Notably absent from Corsair’s lineup is the 700D, a discontinued model that removed the 800D’s hot-swappable drive bays and side panel window so it could exist at a cheaper price. Despite costing $50 less than the 800D, the 700D was still too expensive for the average system builder, especially considering how many other attractive options there are in the sub-$200 territory – not least from Corsair itself. Toward the more affordable side of the Obsidian series, the company has the $120 550D, a mid-tower with an emphasis on quiet operation....

I’m not going to spend a ton of time talking about the performance of this system, because both the i7-7700K and GTX 1080 perform exactly as expected. If you want to know how either part performs, it’s a good idea to check out our reviews of these components. Our GTX 1080 review in particular covers the exact performance you can expect from the One, as our test bench also uses a Core i7-7700K (albeit overclocked for marginal performance gains)....

It would be an understatement to say that SSD technology has improved significantly over the last couple of decades. Less than 15 years ago, a 120GB SATA III SSD would have run you close to $350. Nowadays, $350 can potentially get you upwards of 4TB worth of SSD storage, while also performing nearly 12x faster than old SATA SSDs; those speeds are all thanks to the power of PCIe lanes and NVMe ports....

A few titles did show nice performance gains, but overall performance was much the same, leaving us to recommend prospective 12th-gen owners to ignore DDR5 for now and stick with tried-and-true DDR4. When we published that review, which was prior to Alder Lake’s release we had yet to see what DDR5 pricing and availability looked like, and were forced to comment based on feedback we had received from retailers and manufacturers....

The PCmark Vantage SSD (Solid State Drive) results were interesting as our Corsair drive was considerably slower on the DFI motherboards for some reason. The LANParty UT X58-T3eH8 for example was 10% slower in the Windows Defender test, while the LANParty JR X58-T3H6 was 7% slower than the Asus and MSI X58 motherboards. This test was run several times and this was the average result. CrystalDiskMark confirmed the lower SSD performance, though this time the margins were smaller....

Diablo III requires a constant connection to Battle.net and its servers were simply overwhelmed. That isn’t entirely shocking when you consider the fact that over two million copies were pre-ordered. Launch day hiccups are almost inevitable when you have that many gamers storming your gates. Fortunately, Blizzard implemented various tweaks and its servers are running smoothly as of late Wednesday. Nonetheless, the blunder has intensified debates about always-online schemes. Many users have expressed their disapproval with scathing reviews across the Web (3....

Diablo III wasn’t hugely challenge for mid-range cards at 2560x1600 either, with the HD 6870 averaging 51fps and the GTX 560 Ti hitting 56fps. The old GTX 480 managed 60fps, while the HD 5870 pumped a few more frames at 67fps. The HD 7950 was slightly slower than the GTX 670 (91fps vs 95fps), which is consistent with our recent review, while the 7970 and GTX 680 were neck and neck with 108fps each....

Abyss Odyssey Release date: TBA 2014 | Genre(s): Side-scrolling brawler | Also on: Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 Age of Wushu Release date: TBA | Genre(s): MMORPG | Also on: ??? Alien: Isolation Release date: October 7, 2014 | Genre(s): Survival horror, stealth | Also on: Xbox, PlayStation Arena of Fate Release date: TBA | Genre(s): MOBA | Also on: ??? Assassin’s Creed Unity Release date: October 28, 2014 | Genre(s): Action-adventure, stealth | Also on: Xbox One, PlayStation 4...

On Thursday, Nvidia announced that Fortnite is now available to everyone via its GeForce Now streaming service, including iOS devices. The game was removed from the App Store and Google Play in 2020 after Epic tried circumventing store commissions. While Android users can still play the game natively by sideloading it, iOS users must use browser-based streaming services. Earlier this month, Microsoft launched Fortnite on Game Pass, making it playable on iOS through the Xbox Cloud web app....

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced on Thursday that it will sue to block Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision. The lawsuit doesn’t necessarily kill the deal, as Microsoft plans to fight it and stands a decent chance of winning. The suit stems from fears that Microsoft might use the acquisition to hurt rivals like Sony by restricting or degrading access to Activision’s properties like Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, or Overwatch....

The Gainward GeForce GT 240 also suffered when testing with Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, where we saw a barely playable average of 36fps at 1680x1050. The GeForce 9600 GT managed 49fps at this resolution, and the 9800 GT produced 53fps. Meanwhile, the Radeon HD 4770 delivered far better performance at 81fps.

While the Gainward GTX 770 Phantom does provide more performance when compared to a standard GTX 770 (~5% in the 10 games we tested), as is often the case with factory overclocking the gains are not huge, but it does grant you a little extra peace of mind knowing that the manufacturer is handling the extra boost under warranty. From here on we’ll use the Phantom’s boosted figures to compare against the rest of the cards....

It’s 48 inches in size, which hardly counts as a normal monitor, but is also a tad small for a modern TV. Another way to describe this, it’s just a big gaming display with a 4K resolution, 120Hz refresh rate and OLED technology for that sweet, sweet HDR goodness. The Aorus FO48U is a particularly interesting display because it uses the same panel as the highly regarded LG C1 OLED that we reviewed a few months back....

We first saw the S55U back in May. The monitor follows in the footsteps of similar products that mix gaming and home entertainment features. In this case, the 54.6-inch VA panel offers a 4K resolution, 96% DCI-P3/140% sRGB color gamut coverage, 1,500 nits of peak brightness, a 120Hz refresh rate, a 5000:1 contrast ratio, and a 2ms GTG (minimum) response time. It also comes with FreeSync Premium, which goes some way towards Gigabyte’s designation of the S55U as a gaming monitor, despite the lack of a DisplayPort input....

Those willing to dabble with a little extra overclocking should be able to get HD 7970-like speed out of any HD 7950, but Gigabyte’s model made the task easier by coming partly overclocked. Its WindForce 3X cooler also helped keeping the card’s temperatures in check while making nary a peep. Gigabyte’s HD 7950 also averaged 32% faster than AMD’s previous-gen flagship and it bested Nvidia’s GTX 580 by 14%, when testing games at 2560x1600....

If you’ve never heard of Google Currents, it essentially gave every company that signed up a private social media network for their workers and executives to interact in. They could have casual chats, message each other, and publish important (or unimportant) announcements as desired. Given that Currents managed to survive four years under Google’s watchful eye, it probably saw some limited amount of success. Either way, though, Google feels the platform has become entirely obsolete now....

While Qualcomm does advertise the Snapdragon 821 as having increased clock speeds, Google hasn’t utilized these improvements in the Pixel and Pixel XL. These phones have a quad-core custom Kryo CPU clocked at 2.15 GHz on two ‘big’ cores and 1.59 GHz on two ‘LITTLE’ cores, along with an Adreno 530 GPU clocked at 624 MHz. For reference, the Snapdragon 821 can go as high as 2.34 and 2.19 GHz on its big and LITTLE cores respectively, and up to 653 MHz on the GPU....

Then this model is used to make a prediction from a new piece of data, and the model infers some likely outcome from that data. Here, inference chips run the new data against the model that has already been trained. These two purposes are very different. Training chips are designed to run full tilt, sometimes for weeks at a time, until the model is completed. Training chips thus tend to be large, “heavy iron....

Like the iPad Pro and Air, the 10th-gen iPad has an all-screen design and flat-edge casing, with the home button removed and Touch ID moved to the top power button. It also features a USB-C port, meaning the entire iPad line now supports the charging standard, allowing it to comply with the new EU rules that come into effect on December 28, 2024. Zack Nelson begins the video by taking a dig at Apple over the fact that only the first-generation Apple Pencil is compatible with the new iPad....

We’ve addressed these “core” misconceptions before, explaining that overall CPU performance is all that matters, rather than how many cores a CPU has. And while that should be a fairly easy concept to understand, there’s a surprising amount of pushback. It’s also easier to dump down system requirements to core count, because it’s a quick way to dismiss a wide range of CPUs. For example, games no longer run properly, or at all, on dual-core CPUs, so in that sense you require at minimum a quad-core to game....