Computer Systems - Page 29

When LG first unveiled its Chromebase all-in-one Chrome OS-Based PC the tech community was set abuzz, and while many doubted that a Chrome OS desktop was worth the space it took up, more industry experts thought that the Chromebase was an excellent idea, and an indication of where the industry is going. Today LG announced that the Chromebase AIO would be arriving later this month on May 26th at Amazon, Newegg, and Tiger Direct.

"Personal computers have obviously become central to each member of the family, regardless of age, which is why it's important to have one that's easy to use," said Thomas Lee, senior vice president, LG Electronics USA. "Google's suite of programs, ability to update software and cloud-based storage allow the LG Chromebase to offer a simple, modern computing experience."

The Chromebase features a 21.5-inch full HD 1080p display, an Intel Celeron 2955U Haswell Processor, 2GB of RAM and 16GB of solid state storage. Google will toss in an extra 100GB of cloud storage, and 802.11 n Wi-Fi will handle network connectivity. A single USB 3.0 and single USB 2.0 port will allow for external storage, and an HDMI connector is present for video output to a HDTV. The Chromebase will retail for just $349.99

NVIDIA collaborated with a US based Boutique system builder Falcon Northwest for raising money on behalf of the Philip Scholz Memorial Foundation by auctioning a custom-designed gaming PC via Ebay. The foundation is responsible for providing needs-based scholarships and promotes physical activity among the youth.

Philip Scholz was a 35-year-old graphic design marketer in NVIDIA who lost his life when he tried to save a man who was laying down on the Caltrain tracks at the Santa Clara station in January. Scholz tried to save the man, but both men were struck by the train. Back then, NVIDIA co-founder said that his heroic act resonated Scholz's consistent behaviour as he found to be confident, aggressive and a capable person.

The auction is still active. At the time of writing, the current bid stands at US $7,200 and so far 20 bids were made. There are three days left for the auction to be completed.

Dell has pulled the wraps off some new computer systems including new Inspiron notebooks and All in One PCs. The new notebooks include the Inspiron 14, 15, and 17 5000 series notebook computers. Dell is aiming these machines at students that need a laptop they can take around campus. The 15 and 17-inch machines in the series have backlit keyboards and full HD touch displays.

Those touch screens support 10-finger touch and have scroll, zoom, and tap. The laptops have various 4th Gen Intel Core processors and battery life of up to 8 hours for the Inspiron 14. The Inspiron 15 is good for runtime of up to 7 hours and 33 minutes. The new AIO machines include the Dell Inspiron 20 and 23. The 23 uses 4th generation Core processors and have full HD displays.

They also have 10-point finger capacitive touch. The Inspiron 20 AIO uses Intel or AMD processors and both AIO machines have MaxxAudio for improved audio playback. All of the notebooks are available as of now with both AIO machines landing on May 6. The Inspiron 14 will start at $749.99, the 15 starts at $649.99, and the 17 starts at $449.99. The Inspiron 23 AIO starts at $579.99 with the 20 using AMD power starting at $449.99 and the Intel version starting at $579.99.

GIGABYTE is really expanding its BRIX lineup of small form factor PCs, with the latest one powered by an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 GPU. Not only that, but it had an Haswell-based Core i5 processor, too.

Inside of the new BRIX was an Intel Core i5-4200H processor at 2.8GHz (up to 3.4GHz thanks to Turbo), with a 47W TDP. As for the desktop-class GPU, the GeForce GTX 760 has a total TDP of 170W, so we should expect some serious heat to be pushed out of this particular BRIX. Inside, we have dual SO-DIMM slots, support for both mSATA and 2.5-inch drives, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Gigabit Ethernet.

On top of that, we have four USB 3.0 ports, dual HDMI outputs, and a miniDisplayPort output. We should expect the GeForce-powered BRIX PCs to roll out sometime next month, with the company teasing a Core i7-based BRIX being available soon. We should see much more on the BRIX PCs as we get closer to Computex which kicks off in early June.

The last time we talked about Lenovo and a battery recall was back in 2009 when the notebook industry was in the midst of one of the biggest battery recalls ever. Lenovo has recently announced another battery recall that covers battery packs used in its notebook computers.

Lenovo says that the battery packs can overheat and pose a fire risk. Lenovo reports that it has received two notifications of battery packs overheating and resulting in damage to the battery pack, notebook, and nearby property. No injuries have been reported so far.

The recall covers 34,500 batteries in the US and an additional 2,900 batteries in Canada. Battery packs covered in the recall were sold separately and with the following notebooks: Edge 11, 13 and 14 series, the T410, T420, T510 and W510 series, and the X100e, X120e, X200, X201 and X201s.

GTC 2014 - One of the more impressive setups at this year's GPU Technology Conference was from Origin PC, where the custom PC maker had one of its Genesis PCs on display running 4-way GeForce GTX Titan Black GPUs in SLI.

What good are all four of those GPUs if there's not going to be an insane amount of pixels to be pushed, right? Well, are three 4K TVs enough? Yeah - I thought so. The Origin PC Genesis system was pushing out an insane 1.5 billion pixels per second, running Slightly Mad Studios' Project CARS. I didn't get any hands-on time with it unfortunately, but we'll let some of the photos of the setup do some justice.

CeBIT 2014 - We have had some hands-on time with MSI's unique Nightblade gaming barebones PC at CeBIT 2014 in Germany. Take a look at our hands-on video below.

Inside of the Nightblade we have a unique OC Genie button, which is capable of overclocking the Nightblade with just a press of a button. Better yet, the overclock is represented by a red light emitting from the Nightblade. Inside of the MSI Nightblade is a case fan that was custom-made for the chassis. The fan speed is dynamically adjusted depending on what you're doing at the time, with the fan capable of driving up to 3600RPM.

As for GPU support, the Nightblade is capable of housing a full-size GPU, with a maximum length of 290mm and 35mm thick. Even something as powerful as AMD's Radeon R9 290X can be installed into the Nightblade. MSI has installed its own MSI GAMING motherboard inside of the Nightblade, as well as a 600W PSU that should be capable of driving any combination of hardware you desire.

Zotac is well known for its video cards and its series of Zbox mini PCs for a very long time. The company worked with both AMD and Intel based mini PCs in the past, providing very small systems and barebones for its buyers. The company recently introduced some of its upcoming Zbox mini-PC systems during the CeBIT trade show. The Zotac Zbox 'E' series will be using Haswell and Iris Pro integrated graphics and the smaller Zbox unit AQ02 series will be using AMD Richland APU.

Zotac's senior direct Carsten Berger said that Zbox E series can deliver a good gaming experience and maintain balance between size, performance, heat dissipation and energy consumption. Intel's Haswell architecture and Irs Pro 5200 enabled them to do just that within the Zbox form factor. Zotac is confident that the E-Series can deliver smooth medium quality gaming experience and the perfect option for those LAN party gamers who want a compact PC gaming system.

The E series comes in a black enclosure, with the choices of i5 4570R and i7- 4770R. Its 'Plus' series variant offers 8GB DDR3 memory and 1TB 5400 RPM mechanical drive. It features dual DisplayPorts, dual Gigabit Ethernet, 6Gbps SATA and mSATA ports.

Before confirming the order, a buyer found out that Dell was charging an amount to install a free and open source web browser 'Firefox'. It was found that the PC builder has an option to install Mozilla Firefox on behalf of the buyer for a new PC if the buyer agrees to pay £16.25. Dell even put this as an option to select in its 'additional software' pre-purchase custom options selection list.

The Mozilla Foundation has started investigating once they've received this report. The company behind Firefox said that they are consulting with legal teams, though the process is in a very early stage.

As of now, Dell did not make any comment.

A researcher was caught using Harvard's Odyssey cluster of 14,000 cores that's usually meant for researching new clean energy methods for mining dogecoins.

The assistant dean for Research Computing at Harvard University, James Cuff, sent an email to the rest of the researchers with a message that "Odyssey and Research Computing resources can not be used for any personal or private gain or any non research related activity. Accordingly, any participation in "Klondike" style digital mining operations or contests for profit requiring Harvard owned assets to examine digital currency key strength and length are strictly prohibited for fairly obvious reasons. In fact, any activities using our shared resources for any non scientific purpose that results or does not actually result in personal gain are also clearly and explicitly denied."

As one would expect, the researcher no longer has any access to its facilities on a permanent basis. The email also added that though the researcher was caught 'eventually', its most likely that he or she already made a significant profit at the University's expense. Since the mining operation lasted many days using the Odyssey cluster, the profit could have been in thousands of dollars as the value of a single dogecoin was roughly $0.0012.

Following this mornings announcement from NVIDIA, boutique PC builder, Digital Storm, has announced that it now offers all three of NVIDIA's new discrete graphics solutions in its line of custom gaming PCs. Digital Storm is offering both the GTX 750 and GTX 750 Ti, as a low-cost HD gaming solution to lineup. If Ultra-HD 4k gaming is more your style, Digital Storm is also offering NVIDIA's new flagship, the GeForce GTX Titan Black, the world's fastest GPU.

"HD gaming is the new standard and Ultra HD is not far behind with 4K displays already available for $800," said Rajeev Kuruppu, Digital Storm's Director of Product Development. "This is an exciting time for gamers and we're thrilled to incorporate NVIDIA's new cards into our systems to deliver the stunning graphics and advanced gaming experience our customers demand." Digital Storm went on to highlight a few of its PCs that pair up great with these new offerings.

ASUS has just announced the Chromebox, a small NUC-like compact PC that features Chrome OS. ASUS' Chromebox features deeply integrated Google services thanks to Google's OS, as well as access the popular services such as YouTube, Netflix and Hulu.

The company has used Intel's fourth-generation Core or "Haswell" processors, the latest 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi tech, four USB 3.0 ports, Bluetooth 4.0 and SD card reader. As for display outputs, we have HDMI and DisplayPort, which will drive 4K or Ultra HD displays. A nice touch for something that starts off at just $179.

There will be three CPUs on offer depending on the market you're based in, the Celeron 2955U, Core i3-4010U, or Core i7-4600U. It'll come with 2GB DDR3 1600MHz RAM, but can be optioned with 4GB of RAM. For storage, we have 16GB of built-in M.2 NGFF storage, backed up by 100GB of free Google Drive storage (which is for a limited time).

Today ZOTAC announced the launch of its ZBOX Nano series of mini-PCs featuring Intel "Haswell" 4th Generation Core processors. The new ZBOX ID68 and ZBOX ID69 series mini-PCs feature Intel Core i5 and i7 processors with Intel Turbo Boost Technology and take palm-sized computing to new levels.

"Users that want a taste of Intel Turbo Boost technology can opt for the ZOTAC ZBOX nano ID68 series with a high-performance Intel Core i5 4200U that can turbo boost up to 2.6 GHz," Zotac said in a release. "Demanding users that require the best performance available from the compact form factor can step up to the ZOTAC ZBOX nano ID69 series with an Intel Core i7 4500U processor that turbo boosts up to 3.0 GHz."

ZOTAC ZBOX ID68 series

During a recent Reddit AMA, Valve god Gabe Newell had something interesting to say about Steam Machines, and EA's Origin service. "We're trying to make it as open as possible," said Newell, continuing: "If EA wants to put Origin on it, that would be fine, etc... (trying to pick an example of something that people think we would prohibit)."

One of the big hurdles of Steam Machines in the market, would be to cut themselves off from the world, and not accept competitors' digital distribution or gaming services on its devices. But as we can see here, Newell is all for it - a totally open platform.

I think we're seeing the beginning of something very special here, a true living room PC. All we need are some awesome games like Half-Life 3, Team Fortress 3, Left 4 Dead 3 and more, and we'll be in gaming heaven.

When Valve first announced that it was working with OEM partners to develop a full range of Linux-based gaming devices called Steam Machines, great emphasis was placed on the fact that the devices were to be PC based and fully upgradeable. Unfortunately today we are seeing the first major OEM break away from this philosophy and built their Steam Machine devices similar to current console construction.

Alienware has long been known for its high-end gaming PCs and while overpriced in some opinions, the company's wares have always been fully upgradeable. Today, Frank Azor, Alienware's general manager said in an interview that "There will be no customization options, you can't really update it." This means that Alienware's Steam Machines are most likely being built with AMD APUs or custom GPU solutions that are hard mounted to the motherboard, much like how Microsoft and Sony are doing with the next-gen consoles. Personally I feel that this will ultimately hurt Alienware in the longrun, as the main appeal to a Steam Machine is its upgradeability.

We only just reported that Intel is looking to release its Broadwell CPUs earlier than expected, but it looks like the chipmaker is working on two new NUC units based on the freshly shrunken CPU technology, codenamed Broadwell.

Intel engineers are currently working on two new NUCs, the "Rock Canyon" and "Maple Canyon". Starting with what we know on the Rock Canyon, which is expected to be pushed toward the consumer market, where it will be marketed toward being in your living room, with technologies making it feel more at home. We should see USB 3.0, HDMI and DisplayPort technologies inside, as well as being ready to take an infrared receiver module. On top of that, it should feature an M.2 PCI Express-based slot for SSDs.

The Rock Canyon NUC will also reportedly feature NFC technology which will allow it to connect to your smartphone or tablet, as well as WiChrg technology. It looks like the most consumer-friendly NUC yet, improving on the already great NUCs on the market.

During the Consumer Electronics Show 2014 in Las Vegas, iBUYPOWER showed off some GPU coin mining systems that were powered by AMD's Radeon R9 290X GPUs. These systems are used purely to mine digital coins, such as Bitcoin and Litecoin.

iBUYPOWER's Vice President and co-founder, Darren Su, talks about the new GPU coin mining PCs from his company: "iBUYPOWER prides itself for being on the edge of technology, and as the world changes, we want to be at the forefront. Coin mining and high-compute systems are one of the few new areas that we have interest in. We're thrilled to be part of revolutions, and crypto-currencies are definitely on the hot-list."

The new GPU coin mining systems from iBUYPOWER start from $999, and can be configured in many different ways, depending on what you want to spend. The new coin mining PCs can be configured with up to three AMD Radeon R9 290X for some serious compute power.

Global PC shipments continued to slide during the fourth quarter of 2013, according to research group Gartner, as the industry continues to look for stability. Overall, the market shrank 10 percent, as expected, though still shipped 315.9 million units in the 12-month period.

Lenovo remained the No. 1 global PC manufacturer, shipping 18.1 percent of all PC shipments in the last quarter. Ironically, China remains a tough battleground for Lenovo, though showed strong growth results in all other regions.

"Although PC shipments continued to decline in the worldwide market in the fourth quarter, we increasingly believe markets, such as the U.S., have bottomed out as the adjustment to the installed base slows," said Mikako Kitagawa, Gartner Principal Analyst, in a statement.

CES 2014 - AMD is using CES 2014 to show off its new Nano PC, which is powered by the company's Mullins APU. AMD's Nano PC is a super small PC that sits on, or under your TV, and is capable of running Windows 8.1.

The Nano PC, even at its tiny size, features a camera, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and DockPort connectivity, as well as a 256GB SSD for storage. The Mullins APU is capable of driving the Nano PC without a problem, with reports stating that the tiny PC can play FIFA 14 at 1080p without a problem. We have a mini breakout box that provides USB and HDMI so that it can push the Nano PC's output to your TV.

Unfortunately, AMD won't be selling these Nano PCs direct, but instead will be offering them as a prototype to other manufacturers as a new HTPC/thin PC device.

CES 2014 - This morning we got a chance to stop by the Digital Storm suite and check out their new Bolt II hybrid Steam Machine. Robert Wall, senior technician for Digital Storm gave us a full rundown of the new hybrid Windows and Steam OS system in the video below.

The Bolt 2 Steam Machine that was demoed featured an purpose-built custom case that is able to pack everything into a nice and tidy small form factor footprint. Processing power is handled by an Intel i7 4770k CPU along with 16GB of Corsair Dominator Platinum RAM. An NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780Ti handles the GPU duties while a Corsair H100i dual fan unit keeps the CPU running nice and cool. Air flow and lighting are controlled via Digital Storm's proprietary lighting and cooling module, and further adds to the uniqueness of this unit.

Power is handled by a normal ATX PSU up to 700W in size, and a pair of 30mm fans are installed to ensure no stagnant pockets of hot air form inside the chassis. Surprisingly the Bolt II is about as silent as a PC can get. While in the suite, I was unable to notice any noise at all coming from the device that was running under the flat-screen TV. Digital Storm says that the Bolt II will be priced from $1500 up to $2500 depending on component choices and features.