Gadgetory

our coverage of Computex 2017 is brought to you by the Corsair 1 and synergy you can check them out at the link in the video description I have been conspicuously silent about Intel's new high end desktop X $2.99 platform and the CPUs that they just announced to go with it and this was on purpose but probably not for the reasons that you think I've spent the last few days walking the show floor chatting with industry folks and generally trying to wrap my head around what the actual hell it is that Intel's trying to do with this launch before we get into that though a primer on X 299 so socket 2011 v3 is old news socket 20 66 is the hot new girl in class with the new chipset come support for up to seven series skylake based Intel Core i nine processors we get up to quad-channel ddr4 memory running at up to ddr4 26 66 megahertz we get up to 44 PCI Express Lanes for massive expansion up to greatly expanded nvme and obtain storage capabilities and up to 2 preferred turbo max cores that run at higher boost frequencies well what's with all this up to I'll get to that first let's take a look at the board's so intel's partners have been out in full force with support for this new tech a since we're showing about half a dozen boards based on the same basic DNA each with some standout features the rampage fix extreme includes dual water flow sensors to go with the pump headers that are standard on this generation their Deluxe board includes 802.11 80 multi gigabit Wireless and an OLED postin system monitoring display and the tough smart one comes with in the usual extra thermal sensors tough armor and the freaking graphics card sag holder gigabytes digital RGB header allows lighting effects with individually addressable LED strips they are smart fan 5 software now allows fans to be turned off outright if system temperatures allow it a huge boom to silence freaks like me they've gone ham on USB 3.1 10 gigabit ports including like the others support for the new type-c front panel spec and they were showing off for PCIe nvme SSDs running in raid which in and of itself isn't exactly groundbreaking but the fact that they were running off of the CPU and they were bootable is MSI on the subject of nvme has boards with native support for up to 5 m dot two SSDs and is putting a really strong emphasis on cooling for them like everyone else they've given a lot of thought to the aesthetics of their board you can even 3d print accessories from template and swap cooler covers in some cases and unlike everybody else this is interesting they've got a white or red LED that tells you what kind of CPU you've got installed and in turn that how many of the features that you're looking at on the board are actually going to be enabled which I guess brings us to a fairly natural conclusion to the nicely scripted part of this video because I've got some rough notes for some other stuff that I've got to get off my back but to do that I think it's probably better if we go for a little walk going back to my earlier question what what is this platform quite honestly what it looks like to me is that Intel themselves can't really decide it's like they've changed their mind multiple times and the whole thing just seems like this this knee-jerk reaction to AMD's announcement of they're up to 16 core 32 threads thread Ripper platform and then I mean some of the things they're doing look just kind of like a 1/2 desperate attempt to appease enthusiasts and gamers who if they feel anything like me we're you know the mainstream has been stuck with quad-core processors for the last 10 years and even on the enthusiast level we're lucky to get another 2 cores and last time around we even had to pay another $700 just for the privilege of going from 8 to 10 course with the new Broadwell II generation I mean to be clear for me personally a lot of this stuff can only be good I mean high core count overclockable water-cooled servers that that's right in my wheelhouse that's perfect and when you're someone who doesn't pay for hardware then it's expensive no problem I mean not to mention that as a hardware enthusiast I'm not going to be struggling to pair the correct board and the correct memory and the correct TPU together to make sure that I'm getting the most out of the entire platform cause honestly that's one of the biggest problems with a platform right now it's really confusing K V Lake X muddies the water in a way that just makes absolutely no sense for Intel to do I mean I've spoken to system integrators here at the show I'm not going to name them by name or anything but they flat out said we're not going to support this this aspect of the platform is a mess because what is kV Lake acts like on the surface it sounds like they've gone ahead and they've added the latest architecture to this platform in some you know amazing Wow we engineered a new generation overnight kind of way but what actually happened was they took the existing cable 8 processors on the main stream platform and just like they pulled the lawn to socket 2066 the only difference between the 7740 and the 7640 compared to the socket 1151 versions is that they're rated at 20 hired TDPS their cloths a hundred megahertz higher and Intel is promising better overclocking on them but at the end of the day am I going to spend another hundred dollars on a board just for that and why on earth would Intel neuter all the features on the motherboard just for the sake of me being able to run a chip at like a little bit higher frequency they don't have four PCI Express Lanes they still only got sixteen and making matters even more confusing they only run dual channel memory still so when you go and you buy an X $2.99 motherboard it can have anywhere from four to eight memory slots on it which might support two sets of dual channel memory a single set of quad channel memory or two sets of quad channel memories so you might actually have bin slots that don't work if you install a KT like XE to you oh and I mean right this is crazy too I even forgot the part how X $2.99 boards aren't going to have all the connectors for onboard graphics so the onboard graphics are fused off which wouldn't inherently be a huge problem I expect someone spending you know 300 to 600 dollars on a motherboard to buy a dedicated graphics card but the issue is that then you can even use features that you would be able to on the mainstream platform like quick sync for example that rely on the integrated GPU in order to function KDH just makes no sense at all okay so now let's talk about those reactionary hike or count CPUs again I'm not complaining an 18 Core Extreme Edition that's overclockable sounds great to me but everyone in there dog knows that Intel was only planning to use the low core count version of their xeon processors to create their high-end desktop platform so that was going to be up to 12 cores and surprise surprise here at the show the only tips they're showing are based on that one so what Intel did is they saw Ono AMD has red gripper there they're making us look bad by announcing this stuff that people really want a quick announce something even though you know we don't know how much power it's going to consume we don't know what clock speeds is going to run at we don't know how much we're going to charge for it we just we need to make sure we're announcing something so that when AMD launches thread Ripper we're not caught completely with our pants down and no way to react to it but here's the problem they're taking this wait-and-see approach for a reason that I personally don't really like they want to see what thread Ripper turns into before they commit to what they're going to deliver to the consumer and that's exactly the problem that they're running up against in the first place here here's some corporate strategy advice free of charge and help build the best thing you can for the best price that you can deliver it and you're not going to get blindsided by a competitor that walks in and delivers something way better for a lower price so we've got this really confusing platform we've got these these mid core counts harvested Zeon's on the high end desktop platform that are going to be differentiated by having lots of PCI Express Lanes which i think is what gives them the core i9 designation we're going to have the normal chip some of which still have lots of PCI Express Lanes and go up to 12 cores all of the ones I've mentioned so far support quad channel memory and anywhere from 28 to 44 PCI Express Lanes then we're going to have KB Lake X which only supports 16 PCI Express lanes and get this the motherboard manufacturers have to support any chip that you could put in the socket on every single board how do you build a board around 16 to 44 PCI Express Lanes dual to quad channel memory and anywhere from 4 to 18 cores the whole launch is so rushed that gigabyte flat-out isn't supporting Thunderball three on any of their ex 299 boards because they didn't have time to go through the certification process and the whole thing is confusing as hell too not just the general consumer but even enthusiasts and I mean there's other stuff here that just makes no sense to me as well be Rock okay so I talked about how you can have you know up to you know better support for nvme storage than ever before so this is a really cool feature you can actually run bootable raid through the CPU rather than letting it get bottlenecks by the chipset now with nvme devices but out of the box Intel is only supporting raid zero and if you want to run raid 1 or raid 10 you need to buy a $99 physical key and plug it into the board and if you want to support raid 5 on top of all that other stuff you're going to pay another $300 like I get that they're worried about cannibalizing there's V on sales and their server and high-end workstation sales with this platform but this seems like such a step backwards on a consumer product going back to buying like rain cheese and sticking them onto a motherboard and as if that wasn't an T consumer enough the word on the street now and I really hope they reverse this decision if it is one is that this bootable raise this be Rock feature is only going to work with Intel branded nvme SSDs they don't make the best nvme SSDs at least not till octane lands so they're basically going out here's the highest end you know enthusiast thing oh by the way put some you know SSDs in here for your wicked raid array that aren't even the best on the market so I'm sorry if this video was a little more rambley than what I usually do and maybe a little longer than what I do these days but I guess it just felt appropriate given the the frustration that I've had I mean you know I've been asking for higher core count and I've been you know asking for really a lot of the things that they're doing right now which like it's funny because here I am complaining about it but what's frustrating is not that they're doing it what's frustrating is my perception of the reasons that they're doing it so I guess that's pretty much it like leave a comment letting me know your guys's thought am I am I being nitpicky or are the criticisms fair leave a comment below and let's let's at least talk about it if Intel is going to come across this video I'd love for them to get some real feedback not just for me but also from you guys so thanks for watching this video here from Computex 2017 and beautiful Taiwan a huge shout out to Corsair for allowing us to be here the Corsair one is their 12 liter powerhouse of a gaming machine that's available with up to a GT X 1080 graphics card with a 1080p eye version coming soon and a huge shout out to synergy for offering 25% off their mouse and keyboard sharing software to all of our viewers and you can find links to both of those in the video description