The ROG Strix Helios is a premium case, constructed with brushed aluminum frame and tempered glass side panels. The front panel is also tempered glass, which is lit by an array of RGB LEDs to show the “ROG” logo. There are built-in fabric handles on top for users, who wants to carry the tower to LAN parties.
The case is pretty large, measuring in 250 mm x 565 mm x 591 mm (WxDxH). You can install up to a 420 mm radiator at the front, 360 mm at the top and 140 mm at the rear for cooling. It supports motherboard size from Mini-ITX up to E-ATX. It has eight traditional expansion slots plus two vertical slots, if you want to install the graphics card vertically with a riser cable. For storage, there are two internal 2.5-inch/3.5-inch drive bays and four 2.5-inch only bays.
Front panel connectors include a USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C, four USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-A ports and two 3.5 mm audio jacks for microphone and headphone. There are two extra buttons to control both the LED lighting effects and fan speeds.
The ROG Strix Helios will be first available in the United Kingdom this April. It will be priced at £249.99 GBP (MSRP), which is around $327.06 USD.
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As small form factor PC builds gaining more popularity in the community, RAIJINTEK refreshes the low-profile PALLAS CPU cooler from 2014, with six heatpipes and a 120 mm RGB cooling fan. How does the new PALLAS 120 RGB perform, compared to other compact coolers?
Unboxing
The packaging has a lively and colorful design to match the RGB lighting of the cooler. Large photos of the PALLAS 120 RGB are at the front and top, which also highlights its 68 mm height.
If you do not need/want lighting on the cooler, there is another option with a simple non-RGB cooling fan. Detailed specification lists for both the PALLAS 120 RGB heatsink and the included fan are printed on the side of the box.
Inside the packaging, you can find the mounting system, which can support most modern CPU sockets. It is compatible with all Intel sockets from LGA 775 to LGA 2066, and all AMD sockets from FM2 to AM4. Tow pair of fan clips and a pack of thermal paste, as well as an installation guide are also included.
RAIJINTEK PALLAS 120 RGB CPU Cooler
The PALLAS 120 RGB’s heatsink is coated with black paint completely to create a stealthy and stylish look. There are a total of six 6 mm heatpipes responsible to transfer the heat from the processor to the aluminium fin stack. The heatpipes are also bent into a “C” shape to allow the cooler to have a lower overall height (at 55 mm without fan).
The polished base will be making direct contact with CPU (CDC), and is made of copper.
The included fan is the Aeolus β-RGB, which is a ultra-slim 120 mm fan. The 13 mm thickness of the fan contributes to the compact size of the cooler. It has a total of 17 blades to push air through the heatsink, while ten RGB LEDs are located around the hub to provide the desired lighting effects.
The Aeolus fan can spin from 200 RPM to 1400 RPM, controlled via PWM. It is rated to last up to 40,000 hours.
The Aeolus fan requires two cable for both power and RGB lighting. There are a standard 4-pin PWM cable and a 12V 4-pin RGB header cable.
Review
We have updated our CPU cooler tests to more reflect real-world cooling performance of coolers.
Testing Methodology
To find out how the cooler performs, a total of two benchmarks are included. AIDA64 is used to run a CPU stress test. CPU, FPU and system cache are all stressed to create as much heat output as possible. Also, Cinebench R15 is used to simulate real-world CPU load (like video-editing or rendering). It will be run continuously for three times. The highest CPU package temperatures are recorded. Ambient temperature is around 26°C.
Results will be taken at a 50% fan speed and 100% speed, controlled via the motherboard CPU PWM fan header. Only the single-fan configuration of the cooler will be tested.
At both fan speeds, the PALLAS 120 RGB sat at 30°C at idle. The CPU package temperature reached 68°C at load in AIDA64 stress test, which was also the highest temperature among all our benchmarks. It dropped to 64°C when the fan was set to run at 100%.
Cinebench R15 produced less heat compared to the stress test. The PALLAS 120 RGB managed to hold the load temperature at 63°C and 62°C respectively. Ramping the cooling fan provided a 1°C improvement, about 1.59% better.
Comparison
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The PALLAS 120 RGB has the largest temperature delta among the coolers we tested. This is as expected because of the much smaller heatsink area. Compared to the similar-sized cooler, such as the Noctua NH-L12S (its review here), the PALLAS 120 RGB averaged about 7°C higher.
RGB Lighting
Depending on what motherboard RGB software you are using, you may get different lighting effects and customization. You can choose from random, cycling, breathing and more. Please be reminded to use the 4-pin 12V RGB header, instead of a 3-pin 5V one.
Conclusion
The PALLAS 120 RGB performed adequately as a compact CPU cooler, which should be more than enough for a mid-tier processor with a lower heat output (around 65 W TDP), like an Intel Core i5 or AMD Ryzen 5. I would not recommend to use the cooler for an overclocked CPU. Installation is a bit too complicated, which involves a lot of small pieces.
The Aeolus fan ran smooth and quiet throughout the whole RPM ranges. The ten RGB LEDs around the motor hub creates a bright and vivid lighting effects, which supports most major motherboard manufacturers’ control software.
To sum it up, the PALLAS 120 RGB is a great choice for small form factor PC build, because of its 68 mm height clearance. It costs $72.99 USD (MSRP), but is on sale for only $49.99 USD. I think the cooler is still worth considering if you can get it for a discount.
You can purchase the cooler from your local/online resellers or the links below from Newegg.
Thanks RAIJINTEK for providing us the PALLAS 120 RGB for review. (Review Sample)
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At GDC 2019, NVIDIA announced its plan to add DXR Ray-Tracing support on non-RTX graphics cards. Today, the new game-ready GPU driver, version 425.31, is now available for users to try out the real-time ray-tracing features on their older hardware.
The following GeForce GTX 10-series and GTX 16-series cards will be compatible with DXR Ray-Tracing.
GTX 1660 Ti
GTX 1660
NVIDIA TITAN Xp (2017)
NVIDIA TITAN X (2016)
GTX 1080 Ti
GTX 1080
GTX 1070 Ti
GTX 1070
GTX 1060 6 GB
The new driver uses Microsoft DXR Real-Time Ray Tracing API to allow the feature to be enabled. However, due to the lack of dedicated RT cores, the older cards will be using their CUDA cores entirely to handle all the ray-tracing rendering works. They will be much slower and less efficient than the latest RTX-20 series graphics cards, which would reach about 30 fps in 1440p.
The driver also provides better optimization to “ANNO 1800“. You can now download the GPU drivers from NVIDIA’s website or GeForce Experience.
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In December 2018, Microsoft announced that it will switch to Chromium engine for the Edge web browser, instead of the proprietary EdgeHTML. Early build of the new Edge browser were leaked last month. And today, Microsoft releases a couple official preview builds to the public.
For now, there are two test builds available for download, only on Windows 10. The Developer builds will receive updates weekly, while the canary builds update daily. A more stable beta version of the browser will be coming in a later date, which will be updated every 6 weeks. You can download them at Microsoft Insider website.
The new Edge browser will be based on the Chromium rendering engine, with custom user interface on top. It will have some unique features on Windows 10, like Windows Hello integration and improved smooth scrolling. It will also support all existing Chrome extensions.
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Apacer has introduced a brand-new SSD today, named AS2280P4. It will be utilizing the NVMe 1.3 protocol and a PCIe 3.0 x4 interface, which will offer much faster performance over traditional hard drives.
The AS2280P4 is equipped with 3D TLC NAND flash to store all the data. There are two capacities to choose from, 240 GB and 480 GB. It can reach maximum sequential read/write speeds of 3200 MB/s and 2000 MB/s. However, the smaller model (240 GB)’s performance drops down significantly to only 1600 MB/s for read and 1000 MB/s for write. It will only comes with M.2 2280 form factor.
The SSD is rated to last for 1.5 million hours (MTBF) and will have a 3-year limited warranty. Currently, no pricing and availability information are provided.
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GIGABYTE first introduced the AORUS RGB AIC NVMe SSDs at CES 2019 in January. Product information of the SSDs has been published on the official company website recently.
As the name suggested, the SSD will be using an Add-in-card form factor with the PCIe 3.0 x4 interface. It will be equipped with Toshiba’s 64-Layer 3D TLC NAND flash and dedicated DRAM cache. The SSD can reach sequential speeds of 3480 MB/s for read and 3080 MB/s for write. You can choose between two capacities, 512 GB or 1 TB.
The rated MTBF is at 1.8 million hours and TBW of 800 TB and 1600 TB. The AORUS RGB AIC NVMe SSD will be covered by a 5-year limited warranty.
Apart from raw performance, the SSD’s exterior casing features customizable RGB lighting, which supports GIGABYTE’s RGB Fusion 2.0 software. The aluminum shroud and backplate also double as a passive heatsink for cooling the internal components.
Price and availability have not been revealed at the moment.
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Kingston has recently introduced a new lineup of microSD cards, focusing on high endurance. Compared to other normal cards, it is tested to operate in harsh conditions against temperature, water, shock and x-rays.
The High Endurance microSD cards have three capacities, including 32 GB, 64 GB and 128 GB. They are able to store up to 5000, 10000 and 20000 hours respectively. They are rated to run at temperatures ranging from -25°C to 85°C. The cards are best suited to use in write-intensive applications, such as surveillance cameras and dash cams.
For performance, the 32 GB and 64 GB models can achieve sequential read speed up to 95 MB/s and write speed at 30 MB/s. The 128 GB card will reach the same read performance, but have a higher write at 45 MB/s. The microSD cards are available for purchase now worldwide, priced at $11.99 USD, $16.99 USD and $31.99 USD (MSRP).
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Microsoft quietly refreshed its Surface Book 2 lineup over the weekend. The 13.5-inch model is getting the latest Intel 8th Generation quad-core processor, while other hardware remains unchanged.
You can now choose to equip the 13.5-inch Surface Book 2 with the Intel Core i5-8350U CPU with 4 cores and 8 threads. It has a base clock of 1.7 GHz and can turbo boost up to 3.6 GHz. Combined with 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB of internal SSD storage, this configuration will cost $1499 USD. The older Intel Core i5-7300U option is still available for purchase, which starts at $1149 USD.
If you want more power, you can equip the Surface Book 2 with the Intel Core i7-8650U CPU with a NVIDIA GTX 1050 graphics card. The 15-inch model’s specifications have not been altered, which starts at $2499 USD with a Core i7 processor, 16 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage.
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