Last week, Intel dropped the bombshell that its 7nm process would be delayed. As such, much of the news discussion this week centers on that news and its various repercussions. As is evident below, the first half of our news this week will be dedicated to the Intel news show. As it relates to Intel’s 7nm delay, Intel may be dealing with a potential lawsuit, has already reshuffled its leadership and internal organization, and is reportedly preparing to do more business with TSMC.

We also have news regarding NZXT revising its BLD warranty (finally) regarding users enabling XMP with their memory, which was ridiculous to begin with. There’s also AMD’s Q220 earnings report, and more. 

Within GN, we recently took a look at a cringy waifu computer case from AliExpress, and we also compared a $1 thermal pad to a $10 thermal pad. Overall, GN has been experiencing a bit of down time as we’ve been revising some of our methodology and implementing new test tools. We posted a major piece exposing MSI’s shady and (what we believe to be) unethical review practices, too, and that’s worth watching. The improvements from these efforts should show up within the next couple weeks, so stay tuned. 

News article and video embed are below.

This week’s news is anchored by yet more manufacturing woes from Intel, this time at 7nm. Intel has had to delay its 7nm products due to less than great yields, although the exact problem causing poor yields wasn’t disclosed. Joining Intel in manufacturing trouble is Samsung, as the company is reportedly struggling to improve its 5nm yields. 

We also have leaks that NVIDIA is internally working on Ampere launch timelines now, which would point toward early rumors that the cards would see an August/September launch window. Igor of Igor’s Lab may be on the mark with that one. Finally, we have some smaller AMD and Cooler Master news to go over, as well as ARM interest by Nvidia. 

News article and video embed are below, as usual.

The Phanteks Enthoo Pro 2 is a case that we last saw at CES 2020, back in January. It’s a giant liquid cooling-focused enclosure built on the existing P600S chassis and, as such, it differs from our usual case reviews in much the same way that the O11 Dynamic XL review did. Incidentally, the Phanteks reviewer’s guide suggests that this case is intended to directly compete with the XL, as well as Fractal’s Define 7 XL, be quiet!’s Dark Base Pro 900, and Corsair’s Obsidian Series 1000D. Today, we’ll be discussing the airflow and some unusual features of the Enthoo Pro 2, including our first hands-on testing of Phanteks’ self-dubbed “High Performance Fabric.”

While the week started off rather slowly, hardware news picked up towards the end of the week. As such, we have plenty to cover, including a GN exclusive, in which we’re able to confirm the rumored 12-pin PSU connectors for Nvidia’s Ampere. The father of Linux, Linus Torvalds, is also back in the news, this time with a rant over AVX-512. We also go over the finalized DDR5 spec, which will set the stage for industry adoption in 2021. 

Elsewhere, we have a bit more news on Apple Silicon as it relates to manufacturing, a fresh Alder Lake rumor, Skylake-X Refresh reaching EOL, and a bit more. As always, the news article and video embed follow below.

Today is a round-up of the best airflow-focused cases currently out, which can also be tuned to be good acoustic performers by nature of unrestricted intakes. Over all the years that we’ve been doing case reviews, we’ve advocated for high airflow designs. That generally implies lots of mesh and lots of fans, like the classic Cooler Master HAF cases that adopted “high airflow” as a brand name. As those cases aged and optical drives fell out of favor, front panel designs became increasingly clean and minimalistic, and therefore increasingly closed-off. Now the tide has turned again, and in 2020, we have more airflow cases than we know what to do with. Today, we’ll be covering some of our top choices--this isn’t our yearly best-and-worst cases roundup, it’s just a selection of airflow-focused cases with good value. We have almost 300 rows of test data multiplied across about 7 sheets, so although we’ll be limiting ourselves to cases we’ve reviewed, that’s still a big list. As always, let us know if there’s another case we should check out in the comments below.