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April 2020 |
Thursday Morning
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Thursday, 30-April-2020 00:17:31 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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I can't decide if this is ridiculous or cool.. a Tesla car themed PC from Origin PC. Not a one-off project, an actual commercial product. "True to its name, the Ludicrous PC is a special edition PC that combines a Radio Flyer Tesla Model S with a liquid-cooled high-performance Origin PC," said Kevin Wasielewski, Origin PC CEO and co-founder. "The Ludicrous PC is a true showcase build that the Origin PC team created which was inspired by MKBHD’s high-quality content and his high-performance Tesla. For a limited time, you can order your own on OriginPC.com for $13,370."
Or maybe this Raspberry Pi Nerf RC Car is more your style. We are all doing the best we can to keep our sanity, and maybe even getting to know ourselves a bit better while in isolation. Perhaps you have an undiscovered talent that may have otherwise gone overlooked. Hey, it happens—a clever individual in Serbia found out he could build a nifty RC car that fires Nerf darts using a Raspberry Pi board (one of many neat Raspberry Pi projects to pass the time), despite not being a developer.
Another strange bit of tech to appear recently is RTX Voice, which uses your GPU to improve the audio quality when teleconferencing. Sounds like you can run it on older cards, too. The latest architecture to grace GeForce graphics cards comes with two new additions to the silicon: RT Cores and Tensor Cores. The RT Cores accelerate ray tracing workloads, while the Tensor Cores are used for AI workloads—such as DLSS or denoising ray-traced scenes. You might think the latter would be required for RTX Voice. You'd be wrong. It's not your fault, Nvidia does dance around the subject a bit. With only a small adjustment to the code RTX Voice will work on older graphics cards—simply delete the segment that says you can't run it without an RTX graphics card. More here on HotHardware and here on TechPowerUp.
TechSpot wonder how the GTX 1080 Ti stacks up in 2020. For roughly 18 months the GTX 1080 Ti was the most powerful GeForce GPU on the market, but the fondness high-end gamers seemed to have for this GPU was only magnified when Nvidia showed it the door with the GeForce RTX 20 series. These days we may have digested the GeForce RTX series as the top offering in Nvidia's lineup, but when the RTX 2080 launched in late 2018, it did so at the same $700 price point as the GTX 1080 Ti while offering no real performance advantage.
Even more retro is this Pixel Ripped 1995 performance guide from BabelTechReviews. This editor enjoyed a retro blast from the past playing Pixel Ripped 1995, the sequel to Pixel Ripped 1989, and we are going to benchmark it with 15 video cards using the Vive Pro and FCAT-VR.
Jakub also has some retro news: Not sure if this is news worthy, but an old game series that I loved as a kid in the 90s was the Escape Velocity series (Classic, Override and Nova). The company that published them went defunct last year and now one of the creators of EV - Override has started a kick starter to remake the game for PC, Mac and Linux. The engine will be open sourced as well. Link here. Downloads of the original versions here and here (along with other Ambrosia games). The first two games were Mac only and I expect a lot of old Mac users will know them and be fond of them.
Meanwhile, this from Dilbery: I noticed that in one of the latest LGR videos, OCAU is mentioned for a Windows ME Dos fix, blast from the past but I thought it was pretty cool. That is cool. :) I'm not familiar with LGR but it seems to be a retro/oddities computing channel, so there's probably lots to check out there. It also makes me realise I really should get onto updating OCAU's 20 year old main site design..
Google's head of Quantum Computing has resigned. Soon after the team had first got its quantum supremacy experiment working a few months earlier, Martinis says, he had been reassigned from a leadership position to an advisory one. Martinis tells WIRED that the change led to disagreements with Hartmut Neven, the longtime leader of Google’s quantum project. Martinis resigned from Google early this month. “Since my professional goal is for someone to build a quantum computer, I think my resignation is the best course of action for everyone,” he adds.
Today's web timewasters are lots of historic Google Doodle games. Over the years, Google has featured an impressive number of games and minigames on its homepage, all of which have been carefully preserved and archived on the Google Doodle Blog. Starting April 27 and running for two weeks, Google is launching a new series of ten Doodles, each one a callback to one of the company’s popular games.
Tuesday Night Reviews
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Tuesday, 28-April-2020 23:50:57 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Audio Visual:
Cougar Phontum S Pink Gaming Headset on FunkyKit.
COUGAR Havoc BT In-Ear Gaming Headset on NeoSeeker.
HyperX Quadcast USB Condenser Gaming Microphone on FunkyKit.
Storage:
iStorage CloudAshur secure USB drive on Vortez.
Sabrent Rocket Nano Portable Solid State Drive on ThinkComputers.
LaCie Mobile 1TB USB-C Portable SSD on Tweaktown.
Cases:
be quiet! Pure Base 500DX on TechPowerUp.
Phanteks Enthoo 719 (aka Luxe 2) on Guru3D.
iBUYPOWER Snowblind Element Mid-Tower on Tweaktown.
Power Supply:
be quiet! Straight Power 11 Platinum 1200W ATX PSU on Tweaktown.
Sandberg Survivor Powerbank 30000 PD 45W on NikKTech.
Misc:
noblechairs EPIC Black Edition on Vortez.
Initial Benchmarks Of The AMD EPYC 7F32 Performance On Ubuntu 20.04 LTS on Phoronix.
EVGA GeForce RTX 2070 Super KO video card on TechPowerUp.
Time for some news catchup. I will say again that since this COVID thing kicked off, we've been busier in the forums than we have been in quite a while. Feel free to sign up and join in the conversations!
Anthony Agius of (among other things) MacTalk and The Sizzle has a video talk over on LASTAnywhere about his varied career, so far. Come hear about Anthony’s very interesting career. Including: How he created and sold the biggest Apple Mac website, outside the US. Why he owned one of the first iPads in Australia. Started one of the first and most popular podcasts in Australia. How he “earned” more than 1 million Qantas points by lifting his finger 10,448 times. Anthony will join us via video from Melbourne, Australia.
There's been a benchmarking scandal in the world of mobile phones, uncovered by Anandtech. Naturally, and unfortunately, my first thought was that there must be some sort of cheating going on. We had reached out to our friends at UL for a anonymised version of PCMark – the teams there in the past had also been a great help in deterring cheating behaviour in the industry. To no major surprise, the two versions of the benchmark did differ in their scores – but I was still aghast at the magnitude of the score delta: a 30% difference in the overall score, with up to a 75% difference in important subtests such as the writing workload.
More relevant to PC users is the discovery that drive specs are not what they seem sometimes. Several interesting threads popped up in Reddit over the weekend claiming that WD was surreptitiously shipping inferior shingled magnetic recording (SMR) hard drives in its new WD Red NAS line of drives, but without disclosing that the drives use the slower recording technique. We sent queries to WD over the weekend, and the company confirmed to Tom's Hardware today that the drives do use SMR technology. However, WD doesn't list that fact in its advertising or on the specification sheets made available to consumers.
GamersNexus took a tour of a PSU factory. In this factory tour, we'll be walking through the manual assembly and validation process of power supplies in Tainan, Taiwan, at the southern tip of the island. Power supplies go through PCB manufacturing, SMT lines, automatic optical inspection, validation, assembly, and then through testing. 100% of all power supplies made in this factory are thermally burned-in and tested on Chroma machine power supply testers.
Wired have an article about the push for photonic circuits as a replacement for electronics. That is to say - using light. By demonstrating its application in the main ingredient in conventional computer chips, Bakkers and his colleagues have taken another major step toward practical light-based computing. Electronic computer chips have faithfully served our computing needs for half a century, but in our data-hungry world, it’s time to kick our processors up to light speed.
The Hubble Space Telescope is celebrating 30 years of amazing images. The Hubble Space Telescope launched 30 years ago on Friday, forever changing the way we see the universe. The telescope's ethereal, dreamy and almost fantasy-like views of space vistas have inspired people for decades and led to some of the most important astronomical discoveries.
Sunday Night Reviews
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Sunday, 26-April-2020 23:15:34 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Video Cards:
PowerColor Radeon RX 5600 XT Red Dragon Graphics Card on Tweaktown.
ASUS ROG STRIX Radeon RX 5600 XT on Tweaktown.
ASRock Radeon RX 5600 XT Phantom Gaming D3 6G OC on FunkyKit.
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1650 OC GDDR6 on TechPowerUp.
Audio Visual:
Patriot Viper V380 Gaming Headset on APHNetworks.
König & Meyer 26783 Screen/Monitor Stand on NikKTech.
Portable & Prebuilt:
LG G8X ThinQ Review: Dual OLED Screens, Affordable Android on HotHardware.
Mobvoi TicWatch Pro 4G/LTE on OCInside.
ASUS ROG Strix Hero III Review: A Svelte RTX Gaming Laptop on HotHardware.
Storage:
Kingston KC2000 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD on Tweaktown.
Synology DS220j Two-Bay Consumer NAS on Tweaktown.
WD Blue SN550 1TB NVMe SSD on Guru3D.
Cooling:
Scythe Mugen 5 TUF Gaming Alliance CPU Cooler on NikKTech.
XPG Levante 240 AIO CPU cooler on TechPowerUp.
CORSAIR iCUE QL140 RGB 140mm PWM White Fans Showcase on MadShrimps.
ARCTIC Liquid Freezer II 280 CPU Cooler on Tweaktown.
EK AIO 240 D-RGB Liquid Cooler (LCS) on Guru3D.
Misc:
Velux Heat Protection Awning on FunkyHome.
Tesoro Alphaeon S2 Gaming Chair on TechSpot.
The State of Neverwinter 2020 on OCClub.
Seasonic Connect 750W PSU on TechPowerUp.
Cougar Minos XT Pink Gaming Mouse on FunkyKit.
AMD Ryzen 7 4800H Review: 8-Core Power for Mainstream Laptops on TechSpot.
FSP T-WINGS CMT710 dual-system chassis on TechPowerUp.
NETGEAR Nighthawk AX12 WiFi-6 Router on FunkyKit.
Man, I only managed one reviews post this week. Got to sit down and clear out the news box at some stage. But in the meantime, it's Friday! Thanks to metamorphosis and my Mum this week!
     
     
     
     
     
Wednesday Morning Reviews
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Wednesday, 22-April-2020 00:26:00 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Cooling:
Modwater PC Watercooling Coolant Performance Review on HWAsylum.
ID-Cooling SE 234 ARGB CPU cooler on TechPowerUp.
Corsair iCUE H115i RGB PRO XT Liquid CPU Cooler on Modders-Inc.
Video Cards:
GeForce Ti Showdown: GTX 980 Ti vs GTX 1080 Ti vs RTX 2080 Ti on Tweaktown.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 Super vs. AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT: 2020 Update on TechSpot.
Storage:
DataLocker Sentry K300 64GB Secure Keypad Micro SSD Drive on NikKTech.
HP SSD EX950 2TB M.2 Solid State Drive on ThinkComputers.
Seagate IronWolf 510 m.2 NAS SSD on Tweaktown.
HP EX950 2 TB M.2 NVMe SSD on TechPowerUp.
Synology DS420j 4-bay NAS on TechPowerUp.
Kingston’s Canvas Select Plus, Go Plus & React Plus SD & MicroSD cards on BabelTechReviews.
Western Digital Red WD140EFFX 14TB Hard Drive on APHNetworks.
Silicon Power Superior UHS-I 256/512GB & Superior Pro UHS-II 128GB MicroSDXC Memory Cards on NikKTech.
Software:
Resident Evil 3 Review: Jill's Thrills, Spills, and Zombie Kills on Tweaktown.
Resident Evil 3 Remake on OCClub.
Experiencing Minecraft RTX: A Whole New Ray Traced World on HotHardware.
Audio Visual:
Cooler Master MH650 headset on TechPowerUp.
Dell UltraSharp U4320Q 42.5-inch 4K Monitor on ThinkComputers.
Creative Sound Blaster G3 Portable External USB-C DAC Amp on MadShrimps.
AVerMedia Live Gamer BOLT capture widget on Vortez.
Creative X3 External USB DAC on Modders-Inc.
Cases:
SilverStone SETA A1 Computer Case on APHNetworks.
SilverStone Seta A1 on OCInside.
Abkoncore Helios 500G Sync on Guru3D.
Thermaltake View 51 TG Snow ARGB on TechPowerUp.
Misc:
ASUS TUF Z390-Pro Gaming Motherboard on NikKTech.
NZXT C850 Gold ATX Power Supply on Tweaktown.
TeamGroup T-Force Xtreem ARGB DDR4-3600 MHz CL14 2x8 GB memory on TechPowerUp.
Friday again - thanks to Axe and Simon this week!
     
     
     
     
Thursday Night Reviews
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Thursday, 16-April-2020 21:38:21 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Audio Visual:
HyperX QuadCast Standalone Microphone on NikKTech.
Creative Sound Blaster AE-9 Hi-Res PCIe Sound Card on NikKTech.
Cooler Master MH670 wireless gaming headset on TechPowerUp.
Motherboard & CPU:
ASUS Prime X299 Edition 30 on TechPowerUp.
AMD EPYC 7F52 Linux Performance on Phoronix.
Intel Core i7-10875H: 8 Cores, 16 Threads for Laptops on TechSpot.
Input Etc:
Thermaltake Level 20 RGB Keyboard on TechPowerUp.
iQunix F96 Coral Sea Wireless Mechanical Keyboard on ThinkComputers.
Video Cards:
MSI GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER GAMING X on Tweaktown.
Radeon RX 5700 XT vs. GeForce RTX 2060 Super: 2020 Update on TechSpot.
MSI GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER GAMING Z TRIO on Tweaktown.
ASRock Radeon RX 5600 XT Phantom Gaming D3 on TechPowerUp.
Storage:
LaCie 6Big Thunderbolt 3 DAS on Tweaktown.
Lexar SL100 Pro Portable SSD 500 GB on TechPowerUp.
Sabrent Rocket NVMe 4.0 SSD Review: Premium, Fast Storage on HotHardware.
DataLocker Sentry K300 Encrypted Flash Drive on ThinkComputers.
HP EX950 1TB NVMe SSD on Guru3D.
HP P700 1TB Portable SSD on Tweaktown.
Portable & Prebuilt:
Intel NUC 9 Extreme Ghost Canyon Review: Pint-Sized Powerhouse on HotHardware.
Intel NUC 9 Extreme "Ghost Canyon" NUC9i9QNX on Tweaktown.
Misc:
Linksys MX5300 Velop Whole Home Intelligent Mesh WiFi 6 (AX) System Review @ Madshrimps.be
Silicon Power XPOWER AirCool 32GB DDR4-3200 Memory Kit on FunkyKit.
be quiet! Shadow Rock 3 CPU Cooler on Tweaktown.
Logitech G604 mouse on TechPowerUp.
Monday Night Reviews
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Monday, 13-April-2020 21:38:52 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Input Etc:
Cougar Surpassion RX Wireless Mouse on Modders-Inc.
CORSAIR Dark Core RGB PRO SE mouse on Vortez.
CORSAIR Dark Core RGB Pro Wireless FPS/MOBA Gaming Mouse on NikKTech.
Corsair Dark Core RGB Pro Wireless Gaming Mouse on NeoSeeker.
Corsair Dark Core RGB Pro mouse on OCClub.
Corsair Dark Core RGB Pro Wireless Optical Mouse on APHNetworks.
Corsair Dark Core RGB Pro gaming mouse on Guru3D.
CORSAIR DARK CORE RGB PRO SE Wireless FPS/MOBA Gaming Mouse on MadShrimps.
Corsair Dark Core RGB Pro on TechPowerUp.
Corsair Dark Core RGB Pro Gaming Mouse on ThinkComputers.
Storage:
Lexar NM610 M.2 2280 NVME SSD on FunkyKit.
G-Technology G-DRIVE 14TB Thunderbolt 3 on Tweaktown.
Icy Dock MB795SP-B and MB703M2P-B on OCInside.
Portable & Prebuilt:
Gaming on a Ryzen 9 4900HS Laptop with a Discrete GPU on TechSpot.
Dell XPS 13 (2020) Review: Laptop Excellence Refined on HotHardware.
Cooling:
EK Water Blocks Classic RGB P360 Complete RGB Liquid Cooling Kit on NikKTech.
SilverStone Permafrost PF240-ARGB AIO CPU cooler on OCInside.
Video Cards:
AMD Radeon Pro W5500 Review: Navi Pro Graphics For Less on HotHardware.
Gigabyte GTX 1650 WindForce OC (with GDDR6) on Guru3D.
Furniture:
Tesoro Real Madrid Gaming Chair on TechPowerUp.
Cougar Mars gaming desk on Vortez.
Misc:
DOOM Eternal game on OCClub.
Silverstone SETA A1 case on TechPowerUp.
Intel Xeon Gold 5220R + Xeon Gold 6226R Linux Performance on Phoronix.
Antec Signature Titanium 1000 W PSU on TechPowerUp.
Antlion Audio ModMic Wireless Attachable Microphone on Tweaktown.
Hope you're enjoying your long weekend, and staying safe at home! I had a thought that it might be fun to do an online pub quiz type trivia night sometime this weekend. If you like the sound of that, head over to this thread where I'll be figuring out the details.
     
     
     
     
     
     
Friday Afternoon Reviews
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Friday, 10-April-2020 13:08:15 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Video Cards:
ASRock Radeon RX 5600 XT Phantom Gaming D3 6G OC on Tweaktown.
GeForce GTX 980 Ti Revisited, against GTX 1070 and RTX 2060 on TechSpot.
ASRock Radeon RX 5500 XT Phantom Gaming GPU on Modders-Inc.
Cooling:
Thermaltake Riing Quad 12 radiator fan on OCInside.
Scythe Mugen 5 ARGB PLUS CPU Cooler on Tweaktown.
Fractal Design Celsius+ S36 Prisma AIO cooler on Guru3D.
Fractal Design Celsius+ S36 Prisma AIO on Modders-Inc.
Fractal Celsius Plus S28 Prisma Liquid CPU Cooler on Tweaktown.
Bitspower Touchaqua NJORD 120 PWM Fan on TechPowerUp.
Corsair A500 Dual Fan CPU Cooler on NeoSeeker.
Corsair HydroX Custom Liquid Cooling on Tweaktown.
SilverStone Permafrost PF240-ARGB AIO cooler on OCInside.
Cases:
Antec P82 Flow Computer Case on APHNetworks.
Thermaltake A700 TG Full Tower on ThinkComputers.
Storage:
CalDigit Tuff Nano 1TB Portable SSD on Tweaktown.
ADATA SE760 Portable SSD 1 TB on TechPowerUp.
Crucial P1 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD on OCInside, OCAU review here.
Misc:
Lian Li Strimer Plus 24-pin & 8-pin RGB cables on TechPowerUp.
Reolink Argus PT Wire-Free Security Camera on Tweaktown.
Proscenic M7 Pro Robot Vacuum Bundle on NikKTech.
April 2020 Retro Racing: NFS Porsche Unleashed
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Tuesday, 7-April-2020 14:00:35 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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This month's Retro Racing challenge is Need For Speed: Porsche Unleashed from way back in 2000. To compete you can use the free playable demo which works on many modern operating systems. Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed gives the player the opportunity to race Porsche cars throughout a range of tracks located in Europe.
click for the thread!
I missed this last month, but Bill Gate has stepped down from Microsoft's board. “With respect to Microsoft, stepping down from the board in no way means stepping away from the company,” Gates said. “Microsoft will always be an important part of my life’s work and I will continue to be engaged with Satya and the technical leadership to help shape the vision and achieve the company’s ambitious goals. I feel more optimistic than ever about the progress the company is making and how it can continue to benefit the world.”
DDR5 seems set to arrive on the desktop sometime this year. It's about that time again in the desktop market to switch to a new memory standard. We first began the transition from DDR3 to DDR4 six years ago, and now memory suppliers are laying the groundwork for the leap from DDR4 to DDR5. So, what kind of advantages will DDR5 offer over its predecessor? Well, SK Hynix is claiming that DDR5 will ultimately offer twice the bandwidth currently available with DDR4 modules.
FunkyKit built a tiny but powerful PC in an open chassis. Once again it’s time for our Funky Kit Team to get a little busy, and this time we’re going to build our very cute mini PC and we’ve called it … Project AMD3D Mini. I’ve always wanted to build a compact, mini-ITX system that’s unique and can stand out from the crowd. And over the past few years, I’ve searched and searched, but just couldn’t find the right type of chassis until now.
HotHardware meanwhile looked at the benefits of upgrading onboard graphics with a discrete GPU. I mean, it's basically just a GPU roundup with some onboard ones included, but given how far onboard graphics have come in the last few years it's an interesting comparison. Obviously, there's still plenty of room to grow though, which is why AMD and NVIDIA have spent years releasing a whole new top-to-bottom lineups of discrete graphics cards. All those desktop systems with integrated graphics are ripe for an upgrade, however, for folks who want to play the latest game titles and breath new life into their machines.
IntelInside spotted this data security SNAFU involving a German military laptop sold on eBay. Weighing in at a hefty 11 pounds, with a tiny 128 MB of working memory and a decades-old Pentium III processor, a used laptop recently bought by a German cybersecurity firm had its heyday long before the first iPhone was built. But the laptop’s new owner says it has one standout feature: Its hard drive carried — without encryption or even password protection — a confidential user manual and schematics for a surface-to-air missile system that Germany’s air force still uses.
TechARP have a list of 9 Free Steam Games to keep you busy. Here are NINE (9) games you can add to your Steam account for FREE for the next 24-48 hours, and they are yours to keep forever!
But if you are finding yourself with plenty of time over the next few weeks, you could maybe boost your career prospects by taking in some free training. It seems to me that people with a lot more time on their hands could be using it to advance their career prospects. So, let's make a thread of resources that are free or that have become free or have a decent free trial, so you can tool up during your downtime. Feel free to add more that you know of!
Sunday Afternoon
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Sunday, 5-April-2020 15:37:43 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Hope you're not going too stir crazy out there.
Half Life: Alyx is apparently an amazing VR experience. I played the final three hours of Half-Life: Alyx in a single session. Before Alyx, I never used VR for more than 30 minutes at a time. I don't get motion sick but I do get generally tired of VR. Tired of having a hunk of plastic strapped to my face, of having to stand and stoop and reach awkwardly around, of not being able to check my phone or have a sip of coffee. But I didn't take a break, or even want to, during the final chapters of Half-Life: Alyx. I wasn't tired. I was completely enthralled and unwilling to stop playing.
If you're wanting to join the fun, BabeltechReviews compared 13 AMD and NVIDIA cards for use in Half Life: Alyx. Half Life: Alyx released on March 23rd to great reviews and it is probably the most important and instantly popular VR game to date. It has just been added to BTR’s regular benchmark suite, and we are going examine its image quality (IQ) and measure the performance of 13 NVIDIA and AMD video cards with the Vive Pro using FCAT-VR.
OCInside modified an AIO cooler to make a more serious custom cooler. Today, an AIO water cooling system is being converted on OCinside.de. We show the conversion of an Antec K240 AIO water cooling with a few components from Alphacool to a flexible test system in a comprehensive video on our YouTube channel.
GamersNexus visited the Lian Li factory to see how PC case panels are made. Due to human malware concerns presently spiraling, the metals factory we visited in Taiwan has more business than ever. Its competition across the ocean is operating at significantly reduced capacity, so companies that can afford to make their products in Taiwan are sourcing parts locally rather than importing them. It was a busy time to visit the factory, affording an incredible opportunity to film the full process of how sheet metal is made. Lian Li is a customer of this factory, using its metal for networking chassis and sometimes DIY cases.
Australia's Communications Alliance have asked people to consider their bandwidth usage during peak times. Although many internet providers have increased or fully removed data caps on customers' monthly plans to help people working from home, Communications Alliance suggested that people generate less data traffic, and avoid downloading and uploading large files during peak times. Peak times now include daytime hours, and CA said "it can make a big difference if you can plan ahead and download a movie or other large files between 9pm and 9am." Furthermore, if customers have a choice of image quality, they should pick standard definition (SD) over 1080p high definition (HD) or 4K Ultra HD for streaming video, the industry body advised.
Leroy noticed that the games "Gone Home" and "Hob" are free on Epic Games this week. The first of this week’s free games is Fullbright’s acclaimed 2013 atmospheric mystery game Gone Home. In Gone Home, you arrive home after a year abroad and explore your house in order to learn what happened while you were away. I can’t say too much more without getting into spoiler territory, but Gone Home is widely regarded as a great game, as its 86 on Metacritic and 9 here at DualShockers suggest.
Sunday Afternoon Reviews
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Sunday, 5-April-2020 13:04:18 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Input Etc:
CORSAIR Scimitar RGB Elite MOBA/MMO Gaming Mouse on NikKTech.
Cougar Ultimus RGB Keyboard on TechPowerUp.
Power Supply:
XPG Core Reactor Gold ATX Power Supply on Tweaktown.
Cooler Master Reactor Gold 750W on OCInside.
Super Flower Leadex III ARGB Gold 550W on TechPowerUp.
Portable & Prebuilt:
LG V60 ThinQ 5G Review: Dual Display, Almost Flagship on HotHardware.
System76 Thelio Major Linux workstation on Phoronix.
Storage:
Crucial MX500 2TB SATA SSD on Tweaktown.
Lexar Professional SL100 Pro 500GB USB 3.1 Gen 2 External SSD on APHNetworks.
Patriot P300 PCI-E 3.0 x4 SSD on Vortez.
Crucial BX500 2TB SATA SSD on Tweaktown.
Crucial X8 1TB Portable SSD on MadShrimps.
ADATA SE760 Ultra Fast 1TB USB-C Portable SSD on Tweaktown.
Audio Visual:
ASUS ROG SWIFT PG43UQ on Guru3D.
Jabra Elite 75t True Wireless Earbuds on NikKTech.
HyperX Cloud MIX Wired Gaming Headset with Bluetooth on FunkyKit.
Misc:
GIGABYTE Z390 Aorus Master Motherboard on NikKTech.
ASUS ROG Strix RTX 2080 Ti video card on Modders-Inc.
Scythe Shuriken 2 CPU cooler on TechPowerUp.
I don't mean to brag, but I bought some toilet paper on Wednesday. That's right baby, 18 rolls of triple-ply gold. Anyhoo, thanks to Axe, metamorphosis and mpot this week!
     
     
     
     
     
Thursday Morning
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Thursday, 2-April-2020 00:42:38 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Peter Tonoli, the Vice President of Electronic Frontiers Australia, passed away recently. Peter had been involved in protecting digital rights in Australia since the foundation of the internet in early 1990's. He was involved in the first community ISP in Australia. He was unwavering in his support of community groups, and never failed to take responsibility for those groups he was involved and encouraged new members to find their place and EFA would not be what it is today without his contribution.
PCWorld looked at how Zen 2 works in a laptop. AMD’s Zen 2 core performance has been well-tested in desktops. The new element here is how performance will be affected by the limited thermals, power, and acoustics of the typical laptop. There's some more reviews in the most recent Reviews post, too.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, ServeTheHome looked at a new 18-core Intel Xeon. When we first heard about the Intel Xeon W-2295 it sounded like an exciting part. For $1,333 (USD) this is a high-frequency 18-core part that would fall between the Intel Xeon E-2288G and Intel Xeon W-3275 for Xeon Workstations. These Xeon W parts also make for interesting options in the single-socket server market, and the Xeon W-2295 is no exception.
If you're not having much luck with Folding@Home or want to try something different, metamorphosis points out that Rosetta@home is fighting COVID-19 too. Folding@home and Rosetta@home are complimentary projects: Folding@home's strength is modeling the process of protein folding, while Rosetta@home's strength is computing protein design and predicting protein structure and docking.
3D printing is coming to the rescue for COVID-19 too, including from the University of Wollongong. The University of Wollongong has joined a number of global organisations including Renault and Tesla pivoting their operations to 3D print medical supplies to support healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Researchers from the university are working with the Illawarra SHoalhaven Local Health District to determine what can be produced using local 3D printing capabilities, such as face shields or parts for ventilators.
I can't work out if this is real or not, but apparently there are robots enforcing lockdown in Tunisia. In a series of videos that have been widely shared on social media, Tunisians have been approached by remote-controlled vehicles asking if they're aware of lockdown rules. According to one of the videos, which is akin to a scene from a sci-fi movie, a man is confronted by one of the robots as he steps onto an empty street in the capital Tunis. The robot castigates the man, asking: "Are you aware of the lockdown?" and demands to know where he is going.
Wahoo84 sent word that World War Z is free from Epic Games at the moment. World War Z is a heart-pounding four-player cooperative third-person shooter featuring massive swarms of zombies that recklessly rush their living prey. Sounds like buying toilet paper at Woolies lately.
If, like me, you're missing the world of motorsport because everything is cancelled, you might get sucked into Marbula One. There's literally and figuratively NOTHING better to do than watching glass spheres, plastic track/sand, and gravity happen... It's more entertaining than watching humans doing anything right now!
Wednesday Night Reviews
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Wednesday, 1-April-2020 23:53:43 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Cooling:
Cooler Master MasterAir G200P CPU Heatsink on APHNetworks.
Scythe Big Shuriken 3 Low-Profile CPU Cooler on NikKTech.
Storage:
Silicon Power BOLT B80 1TB Portable SSD on FunkyKit.
Lexar SL100 Pro Portable Solid State Drive on ThinkComputers.
Lexar SL100 Pro Portable SSD on FunkyKit.
Sabrent Rocket 1TB NVMe SSD on Guru3D.
Silicon Power Armor A80 Waterproof & Shockproof Portable HDD on MadShrimps.
Portable & Prebuilt:
ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 Review: Ryzen 4000 Mobile Unleashed on HotHardware.
AMD Ryzen 9 4900HS Review: Mobile Ryzen goes full throttle on TechSpot.
Software:
Star Control: Origins - Earth Rising Expansion game on OCClub.
Resident Evil 3: PC graphics performance analysis on Guru3D.
Resident Evil 3 Benchmark Test & Performance Analysis - 27 Graphics Cards Compared on TechPowerUp.
DOOM Eternal Benchmarked at 8K - Not Even The Devil Can Run This on Tweaktown.
Resident Evil 3 Benchmarked: Survival horror that your GPU can likely handle on TechSpot.
Misc:
EVGA RTX 2060 KO Video Card Review and LN2 Overclocking on HWAsylum.
TEAM T-Force XTREEM ARGB DDR4-3600 16GB Dual-Channel Memory Kit on Tweaktown.
Aerocool Aero One Eclipse case on TechPowerUp.
Glorious PC Gaming Race Model D Gaming Mouse on ThinkComputers.
Antec Signature 1300W Platinum Power Supply on Tweaktown.
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