HWBOT, an organization regulating international Overclocking competitions and rankings is delighted to announce its partnership with TAITRA (Taiwan External Trade Development Council) and CyberMedia as the HWBOT World Tour 2016 attends COMPUTEX 2016.

From May 31st – June 4th 2016, the HWBOT World Tour 2016 will host a booth located on the 4th Floor of the Taipei World Trade Center Nangang Exhibition Hall. Visitors to COMPUTEX 2016 will find a relaxed social environment for overclockers to learn, share and compete, as well a platform to learn about overclocking, the OC community and the significance of overclocking to the enthusiast PC market.

The highlight of the World Tour stop in Taipei will be the HWBOT World Series overclocking contest where Extreme overclockers compete for some great prizes and a chance to face the best of each World Tour stop during the OC World Championship final in Berlin, Germany at the end of the year. In short, HWBOT will bring all of the excitement of competitive overclocking to COMPUTEX 2016.

“As one of the most important events of year, we are thrilled to join TAITRA and bring the HWBOT World Tour to COMPUTEX 2016,” commented Pieter-Jan Plaisier, Director at HWBOT.“Visitors to the HWBOT booth will discover a quickly evolving and dynamic world of overclocking, a sport and hobby that is enjoyed by more people around the world than ever before.”

“We are delighted to be working with HWBOT and CyberMedia to bring Overclocking to COMPUTEX 2016. This is a fantastic opportunity to educate visitors about the influential role that overclocking has within the Taiwanese tech industry”, commented Walter Yeh, Executive Vice President at TAITRA.

“We’re thrilled at the opportunity of being able to work together as a team to bring such an interactive experience to COMPUTEX this year and show the world what overclocking is all about”,commented Fanny Chang, Managing Director at CyberMedia.

The Origins of Overclocking

Overclocking is the act of configuring a device to run beyond its factory settings. In the modern PC era, PCs are traditionally overclocked to either address shortcomings in performance, or to make affordable PC hardware operate at performance levels closer to or even beyond more expensive, high-end parts.

Fifteen to twenty years ago many PC gamers found that their hardware could often not keep pace with the demands of 3D gaming. Frames-per-second, or FPS rates were often so low that the in-game experience was negatively affected. In fact many of today’s overclockers started overclocking their PCs in an effort to gain higher frame-rates, increasing the clock speeds of the system’s CPU and GPU to improve the PCs ability to deliver a smooth and enjoyable 3D gaming experience often on more affordable hardware components.

Overclocking requires a deep technical knowledge of how a PC works. This includes knowledge of the system’s BIOS settings as well as understanding issues such as heat dissipation and advanced cooling techniques. An experienced overclocker can add improved cooling apparatus including, water-cooling, Dry Ice and even liquid nitrogen to his PC and then alter the PC’s settings to dramatically improve performance.

PC enthusiasts, gamers and others interested in overclocking started to share ideas, advice and technical information on forums and websites on the Internet. To compare performance levels overclockers would use benchmark applications to accurately assess raw computational performance levels. Mathematical benchmark applications such as SuperPi, wPrime and others enabled overclockers to compete against each other to ascertain who had the powerful system.

Overclocking and the Hardware Industry of Taiwan

Overclockers, more than any other segment of the PC enthusiast community understand the value of top quality hardware. It is essential for motherboards, graphics cards, power supplies and other components to be of sufficient quality to withstand the rigors of overclocking. Overclockers demand components with improved power delivery, access to additional settings and a level of durability that few other PC users appreciate.

The HWBOT World Tour 2016 at COMPUTEX:

The HWBOT World Tour is a series of overclocking events held at various locations around the world throughout the year. The aim is to provide a relaxed social environment for overclockers to learn, share and compete. To help nurture the next generation of overclockers, each World Tour stop provides open overclocking workshops that offer an overclocking experience where first-timers with zero experience can learn the basic skills involved with overclocking.

Of course, no overclocking event would be complete without some real competitive OC action. Each World Tour event integrates overclocking contests, including extreme overclocking using liquid nitrogen. Visitors to the HWBOT Booth at COMPUTEX 2016 will soon grasp that overclockers are a special breed of PC enthusiast, a segment that can be very influential when it comes to developing and marketing hardware to a knowledgeable PC enthusiast audience.

 Maximum system protection and convenience for enthusiasts

April 15th, 2016, Taipei, Taiwan – BIOSTAR is proud to announce that all BIOSTAR RACING Series motherboards are designed with utmost protection in mind with the new BIOSTAR DUAL BIOS feature. There’s numerous advantage to having multiple BIOS in a motherboard and BIOSTAR has carefully crafted the DUAL BIOS feature to meet the needs of enthusiasts and power users as well as everyday users.

DUAL PROTECTION with Two BIOS Chips

With two physical BIOS chips, BIOSTAR motherboards allow two independent BIOS ROMs to be booted from. This provides a safety feature as well as a convenient tool for overclockers who might encounter system stability issues during system tweaking as well as troubleshooting possible issues caused by corrupted ROMs or a hardware failure. BIOS viruses that may attack the ROM are also mitigated as one can fall back to the secondary BIOS for system recovery. Users may run different versions of BIOS ROMs independently for maximum compatibility.

How to Use Dual BIOS?
To use Dual BIOS, select the desired ROM (ROM1/ROM2) via the onboard switch and power on the system. Be sure to note the active BIOS when you want to flash an update or reflash the existing version.

1. The Dual BIOS allows you to choose one of the BIOS ROMs (ROM1/ROM2) for booting up.
2. If you want to flash BIOS ROM, please make sure the Dual BIOS switch is set to the BIOS ROM which you want to update.
3. The failed BIOS can be updated by using BIOSTAR BIOS Flasher or BIOSTAR BIOS Update Utility.

ATTENTION:
Do not use the Dual BIOS switch during a BIOS update since it will result to the corruption of BIOS ROMs.

Manual BIOS Switch

BIOSTAR RACING motherboards feature a manual BIOS switch to toggling between ROMs. The decision to go with a manual switch is to limit the possibility of corrupting the secondary BIOS with an automatic design. Other motherboards who utilize a dual-BIOS design utilize an automatic switching method which could potentially cause further issue when a corrupted BIOS or virus is automatically copied over to the backup BIOS. BIOSTAR’s manual switch design for its Dual BIOS implementation limits this issue by allowing each ROM to operate independently of each other.

Only in BIOSTAR RACING Series
The Dual BIOS technology can be found in BIOSTAR Racing series motherboards including the BIOSTAR RACING Z170GT7, RACING B150GT5 and RACING H170GT3. See the following list for specifications:

BIOSTAR RACING Z170GT7

BIOSTAR RACING B150GT5

BIOSTAR RACING H170GT3

AMD's CEO makes teasing comments about possible new hardware

Gamespot.com, New comments from leading chip-maker AMD seem to back up the reports and rumors about new consoles, teasing multiple new systems are coming as early as this year. Speaking during its latest earnings briefing, AMD CEO Lisa Su referenced three “design wins” for the company's Semi-Custom unit.

In her comments, reported by Gi.biz, Su made clear that “not all of the designs” will come to bear in calendar year 2016. The release dates for the rumored PS4.5 and NX have not been announced, while Microsoft's vague comments about new Xbox One hardware also did not come with an suggestions of release timing.

“In addition [to the new design wins] we have our current game console business as well,” Su said. “So when you look at the aggregate of that, we do expect to start ramping that new business in the second half of the year. But we also expect the seasonal uplift of our traditional game console business. So that's adding to what we expect will be a strong year for Semi-Custom overall.”

Investors asked Su to share more details regarding the purpose and nature of the new designs, but she did not give anything away. “I don't believe that we've gone through any detail about what those wins are. So I would prefer to let that come out as our customers are ready to launch,” she said.

The NX is rumored to be a console/mobile hybrid, so it may be that two of AMD's “design wins” are accounted for by the NX–one for the console and one for the mobile device, if that is indeed how the system works.

For more on this story, head to Gi.biz.

The leaked PS4.5 specifications that emerged this week specifically mentioned AMD technology. We have yet to see anything that details the guts of the NX or whatever new hardware Microsoft may be working on.

For its part, Nintendo has said it will begin to discuss the NX this year, while Microsoft is reportedly experimenting with a “variety” of Xbox devices. Microsoft also recently said it plans to discuss things “beyond” Xbox One and Windows 10 in the coming weeks and months.

NVIDIA’s increased focus in the gaming market conforms to COMPUTEX’s emphasis on Gaming and E-Sports this year. At the COMPUTEX press conference, Alex Chang, TASA Technical Marketing Manager at NVIDIA, shared his views on the importance of quality graphic process unit (GPU) for overachieving gamers and that a high performing GPU is essential to enhance system’s visual computing. As a world leading brand, Mr. Chang spoke of NVIDIA’s graphic-rich GPU built for PC gamers as well as his observation on the gaming industry trend.

NVIDIA is the world leader in visual computing. The GPU serves as the visual cortex of modern computers and is at the heart of NVIDIA’s products and services. NVIDIA continues to be one of the most reputable international brand and the first choice for professional gamers.

With the changing demand of the gaming market, NVIDIA focuses on the development of virtual reality and mobile entertainment. It established virtual reality of VR Ready standard to provide players with the perfect match of efficient hardware and optimized software, letting players simply immersed in the world of games. At the same time, NVIDIA also develops chips for mobile entertainment. The thin hardware provides hi quality entertainment, achieves diversification of development, and showing growth potential in the gaming markets.

April 22nd, 2016 Taipei, Taiwan – BIOSTAR proudly introduces its latest Hi-Fi series motherboard intended for gaming and multimedia enthusiasts. With a balance of features and performance, the BIOSTAR Hi-Fi B150S5 offers those looking for a foundation for their next movie and gaming system to get the most of out their experience.

With support for the latest 6th-gen Intel Core processors and support for PCI-e 3.0 devices, experience gaming like only BIOSTAR Hi-Fi can give with a full-immersive audio and visual experience powered by the latest processors and DDR4 memory up to a maximum of 32GB. The BIOSTAR Hi-Fi B150S5 highlights further its performance capabilities with options for utilizing high-speed storage via an onboard M.2 slot. With BIOSTAR Hi-Fi technology, immerse yourself in a truly unique visual and audio experience with BIOSTAR’s premium audio solution, which provides clean and crisp sounds perfect for listening to music and in-game audio as well as watching movies.

The Hi-Fi Zone Design

BIOSTAR’s innovation on its Hi-Fi design takes audio to another level with exclusive hardware and software design including ground-isolation circuit design and a fully independent audio power delivery system as well as a built-in amplifier. All these additions give users the best audio quality and performance. On the software side, BIOSTAR bundles the Multi-Channel Calibration application which is normally found in high-end sound systems but is offered completely free with your BIOSTAR Hi-Fi motherboard. This feature allows you to detect your location and adjust the volume level of every speaker to create a balanced audio environment aided by the built-in audio amplifier for powerful sound compared to other motherboards.

A combination of exclusive hardware & software design including “ground-isolation circuit design”,”an independent audio power”, and “a built-on-board amplifier”, with all these hardware features gives you the best audio quality and performance. As for software, we offer you a free bundle utility “Multi-Channel Calibration” which normally you’ll find in high level sound systems; this feature allows you to auto detect your location; with a user friendly interface, you can easily adjust the volume of every speakers to make a well balanced surround sound. And of course, the built-on-board amplifier always gives you a super powerful sound comparing to other motherboards.

Blu Ray Audio

Upgrade your system’s audio performance by using BIOSTAR motherboards. With support for Blu-ray audio DRM, BIOSTAR Hi-Fi motherboard have higher audio output of 24 bit/192Khz. A true high-level experience with pure Blu-ray audio.

Video+:

For online game lovers, The Hi-Fi B150S5 supports DirectX 12 which introduces the next version of Direct3D, the graphics API at the heart of DirectX. Direct3D is one of the most critical pieces of a game or game engine, and we’ve redesigned it to be faster and more efficient than ever before. Direct3D 12 enables richer scenes, more objects, and full utilization of modern GPU hardware.

Speed+:

With PCI-E 3.0 technology, there is 2 times the bandwidth of PCI-E 2.0 and allows for up to 1GB/s of bandwidth per lane per direction. USB3.0 is also available allowing 10x faster transfers than USB2.0 but retains backwards compatibility for these devices.

Super LAN Surge Protection

BIOSTAR adds another layer of protection to your motherboard by providing a more advanced LAN port with anti-static protection via an integrated chip to improve electrical stability and prevent damage via lighting strikes and power surges. SLSP (Super LAN Surge Protection) series motherboard improves the standard of system protection up to 4x that of other boards.

Best Online Gaming Experience:

There is also BIOSTAR’s SmartSpeedLAN included which is a free software application that monitors and manages your PC’s network behavior. With user-friendly GUI, it allows you to select and prioritize different types of network traffic, including gaming, media streaming, communications or web surfing. You can also set any specific applications, choosing to prioritize or block accordingly. SmartSpeedLAN can feature automatic management options that use adaptive networking intelligence to ensure that you are getting the best online gaming experience over other gamers.

Power up Your Smart Phones and Tablets:

The board features the latest BIOSTAR technologies such as Charger Booster II which will power up your smart phones and tablets quickly. There is also BIOS Flasher and BIOS Online Update for easy updating and restoration of the BIOS, as well as BIO-Remote2 for remote control of the system via Android and Apple devices. Also included is BIO-Remote2 Technology which gives users a better Home Theater environment. Users who own either Android or Apple mobile devices are able to access and control the PC remotely. Your smart device can become an intelligent and functional remote control. Moreover, BIO-Remote2 also includes both the function of mouse pad and power point presentation modes.

100% Solid Caps

With armor-plated BIOSTAR Technology, all capacitors are placed with 100% solid capacitors that have a lasting life cycle, durability and stability for crucial components.

Protection+ Baked Into The Board:

USB Overcurrent Protection is an onboard dedicated power fuse to help prevent electrical USB port failure. This ESD protection (Electrostatic Discharge), prevents the USB Port from providing overcurrent. In addition, throughout strategic places on the board there are OVER-Current Protection, OVER-Voltage Protection, and OVER-Heat Protection safeguards. These are special circuit designs to detect heat and overvoltage conditions to prevent voltage surges from spreading in real time.

DIY+ with UEFI BIOS Technology

Many people love to do it yourself when building PCs and BIOSTAR fully supports the user in many innovative ways such as with BIOS features. UEFI BIOS is a modern and easy-to-use graphical user interface. The UEFI BIOS comes with a colorful easy-understand icons leading users directly into the setup layer. BIO-Remote 2 gives users a better Home Theater environment. Users who own either Android or Apple products are able to access and control the PC remotely. This allows a smart device to become an intelligent and functional remote controller. In addition, the BIO-Remote2 feature also includes both the function of a mouse pad and a power point presentation controller.

SPECIFICATIONS