Minisforum is known for its ultra-compact form-factor (UCFF), highly integrated PCs primarily designed for offices or living rooms. Apparently, the company does not want to stop there. This week, it introduced a rather extraordinary product for itself. Not only is the Minisforum GameMini an attempt at cracking our best gaming PCs list, but it’s also an open-case gaming PC aimed at enthusiasts.
The Minisforum GamiMini appears to be quite a powerful rig. It uses Gigabyte’s Aorus B550I Pro AX motherboard carrying an AMD Ryzen 5 5600X (6 CPU cores,12 threads, clock speed of 3.70 GHz – 4.60 GHz, 32MB of L3 cache, 65W). The board also packs 32GB of dual-channel DDR4-3200 RAM and a 1TB Kingston KC2500 M.2 SSD. The system is also equipped with an AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT graphics card sitting on the opposite side to the motherboard. The PC is powered by SilverStone’s SX650-G power supply, so it can be upgraded fairly easily.
Since the GamiMini is an open system, Minisforum doesn’t have to worry too much about cooling the Ryzen 5 5600X, a 65W CPU that can pretty hot, or the rather power-hungry Radeon RX 6700 XT graphics card that’s rated for up to 230W TGP. Both components use rather modest air coolers.
As far as connectivity is concerned, Minisforum’s GameMini has everything that we come to expect from a Mini-ITX PC these days. The Aorus B550I Pro AX motherboard has a Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.1 module, a GbE port and multiple USB connectors.
Minisforum traditionally funds development of its PCs using a crowdfunding platform, so it hasn’t yet discussed pricing of its GameMini or a final release date.
back in February, now has full specs, pricing and is opening pre-orders for the machine. It will come in three configurations, starting at $999.
That base model has an Intel Core i5-1135G7 processor, 8GB of DDR4 RAM, a 256GB NVMe, Wi-Fi 6 and will run Windows 10 Home. A $1,399 performance configuration bumps the processor up to an i7-1165G7 and doubles the RAM and storage to 16GB and 512GB, respectively. A professional model, starting at $1,999, has an i7-1185G7, 32GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD, support for vPro and runs Windows 10 Pro.
There will also be a DIY edition, starting at $749 barebones, that you build yourself from a kit and customize with parts and modules.
Each laptop will also have a 3:2, 2256 x 1504 display, 1080p webcam with a privacy switch, a 55Wh battery and a keyboard with 1.5 mm of key travel, all features you might find in one of the
best ultrabooks
. The entire motherboard is replaceable to allow upgrades to future generations of processors, which are typically soldered to the board on laptops.
Pre-orders are starting today in the United States, and Canada will come soon, with Asia and Europe coming before the end of the year.
But like most tech companies, Framework hasn’t been immune to supply chain issues, which it says will “limit the number of Framework Laptops we have available at launch.” The company will take its pre-orders in small batches to ensure it can fulfill orders. The first batch, Framework says, will ship in July, with more to come. A pre-order requires a $100 refundable deposit, and the balance will be paid when it’s ready to ship.
While the Framework Laptop sounds promising on paper, other small computer vendors have faced issues with fulfillment. Eve Devices, for instance, had issues fulfilling its Eve V, and some potential buyers have proven far more cautious around its Spectrum monitor and second-gen convertible. But Framework is acknowledging the difficulty in sourcing parts right now, so at least it’s being straightforward there.
A Twitter user has shared the first photographs of the AMD 4700S Desktop Kit. The 4700S processors are widely thought to be defective chips that didn’t make their way into the Xbox Series X, but AMD has declined to comment on that aspect.
AMD doesn’t officially list the 4700S on its website, so the processor’s specifications are unknown to the public. However, a couple of convincing benchmarks and retailer listings helped us put the pieces together. Based on the Zen 2 microarchitecture, the AMD 4700S wields eight cores and 16 threads with a 8MB L3 cache. We’ve spotted the 4700S operating with a 3.6 GHz base clock and a boost clock that peaks at 4 GHz. The octa-core chip is paired with 16GB of what appears to be GDDR6 memory.
According to a retailer’s listing, the AMD 4700S is slower than the Ryzen 7 4750G (Renoir) in both single-and multi-threaded performance. Although the 4700S loses to the Core i7-9700 in single-threaded performance as well, the AMD chip delivers higher multi-threaded performance.
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The AMD 4700S Desktop Kit resides on a tiny, green motherboard, although we’re uncertain if it conforms to the standard mini-ITX form factor. It draws power from a standard 24-pin connector and 8-pin EPS connector. The motherboard doesn’t offer memory slots of any kind, which seems to confirm our suspicion about the usage of soldered GDDR6 memory chips. It features a custom heatsink and a small cooling fan. Given the size of the heatsink’s backplate, the GDDR6 memory chips may be located at the backside of the motherboard.
Like the typical mini-ITX motherboards on the market, the AMD 4700S Desktop Kit provides a single PCIe 3.0 x16 expansion slot for you to add a discrete graphics card. We suspect that AMD added the slot because the iGPU inside the 4700S is either disabled or defective.
There are a total of eight USB ports on the AMD 4700S Desktop Kit. The black ones are obviously USB 2.0 and the red ones are likely USB 3.0, although we don’t know the exact specification of the latter. The motherboard also provides three 3.5mm audio connectors and one Ethernet port.
We’ve seen the AMD 4700S Desktop Kit selling for around $317.38 at a Finnish retailer. Unfortunately, we’ve been unable to find the kit in the U.S. market to verify its pricing. And since AMD’s keeping a tight lip around the 4700S, we’ll just have to wait until the next clue pops up.
ASRock’s Z590 Taichi is a well-rounded premium mid-range motherboard, with more-than-capable power delivery, Thunderbolt 4 Type-C ports, three M.2 sockets, Intel- and Killer-based networking, including Wi-Fi 6E.
For
+ Unique style
+ Killer 2.5 GbE and Wi-Fi 6E Networking
+ Robust 90A power delivery
+ 2x Thunderbolt 4 Type-C ports (40 Gbps)
Against
– Last gen audio codec
– Only eight rear USB ports
– PCIe 4.0 M.2 compatibility issues
Features and Specifications
The latest in a long line of Taichi boards, ASRock’s Z590 Taichi for Intel’s latest Rocket Lake CPUs includes improved power delivery, fast Killer-based networking, eight SATA ports, native PCIe 4.0 for the GPU and M.2 socket, and improved aesthetics. Landing at $459.99, this upper-midrange board may be out of range for some users. But if you want to spend this much, this is a feature-rich and capable Z590 board.
ASRock’s Z590 lineup is similar to the previous-generation Z490 product stack. At the time we wrote this, ASRock had 12 Z590 motherboards listed. At the top is Z590 Taichi, followed by the PG Velocita we’re looking at here, and three Phantom Gaming boards, including a Micro-ATX option. Additionally, there are two professional boards in the Z590 Pro4 and Z590M Pro4, two Steel Legend boards, two Extreme boards (also more on the budget end), and a Mini-ITX board rounds out the product stack. Between price, size, looks, and features, ASRock should have a board that works for everyone looking to dive headlong into Rocket Lake.
Performance testing on the Taichi went without a hitch, producing results aligned with the other tested boards. Game performance was on the slower side of things, but the meager difference will be tough to notice unless you’re benchmarking. The memory, which uses Gear 1 on the latest BIOS, is where the Taichi shined. That said, outside of the benchmarks, again you won’t notice the difference. Overall, the Taichi performed well compared to other tested Z590 boards.
The Z590 Taichi is a nice improvement over the previous Taichi, between the improved appearance and cool moving gear feature, it is one of the better-looking Z590 boards. But looks aren’t everything. The Taichi comes with two Thunderbolt 4 Type-C ports (40 Gbps), eight SATA ports, Killer-based Wi-Fi 6E and 2.5 GbE, and a graphics card support bar. We’ll check out these details and other features below. But first, here are the full specs from ASRock.
Specifications – ASRock Z590 Taichi
Socket
LGA 1200
Chipset
Z590
Form Factor
ATX
Voltage Regulator
14 Phase (12+2, 90A MOSFETs)
Video Ports
(1) HDMI (2.0)
(2) Thunderbolt 4
USB Ports
(2) USB 4.0 Thunderbolt 4 Type-C (40 GB/s)
(2) USB 3.2 Gen 2, Type-A (10 Gbps)
(3) USB 3.2 Gen 1, Type-A (5 Gbps)
Network Jacks
(2) 2.5 GbE and 1 GbE
Audio Jacks
(5) Analog + SPDIF
Legacy Ports/Jacks
✗
Other Ports/Jack
✗
PCIe x16
(3) v4.0 x16, (x16/x0/x0, x8/x8/x0, or x8/x8/x4 (PCIe 3.0)
Inside the box, along with the motherboard, you’ll find cables, the graphics support bar and even a second VRM fan and an additional bracket to add your own 40mm fan. The included accessories should get you up and running without having to scramble and head to the store. Below is a complete list of all included extras.
Support DVD / Quick installation Guide
Graphics card holder
Wi-Fi Antenna
(4) SATA cables
(3) Screw package for M.2 sockets
(3) Standoffs for M.2 sockets
Wireless dongle USB bracket
3010 Cooling Fan with bracket
4010 Cooling Fan bracket
Wireless dongle USB bracket
ASRock Screwdriver (Torx)
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After removing the Z590 Taichi from the box and setting it up, one of the first things I noticed was the addition of the moving gears above the IO area. During POST, the watch-like gears rotate, which gives this board a unique design aesthetic–although your system will need to be sitting at eye level with a clear side panel to notice this. The VRM heatsinks are connected via heatpipe and use active cooling (in the form of a small integrated fan) to keep temperatures in check. The bottom half of the matte-black, 8-layer PCB is covered in heatsinks and shrouds for the M.2 sockets.
You’ll find RGB lighting elements under the IO cover, chipset heatsink, and on the right edge of the board. The RGBs are bright and saturated, adding a significant glow from under the board. Control over the RGB is provided by ASRock’s Polychrome Sync software. In the end, the Z590 Taichi’s appearance has improved over the last generation and shouldn’t have issues fitting in with most build themes.
(Image credit: ASRock)
Focusing on the top half of the board and starting on the left side, we get a closer look at the unique gear design. The black half gear/counterweight slowly ticks when powering the board up and stops once POST completes. The cogwheel spins either clockwise or counterclockwise via a small motor. In the BIOS, you’re able to adjust the time between rotations (5/10/30/60 minute intervals and off). Although this is clearly a gimmick, it’s truly a unique design aesthetic. Just below this is the Taichi name lit up by RGB lighting.
The VRM heatsinks are large and actively cooled with a small fan hidden inside the left bank. Just above this are the two 8-pin EPS connectors (one required) for powering the CPU. Just to the right of the socket area are the unreinforced DRAM slots. The board supports up to 128GB of RAM at speeds listed to DDR4 5000 when using an 11th generation CPU (lower with a 10th gen). Just above the DRAM slots is the first RGB header. In this case, it’s 3-pin ARGB.
Just to the right is the first 4-pin fan header. This particular header happens to be the Chassis/Water Pump connector and supports 2A/24W. The CPU fan headers are located mid-board above the first M.2 socket. The CPU connector supports up to 1A/12W, while the CPU_Fan2/WP3A supports 3A/36W. The rest of the connectors support up to 2A/24W. These headers have plenty of available power to connect your fans and water pump, without overloading the board.
Making our way down the right edge, we find the 24-pin ATX connector for board power, two front-panel USB 3.2 Gen 1 headers (one vertical, the other horizontal) and the front-panel USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 Type-C header. Last, in white, is the first 3-pin RGB header.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
The Z590 Taichi sports a 12-phase VRM setup for the CPU. The 8-pin EPS connector(s) send power to the Renesas ISL69269 12-channel (X+Y+Z=12) controller, then on to six ISL6617A phase doublers. Last but not least is the 12 90A Renesas ISL99390B Smart power stages. This configuration supports up to 1080A for the CPU, which is plenty for stock and overclocked operation, including extreme (read: sub-ambient) overclocking. The power delivery on this board will not get in your way. Again, this board also includes an additional fan for the VRM. After testing without it, we chose not to use it as there wasn’t a need and it would only increase the noise profile, which was quiet without it. Temperatures were well within operating range throughout all testing.
(Image credit: ASRock)
Moving down to the bottom half of the board, we’ll again start on the left side with audio. Hidden below a plastic shroud is the Realtek ALX1220 codec – a last-generation flagship solution. I would like to have seen the latest generation codec (not that most will notice the difference) for this price. We can also see the audio separation line from the other parts of the board and the red WIMA audio caps. The Taichi also includes an ESS ES9218 Sabre DAC supporting up to 600 Ohm headphones and 130dB SNR.
In the middle of the board are three full-length, reinforced PCIe slots along with a single x1 size slot. Between them are heatsinks for the three M.2 sockets and shrouds covering the board. When using an 11th gen CPU, the top two PCIe slots support PCIe 4.0 speeds. The top PCIe slot runs at x16 while the second slot runs at a maximum of x8 — both are CPU connected. The bottom full-length slot is connected to the chipset and runs at PCIe 3.0 x4. The board supports AMD Quad CrossfireX, 3-Way CrossFireX and CrossfireX. No mention of NVIDIA SLI, even though the board is wired to support it.
On the M.2 storage front, the Taichi includes three sockets. The top M2_1 is the Hyper socket (PCIe 4.0 x4, 64 Gbps) and supports 80mm PCIe-based modules. M2_2 supports both SATA and PCIe modules up to PCIe 3.0 x4 (32 Gbps), up to 80mm long. The bottom socket, M2_3, supports 110mm SATA or PCIe modules up to PCIe 3.0 x4. M2_2 shares lanes with SATA port 0/1. If either one is in use, the others are disabled. M2_3 shares lanes with SATA ports 4/5 and the bottom PCIe slot. If either is in use, the others will be disabled. You can have three M.2 devices and up to 4 SATA ports running concurrently.
Note, though, that I had trouble with the PCIe 4.0-based Phison drive we use for testing. Using the latest BIOS, version 1.63 for me, the top M.2 socket that runs PCIe 4.0 doesn’t recognize the drive. The Phison storage drive works just fine on all of the other PCIe 3.0 sockets and other boards’ PCIe 4.0 M.2 sockets. We’re not sure if this is limited to the Phison drives, as they are the only PCIe 4.0 M.2 drives I have in-house. We’ve let ASRock know and they are working on the issue. It’s likely that a BIOS update will resolve this problem.
Finally, to the right of the PCIe slots and M.2 sockets is the chipset heatsink. Here we get a close look at the unique pattern found on the heatsinks. It’s almost like a rough wood grain type of finish, quite unique. To the right of it are the eight SATA ports, two of them managed by an ASMedia ASM1061 controller, with the rest connected to the southbridge. Just below are two more fan headers. The included GPU support bracket mounts in this area to the ATX screw holes in the middle and bottom of the board. This is a nice value-add in these days of huge and heavy cards. Now if only ASRock could do something about how much modern high-end cards weigh on our wallets.
Across the board’s bottom are several headers, including more USB ports, fan headers and more. Below is the complete list, from left to right:
Front-panel audio
RGB and ARGB headers
(2) Chassis fan headers
Clear CMOS jumper
TPM
(2) USB 2.0 headers
Dr. Debug LED
Reset/Power buttons
Clear CMOS button
Temperature sensor, water flow headers
Front panel header
(Image credit: ASRock)
Looking at the rear IO, we see the pre-attached IO plate matches the colors and design theme of the rest of the board. One thing that jumps out is the 5-plug plus SPDIF audio stack’s location: It sits in the middle. Typically this is on the right edge/bottom, but in most cases the odd placement shouldn’t be a cause for concern. From left to right, we have the BIOS Flashback button to flash the bios without a CPU, the Wi-Fi antenna connections and an HDMI (v2.0) port for the integrated video. Next are two USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports and the audio stack mentioned above.
On the networking front, the Intel-based Ethernet port is black, while the Killer 2.5 GbE port is blue. Below those are two USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports. At the bottom are two Thunderbolt 4 USB Type-C ports that support up to 40 Gbps throughput. They also double as additional video outputs. Curiously, these aren’t labeled as Thunderbolt here. On the far right are the last two USB ports that run at USB 3.2 Gen 1 speeds.
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.
As the development of DDR5 memory modules advances, the number of manufacturers joining the race increases. For now, we know that SK Hynix, TeamGroup, Adata, and Samsung are already developing their own DDR5 memory solutions, but there’s a new name to join the ever-growing list. The latest addition is Kingston, which expects to ship overclockable DDR5 modules in Q3 2021.
The company has already sent these modules to motherboard partners to start their validation process. The modules sent to the partners had a XMP profile, but the partners will also be allowed to tune the power management integrated circuit (PMIC) beyond the 1.1V that Kingston has set.
DDR5 memory DIMM modules don’t have much use for now, but that will change once Intel releases the Alder Lake-S platform to the public, which is expected to come later this year. By then, the list of manufacturers developing DDR5 memory modules should be considerably bigger.
The DDR5 memory modules are expected to release clocked between 4,800MHz and 8,400MHz. The upper limit should be easily beaten once professional overclockers get their hands on these modules.
Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.
KitGuru says: Are you waiting for the release of DDR5 memory before upgrading your system? Do you think the performance improvement from DDR4 to DDR5 will be worth the upgrade?
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Intel Alder Lake-S is leaking again. This time around, we have new details on an engineering sample for an Intel Core-1800 CPU, a 16C/24T processor. A datasheet has also found its way online, detailing all remaining specifications, including maximum operating clocks, power limits, T-Junction, and more.
The datasheet, which was shared by Igor’s LAB, shows that this particular engineering sample is a B0 stepping, meaning specifications are likely not final. Following the same logic, the Core-1800 codename likely won’t be the final name for this processor.
According to the datasheet, the Core-1800 features 8 big ‘Golden Cove’ cores with Hyper Threading and 8x Atom ‘Gracemont’ cores with no Hyper Threading. The base clock for all cores is set at a rather low 1.8GHz, but boost clocks can reach up to 4.6GHz on two big cores, 4.4GHz on up to four, 4.2GHz on up to six, and 4.0GHz on all. As for the Atom cores, four of them can go up to 3.4GHz, but eight can only go as high as 3.0GHz.
The CPU power values listed in the specifications suggest the processor will feature a 125W TDP/PL1, with a 56sec tau, and a PL2 of 228W with a 2.44ms tau. The processors’ maximum junction temperature is reportedly 100ºC. The processor was running at 1.3147V.
Intel Alder Lake processors will be based on the LGA 1700 socket, and support PCIe 5.0, and DDR5-4800 and DDR4-3200 memory, depending on the motherboard. Rumours claim only the Z690 motherboards will support DDR5 memory, leaving the mainstream and entry-level ‘H’ and ‘B’ motherboards with support for DDR4.
Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.
KitGuru says: Considering the Intel Core-1800 is just an ES2, there’s still room for improvement. Base and boost clocks should increase slightly in latter revisions, possibly hitting 5.0GHz while boosting.
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
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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.
The Gigabyte Z590 Aorus Pro AX is a full-featured Z590 motherboard that includes robust power delivery, premium audio, four M.2 sockets, and 13 USB ports on the rear IO. This $290 board is a good value, especially for those who would like lots of M.2 and USB ports.
For
+ 13 rear USB ports. including Type-C Gen 2×2
+ Robust 90A, 12-Phase VRM
+ Four M.2 sockets
+ Latest-gen audio solution
Against
– Integrated Wi-Fi lacks 6E capability
Features and Specifications
The Gigabyte Z590 Aorus Pro AX positions itself as a mid-range SKU with a modest (for recent motherboard generations) price of $289.99. For that price, you get the most USB ports — thirteen, including USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 Type-C port — we’ve seen on any motherboard in quite a while. Additionally, the board includes the latest audio codec, extreme overclocking-capable power delivery and four M.2 sockets. This, coupled with a reasonable price tag, yields a great option fory new Intel-based builds.
Gigabyte’s current Z590 product stack consists of 13 models. There are familiar SKUs and a couple of new ones. Starting with the Aorus line, we have the Aorus Xtreme (and potentially a Waterforce version), Aorus Master, Aorus Ultra, and the Aorus Elite. Gigabyte brings back the Vision boards (for creators) and their familiar white shrouds. The Z590 Gaming X and a couple of boards from the budget Ultra Durable (UD) series are also listed. New for Z590 is the Pro AX board, which looks to slot somewhere in the middle. Gigabyte also released the Z590 Aorus Tachyon (review coming soon), an overbuilt motherboard designed for extreme overclocking.
Overall, performance on the Aorus Pro AX was inconsistent in our testing. Some results were below the average, while others were right there or faster than the pack. For example, the 3D/game testing showed above-average results, while some synthetic tests were slower than others. This board is performant out of the box, with settings that go beyond Intel specifications.
The mid-priced Aorus Pro AX brings users premium features, including 90A MOSFETs, Realtek 4000 series audio, a staggering four M.2 sockets and a slew of USB ports. Gigabyte updated the appearance from the last generation as well. So between the modern appearance and updated hardware, there’s a lot to take in. We’ll cover those and other features in more detail Below. But right out of the gate this looks like a strong contender for our best motherboards list. First, let’s take a look at the full specs list from Gigabyte.
Specifications – Gigabyte Z590 Aorus Pro AX
Socket
LGA 1200
Chipset
Z590
Form Factor
ATX
Voltage Regulator
12 Phase (12+1+1+2, 90A MOSFETs)
Video Ports
(1) DisplayPort
USB Ports
(1) USB 3.2 Gen 2×2, Type-C (20 Gbps)
(4) USB 3.2 Gen 2, Type-A (10 Gbps)
(4) USB 3.2 Gen 1, Type-A (5 Gbps)
(4) USB 2.0 (480 Mbps)
Network Jacks
(1) 2.5 GbE
Audio Jacks
(5) Analog + SPDIF
Legacy Ports/Jacks
✗
Other Ports/Jack
✗
PCIe x16
(1) v4.0 x16
(2) v3.0 x4
PCIe x8
✗
PCIe x4
✗
PCIe x1
✗
CrossFire/SLI
AMD Quad-GPU Crossfire and 2-Way AMD Crossfire
DIMM slots
(4) DDR4 5400(OC), 128GB Capacity
M.2 slots
(1) PCIe 4.0 x4 / PCIe (up to 80mm)
(2) PCIe 4.0 x4 / PCIe (up to 110mm)
(1) PCIe 3.0 x4 / PCIe and SATA (up to 110mm)
U.2 Ports
✗
SATA Ports
(6) SATA3 6 Gbps (RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10)
USB Headers
(1) USB v3.2 Gen 2 (Front Panel Type-C)
(1) USB v3.2 Gen 1
(2) USB v2.0
(2) Thunderbolt AIC headers
Fan/Pump Headers
(8) 4-Pin
RGB Headers
(2) aRGB Gen 2 (3-pin)
(2) Aura RGB (4-pin)
Legacy Interfaces
✗
Other Interfaces
FP-Audio, TPM
Diagnostics Panel
4-LED ‘Status LED’ display
Internal Button/Switch
✗
SATA Controllers
✗
Ethernet Controller(s)
(1) Intel I225-V (2.5 GbE)
Wi-Fi / Bluetooth
Intel WiFi AX200 (802.11ax, 160 Hz, BT 5.1)
USB Controllers
Realtek RTS5411E
HD Audio Codec
SupremeFX ALC4080
DDL/DTS Connect
✗ / ✗
Warranty
3 Years
Inside the box along with the motherboard are a slew of accessories. While certainly not the most inclusive we’ve seen, the SATA cables, Wi-Fi Antenna, screws and more, are plenty to get your system build moving along. Here’s everything that Gigabyte includes in the box.
User’s Manual / Installation Guide
Q-connector
Aorus sticker
Graphics card holder
Wi-Fi Antenna
(4) SATA cables
(3) Screw packages for M.2 sockets
(1) RGB extension cable
Image 1 of 3
(Image credit: Gigabyte)
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(Image credit: Gigabyte)
Image 3 of 3
(Image credit: Gigabyte)
Once we removed the Pro AX from the box, we noticed a few design changes from the Z490 version. The first,the direction of the lines and brushed-aluminum finish on the M.2 and the chipset heatsinks go the other way. Outside of that, the rear IO cover with its single RGB LED strip, VRM heatsinks, matte-black PCB and reinforced slots are familiar carryovers. The audio shroud illuminates the “Amp Up Audio” branding towards the bottom with RGB LED. Those looking for an RGB light show will have to add their own to the internal headers, but what’s here does give off a nice saturated glow, even if it isn’t a disco.
Overall, this board looks good for the price and should fit in with most build themes. The brushed-aluminum accents give this board a more premium appearance than others around the same price point.
(Image credit: Gigabyte)
Starting in the upper left, we get a closer look at the shroud with the Aorus branding, along with the “Team Up, Fight On” motto. Between this is a plastic diffuser to thin the light out from the RGB LEDs below. If that shroud looks familiar, it’s because it’s a carryover from the Z490 Pro AX. Moving to the right, we see an 8-pin EPS connector (required) with an optional 4-pin next to it. Also located in this area, curiously, is the first of eight 4-pin fan headers.
The VRM heatsink is the same as Z490, using a large metal sink on the top bank and a finned heatsink over the left bank. As you’ll see later on, this solution does a good job cooling the chips below. Just to the right, above the DRAM slots, are two more fan headers (CPU_OPT and CPU_FAN). All fan headers on this board support both 3-pin and 4-pin fans. Each header outputs up to 2A/24W, which should be plenty for piggybacking a couple of fans, as well as supporting most water pumps.
Just below these headers are the four DRAM slots. Gigabyte reinforces the slots with its Ultra Durable Memory Armor, which improves the appearance, but in general isn’t all that useful — on any motherboard. The board supports up to 128 GB of RAM with speeds listed up to DDR4 5400, some of the fastest we’ve seen. As always, your mileage may vary as you’ll need the right CPU and memory kit to reach those speeds.
To the right of the DRAM slots are the first set of 3-pin ARGB and 4-pin RGB headers. A little higher up the board than usual is the 24-pin ATX connector for primary power. Below this is a system fan header, a USB 3.2 Gen 1 header and a USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 Type-C header.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
The Pro AX uses a 12+1(+1+2) configuration for the Vcore and System Agent. The EPS connector sends power to a Renesas ISL69269 12-channel (X+Y+Z=12) controller. It’s then fed directly (no phase doublers or teaming here!) to 12 Renesas ISL99390 90A Smart Power Stages. This setup yields 1080A available for the CPU. In short, you’ll be limited by the CPU cooling well before the power delivery lets you down here.
(Image credit: Gigabyte)
As we move to the bottom half of the board, we’re greeted by plastic shrouds and heatsinks covering most of the PCB. On the left side is a plastic shroud that covers a majority of the audio bits. On top is the second and final RGB LED location that lights up the Amp Up Audio branding. Hidden below is the latest generation Realtek ALC4080 codec, along with WIMA audio capacitors for the rear outputs (Gigabyte says 120dB SNR for that output). Also visible are several yellow Nichicon audio capacitors and the audio separation line from the rest of the board. Most users will find this audio solution satisfactory.
In the middle of the board resides the four M.2 sockets and three PCIe slots. To prevent shearing and EMI protection (for what it’s worth), Gigabyte reinforced the top PCIe slot. The top slot is wired directly to the CPU and runs at PCIe 4.0 x16. The two other slots are sourced from the chipset and run at PCIe 3.0 x4 speeds. This configuration supports AMD Quad-GPU Crossfire and 2-Way AMD Crossfire. Since no other slots run at x8 speeds, NVIDIA SLI is not possible. I would like to have seen an additional x1 slot for additional peripherals, but the two full-length slots should be enough for most people.
Laced between and above the PCIe slots are all four M.2 sockets. The top three M.2 sockets are connected via the CPU. The top, M2A_CPU, supports up to 80mm PCIe devices at PCIe 4.0 x4 speeds. The following two sockets, M2B_CPU and M2C_CPU, support up to 110mm PCIe modules at PCIe x4 speeds. The bottom M.2 socket, M2P_SB, is attached to the chipset and runs both SATA and PCIe modules (PCIe 3.0 x4). On this board, SATA port 1 gets disabled when a SATA-based M.2 drive is installed. Not too much to worry about there. The worst case is that you can have four M.2 modules and five or six SATA ports available (depending on what type of module is installed in M2P_SB). That’s a lot of storage without much lane sharing.
To the right of the PCIe/M.2 area is the chipset heatsink with the Aorus falcon on top. To the right of it are six horizontally affixed SATA ports. This board supports RAID0, 1, 5 and 10 modes. Last but not least, just below that next to the CMOS battery are the Thunderbolt 4 AIC headers.
Across the board’s bottom are several headers, including fan and USB, a QFlash button and more. The Aorus Pro AX also has a temperature header on the bottom and includes a sensor for it. This is a good value add for users who would like to ramp up/down fan speeds based on internal chassis temperature. Additionally, in the right-hand corner is the Dr.Debug display. This 4-LED area lights up during the POST process and displays the current stage (Boot, CPU, DRAM and VGA). If there is a problem during this process, the corresponding LED stays lit. Below is the full list of headers and buttons, from left to right:
Front-panel audio
RGB and ARGB headers
TPM header
(2) USB 2.0 headers
2-pin Temperature header
Q-Flash button
(3) System fan headers
Clear CMOS jumper
Front panel header
(Image credit: Gigabyte)
The rear IO area is dominated by a menagerie of USB ports. From USB 2.0 to USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 Type-C, you’ll find it here on one of the 13 ports. The IO plate itself comes preinstalled, and its black background and Aorus branding match the rest of the board. There’s a total of four USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports, four USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, four USB 2.0 ports and finally, The 3.2 Gen 2×2 Type-C port. If you run out of USB ports on this board, you may want to reevaluate your life/peripheral choices–or you could just plug into one of the two previously mentioned USB-C front-panel headers. Video output (when using the integrated graphics on the CPU) comes from a single DisplayPort Port. In addition to the 2.5 GbE port are Wi-Fi antenna connections, and finally, the 5-plug plus SPDIF audio stack.
Kingston has sent over the brand’s overclockable DDR5 memory modules to its motherboard partners for qualification. The company plans to ship the new DDR5 products in the third quarter of this year to compete with the best RAM on the market.
Kingston’s DDR5 memory is equipped with a XMP profile for an easy and fast setup. In addition, the memory modules feature a programmable PMIC (power management integrated circuit) so motherboard partners can have some fun with them. The standard operating voltage for DDR5 is 1.1V, however, an adjustable PMIC would allow vendors to overclock the memory modules beyond JEDEC’s baseline.
DDR5 not only pushes the speed limit, but also the capacity envelope. Some memory vendors are already on the drawing board to develop DDR5 that runs at 10,000 MHz, while others are aiming for 512GB memory modules. We’ve already gotten a first taste of what DDR5 brings to the table in some early RAM benchmarks, and it looks very promising.
Intel’s 12th Generation Alder Lake processors are rumored to be the first consumer chips to embrace DDR5. Although the chipmaker hasn’t commited to a specific date, Alder Lake production is scheduled to ramp up in the second half of this year. If we’re optimistic, the first Alder Lake chips could land in late 2021 or maybe early 2022. So while Kingston expects to ship DDR5 memory modules in the third quarter of the year, consumers might not be able to exploit them until later in the year, barring any setbacks.
The server and data center market, on the other hand, will welcome DDR5 with open arms. Intel’s looming 4th Generation Xeon Scalable (Sapphire Rapids) will arrive with DDR5 support. AMD’s next generation of EPYC chips (Genoa) will launch this year as well. AMD has stated that Genoa will support “new memory,” likely referring to DDR5.
Resident Evil Village is the latest addition to the long-running horror series, and just like last year’s Resident Evil 3 remake, it is built on Capcom’s RE Engine. We test over 25 GPUs at 1080p, 1440p and 4K to find out what sort of hardware you need to run this game at maximum settings, while also looking at the performance and visual quality of the game’s ray tracing options.
Watch via our Vimeo channel (below) or over on YouTube at 2160p HERE
In terms of visual settings, there are a number of options in the display menu. Texture and texture filtering settings are on offer, as well as variable rate shading, resolution, shadows, and so on. There’s also selection of quick presets, and for our benchmarking today we opted for the Max preset, but with V-Sync and CAS disabled.
One interesting thing about the Max preset is the default ambient occlusion setting – FidelityFX CACAO, which stands for Combined Adaptive Compute Ambient Occlusion, a technology optimised for RDNA-based GPUs. To make sure this setting wouldn’t unfairly penalise Nvidia GPUs, we tested CACAO vs SSAO with both the RX 6800 and RTX 3070:
Both GPUs only lost 3% performance when using CACAO instead of SSAO, so we were happy to use the former setting for our benchmarking today.
Driver Notes
AMD GPUs were benchmarked with a pre-release driver provided by AMD for Resident Evil Village.
Nvidia GPUs were benchmarked with the 466.27 driver.
Test System
We test using the a custom built system from PCSpecialist, based on Intel’s Comet Lake-S platform. You can read more about it over HERE, and configure your own system from PCSpecialist HERE.
CPU
Intel Core i9-10900K
Overclocked to 5.1GHz on all cores
Motherboard
ASUS ROG Maximus XII Hero Wi-Fi
Memory
Corsair Vengeance DDR4 3600MHz (4 X 8GB)
CL 18-22-22-42
Graphics Card
Varies
System Drive
500GB Samsung 970 Evo Plus M.2
Games Drive
2TB Samsung 860 QVO 2.5″ SSD
Chassis
Fractal Meshify S2 Blackout Tempered Glass
CPU Cooler
Corsair H115i RGB Platinum Hydro Series
Power Supply
Corsair 1200W HX Series Modular 80 Plus Platinum
Operating System
Windows 10 2004
Our 1-minute benchmark pass came from quite early on in the game, as the player descends down into the village for the first time. Over the hour or so that I played, the results do seem representative of wider gameplay, with the exception of intense combat scenes which can be a bit more demanding. Those are much harder to benchmark accurately though, as there’s more variation from run to run, so I stuck with this outdoor scene.
1080p Benchmarks
1440p Benchmarks
2160p (4K) Benchmarks
Closing Thoughts
After previously looking at the Resident Evil 3 remake last year, a game which is also built on Capcom’s RE Engine, I wasn’t too surprised to see that overall performance is pretty similar between both games.
That’s certainly a good thing though, as the game plays very well across a wide range of hardware. At the lower end, weaker GPUs like the GTX 1650, or older cards like the GTX 1060 6GB, still deliver a very playable experience at 1080p max settings. Village also scales very well, so if you have a higher-end GPU, you will be rewarded with significantly higher frame rates.
AMD does see the benefit to its partnership with Capcom for this one, as RDNA-based GPUs do over-perform here compared to the average performance we’d expect from those cards. The RX 6700 XT is matching the RX 3070 for instance – when we’d typically expect it to be slower – while the RX 6900 XT is 7% faster than the RTX 3090 at 1440p.
In terms of visual fidelity, I don’t think the RE Engine delivers a cutting edge experience like you’d get from Cyberpunk 2077 or Red Dead Redemption 2 when using Ultra settings, but it still looks good and I am particularly impressed with the detailed character models.
The only negative point for me is that the ray tracing is pretty underwhelming. As we demonstrate in the video above, it doesn’t really deliver much extra from a visual perspective, at least in my opinion. Overall though, Resident Evil Village looks good and runs well on pretty much any GPU, so it definitely gets a thumbs up from me.
Discuss on our Facebook page HERE.
KitGuru says: Capcom’s newest game built on the RE Engine delivers impressive performance and looks good while doing so.
João Silva 15 hours ago Featured Tech News, Gaming PC
Gigabyte is getting into pre-built gaming PCs, starting with two new models – the Model X and the Model S. The Model X is a more traditional ATX system based on your choice of Intel Z590 or AMD X570 and an RTX 3080 GPU, while the Model S is a compact, 14-litre PC that packs high-end hardware despite its small size.
The Aorus Model X chassis offers good thermal performance and stylish aesthetics thanks to a half-vented, half-tempered glass front panel with RGB lighting and a half-vented top panel with RGB. Rated with acoustic performance below 40dB while gaming, the inside of the Model X was organised to allow less experienced users to mount an SSD or add another component to the system with ease. The chassis comes with an integrated GPU bracket and a 360mm AIO cooler. The side panel can either be transparent or metallic.
The Aorus Model S shares some similarities with other cases such as the NZXT H1 and the darkFlash DLH21. Featuring an AIO thermal design, the Model S has more space to fit the remaining components. The air intakes are concealed to keep the sleek aesthetics of the chassis, which features an RGB-lit Aorus logo on the front panel. During operation, the rated noise performance sits just below 36dB.
Whether you choose AMD or Intel for the CPU, some specifications are shared across both variants. For instance, the Model S comes with a 750W power supply for both Intel and AMD configurations. There are also some differences, with AMD-based PCs coming with slower memory options compared to an Intel-based PC.
The following table shows the specifications of the AMD-powered Aorus Model X and S gaming systems:
Model
Aorus Model X
Aorus Model S
Platform
X570
B550
CPU
AMD R9 5900X
AMD R9 5900X
RAM
32GB DDR4-3600 RGB
32GB DDR4-3600
GPU
RTX 3080
RTX 3080
PSU
850W 80 Plus Gold
750W 80 Plus Gold
Storage 1
M.2 2280 Gen4 1TB
M.2 2280 Gen4 1TB
Storage 2
M.2 2280 NVMe 2TB
M.2 2280 NVMe 2TB
The next table shows the specifications of the Intel-based Aorus Model X and S gaming PCs:
Model
Aorus Model X
Aorus Model S
Platform
Z590
Z590
CPU
Intel Core i9-11900K
Intel Core i9-11900K
RAM
16GB DDR4-4400 RGB
32GB DDR4-4000
GPU
RTX 3080
RTX 3080
PSU
850W 80 Plus Gold
750W 80 Plus Gold
Storage 1
M.2 2280 Gen4 1TB
M.2 2280 Gen4 1TB
Storage 2
M.2 2280 NVMe 2TB
M.2 2280 NVMe 2TB
The Intel version of the Model S comes with 32GB DDR4-4000 memory and the Intel Model X with 16GB DDR4-4400 memory. AMD versions of both PCs come with DDR4-3600 or DDR4-4000 memory instead. It’s also worth noting that the AMD Model S comes with a B550 motherboard, while the Model X features an X570 motherboard.
KitGuru says: What do you think of Gigabyte’s latest Aorus gaming PCs? Would you go for an Intel or AMD based system?
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Almost every SKU of the RTX 30-series line returns in today’s Newegg Shuffle, save for the RTX 3090. But making up for that high-end absence are new bundles for some of AMD’s best graphics cards, giving you a total selection between not only the RTX 3060, RTX 3060 Ti, RTX 3070 and RTX 3080, but also the RX 6700 XT and RX 6900 XT.
Like most of Newegg’s recent shuffles, all of today’s cards do come bundled with another component. For the most part, that’s a power supply or motherboard, though there are a few RAM bundles in today’s shuffle as well. There’s also a bundle for an RTX 3070 and EVGA XR1 Capture Card that might interest streamers.
These bundles, unfortunately, don’t represent savings. Instead, Newegg’s just taking the opportunity to sell loosely related components by forcing prospective graphics card buyers to get them with their purchase. These additional parts aren’t overpriced, but you can’t opt out of buying them if you don’t need them. Certain parts, like the Gigabyte Power Supplies, also have low ratings and could prove unreliable over time.
Still, even with the extra parts, our eBay GPU pricing index shows that you’re still likely to pay less for a GPU here than you would with a scalper. You could probably trash the bundled item and still come out ahead, though reselling might be the wiser choice.
And that’s not a horrible tradeoff to be able to buy cards from all over the top half of our GPU benchmarks hierarchy. For an idea of the power we’re looking at here, know that RTX 3060 cards are about as fast as the RTX 2070 from 2018, but with more memory (and less memory bandwidth). The RTX 3080, meanwhile, is the Ampere flagship and offers the best performance you can find without going into the RTX 3090’s Titan RTX-level power.
AMD’s Radeon cards are also powerful when it comes to rasterized games, but our ray tracing face-off shows that they still have a ways to go when it comes to matching Nvidia’s ray-tracing and DLSS prowess.
For those unfamiliar with the process, Newegg Shuffle uses a lottery format. Just select the component(s) you’d like to potentially buy. Then Newegg will hold a drawing later today, after which the ‘winners’ will be notified by email with the chance to purchase an item (only one) within a several-hour period. Based on our experience, you won’t get selected most of the time. But hey, it’s free to try.
Here’s the full list of today’s options:
EVGA RTX 3060 with EVGA Supernova 750W Power Supply for $522
EVGA RTX 3060 with EVGA 750W Power Supply for $505
MSI RTX 3060 Ventus OC with OLOy WarHawk RGB 2 x 8GB RAM for $600
MSI RTX 3060 Ventus OC with OLOy 2 x 8GB RAM for $580
MSI RTX 3060 Ventus OC with OLOy 2 x 8GB RAM for $588
Asus TUF Gaming RTX 3060 OC with Asus TUF Gaming B450M Motherboard for $604
Asus TUF Gaming RTX 3060 OC with Asus ROG Strix GB450-F Motherboard for $644
EVGA RTX 3070 with EVGA Supernova 750W Power Supply for $761
EVGA RTX 3070 with EVGA XR1 Capture Card for $824
Gigabyte RTX 3060 Ti with Gigabyte 750W Power Supply for $759
Gigabyte RTX 3060 Ti with Gigabyte B550 Aorus Elite Motherboard for $804
Gigabyte RTX 3060 Ti OC with Gigabyte B550 Aorus Elite Motherboard for $814
Gigabyte RTX 3060 Ti OC with Gigabyte 750W Power Supply for $769
Gigabyte RX 6700 XT with Gigabyte X570 Aorus Elite Wifi Motherboard for $1,084
Gigabyte RX 6700 XT with Gigabyte X570 Aorus Elite Motherboard for $1,084
Asus ROG Strix RX 6700 XT with Asus TUF Gaming B450M Motherboard for $1,044
Asus ROG Strix RX 6700 XT with Asus ROG Strix B450-F Motherboard for $1,084
Gigabyte Aorus RTX 3080 with Gigabyte X570 Aorus Elite Wifi Motherboard for $1,304
Gigabyte Aorus RTX 3080 with Gigabyte X570 Aorus Elite Motherboard for $1,304
AsRock RX 6900 XT with ASRock B550M Steel Legend Motherboard for $1,859
With component shortages plaguing the PC industry, not to mention the smartphone and automotive industries, the latest word is that prices aren’t likely to return to ‘normal’ throughout 2021. If you can keep chugging along with whatever your PC currently has, that’s the best option, as otherwise prices are painful for all of the Nvidia Ampere and AMD RDNA2 GPUs.
Today’s Newegg shuffle starts at 1 pm EST/10 am PST. The Newegg Shuffle normally lasts for 2 hours, so if you’re interested in any of these components, act fast!For other ways to get hard-to-find graphics cards, check out our RTX 3080 stock tracker and our feature on where to buy RTX 30-series cards. And for more Newegg savings, visit out page of Newegg promo codes.
Monday’s Newegg Shuffle comes with every SKU of Nvidia’s best graphics cards from the Ampere line, plus a single AMD GPU and a bunch of motherboards and power supplies that you probably don’t want. The RTX 3060 and RTX 3090 are both here, as well as every option in between, including Ti and overclocked models. Plus, the Radeon RX 6700 makes sure AMD has some representation.
Of note is that all of today’s bundles come with either a motherboard or power supply attached, save for one bundle that instead opts to include a 1440p @ 165Hz Asus Monitor. Some of these are decent gear, like the Gigabyte Elite and Master series motherboards, but be careful around those power supplies. The Gigabyte power supplies included here have some pretty low ratings, although the EVGA bundles are likely a safer bet. Maybe.
As for why you need to buy a bundle in the first place, it’s because Newegg knows these GPUs are rare, and it’s happy to take the opportunity to force you to buy extra gear if you want to get them. Not just any gear, either: It’s often gear that doesn’t sell as well on its own. Still, even with the extra parts, our eBay GPU pricing index shows that you’re still likely to pay less for a GPU here than you would with a scalper — the bundled item can be offloaded or trashed and you’d still come out ahead.
And this is a pretty strong lineup, featuring cards from all over the top half of our GPU benchmarks hierarchy. For an idea of the power we’re looking at here, know that RTX 3060 cards are about as fast as the RTX 2070 from 2018, but with more memory (and less memory bandwidth). The RTX 3090 meanwhile reigns as the king of the GPU hill, with 24GB of VRAM for good measure. It’s about 25% faster than the old Titan RTX, and right now costs nearly as much.
If you’re eyeing the lone Radeon card, refer to our ray tracing face-off to see how it stacks compared to Nvidia’s ray-tracing and DLSS prowess. It does a lot better in traditional rasterized games, however, where it keeps pace with the RTX 3070.
For those unfamiliar with the process, Newegg Shuffle uses a lottery format. Just select the component(s) you’d like to potentially buy. Then Newegg will hold a drawing later today, after which the ‘winners’ will be notified by email with the chance to purchase an item (only one) within a several-hour period. Based on our experience, you won’t get selected most of the time. But hey, it’s free to try.
Here’s the full list of today’s options:
Gigabyte RTX 3060 Vision OC with Gigabyte B550M Aorus Pro Motherboard or Gigabyte B550 Gaming X V2 Motherboard for $634
Gigabyte Aorus RTX 3060 Ti with B550M Aorus Pro Motherboard or Gigabyte B550 Gaming X V2 Motherboard for $774
Gigabyte Aorus RTX 3060 Ti with Gigabyte B550 Aorus Elite Motherboard for $804
Gigabyte RTX 3060 Ti with Gigabyte B550 Gaming X V2 Motherboard for $784
Gigabyte RTX 3060 Ti with Gigabyte B550 Aorus Elite Motherboard for $814
EVGA RTX 3070 with EVGA 750W Power Supply for $819
EVGA RTX 3070 with EVGA Supernova 750W Plus Gold Power Supply for $821
EXGA RTX 3070 with EVGA Supernova GT 750W Power Supply for $834
Gigabyte RTX 3070 Vision OC with Gigabyte 750W Power Supply for $879
Gigabyte RTX 3070 Vision OC with Gigabyte B550 Aorus Pro Motherboard for $959
Gigabyte RTX 3070 with Gigabyte 750W Power Supply for $899
Gigabyte RTX 3070 with Gigabyte X570 Aorus Elite Motherboard for $1,004
Gigabyte RTX 3070 with Gigabyte B550 Aorus Master for $1,064
Asus ROG Strix RX 6700 XT with Asus TUF Gaming B450M Motherboard for $1,044
Asus ROG Strix RTX 6700 XT with Asus ROG Strix B450-F Motherboard for $1,084
Asus TUF Gaming RTX 3080 with Asus ROG Strix B550-F Motherboard for $1,239
Asus TUF Gaming RTX 3080 with Asus TUF Gaming 27 inch 1440p @ 165Hz Monitor for $1,409
Gigabyte RTX 3080 Vision OC with Gigabyte X570 Aorus Elite Motherboard or Gigabyte X570 Aorus Elite Wifi Motherboard for $1,304
Gigabyte RTX 3080 Vision OC with Gigabyte B550 Aorus Master Motherboard for $1,364
Asus TUF Gaming RTX 3090 with Asus Prime B550M Motherboard for $2,309
Asus TUF Gaming RTX 3090 with Asus ROG Strix B550-F Gaming for $2,399
Gigabyte Aorus RTX 3090 with Gigabyte 850W Power Supply for $2,379
Gigabyte Aorus RTX 3090 with Gigabyte X570 Aorus Master Motherboard for $2,604
Gigabyte Aorus RTX 3090 with Gigabyte X490 Aorus Master Waterforce Motherboard for $2,854
With component shortages plaguing the PC industry, not to mention the smartphone and automotive industries, the latest word is that prices aren’t likely to return to ‘normal’ throughout 2021. If you can keep chugging along with whatever your PC currently has, that’s the best option, as otherwise prices are painful for all of the Nvidia Ampere and AMD RDNA2 GPUs.
Today’s Newegg shuffle starts at 1 pm EST/10 am PST. The Newegg Shuffle normally lasts for 2 hours, so if you’re interested in any of these components, act fast!For other ways to get hard-to-find graphics cards, check out our RTX 3080 stock tracker and our feature on where to buy RTX 30-series cards. And for more Newegg savings, visit out page of Newegg promo codes.
As spotted by TechPowerUp, MSI has just announced three new motherboards for the Z590 platform: the MEG Z590 Unify, Unify-X, and the MEG Z590 ACE Gold Edition. All three boards are aimed to extract the most from Intel’s Comet Lake and Rocket Lake CPUs, with very robust power delivery setups, plus tons of connectivity for storage, wireless and USB devices.
(Image credit: MSI)
The MEG Z590 Ace Gold Edition is as blingy as the name implies, layered with gold and silver touches from top to bottom. Rather than being completely gold, it’s more of a silver-themed board with gold accents. Still, it’s one of the most striking designs we’ve seen on a motherboard in a while. If you want a board to pair with your 24-Karat Adata keyboard, we can think of nothing better.
But the Ace Gold Edition isn’t all about aesthetics, it’s a flagship board just like the normal Ace variant. The board comes with a beefy 16 phase power delivery system with 90A power stages and a large aluminum heatsink that extends from the uppermost M.2 slot all the way to the memory DIMMs.
The Ace Gold Edition also comes with a ton of storage options and connectivity, including four M.2 slots, Wi-Fi-6E AX210, and eight USB ports, plus dual 40Gbps Thunderbolt 4 connections. If you opt for this board and somehow don’t also install G.Skill Trident Z Royal memory, you’re clearly doing it wrong.
Z590 Unify/Unify-X
(Image credit: TechPowerUp)
MSI is also refreshing its ‘Unify’ brand for the Z590 platform, with the new Z590 Unify and Unify-X. These boards are all about ringing out as much performance from your system components as possible.
Both boards will feature a beefy power delivery system with a 16+2+1 phase design, built with 90A smart power stages, so you shouldn’t be bottlenecked by your VRMs when overclocking Intel’s most power-hungry chips.
The Unify-X turns things up a notch even further when it comes to memory overclocking, to increase memory stability at high clock speeds, MSI has deleted two of the DIMMS which allows support for up to 7200MHz.
Both boards also come with a boatload of connectivity, including four M.2 slots for storage, and 12 USB ports.
Aesthetically, the Z590 Unify and Unify-X are the polar opposite of the Ace Gold edition, with no LED or RGB lighting insight, and featuring a matt black aesthetic from top to bottom. A great look for those looking for stealth and simplicity.
We don’t know when any of these boards will be available to purchase, but the Z590 Ace Gold Edition is already upon MSI’s website, so we expect all three boards to be purchasable soon.
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