Popular Windows optimization utility CCleaner has a serious problem right now as a recent blog post by their VP of Products, Paul Yung reveals that hackers have compromised recent versions of CCleaner, installing a backdoor utility into the application that would allow hackers to remotely access systems with CCleaner installed.

The security issue which was discovered on September 12, affected the 32-bit version of CCleaner version 5.33.6162 and CCleaner Cloud version 1.07.3191. Hackers were able to illegally modify the application before it was released and was able to introduce the malicious code. The malicious code not only granted attackers remote access to [...]

Samsung’s Magician software has long been the gold standard in consumer SSD software suites and over the years have gone through several revisions. The latest revision is Samsung Magician 5.1 which provides customers with a completely re-hauled user interface and adds some new features designed for better operation with newer operating systems.

If you’re on the fence about downloading the new version, or are considering whether to install the software or not, today we’ll be doing a quick overview of Samsung Magician 5.1 to help you make that decision.

 

Samsung Magician 5.1

The new Samsung Magician interface has changed [...]

Without a doubt, fake news has become a spotlight issue lately. The reason for this is because people are conned into believing news that isn’t true, but believes it is simply because many others shared the piece of fake news. In Google’s latest optimization attempt to deliver the highest-quality information possible, fact checking is now embedded for Google Search.

The feature was originally released for Google News to help simplify fact check the various news sources. After receiving positive feedback from both users and publishers, Google has extended this function to Google Search result as well.

Google Search results that have been fact [...]

Although AMD’s Ryzen CPUs launched to a rocky start, AMD has shown that they’re fiercely working on improving the platform, releasing three community updates within just a few weeks of the initial Ryzen 7 launch.

One of the issues that had been plaguing early Ryzen adopters is that the Windows 10 default “Balanced” power profile isn’t optimized to properly utilize Ryzen’s power saving capabilities which resulted in reduced performance with the Balanced power profile engaged. The reason for this is because with the Windows Balanced Power Plan, Windows sets higher thresholds and longer timers for transitions across P-states, and [...]

Youtube channel AdoredTV recently uncovered a potential shortcoming in Nvidia’s drivers which can cause performance dips when a Nvidia graphics card is paired with a Ryzen CPU.

When paired with a Nvidia graphics card, AMD’s Ryzen 1800X falls short – sometimes by as much as 40% – when compared to an Intel Core i7-7700K running Rise of the Tomb Raider. GPU statistics collected during benchmark runs reveal that the Ryzen-based system wasn’t pushing the GPU to 100%, causing it to lag behind the Intel-based system. This was consistent in both DX 11 and DX 12 benchmarks. Normally, this would indicate a bottleneck on the CPU, which was [...]

As with any major new CPU architecture, AMD’s Ryzen CPU is experiencing some growing pains early out the gate as gaming performance had been a little less impressive than expected. This can be seen in games such as Ashes of the Singularity where although both multi-thread and single-core performance were competitive against Intel’s 6-core Core i7-6800K and even the 10-core Core i7-6900K in many other benchmarks, it trailed behind Intel’s Quad-Core Core i7-7700K in several gaming benchmarks.

As a result, many were baffled at the performance results. If the Ryzen 7 1800X could adequately compete against Intel’s top-end Core i7-6900K in both single [...]

Some keen eyes over at Videocardz recently discovered that benchmarks for the highly anticipated AMD Radeon RX Vega GPU have inadvertently been leaked in the CompuBench benchmark database. The leaked benchmarks also reveal some GPU specifications for the first time including potential clock speeds and compute unit count.

Starting off, we can see that the leaked CompuBench benchmarks shows a device ID 687F:C1. This is the same device ID of the AMD Radeon RX Vega GPU that we saw running the Doom 4K demo at CES.

Using the information on the info page, we get several important pieces of information about the GPU.

CL_DEVICE_MAX_COMPUTE_UNITS = 64 [...]

AMD hosted an AMA (Ask Me Anything) Q&A thread on Reddit to celebrate the launch of their new Ryzen CPUs and address some key concerns. Participants included Dr Lisa Su (AMD CEO), Robert Hallock (CPU Technical Marketing), and James Prior (CPU Business Development). We’ve sorted through the thread and extracted the important bits.

 

Q: Is gaming performance something you will work towards going forward with the Zen architecture? (Reddit user Makkarikock)

Lisa Su: Absolutely! You should expect gaming performance to only get better with time as the developers have more time with “Zen”.

AMD had also recently announced a [...]

Fast, Quiet, Powerful

Welcome to our Best Gaming Workstation PC Build Under $1,500 build guide! In this article, we’ll be showing you all the components you’ll need to put together a workstation that can not only handle serious work, but also play as well.

This gaming workstation build today will be focused on building a PC that can comfortably handle games at 1080p or 1440p as well as handle workstation duties such as photo editing, video editing, 3D modeling, video encoding, CADD and more. For this build, we’ve set a budget of $1,500 to create an excellent gaming workstation build that’s not only fast, powerful and quiet, but also within budget as [...]

Mid-Range Gaming PC Build

Late last year, we put together a $1,200 custom gaming PC build which was very popular among the readers, but with new hardware releases over the past few months, we decided to once again put together a new build with the latest components. Our goal for this month’s build is once again put together a system with the greatest amount of performance for running all the latest games at mid to high settings at 1080P, 1440P, or 1600P without compromising style or going overbudget.

Let’s take a look at how we did!

 

Best Gaming Computer Build Component Summary – Budget: $1,200 CPU Intel Core [...]