MSI Releases Intel Z170 Motherboards Featuring XPower Titanium

We've heard news of Z170 motherboards from a couple of vendors today, but how many of them can claim a silver motherboard? If you guessed none you'd be correct - until this moment, that is.
Feast your eyes on the all new MSI XPower Gaming Titanium motherboard, a silver ATX design featuring the new Intel Z170 chipset. While this board is obviously rather new it already has the distinction of holding the highest DDR4 overclock to date (a fact which seems not to have escaped MSI's attention).

In addition to apparently overclocking memory rather well the XPower Titanium also features:

    OC DASHBOARD: On-the-fly overclocking
    Twin Turbo M.2 64Gb/s + Turbo U.2 ready
    GAMING LAN with LAN Protect, powered by Intel
    Audio Boost 3, Nahimic Audio Enhancer
    Game Boost: 8 levels of easy overclocking
    GAMING Hotkey: Assign macros, launch your favorite games or do real-time overclocking using a single button
    XSplit Gamecaster v2.5: 1 year free premium license
    Military Class 5: The latest evolution in high quality components featuring the brand new Titanium Chokes
    MULTI-GPU with Steel Armor: Steel Armor PCI-E slots

The name of the new motherboard might have something to do with the Military Class 5 titanium chokes, but there's no mistaking the look of this board which will provide a fresh option for new builds.

Phanteks Announces Enthoo EVOLV ITX SE Enclosure

Phanteks today announced the second edition of the mini-ITX member of the EVOLV enclosure family, the new Enthoo EVOLV ITX SE.

 The new Mini-ITX variant retains the aesthetic from the prior version, and supports full-size graphics cards up to 13 inches and dual-width liquid CPU coolers via the removable upper radiator bracket.There is certainly an added dose of style with this new edition as it is being offered with two interesting color combos, with your choice of either a white exterior with black interior, or a black exterior with red interior.
The enclosures will carry a 5-year warranty and retail pricing has been announced as $69.99(Kshs,7,300) for the black/red version and $79.99(Kshs.8,300) for white/black. The Enthoo EVOLV ITX SE will be available in October.

4GB, 8GB Or 16GB; How Much RAM Do You Need?

Buying a computer is not as easy task as you would have thought. Given a choice among the plethora of configurations available for each brand, confusion is bound to creep in. The most frequent questions that tend to bewilder the regular users are about the processors i5 vs i7, the RAM, and the graphics.
How much RAM would be enough for your computer? This is always a tricky one. According to a comparative study by TechSpot for the system performance with 4GB, 8GB, and 16 GB RAM, more the merrier concept doesn’t suitably apply here with the RAM.
The Windows 10 desktop machines with separate RAMs were tested by TechSpot to check each one’s performance. Each desktop running two browsers, playing super heavy games and 65 tabs open in the background. The machines were then subjected to even further test with Postbox, Photoshop, Microsoft Word and Excel, Dropbox, and other programs running in the background to find the differences between using 4GB, 8GB, or 16GB of RAM.
Well, you can the see the results for yourself. Th 16 GB RAM doesn’t do your computer much good over its other counterparts. Other tests showed that even the 4 GB RAM would be sufficient for the regular buyers.16 GB RAM gives you a slight performance boost if you are a power user and intend to perform heavy video editing or running other virtual machines. 16 GB RAM was also the advantageous while compressing huge files with 7-zip.
Conclusion: So, if you are planning to buy a new computer or upgrading your system, then 8 GB RAM should be preferred. 16 GB RAM is only advised if you are dealing with specific high-demand scenarios.

Intel Core i7 Skylake Processor Reaches Record-breaking 7GHz Clock Speeds

If you are skeptical about the upcoming 6th generation Intel processors and upgrading to the same, here’s a news that will clear all your doubts. A professional from Honk Kong has over clocked the Intel Core i7-6700K chip and made a new record for the micorprocessor frequncy. This speed acheived by Intel Core i7 Skylake processors is among the highest ever acheived by any microprocessor of Intel Core i-series.
According to Kitguru, Kui Lam, a professional overclocker from HKEPC website from Hong Kong, has overclocked an engineering sample of Intel Core i7-6700K Skylake microprocessor to whopping 6998.88MHz. This clock speed is about 74.9.7 per cent more that its normal stock frequency.
To achieve this, Kui Lam had to disable three cores out if four and the Hyper-Threading technology, and the voltage of the processor was increased from 1.2V to 1.888V.
Other components used to make this record included Asrock Z170 OC Formula mainboard, a G. Skill Ripjaws 4 DDR4 RAM along with a 1300W power supply unit. Added to these, the processor was cooled using liquid Nitrogen (LN2).



While this professional overclocker achiever speeds up to 7GHz using Intel Core i7 Skylake processors, it would be interesting to notice if the retail versions of these microprocessor chip will be able to kiss even 5GHz mark with the commercially available cooling systems. Another point that needs to be looked upon is the use of single core instead of all four. This extreme overclocking is surely interesting, but with changing times, the value of single-core CPU is diminishing.

AMD Launches the A8-7670K APU

AMD’s Kaveri lineup has seen its fair share of success since its launch about a year ago. Both entry level and mid-end systems have incorporated this architecture in an effort to combine both respectable x86 performance an excellent graphics capabilities into affordable PCs. However, with Intel’s Skylake right around the corner and lackluster financial results dogging their heels AMD needed something, anything, to spark a bit of interest in their product stack. This is where the A8-7670K steps into the equation.

Like the so-called “Godavari” A10-7870K, the A8-7670K utilizes the same Kaveri base architecture as its predecessors but leverages the inherent advantages of a very mature 28nm manufacturing process to boost performance without negatively affecting efficiency. Yes, we realize this is the same old story AMD has been using for its rebranded 300-series graphics cards and other APUs but it’s all they’ve got for now. Carrizo will remain a notebook-oriented architecture for the time being while next generation parts are still a long while off. Meanwhile Intel has successively increased their lead with Haswell and Broadwell.

Like the A10-7870K Godavari APU before it, AMD’s A8-7650K simply utilizes the same layout and features of the xx50-series product below it and increases clock speeds by a slight amount. In this case the base frequency has increased by 300MHz while the maximum Turbo speed sees a boost of a lackluster 100MHz. Meanwhile, the 384-core R7-series graphics core gets a bump up to 757MHz. All of this has been accomplished while keeping the chip’s TDP at 95W.

Pricing shouldn’t come as any particular surprise given how AMD’s current lineup has seen its relative costs gradually decrease over the last few months. For the time being the A8-7670K hits the $118 mark or about two bucks less expensive than Intel’s i3 4160. That’s actually not too bad considering Intel’s budget-focused chip only has two cores and its integrated graphics processor tends to fall behind quite drastically. In addition AMD’s APU boasts the K-series designation so it comes with an unlocked multiplier, potentially boosting overclocking potential.

In applications that play to AMD’s relative strengths of processor graphics like gaming and GPU compute, the A8-7670K naturally pulls ahead of Intel’s offering. While Broadwell CPUs narrowed the gap between Intel and AMD chips within this respect, the Kaveri architecture has managed to remain ahead as it leverages the Radeon lineup’s substantially superior driver package.

As AMD has struggled to retain some form of presence within the processor market, certain aspects of their APUs have been brought into sharp contrast. After years of towing the same Heterogeneous System Architecture talking points it is becoming abundantly evident that development of supporting applications is nowhere near where it needs to be for their dreams to become reality. For example, hUMA and Heterogeneous Queuing optimizations have yet to make it into any mass-market programs and likely won’t anytime soon. Even the use of GPU acceleration and its abundant potential for performance speedups has been largely ignored (other than a few cases) by developers and programmers alike. Granted, the programming space is slowly dragging itself forward but it is looking more and more like Kaveri and even Carrizo will be long gone before GPU compute integration becomes mainstream.

This causes a problem for AMD since they’ve been forced to fight a battle with architectures that have awesome graphics potential but wholly underpowered x86 processing stages. The A8-7670K will face those exact same challenges as its predecessors but it shouldn’t be written off either. It can pack an almighty punch for anyone that wants graphics-first throughput for a light gaming or HTPC machine.

With all of that being said, this is an abundantly convenient launch time for AMD since they are still able to compare their APUs to the older Haswell chips. Intel’s Skylake series CPUs promise to turn these metrics on their collective heads with significantly better graphics specifications and much better performance per watt numbers. Even upcoming Broadwell CPUs will likely cascade down into lower price brackets eventually. So while the A8-7670K may staunch the bleeding in the mid-range for now, AMD will soon need a ground-up refresh to effectively compete with what’s coming down the pipeline

AMD's Radeon market share continues to collapse, now resides at a troubling 18 percent

Back in Q4 2014, we caught word that Nvidia was ahead in the discrete GPU market with 76% market share, heavily outweighing AMD's contributions. At the time, Nvidia's highest performing card was the GTX 980. This was long before Titan X came out in March of this year, and the GTX 980 Ti in June, both of which boasted improved support for 4K gaming, no sweat.
The R9 390X was supposed to introduce a positive change for the Sunnyvale, California-based chip maker, but on the contrary, it was anything but revolutionary. Instead, it was just another reskin of the 300 series video cards.
Now, Nvidia has unsurprisingly taken yet another leap, pouncing AMD once again at a sudden boost from 76% market share in Q4 2014 to 82% in Q2 2015, acording to data acquired by Mercury Research. Even after issuing a slew of new products, AMD has failed to redeem itself assigning it a worrying label of 18% market share.
Curiously, even its futuristic R9 Fury X card couldn't save it from a disastrous year in sales. Tweaktown reports that this is due to a low manufacturing rate of the HBM1 modules, with only 30,000 units made over an entire year. Also problematic is the concern over performance comparisons with Nvidia's GeForce GTX 980 Ti, which has proved to be a better value in raw price vs. performance, especially if you overclock.

Mid-Range Gaming PC Build Using Intel i5 & GTX 970 for $784 (Kshs.82,000)

 

 

Graphics Card 

EVGA Super Clocked 970 ($320)(Kshs.33000): The video card is one of the most critical build components for gaming. Something powerful is needed, but there has to be a reasonable balance between its power and the other components. In this case, we’ve chosen the EVGA Super Clocked GTX 970 for $320. It will perform well at around high and ultra settings for most games at 1440p and 1080p.
Our most recent benchmarks including the GTX 970 can be seen here. As a reference point, it generally performs a bit below a 290X/390, a bit above a 770, and decently below the GTX 980. The dual-fan design helps ensure that the card remains reasonably cooled during load -- although this isn’t incredibly hard due to the efficiency of Maxwell -- and retains silence. The GTX 970 comes with 4GB of VRAM, a core clock of 1.2GHz, and support for 4k.

CPU

Intel i5 4460 ($190)(Kshs.19700): For this build, we’ve chosen a $190 i5-4460 CPU. Despite the recent release of the Skylake K-SKU CPUs (i5-6600K, for instance), there is short supply of Skylake CPUs and the locked Skylake CPUs are yet to be released. An unlocked CPU doesn’t work well in this budget, so we’ve instead chosen the 3.2GHz i5-4460. It may not have an unlocked multiplier (used for overclocking) or the highest base clock around, but it’ll perform admirably for gaming. In certain cases it can turbo up to 3.4GHz to provide a bit extra speed.
With it being an i5, the CPU has four cores and four threads (one per core). It comes with a stock heatsink that will adequately cool it, but for users wanting cooler and/or quieter operation, the Cryorig H7 is a good addition for $35. This will also improve longevity.

Motherboard 

ASRock H97M Pro4 ($68)(Kshs.7000): The CPU needs a place to sit – life is demanding for a silicon die. The Asrock H97M Pro4 supports up to a Haswell i7, 4xDDR3 slots, 1xPCIe 3.0 x16 slot, 1xPCIe 2.0 x16 slot, 2xPCI slots, 6xSATA 6Gb/s slots, 2xUSB3.0 slots, and 4xUSB 2.0 slots.
It should be noted that the lower x16 PCIe slot is actually wired for x4. The board also has 4xUSB 3.0, 4xUSB 2.0, 1xPS/2, 1xDVI-D out, and 1xOptical on the I/O. The Pro4 is a good budget motherboard that will work fine for this micro-ATX build.

Memory

G.Skill RipJaws X Series 8GB DDR3 ($47)(Kshs.4700): This build features G.Skill RipJaws Series 1x8GB DDR3 1600 RAM – quite a mouthful. This RAM is fairly standard in that it is DDR3-1600, has a CAS latency of 9, and runs at 1.5v. 8GB is enough for gaming currently, and having one stick allows for easy upgrading to larger RAM capacities if needed down the road. Currently, the G.Skill RipJaws Series 8GB RAM is available for $40 at Newegg. It also has a lifetime warranty.
Using a single stick of memory means that dual-channel operation is lost, but this is something we’ve found to have minimal impact on dGPU gaming performance.

Power Supply

SeaSonic S12II 520W ($55)(Kshs.5700): Next up is the power supply, for which we are going with the SeaSonic S12II 520W. 520 Watts is definitely enough for this build. This allows the PSU to be used in future builds if needed/possible. It has 1x6 and 1x6+2 pin connectors, which fits the EVGA GTX 970’s requirements. The SeaSonic S12II is 80 Plus Bronze Certified, so it is reasonably efficient. To top all this off, SeaSonic has a 5 year warranty for this PSU.

HDD & Optional SSD

Western Digital 1TB Blue ($52)(Kshs.5400): For the regular user, this hard drive will provide adequate speed and capacity to start with. It’s not winning any speed awards, but the price per GB is still advantaged over SSDs, although read, write speeds, and seek times are worse. The WD Blue is a standard 7200 RPM HDD.
Samsung 850 Evo 250GB ($90)(Kshs.9300): For users wanting a faster drive for the operating system, games, and commonly used programs, the Samsung 850 Evo 250GB SSD is a good addition to this build. SSDs provide substantially better read, write, and seek speeds compared to SSDs, and also uses less power. This SSD comes with a five-year warranty backing it, granting it a longer warranty compared to much of its competition.

Case

Cooler Master N200 mATX ($45)(Kshs.4600) This build will use the Cooler Master N200 to house the components. It is an mATX case, making it a smaller and more compact case than many more  common ATX cases. The N200 supports graphics cards up to 355mm, so even long GPUs can fit with ease. The N200 has reasonably good watercooling support, which is nice addition to a case at this price point. It supports 3x3.5” bays, and 4x2.5” bays. Of course, as with any modern case, the N200 also has front USB 3.0 ports.
While the stock Intel cooler is pretty short and isn’t near this tall, the N200 supports CPU coolers up to 160mm. The Cooler Master N200 comes with 2xCooler Master XtraFlo fans.
While Skylake was recently released, the unlocked CPUs -- which are the only ones currently out -- aren’t a good fit for lower-budgeted builds. For this most recent ~$770 gaming PC build, we’ve gone for a locked Haswell i5 and GTX 970 combo to achieve satisfactory performance at 1080p and (to a slightly lesser extent) 1440p.