PATREONItems tagged with MSI
Late last week, we came across an ASRock motherboard box shot that alleged Intel's H310 Express chipset will have support for upcoming 9th generation Core Coffee Lake Refresh processors. Today, MSI is providing evidence that the Intel Z370 chipset will also support the new CPUs. Confirmation of the support came courtesy of a news update posted to MSI's website that states, "MSI, the world leading gaming motherboard manufacturer, is pleased to announce new BIOS updates for MSI Z370 motherboards to support Intel 9000 processors. The new BIOS updates are all fully optimized for Intel 9000 processors." The full list of supported MSI Z370 motherboards is seen below: This...
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At long last, AMD's hardware partners have formally introduced a slew of new motherboards based on the company's B450 chipset. Whereas AMD's X470 is aimed at power users and enthusiasts, B450 boards typically target buyers on a budget. Prices vary depending on features, of course, but for the most part B450 motherboards should check in at under $200. The main thing you give up with B450 versus X470 is multiple GPU support (CrossFireX and SLI). Otherwise, B450 and X470 are overall pretty similar—they have the same number of PCIe Gen3 lanes (16 with Ryzen 7 CPUs), both support overclocking, and both can enable XFR2 Enhanced and Precision Boost Overdrive in second-generation Ryzen CPUs, whereas...
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The ups and downs of the cryptocurrency market have meant that it's been a wild year for PC gamers. Cryptocurrency miners rushed out to purchases hordes of NVIDIA and AMD GPUs, which drove up the prices for people that just wanted to play Doom in 4K without having to pay an arm and a leg for a graphics card. Luckily, graphics cards prices are starting to fall back to normalcy as the cryptocurrency craze wanes, and the latest deal to come as a result is on the MSI Gaming Radeon RX 580 8G V1. Amazon has the card on sale for $259.99 with free two-day shipping for Amazon Prime members. To make the deal even sweeter, there is a $30 mail-in rebate that brings the...
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MSI is delivering plenty of goods for gaming enthusiasts at this year's Computex show in Taipei, Taiwan. The products on display will include gaming notebooks, monitors, all-in-one PCs and motherboard (among others). MSI GT75 Titan 8RG At the top of the gaming [laptop] totem pole is the , which is quite a mouthful to say. The 17.3-inch laptop (Full HD or 4K display options) comes packing Intel's top-of-the line Intel Core i9 unlocked hexa-core Coffee Lake processors that works in conjunction with an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 graphics card. Other features include a SteelSeries mechanical keyboard with per-key RGB backlighting, Killer Wireless-AC 1550 networking and Aquantia 10 GbE. The GE73...
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MSI is rolling out a new Mech 2 line of Radeon RX graphics cards with AMD's Polaris GPUs underneath the hood, as part of its newly formed Mech series. Normally a new gaming brand wouldn't warranty much attention, but it's notable here because of all the drama surrounding NVIDIA's recently retired GeForce Partner Program (GPP), and the events that have unfolded since the controversial affiliate program was first announced. To quickly recap, NVIDIA created an affiliate program in which it would provide additional marketing support and other perks to its hardware partners in exchange for carrying a gaming brand exclusive for GeForce products. The program drew anti-competitive concerns, including...
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MSI has unveiled a new workstation computer called the Vortex W25 and it is aimed at professionals out there who need a compact workstation that still has enough performance for complex tasks. The W25 is the world’s first 2.5L desktop computer with an NVIDIA Quadro P5200 GPU. Along with that GPU is the latest 8th generation Intel Core i7 "Coffee Lake" processors. The processor used in the machine is a 6-core unit that MSI says is 30% more powerful than the previous generation of CPUs used, combined with the 40% more powerful GPU the Vortex W25 is aimed directly at high-end 3D and VR tasks. The machine is cooled by the MSI Cooler Boost Titan thermal solution that gives more thermal...
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Fans of gaming and computer hardware who didn’t get to go to PAX East this year take heart; we have booth video tours from the floor of the show that give you an excellent glimpse at what you missed. Our first video is the tour of the MSI booth at the show and all of the latest gaming notebooks the company offers are on full display. The full RGB keyboard backlighting is nice and some of the keyboards can be programmed to light specific keys for each game. Our second booth tour is of the Gigabyte booth, and the company has lots of its computer hardware on display. One of the coolest products was the full Aorus setup that shows all the RGB lighting and high-end gaming hardware that Gigabyte...
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Cryptocurrency mining is a phenomenon that many gamers and even some cities are having issues with. Gamers aren't happy because the miners are buying up all the graphics cards out there and making them hard to find and driving prices up. Some cities aren't happy because the miners are slurping up vast amounts of electricity and raising the rates for everyone in the town, this is exactly what happened in a small New York town recently. That said, for those that are willing to make an effort, even if on part time basis, re-purposing your gaming system can be a worthwhile and profitable effort, so long as cryptocurrency values hold up to recent volatility. Perhaps another answer...
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Forget about planning just for Patch Tuesday, the second Tuesday of every month when Microsoft issues security updates to Windows users. As companies scramble to mitigate Meltdown and Spectre, you should be planning for Patch January, and maybe February as well. Case in point, ASUS, Gigabyte, and MSI have all now released firmware updates for a whole bunch of motherboard models. "ASUS is aware that the current Intel microcode version might be subject to recently identified security vulnerabilities. We are diligently working to update ASUS motherboards that support 6th, 7th or 8th Generation Intel Core processors or Intel Core X-series processors for X99 and X299 platforms. We recommend customers...
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More AMD RYZEN love is being announced at CES 2018, this time from prominent motherboard maker MSI. Small form factor (SFF) PCs can be fantastic build projects. They significantly decrease the footprint of your PC, often without compromising performance, whether it’s to accommodate confining dorm-living or a convenient portable build for LAN and eSports gaming. But first you need a strong but diminutive foundation. Enter the MSI Mini-ITX B350 PRO AC motherboard for RYZEN. The Mini-ITX B350 PRO AC is an AM4 socket motherboard for RYZEN processors and is packed with a surprising array of features for its super small Mini-ITX stature. It features a powerful 9-phase PWM design (6+2+1), which...
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A determined user has managed to get an Intel 8th Generation Core processor (Coffee Lake) running on a Z170 chipset motherboard, despite claims by Intel that such a feat is simply not possible. With a little BIOS wizardry, the user successfully booted into Windows with a Core i3-8350K processor nestled into an MSI Z170A XPower Titanium motherboard, and posted images of his feat on Baidu. The modded BIOS sidesteps a restriction that Intel has placed on its hardware partners preventing them from supporting Coffee Lake processors Z270 and Z170 motherboards. That has been a point of frustration for customers, as Coffee Lake CPUs use the same LGA 1151 socket as Kaby Lake chips. However, Intel maintains...
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If you're looking for a gaming monitor that has good specs for not a lot of money, MSI has a new offering that hopes to tick off as many boxes as possible on your wish list. The company has launched the Optix MAG24C, which is a 24-inch gaming monitor with a frameless design. The Optix MAG24C has a Full HD (1920x1080) resolution display that aims to impress with a curved screen (1800R) and a 144Hz refresh rate. Response times are listed at 1ms (thanks to its VA panel), the brightness rating is 250 nits and it features a contrast ratio of 3,000:1. Other features include support for AMD FreeSync, 178-degree viewing angles (vertical and horizontal), 85% NTSC and 110% sRGB color representation, blue...
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Intel launched its 8th generation Core desktop processors based on Coffee Lake architecture last week, and the hardware community quickly embrace the new Core i3, i5 and i7 processors. We already seen what MSI has to offer on the motherboard front for these Coffee Lake processors, and now the enthusiast hardware company has announced its latest small form factor machine: the Vortex G25. The Vortex G25 is available in two configurations, with the entry-level system feature a Core i5-8400 processor (six cores, six threads) and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 with 6GB GDDR5 memory. The upgraded model comes equipped with a Core i7-8700 processor (six cores, twelve threads) and a GeForce GTX 1070 graphics...
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Starting on Thursday, October 5, you will be able to purchase one of Intel's newfangled Coffee Lake CPUs. In the meantime, two things are happening—early benchmarks are leaking to the web showcasing the promise of 6-core/12-thread processing, and motherboard makers are launching new brand new printed circuit boards (PCBs) based on Intel's Z370 chipset for its 8th generation Core processor family. MSI is among them, with a flurry of new options aimed at gamers. MSI announced more than a dozen Z370 motherboards spread out across its Enthusiast Gaming, Performance Gaming, Arsenal Gaming, and Pro Series lines. Starting at the top, MSI unveiled its Z370 Gaming M5 and Z370 Godlike Gaming, the latter...
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Today we are going to take a look at three popular Intel Z270-based motherboards targeted at power users and gamers, produced by enthusiast favorites Gigabyte, ASUS and MSI. The three boards we've rounded-up here cover a wide range of price points. The Gigabyte Aorus Z270X-Gaming K5 and ASUS ROG STRIX Z270F Gaming boards represent more mainstream segments, while the MSI Z270 XPOWER Gaming Titanium targets the ultra high-end. Although AMD's powerful Threadripper processors and Intel's upcoming 18-Core Skylake-X behemoth have gotten the lion's share of attention lately, more mainstream processors like Intel's Kaby Lake-based Core i7s and Core i5s sell in much greater quantities. As such, we...
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We are still waiting for Intel to serve up its Coffee Lake processor lineup on the desktop. Barring a last minute change of plan, Coffee Lake CPUs will require a new motherboard even though they will use the same LGA 1151 socket that is compatible with Kaby Lake. Once such contender has emerged on the web—MSI's Z370 Godlike Gaming, a high-end motherboard based on Intel's forthcoming Z370 chipset.Based on previous leaks and rumors, we are expecting Coffee Lake and Z370 motherboards to arrive sometime in the fourth quarter of this year. We also expect to see plenty of motherboard announcements leading up the launch of Coffee Lake on the desktop, as seems to always happen whenever there is a new...
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Has the hype surrounding Ryzen Threadripper gotten to you yet? Well, if you’ve been bitten by the bug, chances are that you early adopters will have the processors in-hand within the next two weeks or so. With this in mind, the folks over at MSI has posted a brief, but informative tutorial on YouTube that shows you how to install a Ryzen Threadripper into your brand new [hopefully MSI-branded] motherboard. First of all, we have to commend MSI on the positively “chill” music that they used for this video. I could totally listen to this all day while on hold on the phone, or in an elevator, or while sitting in the waiting room for a root canal procedure. Instead of a single-lever system,...
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If you are planning to build a system around a high-end desktop (HEDT) processor, then you probably have AMD's upcoming Threadripper launch on your radar. We will have to wait and see how things shake out, but on paper, Threadripper looks impressive—compared to Intel's HEDT lineup, Threadripper offers more cores and threads per dollar, along with more PCIe lanes for decked out configurations with multiple graphics cards and those fancy NVMe M.2 SSDs. Of course, performance will depend on the motherboard as well, and mobo makers are starting to reveal their Threadripper-compatible lineups.A spattering of motherboards based on AMD's X399 chipset for Threadripper have started making an appearance...
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Preorders are currently underway for Intel’s new Core X-Series processors, which range from the quad-core, quad-thread Core i5-7640X ($242) to the 8-core, 36-thread Core i9-7980XE ($1,999). These new Skylake-X and Kaby Lake-X processors require a brand-new chipset, the X299, and motherboard manufacturers have responded by providing a number of new offerings hitting multiple price points. Luckily, we’ve got a quick roundup of new X299 motherboards from EVGA, Gigabyte and MSI to get you started on your search for the perfect companion for your new Core X processor. ASUS ASUS has a total of seven X299 boards at its disposal, with the Republic of Gamers (ROG) lineup leading the way: ASUS ROG Rampage...
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Intel and AMD are getting ready to duke it out in the high-end desktop (HEDT) processor market with brand new CPUs and platforms. It remains to be seen which side will have the upper hand, but in terms of motherboard selection, that does not appear to be a problem. With regards to Intel and its X299 chipset for enthusiasts, MSI unveiled a handful of options at Computex. MSI X299 Gaming Pro Carbon AC Two of those models have product pages already up on MSI's website. They include the X299 Gaming Pro Carbon AC and X299 SLI Plus. Starting with the former, the X299 Gaming Pro Carbon AC is being billed as the world's first motherboard with fully interchangeable heatsink covers and X-Mounting accessories...
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MSI is one of the biggest players in the gaming laptop market with a wide range of models that cover the spectrum from thin and light notebooks that pack a punch, on up to desktop replacement systems with unbridled power inside. The company added to both market segments at Computex by announcing the new GT75VR, a monster laptop with three GPU options, and the GS63VR and GS73VR, a pair of slim gaming laptops with a GeForce GTX 1070 GPU inside. Starting with the meatier of the two, the GT75VR is a muscular laptop that can be outfitted with a single GeForce GTX 1080 GPU, two GeForce GTX 1070 GPUs in SLI, or a single GeForce GTX 1070 GPU. It also features a burly Intel Core i7-7820HK processor, an...
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Custom variants of NVIDIA's mighty GeForce GTX 1080 Ti are finally available -- more so than the initial run of the stock clocked Founders Editions. As always, however, fortune favors the prudent buyer or simply those more recently flush with cash. In this custom 1080 Ti offering, MSI marries old form with new function. The MSI GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Gaming X 11G has just emerged from our gauntlet of a dozen benches with style and grace, but we have to admit, she looks darn familiar. While other company's are gambling with fancy new fan configurations, RGB lighting and complicated cooling systems, MSI is kicking it old school. The company has stripped down NVIDIA's new flagship GPU-juggernaut...
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