Gadgetory

welcome back to the hardware unboxed news corner it's good to be back for the second week in a row in our usual Friday slot but perhaps there hasn't been as much news this week as we'd normally see I guess that's what tends to happen when we get close to December the news gets dried up a little bit as companies mostly focus on holiday sales and preparing for bigger events in 2019 like see yes still a few interesting stories though so let's kick things off first story from this week is more of a rumor that I wanted to get out of the way early because it's generated a bit of discussion according to some random person on a Taiwanese forum as person on wucf tech Intel is working on a new generation of s-series desktop processors called common lake that will bring 10 cores manufactured using 14 animators the CPU is also said to use a dual ring bus interconnect and that's basically all the information that was shared down face value this seems reasonable over the past few years intel has been steadily increasing the core count of their flagship desktop CPUs from four cores with seventh gen processes up to eight cores with current ninth gen parts so moving to 10 cores with the future processor sounds about right Manufacturing the chip on 40 nanometers also is a possibility given Intel struggles with 10 nanometers and without any architectural changes to drive performance improvements simply adding more cores is one way to speed up a new chip in multi-core workloads Intel of course we'll need a new CPU to compete with third-generation AMD rising CPUs which have been built on 7 nanometers and we use the company's overhauled Zen 2 architecture there's the possibility these CPUs will pack up to 16 cores with higher clock speeds and major improvements to make them more competitive with current generation Intel silicon so if Intel can't get a 10 nanometer chip out they're basically left with no choice but to add more cores on 40 nanometers but like with a lot of rumors this one is filled with red flags firstly it's a random post on a Taiwanese forum I mean come on that is not some sort of verified source that has delivered accurate information in the past literally anyone can post any rubbish on a foreign language forum that doesn't mean it's gentlemen and secondly while the fate of Intel's 10 nanometers is still up in the air the word from the company at the moment is they are on track to ship 10 animated products in 2019 whether that's a cut down version of intel's original 10 nanometer plans or the real 10 nanometers is unclear but at this stage we're expecting something 10 nanometers next year plus it seems Intel has done already all it can do on their 14 nanometer plus plus note the current core o 919 900k runs hot and consumes a ton of power and that won't get any better if you try and shove another two cores into the mix so this woman doesn't smell quite right to me I'd certainly be waiting until 2019 to see what Intel has in store there's another reason why waiting until 2019 might be a good idea Intel is set to discuss their next-generation CPU architecture at an event on December 11th if Intel are ready to talk about the next architecture it would certainly be strange to then go and race a new comet-like processor on 40 nanometer plus plus that basically it just adds two more cores with roughly the same architecture as Skylink of course comet-like could be using an overhauled architecture on 14 nanometer that's a possibility if Intel are going to use a dual ring bus design but in the past Intel haven't bothered to hold architecture events to talk about the minor differences between skylake cable a canned coffee like instead leaving most of those announcements to the actual product unveils later in the year you'd think if Intel we're holding an architecture event this far ahead of any new CPUs there would be something interesting to talk about in any case the fact the event is relating to CPU architectures means the event is not about GPUs there were some rumors floating around that Intel would use their december event to unveiled their discrete GPU architecture but those rumors were a load of BS because interests confirm the event is solely about CPUs with Intel still targeting 2024 GPUs it would certainly be too early to be talking about GPS at this stage there naturally there's a lot of excitement about what Intel will do in that space samsung has launched a new affordable SSD line called the 860 couvreux yes QV oh these drives are available in a 2.5 inch form factor and interface over SATA offering acceptable performance for a budget drive that slots in below the 860 Evo the name couvreux refers to the fact these drives are using new qlc memory which can store four bits per cell and is set to become the standard across cheaper drives the cool thing about the eight-six DQ bro line is the drives come at a cost of just fifteen cents per gigabyte and are available in 1 2 and 4 terabyte capacities so the one terabyte model is one hundred and fifty dollars the two terabyte $300 and the four terabyte is $600 right speeds aren't fantastic due to the nature of qlc but it's hard to pass up that sort of value if you need a high-capacity affordable SSD AMD has launched a new CPU and cool a bundle that gives buys the beefier wraith max cooler with either the risin 5 2600 x or the risin 7 2700 these processes normally come with the wraith spire or wraith spire LED coolers which are decent enough for a box cooler but the max is a fair bit larger and handles overclocking better thanks to its 200 watt heat dissipation rating in the UK the wraith max bundle costs around 15 to 20 pounds more than the cpu with the standard box cooler the wraith max alone cost 50 pounds so it's decent value if you were after a better air cooler for your rice and processor the bundles are also expected to hit amazon Newegg and other retailers soon both MSI and ZOTAC have jumped onboard the geforce gtx 1060 with gddr5 x memory bandwagon these cards are basically the same as the existing gtx 1066 gigabyte right down to core configurations clock speeds and even memory clock speeds so despite the cards using gddr5 X instead of gddr5 they're still clocked at 8 gigabits per second on the memory in some ways that's good news for consumers as there should be no performance difference between the gddr5 and gddr5 X versions of the GTX 1060 what these new versions will provide is extra memory overclocking Headroom the cards also reportedly using GP 104 silicon rather than CP 106 although again Nvidia is cutting this GPU down to GTX 1060 size anyway so there's no real difference here the MSI model is called the GTX 1066 gigabyte armor ocv 1 while the zotac version has the catchy name of gtx 1066 gigabyte g5x destroyer as rock has launched a new mid-range x3 99 motherboard called the phantom gaming 6 this new board is designed to sit below the x3 99 Taichi and as rocks Lana but it still includes good features like support for up to 3 Way SLI and crossfire 3 m dot 2 slots Jul 8 p.m. hour inputs and USB see the vrm is perhaps the biggest area where as rock has cut down compared to the Taichi here we're looking at according to as rock and 8 phase design however as Drock makes it clear in their marketing materials that this board is only designed for AMD's 180 watts thread Ripper CPU so that means everything up to the 16 chord 2950 X the more power-hungry 250 watt 32 core 2990 WX is not meant to be used with this board which isn't surprising considering the mid tier vrm although you would have to wonder how 29 50 X overclocking would go on this 8 phase design there's no word on pricing or availability at this stage though a suit is set to launch a new display called the ROG Strix XG 32 bqr shortly packing a 2560 by 1440 V a panel a maximum 144 Hertz for a fresh straight and free sync to HDR certification however I don't expect the HDR experience to be all that good considering the panel only conforms to the Vaser display hgr 400 specification and doesn't appear to have local dimming of any kind peak brightness only tops out at 450 nits though there is 94% DCI p3 coverage so it will be a wide gamut monitor no word on pricing at this stage though these specs were probably looking around the 400 to 500 dollar mark final story for this week concerns AMD's Radeon rx 580 2048 SP which we first covered on the channel in news corner a fair while back well I met over at gamers Nexus managed to get hold of one of these 2048 SP models and confirm that it is indeed just a pre overclocked rx 570 the box even lists rx 580 on it despite performing like the rx 570 so it's very deceptive to say the least not good stuff an AMD though if you are interested to see how the rx 580 2048 SP ended up here over the game is Nexus and check out their full review that's it for this week's news corner before I go just want to say a big thanks to everyone that supported the channel over the last few years we've just passed 300,000 subscribers which is a neat little milestone for hardware our box would have been possible without you guys clicking on her videos and listening to to all these talked about PC hardware as always you can subscribe for news corner around this time every week consider supporting us on patreon to get access to our monthly live streams and exclusive disco chat I'll catch you in the next one you you