Taking a look at Thin Mini-ITX AM4 motherboards
Thin Mini-ITX standard was created by Intel for small form factor and integrated PCs. AMD based system were absent from this form factor but Asrock and some OEMs did ventured into it with A320 chipset supporting early Zen APUs. Let's take a look at such OEM Thin Mini-ITX board - Quadro A4-320.
Zen 2 comparison of monolithic 4650G versus chiplet 3500X
Ryzen raise on desktop is really well benchmarked and tested. We know how it scales with memory and so on. But what about mobile parts? How much do the loose stuck at 3200CL22 JEDEC RAM? Are there any other less obvious compromises that affect performance? Lets take a look.
Laptop memory on a desktop with JET-5608 adapter
China is a source of many curious PC components. One of them is JET-5608 laptop SODIMM memory to desktop DDR4 sockets adapter. Let's see how this thing works on Intel and AMD platforms.
Benchmarking World of Warcraft on AMD APU integrated graphics
As the GPU shortage continues being able to play video games can be either expensive or problematic. Integrated graphics can be a temporary solution when building a new PC or when a very small and quiet media PC or a thin and lightweight laptop is needed. In this benchmark I'll go over World of Warcraft on AMD mobile and desktop integrated graphics – APUs (with some Intel commentary).
Analyzing WoW Shadowlands Spires of Ascension 9.0.5 performance regression
After patch 9.0.5 lot of players reported FPS drops in various places in the game. Blizzard followed this by some fixes but some spots like Spires of Ascension still remain problematic to some players on PC and macOS. Lets analyze the problem.
Scripting machine vision and astronomical cameras in Python
Recently I've showcased how to script Ximea cameras in Python. There are other machine vision, microscopy or astronomical cameras that have Python bindings and can be used for image acquisition. In this article I'll go over most popular vendors and their APIs.
Aliexpress nettops for entry-level gaming
With desktop graphics card prices reaching the Moon and availability having constant problems players are looking for alternatives. Laptops seems to be somewhat reasonably priced, at least for the entry-level. There are also miniPCs, nettops, that are cheaper than laptops and some offer that entry level gaming performance with GTX 1650 or decent integrated graphics. In this overview I want to go over Aliexpress nettops capable of such entry-level gaming.
Scripting Ximea machine vision cameras in Python with Flask and PyQt
Machine vision cameras are usually intended to be integrated into third party vision systems. This puts a requirement on camera makers to maintain a good set of APIs for their products so that so software developers can use their hardware easily. In this tutorial I'll showcase a PyQt5 and a web based simple imaging applications using Ximea Python API.
Testing Ximea XiC MC023MG-SY camera with mono IMX174 sensor
Ximea is a machine vision company that makes a wide range of cameras from fast and small for vision applications to big cooled for more scientific and specialized use cases. In 2012 I've tested one of their cameras and now I've decided to check their progress by reviewing one of current cameras - USB3.1 MC023MG-SY camera with a mono IMX174 CMOS sensor.
Numato and Pi Supply generic USB GPIO boards
Sometimes you need a simple GPIO connected via USB to your PC to do some automation, to read sensors or control some devices. It can also be handy on SBC like Raspberry Pi when you are running out of GPIO pins. In this article I'll look at Numato Lab and Pi Supply generic USB GPIO boards.
