Astro Gaming has officially announced that they will once again be sponsoring DreamHack Open for the 2018 year. Starting in 2012, DreamHack Open is one of the largest gaming tournaments every year. For 2018, DreamHack Open will feature eight live events in Europe and North America with a total prize pool of $800,000. DreamHack Open will feature the popular FPS, CS: GO where eight teams will compete live for a $100,000 prize pool. The first of the eight events has already taken place in Leipzig, Germany in January.

“One of your primary goals at ASTRO Gaming is continuing to expand our support of the global esports, and DreamHack’s efforts and vision [...]

Razer is adding a few more championship teams to their roster of sponsored elite esports teams as the company signed a two-year partnership deal with KSV eSports in which Razer will begin providing all current and future KSV eSports teams with pro-tournament grade mice, keyboards, headsets, and surfaces.

With this new partnership, Razer is now the official sponsor to KSV eSports’ Seoul Dynasty Overwatch team and will be providing them with esports grade gaming peripherals for their 2018 season and tournament activities.

According to Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan, “Helping ambitious organizations and players reach the next level has been a matter of [...]

Razer has further elaborated its Seiren microphone series with the release of its Siren Elite microphone.

The Seiren Elite builds on Razer’s Seiren microphone by providing higher quality voice recording for streamers. Unlike the condenser capsule-based Seiren Pro and the Seiren X, nested inside the Seiren Elite’s barrel design is a single dynamic capturing capsule which provides higher quality voice recording. As expected, Razer has configured the Seiren Elite to operate in a cardioid capture pattern, meaning that it captures most of the sound from the front of the mic.

The Siren Elite is optimised for voice capture right out of the gate. It [...]

Earlier this week, AMD addressed some key questions regarding its upcoming Ryzen APUs.

To set most at ease, the APUS will be fully compatible with AM4 motherboards, with only a BIOS updated needed for newer CPU support. This lowers the cost of entry into the Ryzen platform, with tremendous upgrade options available later on.

Zen APUs are coming in Febuary which feature the Global Foundries 14nm process found in the current generation Ryzen CPUs. Both models will feature quad cores, but the Ryzen 5 2400G features SMT, a base clock of 3.6GHz/boost clock of 3.9GHz and 11 Vega CUs for $169. The Ryzen 3 2200G will lack SMT, be clocked at 3.5GHz/ boosts [...]

Razer is demoing its newest concept design, Project Linda, at CES 2018. Razer’s project Linda aims to leverage the power of the Razer Phone and instantly transforms it into an Android based laptop PC. The concept is similar to the Windows Dock or the Samsung DeX Station, but rather than dock to a desktop PC, Project Linda seamlessly docks the phone right into the laptop.

The way it works is that the Razer Phone docks in face-up position where the touchpad would normally be found. This allows the phone to be used as the touchpad and the phone’s forward facing onboard speakers serve as speakers for the system as well. Having the phone in a face-up [...]

Samsung has added another massive panel to its curved display lineup. The 34-inch CJ791 is the first in the family to feature Thunderbolt 3 connectivity.

In addition to feeding display information, Thunderbolt’s increased bandwidth allows the CJ791 to function as a dock. This means that all your peripherals such as mice, keyboards, and webcams can be connected to the monitor instead of your laptop over a single cable. This offers great convenience for on-the-go users who need to frequently move their laptops from the desk. The Thunderbolt 3 interface also provides up to 85W of laptop charging power.

The CJ791 features a 3440×1440 ultra-wide QLED [...]

Dell’s XPS 13 ultrabook just received a significant performance upgrade and enhanced asthetics.

The new XPS 13 now uses Intel’s 8th gen Quad-core i5-8250 and i7-8550 CPUs. The CPUs have a baseline TDP of 15W, but can be configured for to up to 25W. Dell states that the new cooling solution in the new XPS 13 can handle up to 27W, so it’s likely that the CPUs had their TDPs increased accordingly. Despite the robust cooling, the weight of the is kept at  just 2.67 lbs.

The Dell XPS packs a display that guarantees a peak brightness of 400nits. It covers 100% of the sRGB color gamut and 72% of the Adobe RGB color gamut. Full HD and 4K [...]

Several weeks ago, Intel and rival AMD made headlines when the two companies announced that Intel would begin using AMD Vega graphics in some of its mobile CPUs. It appears that the first SKU is finally rolling off the production line with the model name Core i7-8809G.

The Core i7-8809G carries a 4 core, 8 thread CPU. When Intel teased this chip in November 2017, it did so under the moniker “Kaby Lake G”, which suggests that it’ll likely feature Kaby Lake architecture with some tweaks rather than the new Coffee Lake architecture that’s rolling out on some of the newer 8th Generation Core Processors.

The graphics die is the center of [...]

If you’ve been surprised by the massive surge in RAM pricing lately, you’re not alone. China is now closely monitoring DRAM prices, hinting that it’s possibly looking to conduct an investigation for price fixing. Xu Xinyu, an official of China’s National Development and Reform Commission’s Pricing Supervision Department, stated:

 “We have noticed the price surge and will pay more attention to future problems that may be caused by ‘price fixing’ in the sector”

The officials didn’t specifically mention which major manufacturers will be scrutinized, but the according to Wang Yanhui, Secretary General of the Mobile China Alliance, [...]

Rumors are abound that Nvidia may be gearing up to release a variant of the GeForce GTX 1060 with 5GB GDDR5 of memory. This new card will be strictly targeted towards the Chinese PC cafe market.

The new variant is rumored to feature a new GP106-350 GPU core. It features the same 1,280 CUDA cores as the GP106-400 in the GTX 1060 6GB, but will feature a narrower 160 bit memory bus which will help reduce cost.

In addition to shaving off 1GB of memory, the card is also rumored to use less robust packaging to save cost. This won’t matter though, since this card is targeted towards internet cafes rather than off the shelf retail. No word on pricing or [...]