With Intel’s new eight-core, 35-65W Tiger Lake-H processors, Dell is rolling out updates to its most premium workhorses and some of the best ultrabooks, the XPS 15 and XPS 17. The pair will be available sometime this summer, with more exact dates coming soon.
The Dell XPS 15 (9510) will start at $1,199.99 with processor options going up to an 11th Gen Intel Core i9 CPU and an Nvidia GeForce RTTX 3050 Ti graphics card. Dell calls it the “smallest 15.6-inch performance class laptop,” with a 92.9% screen-to-body ratio thanks to a 16:10 display and a new, thinner InfinityEdge bezel. Like the XPS 13, Dell is introducing a 3456 x 2160 OLED screen in the top end.
Dell XPS 15 (9510)
Dell XPS 17 (9710)
CPU
Up to Intel Core i9-11900H
Up to Intel Core i9-11980HK
GPU
Up to Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 Ti (4GB GDDR6, 45W)
Up to Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 (4GB GDDR6, 70W)
RAM
Up to 64GB DDR4-3200
Up to 64GB DDR4-3200
Storage
Up to 4TB PCIe SSD
Up to 4TB PCIe SSD
Display
15.6-inch 3840 x 2400 touch, 3456 x 2160 OLELD touch, 1920 x 1200 non-touch
17-inch 3840 x 2400 touch, 1920 x 1200 non-touch
Networking
Killer Wi-Fi 6 AX1650, Bluetooth 5.1
Killer Wi-Fi 6 AX1650, Bluetooth 5.1
Battery
56 WHr or 86 WHr
97 WHr
Starting Price
$1,199.99
$1,449.99
Dell’s ports are still minimalist, including two Thunderbolt 4 ports, a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port, a headphone jack and a full-size SD card reader.
(Image credit: Dell)
The new Dell XPS 17 (9710) will start at $1,499.99 and go a step higher with some components. It will go a step further with the processor, topping out at the unlocked Intel Core i9-11980HK with a
boost clock
of 5.0 GHz, while the GPU will go up to an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060. Potential customers will have the same storage and RAM options, but there is no OLED screen here – just a
4K
touch version and
FHD
non-touch.
Dell says this is the smallest 17-inch laptop with a screen-to-body ratio of 93.7%. While that’s impressive, there aren’t that many 17-inch non-gaming laptops out there right now. It has four Thunderbolt 4 ports and a headphone jack, with no SD card reader like its 15-inch counterpart.
On both laptops, Dell is touting quad-speaker designs with Waves NX audio. The company says those speakers were tuned by Jack Joesph Puig, a Grammy-winning producer who has worked with Green Day, U2, Fergie, Sheryl Crow, Sum 41 and more.
The smallest in the lineup, the Dell XPS 13 last saw an update in April, when the Tiger Lake U-based system was updated with an OLED display option.
The GeForce RTX 3050 Ti and GeForce RTX 3050 will almost certainly come to desktops and finish filling out the bottom end of our list of the best graphics cards, but the new GPUs are slated to be mobile solutions first. That can be good or bad news, depending on whether you’re interested in buying a budget gaming laptop. Considering how difficult it is to find a reasonably priced desktop graphics card these days, we would have welcomed some new lower spec options. However, Nvidia likely sees more of a market for the RTX 3050 series in laptops, so that’s where they’ll start.
Nvidia says that the RTX 3050 GPUs will bring the entry price for RTX gaming laptops down to just $799. We don’t have full specs on what sort of laptops you’ll be able to buy — there are sure to be a variety of options — and we’ll have to wait for our own performance testing, but the new GPUs cover a range of options.
Here’s a quick rundown of the specs for the various RTX 30-series mobile parts, with the newcomers on the left.
GeForce RTX 30 Series Laptop GPU Specifications
GPU
RTX 3050
RTX 3050 Ti
RTX 3060
RTX 3070
RTX 3080
SMs
16
20
30
40
48
CUDA Cores
2048
2560
3840
5120
6144
RT Cores
16
20
30
40
48
Tensor Cores
64
80
120
160
192
Boost Clock (MHz)
1500
1485
1283-1703
1290-1620
1245-1710
GPU Power (W)
35-80
35-80
60-115
80-125
80-150+
GDDR6 Memory
4GB
4GB
6GB
8GB
8GB or 16GB
Memory Interface
128-bit
128-bit
192-bit
256-bit
256-bit
TFLOPS (FP32)
6.1
7.6
9.9-13.1
13.2-16.6
15.3-21
Tensor TFLOPS (FP16)
49
61
79-105
106-133
122-168
There are plenty of questions regarding performance, and we’re curious to see how RTX hardware stacks up. The power range will also be a key factor, as a 35W TGP solution will likely perform quite a bit worse than an 80W TGP laptop. It might not be half as fast, but that big of a power difference will likely drop performance at least 30%.
Obviously, the RTX 3050 and RTX 3050 Ti aren’t intended to be high-end solutions powering 4K displays, but even then, you’ll need to pay attention to the settings used in some of the latest games so that you don’t exceed the 4GB VRAM. Whether ray tracing effects are even viable or meaningful this far down the product stack is also something we look forward to testing.
The potential ace in the hole for Nvidia is that these new GPUs will also support DLSS. That can prove useful even without ray tracing effects, and upscaling from 720p to 1080p on these budget-friendly GPUs might be a great alternative — for the games that support DLSS, obviously. Nvidia provided the following performance preview:
(Image credit: Nvidia)
Spoonfuls of salt as usual, and the “would not run” score of 0 on all the RT-enabled games is a bit misleading at best. It’s true you need RT hardware to run those games with RT enabled, but you don’t actually need to play with ray tracing. In fact, that’s normally what we’d advise on any modest laptop. Still, the combination of RT cores and DLSS means gaming at more than 60 fps, and 1080p is within reach of the RTX 3050 Ti. Strangely, Nvidia didn’t provide performance figures for the vanilla RTX 3050, though, which will presumably be about 20% slower. The idea is probably to run with low to medium settings but still enable ray tracing to get to 60 fps in that case, right?
Forgetting the RT aspect of the above comparisons, there’s still a good jump in performance relative to the entry-level GTX 1650 Ti. With DLSS enabled, some games will even run about twice as fast. More pragmatically, for the large number of games that currently don’t support DLSS, the RTX 3050 Ti still looks to provide about a 50–60 percent boost to frame rates.
There’s more good news as well. You know how cryptocurrency mining has caused a massive shortage of basically everything listed in our GPU benchmarks hierarchy? The 4GB VRAM actually plays in favor of gamers since it effectively precludes Ethereum mining (which now requires more than 4GB). At the very least, it means laptops using the RTX 3050 and 3050 Ti won’t be attractive to miners.
We’re working on getting some review samples for testing, at which point we can provide a larger selection of benchmarks. On paper, RTX 3050 and RTX 3050 Ti will likely perform worse than the previous generation RTX 2060, but they should also cost less. Nvidia also looks ready to abandon non-RTX solutions going forward, or perhaps just continue to produce GTX 16-series parts for that market. Given the other benefits of RTX hardware (DLSS and Nvidia Broadcast are two excellent examples of why Tensor cores and AI are important), we can’t complain about the end of the GTX era.
Razer is refreshing its Blade 15 Advanced model with Intel’s Tiger Lake-H, its 11th Gen, 35-65W processors for gaming. The new lineup starts at $2,299 and will go as high as $3,399 when it ships in June. It’s pricey, but the previous release was one of the best gaming laptops.
The majority of Razer’s configurations will include the Intel Core i7-11800H, an 8-core processor with a 4.2 GHz max boost clock. The top-of-the-line version will use the Core i9-11900H with a 4.9-GHz max boost. None of them uses Intel’s overclockable Tiger Lake-H chips. Graphics range from the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 on the intro model and go up to the RTX 3080 with 16GB of VRAM.
Razer Blade 15
$2,299
$2,599
$2,699
$2,999
$3,099
$3,399
CPU
11th Gen Intel Core i7-11800H
11th Gen Intel Core i7-11800H
11th Gen Intel Core i7-11800H
11th Gen Intel Core i7-11800H
11th Gen Intel Core i7-11800H
11th Gen Intel Core i9-11900H
GPU
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 (8GB)
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 (8GB)
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 (8GB)
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 (8GB)
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 (8GB)
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 (16GB)
Display
QHD, 240 Hz
FHD, 360 Hz
QHD, 240 Hz
QHD, 240 Hz
FHD, 360 Hz
4K, OLED, Touch
Storage
1TB (PCIe)
1TB (PCIe) with one open M.2 slot
1TB (PCIe) with one open M.2 slot
1TB (PCIe) with one open M.2 slot
1TB (PCIe) with one open M.2 slot
1TB (PCIe) with one open M.2 slot
Memory
16GB DDR4-3200
16GB DDR4-3200
16GB DDR4-3200
32GB DDR4-3200
32GB DDR4-3200
32GB DDR4-3200
Battery
80 WHr
80 WHr
80 WHr
80 WHr
80 WHr
80 WHr
Networking
Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.2
Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.2
Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.2
Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.2
Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.2
Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.2
Webcam
1080p webcam with IR for Windows Hello
1080p webcam with IR for Windows Hello
1080p webcam with IR for Windows Hello
1080p webcam with IR for Windows Hello
1080p webcam with IR for Windows Hello
1080p webcam with IR for Windows Hello
At 13.98 x 9.25 x 0.67 inches, there’s no real change in profile beyond a few fractions of a millimeter of thickness shaved off. Still, Razer claims that the CNC aluminum notebook is the smallest 15-inch gaming laptop with RTX graphics.
There are other technical improvements internally including faster memory clocked at 3,200 MHz and support for
PCIe
Gen 4 storage (up to 4TB). On models that don’t use the RTX 3060, there’s a second PCIe slot that lets you stack storage in the laptop’s minimal space. Finally, there’s a
1080p
webcam with IR support for Windows Hello, both of which will be welcome for those using the Blade 15 to work from home.
It’s still keeping its Choma keyboard, of course. One might argue it wouldn’t be a Razer laptop without it.
Image 1 of 2
(Image credit: Razer)
Image 2 of 2
(Image credit: Razer)
Razer has only provided information about the Advanced Model. The company did not make it clear when 11th Gen Core processors may come to the normal Razer Blade 15 or the Studio Edition.
If it’s as good as the Blade 15 has historically been, the new version will be worth looking forward to. But there are a lot of gaming laptops with 11th Gen Core and Nvidia RTX being announced today, so it will surely be in a crowded field.
HP’s first laptops to use Intel’s 11th Gen Tiger Lake-H processors are its ZBook G8 line, which consists of four notebooks. There are two ZBook Fury laptops — one 15.6-inch and one 17.3-inch — along with the ZBook Power and ZBook Studio.
The ZBook Power is the entry-level workstation, going up to an Intel Core i-11950H CPU, using GPUs with 4GB of VRAM. The HP ZBook Studio G8, aimed at data scientists and creators, uses more powerful GPUs, with both gaming-grade GeForce RTX and workstation-grade RTX A-series cards with as much as 16GB of VRAM.
(Image credit: HP)
In an atypical move, the ZBook Studio G8 is getting an RGB keyboard, which you would typically find in gaming laptops. In fact, it will use the Omen gaming hub to make profiles. These key presets can be set per application, not just games, so you could have custom lighting for creative software.
HP ZBook Power G8
HP ZBook Studio G8
HP ZBook Fury 15.6-inch G8
HP ZBook Fury 17.3-inch G8
CPU
Up to Intel Core i9-11950H
Up to Intel Core i9-11950H
Up to Intel Core i9-11950H, Up to Intel Xeon W-11955M
Up to Intel Core i9-11950H, Up to Intel Xeon W-11955M
Graphics
Nvidia T1200, RTX A2000 or Nvidia T600 (4GB GDDR6 each)
Up to Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 (16GB GDDR6), Up to Nvidia RTX A5000 (16GB GDDR6)
Up to Nvidia RTX A5000 (16GB GDDR6) or AMD Radeon Pro W6600M (8GB GDDR6)
Up to Nvidia RTX A5000 (16GB GDDR6) or AMD Radeon Pro W6600M (8GB GDDR6)
The Fury line, which comes in both 15.6 and 17.3-inch sizes, offers the most power, including 11th Gen Xeon processors as well as up to 128GB of RAM. These two laptops also have configurable choices with either Nvidia or AMD graphics and allow for Intel LTE to work on the go.
Image 1 of 2
(Image credit: HP)
Image 2 of 2
(Image credit: HP)
For this round of workstations, HP is introducing its Tamper Lock system, which came from the Firefly G8, which notifies users or IT departments if the bottom of the laptop is removed. They can choose to disable the system, lock the BIOS or use Bitlocker to secure the system. Users would also know if RAM or HDDs were removed. Additionally, the laptops continue HP’s tradition of using Tile tracking to recover the notebook if it is lost or stolen.
Pricing has not been made available, but HP says it will announce that closer to the laptops’ launches.
Laptops like the recent Samsung Galaxy Book Go run Windows 10 on a Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset. However, according to reports Samsung will introduce a new Exynos chipset in the second half of this year that will be used to power future laptops.
This chip – tentatively named Exynos 2200 – will feature an AMD Radeon GPU, which will deliver a PC-class graphics performance. The chip will be fabbed at Samsung’s 5nm foundries.
The €450 Galaxy Book Go runs Windows 10 on a Snapdragon 7c chipset
Interestingly, when Samsung and AMD officially announced their collaboration, there was supposed to be no overlap between products using the new Exynos chip and AMD chips. And AMD sure does make laptops. An additional agreement may have been made since then.
Anyway, after making its debut in a laptop, the Exynos 2200 may find its way into Galaxy tablets as well (perhaps even phones). It should support Android as well as Windows.
The Exynos will rival the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2, which Qualcomm unveiled in September, and (of course) Apple’s M1 product line-up, which recently added iPad Pro tablet into the mix. While the Qualcomm chip uses the same Kryo 495 CPU cores as the original 8cx from 2019, the Exynos should benefit from more current ARM Cortex designs.
Matthew Wilson 3 hours ago Console, Featured Tech News
It is looking increasingly likely that Nintendo will launch an upgraded Switch console soon. We’ve known for a long while that Nintendo is looking to release a new Switch with an OLED display – now, the manufacturer of those OLED displays may have outed themselves.
Universal Display Corp, a supplier of displays for device makers like Nintendo, recently held a Q1 investors call. As pointed out by Spawn Wave, in that call, the company’s CEO, Steven V. Abramson, said “Nintendo has selected an OLED screen for the new Switch Pro due to OLED benefits of higher contrast and faster response times”.
That quote comes from a larger discussion around the growth of OLED, which is beginning to be adopted more frequently in the laptop market as well, leading to higher sales of these panels. Universal Display Corp does not say that it is the company supplying Nintendo with OLED displays, but it would seem that the Switch Pro is an ‘open secret’ amongst supply chain sources.
Other recent reports have indicated an early 2022 launch for a new Nintendo Switch model. It may also use an updated Nvidia Lovelace GPU with DLSS capabilities to achieve greater performance for games.
KitGuru Says: The Switch Pro has been floating around the rumour mill for a couple of years now, but this year, there seems to be better evidence coming to light. Would you like to see an upgraded Switch Pro?
Become a Patron!
Check Also
Sony may finally be making a black DualSense controller
When the PS5 was first revealed, one of the most controversial aspects to the console …
SilverStone Milo 10 is a tiny PC case that supports a Mini-ITX motherboard – and when we say ‘tiny’ what we really mean is ‘less than four litres in capacity.’ You won’t be shocked to learn that Milo 10 does not support a graphics card and requires the use of an external power brick, but despite that you have a number of options and it is surprisingly versatile.
Watch the video via our VIMEO Channel (Below) or over on YouTube at 2160p HERE
Main features
Super small at only 2.7 litres or 3.6 litres depending on configuration
Includes interchangeable top covers for altering case size to accommodate various components
Includes VESA mounting plate for integration with monitors
Supports standard sized Mini-ITX motherboard
Supports slim optical drive with interchangeable bezel
Specification:
Motherboard support: Mini-ITX.
CPU cooler support: Between 29mm and 63mm depending on configuration of storage and top cover.
Expansion slots: None.
Included fans: None
Fan mounts: 1x 120mm/140mm in top cover.
Radiator mounts: None.
Optical drive bay: Slimline laptop ODD.
Internal drive bays: 1x 3.5-inch/2x 2.5-inch.
Front I/O: 2x USB 3.0 ports
Dimensions: 453mm H x 227mm D x 196mm W x 63mm H with standard top cover or 84mm H with Elevated cover.
We faced a dilemma during our build as we have a reasonable selection of Mini-ITX motherboards and a huge pile of CPUs, but finding an APU that is sub-65W nearly defeated us. In essence you can take AMD off the table and are forced to turn to Intel.
When you are working with relatively small items such as the SilverStone Milo 10 the regular form is use a banana for scale, however Leo was determined to get his hands in the picture to better illustrate the tiny size of this case.
This is probably the first (and last) time we will skip thermal testing during a case review as your choice of APU and cooler will make a huge difference to the results, along with the types of workload you perform. If you install an Intel Core i3-10300 and merely update spreadsheets or watch videos on YouTube, you will barely stress the CPU. We felt bad running 3D Mark Fire Strike for the video and simply did not have the heart to run Blender.
Closing Thoughts
Building a PC inside the SilverStone Milo 10 can be a fiddly process, although it gets easier with repetition, and you will find the situation improves if you choose your components wisely.
You will have noted our single biggest gripe with the SilverStone Milo 10 is its reliance on an APU with a relatively low power draw as that is a complete change in direction for us folk at KitGuru. The obvious choices for us would be an AMD Ryzen 5 5600G or Ryzen 7 5700G, however they are not on sale to the public and are exclusively in the hands of system integrators.
For that reason we doubt many home enthusiasts will line up to buy the Milo 10 case and its matching SilverStone AD120-DC DC board and external AC adapter combo kit, unless they have amazingly specific requirements that centre around the tiny form factor of this case.
On the other hand we can easily imagine system integrators using the SilverStone Milo 10 to deliver low powered PCs to offices, hotels and shops where space is at a premium.
While we are all in favour of small form factor PCs, they typically weigh in at 10-20 litres in volume and allow you a fair degree of latitude with your choice of hardware. By contrast the sub-4 litre Milo 10 is a more challenging proposition that is best suited to a customer who is simply unable to compromise in their pursuit of a tiny PC.
You can buy the SilverStone Milo 10 for £44.99 HERE.
Discuss on our Facebook page HERE.
Pros:
Pricing for the case is cheap, but you also have to factor in the DC power converter.
Supports a range of storage up to 3.5-inch HDD.
Supports a 120mm/140mm fan in the top cover.
Cons:
Requires an APU to provide graphics.
Limited to 65W TDP.
Requires an ITX motherboard which is limiting and probably expensive too.
KitGuru says: SilverStone Milo 10 requires the careful selection of an APU, motherboard, cooler and storage.
João Silva 3 hours ago Featured Announcement, Featured Tech News, Graphics
Intel’s upcoming Xe DG2 GPUs were recently revealed to be “right around the corner” and now, we have some early information on what to expect, with new reports indicating that the first DG2 GPUs will arrive in Alder Lake-P powered laptops later this year.
As reported by Igor’s LAB, the DG2 line-up will be heading laptops first in the second half of this year. The report also seems to confirm some rumours we’ve previously shared. There will eventually be DG2 GPUs for desktop systems, but specific dates are currently unknown.
Image credit: Igor’s LAB
According to Igor, the DG2 laptop line-up will consist of 5 SKUs with 4-16GB of GDDR6 memory clocked at 16Gbps. The number of EUs range from 128 to 512, and GPU frequency can reach a 1.8GHz clock. The mobile variants of SKU 1, 2, and 3 will reportedly have a 100W TDP.
Here’s a table listing the known specifications of each SKU:
SKU 1
SKU 2
SKU 3
SKU 4
SKU 5
Package
BGA2660
BGA2660
BGA2660
TBC
TBC
Memory speed
16Gbps
16Gbps
16Gbps
16Gbps
16Gbps
Memory bus
256bit
192bit
128bit
64bit
64bit
Memory
16GB GDDR6
12GB GDDR6
8GB GDDR6
4GB GDDR6
4GB GDDR6
Smart Cache
16MB
16MB
8MB
TBC
TBC
Graphics Execution Units (EUs)
512
384
256
196
128
Graphics Frequency (High) Mobile
1.1GHz
600MHz
450MHz
TBC
TBC
Graphics Frequency (Turbo) Mobile
1.8GHz
1.8GHz
1.4GHz
TBC
TBC
TDP Mobile (Chip Only)
100W
100W
100W
TBC
TBC
TDP Desktop
TBC
TBC
TBC
TBC
TBC
The report also included a PCB diagram showing the layout of a DG2 GPU on a laptop board, presumably a BGA2660 socket board, with 4 or 6 memory modules. This information suggests that we’re looking at one of the non-flagship SKUs.
KitGuru says: Intel’s return to discrete graphics has been interesting to follow, but the question still remains, can they compete with Nvidia and AMD?
Become a Patron!
Check Also
RX 7900 XT RDNA 3 GPU reportedly brings at least 40 percent more performance
AMD’s flagship RDNA 2 GPUs have been out for a while now, which means it is time to start looking ahead to the next generation. AMD is currently working on its RDNA 3 GPU architecture, and according to early leaks, we can expect at least a 40% performance improvement.
The new Chia cryptocurrency has already started making waves in the storage industry, as we’ve reported back in April. With Chia trading now live, it looks set to become even more interesting in the coming months. The total netspace for Chia has already eclipsed 2 exabytes, and it’s well on its way to double- and probably even triple-digit EiB levels if current trends continue. If you’re looking to join the latest crypto-bandwagon, here’s how to get started farming Chia coin.
First, if you’ve dabbled in other cryptocurrencies before, Chia is a very different beast. Some of the fundamental blockchain concepts aren’t radically different from what’s going before, but Chia coin ditches the Proof of Work algorithm for securing the blockchain and instead implements Proof of Space — technically Proof of Time and Space, but the latter appears to be the more pertinent factor. Rather than mining coins by dedicating large amounts of processing power to the task, Chia simply requires storage plots — but these plots need to be filled with the correct data.
The analogies with real-world farming are intentional. First you need to clear a field (i.e., delete any files on your storage devices that are taking up space), then you plough and seed the field (compute a plot for Chia), and then… well, you wait for the crops to grow, which can take quite a long time when those crops are Chia blocks.
Your chances of solving a Chia coin block are basically equal to your portion of the total network space (netspace). Right now, Chia’s netspace sits at roughly 2.7 EiB (Exbibytes — the binary SI unit, so 1 EiB equals 2^60 bytes, or 1,152,921,504,606,846,976 bytes decimal). That means if you dedicate a complete 10TB (10 trillion bytes) of storage to Chia plots, your odds of winning are 0.00035%, or 0.0000035 if we drop the percentage part. Those might sound like terrible odds — they’re not great — but the catch is that there are approximately 4,608 Chia blocks created every day (a rate of 32 blocks per 10 minutes, or 18.75 seconds per block) and any one of them could match your plot.
Simple math can then give you the average time to win, though Chia calculators make estimating this far easier than doing the math yourself. A completely full 10TB HDD can store 91 standard Chia blocks (101.4 GiB). Yeah, don’t get lazy and forget to convert between tebibytes and terabytes, as SI units definitely matters. Anyway, 91 blocks on a single 10TB HDD should win a block every two months or so — once every 68 days.
Each Chia plot ends up being sort of like a massive, complex Bingo card. There’s lots of math behind it, but that analogy should suffice. Each time a block challenge comes up, the Chia network determines a winner based on various rules. If your plot matches and ‘wins’ the block, you get the block reward (currently 2 XCH, Chia’s coin abbreviation). That block reward is set to decrease every three years, for the first 12 years, after which the block reward will be static ad infinitum. The official FAQ lists the reward rate as 64 XCH per 10 minutes, and it will get cut in half every three years until it’s at 4 XCH per 10 minutes with a block reward of 0.125 XCH.
Of course, luck comes into play. It’s theoretically possible (though highly unlikely) to have just a few plots and win a block solution immediately. It’s also possible to have hundreds of plots and go for a couple of months without a single solution. The law of averages should equalize over time, though. Which means to better your chances, you’ll need more storage storing more Chia plots. Also, just because a plot wins once doesn’t mean it can’t win again, so don’t delete your plots after they win.
This is the standard cryptocurrency arms race that we’ve seen repeated over the past decade with hundreds of popular coins. The big miners — farmers in this case — want more of the total Chia pie, and rush out to buy more hardware and increase their odds of winning. Except, this time it’s not just a matter of buying more SSDs or HDDs. This time farmers need to fill each of those with plots, and based on our testing, that is neither a simple task nor something that can be done quickly.
Hardware Requirements for Chia Coin Farming
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
With Ethereum, once you have the requisite GPUs in hand, perhaps some of the best mining GPUs, all you have to do is get them running in a PC. Chia requires that whole ploughing and plotting business, and that takes time. How much time? Tentatively, about six or seven hours seems typical per plot, with a very fast Optane 905P SSD, though it’s possible to do multiple plots at once with the right hardware. You could plot directly to hard drive storage, but then it might take twice as long, and the number of concurrent plots you can do drops to basically one.
The best solution is to have a fast SSD — probably an enterprise grade U.2 drive with plenty of capacity — and then use that for the plotting and transfer the finished plots to a large HDD. Chia’s app will let you do that, but it can be a bit finicky, and if something goes wrong like exceeding the temp storage space, the plotting will crash and you’ll lose all that work. Don’t over schedule your plotting, in other words.
Each 101.4 GiB plot officially requires up to 350 GiB of temporary storage, though we’ve managed to do a single plot multiple times on a 260 GiB SSD. Average write speed during the plotting process varies, sometimes it reaches over 100MB/s, other times it can drop closer to zero. When it drops, that usually means more computational work and memory are being used. Plotting also requires 4 GiB of RAM, so again, high capacity memory sticks are par for the course.
Ultimately, for fast SSDs, the main limiting will likely be storage capacity. If we use the official 350 GiB temp space requirement, that means a 2TB SSD (1863 TiB) can handle at most five concurrent plots. Our own testing suggests that it can probably do six just fine, maybe even seven, but we’d stick with six to be safe. If you want to do more than that (and you probably will if you’re serious about farming Chia), you’ll need either a higher capacity SSD, or multiple SSDs. Each plot your PC is creating also needs 4GB of memory and two CPU threads, and there appear to be scaling limits.
Based on the requirements, here are two recommended builds — one for faster plotting (more concurrent plots) and one for slower plotting.
Our baseline Chia plotting PC uses a 6-core/12-thread CPU, and we’ve elected to go with Intel’s latest Core i5-11400 simply because it’s affordable, comes with a cooler, and should prove sufficiently fast. AMD’s Ryzen 5 5600X would be a good alternative, were it readily available — right now it tends to cost about twice as much as the i5-11400, plus it also needs a dedicated graphics card, and we all know how difficult it can be to find those right now.
For storage, we’ve selected a Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus 2TB that’s rated for 1400 TBW. That’s enough to create around 800–900 plots, at which point your Chia farm should be doing quite nicely and you’ll be able to afford a replacement SSD. Mass storage comes via a 10TB HDD, because that’s the most economical option — 12TB, 14TB, 16TB, and 18TB drives exist, but they all cost quite a bit more per GB of storage. Plus, you’ll probably want to move your stored plots to a separate machine when a drive is filled, but more on that below.
The other components are basically whatever seems like a reasonably priced option, with an eye toward decent quality. You could probably use a smaller case and motherboard, or a different PSU as well. You’ll also need to add more HDDs — probably a lot more — as you go. This PC should support up to six internal SATA HDDs, though finding space in the case for all the drives might be difficult.
At a rate of 18 plots per day, it would take about 30 days of solid plotting time to fill six 10TB HDDs. Meanwhile, the potential profit from 60TB of Chia plots (546 101.4 GiB plots) is currently… wow. Okay, we don’t really want to get your hopes up, because things are definitely going to change. There will be more netspace, the price could drop, etc. But right now, at this snapshot in time, you’d potentially solve a Chia block every 11 days and earn around $5,900 per month.
What’s better than a PC that can do six plots at a time? Naturally it’s a PC that can do even more concurrent plots! This particular setup has a 10-core CPU, again from Intel because of pricing considerations. We’ve doubled the memory and opted for an enterprise class 3.84TB SSD this time. That’s sufficient for the desired ten concurrent plots, which will require up to nearly all of the 3.57 TiB of capacity. We’ve also added a second 10TB HDD, with the idea being that you do two sets of five plots at the same time, with the resulting plots going out to different HDDs (so that HDD write speed doesn’t cause a massive delay when plotting is finished for each batch).
Most of the remaining components are the same as before, though we swapped to a larger case for those who want to do all the farming and plotting on one PC. You should be able to put at least 10 HDDs into this case (using the external 5.25-inch bays). At a rate of 30 plots per day, it should take around 30 days again to fill ten 10TB drives (which aren’t included in the price, though we did put in two). As before, no promises on the profitability since it’s virtually guaranteed to be a lot lower than this, but theoretically such a setup should solve a Chia block every seven days and earn up to $9,800 per month.
Chia farming rig from https://t.co/IPJadpARFa 96 terabytes running off a RockPi4 Model C pic.twitter.com/F6iKOMIdIyJanuary 15, 2021
See more
Long-term Efficient Chia Farming
So far we’ve focused on the hardware needed to get plotting, which is the more difficult part of Chia farming. Once you’re finished building your farm, though, you’ll probably want to look at ways to efficiently keep the farm online. While it’s possible to build out PCs with dozens of HDDs using PCIe SATA cards and extra power supplies, it’s likely far easier and more efficient to skip all that and go with Raspberry Pi. That’s actually the recommended long-term farming solution from the Chia creators.
It’s not possible to directly connected dozens of SATA drives to Raspberry Pi, but using USB-to-SATA adapters and USB hubs overcomes that limitation. There’s the added benefit of not overloading the 5V rail on a PSU, since the enclosures should have their own power — or the USB hubs will. And once you’re finished building out a farm, the power costs to keep dozens of hard drives connected and running are relatively trivial — you could probably run 50 HDDs for the same amount of power as a single RTX 3080 mining Ethereum.
How to Create Chia Plots
We’ve mostly glossed over the plot creation process so far. It’s not terribly complicated, but there are some potential pitfalls. One is that the plotting process can’t be stopped and restarted. You don’t want to do this on a laptop that may power off, though theoretically it should be possible to put a system to sleep and wake it back up, and then let it pick up where it left off. But if you overfill the temp storage, Chia will crash and you’ll lose all progress on any plots, and since it can take six or seven hours, that’s a painful loss.
The first step naturally is to install Chia. We’re using Windows, though it’s available on MacOS and can be compiled from source code for various Linux platforms. Once installed, you’ll need to let the blockchain sync up before you can get to work on farming. However, you can still create plots before the blockchain gets fully synced — that takes perhaps 10 hours, in our experience, but it will inevitably start to take longer as more blocks get added.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
You’ll need to create a new private key to get started — don’t use the above key, as anyone else on the ‘net can just steal any coins you farm. Screenshot and write down your 24 word mnemonic, as that’s the only way you can regain access to your wallet should your PC die. Store this in a safe and secure place!
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
Next, you’ll see the main page. As noted above, it can take quite a while to sync up, and any information displayed on this screen prior to having the full blockchain won’t be current. For example, the above screenshot was taken when the total netspace was only 1.51 EiB (sometime earlier this week). The Wallets and Farm tabs on the left won’t have anything useful right now, so head over to Plots and get started on the plotting process.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
If you’ve previously generated plots, you could import the folder here, but your key has to match the key used for generating plots. If you were to gain access to someone else’s plot files somehow, without the key they’d do you no good. Again, don’t lose your key — or share it online! Hit the Add a Plot button, though.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
Here’s where the ‘magic’ happens. We’ve specified six concurrent plots, with a ten minute delay between each plot starting. That should result in roughly a ten minute delay between plots finishing, which should be enough time for the program to move a finished plot to the final directory.
The Temporary Directory will be your big and fast SSD drive. You could try for a smaller delay between plots starting, but six concurrent plots will certainly put a decent load on most SSDs. Note also that Chia says it needs 239 GiB of temporary storage per plot — it’s not clear (to us) if that’s in addition to the 101.4 GiB for the final plot, but the amount of used space definitely fluctuates during the course of plot creation.
Once everything is set, click the Create Plot button at the bottom, and walk away for the next 6–8 hours. If you come back in eight hours, hopefully everything will have finished without incident and you’ll now see active plots on your Chia farm. Queue up another set of six plots (or however many plots your PC can handle concurrently), and done properly you should be able to get around three cycles in per day.
Then you just leave everything online (or migrate full drives to a separate system that uses the same key), and eventually you should manage to solve a block, earn some XCH coin, and then you can hoard that and hope the price goes up, or exchange it for some other cryptocurrency. Happy farming!
Chia Farming: The Bottom Line
(Image credit: Shutterstock)
Just looking at that income potential should tell you one thing: More people are going to do this than what we’re currently seeing. That or price is going to implode. For the cost of an RTX 3080 off of eBay right now, you could break even in just a couple of weeks. Our short take: anyone looking for new hard drives or large SSDs — could be in for a world of hurt as Chia causes a storage shortage.
During its first week of trading, Chia started with a price of around $1,600, climbed up to a peak of around $1,900, and then dropped to a minimum value of around $560. But then it started going up again and reached a relatively stable (which isn’t really stable at all) $1,000 or so on Friday. A couple more exchanges have joined the initial trio, with OKex accounting for around 67% of trades right now.
More importantly than just price is volume of trading. The first day saw only $11 million in trades, but Thursday/Friday has chalked up over 10X as much action. It might be market manipulation, as cryptocurrencies are full of such shenanigans, but anyone that claimed Chia was going to fade away after the first 12 hours of trading clearly missed the boat.
Unlike other cryptocurrencies, Chia will take a lot more effort to bring more plots online, but we’re still seeing an incredibly fast ramp in allocated netspace. It’s currently at 2.7 EiB, which is a 55% increase just in the past four days. We’ll probably see that fast rate of acceleration for at least a few weeks, before things start to calm down and become more linear in nature.
There are still concerns with e-waste and other aspects of any cryptocurrency, but Chia at least does drastically cut back on the power requirements. Maybe that’s only temporary as well, though. 50 HDDs use as much power as a single high-end GPU, but if we end up with 50X as many HDDs farming Chia, we’ll be right back to square one. For the sake of the environment, let’s hope that doesn’t happen.
Microsoft has indefinitely delayed Windows 10X, its lightweight operating system for low-spec systems and foldables, according to reports from Windows Central and Petri. Instead, the company will turn its focus to the existing desktop experience.
A Microsoft spokesperson told Tom’s Hardware that “Microsoft has nothing to share at this time.”
Windows 10X was introduced in 2019 at a Surface-based event as a version of the Windows 10 operating system designed for dual-screen devices, like the Surface Neo. But Windows 10X was delayed to spring 2021 after a shift to single screen devices to service people’s needs during the Covid-19 pandemic. The Surface Neo was delayed, and no date was ever given for a release. The device was also removed from Microsoft’s website.
In theory, not only would Windows 10X power foldables, but also rival Google’s Chrome OS with support for low-power computers. The Surface Neo, for instance, was going to run on Intel’s Lakefield platform.
The company is reportedly focusing on the existing Windows 10 experience now. Its Sun Valley update, which will include a visual overhaul will likely see the benefits of Windows 10X later this year.
Windows 10X was not Microsoft’s first attempt to rejuvenate Windows 10. Windows 10 S showed up with the Surface Laptop in 2017, but was seen as limited and later made into a locked down mode that users could easily switch out of. And let’s not forget Windows RT, which launched alongside the original Surface Tablet in 2012, only to be discontinued a year later, although technically that was in the days of Windows 8.
Recently, Microsoft announced that 1.3 billion active devices are running Windows 10. It appears that Microsoft is focusing on those experiences instead.
In the past few weeks we saw a number of indicators that Razer is getting ready to launch an AMD-based Blade gaming notebook. In a rather odd-looking Twitter conversation on Thursday night that went into Friday morning, Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan and Frank Azor of AMD suggested the possibility of a collaboration.
“What do you think about making an AMD equipped Razer Blade laptop, @minglintan,” asked Frank Azor, AMD’s gaming chief in a Twitter post.
I dunno guys. What do you all think? Do you all want to see an @AMD equipped @Razer Blade? https://t.co/u6hpVPWFj3May 7, 2021
See more
“I get a ton of requests all the time to make an AMD gaming laptop,” Min-Lian Tan, a co-founder and CEO of Razer, responded shortly. “What do you guys think?” […] FWIW I think we could design/engineer a pretty awesome AMD gaming laptop. The current laptops out there don’t really push the limits of what can be done. What would you guys like to see in a Razer Blade with AMD?”
FWIW I think we could design/engineer a pretty awesome @AMD gaming laptop. The current laptops out there don’t really push the limits of what can be done. What would you guys like to see in a @Razer Blade with AMD?May 7, 2021
See more
Razer is the last major notebook brands to exclusively offer Intel-based machines, which has frustrated some gamers looking for more choice. Back in 2019, Tan told Tom’s Hardwarethat “we do have quite a number of customers reaching out to us asking us about AMD[.]”
Last month someone submitted benchmark results of two Razer machines, codenamed PI411, featuring AMD’s unlocked Ryzen 9 5900HX processor accompanied by Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3060 or RTX 3070 GPU with an 80W TGP. That’s a clear indicator that the PC maker was at least experimenting with AMD’s CPU.
The 3DMark submission itself does not mean that a product is coming to the market as some products do not meet certain goals that manufacturers set. But when high-ranking executives start to talk about new products publicly, it certainly suggests that some plans are being set internally.
Tan is a self-described loose cannon on social media, once telling Tom’s Hardware that “my PR team and my legal team lives on tenterhooks that I’m gonna say something stupid.” But with a partner involved, this seems like it could potentially lead to something real.
The Raspberry Pi might be known as a pocket-sized computer but it does turn up in all manner of places. This maker, known as Littlespleen online, decided to use an old Apple laptop as housing for a Raspberry Pi 4.
The best Raspberry Pi projects breathe life into old hardware, and this one recycles a broken MacBook. This exact model, the A1181, was chosen due to the trackpad and keyboard which connect via USB—perfect for attaching to a Raspberry Pi.
The Raspberry Pi 4 outputs video to the original MacBook screen via an adaptor. According to Littlespleen, there are many third-party controller boards on the market that can take inputs from HDMI / DVI and VGA and output to LCD displays. Users need to research the exact model number when recreating this project to make sure a compatible board is chosen.
Image 1 of 3
(Image credit: Littlespleen)
Image 2 of 3
(Image credit: Littlespleen)
Image 3 of 3
(Image credit: Littlespleen)
As space is at a premium, careful decisions had to be made and one was form factor. This required some capacitors to be placed on their side to make room for the LCD controller board installation. Most of the hardware was placed under the keyboard after gutting the original internals. The onboard batteries power both the Raspberry Pi and the display, with careful consideration made to include a voltage regulator / switching power supply to ensure the Raspberry Pi only sees 5V.
The end result is a fully functional laptop that looks like Apple but tastes like Raspberry. If you want to read more about how it goes together, visit the original Reddit thread for more details.
With just three games left of the Turkish Super Lig, Galatasaray vs Besiktas sticks out as the last remaining hurdle between league leaders Besiktas and the first part of their possible third Turkish domestic double. Make sure you know how to watch a Galatasaray vs Besiktas live stream from anywhere in the world.
Galatasaray vs Besiktas live stream
Date: Saturday 8th May
Kick off: 6.30pm BST / 7.30pm CET / 1.30pm ET
Location: Türk Telekom Stadium, Istanbul
Live stream: BeIn Sports (US, CAN, France, Turkey)
A 23rd Turkish Super Lig title looks unlikely for Galatasaray this time around. The Lions sit in third place, six points off top spot, and although it’s not mathematically impossible, they’d need need a few favours from the clubs facing both Besiktas and Fenerbahce in the closing stages of the campaign.
It’s all on as far as Besiktas are concerned, though. The Black Eagles need two wins from their last three to guarantee their first title since 2017 and set them up nicely for their Turkish Cup Final on Tuesday 18th May with the chance of that historic double. They’re missing a few key players ahead of the Istanbul Derby, however.
Second-top scorer Vincent Aboubakar is an injury doubt, as is centre-mid Oghuzan Ozyakup, as well as loanee Everton forward Cenk Tosun. The season’s star striker, Canadian Cyle Larin, is raring to go, though.
Gala have a few problems of their own. Season stalwart defender Christian Luyindama will likely be missing but winger Henry Onyekuru has returned to training after a hamstring injury.
It’s a 6.30pm kick-off in Istanbul on Saturday night. Lucky Super Lig fans in Brazil and Japan can watch a Galatasaray vs Besiktas free live stream with a 7-day DAZN free trial. Those in US, France, Turkey and Canada can watch the action with a subscription to BeIn Sports. It also appears to be available as a Bet365 live stream in the UK. Make sure to use a VPN if needed when travelling outside those countries for access.
Read on for full details on how to watch a Galatasaray vs Besiktas live stream in HD or for free wherever you are in the world.
Watch a Galatasaray vs Besiktas free live stream
(Image credit: beIN Sports)
Rights to show Turkish Super Lig matches in the USA – including the epic Galatasaray vs Besiktas clash – belong to beIN Sports. It’s easily bolted on to your existing cable package in the States and you can watch via the beIN Sports Connect app.
Not got cable? Good news – popular streaming platform FuboTV carries beIN Sports. Better yet, FuboTV offers new subscribers a free 7-day trial. That’s right, you can watch Galatasaray vs Besiktas for free!
Those in the UK also appear to be able to access a free live stream using their mobile phones through Bet365. You’ll need to sign up and wait for the video symbol next to the app to turn yellow when live,
Going to be outside the US and UK this weekend? Simply use a VPN to access FuboTV and Bet365 as if you were back in your home state. We recommend ExpressVPN as it comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee and 24/7 customer support.
When the free 7-day trial ends, the entry-level FuboTV package costs $65 per month but it does get you 110 premium TV channels and much more. Not for you? You can cancel any time – there’s no lock-in contract.
Galatasaray vs Besiktas kicks off at 1.30pm ET / 10.30am PT on Saturday morning in the States.
Watch Galatasaray vs Besiktas live stream anywhere in the world using a VPN
Even if you have subscribed to the relevant Galatasaray vs Besiktas rights holders, you won’t be able to use them when outside your own country. The service will know your location based on your IP address, and will automatically block your access.
A Virtual Private Network (VPN) helps you get around this obstacle. A VPN creates a private connection between your device and the internet, such that the servers and services you’re accessing aren’t aware of what you’re doing. All the information passing back and forth is entirely encrypted.
There are many VPN providers out there, with some more reliable and safe than others. As a rule, we’d suggest a paid-for service such as ExpressVPN which offers a 100 per cent risk-free money back guarantee. If you’re not happy with the service any time within the first 30-days, then you can cancel with no penalties at all.
Try ExpressVPN risk-free for 30 days ExpressVPN offers a 30-day money back guarantee with its VPN service. You can use it to watch on your mobile, tablet, laptop, TV, games console and more. There’s 24/7 customer support and three months free when you sign-up. Try it – it’s easier than you think.
Japan & Brazil: Galatasaray vs Besiktas live stream on DAZN
Football fans in Brazil and Japan get the chance to watch a Galatasaray vs Besiktas live stream for free. DAZN has the rights to show the Turkish Super Lig and a whole host of sports in these territories, and, best of all, DAZN offers a 1-month free trial. So long as you’ve not used yours already, then you can fill your boots.
Sadly the DAZN free trial isn’t available to those outside these regions. If you are a DAZN customer but travelling abroad, simply use a VPN to access a Galatasaray vs Besiktas live stream without being blocked.
UK and Australia: Galatasaray vs Besiktas live stream
Sadly there is no televised coverage of the Turkish Super Lig in the UK and Australia right now. The best option is to sign up to Bet365 and use its app for the free Galatasaray vs Besiktas live stream.
The game is currently scheduled for a free live stream on the platform. Signing up to Bet365 is free. No betting required. The video icon next to the match listing should turn yellow when the game is live, although the schedule can be subject to change.
If you are a Bet365 customer but travelling abroad, simply use a VPN to access a Galatasaray vs Besiktas live stream without being geo-blocked.
Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez and Billy Joe Saunders are set for a blockbuster showdown in Texas on Saturday. The 12-round super-middleweight unification bout tops a big-time boxing bill that will be streamed exclusively on DAZN. Can Canelo become a three-belt holder at 168lbs? Follow our guide on how to watch a Canelo vs Saunders free live stream, from anywhere in the world.
Canelo vs Saunders free live stream
Main card: 1am BST / 8pm ET / 10am AEST
Ringwalks: 4am BST / 11pm ET / 1pm AEST
Venue: AT&T Stadium, Texas
Free stream: DAZN free trial (Canada)
Watch anywhere: Try ExpressVPN
UK stream: DAZN (£2/month)
US stream: DAZN ($20/month)
Tickets: Seatgeek (from $40)
Canelo retained his WBC, WBA and Ring Magazine super-middleweight titles in February when he beat Turkey’s Avni Yildirim, while Saunders (30-0, 14 KOs) holds the WBO strap since defeating Shefat Isufi to capture the vacant WBO championship in May 2019.
After some disagreement about the size of the ring (Saunders briefly threatened to fly home) both fighters are now ready to grace the AT&T Stadium, which will play host to a 60,000 boxing fans. (You can buy Canelo vs Saunders tickets for $40.)
Heavyweight champion Tyson Fury has arrived in Texas and says Saunders has what it takes to outfox the 30-year-old Mexican:
“Canelo Alvarez’s kryptonite is someone who boxes and moves — southpaw, slick, good feet, good hand speed, good power. Billy Joe Saunders does all of that. He will give him a boxing lesson, smash him, stop him in round 11 or 12… I’ve never been as confident about anything in my life.”
The bookmakers disagree – as does ‘Iron’ Mike Tyson. The tiger-hugging pigeon fancier claims Saunders is “already knocked out”. Perhaps he missed Saunders’ demolition of Chris Eubank Jr?
Saturday’s unmissable fight is exclusive to DAZN but it’s much cheaper in some countries than in others. Here’s how to find a Canelo vs Saunders free live stream from anywhere in the world.
Watch Canelo vs Saunders for free on DAZN
(Image credit: DAZN)
Boxing fans around the world can stream this weekend’s big fight live on DAZN. Subscription to the sports streaming service costs $20 a month in the USA, or just £2 a month int he UK. Canadian subscribers enjoy a FREE trial. Worth knowing, right?
Canelo vs Saunders free live stream with DAZN free trial
DAZN has the rights to the UFC, Bundesliga, UEFA Champions League, UEFA Europa League, US Sports, Fightsports, and much more live and on demand in selected European countries. Try it free for one month. Cancel at anytime.
Going to be outside Canada this weekend?Simply use a VPN to access the DAZN free trial without being geo-blocked. We recommend ExpressVPN because it comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee and 24/7 customer support.
The Canelo vs Saunders ringwalks are expected at 11pm ET / 8pm PT.
Canelo vs Saunders free live stream anywhere in the world using a VPN
Even if you have subscribed to the relevant Canelo vs Saunders rights holders, you won’t be able to access these streaming services when outside your own country. The service will know your location based on your IP address, and will automatically block your access.
A Virtual Private Network (VPN) helps you get around this obstacle. A VPN creates a private connection between your device and the internet, such that the servers and services you’re accessing aren’t aware of what you’re doing. All the information passing back and forth is entirely encrypted.
There are many VPN providers out there, with some more reliable and safe than others. As a rule, we’d suggest a paid-for service such as ExpressVPN.
Try ExpressVPN risk-free for 30 days ExpressVPN offers a 30-day money back guarantee with its VPN service. You can use it to watch Canelo vs Saunders on your mobile, tablet, laptop, TV, games console and more. There’s 24/7 customer support and three months free when you sign-up.
UK: Canelo vs Saunders live stream
(Image credit: DAZN)
DAZN has the exclusive rights to stream this fight live online. Subscription costs just £1.99 a month – a tenth of what it costs in the States!
Remember: British boxing fans stuck outside the UK this weekend can use a VPN to access DAZN for £1.99 from anywhere – without being blocked.We recommend ExpressVPNbecause it comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee and 24/7 customer support.
The Canelo vs Saunders ringwalks are expected at 4am BST.
Canelo vs Saunders fight card
(Image credit: Matchroom Sport)
Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez vs Billy Joe Saunders – for WBO, WBA (Super), WBC and The Ring magazine super-middleweight titles
Elwin Soto vs Katsunari Takayama – for WBO light-flyweight title
Kieron Conway vs Souleymane Cissokho – for WBA inter-continental super-welterweight title
Frank Sanchez vs Nagy Aguilera
Christian Alan Gomez Duran vs Xavier Wilson
Keyshawn Davis vs Jose Antonio Meza
Marc Castro vs Irving Macias
Castillo Kelvin Davis vs Jan Marsalek
Canelo vs Saunders tale of the tape
Name: Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez – Billy Joe Saunders
Nationality: Mexican – British
Date of birth: 18th July 1990 – 30th August 1989
Height: 5ft 9 inches – 5ft 11 inches
Reach: 70 inches – 71 inches
Total fights: 58 – 30
Record: 55-1-2, 37 KOs – 30-0, 14 KOs
Billy Joe Saunders on Canelo Alvarez
“You’ve never been in the ring with someone like me. You’ve never seen anybody with this heart.”
“This fight is all about the brain. Not about power, muscle or skill, it’s the brain and the game plan, and being able to execute that game plan.
“I’m not going to sit here and slag people off and big people up. Canelo has been doing it for many, many years now, destroying everyone. Six of those were Brits. I don’t really take anything from any of them because I do my own thing.
“That’s what’s going to win this fight, something I bring to the table that none of them had. Hatton did a good job many years ago, Ryan Rhodes also. I still haven’t watched the Callum Smith fight now, I’ve seen highlights.
“But I think tactics may have been a little bit wrong there and a bit rushed because they didn’t have a lot of preparation for it. That’s what I hear anyway.”
Canelo Alvarez on Billy Joe Saunders
“It’s always been 20ft and now he wants 24ft,” Alvarez told 5 Live Boxing after the dispute over the size of the ring. “If he wants I will give him the whole stadium. I don’t care.
“He’s been talking a lot about me for the last four years. In a couple of days it will happen and it’s a little more personal.”
Cowboy, maker of some of our favorite pedal-assisted electric bikes, is back with two new models for 2021. The Cowboy 4 is a complete overhaul to last year’s Cowboy 3 while the Cowboy 4 ST features the company’s first step-through frame. Both bikes benefit from a new powertrain with 50 percent more torque than last year’s C3 as well as a new integrated “cockpit” with Quadlock mount that wirelessly charges your phone as you ride. But that’s just a start to the bevy of tweaks both big and small that Cowboy hopes will justify a price tag of €2,490 / £2,290 (about $3,000 USD) when the bikes ship in September.
I had a chance to ride near final pre-production versions of the Cowboy 4 and Cowboy 4 ST alongside Adrien Roose, co-founder and CEO of Brussels-based Cowboy. While the two bikes share the same specs, the rides couldn’t be anymore different.
“We’ve stayed true to our initial vision of providing a better alternative to the car — in form and function — and with the Cowboy 4 it’s a shift we will accelerate and lead,” said Roose in a press statement.
The fourth-generation C4 maintains the same sporty riding position and ultra-responsive steering as every Cowboy before it. But this year’s model has a redesigned 250W rear-hub motor that remains silent as it assists riders up to a max speed of 25km/h (15.5mph), even though it’s smaller and produces noticeably more torque. The bump from 30Nm to 45Nm of torque is apparent on the first downstroke, with the lightest of touches propelling the slightly heavier 18.9kg / 41.67-pound e-bike forward with enough gusto to help smooth out hills.
The C4 ST has a lower saddle and higher grips that put the rider into a more upright position. That coupled with a lower gear ratio (2.71 on the C4 ST vs. 2.85 on the C4) makes the ride feel more relaxed despite having the same motor and Gates Carbon belt drive as its brother. The C4 ST is the model you buy for long, lazy commutes with a laptop bag, or for anyone who won’t fit the C4’s taller frame.
The C4 e-bikes, like their predecessors, offer only a single power setting with no throttle and no extra gears. They rely on a torque sensor to adjust the power delivery as needed, which has traditionally resulted in one of the most intuitive pedal-assisted rides on the road.
Cowboy refers to the Quadlock mount with integrated wireless charging unit as the “cockpit.” It can charge your phone at up to 15W from the e-bike’s removable 360Wh battery, but requires a Quadlock-compatible case that must be purchased separately for about €29 / £29. Although the cockpit is bulky enough to fit another battery, the space is mostly empty I’m told, providing a wide base for the wireless coils and access to the frame to run brake cables through.
The Cowboy apps for iOS and Android have also been totally redesigned with an emphasis on health and fitness in addition to navigation, with many new features rooted in game design theory. “What we’re trying to achieve is some weird mix between Strava, Peloton, and Pokémon Go,” said Roose, “simply to encourage people to bike more.”
The fourth-generation Cowboy 4 also improves upon the Cowboy 3 in a number of other ways:
The C4 is redesigned down to the component level, making one of the best looking e-bikes look even more cohesive and sleek. Cowboy says the C4 now features “200 custom-made parts” assembled by Flex in Hungry, including the motor and tires. The Selle Royal saddle, SunRace hydraulic brakes, and Gates drive are the notable outliers.
The €89 Cowboy mudguards are finally standard, which partially explains the added weight and price of the new e-bikes.
The C4 and C4 ST still don’t come with kickstands, but at least Cowboy now makes its own as a €29 / £29 add-on. It’s also making an optional rear rack priced at €99 / £99.
Cowboy doesn’t currently sell e-bikes in the US, but that will change next year, according to Roose, who’s particularly bullish after hearing President Biden’s plans to cut CO2 emissions. “Our growth, and the growth of the US e-bike market, is making a move for us quite appealing and we want to jump,” said Roose. “We’re talking the next 12 months.”
For Europeans, the €2,490 / £2,290 purchase price for a Cowboy 4 / 4 ST includes theft and crash detection, and free on-demand mobile repairs available nationwide in Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany, France, Austria, Luxembourg, the UK, and in select cities in Spain and Italy. Cowboy also touts its 94.4 percent customer satisfaction rate, noting that owners get replies to support requests within six minutes, on average. A little poke at e-bike rival VanMoof, perhaps, which struggled to support buyers of its S3 and X3 e-bikes as sales ramped up during the pandemic.
The C4 and C4 ST are available in three colors: black, khaki (greenish), and sand (off-whiteish). Test rides will begin in July before the bikes start shipping in September to Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Spain, and the UK. Preorders begin today after a €100 / £100 deposit.
The Cowboy 3 is also being reduced to €2,190 today and now comes standard with mudguards. That’s a price drop of €189 compared to the same e-bike purchased last year.
Photography by Thomas Ricker / The Verge
We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience. By clicking “Accept”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
