CES 2016 - Lenovo displayed their latest push into mobile gaming at CES 2016 with a new gaming notebook, the Ideapad Y900. The Ideapad Y00 is a 17-inch Full HD gaming notebook with some impressive specifications.

Inside, we have an Intel Core i7 K-series processor meaning it can be overclocked, and to handle the gaming side of things Lenovo has included an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M with 4GB of GDDR5. Lenovo has crammed a 512GB SSD inside of the Ideapad Y900, and a 1TB drive for storage. The Lenovo Ideapad Y900 sports a mechanical gaming keyboard, making the product all that more alluring.

Lenovo will be starting the price of the Ideapad Y900 at $1999, with a release window of June.

CES 2016 - Deepcool's new Genome case combines the spacious utility of a performance PC chassis with a complete AIO closed-loop cooling system.

Set in a mid-tower form factor, the Genome case sports an integrated AIO closed-loop CPU liquid cooling system that works in tandem with a fan array to maintain excellent heat processing in ATX PC builds. The cooling system rocks a 360mm radiator equipped with 3x LED-lit PWM fans, and the liquid cooling solution is held in a wicked T-Virus-esque helix spiral surrounded by a glass tube.

The case can fit video cards up to 300mm in length and supports 2X SLI, and measures 506mm x 210mm x 510mm with a hefty weight of 21.5 pounds. It features a 120mm exhaust fan, 20mm radiators on the front and rear, 1x 120mm fan at 7x expansion cards, 4x 2.5" SSD drive bays and 2x 3.5" HDD bays and doesn't accommodate 5.5" drives.

CES 2016 - Phison was showcasing their extensive line of storage products at the Consumer Electronics Show this year, with PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe solutions, as well as next-gen SSDs using 1Znm TLC flash. Not only that, but flash drives using USB Type-C and super-fast 128GB SD cards were also on the table.

Starting with the PS5007-E7 which is the latest PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe-based SSD controller which Phison says "is in the final phase of performance tuning", with it hitting 2.6GB/sec reads and 1.5GB/sec writes - they are not for the faint-hearted, that's for sure. The PS5007-E7 features random performance of 300K IOPS read, and 250K IOPS write. Random performance sits at 36K IOPS. We should expect it to hit the consumer space in March, with drives arriving at up to 4TB.

Moving onto the PS3110-S10, which is a SATA 6Gbps controller, but it now supports the latest 1Znm NAND flash technology. Together with the 1Znm TLC, the S10 controller "saturates" the SATA bus, but adds "additional proprietary technology to provide a robust solution".

The age-old battle against pirates and publishers has raged for decades now, but it looks like the publishers may have just won the war with a new major advancement in DRM tech.

Denuvo's new-ish Anti-Tamper technology has slowed the once-steady flow of pirated games, allowing many key AAA hits to remain uncracked a full month after their release. The Anti-Tamper system, which protects DRM solutions, has ensured that most PC games that use it wont be cracked upon their release. Just Cause 3 and FIFA 16, which a both protected by Anti-Tamper, still remain uncracked.

Due to the advancements in DRM protection, the leader of notorious Chinese hacking group 3DM says that publishers may win the war in two years time. "Recently, many people have asked about cracks for 'Just Cause 3′, so here is a centralized answer to this question. The last stage is too difficult and Jun [cracking guy] nearly gave up. According to current trends in the development of encryption technology, in two years time I'm afraid there will be no free games to play in the world," the 3DM leader said in a forum post.

CES 2016 - Our last meeting of the day for day one of CES 2016 was with German cooling giant be quiet!, where we took a look around their suite at their current array of products.

There's not much new to show, but what we did find out was that be quiet! is working on an AIO watercooler - in the same vein as Corsair's Hydro series coolers - and that it'll be shown off towards the end of the year, with it hopefully in full form at CES 2017 next year.

This will be quite exciting, as be quiet! said it would be "extremely quiet" - so I'm guessing we won't hear the pump noise that we are all used to on other AIO coolers.

In our tweak guide for Warhammer: End Times - Vermintide, we uncovered an issue with the Skin Shading graphics option where turning it on or off would also turn Screen Space Ambient Occlusion (SSAO) on or off. Fatshark graphics programmer Axel Kinner has confirmed to us this is the case while also noting Skin Shading is still controlled by this setting -- it's just a very subtle effect.

Kinner says "a fix for this will hopefully be in the next patch". One would think that because both SSAO and Skin Shading are enabled as is, disabling them would net an even bigger FPS increase than normal, but this is not the case right now. As such, when the patch hits, it's unclear what effect disabling Skin Shading will have on performance, but we do know the visual impact will be minimal at best.

CES 2016 - Beyerdynamic has a good showing at CES this year with a new product that just launched, the DT 1770 PRO, as well as a much improved version of their halo product, the T1, which I took the chance to sit down and relax to some tunes while the world wizzed by.

The second generation of the T1 improves on a lot of the areas that astute audiophiles have been complaining about since they came out. First on that list are a removable cable system based off of mini-XLR that allows for customized cabling from your favorite third party. IT's a huge step forward even just for the piece of mind given that cables connections are the first to wear out anyway.

And inside they've reworked the drivers completely to give it a slightly different, but overall better sound profile. The top-end is slightly rolled-off but the low-end is perhaps even more smooth and just a bit more present. The result is a more fun headphone that doesn't completely sacrifice the neutral flavor that they're known for. Even on the loud show-floor, the sound was good on a variety of material. Subtelties in the works of Dvorak couldn't be discerned with such loud ambient noise, but even then the sound is leagues better than Apple Earpods.

Marc Laidlaw, the man responsible for writing Valve's magnum opus Half-Life series, has officially left the company after 18 years of work.

Valve has just lost one of its key talent juggernauts. Marc Laidlaw not only penned the legendary shooter that changed PC gaming forever (Half-Life) all by himself, but helped shape the continuation of the series by writing Half-Life 2 and its duo of episode expansions.

The news was confirmed by a string of emails between Laidlaw and a fan, wherein the Half-Life writer expressed a need to move out of the game's mighty shadow.

A new app just made it onto the Windows Phone app store that might point towards the future of data services for Windows Phones. It looks like this app is going to pave the way for an in-house data connection solution much in the same vein as Google's Fi.

The new app allows for a persistent data connection of cellular, but only with a Microsoft branded SIM card. Such cards aren't quite in existence just yet. The cellular data service is also only available on certain devices though how one gets the aforementioned Microsoft SIM cards is still a mystery.

Google's Fi service has proven to be a reliable and great alternative to the typical way of paying for cell service. It was far more convenient and ended up being reasonable in price compared to actual competing cell companies. You pay for what you use, and it's all an integrated experience that was streamlined into the Nexus phones itself. Perhaps Microsoft wants to capitalize on that ease of use as well as the potential cost savings, which could end up bringing them huge business as people switch to a pure Microsoft solution. What bands and providers will be the back-end are unknown at this time.

CES 2016 - Enermax has just unveiled a new duo of DIY case fans aimed at merging high-performance cooling with stylish lighting, adding a bit of futuristic flair to PC builds.

Enermax's new case fans consist of the D.F. Pressure and D.F. Vegas models, and represent a "giant leap forward" in chassis fan design. Both models utilize a combination of existing designs including Dust-Free Rotation, which allows the fan to spin in reverse for a small period upon system start up. Using DFR tech, Enermax's new fans are able to "greatly reduces the dust of the internal PC system or the fan blade".

The D.F. Pressure model is based on Enermax's existing TwisterPressure series and sports a static pressure of 3.845mm-H20. Adjustable Peak Speed PWM side controls ensure safety and easy cleaning.