James Schell – Page 16 – SFF.Network

Nvidia launches the GTX 950

Today Nvidia is launching the GTX 950, a new mid-range card aimed at the $150 market. While cards like the GTX 980Ti and Fury X grab headlines, this more affordable price bracket is much larger in terms of sales volume and as such is an important launch for Nvidia, considering their previous offering, the 750Ti, is now almost a year and a half old. The GTX 950 uses a slightly cut-down version of GM206, the chip used in the GTX 960, and as such features performance between the 750Ti and 960. For now we’re not seeing any of the AIB …

Motherboards Reviews

Asus X99-M WS review – Worth the Wait?

On the bench today is the X99-M WS motherboard, Asus’s much anticipated foray into the world of microATX X99. But has it been worth the wait? This product is one I’ve been anxiously awaiting for quite some time now, since April of last year actually. Except back then I was expecting a Rampage V Gene (a hypothetical update to the X79-based Rampage IV Gene) but the launch of Intel’s X99 platform came and went with no sign of the Gene and then a few weeks later Raja from Asus confirmed that a Gene wasn’t in the plans at all. That was a huge disappointment …

Motherboards Reviews

EVGA X99 Micro2 Review – Second Time’s the Charm?

Welcome to this review of the EVGA X99 Micro2 motherboard, a much needed refresh of the X99 Micro, a board that EVGA had released last Fall with the launch of Intel’s X99 platform. The original Micro wasn’t a terrible product but it had several deficiencies that prevented it from being a great board. So does this sequel address the shortcomings of its predecessor? Let’s find out! First off, this is an Intel X99 motherboard in the microATX form factor. Like the original, the Micro2 features an Intel socket 2011-3, four DDR4 RAM slots, three PCIe slots, and a M.2 slot. Specifications …

News

Intel Z170 Motherboards Launch

Intel’s new Skylake platform partially launches today, starting at the high-end with two new CPUs (the i7-6700K and i5-6600K) and new motherboards based on the Z170 chipset. The rest of the CPU lineup and the other motherboard chipsets will be released at a later date. Here are the Mini-ITX and microATX Z170 motherboards that have been announced so far: Mini-ITX ASRock Fatal1ty 170 Gaming-ITX/ac AnandTech has a pic and some specs of the Fatal1ty Z170 Gaming-ITX/ac but nothing on the ASRock site or at any retailers. My suspicion is that this board won’t be available right away, a common trend as you’ll see. Highlights …

News

EVGA launches the X99 Micro2

Today EVGA is launching the X99 Micro2, a refresh with several much needed improvements over the original X99 Micro. Notable changes are the all black capacitors, a USB 3.1 type-C port on the rear IO, PCIe 3.0 x4 32Gb/s M.2 slot (lanes shared with the bottom PCIe slot), isolated audio, 4 more Sata 3.0 ports (for a total of 10), and a few other nice tweaks. The other specs are carried over: microATX form factor, Intel LGA 2011v3 socket, four DDR4 RAM slots, 3 PCIe 3.0 slots (40-lane: x16 / x16 / x8 and 20-lane: x16 / x8 / x4), USB 3.0 header, …

News

Asus formally launches the X99M-WS microATX motherboard

JJ from Asus first started hinting at a microATX X99 solution from them back in April this year then pics started surfacing of the board during Computex. The product page and manual showed up earlier this month and now Asus has officially launched it, the Asus X99M-WS. So what are we getting? Rather than a Rampage Gene like previous platforms, for X99 we’re instead getting a WorkStation-series board with that beautiful black/dark grey color scheme from the X99-E WS. So not a Republic Of Gamers board but JJ said that the X99M-WS carries some of the over-engineered pedigree of the …

News

SilverStone announces the Milo ML06-E

SilverStone has just announced an updated version of the Milo ML06 HTPC chassis. The main change is moving the SFX PSU to the other side of the Mini-ITX motherboard to allow for a dual-slot low-profile expansion card. There are a few versions of the GTX 750Ti available in that form factor but for now that’s about the most GPU power you can get in a low-profile card. But as AMD has shown with the Fury X, moving to HBM allows for much more compact PCB sizes so hopefully in the future we’ll see a proliferation of powerful low-profile video cards to get …

News

EK releases AMD Radeon R9 FURY X Full-Cover water block

The single-slot IO and short PCB of the Fury X combined with these new single-slot blocks and bracket would make for an awesome SFF build if we ever get a proper enthusiast-grade Mini-DTX motherboard. “July 7th – EK Water Blocks, Ljubljana based premium computer liquid cooling gear manufacturer, is excited to launch the true single-slot liquid cooling solution for AMD® Radeon® reference design R9 FURY X graphics card. EK-FC R9 Fury X directly cools the GPU, HBM as well as VRM (voltage regulation module) as water flows directly over these critical areas, thus allowing the graphics card and it’s VRM …