Computer Systems News - Page 1

The Apple Lisa home computer first hit the scene forty years ago, and even though it launched for USD 9995 in 1983, which works out to be over 30K with inflation, it brought several ground-breaking additions to the world of PCs. It introduced the idea of a Graphical User Interface (GUI) to interact with a desktop home computer, plus a crazy new concept called a computer mouse.

The Apple Lisa (1983)

Thanks to the Computer History Museum (CHM), you can grab the complete source code for the Apple Lisa, which includes system and applications software. As part of the announcement, the CHM mentions one of computing history's most talked about stories. That time Steve Jobs and Apple visited Xerox and saw it was sitting on a potential killer feature in the form of a GUI. And so they "borrowed" the idea for the Apple Lisa.

Although worldwide PC shipments of 65.3 million units in Q4 2022 sound like a lot, it's a 28.5% decrease compared to Q4 2021. The data comes courtesy of Gartner, Inc, with economic uncertainty as one of the underlying factors.

Data from Gartner, Inc.

Undoubtedly, the last couple of years have been strange for PC hardware, from hardware shortages to a pandemic to a substantial increase in people working from home. Gartner notes that the high demand and low supply issues of 2021 did a complete 180 to turn into an excess of supply once the demand slowed down.

With Windows 11 being the OS of choice for new pre-built gaming desktops and gaming laptops coming in 2023, Xbox has put together a list of PCs and notebooks to keep an eye on.

CyberPower's new Prism 360V

On the desktop front Xbox highlighted the CyberPower Prism 360V, pictured above, with its cool wide case and the new range of desktop gaming PCs from iBUYPOWER. The latter features the new HYTE Y40 case with up to Intel Core i9 13900KF processing and GeForce RTX 4090 graphics. Plus, Windows 11 is installed on all rigs.

Xiaomi has just teased a couple of its new small form factor (SFF) systems in Mini-PC form, with the Chinese manufacturer pushing into the Windows ecosystem with laptops for content creators and gamers already, the Mini-PC market is about to get some love.

The Chinese manufacturing giant was expected to unveil its new Mini-PC systems during its Xiaomi Mi 13 launch event, but the event was postponed due to undisclosed circumstances, where the new SFF gaming systems were meant to be unveiled next to the next-gen high-end Mi 13 gaming smartphone.

However, the new Xiaomi Mini-PC systems were unveiled to a handful of people, which is where the photos have been leaked. Inside, there's no internal hardware in the photos, but we are to expect a tiny 100W SFF PSU. We don't know what motherboard and CPU will be inside, but we should expect either an Intel CPU or AMD CPU, and enough room for a dual-slot graphics card.

Intel's new NUC 13 Extreme "Raptor Canyon" PC is out in the wild, where it has been tested with NVIDIA's new flagship GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition graphics card... and man, what a combo it creates.

Intel's new NUC 13 Extreme "Raptor Canyon" with the GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition installed

Inside, Intel ships the NUC 13 Extreme "Raptor Canyon" SFF system features an Intel Core i9-13900K processor with 24 cores and 32 threads of Raptor Lake CPU power, and an ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3080 Ti graphics card. Now, the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti isn't a performance slouch, but upgrading to the GeForce RTX 4090 inside of a system this small is a force to be reckoned with.

We already know that the Intel NUC 13 Extreme supports a triple-slot graphics card, but the chunky GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition is truly something else. You've already got 32GB of DDR5-4800 from Kingston, and 3 x M.2 SSD slots for some super-fast storage, which can be backed up by a 2.5-inch SATA drive for more storage capacity if needed.

Intel has unleashed its next-gen NUC 13 Extreme system, which features the company's new 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" CPUs as well as support for huge triple-slot, 12-inch-long graphics cards for the ultimate in performance in a small package.

Intel's new NUC 13 Extreme PC in all its small, but damn powerful glory

The company is celebrating the 10-year anniversary of launching the NUC (Next Unit of Computing) with the new Intel NUC 13 Extreme Kit and Intel NUC 13 Extreme Compute Element, with their powers combined, making for the most powerful Intel NUC ever built.

Intel has optimized the thermal design inside of the new NUC 13 Extreme PC, with "off-the-charts" performance and never-before-seen features. We have a redesigned chassis that optimizes airflow in order to reduce noise and throttling during heavy workloads (gaming, creative content, and more). All of this, is within the tiny package that the NUC 13 Extreme arrives in.

AMD first announced its Project Quantum PC back in 2015, and while it didn't materialize, it was marketed in a huge way as the "best possible system for VR" when AMD had all of its blood going to its head for VR.

The fan-made AMD Project Quantum PC (source: stand_up_g4m3r)

Anyway, the awesomely-designed AMD Project Quantum system was based on an Intel CPU and what would've been a freaking wicked dual Fiji GPU design. The system was shown off during E3 2015 if you can believe that, after the company had internal discussions about using the dual-GPU solution, but later designs of the never-released Project Quantum system had better internals (AMD's new Zen CPU + Vega GPU with HBM2 memory).

But now... now a fan-made 3D project has breathed a massive breath of fresh air into AMD Project Quantum. A new system was crafted by the amazing hands and work of "stand_up_g4m3r" who used an ASRock DeskMini X300W PC on the AM4 platform, slotting in an AMD Ryzen 7 5700G APU that packs an integrated GPU and 32GB of DDR4 memory.

A Reddit user has secured themselves a decommissioned Netflix cache server, posting about his experience on Reddit.

A decommissioned Netflix cache server (source: "PoisonWaffle3" on Reddit)

Redditor "PoisonWaffle3" works for an ISP that has been getting rid of old Netflix servers, as they've been upgrading to new systems. In a thread titled "So I got a Netflix cache server..." with a bunch of pictures of the bright-Netflix-red server, and what is inside of the cache server.

PoisonWaffle3 explained on his post on Reddit that all he could find online for the Netflix cache server was overviews, installation and configuration guides for their proprietary software, and more. The Redditor noted that he had "no specs, no clue what was inside the red box".

Intel has now launched its new NUC 12 Enthusiast "Serpent Canyon" PC, with the system arriving in a rather unique coffin-shaped retail package, which has been pictured by ETA Prime. Check it out:

The new Intel NUC 12 Enthusiast "Serpent Canyon" PC includes Intel's new Core i7-12700H CPU which packs 14 cores and 20 threads at up to 4.7GHz, with 24MB of L3 cache and a 45W TDP. The Intel Arc A770M GPU has 16GB of GDDR6 memory, while for RAM there's up to 64GB of DDR4-3200 SO-DIMM memory in the NUC 12 Enthusiast PC.

The interesting coffin-shaped box that the Intel NUC 12 Enthusiast "Serpent Canyon" system arrives in looks awesome, which packs the PC itself, a vertical stand, and the 330W power supply. You also get some nifty replaceable side panels, which feature either a skull or serpent and are LED-illuminated... of course.

Intel's new NUC 12 Enthusiast "Serpent Canyon" is now available for pre-order, where inside the new NUC system packs the very latest mobile CPU and mobile GPU from Intel.

The new Intel NUC 12 Enthusiast "Serpent Canyon" features up to an Intel Core i7-12700H "Alder Lake" mobile CPU, joined by an Intel Arc A77M0 discrete GPU meaning it's an all-Intel system (Intel CPU + Intel GPU). The new NUC packs into the usual interesting, and small chassis with 2.5L (230 x 180 x 60mm).

The Core i7-12700H CPU offers 14 cores and 20 threads at up to 4.7GHz, joined by 24MB of L3 cache and a 45W TDP. The Intel Arc A770M GPU has 16GB of GDDR6 memory, while inside the new NUC 12 Enthusiast "Serpent Canyon" system offers up to 64GB of DDR4-3200 SO-DIMM memory, it's also Intel Optane ready (even though Intel just shut the division down), and 3 x M.2 slots that are ready for PCIe 4.0 or PCIe 3.0 SSDs as well as a SATA SSD that can be between 128GB and 2TB.