Computex 2018
One of the most impressive motherboard designs coming out of Computex was MSI’s new X399 Creation motherboard. With Threadripper 2 around the corner, sporting support for up to 32 cores and 250W TDP, a couple of the motherboard manufacturers are building X399 ‘refresh’ motherboards that are optimized for the new processors, and this is MSI’s very impressive effort. The headline from this motherboard is the 19 power phases, arranged as 16 for the processor. This is likely a four-phase implementation with two doublers, but still comes in as eight more than the amount of phases for the CPU compared to any other Threadripper motherboard on the market. The effect of using more phases in this way means that the power multiplexing over time that occurs...
AMD BIOS Limitations: Bristol Ridge Dropped From Certain Motherboards
One of the functions of a motherboard BIOS, or UEFI, is the ability to discern which CPU is installed in the socket. With each new generation of CPUs, new...
34 by Ian Cutress on 6/15/2018
G.Skill Trident Royal Crystalline DRAM: Premium Gemstone Glamour
Despite virtually everything in the consumer world being unnecessarily stuffed to the gills with RGB LEDs, they seem to sell like hotcakes. I was told earlier this year by...
32 by Ian Cutress on 6/14/2018
Tyan Tomcat EX: The First AM4 Ryzen Motherboard with Management Control
A surprise at Computex was seeing the first public AMD Ryzen-based AM4 motherboard that will implement an Aspeed AST2500 BMC chip for additional management. Tyan was showcasing its Tomcat...
12 by Ian Cutress on 6/14/2018
Behind GIGABYTE’s Fish Tank Oil System: A New Take on Liquid Cooling
One of the more interesting designs out of the computer industry recently has been GIGABYTE’s fish tank PC build. The concept is similar to a simple mineral oil or...
25 by Ian Cutress on 6/14/2018
Magnets, How Do They Work? A Maverick / Streacom Prototype
If channeling Insane Clown Posse in the title was not enough, how about a fully configurable chassis where the user can move everything to every location inside the chassis...
17 by Ian Cutress on 6/14/2018
GIGABYTE Aorus PCIe x16 M.2: For Four NVMe Drives, X399 Compatible
Everyone has spare NVMe SSDs, right? Or perhaps users want to buy four of them? Intel was on a big push recently with its newest 380 GB Intel Optane...
19 by Ian Cutress on 6/13/2018
Building for Apache Pass: Why Some Skylake Servers Already have 8 DIMMs Per Socket
If you don’t have a hand in a server day in and day out, it was perhaps not obvious why some Skylake servers when launched had eight memory slots...
16 by Ian Cutress on 6/13/2018
USB-IF and Fast Charging: New Standard Logo with Wattage Listed
When discussing industry standards, the sexy ones are involved around performance: if you can breathe PCIe 4.0 or PCIe 5.0 into a sentence, people start listening. One of the...
28 by Ian Cutress on 6/13/2018
Streacom DA2 Fanless: The All-Aluminum Silent Chassis
Before Computex we reported on Streacom’s latest creation, the DA2. This is an all-aluminium chassis aimed at small form factor systems but with a key twist – the rails...
7 by Ian Cutress on 6/13/2018
UFS - USB Bridge Controllers for Card Readers, Hosts Incoming from JMicron & SMI
The JEDEC published the UFS Card 1.0 specification back in mid-2016, and shortly after that Samsung introduced its UFS cards with 32, 64, 128, and 256 GB capacities. In...
5 by Anton Shilov on 6/13/2018
FSP Readies Cannon: a 2000 W PSU for Mining and Extreme Desktops
FSP is well-known for high-quality moderately-priced power supplies but is not particularly known for high-wattage units. At last year’s Computex the company demonstrated a PSU that could output 1400...
10 by Anton Shilov on 6/13/2018
Plextor Demonstrates 4-Way M9Pe Extreme SSD Solution: Up to 6.5 GB/s
Having worked with Marvell for many years, Plextor is tied closely to Marvell’s controller ecosystem since its proprietary firmware technologies rely on capabilities of the said controllers. In recent...
13 by Anton Shilov on 6/12/2018
ZOTAC Preps SFF Workstation with NVIDIA’s Quadro, Intel’s 10 GbE NICs
Having established strong positions on the markets of discrete graphics cards and mini PC barebones, ZOTAC is marching into factory-built systems targeting gamers and professionals. On the gaming side...
13 by Anton Shilov on 6/12/2018
PCIe-Based SD 7.0 Spec Closing In, Set to Be Announced This Month
The SD Association plans to formally announce its Secure Digital 7.0 specification later this month. The new spec will define usage of a PCIe protocol for SD cards and...
15 by Anton Shilov on 6/12/2018
Antec Announces Its First Memory Modules
In a rather unexpected move, Antec announced its first memory modules at Computex. The Antec Memory DDR4 DIMMs are meant to stretch Antec’s designs to DIMMs, increasing the company’s...
10 by Anton Shilov on 6/12/2018
Enermax Readies Sub-$100 PC Case with Addressable RGB Lighting
Customizable RGB lighting is now featured on virtually all PC components aimed at enthusiasts. At Computex, a manufacturer told us that RGB-equipped products outsell non-RGB products 7 to 3...
10 by Anton Shilov on 6/12/2018
Afox and Qdion Have 3kW PSUs for Cryptocurrency Miners
With GPU cryptocurrency mining apparently here to stay, over the last couple of years hardware vendors have begun developing mining-optmized (or at least branded) gear for miners. This of...
13 by Anton Shilov on 6/11/2018
G.Skill’s DRAM Extremes: DDR4-4000 on AMD Ryzen, DDR4-5066 on Intel Core i7
In the constant race to one-up the other memory vendors in the highly commoditized DRAM market, at Computex last week G.Skill demonstrated its Trident Z RGB memory modules running...
18 by Anton Shilov on 6/11/2018
GIGABYTE Expands Aorus Range to PSUs with AP750GM and AP850GM
After launching their high-end gaming-focused Aorus sub-brand a couple of years ago, GIGABYTE has continued to invest in the brands over the years with new products and branching into...
1 by Anton Shilov on 6/11/2018
Micron’s 96-Layer 3D TLC NAND Demonstrated, Qualified by Maxio, SMI
Micron yet has to formally introduce its 3rd generation 96-layer 3D TLC NAND flash. But as we've spotted on the Computex showfloor, SSDs based on the new type of...
15 by Anton Shilov on 6/11/2018
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