The Wall Street Journal's earlier report about an expected record-setting 2016 in regards to chinese investment in the United States was right. Newegg Inc., one of the most popular online tech-related retailers, is now reportedly owned by chinese company Hangzhao Liaison Interactive Information Technology Co., Ltd. (Liaison Interactive).

After September's reports of a significant investment from the Chinese company on Newegg, which would allow the California-based company to "accelerate the pursuit of the company's strategic initiatives" and into high-growth markets such as eSports, VR (Virtual Reality) and AR (Augmented Reality), it now appears that the investment was much more than a simple capital infusion: it was a bid towards controlling an effective majority in the American company's shares.

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.

Samsung Electronics America, Inc., a leader in digital media and technology, today announced the SE370, the world's first monitor with an integrated wireless charging function for compatible mobile devices. The monitor, available in a 23.6-inch version, aims to declutter work areas by eliminating unnecessary cables for charging mobile devices.

"As a leader in both mobile devices and display technology, Samsung has combined our knowledge of consumer behavior and needs in these areas to create the SE370 wireless charging monitor," said Dave Das, Senior Vice President at Samsung Electronics America, Inc. "With consumers increasingly relying on mobile devices, we are proud to offer them the ability to declutter their workspace and use mobile devices simultaneously. As an industry-first, this monitor transforms the way users see and utilize their workspace, enabling them to work in a smarter and more efficient manner."

The Intel Compute Stick, a new pocket-sized computer based on a quad-core Intel Atom processor running Windows 8.1 with Bing, is available now through Intel Authorized Dealers for much of the world.

The Intel Compute Stick can transform any HDMI display into an entry computer capable of working with productivity apps, playing local or streamed content, driving basic digital signage or enabling thin clients. It will support Wireless 802.11 b/g/n, a microSD card for expandable memory, MicroUSB power supply and Bluetooth 4.0 for keyboard and mouse.

Under pressure from its own recently launched GeForce GTX 980 cannibalizing its $3,000 flagship GeForce GTX TITAN-Z (you can buy GTX 980 Quad-SLI at $2,200), NVIDIA could finally review its pricing, in the retail channel. The company recently reduced its price for the OEM channel, letting pre-built gaming PC manufacturers source the card at a lower price, whether those price-savings were transferred to the end-users, is a different question. To what measure NVIDIA could lower prices of the GTX TITAN-Z, is not known at this point. Retailers like OCUK were seen offering their GTX TITAN-Z cards at a slightly reduced price, last week. Across the big pond, American retailer Newegg sold-out an ASUS-branded GTX TITAN-Z for as low as US $1,500.

In the wake of GTX 980, AMD cut prices of its dual-GPU flagship product, the Radeon R9 295X2, down to $999. It's hard to imagine that competition from this card, and the GTX 980, are the only factors driving down prices of the GTX TITAN-Z in such a big way. Could NVIDIA be working on its next dual-GPU flagship graphics card already? Perhaps one based on a pair of GM204 chips, with thermal and power requirements as low as those of the GTX 690? Watch this space for more.

MSI Computer Corp, a leading manufacturer of computer hardware products and solutions, announces the availability of the GS60 Ghost Pro 3K and GS60 Ghost gaming notebooks in a luxurious golden chassis. Available exclusively at NewEgg, the limited edition golden gaming notebooks feature top-of-the-line technology, including NVIDIA GeForce GTX 870M graphics, 4th Generation Intel Core i7 processor, Killer Gaming Networking and Steel Series keyboard with SteelSeries Engine.

The limited edition GS60 Ghost Pro 3K and GS60 Ghost gaming notebooks come preloaded with MSI's superb blend of programs, including SteelSeries Engine and XSplit Gamecaster. SteelSeries Engine optimizes the multi-backlit gaming keyboard to deliver unparalleled customization power with advanced macro and micro programming of individual keys. XSplit Gamecaster gives gamers the ability to easily stream games; add, resize and position a webcam feed; draw on screen with in-game annotations; and organize and upload videos.

iBUYPOWER and Newegg are proud to announce an amazing new way to get the best components you want without having to deal with the hassles of building, troubleshooting, and maintaining on your own. You pick what you want and your high-performance gaming system ships to you, completed!

Never before has this been possible. iBUYPOWER, known for its selection of high-performance gaming systems, together with Newegg, known for carrying the widest selection of gaming components, brings together the best of both worlds.

CyberPower Inc., a manufacturer of custom gaming machines, notebook systems, and high performance workstations, has teamed with leading online retail partner Newegg to offer the Everyman Quad Core (EQ100) - an AMD Sempron 3850 Kabini powered desktop system that makes quad core computing practical for everyday use. The CYBERPOWERPC EQ100 arrives just in time for Father's Day and will be available June 13-15 fully-loaded at $299.99 at www.newegg.com.

Pre-built with AMD's Sempron 3850 Kabini APU, the Everyman Quad Core delivers quad-core performance to consumers with two SATA 6 Gbps ports, two USB 3.0 ports, four USB 2.0 ports, a PCIe x16 2.0 slot for graphic card upgrades, and a pair of video outputs (HDMI, and VGA). The AMD system-in-a-socket platform provides up to 3x more computing performance than its competitors.

Intel announced its much awaited Core i7 and Core i5 "Devil's Canyon" unlocked quad-core processors. Based on an enhanced "Haswell-DT" Refresh silicon, the chips feature binned dies, enhanced thermal interface material between the die and the integrated heatspreader, enhanced on-package electricals, and high voltage limits. Among the models launched today, are the Core i7-4790K, and the Core i7-4690K. The i7-4790K features four cores, with HyperThreading enabling eight logical CPUs, 8 MB L3 cache, Intel HD 4600 graphics, and an integrated dual-channel DDR3 IMC. It comes with clock speeds of 4.00 GHz, with 4.40 GHz Turbo Boost. Apart from unlocked multipliers, it features higher voltage limits than the current i7-4770K. The Core i5-4690K, on the other hand, is a quad-core chip that lacks HyperThreading. It offers clock speeds of 3.50 GHz, and Turbo Boost speeds of 3.90 GHz. The i7-4790K is priced at US $350, and the i5-4690K at $250. Both chips should be available by 25th June, 2014. For now, you can pre-order them on Newegg.

AMD stabilized end-user pricing of its Radeon R9 series graphics cards, restoring them to their original launch prices in most cases, and even lower in some. Pricing of most AMD Graphics CoreNext architecture-based GPUs inflated over the past 6 months, due to the frenzy created by Cryptocoin currency miners, who leveraged the chips' GPGPU performance to 'mine' currencies such as Litecoin. Sensing that high prices are driving gamers away from Radeon, AMD swung into action by dealing with the problem at two levels. First, VP Global Channel Sales, Roy Taylor micro-managed the supply chain in China, and next, the company dealt with distributors and retailers.

At the time of preparing this article, most Radeon R9 series-based graphics cards, including high-end ones such as the R9 290X, and non-reference cards, are back to their original price-points on US retailer Newegg.com. The R9 290X can now be had for as low as US $519.99 (launch-price $549.99, was inflated to $750), the R9 290 for $379.99 (launched at $399.99, was inflated to $600), the R9 280X as low as $279.99 (launched at $299.99, was inflated to $400); the R9 280 as low as $229.99 (launched at $249.99, was inflated to $280); and the R9 270X at $199.99 (was inflated as high as $250).

Ahead of their anticipated May 9th launch, various motherboards based on Intel's upcoming Z97 Express chipset began appearing on US retailer Newegg.com. The boards are up for order, and ready to ship. Notable mentions include MSI Z97 MPower MAX AC, the company's flagship motherboard based on this chipset, which is going for US $259.99; its slightly toned down variant, the Z97 MPower, priced at $199.99; ASUS TUF Sabertooth Z97, the company's tough-nut motherboard based on this chipset, priced at US $249.99; MSI Z97-Gaming 7, priced at $189.99; GIGABYTE Z97X-UD3H, the company's mid-range Z97 model, priced at $149.99; and the similarly priced ASUS Z97-A. Featuring out of the box support for Intel's upcoming Core "Haswell" refresh processors, including the new high-end Core i7-4790K, Z97 Express brings SATA-Express and M.2 support to the table.

Newegg is building on its e-commerce leadership in the United States with a pilot program that makes a limited selection of its products available to customers in the United Kingdom and Australia. The move is an important first step in the company's international expansion plans. "We're extending the Newegg customer experience beyond North America, selectively addressing English-speaking countries overseas to begin that process," said Soren Mills, Chief Marketing Officer for Newegg North America. "This is an important step forward for our company and we're taking a very deliberate approach to our international growth."

Customers in the United Kingdom and Australia are now able to visit Newegg.com and purchase select products for shipment to their respective countries. Several thousand products are currently available in these new markets with the product line expanding dramatically throughout the year.
Scaling an e-commerce business to new international markets poses significant logistical challenges in the areas of order fulfillment, customer support, returns, regional product compatibility and country-specific regulations. To ensure a smooth expansion, Newegg plans to closely monitor all operational functions as it scales international product availability.

Club 3D B.V., the European graphics card market leader and total solution pioneer today announced its launch into North America in cooperation with Newegg Inc.

"We are very excited to launch our products into the North American market" said Judith Ma, CEO of Club 3D. "Demand has been steadily increasing there and we believe the timing is perfect. Therefore Club 3D is proud to announce our exclusive partnership with Newegg Inc. Newegg Inc. is a leader in delivering high quality products and high quality service in North America. We feel their dedication to the market aligns well with Club 3D's Mission to provide high quality, best in class products with flexible and fast service to our customers. Our products will be available for sale beginning Nov, 15 on www.newegg.com and we look forward to build on a strong and profitable relationship."

Disappointed at the $729.99 Newegg.com pricing of the Radeon R9 290X? No worries. AMD's second SKU based on the "Hawaii" silicon could be lighter on the wallet. Japanese retailers leaked the specifications sheets of both the upcoming R9 290X, and its lighter sibling, the R9 290 (non-X). Specifications of the R9 290X match rumors. The chip features 2,816 stream processors, up to 1000 MHz of GPU clock, single-precision floating point performance of 5.16 TFLOP/s, and 4 GB of GDDR5 memory across a 512-bit wide memory interface, clocked at 5.00 GHz, yielding 320 GB/s of memory bandwidth. The R9 290, on the other hand, features 2,560 stream processors, up to 948 MHz GPU clocks, 4.9 TFLOP/s single-precision floating point performance, and the same memory subsystem as the R9 290X. Both cards feature an identical combination of power connectors, 8-pin PCIe and 6-pin PCIe. Both feature hardware support for DirectX 11.2, OpenGL 4.3, and Mantle.

Intel's Core i7 "Ivy Bridge-E" processors are now generally available for purchase, keeping in tune with its September 3rd to 11th launch window. The Core i7-4960X six-core high-end part, which on paper featured a $990 price-tag, is being sold by US retailer Newegg.com for $1,050. The same store is selling the on-paper $555 Core i7-4930K six-core chip for $580, and the catchy on-paper $310 Core i7-4820K quad-core part for $330. If you don't already own an LGA2011 platform, the store is offering decent combo deals, which shave that markup off, when the chips are purchased with compatible socket LGA2011 motherboards. Oh, and the i7-4960X indeed ships in a boring blue box, which totally makes the chip run slower.

In a bid to step up competitiveness of its Radeon HD 7990 "Malta" dual-GPU graphics card against NVIDIA's GeForce GTX TITAN and GTX 690, AMD add-in-board (AIB) partners slashed prices of the card by almost a third. What was once retailing for $1,100-1,200, is now down to $699.99. Prices of the card on American retailer Newegg.com, are ranging between $699.99 to $789.99, with two AIBs capturing the $729.99 and $749.99 price points, along the way. With the right kind of CrossFire profiles, a Radeon HD 7990 can offer frame-rates rivaled only by GTX Titan and GTX 690. Then there are also AMD's recent CrossFire micro-stuttering fix, and eight Never Settle games with realistic resale value of $100 to account for. These prices should also give GeForce GTX 780 buyers second thoughts.

SanDisk Corporation, a global leader in flash memory storage solutions, today announced SanDisk Connect, a line of wireless flash memory storage devices including the SanDisk Connect Wireless Flash Drive and SanDisk Connect Wireless Media Drive. These new wireless devices represent the next generation of portable storage, delivering an easier way to access and share content across multiple mobile devices. "Today's consumers own an increasing number of mobile devices and accessing content across them can be a challenge," said Dinesh Bahal, vice president, product marketing, SanDisk. "With the new SanDisk Connect product line, we're raising the bar on what consumers can expect from personal storage. We combined the portability of small flash memory storage devices with the convenience of wireless streaming and sharing functionality."

The SanDisk Connect Wireless Flash Drive provides a convenient and affordable way for consumers with a variety of devices to wirelessly store, share and stream content, across mobile devices and computers. As the smallest wireless USB storage device available to date, the drive allows users to enjoy up to 32GB1 of extra storage for their devices without the need for an Internet connection or cables. Users can simultaneously access photos, movies, music and documents on their drive from multiple devices around the house or on the go, with up to four hours of continuous streaming on a single charge.

You may have read our report from earlier today, covering the main points that AMD was trying to make in its recent teleconference with the European press (which includes us). While in the call, we were a little jolted by the choices of words some of AMD's executives used to describe their company's consumer graphics outlook for 2013, how they believe they can hold out for almost the entire year with little or no major updates to their product stack, and more interestingly, a few above-the-belt jabs at NVIDIA and its upcoming GeForce GTX Titan product.

The crux of AMD's emergency meeting with the press was to bust some misconceptions spread in the press over the last couple of weeks, to tell them a Graham's Number of times that they still hold the fastest single GPU on the planet, which powers the fastest graphics card there is (ASUS ARES II). The most ironic part of AMD's emergency meeting with the press was the one in which they called GeForce Titan NVIDIA's emergency/knee-jerk reaction to AMD's getting cozy with game developers, and netting some of the biggest PC game launches of the season for its Never Settle Reloaded bundle.

AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced the arrival of its "Never Settle: Reloaded" game bundle, the sequel to last year's monumental "Never Settle" bundle. "Never Settle: Reloaded" delivers by bundling up to four of this year's most anticipated PC games -- "BioShock Infinite" by 2K Games and Irrational Games, "Crysis 3" by Electronic Arts, "DmC Devil May Cry" by Capcom and "Tomb Raider" by Square Enix -- with select AMD Radeon HD 7900 and HD 7800 Series graphics cards. The bundle highlights the continued commitment by AMD to ensure an incredible gaming experience on the world's top PC titles optimized for AMD Radeon graphics cards

"AMD knows gaming and in 2013 we plan to make a huge mark on the industry. Today we begin that journey by showing the world that the best PC game developers are AMD Gaming Evolved partners," said Matt Skynner, corporate vice president and general manager of AMD Graphics. "The 'Never Settle: Reloaded' bundle clearly stands apart from anything else in the market. Gaming has always been, and will remain, the core of the AMD Graphics strategy and success. In 2013, we plan to forge greater inroads into the gaming industry and it begins with packaging this year's biggest games with the best graphics hardware from AMD." The "Never Settle: Reloaded" bundle offers the following games when purchased with select AMD Radeon HD 7900 and HD 7800 Series graphics cards:

Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. AMD won Best Merchandising Campaign for its unique "Never Settle" graphics marketing program, and John Torres, Sales Account Manager at AMD, was awarded an EggXellence Award for outstanding individual contribution to the business.

"This award underscores our commitment to delivering the best experience for our customers through highly acclaimed merchandising programs," said Roy Taylor, corporate vice president, AMD Channel Sales. "The 'Never Settle' campaign is the natural outcome of a company committed to technical excellence."

Mushkin, Inc., an industry-leading designer and manufacturer of high-performance and mission-critical computer products, today announces the U.S. availability of the 480 GB Atlas mSATA solid-state drive. Mushkin's 480GB Atlas mSATA solid-state drive (Model No.: MKNSSDAT480GB) is initially available in the U.S. at Newegg.com, with worldwide availability scheduled for end of January. MSRP on Mushkin's 480GB Atlas mSATA SSD is $499.99 USD. The Atlas mSATA SSD is covered by a three-year limited warranty.

GUNNAR Optiks, the world's leading manufacturer of computer eyewear, today announced that it has been awarded broad patent coverage on the company's lens technology and design. GUNNAR's 20/20 and prescription computer eyewear, optimized for use while viewing digital screens, combines a proprietary lens material in an advanced geometry, finished with custom tuned lens tints and coatings.

"Aggressively protecting our technological innovations is an integral part of our business," said Joe Croft, co-founder of GUNNAR. "GUNNAR Optiks computer eyewear addresses a problem affecting more than 120M Americans today. Securing broad-based patents reinforces GUNNAR's leadership position in the category that we created, and ensures that affected consumers can receive a high-quality eyewear solution that protects their vision."

ADATA Technology a leading manufacturer of high-performance DRAM modules and NAND Flash storage application products, today announces the release of the DashDrive Durable UD310 USB Flash Drive, a tiny, water resistant USB flash drive with an attractive gem-like appearance.

The UD310 is manufactured through a special chip-on-board (COB) process, resulting in high water and impact resistance for the drive. A sparkling jewel-like faceted end-cap highlights the ultra-small and extremely portable design that takes up no space when used in a laptop or desktop. It allows for unrestricted sharing of pictures, music and videos, making the UD310 an ideal accessory for Ultrabooks and various slim and sophisticated electronic devices.

Microsoft's biggest launch of the year, Windows 8, may be under two weeks away, but there are still a couple of things Redmond managed to keep secret despite consumers getting a fair look-and-feel of the new operating system with pre-launch Consumer Previews. A large volume of Windows licenses are sold through hardware vendors, where the operating system is sold pre-installed on PCs and notebooks. The rest is sold as packaged software, through conventional retail channels.

As packaged software, the two variants of Windows 8 (Windows 8 and Windows 8 Pro) will be available as upgrade and full-version. The upgrade package lets you move from an existing installation of Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows 7, to the new OS. The Windows 8 Pro Upgrade is listed at an introductory price of US $69.99. For the same price, you get Windows 8 Pro Pack, which is a card with a software key to Windows 8 Pro (any architecture), no installation media. The OEM (builder) packages of Windows 8 (standard), which includes a key and installation media is sold in 64-bit and 32-bit variants, each priced at $99.99. Lastly, there are similar 64-bit and 32-bit packages for Windows 8 Pro, each priced at $139.99. Newegg.com is accepting pre-orders.

Galaxy's upcoming GeForce GTX 650 Ti GC (model: 65IGH8DL7AXX) factory-overclocked graphics card was listed (later deactivated) by American retailer Newegg.com for US $149.99. The sale page revealed quite a few details about the card. The specifications listed beat those which have been doing rounds for the past couple of weeks. According to the specs, the GTX 650 Ti in fact has 768 CUDA cores, and not 576, as previously believed. The GPU core is clocked at 966 MHz, with 5.40 GHz (GDDR5-effective) memory. The card packs 1 GB of memory across a 128-bit wide memory interface. Pictured below is Galaxy's GeForce GTX 650 GC (non-Ti, GK107-based), according to the source, the Galaxy GTX 650 Ti GC (GK106-based) looks very similar.