This week marked the arrival of Batman: Arkham Knight, the fourth entry in WB’s Batman: Arkham series and a direct sequel to 2011’s Arkham City (Arkham Origins was a prequel story-wise, however it was the third game installment). Arkham Knight is also powered by Unreal Engine 3, but you can expect noticeably improved graphics, in part because the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One have replaced the PS3 and 360 as the lowest common denominator....

Both the OCZ Agility 2 and Vertex 2 40GB drives were quite slow in this test with a throughput of just 150MB/s. This made them only slightly faster than the OCZ Onyx 32/64GB drives which were limited to ~130MB/s. The sequential write performance trends are quite different and here we see that the conventional Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB hard drive performs very well. In fact the Kingston SNV425-S2 64GB was the only SSD to beat the Samsung HDD and it did so convincingly providing 50% more performance....

One of the only real issues with our dual E5-2670 v1 build was power consumption. Loading up both 8-core processors would push the total system power consumption to almost 350 watts. The newer E5-2630 v4 processors go a long way in rectifying that issue by reducing system consumption by 22% to 267 watts, which is only 20% more power than a single FX-8350 processor and of course there you have 8-cores whereas the Xeon system is playing with 20....

According to research by Susquehanna Financial Group (via Bloomberg), lead times—the time between a chip being ordered and when it is delivered—averaged 26.3 weeks in September. That’s down from around 27 weeks the previous month. For comparison, the fall between July and August was a single day. August’s waiting period was still a lot longer than in pre-Covid times—it was just 12.7 weeks in October 2019—but the size of the monthly decline is significant....

Although we just called this the best LAN-friendly case we’ve worked with, make no mistake: the HAF XB is still big and bulky. However, its cube-like design makes it less awkward to transport than traditional case designs. There are certainly more compact options available, but all of them come with tradeoffs that are mostly absent with the HAF XB, which can easily accommodate a full-fledged gaming rig with an ATX motherboard, a beefy aftermarket processor heatsink, a pair of flagship graphics cards and so on....

We installed our typical test hardware for mid-ATX cases: an OCZ ZX 1000w PSU, an Asrock Fatal1ty 990FX Professional motherboard, 8GB (2x4GB) of Kingston RAM, an AMD Phenom II X6 1100T CPU with the Prolimatech Megahalems and an Inno3D GeForce GTX 580 OC GPU. We also crammed in half a dozen Western Digital Scorpio Blue 500GB HDDs and a Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000 1TB drive. We began by installing Prolimatech Megahalem’s CPU bracket to the back of the Asrock board, but forgetting this step is no problem thanks to the hole in the motherboard tray....

We presume the reason why so many are asking this question is that the Core i7-7800X costs just ~$70 more and with that you get two extra cores, but also access to Intel’s latest desktop platform. There are other cost considerations to make, but we’ll discuss those later. Before we jump straight to the comparison benchmarks, let’s have a quick look at what the two Intel CPUs have to offer on paper....

Corsair released its first case some two years ago with the $299 Obsidian 800D, which garnered a massive following among enthusiasts. With its boxy, yet elegant design and a clean matte black finish, it’s seems likely that Corsair was at least somewhat inspired by Lian-Li’s minimalist approach. In fact, it’s fair to say that Corsair even improved the formula, as many rated the 800D ahead of similarly priced Lian-Li cases....

Using a tool-less system, the 5.25" drive bays offer an ultra-quick and reliable way to install and remove devices. While majority of the tool-less designs we’ve used are clumsy and impractical, this design actually works very well. The two 3.5" drive cages are removable and each houses three drives. The quick release cradles support both 3.5" and 2.5" devices, while they help to make installation a breeze. There is a massive 7....

Follow up: Stock Update July 2021, August 2021, September 2021, October 2021, November 2021, December 2021, January 2022, February 2022, March 2022, April 2022, May 2022, June 2022 Woohoo! CPUs are good now One change for this month’s update is that we’ll no longer be covering CPU market. The reason is a positive one: you can currently buy the vast majority of processors at their respective MSRP in most regions....

Regardless of how we tested, the Radeon HD 6950 and GeForce GTX 570 boards produced very similar results. Compared to our Crysis Warhead benchmark that sees the GTX 570 getting a ~5fps advantage, both graphics cards rendered considerably more frames per second in Crysis 2. At 1920x1200 the GPU performance does decline considerably. The Radeon HD 6870 still averaged 42fps which interestingly is the same performance output than in our Crysis Warhead test....

But beyond the stock features that came with your router, there are many things that the hardware you bought might be capable of; it just happens that the manufacturer decided not to include them for a variety of reasons that go from keeping things simple, to the fact that they sell more expensive models to people who need those features. Luckily for you, people have been working on ways to get the fancy stuff running on your average $60-$100 device....

In mirror mode, Dell Cast works as you’d expect - mirroring what’s on your tablet to a larger display. Productivity mode, however, essentially turns your Dell tablet into a full-size computer complete with a custom UI that somewhat resembles Windows or Chrome OS. Combined with the wireless keyboard and mouse, one could easily get quite a bit of work done. While Dell Cast has the potential to be a powerful productivity tool, I feel it still needs a little bit of polishing....

The graphics core in the i7-6500U is Intel’s HD 520, with 24 execution units clocked up to 1,050 MHz. When you opt for a Core i7 part, you get a slight 50 MHz clock speed boost on the GPU compared to Core i5 and Core i3 parts, which shouldn’t have a huge effect on performance. As this is a mid-level integrated GPU, it won’t be setting any performance records, especially relative to a discrete GPU from Nvidia or AMD....

At the time I was 10, and while I can’t exactly recall if my first encounter with the game came right then or a few years later, it certainly left a mark as it did to millions. One thing I do know is that there is a significant divide between the 1993 sci-fi horror game and id Software’s 2016 reboot. As a young kid I couldn’t imagine playing this latest version of Doom, which is probably why it has been rated M for mature players over the age of 17....

After arguing for a universal charging solution for over a decade, the European Commission in October voted overwhelmingly in favor of legislation that would see all phones, tablets, and other small electronics sold in the region feature USB-C ports by 2024. The European Council approved the mandate a few weeks later, and it recently confirmed the December 28, 2024, deadline, with laptops given until April 28, 2026. While most phones (apart from iPhones) use USB-C, PocketNow spotted a different law being proposed by the EU that would impact more than just Apple: the EU Parliament and Council has reached a provisional agreement to overhaul EU rules on portable batteries....

The memory bandwidth performance of the ECS Liva’s chip is comparable to the AMD Sempron 3850, Athlon 5150, 5350 and Celeron J1800. Still, with a bandwidth of just 6GB/s, the Liva will be limited in capabilities. The L1 and L2 cache performance of the Liva is again comparable to the Celeron J1800 at around 11% slower.

Speaking on Dutch television recently, Lagarde made her feelings on the subject very clear. “I have said all along the crypto assets are highly speculative, very risky assets,” she explained. “My very humble assessment is that it is worth nothing. It is based on nothing, there is no underlying assets to act as an anchor of safety.” Lagarde’s comments come at a time when crypto is facing a major crisis....