Dynabook Introduces 989-gram Portégé Laptop With Meteor Lake CPUs

Dynabook has introduced the Protégé X30W powered by up to an Intel Core Ultra 7 165H processor. At first glance, that hardly seems impressive, but a closer look at the device reveals that the laptop weighs a feather-light 989 grams, or roughly 2.2 lbs. The device is also a convertible, which means that the hinge allows for 360° rotation, effectively converting the laptop into a tablet.

Apart from its lightweight design, there is little else about the laptop that is worth noting. The highest-end variant sports a Core Ultra 7 165H, which is a plenty-powerful chip, featuring 6 performance cores and 8 efficiency cores for a total of 14 cores and 22 threads, since the Crestmont cores do not support Hyper-Threading. An 8-core Arc iGPU handles the graphics, and delivers decent performance that nearly matches the RTX 2050 Mobile in certain cases. The system features up to 32 GB of DDR5-5200 memory, and up to a 2 TB PCIe Gen 4 SSD. Read full story


https://www.techpowerup.com/329871/dynab...-lake-cpus

(PR) CoolIT Systems Continues to Expand Manufacturing Capabilities

CoolIT Systems (CoolIT), the world's leader in liquid cooling systems for advanced computing, is continuing to invest in its manufacturing capabilities to support the surging demand for liquid cooling of AI systems. Along with a 25x capacity expansion in a new Calgary, Canada manufacturing facility, CoolIT recently hired Scott Hudson as Vice President of Quality to lead the company's development of world-class quality operations and systems.

"As the leader in direct liquid cooling for over two decades, our customers expect leading performance and reliability from CoolIT products," said CoolIT's COO Patrick McGinn. " Adding Scott as CoolIT's VP of Quality reinforces CoolIT's commitment to developing best-in-class quality standards for liquid cooling products." Scott joins CoolIT from Celestica, where he led the company's global quality strategy for all business segments across over 30 sites. His career spans three decades of quality leadership roles in the worldwide computer hardware industry, overseeing multi-site operations in North America, Asia and Europe. Read full story


https://www.techpowerup.com/329803/cooli...pabilities

Former Dauntless Associate Producer Criticizes 'Awakening' Update for "Gutting" Core

We recently reported on the overwhelmingly negative response from the Dauntless community after the game's latest Awakening update and Steam launch. Now, Jessie Leigh Gagnon, a former Phoenix Labs developer and the former associate producer for Dauntless, has also weighed in on the current state of the game and the changes introduced by the indie developer. According to Gagnon's post on LinkedIn, the creative team that birthed Dauntless and maintained it before Phoenix Labs's dark times "never would have made decisions that are so blatantly not player focused." She seemingly attributes the disastrous Steam launch and poor decision-making that led to the maligned update to the studio's new ownership.

According to Gagnon's description, when Dauntless was first launched, Phoenix Labs was an indie studio in the true sense. It was a group of passionate developers who simply wanted to create something fun. In this case a Monster Hunter-like game that wasn't locked to the Nintendo DS and didn't force its players to deal with "aching hands, cumbersome inventory management, and a lore that wasn't super approachable." Since then, though, Phoenix Labs has been through the wringer and lost much of its original creative talent and many of its former executives, supposedly all culminating in a game that seems to have put monetization before all else. Read full story


https://www.techpowerup.com/329756/forme...-mechanics

(PR) GameMax Introduces GS SFX Gold Series PSU with ATX 3.1 and PCIe 5.1 Standards

GameMax, an emerging brand of PC gaming components including gaming cases and power supply units, proudly announces the GS SFX Gold Series power supply units featuring ATX 3.1 and PCIe 5.1 standards. The GameMax GS SFX Gold Series features native 12V-2x6 connectors for the latest NVIDIA RTX graphics cards. The GS SFX Gold Series is available in 650 W, 750 W, and 850 W models—all of which are available in black and white colors to color-match your PC build!

The circuit design features advanced Active PFC, Half-Bridge LLC Resonance, Synchronous Rectification, and DC-DC topology to ensure high performance and efficiency particularly to the +12V rail for graphics cards. The GS SFX Gold Series PSU's FMD-F161E131B microcontroller intelligently manages the fan with a stop/start function, enabling the fan to stop below 20% load for silent 0 dBA operation. Read full story


https://www.techpowerup.com/329721/gamem...-standards

Gaming is a popular pastime for many students, but balancing it with academic responsibilities can be challenging. Assignment Writing Services Australia can ease this pressure by providing expert support, and ensuring assignments are completed on time and to a high standard. With professional guidance, students can enjoy their gaming sessions without compromising their academic success, making it easier to manage both interests effectively.

Indie Game Marketplace Itch.io Gets Taken Down in Unlikely IP Crossfire

Itch.io, the popular developer-friendly indie game marketplace, has revealed that the site has been taken down by a seemingly erroneous IP protection request by none other than Funko Pop, the pop culture collectible maker. According to Itch.io, the bizarre take-down happened as a result of Funko's automated IP protection provider, and it happened despite Itch.io taking action to prevent the take-down. The site has since been restored, with the offending page removed, but it took more than a little effort on the part of Itch.io's management. The whole situation seems to have been caused by poor communication on the part of Itch.io's domain registrar, Iwantmyname, since that's where the decision to remove the entire site, instead of just the offending page, seems to have originated.

According to posts on X by BrandShield, Funko's IP protection partner, the company's automated system flagged an apparent phishing attempt by an Itch.io subdomain, prompting BrandShield to request the removal of the offending subdomain, notifying both Itch.io and Iwantmyname. Itch.io says that it then removed the offending page and sent an e-mail confirming that it had taken the requisite action, but that e-mail apparently went unread, leaving Itch.io without a site for what appears to be around eight hours. Eventually, someone at Iwantmyname was able to address Itch.io's communications regarding the take-down, and the site was restored in the morning of Monday, December 9. Read full story


https://www.techpowerup.com/329672/indie...-crossfire

Intel 0x114 Microcode Could be the Magic Gaming Performance Fix for "Arrow Lake"

The gaming performance of Intel's latest Core Ultra 200-series "Arrow Lake-S" desktop processors missed the mark by quite a bit, ending up slower than the 14th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" processors. Adding pressure to Intel is AMD's recent launch of the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, which extends the company's leadership in gaming performance, ending up to 12% faster than the top Core Ultra 9 285K at gaming (1080p). The company then announced that it has identified possible reasons why gaming performance of "Arrow Lake" ended up below expectations, and that it's working on a microcode-level update to the processor.

A discussion in the ASUS ROG Forums sheds light on what this microcode update could be. Allegedly, it's called the Intel 0x114 Microcode Update, and you can expect it soon in a beta UEFI firmware update from ASUS and other motherboard vendors, which makes it possible that we see a public release of the microcode either by yearend, or in Q1-2025. There's still no word on the extent of gaming performance gain from this microcode, but if we were to speculate, Intel wouldn't bother with such an update if it didn't at least bring "Arrow Lake" to the same gaming performance level as "Raptor Lake," if not higher.


https://www.techpowerup.com/329635/intel...arrow-lake

Microsoft Visual Studio With Coding Courses Is Down to $56 with This Deal

More developers than you think are self-taught, and you can easily teach yourself how to code with this bundle of coding e-courses and Microsoft Visual Studio Pro. You could build a portfolio and start a new career, freelance, or know how to create apps and websites. If you purchase everything separately and not on sale, it would cost you $1,999, but it's only $55.97 on StackSocial for Cyber Week.

The 15 coding e-courses cover front-end development with HTML, JavaScript, Vuex, and React and back-end development with Python, Ruby on Rails, Java, C++, and SQL so you can create websites or desktop applications. Or, maybe you're interested in mobile apps with Flutter, Swift, and Kotlin, data science and machine learning, or DevOps engineering with AWS or Azure.

Through December 8 at 11:59 p.m. PT, get this bundle of Microsoft Visual Studio Pro and 15 coding e-courses on sale for $55.97 (reg. $1,999) on StackSocial. Supplies are limited, so act while they're still available. Read full story


https://www.techpowerup.com/329565/micro...-this-deal

F2P Hero Shooter Marvel Rivals Shatters Expectations With Over 400,000 Concurrent Pl

It's no secret that 2024 hasn't been kind to live-service games, with recent months seeing games like XDefiant and Concord shut down—although not always without reason—so it's a bit refreshing to see the recently released Marvel Rivals hit what can only be described as a home run. Not only is the game already at "Mostly Positive" in terms of Steam reviews, the free-to-play hero shooter also managed to draw in massive amounts of players in its first week on Steam. According to SteamDB, Marvel Rivals peaked at 444,286 concurrent players a mere two and a half hours after its launch on Friday, December 6.

The game launched on the same day as Path of Exile 2, which had an equally successful launch, despite its Early Access fee and some serious technical hiccups along the way. These two games have not been the norm, although Marvel Rivals signals that gaming properties based on Marvel characters may have finally found their audience. In previous years, both Marvel's Midnight Suns and Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy made their own impacts, scoring big with both reviewers and audiences. Of course, neither of the aforementioned games garnered quite the player count as Marvel Rivals, but that's likely simply due to the free-to-play nature of Rivals. Read full story


https://www.techpowerup.com/329593/f2p-h...ter-launch

JONSBO Intros TH-series AIO CLCs with Compound Fans

JONSBO today introduced the TH line of all-in-one liquid CPU coolers. These feature conventional cylindrical pump-blocks capped with an LED 7-segment display that puts out CPU temperature, framed by an ARGB diffuser. The highlight with these coolers are their included compound fans. A compound fan is a single frame with multiple impellers (fanlets), which reduces the cable clutter that comes with having multiple individual fans. It takes in a single cable for the 4-pin PWM and 3-pin ARGB connections. The sides of the frame and the impeller hubs feature ARGB diffusers.

There are four models in the JONSBO TH-series depending on the color and radiator size—the TH-240 Black, the TH-360 Black, the TH-240 White, and the TH-360 White. Each 120 mm fanlet in the compound fan turns at speeds ranging between 700 and 2,400 RPM, pushing between 21.46 and 62.40 CFM of airflow; at between 21.3 and 37.3 dBA of noise output. The company didn't put out static pressure numbers. Among the CPU socket types supported are LGA1851, AM5, LGA1700, and AM4. The company didn't reveal pricing.


https://www.techpowerup.com/329554/jonsb...pound-fans