∆VERON∆™

The SuperNOVA 650 G1+ is a fully modular and efficient PSU. It sells for $110 though, and that price weighs heavy on our value score. In fact, while the 650 G1+ does demonstrate excellent performance, it costs the same as EVGA's own 650 G3 and Seasonic's Focus Plus Gold 650, both of which serve up superior results across our benchmark suite. We aren't sure why the company created so many power supply families within its portfolio. After all, when multiple models overlap, enthusiasts shopping for new PSUs are bound to get confused. In this case, the 650 G1+'s major advantages over the 650 G3 include a top-notch fan and longer warranty (10 years versus seven). Plus, through the end of 2018, EVGA offers a two-year warranty upgrade on both models, extending their protection to 12 and nine years, respectively. Either way, the EVGA PSUs are well-protected by a confident guarantee. That actually makes it difficult to favor one over the other based on wrranty coverage alone. Our decision is even more challenging since EVGA's 650 G3 fares better under transient loads, which PSUs have to deal with every single day. To help cut through some of the confusion caused by EVGA's excessive number of PSU families, remember that the G in G1+ represents 80 PLUS Gold efficiency. The G1 line-up first entered production in 2013, so it's been overdue for an update. Once again, FSP handles the manufacturing for EVGA. Although an 80 PLUS Gold certification carries over from the previous version, the G1+ actually loses a level in Cybernetics' system, dropping to ETA-A- (rather than ETA-A) as a consequence of low power factor measurements. All of the protection features we expect to see are present. A LAMBDA-A- rating indicates that the 650 G1+ is not noisy, though it does lack a semi-passive mode. Inside, you'll find a 135mm cooling fan armed with a fluid dynamic bearing that should outlast EVGA's warranty coverage. Apparently, the company is eager to inspire confidence in the longevity of its products. The minor rails offer up to 120W of combined power, which is more than enough for any modern PC. EVGA's +12V rail can deliver up to 54A or 648W of power, while the 5VSB rail's capacity is satisfactory for a mid-range PSU. It is nice that EVGA exposes a couple of EPS and four PCIe connectors, all hosted on dedicated cables. The cables are all long enough to ensure compatibility with most cases, and they aren't made obnoxiously rigid by extra filtering capacitors. However, the distance between connectors is too short at only 10cm. Ideally, the SATA and four-pin Molex connectors should be placed 15cm away from each other.

Forest fires raging across Greece have killed at least 20 people, the government says, as the authorities there seek international assistance. Hundreds of firefighters are battling the blazes and people have left their homes near the capital, Athens. A search and rescue operation is underway for 10 tourists who fled one of the fires in a boat, officials say. "We will do whatever is humanly possible to control it," Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras told reporters. He cut short an official trip to Bosnia in order to help coordinate the response to the situation, which firefighters have described as "extremely difficult". Early on Tuesday, government spokesman Dimitris Tzanakopoulos confirmed that the death toll had risen to 20. Most of the victims had been trapped in the seaside resort of Mati, 40km (25 miles) north-east of Athens, and died either in their homes or their cars. More than 104 are injured, 11 seriously, he added, with 16 children among the casualties. Miltiadis Vyronas, from the country's Ekav emergency service, said that 25 people had been taken to hospital and four were seriously injured. Dramatic video posted on social media showed damaged buildings, orange smoke-filled skies, and people fleeing the fires by car. Residents in the worst-affected areas were forced into the sea to escape the flames. "Thankfully the sea was there and we went into the sea, because the flames were chasing us all the way to the water. It burned our backs and we dived into the water... I said my God, we must run to save ourselves," Kostas Laganos in the coastal resort of Mati said. Prime Minister Tsipras said that "all emergency forces have been mobilised" and declared a state of emergency in the Attica region around Athens. The government has asked other European countries for helicopters and additional firefighters to help tackle the fires. Earlier on Monday, residents of a coastal region near Athens were told to abandon their homes as the uncontrolled fires spread. Hundreds of children were also evacuated from holiday camps. The extreme weather comes as dozens of wildfires continue to rage in Sweden. Countries including Italy, Germany, Poland and France have all sent help in the form of additional planes, vehicles and firefighters. But with temperatures set to soar again, they are in a race against time to get the fires under control. The wildfires are the worst to hit Greece since 2007, when dozens of people were killed in the southern Peloponnese peninsula.

At first glance, our initial test of Cooler Master’s MasterAir G100M revealed a good-looking CPU cooler that just couldn’t take the heat. However, our readers quickly pointed out that while the G100M is rated at 130W, the CPU in our overclocked, full-size testing rig was rated at 140W at stock settings. With that in mind, we decided to retest the MasterAir G100M on our 84W-rated Mini-ITX testing rig to see if it could earn some redemption. Unfortunately, further testing only revealed more problems. First, a quick recap. The Cooler Master MasterAir G100M is a compact, downdraft style CPU cooler whose form bears some resemblance to that of a classic flying saucer UFO. Its design features a solid copper base that conducts heat from the CPU up into a copper vapor chamber that in turn dumps heat into an array of fins surrounding the core. Then, the cooler's 90mm fan removes the heat. Said fan features built-in RGB LED lighting that accepts control via both motherboard software and an included controller. The G100M has a thermal design limit of 130W and supports all major CPU sockets, including Intel 775, 115x, 1366 and 2011x as well as AMD FM1, FM2(+), AM2(+), AM3(+) and AM4. To install the MasterAir G100M LGA 1150 you press a set of anchor nuts into the cooler’s backplate and then place the backplate behind the motherboard. Included standoffs, which also function as attachment points for the cooler, secure the backplate in place. Once the backplate is in position, you apply a thin layer of thermal paste to the CPU's heat spreader. Secure the body of the cooler to the motherboard with the provided hardware. Finally, install the cooler and motherboard into the case, followed by the rest of the components - provided the cooler isn’t in the way. In our original review we discovered that the G100M’s not-so-compact size caused it to encroach on the motherboard’s RAM slots, limiting users to the use of low profile memory. This is a common issue among CPU coolers, and while it can be a bit of an annoyance to builders, especially those who are building a PC for the first time, it’s rare that we find a cooler that completely blocks the installation of system components. However, that isn’t the case here as the G100M was large enough to completely block access to the PCIe slot on our testing motherboard. It’s worth noting that the placement of the CPU socket (in relation to the PCIe slot) matters here and that other boards from other manufacturers may not have this issue. That said, since we don’t use the GPU in our CPU cooler tests and it doesn’t significantly contribute to the overall results, we’re going to press on with retesting the G100M to see how well it can handle a mid-tier CPU.

Gunmen in South Africa have killed 11 taxi drivers in an ambush, police say. The men from Gauteng province were travelling to Johannesburg on Saturday night when their minibus was fired at. The dead men, and four more who were critically injured, were returning from a colleague's funeral in the coastal region of Kwa-Zulu Natal, police said. The motive is unclear although rivalry between groups running minibus taxi routes in South Africa has led to violence in the past. Minibus taxis are the most po[CENSORED]r form of transportation among South Africa's po[CENSORED]tion of 55 million. Police spokesperson Brigadier Jay Naicker said the vehicle was attacked between the towns of Colenso and Weenen, in the coastal province. "The vehicle was ambushed. There were 11 fatalities and four were seriously injured and are in hospital," he told reporters. "There has been a lot of taxi violence in the area but we are still investigating who the perpetrators were." The targeted attack comes days after deadly shootings in Johannesburg, South African media reported. In one week, a taxi owner reportedly with "no enemies" was shot dead in his vehicle, and two others were killed while travelling under a police escort. Ten people were also killed in violence related to rivalries among minibus drivers in Cape Town over one weekend in May.

People across Japan have been urged to take precautions against a heatwave that has killed about 30 people. Thousands more have sought hospital treatment for heat-related conditions over the past two weeks. Temperatures reached 40.7C (105F) in central Japan earlier this week, a five-year nationwide peak. In the city of Kyoto temperatures have stood above 38C (100.4F) for seven days in a row for the first time since records began in the 19th Century. The Japanese education ministry told schools to take thorough measures to prevent heat stroke after a six-year-old boy died following an outdoor class in Aichi Prefecture on Tuesday. Japan's meteorological agency urged people to drink sufficient water to prevent heat exhaustion. The temperatures are also complicating flood recovery efforts in western Japan, as many volunteers struggle with the heat. More than 200 people were killed in the floods and mudslides triggered by record rainfall earlier this month.

The Phison PS5008-E8 SSD controller promised us low-cost and low-power devices that would speed the transition to NVMe. Early indicators backed that claim, but the market is different now than when companies first launched products with the controller. Kingston was a little late bringing the A1000 to market, and as a result, faces several challenges because mainstream NVMe SSDs like the Adata XPG SX8200 and HP EX920 have crashed the price points the A1000 was designed to fit in. The A1000 is a decent SSD, but the performance difference that comes with spending just a few dollars more is much larger than we imagined. Phison designed the PS5008-E8 controller to deliver NVMe responsiveness while extending notebook battery life by using half the number of PCI Express lanes. The limited bandwidth caps throughput performance, but nearly doubling the throughput of SATA is good enough as long as the other selling points are achieved. It's not quite a utopia, but the promise is pretty good. Like the fountain of youth, electric cars saving the world, and those pills said to do great things to your body, the hype never quite lived up to the reality. The PS5008-E8 gave us some extended battery life, but mostly when we compared the results to the previous-gen Phison controller. The controller has poor random performance so the responsiveness isn't as impressive as the 850 EVO, and the 64-layer TLC flash puts the sequential write performance in the same bracket as the EVO, or worse, of smaller SSDs. Kingston brought the A1000 series to market in 240GB, 480GB, and 960GB capacities. The PCI Express 3.0 x2 configuration limits the available bandwidth through the interface but it also reduces engineering costs and enables the use of smaller, low-end processors that reduce manufacturing costs. All three capacities achieve 1,500 MB/s of sequential read throughput, but sequential write performance, which stretches up to 1,000 MB/s for the 960GB model, varies by capacity. All models deliver 100,000 read IOPS and a peak of 100,000 random write IOPS with the 960GB model, but as expected, random write performance also varies by capacity. Kingston measures write performance with bursty workloads that land in the SLC buffer, so extended workloads, like transferring a large movie to the drive, will suffer from lower performance when the data spills over to the TLC flash. Features The A1000's write performance is lower than we would expect from a two-lane PCI Express interface. The Phison PS5008-E8 uses older and less powerful BCH error correction technology and only comes with two processor cores, which likely factors into the reduced throughput. The PCI Express 3.0 x2 interface can be an advantage, though. Desktop users rarely care about shaving off a few milliwatts of power consumption, but every watt counts in a notebook. Some notebooks turn off unused PCIe lanes and the PHYs to save power, so using only two PCIe lanes can be a huge benefit that extends notebook battery life. The previous-gen Phison NVMe controller, used in products like the Kingston KC1000, was a real problem. In our testing, the PS5007-E7 NVMe SSDs were some of the worst products available for notebook battery life. Pricing, Warranty, And Endurance You can purchase a 240GB A1000 SSD for less than $90. Pricing increases steadily with each jump up the capacity range. Kingston provides a generous five-year limited warranty that we often don't see with entry-level products. The warranty supports varying levels of endurance based on capacity. Software Kingston offers its SSD Manager software for many of its newer SSDs, but the software doesn't support the company's NVMe drives. Products like the KC1000 and new A1000 do not come with management support from Kingston at this time. Phison does offer a software package for companies to build management tools for both SATA and NVMe products. Kingston includes a key code and download instructions for Acronis software so you can clone your existing data to the A1000. The A1000 comes in the M.2 2280 S3 (single-sided 3mm height) form factor. The design appears to be identical to the Phison E8 reference design. The A1000's we tested ship with a new firmware that we haven't tested with the controller before.

Hackers have stolen personal data in Singapore belonging to some 1.5 million people, or about a quarter of the po[CENSORED]tion, officials say. They broke into the government health database in a "deliberate, targeted and well-planned" attack, a government statement says. Those targeted visited clinics between 1 May 2015 and 4 July of this year. Data taken include names and addresses but not medical records, other than medicines dispensed in some cases. "Information on the outpatient dispensed medicines of about 160,000 of these patients" was taken, the statement says. "The records were not tampered with, ie no records were amended or deleted. No other patient records, such as diagnosis, test results or doctors' notes, were breached. We have not found evidence of a similar breach in the other public healthcare IT systems." The data of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, including information on his outpatient dispensed medicines, was "specifically and repeatedly targeted". Mr Lee has survived cancer twice. Singapore, a wealthy city state, prides itself on its stability and security. How were systems breached? It appears that a computer belonging to SingHealth, one of the state's two major government healthcare groups, was infected with malware through which the hackers gained access to the database. They struck some time between 27 June and 4 July, according to the government. SingHealth has temporarily banned staff from surfing on all 28,000 of its work computers, according to the Straits Times. Other public healthcare institutions are expected to do the same. How vulnerable is Singapore to hacking? The government has previously warned of cyber attacks, saying it has been the target of international hackers, but most attacks were foiled. It has stepped up measures in recent years, including disconnecting computers for certain key ministries in the civil service from the internet, so that they operate on intranet only. A cyber attack last year targeted the defence ministry but only got basic information on military conscripts.

Israel's parliament has passed into law a controversial bill that defines the country as an exclusively Jewish state. The "Jewish nation state" bill downgrades Arabic as an official language and says advancing Jewish settlement is a national interest. It also states that the "whole and united" Jerusalem is its capital. Israeli Arab MPs condemned the legislation but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised it as a "defining moment". The bill, backed by the country's right-wing government, says "Israel is the historic homeland of the Jewish people and they have an exclusive right to national self-determination in it". It was passed after a stormy session in the Knesset that lasted more than eight hours. Sixty-two MPs voted for the bill, with 55 against. However some clauses were dropped following objections by Israel's president and attorney-general, including a clause that would have enshrined in law the creation of Jewish-only communities. Israeli Arabs make up about 20% of Israel's po[CENSORED]tion of about nine million people. They have equal rights under the law but have long complained of being treated as second-class citizens and say they face discrimination and worse provision of services such as education, health and housing. Arab MP Ahmed Tibi said the bill's passing represented the "death of democracy". Adalah, an Arab rights non-governmental orgnisation, said the law was an attempt to advance "ethnic superiority by promoting racist policies". Last week Mr Netanyahu defended the law, saying: "We will keep ensuring civil rights in Israel's democracy but the majority also has rights and the majority decides."

Patriot bucks the trend of pairing cosmetic features with mainstream DRAM ICs, instead pushing data rates up to 4,133 megahertz (MHz) on its Viper RGB. This DDR4-3600 kit is only $10 more than the white-LED version and several dollars cheaper than competing products with similar latency. That makes it a great value at this speed, though slower kits have greater pricing advantages. VERDICT The fastest DDR4-3600 kit we’ve tested, Patriot’s Viper RGB DDR4-3600 kit provides great value to buyers who want both go (overclocking capability) and show (RGB LEDs). The kit includes two single-rank 8GB DIMMs, which would have put it at a competitive disadvantage against dual-rank DIMMs of the same capacity. But dual-rank DIMMs require twice as many chips, and those less-dense ICs have been out of production for around two years. Buyers who can’t afford 32GB are stuck with single-rank DIMMs with today’s 8GB ranks. Patriot’s part number PVR416G360C6K requires the Intel-developed extreme memory profile (XMP) mode to get past DDR4-2133, which in turn requires an XMP-compatible motherboard. While some competing modules have DDR4-2400 or even DDR4-2666, non-XMP programming as a backup plan, anyone paying extra for DDR4-3600 should be well-informed to not need a backup plan. The single XMP value of DDR4-3600 comes at excellent 16-18-18-36 timings, edging out our performance-memory standard of one latency cycle for every 200MHz data rate. That standard is derived from simple math, since DDR-400 CAS 2, DDR2-800 CAS 4, DDR3-1600 CAS 8 and DDR4-3200 CAS 16 all have the same latency time. Lower is better. Compatible with motherboard-supplied RGB software from Asus, ASRock, Gigabyte and MSI, Patriot also offers customers their own control software. Besides offering more lighting modes than MSI Mystic, it’s also compatible with boards that don’t have an RGB suite. Latency Tuning, Overclocking & Benchmarks Spoiler: The Viper LED reached at least DDR4-4000 according to our latency tuning table. Before we get to the overclocking chart, we’d like to point out that it reached that high speed at a mere 18-19-19-38 timing set. Noting that Thaiphoon Burner lists the IC’s as “K4A8G085W?-BCPB," we treated the question mark as a “B,” as in Samsung B-die. Doing so saved several hours in our search for the lowest stable timings at various data rates. Patriot’s Viper RGB DDR4-3600 had the lowest stable timings across the gamut compared to our other DDR4-3200 to DDR4-3600 kits. We’ve reached DDR4-4040 several times with higher rated parts, but putting Patriot Viper RGB within the perspective of similarly rated parts makes it appear a master of the overclocking arena. Viper RGB also runs the board in Sandra when using custom-tuned timings. Viper RGB and the Viper LED are identically rated and have similar XMP values, and both Patriot kits showed a consistent lead over the competing brand at all settings. Our F1 2015 and 7-Zip tests represent the truly rare example of programs that scale upward with memory at any performance level, while Blender CPU Render and Metro LL Redux represent a wider variety of programs which are hampered with really poor memory configurations (think single-channel or below DDR4-2400 data rates). As such, the custom-tuned Viper RGB surges ahead of the competition in F1 2015 and 7-Zip. Given the high cost of RAM, it’s tough to imagine that a $10 price difference could put Patriot’s high-flying Viper RGB noticeably behind the Viper LED in performance-per-dollar; however, that $10 savings make the Viper LED the DDR4-3600 Value Champ. On the other hand, G.Skill’s DDR4-3200 has a $90 price advantage. That’s enough to wipe out its performance loss in the value chart. Those who can’t afford DDR4-3600 will want to consider this. Bottom Line For those willing to pay an extra $10, Patriot Viper RGB’s overclocking and latency tuning wins over its own monochromatic LED counterpart make this product a supreme value. And for those who would rather have any lighting features rather than none, both Patriot kits--this RGB model and the LED version--outrank G.Skill's Sniper X DDR4-3600.

China has revoked the licences of two Air China pilots after a vaping incident in the cockpit forced an emergency descent last week. A passenger flight from Hong Kong to Dalian had to drop more than 6,500m (21,000ft) due to a sudden loss of cabin pressure. Investigators said it was caused by one of the pilots smoking an e-cigarette. The civil aviation body fined the airline and cut the carrier's flights with Boeing 737 models by 10%. It also ordered Air China to undertake a three-month safety review. The mid-air drama unfolded when one of the pilots, who was vaping, tried to turn off a fan to stop his smoke reaching the passenger cabin. Instead, he turned off the air-conditioning unit, causing a drop in the cabin's oxygen levels. Emergency measures were triggered, and oxygen masks dropped. The plane was forced to descend rapidly. If a plane loses cabin pressure, the pilot has to bring the aircraft to a lower altitude to keep crew and passengers safe. Once the crew saw that the air conditioning had been turned off, they reactivated it and brought the flight back to its normal altitude. The plane went on to complete its flight as scheduled, and none of the 153 passengers or crew were injured. A third pilot on board, who was not involved in the incident, had his licence revoked for six months and was banned by Air China for two years, the South China Morning post reports. Chinese flight regulations prohibit all flight crew from smoking, and banned passengers from using e-cigarettes on board in 2006.

A "lava bomb" has struck a tour boat in Hawaii, injuring 23 people, officials in the US state say. An explosion sent rocks and debris hurtling through the air and through the roof of the tourist vessel. One passenger broke a leg while others suffered burns. The authorities are investigating. The lava is from Hawaii's Kilauea volcano, which erupted in May and has been spewing out gas and molten rock ever since. The explosion left a gaping hole in the roof of the tour boat, which had been taking visitors out to view lava plunging into the sea. Hawaii County fire department battalion chief Darwin Okinaka told Reuters the boat had returned to port under its own power, and three of the injured were taken away by ambulance. Authorities said the boat was operated by Lava Ocean Tours, which charges about $250 (£188) a head to watch lava flow into the sea from a tour boat. Will Bryan, who was on the boat with his girlfriend Erin, described the terrifying moment when the vessel was hit. "As soon as you saw it coming there was no time to move and the worst part was you're in a small boat," Mr Bryan told the BBC. "So as you're getting pelted with this lava there is nowhere to go. You only have like 20 feet [6m], and everyone is trying to hide at the same spot. It was actually rather terrifying. "For a little bit afterwards there was just chaos, and the captain tried to do what he could to keep everyone calm but you can't. Erin's face was covered in soot and my back was hot. It was just scary." Some passengers told Hawaii's Department of Land and Natural Resources that the boat was outside a safety zone established by the coastguard. Rules prohibit ships from getting any closer than 300m to a lava flow entering the sea, although a coastguard spokesperson told Reuters news agency that experienced boat operators had received special permissions to get far closer. Officials have warned of the dangers of toxic fumes, created when molten rock hits the sea and forms hazardous clouds containing hydrochloric acid and glass particles. Kilauea is one of the world's most active volcanoes, and its eruption has destroyed hundreds of homes and forced thousands to evacuate. But until now there had only been one serious injury, a man whose leg was hit by a projectile of molten rock as he sat on a balcony. Last week, scientists at the US Geological Survey said the flow of lava had created a new small island.

Italy will allow 450 migrants who were picked up from an overcrowded boat on Saturday to disembark in Sicily. The decision was taken after Italy said that France, Germany, Malta, Portugal and Spain had each agreed to take 50 migrants. Malta and Italy had earlier each insisted that the other country should allow the boat to dock. Italy's new government has toughened its policies in an effort to stem the flow of arrivals on its shores. So far, only women and children, 57 people in all, have been allowed to land in the Sicilian port of Pozzallo. The migrants were rescued from a boat in the Mediterranean by two vessels of the EU's Frontex mission, but Italy was unwilling to allow them to land at its ports. Before the migrants were rescued from their wooden boat on Saturday, Malta had refused calls to allow them to be landed in Valletta, saying that the boat was much closer to the Italian island of Lampedusa. But Italy's Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said that the Frontex boats should "head south, to Libya or Malta" once the migrants had been rescued. The Italian position changed after Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte had written to all European Union member states asking them to accept some of the refugees. "In this context which always sees Italy in the frontline of saving lives at sea, I ask you for a clear sign on sharing the responsibility of managing the migrant issue," Mr Conte wrote. France and Malta said on Saturday they would take 50 each, with Germany, Spain and Portugal making a similar pledge on Sunday. But Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis dismissed the request, saying relocating the migrants would "lead down the road to hell". And Libya restated its refusal to take in anyone from the ship. "No, we will not accept any illegal migrants after they are rescued by rescue ships," a coast guard spokesman told Reuters news agency. In June, two rescue boats struggled to find a port at which to dock, after Italy refused permission. The Aquarius finally sailed to the Spanish port of Valencia with 630 migrants after being blocked by Italy and Malta. A second ship, the Lifeline, docked in Malta with 230 migrants. In both cases, a number of European countries agreed to accept the migrants.

At Computex 2018, Asus and several other companies announced the TUF Gaming Alliance, a collection of components (from motherboards and cases to coolers and power supplies) designed to work together--and look good doing it. We’ve already highlighted a collection of those components used in the Asus TUF Gaming Alliance component build, including two Cooler Master MasterAir heatpipe cooling towers: the MA620P, and the smaller MA410M that we're looking at here. Of those two (both of which are priced at about $60), this model is far more interesting. Even though it happens to carry the trusty, budget MA410 moniker of other recent models, the MA410M TUF Edition comes out swinging with striking visuals. But it follows up its good looks with excellent performance, besting its larger sibling to truly stand out. Those looking for a fairly compact tower cooler with RGB bling should strap this model to their short list. While not a complete overhaul of its MA410 sibling, the new MasterAir MA410M TUF Gaming Edition boasts a few new features and a sharp, chiseled look. We’re here to tell you this is one of the best quad-heatpipe tower coolers we’ve seen in recent months. The MA410P TUF Gaming Edition could single-handedly help topple the fundamental thinking that ‘larger is always better’ when comparing perceived performance between four- and six-heatpipe (or larger) coolers. Everyone loves when the little guy punches above his weight. The MasterAir MA410M TUF Edition comes equipped with mounting hardware to support installation on most AMD and Intel sockets, though Threadripper builders will need to seek something more substantial. The familiar Cooler Master flexing ‘X’ bracket, backplate and threaded offsets are employed, since the cooler heatink is narrow enough to allow direct screwdriver access to easily tighten the spring loaded hex bolts. A PWM and 4-pin RGB splitter are both included, along with a newer RGB controller with an included micro USB port, presumably to allow cabled control for lighting and effects (not included). ' Beneath the TUF armor shell lies a rather typical 6mm-diameter copper heatpipe cooling tower. Shrouding allows airflow to tunnel through the cooler fins, rather than it dissipating out the sides, while delivering attractive aesthetics to the top of the cooler. A pair of 120mm fans RGB fans cradle each side of the heatpipe cooling fins, allowing the CPU to benefit from a push+pull airflow setup. Colorful illumination from the MasterAir MA410M TUF (with 28 addressable LEDs) bathes the case interior with nearly infinite (ok, actually only 16.7+ million) color possibilities. With the RGB fan LEDs located within the fan hubs themselves, the cooling tower RGB lighting diodes are nestled along the external perimeter, tucked just inside of the TUF armor shell. The direct contact copper heatpipe base of the MasterAir MA410M TUF is nearly identical to that of the its MA410P sibling, though a couple minor changes are visible. Easily seen from either top or bottom, the rounded, hexagonal Cooler Master Logo ‘shape’ is cut throughout the entire set of tower fins, allowing unobstructed view from the cooler top down to the base. Integrated into the aluminum base sits a small thermal probe, which allows coordinated lighting displays to indicate reported thermal load, should you enable that lighting option. Installation of the MasterAir MA410M TUF Gamin Edition is rather simple, as both fans are easily removed via the thumbscrews that hold the fans to the TUF armor shield on either side. Memory clearance problems should be a rare occurrence, as there is adequate height and spacing around the entire perimeter of the cooling tower with the fans installed.

A woman in Saudi Arabia has been arrested after running on stage to hug a male singer during a concert, according to reports. Majid al-Mohandis was performing at a festival in the western city of Taif when the woman darted on to the stage. Videos posted online showed her holding on to Mr Mohandis while security staff tried to pull her off him. Women in Saudi Arabia are not allowed to mix in public with men who are unrelated to them. Mr Mohandis, whose website says is "the prince of Arab singing", has not commented on the incident. The Iraqi-born singer, who also has Saudi citizenship, continued to perform after the incident. A public prosecutor will now consider harassment charges against the woman, police told Okaz, a leading Saudi newspaper, and Efe news agency. The country has strict morality laws regarding alcohol prohibition, modest clothing and gender segregation. Restrictions that had long been placed on women attending public events in the kingdom have been relaxed in the past year under a series of reforms by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Vision 2030, unveiled last year, aims to increase household spending on cultural and entertainment activities in the oil-dependent kingdom from 2.9% to 6% by 2030. Women were allowed to attend a concert and a football match for the first time on the same weekend, and the kingdom also hosted its first concert by a female singer, Lebanese star Hiba Tawaji, in December. Women were also allowed to drive from last month. But significant restrictions remain in place and women still have to adhere to strict dress codes. The unnamed women seen hugging Mr Mohandis was wearing a niqab, a headdress that shows only the eyes.

Gaming laptops are always a balance between power and portability. The Alienware 15 R4 ($1,299.99 to start, $1,849.99 as tested) leans towards the former, with an overclocked, full-size Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 GPU that can tear through high-level gaming and deliver it on a bright, G-Sync display. It’s bulky, but that space also makes it easy to upgrade and allows for deep key travel. But on productivity scores, its 8th Gen Core i7 processor fell behind competitive systems, which may give some users pause. Design For better or worse, Dell hasn’t changed the Alienware 15’s design much from years past. It has an aesthetic that makes it look like a spaceship, but this time around, it comes in black. It looks sleeker than the silver design of previous years, but it's still on the chunky side. There’s additional lighting on both sides of the monitor and on each side of the laptop’s base. The laptop has a 15.6-inch, 1080p display, but you may first notice the bezel, which is massive even by gaming laptop standards these days. It has a traditional style keyboard with programmable macro keys (and customizable lighting). There’s also RGB lighting behind the alien-shaped power button and on the touchpad. All in all, there are 13 different customizable lighting options. The deck is covered in a comfortable soft-touch material that feels good against your wrists while you type. The right side of the laptop has a lone USB 3.0 port, and the left side is home to a USB Type-C, another USB 3.0 port, headphone and microphone jacks and a Noble lock slot. The decision to move the hinge forward from the very back of the machine adds more room for ports there, including an Ethernet jack, mini DisplayPort, HDMI output, Thunderbolt 3 and a proprietary graphics amplifier port. At 7.8 pounds and 15.3 x 12 x 1 inches, the Alienware is noticeably larger and heavier than competitors. It makes the Razer Blade 15 (4.6 pounds, 14 x 9.3 x 0.7 inches) and MSI GS65 Stealth Thin (4.2 pounds, 14.1 x 9.8 x 0.7 inches) look miniscule by comparison. MicroCenter’s PowerSpec 1510 (6.5 pounds x 15.3 x 10.8 x 1.3 inches) is also smaller and lighter, but not by as much. Gaming, Graphics and VR Armed with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 GPU and 8GB of GDDR5 video memory, the Alienware is a powerhouse that has no trouble with games on their highest settings. When I played Middle-earth: Shadow of War, it ran between 75 and 80 frames per second (fps) at 1920 x 1080 on Ultra settings, without any screen tearing thanks to G-Sync. On the Rise of the Tomb Raider benchmark (1920 x 1080, Very High), it ran at 72 fps, blazing past the premium gaming average of 58 fps, as well as the Stealth Thin (GTX 1070 Max-Q), PowerSpec (GTX 1070) and Zephyrus (GTX 1070 Max-Q). Only the Razer Blade (77 fps, GTX 1070 Max-Q) was faster. When it came to the Hitman benchmark (1920 x 1080, Ultra), the Alienware ran the game at 92 fps, again surpassing the average (86 fps) as well as each of its competitors. On Grand Theft Auto V (1920 x 1080), the Alienware ran the game at 74 fps, falling short of the 76-fps average but surpassing all of the other machines. The Alienware earned a perfect score of 11 on the SteamVR performance test, beating the Stealth Thin, Blade, Zephyrus, and the average of 10.2, so it’s the perfect pairing for an Oculus Rift or HTC Vive. The PowerSpec also earned an 11. In our sustained performance test, we ran the Metro: Last Light benchmark 10 times, simulating 30 minutes of gaming and measuring with HWInfo. Frame rates varied between the runs, switching between the low 60s and high 50s, seemingly without a specific pattern. The average frame rate was 61.2 fps and the average clock speed 3.33GHz. The CPU’s average temperature was 95 degrees Celsius (203 degrees Fahrenheit), and the GPU measured an average of 76 degrees Celsius (169 degrees Fahrenheit). Performance It’s no surprise that the Alienware, rocking an Intel Core i7-8750H CPU, 16GB of RAM a 256GB PCIe m.2 SSD and a 1TB, 7,200-rpm HDD, doesn’t slouch. A simple workload of 25 tabs in Chrome, including one streaming a 1080p episode of “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” didn’t case any hiccups at all. But in benchmarks, it didn’t fare as well as other gaming notebooks. On the Geekbench 4 overall performance test, the Alienware earned a score of 16,981, falling below the premium gaming average (17,634) and performing worse than both the Blade and Zephyrus (which share the same CPU as the Alienware), as well as the PowerSpec with its 7th Gen CPU. It took the Alienware 23 seconds to transfer 4.97GB of mixed-media files, a rate of 221 MBps, which is much slower than average (472.5). The Zephyrus, PowerSpec and Blade absolutely smoked it, while the Stealth Thin was a little slower at 193.3MBps. The Alienware paired 65,000 names and addresses in 50 seconds in our Excel macro thest. That’s slower than average (0:44) as well as the Zephyrus, Blade, and Stealth Thin. The PowerSpec trailed the pack at 1:08. On our Handbrake video editing test, in which computers transcode 4K video to 1080p, the Alienware completed the task in 10 minutes and 28 seconds. While that’s slower than average (10:17) and the Zephyrus (9:43), the Alienware beat the Stealth Thin, PowerSpec and Blade. Display The Alienware’s 15.6-inch, 1920 x 1080 IPS screen is nice and bright, which is great for all-day gaming. When I watched a trailer for Mission Impossible: Fallout, a sunset over Paris was a mix of vibrant blues and oranges, and it was easy to make out every shard of glass as Tom Cruise smashed Henry Cavill into a mirror. When I played Middle-earth: Shadow of War, I could see the red in Talion’s sleeves, even in dark areas. The Alienware's display had an average of 311 nits on our light meter, which is brighter than the 282-nit premium gaming average, as well as the Zephyrus, Blade and Stealth Thin. The PowerSpec was just a little dimmer (306 nits). Alienware’s panel covers 119 percent of the sRGB color gamut. While that's less vivid than the premium average (132 percent), as well as the Stealth Thin’s 150 percent, the Alienware shows off more hues than the Blade and PowerSpec and is about equal to the Zephyrus. Keyboard and Touchpad The keyboard on the Alienware offers a deep 2 millimeters of travel and requires 78 grams of actuation to press down. While I didn’t get the clicky feedback I like on gaming keyboards, typing was still comfortable thanks to the deep travel. On the 10fastfingers.com typing test, I reached 117 words per minute, the high end of my average range, along with my standard two percent error rate. The 3.9 x 2.1-inch touchpad is smaller than I'd like, and there is ample room on the deck for a larger one. Still, it’s accurate and responsive to Windows 10 gestures like switching active programs with three fingers and opening the Notification Center with a four-finger tap. The right and left mouse buttons offer a satisfying click. Audio If you like your audio loud, the Alienware speakers will be music to your ears. They easily filled a conference room with sound as I listened to Marshmello and Anne-Marie’s “Friends.” Vocals and record scratches were detailed, though some clapping and drums weren’t as defined as I would like. When I played Middle-earth: Shadow of War, even subtle sounds like a sword slashing through the air when I missed an orc were clear to my ears. There isn’t any audio software on board, like Dell’s cheaper G series of gaming notebooks, which has Waves MaxxAudio Pro. Upgradeability The RAM and the storage in the Alienware 15 R4 are a fairly simple upgrade. All you need is a Phillips screwdriver and a plastic scribe for some prying. To get the base off, you have to remove six screws (all of the same length) and loosen one more, which secure the cover to the bottom of the machine. In our review unit, there was a single, 16GB stick of RAM with a free slot for going up to 32GB. Besides our 128GB PCIe SSD, which you can replace by removing and reinserting a single screw, there’s a slot for yet another PCIe SSD if you need more storage. Taking out the hard drive requires removing a cover with three screws and then another four screws (of a different size) to remove the HDD from the assembly. Software and Warranty Dell includes just a few utilities on the Alienware, most of which are useful. The most notable is Alienware Command Center, which serves as a library for all of your games, as well as the console to control all of the computer’s RGB lighting. It also displays CPU and GPU performance. Alienware Mobile Connect lets you connect your smartphone to send and receive text messages, and, on Android, mirror your phone. And the Killer Control Center lets you prioritize which games and apps get access to your bandwidth. The only bloatware is McAfee Security, which comes preinstalled. Of course, there are a few apps packed into Windows 10 that you can’t avoid, like Candy Crush Soda Saga, Disney Magic Kingdoms, Bubble Witch 3 Saga, March of Empires: War of Lords, Drawboard PDF and Autodesk SketchBook. Dell sells the Alienware 15 R4 with a one-year warranty. Configurations Our review unit costs $1,849.99 and includes an Intel Core i7-8750H, 16GB of DDR4 RAM, a 256GB PCIe M.2 SSD, 1TB 7,200-rpm HDD, 1920 x 1080 G-Sync display, and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 with 8GB of VRAM. The $1,299.99 base model has an Intel Core i5-8300H processor, 8GB of RAM, a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 with 6GB of GDDR5 video memory, a 1920 x 1080 display and a 1TB, 7,200-rpm HDD. And if you want the most expensive configuration, that will run you $2,599.99 with an Intel Core i9-8950HK, an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 with 8GB of VRAM and the same display and storage as our test model. Bottom Line The Alienware 15 is a powerhouse laptop with a comfortable keyboard and easily upgradable parts if you need extra storage or more RAM. Its biggest downside, though, is that it didn’t do as well as some competitors on most non-gaming benchmarks. And then there's the bulk. Competitors like the MSI GS65 Stealth and Asus ROG Zephyrus M GM501 both have higher CPU scores and are far more portable, but you’re giving up the full-sized GTX 1070 in the Alienware for a Max-Q option in both cases, and each of those are more expensive for similar configurations. If you want a GTX 1070 on the cheap, find MicroCenter’s PowerSpec 1510 while you still can, but we expect this $1,300, 7th Gen processor model will disappear soon. That makes the Alienware 15 R4 a fine gaming PC, albeit one on the bulky side. But if you’re going for power, not portability, you should definitely consider it.