The Gigabyte Brix consumes very little power as its mobile Core i5-3337U pulls just 12 watts at idle, almost 3.5x less than the Pentium G2020, and only 37 watts at full load, nearly 40% less than the G2020. When left to idle, the Brix operated at just 39 degrees, which isn’t bad given how thin its heatsink is and more importantly, how quiet the whole system is. However, its temperature quickly soared to 78 degrees when under load via Prime95....

Chrome OS is marking the release of version 100 with a new app launcher. Now, users will be able to organize apps by color or name. They’ll also have the option to arrange them manually. Additionally, the launcher will display more information in search result previews. Chrome OS should download updates automatically when connected to the internet. The currently installed version is displayed under “Google Chrome OS” in Settings. If it is not the latest version, go to Settings > About Chrome OS > Check for Updates to force a manual update....

Follow up: July 2022, August 2022, September 2022, October 2022, November 2022, December 2022 In fact, by the sounds of it, supply has recovered to such a degree that retailers may be in a bit of strife trying to shift all current-gen stock before new GPUs arrive, and that’s why pricing continues to fall across the entire market. Nvidia GPU Pricing Trends June is the first month since the launch of Ampere that you can readily find an Nvidia RTX 30 series graphics card below MSRP....

Those convenient remote car apps that allow you to start, unlock, honk, and even locate your car from your phone might not be as secure as you thought. Hackers figured out a way to do all those things without needing your login credentials. The trick worked for several makes, including Acura, Honda, Infiniti, and Nissan vehicles. It might also work on BMW, Hyundai, Jaguar, Land Rover, Lexus, Subaru, and Toyota since they all use the same telematic provider....

The HIS Radeon HD 6850 IceQ X Turbo averaged 33fps, making it 10% faster than the GTX 460 and 6% faster than a standard HD 6850. However, it was 20% slower than the GTX 560 Ti and 13% slower than the HD 6870. Scaling things up to 2560x1600, we found that the HIS Radeon HD 6870 IceQ X Turbo X Crossfire configuration provided 49fps making it 7% faster than the GTX 590 and 11% slower than the HD 6990....

Intel Skylake processors will be about 18 months old when they are replaced early next year with ‘Kaby Lake’ parts. AMD is also expected to finally unleash their Zen CPU, and with that we expect many of you will be looking into these new platforms for possible upgrades. Although memory prices remain competitive (read: cheap), there’s been a slight surge in pricing during the past few months. For the most part DDR4 memory is now cheaper than older DDR3, with 8GB DDR3-2400 kits starting at just $60 – less than many of you would spend on a lump of aluminum for your CPU – you probably won’t think twice about spending $110 to secure a 16GB kit....

Blender is free/open source 3D creation software which is commonly used by professionals all around the world. Unfortunately while it can be a heavy user of RAM the SPECwpc test only pushed the entire system usage to 6.1GB, so it isn’t ideal for looking at the difference between 8GB and 16GB of RAM. That said, we didn’t see a significant drop off when using just 4GB of memory either....

The 3D Objects folder (C:\Users\3D Objects) is the default location for saving files from Paint 3D and has been placed along with the folder links to Desktop, Downloads, Music etc., which only take up space in the Explorer if they aren’t being used. Plus, each icon is available in multiple locations on the same window anyway. Most of you probably aren’t using 3D Objects and probably wonder how to get rid of it....

Thanks to the relocation of the 4-megapixel Ultrapixel camera to the front, the selfie camera on the HTC One M9 is one of the best I’ve seen. It’s not as good as the rear camera during the day or in mild indoor conditions, but at night, the 2.0-micron pixels in the selfie cam see it destroy the rear camera (and most other selfie cameras) in terms of picture quality....

Improving upon HTC’s previous efforts is the Sensation’s 8 megapixel autofocus camera, complete with dual LED flash. This is probably the best camera I’ve experienced on an HTC handset, and photos captured by the Sensation were generally quite vibrant and pleasing to the eye. Photos taken in low light could be a little more hit and miss, with some blur creeping in if the phone wasn’t kept perfectly still, but you can judge the results for yourself by checking out the sample images below....

The most impressive aspect to the Mate 9 is its performance. The Kirin 960 is faster in CPU workloads and competitive in GPU workloads compared to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 821, providing a significant improvement over the Kirin 955. CPU performance in particular is very impressive, and there’s enough headroom over current-gen designs to keep it competitive when the Snapdragon 835 arrives. Aside from SoC performance, the Mate 9 packs 64GB of very fast NAND plus a microSD card slot....

Intel Core i7-7700K (or Kaby Lake in general) Kick starting 2017, Intel released the new ‘Kaby Lake’ series which actually didn’t turn out to be all that new. Apart from a small factory overclock these were basically Skylake parts and when matched clock-for-clock we found zero IPC gain. So if you owned 2015’s 6700K there was no need to buy the 7700K. A shame because the same could be said if you owned either a Haswell or Broadwell Core i7 CPU, and even arguably a Sandy or Ivy Bridge i7 as well....

Broadwell was kind of a big deal as it ushered in Intel’s now infamous 14nm process. It was mid-2015 and the chipmaker’s then new and very cutting edge 14nm process was a big deal, we just didn’t expect that they’d still be relying on it 6 years later with their 11th-gen Core series processors. The 14nm process also had its issues and was heavily delayed – just not “10nm” heavily delayed – but it was, and as a result Broadwell arrived much later than expected, forcing Intel to refresh Haswell a year after release, and it would still be another full year before 14nm Broadwell would arrive....

We’ll compare it to previous products like the Core i9-9880H, Core i7-9750H and AMD’s new Ryzen 9 4900HS to see how it stacks up for high-performance mobile productivity. Over the next few weeks and months we’ll hopefully check out a range of other 10th-gen CPUs and doing all sorts of comparisons, including deeper dives into the new six-core part and how these chips fare for gaming. This has been an interesting generation for Intel....

During Computex 2015 four new Z170 motherboards were announced by Asrock, the flagship model being the Z170 Extreme 7, while the Z170 Fatal1ty Gaming K6 and Z170 Fatal1ty Gaming K6 were also unveiled. The fourth was the Z170 Gaming-ITX/AC, a motherboard we’ll have to check out in the near future. All Z170 motherboards featured impressive designs and the Z170 Fatal1ty Gaming K6 looked particularly striking with its red and black theme....

The lab will also test and qualify Intel data center products under the Xeon and Optane brands as well as Intel Agilex FPGAs and Xe architecture products. Customers and partners will also be able to visit the lab and see Intel products in action in data center environments to determine if they would be a good fit in their own operations. Construction on the research lab will start later this year at the Jones Farm campus in Hillsboro, Oregon, and is expected to wrap up sometime in late 2023....

The new chipsets – codenamed Panther Point – will finally support USB 3.0 natively; Sandy Bridge based systems already offered widespread support for the faster interface but they relied on third-party solutions from NEC and others. All the aforementioned 7-series chipsets will offer up to four USB 3.0 ports and a maximum of 10 USB 2.0 ports, except for the B75, which drops the USB 2.0 count to eight. SSD caching via Intel’s Smart Response Technology will be supported by Z77, H77 and Q77 chipsets....

Along with preparing a series of Skylake-X processors, Intel’s counter to Ryzen includes a Kaby Lake-X lineup consisting of the Core i5-7640X, which is basically a renamed 7600K, and the Core i7-7740X, a 7700K in disguise. Leading up to their arrival, it was suggested that the 7640X might feature Hyper-Threading support, essentially making it a Core i7, while the 7740X would perhaps tout 6-cores. Those upgrades didn’t seem particularly likely to me, and it also seemed improbable that Intel would release existing mainstream CPUs on their high-end desktop platform....

The Corona benchmark also favors the 7700K and 7600K by a slim margin. We saw the same trend in our Blender test, in which the 7700K and 7600K were clearly faster. I ran this test three times on each CPU after a full system reset and each time the LGA1151 CPUs came out on top. This can also be seen in HandBrake where the 7700K and 7740X were much the same though the 7600K did pull ahead of the 7640X....

As expected, the Pentium G3258 is very fuel efficient, consuming almost 20% less power than the Core i3-4130 under load and 32% less power than the AMD A10-7850K. Overclocking the G3258 by 38% to 4.4GHz resulted in an increased consumption of almost 50% due to the added voltage. So while the overclocked G3258 still consumed far less power than any AMD FX processor, it was using the same amount as a flagship Core i5....