In this news recap, we talk about Nintendo finally announcing an updated Switch model, though the heavily rumored Switch Pro remains a mystery for now. We also have news on the Arm-Nvidia deal, this time in the form of commentary from Arm CEO Simon Segars. There’s also positive news on the right to repair, which is a topic we follow closely at GN. Additionally, we've covered the Steam Deck in a separate piece here.

In other news, Microsoft is working on its own AI-based resolution upscaling solution, and is also struggling to deal with a new critical security flaw affecting the Windows Print Spooler. There’s also news from Intel, Newegg, and more. 

At GN, we dove into a game streaming roundup, looked at Intel’s DG1 Iris Xe GPU, and reviewed our latest pre-built: The Lenovo Legion 5i.

This hardware news episode mostly focuses on alleged Threadripper documentation that we received through a leak, including discussion of the sTRX4 and sWRX8 processors that are listed in said document. The "4" and "8" are indicative of memory channel count, though we don't fully know what name or release date AMD intends to give these CPUs. AMD's Threadripper 3000 series CPUs will be competing with Intel in HEDT, where Intel is presently focusing effort for its next major release cycle. Beyond the Threadripper discussion, we also talk about Intel and AMD bickering with each other like children (I'll turn this car around right now!), Der8auer's survey, USB4 spec, and the Steam Hardware Survey.

Show notes and sources continue below the video embed.

AMD’s new Threadripper 2 CPUs are slated for launch in the immediate future. We have AMD Threadripper 2 specs, prices, and topological information for the 2990WX, 2970WX, 2950X, and 2920X, most of which have been detailed today. Additional details and reviews are pending publication from sampled outlets. We are not technically working with AMD on this launch, but are looking into review/test options. These will likely be pushed back past our move-in for the new office.

The new AMD Threadripper 2 2990WX will use cores enabled in dies 0, 1, 2, and 3 – so all 4 of the dies under the IHS – which more or less confirms Der8auer’s findings earlier this year. The 2950X and 2920X will be using dies 0 and 1, leaving the other two unutilized.

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.

We just arrived in Canada for LTX and should be working on some content featuring YouTubers in the space. In the meantime, another hardware news episode is due – and this one is heavily filled with industry goings-on, rather than product news. Our first topic is Intel’s debunking of brand death rumors, followed-up by a German court banning pre-orders with indefinite delivery dates, aiming to crack-down on some Kickstarter and Indiegogo failures. Further, AMD’s Threadripper 2 TDP has been re-confirmed by a slide for the Gigabyte X399 Extreme motherboard, which now has a finalized VRM design and layout. Memory suppliers are also back in the news this week, for the third consecutive week, this time with their own concerns about IP and patent theft.

Show notes below, following the embedded video.

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.

The past week has been abnormally packed with hardware news, with several heavy-hitter items from Intel and AMD partners alike. The headlining story highlights Intel's prototype dGPU unveil -- something that we won't see more of for years, if at all -- and talks Intel's initial plans for its dGPU component. This comes shortly after Intel's very public hiring of former RTG Chief Raja Koduri, who recently set to work on Intel's new dGPU division. It is likely that the prototype discussed has been in the works for a while, but Koduri's work will no doubt be visible in the coming years.

Other news items include the accidental publication of Intel Celeron CPUs by Newegg, including a new G49X0 series (G4920, G4900), and the non-K alternatives of the 8500 and 8600 i5 CPUs. For AMD, we saw news reports about an upcoming EKWB Threadripper Monoblock for MSI motherboards, which should be useful in full loop scenarios where the VRM thermals must be controlled. Several other news items are also present in this round-up. Find the show notes below.

We previously went through the process of dismantling, draining, and refilling an Enermax Liqtech TR4 closed-loop liquid cooler (some call these "AIOs") in an attempt to determine how serviceable the CLCs are. This particular cooler wasn't too difficult to refill, as we showed in our accompanying video, but we still wanted to check thermal results to see if the cooler had worsened in performance. The goal wasn't to make it better, just to see if it could be serviced, and without negative impact to cooling ability.

Keep in mind that fluid selection will matter: If the CLC mixes metals, as many do, you'll want to include a biocide of some sort in your refill. There are plenty of mixtures that would achieve this. We used an EK Cryofuel with biocide additive, with distilled water as the primary component (>90%) for the liquid composition. Our thermal test methodology is the same as in all our Threadripper cooler reviews, including the Enermax 360 vs 240 review. If curious how we tested, head over there.

The recent trend in memory prices have put a major hold on our PC build guides. For years – most of its 10-year existence – GN has published nearly monthly gaming & workstation PC build guides. We haven’t published one for several months now, and that’s because of the simultaneous collision of memory and video card prices. The two all-time high price jumps on GPUs (miner+gamer joint demand) and RAM (supply shortage & process switch) made PC building nearly impossible to afford. There’s been some alleviation of that lately, but not in memory prices directly. The onslaught of Cyber Monday and Black Friday sales have brought down other components enough to more or less neutralize the insane RAM pricing; now, for instance, the 1950X is $200 off MSRP, which instantly counters the RAM pricing being 2x what it should be. For this reason, we decided to revisit our PC build guides with a Threadripper 1950X workstation, built for 3D rendering (Blender), H264 video encoding with Handbrake, and some other batch processing work and Adobe Premiere work.

A Note About PC Builds

PC builds always get comments from people who want to express their infinite wisdom and intelligence in comments fields, likely because, of all the things we publish, PC building is the item with which folks have the most experience. A note, here: We’re building based on two primary criteria, which include:

• - We have used and tested the parts, and trust them for this build.
• - We are using this build internally as a temporary encode/render system, which means that it’s mostly to suit our needs; if you can do better, great, but we’re going for a workstation that can get our jobs done, then be unbuilt.

There are places you can cut costs on this build. We’ll include alternative parts listings for those instances.

In the calm before the global celebration of consumerism, it would seem that the entire range of AMD processors has gone on sale – or most of it, anyway. Several of these have tempted us for internal machines, at this point. The Threadripper 1950X has been available as low as $800 (from the usual $1000) price-point, the R7 CPUs are cut into R5 prices -- $260 for the 1700X is now common, and R5 CPUs have also been dropping in price. The timing is excellent, too, as we just posted our Best CPUs of 2017 Awards, which include several of these sale items.