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.
Prior to holding its Financial Analyst Day in New York City, AMD showed off some new CrossFire-related technology to a few select members of the press. What we saw was AMD’s Hybrid CrossFire and its associated hardware, which marries next-generation integrated graphics processors (IGP) and entry-level discreet graphics cards for increased...
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Since this performance preview is targeted to PC Gamers, to start things off we might as well play a game. Riddle us this... What would be the antithesis of a product like a thin and light Notebook PC that is energy efficient, eco-friendly, and performance-per-watt tuned for those of you on the go? ...
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NVIDIA’s G80 GPU has been sitting atop the 3D graphics food chain for well over a year now. It was way back in November of ’06 that the GeForce 8800 GTX and original 640MB GTS arrived – the first two graphics cards based on the G80 GPU. Sometime later, the more affordable 320MB GeForce 8800 GTS and current flagship GeForce 8800...
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As the year draws to an end and the holiday shopping season begins, we here at HotHardware have a time-honored tradition of bringing our faithful readers our annual Holiday Buyer's Guide. We hope that our Holiday Guide will help you make informed buying decisions, whether you're looking for a couple of parts to put into your own...
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ATI’s FireGL brand of workstation-class graphics cards have played second fiddle to NVIDIA's offerings for some time now. NVIDIA’s rival Quadro lineup has been an incredibly strong competitor, and combined with the fact that the last several FireGL card releases have suffered from late arrival dates and lackluster performance by the time they...
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Not too far back, there was a time when it was inconceivable that a motherboard had anything other than a green or mustard colored PCB that had a few sockets for the CPU and DIMMs, maybe a hard drive connector or two, and a floppy drive connection. Keyboards and mice were typically PS/2 based, although a COM port sufficed...
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A few days ago, AMD officially unveiled their RV670 GPU, the chip at the heart of the ATI Radeon HD 3800 series of graphics cards. Just in case you missed it on the day of the launch, our coverage of the new Radeon HD 3870 and HD 3850 cards is available right here. While we did thoroughly explain the RV670’s architecture...
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Thirty million transistors on the head of a pin. Think about that for a minute. Where on earth can you fit 30 million of anything in that amount of space? It used to be that 30 million transistors was a good-sized chip. These days, in a 45nm Hafnium-based High-K process, it almost seems like we (OK, OK,...
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When the R600 GPU hit the scene last May in the form of the Radeon HD 2900 XT, it wasn't very well received by enthusiasts for a few key reasons. For one, the Radeon HD 2900 XT generally consumed more power and generated more heat than NVIDIA’s already well established GeForce 8800 GTS. In addition, the 2900 XT was also...
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Over the course of the past few months, we've brought you detailed analysis on Intel's forward-looking products based on their 45nm Penryn core architecture. At the time, these products were not officially launched in the various sales channels. Today Intel has announced official...
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Speed. It's the one thing that gets all the attention when most folks consider performance computer hardware. Whether we're referring to the CPU, Memory, Hard Drive or Graphics card, one of the most important characteristics we consider is its raw performance, wanting to know just how fast a component is compared to others in its...
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Seagate was surprisingly late to join the small, but elite club of storage manufacturers shipping one terabyte (1TB) class hard drives. Somewhat expectedly, the first out of the gate was Hitachi, who made it to market several months beforehand with a high-density five-platter 1TB hard disk design. While Hitachi’s performance, thermals,...
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As it stands today, many of the major components in a typical enthusiast class PC have built-in mechanisms for monitoring the health status of the device. Processors and GPUs have internal thermal diodes for monitoring temperatures, and graphics cards and motherboards have sensors for monitoring a myriad of voltages and things like fan...
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In the GPU business, like any other semiconductor technology, die size, cost and performance-per-watt are the name of the game. Performance-per-watt from a design and manufacturing perspective is important on multiple levels. Certainly, power efficient products are important to the consumer but also, generally speaking, power-efficient...
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It seems like Intel started talking about the Penryn core as soon as the Conroe core launched in the form of the first Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Extreme processors. Penryn was to be the next evolution in Intel’s Core microarchitecture and would be the foundation of a new class of mobile, desktop, and server processor built using the company’s...
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Claiming to be the best at anything is bold. From professional athletes to product manufacturers, stating you or your product is the best out there opens things up for closer scrutiny. Being the best at what you do, or what you make, means near flawless execution. Regardless of the context, one thing is certain,...
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It was back in January of this year at the Consumer Electronics Show that AMD first revealed their plans for the DTX open industry standard for small form factor computers. The focus of those early briefings was to explain AMD’s vision for interoperable small form factor systems. As it stands today, most SFF systems from large...
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Whether you’re a hardcore power user or a casual tinkerer who knows just enough to get into trouble, Asus is a company that you’re no doubt familiar with. The company is held in high regard in the PC enthusiast community thanks in no small part to their consistent track record and seemingly never-ending flow of innovative products....
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As enthusiasts, we're always looking for the next great design in computer cases. We're eager to see companies innovate in various areas of design, including cooling, tool-less installation, and style. When we see a new case hit the market, we often hope that it is made of aluminum, includes quiet 120mm or larger fans, and is easy...
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Just about four and a half years ago, a company started by ex-Visiontek executives entered the already crowded graphics card market with the hope of capturing the enthusiast and hardcore gaming audience. The plan was to factory overclock many of their products, offer a life time warranty, and have a dedicated 24/7 technical support staff ready...
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Today’s power supplies are a far cry from those that were available just a few years ago. With the increasing power demands of the latest GPUs and high-end processors, the need for ample, stable power has increased exponentially. With more and more attention being paid to efficiency and energy conservation, one has to question...
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It has been quite some time since Intel launched a desktop chipset targeted squarely at power users and PC enthusiasts. Of course, the P965 and current P35 have both been very well received by motherboard manufactures and the enthusiast community, but these chipsets were actually designed for the upper-mainstream space. In fact,...
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