Technology

Intel's Compute Stick is a $149 Chromecast-sized PC

At CES this week, Intel announced that the Compute Stick—the company's $149 Chromecast-sized PC—will launch in March.

The Compute Stick is a great little piece of hardware. Like other streaming-stick machines, like the Chromecast, the Compute Stick plugs into an HDMI port on a TV or monitor. But instead of simply bringing streaming or smart-TV features, the Compute Stick packs a full PC experience.

The stick is powered by a Atom Z3735F processor, 2GB of RAM and 32GB storage. In other words, enough for a basic Windows install, but not much else. There's also a microSD card slot for further storage expansion, as well as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

In addition to the $149 Windows version, a lower-powered (1GB RAM, 8GB storage) Linux option will also be available for $89.

Corsair's Sabre RGB Gaming Mouse Weighs Under 100 Grams

Corsair's latest gaming mouse is made especially for fast-paced gaming, weighing less than 100 grams.

Corsair just launched its RGB lineup of gaming peripherals, and already the company is adding a new product to the series. The product in question is the Corsair Gaming Sabre RGB mouse, which is an ultra-light mouse for fast-action gaming FPS gaming.

Up until now, the M65 RGB was the only RGB mouse from Corsair, with the K95 RGB, K70 RGB, and K65 RGB keyboards accompanying it.

The mouse itself weighs less than 100 grams and has a newly-designed ergonomic shape. It also has programmable buttons, adjustable DPI settings, and four LED lighting zones, each of which is capable of 16.8 million colors. You can adjust all of the options in Corsair's CUE software. The mouse connects to your PC through a 1.8-meter braided USB cable.

To suit a larger audience, Corsair built two versions of the mouse – one with an optical sensor and another with a laser sensor. The optical variant has a DPI rating of 6400, while the laser-based Sabre RGB can sense up to 8200 DPI.

Corsair priced the Sabre RGB Optical at $59.99, while the laser version can be yours for $69.99.

EKWB Intros Water Block For Gigabyte GTX 970 Gaming G1

The GTX 970 might be a great card because of its relatively efficient performance, but that doesn't mean that it isn't fun to overclock the snot out of it. At launch, Gigabyte released its GTX 970 Gaming G1 card, which is a non-reference design with a triple-fan WindForce cooler and a custom PCB design. Of course, you won't be able to fully reap the benefits of that elaborate power delivery circuit using only that cooler, but under water, chances are that you will. For that EKWB offers its EK-FC970 GTX WF3 water block.

The EK-FC970 GTX WF3 is a full-cover block, cooling the memory, VRM circuitry, and the Nvidia GPU. It has a high-flow design, meaning that it can be used in combination with longer, more complex loops, or in loops with weaker pumps. Over the GPU area you'll find a 0.5 mm microchannel structure, which increases the heat transfer between the GPU and the water flowing through the block.

EKWB is manufacturing two versions of the water block – one with an acrylic see-through top and another with a black Acetal top. Both come nickel plated, which protects the copper block underneath the coating from corrosion.

Both variants are available immediately for $137.10, with black and nickel backplates coming soon.

Xiaomi To Launch $100 Android Tablet With iPad Mini-Like Performance

Xiaomi recently became the third largest smartphone manufacturer in the world, and it now has plans for global expansion. One way the company plans to achieve global popularity is through low-priced devices that perform very well. As such, Xiaomi is reportedly working on a 9.2" tablet that is said to have performance that's akin to Apple's iPad Mini, yet costs only $100.

The company intends to use the Snapdragon 410 SoC, which got a significant boost in performance thanks to the switch to ARMv8 architecture and the new Cortex A53 core design. The chip will also come with an Adreno 306, which has also improved over the Adreno 305 in the Snapdragon 400. Although the GPU is not a high-end one, it will only have to support a 720p resolution. That actually seems like a reasonable compromise given the low price.

The device will also have 1 GB of RAM and 8 GB of storage, which isn't too much, but it's what we currently get on devices such as the $180 Moto G, which is considered to have a good value for the price. In fact, with the larger screen and faster processor, all for a significantly lower price, the Xiaomi tablet looks to offer even bigger bang for your buck than the Moto G. Of course, one is a phone and the other is a tablet, but the type of components both are using is essentially the same.

Samsung Upgrades SSD Lineup With 850 EVO, Sports 3-Bit 3D V-NAND

Back in October, we reported that Samsung was in the process of mass producing 3-bit 3D V-NAND flash, and at the time, we speculated that it would be the flash for the 850 EVO SSD seen at IFA. Today, Samsung confirmed as much with the launch of the 850 EVO SSD.

The most outstanding feature is that the 850 EVO uses the new 3-bit 3D V-NAND flash instead of the 2-bit 3D V-NAND used in the 850 Pro, which Samsung released earlier this year. According to Samsung, this makes the new SSD more suitable for notebooks and gaming PCs. The 3D V-NAND is important to the SSD because Samsung layers the NAND cells instead of shrinking each cell to create higher densities and cheaper memory, and with 3 bits per cell, you can expect higher data densities than previous SSDs.

The 850 EVO comes in 120 GB ($99.99), 250 GB ($149.99), 500 GB ($269.99), and 1 TB ($499.99) capacities. All models have a power consumption of 50 mWatts and are encrypted with AES 256-bit Encryption (Class 0), TCG/Opal, and IEEE1667 (Encrypted drive). The 850 EVO comes with a five-year warranty compared to the 850 Pro's ten-year warranty, and it's rated for up to two million hours reliability.

With the exception of the 1 TB model, which uses Samsung's MEX controller, the SSDs utilize the MGX controller. All models have sequential read/write speeds of 540 Mbps and 520 Mbps, respectively. Additionally, the 1 TB and 500 GB models have up to 98,000 IOPS random read speed and 90,000 IOPS random write speed. The 250 GB model has a random read speed of 97,000 IOPS, while the 120 GB model has a 94,000 IOPS random read speed. However, both the 250 GB and 120 GB models have random write speeds of 88,000 IOPS.

With Samsung putting its best foot forward in the SSD market, it doesn't look like the company is slowing its momentum any time soon. There are already plans to release the 850 EVO with more connectors, specifically mSATA and M.2.

Toshiba Finally Intros 4 TB and 5 TB Consumer-Grade Desktop HDDs

Toshiba finally (almost) catches up to its competitors for consumer-grade hard drive capacities.

While Western Digital, Seagate and HGST all have consumer-grade 6 TB hard drives already on the market, Toshiba is playing catch-up; the company is only now announcing 4 TB and 5 TB desktop hard drives.

The two drives fall under the "Desktop" series of hard drives from the company and spin at 7200 RPM. They use Perpendicular Magnetic Recording technology and have support for NCQ and TMR head recording, too. Toshiba has also equipped the drives with internal shock detection and ramp loading technology for added durability.

Both the drives feature the industry-standard SATA3 (6 Gb/s) interface, making them compatible with almost every PC out there.

On top of being late to the party, Toshiba also priced the drives quite high. The 4 TB model carries an MSRP of $299, while the 5 TB drive should cost $399. For comparison's sake, competing hard drives can be found for about half that on Newegg. Toshiba, however, is known to have excessively high MSRP's on its hard drives, and it almost always ends up having lower street prices.