In cooperation with Axagon, we have prepared a cyclical activity for this year, which may be of interest to HWCooling readers. We’ll post a detail of some piece of hardware and you can guess what it is. You can compete (and eventually win something) on a regular basis, with a new challenge every month. But for now, you need to get “to the next round” through the next one, in October. Read more “Axagon Riddle (10/2024). Can you guess what’s in the photo?”
Recently, we reported that the Intel LGA 1851 platform with Core Ultra 200 (“Arrow Lake”) processors will premiere certain memory innovation – CUDIMM modules that have an integrated clock driver (CKD) that enables operation at (hopefully) higher clock speeds. It was unclear for a while whether this would end up being an Intel exclusive feature, but now it looks like CUDIMMs will be usable on AM5 boards with Ryzen processors as well. Read more “CUDIMM will work on AM5, MSI says, Ryzen 9000 or 8000 needed”
Intel is expected to launch the second generation Arc gaming graphics cards late this year, or early 2025. Their Alchemist generation suffered from various flaws (high idle power consumption, for example) and a less mature ecosystem but it’s still the most successful (and the only usable yet) attempt to produce an alternative to GeForce and Radeon graphics cards. The next generation, Battlemage, could hopefully take it further. Read more “Intel catching up with Radeons? Battlemage GPUs will clock high”
It seemed like the huge issue of unstable and crashing Intel Raptor Lake CPUs (Core 13th and 14th desktop generation) was over – and Intel would certainly like it to be – when last month BIOSes with microcode fixes started coming out. But it’s not. The company has now issued a new statement saying that even those fixes are not yet enough, and owners will need one more update to prevent these processors from slowly failing. Read more “Intel Raptor Lake CPUs need another fix to prevent damage”
It looks like the release of the next generation of Nvidia graphics cards got closer again. Major news about its Blackwell architecture GPUs was leaked on the web, or more accurately on (former) Twitter, yesterday – the specs of the two highest performance models that are due out first: the GeForce RTX 5080 and the new high-end, GeForce RTX 5090. And there’s a surprise: the specs of the high-end have improved compared to previous reports. Read more “New Nvidia GPUs: GeForce RTX 5080 and RTX 5090 specs”
AMD’s launch of Zen 5 desktop CPUs was limited to regular models without 3D V-Cache, which is a differentiator of the so-called “X3D” models that significantly improves performance in games. Gamers have no successor for the past generation Ryzen 7 7800X3D, which remains the best gaming CPU. This could change soon though, it seems that AMD is starting talk about the X3D version of Zen 5 and the release is coming soon. Read more “Zen 5 with V-Cache coming soon. Ryzen 7 9800X3D next month?”
BeQuiet!, which I don’t need to introduce here, launched its top-end Dark Rock Elite cooler early this year. Along with it, the Dark Rock Pro 5 was also released, but it has remained somewhat in the shadow of its elite sibling, which I would like to correct today. I firmly believe that the fifth gen of the Dark Rock Pro will successfully build on the previous versions, which have always been known for their uncompromising cooling performance and quiet operation. Read more “BeQuiet! Dark Rock Pro 5 – A suitable successor to a legend”
QLC NAND SSDs, which have low endurance but should allow for lower prices, have recently been improving in performance more and more, which is the second main criticism of this type of memory. Recently there was the cheap Kingston NV3 SSD, which will apparently feature both QLC and TLC NAND versions, now a new Crucial P310 drive is coming to market. And this module is seemingly the fastest QLC SSD ever to come out so far. Read more “Crucial P310: Surprising performance from an SSD with QLC NAND?”
You may not know this, but the x265 video encoder can use AVX-512, but they are unused by default for historical reasons. In the past we made a guide showing how to enable the optimizations and looked at their effect, first on Intel Rocket Lake processors and then on Zen 4. Due to the popularity of those articles, we’ve now repeated the same tests on the new Zen 5 architecture, for comparison with previous cores. Read more “How much does AVX-512 help Zen 5 in x265? And how to turn it on”
The next generation AMD GPUs with RDNA 4 architecture should be coming soon. The company has now confirmed the rumors that high-end models will not be released in this generation and it will cover only part of the performance and price range. But the company also discussed their long-term roadmaps for the Radeon and Instinct GPU architectures. It seems we could be in for a change as significant as the transition from GCN to RDNA. Read more “UDNA: Next-gen architecture will unite AMD’s gaming and AI GPUs”
The Era 2 case is an evolution of the original model (Era ITX), where Fractal Design also changed the approach to the ventilation holes. Be it in terms of the top panel or the side, larger perforations. How the Era 2 will make its mark and stack up against competing SFF cases remains to be seen. Despite the detailed analysis, this is still the first case to pass our new testing methodology. Read more “Fractal Design Era 2: Holes in wood for more efficient cooling”
PC cases with prices around 40 EUR are becoming a rarity. It is also the too low margins that discourage manufacturers from producing them. Endorfy (formerly SilentiumPC), however, stays true to its roots, which are associated precisely with more affordable products. The Armis 100 Solid is one such case, designed for simpler gaming or office builds. And look out, it also has a memory card reader and anti-theft features. Read more “Endorfy comes out with really cheap PC case – Armis 100 Solid”
The big advantage of small PC cases can be that they take up minimal space on a desk. If this is to be combined with high performance, the orientation (of the case) must be vertical. As is the case with the DeepCool CH170 Digital. In addition, this new case is also equipped with a panel for monitoring the essential parameters of the components. For example, their temperature, but also the power consumption. Read more “DeepCool CH170 Digital? SFF vertically: Mainly a small footprint”
As recently reported, Qualcomm was about to expand the range of ARM processors for laptops downwards to lower the starting price of Windows ARM PCs. Now, Qualcomm has actually released the new models of Snapdragon X Plus processors, and there are even more of them than expected. More importantly, the cheaper SKUs are now improved quite a bit. They finally have a decent single-threaded boost, which has been a weakness until now. Read more “Cheaper ARM processors with “Nuvia” cores for laptops are here”
Although PCCooler operates mainly in the Asian market, the company is trying to establish itself in the rest of the world. So, today I bring you a review of the DS360-BK cooler, which falls into the upper mid-range segment of liquid AIO coolers. One of the interesting features of this cooler is, for example, a display that shows the current CPU temperature or very high quality fans that can rival the absolute best on the market in certain situations. Read more “PCCooler CPS DS360-BK – New king of liquid coolers?”
Some articles become obsolete faster, others are relevant for a long time. Such, more durable ones usually do not focus on a specific product, but on a topic as a whole, with a pinch of generality. Articles like this have always been given space around here, since the beginning of HWCooling, and it probably doesn’t hurt to bring them up again. Well, at least as part of this selection which would be a shame to miss forever. Read more “We wrote 7 years ago. Tests you may have overlooked”
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