Ben Funk
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Opinions and content posted by HotHardware contributors are their own.
Recent posts
Water-cooled graphics cards aren't exactly new. For years, enthusiasts who build their own custom liquid cooling loops have incorporated blocks onto their GPUs to keep the heat at bay without producing a ton of noise. In recent years, some manufacturers have released cards with their own closed-loop AIO coolers...
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Windows 11 is coming this holiday season, although upgrades from Windows 10 won't happen until much later. We're sure that users who are hungry to get their hands on Microsoft's latest OS will be able to do so fairly quickly, though. That's especially true considering Windows 10 Insider Previews have all but dried up...
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In the spring, Id Software and Bethesda announced that they would bring real-time ray tracing and NVIDIA DLSS 2.0 to the Vulkan-powered Doom Eternal. When we reviewed thsi latest Doom title, we found that it was already pretty stunning graphically while running really well on all kinds of different hardware. High performance and a bevy of...
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Just last week, many Western Digital MyBook Live owners lamented the fact that their personal cloud was being attacked and wiped remotely. Those storage devices were older and hadn't been supported since 2015. As a result, those NAS products proved to be a lesson in not putting unsecured and unpatched devices on your...
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We were really impressed with Intel's latest high-performance notebook CPUs from the Tiger Lake-H family when we got to try them out in a test platform. Intel arguably produced the single fastest x86 notebook CPU on the planet, with blistering single-threaded speed and heavy multi-threaded prowess. However, we were itching to get our hands...
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Ever since the introduction of Windows Vista in early 2007, Microsoft has enforced the rule that Windows drivers must carry digital signatures by default. Any software that runs in kernel mode, in fact, has to be signed by the company. This is a security measure that should prevent malicious software from digging its...
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Windows 11 upgrades may be free, but the hardware is certainly going to cost you. That's the message sent by Microsoft yesterday as the company published system requirements for the upcoming operating system, due during the Holiday season later this year. At first blush, the Windows 11 system requirements calling for...
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The PCI Express 4.0 interface has been around on AMD's Ryzen platform for a long time now, ever since the launch of Zen 2 and the X570 chipset. The new spec has finally gone mainstream on Intel's platforms, as well, with the release of the Rocket Lake-S 11th Gen Core processor family and the accompanying Z590 PCH. That means that neither camp...
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When AMD unveiled "Big Navi", now known as the Radeon RX 6000 series, the new GPU family brought with it support for Microsoft's nascent DirectX Ray Tracing. DXR adds photorealistic lighting, reflections and more visual effects to make games that support the technologies look more true to life. However, real-time ray...
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Intel's Tiger Lake-H family of notebook processors has been divided into two two groups: some very exciting eight-core parts with 45-watt TDPs, and some slightly less exciting but still very fast 35-watt CPUs. Both of these product groups have shown best in class single-threaded performance for high-performance and...
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Back in September of last year, the x86 version of the Samsung Galaxy Book S failed to wow us with its performance and battery life. This ultralight laptop is powered by Intel's Lakefield-based Core i5-L16G7 processor, which was the company's first attempt at creating a hybrid processor with a big.Little architecture...
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Notebooks often have limited storage capacity, despite significant advancements over the last few years. An M.2 drive is only the size of a stick of gum, but not every laptop can fit more than one or two drives at a time, and some users aren't comfortable opening up their machine to upgrade them, which ultimately limits their storage capabilities....
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Back in 2006 when Nintendo first launched the Wii, there were three games worth playing: Wii Sports, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (also on the GameCube), and Rayman Raving Rabbids. Ubisoft's title was the first third-party attempt at motion controls and was a blast in multi-player. The series featuring weird...
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It's the first weekend of June, and that means once again it's almost time for Apple's World Wide Developer's Conference. The annual WWDC is always good for learning about what new software features the company has cooked up for its many platforms, including the Mac, iPad, iPhone, Apple Watch, and more. Like last...
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It seems almost impossible that four technology titans could possibly be on the same page. It's not totally unprecedented, however, considering Apple and Google managed to work together on COVID-19 contact tracing. However, it's much more common to read about companies taking potshots at one another over their...
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Apple's family of M1 Macs is pretty impressive. Cupertino's attempt to replace Intel's Core family of CPUs with its own home-grown processors has been pretty solid. We were blown away by the power efficiency and performance of the most entry-level Mac there is, the 2020 Mac mini with the company's M1 SoC. The thing...
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Computex might be a virtual online-only show this year, but you should expect some big announcements from many of the heavy hitters in tech. The virtual show kicks off May 31 at 7:30 AM local time in Taipei, which translates to 10:30 PM Eastern on Sunday the 30th in the U.S. While there will undoubtedly be a ton of...
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It's no secret that Intel's true desktop performance graphics card is on its way, affectionately referred to as DG2. Thanks to a leak earlier in the month, we know that Xe HPG (Xe High Performance Gaming) will apparently come in five distinct flavors, with anywhere from 128 to 512 execution units. We've also gotten a...
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Apple's iOS 14.5 was supposed to let users take back control over their data, or so the narrative goes, by preventing apps from tracking their every move. Apple has been banging that privacy drum for a long time now, and customers have taken the company at its word. In fact, you've likely already read our report that...
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It was just earlier this month that IBM announced an incredible manufacturing breakthrough with its 2-nm manufacturing process that crammed 50 billion transistors into the size of a fingernail. While that's still a future-looking technology that hasn't made it into mass production (and thereby not a solution for our...
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Apple has garnered a lot of praise for its M1 SoC, which is quickly spreading throughout its entry-level Mac family, and even the iPad Pro. While the performance and efficiency aspects of the chip are unquestionable, there have been questions raised about some particular aspects of the Apple Silicon...
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Over the last eight months or so, segment by segment, AMD's various Zen 3-based processors have taken the world by storm. High performance servers, desktops, and notebooks all feature AMD's flagship silicon, thanks in no small part to its excellent perf-per-watt and strong overall value proposition. That dynamic...
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