ASUS started selling its premium Mini-ITX motherboard based on the AMD X570 chipset, the Republic of Gamers (ROG) Strix X570-I Gaming. The board was announced as part of ASUS' X570 motherboard lineup back in July, but is only now reaching selves, with an MSRP of USD $220. The board features an elaborate thermal solution that cools the CPU VRM, the fiesty X570 chipset, and an M.2-2280 SSD over a network of interconnected heatsinks that are ventilated by two 30 mm fans. Despite crippling space constraints, ASUS managed to cram in a 10-phase VRM to power the socket AM4 CPU, which is wired to two DDR4 DIMM slots, an M.2-2280 slot, and the board's sole expansion slot, a PCI-Express 4.0 x16.

Storage connectivity on the ASUS ROG Strix X570-I Gaming includes not one, but two M.2-2280 slots, one wired to the AM4 socket, and the other from the X570 chipset. The two M.2 slots are stacked one on top of the other, with a metal heatspreader between them, pulling heat from the drive below to the board's heatsink network. Four SATA 6 Gbps ports make the rest of the storage connectivity. Networking includes WiFi 6 (802.11ax) and Bluetooth 5.0 from an Intel "Cyclone Peak" AX200 card; and 1 GbE wired Ethernet pulled by an Intel i211-AT chip. The onboard audio solution features a Realtek ALC1200A CODEC with dual OPAMPs.

NETGEAR, Inc., the leading provider of mesh WiFi systems that power smart homes, today announced the worldwide release of Orbi WiFi 6 Mesh System an innovative solution that delivers a new standard for wireless networks.

This next generation Orbi Mesh WiFi System is designed for the connected world of today and the future. Households now have a multitude of always-on and always-connected smart home devices many of which are running high-bandwidth applications like streaming 4K/8K Ultimate HD connections across multiple screens. The Orbi WiFi 6 mesh system has the capacity to support the traffic generated by the multitude of connected devices that are in the home today and for years to come. Similar to the difference experienced between driving on a congested four-lane highway compared to that of a sixteen-lane superhighway, WiFi 6 provides more streams so there is an increased capacity for more traffic ensuring that the fastest high-speed WiFi connected devices are not stalled by the slower ones.

ASRock is pleased to announce a very special product launch: the new X570 AQUA motherboard, which is already highly anticipated for its unprecedented features and performance.

The X570 AQUA is the only completely water-cooled X570 motherboard - its unique all-copper cooling block covers the CPU, VRM and X570 Chipset to provide unbelievable performance and stability. This exclusive product is being manufactured in a very limited production run of just 999 boards and made available on a first come first served basis. X570 AQUA is the ultimate selection for the AMD X570 chipset and Ryzen 3000 series desktop processors - to be enjoyed only by a select few worldwide. With the top choice CPU for DIY PC enthusiasts - AMD Ryzen 3000 series processors paired with ASRock's super high-end X570 AQUA motherboard will definitely be your ideal partner.

TP-Link, a leading global provider of consumer and business networking products, today announced its revolutionary AX3000 Wi-Fi 6 router—Archer AX50. Targeted at the mainstream and equipped with the Intel Home Wi-Fi Chipset, Archer AX50 will deliver a premium Wi-Fi 6 Gig+ experience to more families at an affordable price point. Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) is expected to be the most significant leap in Wi-Fi technology, developed in response to the ever growing demands on home Wi-Fi. With Intel's Wi-Fi 6 (Gig+) technology, Archer AX50 is capable of delivering a huge boost in speed and total capacity by utilizing a cutting-edge Wi-Fi 6 foundation.

Mainstream adoption of Wi-Fi 6 is growing with the introduction of more and more AX clients. Archer AX50 is estimated to be a major router product to hit the mass market. "Intel was the first to introduce Wi-Fi 6 for the PC and multiple PCs are now being introduced with the technology worldwide. Embedded with Intel's Wi-Fi 6 technology, TP-Link Archer AX50 can deliver Gig+ speeds to new PCs with Intel Wi-Fi 6 Gig+," said Pingji Li, VP & GM of TP-Link Networking BU. "Intel is devoted to bringing Wi-Fi 6 Gig+ to more people for a better experience. The close collaboration with Intel helps TP-Link as we continuously strive for better connectivity, anywhere, at any time, for more people to deliver better experiences."

The leading global motherboard manufacturer, ASRock, is pleased to officially announce the launch of the new AMD X570 motherboard series, previewed during Computex 2019. The series offers ten motherboard models for every role from affordable performance to gaming to content creation to power users. ASRock's X570 boards get the most from the next generation PCIe 4.0 interface and from the newest, most powerful AM4 processors, including the AMD Ryzen 2000 and 3000 Series. These new boards continue the tradition of trusted ASRock names such as Taichi and Phantom Gaming.

The new design for ASRock's X570 motherboards is a huge step forward. ASRock has combined both aesthetics and functionality to create a board that not only looks fascinating, with its bold angular lines, but performs as good as it looks. The stunning full coverage aluminum heatsink cools and protects the PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSDs as well as the chipset. The neatly designed color LED system is eye-catching but also classy. If you need even more enhanced RGB effects, you can customize your PC with Polychrome SYNC full-color RGB LED lighting, which provides both 3-pin addressable RGB headers and traditional 4-pin RGB LED headers which allow users to connect RGB strips directly to the motherboard and sync their lighting system using the app provided.

AMD X570 is the company's first in-house design desktop motherboard chipset for the AM4 platform. The company sourced earlier generations of chipset from ASMedia. A chipset in context of the AM4 platform only serves to expand I/O connectivity, since an AM4 processor is a full-fledged SoC, with an integrated southbridge that puts out SATA and USB ports directly from the CPU socket, in addition to LPCIO (ISA), HD audio bus, and SPI to interface with the firmware ROM chip. The X470 "Promontory Low Power" chipset runs really cool, with a maximum TDP of 5 Watts, and the ability to lower power to get its TDP down to 3W. The X570, on the other hand, has a TDP of "at least 15 Watts." A majority of the X570 motherboards we've seen at Computex 2019 had active fan-heatsinks over the chipset. We may now have a possible explanation for this - there are just too many things on the chipset.

According to AMD, the X570 chipset by itself can be made to put out a staggering twelve SATA 6 Gbps ports (not counting the two ports put out by the AM4 SoC). A possible rationale behind this may have been to enable motherboard designers to equip every M.2 slot on the motherboard with SATA wiring in addition to PCIe, without needing switches that reroute SATA connection from one of the physical ports. It's also possible that AMD encouraged motherboard designers to not wire out SATA ports from the AM4 SoC as physical ports to save costs on switches, and dedicate one of them to the M.2 slot wired to the SoC. With the two SATA ports from the SoC out of the equation, and every other M.2 slot getting a direct SATA connection from the chipset, motherboard designers can wire out the remaining SATA ports as physical ports, without spending money on switches, or worrying about customer complaints on one of their drives not working due to automatic switching. This is an extreme solution to a rather simple problem.

Motherboard vendors are betting big on the success of AMD's "Valhalla" desktop platform that combines a Ryzen 3000-series Zen 2 processor with an AMD X570 chipset motherboard, and have responded with some mighty premium board designs. GIGABYTE deployed its full spectrum of Aorus branding, including Ultra, Elite, ITX Pro, Master, and Xtreme. The X570 I Aorus Pro WiFi mini-ITX motherboard is an impressive feat of engineering despite its designers having to wrestle with the feisty new PCIe gen 4 chipset. It draws power from a combination of 24-pin and 8-pin connectors, and conditions power for the SoC with an impressive 8-phase VRM that uses high-grade PowIRstage components. A rather tall fan-heatsink cools the X570 chipset, with a 30 mm fan.

Connectivity options on the X570 I Aorus Pro WiFi are surprisingly aplenty. The sole expansion slot is a PCI-Express 4.0 x16, but the storage connectivity includes not one, but two M.2-2280 slots (reverse side of the PCB), each with PCI-Express 4.0 x4 and SATA 6 Gbps wiring. Four SATA 6 Gbps ports make for the rest of the storage connectivity. Networking options include 2.4 Gbps 802.11ax WLAN, Bluetooth 5.0 (Intel , and 1 GbE, all pulled by Intel-made controllers. USB connectivity includes six 5 Gbps USB 3.2 gen 1, and two 10 Gbps USB 3.2 gen 2 ports (of which one is type-C), and two 5 Gbps ports by headers. The onboard audio solution has 6-channel analog output, but is backed by a premium Realtek ALC1220VB Enhance CODEC (114 dBA SNR).

We were pleasantly mistaken when we thought ASRock would stop at the X570 Phantom Gaming X or the X570 Taichi for AMD's new "Valhalla" enthusiast desktop platform. It turns out that they have a roughly-$1,000 monster motherboard in the pipes, called the X570 Aqua. Pictured below, the board is based on a slight variation of the X570 Phantom Gaming X PCB. The biggest change of course is the aluminium shroud that covers most of the board's front side. There's also a metal back-plate.

Beneath the metal shroud is what gives the board its name: a massive liquid-cooling monoblock that cools not just your processor (including heavyweights such as overclocked Ryzen 9 3900X chips), but also the CPU VRM, and the feisty AMD X570 chipset. The coolant channel first goes over the CPU through a large micro-fin lattice, then onto the X570 chipset, and finally over the CPU VRM on its way out. Much like the Phantom Gaming X, this board features daisy-chained dual-channel DDR4 memory slots designed to make the most OC out of 2-module setups.

Intel laid rest to speculation that post 9th generation, it could replace its Core brand with something else. The 10th generation Core processors, built around the 10 nm "Ice Lake" microachitecture, will feature the first noteworthy IPC increments since "Skylake" thanks to their new "Sunny Cove" CPU cores. These will also feature DLBoost, a fixed-function matrix-multiplication hardware that speeds up deep-neural net building and training by 5x, as well as certain AVX-512 instructions. The cores will be optimized to cope with 2.4 Gbps 802.11ax Wi-Fi and faster Ethernet standards. The first of these chips will target mobile computing platforms, and will be quad-core parts like the dies pictured below. To save notebook PCB real-estate, Intel will put the processor and PCH dies into a multi-chip module. It will be quite a wait for the desktop implementation, but at least you know what their case-badges look like.

ASRock is ready with its own mini-ITX motherboard based on the AMD X570 chipset, the X570 Phantom Gaming-ITX TB3. This tiny powerhouse one-ups other mini-ITX motherboards in its category by offering 40 Gbps Thunderbolt 3 connectivity over USB type-C, in addition to USB 3.2. This Thunderbolt port also includes a DP pass-through from your discrete graphics card.

Expansion includes one PCI-Express 4.0 x16. Storage connectivity includes one M.2-2280 with PCI-Express 4.0 x4 and SATA 6 Gbps connectivity; and four SATA 6 Gbps ports. Networking options include 2.4 Gbps 802.11ax WLAN, Bluetooth 5.0, and 1 GbE driven by Intel i211-AT. The board pulls power from a combination of 24-pin ATX and 8-pin EPS connectors, conditioning it for the SoC with a 6+2 phase VRM. A chunky fan-heatsink cools the chipset, shedding some of its heat to the enlarged VRM heatsink cloaked under the I/O shroud.

ASRock came to Computex 2019 with a fairly big selection of socket AM4 motherboards based on the AMD X570 chipset. The lineup is led by the X570 Taichi, launched as a single SKU and not differentiated into an "Ultimate" variant. ASRock retains the characteristic gearwheel style along the board's styling. Almost the entire bottom half of the board is covered by a metal shroud that spreads heat from the chipset heatsink, and three M.2 SSDs. The chipset heatsink's fan is concealed behind a grille to not look like an eyesore. New generation connectivity options from this board include 2.5 GbE wired + 2.4 Gbps 802.11ax WLAN, and USB 3.2 ports. The Taichi looks a little less understated than its predecessors, with more RGB LED embellishments.

We also spied the X570 Steel Legend, with its polarizing "urban camo" print, and bright metal meatsinks and I/O shrouds. The Steel Legend series motherboards command interesting sub-$200 price-points, and it will be interesting to see where this one lands. You get two M.2 NVMe slots, both with metal heatsinks, an M.2 E-key slot, open-ended x1 slots, and a reasonably powerful ALC1220-based onboard audio solution. We also spotted two Phantom Gaming products, the X570 Phantom Gaming X, and the X570 Phantom Gaming 4, with the Gaming X being the company's flagship X570 offering. This board maxes out the platform's connectivity with three M.2 NVMe slots, 802.11ax WLAN, 2.5 GbE wired networking, an additional 1 GbE interface driven by an Intel controller, USB 3.2, and a strong 16-phase VRM powering the AM4 socket. Like most other ASRock boards, the fan ventilating the chipset heatsink is concealed behind a grille.

With motherboard vendors going big on the AMD "Valhalla" platform (a combination of 3rd generation Ryzen processor and AMD X570 chipset), we got to see MSI pull out every single high-end motherboard label it has, including MEG GODLIKE and MEG Creation. We sneaked into the MSI booth to take some snaps of the other X570 boards, including a close-up of the MEG X570 Ace, and three other MPG series boards. The MEG X570 Ace is largely carved out of the MEG X570 GODLIKE with a little toning down of the style and features. This is still a formidable board built for serious manual overclocking. We also get the sense that MSI is replacing its "Gaming M7" moniker with MEG Ace in its product stack, as we couldn't find an "X570 Gaming M7" anywhere.

With the MEG GODLIKE and MEG Creation expected to be priced north of $300, the MEG X570 Ace could be priced around the $260-mark. Positioned below it around $200-220, is the MPG X570 Gaming Pro Carbon. This board offers everything you need to build a super high-end rig where the focus is on gaming. It has decent CPU overclocking chops, too. The onboard audio and networking features are premium, and we expect MSI to deploy 802.11ax Wi-Fi. The new MPG X570 Gaming Edge is a lighter variant of the Gaming Pro Carbon, and is largely based on the same PCB. If you don't care all that much about board design, the MPG Gaming Edge is the way to go, with its roughly-$180 price. The MPG X570 Gaming Plus is a cost-effective product, and has all of the essentials gamers need for this platform. It is expected to go for around $150.

ASUS at a private pre-Computex event gave us a closer look at a treasure of upcoming products. The star-attractions, however, were its AMD X570 motherboard family that's spread across nearly every brand: ROG Crosshair, ROG Strix, TUF Gaming, Prime, and for the very first time for the AM4 platform, the WS series. The crown jewel of course is the mini-ITX form-factor product, the ROG Strix X570-I Gaming. This board is quite an engineering feat considering the ≥15 Watts TDP of the X570 chipset, which requires active cooling in most cases. An intricate network of heatsinks suspended along heat-pipes leading up to a dense aluminium fin-stack ventilated by a 30 mm fan, cools both the chipset and CPU VRM. ASUS designed this board to handle even the 12-core Ryzen 9 3900X, but we don't expect too much overclocking headroom.

AMD X570 is the company's first in-house design socket AM4 motherboard chipset, with the X370 and X470 chipsets being originally designed by ASMedia. With the X570, AMD hopes to leverage new PCI-Express gen 4.0 connectivity of its Ryzen 3000 Zen2 "Matisse" processors. The desktop platform that combines a Ryzen 3000 series processor with X570 chipset is codenamed "Valhalla." A rough platform diagram like what you'd find in motherboard manuals surfaced on ChipHell, confirming several features. To maintain pin-compatibility with older generations of Ryzen processors, Ryzen 3000 has the same exact connectivity from the SoC except two key differences.

On the AM4 "Valhalla" platform, the SoC puts out a total of 28 PCI-Express gen 4.0 lanes. 16 of these are allocated to PEG (PCI-Express graphics), configurable through external switches and redrivers either as single x16, or two x8 slots. Besides 16 PEG lanes, 4 lanes are allocated to one M.2 NVMe slot. The remaining 4 lanes serve as the chipset bus. With X570 being rumored to support gen 4.0 at least upstream, the chipset bus bandwidth is expected to double to 64 Gbps. Since it's an SoC, the socket is also wired to LPCIO (SuperIO controller). The processor's integrated southbridge puts out two SATA 6 Gbps ports, one of which is switchable to the first M.2 slot; and four 5 Gbps USB 3.x ports. It also has an "Azalia" HD audio bus, so the motherboard's audio solution is directly wired to the SoC. Things get very interesting with the connectivity put out by the X570 chipset.Update May 21st: There is also information on the X570 chipset's TDP.
Update May 23rd: HKEPC posted what looks like an official AMD slide with a nicer-looking platform map. It confirms that AMD is going full-tilt with PCIe gen 4, both as chipset bus, and as downstream PCIe connectivity.

The high-end Intel Z390 chipset is entering the next phase of its life cycle. So, just as everyone begins to feel bored with old motherboard designs from last year, ASRock has decided to give gamers and enthusiasts a welcome surprise by introducing the Z390 Phantom Gaming 7 and Z390 Phantom Gaming X, to join the just launched Z390 Steel Legend. ASRock is bringing new life to the Z390 motherboard market with this complete mainstream to high-end product lineup.

Aesthetics are one of the many big improvements in the new Z390 Phantom Gaming 7 and Z390 Phantom Gaming X. Not only is there the cool RGB lighting already built into the motherboard, plus RGB LED headers, but the beautifully designed pre-installed I/O shield reserves more space for fitting tolerances and allows IO shield positional adjustment while installing, thus fitting the chassis perfectly. Unlike most so-called pre-mounted I/O shields that are only decorated with fancy color schemes, ASRock's design can truly improve the whole PC building experience.

ASUS today announced the AiMesh AX6100 Wi-Fi System, a complete home mesh Wi-Fi solution consisting of two ASUS RT-AX92U wireless routers.

Featuring the latest Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) technology, which includes a variety of new technologies that improve Wi-Fi speed and network capacity, the AiMesh AX6100 Wi-Fi System provides extremely fast, stable and strong Wi-Fi connections anywhere in the home as well as future-proof performance and compatibility with current and legacy Wi-Fi devices.

Rivet Networks announced general availability of its Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) capable Killer WiFi 6 AX1650 WLAN network controllers for sale to PC motherboard and notebook manufacturers. The AX1650 is based on Intel "Cyclone Peak" PHY, mated with a custom firmware and drivers by Rivet Networks that are optimized for competitive online multiplayer gaming. The controller supports 2x2 MU-MIMO with 160 MHz channels, delivering up to 2.4 Gbps theoretical maximum WLAN bandwidth over the card's main PCIe gen 3.0 x1. It also supports Bluetooth 5.0 over a separate USB 2.0 connection.

Besides minimizing CPU overhead, Killer drivers provide a highly specialized QoS solution called Killer Intelligence Engine, which shapes the Internet traffic of your game and streaming software ahead of other apps that seek Internet access. Advanced Stream Detect 2.0 can detect Internet traffic from thousands of games and gaming websites to optimize your Internet access on the fly. GameFast Technology works to reduce the Wi-Fi controller's CPU overhead by up to 10 percent compared to other WLAN solutions. The controller is also DoubleShot Pro (teaming) capable. The controller ships in M.2-2230 and 1216 modules, with PCIe and USB interfaces.

NETGEAR , Inc., the industry's leading provider of leading-edge networking products for the home and office, has announced the availability of four new routers that support the latest and fastest Wi-Fi networking standard - Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax).

Today's households are dealing with an increasing number of connected devices and an increasing demand for greater bandwidth from streaming video, audio and online gaming. Add to this the plethora of smart home devices from IP cameras, voice assistants, smart thermostats and appliances, all of which are dependent on a constant connection to the cloud. These devices just increase the complexity of a network as they compete for bandwidth, pushing wireless home networks beyond the technical threshold for the current generation of Wi-Fi. NETGEAR has solved for this modern-day dilemma with the introduction of a full suite of ultra-fast Wi-Fi 6 routers.

Intel formally launched the Wi-Fi 6 AX200 client-segment WLAN card for notebooks and PC motherboards in the M.2-2230 and M.2-1216 form-factors, based on the "Cyclone Peak" PHY powering the Wireless AX-22260 NIC family. The card interfaces with its host over PCI-Express 3.0 x1 and USB 2.0, for the Wi-Fi and integrated Bluetooth interfaces, respectively. As a Wi-Fi 6 adapter, it supports 802.11ax over 2x2 MU-MIMO antennae, and peak bandwidth of 2.4 Gbps, with support for both the 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz bands. The Bluetooth interface is version 5.0.

Intel is giving finishing touches to its new family of compact WLAN cards for portables and motherboards, under the "Cyclone Peak" family. These include the Wireless-AX 22260 sold under Intel's main brand, and two re-branded or differentiated products by RivetNetworks: Killer Wireless-AX 1650x (22260NGW), and Killer Wireless-AX 1650W (22260D2W). Device IDs for these cards were recently added to the IWLWIFI repository by Intel software teams. "Cyclone Peak" offers 802.11ax Wi-Fi connectivity, in addition to Bluetooth 5. 802.11ax provides about 37 percent higher data-rate than 802.11ac, but improved effective bandwidth due to better spectrum utilization.

Intel today unveiled a killer new product with which it hopes to bring about as big a change to mobile computing as Ultrabook did some eight years ago. This effort is a combination of a new mobile computing form-factor codenamed "Project Athena," and an SoC at its heart, codenamed "Lakefield." Put simply, "Lakefield" is a 10 nm SoC that's integrated much in the same way as today's ARM SoCs, which combine IP from various vendors onto a single PoP (package-over-package) Foveros die.

The biggest innovation with "Lakefield" is its hybrid x86 multi-core CPU design, which combines four Atom-class low-power cores, with one Core-class "Sunny Cove" core, in a setup akin to ARM's big.LITTLE. Low-power processing loads are distributed to the smaller cores, while the big core is woken up to deal with heavy loads. The SoC also integrates a Gen 11 iGPU core, partial components to accelerate 802.11ax WLAN, 5G, an PoP DRAM and NVMe storage devices. The reference motherboard based on "Lakefield" is barely larger than an M.2 SSD!

ASUS Republic of Gamers (ROG) today announced that the ROG Rapture GT-AX11000 Wi-Fi gaming router is now available. Featuring support for the latest 802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6) standard, which includes a variety of new technologies that improve Wi-Fi speed and increase network capacity and coverage, ROG Rapture GT-AX11000 satisfies gamers' demands for ultrafast, networking performance and reliability. As a gaming router, it also offers numerous additional features designed to provide the best online gaming experiences, including triple-level gaming acceleration to reduce ping times and provide low latency gameplay, Game Radar to let gamers find the best game server before connecting, Open NAT for simple, three-step port forwarding and dynamic frequency selection (DFS) to avoid interference from other wireless devices.

TP-Link , a leading global provider of consumer and business networking products, today unveiled two new groundbreaking WiFi routers-the Archer AX6000 and the Archer AX11000. Both routers support the new 802.11ax wireless standard, also known as WiFi 6. The revolutionary 802.11ax standard features advanced technologies such as OFDMA, AX MU-MIMO, 160MHz channel and 1024 QAM to vastly improve network capacity and efficiency, aiming to support more devices with faster speed.

The Archer AX6000 is TP-Link's first 802.11ax WiFi router. It is designed to speed up your connection and serve more devices simultaneously-making it the perfect router for your modern home or office whether you're streaming 4k/8k movies, online gaming, experiencing VR, or engaging with your smart devices.

Many of our readers would probably have no problem identifying the type of connectivity offered by Wi-Fi standards such as 802.11ac or 802.11n, but for many other users those differences have never been too clear.

That's precisely what the Wi-Fi Alliance, the organization that defines these standards, wanted to solve. In an official announcement, this body has revealed the new scheme to name Wi-Fi versions. The new names will make those versions much more easily differentiated both by manufacturers and especially by users.

Today, at Mobile World Congress Shanghai, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., a subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated, and Tsinghua Unigroup Subsidiary New H3C (New H3C), announced the availability of the H3C WA6628, an 802.11ax enterprise grade Access Point (AP), based on Qualcomm Technologies' IPQ8078 802.11ax chipset. This new solution is designed to offer one of the fastest throughput rates for an enterprise AP, by supporting 12 stream channels that serve data to up to 1000 client devices simultaneously. The WA6628 is targeted to begin shipping to customers in September 2018.

Qualcomm Technologies' IPQ8078 chipset is based on a powerful networking platform that supports up to 10 Gigabits per second (Gbps) wide-area networks and up to 6 Gbps peak physical (PHY) layer rates on Wi-Fi. The WA6628 makes full use of IPQ8078 capabilities, with a 10G Ethernet port and built-in Bluetooth. WA6628 can improve wireless network transmission rates by at least three times more than the mainstream 11ac Wave 2 AP.