Skull Canyon was designed to dispel stereotypes about low efficiency of compact-sized PCs. Intel tried hard to take its mini-PC to the next level. Hence, the company furnished it with a 4-core Core i7-6770HQ CPU (Skylake) with support of Hyper-Threading. It features 6 MB L3 cache, 45 W TDP and runs at 2.6/3.5 GHz frequency. The CPU incorporates Intel Iris Pro Graphics 580 (GT4e) graphics core with 72 computing units and an additional eDRAM of 128 MB (frequency index: 350-950 MHz).



Intel Skull Canyon is housed in a stylish case with skull logo, featuring 216x116x23 mm dimensions & 0.7 liters capacity. The model accommodates a pair of So-DIMM DDR4-2133+ slots, allowing to install up to 32 GB of memory. Storage subsystem might be organized thanks to a pair of M.2 slots which support SSDs with SATA or PCI Express x4 interface.


This mini-PC comes with Intel Dual Band Wireless AC 8260 adapter that is thought to support Wi-Fi 802.11ac and Bluetooth 4.2 connectivity. The rear panel …

Gigabyte Technology introduces three new motherboards of micro-ATX form-factor, based on Intel H81 Express chipset. The new-comers, entitled GA-H81M-DS2, GA-H81M-D3V and GA-H81M-D2V, are equipped with LGA1150 socket that supports Intel Haswell CPUs. Their efficiency and durability is the result of the implementation of Gigabyte Ultra Durable 4 Plus concept, On/Off Charge and UEFI DualBIOS technologies, as well as of prime capacitors with a solid electrolyte. Each motherboard is unique, so the specifications of each item are worth of being detailed.



Gigabyte GA-H81M-DS2 features:

— 226 x 170 mm dimensions;

— the possibility of integrating up to 16 GB of two-channel DDR3 memory with up to 1600 MHz frequency;

— a pair of SATA II and SATA III ports;

— a pair of PCI Express x1 slots and a single PCI Express x16 slot;

— gigabit Ethernet port;

— Realtek ALC887 controller with the support of HD Audio sounding;

— rear I/O panel with RJ-45 port, D-Sub, …

MSI has taken its fans by surprise by introducing two lineups of video cards simultaneously. The lines (which embrace 10 models in total) are based on Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 1050 & GeForce GTX 1050 Ti adapters. The new-comers feature either one or two fans and differ by the operational performance as well as functional. It stands to reason that the company has enlarged its Gaming series with 4 new products.



One-fan video cards are distinguished by the implementation of Military Class 4 hardware base, whereas the two-fan versions boast the incorporation of MSI Twin Frozr VI cooling system (TORX 2.0 fans), three operational profiles and overclocking features.


The MSI GeForce GTX 1050 series is introduced by the following models (Nvidia GP107-300 GPU, Pascal, 640 CUDA, 2GB GDDR5, 128-bit bus, DVI-D, HDMI 2.0b, DisplayPort 1.4):

— MSI GeForce GTX 1050 2G: base GPU frequency – 1354 MHz, dynamic GPU frequency – 1455 MHz, efficient memory frequency – 7.0 GHz;

— …