Searching a real jack of all trades – Intel 12th Gen Alder Lake IMC binning with DDR4, DDR5 and SP values and interesting findings

What do you do with two Core i9-12900K trays? That’s right, binning! Today we have a very special treat for you from the south of Germany. The system integrator MIFCOM has kindly provided us with a large amount of Alder Lake i9 CPUs so that we can put them through their paces and examine them for differences in clock speed. Originally, the [...]


DDR5 (relatively) affordable – Teamgroup T-Force VULCAN 5200 CL40 2x 16 GB kit review with teardown and OC

Teamgroup is a known brand in the memory market and not only since DDR5. Today we’re looking at one of their more cost-effective product lines of the new RAM standard, in the form of a VULCAN DDR5-5200 2x 16 GB kit. In addition to testing in XMP, we will of course overclock the kit manually again and find out how close you can get to faster [...]


Rembrandt illustrated: AMD’s Ryzen 6000 Mobile with Zen 3+, RDNA 2, DDR5 | technology details, gaming and application performance

We already had all the relevant information about the Ryzen 6000 for mobile use at CES, but AMD has now added some more details. Zen3+ features the improved Zen 3 cores with up to 5 GHz clock and a new RDNA 2 graphics with a targeted doubling of performance. The whole thing is manufactured in TSMC’s N6 and also features a completely new [...]


Supercool Computers Direct-Die waterblock and delid tool for Intel Alder Lake Review| Intel Core i9-12900K in Pain

Ever smaller manufacturing processes lead to ever higher thermal densities in CPUs and GPUs. This is one of the reasons why Intel’s new Alder Lake CPUs run so hot that every air cooler almost has no chance with a big i9, no matter how many watts of waste heat it is designed for. The often cited bottleneck lies further up the cooling chain [...]


DDR5 is no longer a sidegrade – ADATA XPG LANCER RGB DDR5-6000 CL40 2x 16 GB kit in the test with overclocking and teardown

Today we’re looking at the next high-performance upgrade level of DDR5 memory, in the form of the ADATA XPG LANCER RGB DDR5-6000 CL40 2x 16 GB kit. Our sample is based on the SK Hynix M-Die memory chips, which currently offer the highest performance and overclocking potential for DDR5. Even though the XMP profile looks rather unsuspicious [...]


Intel Socket LGA-1700 “washer mod” part 2 – motherboards, ILM manufacturers and coolers in a before/after comparison | Practice

As promised, today we cover part 2 of the “Washermod”, in which we want to evaluate a few more combinations of different motherboards, socket manufacturers and coolers in a before and after test with the modification. To briefly summarize what the washer mod is all about: washers are installed between the motherboard and the ILM [...]


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AMD’s Socket AM5 v2 in detail – What is better in Ryzen than in Intel’s Socket LGA-1700 for Alder Lake | Exclusive

Today I turn for the first time in detail to AMD’s upcoming Socket AM5 (version 2), as it will be used for the upcoming Raphael CPUs (Ryzen 7000). AMD consequently changes from the PGA (Pin Grid Array) with the contacts on the CPU to the much easier to handle LGA (Land Grid Array) because of the large number of required (1718) pins. After we [...]


Alder Lake’s cooling problem straightened out by 5 degrees! – Simple ILM-Mod for Intel’s LGA-1700 socket | Practice

Intel’s Alder Lake CPUs run hot, very hot. A few weeks ago, Igor had already identified the bending of the CPU and motherboard due to the LGA1700 socket as a potential cause for this. Today I’ll show you a simple modification that can gain up to 5 °C in CPU core temperatures, and it almost couldn’t be simpler. Thanks (again) to [...]