Vjeran Pavic
How mini is the new Mac Mini?
Wes gave me a great idea to bring my Apple TV to compare and see how small the new M4 Mac Mini actually is. I decided to document my Pulitzer-worthy investigation in this short video.
Desktops
Umar Shakir
Sean Hollister
Andrew Liszewski
6
Verge Score
Still beautiful. Still good. Still the wrong form factor for basically everybody.
Nathan Edwards
Chris Welch
Those new iMac colors look even better in our hands-on video.
It’s been a very busy week for the Mac. Apple gave creators and select media a preview of its latest machines in Los Angeles on Wednesday. Here’s Vjeran’s video roundup on the new Mac Mini, iMac, and MacBook Pro. The more I see that nano-texture coating on the latter, the more I’m sold on it.
Stay tuned for our reviews.
Sean Hollister
The first Thunderbolt 5 add-in cards are arriving.
We’ve seen the first Thunderbolt 5 port, the first cable, and the first dock to theoretically offer its blistering 120Gbps speeds. Now, behold the first TBT5 cards from Gigabyte and from Asus.
Neither one magically adds Thunderbolt to your PC — to create two do-it-all Thunderbolt 5 connectors, you need to plug power, USB, mini-DP video and your motherboard’s existing internal Thunderbolt header into this thing.
Sean Hollister
Today I learned my next gaming PC could look like a NUC strapped to a GPU.
The Beelink EX Docking Station is a $159 staircase of a gadget that connects a mini-PC to a desktop GPU, with built-in 600W PSU. Beelink claims no performance hit, with PCIe x8 direct connect rather than USB or Oculink.
Beelink’s been around for a while; it just announced a $999 AMD Strix Point mini-PC too. The eGPU only works with its Intel models, though.
Sean Hollister
Acer will honor Intel’s warranty extension on crashing chips — meaning everyone’s finally on the same page.
Acer to The Verge, today:
We are offering a two-year extended warranty for affected 13th and 14th Gen Intel Core desktop processors causing instability issues. While we are working closely with Intel to address the situation through microcode updates, customers experiencing such issues should contact their nearest Acer service center.
I think that’s just about everyone. Now we see if everyone makes exchanges difficult... or easy.
Sean Hollister
Lenovo will now honor Intel’s two-year extension on crashing desktop CPUs.
Lenovo previously had an unsatisfactory answer, but it’s come around:
For affected processors, we will honor Intel’s 2-year processor warranty extension and recommend customers impacted by any CPU instability issues to contact Lenovo service for support.
Fuller statement in our big story:
Sean Hollister
Dell and Alienware are honoring Intel’s extended warranty now too. Five year warranty on unstable Raptor Lake CPUs.
Intel recently informed us that the impacted 13th and 14th generation processors facing instability issues will have an extended warranty. Dell will support Intel’s extended warranty terms for a total of five-years on these processors.
Pretty much every brand is on board now, save Lenovo and Acer:
Sean Hollister
MSI has now agreed to extend its Intel desktop warranty by two years.
The company’s answer was brief:
MSI will cover 2 year extended warranty on all MSI Desktop.
We asked all its competitors the same question about Intel’s crashing chips. Here are the answers:
Sean Hollister
Lenovo wins worst answer award re: replacing your Intel CPU.
The number-one PC maker has answered our question whether it’ll honor Intel’s two-year extended warranty on damaged chips — but the answer doesn’t even include the word “warranty.”
Lenovo has been made aware of the instability issue affecting Intel’s 13th and 14th Generation Processors and is working with Intel to understand the potential impact on our products and how to best resolve them. We will work toward integrating into our future product BIOS any fixes provided by Intel once available. We recommend customers impacted by any CPU instability issues to contact Lenovo service for support.
Intel is footing the bill for replacements; this shouldn’t be a hard decision for Lenovo.
Sean Hollister
Will PC makers extend their warranty on Intel’s crashing chips? This one just did.
Puget Systems writes it’s indeed seeing higher failure rates with 13th and 14th Gen Intel Core processors — so it’ll extend warranty to three years for affected buyers. Normally, Puget only warranties parts for one year.
We don’t yet know if Intel is helping PC makers extend warranty. So far it’s only extended warranty on its own retail chips.
Puget Systems' Perspective on Intel CPU Instability Issues
[Puget Systems]
Wes Davis
There’s a new AMD-powered mini PC for the Intel NUC crowd.
This fast AMD mini PC comes with a 16-core AMD Ryzen 9 7945HX, a Radeon RX 7600M XT GPU, and two NVMe SSD slots. And at $1,249 for the barebones model, it’s cheaper than the Asus ROG NUC with an Intel Core Ultra 9.
Correction: Only one SSD slot is PCIe 5.0; the other is 4.0.
The Verge’s favorite methods for keeping our tech in reasonable order.
Verge Staff
Sean Hollister
PC industry growth wasn’t a fluke.
IDC and Canalys disagree whether this is the second or third consecutive quarter of growth, but either way, the slump is definitively behind us — and we haven’t even seen the impact of this year’s Qualcomm, AMD and Intel chip launches yet.
Sean Hollister
Mini Maker Turbo Mini X: your socketed desktop processor in a transparent PC less than 1.5 inches thin.
Mini Maker wasn’t on our transparent gadget radar, but I’m fixing that now! The Turbo Mini X looks incredibly svelte for something with a 65W Intel desktop chip inside, and there’s a companion eGPU with direct PCIe connection that’s allegedly faster than Thunderbolt. It’s not just vapor: Tom’s Hardware saw one.
1/8The Turbo Mini X. (This one’s the PC, next image is the eGPU.)
Sean Hollister
This is what a desktop motherboard with CAMM2 memory modules looks like.
Originally I was just excited for LPCAMM2 modular laptop memory, but low-profile desktop RAM too? Hells yes.
Image: MSI (X)
Sean Hollister
A motherboard with no USB-A ports... but 10 USB-C instead.
ASRock just traveled back in time from a distant future where USB-A is dead. Here’s its new Taichi Aqua motherboard as proof (via VideoCardz).
Sean Hollister
Acer brings the dual hertz with a 32-inch 4K OLED monitor.
Like a certain Asus monitor we saw at CES and an LG before that, the new Acer Predator X32 X3 has a dual-mode panel that can do 480Hz at 1080p, or 240Hz at 4K. Typical brightness is just 275 nits, but it can peak at 1,000 — and it offers built-in KVM with 90W of USB-C PD charging, all for $1,200.
Quentyn Kennemer
Gordon Bell, minicomputer pioneer, passes away at age 89.
As an engineer for DEC in 1965, Bell played a pivotal role in shrinking room-sized computer systems into minicomputers.
An $18,000 prototype Bell created inspired the compact PCs we enjoy today. Bell later started the Computer History Museum.
C. Gordon Bell, Creator of a Personal Computer Prototype, Dies at 89
[The New York Times]
Victoria Song
Joanna Nelius
Intel’s discontinuing some of its 13th-gen desktop CPUs.
Final shipments to vendors end on June 28th, 2024. I doubt this has anything to do with certain PC games crashing, but my partner did recently exchange his brand new Core i9-13900K because he was having the same issue. The 12th-gen K-series chips seem to be sticking around, too, at least for now. Curious...
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