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18 Jul 2025

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You can put Windows 11 on older Windows 10 PCs with this free tool
Even though Microsoft has pushed back the end of Windows 10 support by another year, at some point there will be no more security updates for the popular Windows operating system. When that time comes, you’ll have few options on how to proceed. What can you do if you want to move up to Windows 11 but your current Windows 10 PC is so old that it isn’t eligible? One thing you can try is to use a free app called Flyby11, which was recently updated to version 3.0 and is available for download on GitHub. From the version 3.0 changelog: Flyby11 now supports the Media Creation Tool as a download source. […] If the Fido downloader doesnt work for you or the ISO language doesnt match your system, it’s recommended to use the Media Creation Tool instead. It always downloads the ISO in your system language and “gives you the best chance of keeping files, settings, and apps.” With Flyby11 version 3.0, you should be able to install Windows 11 on computers that don’t meet Microsoft’s hardware requirements for the operating system. In other words, a lack of TPM and/or Secure Boot or an old processor shouldn’t stop you from installing Windows 11. That said, even though you can use Flyby11 to install Windows 11 on an older Windows 10 PC, our security expert Mike Danseglio doesn’t recommend it. Not only is Flyby11 not supported by Microsoft, but Mike’s take on forcing Windows 11 onto incompatible hardware or using third-party Windows 10 security patches is simple: “Hard no.” Further reading: Don’t toss your Windows 10 PC! Try KDE Plasma

HighPoint 7604A RAID card review: Up to 32TB of blisteringly-fast storage
At a glanceExpert's Rating Pros Fantastically fast in RAID 0 (50GBps possible) or non-RAID Great for adding PCIe 5.0 M.2 slots to your motherboard Easy to populate and install Versatile RAID setup Cons $1,000 Not a lot of software can take advantage of the speed Our Verdict I love this 16x, four-port, full-speed M.2/NVMe PCIe 5.0 card — it’s faster than most motherboard NVMe M.2 and three to four times as fast in RAID 0 as a single SSD. But it ain’t cheap by any means. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: HighPoint 7604A RAID card Retailer Price HighPoint $999 View Deal Check Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Best Prices Today: Check today’s prices If you want up to 32TB of lightning-fast storage, there’s no better way to get it than HighPoint’s 7604A — a four-slot, PCIe 5.0 x16, NVMe expansion card. It can transfer data as fast as 50GBps in RAID 0, and is also a great way to up your count of PCIe 5.0 M.2 slots from the single slot provided by most motherboards. But you need software that does direct I/O to take advantage of the RAID performance and the 7604A is pricey — this puppy will set you back a cool $1,000. If you find that scary, it was listed at an astronomical $2,000 when I started this review. Fortunately, the company came back to low earth orbit, but it’s still not what most people would consider an impulse buy. Read on to learn more, then see our roundup of the best SSDs for comparison. What are the 7604A’s features? As already discussed, the 7406A is a PCIe 5.0 x16 card with four x4 NVMe M.2 slots on board. With each slot allotted four lanes, you get top bandwidth out of every SSD on the card, unlike many cheaper cards where four or eight lanes are divvied up. In theory, throughput can be as high as 56GBps in RAID 0. Depending on your system, the 7604A can get close to that. Yowser! The 7602A populated with a rag-tag assortment of PCIe 5.0 SSDs. It performed better when I matched the WD SN8100s with a Crucial T705 pair. As you can see above (and below with the heatsink/fan on), the 7604A is of quality construction. Not shown are the status LEDs on the endplate. These provide feedback on the state of the card. The 7640A will also yelp (a loud beep) at you if you try to use it without the heatsink/fan. You can guess how I acquired that particular piece of knowledge. This is a beefy heatsink with a very effective, but somewhat noisy fan that kicks in under stress. The 7604A can function as four individual full-bandwidth x4 PCIe 5.0 M.2 slots, or in various RAID modes (0, 1, 5, 10). The RAID is hardware, but also dependent upon HighPoint’s driver, as well as the company’s configuration and monitoring software. I.e., there are no dip switches or jumpers. The browser-based 7604A configuration and monitoring software. This is the information on the actual adapter and it’s connection speed. The driver was rock solid and the configuration software works quite well. The admin interface is HTML-based — i.e., it opens in your web browser, and is slightly slow to respond to commands. It also gave me a can’t-connect error requiring a couple of reloads before the interface would appear. Communications lag, no doubt. The configuration interface is also a bit geeky in language and concepts, so if you don’t know about RAID, bone up on the concepts before attempting to create an array or otherwise configure the card. Note that neither the driver or configuration software are required if you simply want to add four x4 M.2 NVMe ports to your system. Slap the populated 7604A into an x16 PCIe 5.0 slot and the drives will simply appear under disk management, where you may in initialize and format the drives appropriately. How does the 7604A perform? While I did not get the numbers that HighPoint says are possible, they were still pretty darn good on our new test bed. You can read about the new test bed at the bottom of this article. Of course, to get top performance out of the 7604A, two things must happen: It must be populated with PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSDs and it must be in a 16x PCIe 5.0 slot and actually connecting with 16 lanes and at 32GT/s. This can be an issue with some motherboards and CPUs, so check the number of lanes you have and how your motherboard allocates them (bifurcation). I populated the 7604A with two Crucial T705 and two WD Black SN8100 2TB SSDs for testing — among the very fastest of their PCIe 5.0 ilk. The single SSD test was with a WD Black SN8100. Note that the single-queue performance is what you’ll see from Windows Explorer transfers (theoretically, real life is much different) and most software, while the multi-queue performance is what you’ll see from software that does its own I/O. Regardless, 44.3GBps is a fun number. Even without the software to leverage the 50GBps RAID 0, having an additional four full-speed PCI 5.0 NVME slots is awfully enticing. No matter which way you cut it, the 7604A is hauling the freight when it comes to sequential throughput. Longer bars are better. The 7604A’s CrystalDiskMark 8 random test results highlight the facts that RAID 0 is not particularly good for random access, and that the 7604A is also a very good host for individual drive performance. This test highlights the fact that RAID 0 is not particularly good for random access, and that the 7604A is a very good platform or single drive performance. Longer bars are better. What is apparent from the next charts is that you’re not going to see vast improvements with the naked eye when it comes to Windows file transfers. Note that we have changed this test to include DiskBench (DB) and Xcopy (XC) alongside our traditional Windows Explorer drag-and-drop (bottom of the chart). Xcopy is significantly faster than the Windows Explorer drag-and-drop, which raises the question: Why would Microsoft optimize a command line program while leaving Windows Explorer comparatively slow as molasses? Xcopy might be worth learning and using if you more than occasionally have a lot of data to copy. Big hint: batch files (x.bat). Real-world performance in Windows transfers doesn’t show the improvement you will get with the proper software. Shorter bars are better. The 7604A turned in good numbers in our 450GB write test in RAID 0; however, it was actually faster with a single drive in this test according to the quicker Xcopy and FastCopy. If you want fast file transfers within Windows Explorer, take the latter for a test ride. The 7604A turned in good numbers in our 450GB write test in RAID 0, however, it was actually faster with a single drive in this test in some instances. Shorter bars are better. The 7604A was considerably faster with single drives than our Z890 test bed motherboard’s M.2 slots — a known issue with the chipset, NVMe, and certain processors such as our i5 Core Ultra 225. In RAID 0, the 7604A will be a boon for any software that can’t take advantage of it. That means any software using multi-queue, multi-thread disk I/O. Such software is rare in the consumer market, but not unheard of. Caveat: If you are a fan of extreme peace and quiet, be warned that the 7604A’s fan kicks in quite a bit when it’s under stress, and it’s not particularly bashful. Just saying. Should you buy the HighPoint 7604A? I love the 7604A and it’s a fantastic performer. Would I pay $1,000 for it? Yes, if I had the need and the software to take full advantage. Even without the software to leverage the 50GBps RAID 0, having an additional four full-speed PCI 5.0 NVME slots is awfully enticing. For the average user, though, which includes me — the 7604A is a tough recommend as the real-world benefits in everyday usage don’t quite add up to $1,000 in my estimation. But that is absolutely not a knock on the 7604A as a product. As I said, it’s a fantastic piece of kit. Nice job, HighPoint. How we test Drive tests currently utilize Windows 11 24H2, 64-bit running off of a PCIe 4.0 Samsung 990 Pro in an Asus Z890-Creator WiFi (PCIe 4.0/5.0) motherboard. The CPU is a Core Ultra i5 225 feeding/fed by two Kingston Fury 32GB DDR5 4800MHz modules (64GB of memory total). Both 20Gbps USB and Thunderbolt 5 are integrated and Intel CPU/GPU graphics are used. SSDs involved in the test are mounted in a HighPoint 7604A 16x PCIe 5.0 adapter card. (Yes, the subject of this review) We run the CrystalDiskMark 8, AS SSD 2, and ATTO 4 synthetic benchmarks to find the storage device’s potential performance, then a series of 48GB and 450GB transfers tests using Windows Explorer drag and drop to show what you’ll see under Window, as well as the far faster Xcopy to show what’s possible. The 48GB transfer tests utilize an USFMount RAM disk taking up 58GB of the 64GB of total memory. The 450GB file is transferred from an SSD on the HighPoint card. Each test is performed on a newly NTFS-formatted and TRIM’d drive so the results are optimal. Note that in normal use, as a drive fills up, performance may decrease due to less NAND for secondary caching, as well as other factors. This can be less of a factor with the current crop of SSDs with far faster late-generation NAND. Caveat: The performance numbers shown apply only to the drive we were shipped and to the capacity tested. SSD performance can and will vary by capacity due to more or fewer chips to shotgun reads/writes across and the amount of NAND available for secondary caching. Vendors also occasionally swap components. If you ever notice a large discrepancy between the performance you experience and that which we report, by all means, let us know.

Kore.ai launches AI agent solutions in AWS Marketplace
Kore.ai has made its AI agent solutions available on AWS Marketplace, enabling faster deployment and streamlined procurement for enterprises across various sectors.

Newtown fire: Firefighters investigating cause of 'pretty bad' Mansfield St blaze
The massive blaze on Mansfield Street broke just before midnight.

MSI’s RTX 4070 gaming laptop with Core Ultra 9 CPU is $400 off today
Good gaming laptops aren’t exactly cheap, so finding one on sale with a hefty discount can really make your year. For example, Best Buy is currently selling this MSI Stealth 16 AI Studio for $400 off, bringing its high $2,000 price down to a more affordable $1,600. Given all that you get inside this beastly machine, you’ll want to jump on this one fast! The MSI Stealth 16 AI Studio is everything you could want in a higher-end gaming laptop. For starters, it features a large 16-inch IPS display with a 1200p resolution and a speedy 165Hz refresh rate, which all sounds pretty standard for a gaming machine—but look at the internal hardware. It runs on an Intel Core Ultra 9 185H processor paired with 32GB of DDR5 RAM and a fast 1TB SSD, plus a dedicated Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 for pushing high-fidelity graphics at high frame rates. And with Nvidia nearly doubling the FPS of RTX 40 cards for free, it’s even better now! Other bits and bobs worth knowing about this laptop: it comes with Windows 11 Home and a Copilot key on the keyboard, the CPU has an NPU for AI tasks but doesn’t meet the requirements to be called a Copilot+ PC, and for ports you get a Thunderbolt 4, fast USB-A and USB-C, full-sized HDMI, Ethernet, and microSD. This monster machine will last you many years, and it’s more enticing than ever with this 20% discount. Get the MSI Stealth 16 AI Studio for $1,600 from Best Buy before this deal expires! Or if it isn’t exactly what you’re looking for, check out our best picks for the top laptops. Save $400 on this MSI laptop with Core Ultra 9 and RTX 4070Buy now from Best Buy