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The Supreme waterblock was just one product that was developed under licence for EKWaterBlocks by Aquatuning

It seems all is not well in the world of water cooling as Aquatuning – probably the worlds biggest online retailer of water-cooling hardware, has announced it is to stop selling hardware manufactured by EKWaterblocks.

The move will affect all of Aquatuning’s on-line webshops, which cover a vast array of countries including the UK and USA.

The stock has been removed with immediate effect, and it raises questions about just how big a dent in profits it will make for both companies, but particularly for Slovenia-based EkWaterBlocks, whose CPU and GPU waterblocks are very popular.

For Aquatuning, it means losing a popular key partner, although it has plenty of others to choose from such as XSPC, Watercool, Alphacool and Phobya.

A statement released by Aquatuning today reads:

With effect from 17.05.2013, the management of Aquatuning has decided to drop all EKWB products from the webshop. In 2007 and following years Aquatuning developed many products for EK Water Blocks under license and technology agreements among other products the EK Supreme CPU block, which immediately became the new No. 1 CPU water block. After many years of successful collaboration, EK Water Blocks surprisingly decided to stop the payment of the licenses to Aquatuning.

Due to the ultimatum from EK Water Blocks to either accept the breach of contract or stop buying products from EK Water Blocks, the Aquatuning management saw no other way then to inform the public about the background of the unprecedented incident never seen before in the 10-year history of Aquatuning.

We regret the end of the collaboration with EK Water Blocks very much, especially because in recent years many good and successful products have emerged from it. The products we licensed to EK Water Block will now be given to other manufacturers so that we can continue to bring revolutionary cooling products to market.

What do you make of this development? Let us know in the forum.

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Casting my mind back 20 years or so, I remember when hard disks were barely breaching the 1GB barrier. Even though programs at the time generally took up a lot less space than they do today, space was very much a premium. I was mainly into flight simulators at the time, and these took up far more space than your average fps did before the millennium. So much so that I would have to uninstall all other games just to run my favourite sims, and even then I’d be running the hard disk with less than 10 per cent space free.

This, of course, meant it was pretty slow, even by standards back then. Thankfully, at the turn of the century, hard disks started to increase in size almost exponentially. By 2002, 40GB was common but you still had to keep an eye on your disk space. At the time I was getting pretty interested in performance too, and generally lived by the rule of having at least 30 per cent space remaining so not to have my hard disk grind to a halt as it chugged through all the data.

Fast-forward another five years and the average hard disk had increased ten-fold again with 500GB drives now relatively affordable. By this stage of course, a vast majority of people had more space than they could ever hope to fill. With 3TB hard disks now available for less than £90 and 1TB models for around £50, for those of us that don’t have gargantuan video collections, running out of storage space is practically impossible. In fact for less than the price of a tank of petrol (in the UK anyway), you can quite easily acquire enough storage to probably last half a decade.

However, it’s this tipping point, and the fact that SSDs are still relatively limited in size, that got me thinking. Is having an abundance of storage entirely a good thing? I’ve used an SSD as my main boot drive for a couple of years now, and having seen the benefits both in terms of noise reduction and of course speed, I’m keen to make my main PC a hard disk-free zone.

The hard disk is actually the nosiest component too as the CPU, GPU and motherboard are all water-cooled. However, without spending shed loads of cash on 500GB SSDs, I’ve been looking at buying a new 256GB model for my main boot drive, using some of the slower, older ones for storage.

With my combined photo, video and program collection stretching to a couple of hundred gigabytes, my ageing Crucial C300 256GB and comparatively ancient Indillinx-based 128GB Patriot Torqx should manage, and I’ve found 256GB to be enough space for Windows 7 plus numerous programs and games without clearing out the crap every other day, as I usually did with a 128GB SSD.

The result of trying to squeeze my essential data, be it programs or photos, into a smaller amount of space than I’m used to, having dealt with 2TB hard disks for the last couple of years, is that I’ve methodically sifted through my storage to weed out stuff I didn’t really need. I converted many RAW photo files I just wanted to store into JPGs, and reduced the resolution of many too. I ran a duplicate file searcher as well and this saved even more space, picking out photos, videos and other stuff I’d managed to leave in two places as I worked on the files and dumped them into storage.

The total size of all my data was now less than 200GB – 40% smaller than what it was, and it’s now a lot more organised too, just to be able to squeeze everything onto a couple of SSDs. Would I have done this if I was still planning on using my 2TB hard disk for the foreseeable future? Almost certainly not.

I’m strangely grateful to the current limited storage SSD’s offer – I actually shudder to think the state my data would be in terms of organisation and wasted space, a couple of years down the line. In short, I think an excess like this makes us lazy, or at least it certainly did me. I was amazed at how much I could trim off my storage needs.

Is your PC a hard disk-free zone? If you haven’t made the move to SSD’s yet, is it storage limits that have put you off? If so could a bit of organising sort things out? Let us know in the forum.

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The NVXP Titan waterblock uses a stainless steel top, acetal body and copper inserts.

Alphacool has released photos of its new range of full-cover GPU waterblocks.

The company has a long history of making water-cooling hardware, and has been working on a new GPU full-cover waterblock design, which preliminary tests over at Hardware Max show to be extremely competitive too.

The Alphacool NVXP Titan waterblock features an unusual construction method, using a stainless steel top and a large acetal body. Strangely, the underside isn’t an all-copper affair.

Instead, copper inserts protrude from the acetal body to reach the hot spots on the PCB, with individual inserts dealing with each RAM module and VRM chips.

It’s an interesting design that makes use of injection moulding to reduce the amount of metal required to make the waterblock. This has apparently had a knock-on effect with the price too – the Alphacool NVXP Titan full-cover waterblock is slated to retail at just £70.

This is £5-10 cheaper than the most affordable full-cover GPU waterblocks for Nvidia’s Titan graphics card available at the moment and up to £40 less than some of the more expensive models.

What do you make of Alphacool’s new waterblock? Let us know in the forum.

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The new 8970M has 1280 stream processors running at 850MHz.

AMD has unveiled the latest addition to its laptop graphics series, in the shape of the AMD Radeon HD 8900M series.

The new range currently consists of only one card – the top of the line HD 8970M. This boasts a whopping 1280 stream processors, which is double that of the next step down in the 8000 series, the 8800M, which has only 640 stream processors.

As with the rest of the 8000 series, the new chip uses AMD’s GCN architecture and features full DirectX 11.1 support.

Due to its power output, the 8970M will only likely find its way into the bulkiest of laptops. One such model that has already been announced is the MSI GX70, a 17in model with a Full HD screen, quad-core AMD A10 APU, Eyefinity support and a keyboard designed by Steel Series.

According to figures supplied by AMD, the new chip will be some 42% faster than the Nvidia GTX 680M in Bioshock Infinite (1,920 x 1,080, 0xAA, 0xAF, ultra detail) and 12% faster in Crysis 3 (1,920 x 1,080, 0xAA, 0xAF). The company didn’t supply comparison figures for Nvidia’s latest 700M range of mobile graphics processors but boldly claims it as being “the world’s fastest notebook GPU”.

AMD 8970M Specs
The 8970M completes AMD’s lineup of 8×00 series mobile graphics cards, which start with the 8500M, which features 384 stream processors, and continues with the 8700M (384 stream processors with faster clock speeds all round) and 8800M (640 stream processors). The full specs of the range are shown below.

Click to enlarge
As with previous mobile AMD graphics solutions, these chips can work together with the integrated GPU on the company’s APUs to boost performance, though the advantage would be minimum on a processor as powerful as the 8970M.

Although AMD hasn’t pinned down exact launch dates for products featuring the new chip, we can expect to start seeing them around Q3.

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Fractal Design Arc Midi R2 Review

Manufacturer: Fractal Design
UK price (as reviewed): £74.95 (inc VAT)
US price (as reviewed): $109.99 (ex Tax)

The recently launched Fractal Design Arc Midi R2 comes in at the same attractive £75 price point as its predecessor, the Fractal Design Arc, which was impressive enough to earn itself an Approved award when we first looked at it. Unlike Fractal’s Define series, the Arc range of chassis prioritises high performance over low noise, with the R2 promising a design optimised for both air and water-cooling. These are bold claims for a relatively small mid-tower, especially for one in so crowded a price range, but Fractal isn’t a company to be taken lightly in the realm of case design.

The 230mm width of the chassis is apparent as soon as you lay eyes on it, and it’s this width that means the case supports CPU coolers all the way up to 180mm tall. The plastic front panel has the same brushed aluminium effect to it as before, while the flat side panel has had its fan mount swapped out for a large window. This does lead to a little less ventilation around the GPU area, but naturally also allows you to show off your hard work. Oddly, the window has a brown tint to it, which may or may not be to your favour.

Click to enlarge – Fractal’s case now features a tinted side window
Applying pressure to various parts of the case reveals that it’s sturdy and well made, with no rattly or loose panels to speak of. The case feet, while not providing very much clearance, do gift the Arc Midi R2 a serious amount of grip that means it won’t be sliding around the floor or desk any time soon. We usually take the opportunity to test the rigidity of rear grommets too, but Fractal’s new case has none, relying on its own internal water-cooling capabilities instead of catering to external set-ups.

Although the front of the case looks identical to before with the same pair of optical drive covers and a lower meshed section featuring dust filtering foam, a simple but important improvement has been made. It’s no longer necessary to fully remove the front panel just to clean the dust filter; the meshed section is now its own panel which pops out with a simple push. It’s only held in place by clips at the top, however, so it’s a little loose compared to the rest of the case’s fittings, which are all very secure. Peeping behind it reveals a single 140mm intake fan, with room for another in the mount below it.

Click to enlarge – The front dust filter pops on and off for easy cleaning
The roof panel is made almost entirely of mesh, and like the front panel this is backed by dust filtering foam, meaning your components are protected even when your system is off. The whole panel can be removed thanks to two thumbscrews at the rear, and doing so reveals the numerous top fan mounts, the furthest back one being filled with another 140mm fan.

The final 140mm fan is found in the usual rear position, and as with the others is a Silent Series R2 fan with a relatively low maximum RPM of 1,000. In traditional Fractal style, all the fan blades as well as the 7+1 PCI expansion slots are highlighted in white, with the extra expansion slot being a vertical one for cards that don’t need a direct connection to the motherboard.

Click to enlarge – The front panel now features an integrated fan controller
Fractal has decided to ditch one of the three USB ports from the original case’s front panel, but the remaining two are USB 3.0 ones that are naturally both fully backwards compatible with the USB 2.0 spec. The power button is nice and sturdy, and pleasingly the case’s fan controller is now fully integrated. It has three speed settings (5V, 7V and 12V) and can control up to three fans, so all the default ones can be hooked up.

The last feature worth mentioning is the lower filter, which slides in and out of place and guards both the PSU and bottom fan mount from dust. It can be a little hard to replace without lifting the case off the ground a little, due to its proximity to the ground, but it’s still great to see every inlet for dust protected.

Specifications

• Dimensions (mm) 230 x 515 x 460 (W x D x H)
• Material Steel, plastic
• Available colours Black
• Weight 10.7kg
• Front panel Power, reset, 2 x USB 3, stereo, microphone
• Drive bays 2 x external 5.25in, 8 x internal 3.5in/2.5in, 2 x internal 2.5in
• Form factor(s) ATX, micro-ATX, mini-ITX
• Cooling 2 x 140mm/120mm front fan mounts (1 x 140mm fan included), 1 x 140mm/120mm rear fan mount (1 x 140mm fan included), 3 x 140mm/120mm or; 1 x 180mm and 1 x 140mm/120mm roof fan mounts (1 x 140mm fan included), 1 x 140mm/120mm bottom fan mount (fan not included)
• CPU cooler clearance 180mm
• Maximum graphics card length 290mm (430mm with HDD cage removed)
• Extras Removable dust filters, three speed fan control

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Nvidia’s profit margins have hit a record high, thanks to growth in its high-end GPU and GPGPU products helping to shore up a slowdown in Tegra business.

Nvidia has bucked the current PC market slowdown, posting boosted profits compared to the same time last year thanks to strong sales of its high-end Kepler-based GPU products.

According to the company’s quarterly filing report, the company made an impressive $954.7 million in the first quarter of its financial year 2014 – and while that’s down a disappointing 13.7 per cent compared to the last quarter of FY13, when the company took in a whopping $1.11 billion, it represents a 3.2 per cent gain on the same period last year. With other PC-related companies complaining of slowing sales and tight margins, that’s not too shabby at all – and comes at the very top of the company’s previous projections.

‘Our results this quarter came in at the upper end of our guidance, driven by strong sales of higher-end GPU products for PC gaming,‘ explained Nvidia’s Rob Csongor, vice president of investor relations, during the company’s conference call late last night. ‘We made good progress on our key strategies as the Kepler GPU architecture, which delivers outstanding performance and energy efficiency drove strong GeForce demand with PC gamers and began to flow through our Quadro and Tesla businesses in new products.‘

Keplar on the rise
Increased uptake of high-priced Kepler boards, especially in the workstation market, have seen the company’s margins rise to a record 54 per cent – 1.4 points up on the last quarter, and 4.2 per cent year-on-year. ‘There are always puts and takes but this improvement reflects our richer mix of higher margin products as well as the underlying value of our GPUs in the marketplace and our focus on cost,‘ claimed Burns. ‘For Q2, we expect margins to remain within the same 54% range as Q1 with a high mix of our higher margin products.‘

Another major win for the company has been uptake of GeForce Grid, the company’s GPU-powered cloud computing platform, and its closely-aligned workstation-centric Grid Visual Computing Appliance (VCA). ‘In the short time since we began taking Grid to market this quarter, we’ve engaged over 100 Grid VGX and Grid VCA trial customers and signed many of the top Adobe, Autodesk and SolidWorks resellers to take Grid VCA to market,‘ claimed Csongor. ‘We believe Grid VCA represent a potential $3 billion market opportunity.‘

Discussing the slowing PC market and growth of tablets, Nvidia’s co-founder, chief executive and president Jen-Hsun Huang was bullish on his company’s future in the discrete GPU market. ‘ People who build high-end gaming PCs, and people who are enthusiasts, and who enjoy having the most performance on the desktop, or people who are building these PCs for their own video editing hobbies, or the maker people who are designing 3D objects and then printing it at home, they print their own jewellery, they print their own, I don’t know what, telephones: they need to be designing 3D somehow, and those PCs tend to have GPUs inside,‘ explained Huang. ‘And that’s a movement that’s really growing fast. So, I would say that desktop PC market that we target, that we serve, is quite a vibrant market.‘

An admission from Huang of just how high the margins on his company’s enterprise-grade products are – the Grid family and the Tesla GPGPU accelerator boards – provides a glimpse as to the headline-grabbing 54 per cent profit margin: ‘Grid and Tesla are much higher than 54 per cent,‘ Huang explained, ‘[while] Tegra is lower than 54 per cent. Whenever our gaming business improves, it helps gross margins. Whenever GTX improves, it helps gross margins. When Tesla grows, it helps gross margins. Notebooks obviously drag the gross margins down, because they tend to be a more competitive business. Low-end desktop PC business tends to drag gross margins, but that’s not a very large business [for Nvidia] anyhow.‘

‘You know, the PC market declined 10 per cent quarter-over-quarter, but we declined only 6 per cent quarter-over-quarter,’‘ added Csongor. ‘That difference comes from growth in the non-commodity PC space. Non-commodity PC space will tend to be Tesla and Quadro and GTX, and those growths are always good for us and that helps gross margins. That’s also where we are putting most of our energy. Most of our energy related to GPGPU, related to extending our GPU beyond the PC into our datacentres and servers all the work that has led to the announcement of Cisco, and IBM, and Dell and HP launching their GPU servers, all of that kind of growth is good and I think we are just gearing up for Grid becoming a larger and larger component of our business – and that’s good for our margins.‘

Tough time for Tegra
But what of Tegra, the company’s ARM-powered system-on-chip product? Back in November, the company claimed that a large proportion of its growth was coming from non-PC products, meaning Tegra and its related chipsets. Well, things appear to be slowing down a little on that front – the company has reported a 50.5 per cent dip in revenue sequentially, and 22.2 per cent year-on-year – likely as a result of increased competition from the like of Qualcomm’s popular Snapdragon family and as the market waits for the first Tegra 4 products to hit shop shelves – due, Csongor claimed, during the next financial quarter.

‘Sales volume of Tegra 3 processors declined as customers began to ramp down production of Tegra 3 base mark phones and tablets,‘ admitted Karen Burns, the company’s interim chief financial officer and vice president, during the call. ‘We expect this to continue in to the next quarter as customers start to announce Tegra 4 design with further new designs and phone ramp starting in the second half of the year.‘

Beyond a commitment to launch Tegra 4 into the market – or at least have some of its customers announce devices powered by the chip, and its Tegra 4i LTE-modem integrated variant – by the end of the next quarter, Nvidia was silent on impending product launches, except to say that it expects an uptick in sales when Intel launches its Haswell processor family at Computex in June.

For those who like full figures: the company’s Generally Accepted Accounting Practices (GAAP) revenue for the quarter was $954.7 million on a gross margin of 54.3 per cent. With operating expenses for the quarter totalling $435.8 million, that makes for a total net profit for the quarter of $77.9 million – or $0.13 per share. Investors appear to have taken the news cautiously: despite hitting the top end of its projections, Nvidia’s stock price is steady having climbed just 1.01 per cent in after-hours trading.

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Zotac Zbox ID89 Plus Review

Manufacturer: Zotac
UK price (as reviewed): approx. £425 (inc VAT)
US price (as reviewed): approx. $519 (ex Tax)

The mini-PC market can hardly be described as a big one. With the Mac Mini, Apple largely has the high end corner to itself, with only a few names putting their weight behind less expensive devices. Zotac is one such name, and today marks the launch of some new additions to the Zbox range, specifically the ID89 and ID89 Plus (the Plus indicates that the system comes with a HDD and RAM). At £425, the ID89 Plus is hardly cheap, but Zotac has managed to cram a desktop Ivy Bridge CPU into its tiny frame, so it will be interesting to see what it can do.

The ID89 Plus uses the same tiny chassis as the ID42 Plus that we looked at recently with the same external connections too. The glossy black plastic lends it a home theatre look, but feels cheap and light and accumulates finger prints and dirt in no time. The soft blue glow of the ring that lights up when the system is on is a nice touch, but it’s difficult not to feel let down by the reliance on plastic in a device that exceeds £400. By comparison, it’s only £50 less than the cheapest Mac Mini model, which looks gorgeous thanks to its brushed aluminium shell.

Click to enlarge – The Zbox ID89 Plus certainly lives up to the name mini-PC
The system is powered by a single laptop-style power brick, which naturally helps to reduce its size. It can be stood horizontally on its four rubber feet which provide a little grip, or vertically in the supplied plastic stand. It can also be mounted directly to the rear of compatible displays thanks to a provided VESA mount, enabling you to keep it entirely out of sight should you wish.

The front panel has foregone the touch button of the ID42 Plus in favour of a traditional power button, although there’s still no reset one. Two LEDs are also used to represent hard drive activity and wireless connectivity. The 4-in-1 card reader is a handy addition to the front panel, while the usual pair of analog audio jacks can also be found. The system features two easily accessible USB 3 ports; one on the front and one on the side (or top, depending how you stand it), which has its own rubber cover.

The ID89 Plus also comes with a pair of screw on antennas (one for Bluetooth, one for WiFi), which is sure to please fans of the wireless router look. Zotac is also generous enough to supply a media remote control, which works with the IR receiver on the front of the unit, or the supplied USB extension receiver in case you prefer to keep the unit itself out of sight.

Click to enlarge – A pair of antennas and a Media Centre remote are supplied
While there’s no operating system supplied with the ID89 Plus, you’ll still need a USB optical drive to take advantage of the supplied driver disc. The requisite software can also be downloaded from Zotac’s website, but as you’d need either ethernet or wireless drivers beforehand the best method is to obtain everything on a different computer. This is a potential oversight on Zotac’s part (especially when the Mac Mini runs OS X out of the box), but equally we don’t feel it’s unreasonable to expect people buying a mini-PC with no operating system to be able to manage this.

Ventilation on the chassis allows the single fan to pull and push air around the hardware. There’s nothing in the way of dust filtering material, but the case is joyfully simple to open thanks to just a single pair of thumbscrews holding it shut. Let’s open it up and see what awaits us on the inside.

Specifications

• Chipset Intel H61 Express
• CPU Intel Core i5-3470T (dual-core), 2.9GHz (max Turbo frequency 3.6GHz), 3MB L3 cache
• Memory 2 x 204-pin SO-DIMM slots (1 x 4GB DDR3-1600 included)
• GPU Onboard Intel HD Graphics 2500, 650MHz (max dynamic frequency 1.1GHz)
• Audio Realtek ALC892 HD audio
• Networking 2 x Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11n/g/b WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0
• Storage 1 x SATA 3Gbs (1 x Toshiba MQ01ABD050 500GB 5,400rpm drive included)
• Video Output 1 x DVI-D, 1 x HDMI
• External Connectivity Power, 2 x USB 3, 2 x USB 2, stereo, microphone, 1 x S/PDIF, 4-in-1 card reader (MMC/SD/SDHC/SDXC)
• Operating System None (user installed)
• Dimensions (mm) 188 x 188 x 51 (W x D X H)
• Warranty Two years

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Zeus Edition by Ronnie Hara

Project log: Here

Few cases have stood the test of time better than Cooler Master’s Cosmos S. Its racy lines, sweeping curves and good size have meant that it’s popular among a whole range of enthusiasts. It’s modding and water-cooling friendly and while we’ve probably seen hundreds of Cosmos-based case mod projects since its release in 2008, we never get tired of them.

Of course for part of that reason we need to give credit to the modding community for coming up with fresh idea after fresh idea with acrylic, metal plating, epic paint jobs and water cooling all thrown into the mix. The latest Cosmos S project to catch our eye is Zeus Edition by Japan-based modder Ronnie Hara. Ronnie has been kind enough to talk to bit-tech about his latest project, and if you like water cooling, you’re in for a treat. It’s over to Ronnie…

My name is Ronnie Hara, and I’m 35 years old. I am Brazilian and I have lived in Japan for about 18 years. My first contact with case modding happened four years ago, when I tried to improve the look of my older brother’s computer, with only minor changes in the interior. I replaced some fans and organized the cables.

click to enlarge

Over time, I began to like case modding. Today I can say that case modding is my favourite hobby and a reason for many sleepless nights. I’m crazy about case modding! In all my projects, I carefully choose all the components I will use.

It all starts with a small idea and from there I try to find the best components for assembling what I consider perfect project. I always try to create harmony between colours, hardware and organization. I have the habit of visiting many stores in order to get pieces that I would use in my works. I always look for miscellaneous items, so I can innovate and add something new or different in each assembly.

For many hours I analyse the project, always looking to do my best and get a satisfactory result. Throughout these four years, I created some machines and in May 2011 I won the Rig of the Month at Guru3D site. Today I want to show my latest work finished just a while ago. In my project I used components from another case that I built.

Those who have seen my work should know that the color scheme used in the project below is not new. I think that first project was an inspiration for the next one and I will describe my work below.

My idea for this project was to do something that could really bring the image of a powerful machine like a supreme god. I chose Zeus, which for many is the god of gods, and in Greek mythology the god of sky and thunder. No one better than Zeus could represent the project I had in mind and that I would work on for the coming months.

From the name, I started looking for a cabinet that had a different style, where I could really innovate and create something that is hard to find anywhere. Then one day while visiting some used hardware stores here in Japan, I found a case from Cooler Master, model Cosmos S.

Besides liking many cases from Cooler Master (in particular the Cosmos series), using a case like this in my new project represented something special to me, since I won the aforementioned competition with the “brother” of the Cosmos S, the Cosmos Pure. I did not hesitate to buy this cabinet.

From there, I spent some weeks choosing which pattern of colours I would adopt since I was already pleased with the hardware and performance. Besides enjoying assembling computers, I’m a games lover too. Well, here are some details that I think are relevant to my Zeus project. I leave the configuration specs below along with list of materials I used.

Components:

• Case: Cooler Master Cosmos S
• MotherboardO: Asus p67 sabertooh
• CPU: Core i7 2600K Sandy Bridge 4.6Ghz
• RAM: Corsair Vengeance 1866MHz 8G
• GPU: 2 x Palit GTx 580
• HDD: WD Black 1 Tera
• SSD: OCZ Agility 2 x 3 60GB
• PSU: OCZ 1000W

Cooling:

• EK CPU Block
• EK GPU Block
• EK Backplate for 2x Palit GTX 580
• EK Radiator 360mm, 240 mm
• Reservoir EK 100, 250 X2 Advanced
• EK Fittings Extender
• Bitspower Flowmeter
• Bitspower Matte Black Multi-Link Adapter
• Bitspower Crystal Link Tube
• Alphacool VPP655 Bitspower Pump With Mod
• MNPCTECH Overkill “Ring” 120mm Fan Grill
• 7 x Corsair Fan SP 120
  Coolant Primochill Gold

With the materials chosen, it was time to start working on the project. As I mentioned before, part of the materials used in this project are for customizing cars. As for the colour, I chose a golden colour from a spray paint used to paint car rims. The sticker colours were chosen to be the closest match to the spray paint. The fans were also chosen from Corsair’s SP line because there was the possibility to customize their edges, which is something different than what we normally see.

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AMD hUMA unites the CPU and GPU memory spaces into one.

AMD has provided a few more details about its upcoming Heterogeneous System architecture (HSA), revealing the name of the unified memory system it will be using: Heterogeneous Unified Memory Access (hUMA).

HSA is AMD’s big vision for its future APUs. Like its existing APUs, HSA chips will feature a CPU and GPU on one piece of silicon but the big innovation with HSA is that the two units will now share memory directly, thus hUMA.

On current AMD and Intel APUs the CPU and GPU have separate memory blocks. So for the GPU to do some processing it requires the appropriate data to be copied from the CPU memory to the GPU memory, and back again once the processing is finished. This creates a severe bottleneck in performance and greatly increases complexity for programmers.

By unifying the two blocks of memory and allowing the CPU and GPU to directly access the same data the performance overhead of copying all the data is eliminated and programming complexity is greatly reduced.

AMD highlighted what it sees as the top ten benefits of HSA in a recent presentation:

• Much easier for programmers
• No need for special APIs
• Move CPU multi-core algorithms to the GPU without recoding for absence of coherency
• Allow finer grained data sharing than software coherency
• Implement coherency once in hardware, rather than N times in different software stacks
• Prevent hard to debug errors in application software
• Operating systems prefer hardware coherency – they do not want the bug reports to the platform
• Probe filters and directories will maintain power efficiency
• Full coherency opens the doors to single source, native and managed code programming for heterogeneous platforms
• Optimal architecture for heterogeneous computing on APUs and SOCs.

Some of these bullet points are clearly digs at Nvidia’s current system for GPU accelerated programming, CUDA, which uses a software layer to interpret simple programmer input and automatically handle the complication of memory management (among other things). HSA shouldn’t require this software layer.

HUMA is essentially just a bit of branding that refers to the single memory address space the company’s upcoming HSA APUs will be using. It harks back to the Unified Memory Access nomenclature of early multicore CPUs – where each CPU core started to share the same memory – adding in heterogeneous in reference to HSA.

HSA isn’t just an AMD project, though, it is centred around the HSA Foundation “whose goal is to make it easy to program for parallel computing.” The foundation includes such other high profile members as ARM, Qualcomm and Samsung.

The arrival of HSA is still some way off, with the first AMD chips set to use the architecture expected to arrive early next year. However, the PlayStation 4 is expected to feature an HSA type processor, so we’ll see some indication of what we can look forward to when that console arrives in Q4 this year.

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Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/GamingRipplesWeb/~3/tpLhoH4_l-Y/

AMD hUMA unites the CPU and GPU memory spaces into one.

AMD has provided a few more details about its upcoming Heterogeneous System architecture (HSA), revealing the name of the unified memory system it will be using: Heterogeneous Unified Memory Access (hUMA).

HSA is AMD’s big vision for its future APUs. Like its existing APUs, HSA chips will feature a CPU and GPU on one piece of silicon but the big innovation with HSA is that the two units will now share memory directly, thus hUMA.

On current AMD and Intel APUs the CPU and GPU have separate memory blocks. So for the GPU to do some processing it requires the appropriate data to be copied from the CPU memory to the GPU memory, and back again once the processing is finished. This creates a severe bottleneck in performance and greatly increases complexity for programmers.

By unifying the two blocks of memory and allowing the CPU and GPU to directly access the same data the performance overhead of copying all the data is eliminated and programming complexity is greatly reduced.

AMD highlighted what it sees as the top ten benefits of HSA in a recent presentation:

• Much easier for programmers
• No need for special APIs
• Move CPU multi-core algorithms to the GPU without recoding for absence of coherency
• Allow finer grained data sharing than software coherency
• Implement coherency once in hardware, rather than N times in different software stacks
• Prevent hard to debug errors in application software
• Operating systems prefer hardware coherency – they do not want the bug reports to the platform
• Probe filters and directories will maintain power efficiency
• Full coherency opens the doors to single source, native and managed code programming for heterogeneous platforms
• Optimal architecture for heterogeneous computing on APUs and SOCs.

Some of these bullet points are clearly digs at Nvidia’s current system for GPU accelerated programming, CUDA, which uses a software layer to interpret simple programmer input and automatically handle the complication of memory management (among other things). HSA shouldn’t require this software layer.

HUMA is essentially just a bit of branding that refers to the single memory address space the company’s upcoming HSA APUs will be using. It harks back to the Unified Memory Access nomenclature of early multicore CPUs – where each CPU core started to share the same memory – adding in heterogeneous in reference to HSA.

HSA isn’t just an AMD project, though, it is centred around the HSA Foundation “whose goal is to make it easy to program for parallel computing.” The foundation includes such other high profile members as ARM, Qualcomm and Samsung.

The arrival of HSA is still some way off, with the first AMD chips set to use the architecture expected to arrive early next year. However, the PlayStation 4 is expected to feature an HSA type processor, so we’ll see some indication of what we can look forward to when that console arrives in Q4 this year.

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/bit-tech/news/~3/a9icdBMoT7E/1

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/GamingRipplesWeb/~3/tpLhoH4_l-Y/