Author: Computer Tech

Introduction

A big thank you to be quiet! for supplying the review sample.

be quiet! has become a go-to brand for PC enthusiasts, thanks to its focus on delivering high performance, low noise products that stand the test of time. With both exceptional build quality and solid warranties added in for good measure, it’s easy to see how they earned their place as a top-tier manufacturer of cases, coolers, power supplies, and fans. With a strong track record of excellence it will be interesting to see how be quiet! continues to grow and adapt in the DIY PC component market.

In today’s review, I will be putting the be quiet! Light Loop 360 to the test. Our review sample is the white version, and it comes packed with ARGB LED lighting on the pump and fans, as well as an ARGB hub to help sync all your devices. Add in a fill port and extra coolant along with a decent warranty, and you have the makings of a solid offering if performance is lives up to the looks. Considering the unit does have the offset mounting option for AMD processors I anticipate an excellent showing so let’s take a closer look!

Introduction

Intel today launched the second graphics card in its Arc Battlemage series, the Arc B570, and we have with us the ASRock Arc B570 Challenger OC, the company’s value custom-design based on it. Intel’s 2024 yearend launch of the B580 saw unexpected success, and was received well by reviewers and gamers alike. At a disruptive starting price of $250, the B580 offered much better value than the segment leader GeForce RTX 4060, consistently dominating it in all game genres. It also has a powerful ray tracing hardware feature-set. Besides the silicon engineering, the B580 is well-rounded by a surprisingly mature software backbone, and an agile driver release cycle. Now, Intel plans to repeat its success at an even more competitive price point with the new Arc B570.

The Intel Arc B570 is coming in at a feisty starting price of just $220, with custom design boards such as the ASRock B570 Challenger OC going for $230. This separates it from the B580 custom designs by around $20-40. The B570 is designed to have a lower cost than the B580, and is better positioned to eat NVIDIA’s lunch around the $200-mark, or even below. If you recall, NVIDIA did not launch a successor to the RTX 3050 in the RTX 40-series Ada generation, which means this market segment is practically undefended by the green team. AMD’s approach has been equally clumsy, there is nothing in its product stack below the RX 7600 in its current generation, and there exists a vast performance gap between the RX 7600, or older generation RX 6600 series, and the “mid-range” RX 6500 XT, a GPU that performs in the league of iGPUs. The task for Intel Graphics is hence cut out. If it is able to maintain the levels of cost-performance it did with the B580, the B570 will breathe life into the low-cost gaming PC segment.

The Arc B570 is powered by the new Xe2 Battlemage graphics architecture. Intel took learned lessons from its Xe Alchemist generation, and tried to address them at a hardware level with Xe2. These include an up to 70% generational increase in SIMD performance from its Xe cores, and a 50% gain in performance per watt, due in part to the switch to TSMC 5 nm EUV process. The company also worked intensely on the ray tracing hardware of this architecture, and claims 50-100% gains in specific areas of the ray tracing workload, reducing the cost of enabling ray tracing. Intel is also introducing XeSS 2, the second generation of its in-house performance enhancements, which introduces XeFG (Xe Frame Generation), and XeLL (Xe Low Latency), working alongside the Super Resolution to unlock performance and image quality of GPUs from higher segments, as well as give the B570 longevity and market relevance for years.

The Arc B570 is based on the same 5 nm BMG-G21 silicon as the B580, but is further cut down. It has 18 Xe cores compared to the 20 on the B580, which work out to 112 execution units, or 2,240 unified shaders. You also get 18 ray tracing units, and 144 XMX cores, 144 TMUs, and 60 ROPs. The memory size is down to 10 GB from the 12 GB on the B580, and the memory bus width is lowered to 160-bit compared to the 192-bit of the B580. Intel is using 19 Gbps GDDR6 memory speeds, and so this results in 380 GB/s of memory bandwidth. This is still a superior memory sub-system to the RTX 4060 and RX 7600, which feature 8 GB of memory across narrower 128-bit memory interfaces. The display and media acceleration capabilities of the Arc B570 are carried over from the B580—you get DisplayPort up to UHBR13.5 and HDMI 2.1 handling I/O, and dual media acceleration engines capable of AV1 and HEVC encode and decode.

The ASRock Arc B570 Challenger OC is the company’s value custom-design based on this GPU, it features a simple aluminium fin-stack heatsink that’s ventilated by a pair of large fans that offer idle fan-stop. There’s also a well-designed metal 3-D backplate. The PCB underneath is two-thirds the length of the card, and so airflow from the second fan goes through the heatsink and is vented from large cutouts in the backplate. The card draws power from a single 8-pin PCIe power connector. ASRock is pricing the card at a $10 premium over the Intel baseline price, attempting to justify it with a small factory overclock of 2.60 GHz engine clock compared to 2.50 GHz Intel reference, while leaving the memory untouched at 19 Gbps.

Introduction

Established in 2018, G-Wolves is a peripherals company based in China. Following the Hati-S and Hati-S Plus, the Hati-S2 8K is the newest addition to the Hati-S series, and easily the smallest among them. Though the basic shape is retained, and the width essentially the same, the Hati-S2 8K is quite a bit shorter than the others. With that in mind, it comes as no surprise that at 34 g, the Hati-S2 8K is especially lightweight. Much like previous G-Wolves releases, the Hati-S2 8K employs an open-bottom design, but the top shell isn’t fully solid, and instead features small slits. PixArt’s PAW3395 sensor capable of 26,000 CPI is used, alongside Huano (blue transparent shell, pink plunger) switches for the main buttons. Polling rates of up to 8000 Hz are possible in wireless operation, and G-Wolves cites up to 80 hours of battery life using 1000 Hz. The feet are made of pure PTFE, and several replacement sets are included in the box. Configuration is done conveniently through a web driver. The Hati-S2 8K is available in white, green, red, violet, and gray.

Specifications

Introduction

Huion is a brand we have become more familiar with over the past year, especially since TechPowerUp has covered multiple of its pen display tablets that have all been commercially successful. In fact, since its launch in 2011, Huion has managed to carve out a sizable chunk of the digital ink devices market to itself, thanks to its wider assortment of products spread across pen tablets (no integrated display), display tablets, and even touch computers that come with a PC inside to run independently. These also come in various sizes and standard/pro versions too in some cases—although things have been blurry here as newer non-pro launches have offered features which compete strongly against the pro versions and other competing solutions in the market for a lower price. The Kamvas 13 (Gen 3) is a good example of this, and Huion says this has been one of its most popular products ever to where the Kamvas Pro 13 (2.5K) might be threatened.

Today we take a closer look at the brand new Huion Kamvas 16 (Gen 3), which ups the ante with an individually calibrated 15.8″ 1440p panel with a new glass screen that promises a drawing experience closer to paper than before. It gets the same new features we first saw on the smaller Kamvas 12 (Gen 3) too, including a revised slimmer and more accurate pen, customizable dial controllers and side buttons, and even the nice tablet stand for those who prefer it. The Kamvas 16 (Gen 3) launches at CES, and I happened to have received a retail unit before launch to help bring you this quick look article. Thanks to Huion for providing a sample to TechPowerUp, and let’s begin with a look at the product specifications in the table below. Please note that the product page is not out yet as of the date I write this review, so some of these specifications may be prone to changes before it is officially launched.

Packaging and Accessories

Having recently examined the Huion Kamvas 13 (gen 3), this product box for the newer Kamvas 16 (Gen 3) is quite familiar owing to a similar design. We get a thick two-piece cardboard box with the company logo and product name on the front along with a render of the tablet itself. There’s not much else going on here, with QR codes eventually leading you to the downloads page and the brand’s social media channels. Take off the lid and you will see a display calibration report for your specific unit, which is nice to see in a non-Pro model, and the tablet itself which comes inside a wax paper wrap to keep it pristine and dust-free. Underneath we find the various accessories included in two separate layers.

The foldable stand ST300 was included in this review unit and sells for $50 separately, and I am not sure at this time whether Huion will have two SKUs of this product—one with the stand included for a discounted price, and the other without the stand—as with the smaller Kamvas 13 (Gen 3). We will know together at launch, I suppose! The stand weighs over 550 g by itself, feels quite sturdy in the hands, and really feels like a must-have for the tablet as we will soon see. It measures in at 282 x 184 x 8 mm and can still easily fit inside a typical 13″ tablet/laptop carry case. The contact surface has silicone pads for added grip as well as to prevent scratches to the tablet itself, we see more on the bottom for a similar purpose when used on your desk. There is a smaller section underneath which can be pulled out to hold the tablet, and then a larger one you fit into various notches on the underside to get different support angles ranging from 14.5° to 45°. This allows you to position the tablet at a more ergonomic angle to better suit your hands and shoulders while also helping get the best viewing angle when working.

Huion simplifies the connectivity here compared to previous generation tablets thanks to the use of two Type-C ports on the device, one of which is fully-featured and can be used with a variety of different connection options. We get a 3-in-1 cable that goes from a right-angled Type-C connector from the tablet to three separate connectors on the source side in the form of USB Type-A for power (if the other USB connection isn’t strong enough), USB Type-A for data, and a full-size HDMI cable for video out from your graphics card to effectively use the tablet as a secondary display. Additionally, Huion also provides a USB Type-C to Type-C cable that can provide power, display, and data signals in a single cable if your connected device is compatible with power and display over Type-C. A USB Type-C to Type-A cable, as well as a USB Type-A extension cable helps if you need separate cables in this case, and we also see a USB wall adapter included in the box. This makes the Kamvas 16 (Gen 3) far more complete out of the box, and with more configurable connectivity solutions compared to the smaller, less expensive Kamvas 13 (Gen 3).

We get a multi-language quick start guide with useful illustrations, although there will no double be a more detailed user manual available online when this product is launched, if only because Huion has done this for its other recent releases too. There is also a microfiber cloth to keep the display clean over time, in addition to one of those drawing gloves which you only put two fingers into. Huion also includes a pen holder which unscrews to reveal storage for up to 10 pen nibs, with these slots already occupied by 10 spare nibs thrown in the box to ensure product longevity. Rounding off the unboxing experience is the digital pen itself with a soft touch texture, making it very comfortable to hold and use. It has three buttons closer to the active end and can be easily placed into the holder for when you are taking a break, as seen above.

Closer Look

The Huion Kamvas 13 (Gen 3) came in two color options—Sakura Pink and Cosmo Black—the larger Kamvas 16 (Gen 3) is only available in black at this point. As the name suggests, this tablet uses a 16″ screen that’s actually 15.8″ in size, making it effectively larger than most of the contemporary tablets in this range that use a 14-15″ display. The overall dimensions are 415 (L) x 235 (W) x 11.5 (H) mm as measured here, which is on the smaller side of average for tablets in this size class as a result of three of the sides having minimal case bezels—this also helps make this tablet be usable whether you are right-handed or left-handed as the screen can also be rotated to facilitate this feature. The fourth side has the power button, two dials with associated function switch buttons, and six other buttons in the middle that use low profile tactile switches and have different patterns on the top to help identify them easily by touch. The active area is smaller of course at ~350×197 mm, uses a 2560×1440 LCD IPS 60 Hz panel for 186 PPI, and you will notice the panel itself has bezels to allow you to hold the tablet normally too. This being a non-Pro model, the max brightness of 220 nits, 14 ms response time, 1000:1 contrast ratio and 99% sRGB gamut with 178° viewing angles seem easier to accommodate. There’s not a lot to see on the back outside the four rubber pads on the corners, and I will also mention the tablet feels thinner than its 12 mm thickness, owing to gentle curves all around the sides which also make it easier to hold the device in one hand. Do note that this color picks up and displays smudges and fingerprints fairly easily, so use the provided microfiber cleaning cloth regularly.

Don’t expect to see an all aluminium chassis here, and yet I didn’t think the build quality on the Kamvas 16 (Gen 3) will be an issue for anyone outside the smudges aforementioned. The buttons feel solid, as do the dials themselves with the knurled finish on the side making them satisfying to rotate and press. The side with these buttons and dials also has two USB Type-C ports to help keep the product future-proof. The one closest to the power button is a fully-featured USB 3.1 (Gen 1) Type-C port with DisplayPort 1.2 capability, allowing you to use a compatible table to provide power, data, and display signals alike. If you don’t have a source which is compatible with video + power out over Type-C, then you will likely use the 3-in-1 cable that comes with the tablet, which also makes for a clean connection as seen above. The other end of the cable goes to two available USB Type-A ports and a full-size HDMI port, and note that you can move the cable minders to allow for more room for the cables to individually reach where they need to be.

Here’s a look at the tablet positioned on the provided tablet stand. The tablet does weigh ~1.2 kg, so it’s not exactly the easiest to hold in one hand even beyond the larger form factor compared to the far more portable 12-13″ class tablets. As such, I highly recommend getting the stand in case Huion ends up making it an optional extra as with the Kamvas 13 (Gen 3). I found myself mostly using the stand on the smaller pop-out at a 15-20° angle when having the entire ensemble on a desk alongside my PC or laptop. There are also dual device stands available allowing you to have your tablet and laptop on the same stand for easier multitasking.

User Experience

The Huion website is extremely easy to navigate, and you can find the drivers for the Kamvas 16 (Gen 3) on this page for the OS of your choice. It’s a good idea to remove all other graphics/drawing tablet drivers off your system first, although I found the generic Windows drivers did not cause any issues. The latest version of drivers for Windows (v15.7.6.1357) are from late summer 2024, and the installation process is simple. The program takes ~60 MB of space and runs light on system resources too. Once installed, it only shows working options if the tablet is connected and powered on. Included here are monitor calibration settings, the expected pen calibration tool and pressure sensitivity slider, and key mapping options for the buttons/dials on the tablet and pen to provide useful shortcuts within reach. You can also correct the active Window in the display if it is different from expected, as well as check for firmware updates from within the software itself. Note that the program needs to be running in the background for any of the changes from the default configuration to work.

Pressing and holding the power button pulls up the OSD (on-screen display), which then works with the pen to allow you to do some on-the-fly changes to the display too, as seen above. You can change the brightness, color temperature, choose the connection mode, change the color gamut, and even the aspect ratio as desired. In essence, if the display and pen are already working fine for you on Windows, then there is not a lot to gain from installing the first-party drivers. I would have liked profile support to allow for different sets of shortcuts for different applications—that would have made the re-mapping options even more useful. On the other hand, I suppose working professionals already have their preferred software of choice for drawing/editing, so you could remap once and call it a day.

I mentioned before how the graphics tablets I’ve used personally have been significantly smaller than this one. I typically use such tablets for taking notes and for easier editing of content such as images, as seen in the example above of a photo that will be part of an upcoming review of the Dan Clark Audio NOIRE X closed-back headphones. Windows Ink compatibility allows for graphics tablets to work directly with Adobe Creative Suite, and Lightroom in particular. I had noticed the newer panel on the Kamvas 16 (Gen 3) felt more natural to type on, and the new anti-glare screen is the best such implementation of matte + glossy on a graphics tablet I’ve used to date, also helping is the new pen which goes down to just a 0.35 mm gap between the screen and the tip of the pen nib now. The tip is thinner than before, and the new pen is also more sensitive and accurate to use. Huion calls the new glass cover as “Canvas Glass,” marketing its increased durability and sensitivity. The 16″ display is large enough for me to use as a primary screen for editing/drawing itself, which is a boost over the smaller screen tablets we’ve seen before. You can also turn off the display and use it as a pure pen tablet while looking at a larger primary display, should you so desire. Alternatively, this can also be used as a secondary display with, say, a laptop on the go but this use case is not going to be vastly popular I imagine. The color accuracy is quite good here, with 99% sRGB and 95% Adobe RGB coverage and individual calibration guaranteeing a ΔE <1.5—this particular sample was at 0.75, for context. As such, and combined with the notable improved screen and pen experience, pretty much anyone looking at this tablet will be a content creator using it for drawing/sketching, be it for technical drawings or illustrations to be used for a variety of applications. Palm rejection is basically a non-issue for any modern graphics tablet, as is the case here, and the various buttons and dials are very handy for tasks like quick zooms, changing brush sizes, and also hotkeys for white balance and alignment.

The Huion Kamvas 16 (Gen 3) graphics tablet launches January 7, and will cost $499 from the Huion online store. I am not sure whether this is with the stand included or if it is optional, although it would certainly be good to see it included. This is nearly twice as expensive as the Kamvas 13 (Gen 3), however, while giving you a similar feature set. You get a larger screen which is also sharper, an extra button, and of course more included accessories to make this a more complete package out of the box. I would say the smaller Kamvas 13 (Gen 3) is the way to go if you prioritize portability and a lighter tablet, especially if you want to use this on your lap or in your hand. The Kamvas 16 (Gen 3) is a tougher sale given the price, but it remains competitive in the overall graphics tablet market with the new glass and pen technology incorporated.

Introduction

Anyone who has been interested in in-ear monitors (IEMs) for personal audio over the last few years has likely heard of ThieAudio. While the likes of MOONDROP and FiiO get more attention when it comes to Chinese audio brands, at least partially owing to the vast number of products released each year, ThieAudio has been slowly building up its status to be in contention with much larger companies, including Western brands which have been around for a lot longer. ThieAudio is a house-brand of Linsoul, one of the largest audio retailers today, and operates out of dual offices in Chengdu and Shenzhen in China. I visited Linsoul’s office in Shenzhen while I was there attending a show, and had a chance to try out some upcoming products and recent releases. Earlier in the summer, Linsoul/ThieAudio also participated in CanJam London where once again there was one particular set that got my attention more than most others. This just happens to be the subject of today’s review—the ThieAudio Origin.

While the ThieAudio Monarch series might be what the brand is most known for, a quick look at its product lineup shows the team there is skilled in putting out far more, including headphones. There are all-balanced armature sets, including the V16 Divinity that remains one of my favorites, we’ve seen single DD sets, with plenty of hybrid (DD + BA) and tribrid driver (DD/BA/EST) configuration sets too in a wide price range. The ThieAudio Origin adds to this by being the brand’s first quadbrid set, in that it uses four different driver types. More exciting is the part where the fourth driver here is a bone conductor, and not the thing you might be thinking of either. You see, bone conduction drivers (BCDs) have often been used in open-ear TWS earphones that don’t go in the ear at all, but there have been more specialized IEM BCDs used to enhance the user experience by providing an added sense of tactility. This is usually seen in very expensive IEMs, yet the ThieAudio Origin costs well under $1000. This also happens to be my first BCD IEM product review, so let’s thank Linsoul for providing a sample to TechPowerUp and begin with a look at the product specifications in the table below.

Specifications