For this hardware news episode, we compiled more information ascertained at CES, whereupon we tried to validate or invalidate swirling rumors about Ryzen 3000, GTX 1660 parts, and Ice Lake. The show gave us a good opportunity, as always, to talk with people in the know and learn more about the goings-on in the industry. There was plenty of "normal" news, too, like DRAM price declines, surges in AMD notebook interest, and more.

The show notes are below the video. This time, we have a few stories in the notes below that didn't make the cut for the video.

CES posed the unique opportunity to speak with engineers at various board manufacturers and system integrators, allowing us to get first-hand information as to AMD’s plans for the X570 chipset launch. We already spoke of the basics of X570 in our initial AMD CES news coverage, primarily talking about the launch timing challenges and PCIe 4.0 considerations, but can now expand on our coverage with new information about the upcoming Ryzen 3000-series chipset for Zen2 architecture desktop CPUs.

Thus far, the information we have obtained regarding Ryzen 3000 points toward a likely June launch month, probably right around Computex, with multiple manufacturers confirming the target. AMD is officially stating “mid-year” launch, allowing some leniency for changes in scheduling, but either way, Ryzen 3000 will launch in about 5 months.

The biggest point of consideration for launch has been whether AMD wants to align its new CPUs with an X570 release, which is presently the bigger hold-up of the two. It seems likely that AMD would want to launch both X570 motherboards and Ryzen 3000 CPUs simultaneously, despite the fact that the new CPUs will work with existing motherboards provided they’ve received a BIOS update.

CES is next week, beginning roughly on Monday (with some Sunday press conferences), and so it's next week that will really be abuzz with hardware news. That'll be true to the extent that most of our coverage will be news, not reviews (some exceptions), and so we'd encourage checking back regularly to stay updated on 2019's biggest planned product launches. Most of our news coverage will go up on the YouTube channel, but we are still working on revamping the site here to improve our ability to post news quickly and in written format.

Anyway, the past two weeks still deserve some catching-up. Of major note, NVIDIA is dealing with a class action complaint, Intel is dropping its IGP for some SKUs, and OLED gaming monitors are coming.

It’s been quiet on the website for the past week as we’ve been traveling and ramping our testing operations. Video took a lot of time this week, as we were working on our newest Disappointment PC build, following our highly popular 2017 version. The Disappointment PC (which now has an accompanying shirt on our store) is a collection of the most, well, disappointing parts of 2018, all in one box. Like last year, we spent a lot of time to make a fun and different intro, taking a short film approach with a horror slant. Last year, it was a haunted Vega FE card.

Separately, we wanted to let you all know (on the article side) that we are working hard to revamp the website. We hope to re-launch sometime in the next month or two, if not much sooner, and implement a better back-end editing system for writers to work on. Our goal is to really expand article capabilities and output by end of first quarter 2019, but to put the systems in place by end of year. Personally speaking, the website is where I started, and the growth of GN makes it hard to do high-quality articles every day while also putting out high-quality video, managing a team, and running the business. I still prefer writing the articles, but I need some assistance from the rest of the team. Overhauling the site will enable that, and we’re hugely excited for it.

Anyway, without further delay, here’s the new Disappointment PC build. We’ll leave this one to video, as the first 3 minutes are what make it special. If you’d like to support our efforts, please consider picking up one of the Disappointment Build shirts on the store.

Extreme Ultra-Violet Lithography is something of a unicorn in the space of silicon manufacturing, and has been discussed for generation upon generation. EUV only recently started seeing any form of use in mass produced products, with Samsung kicking off high-volume efforts recently. Intel has also made progress with EUV, deviating from its choice of DUV lithography for a struggling 10nm process and instead setting sights on a 7nm option. This is our leading news item in the recap today, with RAM price declines following closely behind.

As always, show notes are below the embedded video.