Enlarge / Asus (and others) are tweaking their motherboards to ensure Windows 11 compatibility. (credit: Asus)

If you’re using a pre-built desktop or laptop PC made within the last three or four years, Windows 11’s sometimes-confusing, sometimes contentious security-oriented new system requirements won’t be a problem for you—all of the security features Microsoft is requiring for the new operating system should be turned on by default. It’s a bigger problem for people who build their own computers (or who have had computers built for them), since features like the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) are often disabled by default.

Most motherboard manufacturers have already posted lists of boards that they expect to meet Windows 11’s requirements, and some of them are going a step further—releasing new BIOS updates for their motherboards’ firmware that enable the integrated TPMs in Intel and AMD processors by default. While it usually isn’t too difficult to switch the TPM on manually, each motherboard manufacturer keeps this setting in a different place, and the way the setting is labeled differs depending on whether you’re using an Intel or AMD chip or what motherboard you’re configuring.

Asus is currently taking the most comprehensive approach, with BIOS updates either available or “under testing” for the vast majority of Intel and AMD motherboards made within the last three or four years (300-, 400-, and 500-series chipsets from both Intel and AMD are broadly supported, which covers most 8th-generation and newer Intel CPUs and all of AMD’s Ryzen processors). But ASRock has released TPM-enabling BIOS updates for a handful of its newer motherboards as well, and we’d expect other motherboard-makers to follow suit in the next few months. We’ve contacted ASRock, Gigabyte, and MSI to see if they have any information to share and will update if they do.

Enlarge / Samsung’s 5 nm Exynos W920.

Tomorrow is Samsung’s big event for the back half of 2021, and in addition to launching some foldable smartphones, the company is expected to reveal the Galaxy Watch 4 and the big Wear OS revamp it is working on with Google. Google is cooking up the first major Wear OS release since 2018, and Samsung is abandoning Tizen for smartwatches and going all-in on Wear OS with the Galaxy Watch 4. Last night, Samsung took the wraps off the main SoC for the Galaxy Watch 4, and compared to what Wear OS usually gets, Samsung is shipping a beast of an SoC.

The “Samsung Exynos W920” will be a multi-generational leap in performance for Wear OS. Samsung says this is a 5 nm chip with two ARM Cortex A55 cores and an ARM Mali-G68 GPU. For the always-on display mode, there’s an additional Cortex M55 CPU, which can keep the watch face ticking along while using minimal power. There’s also an integrated LTE modem for on-the-go connectivity.

Compared to Samsung’s previous smartwatch chip, the Tizen-only Exynos 9110 (10 nm, 2x Cortex A53), the company is promising “around 20 percent” better CPU performance and “ten times better graphics performance.” Remember that the Exynos 9110 is from 2018, so those comparative numbers are inflated, but at 5 nm, this is a more modern chip than Wear OS has ever seen.