Samsung and Kingston jack up SSD prices

The Hot Take: When do we start spinning up class action on this price rigging game?

SSD prices are already daft, and Samsung and Kingston have decided that now is the perfect time to whack them up by about 10 per cent. Those Micro Centre shelves stacked with high-end drives costing thousands of dollars are heading for even sillier price tags, and budget gaming PC builds are getting mugged. Samsung has sent out a price adjustment notice for SSD products, with increases said to exceed 10 per cent. It has told three major domestic distributors that its cost prices have formally risen. IT Home Source Bobantang wrote: ā€œAt…

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Carbon nanotube wiring gets closer to competing with copper

The Hot Take: Cool, I mean if it makes sense I'm all for it.

Shortly after their discovery, carbon nanotubes seemed to be a material wonder. There were metallic and semiconducting forms; they were tiny and incredibly light; and they could only be broken by tearing apart chemical bonds. The ideas for using them seemed endless. But then the reality of working with them set in. It was hard to get a pure population of metallic or semiconducting forms. Synthesis techniques tended to produce a tangle of mostly short nanotubes; those that extended for more than a couple of centimeters remain rare. And while…

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Intel’s Hallock Blames Software, Not Silicon, For Gaming Gap — Claims 30% Performance Is Hiding Behind Poor Optimization

The Hot Take: Again the people out there are calling this cheating. I say if you optimized for your hardware how is it cheating????

While everyone wants faster hardware, Intel says the answer lies in software optimization, and the P and E cores are almost identical in gaming performance. Robert Hallock Says E-Cores Don't Degrade Gaming Performance and PC Enthusiasts are "Underestimating" the Importance of Software Intel might not have been able to deliver X3D-equivalent performance in gaming with its latest Core Ultra 200 series, but it has gotten closer with the Plus variants. While still noticeably behind when it comes to the leading gaming performance, Intel blames this…

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Intel’s Z970 Chipset Will Cover Both the Z890 High-End and B860 Mainstream Tiers for Nova Lake

The Hot Take: Interesting move, consolidate down to a single chip set. Less time to develop, they going to do disabling features at the firmware level to get more skus at different price points?

Intel's upcoming Z970 motherboards for Nova Lake-S Desktop CPUs will replace both high-end Z890 and mainstream B860 options. Intel Z970 Motherboards To Cover An Extensive Market With Both High-End & Mainstream Options For Nova Lake Builders Intel's 900-series motherboards will have a wide range of options for PC builders. The flagship Z990 chipset will be the recommended choice for enthusiast Nova Lake Desktop CPUs, featuring a dual compute tile configuration, while the Z970 chipset will retain a primary focus on the high-end market. Based…

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Bolt Graphics Tapes Out Zeus GPU, Targets HPC with Bold RTX 5090 Claims

The Hot Take: We all desperately need this to not be vapor-ware!

A relatively unknown U. S. -based startup, Bolt Graphics, has announced that it has successfully taped out the first test chip of its Zeus GPU architecture. The company positions Zeus as a disruptive compute accelerator, previously claiming performance up to 150% higher than an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 while consumi ...

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Supermicro GPU smuggling prompts Nvidia to intensify supply chain audit

The Hot Take: How far up the supply chain does this go? All the way to Nvidia? Only time will tell.

Following the recent smuggling indictment involving Supermicro co-founder Wally Liaw and others, Nvidia has significantly upgraded its global supply chain monitoring practices in recent months, according to an industry source. Already maintaining high visibility over customer lists, Nvidia now enforces stricter controls on shipments and transshipment processes, prompting multiple suppliers to expand their legal teams to comply with the intensified audits.

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Elon Musk says his TeraFab facilities will use Intel's 14A process technology to make AI chips — SpaceX will be responsible for high-volume chip manufacturing in likely Intel tech licensing deal

The Hot Take: Intel needs this licensing support as other law suits are back in court with patent trolls....

Elon Musk reveals details about TeraFab: Intel provides technology, Tesla builds pilot line, SpaceX constructs high-volume fab.

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Tested: Windows 11 setup screen now finally lets you skip forced updates, and go directly to the desktop

The Hot Take: Nice, quicker to desktop.

Microsoft told Windows Latest that it’s rolling out a new feature that allows you to skip forced Windows 11 updates during device setup (out-of-box experience). Right now, when you clean install or reinstall Windows 11, or buy a new device, you have to go through a long out-of-box experience, also called OOBE. During the OOBE setup, Windows nags you to set up a Microsoft account, buy Microsoft 365, try Xbox Game Pass, and more. While it’s unclear when the calmer OOBE without upsells will begin rolling out, Microsoft is already curbing one…

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