Tech News
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Gigabyte GTX 980 Ti G1 Gaming 6 GB @ techPowerUp
Saw this card at Computex and am actually a little suprised to see a review of it posted so quickly.
Gigabyte's GTX 980 G1 Gaming comes with a large overclock out of the box, which lets the card surpass GeForce GTX Titan X in performance, at a much lower price. The cooler is also better than the reference heatsink and avoids the 84°C thermal limit at all times. It also turns off its fans in idle and light gaming.
By the looks of it the card is pretty good and keeps the GPU cool under load and overclocking isn't too bad either.
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Computex 2015 Wrap Up
As many of you know Computex started June 2nd and the hellish week put me behind in getting my coverage posted AND by the looks of it there really wasn't that much Computex news coming out of Taipei anyway which is a huge disappointment.
I'd like to say I'm not surprised, of of the editors I ran into a good number of them were from sites at both extremes of the spectrum, (eg large sites and small sites) leaving the juicy middle virtually empty. This middle is where we normally see the bulk of news stories and with that gone it makes you wonder if there is any journalistic future for Computex.
This will be a major talking point in the next Hardware Asylum Podcast so be sure to subscribe to know when that episode drops.
I'll be posting the last three Computex related articles today and then will be getting back to my normal routine of reviews and news.
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Computex 2015 EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Classified Kingpin Edition
This isn’t so much a daily write up but rather a super excited, “I have to get this posted” sort of thing.
As expected with the launch of the GTX 980 Ti EVGA has been refreshing their video card line to accommodate the new chip. The niche flagship is this the GTX 980 Ti Classified KPE (Kingpin Edition). The card features the same VRM found on the 980 Classified with a special bin for LN2 overclocking and a few “warming” features to ensure the best performance when the card is running on Liquid Nitrogen.
The card features a redesigned ACX based heatsink with copper plating over the entire heatsink and then covered with an ornate plastic shroud. Under the heatsink you’ll find a chrome plated heatspreader which is then further reinforced with an EVGA blackplate.
For those of you planning to run this card on air you will of course get exceptional performance but keep in mind that the “special bin” means the ASIC for the GPU is quite poor and will limit above ambient overclocking which is good since when the chip gets colder it should scale quite well.
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Computex Starts Today June 2nd 2015 Taiwan Time
One of the biggest computer hardware shows in the world starts in just a few hours. Per the usual I will try to have daily show reports posted highlighting the cool stuff I see at each of the vendors. Also, keep in mind that while some “go-getters” huff around 50+ pounds of gear to bring you show coverage I’m simply armed with a notebook (the paper kind), my Canon DSLR and a Samsung S4 so there might be a little “lag” in getting things posted.
On the positive I have a FULL schedule planned this year including a good mix of old and new hardware vendors and will most likely miss a few I should go see. Some of the few I am most excited to visit include: EVGA, Gigabyte, MSI, NVIDIA, Zotac, DeepCool, InWin, beQuiet, Corsair and Silverstone to name a few.
If there is anything you wish for me to see in person fire off an email or send a message via any of the Social media affiliations linked and set forth on this website (usually @HardwareAsylum, #HardwareAsylum +HardwareAsylum, you get the gist)
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NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Launch Day
It is launch day again and this time it is a new GPU from Nvidia called the GTX 980 Ti. In following with previous launches Nvidia has positioned this card to be the performance king in the retail channels and designed to deliver so much more.
Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Ti Video Card Preview @ Hardware Asylum
Given that this is also Computex week there should be a good number of vendors showing off their custom designs and if anything that is what will be really exciting about the launch.
Web Reviews
- The New King Of High-end: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Review @ Techgage
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Review: A Cheaper Titan X Arrives @ HotHardware
- Nvidia GTX 980 Ti @ LanOC Reviews
- Nvidia's GeForce GTX 980 Ti graphics card reviewed @ Where?
- NVIDIA GTX 980Ti Review @ Vortez
- The NVIDIA GTX 980Ti Performance Review @ Hardware Canucks
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6 GB @ techPowerUp
- The New Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Ti: Features and Tech Overview @ Bjorn3dI'm sure there are more reviews out there and I might post a few more as the week goes on. Until then watch for my (our) Computex 2015 coverage.
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Intel Z97 OC-motherboard LN2 review: extreme boards, extreme tests
Testing systems with LN2 is usually something you do for fun but it seems HWInfo is taking things to the next level and tried to determine what motherboard is best suited for LN2 overclocking.
ASUS, ASRock, Gigabyte and MSI all claim that they have the ultimate motherboard for extreme overclockers. Hardware.Info wanted to see what board is actually the best, so last year we locked Hardware.Info Pro OC members Joost ‘Rsnubje’ Verhelst and Bauke ‘Nedernakker’ Caspers in our test lab for 48 hours with a Intel Core i7 4790K “Devil’s Canyon” processor, gallons of liquid nitrogen and the motherboards that lay claim to being the best at overclocking from all four manufacturers. Their mission was to find our which of these motherboards is actually the best at overclocking and, more importantly, which motherboard is the easiest to overclock with?
The ease of overclocking is usually personal preference or based on past experences so it will be interesting to see what their conclusion will be.
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BeQuiet Dark Rock TF Heatsink Review @ Frostytech
Frostytech brings up a good point in the introduction of their review in that the PC cooling system does require maintenance and traditional aircoolers, heatpipe or otherwise, tend to last longer than any liquid cooler, AIO or otherwise.
On the test bench today we have BeQuiet's Dark Rock TF heatsink - a top-down dual tower heatsink which features a pair of BeQuiet SilentWings fans and stands 130mm tall. The Dark Rock TF heatsink is built around six 6mm diameter heatpipes which link a large primary aluminum fin stack and smaller secondary set of aluminum cooling fins to a chunky copper heatspreader below. The 135mm PWM fans are arranged in a push-pull configuration, exhausting downwards so related motherboard CPU VRM components benefit from the cooling air flow.
I was able to review the beQuiet! Dark Rock TF recently and despite my normal grumblings about the installation method and tight clearances the cooler is actually really good.
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GTX 980 SLI Testing @ LanOC Reviews
To buy or not to buy, THAT is the question. For the money a single GTX 980 is more than enough for modern game titles, especially at "reasonable" resolutions. But, in the hardware world its not about "reasonable" or "enough" and more about pushing the limits and exploring the unknown.
After taking a look at the Titan X last week it really got me thinking. Currently you can pick up two GTX 980s for the price of one Titan X. That leaves me wondering how well two GTX 980s would perform in SLI compared to the Titan X. Well it just so happens I had two GTX 980’s in use in the office so I put them to the test. Today I’m going to take a quick look at their performance and see if they are a better buy than a single Titan X.
So, what does happen when you run a GTX 980 in SLI? In a way I kinda wish I would have tested that myself.
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Deepcool Tristellar @ techPowerUp
This was the case shown at the CyberPowerPC suite during CES and quickly became the talk of the show. I am interested to hear the story behind "why" TechPowerUp has a review sample since I was under the impression that DeepCool built it for CyberPowerPC.
Either way, it is still a great looking chassis.
In 100 years we will look back at our meager existence and when someone quietly asks the question "how did Skynet get started?", the answer could very well go like this: "Once, there was this chassis, the Tristellar...". Deepcool has created a crazy looking chassis which weighs more empty than most ITX systems as a whole. All this with the goal to be a showcase of design & function at the same time.
With any luck I'll get to see this case again at Computex.
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Falcon Northwest Tiki 18-core micro PC Review @ PC World
Overkill seems to be such a harsh word but, is so appropriate.
Remember: The Tiki does packs all that firepower into a chassis 4-inches wide, 13.25-inches tall and 13-inches deep. Impossible! After all, you’re thinking, you can’t get an LGA2011-V3 CPU into such a small machine, much less an 18-core Xeon.
That may have been true last year, but this spring Asrock released its crazy X99E-ITX/AC motherboard, which did what others told me was impossible: Put a massive LGA2011-V3 socket into a tiny Mini ITX motherboard. You see, the X99 chipset and its big-boy CPUs feature quad-channel memory controllers, and that means you need four pieces of RAM.I have my reservations about the Asrock X99 Mini ITX motherboard in that it wastes the main reason to own a LGA 2011v3 processor. The board only has a single PCI Express slot and only supports two memory channels instead of the customary four. Of course, with that being said the Tiki uses this as an excuse to get creative. The system comes with an 18 core Xeon processor and Titan X making it extremely powerful. On top of that the case is super small and can be custom painted to whatever color you desire giving the entire system a footprint close to a first gen Xbox360 and a wow factor beyond no other.
In fact, the only thing more impressive than the raw computing power is the price. > 9k USD.
