Computer Systems News - Page 1

Colorful Technology is known for creating PC components, gaming laptops, audio products, and all-in-one gaming solutions. At Computex 2024, it's set to showcase a range of liquid-cooled products - two standouts being the unique Colorful Neptune Series all-in-one PC with an open-frame and full-cover water block and the updated COLORFUL iGame GeForce RTX 4090 Vulcan LAB.

The Neptune Series PC is quite the looker thanks to its open design and full-cover water block that delivers liquid cooling to the CPU, other components, and the Neptune graphics card. With its sci-grey color scheme, it looks like a space station or spaceship. COLORFUL confirms that the unique all-in-one PC will ship with an Intel Core i9 processor, iGame Z790D5 Neptune i92T motherboard, and 2TB SSD.

Customers will have control over the specs when ordering, so there will be multiple variations of the Neptune Series PC. Colorful also notes that it is developing a Neptune motherboard "for the next-generation Intel Core processors," so its design will support next-generation Intel Arrow Lake CPUs.

Update: ASUS updated us on the NUC 14 Performance, saying that there would be barebones systems, and systems with pre-installed SSD and RAM.

ASUS has just introduced its new NUC 14 Performance, which is pretty much identical to the ROG NUC, but without the ROG flair. There are more hardware options available for the NUC 14 Performance, too.

Inside, the new ASUS NUC 14 Performance with its highest-end specs will be powered with an Intel Core Ultra 9 185H "Meteor Lake" CPU, an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 desktop GPU, up to 64GB of DDR5 SO-DIMM memory, and support for a Gen4 SSD.

This is something you've probably never seen before: a desk with a hidden hatch that reveals a built-in 45-inch OLED gaming monitor, all of your peripherals, and even a liquid-cooled gaming PC with a flagship NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card. Check it out:

YouTube channel DIY Perks is behind this beautiful creation, with a built-in 45-inch Corsair Xeneon Flex ultrawide bendable OLED gaming monitor, which he stripped down to its bare PCB and panel to completely minimize its size. The peripherals used include a full-sized keyboard, gaming mouse, gaming headset, and an external audio interface with the OLED gaming monitor.

On the PC side of things, we have an Intel Core i9-13900K processor, ASRock Z790 PG-ITX/TB4 motherboard, and a ZOTAC GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card, all of which are cooled with water blocks. There are also dual HDPlex 500W GaN power supplies, with one of them dedicated to the RTX 4090. Filling out the specs, we've got an amazing 12 x 4TB Crucial P3 M.2 drives in a Flashtor 12 Pro NAS, which is connected through an M.2 port to the motherboard, and a 10GbE M.2 network card.

Lenovo has just launched their latest Legion desktop gaming PCs with new Mobile on Desktop (MoDT) designs that offer up to an Intel Core i9-14900HX processor.

Lenovo is the largest PC maker in China, with MoDT platforms used by Chinese companies for years now, Lenovo is the latest one with its new Legion 7000K desktop PC series. Lenovo's new Legion 7000K systems feature Intel's current-gen 14th Gen Core "Raptor Lake Refresh" CPUs.

The company is using two of these CPUs: the Core i9-14900HX (24 cores, 32 threads) at up to 5.8GHz and a 190W TDP (!!!) and the Core i7-14650HX (16 cores, 24 threads) at up to 5.2GHz with a 160W TDP. Lenovo uses a custom desktop motherboard with the CPU pre-installed, which means it's not upgradeable at all. There's no IHS (integrated heat spreader) on the CPU, which Lenovo says is an advantage, as some enthusiasts will delid (remove the IHS) off their processor.

The rumors of NVIDIA making a next-generation Arm-based processor seems to be gaining traction, with both the CEOs from Dell and NVIDIA teasing a new NVIDIA Arm-based processor inside of a new Dell AI PC in 2025.

During a recent chat with Bloomberg's Ed Ludlow, Dell CEO Michael Dell was asked about NVIDIA's place in the huge AI PC market, to which the Dell CEO said: "come back next year," while NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang said "exactly".

We know that the Windows-on-Arm AI PC market is going to absolutely explode in the next 12 months, with Microsoft launching its new Copilot+ PCs powered by Arm-based Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Plus processors. NVIDIA has all of the ingredients to create a monster Arm-based processor: Arm general purpose cores, GeForce GPUs, Tensor Cores for AI, networking, and more hardware.

Qualcomm has announced that in collaboration with Microsoft, the new Snapdragon Dev Kit for Windows, a compact form-factor PC powered by the flagship Snapdragon X Elite, specifically designed for developers creating or optimizing apps and experiences for the next-generation of AI PCs under the new Copilot+ PC ecosystem.

Inside, the new Snapdragon Dev Kit features Qualcomm's new flagship Snapdragon X Elite processor, running at a TDP of up to 80W. There's also 32GB of LPDDR5X memory (not upgradeable), and 512GB of SSD storage. There are 3 x USB4 ports with Type-C, 2 x USB 3.2 ports with Type-A, a single Ethernet jack, 3.5mm headphone and HDMI.

Qualcomm's new Snapdragon Dev Kit is priced at $899.99, but remember that these aren't for everyone... they're for developers who reach out to Qualcomm to get their hands on a Snapdragon Dev Kit.

The M2 Ultra Mac Studio and Mac Pro are among the best Macs you can buy if you need raw horsepower and lots of cores, but we now expect that Apple will ship the M3 family of chips for these computers entirely and move on to the M4. Apple announced the first M4 device earlier this month in the form of the iPad Pro, and while there are no Macs with the chip yet that will change later this year. But in terms of the M4 Ultra and the Macs that will use it, there is no suggestion that they will arrive before 2025.

In fact, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman has now reiterated that in the paywalled version of the Power On newsletter for Bloomberg. Gurman says that Apple's current roadmap has the company set to launch the new M4-powered Mac Studio and Mac Pro in the middle fo 2025 which means that we shouldn't expect anything any time soon. Thankfully, the M2 Ultra Mac Studio and Mac Pros are still extremely fast devices.

Gurman also says that he doesn't expect that Apple will announce any new Macs at the WWDC event that will kick off on June 10, allowing the company to instead focus on software. Given the expected focus on big AI features coming to the iPhone that could be the best decision, giving Apple the time needed to show off its new software updates to the fullest. Alongside the iOS 18 update, we also expect Apple to preview new updates for the Mac, Apple Watch, Apple TV, iPad, and Apple Vision Pro.

Apple has been beta testing the macOS Sonoma 14.5 update for a few weeks now, giving developers and public beta program testers the chance to put it through its paces. Apple hasn't yet confirmed when it will be released to the public, but the expectation is that it will arrive within the next few weeks. That's now become more likely than ever before after Apple made the first Release Candidate version of the update available for download by developers.

This Release Candidate suggests that Apple is almost ready to make the macOS Sonoma 14.5 update available for download by Mac owners around the globe, although it's possible we will see one or two more Release Dancidates made available depending on whether there are any new issues identified by testers.

Perhaps most notable however is the news that Apple has shared details of what people can expect from the big update when it does finally become available for Mac owners. Apple doesn't often share release notes for beta updates depending on the platform and the features it expects to ship, but this Release Candidate does have a release note available for our perusal.

The new Minisforum S100 is a pocket-sized mini PC (that looks like a portable tape recorder from the 1990s) powered by Intel's N100 Alder Lake-N processor. This 6W quad-core chip lacks capabilities like HyperThreading.

However, 6W for a CPU is not a lot of power at all, and with a boost clock speed of 3.4 GHz, 8GB of LPDDR5-4800 memory, and 256GB of UFS 2.1 storage (with read and write speeds of up to 850 MB/s and 260 MB/s, respectively), it's low enough that the Minisforum S100 doesn't need to be connected to a wall socket to fire up.

How does the Minisforum S100 draw power? You have two options: use the USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port (an adapter is included) or the 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet port that supports powered Ethernet. The latter solution means the Minisforum S100 can get power and data from a single cable. In addition, the Minisforum S100 comes equipped with Windows 11 and can output up to 4K.

Minisforum is gearing up to launch its new AtomMan X7 Ti Mini-PC, featuring an Intel Core Ultra 9 185H "Meteor Lake" CPU, a built-in 4-inch touchscreen, OCulink connectivity, and so much more.

First off, the AtomMan brand from Minisforum is something new, aimed at the Mini-PC market and offering something different than what we've seen over the years. Inside, the new AtomMan X7 Ti features some high-end components, including Intel's flagship Meteor Lake CPU with the Core Ultra 9 185H.

Minisforum's new AtomMan X7 Ti Mini-PC is the first product to feature an Intel Meteor Lake CPU and the new Dynamic Screen, a 4-inch touchscreen that shows system monitoring information like real-time temperature monitoring, CPU, GPU, SSD usage, and more.