x8 Western Digital Black 1TB Synology DS3612xs x8 Western Digital Black 1TB QNAP TS-219P II x2 Western Digital Blue 500GB Synology DS212+ x2 Western Digital Blue 500GB Synology DiskStation DS1511+ x4 Western Digital Blue 500GB Synology DiskStation DS1512+ x4 Western Digital Blue 500GB Synology DiskStation DS2411+ x4 Western Digital Blue 500GB Synology DiskStation DS712+ x2 Western Digital Blue 500GB Synology DiskStation DS411+ x4 Western Digital Black 500GB QNAP TS-659 Pro II...

The basic design of these CPUs is unchanged which is probably why they are still being called 8th-gen parts, rather than 9th-gen to fit in with Intel’s current desktop line-up. There are only three SKUs: the Core i7-8565U and Core i5-8265U that are 4 core / 8 thread CPUs, while the Core i3-8145U is a dual-core part with 4 threads. All are 15W chips although the TDP can be configured anywhere from 10W to 25W depending on what the OEM wants....

Testing DiRT 3 at 1680x1050 saw the GeForce GTX 650 Ti average 62fps, making it 5% slower than the old Radeon HD 6870, yet 15% faster than the 7770 and 59% faster than the 7750. Jumping to 1920x1200 the GeForce GTX 680 can be found averaging 106fps which made it 4% slower than the Radeon HD 7970 and 12% slower than the 7970 GHz Edition. The GeForce GTX 670 on the other hand was 12% faster than the Radeon HD 7950 and 2% faster than the 7950 Boost....

Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel has shared an action with colleagues that, if adopted, would require callers to obtain consumers’ consent before delivering a ringless voicemail. “Ringless voicemail can be annoying, invasive, and can lead to fraud like other robocalls—so it should face the same consumer protection rules,” Rosenworcel said. “No one wants to wade through voicemail spam, or miss important messages because their mailbox is full.” According to Arbeit, there are two ways ringless voicemail can happen....

Vega sucks big time in PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds right now and while many will no doubt argue this game shouldn’t be included as it’s still early access, I obviously disagree. In fact I believe most of you do given the overwhelming amount of requests I received to test Vega’s performance in this title. Battlegrounds might only be in the early access phase but it’s massively popular right now and it’s a game AMD surely needs to optimize for ASAP!...

We’ll do a recap of the entire first year of Nvidia’s ray tracing efforts. A look at the games that came out with RTX support, the games that didn’t, and just how the ecosystem has evolved in the space of twelve months. Has performance improved? Have some of the visual issues been sorted out? Has Nvidia delivered on their launch day promises? Starting from the beginning, Nvidia released the first consumer GPU with hardware accelerated ray tracing on September 20, 2018 in the GeForce RTX 2080....

Enabling the high quality graphics preset had a huge impact on frame rates, dropping the GTX 980 from 88/98fps to just 30/65fps. What is most noticeable here is the huge reduction in minimum frame rates, which in the case of the GTX 980 is 3x less than the average frame rate. This means at 1080p using the high quality visuals the GTX 980 was the only GPU able to deliver a minimum of 30fps....

Gaming

Now let’s take a look at how these graphics cards compare in the latest Tomb Raider title released late last year. At 2560x1600 the GTX 1080 was 31% faster than the GTX 980 Ti and 68% faster than the GTX 980. Meanwhile it is 7x faster than the GTX 480 and almost 4x faster than the GTX 680. Another relatively new yet extremely popular title is The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt....

The Cue is roughly the same size as the Eclipse but is thicker and has more of a traditional design. The top of the mouse is completely flat with a black glossy plastic surface. There are no distinguishable left and right click buttons or a scroll wheel of any sort, although there is a small white line down the center between the two click buttons. A soft rubber strip wraps around the sides of the mouse and the Speedlink name is printed on the bottom half....

On Friday, Steam posted good news about Steam Deck production. Valve says that it has alleviated some of its supply chain constraints and has been able to ramp up manufacturing. As a result, it moved most of the Q4 reservation queue to Q3, while the rest of its existing orders will “solidly” receive their Decks by the end of the year. Most customers expecting to get their order near the end of the year can look for it to arrive between now and the end of September....

Valve posted the announcement on the Steam Deck Events page. The delay is being blamed on factors that have become all too familiar: parts shortages and Covid closures impacting manufacturing facilities. The good news is that the delay doesn’t extend to the Steam Deck itself. The handheld console’s production schedule and reservation windows are unaffected as its parts are different from the dock’s and it is manufactured at different factories....

In an interview with The Verge, Valve shed some light on its next steps for the Steam Deck, SteamOS, and other projects. The company even chimed in on recent competing handheld PCs and its ill-fated “Steam Machines” project. Also read: I have a confession to make: I’ve spent several hundred dollars on Steam Controllers Users shouldn’t expect a significantly more powerful “Steam Deck 2” anytime soon. Instead, the next version of Valve’s handheld could be a light upgrade similar to the OLED model of the Nintendo Switch....

The statements from Visa and Mastercard echoed similar sentiments, citing Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine and the unprecedented nature of the current conflict. The decision comes on the heels of recent sanctions that limited or removed Russian banks from the SWIFT messaging system, a move that cut off most Russian banks from communicating with the rest of the world using the network. The actions by Visa and Mastercard mean that within several days any cards issued within the country will no longer work outside of Russia....

As is always the case with its livestreams, Nvidia hasn’t gone into detail about what will be unveiled beyond it being the “latest innovations made possible by accelerated computing and artificial intelligence.” It seems almost certain that the highlight of the show will be the RTX 4070 Ti. To recap, the RTX 4080 12GB’s $899 price and the difference in specifications compared to the 16GB version of the Lovelace GPU caused such a backlash that Nvidia “unlaunched” the less powerful card, which it put down to a confusing name....

Tew, then 21 years old, was looking for a way to fund his business management studies at the University of Nottingham. He created a website with a grid of 1,000 x 1,000 pixels, and put each block of 10 x 10 pixels on sale for $100, with the promise that the site would remain online for at least 5 years. Combined, all pixels were worth $1 million. The site was thus named The Million Dollar Homepage....

Since Windows 8’s release the PC world has continued to evolve, including expectations for modern operating systems. Here are some considerations that come to mind: The walled garden model Despite some limitations, mobile OSes like Android and iOS have demonstrated the level of security and control that is possible with closed ecosystems. They have also shown that constant and major point updates are possible without disrupting the user experience and breaking compatibility every single time....

David Weston, Microsoft’s VP of Security and Enterprise, announced the news via Twitter earlier this week. According to Weston, the lockout policy is designed to mitigate Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) and other brute force attack vectors. The new feature is available on Windows 11 Insider Preview builds 22528.1000 and newer. The feature will also be deployed to Windows 10; however, users will have to enable the policy manually. Brute force attacks are executed using scripts and applications designed to generate millions of password combinations in an effort to obtain a user’s login credentials....

It’s powered by a Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2, which is comprised of an octa-core CPU and Adreno 680 graphics on a 7nm manufacturing process. The SoC is starting to show its age considering Qualcomm introduced its Gen 3 SoC back in December. The chip is paired with 8GB of LPDDR4X RAM and a 256GB SSD. Wi-Fi 5 and Bluetooth 5.1 come standard, as do the system’s dual speakers, 3.5mm audio jack, 13-megapixel rear-facing camera and Windows 11 operating system....

Regular Twitter leaker momomo_us often makes the news over his graphics card reveals. While their latest tweet does relate to an AMD product, it’s not a piece of PC hardware; this is the PL4500 AMD Edition gaming chair. The result of AMD’s collaboration with Vertagear is a team-red version of the gaming chair company’s PL4500. It’s available on AMD’s fan site for $579, and while the standard chair usually goes for $549, or just $30 less, it’s currently discounted to $399, so you’d probably need to really, really like AMD to opt for the branded version....