Keeping up with trends in new technology and investing in continuing education is the best way for project managers to stay competitive.

Keeping up with current project management trends is critical. Project managers must stay up with the times. How can your team be prepared for the future if you don’t? Listed below are the seven project management trends we expect to see more of in the future.

Trend #1: Continued Agile Methods

With the rise of digital innovation, it’s no surprise that project managers are turning to agile.

Agile allows your work to be flexible and adaptable. In addition, it allows you to easily adjust to changing market conditions and consumer demands. We see agility scaled across businesses as more firms move in the direction of DevOps principles. In short, by the end of 2022, we anticipate one in three organizations will be using DevOps.

Even now, most big retailers use lean business principles such as cross-functional teams, minimum viable products, fast prototyping, and innovation. Current issues such as SAFe agile are essential for success in 2022 and beyond.

Of course, businesses today need several technologies to survive. Technologies such as SaaS, cloud storage, and computing power for big data analytics are everywhere. In addition, the trends of artificial intelligence and machine learning are more common than ever.

Trend #2: Projects That Rely Heavily on Cloud Suppliers and Systems Integrators

More businesses are adopting new technologies to bridge current tool and network gaps. Project managers must remain abreast of the trends of best practices for merging complex systems.

Using KPI tools to improve team cooperation is the trend of the future. Pprojects rely more and more on third-party services from cloud providers and systems integrators. In addition, you’ll need strong connections to assure complete coverage.

Trend #3: Better Remote Collaboration

Thanks to technology, we now interact and work together from anywhere. It’s a wise project manager who sees the rise of remote work as an opportunity. A good PM monitors results and goals even if the workforce is spread globally.

The good news for project managers is that collaboration tools are now cheaper than ever. Slack and Asana make team connections simple. WhatsApp has brought in voice and video calling tools. As these tools become more widely used there is a greater need for a more robust network.

The trend of newer technologies such as 5G allows people to send video content without hogging bandwidth. This assists project management and team interaction.

Trend #4: Soft Skills Crucial as AI Evolves

Some companies already invest in workers’ soft talents. IBM, for example, has developed a curriculum to develop global leader’s skills. It combines empathy and creative training in one course.

In addition, soft skills are more crucial in certain areas the more AI develops. Learning about this trend is important to any business in the future.

Trend #5: Demand for Project Management Tools and Experts

Existing programs such as Atlassian JIRA and Trello already see high user growth. Similarly, this shows the increased interest in boosting internal project interaction globally. A company’s tools need to be updated often as they become more reliant on technology.

Moreover, as technology trends develop, project managers turn to new tools to manage their workflow. These tools help project managers interact with team members online.

Trend #6: The Rise in Cloud Computing

Over 40% of firms now use SaaS accounting software and other cloud-based services. It’s no wonder that businesses directions are turning to the cloud.

Cloud computing allows scaling operations at a low cost without losing quality or capability. As demand for cloud-based services grows, so does the need for people who can handle them.

Trend #7: More Automation

We can’t talk about future project management trends without including automation. Bots and AI have become far more common in our culture. It’s only natural that they enter project management. For example, a bot can deliver regular project updates or indicate potential problems.

Today, these technologies lack the context needed to make intelligent judgments. However, the ability to input AI data on individual projects — e.g. client-company X sends us Y amount of income each year — would allow us to gain insights on how to boost output rather than just automating repetitive chores.

The Really Good News

To be competitive, after all, you must know what trends are ahead.

It doesn’t matter if you’re new to project management or a seasoned pro looking to grow. Keeping up with industry trends is vital.

Finally, the good news is that there are many resources to help you develop your project management brand. By learning about the future of project management, you’ll be better able to seize exciting options and grow your skills.

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Cloud computing for business is having its moment in the spotlight.

The global cloud computing market reached almost $300 billion in 2020. Fueled in no small measure by the pandemic that same year, this number will only climb as more and more businesses recognize a need to speed up their transition toward cloud-based solutions.

Cloud computing offers a range of benefits that many businesses find both appealing and practical. By securely storing business data in the cloud, companies have an opportunity to reduce expenses, provide more flexibility to their employees, and improve work efficiency.

But how exactly can cloud hosting help your small business? And why are so many companies of all sizes around the world moving away from on-premise data storage solutions? The five reasons listed below should shed a bit more light. 

1. Cloud Computing for Business is Cost-Effective

Maintaining an IT infrastructure is expensive. If something should happen to go wrong, it can quickly become downright unaffordable. You not only have to hire or outsource IT staff but also have to worry about maintaining equipment that becomes outdated all too quickly.

When your business opts for cloud computing solutions, you are essentially handing over the entire IT process to a qualified third-party provider who will securely host all of your data on their servers.

That way, you don’t have to worry about paying IT staff, performing system upgrades, or fixing various issues. Everything is handled by someone outside your company and that means you can enjoy both savings and security.

Additionally, flexible and affordable cloud computing solutions today make it an option even for small businesses. Smaller companies can now enjoy the perks of being a data-driven business even if they don’t have the budget to create their own infrastructure from scratch and maintain it.

2. Cloud Computing Is Much Easier to Scale

Predicting data storage needs isn’t always easy. Requirements can vary based on demand, growth, market conditions, and a variety of other factors that can change year to year…or even on a quarterly basis.

However, if you’re using an on-premise solution, you won’t have nearly as many options to choose how much you want to expand. Instead, you’ll have to guesstimate what you need and invest in creating the additional infrastructure to support it.

The stickiest problem is that while you may have relatively straightforward needs now, there’s no telling how soon you might need more storage or more features. Making inaccurate guesses or unnecessary purchases nearly always proves to be costly.

When your business needs room to grow, reconfiguring your data storage capacity can be a huge, expensive hassle that chews up a lot of your time.

On the other hand, if you use cloud computing for your business, you have the ability to scale up and down with ease. Cloud solutions allow you to change your plan according to what you currently use and maximize the value you get from the money you spend. 

3. Enhanced Data Security

Your data is perhaps the most valuable asset your business has. Were that information to fall into the wrong hands, a data breach could be the cause of your company’s demise. The secure handling and storage of sensitive customer and business data is a top priority for any business. 

Once again, if you don’t have a 24/7/365 IT department monitoring the performance and security of your systems, you’re always at risk of something going wrong. Add to this the fact that cybersecurity requirements are constantly evolving. Given this landscape, you’ll always be trying to catch up with what’s required to provide adequate protection for your data.

Security is one of the areas where cloud computing for business can really set itself apart from the alternatives. When you work with a reputable cloud services provider, you get their cybersecurity expertise and a continually upgraded infrastructure that withstands security challenges.

Today’s cloud computing providers utilize state-of-the-art technologies to combat emerging threats. Their expertise affords you peace of mind without your company having to put in the effort of ensuring the safety of your data.

4. Significantly-Better Uptime

Downtime can be a nightmare scenario for any business. Whenever your on-premises data storage needs to be updated or — worse — there’s an unplanned security event, it can completely paralyze business activities. Precious time and revenue are lost as you scramble to catch up and get your systems back up and running.

Luckily, when you opt for cloud computing solutions for business, downtime isn’t an issue you will have to deal with.

Whenever there’s scheduled maintenance or an issue with the servers that store your data, backups provide cover almost immediately. This ensures that you can always access your data and conduct business as usual. Be sure to choose a provider that guarantees uptime.

5. Your Business Is Empowered to Make Data-Driven Decisions

In the end, cloud computing is not just about saving costs or ensuring that your business can function effectively. It’s just as much about becoming a more forward-thinking business that makes data-driven decisions.

By using cutting-edge cloud computing solutions, your business can leverage the data you collect into valuable insights about your customers. You have the chance to improve your business performance. You can also keep up with trends in your industry that determine how successful your company will be.

Setting up analytics and data capacity will take time and resources. However, cloud computing is making it more affordable and accessible to businesses of all sizes. However, to take advantage of that, you must be willing to go through a digital transformation and embrace cloud technology as a central part of the way you do business.

Cloud Computing Provides an Opportunity for Your Business to Level Up

Cloud computing is here to say. Technology is now more accessible than ever. Businesses that want to survive and thrive must figure out how to make cloud computing work to streamline operations.

Luckily, there’s now a wide range of cloud solution providers aimed at various industries and business sizes. You shouldn’t have any trouble finding the perfect match for your situation. Look for something that will be affordable, secure, and come with all the features you require.

The post Cloud Computing for Business: 5 Compelling Reasons to Take the Plunge appeared first on The Tech Report.

Twitter user WalkingCat recently did some digging and found an official Windows File Recovery tool in the Microsoft Store. It doesn’t seem that Microsoft has announced the release of this tool, but it is available for those with Windows 10 build 19041 (version 2004). The store page also includes a URL that redirects to a user guide for the tool.

Accidentally deleted an important file? Wiped clean your hard drive? Unsure of what to do with corrupted data? Windows File Recovery can help recover your personal data.

The Windows Files Recovery tool is currently a command line only utility called winfr.exe. However, according to WalkingCat, the package includes a folder titled “gui” in addition to a “WinFRUI.exe” executable. The executable doesn’t work at the moment, but it hints at an updated version of the tool with a full user interface.

The tool can be used to recover deleted files from hard drives, USB drives, and SD cards, so long as the deleted files haven’t been written over. The tool does not support cloud storage or network file shares. There are three modes of operation, each of which goes about attempting to recover deleted files in a different way:

• Default mode: This mode uses the Master File Table (MFT) to locate lost files. Default mode works well when the MFT and file segments, also called File Record Segments (FRS), are present.
• Segment mode: This mode does not require the MFT but does require segments. Segments are summaries of file information that NTFS stores in the MFT such as name, date, size, type and the cluster/allocation unit index.
• Signature mode: This mode only requires that data is present, searches for specific file types, and doesn’t work for very small files. For non-NTFS storage devices, only Signature mode is supported. For more information on file systems, see the “About modes and files systems” section.

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You know what they say: new year, new computer. Well, someone says that, probably. Just after Christmas, I sold my 1080 Ti for a 2070 Super, picked up an Acer Predator X27 monitor, and finished off the upgrade list by throwing in a Western Digital Black SN750 500GB NVMe SSD. The benefits of the first two items are pretty clear–I wanted ray-tracing and G-Sync. An NVMe drive, though, doesn’t change how you use your computer. It’s a different way to do the same things you do every day. With chip prices on the rise, though, I wanted to jump in and see if NVMe drives are worth the hype, and I was surprised by the results. There are benefits, but they’re not what you think.

NVMe “versus” M.2

The first two things to know ate that 1) not all M.2 drives are created equal, and 2) you can get some of the benefits we’ll go into below without some of the drawbacks.

Serial ATA (SATA), what most of us use now to connect drives to a PC, is both a connector and a bus interface. It’s the physical hookup between the drive and the PC, and the protocol used to send data between the two.

By contrast, M.2 is only a connector, which plugs into the PCIe bus interface. Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) is a technology for storing data that is fast enough and low-enough latency to connect to the PCIe bus interface via the M.2 connector.

This gives you some options. You can get an M.2 drive that accesses the SATA bus instead of the PCIe bus, which is convenient but doesn’t max out the connection speed. Or, you can get NVMe drive that accesses the PCIe bus and gets all the speed and latency benefits that come with that.

The benefits of NVMe

When people talk about plugging an NVMe drive into their system, the primary benefits are latency and speed. NVMe drives have a latency of just a few microseconds, while SATA SSDs have latency in the 30-100 microsecond range. SATA-based SSDs top out around 550 MB/s, while NVMe drives can reach up to 3,500 MB/s on PCIe 3.0. When you look at it from that perspective, it sounds like a done deal NVMe is faster in every way. But a Ferrari can dust a Mustang on the track, and there are lots of reasons we don’t all have Ferraris.

Reasons to go NVMe

There are a few reasons to go with an NVMe-based drive, and some of them are really good. From a builder’s perspective, an M.2 drive is a clear win compared to an SSD using the SATA connector. M.2 drives are easy to install and hard to screw up. There’s no need to go rummaging for cables, then make sure that the cable is SATA3 vs. SATA2, or that it’ll fit into the tight spots in your case. Installing an M.2 drive into my case took about two minutes, and that’s not an exaggeration. It also looks more attractive and makes for a cleaner, leaner build.

But once you get past the build stage, the real-world benefits thin out. If you work with huge amounts of data, you might see a benefit. Users who need to run a huge number of virtual machines or who work with 4K and 8K video, for example, might see benefits to using NVMe in real-world applications. Enterprise users will see a big difference because M.2 NVMe drives have a queue-depth of 1 with room to run 32 commands in that queue. NVMe, meanwhile, has a queue depth of 64,000 with room for 64,000 commands in each queue. Again, that sounds like a huge difference, but most home users can’t take advantage of even a tiny fraction of that. Day-to-day OS use may be slightly snappier than on a SATA SSD. Also, your numbers in CrystalDiskMark and other drive benchmarking suites will be much bigger.

Reasons to wait on NVMe

Even though we’re only a few years into the technology, NVMe is still a hard sell when you look for benefits beyond a cleaner build and bigger benchmark numbers.

For gamers, there’s absolutely no value to NVMe. Even a game installed directly to NVMe sees little to no benefit. While games have no doubt ballooned far beyond what we could’ve guessed 10 or 20 years ago, a game is accessing very little data from a hard drive any given time. The stuff the game needs is mostly loaded into memory. You may see initial load times speed up by a few seconds, but it won’t be dramatic on a PC. The story may be different on a console, where games typically have less dedicated memory to work with. Modern games are also not yet optimized for an NVMe. An NVMe-optimized game may indeed see a big benefit, and that’s what we’re expecting from that next generation of consoles. But for most PC gamers, the heavy cost of an M.2 NVMe SSD far outweighs the benefits.

Similarly, most users will see few benefits in day-to-day use. Your computer will wake from hibernation more quickly. You may see a more fluid experience using your operating system. Overall, though, it will make very little difference.

My tests for NVMe vs SSD

When installing my NVMe drive, I ran a bunch of “real world” tests timing:

• how quickly Photoshop 2020 could load a 1.8GB PSD.
• how long WinDirStat took to read my C: on the SATA SSD and then cloned it to the M.2 NVMe SSD and did the same.
• the time to load into games like Control and the Witcher 3.
• the time to unzip large/complex ZIP files.

The most dramatic difference was with Photoshop 2020. That program took an average of 18 seconds to load on a fresh boot after Windows had fully loaded on the SATA SSD and took about 11 on the NVMe drive. But games saw much less difference, with Control dropping from 36 to 30 seconds to load to the initial menu screen, but no discernible benefit to the game itself. Witcher showed a similarly small improvement of just a few seconds for that initial load and no real-world benefit in-game.

WinDirStat seemed like it would be a great indicator since it has to read the entire contents of the drive. After I’d cloned my existing drive, I had two nearly identical real-world data sets I could use for side-by-side testing. But the time to read the drives varied wildly from the first read after reboot to the second and third read after reboot, and the change wasn’t reliable enough to conclusively say that the benefit is clear.

WinDirStat, even then, is a kind of edge-case real-world situation, since most people rarely scan their entire hard drives’ file tables on a regular basis.

Conclusions

The upshot of all of this is that you don’t have to worry about missing out on NVMe. I went in with the bias that NVMe drives are faster, along with the desire to prove my purchase a good one, but came out surprised. I have more hard-drive space, but won’t see much difference for speed.

Unless you’re doing really heavy work or want a cleaner build, it’s not really worth the money. An M.2 SATA or traditional SATA drive is going to be noticeably cheaper, but not noticeably slower in all but a few cases.

In five or ten years, when spinning drives are used for all but super-massive storage and solid-state technology rules the desktop and laptop world, we might see things like NVMe-optimized games, and then the different may start to matter more. For now, though, you might want to hold off. There’s no doubt that an NVMe drive is measurably faster, but the difference is much harder to discern with the naked eye.

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The world is built on data these days, and keeping that data safe and sound is big business. Now, Microsoft is showing off a new proof of concept called Project Silica that stores 75.6 gigabytes of data on a sheet of glass about the size of a drink coaster and just 2mm thick. To make the display extra special, the company partnered with Warner Bros film to put the 1978 movie Superman on one of these disks. If you’ve ever seen the Superman movies, you can imagine what this looks like:

Project Silica has produced a 750-mm x 750-mm x 2-mm sheet of silica glass that Microsoft says could be one future for cold data storage. Right now, cold storage happens on hard drive or magnetic tape. Both of those wear out after a few years of use, and companies like Warner Bros. have to constantly migrate data to new storage to make sure its back catalog of master files doesn’t go up in smoke.

Glass data storage is an interesting proposition. You can only write to it once, but it degrades more slowly than other formats. The data is written using lasers similar to those used in LASIK, and once the data is written, it will stay there for centuries rather than years. For data that is simply stored and protected, that seems like a pretty good idea.

Project Silica keeps on ticking

And this format is durable. Microsoft researches boiled, baked, microwaved, and scoured the glass with steel wool (all the same things one can do to a potato) with no loss to the data stored inside the glass.

The climax of the first season of Mr. Robot was built around destroying cold-storage data by simply heating it up; a plausible if unlikely situation. And then there’s that time hundreds of master recordings were lost in a fire. Cold storage is carefully managed for temperature, humidity, and general air quality. These glass sheets can be smashed with a hammer, but they’ll withstand a lot of other disasters that traditional storage simply won’t, and they’ll last much longer.

Microsoft is clear that this storage isn’t meant for home use. This is for enterprise-level storage. There’s still a lot of work to be done, too. The format reads slowly right now, and Microsoft wants to improve on that. Even so, glass has benefits similar to that of SSDs when compared to rotational drives; data can be read from exactly the spot you want when you want it, rather than having to spin or spool over to that spot. Tape storage also offers significantly higher density for the size. A single tape cartridge can store terabytes, plural, and researchers are developing tape storage that could hold well over 150TB of data.

Magnetic tape storage is also very mature, while glass is in its embryonic stage. We likely won’t see it in commercial use for quite a few years yet—if ever. Even so, forever is a tantalizing proposition for the companies that are having to spend the time and money swapping their data to new formats every few years.

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A couple weeks back I unveiled the contenders in our planned battle for portable flash supremacy. Things have changed a bit since that simpler time, though, and my personal list of priorities has been, uh, trimmed.

This review was always going to be a longer term project. I’m aspiring to put my own spin on a mini version of Geoff’s iconic SSD Endurance Experiment. Albeit, one with a degree of portable wear and tear involved.

Since I’m off to a delayed start, and because I expect it’s going to be a long wait for more data, I want to share what I’ve got so far. Without further ado, let’s take a look at the setup.

The source of my ancient avatar, original work by my sister.

The hub is an ORICO 10-port USB 3.0 model. Here’s a rundown of what you can see in that image, sorted left to right in order of the USB port they are plugged into.

• Intel Optane Memory M10 16 GB & ORICO Transparent NVMe M.2 USB 3.1 Type-C Gen2 enclosure (plugged directly into my PC)
• Kingston Digital 60 GB mS200 mSATA SSD & ORICO external mSATA UASP SSD enclosure
• Samsung 840 EVO 120GB SSD & StarTech SATA to USB 3.1 UASP hard drive adapter
• Patriot 64 GB Supersonic Rage Series USB 3.0 flash drive
• PNY Turbo 64 GB USB 3.0 flash drive
• SanDisk Ultra CZ48 64 GB USB 3.0 flash drive
• Corsair Flash Voyager Slider X1 64 GB USB 3.0 flash drive
• Kingston Digital 64 GB 100 G3 USB 3.0 DataTraveler

All of that plugged into my PC made for an interesting Disk Management window. After all, I’m usually a single drive kind of guy (not counting OneDrive or network drives). Before I gathered my initial numbers, I made sure all the drives had just a single NTFS partition on them that used all the space on the drive. I also did a full format on them before testing, why not?

Drive capacities apparently not shown to scale.

For my first test with these new recruits I went back to some benchmarking comfort food, CrystalDiskMark 6. I intend to employ TR’s own RoboBench or something similar for longevity testing, though. I used my main rig to obtain these numbers, it runs Windows 10 Professional with all the latest updates for hardware and software. I’m not going to spell out the exact specifications in this piece, but you can check them out over here if you’d like. I set DiskMark to do nine passes at 500MiB for these tests, the same settings I’ve used in my other reviews.

Let’s look at some numbers (note the change to the x-axis as the tests change gears).

If you’re already thinking that it sure would be nice if Fish would add a cheap M.2 NVMe SSD into this mix, you’re not alone. I’m definitely fighting the review-feature-creep urge. We’ll see what happens. Anyway, I think the most interesting result here is the massive gap between the Optane’s read and write performance. I’m inclined to blame the controller in the enclosure, but without testing another… Gosh darn it, I’m going to have to buy another drive aren’t I?

Beyond that, it’s easy to see that if you’ve got an old SSD laying around you’ll get much better bang for your buck if you buy a $15 enclosure for it than buying a $15 flash drive. Speaking of the flash drives, the Patriot and the Corsair are the clear leaders in sequential performance, almost catching the mSATA drive in read speed and coming close to half its write speed.

I love the random 4K tests as a gut check for worst-case performance. With a queue depth of eight and eight threads to work with, there’s a massive throughput hit to everything—except for the Optane’s write speed. Hmm… Interestingly, one of the flash drives, the SanDisk Ultra, distinguishes itself with terrible but not tragic write performance. Frankly, I’m surprised the other drives even finished the benchmark.

As the number on the end of our x-axis continues to drop lower we can easily see why. At a queue depth of 32 and just one thread, the write speed on the Optane is still hitting the same wall but performance everywhere else is tanking. That said, even the over five-year old Kingston mSATA drive is whooping the flash drives from inside is aluminum UASP to-go box. The SanDisk Ultra’s meager 1.5 MB/s write speed is still remarkable among its peers, though.

With a queue depth of just one and a single thread to match, it doesn’t get much more worst-case than this—for performance anyway. Yeah, it’s not the most realistic test for a flash drive, but if a drive can handle this, you should be able to count on it handling whatever fiddly batch of files you want to move around with it. Notable developments are the Optane’s write speed finally stumbling and the SanDisk Ultra still cruising along with its mysteriously superior write speed. Finally, we have write speeds of the full-blown SSDs all surpassing the read speeds—caching at work.

That’s all I’ve got to share for now. If you must have a conclusion at this stage, mine would be that I like the plucky SanDisk Ultra the best of the flash drives. However, you’d be better served by digging an old mSATA drive out of your junk drawer and tossing it into a USAP-friendly housing. I’ll be back again once I’ve sufficiently abused these poor drives.

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• We usually write up sales on the Intel 660p, but this time around we have something much faster: the Sabrent Rocket family of speedy NVMe SSDs. Although the company isn’t one of the major players in the space, its SSDs hit all the right spots. We have three today, with capacities ranging from 512 GB to 2 TB, all on sale at absurd prices. The 512 GB model can do 3400 MB/s in sequential reads and 2000 MB/s in writes, and 357K IOPS in random reads and 456K IOPS for writes. It’s going for just $49.99 at Amazon. The next one up is the 1 TB model, with 3400/3000 MB/s for sequential data, and a whopping 650K random read IOPS and 640K write IOPS. This one will set you back an almost-even $99.99. The biggest unit is the 2 TB model, with 3400/3700 MB/s sequential speeds, and 490K/540K IOPS for random I/O. You can pick this one up for $219.99.

• Today’s cheap RAM pack is the Adata XPG Gammix D10 16 GB set with 3000 MT/s sticks. The silver heatsinks should look good under any kind of lighting, and the timings are set at 16-20-20. The folks at Rakuten are asking but $53.54 for the pair with the checkout code SAVE15. The manufacturer offers lifetime warranty.

• It’s a hot season for Ryzen builds, and we have just the board for that. The Gigabyte B450 Aorus Pro WiFi is one fine lookin’ circuit board with two PCIe x4 M.2 slots under heatsinks, a souped-up ALC1220-VB audio codec with WIMA capacitors, an Intel Ethernet chip, and metal casing on the main PCIe slot. You also get USB 3.1 Gen2 ports in both Type-C and Type-A flavors, along with Intel-powered 802.11ac Wi-Fi. The VRMs sit under decently sized heatsinks, and there’s onboard RGB LED lighting for good measure. This mobo hits all the right notes, and it’ll set you back just $109.99 at Newegg.

• If an Intel machine is more your speed, then check out the Core i3-9100F processor. This is one of the top low-end processors you can get your hands on, as its four cores clocked at up to 4.2 GHz make for a potent gaming concoction, especially when paired with a discrete graphics cards. As it happens, the “F” suffix for this model means that it does away with an IGP, making it suitable for that exact type of build. Pick this processor up from Newegg for only $84.99 with the cart code EMCTCTV38.

• It’s time to go mobile. The Lenovo Flex 15 (81SR000QUS) is a fold-back convertible with a 15.6″ 1920×1080 touch-screen, and it’s powered by a snappy Intel Core i7-8565U chip (four cores, eight threads at up to 4.6 GHz) next to 8 GB of RAM (in a 4+4 configuration) and a 256 GB NVMe solid-state drive. The machine’s just 0.81″ (20.5 mm) thick, and the price tag is equally as thin at $564.99 with the cart code LEN110.

• For a meatier hardware selection, we have just the machine. The Dell G3 15 gaming laptop (I3590-7957BLK-PUS) is one heck of a geared-up portable, powered by an Intel Core i7-9750H processor, a six-core, twelve-thread affair with a 4.5 GHz turbo and 12 MB of cache. Sitting next to the CPU are 16 GB of RAM and a roomy 512 GB NVMe solid-state drive. Pixels find their way to the screen at speed thanks to a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti graphics card with 6 GB of its own memory. The port selection includes both Type-A and Type-C USB ports, as well as an HDMI output. You can get your hands on this fast-moving beast for $1079.99 at Best Buy.

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• In our view, the RTX 2060 strikes a pretty good balance between horsepower and price as graphics cards go these days. The Gigabyte RTX 2060 OC is a simple-but-solid take on that card with a nominal boost clock is 1755 MHz. It’s fitted with a dual-fan cooler with alternate spinning fans sitting atop a big honkin’ chunk of metal. You get a free copy of Wolfenstein: Youngblood with the purchase, and the price is currently $339.99 at Newegg with the cart code EMCTBVD23.

• Quality mechanical keyboards used to be luxury items, but they’re quite affordable nowadays. The HP Omen Sequencer keyboard is a fine example of the breed, and it comes fited with an opto-mechanical variant of Cherry MX Blue switches that affords a 0.2 ms response time. There’s also a set of macro keys and multimedia controls. All the gear sits on an island-style aluminum frame. There’s a USB pass-through port and the requisite per-key RGB LED backlighting. The price is set at just $69.99 at Best Buy.

• Cheap mass storage is back in fashion, as you can tell from looking at this here Western Digital Elements 8 TB external hard drive. It’s roomy, simple, and comes with backup software. You can pick one up from Newegg for $124.99 with the cart code EMCTBVD22.

• The prodigal son Intel 660p 1 TB NVMe SSD returns. You’re probably groaning “not again” at this point, but its price just keeps dropping. For reference, this variant can push 1800 MB/s sequentially in either direction, while the random I/O figures clock in at 150K read IOPS and 220K write IOPS. Today’s price is $87.99 at Newegg Flash. Did we mention this is a flash deal? I’ll see myself out.

• Let’s combo it up. The Core i9-9900KF is one heck of a desktop CPU thanks to its eight threads and 16 cores clocked at up to a whopping 5 GHz. This is one of the best chips of the moment thanks to its ability to both game and work with aplomb. The “KF” mark means this model is unlocked but devoid of an integrated graphics processor that’d probably go to waste in a high-end build anyway. Newegg is selling this CPU together with an HP EX900 250 GB NVMe drive, all for the sum of $459.99 at Newegg with the cart code EMCTBVC22. You’re basically getting the SSD for free.

• We end today’s deals with a fancy rodent. The Corsair M65 RGB Elite is fitted with an 18,000 DPI optical sensor and Omron switches undenearth the eight buttons. The aluminum underside has spots for fitting weights and can be used as a blunt weapon in an emergency. Around the side, there’s a well-placed sniper button, and naturally, there’s onboard RGB LED lighting. You can grab one of these for $39.99 from Best Buy, or also for $39.99 from the folks at Amazon.

That’s all for today, folks! There’s a chance you’re looking for something we haven’t covered. If that’s the case, you can help The Tech Report by using the following referral links when you’re out shopping: not only do we have a partnership with Newegg and Amazon, but we also work with Best Buy, Adorama, Rakuten, Walmart, and Sam’s Club. For more specific needs, you can also shop with our links at Das Keyboard’s shop.

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As some that venture into our amazing forums may be aware, I kicked off an experiment last month where I asked gerbils to nominate and then vote for something that I could review. I was open to nearly any suggestion, but I put a $100 cap on the expense involved to keep things reasonable.

I got some great suggestions and narrowed them down to seven options that I put in a poll. After a week of voting, we had our winner. It turned out that I’d signed myself up for a portable NAND grudge match. After stewing on exactly when that meant for a few weeks, I finally pulled the trigger on our contestants. Behold!

Here’s a list of what you’re looking at:

• ORICO 10-port USB 3.0 hub (plenty of room for everyone below)
• PNY Turbo 64 GB USB 3.0 flash drive
• Patriot 64 GB Supersonic Rage Series USB 3.0 flash drive
• Corsair Flash Voyager Slider X1 64 GB USB 3.0 flash drive
• SanDisk Ultra CZ48 64 GB USB 3.0 flash drive
• Kingston Digital 64 GB 100 G3 USB 3.0 DataTraveler (too cool to be just a flash drive, I guess)
• Intel Optane Memory M10 16 GB
• ORICO Transparent NVMe M.2 USB 3.1 Type-C Gen2 enclosure

The total for all the contenders ran past my $100 limit, but I just couldn’t shake the idea of portable Optane out of my mind. So, I cashed in my precious Amazon bucks and added the Optane drive and NVMe enclosure to my cart as well. I’ve wanted to try one of the ORICO transparent enclosures for a while anyway (yes, it’s silly, but I think they look cool).

Joining the newly bought hardware are some drives I had laying around that I thought would make interesting competition (or at least a good frame of reference). I figure turning a retired SSD into an external drive by way of an enclosure or adapter that costs about the same as a 64 GB flash drive is worth a closer look. Check it out the scraps below.

• ORICO external mSATA UASP SSD enclosure
• Kingston Digital 60 GB mS200 mSATA SSD (best I could do was link to the 120 GB drive)
• StarTech SATA to USB 3.1 UASP hard drive adapter
• Samsung 840 EVO 120GB

Now that I have all the pieces of the puzzle, I can finalize my plan for testing. I’m not going to predict how long this project will take but look for the results of what I come up with down the road. Oh, and don’t be shy with your suggestions.

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• We don’t often lead our deals posts with mice, but there are juicy rodents to be caught today. The Logitech G903 Lightspeed wireless gaming mouse is one of the swankiest out there thanks to its top-notch sensor, sensible shape and button placement, and high-end wireless capabilities. This mouse usually runs you up quite a pretty penny, but it’s priced at only $74.99 at Best Buy right now. If that’s too rich for your blood or you simply prefer a simpler mouse, the Logitech G703 wireless mouse can be obtained for $54.99 also at Best Buy.

• Since we’re talking peripherals, might as well hit up the Corsair Strafe MK.2 keyboard with Cherry MX Silent switches. This is one of the highest-end clackers you can get your gerbil mitts right now. It’s a full-sized affair with dedicated media keys, a handy volume roller, per-key RGB LED lighting, and of course, those punchy, quiet MX Silent key switches. The keyboard also comes with a wrist rest, too. The price tag reads $99.99 at Best Buy.

• We haven’t seen many cheap quality power supplies lately, so it’s with great pleasure that I announce the Corsair Vengeance 750M. This power supply has semi-modular cabling, semi-passive cooling, and an 80 Plus Silver rating for efficiency. You can opt for single- or multi-rail power delivery, and the generously sized fan measures 140 mm across. The asking price is just $59.99 at Newegg with the promo code EMCTBVA36, and there’s a $15 rebate card available that can bring the end-game price to $44.99.

• Just the other day we had a real affordable pack of RAM, and now it’s even cheaper. The G.Skill Aegis 32 GB dual-channel kit of 3000 MT/s RAM comes clad in simplistic heatsinks and has 16-18-18-38 timings. The price right now is a silly low $109.99 at the ‘egg. Time for that 128 GB virtual machine host build, eh?

• It’s time for a c-c-c-combo! Here’s a pack that’s handy for new builds and upgrades both. The MSI GeForce RTX 2060 Ventus OC is one of the best samples of a mid-to-high end graphics card right now thanks to its combination of raw speed, low noise, and RTX ray-tracing smarts. It’s accompanied by the Intel 660p 1 TB NVMe solid-state drive, a well-known person around these parts. The drive push sequential data at speeds upt o 1800 MB/s, while its random I/O performance can hit 150K read IOPS and 220K write IOPS. The folks at Newegg will package both items for you for $419.98, or $40 off the regular combined total.

• Here’s a sweet deal if you’re looking for a gaming laptop that won’t cost you a paw and a leg. The Asus ROG G531GT-BI7N6 is a 15.6″ laptop with thin bezels around the 1920×1080 display and a backlit keyboard. Inside the compact-for-15.6″ chassis sits a latest-gen Core i7-9750H processor (six cores, 12 threads, and a 4.5 GHz turbo). Next to the chip sit 8 GB of RAM and a quite-roomy 512 GB NVMe solid-state drive. Pixel-pushing prowess comes by way of a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 graphics card with 4 GB of VRAM. The price for all this hardware is (drum roll) only $799.99 at Best Buy.

That’s all for today, folks! There’s a chance you’re looking for something we haven’t covered. If that’s the case, you can help The Tech Report by using the following referral links when you’re out shopping: not only do we have a partnership with Newegg and Amazon, but we also work with Best Buy, Adorama, Rakuten, Walmart, and Sam’s Club. For more specific needs, you can also shop with our links at Das Keyboard’s shop.

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• Daaaannng. That’s what I and the rest of the TR folks said when we found the G.Skill Aegis 32 GB dual-channel kit with 3000 MT/s DIMMs. These sticks are pretty simple. The heatsinks are minimal, and the timings are set to 16-18-18-38. What got us wowed is the price, which is a ridiculous $116.99 at Newegg. Soon enough you’ll get a pack of RAM free with your purchase of a large coffee.

• Next up, a graphics card from the red team. The ASRock Gaming X Radeon RX 590 OC has three operation modes and can push its core clock to 1591 MHz in the fastest one. The heatsink is particularly large for efficient heat dissipation, and the input selection includes two DisplayPorts, two HDMI outputs, and a dual-link DVI connector. The price is just $199.99 at Newegg, and you get free codes for Resident Evil 2 Remake and an additional two games.

• At a similar price point, we have the Intel 660p 2 TB NVMe SSD. Come on guys, y’all know this one. Data can stream sequentially at 1800 MB/s either way, and random I/O rings in at 220K IOPS both directions. As for today’s sale price, it’s only $176.99 with the cart code EMCTBVU47 at Newegg.

• There’s never been a better time to get your 4K on at an affordable price. The LG 27BK67U-B monitor is a 27″ display with an IPS panel with a resolution of 3840×2160. Its color gamut should cover 99% of the sRGB space, and the contrast ratio is 1000:1. There’s FreeSync support on hand, as well. The included stand not only has height adjustment, but can also swivel and pivot. The input port selection includes a handy USB-C connector. As for the price tag, it reads just $299.99 at Newegg.

• And now we move to the mobile aisle. There’s two laptops today, and we’ll start with the gaming model. The Asus TUF FX705DT-DR7N8 is a little pudgy with its 17.3″ display, but it’s got the goods inside. The machine’s powered by a four-core, eight-thread AMD Ryzen 7 3750H processor sitting next to 8 GB of RAM. There’s a lot of room for games in the 512 GB NVMe SSD, and a Nvidia GTX 1650 graphics card with 4 GB of VRAM handles pixel-pushing duties. The port selection includes a handy USB-C connector, and the asking price is just $849.99 at Best Buy.

• For something quite a ways more upmarket, there’s the Dell XPS 13 9380 laptop. Inside its well-milled chassis live an Intel Core i7-8565U processor, 16 GB of RAM, and a 512 GB NVMe drive. The star of the show, however, is the dashing 4K wide-gamut touch display. The machine is thin, light, and its price tag reads $1,597.99 at Rakuten.

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• It’s a big sale today, both literally and figuratively. Our leading deal is an LG 32GK650F-B display, measuring 32″ across and placing 2560×1440 pixels on its VA panel. The static contrast ratio is 3000:1, the refresh rate is a speedy 144 Hz, and there’s a blur-reduction mode and FreeSync support on tap. The stand has height, tilt, swivel, and pivot adjustments, and the price tag reads just $309.99 at Newegg.

• It’s time to talk storage, and the first speaker of the day is the Western Digital EasyStore 8 TB. This simple drive does its job with aplomb and no fuss, and even comes with included backup software. Pick one up for only $129.99 from Best Buy if you join My Best Buy (free registration). That works out to $16.25 a terabyte.

• Lately, it’s not a matter of whether the Intel 660p 1 TB NVMe drive will be on sale, rather, but rather, for how much. This drive can do 1800 MB/s in sequential reads and writes, and its random I/O figures ring in at 150K IOPS for reads and 220K IOPS when writing. The price tag currently reads just $87.99 at Newegg with the cart code EMCTBUD23. If you’re looking for a faster drive, then your huckleberry’s the HP EX920 1 TB. This model can do 3200 MB/s reading and 1800 MB/s writing, and is priced at 104.99 at Newegg.

• Look who’s back. Apple must really be feeling a sales pinch, as it seems that not a day goes by without a sale on some iDevice. Today’s entrant is the iPad 2018 (latest model) with 128 GB of storage and Wi-Fi connectivity. This sleek metal machine contains an Apple A10 Fusion SoC with four cores (2+2) ticking away and a PowerVR Series 7 XT Plus IGP. The colorful display has a resolution of 2048×1536, and there’s 2 GB on tap, as well as a 8827 mAh battery. Grab one of these for only $299.99 from Best Buy if you sign up (free) to be a My Best Buy member.

• The first laptop on hand is a mighty gaming machine. The sleek-looking Asus ROG Zephyrus (GA502DU-BR7N6) is quite pretty in yours truly’s opinion, and it’s powered by a four-core, eight-thread AMD Ryzen 7 3750H processor sitting next to 16 GB of RAM. Graphics horsepower comes by way of a cool ‘n’ quiet Nvidia GTX 1660 Ti Max-Q graphics card that slaps pixels onto the 120 Hz 1920×1080 IPS display. There’s a generously sized 512 GB NVMe SSD for storage. The asking price for the whole caboodle is just $1049.99 at Best Buy.

• The last item and second portable is the Lenovo IdeaPad 730S (81JB000AUS). This machine’s aluminum jib is of a cut above most laptops, and inside it sits a Core i7-8565U processor next to 16 GB of RAM and a 256 GB solid-state drive. The 11.9 mm chassis frames a 1920×1080 display and holds a battery that should be good for 10 hours of usage. The whole thing weighs just 2.43 lbs (1.1 kg) on your hands, and $754.02 on your wallet when ordered from Rakutenwith the checkout code SAVE15.

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• Judging by my Mark I eyeball, graphics card prices are starting a slow descent. Today’s bit of evidence is the EVGA RTX 2060 SC pixel-pusher. This mighty mid-range card has two fans sitting atop a generously sized cooler and a 1755 MHz boost clock. The card comes with Gripand the RTX-enabled Wolfenstein Youngblood. You can grab one of these for only $319.99 at Amazon. For what it’s worth, I’m a big fan of EVGA due to the easy RMA process, cheap warranty extensions, and 90-day Step Up window. Nvidia recently announced a spate of RTX-improved games to take advantage of the special silicon in the chip at E3, too.

• Samsung’s line of higher-end SSD has always been well-respected and well-reviewed, and find one of its members on sale today today. The Samsung 970 EVO 500 GB NVMe drive is a beast. It can do 3400 MB/s on sequential reads and 2300 MB/s when writing, and its random I/O figures clock in at 370K random read IOPS and 450K write IOPS. Yowza. No wonder the drive got a TR Recommended award. You can pick it up from Amazon for only $99.99 right now. I’m using one of these as a system drive in this very system I’m typing on, and I have nothing but good things to say about it.

• Here’s a combo with fast silicon, along with big silicon. The Intel Core i9-9900K is one of the tastiest chips to ever come out of Intel, packing eight cores and 16 threads clocked at up to a whopping 5 GHz. That makes for a chip that’s close to the fastest in existence for gaming, and equally powerful when working. The CPU comes in a bundle with the big honkin’ Intel 660p 2 TB drive, which I’m sure you’re all familiar with by now. The whole package will set you back $634.98 at Newegg, or $55 off the regular combined total.

• Speaking of big, how about a gigantic display? The LG 43MU79-B measures all of 43″ across its diagonal and has an IPS panel with a resolution of 3840×2160. The 60 Hz refresh rate isn’t going to win it any gaming awards, but that’s hardly the raison d’être for this monitor. Four onboard HDMI inputs are joined by a USB Type-C connector, and a remote control allows users to fiddle with mulitple types of picture-in-picture and picture-by-picture functions from a distance. The asking price is only $399.99 at Newegg. That works out to $9.3 for each 4K-enabled inch.

• I can personally attest that an iPad is one of the handiest items to have around the house or accompanying you when traveling. The latest-generation Apple iPad with 128 GB of storage and Wi-Fi is one heck of a tablet. It’s powered by an Apple A10 Fusion chip with four cores in a 2+2 arrangement and a PowerVR Series 7XT Plus IGP. The gorgeous 2048×1536 display has a pixel density of 264 PPI, and there’s 2 GB of RAM on tap. The price tag currently reads only $328 at the shores of Walmart.

• The last item today is a TP-Link Deco m4 mesh Wi-Fi three-piece system. This dual-band AC1200 system can cover a gigantic abode and handle up to 100 connected devices. It’s easy to setup and manage thanks to mobile apps, and there’s Alexa voice control on tap, parental controls, and an Ethernet backbone option for good measure. Pick the set up from Amazon for $159.99.

• Oh, right, before we forget, Newegg’s running a big SSD sale. You can find dozens of models at discounted prices if you use the cart code EMCTBUW25. Just click this link right here to browse the selection.

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• Our leading deal today is a simple but oh-so-handy combo. Y’all know the Intel 660p 1 TB NVMe drive. It’s reliable, solid, and can do 1800 MB/s pushing data on either direction. Today, it’s packaged with a Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB kit of 3000 MT/s DIMMs with short heatsinks. This whole enchilada will come in handy both for upgrades and new builds, and will set you back just $139.98 at Newegg. That’s almost the price of a 1 TB solid-state drive alone.

• If you have a need for more I/O horsepower than the Intel drive can offer, then what you want is the Adata XPG SX8200 Pro 1 TB SSD. For sequential operations, it can do 3500 MB/s for reads and 3000 MB/s for writes, while random I/O figures ring in at a whopping 390K random read IOPS and 380K write IOPS. Right now you can get one of these for just $123.24 from Rakuten with the checkout code ADA15.

• Keeping with the storage theme, it’s possible that you want to take data with you but don’t want to wait hours on end to get data onto or off it. The Samsung T5 portable SSD 2 TBstands ready for that purpose. This drive earned itself a TR Editor’s Choice award back when we reviewed it, and it can do 540 MB/s in either direction using its USB 3.1 interface. It comes with C-to-C and C-to-A USB cables for added convenience, and the price is a mere $297.99 at Newegg, or $299.99 at Amazon.

• It’s now time for a trio of 15.6″ portables, sorted in ascending order of performance. The first one is the Alienware A15R4-7291SLV. This machine has positively dashing looks and is powered by an Intel Core i7-8750H processor sitting next to 16 GB of RAM. Storage comes by way of a combo setup with a 256 GB NVMe SSD and a 1 TB hard drive, while pixels find their way onto the 400-nit G-Sync display via a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB card. This laptop’s price tag reads $1069.99 at Newegg.

• Moving on, here’s the Asus ROG Strix Scar II (GL504GS-DH76). This laptop also has an Intel Core i7-8750H chip inside and 16 GB of RAM, but the graphics card on deck is the mighty GeForce GTX 1070 with 8 GB of VRAM. Over on the storage division, there’s a 512 GB NVMe SSD. The thin-bezel 1920×1080 display has a whopping 144 Hz refresh rate for good measure, and the 802.11ac adapter has four antennas for more reliably connectivity. You can pick this machine up from Newegg for just $1299 with the cart code EMCTBUU43.

No, I have no idea what’s with the Azure ad on the display either.

• The final and mightiest portable is the Gigabyte Aorus 15-X9-RT4AD. Unsurprisingly, there’s also an Intel Core i5-8750H handling CPU duties, but this time around it’s next to big honkin’ Nvidia RTX 2070 graphics card that throws pixels onto the LG 144 Hz 1920×1080 display. There’s 16 GB of RAM and a combo storage setup with a 512 GB NVMe SSD and a 1 TB hard drive. This potent laptop can be yours for $1699 from Newegg with the cart code 72GPCS12.

The post Bargain basement: an Intel 660p 1 TB and 16 GB of fast RAM for $140, and much more appeared first on The Tech Report.

• There’s been a lot of sales on Apple gear these days. Today there are two items with the fruit logo, and the first one is the iPad Mini 64 GB with Wi-Fi. This is the most recent refresh of the tablet, and it’s a diminutive powerhouse. Inside sits an Apple A12 Bionic chip, a six-core affair in a 2+4 arrangement. The 7.9″ display has a resolution of 2048×1536 for an effective 324 PPI and a color gamut covering the vast majority of the DCI-P3 space. A 5124 mAh battery and 3 GB of RAM round out the main specs. This compact tablet is going for $350.99 at Rakuten with the checkout code HED10P and it’s available in all three finishes—space gray, silver, and rose gold.

• Fancy more power behind iOS (soon to be iPad OS), pencil support, and a high-refresh-rate display? The iPad Pro 11 64 GB with Wi-Fi (latest revision) says hi. The chip inside this beast of a tablet is an Apple A12X Bionic with 4+4 cores and a powerful custom Apple GPU. The TrueTone display has a 120 Hz refresh rate and covers about the entirety of the DCI-P3 space. There’s Apple Pencil support, a big honkin’ 7812 mAh battery, and 4 GB of RAM. Grab this high-end tablet for $649.99 from Amazon. Note that the discounted price shows up during the checkout step.

• Now, back to our scheduled SSD and RAM deals. We’re pretty much only publishing pricing updates on the Intel 660p NVMe drive, and for good reason. This is a solid entry-level PCIe SSD from a reputable manufacturer, and the 512 GB variant is capable of pushing 1500 MB/s on sequential reads and 1000 MB/s when writing. The biggest model with 2 TB can do 1800 MB/s in either direction. Right now you can get the 512 GB drive for just $49.99 from Amazon, while the 2 TB variant will set you back only $181.99 at Newegg with the cart code EMCTBTB22.

• While we’re on the topic of storage, check out the Western Digital EasyStore 10 TB external hard drive. This hard drive doesn’t have much on the specs list, but that’s perfectly fine for its intended purpose—mass storage. It uses a USB 3.0 interface, comes with included backup software, and is priced at only $159.99 at Best Buy.

• Next up, blinkenlit RAM: The G.Skill Trident Z RGB 32 GB dual-channel kit with 3200 MT/s sticks. These DIMMs don’t really need introduction. They were one of, if not the first, to do the RGB thing without an auxiliary power cable. Their great looks combined with the LED diffusers gives them a rather fetching design that combines easily with pretty much any build style. Newegg will sell you this set for $169.99.

• The final item today is a big one, literally. The Corsair Crystal 570X is a case with a rather unique design. It’s got tempered glass sheets across the entire chassis (top, front, and sides). It’s got room for six case fans and is compatible with multiple 360-mm radiators. The front and top have removable fan trays, and there’s a generous amount of room between the panels for air intake. This premium case usually costs a pretty penny, but you can pick it up today for only $109.99 at Newegg.

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• Apple's WDDC was yesterday, and keeping with that theme (by pure chance, really) our leading deal today is the iPad 32 GB with Wi-Fi (2018, latest model). This speedy, practical tablet has a pretty 2048×1536 display and is powered by an Apple A10 Fusion quad-core SoC with four CPU cores in a 2+2 arrangement and PowerVR Series7XT Plus graphics. The 2 GB of RAM might feel a little tight, but in yours truly's experience with his own iPad Air 2, that's more than fine for iOS. Right now Walmart wants but $249 for this nice tablet in gray, silver, or gold finishes.

• Next up, a positively gorgeous display that can fight on two fronts. The Aorus AD27QD is a 27" monitor with a 2560×1440 IPS panel capable of hitting a 144 Hz refresh rate. That's serious gamer cred already, but get this, the 10-bit panel's color gamut can cover a whopping 95% of the DCI-P3 space. That's more than good enough for video and photography work in your free time. The included stand offers swivel, pivot, tild, and height adjustments, and the asking price is just $539.99 at Newegg with the promo code EMCTBTW25.

• This wouldn't be a 2019 deals post without some RAM, so here we go. The G.Skill Ripjaws V 32 GB dual-channel kit with 3600 MT/s DIMMs is both capacious and darn fast. The timings are set to 19-20-20-40. The heatsinks are red and there's no RGB LED lighting, but jeez, at just $159.99 at Newegg, who cares?

• It's time for a c-c-combo. The Core i5-9600K is one sweet (and unlocked) mid-range CPU with six cores capable of hitting 4.6 GHz. That makes for one mean gaming machine, and the current deal has this chip going out the door with an Intel 660p 512 GB NVMe SSD. Newegg will hand you both items for $312.98, or $15 off the regular total.

• Next up, a great all-round laptop. The Asus VivoBook Slim (S530FN-BH73) is a 15.6" laptop with a thin-bezel 1920×1080 display. Inside its thin chassis sits an Intel Core i7-8656U processor, a four-core, eight-thread affair with a 4.6 GHz turbo. The chip is served by 8 GB of RAM, while a combo storage setup with a 256 GB SSD and a 1 TB hard drive offers more than enough room for nearly any task. You can do some light gaming on this machine, too, thanks to the Nvidia GeForce MX150 graphics card. Dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi and a Type-C USB port round out the specs list. Newegg is selling this machine for just $799.99.

• The final item today should go nicely into your living room, or perhaps an extra-fancy gaming setup. We're talking about the Pioneer VSX-933 7.2 receiver. This box o' watts can push 80 W per stereo pair and supports, well, everything. There's DTS:X and Dolby Atmos, all the HDR specs you can think of (HDR10, HLG, BT.2020), Dolby Vision compatibility, and multiple types of phase alignment functionality. Additionally, you get built-in Chromecast support, DTS Play-Fi, and about a hundred other alphabet-soup standards. The price reads just $239.99 at Newegg.

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• The memory returns, in the form of the G.Skill Ripjaws V 32 GB dual-channel kit with 3000 MT/s DIMMs. These sticks are simple, with generously sized heatsinks and no RGB LED lighting. The timings read 16-18-18-38, and the price tag reads just $134.99 at Newegg. Essentially, you're getting 32 GB for what 16 GB cost not all that long ago.

• Look who's back too! The Intel 660p 1 TB SSD is a staple of our deals posts, thanks to its ever-dropping price. This simple-but-solid NVMe drive can push 1800 MB/s in either direction, and it can do 150K random read IOPS and 220K random write IOPS. This drive's been off the news lately because there's only so low you can go… or is there? Newegg will currently sell you one for $90.99 with the cart code EMCTAWU22.

• If you're an I/O speed demon, then check out the Sabrent Rocket 1 TB drive instead. The company's not a household name, but the drive's got it where it counts, as it can do 3400 MB/s sequential read and 3000 MB/s write speeds. The drive's selling for just $113.65 at Amazon right now, making it apparently a budget Samsung 970 EVO.

• The last system component today is the Intel Core i7-8700 processor. This is mighty chip might not be of the latest-gen crop, but it nonetheless has everything it needs: six cores, 12 threads, and a turbo clock of 4.6 GHz. If you're looking for an upper-midrange, balanced chip, this is it. It comes with an included cooler, and it's currently priced at $284.99 at Newegg with the promo code EMCTAWT22.

• Shall we move to the mobile aisle? The Lenovo Legion Y530 (81LB003MUS) is one nice mid-range gaming machine. It's got an Intel Core i5-8300H processor (four cores, eight threads, 4 GHz turbo), 8 GB of RAM, and a 256 GB solid-state drive. Pixels find their way onto the 300-nit 1920×1080 display thanks to a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB graphics card. If there's one word to describe this laptop, it's definitely "balanced." Get it for $879.99 from Newegg.

  

• The final item today is a potent one. The Dell XPS 13 9370 (dncwy620h) is a real beast. Inside the well-manufactured chassis sits an Intel Core i7-8550U processor sitting next to 8 GB of RAM and a 512 GB NVMe drive. The star of the show, however, is the positively gorgeous wide-gamut 4K display with touch capability. This is a quality machine great build quality, keyboard, and trackpad. It's selling for just $1059.99 at Rakuten with the checkout code DELL109.

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To the surprise of absolutely no-one, Gigabyte has a big presence at Computex. The company sent over a whole packet of photos of its booth, which was mostly Aorus-flavored. Unfortunately, I'm not at Computex, and if you're reading this, you're probably not either. So instead of the booth, let's talk about the new products Gigabyte has on the way. Besides the seven Socket-AM4 motherboards based on AMD's X570 chipset, there's a trio of monitors and a PCIe 4.0 SSD to talk about.

As far as the motherboards go, I'm going to skim them real quick. If you're after the nitty-gritty, the product pages are up for each model and I'll link them as we go, or if you're impatient, I made the chart above that you can check out with the salient details.  Gigabyte also helpfully provided another chart that identifies the exact components used in the construction of each board's power delivery hardware. I'm not too knowledgeable about things at the component level, so I'll let the gerbils dissect that one.

Gigabyte's fanciest X570 board is the X570 Aorus Xtreme. I probably don't need to tell you that this E-ATX monster has everything plus the kitchen sink. Triple M.2 sockets, Intel GbE-plus-Aquantia-powered 10-Gigabit Ethernet, a fancy ESS Sabre 9218 DAC, and seven USB 3.1 ports are the functional highlights of the board. The Xtreme also has dual EPS12V sockets to drive its sixteen PowIRstages, which are in turn cooled by a microfin array heatsink whose heatpipe rests directly on the hardware just like the best CPU heatsinsks. Gigabyte brags that the board uses 5-W/mK thermal pads under the aforementioned VRM heatsink, as well as between the board and its metal backplate.

The X570 Aorus Master is only a small step down from the Xtreme. The Master board has the same triple-M.2-plus-six-SATA storage configuration, but its dual LAN trades the Aquantia chip for a Realtek-powered Gigabit Ethernet to sit alongside the Intel connection. It also steps the ESS DAC down to a 9118; what difference that makes, I do not know. You lose a couple of USB 3.1 ports in the transition, but the Master has a PCIe 4.0 x1 slot that the Xtreme doesn't. It also retains the fancy backplate and VRM cooling from the Xtreme.

The next step down in Gigabyte's X570 product family is the X570 Aorus Ultra. This board, much like other "Aorus Ultra" models before it, is sort of a "premium midrange" offering. It's stripped-down compared to its more expensive siblings, but it still has more or less all the functional parts that they do: triple M.2 sockets, a fancy ALC1220-VB audio codec, and a microfin array VRM heatsink. The majority of things that it misses are overclocker niceties, like diagnostic LEDs, onboard power and reset buttons, and a rear-panel reset button. 

Gigabyte's X570 Aorus Pro comes in Wi-Fi and no-Wi-Fi versions. Otherwise, it's yet another small step down from the Ultra model, and when I say "small" step, I'm serious. They have the exact same power delivery configuration, their stat-lines in the chart above are essentially identical, and ultimately the only real difference I can find in the two boards (Ultra and Pro) is that the Pro model loses an M.2 socket compared to its cousin. There's also no grille on the chipset fan, for what that matters.

Naturally, Gigabyte has a mini-ITX board coming: the X570-I Aorus Pro Wifi. There's something about the idea of running a twelve-core, 4.6-GHz processor in a mini-ITX machine that makes me giggle. Anyway, this board makes the necessary sacrifices for the sake of miniaturization, but it's still richly-appointed. A pair of M.2 sockets are joined by a third E-key slot for the Wi-Fi card. This is also the only board in Gigabyte's lineup that includes more than one video connection, in case you should want to use it with a chip that has integrated graphics.

Gigabyte didn't send me a picture of the Elite, so here it is in the booth.

The X570 Aorus Elite is probably the most appealing model to price-conscious gerbils. Not to say that it's cheap—perhaps "uncomplicated" is a nice way to put it. Despite its positioning in the product stack, the Elite still keeps a pair of M.2 sockets and Intel-powered Ethernet, as well as S/PDIF audio output and a USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C port for the front of the case. It does lose the ability to split the CPU's PCIe lanes and hook up a pair of graphics cards to 8 lanes, though. It also doesn't come with WI-Fi.

Last and likely least among Gigabyte's X570 boards is the X570 Gaming X. Despite the decidedly budget-oriented nature of this board, it should appeal to a certain segment of users. After all, it's the only board among the lineup to have PS/2 ports—and a pair of them, too. It also has three PCIe 4.0 x1 slots mixed in with its dual physical-x16 slots and pair of M.2 sockets. The real letdown of this board is the lack of USB 3.1 Gen 2 ports, although I'm not extremely excited about the single Realtek LAN chip or that ancient ALC887 audio codec, either. Still, it should be cheap.

As you'll know if you read the chart above, all of Gigabyte's X570-based Ryzen boards support ECC memory, which is interesting. Gigabyte is proud of a few of its other features too, like Q-Flash Plus, which lets you "update the BIOS even without installing a processor, memory, graphics card, or booting up the PC." Pretty handy for boards that are likely to see at least one more round of CPU releases. All of these boards also support XMP profiles for easy memory configuration, too.

Gigabyte's new monitors are the KD25F, CV27F, and CV27Q. We know the least about the CV27Q, so I'll start with that. Gigabyte says that the CV27Q is its first "curved, tactical gaming monitor" and that the 27" display uses a VA LCD in 2560×1440 resolution with 1500R curvature. The monitor supports refresh rates up to 165 Hz as well as FreeSync 2 HDR, and Gigabyte says the CV27Q can reproduce 90% of the DCI-P3 colorspace. Not bad at all.

Gigabyte also says the CV27Q supports a 1-ms response time, but I'm a little dubious on that point because the company reports the CV27F's response time as "1ms (MPRT)." For those who don't know, MPRT is "moving picture response time," and it represents the "felt" response time of a display. When talking about gaming monitors, a response time of "1ms (MPRT)" generally means that the monitor is using blur-reduction tech—usually backlight strobing—to achieve that figure. Besides, a real 1ms response time on a VA LCD is virtually unheard-of.

Other salient specs on the CV27F include a 27" diagonal, 1920×1080 screen resolution, 165-Hz refresh rate, 3000:1 static contrast, 400 cd/m² peak brightness, and FreeSync 2 support. It also has a USB 3.0 hub built-in, VESA mounting support, and like its cousin, the ability to reproduce some 90% of the DCI-P3 colorspace. I'd show you a picture of it, but it looks virtually identical to the CV27Q above, so refer to that.

I could show you the front, but it's not interesting. Check out this wacky stand!

Meanwhile, the KD25F is not like the others. This flat (i.e. non-curved) display is 24.5" from corner to corner, and it uses a TN LCD panel. You might think, "oh, it's a budget display," but you'd be mistaken. This monitor supports a 240-Hz refresh rate, after all. More interestingly, this monitor is the second (after BenQ's XL2546) that we've seen to support blur reduction strobing at 240 Hz. Gigabyte marks this model down for a 0.5ms response time, but that's an MPRT number of course.

If you're concerned about the image quality, you probably needn't be. The KD25F's TN LCD is a true 8-bit panel that can display the full sRGB colorspace, and its backlight allows it to shine at up to 400 cd/m². Typical contrast is average for a TN LCD at 1000:1. Like the other monitors, it supports VESA mounting and has a USB 3.0 hub built-in. Just make sure you sit directly in front of it.

Finally, that SSD I mentioned. Gigabyte paired up an "all-new" PCIe 4.0 SSD controller with similarly-fresh Toshiba BiCS4 NAND flash to make what it calls, simply, the "Aorus NVMe Gen4 SSD." (Maybe it'll get renamed later.) This thing is wreathed on all sides in copper to keep it cool, and that's not that surprising when you hear that it can whip out a full 5 GB/sec on sequential reads. Gigabyte's not talking random performance, unfortunately. Gigabyte's general Computex press release claims the drive comes in an 8TB capacity, but the SSD's own info only lists 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB sizes. We'll ask Gigabyte for clarification.

Gigabyte didn't say when any of this stuff would be available, or for how much. Sorry to get you excited with no payoff. We reckon the majority of the motherboards will be available in early July, around the time the CPUs for them are out. As for the rest of the hardware, it's anybody's guess.

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• Last week, we lead our deals with a high-end graphics card, and today's the time for a modest offering to shine. The PowerColor Radeon RX 570 4 GB is probably the choice pixel-pusher for those with modest needs or modest budgets. This unit in particular has a generously sized heatsink with two fans atop and a 1250 MHz boost clock. The shroud has a red-on-black dragon motif that could signify House Targaryen. The asking price right now at Newegg is a scant $119.99 with the cart code EMCTAVD55. The folks at AMD also throw in The Division 2 Gold and World War Z for free.

• Keeping with the budget theme, here are the potential processor and motherboard to go with the card above. The Ryzen 5 1600 is a six-core, 12-thread Zen processor capable of hitting a 3.6 GHz boost speed. It might not be the latest-and-greatest model, but it's still pretty potent and more than good enough for for a modest machine. The chip comes with a cooler and arrives into town with the ASRock B450-HDV motherboard, a fine circuit slab with a PCIe x4 M.2 socket. This set of two will set you back only $139.98 at Newegg, or $45 off the regular total.

• An capacious hard drive is always a handy item to have, whether it's for backups or just for storing cheese pictures. One of the most popular drives is the Western Digital MyBook 6 TB external spinner, a simple USB 3.0 affair that comes with included backup software and hardware encryption. You can currently pick one up for $95.96 from Amazon.

• Now, it's time for compact and mobile systems. The Intel NUC (NUC8i7BEH1) has horsepower that far belies its diminutive dimensions. Inside sits a Core i7-8559U processor, a 28 W affair that packs four cores and eight threads with a 4.5 GHz turbo clock. The chip also includes Iris Plus 655 graphics silicon with 128 MB of eDRAM—a cut well above your standard IGP, and more than capable for light gaming in a pinch. Newegg's currently selling this machine for $484.99, and it'll throw in a Corsair 8 GB SO-DIMM, an item with a $37 value. We'd suggest grabbing the pack plus another one of those DIMMs for a dual-channel 16 GB setup, and you'll be golden.

• Over on the mobility aisle, you'll find the Lenovo Ideapad 530S 14" laptop. This well-built machine comes with an AMD Ryzen 5 2500U processor, a quad-core, eight-thread affair with a 3.6 GHz boost clock. Next to the chip sit 8 GB of RAM and a 256 GB NVMe solid-state drive. The display is a 14" 1920×1080 affair, and the keyboard is backlit. You can pick this machine up for $424.99 from Rakuten with the checkout code SAVE15.

• The final bit of kit today is the ROG Strix Hero II gaming laptop (GL504GM-DS74). On the outside sits a 15.6" display with extra-thin bezels and a whopping 144 Hz refresh rate. To slap frames on the screen at that speed, the machine uses an Intel Core i7-8750H processor sitting next to 16 GB of RAM and a GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB graphics card. For storing your game collection, you get a 256 GB NVMe SSD and a 1 TB hard drive. The cooling system uses two fans, and the keyboard has RGB LED backlighting. The price tag reads just $1099.99 at Newegg with the promo code EMCTAVD32.

That's all for today, folks! There's a chance you're looking for something we haven't covered. If that's the case, you can help The Tech Report by using the following referral links when you're out shopping: not only do we have a partnership with Newegg and Amazon, but we also work with Best Buy, Adorama, Rakuten, Walmart, and Sam's Club. For more specific needs, you can also shop with our links at Das Keyboard's shop.

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• Here's quite the shocking deal. RAM prices have been quite low of late, but what if we had a kit that's fast and capacious and cheap? Yep, it's the G.Skill Ripjaws V dual-channel 32 GB set with 3600 MT/s sticks. No, that's not a typo—these things really go that fast, and it's a total of thirty-two gigabytes. The timings are 19-20-20-40, and the price is (drumroll) only $159.99. As usual, G.Skill offers lifetime warranty coverage. Best hurry up and grab these before they're gone.

• It's the return of the combos. The AMD Ryzen 5 2600X processor is as balanced a mid-range chip as they come, packing six Zen+ cores and twelve threads, each capable of ticking away at up to 4.2 GHz. There's a Wraith Spire cooler in the box, and AMD throws The Division 2 Gold and World War Z as freebies. Meanwhile, the Gigabyte X470 Aorus Ultra Gaming is one fine Ryzen motherboard. It sports an Intel Ethernet controller, a souped-up Realtek ALC1220-VB audio codec, and two M.2 sockets, one of which sits underneath a heatsink. There's a decent amount of metal over the VRMs and onboard LED lighting for good measure. Newegg will throw both these bits of kit in a box for the amount of $244.98, or $70 off what they'd normally go for separately.

• There's an additional combo deal today. The Intel 660p 512 GB NVMe drive should be a stranger to no-one, thanks to its ubiquity in our deals posts. It can push 1500 MB/s in sequential reads and 1000 MB/s when writing. Its combo companion is the MSI Radeon RX 70 Armor 8 GB OC graphics card, a well-known pixel-pusher with a 1268 MHz core clock. The price for the entire combo is just $189.98, or a $36 savings compared to the regular total. However, Newegg also throws in a $20 mail-in rebate that could bring the endgame total to $169.98.

• Any self-respecting desktop these days needs a good power supply to get it going, like the Corsair TX850M. This unit has semi-modular cabling and an 80 Plus Gold efficiency rating. There's a 140-mm fan inside, and the 12 V rail can push 62 A. The price is $89.99 at Newegg with the promo code EMCTAUB28, and there's a $20 rebate card on tap.

• Our cheap SSD storage today is of a slightly different breed. Sabrent might not be a household name, but the company makes some pretty darn fast SSDs. The Sabrent Rocket family of NVMe drives can push up to 3450 MB/s in sequential reads and 3000 MB/s when writing. Right now, you can pick up the 512 GB drive for $65.99 from Amazon with the checkout code 12HFT7HA, the version with 1 TB of capacity for $133.65 with the code 153EBNHY, or the big honkin' 2 TB model for $269 if you input 13BDRYQA.

• The last item today is the Asus Vivobook 15" laptop (F505ZA-DH51). Contrary to most portables, this one is powered by an AMD chip: the quad-core, eight-thread Ryzen 5 2500U with Radeon Vega 8 integrated graphics. Next to this chip sit 8 GB of RAM along with a 256 GB SSD. The display has a resolution of 1920×1080, and the price is currently set at $499 at Amazon.

That's all for today, folks! There's a chance you're looking for something we haven't covered. If that's the case, you can help The Tech Report by using the following referral links when you're out shopping: not only do we have a partnership with Newegg and Amazon, but we also work with Best Buy, Adorama, Rakuten, Walmart, and Sam's Club. For more specific needs, you can also shop with our links at Das Keyboard's shop.

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• Who wants a quality portable that can make short of work of heavy-duty number crunching but also game with the best? The Dell G15 5590 (gnvca5cr1000smp) is one mean machine, fitted with a spankin' new Core i9-9750H processor sitting next to 8 GB of dual-channel RAM. For pixel-pushing prowess, you'll find a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti graphics card with 6 GB of VRAM, while storage duties are taken care of by a combo setup with a 256 GB NVMe solid-state drive and a 1 TB hard drive. That's darn impressive enough already, but we saved the best for last: the display is a 1920×1080 IPS unit with a 144 Hz refresh rate and G-Sync adaptive refresh rate support. The price tag reads just $1179.99 at Rakuten. Daaaang, right?

• Want a cheap pack o' RAM? Right this way, good gerbil. The G.Skill Aegis 32 GB dual-channel kit with 2666 MT/s DIMMs is heckin' capacious and has 19-19-19-43 timings. The price is a silly low (drum roll) $124.99 at Newegg. That was the price for 16 GB not too long ago. If you prefer a kit with lower capacity but a higher speed, the Team T-Force Vulkan 16 GB set with 3000 MT/s sticks is going for $72.99, also at the fresh ovum.

• There's a ton of discounted storage today, starting with NAND flash. The Intel 660p 1 TB NVMe drive says "s'mee again" and brings its 1800 MB/s sequential read and write speeds to the table, as well as a good helping of random I/O at 150K read IOPs and 180K write IOPs. The price is now under a Benjamin: only $92.99 at Newegg with the cart code EMCTAUY22.

• Nobody should be forced to employ a rodent of poor upbringing. Affordable quality choices are now plentiful, like the SteelSeries Rival 310. We liked it well enough back when we reviewed it—particularly its accurate 1:1 sensor, and the sensible shape and button placement. Whereas we weren't enamored with the price tag back then, that's a complete non-issue today as you can obtain one for only $29.99 from Amazon. If you prefer a different take on an affordable mouse, the Logitech G402 Hyperion Fury has a distinct shape and sensor, but a similar price: $28.70, also at Amazon.

• The months-long drought of affordable mass storage seems to be coming to an end. The Western Digital EasyStore 8 TB spinner is a simple and straighforward external drive, and it'll set you back just $129.99 at Best Buy, or $16.25 a terabyte. The bigger model, the Western Digital EasyStore 10 TB, is comparatively even cheaper at $159.99 at the same e-tailer, or $16 per TB. Finally you have somewhere to store your cheese picture collection.

• Now here's something off left field: a monitor that you can game and do color-critical work on, from a place you wouldn't expect. The Aorus AD27QD is a 27" display with a resolution of 2560×1440. So far so good, but it uses a IPS panel with a 144-Hz refresh rate and—get this—10-bit color reproduction, leading to a color gamut that should cover 95% of the DCI-P3 color space. There's HDR support on tap and a 1 ms blur-reduction mode, too. If you were looking for a monitor that can do everything, this one is it. Get it for $539.99 from Newegg with the cart code EMCTAUY55.

That's all for today, folks! There's a chance you're looking for something we haven't covered. If that's the case, you can help The Tech Report by using the following referral links when you're out shopping: not only do we have a partnership with Newegg and Amazon, but we also work with Best Buy, Adorama, Rakuten, Walmart, and Sam's Club. For more specific needs, you can also shop with our links at Das Keyboard's shop.

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• It's time for a c-c-c-combo. The Intel 660p 512 GB NVMe drive has been in our deals posts more times than we can remember, thanks for its 1500 MB/s sequential read and 1000 MB/s write speeds. Today, it's joined by the Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB dual-channel kit with 3000 MT/s DIMMs, a simple but effective affair with low-profile heatsinks. Right now, Newegg will hand you both small boxes for the low sum of only $124.98. That's $24 off the regular combined price, and it's the perfect set of items for new builds and upgrades both.

• We usually save mobile devices for last, but today there's a real juicy deal on a Microsoft Surface Pro 6 convertible. The exact model on hand has an Intel Core i5-8250U processor, 8 GB of RAM, and a 128 GB NVMe SSD. The wide-gamut touchscreen on this device is quite gorgeous and has a resolution of 2736×1824. This particular deal includes the keyboard-and-touchpad Type Cover, and it's currently selling for $999.99 at Newegg. There's more to the story, though—you get a $100 Newegg gift card with your purchase, bringing the effective amount down to only $899.99.

• AMD's apparently running an aggressive desktop pricing game, and enthusiasts everywhere are reaping the benefits. The AMD Ryzen 7 2700 processor is a meaty mid-range chip that needs little introduction. We'll quickly rattle off key specs: eight Zen+ cores and 16 threads, each capable of hitting a 4.1 GHz boost speed, and 16 MB of L3 cache. There's a Wraith Spire RGB LED cooler in the box, and the price is just $194.99 at Amazon. We think this higher-end model is definitely worth the outlay, but if that amount is a little dear, then you should totally check out the six-core, 12-thread Ryzen 5 2600X for $159.99, also at Amazon, also with an included cooler. No matter the model, you get The Division 2 and World War Z for free courtesy of AMD.

• Basic-looking RAM is a good fit for any system, but you may be looking for something a little more ritzy, like the Geil Super Luce RGB Sync 16 GB kit of 3000 MT/s DIMMs. These sticks have technicolor lighting and diffusers at the top, don't need an additional cable to do their light dance, and they're compatible with Asus' Aura Sync. The asking price is just $79.99 at Newegg provided you use the cart code EMCTAUT26.

• Solid-state drives are real cheap these days, and we're getting to the point where it's practical and cheaper to get a big honkin' SSD for your, well, everything. The Intel 660p 2 TB NVMe drive is the biggest in the family, and it can do 1800 MB/s pushing data sequentially in either direction. Random I/O figures ring in at a healthy 220K IOPS both ways. The price tag reads but $184.99 at Newegg Flash with the cart code NEFPBN29. Get'em while they're hot; we doubt stocks are going to last long.

• The final deal today is a rather simple one: the Western Digital Elements 8 TB external hard drive. There ain't much to discuss, as it's a simple affair that just works. The price currently sits at $124.99 at Newegg if you input the cart code EMCTAUT54, an amount that works out to $15.62 a terabyte.

That's all for today, folks! There's a chance you're looking for something we haven't covered. If that's the case, you can help The Tech Report by using the following referral links when you're out shopping: not only do we have a partnership with Newegg and Amazon, but we also work with Best Buy, Adorama, Rakuten, Walmart, and Sam's Club. For more specific needs, you can also shop with our links at Das Keyboard's shop.

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The folks with the sailing ship logo make some interesting headsets, and one of the prime examples is the Corsair Void Pro RGB. A pair of 50-mm drivers sit ensconced in the earcups, and the noise-cancelling microphone is retractable and has a mute indicator LED. There's Dolby Headphone 7.1 surround sound virtualization on tap, as well as the requisite RGB LED lighting with Corsair iCUE support. You can get these cans on your head for just $54.99 from Newegg with the cart code EMCTATC22.

Picture not to scale of dimensions, but to scale of capacity

There are multiple storage deals today, but we're starting with the tiniest one—physically, that is. The Samsung EVO 512 GB EVO Select microSD card definitely merits a "it's bigger on the inside" remark, and its U3 rating means it can push at least 100 MB/s when reading. The manufacturer covers it with a 10-year warranty, too. Pick one of these up from Amazon for just $99.99.

Next up, our favorite solid-state drive of the moment: the Intel 660p NVMe SSD. We have two of these today in distinct capacities. The 512 GB model can push up to 1500 MB/s on sequential reads and 1000 MB/s during writes, and its asking price is just $56.99 at Newegg with the cart code EMCTATB24. That's probably a historic low right there. If you want a speedier, bigger unit, the 1 TB model can push 1800 MB/s sequentially either way, and can be had for $93.49 at Rakuten with the checkout code SAVE15. No need to bother with SATA drives if you have an M.2 slot open, folks.

Having 16 GB of RAM is the "just right" amount these days, but demanding users yearn for more capacity. The G.Skill Ripjaws V 32 GB kit of 3000 MT/s DIMMs is both speedy and roomy. The timings are 16-18-18-38, the heatsinks are red, and the price is just $144.99 at Newegg. Lemme run that by you again: 32 GB of fast RAM for under $150.

We're wrapping things up with a set of potent portables, both with distinct takes. The Asus ZenBook S UX391UA is a slim-and-light ultraportable with a 1920×1080 display, powered by an Intel Core i7-8550U processor. There are 8 GB of RAM on tap and a 256 GB solid-state drive. Additionally, you can connect fast peripherals or perhaps an external graphics card by way of a Thunderbolt 3 connector. The entire machine weighs just 2.3 lb (1.05 kg) and is only 0.5" (1.27 cm) thick. Best Buy will let you take one of these home in a dashing shade of burgundy for just $899.99.

The second machine hails from the same company—the Asus ROG GU501GM gaming laptop. It's quite the looker, and inside its pretty chassis sit an Intel Core i7-8570H processor and a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB graphics card. The RAM amount is 16 GB as befits a gamer's box, and there's a combo storage setup with a 128 GB solid-state drive and a 1 TB SSHD. A Thunderbolt 3 connector stands ready to hook up with fancy peripherals. The price is only $1099.99 at Best Buy.

That's all for today, folks! There's a chance you're looking for something we haven't covered. If that's the case, you can help The Tech Report by using the following referral links when you're out shopping: not only do we have a partnership with Newegg and Amazon, but we also work with Best Buy, Adorama, Rakuten, Walmart, and Sam's Club. For more specific needs, you can also shop with our links at Das Keyboard's shop.

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• Today we kick off the proceedings with a combo deal. The Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1660 OC 6 GB is one of the top budget graphics cards of the moment, more than good enough for speedy 1920×1080 gaming with high detail levels. The model on hand has a generously sized cooler with two large fans, a protective backplate, and a 1830 MHz core clock. Meanwhile, the Intel 660p 1 TB NVMe SSD is probably our favorite affordable drive of the moment thanks to its low pricing coupled with 1800 MB/s sequential read and write speeds. Newegg will sell you both these items for only $289.99, or $40 off their regular combined price. That's a fantastic deal for upgrades or new builds both.

• Since we're on the topic of affordable PCIe storage, let's look at the HP EX900 512 GB NVMe solid-state drive. This byte gumstick is good for pushing up to 2100 MB/s on sequential reads and 1500 MB/s on writes, while random I/O figures ring in at 120K read IOPS and 108K write IOPS. This drive is selling for just $57.99 at Newegg—a price that even boring slow SATA drives have a hard time matching.

• Next up, a trio of portables. We'll start off with the smallest one, the ultra-light MacBook Air (2018) fitted with an Intel Core i5-8210Y processor, 8 GB of RAM, and a 256 NVMe drive. The 13.3" display is a gorgeous 2560×1600 wide-gamut unit, and there are two Thunderbolt 3 connectors on tap. Best Buy is currently selling this machine in dark gray for just $949.99, a rather excellent deal for a premium ultrabook. You can also get it with a gold color or a silver finish for the same price.

• Over at the Dell aisle, we have two machines with the same price but two unique slants. Folks looking for a high-end portable work machine will undoubtedly want the Dell XPS 15 9570 (dycwb1647h). This quality-built laptop comes with an Intel Core i7-8750H processor, 16 GB of dual-channel RAM, and a speedy 512 GB NVMe solid-state drive. A Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti handles pixel-pushing duties and will handle games with aplomb. The wide-gamut display has a 1920×1080 resolution and 400 cd/m² maximum brightness. This machine just oozes quality, and it can be yours for $1410.99 at Rakuten.

• If gaming is more your thing, then you probably prefer the Alienware M15 (dkcwm1502hmp). This sleek and stylish gaming laptop has similar equipment to the XPS above: an Intel Core i7-8750H processor and 16 GB of dual-channel RAM, but storage duties are handled by a 256 GB NVMe solid-state drive coupled with a 1 TB SSHD. There's extra graphics horsepower under the hood, too, in the form of a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB graphics card. There's a Thunderbolt 3 port and RGB LED lighting on the keyboard, and the asking price is $1410.99 at Rakuten.

• Finally, something to handily ease your home Wi-Fi woes: the Google OnHub AC1900 Wi-Fi router. This unassuming jug can sprout an 802.11ac Wi-Fi signal at up to 1900 Mb/s aggregate speed. The exact version on hand is manufactured by TP-Link and comes with 13 total antennas in a circular pattern for wide-ranging coverage. Good hardware is only part of the story for any router, and the OnHub's software is a cut above most offerings, allowing for easy setup and monitoring of your home network. There's also IFTTT support, band steering, and Bluetooth Smart. This radio wave emanator can be had at Newegg Flash for a stupid-low $64.99 with the cart code NEFPBL71 while stocks last.

That's all for today, folks! There's a chance you're looking for something we haven't covered. If that's the case, you can help The Tech Report by using the following referral links when you're out shopping: not only do we have a partnership with Newegg and Amazon, but we also work with Best Buy, Adorama, Rakuten, Walmart, and Sam's Club. For more specific needs, you can also shop with our links at Das Keyboard's shop.

The post Bargain basement: a GTX 1660 card and an Intel 660p 1 TB SSD for $290 and more appeared first on The Tech Report.

• Mid-range CPUs are usually where the best performance-per-dollar lies, as is the case with the AMD Ryzen 7 2700X. This chip is a long-time TR favorite, thanks to its accoutrement of eight Zen+ cores and 16 threads, each capable of ticking away up to 4.3 GHz. There's a rather-good RGB-LED-lit Wraith Prism cooler in the box, too. Meanwhile, the HP EX900 250 NVMe SSD is a fine entry-level PCI Express drive, capable of pushing up to 2100 MB/s in sequential reads and 1500 MB/s when writing. Newegg will hand you both pieces of kit for just $294.99. Just add the processor to your cart and the solid-state drive will follow.

• If you live on the Intel side of the border, you'll probably be interested in the spiffy Asus ROG Strix Z390-E motherboard. It covers pretty much all the bases for most any high-end LGA1151 build. You get USB 3.1 Gen2 ports in Type-A and Type-C flavors, two M.2 slots, an Intel I219-V Ethernet controller along with an Intel Wireless-AC 9560 chip for 2×2 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.0, SLI and CrossFireX support, and a souped-up Realtek S1220A audio codec. Additional accoutrements include a built-in I/O shield, RGB LED lighting, and metal reinforcement around the main PCIe slots. Boards this nice are usually quite dear, but not today: $199.99 is all you need to take one home from Newegg so long as you apply the cart code EMCTYVB24.

• We usually post deals on regular-looking RAM sticks, but we have something today with a little more pizazz. The Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 16 GB kit of 3000 MT/s DIMMs are quite the lookers thanks to their diffused RGB LEDs and dark gray heatsinks. The timings are set to 16-20-20-38, and the price is just $99.99 at Newegg.

• 'Tis becoming the season again for capacious spinning storage. The Western Digital Elements 6 TB external drive is a simple-but-steady affair. It's got a USB 3.0 connection, subdued looks, and will set you back only $99.99 at Newegg with the cart code EMCTYVB36.

• The mobiles are up next. The Dell XPS 13 (xnita3ws607h) is one of the best laptops around, and the model we have on hand today is fitted with a colorful 1920×1080 display with 400 cd/m² maximum brightness, an Intel Core i5-8265U processor, 8 GB of RAM, and a 256 GB NVMe solid-state drive. Connectivity options include two Thunderbolt 3 connectors. The asking price is but $1019.99 at Rakuten with the checkout code Q52H-HMJJ-HMV9-K7PT.

• If you'd rather have a bigger machine packed to the gills with powerful hardware, then you'll want the Dell G15 5590 (GNvca5ch7043hmp). This machine packs an Intel Core i7-8750H processor, 8 GB of RAM, and a mighty Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 6 GB graphics card. That GPU can push out pixels at rather accelerated pace, and it'll go handy with the 1920×1080 display with 144 Hz refresh rate. Grab this machine for $1232.49 from Rakuten so long as you input the code Q52H-HMJJ-HMV9-K7PT during checkout.

That's all for today, folks! There's a chance you're looking for something we haven't covered. If that's the case, you can help The Tech Report by using the following referral links when you're out shopping: not only do we have a partnership with Newegg and Amazon, but we also work with Best Buy, Adorama, Rakuten, Walmart, and Sam's Club. For more specific needs, you can also shop with our links at Das Keyboard's shop.

The post Bargain basement: a Ryzen 7 2700X and a 250 GB NVMe SSD for $295 and more appeared first on The Tech Report.

• We've run what felt like hundreds of RAM deals in the past few months. Prices have stabilized in the meantime, and cheap's the new normal. It takes an outstanding discount to make the cut these days, but that's exactly what we have here with the G.Skill Ripjaws 32 GB kit of 3600 MT/s DIMMs. They're capacious, speedy, and ring in at a belief-begging $179.99 at Newegg.

• Builders with a penchant for many-cored machines are probably eyeing the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2950X processor. Underneath its massive heatspreader sit 16 cores and a total of 32 threads accompanied by 40 MB of cache. Each individual core can hit a 4.4 GHz boost frequency, and there are a total of 64 PCIe lanes on tap, all ready to hook up to high-speed devices. The pretty box containing this CPU can be yours for $679 from Amazon. This deal ends today, so hit it ASAP.

This portable SSD is definitely not to scale. Spot the USB-C port.

• A while back, we took a long, hard look at SanDisk's Extreme Portable SSD, and we gave it an Editor's Choice award for its massive speed and build quality. If you fancied something like that but felt it was a little dear, you're in luck. The SanDisk Extreme Portable 2 TB SSD is rugged, solidly built, and can push data into its host device at up to 550 MB via a USB Type-C port. Until the end of today, you can pick up this drive for $279.99 from Amazon.

• Since we're discussing storage, how about a tiny card instead? The SanDisk Ultra 400 GB microSDSX UHS-I card is one of the best offerings out there, and it's capable of 100 MB/s read speeds and has an A1 app performance rating. Amazon's selling these for just $64.17 at the moment—we figure they won't last long.

• Over at the Aisle of Portability, you'll find the Dell XPS 15 9570 (fncwxb1652h). The specific model at hand has a 1920×1080 display with 400 cd{m2} maximum brightness, a four-core, eight-thread Intel Core i5-8300H CPU coupled with 8 GB of RAM, and a 256 GB NVMe SSD. This quality portable has top-notch build quality, trackpad, and keyboard, and a price tag of just $899.99 at Newegg Flash while stocks last.

• The next portable in line is the Razer Blade Stealth (RZ09-02393E32-R3U1). This stylish 13.3" laptop has a drool-provoking  high-res 3200×1800 IGZO display. Inside the aluminum chassis sits a Core i7-8550U chip next to 16 GB of RAM and a capacious 512 GB NVMe SSD. The machine weighs only 3 lb (1.36 kg) and is just 0.5" (12.7 mm) thick. The port selection includes Thunderbolt 3 connectivity for good measure. Best Buy will happily hand you this machine for just $1189.99.

That's all for today, folks! There's a chance you're looking for something we haven't covered. If that's the case, you can help The Tech Report by using the following referral links when you're out shopping: not only do we have a partnership with Newegg and Amazon, but we also work with Best Buy, Adorama, Rakuten, Walmart, and Sam's Club. For more specific needs, you can also shop with our links at Das Keyboard's shop.

The post Bargain basement: $180 for 32 GB of super-fast RAM, a $680 Threadripper 2950X, and more appeared first on The Tech Report.

Colton's picks

• Are you sick and tired of your kids staring at a screen all day? I'm not! That said, sometimes it's nice to take a break from watching moving pictures on LCDs and OLEDs and get back to reading customizable fonts off good old-fashioned E Ink. I'm a big fan of Amazon's E-readers and they've got a sweet deal on a kids bundle going on right now. It's just $59.99 for an 8th gen Kindle along with your choice of cover, and it comes with the standard two-year worry-free Amazon guarantee for kids versions of their wares. The 2016 era model doesn't have lighting built in, but it's easy to read in daylight. So, load it up with the books you've always wanted your kid to read and boot them outside to produce some Vitamin D now that the weather is getting nicer. It's win-win.

• There's no glamour to this deal, but the savings is nice. Here's the bottom line: you probably need more MicroSD storage. I know all of my cards are sub-32GB, it's pathetic. High-quality stuff like Sandisk's 200 GB Ultra UHS-I MicroSD can be had for the low, low price of $25 at both Amazon and Newegg. That's prime impulse-buy territory, folks. Surely, you've got a crusty old DSLR, shiny new mirrorless camera, a drone, Raspberry Pi, GoPro, tablet, or other device that needs some love delivered in the form of a heap of extra storage? I just realized that I haven't even dropped one in my phone yet. That mistake ends today.

Ben's picks

Greetings, gerbils! Speaking of staring at screens all day, I've finally looked up from Shining Force CD to find that, in a move he's sure to regret, Bruno's out of the office today. The deals must go on, however, and we've got his back. Storage is the order of the day in this section. If you've started taking bites from your bytes because there's not enough room to hold them all, today's the day to expand your capacity.

• HP's EX900 series of NVMe solid-state drives have been the subject of some serious deals over the last couple of weeks, and this week is no different. This time, Newegg has the 500 GB flavor of this gumstick for a mere $59.99. The e-tailer's Shell-Shocker deal represents the best price we've seen for this drive yet. If you're in the market for a speedy boot disk, be sure to snatch this one up before it disappears.

• Earlier this week I was griping about the price of mass storage and lamenting that my whole life was on a single 6-TB chunk of spinning rust. Fortunately, Best Buy has a great deal so I can mirror my data. Right now, the blue shirts will sell you a Western Digital Easy Store 10-TB USB 3.0 drive for the low, low price of $159.99. That's $140 off the list price, and if you like base-10 storage figures, that works out to only $0.16 per gigabyte. This external drive is around half the price of comparable internal drives.

And now back to your regularly scheduled, but seriously important, boilerplate… There's a chance you're looking for something we haven't covered. If that's the case, you can help The Tech Report by using the following referral links when you're out shopping: not only do we have a partnership with Newegg and Amazon, but we also work with Best Buy, Adorama, Rakuten, Walmart, and Sam's Club. For more specific needs, you can also shop with our links at Das Keyboard's shop.

That bit above gets repeated twice a week, but we're super serious about it. Using those links really helps The Tech Report out. If you're looking for just a bit of extra justification for your next purchase, well, let helping us out be that little extra push you need to treat yourself.

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• Cheap NAND! Get yer cheap NAND here! Prices for flash chips are a-tumblin', like in the Intel 660p 2 TB NVMe drive. This super-capacious gumstick can push 1800 MB/s sequentially in either direction, and can clock 220K random IOPS either way. You can get one of these for $191.24 from Rakuten with the checkout code MN33.

• If your needs for both speed and capacity are a little more modest, then you'll be happy with the Crucial MX500 1 TB M.2 drive. This SATA affair is one of the best around, thanks to its rated speed of up to 560 MB/s in sequential reads and 510 MB/s for writes. Newegg will let you have it for $109.03 if you use the cart code EMCTYUB48.

• We have a couple extra-large LG displays today. The first is the LG 32QK500-W, a 32" affair bearing an IPS panel with a resolution of 2560×1440. The refresh rate can hit 75 Hz, and there's FreeSync (G-Sync compatible) support on tap. The static contrast ratio is 1000:1, and the brightness should hit 300 cd/m². This unit's selling super-cheap today: only $219.99 at Amazon.

• Need to go even bigger, and much sharper? Right this way. The LG 43UD79-B almost doesn't qualify as a monitor, for the best of reasons. Its 43" IPS panel has a resolution of 3840×2160 and should cover close to 100% of the sRGB color space. The maximum brightness is 350 cd/m²—an impressive amount for a display this large. Signals can go into the monitor via HDMI, DisplayPort, or USB Type-C connectors. Newegg wants but $529.99 for this vast expanse of pixels, provided you input the cart code EMCTYUB33.

• I'll admit, I have a particular weak spot for HP's Spectre x360 convertible laptops. We have one of those today, and it's stuff with fancy hardware, to boot. Outside, there's a super-sharp 13.3" touch display with a resolution of 3840×2160, USB Type-A ports and two Thunderbolt 3 connectors, and an active pen. Inside sit a Core i7-8565U processor coupled with 16 GB of RAM and a 512 GB NVMe solid-state drive. This sleek machine weighs just 2.8 lb (1.26 kg) and is 0.5" (12.7 mm) thick. Drooling yet? Grab one of these from Best Buy for just $1049.99.

• The Microsoft Surface Laptop is also one of the handiest machines around, thanks to its compact format, well-thought-out ergonomics, and quality display. The model on sale has a Core i7-7660U processor with Iris Pro graphics, 8 GB of RAM, and a 256 GB NVMe SSD. The 2256×1504 3:2 touchscreen has great color reproduction, and the battery should be good for 14 hours of usage. Newegg is selling this machine for $779.99 while stocks last.

• Speaking of colorful displays, the one atop the Apple iPad Pro 11" with Wi-Fi and 64 GB of storage (2018) is one of the finest on any mobile device. The MTXN2LL/A model on hand is the latest version of the high-end tablet, powered by an A12X Bionic chip, and with 4 GB of RAM on tap. The 12" 2388×1668 display has a 120 Hz refresh rate. Best Buy will hand you one for just $674.99. The good folks at Amazon, too, are selling this for $674.99.

That's all for today, folks! There's a chance you're looking for something we haven't covered. If that's the case, you can help The Tech Report by using the following referral links when you're out shopping: not only do we have a partnership with Newegg and Amazon, but we also work with Best Buy, Adorama, Rakuten, Walmart, and Sam's Club. For more specific needs, you can also shop with our links at Das Keyboard's shop.

The post Bargain basement: an Intel 660p 2 TB for $191, a Core i7 Surface Laptop for $780, and more appeared first on The Tech Report.

A fair day, good gerbils. While I'd like to think that I have a decent enough moral compass, I've been considering the infliction of bodily harm these past couple days. You see, my apartment building is glued to the next one over, and someone over there is apparently doing some serious remodeling. Given that I work remotely with a multiple-hour timezone difference, I usually sleep over the morning. The hammers started at 08:00. I'm becoming angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry. The only thing that soothes me right now is sweet PC hardware deals. Here's today's catch.

• Our leading item is one heck of a combo pack. The AMD Ryzen 2700X is one of the best mid-range CPU choices of the moment, thanks to its eight Zen+ cores and sixteen threads, each capable of hitting 4.3 GHz. The chip will go nicely into the Gigabyte GA-AX370-Gaming 3 mobo, a straightforward but capable affair with metal jackets around the main PCIe slots, an M.2 PCIe x4 slot, and a souped-up Realtek ALC1220 audio codec. The folks at Newegg will sell you both pieces for $319.98, or $75 off the regular total.

• You can link that awesome combo with this hyper combo for an ultra combo finish. The first item in this here pack is the Intel 660p 512 GB—probably the SSD of the moment, thanks to its combination of low price and good performance, capable of pushing 1500 MB/s in sequential reads and 1800 MB/s writing. That drive goes well with the G.Skill Aegis 16 GB kit with 3000 MT/s DIMMs, a no-frills set that just does its job. Newegg will box you both items for just $129.98, an amount that's $28 off the regular combined total and that would get you only the RAM kit just a few months back.

• That processor above is pretty nice, but if you want something with even more grunt, we have yet another combo deal that could also go with the SSD-and-RAM pack. The Intel Core i9-9900K is a top-shelf CPU that's nigh on the best gaming chip around, and it's also a productivity beast. After all, eight cores and sixteen threads of Coffee Lake clocked at up to a sky-high 5 GHz pack some serious punch. Since that processor needs as suitable home, the Asus ROG Strix Z390-E motherboard should fit the bill. It's got sizable heatsinks sitting next to an integrated I/O shield, two M.2 slots, a high-end S1220A audio codec, Intel-powered Ethernet and Wi-Fi, USB Type-A and Type-C ports, and, naturally, RGB LED lighting. Grab both these high-end pieces of kit for $684.98 from Newegg, or $100 off what they'd cost separately.

• How about an affordable gaming monitor that hits every note just right? The Acer ED242QR is a 24" display with a resolution of 1920×1080. That's as banal as banal comes, but there's more than meets the eye. The VA panel is curved and has a maximum refresh rate of 144 Hz. There's FreeSync adaptive refresh rate support on tap, and an input selection with DVI, HDMI, and DisplayPort connectors. The price? A mere $149.99 at Newegg with the cart code EMCTYTA35. That's insane.

• Bigger is oftentimes better, and that may well be the case with the LG 34UC79-G display. It's a humoungous 34" display with a resolution of 2560×1080 and a 144 Hz refresh rate. As befits a good gaming monitor, there's FreeSync support on tap. As an added bonus, this display comes with a 1 ms motion blur reduction feature that'll certainly come in handy. The price is just $454.99 at Newegg.

• The final bit of kit today is a powerful one. The Seasonic Focus Plus 550 W power supply is a quality box o' watts. It's got fully modular cabling, semi-passive cooling, and enough connectors for most any rig. The efficiency rating is 80+ Gold, and the price is $74.99 at Newegg. That's not bad, but the trick here is the $25 rebate card that can bring the endgame total to just $49.99.

That's all for today, folks! There's a chance you're looking for something we haven't covered. If that's the case, you can help The Tech Report by using the following referral links when you're out shopping: not only do we have a partnership with Newegg and Amazon, but we also work with Best Buy, Adorama, Rakuten, Walmart, and Sam's Club. For more specific needs, you can also shop with our links at Das Keyboard's shop.

The post Bargain basement: a Ryzen 7 2700X and a mobo for $320 and much more appeared first on The Tech Report.

• It's a pretty safe bet that most gerbils would love an Intel Core i9-9900K. After all, it's simply one of the best-performing chips in recent memory, thanks to its consistently high performance with barely any weak spots. Its eight Coffee Lake cores and sixteen threads tick away at up to a whopping 5 GHz (you read that right), making for a chip that's ideal for gaming and working both. It's usually pretty expensive, too, but right now you can pick one up for $489.99 from Amazon or from the folks at Walmart for that same amount.

• You didn't think there would be a deals posts without RAM and SSDs, right? On the memory front, we have the Team T-Force Vulcan 16 GB kit of 3000 MT/s DIMMs. The sticks have unobtrusive red-and-black heatsinks, and the timings are 16-18-18-38. The price currently sits at a silly $74.99 with the cart code EMCTYTD26 at Newegg.

• That e-tailer has had a hot streak of solid-state drive deals lately, as evidenced by the HP EX900 500 GB drive. This gumstick can push up to 2100 MB/s when reading and 1500 MB/s on writes, and its random I/O figures ring in at 120K random read IOPS and 108K write IOPS. For only $64.99, you can take one home from Newegg.

• If you a need bigger bucket o' NAND, then the Intel 660p 1 TB SSD should fit the bill nicely. It can do 1800 MB/s in sequential operations in either direction, 150K random read IOPS, and 180K random write IOPS. It's currently going for just $102.99 at Newegg with the cart code EMCTYTE43. If that's still not big enough for you, then the Intel 660p 2 TB version is sitting at $199.99 with the cart code NEFPBK55, while stocks last.

• Over at the monitor aisle, we have a big one. The MSI Optix MAG341CQ is a 34" ultra-wide behemoth, with a 3440×1440 VA panel with a 3000:1 contrast ratio. Its refresh rate can hit 100 Hz, and there's FreeSync support on hand for good measure. You'd think that dollar tags are largely proportional to monitor inches, but this model's priced at just $399.99 with the cart code EMCTYTE64 at Newegg. There's an additional $20 rebate card on top of that, too.

• Moving on to portables, check out the MSI GV62 8RE-015 15.6" laptop. Ignore the weird model name and focus on the hardware inside: an Intel Core i7-8750H processor accompanied by 16 GB of RAM and a GeForce GTX 1060 3 GB graphics card. There's a combo setup with a 128 GB NVMe solid-state drive and a 1 TB hard drive for storage, and the display has a resolution of 1920×1080. Newegg will hand you one of these for $1019 with the cart code EMCTYTE49. That's not bad already, but the gigantic $150 rebate card can turn this into a $879 purchase.

• The final item today is another laptop, the Acer Swift 3 (NX.GQJAA.003). It's a sleek, thin affair clad in a gorgeous blue finish. Inside, there's an Intel Core i5-8250U processor, 8 GB of RAM, and a 256-GB solid-state drive. Acer says the battery should be good for 10 hours, and there's a fingerprint reader on hand. The price? Just $529.99 at the good ol' Newegg.

That's all for today, folks! There's a chance you're looking for something we haven't covered. If that's the case, you can help The Tech Report by using the following referral links when you're out shopping: not only do we have a partnership with Newegg and Amazon, but we also work with Best Buy, Adorama, Rakuten, Walmart, and Sam's Club. For more specific needs, you can also shop with our links at Das Keyboard's shop.

The post Bargain basement: an Intel Core i9-9900K for $490 and much more appeared first on The Tech Report.

• Playing games or listening to music with poor-quality output devices is borderline torture. What you're looking for is something like the Corsair Gaming Void Pro RGB Wireless headset. This sleek-looking pair of cans has 50-mm neodymium drivers, Dolby Headphone 7.1 support, and a quality boom mic. Corsair says the battery should be good for 16 hours of wireless audio, and that you can get 40' away from your computer before your teammates realize you're not there. Newegg will sell you this set for $69.99 with the cart code EMCTYTV35. Sound good to you?

• Next up: a fine, affordable board for a Ryzen system. The Gigabyte B450 Aorus M is a solid offering with an M.2 slot with a heatsink on top, a an upgraded Realtek 8118 Ethernet controller, USB 3.1 Gen2 ports, and onboard RGB LED lighting. I've built a friend's system using this model, and it worked fine, which isn't something you can say about every board. Grab one for $74.99 from Newegg.

• Here's today's pack o' NAND, the Intel 660p 512 GB NVMe drive. This model is a common sight on our deals posts, as it's a fine NVMe desktop drive as they come. It should be good for 1500 MB/s sequential reads and 1000 MB/s writes. At the price it's at, there's no need to bother with SATA drives anymore: only $59.99 at Newegg with the cart code EMCTYTA22. Alternatively, you can get the Intel 660p 512 GB drive plus a G.Skill Aegis 8 GB DDR4 stick at 3000 MT/s for a total price of just $89.98.

• Here's today's rather large pack o' NAND, in the form of the HP EX920 1 TB NVMe solid-state drive. This fine PCI Express drive can push data at a rate of 3200 MB/s for reads and 1800 MB/s when writing. Its random I/O specs ring in at 350K IOPS for reads and 250K IOPS when inhaling data. Those specs scream "high-end," but the price is decidedly budget at only $140.24 at Rakuten with the checkout code KEY25.

• A day doesn't go by without a fast gaming laptop on sale, and the one on hand today is the Dell G7 15 7590. This is a decidedly high-end model, both in build quality and specs. Ticking away inside the chassis sits an Intel Core i7-8750H processor sitting pretty next to 16 B of RAM and a storage combo setup with  a 128-GB NVMe SSD plus a 1 TB hard drive. The star of the show, however, is the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 graphics card—a rather beefy pixel-pusher for a laptop. The 15.6" IPS screen has a resolution of 1920×1080, and the generous port selection includes USB 3.1 Gen2 ports of multiple flavors, Ethernet, HDMI, and mini-DisplayPort connectors. Take this portable home for $1479.99 from Rakuten.

• Looking for a meaty RAM upgrade? Here's the G.Skill Ripjaws V 32 GB kit of 3000 MT/s DIMMs. There's not much to say about these, and that's just fine. The heatsinks are red, the timings are 16-18-18-38, and the price is a mere $149.99 at Newegg.

That's all for today, folks! There's a chance you're looking for something we haven't covered. If that's the case, you can help The Tech Report by using the following referral links when you're out shopping: not only do we have a partnership with Newegg and Amazon, but we also work with Best Buy, Adorama, Rakuten, Walmart, and Sam's Club. For more specific needs, you can also shop with our links at Das Keyboard's shop.

The post Bargain basement: a Corsair Void Pro RGB wireless headset for $70 and more appeared first on The Tech Report.

• The big-hitter deal of the day is the Intel 660p NVMe 2 TB solid-state drive. This is a workhorse drive fit for any general-purpose machine, and it can push 1800 MB/s on sequential reads and 1800 MB/s when writing. The random I/O figures are actually pretty decent at 220 K IOPS in either direction. You can slap this gumstick in your PC for just $199.99 from Newegg with the cart code EMCTYTV23.

• Might as well continue along the same lines, with the Crucial P1 TB NVMe drive. This offering is roughly in the same performance bracket as the drive above, and it can push 2000 MB/s in sequential reads and 1700 MB/s when writing. When it comes to random I/O, this model clocks in at 170K IOPS for random reads and 240K IOPS when writing. You can find this drive for the same exact price at two large e-tailers right now: $104.99 at the good ol' Newegg, and $104.99 from the folks at Amazon.

• Next up, a combo deal. The AMD Ryzen 7 2700 doesn't need a lot of introduction around these parts. It's got eight Zen+ cores, 16 threads, and each core can clock up to 4.1 GHz. Those are all good things, and that's 'nuff said. That chip will slot nicely into the MSI B450-A Pro motherboard. This simple-but-straightforward affair has a metal-jacketed main PCIe slot, an M.2 slot, and actual VRM heatsinks. Newegg is packaging up both items for $289.98, or $50 off the regular combined price.

• Here's one heck of a speedy display. The Asus ROG Swift PG258Q is a 25" display with a resolution of 1920×1080. So far so banal, but there are quite a few tricks up its sleeve. For starters the maximum brightness rating is 400 cd/m², and the refresh rate is a whopping 240 Hz. Finally, there's support for G-Sync adaptive refresh rate tech and a nitfy height-adjustable stand. Grab this monitor from Newegg for $489.99 with the cart code PG258QSALE.

• Moving on to the topic of potent portables, here's a hot model: the Dell G5 15" 5587 (fncwG5F703RPhMP) gaming laptop. This quality machine comes fitted with an Intel Core i7-8750H processor sitting next to a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB graphics card. There's 16 GB of RAM on tap, thankfully in a dual-channel configuration. A combo setup with a 128 GB NVMe drive and a 1 TB hard drive handles storage duties. The 15.6" display inside the lid has a resolution of 1920×1080. Rakuten asks but $887.49 for this laptop if you input the code DELL150 during the checkout process.

• Our second mobile machine today is similar to the one above, yet different. The Asus ROG Strix Hero II laptop we have on hand also has an Intel Core i7-8750H processor and a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB graphics card, but most of the similarities stop right there. The RAM allotment is 8 GB, but there's a 256 GB NVMe solid-state drive. The hottest piece of kit, though, is the display: a 15.6" 1920×1080 with a 144-Hz refresh rate and a 3-ms response time, a fine fit for fantastic fast-paced gaming action. Walmart is selling this machine for $949.99 right now.

That's all for today, folks! There's a chance you're looking for something we haven't covered. If that's the case, you can help The Tech Report by using the following referral links when you're out shopping: not only do we have a partnership with Newegg and Amazon, but we also work with Best Buy, Adorama, Rakuten, Walmart, and Sam's Club. For more specific needs, you can also shop with our links at Das Keyboard's shop.

The post Bargain basement: an Intel 660p 2 TB NVMe drive for $200 and much more appeared first on The Tech Report.

• It's not every day that we can say that a monitor covers every base, but that's exactly what the Acer Nitro VG271UP does. This 27" slab o' pixels has an IPS panel with a resolution of 2560×1440 and a 144 Hz refresh rate. That's quite fine already, but there's much, much more. The display's maximum brightness is 400 cd/m², warranting its DisplayHDR 400 certification. Not only that, its color gamut should cover 95% of the DCI-P3 space, making this monitor extra-colorful and a fine fit for photography or video work alongside gaming. Finally, Acer says the response time can go as low as 1 ms with the help of a blur-reduction mode. The price for all this? In internet words, "lol." Only $309.99 at Newegg with the cart code EMCTWVE27.

• We've said that RAM's dirt-cheap lately, and it seems that dirt's getting cheaper still. We have three kits for you. The Micron Ballistix Sport LT 16 GB dual-channel kit of 3000 MT/s DIMMs clad in silver heatsinks is currently selling for just $74.69 with the cart code EMCTWVE22 at Newegg. If you prefer just a little speed boost, then the Micron Ballistix Sport LT 16 GB set with 3200 MT/s sticks will set you back $84.29 at Newegg with the code EMCTWVE35. Finally, if you're a power user, you'll certainly be interested in the Micron Ballistix Sport LT 32 GB kit with 3200 MT/s DIMMs for the amount of just $174.59 provided you use the code EMCTWVE23. Do we really need to say more?

• Both volatile and non-volatile memory is selling for peanuts, and now we're going to look at the Micron 1100 512 GB M.2 solid-state drive. This SATA gumstick affair is a modest offering that's still capable of pushing 530 MB/s in sequential reads and 500 MB/s when writing. Random I/O figures ring in at 92K read IOPS and 83K write IOPS. We saved the best news for last, though: the price tag reads a mere $44.99 at Newegg.

• If you want a drive with a little more oomph, then the HP EX950 1 TB NVMe SSD will be your huckleberry. This drive's made of fast, as it can push up to 3500 MB/s in sequential read operations and 2900 MB/s when writing. Those with a requirement for heavy I/O will more than make use of the drive's ability to do 410K random read IOPS and 370K write IOPS. The speed might be high, but the price is low: $164.99 at the good ol' Newegg.

• Everyone loves them some nice peripherals, like those of the folks at Logitech. Amazon's currently running a big sale on the manufacturer's wares, and while there's a lot on offer, there are a few higlights. The Logitech G600 MMO mouse is listed for $24.99, the quite-handy Logitech K400 wireless keyboard-and-touchpad combo is going for $17.98, and the Logitech G603 Lightspeed wireless rodent will set you back $43.68. Those with a penchant for a headset will find the Logitech G933 Artemis Spectrum going for $94.49, and the Logitech G633 Artemis Spectrum with a price tag of $59.99.

• It's time for portables, of which we have two. The Dell XPS 13 9370 (XPS9370-5156SLV-PUS) is a sleek, stylish, and powerful machine. The version we have on hand packs a Core i5-8250U processor, 8 GB of RAM, and a 128 GB NVMe SSD. So far so normal, but this machine's party trick is the gorgeous wide-gamut 3840×2160 touch-enabled display. Additionally, there are two Thunderbolt 3 ports for connecting high-speed peripherals. The whole machine weighs a mere 2.7 lbs (1.22 kg)—just as light as the price, $949 at Newegg.

• There's a lot of "gaming" laptops these days that barely qualify. That's definitely not the case with the MSI GE63 Raider (RGB-011). This is one heck of a complete machine. The basics start with an Intel Core i7-8750H CPU playing along with a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB graphics card. 16 GB is the generous amount of RAM the processor has to play around in, and there's a storage combo setup with a 256 GB SSD and a 1 TB hard drive. These specs are already darn solid, but the star of the show is the 1920×1080 wide-gamut display with a 120 Hz refresh rate and a 3 ms response time. Additional bonuses include per-key RGB lighting on the keyboard, a Killer Ethernet adapter. Newegg wants but $1149 for this machine if you use the cart code EMCTWVE37, and there's another $100 dangling off a rebate card.

That's all for today, folks! There's a chance you're looking for something we haven't covered. If that's the case, you can help The Tech Report by using the following referral links when you're out shopping: not only do we have a partnership with Newegg and Amazon, but we also work with Best Buy, Adorama, Rakuten, Walmart, and Sam's Club. For more specific needs, you can also shop with our links at Das Keyboard's shop.

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Just look at the size of that…cooler.

That slab of metal hides a Phison E12 controller backed by 512 MB of cache and up to two full terabytes of NAND. Unfortunately, Patriot's data sheets for the VPN100 tell us neither what kind of NAND nor the drive's write endurance rating. The Phison controller does get a full four lanes of PCI-Express connectivity, though.

Patriot rates the 2 TB version's sequential reads and writes at 3100 MB/s. Peak random 4-kilobyte reads and writes for that capacity top out at a substantial 500K IOPs. Those figures fall off once you get down to 512 GB or 256 GB; the smallest drive is only rated for 1000 MB/sec sequential writes. Patriot says the enormous heatsink will help keep the flash cool and performance consistent. An external thermal sensor should help ensure the drive doesn't overheat. 

Patriot backs all versions of the VPN100 with a three-year warranty. These drives are already available at e-tail, too. Newegg lists the drives at $70 for the 256 GB version, $110 for 512 GB, and $200 for 1 TB. Amazon has the smaller drives available: $60 for 256 GB and $95 for 512 GB.

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• At first glance, a super-cheap high-end CPU sure looks like an oxymoron. There's a story behind that today, though. The AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1920X is a mighty X399 processor with a total of 12 cores supporting SMT, for a total of 24 threads. Sheesh. Each individual core can hit a 4 GHz turbo speed, and there's 32 MB of L3 cache on tap. This CPU is kind of the gateway drug to the world of high-end desktop and workstation computing, and it's selling for a stupid-low $279.99 at Amazon. I'd hurry up and order if I was you, we suspect that deal won't last long. Thanks to Shinare at the TR forums for the hot tip.

• There's been a string of great NVMe drive deals lately, and the one we have today is for the Silicon Power P34A80 1 TB NVMe SSD. This unassuming-looking drive packs a real punch, as it's underpinned by a Phison E12 controller and Toshiba 3D TLC NAND. It's rated for sequential speeds of up to 3200 MB/s on reads and 3000 MB/s on writes. It's also covered by a five-year warranty to boot. That list of specs is more often seen on marked-up drives of bigger brands, but you can currently have this model for just $144.99 from Amazon.

• You've got the processor up above, now check out the RAM. The Geil Super Luce RGB Sync 16 GB kit at 3000 MT/s is a spiffy-looking set of sticks. The generously-sized heatsinks ensconce RGB LED lighting compatible with Asus' Aura Sync software, ready to make your build stand out. The price is particularly palatable at just $89.99 at Newegg.

• How about you stop trying to aim in games and just do it? For that, you'll need a quality rodent like the Razer DeathAdder Elite. It's got an uncomplicated shape, just the right amount of buttons, rubber side grips, a 16,000-DPI sensor, and RGB LED lighting. In short, everything you need, and nothing you don't. The asking price is currently $37.99 at Amazon, a figure that we suspect won't last long.

• Let's hear it for thin-and-light portables. We have a pair of those today, and the first one is the Asus ZenBook 15 (UX533FD-NS76). This 15.6" machine has a 1920×1080 display surrounded by thin bezels, and it's powered by a might Intel Core i7-8565U chip, a quad-core, eight-thread affair with a doubletake-inducing 4.6 GHz turbo speed. The chip sits next to 16 GB of RAM and a GeForce GTX 1050 Max-Q graphics card with 2 GB of its own VRAM. Digital pack rats will be extra-happy to know that this machine comes with a 1 TB NVMe SSD (jeez). As the proverbial cherry on top, there's an IR camera with Windows hello support, a USB Type-C port, and Bluetooth 5.0. Grab this portable for just $1299.99 from Newegg.

• You might prefer a slightly smaller, simpler machine like the Acer Swift 3 (NX.GQJAA.003). This blue-shaded laptop comes fitted with an Intel Core i5-8250U processor, 8 GB of RAM, and a 256-GB solid-state drive. The 14" 1920×1080 display sits inside a metal chassis. There's 802.11ac Wi-Fi in a 2×2 arrangement with MIMO support, too. The amount of $529.99 is all you'll need to take this laptop home from Newegg.

That's all for today, folks! There's a chance you're looking for something we haven't covered. If that's the case, you can help The Tech Report by using the following referral links when you're out shopping: not only do we have a partnership with Newegg and Amazon, but we also work with Best Buy, Adorama, Rakuten, Walmart, and Sam's Club. For more specific needs, you can also shop with our links at Das Keyboard's shop.

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• Sing with me: NAND prices are falling down, falling down… There used to be a time when having one terabyte of SSD storage was a crazy prospect, never mind two. And yet, that's exactly what you get with the Intel 660p 2 TB NVMe SSD. This unassuming gumstick can push data sequentially at up to 1800 MB/s in either direction, and its random I/O performance measures 220 K IOPS both ways. That's a rather potent concoction, and the price is pretty crazy at $199.99 at Newegg with the cart code EMCTWUE22.

• If SATA drives are more your thing, then check out the Adata SU800. The bigger versions of this unit can hit 560 MB/s on sequential reads and 520 MB/s on writes. These drives are speedy and affordable, as they're ringing in at $94.34 at Rakuten for the 1 TB model, $50.14 for the 512 GB version in a 2.5" form factor, and $55.24 for the 512 GB M.2 gumstick variant. Use the checkout code SAVE15 to get those prices.

• If you're anything like me, you like control rodents with few frills and just the right amount of buttons and functionality. The SteelSeries Rival 110 delivers on those fronts. It's got six buttons, weighs a mere 3.17 oz (90 g), and has a 7200-DPI sensor with 1:1 tracking. Best of all, all you need to get one from Amazon is $22.99.

• Get rid of that tiny, low-res monitor on your desk and replace with something more in tune with the year 2019. The Acer ET322QK is a large 32" display with a resolution of 3840×2160. Its VA panel has a maximum brightness of 300 cd/m², and there's a pair of built-in speakers and FreeSync support on tap. The included stand is quite pretty if I may say so, too. Newegg will hand one of these to you for $314.99 with the cart code NEFPBG11 while stocks last.

• If 32" of monitor is too much for your desk, then check out the LG 27UK600-W instead. This IPS monitor also has a resolution of 3840×2160, along with a contrast ratio of 1000:1 and maximum brightness of 350 cd/m². Once again, FreeSync comes along for the ride. You can obtain one for $349.99 from the folks at Best Buy.

• The iPad Pro 10.5" is a prime example of computing in a pure tablet form factor. Its gorgeous 120-Hz display has a resolution of 2224×1668 and nearly full coverage of the DCI-P3 color space. Inside, you'll find an Apple A10X SoC and 64 GB of flash storage. Rakuten is currently selling this puppy for just $475.96 provided you enter the checkout code PRO84.

• In usual form, we're finishing up with a potent portable. The Huawei MateBook X Pro checks pretty much every box in a long list of features. To start, the IPS touchscreen has a tasty resolution of 3000×2000 (about 258 PPI), maximum brightness of 450 cd/m², and a 1500:1 contrast ratio. Inside, there's a Core i7-8550U processor next to 16 GB of RAM and accompanied by a Nvidia GeForce MX150 graphics card. A 512 GB NVMe handles storage. The whole machine weighs but 2.93 lb (1.33 kg), and it's rather compact given that the screen-to-body ratio is a whopping 91%. Last but not least, there are Type-A and Type-C USB ports, along with a Thunderbolt 3 connector. The battery's also pretty capacious at 57.4 Wh. The price is currently set at a ridiculous $1139.99 at Newegg while stocks last.

That's all for today, folks! There's a chance you're looking for something we haven't covered. If that's the case, you can help The Tech Report by using the following referral links when you're out shopping: not only do we have a partnership with Newegg and Amazon, but we also work with Best Buy, Adorama, Rakuten, Walmart, and Sam's Club. For more specific needs, you can also shop with our links at Das Keyboard's shop.

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• Our leading deal today is a gigantic one, in the literal sense. The Acer ED347CKR is a 34" curved display with a healthy resolution of 3440×1440. It employs a VA panel with a speedy 100 Hz refresh rate and a native contrast ratio of 3000:1. The included stand is height-adjustable, there's a pair of built-in-speakers, and the cherry on top is FreeSync support. You can take home this humongous pixel slab for $399.99 from Newegg with the cart code EMCTWUA33.

• It's hard to believe, but SSD and RAM prices are still tumbling. The Adata SX8200 960 GB NVMe drive has popped up again at silly low pricing. This NAND bucket is good for sequential reads as fast as 3200 MB/s and writes up to 1700 MB/s. Server and power users alike will be happy with this SSD's ability to hit 310K random read IOPS and 280K write IOPS, too. The asking price is just $140.24 at Rakuten with the checkout code AD24.

• You might need a drive that's still speedy but not quite so big. The HP EX900 M.2 500 GB NVMe solid-state drive is one fast bit of kit, capable of pushing 2100 MB/s on sequential reads and 1500 MB/s when writing. Heavy-duty users will be happy to know that random I/O rings in at 120 K read IOPS and 108 K write IOPS. Take it home from Newegg for just $66.99.

• Plain SATA drives are equally discounted. The Adata SU650 480 GB SSD is a simple-but-cheerful offering that's currently going for just $42.49 at Rakuten with the checkout code AD7. That's just under 8.9 cents a gigabyte. If you need a bigger drive, then the Crucial BX500 960 GB will set you back $96.90 also at Rakuten provided you enter the code KEY37 during checkout.

• External hard drives are back in season again. The Western Digital Elements 6 TB is as simple and steady drive as they come. It connects with USB 3.0, does the job just fine, and will only cost you $99.99 at Newegg with the cart code EMCTWUA65. That works out to $16.67 a terabyte.

• Where's the RAM, you ask? Right here, good gerbil. The Adata XPG Gammix 16 GB dual-channel kit at 3000 MT/s is clad in silver heatsinks and has 16-18-18 timings. The manufacturer offers lifetime warranty, and the price is set at a mere $73.94 at Rakuten with the checkout code AD13. Get'em while they're hot.

• Smart watches may not be to everyone's taste. If you're going to slap one on your wrist, though, might as well go for the best. The Apple Watch Series 3 is fitted with an S3 dual-core processor, a truckload of sensors including an altimeter and a heart rate sensor, and an OLED display. This bit of kit is an ideal companion for your daily life. The 42-mm version with GPS and Wi-Fi connectivity is selling for $229 at Best Buy. Folks with narrower wrists may find the 38-mm model more to their liking. That one will set them back $199, also from Best Buy.

That's all for today, folks! There's a chance you're looking for something we haven't covered. If that's the case, you can help The Tech Report by using the following referral links when you're out shopping: not only do we have a partnership with Newegg and Amazon, but we also work with Best Buy, Adorama, Rakuten, Walmart, and Sam's Club. For more specific needs, you can also shop with our links at Das Keyboard's shop.

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Toshiba emphasizes that the XD5s are optimized for low-latency operation and consistent performance, but given their specifications, we think it sounds more like "low-cost." Toshiba says the drives offer up to 2.7 GB/sec on sequential reads and 895 MB/sec on sequential writes. Random performance is even more slanted toward reads—250,000 IOPS versus just 21,000 IOPS on random writes.

The 2.5" XD5 SSDs use NVMe and hook up to U.2. The 2.5", 7-mm height U.2 drives come in sizes ranging from 1TB to 4TB, while the M.2-22110 drives come in just 2TB and 4TB flavors. Toshiba specs the drives for one full drive write per day and says that they should do their thing with no more than 7 W of power. Like the M.2 drives, the 2.5" XD5s come with a five-year warranty.

Given their intended market, you probably won't see these drives showing up on Newegg anytime soon, but they'll show up in various vendor catalogs sometime in Q2. We reckon we're likely to see a consumer version sooner or later, too.

The post Toshiba fills out its NVMe SSD offerings with the 2.5″ XD5 series appeared first on The Tech Report.

• We don't often see Intel gear on sale, but today is an exception. We're initiating the ceremony with the Intel 660p 1-TB NVMe drive. This SSD is underpinned by a helping of 3D QLC NAND and can push data at up to 1800 MB/s when reading or writing. Those with heavy-duty workloads will be happy to know that it can do 150 K random read IOPS and 220 K write IOPS. I recently built my HTPC using the 512 GB model, and I have nothing to say other than it works as advertised, which is what you want in an SSD. Get it for $104.99 from Newegg if you use cart code EMCTWTC24.

• The Intel Core i5-9400F processor is one of the meatiest mid-range CPUs you can get your hands on right now. It's got 9 MB of L3 cache and six Ice Lake Refresh cores that can hit a very healthy 4.1 GHz. This chip does away with integrated graphics, but that's fine since we figure most people are going to pair it with a discrete graphics card anyway. Take it home from Newegg for $159.99 with the cart code EMCTWTC23.

• For most computing needs these days, there's little reason to go with a big honkin' tower machine. One of the most popular alternatives to common form factors would be Intel's NUC 8 (BOXNUC8I3CYSM1). This compact machine measures 4.6 x 4.4" and comes fitted with a Core i3-8121U processor, 8 GB of RAM, and a 1-TB hard drive. Rather interestingly, an AMD Radeon 540 graphics chip handles all the pixel-pushing. You can acquire this tiny box from Newegg for just $419 with the EMCTWTC49 cart code.

• It's big hard drive season again, it seems. The Western Digital Easystore 10 TB external drive is capacious, simple, and costs $159.99 at Best Buy with a bundled 32-GB USB stick. That works out to $16 per terabyte. If you don't need that much room (yeah, right), then the Western Digital Easystore 8 TB drive comes in at $134.99 at Newegg with cart code WD8TBEXHDS, although that one includes no USB stick offer.

• Fans of macOS may be interested in the latest version of the Apple Macbook Air. The models we have on offer today pack an eighth-gen Core i5 processor and 8 GB of RAM. These machines have a 13.3" Retina display and two Thunderbolt 3 ports. Best Buy is running a sale on these models, and you can pick up the version with a 128 GB NVMe SSD for $999.99, or a roomier variant with a 256 GB drive for $1199.99.

• Ultra-portable machines are nice for toting around, but serious work requires something like a Dell XPS 13 9380. We have two models on hand today, both fitted with Intel Core i7-8565U processors. The most powerful machine (model xnita3ws606h) comes with 16 GB of RAM, a 512 GB NVMe drive, and a gorgeous 4K touchscreen. This beastie rings in at $1504.79 at Rakuten. If a colorful 1920×1080 suffices for your needs, then the xnita3ws604h variant with 8 GB of RAM and a 256 GB SSD will set you back only $1108.79 at Rakuten.

That's all for today, folks! There's a chance you're looking for something we haven't covered. If that's the case, you can help The Tech Report by using the following referral links when you're out shopping: Not only do we have a partnership with Newegg and Amazon, but we also work with Best Buy, Adorama, Rakuten, Walmart, and Sam's Club. For more specific needs, you can also shop with our links at Das Keyboard's shop.

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In case it wasn't obvious, the 1300 is fundamentally the same drive as the 1100, just built with Micron's new 96-layer 3D NAND. Don't fret; this is still TLC flash, not QLC. Capacities are the same as the 1100: up to 1TB in M.2 form, and 2TB in a 2.5" case. The new SSDs are also more efficient thanks to the denser packaging.

Specifically, Micron says that the 1300 is 45% more efficient than a 5400 RPM laptop hard drive. The company also says that the drive draws just 75 mW in operation, though. That would make it about 21 times more efficient. We've asked Micron for clarification on that point.

(Update: Micron clarified for us that the drive does in fact draw 750 mW, not 75 mW. The lower number was a typo in the press release.)

There's no such confusion over the performance specs. Micron says the 1300 should perform sequential reads and writes at 530 MB/sec and 520 MB/sec, respectively. Random performance isn't bad for a SATA SSD, either, at 90K IOPS on reads and 87K IOPS on writes.

Those performance specs probably aren't setting your heart alight, but this drive shouldn't set your wallet alight either. Unfortunately, since they're meant for OEM machines, Micron didn't announce any pricing for the 1300s, but we expect you'll see them fall into the channel in the coming months.

The post Micron’s 1300 refreshes its entry-level SSDs with 96-layer NAND appeared first on The Tech Report.

Just like the original SX8200, the Pro is an NVMe-enabled, M.2, four-lane-PCIe drive, with 64-layer Micron TLC and a Silicon Motion controller humming along under the hood. But despite all those similarities, Adata’s product pages claim a variety of significant speed improvements. Random read and write IOps have seen hefty gains, and the 1 TB version’s sequential write speeds have skyrocketed from 1700 MB/s to 3000 MB/s. What accounts for the difference? Maybe it’s the XPG sticker that Adata now ships in the box.

A quick squint at the bare drive reveals that the brains of the operation is Silicon Motion’s SM2262EN controller, a new-and-improved flavor of the SM2262 that underpinned the SX8200. Silicon Motion’s spec sheet reveals precious few differences between the old and the new controllers—they’re both eight-channel affairs with the same interfaces and capabilities—but the SM2262EN’s maximum performance ratings are higher. Unfortunately, the SX8200 Pro sample we received is the 1 TB version, so we won’t be able to do a true and direct comparison of the two controllers, since our original SX8200 review unit was a 480 GB drive.

The controller really does seem to be the only major difference between the old and new drives. They both lean on pseudo-SLC caching to reach their peak speeds, both omit hardware encryption acceleration, both have the same five-year warranty, and both are rated for the same number of total bytes written—640 TB for the 1 TB flavor. One thing that has drastically changed is the price: The 1-TB SX8200 Pro is available at at Amazon for $193, which is a far cry from the $190 that 480 GB version of the prior SX8200 commanded at the time we reviewed it.

So let’s see what a new controller and a fresh coat of sticker does for the SX8200 line. To the bench!

IOMeter — Sequential and random performance

IOMeter fuels much of our latest storage test suite, including our sequential and random I/O tests. These tests are run across the full capacity of the drive at two queue depths. The QD1 tests simulate a single thread, while the QD4 results emulate a more demanding desktop workload. For perspective, 87% of the requests in our old DriveBench 2.0 trace of real-world desktop activity have a queue depth of four or less. Clicking the buttons below the graphs switches between results charted at the different queue depths. Our sequential tests use a relatively large 128-KB block size.

The SX8200 Pro 1 TB’s read speeds aren’t markedly different from the SX8200 500 GB’s, but the writes show tremendous improvement. The Pro doubles the write rates of our older SX8200 review unit. Of course, some of that improvement is simply due to the capacity difference, but nonetheless we’re impressed. Still, Samsung’s 970 EVO 1 TB enjoys a commanding lead in the sequential write tests. TurboWrite seems to remain the gold standard for pseudo-SLC caching speed. Let’s have a look at random rates.

Adata’s claims of random-rate gains do not manifest at QD1, but the Pro ekes out some minor wins over the SX8200 in our QD4 tests.

Our initial IOMeter tests seem to corroborate Adata’s story of how much better the SX8200 Pro is versus its predecessor. But we’ve got a lot more tests to pit against the newcomer.

Sustained and scaling I/O rates

Our sustained IOMeter test hammers drives with 4-KB random writes for 30 minutes straight. It uses a queue depth of 32, a setting that should result in higher speeds that saturate each drive’s overprovisioned area more quickly. This lengthy—and heavy—workload isn’t indicative of typical PC use, but it provides a sense of how the drives react when they’re pushed to the brink.

We’re reporting IOPS rather than response times for these tests. Click the buttons below the graph to switch between SSDs.

The SX8200 Pro’s peak random write rates hover around the same range as the original SX8200’s. But while the SX8200  hit that speed only during a single, fleeting burst, the SX8200 Pro managed to hold to its highest speeds over the span of minutes. The drives both decline to a similar steady-state rate between 20K and 30K IOps.

The absolute peak figure masks the difference in behavior between the two drives that we observed during the high-speed phase. Silicon Motion’s firmware for the SM2262EN clearly has been tuned to milk its pseudo-SLC caching potential for all it’s worth. But as we noted before, Samsung has some secrets that Adata has yet to penetrate; the 970 EVO 1 TB’s steady-state write rates are almost a full 50% faster than that of the XPG SX8200 Pro 1 TB.

Our final IOMeter test examines performance scaling across a broad range of queue depths. We ramp all the way up to a queue depth of 128. Don’t expect AHCI-based drives to scale past 32, though—that’s the maximum depth of their native command queues.

For this test, we use a database access pattern comprising 66% reads and 33% writes, all of which are random. The test runs after 30 minutes of continuous random writes that put the drive in a simulated used state. Click the buttons below the graph to switch between the different drives. Note that each drive uses a different scale for IOPS to allow us to view the shape of its curves.

Adata’s new drive offers smooth scaling until a queue depth of about 32 before leveling off. Not bad for a consumer-oriented drive.

When viewed side by side, it seems that the SX8200 Pro 1 TB does slightly worse in this test than its 480-GB predecessor. Perhaps the firmware’s new burst-speed grunt comes at the cost of performance in more demanding workloads.

Nevertheless, the SX8200 Pro is lookin’ good. IOMeter synthetics have proved troublesome in some of our previous Adata reviews, but this drive hasn’t really broken a sweat yet. Now it’s time to see what its real-world performance is like.

TR RoboBench — Real-world transfers

RoboBench trades synthetic tests with random data for real-world transfers with a range of file types. Developed by our in-house coder, Bruno “morphine” Ferreira, this benchmark relies on the multi-threaded robocopy command build into Windows. We copy files to and from a wicked-fast RAM disk to measure read and write performance. We also cut the RAM disk out of the loop for a copy test that transfers the files to a different location on the SSD.

Robocopy uses eight threads by default, and we’ve also run it with a single thread. Our results are split between two file sets, whose vital statistics are detailed below. The compressibility percentage is based on the size of the file set after it’s been crunched by 7-Zip.

RoboBench’s write and copy tests run after the drives have been put into a simulated used state with 30 minutes of 4-KB random writes. The pre-conditioning process is scripted, as is the rest of the test, ensuring that drives have the same amount of time to recover.

The media set is made up of large movie files, high-bitrate MP3s, and 18-MP RAW and JPG images. There are only a few hundred files in total, and the data set isn’t amenable to compression. The work set comprises loads of TR files, including documents, spreadsheets, and web-optimized images. It also includes a stack of programming-related files associated with our old Mozilla compiling test and the Visual Studio test on the next page. The average file size is measured in kilobytes rather than megabytes, and the files are mostly compressible.

Let’s take a look at the media set first. The buttons switch between read, write, and copy results.

The SX8200 Pro actually trails its predecessor slightly in the write tests, but more than makes up for it in the copy tests. It’s the fastest reader and copier yet in the media set with a single thread. The write performance gap between the XPG and Samsung’s 970 EVO 1 TB seems to have shrunk substantially in the real world. What about the more difficult work set?

This time it snags the records across all three tests at 1T. Adata’s new drive is a file-pushing monster.

The SX8200 Pro doesn’t always manage to outdo the original SX8200, but that was a high bar to begin with. The Pro put on a fine showing in RoboBench, about on par (in the aggregate) with Samsung’s perennially potent performers. Our next and last set of tests will measure the drive’s abilities as a primary boot drive.

Boot times

Until now, all of our tests have been conducted with the SSDs connected as secondary storage. This next batch uses them as system drives.

We’ll start with boot times measured two ways. The bare test depicts the time between hitting the power button and reaching the Windows desktop, while the loaded test adds the time needed to load four applications—Avidemux, LibreOffice, GIMP, and Visual Studio—automatically from the startup folder. These tests cover the entire boot process, including drive initialization.

Yet another unremarkable boot performance. Don’t get me wrong—unremarkable is desirable in this context. Very few SSDs tend to set themselves apart in boot-time tests, and even when they do, it’s not often in a good way.

Load times

Next, we’ll tackle load times with two sets of tests. The first group focuses on the time required to load larger files in a collection of desktop applications. We open a 790-MB 4K video in Avidemux, a 30-MB spreadsheet in LibreOffice, and a 523-MB image file in GIMP. In the Visual Studio Express test, we open a 159-MB project containing source code for Microsoft’s PowerShell.

Load times for the first three programs are recorded using PassMark AppTimer. AppTimer’s load completion detection doesn’t play nice with Visual Studio, so we’re still using a stopwatch for that one.

Similarly, these tests don’t typically do much to differentiate SSDs, but this time the SX8200 Pro snags three top finishes. Adata’s onto something here. Finally, let’s load up some games.

The SX8200 Pro is a top-tier gamer, but so is just about any SSD. To give credit where it’s due, though, the drive does net another pair of first-place trophies.

We’ve exhausted our supply of tests but have failed to exhaust the XPG SX8200 Pro. It withstood every sort of challenge we could conceive. The penultimate page of this review documents our storage testing methods, and the conclusion follows thereafter.

Test notes and methods

Here are the essential details for all the drives we tested:

The SATA SSDs were connected to the motherboard’s Z270 chipset. The PCIe drives were connected via one of the motherboard’s M.2 slots, which also draw their lanes from the Z270 chipset.

We used the following system for testing:

Thanks to Gigabyte for providing the system’s motherboard, to Intel for the CPU, to Corsair for the memory and system drive, and to Rosewill for the PSU. And thanks to the drive makers for supplying the rest of the SSDs.

We used the following versions of our test applications:

• IOMeter 1.1.0 x64
• TR RoboBench 0.2a
• Passmark AppTimer 1.0
• Avidemux 2.7.1 x64
• GIMP 2.10.0
• LibreOffice 6.0.4.2
• Visual Studio Community 2017 15.7.4
• Batman: Arkham Origins
• Tomb Raider
• Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor

Some further notes on our test methods:

• To ensure consistent and repeatable results, the SSDs were secure-erased before every component of our test suite. For the IOMeter database, RoboBench write, and RoboBench copy tests, the drives were put in a simulated used state that better exposes long-term performance characteristics. Those tests are all scripted, ensuring an even playing field that gives the drives the same amount of time to recover from the initial used state.
• We run virtually all of our tests three times and report the median of the results. We run our sustained IOMeter test a second time to verify the results of the first test, and  we perform additional runs only if necessary. The sustained test runs for 30 minutes continuously, so it already samples performance over a long period.
• Steps have been taken to ensure the CPU’s power-saving features don’t taint any of our results. All of the CPU’s low-power states have been disabled, effectively pegging the frequency at 4.0 GHz. Transitioning between power states can affect the performance of storage benchmarks, especially when dealing with short burst transfers.

The test systems’ Windows desktop was set at 1920 x 1200 at 60 Hz. Most of the tests and methods we employed are publicly available and reproducible. If you have questions about our methods, hit up our forums to talk with us about them.

Conclusions

Adata’s XPG SX8200 was one of the quicker drives in our current standings when it first hit our storage labs, and the Pro edition is even faster. The SX8200 Pro 1 TB must certainly be among the fastest client NVMe drives we’ve ever tested. We distill the overall performance rating using an older SATA SSD as a baseline. To compare each drive, we then take the geometric mean of a basket of results from our test suite. Only drives that have been through the entire current test suite on our current rig are represented.

The XPG SX8200 Pro was just a few hairs short of snagging that coveted number-one position. Adata had more first-place finishes throughout the test suite, but the 970 EVO 1 TB’s margin of victory was enormous in a few of the IOMeter synthetics. But don’t fret, SX8200 Pro;  the 970 EVO is fantastic company to keep, even if it is the drive of yesteryear.

To wrap up our discussion of the XPG SX8200 Pro and render our final verdict, we must examine the latest developments in the SSD price wars.  In the plots below, the most compelling position is toward the upper left corner, where the price per gigabyte is low and performance is high.

After months of endless freefall, it seems that SSD prices have somewhat stabilized. They’re still quite low, thankfully, but they have plummeted no further since our last check-in. The XPG SX8200 1 TB fetches $193 at Amazon or directly from Adata, which translates to a mere nineteen cents per gigabyte. It doesn’t feel like that long since the days when 1-TB SATA drives were around the three-hundred-dollar mark, so shelling out less than $200 for a terabyte of wicked-fast NVMe goodness feels like a steal.

As far as the competition is concerned, well, you can pay a bit more for a 970 EVO or 970 EVO Plus and get a bit more performance, but it pays to keep in mind what sort of gains you’re ponying up for. We haven’t yet had a crack at the 970 EVO Plus 1 TB, but the vanilla 970 EVO 1 TB’s advantages primarily lay in our IOMeter synthetic tests for sequential writes and long-sustained random writes. The speed gap shrank to near nil in our real-world RoboBench and load time tests.

So if you’re a salt-of-earth sort of gerbil with ordinary storage needs, the XPG SX8200 Pro 1 TB will give you everything you need and more. Its competent handling of our IOMeter tests and blazing speeds in our file-transfer and stopwatch tests left us with the warm fuzzies. Its remarkably reasonable asking price was just icing on the cake. Adata has put out a real winner in the SX8200 Pro.

The post Adata’s XPG SX8200 Pro 1 TB, reviewed appeared first on The Tech Report.

• The leading deal today is a tasty combo meal. The Ryzen 5 2400G is probably our favorite budget CPU of the moment thanks to its four Zen+ cores and eight threads ticking away at up to 3.9 GHz. The chip's Vega RX 11 integrated graphics are more than competent enough for some light gaming, too. The processor will slot nicely into the Gigabyte B450M DS3H motherboard. Modest it may be, this circuit slab still offers a PCIe M.2 slot, USB 3.1 Gen2 ports, hybrid fan headers, and support for RGB LED strips. Newegg will hand you both items in exchange for just $209.98. That's $25 off the regular combined total, and there's a $10 rebate card on tap to further sweeten the pot.

• Next up are some killer RAM and SSD deals. First up is the Sandisk SSD Plus 480-GB drive. This bit bucket can push sequential data at up to 535 MB/s when reading and 445 MB/s when writing. Sandisk offers a three-year warranty, and Newegg will sell you the drive for just $49.99 with the promo code EMCXTVVU3. If you need a bigger SATA drive, the familiar Adata SU650 960-GB SSD says hi. This drive's speed ratings are similar to the previous unit, and its asking price is just $84.99 at Rakuten with checkout code AD15. That works out to under 8.9 cents per gigabyte, folks.

• SATA drives are fine for modest usage or mass storage, but chances are you want to kick things up a notch with an NVMe unit. The HP EX920 512 GB is well-known around these parts, and it can push 3200 MB/s in sequential reads and 1800 MB/s when writing. As befits a nice NVMe drive, random I/O clocks in at 350K read IOPS and 250K write IOPS. You can have one of these from Newegg for $74.99 with cart code AFM2SSD22. Should you require more of that speedy storage, consider the Adata XPG SX8200 960 GB. This drive is roughly as fast as the HP, and it's going for just $144.49 at Rakuten with checkout code AD25.

• These days, cost isn't really an excuse to run a computer with a low amount of RAM. To prove that point, we present the Adata XPG Gammix D10 16-GB kit of 3000 MT/s DIMMs. They're fast, stylish, and will run you just $80.74 at Rakuten with the checkout code AD14. Those with a preference for capacity over speed might elect to go with the G.Skill Aegis 32-GB kit of 2400 MT/s sticks. That's going for just $149.99 at Newegg. Dang.

• The last entry today is chock full of goodies. The Dell G7 gaming laptop (I7588-7385BLK-PU) is one of the finer specimens of the breed, and the version we have here comes with an Intel Core i7-8750H processor (six cores, 12 threads!), 8 GB of RAM, and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB Max-Q graphics card. All you need to take home this beastie from Best Buy is $899.99.

That's all for today, folks! There's a chance you're looking for something we haven't covered. If that's the case, you can help The Tech Report by using the following referral links when you're out shopping: Not only do we have a partnership with Newegg and Amazon, but we also work with Best Buy, Adorama, Rakuten, Walmart, and Sam's Club. For more specific needs, you can also shop with our links at Das Keyboard's shop.

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This is an educated guess, but as far as we can tell the SU750 is essentially the same SSD as the SU800, just without the DRAM cache. It's still based on 3D TLC flash memory from an unspecified vendor, though—no QLC memory here. Curiously, Adata talks up these drives' durability in its product page blurb yet gives no durability specification beyond a uselessly vague MTBF value of two million hours.

The SU750 supports an SLC-mode caching scheme for improved performance when the drive has free space, but it obviously doesn't make up the difference between it and the SU800. Adata says the SU750 should be good for 65K IOPS on random read operations and 75K IOPS in random writes. We'd expect those numbers to fall pretty sharply when the drive fills up.

Still, as Adata itself points out, it's always going to be a whole lot faster than a hard drive. Drives like this have really made some inroads to crashing the SSD price plane with no survivors. The expected prices that Adata gives—$60 for 256GB, $80 for 512GB, and $150 for 1TB—don't set our hearts alight, but the SU800 is currently selling way below its listed prices. We'll be curious to see what these drives end up costing when they find their way to e-tail.

The post Adata’s SU750 SSD serves up TLC, hold the DRAM appeared first on The Tech Report.

• Our leading deal today is a rather simple one: an honest-to-goodness NVMe drive at SATA prices. The Intel 660p 512-GB PCIe drive comes fitted with 3D QLC NAND and is capable of pushing up to 1800 MB/s sequentially in reads or writes. The figures for random I/O are pretty nice for an affordable drive at 220 K IOPS in either direction. Newegg will hand you this tiny drive in its tiny box for just $67.99 with the promo code EMCTVUD29.

• Our second-hottest item is the Lenovo Yoga 920 fold-back convertible. This fetching high-end machine packs quite the wallop. It's got an Intel Core i7-8750U processor coupled with 16 GB of RAM and a 512-GB solid-state drive. Those specs are impressive already, but the best part is that the 14" touch display has a resolution of 3840×2160, just the ticket for high-DPI goodness. Finally, there's a Thunderbolt 3 port for good measure. Best Buy will let you have this beast of a portable for $1,154.99.

• That Intel SSD up above is also present in a sweet combo deal. The ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming 4 motherboard has a 10-phase power layout, USB 3.1 Gen2 ports in Type-A and Type-C flavors, and an Intel Ethernet controller. As for the Intel 660p 512-GB NVMe SSD, hey, just go back a couple paragraphs for the deets. Newegg will set you up with both items for the low price of $149.98, or $55 off the regular total. 

• It's rodent season in our deals posts, apparently. The species in store today is the Corsair M65 RGB Elite. This gaming mouse has an aluminum underside with a weight tuning system, a sniper button, Omron switches, a super-duper PMW3391 18,000-DPI optical sensor, and RGB LED lighting. It can be yours today for a measly $39.99 from Best Buy.

• If you're building a machine with one of today's power-hungry high-end CPUs, it's a good idea to invest in a nice liquid cooler like the Corsair Hydro H100i Pro 240-mm CLC. This unit comes with two ML120 magnetic-levitation fans and RGB LED lighting on its quiet pump. Newegg's selling this unit for $109.99, and there's a $20 rebate card available. Should you need to go bigger, the Corsair Hydro H115i Pro 360-mm variant is currently going for $124.99 at Newegg, and you can get $25 back with the included rebate card.

• There's nothing quite like an extra-sharp, high-DPI desktop, like that provided by the LG 27UK600-W monitor. This 27" IPS display has a resolution of 3840×2160 and a color gamut that should cover 99% of the sRGB space. There's FreeSync and HDR10 support on tap as well. As an added bonus, the bezels are quite thin. Grab one of these from Best Buy for just $349.99.

That's all for today, folks! There's a chance you're looking for something we haven't covered. If that's the case, you can help The Tech Report by using the following referral links when you're out shopping: Not only do we have a partnership with Newegg and Amazon, but we also work with Best Buy, Adorama, Rakuten, Walmart, and Sam's Club. For more specific needs, you can also shop with our links at Das Keyboard's shop.

The post Tuesday deals: an Intel 660p 512-GB NVMe drive for $67 and much more appeared first on The Tech Report.

• Our leading deal today is a popular chip: the AMD Ryzen 5 2600 processor. Underneath its heatspreader lie six Zen+ cores ticking away at 3.9 GHz, next to 16 MB of L3 cache. This CPU is one of the best values of the moment—moreso today because it's selling for just $149.99 at the good ol' Amazon, and also at Walmart. If you're into overclocking, a slight turn of the virtual screwdriver can easily significantly boost the chip's performance.

• How about some nice RAM to go with the chip above? The Adata XPG Gammix D10 16-GB kit of 3000 MT/s sticks come clad in shiny silver heatsinks and have CL16-18-18 timings. Rakuten is asking for a mere $80.74 for the kit right now if you use checkout code AD14. If you're building a system with an eye towards multicolored lighting, the similarly appointed Adata XPG Spectrix D41 16-GB kit at 3000 MT/s with RGB LED lighting will set you back only $89.24 at Rakuten with the checkout code AD16.

• You don't want to be caught  building a system in a cheapo case. What you're looking for is something like the Antec P110 Luce. This quiet, roomy enclosure has room for 360-mm radiators and most every cooling setup under the sun. We gave this case an Editor's Choice when we took a look at it, and we're happy to report that it's currently selling for just $84.99 at Newegg with cart code ANTECFEB15. There's a $20 rebate card to go on top of that, too.

• We haven't seen many hard drive deals lately, but today the Western Digital EasyStore 10-TB external HDD decided to show up. This drive comes bundled with free backup software and a 32-GB USB stick. Best Buy will hand you one of you these for just $169.99.

• For our final items today, we collected a sweet pair of portables. The first one is the Surface Pro 6. I own one of the earlier models, and I'm super happy with it. The form factor with the integrated kickstand makes for quite the convenient machine, and the 2736×1824 high-res display has fantastic color accuracy. The Microsoft Store is shaving $200 off the price of the entire Surface Pro 6 lineup right now. Get yours today.

• For a convertible of another feather, check out the Lenovo Yoga 730. This machine has a 13.3" 1920×1080 touch display and will literally bend over backwards for you. Inside, there's an Intel Core i5-8250U processor sitting next to 8 GB of RAM and a 256-GB NVMe SSD. A Thunderbolt 3 port stands ready for connecting high-speed peripherals or external displays. Best Buy will ship you one of these for just $629.99.

That's all for today, folks! There's a chance you're looking for something we haven't covered. If that's the case, you can help The Tech Report by using the following referral links when you're out shopping: Not only do we have a partnership with Newegg and Amazon, but we also work with Best Buy, Adorama, Rakuten, Walmart, and Sam's Club. For more specific needs, you can also shop with our links at Das Keyboard's shop.

The post Friday deals: Ryzen 5 2600 for $150, Surface Pro 6 $200 off, and more appeared first on The Tech Report.

• The first and juiciest deal today is one heck of a handy combo. The Intel 660p drive is a modest but perfectly serviceable and reliable NVMe SSD that can push up to 1800 MB/s in sequential reads and writes. It does pretty okay with random I/O, too, at 220 K IOPS in either direction. Meanwhile, the Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 16-GB kit of 3000 MT/s DIMMs is sleek, sexy, and fast. These are some of the best-looking sticks around. Newegg will pack up both items for you in exchange for just $159.99, or $47.99 off the individual items' price. I'd advise grabbing this combo before it runs out, folks.

• Everyone's talking about Nvidia's RTX cards these days, but the GTX 10-series offerings are still pretty darn fast. One such item is the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1070. This card is pretty simple—it's got a hefty cooler with three fans, a boost clock of 1822 MHz in OC mode, and it will set you back only $299.99 at Newegg. You also get a Fortnite gift card and a Gigabyte Aorus RGB SLI HB bridge that may come in handy for some dual-card action.

• Proceeding onto storage, we have the HP EX920 512-GB NVMe solid-state drive, a familiar sight around these parts. This speedy drive is good for pushing 3200 MB/s in sequential reads and 1600 MB/s in writes. Those are strong figures, but where random I/O is concerned, the EX920 whups some tail with the ability to do 340 K random read IOPS and 260 K write IOPS. You can pick one of these up today for $78.99 from Newegg.

• Fast drives like the one above are all well and good, but for mass storage purposes, you're probably better off looking at the Western Digital Elements 6-TB external drive. There ain't much to say about it—it's compact, discreet, and costs only $99.99 at Newegg with cart code EMCTVUU26. That works out to $16.67 per terabyte.

• Nope, we still haven't run out of RAM deals. The G.Skill Ripjaws V 16-GB dual-channel kit with 3000 MT/s sticks comes clad in generously sized red heat spreaders and has 16-18-18-38 timings. Its best spec is the dollar amount it's going for right now: just $89.99 at the good ol' Newegg. Dang.

• One of the worst punishments that people often subject themselves to is using a low-quality mouse. The Corsair M65 Pro RGB is here to change that. It's got a 12,000-DPI sensor; an aluminum base with adjustable weight; and a large, handy sniper button. There's a dash of RGB LED lighting for the bling factor, and the top is dressed in a rather fetching white finish. Newegg will sell you one of these for a stupid-low $29.99.

That's all for today, folks! There's a chance you're looking for something we haven't covered. If that's the case, you can help The Tech Report by using the following referral links when you're out shopping: Not only do we have a partnership with Newegg and Amazon, but we also work with Best Buy, Adorama, Rakuten, Walmart, and Sam's Club. For more specific needs, you can also shop with our links at Das Keyboard's shop.

The post Tuesday deals: A 512-GB NVMe SSD plus 16 GB of fast RGB LED RAM for $160, and more appeared first on The Tech Report.

• Think we're tired of RAM deals? Think again. We just spotted a G.Skill Aegis 16-GB kit with 3000 MT/s DIMMs in the wild. It's got short heatspreaders, 16-18-18-38 timings, and a price tag that's only $84.99 over at the 'Egg. If you're doing heavy lifting with your machine, perhaps you'll instead want the G.Skill Sniper X 32-GB set with 3200 MT/s sticks for a mere $209.99 at Newegg. Get'em while they're hot.

• We're big fans of Dell's gear around here, so we're extra happy to report that Rakuten is running a 10% off sale on a good portion of Dell's catalog. If you follow this link right here and input the checkout code CQ4I-0ADE-RON3-JRSU, you'll get access to that discount, up to a maximum of $150. Here are a few very quick highlights:
   
  • Dell XPS 13 (9360) laptop with a Core i5-8250U, 8 GB of RAM, and a 128-GB solid-state drive for $809.99.
  • Dell XPS 15 (9570) laptop packing a Core i7-8750H, 8 GB of RAM, a 256-GB SSD, and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti graphics card with 4 GB of VRAM for $1124.99.
  • Dell G7 (7588) gaming laptop with Core i7-8750H, 16 GB of RAM, a storage combo setup with a 256-GB SSD and a 1-TB hard drive, and Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 6-GB Max Q graphics—all for $1169.99.

• Next up is a nice chunk of NAND flash storage. The Western Digital Blue 1-TB SSD with 3D NAND. This pack o' bytes can push up to 560 MB/s on sequential reads and 530 MB/s on writes, and it's going for $115.99 at Newegg with the cart code EMCTVTC62.

• If you're reading these deals posts, chances are you're building, or are going to build, a new system. For that you'll need a quality power supply like the Corsair HX850i. This is a fully modular unit with a truckload of PCIe and SATA connectors, semi-passive cooling, and an 80 Plus Platinum efficiency certification. The real deal here is the PSU's set of sensors and monitoring capabilities. Use Corsair's Link utility to configure your PSU's rail modes and fan speeds, and to keep an eye on its metrics. Grab the HX850i for $139.99 at Newegg with cart code EMCTVTC29 and use the available rebate cart to get another $20 back.

• Finally, an extra spiffy keyboard. The Logitech G910 Orion Spark is a full-sized affair underpinned by the company's exclusive Romer-G switches. There's per-key RGB LED lighting on tap, as well as macro keys, a fancy palm rest, media controls, and a volume wheel. The party trick here is a smartphone dock that'll let you use an app to get in-game data. If all this isn't fancy enough for you, we don't know what is. The G910 usually costs a pretty penny, but you can get it today only for $99.99 at Newegg with cart code 24WWJD4.

That's all for today, folks! There's a chance you're looking for something we haven't covered. If that's the case, you can help The Tech Report by using the following referral links when you're out shopping: Not only do we have a partnership with Newegg and Amazon, but we also work with Best Buy, Adorama, Rakuten, Walmart, and Sam's Club. For more specific needs, you can also shop with our links at Das Keyboard's shop.

The post Thursday deals: Cheap G.Skill RAM, discounted Dell gear, and more appeared first on The Tech Report.

• There's rarely a deals post without cheap NAND storage, and today we have discounted Crucial MX500 500-GB SSDs. These are a familiar sight around these parts thanks to their unbeatable price-to-performance ratio, and we recommended them across most builds in our latest System Guide. These drives can push up to 560 MB/s on reads and 510 MB/s on writes, while random I/O clocks in at 95K IOPS on reads and 90K write IOPS. The price today is an absurdly low $55.09 at Newegg for the 500-GB version in an M.2 form factor with cart code EMCTUVY22, or $57.99 for the 2.5" drive. Amazon will also sell you the 500-GB MX500 for $57.99 in either M.2 stick or plain 2.5" box variants.

• Feast your eyes on these big tracts of RAM. The T-Force Vulcan 16-GB dual-channel kit with 3000 MT/s DIMMs is speedy, stealthy, and going for just $89.99 at Newegg. If you're into heavy-duty computing, then you might prefer the 32-GB G.Skill Ripjaws V dual-channel kit, also clocked at 3000 MT/s. The folks at Newegg will hand you one for $189.99.

• The Ryzen 5 2600 is one of the finest mid-range processors you can get your hands on, thanks to its six Zen+ cores, twelve threads, and 3.9 GHz boost speed. This chip should go in a nice home, like the ASRock X370 Killer SLI/ac motherboard, a circuit slab that's chock full of goodies like two M.2 sockets, Type-C USB ports, Intel-powered gigabit Ethernet and 802.11ac Wi-Fi, and metal jackets around the main PCIe slots. Newegg will sell you both bits of kit for $254.98, or $45 off the regular combined price. That's not all, though: you also get a $25 mail-in rebate.

• If that ASRock board isn't quite your thing, maybe you'll want to check out the Asus ROG Strix B350-F Gaming, instead. This Ryzen-ready mobo has metal-reinforced main PCIe slots, an Intel Gigabit Ethernet controller, a fancy-pants Realtek S1220A audio codec, and onboard RGB LED lighting. Get it for $79.99 from Newegg with cart code EMCTUVY23.

• A couple days ago, we had a deal on an iPad Pro, and today there's another. The iPad Pro (2017) with 256 GB of storage and Wi-Fi connectivity is one of the finest, fanciest tablets you can get. Its wide-gamut display has a 120-Hz refresh rate, making for colorful and extra-smooth visuals. Inside, you'll find Apple's A10X Fusion SoC and 4 GB of RAM. Grab yours today for $549.99 from Best Buy.

That's all for today, folks! There's a chance you're looking for something we haven't covered. If that's the case, you can help The Tech Report by using the following referral links when you're out shopping: Not only do we have a partnership with Newegg and Amazon, but we also work with Best Buy, Adorama, Rakuten, Walmart, and Sam's Club. For more specific needs, you can also shop with our links at Das Keyboard's shop.

The post Thursday deals: a 500-GB Crucial MX500 for $55 and more appeared first on The Tech Report.