iFixit tears down the Nexus Q: made in the USA, and possibly somewhere else

iFixit tears down the Nexus Q made in the USA, and possibly somewhere else

Is it possible to manufacture a sophisticated wireless-capable device entirely in the United States? That's vaguely the suggestion of Google's jet-black orb, launched last week at the search (and now hardware) giant's I/O event in San Francisco. Now, the Nexus Q is just dying to get undressed, and that's exactly what our iFixit friends have done, revealing each component's country of origin. Perhaps one of the most notable items, the Samsung 16GB moviNAND Flash Memory module, may have been made stateside (Austin, TX), but could also have been produced in Hwaseong, South Korea. Some parts, such as the Ethernet port (China) or optical-out connector (Japan) could only have been imported, as iFixit points out, though others are certainly domestic (a photomicrosensor made in California or Illinois). Ready to dive in yourself to verify those findings? You're not going to want to open this thing up on your own -- there's a bevy of capacitors inside, including one with output in the 400-volt range (a warning label alerts would-be trespassers). You can, however, poke around a bit more at our source link below.

iFixit tears down the Nexus Q: made in the USA, and possibly somewhere else originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 05 Jul 2012 09:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google’s Nexus 7 tablet hits the iFixit teardown labs

Google Nexus 7 tablet hits the iFixit teardown labs

We can always count on iFixit to get down and dirty with its spudger and the latest tablet tech, and we're not going home empty handed today. The latest victim happens to be Google's recently announced Nexus 7, which has achieved a "repairability score" of 7 out of 10 (the Kindle Fire squeaked one notch past with an 8), with many accessible components including a replaceable battery and standard Phillips screws. While the site's ultimate goal is to illustrate the delicate process of opening our gadgets while leaving them unharmed, the good folks at iFixit never fail to entertain us in the process, with two dozen high-res photos of the Nexus 7's innards littering the 21-step repair guide. The most disappointing discovery appears to be the display, which is permanently affixed to its Corning glass covering, but given the tablet's $200 price tag, replacing such a component is not likely to be a cost-effective proposition. There's plenty more to gawk over, but you'll need to head to iFixit to, well, get your fix. Click on through at our source link below.

Google's Nexus 7 tablet hits the iFixit teardown labs originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 03 Jul 2012 09:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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NVIDIA GeForce GT 640 review roundup: a $99 card that fails to keep Kepler’s promise

NVIDIA GeForce GT 640 review round-up: a $99 card that fails to match Kepler's promise

NVIDIA blew reviewers away with its flagship GTX 680, but building cards for the low-end is a whole different challenge. The GT 640 hits the $99 price point, where it sits right between the AMD Radeon HD 7750 at $109 and the last-gen Radeon 6670 at around $80. As it turns out, these rivals pull off something of a pincer movement, leaving NVIDIA's card little room to retaliate. The GT 640 contains a 28nm Kepler chip, but it's a cutdown version of the silicon with just 384 CUDA cores, a poor memory bandwidth of 28.5GB/s and no GPU Boost feature -- which means the card can't boost its 900MHz to make use of thermal headroom. These limitations have a significant impact on the benchmarks, as you'll see in our little review roundup after the break.

Continue reading NVIDIA GeForce GT 640 review roundup: a $99 card that fails to keep Kepler's promise

NVIDIA GeForce GT 640 review roundup: a $99 card that fails to keep Kepler's promise originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 20 Jun 2012 14:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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