Content and news by Jamie Fletcher

As part of its 50-year anniversary, Intel announced a limited edition run of a special CPU called the i7-8086K. This is named after Intel’s most iconic CPU, the 8086, and is the building block for the architecture that we now know as x86. The release is somewhat surprising, as initial speculation put…..

ASUS is pushing its Republic of Gamers branding hard at this year’s Computex. While the usual assortment of devices and tech is in the mix, there are a number of ‘firsts’ for the ROG brand, including a smartphone. While for the most part, ROG is known for its motherboards, graphics cards, peripherals,…..

ASUS has released a number of phones over the years, namely its Zenfone range, but here at Computex 2018, its very first smartphone was unveiled under the ROG (Republic of Gamers) branding, meaning this phone is built with gaming at the forefront of its functionality. Taking on the likes of the Razer Phone,…..

Virtual and Augmented Reality headsets are slowly but surely, taking off. The novelty has faded, and more serious applications are putting the technology to use, backed by a number of companies in the tech market. However, despite the number of devices on the market, there are really only two providers for the…..

It’s hard to believe that WPA2 has been with us now for nearly 14 years, and that it’s taken so long for a new standard to replace it, not too dissimilar from the transition from USB 2.0 to 3.0. For the most part, WPA2 has done its job. It’s been the predominant…..

Noctua shouldn’t need an introduction, it’s one of the best known enthusiast computer cooler suppliers in the market, offering up the best heatsinks and fans going, for all different price ranges. While new products come along with marginal changes, it’s quite rare to see something that’s actually new. Designing and building a…..

Sometimes it’s nice to see the other side of what goes into consumer electronics. We often see the faults of IoT, but rarely how it’s used in the industry. Arm briefed us on what the industry in general is doing with IoT, as well as some of its partners, case studies, and what’s being done to reverse the security stigma.

Time a for a new batch of motherboards as AMD releases details of the new X470 chipset that’s set to support the upcoming 2nd gen Ryzen CPUs from AMD. While there are no major breakthroughs, this is a launch aimed at refinement, and ASUS was first out of the gate to show…..

Late last year, we saw the launch of Intel’s 8th generation Core series CPUs with Coffee Lake on desktop system, bringing with it Intel’s first core-count boost on a mainstream part in nearly a decade. It’s now the mobile sector’s turn for a new wave of chips, which includes all new 6-core…..

After two years of being talked about, showcased, developed, and in a way, finding a market, AMD’s Radeon Pro SSG will soon get its first official show of support in the media and entertainment workhorse, Adobe Premiere Pro, as part of the new Creative Cloud update that’s being rolled out. The Radeon…..

Deep learning, artificial intelligence, machine learning, neural networks, these are all terms that are quite common in the research and enterprise sectors, but you should expect to see them in more mainstream devices going forward. While autonomous vehicles are at the forefront of much of AI and deep learning’s focus, don’t be…..

The venerable Raspberry Pi 3 just got an update with the Model B+ (instead of just a Model B). It keeps the same $35 price as all previous generation Model Bs, but now with a faster CPU, better wireless capabilities, and some other new features ready to be exploited, such as PoE.…..

With games getting bigger and movies switching to 4K resolutions, the amount we need to store for our digital lives is forever increasing. While cloud services help, sometimes you need something local to keep everything on. We take a look at one of Seagate’s highest density drives on the market, the Barracuda Pro 12TB.

About 18-months ago, we were on call with Micron with its first generation 64-layer 3D NAND flash chips, which were quite impressive at the time. A lot can happen in those 18-months as Micron goes from 8GB in a 59mm2 pack, to 32GB, not just through process size reductions, but also through…..

There is a bit of a craze going on with standalone virtual and augmented reality headsets, thanks to the rapid development afforded by Qualcomm’s VR reference designs that now date back a couple of generations. Today, ahead of the Mobile Word Congress event, Qualcomm is unveiling details of its latest reference design,…..

It’s painful, but not altogether surprising at the same time, as another Kickstarter funded game goes on indefinite hold. Back in July 2016, Nightdive Studios put together a plan to remaster the venerable System Shock for a new audience. It took to Kickstarter and secured $1.3 million from over 21,000 backers –…..

It’s been a while since we last touched on AMD’s TrueAudio, an attempt at reintroducing hardware acceleration back into system audio pipeline. While it saw not much more than a tech demo from the relaunch of Thief, there is still some merit to what the tech is meant to achieve. Steam’s comprehensive…..

The new Vive Pro from HTC is quite the refinement of the top-tier VR solution. It fixes some of the issues that were brought up by many people, as well as enhances existing functions, and even adding a few more features. The Vive Pro still looks like the familiar Vive, but there…..

The Cloud headsets from Kingston’s gaming division, HyperX, have revitalized the gaming audio industry. Instead of going with style over substance with big plastic enclosures and BassBoostMegaExtreme 8.0 technology, HyperX went with a more sane solution of ‘make it sound good’. The end result worked so well, plenty of other manufacturers ended…..

NZXT makes everything around a computer. It has a diverse range of chassis designs, fans, liquid coolers, even smart fan controllers – they’ve even got power supplies. What was completely unexpected was treading into new territory, not with peripherals like keyboards and mice, but with a motherboard. Specifics around the board are…..