A lightweight M.2 SSD is a great way to add significant performance gains to any laptop or PC workstation. Silicon Power (SP) is releasing a new enclosure that will give your SSD the ability to not only achieve these gains but also take it wherever you go. The PD60 turns your M.2 M-key NVMe or SATA SSD into a portable hard drive for whenever and wherever you need it. Transfer data rapidly up to 10 Gbps via its USB 3.2 Gen 2 interface with the included Type-C to Type-C cable. It's also backwards-compatible with USB 3.1/3.0/2.0 at their respective speed limits.

The aluminium body is durable enough to protect your SSD, yet light enough to toss in your bag and hardly notice it, making it the perfect travel companion. It also provides superior heat dissipation, which is further enhanced by its slide design, allowing excess heat to escape when the cover is removed.

The surge in PC demand continued through the second quarter of 2021 (2Q21) despite global component shortages and logistics issues. Worldwide shipments of Traditional PCs, inclusive of desktops, notebooks, and workstations, reached 83.6 million units in 2Q21, up 13.2% from the second quarter of 2020, according to preliminary results from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker. Elevated demand for PCs combined with shortages that greatly impacted the supply of notebooks led to desktop growth outpacing that of notebooks during the quarter.

"The PC market's hot streak continued to drive heavy investments from the supply side including the entry of new vendors as well as additional spend from underdogs," said Jitesh Ubrani research manager for IDC's Mobile and Consumer Device Trackers. "And while the top 5 continue to drive volume, the smaller vendors have helped drive growth by offering unique features or niche designs."

Qualcomm is trying to get into the PC space with their mobile Snapdragon chips, which offer great battery and decent performance. However, so far only Apple managed to get the right formula for developing custom low-power, high-performance chips. It is exactly Apple's M1 processor in question that Qualcomm intends to mimic. According to the recent interview with Qualcomm's new CEO Cristiano Amon, we are informed that Qualcomm plans to produce laptop chips that would directly compete with Apple's. That means that, despite the ecosystem differences of Apple M1 (macOS) and Qualcomm Snapdragon (Windows-on-Arm), the company wants to deliver equal if not better performance and great battery life.

With the recent acquisition of Nuvia, Qualcomm has a team of very talented engineers to back up its claims. The company also recently hired some of the developers behind Apple's M1 chip. The company notes that it will be using only the best solutions for its upcoming SoC, which will include a 5G modem. Mr. Amon has also noted the following:

We needed to have the leading performance for a battery-powered device. If Arm, which we've had a relationship with for years, eventually develops a CPU that's better than what we can build ourselves, then we always have the option to license from Arm.

EVGA Corporation, or simply EVGA as it is known in the community, is the maker of various PC components and peripherals. As many of you are aware, EVGA has historically been focused on making products based on silicon coming from NVIDIA and Intel. The company has used NVIDIA products exclusively for its GPU portfolio and used Intel chipsets for its motherboard solutions. In the past, EVGA made motherboards for AMD processors, however, these boards used NVIDIA's chipset so they weren't technically full AMD motherboards. Starting today, that is about to change as we got some very juicy teasers from EVGA. In the nine-second video teaser on YouTube titled "A new Darkness is coming...", EVGA showcased a simple animation showing the AMD Ryzen logo surrounding EVGA's.

And of course, that only means one thing. EVGA will officially be joining the ecosystem of AMD and offering motherboards for their Ryzen processors. While the company is "one of the top NVIDIA authorized partners" in GPUs, on the CPU front it is officially joining Team Red and marking an important milestone for everyone. It is still not clear what kind of motherboard we will be getting, however, we can expect to see EVGA's best engineering applied in the form of a possible X570 Dark motherboard.Below, you can see the video teaser.

Microsoft has opened the floodgates, and allowed the huge PC and Apple devices market to enter the Xbox ecosystem via Cloud Gaming. Now you don't need to have a gaming PC or Xbox console. Now, you can be a part of Microsoft's ecosystem with whatever device you use - Xbox will always be there with you. This is the vision Microsoft is aiming at with the extension of Cloud Gaming to (almost) anything - with a simple browser, via its (currently Beta) xCloud for PC. Provided you subscribe to the Games Pass Ultimate subscription tier, of course. Which Microsoft is offering at $1 a month, with two extra free months, and then $12.99 a month.

However, there's a catch: if you want to be on the receiving end of Microsoft's franchises via Cloud Gaming, you have to possess a supported controller - Xbox offerings are the surest bets; however, PS4's controller is also supported). This happens because the stream is being originated in custom Xbox Series X consoles on the cloud - Microsoft's best performant hardware to date. However, it seems a way to adapt the stream from Xbox Series X's controller inputs and adapt them to the PC's native mouse and keyboard controller wasn't found. Streams will also be constrained by a less than optimal (but still very respectable) 1080p and 60 FPS limitations. Other than those caveats, if you don't have a gaming-capable PC or Microsoft's latest family of consoles, this is the way to enjoy gaming within Microsoft's franchises and all other partners through the ecosystem. Microsoft had already launched an xCloud app for Android smartphones, thus capturing most of the market in one fell swoop. The press release follows.

Thermaltake, the leading PC DIY premium brand for Cooling, Gaming Gear, and Enthusiast Memory solutions, is excited to release a new power supply to the market - Toughpower TF1 1550 W Titanium - TT Premium Edition. This is an extremely high-end power supply unit which comes in 1550 W, and is specially designed for overlocking enthusiasts. The Toughpower TF1 1550 W Titanium is dedicated to providing a better overclocking environment, hence, more additional features are added to enhance the stability. Firstly, there is a turbo fan button designed at the side of the PSU. The Turbo fan increases the airflow intake and ramps the fan up to 2400±10% RPM; users can simply switch on the button for additional cooling when the PSU is at full load.

Secondly, a strict standard of the transient response is set with 12 V < 1 %, 5 V< 3%, and 3.3 V < 5% to guarantee a constant output in response to load changes and avoids output voltage deviation causing damage to subsequent equipment malfunction. Thirdly, the inrush current is controlled to not exceed 50 Ampere making sure PSU components will not suffer from the massive power output. Additionally, a 12 V OCP protection is covered to give extra support preventing the hard drives from malfunction and damage. Last but not least, there is an extra 24 pin jumper attached to provide electricity to the graphics card without connecting to the motherboard. The jumper brings more convenience and flexibility that users can configure the layout of their system in a desired way.

As most of the DOOM Eternal fans are informed, on June 29th, the latest installment in the DOOM series of games, DOOM Eternal, will be receiving a huge upgrade coming to all PC gamers. For the first time, PC players will get to experience NVIDIA's best pieces of technology, coming in a form of raytracing and NVIDIA Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS). To celebrate that, the folks over at Bethesda Softworks and id Software have partnered with NVIDIA to launch a limited edition DOOM Eternal bundle. Called the "DOOM Eternal GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Limited Edition Demon Slayer Bundle", it will be a very scarce bundle made only in 300 copies.

Containing NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3080 Ti graphics card, the bundle is all about performance. However, what makes it special and different from buying a regular card is that it includes some additional products. For starters, the bundle includes Titanium Slayer Collectible mini-figure with matching aesthetics of the GPU, making it a real collectible item. Next up is a Titanium DOOM Eternal-GeForce RTX t-shirt, and an exclusive "DOOM Eternal: The Ancient Gods" oversized 15.75-inch x 35.44-inch mouse pad. Additionally, a $100 Bethesda Store credit and DOOM Eternal Deluxe Edition game code is included as well. Together, it forms a bundle that is limited to 300 pieces and costs 1450 USD. To join the raffle to purchase this bundle, you can enter here for North America, and here for Europe. Unfortunately, people from other regions can not enter. The raffle starts today, June 23, 2021, 5:00 AM (MST), and ends on July 7, 2021, 11:59 PM (MST). Winners will be announced on July 8th.

At its IR Day 2021 Game & Network Services Segment, Sony themselves have spilled the cat out of the bag regarding ports from their first-party studios to the PC realm. Case in point: Uncharted 4: A Thief's End, developed by naughty Dog, will be releasing on the PC platform at some point in the future. The information is tucked away at page 26 of Sony's documentation. This comes as no surprise, considering other tidbits Sony shared regarding its PC initiative: the company achieved a 250% ROI (Return on Investment) with the port of Horizon: Zero Dawn to PC and more recently Days Gone, meaning that porting costs were more than recouped.

Of course, the ROI also has to take into account the potential decrease in value of the PlayStation brand with the relative loss of exclusivity, but this doesn't seem much different from Microsoft's strategy of delivering console exclusives that still make it onto the PC space (and the company has been doubling down on those efforts, and they surely wouldn't be doing so if they were losing money).

International Data Corporation (IDC) recently published new forecasts for the worldwide hard disk drive (HDD) and solid state drive (SSD) markets. While both markets were affected the COVID-19 pandemic, the outlook looks good as demand for storage remains strong in multiple areas. Worldwide HDD industry petabyte shipments are expected to see a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 18.5% over the 2020-2025 forecast period and average capacity per drive is forecast to increase at a five-year CAGR of 25.5%.

"While the client HDD market continues a long-term secular decline due to rising SSD attach rates, the COVID-19 pandemic has over the near term increased the demand for certain types of HDDs, particularly mobile HDDs as well as capacity-optimized HDDs," said Edward Burns, research director, Hard Disk Drive and Storage Technologies at IDC. "And the demand for storage capacity continues to grow at a steady pace as the world creates and stores more and more data."

Microsoft's console and gaming division, Xbox, has been working closely with game studios and game developers for years now, and in return for supporting the creation of games, the company gets its platform exclusivity, where the game is only available on Xbox series of consoles. Today, Xbox has decided to unveil a hefty list composing out of AAA titles exclusive to the Xbox Series X|S consoles. Starting off, we have the Forza Horizon 5 game, which delivers the experience of the open world of Mexico, while allowing you to drive the world's greatest cars. The game is set to become available on November 9 on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Xbox Game Pass, PC via Steam on Windows, and Cloud Gaming service, which is in Beta.

Next up is a collaboration with 343 Industries game studio, which has unveiled its next-generation Halo shooter gameplay. Dubbed Halo Infinite, the game is a massive experience set in the world of Halo, which also includes a free-to-play multiplayer element aiming to bring millions of people together across Xbox consoles, cloud, and PC to join the fight. When it comes to new franchises, we have seen the announcement of Redfall, a co-op first-person shooter that sets you in a small island town of Redfall, which has now fallen to the pandemic of vampires, and your goal is to put it to the end. Coming from Arkane Austin, the developers of Prey and Dishonored, the game is sure to be a quality one.

If you're a fan of From Software's games - and that requires that you have slight masochistic tendencies and enjoy evocative world building more than most - there are good news for you. From Software has confirmed that the game will be released come January 21st 2022 in all major platforms - including the all-dominating PC sphere. The game's worldbuilding has been crafted by both From Software's veteran Hidetaka Miyazaki and George R. R. Martin (of Game of Thrones fame), and will feature an open-world game with horse riding and the usual From Software design philosophy. Check out the game's trailer after the break, and as always: prepare to die.

Valve, the company behind the Steam gaming platform, will be making an appearance at this year's E3 gaming event. The E3 is taking a form of a virtual trade event this year, which is standard for all of the previous events we had in the past, like Computex 2021. The special appearance this year will come from Valve. According to PC Gamer, Valve will have something to share, more specifically a "message regarding Steam". Usually, Valve doesn't make a lot of appearances at E3 and is not considered a regular there, so this year's E3 show will have the honor to host the company at the PC Gaming Show. This means that we are getting a possibly big announcement from Valve.

The current rumors are suggesting that the company wants to present the SteamPal, a Switch-like portable gaming console that aims to bring gaming on the go, powered by Valve. The exact details of what is to be presented will be unveiled on Sunday, June 13 at 2:30 PM PST / 5:30 PM EST and we will be sure to report about the happenings at E3, so stay tuned for more details.

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.

Total NAND Flash revenue for 1Q21 increased by 5.1% QoQ to US$14.82 billion, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. In particular, bit shipments rose by 11% QoQ, while the overall ASP dropped by 5% QoQ; hence, bit shipment growth offset the decline in the overall ASP. Although NAND Flash demand from notebook computer and smartphone manufacturers remained high, clients from the data center segment exhibited relatively weak demand, since this segment had yet to leave the state of NAND Flash oversupply. Contract prices for this quarter therefore still mostly showed a considerable QoQ drop. On the other hand, OEMs/ODMs of end products began to increase procurement of NAND Flash products from the second half of January onward because they noticed that the shortage of NAND Flash controller ICs was affecting the production of medium- and low-density storage products. Besides avoiding a possible supply crunch in the future, OEMs/ODMs were placing additional orders because they were preparing for a push to expand market share. On account of these developments, the overall NAND Flash demand surpassed expectations in 1Q21.

Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser has been one of the biggest browsers in the world by market share. However, that was some years ago and the browser technology keeps developing to a point where a 3-month non-updated browser is slow and insecure. The latest version of Internet Explorer is version 11, which you can find still running on your Windows PC. You might wonder why is it still present when Microsoft announced its Chromium-based Edge browser some time ago. Well, many applications have built-int code that needs Internet Explorer to work. If there is no IE browser, the application would display errors and likely not run well.

However, Microsoft today announced that the company will be moving on from IE 11 and that it is finally killing it by June 15th, 2022. The IE browser represents a code that is probably hard to maintain and a potential security hole. That is why the company is deciding to end it in 2022. If you are wondering how the company plans to migrate a plethora of apps from needing IE, Microsoft is preparing Internet Explorer compatibility mode on its Edge browser. That way it ensures that all of the existing applications would run under the Edge browser and that old and insecure piece of code is removed from Windows.

The discrete GPU market has been a duopoly for quite some time, and when Intel announced that the company is rebooting plans for its discrete GPU lineup, another player was about to break that duopoly. Today, that has been changed forever and Intel has officially become the third manufacturer of discrete GPUs, as we can see on the online listing. On BestBuy, CyberPowerPC has listed "Gamer Xtreme Gaming Desktop" powered exclusively by Intel components. When it comes to the CPU choice, Intel's 6C/12T Core i5-11400F CPU model is present without iGPU. Now comes the interesting part. The GPU powering the system is Intel Iris Xe discrete graphics card, which is a DG1 GPU based on Xe-LP SKU.

This model features 80 EUs, resulting in 640 shading units. While this is not any gaming beast, casual 1080p gaming should be just fine on this configuration. The system is listed for 750 US Dollars, and it is sold out, as of the time of writing this. While the performance of this configuration may not be something monumental, it is an important step towards Intel's inclusion in the discrete GPU market. By using OEMs, the GPU will reach a very large market without any major problems. We are waiting to see the first reviews of the system, which will surely take a good look at the card and examine its performance.

SPC Gear, the gaming label of the European manufacturer SilentiumPC, announces a fresh, bright colour variant of the popular SM950 streaming microphone kit. The new edition is inspired by the rare mineral white onyx, known for its exceptional durability and unique appearance. SPC Gear designed the Onyx White variants with this qualities in mind while offering directional (cardioid) characteristics, ensuring good dampening of unwanted ambient noise. High-quality components on the other hand, allow for a warm, radio-like sound. Being a Plug&Play microphone, the SM950 does not require installing any additional software and is ready to be used straight out of the box. The physical mute button is conveniently located on top of the microphone and provides visual cues when mutes. With the SM950 series, SPC Gear offers a prefect kit for every streamer, YouTuber and musician, seeking an affordable full-fledged recording setup for streaming of games on Twitch or YouTube or recording of podcasts and voiceovers.

Valve's head, Gabe Newell, has on Monday talked to the students at Auckland, New Zealand's Sancta Maria College. While Mr. Newell spoke to students, one of them has asked Mr. Newell about the company's plans for consoles and has recorded the response. The student then proceeded to upload the recording to Reddit, but, it was later deleted. However, we are in luck as Ars Technica reported on this and we have managed to get a bit of new information about what's coming from Valve and what we can expect. During the talk, a student asked Mr. Newell: "Will Steam be porting any games on consoles, or will it just stay on PC?"

To that, Mr. Newell responded by saying: "You will get a better idea of that by the end of this year... and it won't be the answer you expect. You'll say, 'Ah-ha! Now I get what he was talking about.'" This is a rather vague answer to a question and it doesn't give us much information, other than the fact that we can expect something towards the end of 2021. This could mean anything, so we are not sure yet. However, we will keep an eye on it and make sure to report every new information as it appears.

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.