Tech News
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TechPowerUp's Best of 2017
I should do one of these. Anyone dare me to look back on 2017 and tell you what was great about it?
#didntthinkso
Before we say farewell and adieu to 2017, join the editors of TechPowerUp on a trip down the memory lane as we look back at each of our specific review categories. The first annual TechPowerUp Best of article aims to recognize products that held up to the hype, and in some cases even managed to surprise and over-deliver.
If you have been paying attention this year it should be pretty easy to figure out what was great and what really didn't live up to expectation. I'm really surprised to see Core i7 8700K on the list despite the lack of availability and motherboard options.
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EwinRacing Flash Series Ergonomic Office Chair Review @ Bigbruin
Gaming chairs are one of those items that you are always curious about but never brave enough to try. Many reviews are deeply seeded with opinion that it is difficult to know if the chair is good or if the review is bad.
Well, it would seem that Bigbruin feels the same way.
I have never reviewed a chair before, but I have sat in plenty of them, so I would say I am fairly qualified to share my opinion. The EwinRacing Flash Series chair is definitely very comfortable, and overall has a very high build quality. There is plenty of adjustability to it, and the inclusion of both a lumbar and a neck pillow are welcome touches. I also appreciate that it can accommodate such a range of user heights / weights, as I am quite often left with chairs maxed out and still wishing for a little more room! Not with this chair, as it can go so high that my feet are left dangling.
I'm actually quite impressed with the EwinRacing chairs. They seem to pull in all of the stuff that makes a great gaming chair and then stacks on crazy build quality to push things over the top. Do you need an alloy caster base and reinforced chair frame? Not really but, by gum, if I can get a chair with that stuff it will become a decision point for sure.
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Caselabs Bullet BH8 Unboxing Video @ Modders-Inc
Video and Hardware Reviews have been a thing since the days of "Another Kickass Review", I never felt they were all that effective but were fun to watch. For those that remember the Kickass time you might get a chuckle. If not you might as well go back to your YouTube and support the unsustainable marketing engine.
Modders-Inc has posted a video review of the CaseLabs Bullet BH8. This is a standard sized computer case that looks more like a test bench than traditional tower. there isn't anything wrong with that and given the absense of external drives we might see more designs like this. Of course if you really want a tower case, then you might as well go back to watching your YouTube videos cause this bit if news is not for you.
Have you ever wanted a case that is custom made and created by someone that understands the issues you have when updating your system? Caselabs to the rescue with the Bullet BH8! Created in the USA and by a small private company that knows what it is like to not be able to put a system together just the way
Caselabs has been one of the go to vendors for the many of the show builds you see on YouTube (again for those who don't bother reading anymore). Caselabs chassis are quite large and assemble using screws over the traditional rivets you see in just about every computer case in the world. Personally I find this werid but then again they have never trusted us enough to send over a sample.
Be sure to check out the video over at Modders-Inc.
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ASRock Z370 Taichi Build Makes 5Ghz OC Simple – Intel Optane Adds Instant Startup
Dare I say... Optane
We also have to consider that 5Ghz overclock AND Optane are in the same paragraph and if that is Fake News.
I think not and ASRock gives us a reason why.
Our combination of the ASRock Z370 Taichi, 8th Gen Intel chip and Intel optane provided for the fastest and most powerfull build to date! Not only do we demonstrate how to hit and use a solid 5GHz in two easy steps, but also, our video demonstration validates the fastest system startup and shut down we have seen yet in a PC. It also validates our 5GHz clock speed.
There is a ripple in the PC world where folks seem to think faster is better. Thing is, they are not wrong but I have to wonder if shutdown speed is really something people are concerned with and if they are maybe they should consider closing their apps before shutting down the PC.
#justsayin
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Thermaltake Floe Riing RGB 240 TT Premium Edition Review @ Vortez
AIO or All in One cooling solutions combine the maintenance free operation of air cooling with the capacity of water. Granted there isn't much water in these coolers but every little bit counts. Of course, the one thing people often forget is that while you do get better thermals with an AIO the real benefit is your ability to direct the exhaust heat where ever you want.
The latest all-in-one CPU cooler that we’re looking at today is the Thermaltake Floe Riing RGB 240 TT Premium Edition. The name is quite a mouthful, granted, but it explains everything you need to know about the product in one fowl swoop. The RGB CPU cooler arrives in 3 different flavours, depending on the size of the radiator that you choose; 240mm (2x 120mm), 280mm (2x 140mm) or 360mm (3x 120mm).
Thermaltake has fully embraced RGB lighting and has gone to great lengths to include it into everything they sell, including AIO coolers made by asetek and branded with their own RGB LED lighting effects and Riing fans.
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PowerColor Red Devil Vega 56 8GB review
One of the reoccurring themes on the Hardware Asylum Podcast is the PowerColor Red Devil. It may not be one of the fastest cards on the market but it does have one of the best back stories of any high-end graphics card brand. I got to review one of the RX cards this last year and despite being light on mainstream features it had the performance you would expect.
Finally, the first custom Vega boards have hit the market. In this review, we take a devilish PowerColor Radeon RX Vega 56 with 8GB graphics memory for a spin. The 56 is a more affordable graphics card in the Vega range, and might actually be the better proposition value for money wise.
Vega is a GPU that I haven't paid much attention to, in fact it isn't something many other sites were able to review either which makes me wonder if it really is all "that" or just more AMD hype to sell more cards.
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AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition Overview @ TechPowerUp
Regular driver updates are important to ensure smooth gameplay and that the latest features are supported. Very rarely will drivers increase performance but I have seen instances where the driver devs reorder some stuff to give you a few more FPS in certain instances.
AMD has recently released a driver update called "The Adrenalin Edition" which brings with it some pretty cool stuff. That is assuming you are on Team Red.
The next version of AMD's Radeon Software Graphics Drivers, Adrenalin Edition, has been released today, and it aims to more than just a customizable overlay. One of the many exciting new features is AMD Link, an iOS/Android app that makes the most of a second screen experience. This is a driver release that merits the time to go through in detail.
I do like how you can link it to your smart device and I suspect more of that will be happening in the future.
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NVIDIA TITAN V Transforms the PC into AI Supercomputer
Volta-Powered GPU Delivers 110 Teraflops of Deep Learning Horsepower — 9x Its Predecessor — to Researchers and Scientists
LONG BEACH, Calif., Dec. 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems -- NVIDIA today introduced TITAN V, the world’s most powerful GPU for the PC, driven by the world’s most advanced GPU architecture, NVIDIA Volta.
Announced by NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang at the annual NIPS conference, TITAN V excels at computational processing for scientific simulation. Its 21.1 billion transistors deliver 110 teraflops of raw horsepower, 9x that of its predecessor, and extreme energy efficiency.
“Our vision for Volta was to push the outer limits of high performance computing and AI. We broke new ground with its new processor architecture, instructions, numerical formats, memory architecture and processor links,” said Huang. “With TITAN V, we are putting Volta into the hands of researchers and scientists all over the world. I can’t wait to see their breakthrough discoveries.”
NVIDIA Supercomputing GPU Architecture, Now for the PC
TITAN V’s Volta architecture features a major redesign of the streaming multiprocessor that is at the center of the GPU. It doubles the energy efficiency of the previous generation Pascal™ design, enabling dramatic boosts in performance in the same power envelope.New Tensor Cores designed specifically for deep learning deliver up to 9x higher peak teraflops. With independent parallel integer and floating-point data paths, Volta is also much more efficient on workloads with a mix of computation and addressing calculations. Its new combined L1 data cache and shared memory unit significantly improve performance while also simplifying programming.
Fabricated on a new TSMC 12-nanometer FFN high-performance manufacturing process customized for NVIDIA, TITAN V also incorporates Volta’s highly tuned 12GB HBM2 memory subsystem for advanced memory bandwidth utilization.
Free AI Software on NVIDIA GPU Cloud
TITAN V’s incredible power is ideal for developers who want to use their PCs to do work in AI, deep learning and high performance computing.Users of TITAN V can gain immediate access to the latest GPU-optimized AI, deep learning and HPC software by signing up at no charge for an NVIDIA GPU Cloud account. This container registry includes NVIDIA-optimized deep learning frameworks, third-party managed HPC applications, NVIDIA HPC visualization tools and the NVIDIA TensorRT™ inferencing optimizer.
Immediate Availability
TITAN V is available to purchase today for $2,999 from the NVIDIA store in participating countries. -
Introducing the EVGA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti FTW ULTRA SILENT
December 6th, 2017 – Take on today’s most challenging, graphics-intensive games without missing a beat. The EVGA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti delivers the incredible speed and power of NVIDIA Pascal – the most advanced gaming GPU architecture ever created. This is the ultimate gaming platform.
Featuring an all-new 2.5 slot cooler and ultra silent fan profile, the EVGA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti FTW ULTRA SILENT gives you the best of both worlds – Cool, silent running and game-changing performance! The larger heatsink efficiently removes more heat, which allows your fans to run at a lower and quieter speed. Alternatively, the improved cooling gives you more headroom to overclock and improve performance without worrying about heat.
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Magnesium batteries could be a thing
When I was a kid the hottest thing you could get for your bike were "Mag Wheels". They only had 5 spokes and looks pretty darn cool and have largely been replaced by plastic versions that look similar. Magnesium wheels or "Mags" were also hot on cars too though they quickly fell out of popularity due to safety and price concerns. You see, Magnesium burns and becomes brittle over time due to how they were cast.
Well, it would seem there are other uses for Magnesium and some researchers are looking to it as a safer and more powerful alternative to lithium.
It's still early days for the promise of safer, energy-dense solid-state rechargeable batteries. However, a team of scientists at the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research have just discovered a fast magnesium-ion solid-state conductor that will go a long way towards making non-flammable batteries with more capacity.
I find it interesting that it took "this" (I'm holding up a unit of measure) long for researchers to discover their fast magnesium-ion solid-state conductor and figure out how to turn it into a battery. Then again that was the premise of Iron Man 2 and just look what Tony Stark was able to accomplish.
Of course, all joking aside, safer batteries are a good thing for everyone and will help pave the way to our electrical future.
