Tech News
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Intel to exit the desktop motherboard business
Published: Tuesday, January 22, 2013 | By: DennisSome hard hitting news from the Tech Report.
For years, Intel has produced its own line of desktop motherboards. Not for much longer, though. This afternoon, we learned that Intel will ramp down its desktop motherboard business over the next three years. As that division spins down, Intel will allocate more resources to reference design development, small-form-factor NUC devices, and "other areas to be discussed later."
According to Intel spokesman Dan Snyder, Intel will stop developing new desktop boards after it rolls out models designed for next-gen Haswell processors. After that, you'll have to rely on boards from the likes of Asus, Gigabyte, ASRock, and MSI, as most of you probably do already. Those firms are expected to fully support Intel's upcoming roadmap, Synder says, so desktop boards aren't going anywhere.Three years seems like a long time but I suspect this is to allow for full warranty support on existing products in the market. I wouldn't expect any new boards to come out of an Intel fab after September 2013
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HIS HD 7970 IceQ X2 and HD 7950 IceQ X2 Review @ Hardware Canucks
Published: Tuesday, January 22, 2013 | By: DennisHIS has always been a "soft spoken" video card vendor in terms of availability in the US but when they release a product they know how to get people's attention. Enter the X (squared) 7970 and 7950 Radeon graphics cards. These are basically reference clocked GPUs with an extremely large dual fan cooler.
HIS's IceQ X2 heatsink design is billed as one of the best around and it has now been paired up with AMD's HD 7970 GHz Edition and HD 7950 Boost. They've done this without adding a huge premium onto these cards which results in an excellent price / performance ratio, particularly when overclocking is involved.
I am almost suprized that they didn't include a fourth heatpipe given the size of the radiator. Then again the 7970 wasn't "that" hot to begin with so maybe the design was on purpose or a balance between cost and performance.
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NL: Review Block - Cases and Coolers Jan 22 2013
Published: Tuesday, January 22, 2013 | By: DennisI have a pretty big list of reviews from around the web. Look them over and let me know what you think.
Coolers
- Cooler Master Seidon 240M AIO CPU Cooler Review @ Pro-Clockers
- Cooler Master Seidon 240M AIO Liquid CPU Cooler Review @ Hi Tech Legion
- Zalman LQ315 CPU Cooler Review @ Hardware Secrets
- Thermaltake Water 2.0 Extreme CPU Cooler Review @ ThinkComputers
- Be Quiet Dark Rock Pro 2 Review @ XSReviews
- Gelid Solutions The Black Edition Twin-Tower-Cooler @ ocaholic
- Thermalright AXP-100 CPU Air Cooler Review @ [H]
- Sapphire Vapor-X CPU Cooler Review on Technic3D
- Corsair Hydro H60 Watercooling System Review @ Frostytech
Cases
- NZXT Phantom 630 @ techPowerUp
- Fractal Design Define R4 Mid-Tower Chassis Review @ Techgage
- Antec GX700 Mid-Tower Case Review @ Hi Tech Legion
- Cooler Master HAF XB @ techPowerUpOf course some of these I/we have already reviewed like the Be Quiet Dark Rock and Cooler Master HAF XB.
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Intel set to announce Haswell processors at Computex 2013
Published: Monday, January 21, 2013 | By: DennisIn the past Intel has launched their new tech at CES which allows mfgs to have "real" products live by Computex time, From what I have heard most of the mfgs were ready with their Haswell products they were just waiting for the nod from Intel to make an announcement.
Intel is set to host a conference prior to Computex 2013 in June announcing its upcoming Haswell series processors jointly with downstream partners, according to sources from PC players.
The sources noted that the new CPUs will appear on June 2 and related PC products will be showcased at Computex, hosted from June 4-8.This is really good news and should make Computex quite exciting once again. Now I just need to figure out how to get there.
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Borderlands 2 level cap raise incoming
Published: Thursday, January 17, 2013 | By: DennisI have yet to get any of my two characters up to level 50 but I'm pretty close with my siren, Level 47 as of this post. Some hardcore players reached level 50 in the first week while others may have abandoned the game after the first play thru. Either way Gearbox has been watching and will raise the level cap when the time is right.
The cap raise timing is partly dictated by Borderlands 2?s increased stat tracking. “With Borderlands 1 we had to go by forum posts, and by checking out the number times certain achievements had been unlocked to really get an idea of where players were” explains Lopez. “But SHiFT allows us to see a lot more about the way players are playing the game, and see what they’re doing. We wanted to give people enough time to get at least one level 50 in there, and then see from there, how many people are doing this. Is this a good time for this? We also didn’t want to wait so long that people were no longer interested, or felt like it wasn’t coming”.
Many games have a level cap either imposed by the game algorithms or by the developer. Skyrim for instance has a level cap so you can't "perk" everything in the astrology tree. Borderlands 2, being an RPG, has a similar level cap so when they do raise the cap it I'll be curious to see how the perk tree will change.
It won't be a challenge if you unlock everything.
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Intel reportedly prepping soldered desktop chips after all @ ExtremeTech
Published: Thursday, January 17, 2013 | By: DennisSpeculation on the Intel roadmap told us that there would be BGA processors, what wasn't clear from their reponse is what segment(s) would overlap the socketed space.
New evidence (a “trusted source,” according to Tech Report) suggests Intel is actually planning a bifurcated strategy. Starting with Broadwell, certain motherboards will be available with soldered processors — presumably those intended for small set-top boxes or other diminutive form factors.
(the article at Tech Report)This all makes perfect sense really, Microsoft is pushing touch interfaces going forward so there is very little need to have configurable PCs anymore. I suspect there will always be a need for workstation class machines but take it from someone who has a Desktop at home and a Ultra Tablet on the road, the lines are getting blurred as to what a PC/Workstation needs to be.
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higher prices, better quality are the PC industry’s last chance
Published: Wednesday, January 16, 2013 | By: DennisWhen I post a review I will often not mention price or even where a product falls in relation to the competition. The reason being, if you are reading these reviews you a) already know what you want and are looking for an opinion or something specific or, b) you are just curious about these products in which case your not likely to be in the market to buy.
Bottom line, when it comes to high-end gear you have to be willing to pay the price, as with anything worth doing the right way.
The question is, is that way of thinking good for the PC industry in general?? In the early days (been looking back on the good'ole days lately) computers were extremely expensive. An Intel SX 386 might cost you 3 grand whereas the DX edition was upwards to 4 thousand dollars. These days you can buy a quad core Android tablet for 500 bux and people are complaining that it costs too much.
So what happened?
I say there was a trade-off early on, mfgs started lowering prices to make their profits in volume and started including bloatware to offset their losses. As the trend continued it was a race to the bottom with each mfg attempting to undercut the other and make things as cheap as possible.
Not sure that is the right direction and this article at ExtremeTech is saying the same thing.
The answer to this question has precious little to do with Microsoft. For decades, virtually every computer manufacturer, save Apple, has pursued a relentless policy of cost cutting. The precipitous decline in computer prices is one of the great technological success stories of the 20th century, but the decision to prioritize low prices above all else, over the course of decades has rotted the market from within.
Funny how Apple has been excluded, then again they control the price because they control the hardware.
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New Social Buttons added Reddit
Published: Wednesday, January 16, 2013 | By: DennisSince getting back from CES I have started looking at some upgrades to the Ninjalane.com website. The first of these is to update the social networking share buttons and changing them from the small elegant ones to the larger "Hey LoOk at me" clickable postage stamps.
In the process I have removed the Facebook share button that was causing issues with the site navigation and added reddit. They say reddit is the front page of the internet and based on the news of websites going down after being featured on reddit I'm kinda think something is there.
Back in the early days it was a right of passage to get "slashdotted" and it seems that honor has been relinquised, enter reddit, now go forth and share!
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NL: Review Block - CES 2013 Consumer Electronics Wrap Up
Published: Monday, January 14, 2013 | By: DennisCES is over but there is still plenty to ready about and photos to see.
- CES 2013: The Booth Babes @ ThinkComputers
- Bjorn3D CES 2013 Coverage
- CES 2013: CyberPower @ ThinkComputers
- Micron and Crucial Unveil M500 Series SSD, DDR4 Ballistix Memory Kit @ HotHardware (not located in Meridian)
- EVGA preps first Mini-ITX enclosure
- Intel Preview’s Haswell’s GT-3 @ CES Bjorn3D
- Micron and Crucial introduce next-gen M500 SSD @ TR
- Nvidia's Project Shield handheld caught on video
- CES 2013 Coverage Round-up @ Techgage
- CES 2013 Day 1 Coverage Posted At Legit Reviews
- Gigabyte Touts Tablets, Notebooks and All-in-Ones At CES 2013 @ HotHardware
- Xi3 Making Valve’s Fabled Steam Box? That’s News to Valve, It Turns Out @ HotHardware
- ASUS E2KM1I-Deluxe, ARES II Graphics Card, & RAIDR Express PCIe SSD @ Legit ReviewsI still have a few galleries to post and am just now finishing up the final photos. Look for them soon.
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Back from CES, News will resume after these messages
Published: Monday, January 14, 2013 | By: DennisThese days when your SEO URL is comprised of the articles title you have to be careful what you say since the most logical title is not likely what will get any traffic.
For instance, at the Detroit Auto Show they unveiled the new C7 Corvette Stingray which looks amazing and appears to be a cross between a Ferrari, a Dodge Viper and Nissan Skyline but is all Chevy and something anyone will want to buy.
I mean it looks good, but will anyone see my news because I say the New Corvette is awesome? We shall see.
Along a different path did you hear about how c|net had to recast its vote for the best product of CES?? It would seem that while the Dish Hopper clearly won the top prize the c|net crew had to change their vote to exclude the Hopper from winning due to an ongoing lawsuit over the commercial skipping option. (which is great by the way)
HWBot has also posted an interview with Roman 'Der8auer' Hartung the famed builder of the CPU container I use when LN2 overclocking. The interview is pretty good I would suggest you all check it out.
More news after the break, I'm still recovering from CES and deciding if I should post more CES coverage or roll the content into something "better"
