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ASUS Provides BIOS updates addressing MDS vulnerabilities, ZombieLoad, RIDL, and Fallout

ASUS is aware that a new sub-class of speculative execution side-channel vulnerabilities in Intel CPUs, called Microarchitectural Data Sampling (MDS), also known as ZombieLoad, RIDL, and Fallout, may allow information disclosure. Intel states that selected 8th and 9th Generation Intel Core processors, as well as the 2nd Generation Intel Xeon Scalable processor family, are not vulnerable to MDS. If you are using one of these processors, no further action is necessary.

For other Intel processors, ASUS is working closely with Intel to provide a solution in a forthcoming BIOS update. We recommend owners of affected products update both the BIOS and operating system as soon as these mitigations are available. Please find our first-wave model list below and download the appropriate BIOS update from the ASUS Support website. More details, including affected systems, will be added to this document as they become available.

ZADAK Announces the SPARK RGB DDR4 Memory

ZADAK announced today the immediate worldwide release of their latest ultra-high-performance RGB gaming memory module, the SPARK RGB DDR4. Firmly aimed at the high-end PC enthusiasts and gamers market, the SPARK RGB DDR4 brings together powerful memory module, overclocking capability and top-notch design elements to form a valuable addition to the ZADAK DDR4 family that is compatible with high-end motherboards.

SPARK RGB DDR4 modules are available in kits ranging from 16GB (2x8GB) up to 64GB (4x16GB) with the top-end models running at 4133 MHz. Overclocking is made simple with XMP 2.0 support allowing users to select their preferred profile for stable and reliable overclocking.

Gigabyte's Z390 Aorus Xtreme Waterforce and 5.1 Ghz Core i9-9900K Bundle Now Available

Remember that ludicrous Gigabyte bundle that mixed the company's most outrageously expensive motherboard with a cherry-picked Intel Core i9-9900K overclocked to 5.1 GHz? Well, it's finally available, if that's your particular kind of beach, and the pricing is better than was expected. Solo, the motherboard sets you back $999, while a cherry-picked Intel Core i9-9900K at 5.1 GHz would set you back some $939 in houses such as Silicon Lottery. However, Gigabyte have confirmed that the bundle pricing for these components for the US stands at $1,699 - which really isn't too shabby, if you consider the motherboard to have sufficient bang for your buck.

Intel "Sapphire Rapids" Brings PCIe Gen 5 and DDR5 to the Data-Center

As if the mother of all ironies, prior to its effective death-sentence dealt by the U.S. Department of Commerce, Huawei's server business developed an ambitious product roadmap for its Fusion Server family, aligning with Intel's enterprise processor roadmap. It describes in great detail the key features of these processors, such as core-counts, platform, and I/O. The "Sapphire Rapids" processor will introduce the biggest I/O advancements in close to a decade, when it releases sometime in 2021.

With an unannounced CPU core-count, the "Sapphire Rapids-SP" processor will introduce DDR5 memory support to the data-center, which aims to double bandwidth and memory capacity over the DDR4 generation. The processor features an 8-channel (512-bit wide) DDR5 memory interface. The second major I/O introduction is PCI-Express gen 5.0, which not only doubles bandwidth over gen 4.0 to 32 Gbps per lane, but also comes with a constellation of data-center-relevant features that Intel is pushing out in advance as part of the CXL Interconnect. CXL and PCIe gen 5 are practically identical.

AMD Takes a Bigger Revenue Hit than Microsoft from Huawei Ban: Goldman Sachs

The trade ban imposed on Chinese tech giant Huawei by the U.S. Department of Commerce, and ratified through an Executive Order by President Donald Trump, is cutting both ways. Not only are U.S. entities banned from importing products and services from Huawei, but also engaging in trade with them (i.e. selling to them). U.S. tech firms stare at a $11 billion revenue loss by early estimates. Wall Street firm Goldman Sachs compiled a list of companies impacted by the ban, and the extent of their revenue loss. It turns out that AMD isn't a small player, and in fact, stands to lose more revenue in absolute terms than even Microsoft. It earns RMB 268 million (USD $38.79 million) from Huawei, compared to Microsoft's RMB 198 million ($28.66 million). Intel's revenue loss is a little over double that of AMD at RMB 589 million ($84 million), despite its market-share dominance.

That's not all, AMD's exposure is higher than that of Intel, since sales to Huawei make up a greater percentage of AMD's revenues than it does Intel's. AMD exports not just client-segment products such as Ryzen processors and Radeon graphics, but possibly also EPYC enterprise processors for Huawei's server and SMB product businesses. NVIDIA is affected to a far lesser extent than Intel, AMD, and Microsoft. Qualcomm-Broadcom take the biggest hit in absolute revenue terms at RMB 3.5 billion ($508 million), even if their exposure isn't the highest. The duo export SoCs and cellular modems to Huawei, both as bare-metal and licenses. Storage hardware makers aren't far behind, with the likes of Micron, Seagate, and Western Digital taking big hits. Micron exports DRAM and SSDs, while Seagate and WDC export hard drives.

Intel Again Leader in Silicon Supply Race

Intel was the historic leader in silicon manufacturing and sales from 1993 through 2016, the year it lost its lead to Samsung. The issue wasn't so much to do with Intel, but more to do with market demands at the time - if you'll remember, it was the time of booming DRAM pricing alongside the smartphone demand increase that propagated stiff competition and manufacturers trying to outgun one another in the form of specs. The DRAM demand - and its ridiculous prices, at the time - propelled Samsung towards the top spot in terms of revenue, leaving Intel in the dust.

However, with the decrease in DRAM pricing following the reduce in smartphone demand and increased manufacturing capabilities of semiconductor manufacturers, which flooded the market with product that is being more slowly digested, has led to the drop of the previously-inflated Dram pricing, thus hitting Samsung's revenues enough for Intel to again become "top dog" in the silicon manufacturing world - even as the company struggles with its 10 nm rollout and faced supply issues of their own. As IC Insights puts it, "Intel replaced Samsung as the number one quarterly semiconductor supplier in 4Q18 after losing the lead spot to Samsung in 2Q17. (...) With the collapse of the DRAM and NAND flash markets over the past year, a complete switch has occurred, with Samsung having 23% more total semiconductor sales than Intel in 1Q18 but Intel having 23% more semiconductor sales than Samsung just one year later in 1Q19!".

U.S. Tech Industry, Including Google, Microsoft, Intel, and Qualcomm, Ban Huawei

The United States tech industry has overnight dealt a potentially fatal blow to Chinese electronics giant Huawei, by boycotting the company. The companies are establishing compliance with a recent Executive Order passed by President Donald Trump designed to "stop the import, sale, and use of equipment and services by foreign companies based in countries that are potential adversaries to U.S. interests," particularly information technology security. Google has announced that it will no longer allow Huawei to license Android, and will stop updates and Google Play access to Huawei smartphones. Huawei can still equip its phones with open-source Android, but it cannot use Google's proprietary software, including Google Play Store, Chrome, and all the other Google apps. Intel decided to no longer supply processors and other hardware to Huawei, for use in its laptops and server products. Sales of AMD processors will stop, too. Qualcomm-Broadcom have decided to stop supply of mobile SoCs and network PHYs, respectively. Microsoft decided to stop licensing Huawei to use Windows and Office products.

The ban is a consequence of the U.S. Government placing Huawei on a list of banned entities, forcing all U.S. companies to abandon all trade with it, without prior approval from the Department of Commerce. Trade cuts both ways, and not only are U.S. firms banned from buying from Huawei, they're also banned from selling to it. Huawei "buys from" over 30 U.S. companies, (for example, Windows licenses from Microsoft). CNN reports that U.S. firms could lose up to $11 billion in revenues.

ZOTAC Announces the ZBOX QX Series Mini PC Powered by Xeon and Quadro

ZOTAC Technology, a global manufacturer of innovation, today introduced the more capable ZBOX Q Series Mini Creator PC featuring the advanced NVIDIA Quadro GPU and powerful workstation focused Intel Xeon processor. The new addition to the ZBOX Q Series leverages the ZBOX Mini PC's sleek and minimal design without compromising the powerful hardware components inside. From stunning industrial design and advanced special effects, to complex scientific visualization and sophisticated data modeling, to creating and editing images and videos, the ZBOX Q Series enables limitless creations.

The new ZBOX Q Series features the industry certified NVIDIA Quadro with up to 16GB GDDR5 memory. It's a tested and certified fully compatible hardware on many major professional design applications. The new Q Series models come equipped with an Intel Xeon processor to deliver fast and responsive performance.

Intel Tried to Bribe Dutch University to Suppress Knowledge of MDS Vulnerability

Cybersecurity researchers at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, also known as VU Amsterdam, allege that Intel tried to bribe them to suppress knowledge of the latest processor security vulnerability RIDL (rogue in-flight data load), which the company made public on May 14. Dutch publication Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant reports that Intel offered to pay the researchers a USD $40,000 "reward" to allegedly get them to downplay the severity of the vulnerability, and backed their offer with an additional $80,000. The team politely refused both offers.

Intel's security vulnerability bounty program is shrouded in CYA agreements designed to minimize Intel's losses from the discovery of a new vulnerability. Under its terms, once a discoverer accepts the bounty reward, they enter into a NDA (non-disclosure agreement) with Intel, to not disclose their findings or communicate in the regard with any other person or entity than with certain authorized people at Intel. With public knowledge withheld, Intel can work on mitigation and patches against the vulnerability. Intel argues that information of vulnerabilities becoming public before it's had a chance to address them would give the bad guys time to design and spread malware that exploits the vulnerability. This is an argument the people at VU weren't willing to buy, and thus Intel is forced to disclose RIDL even as microcode updates, software updates, and patched hardware are only beginning to come out.

Update: (17/05): An Intel spokesperson commented on this story.

Apple: Protecting Macs from MDS Vulnerabilities May Reduce Performance by up to 40%

Apple has advised users that they should disable Intel's Hyper-Threading feature on the company's computers due to the recently exposed MDS vulnerabilities. Citing internal testing, Apple said that users can expect an up to 40% performance loss in such a scenario (depending on system and workload, naturally) in various benchmarks and multithreaded workloads. The performance loss is understandable - you're essentially halving the number of threads available for your CPU to process data.

Like Intel said, it becomes an issue of how much users value their performance compared to the security risks involved: a classic risk/benefit scenario, which shouldn't ever be in the equation, after all. If users buy a system with a CPU that has known performance levels, they will obviously expect those to be valid for the longevity of the product, unless otherwise stated and considering operational variances that fall within a margin of error/product obsolescence. Halving your performance because of a design flaw that resulted from an effort to achieve higher and higher IPC increases doesn't strike as a way to inspire confidence in your products.

ASRock Outs Z390 Phantom Gaming 4S Motherboard

ASRock today rolled out the Z390 Phantom Gaming 4S motherboard. Clearly built to a cost, the board ships with a narrow ATX PCB, and is positioned below both the Z390 Phantom Gaming 4 and the Z390 Pro4. It draws power from a 24-pin ATX and an 8-pin EPS, conditioning it for the CPU with a 6+2 phase VRM. The LGA1151 socket is wired to four DDR4 DIMM slots, and a single PCI-Express 3.0 x16. The second x16 slot is electrically x4 and wired to the PCH. An M.2 PCIe E-key slot (for WLAN cards) and three open-ended PCIe 3.0 x1 slots make for the rest of the expansion area. Storage connectivity includes just the one M.2-22110 slot (PCI-Express 3.0 x4 and SATA 6 Gbps wiring), and six SATA 6 Gbps ports.

Display outputs include just the one HDMI port. USB connectivity includes eight USB 3.2 gen 1 ports, four on the rear panel, four by headers. The board's sole 1 GbE network interface is driven by an Intel i219-V controller. The onboard audio solution combines a rather premium Realtek ALC1220 CODEC with 6-channel analog output, audio-grade capacitors, and ground-layer isolation. Separate PS/2 ports, one 3-pin addressable-RGB, two 4-pin RGB, and five 4-pin PWM fan headers make for the rest of this board. We expect this to be ASRock's cheapest Z390 offering, priced between USD $110-120.

Intel Releases CPU Microcode Updates For MDS Vulnerabilities Unearthed on May 14

Intel released CPU microcode updates to address four new security vulnerabilities disclosed by the company on May 14, 2019. These microcode updates can be encapsulated as motherboard UEFI firmware updates, and for some processors even distributed through Windows Update. In its Microcode Revision Guidance document put out on Tuesday, Intel revealed that all Core and Xeon processors going as far as the 2nd generation Core "Sandy Bridge" architecture are eligible for microcode updates.

2nd generation Core is roughly the time when motherboard vendors were forced to adopt UEFI (unrelated to these vulnerabilities). A number of low-power microarchitectures, such as "Gemini Lake," "Cherry View," "Apollo Lake," and "Amber Lake," which are basically all low-power processors released after 2012-13, also receive these updates. Until you wait for your motherboard vendor or PC/notebook OEM to pass on these microcode updates, Intel advises you to disable HyperThreading if your processor is older than 8th gen "Coffee Lake," and seek out the latest software updates.
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Intel Releases ModernFW as Open Source, minimal Firmware Replacement

Today Intel announced ModernFW - an experimental approach to building a minimum viable platform firmware for machines such as cloud server platforms. The reason for this software is that, while traditional PC Firmware has evolved over time and retained its backward compatibility, it has become very big and often inefficient.

So to meet the requirements of new platforms that need to be built quickly and adapted easily, Intel decided to offer a new software package that will help with that. The new firmware package targets x86_64 from ISA standpoint and Linux kernel based OSes.

AMD Confirms its Processors are Unaffected by RIDL and Fallout Vulnerabilities

AMD in a statement confirmed that its processors are unaffected by the RIDL (Rogue In-Flight Data Load) and Fallout vulnerabilities. The company however worded its statement in CYA language, just to be safe. "...we believe our products are not susceptible to 'Fallout' or 'RIDL' because of the hardware protection checks in our architecture. We have not been able to demonstrate these exploits on AMD products and are unaware of others having done so," reads the AMD statement put out late Tuesday (14th May).

AMD came to these conclusions on the basis of its own testing and discussions with the researchers who discovered RIDL. It's important to note here, that the "Fallout" vulnerability AMD is referring to in this statement is the one which is part of four MDS vulnerabilities Intel disclosed yesterday, and not the identically named "Fallout" vulnerability discovered by CTS Labs in 2018, allegedly affecting secure memory management of AMD "Zen" processors.

Intel Puts Out Benchmarks Showing Minimal Performance Impact of MDS Mitigation

Intel Tuesday once again shook the IT world by disclosing severe microarchitecture-level security vulnerabilities affecting its processors. The Microarchitectural Data Sampling (MDS) class of vulnerabilities affect Intel CPU architectures older than "Coffee Lake" to a greater extent. Among other forms of mitigation software patches, Intel is recommending that users disable HyperThreading technology (HTT), Intel's simultaneous multithreading (SMT) implementation. This would significantly deplete multi-threaded performance on older processors with lower core-counts, particularly Core i3 2-core/4-thread chips.

On "safer" microarchitectures such as "Coffee Lake," though, Intel is expecting a minimal impact of software patches, and doesn't see any negative impact of disabling HTT. This may have something to do with the 50-100 percent increased core-counts with the 8th and 9th generations. The company put out a selection of benchmarks relevant to client and enterprise (data-center) use-cases. On the client use-case that's we're more interested in, a Core i9-9900K machine with software mitigation and HTT disabled is negligibly slower (within 2 percent) of a machine without mitigation and HTT enabled. Intel's selection of benchmarks include SYSMark 2014 SE, WebXprt 3, SPECInt rate base (1 copy and n copies), and 3DMark "Skydiver" with the chip's integrated UHD 630 graphics. Comparing machines with mitigations applied but toggling HTT presents a slightly different story.

Yet Another Speculative Malfunction: Intel Reveals New Side-Channel Attack, Advises Disabling Hyper-Threading Below 8th, 9th Gen CPUs

Ouch doesn't even begin to describe how much that headline hurt. As far as speculative execution goes, it's been well covered by now, but here's a refresher. Speculative execution essentially means that your CPU tries to think ahead of time on what data may or may not be needed, and processes it before it knows it's needed. The objective is to take advantage of concurrency in the CPU design, keeping processing units that would otherwise be left idle to process and deliver results on the off-chance that they are indeed required by the system: and when they are called for, the CPU saves time by not having to process them on the fly and already having them available.

The flaws have been announced by Intel in coordination with Austrian university TU Graz, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the University of Michigan, the University of Adelaide, KU Leuven in Belgium, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Saarland University in Germany and security firms Cyberus, BitDefender, Qihoo360 and Oracle. While some of the parties involved have named the four identified flaws with names such as "ZombieLoad", "Fallout", and RIDL, or "Rogue In-Flight Data Load", Intel is using the PEGI-13 "Microarchitectural Data Sampling (MDS)" name.

Intel Receiving $1.3B From Micron for IM Flash Stake

The Intel-Micron divorce in the wake of the former's exit from the joint Im Flash venture has taken some strange turns. However, it seems that Micron is looking to take the entire business out of Intel's hands and keep the manufacturing capacity that was jointly developed and invested in all for themselves, offering Intel anywhere from $1.3B to $1.5B for their stake on the venture - including associated debt of the IMF venture to Intel, which amounts to a cool $1B of that amount. This means that Intel's stake in the venture is being valued at $300 to $500 million.

The only remaining factory that is being operated by both parties is located in Lehi, Utah, and exclusively fabricates 3D XPoint memory, which has only been turned to a consumer and professional product by Intel. The acquisition from Micron means they'll have to fulfill Intel's 3D XPoint orders until 2020, and that they'll be investing on the factory's capacity to produce 2nd generation 3D XPoint for their own product portfolio, as well as post-3D XPoint technologies.

AMD Ryzen 9 3000 is a 16-core Socket AM4 Beast

AMD is giving finishing touches to its 3rd generation Ryzen socket AM4 processor family which is slated for a Computex 2019 unveiling, followed by a possible E3 market availability. Based on the "Matisse" multi-chip module that combines up to two 8-core "Zen 2" chiplets with a 14 nm I/O controller die, these processors see a 50-100 percent increase in core-counts over the current generation. The Ryzen 5 series now includes 8-core/16-thread parts, the Ryzen 7 series chips are 12-core/24-thread, while the newly created Ryzen 9 series (designed to rival Intel Core i9 LGA115x), will include 16-core/32-thread chips.

Thai PC enthusiast TUM_APISAK confirmed the existence of the Ryzen 9 series having landed himself with an engineering sample of the 16-core/32-thread chip that ticks at 3.30 GHz with 4.30 GHz Precision Boost frequency. The infamous Adored TV leaks that drew the skeleton of AMD's 3rd generation Ryzen roadmap, referenced two desktop Ryzen 9 parts, the Ryzen 9 3800X and Ryzen 9 3850X. The 3800X is supposed to be clocked at 3.90 GHz with 4.70 GHz boost, with a TDP rating of 125W, while the 3850X tops the charts at 4.30 GHz base and a staggering 5.10 GHz boost. The rated TDP has shot up to 135W. We can now imagine why some motherboard vendors are selective with BIOS updates on some of their lower-end boards. AMD is probably maximizing the clock-speed headroom of these chips out of the box, to preempt Intel's "Comet Lake" 10-core/20-thread processor.

Intel Drivers Reveal 400, 495 Series Chipsets for Comet Lake, Ice Lake - New Year, New Socket, Same 14 nm Process

Data extracted from Intel's latest Server Chipset Driver (10.1.18010.8141) mentions support for new chipsets, which will bring about compatibility for the company's upcoming Comet Lake chips. Comet Lake, if you remember, is Intel's latest gasp in the 14 nm process for CPUs, and should bring up to 10 cores to the consumer segment. The increase in maximum number of cores will naturally be Intel's justification for the need for new chipsets and sockets, due to "electrical incompatibilities" and increased requirements in the power delivery subsystem.

If you're looking for the latest and greatest changes to Intel's architecture and manufacturing process, you'll have to wait for Ice Lake, for which the 495 series chipset brings compatibility. But for that one, you'll have to wait until 2020. Let's see what AMD's Ryzen 2 brings to the table against Intel's current (and up to 10 nm Comet Lake) offerings. Even excluding platform longevity, AMD's architecture and core density really has been giving Intel a run for its money.

Intel Switches to a "Data Center First" Strategy with 7nm

Intel traditionally released new CPU microarchitectures and new silicon fabrication nodes with the client segment, and upon observing some degree of maturity with both, graduated them to the enterprise segment. With its homebrew 7 nanometer silicon fabrication process that takes flight in 2021, Intel will flip its roadmap execution strategy, by going "Data Center First." Speaking at the 2019 Investors Day summit, Intel SVP and GM of Data Center Group Navin Shenoy revealed that the first product built on Intel's 7 nm process will be a GPGPU accelerator chip derived from the Xe architecture for the Data Center, followed closely by a new server CPU. Both these products come under Shenoy's group. One is a competitor to likes of NVIDIA Tesla and AMD Radeon Instinct, while the other is a Xeon processor competing with AMD EPYC.

Shenoy explained the reason why within his group, the GPGPU product was prioritized over the server CPU. It has to do with redundancy of the GPU silicon, or specifically, the higher potential to harvest partially defective dies than CPU. A GPU has a larger number of indivisible components that can be disabled if found non-functional at the time of quality assurance, and these harvested dies can be used to carve out variants of a main product. An example of this would be NVIDIA carving out the GeForce GTX 1070 (1,920 CUDA cores) from the GP104 silicon that physically has 2,560 CUDA cores. The first manufacturing runs of the GPGPU will give the foundry valuable insights into the way the node is behaving, so it could be refined and matured for the server CPU. With 10 nm, however, Intel is sticking to the client-first model, by rolling out the "Ice Lake" processor towards the end of 2019. Within the Client Computing group, Intel has flipped its roadmap execution such that mobile (notebook) CPUs take precedence over desktop ones.

Intel "Tiger Lake" Architecture Combines Willow Cove CPU Cores and Xe iGPU

Even as Intel banks on 10 nm "Ice Lake" to pull it out of the 14 nm dark ages, the company is designing a fascinating new monolithic processor SoC die that succeeds it. Codenamed "Tiger Lake," and slated to debut in 2020, this die packs "Willow Cove" CPU cores and an iGPU based on Intel's Xe architecture, not Gen11. "Willow Cove" CPU cores are more advanced than the "Sunny Cove" cores "Ice Lake" packs, featuring a redesigned on-die cache, additional security features, and transistor optimization yielded from the newer 10 nm+ silicon fabrication process.

Intel is already boasting of 1 TFLOP/s compute power of the Gen11 iGPU on "Ice Lake," so it's logical to predict that the Xe based iGPU will be significantly faster. It will also support the latest display standards. The "next-gen I/O" referenced by Intel could be faster NVMe, Thunderbolt, and USB standards that leverage the bandwidth doubling brought about by PCI-Express gen 4.0. Here's the catch: much like "Ice Lake," the new "Tiger Lake" chip will get a mobile debut as Tiger Lake-Y or Tiger Lake-U, and desktop processors could follow later, possibly even 2021, depending on how much pressure it faces from AMD.

Intel Switches Gears to 7nm Post 10nm, First Node Live in 2021

Intel's semiconductor manufacturing business has had a terrible past 5 years as it struggled to execute its 10 nanometer roadmap forcing the company's processor designers to re-hash the "Skylake" microarchitecture for 5 generations of Core processors, including the upcoming "Comet Lake." Its truly next-generation microarchitecture, codenamed "Ice Lake," which features a new CPU core design called "Sunny Cove," comes out toward the end of 2019, with desktop rollouts expected 2020. It turns out that the 10 nm process it's designed for, will have a rather short reign at Intel's fabs. Speaking at an investor's summit on Wednesday, Intel put out its silicon fabrication roadmap that sees an accelerated roll-out of Intel's own 7 nm process.

When it goes live and fit for mass production some time in 2021, Intel's 7 nm process will be a staggering 3 years behind TSMC, which fired up its 7 nm node in 2018. AMD is already mass-producing CPUs and GPUs on this node. Unlike TSMC, Intel will implement EUV (extreme ultraviolet) lithography straightaway. TSMC began 7 nm with DUV (deep ultraviolet) in 2018, and its EUV node went live in March. Samsung's 7 nm EUV node went up last October. Intel's roadmap doesn't show a leap from its current 10 nm node to 7 nm EUV, though. Intel will refine the 10 nm node to squeeze out energy-efficiency, with a refreshed 10 nm+ node that goes live some time in 2020.

ASUS Also Outs ROG Strix B365-F Gaming Motherboard

In quick succession to last week's launch of the ROG Strix B365-G Gaming, ASUS rolled out its first ROG-branded ATX motherboard based on Intel B365 Express chipset, the ROG Strix B365-F Gaming. Supporting all 9th and 8th generation Core processors out of the box, this board is targeted at gamers who don't intend to overclock their CPUs or need memory clock speeds above DDR4-2667. The board draws power from a combination of 24-pin ATX and 8-pin EPS connectors, conditioning it for the CPU with a 10-phase VRM. The board supports up to 64 GB of dual-channel DDR4 memory capped at 2667 MHz.

Expansion includes one PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slot with metal reinforcement wired to the CPU, a PCI-Express 3.0 x4 (physical x16) slot wired to the B365 PCH, three PCIe x1, and an M.2 E-key slot for WLAN cards. Storage connectivity includes two M.2 slots each with PCI-Express 3.0 x4 wiring, one of which even has SATA 6 Gbps wiring; and six SATA 6 Gbps ports. USB connectivity includes two 10 Gbps USB 3.1 Gen 2 ports at the rear panel, and six 5 Gbps USB 3.0 ports, four on the rear panel, two by header. The onboard audio solution is premium ROG SupremeFX, combining a Realtek ALC1220A CODEC with dual high-impedance headphones amplifiers, audio-grade capacitors, and ground-layer isolation. The board's sole 1 GbE interface is pulled by the ubiquitous Intel i219-V controller. Expect this board to be priced around $120.

Intel Unveils Project Athena Open Labs

Intel today revealed plans for Project Athena Open Labs in Taipei, Shanghai and Folsom, California, to support performance and low-power optimization of vendor components for laptops built to Project Athena design specifications and target experiences in 2020. Located in key ecosystem hubs and operated by teams of Intel engineers with system-on-chip (SOC) and platform power optimization expertise, the three Open Labs sites will begin operating in June 2019 to enable and optimize components.

"Across the industry, we each play an important role in delivering the advanced laptops of today and the future. Project Athena Open Labs are a critical step in enabling more extensive, day-to-day collaboration with the components ecosystem to continuously raise the bar for innovation across the platform," said Josh Newman, Intel vice president and general manager of PC Innovation Segments, Client Computing Group.

EK-Classic - Less Talk, More Cooling!

EK Water Blocks, the leading premium liquid cooling gear manufacturer, announces the expansion and global availability of newly released Classic Product Lineup. The Classic Lineup is directly addressing price-conscious users while reusing some of the key technological solutions that set the EK as the market leader in the PC liquid cooling industry. The packaging, just as the products themselves are streamlined and simplified, making Classic Line Products the pure essence of liquid cooling. And now, it's available for everyone.

The portfolio is now bearing all the relevant parts that a user needs to complete his liquid cooling loop. The existing combo unit, CPU block and GPU block are now joined with Classic Line radiators, fittings and even a GPU block for the ROG Strix GeForce RTX 2080 Ti graphics card. The Classic Lineup is implementing EK's market-proven technologies that ensure high-quality and high-performance liquid cooling products at a more accessible price. Available at about 3/4 of the price of leading EK Quantum series products, our products can now reach more liquid cooling enthusiasts that desire efficient cooling with EK's guaranteed quality and excellent customer support.
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