Kang Gosol

When Honor announced its new Honor 20 Pro in May, one of the confusing things was that despite the global launch being in the UK, the device wasn’t ready. Review samples were recalled, and uncharacteristically for the company, they couldn’t tell us when it would be ready. Part of this was down to how the US Commerce Department had listed Honor’s parent company, Huawei, on a trade blacklist that would require US companies to obtain licenses to work with them, which had knock on effects with Google and similar businesses. Fast forward a few months, and now the Honor 20 Pro is officially being released in the UK.

Honor has announced its new laptop featuring a rare 16.1-inch display with ultra-thin bezels. The MagicBook Pro notebook packs a quad-core processor from Intel as well as a discrete graphics chip from NVIDIA, yet it remains relatively compact and lightweight. Set to be available in China initially, the notebook will cost less than $1000 in Honor's domestic market. Recent developments of display manufacturing technologies enabled makers of monitors to cost-efficiently produce screens featuring sizes that are different from those primarily used for notebooks today (e.g., 13.3, 14, 15.6 inches). Driven by necessity to differentiate their products from competing offerings, makers of mobile PCs are keen to adopt the latest components, and Honor will be one of the first vendors to use such 16.1-inch displays. The new size is meant to help close the gap between 15.6-inch as well as 17-inch class laptops by offering larger screen real estate in a more compact form-factor. Aimed

In our first X570 motherboard review we have the MSI MEG X570 Ace. This motherboard represents MSI's high-end range and sits in the top 3 of its product stack. The MEG X570 Ace has a black and gold theme which fits in with AMD's 50 year anniversary, and also includes an 'Infinity Mirror' on the rear panel cover. It's a beefy looking product, and the Ace has a trump card of  a price tag of $369 as it offers enthusiast-level features such as a  2.5G Ethernet,  a true 12+2-phase power delivery,  and three PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slots, all at a fairly reasonable price .

Phison and Everspin on Wednesday said that the former's upcoming controllers for enterprise-grade SSDs  would natively support the latter’s spin torque transfer MRAM (STT-MRAM) that will be used as a write buffer to enable a more effective I/O management. The new technology will allow makers of SSDs to improve I/O performance of their drives and enable power loss protection without usage of supercapacitors. The upcoming eSSD controllers from Phison will support Everspin’s 1 Gb STT-MRAM memory “to increase the reliability and performance” of next-gen server-grade SSDs. In particular, the companies say that STT-MRAM chips will enable SSD makers to more effectively manage I/O streams, which will enable for better latency determinism and therefore improve QoS. Besides, since STT-MRAM is nonvolatile, drives that will use it instead of traditional DRAM buffers will not need a sophisticated power loss protection enabled by supercapacitors, which will simplify their physical architectu

Sony is a company that we don’t talk nearly as much about as one would expect when it comes to their smartphones. In fact, here at AnandTech we had the odd circumstances of never actually been able to review a Sony phone. Be it unfocused marketing on Sony’s part or just bad luck on our part, it was a coverage area we’ve been looking to address for some while now. This year, after numerous quarters of financial losses of the division, Sony’s mobile group was in particular turmoil as the company division has been going through some major restructuring. The most major change is that the Xperia Mobile division has been now grouped into Sony’s TV, audio and camera product lines, ending its time where the group would operate completely independently from Sony’s other divisions. In a way, this is a good change; we’ve in particular seen statements from the company’s spokespersons that past Sony smartphones suffered from the disconnect to other company divisions, for example having to figur

Intel announced their earnings for the second quarter of their 2019 fiscal year. Overall, revenue dropped 3% year-over-year to $16.5 billion, with gross margins still below the 60% that Intel likes to maintain, but at 59.8%, the are improved significantly over last quarter’s 56.6%. Operating income for the quarter was down 12% to $4.6 billion, and net income down 17% to $4.2 billion. This resulted in earnings-per-share of $0.92, down 12% from a year ago. Intel Q2 2019 Financial Results (GAAP)   Q2'2019 Q1'2019 Q2'2018 Revenue $16.5B $16.1B $17.0B Operating Income $4.6B $4.2B $5.3B Net Income $4.2B $4.0B $5.0B Gross Margin 59.8% 56.6% 60.6% Client Computing Group Revenue $8.8B +2% +1% Data Center Group Revenue $5.0B +2%

As a part of Prime Day deals at Amazon, AMD’s eight-core Ryzen 7 2700X processor is now available for $199.99, which is $129 off its original MSRP. This is the lowest price for this eight-core processor with an unlocked multiplier ever. AMD’s Ryzen 7 2700X is the company’s former flagship CPU that has eight cores with SMT, features a 16 MB L3 cache and runs at 3.7 GHz default clocks. The chip also has two DDR4-2933 memory channels and is compatible with modern AM4 motherboards that are available widely and at different price points. Since we are talking about AMD’s X-series processor, it also has the company’s Extended Frequency Range (XFR) feature for an added performance boost. Originally priced at $329, AMD’s Ryzen now costs $199.99 at Amazon because of its Prime Day deals, which is also the current price of the ‘slower’ AMD Ryzen 7 2700 that lacks the XFR capability. AMD Ryzen 2000-Series CPUss   Ryzen 7 2700X Ryzen 7 2700

Corsair on Wednesday said that it had acquired Origin PC, a well-known boutique PC maker from the USA. Origin PC will remain a separate brand from Corsair and will continue to offer custom gaming and workstation machines. From now on, Origin PC will start to offer more Corsair products inside its systems. Both Corsair and Origin PC are private companies, so the terms of the acquisition are not published. The only thing that Corsair announced today is that Origin PC would remain a separate brand and would continue to operate from its offices in Miami, Florida. After Corsair completes acquisition of Origin PC, Corsair will still continue to offer its Vengeance PC, Corsair One, and Corsair One Pro systems under its own brand. Obviously, both companies will continue to honor all existing warranties, purchases, and support obligations with their respective teams. Since Corsair specializes on computer components, it is natural that Origin PC will over time expand use of hardware

Nintendo has announced a new version of its Switch game console that features a considerably longer battery life than the first-generation model. The new console likely uses new components that feature a lower power consumption and therefore the gaming device can work for longer durations on one charge. The new Nintendo Switch console has the same features as the original one (handheld mode, tabletop mode, TV mode, Joy-Con controllers, etc.) and looks exactly the same too. The company does not disclose precise specifications of the unit, but only says it can work for 4.5 – 9 hours on one charge, up from 2.5 – 6.5 hours in case of the previous-gen model. Since it is hard to increase capacity of a battery by 80% in a short period of time without increasing its physical dimensions, it is more than likely that the product is actually based on a version of NVIDIA’s Tegra X1 SoC made using a more advanced (12 nm or 16 nm) process technology and featuring the same lower power consumpt

Corsair has introduced its first 32 GB unbuffered DRAM modules along with 64 GB and 128 GB dual-channel memory kits for mainstream PC platforms based on AMD’s 400/500-series as well as Intel’s 300-series chipsets (and their successors). Besides, the company also unveiled its 256GB eight-channel kit for high-end desktop as well as extreme workstation processors. Corsair’s Vengeance LPX DDR4 unbuffered memory modules are based on 16 Gb memory chips (from an unconfirmed vendor, though Corsair historically relies on devices from Samsung) as well as the company’s custom 10-layer PCB designed to ensure quality signaling when operating at higher clocks. Traditionally for this product family, Corsair’s 32 GB Vengeance LPX UDIMMs are equipped with black anodized aluminum heat spreaders. Set to be available in kits containing one, two, four, or eight 32 GB unbuffered DIMMs, Corsair’s Vengeance LPX modules are rated for DDR4-2400 CL16 16-16-39 at 1.2 V, DDR4-2666 CL16 18-18-35 at 1.2

AMD's CTO, Mark Papermaster, has published a blog post this week said that AMD has joined the Compute Express Link (CXL) Consortium. The industry group is led by a set of nine industry giants such as Intel, Alibaba, Google, and Microsoft. The CXL 1.0 technology uses the PCIe 5.0 physical infrastructure to enable a coherent low-latency interconnect protocol that allows to share CPU and non-CPU resources efficiently and without using complex memory management. The announcement indicates that AMD now supports all of the current and upcoming high-speed interconnect protocols, including CCIX, Gen-Z, and OpenCAPI.

Today we are taking a look at the Freestyle Edge RGB, the successor to the the first ergonomic mechanical keyboard that we ever reviewed, the Freestyle Edge. Although its name suggests that the company just added RGB lighting to the initial version of the keyboard, as we'll see in this review, Kinesis has made several and significant changes to the overall Freestyle Edge design.

Nintendo has announced a new version of its Switch game console that only works in handheld mode, yet it is considerably more compact, comes at a lower price point, and works for a longer time on one charge. One of the intrigues about the Switch Lite device is that it might be is powered by a new NVIDIA Tegra SoC, presumably made using a more advanced process technology. The Nintendo Switch Lite comes with a 5.5-inch LCD featuring a 720p resolution and has built-in controllers that have the same layout as Nintendo’s Joy-Con controllers. The console will support local and online multiplayer modes and will allow up to eight people to play at once anywhere with Wi-Fi. When it comes to style, the gaming device will come in grey, yellow, and turquoise to attract gamers with different tastes. As far as availability is concerned, the Switch Lite will ship on September 20 and will cost $199.99 (down from $299.99 in case of the fully-fledged version). Since the console is designed for

MSI went heavily into developing gaming products several years ago, and although the company’s laptop lineup isn’t exclusively gaming, that is by far the biggest portion of their portfolio, and as such we’ve seen some impressive laptops from MSI that offer both performance and quality ahead of their competition. Today we are looking at the latest in their “enthusiast” level of laptops with the MSI GE75 Raider. The GE range isn’t quite at the top end of MSI’s lineup – a spot that is occupied by the GT series – but it still offers prodigious portable performance without being as tied to the desk as a typical GT laptop would be.

GALAX has introduced its new flagship SSDs featuring a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface and sequential read performance of up to 5 GB/s. The new HOF Pro M.2 drives will demonstrate all of their advantages when installed inside systems based on AMD’s Ryzen 3000-series processors as well as AMD’s X570 based motherboards , as these are currently the only PCIe 4.0 compatible consumer hosts on the market. Based on Phison’s PS5016-E16 controller (8 NAND channels with 32 CE targets with up to 800 MT/s speeds, 4 th  Gen LDPC ECC engine, 28nm, etc.) and Toshiba’s 3D TLC NAND memory, the GALAX Hall-of-Fame Pro SSDs are set to be available in 500 GB, 1 TB, and 2 TB capacities. As far as sequential performance is concerned, the GALAX HOF Pro SSDs offer up to 5 GB/s read speeds as well as up to 4.4 GB/s write speeds, depending on the model and capacity. As for random performance, GALAX opted for firmware enabling up to 750K read IOPS as well as up to 700K write IOPS. To ensure maximum p

It’s the review we’ve all been waiting for. Since December last year – and particularly since CES – AMD has been teasing us about the new Zen 2 microarchitecture and AMD’s newest Ryzen 3000 series of CPUs. Incorporating a significantly upgraded CPU architecture and built using TSMC's latest generation manufacturing process, AMD has continued to run at full speed at a time when rival Intel has struggled to move at all. The end result is that while the first and second generation of Ryzen CPUs were all about AMD returning to competition and eating into Intel's substantial performance lead, the Ryzen 3000 series is nothing less than AMD's first shot in nearly 13 years at meeting (or beating) Intel at their own game in the desktop CPU market. It's a big moment for AMD, and an exciting one in the CPU industry as a whole. Today AMD launches its entire new CPU lineup and platform, alongside the new Navi-based Radeon RX 5700 series. In terms of CPU coverage, we’ll be takin

Following this week’s launch of AMD’s new Ryzen 3000 series of processors, reports have once again begun circulating that PCIe 4 will be available on some existing 300 & 400 series boards. This comes despite AMD’s official statement last month that they would not be allowing the feature on older boards, as PCIe 4’s tighter signal integrity standards would have led to, at best, a highly fragmented market where some boards work, some boards don’t, and some boards may be outright marginal. At the time the company stated that the feature would be stripped from the AGESA that goes into the final Ryzen 3000 launch BIOSes for older boards. So, to get right to the heart of matters, I reached out to AMD PR this evening to find out what’s going on with PCIe 4 support. The short version then is that no, AMD’s plans have not changed: PCIe 4 support will be disabled in the shipping AGESA for these boards. Our plan is unchanged. For the reliability and consistency reasons cited at Co

ASUS has released a new BIOS version 0601 for its ROG Dominus Extreme motherboard that ‘improves PCIe compatibility’ when using Intel’s latest Xeon W processors based on the Cascade Lake architecture. The move confirms that existing extreme workstation motherboards originally developed for Xeon W-3175X (and other Skylake-SP products) will work with Intel’s latest Xeon W-3200 processors. When ASUS launched its ROG Dominus Extreme platform several months ago, the list of supported CPUs was limited to the flagship 28-core Xeon W-3175X as well as several other Xeon Gold and Xeon Platinum processors based on the Skylake-SP design and designed to use the LGA3647 socket. Recently the company released its new BIOS version 0509 that added support for a variety of Intel Xeon W CPUs featuring the Cascade Lake microarchitecture and a slightly different physical layout. This week the company launched another BIOS version 0601 that is designed to improve PCIe compatibility whe using Intel’s

ASRock has introduced what could be the world’s smallest system based on AMD Ryzen processor. The 4X4 Box-R1000 ultra-compact form-factor (UCFF) PC can fit on the palm of a hand, yet it packs everything needed to run a variety of software required for digital signage, kiosks, thin clients and other applications. Measuring 110×118.5×67.3 mm and weighing 0.7 kilograms, the ASRock 4X4 Box-R1000 is based on AMD’s dual-core Ryzen Embedded R1000-series SoC (the R1606G or the R1505G model) with integrated Radeon Vega graphics. The system can accommodate up to 32 GB of DDR4-2400 memory (using two SO-DIMMs), a 2.5-inch SATA storage device, as well as an M.2-2260 SSD featuring a SATA or PCIe 3.0 x4 interface. When it comes to connectivity, the ASRock 4X4 Box-R1000 features two GbE connectors (controlled by the Realtek RTL8111G controllers), a Wi-Fi 5 controller (Intel Wireless-AC 3168), three USB 3.0 Type-A ports, two USB 2.0 Type-A connectors, one HDMI, two DisplayPorts, and a 3.5-m

EKWB this week introduced its first water blocks for AMD’s Radeon RX 5700-series graphics cards. The devices belong to the company’s EK-Vector series products and therefore brings together more or less classic looks, advanced modern cold plates as well as controllable RGB lighting. The new EK-Vector Radeon RX 5700 +XT water blocks for AMD’s Radeon RX 5700 and Radeon RX 5700 XT graphics cards feature a cold-plate that covers the entire surface of the appropriate add-in-boards and therefore cool the GPU, 8 GB of GDDR6 memory, as well as multi-phase VRM. It is noteworthy that the water blocks channel liquids directly to the said areas in a bid to maximize cooling performance. Traditionally, EKWB’s contemporary water blocks feature Open Split-Flow micro-channels, but the maker does not disclose how many fins the units have. EKWB’s water blocks use regular G ¼ inch barbs for tubing (brass standoffs are pre-installed) and are compatible with a broad range of custom liquid cooling

Ever since Computex, NVIDIA has been teasing a “Super” announcement of their own. And this morning, that announcement is finally coming to fruition. NVIDIA is launching a mid-generation kicker for their mid-to-high-end video card lineup in the form of their GeForce RTX 20 series Super cards. Based on the same family of Turing GPUs as the original GeForce RTX 20 series cards, these new Super cards – all suffixed Super, appropriately enough – come with new configurations and new clockspeeds. They are, essentially, NVIDIA’s 2019 card family for the $399+ video card market. When they are released on July 9 th , the GeForce RTX 20 series Super cards are going to be sharing store shelves with the rest of the GeForce RTX 20 series cards. Some cards like the RTX 2080 and RTX 2070 are set to go away, while other cards like the RTX 2080 Ti and RTX 2060 will remain on the market as-is. In practice, it’s probably best to think of the new cards as NVIDIA executing as either a price cut or a spec

Apple has stopped to list its thin-and-light 12-inch MacBook notebook on its website. Since the company has not updated its most compact laptop for two years, the removal of the product from the website may indicate that the MacBook is gone for good, or Apple is prepping a new generation of the machine that will be released at a later date. Apple introduced MacBook in its current ultra-thin form-factor in 2015 and eventually replaced its 11-inch MacBook Air with the new ultra-portable laptop that offered a better display, thinner design, and lower weight, albeit at a higher price. To make this level of portability possible, all three generations of Apple’s MacBook relied on Intel’s Core Y-series processors with a very low TDP yet moderate levels of performance. One could say that Apple’s MacBook bridged the gap between 10-inch tablets and 13-inch laptops, yet its adoption by end users has never been high mostly because 12-inch mobile PCs target a very niche market. Apple in

AOC is a brand primarily known for its gaming, mainstream, stylish, and entry-level displays. Meanwhile, the company also has its 90-series monitors aimed at demanding professionals, offering color accuracy and other features appreciated by the target audience. Last week the company introduced its most advanced addition to the 90-series lineup: the U2790PQU display that combines a 10-bit 4K panel and a relatively low price. The AOC U2790PQU monitor is based on a 10-bit 27-inch IPS panel featuring a 3840×2160 resolution, 350 nits brightness, a 1000:1 contrast ratio, 5 ms response time, 60 Hz refresh rate, and 178/178º viewing angles. For some reason, AOC does not disclose anything about the color gamuts the display supports, but indicates that the LCD supports the company’s Wide Color Gamut technology, which might mean that we are dealing with a monitor that supports wider than 100% sRGB color gamut, but this is only a suggestion. Two important features of the AOC U2790PQU d