Microsoft Has Given Snapdragon SoCs Priority Over AMD In Its Surface Products But A Company Executive Implies That It Has Nothing To Do With Quality

The Hot Take: Snapdragon SoC's going out of support sooner than x86 chips or that just me thinking this?

The Surface lineup belonging to Microsoft largely comprises machines shipping with Snapdragon chipsets or Intel processors, with the latest addition being NVIDIA’s RTX Spark SoCs for the ultra-premium Surface Laptop Ultra. If you’ve noticed, AMD is sorely missing from the list, even though the company’s Xbox hardware ships with these chips. Well, a company executive has provided a reason, and it’s not because Microsoft has little to no love for AMD. A Microsoft executive says “we love working with AMD,” but it’s working with a limited product…

Read the full article

Intel's next-gen Nova Lake platforms pass compliance at USB and PCIe standards bodies as launch looms

The Hot Take: Nice, when to we get em?

The USB Implementers Forum now lists some of Intel's Core Ultra 400-series 'Nova Lake' platforms in its Integrators List, meaning that the products have passed applicable USB compliance and interoperability tests. The PCI-SIG Integrators List also includes Intel’s 900-series chipsets for Nova Lake-S processors. Such tests are conducted ahead of product launches to ensure interoperability and to gain the right to use the PCIe and USB logos on new products.Go deeper with TH Premium: CPU(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)Intel VP Robert Hallock sets…

Read the full article

Five things Windows 11 quietly keeps about you, and which ones actually matter

The Hot Take: No privacy any where. Except maybe linux but then you get emulated gaming... I just don't like that emulation overhead i want bare metal raw performance.

A viral post on X claims that Windows keeps a thumbnail of every photo you’ve ever deleted, stored secretly in a file called thumbcache_256.db. It sounds scary for a desktop OS used by 1.5 billion people. The post has 1.7M views so far, and I received several DMs asking if they should follow the instructions in the tweet. To be fair, this is a Windows feature. File Explorer does keep a thumbnail cache, so it doesn’t have to regenerate image previews when needed. However, the post goes too far on multiple levels. Viral post claiming Windows…

Read the full article

GIGABYTE AORUS RTX 5090 XTREME WATERFORCE User Says The GPU Waterblock Developed Cracks In Just 3 Weeks Without Being Misused, But Received A Timely Replacement

The Hot Take: Good to see the honor their warranty. Something becoming more rare in these times....

It’s a scary situation when an expensive GPU like the RTX 5090 that’s tamed using a water-cooled solution begins to show cracks in the exact waterblock that’s used to effectively reduce its temperatures. One owner has shown evidence that it took the waterblock less than a month to begin displaying these cracks, but he was lucky that GIGABYTE offered a quick replacement for the AORUS XTREME WATERFORCE version. It took GIGABYTE around two weeks to provide the replacement for the water-cooled RTX 5090, which is a lower turnaround time considering…

Read the full article

High-Res Die Shots Unpack Intel Panther Lake's 18A Tiles In Stunning Detail

The Hot Take: Purtty!

French-language hardware site Hardware & Co has some brilliant die shots of most of Intel's latest processors in a blog entry that was actually posted up back in July but only spotted recently in the broader international hardware community by well-known enthusiast InstLatX64. We're only going to take a look at one of the die shots here, but

Read the full article

Noctua Eyes Forced Physics “Third Cooling Path” That Handles 2000W Without The Complex Liquid Loops Desktops Rely On

The Hot Take: Interesting, we'll see if Air can catch up with some high wattage CPU's coming from Intel & AMD.

Noctua is teaming up with Forced Physics to explore next-gen air cooling that could bring superior cooling capabilities to conventional PC coolers. Noctua Announces Partnership With Forced Physics to Explore 2000W Air Cooling Technology Noctua's partnership with Forced Physics could be big for the future of desktop CPU coolers. The company has recently announced that it has entered into a long-term research partnership with Forced Physics DCT to investigate its JouleForce micro-channel array cooling for desktop PCs and workstations.…

Read the full article