Piltch Point (Video)

Intel has released its newest processor, the Comet Lake-S Core i9-10900K. This new processor is intended to help fight off the rising threat of AMD's Ryzen processors. AMD has seen a huge rise, especially in the realm of high core count. The new Intel processor attempts to match this move, by including ten cores and, out of box clocks in at 4.9 GHz.

Obviously, with specs like that, the processor is not intended for an average consumer. The 10900K is aimed at enthusiasts, power users, and gamers. While it doesn't match AMD's Ryzen 9 3950X in terms of threaded performance, it does make it for it in overall performance as well as price. The Ryzen 3950X is currently retailing for $709, while the Intel 10900K is retailing for $529.

Intel's newest processor does have some downsides, however. First and foremost, it still uses 14-nanometer architecture, which is generations behind where AMD is on its 7-nanometer architecture. This means that to produce the same result, the power consumption is lower. This is a standard rule of processors - smaller transistors use less power. This processor does not buck that trend at all, being the most power-hungry processor that Tom's Hardware has seen in recent times.

With more power consumption comes more heat generation. That means that it takes more work to keep the processor cool. If you're going to build a quiet PC, either for streaming or just to maintain your own sanity, this processor will provide a bigger challenge. Intel rates the processor for 250W at peak performance, and the review even measured peaks as high as 325W at out-of-the-box settings. That is a massive increase over the previous generation, caused almost entirely because of the continued use of the 14-nanometer architecture design decision.

For the full review, head over to Tom's Hardware.

Scott is a developer who has worked on projects of varying sizes, including all of the PLUGHITZ Corporation properties. He is also known in the gaming world for his time supporting the rhythm game community, through DDRLover and hosting tournaments throughout the Tampa Bay Area. Currently, when he is not working on software projects or hosting F5 Live: Refreshing Technology, Scott can often be found returning to his high school days working with the Foundation for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST), mentoring teams and helping with ROBOTICON Tampa Bay. He has also helped found a student software learning group, the ASCII Warriors, currently housed at AMRoC Fab Lab.

Avram's been in love with PCs since he played original Castle Wolfenstein on an Apple II+. Before joining Tom's Hardware, for 10 years, he served as Online Editorial Director for sister sites Tom's Guide and Laptop Mag, where he programmed the CMS and many of the benchmarks. When he's not editing, writing or stumbling around trade show halls, you'll find him building Arduino robots with his son and watching every single superhero show on the CW.

NVIDIA has added a new developer kit to its hardware lineup, called the Jetson Xavier NX. This new board is designed to allow developers to integrate artificial intelligence skills into a hardware project without the need for internet access or custom-designed hardware. Built in to the kit is a couple of common demoes, such as human detection, skeleton mapping, and attention tracking.

In addition to the included models, the Jetson Xavier NX is able to be trained for any AI workload. Perhaps you're building a scanner for an airport that verifies official identification versus forged documents. Or, maybe you're letting passengers know that their driver's license doesn't conform to the new REAL ID system, which will be required in 2021. You can train your system on-board or through an external AI training system and import the model into the device.

The most exciting aspect of this product is the ability to do all this AI training and processing live on the device without internet access. Because connectivity is never guaranteed, and speed and access can vary based on time of day, relying on internet access can be a limiting factor for AI. If you're building hardware for a factoring or manufacturing facility that may be deployed in a developing country, being able to use AI while off the grid can be the difference between market success and a bricked platform.

Once you have developed your application and are ready for system deployment, you can get just the Jetson Xavier NX deployment board and integrate it into your own custom hardware. This reduces the size and cost of the device, plus gives you greater flexibility in your deployment scheme. The developer board is available now for $399 and the deployment module will be available soon.

Scott is a developer who has worked on projects of varying sizes, including all of the PLUGHITZ Corporation properties. He is also known in the gaming world for his time supporting the rhythm game community, through DDRLover and hosting tournaments throughout the Tampa Bay Area. Currently, when he is not working on software projects or hosting F5 Live: Refreshing Technology, Scott can often be found returning to his high school days working with the Foundation for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST), mentoring teams and helping with ROBOTICON Tampa Bay. He has also helped found a student software learning group, the ASCII Warriors, currently housed at AMRoC Fab Lab.

Avram's been in love with PCs since he played original Castle Wolfenstein on an Apple II+. Before joining Tom's Hardware, for 10 years, he served as Online Editorial Director for sister sites Tom's Guide and Laptop Mag, where he programmed the CMS and many of the benchmarks. When he's not editing, writing or stumbling around trade show halls, you'll find him building Arduino robots with his son and watching every single superhero show on the CW.

Whether you're a regular maker or you're looking for new things to try while in lockdown, the Raspberry Pi is a great platform to expiriment with. This board is made for both prototyping as well as learning, and this week, Tom's Hardware has some great advanced projects as well as simple projects.

In the more advanced project category, there are truly a ton of interesting and unique projects. Some are more conceptual while others are designed to improve your daily life. Take, for example, Raspbian XP - a version of the Raspbian operating system designed to look like Windows XP. If you miss the bizarre blue taskbar and green Start button, then this project is for you. However, it's not going to change your day. However, if you're looking to get into shape, HIIT Pi: The Raspberry Pi Personal Trainer might be a legitimate project for you. This uses computer vision to make sure you are doing the moves correctly, like how a personal trainer would in a gym.

If you're looking for a simpler project, perhaps one you can do with your kids, then the second category is intended for you. These projects take advantage of a diverse add-on board, known as the Sense HAT. This board has sensors for temperature, humidity, pressure, magnetic forces, orientation, acceleration. In addition, it has an 8x8 LED pixel matrix which can be used for pictures, words, and more. Learning to use the sensors is easy and can be done using the Scratch 3 block-based programming environment.

Tom's Hardware will help walk you through setting up the device, adding the HAT, and working with the sensors. Like any new technology, making the screen say "Hello, World!" is the place to start, and it's where they start. Once you've got that working, you can move on to learning about the joystick and the temperature sensor. Then, you get to learn the accelerometer. With that knowledge, you should be able to master the device and create your own projects.

Scott is a developer who has worked on projects of varying sizes, including all of the PLUGHITZ Corporation properties. He is also known in the gaming world for his time supporting the rhythm game community, through DDRLover and hosting tournaments throughout the Tampa Bay Area. Currently, when he is not working on software projects or hosting F5 Live: Refreshing Technology, Scott can often be found returning to his high school days working with the Foundation for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST), mentoring teams and helping with ROBOTICON Tampa Bay. He has also helped found a student software learning group, the ASCII Warriors, currently housed at AMRoC Fab Lab.

Avram's been in love with PCs since he played original Castle Wolfenstein on an Apple II+. Before joining Tom's Hardware, for 10 years, he served as Online Editorial Director for sister sites Tom's Guide and Laptop Mag, where he programmed the CMS and many of the benchmarks. When he's not editing, writing or stumbling around trade show halls, you'll find him building Arduino robots with his son and watching every single superhero show on the CW.

When you think of the greast rivalries of the world, you might think of Holyfield and Tyson, or Axl Rose and Vince Neil. But, in the world of technology, there might not be any more interesting rivalry than AMD and Intel. For decades, these two companies have produced the vast majority of processors. For desktops and laptops, these two companies have owned the market. In the server market, Intel has long been the standard. For mobile phones, AMD was once the standard.

While the world is on pause, Tom's Hardware dedicated testing resources to putting the rivalry to the test in today's marketplace. They compared the current offerings from both brands across ten metrics, from price and value to heat and performance. On the total metric count, it was a clear win for AMD.

This win comes care of the difference between the companies' philosophies. AMD has always worked to be the low cost provider. They accomplish this by pushing their hardware to a higher threshold than Intel does. While this helped them in several categories, it did lose them in the overclocking capacity. Because they natively push their processors harder, it means that there is less head room at the top of the processor for users to push it farther.

The biggest win for AMD was in its value. For the same price, you can get an AMD processor with more cores and similar or higher clock speed. In fact, looking at the comparable product families, AMD's processors tend to run about 20% less per device than an Intel processor.

Now, it is important to note that, just because AMD won seven out of ten categories, does not mean that AMD is the right solution for everyone. When purchasing a pre-built machine, don't go out of your way to over customize your configuration. When building your own machine, consider what your intentions are and what your needs are going to be.

Scott is a developer who has worked on projects of varying sizes, including all of the PLUGHITZ Corporation properties. He is also known in the gaming world for his time supporting the rhythm game community, through DDRLover and hosting tournaments throughout the Tampa Bay Area. Currently, when he is not working on software projects or hosting F5 Live: Refreshing Technology, Scott can often be found returning to his high school days working with the Foundation for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST), mentoring teams and helping with ROBOTICON Tampa Bay. He has also helped found a student software learning group, the ASCII Warriors, currently housed at AMRoC Fab Lab.

Avram's been in love with PCs since he played original Castle Wolfenstein on an Apple II+. Before joining Tom's Hardware, for 10 years, he served as Online Editorial Director for sister sites Tom's Guide and Laptop Mag, where he programmed the CMS and many of the benchmarks. When he's not editing, writing or stumbling around trade show halls, you'll find him building Arduino robots with his son and watching every single superhero show on the CW.

Since the beginning of the lockdowns, certain products have been in short supply. The most publicized have been toilet paper and hand sanitizer. However, there have been tech products that have been depleted as well - particularly webcams. But, since webcams themselves are difficult to acquire, people have looked for alternatives that can get you up and running for your next conference call.

During the last episode, Avram asked for input into using the Raspberry Pi as a webcam. This is because the parts to do so are relatively inexpensive and also easily acquired. A Raspberry Pi Zero can be purchased for under $30 and a camera module starts at $10. Pairing these two components together, you can create a type of IP camera, which can be imported onto your computer as a webcam using open-source software.

Avram went through the process of building one of these We-Fi enabled webcams and wrote about the process. While the process isn't especially difficult, it does produce variable results. As an IP camera, there are going to be latency issues generated by the connection between the board and the computer. Running over Wi-Fi is going to slow the feed, possibly creating lag.

There will also be performance variations based on the camera module that you purchase. The $10 module that Avram ran his initial tests with produced a decent result - 720p with a fairly stable connection. But, there are also camera modules that support upwards of 4k video. Clearly, a feed that detailed could overrun the connection between the devices, but is a good starting point for a better HD signal. Turning down the resolution from 4k could lead to better video quality in 1080p or 720p.

If you're not in the mood for a project of this scale, you can also use a phone or DSLR as a webcam.

Scott is a developer who has worked on projects of varying sizes, including all of the PLUGHITZ Corporation properties. He is also known in the gaming world for his time supporting the rhythm game community, through DDRLover and hosting tournaments throughout the Tampa Bay Area. Currently, when he is not working on software projects or hosting F5 Live: Refreshing Technology, Scott can often be found returning to his high school days working with the Foundation for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST), mentoring teams and helping with ROBOTICON Tampa Bay. He has also helped found a student software learning group, the ASCII Warriors, currently housed at AMRoC Fab Lab.

Avram's been in love with PCs since he played original Castle Wolfenstein on an Apple II+. Before joining Tom's Hardware, for 10 years, he served as Online Editorial Director for sister sites Tom's Guide and Laptop Mag, where he programmed the CMS and many of the benchmarks. When he's not editing, writing or stumbling around trade show halls, you'll find him building Arduino robots with his son and watching every single superhero show on the CW.

These days, we definitely live in interesting times. Much of the world is completely shut down in an attempt to keep COVID-19 under control. Some people have lost their jobs, some have been furloughed, while others have shifted to working from home. No matter the scenario, many people still need to purchase things, including electronics. For some of us, it's about reworking our offices to allow us to more easily work from home. For others, it's about enhancing their downtime. For all of us, picking the right retailer is important.

All of the online and brick and mortar retailers have changed their policies in the wake of the shutdown. Some companies are no longer shipping regular products, some are not shipping at all, while others are working hard to fulfill orders. Before you try to make a purchase online, make sure that you know the current policies of the store.

For example, Amazon has changed its shipping policies, moving its priority to essential products. So, if you are trying to buy something that is more of a luxury item, it could take a while to receive. For example, Avram purchased over a dozen different Raspberry Pi cases and has only received one so far. For other maker components, a popular store is Adafruit. The company has converted all of its manufacturing to personal protective equipment (PPE), so it is unlikely that you will receive a product in the near future.

On the other hand, stores like Newegg and B&H Photo have committed to trying to keep business running as usual. That means that if you are looking for a computer, audio video, or photography component, these should be your go-to retailers right now. The key is to check with the company's shipping policies, and verify that you are buying directly from the store and not through a third party.

Scott is a developer who has worked on projects of varying sizes, including all of the PLUGHITZ Corporation properties. He is also known in the gaming world for his time supporting the rhythm game community, through DDRLover and hosting tournaments throughout the Tampa Bay Area. Currently, when he is not working on software projects or hosting F5 Live: Refreshing Technology, Scott can often be found returning to his high school days working with the Foundation for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST), mentoring teams and helping with ROBOTICON Tampa Bay. He has also helped found a student software learning group, the ASCII Warriors, currently housed at AMRoC Fab Lab.

Avram's been in love with PCs since he played original Castle Wolfenstein on an Apple II+. Before joining Tom's Hardware, for 10 years, he served as Online Editorial Director for sister sites Tom's Guide and Laptop Mag, where he programmed the CMS and many of the benchmarks. When he's not editing, writing or stumbling around trade show halls, you'll find him building Arduino robots with his son and watching every single superhero show on the CW.

While interest in desktop PCs has waned in recent years, those who are still interested in desktops often build them themselves. That gives the ability to not only have the PC you want, but also to use it as an art piece. There are PC builders who go all out and customize their cases, turning them into spaceships or even scenes from videogames. However, that is not in the cards for everyone. One thing that can help customize and PC build, however, is RGB LEDs.

For most, some slight customizations here and there are the way to go. However, when Avram and his team get involved, they go all out. Instead of just picking the best of the best components, the team decided to build a PC with as much lighting as they could possibly fit into a Mini ITX case. They call this build the RGBaby.

This build is based around the AMD Ryzen 9 3900X, which obviously does not have lighting on it, but that's pretty much where it ends. Event the processor cooler, the Corsair H100i features lighting on the processor and two lighted fans on the top. The video card is a ZOTAC RTX 2080 AMP Extreme, which features LED strips across the front. The system RAM is HyperX Fury RGB adding a companion stripe to the lights on the video card. All of this is mounted to an ASUS ROG Strix B450-I motherboard, which features RGB LEDs across the edge.

The RGBaby is a companion to the previous build, the RGBeast. This build, which took place at the beginning of 2019, was similar, but larger. Because of the bigger case, they were able to accommodate a lot more components that needed to be skipped this time because of the smaller form factor.

To see the entire RGBaby build, check out the article on Tom's Hardware.

Scott is a developer who has worked on projects of varying sizes, including all of the PLUGHITZ Corporation properties. He is also known in the gaming world for his time supporting the rhythm game community, through DDRLover and hosting tournaments throughout the Tampa Bay Area. Currently, when he is not working on software projects or hosting F5 Live: Refreshing Technology, Scott can often be found returning to his high school days working with the Foundation for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST), mentoring teams and helping with ROBOTICON Tampa Bay. He has also helped found a student software learning group, the ASCII Warriors, currently housed at AMRoC Fab Lab.

Avram's been in love with PCs since he played original Castle Wolfenstein on an Apple II+. Before joining Tom's Hardware, for 10 years, he served as Online Editorial Director for sister sites Tom's Guide and Laptop Mag, where he programmed the CMS and many of the benchmarks. When he's not editing, writing or stumbling around trade show halls, you'll find him building Arduino robots with his son and watching every single superhero show on the CW.

The Dell XPS 13 has long been considered to be one of the greatest lightweight laptops on the market. The company regularly updates the computer with new features and hardware options. This year's upgrade, which just went live from Dell, has made a number of high profile changes, all for the better.

A number of the changes are around the screen. The first and most welcomed change is the removal of the "nose cam." This highly unwanted feature was a move of the webcam built into the computer's screen bezel. Because the screen bezel had gotten so small, in what Dell calls the InfinityEdge, the company decided that the best course of action was to move the camera lens to the bottom of the screen. This meant that, when using the camera, it was often aimed up the user's nose instead of pointed at their face. This led to some unique and interesting conference calls. As of this model, the nose cam is gone, and the lens has been moved back to its rightful place.

The camera isn't the only part of the screen to be upgraded. The actual panel itself has seen some changes. The most notable is the aspect ratio has changed from the standard 16:9 to 16:10 (or 8:5). This gives more vertical screen real estate, meaning more content on the screen. Any time you can get more content on the screen without making it harder to read it is always a benefit.

The processor on the computer has also been upgraded, moving to the newest 10nm Intel processors. While this does likely indicate better battery performance, it does not necessarily mean any performance increases. Tom's Hardware's tests have proven little to no performance changes from one architecture to another. However, using the newest hardware does mean that it will likely have better battery life. We will know soon when the Tom's Hardware product review is published this week.

Scott is a developer who has worked on projects of varying sizes, including all of the PLUGHITZ Corporation properties. He is also known in the gaming world for his time supporting the rhythm game community, through DDRLover and hosting tournaments throughout the Tampa Bay Area. Currently, when he is not working on software projects or hosting F5 Live: Refreshing Technology, Scott can often be found returning to his high school days working with the Foundation for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST), mentoring teams and helping with ROBOTICON Tampa Bay. He has also helped found a student software learning group, the ASCII Warriors, currently housed at AMRoC Fab Lab.

Avram's been in love with PCs since he played original Castle Wolfenstein on an Apple II+. Before joining Tom's Hardware, for 10 years, he served as Online Editorial Director for sister sites Tom's Guide and Laptop Mag, where he programmed the CMS and many of the benchmarks. When he's not editing, writing or stumbling around trade show halls, you'll find him building Arduino robots with his son and watching every single superhero show on the CW.

The Folding@Home program is a distributed computing platform that is dedicated to finding cures for some of humanity's biggest health problems. The program was started to run predictive algorithms on the folding of proteins. When proteins fold incorrectly, it can cause serious and longterm medical issues. However, over the years, the program has taken on additional issues, including computational drug design and other types of molecular dynamics. Currently, the program has added the COVID-19 coronavirus to the list of problems it is working to solve.

The way the program works is by taking parts of a workload and sending them to various computers around the world that are part of the program. The computer uses the unused computing power of idle machines to help run the predictive algorithms. Once the results are computed, they are sent back to the central server for analysis. This allows the program to accomplish far more than it could ever do alone.

As part of the program, Folding@Home allows users to group together and form teams. Those teams can compete against one another to see whose computers are accomplishing more for the program. Obviously, this is an unnecessary aspect of the program, but it makes it a lot more fun to participate. You can challenge your friends, or two friendly brands can see who can make the biggest difference.

Two of the brands from within Future plc have decided to compete against one another to see which brand can complete more work units. Tom's Hardware and AnandTech will announce the rules of their game, but you can help Avram win. Simply download the Folding@Home program to your computer and signup for team number 40051. By doing this, you can help Avram beat his colleague and help to find cures for diseases at the same time.

Scott is a developer who has worked on projects of varying sizes, including all of the PLUGHITZ Corporation properties. He is also known in the gaming world for his time supporting the rhythm game community, through DDRLover and hosting tournaments throughout the Tampa Bay Area. Currently, when he is not working on software projects or hosting F5 Live: Refreshing Technology, Scott can often be found returning to his high school days working with the Foundation for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST), mentoring teams and helping with ROBOTICON Tampa Bay. He has also helped found a student software learning group, the ASCII Warriors, currently housed at AMRoC Fab Lab.

Avram's been in love with PCs since he played original Castle Wolfenstein on an Apple II+. Before joining Tom's Hardware, for 10 years, he served as Online Editorial Director for sister sites Tom's Guide and Laptop Mag, where he programmed the CMS and many of the benchmarks. When he's not editing, writing or stumbling around trade show halls, you'll find him building Arduino robots with his son and watching every single superhero show on the CW.

This week, Avram Piltch has some suggestions on how to improve your life if you have to work from home. While most people don't work out of their homes, that could be about to change. Over the past week or so, many companies have started suggesting that employees work from home because of fear over the COVID-19 coronavirus. But working at home is not as easy and straight forward as it might seem.

It is incredibly easy to get distracted while you work at home. Between family, friends, pets, and chores, it can be incredibly easy to get distracted and not be productive. But, if you do just a couple of simple things, you can avoid the temptations that will inevitably surround you. First, make a space just for work. This might not be simple, but it is important. You will also want to make sure it feels like work - keep it the way you would your desk. If you have space that is dedicated to your work time, it will feel more like work time.

An easy way to make your space feel more work-like is with productivity tools. Grab an extra monitor, a mouse and keyboard, and possibly a docking station. These items will improve your at-home experience significantly and make it so that you can continue to be productive. Most of these items can be acquired for under $100.

You also need to set boundaries with the people around you. Most people don't understand the idea of working from home and believe that it just means that you are home. Let the people in your life know that, during working hours, you are no more available for non-work activities than you ever were before. Allowing someone to violate that rule is a slippery slope and will get worse with time, so solve it early on.

If you have any additional suggestions, we'd love to hear them!

Scott is a developer who has worked on projects of varying sizes, including all of the PLUGHITZ Corporation properties. He is also known in the gaming world for his time supporting the rhythm game community, through DDRLover and hosting tournaments throughout the Tampa Bay Area. Currently, when he is not working on software projects or hosting F5 Live: Refreshing Technology, Scott can often be found returning to his high school days working with the Foundation for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST), mentoring teams and helping with ROBOTICON Tampa Bay. He has also helped found a student software learning group, the ASCII Warriors, currently housed at AMRoC Fab Lab.

Avram's been in love with PCs since he played original Castle Wolfenstein on an Apple II+. Before joining Tom's Hardware, for 10 years, he served as Online Editorial Director for sister sites Tom's Guide and Laptop Mag, where he programmed the CMS and many of the benchmarks. When he's not editing, writing or stumbling around trade show halls, you'll find him building Arduino robots with his son and watching every single superhero show on the CW.