Desktops

More than a year after it was first launched exclusively for Macs, the Thunderbolt standard is now officially available for PCs, too. And by "officially," I mean you can literally buy a motherboard and build a system on your own that supports Thunderbolt.

There's been a lot of talk about Thunderbolt getting to PCs since the standard was first launched. Rumor had it Intel would show off PC motherboards that supported Thunderbolt at CES 2012 (which it didn't). On Monday, however, Intel quietly launched the standard for the PC platform, and today I have in my hand the Intel Desktop Board DZ77RE-75K, the first Thunderbolt-certified motherboard that comes with a built-in Thunderbolt port. The wait is finally over.… Read more

While there have been many new 2.5-inch-standard solid-state drives (SSDs) being introduced to the market in the last two years, it's not every day that you run into one that comes in the new low-profile 7mm thickness. The first one was introduced a few months back by Intel, the 520 series, and now we have the second: The RunCore Pro V 2.5" 7mm Ultra SSD.

The purpose of the new 7mm thickness is so that the drive can fit in an ultrabook, or other ultraportable laptop, without changing the standard SATA port configuration. This means that … Read more

One week after its release, Diablo III remains the only PC game anyone is talking about. Some of that talk is about how the game, a decade in the making, is a huge hit, with millions of copies presold before the May 15 launch. But much of the talk is also about the big bet developer and publisher Blizzard is making by forcing even solitary players to log in online to play.

Dan: I've spent years attempting to divine the line between mainstream and enthusiast gaming, trying to figure out which games could cross over into popular culture, and which ones were going to stay locked into a small, but dedicated, core audience.… Read more

Now that you can actually buy the first wireless networking products that use 802.11ac, Buffalo's router and media bridge, it's time you learned about the this new wireless standard. While the "ac" designation definitely does not mean "air conditioning," I can say for sure that 802.11ac is cool.

And by cool, I mean fast. That's the biggest difference about 802.11ac compared with previous wireless standards. But first let's see how similar it is.

802.11ac supplements 802.11n

802.11ac (aka 5G Wi-Fi) is the next step after 802.… Read more

Netgear today teamed up with Broadcom to announce and demonstrate a new line of wireless networking products that use Broadcom's 802.11ac chips. These are the chips that Broadcom showed off in preparation for and during CES 2012.

These devices include two routers, the Netgear R6300 WiFi and the R6300 WiFi, and one USB adapter, the A6200 WiFi.

All of these devices are based on the new 802.11ac Wi-Fi standard (or 5G Wi-Fi, as Broadcom calls it). The Netgear R6300 is the top of the line and supports the three-stream 802.11ac standard that offers up to 1.… Read more

Toshiba announced today that its Canvio 3.0 and Canvio Basics 3.0 portable hard drives now offer up to 1.5TB of storage space, the second largest capacity on the market for portable external hard drives.

These two drives both support USB 3.0 (and are compatible with USB 2.0). The Canvio 3.0 also comes in a very sleek-looking chassis and now includes software drivers to make Macs support the NTFS file system.

NTFS is the native file system of Windows in which the Canvio drives are preformatted and generally can only be read by Macs. The … Read more

For a PC-only game built on well-trod swords-and-sorcery territory, Diablo III is generating a surprising amount of buzz from not only serious PC gamers, but also more mainstream and casual gamers. That's good for PC gaming, as this may be the biggest thing to happen to that field since Minecraft.

But will Diablo III be able to capture hearts and minds the way its two predecessors did, starting back in 1996? PC gamers Dan Ackerman and Rich Brown debate the relevance of this action RPG. … Read more

The new 2012 Ivy Bridge Macs might be coming soon to a store near you, according to a couple of recent hints.

Details revealed yesterday by benchmarking site Geekbench point to a MacBookPro9,1. Powered by Intel's Ivy Bridge chip Core i7-3820QM quad-core running at 2.7GHz, the name and number would seem to indicate the successor to Apple's current 13-inch pro laptop.

However, MacRumors believes that since the i7-3820QM processor runs at 45 watts, it's more likely to surface in the beefier 15-inch and 17-inch MacBook Pro units.

Another Geekbench benchmark page appears to tip off an upcoming new iMac. With the name and number iMac13,2, the new model would appear to indicate a 27-inch iMac. Powering the new iMac is Intel's Ivy Bridge Core i7-3770 quad-core chip clocking in at 3.4GHz.

How do we know this information is legit? … Read more

One could safely say Dutch computer modder Sander van der Velden adores the behemoth AT-AT vehicle from "The Empire Strikes Back." The self-confessed sci-fi addict recently stuffed a water-cooled computer inside a large Hasbro toy version of Star Wars' most infamous four-legged Rebel annihilator.

The AT-AT computer measures 2 feet tall (plus several more inches for the dock), and contains some spicy hardware, including a Zotac Z68-ITX (Mini-ITX) motherboard running an Intel Core i7 2600k processor, SSD, and built-in Wi-Fi. The water-cooling system (radiator and XSPC pump) uses water blocks to cool the CPU, GPU, and other components.

The designers at Hasbro probably didn't expect someone to take the largest action figure AT-AT ever made and fit a bunch of computer parts into it. … Read more