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August 2020 |
Monday Evening Reviews
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Monday, 31-August-2020 18:59:53 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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I'm sure the recent Internet Outage had nothing to do with the anniversary (kinda) of Judgement Day, but it did affect the Chess World Championship. Anyway, here's some reviews:
Motherboard & CPU:
Intel Core i9-10850K Review - Just as Good as 10900K on TechPowerUp.
ASRock H470 Steel Legend Motherboard on FunkyKit.
Input Etc:
Razer Huntsman Mini keyboard on LanOC.
Razer Gigantus V2 3XL Mouse Pad Presentation on MadShrimps.
Storage:
Patriot P300 1TB M.2 PCIe Gen3 x4 SSD on FunkyKit.
ADATA Falcon 1 TB M.2 NVMe SSD on Guru3D.
Lexar SL200 Portable SSD on Modders-Inc.
Lexar SL100 Pro & SL200 portable SSD on Vortez.
Misc:
Sharkoon Pure Steel RGB case on TechPowerUp.
Cyberpower PC Infinity X10 RTX prebuilt PC on Vortez.
ROIDMI X30 Pro Cordless Vacuum Cleaner on NikKTech.
DJI Mavic Air 2 Review: A Powerful Drone For Any Skill Level on HotHardware.
Thanks to IntelInside and Damien this week!
     
     
     
     
Thursday Lunchtime Reviews
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Thursday, 27-August-2020 13:52:53 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Motherboard & CPU:
ASRock B550 Steel Legend motherboard on Guru3D.
ASRock B550 Phantom Gaming-ITX/ax Motherboard on FunkyKit.
Input Etc:
Razer Huntsman Elite Gaming Keyboard on ThinkComputers.
Glorious Model D- mouse on TechPowerUp.
DREVO Falcon Honeycomb Optical Gaming Mouse on NikKTech.
Memory:
G.Skill Trident Z Neo 16GB DDR4-3600 CL14 Memory Kit on FunkyKit.
T-Force Dark Z DDR4 3600 MHz on ThinkComputers.
Storage:
Lexar SL200 1TB USB 3.1 Portable SSD on NikKTech.
Lexar NM700 M.2 NVMe Solid State Drive on ThinkComputers.
Sabrent USB 3.2 Tool-Free Enclosure EC-TFNE on LanOC.
Portable & Prebuilt:
Lenovo ThinkPad X13 on HotHardware.
ECS LIVA Z3 PLUS (Intel i5-10210U) mini PC on TechPowerUp.
Shuttle EDGE EN01J4 Robust Industry PC on MadShrimps.
LG Velvet Review: Stylish 5G Phone Lacks Excitement, Brings Value on HotHardware.
Misc:
Goosebumps: Dead of Night – Nintendo Switch game on BabelTechReviews.
ZADAK SPARK AIO 240 CPU cooler on TechPowerUp.
Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 5700 XT 8G SE video card on OCInside.
Datacolor Spyder X Elite Advanced Monitor Calibrator on NikKTech.
Tuesday Night
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Tuesday, 25-August-2020 23:50:53 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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TechSpot compared Desktop GeForce vs Laptop GeForce options. Using hardware available in early 2019, we found that the desktop RTX 2070 was on average 19% faster than the RTX 2070 mobile chip at 1080p. This difference expanded to a whopping 42% difference when comparing the desktop RTX 2070 to Nvidia’s low power RTX 2070 Max-Q variant. Since then, we've seen refreshes to laptop and desktop hardware.
They also have an article explaining just exactly what Tensor Cores are. For the past three years Nvidia has been making graphics chips that feature extra cores, beyond the normal ones used for shaders. Known as tensor cores, these mysterious units can be found in thousands of desktop PCs, laptops, workstations, and data centers around the world. But what exactly are they and what are they used for? Do you even really need them in a graphics card?
ThinkComputers have a guide to installing Grafana on a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B. Getting data from your home network devices and services is typically pretty easy, but it doesn’t always look good or at the very least, uniform. That is where Grafana comes in. Grafana is an open source analytics and monitoring solution that provides an interactive visualization of your data. Check out my review of that model Raspberry Pi here.
Australia has a new Cyber Security Strategy. The Australian government has handed down its 2020 Cyber Security Strategy [PDF], with the Commonwealth to develop legislation that would impose cyber standards on operators of critical infrastructure and systems of national significance; consider what laws need to be changed to have a minimum cyber baseline across the economy; and create powers that allow the federal government to get on the offensive and actively defend networks and critical infrastructure.
Anandtech have a very ambitious project to benchmark every modern CPU since 2010. Truth be told, the concept of a project to benchmark almost 700-900 processors has been rattling around in my head for a few years. I actually wrote the first segment of this article way back in 2016. However, over the course of 2016 and 2017, building new testing suites has taken longer, priorities changed, and the project didn’t so much as get shelved as somewhat pushed down the order on a semi-permanent basis until there was an ideal opening.
A recent virtual dogfight contest resulted in AI defeating a real F-16 pilot. On the final day of the trials, Heron Systems AI went up against an experienced human pilot. After just 10 minutes of combat, Heron’s AI held an undefeated record of 5-0, giving them the win. With this win, we can expect to see Heron go further in DARPA’s Air Combat Evolution Program.
Something random from IntelInside, what it looks like inside a tyre when you drive. It’s easy to forget that tires are important shock absorbers that work alongside the rest of the suspension system to smooth your ride since you never get to watch some of the work they do. Until you put a camera one.
Sunday Morning Reviews
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Sunday, 23-August-2020 00:19:12 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Motherboard & CPU:
ASRock H470 Steel Legend Intel LGA1200 Motherboard on OCInside.
ASRock Z490 Extreme4 Motherboard on ThinkComputers.
Storage:
KIOXIA Exceria 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD on NikKTech.
Kingston KC2500 M.2 SSD on Vortez.
GIGABYTE AORUS NVMe Gen4 SSD 500GB on FunkyKit.
T-FORCE 128GB SPARK RGB USB 3.2 Flash(y) Drive on BabelTechReviews.
Silicon Power PC60 960GB USB 3.2 Gen 2 Portable SSD on NikKTech.
TeamGroup Cardea Ceramic C440 PCIe 4.0 NVMe on Guru3D.
HP P700 Portable Solid State Drive on ThinkComputers.
Synology Diskstation DS920+ on Vortez.
Video Cards:
ASUS Dual Radeon RX 5700 XT EVO OC on Guru3D.
ASUS TUF Gaming X3 Radeon RX 5700 Series on HotHardware.
Audio Visual:
Audeze LCD-1 Open-Back Foldable Headphone on HWAsylum.
EVPAD 5S (2020) TV Box on FunkyKit.
Sharkoon Mobile DAC, Mobile DAC PD & Gaming DAC Pro S on TechPowerUp.
HyperX QuadCast Microphone video review by OCClub.
Portable & Prebuilt:
HP Omen 15 Ryzen laptop on TechSpot.
Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra 5G on HotHardware.
Same Laptop, Different CPU: Ryzen 4000 vs. Intel 10th-gen Battle on TechSpot.
Ryzen 4000 vs. Intel 10th-gen Gaming Battle Part 2 laptop CPUs on TechSpot.
Power Supply:
Chieftec Proton 1000W Power Supply Unit on NikKTech.
CORSAIR CX850M V2 Power Supply Unit on NikKTech.
Cases:
Sharkoon TG6 RGB Review - Tempered Glass and Fancy RGB Fans on TechPowerUp.
Antec Dark Fleet DF600 FLUX Mid-Tower on Tweaktown.
Cooling:
Lian Li Uni Fan SL 120 on LanOC.
ABKONCORE Cool Storm T404B Hurricane Dual CPU Cooler on NiKKTech.
Memory:
Lexar SODIMM 8GB 2666Mhz Memory Module on HWAsylum.
HyperX Predator 16GB DDR4-4266 Memory Kit on FunkyKit.
Patriot Viper 4 Blackout DDR4 3600 64GB Kit on OCClub.
Lexar LD4AU008G DDR4-2666MHz 8GB UDIMM Desktop Memory on FunkyKit.
Software:
UnderMine PC Game on BabelTechReviews.
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 Benchmarked on TechSpot.
Misc:
Cougar MARS Gaming Table on Modders-Inc.
HK Gaming Mira-M mouse on TechPowerUp.
Thanks to Axe and mr bill this week!
     
     
     
     
     
     
Thursday Lunchtime
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Thursday, 20-August-2020 14:43:16 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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The latest MS Flight Simulator is out, but its gargantuan download size is making it tricky to evaluate on Steam before the two hour refund limit is up. It's not necessarily that players want more time to fly the skies in Microsoft Flight Simulator before making a final decision, they just want to get in the game, period. So, what is the actual issue? it is the size of the in-game download that takes placer after the initial download—it is around 90 gigabytes, which can take some time, depending on how fast (or not so fast) someone's connection is.
Meanwhile Guru3D have checked out the graphics performance of MS Flight Simulator 2020. Flight Simulator 2020 scores unusually well in the graphics area. The world scenery looks very good, the lots of cities and airports have been manually revised by hand. The ones that did not get ta premium treatment also look pretty good. The differential is the more personalized stuff, example if you fly over your own house, that's where you'll likely be dissatisfied. What is beautiful in-game is the weather system, real-time data is flowing into the engine, and as such, you get a physical simulation of the weather. That weather is not only beautiful to see, it will of course also have an effect on the flight characteristics of your simulation. The combination of beautiful modelled aircraft, gorgeous landscapes and the weather system that makes this Flight Simulator an excellent new edition.
OCBench have a Ryzen 3700X OC guide. Some time has passed since the release of the AMD Ryzen 7 3700X including our detailed AMD CPU review. In the meantime, AMD has released several AGESA updates and the minor issues have been resolved. Today we have again looked at the exact differences to the AMD Ryzen 7 3800X and will test whether the extra cost is worth it and if you can get the performance of a 3800X out of the 3700X with a few simple tweaks.
Backblaze have released their latest HDD stats report. At the end of Q2 2020, Backblaze was using 140,059 hard drives to store customer data. For our evaluation we remove from consideration those drive models for which we did not have at least 60 drives (see why below). This leaves us with 139,867 hard drives in our review. The table below covers what happened in Q2 2020.
Sunday Morning Reviews
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Sunday, 16-August-2020 00:35:46 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Motherboard & CPU:
AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 4650G Renoir APU on Guru3D.
ASRock B550 Steel Legend Motherboard on FunkyKit.
The Old King of Gaming: Intel Core i7-8700K Revisited on TechSpot.
Power Supply:
Corsair CV550 550W Power Supply on APHNetworks.
Chieftronic PowerPlay 750 W on TechPowerUp.
Audio Visual:
HeimVision HMD2 Battery Powered Security Camera on NikKTech.
Turtle Beach Stealth 600 Gen 2 Gaming Headset on APHNetworks.
EarFun Air wireless earbuds: $60 AirPods killer? on TechSpot.
FiiO M15 Portable Hi-Resolution Music Player on NikKTech.
Elgato Key Light Air streaming deck on ThinkComputers.
Viotek GFT27CXB 27-inch 240 Hz Gaming Monitor on ThinkComputers.
AIAIAI TMA-2 HD Wireless Headphones on ThinkComputers.
EarFun Air Wireless Earbuds on FunkyKit.
Cooler:
ABKONCORE CT404B Dual Sync CPU Cooler on ThinkComputers.
Gigabyte B550 Aorus Pro on Guru3D.
ARCTIC Freezer A13 X CPU Cooler on Tweaktown.
Cases:
Deepcool CL500 on Guru3D.
DeepCool CL500 on Vortez.
be quiet! Pure Base 500DX Computer Case on APHNetworks.
Fractal Design Define 7 Compact on Guru3D.
Input Etc:
ROCCAT Kain 120 AIMO Optical Mouse on APHNetworks.
Abkoncore A660 mouse on TechPowerUp.
Zephyr Gaming Mouse on TechPowerUp.
HyperX Alloy Origins Core Mechanical Gaming Keyboard on Tweaktown.
Video Cards:
ASUS Radeon RX 5600 XT TUF EVO on TechPowerUp.
Nvidia DLSS 2.0 and the Nvidia RTX2060-Max Q on Bjorn3D.
Software:
OCC Previews Ary and the Secret of Seasons on OCClub.
‘Horizon Zero Dawn’ PC Performance & IQ Review on BabelTechReviews.
Relicta game on OCClub.
Horizon Zero Dawn Benchmark Test & Performance Analysis on TechPowerUp.
Skully game on OCClub.
Storage:
Crucial P5 1 TB M.2 NVMe SSD on TechPowerUp.
Sabrent Rocket Q 500GB NVMe M.2 SSD on Tweaktown.
Silicon Power PC60 960GB USB 3.2 Gen2 Portable SSD on MadShrimps.
ORICO GV100 Mini M.2 Portable NVMe SSD on FunkyKit.
Lexar Professional NM700 M.2 2280 NVMe SSD 1TB on Modders-Inc.
OWC ThunderBay 8 Thunderbolt 3 8-Bay DAS on Tweaktown.
Sabrent Rocket XTRM-Q 2TB Portable SSD on Tweaktown.
Lexar NM700 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD on NikKTech.
Sabrent Rocket Q NVMe Solid State Drive on ThinkComputers.
Lexar SL200 512GB Portable SSD on FunkyKit.
Portable & Prebuilt:
Maingear Turbo Review: A Jaw-Dropping Mini-ITX Gaming PC on HotHardware.
Google Pixel 4a Review: Great Camera, Killer Android Value on HotHardware.
ASUS ROG Phone 3 Review: Fastest Android On The Planet on HotHardware.
Corsair Vengeance a4100 Streaming PC on Tweaktown.
Misc:
Corsair iCUE LT100 and LS100 Ambient Lighting on LanOC.
CORSAIR iCUE LT100 Smart Lighting Towers on NikKTech.
CORSAIR iCUE LT100 Smart Lighting Towers on Guru3D.
Thermaltake Cyberchair E500 Ergonomic Chair on TechPowerUp.
EnGenius ESR530 AC1300 Home Mesh System Dual pack on LanOC.
Just a small lot this week - have a good weekend!
     
     
     
     
Wednesday Morning
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Wednesday, 12-August-2020 00:19:40 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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If you have an opinion on how the For Sale forums are going on OCAU, head over to this thread where clrobbo is running a poll and discussion.
Intel have suffered a major data breach, thanks Rodney. Intel on Thursday was hit by a massive data-breach, with someone on Twitter posting links to an archive that contains the dump of the breach - a 20-gigabyte treasure chest that includes - but not limited to - Intel Management Engine bringup guides, flashing tools, samples; source code of Consumer Electronics Firmware Development Kit (CEFDK); silicon and FSP source packages for various platforms; an assortment of development and debugging tools; Simics simulation for "Rocket Lake S" and other platforms; a wealth of roadmaps and other documents; shcematics, documents, tools, and firmware for "Tiger Lake," Intel Trace Hub + decoder files for various Intel ME versions; "Elkhart Lake" silicon reference and sample code; Bootguard SDK, "Snow Ridge" simulator; design schematics of various products; etc. More info here.
AMD meanwhile continue to gain market share. AMD's Cinderella story continued today with a report from Mercury Research, one of the chip industry's premier market analyst firms, that indicates AMD had reached 18.3% of the overall x86 share and 19.7% of the client market. That's the company's highest share since the fourth quarter of 2013 and the first quarter of 2012, respectively. The company also broke its all-time record for notebook market share.
Intel recently reported record earnings, so it's not all bad news. Kicking off another earnings season for the tech industry, we once again have Intel, who is reporting their financial results for the second quarter of the year. This is the first full coronavirus-impacted quarter for the company and the tech industry as a whole, but if you were looking solely at Intel’s results, you wouldn’t know there’s a pandemic going on: the company posted yet another record quarter, delivering their highest Q2 revenues ever with a sizable profit margin riding on top of that.
TechSpot have a "gone but not forgotten" article series, with 3Dfx Interactive and OCZ Technology some of the first brands covered. In September 2012, founder and CEO Ryan Petersen resigned from the company. Accounting and other legal issues would plague the business over the next year and in late 2013, it was revealed that Toshiba had agreed to buy nearly all of OCZ’s assets for $35 million. Toshiba said it would continue to run the business as a subsidiary called OCZ Storage Solutions. The Japanese tech giant did release some new OCZ-branded drives but ultimately, OCZ was dissolved and absorbed into Toshiba's memory group, later named Kioxia.
It's Woz's 70th Birthday, or at least it is in the USA as I write this, and his website has all kinds of shenanigans happening over the next day or eleven. Join our 11 Days of Wozdom for daily chances to win signed Apple products, merch, and a Twitter shoutout from Woz! Challenges begin Aug 11th after the stream.
Finally, here's an interesting video sent in by w0ng explaining why rollback netcode in games is better than delay-based netcode. I didn't even know what that meant before watching that video but it makes sense now.
Tuesday Lunchtime Reviews
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Tuesday, 11-August-2020 13:23:45 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Motherboard & CPU:
Asus ROG Strix XG27UQ (UHD - HDR - DCS 144 Hz) on Guru3D.
EVGA Z490 FTW Motherboard Overclocking Review on BabelTechReviews.
Gigabyte Z490 AORUS Master on TechPowerUp.
ASRock B460 Steel Legend Intel LGA1200 Motherboard on OCInside.
ASRock B550 PG Velocita Motherboard on FunkyKit.
Networking:
TRENDnet TPE-082WS V1.2R 10 Port Gigabit Web Smart PoE+ Switch on NikKTech.
Linksys MAX-STREAM MR9600 AX6000 Wi-Fi 6 Router on Tweaktown.
AVM FRITZ!Repeater 2400 AC Wireless Repeater on NikKTech.
Storage:
Toshiba N300 12TB NAS Hard Drive on MadShrimps.
Sabrent Rocket XTRM-Q 8TB Portable SSD on Tweaktown.
Crucial P2 & P5 SSDs on Vortez.
Crucial P5 2TB NVMe M.2 SSD on Tweaktown.
Crucial P5 2TB M.2 NVMe SSD on OCInside.
Cooling:
Montech Air X Review - Big Fans on a Tight Budget on TechPowerUp.
be quiet! Pure Rock 2 on Guru3D.
Enermax AQUAFUSION 360 CPU Liquid Cooler on FunkyKit.
Arctic Freezer 13 X CPU cooler on OCInside.
Deepcool Gamer Storm Castle 280EX AIO CPU cooler on LanOC.
Whoops, late today - thanks to Axe and RnR this week!
     
     
     
     
     
     
Retro Racing August 2020 - 1NSANE
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Wednesday, 5-August-2020 23:19:40 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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This month's Retro Racing game is 1NSANE by Codemasters. Players can drive cars of their choices in either of nine events, which include Capture the Flag, Jamboree, Gate Hunt, Destruction Zone, Pathfinder, Off-Road Racing, Return the Flag, and Free Roam. Highlights for me is the excellent multiplayer mayhem in the capture the flag mode.
click for the thread!
Telstra had some DNS issues on the weekend which were, no wait, weren't, caused by a DDoS. "The massive messaging storm that presented as a Denial of Service cyber-attack has been investigated by our security teams and we now believe that it was not malicious, but a Domain Name Server issue. We're really sorry for getting in the way of your weekend plans," the telco posted on social media. Another reason to use 1.1.1.1 and/or 8.8.8.8.
While I'm clearing out the news box, AMD announced some Threadripper Pro CPUs recently, to battle Intel's Xeons in the workstation market. More info on and Anandtech. The top processor, the 3995WX, will offer all 64-cores. It goes above and beyond the traditional top EPYC 7742 (225 W, 2.25 GHz / 3.4 GHz) and even the 7H12 (280 W, 2.6 GHz / 3.3 GHz), by offering more base frequency at 2.7 GHz and a much higher turbo frequency at 4.2 GHz for 280W TDP. These processors might be taking advantage of the same manufacturing update as provided by the recent Ryzen 3000XT processors in order to drive these higher frequencies.
On a related note, anrke pointed out that the 896-core DooM Task Manager from last week is bogus, perhaps unsurprisingly. As I said at the time I couldn't imagine what platform they could be running it on, with that many cores.. oh well. :)
TechSpot look back at the Far Cry / Crysis series. Every once in a while though, a game is made that becomes part of the industry's history, and we still talk about them or play them years after they first appeared. For PC gamers, there's one title that's almost legendary thanks to its incredible, ahead-of-its-time graphics and ability to grind PCs into single digit frame rates. Later on, for providing a decade-plus worth of memes. Join us as we take a look back at Crysis and see what made it so special.
Here's a grownup-size Lego go-kart. Putting hundreds of hours into creating a giant Lego set and then not being able to actually play with it because you’re too tall undoubtedly takes some of the fun out of the process, so this time around Denton made a Lego go-kart large enough for even him to climb behind the wheel.
Sunday Night Reviews
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Sunday, 2-August-2020 23:15:13 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Motherboard & CPU:
MSI MPG Z490 Carbon EK X on TechPowerUp.
AMD B350 vs. B450 vs. B550 Tomahawk Motherboards on TechSpot.
Colorful CVN B460M Gaming Pro V20 Motherboard on FunkyKit.
ASRock B550 Taichi (AMD B550) Motherboard on Tweaktown.
Audio Visual:
SteelSeries Arctis 3 Bluetooth Gaming Headset on Tweaktown.
Viotek GFV24C 24-inch 144hz Monitor on LanOC.
Input Etc:
Redragon M686 Vampire Elite gaming mouse on TechPowerUp.
MSI Vigor GK50 Low Profile Gaming Keyboard on Tweaktown.
Cooling:
SilentiumPC Fortis 3 EVO ARGB CPU Cooler on NikKTech.
Lian Li Galahad 240 AIO All-in-One CPU cooler on TechPowerUp.
Lian Li Galahad AIO 360 RGB Closed Loop CPU Cooler on Tweaktown.
Lian Li Galahad 360 liquid cooler on Guru3D.
LIAN LI Galahad AIO 240 RGB CPU Cooler on FunkyKit.
NZXT Kraken X53 AIO cooler on OCInside.
Storage:
Kingston KC2500 1TB Solid State Drive on APHNetworks.
KIOXIA Exceria Plus SDXC 256GB & Exceria High Endurance MicroSDXC 128GB on NikKTech.
ADATA Falcon and Swordfish SSD Reviews: Affordable NVMe Storage on HotHardware.
Sabrent Rocket NVMe M.2 512GB SSD on Tweaktown.
Misc:
CORSAIR iCUE NEXUS Companion Touch Screen on MadShrimps.
FSP T-WINGS CMT710 Dual System Chassis on ThinkComputers.
G.SKILL Trident Z Royal 16GB 4000MHz memory on NeoSeeker.
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