SilverStone PF240-ARGB Liquid Cooler Review: Value And Style

SilverStone has been in the AIO (all-in-one) liquid cooling game since 2013, so the cooler we're reviewing today should be a fairly refined product with years of deep feedback and iteration built in. Back in the day, closed loop, AIO liquid coolers were relatively limited in terms of options, but SilverStone was able to distinguished itself by having a unique full alloy water-block that was constructed with a copper base, along with an aluminum body. The cooler also featured brazing fins, similar to those of air coolers, for increased heat transfer. It was initially well received, but was ultimately...

AMD Threadripper 3990X Review: A 64-Core Multithreaded Beast Unleashed

by Marco Chiappetta - Fri, Feb 07, 2020

Although it was somewhat of a foregone conclusion that AMD would launch a monstrous 64-core / 128-thread 3rd generation Ryzen Threadripper processor ever since the initial line-up was announced a few months back, the company made it official at CES 2020 last month. AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su took to the stage during a glitzy press conference in Las Vegas, and revealed the Ryzen Threadripper 3990X 64-core HEDT processor we’ll be showing you here today. During Dr. Su’s talk, she disclosed the 3990X’s speeds and feeds and showed the beastly chip taking down a pair of 28-core Xeons worth...

AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT Review: A Top-Notch 1080p Gaming GPU

by Marco Chiappetta - Tue, Jan 21, 2020

After numerous leaks, AMD officially announced its Radeon RX 5600 series of GPUs during its press conference at CES 2020 a couple of weeks back. Although most of the early leaks were technically accurate at the time they hit the web, a series of events since then has changed the landscape somewhat, and what you thought would be launching today, could be a somewhat different beast. We’ve got one of Sapphire’s Pulse Radeon RX 5600 XT cards on-hand for testing to show you all what a retail-ready version of AMD's Radeon 5600 XT from Sapphire can do relative to its competition. AMD’s...

Intel DG1 Xe Discrete Graphics First Look: These Cards Are Shipping To ISVs

by Marco Chiappetta - Thu, Jan 09, 2020

To close out Intel’s CES 2020 press conference, Gregory Bryant, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Intel’s Client Computing Group showed off an upcoming Tiger Lake-based mobile platform with discrete DG1 GPU running a game live on-screen. We were on-hand to capture video of the short demo and have it posted for you here. The demonstration at the press conference used a discrete DG1, but not a standalone graphics card. That’s an important distinction; although Intel didn’t disclose the exact configuration of the Tiger Lake-based mobile platform used for the demo,...

AMD Unveils Ryzen 4000 Mobile Series With Bold Performance Claims, Insane 64-Core Threadripper Beast

by Dave Altavilla, Marco Chiappetta - Mon, Jan 06, 2020

AMD announced an array of new products at its CES 2020 press conference, including its first Zen 2-based Ryzen 4000 series mobile processors and a monstrous 64-core / 128-thread third-generatoin Ryzen Threadripper. In addition to the new processors, on the graphics front the oft-leaked Radeon RX 5600 XT that target’s 1080p gamers in the sweet spot of the GPU market was also made official – you can read more about the Radeon RX 5600 XT here. Thanks to the performance and efficiency enhancements that come by way of AMD’s Zen 2 architecture and the 7nm manufacturing process...

Addlink S70 SSD Review: Speedy, Affordable NVMe Storage

by Ben Funk - Mon, Dec 23, 2019

Addlink isn't a particularly well-known manufacturer in the PC storage space, but the company has been in the business for a little over a decade. Online shops carry all sorts of flash memory products from Addlink, from micro SD cards to PCI-Express 4.0 solid state drives, and all points in between. However, just because you may not be as familiar with a certain brand or product doesn't mean it's not worth paying attention to. At the risk of giving away the conclusion in the first paragraph of this review, we dare say that Addlink's S70 M.2 SSD is one of those situations. As you'll see in the features...

AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT Review: Navi Targets 1080P Gamers

by Marco Chiappetta - Thu, Dec 12, 2019

Back in October, AMD released its Radeon RX 5500 series GPUs for OEM desktop and mobile systems. The Radeon RX 5500 featured the same RDNA-infused Navi GPU architecture as the more powerful Radeon RX 5700 XT, but scaled things back for lower-power applications and more affordable price points. The cards weren’t destined for the channel or traditional retail availability, but rather pre-built systems and laptops. Soon thereafter, rumors began swirling that a somewhat more powerful, Navi-based mainstream solution was in the works, however – known as the Radeon RX 5500 XT. Well, it turns...

AMD Unveils Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition With Radeon Boost, Streamlined Interface, New Features Galore

by Ben Funk - Tue, Dec 10, 2019

Over the last several years, AMD has released major new driver features and enhancements at the end of the calendar year, and as 2019 draws to a close, it is no different. The just-released Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition overhauls the driver suite's installation and interface to surface what's important, adds new features (and enhances several others), and promises performance improvements in a variety of games. This new driver suite supports any GCN-based Radeon going back to the December 2011 release of the Radeon HD 7970 all the way up to the latest Navi architecture and the Radeon RX...

Build A Great Rig With HotHardware's PC Components Buyer's Guide, Just In Time For Black Friday

by Ben Funk - Wed, Nov 27, 2019

Welcome to HotHardware's PC Component Buyer's Guide, where we help prospective system builders pick out just the right collection of components to build the rigs of their dreams -- or at least the rig which makes the best use of your budget. We've picked out the best bang for the buck in processors, graphics cards, storage, and more in an effort to assemble some truly drool-worthy gaming PCs at a variety of price points. From top to bottom, rest assured that we've done the hard work of balancing price and performance in a way that gets the most performance possible from a given budget. Because...

AMD Threadripper 3970X And 3960X Review: Multi-Threaded Domination

by Marco Chiappetta - Mon, Nov 25, 2019

AMD has been on an impressive run since the release of its first-generation Ryzen processors a couple of years back. After a long stretch playing second-fiddle to Intel in the desktop processor space, unable to effectively compete at the high-end of the market, AMD’s Zen micro-architecture propelled the company into a much more competitive position. And follow-on products turned the heat up on Intel even further. Today, that heat becomes a blazing hot inferno as AMD completely reshapes the HEDT landscape with a pair of processors as impressive as we’ve ever seen. At the risk of...

Intel Core i9-10980XE Review: 18-Core Cascade Lake-X Battles AMD [Updated]

by Marco Chiappetta - Mon, Nov 25, 2019

Intel officially took the wraps off of its upcoming Cascade Lake-X based HEDT processors back in early October, revealed its updated pricing strategy, and the new features coming to its flagship desktop processor line-up. If you missed the original announcement and array of leaked performance data since then, Cascade Lake-X is a essentially a refresh of Skylake-X (the processor cores are mostly unchanged), but with official support for faster memory, more aggressive clocking and boost algorithms, and DL Boost integration, to help accelerate and array of AI workloads. Cascade Lake-X will work in...

GeForce RTX Ray Tracing On A $300 To $500 Budget: What To Expect

by Ben Funk - Wed, Nov 20, 2019

When NVIDIA's GeForce RTX graphics cards first launched, there weren't many games on the market that could take advantage of Turing's new bells and whistles. Over time that's changed, however, and some of this year's biggest hits—titles like Control and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare—can take full advantage of stunning ray-traced visual effects. NVIDIA's high-end Turing cards include some of the fastest GPUs around with equally eye-watering pricing, but it doesn't have to be that way if you want to take a more modest approach. The $299 - $329 GeForce RTX 2060 6 GB and $499 GeForce...

AMD Radeon Pro W5700 Review: Affordable Navi For Workstations

by Marco Chiappetta - Tue, Nov 19, 2019

AMD launched its Navi-based Radeon RX 5700 series GPUs for gamers a few months back and customized, higher-clocked boards from its partners quickly followed soon thereafter. Navi, and its newly-designed RDNA-infused microarchitecture and instruction set, will be the foundation of an entire family of GPUs from AMD moving forward, that will span multiple market segments. The first products based on Navi targeted enthusiast gamers, but now AMD is ready to inject its leading-edge GPU architecture into the pro-graphics space with the brand-new Radeon Pro W5700, which we’ll be showing you here....

AMD Ryzen 9 3950X Review: A 16-Core Zen 2 Powerhouse

by Marco Chiappetta - Thu, Nov 14, 2019

When Dr. Lisu Su took to the stage at an event back in June and officially announced the Ryzen 9 3950X, it didn’t come as much of a surprise to be honest. Considering the fact that Zen 2 CPU chiplets feature 8-cores each, and the Ryzen 9 3900X with dual CPU chiplets launched with only 12-cores enabled, there was immediate speculation that a 16-core Ryzen 3000 series variant was in the works and that AMD was perhaps holding it back for strategic reasons. Of course, there were a multitude of leaks leading up to the announcement that continued to fuel the flames, but needless to say a 16-core...