Content and news by Jamie Fletcher

ModMics from Anlion Audio have gained in popularity over the years. We’ve taken a look at a couple of different versions, including the two different omni and unidirectional ModMic 4s, and the more recent ModMic 5. These microphones have mostly been targeted at gamers with a taste for high-end headphones, but now,…..

Remember when 1TB hard drives first hit the market? At the time, that amount of space in a single disk seemed downright exciting. Today, we see 14TB drives at the top-end, and 8TB as a common option for home server builders. That’s all good – but how does a 40TB HDD sound? We take a quick look at some history and explore the future of HDDs using microwaves and lasers.

It amazes me the selection of cases available today. I don’t think I know of a single company that makes the venerable beige box anymore (that’s not a challenge to go find one, either). Cooler Master has refreshed its range of chassis designs, including a $50 one with a tempered glass panel.…..

NVIDIA sure loves its autos, as with each and every GTC over the past number of years, we’ve heard the company tell us how it’s going to change our driving (or perhaps our “not” driving). At GTC Europe 2017, the company unveiled two bombshells: the debut of DRIVE PX Pegasus, and the announcement of early access to its VR design suite, Holodeck.

Seagate has released its latest tear of hard drives for the performance segment, looking at not just high-capacity, but high speed, too. The drives fall under Seagate’s IronWolf range for network storage, and Barracuda Pro for desktops, extending them to 12TB, up from 10TB. Both drives are helium filled to allow for…..

Synology has become synonymous with network storage over the years. Its NAS units are some of the best in the industry, scaling from small, home-use, simple disk caddies for network storage, up to large, multi-rack enterprise storage management systems. What really set them apart was the software stack, and building one of…..

Strange as it seems, trackballs are still a thing. While they are often seen as archaic and bring up bad memories from 90s style laptops, trackballs still have a purpose and are enjoyed by many people. Choices are limited, with Logitech being one of the few companies out there to manufacture them…..

Internships are about sorting files, serving drinks, and menial labor, right? Not at NVIDIA. When you take some high school students with an aptitude for robotics, and teach them the power of AI and deep learning, some interesting things can happen. Jetson-powered robots run rampant at NVIDIA’s head office, as the interns go wild with their new-found knowledge.

Corsair has updated its venerable VOID series of headsets with the VOID PRO. At face value, they appear the same, even down to the specifications. Underneath all that, though, is a ton of small improvements. We take the VOID PRO Wireless for a spin and hear how it performs.

Making smartphones smarter is Qualcomm’s bread and butter, and with the expanding possibilities that are being generated from the continued development of virtual and augmented realities, it’s in Qualcomm’s interest to keep the technologies rolling in. The second generation Spectra Image Signal Processor (ISP) that’ll come with the next Snapdragon SoC offers…..

When picking a motherboard for a new build, it’s not about performance, but features and price. ASUS already has a fine selection of X299 boards ready and waiting, as was shown at Computex, but there was still room for a couple more ‘enthusiast’ grade boards. ASUS’ ROG Rampage takes a ‘no compromise’…..

As part of Intel’s Optane roll-out, new ways of handling data storage at the enterprise level is cropping up. The shift to solid state storage is still ongoing, but it brings with it an opportunity to experiment with new ways of handling that storage. Classic hard drives have defined the form factor…..

SIGGRAPH 2017 has begun, and NVIDIA is quick to show off its latest research projects. From AI-assisted rendering and denoising, animated faces built from neural networks, robots that teach themselves to move, and external workstation GPUs. There is also a great deal coming in the AR and VR space with new HMD designs and haptic feedback.

While RX Vega and Threadripper take most of the limelight for high-end desktops and gaming, SIGGRAPH is about workstations too, the content creators and people behind what makes gaming possible. For professionals, AMD had two new workstation cards unveiled, both are Vega-based to complement the Vega FE launch. The WX 9100 is…..

Finishing up AMD’s consumer Ryzen CPU launch are budget orientated R3 CPUs; the 1300X, and 1200. We had a sneak peek at these chips with the Ryzen PRO launch a couple of weeks ago, but we now have both confirmation and official launch. The two R3 chips will ship for $110 and…..

Standalone VR platforms are beginning to crop up, providing a VR experience without the need for a smartphone or desktop computer. A couple of months back, Qualcomm announced a partnership and reference design for Google’s Daydream platform, a purpose-built experience for VR that extends beyond the capabilities of what Cardboard originally offered.…..

Didn’t we see Oculus drop the price of its Rift back in March to just shy of $600? Well, Oculus has done another price drop to an even more palatable price of $399, which includes the touch controllers. This is nearly half the launch price of the same package since December. This…..

While sound cards have improved greatly over the years, there is still a market for premium, and external solutions. Creative has been at the audio game for quite a while, and has released a new solution for both gamers and audio enthusiasts alike. Let’s see if the Sound BlasterX G5 (with included headphone amp) is deserving of that premium audio title.

With a well received consumer launch of AMD’s Zen architecture in the form of the Ryzen desktop CPUs, and Threadripper on the way for HEDT, AMD has its eyes set on corporate and enterprise markets. With EPYC for enterprise already on the way, it’s time for corporate; enter Ryzen PRO. Ryzen PRO…..

While late last year was all the hype surrounding Zen and Polaris for AMD, this year, it’s EPYC, Threadripper, Vega, and now Instinct. The role of the GPU has changed somewhat over the years, moving beyond simple graphics accelerators. GPUs now do general purpose compute, ray tracing, video rendering, finance, and now…..