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Posts Tagged ‘core’

It’s more a work of art than a PC

You can’t truly appreciate the paint job on Falcon Northwest’s Mach V unless you can fondle it. We mean it—you just can’t comprehend how damn smooth the paint is without lovingly stroking your hand on the side of this beauty as if you were a presidential candidate.

Inside the Mach V, you’ll find a pedigree of hardware to match its stunning exterior. Intel’s top gun—the 3.3GHz Core i7-3960X—gets top billing, of course. This hexa-core chip simply makes all other chips before it—quad- or hexa-core—seem downright weak. Falcon mates the chip with … [Read More...]

Toshiba’s recently announced Portégé Z830 Series Ultrabooks are now available starting $799.99 at Best Buy and on ToshibaDirect.com, starting at $829.99. Back in September, Toshiba revealed the Portégé Z830 Series, which is their first PC in the category of stylish and thin PCs called Ultrabooks introduced by Intel. The Portégé Z830 Series is powered by Intel’s second-generation Core processors, weighs less than 2.5 pounds, has a 0.63-inch profile and a full-size LED backlit and spill-resistant keyboard!

For more on Toshiba’s Portégé Z830 Series, click here to visit their website.

This article was written by Windows Experience (Source)

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Are you rocking a preview build of Windows 8? If so, you don’t need to go without CPU-Z. There’s a new update available, the first one in about five months, that brings CPU-Z up to version 1.59. Among the short list of changes is official support for Windows 8. The new build also recognizes Intel’s Core i7 2960X, 3930K, and 3820 Sandy Bride-E processors.

Along with support for Sandy Bridge-E chips, CPU-Z v1.59 reads and recognizes Intel’s X79 chipset. The update isn’t all about Intel and Microsoft, however.

Other additions to CPU-Z’s database include AMD Opteron and Valencia (Bulldozer), AMD … [Read More...]

The Portégé puts the third accent on battery life

There was a time when Toshiba’s line of Portégé business ultraportables was the epitome of sleek utility, particularly in the days of the R500 and R600. Samsung stole some of that show when it released the Series 9 (reviewed here)—the closest a PC has come to a MacBook Air to date. But while the Portégé R830, much like the R700 before it, won’t win any design contests, it offers many useful amenities in a very-portable package.

Costing exactly the same as the Series 9, the 13.3-inch R830 trumps that fancy lad … [Read More...]

Creative hedges its bets

Is Creative buying into the notion of the post-PC world? The Sound Blaster Recon3D is a powerful USB audio device based on Creative’s all-new Sound Core3D chip. But you can also connect the Recon3D to an Xbox 360, PS3, or even an Intel-based Mac. Creative tells us the Sound Core3D doesn’t boast the naked power of the company’s previous-generation audio processor, but that it is extremely efficient—it draws all the power it needs from a single USB port.

The Recon3D has an optical S/PDIF input, a 1/8-inch audio output to drive a pair of speakers or … [Read More...]

Intel’s Core i7 2700K processor is new in town and boy does she get around. We mean that in a good way, and it’s totally with the blessing of her folks from Santa Clara who told her, “Hey, you’re unlocked, go have a good time.” The 2700K took those words to heart and, among other places, found herself hanging around Maingear where she’s running laps at 5GHz and beyond.

Maingear tells us they’ve added the 2700K to its Shift and F131 desktop systems. The less expensive F131 starts out at $1,104, or $1,339 with the 2700K option, and includes an … [Read More...]

It’s not pretty, but it’s gaming ready

Cybernet has been building all-in-one touch-screen PCs for hospital and medical use for years. Given the ambitious specs of the company’s new iOne-H5—a 2.93GHz Core i7-870, 8GB of memory, and ATI’s Mobility Radeon HD 5730 GPU—we found ourselves wondering if this long-term expertise would translate into an awesome consumer system.

The truth is that performance is pretty much the only hope Cybernet has of winning over would-be buyers. In a category that emphasizes glossy plastic curves and minimalist bezels, the iOne stands in such stark contrast to systems like HP’s TouchSmart 610 and … [Read More...]

AVA finds a way to mix performance and silence

In our world, performance and silence go together about as well as Aliens and Predators. Each one has its appeal, but put them together, and you generally get a turd.

That’s a fact AVADirect has set out to disprove with a PC apparently named by U.S. Army logistics command: Custom Gaming PC, Silent PC, Low-Noise Custom Computer System. Despite its funktastic name, the AVADirect PC doesn’t disappoint and seems capable of creating its own alternate reality where performance commingles harmoniously with peace and quiet.

Sure, Puget System’s virtually silent Serenity Mini … [Read More...]

Capable-but-unexciting Budget Box

You want to know a secret? Building a high-end PC on an unlimited budget ain’t that hard. You just click the “Bestest” button and add to cart.

What’s hard is building a PC on a strict budget. Do you sacrifice CPU, GPU, or storage? Do you cheap out on the case or the PSU?

So when WarFactory decided to ship us its Immortal budget box instead of the usual shoot-for-the-moon rigs we test, we thought it would be interesting to see how the more modest PC would measure up.

The Immortal can’t win any benchmark battles but … [Read More...]

A real Velcro PC at last

Perhaps you’ve heard about our concept for the Velcro PC: a computer so small, light, and unobtrusive that you could literally affix it to the back of your HDTV.

That concept might have finally arrived in Giada’s i50 PC. Similar to the original Giada Ion-100, the i50 is a serious step up over the original box.

The most noticeable upgrade is in the brains department: The original Ion-100 sported an Nvidia Ion 2 chip coupled with a 1.3GHz Atom 330; this new model features a 1.2GHz Core i5-430UM processor. It’s not wickedly fast, mind … [Read More...]

This is the next in the series of “PC Snapshots” – short 2-3 minute overview of PCs that Ryan and I think are awesome. If there’s a PC that you’d like to see us cover, hit me on Twitter, send me mail, or leave a comment. We’ll try to get to it ASAP!

Today’s PC is the ASUS U36, which I reviewed on the blog a few months back.  It’s a great little PC; lightweight (around 3.5lbs), thin (19mm at its thinnest point), and fast (Intel Core i5, 500GB hard drive, NVIDIA GeForce 310M GPU).  And it gets around 8 … [Read More...]

It’s clear that HP sees the value in this category. The PC maker’s new TouchSmart is sleek, polished, and is the first all-in-one we’ve ever seen to feature a subwoofer-out jack. HP makes a subtle but valid point here: The truth about these systems is that, regardless of where we set them up—kitchen, living room, garage—we find ourselves frequently using them as music stations, so why not aim for higher audio fidelity? Conveniently, HP has also integrated Monster’s (and Dr. Dre’s) Beats environment, allowing the TouchSmart 610 to pump out impressive enough sound to make people do a double-take.

HP’s … [Read More...]

Panasonic has updated its Toughbook C1 convertible tablet PC with a second-generation Intel chip. The upgraded C1, which lays claim to being the lightest 12.1-inch convertible tablet, features a Core i5-2520M vPro 2.50GHz processor as opposed to the 2.4GHz Core i5-520M found inside its predecessor. Hit the jump for detailed specs.

The Sandy Bridge processor is not the only thing that gives the latest model an edge over its predecessor. Here is a list of some of the other upgraded features:

• 320GB 7200rpm shock-mounted flex-connect hard drive with quick-release
• RAM:  2GB DDR3 (1333MHz) RAM (expandable to 8GB)
• Battery Life: Up

… [Read More...]

A bronze statue of power

How far can you take a Sandy Bridge processor? We’ve heard that even extreme overclockers seem to hit a wall just beyond 5GHz with Intel’s darling new chip.

Whatever the limitations, Maingear seems content to take its Shift Super Stock to the brink of madness by clocking the 3.4GHz Core i7-2600K to 5GHz.

The company credits some of that high overclock to its new partnership with CoolIT and the use of a massive and exclusive 18cm EPIC cooler. EPIC, in this case, stands for Enhanced Performance InterCooler. Perhaps even more impressive, you can’t even find … [Read More...]

We love it when the trade shows roll around because that’s when companies show off their upcoming products. Not all of them turn out to be winners, of course, but Asus’s UX21 ultrathin notebook being shown off at Computex holds a lot of promise. From the pictures we’ve seen, it’s sleek and sexy, and the Core i7 foundation is just icing on the cake.

The UX21 measures 17mm at its thickest point and weighs just 2.4 pounds. It’s what you can expect from Asus’s UX Series of ultraportables, which Asus said “are made possible through the use of a strong … [Read More...]

Polywell’s latest packs a surprise GPU

Here at Maximum PC, we adhere to the cable news statistics rule that two data points is all you need to create a trend. So being presented with the second white system we’ve seen in the last three months, we can now declare that white is the new black (which was the new beige).

And, (Kent Brockman voice-over) it’s a trend we like. Far from gaudy, Polywell’s Ignition X5800 manages to look powerful, stately, and professional. It’s an appropriate aesthetic coming from a company with a long history of making computers for work. For … [Read More...]

A bold move into Apple territory

Samsung has only been selling its laptops in North America for the last few years, and while those machines haven’t been bad, they haven’t been remarkable either. But with the Series 9, the company is putting forth a laptop that demands notice. From its sub–three pound, super-slim, and sexy chassis to its spare, sophisticated style, it looks like nothing so much as a MacBook Air. It’s a bold, high-profile move by a company that’s been firmly rooted in the mainstream.

While the comparison to a MacBook Air is inevitable, the Series 9 features some … [Read More...]

You know what Sony does well? Make a premium PC. They proved that again with today’s refresh of the VAIO S ultraportable line and the high-end entertainment powerhouse F series.

The new S is an upgrade to what is already a great PC. I have current generation VAIO SB (that you can read about in this post) that I’ve been using as my daily carry for the last few weeks, and I really like it. It’s fast, light, and with the optional sheet battery, gets about 15 hours of battery life. It has a premium look and feel – even … [Read More...]