Between our process of moving into a new office with actual space for testing stuff, we've been working on hardware news videos and other content alongside office setup. This week's hardware news has heavy AMD focus, split between Threadripper 2 SKUs and specs, a new AMD console SOC, and motherboard add-ons for ASUS X399 boards. The add-ons include SOC and Vcore cooling modules, meant to help cope with overclocked TR2 VRM thermals and power delivery requirements.

Also in major news this week, New York state banned Charter communications (Spectrum, formerly TimeWarner Cable) from its state, and has given the company 60 days to leave. This is a major event in a world with duopolistic and monopolistic ISP establishments.

Intel's 10nm CPUs may have had their last delay -- and it's through the 'holidays' of 2019. Intel's latest earnings call indicates a finalized release target of EOY/holiday of 2019, continuing the saga of 10nm delays since 2015-2016. Note, however, that although TSMC and GF 7nm comparisons are prevalent, it's not as simple as comparing the numbers "7" and "10" -- density matters, as does architecture, and this is something we discussed with David Kanter in an upcoming video interview from GamersNexus.

Other hardware news revolves around a mixture of rumors and actual news, the latter represented by AMD's best quarterly earnings report in 7 years, and the former represented by Intel 9000-series specs and Samsung GPU development.

As always, the show notes are below the video.

Hardware news this week has been largely overrun with major movers: Micron and Intel are set to end their partnership on 3D XPoint, PC sales have grown for the first time in 6 years, Z370 BIOS updates indicate an 8-core CPU on the horizon, AMD Ryzen CPUs could be targeting more than 8C in 2019, Western Digital is shutting down a major hard drive plant, and more.

As always, our show notes for the episode are below, with sources and links to all stories. We've also got a video for those who prefer the visual medium:

For today, we’re talking about volt-frequency scalability on our 8086K one more time. This time, coverage includes manual binning of our core, as we already illustrated limitations of the IMC in the overclocking stream. We’ve also already tested the CPU for thermal and acoustic performance when considering liquid metal applications.

The Intel i7-8086K is a binned i7-8700K, so we thought we’d see what bin we got. This testing exhibits simple volt-frequency curves as plotted against Blender and Firestrike stability testing. Note that our stability tests were limited to 30 minutes in an intensive Blender workload. Realistically, this is the most achievable for publication purposes, and 99% of CPUs that pass this test will remain stable. If we were selling these CPUs, maybe like Silicon Lottery, it’d obviously be preferable to test for many hours.

In case you missed it, we spent four hours live overclocking an Intel i7-8086K just a couple days ago. The OC effort was watched by about 2300 people concurrently, spanning all four hours, and was one of our most successful streams to-date. The viewership was beaten only, and unsurprisingly, by our #RIPLTT stream’s 5000 concurrent viewers.

As for the testing, it was all 8086K overclocking in Firestrike Physics, with some additional memory overclocking in the final two hours. Components used were varied, depending on what was happening at any given time, and the final frequency was high. We closed at 5.35GHz, running a 101 BCLK with 53x all-core multiplier. Some additional testing was done in effort to push individual cores to 54x, but we couldn’t get it stable. Despite our ultimate core limitations at just under 5.4GHz, the CPU itself – barring the IMC – is the best-binned 8700K we’ve had hands-on with yet. Our 8086K (which is a binned 8700K) managed to hold 5.1GHz at roughly 1.3V with relative stability in Firestrike, only running into exponential increases in voltage requirement upon pushing 53x multipliers. We even attempted 1.5V for a 5.4GHz overclock, but just couldn’t stabilize. Our plan is to return in the future with a bigger or more exotic cooling solution atop the die. Our X62 did admirably, and the delid with liquid metal (Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut) kept thermals in check, but lower is still better.

As a quick heads-up, just before getting started, we will be streaming our 8086K overclocking efforts live at 6PM EST on Wednesday, 7/11. It’ll stream to our YouTube channel directly.

Major news for this week consists of Taiwanese manufacturing company trade secrets being stolen, representing one of the most egregious cases of corporate espionage in the tech industry. We also talk about DIY CPU soldering, passive cooling, and scientific advancements in cooling materials.

Show notes below the video, as always.

Our Computex 2018 coverage continued as we visited the BeQuiet! booth. This year, Be Quiet! announced the new Dark Rock Pro for socket TR4 (Threadripper), timely for Threadripper 2, and also showed a trio of refreshed cases -- the Silent Base 801, 601, and Dark Base 900 Rev 2.0.

The Dark Rock Pro TR4 is specifically designed with AMD’s Threadripper socket TR4 in mind. The Dark Rock Pro’s only real difference from previous iterations is the new full coverage block for Threadripper. The new cold plate is designed to help ensure full die coverage on Threadripper, which we discussed back in August of last year. We’ve previously found there to be a measurable difference when using TR4 full coverage coolers vs. non-TR4 ones. Price and release date were not available at this time.

Rumors and speculation around Intel’s Core i7-8086K have begun to grow in large part due to listings on retail websites. The rumored i7-8086K is likely Intel’s way of commemorating their 40th anniversary of their 8086 CPU, a 16-bit processor released on June 8th, 1978.

The i7-8086K (6C/12T) was listed at two different frequencies of 4.0GHz and 5.0GHz. The 5GHz model was listed on Connection.com for $489.83, an increase of $139.94 over the i7-8700K at the time of writing. Despite rumors, GN has been told by multiple sources that the 8086K will not be a soldered CPU, but instead will use TIM.

With B350, B360, Z370, Z390, X370, and Z490, we think it’s time to revisit an old topic answering what a chipset is. This is primarily to establish a point of why we need clarity on what each of these provides – there are a lot of chipsets with similar names, different socket types, and similar features. We’re here to define a chipset today in TLDR fashion, with a later piece to explain the actual chipset differences.

As for what a chipset actually is, this calls back to a GN article from 2012 – though we can do a better job now. The modern chipset is a glorified I/O controller, and can be thought of as the spinal cord of the computer, while the CPU is the disembodied brain. Intel calls its chipset a PCH, or Platform Controller Hub, while AMD just goes with the generic and appropriate term “chipset.” The chipset is the center of I/O for the rest of the motherboard, assigning I/O lanes to devices like SATA, gigabit ethernet, and USB ports.

Intel’s Pentium G line has largely managed to hold-on as one of the better buys of the past few years. There was a brief period where the G3258 made a lot of sense for ultra budget-minded buyers, then the G4560 recently – particularly at the actually good price of $60 – and now Intel has its Pentium G 5000 series. The G4560 had stunted growth from limited stock and steep hikes on MSRP, forcing people to consider i3s instead, up until R3s shipped. The 4560 remained a good buy as it dropped towards $60, fully capable of gaming on the cheap, but it is now being replaced by the units we’re reviewing this month.

We’re starting with the Intel Pentium G5600, which is the most expensive of the new Pentium Gold line. At $95, it’s about $40 more than the G4560, $10 more than the G5500, and $20 more than the G5400. The R3 1300X is about $105, and the R3 1200 is about $95.