PC Components, Peripherals And Gadget Reviews And News
Dig into our deep-dive product reviews and news of PC components from processors, to motherboards, graphics cards (GPUs), sound cards, and storage, along with other gadgets and peripherals that complete the computing experience. Whether you're a DIY PC enthusiast builder or just looking to read-up on what should be inside or connected to your next pre-built PC, here's where you'll find all the nuts and bolts sorted on what makes modern computer systems tick, as well some of the best user interface devices to go with them.
A few weeks back, we took a look at the WD Blue SN500 SSD. That solid state drive is an affordable NVMe M.2 option, that’s targeted at mainstream systems and budget-constrained users. The WD Blue SN500 offers the benefits of NVMe, with pricing that is in-line with legacy SATA devices. The drive we’ll be looking at today, however, the WD Black SN750 SSD with Heatsink, takes things in a completely different direction. The WD Black SN750 SSD with Heatsink targets enthusiasts and gamers, and offers much higher performance in some scenarios. It is also priced higher, but not exorbitantly so. The WD Black SN750 SSD with Heatsink is by no means a mainstream drive, as you’ll see shortly,...
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WD’s Blue family of solid state drives has historically been comprised of nothing but SATA-based offerings, but the company recently updated the line-up with some brand-new NVMe-based drives. The WD Blue SN500 we’ll be showing you here today is the first Blue-branded NVMe SSD from the company, and as has been the case with many of WD’s “Blue” products, it is aggressively priced and pushes NVMe into more mainstream territory. The WD Blue SN500, however, does not target the high-end of the NVMe market; that is the WD Black family's job. As you’ll see in the WD Blue SN500’s specifications below, it’s much more tame than many of other NVMe solid state...
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Western Digital is one of the world’s largest storage manufacturers with a wide array of products to meet their customer's unique needs. Its My Passport Wireless line of external drives offer more than just convenient storage. With on-board Wi-Fi, battery, and SD card readers, WD bills them as a working photographer’s best friend. That certainly sounds like a common use case for a device like this, but will this latest WD My Passport live up to its promise? WD sent over their latest My Passport Wireless SSD for us to use and review. The SSD version is available in capacities from 250GB to a spacious 2TB. They range in price from $199.99 to $749.99 respectively. Our unit is the...
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Black Friday is just around the corner and retailers have been releasing “sneak peaks” and ads since October. Walmart recently revealed their own Black Friday ad. The superstore will be offering discounts on items like smart TVs, PC and console gaming gear, Chromebooks, and even a PS4 Spider-Man bundle. Smart TVs are one of the hottest commodities this year. Customers will be able to nab a 65" Class 4K Roku Smart TV for $398 USD. The Samsung 32" Class Smart TV will run you $178 ($72 off), while the Samsung 55" Class 4K Smart TV will ring in at $398 ($300 off). The Vizio 60" Class 4K Smart TV will be available for $498 ($100 off). The Samsung 55" Class 4K Smart TV If you are...
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We have a treat coming up for you all tomorrow afternoon, as we’ll be hosting a livestream chat with Tom Petersen, who serves as the Director of Technical Marketing for NVIDIA. It doesn’t take a cryptologist to figure out what we’re going to be talking about: all things NVIDIA Turing of course. Early last week, NVIDIA announced its next-generation gaming graphics card lineup which includes the GeForce RTX 2070, RTX 2080 and the RTX 2080 Ti. In addition to promising raw gaming performance gains over the previous generation GeForce GTX 10 series, these new Turing cards also bring NVDIA RTX real-time ray-tracing technology and some new image quality features, like AI-powered...
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Western Digital recently launched a new family of NVMe-based solid state drives targeting gamers and enthusiasts. The simply-branded WD Black NVMe SSD family has a similar naming convention to some previous-generation solid state drives built by the company, but these latest offerings are packing some new technology and offer performance much higher than any of the earlier WD-made storage product offerings that came before it. The WD Black NVMe SSD family features a new controller, 64-layer BiCS3 3D TLC NAND flash memory, an intelligently laid-out PCB that optimizes thermal characteristics, and firmware tuned for enthusiast desktop applications. The drive’s main features and specifications...
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WD recently updated its mainstream Blue line of solid state drives with new 64-layer 3D BiCS NAND flash memory. When we first took a look at the original WD Blue SSD, we found it to be an admirable performer with competitive pricing. This new generation of drives, however, promises better performance and features all of the firmware tweaks and optimizations WD has gleaned over the Blue SSD line’s lifetime.In addition, SanDisk branded versions of the drive are hitting the market as well. Internally the WD Blue with 3D NAND and new SanDisk Ultra 3D are virtually identical, but the drives will target different distribution channels. The WD Blue 3D is for do-it-yourselfers and is headed into the...
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Western Digital is the king of the hard drive market but up to now has been a non-factor in SSDs. However, with its purchase of solid state storage giant, SanDisk, the company immediately leaped to the forefront of the market in one fell swoop. Now the company is entering the consumer/commercial SSD market with WD Green and WD Blue SSDs, using a naming scheme borrowed from its hard drive line and technology acquired from SanDisk. WD's Green lineup is for entry level PCs meant to have a low power draw while the Blue SSD series is aimed at mainstream consumers. Both series are available in both 2.5″ SATA III and M.2 SATA III form factors. The WD Green SSD is only available in lower density...
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External storage is commonplace now, but traditional standalone storage products sometimes leave a large number of devices hanging. I've got a 2TB external drive plugged into a USB 3 port, for example, which is great for the main PC, but it doesn't help much with the laptop, iPhone and iPad. That's where some of the latest wireless storage products like the WD My Passport Wireless Pro we're going to be showing you here come in. Through creative piggy-backing onto your Wi-Fi network, you can add multiple terabytes of additional storage that can be accessed by any wirelessly-connected device, giving your phone, tablet, laptop and anything else shared access through a high-speed wireless interface....
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If you’re still rocking a 1TB or even 2TB hard drive on your PC, you’re probably starting to feel squeezed by that capacity ceiling sneaking closer and closer. Game download sizes are swelling with the addition of ever-increasing detail and 4K textures (Star Citizen is rumored to exceed 100GB) and content producers can never have enough space to store and edit their digital creations. If you’re looking for a seriously roomy new hard drive or three, Western Digital has you covered with today’s launch of the WD Black 6TB HDD and the NAS-friendly WD Red Pro 6TB. They're also launching 5TB versions of each, but we'll take the maximum storage allowed by law, thank you very much. The newest hard...
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With Windows 10, Microsoft is making a concerted effort to unify their platforms. Universal apps, Xbox One to PC game streaming, Xbox 360 game streaming, Game DVR functionality, and a host of other features and tweaks to make the Windows experience more seamless across various devices. I've always seen the potential for PC to Xbox One streaming, but for that Microsoft would need to implement full keyboard and mouse support. Well guess what gamers? Xbox head Phil Spencer today said that exact support isn't far away. @lgriao @PNF4LYFE @Tak225Th Yep, keyboard and mouse support for Xbox would need to be there for this to work, those aren't far away. — Phil Spencer (@XboxP3) July 21, 2015 In...
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The WD My Cloud EX2100 is a new prosumer-oriented NAS drive from WD that continues the company's adventures in the realm of "personal cloud" storage. These drives are aimed directly at people who use Cloud storage such as Dropbox, Google Drive, Box.com, and others. The marketing speak from WD is that those services require a monthly payment for a small amount of storage, and you have to store your data on someone else's cloud. For example Dropbox charges $10 a month for 1TB of storage, and Google charges the same. WD's pitch is you can get multiple terabytes of storage with one of its drives, and use it as your own personal cloud storage, with the files accessible from any location with an internet...
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The Western Digital Passport Wireless is a member of a new class of storage devices that combine run-of-the-mill USB storage with wireless hotspot and media center functionality. These devices essentially marry what used to be two separate drives - an external USB device and a media device that can stream data wirelessly to connected devices. They also help address the relatively small amount of storage that is included with today's mobile devices, as they let you store and access terabytes of data on your smartphone or tablet without having to store it locally. It's an interesting combination, and very useful if you're the type of person who is constantly passing your external drive around to...
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It has been a few weeks since Microsoft released its Technical Preview of Windows 10 -- which means we've had enough time to walk around the vehicle, kick the tires, and investigate the product in its current form. After the drubbing that Windows 8 took in the tech press and from angry users, Microsoft badly needs this new operating system to be a success, but simply cramming the Start menu back into the OS isn't going to cut it. So what has Microsoft been up to all this time beyond the Start menu's triumphant return? Let's take a look. The Road To Windows 10 We want to kick off this preview by briefly discussing something that's been percolating in the back of our heads for quite...
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