In the run-up to Intel's big Core i7 "Broadwell-E" launch, GIGABYTE announced its latest socket LGA2011-3 motherboard, the X99P-SLI. Positioned in the company's "mainline" brand, the board is built in the ATX form-factor, and draws power from a combination of 24-pin ATX and 8-pin EPS power connectors. The CPU socket is wired to eight DDR4 DIMM slots, supporting up to 128 GB of quad-channel DDR4 memory; and four PCI-Express 3.0 x16 connectors (x16/NC/x16/NC or x16/NC/x8/x8 or x8/x8/x8/x8, depending on how they're populated, on CPUs with full-featured PCIe root-complexes).

The star-attractions here are its 40 Gb/s Thunderbolt 3 port, and two 10 Gb/s USB 3.1 type-A ports. The Thunderbolt port features a DisplayPort passthrough, letting you wire your discrete graphics card's DisplayPort output through the board's Thunderbolt port. Storage connectivity includes ten SATA 6 Gb/s ports, one 32 Gb/s M.2 slot with NVMe boot support, and one SATA-Express 10 Gb/s port. 10-channel AMP-Up! onboard audio, with a 115 dBA SNR CODEC, EMI shielding, ground-layer isolation, audio-grade capacitors, and an OPAMP; and an Intel-driven gigabit Ethernet interface, make for the rest of it.

GIGABYTE unveiled a new high-end socket LGA1151 motherboard, the X170-Extreme ECC. Positioned as a workstation motherboard for the high-end desktop crowd, this board is based on Intel C236 chipset, and comes with support for Intel Xeon E3-1200 V5 processors in addition to 6th generation Core "Skylake" processors. It also supports DDR4 ECC memory, which partly lends it its name. Built in the standard ATX form-factor, the board draws power from a combination of 24-pin ATX and 8-pin EPS power connectors. Expansion slots include two PCI-Express 3.0 x16 (x8/x8 with both populated), a third PCI-Express 3.0 x16 (electrical gen 3.0 x4, wired to the PCH), and three other PCIe 3.0 x1 slots.

A star attraction here is GIGABYTE's choice of an Intel-made 2-port USB 3.1 controller, which connects to the PCH over PCI-Express 3.0 x4, compared to most other USB 3.1 controllers in the market, which connect over PCI-Express 3.0 x2. This ensures consistent 10 Gb/s bandwidth dedicated to each of the two ports, without any bandwidth loss to overhead. The board offers one each of type-A and type-C ports, wired to this controller. The board offers an additional four USB 3.0 ports from the chipset and a Renesas-made hub chip. Also on offer is a 40 Gb/s Thunderbolt 3 port, with DisplayPort 1.2 passthrough.

Intel announced its first "gaming grade" NUC. As if the very concept of NUC wasn't disruptive to the small form-factor desktop segment enough, the company is upping the ante with one that's prepped for gaming. Codenamed NUC6i7KYK, the new Skull Canyon NUC is about double the size of the average NUC. It has sufficient muscle for sub-1080p gaming, but is also prepped for external graphics solutions, such as the Razer Core.

To begin with, the Skull Canyon is driven by a Core i7-6770HQ processor based on the "Skylake" architecture. This quad-core chip features HyperThreading, which enables 8 logical CPUs, 6 MB of L3 cache, 128 MB L4 cache, and Intel Iris Pro Graphics 580. The CPU cores run at speeds between 2.60 GHz and 3.50 GHz, while the iGPU ticks at 950 MHz. With 576 execution units, 72 TMUs, and 9 ROPs, the integrated graphics core is good enough for gaming at sub-1080p resolutions such as 720p and 900p.

Razer, a world leader in connected devices and software for gamers, today announced its new Razer Blade gaming laptop. The Blade's specs have been improved across the board from its predecessor, and it is now more affordable than ever before. The new Razer Blade houses the latest 6th generation Intel Core i7 quad-core processor and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M GPU with 6 GB of VRAM. PCIe SSD technology offers up to three times faster speeds than traditional solid-state drives. Killer Wireless-AC is included. All models will feature 16 GB of DDR4 dual-channel RAM.

All Razer Blade models also come with a stunning 3200x1800 QHD+ display. The laptop remains 0.70 inches thin, but now weighs only 4.25 pounds, making it even more portable than previous generations. The screen and internals are housed in a CNC-milled aircraft grade aluminum chassis. The Razer Blade - following Razer's Blade Stealth Ultrabook - will be the second laptop in the world equipped with individually backlit RGB keys. Millions of color options for the anti-ghosted keyboard are available thanks to Razer's Chroma technology.

AMD today announced AMD XConnect technology, making it easier than ever to pair a powerful external Radeon graphics card with a compatible notebook or 2-in-1 using Thunderbolt 3. AMD XConnect technology is a groundbreaking new feature of Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.3. Traditionally, PC gamers have been faced with the problem of choosing between gaming notebooks, sacrificing portability for gaming performance, or ultrathin notebooks, sacrificing gaming performance for portability.

A lightweight notebook or 2-in-1 with Thunderbolt 3 that is compatible with AMD XConnect technology brings the best of both worlds to life -- conveniently lightweight on its own, but as needed, can easily tap into serious framerates and image quality of a gaming notebook with a powerful external GPU. The connection between the external GPU enclosure configured with Radeon R9 300 Series graphics is made possible over Intel's Thunderbolt 3, and can be connected or disconnected at any time, a first for external GPUs.

AMD released the latest version of Radeon Software Crimson Edition, its software suite which provides drivers and system software for Radeon GPUs and IGPs. Version 16.3 improves performance for "Rise of the Tomb Raider" on Radeon R9 Fury X series GPUs by up to 16 percent (compared to version 16.2), and for "Gears of War Ultimate Edition," by as high as 60 percent on the R9 Fury X series (compared to version 16.2.1), and by up to 44 percent on Radeon R9 380 series (compared to version 16.2.1).

Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.3 also adds official support for the Vulkan API; 2-display Eyefinity, an accessible CrossFire status indicator, a new power-efficiency toggle for Radeon R9 300 series and R9 Fury series GPUs. With version 16.3, AMD is introducing the XConnect Technology, a new standard for external graphics enclosures over not just high-bandwidth interfaces such as Thunderbolt 3, but also the more accessible USB 3.1 interface. AMD is providing the software ecosystem that lets you plug-and-play external GPUs for instant boosts in performance and functionality. AMD is also adding/updating CrossFire profiles for "Hitman (2016)", and "The Park."

DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.3 for Windows 10/8.1/7 64-bit | Windows 10/8.1/7 32-bit

NVIDIA rolled out a Hotfix driver update for its recently released GeForce 361.75 Game Ready drivers. The new GeForce 361.82 Hotfix driver corrects a bug which makes your installed GPUs appear as removable devices in your system tray (much like removable storage devices). It may have been a bug in the implementation of support for external graphics solutions over Thunderbolt 3, introduced with 361.75 WHQL. The hotfix driver addresses the issue.

If you find a 300-megabyte download worth fixing the bug (i.e. you often accidentally "eject" your graphics cards (unload display driver) while trying to unmount your external storage devices), then grab the driver for your OS from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 361.82 Hotfix

Following a month without any driver releases (the last one being dated December 21), NVIDIA released its latest GeForce drivers. Version 361.75 WHQL drivers are "Game Ready" for Rise of the Tomb Raider, and Tom Clancy's The Division (beta). This includes performance optimization, SLI profiles, and GeForce Experience optimal settings. The drivers also come with early (beta) support for GeForce GTX GPUs installed in external graphics solutions over the Thunderbolt 3 (40 Gb/s) interface. Grab them from the links below.DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 361.75 WHQL for Windows 10 64-bit | Windows 10 32-bit | Windows 8.1/7 64-bit | Windows 8.1/7 32-bit

Plugable today announced their new Thunderbolt 3 Docking Station and Dual-Display Adapter line - Plugable's most powerful products yet. Thunderbolt 3 seems to be sweeping the PC industry in 2016 - it costs less than Thunderbolt 2, doubles performance to 40Gb/s, integrates a USB 3.1 Gen2 (10Gb/s) controller, supports power delivery up to 100W, and brings both Thunderbolt and USB to the new reversible USB-C connector.

"Thunderbolt 3 on the USB-C connector is a game-changer," said Bernie Thompson, Plugable Technologies Founder. "Thunderbolt 3 is a well-standardized set of advanced features with required certification so computers, peripheral devices, and cables will just work."

Intel's tick-tock product development cycle is disturbed. The cadence of launching a new CPU microarchitecture on a given silicon fab process, miniaturizing it to a smaller fab process, and then launching an even newer micro-architecture on that process; is about to change with the company's 7th generation Core "Kaby Lake" processor. When launched, it would be the third microarchitecture built on the company's 14 nm process, besides "Skylake" (current new architecture) and "Broadwell" (miniaturization of "Haswell" to 14 nm.) Some of the very first documents related to Kaby Lake began to move about, making news along the way. The architecture is scheduled to launch along with its companion 200-series chipset some time in 2016.

To begin with, Core "Kaby Lake" will continue to be built on the LGA1151 package, and will likely be backwards compatible with existing 100-series chipset motherboards with a firmware update. From what we get to understand from leaked material, it will not be a vastly newer architecture than Skylake, at least not of the kind Skylake was to Broadwell. There are still CPU performance enhancements on offer, an "enhanced full-range BClk overclocking," which could mean improved overclocking on chips with upwards-locked multipliers (although we won't get our hopes too high and call it a return of the BClk overclocking era). A bulk of the R&D will fall into improving the integrated graphics, to support multiple 5K displays, 10-bit HVEC and VP9 hardware-acceleration; platform-integrated Thunderbolt 3, and platform interface support for Intel Optane (3D XPoint memory).

GIGABYTE announced that it's enabling 40 Gb/s Thunderbolt 3 support on select boards that have 20 Gb/s Thunderbolt 2 support, with a mere firmware update. It turns out that the Thunderbolt controllers on the company's Z170X-Gaming G1, Z170X-Gaming GT, and Z170X-Gaming 7 motherboards physically support Thunderbolt 3, but due to a lack of certification, its support was withheld, and bandwidth limited to 20 Gb/s.

What's more, these boards support the Thunderbolt protocol over USB 3.1 type-C, at lowered bandwidth, besides its traditional Thunderbolt/mini-DisplayPort connector at rated bandwidth. This should help with the new generation of Thunderbolt daisy-chaining docks that support USB type-C connections. To get the latest firmware, all you need to do is update your board's BIOS to the latest one on GIGABYTE's website.

Eurocom has launched the Sky X9 super high performance, fully upgradeable gaming laptop with desktop NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 graphics, Desktop Skylake Intel Core i7 6700K CPU and 64 GB of DDR4 memory. "We have put a desktop graphics card into a laptop, giving our customers amazing desktop 980 performance in a laptop. Users now have 980 desktop graphics performance combined with Intel Skylake desktop CPU performance." Mark Bialic, Eurocom President.

EUROCOM Sky X9 is powered by desktop NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 graphics, a fully unlocked GM204 core with 2048 CUDA cores. 8 GB memory with 7 Gbps memory clock and GDDR5 memory interface is supported. The EUROCOM Sky X9 is the first laptop with upgradeable desktop graphics supported inside, another amazing innovation from Eurocom. The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 is overclockable for maximum control and performance.

GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY Co. Ltd., a leading manufacturer of motherboards and graphics cards, is proud to be the first to bring Thunderbolt 3 to the desktop PC by launching the GIGABYTE Z170X-UD5 TH motherboard with support for the 6th Generation Intel Core processors.

Powered by Intel's own Thunderbolt controller the new Thunderbolt 3 protocol, which is available over two USB Type-C connectors on the back I/O of the GIGABYTE Z170X-UD5 TH, brings an unprecedented single-wire bandwidth of up to 40 Gb/s -- twice more than the previous generation of Thunderbolt! This incredible increase in bandwidth is also accompanied with support for different protocols such as DisplayPort 1.2 and USB 3.1, which is backwards compatible with USB 3.0 and USB 2.0, opening up a world of new possibilities.