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Post by Admin on Apr 5, 2020 16:54:53 GMT
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Post by Admin on Apr 17, 2020 13:25:44 GMT
Guru3D Spring 2020 PC Buyers Guide It has been around 4-5 months since the last version of this guide, and the world is very much a changed place since then. The pandemic of the SARS-COV-2 / COVID-19 virus has thoroughly left its mark on 2020, having shut entire nations down. This article has been in the works for a fair while but we wanted to wait, but then decided that during this outbreak, many people will purchase or buy a (Game) PC for home-usage. www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/guru3d-spring-2020-pc-buyer-guide,1.html
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Post by Admin on Oct 5, 2020 17:39:38 GMT
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Post by Admin on Nov 6, 2020 21:26:23 GMT
NEW RASPBERRY PI 400 IS A COMPUTER IN A KEYBOARD FOR $70 hackaday.com/2020/11/02/new-raspberry-pi-400-is-a-computer-in-a-keyboard-for-70/The newest Raspberry Pi 400 almost-all-in-one computer is very, very slick. Fitting in the size of a small portable keyboard, it’s got a Pi 4 processor of the 20% speedier 1.8 GHz variety, 4 GB of RAM, wireless, Ethernet, dual HDMI outputs, and even a 40-pin Raspberry Standard IDE-cable style header on the back. For $70 retail, it’s basically a steal, if it’s the kind of thing you’re looking for because it has $55 dollars worth of Raspberry Pi 4 inside. In some sense, it’s getting dangerously close to fulfilling the Raspberry Pi Dream. (And it’s got one more trick up it’s sleeve in the form of a huge chunk of aluminum heat-sinked to the CPU that makes us think “overclocking”.) We remember the founding dream of the Raspberry Pi as if it were just about a decade ago: to build a computer cheap enough that it would be within everyone’s reach, so that every school kid could have one, bringing us into a world of global computer literacy. That’s a damn big goal, and while they succeeded on the first count early on, putting together a $35 single-board computer, the gigantic second part of that master plan is still a work in progress. As ubiquitous as the Raspberry Pi is in our circles, it’s still got a ways to go with the general population.
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Post by Admin on Nov 17, 2020 18:42:58 GMT
NVIDIA Announces the A100 80GB GPU for AI Supercomputing www.techpowerup.com/274740/nvidia-announces-the-a100-80gb-gpu-for-ai-supercomputingNVIDIA today unveiled the NVIDIA A100 80 GB GPU—the latest innovation powering the NVIDIA HGX AI supercomputing platform—with twice the memory of its predecessor, providing researchers and engineers unprecedented speed and performance to unlock the next wave of AI and scientific breakthroughs. The new A100 with HBM2E technology doubles the A100 40 GB GPU's high-bandwidth memory to 80 GB and delivers over 2 terabytes per second of memory bandwidth. This allows data to be fed quickly to A100, the world's fastest data center GPU, enabling researchers to accelerate their applications even faster and take on even larger models and datasets. "Achieving state-of-the-art results in HPC and AI research requires building the biggest models, but these demand more memory capacity and bandwidth than ever before," said Bryan Catanzaro, vice president of applied deep learning research at NVIDIA. "The A100 80 GB GPU provides double the memory of its predecessor, which was introduced just six months ago, and breaks the 2 TB per second barrier, enabling researchers to tackle the world's most important scientific and big data challenges."
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Post by Admin on Nov 19, 2020 22:14:58 GMT
NVIDIA's latest desktop workstation has four 80GB GPUsMeet the DGX Station A100. www.engadget.com/nvidia-dgx-station-a100-80gb-tensor-core-gpu-announcement-140027589.htmlBack in May, NVIDIA announced a ridiculously powerful GPU called the A100. The card was designed for data center systems, however, such as the company’s own DGX A100, rather than anything that the average consumer would run at home. Today, the company has announced the DGX Station A100 which, as the name implies, has the form factor of a desk-bound workstation. It comes with four A100 GPUs — either the 40GB model that the original DGX A100 system came with, or a new 80GB version. If customers go with the latter, they’ll have 320GB of GPU memory to play with. (We’re not jealous at all…) Like the DGX A100, the DGX Station A100 is meant for the science and business world. The kind of research and engineering outfits that are crunching massive datasets and investing heavily in machine learning and artificial intelligence. As my colleague Chris Schodt explained earlier this year (watch his explainer, it’s seriously good), you won’t be gaming on an A100 card anytime soon. It leverages an architecture called Ampere, however, which is now being used in consumer cards such as the GeForce RTX 3080. So while you can’t have an 80GB GPU in your gaming PC, it is possible to leverage some of the same technologies… provided you still have some serious cash to burn. According to NVIDIA, the DGX Station A100 offers “data center performance without a data center.” That means it plugs into a standard wall outlet and doesn’t require a data center-grade cooling system. Inside the gold-ish case, you’ll find a 64-core AMD CPU with 512GB of memory and a 7.68TB NVME SSD. It’s the only workgroup server that supports NVIDIA’s Multi-Instance GPU (MIG) technology, the company explained in a press release. That means a single DGX Station A100 can provide 28 separate GPU instances for parallel jobs or multiple users to access. BMW, Lockheed Martin, NTT Docomo and the Pacific Northwest Laboratory have already adopted DGX Stations for some of their AI and research-focused work. The DGX Station A100 doesn’t make its data center sibling obsolete, though. NVIDIA announced today that the standard DGX A100 will be sold with its new 80GB GPU, doubling memory capacity to 640GB per system. An upgrade option will also be available for customers who have already purchased the DGX A100 with four 40GB A100 cards (320GB). NVIDIA hasn’t disclosed any pricing for its new enterprise-grade hardware, but for context, the original DGX A100 launched with a starting sticker price of $199,000 back in May.
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Post by Admin on Nov 21, 2020 21:31:00 GMT
GIGABYTE’s New AMD BRIX Series: Now With AMD Ryzen 4000U Renoir! www.anandtech.com/show/16265/gigabytes-new-amd-brix-series-now-with-amd-ryzen-4000u-renoirOne of the key questions when AMD launched its latest Ryzen Mobile processor family, Renoir, was when the chip would be available in the Mini-PC space. At the time, AMD made motions saying that the key market they were focusing on was for laptops, but they wouldn’t preclude partners that were interested in building miniature systems. We’re starting to see a few of them trickle through into the market now, and GIGABYTE is also going down this route with its BRIX series. The new BRIX S Mini-PCs will be offered with up to a Ryzen 7 4700U, with Vega graphics, M.2 support, Wi-Fi 6, and 2.5 gigabit Ethernet The History GIGABYTE briefly toyed with AMD versions of its BRIX almost seven years ago now in 2013, using Richland-based dual core processors and AMD mobile graphics. These units, while an interesting foray into AMD small form factor machines, were a hot mess – I purchased a unit recently and it overheats to the point of shutdown! It was a rushed product with bad cooling, and was removed from the market as quickly as it had arrived. At that point we weren’t sure we would see other AMD Mini-PCs, and I was somewhat aware that the focus for these companies was solely on Intel. The Present With Zen, and now Zen2, that has changed. It would appear that a number of companies like GIGABYTE and its competitors now see AMD’s mobile offerings as competitive in this Mini-PC space where batteries aren’t needed. Because these processors are soldered on like in the mobile form factor, a system comes as a unit with the processor attached, and so finding the right performance in the right form factor where there is demand are all dimensions to the puzzle to ensure a relevant product.
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Post by Admin on Jan 15, 2021 12:39:23 GMT
BeagleV: An Affordable RISC-V Computer Designed to Run LinuxBeagleV is an affordable RISC-V computer designed to run Linux for artificial intelligence projects. news.itsfoss.com/beaglev-announcement/www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2021/01/beaglev-risc-v-board-for-linuxBeagleV is a single board computer (SBC) that runs Linux out of the box. The computer has been announced by Seeed Studio and Beagleboard.org in collaboration with SiFive (Star Five). The BeagleV runs on a RISC-V CPU that is capable of running Linux and can also be used in edge compute applications such as training autonomous vehicles, object detection, speech processing and many more workloads related to AI. The mainstream computers are powered by Intel and AMD’s processors based on x86 architecture. Another alternative is ARM processors based on RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer) architecture. For its smaller size and relatively lower power consumption, ARM processors are preferred for single board computers. So, what about RISC-V then? Well, ARM is a brand, a company that makes these processors or license them. On the other hand, RISC-V is not a company. It’s just a standard. An open standard and no licensing attached to it. This means RISC-V processor can be manufactured by any hardware vendor. In BeagleV, the RISC-V processor is from SiFive, a company specializing in RISC-V processors. This makes BeagleV running on open source software as well as open hardware.
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Post by Admin on Jan 31, 2021 13:47:19 GMT
A Desktop Quantum Computer for Just $5,000 A cheap, portable quantum computer, aimed at schools and colleges will be launched later this year. www.discovermagazine.com/technology/a-desktop-quantum-computer-for-just-usd5-000A Chinese start-up has unveiled plans to sell a desktop quantum computer costing less than $5,000. The new portable device is one of a range called SpinQ, aimed at schools and colleges. It is made by the Shenzhen SpinQ Technology, based in Shenzhen, China. This is not the company’s first quantum computer. Last year, it started selling a desktop quantum computer for around $50,000. The desk in question would need to be sturdy given that the device weighs a hefty 55kg (121 lbs)—about the weight of a small adult. But the new machine will be simpler, more portable and cheaper. “This simplified version is expected to be released in the fourth quarter of 2021, such that it can be more affordable for most K-12 schools around the world,” say the team behind the device. The price of the machine is in stark contrast to other quantum computers supplied by companies such as D-Wave, which cost in the region of $10 million and can process more than 50 qubits. By contrast, the SpinQ machine is much less powerful, able to process just 2 qubits, and relies on an entirely different technology called nuclear magnetic resonance. This works by trapping specially selected molecules in a powerful magnetic field and then zapping them with radio frequency pulses to manipulate the spins of the atoms they contain. After each set of radio pulses, the atoms relax and emit their own radio frequency signals, which reveal their new state. In this way, it is possible to flip the spin of atoms—equivalent to changing a 0 into 1 – and make the spins of neighboring atoms interact, which can simulate mathematical operations, and finally to record the result. The compound at the heart of the SpinQ machine is dimethylphosphite, a tetrahedral molecule consisting of one phosphorous atom, one hydrogen atom, an oxygen and two CH3O groups. This takes the form of colorless liquid at room temperature. Dimethylphosphite is ideal because the phosphorous and hydrogen atoms are bonded to each other and close enough to interact while also capable of being manipulated independently. To ensure that the radio signals from the hydrogen and phosphorus atoms are strong enough to pick up, a huge number of molecules must be used, about 10^15 of them. That requires a few drops of liquid, which sit in a small vial in the middle of the powerful magnetic field. The technique is well understood and has long been used to make medical images of the body. Indeed, the first quantum computers built in the 1990s used exactly the same approach. Superconducting Magnets Back then, this approach was expensive because magnetic fields strong enough to do the job could only be created by powerful superconducting magnets. These must be cooled to the temperature of liquid helium, a difficult task requiring expensive, bulky equipment. But the SpinQ team use permanent magnets instead. These can now produce fields of up to a Tesla in strength, tens of thousands of times stronger than the Earth’s field. For quantum computing, the field must also be highly regular. So the team employs a technique called shimming that generates another magnetic field capable of cancelling out any irregularities in the stronger field. The result is a hugely powerful, regular magnetic field. And that’s it. The machine just needs to be connected to an ordinary computer with a software package capable of controlling it. Although it processes only 2 qubits, the SpinQ device is capable of a number of quintessential quantum calculations. For example, it can implement a version of Grover’s algorithm, which can search through a database more quickly than a classical algorithm. With only 2 qubits, none of these algorithms will be any more powerful than is possible with a conventional computer. Indeed, they don’t come close. But the point is to demonstrate quantum computation and allow students to try it themselves. The SpinQ team say they have shipped their earlier design—called SpinQ Gemini -- to institutions in Canada, Taiwan and China. But at $50,000 a piece, these places need to be well resourced. Which is why the company is launching the cheaper version later this year based on the same platform. It is also working on a more powerful device that can process 3 or 4 qubits. However, these devices will never match the power of the quantum computers that Google, IBM, Microsoft and others are toying with. One of the drawbacks of quantum computation based on nuclear magnetic resonance is that the machines cannot handle more than a dozen or so qubits. Indeed, there is some debate over whether these kinds of calculations are truly quantum at all. But the makers of SpinQ devices are unlikely to be phased by this. Their goal is education. “We believe that low-cost portable quantum computer products will facilitate hands-on experience for teaching quantum computing at all levels,” they say. Ref: arxiv.org/abs/2101.10017 : SpinQ Gemini: A Desktop Quantum Computer for Education and Research
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Post by Admin on Feb 6, 2021 20:10:12 GMT
Who needs a supercomputer? Your desktop PC and a GPU might be enough to solve some of the largest problems A new method significantly reduces the amount of memory needed for brain simulations, freeing some AI models from the need for a supercomputer. www.zdnet.com/article/who-needs-a-supercomputer-your-desktop-pc-and-a-gpu-might-be-enough-to-solve-some-of-the-largest-problems/Armed with a single turbocharged GPU, a team of researchers have successfully simulated part of a monkey's brain – something that normally requires a powerful and expensive supercomputer, but which the scientists maintain can now be carried out on a desktop PC. The experiment, which involves simulating millions of neurons, as well as the billions of connections between those neurons, was performed by researchers from the University of Sussex using a single desktop PC and latest-generation Graphical Processing Units (GPUs). While GPUs have long been leveraged to accelerate computation processes for AI models, running a model of this size on hardware that could be found in most gamers' bedrooms is a first. Using a new method they developed, the researchers effectively created a model of a macaque's visual cortex, complete with billions of synapses, which previously could only be simulated on a supercomputer.
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Post by Admin on Feb 16, 2021 14:52:20 GMT
Guru3D Q1 Winter 20/21 PC Buyer Guide www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/guru3d-q1-winter-2021-pc-buyer-guide,1.html It has been a while since the last version of this guide; the world is very much a changed place since then. The pandemic of the SARS-COV-2 / COVID-19 virus has thoroughly left its mark on 2020 and 2021. This article has been in the works for a fair while, but we wanted to wait for prices and availability to settle but then decided to move forward.
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Post by Admin on Feb 16, 2021 18:54:47 GMT
Next-Gen HAMR Platters Promise 80TB Hard Drives We're about to get 20 terabyte hard drives, but the path looks clear to scale up to 80TB. www.pcmag.com/news/next-gen-hamr-platters-promise-80tb-hard-drivesAs the world's demand for storage continues to grow, so does the need to find the next storage density breakthrough. It looks like one just happened, though, and it paves the way to 80TB hard drives. As AnandTech reports, Japanese company Showa Denko K.K. (SDK) is the world's largest manufacturer of hard drive platters, which are the disks stacked inside each drive to store the data. This week SDK announced it had improved upon Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR) technology to allow for next-generation hard drives. HAMR works by temporarily heating the disk material making it more receptive to magnetic effects, in turn that allows the writing of data to smaller regions and therefore increases the data density per platter. Later this year Seagate will start shipping 20TB hard drives that use HAMR technology, but SDK is going far beyond that with the promise of its HAMR platters allowing for up to 80TB drives.
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Post by Admin on Feb 18, 2021 0:11:00 GMT
Avoid the Trash Heap: 15 Great Uses for an Old PC You may be tempted to junk that ancient laptop or desktop, but if it was created any time in the last decade, you'd be surprised by how much life you can get out of it. uk.pcmag.com/features/94383/avoid-the-trash-heap-15-great-uses-for-an-old-pcIn 2019, after seven years of slumps, PC sales went up by the tiniest increment—0.3 percent. Demand then surged in recent weeks as people shifted to work-from-home setups due to COVID-19 quarantines. Which means some of you may be getting a new computer. But what do you do with the old PC? You may be tempted to go the easy route and just junk it. But don't. If that laptop or desktop was created any time in the last decade, you'd be surprised by how much life you (or others) can get out of it. I'm not talking about limping along, but of ways to bring an old PC back to useful life. You may need to do some light upgrades here and there; more RAM and a big new storage drive may benefit some (okay, probably all) of these projects. In many cases, the PC will require access to the internet and/or the ability to access software written to a USB flash drive to install on that old junker. Take a gander at the options. You'll be glad you kept that old PC around.
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Post by Admin on Mar 23, 2021 14:38:31 GMT
be quiet! Dark Power 12 review (850W) Element 22 - Bulletproof, nothing to lose, I ... am Titanium www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/be-quiet-dark-power-12-850-watt-psu-review,1.html Shortly after the release of the PRO series 12 power supplies from be quiet! now releases a non-PRO mode, Dark Power 12. Initially released as 1000W, 850W, and 750W models we'll check out the 850W one. Now, don't let the looks and title fool you, this series is carrying a Titanium 80Plus certification, and that means gaming with the most efficient PSU series available. Dark Power 12 features 80 PLUS Titanium certification, much like the new PRO model. There is however a distinction, the PRO model is all digital, and this non-pro model is not; makes use of Active Rectifier + Full Bridge LLC + SR + DC-DC topology. It's wire-free on the DC side (but not AC). This hardware infrastructure results into high-efficiency ratings, the best possible even at rated Titanium. And albeit I am a fan of single rails at defaults, this unit is set up at default with four separated 12V rails. However, bequiet! once again includes a switch/jumper designated the (overclock locking key), and with a flick of it (when powered down yo!) you can choose a full single 12V rail or the separated 12V ones. As stated I say give me a single rail any time of the day, but if you want more choice and prefer multi-rails, you'll have that option with the Dark power serries. 80 Plus Titanium, in short at 50% load, this puppy is 96% efficient and even 94% at 20% of its capacity (based on 230V). From the entire scope of certifications, Bronze, Silver but really Gold, Platinum, and Titanium sits at the end of the energy efficiency spectrum. And while we're sure that if ever a 98% efficient model can be made we'll see a Plutionuim model, Titanium currently is the best the industry can offer. If your PC is on 24/7, this is what you want. Surely does cost a pretty sum of money. And you know it by now, efficiency does matter; many years ago PSUs were rated as low as 70% efficient, meaning that 30% of the used power simply vanishes somewhere in that electric circuitry, while you are paying for it on that electricity bill. For example; if your components would consume 500W directly from the PSU, then with that 70% efficient product, you'd use and draw 650W from your wall power socket, that difference is the efficiency loss. With a Titanium PSU, that very same PC now would be using 520W depending on the PSU model). The math is that simple. The Be Quiet! Dark Power 12 series will become available in three models initially, 750, 850 and 1000 Watts. Admittedly we see little reason for kilowatt power supplies these days, that is, unless you are a hefty overclocker or need something really efficient for cryptocurrency mining. An average high-end PC these days (and yes multi GPU isn't a thing anymore these days also) will be fine with say a 750 Watt PSU as a modern Ryzen 9 5800 XT PC under full computational load paired with say a GeForce RTX 3080 consumes maybe 400~450 Watts. We do always state this though, calculate and double up your wattage, as at half the PSU load, your power supply will be the most efficient. In the aforementioned example, that would mean something in the region of an 800 Watts PSU. And what do you know? We have the 850W model available for testing. Let's have a peek at the product and then let's head onwards into the review.
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Post by Admin on Mar 30, 2021 18:08:12 GMT
MSI MEG Z590 ACE motherboard reviewMeet the MEGalodon We peek at the all-new MSI MEG Z590 ACE motherboard; this socket LGA1200 and Z590 chipset-based product offers an updated infrastructure for your Comet Lake (10th gen) or Rocket Lake (11th gen) Intel processor. We'll check it out with the Core i9 11900K, bringing PCIe Gen 4.0 to the platform as well. All Comet Lake and Rocket Lake generation processors are supported on this board; it's about performance and aesthetics. Dual 8-pin connectors feed the CPU, and for VRM design, this motherboard has 18+2+1 phases backed by 90A power stages. MSI applies a familiar dark shielded design. The 11th generation into Core desktop processors is running up-to 8 cores, which's two down from 10th generation processors. Likely, Intel needed the transistor space on 14nm for the increase in IPC, bigger Tier1 and 2 caches, and of course, the new Xe-based integrated graphics solution. The processor socket sticks towards 1200 pins, aka LGA1200. After a BIOS update, Z490 will also be compatible with 11th Gen processors, be sure to check out compatibility with your motherboard manufacturers. Among the main features, we have HyperThreading through the entire line of Core products, so that's from Core i3 to Core i9, up to 8 cores and 16threads, and up to 5.3GHz for a single-core boost if your cooling allows the processor to do so. The new Z590 motherboards will last for Comet Lake-S (last gen) and Rocket Lake-S (11th-gen). Being Z590, if you pair the mobo with a Gen 11 (Rocket Lake-S) processor, you'll get 16 lanes of Gen 4 for graphics cards and 4 lane gen4 available for a nice fast NVMe SSD. It also has and has nice cooled M2 slots, four of them! (only one can be used at PCIe Gen 4. Z590 allows USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 from the chipset. The USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 standard offers speeds of up to 20 Gb/s. The new RKL/Z590 platform has native support for 3200 MHz DDR4 memory, but the OC model can run upwards of over 5000 MHz. The motherboard has been fitted with the usual suspects and then some, including a 2.5 Gigabit (I225-V) ethernet and WIFI6 in the form of Wi-Fi 6E AX210 (AX). You will run into a Realtek ALC4082 Codec (flagship) + ESS SABRE9018Q2C combo DAC when it comes to the audio. The motherboard has four DIMM slots, and the top PCIe slot is reinforced. The board, as stated, is positioned in the high-end region. MSI applies the Gaming Dragon in gold on a dark design, setting this SKU apart from the rest. The VRM heatsinks are both made from a solid block of aluminum with lines cut out. Current pricing indicated you'd need to spend 450 to 500 USD to purchase this product. www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/msi-meg-z590-ace-review,1.html
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