Computer Systems News - Page 1

Lenovo has a supremely tiny PC box that runs ChromeOS and has just gone on sale in the US, pitched at the kiosk market.

The Chromebox Micro is available at Walmart, Notebookcheck.net noticed, although it'll set you back $361 from there, and the PC is cheaper elsewhere.

Indeed, you can pick it up for $250 at CDW, which is a massive difference - the catch being that it's not currently in stock. However, it's still possible to back-order the Chromebox Micro if you wish, although there's no timeframe provided for when the PC might come back into stock.

NVIDIA is rumored to be cooking up a new scheme whereby it'll offer small form-factor (SFF) PCs with its partners, and naturally they'll have compact GeForce graphics cards inside.

Apparently, Team Green wants to get in on the act and help those looking to build a compact PC, as while this may be a niche market, it's seemingly a rich enough vein for NVIDIA to tap.

Wccftech informs us that NVIDIA's plans for SFF PC builds don't just incorporate GPU makers, but a range of component manufacturers - including the chassis, power supply, and so on.

Apple might have only started to sell some M3 Macs not all that long ago - October 2023, in fact - but we have already started to see more than a few leaks that suggest the new M4 chips are just around the corner. What's more, it now looks increasingly likely that Apple is getting ready to begin launching those M4 Macs sooner rather than later, with the entire lineup of laptop and desktop machines set to be refreshed.

If that is indeed the case, it would mark the first time that the entire Mac lineup has used the same generation of chips since the move to Apple silicon began. Previously, some Macs skipped entire generations - the iMac skipped the M3 and the Mac Pro skipped the M1, for example. But that's all going to change with the release of the M4 series of chips.

That's according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, writing in the weekly Power On newsletter this past weekend, at least. According to Gurman, Apple is getting ready to begin an entire lineup overhaul later this year and then continue that through 2025. In fact, Gurman has gone so far as to share the entire roadmap for all of this. However, it's important to remember that the plans could change before the rollout is complete depending on a variety of things, not least chip availability.

ASUS has just quietly upgraded the innards of its new ROG NUG gaming PC, with the ROG C22CH -- or in China, the ROC Ice Blade X -- featuring an upgraded GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER graphics card.

The original ASUS ROG NUC features a GeForce RTX 4070, but now the China-destined ROG NUC -- or ROC Ice Blade X -- features a better GPU. NVIDIA's newer GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER features 7168 CUDA cores, an upgrade from the 5888 CUDA cores inside the RTX 4070 in the original ROG NUC gaming system.

NVIDIA's newer GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER inside of the upgraded ASUS ROG NUC features 25W more TDP, up from the 200W TDP in the RTX 4070-powered ROG NUC to 225W in the RTX 4070 SUPER-powered ROG NUC. You can opt for either Intel's new Core i9-14900KF or Core i7-14700KF processors, with either the RTX 4060 Ti or RTX 4070 graphics cards, but now we've got a newer RTX 4070 SUPER to choose from.

If you buy a new M3 iMac or M3 MacBook Air at an Apple Store today, you'll spend more than a thousand dollars yet only get a machine with 8GB of RAM - unless you choose to upgrade to a more copious amount and pay extra, of course. That's something that Apple has long drawn flak for with many Windows PCs and laptops shipping with more, especially at the same kind of price point. However, Apple has now suggested that there is a very good reason these Macs come with just 8GB of RAM - that's all that people really need.

At least, that's what most people who buy these particular Macs need, according to two Apple executives who were interviewed by IT Home.

According to the IT Home report, Mac marketing executive Evan Buyze argued that the entry-level 8GB of RAM in iMacs and MacBook Airs is plenty for most tasks and most users. He used some examples as well, saying that media playback. photo and video editing. and even gaming only needs 8GB assuming you aren't pushing the boundaries - high-end games might need more, but it's unlikely anything downloaded from the App Store and Apple Arcade, will. Web browsing is another key use, and 8GB is plenty for that, too.

Apple might have only released its first Macs powered by the M3 chips a few months ago but a new report claims that it is already working towards making the first M4-powered Macs available, too. The report claims that the first Macs with M4 chips are just around the corner with the latest iteration on Apple silicon nearing production.

The report, which comes via Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, claims that the new chip will come in three varieties - likely M4, M4 Pro, and M4 Max - and will eventually find its way into every model of Mac that Apple sells. However, the source of the information isn't clear with Gurman keeping their identity secret for obvious reasons.

According to the report Apple plans to release the new Macs beginning later this year before continuing the rollout into 2025. There will be new iMacs and a low-end 14-inch MacBook Pro as well as a high-end 14-inch MacBook Pro to go with an equally powerful 16-inch model. New Mac minis are also expected, all powered by Apple's new M4 trio of chips. Gurman does note that Apple's plans could change, however. Given recent delays associated with the OLED iPad Pro launch, it's entirely possible that could happen.

After being in a prolonged slump for some time now, it appears that the PC market is in recovery, with a small - but nonetheless notable - amount of growth recorded in the latest figures from a big analyst firm.

IDC's latest report on global PC sales shows that in Q1 2024 there were 59.8 million devices shipped, which represents growth of 1.5% year-on-year.

Indeed, this is almost a return to pre-pandemic sales, as if we look back five years to Q1 2019, there were 60.5 million sales - so in 2024 we are nearly back at that level of shipments.

YouTuber "noisycarlos" has converted his Framework 13 laptop into an interesting, battery-powered all-in-one (AIO) workstation system. Check out the full details in his video below:

During the conversion process of turning his Framework laptop into an AIO workstation, the YouTuber created -- and is selling, you can buy it here -- a Framework 13 Conversion kit, so you can make your own Framework AIO system if you wanted to, which is really cool.

Noisycarlos found himself traveling and working on the go, and laptops weren't good for what he needed and his specific requirements. He didn't like clamshell laptops with their keyboard designs and that a 15-inch laptop was too big for something like using it in long haul flights. So, he decided to "optimize" the laptop design into something super-portable, as long as there is a desk (or hanging hooks) at the destination: hotel, AirBnb, etc.

Alafia AI has just unveiled its new Aivas SuperWorkstation for medical imaging, with the startup packing some serious hardware into the AIO workstation PC.

Inside, the Alafia Aivas SuperWorkstation features a 128-core Ampere Altra processor and two NVIDIA RTX workstation series graphics cards. The AIO system itself features a 4K display that is touch-capable, with the 128-core Ampere Altra CPU running at 3.0GHz, while the GPUs can be configured with either NVIDIA's RTX 4000 or RTX A3000 workstation graphics cards.

You can configure the super-workstation AIO system with up to 2TB of DDR4 memory and up to 8TB of SSD storage, which is a damn good CPU/GPU combo and RAM/SSD combo for an AIO system with a 4K-capable touch display.

Minisforum just officially launched its new V3 tablet powered by AMD's new Hawk Point APU, but the company had plenty of new Mini-PC designs to show off under their newly-announced AtomMan branding.

The company is shifting some of its focus to creating high-end Mini-PC systems based on AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA hardware, with the first of these new systems expected to be available for pre-order on May 20. One of those new systems is the Minisforum AtomMan UM890WE, a new high-end Mini-PC with an AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS APU.

Inside, the AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS APU features 8 cores and 16 threads that boost up to 5.2GHz, 16MB of L3 cache, 8MB of L2 cache, and a TDP of up to 45W. On the integrated GPU side of things, we've got the Radeon 780M, which features 12 compute units with the GPU boosting up to 2.8GHz. Minisforum's new AtomMan AI Mini-PC comes in a small 3.5L chassis, and is water-cooled... very cool, pun intended.