News and specifications about Intel's upcoming Kaby Lake-based desktop CPUs are thin, but a recent leak has made it possible to discern at least some details, due to an Intel product change notification (PCN) document.

A PCN is a document issued by a manufacturer to inform customers about a change to a mass-produced product or its manufacturing process. In this PCN, Intel details a new factory in Vietnam which will work in order to "ensure a continuous supply of the Select Intel Xeon Processor E3-1205, Intel Core i5-7400 Processor, Intel Core i5-7400T Processor, Intel Core i5-7500 Processor, Intel Core i5-7500T Processor, Intel Core i5-7600 Processor, Intel Core i5-7600K Processor, Intel Core i5-7600T Processor, Intel Core i7-7700 Processor, Intel Core i7-7700T Processor and Intel Core i7-7700K Processor products".

15 years ago, Aqua Computer set the standard with the introduction of the CPU water block cuplex, and today, the company is releasing a highly innovative new CPU cooler, the Cuplex Kryos NEXT.

Intel today announced the launch of a new generation of Intel Atom processor, the Intel Atom processor E3900 series, designed from the ground up to support the rapid development and the growing complexity of Internet of Things (IoT) businesses. The Intel Atom processor E3900 Series delivers excellent performance and a unique set of features for the edge in segments such as industrial, automotive, video, manufacturing, retail, and more. Intel is also offering an automotive grade processor specifically to address in-vehicle experiences called the Intel Atom processor A3900 series.

AMD today released their earnings call for 3Q 2016, giving us some interesting tidbits in regards to their financial robustness. The balance of AMD's economics seems to be pending towards better execution, and, coeteris paribus, a much better outlook for the coming quarters, after the monumental missteps in the past that almost threw AMD under the proverbial bus. Reception for the results seems to be a tangled mess, however, with some sides claiming that AMD beat expectations, while others prefer to draw attention to AMD's 2% stock decline since the report was outed.

AMD posted revenue of $1,307 million, up 27% sequentially and 23% year-over-year. This revenue was distributed unevenly through AMD's divisions, though. "Computing and Graphics" segment revenue was $472 million, up 9% from Q2 2016, primarily due to increased GPU sales (where Polaris picked up the grunt of the work, being responsible for 50% of AMD's GPU revenue), offset by lower sales of client desktop processors and chipsets; whereas "Enterprise, Embedded and Semi-Custom" segment revenue was $835 million, up 41% sequentially, primarily due to record semi-custom SoC sales (such as those found in Microsoft's XBOX One and Sony's PS4 and upcoming PS4 Pro).

As previously reported by TPU, in preparation for Intel's Kaby Lake architecture release, MSI published BIOS updates for its MSI 100 series chipset motherboards that (supposedly) guaranteed compatibility with Intel's upcoming platform. However, the new BIOS update seemingly disappeared from MSI's support webpages without any information as to why. According to ComputerBase, MSI representatives mentioned that an error was found in the code, and that a fix was currently being worked on. According to MSI, the fixed BIOSes should be made available shortly.

In any case, this scenario is better than the alternative of it having been users discovering the BIOS support to be defective. MSI did a good job in finding this ahead of Kaby Lake's launch and potential accompanying headaches from a not fully compatible CPU and motherboard combo.

Thanks to AMD's incorporation of an ARM-based "AMD Secure Processor" in their upcoming ZEN micro-architecture, the company is poised to offer something competitor Intel's microprocessors yet don't: memory encryption. This processor, and its underlying technologies, could prove to be a stepping-stone for AMD towards regaining lost server market share. Essentially, because in a market ever more steered by cloud computing considerations, it allows for the client's data to be encrypted at every moment of the work chain. Assuming all works as intended, for the first time not even cloud providers, with either hypervisor-level privileges or even physical access to the servers, will be able to carry out any malicious actions against their clients.

One only has to consider the writing on the wall: Morgan Stanley predicts that by 2018, 30% of Microsoft's revenue will stem from its cloud services; Amazon Web Services (AWS) generated $7.88B in revenue on Q4 2015, up 69% over 2014; and worldwide spending on public cloud services by itself will grow from $70B in 2015 to an estimated $141B in 2019. Cloud computing is here to stay, and with security being as important as it is for some businesses, this is an important area of investment for AMD. This "AMD Secure Processor" will work on essentially two fronts: SME (Secure Memory Encryption) and SEV (Secure Encrypted Virtualization), backed by an hardware-based SHA (Secure Hash Algorithm).

AMD is reportedly "aggressively clearing" its inventories of current-generation processors, such products in the AM3+ and FM2+ packages; to make room for next-generation processors based on the "ZEN" architecture, and new 7th generation A-series "Bristol Ridge" APUs, both of which are built in the new socket AM4 package. You should be able to find AMD FX CPUs at attractive prices, so current 4-core and 6-core users could be lured to upgrade to faster 8-core chips, including those featuring the company's Wraith silent CPU cooler.

Taiwan industry observer DigiTimes reports that AMD will launch its next-generation "ZEN" processors, and motherboards based on the high-end X370 chipset, alongside the 2017 International CES expo, in early January. 2017 promises to be a big year for the company as it's not only attempting to regain competitiveness in the performance desktop CPU space, but also high-end graphics, with its Radeon "VEGA" family.

SoftBank today announced that it has concluded the acquisition of British chipmaker ARM, in a USD $31 billion purchase. The acquisition was first announced in July 2016. Following this, ARM will be de-listed from the London Stock Exchange from the 6th of September 2016. Although ARM is a CPU architecture designer with a mere $1.5 billion in revenue last fiscal, and licenses the architecture to other SoC makers such as Qualcomm, Samsung, Apple, Huawei, etc., SoftBank is betting on ARM CPU architecture's emergence as the prime-mover of the IoT (Internet of things) revolution. This is SoftBank's largest tech acquisition following the $20 billion acquisition of American cellular network Sprint, and a $15 billion investment in Vodafone Japan.

In a leaked presentation meant for its investors, AMD states that it expects to launch the "Vega" GPU architecture no sooner than 2017. The company plans to get it out within the first half of 2017. What makes this decision significant is that the company isn't planning on making bigger GPUs on its existing "Polaris" architecture, and its biggest product is the $249 Radeon RX 480. This leaves the company's discrete GPU lineup virtually untended at key price-points above, against NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 1070, GTX 1080, and TITAN X Pascal, at least for the next five months.

In the mean time, AMD could launch additional mobile SKUs based on the Polaris 10 and Polaris 11 chips. The reasons behind this slow-crawl could be many - AMD could be turning its chip-design resources to the various semi-custom SoCs it's working on, for Microsoft and Sony, with their next-generation game consoles; AMD Vega development could also be running in-sync with market availability of HBM2 memory. 2017 promises to be a hectic year for AMD, with launch of not just Vega, but also its "ZEN" CPU architecture, the "Summit Ridge" processor, and APUs based on the CPU micro-architecture.

BIOSTAR proudly announces a new line up of motherboards featuring the new 14nm Intel Braswell Refresh SoC processors that feature many improvements from its older 22nm counterpart Baytrail SoC. The new 14nm processors offer a more efficient yet powerful experience than its predecessor whilst consuming less power and producing less heat. The various improvements also introduce new performance enhancements for both CPU and GPU guaranteeing a more refined visual experience.

With the new processor architecture comes new enhancements over the older-generation of processors. Besides improvements in processing speed, Braswell Refresh boasts a new 14nm fabrication process which gives the SoC a smaller die that needs less power (6w) and produces less heat. A heavily improved 8th-gen Intel HD Graphics processor with 12 Execution Units (EUs) is baked into the SoC compared to the 4 EUs of the older gen model. Connectivity is also improved with native support for DDR3L-1600 speeds, SATAIII and up to 4 USB3.0 devices.

CERN engineer Liviu Valsan, in a recent presentation on datacenter hardware trends, presented a curious looking slide that highlights some of the key features of AMD's upcoming "Zen" CPU architecture. We know from a recent story that the architecture is scalable up to 32 cores per socket, and that AMD is building these chips on the 14 nanometer FinFET process.

Among the other key features detailed on the slide are symmetric multi-threading (SMT). Implemented for over a decade by Intel as HyperThreading Technology, SMT exposes a physical core as two logical CPUs to the software, letting it make better use of the hardware resources. Another feature is talk of up to eight DDR4 memory channels. This could mean that AMD is readying a product to compete with the Xeon E7 series. Lastly, the slide mentions that "Zen" could bring about IPC improvements that are 40 percent higher than the current architecture.

This week on TechPowerUp News: New AMD CPUs and APUs hit the stores; Seagate served a class-action lawsuit over false reliability claims of its hard drives; and more details of AMD "Zen" architecture.

AMD today launched new thermal solutions, including the flagship AMD Wraith Cooler, as well as the new AMD A10-7860K and new AMD Athlon X4 845 desktop processors. Designed for the consumer who cares about how their desktop PC runs, sounds, and looks, AMD now offers new thermal solutions that generate less than one-tenth the noise of their predecessors -- running at a near-silent 39 decibels, about as quiet as a library.

The new AMD Wraith Cooler combines near-silent operation with unique styling via a sleek fan shroud and LED illumination. Providing superb cooling, the new design delivers 34 percent more airflow and 24 percent more surface area for heat dissipation than its predecessor.

Intel's first 5-gigahertz CPU will bear an unlikely brand - Xeon. The company's upcoming Xeon E5-2602 V4 quad-core chip based on the 14 nm "Broadwell-EP" silicon, is rumored to ship with a staggering 5.10 GHz clock speed out of the box. Getting there won't be easy for this socket LGA2011v3 chip. Despite being a quad-core chip, with just four out of ten cores on the "Broadwell-EP" silicon bring physically enabled, the chip's TDP is rated at 165W. Other features include 10 MB of L3 cache, and a quad-channel DDR4 memory interface.

AMD demonstrated a new reference air-based CPU cooling solution. Called the AMD Wraith, the cooler addresses the noise problem affecting AMD's stock CPU cooler, particularly on 95W-125W CPUs and APUs; and is more easy to deal with, than the company's liquid cooling solution. AMD Wraith could either be sold standalone, or as part of premium bundles with certain current or upcoming CPUs/APUs.

In its demo, the AMD Wraith is shown to be significantly quieter than AMD's stock cooling solution at maximum speed. Much like the stock cooler, the AMD Wraith is a top-flow aluminium fin-stack cooler, but with a larger heatsink, and a bigger fan. A groovy LED backlit AMD logo decks the black cooler shroud.The video presentation by AMD follows.

Mercury Research published its market analysis for PC Graphics, for the second quarter of 2015 (April-June), this is an important quarter as this is when people tend to buy or upgrade their PCs for the summer break. According to the numbers posted by Mercury Research, NVIDIA hit a new record in discrete GPU market share. In the assessment period, 76.4 percent of desktop discrete GPUs were NVIDIA, up from 63.8 percent in Q2-2014. AMD, the only other desktop discrete GPU maker, saw its share drop to 23.6 percent.

The mobile discrete GPU figures were slightly better for AMD, with the company making up 34.6 percent, slightly up from 33.2 percent in Q2-2014. NVIDIA slipped proportionately down to 65.4 percent, from 66.8 percent in Q2-2014. When being a "discrete" GPU is no longer a criteria, and Intel is added to the mix, i.e. every CPU with graphics Intel sold, and every APU AMD sold (including the ones it sold to Microsoft and Sony), NVIDIA makes up 15.7 percent, AMD 14 percent, and Intel a whopping 70.1 percent. The big-picture isn't looking good. PC graphics shipments declined by 8 percent over the quarter, and down 21 percent from the same time last year. This is the worst on-year decline since the 2008 Financial Crisis.

Intel's upcoming Core "Skylake-U" low-power processors, for ultra-portable notebooks, tablets, convertibles, and fan-less desktops, is where the fruition of Intel's 14 nm process takes shape. These dual-core chips, spanning all five brand extensions - Core i7, Core i5, Core i3, Pentium, and Celeron, offering TDP as low as 7.5W, and no more than 15W. The lineup is kept slim, with no more than 2 SKUs per extension. All three Core extensions feature Intel HD 520 graphics, clocked around 350 MHz, with 1000 to 1050 MHz boost, while the Pentium and Celeron models feature slimmer HD 510 graphics, ticking at 300/900 MHz.

The lineup is led by the Core i7-6600U and i7-6500U. Besides HyperThreading enabling 4 logical CPUs, these two chips feature 4 MB L3 cache, 1050 MHz iGPU boost frequency, and the highest CPU clock-speeds in the series. The Core i5 chips differ from their Core i7 counterparts with sub-3 GHz CPU clock speeds, 3 MB L3 cache, and maximum iGPU boost frequency of 1000 MHz. The Core i3 parts are almost identical to their Core i5 counterparts, except they lack CPU Turbo Boost. The Pentium processors feature very low CPU core speeds, and are almost identical to Core i3, but feature lower 950 MHz iGPU boost frequency, and 2 MB L3 cache. Celeron parts lack HyperThreading. Some of these parts will launch in 2015, others in 2016. Find the exact clock speeds for each SKU in the table below.

They've done it! After building the first LGA2011v3 motherboard in the mini-ITX form-factor, letting you cram up to 8 "Haswell" cores into a lunchbox-sized PC, albeit having to make do with just dual-channel memory; ASRock developed the first mini-ITX motherboard with not just LGA2011v3, but also its full quad-channel memory interface, called the EPC612D4I. There's just one rider, which shouldn't really be a dealbreaker - this is a server-grade motherboard, and is bound to be expensive.

The EPC612D4I achieves its quad-channel memory chops by using smaller DDR4 SO-DIMM slots instead of standard-sized DIMM slots. Availability of aftermarket DDR4 SO-DIMM memory is close to non-existent, but that could change with 6th Generation Core processor notebooks hitting the shelves by Holiday 2015. As an enterprise board, it also supports Xeon E5-1600 V3 and E5-2600 V3 processors.

In what is a confirmation that AMD has killed socket AM3+ and its 3-chip platform, a leaked slide that's part of a larger press-deck addressing investors, tells us that the company is planning to launch a high-performance desktop processor targeting enthusiasts, based on its next-generation "Zen" architecture, in 2016. Our older articles detail the Zen CPU core design, and the way in which AMD will build multi-core CPUs with it. This processor will be codenamed "Summit Ridge," and will be a CPU, and not an APU as previously reported. In AMD-speak, what sets a CPU apart from an APU is its lack of integrated graphics.

AMD "Summit Ridge" will be an 8-core CPU built on the 14 nanometer silicon fab process. It will feature eight "Zen" cores, with 512 KB of L2 cache per core, 16 MB of L3 cache, with 8 MB shared between two sets of four cores, each; a dual-channel integrated memory controller that likely supports both DDR3 and DDR4 memory types; and an integrated PCI-Express gen 3.0 root complex, with a total of 22 lanes. We can deduce this from the fact that "Summit Ridge" will be built in the same upcoming socket FM3 package, which the company's "Bristol Ridge" Zen-based APU will be built on. "Summit Ridge" will hence be more competitive with Intel's 6th generation Core "Skylake" processors, such as the i7-6700K and i5-6600K, than the company's "Broadwell-E" HEDT platform.

European PC cooling specialist Alpenföhn announced two additions to its popular Matterhorn CPU cooler series, the Matterhorn White Edition, and Black Edition. This tower-type cooler features a monolithic fin-stack with trapezoid fins, to which heat drawn from the CPU is fed by six 6 mm thick copper heat pipes. Measuring 138 x 100 x 158 mm, the heatsink weighs a little over 1.06 kg. The heatsink is ventilated by an included Alpenföhn WingBoost 2 fan. This 120 mm spinner takes in 4-pin PWM-controllable power, spins between 500 and 1,500 RPM, pushes up to 106 m³/h of air, with a noise output ranging between 18 and 20 dBA. Available now, the two are priced at 52.90€.

SilentiumPC announce the Spartan PRO-B HE924 CPU cooler. Spartan PRO-B HE924 is a compact titan in the field of processor cooling from SilentiumPC. It owes its high efficiency to 4 heat pipes (6mm) a unique heat sink unit structure and HE (high efficiency) technology - direct heat pipe contact with the processor. Along with the heat sink unit there is a 100mm fan including the automatic rotation regulation function PWM. The fan rotation modes have been diligently selected to suit both those who cherish peace and quite and also overclockers. With the latter in mind the accessory box includes fastenings for a second fan.

The mounting system utilizes backplate, this makes Spartan PRO-B HE924 a perfect solution for system integrators. Wide compatibility includes LGA 775/1150/1155 /1156/1366 and AMD AM2 /AM2+ /AM3/AM3+/FM1/FM2/FM2+. Spartan PRO-B HE924 fits into virtually all midi tower cases. The set also includes an advanced thermal conductive paste (4.1 W/mk).

GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY Co. Ltd., a leading manufacturer of motherboards and graphics cards is proud to announce today the addition of 4 new high performance motherboards to their comprehensive Intel X99 chipsets offering with the X99 Champion series. The new motherboards consist of the X99-Gaming 5P, X99-UD4P, X99-UD3P and the already famous X99-SOC Champion.

DDR4 memory modules are available at a stock frequency of 2133 MHz, but memory vendors encode XMP profiles which can automatically modify the frequency and timings of the supported memory modules to work in par with your CPU. With the X99 Champion Series, GIGABYTE is offering a tested and proven platform that ensures proper compatibility with profiles up to 3200 MHz, and exclusively 3400 MHz for the X99-SOC Champion.

ORIGIN PC announced today their new ORIGIN PC EON17-X and EON15-X high-performance laptops for gamers, artist, professionals and enthusiasts. The EON17-X and EON15-X feature blazing fast Intel desktop processors on the latest Z97 chipset while almost 40% thinner and 30% lighter than the previous generation. For unrivaled performance, the EON17-X and EON15-X support ORIGIN PC's award winning CPU overclocking to run today's processor hungry games and applications. Reinforced with NVIDIA's next-gen Maxwell-powered 970M or 980M graphics cards, the EON17-X and EON15-X deliver hyper-realistic gameplay with support for 4K resolutions at smooth frame rates on your favorite 4K external display.

ORIGIN PC has also announced an all-new EON15-S thin and light laptop for gamers and professionals. The new EON15-S is now 36% thinner and 25% lighter than its predecessor yet continues deliver incredible performance thanks to Intel's latest i7 mobile CPU's and NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 980M graphics card. Gone are the days where lugging around heavier and thicker laptops was the only option for mobile performance. Customize and upgrade to ORIGIN PC's latest EON thin and light laptops today.

Nintendo is working on a next-generation gaming console to succeed even the fairly recent Wii U. The company is reacting to the plummeting competitiveness of its current console to the likes of PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One. Reports suggest that Nintendo would make a course-correction on the direction in which it took its game console business with the Wii, and could come up with a system that's focused on serious gaming, as much as it retains its original "fun" quotient. In that manner, the console could be more NES-like, than Wii-like.

Nintendo could ring up AMD for the chip that will drive its next console. It's not clear if AMD will supply a fully-integrated SoC that combines its own x86 CPU cores with its GCN graphics processor; or simply supply the GPU component for an SoC that combines components from various other manufacturers. The Wii U uses IBM's CPU cores, with AMD's GPU, combined onto a single chip. There's no word on when Nintendo plans to announce the new console, but one can expect a lot more news in 2015-16.

Thermal Solutions specialist GELID Solutions unveils its latest CPU cooler "SnowStorm". The cooler contains an optimized compact heatsink with 3 power heatpipes and a 92mm fan with PWM function. The cooler is a product of GELID Solutions SILENT product line.

In comparison to other mid-end CPU coolers the "SnowStorm" is built with a unique fin architecture which distributes air flow equally into the heatsink. Thanks to the 3 power heatpipes with Direct Touch Technology (HDT) this compact cooler achieves unexpected cooling performance. Its compact heatsink size makes it light and with the metal back plate the mount is much secure than with the traditional mounting. The 92mm fan contains an intelligent PWM fan control which ensures a silent operation at low CPU temperature and a fan speed acceleration when the CPU temperature climbs higher.