|
|
|
|
|
May 2016 |
Tuesday Night Reviews
(5 Comments)
(link)
Tuesday, 31-May-2016 23:51:49 (GMT +10) - by Agg
|
Motherboard & CPU:
Intel Broadwell-E Core i7-6900K & 6950X on Vortez.
The Intel Broadwell-E: Core i7-6950X, i7-6900K, i7-6850K and i7-6800K on Anandtech.
Intel i7-6900K on HWHeaven.
Intel i7-6950X Broadwell-E CPU on OCClub.
Intel boosts the high-end desktop with its Broadwell-E CPUs on TechReport.
Intel Core i7-6950X 10-core Broadwell-E on PCPerspective.
Intel "Broadwell-E" Core i7-6950X 10-Core Extreme Edition CPU on Tweaktown.
Intel Core I7 6950X Extreme Edition Broadwell-E CPU on OCClub.
AMD Athlon X4 845 CPU on NeoSeeker.
Video Cards:
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Founders Edition on LegitReviews.
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 on LegionHW.
GeForce GTX 1070 FCAT Frametime Anaysis on Guru3D.
Misc:
Silverstone Tundra TD02-E CPU Cooler on Modders-Inc.
Patriot Tab 128GB Micro USB 3.0 Flash Drive on Tweaktown.
XCELLON 12,000mAh AC & USB Power Bank (PB-1200AC) on ModSynergy.
TP-LINK Neffos C5 Smartphone on MadShrimps.
Fresh 'n Rebel Rockbox Chunk Fabriq Edition Wireless Speaker on MadShrimps.
G.Skill Ripjaws V 3200 MHz 32 GB (2x 16 GB) memory on TechPowerUp.
Fnatic Gear Focus G1 XL Mousing Surface on APHNetworks.
Cooling:
Noctua NH-U14S CPU Cooler on TechnologyX
Zalman Z9 NEO CPU Cooler on Tech Powerup
Noctua Industrial PPC Fans on Modders-Inc
Videocard:
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 Founders Edition on Guru3D
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 Founders Edition on OCC
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 on TweakTown
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 on Techspot
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 on BabelTech Reviews
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 8GB Founders Edition on PC Perspective
Keyboard:
Tesoro Excalibur V2 Mechanical Gaming Keyboard on BigBruin
1UP Keyboards Pok3r Sleeve on LanOC
Storage:
SanDisk X400 1TB SATA III SSD on TweakTown
Kingston DataTraveler 4000 G2 64GB Encrypted USB Drive on OCC
Toshiba OCZ RD400 M.2 NVMe 512 GB on Ocaholic
ASUSTOR AS3202T Network Attached Storage System on APH Networks
Toshiba OCZ RD400 512GB SSD on Tech Report
Patriot SuperSonic Rage 2 256GB USB 3.1 Gen 1 Flash Drive on NikKTech
Motherboard:
ASUS X99 Deluxe II on Hardware Heaven
ASUS X99-Deluxe II on Vortez
Network:
TP-LINK AV2000 Powerline Kit on Hardware Heaven
Amped Wireless Athena AC2600 RTA2600 MU-MIMO Wireless Router on TweakTown
Netgear Nighthawk X8 - AC5300 Tri-Band Quad-Stream Wi-Fi Router (R8500) on Missing Remote
Misc:
Nights of Azure (PS4) on Gaming Nexus
Razer Overwatch Gaming Gear on Hardware Heaven
GELID ZenTree Docking Station on TechARP
Fractal Design Define R5 Case on OCInside
Braven BRV-XXL Portable Speaker on TechGage
SilverStone Strider Titanium Series 800W SST-ST80F-TI Power Supply Unit on NikKTech
AMD A10-7890K CPU on Hardware Heaven
Imfaceroll's Tie Fighter PC
(1 Comments)
(link)
Sunday, 29-May-2016 13:31:48 (GMT +10) - by Agg
|
Imfaceroll has finished his incredible Tie Fighter PC. If you really like it, you can vote for it in the Tt CaseMOD Invitational, where I believe you can win a prize just by voting.
click for the worklog!
Friday again!
     
     
     
     
     
Friday Morning Reviews
(0 Comments)
(link)
Friday, 27-May-2016 06:25:49 (GMT +10) - by booj
|
Storage:
Toshiba OCZ RD400 M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD on Legit Reviews.
OCZ RD400 NVMe SSD Review (256GB/512GB/1TB) on The SSD Review.
LaCie 8big Thunderbolt 2 1U Rack on TweakTown.
Audio:
Creative Labs iRoar Bluetooth Speaker on Hardware Asylum.
HyperX Cloud Revolver on LanOC Reviews.
Input etc:
SteelSeries Apex M500 Gaming Keyboard on ThinkComputers.
Corsair Gaming K70 RGB RapidFire keyboard on Guru3D.
QPAD MK-90 Pro Gaming Mechanical Keyboard on NikKTech.
Corsair Lapdog on Techspot.
Corsair Lapdog on TweakTown.
Corsair Lapdog on Vortez.
Smartphones:
TP-LINK Neffos C5L Smartphone on Madshrimps.
LG G5 on Techspot.
Flash Plus 2 Smartphone Revealed! on Techarp.
Misc:
Intel Skull Canyon NUC6i7KYK Mini PC on Hot Hardware.
Noctua NH-U12S CPU Cooler on TechnologyX.
Intel Core i5-6600K vs Core i5-2500K - 2D Performance on ocaholic.
Thermaltake Core X71 Chassis on TechnologyX.
ASIGN_Baz's Iron Man
(0 Comments)
(link)
Friday, 27-May-2016 00:18:19 (GMT +10) - by Agg
|
In case you've missed it, ASIGN_Baz has been making an Iron Man suit in steel, in a project going back to 2012. It seems to be nearing completion, if his latest update is anything to go by:
click for the worklog thread!
Wednesday Afternoon
(13 Comments)
(link)
Wednesday, 25-May-2016 16:48:32 (GMT +10) - by Agg
|
Microsoft's push for Windows 10 upgrades has taken another turn. Microsoft has faced criticism for changing the pop-up box encouraging Windows users to upgrade to Windows 10. Clicking the red cross on the right hand corner of the pop-up box now activates the upgrade instead of closing the box.
Sniper spotted this internet speed test from Netflix, with more info here. Netflix has launched a website that measures the speed of your connection, and it’s sure to send some Australians into a spiral of misery. Fast.com allows internet users to quickly and easily check their download speeds in real time. “We all want a faster, better internet, yet internet speeds vary greatly and can be affected by other users on your network or congestion with your internet service provider,” David Fullagar, vice president of content delivery architecture at Netflix, said in a blog post.
MadShrimps checked out three SFF coolers. oday we are going to tackle the latter and will test three coolers specifically designed to be compatible for this popular factor. We will put head to head the Corsair AIO H5 SF, the tiny Noctua NH L9x65 and the Cryorig M9i tower cooling solution.
TechSpot wonder if 4000MT/s memory makes a difference. For the most part we test using DDR4-3000, as it occasionally shows some benefits over the more typical 2400 and 2666 speeds. Going to 4000 MT/s (2000MHz) and beyond is a massive increase in frequency (and cost) and I struggled to imagine where this would be useful, particularly when gaming. Then again, curiosity had gotten the better of me...
Here's an impressive (if somewhat depressing) video of a hyper augmented future. There is a lot of potential for such tech, but as ever, the future reality isn’t going to be exactly how we envisioned it. Typically it’s worse. Hyper-Reality depicts one such potential future, and it’s quite depressing as far as I’m concerned.
BabelTechReviews have been overclocking the GTX 1080. Today, we will present our final stable overclock using EVGA’s latest non-public beta of Precision X16, or Precision XOC with our entire game benchmark suite of 26 games and 1 synthetic, and will give you a report on our adventure in overclocking the GTX 1080. EVGA’s Precision XOC or Precision X 16 will be released to the public shortly, in less than 5 days and it features a scanner for a semi-automatic new way to set overclocks to fully unlock the new Pascal GPU’s Boost 3.0.
Today's timewaster is FactoryIdle, from Stephen. Hey guys - a while ago I let you guys know about a game called ReactorIdle. The author has made a sequel of sorts called FactoryIdle which is a bit more thinky and complex. Run awaaayyyy.....
Wednesday Afternoon Reviews
(0 Comments)
(link)
Wednesday, 25-May-2016 16:07:34 (GMT +10) - by Agg
|
Input Etc:
Gigabyte XM300 mouse on TechPowerUp.
Tt eSPORTS LEVEL 10 M Advanced mouse on Vortez.
GAMDIAS Hermes 7 Color Mechanical Keyboard on APHNetworks.
Audio Visual:
SJCAM M20 Action Camera on FunkyKit.
SteelSeries Siberia 350 Headset on BenchmarkReviews.
Syllable D900S Tip Wireless Earbuds on FunkyKit.
Portable & Prebuilt:
Fitbit Alta Fitness Wristband on Tweaktown.
Shuttle XPC Cube Barebone SZ170R8 on MadShrimps.
Intel NUC NUC6i7KYK Skull Canyon Mini PC on LegitReviews.
Storage:
Toshiba OCZ RD400 PCIe (M.2. NVMe) 512GB SSD on Guru3D.
Toshiba OCZ RD400 512GB PCIe NVMe SSD Full Review on PCPerspective.
Toshiba OCZ RD400 Series High-Performance NVMe SSD on HotHardware.
OCZ RevoDrive 400 M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD on Tweaktown.
OCZ Trion 150 480GB SSD on OCClub.
Misc:
Enermax ETS-N30R-HE and ETS-N30R-TAA CPU Cooler on Tweaktown.
Linksys EA8500 Max-Stream AC2600 MU-MIMO Smart Wi-Fi Router on NikKTech.
Thermaltake Core X31 cases on ThinkComputers.
There's been some police raids related to the NBN late last week, and SMH explain what happened. On Thursday night, the Australian Federal Police raided the Melbourne office of former communications minister Senator Stephen Conroy and the home of a Labor staffer, setting off an unexpectedly heated end to the second week of the election campaign. The raids were part of an investigation, started in December, into damaging media leaks about the rollout of the National Broadband Network, following a referral from the company administering the infrastructure project, NBN Co. More info here and discussion continues in the massive NBN thread.
Meanwhile Telstra have been suffering outages once again. Three days of sporadic outages — now extended to four — in voice and data on NBN, data on ADSL, Telstra Internet Direct, its prepaid and recharge services down, MyAccount, and Telstra Wi-Fi off the air meant that May was not a very merry month this year.
FunkyKit have a mini SSD comparison. We've just published an article on the Mini SSD Performance Comparison – Difference between mSATA vs M.2 vs PCI Express Mini. "In this article we’ll be taking a look at the mini SSD performance comparison between the various types of mini SSDs available on the market. Most mini SSDs can be found on newer laptops, ultrabooks and slimmer notebook models."
Google are planning to make driverless cars safer by sticking people to them. Okey dokey. Google just got a patent for a special kind of coating on self-driving cars that could help prevent pedestrian injuries. The company wants to coat autonomous vehicles with a sticky substance so that if they hit a pedestrian, the person would be glued to the car instead of flying off.
Anandtech report on the little brother of the NVIDIA GTX 1080, the GeForce GTX 1070. Previously disclosed at 6.5 TFLOPs of compute performance, we now know how NVIDIA is getting there. 15 of 20 SMs will be enabled on this part, representing 1920 CUDA cores. Clockspeeds are also slightly lower than GTX 1080, coming in at 1506MHz for the base clock and 1683MHz for the boost clock. Overall this puts GTX 1070’s rated shader/texture/geometry performance at 73% that of GTX 1080’s, and is a bit wider of a gap than it was for the comparable GTX 900 series cards.
LanOC have visited a 3D printer factory and also looked at their product, the sSeeMeCNC Eris. So yesterday I did a relatively short rundown on what is 3d printing and I also spoke about my visit with SeeMeCNC. Well today I’m actually going to dive into the SeeMeCNC Eris 3d printer that I picked up when I was visiting them. The Eris is their brand new portable delta printer. Not only is easy to carry, but they set out to make the Eris their first truly out of the box and printing experience. Generally, with most 3d printers you have a lot of build and setup time, but with the Eris shipping completely built and with their new Auto Leveling system they are hoping it will be a great printer for new 3d printing users.
Monday Morning Reviews
(0 Comments)
(link)
Monday, 23-May-2016 09:51:25 (GMT +10) - by Agg
|
Cooling:
CRYORIG A40 Hybrid Liquid Cooling System on NikKTech.
CRYORIG C7 CPU Cooler on APHNetworks.
Storage:
Thecus N2810 Two-Bay Consumer NAS on Tweaktown.
Thecus 2-bay N2810 4K NAS on MadShrimps.
Patriot Viper 64GB USB 3.1 Flash Drive on FunkyKit.
Cases:
Thermaltake Core P5 Mid-Tower on NikKTech.
InWin 303 Mid-Tower on eTeknix.
Misc:
GIGABYTE X99P-SLI Motherboard on PCPerspective.
Tesoro Sagitta Spectrum H6L Gaming Mouse on Tweaktown.
PC Specialist Liquid Series LS-E01 Gaming PC on eTeknix.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Founders Edition video card on LegitReviews.
Thanks to mpot and t1mbot this week! The last one is one of those optical illusion thingies, so let me know what you see, in the comments. I saw it one way at first but now can only see it the other way. Anyway, have a good weekend!
     
     
     
     
     
     
Friday Morning Reviews
(0 Comments)
(link)
Friday, 20-May-2016 06:51:07 (GMT +10) - by booj
|
Motherboards & CPUs:
Core i7-6700K vs. Core i5-6600K - 2D Performance on ocaholic.
EVGA X99 FTW K Motherboard on Hardware Asylum.
Video Cards:
GeForce GTX 1080 on Techgage.
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 at BabelTechReviews.
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Overclocking on OCC.
Storage:
Mushkin Atom 128GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive on NikKTech.
SilverStone DS222 Two-Bay USB 3.0 RAID Storage Enclosure on TweakTown.
Thecus N2810 NAS on Guru3D.
Cases:
Cooler Master Maker 5 Chassis on eTeknix.
Thermaltake Suppressor F1 mITX Cube on OC Inside.
Audio:
808 HEX XS Bluetooth Speaker on Benchmark Reviews.
UE BOOM 2 speakers on Techpowerup.
Jabra SPEAK 510 Wireless Bluetooth Speakerphone on FunkyKit.
Tablets and Systems:
Lenovo ThinkPad X1Hybrid on arstechnica.
MSI Vortex G65 6QF Gaming PC on eteknix.
Microsoft Surface Pro 4 Continues To Evolve on Techarp.
Gigabyte BRIX BSi7-6500 Compact PC Kit on ThinkComputers.
Lenovo YOGA 900s First Look on Techarp.
Chuwi Hi8 Pro Tablet on TechnologyX.
Mice:
ROCCAT KOVA 2016 Pure Performance Gaming Mouse on eTeknix.
Asus ROG Spatha on Hexus.
Thursday Morning
(5 Comments)
(link)
Thursday, 19-May-2016 08:48:26 (GMT +10) - by Agg
|
YouTube Red has launched in Australia. YouTube has launched its premium YouTube Red subscription service — which removes ads and allows users to save any video for offline playback — in Australia, alongside a dedicated app for listening to music. Australia is only the second region to get the new services, following the US, and YouTube is aiming squarely at its most voracious consumers.
BackBlaze have released a new hard drive reliability report. For Q1 2016 we are reporting on 61,590 operational hard drives used to store encrypted customer data in our data center. There are 9.5% more hard drives in this review versus our last review when we evaluated 56,224 drives. In Q1 2016, the hard drives in our data center, past and present, totaled over one billion hours in operation to date. That’s nearly 42 million days or 114,155 years worth of spinning hard drives. Let’s take a look at what these hard drives have been up to.
Google are hiring driverless car drivers. Test drivers will give engineers written and verbal comments on how the car drives and reacts to other vehicles on the road. More importantly, they'll be available to take control of the car should the situation arise, because the cars are not yet ready to fully operate without assistance.
IBM have some new superfast optical storage. Flash storage is too slow for your device's main memory, but RAM is expensive and volatile. Thanks to a breakthrough from IBM, phase-change memory (PCM) might one day replace them both. The crystal-based storage has been used in optical disks and other tech for at least 15 years, but the technology has been limited by the cost and storage density -- cells are either "on" or "off." However, IBM researchers have figured out how to save 3-bits of data per cell, dramatically increasing the capacity of the original tech.
Back to Google, who are giving cameras to museums to capture artwork in gigapixel detail. But now, with its new robotic Art Camera, Google is automating the process of ingesting these works and putting them online, so you'll be able to see even more without leaving the house. Google has announced a new camera and the online availability of 1,000 new gigapixel images on Tuesday via its official blog.
A Foxconn subsidiary has acquired 60% of Thecus. With Ennoconn’s acquisition, Thecus will formally join the world's largest electronics manufacturing company Foxconn Technology Group. Foxconn is renowned for its superior manufacturing capability globally, cost-efficiency, and high-end quality. It is anticipated that with the collaboration of this unparalleled portfolio to work with, Thecus is set to bring unprecedented change to the network storage industry.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080
(3 Comments)
(link)
Wednesday, 18-May-2016 00:25:58 (GMT +10) - by Agg
|
NVIDIA's much-anticipated GeForce GTX 1080 has been released. To quote NeoSeeker's review: Today we review the "Founder's Edition" of the soon-to-be-released NVIDIA GeForce 1080 graphics card, featuring the new G104 GPU based on the 16nm FinFET Pascal architecture with 160 TMUs and 64 ROPs. It's a fancy name for a reference board, but what a board it is. The card also features a 1607/1733 MHz core/boost clock and 8192MB of GDDR5X RAM with a 320 GB/s memory bandwidth and a 1250 MHz (10 GHz effective) clock that all promises to add up to double the performance of the GeForce Titan X series.
Here's some more coverage:
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Founders edition on Guru3D.
GeForce GTX 1080 FCAT Frametime review on Guru3D.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Performance Review: Pascal, The New King on HotHardware.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Founders Edition on OCClub.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Review - Hail to the King, Baby on Tweaktown.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 8 GB on TechPowerUp.
The GeForce GTX 1080 8GB Founders Edition on PCPerspective.
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 on TechSpot.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Founders Edition on HardOCP.
The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Preview on Anandtech.
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Founders Edition on Hexus.
Discussion in this thread in our Video Cards forum.
Here's some projects and reviews from the forums:
Tuesday Afternoon
(0 Comments)
(link)
Tuesday, 17-May-2016 15:35:12 (GMT +10) - by Agg
|
A legal firm says they have hired the first artificially intelligent lawyer. Ross, “the world’s first artificially intelligent attorney” built on IBM’s cognitive computer Watson, was designed to read and understand language, postulate hypotheses when asked questions, research, and then generate responses (along with references and citations) to back up its conclusions. Ross also learns from experience, gaining speed and knowledge the more you interact with it.
HWSecrets investigate if there's any gaming advantage to PCI Express 3.0 vs 2.0. Besides the big difference on the maximum theoretical bandwidth between the CPU and GPU, we were still curious about the real-life performance impact on games by using a PCI Express 3.0 against a 2.0 connection. So, we ran 3D benchmarks using 3DMark and some recent games, using a high-end video card (which, in theory, demands more bandwidth than a mainstream or value one), first with the slot configured as PCI Express 3.0 x16, then with the same slot configured as PCI Express 2.0 x16.
TechSpot have benchmarked the new DOOM game. The Doom reboot is a gift to the PC Master Race. The 4K visuals are amazing, excellent high resolution textures cover every surface, the lighting and shadows are on point and this all comes together to make those glory kill animations look insane. The question that remains now is, what kind of hardware do you require to enjoy those glory kills in all of their gory glory?
Meanwhile Tweaktown have a graphics performance tweak guide for Killer Instinct. As a Universal Windows Platform (UWP) game, it, unfortunately, forces V-Sync and therefore a 60 frames per second (FPS) cap (on 60Hz monitors at least), and doesn't work with our benchmarking tool. This would make it useless for a proper tweak guide, but the in-game benchmark still yields useful results with unique benchmark scores (not FPS measurements), so that's what you'll see today.
YouTube pranks are all fun and games, until you go to prison. Four members of the controversial Trollstation YouTube channel have been jailed in connection with fake robberies and kidnappings. The group were involved in a fake robbery at London's National Portrait Gallery and a fake kidnapping at Tate Britain in July 2015. The channel, with 718,000 subscribers, has built a reputation for filming staged pranks around the city. A fifth member was imprisoned in March following a bomb hoax.
A few people sent in this video from 1995, featuring Bill Gates inside DOOM!
Tuesday Afternoon Reviews
(0 Comments)
(link)
Tuesday, 17-May-2016 14:50:01 (GMT +10) - by Agg
|
Storage:
Patriot Blast 480GB SATA3 SSD on FunkyKit.
Vantec CB-STU3 USB 3.0 to SATA 2.5-inch Adapter with Case on Tweaktown.
Audio Visual:
Lenovo Pocket Projector First Look on TechARP.
Kingston HyperX Cloud Revolver Gaming Headset on APHNetworks.
Input Etc:
Corsair M65 Pro RGB Gaming Mouse on ThinkComputers.
Aorus Thunder K7 keyboard on Vortez.
Cooler Master Sentinel III mouse on OCInside.
Aorus Thunder K7 Mechanical Keyboard + Macro Keypad on eTeknix.
Cases:
Anidees AI-06 V2 Silent Mid-Tower on eTeknix.
RIOTORO Prism CR1280 on OCClub.
Portable & Prebuilt:
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon First Look on TechARP.
Dell Latitude E7370 Ultrabook on FunkyKit.
Misc:
Arozzi Enzo Black Gaming Chair on NikKTech.
Patriot Viper Elite DDR4-3200 Memory (16GB) on TechnologyX.
Supermicro C7Z170-OCE Z170 LGA1151 Motherboard on MadShrimps.
ASUS GTX950-2G Unplugged video card on Vortez.
TRENDnet TEW-827DRU AC2600 StreamBoost MU-MIMO Wireless Router on Tweaktown.
FSP Hydro X Series 550 W PSU on TechPowerUp.
Sunday Morning Reviews
(0 Comments)
(link)
Sunday, 15-May-2016 05:55:22 (GMT +10) - by booj
|
Cases:
Phanteks Eclipse P400S on ThinkComputers.
Case Labs Mercury S8S on ocaholic.
Open Benchtable Project by OC TV, HWBOT LLC and Streacom on Madshrimps.
Input etc:
Corsair K70 RGB Mechanical Keyboard on NikKTech.
Corsair K70 Keyboard on Techpowerup.
Cooler Master Masterkeys Pro L on ocaholic.
Gamdias Hermes Mechanical Keyboard on Benchmark Reviews.
Gamdias Hermes RGB Keyboard on LanOC.
Audio:
V-MODA Zn Earphones on APH Networks.
Creative Sound BlasterX H7 on Vortez.
JBL Under Armour Bluetooth Wireless Headphones on TweakTown.
LUXA2 Lavi S Over-Ear Wireless Headphone With External Speaker on NikKTech.
HyperX's Cloud Revolver gaming headset on The Tech Report.
Storage:
Toshiba XG3 M.2 NVMe SSD Review (1TB) on The SSD Review.
QNAP TBS-453A NAS on Legion Hardware.
ADATA SP550 240GB SATA SSD Review on Modders-Inc.
Mushkin's Reactor 1TB SSD on The Tech Report.
Networking:
Tenda AV2 1000 P1002P Powerline Adapter Starter Kit on Tweaktown.
TP-LINK AC1750 Wi-Fi Range Extender (RE450) on Madshrimps.
Misc:
AMD FX 8350 Black Edition CPU and Wraith Cooler on Neoseeker.
Samsung Galaxy TabPro S on Techspot.
G.SKILL TridentZ DDR4-3600 16GB Dual-Channel Memory Kit on TweakTown.
Thanks to mpot, Hoff and DC this week!
     
     
     
     
     
     
Western Digital now officially own SanDisk. For a cool $19 billion, Western Digital now gets to call SanDisk (and their sizeable share of the SSD market) their wholly owned subsidiary. Although SanDisk might be best known for flash memory cards and USB sticks, the company has been expanding into enterprise notebook hard drives and also builds OEM memory components for Apple and Nvidia. Bonus trivia: Back in 2014, SanDisk founder Dr. Eli Harari was honored by President Obama for "revolutionizing the flash storage industry."
The legal battle between Oracle and Google has entered round two. The upcoming trial is the second time Oracle has faced off in court with Google over copyrights and the Android mobile operating system. Oracle sued in 2010, saying that by using declaring code in 37 Java APIs, Google broke copyright law. After an initial trial that concluded in 2012, US District Judge William Alsup ruled that APIs can't be copyrighted at all. However, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit overruled him. Now a second trial is beginning, and Google's only defense against a copyright infringement claim is a "fair use" argument. More info about the case here.
I haven't quite got my head around it yet, but this article claims that the limiting factor for semiconductor scaling will be thermal management. Some in the industry are beginning to wake up to the problem. A paper by IBM and the University of Virginia states, “While increasing parallelism rather than frequency is a more power-friendly approach to performance growth, the stricter requirement from chip power still forces processor vendors to keep the chip power at a constant thermal design power (TDP) in order to hold down cooling cost.”
Google have open sourced a new natural language parsing technology, naturally calling it Parsey McParseface. Combining machine learning and search techniques, Parsey McParseface is 94 percent accurate, according to Google. It also leans on SyntaxNet’s neural-network framework for analyzing the linguistic structure of a sentence or statement, which parses the functional role of each word in a sentence. If you’re confused, here’s the short version: Parsey and SyntaxNet are basically like five year old humans who are learning the nuances of language.
NASA have announced the discovery of lots more planets. NASA's Kepler mission has verified 1,284 new planets – the single largest finding of planets to date. “This announcement more than doubles the number of confirmed planets from Kepler,” said Ellen Stofan, chief scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “This gives us hope that somewhere out there, around a star much like ours, we can eventually discover another Earth.”
With an election on the cards it's time for me to start avoiding possibly-political stories again, but this one makes a very good point about the NBN: “We didn’t have this sort of squabbling when it came to the Snowy Mountains Scheme or the Sydney Harbour Bridge. These projects, like the NBN, were long term investments in the country’s future and were rightly seen as such. Once construction began everyone acknowledged that they were much-needed, just like fast, ubiquitous broadband is today.”
Audio:
HyperX Cloud Revolver Headset on Benchmark Reviews
HyperX Cloud Revolver Gaming Headset on OCC
Kennerton Audio Jimo In-ears on techPowerUp
Keyboard/Mouse:
Fnatic Gear Rush G1 Mechanical Gaming Keyboard on Madshrimps
Azio MGK1 RGB Backlit Mechanical Gaming Keyboard on Hardware Asylum
Razer BlackWidow Ultimate 2016 on Vortez
Corsair K70 RGB RAPIDFIRE Mechanical Gaming Keyboard on Techgage
Tesoro Sagitta Gaming Mouse on TechnologyX
Corsair K70 RGB Rapidfire Gaming Keyboard on Techspot
Videocard:
MSI Radeon R7 370 GAMING 2G on Guru3D
Core i7-5820K vs. Core i7-6700K on Ocaholic
Cooling:
Thermaltake Pacific W2 CPU Water Block on Hardware Asylum
Silentium PC Fortis 3 HE1425 CPU Cooler on TechPowerUp
Storage:
PNY CS2211 XLR8 480GB SATA III SSD on TweakTown
Toshiba XG3 M.2 NVMe SSD Review (1TB) on The SSD Review
Misc:
Thermaltake Lumi Color 256C LED Strip on Modders-Inc
Samsung Galaxy S7 edge (SM-G935FD) Smartphone on TechARP
Battleborn Game on Madshrimps
Gigabyte X170-Extreme ECC on ocaholic
HTC Vive VR Kit on Hot Hardware
The internet is abuzz with info on NVIDIA's new GTX 1070 and 1080, thanks CC. The 1080 in particular seems to be a beast of a thing (in several versions), but I'm not aware of any independent reviews yet, just info from the vendors. So stay tuned, I guess. Tweaktown have unboxed one of the "Founder's Edition" (reference cooler) cards. More info in this thread in our Video Cards forum.
The UK research ship won't be called Boaty McBoatface, unsurprisingly - but its remotely operated undersea vehicle will be! A new £200 million ($388 million) polar research ship is to be named after veteran BBC naturalist David Attenborough. But the government has promised that "Boaty McBoatface", the name which topped a public poll, would not be ignored.
Australian scientists have found why Australians don't feel guilty about pirating content - it's in the brain. What the researchers found was that when imagining stealing an item, participants showed much more activation in the lateral orbital frontal cortex of their brains. Among other things, this part of the brain is associated with feelings of moral sensitivity and it was much more active when test subjects were thinking about stealing physical items than it was for intangible items such as digital files.
Soon the tiny screen on your smartwatch might not be an issue. Today a team at the Future Interfaces Group, a research lab within Carnegie Mellon University, released a look at a novel solution to this problem: making the skin on your arm and hand act like a touchscreen for your smartwatch. The system uses a signal-emitting ring worn on the finger to communicate with a sensing band attached to the watch. When the finger wearing the ring touches the skin, a high-frequency electrical signal spreads across your arm.
Facebook are working on AIs that create AIs. Have none of these people even seen Terminator? As Mehana says, Facebook trains and tests about 300,000 machine learning models each month. AutoML can then use the results of these tests to train another machine learning model that can optimize the training of machine learning models. Anyway, sounds pretty much like what we used to call "genetic algorithms".
NSW will soon have a plastic bottle recycling scheme, joining South Australia who've had one for years. Ten cents will be paid for every drink container between 150ml and three litres, and displaying a NSW CDS label, when returned to a depot or reverse vending machine. Premier Mike Baird said the scheme was "the single largest initiative ever undertaken to reduce litter in NSW".
Monday Evening Reviews
(0 Comments)
(link)
Monday, 9-May-2016 18:44:55 (GMT +10) - by Agg
|
Motherboard & CPU:
MSI's Z170A SLI Plus motherboard on TechReport.
ASRock Fatal1ty Z170 Gaming K4 Motherboard on TechARP.
Audio Visual:
1MORE Dual Driver In-Ear Headphones on Tweaktown.
SteelSeries Siberia 200 Gaming Headset on Modders-Inc.
Cooling:
CPU Cooler Comparison 2016 on OCInside.
Cooler Master GeminII S524 Ver.2 CPU Cooler on APHNetworks.
Storage:
Western Digital RED WD40EFRX 4TB SATA III HDD on NikKTech.
Lexar JumpDrive C20i 64GB Lightning Flash Drive on Tweaktown.
Input Etc:
Fnatic Gear Rush G1 Mechanical Keyboard on APHNetworks.
Tesoro Sagitta Spectrum Gaming Mouse on BigBruin.
Corsair M65 PRO RGB FPS Gaming Mouse & MM300 Extended Mouse Pad on OCClub.
Misc:
TRENDnet TPL-421E2K Powerline 1200 AV2 Adapter Kit on NiKTech.
MSI custom 3 and 4-way SLI bridges on Guru3D.
be quiet! Silent Base 600 Review: A Product of German Ninja-neering case on Modders-Inc.
Don't forget Mother's Day on Sunday! :) Thanks to mpot, Gordon and Dean this week!
     
     
     
     
     
     
If you keep hitting that "upgrade later" button when prompted about Windows 10, but do intend to upgrade at some stage, you might have to do it sooner rather than later. On Thursday, Microsoft began showing potential customers of Windows 10 the carrot as well as the stick, touting Windows 10’s success but also warning that the free upgrade offer would expire in a couple of months. If consumers don’t upgrade their PCs from Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 by July 29, Microsoft will charge $119 for a copy of Windows 10 Home when they eventually do.
Meanwhile here's a video showing Microsoft's new hover gestures for Windows phones. Microsoft had been planning to use a number of sensors on the sides of a device to detect how a phone is held by grip, allowing 3D Touch-enabled phones to block an orientation switch when you're lying down in bed. In the Microsoft Research video you can also see features allowing additional gestures to be unearthed as a users' finger gets closer to the screen.
Apple are pushing for IPv6 adoption, by requiring apps to have IPv6-only networking support. At WWDC 2015 we announced the transition to IPv6-only network services in iOS 9. Starting June 1, 2016 all apps submitted to the App Store must support IPv6-only networking. Most apps will not require any changes because IPv6 is already supported by NSURLSession and CFNetwork APIs.
A few people sent in this story about iTunes deleting people's music. What Amber explained was exactly what I’d feared: through the Apple Music subscription, which I had, Apple now deletes files from its users’ computers. When I signed up for Apple Music, iTunes evaluated my massive collection of Mp3s and WAV files, scanned Apple’s database for what it considered matches, then removed the original files from my internal hard drive. REMOVED them. Deleted.
There's a new Android security bug. Security researchers have uncovered a bug in Google Android devices that could leave potentially millions of smartphone and tablets manufactured over the last five years open to attack.
There's a World Video Game Hall of Fame, and they have announced the 2016 inductees. The games in the second class of The Strong’s World Video Gamed Hall of Fame® span multiple decades, countries of origin, and gaming platforms, but all have significantly affected the video game industry, popular culture, and society in general. Grand Theft Auto III, The Legend of Zelda, The Oregon Trail, The Sims, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Space Invaders have been selected from a field of 15 finalists that also included Elite, Final Fantasy, John Madden Football, Minecraft, Nürburgring, Pokémon Red and Green, Sid Meier’s Civilization, Street Fighter II, and Tomb Raider.
NASA have released many more patents into the public domain. These technologies were developed to advance NASA missions but may have non-aerospace applications and be used by commercial space ventures and other companies free of charge, eliminating the time, expense and paperwork often associated with licensing intellectual property. The technologies include advanced manufacturing processes, sensors, propulsion methods, rocket nozzles, thrusters, aircraft wing designs and improved rocket safety and performance concepts.
Yesterday was World Password Day. Betty White tells you how to improve your password habits.
Friday Afternoon Reviews
(0 Comments)
(link)
Friday, 6-May-2016 13:22:37 (GMT +10) - by Agg
|
Motherboard & CPU:
GIGABYTE GA-Z170X-Gaming 7 and GA-Z170X-Gaming G1 Motherboards on Futurelooks.
AMD A10-7860K APU on Guru3D.
AMD A10-7860K and A8-7670K on PCPerspective.
Input Etc:
Fnatic FLICK G1 Mouse on BenchmarkReviews.
G.Skill's Ripjaws KM780R gaming keyboard on TechReport.
HAVIT HV-KB366L RGB Backlit Mechanical Keyboard on NikKTech.
Portable & Prebuilt:
Nextbook Flexx 10 netbook on TechWareLabs.
ASUS Zenbook UX305CA on Vortez.
Cooling:
Noctua NF-A14 industrialPPC-24V-2000 IP67 PWM Fans on MadShrimps.
Cooler Master MasterLiquid Pro 240 on BenchmarkReviews.
Audio Visual:
Creative iRoar Bluetooth speaker on LegionHW.
Creative iRoar Intelligent Bluetooth Speaker on Tweaktown.
Cases:
Zalman Z9 Neo White Case on ThinkComputers.
Corsair Carbide Spec-Alpha ATX Mid-Tower on TechSpot.
Power Supply:
Corsair SF600 SFX PSU on LanOC.
Corsair RMi Series 650 W on TechPowerUp.
Video Cards:
Maxwell Quadro For All: NVIDIA Quadro M2000 Workstation Graphics Card on Techgage.
AMD's Radeon Pro Duo Benchmarked And Tested on HotHardware.
Storage:
LaCie P9227 Porsche Design Slim Drive 2TB USB C on Tweaktown.
Intel 540s SSD Review (480GB) – SMI Controller With SK Hynix Memory on TheSSDReview.
Synology DiskStation DS216+ 2-Bay NAS on Techgage.
Here's some projects and reviews from the forums:
Thursday Afternoon
(1 Comments)
(link)
Thursday, 5-May-2016 15:25:23 (GMT +10) - by Agg
|
An Australian computer scientist and inventor may be the mysterious founder of Bitcoin. Craig Steven Wright—a 45-year-old Australian computer scientist and inventor who was outed against his will and with dubious evidence as Mr Nakamoto in December last year—now claims he is the real Satoshi. On May 2nd he published a blog post offering what he says is cryptographic proof that he is indeed the creator of bitcoin. But proving it is somewhat tricky.
The recent Budget announcement included info on ending NBN Co funding. The Federal Government has revealed that it has put together a special taskforce to determine how to fund its modified rollout of the National Broadband Network, with the project’s costs ballooning and the public purse running dry of funds to support it. More info here.
Straight off the pages of a cyberpunk novel, Sony (and Google and Samsung) have recently patents for smart contact lenses. Potential misuses aside, the technology behind these new 'smart eyes' is actually incredibly cool. The patent describes contact lenses that can 'sense' when you're making a deliberate blink rather than a natural one, and respond by turning the recording on or off.
John sent in this enormous Lego Star Destroyer project.
Wednesday Morning Reviews
(0 Comments)
(link)
Wednesday, 4-May-2016 10:05:45 (GMT +10) - by Agg
|
Motherboard & CPU:
ECS Z170-Claymore Motherboard on PCPerspective.
AMD A10-7860K 65W APU on TechPowerUp.
Input Etc:
CM Storm Quick Fire XTi Gaming Keyboard on TechPowerUp.
Corsair M65 PRO RGB mouse on Vortez.
ASUS ROG Spatha mouse on Vortez.
GAMDIAS' Hermes RGB mech gaming keyboard on Techgage.
Audio Visual:
Phiaton BT 110 Bluetooth Headset on BenchmarkReviews.
Pittasoft BlackVue DR650GW-2CH Car Dashcam on NikKTech.
JBL Xtreme Portable Bluetooth Speaker on Tweaktown.
SteelSeries Siberia 350 Gaming Headset on MadShrimps.
Portable & Prebuilt:
Intel NUC NUC6i5SYK Skylake Mini PC on LegitReviews.
InFocus M560 Smartphone on MadShrimps.
Storage:
LaCie P9227 Porsche Design Mobile Drive 4TB USB C on Tweaktown.
MyDigitalSSD Bullet Proof 5 Eco M.2 SSD Review (480GB) on TheSSDReview.
Plextor M7V M.2 SATA SSD on Modders-Inc.
Lexar 633x microSDXC Card Review (200GB) on TheSSDReview.
Intel 750 Series 400GB NVMe Solid State Drive on ThinkComputers.
Misc:
Turris' VR Chair on TechReport.
Chieftec Navitas 1000W GPM-1000C PSU on OCAholic.
Anonabox Pro Tor And VPN Router on HotHardware.
EK P360 Performance Liquid Cooling on Guru3D.
Mouse/Keyboard:
Fnatic Gear Flick G1 Optical Mouse on APH Networks
Corsair K70 RGB RAPIDFIRE Keyboard on Benchmark Reviews
Corsair Gaming K70 Rapidfire RGB Gaming Keyboard on eTeknix
Corsair Gaming K70 RGB RAPIDFIRE Mechanical Keyboard on Legit Reviews
Corsair K70 RGB RAPIDFIRE Mechanical Gaming Keyboard on TweakTown
Videocard:
XFX R9 Fury Triple Dissipation on OCC
AMD A10-7890K APU on Neoseeker
AMD Radeon Pro Duo on PC Perspective
Asus GTX 950 2 GB (no power connector) on Tech Powerup
Cooling:
Noctua NH-C14S CPU Cooler on OCC
Silverstone Argon AR06 CPU Cooler on Modders-Inc
Cryorig A40 Ultimate on Vortez
Thermalright Macho 120 SBM CPU Cooler on NikKTech
Cryorig M9i CPU Cooler on ThinkComputers.org
Audio:
Creative SoundBlaster X Pro-Gaming H5 Headset on eTeknix
Kingston HyperX Cloud Revolver Headset on Modders-Inc
Razer Leviathan Mini on Vortez
Tesoro Kuven A1 Pro Real 5.1 Surround Sound Gaming Headset on NikKTech
1MORE Swarovski Crystal Piston Earphones on TweakTown
Creative Sound Blaster Roar Pro Bluetooth Portable Speaker on TweakTown
Case:
InWin 909 E-ATX Aluminium & Tempered Glass Chassis on eTeknix
Phanteks Enthoo EVOLV ATX Tempered Glass Edition Case on Hardware Asylum
Lian Li PC-J60 on Ocaholic
Riotoro CR1280 Prism Full Tower Case on Neoseeker
NZXT Manta Mini-ITX Enclosure on PC Perspective
Thermaltake Versa N21 Case on ThinkComputers.org
Gaming PC/Laptop:
Cyberpower Infinity X55 Pro Gaming PC on eTeknix
Intel NUC Kit NUC5PGYH Braswell Mini PC on Missing Remote
MSI GL62 6QF-628 Gaming Notebook (GTX 960M) on Tech Powerup
Motherboard:
Gigabyte X170 Extreme ECC and Intel Xeon E3-1230 v5 Motherboard on Guru3D
Gigabyte X99P-SLI (Intel X99) Motherboard on TweakTown
Biostar Racing Z170GT7 (Intel LGA-1151) on Tech Powerup
Storage:
Asustor AS3204T NAS on Guru3D
Patriot SuperSonic Magnum 2 256GB USB 3.1 Gen 1 Flash Drive on NikKTech
ADATA i-Memory UE710 64GB Lightning OTG Flash Drive on TweakTown
Thecus N5810 Consumer NAS on TweakTown
Crucial MX200 250 GB SSD on OC Inside
PSU:
Antec High Current Gamer M 750 W (HCG-750M) PSU on Hardware Insights
SilverStone Strider Titanium ST80F-TI 800W Power Supply on APH Networks
Misc:
Blackbird VX-2SSD USB 3.1 Type-C Media Dock on Legit Reviews
Fitbit Blaze Smart Fitness Watch on TweakTown
Elgato Eve Energy Wireless Power Sensor & Switch on TechnologyX
LG V10 SmartPhone on LanOC
G.SKILL TridentZ 32GB 3200MHz DDR4 (F4-3200C15D-32GTZ) Memory Kit on Madshrimps
ASUS MG24UQ and MG28UQ IPS 4K FreeSync Monitor on eTeknix
Linksys LGS116P 16-Port Business Desktop Gigabit PoE+ Switch on NikKTech
Dark Souls III PC on TweakTown
|
|
Advertisement:
All original content copyright James Rolfe.
All rights reserved. No reproduction allowed without written permission.
Interested in advertising on OCAU? Contact us for info.
|
|
