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Here a roundup of today's reviews and articles:

AMD X570 Puts Out Up To Twelve SATA 6G Ports and Sixteen PCIe Gen 4 Lanes
AMD Zen 2 has Hardware Mitigation for Spectre V4
ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming 7 Motherboard Review
Corsair Dominator Platinum RGB 16GB 3000MHz Review
Netgear Nighthawk AX8 Review
ROCCAT Kain 120 AIMO Review
Scythe Mugen 5 TUF Gaming Alliance CPU Cooler Review
SilentiumPC Navis RGB 280 Review
Team Group MP34 Phison E12-Powered NVMe SSD Review



AMD X570 Puts Out Up To Twelve SATA 6G Ports and Sixteen PCIe Gen 4 Lanes

AMD X570 is the company's first in-house design desktop motherboard chipset for the AM4 platform. The company sourced earlier generations of chipset from ASMedia. A chipset in context of the AM4 platform only serves to expand I/O connectivity, since an AM4 processor is a full-fledged SoC, with an integrated southbridge that puts out SATA and USB ports directly from the CPU socket, in addition to LPCIO (ISA), HD audio bus, and SPI to interface with the firmware ROM chip. The X470 "Promontory Low Power" chipset runs really cool, with a maximum TDP of 5 Watts, and the ability to lower power to get its TDP down to 3W. The X570, on the other hand, has a TDP of "at least 15 Watts." A majority of the X570 motherboards we've seen at Computex 2019 had active fan-heatsinks over the chipset. We may now have a possible explanation for this - there are just too many things on the chipset.

According to AMD, the X570 chipset by itself can be made to put out a staggering twelve SATA 6 Gbps ports (not counting the two ports put out by the AM4 SoC). A possible rationale behind this may have been to enable motherboard designers to equip every M.2 slot on the motherboard with SATA wiring in addition to PCIe, without needing switches that reroute SATA connection from one of the physical ports. It's also possible that AMD encouraged motherboard designers to not wire out SATA ports from the AM4 SoC as physical ports to save costs on switches, and dedicate one of them to the M.2 slot wired to the SoC. With the two SATA ports from the SoC out of the equation, and every other M.2 slot getting a direct SATA connection from the chipset, motherboard designers can wire out the remaining SATA ports as physical ports, without spending money on switches, or worrying about customer complaints on one of their drives not working due to automatic switching. This is an extreme solution to a rather simple problem.

Read full article @ TechPowerUp

AMD Zen 2 has Hardware Mitigation for Spectre V4

AMD in its technical brief revealed that its Zen 2 microarchitecture has hardware mitigation against the Spectre V4 speculative store bypass vulnerability. The current generation "Zen" and "Zen+" microarchitectures have OS-level mitigation. A hardware mitigation typically has less of a performance overhead than a software mitigation deployed at the OS or firmware level. In addition, just like older generations of "Zen," the new "Zen 2" microarchitecture is inherently immune to Meltdown, Foreshadow, Spectre V3a, Lazy FPU, Spoiler, and the recently discovered MDS vulnerability. In comparison, the 9th generation Core "Coffee Lake Refresh" processors still rely on software or microcode-level mitigation for Spectre V4, Spectre V3a, MDS, and RIDL.

Read full article @ TechPowerUp

ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming 7 Motherboard Review

ASRock’s manages to deliver integrated 2.5GbE at under $200, but mediocre overclocking and high temps with the stock i9-9900K hold this board back.

Read full article @ Tom's Hardware

Corsair Dominator Platinum RGB 16GB 3000MHz Review

At CES earlier this year Corsair’s biggest introduction was their new CAPELLIX RGB’s which drop the conventional package that PC LEDs have been using to create a much smaller, brighter, and energy efficient LED. Now smaller means the potential for much higher density and energy efficiency could mean you could see them used more in wireless devices. But the first product they introduced with CAPELLIX LEDs was the Dominator Platinum RGB memory kits. So in addition to being the first Corsair RGB kit to come into the office, I’m also excited to see what the CAPELLIX LEDs can do. I will also talk a little more about the benefits later as well.

Read full article @ LanOC Reviews

Netgear Nighthawk AX8 Review

The Nighthawk AX8 is an 8-stream router and is part of an initial offering within Netgear's WiFi 6 range. WiFi 6 is the latest confirmed standard within the WiFi standard; WiFi 6 and 802.11ax are interchangeable, however, to make wireless transmission technologies easier to understand for the general public. This latest standard improves 2.4GHz & 5GHz operation and supports the newer 160MHz channels, and in doing so broadly increases support for multiple high-bandwidth devices.

Read full article @ Vortez

ROCCAT Kain 120 AIMO Review

ROCCAT's Kain line debuts with two medium-sized, right-handed ergonomic mice of which the Kain 120 is the more premium one. It's a fantastic gaming mouse, featuring ROCCAT's signature AIMO lighting, an all-new Owl-Eye 16K sensor, a freshly patented main button mechanism and much more, while staying relatively lightweight.

Read full article @ TechPowerUp

Scythe Mugen 5 TUF Gaming Alliance CPU Cooler Review

Back in 2017 we took a look at the Scythe Mugen 5 CPU cooler, we liked it so much that we gave it a 9 out of 10 score and our Good Value Award. Scythe is back with a new Mugen 5 TUF Gaming Alliance CPU cooler. The TUF Gaming Alliance is a collaboration between ASUS and major PC-component manufacturers to guarantee both compatibility and aesthetic harmony. Basically you can buy different TUF Gaming Alliance products and they will all look the same / have the same design so your build looks pretty awesome. The Mugen 5 has been given the TUF Gaming alliance treatment with an RGB top, RGB fan, and TUF Gaming Alliance colors, which happen to be black and yellow. Besides that we have a single-tower cooler with six heatpipes and a 120 mm cooling fan. Is this the air cooler you need? Read on as we find out!

Read full article @ ThinkComputers.org

SilentiumPC Navis RGB 280 Review

Today we are testing on OCinside.de the all-in-one water cooling system Navis RGB 280 from the manufacturer SilentiumPC. The company was founded in 2007 in Warsaw. They made it their business to manufacture high-quality silent accessories in the form of enclosures, power supplies and cooling solutions. Let us take a look at the following review of the SilentiumPC Navis RGB 280 to see if it is a quiet and powerful CPU cooler.

Read full article @ OCInside.de

Team Group MP34 Phison E12-Powered NVMe SSD Review

You may have noticed the massive influx of NVMe SSDs with the Phison PS5012-E12 controller just coming to market. There are many, and the supply is plentiful. These market conditions have helped to lower E12-based SSD pricing at a quicker rate than many other SSDs, like those from Samsung.

Read full article @ TweakTown