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August 2018 |
Around 10am tomorrow we will be doing some more forum maintenance, so don't panic if things get a bit weird/unavailable around then. Thanks to Axe and Sam this week! The last one might be NSFW..
     
     
     
     
     
     
Friday Afternoon
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Friday, 31-August-2018 14:32:32 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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There's a new Windows 10 vulnerability, but it requires local access to implement. A security researcher has publicly disclosed the details of a previously unknown zero-day vulnerability in the Microsoft's Windows operating system that could help a local user or malicious program obtain system privileges on the targeted machine. And guess what? The zero-day flaw has been confirmed working on a "fully-patched 64-bit Windows 10 system." I don't think there's a patch yet, but there's more info here.
TPG and Vodafone are merging in Australia. The merged group will be owned 49.9 per cent by TPG shareholders and 50.1 per cent by VHA shareholders: Vodafone and Hutchison Telecommunications Australia. The new ASX-listed group will be named ‘TPG Telecom Limited’ and have approximately 20 per cent of the Australian mobile market share and 22 per cent of the fixed line broadband market share. Together, the new company would have some 6.4 million mobile subscribers and 1.9 million fixed line broadband customers. Assuming ACCC approve, of course.
HotHardware have an interview with Tom Petersen from NVIDIA. Yesterday afternoon, we had the pleasure of chatting with Tom Petersen (TAP), NVIDIA's Director of Technical Marketing and Distinguished Engineer. Given that NVIDIA's next-generation graphics cards are on everyone's mind these days, it should come as no surprise that we went straight into exploring the Turing architecture that underpins the GeForce RTX 2070, RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 Ti. We peppered Tom with questions on what to expect from Turing's various new technologies like Ray Tracing, Tensor cores, DLSS, and the expected performance lift over NVIDIA's previous gen GeForce GTX 10 products.
Phoronix look into the performance cost of the recent Meltdown/Spectre patches on Linux. For getting an overall look at the performance impact of these mitigation techniques I tested three Intel Xeon systems and two AMD EPYC systems as well as a virtual machine on each side for seeing how the default Linux 4.19 kernel performance -- with relevant mitigations applied -- to that of an unmitigated kernel.
OCInside report from a gaming fair in Cologne, Germany. Of course we visited gamescom again and published this gamescom 2018 report on OCinside.de with more than 200 gamescom pictures and videos on several pages of current gaming hardware, current games, gaming seats, cosplayers, VR glasses and even without DCMM some casemods. You should not miss this!
For maximum nerditude, how about a driveable Lego Bugatti Chiron? Wilder yet, this thing moves. It’s not going to keep up with an actual Chiron with its 250+ mph top speeds, obviously – but the company says it got the model up to around 13 miles per hour for the video above, and says that it theoretically tops out at around 19 miles per hour. Not bad for a car made out of toy parts and powered by a bunch of plastic motors. Speaking of which, this thing has over two thousand Lego Power Function motors in a massive array, giving it a total theoretical horsepower of 5.3. 24 motor “packs”, each made up of 96 individual Lego motors, hook into a steel chain that drives the wheels.
Friday Afternoon Reviews
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Friday, 31-August-2018 13:49:07 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Motherboard & CPU:
Asus ROG Maximus X Hero on LanOC.
$400 12-core Threadripper: But Is It Worth It? on TechSpot.
Intel boosts ultrabooks and fanless PCs with more eighth-gen CPUs on TechReport.
Portable & Prebuilt:
GeChic On-Lap 1102H Portable External Display on Guru3D.
2018 Acer Aspire Z 24 AIO Desktop Preview on TechARP.
ASUS ZenBook Pro 15 (UX580) Price, Features + Videos Revealed on TechARP.
Cases:
Silverstone Redline RL07 on TechPowerUp.
Lian Li Strimer on Vortez.
Input Etc:
Cherry KC 1068 Keyboard on TechPowerUp.
Fnatic miniSTREAK RGB Keyboard on BenchmarkReviews.
Storage:
Corsair Force Series MP300 SSD on Vortez.
Toshiba XG6 NVMe SSD Review: BiCS Flash Puts Up 3GB/Sec Performance on HotHardware.
Toshiba XG6 SSD on Tweaktown.
Samsung X5 Portable SSD (Thunderbolt 3 NVMe) on Guru3D.
Misc:
Nest Hello Video Doorbell on MissingRemote.
Corsair Vengeance RGB PRO DDR4-4000 16GB memory on Tweaktown.
Asus' ROG Rapture, Blue Cave, and Lyra Trio wireless routers reviewed on TechReport.
Wednesday Afternoon Reviews
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Wednesday, 29-August-2018 16:29:38 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Motherboard & CPU:
ASUS ROG Maximus X Formula Motherboard on HWAsylum.
ASRock B450M Pro4 Motherboard on FunkyKit.
Storage:
QNAP TVS-873E-4G NAS Server on NikKTech.
Samsung X5 Portable SSD on Vortez.
Samsung Portable SSD X5 on LegitReviews.
Samsung X5 Thunderbolt 3 Portable SSD on Tweaktown.
Samsung's Portable SSD X5 on TechReport.
Samsung X5 Thunderbolt 3 Portable SSD on HotHardware.
Asustor AS4004T 10 Gigabit Consumer NAS on Guru3D.
Mushkin Source 500 GB SSD on TechPowerUp.
Crucial MX500 250GB M.2 Type 2280 SSD on MadShrimps.
Samsung SSD 970 PRO Solid State Drive on BenchmarkReviews.
Misc:
2018 HP OMEN 15 + OMEN 17 Gaming Laptops Revealed on TechARP.
Cougar Conquer Essence Mini Tower case on Modders-Inc.
Beyerdynamic MMX 300 2nd Generation headset on TechPowerUp.
Tuesday Morning
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Tuesday, 28-August-2018 00:24:16 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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A team featuring an Australian member has won almost US$11.2M in a Dota 2 tournament. This is the second straight year in which an Australian has featured in the Grand Finals of The International, despite our local scene being relatively small. Sydney's Damien 'kpii' Chok earned second place with Chinese team Newbee in 2017. His team slumped to a 13th-16th placed finish this year.
Unfortunately that news has been overshadowed by a shooting at a video game tournament in Florida. A gunman has opened fire at an online video game tournament that was being livestreamed from a Florida mall, killing multiple people and sending many others to hospitals, authorities said.
Tech Report have an interesting article about mirrorless cameras taking over from SLRs. Nikon's introduction of its Z6 and Z7 cameras might make it the most recent company to hop on board the professional mirrorless-camera bandwagon, but the venerable Japanese firm is hardly the first to take a crack at cutting the flipping mirror of single-lens-reflex cameras out of the optical path.
Huawei are not happy about having been banned from the 5G rollout in Australia. Huawei has now indicated that it might seek to challenge the official ban through the courts. "We will continue to engage with the Australian Government, and in accordance with Australian law and relevant international conventions, we will take all possible measures to protect our legal rights and interests," the company's global headquarters said in a statement.
Fans of our Retro & Arcade forum might enjoy this article about C64 Month. Released in August 1982, the Commodore 64 (C64) was the first computer many Australians ever used or owned, going on to become the highest selling single computer model of all time. More than 30 years later, the revolutionary C64 still has a huge global fan club who flock to social media each August on the anniversary of its release.
Matt sent in this video about virtual land for sale. Investors are spending real money to buy land in a new city that only exists in virtual reality. Buyers can build whatever they want on their plots in Decentraland. Many hope to make a profit trading goods and services in the virtual world's own crypto currency. But will Decentraland be an online utopia or a cyber slum? Sounds like Second Life with updated buzzwords.
If you fly your drone in an illegal manner and then post your photos on social media, you might be caught by CASA.. or maybe not. CASA has openly warned drone users they will use social media to help prosecute illegal activity. However, thousands of illegally-shot Australian drone photos remain proudly posted to Instagram pages. "The challenge is proving who was flying it at the time and we have used social media for that, but it can be difficult," Mr Gibson said.
Monday Night Reviews
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Monday, 27-August-2018 22:52:33 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Storage:
Mushkin Source 500GB Solid State Drive on ThinkComputers.
Kingston UV500 240GB (mSATA) Solid State Drive on APHNetworks.
SanDisk's Extreme Portable 1 TB SSD on TechReport.
Motherboard & CPU:
ASRock Fatal1ty B450 Gaming-ITX/ac Motherboard on FunkyKit.
Intel i7-8086K on LanOC.
Gigabyte Aorus B450 I Pro Wifi on Guru3D.
Software:
Strange Brigade Benchmarked on TechSpot.
Code masters F1 2018 Graphics card performance analysis on Guru3D.
Portable & Prebuilt:
Honor Play In-Depth Review – Mobile Gaming FTW! on TechARP.
Azulle Inspire Fanless Intel Kaby Lake Barebone Mini PC on PCPerspective.
Misc:
SteelSeries Arctis Pro + GameDAC Headset on FunkyKit.
Home8 Video Verified Security Alarm System on NikKTech.
Antec HCG 750W Bronze Power Supply on OCInside.
Elgato Eve: Smart Home with Apple HomeKit on Tweaktown.
Swiftech H240 X3 All in One Cooler on Modders-Inc.
There's a new Prime Minister? It must be Friday. Thanks to Strange1 and Phil this week!
     
     
     
     
     
     
Friday Afternoon
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Friday, 24-August-2018 14:51:38 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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NBN Co will have a new CEO next month. NBN Co’s chief financial officer Stephen Rue will take over as the government-owned company’s chief executive from 1 September. Rue replaces Bill Morrow as CEO, who revealed in April that he planned to step down. He has also been appointed executive director of NBN Co's board.
Meanwhile Huawei and ZTE have been banned (again?) from Australian 5G rollouts. Huawei says the government has informed the company that it, along with fellow Chinese telecommunications equipment provider ZTE, has been banned from providing 5G technology to Australia's telcos. The government this morning released a statement saying it had provided 5G security guidance to Australian telecommunications carriers.
SiliconAngel sent word of a strange clause in the EULA for some Intel microcode patches, banning benchmarking of what is thought to be a performance-affecting patch. "You will not, and will not allow any third party to ... publish or provide any software benchmark or comparison test results," Intel's new agreement states. However they seem to have immediately backpedalled and allowed benchmarking again when called out on it.
Simon sent in this video of a watercooled server by der8auer. der8auer's liquid cooled 64-core dual Epyc server that he helped create with German company Caseking is pretty damn cool. It's also completely impractical and incredibly fast. Seems to be spraying some kind of fluid across the heatsinks?
Friday Afternoon Reviews
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Friday, 24-August-2018 14:43:15 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Storage:
ADATA XPG SX950U 240GB SSD on Guru3D.
Toshiba RC100 240GB Solid State Drive on APHNetworks.
HyperX Gaming microSD Card on LegitReviews.
Kingston UV500 480GB M.2 SSD on NikKTech.
Corsair MP300 M2 NVMe 480GB SSD on Guru3D.
Motherboard & CPU:
MSI B450i Gaming Plus AC Motherboard on ThinkComputers.
GIGABYTE Z370 Aorus Ultra Gaming WIFI-OP Motherboard on Tweaktown.
EVGA Z370 Classified K (Intel Z370) Motherboard on Tweaktown.
MSI B450 Gaming Pro Carbon AC on Vortez.
Input Etc:
Razer's Ornata Chroma gaming keyboard on TechReport.
Logitech PRO Wireless Gaming Mouse on TechPowerUp.
FNATIC miniStreak Gaming Keyboard on ThinkComputers.
Portable & Prebuilt:
Huawei MateBook D Review: A Sleek, Attractive AMD Ryzen Powered Ultrabook on HotHardware.
ASUS TUF Gaming FX505 Gaming Laptop Preview on TechARP.
ASUS ROG Zephyrus S (GX531) Gaming Laptop on TechARP.
ECS LIVA Z2 Mini-PC on TechPowerUp.
Samsung Galaxy Note9 on TechARP.
Memory:
ADATA XPG Spectrix D41 DDR4-3200 32GB Memory Kit on Tweaktown.
Patriot Viper RGB DDR4 3200 MHz on TechPowerUp.
Misc:
Reeven Twila RGB LED Light Strip on BenchmarkReviews.
DJ Mavic Air drone on HotHardware.
SteelSeries Arctis Pro + GameDAC and Arctis Pro Wireless headsets on LanOC.
Cooler Master MasterBox TD500 mid-tower on Vortez.
Cooler Master MasterLiquid ML360R RGB CPU cooler on TechPowerUp.
Interesting Forum Threads
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Wednesday, 22-August-2018 15:45:58 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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You can keep on top of things in the forums via the recent activity feed or the new posts page. To see activity in threads you subscribe to, check out your latest alerts. Also, the alert system is a little different in our new xenForo platform than earlier on vBulletin. So, it's worth checking your watched threads list from time to time in case you missed an alert.
Meanwhile, here's a snapshot of what people are discussing in the forums:
GUIDE - How to set up PC Fans & Pumps for Minimum Temps and Noise in Overclocking & Hardware.
VSS Writers in W2K12R2 causing backup issues in Business & Enterprise Computing.
What expensive indie SFF case is the best? in Portable & Small Form Factor.
Solved: Linux and WiFi : PCIe or USB options that ARE compatible please? in Other Operating Systems.
SSD's - How much does yours write per day? in Storage & Backup.
Retro Let's Play: "Earthbound" aka "Mother 2" (1994) in Retro & Arcade.
Retro Let's Play: "Devil May Cry" (2001) in Retro & Arcade.
New Monster Boy & Wonder Boy III remake in Retro & Arcade.
Retroarch Runahead - low latency on emulators in Retro & Arcade.
Genre-defining retro games in Retro & Arcade.
Retro Pickups - Japan in Retro & Arcade.
On Today's Episode of "I Am Not Good With Computer"... How I USB? in Troubleshooting Help.
Pokemon Go For IOS/Android in Mobile Phones & Devices.
PC Caught Fire in Photography & Video.
Hasselblad H6D-400c (400 megapickles) in Photography & Video.
Does the modern house really need light switches? in Lifestyle.
New Star Trek with Patrick Stewart in Entertainment.
Music: Retro Wave in Entertainment.
What Podcast are you listening to in Entertainment.
New Nürburgring Nordschleife Lap Record in Motoring.
The Rogue Tesla Mechanic Resurrecting Salvaged Cars in Motoring.
LED H7 Headlights in Motoring: Technical.
Apple becomes world's first trillion-dollar company in Career, Education & Finance.
Australians who won’t unlock their phones could face 10 years in jail in Current Events.
Giving Up Smoking in The Pub.
GeForce RTX Series
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Tuesday, 21-August-2018 13:20:13 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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As expected, NVIDIA announced their new GeForce GPUs last night. Powered by the new NVIDIA Turing™ GPU architecture and the revolutionary RTX platform, RTX graphics cards bring together real-time ray tracing, artificial intelligence, and programmable shading. This is a whole new way to experience games. They follow the 10x0 series naming with 2080, 2080 Ti and 2070 models - the highest-spec RTX 2080 Ti looks like it will cost nearly $2k on the ground in Australia.
Anyway, there's no reviews yet, but specs and more info on LegitReviews, TechARP (with Quadro RTX info here) and Anandtech.
Discussion continues in this thread and there's a new thread for this series here.
There's been a lot of leaks and rumours about the new NVIDIA GPUs over the last few weeks, but we should finally have the facts soon. NVIDIA have a twitch stream running which will apparently be making the official announcement in under 6 hours from now. Plenty of discussion in this thread in our Video Cards forum.
An Australian teen is in hot water after apparently hacking Apple. The story became more interesting when it was found that he saved all the instructions for hacking and the hacked data in a folder named “hacky hack hack.” The hacker in question has pleaded guilty in the court, and the magistrate has decided to announce the sentence by next week because of the complexities involved in the case.
Google are using AI to cool datacentres. Now, Google says, it has effectively handed control to the algorithm, which is managing cooling at several of its data centers all by itself. “It’s the first time that an autonomous industrial control system will be deployed at this scale, to the best of our knowledge,” says Mustafa Suleyman, head of applied AI at DeepMind, the London-based artificial-intelligence company Google acquired in 2014.
If the crypto-fuelled price rises on GPUs have annoyed you, NVIDIA may have good news - that they expect to no longer make any money from that market. Although Nvidia’s report said the company was expecting a decline in GPU sales and “cryptocurrency-specific products” from a peak of $289 million last quarter to about $100 million this quarter, the actual revenue for its crypto-specific products ended up being a mere $18 million. That’s a 93 percent decrease in just three months. “Whereas we had previously anticipated cryptocurrency to be meaningful for the year, we are now projecting no contributions going forward,” Nvidia’s report reads. Personally I dabbled a bit in Nicehash but stopped a few months ago.
ARM have revealed a new CPU roadmap, showing plans to tackle AMD and Intel in the mobile market. We have been given a roadmap of the next two generations of products from the company that are intended to compete in not only the cellphone market, but also in the laptop market. ARM has thrown down the gauntlet and their sights are set on Intel and AMD. Not only is ARM showing us the codenames for these products, but also the relative performance.
Techgage report from SIGGRAPH 2018 in Vancouver. SIGGRAPH is the place to be if your job revolves around graphics technology. You not only get to see the latest graphics tech up close, you also get to peer into the future. You of course also get to refine your craft by keeping-up on cutting-edge technologies and techniques.
Meanwhile, GamingNexus sent a self-described "clueless noob" to the Call of Duty World Championship. From what I have gleaned listening to my son play online matches, Call of Duty fans are A) an average of fifteen years old, B) insanely cruel, and C) super racist. I am hoping to have the opportunity to drop the dad hammer on some rabid pipsqueaks that I overhear being mean to each other, safe in the knowledge that I can use my press pass to scurry away to safety if they turn on me.
SiliconAngel sent word of a remote Spectre attack. Honestly it's hard to keep track of these things lately. Until now, Spectre attacks have required malicious code to be running on a vulnerable machine to potentially extract passwords, keys, and other secrets, from the memory of other software on the computer. Now, here comes NetSpectre: a technique for potentially extracting private information from another device on the network without requiring any exploit code on the target box, albeit exfiltrating it rather slowly. There are potentially billions of computers, gadgets, and gizmos at some degree of risk.
Monday Evening Reviews
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Monday, 20-August-2018 18:23:45 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Motherboard & CPU:
Linux vs. Windows Benchmark: Threadripper 2990WX vs. Core i9-7980XE Tested on TechSpot.
A Look At The Windows vs. Linux Scaling Performance Up To 64 Threads With The AMD 2990WX on Phoronix.
Portable & Prebuilt:
Acer Predator Helios 300 gaming laptop on Vortez.
Shuttle XPC Slim Barebone DH10J on MadShrimps.
ASUS ROG Strix SCAR II (GL704) Gaming Laptop Sneak Preview on TechARP.
Input Etc:
ROCCAT Vulcan 120 AIMO Mechanical Keyboard on APHNetworks.
Fnatic Flick 2 Optical Gaming Mouse on Tweaktown.
COUGAR ULTIMUS RGB Keyboard on Funkykit.
Cases:
Thermaltake Level 20 GT RGB Plus Full Tower on NikKTech.
Azza Storm 6000 on TechPowerUp.
Power Supply:
NZXT E850 Digital Power Supply on PCPerspective.
Lian-Li Strimer RGB power cable thingy on Guru3D.
Misc:
Cougar Fortress Gaming Backpack on FunkyKit.
Corsair H100i Pro RGB watercooler on Vortez.
Friday again!
     
     
     
     
     
     
Friday Afternoon Reviews
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Friday, 17-August-2018 14:19:41 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Motherboard & CPU:
Windows Server vs. Linux Performance On The Threadripper 2990WX on Phoronix.
ASRock B450M Pro4 on Vortez.
AMD's Ryzen Threadripper 2950X CPU on TechReport.
Input Etc:
Gamdias Hades M1 Gaming Mouse on BenchmarkReviews.
iKBC CD108 BT Keyboard on TechPowerUp.
Storage:
iStorage diskAshur 2 1TB PIN Authenticated Portable USB 3.1 Hard Drive on NikKTech.
HP S600 240GB SATA SSD on LegitReviews.
Kingston UV500/480G SSD on Modders-Inc.
Cooling:
Corsair H100i PRO RGB Liquid CPU Cooler on ThinkComputers.
Arctic Accelero Xtreme IV GPU Cooler on HotHardware.
Raijintek Orcus 240 AIO cooler on Guru3D.
Misc:
Cougar Armor S Gaming Chair on TechPowerUp.
TRENDnet TWC-L10 Wi-Fi Light Bulb Security Camera on Tweaktown.
Asus ROG Swift PG27UQ Review: 4K 144Hz HDR Is Finally Here on TechSpot.
Samsung Galaxy Note 9 on HotHardware.
Thursday Afternoon
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Thursday, 16-August-2018 17:09:12 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Yet another Intel CPU vulnerability has been uncovered - this time it's called Foreshadow. The researchers reported these findings to Intel earlier this year, and the company’s own analysis into the causes of the vulnerability led to the discovery of a new variant of Foreshadow, called Foreshadow-NG. This particular variant is theoretically capable of bypassing the earlier fixes introduced to protect computers against Meltdown and Spectre — potentially re-exposing millions of computers globally to attacks. Intel has since release patches and updates to mitigate all varients of Foreshadow. However, more research will need to be done to understand the full impact of the Foreshadow-NG variant. More info here on Redhat, and there's a Windows 10 patch already. Discussion here.
NVIDIA have unveiled their new next-gen Turing GPU architecture at SIGGRAPH 2018. The next generation of NVIDIA’s GPU designs, Turing will be incorporating a number of new features and is rolling out this year. While the focus of today’s announcements is on the professional visualization (ProViz) side of matters, we expect to see this used in other upcoming NVIDIA products as well. And by the same token, today’s reveal should not be considered an exhaustive listing of all of Turing’s features.
There's a bit of an uproar about Google storing location data, even if you turn that feature off. Google says that will prevent the company from remembering where you’ve been. Google’s support page on the subject states: “You can turn off Location History at any time. With Location History off, the places you go are no longer stored.” That isn’t true. Even with Location History paused, some Google apps automatically store time-stamped location data without asking. (It’s possible, although laborious, to delete it.)
The Government have provided info on how they plan to target encryption. “The Australian government has no interest in undermining systems that protect the fundamental security of communications,” it said. However, the government plans to compel a range of companies that make up end-to-end communications services "to enable access to a particular service, particular device or particular item of software". The targeted provider must come up with a method "which would not systemically weaken these products across the market." So a magic backdoor that can only be exploited by the good guys. What could possibly go wrong?
Wednesday Afternoon Reviews
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Wednesday, 15-August-2018 15:27:31 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Motherboard & CPU:
AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2950X and 2990WX on PC Perspective.
Mega-Tasking Test: AMD Threadripper 2990WX Heavy Multitasking on TechSpot.
AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX Processor on LegitReviews.
AMD Ryzen Threadripper 16-core 2950X & 32-core 2990WX Processors on Techgage.
BIOSTAR Racing X470GT8 AM4 Motherboard on MadShrimps.
Audio Visual:
Etymotic ER3XR in-ear headphones on TechPowerUp.
Searching for the right poolside portable speaker on LanOC.
BlitzWolf BW-ANC1 Active Noise Cancelling Bluetooth Earphones on NikKTech.
Reolink Argus 2 Wire-Free 1080p Security Camera on NikKTech.
Asus RoG Swift PG27UQ - 4K G-SYNC 144Hz Gaming Monitor on Guru3D.
Input Etc:
SteelSeries' Rival 600 gaming mouse on TechReport.
CORSAIR STRAFE RGB MK.2 Mechanical Gaming Keyboard on NikKTech.
Corsair K70 MK.2 RGB Mechanical Keyboard on BenchmarkReviews.
Fnatic miniSTREAK Mechanical Gaming Keyboard on Tweaktown.
Fnatic STREAK keyboard on Vortez.
EasySMX ESM-9013 Wireless Gamepad on APHNetworks.
Portable & Prebuilt:
Moto Z3 Play Review: Have Mods, Will Travel on HotHardware.
HP Envy x360 13 laptop on TechSpot.
Misc:
Bond Home Smart Ceiling Fan Controller on BigBruin.
Netgear Nighthawk Pro Gaming XR500 router on Vortez.
Titus&Wayne Luft Qi Filterless Air Purifier Video Review on APHNetworks.
Mushkin Pilot NVMe SSD Review - The American SM2262 on Tweaktown.
Ballistix Elite 32GB Kit (4 x 8GB) DDR4-3466 on Modders-Inc.
Enermax Platimax D.F. 750W 80+ Platinum PSU on FunkyKit.
The New 3GB GeForce GTX 1050: Good Product or Misleading Product? on TechSpot.
Corsair Carbide SPEC-06 RGB case on Vortez.
Forum Projects
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Tuesday, 14-August-2018 18:44:43 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Here's some reviews and projects from the forums. Another good way to see what's going on at any moment in the forums is to hit the New Posts link. Enjoy!
Tuesday Afternoon
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Tuesday, 14-August-2018 14:57:22 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Enthusiast-friendly PC case manufacturer CaseLabs has shut down, laying the blame squarely at the feet of recent tariffs imposed by the US Government. We are very sad to announce that CaseLabs and its parent company will be closing permanently. We have been forced into bankruptcy and liquidation. The tariffs have played a major role raising prices by almost 80% (partly due to associated shortages), which cut deeply into our margins. The default of a large account added greatly to the problem. It hit us at the worst possible time. We reached out for a possible deal that would allow us to continue on and persevere through these difficult times, but in the end, it didn’t happen. Discussion here.
Australia now has a National Data Commissioner. She has the difficult task of supervising the public data system at a time when projects like the publication of de-identified health records that researchers used to re-identify patients, and more recently, the My Health Record, have damaged public trust. The role will see her find ways to promote greater use of data while building trust in the government’s capabilities in that area.
TechPowerUp compared 15 video cards in the game Monster Hunter: World. Monster Hunter: World brings the epic fight against huge enemies to the PC platform. The port is well done, and runs well, especially on AMD graphics cards. Our performance review looks at this in detail, using 15 graphics cards. We also investigated VRAM usage and CPU core scaling.
HardOCP compared video cards too, with a NVIDIA GPU generational performance analysis. The topic of review is being divided into multiple parts so we can best facilitate testing. We are covering a wide range of GPUs, games, and game settings. We are covering NVIDIA and AMD, starting with NVIDIA. The purpose of this series is to find out how GPUs have evolved in terms of real-world gaming performance over the last five years. It should tell us if the upgrading we’ve done over the years actually means something and how much it actually means in terms of performance.
Phoronix meanwhile compared Windows 10 vs Linux on the new Threadripper 2990WX CPU. When receiving the Threadripper 2 review launch kit, included with the bundle was a Samsung 970 EVO 500GB NVMe SSD and on there was a fresh Windows 10 installation setup by AMD. When seeing that, prior to wiping that, I ran some benchmarks of that Windows 10 Pro Build 17134 setup and compared it to a few Linux distributions on this same system while maintaining the hardware's configuration and BIOS settings.
This mind-bending article details how someone found a hardcoded "god mode" in 2004-era VIA CPUs, thanks metamorphosis. Domas followed the "trail of breadcrumbs," as he put it, from one patent to another and figured out that certain VIA chipsets were covered by the patents. Then he collected many old VIA C3 machines and spent weeks fuzzing code. He even built a testing rig consisting of seven Nehemiah-based thin clients hooked up to a power relay that would power-cycle the machines every couple of minutes, because his fuzzing attempts would usually crash the systems. After three weeks, he had 15 GB of log data — and the instructions to flip on the backdoor in the hidden RISC chip.
It's good to see the demo scene is still going strong - here's the winners from the 2018 Assembly contest. More info here.
AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2000 Series Reviews
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Tuesday, 14-August-2018 03:08:25 (GMT +10) - by booj
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Threadripper 2990WX & 2950X:
Anandtech
Bit-Tech
Hot Hardware
PC Perspective
Techgage
Techspot
Toms Hardware
TweakTown
Threadripper 2990WX:
Guru3D
Hexus
Overclock 3D
PC World
Phoronix
The Tech Report
WCCFtech
Threadripper 2950X:
Guru3D
Hardware Canucks
TechPowerUp
Tomorrow between 10am and noon Sydney time we will be doing some upgrades behind the scenes which may make the forums unavailable from time to time. So don't panic if things get a bit weird. In the meantime, here's some Misc Pics:
     
     
     
     
     
     
Friday Afternoon
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Friday, 10-August-2018 14:33:06 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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A Sydney man is possibly facing prison time over 3D Printed Guns. A Sydney man who made replica guns with a 3D printer and advertised them online is facing possible jail time but will have to wait several weeks before learning his fate. Sicen Sun was arrested in 2017 after he advertised one of his imitation weapons for sale for $1 million - negotiable - on a Facebook buy, swap and sell group. He's since pleaded guilty to charges including possessing a digital blueprint for the manufacture of firearms, manufacturing a pistol without a licence permit, and possessing an unauthorised pistol.
Tweaktown have a Ryzen (2000-Series) Overclocking Guide. Happen to own a Ryzen CPU and wondered how to overclock it? We have your back, here is an easy to understand Ryzen overclocking guide.
Meanwhile TechSpot look back at One Year with Threadripper. As the chief hardware writer on TechSpot and video reviewer/creator on HUB, I often get asked about my own PC and what I choose to use as my daily driver, so today I’m going to discuss my experiences with AMD's Ryzen Threadripper 1950X and the supporting X399 platform. Since I transitioned over to Threadripper about a year ago and we have 2nd-gen Threadripper landing very shortly, I thought what better time to discuss my experience so far.
IBM have a 19TB NVMe SSD on the way, for enterprise use. The new SSDs for IBM's FlashSystem have a usable storage capacity of up to 19.2TB of 64L 3D TLC NAND flash memory, making them some of the highest-density TLC-based drives. The drives use a 20-channel NAND interface and a four-lane PCIe 4.0 host interface that can operate in dual-port 2+2 mode. IBM's controller also provides optional transparent compression with a typical 3:1 compression ratio, and FIPS 140 compliant encryption.
More likely to appear in a desktop PC near you soon are these 4TB SSDs from Samsung. A couple of years ago, Samsung launched its first 4TB solid state drives, which might as well not have existed given their $1,499 asking price. Today, the company announces the commencement of mass production of a more — though it’s too early to know exactly how much more — affordable variant with its 4TB QLC SSDs.
I've never thought about using an aftermarket clipboard manager, but TechSpot compared 12 of them. Clipboard managers make it much easier to re-enter text or anything else that you've recently copied and pasted, adding an array of new capabilities to the default Windows clipboard. Although they differ in features, the typical clipboard manager automatically saves text, images and other items as they are copied to your clipboard, displaying them in a list-style GUI that makes it simple to re-copy or paste something later.
The University of Melbourne have looked into whether or not gamers are the issue when it comes to NBN bandwidth. The head of Australia’s National Broadband Network, NBN Co, has named ‘gamers’ as a problem for the national internet system and identified them as a major cause of congestion on the fixed wireless network. But these polarising comments do little to explain the nature of competitive online gaming in Australia. So are gamers national sporting heroes, or a thorn in the side of everyday internet users?
Friday Afternoon Reviews
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Friday, 10-August-2018 13:23:57 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Input Etc:
Fnatic CLUTCH 2 & FOCUS 2 mouse and pad on Vortez.
Input Club's WhiteFox mechanical keyboard on TechReport.
Tt eSPORTS Nemesis Switch Optical RGB on TechPowerUp.
Storage:
QNAP TS-473 4-Bay NAS on TechPowerUp.
Samsung SSD 970 EVO on BenchmarkReviews.
ASUSTOR AS1004T V2 NAS Server on NikKTech.
HP Portable SSD P800 Review - High-Capacity and Speed on Tweaktown.
Misc:
CORSAIR H100i PRO RGB Liquid CPU Cooler on FunkyKit.
EZVIZ 4-Camera 4K Security System with 2TB HDD NVR on BigBruin.
iMovR Lander Desk on ThinkComputers.
MSI B450i Gaming PLUS AC motherboard on Guru3D.
MSI Radeon RX 570/580 MECH 2 video cards on Tweaktown.
Seasonic PRIME Ultra 850W PSU on HardOCP.
Wednesday Night Reviews
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Wednesday, 8-August-2018 21:37:47 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Audio Visual:
EasySMX COOL 2000 headset on Vortez.
Divoom Timebox Smart Music Clock on NikKTech.
Motherboard & CPU:
ASRock Fatal1ty H370 Performance Motherboard on FunkyKit.
ASUS Prime X470-PRO Motherboard on ThinkComputers.
Cases:
Cooler Master MasterBox Q300L and Q300P on OCInside.
Phanteks Eclipse P350X on ThinkComputers.
Cooling:
Deepcool Gamer Storm MF120 RGB fan on Vortez.
ID-Cooling Dashflow 360 radiator on TechPowerUp.
Storage:
Crucial MX500 1TB 2.5" 3D NAND SSD on ModSynergy.
Intel SSD 660p SSD Review - Consumer QLC Debut on Tweaktown.
Buttered With Btrfs – Synology DS1618+ 6-bay SMB NAS Review on TechGage.
Intel SSD 660p 1TB SSD Review With QLC NAND Flash on LegitReviews.
Best M.2 SATA SSD - Samsung 860 EVO or Crucial MX500 on Tweaktown.
Intel SSD 660p Review: Snappy NVMe Storage At Rock-Bottom Prices on HotHardware.
Portable:
EaseUS Todo Backup Home on OCInside.
Honor Play In-Depth Review - Mobile Gaming FTW on TechARP.
Input Etc:
Corsair STRAFE MK.2 RGB Mechanical Keyboard on BenchmarkReviews.
CORSAIR Gaming Lapboard for the K63 wireless keyboard on FunkyKit.
Video Cards:
MSI Radeon RX 570 and 580 MECH 2 8G OC on Guru3D.
MSI Radeon RX 580 Mech 2 8 GB on TechPowerUp.
Misc:
ZOOZ ZSE18 Z-Wave Plus Motion Sensor with Magnetic Base on BigBruin.
Stanley FatMax Lithium-Ion LED/HID Flashlight on ModSynergy.
MSI GV62 8RE laptop on Vortez.
AMD Threadripper 2
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Tuesday, 7-August-2018 18:18:36 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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AMD have unveiled their 2nd generation Threadripper CPUs today. There seem to only be specs and unboxing articles at the moment, not proper reviews, but here they are anyway:
32-Core 2nd Gen AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX: Unboxing The Beast on HotHardware.
AMD's second-generation Ryzen Threadripper CPUs revealed on TechReport.
Preview: Threadripper 2950X and 2990WX (specs and unboxing) on Guru3D.
AMD Announces 2nd Generation Threadripper with up to 32 Cores on PC Perspective.
The AMD Threadripper 2 Teaser: Pre-Orders Start Today, Up to 32 Cores on Anandtech.
Discussion continues towards the end of this giant thread in our AMD Hardware forum.
The Australian Computer Museum Society are still looking for people to save their collection of vintage computers, thanks David. Some of the Australian Computer Museum Society’s 50,000-item-strong collection may be bulldozed next week, because the warehouse it occupies is scheduled for demolition and the Museum can’t find alternative accommodation within its budget. The Society currently occupies a warehouse in the Sydney suburb of Villawood. Curator John Geremin said the Museum’s collection occupied more than 200 square meters on triple-level racks. Among the notable items in the collection are an EAI analog computer from the 1940s, vintage minicomputers from the 1960s and 1970s, and what Geremin described as “disk drives that are bigger than your washing machine”. I think this week is crunch time - discussion continues in this thread.
ExtremeTech meanwhile ponder some of the worst CPUs ever made. To make it on to this list, a CPU needed to be fundamentally broken, as opposed to simply being poorly positioned or slower than expected. The annals of history are already stuffed with mediocre products that didn’t quite meet expectations but weren’t truly bad.
The best news I've heard in a while is that Jean-Luc Picard is back! Or will be soon, anyway. It’s official — Patrick Stewart is returning to the Star Trek franchise. The acclaimed Shakespearean actor is set to headline a new Star Trek series for CBS All Access, reprising his iconic Next Generation character, Captain Jean-Luc Picard. The project, which has been rumored since the June announcement of a Star Trek universe expansion with new series, was just unveiled by Stewart himself in a surprise appearance at the Las Vegas Star Trek Convention.
TSMC recently had a virus infection which has somewhat derailed production and will affect its bottom line. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has disclosed that a computer virus stalling part of its production over the weekend is expected to impact 3% of its third-quarter 2018 revenues. "TSMC expects this incident to cause shipment delays and additional costs," said the world's top foundry service provider in an update today about the impact of virus infection that it first reported on Saturday.
Just when you thought HDDs were dead, Seagate have a new multi-actuator system to speed them up. Today Seagate said its new MACH.2™ Multi Actuator technology has enabled them to set a new hard drive speed record, demonstrating up to 480MB/s sustained throughput — the fastest ever. Seagate formally introduced its MACH.2 Multi Actuator technology yesterday, which has now been deployed in development units for customer testing prior to productization.
Popular anti-bloatware tool CCleaner has some privacy issues of its own, thanks Axe. Piriform, the original developer behind CCleaner, was acquired by antivirus outfit Avast not long ago. Shortly afterwards, malware found its way into a public build of the program. You'd think, given this catastrophe, Avast would be a bit more careful with its updates. Apparently not. Bowing to online pressure, the company has pulled the latest version of CCleaner, 5.45, after it was discovered the ability to opt-out of program's data gathering was removed.
TechPowerUp used the game Yakuza 0 to compare video card performance. Yakuza 0 finally lets PC gamers in on the Japanese mafia action that console gamers have enjoyed for years. The game has an entertaining storyline that will make you laugh, and shudder at the subtleties of Japanese nightlife. We test the game on 15 graphics cards, take a look at VRAM usage and check CPU core scaling.
Monday Night Reviews
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Monday, 6-August-2018 21:22:31 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Motherboard & CPU:
GIGABYTE X470 AORUS Gaming 7 WIFI Motherboard on PCPerspective.
Asus ROG Strix B360-F Gaming Motherboard on FunkyKit.
ASUS ROG STRIX X470-I Gaming Motherboard on HardOCP.
Storage:
Toshiba High Speed M203 MicroSDXC Card on MadShrimps.
Seagate Barracuda SSD - Rehashing Entry-Level Server Storage on Tweaktown.
Intel Optane SSD 905P 960GB Drive on LegitReviews.
GIGABYTE UD Pro SSD Review - Abundant Flash Widens the Market on Tweaktown.
Input Etc:
Corsair STRAFE RGB MK.2 keyboard on Vortez.
SteelSeries Rival 600 Optical Mouse on APHNetworks.
Logitech G513 Carbon Gaming Keyboard on OCClub.
SteelSeries' Apex M750 mechanical gaming keyboard on TechReport.
Fnatic miniSTREAK keyboard on Vortez.
Audio Visual:
AUKEY Dash Cam DR01 on LegitReviews.
D-Link DCS-8300LH 1080p WiFi Indoor Security Camera on BigBruin.
Misc:
A-DATA XPG SPECTRIX D41 RGB DDR4-3600 memory on TechPowerUp.
Enermax RevoBron 700W PSU on HardOCP.
Corsair SPEC Omega RGB case on Guru3D.
Dell G7 15 Gaming Laptop on HotHardware.
NETGEAR Nighthawk Pro Gaming XR500 Router on TechPowerUp.
Friday again! The first one this week is from KonMan who says: Hey OCAU, I work in Melbourne next to the building where Gold 104 and KISS 101 have their studios. Not sure of the context if it was a dare or what? They needed an echo chamber and couldn't do it in post? Anyway - our whole office was at the window laughing. The second one is from g@z who noticed a geeky solution to L-plate attachment. Thanks also to Tim this week!
     
     
     
     
     
     
Friday Afternoon
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Friday, 3-August-2018 15:10:46 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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There's an interesting interview on TechGage with the man who created graphical ray-tracing. With the release of DirectX Raytracing and NVIDIA’s RTX API, it’s time we took a look at the history behind ray tracing, and how it came about. With SIGGRAPH just around the corner, we speak to Turner Whitted, who used his knowledge of sonar to pioneer ray tracing as a method for rendering computer graphics back in 1979.
It's not too often we publish a positive Telstra story, but they have been crowned the fastest for Netflix after two years as the slowest. Every month, Netflix Australia ranks six of the country’s ISPs based on the streaming provider’s own calculations of download speeds during prime time. From April 2015, a month after Netflix landed in Australia, until August 2017 Telstra was listed as the slowest provider. But from September 2017, the telecommunications giant started to climb up and has been the fastest provider since February 2018.
Guru3D have an updated PC Buyer's Guide. It's that time of the year again! Welcome, all to the (Late) Summer 2018 edition of Guru3D's PC Buyer's Guide. This article will show you PC builds at various price points that we - as a unit - feel happy to recommend.
LanOC meanwhile look at casting 3D-printed parts. How does one make something metal with a 3D printer? You can spend a huge sum of money and buy a printer that can sinter metal powders together. Unless you’re NASA or SpaceX that is a lot of money. Sure, you could slap a MIG welder nozzle on your printer but that is not very precise and would take a lot of tinkering to get something useful out of it. Instead of going high tech, let’s go low tech. Casting liquid metal into sand molds is a process humans have been doing for centuries. What if you used a 3D printer to create the mold patterns for the sand in a few hours instead of the day(s) it would have taken to do by hand?
An old Reddit backup was compromised recently, which may have security implications if you have been a member over there for a while. Most interesting is the fact that SMS messages for two-factor authentication were intercepted as part of the hack.
Thursday Afternoon Reviews
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Thursday, 2-August-2018 13:00:50 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Motherboard & CPU:
AMD's Ryzen 7 2700 CPU on TechReport.
AMD Ryzen 7 2700X Processor on ThinkComputers.
ASRock Fatal1ty H370 Performance Motherboard on OCInside.
ASRock X470 Taichi AMD Ryzen Motherboard on FunkyKit.
Video Cards:
GTX 1060 6GB vs the RX 580 8GB vs the GTX 980 4GB revisited on BabelTechReviews.
MSI Radeon RX580/570 MECH 2 Unboxed on Tweaktown.
XFX RX 570 RS 8GB XXX Edition on OCClub.
Cooling:
EKWB EK-MLC Phoenix 360 watercooler on NikKTech.
Cooler Master MasterLiquid ML120R RGB Closed Loop Water Cooler on APHNetworks.
Cases:
Antec DF500 RGB on FunkyKit.
Fractal Design Focus G Mini on TechPowerUp.
Audio Visual:
Viotek 144Hz GN32LD 32" Curved Gaming Monitor on TechSpot.
ASUS ProArt PA328Q Monitor on Tweaktown.
Cougar Phontum Gaming Headset on ThinkComputers.
Storage:
Kingston UV500 960GB 2.5 Inch SSD on BigBruin.
SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD on HotHardware.
Crucial MX500 1TB 2.5" 3D NAND SSD on ModSynergy.
StarTech USB-C Docking Station on Tweaktown.
Samsung's 860 EVO 1 TB SSD on TechReport.
Misc:
Cooler Master CK552 Full RGB Mechanical Gaming Keyboard on Modders-Inc.
Gigabyte AORUS P850W 850W PSU on APHNetworks.
AMD's B450 Chipset
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Thursday, 2-August-2018 12:01:39 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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AMD have unveiled the B450 motherboard chipset which provides a more budget-friendly, power-conscious way to get up and running with a Ryzen CPU. Here's some reviews from around the net:
AMD B450 Chipset Explained with Official AMD Tech Briefing on TechARP.
Gigabyte B450 Aorus Pro on Guru3D.
ASRock B450 Gaming-ITX/ac on TechPowerUp.
GIGABYTE B450 Aorus Pro WIFI (AMD X470) on Tweaktown.
MSI B450 GAMING PRO CARBON AC on TechPowerUp.
ASRock Fatal1ty B450 Gaming K4 on FunkyKit.
MSI B450 Gaming Pro Carbon AC & Tomahawk on NeoSeeker.
MSI B450 Tomahawk on Guru3D.
ASRock B450 Gaming ITX/ac and B450 Gaming K4 boards on Anandtech.
A Quick Look at 25 Motherboards on Anandtech.
Discussion continues in this thread in our AMD Hardware forum.
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