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Battle of the Boutiques Part 2: A4-SFX | S1 | SM550 | SM560

The following article is for Part 2 of our multi-part review. If you haven’t already seen it, you can view Battle of the Boutiques Part 1 here. We had originally intended to release the 2nd and final part of this review back in July but due to immature BIOS issues with Ryzen’s latest CPUs, we experienced some questionable voltage results and instability, so we decided to wait it out. Finally, on the 15th of August, ASUS provided a BIOS update(1.0.0.3 Patch AB, still not perfect) to their ROG STRIX X470-I GAMING motherboard, so I decided to crank through this in …

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NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti review, SFF style.

This product was purchased using personal funds. No signed agreement or contact with the manufacturer has been made. As such, this review is presented as-is using only rasterize based rendering engines. The card’s main technology features aren’t usable in today’s games …yet. As such, this is going to be an ongoing review, a first for SFFn, and will see several updates throughout the following months. The GeForce RTX 2080 Ti has been covered extensively on other sites as the launch of NVIDIA’s new Turing GPU architecture was hotly anticipated. Most of the unique reading material that we had planned to …

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Ncore V1 prototype shows efficiently minimalistic mount

Over on HardOCP, Kyle Bennett has gotten his hands on a prototype waterblock from NUDEcnc, run by Arek Tobiszewski. Unlike most waterblocks this tiny block mounts only on delidded Intel socket 115x boards by basically replacing the heatspreader as a part of the design. This allows the waterblock to make a direct contact with the CPU die meaning a much more efficient cooling. It will be available for crowd funding on Kickstarter on April 1st. Read more here (hardocp.com)   Discuss on our forum.  
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Gemini Lake NUCs Appear on Retailer Listings

Intel has renewed it’s support for the NUC platform, recently releasing Gemini Lake variants of the platform, namely the NUC7CJYH and NUC7PJYH NUCs. As you may have guessed, the “C” and “P” in the model numbers reference the inbuilt processor – either a Celeron (SR3S5) or Pentium Silver (SR3S3) Processor. The units have started to show at e-tailers for pre-order for example, ShopBLT.com lists it here and CompSource here. While there’s no details on availability as yet, at least the price is known. The entry-level Celeron NUC will be sold for approximately US$130, whilst the Pentium Silver variant will sell for around US$190. …

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PSA: Only five days left for the SFF Forum Swag Sale!

It was over a week ago that we kicked off a Teespring campaign for various SFF Forum swag, but with just five days left, time is running out to get your hands on our first-ever branded gear – emblazoned with our shiny new logo, no less! Though time may be limited to put in an order, the good news is that our campaign easily reached our MOQ (minimum order quantity), meaning that all orders are guaranteed to be made and shipped. In fact, we’ve already had reports of some folks getting shipping notifications for their orders, with shirts and hoodies …

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The DC-DC Solution, An Introduction

As part of a multi-part series, I will be discussing the brave new(ish) world of DC-DC power supplies, their advantages, disadvantages and the technology that powers the smallest of our systems. In the first article, I explain what DC-DC is, why it is a useful product, and run down a few of the more popular brands on the market. [mks_separator style=”blank” height=”2″] [mks_separator style=”blank” height=”2″] What? Using a ‘DC-DC PSU’ as your sole power supply just won’t work. For a system to run (generally), you need to take AC (alternating current) from your mains power, and convert it to the …

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Enermax to launch Revolution SFX series of power supplies.

On December 9th, Enermax will launch their new Revolution SFX series of power supplies. Available in 550W and 650W variants, these 80-Plus Gold, fully modular power supplies are yet another welcome addition to the SFF market. With semi-fanless operation up to 30% utilization, the offset 80mm fan will (hopefully) help to provide quiet operation depending on the system load. This unit appears to be based on the same Enhance Electronics platform as the SilverStone SX600-G, Thermaltake STP-0600F-G, and Lian-Li PE-550 though so it will remain to be seen if Enermax has improved on the fan controller deficiencies inherent to the platform. Edit1: or maybe not. …

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AMD AM4 Bristol Ridge APU De-Lidded

Professional overclocker Nam Dae Won (NameGT) from Seoul, South Korea has de-lidded an AMD AM4 Bristol Ridge APU for all the world to see (Source, Facebook). Likely based on the Bristol Ridge A12-9800 that he took to 4.8GHz back in September (on the stock cooler no less), this unveiling comes with a very pleasant surprise. [mks_separator style=”blank” height=”2″] [mks_separator style=”blank” height=”2″] As you can see in the image above, AMD has decided not to skimp on the quality of the thermal interface material. AMD has chosen to use a liquid metal-based compound, at least on the engineering samples. This is a welcome addition over the budget TIM that …

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