The iLive Platinum Concierge is one of the first stand-alone speakers to use the Amazon Alexa voice service (AVS). The iLive Concierge emulates the Amazon Echo in both design and capabilities. The goal of the Concierge is, however, to be even better than the original Amazon Echo. It offers several important features that are missing in the Echo.

iLive gives their Alexa device the ability to play the same music on more than one Concierge/speaker at the same time. This whole-house music solution is woefully missing in the Amazon Echo. The Concierge also offers a built-in battery so that you can move it about the house without its being plugged in. Again, something that the Amazon Echo cannot do. Overall, however, the Concierge falls short of the goal of being better than the Amazon Echo.

Design

The iLive Concierge is very similar in design to the Amazon Echo. It is a cylindrical device 7-1/4″ high and 3″ in diameter. Compared to the Amazon Echo which is 9.25″ high and 3.3″ in diameter, the Concierge is only slightly smaller. The Concierge, however, weighs only 0.94 pounds, compared to the Echo at 2.34 pounds. Its weight and slightly slimmer profile give it more portability.

The Concierge has a woven cloth that covers most of the device. One inch around the top is covered in a plastic material. The control strip that runs down the side of the device is covered in a leather-like material. The iLive Concierge is available in black, denim blue, burgundy, and silver gray.

Like the Amazon Echo, the Concierge has a light ring around the top, but it does not control the volume. Instead, this is done by a strip of speaker controls and inputs on the side of the device.

This strip includes controls to turn the Alexa microphone on and off. there is also a plus and minus volume control. It also has a connect Wi-Fi/pair Bluetooth button that also acts as a play/pause button. Under that is a power/mode button that turns the speaker on or off. This button can also be used to switch between Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and aux modes. At the bottom is a micro USB port for charging and an aux port.

Setup

While set up is easy, for full functionality you will need to install both the iLive and Alexa app. You will also need to have an Amazon account.

The Alexa Service

While the Concierge has Alexa built-in, there are certain functions that she cannot perform. She will answer questions, tell jokes, give you your appointments, and turn lights on and off. But she cannot use Alexa calling or messaging.

There are also some restrictions on using a second Concierge device when playing synchronized music. More on that in the Music section of this review.

Charging & Battery Life

Adding a lithium ion rechargeable battery to this device was a great idea. However there are two caveats. First the Concierge came with a charging cable with a USB end, but without a wall plug. Did iLive actually expect us to take the Concierge over to our computers to charge it up? Second, the battery life cpu;d be better. While iLive rates it at about 6 hours, my devices playing music at Volume 5 lasted only 4 hours. Fully recharging the device can take hours. Unfortunately the device has no battery power indicator.

Music

Like the Amazon Echo, the Concierge has good surround speakers. While the treble is excellent, to my ears, there is a definite lack of base. In a side-by-side comparison with the Google Home and Amazon Echo, I rated the Google Home the best while the Echo and Concierge came in second.

The Concierge can play music from all the major services like Amazon, Spotify, Pandora, iHeart Radio, and TuneIn. You can also pair the Concierge to Bluetooth devices to play music from your phone or notebook. The Concierge also has an Aux port so you can attach other speakers. iLive even provides a 3.5 mm audio cable for this purpose. None of the other major voice-activated devices have Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and the ability to sling the music to an Aux port. So the Concierge beats them all here.

Like the Google Home, you can have two or more Concierge devices playing the same music at the same time. You can also use its Wi-Fi capacities to add other speakers which can be synchronized. Unfortunately the implementation of this is problematic.

To synchronize two Concierge devices you must use the iLive app. While this is easy to do but you still have to reach for your phone or tablet to tie the two devices together. With Google Home, you simply set up a group and tell Google to play music to that group. You only need to set up the group once. Each Google device will still work independently to perform tasks like answering questions. With the Concierge devices, once you combine the devices, only one will still function like an Alexa-enabled device. The others will become “slaves” incapable of answering questions or performing other Alexa functions. To stop the music synchronization and re-enable the Alexa capabilities of the “slave” devices, you must separate the devices in the app. Also there is no physical indication of which device is Alexa and which is the slave, which can be confusing.

iLive markets the Concierge as an Alexa-enabled WI-Fi- speaker rather than a voice assistant. This is important because in some instances, like the one above, it will be only a speaker not a voice assistant.

Summary

Amazon has already announced that they are trying to get Alexa into as many devices as possible. Their latest development kit called the AVS Device Software Development Kit, makes Alexa much easier to integrate. Alexa is already being incorporated into a wide variety of devices from entertainment equipment to modems and you can expect to see a plethora of Alexa-enabled devices in the near future.

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The Ryzen Threadripper 1920X is one of the first CPUs from AMD for the HEDT (High-End Desktop) segment, with 12 cores, 24 threads, 3.5 GHz base clock, 3.7 GHz turbo clock and 32 MiB L3 cache. Let’s see how fast is it.

For many years Intel had no competitors in the HEDT market, which is aimed on professional users that do image and video rendering, video encoding, scientific computing, among other applications that demand high computational power. However, a few days ago AMD launched a new lineup of CPUs for this segment, called Ryzen Threadripper.

Until now, there were two models launched: the Ryzen Threadripper 1950X (16 cores, 32 threads, 3.4 GHz base clock and 3.7 GHz turbo clock) and the Ryzen Threadripper 1920X (12 cores, 24 threads, 3.5 GHz base clock, 3.7 GHz turbo clock.) These CPUs use the new TR4 socket and support four memory channels, 64 PCI Express 3.0 lanes, 512 kiB of L2 cache per core and 16 MiB of L3 cache for each die.

Internally, the Ryzen Threadripper CPU is made with two dies (or chips), each one similar to a Ryzen 7 or Ryzen 5 CPU. Each die has two CCX (core complex), and each CCX has up to four processing cores.

The Ryzen Threadripper 1920X uses two dies, each one with 3+3 configuration (one disabled core on each CCX), for a total of 12 cores. Thanks to the SMT (simultaneous multi-threading) technology, each core is seen by the operating system as two logical cores (threads), what results on the 24 threads.

The first TR4 motherboards for Ryzen Threadripper CPUs use the X399 chipset and offer four DDR4 memory channels (officially up to 2,666 MHz) and, usually, four PCI Express 3.0 x16 for video cards, which is possible thanks to the 64 PCI Express lanes provided by the CPU. Typical slot configuration is x16/x8/x16/x8, since some lanes are used by M.2 slots.

The Ryzen Threadripper 1920X has a TDP of 180 W. Besides its 3.5 GHz base clock and 3.7 GHz turbo clock on all cores, there is a 4.0 GHz boost clock when there are up to four active cores and a XFR clock of 4.2 GHz, activated when there are up to four active cores and the processor sensors detect that there is more thermal room to boost the CPU.

Costing USD 799, the Threadripper 1950X has no direct competitor, being positioned between the Core i9-7900X from Intel (click here to read the review), that costs USD 999, and the Core i7-7820X, that costs USD 599. So, in our tests we compared the Ryzen Threadripper 192X to the Ryzen Threadripper 1950X and to the Core i9-7900X.. We also included in the comparison the Core i7-7740X (review) and the Ryzen 7 1700X (read review here). Keep in mind, however, that these two models cost a lot less, and are not competitors to the Threadripper 1920X.

Figure 1 shows the package of the Ryzen Threadripper 1920X, next to the 1950X’s. It’s a big foam package.

Figure 1: Ryzen Threadripper package

Figure 2 shows the package open, unveiling the content: a second package (plastic) that holds the CPU, a liquid cooling solution adapter frame, a Torx screwdriver, two case stickers and a small manual.

Figure 2: box contents

Opening the second package, we reach the Ryzen Threadripper 1920X CPU.

Figure 3: the Ryzen Threadripper 1920X

Figure 4 shows the bottom of the CPU. On this processor, AMD adopted the LGA system (like used by Intel), where the pins are located on the socket, not on the CPU.

Figure 4: underside of the Threadripper 1920X

We used a GeForce GTX 1080 video card on all tests.

On the next page, we will see how to install this CPU on the motherboard.

Continue: Socket TR4 installation

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We tested the Samsung 960 EVO 500 GiB SSD, which uses M.2 form factor, PCI Express 3.0 x4 connection, and NVMe standard. It is found on 250 GiB, 500 GiB and 1 TiB capacities, and its annouced maximum read speed is 3,200 MiB/s and write speed of 1,900 MiB/s.

While the most popular SSDs use the 2.5 inches form factor (which is the same size of a standard laptop HDD), the M.2 form factor is being more and more common. The main reason is that this standard allows both the SATA-600 and the PCI Express x4 connections, that has a higher maximum bandwidth. One of the models that use this standard is the Kingston HyperX Predator.

There are also SSDs that uses the PCI Express 3.0 x4 connection, but come as an expansion card, like the Intel SSD 750 Series.

Another highlight refers to the conection specification: traditional SSDs use the AHCI (Advanced Host Controller Interface) standard, that was designed for SATA mechanical hard disk drives. Modern drives, like the Samsung 960 EVO, use the NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory express) protocol, which was developed for SSDs, allowing lower latencies and higher speeds, specially under parallel tasks.

Just like most recent SSDs, the Samsung 960 EVO uses TLC (triple level cell) memories. This kind of memory stores not two, but three bits per cell. It allows a higher data density and, thus, a smaller manufacturing cost for a same capacity chip.

The bigger issue with TLC memory chips, compared to the two-bit MLC chips (and even more compared to the SLC memory chip, that store only one bit per cell) is the shorter lifespan, because there is more cell wearing on the erasing process (executed before writing new data). This fact reflects on the TBW, which stands for Total Bytes Written, meaning the amount of data written on the drive before it begin to experience tearing problems. Obviously, typical TBW values are very high numbers and must not worry home users, but it makes models with low TBW inadvisable for applications that need a big amount of data writing, like servers or workstations for working with raw video files, for example.

In this review, we compared the Samsung 960 EVO 500 GiB to the Kingston HyperX Predator 480 GiB, which has a similar capacity and also use PCI Express x4 connection. However, while the Samsung model uses NVMe standard, the Kingston model uses the AHCI standard. Another difference is that the 960 EVO uses PCI Express 3.0 x4 interface, while the Predator uses PCI Express 2.0 x16 standard.

In the table below, we compared the tested units.

Manufacturer	Model	Model #	Nominal capacity	Price
Samsung	960 EVO	MZ-V6E500	500 GiB	USD 248
Kingston	HyperX Predator	SHPM2280P2H/480G	480 GiB	USD 350

In the table below, we compared technical specs of the tested drives.

Model	Controller	Buffer	Memory	TBW
Samsung 960 EVO	Samsung Polaris	512 MiB	2 x 256 GiB Samsung V-NAND	200 TiB
HyperX Predator	Marvell 88SS9293	2 x 512 MiB	8 x 64 GiB Toshiba TH58TEG9DDKBA8H	882 TiB

Continue: The Samsung 960 EVO 500 GiB

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