Category: PC Hardware

TSMC this week held its Arizona fab ‘first tool-in’ ceremony, where alongside celebrating its first US fab, the company also announced major expansion plans for the production facility. The world’s largest foundry is set to invest tens of billions of dollars in the next phase of its Fab 21 near Phoenix, Arizona, to significantly expand its capacity and start production of chips on its N3 process technologies there by 2026. Construction of TSMC’s Fab 21 phase 1 in Arizona was completed earlier this year, and this week the company began installation of production tools into the facility. The fab will ... Read more

Just under a year since the specification was first announced, the ATX 3.0 era for power supplies is now underway. The updated version of the Intel-maintained specification introduced several notable changes to PC power supply designs, most notably the introduction of the 600 Watt-capable 12VHPWR connector and associated cabling. Altogether, ATX 3.0 is designed to lay the groundwork for future video cards (and other high-powered accelerators) by providing for a single-cable power connection that can better accommodate the high total and rapid shifts in power consumption a video card can undergo. The biggest change since the addition of the 12V ... Read more

Intel officially unveiled the details of their Raptor Lake-based NUC13 Extreme last month. Based on the desktop Raptor Lake processors, the 13.7L NUC13 Extreme is Intel’s biggest NUC yet. The model retains the Compute Element / baseboard combination seen in previous Extreme NUCs. However, the extra volume has enabled the company to incorporate a 150W TDP processor and support large discrete GPUs. Given the power-packed components, it is obvious that Intel is taking the NUC family to performance levels that have hitherto remained out of reach of small form-factor (SFF) machines. Does the NUC13 Extreme deliver on its vision? Read ... Read more

One of the world’s biggest semiconductors and manufacturers of DRAM, SK hynix, has unveiled it has working samples of a new generation of memory modules designed for HPC and servers. Dubbed Multiplexer Combined Ranks (MCR) DIMMs, the technology allows high-end server DIMMs to operate at a minimum data rate of 8 Gbps, which is an 80% uptick in bandwidth compared to existing DDR5 memory products (4.8 Gbps). Typically, the most common way to ensure higher throughput performance on DIMMs is through ever increasing memory bus (and chip) clockspeeds. This strategy is not without its drawbacks, however, and aiming to find a ... Read more

As many of you noticed, AnandTech has spent several hours offline today. We are still in recovery mode at the moment (as I write this, the site has been restored to a copy from November 25th), but now that our major restoration efforts are completed, I wanted to offer you guys a brief update on the status of AnandTech. At around 13:00 UTC (5am PT) today, the on-site cloud storage for AnandTech’s hosting provider became corrupted. As a result, AnandTech (and some other sites) were brought offline. Due to the nature of the corruption and the need to begin restoration ... Read more

Western Digital had announced new products in the WD_BLACK lineup back in May 2022 to augment their offerings in the gaming market. The WD_BLACK P40 Game Drive SSD was part of the set, and became widely available last quarter. Western Digital has positioned the portable drive (PSSD) as a mid-range alternative to the premium WD_BLACK P50 Game Drive SSD. Sporting a USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 (20 Gbps) interface, the drive launched at a much lower price point compared to the P50 despite the addition of RGB lighting to the case. What corners has Western Digital cut in this mid-range offering, ... Read more

ASUS is introducing two versions of the GeForce RTX 4090 and 4080 in its Republic of Gamers and TUF Gaming lines, giving gamers stylish and robust options for the latest graphics cards.Read MoreAnandTech

Intel is officially taking the wraps off the first member of their Raptor Lake-based NUC13 family today. The NUC13 Extreme (like the three previous Extreme NUCs) caters to the gamers and content creators requiring leading edge performance and high-end discrete GPU support. Unlike the mainstream NUCs which have been consistently maintaining an ultra-compact form-factor profile, the Extreme family has slowly grown in size to accommodate flagship CPUs and discrete GPUs. These systems integrate a motherboard in a PCIe add-in card form factor (the Compute Element) and a baseboard that provides additional functionality with PCIe slots and other I/O features. As ... Read more

With AMD’s first-wave of Zen 4 CPUs now in the books with the Ryzen 7000 series, the consumer arm of AMD is now shifting its attention over to its graphics business. In a presentation that ended moments ago dubbed “together we advance_gaming”, Dr. Lisa Su and other AMD leaders laid out the future of AMD’s graphics products. And that future is the RDNA 3 architecture, which will be the basis of the new Radeon RX 7900 XTX and Radeon RX 7900 XT video cards. The two cards, set to be released on December 13th, will be the first products released ... Read more

Following hot on the heels of AMD’s major CPU launch of the year – the Zen 4 architecture and Ryzen 7000 family – today AMD will be giving their GPU architecture its moment in the sun with their gaming-centric “together we advance_gaming” event. Today’s event will be all about AMD’s next-generation Radeon GPU architecture, RDNA 3, which among other things, promises a 50% improvement in performance-per-watt over the previous-generation RDNA 2 (Radeon RX 6000 series) parts. Notably, unlike AMD’s CPU event back in August, AMD has held their (video) cards closer to their proverbial chest for this event. We know ... Read more

In today’s review, we are taking a look at the ValuePro VP1600ELCD, a popular low-cost UPS from CyberPower, the renowned US-based power systems manufacturer. As the name suggests, it is a product developed with value in mind, in an effort to entice home users and small business owners. Truly, features such as built-in AVR and completely silent operation are very enticing at this price range from a renowned brand name. As with all things that are too good to be true though, there are tradeoffs.Read MoreAnandTech

While always an interesting topic by default, corporate earnings reports in the tech industry have become especially important in the last few months, as the industry prepares to weather what’s expected to be the biggest downturn in demand in the last several years. Intel’s brutal Q2’22 report, which found the company losing money on a GAAP basis for the first time in 5 years, seems to have been a herald of things to come for the largest industry, with AMD and other companies since issuing earnings warnings ahead of their own Q3 reports. So as the first major tech company ... Read more