(Editor's Note: This new wireless technology and particular frequency of operation make it especially interesting for VR scenarios, since the high data throughput within an enclosed space seems to be one of the ideal applications for this technology.)

Qualcomm Technologies today announced a family of 60GHz Wi-Fi chipsets, the QCA64x8 and QCA64x1, delivering 10+ gigabit-per-second (Gbps) network speeds and wire-equivalent latency, while setting the industry low-power benchmark for extended device battery life. As a new connectivity era dawns, reliance on high-bandwidth mmWave spectrum will increase, bringing powerful new wireless experiences like ultra-high-definition video streaming, Virtual/Augmented Reality (VR/AR), mobile screen casting and fixed wireless mesh backhaul.

As of September 30, 2018 Backblaze had 99,636 spinning hard drives. Of that number, there were 1,866 boot drives and 97,770 data drives. This review looks at the quarterly and lifetime statistics for the data drive models in operation in our data centers. In addition, we'll say goodbye to the last of our 3TB drives, hello to our new 12TB HGST drives, and we'll explain how we have 584 fewer drives than last quarter, but have added over 40 petabytes of storage.

Hard Drive Reliability Statistics for Q3 2018
At the end of Q3 2018, Backblaze was monitoring 97,770 hard drives used to store data. For our evaluation, we remove from consideration those drives that were used for testing purposes and those drive models for which we did not have at least 45 drives (see why below). This leaves us with 97,600 hard drives. The table below covers what happened in Q3 2018.

Jonsbo is a China-based brand that has been associated with particular attention to original design - and the added bonus of overall good build quality and performance characteristics. The company has made its name with chassis, coolers, and memory heatspreaders. However, following some problems with its supplier for the North American market, the company pulled from its market-penetration efforts.

It seems those times are past now, as the company has again made its products available via Newegg, B&H and Superbiiz. It seems they've got a new distributor deal in place which will allows North American users to once again purchase their products - should you accept that particular mission, of course.

DDR5 will be the next step in DDR5 memory tech, again bringing increased transfer speeds over the previous JEDEC (the standards body responsible for the DDR specifications) specification. The new memory technology will also bring the customary reductions in operating voltage - the new version will push the 64-bit link down to 1.1V and burst lengths to 16 bits from 1.2V and 8 bits. In addition, DDR5 lets voltage regulators ride on the memory card rather than the motherboard. CPU vendors are also expected to expand the number of DDR channels on their processors from 12 to 16, which could drive main memory sizes to 128 GB from 64 GB today.

DDR5 is being developed with particular attention to the professional environment, where ever-increasingly gargantuan amounts of addressable memory are required. One of the guiding principles over DDR5's development is a density increase (to allow 16 Gbit chips) that would allow for larger volumes of memory (and thus data processing) in the environments that need that. Reduced power consumption also plays a role here, but all of this will have a cost: latency. For end-users, though, this increased latency will be offset by the usual suspects (DDR memory companies such as Crucial, Corsair, just to name some started with the letter C) in tighter timings and increased operating frequencies. JEDEC's specification for DDR5 is set at 4800 MT/s, but it's expected the memory tech will scale to 6400 MT/s, and you know overclocking and performance-focused companies will walk all over the standard.

We are still waiting for 10 nm to happen at Intel, and although we have recently received some good news about those chips, they won't be available until the end of 2019. The problems at Intel could be alleviated thanks to a strategic change that the company is proposing. Sohail Ahmed, who was in charge of the manufacturing group since 2016, will retire next month, and that will lead to a number of major changes in manufacturing management at Intel.

Intel will divide its manufacturing group into three new segments led by different managers, but there is no information on how the three groups will collaborate. The decision to split the manufacturing division is important, and comes at a weird time given that there hasn't been a replacement for Krzanich, who left the company in June 2018 after violating Intel's non-fraternization policy. Chief Financial Officer Bob Swan is leading the company as the interim CEO, but the six month process to find a new leader should clarify things at the company.

ZOTAC today introduced its GeForce RTX 2070 Mini series graphics cards, which could be the most compact RTX 20-series products in the market right now. With 21 cm length, and 12.9 cm height, these cards are more friendly with space-constrained cubical cases meant for micro-ATX and mini-ITX motherboards. ZOTAC's RTX 2070 Mini lineup consists of two variants, the base (model: ZT-T20700E-10P), and the factory-overclocked OC variant (ZT-T20700F-10P). Both cards are identical, and vary with clock speeds. The base variant offers NVIDIA-reference clock speeds of 1410 MHz base, and 1620 MHz GPU Boost; while the OC variant increases the boost frequency to 1650 MHz. Memory on both cards is untouched, at 14 GHz (GDDR6-effective).

On both cards, power is drawn from a single 8-pin PCIe power connector. The PCB is slightly shorter than the cooler itself. The cooler consists of a dense aluminium fin-stack, to which heat drawn from the GPU is fed by copper heat pipes. The heatsink is ventilated by two fans, one of which is 90 mm, and the other 100 mm. Display connectivity curiously includes a dual-link DVI-D connector on card, in addition to three DisplayPorts and a HDMI. The VirtualLink port is MIA. The base variant is priced around $530, and the OC variant around $550.

Otoy, based in Los Angeles, announced a few months ago the launch of RNDR, a cloud rendering platform that is based on the same blockchain used on the Ethereum platform. The idea is simple: it leverages a distributed network of idle GPUs to render graphics more quickly and efficiently.

The solution takes advantage of the unused power of our GPUs, and allows those who need to render images at full speed to do so through this platform. RNDR distributes the revenue through its own blockchain in a decentralized fashion, and in a recent survey of 1,200 of its contributors Otoy said it has the world's largest cloud rendering platform. One that has even been praised by Hollywood director and producer J.J. Abrams, founder of Brave and Basic Attention Token Brendan Eich, and famed talent agent Ari Emanuel.

AOC, a worldwide leader in monitor display technology, today announces the V2 Series of frameless monitors with a gorgeous slim design and advanced IPS panel. The V2 Series includes three monitors: a 22-inch (22V2H), 24-inch (24V2H) and 27-inch (27V2H) model. The entire line sports a Full HD IPS panel with frameless design and AMD FreeSync technology. The true zero-edge design makes them perfect for multi-monitor setups in the home office. The V2 Series is available at Amazon and Newegg starting at $99.99.

The V2 Series offers great image quality at its full HD resolution; the monitor itself also features a gorgeous ultra slim design. The line uses an advanced IPS panel which produces brilliant colors and offers wide viewing angles. The monitor is perfect for home entertainment or professional tasks such as watching videos, editing photos or gaming.

Real time ray tracing won't be cheap. NVIDIA GeForce RTX 20 Series graphics cards are quite expensive, but even with that resources the cost to take advantage of this rendering technique will be high. We didn't know for sure what this cost would be, but the developers at Remedy have shown some preliminary results on that front. This company is working on Control, one of the first games with RTX support, and although they have not provided framerate numbers, what we do know is that the activation of ray tracing imposes a clear impact.

It does at least in these preliminary tests with its Northlight Engine. In an experimental scene with a wet marble floor and a lot of detailed furniture they were able to evaluate the cost of enabling RTX. There is a 9.2 ms performance overhead per frame in total: 2.3 ms to compute shadows; 4.4 ms to compute reflexions; and 2.5 ms for the global denoising lighting. These are not good news for those who enjoy games at 1080p60.

Cooler Master and Mark's Fabrications, Case Mod World Series 2018 2nd place winner, have joined forces to unleash the C700P Carbon - a Carbon Fiber limited edition of five units only. The handcrafted carbon fiber accented PC case brings an unmatched level of luxury, exclusivity and design to Cooler Master's flagship case.

This luxurious limited edition C700P has been designed and modified by Mark's Fabrications to deliver unmatched craftsmanship and unparalleled strength. The iconic bar handles that dominate the top and bottom of the case have been enhanced by adding carbon fiber on the C700P Carbon. The front panel is meticulously made with two type carbon fiber: twill weave carbon fiber and wasp carbon fiber. The back frame completes the full carbon fiber touch.

Palit Microsystems Ltd, the leading graphics card manufacturer, releases the new NVIDIA Turing architecture GeForce RTX series in Palit GeForce product line-up, GeForce RTX 2070 Dual. NVIDIA GeForce RTX delivers the ultimate PC gaming experience. Powered by the new NVIDIA Turing GPU architecture and the revolutionary RTX platform, RTX graphics cards bring together real-time ray tracing, artificial intelligence, and programmable shading. This is a whole new way to experience games.

GeForce RTX 2070 is based on the NVIDIA Turing architecture TU106 GPU armed with 2304 CUDA cores and equipped with 8GB of GDDR6 memory running at an effective clock rate of 14 GHz on a 256-bit bus. Palit GeForce RTX 2070 is designed to deliver 6x more performance than previous-generation video card and brings the power of real-time ray tracing and AI to games. The Palit GeForce RTX 2070 Dual is targeting at MSRP $499 which is available in the market now.

Colorful Technology Company Limited, professional manufacturer of graphics cards, motherboards and high-performance storage solutions is proud to announce the launch of its latest motherboard featuring the Intel Z390 chipset. The new COLORFUL iGame Z390 Vulcan X joins the family of high-performance, gamer-inspired products of the COLORFUL iGame family. The new motherboard will support the latest Intel 9th-gen processors as well as 8th-gen processors in LGA1151 package. Designed to bring the best platform for gamers, the new COLORFUL iGame Z390 Vulcan X is geared with the most innovative technology from COLORFUL to improve both performance and stability to give gamers the best gaming experience.

Intel's newest 9th-gen offers up to 8-cores with the brand new Core i9 series which aims to deliver the best performance for gamers, content creators, power users and professionals. The iGame Z390 VulcanX is equipped with a 14-phase digital power design to deliver stable power to the processor and allow overclockers to unleash the full potential of the new 9th-gen Intel Core processors. COLORFUL has engineered the VRM for the best stability equipped with high-quality components including full tantalum capacitors.

AMD "Zen" CPU architecture brought the company back to competitive relevance in the processor market. It got an incremental update in the form of "Zen+" which saw the implementation of an improved 12 nm process, and improved multi-core boosting algorithm, along with improvements to the cache subsystem. AMD is banking on Zen 2 to not only add IPC (instructions per clock) improvements; but also a new round of core-count increases. Bits n Chips has information that Zen 2 is making significant IPC gains.

According to the Italian tech publication, we could expect Zen 2 IPC gains of 13 percent over Zen+, which in turn posted 2-5% IPC gains over the original Zen. Bits n Chips notes that these IPC gains were tested in scientific tasks, and not in gaming. There is no gaming performance data at the moment. AMD is expected to debut Zen 2 with its 2nd generation EPYC enterprise processors by the end of the year, built on the 7 nm silicon fabrication process. This roughly 16 percent IPC gain versus the original Zen, coupled with higher clocks, and possibly more cores, could complete the value proposition of 2nd gen EPYC. Zen 2-based client-segment products can be expected only in 2019.

The EVGA GeForce RTX 2070 Graphics Cards are powered by the all-new NVIDIA Turing architecture to give you incredible new levels of gaming realism, speed, power efficiency, and immersion. With the EVGA GeForce RTX 2070 gaming cards you get the best gaming experience with next generation graphics performance, ice cold cooling, and advanced overclocking features with the all new EVGA Precision X1 software.

The new NVIDIA GeForce RTX GPUs have reinvented graphics and set a new bar for performance. Powered by the new NVIDIA Turing GPU architecture and the revolutionary NVIDIA RTX platform, the new graphics cards bring together real-time ray tracing, artificial intelligence, and programmable shading. This is not only a whole new way to experience games - this is the ultimate PC gaming experience.

Update: Gigabyte themselves have come out of the gates dismissing this as a typo on their part, which is disappointing, if not unexpected, considering that there is no real reason for NVIDIA to launch a new SKU to a market virtually absent of competition. Increased tiers of graphics card just give more options for the consumer, and why give an option that might drive customers away from more expensive graphics card options?

NVIDIA designed the $500 GeForce RTX 2070 based on its third largest silicon based on "Turing," the TU106. Reviews posted late Tuesday summarize the RTX 2070 to offer roughly the the same performance level as the GTX 1080 from the previous generation, at the same price. Generation-to-generation, the RTX 2070 offers roughly 30% more performance than the GTX 1070, but at 30% higher price, in stark contrast to the GTX 1070 offering 65% more performance than the GTX 970, at just 25% more price. NVIDIA's RTX varnish is still nowhere in sight. That said, NVIDIA is not on solid-ground with the RTX 2070, and there's a vast price gap between the RTX 2070 and the $800 RTX 2080. GIGABYTE all but confirmed the existence of an SKU in between.

DeepCool today introduced the GAMMAXX L240 all-in-one liquid CPU cooler. This cooler is characterized by a refreshed illumination system that uses addressable RGB LEDs, which take input from standardized aRGB headers, and which can be controlled using ASUS Aura Sync, GIGABYTE RGB Fusion, MSI Mystic Light, ASRock Polychrome, Biostar VividLED DJ, etc. The lighting consists of a minimalist illuminated ornament on top of the pump-block, and a pair of illuminated 120 mm fans to ventilate the 240 mm x 120 mm radiator. The included 120 mm fans spin between 500 to 1,800 RPM, pushing up to 69.34 CFM of air, with noise output up to 30 dBA, each. Among the CPU sockets supported, are the LGA2066, LGA115x, AM4, and AM3+. Available now, it is priced at USD $90.

GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY Co. Ltd, a leading manufacturer of motherboards and graphics cards, teamed up with Intel to successfully overclock the Intel Extreme Core Count (XCC) processor past 5GHz across all cores during the Intel Keynote at COMPUTEX 2018. Even without liquid nitrogen (LN2) cooling, the combination of a GIGABYTE motherboard and Intel XCC processor managed to shatter records for single processor socket overclocking. Following Intel's announcement of its Xeon W-3175X processor, GIGABYTE will launch compatible products in the near future.

Multi-core computing has long been instrumental in many different fields of science and technology such as in Physics, Aerospace Technology, Meteorology models/simulations by providing great computing power with impressive accuracy and efficiency. It has also played a huge role in AI development, data mining, and the vastly growing, big data analysis. In the business field today, multi-core computing is also highly useful for financial analysis, stock market analysis, etc. with its fast, accurate calculation abilities. With ultra-high stability, reliability, expert refinement, along with support for the Intel XCC processors, GIGABYTE motherboards are the perfect platform for research institutions, educational institutions, as well as big data centers.

We reported in August this year that Discord was trying out games delivery as a service option, and today the company took a major step forward in this regard by bringing out the Discord Store to a public beta state. For all intents and purposes, the store is fully functional and all users have access to it regardless of whether you are a free user or subscribe to the Discord Nitro service. The new store is curated, and attempts to be user friendly in finding games- something that is easier with fewer games on board, as Steam users will be quick to tell you. There are a few "First on Discord" games already, and the number is bound to increase as the company will have to attract users to what is yet another game store option on the PC platform.

Going the profitable subscription route, Discord Nitro at $9.99/month or $99/year (USD) now offers 60+ games at no additional cost. This list includes smaller titles such as last year's popular horror game Soma, as well as larger AAA titles from before including Metro: Last Light Redux for what they term as a combined value exceeding $1000. For those who do not want games but wish to retain the older perks of Nitro, the new Nitro Classic at $4.99/month is for you. Lastly, for those worrying about the need for another separate launcher, the addition of Discord Library means that games from the Discord Store can be launched right from Discord itself. In a pleasant bonus, Discord Library will also allow players to launch other games regardless of where they were purchased from, although this currently is similar to adding an external game on the Steam application.

Something changed forever in a little school in Seattle in the early 1970s. Paul Allen met Bill Gates there, and from that moment on the duo would work together to start Microsoft in 1975. Well, it wasn't Microsoft at that time, it was "Micro-Soft". Eight years later Allen would have to leave Microsoft after receiving a Hodgkin's lymphoma diagnosis. He kept his shares at Microsoft -Gates tried to buy out them at $5 per share-, a decision that allowed him to become a billionaire, an investor and a philanthropist.

He invested in several companies and became a celebrated sports team owner. He purchased Portland Trail Blazers, Seattle Seahawks and Seattle Sounders FC, but he was also devoted to philanthropy, giving contributions worth more than $2 billion to several projects and organizations. He won all those battles and even beat cancer both in 1982 and in 2009. On October 1, 2018, Allen wrote on Twitter "Recently, I learned the non-Hodgkin's lymphoma I battled in 2009 has returned. I've begun treatment & my doctors are optimistic that I will see a good result. Appreciate the support I've received & count on it as I fight this challenge.". He finally didn't make it and died yesterday, October 15, 2018. RIP.

Not quite much had been shown for Battlefield V single-player mode, but EA and DICE have finally released the first trailer that allows us to take a sneak peak at the promising "War Stories" missions. The game will not feature a classic single player mode with a long story focused on one character. Instead, it will include four different missions that bring us to different locations and characters. Those will make us familiarize with several scenarios, weapons and vehicles in the game.

The missions take place in locations such as Nordlys, where we will have to resist German occupation in Norway. There's another mission where we will have to sabotage behind enemy lines as an unlikely English soldier. Tiralleur is the third single-player War Story, and will follow the Senegalese units of the French Colonial Forces, while the last mission (available in December) is called The Last Tiger and will make us join the crew of a Tiger I as they question why they fight. Battlefield V is out worldwide November 20 after the announced delay a few weeks ago.

DataLocker, Inc., a leading provider of encryption solutions, today announced that the company's recently announced DataLocker Sentry K300 encrypted flash drive is in stock and now available for order. When the company first introduced the K300 at RSA 2018, attendees gave the company a very positive reaction to the industry's first menu driven encrypted keypad flash drive featuring AES 256-bit encryption, an alpha-numeric keypad, enhanced security features, and up to 256GB capacity, all developed around DataLocker's "Simply Secure" design principles. Since RSA, the K300 has passed FIPS 197 and IP57 certifications. The Sentry K300 is available for purchase from major resellers and distributors worldwide.

The Sentry K300 is the industry's only platform-independent and OS agnostic keypad flash drive which incorporates an OLED display and represents the next generation of encrypted data storage products. In addition to the display's true alpha-numeric password-based authentication, the Sentry K300 offers users a full featured, visual based menu driven system to easily change passwords, set password policy and enable other security features without needing to consult a user manual. The Sentry K300 utilizes micro SSD flash memory to offer unparalleled speed and performance.

CORSAIR , a world leader in PC gaming peripherals and enthusiast components, today announced the CORSAIR Force Series MP510 M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD, the latest and fastest in its range of M.2 solid state drives. The MP510 delivers blazing fast sequential read speeds up to 3,480MB/sec, and sequential write speeds up to 3,000 MB/s, making it CORSAIR's highest performing SSD yet.

Available in 240 GB, 480 GB, 960 GB, and 1920 GB capacities, the MP510 offers extreme storage performance in the ultra-compact and simple M.2 2280 form factor, fitting directly into a motherboard or notebook. Utilizing the ultra high-speed NVMe PCIe Gen3 x4 M.2 interface for maximum bandwidth, the MP510 leaves traditional SATA 6Gbps and even previous generation M.2 SSDs in the dust. Loading everything from large video and image files to games, applications or the operating system faster than ever before, the MP510 supercharges your system's performance, whatever you're doing.

Following the releases of the TS-328 (powered by a Realtek CPU) and the TS-332X (powered by an AnnapurnaLabs CPU), QNAP Systems, Inc. today completes the 3-bay RAID 5 NAS lineup with the introduction of the high-end home NAS TS-351. The TS-351 is powered by an Intel Celeron J1800 processor, and includes a wide range of features for media streaming, instant sharing, HDMI-output, and auto-tiering for optimal storage efficiency. The TS-351 provides homes and home offices with an excellent file management and multimedia entertainment center.

The high-performance TS-351 uses an Intel Celeron J1800 dual-core 2.41 GHz processor (burst up to 2.58 GHz), features 2 GB/4 GB DDR3L memory (upgradable to 8 GB), supports SATA 3Gb/s and 6Gb/s disks, and enables AES 256-bit encryption for both full volumes and shared folders. Featuring a minimalist design with effective airflow and cooling, the TS-351 can easily fit home space. Its tool-less 3.5-inch hard drive installation allows easy system setup and maintenance.

The GRAM Spectrum TKL Mechanical Keyboard follows the award winning GRAM Spectrum, delivering a low profile design in a compact version. Featuring the Tesoro's low-profile Agile Switch, the GRAM TKL offers precise keystrokes, fast response and accurate actuation available within a shorter, beautiful tenkeyless body. Experience typing and gaming with an ergonomic, aligned mouse placement for optimal comfort with hours of use. While compact in size, features, functionality and customization are robust and plentiful with the GRAM TKL. Enhanced RGB with 16.8M color customization, the GRAM TKL is housed within double injected PBT keycaps and casing made from high-strength steel plate.

INNO3D, a leading manufacturer of awesome high-end graphics hardware components and various innovations enriching your life, introduces a new family member to the INNO3D gaming graphics cards line, the GeForce RTX 2070. The line-up of this series will consist of the TWIN X2 and X2 OC version. Powered by the new NVIDIA Turing GPU architecture and the revolutionary NVIDIA RTX platform, the new graphics cards bring together real-time ray tracing, artificial intelligence, and programmable shading. This is not only a whole new way to experience games-this is the ultimate PC gaming experience.

The INNO3D GeForce RTX 2070 X2 OC Edition is designed for gamers who demand round-the-clock excellent performance with 24/7 gameplay. The intricate design for this cooling system comprises of 2 x 92mm ultra quiet fans, INNO3D unique Power Direct Cooling System (P.D.C.S), AI full-Stop-Mode technology and strand reinforcing backplate, offering the most efficient heat transfer and the best gaming performance at ultra-low noise levels.

Black products are a tradition with the German gaming peripherals manufacturer, with the Kone Pure Gaming Mouse being the first white ROCCAT product that was introduced back in 2013. Today ROCCAT offers various products in white giving different options for gamers' set-ups.

Often requested from ROCCAT's customers, the Kone Pure Owl Eye and the Khan AIMO are perfect additions to the white collection the manufacturer already counts in its portfolio. Both products are perfect peripherals to display RGB lighting and boast the same technology of the other colour variants.

be quiet!, the market leader in PC power supplies in Germany for twelve consecutive years, announces Dark Rock Pro TR4, its high-end air cooler for AMD's Ryzen Threadripper processors. Dark Rock Pro TR4 is part of the Dark Rock 4 cooler family and features a large base plate, optimized for Socket TR4 CPUs. With a sleek design and smart optimizations, Dark Rock Pro TR4 targets demanding workstation users needing the best performance at extremely low noise levels.

I myself never used Winamp - I was a Windows Media Player kind of guy back then, yeah - but I'm well aware of its cult status among users of that times' PC's. The app's latest official version was released back in 2013, but a new version (release 5.8) will hit the scene soon - at first, with bug fixes and removal of Pro features for a more cohesive package.

Radionomy, the company that purchased Winamp back in 2014, has announced via its CEO, Alexandre Saboundjian, that "There will be a completely new version next year, with the legacy of Winamp but a more complete listening experience." This means eventual added support for modern features that have become quintessential to our consumption of audio media, such as playlists, podcasts, streaming radio stations, and others. The new release is pegged for a 2019 launch, though details are scarce in the fields for now.

IBASE Technology Inc. (TPEx: 8050), a leader in the manufacture of industrial motherboards and embedded systems, announces the new MI995 in mini ITX form factor (170x170 mm) based on the latest 8th Gen Intel Core / Xeon E family processors and Intel CM246/QM370 mobile chipset.

The MI995 low-power Mini-ITX delivers stunning graphics and media performance and supports up to three independent displays in eDP, HDMI 2.0a, DVI-D and DisplayPort outputs, which makes it ideal for gaming/entertainment, digital signage and POS applications. The motherboard has two DDR4-2666 SO-DIMM sockets accepting up to 32GB memory with ECC. Apart from enhanced performance of CPU and graphics, the MI995 features optimized I/O with onboard 6x USB 3.1, 4x USB 2.0, 4x COM, and up to 4x SATA III to empower real-time IoT and data-intensive applications.

NVIDIA released comparison benchmarks for its new AI-accelerated DLSS technology, which is part of their new Turing architecture's call to fame. Using the Infiltrator benchmark with its stunning real-time graphics, NVIDIA showcased the performance benefits of using DLSS-improved 4K rendering instead of the usual 4K rendering + TAA (Temporal Anti-Aliasing). Using a Core i9-7900X 3.3GHz CPU paired with 16 GB of Corsair DDR4 memory, Windows 10 (v1803) 64-bit, and version 416.25 of the NVIDIA drivers, the company showed tremendous performance improvements that can be achieved with the pairing of both Turing's architecture strengths and the prowess of DLSS in putting Tensor cores to use in service of more typical graphics processing workloads.

The results speak for themselves: with DLSS at 4K resolution, the upcoming NVIDIA RTX 2070 convincingly beats its previous-gen pair by doubling performance. Under these particular conditions, the new king of the hill, the RTX 2080 Ti, convincingly beats the previous gen's halo product in the form of the Titan Xp, with a 41% performance lead - but so does the new RTX 2070, which is being sold at half the asking price of the original Titan Xp.

Crucial, a leading consumer brand of Micron Technology for memory and storage upgrades, today announced the availability of the Crucial P1 SSD, a PC storage device that leverages the NVMe PCIe interface and Micron's leading-edge QLC technology to deliver fast capacity for less. This is an expansion of Crucial's award-winning portfolio of dependable, high-performing, and affordable SSDs.

The Crucial P1 SSD delivers category-leading, real-world performance. PCMark 8 benchmarks show that the drive is capable of mixed-mode throughputs of up to 565 MB/s, with a composite score of 5,084, which outperforms similar SSDs within the price category. With sequential read/write speeds up to 2,000/1,700 MB/s, the P1 provides unwavering performance via hybrid-dynamic write acceleration, a unique SLC cache implementation. The drive offers an MTTF of 1.8 million hours and an endurance of up to 200 TB total bytes written, with power usage at an active average of 100mW.

AeroCool introduced the Playa Slim, a slim tower-type micro-ATX case that can be oriented sideways for living room shelves. Its motherboard tray seats micro-ATX or mini-ITX motherboards, with room for up to five low-profile (half-height) add-on cards 18~24 cm in length, and CPU coolers up to 8 cm in height. Storage options include a 5.25-inch drive bay (which you'll need for your Blu-ray drive), and a 2.5-inch internal drive bay. Ventilation includes just two 80 mm fan vents. Front-panel connectivity includes two USB 3.0 type-A ports, and HDA jacks, although an IR receiver is a notable absentee. An concealed power-supply bay holds SFX PSUs, with an AC receptacle relaying power to it. The case measures 100 mm x 380 mm x 300 mm (WxDxH), weighing about 2.6 kg.

AMD late Monday updated its Radeon Software Adrenalin 18.10.1 beta drivers, without changing version numbers, to support some of the new regional SKUs the company launched over the weekend, including a variant of the Radeon RX 580 with only 2,048 stream processors instead of the normal 2,304; and the RX 580G and RX 570G. Besides this, the driver is unchanged from the original 18.10.1 drivers AMD released late last week. We have uploaded these latest drivers to our Downloads section.DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 18.10.1

Mushkin introduced M.2-SATA variants of its cost-effective Source SSDs. Built in the M.2-2280 form-factor, the drives feature SATA 6 Gb/s interface. The drives combine a Silicon Motion SM2258XT DRAM-less controller with Micron 3D TLC NAND flash, and comes in capacities of 120 GB, 240 GB, 480 GB, and 960 GB. On tap are sequential read speeds of up to 560 MB/s, with up to 520 MB/s sequential writes; up to 78,000 IOPS 4K random reads, and up to 81,000 IOPS 4K random writes. Among its unique features are LPDC ECC, Data Shaping, Global Wear-leveling, Static Data-refresh, and MEDS (Muskin Enhanced Data-protection Suite), an imaging and data-backup software. The drives are backed by 3-year warranties, and could be priced mostly under the $100-mark, except for the 960 GB variant.

AMD's first response to Intel's 9th generation Core "Coffee Lake Refresh" processors could be that of 5-10% price-cuts of its Ryzen "Pinnacle Ridge" processors across the board, according to a pricing list compiled by Techspot. These cuts could see the company's Ryzen 7 2700X priced just below the $300-mark. These cuts will be introduced not just by AMD, but also retailers.

The $200-300 segment could get crowded, with the 8-core/16-thread 2700X at around $295, the Ryzen 7 2700 (non-X) at $265, and the 6-core/12-thread Ryzen 5 2600X drop to around $210. Intel's only sub-$300 offering from its 9th generation family is the 6-core/6-thread Core i5-9600K. The sub-$200 segment will see the Ryzen 5 2600 go for $160, a rather compelling price for a 6-core/12-thread chip, given that Intel's cheapest 6-core offering, the i5-8400, is now retailing for $220, and that the company only has the quad-core i3-8350K around this price, at $170.

It seems that by the time NDA drops on Intel's latest and greatest mainstream processor platform, we will have known more about it than ever before with similar launches. GIGABYTE joined the club with the release of their Z390 overclocking (OC) guide specific to their AORUS-branded motherboards. This contains a lot of useful information in general, and we certainly recommend taking a look at it in the source linked in the full post. As it is, a few items in the guide caught our eye- in particular, a direct quote saying "As you can tell from the last screenshots, the CPU temperature of the i9-9900k is quite high. This is something that we've noticed on almost all the processors. For this reason we suggest you to use a custom water-cooling and adjust the TjMAX Temperature to 110°C."

The quote references their guide to achieve a stable 5 GHz overclock on all cores on the Core i9-9900K, which was cooled via a custom watercooled setup and a Vcore ranging from 1.3-1.4 V. GIGABYTE's internal testing thus indicates that these higher end, unlocked 9000-series CPUs will run incredibly hot if you wish to push them, and the soldered IHS may not be as effective in cooling these dense processors as we may have hoped. Indeed, with news of the 28-core Xeon using thermal paste for the IHS, it appears that Intel may be conflicted on optimal cooling when battling the Core Wars with AMD.

In a silent event that occurred earlier today, AMD's Chinese product page for the Radeon RX 580 graphics card now shows a new addition- the RX 580 2048SP. Contrary to every other RX 580 on the website, including OEM and system integrator solutions, this new SKU has 256 fewer stream processors (2304 vs 2048, respectively). As it turns out, this appears to be a China-only graphics solution that launched on October 15, 2018 and TechPowerUp can confirm this is a Polaris 20-based Radeon product as well.

Looking purely at the specifications, this appears to be an RX 570 with a higher boost frequency (up to 1284 MHz vs 1244 MHz), so this is a confusing strategy by AMD to call it an RX 580 instead. The tinfoil hat nearby suggests that this may well be taking advantage of consumers who go simply by the name scheme and do not look up what a stream processor is, and indeed this is similar to what AMD did last year with the downgraded Radeon RX 560 that started out to be a Chinese-region product and then found its way elsewhere as well. Retailers have started listing this as a product available for consumer purchase already, and a search for RX 580 brings up both these and the other versions together. Not cool, AMD, not cool.

The first official data we have received about the performance of the new Intel processors are not exactly spectacular. The Core i9-9900K has aroused considerable controversy due to the unfair Principled Technologies test bench. The results have been reviewed and confirm that the performance gain is debatable, but independent analyses have yet to appear for Core i9-9900K, Core i7-9700K and Core i5-9600K processors.

Today we have some info about one of them: a new video in China shows a Core i5-9600K being benchmarked with a MSI Z390 MEG Godlike motherboard with 16GB of DDR4 memory and a Silver Arrow Extreme cooler from Thermalright. We don't have game benchmarks, but at least we have some Cinebench results both with the processor working with its 3.7 GHz base clock and overcloked to 5.2 GHz. That process was done without problems despite using an air cooler.

Intel's 6-core "Coffee Lake" die was essentially a "Kaby Lake" die with two extra cores, and no physical changes to other components, such as iGPU or uncore. With its new 8-core "Coffee Lake" Refresh silicon, Intel has turned its attention to not just increasing the core-count, but also improving the processor's integrated memory controller, in addition to hardware fixes to certain security vulnerabilities. The 128-bit wide (dual-channel) integrated memory controller now supports up to 128 GB of memory. Intel's current DDR4-capable mainstream desktop processors only support up to 64 GB, as do rival AMD's Ryzen socket AM4 processors.

Support for up to 128 GB explains the emergence of off-spec memory standards such as ASUS' Double Capacity (DC) DIMMs. Samsung is ready with a JEDEC-compliant 32 GB dual-rank UDIMM memory module for client platforms. Introduction of 32 GB UDIMMs also comes amidst reports of DRAM pricing cool-off through 2019, which could make 32 GB dual-channel memory kits consisting of two 16 GB UDIMMs more affordable. The increase in maximum memory amount could also indicate Intel's seriousness to introduce 3D Xpoint-based Optane Persistent Memory modules as alternatives to DRAM-based main memory, with higher capacities compensating for worse latencies and data-rates compared to DRAM.

Dell today announced the monster of ultrawide monitors, and the world's first Dual Quad HD monitor, in the form of the U4919DW. This 49" monitor sports a 5120 x 1440 resolution on a 60 Hz panel. The panel is of the IPS type with the usual LED edge lighting we've come to expect, which is much cheaper than any form of local dimming technology. The 3800R curve should help users keep the monitor's screen real-estate in their field of vision, which would be harder to do with a flat panel; and the screen's diagoal basically precludes its usage in a multi-monitor setup.