PC Components, Peripherals And Gadget Reviews And News

Dig into our deep-dive product reviews and news of PC components from processors, to motherboards, graphics cards (GPUs), sound cards, and storage, along with other gadgets and peripherals that complete the computing experience. Whether you're a DIY PC enthusiast builder or just looking to read-up on what should be inside or connected to your next pre-built PC, here's where you'll find all the nuts and bolts sorted on what makes modern computer systems tick, as well some of the best user interface devices to go with them.

Kioxia XG8: Starting At $XXX A new NVMe controller and the latest 3D NAND combine to make a very solid product for OEM markets. It won't officially come to retail channels, though.  Excellent sequential throughput Very good latency and IOPs at high queue depths Solid performance in system drive workloads Mediocre latency... Read more...
At a time when it’s exceedingly tough for enthusiasts to acquire many top-flight PC components, dashing hopes for many a fun upgrade or new build, solid state drives remain a shining beacon of hope. The SSD market has seen a consistent influx of new and updated products, addressing virtually every price bracket, with good availability... Read more...
This morning Kingston announced that its latest DC1500M series of enterprise-class solid state drives have begun shipping. Like many of its predecessors in Kingston’s enterprise SSD line-up, the new DC1500M series leverages a hot-pluggable U.2 (2.5”, 15mm) form factor, that’s compatible with common U.2 backplanes. The drives... Read more...
Kingston recently released its DC1000M series of solid-state drives for data center applications, capped off by a massive 7.68TB model. The DC1000M series leverages a hot-pluggable U.2 (2.5”, 15mm) form factor, that’s compatible with U.2 backplanes and the drives target mixed-use, data-intensive workloads, including Cloud computing,... Read more...
Over the past few months, we have seen a spattering of Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) routers enter the fray, including the ASUS ROG GT-AX11000 and Netgear Nighthawk AX8, both of which we recently put under the microscope. There was a caveat to our testing, however—we had to benchmark them using Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) hardware... Read more...
Kingston recently expanded its portfolio of solid state drives, with a new family of products targeting high-performance desktop and workstation applications. The Kingston KC2000 series of drives feature a PCI Express Gen 3.0 x 4 controller, 96-layer 3D TLC NAND flash memory, and boast of peak transfer speeds north of... Read more...
Kingston has been a dedicated stalwart of the memory, storage, and peripheral markets for many years. The company’s products target virtually every type of user, from entry-level first-time PC builders to seasoned sysadmins. The products we’ll be showing you here today, the Kingston DC500R and DC500M solid state drives, target... Read more...
In a broad sense, there are two types of keyboards in this world—those that use mechanical key switches and those that don't. If that sounds like something a keyboard snob would say, so be it, this editor stands guilty as charged, and happily so. We can accept that not everyone will find just cause to spend a premium... Read more...
Solid State Drives continue to be one of the more sought after (and effective) upgrades for both desktop and mobile systems. But as drives have matured, and newer generations have been released, the bandwidth limitations of the legacy SATA interface have become increasingly more apparent. Even relatively affordable, mainstream solid state... Read more...
When you're on the path to becoming a power user, you begin to notice certain things that the average person might not. One of those is the difference between typing on a sweet mechanical keyboard with luxurious key action versus pounding away on a run-of-the-mill squishy plank that relies on mushy membranes to register your keystrokes. The... Read more...
I have a confession to make: I'm an addict -- and it's 100% Marco's fault. 12 months ago, I was perilously tight on funds and short on keyboards. More precisely, I was short on keyboards that weren't $5 bargain-basement pieces of junk. While I keep plenty of those on hand for testing various system builds, I prefer something with a little... Read more...
To some users, one of the downsides of the iPad, iPod touch, and iPhone is non-expandable memory. Of course, many users buy the higher-capacity devices and assume they'll have adequate storage. But what happens if you run out of space on your iPad, iPod touch, or iPhone and you don't want to delete any files? At first, it may appear that... Read more...
Kingston has been known throughout the industry as a steady-hand, a reliable partner, a company which is stable and never really pushed the bar in terms of enthusiast memory modules. If you wanted a solid, name-brand memory module which would be almost guaranteed to work, Kingston was one of the few brands which one should look for. They were... Read more...
  No question about it, Flash Memory devices have taken on the Consumer Tech industry by storm.  Flash memory is utilized in so many different applications these days, from Cell Phones and PDAs, to MP3 players and Digital Cameras, that it's hard to imagine a world before the Flash memory was invented.  However, thanks to some... Read more...
  The MSI K7N2 Delta-ILSR A New nForce2 with Something Extra By: Jeff Bouton July 23rd, 2003 It's funny how things can turn around in the computer industry. Take nVidia's original nForce chipset for example.  While the graphics division was riding high with the latest GeForce product line, the overall response to the fledgling chipset... Read more...
Kenwood's 72X True X CD-ROM Drive No "specsmanship" just performance!       Once in a blue moon, we get a product in here at Hot Hardware that absolutely knocks our socks off. It doesn't happen very often and we test a lot of product every month. This is one of those times. For many of us, CD-ROM drive technology has... Read more...
The Kyro II... IMAGINATION TECHNOLOGIES: NEXT GENERATION KYRO IIT 3D GRAPHICS ACCELERATOR 12TH MARCH 2001 IMAGINATION TECHNOLOGIES' PARTNER STMICROELECTRONICS ANNOUNCES NEXT GENERATION KYRO II(tm) 3D GRAPHICS ACCELERATOR AND CUSTOMER HERCULES Imagination Technologies Group plc (LSE: IMG), the leading provider of human computer interface intellectual... Read more...
The Kingmax TinyBGA PC133 SDRAM DIMM A New Form Factor In PC Memory Technology June 14, 2000 By Dave "Davo" Altavilla   We've said this before and the same rings true time and time again, the PC Hardware Industry always has a place for something new and innovative.  Too often products are brought to market with a "me... Read more...