Tech News
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Corsair Carbide Air 240 @ techPowerUp
Back in the old days, I believe there was more of a distinct seperation between the console world and PC's. Recently however, it seems like that line has definitely blurred. With examples like AMD fueling it's revenues feeding chips to Sony for their PS4s, the definition of what makes the traditional PC unique seems to be more elusive, and the arguement is really just over your preferred chassis, UI and input device. This may feed into why we're starting to see more chassis designs deviating away from the traditional tall, rectangular, iconic design, in favor of something a little more... well, like a console.
Corsair has steered clear of the tiny cube chassis, while other companies like BitFenix, Xigmatek, or Aerocool have been duking it out, trying to get the attention of gamers who want a compact chassis with the ability to hold potent hardware. Well, the Carbide Air 240 is about to step into the ring and manages to impress.
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Cooler Master Nepton 280L Liquid CPU Cooler Review @ Hardware Heaven
Cooler Master recently released the Nepton, a liquid cooler built for high performance applications. It uses slightly larger radiators and fans to improve airflow, over it's counterpart the Saidon line of coolers, preferring to use 140mm fans over the Saidon's 120mm. The Nepton is available in a single 140mm design, as well as a dual-fan 280mm design.
Recently we took a look at a bundle of Cooler Master components which included their Silencio case, gold rated PSU and the Seidon cooler. That cooler really stood out for us with its simple install and decent performance… but it was an entry level cooler. Today we have the Nepton 280L on our test bench which we hope takes that same installation and adds a whole whack of performance for the high end user. Let’s find out…
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Russian Hackers Steal Over a Billion Passwords
Following just a short span after the Heartbleed bug was discovered, a new security exploit is now being reported, causing yet another large wave of reminders to err on the side of caution and change your passwords again to all of your favorite sites - just in case.
A Russian crime ring has amassed the largest known collection of stolen Internet credentials, including 1.2 billion user name and password combinations and more than 500 million email addresses, security researchers say.
The records, discovered by Hold Security, a firm in Milwaukee, include confidential material gathered from 420,000 websites, including household names, and small Internet sites.
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ASUS R9 270 Direct CU II OC 2 GB Video Card Review @ Madshrimps
Today we're looking at another budget enthusiast card with a lot of (potential) horsepower under the hood. The CU II posts some good gaming figures, and is cheaper than many 270X variants. Since it's built on the same hardware, with a few clock tweaks, it can also can run nearly as fast as them too.
The ASUS R9 270 Direct CU II VGA card shares the hardware with the more expensive 270X variant, but has lower stock clocks; from our experiences regarding overclocking with this card, we could say that it can easy surpass the R9 270X clocks or ever surpass it. Those who search the best bang for the buck VGA cards and won’t game on higher resolutions than Full-HD should put this card on their short list.
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NVIDIA SHIELD Tablet: The Fastest Tablet Available @ HotHardware.com
Back in late July, NVidia showcased their new Shield tablet, aimed squarely at mobile gaming and multimedia. Now that they've started shipping, we're starting to get some more information now on it's performance, both as a mobile gaming platform, and as a tablet device.
A few days after the initial announcement was made, we got our hands on a SHIELD tablet, wireless controller, and cover. We’re still working (and playing) with the SHIELD tablet, and will be posting up some more information about its gaming prowess in the days ahead, but in the meantime, we thought you’d all like to take to see just how the device performs.
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Oculus Rift Dev Kit 2 Teardown @ iFixIt
When Facebook's acquisition of Oculus went public there was a rather fierce uproar over the whole thing. That has all since simmered down as the collective internet has since found something new to decry and rally against a week later.
Now, to assuage any lingering fears that Facebook was using any of its other intellectual properties for nefarious emotional conditioning experiments, the kind folks over at iFixIt have torn apart the latest Oculus Rift development kit to make sure. Long answer short, it's perfectly safe - but you may be surprised at what they did find inside.
Oculus VR took the world by surprise last year with the Oculus Rift. This year, they seek to push their own self-created envelope with the Oculus Rift Development Kit 2. We may not have flying cars, hoverboards or (commercial) teleporters, but we do have the latest virtual reality tech. Join us as we ogle the wizardry in the Oculus Rift DK2, teardown style.
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AMD Kaveri AMD's A10-7800 Processor Review @ Tech Report
Looks like AMD is introducing a few extra players to it's Kaveri lineup of APU's. The new A10-7800 and A8-7600 are looking to compliment the A10-7850K and 7700K as slightly less powerful but optimized variants of the original chipsets. A new 6-core A6-7400K was also announced for budget minded enthusiasts looking to make a leap up for under $100.
We first reviewed an AMD Kaveri processor back at the start of the year, but since then, AMD's new APU has been in kind of a weird place. The A8-7600 chip we reviewed has been scarce in retail channels, evidently because AMD succeeded in selling them elsewhere—likely to big PC manufacturers. Some of the chips were surely set aside for use in laptops, too. As a result, PC hobbyists just haven't had very good access to AMD's latest APU.
Happily, that situation is finally changing, and Kaveri-based chips are starting to make their way into the market. AMD is putting an exclamation point on that fact today by filling out its APU lineup and making some tweaks to its pricing. The headliner of the bunch is a brand-new model, the A10-7800, that may just be the most desirable Kaveri-based desktop processor yet. -
The Backpedaling Patent Troll Tried to Drop a Lawsuit
Never thought I would concern myself with a "patent troll" but this story over at Ars has me concerned. The article talks about how a company, Personal Audio, is trying to get money from a patent they hold describing "episodic content". This patent and applies to Podcasts and certain online videos where they are released on a regular basis.
As you know Podcasts work on the episode principle much like a written article. The Hardware Asylum Podcast and Ninjalane Podcast before that never indicated an episode number in the recording but, if you look carefully you can see what number we are on.
The article goes on in a typical "he said, she said" banter claiming that (Patent Troll) Personal Audio filed a lawsuit against Adam Carolla claiming he owed them money. Adam fought back and even asked his listeners to send in money to help pay his legal expenses. Personal Audio then dropped the lawsuit after realizing that Podcasters don't make much money. As it would turn out Adam didn't accept that and is still planning to go to court.
"Adam Carolla’s assertions that we would destroy podcasting were ludicrous on their face," said Personal Audio CEO Brad Liddle. "But it generated sympathy from fans and ratings for his show. Getting his fan base to continue to donate to his legal fund is a cynical exploitation of the publicity power he enjoys as an entertainer." He continued to say that Personal Audio was "quite surprised" Carolla turned down their offer:
Perhaps this is because he feels he can simply get his fans to fund his future and, now unnecessary, legal expenses. Or perhaps it relates to how he uses the case as material for his show. The fact of the matter is that Adam Carolla is asking people to donate money to him for a lawsuit that he no longer needs to defend. We would like his listeners to understand this situation when deciding whether or not to donate additional money to his cause.
According to Personal Audio, they've lost interest in suing podcasters because the podcasters—even one of Adam Carolla's size—just don't make enough money for it to care.There is a principle involved here and I applaud Carolla in fighting to make sure Podcasts remain free (to a certain extent). Personal Audio is now attempting to tarnish his reptutation by claiming he is using listener money to fight a lawsuit he no longer needs to defend.
It will be interesting to see how this pans out. I suspect that if Carolla wins then Personal Audio will lose their ability to troll on their 1996 patent. However, if Personal Audio wins then Carolla will end up paying the license fee and they will have free reign to request money from other famous, and not so famous, podcasters.
A tightrope on both sides.
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Silent Power 'Copper Foam' Cooled PC Prototype Looks All Kinds Of Awesome @ Hot Hardware
In the news today that can only be described as "Stories from the outer fringes of development." An interesting new cooling prototype was unveiled earlier this week that is both completely fanless... and extremely good at cleaning stainless steel pans. The new Silent Power cooling design appears to place all the hottest components directly under a copper plate topped with a copper mesh heatsink. At least if the crowdfunding on this project tanks, the company would still have a future as a leading supplier of copper sink scouring pads in Europe.
At the moment, this design is just a prototype. According to the wording on the website (which I had to rely on Google Translate for), it doesn't seem that the build above has actual components inside of it, and as such, no benchmarks / temperature data is able to be provided to us.
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Sharks Cove: A Raspberry Pi-style mini-PC for Windows 8.1
Back in the early days IBM figured that the money to be made in the computer world was with the hardware. History tells us that software was the big money maker and offered reoccurring income. Of course software was largely dependent on hardware so it was a nice symbiosis. It would seem that Microsoft has rediscovered disposable hardware and for that to work they need developers to write the software bits.
Hoping to show that Windows can run on just about anything, Microsoft has teamed with Intel and product manufacturer CircuitCo to announce a Windows-compatible development board, which is now available for pre-order, as ArsTechnica first reported.
Dubbed the Sharks Cove, this tiny PC features a "Bay Trail" 1.33GHz Intel Atom processor with integrated graphics, 1GB of RAM, 16GB onboard storage, a microSD slot, HDMI, a MIPI connector, a single USB 2.0 port, and a micro-USB port for power. There's no Ethernet or Wi-Fi card onboard, so you'll need to use USB adapters to connect the board to the Internet or any other network.
I'm all for these little mini machines and this one looks cool. However, I'm with the author in saying it is best to wait for some of the low cost laptops and such if you want a small form factor machine.
