Page 4 - Computer Power User - February 2017

Mushkin Introduces New SSDs,

Including Helix, Its First M.2 Line
Among the new storage products Mushkin unveiled at
CES in January was Helix, the company’s first PCIe 3.0
SSD with an M.2 2280 form factor. Helix operates on the
NVMe 1.2 protocol and has an SMI SM2260 controller
and 3D MLC flash. It sports sequential read speeds up
to 2.5GBps and sequential write speeds up to 1.1GBps.
Random 4K read speeds for Helix reach up to 232K IOPS,
and random 4K writes reach up to 185K IOPS. Mushkin
GIGABYTE Announces AORUS says it will eventually roll out Helix models this year in
200 Series Gaming Motherboards multiple capacities ranging from 250GB to 2TB, with the
first models arriving in Q1. Although the company hasn’t
GIGABYTE is rolling out new product lines under its released specific pricing, enthusiasts should be pleased when
AORUS gaming brand, including new AORUS 200 Series the products hit shelves. Company officials say Mushkin
motherboards that feature Intel’s Z270 chipset. Sitting at the intends to be extremely competitive with Helix pricing
top of the new releases is the AORUS Z270X-Gaming 9, an across all models, but particularly at the larger capacities.
extended-ATX board with distinctive white armor. The socket
1151 motherboard supports the latest 7th Generation Intel
Core processors and is chock-full of technologies for gamers and
overclockers. It supports four-way graphics (dual/triple/quad
NVIDIA SLI; dual/triple/quad AMD CrossFire; and quad-GPU
AMD CrossFireX), can handle up to 64GB of DDR4 4133,
and supports triple NVMe PCIe SSDs in RAID 0. It has ports
aplenty: five USB 3.1, plus one USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type C that
supports Thunderbolt 3 and one USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type A; two
M.2 socket 3; and two U.2. It comes with a special EKWB
G-Frost Hybrid waterblock with 1/4-inch fittings to help cool
the CPU’s VRMs. And yes, it’s RGB. MSRP is $499.99.

WATCHING THE CHIPS FALL

CPU Released Original Price Last Month’s Price Online Retail Price*
Here is the pricing AMD FX-9590 Eight-Core (Vishera) 6/11/2013 n/a $199.99 $199.99
information for AMD FX-9370 Eight-Core (Vishera) 6/11/2013 $375 $219.99 $179.99
various AMD and AMD FX-8370 (Vishera) 9/2/2014 $199.99 $189.99 $184.99
Intel CPUs. AMD FX-6350 (Vishera) 10/1/2012 $132 $134.99 $134.99
AMD A10-7890K (Godavari) 3/1/2016 $164.99 $148.99 $148.99
AMD A10-7870K (Godavari) 5/28/2015 $137 $145.69 $157.99
AMD A10-7860K (Godavari) 2/2/2016 $116.99 $99.99 $114.99
AMD Athlon X4 880K (Godavari) 3/1/2016 $94.99 $93.40 $96.40
AMD Athlon X4 860K (Kaveri) 8/1/2014 $94.99 $64.99 $99.99
AMD Athlon X4 845 (Carrizo) 2/2/2016 $69.99 $67.99 $67.99
Intel Core i7- 6950X (Broadwell E) 5/31/2016 $1,723** $1,649.99 $1,649.99
Intel Core i7- 5960X Eight-Core (Haswell) 8/29/2014 $999** $1,015.99 $1,084.66
Intel Core i7- 6900K (Broadwell E) 5/31/2016 $1,089** $1,049.99 $1,049.99
Intel Core i7- 6850K (Broadwell E) 5/31/2016 $617** $609.99 $609.99
Intel Core i7- 5930K Six-Core (Haswell) 8/29/2014 $583** $579.99 $613.64
Intel Core i7-5820K Six-Core (Haswell) 8/29/2014 $389** $389.99 $389.99
* As of January 2017 Intel Core i7-6700K Quad-Core (Skylake) 8/5/2015 $359** $339.99 $339.99
** Manufacturer’s Intel Core i7-4790K Quad-Core (D.Canyon) 6/25/2014 $339** $339.99 $339.99
estimated price Intel Core i7-4790 Quad-Core (Haswell) 5/11/2014 $303** $304.99 $304.99
per 1,000
Intel Core i5-6600K Quad-Core (Skylake) 8/5/2015 $249** $229.99 $239.99

4 February2017 / www.computerpoweruser.com