Must Have Products

Most people who are in the market for a new graphics card have one primary question in mind: Which card will give me the most bang for my buck? Obviously, the answer will vary depending on your budget. Beyond that, there are a number of factors to  consider: Raw performance is important, but so are things like noise, the driver experience, and supplemental software. And do you want to pay a premium to get in on the bleeding edge of real-time ray tracing? Gaming GPU cheat sheet Our quick-hit recommendations: Best budget GPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600G APU Remove non-product link   [newegg.com] Best 1080p GPU: GeForce GTX 1660 Super  [ newegg.com ] Best 1440p GPU: GeForce RTX 3060 Ti   [bestbuy.com]  Best 4K GPU:  GeForce RTX 3080 Remove non-product link   [bestbuy.com]  or  Radeon RX 6800 XT [bestbuy.com] Let us make it easy for you. We’ve tested nearly every major GPU that’s hit the streets over the past couple of years, f...

Intel says its upcoming 12th-gen Alder Lake CPUs will be the company’s “most significant” change in more than a decade. Alder Lake will likely be Intel’s first attempt to wrest the ”best CPU” performance crown back from a surging AMD, too. Yes, we know, we’re months away from a real show down, but in the spirit of sports analysts and Las Vegas bookies calling odds on the Super Bowl winner before the first game has even been played, here’s where we think Intel’s 12th gen Alder Lake may stack up against AMD’s mighty Ryzen 5000 —including AMD’s unexpectedly radical V-cache upgrade . Watch our predictions below, or visit the video directly on PCWorld’s Youtube channel. Be sure to subscribe while you’re there! To read this article in full, please click here from PCWorld https://ift.tt/3DMoi8X

Addressing TechHive's long-standing complaint about behemoth top-tier TVs, Samsung announced at CEDIA that its Neo QLED Q90A series will now be available in apartment-friendly sizes. from PCWorld https://ift.tt/3DMsO7m

Global wearables market saw a 6 percent growth in shipments in Q2 2021 as Xiaomi overtook Apple for the top spot, as per market analyst firm Canalys. from Gadgets 360 https://ift.tt/3BBiNrC

When I bought my first mechanical keyboard in 2015, I had no idea what I was doing. Coveting the clackety sound and glorious key travel of mechanical switches, I sprung for a hefty Rosewill Apollo keyboard without doing much research. It ended up being a poor fit for me, and I sold it on eBay a few years later. Only later did I realize the depth of the mechanical keyboard rabbit hole , and how many granular options exist to get exactly the typing or PC gaming experience you want. After buying my first compact mechanical keyboard—then another, and another—I realized there was no going back to cheaper keyboards with mushy rubber membranes and blandly utilitarian aesthetics. To read this article in full, please click here from PCWorld https://ift.tt/3yCSL5j

Just five years ago, debating the merits of a 6-core CPU versus an 8-core model wasn’t possible. We were all stuck with 4-core chips at a consumer level—to break past that barrier, you had to pay serious bucks for a high-end desktop (“big socket”) CPU. Not that you needed to go that extreme for gaming. Nowadays, game developers have begun adapting to the new normal of high core-count processors. And if you’re going to have a PC for years, you want one that’s going to comfortably see you through the duration. But choosing between a mid-tier 6-core CPU and a higher-tier 8-core CPU isn’t a simple matter of more cores equaling better performance. It’s actually a nuanced decision, one that you should come to after considering four major factors. Here’s how it shakes out.  To read this article in full, please click here from PCWorld https://ift.tt/2Vb0hqq

Now even your USB-C and Lightning cables can spy on you. Hak5 has begun selling USB-C and USB-A cables that yes, work as cables—but they can also be used hack your laptop, tablet, or phone remotely. The cable, first demonstrated by security researcher MG in late 2019, is designed to look like a standard USB cable. Lurking inside, however, is embedded Wi-Fi, web server, and keylogger functionality, along with the ability to remotely control the mouse and keyboard of the computer its attached to. Called the O.MG Cable, it’s described by Hak5 as being “built for covert field-use, with features that enhance remote execution, stealth, forensics evasion, all while being able to quickly change your tooling on the fly.” MG built this as a penetration testing tool for security researchers. To read this article in full, please click here from PCWorld https://ift.tt/3tmNyhj

Asus’s new ProArt Studiobook and Studiobook Pro series just reinvented the wheel. These laptops literally feature an embedded wheel embedded for content creators who need to quickly scrub through media or make quick adjustments. You might not even look down at that wheel though, because it might be hard to rip your eyes away from the 16-inch, 4K+, 16:10 “third-generation” OLED screen Asus uses in the StudioBook series. OLEDs have long suffered from burn-in concerns, but Asus says the latest Samsung technology helps mitigate that risk. The OLED features pixel-level wear levelling that monitors each subpixel’s use, and it will occasionally shift pixels slightly as well. To read this article in full, please click here from PCWorld https://ift.tt/3gROkOb

You can live far away from the western United States and still be affected by the smoke from the wildfires raging there. In fact, you’re not even safe if you live completely across the country. Back in July, hazy skies settled over New York City, Boston, Washington DC, and other parts of the east coast thanks to wind and jetstream patterns. Living in the path of wildfire smoke isn’t the same high-risk scenario for a PC as actually surviving a fire in the home. But the danger of smoke remains the same, albeit in less concentrated form: acidity, discoloration, and speed of particulate build-up. All of these effects can possibly damage your PC. How to protect your PC from wildfire smoke Because smoke can have acidic properties, you don’t want to leave the ash, soot, and other particles lingering in your system for too long. Corrosive damage to your components and case aren’t a guarantee, but the more intense the smoke exposure, the more mindful you should be about its potential impac...

As incredible as Nvidia Broadcast’s AI-powered software is for RTX graphics card owners , its features haven’t been perfect. Take background noise removal. Get too excited, and on occasion, your voice gets muted as unwanted noise. With the release of version 1.3, Nvidia is eliminating that problem, plus adding more camera support for its virtual greenscreen effects and reducing Broadcast’s impact on system resources. Of Nvidia Broadcast’s four main features, the borderline magical RTX Voice may be its best known. Available to RTX and GTX card owners, its elimination of ambient sounds is the only feature also supported on older cards. Barking dogs, household chatter, roaring vacuum cleaners—RTX Voice keeps that unwanted audio from seeping into video calls and livestreams. But now and then, it would also mute the primary speaker when they spoke too loudly or at a higher pitch, usually during moments of high emotion on livestream. Now, Nvidia says new training sound profiles will el...

The best Windows tablets squeeze as much performance, battery life, and features as they can inside their ultraportable form factors. Also sometimes referred to as 2-in-1s, thanks to their ability to function as a laptop with the aid of rotating or removable keyboards, these compact PCs can replace a traditional laptop or an iPad for on-the-go work and play . Of the four major tablets of the 2021 generation, two are particularly notable and stand out above the others. To read this article in full, please click here from PCWorld https://ift.tt/2Ya0Sd5

Determining the specs for a new laptop (or a laptop upgrade) can be a delicate balancing act. You want to spend enough so you won’t be miserable in the future, but not so much that you don’t make use of all the hardware you get. Memory (or RAM) is the perfect example of this. Your PC uses RAM to hold data temporarily: When you’re opening applications, working on large files in Photoshop, or even juggling dozens and dozens of browser tabs, that data is being stored in the system memory, not on your SSD or HDD. The more memory-intensive tasks you do, the more RAM you should have. It’ll keep your computer feeling fast and responsive. To read this article in full, please click here from PCWorld https://ift.tt/38xpQVZ

Google Search, Maps, and Assistant in India will now show additional information about vaccine availability and appointments. They will help people get information like availability of slots, expected pricing, information on doses, and more. from Gadgets 360 https://ift.tt/38G3KjP

The US Justice Department is readying a second monopoly lawsuit against Google over the Internet search giant's digital advertising business, as per a report citing a person familiar with the matter. from Gadgets 360 https://ift.tt/3na4nLl

Google is reportedly working on its own processors for laptops and tablets running Chrome OS. The tech giant seems be increasing its efforts to develop its own chips similar to its global rivals like Apple that are pursuing the same strategy and shifting away from Intel CPUs for its MacBook devices. from Gadgets 360 https://ift.tt/38xQQV9

Just like Apple with its homegrown M1 chip , Google may be building its own Arm-based CPU to run Chromebooks, according a recent news reports. Citing three different unnamed sources,  Nikkei Asia  said Google is building its own processor for use in laptops and tablets running ChromeOS, with a targeted release date of 2023. [ Further reading: Our picks for best PC laptops ] Chromebooks have been tearing up sales charts and dominating in schools due to their low cost, easy maintenance, and close paring with Google services. In fact, laptops using ChromeOS have been slowly eating into Microsoft’s Windows share of the market pie, and now actually outsell MacBooks. To read this article in full, please click here from PCWorld https://ift.tt/2WLdkzM

An analysis of dead EVGA GeForce RTX 3090 cards that failed while playing Amazon’s New World game indicate a rare soldering issue limited to a small batch of cards is responsible, a company spokesman told PCWorld. EVGA said it received about two dozen dead GeForce RTX 3090 cards believed to have failed from playing the New World beta. All of the cards were earlier production run cards manufactured in 2020. Under an X-ray analysis, they appear to have “poor workmanship” on soldering around the card’s MOSFET circuits that powered the impacted cards. To read this article in full, please click here from PCWorld https://ift.tt/3BCUVnD

Well that didn’t take long. Mere hours after announcing Windows 11’s October 5 release date , the company is booting Windows Insider preview PCs with unsupported hardware out of Windows 11 testing. The move isn’t a surprise. Microsoft allowed Windows Insiders who have been testing Windows 11 to continue to do so even after revealing surprisingly strict hardware requirements for the operating system, with the caveat that access will be pulled eventually. But it caps off a tumultuous few days for the company. To read this article in full, please click here from PCWorld https://ift.tt/3kDZmrk

Intel’s ultra-fast Core i7-1195G7 chip just reared its head in MSI’s Prestige 14 Evo, but that’s not the most exciting feature of the ultra-slim laptop—it’s the USB port. Really. Sure, Intel’s 5GHz Core i7-1195G7 is technically faster than the previous 4.8GHz Core i7-1185G7 by about 200MHz, which works out to about 4 percent higher clock speeds than Intel’s previous top-end CPU for ultra-light laptops.  That’s not a lot to hoot about, but the feature that makes the latest MSI Prestige 14 Evo laptop about a million times better than the previous version is its USB port. The previous MSI Prestige 14 inexplicably has a USB A 2.0 port. That’s dirt slow in 2021. Sure, you can and probably should just plug into the two available USB C / Thunderbolt 4 ports on the other side of the laptop, but if you don’t, you’ll get a rude slow surprise when transferring data. (Though to be fair, MSI probably thought you’d only plug a mouse into that port.) To read this article in full, plea...

You likely know iBuyPower as a system integrator—a company that offers customizable prebuilt PCs using off the shelf parts. But the company also has a history of producing interesting standalone computer cases , namely the Snowblind series , which had a transparent LCD screen in place of a standard tempered glass side panel. This time, the company has gone a different route. On Wednesday, it launched the Hyte Revolt 3, a mini-ITX case with a tower design similar to the popular SSUPD Meshlicious Remove non-product link and infamous NZXT H1 , as part of its new Hyte lifestyle sub-brand. To read this article in full, please click here from PCWorld https://ift.tt/3mRbQ1n

Telegram 8.0 update brings many new features. Hosts can now have livestreams in a Channel or conduct Group Video Calls with unlimited participants. Users will also be able to customise a forwarded message before sending it. Additionally, the instant messaging service has added features such as a new sticker panel, more animated emojis, endless scrolling between Channe... from Gadgets 360 https://ift.tt/3yzBIBh

Addressing TechHive's long-standing complaint about behemoth top-tier TVs, Samsung announced at CEDIA that its Neo QLED Q90A series will now be available in apartment-friendly sizes. from PCWorld https://ift.tt/3yv9Rlz

Google has detailed new AI-based diffusion models — image super-resolution (SR3) and cascaded diffusion models (CDM) — for transforming low resolution images into high-resolution ones. SR3 is able to attain 4x to 8x scaling with impressive results. from Gadgets 360 https://ift.tt/38wcclK

Google said it was appealing against a EUR 500-million (roughly Rs. 4,320 crores) fine imposed by France's antitrust watchdog in July over a dispute with local media about paying for news content. from Gadgets 360 https://ift.tt/3ByI6KL

A classic bit of internet security advice just bit the dust. For ages, email users were told to hover their mouse over a link to see where it led—if you saw the URL of a legitimate website, you were in the clear. But on Tuesday, Microsoft shared details on a new kind of phishing attack: Email with links that contain a known website at the start, but actually redirect to a malicious page. This ploy relies on a type of link often used by sales and marketing teams to track information about who clicks on a URL in a newsletter or on social media. Known as open redirect links, the structure of the link begins with a primary domain, then includes a string of analytics data and a final destination site. To read this article in full, please click here from PCWorld https://ift.tt/3Bvntzj

If you’re using Microsoft Edge or Google Chrome without any additional extensions, you’re missing out on key features that your browser doesn’t provide. Browser extensions are almost always free, easy to install, and can really make web browsing fun and productive. Keep in mind that not all browsers offer the same functionality. Browsers that use Chromium—including Google Chrome and now Microsoft Edge—are essentially interchangeable, and browser extensions that work on one will work on the other. (Unfortunately, Firefox has its own set of incompatible extensions.) Over time, browsers have tended to incorporate popular functionality that used to require an extention—today, for example, you don’t need a separate PDF plugin to open an Adobe Acrobat document. But there are still many tricks that browsers lack natively. To read this article in full, please click here from PCWorld https://ift.tt/2V8B4Nw

Modern motherboards are fairly resilient, but they’re not impervious to damage. So when your mobo appears unresponsive upon powering your system, it can cause momentary heart palpitations. Some mobos are pretty expensive, and even when they’re not, replacing one is more time consuming than other components. Usually if you’re having problems with your motherboard powering on, you should look at the rest of your setup to see if there’s an issue. The following steps guide you through the troubleshooting process, starting with the easier and more common suggestions. (And for anyone wondering: No, a CMOS battery can’t prevent your motherboard from powering on. Not with modern motherboards, anyway. That coin battery just ensures that your BIOS settings, such as boot order, fan curves, and the like, remain saved. It can’t hurt to replace it if you truly think it’s the source of your problems, though—they only cost $3 or so.) To read this article in full, please click here from PCWor...

Google Chrome 93 brings many changes to Google's Web browser. It will get a new icon for HTTPS webpages, an updated Recently Closed tabs feature, show important documents from Google Drive, and more. Chrome 93 on Android gets an enhanced dark theme as well as bring support for WebOTP API on desktop. Chrome 93 on iOS is getting a new context menu and Ubuntu 16.04 has b... from Gadgets 360 https://ift.tt/3zAgvbI

A new Spotify integration for the Hue app lets you sync your color Hue lights with your Spotify playlists. Also coming soon: dynamic scenes, brighter A19 bulbs, and more. from PCWorld https://ift.tt/3BulZoR