Cincoze DS-1300 Industrial PC Review: Xeon-Powered Do-it-All

Industrial PCs are meant for 24×7 deployment in a wide range of environments. This brings in a host of requirements such as wide operating temperature range, ruggedness, regulatory requirements, support for specific I/O types, etc. Most industrial PCs are passively cooled, with the absence of moving parts contributing to better reliability. In certain cases, processing power requirements and space constraints make it necessary to include active cooling. Today, we are looking at a high-end industrial PC from Cincoze – the DS-1300 featuring a Comet Lake-based Xeon CPU and a discrete GPU. Read on to for a detailed look at the features and performance profile of the flagship member of the Cincoze DS-1300 series.

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Mushkin Redline VORTEX PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD Launched: Affordable Flagship

Mushkin’s lineup of PCIe 4.0 SSDs has largely remained a Phison affair. The Delta series was based on the Phison E16 and the Gamma on the Phison E18. Recently, the company launched a new series of PCIe 4.0 SSDs – the Redline VORTEX. The key here seems to be the usage of a new SSD controller – the Innogrit Rainier IG5236. It appears to be taking over the flagship mantle from the Gamma – besting it in both read and write random access IOPS and also sequential read speeds. However, unlike the Delta and Gamma, which came to the market in 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB flavors, the Redline VORTEX series has three capacity points – 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB. Detailed specifications are provided in the table below.

Mushkin Redline VORTEX SSD Specifications
Capacity
512 GB
1024 GB
2048 GB
Controller
Innogrit IG5236
NAND Flash
?? 3D TLC NAND
Form-Factor, Interface
Single-Sided M.2-2280, PCIe 4.0 x4, NVMe 1.4
<!– Double-Sided M.2-2280, PCIe 4.0 x4, NVMe 1.4 –>
DRAM
512 MB DDR4
1 GB DDR4
2 GB DDR4
Sequential Read
6750 MB/s
7430 MB/s
7415 MB/s
Sequential Write
2635 MB/s
5300 MB/s
6800 MB/s
Random Read IOPS
200K
390K
730K
Random Write IOPS
645K
1085K
1500K
SLC Caching
Yes
TCG Opal Encryption
No
Warranty
5 years
Write Endurance
250 TBW
0.27 DWPD
500 TBW
0.27 DWPD
1000 TBW
0.27 DWPD
MSRP
$78 (15.23¢/GB)
$125 (12.21¢/GB)
??

The SSD adopts a graphene heat dissipating label for its thermal solution – typical for the price point targeted. The performance numbers (aided by dynamic SLC caching) make it sitable for content creation and gaming – workloads that typically benefit from the capabilities provided by PCIe 4.0 SSDs.

Mushkin is not the first to market with the Innogrit Rainier controller. The Patriot Viper VP4300 series and the ADATA XPG GAMMIX S70 Blade were introduced late last year. While the Viper VP4300 is priced quite high, the Mushkin Redline VORTEX manages to undercut the XPG GAMMIX S70 blade by $12 at the 512GB capacity point and $5 at the 1TB point (based on current street pricing). The company is yet to announce availability and pricing for the 2TB SKU. The appearance of more affordable PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs in the market is good news for consumers.

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AMD Teases FSR 2.0: Temporal Upscaling Tech for Games Coming in Q2

Alongside their spring driver update, AMD this morning is also unveiling the first nugget of information about the next generation of their FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) technology. Dubbed FSR 2.0, the next generation of AMD’s upscaling technology will be taking the logical leap into adding temporal data, giving FSR more data to work with, and thus improving its ability to generate details. And, while AMD is being coy with details for today’s early teaser, at a high level this technology should put AMD much closer to competing with NVIDIA’s temporal-based DLSS 2.0 upscaling technology, as well as Intel’s forthcoming XeSS upscaling tech.

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AMD’s Ryzen 7 5800X3D Launches April 20th, Plus 6 New Low & Mid-Range Ryzen Chips

Since the launch of AMD’s Zen 3-powered Ryzen 5000 desktop processors in late 2020, the company’s retail desktop chip offerings have been rather static. With AMD facing heavy demand for products on multiple fronts – from CPUs to GPUs to console APUs – and all during an unprecedented chip crunch, the company has held back on expanding its desktop offerings. Instead, AMD has focused its limited TSMC 7nm wafer allocations on trying to keep up with demand for some of their most important (and highest margin) products, such as server CPUs, laptop chips, and high-end desktop CPUs.

However, as the chip crunch has ever-so-slightly abated, AMD is now turning their attention back to the desktop space, to finally focus on fleshing out their desktop processor product lineups. We saw our first glimpse of that last week with the announcement of the long-awaited Threadripper Pro 5000 series for workstations. And now for this week the company is announcing the launch dates of several new Ryzen desktop processors, including the much-awaited Ryzen 7 5800X3D with V-Cache, as well as 6 new low-to-mid-range Ryzen SKUs for the retail market.

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Best AMD Motherboards: March 2022

As we continue the journey through 2022, we find that AMD’s current AM4+ platform is in middle of its stride. On top of AMD’s current stack of Zen 3 processors, AMD CEO Lisa Su confirmed during CES 2022 that AMD’s next Zen 3 desktop CPU, the V-cached equipped Ryzen 7 5800X3D, will launch this spring. So with a new chip to come and AMD’s existing Zen 3-based offerings remaining highly competitive today, there remains a sizable market for AM4+ motherboards.

With varying levels of motherboards available, from the more affordable B450 chipset to the flagship X570 chipset and latest X570S models, there’s something available for users on all kinds of budgets. Here are our AMD-based selections for March 2022 in our latest motherboard buyers guide.

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The ADATA XPG Cybercore 1300W PSU Review: Advanced From the Start

In today’s review, we are taking a look at XPG’s latest creation, the Cybercore power supply series. The Cybercore PSU is based on a whole new power supply platform and boasts a massive power output for its proportions, all while it is built exclusively with premium components.

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The Intel W680 Chipset Overview: Alder Lake Workstations Get ECC Memory and Overclocking Support

Earlier this month Intel quietly launched its W680 chipset, the company’s workstation-focused chipset for its 12th Gen Core (Alder Lake) processors. Unlike the current generation of consumer desktop chipsets such as Z690, H670, B660, and H610, the W680 adds the capability to use ECC DRAM, including both DDR5 and DDR4 variants. At present, there haven’t been many W680 motherboard announcements, although a couple of vendors, including ASRock Industrial and Supermicro have a few options listed. So we’re giving you the lowdown on W680, what it has to offer, and what technologies it brings for users looking to build a workstation-class desktop with Intel’s latest Alder Lake architecture.

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Interview with Intel’s Raja Koduri: Zettascale or ZettaFLOP? Metaverse what?

We currently live in a sea of buzzwords. Whether that’s something to catch the eye when scrolling through our news feed, or a company wanting to latch their product onto the word-of-the-day, the quintessential buzzword gets lodged in your brain and it’s hard to get out. Two that have broken through the barn doors in the technology community lately have been ‘Zettascale’, and ‘Metaverse’. Cue a collective groan while we wait for them to stop being buzzwords and into something tangible. That’s my goal today while speaking to Raja Koduri, Intel’s SVP and GM of Accelerated Computing.

What makes buzzwords like Zettascale and Metaverse so egregious right now is that they’re referring to one of our potential futures. To break it down: Zettascale is talking about creating 1000x the current level of compute today but in the latter half of the decade, to take advantage of the high demand for computational resources by both consumers and businesses, and especially machine learning; Metaverse is something about more immersive experiences, and leveling up the future of interaction, but is about as well defined as a PHP variable.

The main element that combines the two is computer hardware, coupled by computer software. That’s why I reached out to Intel to ask for an interview with Raja Koduri, SVP and GM, whose role is to manage both angles for the company towards a Zettascale future and a Metaverse experience. One of the goals of this interview was to cut through the miasma of marketing fluff and understand exactly what Intel means with these two phrases, and if they’re relevant enough to the company to be built into those future roadmaps (to no-one’s surprise, they are – but we’re finding out how).

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Apple Announces M1 Ultra: Combining Two M1 Maxes For Workstation Performance

As part of Apple’s spring “Peek Performance” product event this morning, Apple unveiled the fourth and final member of the M1 family of Apple Silicon SoCs, the M1 Ultra. Aimed squarely at desktops – specifically, Apple’s new Mac Studio – the M1 Ultra finds Apple once again upping the ante in terms of SoC performance for both CPU and GPU workloads. And in the process, Apple has thrown the industry a fresh curveball by not just combining two M1 Max dies into a single chip package, but by making the two dies present themselves as a single, monolithic GPU, marking yet another first for the chipmaking industry.

Back when Apple announced the M1 Pro and the already ridiculously powerful M1 Max last fall, we figured Apple was done with M1 chips. After all, how would you even top a single 432mm2 chip that’s already pushing the limits of manufacturability on TSMC’s N5 process? Well, as the answer turns out to be, Apple can do one better. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say twice as better. As for the company’s final and ultimate M1 chip design, the M1 Ultra, Apple has bonded two M1 Max dies together on to a single chip, with all of the performance benefits doubling their hardware would entail.

The net result is a chip that, without a doubt, manages to be one of the most interesting designs I’ve ever seen for a consumer SoC. As we’ll touch upon in our analysis, the M1 Ultra is not quite like any other consumer chip currently on the market. And while double die strategy benefits sprawling multi-threaded CPU and GPU workloads far more than it does more single-threaded tasks – an area where Apple is already starting to fall behind – in the process they re breaking new ground on the GPU front. By enabling the M1 Ultra’s two dies to transparently present themselves as a single GPU, Apple has kicked off a new technology race for placing multi-die GPUs in high-end consumer and workstation hardware.

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The Apple “Peek Performance” Event Live Blog (Starts at 10am PT/18:00 UTC)

Join us a bit later today for Apple’s spring product launch event, which for this year is being called “Peek Performance“.

The presentation kicks off at 10am Pacific (18:00 UTC) and should be packed with a barrage of Apple product announcements. In previous years these events have covered new Macs, iPads, and even iPhones, and this year should be much the same. So it should be interesting to see what Apple has in store, especially as the company continues its multi-year transition in the Mac from x86 CPUs to their own Arm-based Apple Silicon chips.

Join us at 10am PT for more details!

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