Gadgetory

everyone welcome back to another hardware news recap for the week while we've been busy with the wall RPC and we have more on that coming up soon we got news about the ongoing price-fixing investigations currently being spearheaded by the Chinese government for memory prices you may remember this story from a couple of months ago well it hasn't stopped it's been going on slowly in the background as government proceedings often do so we have an update on the price-fixing investigation over there and then also Nvidia stock took a nosedive 19% don't really do too much on financial side but we'll talk about that board partners have way too much inventory right now which relates to the previous item of Nvidia stock and then there was an RT X 26 T week amount of other things for this week before that this video is brought to you by US and the gamers access store you can go to store it on cameras nexus net to pick up one of our ceramic mugs critically-acclaimed mod mats or educational video card tear down and PCB anatomy posters that teach the names and placements of all the key PCB components learn more at store des cameras XS net or click the link below really quick GN item first so this shirt is brand new we have it on store dock here in sexist and I actually I designed this one and then Andrew made the all the mock-ups of it all the art for it and blender you may know blender as benchmarking software for CPUs and GPUs we actually use it professionally for things like this and the mod mats actually so yeah we designed this completely it's a two-tone shirt we designed where the color differences are we picked the material so it's 95% cotton 5% of lasting and has kind of a sporty feel to it plus GN logo on the side there GM logo on the front and then it's got a that two-tone color just for something different that's pretty fun to design we're very happy with the quality completely custom selling all that stuff so let's get into news so first of all the Chinese government claims it has evidence of price fixing this is the biggest thing that has come out in the last week or two so we've been covering the Chinese government's investigation as DRAM makers for a couple of months now and that would include SK Hynix Samsung and micron those are the big three for memory manufacturing that includes SSDs they really don't have any competition at this point besides each other oh then I guess you could count Nonya and they they don't do a whole lot they make DRAM for asses things like that some of the cash so the investigation stems from the theory of price fixing and anti-competitive behavior amidst skyrocketing memory prices which you likely have all noticed and it's got a little bit better in the last couple of weeks but either way in DRAM manufacturers defense they appear to be cooperating with the proceedings not on the defense they've been caught price-fixing before legitimately caught doing it but previous history does not indicate current trends so there's no no evidence that we have publicly yet of price fixing and that's because the Chinese government despite saying they have quote massive evidence of price fixing between the three memory manufacturers that we all know China has not released that information yet so according to the story broken by the Financial Times the investigation has yielded evidence of the aforementioned companies conspiring to increase the RAM prices Oh Jen go ahead of China's anti-monopoly Bureau stated that the investigation has quote yielded massive evidence however no evidence has been made public yet until the Chinese government decides to be more forthcoming with its evidence likely after it does some more investigating it's worth taking this information with a grain of salt so far none of the big three have responded to the allegations and they are fighting a stateside class-action lawsuit that was filed recently and when more information comes out into the public sphere we'll keep you informed accordingly of course SK Hynix Samsung and micron make up the great memory triumvirate controlling an estimated 95 percent of the world's DRAM market China has since been trying to break into the memory market on its own with no shortage of its own controversy as a reminder Samsung on hynek's were both defined in 2005 and 2010 for price-fixing but again past behavior doesn't guarantee current behavior and the Chinese government has been attempting to break into memory as a stateside issue so of course that requires some additional scrutiny too but we are not going to be the experts in this story so we'll keep you informed as the experts continue to uncover the legal and financial proceedings and we'll boil it down to the hardware topics that are most relevant to our audience so stay tuned for more of that it's been a slow process but that's what legal matters are so next a rumor so put on your rumor hats I guess that's the thing this one especially we're a little bit more cautious I almost cut it from our news story today but we're gonna leave it in there because it is getting some traction so just be firmly advised there's no evidence of any of this yet so it might not actually be real but either way let's get into the rumor side just for some fun so Intel allegedly is bringing 10 cores to the desktop and they've kind of already done that with the 700 X but that was technically an HED tcp it was about $1,000 when it launched so when AMD launched its first Zen base tries and chips in 2017 it sort of marked a return to the core Wars for Intel and AMD making things a bit exciting again in the CPU space something that's been kind of lacking in the years prior so 2018 is about a good year for CPUs in general anthe and Intel had a lot of launches and a lot of those are our very core heavy on the CPU side so Intel's gone from comfortably putting quad-core chips at the top of their product stack with hyper-threading to go into things like 8 cores for example with hyper-threading and even higher on h EDT now there's a new rumor from taiwanese forums that has been turned on the rumor mill to suggest intel could be ready in 10 core parts for main stream desktop with a comet lake s lineup if you're not familiar with the S demarcation it's what all the desktop Seabees are so in 8700 K would be an ass CPU details are scarce the rumor only alludes to 10 cores based on Intel's 14 nanometer and that there could be an additional rain bus introduced as a design comet lake is rumored to be the micro architectural successor to coffee lake and whiskey lake and is supposedly slated for mid 2019 and as with all rumors this should be clear at this point grain of salt and some of them are more trustworthy than others we try to a lot of time when we report on rumors and our stories this is some behind the scenes news for you or information when we report on them in these news round ups it's typically the case that we'll check with our sources in the industry off record and confirm if those stories have any legitimacy to them we have not been able to do that yet for this one so not really confirmed but the timing makes sense mid 2019 is about when Intel would launch another product so we'll see what happens and video so I can know his dive of 19 percent in the market this past couple of weeks last week or so and this news is adjacent to the coming up news about hardware problems going into 2019 especially with the oversupply of current or now previous generation Pascal products so in recent earnings reports and Vidia announced that it expects fourth-quarter earnings to only be two point seven billion dollars which is much less than the anticipated three point four billion that Nvidia previously targeted the primary reasons for these shrunken earnings are Nvidia's at lackluster r-tx launch I don't think we need to update you on what happened there and a miscalculation of the cryptocurrency boom don't think we need to let you know or update you know happen there either so in quite a slump for cryptocurrency mining and that has led to oversupply of ten series cards and rx cards from AMD specifically gtx 1060 cards for Nvidia and videos stock dropped nearly 19% after the news broke which is the lowest recorded one-day drop for the company in ten years this news overshadowed the record profits in the data center and automotive segments though somebody is doing well in that segment especially and videos that Jensen Wan has called this a crypto hangover his words and stated that the excess inventory of mid-range cards would take one to two quarters to correct Nvidia of course has an upcoming 2016 chat some point whether it be RT x with gtx we don't yet know but one of the consequences of this oversupply of gtx 1060 s could be that the mid range during cards have some kind of delay or other impact that we're just not familiar with yet so we'll see the ship dates could potentially be pushed back as inventories recede but just depends on how well there's 1060 sell for this final quarter of the year and next up board partners have too much inventory it's related to the previous one so according to new reports from digit x motherboard and GPU makers in taiwan which is most of them that you're familiar with are facing revenue declines and shrinking margins stemming from multiple factors in third quarter of 2018 one of the biggest ones is intel's shortage of 14 nanometer this has been a major story of the last couple of months now to the point where intel starting to push some of its Manufacturing to TSMC reported on that a couple of weeks ago they're also pushing their some of their chipsets 40 nanometer very low-end chipsets back to 22 nanometers so that's also worthy of note h-series chipsets and the 300 line so Intel CPU shortage is a big one that's impacting GPU and motherboard makers primarily motherboard on that side the erosion of demand from crypto miners of course impacting the video card board partners significantly and then the us-china trade war that's expected to have a major tariff hike January 1st 2019 Asus and gigabyte are both taiwan-based EVGA has a large headquarters in Taiwan a messiah has a large headquarters in Taiwan most of these companies sans gigabyte do actually including you might do their largest volume manufacturing in China gigabyte has a smaller facility in Taiwan believe it's in Tao yen not sure but we've been there we have a video on it but that's a small facility it's kind of an outlier the other companies don't really manufacture much outside of China so that's going to affect things going forward as well these ill effects have caused companies like asus and gigabyte to report excess inventories as motherboard and video card shipments are down from last year year-over-year this means that revenue was below peak expectations for the holiday season as well as for this quarter in general so for instance asus saw a 43% dip in profits for third quarter 2018 gigabyte for their part only netted four point two seven million dollars in profits for third quarter 2018 which is the lowest recorded for gigabyte since third quarter 2008 big chains there what's worse is these trends are expected to continue into 2019 gigabyte is expecting to see its profits cut in half for first quarter 19 compared to the same quarter last year and according to digit times may swing into the red for fourth quarter of 2018 Intel and NVIDIA are also affected here Intel's widely publicized CPU shortage of course is a major factor for their well-being and Nvidia's price seat new GPUs make for problems for both companies both of these companies also work with board partners whether that's motherboards or video cards and that's why you're seeing the effects that stem to them as well so then Intel and and are expected to hike prices in 2019 for their chips in a bid to maintain profits which will further put pressure on motherboard and adding board partners and likely lead to hardware prices rising in 2019 alongside the tariffs change so we'll keep an eye on it but not great news there for us even though it's the companies who are primarily affected right now RDX 2060 this is a sort of a rumor but not really kind of depends I look at it so the 2060 benchmark was kind of leaked through final fantasy again final fantasy 15 s database is a popular place these days for these types of updates we saw with rx 590 we've seen it with an yet unidentified Vega part and if you want to be cynical you might think that the company has pushed these types of things out to these benchmark databases by accident to create some buzz or maybe undercut their competitors releasing products in a similar category and that might be what's happening but either way he RT X 2060 appeared there the rx 590 appeared there recently ahead of its eventual release and now it appears the 2060 has serviced in the extremely flawed benchmark as well the one that we've talked about in the past and we use the our tax monitor moniker unassumingly here because there's yet confirmation about whether it's gonna be RT X or GTX and there's plenty of speculation that mid-range touring cards won't be RT X cable we've been among that group because if you look at it is a 2060 really going to have enough mm to really push RTS really push any kind of real-time rate raising when it still has to combat actual general performance because it's not the highest tier card on the market or in the stack at any rate art here 2060 was purportedly benchmark at 4k resolution in Final Fantasy 15 s benchmark and that has a high quality preset leading to a score of 25 89 points for comparison at handily beats both the new rx 590 and the GTX 1060 with a barely trailing score behind a gtx 1070 at 27 48 points there's some variance there also the benchmark is bad but it gives you a basic idea anyway next so as with all these leaks and rumors liberal amount of salt here the RX 590 was actually proven in this one so they're not all far-fetched but you know keep it keeping my that that's not confirmation just something that popped up online as cloud computing becomes more pervasive in daily life data centers demand for high-energy airs on the side of insatiable data centers across the globe are currently using 416 terawatt hours of electricity which is an estimated two percent of global power global power for data centers has been a concern for some time now as they consume and waste enough energy to power small cities data in the cloud is expected to quintuple between 2016 and 2021 with cloud traffic estimated to account for over 95% of data center traffic the succeeds previous predictions that global cloud traffic would double every four years and as such data centers are becoming increasingly scrutinized as the power concerns come into play going forward data centers will be expected to reduce IT emissions store data more efficiently and build more scalable facilities the SN ia storage networking Industry Association emerald program at that aims to do just that with aiding and scalability and reducing emissions and increasing storage efficiency we have a link to that coverage below in the show notes if you want to read more about what sni a is doing or if Nia if you prefer so we got an email this morning from Samsung's PR firm that they work with saying that their new 860 QB o SSDs based on QL seen and will use the new SATA technology it's not new it's it was released in 2009 for say two three and two thousand four SATA but and we did actually email back and say so just to make sure we're not missing anything here what's new about SATA is there like a new gen there's SATA 4 no one's told me about nope just a PR firm getting the words wrong so what is new is the 860 QV SSDs not say that just to be really clear they're so SSD makers are getting on board with kiosk scene at an end this can be explained in our previous how NAND works video if you want to learn more about what mlct LCS I'll see all that stuff really means ultimately and the effect is you get higher density storage for a lower price with less endurance and less performance this is a trade-off yeah more storage but it might die it will die sooner and the performance isn't as good and those are absolutes so QL is being used to bring terabyte SSDs into the fold that more aggressive pricing although recently will link one of these below maybe there's been discount sales new pricing on one terabyte SSD said about 120 hundred fifty dollars on how good of an SSD you get it's pretty damn good but it can always be cheaper apparently so that's where qlc comes in and this looks like it's been on the market roadmap since october at this point but they're finally releasing and appearing online samsung qbo drives will adhere to the two and a half inch SSD form factor we'll use the old SATA 3 interface likely no surprise to anyone there the drivers will use qlc 3d NAND which focuses on density rather than performance an early test show qlc lacking and write performance and endurance with endurance being the biggest point of concern that buyers should consider that bu the drives offered dense storage at a low cost so might be a trade-off that's worth it for some use cases despite that Samsung's qbo drives are rated for 550 megabyte per second or 520 megabyte per second sequential read and write speeds and up to 96 thousand or 89 thousand even write random IOPS for K random so far there looked to be three capacities one two and four terabytes official pricing hasn't been revealed or at least at the time of filming this but the qbo drives should be cheaper in general than the Evo or pro family at similar capacities and those prices are probably out there at this point when it goes live but that's the point of qlc it'd be cheaper at the same capacity so Samsung's qbo drives are currently expected for December 2018 and wide availability but Samsung hasn't made that official last one Intel and the 40 nanometers shortage mentioned a few times already the show but Intel's shortage puts partners on hold through March now so multiple PC vendors and some smaller vendors who are working with Intel directly on high unexpectedly high demand parts have confirmed and come forward that Intel's 14 nanometer shortage is beginning to affect their businesses as well as partners where's a rough place to be what are you gonna do you can't make the trip yourself so just last week and tell me clear its plans to slash DIY CPU availability to the channel by about 2 million units affecting all of us and instead directing that allocation toward OMS and system builders some of them more some of them will make better use of those chips so it seems that Gemini Lake s OCS are so backlogged now that vendors are expecting and manufacturers expecting to wait until February or March 2019 for orders hard Colonels Odroid h2 is an x86 based product single board mini PC that uses the Celeron J 4105 and apparently that company undershot demand for the system by so much and sold through its 2000 products in about 24 hours that it's become a problem that they just hold somebody because they can't get more inventory so they're part of the the group that's been confirming these reports of shortages Intel reports that it can't deliver anymore Gemini Lake chips until February or March and can't even confirm a delivery schedule until January so that's potentially on the optimistic side for those those months and so I was already off-loaded some of its entry-level chip production to TSM see they've offloaded some of the chipset production as well or brought it back to 22 nanometer and rumors have suggested SOC may become out sourced in addition to these other parts but if it keeps production going and that's what they need to do so that's it for this one as always you can go to store doc here in Texas net not as always brand new you can pick up this shirt there if you'd like to check it out and you can also go to patreon.com/scishow his actual sounds that directly we need to do to other ask G on patreon tasks to UM look at that in soon this week probably thanks for watching and subscribe for more I'll see you all next time