Desktop

Loongson is the company behind the development of the "Loong Arch" instruction set - China's first domestic CPU instruction set. According to third-party IP evaluators, Loong Arch is completely original and does not conflict with other foreign IPs. It is still compatible with other mainstream architectures like x86, RISC-V and MIPS.

Netac has only been in the RAM market for a few years, but the Chinese company already intends to set itself apart and be the first to introduce DDR5 RAM modules overclocked to 10 GHz. This may take a while since 8.4 GHz DDR5 modules are supposed to launch next year.

The system is hundreds of dollars cheaper than an Intel NUC. If you don't plan on running intensive applications or heavy graphics, then the Core i5-8259U-powered NucBox 2 will do the trick for your HTPC streaming purposes.

A new blog post from Sony has spilt the beans about what Days Gone has in store for us on PC. It will support ultrawide monitors, third-party controllers, unlocked framerates, and more. It retails for US$49.99 and is up for pre-order on Steam and the Epic Games Store.

Nvidia is reportedly working on a new GeForce RTX 3060 variant with enhanced anti-crypto protections. It will use a new GA106-302 GPU which will require completely new drivers. The new RTX 3060 variant is expected to hit shelves in May 2021.

NVIDIA's CFO Colette Kress has spoken out about the ongoing graphics card shortage again. Apparently, demand is expected to outstrip supply for 'most of the year', which is another way of saying that there will be no GPUs at MSRP until next year.

The brand-new G.SKILL Trident Z Royal Elite DDR4 memory kits come with a multi-faceted crystalline design across the heat spreader and feature CL16 to CL22 timings, stock frequencies between 3600 MHz and 5333 MHz, and come in capacities between 16 GB and 64 GB. Shipments should begin next month.

The same 12-liter chassis from previous Corsair One mini ITX models can now be equipped with up to an AMD Ryzen 9 5900X or Intel Core i9-11900K, plus a desktop-grade RTX 3080 GPU. The systems also include 32 GB of DDR4-3200 RAM, 1 TB NVMe + 2 TB HDD storage combo and quad video outputs. The Intel models come with a Thunderbolt 3 port.

Gigabyte has released a trio of AORUS gaming monitors, the AORUS FI32U, AORUS FV43U and the AORUS FO48U. All are 4K monitors with HDMI 2.1 ports, but only the flagship 48-inch model has an OLED panel. The three monitors should deliver excellent colour accuracy though, and can output at up to 144 Hz in most cases.

AMD has released its Ryzen 5000G and Ryzen 5000GE-series of desktop processors with integrated graphics. There are currently three SKUs in each series, with the Ryzen 7 5700G being the top-end model. AMD claims the new OEM-only Cezanne Zen 3 desktop APUs have “the world’s fastest graphics in a desktop processor” with the presence of up to a Radeon Vega 8 iGPU.

With the rising LCD production costs and the sub-par QD-OLED panels developed by Samsung Display, the Korean giant apparently has no other choice but to sign a deal with LG for 5 million OLED TVs supplied throughout 2022. Quite ironic for Samsung, as it has been trying to prove OLED panels are inferior to its QLEDs for the past few years.

The major Computex industry event is now confirmed to take place in 2021. It will do so in "hybrid" form this year, which means a blend of onsite and virtual presentations and resources. This entire show will run from May 31 to June 30, 2021, and is slated to see participation from prominent OEMs, AMD and Intel included.

A CD Projekt Red executive has confirmed that the company plans on supporting Cyberpunk 2077 for quite some time, as it wants the game to 'sell for years'. We're probably looking at a mix of free and paid DLC expansions, timely QoL improvements and patches to top up the game with fresh content.

Have you ever looked at your iPhone 12 Pro and thought it just wasn't 2019 Mac Pro enough? A new case means you can indeed apply the desktop's signature "cheesegrater" texture to the mobile device - provided you have a 3D printer, of course. Its designer has taken inspiration from alleged Apple IP that might make the idea a reality.

Key specifications for the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5750G, Ryzen 5 PRO 5650G, and Ryzen 3 PRO 5350G desktop APUs have been shared online. Unsurprisingly, the Ryzen PRO 5000G chips should offer the same specs and performance as the regular Cezanne Zen 3 desktop APU counterparts, but with the added benefit of AMD’s PRO technologies for business.

An AMD Ryzen 7 5700G desktop APU, which has appeared in a live image, has been put through both CPU and GPU benchmark tests. While the CPU part delivered a single-thread test score that places the Ryzen 5000 Cezanne chip way beyond its Renoir counterpart Ryzen 7 4700G, the Vega 8 GPU part is something of a letdown.

A user of a "popular hacker forum" claims to have scraped the data from approximately 500 million LinkedIn accounts - personal information such as names, email addresses and phone numbers included - and now plans to sell it at auction. This individual has reportedly posted 0.4% of these files as proof of their theft.

A timely reminder has been shared of how the current global chip famine has affected processor prices, in this case specifically for the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X. While retailers who have tried to stay close to MSRP are invariably out of stock, those with Ryzen 9 5950X CPUs to sell are mostly setting astronomical price tags for the Zen 3 powerhouse.

Even though the non-X processors come with a 61.5% lower TDP, 700 MHz lower base clock and 100 MHz lower boost clocks, the performance loss is barely noticeable with the UserBenchmark suite versus the 5900X models. The Ryzen 9 5900 is an OEM-only model and is now available in select pre-built gaming rigs like the Alienware Aurora.

Even if Intel manages to deliver on these impressive leaked specs, does it really matter when the cards are scheduled to release a year after Nvidia's Ampere launch? Still seems like a good start, considering Intel has not tried its hand at a gaming discrete GPU in decades. However, Intel needs to make sure we are not seeing yet another paper launch.

Eve Devices announced its Spectrum as the world's first monitor with a QHD/240Hz option back in January 2021. Unfortunately, the OEM has also just stated that this SKU will not ship until July 9, 2021. Furthermore, the 4K/144Hz model that was to start shipping in April of this year has also been pushed back again.

The Easter Sale campaign ran by MINISFORUM includes tempting deals on the brand's most popular devices, including the HM50 (US$100 for the first 100 units sold), UM270 and UM820/850 (US$50 off), as well as a mere US$20 off for the UM250 and X35G. Most of the discounts will be available until the end of the month.

The PN51 models come with the same chassis from last year's PN50 models and only support the Zen 2 Lucienne Ryzen 5000U processors. Despite using the same Zen 2 cores as the Ryzen 4000U models, the Lucienne processors come with upgraded memory controllers and can be coupled with up to 32 GB of DDR4-3200 RAM plus up to 2 TB of storage. There also is support for up to 4x 4K monitors.

The latest high-end video cards from NVIDIA are priced really high and the prices of custom designs make the US$2,999.99 tag on a GeForce RTX 3090 Founders Edition that has just been sold on eBay look like a bargain. For example, a German seller is down to the last ASUS GeForce RTX 3090 ROG STRIX, after selling 11 for over US$3,900 each.

PassMark’s CPU Mark single-thread performance chart for desktop processors now features a few more new Intel Rocket Lake chips, which have offered up a mixed bag of results. While the Intel Core i9-11900K still reigns and the i9-11900KF has performed well, both AMD’s Ryzen 5000 and Apple’s M1 have remained steadfast.

A new CPU Mark single-thread performance chart for desktop processors has been published by PassMark, and once again it features some startling results. It appears the Apple M1 silicon, which is a hybrid chip, is rapidly closing in on the powerful Intel Core i9-11900K desktop processor in this particular benchmark.

Introduced in early March 2017 with a price tag that read US$699 and discontinued in the meantime, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti is now apparently being produced again. For now, it looks like older units that were sent for RMA are being replaced with brand-new ones, so we might see them on the free market as well.

Some intrepid Chinese modders have managed to upgrade the storage and memory capacity of an M1 Mac Mini by desoldering the existing hardware and replacing it with identical, higher-capacity variants.

Steam has published its hardware and software survey for March and yet again AMD has pinched some more processor usage share away from Intel. However, there has been a small increase for Team Blue with Linux-based systems, and there must be some hope that Rocket Lake has the cash registers ringing soon.

An AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5750G desktop APU engineering sample has had its CPU-Z benchmark results shared, once again showing decent single-thread performance that went beyond the Ryzen 7 4700G and Intel Core i9-10900K. The Ryzen 7 PRO 5750G will be an enterprise-oriented variant of the Cezanne Zen 3 Ryzen 7 5700G APU.

The Big Island GPGPU developed by Tianshu Zhixin is produced by TSMC on the 7 nm nodes with 2.5D CoWoS packaging. It integrates 24 billion transistors, is rated for 300 W TGP and the board includes 32 GB of HBM2 VRAM plus a single 8-pin connector. Its performance is comparable to AMD's Instinct MI100.

AMD will reportedly improve the supply of its much-desired Ryzen 5000 chips during the second quarter of 2021. Huge demand has overwhelmed the chip designer, leading to price premiums being placed on SKUs like the Ryzen 9 5900X and Ryzen 9 5950X. The supply bump comes just in time to counter Intel’s Rocket Lake series availability.

The electronics giant Huawei launched its first PC display in 2020. This 23.8-inch peripheral has an FHD IPS panel, and is mostly directed at enterprise-grade customers. It is also now available in a new market: the UK.

TSMC is ready to implement a solution for the ongoing global semiconductor shortages that will require $100 billion in investments. The plan is to build new production facilities in the U.S., Europe and Taiwan and have these ready by 2023. In order to implement the plan, however, TSMC is asking all of its customers to accept full production costs with no wafer price discounts throughout the entire 2022.

A leaker has offered up some clues in regard to upcoming redesigned Apple iMacs. According to the details, the iMac computers will feature considerable changes on the outside and on the inside. This includes being powered by M1-based Apple Silicon, which could end up being the oft-rumored 12-core M1X chip.

BLEU JOUR has introduced the Wave, its latest mini-PC. The compact machine uses Intel NUC Compute Elements, which should make it simple to upgrade.

Three SKUs from the AMD Ryzen 5000G desktop APU series have had their core specifications leaked. The three chips in question are the Ryzen 3 5300G, Ryzen 5 5600G, and Ryzen 7 5700G. The top-end Cezanne unit will offer eight Zen 3 cores and clock rates from 3.8 GHz up to a maximum boost of 4.6 GHz.

CD Projekt has revealed its 2021 update roadmap for Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher franchise. Revealed is stretching it somewhat in the case of Cyberpunk 2077 though, as its multiplayer modes and expansions are out of scope for 2021.

The ubiquitous chip-design IP-holder Arm perceives the future as one in which processing demands will trend strongly towards AI and data-security needs while moving away from general computing. The company aims to meet it with its latest v9 architecture, packed with advanced support for pursuits such as machine learning (ML) and digital-signal processing (DSP).

Besides storing more high-res textures and boosting the ray tracing performance, the 16 GB mod can also help improve framerate stability. Some games like Watch Dogs Legion can be less stuttery on the 16 GB mod, as the 0.1% Low and 1% Low framerates see considerable improvements, but other games like Godfall do not seem to take advantage of the increased RAM capacity and even perform slightly slower.

AMD APU driver updates for Linux may have revealed details about the company's upcoming Van Gogh architecture. Additionally, the updates seemingly confirm the Infinity Cache of Navi 23-based desktop GPUs, including the RX 6600 series.

The 2021 Ultra 17 models from XMG pack up to an i9-11900K 8-core / 16-thread CPU, which can be coupled with up to 128 GB of DDR4-3200 RAM and 32 TB NVMe SSD storage. Users can choose among max TGP versions for the RTX 3060 / 3070 / 3080 mobile dGPUs that take full advantage of 16 PCIe 4.0 lanes. Screen options include 300 Hz FHD and 60 Hz 4K IPS panels and among the ports we find 2x Thunderbolt 4 connectors plus an HDMI 2.1 video output.

Major GPU OEM Colorful seems to have entirely omitted download links for Resize BAR BIOS updates on its technical support page. This leaves Colorful graphics card owners with no way to enable the feature, at least until the OEM fixes those broken links.

The Intel Core i9-11900K has been tested alongside an Intel Core i9-10900K and an AMD Ryzen 7 5800X in a barrage of Unreal Engine benchmarks. The Comet Lake part and Zen 3 chip performed well in the game engine tests, but the Rocket Lake i9-11900K simply appeared to be on the verge of obsolescence here.

Resizable BAR is now available for NVIDIA's full RTX 30 desktop product stack, as the company promised earlier this month. Resizable BAR is available for most modern AMD and Intel chipsets and processors, including Zen 3 and Comet Lake-S CPUs. NVIDIA has expandable Resizable BAR support to 17 games, too.

AMD has released the latest version of its Adrenalin 2020 Edition driver for Radeon cards. It is hardly essential, yet may be useful for those wishing for the best experience in ray-tracing-heavy titles such as Cyberpunk 2077. It also adds support for some other games, including Outriders and Evil Genius 2: World Domination.