Month: April 2020

The HP brand may be a household name, but anyone deep enough into PC hardware to read enthusiast publications probably doesn’t associate the company with the memory market. Most of us associate HP name with expensive ink cartridges and an ever-rotating array of notebooks. While the greatest benefit of being associated with a well-known 81-year-old company might be the ability to draw in neophytes, those researching and buying enthusiast tech like high-end desktop memory often pay little attention to marketing. So, what is the tech?

Available at data rates ranging from DDR4-2666 to DDR4-3600, each HP V6 memory kit includes one or two DIMMs, a product ID insert with installation guide and RMA contacts, and a lengthy multi-language regulatory compliance sheet. Heat spreader color is said to identify each kit, with red for DDR4-2666 and blue for DDR4-3000. But HP confuses the issue by cloaking both its DDR4-3200 and DDR4-3600 in black.

A look at the back of the package indicates that these modules can be found on the main webpage of HP Development Inc., but that it’s also manufactured and distributed under license. Sure enough, our search of the HP website yielded no information about this memory.

HP business partner Multipointe Channel Solutions (MCS) has been marketing HP-branded SSD’s for a while now, but doesn’t talk about its own history on its own website. Any customer assurance should come from the fact that the company is still in operation, rather than its ties to the HP name.

As MCS only offers 8GB modules, its P/N 7TE41AA#ABC DDR4-3200 dual-channel kit has a total of 16GB. XMP timings of 16-18-18-38 at 1.35V boost the kit past its basic DDR4-2666 configuration, but that relies on users to own an XMP-compatible motherboard to set XMP mode. This of course is how the entire performance memory market works, but it’s still something that uninformed buyers might not know.

One thing that stands out about HP memory in general is its 5-year warranty, which is substantially less than the lifetime warranties of others (though the meaning of “lifetime” can sometimes be sketchy). This gives rise to questions, like “how long will I use this kit, anyway?” Five years is likely enough coverage for many, especially given we’ve seen that most defective memory dies in less than five years and would thus be covered.

Comparison Hardware

Comparison kits for our testing rounds include our latest 2x 8GB review samples from Geil, OLOy, and Team Group, the later clocked at a higher DDR4-3600 XMP, tested on AMD’s Ryzen 7 3700X and MSI’s memory-mastering MEG X570 Ace, using Toshiba’s OCZ RD400 SSD and Gigabyte’s GeForce RTX 2070 Gaming OC 8G to reduce bottlenecks.

Overclocking and Latency Tuning

The HP V6 DDR4-3200 is the first 2x 8GB kit we’ve seen in a while that wouldn’t reach DDR4-3600, which means it won’t be represented at several of our alternative performance settings. We were however able to reduce its DDR4-3200 timings to 14-16-16-32 at 1T.

Lowest Stable Timings at 1.35V (Max) on MEG X570 ACE (BIOS 1.20)

Unfortunately, the rest of the kits reached at least DDR4-3600, and one even went to DDR4-4266. The fastest kit was also rated at a higher DDR4-3600 XMP.

Benchmark Results and Final Analysis

The HP V6 DDR4-3200 kit’s XMP bandwidth and latency are close to average in SiSoftware Sandra.

XMP gaming performance also looks good, and it even retained that performance for the most part at our lower frequency and latency settings.

The HP V6 DDR4-3200 also looks decidedly average in our timed tests, where less time means more performance. So, it should be a good deal if it’s priced well.

About that key pricing issue though: We weren’t able to find P/N 7TE41AA#ABC for sale anywhere, and instead had to price it as two P/N 7EH67AA#ABC single modules. To compete, a pair of these would need to be priced around 25% lower than two single modules.

At its current price of about $53 per 8GB stick, this kit just isn’t competitive. That of course doesn’t mean it’s a bad product, just that there are plenty of better options available from companies more well-known in the memory market. Pricing could of course also change substantially, which could make this memory more competitive. But until it does, most consumers in the know should look to the plethora of competitors.

Microsoft has updated the new Cortana app for Windows 10 Insiders, taking the app to version 2.2003.27748.0.

The main improvement is greater support for languages other than English, with support for 12 languages: Italian, German, UK English, Japanese, Spanish from Spain and Spanish from Mexico.

The app otherwise remains quite limited and neutered, with support for only:

Lists and reminders

Simplified app launch

Email support

Calendar assistance

The update should roll out automatically to Windows 10 Insiders in the Fast Ring.

Starting today, customers who purchase a Mac Pro can choose to add a Radeon Pro W5700X graphics card with 16GB of GDDR6 memory to their machines when using Apple’s build-to-order feature, a new option that was just added.

When the ‌Mac Pro‌ was released, Apple said that the W5700X graphics card option would be coming in the near future, but it has taken a few months for it to show up.

Selecting the Radeon Pro W5700X adds an additional $600 to the price of the ‌Mac Pro‌, with Apple also offering an option to add two Radeon Pro W5700X graphics cards for a total of $1,600. It’s also available as a standalone purchase for $1,000.

These graphic card options are in addition to the default Radeon Pro 580X and Radeon Pro Vega II and Duo options that were already available.

Chuwi revealed the AeroBox last month, but a representative from the company recently confessed to TechRadar Pro that the mini-PC bears an identical motherboard to the Xbox One S.

AMD makes a lot of custom-tailored CPUs for its partners, some of which don’t have official model names. Such is the case with Microsoft’s Xbox One gaming consoles, which pack AMD processors. All eyes are currently on the upcoming Xbox Series X on the way, but Chuwi’s latest mini-PC could be using the same AMD chip as the Xbox One S.

As a quick recap, the Xbox One S features a custom octa-core processor that’s comprised of two Jaguar Compute Units (CUs) that each sport up to four CPU cores. The chip checks in at 1.75 GHz. On the graphics side, the APU has 768 shaders running at 914 MHz to deliver 1,404 GFLOPS of peak single-precision (FP32) performance.

Chuwi sells the AeroBox workstation with an AMD A9-9820 that seemingly tops out at 2.35 GHz. The AeroBox likely has more thermal headroom as opposed to the Xbox One, which would allow the APU can operate at higher clock speeds. However, Chuwi pairs the A9-9820 with a Radeon R7 350 discrete graphics card, suggesting that the manufacturer could be using salvaged chips that don’t meet the requirements for the Xbox One S. The Radeon R7 350 brings 512 shaders running up to 935 MHz, which peak to 957.4 GFLOPS of FP32 performance. 

Thanks to the higher-clocked processor, the AeroBox might offer more raw processing power, which comes in handy for office and productivity usage, than the gaming console. But the workstation’s graphics performance won’t be anywhere close to that of the Xbox One S. The math shows that that Xbox One S should deliver up to 46.6% higher FP32 performance than the AeroBox.

The AeroBox will only be available in Japan at launch. Chuwi still hasn’t put a price on the mini-PC yet.

TechRadar has discovered that Apple has filed a new document with the FCC on Wednesday that could very well be the next Powerbeats Pro 2 coming later this year.

The description for FCC ID BCGA2453 describes ‘totally wireless high-performance earphones’ and corresponds to Apple’s model numbers A2453 and A2454, which could be two new versions of the Powerbeats Pro. 

Unfortunately, Apple has requested that the FCC withhold external photographs, internal photographs, test setup photographs and the user manual until October 12, 2020 (potentially the day Apple has chosen to hold its annual iPhone unveiling event) so it will be awhile before we can confirm our suspicions.

Without photos or documentation there’s not a whole lot of information available inside the brief other than the wireless frequency the earphones will operate on (2.402-2.48 GHz) and some really technical information about the kind of wireless transmitter it will have inside. 

That said, in previous FCC filings, the Apple AirPods were model number A1722 as described in an FCC filing in 2016 and the new Beats Powerbeats were model number A2015 as described in FCC ID BCGA2015 – so the A2453 model name fits within the previously established naming scheme Apple’s cooked up.

Powerbeats Pro 2? What’s the deal?

Beyond this filing we really don’t have any idea what Apple is cooking up – so take everything that follows as pure conjecture.

Certainly some of the things Apple could add to the Powerbeats Pro would be noise cancellation – a feature taken directly from the Apple AirPods Pro – and an IP68 water-resistance rating like the iPhone 11 Pro. The latter would be a bit tricky – most earphones really stick to an IPX4 rating – but some sports enthusiasts buds like the Jaybird Tarah Pro go up to IPX7.

How much of that Apple will decide to implement remains to be seen, but both upgrades would be a substantial improvement on the Powerbeats Pro that are currently on store shelves now.