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To the left of the I/O panel is a rectangular box that houses four 5.25" external bays that are blocked by mesh cover plates until they’re needed. These cover plates are externally removable using the tabs on either side. Below them, in the middle of the façade, is an external 3.5" bay which is also “hidden” by a removable mesh cover plate. Next to the external 3.5" bay is a lock that can be used to restrain access to the removable hot-swappable bays on the side of the case, which we will get to shortly....

This workload uses a trace of importing a collection of images in Windows Live Photo Gallery. A USB stick with 68 images (434MB total) was inserted and images were imported to Windows Live Photo Gallery. Recording of activity on system drive started at the beginning of importing pictures and lasted until thumbnail images appeared on the display. During the trace Windows Live Photo Gallery copied images from USB stick to Pictures library, indexed them and created thumbnails....

As you likely know, while manufacturers claim impressive peak I/O performance out of the box, this performance can diminish over time. Unlike a conventional hard drive, any write operation made to an SSD is a two-step process: a data block must be erased and then written to. Obviously if the drive is new and unused there will be nothing to erase and therefore the first step can be bypassed, but this only happens once unless the drive is trimmed....

The Agility 4 loaded Windows 7 in just 10.5 seconds, 30% faster than the v4, which was quite slow by today’s SSDs standards at 15 seconds. Again, the v4 stands out as being one of the slowest SSDs we have tested in recent years, taking 6.1 seconds to complete the Windows 7 multitasking test. The Agility 4 finished in 5.2 seconds. The Adobe Photoshop CS4 load test typically takes about a second to complete using a modern SSD and this was true for the Agility 4, but the v4 took 2....

The Radeon HD 6850 scored just 49fps, while the GeForce GTX 560 was slightly faster with 54fps. The GeForce GTX 460 was overwhelmed at 1920x1200 averaging 45fps. The current generation of affordable high-end graphics cards in the GeForce GTX 570 and Radeon HD 6950 performed well delivering 66 and 68fps, respectively.

Disney+ Premium (with no ads) now commands $10.99 per month, or $109.99 a year. In addition to everything Basic affords, Premium members get unlimited offline downloads on up to 10 devices as well as support for GroupWatch and Dolby Atmos. With GroupWatch, you can host virtual movie nights, sync up for season premieres and more without having to be in the same physical location. Disney also has a couple of new bundles for your consideration....

Back in March, Disney+ announced it would be offering a cheaper, ad-supported plan later this year. One could argue that it’s just introducing ads to the current $7.99 tier on December 8, the same date it launches the ad-free Disney+ Premium option that will cost $10.99 per month in the US. Disney CEO Bob Chapek said the ad-supported tier, which can’t be paid for annually, would have a “lower ad load and frequency to ensure a great experience for viewers....

SpaceX has supplied around 25,000 Starlink terminals to Ukraine since the war began. Musk says the donations have cost the company $80 million and will exceed $100 million by the end of the year. Ukraine vice prime minister Mykhailo Federov has thanked Musk for the deliveries, which have allowed the country’s military and civilians to continue communicating and accessing the internet even as Russia targets its comms infrastructure. But it seems SpaceX’s generosity isn’t without its limits....

The European Commission adopted the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and the Digital Services Act (DSA) this week, two packages designed to control the power of tech giants in favor of consumers. After the Council of the EU signs and adopts the acts, they’ll go into effect this fall. Between the two, the DMA is probably the more important for platform holders like Google and Apple. It will require “gatekeepers” like them to let EU users install apps from outside official app stores, easily uninstall pre-installed software, or easily unsubscribe from core services....

It’s interesting to note that the GTX 970 and GTX 980 topped our graph at this resolution with the former being 2fps faster than the R9 290X and the latter being 11fps faster. However, it’s a different story at 2560x1600 where the R9 290X beat the GTX 980 by 2fps – hardly a deathblow but surely not what Nvidia wants to see from its flagship. The biggest surprise may be that the GTX 970 dropped to 44fps at 2560x1600, only 3fps faster than the HD 7970 GHz Edition....

It simply doesn’t make sense to pay that much extra for an overclocked processor which is only 6% faster. Moreover, for the same money consumers can purchase the Athlon 5350 for $65 and a decent AM1 motherboard such as the Asrock AM1B-MDH for $35. The Pentium J2900 keeps up with the Athlon 5350 in application performance, with the latter having a slight edge in encoding performance and the former doing a bit better in 1080p video playback....

According to a new report by the FBI, cybercriminals are stealing login credentials to the networks of US-based colleges and universities. These are then sold to other criminal actors or used for credential stuffing attacks, whereby attackers take advantage of victims who reuse the same credentials across multiple websites, most notably banking services. In 2017, the agency found cybercriminals cloning university login pages and embedding a credential harvester link in phishing emails....

Mozilla has announced it will enable the Total Cookie Protection feature by default for users of its popular Firefox web browser on Mac and Windows. Total Cookie Protection works by compartmentalizing cookies for each website you visit. Any cookie deposited in your browser by a site or third-party content embedded in it remains confined in a “cookie jar” assigned only to that website, hidden from other sites you visit. This approach doesn’t allow web trackers to link up your behavior on multiple sites, reducing the amount of information companies gather about you....

Chinese networking equipment manufacturer H3C has just announced the Magic BE18000, the “world’s first Wi-Fi 7 router.” It’s worth noting that the IEEE hasn’t finalized the Wi-Fi 7 (802.11be) standard yet, meaning that this router might not support all the features of upcoming certified devices. The BE18000 has a 4x4 MIMO antenna configuration and supports all three Wi-Fi frequency bands. It has a maximum PHY rate of 1148 Mbps on 2....

Disney was deep in discussions with Twitter about a possible takeover in late 2016. Reports claimed other massive firms had also shown an interest, but Google, Apple, and, surprisingly, Disney eventually announced they would not be bidding for Twitter. A few years later, former Disney CEO Bob Iger revealed it was the “nastiness” permeating Twitter that put the company off completing the purchase. He recently elaborated on what happened at Vox Media’s Code conference....

Finally we get to see the Gainward GeForce GT 240 deliver some respectable results. While testing with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 at 1680x1050, the card was able to produce an average of 51fps, making it just 4% slower than the GeForce 9800 GT. It was about 13% faster than the GeForce 9600 GT, but unfortunately that was not enough to match the 61 frames per second delivered by the Radeon HD 4770....

Inside, Cooler Master’s patented finger-press buttons are still used for the 5.25" drive bays, providing an ultra-quick and reliable way to install and remove devices. While many other tool-less designs are clumsy and impractical, the finger-press buttons actually work very well. The removable 3.5" hard drive racks (which are now green) also work smoothly. The first 3.5" drive rack features a removable adapter for 2.5" drives to accommodate either standard....

On the left there’s a large perforated vent that allows the fans to draw in cool air. The right side panel has the FX logo embossed in the center, a specifications sticker and the Windows proof of license and model number stickers. Gateway has included five memory card reader slots on the top of the front bezel: xD, CF, Micro SD, SD / MMC and MS / MS Pro. There’s also a Photo Frame button with an activity LED, two USB ports, headphone and microphone jacks....

The GPU is an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 with 6GB of GDDR5 memory. This discrete graphics chip is essentially identical to the desktop equivalent, with 1280 CUDA cores, 80 TMUs, and 48 ROPs. It’s clocked at 1404 MHz with a rated boost of 1670 MHz, slightly lower than the desktop GPU. Its 6GB of memory is clocked at 8000 MHz on a 192-bit bus for 192 GB/s of bandwidth. Currently, only one configuration of the Aero 15 is available....