Sonarworks had caught our eye back at CES 2019, when they showed off their then-still-in-progress mobile app for personalized sound signatures called True-Fi. The Latvia-based company has credentials to back all their claims, and the in-suite demo was impressive to say the least. Getting it out in the real world meant that the company had to build up their database of compatible headphones to first normalize the sound signature, and then work on the best option for recuperating R&D costs without breaking any wallets. As it turns out, the company had more insight on this at CES 2020 but are only now ready to show their retail plans in the form of SoundID.

SoundID, as both a mobile app (iOS, Android) and the new desktop SoundID Listen experience, takes over from where True-Fi started. The interface is more colorful and user-friendly to the masses, and the mobile app in the current beta form is being marketed more for profile-creation than usage, although it has the option to plug into your Spotify library. The older A/B tests are retained here, and at CES 2020 the app only had the "Core" experience. As of May, the app has new features to coincide with the desktop client's release, and read past the break for more on both.

Intel spoke of a "double digit percentage performance growth generation on generation" at its product reveal for "Tiger Lake" along the sidelines of its CES event. We now have a theory as to how they arrived at that. The company's 11th generation Core "Tiger Lake" processor, scheduled to launch sometime mid-2020, could bring about big gains in per-core performance for the ultraportable segment. PC enthusiast MebiuW, who has had a high hit-rate with Intel leaks, revealed that the flagship "Tiger Lake" part, the Core i7-1185G7, could ship with a CPU Turbo Boost speed of 4.70 GHz, a steep increase from the 3.90 GHz of the top current "Ice Lake" part, the i7-1065G7. The increased clock speeds, coupled with the more advanced "Willow Cove" CPU cores appear to be the 11th generation chip's value proposition.

Seagate had plenty of things to show off at their CES booth, however, some things specially stuck out, like the Lyve Drive Mobile system. Developed to address the need for data movement between different endpoints, the Lyve Drive system comes in a few flavors. First in the line is a Lyve Drive Cards and Card Reader solution, which offers 1 TB CFexpress cards on the go, and a portable reader for them to read the data on the spot. Next up is the Lyve Drive Shutte which resembles an autonomous data storage and data transport solution that offers capacities of up to 16 TB of HDD or SSD storage.

Another Part of the Lyve Drive ecosystem is a Lyve Drive Mobile Array, which offers a sealed and ruggedized solution for carrying up to 6 of Seagate's 18 TB Exos HAMR (heat-assisted magnetic recording) hard drives for a total capacity of 108 TB. Next in the lineup is the Lyve Drive Modular Array - a 4-bay flexible solution that offers various configurations for business, so their deployment strategy of these devices varies. It uses Seagate's MACH.2 multi-actuator technology that transfers the data concurrently. Last but not least is a Lyve Drive Rackmount Reciver which is a 4U rackmount hub that allows for direct connection of Lyve Drive arrays into the data center, without a need to reconnect any of the data center networking specially for storage transfer.

Visiting Bitspower at CES or Computex is a real adventure of sorts in terms of not knowing what to expect. Last year, for example, we were greeted to LN2 pots of all things, in addition to new blocks and fans that made their way to the retail market over the subsequent months. It was also interesting to take a look back at the concept of the Premium Summit M CPU block from last year, knowing what it turned out now. This year, the company hosted us again at CES and had a large hotel suite full of products- refreshes, and new alike. We take a look at their offerings here, and be sure to read past the break for more.

The very first thing we saw was a distribution plate/case hybrid, which Bitspower wants to bring out as a test bench case later this year. There have been other such executions come out recently, including some at CES from other companies, and this is a natural extension of the distro plate development that has caught the mind of several custom watercooling companies for one reason or another. This particular version uses two Xylem DDC pumps with Bitspower heatsinks, and has four large feet to prop up the finished build horizontally for testing/display. Bitspower expects to introduce the finalized version at Computex later this year, and are seeking feedback from our readers on what features they would like to see here.

CES might be over, but our coverage from the event continues. TechPowerUp prides itself on visiting a lot of brands, big and small, and bringing to you our first-hand account of everything new. EK Waterblocks, or simply EKWB henceforth, had a large room in the Mandalay Bay with a big open window spanning the room, which made for challenging photography, but a well-laid out open plan made it easy for us to go over the various product segments they had to display. This post will go briefly over them, but keep in mind that nearly all products showcased do not have set retail availability info just yet.

The very first thing that caught our eyes was their new line of AIO cooling solutions, now simply called EK-AIO. These are the successors to the EK-MLC Phoenix, and the EK-Predator from before, both of which did not really change the status quo of the pre-filled AIO CPU cooling market. EK hopes that the new series, of which again they are working to finalizing the design before committing to a release window and pricing information, will change this. As with most of their new products, the EK-AIO coolers integrate RGB support with 9 dRGB LEDs in the pump/block and more on the EK-Vardar RGB fans that are used on the radiator itself. The EK-AIO series is planned to come in 120/240/360 mm radiator size options, with 1/2/3 fans respectively. Read past the break for more from the Slovenian watercooling brand.

A new find this CES 2020 is Martiantec, a new tech entrant that wants to reinvent the keyboard and mouse as we know it. Their eyeball magnet is what they call the "Martian 104 prototype keyboard" (a working title). Its design involves the physical compartmentalization of every key into interconnected nodes that make up a mesh. The keycap surrounds each node.

This design ensures that no dirt accumulates between keys over time. The Martian 104 comes in several glossy, bright colors. Under the hood(s), this membrane keyboard uses a single piece fiberglass PCB that's been heavily perforated. Each key in this otherwise standard 104-key QWERTY keyset is re-programmable. Martiantec also showed us a prototype wireless mouse, with little else to go off aside from the images below.More pictures follow.

Phison Electronics, the industry's leader in flash controller and NAND storage solutions, is demonstrating mainstream performance using 4-bits per cell QLC NAND flash controllers and SSDs at the Consumer Electronics Show 2020 (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada. In its private suite, Phison is showcasing the addition of support for QLC NAND to its already shipping E16 PCIe Gen 4x4, E12 PCIe Gen 3x4, and S12 SATA controllers that use TLC NAND. Phison's industry leading approach leverages highly successful controllers that were qualified by tier-1 OEMs, are in mass production now, and extends new SSD designs to utilize either TLC or QLC NAND. Phison's proprietary QLC NAND controller technology enables higher SSD capacities in industry standard form factors while meeting the performance demands of mainstream applications.

Phison's flagship E16 series controller for PCIe Gen 4x4 NVMe SSDs can achieve up to 4 TB in capacity with QLC NAND and reaches speeds of 4.9 GB/s for sequential reads and 3.8 GB/s for sequential writes. The E12 series controller enables PCIe Gen 3x4 NVMe SSDs and has a capacity of up to 8 TB and speeds of 3.4 GB/s sequential reads, 3.0 GB/s sequential writes with QLC NAND. For the SATA interface, Phison is also demonstrating the S12 controller series SSDs with up to 16 TB using QLC NAND and performance at 550 MB/s sequential reads and 530 MB/s sequential writes. Phison's DRAM-less S13T controllers enable smaller form factors, have a capacity of up to 2 TB, and operate at 550 MB/s sequential reads and 500 MB/s sequential writes.

Edifier, the prominent designers and award-winning manufacturer of premium sound systems and well-known for its bookshelf speakers, today introduced their newest products, the TWS NB, TWS6, GM6 and G7, to its ever-expanding audio and gaming accessory lineup.

To fill a gap in the marketplace, the TWS NB features active noise technology found in noise-canceling over-ear headphones, in a sleek, truly wireless earphone design while boasting a fully noise-free, immersive listening experience at an affordable cost. Equipped with Knowles tri-frequency balanced armature driver, the TWS6 delivers a rich and powerful, all-encompassing sound in a compact and elegant design. In terms of gaming, the GM6 offers a truly portable mobile gaming experience with the security of listening to every sound in tandem with the visuals, while the G7 brings high quality, surround sound audio in a heat regulating, easy-to-use and stylish headset.

CORSAIR introduced us to their small form factor Capellix LEDs, co-developed with Primax, at CES last year and has since been utilizing them in memory and peripheral products alike. So it was just a natural next step for them to find a way to include them into their cases, and the company took to CES 2020 to show off a traditional retail case which has been covered with a film encompassing these LEDs.

The glass panels are lined with a thin, transparent film so that you are able to have a matrix of these RGB LEDs on the backside without any easily visible wires, which makes for quite a unique look. This implementation does require a lot of more complex wiring relative to a standard LED strip, tiny as it still may be spatially, which currently limits the number of LEDs that could be embedded in such a removable panel, but the result is attention-grabbing regardless. There is no concrete launch date or pricing for this, and CORSAIR is still deciding if they will include these on current cases as a special edition or for future enclosure products. That said, the implementation at CES already looked pretty clean externally and, a fun fact is, you can touch them on the backside of the glass panel and will not get zapped.

At this year's CES, Razer presented its Tomahawk gaming desktop based on Intel's Compute Element - an all in one solution that packs CPU, RAM, and storage on the same PCB. The Tomahawk presents a complete solution, meaning that it is a pre-built PC that you can spec out to your liking. Available with up to Intel 9th generation Core i9, 64 GB of RAM and NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 2080 graphics card, the Tomahawk is marketed as a powerful small form factor gaming PC.

When it comes to connectivity options, the Tomahawk is featuring all of the ports that are available on Ghost Canyon NUC 9, meaning two Thunderbolt 3 ports, six USB-A ports, one HDMI and two LAN ports, plus video output from the graphics card. On the PCB than connects the Compute Element and the GPU, there is also one PCIe 3.0 M.2 NVMe SSD slot available. Razer also announced that they will make this case available on its own to please all the DIYers, and it will be called the Tomahawk N1. For now, however, it is a pre-built only.

At this year's CES show, Sharp, a company behind Dynabook, unveiled what they call the world's lightest 13-inch notebook weighing in at just 1.9 lbs or 0.86 kilograms for all the metric system folks out there. The Portégé X30L-G as it is called is a 13-inch laptop of many qualities. For starters, it comes equipped with a 13.3-inch, 1080p IGZO display with a peak brightness of 470 nits. At its core, the Portégé X30L-G uses Intel's 10th generation of Core processors, presumably the Comet Lake variants. Onboard is also Intel's WiFi 6 standard for faster internet speeds, while the I/O is petty decent as well with two USB-A, one USB-C, one HDMI and one Ethernet port.

The laptop's chassis is made out of magnesium alloy and it features dust and drops resistance per military testing methodologies, making it a durable design that can take on everyday work. Additionally, there is a battery of unknown capacity that is advertised to last up to 14.5 hours, however, that is based on Dynabook's testing and we will have to wait for 3rd party reviews to confirm. The X30L-G is going to arrive sometime in February for the price of $1600.

ASRock at CES 2020 showcased their newfound commitment to AMD APUs and CPUs in the form of their new 1-liter Jupiter A320 mini-PC and the A320-M motherboard. The A320-M motherboard supports up to 65 W AMD APUs, features dual SODIMM memory sticks support, includes 1x NVMe M.2 storage slot and 1x SATA. Video outputs include 2x HDMI and one D-Sub.

ASRock also showcased their Jupiter A320 Mini-PC, which was previously an Intel-only product but will now be offered with AMD innards as well. Offering support for up to 65 W AMD APUs, the Jupiter A320 offers 2x NVMe M.2 storage expansion, 1x SATA, and 8x USB (including 2x Type C and 2x Type-A in the front panel). Video output is taken care of by 1x DisplayPort or 1x HDMI.

ECS unveiled its latest generation Liva Z3 Plus and Z3E Plus compact desktops. The two implement 15-Watt Intel Core i7 "Comet Lake-U" 6-core/12-thread processors. The only thing setting the two apart from each other is the addition of a 2.5-inch SATA drive bay on the Z3E Plus. Both models support an M.2-2280 SSD with both PCI-Express 3.0 x4 and SATA 6 Gbps wiring. An M.2 E-key slot lets you drop in 802.11ax or 802.11ac WLAN cards. Other networking options include two 1 GbE interfaces, one of which is driven by an Intel i219-V controller.

The Liva Z3 Plus series come with Amazon Alexa built in, with four A4PC (Alexa for PC) microphones listening for natural voice input, while a headset combi-jack handles the rest of the audio. USB connectivity includes three USB 3.1 gen 1, and a USB-C 3.1 gen 1. HDMI 2.0 and mini-DisplayPort 1.2 display outputs make for the rest of them.

German PC power, casing, and cooling major be quiet! brought many new goodies to CES 2020, and we went hands on with them. The star-attraction here is their new flagship power-supply, the Dark Power Pro 12. Available in two high-wattage variants, 1,200-Watt and 1,500-Watt, this series boasts of 80 Plus Titanium certification (rare for such high wattage, including in 100-120VAC regions and not just 220-240VAC). It features fully digital power regulation across all domains. The digital power regulation covers 12 V, LLC, and PFC. It's important to note that it does not use a single +12V rail design, but rather a 6-rail design, with at least 40 A per rail. The 1500 W model features a couple of 45 A rails. There are markings on the connection dock about which specific rail is pulling a connector, so you don't end up overloading a rail.

The Dark Power Pro 12 features an "OC Mode" toggle that optimizes the PSU for overclocking. It is cooled by a 135 mm Silent Wings fan that's optimized for whisper-quiet operation. The 1200 W model provides eight 6+2 pin PCIe power connectors, while the 1500 W model provides ten of them. You get at least two 8-pin EPS connectors that aren't piggy-backing a single cable. You get all common electrical protections (over/under-voltage, overload, short-circuit, and overheat). The PSU is housed in a premium brushed aluminium body with a fine mesh over the fan intake. You get single-sleeved modular cables. be quiet! is backing this PSU with a 10-year warranty, and will launch it in February 2020 at an undisclosed price.

At the 2020 International CES, Dell unveiled its latest monitor for graphics professionals, the UltraSharp PremierColor UP2720Q. This 27-inch monitor features an in-built colorimeter for color-caliberation, besides support for CalMAN, which lets you caliberate color with an external colorimeter. The UP2720Q offers 100% Adobe RGB coverage, besides 98% DCI-P3, and 80% BT.2020. The 27-inch 4K Ulra HD (3840 x 2160 pixels) monitor also supports Thunderbolt 3, letting you daisy-chain it with other devices.

Thermaltake, the leading PC DIY premium brand for Cooling, Gaming Gear, and Enthusiast Memory solutions, is excited to announce the launch of View 51 TG ARGB mid-tower and AH T600 TG open frame gaming chassis and will be showcased in Thermaltake booth in CES 2020. View 51 and AH T600 reflect the determination from Thermaltake to create a broader range of enthusiastic gaming cases which are based on gamers, modders and enthusiasts' demands. View 51 is designed to fulfill gamers who love hardcore water-cooling while AH T600 makes a bold statement as open frame chassis concept utilizing a leading-edge aesthetic and powerful air-cooling design.

View 51 that tailor-made for advance water cooling and features two 200 mm ARGB PWM fan at the front of the case and one 120 mm ARGB fan at the rear as a standard option. The case is wrapped in three sheets of 4 mm tempered glass panels for a transparent view into the front, side and top. Combined with support for quad 360 mm radiators at the top, front, side and bottom of the case, the smoked tempered glass and RGB fans contrast perfectly against the View 51's DUAL-CHAMBER design available in either black or white.

Shure in its pre-CES show unveiled the Aonic 215, a pair of true-wireless in-ear monitors that's out to compete with the likes of the AirPods Pro. Each of its two ends features a conventional IEM-like design with replaceable heads, which plug into a stock that runs behind your pinna. This extends to a lobe that contains the battery and the earphone's wireless hardware. Shure promises up to 8 hours of listening on a full charge, and quality on-par with with high-quality wired earphones. As with most other true-wireless earphones, the case of the Aonic 215 doubles up as a recharging dock. It comes with a leatherette exterior and a zipper.

According to sources at DigiTimes, Intel will announce its advanced cooling solutions for project Athena thin and light laptops, at 2020's CES. Pushing project Athena to be the finest of all laptop options, Intel wants to give users the ability to have their laptops run even cooler than ever with a new thermal solution that will supposedly enable an additional 25-30% of cooling headroom. The new cooling module will combine two ingredients to make up for a powerful cooling solution - vapor chambers and graphite sheets.

Usually, the cooling modules inside laptops are placed between the keyboard and laptop's bottom shell, where they could utilize only a small space, so thermal management became hard. In contrast, Intel's design is combining the vapor chamber with graphite sheets to create a bigger surface for heat dissipation. The vapor chamber will replace all the current modules and connect to graphite sheets placed behind the laptop screen, where a lot of area is available. Connecting the vapor chamber to the graphite sheet is a laptop hinge, where a graphite cooling solution would pass through. This hints at a complete redesign of laptop hinges, so we can expect to see some creative solutions there as well. Additionally, this design will allow manufacturers to make fanless laptops that use lower-power CPU models, and we can expect to see even slimmer laptop designs than ever before.

SK hynix Inc., a global semiconductor maker based in Korea, is set to introduce its newest offering of "Gold P31" and "Platinum P31" PCIe NVMe Solid State Drives (SSDs) at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2020, which will be held on January 7-10 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The drives are built with SK hynix's 128-layer 4D NAND flash, only six months after the Company announced the mass production of the world's first and highest vertical stack for NAND flash, demonstrating the chipmaker's technological edge.

As a leading manufacturer of memory chips, SK hynix builds and supplies its own DRAM and NAND flash devices, as well as SSD controllers designed and developed in-house. The company has a proven track record as a major supplier to global OEMs including top-tier PC makers, who have trusted and purchased SK hynix's SSDs for nearly a decade now. As a next step, SK hynix is now expanding into the consumer market with its newest drives.

NVIDIA could launch a "GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Super" after all, if a tweet from kopite7kimi, an enthusiast with a fairly high hit-rate with NVIDIA rumors is to be believed. The purported SKU could be faster than the RTX 2080 Ti, and yet be somehow differentiated from the TITAN RTX. For starters, NVIDIA could enable all 4,608 CUDA cores, 576 tensor cores, and 72 RT cores, along with 288 TMUs and 96 ROPs. Compared to the current RTX 2080 Ti, the Super could get faster 16 Gbps GDDR6 memory.

It's possible that NVIDIA won't change the 352-bit memory bus width or 11 GB memory amount, as those would be the only things stopping the card from cannibalizing the TITAN RTX, which has the chip's full 384-bit memory bus width, and 24 GB of memory. Interestingly, at 16 Gbps with a 352-bit memory bus width, the RTX 2080 Ti Super would have 704 GB/s of memory bandwidth, which is higher than the 672 GB/s of the TITAN RTX, with its 14 Gbps memory clock. These design choices would ensure NVIDIA has a sufficiently faster product than the RTX 2080 Ti, without an increase in BOM, provided it has enough perfectly-functional "TU102" inventory to go around. There's no word on availability, although WCCFTech predicts a CES 2020 unveiling.

According to the findings of a Chiphell user called "wjm47196", AMD is supposedly going to host an event at CES 2020 to showcase its next generation of Radeon graphics cards. Having seen huge success with its first-generation "RDNA" GPUs, AMD is expected to showcase improved lineup utilizing new and improved RDNA 2 graphics card architecture.

Judging by the previous information, second generation of RDNA graphics cards will get much-needed features like ray tracing, to remain competitive with existing offers from NVIDIA and soon Intel. Supposed to be built using the 7 nm+ manufacturing process, the new GPU architecture will get around 10-15% performance improvement due to the new manufacturing process alone, with possibly higher numbers if there are changes to the GPU core.

Remember that awe-inducing Alienware OLED monitor that we introduced you to back in CES 2019? Well, new information has been made known in regards to that particular 55", 4K, 120 Hz OLED panel. In essence, it will be releasing for avid, deep-pocket gamers' hands everywhere on September 30th, for the low, low price of $3,999. Add to that an impressive 0.5 ms response time and FreeSync support, and this will be a giddying piece of hardware.

The Alienware AW5520QF sports a 130,000:1 contrast ratio (due to OLED's pure blacks that are the hallmark of the technology), achieved with a mere 400 nits of brightness (which denies HDR support), as well as coverage of 98.5% of the DCI-P3 color gamut. 1x DisplayPort 1.2, 3x HDMI 2.0 ports, 4x USB ports, 1xS/PDIF audio line-out and 1x headphone jack round out the monitor's connectivity. There's also RGB lighting on the back of the monitor. If only it was something akin to Philips' Ambilight tech...

The gift that is CES keeps on giving! We go over the NETGEAR suite, and it was more of an entire floor, in this article with the company showing off their involvement in every networking sector imaginable- the professional environment, consumer and retail networking solutions, and smart home devices. Indeed, stepping off the elevator itself led to a hallway lined with Meural canvasses, which are very well built frames that have an integrated display to show off images of your choosing. This public hallway had generation 2.0 canvasses, with the new-for-CES generation 3.0 series inside the show room that encompasses four different frame options in two different sizes- the currently available 27" version, and the newer 21.5" size for those wanting something smaller.

Meural canvasses can be used in landscape or portrait configurations, and supports a library of over 30,000 curated art images at an optional membership cost of $49.95/year. The new generation is available from August 2019, with the new screens having a wider color gamut and a truer-to-life display, that was impressive. These are definitely for a niche audience, however, but I can appreciate NETGEAR wanting to provide more use cases for their networking solutions. The current Gen 2.0 27" canvas starts at $595 (dimensions with the frame are larger than 27"), and an optional pivoting stand with more display I/O options is an additional $49.95 for when you want to have your own images connected to it. For the rest of the tour, be sure to read past the break!

During our visit with ECS at CES 2019, we had the opportunity to check out some of their Mini-PCs. The first one we looked at during our tour was the M520 which comes equipped with an Intel Apollo Lake SoC and support for up to 8 GB of DDR3L via 2 SODIMM slots. Expansions options consist of an M.2 E key 2230 slot (PCIe, USB) and an M.2 M key 2242/2280 PCIe x1 slot. It offers HDMI and mDP for video output and even has two Gigabit LAN ports along with wireless connectivity and Bluetooth 4.0. Onboard storage consists of eMMC configured as 64 GB or 32 GB, and a 2.5-inch HDD/SSD as an option. It also has 4x USB 3.1 Gen 1 ports for peripherals and device connectivity along with an ES-232/422/485 port. In general, this particular system is quite tiny, but even with that in mind, we have to wonder why a 32 GB version is also an option considering Microsoft has gone so far as to say 32 GB of storage is inadequate for Windows 10.

Next up was the LIVA M520 not to be confused with the model previously discussed this option is quite a bit larger but features similar specifications. It comes equipped with a Celeron N3350 and up to 8 GB of DDR3L via 2x SODIMM slots. Storage consists of the same 32 GB, or 64 GB of eMMC and a 2.5-inch HDD/SSD is optional. The rest of the specifications are also quite similar with the LIVA M520 having an HDMI + mDP for video output, 4x USB ports, and 2x Gigabit LAN ports. Where it differs is the USB ports are only USB 3.0, not 3.1. For expansion, it includes the same M.2 E key and M.2 M key slots as the other M520 system.

Computer Upgrade King demoed 2 new extremely powerful and colorful mATX gaming desktops at CES that release in Spring 2019. On display at Patriot's suite, they featured their Continuum Mini which has an intense infinity mirror front panel with large side vents to ensure excellent air flow. Inside, there was an NVidia RTX 2080 TI GPU and an Intel i9-9900K CPU with their own custom cooling system consisting of an RGB CPU water block, anodized brushed aluminum reservoir and pump combo, front mounted 240mm radiator and lotus style ARGB fans.

On display at AMD's suite, they featured their Stratos Mini which has a triple RGB fan front panel with metal blade design to ensure excellent air flow. Inside, there was a Gigabyte Vega 56 GPU, an AMD Threadripper 2950X CPU with their own custom cooling system, a Team Group T-Force Delta RGB SSD, and halo style RGB fans.