Intel's quasi-barebones NUC PC is back for round three, with the sexy-named "NUC5i5RYK" SKU leading the charge. Equipped with Intel's i5-5250U dual-core CPU, clocked at 1.6GHz, the processor still comes soldered to the NUC's motherboard. And once again, owners will have to bring their own OS to the party.
In terms of form factor, the NUC is still extremely portable—it measures 4.5x4.3x1.3 inches and weighs one pound, 4 ounces. Ports include four USB 3.0, one Mini HDMI 1.4a, one Mini DisplayPort 1.2, and an Ethernet jack. In addition to the new Broadwell proc, there are several upgrades to the NUC5i5RYK. This NUC now supports up to 16GB of 1866MHz SO-DIMM RAM, with its two memory slots. This addition is appreciated, considering the old NUC D54250WYKH SKU would only support 1,600MHz RAM. For the purposes of this review, Intel provided us with 8GB of HyperX DDR3L RAM clocked at 1,600MHz, but you'll have to BYO if you want to join in on the NUC party. In addition, this NUC does away with both SATA and mSATA slots and replaces them with the faster M.2 standard, previously known as the Next Generation Form Factor. For review purposes, Intel provided us with its own 530 series M.2 SSD and Samsung's more expensive XP941 series 256GB drive, to give us an idea of how an enthusiast M.2 SSD could take advantage of the speedier slot. Finally, another nice addition to this is an 802.11ac and Bluetooth 4.0 combo adapter. With previous SKUs, you bought your own.
Accessing all of these components is just as easy as unscrewing four screws on the bottom of the NUC. Owners may be happy to hear that the base uses captured screws, which means they won't fall out. Users will be able to install their M.2 drives by unscrewing a single screw, which anchors the drive in place (we had to use a small Phillips head screwdriver here because our standard screwdriver was too big). You can also pry open and change the top cover. The default black lid pops out easily enough with a thin flathead screwdriver. Intel says there will be different color options available, but we don't really see this catching on in much of a big way outside of the enthusiast NUC community.
Considering that Broadwell is a "tick" on Intel's tick-tock roadmap and equates to a new 14nm manufacturing process, our CPU is focused more on power efficiency than pure performance gains. Oddly enough, however, we saw a bit of the reverse to be true in our test. Measuring the wattage, this NUC5i5RYK soaked up roughly one watt less at idle than the D54250WYKH Haswell NUC we reviewed last year, but consumed roughly five more watts when we stressed it under Prime95 and Furmark. Thankfully, this Broadwell NUC made up for it in performance, where it bested its Haswell cousin by roughly 7–10 percent in our CPU benchmarks.
While the CPU gains were admirable, we saw a bigger delta in our graphics benchmarks. The NUC5i5RYK uses Intel's HD Graphics 6000, and while it doesn't hold a candle to the Gigabyte Brix Pro we reviewed last year, which uses Intel's top-of-the-line Iris Pro graphics, it is a step up compared to Intel's HD Graphics 5000 series, beating it by 10–45 percent in our graphics tests.
Considering that the box is quite small, you might be wondering how hot or loud it gets. When the NUC is sitting idle, it's both cool and quiet. Under the onslaught of our benchmarks, however, the fan did rev up, but it was hardly offensive. The box also got a little warm to the touch, but nowhere near as scorching as the Gigabyte Brix Pro, which is an enthusiast NUC gunning for performance.
The real story here pertains to the included M.2 slot, which allows for some ridiculous storage speeds. With Intel's 530 Series M.2 SSD installed, we saw sequential-read and -write speeds of 419MB/s and 213.6MB/s, respectively, using our CrystalDiskMark benchmark. Those numbers aren't super impressive, but considering that a 180GB drive will run you $105, it isn't a super high-end SSD either. When we plopped in Samsung's more expensive ($254) XP941 256GB M.2 drive, however, we got stupid sequential-read and -write speeds of 1,089MB/s and 798MB/s, respectively. You're grandmother's traditional 2.5-inch SSDs can't touch those numbers, as they are limited to SATA III's 6Gb/s bandwidth cap. What makes M.2 drives interesting is that they come in different sizes and even have different connectors. Interesting tidbit aside, the downside of M.2 SSDs at the moment is that they aren't as plentiful as traditional 2.5-inch SSDs, and are still quite expensive. Alas, this is the price you pay for being an early adopter.
If you can stomach the extra cashola that the M.2 slot currently demands, then you'll appreciate some of the tweaks that this NUC brings to the table. The included Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are greatly appreciated, and we like that you can stuff speedier RAM in the box, which could further bolster the integrated graphics. Like other NUCs, we still feel that it's going to be a pretty niche product at the end of the day. It's certainly not hard to build into, and could be a good first step for the noob PC builder. That said, the fact you have to purchase your own storage, RAM, OS, and install all the drivers yourself may turn off PC noobs from picking up what is essentially a pretty cool Ultrabook tossed into a small desktop form factor.
Smaller system builds are fast becoming a thing, but that shouldn't that also mean smaller prices? That's not always *ahem* the case (see what we did there), though it can be! Just check out today's top deal for a Fractal Desigh Core1100 Micro ATX Mini Tower Case for $30 with free shipping (normally $45). That's right, just three Hamiltons, or pair a Hamilton with a Jackson, or grab six Lincolns (on paper, not copper), or 30 Washingtons, or...you get the point.
Technically there's a bezel on Acer's new 25-inch H257HU monitor. However, Acer's marketing the display as having a "zero-frame design" that both maximizes the viewing area and provides a more seamless viewing experience for multi-monitor setups. Having looked at pictures, I won't argue the point too much, just that there are bezels, though nowhere near as thick as my Dell U3011 (except on the bottom).
How thin are they? Acer didn't say, though it did talk about the monitor's brushed metal construction, diamond cut stand, and the slim aluminum front bezel on the bottom, underneath of which are the on-screen display (OSD) controls and presumably the power button.
Getting to its vitals, the H257HU sports a WQHD (2560x1440) resolution. It uses an In-Plane Switching (IPS) panel with 178-degree wide viewing angles horizontally and vertically.
According to Acer, the H257HU covers 100 percent of the sRGB color space. To get things looking just right, the monitor offers 6-axis color adjustment.
Rated specs include a native 1,000:1 contrast ratio, 350 cd/m2 nits brightness, and 4ms response time. We don't ever put much stock into such things, as there's no universal standard that all monitor makers adhere to, so as always it comes down to real-world performance.
As for connectivity and added features, the H257HU features an HDMI 2.0 port, DVI port, DsiplayPort 2.1, mini DisplayPort, and built-in speakers with DTS sound.
Go ahead and apply the standard disclaimer about leaked specs not being verified or official, because that's certainly the case here. Disclaimer aside, we hope that unconfirmed specifications of the AMD's forthcoming Radeon R9 390X graphics card turn out to be accurate, because if they are, it's going to be a potent part that's up to 60 percent faster than AMD's Radeon R9 290X.
The folks at Videocardz asked their source if he could share additional information about AMD's new flagship graphics card, and to the site's surprised, he responded in kind with a few more goodies to digest. One of those goodies is that AMD scrapped plans to run with 4GB of High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) Gen1 (1GB per stack) after Nvidia unveiled its Titan X graphics card. Now the plan is to release the Radeon R9 390X with 8GB, but Gen2 (2GB per stack), on a 4,096-bit bus (1,024-bit per stack). That should give the card around 1.25TB/s of memory bandwidth.
The GPU is said to be a 28nm Fiji XT part with 4,096 unified cores and 256 Texture Mapping Units (TMUs). There's no mention of ROPs or core clockspeed, though the boost clockspeed is reportedly 1,050MHz. Other specs include a 1,250MHz memory clock, 8.6TFLOPS of compute performance, and either a 6+8 pin or dual 8-pin PCI-E configuration.
There's also a performance slide that was leaked, and if it's accurate, performance will be up to around 1.65 times that of the Radeon R9 290X in 4K gaming.
Reports from elsewhere on the web have the card debuting at around $700, which is also unconfirmed.
Cougar on Monday announced the arrival of its QBX, the "most advanced compact gaming case" around. According to Cougar, there are three reasons the QBX stands out from the crowd. The first is its compact dimensions -- the small form factor (SFF) chassis measures 178 (W) x 260 (H) x 368 (D) millimeters, or 7 (W) x 10.2 (H) x 14.5 (D) inches and can only swallow up mini-ITX motherboards.
Second on Cougar's list is expandability. While small in stature, it has a big appetite for hardware and can be stuffed with up to five storage drives (hard drives or solid state drives), a long graphics card up to 350mm (13.77 inches), a standard ATX power supply up to 140mm long (5.51 inches), and a slim optical drive.
Cougar's third reason is cooling. The QBX supposedly offers the "best cooling" of its class on the market, a claim Cougar makes based on the cases seven fan mounts and liquid cooling support (you can mount a radiator up to 240mm). There's also a dedicated PSU compartment to prevent hot air from affecting the other components, along with wide ventilation openings with dust filters.
Look for the QBX to be available in April. We've reached out to Cougar for a price and will update when/if we hear back.
Also new is the the option to automatically pause plugin content
Each browser update usually contains no more than two or three noteworthy new features in this rapid-release-cycle era, and Chrome 42 is no exception. It entered beta a few days back with a couple of notable features — well, at least on the desktop front.
The one feature that stands out from the rest of the changelog is the addition of smartphone-style push notifications, which provide web app developers with a way to apprise users of content updates and other changes in real time. But, of course, before they can do any of that they must secure the user's permission to do so. And should the alerts turn out to be far too frequent and/or trivial, such permission can be revoked at a later time from within the "Site Settings" option that accompanies every alert.
Another new feature is a new setting that automatically pauses plugin content to save battery power and precious CPU cycles. Under Chrome's content settings, you can now opt for the browser to automatically "detect and run important plugin content." This will ensure that the browser automatically runs "the main plug-in content on websites" while disabling all peripheral plug-in content.
The video uploading process isn't entirely automatic
YouTube has followed through on its January announcement that it was "working to support 360 degree videos in the coming weeks." The Google-owned online streaming site announced in a blog post Friday that it now supports 360-degree video uploads. According to the site, the list of compatible 360-degree cameras includes Bublcam, Giroptic's 360cam, IC Real Tech's Allie, Kodak's SP360 and Ricoh Theta.
With the whole uploading process being a bit rough around the edges at this stage, be prepared to endure a technical rigmarole. You need to run a Python script on the video file to "insert the right metadata" and ensure that it uploads as a 360-degree. The company says it's working to make the entire process automatic.
For playback, you can either use the Chrome browser or the YouTube Android app (iOS support in the works). While the former requires the use of a mouse, the Android app delivers a more intuitive experience as moving the smartphone or tablet is all that is needed to control the point of view.
A couple of years after its official release, Valve's Steam for Linux initiative is making steady progress. It recently notched up a significant milestone when the number of Linux-compatible games on Steam breached the 1,000 mark.
Granted, this number still pales in comparison to Windows' tally of nearly 4,800 compatible games, but we believe both Valve and Linux users would have gladly taken it had someone whispered it to them at the time of Steam's release on Linux. And for all its worth, the rate at which Linux-compatible games are appearing on Steam is a gallop compared to the crawl of Steam-powered Mac gaming, which has labored its way to just over 1,600 titles in the nearly five years that the Steam for OS X client has been available.
The question now is: Can Valve prove the naysayers wrong once again and successfully orchestrate the invasion of Linux into the living room through SteamOS (a Linux distro built around Steam) and Steam Machines (pre-built SteamOS-powered gaming PCs)? The success of these two initiatives is Linux users' best bet of ever seeing a critical mass of AAA titles for their OS of choice.
Barely a bezel
A potentially beastly card in the making
Mini-ITX or bust
Also new is the the option to automatically pause plugin content
The client was released in February 2013
