The launch of Intel's Alder Lake processsors has opened an exciting chapter for team blue and motherboard makers who are finally transitioning to new technologies like DDR5 and PCIe Gen5 standards. Today, GIGABYTE AORUS has prepared a complete lineup of motherboards designed to satisfy all kinds of workloads powered by Alder Lake processors as these AORUS Z690 motherboards are about to hit the market. These new boards include an upgraded feature set like 16+ phases power delivery on all boards, upgraded heatsinks to keep VRM temperatures under control, and built-in DDR5 overclocking features.

The event will be live-streamed on YouTube, so tune in to the First Look Event as the AORUS team gives an in-depth overview and cover the performance increase you can experience with Intel 12th gen CPU and DDR5 memory on the AORUS Z690 platform. They will be going over the new platform's entire lineup and feature set, so make sure you get to the event on time. It will start at 18:00 UTC zone, and you can tune in to watch here: AORUS Z690 First Look Event.

Videocardz today reported on one of the fundamental questions regarding Intel's upcoming Alder Lake: its release date. According to the publication, and citing industry sources, Intel is planning to launch Alder Lake-S come November 4th, 2021. The 12th Gen family of Intel core processors can not come soon enough for the blue giant, who sees itself embattled against the David-like rise of AMD via its Zen architecture. Especially if they do materialize with a 27% single-thread performance improvement over Zen 3.

The release date was first originally referenced by an MSI press release regarding the availability of an upgrade kit for its MAG Coreliquid K and MPG Coreliquid X - both AIO solutions will require new mounting mechanisms for Alder Lake's LGA 1700 socket, and their release is pegged to November 4th as well - this prompted the industry insider sources to confirm the release date. According to WCCFTech, the actual release timeline for the announcement and pre-orders is set for October 27th, whilst the actual product launch and review embargo lifts on November 4th, which is the market availability date.

Colorful Technology Company Limited, a professional manufacturer of graphics cards, motherboards, all-in-one gaming and multimedia solutions, and high-performance storage, announces the launch of the GPU History Museum in partnership with NVIDIA. COLORFUL has recently relocated to Shenzhen New Generation Industrial Park. With that, COLORFUL is proud to announce the launch of the first GPU History Museum in China. The museum will showcase the beginnings of the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), to the development and evolution of graphics cards up to the present generation.

XPG, a fast-growing provider of systems, components, and peripherals for Gamers, Esports Pros, and Tech Enthusiasts, today announces that it will launch its new DDR5 gaming memory modules in Q3 2021. The new product series will be known as the CASTER series. The modules will deliever frequencies ranging from 6000 to 7400 MHz and come with capacities of 8, 16, or 32 GB. XPG has been working closely with its motherboard partners, including GIGABYTE, MSI, ASUS, and ASRock, to ensure the highest level of compatibility and ability to realize extreme overclocking performance.

The new DDR5 modules will come in two variants, with and without RGB. Despite this difference, they share a cohesive industrial design. The products' designs convey an understated sense of depth and textural contrast with the use of two surface treatments, one glossy and one matte. For added depth, the matte surface of the modules are beveled for an additional textural element and futuristic look. To communicate the XPG brand, the modules sport diagonal intersecting lines and grooves that form geometric forms and X shapes that play off the XPG brand name and visual identity.

MAINGEAR—an award-winning PC system integrator of custom gaming desktops, notebooks, and workstations—today launched the MAINGEAR ELEMENT Lite, a 15" ultra-premium notebook designed in collaboration with Intel. Featuring Intel Iris Xe Graphics and up to an 11th Gen Intel Core i7 processor, the MAINGEAR ELEMENT Lite pairs next-generation hardware with a sleek and minimal machined aluminium alloy chassis for maximum power, speed, and portability. The new MAINGEAR ELEMENT Lite is the perfect Windows laptop for work and play on the go.

Custom designed and engineered in collaboration with Intel, this uncompromising notebook PC comes equipped with up to an Intel Core i7-1165G7 Processor running at 2.8 GHz with a Max Turbo Frequency of 4.7 GHz on 4 cores / 8 threads. Integrated Intel Iris Xe Graphics make multimedia viewing, content creation, and even light gaming a breeze. ELEMENT Lite systems can be equipped with 16 GB of DDR4 memory and up to 2 TB of user-replaceable PCI-E Gen4 M.2 NVMe SSD storage. MAINGEAR optimized the ELEMENT Lite to pack exceptional performance and cooling into its frame without sacrificing on battery life or upgradeability. It weighs in at just 3.64 lbs (1.65 kg) and is 14.9 mm thin—making it the thinnest notebook that MAINGEAR has ever offered.

GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY Co. Ltd, a leading manufacturer of motherboards and graphics cards, today presented two gaming systems of Intel Z590 platform with AORUS MODEL X and mini system AORUS MODEL S, which adopt the top-notch components and materials for extreme performance. Enhanced by the strict verification and leading technology, GIGABYTE provides the PC system of premium performance with optimized heat dissipation and acoustic control. The system maintains cool and quiet even under the overclocking, which balance the high performance and low temperature to keep the system acoustic under 40dB without throttling. Furthermore, the three-year warranty of full system offers reassuring and comprehensive service for users.

"When tackling the uplift of PC performance, multi-core, high frequency, and copious storage become a standard to the premium PC platform, as well as how to make the best components matrix to provide the optimized performance with reliability turns into more inevitable." indicated by Eddie Lin, Vice President of the GIGABYTE Channel Solutions. "The new AORUS system is well-tempered by multiple verification and tuning of GIGABYTE's R&D team, which provide a perfect match of cool, quiet, and powerful performance with optimized compatibility, Expandability, and three-year warranty of whole system.

AMD has today decided to launch the next generation of Accelerated Processing Units (APUs), now in form of the 5000G lineup codenamed Cezanne. The APUs are getting launched as OEM-exclusive products for now, which means that only manufacturers like Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc. can have access to them. AMD is set to announce these processors for wider masses, such as consumer DIYers, later this year. So you must be wondering what is new about the 5000G APUs. For starters, the new APUs feature AMD's improved Zen 3 core with a notable IPC boost over Zen 2 found in last generation 4000G APUs. When it comes to graphics, the new APUs feature anywhere from 6-8 GPU cores, based on the Vega architecture.

When it comes to the available models, AMD lists six SKUs, all differentiating in CPU/GPU core count, TDP, and frequency. There are three regular SKUs, with their power-efficient variants. The regular SKUs are AMD Ryzen 7 5700G, Ryzen 5 5600G, and Ryzen 3 5300G. They are normal SKUs that have a TDP of 65 Watts, meaning a higher base frequency needing a more adequate cooling solution. However, as there are regular SKUs, there are also power-efficient, TDP-constrained models present. Called the AMD Ryzen 7 5700GE, Ryzen 5 5600GE, and Ryzen 3 5300GE, these models bring the TDP down to 35 Watts and reduce base frequency by a couple of hundreds of MHz.

NVIDIA today introduced a new class of NVIDIA-Certified Systems, bringing AI within reach for organizations that run their applications on industry-standard enterprise data center infrastructure. These include high-volume enterprise servers from top manufacturers, which were announced in January and are now certified to run the NVIDIA AI Enterprise software suite—which is exclusively certified for VMware vSphere 7, the world's most widely used compute virtualization platform.

Further expanding the NVIDIA-Certified servers ecosystem is a new wave of systems featuring the NVIDIA A30 GPU for mainstream AI and data analytics and the NVIDIA A10 GPU for AI-enabled graphics, virtual workstations and mixed compute and graphics workloads, also announced today.

Intel in a statement to Hardwareluxx has confirmed that the release date for the company's next-gen CPU family, codenamed Rocket Lake-S, will indeed see a global launch come March 30th. The 11000 family of CPUs is already being sold on Germany, however, via etailer Mindfactory.de, who apparently jumped the gun on the actual availability of said CPUs. Mindfactory only ships within Germany, meaning that that country is actually the sole current field for Intel's latest-gen CPUs. The etailer says that they have the right to sell the CPUs, and stands by its decision, which likely means that their supplier failed to convey the proper NDAs and launch dates when selling - or so we're led to believe. That's the reason why benchmarks of Intel's 11000-series are already in the wild - even for currently unannounced CPUs, such as the Core i7-11700K.

WCCFTech over the weekend got their hands on the full table for Intel's upcoming Core i9 and Core i7 products (at least those available at launch). Mainstream CPUs on the Core i5 family and below weren't listed, however. It remains to be seen whether the previously speculated March 15th launch date will actually be the official announcement date from Intel, of if something else is afoot for that particular day of March.

AMD is slowly preparing the next-generation of its compute-oriented flagship graphics card design called Instinct MI200 GPU. It is the card of choice for the exascale Frontier supercomputer, which is expected to make a debut later this year at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility. With the supercomputer planned for the end of this year, AMD Instinct MI200 is also going to get launched eight a bit before or alongside it. The Frontier exascale supercomputer is supposed to bring together AMD's next-generation Trento EPYC CPUs with Instinct MI200 GPU compute accelerators. However, it seems like AMD will utilize some new technologies for the making of this supercomputer. While we do not know what Trento EPYC CPUs will look like, it seems like Instinct MI200 GPU is going to feature a multi-chip-module (MCM) design with the new CDNA 2 GPU architecture. With this being the only information about the GPU, we have to wait a bit to find out more details.

The 11th Gen Intel Core H35 processors, the newest of Intel's H-series processors, are designed for ultraportable gaming on laptops. Packed with incredible gaming performance in an ultraportable form factor, the processors balance mobility and enthusiast-level gaming. The 11th Gen Intel Core i7-11375H Special Edition headlines the new H35 processors, and utilizes Intel Turbo Boost Max 3.0 to deliver up to 5.00 GHz Turbo frequencies.

The 11th Gen Intel Core i7-11375H Special Edition delivers the fastest single-threaded performance of any laptop processor and is matched only by the 10th Gen Intel Core i9-10980HK. 11th Gen Intel Core H35 processors enable enthusiast level gaming on the go. Users can play a majority of popular e-sports and AAA games in full high definition at high settings with the 11th Gen Intel Core i7-11375H Special Edition processor.

Today we are welcoming GIGABYTE's AORUS to present the latest innovations in the PC space with the newest product announcements. Join us in the live blog coverage of the "Performance Above All" virtual launch event and find out what AORUS has been working on in the meantime.Update 17:45 UTC The event is starting...

XPG, a fast-growing provider of systems, components, and peripherals for Gamers, Esports Pros, and Tech Enthusiasts, today announces the XPG SPECTRIX S20G PCIe Gen3x4 M.2 2280 solid state drive (SSD). The SPECTRIX S20G is an SSD built with form and performance in mind with its distinct x-shaped RBG lighting and excellent read/write speeds.

The XPG SPECTRIX S20G is a gaming SSD through and through and its styling reflects this. It sports a distinctive and prominent x-shaped RGB design that outshines the competition. The RGB light effects can be customized via software. What's more, a hairline-brushed finish gives the SSD a formidable yet elegant look that will intimidate and impress.

AMD's launch of their top of the line RX 6900 XT graphics card seems that it will have even less availability than the company's high-end RX 6800 and RX 6800 XT graphics card. This isn't surprising; the RX 6900 XT is a 590 mm² beast of a GPU with all of its execution units enabled - that's a lot of die space to harvest without a single silicon fault, no matter how good TSMC's 7 nm manufacturing process really is. Stock will be scarce, and likely will be scarce throughout the lifetime of the product, especially with the clogged, unmet, existing demand for high performance GPUs from a world population that has turned to gaming as a solace in times of quarantine.

Digitec, the largest Swiss retailer (serving a population of 8.5 million people), is only receiving 35 RX 6900 XT graphics cards for launch. We don't know, of course, what exactly is the Swiss demand for high-performance graphics cards, but it being one of the world's wealthiest countries (when it comes to its population's average income) it's expected to be higher than other countries with comparable population but lower income. As a result, the retailer isn't even putting the cards up for sale as they normally would; instead, there's a sweepstakes of sorts where 35 random users that opt-in for the event will receive a code that allows them to purchase the graphics card for its retail price of $999. An interesting solution, albeit of course, it just signals the dimension of the cards' availability issues.

ASRock announced a new partnership with Razer to develop the ASRock Taichi Razer Edition line of motherboards, the world's first motherboard that is natively integrated with Razer Chroma RGB lighting. Razer Chroma RGB is the world's largest lighting ecosystem for gaming devices which supports over 500 devices, 150 natively integrated games and over 15 million users worldwide. The integration with ASRock enables universal compatibility with thousands of addressable RGB (ARGB) components directly into the ecosystem.

"We've been so excited to make the ASRock Taichi Razer Edition debut. The sense of Razer sublimates it into a part of gamers' religion," said Chris Lee, general manager of ASRock motherboard business unit. "Razer knows well about elements gamers looking for and makes everything fall into place!"

Marvell (NASDAQ: MRVL) today introduced the industry's first native NVMe RAID 1 accelerator, a state-of-the-art technology for virtualized, multi-tenant cloud and enterprise data center environments which demand optimized reliability, efficiency, and performance. Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is the first of Marvell's partners to support the new accelerator in the HPE NS204i-p NVMe OS Boot Device offered on select HPE ProLiant servers and HPE Apollo systems.

As the industry transitions from legacy SAS and SATA to NVMe SSDs, Marvell's offering helps data centers fast-track the move to higher performance flash storage. The innovative accelerator lowers data center total cost of ownership (TCO) by offloading RAID 1 processing from costly and precious server CPU resources, maximizing application processing performance. IT organizations can now deploy a "plug-and-play," NVMe-based OS boot solution, like the HPE NS204i-p NVMe OS Boot Device, that protects the integrity of flash data storage while delivering an optimized, application-level user experience.

When NVIDIA introduced its Ampere consumer graphics cards, they launched three models - the GeForce RTX 3070, RTX 3080, and RTX 3090 GPUs. Both the RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 have seen the light of the day as they are now available for purchase, however, one card has remained. The GeForce RTX 3070 launch was originally planned for October 15th launch, but it has officially been postponed by NVIDIA. According to the company, the reason behind this sort of delay in the launch is the high demand expected. Production of the cards is ramping up quickly and the company is quickly stocking up the cards. Likely, NVIDIA AIBs are taking their time to stock up on cards, as the mid-range is usually in very high demand.

As a reminder, the GeForce RTX 3070 graphics card features 5888 CUDA cores running at a base frequency of 1.5 GHz and boost frequency of 1.73 GHz. Unlike the higher-end Ampere cards, the RTX 3070 uses older GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus with a bandwidth of 448 GB/s. The GPU features a TDP of 220 W and will be offered in a range of variants by AIBs. You will be able to purchase the GPU on October 29th for the price of $499.

Scour the Internet's most likely tech-related places in forums such as TechPowerUp's own and Reddit, and a picture begins to form regarding NVIDIA's RTX 3080 launch. It's a bit like a Dali painting, with surrealist expectations, a whispered "NVIDIA's Ultimate Play" through virtual hallways, blink-and-you-missed-it details materialized in stock availability, and science-fiction-worthy bots scouring all available stores for their deployment overlords. Wherever you turn, there are would-be buyers complaining of furious F5 attempts (we heard F5 key replacements are also out of stock these days), with store availability going from "available soon" to "out of stock" faster than a single DOOM Eternal frame can be rendered. Most webstores crashed in one way or another, multiple buyers got attributed the same card from a webstore stock, and even NVIDIA's own store (you know, the one powered by the company who actually drives some of the world's fastest supercomputers) faltered under the pressure.

In other corners of the Internet, however, expectations were met and attempts flourished. These seem to have been mostly met by scalpers, though, so there is nothing idyllic in this particular painting - it's more akin to Edvard Munch's The Scream than it is Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Night. On eBay, an RTX 3080 card was allegedly sold for 70,000$ - a particularly criminal act, if I've ever seen one. It's also common, right now, to see some of these going for prices ranging between $1,300 and $5,000 - and at this point, this writer feels he's almost out of metaphors for this particular situation. Apparently, a service named Bounce Alerts was used - it appears that most RTX 3080 orders were done through this service, which automatically bought as much RTX 3080 stock as it could from wherever they were sold. A user reported having acquired some 42 RTX 3080's from the NVIDIA store before stock ran out. There are even bots designed to bid on eBay sales so as to waste scalpers' time and make orders that will never be fulfilled - a sort of poetic justice, if you may, though I don't believe the kind Shakespeare himself would have conceived of.

Sony yesterday at its PlayStation Showcase finally revealed pricing and exclusive launch titles for their PS5 console. First things first: the PS5 will be launching in two version, as we've known for a while, with different pricing according to the console version you choose. The "vanilla" PS5 which includes a 4K Bluray disc drive will be going for $499; its price-reduced cousin, the PS5 Digital Edition, forgoes the 4K Bluray disc drive to deliver a $399 pricing.

Alongside pricing details, Sony also announced the PS5 exclusive games we can count on the consoles' launch, which is set for November 12th. These include Astro's Playroom (Japan Studio), which will be pre-installed on the PS5 and is thus a free game; the highly-awaited next-gen version of Demon's Souls (Bluepoint Games / Japan Studio) - $69.99; Destruction All Stars (Lucid Games / XDEV) - $69.99; Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales - $49.99; Marvel's Spider-Man: Mile Morales Ultimate Edition - $69.99; and Sackboy A Big Adventure (Sumo Digital / XDEV) - $59.99.

It's rare when a company actually responds to rumors with more than a simple "we don't comment on speculations"; however, Sony has done just that in regards to purported reduced supply of PS5 consoles on launch. There are some likely reasons for this move from Sony; for one, the rapid uptake on mainstream media following the initial Bloomberg report may have garnered a little too much attention for comfort. Consider the fact that Sony's share price fell some 3.5% following the report, however, and you can see how these rumors may have forced the company's hand to stem the bleeding.

Sony quells this rumor with extreme prejudice, too. According to the company, speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, "While we do not release details related to manufacturing, the information provided by Bloomberg is false. We have not changed the production number for PlayStation 5 since the start of mass production." That should settle things - and mean there will be 4 million more PS5s up for grab out there at launch. It was, in any event, strange that the chip inside the PS5 was having such troubling 50% yield number as was advanced by the Bloomberg report; we know that Ryzen itself has been designed by AMD with manufacturing yields and cost-reduction in mind for some time, now.

Today we have found out that Sony has reportedly cut PlayStation 5 launch supply due to bad yields of the SoC powering the console. Previously, we reported that Sony has doubled production of the new console amid high demand, where the company expected to sell 10 million units in the fiscal year. The original plan was to have around 15 million units of the new console available by March 31st, 2021. Sony has been spending a lot of resources to get as many units out to consumers, however, the bad SoC yields have held the company back significantly.

It is reported by Bloomberg that instead of the original 15 million units Sony plans to supply, there will be only 11 million of them. That represents a massive reduction of 4 million units. And you are wondering how bad the yields of the new SoC are to have that big reduction. According to the source, TSMC and Sony are seeing only 50% yields on the production run. It is reported that the yields are gradually improving but have not yet reached the level needed to have a stable supply. This represents a big problem for the company and we don't know who is to blame. TSMC has been very good at manufacturing 7 nm silicon, however, it could be bad design from AMD and Sony that is making the production difficult. We are waiting for more information.

Intel today launches its 11th Gen Core "Tiger Lake" mobile processors that introduce several new technologies on the backs of new IP. As described in the Architecture Day, "Tiger Lake" is built on the 10 nm SuperFin process, and combines new "Willow Cove" CPU cores with the first commercial debut of the Xe Gen12 graphics architecture that Intel is betting big on, to make a stab at the consumer graphics and scalar compute markets. Join us in this live-blog.Update 16:00 UTC: GB (Gregory Bryant, EVP Client), leads the event from the comfort of his home.Update 16:04 UTC: Here it is, the "world's best processor for thin and light laptops. You'll notice that like most Intel U-segment chips, this is an MCM of the processor and PCH die. Intel bases its "world's best" claims on a per-segment basis.

Sony has recently launched PlayStation 5 pre-order registrations on the PlayStation website, without pricing or launch date information. To register for the pre-order queue you simply need to submit your PlayStation Network ID and ensure your email is associated with the account. This registration is simply for a pre-order slot for the PlayStation 5 from the Sony online store and not an actual pre-order. If selected you'll have a limited amount of time to complete your order, you may purchase one PlayStation 5 or PlayStation 5 Digital Edition along with up to 2 controllers. This early registration is only available to US residents with global availability expected later this year when the console is officially launched.

ASUS today launched ZenBook 13 (UX325) and ZenBook 14 (UX425), which are thinner and lighter than the previous generation that offers power on the go with versatile connectivity. The compact four-sided NanoEdge display offers a 90% screen-to-body ratio for immersive visuals, with the option of an ultra-low power 1-watt display that maximizes battery life. The user experience is also fully updated, featuring ASUS NumberPad 2.0, up to 22 hours battery life, a new edge-to-edge keyboard design, ErgoLift hinge mechanisms, and IR cameras for fast face-recognition. It's also equipped with the latest 10th Generation Intel Core processor and up to 8 GB RAM, up to 512 GB PCIe 3.0 x4 SSDs, and the latest WiFi 6 (802.11ax) for a faster and smoother performance.

The latest ZenBook Classic series offers two screen sizes. There's the ultralight ZenBook 13 for the ultimate travelers and the Zenbook 14 for those who prefer a larger screen. Both models are designed for effortless portability and a compact and elegant all-metal chassis that's a mere 13.9 mm thin. ZenBook 13 and 14 are also power efficient and a perfect match for today's on-the-go lifestyle.

Intel today has officially launched their new Core i9-10850K CPU. The 10-core, 20-thread design slots in between the top of the line i9-10900K and the i9-10800K, and only features a small (100 MHz) clock reduction compared to the 10900K across all clocks (this means base, set at 3.6 GHz; Turbo Boost Max 2.0, reaching 5.0 GHz; Turbo Boost 3.0 going up to 5.1 GHz. Thermal Velocity Boost tech is also supported, which should allow for up to 5.2 GHz on a single core and a 4.8 GHz clock across all cores. The TDP remains the same as the 10900K at 125 W, with the same Tau and PL1/PL2 values as 10900K (56 sec, 125 W, and 250 W).

The new CPU improves on the value proposition of the 10900K by being available at around 10% less than Intel's top-of-the-line Comet Lake-S CPU, with pricing set at $453 (at 1K tray quantities). As Intel's manufacturing woes and 14 nm production output keep failing to meet demand, it's likely that the company will continue to fine-tune its product stack with as many CPUs as it can, in order to achieve higher ASP on each model than they would if they had to only count on manufacturing yields and/or manually disabling cores in chips that can't quite hit their advertised speeds for each CPU model. The Core i9-10850K retains compatibility with Intel's Z490, H470 and B460-based motherboards.