Laptop

The Asus 'ROG Mothership' GZ700GX was first announced earlier this year at CES and was aimed at offering flexibility and enhanced cooling compared to traditional clamshell gaming notebooks. Now, the GZ700GX is available with factory-overclocked versions of the 9th gen Intel Core i9-9980HK CPU and NVIDIA RTX 2080 GPU both of which are cooled by liquid metal and a total of four heatsinks. The ROG 'Mothership' is all set to be available worldwide starting Q2 2019.

NVIDIA has officially announced the availability of the GeForce GTX 1650 and the GTX 1660 Ti along with their Max-Q variants. These Turing-based GTX 16-series GPUs are slated to feature in most budget to mid-range gaming notebooks this year and offer perceivable benefits over their Pascal counterparts and significant improvements over the Maxwell generation. Our first synthetic benchmarks on pre-production hardware reflect that the GTX 1660 Ti is within close range of the RTX 2060 while the GTX 1650 is firmly placed between the GTX 1660 and the GTX 1050 Ti.

Asus has announced the successor to the Zephyrus GX501 with the Zephyrus S GX502. The GX502 now comes with the 9th gen Core i7-9750H CPU and RTX 2060/2070 CPU options with NVIDIA Optimus support. The GX502 also features a PANTONE-validated 240 Hz FHD display, improved connectivity and audio, and is also lighter than the GX501.

Asus has announced the availability of the TUF Gaming series with the latest NVIDIA Turing GTX 1660 Ti graphics. The TUF Gaming series is available in FX505 and FX705 SKUs and come with AMD Zen+ Ryzen 5 3550H and Ryzen 7 3750H CPU options. Apart from the new GTX 16-series GPU option, these laptops are otherwise identical to the original TUF Gaming series with Radeon RX 560X graphics announced during CES 2019.

Unveiled in early January at CES 2019, the Lenovo Legion Y9000K is now finally launching in China. This machine seems to be exclusively targeting the local market and features an 8th generation (could be an error instead of 9th generation) Intel Core i7 processor, a 17-inch 144 Hz display, as well as NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Max-Q graphics.

Details about a refreshed Razer Blade 17 and updated Razer Blade 15 have been accidentally leaked in a YouTube video review posted by tech site PCWorld. The video has now been taken down, but not before some apparent key specifications were shared online. The base model of the Razer Blade 15 is likely to get a GPU upgrade from an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 Max-Q to an RTX 2060.

Another video posted by Nvidia on the Twitter account for Nvidia GeForce has offered up some massive clues about what gamers can expect next from the company. Although original focus was mostly on the sleek device that featured in the four clips, it’s now shifted to what’s inside the laptop: Namely an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti GPU.

A trio of IT researchers affiliated with Facebook have created a new method to turn a video of an individual performing a series of actions (e.g. a dance) into a 3D 'game character'. This character - and its associated movements - can then be transposed onto a new background. The researchers assert that this background could interact with said character.

Dell has a very limited sale on at the moment for certified refurbished Dell XPS 15 9560 laptops. One particular SKU comes with an Intel Core i7 processor from the Kaby Lake series, a discrete GPU in the shape of an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050, and a generous 1 TB M.2 PCIe SSD. A usual price of US$2,306 is advertised for this laptop, but with the sale and a coupon it can be picked up for US$1,365.03.

The new NVIDIA 1650 card is to be unleashed soon. However, it seems there is also a Ti variant of this graphics solution in the works. ASUS has apparently developed several different models of this new GPU, which have surfaced on the Russian ECC certification database.

Chuwi could be launching an 8-inch mini-computer that comes with a choice of Intel Gemini Lake processors in the not too distant future. The device, which is currently known as the iLife NG08, may be rebranded as the Chuwi MiniBook for market release. The little laptop features a Full HD touchscreen, 4 to 8 GB RAM, and it even has an integrated fingerprint scanner.

Images of the components for the upcoming GPD Win Max handheld gaming PC have been leaked. The pictures show that an embedded chip from AMD’s Ryzen V1000 series has been chosen to power the device. It also seems that GamePad Digital (GPD) has decided to change the device’s name from Win 2 Max to simply Win Max.

A new video has been posted on Twitter accounts for Nvidia, Asus, and MSI that shows a bit more detail of the mysterious device that the trio of companies teased recently. The same Matrix-like streaming green code can be seen on the display while this time the keyboard is made much more visible. An eagle-eyed tweeter has spotted a very revealing clue about the device.
Lenovo also appears to be involved with the promotional stunt.

The Zen 2-based Ryzen, EPYC and Threadripper chipsets should make for exciting launches soon. This is because their state-of-the-art 7nm architectures should deliver performance improvements in many areas compared to their Zen+ predecessors. However, it appears that the Zen 3s of the future are shaping up to be even better already.

Recently, the gaming community has been set alight with rumors that Grand Theft Auto will get a new version soon. This has come about as a result of the discovery of an online resume belonging to a "3D game artist" who lists the heretofore unseen title among his experiences at Rockstar Games. This individual also specifically claims a role in GTA 5's DLC.

The C-Force CF015C weighs just 700 g and is 6 mm thick, yet packs a 4K, 15.6-inch display that boasts 100% sRGB coverage. The CF015C is currently available for US$199 on Kickstarter and ships in June.

Microsoft has made the next upcoming version of Windows 10 available via its Insider Preview program. It is called 1903, or the May 2019 Update. An SDK for this build is also now ready to download.

Dell, you tease. After going quiet having missed its last deadline to fix the XPS 15 9570's DPC latency issues, the company has now given a new date by when it plans to release a solution. Hopefully, it is not just breadcrumbing owners with this revised schedule.

With just over 24 hours to go, the NexDock 2 has already received 956% of its campaign goal. Nex Computer has one more surprise up its sleeve if the campaign can get to US$500,000 though.

There is a new product listing on Acer’s website for its Predator laptop series: model name PH315-52-78VL. The Predator Helios 300 gaming laptop in question sports some impressive hardware, which apparently includes a mobile variant of Nvidia’s Turing-based GeForce GTX 1660 Ti graphics card. The device also comes with a Coffee Lake H Refresh mobile processor from Intel.

As HP's first 15.6-inch Chromebook, the unit carries narrow bezels and many design influences from the smaller 14-inch Chromebook series including dual USB Type-C, Bang & Olufsen audio, 802.11ac, and a premium metal design.

The newly-introduced Helios lineup can easily replace a high-end desktop, as it comes with desktop-grade components like Intel's Core i5-9600K / i7-9700K / i9-9900K CPUs coupled with up to 64 GB of DDR4-2666 RAM and up to 12 TB of storage, plus RTX 2060 / RTX 2070 / RTX 2080 GPUs. The chassis is clearly bulkier and the laptops come with 330 W power adapters.

The 6 nm node is scheduled to enter risk production in Q1 2020, almost 1 year after the 5 nm risk production, so the first 6 nm chips will probably ship in mid-2020. The only major benefit brought by the new node is the 18% transistor density increase over the original (non-EUV) 7 nm node and performance will see negligible gains since this is not a full node shrink.

Despite giving assurances to the contrary, Dell is still yet to fix the latency issues that have plagued the XPS 15 9570 since its launch. Get your act together, Dell.

AMD Ryzen 3000 for laptops has been announced a few months ago and the PC OEMs are starting to release more and more new laptops with these CPUs. Now, two new Lenovo ThinkPad laptops are listed on the website of the manufacturer. With the new Ryzen 3000 processors, the business laptops ThinkPad E495 and ThinkPad E595 are the direct successors of the E485 and E585.

A video clip that has been uploaded to Nvidia, MSI, and Asus Twitter accounts has sparked furious speculation over what it is about and what the device that stars in it is. The clip is painfully brief at just five seconds long and simply shows an impressively slender laptop-like device opening up and displaying some Matrix-like green animation.

Asus has added the FX95DD laptop to its Chinese website as part of its FX/ZX series of computers. The device will feature a Zen+ Picasso AMD Ryzen 7 3750H APU in combination with the Pascal-based Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 GPU. The notebook, which is known locally as the Flying Fortress, is currently being offered for presale orders.

One-Notebook's unique pocket-size convertible lineup is getting updated with the OneMix 2S Platinum edition, which pack a faster Intel Core i7-8500Y CPU coupled with 8 GB of DDR3 RAM and 512 GB of NVMe SSD storage. The new device has a QWERTY keyboard with fingerprint scanner for increased proficiency, plus a rotating touchscreen that allows users to switch to tablet mode.

Exactly one year ago, we complained that some manufacturers were shipping laptops with "fake" RGBW 4K UHD displays without advertising them as such. It appears that the trend has stopped now that RGBW panels are nowhere to be found on the latest 4K laptops.

Instead of telling the anti-virus software what the common attributes of a malware are, why not have the software learn that itself from terabytes of pre-determined files? HP says its Sure View algorithm can detect even the latest viruses and malware based on a similar technology that Nvidia uses for its Deep Learning Super-Sampling (DLSS) graphics technique.

The refreshed models are coming next month with a handful of internal updates to improve both performance and security including Sure Sense, Sure View Gen3, brighter displays, and 8th gen ULV Intel Core with vPro. The designs and sizes are otherwise exactly the same as last year's models.

While mostly just a minor refresh, security buffs and business users will appreciate the new camera slider and updated hardware-level anti-virus and recovery features.

HP will be bringing some features commonly found on its flagship EliteBook 1000 series to its mid-range EliteBook 800 series including hybrid HD+IR webcams and privacy camera switches. The 1000-nit display, however, will be limited to just one size and configuration for now.

If you thought last year's Core X external graphics dock was missing some of that Razer flair, you'd be right. The new Core X Chroma embellishes the eGPU with configurable LED lights that should feel instantly familiar to owners of Razer keyboards, mice, and other accessories.

Numerous online retailers have been adding new placeholders for Intel processors on their e-commerce sites. The chips listed are the Intel Core i3-8145UC, the Core i5-8265UC, and the Core i7-8565UC. It’s not entirely clear how these CPUs differ from the Whiskey Lake U-series, although the stepping code variation seems to suggest memory support changes.

The narrow-bezel Asus ZenBook UX391 will now be even narrower with the ZenBook UX392. Asus is promising a lighter and faster GeForce-powered Ultrabook than the Dell XPS 13 while offering a larger 13.9-inch display.

The next generation of AMD cards based on the Navi architecture could be unveiled at Computex this year. However, according to some other rumors, they could also have their own dedicated release event on July 7 this year. It would be a good choice of date, as the potential success of Navi hangs on its state-of-the-art 7nm nature.

White label designs from Tongfang and Clevo have been undercutting the likes of MSI, Asus, Acer, Alienware, and HP by several hundred dollars for this latest generation of Turing gaming laptops. Major OEMs have been responding with price cuts across the board.

Acer has just revealed its brand-new Predator Helios 300. The laptop sports thin bezels, an RGB-illuminated keyboard, and it will feature top-of-the-range goods from both Intel and Nvidia. But we already expected this thanks to a retailer posting information about the device on its website just days before the computer was officially announced.

Dell's full-frontal refresh of its popular Alienware 17 series is significantly leaner and more portable. It does, however, sacrifice some features along the way that Alienware purists may miss. We list the major changes here based on our hands-on review of the newer model.

Lenovo is holding a Tax Time Sale this weekend for those hunting for a great deal on a laptop or convertible. The Chinese manufacturer has laptops from its flagship lines on offer, and there are savings to be had on a variety of tablets, monitors, and other peripherals and accessories. The current sale ends on April 15.