Desktop

CheckMag You might ask what use a gaming PC is without a monitor, but the ability to store your PC in any room in the house and play games using any device you can attach a controller to does have its benefits. If you have a solid network connection you can even game from it while on the go. Forget the PlayStation Portal, here's how to use devices you already own to play games remotely.

CheckMag Nvidia’s 40-series graphics cards have had a bit of a rocky start to say the least. While the company has tried to make amends with the mid cycle refresh giving us some “Super” variants, where does that leave budget conscious gamers invested in Nvidia products?

The manufacturer Lian Li has presented a new PC case. This is a case in the shape of a desk, which also has a display - a transparent model. Hot and cold drinks can also be stored directly.

The new Cosmic desktop from American Linux hardware and software maker System76 will be released with Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS. According to the System76 developer blog, a first alpha version of the Cosmic desktop is expected soon.

Available on Amazon for both the $1,499.99 list price and the all-time low of $801.74 in the last month (according to Camelcamelcamel), the Samsung Odyssey G85SB curved gaming monitor is now 35% off for a still good price of $980.15. However, the Samsung Offer Program can push it below $750 for qualifying Samsung US customers.

The Fedora Project consolidates several Linux systems with an unmodifiable root filesystem under one name: Fedora Silverblue, Kinoite, Sericea and Onyx become Fedora Atomic Desktops.

With no new hardware to support, the latest GeForce Game Ready Driver package, labeled 551.52, only comes with DLSS support for three titles. However, Nvidia reveals that "a whole host of games" will get DLSS and RTX enhancements in the coming weeks. The list of such games and apps currently includes over 500 items.

The new BD790i motherboard comes pre-installed with a top-of-the-line Ryzen 9 7945HX mobile APU for $519. Users can add up to 64 GB DDR5-5200 RAM, speedy PCIe 5.0 SSD storage via 2x M.2 slots and a dGPU on the included PCIe 5.0 X16 slot.

Overclocking master Der8auer tears into the AMD Ryzen 7 8700G with impressive results, netting a 25 °C reduction in operating temperatures and a massive jump in performance, bringing it close to the performance of the Ryzen 7 7700X.

AMD’s RDNA 4 RX 8000 GPUs could launch in Q4 of this year without any flagship boards. According to the latest information, the mid-range Navi 48 and Navi 44 GPUs could beat the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER and the RTX 4060 Ti, respectively, in performance. The GPUs are also reportedly hitting much better clock speeds in the engineering sample phase vs the retail RDNA 3 cards.

GPTshop has announced a new AI workstation PC lineup with Nvidia Grace Hopper CPU and GPU. The first configuration available to purchase comes with a GH200 72-core Grace CPU and H100 Tensor Core GPU. It offers 576 GB of fast-access memory and 900 GB/s of NVLINK-C2C coherent memory. This AI computer starts at $43,500.

Initially released only to OEMs in April 2022, the Ryzen 7 5700 processor from AMD recently became available as a retail product. Hardware Unboxed put this model through its paces and discovered that it only features half the L3 cache from the X version, which affects performance to the point where it even lags behind the more affordable Ryzen 5 5600.

GoPro has announced that it has rebranded its current subscription to Premium, which has also now sprouted a new Plus variant. The latter offers all of the same features as the former, with an added 'pro-grade' video stabilization tool and extra added cloud storage. The action-cam OEM's Quik for Macs has finally been released alongside it.

The Crucial T705 PCIe 5 SSD series has leaked. It will reportedly have a 4 TB solid-state drive, which is rare for modern SSDs. What’s more interesting is that the new PCIe Gen 5 range will purportedly deliver up to 14.5 GB/s read and 12.7 GB/s write speeds. These transfer speeds are better than the current fastest PCI Express drives.

With the launch of the latest Super models, Newegg is clearing stocks for the original variants, discounting the MSI Ventus 2X RTX 4070 Ti cards down to $699.

In a recent interview, the CEO of System76, the company that makes the Pop!_OS Linux distribution, talks about what prompted the move away from Ubuntu and provides some insights into the end-goal of Pop!_OS.

The AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT has dropped by a cool $50 on Newegg to become a full $100 cheaper than the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER. Needless to say, the Radeon card is an exciting value at the discounted price owing to its superlative QHD/4K rasterization performance that puts the GPU in line with the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER.

Due to inconsistencies in the release cycle of Ubuntu 24.04 and Plasma 6, Kubuntu 24.04 LTS must be released with KDE Plasma 5 instead of the new Plasma 6 desktop. The switch to Plasma 6 for the Ubuntu flavour Kubuntu will not take place until the 24.10 release in October 2024.

Intel could be preparing to give the LGA 1700 users more CPU options as a new leak from RedGamingTech talks of Bartlett Lake-S, a sort of refresh for Raptor Lake Refresh, that allegedly features the same architecture. The new CPUs will reportedly slot in existing LGA 1700 boards after only a BIOS update.

The new GeForce RTX 3050 6 GB has been shown to perform well against the RTX 3050 8 GB in early benchmarks, even with NVIDIA's various hardware cutbacks. Somehow, the new 6 GB model gets within 20% of its 8 GB counterpart despite its 46% lower power target.

Samsung launched the 990 EVO less than two weeks ago. It's the first PCIe 5.0 SSD in the brand's portfolio, albeit with a hybrid interface featuring 4x PCIe 4 support and 2x PCIe 5. The good part is that this brand-new solid-state drive has already received a generous discount, making it offer more value than at launch.

CheckMag Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices will give you remote access to all your files from any device both at home and away. Just add your drives and off you go, but they aren’t cheap. However there are some compelling software solutions that can turn any old PC and a few drives into a potent NAS which can compete with even the most expensive off the shelf solutions.

Google has announced that its chatbot is now able to work with text in many more languages besides English, and can also be made to double-check the results of its responses. Bard also now supports AI-generated images thanks to one of the Mountain View giant's latest models.

The last KalmX card from Palit was the Nvidia GTX 1650, which was launched in 2019. After nearly five years, we have a new member in the lineup. It's the Nvidia RTX 3050 KalmX, a first of its kind. But this fanless GPU isn't the same as its regular sibling. Instead, it's a new SKU with some downgrades.

The info provided in Intel's GFX CI database seems to confirm the recently leaked internal spec sheets that were suggesting that Arrow Lake-S would not support hyperthreading. Furthermore, the database info shows no AVX512 support and base CPU frequencies limited to 3.0 GHz.

There are a good number of GPU options that feature passive cooling. But for most systems, the passively cooled graphics card units available for purchase don’t offer the required performance. That’s likely what made a Redditor named Everynametaken9 take on a brave project of silently cooling an Nvidia RTX 3080 with a thick copper bar and heat sinks.

Initial reviews comparing the R7 5700X3D to Intel's i5-12600K and i5-13600K models reveal that AMD's latest 3D V-Cache processor is ~8% slower than the R7 5800X3D for $59 less.

It turns out that, despite OCulink's higher bandwidth, it still chokes high-end GPUs like the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 by up to 23% when used in an external GPU enclosure, but Thunderbolt's limitations are far more obvious. As with the older standard, the eGPU setup suffered more when the graphics output was sent back to the laptop.

The EndeavorOS team has released "Galileo Neo", which updates the Live USB version for installing the Arch Linux-based rolling distribution. In addition to bug fixes, it includes the latest Linux 6.7 kernel.

Spec Ops: The Line was released 12 years back. Developed by YAGER, it's a controversial title due to its storyline, but it's still a highly regarded third-person military shooter. However, yesterday, it got delisted from Steam and other game stores. Publisher 2K explained it's due to the expiration of "several partnership licenses."

NTDev, the developer behind Tiny11, has pushed the limits of tweaking and stripping Windows 11 to cut it down to just 100 MB. The developer named this version of the lightweight OS "Minwin." But this command line interface-only operating system barely works, so it isn’t available for download yet.

The new Zen 5 desktop processors will also bring updated chipsets, but motherboards might actually come later. X3D models could launch at the same time, but some sources believe they could be delayed to launch in response to Intel's Arrow Lake-S in Q4.

With a resolution of 7,680 X 2,160 pixels and a 57-inch diagonal, the Samsung Odyssey Neo G9 G95NC provides as much workspace as two UHD monitors. This curved behemoth with a 240 Hz refresh rate and 1 ms response time is now 20% off on Amazon, going for the all-time low price of $1,999.99 once again.

The Zotac Zbox Pico PI430AJ Mini-PC features the Intel Core i3-N300, a native 8-core SoC, and is equipped with a new cooling unit. Zotac is the pioneer in mini PCs to incorporate two AirJet mini cooling modules from Frore System. However, during testing, the Zotac Zbox Pico PI430AJ Mini-PC failed to distinguish itself from the competition in terms of performance.

Lenovo is set to debut its very first SSD lineup. This lineup will consist of four storage solutions: PCIe Gen 4, PCIe Gen 3, SATA III, and portable drives. They will all be manufactured by BIWIN, one of the major solid state drive and memory manufacturers.

In addition to providing support for the brand-new GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super, the GeForce Game Ready Driver 551.23 software package also comes with RTX Video HDR, a free AI-powered tool that automatically converts SDR video into HDR feeds directly in the internet browser. Ultra Low Latency Mode is now ready for DX 12 games.

MAINGEAR has marked the launch of the RTX 4070 Ti Super card by conducting a "limited drop" of a new "handcrafted and individually numbered" PC custom-built in collaboration with MSI. The Zero is touted to bring a revolution in gaming PC minimalism about with its new MG-RC cable-management system, not to mention a Panoramic Glass case through which an eponymous motherboard, branded cooler and "clean" RGB is displayed.