PATREONItems tagged with systems
At CES MSI announced a bundle of new PCs and tech components targeted at gamers. Among these new products are two desktop PCs, a case, a mechanical keyboard, and a graphics card. "MSI is devoted to gaming and our lineup reaffirms our position as an industry leader endorsed by gamers and eSports teams worldwide," said Charles Chiang, MSI's new global CEO. "We are honored to be recognized by the CES awards panel and will continue to push boundaries to achieve extreme performance, superior design, and maximum reliability." Both of the new gaming desktops announced by MSI are described as using a compact form factor, though it's unclear if these will be micro-ATX or mini-ITX systems. One of the cases...
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As the holidays drew near, we wanted to do our part to get you all worked up into a frenzy and in the holiday spirit! So, we thought, "what better way to that, than to give away some HOT new gaming gear, powered by some of the latest and greatest technologies?" Core i7 processors? GeForce GTX 1080 graphics? Curved displays, gobs of memory, and solid state storage? Yeah, thanks to our friends at Lenovo, we had it all! And a couple of you just won! Up for grabs in this latest HOT Holiday giveaway were two powerful gaming systems -- an awesome IdeaCentre Y900 RE gaming desktop (Razer Edition) complete with a 27" curved display and a beastly Ideapad Y900 17" gaming laptop......
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It's hard to believe this year is nearly over. It feels as if our holiday gift guides are being assembled at an ever more rapid pace. Perhaps that has to do with the non-stop innovation in the tech sector, and our insatiable desire for ever-advancing product development. Each year, the leaps in processing power and graphics performance, in addition to the miniaturization and integration of advanced technologies, seems to constantly push the envelope, which means that there are almost always plenty of suitable replacements for our favorite gadgets and gizmos. And if you're on the hunt for gifts for a special someone, we think we've got you covered. From budget products to flagship devices, your...
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When Xotic PC asked us to be judge and jury of its Executioner gaming system, we thought to ourselves, "this better be one helluva setup to warrant its killer moniker," and spoiler alert, it is. We'll get to the benchmarks and other particulars in due time, but there's more to this $6,500 PC than raw performance alone. Yes, we said $6,500, which is the rounded up cost of the version Xotic PC sent us. When shopping an Executioner, you begin by picking one of four baseline setups dubbed Stages 1-4. Ours is a Stage 4 configuration that starts at just shy of $5,100, though with the custom upgrades Xotic PC decided to showcase, the final price tag is around $1,400 higher. All four Stages come standard...
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Had things gone to plan, Steam Machines would be a shipping product by now. However, Valve threw a wrench into the works when it decided that more time was needed to tweak its custom Linux-based Steam OS and fine tune the platform's accompanying Steam Controller. That decision left several partnering OEMs and boutique system builders in limbo, as they had already put in the necessary R&D to develop living room boxes that would serve as official Steam Machines. Hence a new category was born -- the PC gaming console. Systems like the Syber Vapor are full-fledged PCs stuffed inside console-sized cases that could have and would have served as Steam Machines. Since they lack Steam OS, they're...
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All in one systems are all about balance. Attempting to cram an entire PC’s worth of components into the back of what amounts to a slightly wider-than-normal display can be an iffy proposition. Pare down the specifications too much and you wind up with a limp machine that’s obsolete by the time you get it. Jam in too many high-performance components and the price skyrockets to a point that you wonder if a different form factor might have been a better option, not to mention the additional thermal and acoustic concerns. Lenovo’s B Series all in one systems are decidedly mid-range in both name and performance. You can opt for the low end in the C Series, which come with either a Celeron...
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We’ve seen a lot of cool stuff coming out of this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, but one of the most interesting has to be Cyberpower PC’s Fang Trinity gaming PC. The Fang Trinity features a unique tri-zone case from DeepCool (dubbed the Trinity concept) that looks somewhat like a Star Wars Imperial Shuttle. Each zone contains an array of components and the wiring is snaked through the case through a central cylinder that also houses the power button. We could ramble on about tech specs and what makes the Cyberpower PC Fang Trinity so intriguing, but it’ll probably be better if you just take a look at it yourself. Here’s a quick video we shot while on site... The Cyberpower Fang TrinityAs...
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Welcome to the era of dual-mode devices, where the mantra "bigger is better" rules the day. Need an example? Take smartphones -- Samsung's been serving up large size handsets for the past several years, some of which are so big that it warranted creating a brand new category. Even Apple jumped on the big device bandwagon with the recent launch of its iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus models. Do you know what you end up with if you take that same mantra and apply it to PCs? You get "Dell's XPS 18 Portable All-in-One Desktop with Touch," a hybrid system that turns a giant sized Windows 8.1 tablet into a full blown desktop PC, and the result is brilliant... Dell XPS 18 Portable All-in-One Review: Haswell...
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Welcome to the era of dual-mode devices, where the mantra "bigger is better" rules the day. Need an example? Take smartphones -- Samsung's been serving up large size handsets for the past several years, some of which are so big that it warranted creating a brand new category. Even Apple jumped on the big device bandwagon with the recent launch of its iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus models. Do you know what you end up with if you take that same mantra and apply it to PCs? You get "Dell's XPS 18 Portable All-in-One Desktop with Touch," a hybrid system that turns a giant sized Windows 8.1 tablet into a full blown desktop PC, and the result is brilliant. We can say that because this isn't...
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Thick, heavy gaming notebooks are a bit out of fashion, but MSI (a company that also has slim gaming notebooks to sell) is outing a beastly desktop replacement rig that purports to destroy benchmarks. In any case, MSI seems to have pulled out all the stops for the MSI GT72 Dominator Pro. It has a 17.3-inch display (1920x1080) and runs on an Intel Core i7-4710Q (2.5GHz, up to 3.4GHz), NVIDIA GeForce GTX 880M (8GB), and 32GB or 24GB of DDR3L-1600 RAM. On the storage side, you can configure a GT72 Dominator Pro with up to four 128GB SSDs (M.2) in RAID 0 in tandem with a nice big 1TB (7200rpm) HDD. There’s a Blu-ray burner on board, Dynaudio Premium Speakers with a subwoofer, 1080p HD webcam,...
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The race to develop a driverless car is on, driven in large part by the efforts of Google, although plenty of other companies such as Intel and Ford are investing heavily into developing such technology as well. You can count Nissan as one major car maker that’s in the fray, as CEO Carlos Ghosn revealed the company’s plans to reporters in Tokyo. Nissan has a roadmap for a nearly autonomous car by 2020. By 2016, Nissan will have vehicles that can self-park; by 2018, they’ll be able to change lanes without driver intervention, and by 2020 they’ll be able to navigate intersections autonomously. Nissan's electric Leaf Ostensibly, autonomous cars will reduce the number of traffic...
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It seems that the era of bulky gaming laptop beasts is over as most PC builders are releasing slim machines that deliver impressive gaming performance in surprisingly svelte form factors. Origin PC and CyberPowerPC are on the bandwagon as both companies are releasing new gaming notebooks. The Origin PC EVO 15-S weighs 4.36 lbs and measures .79 inches thick and features a 15.6-inch Full HD eDP display (with a 3K option coming soon); under the hood rumbles an Intel Core i7-4710HQ chip and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 870M 3GB GPU. The storage configuration is tantalizing: it’s comprised of a pair of 128GB SSDs in RAID 0 with a 1TB 7200rpm HDD. Other features include 16GB (2 x 8GB) of DDR3L-1600MHz...
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Two years ago saw the release of the Raspberry Pi Model B, a $35 computer board running Linux, and in the meantime we’ve also seen the $25 Model A emerge. Now the Raspberry Pi Model B+ is here, and the team is calling it “the final evolution of the original Rasperry Pi”. Although the B+ has the same ARM-based BCM2835 processor, 512MB RAM, and $35 price tag as the Model B, there are several key improvements, including two additional USB 2.0 ports (for a total of 4 four), a slicker push-push microSD slot that replaces the old friction-fit slot, and a 40-pin GPIO header that replaces the old 26-pin setup. Raspberry Pi Model B+ There’s also a dedicated low-noise power supply...
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Sometimes, you just have to pull out all the stops, which is essentially what Dell is doing by making its Alienware Aurora gaming desktop available with the option of including an NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan Z GPU. Alienware notes that the Titan Z boasts 5760 CUDA cores, 12GB of GDDR5 memory, and 8 TeraFLOPS of compute power. Of course, there’s plenty of other good stuff available for the Aurora. You can configure a system with an Intel Core i7-4820K (up to 3.9GHz), 8GB (4 x 2GB) of quad-channel DDR3-1600MHz RAM, 2TB 7200rpm HDD, and double-layer 24x CD/DVD burner ODD with a Titan Z for $3,799 (or for a limited time, $3,609.05). And of course, you can opt for more RAM and faster and/or higher-capacity...
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The PC market has been decidedly down as of late, as tablets in particular have taken a big chunk of the market share. Thus, many have been bemoaning the death of the PC while others (most of us at HH included) have been more optimistic about the future of the PC. Gartner has given reason for the latter view in a new report. Projecting that computing devices overall (PCs, tablets, ultramobiles, and phones) should see a 4.2% increase in 2014, Gartner research director Ranjit Atwal added, "2014 will be marked by a relative revival of the global PC market.” Lenovo M58e Desktop Granted, what that means is merely that the global PC market will see less loss--it won’t be seeing an actual...
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Months after first announcing the availability of the $350 Oculus Rift Dev Kit 2, the new device is now shipping. More to the point, some 10,000 DK2s are shipping from the factory this July, and a Team Oculus post on Oculus’ developer forums stated that more than half of the units will be through distribution centers by the end of the month. Oculus Rift DK2 The earliest devs can expect their DK2s is July 14th. Oculus says it received about 45,000 preorders, but it’s already behind on manufacturing; even though some people were told their shipments were landing in July, most won’t come until August. “We have a team in China working on continued ramp of production at our...
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SFF (small form factor) rigs can be tricky; depending on the configuration, they can be decent if underpowered machines or performance beasts, and although many system builders are putting out whole lines of the compact computers, you’ve in some cases only been able to configure them so much, often limited by the size of the chassis. CyberPowerPC, for its part, has just launched a configurator for SFF builds, so you can obsess about every detail and nuance of a little build as much as you have larger systems. The key is CyberPowerPC’s use of chassis that can support a wider variety of components, such as full-size graphics cards and standard-size PSUs. Chassis include the Corsair...
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Android TV is coming, and as we mentioned earlier, one of the killer features of the product will be the ability to play Android games on a nice, big TV. It appears that Android TV will ship on certain devices, but apparently there will also be a standalone Android TV box, and there’s a controller that will ship with said box. Google I/O attendee Artem Russakovskii posted an image on Google+ that shows the alleged controller with the alleged Android TV box. Russakovskii’s photo has been corroborated by some press renders of the controller discovered by Reddit user bedofgoatturds in a directory of the Android L Developer Preview. Credit: Artem Russakovskii Both images show that...
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Last month, news emerged that Philips was suing Nintendo over alleged patent infringements in the U.S., and the proverbial chickens are already coming home to roost in other countries. According to Reuters, Philips said it has won a patent suit in the UK (although no details about amounts for compensation have been shared). The patents concern motion, gesture, and pointing control that Philips licenses to companies that make set-top boxes and game consoles, and the company has asserted that Nintendo has been using the technology in the Wii U without a functioning license agreement. Philips spokesman Bjorn Teuwsen told the outlet that the company had been trying to come to terms with Nintendo...
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Previously, Apple’s least expensive Intel Haswell-based iMac was the 21.5-inch version with a quad-core Intel Core i5 (2.7GHz) that started at $1,299, but the Cupertino company has bumped the bottom line down a bit with a new model that costs $1,099. Apple tends not to skimp on specs with its pricey machines, but the company surely had to make some sacrifices on hardware to push that price down. So what were the concessions? Simply compared to the aforementioned $1,299 iMac, the $1,099 version has a dual-core Core i5 clocked at 1.4GHz instead a quad-core chip at 2.7GHz. It has half the storage (500GB versus 1TB), and it has Intel HD Graphics 5000 instead of Intel Iris Pro Graphics (or discrete...
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MakerBot announced a new line of 3D printers at CES that run the gamut from smallish and more affordable to large (and less affordable, for the average Joe). The latter is now shipping, and MakerBot believes that it’s more than just a big 3D printer. “This is a massive scale for a 3D printer and comparable to 3D printers that cost tens of thousands of dollars more,” said MakerBot CEO Bre Pettis in a press release. “We believe that the MakerBot Replicator Z18 is going to disrupt the industry in that it enables 3D printing of large-scale and complex prototypes and models that were previously out of range for the creative community.” MakerBot Z18 That community, he...
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Remember how the old NES game Excitebike was amazingly cool because you could make your own courses? It took Nintendo 29 years to follow suit, but now you can actually design your own levels of Super Mario Bros. with the company’s upcoming “Mario Maker” on the Wii U. Nintendo is showing off the--game?--at E3, and judging by the trailer, it’s something that you can spend endless hours getting into. Using the Wii U’s GamePad touch screen, you can drag and drop all sorts of familiar pieces and characters into blank levels to create your own masterpieces. “Place blocks, pipes, lifts and enemies anywhere and play through the level,” teases Nintendo. “Want...
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