Klevv CRAS C925 SSD – Review

Klevv is an odd name with the double V at the end, and it’s a bit of a strange brand as well. In reality, it’s just part of the SK Group — a group which includes SK hynix — with a focus on retail drives. Klevv is known for its “strictly-selected 3D NAND flash,” which some observers might take to mean it’s a variable-hardware SSD in disguise. In reality, Klevv not only states that the C925 is using TLC flash but strictly-selected in this case means SK hynix flash. This is unique in that such flash is not commonly found in other NVMe SSDs and, when it is, it’s usually an older generation of flash. Klevv has access to more or less contemporary flash and this helps the brand stand out a bit.

As for the controller, Klevv isn’t using an in-house drive like many of SK hynix’s most popular drives, such as the Gold P31 and Platinum P41. Most recently, Klevv has been moving towards Maxiotech and the C925 is using the MAP1602 controller. This controller is well-known in storage circles as a popular high-end DRAM-less solution. That means it does technically lean budget, but it’s almost always found with Chinese YMTC flash. When we reviewed the C930 — a drive with the InnoGrit IG5236 controller, which is normally paired with Micron flash.

This drive is rare in that its street pricing is reasonable right out of the gate, at least for the 1TB model. Too often drives have an unreasonably high MSRP and then even the street prices are too high for what the drive delivers. The C925 knows what it is and is priced appropriately.

The C925 can reach up to 7,400 / 6,500 MB/s for sequential reads and writes and up to 700K / 1000K random read and write IOPS. This is pretty standard for a PCIe 4.0 SSD of this class. Where the drive isn’t standard is with the rated write endurance — the five-year warranty includes coverage of writes up to 1,200TB per TB capacity. This is double the normal value, but we emphasize that TBW is usually not that meaningful. Still, if it’s something you look at then the C925 is high for its range.

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Asus ROG Harpe Ace Extreme -Review

The Asus ROG Harpe Ace Extreme is the mouse side of Asus’ “Extreme” peripherals — to match its $500 Asus ROG Azoth Extreme keyboard. This carbon fiber mouse is insanely lightweight (47g), with a classic, symmetrical shape and five programmable buttons (including the scroll click). Like the Asus ROG Keris II, the Ace Extreme sports Asus’ ROG AimPoint Pro optical sensor, which has a maximum resolution of 42,000 DPI and a maximum speed of 750 IPS, and can handle up to 50 G’s of force. It also features a wireless polling rate of up to 8,000 Hz with Asus’ ROG Polling Rate Booster (included).

The ROG Harpe Ace Extreme is made of carbon fiber, and it… looks like it’s made of carbon fiber. Well, it’s not made entirely of carbon fiber — the top half of its chassis is made of carbon fiber, while the lower half is made of lightweight plastic. This means the top of the mouse, including its two primary buttons, feature a distinctive carbon fiber weave pattern, while the bottom of the mouse is solid matte black plastic with light texturing on the sides.

The mouse features the same right-handed symmetrical design of its less-extreme counterpart, the Asus ROG Harpe Ace Aim Lab Edition.

It has the same dimensions as that mouse, measuring 5.01 inches (127.5mm) long by 2.51 inches (63.7mm) wide by 1.56 inches (39.6mm) high at its tallest point. Thanks to its carbon fiber construction, however, it’s lighter than the Harpe Ace Aim Lab Edition by 7g — the Harpe Ace Extreme weighs just 1.66 ounces (47g).

The Harpe Ace Extreme is not a small mouse, but it has a mild hump and a symmetrical shape that will work with a range of hand sizes. The sides curve in slightly and the mouse flares out at the top, making it easier to pick up and more comfortable to hold in claw and fingertip grips. It has a mild center hump that’s slightly pointed so your fingers will fall on either side of it.

The primary buttons are mostly flat, with a slight curve toward the center of each button to help keep your fingers in place. It’s easy to pick up because it’s so lightweight, and even though the carbon fiber is smooth and a little slippery, the textured sides offer enough grip that you shouldn’t have any trouble keeping this mouse in your hand. In the event that you do need a grippier surface, Asus includes precut grip tape with the mouse (for the sides and the primary mouse buttons).

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Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W – Review

It is fair to say that the Raspberry Pi Pico disrupted the maker community in 2021. The $4 microcontroller was Raspberry Pi’s first foray into making its own chips (ok, the Raspberry Pi 5’s RP1 is technically the first, but it was released after the Pico) and it saw the Raspberry Pi Pico and its RP2040 become a hot property. The Raspberry Pi Pico W, released in 2022, brought Wi-Fi to the form factor, but it wasn’t until 2024 that we saw the successor to the Raspberry Pi Pico, the $5 Raspberry Pi Pico 2.

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The Raspberry Pi Pico 2 brings a more powerful CPU, more RAM and flash storage. It also brings security features via Arm TrustZone and Secure Boot. But, there is no Wi-Fi, until now.

The Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W is essentially a Raspberry Pi Pico 2, with the same Wi-Fi package as the original Raspberry Pi Pico W, and the same RM2 package as used in Pimroni’s Pico Plus 2 W.

You can’t help but notice that the Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W looks just like the original Raspberry Pi Pico W. The key differences are branding text, surface mount component placement and FCC / ID reference numbers. Other than that they are identical. Including just the BOOTSEL button.

It’s a Raspberry Pi Pico, so you know that this can be programmed via MicroPython, CircuitPython, Arduino and many other languages. The short story is that the Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W can be programmed using the same languages and software as you are already using. They just need an update from their maintainers in order to get Wi-Fi functionality to work.

The RP2350 is a much more powerful chip when compared to the RP2040. While you don’t need huge amounts of processing power for most microcontroller projects, there are some where the added oomph will provide a benefit. Emulation, AI / Machine Learning / Computer Vision for example.

The Pico 2 W builds on that, by offering a solid Wi-Fi connection.

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Crucial T500 SSD – review

The Crucial T500 4TB is here, for those who find that 2TB of storage just isn’t enough these days. Using Phison’s E25 controller, the T500 has a power-efficient architecture with DRAM, now available as a 4TB pseudo-budget SSD.

Crucial promised a 4TB model a year ago, and it has now delivered: the same great taste but in an extra large tin.

For the most part, nothing has changed but the capacity. The T500 was heralded as a top notch PCIe 4.0 SSD that could match or beat any other drive in its class, all while being more power-efficient. Half the channels with the same amount of fun, and unlike some of its competitors, it kept the DRAM intact. It’s a great successor to drives like the SK hynix Gold P31 for laptops, and it also works great for desktops and consoles.

Perhaps the most obvious potential misstep is the price. In some respects this is supposed to be a “budget” SSD, even though its performance is in line with heavy hitters. Often, it manages to look like a WD Black SN850X or Samsung 990 Pro substitute, but really it just brings DRAM to a potentially less expensive drive, taking on the likes of the Teamgroup MP44. This becomes more obvious when looking at its sustained write performance irregularities, although for the most part you’re not going to notice that in daily use. Still, its price is higher than it should be at 4TB, which keeps it from being the best option in many cases, even if it delivers exemplary all-around performance.

The 4TB Crucial T500 is currently priced at $309 for the non-heatsinked version and $301 for the heatsink model. Those prices can and will change — a week or two back, the non-heatsink model was going for $289 and the heatsink variant cost $319. Whether you want the heatsink or not, check the current pricing, as you can easily remove the heatsink if you really don’t want it. If the bare drive ends up costing less (as it logically should), a variety of M.2 heatsinks will get the job done, or you can use your motherboard’s M.2 heatsink if it has one. Do note that the 4TB model isn’t a single-sided design, however.

The Crucial T500 4TB can hit up to 7,000/6,900 MB/s for sequential reads and writes, and up to 1,050K/1,350K random read and write 4K IOPS. These numbers are slightly lower than the 2TB SKU, and the 1TB SKU as well for that matter. The reason is the hardware. The controller in use has four chip enable (CE) signals for each of the four channels, giving sixteen CE total. As the drive is using 1Tb dies there are 32 dies in total present, more than the CE count, which add some overhead.

The 4TB T500 has a warranty for five years and up to 2,400TB of writes, which is right in line with the smaller SKUs. The drive also supports TCG Opal 2.01 for hardware encryption.

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How to choose the right Linux distro for you

Choosing among linux distros is a personal decision. But the general question is for what purpose you want Linux. There are many distros made just for a specific thing. Notable examples are:

  1. Ubuntu Studio : a linux distro made for people who love creating Audio, Graphics, Video, Photography and Publishing.
  2. Scientific Linux : a Linux release put together by Fermilab, CERN, and various other labs and universities around the world. Its primary purpose is to reduce duplicated effort of the labs, and to have a common install base for the various experimenters.
  3. CnC Linux : a software system for computer control of machines such as milling machines, lathes, plasma cutters, cutting machines, robots, hexapods, etc
  4. General purpose Linux : Most notable here is Ubuntu which is very easy to install, has its own app center and has steam supported. It’s a good platform also for gaming.
  5. If you are an experienced linux user and you want something more challenging then you can go to Arch-Linux and Gentoo. Both of them are minimal installations from which will provide you a minimal base system and you from a command line you gonna give linux the shape you want. You will chose the login manager, the desktop enviroment, the drivers. I would suggest Arch linux because the installation is very much easier from Gentoo and because of its awesome package manager the Pacman which seriously with one just command can update your entire system packages.
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Intel Core Ultra 9 285K- review

Intel’s flagship $589 Core Ultra 9 285K headlines its new ‘Arrow Lake’ Core Ultra 200S series, leading the charge with 24 cores melded into a completely new chiplet architecture that comes with plenty of new leading-edge tech, like 3D Foveros packaging, support for new DDR5 CUDIMM memory tech, and the first dedicated AI engine fused inside a desktop PC chip.

Intel says Arrow Lake provides an up to 150W reduction in system power during gaming and other improvements, like a claimed 20% gain in threaded horsepower and a 5% gain in single-thread performance over the prior-gen, which helps offset the lack of gen-on-gen gaming gains.

The Intel launch comes on the heels of AMD’s tepid Zen 5 Ryzen 9000 launch, which saw AMD’s newest chips providing limited generational gaming improvements, so they couldn’t quite catch up to Intel. Naturally, given the performance we’ve seen with Intel’s new chips, AMD’s Zen 5 processors, which recently had pricing adjustments and firmware/OS enhancements, look much more promising than before — at least compared to Intel’s new chips. However, AMD also has its Ryzen 9000X3D processors slated for release early this month, and they will almost certainly be the new gaming performance champions.

That’s not to say that the Core Ultra 200S series doesn’t have its own charms. Intel employs a range of TSMC nodes for the different chiplets (called “tiles” in Intel parlance) in Arrow Lake. In fact, this marks Intel’s first mainstream desktop PC chip entirely fabricated using another company’s process node technology. Intel combines the more efficient process nodes with a radical new CPU core design that intersperses E-core clusters among the P-cores and discards Hyper-Threading entirely, thus claiming to deliver drastic power reductions that will result in a cooler and quieter PC.

Arrow Lake supports up to 192GB of DDR5 memory, but now in two flavors with two different base speeds. The chips support DDR5-6400 with DDR5 CUDIMMs, a new type of DIMM with an integrated clock driver (ckd) that boosts easily attainable stable clock frequencies by amplifying the signal, thus stabilizing the data eye. Unlike the clock redrivers present on fully-buffered registered DIMMs, the CUDIMM redrivers are said not to impose an additional clock cycle of latency (they use a less complicated and cheaper design).

Intel also points to much higher overclocking headroom with CUDIMMs and says DDR5-8000 appears to be the sweet spot (Gear 2). CUDIMMs should enable the use of poorer-quality DRAM ICs in higher-speed kits while simplifying the pricier DIMM PCB designs often required for higher-end memory. But motherboards with CUDIMM support may cost extra, and the CUDIMMs themselves are likely to carry a price premium, so you’ll need to pay close attention to the final cost before deciding whether CUDIMMs make sense.

Intel also supports standard DDR5, but at lower base speeds than it supports with CUDIMMs (the same DDR5-5600 as with its 14th Gen CPUs). Naturally, both types of memory are overclockable. Arrow Lake does support ECC memory, but it won’t be supported on consumer platforms — instead, that feature is reserved for enterprise-focused W-series motherboards.

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How to control individual app notifications in Windows 10

Windows 10 allows you to control notifications for each your apps individually. In addition to managing the notifications for each app individually, you can also turn on or off the notifications for all the available apps in a single go. The entire process of enabling or disabling the notifications for all apps in a single go, or for each app individually is explained below:

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How to configure Virtual desktops in Windows 10

Windows 10 allow you to add multiple desktops while using the OS. With the help of multiple virtual desktop windows, it becomes easier for you to work on more than one application simultaneously. Since many applications require that you use then in full screen mode (otherwise many of their options remain hidden or inaccessible), by adding a couple of virtual desktops on your Windows 10 computer, you can work on many applications simultaneously without minimizing or closing a single one.

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