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Each spring, most leading PC hardware vendors gather in Taiwan forComputex, a huge showcase of everything from giant laptops to mini PCs, monitors, cooling, storage, CPUs and graphics cards. If you love PCs like we do, this show is the most important one of the year. This year’s expo was dubbed “AI Next,” because every computer and component has to at least claim to benefit from AI. However, many of the most innovative products were iterating on tried-and-true formulas that are either unrelated to or tangentially related to the training and inference features we commonly associate with AI....

Laptops are some of the most important tools people use today. Whether you’re a student submitting homework, at work typing away at documents, spreadsheets or presentations, or you’re just someone who wants to access resources online and connect with family and friends, you want a notebook with the components and features you’ll need to get the job done. That means a great screen, a comfortable keyboard, and long battery life (nice design doesn’t hurt, either!...

Several 4G/LTE routers sold by Billion Electric have been found to suffer from a CVSS level 10 severity flaw, which is rarely seen in the wild.Security Onlinereports that the routers have a very high potential for exploitation. However, Billion has now prepared a range of firmware updates to address these gapingsecurityholes in its networking hardware. Please get an update immediately if you think you may be affected. Router models, including the M100, M150, M120N, and M500, are vulnerable to the headline CVE-2024-11980....

Why you can trust Tom’s HardwareOur expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you.Find out more about how we test. Benchmarks and Final Analysis Benchmark Results and Final Analysis Our standard benchmarks and power tests are performed using the CPU’s stock frequencies (including any default boost/turbo) with all power-saving features enabled. We set optimized defaults in the BIOS and the memory by enabling the XMP profile....

High-purity photoresists are essential for making chips on advanced production nodes. As China strides to build a self-sufficient semiconductor industry, it has to develop not only sophisticated chipmaking tools but also high-purity resists. In 2024, China made notable strides in photoresist development, supported by government initiatives and rising demand from local chipmakers, reportsTrendForce. Semiconductor photoresists are classified by exposure wavelengths, including broadband UV (300–450nm), g-line (436nm), i-line (365nm), KrF (248nm), ArF (193nm), EUV (13....

Following the Moore ThreadsDX12 enablement driver, the Chinese-based GPU manufacturer has released another driver in quick succession, this one featuring optimizations for new and existing titles and bug fixes. The driver, PES Control Center270.80.2, features up to a 40% gaming performance improvement for itsS80andS70graphics cards. Moore Threads has introduced optimization improvements for five titles:Getting Darker,Predator,War Will,Sniper: Ghost Warrior Contact 2, andMan of War 2.Getting Darkersees the largest improvement, featuring a 40% performance improvement with driver 270....

The Shenzhen 8K UHD Video Industry Cooperation Alliance, a group made up of more than 50 Chinese companies, just released a new wired media communication standard called the General Purpose Media Interface or GPMI. This standard was developed to support 8K and reduce the number of cables required to stream data and power from one device to another. According toHKEPC, the GPMI cable comes in two flavors — a Type-B that seems to have a proprietary connector and a Type-C that is compatible with the USB-C standard....

Despite China’s intentions to become self-sufficient in chip production, this year, Chinese companies increased their chip imports year-over-year as consumer electronics, PC, and server markets began to rebound last year. In the first seven months of 2024, China imported 308.1 billion semiconductor units, valued at about $212 billion, which indicates a 14.5% increase in volume and an 11.5% rise in value compared to the same period last year, reportsSouth China Morning Postciting General Administration of Customs of China....

SpacemiT, a China-based CPU developer, has introduced the VitalStone V100, a server processor with up to 64 RISC-V cores, reportsHeise Online. While the CPU is aimed at modern workloads, the single-thread performance of the processor is comparable to outdated Intel Xeon and AMD Opteron processors. SpacemiT’sVitalStone V100processor is largely based on theOpenC910 project design, which is already used by Alibaba’sT-Head Xuantie C910 processor. The X100 4-issue 12-stage out-of-order cores in the VitalStone V100 were developed in-house by SpacemiT....

According toMyDrivers, the Shanghai Pudong International Airport customs officers caught a passenger who tried to pass through the green channel with 44 second-handRadeon RX 580graphics cards. The smuggler had planned to refurbish the graphics cards and resell them for profit. All 44 GPUs look identical and are most likely used in mining machines. It is not known if the person who smuggled it in is the owner of these graphics cards....

As we near the second anniversary of theRTX 4070,Zephyrhas introduced the RTX 4070 Sakura Snow X edition, showcasing an exotic all-CNC-machined shroud, including an integrated I/O bracket (viaVideocardz). While anRTX 5070might seem more logical, Zephyr doesn’t generally consider performance when powering its distinctive small form factor designs. Likewise, porting such a design to the RTX 5070 might not be practical from a sales standpoint, given thecurrent GPU market. Zephyr is a relatively new and niche GPU manufacturer from China specializing in custom, compact-sized GPUs with extraordinary designs, like when they announced the “world’s first” ITX form factor RTX 4070 last year....

When your computer doesn’t wake from sleep, it makes the entire sleep feature kind of worthless. If anything, it’s worse than shutting your computer down because you might not have saved your files and settings. Issues with your peripheral devices and specific settings can prevent your computer from waking when it’s in sleep mode. Restart your device and check if your keyboard and mouse are causing the problem. Sleep Mode for Windows Sleep mode is designed to be used when you step away from your computer....

Cooler Masterhas showed off four new cases atCES2025, giving everyone a lot of designs, sizes, and form factors to choose from. We saw four PC case lines at the company’s booth in Las Vegas: the SFF MasterBox NR200P V3, the compact tower Ncore 100 Air, and the highly customizable mid-tower MasterFrame Aluminum series. These computer cases enable you to build just about any kind of system without having to worry about whether you may get a case that will fit your needs....