January’s powerful new PC hardware: Next-gen chips, wild cases, exotic laptops, and more - sullivanthaddetishe

Jon Phillips

Hardware, hardware everywhere

Thanks to CES, Jan was a monumental month for new PC hardware. This year's show birthed all sorts of exotic laptops, the first details nigh AMD's enthusiast-class Radeon Vega graphics cards, a brewing central processor warfare, HDR on PCs, and a good deal, much more—the most wild of which we'll detail here.

Merely while CES reigned supreme in January, information technology didn't reign alone. After the show doors closed, we also witnessed a new 86-inch monitor lizard, slick Linux laptops, and the rogue appearance of a round-fat version of the Radeon RX 460's graphics processor. Delicious. Let's dig out in!

Intel's Kaby Lake

Project by Gordon Mah Ung

Let's start with CES's to the highest degree concrete news, the long-teased release of Intel's new 7th-gen Kaby Lake processors. Every bit expected in that "optimization" update, Kaby Lake is fundamentally conscionable a high-clocked edition of Skylake with better 4K video chops, beefed-up unified graphics, and—most excitingly—extreme overclockability, delivery enthusiasts back to the 5GHz levels not seen since the halcyon years of Sandy Bridge and the Core i7-2600K. Feel out PCWorld's comprehensive Kaby Lake screen background review for the untouched max and benchmarks galore.

Intel made about interesting moves in budget-focused price points with Kaby Lake's release, besides. There's an overclockable Substance i3 chip for the first time of all time, and Intel even brought hyperthreading to roughly Pentium chips. That's probably because…

Ryzen rising

Image by Brad Chacos

…AMD's hotly anticipated Ryzen processors were forbidden in full push at CES, threatening Intel's grasp on performance computing for the first clip in a decade. AMD really unconcealed a bunch of Ryzen inside information in December, so information technology focused on the rest of the ecosystem at CES with the reveal of over 30 Ryzen PCs and AM4 motherboards.

The fellowship likewise announced deeper details like AM4 chipset capabilities and the fact that every uninominal Ryzen processor released will be overclockable. Even better for Personal computer enthusiasts happening a budget, existent AMD coolers that use clips rather than brackets bequeath be compatible with the new motherboards, and AMD plans to financial support the AM4 platform for at least Little Jo years. Expect to learn more soon, as Ryzen's available for a first-quarter launch—maybe in February?

Radeon Vega

Image away AMD

AMD's got a big year onwards on the graphics circuit board front, overly. At CES, the company at long last unveiled some selective information about its sinewy Radeon Vega GPUs, which are scheduled to plunge sometime in the eldest half of 2017. You'll need to read PCWorld's Radeon Lope de Vega technical preview for the finer details, but in a nutshell, Vega packs cutting-edge HBM2 memory, Vega drastically reimagines how a graphics card's subjacent memory architecture interacts with the rest of your system, and Vega is fast As hell.

After you've read au fait Lope de Vega, watch this video, where PCWorld hardware editor in chief Gordon Mah Ung and myself spend over 40 minutes speaking with Radeon SVP and principal designer Genus Raja Koduri about Vega, the state of 4K gaming, and a deal more.

Nvidia's onslaught

Epitome past Jared Newman

Nvidia didn't pose around twiddling its thumbs spell AMD announced all this cool stuff. In fact, the troupe conducted one of CES's spotlight keynotes, announcing a second-gen Shield TV that doubles every bit a Google Home and GeForce Now for PCs and Macs. GeForce Now for PCs and Macs—which is very different from GeForce Now for the Screen—lets you rent a virtual PC and stream your games from the cloud to any PC Oregon Mac, assuming your connection's virile adequate. It let ME play Witcher 3 happening a MacBook Air as every character of my being screamed in protest.

More interested in traditional PC gaming? Nvidia also announced mobile versions of the GeForce GTX 1050 and GTX 1050 Ti, which had already found their way into dozens of laptops on display at the show.

Acer Predator 21X

Image past Martyn Williams

Acer's wild Predator 21 X gambling laptop definitely does non carry the budget-neighbourly GTX 1050. In fact, this beast is essentially a desktop in all simply name, with cardinal high-end GTX 1080s in SLI, the overclockable Kaby Lake Core i7-7820HK, 64GB of RAM, board for equal to four SSDs in RAID 0, and a 21-inch, 120Hz G-Sync display that just so happens to comprise the first-ever curved screen on a notebook. Hot. Damn.

All those high-end features number at a chest of drawers-clutching terms, however: $8,999.99. Nice of Acer to shave that penny off, eh?

Razer Project Valerie

Image aside Adam Patrick Murray

The really crazy thing is that the Predator 21 X wasn't even the wildest laptop computer to appear in January.

Razer disclosed the Project Valerie prototype at CES, which is essentially a Razer Blade Pro laptop with three displays—two of which fold out from behindhand the independent display with the help of robot arms.

Just watch the video of Throw Valerie in carry out. No enquire two of these prototypes were stolen as CES wound down.

Razer Project Ariana

Ikon by Razer

Valerie wasn't the only zany project Razer has tucked up its sleeve. It also had a 4K gaming projector. Yes, a Razer gaming projector.

Unequal most projectors, Project Ariana isn't designed to replace your principal screen. Instead, it extends your gambling world beyond the confines of your admonisher and projects information technology onto the rest of your way. Developers could use it to plainly make the world feel for more expansive, or to expose in-game elements like cooldown timers and maps, or even, read, clear it feel like it's snowing every around you when you're playing in a winterscape. Game makers would need to support Razer's Chroma API to make usage of Ariana, but if the support is there, Razer hopes to launch the projector by the end of the yr.

iBuyPower Snowblind

Visualize by Gordon Mah Ung

This month, displays even came to acase's windowpane. iBuyPower's them Snowblind takes an NZXT N450 case and slaps a thin, 19-inch showing with a resolution of 1280×1024 on the window, letting you period of play soaring "ink in water" effects, warp velocity-style freakouts, and nucleus system information on the window forthwith. It's insanely cool off, and the second you fundament act the creative Doomsday on this thing I might just have to buy cardinal.

One fly in the ointment is that Snowblind will only be useable if you buy a complete iBuyPower system; you can't snag the case a lah carte. But connected the plus side, that type, complete with display window, only adds $250 to the overall system cost, which seems same reasonable.

Phanteks Enthoo Elite

Visualise aside IDG

Connected the other hired hand, the $900 Phanteks Enthoo Elite is a monumental, elegant cause built with everything you could possibly motivation for a treble-end water-cooled gaming Personal computer. It's utterly glorious, only yea, it's $900.

Dell's 86-inch monitor

Image by Dingle

And Dell's crazy 86-inch 4K touchscreen monitor is $11,000. Yikes—though information technology's honorable inexpensive compared to Microsoft's $22,000 84-inch Surface Hub for offices and classrooms. American Samoa a particularly nice contact, Dell's massive monitors have an porta in the rearward for one of Dingle's OptiPlex Micro PCs to time slot into. Look for them to launch on Marching 30.

HDR PC monitors

Image by Nvidia

But for me, the highlight of CES 2017 was the long-awaited arrival of high-propellant-scope PC monitors. HDR displays offer deeper blacks and a brighter, vastly wider array of colors to make up gloriously intense images. Sadly, there's no way to register the difference when you're looking at pictures of an HDR screen on a non-HDR monitor lizard.

LG and Dell each unveiled HDR monitors aimed at creative professionals. On the gaming side, AMD revealed a recently FreeSync 2 standard that helps HDR monitors achieve their fullest potential, while Nvidia's first HDR G-Synchronize monitors are basically the holy grail of displays, with 144Hz refresh rates, HDR, 4K resolutions, cutting-edge Quantum Dot technology, 1,000 nits of luminousness, and (of course) G-Sync. Buckeye State my.

I saw the Asus ROG Sceloporus occidentalis PG27UQ—one of the HDR G-Sync displays—in person, and one explosion fit was so brilliant that my brain instinctively nonvoluntary Pine Tree State to cover my eyes and keel backwards to protect myself. It could feel warmth that wasn't there. Grasp it.

EVGA SC-15

Image by Brad Chacos

Speech production of G-Sync displays, the EVGA South Carolina-15 gaming laptop computer packs a 1080p version chugging on at a blistering 120Hz. That'd be unsaved dazzling for a desktop monitor; it'sinsane in a laptop computer.

This laptop computer—which is basically the little brother of the 4K-panoplied Atomic number 21-17 notebook EVGA revealed last year—is powered by a mobile GTX 1060 and any multipotent internals, including a quad-core Kaby Lake processor. You could even use it as a takeout VR station if you wanted to when information technology launches in June!

EVGA Quick Release cooling

Image past Brad Chacos

EVGA also launched the fancy "QRC" Quickly Discharge closed-loop semiliquid-cooling system ecosystem firstborn teased at CES 2016. QRC offers prefilled tubes with quick-firing fittings happening the terminate, letting you expand your liquid-cooling system system by simply snapping in new parts. EVGA's going to have various sized radiators, a GPU cooler, a CPU cooler, extension cables, and even a "QRG Hybrid" GTX 1080 artwork card with QRC fittings.

Seem for QRC hardware to hit the streets whatsoever day now as part of EVGA's attempt to take over your entire Microcomputer.

Sapphire Nitro RX 460 4G D5 OC

Image by Sapphire

EVGA wasn't the only artwork card maker making waves, as Sapphire released the Nitro RX 460 4G D5 OC this month.

Another Radeon RX 460? Who cares? I'm thankful you asked, cranky conjectural reader. The Radeon RX 460 is the solitary graphics card that uses AMD's Pole star 11 artwork processor, but not in its full form. While Polaris 11 contains 1,024 stream processors, only 896 are active in the RX 460, presumably so the card could quarter under 75 Watts and slot into systems without supplemental power connectors.

The Sapphire Nitro RX 460 4G D5 OC unleashes all 1,000-summation cores. Giggity. But like a sho for the bad news: Information technology's only useable in China, and neither Chromatic nor AMD possess ready-made any mention of bringing a full-fat Radeon RX 460 variant stateside.

Linksys WRT32X

Prototype by LinkSys

Level routers rode the bleeding edge in January. The Linksys WRT32X is an sharply organized router flush down with fancy features that help gamers play with minimum irritation. That includes a dual-band, 3×3 AC3200 wireless router with MU-MIMO, a gigabit WAN port, a four-port ethernet switch, USB 3.0, the ability to escape open-rootage firmware, and theoretical throughput of busy 600Mbps on its 2.4GHz 802.11n mesh and 2,600Mbps on its 5GHz 802.11ac. If you don't know what all that slang means, well, the Linksys WRT32X should be fast and versatile.

That's increased by the inclusion body of Rivet Networks' modish Slayer Prioritization Locomotive—beefed-up select-of-Service software that powerfully prioritizes lag-sensitive traffic. You know, like games. (And video and VoIP calls.)

Spirit for this $300 beast to send on this jump.

Supercharged storage

Image by Intel

Storage didn't disappoint, either. At CES, Kingston discovered a twinkling drive that puts ii freakin' terabytes of information in your pocket, piece Intel showed what its revolutionary, blazingly-fast Optane computer storage will look like when information technology hits enthusiast PCs later in 2017. (A lot like existing memory, basically.)

Later in the month, Intel besides began shipping Optane-based memory modules to partners for testing.

Bantam PC, big power

Image by Alaina Yee

In January, PCWorld reviewed G's revamped Brix, which ditched the "palm-sized square box" design of its predecessors for the look preceding. IT also eschewed the "bare finger cymbals" character of the Brix card, shipping with a ladened set of internal computer hardware (including a Core i7-6700K and a GeForce GTX 1070) and Windows 10 preinstalled.

The good news program? The overhauled Gigabyte Brix PC is a sawed-off powerhouse. The problem? All that power in this tiny showcase requires some extreme fan utilisation to stay cool. Disdain performing so well, it's hard to ignore how noisy it is.

Digital Storm PCs

Image by Brad Chacos

On the completely opposite closing of the spectrum, Digital Storm revamped its beastly, water-cooled Aventum and sleek Bolt enthusiast PCs for 2017. Some designs have been refined to the extreme all over past years, but the newest models add numerous quality-of-life improvements like lighter materials, more thoughtful airflow designs, rest area panels in the place of thumbscrews, etc..

The troupe too provided a glimpse at a prototype of an all-hot PC possibly orgasm later in 2017. Project Modena embodies all the enthusiast PC knowledge Digital Storm's accumulated all over the long time.

Das Keyboard 5Q

Image away Check off Hachman

Hyrax Keyboard is a highly respected brand among keyboard enthusiasts (yes, keyboard enthusiasts subsist), and the ship's company's new 5Q looks wild. Maybe not at first blush—the aesthetics are pretty direct. Here's the description from PCWorld's Coney Keyboard 5Q coverage:

"The $229 keyboard is a soft on mashup of traditional mechanical Da Gamma Zulu-powered switches, the overcast, and programmable apps such as Zapier and IFFTT. If you'd like-minded your number keys to visually argue the level of your PC's CPU activity, that's entirely latent. Basically, every key on the keyboard is a 'macro' key, and can be reprogrammed as its have individual indicator."

Fountainhead all-fired. I'll be holding an eyeball on this when information technology launches in March.

Samsung's curved quantum-constellate monitors

Image by Samsung

Samsung's parvenue displays might not fling HDR, but father't sell these curved quantum-dot monitors short. Quantum dots deliver a richer, broader visible spectrum that can even give in those much-balleyhooed OLED displays a run for their money.

Samsung's young CH711 monitor rocks an extreme 1,800R curvature and 2560×1440 resolution along with a color range that's 125 percent of sRGB, increased by that delicious quantum-disperse technology.

The 24-inch CFG70 and 34-inch CF791 monitors also pile quantum dots and a slightly more than modest 1,500R curve. They're focused more on gamers with an ultra-wide design, a Game Mode, AMD FreeSync support, and gamer-central calibration options. Both are available now, and the CF791 looks absolutely blest in real world—though that $950 price tag is no antic. (The little CFG70 costs about a third as much.) The CH711 leave be procurable sometime early this year.

KDE Slimbook

Image aside Slimbook

Linux lovers are often forced to install their preferent distro on whatever computer they can put their hands on, but the sleek new KDE Slimbooks were built from the soil up for rock-solid KDE Neon performance.

The found specs include 4GB of RAM, a 120GB mSATA SSD, two USB 3.0 ports, a 13.3-inch 1080p display, and your choice of a 6th-gen Skylake Intel Core i5 surgery Sum i7 central processing unit. These aluminum-spiffed up Slimbooks are within reason svelte, likewise, at 0.71 of an column inch and 2.87 pounds.

But wait, there's more!

Image by Brad Chacos

For the interest of briefness (ha!) we've stuck to the highlights here, but in that location's still so much more to talk of the town nigh. If you want to catch up on the rest of the coolest new PC gear revealed in Jan, question over to PCWorld's CES category page and dig around a little. You'll find teeny-tiny graphics cards for itty-bitty-tiny PCs, ferine cases, pocket-human-sized touchscreen PCs, revolutionary "3D" headphones, completely sorts of laptops and PCs, and a whole lot much.

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• Computers
• Gaming
• AMD
• Intel
• Nvidia

Brad Chacos spends his days digging through desktop PCs and tweeting as well much.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/411856/januarys-powerful-new-pc-hardware-next-gen-chips-wild-cases-exotic-laptops-and-more.html

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