Zak Killian
Opinions and content posted by HotHardware contributors are their own.
Recent posts
Memory overclocking can have a huge effect on application performance, depending on the app in question. One of the key features of Intel's new Arrow Lake processors is that they can support stratospheric memory transfer rates. However, that may only apply to the high-powered "K" series processors, at least if ASRock...
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ASUS Zenbook S 14 (UX5406SA) ($1399 as tested, $1499 for 32GB RAM) The latest elegant corporate laptop out of ASUS comes strapped with Intel's latest and greatest mobile microprocessor. Elegant Styling, Refined Looks Excellent Performance On Wall Power Unreal Battery Life Fantastic HDR OLED Screen Limited External I/O...
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The physical size of a processor tells you a surprising amount about its cost and capabilities, especially if you know the manufacturing process it's made on. AMD has been characteristically tight-lipped about its upcoming series of graphics processors based on the RDNA 4 architecture, but a new leak reveals the...
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After Hurricane Rita nailed Southeast Texas in 2005, the worst part for residents like the author was the inability to contact friends and family to both make sure they were okay and also reassure them of our safety. Now, over a million folks in Florida are still struggling with the same sort of state in the wake of...
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Go ask analysts, investors, and tech bros what kind of company NVIDIA is and they'll immediately shoot back with "AI". It's definitely true that AI has fuelled the company's meteoric rise to become the largest company in the world by market cap in recent years. However, NVIDIA's expertise is in creating massive...
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AMD's cadence in laptop processors has traditionally followed a specific playbook: new consumer Ryzen parts come out, and then a few months later, the PRO versions of those parts hit the market for enterprise and commercial client devices. AMD has been marketing and selling PRO processors since at least the good ol'...
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At this point, AMD EPYC is certainly a brand which needs no introduction. AMD's dense server processors, based on its Zen 5 and Zen 5c core architecture, build on AMD's consumer PC origins to offer many-core solutions with huge compute resources and capabilities that continue to outstrip what people might have...
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It won't surprise anyone to hear that Hot Hardware is staffed by PC gaming stalwarts who (mostly) balk at the idea of playing games on consoles. After all, you have a limited game selection, few choices in terms of input devices, and you're restricted to whatever quality-versus-performance compromise the developer...
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Ever since William Gibson's Neuromancer, thousands or even millions of nerds worldwide have fantasized about the idea of the 'deck', or 'cyberdeck' as it has been known in later cyberpunk fiction. The idea is that of a portable computer, but not like a laptop—more akin to something like a condensed Commodore 64, with...
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If you have any Apple devices running iOS 18, you'd better go make sure they have the latest security updates. That's because Apple has just released fixes for some major flaws, including a bug that could apparently allow an attacker to make your device read your stored password aloud through the VoiceOver...
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In our reviews of Lunar Lake systems, we've noted that a particular bright spot for the new Intel SoC, besides its excellent efficiency, is its graphics performance. However, the previous-generation Meteor Lake machines could also offer great graphics performance—when using unlimited power budgets, at least. How does...
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We've heard isolated reports of Socket AM5 systems struggling with fast NVMe storage, but apparently the issue comes down to more than just a few incidents. We say that because of a statement from memory vendor Crucial's support team that acknowledges user complaints claiming that when PCIe 5.0 SSDs are installed in...
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If you read that headline and thought, "wait, didn't AFMF 2 already come out," then you're thinking of the preview release back in July. At that time, AMD released a beta driver that contained support for the AI-improved, driver-based frame generation technology, and invited users to help test it. As a beta driver, it...
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A new optional Windows Update Preview is apparently causing some percentage of users to lose access to their PCs. This is because the update is making the machines enter a "boot loop", where the system attempts to start, fails, restarts, and then starts over, with no way to resolve the problem without secondary boot...
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AMD and its partners have released a barrage of motherboards today based on the latest Socket AM5 chipsets. That's the X870, as well as the dual-chip X870E version, if you haven't been staying on top of things. Along with the fancy new mainboards, AMD has also released new AGESA firmware to its partners that promises...
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The Wi-Fi 7 standard brings the tantalizing possibility of improved transfer rates even over the already-speedy Wi-Fi 6E, but much like with HDMI and earlier versions of USB, many of the new features in Wi-Fi 7 are optional. As a result, vendors can still call their Wi-Fi adapters "Wi-Fi 7" even if they don't...
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If you're not keen on spending seven hundred American greenbacks on a PlayStation 5 Pro, how about half that much on a Switch 2? We don't know pricing yet, of course, but a new leak gives us a pretty solid idea of the launch window for Nintendo's next system, and also confirms a few rumored details about the...
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Hype for Intel's second-generation graphics parts is at an all-time high after the release of Intel's Core Ultra 200V processors, codenamed Lunar Lake. Those SoCs include graphics parts based on the same technology that will eventually show up in "Battlemage", the company's next Arc GPUs, and in case you didn't read...
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If you're a hardware enthusiast or PC gamer, then you probably already know all about Intel's troubles surrounding its high-end Raptor Lake desktop processors. If you're not, well, the short version is that a combination of factors led to major stability issues and silicon damage in some of Intel's high-end desktop...
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If you read that headline and thought, "wait, what's a Ryzen AI 9 HX 375," don't worry — you're not alone. That SKU was not part of the launch of AMD's Ryzen AI 300 processors, and we haven't heard a peep about it from AMD. It's definitely real, though; you can find the specifications page on AMD's website.
It's...
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Linux is a modern operating system that supports all of the latest technologies, but it's also a legacy-friendly system that dates back to 1991. If it's a computer, you can probably run Linux on it, except that, owing to its origins in 1991, Linux technically requires at least a 32-bit CPU and a few megabytes of RAM...
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For the first time in a decade, Nintendo's handheld gaming dominance is seeing a credible challenge thanks to the emergence of both powerful and affordable handheld systems based, surprisingly, on PC-compatible hardware. Machines like those from Ayaneo and GamePad Digital led the way, but it was really the Steam Deck...
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