I guess people are pretty interested in Framework’s new Strix Halo desktop, Strix Point 13-inch (it’s translucent!) and 12-inch convertible laptop, because I’ve never been put on hold to visit a dang website before.
My colleagues who are veterans of the PS5 restock wars tell me this is normal. Y’all are really out here waiting in line online?
The RTX 5090 fits in an Ncase M1, with a few caveats.
Called the Asus NUC 14 Pro AI Plus, it’s basically the NUC 14 Pro AI in a translucent case. That color E Ink display on top is customizable, as Good e-Reader calls out. Asus says users “can generate AI images” on the display using a built-in app.
We’ve asked Asus for more info on its availability.
Gordon was executive editor for hardware at PCWorld, and he spent 16 years before that at Maximum PC. I’m incredibly lucky to have known him. I’m gonna miss the hell out of him.
6
Verge Score
Still beautiful. Still good. Still the wrong form factor for basically everybody.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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:
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:
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.
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]
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.
