I love a PC case with a bit of nonsense. Yeah, sure, gimme an extra screen or make it out of wood. Tiny and flavoured coloured like matcha? Yes please. That's why Amiiba and its new Ferra case appeals to me so much.

Its dinky case has a big, round circle on the top of the front panel with a pulsing black liquid—a ferrofluid— and it comes with a magnet to mess with it. Not only that, but a microphone built into the back of it means that the Venom-like blob can also react to sound.

Our Dave managed to get hands-on at the Computex 2026 show floor, getting it to react to a tiny magnet, and I'm just a little jealous. Given it's a micro build, it could handily sit on top of a desk, and I fear, the first day I had one, I'd find myself playing with it as much as the rig itself.

The case has two different models: the $119 non-ferrafluid version, and the $199 ferrafluid one that I like(according to Hardware Canucks). There's not much information out there on Amiiba, the company behind it, but we've been told it is aiming for a September release.

As well as the base model, you will be able to pick up swappable front plates for the Ferra, with them ranging from $50 to $150, depending on the type and complexity. We got to see a demonstration of the case fronts being swapped out, and it happens in mere moments.

The case itself looks pretty neat to my eyes, even ignoring the big liquidy elephant in the room, and reminds me of Fractal Design's Terra, being longer than it is wide and with some sweet wood accenting.

Given the removable faceplates, you can presumably go without any wood, too. I like the recent surge of both removable faceplates and microATX builds, and should the build quality be strong, Amiiba could have a neat-looking winner on its hands here.

That is, however, assuming you can afford the rest of the build. With the memory crisis ongoing, it has set a strange tone on some of the Computex offerings this year (here's looking at you, Biwin), but the case and keyboard announcements have been pretty decent thus far.

You only have to take a mere glance at the lowest prices around for gaming SSDs to realise that someone is making a small fortune during the RAMpocalypse. It is, of course, the companies that make the NAND flash memory chips, and the latest research suggests that, altogether, they accrued $46 billion in Q1 2026 revenues, more than three times what they did this time last year.

That's according to the latest report on the NAND flash industry's finances by Counterpoint Research, and given what we all know about the RAMpocalypse, the figures are entirely unsurprising, as is the reason for all that money pouring in. Yes, that's right: it's the demand for enterprise-grade SSDs to go in AI data centers.

That kind of solid state drive now accounts for 40% of the total NAND flash market, and Counterpoint says that it's forecast to pass 60% by the end of the year. Given that every single desktop and laptop PC, as well as phones, watches, and tablets, use SSDs as the primary storage device, that growth is likely to squeeze prices even higher.

Every week or so, I cast an increasingly nervous glance at the health status of the four WD Black SN850X SSDs in my main PC, hoping that I won't have to replace them any time soon. That's because any equivalent replacement will set me back well over $300 apiece, but probably not for much longer, it would seem.

Such is the demand for NAND flash that the relatively small players in the industry have significantly gained market share, with China's YMTC being the biggest winner: 8% in Q1 2025, now 13% and on par with SanDisk and Micron.

They're all making so much money that the combined revenues for Q1 2026 is actually bigger than what the industry earned across the entirety of 2023.

With no sign of AI demand slowing down, plus the fact that memory makers won't be able to ramp up production until well into next year or later, gaming SSD prices are clearly set to continue rising. Which raises a simple question: Just how far can the prices climb before the PC industry collapses under the strain?

We've all stared in shock at the likes of the Steam Deck rocketing in price (now $949 for the 1 TB model) because of the dearth of affordable memory and storage chips, and some gaming PC builders have only managed to stay relevant by using older processors, single sticks of memory, and stocks of ancient and crusty old SSDs.

Sure, the ultra-priced Steam Deck still sold out immediately upon a stock refresh, but I wonder if that was down to a lot of gamers assuming that 'it will only get worse, so buy one now while it's still vaguely affordable'. Either that, or they're just going to scalp them on eBay to fund a 1 TB SSD purchase next year. Anyway, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to look up how best to extend the lifespan of my SSDs, and no, I won't be using any AI search engine to do that.

Ah, it's that time of year. With Computex comes the announcement of a Chinese Zodiac-themed gaming keyboard, and this year, it's celebrating the Year of the Horse. It's probably what you're expecting based on the name, except with 30% more fire.

Our Jacob managed to get his eyes on it, on the Computex show floor, and it's a bit of an over-the-top beauty. It's not every day you get a black keyboard with a big red horse slapped in the middle, covered in gold, red, and orange.

That's all before mentioning that it doesn't appear to have any lettering on its 100 keycaps. But, not having to make it legible does give some creative room to make the keyboard pop, and pop it does.

We don't really have too much information on the keyboard yet, but last year's sold for around the $200 mark, and was limited to 2025 units. We know this year's version is limited to 999 units, but we don't have a price point. Speaking of last year's, the Year of the Snake model may be my favourite Ducky Zodiac release, as it is covered in reds and pinks. It has text on the keycaps, though it's not very legible to my eyes.

Ducky's Chinese Zodiac keyboards do seem intended to be more ornamental, hence the limited supply and loud looks, and on the Computex show floor, the keyboard does look pretty nice behind glass. It's got some light accenting up at the top corners that catches the light well.

We've had some fun Zodiac keyboards from Ducky over the years. In 2020, we got the Year of the Rat one, which looks a bit like a cartoon sewer, and the Year of the Pig one is mostly pink with a black base.

Though last year's was more my style than this year, I can say that I prefer the new Year of the Horse keyboard to Ducky's previous attempt back in 2014. The old version is a pretty simple white base, with black keys and a small horse on the space bar. Due to the shinethrough RGB, it does highlight the horse nicely, but I'd take the new one any day.

Ducky has become one of my favourite brands to keep an eye on at Computex purely to see its yearly keyboard offering, and here's hoping the Year of the Goat model is really out there.

Upcoming "kungfupunk" action game Phantom Blade Zero was so good that our own Wes Fenlon didn't even mind having to fly around the world to play it last August. "I don't think a game has ever come close to letting you fight with that operatic flourish you see in great films like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," said Wes in his Phantom Blade Zero preview, and sounded eager to play more.

Well, sorry Wes, but you're gonna have to wait. Following the game's appearance at yesterday's Sony State of Play (an event that's back to being largely irrelevant for you and I on PC), Phantom Blade Zero creator Soulframe took to X to announce that, sorry guys, it's delayed from September 9 to October 29. Hey, it's still just ducking that GTA 6 window.

"I want to offer my sincere apologies to all the players who have been following and supporting us," wrote Soulframe. "We understand the expectations our players have placed on us. And precisely because of those expectations, we do not want to release Phantom Blade Zero knowing there is still an opportunity to take it one step further."

Soulframe doesn't explicitly say just what opportunity S-Game Studio has identified, but I get the impression it's something to do with the game's graphics tech: Soulframe discusses making sure "the core look, atmosphere, and intensity of Phantom Blade Zero come through at full force for as many players as possible" before moving onto the delay.

"A 50-day delay cannot solve everything. But it does give us enough time to complete a number of clearly defined and genuinely important improvements. These refinements will directly affect how the game feels when players first step into the world of Phantom Blade Zero." Apparently, delivering these changes via post-launch patches wouldn't have worked: "For the players who choose to join us on day one, we believe they deserve the best version of Phantom Blade Zero we can deliver from the very beginning."

Which, hey, fine. 50 days isn't all that much, and do I even have to recite the apocryphal Miyamoto quote now? A delayed game comes out, but a bad game sucks forever. I'll always opt for the former.

After the unfortunate end to Destiny 2's live service support, all of Bungie's eggs are in a Marathon-shaped basket. The studio's immediate future hinges on the extraction shooter, so this makes Marathon's second season, Nightfall, all the more crucial. It launched yesterday and coincides with a free-play week for those on the fence.

Season 2 is all a Marathon fan like me could ask for, really:

• The Night Dire Marsh variant, which comes with new equipment like torches and sonar pulses, as well as terrifying Anomaly creatures, and UESC Certification activities.
• Sponsored Survival, a PvP-lite mode that pits a single group of players against the UESC forces and, later in the match, some Rooks.
• A new Runner shell, Sentinel, which is great for defending areas with tripmines and an anti-explosive barrier.
• Two guns, the KKV-9SD SMG and the D54 burst pistol, make the loot pool (especially at the lower ends) much more interesting. There are also major changes and additions to weapon and Runner mods.
• The Cradle system, which lets you fine-tune your build with stat upgrades and perks without relying so much on loot.
• A seasonal wipe and a barrage of overhauls to the contracts, UI and other.

Many of these additions are a direct response to the feedback so far, and some are things we didn't know we wanted. And so far, I've found it to be a really wonderful update.

Night Dire Marsh is effectively a horror game, plunging the swamp into darkness and forcing you to use torches and other gadgets to see. And Bungie's knack for environmental design shines once again, with toxic plants now whispering in your ears, ghosts that can stalk you, and the Anomaly shimmering in the centre of the map. It's beautiful, it's terrifying, and it's very fun. Despite it being effectively a night mode of an existing map, the new mechanics, activities, and overall playstyle you need to adopt make it almost unrecognisable.

Likewise, Sponsored Survival is basically an experimental PvE mode. You'll spend most of the match looting and shooting the UESC, but as the game progresses, rogue Rook players will spawn. In the rounds that I've played, it's predominantly been a solely PvE affair but with the near-constant fear that you could be ambushed.

The elephant in the room is that you basically couldn't play any of this for the first 24 hours, which is a big deal when Bungie's hosting a free-play week to get much-needed fresh eyes on Marathon. And it did, with the game reaching 30,000 concurrent players on Steam alone before the servers had to be switched off entirely. In what can only be described as a miracle, it actually climbed to a 40,000 player peak right after the servers came back online hours later.

Nevertheless, rampant Anteater, Monkey, or Weasel errors made for a terrible first impression—though as a Destiny player the instability did feel a bit nostalgic. Those issues have largely been fixed by now, at least.

Here's hoping that if and when Bungie decide to run another free-play session, it's prepared to have more players diving in, or it risks souring the waters further against it. After the loss of its main live service game, Bungie really doesn't need to hand out any more hits on a golden plate.

Wireless is wonderful for, say, your gaming mouse, headset, and controller but less so for your keyboard. Between managing input latency and battery life, a wireless keyboard would have to be something pretty special to win me over. Well, Cherry is trying their chances with what is likely the world's first Ultra-Wideband gaming keyboard.

Revealed during Computex, the Cherry XTRFY K63W Pro Compact is a 70% wireless gaming keyboard. The favoured 2.4 GHz connection of many wireless PC peripherals can make for a cluttered band of the radio spectrum, potentially leading to connection issues between your devices. The K63W Pro Compact's Ultra-Wideband connection attempts to sidestep all of that.

That said, I can't say I've personally fallen afoul of a cluttered 2.4 GHz frequency at my own setup, and I suspect this Ultra-Wideband functionality may have niche appeal. We've seen the wireless tech predominantly in 8 kHz gaming mice before this, such as the still unreleased Steelseries Rival Pro Mini. The wireless tech affords the same high polling rate on the Cherry XTRFY K63W Pro Compact too, but again, that seems like overkill to me.

It's also worth noting that an Ultra-Wideband connection lacks the same long range as a 2.4 GHz link. That's fine for deskbound peripherals like mice and keyboards, but potentially less great news if you love to lounge and operate your PC at a distance.

On the subject of 'overkill', though, the Cherry XTRFY K63W Pro Compact also enjoys a 6000 mAh battery that the company claims could potentially last you up to 1,100 hours (obviously, hours of heavy use with the RGB at max brightness and the polling rate set to the 8k maximum will whittle that figure down a bit). Such a generous battery certainly draws my sceptical eye.

This board also enjoys Cherry's MX Low Profile 2.0 switches. I'm personally not a fan of keys that are on the shallower side, but reducing the distance between you and your keys' actuation point by even mere millimetres is bound to appeal to the esports fiends.

Cherry also touts the XTRFY K63W Pro Compact's "carefully tuned gasket construction" which, combined with those low-profile switches, apparently makes for "softer keystrokes, deeper acoustics, and a more satisfying typing experience in a slim form factor." The Cherry XTRFY K63W Pro Compact is slated for release in the US this August and will retail for $170. If you're based in the EU, you can pick it up from July for €180.

If you were hoping that memory vendors would offer some relief from the RAMpocalypse at this year's Computex, then I have some good news and bad news for you. Biwin has a new memory brand and a magnificent range of DDR5 kits heading our way, but with the biggest kit comparable to an RTX 5090 on price, few of us will get the chance to enjoy them.

Our two hardware editors, Dave and Jacob, are currently battling through the crowds at the annual tech-splurge event, and at a time when I was probably fast asleep, they were checking out Biwin's stand, replete with a host of DRAM goodies. The China-based company has been producing memory and storage solutions since 2010, so while its name might not be super familiar to PC gamers, it does make stuff for other brands, such as Acer, HP, and Lenovo.

Anyway, it turns out that not only does it have a new memory brand, Origin Code, it also has a series of DDR5 kits that are very much an anachronism in today's memory-mangled market.

At the top of the range is a 256 GB kit of dual-channel DDR5-8000 CL42 CQDIMMs, which look somewhat understated in design, but stuffed into any Arrow Lake rig, they'd banish any concerns of running out of memory. Last year, I reviewed a 128 GB Crucial CUDIMM kit, which was rated to DDR5-6400 CL52, so we're looking at a substantial improvement in transfer rate and memory timings.

For the PC gamer who simply must have a maxed-out, loaded-to-the-hilt rig, you couldn't ask for anything better. Well, maybe one thing, and that's the small matter of the price tag. Apparently, it will cost somewhere between $2,500 and $3,000.

If, for some unfathomable reason, that's just a wee bit too expensive for your tastes, then you could always pick one of Origin Code's more 'normal' DDR5 kits. For example, it has multiple sets that comply with AMD's new EXPO ULL standard. They're all sporting a CAS latency of 26 cycles and range from 32 GB DDR5-6200 (no, that's not a typo) up to 96 GB DDR5-6000.

However, there's absolutely no guarantee that your gaming PC will be happy to run with DRAM timings that tight. In fact, Biwin itself couldn't get its test platform (AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Dual Edition, Asus ROG Crosshair X870E Dark Hero) to go that low, bottoming out at CL28. The same was true of the 256 GB CQDIMM setup, with the platform only managing CL64, despite the CL42 rating of each module.

So unless you have a super-stable PC, the best latencies might be out of reach, making the DRAM kit somewhat pointless. Admittedly, motherboard vendors may come to the rescue with appropriate BIOS updates, but even then, there's the small matter of having the money to purchase such a DRAM kit in the first place.

I don't know what the smaller/slowest DDR5 sets are being targeted at, price-wise, but given that the cheapest 32 GB DDR5-6000 CL30 kit I've seen of late is $380, you just know that the Origin Code stuff is going to be very pricey. But hey, at least you get a funky DRAM cooler in the box with some of the kits, so that's something, right?

It's that time of year again, folks. Summer Game Fest is upon us, and you know what that means: time to clear space on your hard drive for all the new games you'll be adding to your wishlists and the fresh demos you'll be installing. And do you know where you can find a whole bunch of them that we're sure you, yes you, specifically, will want? The PC Gaming Show, airing June 7 and streaming just about everywhere.

Our main show is going to be hosted by Sean "Day[9]" Plott and Mica Burton, but you should also tune in exactly 30 minutes early for the pre-show hosted by Frankie Ward and new host Elz. There will be games shown in both portions, so it'll all be well worth your time. And, speaking of games...

We've got over 50 games (20+ being world premieres) from publishers and developers including 1047 Games, AMD, Batterystaple Games, Behaviour Interactive, Bonfire Studios, Clever Plays, Critical Reflex, Deep Field Games, Devolver Digital, Digital Sun, Fictions, Mass Transfer Interactive, Mintrocket, New Tales, Nine Dots Studio, Playstack, Raw Fury, Remedy Entertainment, Skystone Games, Team17, The Arcade Crew, Twin Sails Interactive and Wizards of the Coast.

I may be biased, but they're pretty great games, don't miss them. You can see what's already been confirmed for the show on our Steam page, which will be updated as games premiere there.

We're also going to be showing off Exodus gameplay highlights from the Future Games Show Summer Showcase broadcast, and trust me, you don't want to miss the action.

How to watch the PC Gaming Show 2026

So, exactly how and when do you tune into the show? The PC Gaming Show airs Sunday June 7, 12 pm PDT, 3 pm EDT, 8 pm BST, 9 pm CEST, 3 am CST. So, for anyone watching in China, the show will air June 8, 3 am CST. If you want to tune in for the pre-show, that'll start 30 minutes earlier.

You're pretty spoiled for choice on where to watch it. You can catch the broadcast on (deep breath now): Twitch, YouTube, X, Facebook, PC Gamer, GamesRadar+, Steam, Bigo Live, Bilibili, eClutch, Ginx.tv, GameSpot, IGN International (Brazil, China, France, Germany, and Spain), ESR Network, Kuaishou, WeChat, Weibo, Huya, Douyin, Zhihu, Douyu, Poizon, Haoyoukuaibao, Hupu, and Red, plus many more.

We've also got dedicated streams with localised subtitles in Chinese, English, English (CC), French, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Russian, Portuguese (Brazilian), Spanish, ASL, and BSL.

If you'd rather watch alongside other people and chat about the games as they're announced, you can tune into the streams of Rubius, CohhCarnage, Gronkh, SodaPoppin, Stormfall33, AgenteMaxo, DieHardDiva, DizzyKitten, Luality, and PhunkRoyal, plus Hololive and Holostars vtubers.

The real question is: where can't you watch the PC Gaming Show?

It is one of life's greatest privileges to witness the completion of a masterpiece. Imagine Michelangelo putting the final taut lines on David. Imagine shooting the final scene for Mulholland Drive. Now stop imagining. You're here. You're seeing it. Muffinwind Rebaked is done.

Muffinwind Rebaked is a remake of Muffinwind, a classic 2006 mod for Morrowind that integrates a new 20ish-hour narrative with a bunch of new quests. It is, you can probably tell from the name, a comedic work, but that doesn't mean it's not serious. "This is (I hope) a funny mod, but that does not mean it is a joke mod," writes CowGuru, "it's a mod with jokes in it. The tone I hope I've achieved is Discworld, not Monty Python."

The original Muffinwind is a well-loved and classic mod, and has a lot more care and love poured into it than you might immediately assume on hearing the name "Muffinwind." It's got branching quests, entirely new characters, and oodles of actual Elder Scrolls lore.

The cool lore, too: the Kirkbride stuff—all the ayahuasca comparative theology they hid round back of post-Morrowind games. "I want it to be a memorable adventure that you can take seriously," says CowGuru, "with nuanced characters who have understandable, human desires and motivations."

The Muffinwind-i-verse has not just lain dormant since the original hit in 2006. It was expanded last year with The Soggy Muffin, a "coffee shop [alternate universe]" take on Muffinwind that takes some of the characters and locations from Muffinwind and gives them a new spin. Before that, there was Muffinwind Enhanced, a kind of remaster of the original mod that is now pretty much superseded by Rebaked.

To make room for that long legacy, Muffinwind Rebaked comes in two versions. There's, well, Muffinwind Rebaked, which is a direct sequel to The Soggy Muffin and which is the definitive "final instalment in this long and winding series."

But there's also Muffinwind Vanilla, which is a more direct remake of the original Muffinwind—for the nostalgics out there—and therefore does not take place in the Soggy Muffin timeline. Got that? No? Long story short: if you're a Muffinwind old-head wanting to relive the mod you played in 2006, you might want to try Muffinwind Vanilla. Everyone else? You're probably best off going for The Soggy Muffin and Muffinwind Rebaked.

Me? I just think it's a testament to Morrowind and the hardiness of its community that mod events like this are still a pretty common occurrence. It's the best Elder Scrolls—and one of the best games of all time—for a reason.

Thermaltake says it's bringing innovation back to power supplies with its latest unit, shown off at its booth right in the centre of Computex's busiest intersection. It was hosting a surprise visit by Jensen Huang at the time of my visit—chaos. Luckily I could hide away from the action down the company's power supply aisle.

The Dockpower series looks to be more or less your standard power supply. Available from 750 to 1200 watts, in black or white, and including a 12V-2x6 connection, it's got most gaming rigs covered. Though remove one screw from the end with all the ports and it reveals its hidden talent: this part comes away from the body entirely.

The idea is that you can fit the PSU inside the case without this part, which Thermaltake calls the dock module. Then you fit whichever cables you need to it and reattach, saving having to fiddle around with each individual connection in what can be a cramped space inside a PC or under a PSU shroud. The dock modules uses, what I'm told is, a server-grade gold-plated connection. It's secured in place with a provided screw (which has a d-ring to make it easier to tighten by hand).

"Last time when the power supply had innovation was 20 years ago," says Thermaltake representative Mingkei at the booth. "When modular units came out."

"There's no innovation at all until now."

Those are fighting words, as I'm sure some of the power supply products from Seasonic (Connect), Corsair (Shift + AX1600i), and Lian Li (Edge) could claim innovative aspects to their designs over the years, to name a few.

In a press conference from its Computex booth, Thermaltake called the PSU the "next generation of PSU architecture." It also noted the upgradeability of the power supply: rather than rewiring your entire PC, you just swap the power unit and reconnect the dock module.

I do wonder about the overall utility of Thermaltake's design. For one, you can fit most of the cables you need onto a modular PSU before you install it with fairly little effort. Similarly, how easy will it be to secure the connection module into place with the screw once the PSU is installed and cables are attached? Lastly, upgrading a PSU is such a rare occurrence, I doubt most mind the odd bit of cable management that comes with it.

Nevertheless, I get what Thermaltake is reaching for here: it's trying to do something different with what is usually, but not always, a fairly boring black box. How well this works will be clearer once it's out into the hands of PC builders. The Dockpower series—FS, FC, and FI—launches this September.

I'm not usually one for raving over chairs, but I reckon Corsair's new TC80 is worth looking out for. That's because the company is stressing two things that are music to my ears: a move away from "gaming chair style", and affordability. The company says:

"Coming in at an accessible price, we've integrated all the most important features from our other gaming chairs, and distilled them down into a more affordable product."

Corsair also says that, "following our popular TC500 Luxe, we have continued the move away from traditional gaming chair style. The TC80 has more subtle branding, a muted color pallet, and a more professional vibe overall."

I reviewed the TC500 Luxe a couple of years ago and liked it, for the most part. The main thing I didn't like was its armrests, which are too far away from the chair. It doesn't look like that will be a problem here, though, as the arms are connected to the chair.

The other Corsair chair to consider when looking at the TC80 is the TC100 Relaxed. This was our favourite budget chair for a very long time, until it was pipped by the ThunderX3 Solo 360. The biggest difference to my eyes, going off the specs, is that you can recline much further with a TC100 Relaxed. But, if you don't lie back fully in your chair—post-game naps, maybe?—then 115 degrees should be more than enough for most people.

The armrests on the TC80 are also "linkage" ones, meaning they should stay nicely aligned with your forearms however much you recline in it.

The back rest is a little shorter and slimmer compared to the TC100 Relaxed, but from the photos it still looks plenty spacious, and the back itself seems to jut out far enough that hopefully none of the padding around the sides will dig in. Corsair describes it as a "firmer, more supportive central section for enhanced lumbar support." There's a detachable neck pillow, too, if that's your jam.

It's personal preference, of course, but I also like the look of the "flatter wider base", and agree with Corsair that flat seats are "ideal for longer workdays that turn into even longer gaming nights." Under the fabric, there are high-density foams that Corsair claims "won’t collapse after a few years of use leading to an uncomfortable chair."

Apparently the TC80 has gone through BIFMA and EN1335 testing, too, which basically means it's been twisted and turned to no end with heavy weight testing: "They really do abuse these chairs to make sure they're safe and long-lasting." Good stuff.

In all, with the fabric-first, wide-and-flat approach combined with supposed affordability, the TC80 is one chair I'm genuinely excited to see more of. Hopefully it delivers on its promises—including when it comes to price.

We live in some odd times when the CEO of a tech company can be seen working crowds, signing autographs, and generally giving off film star vibes, but that seems to be norm when it comes to Nvidia's Jensen Huang whenever he's in Taiwan. But it was during one such moment at Computex that he said something that would resonate with any PC gamer: declaring that the GTX 1080 Ti was a bit special.

The brief interaction was shared by MilGrauNews on X, where somebody (apparently the OP's girlfriend) handed Jensen an original GeForce GTX 1080 Ti for signing. "Oh, one of my favourites," he enthusiastically responded. "Oh, my god. This is one of the best. This changed everything."

For once, Nvidia's CEO has said something that I wholeheartedly agree with, as the GTX 1080 Ti was outstanding for its time—and for many more years to come. To understand why, we need to go back to May 2016, when Nvidia launched its Pascal GPU architecture. The initial line-up of graphics cards sporting these chips topped out with the GeForce GTX 1080, but then three months later, the Titan X Pascal made an appearance.

That graphics card used a slightly cut-down GP102 GPU, with 3,584 shaders and 12 GB of GDDR5X. It was mighty powerful, but also outrageously expensive at $1,199, though certainly not the most costly that Team Green had released at that point (the $2,299 Titan Z from 2014 takes that award).

But in March 2017, Nvidia did something very special; something that it's never done since and will probably never do again. It launched the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, a GP102-powered graphics card that also had 3,584 shaders and just one GB of GDDR5X less than the Titan X Pascal.

What made the launch special was the price, just $699. Since it used faster VRAM chips than those on the Titan card, it actually had more memory bandwidth, so you were effectively getting an equally, or slightly more, capable graphics card for 42% less money.

Nvidia would eventually go on to release the Titan Xp, in April 2017, that used a full-spec GP102 GPU, with 3,840 shaders for the same price as the first Pascal Titan. But, with the 1080 Ti being so good and so much better value, relatively few people were interested in it. I must admit that I was one such person and bought an Xp, but that was the last time I ever forked out for a range-topping Nvidia graphics card.

In many ways, Pascal marked the end of an era for Nvidia, because the GPU's successor (Turing) was the first to sport Tensor cores and ray tracing units, kick-starting the whole RTX shebang. Something else that the RTX 20-series cards pushed off the line was a noticeable hike in prices. The RTX 2080 Ti and RTX Titan, both released in 2018, were $999 and $2,499, respectively, and these days, all Nvidia models that use the biggest GPU in a given series are silly money.

I'm not suggesting that the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti was cheap, because that's still a big slab of money to hand over for a GPU even now. But what you got for all thatcash was, and still is to some extent, extremely good.

Huang is absolutely right in saying that "it changed everything" because it marked a turning point when Nvidia realised that if PC gamers were happy to spend $699 on a graphics card, they would probably be just as happy to spend a bit more. And then more… and more. Until we're at the point where $699 will only get you a GeForce RTX 5070, although the RAMpocalyse is the biggest factor behind that.

The GeForce GTX 1080 Ti was indeed one of the best graphics cards Nvidia has ever made, but I suspect we will never see its like again.

There I was thinking that Computex 2026 was severely lacking in the coolness department, and then I saw Corsair show off a PC build that looks a bit like a cyberpunk samurai sword. Now, I know that may read as cringe to some, but I'd also like to remind you that cringe is dead and you are free.

Anyway, the showfloor PC build shows off Corsair's limited edition Shugo DDR5-6000 memory, with multiple lit-up sticks seated in the sword's spinning hilt. To my endless envy, Gizmodo Japan went 'hands-on' with the build, wielding the light-up blade and turning on the machine by placing the very much two-handed sword back in its PC pedestal.

Though Corsair announced a number of fresh components at this year's Computex, this particular PC build is one of a kind. Gizmodo Japan wrote on X that the heatsink lights up too, while AKIBA PC Hotline! shares that apparently Corsair Japan's initial concept for this build was originally meant to be even more ambitious.

Beyond that, I can tell you there are four sticks of Corsair's Shugo RAM seated in the sword's rotating hilt—though one 32 GB kit of this limited-edition memory will set you back about $600 (thanks, memory supply crisis). Otherwise, there's not much info available about how Corsair's katana kit works without any visible wires, or what components are inside. Here's hoping Corsair Japan offers a peek behind the curtain some time after the show.

On the subject of Corsair staying sharp, the company also announced the 'Nightsword.' However, this isn't anything like an RGB blade and is actually a gaming mouse with a dedicated Stream Deck button (Corsair has owned streaming brand Elgato since 2018). With a 33K DPI sensor and 8,000 Hz polling rate, this lightweight mouse will set you back $130.

The company also showed off a military-themed PC case with fighter jet controls, and a see-through PSU I'm still trying to get my head around. But when it comes to PC cases, I tend to go for something a little more on the cute side—a preference which darkFlash was only too happy to indulge with its co-branded Sanrio PC cases this year.

But surprisingly, rigs with actual detachable swords are nothing new at Computex; last year, I wrote about this incredible Palico PC with an RTX 5070 Ti GPU sword. Impractical? Sure, but no less impressive. As for this year's Computex, I think it's safe to say Corsair's cyberpunk samurai sword PC is my 'rule of cool' highlight of the show.

I've always been deeply impressed by Final Fantasy 14's solo only challenge runner RathGames—who has been working through the MSQ on his lonesome. Or, as much as is possible given the circumstances. See, FF14 is an MMO, it's not meant to be done on your own, there are explicitly mechanics, encounters, damage checks that are designed for a full party of four to eight people.

Furthermore, RathGames refuses equipment from quest rewards, making most of his gear himself—the one time he's had to renege on his promise was within the Crystal Tower, in which he assembled a group of other solo-only challenge runners because the game quite literally wouldn't let him inside otherwise.

The other time he's technically broken the rule of the run was recently with Shadowbringers' Hades fight. Though I'll say he did so by the letter of the law, not in spirit. RathGames beat that duty with a second character, but he multi-boxed between them by alt tabbing without any external programs, and he levelled that second character all the way through the MSQ a second time without help.

Alas, it didn't take long for RathGames to hit another wall—the Seat of Sacrifice, a battle that has a massive group-based check: Ultimate Crossover, wherein Elidibus throws a Limit Break 4 at the party. Usually, you need to counter this with a Limit Break 3 from a tank, but given RathGames doesn't have access to those, it wasn't looking good.

Thus once more came his alt character, Solo Savior, to the rescue. Rather than trying to out-DPS the fight so that Ultimate Crossover never triggers, RathGames instead showed up to multibox with his main as a Blue Mage, and his alt as a Sage—a healer.

Blue Mages are a 'limited job' with a bunch of gamebreaking spells and, as such, aren't usually permitted in group content (but viable via an unrestricted party). They can obtain an ability called Self-destruct, which does what it says on the tin. Rath waited until Elidibus began casting Ultimate Crossover, had his Blue Mage main blow themselves up, and raised them with his Sage.

Because raises in Final Fantasy 14 have a grace period of one minute, and a brief invulnerability window after the target's resurrected, Rath was able to skip the mechanic entirely by timing his main's acceptance of the raise spell, being either in the raise animation or invulnerable for the oncoming damage.

He only had to do this once, mind, given the fight gives you a checkpoint afterwards—but still, the amount of preparation needed is immense, and it's not as though the rest of the fight was a cakewalk, either.

What ensues is a delicate dance where Rath has to use the Blue Mage's diamondback spell to avoid certain death, occasionally raising his sage alt (who spends most of the fight dead) to deal with other mechanics, usually causing them to immediately die afterwards while his Blue Mage lives on.

It's another incredible feat, and one that took multiple arduous streams just to theorycraft and tackle. Rath's determination in the face of absurd, self-inflicted (a little worryingly so) odds continues to be an inspiration.

For Computex 2026, Gigabyte has just announced a new gaming keyboard called the Aorus K10 Infinity and a similarly named Aorus M10 Infinity gaming mouse, alongside some new web-based software for them. Both the mouse and keyboard are available in black or white. To my eyes, at least, they both look in line with what we'd want from serious gaming peripherals in 2026, at least in terms of design and specs. We'll have to wait and see if they actually deliver the goods regarding performance and feel, though.

The TKL keyboard will have "tactical" magnetic switches, apparently: "Built with tactical magnetic switches, it supports 0.1 mm trigger-point adjustment, multi-stage trigger settings, custom macros, an 8000 Hz polling rate, and a 100-million-time keystroke lifespan."

More notable than this, though—and certainly more notable than the 8k polling, which is overkill even for esports—is the triple-button space bar. Split space bars are something we're starting to see more often, and our Jacob Ridley reckons they're gonna be the next big thing.

The idea is to be able to have a couple of extra keys free once you figure out which thumb you use to press the space bar and bind 'space' to just that side. I'm not so sure, myself, because even while writing these last couple of paragraphs, I've noticed I do sometimes use my right thumb even though I mostly use my left. But I've not tried a split keeb, so I can't say for sure.

The keyboard has an OLED touchscreen, too, which apparently is best used for its "built-in Combat Power feature." Which "allows users to monitor Actions Per Minute (APM), key mileage, precision, and error count in real time, turning the keyboard into an active interface for gameplay adjustment and self-analysis."

It also has 6, 8, and 13-degree tilt adjustment options. I'm a bit of a 'keep it flat' man, myself, but I know some like to have their keyboards tilted, and the more adjustment the better, I say.

So much for the keyboard. The Aorus M10 Infinity gaming mouse looks a little bit Razer Viper-shaped to me, but that's a very speculative guess based on a single top-down picture. The shadows seem to show a little flaring to the buttons, and the rear end of the mouse seems a little bulbous—more-so than a Viper.

Mouse software RAM usage

RAM (MB)

Razer

712

SteelSeries

515

Logitech

230

Corsair (web)

210

Pulsar (web)

159

Glorious

150

Mchose (web)

142

Akko

67

0200400600800

RAM usage

RAM (MB) Data

Product	Value
Razer	712
SteelSeries	515
Logitech	230
Corsair (web)	210
Pulsar (web)	159
Glorious	150
Mchose (web)	142
Akko	67

Gigabyte says it has optical switches and 8 kHz polling, though the latter is absolutely unnecessary even for high-level competitive FPS gaming. Still, it's what all mice seem to be aiming for these days.

More than the actual hardware, though, I'm excited by the fact that Gigabyte has also launched a web version of its GiMate software that you can use to adjust all the settings. Apparently, you'll be able to use it for "easier control, performance monitoring, and lighting customization across the AORUS peripheral experience."

I've tested a bunch of different software for gaming mice, and my main conclusion is that any gaming mouse that launches these days should come with web software—it's just much more convenient and keeps your machine bloat-free. So there's definitely a big plus here in that respect, at least.

Cooler Master has a few new cases on the way, including one that may blow your socks off. There's the Silencio 600, which is built to minimise noise with high airflow, and then there's the HAF II 500, which comes with some of the biggest fans in the biz.

Let's start with the HAF. HAF stand for High Air Flow and this case lives up to the name with those two Mighty40 220 mm fans in the front. It also includes a 180 mm exhaust fan for good measure. These are all thick Liquid Crystal Polymer fans, said to be the thickest around, that can maintain high airflow at low speeds, which helps keep noise levels down.

The front of the HAF II 500 is designed to minimise any resistance those fans might face. There's also a scoop, as we've seen on cases like the Havn BF 360, which sits just above the lower fan to keep air flowing towards the graphics card and leaving some to cool off any components under the shroud, namely the PSU.

The case has lots of mounting points courtesy of the MasterRail system, which Cooler Master has offered for a little while now. It lets you move the top bracket to fit various size fans or radiators. There's no such rail in the front should you wish to remove the fans for something smaller. Cooler Master representative Brett Buren tells me you could theoretically run a metal bracket yourself, as there are rail mounting points provided.

"I feel like it would be a disservice to the case if you remove those, because you're not going to find these anywhere," Buren said.

The HAF II 500 is expected to launch in July this year, fetching a price of around $180 – $210.

Then there's the Silencio 600. This is more my speed, as it's designed to keep noise levels to a minimum. A part of that is the use of twin 180 mm fans in the front and one in the rear. Big fan, slow speed, less noise.

Though the star of the show is the front panel. Built out of a plastic fibre and reminiscent of air conditioning filtration, it's designed like it, too, using a similar principle to HVAC and AC systems to reduce noise.

"We kind of designed this to help trap and destroy the sound waves, so that they're not escaping out of your case," Buren says.

"There's these large slits in the front, which allow a lot of airflow to come through. And then on the side and on the bottom as well. So there's no airflow restriction on this case."

The front panel might not be for everyone but I quite like its practical styling. There's no estimated price for this one, however. Only a rough launch date around October this year.

There were a few other good-looking designs over at Cooler Master HQ, namely these limited edition gold finish cases and coolers. The golden mesh is one and the same with what's used on the DGX Spark, parts of which are built by Cooler Master.

Those gorgeous golden fans are actually a limited run of Cooler Master's upcoming fully-metal fans, pictured above. The standard version will be called the MasterFan A Series, and likely coming our way around June/July. Don't poke these.

At last year's Computex tech show, Wooting announced that it was developing a knob for its popular analogue gaming keyboard, the 80 HE. This year, that knob is almost ready to go.

It's called the Lekker Knob large. It replaces the block of four navigation keys above the arrow keys on the 80 HE. It's a good spot for a volume wheel, but speaking to Wooting's lead software engineer, Simon Whyte, there's much more it can offer than that.

In Wooting's software, the Wootility, there are four main ways to programme the knob. Relative, which fires an action based on which way you turn the dial; Absolute, which sets the dial to a fixed value at each point in the rotation; Zoned, which subdivides the knob into smaller slices, each with its own action when the centre button is pressed; and Analog, which will increase the input strength the further you turn.

It's designed in such a way that the software can tell which position it's in at any given time, ie, it's analogue, which offers a wider range of functionality than a traditional dial.

Furthermore, there are programmable layers in the Wootility. Turn the knob and it does whatever is programmed to the main layer. Press, say, Ctrl and turn the knob, it will do something different if you've programmed it as such. Or go one step further, press Ctrl, Alt, and turn the knob to access yet another layer.

Whyte tells me they're even playing around with the idea of using the knob as a steering wheel input in a racing game—though he's quick to point out that this is currently just an experiment.

There's surprisingly a lot to it. More than I had initially expected. It is becoming much more of a full media control dial than a standard volume wheel. Whyte explains that Wooting has been working on it for three years.

Demanding keys in an ortholinear fashion, eg, in a straight line, it's intended for the 80 HE alone, as it can only sit in the position above the arrow keys. Though Wooting is working on a smaller single key-sized knob that can be used on its other keyboards, but this was under lock and key at the show as it still has a ways to go.

As for the Lekker Knob, Wooting currently expects it to be ready by the end of this year, but I'm told that's a rough estimate.

Wooting is also rolling out some updates to the Wootility in the summer that will let users remap keys with preset hotkeys, like Alt + F4, if you're a masochist. Wooting's partnerships manager Max Janssen tells me the team play a game of Alt + F4 roulette with the new knob, with various emojis assigned to all but one zone, which is set to Alt + F4. Anyways, this update is going to be available to all users.

During today's Sony State of Play a release date for Silent Hill: Townfall was confirmed. It'll land on September 24, which is pretty much exactly a year after Silent Hill f marked the full return of the classic horror series.

The thing is, a lot of games are coming out in September. At a glance we have:

• Blood of the Dawnwalker, a big new RPG from the creators of The Witcher 3, is coming out on September 3
• Marvel's Wolverine lands on September 15, though it's a PS5 exclusive (and based on the gameplay footage today, they can keep it)
• Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 4 is an RTS so maybe it doesn't qualify as a blockbuster, but it's still making for a tight squeeze with its September 18 release date
• Control Resonant will release on the same day as Silent Hill: Townfall, which I think is a bad thing for both
• Onimusha: Way of the Sword is coming on September 25

September is a very busy month it turns out, and I'm not surprised: November belongs entirely to Grand Theft Auto 6. By giving that behemoth a large berth, some of the more modest blockbuster highlights of the season are getting awkwardly cosy with one another. The same day clash between Control Resonant and Townfall in particular seems a bit risky. People drawn to tonally askew, narrative-driven triple A fare are probably going to choose one or the other.

Still, Townfall is starting to look pretty appealing despite how terrible that pun is. In today's trailer we see a lot of mist, ominous red lighting, and snippets of the game's first-person, stealth-centric gameplay. Puzzles will feature heavily, and according to a PlayStation blog, "solving these puzzles isn’t just a way to progress in the game, though, but rather a way to understand the situation [protagonist] Simon finds himself in."

Check out the trailer below:

It's been a relatively quiet year for new game releases, but even by 2026 standards, June feels extra slow. That applies to everything really—both big-budget releases and indie games—but that doesn't mean the month is a total wash.

You'll just have to break out a few old reliables with new updates. I know I'll stay busy trying out Dead by Daylight's new killer, Jason, and the new Final Fantasy 14 patch. As someone who also spends too much time in an online game, I feel for folks grieving for the Destiny community, and I'm watching to see how, or if, that carries over into Marathon.

June is also time for the industry's annual pilgrimage to Los Angeles for Summer Game Fest, where we'll hold the traditional 'cram as many announcements as humanly possible into one weekend' ceremony. It's also the time of year where I spend the most hours poring over our annual new game release date calendar. So, if you happen to need me anytime within the next week or so, you now know where to find me.

The games we're watching in June 2026

June gaming events and sales

It's a busy month with Summer Game Fest, the PC Gaming Show, and more

As is the ancient E3 tradition, June is a big deal for new game reveals and announcements. You can check out our full Summer Game Fest 2026 schedule for more on where to watch streams, specific times, and predictions, but I'll hit the SGF highlights with other happenings in June.

• The Sony State of Play returns for an hour-long showcase on June 2
• Summer Game Fest officially kicks off its weekend of game announcements on June 5
• Wholesome Direct hosts another showcase for comforting, cozy games on June 6
• The Future Games Show airs its second 2026 showcase on June 6
• The Xbox Games Showcase and Gears of War direct air on June 7
• Our very own PC Gaming Show returns with host Frankie Ward on June 7
• The Dead by Daylight 10th Anniversary Party kicks off in Montreal on June 14
• Unreal Fest 2026 hosts its weekend conference in Chicago on June 16
• EVO 2026 holds its next Las Vegas brawl on June 26
• And more Steam sales continue with themed weeks, plus another Next Fest:
  • June 8 – 15: Bullet Fest
  • June 15 – 22: Steam Next Fest: June Edition
  • June 25 – July 9: Steam Summer Sale

Early access games and 1.0 launches in June 2026

Major game updates and events in June

More games releasing in June 2026

Upcoming June 2026 games

At the Sony State of Play showcase today unwitting viewers were subjected to one of the goriest videogame trailers I've ever seen, and I was around to witness the Hatred panic. In the trailer for Ill, a new survival horror game coming in 2027, and published by the company responsible for Atomic Heart, I saw:

• 1 eye socket scooped out with a knife
• 1 skull shot at close range, causing a skull explosion
• 1 skull stomped underfoot, causing a skull explosion
• 1 zombie baby's skull punched and crushed
• 1 neck slashed
• 1 neck repeatedly stabbed
• 1 head severed because it is held to a wall with a knife and the rest of the body just falls off it
• 1 leg shot off
• 1 door kicked
• A naked man who wants to kill you

All this takes place in what looks like some vile hospital. The Ill Steam page describes the setting as a "huge research fort" where some "mysterious source of evil" has generated "horrific Aberrations". In other words, that zombie baby isn't a real human zombie baby, it's an Aberration, so I guess it's totally defensible to smash its face to bits.

Ill is developed by Team Clout, which boasts film industry talent who have worked on Longlegs, V/H/S/Beyond and It: Welcome to Derry, as well as the Until Dawn film adaptation. The trailer's perverse focus on bone-crushing slaughter is probably meant to demonstrate Team Clout's "advanced physics interactions" and "advanced dismemberment system". It's the kind of thing horror studios have been parading for decades, the last most notable recent example being The Callisto Protocol.

I guess from a graphics tech perspective some of the scenes are technically impressive, but the environment—messed up underground lab—is about as bog standard as they come for first-person survival horror, not to mention third-person survival horror, and first-person shooters, and third-person shooters, and sci-fi RPGs etcetera. We'll find out some time in 2027 whether Team Clout has anything better to offer than zoomed-in ultragore.

In a blink-and-you'd-miss-it announcement at Sony's State of Play on Tuesday, a game about Norse mythology—not the new God of War—slipped in between the louder and longer trailers for third-person action games. That game was Ace Combat Zero. It is 20 years old, and later this year it will be only the third game in the long-running series to arrive on PC.

Bandai Namco is offering up a port of Ace Combat Zero as a pre-order incentive for folks who splurge on the deluxe edition of Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve, which is out on both PS5 and Steam on October 1. It was originally a PS2 game, and has never gotten any sort of HD remaster treatment, let alone a PC release. Presumably it'll also be available for sale separately from the pack-in giveaway alongside AC8, and despite its age it may actually be the Ace Combat I'm more excited to play.

Ace Combat Zero sounds cool as hell.

It's got the usual drama and dogfighting that had become staples of the series by that point, nine years in, but it's the Norse mythology and some new underlying systems that make the game stand out in hindsight. Depending on your actions during a mission—basically how many defenseless targets you blow up—you'll earn a reputation as a Mercenary, Soldier, or Knight, which then affects which factions you'll face off against.

Meanwhile, your squadron's name, characters and vehicles pull from Norse mythology and you're duking it out with rival pilots over a chunk of the land nicknamed The Round Table, and the whole game apparently culminates in a 1-on-1 jousting match. It's even more Arthurian themed than it is Nordic, using both mythologies to add a fantastical grandeur to its conflicts.

Ridiculous! I have no notes.

The reputation system brings to mind the other AC, Armored Core, in which the missions you take on as a mercenary in some of the games determine which evil future megacorps thrive and which ones want to see you ground to dust. But what Armored Core doesn't have is flamenco guitar.

Ace Combat Zero doesn't have its own entry on Steam yet, but presumably will be available alongside, or before, Ace Combat 8. The deluxe edition pre-order also lets you jump into one of those annoying early access periods to play AC8 on September 29. You'll be paying $90 for the privilege—a mark-up I would normally say isn't remotely worth it—but getting Zero for free certainly sweetens the deal.

Not only is the Backrooms movie really good, it's also extremely successful. In its first weekend in theaters it destroyed the record for the best A24 release ever and earned nearly $120 million worldwide at the box office.

That bodes well for fans who were left wanting more after the movie's ambiguous ending, because director Kane Parsons says he isn't done with Backrooms yet. His film adaptation of his YouTube series wasn't the end of the story, Parsons told Variety, and while he hasn't officially confirmed that a film sequel is planned, there is still more to come.

"For people who are into it, I've got a contract, and I got a hold at my end," Parsons said, "and that means I am definitely not done with Backrooms."

That could mean a sequel to the film is likely, but it sounds like Parsons might also return to the Backrooms YouTube videos that enthralled so many viewers in the first place.

"I don't want to leave YouTube behind. I immensely enjoy the work I've done there, and I feel creatively fulfilled by it in a way that's proportional to what I've done with this film," Parsons said.

"I personally think there's merits, because there's a lot of projects that I just could never do outside of YouTube, or outside of a more free-form internet multimedia container. So I wouldn't limit myself just to one spot, but I do think it’s a way of saying that I've got a bit of a good thing going right now that I want to utilize with the energy and positivity around this film."

Parsons, under the name Kane Pixels, began creating Backrooms YouTube videos in Blender in 2022, which racked up tens of millions of views. Further works explored the horrors of other liminal spaces, like a shopping mall found deep underground in The Oldest View and a fictitious adventure game in People Still Live Here.

"Without a doubt, Backrooms has always been planned to be more of a series that goes outside the confines of this film," Parsons said. "If anything, I would say this is a bit of a foot in the door that would lead to more of a progression towards the true root of the narrative, which has been set up online for years."

Spider-Man has starred in plenty of classic and a few not-so-classic story arcs, and Magic's Spider-Man set used a bunch of those as the basis for its saga cards. You drop a card like The Death of Gwen Stacy, Kraven's Last Hunt, or The Clone Saga (I did say some of them were not-so-classic) and every comic-book reader at the table knows what the deal is.

The upcoming Marvel Super Heroes set gets to draw from an even broader run of event comics, with saga cards like World War Hulk, The Coming of Galactus, and this one: The Super Hero Civil War.

I love that this card lets you take over other player's characters and then you can make them fight for absolutely no reason. Basically, when you play this card, for the next three turns you get to be Mark Millar in 2006.

Meanwhile, the World War Hulk saga card lets you play a red or green creature for free, then put three +1/+1 counters on a creature, and on the final turn double a creature's power and toughness, and give it trample. It's an easy way to bring out your Hulk, then make him as mad as he's ever been.

The Coming of Galactus ends even more apocalyptically. If your opponent doesn't stop it by turn three, it brings out Galactus as a legendary 16/16 with flying and trample who destroys a land every time he attacks. He does eat planets, after all.

As more cards are revealed, it'll be interesting to see how they handle other big Marvel events. Secret Wars and One World Under Doom, maybe? Doctor Doom is getting his own Commander pre-con. We'll see when the Marvel Super Heroes set comes out on June 26.

We reported just a couple weeks ago that Dune: Awakening's director Joel Bylos didn't really consider the survival sandbox to be an MMO. And to double down on that, today we learned that Funcom is adding a new singleplayer mode in September.

Don't want to play with strangers, or even friends? Starting on September 22 you won't have to, and there are some pretty intriguing features thrown in that make it sound extra appealing. I haven't played Dune: Awakening much since it first launched, but this could finally bring me back again.

"Singleplayer is one of the most-requested features since launch," Funcom said today. "We’re also adding the final chapter of Dune: Awakening’s Book One story, so whether you want to play entirely by yourself, with friends on a private server, or with strangers on a larger multiplayer server, you will now be able to play the story from the start to its dramatic conclusion."

You can already play Dune: Awakening pretty much on your lonesome: from the start of the story to much of the Deep Desert, you'll regularly see other players without having to interact or team up with them if you don't want to. There are also private servers available if you only want to play with people you know.

But since players have found ways to grief each other even in non-PvP zones, I guess I'm not surprised people still regularly request an official way to play solo. This new mode sounds pretty appealing for a number of reasons:

"Singleplayer offers three preset difficulty levels for the survival experience, or full manual customization of individual settings," Funcom said. "Want faster experience gain, easier enemies, or quicker harvesting? All of that is adjustable."

Another huge change in singleplayer mode: you can build bases in the deep desert and they won't be completely wiped each week. The huge Coriolis storm will still hit the deep desert, but will be "less destructive," so while you may need to repair your DD base, you won't be at risk of losing it.

Um... yes, please! Speaking as someone who doesn't really love building, and especially hates rebuilding over and over again on a weekly damn basis, I'm psyched. I don't mind spending resources to fix busted bases, but starting from scratch every week is a bummer, so this alone has me intrigued.

As for the Landsraad, the weekly endgame competition found in multiplayer, there's still a version of that because singleplayer mode "simulates other players engaging with the faction conflict." Interesting.

Below is the list of what you can expect from singleplayer mode, and Funcom says it'll have more details as we get closer to the September 22 release date.

• All the NPCs are there, but no other players 
• The Deep Desert is fully available with all its content and challenges, but the map never resets and your buildings are never wiped. The Coriolis Storm remains as a weather event but is less destructive. 
• The Landsraad endgame simulates other players engaging with the faction conflict, keeping it competitive and engaging
• Singleplayer characters remain exclusive to the single-player mode 
• Private and self-hosted server characters can be played on any of these and can even go between private and self-hosted servers 
• Official server characters can be played on any official server and can even be moved to a private or self-hosted server (but not back again, to ensure the integrity of official servers) 
• Bases and vehicles you back up will come with you 

According to Bloomberg journalist Jason Schreier, Bungie hasn't greenlit any game for the Destiny 2 team to pivot to after content updates for the long-running shooter end, never mind Destiny 3. The studio is reportedly hearing pitches for new projects, which may or may not take place in the Destiny universe.

So it was wildly wishful thinking to imagine that Sony would surprise us all with a Destiny 3 announcement at its State of Play showcase today, and as expected, it did not do that. That didn't stop fans from shouting "#WeWantDestiny3" in chat for the duration of the stream.

Speculation was somewhat fueled by posts from Destiny 2 principal comms manager Dylan "dmg04" Gafner, whose messages of support for the Destiny playerbase could be interpreted as teases, particularly "Do not go gentle into that good night" and "Guardians make their own fate."

"Surely this harmless quote won't be taken out of context and turned into straight liquid hopium to the veins of every destiny fan who is currently holding out hope for a miracle," one X user responded to that latter post. Surely!

The reality is that there's not much hope for an imminent announcement of Destiny 3 or any new Bungie game. The studio has projects in "incubation," but given how many Bungie games in "incubation" have never manifested, that doesn't mean much, and development times being what they are, any new game is many years away (unless it was made in perfect secrecy—not likely!).

There is a lot of energy behind the push for a Destiny 3—over 300,000 people have signed a petition asking Sony to greenlight the game—but some longtime fans say that they are in fact not hyped about the prospect of Destiny 3, or any new Bungie game. One popular post on the Destiny subreddit reads: "Honestly, Destiny being shelved has soured my taste for Bungie to the point that I have no interest in their future games."

For now, Bungie is focused on Marathon. We like the extraction shooter a lot, but it hasn't matched the popularity of Arc Raiders. The studio hopes to change its fortunes this week with Marathon's second season, which introduces a new map and a "PvP-lite" mode that may appeal to a broader playerbase.

Marathon is also free to play from today through June 9 to give prospective players a chance to try it.

There's a new God of War game on the way, but unlike the last few, this one is unlikely to release on PC anytime in the foreseeable future.

Sony revealed the new game, called God of War Laufey, during its State of Play stream today. The star of this one is Kratos' dead wife, Faye, whose body manifests in the afterlife after her burial rites.

"To save the ones she loves, Faye must fight through the afterlife of the gods—the Everywhen—where ruthless gods from across mythology vie for power in a land overflowing with dangerous magic," Santa Monica Studio said in a blog post.

The past three God of War games—God of War (2018), God of War Ragnarok, and God of War Valhalla—have all been ported to PC in what was a change of heart for Sony, which previously kept its prestige PlayStation exclusives console-only.

Sony has had yet another change of heart, though, as we've heard reports of internal communications stating that it's backing away from PC releases for its big singleplayer exclusives.

As PC Gamer's Morgan Park speculated in response to the news, the console wars are perhaps not quite over: "Much like Xbox's renewed interest in its own box, Sony is responding to a waning interest in consoles by reinforcing its 'narrative singleplayer games' as system sellers once again."

Sony will continue putting its multiplayer games on PC—it'd be crazy not to after the success of Helldivers 2—but unless it has yet another change of heart, don't expect to see God of War Laufey or its other flagship exclusives on PC anytime soon.

There's another big console exclusive coming later this year: Grand Theft Auto 6. Rockstar has once again opted to launch on Xbox and PlayStation only, with no PC release date yet announced, despite what an important platform the PC has been for GTA 5.

No release date for God of War Laufey has yet been announced, but Sony says it's "coming soon to PlayStation 5." I would guess that Sony will avoid putting it up against GTA 6.

It's been a long two-and-a-half years of silence since a cinematic teaser for Kemuri hinted at what it would be about: hunting mythical demons in dense urban environments. Much of the interest in the game came from studio founder Ikumi Nakamura, who cut her teeth at Capcom and made herself known during a presentation for Tango Gameworks' Ghostwire: Tokyo. At Sony's State of Play today we finally got a chance to see what Kemuri really looks like, and dare I say it's kinda Suicide Squad, but... cool?

As that teaser hinted at in 2023, Kemuri is a co-op action game about hunting yokai, and there's some really slick animation on display in the new gameplay trailer; I'd say it lives up to the vision the studio had going into development. If it feels as good to play as it looks in motion, I've gotta get my hands on this thing stat.

... is what I'd be saying if Kemuri wasn't still a long ways off, with a release planned for next year.

Nakamura did, at least, pop into the State of Play to talk about the game in more depth.

"The setting is Kemuri City, a chaotic place where the world of the living and the yokai realm are mixed," she said. "Inspired by Asia, it blends many different cultures. There's a saying: where there's smoke, there are yokai. And yokai hunters find them using an ability only they possess: the Fox Window. With this window, they detect paranormal phenomena and yokai. Reveal and then hunt the yokai. But you don't just collect yokai: in our game, you must first form a contract. Hunt the unknown, and embody them yourself as unique apparel."

(That's right: Pummel a yokai into submission, then don its skin as fashionable streetwear.)

"Using the power of yokai possession, gain unique advantages in battle and traversal," Nakamura continued. "With those superpowers, challegen stronger yokai and get closer to the mysteries of the world... We're making Kemuri to deliver chaos—and laughter."

The three classes (convenient for a three-player co-op game) are the Katana Hunter, Bow Hunter and Shaman. We don't get more details on them, but they seemingly slot into some pretty classic archetypes.

According to the PlayStation Blog, it sounds like Kemuri's going for a bit of a Dark Souls-style multiplayer experience: "Even in singleplayer, you are never truly alone in this city. Distinctive hunters and contracted yokai are always by your side. Before you realize it, you may find yourself stepping deeper into the city’s paranormal anomalies while sensing someone else’s presence nearby."

Structurally, though, I'm not sure what to expect. Is Kemuri a free-roaming open world, or carved up into missions? Will it be mostly focused on playing through a campaign, or more of a Monster Hunter loot game where you hunt yokai again and again? Lots to learn, still.

Kemuri will be launching into what strikes me as an ideal media environment for a stylish game about hunting yokai, though: KPop Demon Hunters and manga/anime series Jujutsu Kaisen have become international phenomenons in the years since it started development. You can't count on that sort of good timing for a five-plus year development cycle, but hopefully Kemuri's able to capitalize on it.

Kemuri is currently only announced for PlayStation 5 in 2027, but given Nakamura's Unseen is an independent studio, fingers crossed it will be right there on PC at the same time.

A lot of what's happening at today's Sony State of Play showcase doesn't directly impact us, thanks to Sony's decision to cut back on PC game releases, but this one does: A new trailer for Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis, and also a release date that's a bit of a delay from what we expected.

Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis, "a complete reimagining of the 1996 original Tomb Raider" done up in the new technology of Unreal Engine 5, was initially intended to be out this year. But during today's showcase, the release date was set for February 12, 2027, a couple months past that deadline.

Over on the PlayStation Blog, we also got a closer look at what's in store in this do-over. "Where the original moved you from one self-contained room to the next, Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis opens those spaces into semi-connected environments you can traverse, explore, and approach from new angles," Sony explained. "Every space is designed as a real place first, rich with secrets, collectibles, and resources to reward those who go looking.

"Even returning favorites like the cog puzzle come back reimagined and grounded in the world around them. The result is a Peru brought fully to life, with the scope, history, and personality to make every iconic moment unforgettable."

Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis is up for wishlisting now on Steam, where the new release date hasn't yet been applied—for the moment, it's still listed as "coming soon." The standard edition will set you back $60/£50/€60, or you can pony up an extra tenner for the deluxe edition, which will get you two days of "advanced access" plus a Parisian Fugitive outfit and a "post-launch story DLC pack."

Rayman Legends, an extremely solid platformer from 2013, is getting a fully-fledged remake with 3D graphics—as announced during tonight's Playstation State of Play—dubbed Rayman Legends Retold. And, more to the point, a whole new soundtrack composed by both Rayman OG Christophe Héral, but also industry veteran Grant Kirkhope.

You might know him from his work on Banjo Kazooie and Donkey Kong 64, but he's continued working until the present day on games like A Hat in Time, Yooka-Laylee, and more. I had the pleasure of speaking to production director Alessandro Arndt Mucchi and animation director Marco Renso about the game itself—but also what it was like working with such seasoned talent.

"I think [Kirkhope] is very in line with the humorous tone that we have in Rayman," says Mucchi, "He really gets that. If you look at the past history of his previous compositions and games he worked on, I think he has that feeling.

"He also managed to work very, very well with Christophe Héral, the original composer of the Rayman soundtrack … We have a lot of new compositions, and having these new compositions made by those two super talented musicians, it's brilliant."

Mucchi, who has worked with Kirkhope before on the Rabbids games, seemed glad to have him on board again—but for Renso it's his first time working with the man, and he had some effusive words to say about his quickdraw composition speed:

"Grant is insanely fast as a composer. It's crazy, like just in so little time he comes up with something amazing, it's outstanding honestly, it's very surprising.

"He comes in one day later with something unbelievable, like he's super fast to react, and it's crazy. I mean—I guess it's talent, of course. But I'm constantly amazed by the quality achieved, how fast he can create the music, it's just outstanding."

Rayman Legends, the original 2013 game, is a beloved platformer for a reason—it's very good. We gave it a stonking 90 in our Rayman Legends review, which puts it up there as an all-timer. In fact, it's so good that Ubisoft has decided to remake it in its entirety, swapping out 2D graphics for 3D worlds and throwing on some extra sauce.

I was invited to sit down and play the thing with Ubisoft for a few hours—progressing through several levels—and while I wouldn't say 3D is inherently prettier than 2D on principle (especially with a game that has such a distinct art style as Legends), Retold is still a deeply gorgeous game.

Developed by Ubisoft Milan and Montpellier, the level of work here is more comparable to something like the Spyro remakes from Toys for Bob—we're talking a top-to-bottom recreation.

It almost seems billed as a soft reboot for the franchise writ large. At least that's the impression I get from production director Alessandro Arndt Mucchi, who says "In terms of story and world building, we felt like there was room for tying everything together, because there's a lot in it but it's a bit all over the place—and we wanted to set the starting point for the future of Rayman."

That tying together includes added voice acting, cutscenes, and overworld maps to connect the levels.

"If you remember, in the original Legends, you were jumping into paintings from an art gallery," Mucchi said, "so you didn't have the feeling of being really in the Glade of Dreams, but now the hubs from which you enter into the portals leading you to the levels are set in the actual world of Rayman."

It all certainly seems more cohesive. Even through the slight latency of a remote preview (that is, having the game streamed to me through the Ubisoft client), Rayman Legends Retold feels like it carries the same solid foundation of Rayman Legends without compromising on the platforming.

And the visual upgrade is deeply charming. Retold is a vivid reimagining—not just putting 3D assets over a 2D landscape, but recreating, re-scoring, and tweaking old levels to bring them up to snuff. The game's justifying its existence with a few new features, too.

Retold will have an entirely fresh sixth world dubbed The Land of the Livid Dead with a new platforming power to mess with, as well as rehashed musical levels that, I'm told, will take advantage of the 3D perspective to do some delightful nonsense. There are also dragon riding segments, because why not.

I got to play one of these, and while it was emphasised that they're a huge work in progress, I'm of two minds: They're gorgeously-made and spectacle-filled rail shooter romps where you get to bob and weave a fat little dragon, doubtless a delightful addition if you're looking at the game as a fun little couch co-op time for the family.

Where I felt a little worried was the fact that the health system on these levels are the Teensies themselves—each time you get hit, a Teensie gets flung into the void. Which is all well and good, but it's so easy to get struck by a stray bit of level geometry or bullet that I can imagine completionists are gonna tear their hair out trying to score a no-hit run.

Still, they're a huge work in progress, and there's every chance Ubisoft might make them less obnoxious for 100% gamers before release. Rayman Legends Retold plans to release October 1.

In December 2025, Yacht Club Games founder Cris Velasco said that despite the studio's success with the 2014 hit Shovel Knight, it would be in serious trouble if its then-upcoming game Mina the Hollower wasn't a hit: "It's make-or-break for sure," Velasco said at the time. Six months later, Mina has arrived, and it looks like the studio has made it—for now, at least.

Velasco told Bloomberg that Mina the Hollower sold 300,000 copies in its first three days of release, putting it well above the 200,000 figure he said last year "would be really, really great." It's still off the "golden" mark of 500,000 units sold, but the very strong critical response—Mina is currently tied with Forza Horizon 6 as the top-rated game of 2026 on Metacritic—means that sales number will likely continue to climb.

Among those many glowing reviews is our own, in which we awarded Mina the Hollower a very rare 90% score.

"This is a demanding game filled with bosses eager to pummel players down to size. Even regular enemies demand nothing less than my full attention," reviewer Kerry Brunskill enthused. "But if I'm not interested in that side of things it is also a beautiful, atmospheric game with an intriguing narrative, stuffed full of secrets and quirky characters ... Reaching the credits only makes me realise how much there's still left to uncover, and how many ways I have to go about it."

Continuing, even accelerating, sales, driven by that critical consensus, is what Velasco is looking for. "I wonder how come the best-reviewed game of 2026 is not the fastest-selling game, so I feel a big fire lit to close that gap," he said.

There is definitely a gap. I don't think connecting review scores to sales is a winning idea, but another top-rated indie darling of 2026, Mewgenics, put up one million copies sold in its first week of release. As it stands, the success of Mina the Hollower means Yacht Club will in the short term be able to continue operating without making layoffs or relying on external investment, but the strength of the game's launch hopefully means the studio will ultimately be set for many years to come.

Embracer CEO Phil Rogers didn't win himself many new fans when he said a few years ago that the company's slash-and-burn restructuring, the result of years of hand-over-fist acquisitions that, whoops, it couldn't really afford, was "how we win." This was when Rogers was still Embracer's interim chief strategy officer, prior to his 2025 ascension to CEO, a not-really change in power that saw outgoing CEO Lars Wingefors, the mastermind of Embracer's rise and fall, become its executive chair, a position from which he will focus on "mergers and acquisitions and capital allocation."

Embracer announced the end of that restructuring in March 2024 with the sale of Gearbox, but layoffs and closures have continued more or less apace since then: In October 2025 Embracer sold off Arc Games and Cryptic Studios, for instance, and in March 2026 it laid off 124 people at Eidos Montreal, the fourth round of layoffs at the studio since January 2024.

It's also restructured three times: In April 2024 it transformed into three separate, publicly listed companies named Asmodee Corp, Coffee Stain & Friends, and Middle-Earth Enterprises & Friends; in May 2025 it spun off the Coffee Stain group and renamed Middle Earth Enterprises & Friends to Fellowship Entertainment; and just last month, April 2026, it spun off Fellowship into its own publicly listed company.

That most recent move gave us one of the best headlines you will ever see:

I recap all of these things because in a new interview with The Game Business, Rogers expressed hope that despite everything—and it's a lot—"trust" in the company is improving.

"It’s been a very humbling experience," Rogers said. "There’s a lot of reflection on that in terms of how the industry changed and could we have not all predicted this?"

I think, as a quick aside, that the answer to his rhetorical question is clearly "yes": Perhaps not all of it, but certainly some of it. The runaway growth of the game industry was fuelled by the extraordinary demands of the Covid-19 pandemic, which kept us at home a lot more than we were used to and thus forced us to find new things to do. This was never going to be a permanent state of affairs and as the pandemic settled into the background, people started going outside again, because of course they did.

And sure, it's easy to make that call in hindsight, but I don't think it was all that difficult to make it in the moment either—and more to the point, these C-suite guys get paid millions of dollars every year precisely because they are supposed to know this stuff and make these calls properly. Embracer is hardly alone in that particular whiff, but the scale of its implosion has made it the pinup boy of hoo boy.

Anyway.

"I’d hope trust is improving," Roger continued. "In the industry, if you poll 100 people [asking] what they think about Embracer… whatever that score is, I want it to be better in a year, two years, five years, and that’s the pragmatism. Lots of companies in this industry have had tough times, and then reset and rethink things, and then improve. We’re absolutely in that camp."

Embracer certainly has room to improve, if only because it's spent the past three years making such a spectacular mess of things. In Rogers' defense, he's absolutely correct that the entire industry is in a bad state right now, with layoffs, closures, and cancellations taking a toll on studios of all sizes.

Whether that's likely to get better in the near future is an open question, as is how one even defines "better" in the first place. Rogers said he doesn't think that "necessarily with more money you find more fun," but finding ways to keep costs down, through the use of AI-powered tools or by developing in lower-cost regions, is clearly a priority. And despite Embracer's recent experiences, he said new mergers and acquisitions are always a possibility too—"with learnings" from the last blowup.

"Funding for any M&A would come through organic cash flows, which is really important to mention," Rogers said. "The Embracer [segment] has a lot of businesses that have created good positions. Some of them are very specialized. And again, if M&A can help grow those businesses, then it’s on the cards."

Canvas the Castle is a classic whodunnit quest in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered where you'll track down an art thief in Chorrol. The investigation really doesn't hold your hand with hints or quest steps, so you'll have to do some extra snooping to uncover the truth.

There are multiple outcomes for Canvas the Castle, and your reward depends on the accuracy of your final accusation. You can also get a unique reward for covering for the guilty party instead of revealing them.

How to start Canvas the Castle

To start Canvas the Castle, travel to the town of Chorrol and enter the Castle Chorrol Great Hall. Talk to Countess Arriana Valga, who you'll find sitting on the throne. One of her paintings was stolen from the throne room, and she'll reward you handsomely if you can get it back.

Questioning the suspects

Finding clues in Canvas the Castle

After questioning all five suspects, you still won't have enough information to make a solid accusation. The testimonies seem to point the finger at either Orgnolf and Chanel, but the case isn't water tight just yet. There's a set of clues hidden around the castle that'll help you prepare a bulletproof prosecution.

Canvas the Castle rewards

Making the accusation

All the evidence points to Chanel, so confront her in the private quarters to force her to confess. If you've found all three clues, she'll come clean.

Chanel will only tell the truth if you have a disposition of at least 70 with her, so you may need to play the persuasion minigame to raise her opinion of you. If she doesn't like you enough, she won't confess even though the evidence against her is substantial.

Canvas the Castle rewards

With a concrete confession, it's time to return to Countess Arriana for your reward. There are three outcomes for this quest, each with a different set of rewards.

If you tell the truth about Chanel, the Countess will have her removed from the court. She'll give you a bunch of gold depending on your level, plus a set of valuable gemstones. Chanel will disappear from the game entirely afterward.

If you wrongly accused Orgnolf before pinning Chanel as the prime suspect, you'll receive a smaller amount of gold.

If you decide to cover for the thief and tell the Countess that neither Orgnolf or Chanel are guilty, then you'll get a very small amount of gold as a reward. Chanel will be thrilled that you protected her, however, rewarding you with a special painting after three in-game weeks. You can use it to decorate a purchased home, or you can sell it for 500 gold.

Pragmata is one of my favorite games of the year so far, and a big part of that is down to the relationship between protagonists Hugh and Diana, a deeply normal in-over-his-head guy and a wide-eyed, enthusiastic young android. Banter that could so easily come off as infantilizing, and a story that could easily come across cloying as Hugh instinctively protects Diana, are instead handled with a deft touch.

This hasn't stopped Pragmata from being lumped into the "sad dad" canon alongside The Last of Us and God of War in some reviews; I agree more with Kotaku's Kenneth Shephard, who wrote "Pragmata reads like it was made by people who think that fatherhood rules, actually, and that getting to provide a young mind with insight, fun, and dreams is a meaningful thing that enriches a person’s life."

When I think about Pragmata's dad-ness, I'm also thinking about the people behind the game, given that the sad dad narrative has been shaped by game directors becoming parents. Pragmata may also be shaped by its director Yonghee Cho, but in an interview with PC Gamer he said there's an obvious reason it's not a sad dad game: He's not a sad dad.

"I have a daughter who's about Diana's age, and an older son as well," he said. "I don't think it would fit into the sad dad category, and one of the reasons I think that is because I'm not a sad dad, I'm a very happy dad. When I was creating the story and the actions of the characters, I put myself in the shoes of the characters a lot, and I consider myself pretty happy."

Cho added that while there are obviously elements of a parent-child relationship between Hugh and Diana, it was more meant to highlight companionship—a "buddy type feeling" of cooperating and helping each other out.

"That's a very conscious thing that the development team did. It's not just a parent and child dynamic. If we focused solely on that, players who don't have children might have more difficulty resonating with that, but having that buddy element in there allows a great range [of players who can relate], and a more lighthearted feel."

When I asked Cho if he had kids, he also shared his daughter's reaction to a dramatic moment in the story; she turned to him and said "You can't leave me alone!", apparently identifying with Diana.

"I told her, 'it's okay, Hugh's not your dad—I'm your dad! I'm here," Cho said, while miming patting his daughter on the head reassuringly.

Who knows what we can expect from Cho's future games, though. Once his kids become teenagers, maybe he'll be ready to lean into the angst.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered is a faithful recreation of the classic RPG, even down to its leveling and progression systems. Your main attributes govern your weapon damage and skill values, and your character's build matters much more than you'd think for a Bethesda RPG.

Oblivion Remastered attributes list

Deciding which attributes to dump your points into can be daunting—especially since Oblivion doesn't explain them in detail. Even Oblivion veterans can have a hard time during character creation since Oblivion Remastered makes some tweaks to each attribute. To save you the trouble, we've prepared a breakdown of every attribute in Oblivion Remastered and an at-a-glance view of which ones have changed and which ones are (mostly) the same as before.

Oblivion Remastered attribute changes

Oblivion Remastered keeps the same eight attributes from the original release, but some bonuses have been moved around to allow for smoother progression. One of the biggest attribute changes in Oblivion Remastered is the leveling process itself.

In the original game, your attribute upgrade points were dependent on the skills you improved while filling your XP bar. In Oblivion Remastered, you just get a flat 12 points to spend every level so there's no more tedious skill management required.

Oblivion Remastered also makes some slight changes to the stats and bonuses affected by each attribute. Everything's mostly the same, but there are a few key improvements.

Strength

Strength affects your maximum health, maximum encumbrance, and damage dealt by melee attacks (not counting shortswords and daggers).

In the original release of Oblivion, strength governed all melee damage. It felt a little weird dumping points into strength as a dagger-wielding rogue, so moving smaller blades into a separate category is an appreciated addition.

In Oblivion Remastered, strength now affects your maximum health instead of fatigue. It won't boost your HP as much as endurance, but those points will still make you a bit sturdier.

Intelligence

Intelligence remains largely unchanged from the original version of Oblivion. It governs your maximum magicka, making it the most important skill for spell-slinging sorcerers.

Willpower

Willpower is another attribute that didn't get any changes going into Oblivion Remastered. It affects your magicka regeneration rate and your maximum fatigue level.

It's important to level willpower alongside intelligence, otherwise you'll end up with a huge magicka bar that takes forever to fill up.

Agility

Agility received the biggest changes in Oblivion Remastered, and quite a few stats are now associated with it. This attribute affects your maximum fatigue, your ranged attack damage, and your chance to avoid getting staggered in combat.

Now in Oblivion Remastered, agility affects your fatigue regeneration rate. It also affects your damage with small blades like daggers and shortswords, making this the best attribute for stealth archers and dagger duelists alike.

Speed

Speed is one of the most self-explanatory Oblivion attributes, and it's largely unchanged from its original form. The speed attribute affects your movement speed and how far you can jump. It's great for exploration, but not much else.

Endurance

Endurance is one of the most important attributes in Oblivion Remastered, which affects your maximum fatigue and health, plus your HP regeneration rate outside of combat. You can also breathe underwater longer based on your endurance value.

In the original version of Oblivion, the wonky leveling system made endurance ridiculously important. It affected the health increase you'd get when leveling up, so you'd be forced to dump points into it early to get crucial health bar boosts. HP calculations are now retroactive in Oblivion Remastered, so there's no need to worry about all that.

Personality

Personality is one of the weakest attributes in Oblivion Remastered. It affects your disposition scores with NPCs, making persuasion and haggling easier.

Since you can use the persuasion minigame, bribes, or magic spells to make NPCs like you, I don't recommend dumping points into personality.

Luck

Luck is one of the most nebulous attributes in Oblivion Remastered. It provides slight increases to all of your skills, but not enough to make a huge difference in most builds.

Luck also has some very minor effects peppered throughout the game. A higher luck value will increase the health of gladiators you bet on at the arena, for example, and it also reduces the chances of lockpicks and repair hammers breaking.

This attribute can even affect special equipment like daedric artifacts. Mehrune's Razor has a small chance to instantly kill enemies, and the percentage grows with your luck. These are all very small buffs, but putting a few points into luck never hurt anyone.

It did not look like a happy ending was in the cards for Maverick Games when Amazon ended its publishing deal for the studio's in-development racing game earlier this year. But that assessment may have been premature, as the studio has now unveiled its debut project, Clutch, and has a full trailer coming in the Summer Game Fest showcase on June 5.

"This is a game about the love of driving, about the connection between car and driver, and the raw thrill of speed," Maverick Games co-founder Mike Brown says in the reveal video. Brown is the former creative director of Forza Horizon studio Playground Games, so he knows a thing or two about racing games.

"Clutch is the story of a pair of sibling racing prodigies competing in the R1K racing series," Brown continues. "The R1K is a prestigious and historic series that's been the proving ground of the world's best drivers for 100 years. But away from the pomp and the pageantry and commercialism of the R1K is the Midnight Collective, a group of car enthusiasts who don't care about the money and the fame of the R1K. They care about the love of driving and the raw thrill of speed."

You can probably see where this is going, right?

"In the early part of our game, our hero gets himself into a spot of trouble—a spot of trouble that leads him to look up the services of a fixer. And in doing so, we smash open the doors to the underworld beneath the glitz and the glamour of the R1K."

Brown touches on a few more points about Clutch in the video—it will have an open world component, cars will be upgradeable with "Clutch Tech mods," that sort of thing—but other details, including the game's setting and cast, and being held back for the Summer Game Fest reveal—that showcase is set to get underway at 2 pm PT/5 pm ET on June 5.

Subnautica, if you ask me, is a game about being incredibly wet and alarmingly hungry. It's an under-the-sea game (you can tell from the name) about hoovering up resources and using them to construct ever-more complex tools that you transcend the barriers placed before you by nature. That's what Subnautica was, and, though I've not played it yet, that's why I'm pretty sure Subnautica 2 is too.

But what if actually it was an ecosystem simulator, or a game where you were constantly bopping between different planets, not just trapped on one?

It's more likely, or at least possible, than you think. In a chat with MinnMax, Subnautica 2 game design lead Anthony Gallegos reflected on the numerous ideas Unknown Worlds dreamt up—and scrapped—for its immensely popular sequel.

"We even entertained ideas like, 'Should this be a direct sequel to Subnautica?'" recalled Gallegos. "Should this be about the same character again? Should we continue the story of [Below Zero]? All those things were explored before we ended up going in a different direction."

Also on the table: something Sea of Thieves-flavoured, centred around "endlessly replayable loops." The long wind-up on development for Subnautica 2 gave Unknown Worlds the space to iterate a lot on some pretty out-there stuff. "We spent like eight months just prototyping wild ideas. Wild ideas like: 'What if we made an ecosystem simulator?' And so some of our early prototypes were like—there's these things that eat clams and the clams breed at a rate of one every 90 seconds, and the clams will then—if you're not careful—eat the kelp forest.

"So what does the player have to do to achieve a balance between [eating] the urchins, the urchins eat the kelp, and left to its own devices, how could these things fall apart or not?"

Which, I must say, sounds like the exact kind of systemic weirdness I go bananas for, but Gallegos says it didn't quite work for Subnautica.

"The problem was, it's really hard to explain to the player without Maxis-level UI—you'd have to bring up a minimap with, like, population density of urchins... so you could understand the information you need to make meaningful change."

That didn't work in a game about being "immersed in the world."

Some other scrapped ideas sound a bit more in keeping with the Subnautica we know, though. "What if we made it closer to something like a No Man's Sky, and you actually went to a bunch of different planets, and every planet had titanium, but you had to figure out how to get it? So on one planet titanium might be rocks on the ground, but another planet it might be fish scales because the fish grow armor," said Gallegos. "Another version was like, 'What if it was a world with no land whatsoever, and your base was a completely mobile thing you built on the surface?' And so everything was diving off of a surface-based floating city that you brought everywhere with you."

Given how well Subnautica 2 is doing, I can't fault Unknown Worlds for leaving these ideas on the drawing board, but I'll admit I wouldn't mind seeing some of them make a return. Maybe in a spin-off? Gallegos sounds open to it. "There are so many spin-off Subnautica games I would love to make that would be wildly different. And I think that's where we could do wildly cool stuff with the franchise," he mused. Clam simulator DLC, coming right up.

Sometimes the best things at Computex are the things that aren't at Computex; namely, talk of upcoming tech. Case in point here is AMD's Ryzen and Radeon VP and GM David McAfee telling Tom's Hardware that a Zen 5 replacement for the Ryzen 5 7600X3D—meaning surely a Ryzen 5 9600X3D—“may be something that we look at doing… later this year."

AMD launched the former chip way back in 2024, but it was very limited in numbers because it was only sold by Microcenter. There was talk of a 9600X3D as long ago as this time last year, as references to it were found in driver notes, but nothing ever came of it.

The 'X3D' in the name refers to AMD's 3D V-Cache, which is stacked vertically on top of or under the processor—under, in the case of the 9,000-series—giving the chip easy access to much more L3 cache than a normal processor gets. Lots of games really benefit from big processor caches, so naturally, X3D chips make for some of the absolute best CPUs for gaming.

Given that the cheapest of current-gen options is the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, which costs north of $400, a cheaper six-core option would be nice. Though it might not keep the same 3.9 GHz base and 5.4 GHz boost clock of the Ryzen 5 9600X, given (A) the chip would likely be based on a cut-down eight-core rather than a six-core 9600X, and (B) the stacked cache might prevent the chip from reaching its full potential on that front. Still, though, it would make for a formidable cheaper chip.

But we shouldn't get carried away, because the main problem a Ryzen 5 9600X3D might face is competition from other AMD chips. Given how cheap the Ryzen 5 7500X3D and Ryzen 5 7600X3D CPUs are, many might opt for those instead. And if you want to spend more, unless it's priced very generously, it will be hard to convince some to get a 9600X3D over a 9800X3D, which will have more longevity.

McAfee, however, explained the possible market for this chip as follows:

"I think as we go through the rest of this year, I mean we're always looking for ways to, you know, create as many options as we can, and that may become… maybe something that we look at doing as a runway product later this year, simply because you know we know the pressures that are there in building systems aren't going away anytime soon."

That much is true: more options never hurt in this market. And perhaps it would be more of a processor for pre-builts anyway, in which case it could, for instance, offer a new option for high-end builds when system builders want to save a bit of cash and not opt for a 9800X3D.

At any rate, it seems it's not off the cards for AMD.

US-based Maingear has been offering custom and prebuilt desktop PCs, laptops, and workstations for around 24 years, and most recently, it has launched an updated version of its gaming-focused MG-1. What makes this particular model stand out is that, amongst the raft of hardware configurations you can choose from, there's the option to fit the rig with AMD's latest 3D V-Cache monster: the Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Dual Edition.

For its review sample of the new MG-1 Mk.II, Maingear sent over a build with this 192 MB L3 cache processor, mounted in an MSI MAG X870E Tomahawk Max PZ motherboard, and paired with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition, 32 GB of Kingston DDR5-6000 CL30 memory, and a 2 TB Samsung 9100 Pro Gen5 SSD.

It also houses 120 mm Phanteks D30 RGB fans on the AIO cooler and case exhaust, with the redesigned case fielding three 140 mm fans up front. Almost everything can be tweaked with a custom MG-1, though Maingear is currently using a mixture of Team Group and Adata SSDs in the options list.

Because the review build is a little bit of a one-off, exact pricing isn't possible, but the closest configuration you can currently get that tallies with the one I've been using for a week will set you back around $7,273 (excluding shipping). That's one almighty price tag, and even the simplest of MG-1 configurations (Core Ultra 5 225F, RTX 5060, 32 GB DDR-6000, 2 TB Gen SSD) costs $2,491.

In the case of my review sample, the price is somewhat understandable. Getting hold of a Founders Edition RTX 5090 is nigh-on impossible these days, so you're looking at well over $3,500 just for the graphics card. The Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Dual Edition has an MSRP of $899, and the DRAM kit and SSD together come to $944.

Or, to put it another way, those four components alone account for 73% of the total cost of the MG-1 Mk.II gaming PC. The memory and storage prices explain why the base configuration is so pricey, too.

There's naturally always some measure of a mark-up with prebuilt gaming PCs, custom or otherwise, though when you add in everything else (the Phanteks fans, the 1250 W power supply unit, the MSI motherboard with all its connectors on the rear, the non-generic chassis, Windows licence, etc), you'll find that Maingear isn't making a vast sum of money with each sale.

The global memory supply crisis has caused DRAM, SSD, and graphics card prices to balloon and narrow the range of different components that system vendors can choose from to help maximise profits. In Maingear's case, it had to turn to the only thing it could do for shaving pennies off the bill of materials: the PC case.

That's unfortunate because the new chassis is the primary selling point of this update. Don't get me wrong, it looks very nice and that front panel, magnetically attached to the rest of the system, lights up a treat and can be swapped for an array of different designs (though they're none-too-cheap, starting at $99). And thanks to the three 140 mm front fans, internal airflow isn't a problem.

The issue is that the rest of the case is very cheap-feeling. The metal side panel feels no different to something you'd find in a $45 case, and both sides are very fiddly to remove and reinstall. The metal pins/pins that are there to help the panels lock in place are too small, and they pop out far too easily if you install the panels incorrectly.

Although it performs admirably well enough, as we'll soon see in the benchmarks, the Maingear-branded 360 mm AIO cooler is also a little cheap-feeling. The mounting system is as basic as it gets, and the coolant pipes and radiator are somewhat on the slim side.

Fortunately, the Maingear MG-1 Mk.II is a bit of a wolf in sheep's clothing, thanks to the rest of the hardware.

Gaming performance

Gaming performance

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora (1440p Ultra)Cyberpunk 2077 (1440p RT Medium)Cyberpunk 2077 (upscaling) (1440p RT Medium)Baldur's Gate 3 (1440p Ultra)Black Myth: Wukong (1440p Very High)Black Myth: Wukong (upscaling) (1440p Very High)Metro Exodus: Enhanced Edition (1440p Ultra)3DMark Time Spy Extreme

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2

137

77

NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D

146

61

Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K

142

69

Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K

87

37

Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF

102

44

037.575112.5150

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora (1440p Ultra) Data

Product	Value
Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2	137 Avg FPS, 77 1% Low FPS
NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D	146 Avg FPS, 61 1% Low FPS
Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K	142 Avg FPS, 69 1% Low FPS
Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K	87 Avg FPS, 37 1% Low FPS
Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF	102 Avg FPS, 44 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2

124

92

NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D

124

54

Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K

120

83

Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K

83

70

Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF

83

59

037.575112.5150

Cyberpunk 2077 (1440p RT Medium) Data

Product	Value
Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2	124 Avg FPS, 92 1% Low FPS
NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D	124 Avg FPS, 54 1% Low FPS
Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K	120 Avg FPS, 83 1% Low FPS
Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K	83 Avg FPS, 70 1% Low FPS
Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF	83 Avg FPS, 59 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2

269

179

NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D

262

138

Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K

256

161

Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K

196

139

Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF

191

70

075150225300

Cyberpunk 2077 (upscaling) (1440p RT Medium) Data

Product	Value
Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2	269 Avg FPS, 179 1% Low FPS
NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D	262 Avg FPS, 138 1% Low FPS
Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K	256 Avg FPS, 161 1% Low FPS
Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K	196 Avg FPS, 139 1% Low FPS
Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF	191 Avg FPS, 70 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2

171

87

NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D

151

68

Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K

92

60

Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K

112

70

Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF

101

65

050100150200

Baldur's Gate 3 (1440p Ultra) Data

Product	Value
Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2	171 Avg FPS, 87 1% Low FPS
NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D	151 Avg FPS, 68 1% Low FPS
Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K	92 Avg FPS, 60 1% Low FPS
Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K	112 Avg FPS, 70 1% Low FPS
Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF	101 Avg FPS, 65 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2

92

80

NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D

92

78

Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K

91

64

Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K

67

50

Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF

65

45

0255075100

Black Myth: Wukong (1440p Very High) Data

Product	Value
Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2	92 Avg FPS, 80 1% Low FPS
NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D	92 Avg FPS, 78 1% Low FPS
Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K	91 Avg FPS, 64 1% Low FPS
Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K	67 Avg FPS, 50 1% Low FPS
Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF	65 Avg FPS, 45 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2

119

103

NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D

118

97

Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K

121

77

Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K

92

79

Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF

92

73

037.575112.5150

Black Myth: Wukong (upscaling) (1440p Very High) Data

Product	Value
Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2	119 Avg FPS, 103 1% Low FPS
NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D	118 Avg FPS, 97 1% Low FPS
Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K	121 Avg FPS, 77 1% Low FPS
Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K	92 Avg FPS, 79 1% Low FPS
Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF	92 Avg FPS, 73 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2

224

128

NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D

191

53

Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K

158

70

Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K

156

79

Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF

142

47

075150225300

Metro Exodus: Enhanced Edition (1440p Ultra) Data

Product	Value
Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2	224 Avg FPS, 128 1% Low FPS
NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D	191 Avg FPS, 53 1% Low FPS
Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K	158 Avg FPS, 70 1% Low FPS
Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K	156 Avg FPS, 79 1% Low FPS
Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF	142 Avg FPS, 47 1% Low FPS

CPU index

GPU index

Overall index

Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2

14565

25229

22732

NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D

7292

25622

18606

Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K

13775

24941

22237

Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K

13855

16357

15925

Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF

15310

15986

12354

07,50015,00022,50030,000

3DMark Time Spy Extreme Data

Product	Value
Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2	14565 CPU index, 25229 GPU index, 22732 Overall index
NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D	7292 CPU index, 25622 GPU index, 18606 Overall index
Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K	13775 CPU index, 24941 GPU index, 22237 Overall index
Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K	13855 CPU index, 16357 GPU index, 15925 Overall index
Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF	15310 CPU index, 15986 GPU index, 12354 Overall index

Testing the gaming performance of PCs with RTX 5080 and 5090 graphics cards at 1440p might seem a little odd, but using this resolution helps to bring the review samples' CPUs into play, and the results give a broader overview of the system's capability. Realistically, these are 4K gaming rigs, and at that resolution, the only thing that really matters is the GPU.

Taking all of the gaming performance figures into account, especially the 1% low frame rates, it's clear that the Maingear MG-1 Mk.II is the most powerful gaming PC we've tested for a very long time. Which is, of course, what you'd expect when the CPU is the most potent that AMD makes for desktop PCs, the DRAM is right at the sweet spot in terms of clock speeds and timings, and there's an RTX 5090 right next to the pair of them.

The problem for the new Maingear isn't its performance; it's the bang-for-buck. At the time of writing, you can get an RTX 5090 NZXT Player Three Prime for $5,399, and that comes with 64 GB of memory and 4 TB of storage. The Alienware Area-51 build is more expensive than NZXT at $6,280, but both are noticeably underneath the MG-1's price tag.

However, the Maingear PC is sporting faster DRAM than the NZXT, and both of these PCs have faster SSDs than that in the Alienware. Plus, there's the fact that the 9950X3D2 Dual Edition is twice as expensive as a 9800X3D, and it's not really a gaming CPU, as such.

Content creation performance

Content creation performance

Cinebench 2024Blender 4.2.0 (junkshop)7zip 24.07Handbrake UHD to 1080p conversion3DMark Storage

Single core index

Multi thread index

Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2

143

2240

NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D

129

1293

Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K

132

2182

Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K

141

2364

Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF

139

2031

07501,5002,2503,000

Cinebench 2024 Data

Product	Value
Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2	143 Single core index, 2240 Multi thread index
NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D	129 Single core index, 1293 Multi thread index
Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K	132 Single core index, 2182 Multi thread index
Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K	141 Single core index, 2364 Multi thread index
Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF	139 Single core index, 2031 Multi thread index

CPU (samples)

GPU (samples)

Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2

216

3864

NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D

99

3873

Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K

155

3783

Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K

172

2316

Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF

142

2228

01,0002,0003,0004,000

Blender 4.2.0 (junkshop) Data

Product	Value
Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2	216 CPU (samples), 3864 GPU (samples)
NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D	99 CPU (samples), 3873 GPU (samples)
Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K	155 CPU (samples), 3783 GPU (samples)
Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K	172 CPU (samples), 2316 GPU (samples)
Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF	142 CPU (samples), 2228 GPU (samples)

Compressing (GIPS)

Decompressing (GIPS)

Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2

219

289

NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D

121

128

Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K

168

187

Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K

197

198

Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF

150

159

075150225300

7zip 24.07 Data

Product	Value
Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2	219 Compressing (GIPS), 289 Decompressing (GIPS)
NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D	121 Compressing (GIPS), 128 Decompressing (GIPS)
Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K	168 Compressing (GIPS), 187 Decompressing (GIPS)
Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K	197 Compressing (GIPS), 198 Decompressing (GIPS)
Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF	150 Compressing (GIPS), 159 Decompressing (GIPS)

Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2

137

NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D

83

Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K

116

Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K

95

Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF

104

037.575112.5150

FPS

Handbrake UHD to 1080p conversion Data

Product	Value
Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2	137
NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D	83
Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K	116
Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K	95
Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF	104

Overall index

Avg bandwidth (MB/s)

Access time (us)

Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2

3692

624.25

48

NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D

2501

429.78

72

Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K

3958

672.33

45

Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K

3335

562.46

53

Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF

928

151.41

184

01,0002,0003,0004,000

3DMark Storage Data

Product	Value
Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2	3692 Overall index, 624.25 Avg bandwidth (MB/s), 48 Access time (us)
NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D	2501 Overall index, 429.78 Avg bandwidth (MB/s), 72 Access time (us)
Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K	3958 Overall index, 672.33 Avg bandwidth (MB/s), 45 Access time (us)
Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K	3335 Overall index, 562.46 Avg bandwidth (MB/s), 53 Access time (us)
Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF	928 Overall index, 151.41 Avg bandwidth (MB/s), 184 Access time (us)

Where the MG-1 really comes to the fore is when you switch from gaming benchmarks to those that replicate the sort of workloads you get in content creation tasks, such as offline rendering, code compiling, and video encoding. Here, AMD's cached-to-the-max Ryzen really shines, though it's mostly due to it having 32 threads and high clock speeds.

However, Maingear is very much pitching the MG-1 as being a gaming PC, and if you are considering buying one just for that purpose, then I strongly suggest you don't choose the Dual Edition processor, even if you can afford one. The Ryzen 9950X3D option is $343 cheaper, but you're just going to be far better off picking the Ryzen 7 9850X3D, which knocks an enormous $630 off the price tag.

And there's another reason for choosing a different processor: the MG-1's AIO cooler isn't quite up to the job of managing the 9950X3D2's 250 W peak power consumption.

Power and thermals

Thermal performance

Gaming TempsCreator tempsIdle temps

Avg CPU Temp (°C)

Max CPU Temp (°C)

Avg GPU Temp (°C)

Max GPU Temp (°C)

Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2

63

68

51

53

NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D

63

64

56

69

Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K

52

59

65

68

Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K

54

63

60

46

Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF

53

62

64

48

020406080

Gaming Temps Data

Product	Value
Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2	63 Avg CPU Temp (°C), 68 Max CPU Temp (°C), 51 Avg GPU Temp (°C), 53 Max GPU Temp (°C)
NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D	63 Avg CPU Temp (°C), 64 Max CPU Temp (°C), 56 Avg GPU Temp (°C), 69 Max GPU Temp (°C)
Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K	52 Avg CPU Temp (°C), 59 Max CPU Temp (°C), 65 Avg GPU Temp (°C), 68 Max GPU Temp (°C)
Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K	54 Avg CPU Temp (°C), 63 Max CPU Temp (°C), 60 Avg GPU Temp (°C), 46 Max GPU Temp (°C)
Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF	53 Avg CPU Temp (°C), 62 Max CPU Temp (°C), 64 Avg GPU Temp (°C), 48 Max GPU Temp (°C)

Max CPU temp (°C)

Max SSD temp (°C)

Max SSD temp (°C)

Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2

94

57

48

NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D

88

43

61

Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K

82

63

49

Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K

88

51

Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF

72

35

0255075100

Creator temps Data

Product	Value
Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2	94 Max CPU temp (°C), 57 Max VRM temp (°C), 48 Max SSD temp (°C)
NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D	88 Max CPU temp (°C), 43 Max VRM temp (°C), 61 Max SSD temp (°C)
Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K	82 Max CPU temp (°C), 63 Max VRM temp (°C), 49 Max SSD temp (°C)
Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K	88 Max CPU temp (°C), 51 Max SSD temp (°C)
Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF	72 Max CPU temp (°C), 35 Max SSD temp (°C)

CPU (°C)

GPU (°C)

Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2

49

46

NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D

43

41

Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K

30

38

Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K

50

32

Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF

35

27

015304560

Idle temps Data

Product	Value
Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2	49 CPU (°C), 46 GPU (°C)
NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D	43 CPU (°C), 41 GPU (°C)
Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K	30 CPU (°C), 38 GPU (°C)
Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K	50 CPU (°C), 32 GPU (°C)
Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF	35 CPU (°C), 27 GPU (°C)

To be fair to Maingear, a great many AIO coolers aren't good enough, either, but while the self-branded system is happy as a lamb in a spring field in gaming, when you bring all of AMD's threads to the battle, the processor's temperature rapidly hits 94 °C and the chip throttles its clock speeds back a little.

Realistically, this processor needs something far beefier in content creation workloads, such as an Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro, as it has a deeper radiator, with more coolant and fin surface area to absorb and dissipate the heat. The MG-1 review sample shipped with MSI's control app installed, but without the cooling control module installed, so the system was just using the default BIOS fan settings.

I ran the tests again with every fan at 100% rpm, and that certainly helped keep the peak temperature under 90 °C, but the airflow noise was exceptionally loud, particularly that from the exhaust fan. Not painfully so, but certainly not something you could live with.

At least the RTX 5090 never got even slightly warm, even with the default fan speeds, and I carried out some heavy 4K rendering workloads to really stress the system. At no point did the graphics card get even remotely hot, and the amount of hot air being blasted out of the chassis is a testament to the chassis airflow.

Speaking of graphics cards, the MG-1 has one of the most robust GPU mounts I have ever seen in a PC. A thick arm is bolted to the motherboard tray and card itself, and it felt so stiff that you'd need a small horse standing on the card before you experienced any degree of sagging.

Leaving the price aside for a moment, the Maingear MG-1 Mk.II is one of the better pre-built gaming PCs I've used in a long time. Yes, the case panels are disappointing, but the rest is very good, and the cable routing and overall management are top-notch. I'd prefer to see Velcro strips rather than zip ties holding everything in place, though, as it makes things far easier to handle when the inevitable upgrade comes along.

The overall performance is exactly what you'd expect with this combination of hardware, and while the cooling performance favours the graphics card rather than the CPU, that's sensible given the use of an RTX 5090.

To my eyes, the aesthetics are a nice balance of RGB bling and understated styling, though I feel that Maingear has missed a trick by not using a classier finish to the metal surfaces. The Havn BF 360 Flow, for example, feels like pure luxury, everywhere you lay your hands, and the MG-1 would benefit from a similar feel.

Even the external ports on the top of the case aren't quite what you'd expect from such a premier brand: just two USB (one Type-C, one Type-A) and an audio jack.

As it is, I'm not convinced that the modicum of RGB lighting and customisable front panel is quite enough to justify the price tag, regardless of how well the MG-1 is put together. The review sample is exceptionally expensive, mostly because of the components inside, but also demanding over $2,000 for an RTX 5060 build is certainly an eyebrow-raiser. There's an awful lot to like about the updated Maingear MG-1, but given how pricey gaming PCs have become, it really needs something extra to warrant considering it over cheaper, just as powerful alternatives.

Nvidia's second GTC of the year took place in Taipei, Taiwan this week, with CEO Jensen Huang repeatedly assuring that "useful AI" (read: AI that makes a return on investment) has arrived. As for AI's wider-ranging effects on the economy, Huang expressed some scepticism on stage.

"People talk about AI reducing jobs—complete nonsense," Huang said during his on-stage presentation. "It's causing more software engineers to be hired, and the reason for that is very simple. If you can hire a software engineer and you could generate $9 trillion worth of productive work, why wouldn't you want to hire more software engineers?"

Huang had earlier argued during his presentation, "30 million software developers, representing about $3 trillion worth of GDP, producing three—that's what they're paid—$3 trillion worth of salaries per year, which is generating economic growth for the rest of the industries. Say $100 trillion of the world's industries is impacted...is generated by $3 billion worth of salary [for software engineers]."

It's a little unclear where Huang is getting these numbers from, but earlier remarks suggest he based at least that 30 million figure on increased GitHub activity. Huang then later went on to add, "If that line was flat, then obviously people will hire fewer software engineers, but because the output is so incredible, people want to hire more software engineers. This is going to show up in our economy somehow soon, and so the first thing [to take away from this year's GTC] is useful AI has arrived."

Huang has historically been blasé about the prospect of job losses due to AI, memorably saying that programmers won't be able to 'raw dog' their work in future; he told the All-In podcast last summer, "We also know that…although everybody's job will be different as a result of AI, some jobs will be obsolete, but many jobs will be created.

"The one thing that we know for certain is that, if you're not using AI, you're going to lose your job to somebody who uses AI. That, I think, we know for certain. There's not a software programmer in the future who's gonna be able to hold their own typing by themselves."

But to state the obvious, software engineering is not really the most representative job sector when it comes to the impacts of AI. For one thing, someone in a call centre who loses their job to AI won't necessarily neatly transfer their skills into a tech career. Huang's on-stage comments only discuss job losses in the tech industry, but it's hard not to feel that he's kind of ignoring the wider issues.

Well, don't worry tradespeople, Huang didn't forget about you in comments he made to Channel 4 last year, saying, "If you're an electrician, if you're a plumber, if you're a carpenter, we're going to need hundreds of thousands of them. To build all of these factories."

I am being more than a little sassy. The fact that Huang's visions of the future revolve entirely around AI infrastructure is hardly surprising given that the data centre segment of Nvidia's business raked in a total of $75.2 billion last quarter. Still, it's a no less narrow and bleak vision of the future; I'm not sure about you but I'm not looking forward to a horizon dominated by data centres.

If you are aware of AI, you are likely also aware of the word 'agentic'. Effectively, as AI gets more powerful, it is supposed to run your tasks autonomously with less oversight, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang thinks that is the future of personal computing.

In a Q&A at Computex 2026 attended by PC Gamer, Huang was asked why Nvidia decided to get involved in the laptop market now. With the official unveiling of its SoC chip, RTX Spark, Nvidia is ready to enter the gaming laptop space, but with the memory crisis ongoing (and Nvidia already doing phenomenally well with AI), one would assume the profit margins aren't as high in this area.

He said, "The real question is, can we make a contribution? If we can't make a contribution, and it's a marginal contribution, we won't do it. Can we help reinvent the PC?"

He continued, "If you get a chance to reinvent the single most important instrument, the single most important tool of humanity, what you and I grew up with [that] defined just about everything about our lives, and we have an opportunity after 40 years to go reinvent it for the age of AI."

Yeah, it's probably no big shock that the company that owes its sudden explosion into being the most valuable company in the world to AI also thinks that AI is the future. Huang told us that Nvidia still builds graphics cards, "and we do it insanely well, and we still do it insanely well today."

He mentioned Nvidia's history in the personal computing market and noted the RTX Spark took three years and collaboration with Microsoft and MediaTek, plus hundreds of people, to get where it is today.

Huang said that personal computers in the future will not be ones that only react when you actually use them. He said, "In the future, when we leave it, you know what, we're talking with it all the time. I'll be chatting, you know, in WhatsApp with my agent, and it's doing stuff. And my agents are going to have names, and they're on my WhatsApp, and we're just chatting all the time. I'll be talking to it, and it's going to be talking back; it'll call me."

Huang excitedly told the press, "That is the personal computer future. Tell me that's not R2D2. Tell me that's not robotics. Tell me that's not cool."

Eh, I think that's not cool, and I certainly don't want my PC running autonomously. Ignoring the environmental costs of AI, the effect on the personal PC market, and even the Microsoft co-authored paper that suggested regular generative AI use leaves users with a "diminished skill for independent problem-solving", I simply don't like the privacy implications of leaving all your data in the hands of the black box that is generative AI.

Huang does think that it will be widely adopted, anyway. "We're going to redefine how people think about computers." He continued, "I believe that people, many, many people, will have this at home, just like they have a car at home. Soon, the agent is going to be so valuable to you, you want it to be sitting in a nice box, sitting in a nice computer, secure, performant, something you could carry with you, something you would use for a long period of time."

Minecraft has revealed its third drop for 2026: a new forest biome and and abandoned camps you can find within. Mojang is still in the early days of development for the dappled forest update though, so there's a lot for us to learn before it releases later this year. After the Chaos Cubed update sent us underground, it's nice to have an upcoming update that shoots us back out to explore the overworld.

We don't actually know the official name of the update yet, so until then we're just calling it by its main feature: the Dappled Forest. Getting teases for features over the next couple of months is part of the fun, so here's everything there is to know about the dappled forest update so far.

When will the dappled forest update come out?

The dappled forest update will launch in fall 2026, but we don't know a more specific timeframe than that yet. The features we have seen haven't made it to testing yet, which implies there's quite a wait ahead of us too. Hopefully once the Chaos Cubed update releases in June, we'll start to see a little more information about the next drop.

If it's anything like last year's drop schedule, we could see the dappled forest update as soon as September. Given the autumnal vibes in the first reveal, it would be the perfect update to ship ahead of the season.

What's included in the dappled forest update?

The main thing in the update is the dappled forest biome. This new woodland area will have bright red, orange, and yellow poplar trees, basically shaking up the greens and greys we are used to seeing in the overworld. Don't get me wrong, I love stumbling across a birch or spruce forest, but I am incredibly excited to have such a colourful biome.

The ground will also be coated in orangey coloured grass, and covered in leaf litter, red shrubs, and brown mushrooms, kind of like the cherry grove biome which has pink petals all over the ground. Once again, an entirely new set of poplar wood blocks is coming, so builders are getting treated well. When broken down into planks and slabs, poplar wood has a warm greyish tone, making it one of the lighter shades available in the game.

Apart from the forest itself, a new structure will be added as part of the update: abandoned camps. They have a tent-like building made from wool steps, a campfire, a few chests or barrels to loot and you'll only find them in the dappled forests. No hints were given on whether items like maps can be looted here, so it could just be your bog-standard apples and armor loot, but at least it's some form of shelter if you need a quick base for the night.

What do we not know about the dappled forest yet? A new biome might mean a new passive mob too, but we've not seen one mentioned yet. With how significant the addition of the pale garden and the Creaking felt back in December 2024, it wouldn't be too surprising if the dappled forest was home to a more ominous mob. It would certainly disrupt the cosy atmosphere though.

These days, it's hard not to view Google as a villain. The monopoly is currently engaged in a mission to dismantle the internet as we know it, scraping information from websites and turning it into frequently inaccurate AI nonsense. It's a mission that will likely kill off most of the websites it's feeding on. But it's not all bad. Google's also raising an army of 32 million mosquitoes that it's hoping to unleash upon America.

I know this sounds more like something an over-the-top videogame antagonist might be planning—like Metal Gear Solid's hornet-loving weirdo, The Pain—but actually Google is doing some good here by attempting to reduce the threat posed by the world's most dangerous animal, as reported by The Guardian.

Mosquitos carry a variety of diseases, not least of which is malaria. Around 700 million people a year are victims of mosquito-transmitted diseases, and around a million people die every year from their nasty little bites. When I lived in Zimbabwe, taking malaria tablets every morning became as normal and mundane as putting on my socks.

This is where Google's Debug project comes in. The aforementioned army of mosquitoes are exclusively male—which don't bite or carry these deadly diseases—and Google wants to unleash them upon California and Florida in two waves of 16 million. When they're out in the wild, they will mate with female mosquitoes, but due to a bacteria the males have been infected with, wolbachia, the females' eggs won't hatch.

"Over time," Debug states, "there will be fewer and fewer bad mosquitoes." The project also emphasises that this is a natural solution. "This technique uses a naturally occurring bacteria and uses no chemicals, no toxins and doesn’t involve genetic modification. Similar approaches have been used to safely combat other pests for decades. We’re combining the Debug team's scientific and engineering expertise with the help of international partners to raise and release lots of good bugs and stop bad mosquitoes that can spread disease."

This is all good stuff, and built on decades of research as well as the well-trodden sterile insect technique, which has already been used on other troublesome bugs. Google even found a positive way to use AI, which helps Debug separate male and female mosquitoes and release the males in appropriate locations and in the right numbers.

It's almost like AI could be a force for good if it wasn't so busy plagiarising content and having wild delusions.

As The Guardian notes, Debug has already done this in Singapore, initially working with the country's Nation Environment Agency to release 6 million male mosquitoes a week—the number has since risen to 10 million. This has resulted in a "70% reduction in dengue incidents after 6 to 12 months of releases".

This is genuine life-saving work, which makes it slightly harder to hate Google. But I think I can still manage it.

The old marketing saying of 'sex sells' frequently gets converted to 'excess sells' when it comes to computer tech, and for the 20th anniversary of the ROG brand, Asus has taken this to another level with a new 3000 W power supply unit for gaming PCs.

It's not the power rating that's so eyebrow-raising about the Asus ROG Thor 3000W Titanium III Edition 20, as 3 kW PSUs aren't anything new in the world of workstations. For example, Corsair has the WS3000 and Asus itself has the Pro WS 3000W Platinum. However, for gaming PCs, it's completely overkill and totally unnecessary, even if you're overclocking the twangers off every single component in your rig.

And yet, that's the exact market that Asus is selling its latest mega supply to. Making matters even worse is the fact that the PSU sports four 12V-2x6 power sockets, despite the fact that you can only game on a single RTX 5090. Sure, you could slap another three into your PC for giggles, but it won't help to make anything run faster.

For AI workloads, it's a different story, but that's not mentioned in Asus' marketing, nor is it what ROG is all about. The Thor 3000 W Titanium III Edition 20 does have gaming-related features, such as an OLED display that can be magnetically attached to the PSU or your PC's case via an extension cable, plus a voltage monitoring system to prevent your RTX 5090 from self-destructing.

But no gaming setup is going to get anywhere near the unit's 3000 W power limit (1600 W when using a 115 V supply), and even though the Thor's peak efficiency will be around the 1600 W mark, that's still far more than you're likely to need.

Well, unless you just happen to have an overclocked 800 W Asus RTX 5090, plus a heavily PBO'd Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Dual Edition, a mountain of DRAM sticks, an even bigger mountain of Gen5 SSDs, plus a small warehouse-worth of fans and RGB lighting.

Of course, I am applying logic to a product that isn't logical. It's not really a gaming PSU at all: It's an over-the-top statement from Asus, simply because it can, and partly because the whole ROG brand has become synonymous with this line of thinking.

But even if you can afford it, I would recommend that you look elsewhere for an all-singing, all-dancing power supply, because when you look closely at Asus' images for the new PSU, you can see that it's just a spruced-up standard design. The main power switch and some of the connectors also look somewhat wonky, indicating that this isn't a special, hand-crafted unit. Ho-hum.

Nvidia's first full SoC for the PC, RTX Spark, is finally here. But could it form the basis of a killer gaming handheld? Superficially, that seems like a bit of a no-brainer, what with Nvidia's dominance in gaming graphics. But comments from Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang yesterday make that appear unlikely.

Speaking after his Computex keynote, Huang responded to a question about the possible use of RTX Spark in a handheld.

"If somebody wants to do it, you know, we'll work with them on it. But right now we're really focused on doing something that is just such a big deal, reinventing the PC after 40 years," Huang said.

He went on to explain what a "gigantic project" it is for Nvidia just to launch a PC chip. "Remember all of these applications in the Windows world, the x86 world, we have to prove that they work fantastically, and all the games they have to have anti cheat turned on. And so all of that stuff is really, really hard," Huang explained.

"It took us three years working with Microsoft and two and a half years working with MediaTek to get here, hundreds of people, that's how hard it is, and that's why everybody's so excited about it," Huang says of RTX Spark.

It's all part of his plan, it seems, to reinvent the PC in the age of AI. "Can we help reinvent the PC? And, boy, if you get a chance to reinvent the single most important instrument, the single most important tool of humanity, what you and I grew up with defined just about everything about our lives, and we have an opportunity after 40 years to go reinvent it for the age of AI. Wow, we're not going to sit around, not let it get done," Huang said.

In that context, you can see how making a gaming handheld out of RTX Spark is a bit, well, tangential. Is it yet another indication that gaming is now a very low priority at Nvidia? Possibly.

Of course, the full RTX Spark Chip is probably not a goer for handhelds. It's got 20 Arm cores and a GPU with pretty much identical specs to a desktop RTX 5070 GPU. That's surely too big and too powerful for a handheld, even if Nvidia is claiming its battery life will be "much better than anything you've seen before on RTX laptops."

As I understand it, however, there is a smaller version of RTX Spark coming with fewer CPU cores and a GPU less than half the size, codenamed N1 as opposed to N1x for the full-size RTX Spark chip. And that could be a much better candidate for a gaming handheld.

The thing is, if Nvidia was actively working with partners on an RTX Spark-based gaming handheld, you'd think Huang would have answered that question quite differently. As it is, he's clear that's not where Nvidia's "focus" is right now. Which probably shouldn't be a surprise, as gaming really doesn't seem to be a high priority at Nvidia of late.

Overwatch's anniversary event has come under quite a bit of fire over the last few weeks. While the nostalgic modes were a hit, fans have complained that the rewards are simultaneously not good enough and too much of a grind, and they're not wrong.

While the anniversary loot boxes weren't too bad—allowing players a chance to get everything on offer with no duplicates over the three weeks—the player titles were a slog. The rare title required you to complete 24 anniversary challenges, the epic needed 36, and the legendary needed a whopping 48.

Bear in mind that there were only 24 base challenges in the game, which were a mix of playing one to 20 games each week alongside playing five games on tank, DPS, and support in that week's anniversary mode.

So, to reach 48 challenges meant you needed to complete an extra 24 challenges. The catch is that these extras were the 'Decennium Contributor - Repeating' challenges, which meant players had to complete 10 games (wins and Stadium granted double progress).

That means if you won every game or just played Stadium you'd need to play 120 games, but at the high end players had to complete 240 games over three weeks, which boils down to 5.7 or 11.5 games a day. That's a lot of Overwatch. I play too much Overwatch and I nearly didn't get it—I only finished the Meta Challenge: Decennial Hero and got the legendary title yesterday, hours before the timer was set to run out.

You shouldn't have to grind to get the anniversary rewards. They should be accessible to everyone who's played Overwatch over the last 10 years, regardless of how much they play. And Team 4 has finally cottoned onto this, albeit too late.

Yesterday Overwatch's game director, Aaron Keller, announced that Team 4 would be "making changes to the anniversary event because the requirements to earn the Table Flip (legendary title) weren't entirely clear."

"We do want some rewards to feel rare and meaningful, but many folks didn't realize the effort required to earn this particular title," Keller continues. "As a result, many people who could have earned it may have missed the opportunity. These changes are meant to address that."

So, the requirements to earn the legendary title have been lowered from 48 challenges to 38, and players will get until the end of the season in two weeks to complete them. Good stuff, right? Well, although it's now easier to get this legendary title, the issue of having an unachievable reward for some still stands, as Team 4 is now handing out an even rarer player title to those who already grinded the challenges.

"Players who earned the original Table Flip title before that will receive a special Double Table Flip title in a future patch," Keller explains.

Honestly, I don't think there was any way out of this. As someone who grinded the event I'm really not bothered if people get extra time to get the same reward, but I understand why some people would be frustrated at the notion. Really, this should have never happened in the first place.

There's always plenty of opportunities to grind for exclusive rewards in Overwatch. But this event should have been about celebrating Overwatch and every single player that made it so special over the last 10 years, regardless of how much they play. Because time played doesn't necessarily equal dedication or love for the game. The time you have to put into a live service game is largely circumstantial—lord knows I won't be able to play as much as I do now in 10 years.

Catching up with Keychron's CEO, Nick Xu, at Computex today, it wasn't just carbon fiber keyboard concepts that caught my eye, it was a set of new mouse switches, and even a wee tease of something just over the horizon.

Keychron originally unveiled its new MagOptic switches a month ago, showing off a new type of mouse switch that combines both Hall effect sensing and optical sensing in a single switch. And you can change which option you want to use on-the-fly just in the web app software.

The idea being that Logitech's G Pro X2 SuperStrike introduced gamers to Hall effect switches for gaming mice, but dispensed with the traditional click that has become the standard for mice since time immemorial in favour of a tuned haptic motor. Xu has had feedback from folk that they weren't happy with the feel of the haptics, "a lot of people complain about this because it's very different."

"So we saw that kind of feedback, so we say, 'why not just put in the traditional feedback?' For people still missing the traditional feedback. But if they like the Logitech way, then they can try this one."

He's showing me three different switches with different kinds of feedback, the same as you would get with a keyboard switch. One is clicky, one has that tactile bump, and the other is completely linear.

"We combine this with a haptic engine—you know, just a vibrator—inside the mouse, then it's just same trick," he says.

Logitech will say it's not quite the same trick, as it spent a long time trying out and tuning its haptic motors to get the click feel as close to a traditional mouse click as it could. And, personally, I don't mind it. But with the clicky and tactile MagOptic switches, you don't have to just get close to the feeling.

"Also in the software," Xu adds, "you can change to the magnetic or optical, the Logitech one only had just the option to go the magnet."

These switches are going to start appearing in gaming mice at the end of the month, with the G-series mice being the first. Just look out for the 'HE' suffix Keychron uses for its Hall effect keyboards.

Incongruously, it's already being used in an office trackball mouse. "A lot of people say, 'so Nick, why, why do you put in this in into your office mouse?' I say 'we have the best technology, why not?' You know, it's not that super expensive. Why not just put it in here? If they don't use, they don't use it, but it still performs like a normal mouse."

Conspiratorially, he then tells me he's holding the next generation in his hand. It's a new mouse switch with something else baked inside to improve both optical and magnetic mice, but as of right now, that's all under embargo.

Computex is once again upon us, and, as is the norm, we have already seen some pretty sweet cases this year. However, darkFlash and its Floatron F1 ATX case is among the most confusing to me, as I think it's sort of ugly but also sort of neat.

The Floatron F1 ATX that our Jacob got to see on the show floor has a largely grey body, with accents and highlights which are white, black, orange and red. It is loaded with buttons, although I'm not too sure how many of them are ornamental. The top right of the case comes with both a dial and a big orange cylinder that reminds me of an alarm light. It's the kind of thing I could imagine buzzing and whirring, with steam shooting out of the side, and that's a testament to its unusual design.

The Floatron F1 ATX case is pretty weird even when not customised. All the variants come with a "floating base", with a mini shelf at the bottom (so you can display your anime figurines or model cars). This means the bottom sort of looks like a pillar, followed by a chunk taken out of the PC, and then the rest sits 'floating' above it.

The shelf does come with ARGB light strips, though, so it could look pretty sweet in the right environment. You will likely want to situate it on your desk, as the buttons are at the very bottom of the tower. Unfortunately, it's hard to know how that shelf would look on a traditional gaming desk, as the image on the site appears to be AI-generated (based on the 'REFORLE OF GAMERS' written on the GPU)

The case allows you to mount your graphics cards both vertically and horizontally, and also offers support for up to 10 fans plus an up to 360 mm AIO. It can also fit a GPU up to 415 mm. We don't yet have a price point or release date, though the M-ATX version fetches around $120 at Newegg.

darkFlash has a few neat cases at this year's show. We saw some sweet F1 ATX and F1 M-ATX custom builds, as well as the suspiciously bin-shaped W1 case, and we even got our eyes on its Hello Kitty-themed D2950V PC case.

These are only a few of the interesting cases I've spotted among Computex attendees today alone. Corsair has just announced the Warthog, which is a military-themed PC case with flight control-like buttons that looks like it was ripped straight out of Halo.

And with the week only just starting, we can expect even more PC cases soon. The memory crisis might be in full swing, sucking out some of the joy of new PCs and handhelds, but PC cases will always be a little fun, even if the gear to go in them feels increasingly less so.

Vas ist das? Das ist Tryx Vas. Okay, that kind of worked, if you excuse my substitution of a W for a V. Yes, this is the Tryx Vas, an incredibly smart-looking chassis that our Jacob Ridley just sent us some enticing pictures of from the show floor of Computex 2026.

We don't have much more to go off than the pictures, unfortunately, as the little placard that usually gives the specifications says the following:

"VAS is a pure artistic craftsmanship project by Tryx + 12Square. Blending technology and art, it features an all-metal design of stainless steel and aluminium, shaped through precise bending and cutting techniques. A unique three-dimensional art piece dedicated to spaces that pursue ultimate aesthetic beauty."

My main recollection of Tryx's products is a fabric case seen at last year's Computex. But I reckon this new one outshines that.

The briefcase-alike PC case does look to be a Mini-ITX affair, judging by the size of the chassis compared to its I/O ports on the rear. In addition to ventilation slots, it has a giant intake fan on the side, directly on top of the motherboard, and it looks like the GPU sits behind the mobo itself, presumably with the PSU at the opposite end to the I/O.

Those are just my best guesses, though, because the insides are all blocked off by the steel. Which itself looks very plain, as it should for a build like this.

I must say, though, my brain can't quite make out whether it says 'smart briefcase' or 'industrial air conditioning unit', but hey, that could be a selling point in itself. If you squint, it even has an air of blower-style GPU to it... okay, maybe I'm reaching a little with that one.

The last time I was a regular Sims player was, well, in the era of The Sims. The first one. Since those ancient days, it's my understanding that the series—or at least The Sims 4—has turned into a platform for some of the most exotic and enthusiastic sexual experimentation mankind has yet produced, largely thanks to its mega-popular Wicked Whims mod.

So I should not be surprised, but maybe lightly scandalised, that the Paralives community has quickly made a whole medley of NSFW mods for the game, then promptly made those mods the most popular among players (spotted by TheGamer).

After releasing in early access just a week ago, Paralives' most-popular mods over on Nexus are already, well, just what you expect. The big swinging champ at the moment—the most popular mod of all—is called (I cannot advise strongly enough against clicking this in public or at work) "Parapenis", if you require some sign of where things are at.

Parapenis, which I have now viewed in my work browser, boldly declares that "Freeballing is for everyone" and gives your masculine Parapeople… exactly what you'd expect. Exactly what you'd expect comes in three sizes, ranging from large to small. For a wishful definition of small. Doesn't seem that small to… a friend of mine. Who I asked about it. Ahem.

That is only one of a suite of freethinking modifications. There's also multiple de-censor mods, genital and buttock sliders (that was the name of my band in university), adult toys, more pubic hair mods than you'd anticipate, and, of course, the Parapenis companion mod: Parapussy.

Some days I write about multi-billion dollar corporate acquisitions. Other days it's Parapussy.

Of the top 10 most popular Paralives mods at the time of writing, seven are fully NSFW, and two of the remaining three are underwear mods, which might be NSFW if your W is especially square.

The thing is, on a more serious note, the proliferation and accessibility of mods like these are probably downright essential if Paralives ever hopes to carve out space for itself in the Sims-dominated life sim world. It seems fairly obvious to me that letting your freak flag fly is a key part of the appeal for these games' audience. If the Parapenises are already there just a week after launch? That suggests to me Paralives is in a pretty healthy place, audience-wise.