Quiet and Beautiful

AVADirect wasn’t really a systems builder on our radar until late last year when we reviewed their Avant Mini Cube Gaming PC. After extensive testing, we found that the system was well configured, well built, and well priced, quickly propelling AVADirect to the top as one of our favorite custom PC builders.

Recently, AVADirect sent us another one of the systems in their lineup, the AVADirect X370 Quiet Gaming PC, which as its name implies is AVADirect’s quiet gaming PC offering based on AMD’s X370 Ryzen platform.

AVADirect Quiet Gaming PC Specs Desktop AVADirect X370 Quiet Gaming PC Case Phanteks Eclipse [...]

Aorus, Gigabyte’s gaming-centric laptop branch, has released the world’s thinnest gaming laptop that packs two Nvidia GTX 1070 GPUs in SLI.

The Aorus X9 is designed for gamers looking to play at QHD/UHD resolutions and is more than VR ready. Complimenting the dual GTX 1070s is an Intel Core i7-7820HK quad-core CPU. The CPU is unlocked, meaning users can overclock it on their own.

Two display options are available: a 17.3″ UHD 3840x2160p IPS display with 100% Adobe RGB color gamut, or a 17.3″ QHD 2560x1440p 120Hz WVA high-refresh rate display. All displays are factory calibrated for the best color accuracy.

To [...]

MSI recently announced the Vortex G25, a small yet powerful gaming PC.

The MSI Vortex G25 is absolutely tiny. It’s slim build is almost reminiscent of a blade server. When stood up vertically, it takes up less space than a gaming console. It’s so compact, in fact, that it can be mounted on a VESA monitor mount. At just 5.51lbs, it won’t rip your monitor apart, either.

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SilverStone has always been on the forefront of introducing some very unique, but awesome products and their new SST-MS09C is definitely among those products.

The SilverStone SST-MS09C is an all-aluminum external M.2 SATA SSD enclosure that appears to be a flash drive from the outside and except it doesn’t actually have a drive pre-installed. Instead, the SST-MS09C allows you to purchase your own M.2 2280 SATA drive and install it to use as a flash drive. Bridging the drive is an VIA Labs VL715 controller which is able to interface SATA 6Gb/s with USB 3.1 Gen 2 to prevent any interface bottlenecking.

Those with an extra M.2 SATA drive hanging [...]

As device makers strive to continue to make their devices thinner and more compact, USB-C ports have become commonplace on today’s latest mobile devices. Despite this however, the availability of quality USB-C docks are still difficult to come by.

OWC, the popular maker of Mac accessories, is attempting to change that with their most recent release, the OWC USB-C Travel Dock. The OWC USB-C Travel Dock is a portable USB-C powered device that offers users five additional I/O ports to greatly expand the versatility of a single USB-C port.

Ports on the OWC USB-C Travel Dock include:

USB-C Power 2x USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-A HDMI (Up to one 4K [...]

64-Layer 3D NAND, USB 3.1 Gen 2

Last year I was fortunate enough to be among the first to review the Samsung T3 Portable SSD. The drive was small, durable, fast, available in capacities up to 2TB, and relatively good looking making it not only my favorite portable SSD, but also my most highly recommended as well.

Of course, with Samsung’s annual release cycles, Samsung recently launched the new Samsung T5 Portable SSD which we’ll be reviewing today.

Samsung Portable SSD T5 Specifications Manufacturer Samsung Model T5 Capacity 250GB, 500GB, 1TB, 2TB Interface Type-C USB 3.1 (Gen 2), USB 3.0, USB 2.0 Transfer Speed Up to [...]

As the Intel’s upcoming 8th Generation Core Processors, codename Coffee Lake, nears its official launch, numerous leaks have been springing up on the CPUs. However, little was previously known about the Coffee Lake platform and chipset. Until now.

In a new leak, we now have what appears to be official Intel presentation slides on the upcoming processors as well as information about the chipset and platform.

For starters, here’s the roadmap for Intel’s desktop CPUs from 2Q2017 to 2Q2018. We can see that Coffee Lake-S CPUs along with Kaby Lake Refresh PCH are expected to launch sometime towards the tail end of 3Q2017 with the Cannon [...]

At SIGGRAPH 2017, PNY announced that they’ll soon be jumping into the mobile workstation market with their latest PNY Prevail Pro P3000 and Prevail Pro P4000 mobile workstations.

The new mobile workstations which are just 0.78-inches thin and weigh in at just 4.8Lbs, feature up to a 15.6-inch 4K UHD(3840×2160) display, an Intel Core i7-7700HQ processor, up to 32GB of DDR4 2400MHz RAM, and Nvidia’s Quadro Mobile P3000 for the Prevail Pro P3000 and the Quadro Mobile P4000 (Max-Q) for the Prevail Pro P4000. Storage options include up to 512GB M.2 NVMe PCIe SSDs and up to a 2TB HDD.

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At a special event at SIGGRAPH 2017, Dell revealed the Precision 5520 mobile workstation, commemorating 20 years of Dell Precision workstations.

Crafted in a beautiful brushed aluminum finish, the Dell Precision 5520 mobile workstation is according to Dell the thinnest and lightest 15-inch mobile workstation on the market. The laptop features a thickness of just 0.66-inches at its thickest point and a weight of just under 4lbs for the fully loaded unit.

What do you get in such a compact package? Well, you get a choice between the Intel Core i7-7820HQ or the Intel Xeon E3-1505M v6, up to 32GB of DDR4, Nvidia Quadro M1200 graphics and up to 1TB M.2 [...]

 

The USB 3.0 Promoter Group which includes numerous major tech companies including Microsoft, Apple, Intel, and others, has announced the pending release of the USB 3.2 standard.

The USB 3.2 standard will bring features that takes better advantage of the USB Type-C ports. Traditionally, USB host and devices are single lance solutions. With the Type-C connector, multiple lanes can be hosted over a single connector. USB 3.2 allows device and hosts to be designed with up to two lanes of 5Gbps or two lanes of 10 Gbps devices. The lanes can operate simultaneously, boosting theoretical bandwidth to 2GB/s over a single USB connection.

To take [...]