Razer’s Tomahawk takes an excellent case as foundation and bolts on some basic design flaws, ruining a case design that could otherwise have been brilliant
For
Absolute tank of a chassis
Heavy, quality materials
Quiet operation
Great looks
Against
Restricted front intake
Air doesn’t flow through front intake filter
Only includes one fan
Thermally abysmal
Features and Specifications
When Razer announced its Tomahawk ATX chassis, the first thing that stood out to me is that it appeared to carry the same internals as the Lian Li Lancool II Mesh, a case that we awarded full marks. As such, the Tomahawk ATX is off to a good start, but there’s one big elephant in the room that we must address before we continue: this Razer chassis, despite the same foundations, costs a mighty $200 – twice the price of Lian Li’s excellence.
Therefore, when Razer offered to send a sample, I was very curious to find out where the added $100 went. So without further ado, let’s find out whether the Tomahawk ATX is actually worth its price tag and deserving of a spot on our Best PC Cases list, or whether you should save yourself some money and opt for the excellent Lancool II Mesh instead.
Specifications
Type
Mid-Tower ATX
Motherboard Support
Mini-ITX, Micro-ATX, ATX, E-ATX (280 mm)
Dimensions (HxWxD)
18.7 x 9.3 x 19.5 inches (475 x 235 x 494 mm)
Max GPU Length
15.1 inches (384 mm)
CPU Cooler Height
6.9 inches (176 mm)
Max PSU Length
8.3 inches (210 mm)
External Bays
✗
Internal Bays
3x 3.5-inch
2x 2.5-inch
Expansion Slots
7x
Front I/O
2x USB 3.0
3.5 mm Headphone
3.5mm Mic
Other
2x (Removable) Tempered Glass Panel
Chroma RGB Controller
Front Fans
None (Up to 2x 140mm, 3x 120mm)
Rear Fans
1x 120mm (Up to 1x 120mm)
Top Fans
None (Up to 2x 140mm)
Bottom Fans
None (Up to 2x 120 mm on PSU shroud)
Side Fans
✗
RGB
Yes, Razer Chroma
Damping
No
Warranty
1 Year
Features
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Circling around the outside of the chassis, it’s clear that Razer opted for a very clean and blocky style. It’s quite appealing really, as paired with the extremely dark-tinted glass panels, the chassis has a heft, power, and mystery to it. This thing does look like a $200 case.
But don’t miss me when I say heft – this is a chonky 30-pound (13.5 kg) boy. I’m not kidding when I say it was a challenge to take out of the box.
Okay, so maybe I’ve been away from the gym too much in this pandemic, but all the 0.8mm thick steel and oceans of tempered glass do give the case a quality feel. It’s built like an absolute tank and that goes a long way toward justifying the price point.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
Both the tempered glass panels swing outwards to open up. First, you press them once to click them out, after which you can pull the door away from the magnet – or if you don’t want to get fingerprints on them, just grab the panels from below to pull them out. After opening all the way, you can lift both panels off their hinges.
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And with the hinges, Razer went the extra mile. Whereas the Lancool II has hinges on the outside that kind of look a little cheap, Razer designed a hinge that sits on the inside of the case, giving a much cleaner appearance on the outside – even if it’s at the back of the case.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
Front IO comprises USB-C (something that’s an optional extra on the Lancool II Mesh), two USB 3.0 ports, and discrete headphone and mic jacks.
Internal Layout
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Turning to the inside of the chassis, on the motherboard side we find space for up to 280 mm wide E-ATX motherboards, though you’ll have to remove the cable management cover to fit such boards. Standard-width ATX boards fit best. GPUs can be up to 15.1 inches (384 mm) long and CPU coolers up to 176mm tall.
The PSU shroud has a door that’s also magnetically held in place and can flip down for access. Here you’ll find a trio of 3.5-inch caddies that slide out toward you. There’s plenty of space here for large PSUs too, with supported lengths of up to 8.3 inches (210mm).
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Behind the motherboard tray on the other side of the case you’ll find two 2.5-inch drive bays. These can be moved to the top of the PSU shroud if you want to show off pretty SATA SSDs. You’ll also find the cable management space here with three Velcro straps and the Chroma RGB hub. This hub connects to and is powered through an internal USB 2.0 header.
Cooling
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When it comes to cooling, I suspect things are going to get interesting with the Tomahawk ATX – and I don’t mean that in a good way.
Starting with the good stuff, the case has plenty of room for fans and radiators. You can fit up to two 140mm spinners at the top, two 140mm spinners at the front (or three 120mm units in both cases), two 120mm fans on top of the PSU shroud, and one 120mm spinner at the rear exhaust location. There’s also lots of radiator space in here.
Where things go sour is in the intake design and the included fans – or rather, lack thereof. From the factory, Razer only includes a single 120mm fan, and it isn’t even PWM controlled, nor does it feature any RGB. This isn’t the kind of skimping you expect to see on a $200 case.
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That being said, we’ve proved in the past that cases can get away with a single fan, right? Well, yes, but only if the intake is open mesh – which it isn’t here. As you can see in the images above, the front intake for the Tomahawk ATX is severely restricted, with an attempt at filtration behind the already tight perforation on the front edges.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
To make matters worse, the case also has a shortcut that air can take around this intake – at the bottom handhold to pull the front panel off. As such, the Tomahawk ATX doesn’t have any real airflow path, nor proper intake filtration – this system will get dirty on the inside faster than other cases.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
Fortunately the power supply does have a good air filter, so you won’t need to tear it apart for cleanup jobs.
Microsoft has started testing its xCloud game streaming through a web browser. Sources familiar with Microsoft’s Xbox plans tell The Verge that employees are now testing a web version of xCloud ahead of a public preview. The service allows Xbox players to access their games through a browser, and opens up xCloud to work on devices like iPhones and iPads.
Much like how xCloud currently works on Android tablets and phones, the web version includes a simple launcher with recommendations for games, the ability to resume recently played titles, and access to all the cloud games available through Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. Once you launch a game it will run fullscreen, and you’ll need a controller to play Xbox games streamed through the browser.
Microsoft’s xCloud service on the web.
It’s not immediately clear what resolution Microsoft is streaming games at through this web version. The software maker is using Xbox One S server blades for its existing xCloud infrastructure, so full 4K streaming won’t be supported until the backend hardware is upgraded to Xbox Series X components this year.
Microsoft is planning to bundle this web version of xCloud into the PC version of the Xbox app on Windows 10, too. The web version appears to be currently limited to Chromium browsers like Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge, much like Google’s Stadia service. Microsoft is planning some form of public preview of xCloud via the web in the spring, and this wider internal testing signals that the preview is getting very close.
The big drive behind this web version is support for iOS and iPadOS hardware. Apple imposes limitations on iOS apps and cloud services, and Microsoft wasn’t able to support the iPhone and iPad when it launched xCloud in beta for Android last year. Apple said Microsoft would need to submit individual games for review, a process that Microsoft labeled a “bad experience for customers.”
RTX 3060 graphics cards might be more expensive than expected. Nvidia set the MSRP at $329 when it announced the cards in January and reiterated yesterday that some cards would show up at that pricing on launch, but VideoCardz today reported that some European retailers have listed certain models up to 75% above that price, even though the cards won’t make their official debut until later this month.
The report said that ProShop has some RTX 3060s listed at 499 EUR or 2799 PLN “minimum,“ which are 52 and 75% higher than the MSRP of 329 EUR or 1599 PLN. VideoCardz said that another seller, PCDiga, raised the RTX 3060s to 100 EUR within the last week. It’s not hard to imagine further increases after launch.
Nvidia’s claim that RTX 3060 graphics cards would sell for MSRP always seemed unlikely. When the cards were revealed, we noted that GPU shortages, the cryptocurrency boom, and other factors would lead the latest 30-series graphics cards to sell out quickly, even if they aren’t as powerful as existing offerings.
That was before a European retailer called Alternate said last week that supplies of 30-series graphics cards would get worse throughout the first quarter of 2021 due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, supply chain issues, and the Chinese New Year’s effect on production. All of those factors will contribute to the RTX 3060’s pricing.
It also doesn’t help that Ethereum mining has once again increased demand for practically anything with a GPU powerful enough to earn some cryptocurrency. Miners, people looking to build an affordable gaming PC, and folks who are sick of waiting for more powerful 30-series cards will all be scrambling for limited supply.
Oh, and RTX 3060 prices will probably also be affected by U.S. tariffs on goods imported from China, too. That should be separate from these increases at European retailers, but it also means things are unlikely to be much better across the pond. Managing to snag an RTX 3060 for its MSRP seems like a matter of luck.
Being the most popular microprocessor architecture, Arm powers tens of billions of devices sold every year. The company says that in the fourth quarter of 2020 alone, the Arm ecosystem shipped a record 6.7 billion Arm-based chips, which works out to an amazing production rate of 842 chips per second. This means that Arm outsells all other popular CPU instruction set architectures — x86, ARC, Power, and MIPS — combined.
6.7 Billion of Arm Chips Per Quarter
Arm’s Cortex-A, Cortex-R, Cortex-M, and Mali IP powers thousands of processors, controllers, microcontrollers, and graphics processing units from over 1,600 companies worldwide. As the world is rapidly going digital, demand for all types of chips is at all times high, giving a great boost to Arm given the wide variety of applications its technologies are used for.
(Image credit: Qualcomm)
Arm says that as many as 842 chips featuring its IP were sold every second in the fourth quarter of 2020. Meanwhile, it is noteworthy that although Arm’s Cortex-A-series general-purpose processor cores get the most attention from the media (because they are used inside virtually all smartphones shipped these days), Arm’s most widely used cores are its Cortex-M products for microcontrollers that are virtually everywhere, from thermometers to spaceships. In Q4 alone, 4.4 billion low-power Cortex-M-based microcontrollers were sold.
“The record 6.7 billion Arm-based chip shipments we saw reported last quarter is testament to the incredible innovation of our partners: from technology inside the world’s number one supercomputer down to the tiniest ultra-low power devices,” said Rene Haas, president of IP Products Group at Arm. “Looking ahead, we expect to see increased adoption of Arm IP as we signed a record 175 licenses in 2020, many of those signed by first-time Arm partners.”
CPU Architectures by the Numbers
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At Tom’s Hardware, we mostly cover PCs and therefore the vast majority of processors we talk about are based on the x86 instruction set architecture. But x86 is not even the second most popular ISA after Arm, as there are at least two unrecognized champions.
In 2020, worldwide PC shipments totaled 275 million units, according to Gartner. Shipments of x86-based servers totaled 11.75 million units in 2019. The vast majority of PCs use one x86 processor, whereas most servers come with two CPUs, so it is safe to say that these applications consume around 300+ million processors every year. When devices like game consoles, communication equipment, storage equipment, single-board computers, industrial tools, and supercomputers are added to the mix, it is still safe to say that shipments of x86 CPUs hardly exceed 350~360 million per year. Meanwhile, the absolute majority of x86 designs are high-performance processors for demanding applications.
In contrast, about 1.5 billion products based on Synopsys’ ARC processor IP are shipped every year. Yet, ARC barely receives as much attention from the media as x86 and Arm. Meanwhile, just last year Synopsys introduced its all-new DesignWare ARC HS5x and HS6x processor IP families for high-performance embedded applications, such as SSD controllers, automotive control & infotainment, wireless baseband, wireless control, and home networking.
The MIPS architecture is yet another unsung hero of the CPU and microcontroller markets. When Imagination Technologies acquired MIPS in 2012, it said that, since 2000, over 3.6 billion MIPS-based chips had been shipped. MIPS is not used for game consoles or supercomputers (and personal digital media players have died), but various microcontrollers, consumer electronics SoCs, communication equipment, and a variety of low-power devices still use the technology. Hundreds of millions of such products are sold every year, so it is safe to say that the architecture is still used widely. Yet, because MIPS is barely evolving, it cannot really make headlines.
Unlike Arm, CPU developers AMD, IBM, Intel, MIPS Technologies, Synopsys, and Via Technologies do not share their unit shipments. Meanwhile, it looks like Arm ISA outsells all the other CPU architectures combined.
Do you remember the Mac vs PC commercials from the mid-2000s? While Microsoft and Apple may have become increasingly buddy-buddy since then, with Windows working on Mac and Mac ceding basic productivity app dominance to Microsoft Office, that doesn’t mean the war between Mac and PC isn’t still raging. The fighters are just different.
Intel’s new ad campaign is taking aim at Apple by promoting PC heavily, a continuation of the company’s recent claims that Intel performs better than Apple’s own M1 chip. While Intel has historically been happy to provide Apple chips in the past, Apple’s decision to move to its own, Arm-based chips seems to have changed Intel’s tune about the company’s entire product lineup.
Intel’s attack campaign has been running on Twitter and across various websites since early February under #GoPC, and makes such biting remarks as “If you can power a rocket launch and launch Rocket League, you’re not on a Mac.” Rocket League was
delisted for Mac
early last year.
Of course, Mac’s substandard gaming ecosystem has been known pretty much since the first Macintosh, and that hasn’t stopped Intel from supporting Apple before. Perhaps more harsh is Intel’s snipe at Apple’s refusal to put a touchscreen on its Macbooks, an oft-requested feature that’s become commonplace on similar PC laptops.
Only a PC offers tablet mode, touch screen and stylus capabilities in a single device. #GoPCFebruary 2, 2021
You could read this as Intel standing behind its new mobile-first Evo certification program, which doesn’t require a touchscreen but is built on mobile-first convenience features that touchscreen laptops frequently pass. By comparison, Intel claims that Macs do not.
Not everyone’s sold on Evo, though, as tests like “Switching to Calendar in Outlook” are pretty specific and generally not taxing for most systems. And again, Intel happily supplies chips to PCs that don’t pass Evo spec as well.
Intel’s also commissioned video for the Go PC campaign, including Tech reviewer Jon Rettinger, whose Intel-sponsored video points out that PC laptops have standard USB ports, touchscreens, and eGPU support, and can easily run with multiple external displays.
Of course, Mac fans are having their own fun with this campaign, including this series of rebuttal images from graphic designer Alex.
And, of course, a reference to the KFConsole that pokes fun at the heat generated by Intel CPUs.
Only Intel processors run so hot they can serve as PC and a fried chicken warmer in a single device. #GoPC pic.twitter.com/hk0MchQ5gYFebruary 12, 2021
The PC and Mac war is unlikely to come to an end in our time (I’m a proud dual-citizen), although it’s an interesting look at the marketplace to see a formerly neutral party take a side. With Apple moving to its own silicon, Intel is now synonymous with PC.
What’s the best mining GPU, and is it worth getting into the whole cryptocurrency craze? Bitcoin and Ethereum mining are making headlines again; prices and mining profitability are way up compared to the last couple of years. Everyone who didn’t start mining last time is kicking themselves for their lack of foresight. Not surprisingly, the best graphics cards and those chips at the top of our GPU benchmarks hierarchy end up being very good options for mining as well. How good? That’s what we’re here to discuss, as we’ve got hard numbers on hashing performance, prices, power, and more.
We’re not here to encourage people to start mining, and we’re definitely not suggesting you should mortgage your house or take out a big loan to try and become the next big mining sensation. Mostly, we’re looking at the hard data based on current market conditions. Predicting where cryptocurrencies will go next is even more difficult than predicting the weather, politics, or the next big meme. Chances are, if you don’t already have the hardware required to get started on mining today (or really, about two months ago), you’re already late and won’t see the big gains that others are talking about. Like the old gold rush, the ones most likely to strike it rich are those selling equipment to the miners rather than the miners themselves.
If you’ve looked for a new (or used) graphics card lately, the current going prices probably caused at least a raised eyebrow, maybe even two or three! We’ve heard from people who have said, in effect, “I figured with the Ampere and RDNA2 launches, it was finally time to retire my old GTX 1070/1080 or RX Vega 56/64. Then I looked at prices and realized my old card is selling for as much as I paid over three years ago!” They’re not wrong. Pascal and Vega cards from three or four years ago are currently selling at close to their original launch prices — sometimes more. If you’ve got an old graphics card sitting around, you might even consider selling it yourself (though finding a replacement could prove difficult).
Ultimately, we know many gamers and PC enthusiasts are upset at the lack of availability for graphics cards (and Zen 3 CPUs), but we cover all aspects of hardware — not just gaming. We’ve looked at GPU mining many times over the years, including back in 2011, 2014, and 2017. Those are all times when the price of Bitcoin shot up, driving interest and demand. 2021 is just the latest in the crypto coin mining cycle. About the only prediction we’re willing to make is that prices on Bitcoin and Ethereum will change in the months and years ahead — sometimes up, and sometimes down. And just like we’ve seen so many times before, the impact on graphics card pricing and availability will continue to exist. You should also be aware that, based on past personal experience that some of us have running consumer graphics cards 24/7, it is absolutely possible to burn out the fans, VRMs, or other elements on your card. Proceed at your own risk.
The Best Mining GPUs Benchmarked, Tested and Ranked
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With that preamble out of the way, let’s get to the main point: What are the best mining GPUs? This is somewhat on a theoretical level, as you can’t actually buy the cards at retail for the most part, but we have a solution for that as well. We’re going to use eBay pricing — on sold listings — and take the data from the past seven days (for prices). We’ll also provide some charts showing pricing information from the past three months (90 days) from eBay, where most GPUs show a clear upward trend. How much can you make by mining Ethereum with a graphics card, and how long will it take to recover the cost of the card using the currently inflated eBay prices? Let’s take a look.
For this chart, we’ve used the current difficulty and price of Ethereum — because nothing else is coming close to GPU Ethereum for mining profitability right now. We’ve tested all of these GPUs on our standard test PC, which uses a Core i9-9900K, MSI MEG Z390 ACE motherboard, 2x16GB Corsair DDR4-3600 RAM, a 2TB XPG M.2 SSD, and a SeaSonic 850W 80 Plus Platinum certified PSU. We’ve tuned mining performance using either NBminer or PhoenixMiner, depending on the GPU, with an eye toward minimizing power consumption while maximizing hash rates. We’ve used $0.10 per kWh for power costs, which is much lower than some areas of the world but also higher than others. Then we’ve used the approximate eBay price divided by the current daily profits to come up with a time to repay the cost of the graphics card.
It’s rather surprising to see older GPUs at the very top of the list, but that’s largely based on the current going prices. GTX 1060 6GB and RX 590 can both hit modest hash rates, and they’re the two least expensive GPUs in the list. Power use isn’t bad either, meaning it’s feasible to potentially run six GPUs off a single PC — though then you’d need PCIe riser cards and other extras that would add to the total cost.
Note that the power figures for all GPUs are before taking PSU efficiency into account. That means actual power use (not counting the CPU, motherboard, and other PC components) will be higher. For the RTX 3080 as an example, total wall outlet power for a single GPU on our test PC is about 60W more than what we’ve listed in the chart. If you’re running multiple GPUs off a single PC, total waste power would be somewhat lower, though it really doesn’t impact things that much. (If you take the worst-case scenario and add 60W to every GPU, the time to break even only increases by 4-5 days.)
It’s also fair to say that our test results are not representative of all graphics cards of a particular model. RTX 3090 and RTX 3080 can run high GDDR6X temperatures without some tweaking, but if you do make the effort, the 3090 can potentially do 120-125MH/s. That would still only put the 3090 at third from the bottom in terms of time to break even, but it’s quite good in terms of power efficiency, and it’s the fastest GPU around. There’s certainly something to be said for mining with fewer higher efficiency GPUs if you can acquire them.
(Image credit: Shutterstock)
Here’s the real problem: None of the above table has any way of predicting the price of Ethereum or the mining difficulty. Guessing at the price is like guessing at the value of any other commodity: It may go up or down, and Ethereum, Bitcoin, and other cryptocurrencies are generally more volatile than even the most volatile of stocks. On the other hand, mining difficulty tends to increase over time and rarely goes down, as the rate of increased difficulty is directly tied to how many people (PCs, GPUs, ASICs, etc.) are mining.
So, the above is really a best-case scenario for when you’d break even on the cost of a GPU. Actually, that’s not true. The best-case scenario is that the price of Ethereum doubles or triples or whatever, and then everyone holding Ethereum makes a bunch of money. Until people start to cash out and the price drops, triggering panic sells and a plummeting price. That happened in 2018 with Ethereum, and it’s happened at least three times during the history of Bitcoin. Like we said: Volatile. But here we are at record highs, so everyone is happy and nothing could possibly ever go wrong this time. Until it does.
Still, there are obviously plenty of people who believe in the potential of Ethereum, Bitcoin, and blockchain technologies. Even at today’s inflated GPU prices, which are often double the MSRPs for the latest cards, and higher than MSRP for just about everything, the worst cards on the chart (RTX 3090 and RX 6900 XT) would still theoretically pay for themselves in less than seven months. And even if the value of the coins drops, you still have the hardware that’s at least worth something (provided the card doesn’t prematurely die due to heavy mining use). Which means, despite the overall rankings (in terms of time to break even), you’re generally better off buying newer hardware if possible.
Here’s a look at what has happened with GPU pricing during the past 90 days, using tweaked code from:
GeForce RTX 3060 Ti: The newest and least expensive of the Ampere GPUs, it’s just as fast as the RTX 3070 and sometimes costs less. After tuning, it’s also the most efficient GPU for Ethereum right now, using under 120W while breaking 60MH/s.
Radeon RX 5700: AMD’s previous generation Navi GPUs are very good at mining, and can break 50MH/s while using about 135W of power. The vanilla 5700 is as fast as the 5700 XT and costs less, making it a great overall choice.
GeForce RTX 2060 Super: Ethereum mining needs a lot of memory bandwidth, and all of the RTX 20-series GPUs with 8GB end up at around 44MH/s and 130W of power, meaning you should buy whichever is cheapest. That’s usually the RTX 2060 Super.
Radeon RX 590: All the Polaris GPUs with 8GB of GDDR5 memory (including the RX 580 8GB, RX 570 8GB, RX 480 8GB, and RX 470 8GB) end up with relatively similar performance, depending on how well your card’s memory overclocks. The RX 590 is currently the cheapest (theoretically), but all of the Polaris 10/20 GPUs remain viable. Just don’t get the 4GB models!
Radeon RX Vega 56: Overall performance is good, and some cards can perform much better — our reference models used for testing are more of a worst-case choice for most of the GPUs. After tuning, some Vega 56 cards might even hit 45-50MH/s, which would put this at the top of the chart.
Radeon RX 6800: Big Navi is potent when it comes to hashing, and all of the cards we’ve tested hit similar hash rates of around 65MH/s and 170W power use. The RX 6800 is generally several hundred dollars cheaper than the others and used a bit less power, making it the clear winner. Plus, when you’re not mining, it’s a very capable gaming GPU.
GeForce RTX 3080: This is the second-fastest graphics card right now, for mining and gaming purposes. The time to break even is only slightly worse than the other GPUs, after which profitability ends up being better overall. And if you ever decide to stop mining, this is the best graphics card for gaming — especially if it paid for itself! At around 95MH/s, it will also earn money faster after you recover the cost of the hardware (if you break even, of course).
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
What About Ethereum ASICs?
One final topic worth discussing is ASIC mining. Bitcoin (SHA256), Litecoin (Scrypt), and many other popular cryptocurrencies have reached the point where companies have put in the time and effort to create dedicated ASICs — Application Specific Integrated Circuits. Just like GPUs were originally ASICs designed for graphics workloads, ASICs designed for mining are generally only good at one specific thing. Bitcoin ASICs do SHA256 hashing really, really fast (some can do around 25TH/s while using 1000W — that’s trillions of hashes per second), Litecoin ASICs do Scrypt hashing fast, and there are X11, Equihash, and even Ethereum ASICs.
The interesting thing with hashing is that many crypto coins and hashing algorithms have been created over the years, some specifically designed to thwart ASIC mining. Usually, that means creating an algorithm that requires more memory, and Ethereum falls into that category. Still, it’s possible to optimize hardware to hash faster while using less power than a GPU. Some of the fastest Ethereum ASICs (e.g. Innosilicon A10 Pro) can reportedly do around 500MH/s while using only 1000W. That’s about ten times more efficient than the best GPUs. Naturally, the cost of such ASICs is prohibitively expensive, and every big miner and their dog wants a bunch of them. They’re all sold out, in other words, just like GPUs.
Ethereum has actually tried to deemphasize mining, but obviously that didn’t quite work out. Ethereum 2.0 was supposed to put an end to proof of work hashing, transitioning to a proof of stake model. We won’t get into the complexities of the situation, other than to note that Ethereum mining very much remains a hot item, and there are other non-Ethereum coins that use the same hashing algorithm (though none are as popular / profitable as ETH). Eventually, the biggest cryptocurrencies inevitably end up being supported by ASICs rather than GPUs — or CPUs or FPGAs. But we’re not at that point for Ethereum yet.
Gigabyte recently told its partners that California’s struggle to respond to the COVID-19 crisis has caused shipment delays, CRN reported Thursday, because there simply aren’t enough workers in key ports to unload its products from shipping containers.
CRN said the disclosure arrived via a presentation called “2021 Q1 Supply Chain Review” that “bears the Aorus name.” Gigabyte uses that branding for a variety of components, peripherals, and pre-built systems made specifically for PC gaming.
The presentation reportedly claimed products from 15 containers that arrived in the Los Angeles port in early December still hadn‘t been moved along the supply chain. Similar issues were said to have affected shipping containers sent to Long Beach.
CRN said that Gigabyte cited a Los Angeles Times report from January which claimed that “nearly 700 dockworkers at the twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach have contracted COVID-19” and that “hundreds more are taking virus-related leaves.”
California grappled with rising COVID-19 case numbers from November 2020 to the end of January. Active cases appear to have fallen in recent weeks, according to the state’s official statistics, but they’re still higher than they were for much of 2020.
Gigabyte’s shipping woes reportedly extend beyond these ports in California—CRN said the presentation also cited increased freight costs, chip shortages, and increased demand for certain components related to Bitcoin’s latest price surge.
I would like to thank VIVIFY for supplying the sample.
VIVIFY offers a range of HDMI and USB cables and focuses on technical aspects instead of marketing gimmicks. While some brands try to sway you with simply impossible statements like “better image quality” or “more vivid colors” for an all digital format like HDMI, VIVIFY communicates the maximum resolution, data rate, HDMI standard, and more when it comes to their display cables. On top of that, VIVIFY offers LED and RGB-equipped ones, and we get to take a quick look at the Arquus 73Ø and Aceso W10 cables in this article.
Packaging
The VIVIFY Arquus 73Ø ships in a fairly elaborate package meant to be hung on a store shelf. It sports an image of the cable on front and all the really important specifications on the back.
Inside the package is a foam envelope that holds the cable itself. We are taking a look at the variant that is 9 ft long. While you will find classic HDMI cables at much shorter lengths, offering the Arquus 73Ø as such won’t make much sense since the cost is mostly in its ends; it simply would not translate into any tangible savings.
With the cable, you will receive a sticker, warranty information, and a test report of your specific cable.
In addition to the HDMI cable, VIVIFY also shipped us their Aceso W10 USB-C cable. It also comes with a built-in LED, but this one is just in the specific color you buy. In our case, the cable will light up red. It also comes in a full-color package and features a Velcro strip for easier cable management.
A Closer Look
While you are able to buy HDMI cables on the cheap from a variety of sources, the VIVIFY is in a league of its own as it actually houses quite a bit of technology in each connector. On top of that, the Arquus 73Ø utilizes fiber optics to enable lighting across the wire, which keeps it really soft at the same time. To process this, the cable actually comes with its own IC in the source end, for example. This is also where you will find a USB-A plug to power it and allow it to communicate with Razer Chroma or the VIVIFY Vnode software.
On the display end, you will also find a similar connector that actually comes with a built-in LED element of its own. Naturally, both ends are gold-plated for good measure.
VIVIFY Aceso W10
While we are taking a closer look, the Aceso W10 cable actually feels slightly bulkier than most cables out there, which make it a bit harder to use in scenarios like charging a mouse or connecting a headset. Instead, it is more for charging/connecting your portable device from your phone to your laptop, gaming console, or battery pack.
Similarly to the Arquus 73Ø, the Aceso W10 comes with a diffusor strip on the side, which will light up in that single color you have purchased.
Cables in Use
To get the VIVIFY Arquus 73Ø all set up, simply connect the source end to your output—in this case, one of our test systems for case reviews—and plug the USB-A plug in to provide the necessary power. The cable immediately lights up fairly brightly. In the picture above, we turned off the studio lighting as it is way brighter than anything you would ever work with, which makes the strip a bit more prominent. Obviously, in a darker environment, where RGB is meant to really pop, the VIVIFY Arquus 73Ø will actually be nicely visible.
Even the display end of the connector lights up, which means it will be a nice little V-shaped branding touch if the back of your monitor is exposed. Below are some videos of the connector and cable lighting. Even though the cable is 9 ft long, the illumination seems to be controlled on both ends, so there is no visible drop in intensity from one end to the other.
Connecting the Aceso W10 USB-C cable immediately has its edge light up red. This is pretty nice and straightforward, but the loss of brightness is somewhat visible in a bright environment, which is not as apparent in low-light surroundings.
Vivify Software
VIVIFY also offers their own RGB control software which allows for various effects to be triggered for their cables. In terms of the UI, the software is very prominent and flashy right out of the gate. Installing the software does not take long, but you have to click through several on-boarding slides to get to the end as the installer will just sit there at 100% otherwise.
The core of the Vnode application auto-detects connected VIVIFY RGB products and allows you to select up to four different ones. While that may sound like a low number, having a quad-monitor setup is pretty extreme and rare, which should have it suffice in reality. You may go through several lighting modes or trigger a color of your own choice in the software.
VIVIFY also interfaces to the Razer Chroma ecosystem in the settings menu, where you may check a box to allow the Chroma software to recognize the Arquus 73 and control its lighting effect. Interestingly enough, VIVIFY simply copied some marketing text from Razer and stuffed it into the app, which reads oddly, as if VIVIFY owns Razer.
Conclusion
With RGB becoming a firm staple for gamers, cables seem to be the last frontier since we have seen everything from RGB-equipped PC hardware to monitors, speakers, peripherals, tables, and chairs. So VIVIFY is quite the unicorn in that space. On top of that, their HDMI cables are quite capable when it comes to their technical features. While the price tag of $90 (no Chroma support) or $100 (with Chroma support) for a 9 ft HDMI cable is pretty steep, it offers everything you would expect from a high-end fiber optics cable in terms of technical specifications, as well as the unique RGB functionality. With no-name fiber optic HDMI cables selling for around $40, the VIVIFY Arquus 73 offers in-house production and a 2-year warranty on top of the RGB and interface for $60 so to speak. Thus, this cable is clearly aimed at gamers and enthusiasts who want all the lighting possibilities while still getting all the technical capabilities of a high-end cable.
On the other hand, if you want illumination for your mobile devices as well, the single-color LED VIVIFY Aceso W10 cable is a pretty cool cable to have in your pack, especially because of the 2-year warranty and very study construction for $25.
Microsoft’s Surface Duo is coming to the UK next week. On 18th February, the dual-screened smartphone will land in Britain as well as France, Germany and Canada.
UK buyers can pick one up from Currys PC World and direct from Microsoft for the princely sum of £1349. In France and Germany, it will cost €1,549.
In its native US, the Duo has had its price cut from $1399 to $999. There’s no word on whether this is a permanent price cut or if it’s just temporary. There’s also no sign of international buyers getting the same discount, unfortunately.
The Duo is the latest in a line of folding smartphones that open to the size of a small tablet. Some devices have been plagued by hardware and software issues and although the Surface Duo has been praised for its build quality in some quarters, its iffy software has led to a number of mixed reviews. Microsoft has gone some way to rectify this lately with a series of updates.
The Duo runs Google’s Android operating system, and its exterior is completely free of screens and camera bumps, making it a lot more elegant than most foldable phones. The hinge, in particular, has drawn plenty of praise.
Will it be enough to convince the public in these new territories to part with their cash? Perhaps, but a price cut similar to the one in the US could definitely help its cause…
MORE:
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While many of us moved to home offices when companies sought to avoid COVID-19 infection, for some people, working at home is the norm. One of those people is Sam Byford, Asia editor for The Verge, who works out of a home office in Tokyo, Japan.
We talked to Sam to find out how he has equipped his own home office and to see whether it matters these days if your remote desk is five miles away or about 6,700 miles away from your organization’s main office.
Tell us a bit about yourself and what you do at The Verge.
I’m from the UK, and I’ve been based in Japan since 2008 — first in Osaka, now in Tokyo, where I live with my wife and our dog and our bunny. I came on board The Verge just as the site launched in 2011.
I am now The Verge’s Asia editor, which means two things really. I handle much of our Asia-specific coverage, of course, but I’m also an editor who happens to be in Asia, which is helpful from a time zone perspective. If critical news breaks after the US signs off and before Europe wakes up, or if someone needs an edit on a piece that we’re timing for the morning in the US, that’s often me.
That’s a great space you have. Was that an existing setup, or did you put it together once you knew you’d be working at home?
I’ve been working from home for as long as I’ve been with The Verge, but this is still quite a new setup. My wife and I moved into a bigger place at the end of last year, and it turned out to be good timing since we now both have our own offices and are both at home all day. I didn’t bring any furniture in the move and essentially started from scratch.
The “gaming” desk is on the left; the “working” desk is on the right.
I didn’t expect to see two desks! It looks like one is for gaming and the other for working.
That is exactly what they’re for! In our last place, I had a giant integrated setup on a single L-shaped glass desk. But I found it impossible to keep things organized, and I never really felt like I was off work. With this room, I decided to abandon the idea of coherent, tasteful interior design and went for an unassuming wooden desk for my Mac with an ostentatious gaming setup on the left.
Tell me about the desks themselves. Where did you get them, and how did you decide which ones to get?
They’re both from Rakuten, which often has a bunch of third-party sellers offering near-identical products of unclear origin. The wooden one is simple, but it has convenient storage and a shelf to raise the monitors. The gaming desk came from a seller called PandaTech, and it has RGB lighting, a cup holder, cable management, a USB hub, a controller rack, a headphone hanger, and a fitted mouse mat. I’m not usually into the RGB-heavy gamer aesthetic, but I thought it’d be fun to lean into it as a way to create distinct spaces in the same room.
Did you choose your chair especially, or is that just something you had available?
It’s a Herman Miller Sayl, which is a common chair — Vox Media’s NYC office has hundreds of them. I bought one without arms, though, because it works a little better for my posture. I’m tall, and it’s hard to find chairs that don’t encourage me to slouch. Also, I like the red.
This is obviously going to take a while, but could you tell me about your tech setup?
*deep breath* Okay, so my main work machine is a 2018 15-inch MacBook Pro. I basically never use it as a laptop unless I’m going to trade shows, which, for obvious reasons, I haven’t done since CES 2020, so I like this Brydge vertical dock that turns it into a skinny desktop computer and saves a ton of space. I go through quite a lot of mechanical keyboards, but right now, I’m using a Keychron K2, which is working out great. It’s comfortable to type on, looks good, and works seamlessly with macOS.
The MacBook is hooked up to two LG UltraFine 4K monitors, the discontinued 21-inch model and the current 24 inch. Below them, there’s an Apple HomePod for music and Mac audio, and next to that is one of three original Google Wifi routers we have around the apartment. The camera is a Nikon Df, which I use for most of my personal photography, and I also keep my Nintendo Switch Lite charging on this desk. There are a bunch of dongles, power cables, and wireless chargers in easy reach, plus my two current personal phones: an iPhone SE and a Pixel 4A.
My gaming PC lives under the other desk, and it’s a custom build from 2016. The monitor is an Asus PG279Q, and the speakers are Harman Kardon Soundsticks, which are also hooked up to my Sony record player across the room over Bluetooth. (I’m not an analog purist.) There’s an Oculus Quest VR headset, a Thrustmaster Airbus flight stick, and a Neo Geo Arcade Pro fight stick. There is a dedicated button on my gaming desk to cycle through the colored lighting.
And the Google Nest Hub?
The Google Nest Hub is a recent addition that I got for two specific reasons: to control my Hue smart lights and to keep an eye on Pascal, our unhinged Shiba puppy who spends most of the day upstairs and occasionally tries to destroy our living room. I have a cheap TP-Link Kasa camera hooked up, which does the job.
That’s a great toy collection. Do you have any favorites?
I would say the cacti, which come from an amazing cactus-themed zoo (yes) near Mt. Fuji that my wife and I went to this summer. You can pick the cacti yourself and choose the pots to plant them in, and I like bears and dinosaurs, so.
Cacti, bears, and dinosaurs.
Okay, I need to know about those polar bear basketball players hanging around your computer.
The bear is, for reasons I’m not sure I understand, the mascot character of a Japanese cosmetics brand called Smelly. There’s a store in Harajuku with a gacha machine featuring it in various poses, and I liked the basketball one, so I gave it a shot. Thankfully, it came out quickly.
Do you do game playing on both desks? (I see controllers on the right-hand desk.)
Not unless it’s work-related. The Switch just lives there on its charging dock, and those little handheld consoles are Game Gear Micros that I was in the process of reviewing. There aren’t really any situations where I’d play a game on a Mac when there’s a PC right next to it.
How do you keep the world out while you’re working — or do you need to?
I get locked in pretty easily. The outside light is super bright in the mornings here, even on cloudy days, so I just close the curtains for a few hours and settle in. We live in a mostly quiet neighborhood, so the biggest distraction is our dog, really.
I see you like basketball. (That may be putting it mildly.) Is there anything special about that poster?
My Torontonian wife got me into the Toronto Raptors soon after we met, and now I’m a big fan. This is a print of Kawhi Leonard scoring his iconic Game 7 buzzer-beater over the Sixers to send the Raptors to last year’s Eastern Conference finals on their way to the NBA championship. It’s a great, inspiring image that has taken on new meaning after Kawhi bounced to LA only to see his Clippers collapse embarrassingly in the playoffs this year. I should maybe get it framed or something, but honestly, I kind of like just having sports posters on my wall.
The Toronto Raptors and an OK Computer CD cover.
How about the small print on your wall?
That’s an OK Computer CD cover signed by Thom Yorke from Radiohead. My dad used to be an obsessive autograph hunter, and back when I lived in the UK, we’d often go to gigs together, and he’d wait around for hours afterward to get things signed. Radiohead was one of my favorite bands as a kid, so it’s a neat thing to have that reminds me of home.
Is there anything you’d like to change about or add to the current setup?
I’m mostly good, but I don’t think my gaming PC is going to last very long once next-generation consoles with much better CPUs are on the market. So I’ll probably be looking to rebuild in a year or so. I would also love for Apple to make a version of its 6K pro monitor that doesn’t cost $6,000.
Also, I recently bought Belkin’s ridiculously named Boost↑Charge Pro 3-in-1 Wireless Charger with MagSafe. Charging Apple devices has gotten more complicated recently, at least for me. Now that the Apple Watch tracks sleep, I’ve been charging it with a messy cable at my desk for an hour or so when I start the day instead of overnight. And the iPhone 12 mini turns out to be too small for most stands — the charging coil isn’t high enough on the back of the phone. Belkin’s new charger solves both of those problems.
Update February 11th, 2021, 5:15PM ET: This article was originally published on October 21st, 2020. Several links and prices have been updated, and the Belkin Wireless Charger has been added.
Stardew Valley’s 1.5 update delighted a lot of us when it came out for PC in December, and now it’s finally arriving for consoles. The game’s developer announced on Twitter that the update should be rolling out to Switch, Xbox, and PlayStation “within the next couple of hours.” As of this writing, it is already available on the Nintendo Switch.
The most notable feature in the update is local, split-screen co-op play, which seems absolutely perfect for consoles. Do I want to sit next to someone I love on the couch and build a farm together? Absolutely, yes, and now we can.
The update also includes a new Advanced Options menu, new buildings, animals, and enemies, and of course a crop of bug fixes.
The Stardew Valley 1.5 Update for Switch, Xbox, and PlayStation are out, and should be available on all platforms within the next couple of hours.
— ConcernedApe (@ConcernedApe) February 11, 2021
The full changelog is available on Stardew Valley’s website, and you can look through it yourself to see which changes excite you— we’re hyped for chairs that you can actually sit on, a menu tab that tells you if you’ve talked to someone that in-game day, and an entirely new region with its own quest and characters.
When we first covered this update, we called Stardew Valley our “forever game,” because a lot of us keep coming back to play it every time it’s updated. Despite the game’s popularity (it’s sold over 10 million copies), it still feels like a very personal project — just like my farm in the game, though I’ll admit that’s a bit less impressive.
What do you do if you have an RTX 3090 but your favorite games are over 20 years old? Well, if you’re like modder Darío Samo, you add ray tracing to them. That’s what they announced they would be doing with Super Mario 64 late last year, and their latest progress looks great.
Darío’s been in the modding scene for almost a decade now, largely working on Sonic the Hedgehog projects. But now, thanks to the unofficial Super Mario 64 port that stealth launched early last year, they’re currently working on bringing ray tracing support to Nintendo’s own iconic platforming series.
This actually isn’t the first time Mario 64 on PC has seen ray tracing, but up until now, it’s only been in the form of textures. Darío’s mod, by comparison, adds full ray tracing support.
The project’s latest video demo shows the mod running in the Wet-Dry world stage, which means we get to see some truly impressive water and even fire effects. If the models looked a little better, I could even see myself forgetting this game released in 1996.
Dunno if this is gonna help any matters but here it goes.sm64rtx is a fork of the open-source n64decomp/sm64 project. Distribution of the mod is planned only in source code form, and no copyrighted assets would be included if it were to be released.The mod isn’t public yet.February 10, 2021
According to their Twitter, Darío’s mod isn’t public yet and is only planned to be distributed by sharing the source code. The modder also emphasizes that no copyrighted assets would be included in the mod’s public release, which is probably a response to a recent shoutout from Nvidia’s Twitter account.
Here’s hoping Nintendo is as cool about this as Nvidia.
While Intel’s NUCs come pre-built and ready to work out-of-box, some of the higher-end NUCs can get an aftermarket treatment from fanless chassis makers. Due to higher TDPs, that will apparently not be the case with the latest NUC 11 systems (codenamed Phantom Canyon). The new NUCs come powered by Intel’s quad-core 11th-Gen Core ‘Tiger Lake’ processor as well as Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 2060, but the powerful combination pushes TDPs up to 150W, making passive cooling impractical.
As it turns out, Intel’s NUC 11 for enthusiasts has a combined TDP of 150W, as noticed by FanlessTech in a Twitter post. Such a high TDP makes it impossible to build a small passively-cooled chassis for the unit. By default, the system (which measures 221 × 142 × 42 mm) has a rather sophisticated cooling system featuring five heat pipes and a fan. A third-party fanless cooling solution would be too bulky, and therefore impractical for a small form-factor PC.
In fairness, Intel’s NUC 11 Enthusiast is a rather capable system. The PC packs the quad-core Intel Core i7-1165G7 (up to 4.70GHz, 12 MB cache, 28W TDP-up) processor that is accompanied by 16 GB of DDR4-3200 memory (upgradeable to 64 GB), Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 2060 discrete GPU with 6 GB of GDDR6 memory, and Intel’s Optane Memory H10 (32 GB + 512 GB) or H20 SSD.
(Image credit: FanlessTech)
The CPU can be configured for a 15W or a 28W TDP, but the mobile GeForce RTX 2060 GPU can consume 80W or more (a desktop card consumes 160W). Considering that there are other components too, a 150W combined TDP seems fair for a Phantom Canyon system (especially considering various burst modes modern CPUs and GPUs have).
Without a doubt, it is disappointing for enthusiasts of ultra-quiet computing and passive cooling that it will be impossible to build a fanless PC using components of Intel’s NUC 11 Enthusiast. Meanwhile, for those who want to have a very small PC that can run modern games, this system still makes a lot of sense.
Kingdom Hearts, Square Enix’s action roleplaying mashup of Square Enix, Disney, and Pixar characters, is coming to PC for the first time. The series will be available as an Epic Store exclusive on March 30th, the company announced today.
Titles include Kingdom Hearts 1.5 + 2.5 Remix — enhanced versions of Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2 — Kingdom Hearts III Re Mind, Kingdom Hearts 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue, and Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory. Although the series has spanned a variety of platforms, from its beginnings as a PlayStation title to its arrival on Xbox consoles and handhelds for many of the series’ spinoffs, it has never made the leap to PC.
The series follows Sora as he travels with companions Donald Duck and Goofy through worlds based on Disney classics. Kingdom Hearts III, which acts as the conclusion to Sora’s adventure, launched for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in 2019.
Kingdom Hearts 1.5 + 2.5 Remix is available for $49.99, while the other three games are $59.99.
Microsoft is dropping the price of its foldable Surface Duo device to $999, and launching it in Europe and Canada next week. The Surface Duo will be available in the UK, France, Germany, and Canada on February 18th. It’s the first time the dual-screen Surface Duo has been available outside the US, for both businesses and consumers. Priced from £1,349 in the UK, the Surface Duo will be available at the Microsoft Store in the UK and retailer Currys PC World.
The Surface Duo is also launching in Canada, France, and Germany on February 18th. The device will be priced at 1,549 euros in Germany. Microsoft first launched the Surface Duo in the US in September 2020, and it has taken the company around five months to complete an international release.
Microsoft’s Surface Duo device.Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge
The $400 price drop to $999 certainly makes it a more affordable device, but when we reviewed the Surface Duo last year we praised the hardware and found the buggy modified version of Android made it difficult to use at times. The device also lacked many non-Microsoft apps that took advantage of the dual screens. TikTok was one of the bigger third-party apps that got updated specifically for the Surface Duo last year, but there are still not enough apps taking advantage of this unique hardware.
While Microsoft has promised monthly updates for the Surface Duo, the company failed to deliver an update in December. The updates haven’t done enough to improve the software experience of using the Surface Duo, despite its obvious potential.
Update, February 11th 10:00AM ET: Article updated with Surface Duo launch details in other markets and updated US pricing.
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