ASRock (via momomo_us) has carved up a new motherboard for cryptocurrency miners. The H510 Pro BTC+, which arrives with the LGA1200 socket and H510 chipset, is ready to power your mining operations with the latest Comet Lake or Rocket Lake processors.
The H510 PRO BTC+ measures 50.1 x 22.4cm (20.1 x 8.8 inches) so the motherboard doesn’t adhere to an official form factor. It shouldn’t matter anyways, since the H510 PRO BTC+ is more than likely going on to a rack rather than inside a conventional computer case.
The motherboard’s greatest trait comes in the shape of six PCIe 3.0 x16 expansion slots. However, only the primary PCIe 3.0 expansion slot offers x16 speeds, while the remaining expansion slots are capped at x1. The motherboard allows you to connect up to six graphics cards to mine cryptocurrency. An additional USB mining port bumps the number up to seven.
The steel expansion slots on the H510 PRO BTC+ make sure that your multiple graphics card sit neat and tight on the motherboard. ASRock equipped the H510 PRO BTC+ with not one but three 24-pin power connectors and four Molex power connectors so the motherboard will get all the juice that it needs to feed each and every graphics card.
H510 Pro BTC+ (Image credit: ASRock)
If we leave the expansion slots aside, the H510 PRO BTC+ is really an austere motherboard. It features a very modest four-phase power delivery subsystem, but the motherboard does boast 50A power chokes. It only has one DDR4 memory slot, though. You’re limited to 32GB of total memory and memory speeds up to DDR4-3200 on Rocket Lake and DDR4-2933 for Comet Lake. However, there is support for ECC memory modules if that’s your thing.
You only have two options for storage. The SATA III port will accept any ordinary hard drive or SSD, while the M.2 slot houses SATA-based drives up to 110mm in length. There’s no audio chip onboard the H510 PRO BTC+ so you’ll have to rely on the HDMI 1.4 port.
The H510 PRO BTC+ provides a single Gigabit Ethernet port, which is based on the Intel I219V controller. The rear panel also holds a combo PS/2 port, one HDMI 1.4 port, two USB 2.0 ports and two USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports. One USB 2.0 header is readily available to deliver two more USB 2.0 ports.
Newegg has the H510 PRO BTC+ up for pre-order at $279.99. The H510 PRO BTC+ officially launches on July 18, and purchase is limited to two motherboards per customer.
The BPI-M2 Pro single-board computer Banana Pi announced in March is now available worldwide for $61. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean the board is fully ripe, with CNX Software noting that Banana Pi still hasn’t released its firmware.
Banana Pi said the BPI-M2 Pro features an Amlogic S905X3 equipped with a quad-core Cortex-A55 processor clocked at 1.5 GHz and a Mali-G31 MP2 GPU. It also has 2GB of LPDDR4 memory, 16GB of onboard eMMC storage, and a microSD slot.
The BPI-M2 Pro also offers an HDMI 2.1 port that can theoretically support up to an 8K video output. Still, according to the Banana Pi wiki, it will be limited to 4K output with a 60Hz refresh rate. (Which is to be expected from a single-board computer.)
The board also features 40 GPIO pins, numerous USB ports, and built-in networking that offers Gigabit Ethernet, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth 5 support out of the box. More information about the BPI-M2 Pro’s specs are available via the Banana Pi wiki.
The BPI-M2 Pro is supposed to support Android and various Linux distros, but there aren’t any official images available at the time of writing. It’s not clear if that’s because the board supports images made for the Banana Pi BPI-M5, because it wasn’t supposed to debut yet, or because they’ll be ready when the board reaches buyers.
If the lack of official firmware doesn’t deter you, the Banana Pi BPI-M2 Pro is available now from AliExpress. Just be prepared to wait a while for it to arrive: The retailer said it doesn’t expect orders placed on June 16 to be delivered until July 20.
Intel kicked off Computex 2021 by adding two new flagship 11th-Gen Tiger Lake U-series chips to its stable, including a new Core i7 model that’s the first laptop chip for the thin-and-light segment that boasts a 5.0 GHz boost speed. As you would expect, Intel also provided plenty of benchmarks to show off its latest silicon.
Intel also teased its upcoming Beast Canyon NUCs that are the first to accept full-size graphics cards, making them more akin to a small form factor PC than a NUC. These new machines will come with Tiger Lake processors. Additionally, the company shared a few details around its 5G Solution 5000, its new 5G silicon for Always Connected PCs that it developed in partnership with MediaTek and Fibocom. Let’s jump right in.
Intel 11th-Gen Tiger Lake U-Series Core i7-1195G7 and i5-1155G7
Intel’s two new U-series Tiger Lake chips, the Core i7-1195G7 and Core i5-1155G7, slot in as the new flagships for the Core i7 and Core i5 families. These two processors are UP3 models, meaning they operate in the 12-28W TDP range. These two new chips come with all the standard features of the Tiger Lake family, like the 10nm SuperFin process, Willow Cove cores, the Iris Xe graphics engine, and support for LPDDR4x-4266, PCIe 4.0, Thunderbolt 4 and Wi-Fi 6/6E.
Intel expects the full breadth of its Tiger Lake portfolio to span 250 designs by the holidays from the usual suspects, like Lenovo MSI, Acer and ASUS, with 60 of those designs with the new 1195G7 and 1155G7 chips.
Intel Tiger Lake UP3 Processors
PROCESSOR
CORES/THREADS
GRAPHICS (EUs)
OPERATING RANGE (W)
BASE CLOCK (GHZ)
SINGLE CORE TURBO FREQ (GHZ)
MAXIMUM ALL CORE FREQ (GHZ)
Cache (MB)
GRAPHICS MAX FREQ (GHZ)
MEMORY
Core i7-1195G7
4C / 8T
96
12 -28W
2.9
5.0
4.6
12
1.40
DDR4-3200, LPDDR4x-4266
Core i7-1185G7
4C / 8T
96
12 – 28W
3.0
4.8
4.3
12
1.35
DDR4-3200, LPDDR4x-4266
Core i7-1165G7
4C / 8T
96
12 – 28W
2.8
4.7
4.1
12
1.30
DDR4-3200, LPDDR4x-4266
Core i5-1155G7
4C / 8T
80
12 – 28W
2.5
4.5
4.3
8
1.35
DDR4-3200, LPDDR4x-4266
Core i5-1145G7
4C / 8T
80
12 – 28W
2.6
4.4
4.0
8
1.30
DDR4-3200, LPDDR4x-4266
Core i5-1135G7
4C / 8T
80
12 – 28W
2.4
4.2
3.8
8
1.30
DDR4-3200, LPDDR4x-4266
Core i3-1125G4*
4C / 8T
48
12 – 28W
2.0
3.7
3.3
8
1.25
DDR4-3200, LPDDR4x-3733
The four-core eight-thread Core i7-1195G7 brings the Tiger Lake UP3 chips up to a 5.0 GHz single-core boost, which Intel says is a first for the thin-and-light segment. Intel has also increased the maximum all-core boost rate up to 4.6 GHz, a 300 MHz improvement.
Intel points to additional tuning for the 10nm SuperFin process and tweaked platform design as driving the higher boost clock rates. Notably, the 1195G7’s base frequency declines by 100 MHz to 2.9 GHz, likely to keep the chip within the 12 to 28W threshold. As with the other G7 models, the chip comes with the Iris Xe graphics engine with 96 EUs, but those units operate at 1.4 GHz, a slight boost over the 1165G7’s 1.35 GHz.
The 1195G7’s 5.0 GHz boost clock rate also comes courtesy of Intel’s Turbo Boost Max Technology 3.0. This boosting tech works in tandem with the operating system scheduler to target the fastest core on the chip (‘favored core’) with single-threaded workloads, thus allowing most single-threaded work to operate 200 MHz faster than we see with the 1185G7. Notably, the new 1195G7 is the only Tiger Lake UP3 model to support this technology.
Surprisingly, Intel says the 1195G7 will ship in higher volumes than the lower-spec’d Core i7-1185G7. That runs counter to our normal expectations that faster processors fall higher on the binning distribution curve — faster chips are typically harder to produce and thus ship in lower volumes. The 1195G7’s obviously more forgiving binning could be the result of a combination of the lower base frequency, which loosens binning requirements, and the addition of Turbo Boost Max 3.0, which only requires a single physical core to hit the rated boost speed. Typically all cores are required to hit the boost clock speed, which makes binning more challenging.
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(Image credit: Intel)
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(Image credit: Intel)
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(Image credit: Intel)
The four-core eight-thread Core i5-1155G7 sees more modest improvements over its predecessor, with boost clocks jumping an additional 100 MHz to 4.5 GHz, and all-core clock rates improving by 300 MHz to 4.3 GHz. We also see the same 100 MHz decline in base clocks that we see with the 1195G7. This chip comes with the Iris Xe graphics engine with 80 EUs that operate at 1.35 GHz.
Intel’s Tiger Lake Core i7-1195G7 Gaming Benchmarks
Intel shared its own gaming benchmarks for the Core i7-1195G7, but as with all vendor-provided benchmarks, you should view them with skepticism. Intel didn’t share benchmarks for the new Core i5 model.
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(Image credit: Intel)
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(Image credit: Intel)
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(Image credit: Intel)
Intel put its Core i7-1195G7 up against the AMD Ryzen 7 5800U, but the chart lists an important caveat here — Intel’s system operates between 28 and 35W during these benchmarks, while AMD’s system runs at 15 to 25W. Intel conducted these tests on the integrated graphics for both chips, so we’re looking at Iris Xe with 96 EUs versus AMD’s Vega architecture with eight CUs.
Naturally, Intel’s higher power consumption leads to higher performance, thus giving the company the lead across a broad spate of triple-A 1080p games. However, this extra performance comes at the cost of higher power consumption and thus more heat generation. Intel also tested using its Reference Validation Platform with unknown cooling capabilities (we assume they are virtually unlimited) while testing the Ryzen 7 5800U in the HP Probook 455.
Intel also provided benchmarks with DirectX 12 Ultimate’s new Sampler Feedback feature. This new DX12 feature reduces memory usage while boosting performance, but it requires GPU hardware-based support in tandem with specific game engine optimizations. That means this new feature will not be widely available in leading triple-A titles for quite some time.
Intel was keen to point out that its Xe graphics architecture supports the feature, whereas AMD’s Vega graphics engine does not. ULMark has a new 3DMark Sampler Feedback benchmark under development, and Intel used the test release candidate to show that Iris Xe graphics offers up to 2.34X the performance of AMD’s Vega graphics with the feature enabled.
Intel’s Tiger Lake Core i7-1195G7 Application Benchmarks
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(Image credit: Intel)
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(Image credit: Intel)
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(Image credit: Intel)
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(Image credit: Intel)
Here we can see Intel’s benchmarks for applications, too, but the same rules apply — we’ll need to see these benchmarks in our own test suite before we’re ready to claim any victors. Again, you’ll notice that Intel’s system operates at a much higher 28 to 35W power range on a validation platform while AMD’s system sips 15 to 25W in the HP Probook 455 G8.
As we’ve noticed lately, Intel now restricts its application benchmarks to features that it alone supports at the hardware level. That includes AVX-512 based benchmarks that leverage the company’s DL Boost suite that has extremely limited software support.
Intel’s benchmarks paint convincing wins across the board. However, be aware that the AI-accelerated workloads on the right side of the chart aren’t indicative of what you’ll see with the majority of productivity software. At least not yet. For now, unless you use these specific pieces of software very frequently in these specific tasks, these benchmarks aren’t very representative of the overall performance deltas you can expect in most software.
In contrast, the Intel QSV benchmarks do have some value. Intel’s Quick Sync Video is broadly supported, and the Iris Xe graphics engine supports hardware-accelerated 10-bit video encoding. That’s a feature that Intel rightly points out also isn’t supported with MX-series GPUs, either.
Intel’s support for hardware-accelerated 10-bit encoding does yield impressive results, at least in its benchmarks, showing a drastic ~8X reduction in a Handbrake 4K 10-bit HEVC to 1080P HEVC transcode. Again, bear in mind that this is with the Intel chip running at a much higher power level. Intel also shared a chart highlighting its broad support for various encoding/decoding options that AMD doesn’t support.
Intel Beast Canyon NUC
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(Image credit: Intel)
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(Image credit: Intel)
Intel briefly showed off its upcoming Beast Canyon NUC that will sport 65W H-Series Tiger Lake processors and be the first NUC to support full-length graphics cards (up to 12 inches long).
The eight-litre Beast Canyon certainly looks more like a small form factor system than what we would expect from the traditional definition of a NUC, and as you would expect, it comes bearing the Intel skull logo. Intel’s Chief Performance Strategist Ryan Shrout divulged that the system will come with an internal power supply. Given the size of the unit, that means there will likely be power restrictions for the GPU. We also know the system uses standard air cooling.
Intel is certainly finding plenty of new uses for its Tiger Lake silicon. The company recently listed new 10nm Tiger Lake chips for desktop PCs, including a 65W Core i9-11900KB and Core i7-11700KB, and told us that these chips would debut in small form factor enthusiast systems. Given that Intel specifically lists the H-series processors for Beast Canyon, it doesn’t appear these chips will come in the latest NUC. We’ll learn more about Beast Canyon as it works its way to release later this year.
Intel sold its modem business to Apple back in 2019, leaving a gap in its Always Connected PC (ACPC) initiative. In the interim, Intel has worked with MediaTek to design and certify new 5G modems with carriers around the world. The M.2 modules are ultimately produced by Fibocom. The resulting Intel 5G Solution 5000 is a 5G M.2 device that delivers up to five times the speed of the company’s Gigabit LTE solutions. The solution is compatible with both Tiger and Alder Lake platforms.
Intel claims that it leads the ACPC space with three out of four ACPCs shipping with LTE (more than five million units thus far). Intel’s 5G Solution 5000 is designed to extend that to the 5G arena with six designs from three OEMs (Acer, ASUS and HP) coming to market in 2021. The company says it will ramp to more than 30 designs next year.
Intel says that while it will not be the first to come to market with a 5G PC solution, it will be the first to deliver them in volume, but we’ll have to see how that plays out in the face of continued supply disruptions due to the pandemic.
Raspberry Pi Compute Modules are all very well, but by design they lack a few things usually found on a single-board computer, such as video output, or any other ports for that matter. This is because they’re designed for use in industrial applications and are to be plugged into custom designed PCBs, such as this new carrier board that’s surfaced out of Thailand, as noticed by CNX Software.
(Image credit: QwaveSystems )
The CatsPi Industrial Lite from QwaveSystems sports Gigabit ethernet, USB 2.0, Micro HDMI, the usual 40-pin Raspberry Pi GPIO header, a watchdog timer based upon an ATTiny85 8-bit MCU, and perhaps most interestingly an RS-485 port. Like an RS-232 on steroids, RS-485 is a serial communications port used in industrial control applications. It can support speeds of up to 10Mbps or a cable length of 4,000ft, though not at the same time, and is useful anywhere that requires low-speed data communications with minimal wiring. RS-485 is used in aviation, theaters and in building automation.
As well as dropping the ports, the Compute Module 4 replaces the Pi 4’s whole USB 3.0 subsystem with PCIe Gen 2 (which the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s own carrier board exposes with a 1x slot), adds a configurable amount of eMMC flash storage, and is available in 32 different versions, with varying amounts of RAM, storage, and wireless connectivity. The boards can be used for all manner of DIY projects.
As CNX Software notes, the board can only be purchased online from Thailand, though shipping to other countries can be arranged by email. As the board doesn’t contain a Micro SD interface, you’ll need one of the Compute Modules with eMMC flash, and will probably want to add some cooling too, depending on the operating conditions and computing load. Another version of the board is in the works, with a Mini PCIe slot, Micro SD, Micro SIM/eSIM for WAN connectivity, and a bit more besides.
The Raspberry Pi has a knack for bridging the gap between different technologies but, in this project, it’s combining the power of multiple routers into one connection point. This setup is referred to as a bonded router by its creator, Jona, and operates using a platform called Speedify.
The best Raspberry Pi projects tend to come out of necessity—often providing a solution to a specific problem. According to Jona, he was tired of the bandwidth limitations of rural internet and decided to merge multiple sources into one, stacking the available speed. Before this project, his network speed was capping around 2 – 5 Mbps but now it reaches up to 120 Mbps.
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(Image credit: Jona)
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(Image credit: Jona)
The Raspberry Pi is responsible for distributing network traffic between four individual internet access points (in this case, two LTE lines and two 5G lines). Jona also included a DSL failsafe to act as a backup in the event the bonded router connection drops.
If you’d like to recreate this project, you can download Speedify from the official website. It’s available for Linux machines like the Raspberry Pi but also on Windows, Mac, iPad and Android devices. In Jona’s setup, he’s using an 8GB Raspberry Pi 4 with a 4G LTE HAT. It also has a USB hub connected to a 4-four gigabit Ethernet adaptor and a 5-port Netgear gigabit switch.
Read more about this project in detail on the project thread at Reddit and be sure to follow Jona for more cool Pi projects.
Radxa have announced that it has updated its Raspberry Pi alternative, Rock Pi 4 line of single-board computers with the Rockchip OP1 processor, onboard eMMC storage, and a pre-installed version of Twister OS to create the new Rock Pi 4 Plus family of products. Via CNX-Software.
Camera connector for camera (possibly the Raspberry Pi official camera)
Gigabit Ethernet with PoE support (Model B and additional HAT required)
Dual-band 802.11ac WiFi 5, Bluetooth 5.0 (Model B)
2 x USB 3.0 ports
2 x USB 2.0 port
40 Pin GPIO
Real Time Clock
USB C PD
There are two models of the Rock Pi 4 Plus at launch, the Model A and Model B, that can both be configured with either 2GB of LPDDR4 memory and 16GB of onboard eMMC storage or 4GB of LPDDR4 memory and 32GB of onboard eMMC storage.
We noticed on the Aliexpress listing that the primary difference between the Model A and Model B is that the latter offers wireless connectivity out of the box and POE support via a HAT.
The inclusion of the community created Twister OS is an interesting addition. Twister OS has been with us for around a year and has seen some success as an alternative to Raspberry Pi OS. It is a solid operating system that comes with plenty of extras.
Radxa did say these new models will be 11% faster than their predecessors thanks to the OP1. It’s not clear how that would be the case, however, because OP1 appears to be a brand name for the RK-3399 SoC used in the original models. Radxa may have upgraded the Rock Pi 4 Plus to the RK-3399Pro, which adds a 2.4 TOPS NPU to the base SoC, but that doesn’t mesh with the company’s claim that the “OP1 brings faster performance on both CPU and GPU” to the new models.
Radxa said all of the original Rock Pi 4 accessories will be compatible with the Rock Pi 4 Plus. The new models are supposed to be available via AliExpress, Allnet, and Amazon, but at time of writing the storefronts only offer the Rock Pi 4 Plus Model B.
HP, aka Hewlett Packard, is one of the most well-known tech companies in the world. They produce nearly every product you can think of: laptops, desktops, printers, enterprise hardware, and solid-state drives.
We’ve previously reviewed the HP P700 Portable SSD, which impressed with outstanding performance and high transfer rates. Today’s review is for the HP P500 Portable SSD, which is a much more cost affordable design for people who aren’t as focused on performance.
The HP P500 is actually produced by HP business partner BIWIN Storage, a large Chinese OEM for SSD solutions with 25 years of experience in the storage and microelectronics business. They were granted authorization from HP to produce SSDs in their name. Internally, the HP P500 is built using a UFS flash chip paired with the appropriate glue chips and USB interface. UFS is a highly popular storage standard with cell phones, tablets, and digital cameras. It was invented as a high-performance alternative to SD memory cards for multi-gigabit transfer rates.
The HP P500 uses a UFS 2.1 compatible storage chip from Samsung, which means it’s not the latest revision 3.1, so slower speeds are expected. For external connectivity, HP opted for the fast USB 3.1 Gen 2 interface, which is handled by a Silicon Motion SM3350 controller acting as a USB-to-UFS bridge. In a move typical for most portable SSDs, the P500 does not include a DRAM cache chip.
We review the HP P500 in the 1 TB variant, which retails for $115, but it is also available in capacities of 250 GB (price unknown) and 500 GB ($75). Warranty is set to three years for all these models. The HP P500 is available in four colors.
XMG has added a new processor option to the company’s existing Neo 15 and Neo 17. Intel’s new Core i7-11800H (Tiger Lake) processor will be powering XMG’s refreshed gaming laptops.
Built on Intel’s 10nm SuperFin process, the Core i7-11800H wields eight Willow Cove cores with Hyper-Threading and up to 24MB of L3 cache. The 45W chip rocks a 2.3 GHz base clock and 4.6 GHz boost clock. In contrast to the Ryzen-powered Neo 15 and Neo 17 models, XMG has outfitted the Intel equivalent with Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut for improved cooling.
It’s not just the processor upgrade. XMG also upped the Neo 15 and Neo 17’s graphics card game. Previously, the GeForce RTX 3080 (Ampere) was limited to 150W (135W plus 15W from Dynamic Boost 2.0). With the Tiger Lake-H model, XMG was able to increase the thermal envelope up to 165W for even more performance. XMG doesn’t force you to roll with the GeForce RTX 3080, either. The company also offers the GeForce RTX 3070 and RTX 3060 as other viable options.
The Neo 15 (359.8 x 243 x 26 mm, 2.2 kg) and Neo 17 (395.7 x 260.8 x 27.45 mm, 2.5 kg) boasts a screen that will make any gamer happy. The devices feature a WQHD (2560×1440) IPS screen with a 165 Hz refresh rate and 95% sRGB color space coverage and a maximum brightness of 350 nits. The Neo 15 comes with a 15.6-inch display, while the Neo 17 arrives with a 17.3-inch screen.
XMG Neo 15 (Image credit: XMG)
The Tiger Lake-H version of the Neo 15 and Neo 17 also offers 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet networking, Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5 functionality, Thunderbolt 4 connectivity, high-speed PCIe 4.0 M.2 storage and native support for DDR4-3200 memory.
The base configuration for the Neo 15 (XNE15IM21) and Neo 17 (XNE17IM21) starts at €1,949 or $2,380. It model comes with the Core i7-11800H, Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3060, 16GB of DDR4-3200 memory, a 500GB Samsung 970 Evo Plus SSD and the beautiful WQHD 165 Hz IPS panel. There’s ample room for upgrades too. Both gaming laptops support up to 64GB of memory and RAID 0 or 1 arrays, thanks to the presence of two M.2 2280 slots.
Due to the global shortage of components, the pricing could vary. Pre-orders for the Tiger Lake-based Neo 15 and Neo 17 starts at the beginning of June with orders expected to go out by the end of June.
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This is an iMac unlike any other iMac we’ve seen before, and it all comes down to the M1 chip.
Sure, there are some other differences between this 24-inch iMac and the 21.5-inch model from 2019 that it’s replacing. There are better microphones and better speakers. There are fewer ports, and some of them have moved around. The screen is bigger and better. The keyboard now has TouchID. But the M1 is the star of the show.
It’s not just the performance increase. It’s not just the fact that you can run iOS and iPadOS apps natively on the system. It’s not just the new advanced image signal processor, which helps create better low-light images than I’ve ever seen from an integrated webcam. It’s also the groundbreaking efficiency with which this processor runs, which has enabled Apple to create a slim, sleek, and quite unique iMac chassis.
Whether you actually get every upgrade here depends on the configuration you choose. The entry-level iMac is $1,299 for 256GB of SSD storage, two Thunderbolt / USB 4 ports, 8GB of unified memory, and a seven-core GPU — but that’s only available in four colors and doesn’t come with TouchID. The model I tested bumps the storage up to 512GB and the memory up to 16GB. It has two USB-3 ports in addition to the two Thunderbolt, an eight-core GPU, Touch ID, and a gigabit Ethernet port (which is in the power brick). I also received both the Magic Mouse and the Magic Trackpad with my model. You’d need to pay a total of $2,028 to get everything Apple sent me (and which I’ll be sending back, for the record).
In short, this device costs money. And it’s true that you’d get similar performance and save a few hundred bucks, if you just plugged a Mac Mini into an external display. But this iMac has almost everything that most people need in one package: processing power, sure, but also a camera, speakers, microphones, a keyboard, a mouse, a trackpad, and a display. And they’re all good. This is a computer you can plonk on your desk and never think about again. And for some of the iMac’s target audience, that’s probably worth the extra money. You’re paying for simplicity.
The new iMac is completely redesigned, but instantly recognizable
The M1 processor uses what’s called a “hybrid” configuration. The easiest way to conceive of this is that most competing Intel and AMD chips have a number of equally “okay” cores, where Apple’s M1 has four very fast cores and four lower-powered high-efficiency cores. This allows M1 devices to deliver arguably the best performance-per-watt in the world. It also means that they’re nearly unbeatable in single-core workloads.
That advantage bore out in our benchmark testing. This iMac model achieved a higher score on the Geekbench 5 single-core benchmark than any Mac we’ve ever seen before — even the iMac Pro. That means if you’re looking for a device for simpler everyday tasks that don’t scale to every available CPU core (and that largely seems to be the demographic that Apple is trying to sell this machine to), there has literally never been a better iMac for you to buy.
You can see the rest of our benchmarks below:
Apple iMac 24 (2021) benchmarks
Benchmark
Score
Benchmark
Score
PugetBench for Premiere Pro
372
Cinebench R23 Multi
7782
Cinebench R23 Single
1505
Geekbench Multi
7668
Geekbench Single
1739
Geekbench OpenCL
19114
These results help illuminate where this iMac fits into Apple’s all-in-one lineup, and where its limitations are. The 24-incher is a significant improvement over the 21.5-inch iMac in both single-core and multi-core workloads. And it’s very comparable in graphics tasks — which is quite impressive, given that the 21.5-inch iMac has a discrete GPU and this one relies on what’s integrated with the M1.
On the other end, these results (with the exception of single-core performance) are not close to what we’d expect from the 27-inch Intel iMac with discrete graphics. In this comparison, multi-core results are more important. They indicate that the 27-inch iMac is going to do much better on the types of tasks that owners (or prospective buyers) are likely to be doing: intense multitasking, computations, design, video work, and other more complex loads that may leverage the GPU.
There are other limitations that may put some workloads out of reach. As is the case with the MacBook Pro and Mac Mini, you can’t configure the iMac with more than 16GB of memory and 2TB of storage; we wouldn’t recommend those specs to anyone who regularly edits 4K or 8K video, for example. The memory and storage are soldered, so you can’t upgrade them after purchase. Only one external display is supported (up to 6K resolution at 60Hz). Ports are also bizarrely limited; the base model has just two Thunderbolt / USB-4 ports and a headphone jack, while more expensive models have an additional two USB-3 ports and Gigabit Ethernet. These all may be reasons Apple is pushing this iMac as a “home and family” PC, even though its processor is clearly capable of all kinds of professional work.
The M1 processor’s efficiency allows the iMac to get away with a thin design and minimal fan noise, and still maintain performancePhoto by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
Another way to interpret these numbers is that I was getting effectively the same performance out of this machine as we got from the M1 MacBook Pro and the Mac Mini. That’s completely unsurprising, since these devices all use the same processor. But it’s a good proxy for gauging whether the iMac can handle your work: if you expect you could get a task done with the M1 MacBook Pro, you should be able to do it on this.
More anecdotally, I was able to use my test unit for all kinds of daily tasks, from emailing to YouTube to amateur photo and video work. I was able to hop between over 25 Chrome tabs with Cinebench looping in the background, with no stutter or slowdown whatsoever. If you’re buying the iMac for this kind of thing, I can’t imagine you’ll see too many spinning wheels.
During this testing process, I also got a sense of just how well cooled this chassis is. On thinner laptops that I test often (including the fanless MacBook Air), you’ll see performance decrease if you run heavy tasks over and over again. None of that on this iMac: I looped Cinebench R23 as well as a Premiere Pro 4K video export several times over and never saw scores go down. It took a lot to get the fans going — they were checked out during my daily office multitasking. When they did spin up, mostly while I was working in Premiere, I could barely hear them. They were quieter than the background hum of my refrigerator. That’s quite a quality-of-life improvement over prior Intel iMacs.
The M1’s advantage, after all, has never been raw power; it’s the combination of power and efficiency. We saw much better battery life in the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro than we did in their Intel predecessors. Battery life obviously isn’t a concern with the iMac, but efficiency certainly is. Chips are limited by two things: the power available and how well their systems can keep them cool. They vent almost all the energy they use as heat, and because the M1 has such incredibly high performance per watt, Apple doesn’t need a heavy-duty cooling system to keep it from frying itself. Because it doesn’t need that heavy-duty cooling system, Apple has finally been able to redesign the iMac from the ground up.
The iMac’s chassis is so thin it looks like a big iPad minus the touchscreen
This iMac is sleek. Even though it has a 24-inch screen, it’s close in size to its 21.5-inch predecessor. Apple reduced the screen’s borders by close to 50 percent in order to squeeze the bigger screen into the compact chassis. This device is also 11.5 millimeters thick, or just under half an inch — which is quite thin as all-in-ones go. Next to the 27-inch iMac, it looks like a tablet on a stand.
Size isn’t everything; this iMac also comes in seven colors. There’s blue, green, pink, orange, purple, yellow, and the boring silver we know and love. I’m not quite convinced that the jazzier models will fit in outside of especially stylish homes and offices. But I will say: I’ve never seen so many of my friends, or so many people on TikTok, as excited about a tech product as they seem to be about the colored iMacs. The hues are a nice change, aren’t obnoxious, and are clearly a hit with certain crowds.
Some traditional iMac touches remain, of course. The bezels are still substantial compared to those of some modern monitors. You can’t raise or lower the display height — the built-in stand only allows tilt adjustments. (You can also buy it with a built-in VESA mount adapter.) And there’s still that pesky chin, though it’s no longer emblazoned with the Apple logo.
Pretty much every other notable part of the iMac has been upgraded in some way. There’s a 4.5K (4480 x 2520) Retina display, a step up from the predecessor’s 4096 x 2304 Retina display (though both have effectively the same pixel density). It has Apple’s True Tone technology, which automatically adjusts colors and intensity based on your surroundings.
But the screen is also another reminder that this iMac doesn’t have “Pro” in its name. Twenty-four inches is on the small side as screens go; most of the best external monitors are 27 inches or larger these days. Professionals on The Verge’s video team also noticed some vignetting on the sides of the screen, which caused issues with off-angle viewing — we had a similar issue with Apple’s Pro Display XDR. Of course, neither of these limitations were a problem for my untrained eye; I thought the display looked great, with sharp details and plenty of room for my Chrome tabs and apps.
Elsewhere, Apple has upgraded the camera, microphones, and speakers. The company claims that they’re the best camera, mic system, and speaker system that have ever appeared in a Mac. I’d believe it. The six-speaker sound system is easily on par with a good external speaker. I played some music in my kitchen, and it was audible all over the house. Percussion and bass were strong, and I felt very immersed in the songs. It also supports spatial audio when playing video with Dolby Atmos.
The new camera has a higher resolution and better picture quality for video calls
I don’t have too much to say about the three-mic array except that nobody on my Zoom calls had any trouble hearing me. But the webcam was a very pleasant surprise. The iMac has a 1080p FaceTime HD camera, which has a higher resolution than the 720p shooter that lives in the 21.5-inch iMac (as well as the MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, and many other AIOs). The M1 also lends a hand here: its built-in image signal processor and neural engines help optimize your picture in low-light settings.
I wouldn’t say I looked amazing on my Zoom calls — parts of my background were sometimes washed out, and the image looked processed in some dimmer areas. But I was visible and clear, which is better than you get from most webcams these days. And the difference between this webcam and the grainy mess the MacBook Pro has is night and day.
The iMac is the computer to get if you just want to buy it and not think about it for the next five to ten years
When I review a computer, my task is usually to figure out for whom that computer is made.
But all kinds of people use iMacs, from college students to accountants to podcast producers to retired grandparents. And this model has arguably the most widespread consumer appeal of any iMac that Apple has made in recent years. So it’s much easier to figure out for whom this iMac isn’t made.
It’s not for people who can’t handle dongles and docks; I kept a USB-C to USB-A dongle next to me on my desk while I was testing the iMac, and I used it very frequently. It’s not for people who already own a 27-inch iMac, because it would be a downgrade in display size and quality, port selection, upgradability, and raw power. And it’s not for people with serious performance needs.
It’s not for people who are looking for the very best value for their money. Most folks won’t need the specs and accessories that I tested here, but even $1,299, the base price, is certainly more than plenty of people want to spend on a computer. The base Mac Mini is $600 cheaper than the base iMac; plug that into a monitor and some speakers (you can find plenty of good ones for well under $600), and you’ll get the same M1 performance at a massive discount.
And that, right there, is the biggest reason that this iMac, despite its power, is primarily targeting the family market. Because it’s asking you to pay more in order to do less. You’re paying $600 not to have to research and budget out monitors, speakers, webcams, docks, keyboards, and mice. You’re paying not to have to arrange thousands of things on your desk. You’re paying for a device where everything, out of the box, works well. You’re paying to eliminate fuss.
Tech enthusiasts (especially those who want to pop their machines open and make their own upgrades) may see that as a waste of money. And for them, it probably is. But they’re not the target audience for this Mac — even if its specs might suit their needs.
Could Apple have done more with this iMac? Of course. I was hoping to see a 30-inch, 6K iMac with a powerhouse 12-core workstation chip this month as much as the next person. But I have faith that we’ll get one in the future — and in the meantime, I’m glad Apple released this. It’s not earth-shattering in its design; it doesn’t redefine its category. But it’s fun. It improves upon the 21.5-inch iMac to offer a simple, attractive, and very functional device for users across all kinds of categories. It’s not the iMac to beat — but it is the iMac for most people to buy.
Thanks to Anandtech, we have information on two new Supermicro motherboards designed for Intel’s new Ice Lake Xeon Scalable CPUs: the 12DPL-NT6 and X12DPL-i6. The boards feature dual LGA4189 sockets — for a max potential configuration of 80 CPU cores all squished into a standard ATX form factor.
The stand-out feature of the X12DPL-NT6 and X12DPL-i6 is the ATX form factor; Supermicro has demonstrated it can put two gigantic LGA4189 sockets onto an ATX board without sacrificing many features; the two sockets alone take up nearly half of the entire board’s size.
The only feature Supermicro had cut out was the platform’s maximum support of twelve DIMM slots. Due to the size constraints, each CPU can only access up to four DIMM slots (eight total on the board), meaning each chip will be limited to quad-channel memory configurations. This will only be a problem if you’re workloads benefit from significantly high memory bandwidth/capacity.
For connectivity, you get four PCIe 4.0 slots on the bottom, with each slot having the full 16 lanes available. For storage, the boards support twelve SATA slots with RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10 array support, and dual M.2 PCIe Gen 4.0 slots.
The only difference between the X12DPL-NT6 and X12DPL-i6 is the ethernet and M.2 configuration. With the X12DPL-NT6 you get dual Intel X550 10Gb Ethernet ports, and one more M.2 slot capable of PCIe Gen 4.0 x8 support.
The lower end X12DPL-i6 does not include 10Gb Ethernet and instead relies on two Intel i210 Gigabit LAN controllers for network connectivity. It also loses the x8 M.2 slot.
We have no idea of when these boards will be available to purchase, but if you’re in the market for something like this, Supermicro will probably happily return your emails or phone calls.
Matthew Wilson 2 days ago General Tech, Professional
Synology has a new pair of professional-grade storage racks launching this week. The 12-bay RackStation RS2421+ and RS2421RP+, and 16-bay RS2821RP+ will be available starting this month, built to excel in large-scale infrastructure backups, business-level file serving and private cloud services.
Speaking on the new racks, Julien Chen, product manager at Synology, explained that both new RackStation products support “essential remote work applications” and well as offering a path for mass storage upgrades with redundant power to ensure file servers are protected in the event of a surge or outage.
In the table below, you can see the specs and features for both new RackStations:
RS2421+ RS2421RP+
RS2821RP+
CPU
Quad-core AMD V1500B
Memory
4 GB ECC DDR4 (max. 32 GB)
Form Factor
2U
3U
Drive Bays6
12 (max. 24)
16 (max. 28)
iSCSI 4K random read IOPS
106K
105K
iSCSI 4K random write IOPS
59K
59K
SMB Seq. 64K read
2200 MB/s
2200 MB/s
SMB Seq. 64K write
1154 MB/s
1164 MB/s
Network Interface
4 x Gigabit RJ-45
PCIe Slots
1 x Gen 3.0 8x slot
Redundant Power Supply
RP+ model only
Yes
Warranty7
5-year limited warranty
Both new RackStation units boast higher performance than their predecessors. The RS2421(RP)+ gets a 103% and 161% boost to random write and read IOPS speeds, while the RS2821(RP)+ delivers 115% and 162% higher random write/read IOPS.
Both devices can be fitted with a dual-port Synology 10GbE or 25GbE NIC for better throughput, or a Synology M.2 adapter card and NVMe SSDs to create a speedy cache. Each rackmount also comes with a three year warranty, which can be extended to five years.
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The specifications for Intel’s NUC 11 Essential (Atlas Canyon) device have emerged, courtesy of FanlessTech. The upcoming NUC utilizes the chipmaker’s 10nm low-powered Jasper Lake processors.
Armed with Tremont cores, Jasper Lake checks in with thermal limits between 6W and 10W, so it doesn’t require any serious cooling. The NUC 11 Essential will be available with three different processor options. The Pentium Silver J6005 and Celeron J5105 are quad-core parts, while the Celeron J4505 is a dual-core chip. Neither processor leverages Hyper-Threading technology.
Intel outfitted the NUC 11 Essential with two SO-DIMM memory slots so you can pair either Jasper Lake processor with up to 16GB of DDR4-2933 memory at 1.2V. Some select models will come equipped with 64GB of eMMC storage, but the NUC 11 Essential offers a single M.2 2280 slot for housing NVMe and SATA drives.
As FanlessTech has noted, this is the first time that an entry-level NUC is arriving with a M.2 slot as opposed previous designs with spacing for a 2.5-inch drive. This helps trim down the size of the NUC as the NUC 11 Essential has a 135x115x36mm footprint.
The NUC 11 Essential lands with one HDMI 2.0b port and one DisplayPort 1.4 output. Both connectors support HDCP 2.2 as well as 4K monitors, so you can connect up to two 4K displays to the NUC 11 Essential. You’ll still be limited by Jasper Lake’s Intel UHD graphics engine. The iGPU is an abysmal gaming performer, but should be sufficient for conventional workloads.
The NUC 11 Essential only has a single Gigabit Ethernet port. If you’re a wireless aficionado, however, you can take advantage of the speedy Wi-Fi 6 AX101 and Bluetooth 5.2 connectivity on the NUC. There are two 3.5mm audio connectors on the front of the device. The NUC 11 Essential supports 7.1-audio through the HDMI port.
Don’t let the NUC 11 Essential’s small body fool you. The device offers enough connectivity options to be your daily driver. There are two front USB 3.1 ports, two rear USB 3.1 ports, and two rear USB 2.0 ports. The NUC sips power through a standard 19VDC 65W power supply.
Intel backs the NUC 11 Essential with a limited three-year warranty. There was no mention of pricing. According to FanlessTech, the NUC won’t arrive until the first quarter of next year.
João Silva 18 hours ago Featured Tech News, Laptop / Mobile
Samsung Unpacked just took place this week and this time around, Samsung introduced a new gaming laptop – the Galaxy Book Odyssey. While we have seen listings and rumours about laptops equipped with an RTX 3050 Ti GPU, the Galaxy Book Odyssey is the first one to be officially announced.
The Galaxy Book Odyssey will feature Nvidia RTX 3050 Ti mobile graphics, which is expected to feature 2560 CUDA cores and 4GB of GDDR6 memory. An RTX 3050 non-TI option will also be available.
Samsung has equipped the Galaxy Book Odyssey laptop with Intel 11th Gen Core H-series processors. The official infographic further informs us it will feature both i5 and i7 models, but it’s unclear if it’s referring to the 4-core parts or the upcoming 6 and 8-core CPUs.
The rest of the specs include up to 2TB of NVMe storage, a maximum of 32GB of DDR4 memory, support for Dolby Atmos, and a 15.6-inch FullHD display. For connectivity, there’s an HDMI port, 2x USB-C ports, 3x USB-A 3.2 ports, a Micro SD card reader, a Gigabit Ethernet port, Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.1, and a 3.5mm audio-in/out jack. The laptop will only be available in black and comes with an 83Wh battery powered by a 135W USB-C charger.
The Samsung Galaxy Book Odyssey is scheduled to release in August, with a starting price of $1399.
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Just stop. Stop telling us why your 5G network is the very best and fastest and most reliable. Stop running commercials about how life-changing your 5G network is. Definitely stop telling us why your 5G network is better than the other guy’s 5G network because can you even imagine building a 5G network the way they have? Please stop with all of this, it’s been a very long year and we’re tired.
It would be one thing to make all of these fantastical claims like you do if any of them reflected any real person’s experience. They don’t. Your 5G networks are just not that good yet. They’ll get better, and that’s nice! But please stop pretending like the 5G train has pulled into the station and all we have to do is get on board to be whisked away to the low-latency, Gigabit future when you’re still building the tracks. And the train station.
We’re tired of false starts. First there was 5G Evolution, which sounds exciting. It rhymes with revolution! But then it turned out to be just another name for LTE, which was a bummer. Then there was mmWave, which you called Ultra Wideband because it sounds cooler. It will drive cars, do surgeries, fly drones, you said. You’ll experience download speeds on your phone so astoundingly fast that your sunglasses will fly off your face just being so close. And sure enough, the speed was impressive, that one time we were on the right street corner trying to download a whole movie. But then the crosswalk signal turned green and we kept walking, and we lost the signal.
Now we learn that Ultra Wideband suddenly means mmWave and C-band, and that C-band will actually change everything and we’ll have to pay more if we want to use it. This is confusing, we’re tired, and now we have to go look for our sunglasses. So please let us know when you’ve settled on whatever frequencies will actually change our lives.
We know you’re excited about how you’re building your 5G network, but please don’t explain to us in detail why your spectrum is the best spectrum and the other guy’s spectrum is garbage. You sound like a kid who wrote a PowerPoint presentation for her parents with a point-by-point argument for why she deserves a later bedtime. We, the general phone-using population, do not care to be dragged into these details. Just build the network and we’ll see for ourselves if it really is great.
You’ve spent a lot of time recently breathlessly telling your shareholders why you won the C-band auction. We’ve been scraping the bottom of the barrel on live sports entertainment over the last year, but last time we checked, a federal spectrum auction is not the Super Bowl! Nobody’s keeping score! Unless you’re playing Calvinball, you can’t declare something to be a sport, run around the field, then put on a referee uniform and say that you won.
This may come as a shock, but we don’t cheer for our wireless carriers as if they were baseball teams. We don’t trash-talk our friends about how our carrier’s 5G network is absolutely crushing their carrier’s 5G network. We don’t ask them how they can live with themselves knowing that their carrier is building their 5G network the wrong way.
We all just want our phone service to work when we need it. We want to tweet our stupid tweets, share our dumb pet photos, follow our actual baseball teams, and do so with as little inconvenience as possible. Sure, we want faster service! But we don’t want to know how the sausage is made. Please stop for now and let us know when you’re ready to serve it.
Chinese motherboard manufacturer Onda (via ZOL) has launched the brand’s new Chia-D32H-D4 motherboard. The model name alone is enough to tell you that this motherboard is aimed at farming Chia cryptocurrency, which has already caused hard drive price spikes in Asia.
Designed for mining, rather than to compete with the best motherboards for gaming, the Chia-D32H-D4 is most likely a rebranded version of Onda’s existing B365 D32-D4 motherboard. It measures 530 x 310mm, so the Chia-D32H-D4 isn’t your typical motherboard. In fact, Onda has produced a special case with an included power supply for this specific model. The unspecified 800W power supply arrives with the 80Plus Gold certification, while the case features five cooling fans.
The Chia-D32H-D4’s selling point is obviously the motherboard’s 32 SATA ports, allowing you to leverage up to 32 hard drives. The B365 chipset can only provide a limited amoung of SATA ports, so the Chia-D32H-D4 depends on a third-party SATA controller such as Marvell to get the count up to 32. We counted seven SATA controllers in the render of the motherboard. Assuming that each controller delivers up to four SATA ports, the remaining four should come from the B365 chipset itself.
At 18GB per drive, the motherboard can accommodate up to 576GB of storage for all your Chia farming activities — enough for around 5,760 101.4GiB plots. Based on the current Chia network stats, that would be enough for about 0.05% of the total Chia netspace, though that’s likely to decrease rapidly in the coming days if current trends continue, never mind the time required to actually generate that many plots.
In terms of power connectors, the Chia-D32H-D4 comes equipped with a standard 24-pin power connector, one 8-pin EPS connector and up to two 6-pin PCIe power connectors. The latter is designed exclusively to power the hard drives.
Image 1 of 2
Chia-D32H-D4 (Image credit: ZOL)
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Chia-D32H-D4 (Image credit: ZOL)
Based on the LGA1151 socket and B365 chipset, the Chia-D32H-D4 is very flexible in regards to processor support. It’s compatible with Intel’s Skylake, Kaby Lake, Coffee Lake and Coffee Lake Refresh processors. The motherboard utilizes a modest six-phase power delivery subsystem, but it should be sufficient to house processors up to the Core i9 tier.
Besides the deep storage requirements, Chia farming is reliant memory as well. A single Chia splot requires around 4GB of memory. The Chia-D32H-D4 offers four DDR4 memory slots, providing the opportunity to have up to 128GB of memory in the system. On paper, you can plot up to 32 plots in parallel.
Expansion options on the Chia-D32H-D4 are limited to one PCIe x16 slot, one PCIe x1 slot and one M.2 slot. Connectivity, however, is pretty generous. For connecting displays, you can choose between the HDMI port or VGA port. There are also four USB 3.0 ports and two Gigabit Ethernet ports. A power button is located on both ends of the motherboard.
Onda hasn’t listed the Chia-D32H-D4 motherboard on its website nor its pricing. However, rumor on the street is that motherboards are already in the hands of Chia farmers.
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