Wednesday, January 09

Geek

Daily News Stuff 9 January 2019

Tech News
  • AMD's CES keynote is at 4AM for me, the worst time in the world.  Can't stay up that late, can't get up that early.

  • Toshiba announced their BG4 NVME SSD.  (AnandTech)

    With speeds of 2250MB/s read, 1700MB/s write (about 50% faster than the BG3), it's a middle-of-the-pack contender.  Its secret is that it packs up to 1TB of fast storage into just 16x20 mm (about half a square inch).

    https://ai.mee.nu/images/ToshibaBG4.png

  • Zotac's MEK Mini is eye-wateringly ugly.  (AnandTech)

    It's all but non-Euclidean.  Not shown because it might break the blog.

    Their Magnus E is a normal-looking mini PC with the latest Nvidia RTX mobile graphics, so here's a picture of that instead.

    https://ai.mee.nu/images/ZotacMagnusE.jpg?size=720x&q=95

  • Samsung's Notebook 9 Pro is a fairly nice business laptop, though it doesn't have dedicated pgup/pgdn/home/end keys.  Does have a pen.  Only 1080p display.

    The low-end Notebook Flash looks like a second more talented team of designers was shown a picture of the Notebook 9 Pro and told to make the same thing, only entirely out of recycled milk crates.

    https://ai.mee.nu/images/SamsungNotebookFlash.jpg?size=640x&q=95

  • Asus' TUF Gaming FX505 and FX705DY laptops are powered by AMD Ryzen.  (PC Perspective)

    Apparently there's a shortage of Intel laptop parts, so first-tier manufacturers (Apple, Dell, HP, Lenovo) get their pick and everyone else (Acer, Asus, Gigabyte, MSI) gets to wait.

    These models have the new Ryzen 5 3350H - a 35W part - and Radeon RX 560X graphics.  They dynamically switch from the integrated graphics to dedicated graphics when you start up a game.  It's the same driver so hopefully that will be smoother than on some pervious attempts.

  • ASRock announced the DeskMini A300 including the world's first STX format AM4 motherboard.  (Tom's Hardware)

    This is a big deal because STX doesn't have room for a graphics card, so AMD's superior integrated graphics make for a much more useful mini system.  These are smaller than a Mac Mini, though not quite as tiny as a NUC.  And a barebones system will cost just $119.

    Connectivity is a bit limited - only one Ethernet port, one HDMI, and one DisplayPort, but understandable at the price.

  • Intel's Optane caching solutions for hard drives were dead in the water with the recent fall in price of SSDs, so they've come up with something new.  The Optane Memory H10 has up to 1TB of QLC flash and up to 32GB of Optane cache.  (Tom's Hardware)

    There's one giant fly in the ointment, though: It's not actually a device.  It's a single M.2 card with a x4 connector, but the Optane and QLC storage are presented as two separate x2 drives that are then managed by Intel's RST software.

    So it requires an Intel processor and chipset, and a motherboard and BIOS supporting PCIe channel bifurcation.  Or you could just use regular QLC flash with its much larger pseudo-SLC cache and have a proper x4 SSD that works with anything.

  • Alienware's Area 51m supports a socketed CPU and GPU so in theory you can swap them out when better parts arrive.  (WCCFTech)

    At least the GPU.  Maybe.  CPU sockets change often enough that you're likely to end up stuck with whatever you got.

  • Lenovo's Yoga A940 is a Surface Studioesque desktop system.  (ZDNet)

    A hinged mount can bring the 27" 4K screen forward and down to a 28° angle for drawing or design, and it has a dial for twiddling.  Core i7-8700 CPU, Radeon RX 560 graphics (so you certainly won't be gaming at 4K), four speakers, a couple of cameras, multiple microphones, pen, mouse, wireless charging pad, convenient keyboard tray, carry handle, and, mirroring the original Surface Studio, a ludicrous 1TB hard disk.

    As for the design...  Um.  It's not ugly, as such, but it sure is awkward.

    https://ai.mee.nu/images/LenovoA940cropped.pnghttps://ai.mee.nu/images/LenovoA940Bcropped.png

  • Continental is planning to deliver packages to your door with a driverless miniature bus full of robot dogs.  (Tech Crunch)

    No, really.

    https://ai.mee.nu/images/InvasionOfTheRobodogs.jpg?size=720x&q=95

    I for one welcome our new robotic underdogs.

  • Wait, Google is at CES?  Everything Google announced at CES.  (Tech Crunch)

    Basically all just marketing for Google Assistant.  No new products or even new features, which is why I didn't notice they were even present.

  • Dell showed off a 55" 4K 120Hz HDR OLED Freesync gaming monitor.  (Engadget)

    Pricing not yet announced, and it won't ship until the second half of the year, but a single screen that ticks so many boxes isn't likely to be cheap.

  • Dell also, after years of everyone in the world telling them they are terrible people and deserve to Burn in Heck, moved the camera on the XPS 13 back up to the top bezel.  (HotHardware)

    It even has dedicated pgup/pgdn/home/end keys.  Not in my ideal layout, unfortunately, but they are there, and not combined with F11 and F12 or any such nonsense.

Video of the Day


Good boy!  <clunk>  Sigh.


Disclaimer: Cargo not wanted on voyage.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:00 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 808 words, total size 7 kb.

1 I think my new video card is bigger than that MEK mini (I just got EVGA's new RTX 270 XC Ultra last night--it's a 3-slot card with a taller heatsink and fans, and the higher-binned TU106-400A.)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, January 10 2019 03:06 AM (Q/JG2)

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Apple pies are delicious. But never mind apple pies. What colour is a green orange?




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