How to check your PC's CPU temperature

Is your computer’s CPU too hot? If your PC starts spontaneously shutting down, locking up, or acting sluggish during intense tasks, overheating could be the issue. Keeping tabs on your CPU temperatures is crucial when you’re overclocking your PC’s processor, too—you don’t want to accidentally push the performance pedal too far to the metal when you’re supercharging your pricey Core i9-11900K or AMD Ryzen 5900X, especially given how hard it is to acquire PC parts in general these days.

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PNY LX3030 SSD review: Incredible durability for twice the price

PNY’s new LX3030 NVMe SSD isn’t for everyone. It’s marketed directly at Chia cryptocurrency plotting, a very high-bandwidth sustained write task. If you want some info on how much data Chia requires, you can find it here. But if your workload involves something similar, such as continuous large-scale backup, video encoding, or anything else that involves writing lots and lots of data, it might also be of interest.

Why? The LX3030 is the fastest PCIe 3.0-based sustained writer we’ve tested and its TBW (TeraBytes that can be Written) ratings are astounding: 27,000TBW per 1TB of NAND. Seagate’s scorching fast FireCuda 530 is rated for 1,250TBW per terabyte—a lot of data by normal standards, but shy one zero compared to the PNY's rated durability.

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Aukey PowerTitan 300 review: A well-designed, affordable power station worth every penny

I’ve reviewed a lot of Aukey products, but never had the chance to test out one of the company’s power stations. So a few months ago, I reached out to the Aukey team and asked to check out the $250 PowerTitan 300.

This power station offers enough ports to connect and power almost anything you can think of, and it’s not terribly expensive. Additionally, Aukey sells a 100W solar panel kit that you can use to charge the PowerTitan or small devices, like your phone or tablet, when you have a clear sky.

Note: This review is part of our roundup of portable power banks. Go there for details on competing products and our testing methods.

There were two aspects about the design of the PowerTitan 300 that I noticed right away. First was the 4-inch display that shows the current wattage going in and out of the station, the charge level, and which of the various ports are currently powered on. The second thing I noticed was the number of ports. 

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Use your TV as a computer monitor: Everything you need to know

You’re not the first person who’s wondered what it would be like to have a giant desktop monitor. Think of all the multi-tasking and immersive gaming you could manage if you had a 50- or 60-inch monitor instead of a standard 24-inch monitor! But you’ve probably noticed that as monitors get bigger, they also tend to get prohibitively expensive.

You’ve probably already got a big screen in your house, though—a high-definition television. At the end of the day, isn’t an HDTV just a giant, living-room-oriented computer monitor?

Not exactly. While you can use a TV as a computer monitor in most cases, that doesn’t mean it’s the best option. In fact, it’s likely less attractive, convenient, and usable than you think (not to mention, probably not that cheap). There’s a reason dirt-cheap 32-inch HDTVs aren’t flying off the shelves to be used as budget-friendly jumbo screens.

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Pick the perfect motherboard with these 5 tips

What should you look for when choosing a motherboard? The best CPUs might get all the attention, but motherboard choice can be just as crucial. We’ll show you how to buy based on the features that you need—without breaking the bank.

Choose your CPU and chipset

Your first decision also involves the CPU. Your choice here is either AMD or Intel. Motherboards only work with the specific families of processors they're designed for. Our guide to the best CPUs can help you pick the ideal processor for any budget; your needs there should drive most of your decision making.

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Sony WF-1000XM4 review: These noise-canceling earbuds have all-around appeal

Pre-pandemic, the number of true wireless earbuds with noise canceling was just a trickle. Now they are entering the market in a steady stream, and just in time. Even with reduced travel demand, in-ear headphones with active noise-canceling (ANC) still have their uses—blocking out background conversations in busy households, muffling the cacophony of loud streets, and the like.

With the predecessor WF-1000XM3, Sony pit a strong contender against Bose’s well-regarded noise-canceling competition. Now Sony’s successor ANC buds have improved across the board, making the WF-1000XM4 one of the top contenders in this space. That said, if you care deeply about sound profiles and noise-canceling strength, you should first make sure these buds have what you’re after.

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How to update your PC's BIOS

A tiny BIOS chip lurks inside every computer, sitting on your motherboard to breathe life into your system when you press the power button. It not only powers your PC, but helps protect it, too.

BIOS stands for basic input and output system, and the BIOS chip initializes all the other devices in your PC, like the CPU, GPU, and motherboard chipset. But a few years ago, motherboard manufacturers—in partnership with Microsoft and Intel—introduced a replacement for traditional BIOS chips dubbed UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface).

Almost every motherboard shipping today has a UEFI chip rather than a BIOS chip (UEFI is a Windows 11 system requirement, in fact), but they both share the same core purpose: preparing the system to boot into the operating system. That said, most people still call the UEFI the “BIOS” because of the familiarity of the term.

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The Full Nerd ep. 191: 3rd annual PC Hardware Hall of Fame

In this episode of The Full Nerd, Gordon Ung, Brad Chacos, Alaina Yee, Keith May, and Adam Patrick Murray open up the books and admit worthy hardware into our officially unofficial PC Hall of Fame.

In past years, the Intel 8086/8088 processors, Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT graphics card, IBM Model M keyboard, 3DFX Voodoo graphics card, Raspberry Pi, and MLC NAND (as a stand-in for affordable SSDs) made the cut after a fierce debate. This year, each of us brought three more legendary picks to the table, prepared to plea and cajole as we whittled the original field of 15 nominees down. It starts out full of laughter and trips down memory lane, then the smiles gradually disappear as well-deserving components start getting the axe. Be sure to watch the entire process play out, but in the end, only three products manage to become our 2021 inductees in The Full Nerd’s PC Hardware Hall of Fame:

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How to watch TV on your PC

The easiest way to watch TV on a personal computer--and the one that's most popular now--is to view programming over the Web. The major networks, a number of cable channels, and general sites such as Hulu allow you to view shows in your Web browser. If you want a more direct connection to your TV, you'll need extra hardware, namely a TV tuner.

Tuners essentially turn a computer into a TV set. Usually they include software that allows you to record programming on your computer, too, so you can watch shows on your schedule and not a TV network's. If you have a media center PC, a tuner may already be built into the machine. If you don't have a tuner, you can add one either by installing a tuner card into your PC or by connecting an external tuner.

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Should you buy a used mining GPU?

Should you buy a used mining GPU? Usually, you may want to avoid graphics cards that were used around the clock to mine cryptocurrency. But that's not necessarily the case during the Great GPU Shortage, when the best graphics cards are always out of stock even when they're going for exorbitant prices. 

Let's say you’ve done your research, stood in line for hours, and endlessly refreshed your browser at online retailers without any luck. When you’re finally about to give up, you find the perfect used GPU for sale—but the seller tells you it was used for mining cryptocurrency.

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See the Surface Laptop Studio in action: Full 8 minute walkthrough

As the name suggests, Microsoft’s new Surface Laptop Studio fuses together a number of different Surfaces, among them the Surface Laptop and Surface Studio. Inside the Surface Laptop Studio, however, new GeForce RTX hardware points to the power Microsoft has traditionally offered inside the Surface Book. Our full video above walks you through every inch of the laptop, which doubles as a physical avatar for Microsoft's Windows 11 ambitions.

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How to overclock your PC's CPU

If you think that overclocking is solely for performance-obsessed geeks armed with bottles of liquid nitrogen, it’s time to reconsider! Even a small bump in PC performance can delay the need to upgrade your processor, keeping money in your pocket. Yes, overclocking can make the best gaming CPUs even better.

Today I’ll walk you through simple overclocking steps that can usually boost processor speeds 10 percent or more. If you’re a gamer, video artist, or media streamer, that’s a useful, no-cost upgrade. Read on if you want your PC to go faster!

What is overclocking, anyway?

Overclocking is a technique for tweaking various types of PC hardware, so that it runs faster than the manufacturer’s intended specification. Many processors, RAM modules, and graphics cards can be overclocked, usually by adjusting their settings via your motherboard’s UEFI BIOS. Operate in safe margins and overclocking shouldn’t damage your PC. But, as we’ll discuss, it’s important to manage the additional heat that accelerated hardware can generate.

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The best laptops: Premium laptops, budget laptops, 2-in-1s, and more

With Windows 11 on the horizon, PC makers have been busy announcing new laptops and tablets based on the next-gen operating system.

Add to that heavy competition between Intel, AMD, and Nvidia and we're in an era of some of the best laptops in history right now. Our top picks from currently available laptops are below: 

Latest laptop news and reviews

Here are the latest stories:

• HP announced three new Windows 11 devices that may throw you for a curve: the HP 11 inch Tablet, the 14 inch Laptop, and the Spectre x360 16. The Tablet's cool trick is a swiveling 13MP camera that lets you show off homework. The 14 inch Laptop is also quite different and will be powered by Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon processor. Finally, the Spectre x360 features a 5GHz 11th-gen Tiger Lake H CPU, a GeForce RTX 3050, and a pixel-packed 5 megapixel camera. 
• Framework wants you to take its laptop apart and repair it. Seriously. While most laptops are difficult to impossible to repair or upgrade, this debut product from Framework not only can be dismantled and upgraded, but the company actually encourages you to do it. Find out what we learned when we took an early-production Framework laptop for a whirl.

Gordon Mah Ung

The Framework laptop is designed to be taken apart for repairs or upgrades.

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HP Pavilion Aero 13: Light on price and weight, heavy on style and power

The trusty Pavilion has come a long way. With a magnesium aluminum chassis that looks elegant and feels durable and impossibly light, the HP Pavilion Aero 13 looks and feels more like a model from the company’s higher-end Envy or Spectre line than a mainstream Pavilion. And yet the Pavilion Aero 13 line starts at a reasonable $750.

Despite its light price and weight, the Pavilion Aero 13 is roomy and powerful. The laptop is based on a 13.3-inch display with a 16:10 aspect ratio that makes the display feel more spacious than a standard 16:9 display of the same size. The keyboard runs from edge to edge and feels spacious along with the generously proportioned touchpad. Powering this perfectly sized laptop is an 8-core AMD Ryzen 7 processor that’s no lightweight CPU. Our $999 test system is a great pick for students or anyone looking for tons of style and portability at a great price.

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The Best USB-C cables for charging and transferring data

It’s easy to see why people mistakenly believe that all USB-C cables are essentially the same, and that differences are mostly superficial and a way to mark up prices. After all, it’s just a cable, right?

Wrong. We can tell you from testing more than a dozen USB-C cables that they are not all the same. You will see huge performance differences in transferring data and charging devices depending on the particular cable you buy.

Unfortunately trying to find a quality USB-C cable among the multitude of options available can be daunting. So we bought 14 cables ranging from the biggest, most recognizable brand-names to the cheapest-looking cables around and put them through the wringer to test relative performance. In doing so we were able to identify some clear winners to make your purchasing decision easier.

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Microsoft's Surface Duo 2 phone tries to fix the original's problems

Microsoft’s original Surface Duo folding phone designed in some serious flaws. The Surface Duo 2, to its credit, appears to have at least addressed them.

When Microsoft launched the Surface Duo folding phone a year ago, Microsoft executives preceded it with a gauzy veil of hype that concealed the many flaws reviewers noted: a poor camera, a lack of NFC and 5G, a subsequently poor track record of patches and updates, and an interface whose bugs made the dual-screen interface painful to use.

Microsoft’s Surface Duo 2 arrives today, available for preorder for $1,499.99 on up, with shipments starting Octobr 21. That’s about the same price as Microsoft’s earlier Surface Duo. Can the new phone fix the flaws of the first? On paper, it takes a good first step.

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Meet Surface Laptop Studio, the RTX-powered PC that makes Windows 11 shine

Microsoft’s latest premium notebook, the Surface Laptop Studio, borrows the best from Microsoft’s other products: the flexibility of the Surface Studio, the convenience of the Surface Laptop, and the power of the Surface Book. It might not be the Surface Book 4 we were expecting, but with a new pull-forward display, Nvidia GeForce RTX graphics, Thunderbolt, Windows Hello 2.0, and a high-refresh-rate screen, it’s both an interesting fusion of other Surfaces as well as a physical avatar for many of the new capabilities within Windows 11.

The Surface Laptop Studio won’t come cheaply, though. Microsoft has priced the notebook at $1,599.99 and above, with prices climbing to $3,099.99 for the most premium model. The Surface Studio Laptop is available for preorder beginning today, and will ship on Oct. 5.

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Microsoft's redesigned Surface Pro 8 sets the new bar for Windows tablets

Microsoft announced three new Surface tablets on Wednesday, including a larger, more powerful Surface Pro 8, a new Surface Go 3 that boasts options for a faster Intel Core i3 processor, and an updated Surface Pro X. Microsoft’s Surface Pro 8 boasts Thunderbolt ports for the first time, integrated LTE, Slim Pen integrated storage and charging, as well as a new display that can run at up to 120Hz.

The new updates to Microsoft’s tablet lineup are on par with what we expected from this Surface launch, with Windows 11 looming on October 5, though Microsoft’s quick pace of recent tablet introductions means that there’s not as much of a performance gap as with prior generations.

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Whoa, NZXT finally put a front mesh panel on the H510

Glance at the NZXT H510 Flow, and it looks about as you’d expect given current sensibilities. Optimal airflow dominates the scene at the moment. Most new cases now feature mesh front panels, and the H510 Flow is no different.

Yet the Flow represents a shift on NZXT’s part, as you’ll see in the video above. The standard H510 has long sported a solid front panel, as did the H500 and S340 before it. And despite its critics, the case has enjoyed wild popularity. PC builders love this compact ATX mid-tower’s smaller footprint, thoughtful and straightforward design, and minimalist vibe.

But general trends have had their influence, with a result that should quiet most naysayers. NZXT put a steel mesh front panel on the body of the H510, complete with removable dust filter, and made minor additional tweaks. Namely, the two included 120mm fans come mounted at the front and rear, instead of the top and rear. (The standard H510’s smaller air intakes on the right side panel and the bottom front of the case are gone, too.) You’ll find no other changes to the chassis aside from airflow improvements; PC builders still get the same H510 otherwise. The removable hard drive cage, front fan/radiator bracket, and signature cable bar remain so for ease when building.

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Nexar Pro review: Solid video, cloud storage make this dash cam a good deal

In a field dominated by square or rectangular design, the egg-shaped $160 Nexar Pro dash cam (with its equally egg-shaped discrete interior camera) stands out—in a good way. The Nexar Pro is also one of the cheaper options in a dash cam offering cloud storage, bested only in affordability by the previously reviewed Nexar Beam.

This review is part of our ongoing roundup of the best dash cams. Go there for more reviews and buying advice. 

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