GIGABYTE unveiled the first mini-ITX motherboard based on Intel's upcoming Z87 Express chipset, ready for 4th generation Core "Haswell" processors in the LGA1150 package. The Z87N-WiFi from GIGABYTE takes advantage of the smaller package size of the Z87 PCH, to cram in every feature you'll need, on the space constrained form-factor. The board draws power from a combination of 24-pin and 4-pin ATX connectors. It uses a 4-phase power supply for the CPU, which is wired to a pair of DDR3 DIMM slots, supporting dual-channel memory, and a PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slot. The only other expansion slot is an mPCIe, populated by the board's WiFi card. Storage connectivity on the Z87N-WiFi includes four SATA 6 Gb/s ports, all from the PCH. A pair of HDMI connectors, and dual-link DVI make for its display connectivity. Two gigabit Ethernet interfaces, 8-channel HD audio with optical SPDIF, six USB 3.0 ports (four rear, two by header), and 802.11ac WLAN make for the rest of it. The Z87N-WiFi could be part of the first wave of LGA1150 motherboards by GIGABYTE.Source: LegitReviews

Xigmatek rolled out the Janus low-profile CPU Cooler. It uses a C-type aluminum fin-array design. From a mirror-polished nickel-plated copper base, six 6 mm-thick heat pipes convey heat to an aluminum fin-stack arranged along the plane of the motherboard. It is ventilated by two fans arranged in a top-flow push-pull configuration. The top fan is a 10 mm-thick 120 mm spinner, while the bottom one is a 15 mm-thick 80 mm one. The bigger fan spins at 800-1200 RPM, pushing up to 38.42 CFM of air; while the smaller one does around 2000 RPM, pushing 13.53 CFM. Measuring 120 x 110 x 45 mm (WxDxH), the Janus weighs about 430 g. It supports most modern CPU socket types, including Intel LGA1150, LGA1155, LGA1156, LGA2011, LGA1366, and LGA775; and AMD AM3+/AM3/AM2+/AM2, FM2/FM1.

ECS introduces the first Intel 8-Series Motherboards featuring the new 4th Generation Intel Core processor family for their new family of desktop motherboards Pro, Deluxe and Essentials.

The new ECS (Elitegroup Computer Systems) family of motherboards featuring the new Intel 8-series Chipset family with new designed specifically for the new 4th Generation Intel Core processor family of CPUs, which will be available and shipping worldwide in Q2 2013. The new chipset features support for full SATA III 6 Gb/s internal ports and PCI-Express Gen.3 x16 bus design. They also integrate USB 3.0, Thunderbolt, and enable responsiveness technologies like Intel Smart Response, Intel Smart Connect, and Intel Rapid Start.

During her keynote at the Intel Developer Forum today in Beijing, Diane Bryant, senior vice president and general manager of Intel's Datacenter and Connected Systems Group, discussed how her company is helping users harness powerful new capabilities that will improve the lives of people by building smarter cities, healthier communities and thriving businesses.

Bryant unveiled details of upcoming technologies and products that show how Intel aims to transform the server, networking and storage capabilities of the datacenter. By addressing the full spectrum of workload demands and providing new levels of application optimized solutions for enterprise IT, technical computing and cloud service providers, unprecedented experiences can be delivered.

Evercool announced the HPR 9225EA entry-level tower-type CPU cooler. It uses a stack of 43 aluminium fins, to which heat is conveyed by two 6 mm-thick copper heat pipes, which make direct contact with the CPU at the base. The stack is ventilated by a 92 mm fan that spins at speeds up to 2,200 RPM, pushing 35.6 CFM of air, with 26.3 dBA noise output. Measuring 97 x 73 x 118 mm (WxDxH), the cooler weighs about 400 g. It supports most modern CPU socket types, with the exception of LGA2011. Among the socket types supported are LGA115x, LGA775, AM3+/AM3/AM2+, and FM2/FM1. The company did not give out pricing information.

Thermaltake, an industry leader in computer chassis, thermal solutions, and power supply units announces the most innovative product, NiC Series CPU Coolers. Incorporating the latest proprietary technology, Thermaltake introduces to the world the all new NiC series (consisting of the F3, F4, C4, and C5), inspired from its name "non-interference cooler", fully compatible with RAM of all kinds, ideally for power users who fill their RAM slots with taller high-end overclocked RAM. This also brings the air cooler industry another level towards silence, performance and compatibility.

At its CeBIT booth, German PC peripherals maker Be Quiet! unveiled the Shadow Rock 2, its latest high-performance air CPU cooler. Pictured below, the Shadow Rock 2 uses a fairly cube-shaped (120 x 120 x 120 mm) aluminum fin stack with jagged and curved edges; through which four 8 mm-thick copper heatpipes pass; which draw heat from a copper base. A 120 mm Shadow Wings fan comes included. The Shadow Rock 2 is expected to be priced around €45.Source: Hardware.info

Thermaltake, an industry leader in computer chassis, thermal solution, and power supply unit today introduced the anticipating the new Thermaltake Chaser A31 gaming case designed for computer gamers and enthusiasts that deliver a combination of cooling, performance and expandability any full tower features within this ultra-mean case. It comes with three dynamic colors: Classy black, Snow white, and Thunder blue.

Chaser A31 has an e-sports appearance and outstanding protection designs that characterize a unique personality. Take a look at the side, the transparent windowed panel offers the best inner view for built system see through. Since gaming hardware produces a lot of heat, therefore this enclosure is built for maximum cool with a perforated front bezel with two 120 mm fans at front and rear.

Russian tech publication OCLab.ru, which claims access to Intel's next-generation Core "Haswell" processor engineering-sample (and an LGA1150 8-series motherboard!), wasted no time in running a quick clock-for-clock performance comparison with the current Core "Ivy Bridge" processor. In its comparison, it set both chips to run at a fixed 2.80 GHz clock speed (by disabling Turbo Boost, C1E, and EIST), indicating that the ES OCLab is in possession of doesn't go beyond that frequency.

The two chips were put through SuperPi 1M, PiFast, and wPrime 32M. The Core "Haswell" chip is only marginally faster than Ivy Bridge, in fact slower in one test. In its next battery of tests, the reviewer stepped up iterations (load), putting the chips through single-threaded SuperPi 32M, and multi-threaded wPrime 1024M. While wPrime performance is nearly identical between the two chips, Haswell crunched SuperPi 32M about 3 percent quicker than Ivy Bridge. It's still to early to take a call on CPU performance percentage difference between the two architectures. Intel's Core "Haswell" processors launch in the first week of June.Source: OCLab.ru via X-bit Labs

Imagination Technologies, a leading multimedia technologies company, is now shipping its Caustic Series2 PC boards, the R2500 and R2100, which accelerate PowerVR OpenRL applications including the Caustic Visualizer viewport plug-ins for Autodesk Maya and 3ds Max and the Neon viewport in Rhinoceros 5 from Robert McNeel and Associates.

The Caustic Series2 is the first family of high performance ray tracing accelerator PC boards using Imagination's unique ray tracing technologies in the world's first chipset dedicated to high performance, fully interactive ray tracing in a workstation environment.

Advanced gesture recognition and sensing technology is coming to the 2013 CES! Etron Technology, Inc. launches its innovative Cougar Platform, a hardware-based USB3.0 Depth-Map Controller Platform with two cameras that enables gesture/skeleton control and 3D-video/image capture and works with various middleware and application software. Since the data size of captured images is too large to be managed by motherboard CPUs, Etron developed this platform for intensive data computation immediately post-sensing with a hardware-based depth-map engine.

As a result, Etron's Cougar Platform works smoothly with X86-based systems and ARM-based systems. It also provides synchronized dual HD (High Definition) video/image capture through a USB3.0 (uncompressed) or USB2.0 (compressed) interface. Etron will demonstrate its Cougar Platform at Booth No. 35114 in South Hall 4 at the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC) from January 8th to 11th.

Intel's Core i7 "Haswell" line of high-performance mobile processors will launch around roughly the same time as its first desktop counterparts, in April 2013. The April launch will consist of three models, which occupy conventional TDP ratings, making them fit for performance/gaming classes of notebooks, they're not quite Ultrabook-material.

Leading the pack is the Core i7-4930MX Extreme Edition, which enables nearly every component on the silicon. The quad-core chip features HyperThreading, which enables 8 logical CPUs, 3.00 GHz clock speed with 3.90 GHz maximum Turbo and 3.70 GHz all-core Turbo, new Intel HD 4600 Graphics clocked at 400 MHz with 1350 MHz maximum boost, 8 MB L3 cache, and 57W TDP.

Phanteks launches PH-TC12DX, a U-Type dual tower heat-sink with four 6mm heat-pipes allows for optimal airflow and cooling. PH-TC12DX's 6mm heat-pipes are linearly aligned and developed to have the least amount of air and thermal resistance. Incorporating P.A.T.S and C.P.S.C Technologies, PH-TC12DX delivers better heat dissipation and heat transfers. PH-TC12DX includes dual PH-F120HP PWM Premium fans to allow for higher performance and/or silent operation.

Here is the first picture of Zalman's upcoming silent CPU cooler, the FX100-Cube. Classified in the large category of coolers, the FX100-Cube trades off its large size for silence. It appears to make use of multiple aluminum fin stacks intersecting each other, to which heat from the base is conveyed by four 8 mm-thick nickel-plated copper heat pipes. More details on this beast are awaited, the cooler is expected to be released in the weeks to come.Source: FanlessTech

Cooler Master launched the Eisberg 240L Prestige liquid CPU cooler. What sets it apart from the Graham's number other closed-loop CPU coolers in the market is its exposed copper-fin radiator, micro-channel matrix in the business end of the block, and pressure-enhancing jetstream technology. The cooler consists of a block+pump component, and a 280 x 124 x 30 mm radiator that can hold up to four 120 mm fans in push-pull configuration, although Cooler Master includes two. The two components are joined by pre-fitted flexible coolant tubing. The block features a port that allows you to change the coolant. Slated for market release soon, the Eisberg 240L Prestige is priced over 150€. Find a review at the source.Source: Ocaholic

AMD implemented a new round of price cuts for seventeen of its socket FM1 A-series APUs, FM1 and AM3 Athlon II series CPUs, which has been in the works since mid-October. The cuts cover dual-, triple-, and quad-core Athlon II X2, X3, and X4 series processors; and A4, A6, and A8 series APUs. Popular APU models such as the A8-3870K, A8-3850, A6-3670K, and Athlon II X4 651 see price-cuts ranging anywhere between 3.7 to 17.4 percent. Dual-core Athlon II X2 265 got the biggest price-cut, nearly a third down by 30 percent. Prices of the dual-core A4-5300 socket FM2 was also cut significantly. The complete list of price-cuts is tabled below.Source: CPU World

AMD's FX "Vishera" socket AM3+ processors are in for a long haul. According to a DonanimHaber report based on a leaked company roadmap slide, the company plans no new processor architecture to succeed it in 2013. The company recently launched its FX "Vishera" line of eight-, six-, and four-core chips just an year following FX "Zambezi," leading analysts to believe the company would launch a new micro-architecture each year to keep up with Intel's "tick-tock" product development strategy.

The roadmap slide, pictured below, shows AMD FX "Vishera" continuing through 2013 as the flagship desktop platform, followed by "Richland" third-generation desktop APU, which combines "Piledriver" CPU components with "Radeon 2.0 cores" (we're guessing those are Graphics CoreNext stream processors), which maintains socket FM2 platform; and low-power "Kabini" APU, which carries the mantle from "Brazos."

Source: DonanimHaber

AMD announced the 2012 FX "Vishera" line of eight-core, six-core, and quad-core desktop processors. Based on the new "Piledriver" CPU micro-architecture, the new processors feature increased performance and an updated instruction set, over the previous generation. To begin with, the processors are based around the "Vishera" silicon, built on the 32 nm HKMG process at Global Foundries. With a transistor count of 1.2 billion and a die area of 315 mm², Vishera packs four Piledriver modules, with two cores each, 2 MB L2 cache per module (8 MB total), and 8 MB of L3 cache. Eight-, six-, and four-core models are carved out by toggling the number of modules between four, three, and two.

The Vishera silicon also features an updated CPU instruction set, which includes SSE/2/3/S3/4.1/4.2/4A, AVX, AES-NI, FMA/FMA2/FMA3, XOP, and F16C. An x86 processor by design, Vishera features the AMD64 x86-64 instruction set. Its updated integrated memory controller supports up to 64 GB of dual-channel DDR3 memory, with a standard speed of DDR3-1866 MHz, and more possible with overclocking. The memory interface is single, monolithic 128-bit, unlike the dual 64-bit IMC approach of the "Stars" micro-architecture. Built in the same socket AM3+ package as the previous generation FX, the new chips are compatible with existing AM3+ motherboards with a BIOS update. The 2012 FX processor lineup includes a total of four models, the FX-8350 flagship eight-core, FX-8320 performance eight-core, FX-6300 mainstream six-core, and FX-4300 value quad-core. All models feature unlocked base-clock multipliers, making each of them fit for overclocking. Their specifications and target SEP pricing are tabled below. Market prices could be about 5~10% above the SEP prices.

3rd Generation Intel Core i3 desktop processors are now available providing value-priced CPU horsepower for those wanting to take advantage of features such as Intel HD Graphics with Intel Quick Sync Video, Intel Wireless display, and more. They will be offered in standard and low wattage models, designated by an "s" or a "t" in the processor name, with frequencies ranging from 2.8 GHz to 3.4 GHz. More information is available here.

AMD announced today that the visionary behind Gustafson's Law, John Gustafson, has joined the company as senior fellow and chief product architect, Graphics Business Unit. In this role, Gustafson will set the technical vision for the AMD graphics business unit, driving the technology roadmap and platform for the AMD Radeon and AMD FirePro product lines as well as new technology planning and execution of business objectives. Gustafson will be based in Sunnyvale and will help evangelize AMD graphics leadership internally and externally.

"Our industry-leading graphics technology predicates that we consistently deliver the most differentiated and superior graphics processor unit (GPU) architectures and products -- without compromise," said Matt Skynner, corporate vice president and general manager, AMD Graphics. "With the growing importance of parallel compute in defining the computing experience, John brings the full package of industry experience and knowledge needed to help us expand and execute our AMD Radeon and AMD FirePro graphics technology programs, and will help forge an aggressive long-term roadmap that allows AMD to continue to lead and win with our gaming and virtualization technologies."

Zalman's newest high-end CPU air cooler, the CNPS9900DF, has been on our radar since May. It was launched in select markets earlier this week. The Computer Noise Prevention System (CNPS) model 9900 heatsink has been leading Zalman's product line for years now, with several variations being launched from time to time. The newest one, the CNPS9900DF, in which "DF" stands for dual-fan, builds on the concept by using two fans in push-pull configuration. The "push" fan is nested in the first copper fin stack, while the "pull" fan is located between the two fin stacks. The design is otherwise similar to every other 9900 series cooler.

The design of the CNPS9900DF consists of a nickel-plated copper base, from which four nickel-plated copper heat pipes pass, making a capital-omega (Ω) shape, along which nickel-plated copper fins are arranged, which appear to project radially. The surface area for heat dissipation is 6,800 cm². Measuring 140 (L) x 100 (W) x 154 (H) mm, the CNPS9900DF weighs in at 850 g. The 120 mm "push" fan spins at 1000 RPM, while the 140 mm "pull" fan spins at speeds between 900 to 1400 RPM. Both fans use fluid-dynamic bearings, and the total noise output of the cooler is said to stay within 27 dBA, according to Zalman. The Zalman CNPS9900DF is priced at an estimated US $89.90 a pop.Source: Overclockers Ukraine

MSI, the most popular overclocking brand is excited to introduce an all-new standard for overclocking stability. MSI's OC Certified standard is the new baseline for overclocking mainboards. the new MSI Z77 MPOWER, which is OC Certified, is submitted to a Military Class stress-test for overclocking. Where other motherboard manufacturers only test for a limited duration, MSI Z77 MPOWER is submitted to a 24 hour OC stress-test. Only mainboards surviving 24 hours of Prime95 while heavily overclocked. The conditions of the OC Certified test are rigorous high temperature, no airflow testing.

Today AMD launched the AMD FirePro A300 Series Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) for entry-level and mainstream desktop workstations. Featuring AMD Eyefinity multi-display technology, the new AMD FirePro A300 Series APUs are designed for users who demand a high-performance computing platform to power their computer-aided design, and media and entertainment (M&E) workflows. The new AMD FirePro A300 Series APUs combine industry-certified performance and reliability for professional applications with world-class 24-hour customer support, delivering highly-tuned performance and robust feature support across a range of professional applications and tools.

Akasa's Euler fanless PC case, which was first pictured at Computex 2012, is inching towards a September 2012 launch. Some of its first press-shots were leaked to the web. The pictures reveal its interiors, including the CPU block that conducts heat to the metallic body, where it is dissipated. This passive CPU cooling mechanism, according to a new report, can handle thermal loads of up to 35W, making it fit for low-power dual-core processors. Akasa Euler will be sold at an affordable price, according to the report.Source: FanlessTech

Lian-Li Industrial Co. Ltd, today announces a tall, slim brushed aluminum EATX supported chassis – PC-X2000FN. The PC-X2000FN keeps DIY builder's hardware neat and organized in the interior with its three separate compartments, while having a sleek, elegant feel on the outside thanks to the one-piece front panel with no visible vents on holes.

693mm (27.3”) tall and 240mm (9.4”) wide, the PC-X2000FN lets DIY builders install the hardware they desire in a neat, organized and compartmentalized fashion. The top section holds 5.25”, 3.5” and 2.5” drives. The middle section is for motherboards up to the EATX form factor, and has plenty of room for cable management thanks to the rubber grommets and generous space behind the motherboard tray. The bottom compartment holds the power supply as well as an additional 3.5” HDD cage.