Enermax launches the MaxPro power supply series, promising the same reliable operation as the company's previous offerings if with quieter performance within a form factor just 14cm deep fitting smaller chassis.

Available in 400, 500, 600 and 700 wattages, the MaxPro PSUs are 80 PLUS certified and claim peak efficiency of 87%. Power consumption clocks to under 0.5W in standby mode if paired with a compatible motherboard, meaning they meet the latest EU ErP Lot 6 2013 eco-design directive.

Efficiency reaches an average of 85% at 20-50% load, with "non-stop industrial class performance" at 40°C ambient.

Nvidia reveals its "most advanced" graphics flagship yet-- the Titan X, a Maxwell-based GPU carrying 12GB of 7Gbps DDR3 RAM (double that inside the previous Titan/Titan Black) and 3072 CUDA GPU Cores.

Designed to power 4K resolution gaming, the Titan X reaches single-precision floating point performance of 7 TFLOPS and double-precision floating point performance of around 200 GFLOPS. It also handles graphics technologies such as Voxel Global Illumination (VXGI) and is ready for the upcoming DirectX 12.

Interestingly, while the Titan X is sold on the basis of its games performance, Nvidia says the GPU also finds a place in more professional applications-- specifically neural networks, through what the company calls the DIGITS DevBox, a small desktop supercomputer powered by 4 Titan X GPUs.

The Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA) Foundation releases the 1.0 HSA specification-- a "major milestone" in the bringing about "true heterogeneous computing" across mobile devices, PCs and servers.

What is HSA? It is a standardised platform design claiming to unlock the performance and power efficiency of the parallel computing engines found in modern devices. It is supported by over 40 vendors (including AMD, ARM, Imagination Technologies, LG, MediaTek, Qualcomm and Samsung) and 17 universities, and provides developers with means to easily exploit the hardware resources found in complex systems-on-chips (SOCs).

"Through HSA, we are working to ensure that end users of technology live in a world of new, incredible applications that run fast at low power," the HSA Foundation says. "The Foundation members have been collaborating on this project since we joined together in June 2012, and we are thrilled to be delivering the fruit of that labour today."

MSI presents what it claims is the first "convertible" All-in-One (AIO) PC-- the AP16 Flex, a 15.6-inch touchscreen device customers can use in either standing, hanging or flat modes.

A rotating kickstand can either act as an upright stand or allow attachment to a wall or cabinet for use as a large multimedia device. One can also lay the AP16 Flex flat on its back.

Inside the fanless chassis are a 10W quad-core Intel Celeron J1900 CPU, Intel HD graphics, up to 8GB DDR3L RAM and either 64GB flash storage or a 500GB HDD. Connectivity comes through 3 USB ports, 1 LAN port, 802.11b/g/n wifi and Bluetooth (optional).

Virtual reality is not the only area of interest of games developer turned digital retailer Valve-- at GDC 2015 the company reveals the Steam Link, a hardware means to stream games from any PC on the same network.

The device supports 1080p streams at 60Hz with "low latency," and connects to TVs via HDMI. It also includes a trio of USB ports and promises to automatically detect PCs running the Steam client on the same network.

According to Context PC volume sales (covering notebooks, desktops and PC workstations) are up by 9.5% Y-o-Y for January 2015, following Q4 2014 growth reaching 20.1% Y-o-Y.

The analyst attributes such grown to the Q4 2014 sell-in push of low-cost consumer notebooks, which in part is driven by Windows with Bing-based system. As a result January 2015 consumer-targeted PC sales show 12.4% Y-o-Y (following Q4 2014 growth of 24.1%). Consumer desktop and mobile PCs are also up on a Y-o-Y basis, if from a small base in the case of the latter.

Meanwhile business-targeted PC volume sales show 6.5% growth in January 2015, a slowdown from the 15.1% Q4 2014 increase caused by declining Windows XP migration demand leading to a -14.3% Y-o-Y fall in desktop sales. Notebooks maintain strong performance with 23.8% Y-o-Y January growth although, like the consumer segment, lower-cost devices drive sales.

AMD reveals the "Carrizo" A-series Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) at the International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC)-- a high performance and energy efficient chip designed for notebooks and low-power desktops.

Built as a system-on-a-chip (SoC), the Carrizo combines the latest Bulldozer CPU cores, dubbed "Excavator" (with two modules providing 4 cores) and 8 "Tonga" GPU cores featuring Graphics Core Next architecture v. 1.2. It supports DirectX 12, the AMD Mantle API, H.265 video decoding and, in an AMD first, Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA) 1.0.

HSA allows the APU to share memory between CPU and GPU for more efficient division of resources between tasks.

Swedish PC hardware maker Fractal Design launches a pair of fan lineups building on the company's previous offerings-- the revamped Silent Series R3 and the all-new Dynamic Series fans.

The Silent Series R3 lineup is designed for mainstream system builders. It offers options ranging from 40mm through 140mm, all featuring cost-effective rifle bearings and black stealth ribbon cables within a sturdy design.

Fractal Design says all Silent Series R3 fans produce noise output below 22dbA.