Hardware news was filmed in Taiwan this week, where we've begun our annual factory tour. We've already visited several factories in the deeper supply chain, but need to begin scripting and voice-over work. In the meantime, we're covering hardware news pertaining to CPU updates, YouTube monetization updates, Intel's process commentary, and more.

Show notes continue below the embedded video.

As we prepare to fly out to Taiwan for factory tours, we've got another hardware news round-up to carry through the week: Our final donation count for the wildlife rescue charities is included, followed-up by SK Hynix's response to some Big Navi spec "leaks," JPR's GPU marketshare reporting, Biostar's H61 resurrection, AMD's chiplets aiding in cost reduction, and Intel promising Total Memory Encryption. We also talk about Plague Inc getting pulled due to the coronavirus scare.

AMD's been in the news a lot this week, but for various reasons. One of the bigger stories was that of the Threadripper 3990X and its compatibility with various Windows versions, like Windows 10 Pro versus Windows 10 Enterprise. AMD has officially responded to some of those concerns, all discussed in our news recap today. AMD was also in the news for Google's adoption of more Epyc CPUs. Accompanying AMD, Samsung makes the news for advancements in its EUV fabs for 7nm and 6nm products, and Phanteks makes the rounds for its blatant rip-off of the Lian Li O11 Dynamic.

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We've decided, clearly, to cancel the China leg of our upcoming factory tour series as a result of the Coronavirus, which is a word that YouTube is currently demonetizing for being "controversial" (working around that one is fun). That said, it has enabled us to extend our Taiwan trip, and we've found new factories we didn't know even existed. More on that in the news video, if interested, but rest assured that we'll be safe in Taiwan as it has very few cases and, despite being a neighbor to China, seems to have things under control. We're greatly looking forward to visiting power supply factories, supply chain factories, raw metal factories, and more in Taiwan in March.

We've received a loaner AMD Threadripper 3990X to work with for an upcoming review, but we also will be streaming with the CPU for multiple overclocking efforts. In the meantime, hardware news is still pushing ahead. News on Intel CPU refreshes, AMD x86 marketshare reports, market analysis on AMD's positioning, and more.

Show notes continue after the embedded video.