Items tagged with build
Welcome to HotHardware's PC Component Buyer's Guide, where we help prospective system builders pick out just the right collection of components to build the rigs of their dreams -- or at least the rig which makes the best use of your budget. We've picked out the best bang for the buck in processors, graphics cards, storage, and more in an effort to assemble some truly drool-worthy gaming PCs at a variety of price points. From top to bottom, rest assured that we've done the hard work of balancing price and performance in a way that gets the most performance possible from a given budget. Because budgets tend to be moving targets though, we've also found what we think is the best way to utilize...
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It took a little longer than we would have liked, but we’ve finally got the AMD and Corsair sponsored Raven Ridge giveaway system built up and ready to ship off to the winner! We put together a short video of the build process for those of you that would like to see how the rig came out. As you’ll see, with all of that beautiful Corsair gear and a streamlined AMD Raven Ridge APU setup, the system is super clean and tidy... The complete parts list for the system included: APU: AMD Ryzen 5 2400G Motherboard: ASRock AB350 Gaming K4 PSU: Corsair RM750X PSU Case: Corsair Crystal Series 570X Memory: 16GB Corsair Vengeance RAM Storage: Toshiba TR200 SSD Keyboard: Corsair K70 Rapidfire Mouse:...
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Although updated sales figures haven’t yet been released, and some initial reviews were less than stellar, if the movie is any indicator, EA’s Star Wars Battlefront is poised to be a resounding success in the gaming community. And with an expansion pack inbound, that will likely feature content that ties in with the Force Awakens, it’ll probably continue that success for quite a while. AMD has been offering free copies of Star Wars Battlefront to new buyers of Radeon Fury graphics cards since mid-November 2015 and will continue to do so through the end of this month. But with the recent release of the Radeon R9 380X, the company believes they’ve got a compelling solution...
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We recently set out to design a mini desktop computer with the wildly popular Raspberry Pi single board computer. The Raspberry Pi is a Linux-driven, ARM processor-based micro computer that is known for its low cost and small size. People use the device for a variety of projects, from micro-servers to low cost media players. Basically, our goal was to turn what is currently one of the cheapest bare-bones computer boards into a fully enclosed mini desktop computer that could be taken anywhere without the need for cabling or setup. One of the high level goals of this project was also to learn about programming with Linux and get a good feel for it with the Debian distribution.Update 11/28/2015:...
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Computer generated graphics have come a long way in the past several years and are starting to blur the line between animation and real actors. One of the more difficult tasks for CG artists is to recreate human emotions, especially crying, though you wouldn't know it after watching a tech demo that Square Enix showed off at the Microsoft BUILD Developer Conference. The real-time tech demo is called Witch Chapter 0 [cry] and is part of a research project that studies various next generation technologies. For this particular demo, Square Enix put a lot of research into real-time CG technology utilizing DirectX 12 in collaboration with Microsoft and NVIDIA, the company said. It's an ongoing project...
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When Microsoft told us that Windows 10 would run universal apps, we got the gist of what it meant. Developers would be able to create apps that ran on desktop, tablet, and smartphone version of Windows 10 with the same codebase. It makes for a streamlined app creation process for developers and gives Windows Phone users — who have traditionally been left in the dust when it comes to app support compared to iOS and Android platforms — hope that things will be different once Windows 10 comes around. However, today’s news from Microsoft – courtesy of BUILD 2015 -- was totally unexpected and quite frankly a game changer for anyone that has stuck by Microsoft’s side as its Windows Phone platform has...
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Winds of change are surely blowing now that Satya Nadella has taken over the CEO role at Microsoft. During the company's BUILD conference this week, blockbuster news was announced regarding the pricing future of its most notable product: Windows. Going forward, Microsoft will make Windows free for phones and tablets, likely in a bid to better compete with Android and iOS. Both of those operating systems have monumental slices of market share in the mobile space, which Microsoft is seeking to infiltrate now that sales of laptops and desktops are sliding downward. Up until now, Microsoft was charging device makers around $5 to $15 per device to use Windows, while Google has always allowed Android...
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New features in the upcoming Windows Phone 8.1 update are leaking all over the place, and the latest is a new Notification Center that will be renamed “Action Center” that looks to tidy up some aspects of the user experience. Windows Phone Central nabbed a screenshot (originally found by Winphollowers) of one page of a slide deck that came from an internal Microsoft email and also confirmed its validity. The slide shows two screens of the Action Center and some brief but descriptive text. Action Center serves as a clearinghouse for your notifications (with a handy “Clear All” option) and will let you enable/disable WiFi, Bluetooth, Driving Mode, or Airplane Mode connections...
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Whatever you think about Windows 8.1, good or bad or what have you, we can all agree that the launch of Microsoft’s latest operating system has not gone at all how the company hoped. Microsoft appears ready to move beyond it, in any case, with its “Threshold” initiative designed to further unify Microsoft’s OS ecosystem. There’s an update to Windows 8.1 coming this year, and Microsoft will surely let the world in on its plans for the next generation of Windows at the BUILD conference in April, but the current scuttlebutt is that Threshold will launch in April 2015, and it will be called “Windows 9”. Windows 8.1 Perhaps all that seems obvious, but it’s...
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It’s no secret that Windows 8 hasn’t exactly captured the hearts and minds of the public at large, but when word leaked that Microsoft was working on a rejiggered version of its newest operating system called Windows 8.1, it was a sign that Microsoft might be able to fix what consumers and businesses dislike and jumpstart sales. Although the finished version of Windows 8.1 won’t arrive until later this year, Microsoft has a preview version ready to go, which you can download here. If you want to take a 90-second tour, here’s a visually stimulating video: Windows 8.1 certainly looks pretty, and Microsoft did indeed bring back a version of the Start button when in Desktop...
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There are a slew of new features reportedly coming to Windows 8.1, formerly codenamed Windows "Blue." From the passionately requested Start/Boot to Desktop, to simple things like additional Live Tile sizes, to universal Bing search from within any app in Windows, Microsoft is planning a major-league update with this latest Windows 8 release. During Microsoft's BUILD developer's conference live stream opening keynote today, we picked up on a major feature addition that had us grinning ear to extruded ABS ear. As it turns out, Microsoft decided to bake 3D Printing support right into this Windows 8.1 update. Windows 8.1 will natively support 3D Printers with drivers and API support....
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Two of the world's largest enterprise companies may be about to shake hands in a deal that'll have massive implications across the entire cloud (er, industry). A new report suggests that Microsoft and Oracle are ready to "link their fortunes in the cloud," announcing at its upcoming BUILD conference a new partnership with Oracle. BUILD is expected to be the launching pad for Windows 8.1, but that's mostly on the consumer front. On the enterprise front, Oracle is expected to announce a cooperation with Microsoft whereby Microsoft's software ties in tightly with Oracle's powerful enterprise hardware. It's a strange collaboration, for sure. A few years ago, these two were seen as rivals. But given...
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We recently set out to design mini desktop computer with the wildly popular Raspberry Pi single board computer. The Raspberry Pi is a Linux-driven, ARM processor-based micro computer that is known for its low cost and small size. People use the device for a variety of projects, from micro-servers to low cost media players. Basically our goal was to turn what is currently one of the cheapest bare-bones computer boards into a fully enclosed mini desktop computer that could be taken anywhere without the need for cabling or setup. One of the high level goals of this project was also to learn about programming with Linux and get a good feel for programming in the Debian interface. Behold, the...
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One of the perks of working at a place like HotHardware is that we have access to some of the hottest computer components hardware around. So when I decided to dive into Windows 8 head-first a few months ago, I thought I’d give the OS as much breathing room as possible and install it on a freshly built, ultra high-end rig. Building myself a second system for Windows 8 while tweaking and getting accustomed to the OS’s new interface, and whatever other quirks popped up, would help me remain semi-productive before making the actual transition to the new machine. Before I show you the hardware I used for the build and discuss some of the issues that I had to contend with along the way,...
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One of the perks of working at a place like HotHardware is that we have access to some of the hottest hardware around. So when I decided to dive into Windows 8 head-first a few months ago, I thought I’d give the OS as much breathing room as possible and install it on a freshly built, ultra high-end rig. Building myself a second system for Windows 8 while tweaking and getting accustomed to the OS’s new interface, and whatever other quirks popped up, would help me remain semi-productive before making the actual transition to the new machine. Before I show you the hardware I used for the build and discuss some of the issues that I had to contend with along the way, I want to...
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In this special episode of HotHardware’s Two and Half Geeks webcast, Marco takes us through a system build of a killer new Gaming PC built with top-notch Corsair components that we'll be giving away to our lucky “Back to School” contest winner JOMA! A couple of episodes back, I (Marco) said that I was so jazzed to assemble this system that I promised it would be the cleanest one I’ve built yet. I’m happy to report that I pulled it off (at least I think I did!). Assembling a group of parts that were all designed to work together definitely makes the process much easier. Kudos to Corsair for putting the effort in to design components that cater so well to the enthusiast...
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In this latest episode of HotHardware's Two and Half Geeks, Marco takes us through the component selection and build process for the grand prize of HotHardware's Labor Day Giveaway contest - a custom gaming PC decked out with the latest technologies from Intel, NVIDIA, Patriot, Gigabyte, NZXT and many more!...
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Microsoft discussed the upcoming changes to Windows 8's boot process at BUILD last week, but Matthew Garrett, a mobile Linux developer and blogger at Red Hat has pointed out that the company's new requirements could be used in ways that harm the Linux community. One of Microsoft's new rules for Windows 8 is that any company that ships a windows 8 device must enable UEFI secure boot. Secure boot uses signing keys to ensure that only verified, trusted hardware (and associated drivers) are allowed to boot the system or run once the system has booted. There are separate sets of keys for the boot process and OS/firmware communication. Garrett writes: An OS vendor cannot boot their software on a system...
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There has been no shortage of buzz and chatter about the Windows 8 Developer Preview that Microsoft let fly during their BUILD Developer's conference this week. What's even more interesting is that they made their new beta baby available for public download as well. So we wasted no time in installing the pre-release software on one of our Intel Core i5-based notebooks here in the HH Lab. We came away impressed at the current state of the new operating system, however, there is little question that Win 8 is a radical departure from previous versions of Windows. In fact, it could be easily said that Windows 8 isn't really "Windows" at all. You be the judge on that but to...
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Windows 8 is damned impressive. That's our one-sentence summary of the company's keynote and it applies despite the appearance of a few bugs and hiccups during the on-stage OS demonstrations. The new operating system shares certain design elements with Windows Phone 7, but it's far from a large-screen version of Microsoft's smartphone OS. When Steven Sinofsky, President of the Windows division at Microsoft, wrote that "Windows 8 re-imagines Windows" and implied that this would be the largest overhaul since Windows 95, he wasn't exaggerating. Windows 8 Explored at BUILD 2011...
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Windows 8 is damned impressive. That's our one-sentence summary of the company's keynote and it applies despite the appearance of a few bugs and hiccups during the on-stage OS demonstrations. The new operating system shares certain design elements with Windows Phone 7, but it's far from a large-screen version of Microsoft's smartphone OS. When Steven Sinofsky, President of the Windows division at Microsoft, wrote that "Windows 8 re-imagines Windows" and implied that this would be the largest overhaul since Windows 95, he wasn't exaggerating. Steven Sinofsky holds a first generation Lenovo netbook with an Atom CPU and 1GB of RAM running Win 8 One thing classic users will have to get used to from...
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Microsoft's Build conference kicks off tomorrow and is expected to present world+dog with our first panoramic view of Windows 8, including details on the OS's embedded virtualization technology (baked into all versions), its improved boot times, native USB 3 support, and a host of other technologies. Several companies will be on-hand to demonstrate Windows 8 tablets and devices as well--including a rumored Samsung tablet that'll be powered by Intel hardware, rather than the ARM-based equipment that's grabbed headlines throughout 2011. Any prototype Samsung devices will likely feature Intel's upcoming 32nm Cedar Trail at the least--it wouldn't surprise us if the company opted to include a more...
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