Computer Systems - Page 23

Computex 2016 - MSI has launched its new AEGIS and AEGIS X barebones PC systems, providing a stylish and performance-driven DIY solution for high-end gaming and VR.

With MSI's new AEGIS and AEGIS X barebones PCs, gamers can pack in potent, enthusiast-grade desktop PC hardware in a compact design that's perfect for LAN parties. The AEGIS duo can house full-sized powerhouse video cards like NVIDIA's new GeForce GTX 1080, with support for Intel's 6th Gen Skylake CPUs and an onboard 600W 80 Plus Silver PSU. Up to 32GB of DDR4 RAM can be slotted into the onboard motherboards, with room for two NVMe PCIE-E SSD's in Super RAID 4 configuration to enable blistering-fast data speeds of up to 3300MB/s. MSI's new Silent Storm Cooling 2 thermal system ensures "exceptional cooling and silence even under the most stressful battles" with two separate intake chambers that cool individual components.

The AEGIS X is fully optimized for hardcore VR and gaming performance, sporting one-touch overclocking with the Dragon OC button. The AEGIS X also rocks a liquid cooling solution to keep thermals at bay, with a full Z170 motherboard that fits Intel K-series CPUs (up to a Core i7-6700K) along with 32GB DDR4 RAM support. A front-facing HDMI-out pass through port enables easy VR headset hookups.

Computex 2016 - EVGA didn't just show off their custom GeForce GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 cards at Computex 2016, they also had their DG-87 gaming PC on show and what a beast it is.

EVGA's DG-87 PC is powered by the EVGA X99 Classified, 4 x EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti QRG video cards which are all watercooled, the CPU is watercooled by the EVGA QRC CPU cooler, while the entire system is powered by the EVGA 1600W T2 PSU. To get the 4-way GTX 980 Ti cards working, EVGA used their 4-way Pro SLI Bridge V2, with the entire system looking absolutely beautiful.

On the side of the system is an awesome reflective panel, where we have an LED read out and I/O. It looks ridiculous in person, and really catches you eye.

Computex 2016 - Digital Storm has just unveiled its amazing new Aura, a 34-inch all-in-one gaming PC that somehow manages to cram inside the next-gen Intel Core i7-6950X and NVIDIA's new GeForce GTX 1080 video card.

Digital Storm COO, Harjit Chana explains: "We're excited to announce the Aura, it's unlike anything we've offered. You can now truly have an immersive gaming experience in a slim AIO form factor".

With an innovative internal design, Digital Storm says that the Aura is easy to access and upgrade, with the video card, RAM, storage, process and motherboard all based from off-the-shelf components that can be "replaced or upgraded by users".

Computex 2016 - GIGABYTE has unveiled its new BRIX Gaming UHD mini-PC that's designed for 1080p gaming and running applications in 4K UHD.

GIGABYTE's new BRIX Gaming UHD ultra-compact mini-PC sports a discrete NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950 video card along with an Intel Core i7 Skylake-U processor to enable easy 1080p gaming across four displays, as well as applications in 4K UHD.

Users can slot in two DDR4 2133MHz SO-DIMM RAM sticks for high-performance speeds, and there's room for two 2.5" HDD/SSD's at 7 and 9.5 mm thickness via two 6Gbs SATA 3 slots. Ontop of those storage options, two M.2 SSD's can be equipped for high-speed storage.

Computex 2016 - GIGABYTE has a sweet looking new AIO for your system building pleasure. Dubbed the HKC X320 Plus, it features an R1800 Samsung curved panel, ultra thin PIO, a full-sized GPU slot, a backcover that's easy to take apart and put back together, and USB 3.0 support. Oh, and if you're worried about heat (as you should always be), it accommodates natural dissipation on top, while negative pressure dissipates the heat on bottom.

The display is your stock 1920x1080 60Hz, but interestingly, the panel is VA, which generally makes for good viewing angles, blacks, and contrast compared to other popular panels, but poor response times and ghosting. Response time here is GTG 8ms, while colour is measured at 10.7B; viewing angle is measured at 178 degrees both vertically and horizontally.

See below for supported hardware. There's no word yet on launch date or pricing, but stay tuned.

Computex 2016 - MSI is the latest to join the VR PC backpack craze with a new prototype model that essentially lets uses strap high-end PC hardware to their back for portable VR gaming.

The aim of MSI's new VR backpack--and others like it--is to abolish the irksome cords that tether VR users to desktop PCs, thereby making the experience much more mobile. Now that your hardware is on your back, there's no worry about tripping over cords while wearing room-tracking HMD's like the HTC Vive. The form factor for MSI's backpack is actually smaller than mini-ITX, but it supports full desktop-grade video cards like the GTX 980. In fact, MSI plans to slot in desktop-sized NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 and NVIDIA's new VR powerhouse the GeForce GTX 1080 into the backpack.

MSI has yet to fully announce the VR PC backpack and the hardware is still in its early stages. The unit demoed to press was a sample, and sported an Intel Skylake Core i7 K-series processor paired up with a desktop-grade NVIDIA GTX 980. Users will also be able to swap out and upgrade hardware components like video cards and power supplies. The demo unit provided about 90 minutes of VR gaming on a single charge, but the backpack can be plugged into a wall socket to continue gaming.

Computex 2016 -- TweakTown is on the ground in Taipei for Day 0 of Computex 2016, and we just stumbled across a new, currently unannounced system from ASUS that stuffs a pair of NVIDIA's Pascal-based GTX 1080 video cards into its small-form-factor frame. Say hello to the ROG G31 Edition 10 PC.

While you drool over the eyecandy potential that a pair of GTX 1080s brings to the table, we'll tell you that the ROG G31 also contains an Intel Core i7 CPU (likely the 6700K) and up to 64GB of RAM, though we're not yet sure if it's DDR3 or DDR4.

ASUS is also cramming up to four M.2 PCIe SSDs into the G31, and a Blu-Ray disc writer.

Computex 2016 - ASUS has just revealed its new ZenBook 3 at the Zenvolution event in Taipei.

The ZenBook 3 is a direct competitor to Apple's MacBook, with an incredibly thin 11.9 mm lightweight frame and powerful specs that beats the MacBook's performance two-to-one. ASUS's Johnny Shih boasts that the ZenBook 3 is "the world's most prestigious laptop," with onboard specs ranging up to an Intel Core i7 CPU, 16GB of 2133MHz LPDDR3 RAM, and a 1TB PCIE SSD. The sleek laptop features a 12.5-inch display and is powered by the "world's thinnest" 3mm fan for cooling.

The ZenBook 3 also sports fast-charging capabilities with built-in Thunderbolt 3/USB-C support. ASUS affirms the laptop can jump from a depleted charge up to 60% in just 49 minutes flat, with overall battery life ranging from 9 hours of use. The ASUS ZenBook 3 has three different pricing tiers: $999 for the Intel Core i5 CPU, 4GB of RAM and 256GB SSD; $1,499 for the Intel Core i7 CPU and 512GB SSD; and $1,999 for the Intel Core i7, 16GB 2133MHz LPDDR3 RAM and 1TB SSD variant.

Most people would think that Apple has a decent handle on Mac sales in the US, but this quarter the company was beaten by Chromebook sales.

Market research firm IDC has said that Apple sold 1.76 million Macs in the US in the last quarter, and while it was up from the 1.56 million units in the same quarter as 2015, it didn't beat out Chromebook shipments. IDC only breaks down PC shipments by manufacturer, so it's hard to know how many more Chromebooks were sold, we just know it was 'more'.

Chromebooks have been especially popular for education purposes and those on lighter budgets, as Apple Macs can range from thin-and-light notebooks, all the way through to workstation-class desktops. Chromebooks are mostly low-cost laptops from various companies, with Apple's closest competitor being the iPad. This quarter, Apple sold 10.3 million iPads in the US, not bad at all.

ZOTAC impressed me a few hours ago with their GeForce GTX 1080 PGF for the Chinese market, but the company has also just unveiled their new Windows 10-powered stick PCs.

The new ZOTAC ZBOX PI220 and PI221 are powered by quad-core Intel Atom X5-Z8300 processor clocked at 1.44GHz (and it bursts up to 1.84GHz). There's also Intel HD Graphics with 2GB of DDR3 RAM, and 32GB of eMMC storage - which is expandable through microSD/SDHC/SDXC.

The new ZOTAC ZBOX stick PCs feature an HDMI connector, 1 x USB 3.0 port, a 10/100 Ethernet jack, 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0. ZOTAC will include a universal power adapter, a recovery disk, an HDMI extension cable, and a detachable external antenna. The PI221 is passively cooled, while the PI220 is a little more fancy, cooled by something ZOTAC calls a "SmartFan" system. The passively cooled ZBOX measures in at 131.38mm x 42.5mm x 17mm while the model with the fan checks in at 131.5mm x 42.2mm x 15.8mm.

Acer just announced their Predator G1 gaming desktop, which is much smaller than the slightly older siblings, making it portable enough to take along with you to those ancient LAN parties. The best news is that the redesigned case is only smaller, and doesn't sacrifice anything other than space. Their newest gaming laptop, the Predator 17X also made an appearance with updated internals, fast ones too.

If you feel like, you're able to configure this with up to an NVIDIA Titan X, a Skylake K series chip and 64GB of DDR4 RAM. Of course in the storage region you'll be able to have 512GB of solid state storage or even throw in a 4TB HDD for good measure. Essentially what Acer has done with the new, smaller, G1 is take the internals from the larger G6 and stuff them into a smaller case. The case is attractive, too, with customizable lighting and sleek lines that definitely speak the gamer language, but in a sophisticated way. The new G1 is also completely VR ready with it's powerful internals.

The Predator 17X gaming laptops is the follow-on replacement to last years 17-inch powerhouse and comes with the option for up to a 4K screen, a completely unlocked, and overclockable, Skylake i7-6820HK and up to 64GB of DDR4 with an NVIDIA 980 coming along of the ride. Storage options include 512GB NVMe enabled drives and room for 4TB of storage. It packs Thunderbolt 3, just in case you're thinking about external GPU solutions too. With the potential for so much heat in such a small area, Acer has developed a three-fan setup that sucks in copious amounts of air from the side and then rushes it to through the back. It's portable, sort of.

Maingear just added a new 15-inch portable workstation to their lineup of portable powerhouses. The new Pulse 15 Pro combines NVIDIA's Quadro M2000M professional graphics with Intel's mobile Xeon's to make for a very productive, yet thin, mobile workstation.

Maingear has stuffed a lot of fast technology into a very small package with the new Pulse 15 Pro. It's only .75-inches thick but has an Intel Xeon E3-1505M running at 2.6GHz installed with up to 16GB of ECC enabled DDR4-2133MHz RAM and can have up to two Samsung 950 Pro NVMe enabled M.2 drives in RAID 0 for some insane read and write speeds. The shining star, of course, is the Quadro M2000M with 4GB of RAM with 640 CUDA cores capable of accelerating any OpenCL or CUDA workload you might run across. That can drive up to a 4K (2160P) IPS screen. As with all of Maingears products, you can choose from a variety of paint schemes where they apply automotive grade paint to the top cover. This all starts at a $2549.

The idea is that content creators and professionals of all types can use this to properly edit 4K video while on the go. It's also quite useful for anyone that needs a bit of power and the safety of ECC memory. "The Pulse 15 Pro will offer even the most demanding creative professional, with incredible processing power, blazing speed and impeccable graphics performance," said Wallace Santos, CEO and Founder of MAINGEAR. "With 4K video so easily accessible, even some of the most powerful machines can 'hiccup' when rendering it, however we've built this new workstation to effortlessly power through it."

VR is really taking off now that the two major players have finally released their headsets into the wild. There just remains one issue for those content creators that wish to make pretty things in VR for us to consume; the system to use for that creating. HP is helping to make that decision easier with their new Z series of workstations, make especially for creating highly demanding VR content, which might need a bit more horsepower than usual.

These new workstations are built around two of Intel's newest Broadwell-EP Xeon E5-2600 v4 processors so you can have up to 44 actual cores and 88 threads to process those difficult to render high-resolution scenes. On the graphics front they went with up to dual NVIDIA Quadro M6000's with 24GB of VRAM. That means you can basically keep all your assets in memory and not have to worry about slow load times in whatever engine or program you're working with. For system RAM, you can configure it to have up to 256GB of DDR4 or up to 1TB of LRDDR4 if need be. Storage can e equally as monstrous with a massive six STA ports, eight different SAS ports and up to two PCIe 3.0 NVMe capable m.2 ports.

This can be one monster machine if you want it to be to handle just about any rendering or creation task you want it to. Some might ask why one would want to buy anything premade, and the answer is the support that comes with it. That is, the technical and warranty support that might come in handy from running these systems hard for many hours on end. The new Z840 from Hp starts at $4366, a hefty price tag but for a system that packs a mighty punch. Keyboard and monitor are sold separately, as are the VR HMD's of choice.

GDC 2016 - ZOTAC unveiled their MAGNUS EN980 gaming PC leading up to the Game Developers Conference, but the company had it in the flesh in the Valve suite at the show.

We got some hands-on time with the not-yet-finished prototype, so there will be some changes before it is final. Inside, there's a sixth-generation Intel Core i5 processor, an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 (the full desktop version, the same one that was shrunken down late last year for gaming notebooks) and much more.

ZOTAC is providing support for up to four displays thanks to the GTX 980, and is pushing it for VR gaming. The MAGNUS EN980 also features dual Gigabit ethernet, USB 3.1 Type-C connectivity and a super-small footprint that would fit perfectly in your living room, or for gamers on-the-go.

MSI's Vortex, the minuscule yet powerful cylindrical PC that may be the illegitimate offspring of the Mac Pro, is finally available for purchase.

The Vortex is a mean, lean fighting machine it looks like. They've been able to stuff in a quite a few high-end components into the small area, and everything is capable of being upgraded, within reason of course. All models share an Intel Core i7-6700K, an Intel Z170 motherboard, a 256GB PCIe M.2 SSD with a 1TB storage drive. They also all share a Killer E2400 wired ethernet/ Killer N1535 wireless card, four USB 3.0, two mini-DisplayPort and two Thunderbolt 3 connectors around back. The less expensive version comes in at $2199 and has dual GTX 960's sitting in SLI with 16GB of 2133MHz DDR4. The more expensive version is $3999 and swaps out those 960's for dual GTX 980's and has a total of 32GB of RAM instead. All powered by a 450W power supply.

The whole 6.5L package is a marvel of engineering no less than the Mac Pro it was likely inspired by. The cooling system is very efficient, and is quite the capable performer. The GPU's are all of the MXM variety, also shared with the Mac Pro design. A necessary design consideration if you want to pack as much power into as small a space as possible.

ASUS held an event in Sydney, Australia over the weekend - where it collected a bunch of companies including InWin, NVIDIA, Cooler Master, Kingston and Bitspower - where it was teaching Australian IT retailers about water cooling.

The event included letting IT store staff building a water-cooled PC into the InWin 805 or 909 chassis, where they will display their work in their store for 3 months. Not only that, but they get a certificate in water cooling training, too. There was an afternoon session that allowed local residents to come in and check out the modded PCs, learn about water cooling, talk with ASUS staff, modders and retailers - culminating in a Q&A session.

With a plethora of companies announcing additions of complete pre-built and chassis-only small form factor products recently, ZOTAC has joined the charge with its MAGNUS EN980, featuring 6th Generation Intel processors, an NVIDIA GTX 980 video card and more.

The Skylake processor and GTX 980 are met with equally powerful and useful USB 3.1 Type-C ports, dual gigabit Ethernet, 802.11ac Wi-Fi and factory-installed water cooling. Further options include support for four displays thanks to HDMI and DisplayPort options. While ZOTAC did make sure to mention that the included water cooling will feature a 'minimalistic design', there was no word as to who will OEM this product, nor any word on what motherboard, storage or RAM options we can expect in this model.

This Small Form Factor PC will be shown off by ZOTAC at the upcoming Cebit 2016 and GDC 2016 events. Without any pricing currently released, I can't help but think it's going to be costly.

While there is already an extended series of ASUS VivoPCs on the market, ASUS has decided to expand its plethora of company offerings with the VivoMini VM65 series of products. All models in this series are packed into a chassis that measures under 2 liters in capacity and will include 6th Generation Intel Core processors.

The top model is said to feature not only 16GB of DDR4 memory, but it will also have a discrete NVIDIA GeForce 930M inside. This model is named the VM65N and has been designed for 4K in mind, ASUS said in a recent press release, with the 4K support in this model being designed to "allow users to enjoy stunning videos, play casual games at their highest settings, or view incredibly-detailed photos."

The VM65N further comes packed with two SuperSpeed USB 3.1 ports, four USB 3.0 ports, a 4-in-1 card reader, audio output, an inbuilt Intel Wi-Fi card, plus further Display Port++ and HDMI display options. Wrapping up the feature list is room for a single 4.5-inch HDD or two 2.5-inch storage solutions, with this PC being VESA-mountable.

It seems that SFF computers are all the rage recently, seeing companies like Corsair teasing its Bulldog, other manufacturers releasing Steam machines and ORIGIN PC proudly promoting this beast of a machine.

The Chronos gaming desktop is presented in a Small Form Factor (SFF) chassis, packing within some seriously powerful technology. Measuring in at 11.75" (H) x 4" (W) x 13.75" (D), a recently issued press release reinforced that this product is "ORIGIN PC's smallest form factor chassis ever offered." While it may be small, it certainly doesn't lack performance, with ORIGIN PC mentioning that there is plenty of space to fit an NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN Z within.

With further capacity for five hard drives, the top of the range Chronos can come packaged with an Intel Core i7 5690X or XEON and is said to support all Mini-ITX platforms that are based around Z170 and X99.

One of the quickest ways to hardware failure is running your system incredibly hot, sitting up there with rubbing your motherboard on the carpet or putting your video card through the washing machine.

Investing in a good heat sink or cooling fan is something that Reddit user 'ghalfacree' has suggested, sporting a thermal image of his Raspberry Pi 3 running at a scorching 100 degrees celsius, thanks to the help of thermal imagery.

While sitting at triple digit temperature isn't exactly common, this test was conducted on an open board under full load, causing concern for those who are straining theirRaspberry Pi 3 while contained in a small case or custom chassis. Ghalfacree's solution is a cute little fan, ensuring that his miniature pride and joy computer doesn't melt away.