This week's hardware news recap diverges from Titan V coverage and returns to some normalcy, sort of, except the joining of Corsair by former top EK executives. We also have some loose confirmation of Ryzen+ for 1Q18, MSI's new RX Vega 64 Air Turbo card, and Sapphire's Nitro+ Vega 64 card. Still lots of AMD news, it seems, though Intel popped-up with Gemini Lake, if briefly.
Find the show notes below, or the video embedded:
Corsair Employs Ex EKWB Management
Corsair has acquired both Mark Tanko and Niko Tivadar, formerly CEO and CTO of EKWB, respectively. The former EKWB talent will assume new titles at Corsair—Mark is now “Vice President & BU General Manager at Corsair” while Niki will become “Director Of Engineering at Corsair”. It is safe to assume with this acquisition of experienced DIY water cooling talent, Corsair will be leveraging this to ease their foray into the custom liquid cooling market. Corsair showed off new water cooling products at Computex this year, of which have not been seen since. Time will tell what kind of fruit this arrangement bears.
Source: https://www.techpowerup.com/239706/corsair-opens-port-to-ex-ekwb-top-management
AMD Confirms Ryzen+ for 1Q2018
At a recent press event, AMD confirmed the second generation of Ryzen desktop CPUs. The new chips will be comprised of both Pinnacle Ridge and Raven Ridge (APU) silicon, both based on a 12nm shrink. The new generation of CPUs will debut alongside the AMD 400-series chipset, but will still drop into AM4 sockets and AMD 300-series chipsets (with a BIOS update). The new Ryzen CPUs and APUs will carry the 2000-series model numbers. The microarchitecture will still be Zen, rather than the Zen2 successor.
Sapphire, MSI Roll-out Custom RX Vega Cards
After much delay, Sapphire has finally outed their RX Vega 64 Nitro+ and RX Vega 56 Nitro+ graphics cards. Interestingly, both cards feature a triple fan design as well as triple 8-pin power connectors. The cards also ship with a dual-BIOS feature, additional fan headers, and a VGA support plate.
MSI’s latest custom offering is less enthusiastic, being something of a rehash on the reference design. The MSI RX Vega 64 Air Boost uses a custom blower fan design with a copper core, aimed at drawing more heat from the VRM and Vega 10 chip.
Intel Launches Gemini Lake SoCs
Intel launched Gemini Lake this week, which consists of the new Pentium Silver and Celeron Atom processors, fabricated on Intel’s 14nm technology. The Celeron SoCs and Pentiums will use the Goldmont Plus architecture, and are aimed at low power desktops and mobile.
MSI Debuts Optix MAG Series of Displays
MSI is readying a new series of curved gaming displays, dubbed the Optix MAG series. The MAG family will consist of three models; all models will offer an 1800R curvature on a VA LED panel, with a native 144 Hz refresh rate, 1ms response time, and FreeSync technology. Additionally, all models offer blue light reduction and anti-flicker. The models will offer resolutions of either 1080p or 1440p, and panel sizes of 23.6” or 27”, depending on the specific model. No word on pricing or availability, but the new monitors are allegedly debuting sometime this month.
Source: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/msi-optix-mag-series-monitors,36120.html
Thermaltake Introduces View 22 Case
Thermaltake outed their latest mid-tower offering in the View 22 Tempered Glass Edition. The case offers 4mm thick tempered glass panels and a full length PSU cover, both obscuring the PSU and HDD/SDD racks. The case will ship with a single 120mm exhaust fan, but supports 7x 120mm fans, or 4x 140mm fans. The chassis supports up to 360mm radiators at the top and front, and ships with built-in dust filters. No word on pricing/availability.
Source: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/thermaltake-view-22-tempered-glass,36131.html
- Eric Hamilton