Computer Systems - Page 14

Computex 2023 was jam packed with juicy announcements, and we have decided to gather what we consider to be our favorite unveilings.

From Monday to Thursday last week the TweakTown team wandered the Computex showroom floor, meeting with companies and their marketing teams to understand what is just around the corner for gamers.

TweakTown founder and director Cameron Wilmot, gaming hardware editor Kosta Andreadis, hardware editor Ryan Gendreau, and science, space, and AI reporter, Jak Connor were demoed countless products, from NVIDIA's CEO Jensen Huang showcasing GraceHopper on-stage at the NVIDIA press event, to the ASUS booth where we broke the news on the world's first 38-inch 4K 144Hz gaming monitor.

A relatively late addition to the WWDC 2023 rumor mill was the arrival of an updated Mac Studio and it turns out that the rumors were spot on. Apple has now announced the new Mac Studio powered by the M2 Max and an all-new M2 Ultra.

The new Mac Studio was joined by the first Apple silicon Mac Pro and a new 15-inch MacBook Air in the new-Mac section of the WWDC 2023 opening keynote. And it's set to become a popular option for people who need Mac Pro levels of power but don't need the expansion options that the high-end machine affords.

The new Mac Studio looks identical to the old model and comes with M2 Max and M2 Ultra options. The former comes with a 12-core CPU and up to a 38-core GPU configuration that maxes out at 96GB of unified memory with 400GB/s bandwidth.

Apple has finally announced a new Apple silicon Mac Pro, its first since the transition away from Intel chips began in June 2020. That transition was supposed to take two years, and for the most part, it did. But the Mac Pro was the last holdout - and now it's finally been refreshed.

The very first Mac Pro to be powered by Apple silicon was announced during the WWDC 2023 opening keynote on June 5, and it's set to be quite the powerhouse.

Apple's new Mac Pro is powered by the equally-new M2 Ultra chip, complete with support for PCIe expansion - something that the Mac Studio couldn't offer than to the smaller, sealed form factor. That expandability is a key part of what makes the Mac Pro a big deal for specific workflows, particularly those that require dedicated expansion or acceleration cards.

While there were plenty of interesting announcements from various companies at Computex 2023, the case mods were one of the biggest attractions in terms of eye candy.

The Computex 2023 showroom floor was littered with case mods from modders all around the world. I was lucky enough to be on the showroom floor, and as I met up with companies to discuss their new products, my eyes were constantly being drawn to the impressive designs case modders came up with.

Within this article, I will provide images of my personal favorites I spotted through my three days wandering around the two showroom floors.

Potential buyers of Apple's very best Macs should probably wait a little while before picking up a new one because a new report claims that the company has something new on the horizon.

A new report by Bloomberg's Mark Gurman says that Apple is now testing new versions of its Apple silicon with M2 Max and M2 Ultra chips in the works. And with WWDC taking place on June 5, we can only imagine that there will be a new high-end Mac or two on the docket.

Apple is already expected to announce the 15-inch MacBook Air during the event on Monday, but Gurman has previously said that several new Macs are on the way. In a new report, Gurman says that Apple is planning two new Macs which are labeled internally as Mac 14,13 and Mac 14,14. Gurman believes that the two Macs are running multiple chips including the M2 Max that was announced in January 2022. The other chip is thought to be another high-end chip, likely to be called the M2 Ultra.

When putting together a new PC build for gaming, cable management might be low on your list - but it quickly becomes a genuine hurdle as soon as you connect that first cable from the motherboard to your power supply. From there, things can quickly get out of hand regarding cables, with just about every device requiring some pinned connection to go live.

At Computex 2023, taking a tour through GIGABYTE's product line-up, we had the opportunity to take a closer look at the company's new concept - the AORUS Stealth 500. Specs-wise, it features all of the components you'd consider standard for a modern gaming rig. A Z690 AORUS ELITE Stealth motherboard, a GeForce RTX 3070 GAMING OC Stealth graphics card, and an RGB-lit and stylish AORUS C500 GLASS chassis.

Looking through the side panel, you'll notice one thing missing - cables. All of these are hidden, including the connector to the custom GeForce RTX 4070, outside of the pump for the AIO CPU cooler. GIGABYTE notes that the Cable Stealth Design isn't simply about delivering a cable-free look that is fantastic to witness in person. It's a system that is designed to simplify cable management and component installation.

ZOTAC has announced the Magnus One, an extremely powerful all-new desktop PC with upgraded graphics and CPU performance.

Following the release of NVIDIA's newest graphics card line-up, the RTX 40-series powered by the cutting-edge Ada Lovelace architecture, ZOTAC has rolled out a new and improved lineup of its Zbox desktop PCs. Introducing the Magnus One ERP74070C, which features the ZOTAC GAMING GeForce RTX 4070 12GB GDDR6X and an Intel Core i7-13700 Processor (16-core 2.1 GHz, up to 5.2 GHz). Notably, the Magnus one supports two DDR5-5600/5200 SO-DIMM Memory slots, one M.2 NVMe PCle x4 SSD slot, one M.2 NVMe PCle x4 / SATA SSD slot, and a 2.5-inch SATA 6Gbps HDD/SSD slot.

The specs don't stop there, as ZOTAC has equipped the Magnus One with a killer 2.5Gbps Ethernet port and one Gigabit Ethernet port. Furthermore, the Magnus One comes with Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2 support, along with a single UHS-II SDHC/SDXC card reader for content creators as well as three DisplayPort 1.4a, 1 x HDMI 2.1a for a maximum of four possible displays used simultaneously. If you were wondering about connectivity, ZOTAC has outfitted the Magnus One with one Thunderbolt 4, four USB 3.1 ports, and four USB 3.0 ports.

ZOTAC has walked me through the very impressive Zbox Pico mini PC, which features AirJet solid state active cooling.

Computex 2023 has kicked off with a bang, and I was lucky enough to get a complete walkthrough of the ZOTAC booth, where I was introduced to the Zbox Pico, a palm-sized PC that features an impressive cooling solution. ZOTAC explained to me that typically in the past, its previous mini PC used Pentium or Celeron processors, while the newer model, as pictured above, is the first to feature an Intel Core i3 processor.

This upgrade in power can be attributed to the AirJet solid state active cooling, which is able to reduce the amount of heat produced and, thus, enabling a higher-end processor to be implemented. These solid state cooling chips are able to draw in air from the side, reducing the internal temperature of the mini-PC, and then spitting out the hot air through the other side out its exhaust, as displayed by the blurry fan shown above. ZOTAC explained to me that typically in the past, these systems would feature heat sinks, but since the emergence of solid state cooling chips, they are no longer necessary in this particular build.

Zotac will be on hand at Computex 2023, showcasing several new products, with one of the highlights being a range of new ZBOX Mini PC products. As per the headline, one of these is set to be tiny - with the ZBOX PI430AJ with AirJet being hailed as the world's first solid state active-cooled Mini PC.

AirJet is a new revolutionary bit of technology from Frore System, with Zotac noting that in the ZBOX PI430AJ, two AirJet Minis can remove a significant amount of heat thanks to their rapid airflow. Small and silent, users can boost performance with increased thermal limits to make the most out of the internal hardware. And all without increasing the unit's overall size - which, per the imagery, looks like a small external USB drive.

Hardware-wise, it features an Intel Core i3 processor, 8GB of LPDDR5 memory, and M.2 SSD storage in a pocket-sized PC.

Anyone worrying that Apple is going to kill the Mac Studio powerhouse desktop machine after just one release looks to have been doing so prematurely. A new report claims that Apple is not just working on refreshing the product, but it's also said to have two of the things in the works.

That means that Apple could be about to update the Mac Studio for the very first time, although details on what that will entail have so far been very hard to come by. We don't even know for sure when either of the two Mac Studios will arrive, but the fact that they're even being discussed is good news for many.

The Mac Studio first debuted a little over a year ago in 2022 and can be configured with a maximum M1 Ultra chip. However, with Apple thought to be keen to ship its first Apple silicon Mac Pro, it was worried that the Mac Studio wasn't long for this world. The Mac studio was considered to be something of a stop-gap solution for Apple, allowing it to offer something for high-end power-hungry users who didn't want to wait for that Mac Pro to ship.

ChatGPT can be put to a lot of uses, as we've seen - such as its recent introduction to gaming chat platform Discord - and the latest one is the AI being recruited to help consumers build a PC over at major US retailer Newegg.

In fact, Newegg is putting the AI's skills to use for a raft of things across the retailer's site, but primarily to beef up the PC Builder tool, which is now labeled as 'Build with AI' - and a clear caveat that this is still a beta experience.

As you might expect, if you want to put together a PC, ChatGPT will help provide recommendations for various components that will go together well, or fit a certain budget.

The new ASRock DeskMini 4205 might be a Mini PC designed for commercial use thanks to its all-in-one fanless and efficient design powered by the Intel Celeron Processor 4205U. Still, the optional RGB add-ons make it a great home theatre option.

Though on that front, this Mini PC is limited to DisplayPort 1.2, but that's still capable of 4K 120 Hz with 10-bit color.

The ASRock DeskMini 4205 features dual LAN ports, support for three displays, and four bits of storage - two M.2 2280 PCIe slots and two 2.5" SATA 6Gbps. Three simultaneous displays, as per ASRock, make it a great fit for "digital signage and advertising."

Aston Martin is renowned for creating high-performance automobiles with a focus on style and luxury - and the brand has been the vehicle of choice for fictional spy James Bond for decades. Lenovo, which has been in the PC game for quite a while, creating products for enthusiasts, everyday consumers, and businesses for years, has partnered with Aston Martin for its new range of ThinkStation PX, P7, and P5 workstations.

These high-powered machines are designed for high-compute workloads, equipped with up to 120-core Intel Xeon processors, NVIDIA RTX 6000 Ada Generation GPUs, and beefy 1850W PSUs.

So instead of pushing Call of Duty to triple-digit frame rates in native 4K, they're more likely to be used for machine learning, scientific research, engineering, virtual production, and other applications where workstations sit at the core of cutting-edge computing.

After months and months of hearing nothing about a new 24-inch iMac to replace the 2021 M1 model, a new report claims that Apple will now refresh it sooner rather than later.

Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, writing as part of the weekly Power On newsletter, says that Apple is hard at work getting an M3 version of the colorful computer ready for primetime. And the big release could be sooner than we had previously expected.

Gurman says that Apple is now testing an updated version of the current M1 iMac that looks the same and comes in the same colors. That also means that it will come in the same 24-inches screen size, too.

If you've been saving your pennies and waiting for Apple to update the current 24-inch M1 iMac to the newer, beefier M2, you're going to be in for a long wait. Because it isn't happening.

That's according to one well-connected reporter who says that Apple will instead choose to skip the model entirely, launching an updated M3 iMac towards the end of 2022. That means that the current model will have been on the market for well over two years before it gets its replacement.

Bloomberg's Mark Gurman is the man with the plan, reporting via his Power On newsletter that Apple doesn't look set to give buyers anything to spend their money on any time soon.

Dell Technologies Inc. is set to cut 6,650 jobs as the demand for PCs drops dramatically after a pandemic-era boom that saw an influx of people and businesses buying hardware. According to reports, the company's sales in Q4 2022 saw a massive 37% decline compared to the same period in 2021.

The bulk of Dell's revenue comes from PC sales, over 50%, and these job cuts represent around 5% of the company's global workforce. For PC gaming hardware, this includes Dell's Alienware brand too, which covers PCs designed and explicitly marketed for high-end gaming.

Ahead of the job cut announcement, Dell had already put a hiring freeze in place in addition to other cost-cutting measures. It wasn't enough. "We've navigated economic downturns before, and we've emerged stronger," Dell Co-Chief Operating Officer Jeff Clarke Clarke wrote in a memo sent to employees obtained by Bloomberg. "We will be ready when the market rebounds." Dell is positioning the cuts as critical for the company's long-term health.

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.

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.

The simple idea of windows for different applications, folders, and point-and-click navigation was something that the Apple Lisa brought to the masses. And it did all of that with only 1MB of RAM. That's not a typo; we're talking 1 Megabyte of memory - which was considered huge at the time. It also featured a 32-bit Motorola 68000 processor and a 364 x 720 resolution bitmap display.

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.

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.

"The anticipation of a global recession, increased inflation, and higher interest rates have had a major impact on PC demand," said Mikako Kitagawa at Gartner. "Since many consumers already have relatively new PCs that were purchased during the pandemic, a lack of affordability is superseding any motivation to buy, causing consumer PC demand to drop to its lowest level in years."

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.

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.

You might be wondering why this list of PC gaming rigs comes from Xbox. Well, Xbox has been making significant strides in PC support, namely with the much-improved Xbox app that is a part of Windows 11. In addition to being the hub to launch PC Game Pass titles, it's also a storefront along the lines of Steam. It still has a way to go before it can be considered on par with Valve's PC gaming staple, but it's in a decent state right now.

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.