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Review Roundup: Phanteks T30-120 Fan

Reviews have dropped for Phanteks T30-120 fan with very positive results. Phanteks has clearly taken a shot directly at Noctua, but also put their own flare on the 120mm fan segment. A quick run down of the specs shows why people are talking about this fan: Sunon Magnetic Levitation bearings. Fiberglass reinforced liquid crystal polymer (similar to Noctua’s Sterrox) Built-in fan speed selector on a three phase motor: Advanced up to 3000 RPM Performance up to 2000 RPM Hybrid where the fan doesn’t start spinning until PWM signals go above 50%, and caps the fan at 1200RPM. Daisy-Chain support. 6 …
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Retro Relook – Old SFF PCs

News for the SFF crowd is light right now, so let’s take a walk back in time to the old days of SFF. The really old days. I’m talking about when the term shoebox PC was the word of the day, and good cable management was just getting all the ketchup and mustard to fit. The days of custom mainboards with cooling systems designed by Frankenstein, and when all SFF PCs needed to squeeze in an optical drive.   Let’s start with LGR with a look back at a small form factor 486 PC.   Truly a sight to behold. …
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Tek Everything Reviews Osmi 3.1

We’re a bit late to this party, but SFF specialist Jay Mattison of the YouTube channel Tek Everything has done an in-depth review of the Osmi 3.1. The build included a Corsair SFX 450 Watt PSU, Gigabyte 2060 Mini (ITX) GPU , Ryzen R5 5600X, on a Gigabyte X570 ITX motherboard. Cooling duties for the CPU were handled by the Noctua NH-L9A and Noctua NH-L12S. Check out the review and the Tek Everything website below: Osmi 3.1 website. https://tekeverything.com/  
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Review Roundup: be quiet! Dark Rock TF 2

The be quiet! Dark Rock TF 2 reviews have dropped today and they are mostly positive. The C-style cooler was praised for VRM cooling, noise levels, and stylish looks. However, it was criticized for lackluster overclocking performance, price, and installation issues. Most reviews indicate that while the cooler may be a solid choice for small form factor builds, its performance falters in larger cases compared to less expensive coolers. The Dark Rock TF 2 features a cooler height of 134mm with both fans, or only 107mm with the top fan removed. The MSRP is $85.90 US, and it includes a …
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NVIDIA Announces RTX A2000 Low-Profile Workstation GPU

NVIDIA has announced the RTX A2000; a low-profile professional workstation GPU measuring in at only 2.7″ in height and 6.6″ in length. That would be 68.58mm height and 167.64mm for those on the Metric system. The RTX A2000 comes with 3,328 CUDA cores and 6GB of GDDR6 on a 192-bit bus. Single-precision TFLOPS are listed as 8.0, RT performance at 15.6 TFLOPS, and Tensor performance at 63.9 TFLOPS. Power consumption is 70 watts, and it’s cooled with a 2-slot blower style fan. Additional features include four Mini DisplayPort 1.4A connections, AV1 decode support, and acceleration of AI based tools in …
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Optimum Tech Goes Hands-On with Skyreach 4 Tiny (S4T)

Optmum Tech, a SFF focused YouTube tech channel has gone hands-on with Skyreach 4 Mini with a complete Ryzen 5600G APU build. While the processor left Optimum Tech wanting, the Skyreach 4 Mini was well received, and continues NFC’s well respected case design. Features of the Skyreach 4 Mini include: 3.3L base size that is expandable. 239mm x 200mm x 69mm base size. 1.6mm to 2.0mm thick aluminum panels. 47mm height base CPU cooling. Expandable to include to include dedicated GPUs and SFX power supplies. $165 starting price. Here is a link to the S4T product Page  
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Review Roundup: AMD Radeon 6600XT

The reviews for AMD’s Radeon 6600XT have dropped today and it’s not exactly favorable for AMD’s newest 1080P GPU. Reviewers have taken issue with the low memory bandwidth, PCI-E 8X limitation, poor ray-tracing performance, and high price. While the 6600XT can provide rasterized performance akin to the RTX 3060ti in AMD optimized games, it fails to be competitive with the Nvidia part in most games, while being only $20 less expensive. Check out the reviews below:   Written Reviews: Eurogamer (AKA Digital Foundry) PC Gamer (Aka Maximum PC) Ars Technica Kit Guru IGN Trusted Reviews Hot Hardware Toms Hardware Rock …
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LTT Goes Hands-On With Steam Deck

Renowned tech YouTuber Linus Sebastian was invited to Valve’s HQ for a some hands-on time with the upcoming Valve Steam Deck. While he was limited to only an hour and a half with the device, he was able to get some basic performance metrics, compare it to similar machines, and provide a lot of insights into Valve’s mini-pc handheld. He even goes so far as to test screen response, test Netflix, and examine the unit under a thermal camera. As expected, the RDNA 2 based GPU portion of the Steam Deck’s APU substantially outperforms the previous generation’s Vega based GPU …