HP, Inc. today introduced its next generation Pavilion portfolio, infusing premium features and expressive designs into its convertible, notebook and desktop PCs. The latest Pavilion lineup includes refined materials and finishes, thin bezels, and stepped-up performance options that enhance the customer experience. It will debut this weekend at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, where festival-goers will use the power of Pavilion to create unique experiences at the intersection of art and music.

"Pavilion excels at delivering amazing customer experiences at exceptional value. Our new lineup, featuring the sleekest, thinnest and most powerful Pavilion devices ever designed, raises the bar and inspires new ways to create, connect and share," said Kevin Frost vice president and general manager of consumer personal systems, HP Inc. "Coachella is synonymous with creative expression and amazing experiences, making it the perfect venue to launch our new Pavilion line and enhance the event though technology."

AMD is giving final touches to the new Radeon RX 500X-series graphics cards. Product page placeholders for RX 580X, RX 570X, RX 560X, and RX 550X surfaced on AMD website. The specifications tabs on these pages are blank, so there's no official information on what the "X" denotes. It's curious to see AMD give the extension to even lower-end SKUs such as the RX 560 and RX 550.

The company has, in the past, come up with extensions such as "D" to denote OEM-specific SKUs with different specifications than the retail-channel (AIB) products. Going by the convention of "X" denoting higher performance on certain AMD Ryzen processor SKUs, the RX 500X series could have one of several improvements - a new silicon fabrication process facilitating a clock-speed bump, or faster memory, or even some speed boosting feature similar to Ryzen XFR (extended frequency range). We'll know soon enough.

As the launch of AMD's Ryzen 2000 processors gets nearer, images of upcoming X470 motherboards are gradually starting to show up on the internet. Last week, we got a glimpse at the ASUS ROG Crosshair VII, and we start this week with a teaser of MSI's X470 Gaming Pro Carbon AC motherboard. The new motherboard is available with and without onboard WiFi functionality. There's certainly a striking resemblance to the previous X370 Gaming Pro Carbon. While the overall black and silver theme remains practically untouched, the new heatsinks look spectacular. Other cosmetic changes include the addition of RGB lighting to the I/O shroud, the PCH heatsink, and the right edge of the motherboard.

Upon closer examination, the MSI X470 Gaming Pro Carbon AC has two 8-pin EPS connectors, as opposed to the single 8-pin EPS connector found on its predecessor. According to Canard PC Hardware magazine's review, the power consumption of the new Ryzen 2000 processors is only slightly higher than the previous generation. Our guess is that the second EPS connector on the MSI X470 Gaming Pro Carbon AC is there for the extreme overclockers who plan to overclock the heck out of their chips. Big MSI aficionados might recall that the X370 Gaming Pro Carbon's VRM consists of a 8+2 phase design. Well, the X470 variant now comes with an upgraded 8+4 phase VRM. However, the new motherboard has one less PCIe 1x slot than its predecessor, but makes up for it by having two more SATA III ports for storage. And last but not least, the M.2 Shield on the X470 is longer than the one on the X370, and therefore, it should provide better cooling for your M.2 SSDs.

ASUS' top of the line X470 motherboard for the upcoming AMD Ryzen 200 series of CPUs has seen some sexy leaked images of it on the web. The new motherboard features, among other things, full drop-in support for AMD'snew 2000 series CPUs - without the need for any BIOS fiddling. The software features are expected to be on par with its X370 counterpart, with some added magic dust thrown in for the sake of keeping things fresh.

Hardware-wise, though, there are some slight changes as well. The most relevant of these is the addition of a second M.2 slot, for users who want to take their builds based on this form-factor to another level - smaller drives than the usual 2.5" is always welcome - and they usually look much better as well. One of the M.2 slots features a pre-installed heatsink for better heat dissipation. Other features include 6 SATA III ports (a decline from the X370 version's 8 due to the inclusion of the extra M.2 slot) and two less USB slots (from a total of 14 in the X370 to 12 on the X470) in exchange for a PS/2 port... Arguably the strangest "improvement" to the design. The heatsink design has been slightly reworked as well, in an effort to keep things fresh, but the power delivery mechanism seems to be the same. Don't ruin what works, right?

Whereas not the sexiest leak one can see these days, the packaging picture of ASUS' upcoming X470-F STRIX is nothing to scoff at. This ASUS motherboard is expected to enter ASUS' lineup in the same positioning as the X370-F STRIX motherboard from the previous generation, offering the same borderline functionality and features, with one or two design improvements thrown in for good measure. As a X470 motherboard, the ASUS X470-F STRIX should offer out-of-box support for AMD's upcoming Ryzen 2000 series of processors in the cleanest, more trouble-proof way possible.

Some small redesigns this X470-F STRIX has had over its X370 counterpart is that the southbridge heatsink has been extended to cover the top portion of the first PCIe x16 port - likely to house a second M.2 add-in slot, since that amount of heatsink over motherboard PCB would simply be wasteful. From the packaging, we can see that there are 3x PCIe x16 slots, two of which are reinforced. Some power delivery improvements have reportedly been done as well. The southbridge heatsink itself has seen a redesign, it seems, abandoning the angular look it had before - a step back, if you'll ask me. Expect this ASUS X40-F STRIX motherboard to be available from the Ryzen 2000 series' launch, on April 19th.

CTS-Labs, following up on Tuesday's "Masterkey" exploit proof-of-concept video, posted a guide to bypassing Windows Credential Guard on an AMD Ryzen-powered machine. We once again begin in a privileged shell session, of an AMD-powered machine whose Secure Processor that has been compromised using admin privileges, by exploiting it using any of the 13 vulnerabilities chronicled by CTS-Labs. Mimikatz, a tool that is used by hackers to steal network credentials, should normally not work on a machine with Windows Credential Guard enabled. Using a modified version of Mimikatz, the CTS-Labs researchers are able to bypass Windows Credential Guard (which relies on hardware-level security features present on the processor), leveraging the AMD Secure Processor malware microcode they wrote.The proof-of-concept video follows.

A screenshot of what seems to be a higher core-count CPU from Intel has been doing the rounds, brought to us by the usual suspects. This supposedly marks the first appearance of Intel's new Coffee Lake-S processors, which should feature increased core-counts - gearing them towards stealing some of AMD's initiative. If you'll remember, the red team regained it in explosive fashion with their first generation Ryzen CPUs - and AMD is looking to double down on with the launch of their updated, 12 nm refresh Ryzen 2000 series just next month.

The new CPUs should be delivered alongside a new platform, Z390 - at the moment, a mirage that's been referenced here and there, but still has no concrete evidence towards its existence. However, it's expected that Z390 as a platform will be what Intel's Z370 was supposed to be from the very beginning - but never could. The idea that's been circulating, and which has some credit (though it should still be taken with a salty disposition), is that due to Intel's need to rush Coffee Lake out the door - so as not to compete against AMD's 8-core Zen-based CPUs with their usual cadre of 4-core, 8-thread processors - led the company to rush out the Z370 release. The idea for Z370 was simply for it to deliver, at all points in the minimum requirements, the correct power delivery hardware and mechanisms for the increased power draw that comes with the added cores. But it was, as such, absent of any real improvements - it can be interpreted, basically, as a re-branded Z270 chipset platform - and there's something to that claim, definitely. Thus Z390 will be the actual, originally planned platform for Intel's Coffee Lake CPUs, with all features - however fair that is for buyers of Intel's Z370.

Not sure whether intentional or an error, SiSoftware posted a review of the Ryzen 7 2700X and Ryzen 5 2600 processors on their website. The creators of the popular Sandra benchmark suite has taken down the review for the meantime. Luckily, our good old buddies at VideoCardz have ninja reflexes and downloaded the graphs before SiSoftware removed them. In their review, SiSoftware pitched the upcoming Ryzen 7 2700X and Ryzen 5 2600 processors against AMD's previous Ryzen 7 1700X processor and Intel's Core i7-6700K Skylake processor.

The SiSoftware team evaluated CPU performance using a plethora of synthetic benchmarks. Unfortunately, they didn't evaluate gaming performance. Nevertheless, their review gave us a taste of what we can expect from the Ryzen 2000 series. The Ryzen 2000 series (or Zen+) officially supports DDR4 frequencies up to 2933 MHz which should help improve its performance. Similar to its predecessor, Zen+ processors possess the most cores and threads. Therefore, performance improvements depend hugely on IPC and clock speeds. While we're on the subject of clock speeds, Ryzen 2000 series' base clock is 9% higher while the Turbo/Boost/XFR frequency is 11% higher when compared to previous Ryzen chips. In terms of CPU performance, we can expect at least a 10% improvement in CPU-heavy benchmarks. All of this comes at a cost though. The TDP for Zen+ (105W) is 11% higher than the first-generation Ryzen processors (95W). Beefy cooling solutions are highly recommended especially if you plan to overclock these CPUs. Although Zen+ based processors' L1, L2, and L3 caches suffered no changes, latencies should show some improvement. AMD may launch the Ryzen 2000 series on April 19, so we won't have to wait long to get our hands on the new processors.

Leaks surrounding motherboards based on AMD's upcoming X470 chipset, which will accompany its first-wave of Ryzen 2000-series "Pinnacle Ridge" processors, are on the rise. We now see a fairly clear picture of the retail packaging of ASUS Republic of Gamers (ROG) Crosshair VII Hero, specifically its "WiFi" sub-variant that includes a WLAN card. This board surfaced on benchmark database listings. There's no product image on the box, but the logos make things pretty cut and dry - AMD X470 chipset, socket AM4, support for NVIDIA SLI and AMD CrossFire; ASUS Aura Sync RGB LED management, and an unchanged Ryzen logo. We have confirmation of ASUS readying at least two ROG motherboards based on the X470 so far - the Crosshair VII Hero, and the Strix X470-F. It remains to be seen if the chipset also gets the company's coveted ROG "Extreme" treatment.

ASMedia Technology, a tech company that's best known for designing high speed controllers (most recently, USB 3.1 Gen2, and AMD's X370 chipset), has posted tremendous increases in revenue and profits. The Taiwanese company distributed cash dividends per share in the order of $0.21 in late 2017, after achieving revenues of roughly $102 million, up 44.7% YoY (Year over Year).

While ASMedia is one of the implied companies in the latest AMD nightmare (the suspiciously timed and apparently interest-driven CTS flaw disclosure), AMD is keeping with ASMedia for its X470 chipset design and production. Which was to be expected - even if AMD wanted to change partners or develop the chipset in-house, AMD's Ryzen 2000 series and the accompanying motherboards' release is impending. The company is expected to continue its strong growth on continued shipment of USB 3.1 controllers, adding USB 3.2 controllers to its portfolio, and increased profits derived from the development of AMD's X470 chipset.

Yesterday, we had a very productive phone call with CTS-Labs, the firm behind the "AMD Flaws" critical security vulnerabilities exposé of the "Zen" microarchitecture. Our questions focus on the practicality of exploiting these vulnerabilities, and should provide more insight to the skepticism centered on needing admin privileges, flashing BIOS ROMs, and other localized hacks that would render any machine, not just "Zen" powered, vulnerable. Feel free to follow up with questions in the comments section, if we can help explain something.

Yesterday AMD held their "One Year Ryzen Anniversary" call which reiterated the company's success introducing Ryzen products and also provided insight into what's planned for 2018 and beyond.

When asked about market share status and goals, Jim Anderson, SVP and GM of Computing and Graphics at AMD, mentioned that their near-term goal is reaching levels that the company enjoyed during their early-2000s market-leadership that they had thanks to the Athlon64 processors, which were strong competitors to what Intel offered at the time. Specifically, Jim said "I don't see any reason we can't get back to historical share levels that AMD has enjoyed in the past." Back in the 2000s the company boomed on a market share above 20% for desktop and slightly below 20% for notebook, also thanks to Intel's weakness in driving technology forward.

Welcome back to "Confessions of a Crypto Miner," my column about a crypto miner from 2013 trying to get caught up with the latest standards. I'm presently mining and reporting to you from a dual-GTX 1080 based rig mining zCash.Today we are going to take a look at mining again - using the CPU in particular. CPU mining is the original form of mining cryptocoins.

A few days ago, we spotted AMD's upcoming Ryzen 7 2700X processor at the 3DMark playground. We got word today that our Korean buddies over at the Hardware Battle forums have leaked some benchmarks of a mysterious Ryzen 7 2000 processor. While the graphs don't explicitly state the model of the so-called "Future Processor", it's very likely that it's the Ryzen 7 2700X. First off, the clock speed matched the specifications from the previous 3DMark leak. HWBattle also compared it to the Ryzen 7 1700X numerous times which makes perfect sense considering that the Ryzen 7 2700X is the next successor to the throne. Initially, we projected the Ryzen 7 2700X to hit the 4.2 GHz mark thanks to AMD's XFR 2.0 (eXtended Frequency Range) and Precision Boost 2.0 technologies. However, HWBattle's sample reached 4.35 GHz which makes it even more impressive.

Comparing the Ryzen 7 1700X and 2700X side by side in AIDA64's memory benchmark, the latter was 11% faster in the memory latency test and 30% and 16% faster in the L2 and L3 Cache tests, respectively. The Ryzen 7 2700X's single thread performance was surprisingly strong as well. It surpassed the likes of the Intel Core i9-7980XE, i7-8700K, and Threadripper 1950X processors in the Dhrystone Aggregated-int Native benchmark. The Ryzen 7 2700X started to fall behind in multi-core performance, but it still managed to beat the Intel Core i7-8700K. We saw a similar scenario with the Physics test in 3DMark's FireStrike Ultra benchmark. The Ryzen 7 2700X once again annihilated the Intel Core i7-8700K.

EK Water Blocks, the Slovenia-based premium computer liquid cooling gear manufacturer is releasing a new Socket TR4 based monoblock made for several ASRock X399 motherboards. The EK-FB ASRock X399 RGB Monoblock has an integrated 4-pin RGB LED strips which make them compatible with ASRock RGB LED, thus offering a full lighting customization experience!

EK-FB ASRock X399 RGB Monoblock
This is a complete all-in-one (CPU and motherboard) liquid cooling solution for three ASRock AMD X399 Chipset based motherboards that support AMD Socket TR4 AMD Ryzen Threadripper processors. This monoblock is compatible with the following ASRock motherboards:

• ASRock X399 Taichi
• ASRock X399M Taichi
• ASRock Fatal1ty X399 Professional Gaming

IBASE Technology Inc., a world leader in the manufacture of industrial motherboard and embedded systems, today launched a series of new AMD Ryzen Embedded and EPYC Embedded processor-based products, including the MI988 Mini-ITX motherboard, SI-324 4x HDMI 2.0 digital signage player and FWA8800 1U rackmount network appliance.

"As a premier AMD partner, we have been working closely on building products utilizing both AMD Ryzen Embedded V1000 and EPYC Embedded 3000 products." said Jackson Mao, Product Planning Division Vice President of IBASE. "The next-generation performance and scalability delivered by the new AMD processors translate to real-world differentiation and benefits for our customers across networking, digital media, and industrial applications."

AMD today introduced two new product families - the AMD EPYC Embedded 3000 processor and AMD Ryzen Embedded V1000 processor - to enter a new age for high-performance embedded processors. AMD EPYC Embedded 3000 brings the power of "Zen" to a variety of new markets including networking, storage and edge computing devices, while AMD Ryzen Embedded V1000 targets medical imaging, industrial systems, digital gaming and thin clients. These new AMD Embedded processors deliver breakthrough performance, exceptional integration and on-chip security.

"Today we extend the high-performance x86 'Zen' architecture from PCs, laptops and the datacenter to networking, storage and industrial solutions with the AMD EPYC Embedded and AMD Ryzen Embedded product families, delivering transformative performance from the core to the edge," said Scott Aylor, corporate vice president and general manager, Datacenter and Embedded Solutions Business Group, AMD. "AMD EPYC Embedded 3000 raises the bar in performance for next-generation network functions virtualization, software-defined networking and networked storage applications. AMD Ryzen Embedded V1000 brings together the 'Zen' core architecture and 'Vega' graphics architecture to deliver brilliant graphics in a single chip that provides space and power savings for medical imaging, gaming and industrial systems. With these high-performance products, AMD is ushering in a new age for embedded processors."

AMD's second-generation Ryzen 2000-series "Pinnacle Ridge" processors, which succeed the company's first Ryzen "Summit Ridge," reportedly feature soldered integrated heatspreaders (IHS), according AMD spokesperson "AMD_Robert" on Reddit. This would make the chips different from the Ryzen 2000G-series "Raven Ridge" APUs launched earlier this week, which come with a thermal paste between the IHS and the die. Soldered heatspreaders are generally known to have better heat transfer between the IHS and die, when compared to packages with thermal pastes between the two; and are more expensive to manufacture. They remove the need to "de-lid" the processor (remove the IHS). Ryzen 2000-series processors are expected to debut in April 2018.

The Socket AM4 platform is designed to be a long life, fully featured, scalable solution with support for multiple processors, with varying capabilities. Since the release of the AMD Socket AM4 motherboards in early 2017 with the AMD Ryzen desktop processor, there have been several BIOS updates made available through our motherboard partners. These updates not only provide improved system performance but also expand support for newer processors as they become available.

In February 2018, AMD began introduction of the new 2nd Gen Ryzen Desktop Processor with Radeon Vega Graphics. To enable support for this new processor, an updated BIOS is required. Due to the rapid pace of innovation, and strong demand for Ryzen Processors with Radeon Graphics, it may be possible that some users with an AMD Socket AM4 motherboard paired with a 2nd Generation Ryzen Desktop introduced in 2018, may experience an issue where the system does not boot up during initial setup.

California-based Chinese PC hardware retailer Newegg late Tuesday, issued partial refunds to customers who bought highly marked-up AMD Ryzen 2000-series APUs with Radeon Vega graphics. At launch, Newegg marked up the Ryzen 3 2200G and the Ryzen 5 2400G by as much as US $20 above their MSRPs of $99.99 and $169.99, respectively. The 2400G was listed at $189.99, a price that greatly erodes the chip's competitiveness in the market against similarly-priced Intel chips. Newegg has since "lowered" prices of the two chips back to their MSRPs, and is writing to those who bought the chips at marked-up prices, intimating them of refunds of the mark-up back to their original mode of payment.

Over the last couple of days, motherboard manufacturers have been scrambling to release BIOS updates for their AM4 motherboards to accommodate the new Ryzen 3 2200G and Ryzen 5 2400G processors. From the information we gathered from ASRock's AM4 CPU support list, AMD is secretly preparing two more Ryzen "Raven Ridge" APUs. The unannounced models are the Ryzen 5 2400GE and Ryzen 3 2200GE. Judging from their technical specifications, the aforementioned processors are the low-power variants to the two models that were released today. The "GE" variants come with a lower 3.2 GHz base clock and 35W TDP. As of yet, AMD hasn't officially announced the pricing or release date.

ASUS today announced that its complete lineup of AM4-socket-based motherboards now offer support for the first Zen architecture-based AMD Ryzen desktop processors with Radeon Vega graphics Accelerated Processing Units (APUs), via a BIOS update that's available immediately. These all-new AMD Ryzen 2000 Series APUs combine up to four Zen-based CPU cores with integrated Radeon Vega graphics. When used in combination with ASUS AMD AM4 Series motherboards, AMD Ryzen 2000 Series APUs offer great-value performance and deliver best-in-class gaming and graphics experiences.

Existing owners of ASUS AM4-socket motherboards can update their systems quickly and easily with the intuitive ASUS USB BIOS Flashback or ASUS EZ Flash 3 tools. In addition, an updated graphics driver - available from the ASUS support website - pushes the integrated AMD Radeon graphics to new performance heights for best-ever visual and gaming experiences with AMD Ryzen 2000 Series APUs.

ASRock today announced that it has posted motherboard BIOS updates for its socket AM4 motherboard product lineup, which enables support for AMD Ryzen 3 2200G and Ryzen 5 2400G APUs based on the "Raven Ridge" silicon. The company posted BIOS updates for all 18 of its AM4 motherboard models, based on AMD X370, B350, and A320 chipsets. To get your BIOS update, visit the downloads section of the product page of your motherboard model on ASRock company website.

In related news, it looks like AMD has standardized a new label for use by motherboard manufacturers on their product boxes to denote out of the box support for AMD Ryzen 2000 series processors, on newer batches of their AMD 300-series chipset motherboards. Motherboards without this label likely won't support chips such as the 2200G or 2400G out of the box, and will require a BIOS update using a supported Ryzen "Summit Ridge" processor first. Motherboards based on the upcoming AMD 400-series chipsets, which should launch in Q2-2018, will support "Raven Ridge" and upcoming "Pinnacle Ridge" processors out of the box, including backwards-compatibility for existing "Summit Ridge" processors.

As someone who does not mine crypto-currency, loves fast computers, and gaming on them, I find the current crypto-currency mining craze using graphics cards nothing short of a plague. It's like war broke out, and your government took away all the things you love from the market. All difficult times teach valuable lessons, and in this case, it is "Save up and build future-proof."

When NVIDIA launched its "Pascal" GPU architecture way back in Summer 2016, and AMD followed up, as a user of 2x GeForce GTX 970 SLI, I did not feel the need to upgrade anything, and planned to skip the Pascal/Polaris/Vega generation, and only upgrade when "Volta" or "Navi" offered something interesting. My pair of GTX 970 cards are backed by a Core i7-4770K processor, and 16 GB of dual-channel DDR3-1866 memory, both of which were considered high-end when I bought them, around 2014-15.

Throughout 2016, my GTX 970 pair ate AAA titles for breakfast. With NVIDIA investing on advancing SLI with the new SLI-HB, and DirectX 12 promising a mixed multi-GPU utopia, I had calculated a rather rosy future for my cards (at least to the point where NVIDIA would keep adding SLI profiles for newer games for my cards to chew through). What I didn't see coming was the inflection point between the decline of multi-GPU and crypto-plague eating away availability of high-end graphics cards at sane prices. That is where we are today.

SiSoft's hardware database is a fountain of information for soon-to-be-released hardware if you have the patience to go through all the entries. On this occasion, we get a glimpse of AMD's future Ryzen 5 2600 processor. Similar to its predecessor, the Ryzen 5 2600 is a 65W six-core processor with twelve threads. However, this new model features a 3.4 GHz base clock which is 200 MHz faster than the Ryzen 5 1600 that we reviewed last year. It will also come with 6 x 512 kB of L2 cache and 2 x 8 MB of L3 cache. Being an engineer sample and all, take these specifications with a pinch of salt. According to the entry, the processor was tested on an ASUS ROG Crosshair VII Hero motherboard that sports AMD's X470 chipset. Unfortunately, we don't have any more details at this time.