Workstation

If it's important for your mobile workstation to be as portable and sexy as possible, then go ahead and get the Precision 5550. Otherwise, the older Precision 5540 will be cheaper and perform almost exactly the same.

QNAP has announced that it will no longer officially support vQTS-built virtual machines (VMs) on its servers. This means that, while users can still operate the VMs they have previously constructed on this platform, they will no longer be supported or updated by the company. Machines set up using the newer QuTSCloud will, however.

NVIDIA is reportedly in advanced talks with SoftBank to buy ARM for about US$32 billion. However, this is not set in stone, as the seller may have other options. One, according to Nikkei Asian Review, is other firms in this business such as Foxconn and TSMC clubbing together to buy the pivotal architecture IP-holder instead.

Razer’s workstation features a lot of performance, a 4K OLED touchscreen, a Thunderbolt 3 port, 32 GB of RAM (running in dual-channel mode), 16 of VRAM and a 1 TB NVMe SSD.

Lenovo is expanding its ThinkPad T series portfolio with a new 15 inch model. The new Lenovo ThinkPad T15p comes in a thicker chassis than the regular ThinkPad T15. It features faster Comet-Lake-H processors, an additional RAM slot and the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050, marking the first time a GTX chip is used in a T series ThinkPad.

Apricorn’s Aegis Secure Key 3NXC is reportedly the world’s first USB Type-C pen drive featuring hardware encryption. With a number of laptops and Android smartphones now leveraging USB Type-C, the 3NXC is increasingly relevant. The 4GB based model cost just US$59, but users will have to pay more for higher storage variants.

Erstwhile GPU maker Matrox released a new 4K-capable graphics card for enterprise users called the Matrox D1450. The new Matrox card will be built by NVIDIA and is designed to power multiple high-resolution displays, supporting up to four 4K monitors via HDMI.

Asus has released refreshed versions of the ZenBook 13, ZenBook 14, VivoBook S14, and VivoBook Ultra K14 in India. Both ZenBooks come with Ice Lake CPUs, while the VivoBooks feature Comet Lake processors. The ZenBooks will retail at 79,990 (US$1,068), while the VivoBook Ultra K14 and VivoBook S14 cost INR 39,990 (US$534) and INR 67,990 (US$907), respectively.

AMD has finally made the most enterprise-friendly variants of its Ryzen 3000 series official. It consists of up-to-64-core processors, as is the case with its flagship, the 3995WX. Lenovo has announced its P620 ThinkStation alongside this new line as the first workstations to run on these new Threadripper PROs.

The latest report from Gartner on the PC market shows that it had grown by 2.8% in the second quarter of 2020 (2Q2020). This may not sound like a lot, but is more encouraging in light of 1Q2020's -12.3% performance. This change suggests shipment volumes are recovering from the deleterious effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Shengchang Chiang - also often known as Charles Chiang - has been reported dead. He had taken over as the chief executive officer (CEO) of MSI in January 2019, having served as the company's head of its desktop division prior to that. Chiang reportedly fell to his untimely demise at the OEM's Taipei headquarters.

Initial benchmarks of the Huawei Kunpeng 920 ARM processor in a desktop PC do not seem to paint a rosy picture. This particular PC was powered by an 8C/8T Kunpeng 920 soldered onto a Huawei motherboard and running custom Chinese Linux distro called UOS. The Kunpeng 920 was originally designed with server applications in mind, and it looks to be an indication of China's ongoing efforts to reduce reliance on major CPU players such as Intel and AMD.

A new study conducted in June 2020 by the company TeamBlind indicates that 33% of the workers who participated in it have been given a date on which they can resume office work. This figure varied when corrected for location or company, however. 57% of the respondents stated that they would keep working from home given the opportunity, however.

Tipster @Execufix spotted a reference to AMD’s upcoming EPYC Milan server lineup. An unspecified EPYC Milan server chip was found to operate with a base frequency of 1.5 GHz and a boost clock of 2.2 GHz, in line with ES clocks for EPYC Rome parts. If EPYC Milan hits these clocks in its final avatar, it should provide a noticeable performance boost versus EPYC Rome parts.

MSI presents its new notebooks that, while being powerful enough for many enthusiasts and creators, retain decently portable dimensions. The series consists of 15.6- and 17.3-inch machines that feature up to Intel Xeon processors and NVIDIA Quadro GPUs across the board. They are available to buy now from platforms such as Newegg.

Apple has quietly released a new graphics card option for the Mac Pro, effectively bringing down the cost of equipping the workstation with GDDR6 VRAM. Called the Radeon Pro W5500X, the half-height MPX module is based on AMD's RDNA architecture and has a memory bandwidth of 224 GB/s.

There are many products on the market that claim to convert M.2 NVMe SSDs into fast portable external storage. However, OWC claims that its own such housing is the first to come certified for Thunderbolt 3 speeds. Accordingly, it may achieve 1.533 gigabytes per second (GB/s) in "real-world performance".

Vive X is a group set up by HTC's Vive in order to invest in augmented (AR) or virtual (VR) reality-based products and services. It has announced that it has achieved a return of nearly twice the funding it has awarded since its inception in 2016. It has mostly been conferred on commercial-grade VR/AR companies.

Intel's graphics head Raja Koduri teased new Xe dGPUs being currently tested at the company's Folsom labs. Raja's tweets showed off three GPUs — one of which was referred to as a Big Fabulous Package (BFP) — a prototype cooling system, and the test platform. The BFP is a 4-tile Xe dGPU aimed at HPC workloads.

QNAP's latest TS-x53D series of network-attached storage (NAS) products have 2, 4 or 6 bays and 4 to 8GB of RAM. They are also equipped with a PCIe Gen 2 expansion slot and 2 2.5 gigabit Ethernet RJ45 ports. The user can also play videos at up to 4K thanks to its HDMI port.

Acer is introducing the ConceptD 3 in the Ezel convertible mobile workstation form factor featuring 10th gen Comet Lake-H and Quadro T1000 (Ezel Pro) and GTX 1650 Ti GPU options alongside a refreshed ConceptD 3 Notebook with a similar configuration. Also being introduced is a ConceptD 100 small form factor desktop PC powered by 9th gen Intel processors.

Acer is showcasing its CastMaster system as part of its 2020 General Presentation Conference (GPC). This product consists of a receiver and a transmitter in the form of a large globular button. The OEM asserts that this "Plug-and-Play" arrangement will render the set-up and control of a presentation constant across any environment.

The A100 is the first GPU based on NVIDIA's state-of-the-art Ampere architecture. It is available in NVLink and (as of today) PCIe-enabled cards intended for high-performance computing (HPC) use cases. Its maker has also announced details on over 50 new servers based on these new graphics solutions.

There was a time when Flash was the go-to standard for online content building and support. However, other standards such as HTML5 have outstripped it considerably in the ability to deliver AV and interactive apps of all kinds. Therefore, Adobe has announced a definitive EOL date for this once-ubiquitous relic of the internet.

Lenovo is revamping its workstation lineup. The Lenovo ThinkPad P15 and the bigger ThinkPad P17 are at the core of the 2020 ThinkPad P series: The new models are internally completely redesigned, with a stronger cooling system, higher clocked GPUs and a modular design with daughtercards instead of a soldered solution.

Lenovo is not just updating existing ThinkPad laptops this year, it is also adding an entirely new option: The Lenovo ThinkPad P15v is an affordable 15 inch mobile workstation, which is something that Lenovo did not offer before.

While the rest of the ThinkPad P series mobile workstation line receives bigger updates, the slimmest workstation ThinkPad P1 Gen 3 and its multimedia-counterpart ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 3 are smaller updates. The biggest add-on with this generation: LTE-A and Wi-Fi-6.

Acer Veriton N is the company's newest compact PC for the Indian market. It can be configured with 8th and 9th generation Intel processors, up to 64GB of RAM, and 1TB of storage. Prices start at INR 9,999 for the entry-level variant.

Acer's 15.6-inch workstation scores points with powerful hardware, good battery life, extensive upgrade options and a Pantone-certified Full HD display. The device doesn't have a Thunderbolt 3 port on board.

Sony has announced its latest line of BRAVIA monitors directed at professional environments and use-cases. This BZ40H series has many attributes from this OEM's high-end TVs, as well as Ethernet connectivity in order to set up its own WLAN/WWAN. They also feature an Android Pie (9.0)-based OS with various on-board wireless options.

The market for wall-warts that charge devices via USB is now projected to be worth an additional US$9.9 billion by 2028. It is a sector of the overall wall-charger market, which is thought to grow by up to $23 billion over the same period. Even given the economic effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, various regions are thought to be capable of adding hundreds of millions of USD to its value.

LG has introduced a new monitor, known as the "Ergo". This is due to its new kind of "C-Clamp"-enabled stand that confers a full range of motion on the 27-inch panel. It also has USB type C with 60 watt (W) Power Delivery, so as to enable 1-cable operation with this display.

A leaked Intel Russia roadmap presentation offered a glimpse at Intel's enterprise server plans for 2020: 10nm LGA 4677 Sapphire Rapids parts are set to take on AMD's EPYC Genoa with PCIe 5.0 and DDR5 support.

A 24-core 48-thread Intel 10nm Ice Lake-SP processor has shown up on the SiSoftware database belong to the Intel Whitley platform. Intel Ice Lake-SP is expected to cater to the workstation/HEDT segment and will have to face some formidable opponents such as AMD EPYC Rome, and the upcoming EPYC Milan and Threadripper 4000 CPUs when they launch later this year.

Earlier this year, it emerged that certain OEMs had been misrepresenting some of the hard drives they sold in terms of the storage technology they used. One of these companies was Western Digital (WD), who subsequently admitted to doing so with some SKUs of its Red, Black and Blue HDD series. Now, a law firm has filed a suit in order to procure redress for their owners.

Shortly after Intel brought its Comet Lake S desktop CPU lineup into play, AMD slashed prices on the 64-core 128-thread Threadripper 3990X. The premium HEDT part is now available for its lowest price yet.

The Blade 15 Advanced Model in disguise costs a hefty $4299 USD but it will be packed to the brim with a 4K OLED touchscreen, 1 TB PCIe SSD, Core i7-10875H CPU, and a Quadro RTX 5000 Max-Q GPU.

HP has refreshed the ZBook lineup with the new ZBook Firefly 14 and the Firefly 15 G7. HP calls the ZBook Firefly 14 G7 as the world's thinnest and lightest mobile workstation. The new ZBooks now offer Intel Comet Lake vPro CPUs, NVIDIA Quadro P520 graphics, longer battery life, and optional WWAN and UHD displays and aim to take on the Apple MacBook Pro 13.

HP claims that its Device Provisioning Services can streamline and enhance the process of buying new hardware within a business, while also conserving the costs of doing so. It covers many typical stages of the same, from selection to update regulation. This suite has a range of "modules" aimed at facilitating hardware and software management for target clients.

Microsoft has announced that the latest stable upgrade to the Windows 10 OS will have an "enhanced" form of Packet Monitor. This is an extensive diagnostic tool that can detect, log and export packet drops in a network. Therefore, it may help the user address discrepancies in their Ethernet configurations.

Intel has announced that it has acquired Rivet Networks, a company best known for its Killer brand of connectivity modules. The silicon giant asserts that this move will enhance its standing as a proponent of Wi-Fi standardization. It may also simply help the company stay ahead of the competition in terms of this area of specs.

Since these are "vintage" source codes, there should be no concern regarding possible hacks. Emulators for the original Xbox already exist and are said to already be using the leaked codes, but still cannot provide complete compatibility with today's PC systems. As for the impact of the Windows NT 3.5 source code leak, Microsoft chose not to comment knowing full well that snippets from the old OS can still be found lurking within the latest version of Windows NT 10.

We've been hearing that the i9-10900K needs really good water cooling solutions, so the inclusion of suck chips inside Origin PC's latest EON17-X and NS-17 models is quite the bold endeavor. The powerful CPUs can be coupled with a desktop-grade RTX 2080 Super GPU and up to 64 GB of DDR-3200 RAM, if you have some more money to spare.

Dells 2020 Precision lineup is here and it is a big one: Dell is not only upgrading its mobile workstation laptops with the latest processors, it's also fundamentally redesigning many of the models. That includes the thin Dell Precision 5550 – and the brand new Dell Precision 5750, the first ultra-thin-bezel workstation with a 17 inch screen from Dell.

Today (May 19, 2020), Dell has introduced a whole slew of enterprise-level PCs. This may leave IT managers overwhelmed with options for a new or upgraded workplace fleet. However, the OEM also has a new service that wants to take this weight off their shoulders.

The traditional Dell Precision mobile workstation line receives a big refresh this year, as both the Dell Precision 15 7550 and Dell Precision 17 7750 feature completely reworked designs. Different from their slimmer Precision 5000 counterparts, the full-fat workstation still feature plenty of legacy ports.

The new Dell Precision 3550 and 3551 share a design, but not the internals - one of them is based on Comet Lake U CPUs, the other uses Comet Lake H series processors from Intel. Both models are optionally available with a pointing stick, which makes them unique among this year's Dell Precision workstations: Dell has stopped offering this feature on the more expensive Precision 7000 series.