When times get tough, modders get modding, and 2020 was no different. Today, the winners of Cooler Master’s Case Mod World Series 2020 modding contest receive their crowns, rewarding some of the most remarkable mods created in a challenging year.
The 2020 contest saw 90 entries from enthusiasts across 23 countries. Mods were equally judged on craftsmanship, aesthetics, functionality and innovation, with judges including Cooler Master, professional modders, sponsors, including MSI and the game Control and media judges, including Tom’s Hardware.
Overall, 12 mods won awards, with the most coveted “Best Of” awards going to 6 builds (Best Tower Mod, Best Scratch Build, Best Innovation and Design, Best Craftsman and Best Art Direction).
You can see the full list of Case Mod World Series 2020 winners here. Below is an inside look at some of the fiercest award winners.
Best Tower of the Year: A.R.E.S. by Explore Modding
Case: Cooler Master Cosmos C700M
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X
Graphics Card: Inno3D iChill Frostbite RTX 2070 Super
We may still be waiting for the hover cars that so many movies and novels have promised, but with Explore Modding’sA.R.E.S. build, the appearance of a floating tower is already here. The modder describes his build as a “story, told in art form.” He drew inspiration for the colors, curves and starry window (made of optic fibers and epoxy resin) from the character Robot from Netflix’s Lost in Space reboot.
Ultimately, A.R.E.S. tells its own story though. And with its base designed to make the tower look like it’s awesomely afloat, that story is told from a world seemingly far off in the future.
Not surprisingly, designing and assembling the base was the hardest part of the mod, Explore Modding told us. It required many parts that were hard to fit together, “due to tight tolerances.”
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“Even designing it was difficult because I really wanted something that made it look like the case was separated from it and floating above the surface, but that required a lot of trial and error in order to make it stable enough,” Explore Modding told Tom’s Hardware. “In the end, the three acrylic blocks are very sturdy and they’re very transparent, so they even tend to disappear under some light scenarios, creating that awesome effect of floating.”
A.R.E.S.’ hardware panel rotates 180 degrees on the fly, so you can easily swap the build’s look — components on the left or on the right. Cable management located in the back and front allowed for a clean look inside, where the suspended centerpiece boasting all the components steals the show.
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“I often change the layout on my setups, and I always had the struggle of sacrificing the amazing view of the internal hardware when I had to move the PC to the other side of the desk,” Explore Modding said. “I actually ended up tearing apart my build to make an inverted mod a couple times for this reason. … So this PC can be put wherever you want and still show the same side every time.”
Maintenance is also a bit easier. Just undo a couple screws and turn the panel to access your components. The rotating panel also means you don’t have to tilt the entire case to bleed air from the loop.
Best Scratch of the Year: Ikigai by Nick Falzone Design
(Image credit: Nick Falzone Design)
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600X
Graphics Card: MSI Radeon 5700 Gaming X
Motherboard: MSI B550I Gaming Edge WiFi
RAM: G. Skill Ripjaws V DDR4-3600 (32GB)
SSD: WD Black SN750
Cooling: Alphacool Laing DDC, Alphacool GPU waterblock and radiator, Optimus CPU block, EKWB fittings, Cooler Master SF360R fans
Power Supply: Cooler Master V650 SFX
Nick Falzone Design’s mod Ikiagi is named after the Japanese word for, as he put it, “one’s personal passions, beliefs, values and vocation.” The Japanese concept about finding your life’s purpose has also recently picked up Western attention and led the modder to create a sensible design with both modern and traditional Japanese woodworking techniques.
Nick Falzone Design, an American modder, has been working with wood since childhood and grew to enjoy the Japanese aesthetic, including the “overall timeless and modern design.” In fact, the modder’s first PC case had mini shoji doors.
“At the time, YouTube was not around, so I read books about Japanese architecture and Japanese joinery. … I’d always wanted to make the hemp leaf pattern that I did in Ikigai,” the modder told Tom’s Hardware
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Ikigai incorporates “traditionally made Japanese Kumiko designs” from unfinished Sitka Spruce contrasting with a Wenge wood outer shell complete with hand-sawn dovetails. The inside is mostly acrylic and aluminum with Wenge added for accent pieces.
To keep Ikigai cool, Nick Falzone Design crafted a distribution plate that also serves as the build’s pump top and reservoir, while keeping most of the cables out of view.
The biggest challenge, however, came in maintaining Nick Falzone Design’s vision of a Mini-ITX build. Keeping up with the small form factor trend is great, but carefully constructing the watercooling and wiring in a build that’s under 20 liters is no small task.
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“I made three full-scale models of the main case and many more models of the interior to maximize each component and make everything work efficiently,” Nick Falzon Design said.
Best Craftsmanship: Cyberpunk 2077 – Deconstruction by AK Mod
CPU: Intel Core I9-10900K
Graphics Card: Aorus GeForce RTX 3080 Master
Motherboard: Aorus Z490 Xtreme
RAM: Aorus RGB Memory DDR4-3200 (4x 8GB)
SSD: Gigabyte NVMe SSD M.2 2280 (1TB)
Cooling: Bitspower fittings, Premium Summit M Mystic Black Metal Edition CPU block, D5 Vario motor, Leviathan XF 120 4xG1/4″ radiator, Water Tank Z-Multi 50 V2 and Bitspower Touchaqua in-line filter, digital thermal sensor, digital RGB multi-function controller, PWM fan multi-function hub, Cooler Master MasterFan SF120M, AlphaCool Eiszapfen laser fitting with 4-pin molex
Power Supply: Aorus P850W 80+ Gold Modular
With Cyberpunk 2077 making splashes of all types in 2020, it wasn’t surprising to see a Cyberpunk-inspired mod. More surprising are the undeniable intricacies, craftsmanship and expertise boasted in this showstopping mod that looked unlike any other entry, (and yes, we looked at all 90).
The mod embodies Mantis Blades being repaired. AK Mod did a whole lot of 3D printing, as well as CNC milling and research into unique parts, like military aviation connectors, a vacuum fluorescent (VFD) display and a light bar — to bring the concept to life.
(Image credit: AK Mod)
Of course, 3D printing Mantis Blades calls for some patience. AK Mod separated the blades’ parts into over 90 fdm and dlp files but had to redesign due to construction failure.
“In the original design, inner metal structure frame and outer arm were separated. The outcome of the first design was too thin. The finger parts are difficult to assemble, and the weight bearing for the wrist part was not as expected, so we had to improve the design and print the outcome all over again,” AK Mod told Tom’s Hardware.
(Image credit: AK Mod)
Other techniques used to make Cyberpunk 2077 – Deconstruction include welding, digital processing lathing, UV printing and laser engraving and cutting. Hand-made parts were also sanded, soil filled, spray painted and given an aged treatment.
(Image credit: AK Mod)
AK Mod also included an actionable ring scanning instrument to “simulate the Mantis Blades being scanned as a weapon,” AK Mod said. Red LEDs add authenticity as the blades move horizontally.
Best Innovation and Design: Spirit of Motion by Maximum Bubble Mods
(Image credit: Maximum Bubble Mods)
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600
Graphics Card: Nvidia RTX 2080 Founder’s Edition
Motherboard: MSI B450M Pro-M2
RAM: G.Skill TridentZ – 3,600 MHz (16GB)
SSD: Samsung 970 EVO (500GB)
Cooling: Corsair Hydro H115i Pro, Cooler Master MasterFan Pro Air Pressure RGB
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA 750 G5
While some of this year’s winning mods look straight from the future, Spirit of Motion opts for a retro vibe. Building the mod for his father, Maximum Bubble Mods’ Spirit in Motion goes for a classic car theme, incorporating an “Art Deco era front car grille,” as the modder describes it, topped off with delicious Candy Apple Red paint.
That custom grille not only looks good but opens up to reveal the PC’s components. Hand-building the aluminum grille took “tens of hours, hard work and many processes,” Maximum Bubble Mods told us.
(Image credit: Maximum Bubble Mods)
Further earning the Innovation & Design title, Maximum Bubble Mods inverted and mirrored the motherboard and vertically mounted the graphics card to keep all the I/O as low as possible.
“It was all done to keep the PC from getting excessively large and to keep the I/O below the frame that my hinge would mount to,” Maximum Bubble Mods explained.
Perhaps the best part is that Spirit In Motion is now the modder’s father’s best gaming PC (you can even watch him receive the mod on this YouTube video).
“The last time we talked, he was on a Civilization kick and sounding like he was loving the PC, so I’m happy,” Maximum Bubble Mods said.
Supermicro’s 1023US-TR4 is a slim 1U dual-socket server designed for high-density compute environments in high-end cloud computing, virtualization, and enterprise applications. With support for AMD’s EPYC 7001 and 7002 processors, this high-end server packs up to two 64-core Eypc Rome processors, allowing it to cram 128 cores and 256 threads into one slim chassis.
We’re on the cusp of Intel’s Ice Lake and AMD’s EPYC Milan launches, which promise to reignite the fierce competition between the long-time x86 rivals. In preparation for the new launches, we’ve been working on a new set of benchmarks for our server testing, and that’s given us a pretty good look at the state of the server market as it stands today.
We used the Supermicro 1023US-TR4 server for EPYC Rome testing, and we’ll focus on examining the platform in this article. Naturally, we’ll add in Ice Lake and EPYC Milan testing as soon as those chips are available. In the meantime, here’s a look at some of our new benchmarks and the current state of the data center CPU performance hierarchy in several hotly-contested price ranges.
Inside the Supermicro 1023US-TR4 Server
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The Supermicro 1023US-TR4 server comes in the slim 1U form factor. And despite its slim stature, it can host an incredible amount of compute horsepower under the hood. The server supports AMD’s EPYC 7001 and 7002 series chips, with the latter series topping out at 64 cores apiece, which translates to 128 cores and 256 threads spread across the dual sockets.
Support for the 7002 series chips requires a 2.x board revision, and the server can accommodate CPU cTDP’s up to 280W. That means it can accommodate the beefiest of EPYC chips, which currently comes in the form of the 280W 64-core EPYC 7H12 with a 280W TDP.
The server has a tool-less rail mounting system that eases installation into server racks and the CSE-819UTS-R1K02P-T chassis measures 1.7 x 17.2 x 29 inches, ensuring broad compatibility with standard 19-inch server racks.
The front panel comes with standard indicator lights, like a unit identification (UID) light that helps with locating the server in a rack, along with drive activity, power, status light (to indicate fan failures or system overheating), and two LAN activity LEDs. Power and reset buttons are also present at the upper right of the front panel.
By default, the system comes with four tool-less 3.5-inch hot-swap SATA 3 drive bays, but you can configure the server to accept four NVMe drives on the front panel, and an additional two M.2 drives internally. You can also add an optional SAS card to enable support for SAS storage devices. The front of the system also houses a slide-out service/asset tag identifier card to the upper left.
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Popping the top off the chassis reveals two shrouds that direct air from the two rows of hot-swappable fans. A total of eight fan housings feed air to the system, and each housing includes two counter-rotating 4cm fans for maximum static pressure and reduced vibration. As expected with servers intended for 24/7 operation, the system can continue to function in the event of a fan failure. However, the remainder of the fans will automatically run at full speed if the system detects a failure. Naturally, these fans are loud, but that’s not a concern for a server environment.
Two fan housings are assigned to cool each CPU, and a simple black plastic shroud directs air to the heatsinks underneath. Dual SP3 sockets house both processors, and they’re covered by standard heatsinks that are optimized for linear airflow.
A total of 16 memory slots flank each processor, for a total of 32 memory slots that support up to 4TB of registered ECC DDR4-2666 with EPYC 7001 processors, or an incredible 8TB of ECC DDR4-3200 memory (via 256GB DIMMs) with the 7002 models, easily outstripping the memory capacity available with competing Intel platforms.
We tested the EPYC processors with 16x 32GB DDR4-3200 Samsung modules for a total memory capacity of 512GB. In contrast, we loaded down the Xeon comparison platform with 12x 32GB Sk hynix DDR4-2933 modules, for a total capacity of 384GB of memory.
The H11DSU-iN motherboard’s expansion slots consist of two full-height 9.5-inch PCIe 3.0 slots and one low-profile PCIe 3.0 x8 slot, all mounted on riser cards. An additional internal PCIe 3.0 x8 slot is also available, but this slot only accepts proprietary Supermicro RAID cards. All told, the system exposes a total of 64 lanes (16 via NVMe storage devices) to the user.
As one would imagine, Supermicro has other server offerings that expose more of EPYCs available 128 lanes to the user and also come with the faster PCIe 4.0 interface.
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The rear I/O panel includes four gigabit RJ45 LAN ports powered by an Intel i350-AM4 controller, along with a dedicated IPMI port for management. Here we find the only USB ports on the machine, which come in the form of two USB 3.0 headers, along with a COM and VGA port.
Two 1000W Titanium-Level (96%+) redundant power supplies provide power to the server, with automatic failover in the event of a failure, as well as hot-swapability for easy servicing.
The BIOS is easy to access and use, while the IPMI web interface provides a wealth of monitoring capabilities and easy remote management that matches the type of functionality available with Xeon platforms. Among many options, you can update the BIOS, use the KVM-over-LAN remote console, monitor power consumption, access health event logs, monitor and adjust fan speeds, and monitor the CPU, DIMM, and chipset temperatures and voltages. Supermicro’s remote management suite is polished and easy to use, which stands in contrast to other platforms we’ve tested.
Test Setup
Cores/Threads
1K Unit Price
Base / Boost (GHz)
L3 Cache (MB)
TDP (W)
AMD EPYC 7742
64 / 128
$6,950
2.25 / 3.4
256
225W
Intel Xeon Platinum 8280
28 / 56
$10,009
2.7 / 4.0
38.5
205W
Intel Xeon Gold 6258R
28 / 56
$3,651
2.7 / 4.0
38.5
205W
AMD EPYC 7F72
24 / 48
$2,450
3.2 / ~3.7
192
240W
Intel Xeon Gold 5220R
24 / 48
$1,555
2.2 / 4.0
35.75
150W
AMD EPYC 7F52
16 / 32
$3,100
3.5 / ~3.9
256
240W
Intel Xeon Gold 6226R
16 / 32
$1,300
2.9 / 3.9
22
150W
Intel Xeon Gold 5218
16 / 32
$1,280
2.3 / 3.9
22
125W
AMD EPYC 7F32
8 / 16
$2,100
3.7 / ~3.9
128
180W
Intel Xeon Gold 6250
8 / 16
$3,400
3.9 / 4.5
35.75
185W
Here we can see the selection of processors we’ve tested for this review, though we use the Xeon Platinum Gold 8280 as a stand-in for the less expensive Xeon Gold 6258R. These two chips are identical and provide the same level of performance, with the difference boiling down to the more expensive 8280 coming with support for quad-socket servers, while the Xeon Gold 6258R tops out at dual-socket support.
Memory
Tested Processors
Supermicro AS-1023US-TR4
16x 32GB Samsung ECC DDR4-3200
EPYC 7742, 7F72, 7F52, 7F32
Dell/EMC PowerEdge R460
12x 32GB SK Hynix DDR4-2933
Intel Xeon 8280, 6258R, 5220R, 6226R, 6250
To assess performance with a range of different potential configurations, we used the Supermicro 1024US-TR4 server with four different EPYC Rome configurations. We outfitted this server with 16x 32GB Samsung ECC DDR4-3200 memory modules, ensuring that both chips had all eight memory channels populated.
We used a Dell/EMC PowerEdge R460 server to test the Xeon processors in our test group, giving us a good sense of performance with competing Intel systems. We equipped this server with 12x 32GB Sk hynix DDR4-2933 modules, again ensuring that each Xeon chip’s six memory channels were populated. These configurations give the AMD-powered platform a memory capacity advantage, but come as an unavoidable side effect of the capabilities of each platform. As such, bear in mind that memory capacity disparities may impact the results below.
We used the Phoronix Test Suite for testing. This automated test suite simplifies running complex benchmarks in the Linux environment. The test suite is maintained by Phoronix, and it installs all needed dependencies and the test library includes 450 benchmarks and 100 test suites (and counting). Phoronix also maintains openbenchmarking.org, which is an online repository for uploading test results into a centralized database. We used Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and the default Phoronix test configurations with the GCC compiler for all tests below. We also tested both platforms with all available security mitigations.
Linux Kernel and LLVM Compilation Benchmarks
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We used the 1023US-TR4 for testing with all of the EPYC processors in the chart, and here we see the expected scaling in the timed Linux kernel compile test with the AMD EPYC processors taking the lead over the Xeon chips at any given core count. The dual EPYC 7742 processors complete the benchmark, which builds the Linux kernel at default settings, in 21 seconds. The dual 24-core EPYC 7F72 configuration is impressive in its own right — it chewed through the test in 25 seconds, edging past the dual-processor Xeon 8280 platform.
AMD’s EPYC delivers even stronger performance in the timed LLVM compilation benchmark — the dual 16-core 7F72’s even beat the dual 28-core 8280’s. Performance scaling is somewhat muted between the flagship 64-core 7742 and the 24-core 7F72, largely due to the strength of the latter’s much higher base and boost frequencies. That impressive performance comes at the cost of a 240W TDP rating, but the Supermicro server handles the increased thermal output easily.
Molecular Dynamics and Parallel Compute Benchmarks
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NAMD is a parallel molecular dynamics code designed to scale well with additional compute resources; it scales up to 500,000 cores and is one of the premier benchmarks used to quantify performance with simulation code. The EPYC processors are obviously well-suited for these types of highly-parallelized workloads due to their prodigious core counts, with the dual 7742 configuration completing the workload 28% faster than the dual Xeon 8280 setup.
Stockfish is a chess engine designed for the utmost in scalability across increased core counts — it can scale up to 512 threads. Here we can see that this massively parallel code scales well with EPYC’s leading core counts. But, as evidenced by the dual 24-core 7F72’s effectively tying the 28-core Xeon 8280’s, the benchmark also generally responds well to the EPYC processors. The dual 16-core 7F52 configuration also beat out both of the 16-core Intel comparables. Intel does pull off a win as the eight-core 6250 processors beat the 7F32’s, though.
We see similarly impressive performance in other molecular dynamics workloads, like the Gromacs water benchmark that simulates Newtonian equations of motion with hundreds of millions of particles and the NAS Parallel Benchmarks (NPB) suite. NPB characterizes Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) applications, and NASA designed it to measure performance from smaller CFD applications up to “embarrassingly parallel” operations. The BT.C test measures Block Tri-Diagonal solver performance, while the LU.C test measures performance with a lower-upper Gauss-Seidel solver.
Regardless of the workload, the EPYC processors deliver a brutal level of performance in highly-parallelized applications, and the Supermicro server handled the heat output without issue.
Rendering Benchmarks
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Turning to more standard fare, provided you can keep the cores fed with data, most modern rendering applications also take full advantage of the compute resources. Given the well-known strengths of EPYC’s core-heavy approach, it isn’t surprising to see the 64-core EPYC 7742 processors carve out a commanding lead in the C-Ray and Blender benchmarks. Still, it is impressive to see the 7Fx2 models beat the competing Xeon processors with similar core counts nearly across the board.
The performance picture changes somewhat with the Embree benchmarks, which test high-performance ray tracing libraries developed at Intel Labs. Naturally, the Xeon processors take the lead in the Asian Dragon renders, but the crown renders show that AMD’s EPYC can offer leading performance even with code that is heavily optimized for Xeon processors.
Encoding Benchmarks
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Encoders tend to present a different type of challenge: As we can see with the VP9 libvpx benchmark, they often don’t scale well with increased core counts. Instead, they often benefit from per-core performance and other factors, like cache capacity.
However, newer encoders, like Intel’s SVT-AV1, are designed to leverage multi-threading more fully to extract faster performance for live encoding/transcoding video applications. Again, we can see the impact of EPYC’s increased core counts paired with its strong per-core performance as the EPYC 7742 and 7F72 post impressive wins.
Python and Sysbench Benchmarks
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The Pybench and Numpy benchmarks are used as a general litmus test of Python performance, and as we can see, these tests don’t scale well with increased core counts. That allows the Xeon 6250, which has the highest boost frequency of the test pool at 4.5 GHz, to take the lead.
Compression and Security
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Compression workloads also come in many flavors. The 7-Zip (p7zip) benchmark exposes the heights of theoretical compression performance because it runs directly from main memory, allowing both memory throughput and core counts to impact performance heavily. As we can see, this benefits the EPYC 7742 tremendously, but it is noteworthy that the 28-core Xeon 8280 offers far more performance than the 24-core 7F72 if we normalize throughput based on core counts. In contrast, the gzip benchmark, which compresses two copies of the Linux 4.13 kernel source tree, responds well to speedy clock rates, giving the eight-core Xeon 6250 the lead due to its 4.5 GHz boost clock.
The open-source OpenSSL toolkit uses SSL and TLS protocols to measure RSA 4096-bit performance. As we can see, this test favors the EPYC processors due to its parallelized nature, but offloading this type of workload to dedicated accelerators is becoming more common for environments with heavy requirements.
SPEC CPU 2017 Estimated Scores
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We used the GCC compiler and the default Phoronix test settings for these SPEC CPU 2017 test results. SPEC results are highly contested and can be impacted heavily with various compilers and flags, so we’re sticking with a bog-standard configuration to provide as level of a playing field as possible. It’s noteworthy that these results haven’t been submitted to the SPEC committee for verification, so they aren’t official. Instead, view the above tests as estimates, based on our testing.
The multi-threaded portion of the SPEC CPU 2107 suite is of most interest for the purpose of our tests, which is to gauge the ability of the Supermicro platform to handle heavy extended loads. As expected, the EPYC processors post commanding leads in both the intrate and fprate subtests. And close monitoring of the platform didn’t find any thermal throttling during these extended duration tests. The Xeon 6250 and 8280 processors take the lead in the single-threaded intrate tests, while the AMD EPYC processors post impressively-strong single-core measurements in the fprate tests.
Conclusion
AMD has enjoyed a slow but steadily-increasing portion of the data center market, and much of its continued growth hinges on increasing adoption beyond hyperscale cloud providers to more standard enterprise applications. That requires a dual-pronged approach of not only offering a tangible performance advantage, particularly in workloads that are sensitive to per-core performance, but also having an ecosystem of fully-validated OEM platforms readily available on the market.
The Supermicro 1023US-TR4 server slots into AMD’s expanding constellation of OEM EPYC systems and also allows discerning customers to upgrade from the standard 7002 series processors to the high-frequency H- and F-series models as well. It also supports up to 8TB of ECC memory, which is an incredible amount of available capacity for memory-intensive workloads. Notably, the system comes with the PCIe 3.0 interface while the second-gen EPYC processors support PCIe 4.0, but this arrangement allows customers that don’t plan to use PCIe 4.0 devices to procure systems at a lower price point. As one would imagine, Supermicro has other offerings that support the faster interface.
Overall we found the platform to be robust, and out-of-the-box installation was simple with a tool-less rail kit and an easily-accessible IPMI interface that offers a cornucopia of management and monitoring capabilities. Our only minor complaints are that the front panel could use a few USB ports for easier physical connectivity. The addition of a faster embedded networking interface would also free up an additional PCIe slot. Naturally, higher-end Supermicro platforms come with these features.
As seen throughout our testing, the Supermicro 1023US-TR4 server performed admirably and didn’t suffer from any thermal throttling issues regardless of the EPYC processors we used, which is an important consideration. Overall, the Supermicro 1023US-TR4 server packs quite the punch in a small form factor that enables incredibly powerful and dense compute deployments in cloud, virtualization, and enterprise applications.
Modder and YouTuber “VIK-on” completed his project on modifying a Palit RTX 3070 with 16GB of video memory, doubling the card’s VRAM capacity from its original 8GB specification. In his video detailing the mod, VIK-on shows us the installation process of the memory modules, and his experiences using the card.
This isn’t the first time this has happened. We’ve previously covered VIK-on’s memory mod on an RTX 2070, where he upgrades that card from 8GB to 16GB of memory with some success. Things seem to have gone better with the 3070 this round.
Installation Process
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VIK-on’s work is no easy process, so don’t expect to have a good experience duplicating his mod back at home with your own card. Especially if you lack the proper equipment.
VIK-on first takes the cooler off the RTX 3070, then applies a heat gun to the card’s VRAM modules and starts increases the temperature to the point where he can pull the modules off the card with little to no resistance.
Next, VIK-on has to change what is known as “straps” on the PCB itself. Basically, these straps are little resistors that need to be changed (re-soldered) depending on the memory module in use, whether that be an 8Gb or a 16Gb chip, or a memory chip from a specific memory maker, like Hynix, Samsung, or Micron.
Finally, he lubricates the PCB points where the VRAM will be installed, then installs the VRAM by heating up the modules when placed on the 3070’s PCB.
Like with the RTX 2070 he modified, the 3070 POSTed just fine, and GPU-Z reveals that the full-fat 16GB of memory is indeed visible and usable to the card.
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Driver Problems and a Workaround
Unfortunately, VIK-on ran into what seems to be a driver limitation with the RTX 3070, as the card was very unstable in any 3D application. However, he managed to fix the issue by going into EVGA’s Precision X software and forcing the card to run at its normal frequencies and prevent it from underclocking and undervolting to save power.
Strangely enough, this fix completely resolved any crashing in 3D applications, and the card was fully operational.
Perhaps this bug is a countermeasure from Nvidia to prevent AIB partners from selling 16GB models, since that SKU technically isn’t supposed to exist. More likely, the firmware and drivers simply aren’t tuned to work properly with the different memory configuration. This proves the RTX 3070 core (GA104) can support a 16GB configuration, but this hardware hack isn’t the same as official support from Nvidia.
Hints of a Future RTX 3070 Ti?
A 16GB RTX 3070 would be an interesting configuration to see out in the wild. We’re already seeing AAA games at 4K resolutions reaching the 8GB frame buffer limit, particularly with Ray-Tracing enabled. The 16GB frame buffer could come in handy a few years down the road as games become more and more demanding.
But there’s also the cost, especially during a time where we have a massive VRAM shortage. A 16GB model could be more expensive than it’s worth for most consumers. Presumably, this is why Nvidia dunked the 16GB route and stuck with 8GB of VRAM for the RTX 3070. Rumors of a future 16GB RTX 3070 Ti persist, however, and such a card would make mods like this unnecessary.
For now, it’s cool to see a fully functioning RTX 3070 with double the VRAM. Never underestimate the power of modders.
PNY’s XLR8 Gaming Epic-X RGB DDR4-3200 C16 memory kit is a good partner for contemporary AMD and Intel processors that natively support DDR4-3200 memory.
For
Acceptable performance
RGB lighting doesn’t require proprietary software
Against
Too expensive
Limited overclocking potential
Nowadays, it feels like the norm that every computer hardware company has a dedicated gaming sub-brand. For PNY, that would be XLR8 Gaming that currently competes in three major hardware markets: memory, gaming graphics cards, and SSDs. In terms of memory, the XLR8 Gaming branding is still a bit wet behind the ears, but the company has started to solidify its lineups. The Epic-X RGB series, in particular, is one of XLR8 Gaming’s latest additions to its memory portfolio.
The Epic-X RGB memory modules come with a black PCB and a matching aluminum heat spreader. The design is as simple as it gets, and that’s not a bad thing. The heat spreaders feature a few diagonal lines and the XLR8 logo in the middle. An RGB lightbar is positioned on top of the memory module to provide some flair. The memory measures 47mm (1.85 inches) tall, so it might get in the way of some CPU air coolers.
PNY didn’t develop a proprietary program to control the Epic-X RGB’s lighting, which will favor users who don’t want to install another piece of software on their system. Instead, PNY is handing the responsibility over to the motherboard. Fear not, because the Epic-X RGB has all its bases covered. The memory’s illumination is compatible with Asus Aura Sync, Gigabyte RGB Fusion, MSI Mystic Light Sync, and ASRock Polychrome Sync.
The Epic-X RGB memory kit is comprised of two 8GB DDR4 memory modules. They’re built on a 10-layer PCB and feature a single-rank design. Thaiphoon Burner was unable to identify the integrated circuits (ICs) inside the Epic-X RGB. However, given the primary timings, the memory is likely using Hynix C-die chips.
Predictably, the Epic-X RGB runs at DDR4-2133 with 15-15-15-36 timings by default. There’s a single XMP profile that brings the memory up to speed. In this case, it sets the memory modules to DDR4-3200 and the timings to 16-18-18-38. At this frequency, the memory draws 1.35V. For more on timings and frequency considerations, see our PC Memory 101 feature, as well as our How to Shop for RAM story.
Comparison Hardware
Memory Kit
Part Number
Capacity
Data Rate
Primary Timings
Voltage
Warranty
Team Group T-Force Xtreem ARGB
TF10D416G3600HC14CDC01
2 x 8GB
DDR4-3600 (XMP)
14-15-15-35 (2T)
1.45 Volts
Lifetime
Gigabyte Aorus RGB Memory
GP-AR36C18S8K2HU416R
2 x 8GB
DDR4-3600 (XMP)
18-19-19-39 (2T)
1.35 Volts
Lifetime
PNY XLR8 Gaming Epic-X RGB
MD16GK2D4320016XRGB
2 x 8GB
DDR4-3200 (XMP)
16-18-18-38 (2T)
1.35 Volts
Lifetime
Lexar DDR4-2666
LD4AU008G-R2666U x 2
2 x 8GB
DDR4-2666
19-19-19-43 (2T)
1.20 Volts
Lifetime
Our Intel test system consists of an Intel Core i9-10900K and Asus ROG Maximus XII Apex on 0901 firmware. On the opposite side, the AMD testbed leverages an AMD Ryzen 5 3600 and ASRock B550 Taichi with 1.30 firmware. The MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Gaming Trio handles the graphical duties on both platforms.
Intel Performance
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Predictably, the Epic-X RGB didn’t beat the faster memory kits in our RAM benchmarks. Performance was consistent, with the Epic-X kit placing third overall on the application and gaming charts.
AMD Performance
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Things didn’t change on the AMD platform, either. However, the Epic-X RGB did earn some merits since the memory kit was the fastest in the Cinebench R20 and HandBrake x264 conversion tests. The margin of victory was slim, though, at less than 1%.
The Epic-X RGB isn’t the best overclocker that we’ve had in the labs. Nevertheless, we squeezed an extra 400 MHz out of the kit. We could hit DDR4-3600 at 1.45V after we relaxed the timings to 20-20-20-40.
Lowest Stable Timings
Memory Kit
DDR4-2666 (1.45V)
DDR4-3200 (1.45V)
DDR4-3600 (1.45V)
DDR4-3900 (1.45V)
DDR4-4200 (1.45V)
Team Group T-Force Xtreem ARGB
N/A
N/A
13-14-14-35 (2T)
N/A
19-19-19-39 (2T)
Gigabyte Aorus RGB Memory
N/A
N/A
16-19-19-39 (2T)
20-20-20-40 (2T)
N/A
PNY XLR8 Gaming Epic-X RGB
N/A
15-18-18-38 (2T)
20-20-20-40 (2T)
N/A
N/A
Lexar DDR4-2666
16-21-21-41 (2T)
N/A
N/A
17-22-22-42 (2T)
N/A
Sadly, we didn’t have the same level of luck optimizing the Epic-X RGB at DDR4-3200. Even with a 1.45V DRAM voltage, we could only get the CAS Latency down from 15 to 16 clocks. The other timings wouldn’t yield.
Bottom Line
In this day and age, enthusiasts are pursuing faster and faster memory kits. However, there’s always space for a standard memory kit, and the XLR8 Gaming Epic-X RGB DDR4-3200 C16 kit could very well find its place with users that want to stick to a processor’s official supported memory frequency. Today’s modern processors, such as AMD’s Zen 2 and Zen 3 processors and Intel’s looming Rocket Lake processors, support DDR4-3200 memory right out of the box. The XLR8 Gaming Epic-X RGB DDR4-3200 C16 would fit nicely in this situation since you can just enable XMP and never look back.
The XLR8 Gaming Epic-X RGB DDR4-3200 C16 only has a tiny flaw, and that’s pricing. The memory kit retails for $94.99 when the typical DDR4-3200 C16 kit starts at $74.99. Even the faster DDR4-3600 C18 memory kits sell for as low as $79.99. In PNY’s defense, the Epic-X RGB memory modules do look nice with the RGB lighting and whatnot, so we can probably chalk the extra cost up to the RGB tax.
Aya, a startup behind the industry’s first crowdfunded handheld Windows 10-based game console, has begun its Indiegogo campaign. The start of the campaign was postponed earlier due to components shortages, but now Aya thinks that the market situation is right to start the company’s crowdfunding campaign. To be the first to get the Aya Neo, one must pay as much as $789 via the Indiegogo crowdfunding platform, reports Liliputing.
The Aya Neo uses the AMD Ryzen 5 4500U system-on-chip produced using TSMC’s N7 fabrication process (7 nm-class). This APU has six cores running at 2.30 GHz/4.0 GHz along with with the Radeon Vega 6 graphics unit (384 SPs), 16GB of memory, and 1TB of PCIe/NVMe storage. The AMD system-on-chip is cooled down using a proprietary cooling system with to copper heat pipes and a fan.
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The console has a 7-inch IPS LCD touch-enabled display along with analog sticks, a D-pad, and other game-specific buttons. The Aya Neo exceeds expectations with regard to connectivity, which includes Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5, stereo speakers, a 3.5-mm audio output, and three USB Type-C ports.
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While a 7-inch x86 Windows-based PC seems impressive, the Aya Neo has its peculiarities. In particular, the console uses a six-year-old Polar/Vega GCN 1.4 graphics architecture that first came to life in the form of the Radeon RX 470 GPU in early 2016. AMD and game developers support this architecture for now, but only time will tell for how long this architecture will be supported given the fact that AMD is promoting its RDNA/RDNA2 GPUs and it is the RDNA2 architecture that powers both new generation game consoles, the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox One X/S series.
In any case, without any doubts the Aya Neo is an interesting device from engineering and gaming performance standpoints.
Kubuntu Focus has started to offer Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 30-series graphics processor with its Kubuntu GNU/Linux distribution-based M2 laptop aimed at gamers and performance-hungry professionals.
Linux-based laptops are usually niche products for people with very specific requirements, so there aren’t many configurations available. Yet, a few companies offer high-end notebooks with powerful hardware that can compete against their Windows-powered counterparts. Kubuntu Focus is one of the vendors that offers such machines.
The Kubuntu Focus M2 notebook comes with a 15.6-inch 144Hz Full-HD display and Intel’s Core i7-10875H (8C/16T, 2.30GHz/5.10GHz) processor that was first introduced last October, Liliputing recalls. At the time, the manufacturer only offered Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 20-series graphics processors based on the Turing architecture with it since no mobile GeForce RTX 30-series GPUs featuring the Ampere architecture were available.
Nvidia has launched its GeForce RTX 30-series graphics processors for notebooks, so now the Kubuntu Focus M2 comes with an option for RTX 3060, 3070, and 3080 GPUs. In fact, the base model now comes equipped with the Core i7-10875H CPU, the GeForce RTX 3060 GPU, 16GB of memory, and a 250GB SSD for $1,795.
Kubuntu Focus’ M2 is quite a powerful mobile workstation with plenty of options and rich connectivity, including a Wi-Fi 6 + Bluetooth adapter, a GbE port, a Thunderbolt 3 connector, three USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A connectors, two display outputs (one mini-DisplayPort 1.4 and one HDMI), a microSDXC card reader, and audio ports. The beefiest configuration with the Core i7-10875H, the GeForce RTX 3080, 64GB of DDR4, and 4TB of storage costs $4535.
The Kubuntu Focus M2 seems to be the first Linux laptop with Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 30-series graphics, but it will certainly not be the last one.
Apple is about to discontinue its iMac Pro all-in-one workstation. The system is currently only available in the default configuration while supplies last, and no replacement is planned, at least for now.
Apple confirmed that it is discontinuing the iMac Pro in an interview with MacRumours. The company said that no replacement for the iMac Pro was planned because for the vast majority of iMac Pro users the latest iMac 27-inch in its high-end configuration is the preferred choice, whereas customers who need serious performance and expandability could opt for the Mac Pro.
The main idea behind the iMac Pro was to put in an Intel Xeon W processor with up to 18 cores along with a discrete AMD Radeon Pro Vega 64X graphics processor and up to 256GB of DDR4-2666 ECC memory into an all-in-one PC with a 27-inch 5K display. Apple launched the system in late 2017. Since Apple did not have a competitive desktop workstation in its fleet, it made a lot of sense for performance-demanding users who could plug in a larger monitor or two if they needed more screen real estate.
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After Apple released its Mac Pro workstation in late 2019, the appeal of the iMac Pro somewhat dropped as the full-blown desktop offers more performance with its Xeon W CPU with up to 28 cores, up to 1.5TB of DDR4-2933 memory, and up to two AMD Radeon Pro Vega II Duo MPX modules (4 GPUs in total). The Mac Pro also provides more expandability, as it can be equipped with the Apple Afterburner ProRes and ProRes RAW accelerator card or any other add-in-board supported by Apple’s MacOS.
Then Apple launched its latest iMac in mid-2020. The high-end version of the current iMac comes with a 27-inch 5K display, Intel’s Core i7 processor with eight cores, up to 128GB of DDR4-2666 memory, and an up to Radeon Pro 5700 XT graphics processor. This system immediately made Apple discontinue the eight-core version of the iMac Pro. Still, even the 10-core iMac Pro model does not look too attractive at $4999 compared to a similarly configured iMac that costs over $1000 less.
Right now, Apple is working on its next-generation iMac based on its own Apple Silicon SoC that is expected to beat the current iMac in terms of performance. Whether or not Apple will return to a concept of an all-in-one workstation is something that remains to be seen.
When Intel introduced its codenamed Tiger Lake-H processors earlier this year, it limited the announcement to quad-core CPUs aimed at a rather niche ‘ultraportable gaming’ segment and did not reveal any details about six-core and eight-core Tiger Lake-H CPUs it previously confirmed. These chips are still on track to be released in the coming months, and a PC maker recently disclosed the specifications of some of them.
DT Research sells rugged and specialized PCs for corporate, government, and healthcare clients. Such customers are willing to pay a premium for systems they need, but they also need time to ensure that the PCs comply with their requirements. Recently DT Research issued specifications of its upcoming LT375 Rugged Mobile Workstation and the publication was quickly discovered by @momomo_us/Twitter. The machine is set to be based on Intel’s Tiger Lake-H processor with six or eight cores that will be accompanied by a 17-inch 1000-nits display, up to Nvidia Quadro RTX 5000 GPU, up to 64GB of RAM, and two SSDs (more details about the system below).
DT Research will offer its LT375 with the following three Tiger Lake-H processors:
The PC maker does not list the TDP of the CPUs, but a 17-inch desktop replacement notebook can certainly handle a 45W processor, so it is more than likely that all of these chips are rated for 45W.
What strikes the eye about the specifications of Intel’s Tiger Lake-H is their rather low frequencies when compared to Intel’s previous-generation Comet Lake-H CPUs aimed at the same market segment. We do know that there is Intel’s Core i9-11980HK coming to gaming PCs and this one has to be fast, but its younger brother Core i9-11900H (8C/16C, 2.10 GHz/4.90 GHz) looks rather pale when compared to the Core i9-10885H (8C/16C, 2.40 GHz/5.30 GHz), assuming that the specifications are accurate.
Intel’s Tiger Lake-H processors with up to eight Willow Cove cores have a number of advantages over its predecessors, including an all-new microarchitecture, a massive (up to) 24 MB LLC to maximize effective memory bandwidth as well as single-thread performance, a new memory controller, PCIe 4.0, and Thunderbolt 4 support. But only real tests will reveal whether these advantages are enough to beat its speedy predecessor.
Intel yet has to confirm the final specifications of its upcoming Tiger Lake-H CPUs with six and eight cores, so any preliminary and unofficial information about these chips should be taken with a grain of salt.
The X3 ATR Mgmt from X-Chair offers loads of customizability to best suit your body and budget, as well as excellent lumbar support and an optional heat and massage feature. If you work and game from home, it’s a worthy investment for your comfort and your spine. But starting at over $900, “investment” is definitely the word for it.
For
Extremely customizable and adjustable
Dynamic lumbar support
Heat and massage option
Against
Expensive
Warranty not as robust as some competitors
We’ve said it before, but the best gaming chair might not be a gaming chair at all–especially these days when so many of us are both gaming and working from home. Do you want to broadcast a loud gamer aesthetic to your colleagues in every office Zoom call? And is a one-size-fits-all race car-like bucket seat the best thing for your spine to be sitting on 12-plus hours a day?
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If you think the answer to those questions is no — or even if you don’t but your lower back hurts as you progress through the day — it’s worth considering a fully adjustable chair like the X-Chair X3 ATR Mgmt that I’m sitting at as I type this. Unlike most gaming chairs and many low-cost computer chairs, it’s fully adjustable, configurable to best fit your frame, and has dynamic lumbar support that I’ve found far more comfortable than any cushion or pillow placed against my lower back. The optional heat and massage helps melt away tension, although that bit isn’t all that powerful; Its placement in the lower back area won’t help those whose pain and tightness gathers closer to their shoulders.
There is the small (OK, totally not small) matter of price. The X3 chair starts at $930, and as tested with the heat and massage feature ($100), headrest ($105) and rollerblade-like X-Wheels ($50), it sells for $1,185. While that’s more than most people are used to paying for a gaming chair or a cheap computer chair from Staples or Costco, it’s considerably less than the Herman Miller X Logitech G Embody Gaming Chair, which is mostly just a high-end office chair like the X-Chair with some tweaks. The X-chair’s warranty is also longer than most budget office or gaming chairs, at five years for all materials and moving parts, plus an extra 10 years for all non-moving metal parts.
If you’re going to be spending your foreseeable future mostly working from home, you might want to consider spending high-end GPU money on your work and gaming throne. Because while it’s easy enough to swap in a new graphics card when the frame rates get too low, installing a new spine involves a lot more than popping off a side panel, removing a couple of screws and disconnecting the PCIe cables.
5 years (materials and moving parts), 15 years (non-moving metal parts)
Assembly of the X-Chair X3 ATR Mgmt Chair
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The hardest part of getting the X3 ATR Mgmt Chair ready to sit in might be getting the 89-pound box into your room of choice. My office is up two flights of stairs, but I managed. Before you start assembly, make sure you have a fair bit of space, because the parts and packaging can quickly occupy a room once you start taking things out of the box.
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That said, assembly is surprisingly easy. The wheels pop into the base, much like any other chair (which is to say requiring a fair bit of force). Then the gas lift goes into the wheelbase and the seat slides onto the lift via a hole. This is all fairly standard for any office chair assembly, but note that the seat base is easily the heaviest part, with its generous use of solid metal.
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Sit on the seat a few times to make sure the gas piston is securely wedged into the seat section, and then it’s time to attach the arm rests. This is simple, as the straight arm sections slide into sockets built into the seat section, and get secured with one bolt each. The company includes a nice handled driver for the hex key bolts, but I sped things up a bit by using a cordless screwdriver and matching bit. Place the other armrest in its socket and add another screw and we’re getting close to the finish line.
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The chair back and its two metal support arms also slide into sockets on the back of the chair, and four more hex bolts hold it in place. Unless you want to lay or sit on the floor turning screws, you may want to flip the chair over for this part and flip it back over when the four screws are tight. Last up is the head rest, if you opted for one.
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A plastic piece covers the mounting holes at the top of the back of the chair. Pop it off with a screwdriver or knife and the headrest attaches with the last two hex screws. A smaller plastic screw cover hides your handiwork — or at least it should. I either misplaced mine in the excitement of the assembly process, or one wasn’t included in the box. I’m going to guess the former, based on my personal history of losing small parts when setting up new tech or furniture. Regardless, that’s the entire assembly process done.
Not counting removing the parts from the box, assembly took me about 30 minutes. As someone who has spent hours trying to put gaming chairs together (with help from coworkers) in the past, the fact that I managed this myself in under half an hour is truly impressive. As I said, the hardest part was getting the box inside and up the stairs. You’ll also need some muscle to maneuver some of the larger parts. This is one hefty chair, but it’s also rated to handle humans up to 340 pounds. That’s 40 pounds more than the Herman Miller Embody is rated for. And although my go-to office chair of the moment (
the Baderbräu Task Chair from Wayfair
) is rated to up to 331 pounds, the X-Chair feels much sturdier handling my sub-200-pound form.
Design of the X-Chair X3 ATR Mgmt Chair
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While the X-Chair X3 ATR Mgmt chair is attractive enough, it’s not particularly visually striking. It looks like a high-end office chair, made of mesh, silver metal and plastic–because that’s what it is. Still, the mesh fabric (more on that shortly) comes in four colors for this model: black, grey, blue and glacier (a light blueish grey). Other models in the X-Chair lineup have other color options, with the top-end X4 Leather Exec Chair (starting at $1,149) offering eight color choices.
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Speaking of the fabric, the company calls it Advanced Tensile Recovery (ATR), and says it’s a “multi-layered knit polymer mesh.” While I’m no materials scientist, the fabric feels durable but giving, conforming pleasantly to the contours of my back and backside. The company says it is also spill and stain resistant, designed to hold up well over the years. And remember, if it doesn’t, there’s a 5-year warranty on the fabric and moving parts. I chose this model over the leather model because of its breathability and because I’ve had nothing but bad experiences with leather furniture over the years. After weeks of sitting in the X-3 chair, I still think I made the best choice–especially since the leather model costs more.
In a perfect world, my elbows would have liked for the same ATR fabric to be present on the adjustable arm rests as well, rather than the rubber-like padding the company uses, which has some give but could both look and feel better. But as anyone who’s used a chair for years knows, the armrests tend to get dirty and worn faster than the rest of the chair. So I can see why X-Chair chose the easily cleaned, presumably wear-resistant black material here.
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There’s also a somewhat unsightly seam on the back of the chair, above and around the X-Chair logo where the cover for the metal core of the backrest and its height-adjustable ratcheting mechanism meets the upper portion of the back. For most, this will be a minor thing. But considering the cost of the chair, it feels like a design issue that should be improved.
Configuration Options of the X-Chair X-3 ATR Mgmt Chair
X-Chair sells a number of models, including an X1, X2, X3 and X4, with the price and features getting more premium as you head up the stack. There’s also an X-Basic model that starts at $525. I’ll be focusing just on the X3, as there’s more than enough configuration options to talk about just within this chair line.
The base configuration of the X3 starts at $930 for the standard office chair, or $100 extra for the massage chair option, which includes heat. Next is your choice of fabric/mesh color, which was covered above. You can go with no headrest, or add the headrest and the attachment arm for $105. I feel like I could live without this, in part because I’m only 5-foot-7 and I don’t tend to lean my head back often. But if you’re taller or you like to rest your neck as the day progresses, you may want to consider the headrest. The good news is you can buy it separately after the fact. So if you’re on the fence, go without it and buy it later if neck support seems lacking.
The seat width is 20.5 inches as standard, but if you’re the big and tall type you can get a 22-inch wide extended-width seat for $75 extra. I’m far from skinny, but again, as a person with a somewhat small frame, the standard width was plenty for me.
I went with the standard seat foam, which feels comfortable and supportive, like a firm mattress. After sitting on the standard foam for dozens of hours, it’s fine for me. But if you like things a bit softer, you may want to consider the memory foam seat, which is another $100 add-on.
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The standard wheels are about what you would expect and should be fine for most people. But I went with the add-on X-Wheels, which are essentially swiveling rollerblade wheels for the chair. I’ve had these types of wheels on an office chair before and found them easier to roll around on. X-Chair says they’re also gentler on surfaces, and since I’m currently using the X-Chair on a rug without a chair mat, hopefully they won’t wear out my precious octopus anytime soon.
The X-Wheels start at $50 for the clear wheels (which are what I tested), step up to $55 for black wheels, and top out at $75 for locking wheels. The latter could be handy if you’re on a hardwood floor or a smooth chair mat, as these wheels can make the chair surprisingly easy to move. The company also sells (and sent) a $40 swiveling footrest, which can be good for circulation and comfort when sitting for several hours at a time. But I didn’t use it much because I also have a standing treadmill desk. So when sitting starts to become uncomfortable, I tend to hop back on the treadmill to get my work on.
As stated up top, the X3 chair starts at $930, and as tested with the massage feature, headrest and X-Wheels, it sells for $1,185. Personally, I could skip the headrest and the wheel upgrades. And I don’t have serious lower back issues, so I could live without the heat and massage functionality (more on this in the next section), but there’s no denying it adds another level of comfort.
Comfort and Adjustments on the X-Chair X3 ATR Mgmt Chair
Here’s the thing about computer chairs (whether they be specifically for gaming or more general-purpose): The comfort difference between a great chair and one that’s just OK (or even borderline awful) doesn’t always leap out at you at first. Unless you have persistent back problems, anything with a base, a back, and some padding is going to feel OK when you first plunk down. But sit there for hours, and the pain points (sometimes literally) become clear. Is there not enough padding on the bottom? Is the back not the right shape to support your spine? Is the lumbar support too pronounced (as I’ve often found with gaming chairs with bulky back pillows), or not pronounced enough (often the case when you remove said pillow)?
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While everyone’s body shape, spine health, posture and preferences are different, I can say that I personally had no issues staying comfortable in the X3 ATR Mgmt Chair. As noted earlier, I would have preferred the arm rests be a bit softer. But they’re so adjustable, it’s easy to switch things up throughout the day so that your arms and elbows don’t get fatigued. Buttons on the outside of each arm let you raise and lower the armrests 3.5 inches. And you can move them forward and back 2 inches, as well as twist them in or out several degrees. And there’s a ratcheting action for each type of movement, so it’s easy to shift things a little or a lot.
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There’s a similar mechanism for adjusting the back of the chair (2.25 inches) and the headrest (2.5 inches), although I found the headrest mechanism very stiff, making it hard to land in the middle rather than all the way up or down. The seat can slide forward or back two inches (seat depth is 19.5 – 21.5 inches) via one of the two levers on the left side, under the seat. The other lever adjusts seat height between 18.5 and 23 inches.
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A lever on the right side adjusts the company’s “SciFloat infinite recline,” which is less than infinite as it is 40 degrees max. But you can also lock the recline at any angle between upright and max. I found most of the time while working, I prefered to keep the chair locked upright. But tipping the chair back a bit and locking it, giving me a slightly upward angle at my monitor, was more relaxing and enjoyable for long gaming sessions.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
I haven’t even touched on two of the X3’s primary comfort features yet. First, there’s the Dynamic Variable Lumbar (DVL) support, which is subtle at first but (for me at least) one of the chair’s best features. The part of the chair that meets your lower back is mounted on a tension mechanism. So when you sit down, it moves back just enough to make room for the size and shape of your lower back, while still pressing comfortably against it. In short, it offers very good support to your lower vertebrae, without feeling like you have a chunky stuffed raccoon jammed in between the chair and your spine — which is what lumbar pillows usually feel like to me.
As someone who has lower back pain (usually in the mornings), the DVL feature is a major selling point. I don’t know that it would make me go out and buy a $1,000 chair, but the $525 X-Basic has DVL as well. And if I spent 10-plus hours a day sitting in the same chair, I’d say DVL is worth a few hundred dollars all on its own.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
And then there’s the heat and massage feature, which I’m not entirely sure is worth the $100 add-on price, at least for most people. First the good bit: X-Chair ships two cables for the module, one that’s connected to a power brick and plugs into a wall, while the other has a barrel connector at one end and a USB-A connector on the other. So you can power the heat and massage via your PC or, more conveniently, a small battery pack. I plugged the chair and USB cable into a 10,000 mAh Anker battery pack, wrapped the cable around the pack and stuffed them both behind an elastic strap on the back of the chair.
This effectively gave me a wireless heat and massage chair. And after using both for hours, the battery pack was only about a third drained. This made me wish X-Chair would change at least one of two things: Make the power input a standard USB port so that there’s no proprietary cable to lose or break, or just build a small removable battery pack into the chair itself, which would look much better than my wrapped cable and battery combo. But at least I never actually had to plug the chair into the wall. No one wants a chair that needs to be plugged into a power outlet, and there’s no way you wouldn’t roll over the cable and damage it at some point.
All that said, while there’s no denying that the massage and heat feels good on my lower back, it’s not as strong as I’ve seen with other standalone products, and it’s confined just to the lower back. Plenty of people have tension and pain further up the spine. For not much more than $100, there are all kinds of standalone massagers, designed to be placed on a chair, that will massage and heat the entire length of your back and neck. What’s in the X-Chair, while nicely integrated, feels more like a basic budget massager rather than what you’d expect in a $1,000 device. The controls are also inconveniently placed at the back of the chair as well, which makes using them while sitting kind of awkward.
Bottom Line
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
Look, there’s no doubt many people will balk at spending around $1,000 or more on an office chair. And if you only spend a few hours a day in that chair, that’s completely understandable. But if you used to work in an office and you now work from home (hi there, me), and you also like to play games or work on other things late into the night (also me), spending most of your waking day sitting in the same chair, you should probably consider upgrading to something that’s actually built to house your backside for several hours a day.
There’s a reason offices usually spend hundreds or thousands on high-end office chairs, and not all of it has to do with regulations. Aside from long-term comfort and support, these kinds of chairs also tend to last much longer than your average $89 Staples chair. And with 5 years of coverage for moving parts and an extra 10 years on the metal bits, you can rest assured that the X-Chair X3 ATR Mgmt will either hold up well, or you’ll be able to replace what wears out in that time frame. So what seems like a cheaper chair in the short-term may not be that if you have to replace it a few times over several years. That said, if it’s a long warranty you’re after, the Herman Miller X Embody chair seems to offer a better overall 12-year warranty that covers ” casters, pneumatic cylinders, tilts, and all moving mechanisms.”
Speaking of that chair, it offers a BackFit feature with a knob that lets you adjust the chair to the curve of your spine. That’s an improvement over most gaming and cheap office chairs, but I really liked the dynamic variable lumbar support on the X-Chair, which delivered seemingly the perfect amount of support for my lower spine, without having to fiddle with any knobs or levers. And that feature ships on most of the company’s X-Chairs, including the
X-Basic DVL Task Chair
, which starts at ‘just’ $525. Sure, that’s still a lot for a chair, but it’s a far cry from the $1,500 Herman Miller/Logitech collaboration, as is the $1,185 configuration of the X3 ATR Mgmt Chair I tested.
Skip the heat/massage, headrest, and X-Wheel addons and you still have a very comfortable, solid chair that should serve you well for several years, for about $930. That’s still a lot of money, but it’s probably more affordable than doctor visits and pain pills over the years from spending large parts of your life in chairs that aren’t designed to support your spine several hours a day.
Evidently, not all reference Radeon RX 6700 XT graphics cards will arrive with the same clock speeds — Biostar (via VideoCardz) has listed a reference design that flaunts a small factory overclock.
Biostar refers to the graphics card as “VA67T6TEL9 Ver. RX6700XT M,” although it’s uncertain if that’s the actual model name or the part number. The manufacturer used a render of AMD’s reference Radeon RX 6700 XT, but the packaging itself has the “Extreme Gaming” label. The last bit may allude to the fact that Biostar’s version is clocked higher than the usual reference edition.
AMD lists the Radeon RX 6700 XT with a 2,321 MHz base clock and game and boost clocks up to 2,424 MHz and 2,581 MHz, respectively. The Biostar Radeon RX 6700 XT features slightly higher clock speeds across the board. The graphics card arrives with a 2,330 MHz base clock, and game and boost clocks that scale to 2,433 MHz and 2,615 MHz, respectively. The increase in base and game clocks is negligible, while the boost clock showed a 1.3% uplift.
In case you missed AMD’s announcement, the Radeon RX 6700 XT debuts with the Navi 22 silicon that’s fresh out of TSMC’s 7nm cooking oven. Navi 22 ushers in 40 Compute Units (CUs) for a grand total of 2,560 Streaming Processors (SPs). The graphics card also packs 40 ray accelerators. The Radeon RX 6700 XT offers 12GB of 16 Gbps GDDR6 memory that runs across a 192-bit memory interface to supply a memory bandwidth up to 384 GBps. The number might look disillusioning, but let’s not forget that AMD offsets the memory with 96MB of Infinity Cache.
The Radeon RX 6700 XT will hit the stores on March 18 for $479. The RDNA 2 graphics card will take on the GeForce RTX 3070, which starts at $499. With the graphics card shortage still transpiring, it might not be a battle of who is the fastest, but rather which card is readily available for purchase. AMD has promised to have substantially more Radeon RX 6700 XT stock at launch, so let’s hope the chipmaker delivers.
(Pocket-lint) – Many have accepted that heart rate monitoring is part of their workout routine. With heart rate sensors now common on sports devices, we’ve come a long way from the dark days when such monitors were expensive devices exclusive to the sporting elite.
So with such wide availability of the hardware, is there a demand for something as simple as the Polar’s dedicated heart rate monitor, the Verity Sense?
Design and build
30 x 30 x 9.6mm, 5g
50m water resistance
The Polar Verity Sense is basically just the optical sensor, battery and connectivity hardware you might find in a sports watch, but in a neat button, measuring 30mm in diameter and just under 1cm thick.
The idea is that you can wear the sensor rather than having to wear a watch, or as an alternative to wearing a chest strap – which for many years was the mainstay of heart rate sensors. The Verity Sense is Polar’s second-gen device, improving on the OH1 in many ways.
Pocket-lint
The Verity Sense offers 50m water protection, designed for protection against swimming, so it’s more than happy to be sweated into too. That’s what it’s for – it’s a sports device you wear next to the skin, which means you’re going to be sweating into it a lot.
There’s a single button on one side to power on and off, and switch through the three different modes that it supports. On the opposite side is a coloured LED which will visually display the mode you’re in – blue when connected to another device, green when storing its own data, white when in swimming mode.
Wear and comfort
Strap and clip included
Goggle clip for swimmers
The Verity Sense is designed to be worn against the skin, clipping into a holder on an elasticated band which will keep it in place. This can be adjusted to fit, so will suit various sizes, designed to be worn on the fore or upper arm.
Best fitness trackers 2021: Top activity bands to buy today
By Britta O’Boyle
·
· Updated
Our guide to the top fitness trackers available, helping you count steps, track calories, monitor your heart rate, sleep patterns and more.
Polar advises against wearing on it the wrist like a watch. Given the size of the strap, we think most people would struggle to wear it securely in that position anyway.
Pocket-lint
You basically wear it like a band and we found it easy just to slide it up the arm to a position where it was tight enough to stay in position, but not so tight that it’s uncomfortable. Having been cycling, running, and done plyometric exercises wearing the Verity Sense, we’ve found it stayed in place without a problem.
In that sense, it’s comfortable, more convenient and, for many people, more accessible than a chest strap. We only found ourselves adjusting it on a ride going over 2 hours and then you can move it down your arm a little, or tweak the strap a little to make it looser, if your arms have expanded slightly over the course of the activity you’re doing. The slider on the strap is easy to nudge a little to make it slightly looser on the move.
Being low profile also has a distinct advantage: you can fit the Verity Sense under long-sleeve tops easily. Even when wearing it under tight bike kit or compression gear, we didn’t find it a problem. Having fought with chunky sports watches under tight sleeves, it’s a welcome change – although wearing a chest strap under tight gear has never been a problem either.
Pocket-lint
It can, however, function just about anywhere that it can stay in contact with the skin – indeed a clip is supplied so you can wear it on your goggle strap when swimming, to get your pulse from your temple. We haven’t had the chance to test this in the pool, because the pools are closed at the time of writing, but we’ve worn it to check that it would get a reading through a layer of hair and it seems to work reliably.
Functions and connections
Three recording modes
Bluetooth and ANT+
Polar Flow app
Supporting Bluetooth and ANT+ means that the Verity Sense is compatible with a wide range of devices. Bluetooth is commonplace, allowing you to connect to your phone, laptop, or smart trainer like the Wahoo Kickr, and a whole lot more.
ANT+ is widely supported in sports devices, allowing connection to Peloton, Garmin Edge bike computers, and more.
Having both available means connections are a breeze, so you can setup whichever devices you want to benefit from Polar’s data. We found that connecting to the Hammerhead Karoo 2 was as straightforward as connecting any other sensor.
Pocket-lint
The Verity Sense will also support two simultaneous Bluetooth connections, so you can have it connected to different devices if you want to record and monitor heart rate on two different platforms at the same time.
There’s also the option to disable ANT+ if you never use it via the Polar Flow app – which is another aspect of this device. It’s managed via Polar’s app, so will need to connect to your phone for firmware updates or to download data you choose to save to the internal memory.
There are three modes of use. The first is as a heart rate sensor for another device. As described above, this will let Verity Sense supply live data via Bluetooth or ANT+ to be recorded or displayed elsewhere.
That might be using it with Apple Health or Strava to record a manual activity, with an indoor bike trainer or treadmill, or with bike computers to get a more complete set of data on your rides.
Pocket-lint
When used as a sensor, you don’t have to use Polar’s apps at all. The only time you’d need to use Polar’s apps are when using the other functions that it offers.
The second mode is to have the Verity Sense record the data itself. In this mode, as soon as you switch this mode on it will log the heart rate data to its internal storage, up until you turn it off.
It will hold up to 600 hours of data and you’ll have to sync to Polar Flow to extract the data, where you can then examine it. Bear in mind that it will be recording the whole time the device is on (with the green light showing), so that may well include all those breaks, any delay before you start, and so on.
This mode means you don’t need a phone or any other device nearby for that activity – and if you’re doing something where you don’t want to wear a watch, it’s especially useful. We’ve used it for workouts and it’s a useful feature, even if you can’t immediately figure out how you might apply it to your own exercise routine.
Pocket-lint
Finally there’s the swimming option. This gives additional support, using the internal sensors to detect turns in the pool. You’ll have to set the length of the pool in Polar Flow, but then you’ll get a readout of pace, distance and your heart rate for your swim.
Performance and battery life
20 hours battery life
What’s perhaps surprising about Polar’s optical heart rate sensor in the Verity Sense is that we’ve found it to behave itself better than some of Polar’s other devices, like the Vantage V, which was a little temperamental when we reviewed it.
That’s a good starting point for the Verity Sense, in that it acquires your heart rate quickly and sticks to it, avoiding some of the warm-up lag that sometimes plagues optical heart rate sensors. But it’s an accurate sensor too.
Pocket-lint
Comparing with a Garmin chest strap and a Garmin Fenix 6, we’re getting averages within a beat of those devices, hitting the same highs, seeing the same recovery drops when pausing at traffic lights or coasting downhill and so on.
What can send things out of sync slightly is the inability to control the activity time. As we said above, when using it to save data internally, it starts once the mode is set, and stops when you turn it off. (A little secret here – it doesn’t actually turn “off” it just stops measuring heart rate, because it will still sync with your phone once all the lights are off.)
The result is that, used as a standalone device, you will probably end up sandwiching your workout with non-exercise activity, which can pull the exercise average down. What’s perhaps more important to consider when used like this are the times spent in different zones – and Polar’s software will show you that sort of breakdown.
Pocket-lint
The good performance is backed up by solid battery life too. There’s a lot less demand on this type of device than there is on a watch – but 20 hours of recording is good going. That’s going to cover most people for most activities for a couple of weeks, if not longer.
Charging takes place via USB, by slipping the sensor into the supplied adaptor, so it’s nice and easy.
Verdict
For those who always monitor their activities with a phone – running with it, for example – the Polar Verity Sense is a way to easily add heart rate data to get a lot more information on what your body is doing. That might equally apply to anyone who doesn’t want to wear a watch, or can’t because you’re wearing gloves or something else around your wrists.
There’s immediate appeal for cyclists. With most bike computers supporting additional sensors, adding heart rate without a chest strap – and more affordably – makes the Polar Verity Sense a no brainer. That equally applies for indoor training too, something that’s seen a huge boom.
For many, the Polar Verity Sense is cheap enough to buy as an accessory for those times that you want to use it, even if you have another watch that will offer you heart rate monitoring, just because it is great to have the choice of a dedicated sensor in some situations.
Also consider
Pocket-lint
Polar H10
squirrel_widget_3139769
Polar has a chest strap of its own, offering great performance and comfort. It supports ANT+ and multiple Bluetooth streams as well as standalone tracking mode.
Wahoo
Wahoo Tickr Fit
squirrel_widget_4253691
Wahoo’s collection also includes a band-type optical heart-rate tracker, offering Bluetooth and ANT+ to easily get heart rate data into other devices.
We have with us the Zotac GeForce RTX 3080 AMP Holo, the company’s top custom-design RTX 3080 offering available in the North American market. The AMP Holo is positioned a notch above the RTX 3080 Trinity, which we had a chance to review last year. For the most part, the card retains the design of the Trinity’s IceStorm 2.0 cooling solution, but with lavish use of ARGB LED illumination. The lighting is tastefully executed through a large diffuser along the top edge, and across the metal back-plate. The card also features a higher factory overclock than the RTX 3080 Trinity OC.
The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 “Ampere” is NVIDIA’s current-generation flagship gaming product. Despite the existence of the faster RTX 3090, NVIDIA continues to refer to the RTX 3080 as its flagship because it fulfills everything an enthusiast-gamer would want—maxed out gaming at 4K UHD with RTX raytracing enabled. The GeForce “Ampere” graphics architecture introduces the second generation of NVIDIA’s path-breaking RTX technology, which combines conventional raster 3D graphics with certain real-time raytraced elements to significantly improve realism, such as lighting, reflections, shadows, and global illumination. With 2nd Gen RTX, NVIDIA is also introducing raytraced motion blur, an extremely difficult effect to pull off in real-time, which required the company to innovate a whole new component into its 2nd Gen RT core.
The GeForce Ampere architecture combines new-generation Ampere CUDA cores that can perform concurrent INT32+FP32 math operations, 2nd Gen RT cores that double ray intersection performance over the previous generation and introduce new temporal components, and 3rd Gen Tensor cores, which leverage the sparsity phenomenon in AI DNN to accelerate building and training of neural nets by an order of magnitude. NVIDIA leverages AI for de-noising and its DLSS performance enhancement.
Based on the 8 nm “GA102” silicon, the GeForce RTX 3080 more than doubles the number of unified shaders over the previous generation RTX 2080. It packs 8,704 CUDA cores, 68 RT cores, and 272 Tensor cores. The memory amount has been increased by 25%, to 10 GB, as has the memory bus width, to 320-bit. NVIDIA and Micron Technology have innovated a whole new memory standard for the RTX 3080 and RTX 3090, which they call GDDR6X. This memory operates at a blistering data rate of 19 Gbps and helps NVIDIA hit memory bandwidth levels of 760 GB/s.
As we mentioned earlier, the Zotac GeForce RTX 3080 AMP Holo features the company’s highest factory overclock available in the North American market, with the GPU Boost frequency set at 1770 MHz instead of the 1710 MHz reference. It features the company’s IceStorm 2.0 cooling solution that has two large aluminium fin stacks to which heat drawn from the base is conveyed by five heat pipes. A trio of fans ventilate the cooler. The Spectra 3.0 ARGB lighting package could be the brightest spot in your gaming PC build.
We have with us the Zotac GeForce RTX 3080 AMP Holo, the company’s top custom-design RTX 3080 offering available in the North American market. The AMP Holo is positioned a notch above the RTX 3080 Trinity, which we had a chance to review last year. For the most part, the card retains the design of the Trinity’s IceStorm 2.0 cooling solution, but with lavish use of ARGB LED illumination. The lighting is tastefully executed through a large diffuser along the top edge, and across the metal back-plate. The card also features a higher factory overclock than the RTX 3080 Trinity OC.
The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 “Ampere” is NVIDIA’s current-generation flagship gaming product. Despite the existence of the faster RTX 3090, NVIDIA continues to refer to the RTX 3080 as its flagship because it fulfills everything an enthusiast-gamer would want—maxed out gaming at 4K UHD with RTX raytracing enabled. The GeForce “Ampere” graphics architecture introduces the second generation of NVIDIA’s path-breaking RTX technology, which combines conventional raster 3D graphics with certain real-time raytraced elements to significantly improve realism, such as lighting, reflections, shadows, and global illumination. With 2nd Gen RTX, NVIDIA is also introducing raytraced motion blur, an extremely difficult effect to pull off in real-time, which required the company to innovate a whole new component into its 2nd Gen RT core.
The GeForce Ampere architecture combines new-generation Ampere CUDA cores that can perform concurrent INT32+FP32 math operations, 2nd Gen RT cores that double ray intersection performance over the previous generation and introduce new temporal components, and 3rd Gen Tensor cores, which leverage the sparsity phenomenon in AI DNN to accelerate building and training of neural nets by an order of magnitude. NVIDIA leverages AI for de-noising and its DLSS performance enhancement.
Based on the 8 nm “GA102” silicon, the GeForce RTX 3080 more than doubles the number of unified shaders over the previous generation RTX 2080. It packs 8,704 CUDA cores, 68 RT cores, and 272 Tensor cores. The memory amount has been increased by 25%, to 10 GB, as has the memory bus width, to 320-bit. NVIDIA and Micron Technology have innovated a whole new memory standard for the RTX 3080 and RTX 3090, which they call GDDR6X. This memory operates at a blistering data rate of 19 Gbps and helps NVIDIA hit memory bandwidth levels of 760 GB/s.
As we mentioned earlier, the Zotac GeForce RTX 3080 AMP Holo features the company’s highest factory overclock available in the North American market, with the GPU Boost frequency set at 1770 MHz instead of the 1710 MHz reference. It features the company’s IceStorm 2.0 cooling solution that has two large aluminium fin stacks to which heat drawn from the base is conveyed by five heat pipes. A trio of fans ventilate the cooler. The Spectra 3.0 ARGB lighting package could be the brightest spot in your gaming PC build.
Asus has seemingly confirmed specifications for the mobile GeForce RTX 3050 Ti. As spotted by momomo_us, the graphics card, which Nvidia has yet to confirm, will be available in a cheaper configuration of Asus’ TUF Dash 15 gaming laptop.
Early this year, the SKU was listed with an “NVIDIA GeForce GN20-P0,” and Asus confirmed to Tom’s Hardware that that configuration wouldn’t be available in the U.S. Now, the laptop listing reads “GeForce RTX 3050 Ti,” sparking further intrigue.
The sole mention of a GeForce RTX 3050 Ti is interesting. “RTX” branding in the model name implies that the graphics card will come with ray tracing support, but Nvidia has never offered ray tracing on a xx50-series SKU before.
For Turing, Nvidia marketed the GeForce RTX 2060 as the entry-level model card for ray tracing. If Asus’ listing is accurate, then Nvidia will eventually offer ray tracing across the entire Ampere product stack. However, it might be too early for PC builders to celebrate.
The GeForce GTX 1050 Ti never had a true heir. For reasons unknown, the GeForce GTX 1650 Ti was only available in the mobile form factor. Asus listed the GeForce RTX 3050 Ti for one of its gaming laptops; therefore, it’s uncertain if the GPU will make it to the desktop market to compete with the best graphics cards.
GeForce RTX 3050 Ti (Image credit: Asus)
Asus only listed the card’s memory capacity (4GB of GDDR6). So we still have questions around its other specifications. By today’s standard, 4GB of memory will have trouble pushing some of the more demanding triple-A titles and activating ray tracing only only puts more burden on the graphics card.
Historically, Nvidia’s xx50-series graphics cards have used the xx7 silicon. For example, the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti and GTX 1650 Ti leveraged the GP107 (Pascal) and TU117 (Turing) dies, respectively. Therefore, it’d make sense for the GeForce RTX 3050 Ti to be based on the GA107 (Ampere) die. The silicon still comes out of Samsung’s 8nm furnace but is smaller than the other Ampere dies that we’ve seen so far.
The GeForce RTX 3060 features 3,584 CUDA cores, and the GeForce RTX 3050 has been rumored to come with 2,304 CUDA cores. The GeForce RTX 3050 Ti, which would end up in between the aforementioned SKUs, might come equipped with 3,072 CUDA cores then. In that case, the graphics card would probably have 96 Tensor cores and 24 ray tracing (RT) cores. If the 4GB of GDDR6 memory sticks, the GeForce RTX 3050 Ti should employ a 128-bit memory interface. Assuming that the memory is clocked at 14 Gbps, we could be looking at a memory bandwidth up to 224 GBps.
Would this GPU actually even warrant the inclusion of ray tracing? That’s debateable, and certainly ray tracing games have shown a tendency to require more memory capacity with RT enabled. However, Nvidia’s RTX brand also includes DLSS support. For an entry-level gaming solution, that could prove more beneficial than ray tracing, and at least you still get the option to attempt RT if you want.
A couple months ago, AIDA64 added support for the GeForce RTX 3050, and now, Asus has listed the GeForce RTX 3050 Ti as a graphics card option for its upcoming gaming laptop. It wouldn’t surprise us if Nvidia is on the verge of announcing either graphics card.
After almost a decade of total market dominance, Intel has spent the past few years on the defensive. AMD’s Ryzen processors continue to show improvement year over year, with the most recent Ryzen 5000 series taking the crown of best gaming processor: Intel’s last bastion of superiority.
Now, with a booming hardware market, Intel is preparing to retake some of that lost ground with the new 11th Gen Core Processors. Intel is claiming these new 11th Gen CPUs offer double-digit IPC improvements despite remaining on a 14 nm process. The top-end 8-core Intel Core i9-11900K may not be able to compete against its AMD rival Ryzen 9 5900X in heavily multi-threaded scenarios, but the higher clock speeds and alleged IPC improvements could be enough to take back the gaming crown. Along with the new CPUs, there is a new chipset to match, the Intel Z590. Last year’s Z490 chipset motherboards are also compatible with the new 11th Gen Core Processors, but Z590 brings some key advantages.
First, Z590 offers native PCIe 4.0 support from the CPU, which means the PCIe and M.2 slots powered off the CPU will offer PCIe 4.0 connectivity when an 11th Gen CPU is installed. The PCIe and M.2 slots controlled by the Z590 chipset are still PCI 3.0. While many high-end Z490 motherboards advertised this capability, it was not a standard feature for the platform. In addition to PCIe 4.0 support, Z590 offers USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 from the chipset. The USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 standard offers speeds of up to 20 Gb/s. Finally, Z590 boasts native support for 3200 MHz DDR4 memory. With these upgrades, Intel’s Z series platform has feature parity with AMD’s B550. On paper, Intel is catching up to AMD, but only testing will tell if these new Z590 motherboards are up to the challenge.
The AORUS line from Gigabyte spans a broad range of products: laptops, peripherals, and core components. Across the enthusiast spectrum, the AORUS name denotes Gigabyte’s gaming-focused products, with the AORUS motherboard range featuring a consistent naming scheme that includes the Pro, Elite, Ultra, Master, and Extreme motherboards. Within this lineup, the Master serves as the high-end mainstream option offering prime features at a high but attainable price point.
The Gigabyte Z590 AORUS Master features a monster 19-phase VRM utilizing 90 A power stages and Gigabyte’s signature finned cooling solution. Both Q-Flash and a dual BIOS have been included, providing a redundant safety net for ambitious overclocking. The Gigabyte Z590 AORUS Master also offers a full-coverage aluminium backplate for added rigidity and additional VRM cooling. Additionally, Gigabyte has included a 10 Gb/s LAN controller from Aquantia. All of the features are in order, so let’s see how the Gigabyte Z590 AORUS Master stacks up against the competition.
1x Q-Flash Plus button 1x Clear CMOS button 2x SMA antenna connectors 1x DisplayPort 1x USB Type-C® port, with USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 5x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports (red) 4x USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports 1x RJ-45 port 1x optical S/PDIF Out connector 5x audio jacks
Audio:
1x Realtek ALC1220 Codec
Fan Headers:
9x 4-pin
Form Factor:
ATX Form Factor: 12.0 x 9.6 in.; 30.5 x 24.4 cm
Exclusive Features:
APP Center
@BIOS
EasyTune
Fast Boot
Game Boost
RGB Fusion
Smart Backup
System Information Viewer
USB TurboCharger
Support for Q-Flash Plus
Support for Q-Flash
Support for Xpress Install
Testing for this review was conducted using a 10th Gen Intel Core i9-10900K. Stay tuned for an 11th Gen update when the new processors launch!
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