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Tuesday, June 9th, 2015
| Time | Event |
| 8:00a | The Microsoft Lumia 640 Review The group that was once Nokia's mobile division has gone through a great number of changes in the past few years. After declining sales of Symbian devices, the company decided to go all in with Microsoft's Windows Phone platform. In a very short time, Nokia became the number one vendor of Windows Phone smartphones in the world. Despite this, the move to Windows Phone failed to revitalize the company. In August of last year, Microsoft purchased Nokia's mobile devices business in a 7.2 billion dollar acquisition. Less than a month later, Microsoft launched the Nokia Lumia 830, and the Nokia Lumia 735. These were the last two Lumia smartphones that would be branded as Nokia devices. With Nokia's phone division absorbed into Microsoft, future Lumia devices would fall under the Microsoft brand. Today's review focuses on the Microsoft Lumia 640. This phone was announced alongside the Lumia 640 XL at MWC in February, and it's one of the first new Lumia devices released under the Microsoft brand. At $129, the Lumia 640 occupies a fairly low price point as far as smartphones are concerned, and it serves as an entry model to the Lumia smartphone line. To see how it compares to the competition, and to its fellow Lumia devices, read on for the full review. |
| 8:09a | Thermaltake Computex 2015 Booth Tour
Winner of Thermaltake's modding contest As E., our case, cooling and peripheral editor, wasn't at Computex this year, I had the opportunity of meeting with most of the companies to see what's new. My first stop was Thermaltake, which had several new and upcoming products to show.
To start off with external storage, Thermaltake had a USB 3.1 Type-C enclosure on display, which will be available later this year.
The enclosure is accompanied by a USB 3.1 Type-C hard drive dock, which allows easy hot-swap capability for those who deal with several drives.
For liquid cooling Thermaltake showed off a prototype of a CPU block with an integrated pump. The design above is obviously not a final design, but the concept is certainly interesting since mounting the pump on top of the CPU saves space and allows for smaller form factors. Thermaltake also displayed a DRAM kit with pre-installed liquid cooling block.
The focus of Thermaltake's cases was definitely in modding as the WP200 has room for two complete builds, one on each side. There is also going to be a lighter W200 model that isn't as huge as the WP200 is.
The W100 is the mode desktop-like version that is made for a single system. The top part of the case is fully modular and can be placed either on the top of bottom of the main case, where it can house the radiators or other components.
For customization Thermaltake offers a variety of different fans with LED lights and as a new product Thermaltake is introducing an RGB version of the Riing series with 256 colors.
One of the most interesting products I saw at the Thermaltake booth was the company's new Poseidon Z Touch keyboard. Basically all the keys act as a touchpad and by using Thermaltake's bundled software the user can set up custom gestures, which can be handy in some games that require a large number of macros. Pricing will be about $180, which has a premium in it but I wouldn't consider it to be too bad for a relatively unique product. Gallery: Thermaltake Computex 2015 Booth Tour
      To keep things short, I've only included the highlights here and made a gallery of all photos I took, so head to the gallery above if you're interested in seeing more products that Thermaltake had on display! |
| 8:28a | G.Skill Shows Phison E7 Based Phoenix Blade X PCIe 3.0 x4 SSD
G.Skill isn't a name that is often associated with SSDs, but the company has been making SSDs as a sort of a side product for several years. We reviewed the Phoenix Blade late last year and it actually did relatively well in our tests, although its high price made it hard to justify for many. At Computex last week G.Skill showcased the successor, which will simply be called Phoenix Blade X. Phoenix Blade X uses Phison's PS5007-E7 controller, which is a PCIe 3.0 x4 design that supports both AHCI and NVMe. G.Skill will be offering the drive as an add-in card in full-length/half-width form factor with capacities of up to 2TB.
G.Skill had a live demo at its booth, but as Phison is still developing the firmware the performance is quite far from the preliminary specifications. G.Skill didn't disclose availability, but given Phison's schedule I would expect the Phoenix Blade X to ship some time in H2'15, likely late Q3. Pricing is TBA too, although I was told that the drive should be cheaper than its predecessor. |
| 10:25a | Cougar Computex 2015 Booth Tour: $60 Hybrid Mechanical Keyboard
Every time I go to a trade show I come back with at least one or two highlights that really impressed me. At this year's Computex one of my highlights was from a product category that usually I barely even follow: keyboards. I've been a strong advocate for mechanical keyboards ever since I got my first one a few years ago, but the obstacle I still face is that people aren't ready to fork out close to $100 for a keyboard. Hence I was very excited when Cougar showcased its upcoming 400K and 450K hybrid mechanical keyboards with the cheaper 400K version being priced at only $60. What makes the 400K and 450K hybrid is the fact that the keys are ultimately membrane based, but have a mechanical-like feedback (I will save an in-depth analysis to E.). I played around with the 400K for a few minutes and I have to say I really liked the feeling of the key feedback was very close to a real mechanical keyboard, although we certainly need a longer time with the keyboard before drawing a final verdict.
The 450K differs from the 400K by offering 3-color backlight as well as support for Cougar UIX software for custom key mapping. With such a short testing time it's hard to say whether the 400K and 450K can truly replace a mechanical keyboard, but nevertheless Cougar at least offers a viable option to those whose budget can't afford a proper mechanical keyboard. The 400K and 450K will be available in the next two months and we are eagerly looking forward to getting one in for review.
Another interesting aspect of the 400K and 450K is the splash-proof design. Since there's a membrane between the key and PCB, the keyboard can stand a splash of liquid unlike most mechanical keyboards. That's useful specifically for Internet cafes and other public computers, but it's certainly a nice feature to have in home environment as well.
Moving on to power supplies, Cougar demonstrated its CMD Series with Digital Power feature. Basically the end-user can play around with the PSU voltages using Cougar's software, which is a niche feature but for overclockers and others who like to tinker with their systems it can be handy. Note that the software only allows ~5% changes as per Intel's guidelines as larger changes could potentially damage hardware in case the end-user isn't fully aware of his doings.
Cougar also announced a new mini-ITX case called QBX. The design is fairly neutral and stylish to my eye compared to some of the more enthusiast cases and it can fit a full size GPU for high detail gaming. Gallery: Cougar Computex 2015 Booth Tour
      Check out the gallery for more products. We will also have a review of the 600K mechanical keyboard and 600M gaming mouse out in a short while, so stay tuned! |
| 1:10p | Silicon Motion Displays Upcoming SM2260 PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe Controller
Silicon Motion has remained relatively quiet about its plans for a PCIe controller. We have known that the company is working on one (well, it would be a major surprise if it wasn't), but until last week Silicon Motion had not shared any details. The controller is called SM2260 and it's a PCIe 3.0 x4 design with support for NVMe. Both MLC and TLC NAND are supported at lithographies as small as 15nm, which suggests the use of LDPC error correction similar to the company's SM2256 controller. Preliminary performance specs come in at up to 2.2GB/s sequential read and 200K random read IOPS, but I wouldn't be surprised to see these change before the final product ships. Silicon Motion is still fairly early in development and the SM2260 won't be available until sometime next year. For now the company is keeping the additional details close to its chest, but we'll hear more once Silicon Motion has something concrete to show.
In addition to the SM2260, Silicon Motion showcased its new SM2256 controller that will be shipping in the next couple of months. It's the first commercially available controller & firmware solution with TLC support and as a part of Computex Silicon Motion announced that it now supports Micron's 16nm TLC NAND as well, along with all other available TLC NAND dies. ADATA already displayed its SP550 with the SM2256 inside and it will be among the first drives to ship with the new SMI controller. We have some preliminary benchmarks of a 500GB SM2256 reference design sample in our Bench section, so head there if you're interested in taking an early look.
Another product Silicon Motion had on display was the SM2246XT, which is a DRAM-less version of the popular SM2246EN. There is a slight performance impact from the lack of DRAM cache as only parts of the NAND mapping table can be stored in the controller's internal SRAM cache, but in return the SM2246XT offers lower cost due to a smaller die (no need for DRAM controller). Obviously the drive requires no separate DRAM either, which further reduces the cost for the assembler of the drive. SM2246XT is already used by SanDisk in the SSD PLUS and Z400s that was released a couple of weeks ago. I believe we will see the low-end market shift more towards DRAM-less designs in the next year as the race to the bottom gets tougher and with more sophisticated controllers it's possible to have decent performance even without the DRAM cache. Currently Silicon Motion has no plans for an XT version of the SM2256, although I would personally see TLC NAND and DRAM-less controller as the ultimate value play. |
| 4:26p | Microsoft Launches Updated Xbox One, Controller, and PC Adapter
News comes from Redmond today that Microsoft will be offering a new model of Xbox One. It will ship with a larger 1 TB hard drive, which is double the storage capacity of the original Xbox One. It will also feature a new matte black finish, with the original Xbox One being outfitted in a glossy exterior. This is a small upgrade, but with the size of games getting larger and larger, it makes a lot of sense to offer the larger internal storage, even though the Xbox One did add the ability to use USB storage some time ago. As for the finish, I think the matte should be a good look and should help with dust and fingerprints.
Also being announced today, and being bundled with the new Xbox, is an updated version of the wireless controller. The big change is that Microsoft has finally ditched the proprietary headset connector, and has now moved to the normal 3.5mm jack. More subtle, but certainly notable, is that the bumpers have been tweaked, and the new controllers can now be updated wirelessly. The first gen controllers could also be updated, however they had to be connected to the Xbox One with a USB cable, so this should make it a lot easier to keep the controller firmware up to date. I have only updated my controllers one time because it’s a bit of a pain to do so, but when Microsoft drastically reduced the connection time when powering on the controllers, it was worth my time to find a cable and do that. With the new ones, even less hassle is necessary which is always a good thing. There is also a new camouflage design in silver and black available for those that want something different.
The final bit of Xbox news today is that Microsoft is finally releasing a wireless adapter for Windows PCs, letting you use the Xbox One controllers on your PC with no cable necessary. The adapter is just $25, or bundled with a controller for $80, and should come in very handy for anyone who wants to do PC gaming with a controller, or more importantly for those that want to use the upcoming game streaming from their Xbox One to their PC, which is something I got to try first hand at Build. The wireless adapter is coming this fall.
The new 1 TB model of the Xbox One will be bundled with the Halo Master Chief Collection and available starting on June 16th for $399, with the 500 GB model being permanently moved to $349. Source: Major Nelson Blog |
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