Compu Hub

Remember a couple of weeks ago when ASRock announced that it would be showing off a Mini-ITX board with the X99 chipset at CeBIT? Well, CeBIT has now passed and ASRock did show it there, but now the company has slapped a price tag on it and unveiled all of the juicy specifications. The X99E-ITX/ac is a one-of-a-kind motherboard, as no other motherboard vendor currently has a Mini-ITX X99 offering. Th e reason for this is quite simple – putting X99 on a Mini-ITX board doesn't entirely make sense, as it doesn't have the expansion slots to fully use all the PCI-Express lanes that Haswell-E CPUs have, and you won't be able to actually run quad-channel memory due to the board physically only having room for two DDR4 memory slots. Further, the LGA2011-3 socket is huge, and that doesn't necessarily leave much room on the board for all the I/O, audio hardware, VRM circuitry, and more. One thing worth noting about the board is that it does come with the smaller,...

YouTube recently tested new features for its videos, such as 360-degree videos and a multi-angle feature, but the popular video site is also looking to meet the demands of new technology before it becomes widely accepted. YouTube's latest experiment shows six videos playing at 4K resolutions and 60 frames per second. The videos, which can only be viewed on Google Chrome, feature a variety of content from a  volcano eruption to a fan-made film shot in the space-based game Star Citizen. These videos look beautiful on a full HD display at 1080p and 60 frames per second, but problems arise when you switch to 4K resolution. The obvious issue is that it won't display properly since most people don't even own a 4K display yet. Another issue is bandwidth; the sheer amount of data put into 4K videos will have you watching the buffer loading icon for quite some time. Like HDTVs in the past, 4K needs time to become affordable to be the new standard for display resolutions, ...

A recent report by Ara Labs claims that a news strain of malware is misusing routers to inject ads and pornographic content into websites, and once a router is compromised, the malware will load third-party content onto almost any website visited by the user. The attack alternates between loading ads and directly loading content from pornographic websites. In both cases, it's functioning as a basic adware at tack, redirecting targets as a pay of generating paid traffic for a client. According to the Verge, the attack works by targeting the DNS system. Since DNS information is typically communicated through the router, the attackers used the hacked routers to reroute requests to their own bogus IP addresses. When the target tried to connect to Google Analytics, the hacked router sent the request to the attackers' server, which answered the request by injecting its own content onto the pages in question. Google Analytics is so widely used that the attack was ...

The Logitech Performance Mouse MX was targeted more towards the office worker looking for a great mouse that can perform multiple functions with many buttons as opposed to gamers. It was designed to feel great ergonomically, and it can also perform on any surface, including glass, due to what Logitech calls its Darkfield Laser Sensor. However, the company believes it can make an even better mouse, and annou nced today the replacement for the Performance Mouse MX – the MX Master. The MX Master is slightly larger than its predecessor, at 3.4 x 5 x 2 inches (HWD) compared to 3.29 x 5.05 x 1.85 inches (HWD), yet it's slightly lighter at 5.1 ounces compared to 5.19 ounces. It also has five buttons compared to the Performance Mouse MX's nine. Its design looks slightly similar to the Performance Mouse MX in that it has that same outstretched area on the left side of the mouse as a thumb rest. However, the MX Master added a gesture button to the rest area. By pressing the gestur...

OCZ Storage Solutions, a Toshiba Group Company, released the new Vector 180 series today. The Vector 180 is a continuation of the Vector 150 theme that adds new features to make it more cost-competitive and reliable. The Vector 180 utilizes the same OCZ-proprietary Barefoot 3 controller found in the Vector 150 but switches from first-gen Toshiba 19 nm to second-generation Toshiba A19 nm NAND. This may appear to be a small change, but it will result in a more competitive price point for the end customer. Performance metrics remain fairly static at 100,000 / 95,000 random read/write IOPS, and sequential speed remains near the limit of SATA 6 Gbps at 550 MBps and 530 MBps sequential read/write. OCZ also expanded capacity by adding a beefy 960 GB model to the existing 120 GB, 240 GB and 480 GB capacity points. OCZ's reputation for reliability took quite the beating prior to the Toshiba acquisition, but in fairness, this was largely due to the nature of being a third-party ma...

Looking to purchase a new monitor for your desktop? Why not take the plunge into the curved display market, as Samsung has added five new models to its curved monitor family, ranging from 23.5 inches to 29 inches. These include the SE790C Series, the SE590C series and the SE591C Series. Samsung indicated in its Samsung Tomorrow blog that the monitors have a curve that complements the human eye, meaning users may have a more c omfortable experience when viewing the contents on the screen, even in the dark. In essence, the displays are designed to provide less eye strain and a reduced amount of reflections. For instance, the eye-saver mode lowers eye strain by reducing the amount of blue light emitting from the screen. The panels also use Samsung's flicker-free technology, which reduces the amount of flickering that's associated with your typical monitor. Add these two technologies together, and users presumably can sit in front of the screen with less eye fatigue and fo...