The new Razer Blade 15 Advanced Model lineup continues to present the best gaming laptops on the market. Armed with the new 11th Gen Intel Core H-Series Processor up to an Intel Core i9, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30-Series Laptop GPU, and the fastest available displays with up to 360Hz, the new Razer Blade 15 Advanced Model delivers ultimate power in a premium compact form factor. The RTX 3060 version stands at an impressive height of only 15.8 mm, making it the thinnest gaming laptop in the world with a GeForce RTX 3060 Laptop GPU.

To ensure a smooth experience, the new Razer Blade 15 Advanced Model utilizes the latest PCIe Gen 4 configuration and is powered by DDR4 3200 MHz memory. The innovative M.2 design returns, with dual slots available on RTX 3070 versions and above, allowing users to easily expand the SSD according to their storage needs. Be it hardcore gaming or content creation, the Razer Blade 15 Advanced Model laptops are built to handle intensive usage and multitasking.

Have you ever wondered if your graphics card could pack just a little bit more VRAM than it is advertised to come with? Well, if you have some spare time and some awesome soldering skills, you could find out yourself by placing higher-capacity VRAM chips in place of the standard memory. That is exactly what VIK-on, a hardware modder from Russia, has done with his graphics cards. Before, VIK-on modded the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 to support 16 GB of GDDR6 memory and modded NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3070 to also support 16 GB of GDDR6 memory. Today, VIK-on has done it again and the modder has tested his skills by proving that it is possible to install 22 GB of GDDR6 memory on the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti graphics card.

The modder has taken a broken NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti GPU that was in very bad condition. He had to re-solder the GPU and fix some broken PCB traces. Finally, after that, he tried to install more VRAM than the card came with in the first place. The TU102 SKU is capable of handling up to 48 GB of VRAM, as seen with Quadro RTX 8000 GPU. However, the problem would be firmware support. VIK-on used a strap mod, leading the GPU BIOS to believe that there is much more memory present compared to the stock version, and the card managed to boot. However, some screen flickering was present and it had stability issues, so the mod isn't very successful.

AAEON, an industry leader in embedded AI Edge systems, announces new software support for the BOXER-8200 series of embedded PCs featuring NVIDIA Jetson System on Modules (SOM). AAEON has officially signed an agreement with Canonical to provide customers with the NVIDIA Ubuntu operating system pre-installed on new BOXER-8200 systems. Systems with the NVIDIA Ubuntu OS will also ship with the Jetpack 4.5 drivers and toolkit package preinstalled. Additionally, AAEON announces a new customization services to provide Secureboot to clients in addition to other customization options.

AAEON is dedicated to delivering the most comprehensive platform solutions powered by NVIDIA Jetson SOMs. To meet the needs of their clients, AAEON has signed an agreement with Canonical to provide the official NVIDIA Ubuntu OS image on the entire range of BOXER-8200 series systems. Developers and customers who purchase new BOXER-8200 series systems can receive the system with the OS preinstalled, with no need to flash the image before starting the system up for the first time. The BOXER-8200 series includes the BOXER-822x platforms with Jetson Nano, BOXER-8240AI with Jetson AGX Xavier, BOXER-825x platforms with Jetson Xavier NX, and BOXER-823x platforms with Jetson TX2 NX (currently under development).

The demands of data center workloads and internet traffic are growing exponentially, and new solutions are needed to keep up with these demands while reducing the current and anticipated growth of power consumption. But the variety of workloads and applications being run today means the traditional one-size-fits all approach to computing is not the answer. The industry demands flexibility; design freedom to achieve the right level of compute for the right application.

As Moore's Law comes to an end, solution providers are seeking specialized processing. Enabling specialized processing has been a focal point since the inception of our Neoverse line of platforms, and we expect these latest additions to accelerate this trend.

AMD seems to be preparing a chipset refresh, and this time, it is coming straight from the top-end market. When the company launched its high-end X570 chipset, it brought the PCIe 4.0 support, which many praised due to its capability to handle much faster NVMe drives. However, it seems like the company is not satisfied with that and it needs to release an updated chipset version called X570S. According to a popular hardware leaker, TUM_APISAK, we have discovered that GIGABYTE is preparing X570S Aorus Pro AX motherboard that will use the refreshed chipset. GIGABYTE already listed several Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC) listings, so the new chipset is sure to hit the market, just at an unknown time.

The S denotes the word silent, meaning that these updated chipsets are capable of working with passive cooling and possibly having a lower TDP compared to 11 and 15 Watts of the X570 chipsets for consumer and enterprise motherboards, respectively. The test was conducted using AMD's newly announced Ryzen 7 5700G processor. The 5000-series of APUs are so far limited to OEMs, so one would guess that GIGABYTE itself made the leak by using a public entry of CPU-Z validation.

TrendForce's investigations find that DRAM suppliers and major PC OEMs are currently participating in the critical period of negotiating with each other over contract prices for 2Q21. Although these negotiations have yet to be finalized, the ASP of mainstream DDR4 1G*8 2666 Mbps modules has already increased by nearly 25% QoQ as of now, according to data on ongoing transactions. This represents a higher price hike than TrendForce's prior forecast of "nearly 20%". On the other hand, prices are likewise rising across various DRAM product categories in 2Q21, including DDR3/4 specialty DRAM, mobile DRAM, graphics DRAM, and in particular server DRAM, which is highly related to PC DRAM and is therefore also undergoing a higher price hike than previously expected. TrendForce is therefore revising up its forecast of overall DRAM price hike for 2Q21 from 13-18% QoQ to 18-23% QoQ instead. However, the actual increase in prices of various DRAM product categories will depend on the production capacities allocated to the respective products by DRAM suppliers.

As the global economy enters the post-pandemic era, technologies including 5G, WiFi6/6E, and HPC (high-performance computing) have been advancing rapidly, in turn bringing about a fundamental, structural change in the semiconductor industry as well, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. While the demand for certain devices such as notebook computers and TVs underwent a sharp uptick due to the onset of the stay-at-home economy, this demand will return to pre-pandemic levels once the pandemic has been brought under control as a result of the global vaccination drive. Nevertheless, the worldwide shift to next-gen telecommunication standards has brought about a replacement demand for telecom and networking devices, and this demand will continue to propel the semiconductor industry, resulting in high capacity utilization rates across the major foundries. As certain foundries continue to expand their production capacities this year, TrendForce expects total foundry revenue to reach a historical high of US$94.6 billion this year, an 11% growth YoY.

NVIDIA has recently announced the company's first standalone Grace CPU that will come out as a product in 2023. NVIDIA has designed Grace on Arm ISA, likely ARM v9, to represent a new way that data centers are built and deliver a whole new level of HPC and AI performance. However, the CPU competition in a data center space is considered one of the hardest markets to enter. Usually, the market is a duopoly between Intel and AMD, which supply x86 processors to server vendors. In the past few years, there have been few Arm CPUs that managed to enter the data canter space, however, NVIDIA is aiming to deliver much more performance and grab a bigger piece of the market.

As a self-proclaimed leader in AI, Intel is facing hard competition from NVIDIA in the coming years. In an interview with Fortune, Intel's new CEO Pat Gelsinger has talked about NVIDIA and how the company sees the competition between the two. Mr. Gelsinger is claiming that Intel is a leader in CPUs that feature AI acceleration built in the chip and that they are not playing defense, but rather offense against NVIDIA. You can check out the whole quote from the interview below.

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.

Global shipments of traditional PCs, including desktops, notebooks, and workstations, grew 55.2% year over year during the first quarter of 2021 (1Q21), according to preliminary results from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker. While PCs remain in extremely high demand, the growth rate benefitted from the shortages faced in the first quarter of 2020 when the global pandemic began, resulting in an unusually favorable year-over-year comparison. PC shipments reached 84 million worldwide in 1Q21, a modest 8% decline from the fourth quarter of 2020. While sequential declines are typical for the first quarter, a decline this small has not been seen since the first quarter of 2012 when the PC market declined 7.5% sequentially.

Razer, the maker of various gaming peripherals and gaming PCs/Laptops, has been a long-time user of Intel CPUs in their laptops devices. However, that might be changing just about now. According to some findings by @_rogame, there was a 3D Mark benchmark run that featured AMD Ryzen 5000 series "Cezanne" mobile processors. What is more interesting is the system it was running in. Called Razer PI411, this system is officially Razer's first AMD-powered laptop. While we don't have many details about it, we have some basic system configuration details. For starters, the laptop carries AMD's top-tier Ryzen 9 5900HX overclockable mobile processor. Carrying a configured TDP of 45 Watts (the maximum is 54 W), the system is likely not equipped with sufficient cooling for overclocking.

When it comes to the rest of the laptop, it features NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3060 GPU, 16 GB of RAM, and 512 GB of storage. Being that this laptop was codenamed PI411, it could indicate a 14-inch model. However, we still don't know if it is ever going to hit consumer shelves. Being that Razer never carried an AMD CPU option, this could just be an engineering sample that the company was experimenting with, so we have to wait to find out more.

Editor's note: This is not a part of April Fools.

NVIDIA has separated professional users and regular gamers with the company's graphics card offering. There is a GeForce lineup of GPUs, which represents a gaming-oriented version and its main task is to simply play games, display graphics, and run some basic CUDA accelerated software. However, what would happen if you were to start experimenting with your GPU? For example, if you are running Linux, and you want to spin a virtual machine with Windows on it for gaming, you could just use your integrated GPU as the GeForce card doesn't allow for virtual GPU passthrough. For these purposes, NVIDIA has its professional graphics card lineup like Quadro and Tesla.

However, this specific feature is about to arrive in even the GeForce lineup offerings. NVIDIA has announced that the company is finally bringing the basic virtual machine passthrough functions to the gaming GPUs. While the feature is representing a step in the right direction, it is still limited. For example, the GeForce GPU passthrough supports only one virtual machine and SR-IOV feature is still not supported on GeForce. "If you want to enable multiple virtual machines to have direct access to a single GPU or want the GPU to be able to assign virtual functions to multiple virtual machines, you will need to use NVIDIA Tesla, Quadro, or RTX enterprise GPUs.", says the NVIDIA FAQ. GeForce virtualization, which is now still in beta, is supported on R465 or higher drivers.The full content from NVIDIA's website is written below.

ASUS today announced Mini PC PB62, a durable computer that delivers powerful performance to provide flexibility, expandability and performance to suit a range of business applications, including digital signage, point-of-sales (POS) system, kiosks and intelligent vending machines. Mini PC PB62 is powered by the latest desktop-grade up to 11th Generation Intel Core processor and fast DDR4 3200 MHz memory.

Engineered for performance: 11th Gen Intel Core, DDR4 3200 MHz memory and Intel Optane
With the latest up to 11th Gen Intel Core i7 processors, Mini PC PB62 is caters for with support for either a 35- or 65-watt CPU - so it's ready to be specified for supreme efficiency or maximum performance. PB62 also has built-in support for Intel Optane H20 memory, the technology that greatly improves storage speeds, enables frequently-used documents, pictures, videos and applications to be accessed more quickly while improving overall system performance to maximize productivity and efficiency.

MonsterLabo, the maker of fanless PC cases designed for gaming with zero noise, has today tested its upcoming flagship offering in the case lineup. Called The Beast, the case is designed to handle high-end hardware with large TDPs and dissipate all that heat without any moving parts. Using only big heatsinks and heat pipes to transfer the heat to the big heatsink area. In a completely fanless configuration, the case can absorb and dissipate a CPU TDP of 150 Watts and a GPU TPD with 250 Watts. However, when equipped with two 140 mm fans running below 500 RPM, it can accommodate a 250 W CPU, and 320 W GPU. MonsterLabo has tested the fully fanless configuration, which was equipped with AMD Ryzen 7 3800XT processor, paired with NVIDIA's latest GeForce RTX 3080 Ampere graphics card.

There were no fans present in the system to help move the heat away, and the PC was being stress-tested using Microsoft's Flight Simulator. The company has posted a chart of CPU and GPU temperatures over time, where we see that the GPU has managed to hit about 75 degrees Celsius at one point. The CPU has remained a bit cooler, where the CPU package hit just above the 70-degree mark. Overall, the case is more than capable of cooling the hardware it was equipped with. By adding two slow-spinning fans, the temperatures would get even lower, however, that is no longer a fanless system. MonsterLabo's The Beast is expected to get shipped in Q3 of this year when reviewers will get their hands on it and test it for themselves. You can watch the videos in MonsterLabo's blog post here.

This article serves as a way to sate my curiosity: does anyone even care about Cyberpunk 2077 anymore, or was the release state of the game (and the terrible media surrounding it and CD Projekt Red) enough for people to forget what likely was the world's most anticipated game ever? While this editor had loads of fun playing the game in a PS4 Pro system, such wasn't the case for many, many players - and especially for PS4 players, who couldn't even buy the game from the PS store after a certain point, and still can't. CD Projekt Red has, since the game's release, launched 11 patches that fixed a myriad of bugs and optimized the games' performance - but a ton of issues still remain, and remained.

Now, update 1.2, the second in the two major bug-fixing updates for the game, is being ready for prime-time, and there's a veritable laundry list of fixes on offer. The intention is for this update to solve most of the underlying, fixable issues that don't require reworking of core gameplay aspects of the game, paving the way for the upcoming free DLC and downloadable expansions which are sure to be coming - at least one throughout 2021 seems not only plausible, but extremely likely. But is this enough? Do you still have faith in this game and hope CD Projekt Red pulls a No Man's Sky from Cyberpunk 2077? Or is it far away in your rearview mirror, abandoned in a dystopian setting? In either case, the full list of fixes follows after the break; just looking at it is more than enough information to see the state of the game now, almost four months after launch. Two things to point out: raytracing is now supported on AMD graphics cards, with the latest drivers; and there's an interesting "and many more" in the end of the patch notes.Update 19:36 UTC: The patch is live now! Download size is around 30 GB. Or 55 GB if you're on a PlayStation.

AMD, via its CVP & GM at AMD Radeon Scott Herkelman, confirmed in video with PCWorld that the company's counterpart to NVIDIA's DLSS technology - which he defines as the most important piece of software currently in development from a graphics perspective - is coming along nicely. Launch of the technology is currently planned for later this year. Scott Herkelman further confirmed that there is still a lot of work to do on the technology before it's ready for prime time, but in the meantime, it has an official acronym: FSR (FidelityFX Super Resolution). If you're unfamiliar with DLSS, it's essentially an NVIDIA-locked, proprietary upscaling algorithm that has been implemented in a number of games now, which leverages Machine Learning hardware capabilities (tensor cores) to upscale a game with minimal impact to visual quality. It's important because it allows for much higher performance in even the latest, most demanding titles - especially when they implement raytracing.

As has been the case with AMD, its standing on upscaling technologies defends a multiplatform, compatible approach that only demands implementation of open standards to run in users' systems. The idea is to achieve the broadest possible spectrum of game developers and gamers, with tight, seamless integration with the usual game development workflow. This is done mostly via taking advantage of Microsoft's DirectML implementation that's baked straight into DX 12.

ARCTIC, one of the leading manufacturers of low-noise PC coolers and components, officially launches its MX-5 thermal paste today. The newly developed, high-performance paste comes with an ideal set of thermal properties, guaranteeing reliable heat dissipation over long periods of time. ARCTIC MX-5 is available now in variants ranging from 2 to 50 grams, with and without a spatula.

Like all thermal pastes from ARCTIC, MX-5 is completely metal-free. Because MX-5 is neither conductive nor capacitive, it is particularly safe to use: the possibility of short circuits, corrosion damage or discharges is eliminated.

Historically, system builders have been very good indicators of the market situation and demand for the latest processors available. Today, we have the report coming from Puget Systems, a system builder making PCs and laptops for any task needed. Having been present in the PC building business for 21 years, the company was able to notice some trends and look at the market like no one else could, simply by analyzing its orders. Today, we have the report that showcases just how much the CPU market has fluctuated and how dominant forces have shifted. The two main players, AMD and Intel, have been present for lots of years and we now get to see the latest trends in the consumer marketplace.

Back in 2015, Puget Systems quietly dropped AMD processors from their offerings, amid the very low demand the company saw for them. The sales of AMD processors accounted for a single-digit percentage of all of the total sales, and no one was interested in such systems. With the introduction of the Ryzen generation, Puget Systems re-introduced AMD processors back in their offerings. As the company analyzes its processor sales, it has concluded that, currently, AMD processors account for over 50% of the total CPU sales. That is quite a comeback for AMD, as the latest generation Ryzen 5000 series processors have taken the performance crown, and consumer demand is showing the need for new high-performance processors. You can take a look at the graph representing processor sales in the last five years below.

Demand for notebook computers is expected to remain strong throughout 2Q21 due to the persisting stay-at-home economy that arose in the wake of the pandemic, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. In response to the high demand for notebooks, PC OEMs are actively raising a consistent inventory of components, including client SSDs. Nonetheless, client SSDs are now in increasingly tight supply because the preexisting shortage of NAND Flash controllers is now exacerbated by the power outage at Samsung's Austin-based semiconductor plant. SSD manufacturers are therefore preparing to raise the prices of SSDs. Accordingly, TrendForce has also revised up its forecast of client SSD prices for 2Q21 from "mostly flat" to a 3-8% increase QoQ instead.

Last year, we found out that a group of investors has accused NVIDIA that the company has misled its investors by reporting crypto revenue as gaming revenue numbers and making its gaming revenue seem much bigger than it is. The original lawsuit was filed in 2017 and it demanded that NVIDIA should pay one billion US Dollars to investors shall they be proven right. In 2017, cryptocurrency mining was at the same craze it is today, with people buying every possible card that exists and consumers having a hard time upgrading their PCs. Investors in NVIDIA corporation have believed that in 2017, the company has presented its cryptocurrency earning figures as a part of the gaming figures, thus giving misleading information about the company's success in the gaming market.

Today, we have information that NVIDIA has won this lawsuit. On Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge Haywood Gilliam has dismissed the case and ruled that investors were unable to provide any significant evidence that the company has used such practices and misled investors. By taking this case off the company, NVIDIA will not be paying one billion USD to the accusing investors and the company continues operations as normal.

Global DRAM revenue reached US$17.65 billion, a 1.1% increase YoY, in 4Q20, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. For the most part, this growth took place because Chinese smartphone brands, including Oppo, Vivo, and Xiaomi, expanded their procurement activities for components in order to seize the market shares made available after Huawei was added to the Entity List by the U.S. Department of Commerce. These procurement activities in turn provided upward momentum for DRAM suppliers' bit shipment. However, clients in the server segment were still in the middle of inventory adjustments during this period, thereby placing downward pressure on DRAM prices. As a result, revenues of most DRAM suppliers, except for Micron, remained somewhat unchanged in 4Q20 compared to 3Q20. Micron underwent a noticeable QoQ decline in 4Q20 (which Micron counts as its fiscal 1Q21), since Micron had fewer work weeks during this period compared to the previous quarter.

Antec Inc., a leading provider of high-performance computer components and accessories for the gaming, PC upgrade and Do-It-Yourself market, is presenting a new ITX case which offers PC enthusiasts the best watercooling options in a small format case. The Dark Cube will soon reach store shelves and online retail outlets in Europe with a competitive MSRP of 209 Euros.

The Dark Cube is a masterpiece of the revolutionary ITX case from Antec. This untraditional case provides powerful support for the latest gaming gear. Despite the small size, the Dark Cube still supports motherboards up to M-ATX. The Dark Cube supports high-end hardware and provides dual front panel options: Users can choose either the tempered glass panel or mesh front panel - whether the emphasis is on maximum airflow performance or on showcasing the gaming components.

Ethereum mining has been a crazy ride over the years. In recent times, it has become very popular due to a huge surge in Ethereum prices, following those of the main coin currently present on the market - Bitcoin. However, Ethereum miners use a customized PC stocked with many graphics cards to mine the Ethereum coin. Any other alternative is not viable and graphics cards have a high hash rate of the KECCAK-256 hashing algorithm. But have you ever wondered could you mine Ethereum on your shiny new Apple M1-equipped Mac? Our guess is no, however, there are still some people making experiments with the new Apple M1 processor and testing its capabilities.

Software engineer Yifan Gu, working for Zensors, has found a way to use Apple's M1 GPU to mine Ethereum. Mr. Gu has ported Ethminer utility to Apple's macOS for Apple Silicon and has managed to get GPU mining the coins. While technically it was possible, the results were rather poor. The integrated GPU has managed to get only 2 MH/s of mining power, which is rather low compared to alternatives (desktop GPUs). Being possible doesn't mean it is a good idea. The software will consume all of the GPU power and it will limit your work with the GPU, so it isn't exactly a profitable solution.

343 Industries, a game developer and maker of the Halo game series, has today released 4K screenshots of their upcoming PC title called Halo Infinite game. The company has been providing players with regular updates regarding the game development and showing a bit of how the whole process is looking like. What the developers have in their heads when developing something like this, and what are their goals to achieve. For someone interested in that, these monthly updates are very valuable reads. Today, however, we are in for a surprise. Halo Infinite PC screenshots have been revealed and we get a hint of what is to come.

Showcasing Zeta Halo, one of the seven rings in the Halo Array, located in the Sagittarius Arm of the Milky Way galaxy, we get to see the beautiful open world the developers are creating. The main spotlight of the graphics is centered around the day-nigh changes, which are supposed to feature raytracing technology and use the latest advancements in graphics. Below, you can take a look at the world of rings and see some game scenes for yourself. For a full 4K images, please head over to the Halo Infinite blog post update.More pictures follow.

Demand in the global foundry market remains strong in 1Q21, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. As various end-products continue to generate high demand for chips, clients of foundries in turn stepped up their procurement activities, which subsequently led to a persistent shortage of production capacities across the foundry industry. TrendForce therefore expects foundries to continue posting strong financial performances in 1Q21, with a 20% YoY growth in the combined revenues of the top 10 foundries, while TSMC, Samsung, and UMC rank as the top three in terms of market share. However, the future reallocation of foundry capacities still remains to be seen, since the industry-wide effort to accelerate the production of automotive chips may indirectly impair the production and lead times of chips for consumer electronics and industrial applications.

TSMC has been maintaining a steady volume of wafer inputs at its 5 nm node, and these wafer inputs are projected to account for 20% of the company's revenue. On the other hand, owing to chip orders from AMD, Nvidia, Qualcomm, and MediaTek, demand for TSMC's 7 nm node is likewise strong and likely to account for 30% of TSMC's revenue, a slight increase from the previous quarter. On the whole, TSMC's revenue is expected to undergo a 25% increase YoY in 1Q21 and set a new high on the back of surging demand for 5G, HPC, and automotive applications.