I'm pretty staunchly opposed to the use of generative AI—for me, it's the one-two punch of dubiously sourced datasets and the argument that these models can replace the human creatives they so often rip off. That said, even I'm a little bit intrigued by AI's application in cybersecurity.

Case in point, Microsoft recently shared that it is deploying AI to "identify [issues] faster, prioritize risk, and scale vulnerability discovery across the Windows codebase" as well as "reduce the time between discovery and customer protection." Specifically, Microsoft Security leverages a multi-model agentic scanning harness—or MDASH, for short.

MDASH uses multiple different AI models, including "leading third-party AI vulnerability discovery models," on dedicated Cloud infrastructure to scan for vulnerabilities within Windows.

The executive vice president of Windows + Devices, Pavan Davuluri, explains, "A scanner pipeline scans critical binaries and validates candidates using multi-model debate across multiple model families. Confirmed candidates then flow to a separate, Windows-specific prove pipeline that helps eliminate remaining false positives, so only the highest-confidence findings reach the engineering team."

Multiple times, the emphasis is placed on the use of AI tools "to reduce the time from discovery to protection," whereas 'human expertise' is still what handles key security decisions and fixes.

Davuluri goes on to add, "As AI helps defenders discover more issues, customers will see a higher volume of security updates included in each security release. This is evidence that defenders are getting better at identifying and addressing issues. Our focus is to effectively utilize these AI tools to support faster protection, stronger engineering systems and more actionable guidance for customers."

Microsoft is far from the only company leveraging AI, with Firefox's CTO raving about Claude Mythos' bug-hunting capabilities after it found 271 vulnerabilities in the browser earlier this year. Last year, we also saw an AI hold the top spot in a leaderboard that ranks people who hunt for system vulnerabilities.

Obviously, I'm still not thrilled by the fact that these cybersecurity applications are necessitated by threat actors increasingly using AI in their attacks. For example, one AI-assisted hacking group hit targets with a complicated 'social engineering' scam involving deepfaked CEOs, spoofed Zoom calls, and a malicious troubleshooting program.

That said, both LLMs and AI agents can also be manipulated themselves, with security researchers finding that both bad maths and even poetry can be leveraged to get around AI models' safety guard rails. With all sides leveraging machine learning to some degree, it's hard not to feel like it's a bit of a race to the bottom—or wonder which side will win out.

Nvidia's RTX 50-series cards have a tendency to run cool and quiet. On average, at least. The current generation of Nvidia GPUs were previously claimed to have had their hotspot sensor removed, which lead to limited temp readings in real-time monitoring tools like GPU-Z, as only the regular GPU and memory temperature data is available.

However, Brazilian modding and repair channel Paulo Gomes claims to have gained access to hotspot measurements on RTX 50-series GPUs via MODS, or Nvidia Modular Diagnostic Software, an internal Nvidia tool that appears to have leaked to some repair channels and Discord servers (via Techpowerup).

By the seems of it, RTX 50-series GPUs do in fact have a hotspot temperature reporting sensor, but it's disabled at a driver level on boot. The Nvidia MODS tool bypasses the driver restriction, allowing users to see the exact hotspot temperature, making it easier to diagnose a misaligned cooler or improper application of thermal paste.

Which is what Paulo Gomes has been doing in order to diagnose RTX 50-series cards with abnormal gaming performance and high fan noise, due to thermal throttling.

In the given example, a Gigabyte RTX 5070 Ti was reporting an average temperature of around 68 °C , but had an actual hotspot maximum temp of 107 °C due to poor cooler contact. After replacing the thermal paste and ensuring the cooler was correctly fitted, the hotspot temperatures dropped to 100 °C, resulting in much better performance.

Given the sheer number of AIB coolers strapped to Nvidia's latest efforts, it's no surprise that some become victims to poor implementation of thermal interface material. That being said, it's not the first Gigabyte thermal paste-related issue we've been made aware of.

As to why hotspot data is blocked in the first place for RTX 50-series cards? No idea. Many Nvidia RTX 50-series GPUs have passed through our hands since release, and we've not had issues with poor performance (relative to expectations) or thermal problems with any of them.

Still, the MODS tool is said to be out there, floating within the murky world of Discord. Be careful with what you download though, yes? There's nothing worse than getting an unintentional dose of malware to compound your PC issues, let me tell you.

For PC hardware enthusiasts, the good news has been awfully slim pickings of late. What with the ongoing RAMpocalypse, new GPU generations apparently delayed indefinitely and the seeming inevitability of ever more expensive computer chips, it's nearly all gloom and doom.

Nearly, that is, but not quite. The glimmer of hope in the barren wasteland that used to be affordable PC gaming? That'll be monitors. They keep getting cheaper and better at the same time, a bit like computer chips used to. In fact, in the last few months I've reviewed the most affordable examples yet of two cutting-edge display technologies, mini-LED and OLED.

Both can now be had for under $350 in 27-inch 1440p format. Representing mini-LED is the remarkable KTC M27T6S, a monitor so good it actually shifted my view on mini-LED technology in general.

Stepping up for OLED is the Alienware AW2726DM. Alienware has form when it comes to bringing OLED display technology in at a lower price than the competition and the AW2726DM makes what many gamers see as the ultimate display technology more accessible than ever before.

We're not quite at price parity, of course. The mini-LED KTC monitor comes in around $290 to the Alienware OLED's $350. But they're close enough for cross shopping to be pretty plausible. So the question is, should you make budget mini-LED or budget OLED your PC gaming panel of choice?

What are OLED and mini-LED?

First up, it's worth understanding just how dramatically different these two display technologies are despite the fact that they both exist for essentially the same reason. The name of the game for both mini-LED and OLED, after all, is improved lighting control.

What you might call traditional PC monitors in the flat-panel era have typically used LCD technology with a big, dumb monolithic backlight. OK, you could vary the brightness of that backlight. But that isn't much help if you want to display both bright and dark image elements at the same time.

Mini-LED is actually still an LCD-based display tech. But it attempts to fix the lighting issue courtesy of an array of individually addressable backlight zones allowing different brightness levels across the screen. Current mini-LED monitors usually have in the order of 1,000 to 2,000 such zones, enabling much better lighting control.

Of course, the ultimate in lighting control would be on a literally per-pixel basis, with each pixel acting as its own light source. And that's exactly what OLED panels deliver. Indeed, it's worth noting just how much more precise OLED is than mini-LED in that regard.

While the KTC M27T6S's 1,152 mini-LED dimming zones might sound like a lot, the fundamental resolution of the backlight is extremely low, something in the order of 40 by 25 zones. With a native image resolution of 2,560 by 1,440, the result is over 3,000 pixels in each zone. But with OLED, each of a 1440p panel's 3.7 million pixels has individual lighting control. That's a huge difference.

OLED panel tech comes with other fringe benefits, too. They have much faster pixel response, not far off two orders of magnitude faster. LCD panels generally come in at about 1 ms claimed response, while OLED is typically rated at 0.03 ms. OLED also has better viewing angles.

Not everything goes OLEDs way, however. Full-screen brightness is a notable weakness and it just so happens that's something mini-LED does very well. Even the very latest OLED monitors top out under 350 nits full-screen, while some mini-LED monitors can exceed 1,000 nits.

OLED also comes with the worry of burn-in. The evidence is building that OLED burn-in is something that the vast majority of users won't have to worry about for many years. But it is a real problem and something you don't have to think about at all with mini-LED.

What's better for gaming, budget mini-LED or budget OLED?

On paper, the Alienware AW2726DM looks like the faster, more responsive monitor. It's got a slight edge when it comes to refresh, hitting 240 Hz to the KTC M27T6S's 200 Hz, or 210 Hz if you want to use the slightly silly "overclocking" feature.

The Alienware's Samsung-supplied QD-OLED panel also offers massively faster 0.03 ms claimed pixel response. The KTC's IPS panel is only good for 1 ms, and even that's only for the less demanding MPRT metric as opposed to the Alienware's grey-to-grey rating.

In practice, the subjective gap isn't nearly as big as the objective specifications. Yes, the Alienware is faster. But the difference isn't nearly as dramatic as 1 ms versus 0.03 ms would have you expect. That says a lot about how far IPS panel tech has come and the fact that the KTC has sourced a pretty nippy example of the IPS panel breed.

Put it this way. If the KTC M27T6S was superior in most other ways, you wouldn't take the Alienware AW2726DM just for its speed. It is faster, but that speed isn't a killer blow. A possible exception here is esports, where refresh is king in terms of latency. But then if competitive online shooters are your absolute priority, you don't want either of these monitors. You're better off with the fastest 1080p panel you can find for this kind of money, and it's probably going to be a TN.

Instead, where the Alienware really delivers is HDR visuals, albeit with some caveats. The Alienware AW2726DM is actually only rated at 400 nits for peak HDR brightness, where the KTC will hit 1,000 nits. But the way we dumb humans perceive brightness isn't as simple as comparing specs.

Contrast matters just as much for perceived brightness as outright brightness. And the Alienware absolutely nails contrast. It can do a single pixel hitting 400 nits right next to another putting out basically zero nits. That means it's far, far better at achieving precision lighting across the whole image and a subjective sense of contrast. Small, bright details actually look brighter because they are surrounded by greater contrast.

In other words, OLED black levels are actually, well, black. The go-to test that really emphasises the difference here is a starfield panning across the display. The Alienware's OLED panel has no problem perfectly lighting individual stars as they scan across the sky.

Mini-LED monitors always involve some kind of compromise with that kind of image. The KTC M27T6S actually does the starfield test better than any other mini-LED monitor I've seen, which is pretty remarkable when you consider it's a budget model. KTC has done a really nice job on the M27T6S's backlight algorithm, that's for sure. But it's still nowhere near as good as OLED.

If all that seems a little abstract, what this all translates into is a much more natural and immersive game world using an OLED panel. There's no backlight bleed, no glowing at the edges of the screen, just what feels like a window into a stunning game world.

The Alienware's glossy panel coating actually heightens that sense, it's so clear and crisp. KTC has gone for a fairly coarse matte anti-glare coating and it both slightly softens the image and further compromises perceived black levels and contrast. In darker game scenes, the Alienware QD-OLED therefore absolutely hammers the KTC mini-LED.

However, ramp up the brightness and the tables are somewhat turned. There are some desert scenes in Cyberpunk 2077 that really show what mini-LED can do with HDR enabled. The KTC M27T6S absolutely pops, it renders the afternoon so bright that it almost hurts your eyes.

Running the two monitors side-by-side, the Alienware OLED looks awfully dull by comparison, it simply runs out of pop when you try to light up a large proportion of the panel. Meanwhile, the KTC never looks anything but retina-searingly bright.

The thing is, however, the QD-OLED panel's deficiencies are much less obvious in isolation than they are when you've got the super-bright mini-LED monitor sitting right next to it. Your eyes adjust to the light levels, to at least some degree cancelling out the objective brightness advantage of the KTC. On the other hand, you never stop seeing the washed out black tones, the lack of contrast, the glow at the edges of the panel, with an IPS panel, even one with a mini-LED backlight.

What's better for daily computing?

First, let's square away something that is often overstated. Just as OLED's speed isn't quite as massive an advantage in the real world as you might expect, the mini-LED KTC M27T6S's font rendering is not, in truth, dramatically better than the QD-OLED Alienware AW2726DM.

Yes, that QD-OLED panel has a suboptimal triangular subpixel structure, as opposed to conventional RGB-stripe. And yes the KTC's fonts are clearer, but only marginally. The bottom line is that neither monitor has particularly good pixel density and even the KTC doesn't render terribly nice fonts. If that's what you care about, you need something like a 27-inch 4K panel or even a 5K model.

For daily computing, both monitors are likewise plenty fast enough. So, it's more the static image quality where the differences lie. As ever, the QD-OLED Alienware has much better black levels and contrast, the mini-LED KTC can run brighter.

There are caveats to all that, however. For starters, there's the question of how bright you actually want a monitor, day-to-day. Arguably, the KTC is too bright for daily comfort in SDR content when set to full reheat.

But what if you do tend to prefer a really punchy looking monitor? Does the QD-OLED Alienware fall short? The simple answer is yes, but it can be mitigated. In SDR mode, the Alienware only hits 200 nits. However, if you switch to HDR mode and then max out the SDR content brightness in the Windows Display Settings menu, you can get pretty good results.

It works best if you prefer to run apps and view websites in dark mode. As with pretty much all OLEDs, the more of the screen you light up in HDR mode, the lower the peak brightness you can achieve. With both monitors running Windows in dark mode, HDR enabled and SDR brightness maxed out, the brightness gap is substantially closed and the Alienware feels really very punchy. And at the same time, it retains its contrast and black level advantage.

The exception to that involves the characteristic purple tint of QD-OLED panels in bright ambient light. This can be problematic during the day, if you, for instance, situate the Alienware right near a big window that lets in lots of natural light. In that scenario, the QD-OLED will also look a little overly warm in terms of colour temperature, while the KTC's IPS panel looks more neutral.

So, what's the best budget panel technology overall?

This is going to sound like a massive cop out, but much of this comes down to personal preference. No question, there are some objective pros and cons. The Alienware and its QD-OLED panel is definitely faster, it has better black levels and contrast, plus superior viewing angles.

The mini-LED KTC, on the other hand, is clearly the brighter of the two and renders fonts more precisely thanks to its RGB-stripe subpixel structure. But what you, personally, make of those pros and cons will be another matter.

The fact that it's not an absolute slam dunk for one or other of the two options is in itself telling. But if you absolutely twisted my arm for a verdict, it would go something like this. It all comes down to brightness.

The QD-OLED option is better in almost every other way, so the question is what you make of its outright brightness. In standard SDR mode, I'd say the brightness of the Alienware AW2726DM is problematic. If I had to use it in that mode all the time, I'd still take it over the KTC M27T6S because of the far superior contrast, black levels, speed and viewing angles. But it would be a close run thing.

On the other hand, if I am allowed to switch on HDR mode, ramp up the SDR brightness in Windows and view basically all my apps in dark mode, then it's a much clearer win for the Alienware and thus for cheap OLED tech. But there would be times in games when it looked just a little bit dull and I'd know, deep down, the KTC and its sizzling mini-LED backlight would have given a more vibrant experience in that moment. As ever, you pays your money and you takes your choice. Good luck!

While I'm still side-eyeing and tentatively approaching AI for use for things like ideation, the world around me is breezing on by, putting it to use in every which way you can imagine. Some ways weird, some wonderful, and some probably incredibly wasteful. What's not wasteful, to my eyes, is putting it to the task of 3D printing housing for mainboards, which it can apparently do very well.

David Soria Parra, a member of technical staff at Anthropic, has used Claude Fable to successfully design a three-tray rack for three 13-inch Framework mainboards. The mainboards are the actual processor-clad circuit boards inside Framework laptops that you can either buy separately or tear out of one of the built laptops. Presumably three of them will be used for a multi-PC setup, or a server, or something like that.

Parra was working on the project since at least early June, having the AI use Fusion 360, AKA Autodesk Fusion, via an "MCP server", which is a way to let an LLM communicate with it (safely).

Apparently it researched the dimensions and so on, and then came up with a design. Parra said it was "straight from Claude to printing", although the finished product, Parra says, took 2–3 iterations with the model:

"I connected the fusion 360 MCP server and used Claude Code with dynamic workflows. Claude created the Fusion file and the stl for every component. So it was print ready. It also got me the bill of material to buy."

The recent final picture shows three Framework mainboards sitting in the 3D printed frame. The LLM even made sure there's a cutout for the heatsink and room for the heat pipe.

I suppose how well it works in practice, ie, how high temperatures get, will be the main question. Still, for the AI-tentative and completely design-inept like myself, this is the kind of thing that catches my eye. A cool project, for sure. Now just hand me one of those Framework mainboards given you seem to have so many spare.

If you're rockin' a current-gen AMD graphics card, there are yet more hints that multi frame gen (MFG), ie, frame gen that promises more than 2x frame rate, could soon be with us. 'Soon' is relative, of course, especially in the case of AMD, but detective work by a user on the Chinese forum Chiphell has revealed the presence of FSR MFG ratios up to 8x hidden in recent drivers (via Wccftech).

The user discovered the setting in the RadeonTuner tool, which hooks into the official AMD driver and provides a different app on top. This app, crucially, can present things in the driver that the regular AMD Adrenalin app might not yet give you access to. Things such as the FSR ratio drop-down.

To be clear, we already knew that MFG was probably being worked on by AMD, because earlier this year there was mention of "frame generation ratios" in documentation for the ADLX API. This implied that game developers were now being allowed to tinker with frame generation ratios, which implies the existence of ratios above 2x. In other words: multi frame gen.

Now, we have more confirmation of this, and not only that, but (A) it's seemingly in the actual drivers rather than just SDK documentation, and (B) the ratio maxes out at 8x. For reference, Nvidia's Multi Frame Gen maxes out at 6x.

As someone who uses an AMD RX 9070 XT as my daily driver, I am keenly aware of just how long it's taken AMD to implement promised technologies that Nvidia has already long been able to deliver. Technologies, that is, like multi frame gen, not to mention the latest upscaling and frame gen technologies in general, in more than a smattering of games.

The RadeonTuner tool also seems to show FSR Ray Regeneration and Neural Radiance Caching overrides, which will presumably allow us to override a game's settings to force FSR ray reconstruction and neural caching for better ray tracing.

I can't help but wonder, though, whether AMD users would rather more adoption of the latest FSR technologies we already have, such as regular 'Redstone' ML-powered frame gen and upscaling. There have been improvements on this front of late, though, with the technologies being allowed via driver-level overrides even for previous-gen AMD GPUs.

I also can't help but wonder how 8x frame gen will work in practice. I know for my part, I struggle to deal with the latency of even 3x or 4x frame gen on Nvidia cards. But I'm particularly sensitive to latency, so maybe 8x frame gen will have its place.

One of the unfortunate drawbacks of social media is that anyone, and I mean anyone, can now have a public feud that the rest of us have to witness. Case in point, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Elon Musk are having a tiff on X, and it's starting to get out of hand.

Responding to an X post from Elon Musk, in which the SpaceX CEO and world's richest person declared that Altman "takes scamming to a whole new level," the OpenAI chief said: "Homeboy you're the one selling public market investors on short-term space data centers."

To which Musk replied: "We start flying them next year. Maybe you can come see them if your parole officer approves."

"After stealing an open source AI charity, you then stole all of Apple's phone technology! Wow." Musk continued. "What do you plan for an encore? That's tough to beat."

The open source AI charity claim relates to the much-reported Musk vs Altman trial earlier this year, in which the former accused Altman and OpenAI of breaching a non-profit contract by pivoting into a for-profit business, with Musk alleging he had been deceived into donating $38 million earlier in the company's history.

Musk lost the trial after an advisory jury decided the statute of limitations prevented a verdict in his favour. As for the Apple claim, the company has filed a lawsuit against two former employees who now work for OpenAI, alleging theft of intellectual property.

Apple claims that one of its former staff members "surreptitiously accessed and downloaded dozens of Apple’s confidential hardware-related files, including voluminous, detailed information about unreleased products, engineering presentations, technical specifications, and proprietary project data," before using that info to help OpenAI, among other complaints.

As you would imagine, the replies to Musk and Altman's posts regarding these issues are full of cheerleaders for either side, along with various other allegations against both tech chiefs. Because it's the internet. And civilised debate is apparently a rare thing.

As is, I don't know, arguing in private? Reading these posts is a bit like stumbling into a WhatsApp group you weren't supposed to join. Both seem to have withdrawn from the internet slappyfight for now, hopefully because someone from their respective legal teams has told them it might not be the best idea.

Or perhaps a second round is in the works, who can guess? Still, there's little love lost between the two, and a whole lot of drama playing out on a very public stage. Anyone got any popcorn?

Games on Steam have already been enjoying the various shades of the Steam Deck Compatibility check mark for some time now. Well, now you can check a title's compatibility on both the Steam Machine and SteamOS right there on its store page.

A few beats after the Steam Machine's June release, you can now check whether Valve's funky game box is up to the task of playing the depths of your backlog at a glance. On Steam, just click 'learn more' next to the Steam Deck compatibility rating for a brief breakdown of what works and what doesn't across Valve's various hardware and software platforms.

However, not all games enjoy a full Steam Machine compatibility rating; as spotted by Ars Technica, Black Myth: Wukong's compatibility is still listed as unknown, accompanied by a message that says "Valve is still learning" about the 2024 game, and that it doesn't "currently have further information regarding Steam Machine compatibility." In the case of Wukong, this could be because the game is too GPU and/or CPU intensive, causing the title to fail to reach a minimum threshold of, say, FPS while in-play on Valve's game box.

Otherwise, the game is listed as running "successfully on SteamOS". That means you're not limited to the Steam Machine's hardware specs (or indeed its disappointing price point or availability). You could instead opt to enjoy Wukong plus all the benefits of SteamOS on hardier hardware from someone other than Valve, such as the Lenovo Legion Go S.

Swapping to SteamOS on your home machine, for example, can come with its own share of drawbacks, however. For just one thing, Valve's Linux-based OS is known to often not play well with the kernel-level anti-cheat systems you'll increasingly find in competitive games nowadays.

Anyway, Valve is apparently "still learning" about a number of games when it comes to Steam Machine compatibility, including but not limited to Dragon’s Dogma 2, Elden Ring Nightreign, Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater, and Resident Evil Requiem. That said, a number of games that are just about 'Playable' on Valve's handheld—such as 007: First Light—make the most of the Steam Machine's more powerful hardware and get bumped up to 'Verified'.

Personally, I've been jumping between much less graphically demanding titles. Level-based diorama builder Shanty Town enjoys 'Verified' status on both Steam Deck and Steam Machine, plus SteamOS compatibility. My other favourite this month has been Magical Princess (I feel like the title says it all), which instead enjoys the caveat-laden rating of 'Playable' on both the Steam Deck as well as the Steam Machine due to some text input and button glyph display shenanigans.

For now, you can't filter store results via Steam Machine or SteamOS compatibility, though that feature will likely soon follow. After all, the Great on Frame category was recently introduced, likely heralding the Steam Frame's imminent release. When that VR headset drops, we'll potentially see a similar compatibility category arrive too.

A report from The Wall Street Journal tells the tale of Tim Cook's visit to the White House last summer, in which the Apple chief attempted to persuade the administration to abandon plans to impose tariffs on 100% of all semiconductor imports.

Apple was eventually granted an exemption to the tariffs, in return for a commitment to invest $100 billion into US manufacturing efforts. However, the WSJ says that US president Donald Trump and US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick also "urged" Cook to use Intel's manufacturing plants to make some of its chips.

Later that same month, the US government converted $9 billion in federal grants into a 10% stake in Intel, making it the company's largest shareholder. Trump announced in June of this year that Apple had agreed to build chips with Intel in the US in a Truth Social post, although neither company has issued a formal confirmation of the deal beyond a reported preliminary agreement.

According to the WSJ, Apple plans to have Intel make chips for Mac laptops and iPhones, according to one of its sources familiar with the negotiations.

Intel's stock price, meanwhile, has risen significantly over the past year, more than quadrupling since CEO Lip-Bu Tan took over the reigns in March of 2025. As the outlet reports, much of that good fortune can be attributed to CPU demand for AI servers, but the WSJ argues that the Trump administration's "financial and strategic patronage" has been "the more crucial factor."

Tan is said to visit Washington around once a month to meet with officials from the US Commerce Department, and "talks on the phone regularly" with Lutnick. Meanwhile, Bill Frauenhofer, described as the US government's "chips czar" is said to receive a quarterly briefing from Intel CFO David Zinser, with members of his staff meeting regularly with Intel executives.

All of which is to say, Intel's links with the US government seem to run very deeply indeed, after previous years of financial strife. And Apple, for its part, will be keen to secure chip manufacturing capacity for its products beyond that of TSMC, given the Taiwanese chip giant's capacity constraints in the middle of the AI boom.

So, the deal between the two makes a lot of sense. However, this arrangement certainly fits with the Trump administration's push to bolster chip manufacturing on US soil, and given the federal investment in Intel, it also appears to be a good bet financially for all involved.

Not least of all Apple, which, if these reports are correct and the deal goes ahead, managed to avoid some major tariffs in the process. Make of that, as they say, as you will.

It was still a ways off, but I'd kind of latched on to '2028' being the end in sight of the raging memory supply crisis. However, SK hynix CEO Kwak Noh-Jung reckons we should only be so lucky.

"We forecast that ‌next year will be the worst year in the industry's history from the supply perspective," Kwak recently told Reuters. Not only is 2027 apparently set to be even worse, but Kwak also predicts the situation won't improve for years beyond the 2028 date I'd been holding on to, when SK hynix, Micron, and Samsung are all set to complete capacity expanding builds.

"Our customer demand continues to go up, while our capacity has limitations," Kwak said, "We still forecast that customer demand will remain higher than our supply capacity even beyond 2030. But we are doing our best to solve the problem."

The company also began trading on Nasdaq last Friday, with a US megalisting of shares that was seven times oversubscribed. SK hynix said then that it wants to use the resulting capital for at least two more construction projects in South Korea: a fabrication hub in Yongin, as well as an advanced packaging facility in Cheongju.

Kwak also said that the company is considering a number of other global sites for future wafer ⁠fabrication investment. He said, "The ​US, Japan, and Southeast Asia are all under consideration. Nothing has been decided yet. We are evaluating which location can provide the greatest business advantage."

The tech stock market is still incredibly volatile though; while SK hynix shares were up 13.3% at $168.85 on the Nasdaq Friday afternoon, the company's shares then plunged by 15% in Seoul on Monday. According to Reuters, this marks the company's biggest one-day decline in nearly 20 years. As for the company's US-listed shares come Monday morning, those dipped by 9.2% to $152.50.

What explains that dip? For one thing, analysts say that South Korea's recent multi-billion dollar investments in the AI chip industry, plus all of those other capacity-expanding builds I mentioned earlier, has heightened investor anxiety that tight memory supply may tip over into oversupply in the coming years. Jing Jie Yu, an equity analyst at Morningstar, said, "Our base case here is the fresh capacity in 2027 and 2028 coming up in earnest will improve supply dynamics, thereby leading to price erosion."

Furthermore, the AI bubble is arguably looking a bit strained. Morningstar's director, Lorraine Tan, said, "Despite accelerating artificial intelligence adoption, monetisation remains uncertain and profitability for key players, such as OpenAI, appears to be under pressure. Funding is also shifting toward debt or equity, raising concerns about the maintainability of current spending levels."

In other words, yes, the industry is hoovering up all the memory, but if AI spending fails to see a sensible return on that investment, or data centre build out calms down, the bubble may burst and there will be much less demand for all of that silicon.

If you ask Microsoft Copilot if it's a web app, it answers in the negative. Technically, as the AI points out, Copilot now interfaces with you through an Edge-based web app installed on your Windows 11 PC, but the model lives elsewhere in the cloud.

And said Copilot app is getting a helpful new feature, according to Windows Latest, referred to as PC Insights. This will allow it to connect to Windows APIs and analyse your system hardware, answering questions like "what is my current CPU usage" and helping you find what might be slowing down your PC.

Other example prompts found by Windows Latest include "Do I have enough space for a 100 GB game," "What graphics card do I have," and "Is my antivirus running?"

The feature is said to be currently rolling out to Copilot US users, and sounds rather useful, even if it can't directly fix PC performance problems by itself. Unfortunately, the web app can be something of a RAM hog, which raises the possibility that Copilot itself may be contributing to your dog-slow PC performance on a RAM-limited machine.

Windows Latest recorded 791.7 MB of RAM usage from the Copilot app at idle, suggesting it can reach up to 1 GB of system RAM usage in total. I've left the Copilot app open in the background as I write this article, and it's currently sitting at around 560 MB—making it the third most RAM-heavy application currently running on my PC.

That might not sound like a big deal, but anyone using Copilot to help find resource-sapping applications running in the background may find it's the app itself that's taking the biggest chunk of precious RAM space. And it's not like we're living in a world where extra system RAM is cheap and easy to obtain.

It's not the only RAM-sapping offender I have to bat away on a regular basis, either. The WhatsApp, err... app is also a web-based affair these days, and regularly carves out 1 GB+ chunks of my system resources. Which seems a bit rich, given the previous, non-web app implementation barely used any RAM capacity at all.

Although Microsoft has committed to making Windows 11 leaner and meaner in response to user critique in recent months, it still feels like a bloated OS in comparison to... well, almost any other operating system you can think of.

And while I welcome the idea that Copilot will soon be able to help less-computer-minded users track down potential system problems, it seems like one of the most useful things it could do to improve performance would be to shut itself down entirely. Which is... not the greatest state of affairs, let's be honest.

The idea of taking serious hardware horsepower on the go was always the dream of my misspent, console-gaming youth. Don't get me wrong, I've always loved how older handheld systems made a calling card out of their limitations (and in the case of Nintendo, offered a hardware gimmick or gaming experience you couldn't find anywhere else). The fact that now you can play many of the same games on a portable device that you can also play in your gamer den would've blown my younger self's mind.

Unfortunately, the dream-come-true of handheld gaming PCs feels like it is coming to an end.

Our Andy updates our handheld gaming PC deals each week and recently shared a shocking revelation: 'Somehow, the $1,000 Asus ROG Ally Xbox X is the best value gaming handheld I can think of right now.' If you've got the cash then, sure, the Asus ROG Ally Xbox X with its AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme chip, 24 GB of RAM, and 1 TB of onboard SSD storage makes sense for the asking price. But where does that leave you if you're on a much tighter budget?

The memory supply crisis has raised the pricing floor of all handhelds. Case in point, the device that we still rate as the best budget handheld gaming PC is the Steam Deck. The more affordable LCD models were quietly discontinued last year, leaving those looking to buy a Steam Deck new with only the very shiny OLED models to choose from. Years after release, the price for the base 512 GB OLED model has increased from $549 to $789. The 1 TB model has seen an almost 50% price increase, jumping from $649 to $949. The answer, then, to where that leaves the more budget-conscious? Without a paddle.

Despite this price hike (and the handheld's aged internals), both models of the Steam Deck sold out in North America shortly after the increase was announced back in May. The 1 TB model, which is going for £779 where I'm based in the UK, appears to be out of stock again at the time of writing. But I doubt this is a sustainable trend.

Let's zoom out a smidge. I update our best SSD deals every week, so I've not had the luxury of ignoring how storage prices have been climbing since the tail end of last year. Research suggests that memory prices are likely to rise as much as 50% in Q3 alone. Recent analysis by Bernstein suggests prices won't dip until 2028, when major manufacturers are expected to complete a number of capacity-increasing builds.

But here and now in 2026, it's not just gaming PC components that have seen price increases as a result of the memory supply crisis. For example, the Playstation 5 has seen three different price increases over the last six years and now costs a minimum of $650. I've written about it before but, despite buying a launch day PS5, it's becoming increasingly unlikely I'll pick up a PS6 day one. After all, if the PS5 Pro costs $900 today, how much more will the PS6 cost?

Hey, maybe Bernstein's predictions will bear out and hardware pricing will look a lot more sensible by the time Sony's next-gen console drops in 2028 or even 2029. But in the here and now, handheld gaming PCs remain in an arguably much more difficult position within the consumer market.

For those who don't already have a gaming PC, there's little doubt that a $650 base PS5 is going to look like the more economical option (particularly as Sony won't be bringing its handful of exclusives to PC in future, but maybe it's just me mourning the loss of, like, four games). If you already own a gaming PC, you'll likely want to save your pennies for increasingly expensive component upgrades. Where would a handheld feature in either budget?

The data suggests gamers generally are still willing to part with the cash for new hardware—though they aren't necessarily picking up a handheld gaming PC. A recent Circana report shared that the handheld of choice was overwhelmingly the Nintendo Switch 2, with the hybrid console largely credited for a year-over-year hardware spending increase that grew by 69%, climbing to $500 million this past March.

The Switch 2 saw its own price increase announced back in May, so it's worth pondering how much of this recent consumer clamour was motivated by a desire to scoop the console before it became more expensive. Even so, Nintendo's handheld is set to cost $500 from September 1 in the US.

There are plenty of PC gamers who have no interest in what the big N is doing these days, but a broad-view of today's gaming audience suggests a lot of gamers are more platform-agnostic. For instance, a 2023 Comscore report found 76% of gamers play across multiple platforms. Therefore, it's hard to ignore handheld gaming PC's most obvious competitor, even if the Switch 2 is underpowered compared to many of the available portable gaming options.

In short, the most performant handheld gaming PCs ask a price that's far too rich for my blood, and the best budget option is arguably not quite as compelling as Nintendo's offering (even after the price hike comes into effect later this year).

To paraphrase Andy's point, there's a chance gaming handhelds eventually revert to occupying a boutique niche for gamers with especially deep pockets. That's how they were in the before times prior to the Steam Deck's launch, with smaller Chinese outfits, such as OneXPlayer, releasing expensive, weak, poorly optimised devices. That's not really the future I want for handheld gaming PCs, but it's a strong possibility. However, given the state of, well, everything, I find myself taking a bleaker outlook.

In the longer term, it doesn't feel like handheld gaming PCs are the most economical proposition for brands or manufacturers either. For example, back in March Ayaneo suspended pre-orders for its uber-powerful Next 2 gaming handheld after costs approached 'twice the price we originally set'. To be clear, I strongly doubt Valve is going to pack it in with the Steam Deck any time soon. However, smaller companies with a much less diverse portfolio than, say, the company behind one of the largest storefronts for digital games, are likely to struggle.

What seems certain is that prices will continue to rise and meaningful chunks of the devices' audience will be priced out. My concern is that the maths may simply no longer math, and hardware companies will increasingly decide that handheld gaming PCs specifically just aren't worth it. For my wide-eyed younger self, I hope I'm wrong.

If you thought Meta was stepping away from the VR market after seemingly turning away from the Metaverse and closing 3 VR studios earlier this year, think again, buddy. It seems like the plan as of right now is to put out multiple headsets in the future, memory crisis be damned.

The news comes from the mouth of Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth, who took to Instagram to answer questions (via UploadVR). When asked if Meta has given up on VR, he said, "No. We've talked about this a lot this year—kind of an odd comment. We've just updated the user interface profoundly for the first time in years. We've talked openly about the fact that we're building multiple next-generation headsets."

That's true. In the Q4 earnings call for 2025, which was announced in January 2026, Meta CFO Susan Li said the company is still building future headsets. Bosworth also said a potential Meta Quest 4 would be on the way shortly after this earnings call. However, the closing of studios doesn't exactly help her point. Bosworth addresses this point, saying, "We did get ourselves into a more sustainable shape, that's true. But no. We continue to invest quite a bit there."

Bosworth ends this answer by telling viewers to keep an eye on Meta Connect for more details. Meta Connect is Meta's yearly conference, where it communicates plans for the company going forward to the rest of the world. This year it will happen on September 23 and 24, so we should expect an announcement or tease of at least one of the headsets by then.

There is one major headset scheduled for release between now and then, though: the Steam Frame. We've seen a huge shipment of the Steam Frame going to the US recently, and the 'Great on Frame' tag has popped up on the Steam storefront. Valve said it is due to launch in the Summer, so we're expecting the headset very soon.

Both Valve's headset and whatever Meta is cooking up will have major question marks over their heads around the price, and that will be the biggest concern going forward. The Steam Frame has 16 GB of LPDDR5X memory, and the Meta Quest 3 uses 8 GB of LPDDR5 memory. There is, of course, a certain painful irony in Meta, a company going all-in on AI, potentially struggling because of the effects of AI expansion (ie, data centres slurping up all that hardware).

For Meta's next headset to truly be 'next-generation', it will need the hardware to back it up, and that hardware is likely to stay expensive for some time. This is all to say the next two years are a really bad time to put out hardware, and Meta will really want this one to land, especially given the downsizing it did earlier this year. September will be a big month for the Facebook owner, in more ways than one.

The memory supply crisis looks set to rage until at least 2028, when major players Samsung, SK hynix, and Micron all look set to complete capacity-expanding builds. However, that's still a way off. So, a number of component companies are now looking to another China-based competitor to meet their memory demands.

Earlier this week, MSI announced BIOS support on its AMD motherboards for DDR5 memory from CXMT (ChangXin Memory Technologies). Previously, you could use CXMT's modules, but these were limited to DDR5-6800. MSI's latest update now supports up to DDR5-8200 (via VideoCardz). And it's not just MSI moving forward with CXMT memory validation.

Asus joined the party by sharing a similar update for its own AM5 socket mobos. Depending on your hardware loadout, this update can support up to DDR5-8200—though the highest result Asus shared was a KingBank 2x 24 GB DDR5-6000 kit overclocked to DDR5-8400.

Unlike MSI, Asus' BIOS version 1686 is available via its global support pages and therefore not limited to use within the Chinese market. If you fancy giving it a go yourself, be sure to read Nick's market research on Chinese DRAM first. Besides KingBank and its DDR5 kit's tasty overclocked results, there are a few other Chinese options to keep an eye out for.

Tom's Hardware reported earlier this year that Corsair had started using CXMT DDR5 DRAM dies in its Vengeance RAM kits aimed at the Chinese market. Besides Corsair, Lexar is also reportedly planning to use CXMT DRAM for its new Thor DDR5-7600 CL38 memory kits (MSI's validation tests used a Lexar kit, but didn't mention a model name at the time). A DDR5-7200 CL38 configuration is expected to also be available, and both kits will comprise two 16 GB sticks.

The memory landscape being what it is, there's a lot of interest in CXMT. According to the Financial Times, the memory crisis has transformed CXMT's fortunes; besides Apple also testing the company's DRAM chips as an option for the devices it sells in China, CXMT is now the fourth largest producer of DRAM behind the usual suspects. Accounting for 11% of wafer capacity last year, that figure is expected to grow to 15% by 2028. But as for revenue, the company made a 33 billion yuan net profit during the first quarter of 2026. That represents a 719% year-on-year jump.

The company's rise to prominence isn't without controversy, though. For just one thing, a former Samsung researcher was recently sentenced to seven years in prison for leaking core DRAM semiconductor tech to CXMT. For another, the Pentagon has blacklisted CXMT for allegedly working with China’s military, according to Bloomberg, leaving Apple to apparently lobby for the clearance necessary to buy CXMT's memory. Whatever happens with those efforts, we're bound to be hearing a lot more about the DRAM chipmaker over the coming months and years.

When Qualcomm released its first batch of ARM-based Snapdragon X processors two years ago, they worked well enough, but failed to set the PC gaming world on fire. It's not really what they were meant for, and if decades of buying computer parts have taught me one thing, it's never to buy into the first generation of a new product. I still do it, of course, as the Oculus Rift sitting unloved in its box shows, but I'm always left with the feeling that I should know better.

The main downside of the OG Snapdragon, once software compatibility issues were smoothed out, was its GPU. The Adreno cores buried somewhere in the chipset felt underpowered for anything heavier than Stardew Valley, and while DirectX and Vulcan compatibility was high, and driver updates refined the process, some games just didn't work.

With the release of the Snapdragon X2, a few things have changed. The main one is that the CPU package now comes with a lot more processing cores—18 on the Elite Extreme model we've got here—but the GPU is also a lot better. It's now putting out the sort of benchmark results you'd expect from Intel iGPUs, and in some tests can even produce better results than Panther Lake.

The ASUS ZenBook A16 we're looking at here is one of the first Snapdragon X2 laptops on the market. It boasts the Elite Extreme version of the chip, a name that makes you wonder where they're going to go next if they release an even better one. Elite Extreme Pro Max Gold Caviar Truffle Edition, perhaps. This one has 18 cores, and according to CPU-Z 12 of those are Performance cores running at 4.4 GHz, with the other six being Efficient cores running at 3.6 GHz. That's a lot of cores, and with ARM chips' ability to produce exceptional single-core performance (as shown by Apple's M5 last year) I had high hopes for this one.

And I was right. The X2 doesn't hit the same Geekbench 6 heights as the M5, but it's close, and beats the desktop Core Ultra 7 265KF and mighty Ryzen 9 9955HX in the single-core test. It beats those chips in the Geekbench multi-core test too, along with the Core Ultra 9 275HX from the Alienware 16 Area 51, and roughly the same as the 14-core M4 Pro in a 16in MacBook Pro.

The elephant in the room here is Panther Lake, which is going to be appearing in new laptops at the same time as the X2. And in Geekbench, the X2 and Core X9 388H both score over 3,000 points in the single-core test, with the X2 marginally in front, but in multi-core the gap widens, probably because the Intel chip only has four of the full-fat performance cores and 16 in total. It scores 17,924. The X2: 22,785. That's a difference of almost 24%.

Moving over to the Cinebench single-core CPU rendering test, which has been known to bring laptops to their knees and in which 100 is a respectable score, the X2 scores 151. A laptop running the X9 388H scores 130 in this test, and the multi-core rendering workout goes the same way, with the X2's 1391 beating the Panther Lake chip's 1173.

All this is assuming, of course, that the same tests applied to different CPU architectures can be directly compared. Geekbench has been designed for this, though as more of a tool for plotting broad relationships rather than a perfect one-to-one comparison between PCs.

All that single-core performance makes the ZenBook A16 very responsive, and if Microsoft's new Low Latency Profile makes its way to Windows on ARM it should make things even better. The fact that Asus has paired Qualcomm's X2 with 48 GB of fast RAM certainly helps too.

Things are looking quite good for the ARM chip until you remember it still uses an integrated Adreno GPU, and we have yet to see one that's paired with a discrete graphics chip. Still, it's not bad for an iGPU, supporting DX12 Ultimate and Vulkan 1.4, and putting out enough frames to play games in 1080p as long as you don't mind medium to low settings. Cyberpunk 2077 looks surprisingly good on medium, and while there are some shimmering textures in Blackmyth: Wukong, it doesn't struggle too badly as long as you remember to switch FSR upscaling on. Older titles such as Horizon: Zero Dawn look like what they are: PS4 games (albeit ones running at nearly 60 fps in this case, rather than the locked 30 fps of the console version). But it's great to see the Adreno is capable enough to play them as they were originally meant to be seen.

There are still some issues with the occasional game—F1 2024, for example (and this might be a different story with a more up to date release), putting up a notice that it's not compatible with ARM processors. This could also be because it's a fairly new processor at the time of writing, and a few software patches and driver updates will sort it right out.

On the outside, this is an unassuming laptop, though as a 16-incher it has a presence that you just don't find in smaller models. It's a kind of beigy grey, which isn't utterly unpleasant but certainly stands out from all the black and silver casings out there, and is made from Asus' Ceraluminum material that's some sort of unholy amalgam of aluminium and ceramics. It has a matte feel, and makes the A16 extremely light, but it's also stiff enough to handle by the corner without the trackpad becoming non-functional.

That trackpad is a big one, too, smoother than the surrounding casing but the same colour, and a better experience than the keyboard, which doesn't have much travel and is the worst aspect of this particular package. The screen, however, might be one of the best. It's a 2.8k 16:10 OLED, not a touch-sensitive one, with a 120Hz refresh rate. It's sharp, bright (500 nits), colourful and all the things a laptop screen should be. Battery life is exceptional—at least it is if all you're doing is looping a video, at which it kept going for almost 17 hours. Make it work a bit harder and that's going to drop, and there's a fan to keep it cool when it's under load.

So once again, Qualcomm has released a capable chip with a bit of a weak GPU, though it's nowhere near as bad as last time. Asus has then put it into a laptop with an excellent screen, though it is a little bit expensive when you could pick up something with a low-end GeForce chip for less, and have a superior gaming experience.

I can't help thinking though, that if someone could teach the X2 to talk to an RTX card, even as an eGPU, then we could have something truly fearsome on our hands.

Nvidia isn't one to shy away from memorabilia. From signed golden graphics cards to selling CEO Jensen Huang's iconic leather coat for charity, it's fond of putting out things for collectors. But I never quite expected today's reveal, a series of collectable trading cards.

Shared to Nvidia's YouTube page, the first set of trading cards "celebrates the graphics cards, tech demos, and games that started it all".

Series 1, the first set of trading cards, focuses on GeForce and has a nostalgic tone to it. We've only seen a brief look so far, but the cards focus on older Nvidia creations like the NV1, GeForce 3, GTX 1080, and even the Medusa demo. Of all the places to start, it's a pretty good one, and an iconic era for Nvidia to look back at.

It's not made clear how many cards are in the pack, or how limited they will be just yet, but I do know I kind of want one. Unfortunately, the only way to get them is by attending live events or winning community giveaways during what Nvidia calls the "Summer of RTX".

The good news here, though, is that you don't have to pay anything to get your hands on the cards. Well, you may have to pay for flights or travel, but you won't be handing Nvidia any cash to get your hands on them.

And the fact that this is called Series 1 implies to me that Nvidia isn't done here, though the RTX era seems less iconic in its visuals than the GTX era. The RTX 5090 is a beautiful card, but aside from their relative size, it's not that different to the RTX 4090, and bizarre box art is far less common on graphics cards nowadays (much to my annoyance).

Though it's a pretty sweet collection, and quite fun, Nvidia has drawn flak in the comment section, and it's easy to see why. The reason why gaming hardware is so hard to buy at reasonable prices right now is because of the explosion of AI over the last few years, and Nvidia has played a major part in that. As one comment puts it, "Finally a card I can afford."

More comments decry the prices of graphics cards while Nvidia is putting out non-graphics cards, but some comments seem to believe that Nvidia is selling the trading cards, which does explain some of the cynicism. I personally think they're mighty neat, but it's easy to see why people are instinctively dismissive of a company that is essentially enabling the technology that is making it harder and harder to get graphics cards, memory, and storage unless you're willing to offer an arm and a leg in return.

So, I've got to ask: Did you guys see this whole memory crisis coming a mile off, or what? Because, while we're continually bemoaning the state of the industry with AI datacenter business hoarding all the available memory as fast as Samsung, SK hynix, and Micron can make it—and the ensuing pricing batshittery that has followed it—you lot have seemingly been securing yourselves against the RAMpocalypse.

With the topic of widespread hardware price rises owing to this memory demand and supply issue being something that is almost permanently in our heads on the PCG hardware team, we thought it worth just finding out how you guys were faring in these troubling times.

So, over the past week, we've been asking one simple question: How much RAM do you have in your current gaming rig? And the answers have been interestingly enlightening; basically, the vast majority of you had already protected yourself from the core issue by filling your machines with a whole lot of RAM already.

I will admit I had my own expectations, which have been utterly overturned by the data you guys have provided. I thought that there would effectively be some level-pegging between those rocking 16 GB of RAM and those with 32 GB in their gaming PCs. But the numbers are not even close.

A solid 50% of readers already have 32 GB of RAM in their main gaming PCs, which is by far the biggest contingent in the results. Those with 16 GB of RAM surprisingly only make up 18% of the readers who responded to the survey, which is actually less than the number of people who've gone even bigger with 64 GB of RAM. Golly.

How much RAM do you have in your current gaming rig?

Votes (%)

32 GB

50

64 GB

20

16 GB

18

MOAR THAN 64 GB, MWAHAHAHAHA

7

8 GB

3

48 GB

2

Votes (%) Data

Product	Value
32 GB	50
64 GB	20
16 GB	18
MOAR THAN 64 GB, MWAHAHAHAHA	7
8 GB	3
48 GB	2

In fact, if you combine the 3% still sporting 8 GB of memory (how do you get anything done, and which version of Linux are you using?) and those with 16 GB, that only just about tops the number with 64 GB, and then by only 133 votes.

Then you have the local AI luvvers (surely) who are sporting more than 64 GB of RAM, which makes up a surprisingly large 7% of responders.

The thing to note here, however, is that we are still just talking about capacity, and that isn't the be-all and end-all of memory. You could be sitting on a ton of DDR4 RAM with a limited upgrade path for future CPU platforms. But in today's climate, I'd probably be happier sitting on 32 GB DDR4 than 16 GB DDR5, because even the CPUs of those latter generations will still be keeping modern GPUs happily fed with raw frames to play with.

It also doesn't secure you against the knock-on effects of the memory crisis, either. Sure, you might have lots of system memory, but buying extra storage for your PC or NAS box is still a nightmare experience. To say nothing of the rising prices of PCs, laptops, graphics cards, and pretty much anything else that can claim to need memory.

I would bet we're not far off peripheral makers trying to justify a me-too price hike by saying the memory chips they need for saving tiny profiles necessitate 200% increases.

Let us know in the comments where you stand on this sliding scale of memory capacity, and how the memory crisis has affected you and your PC gaming experience.

This week's question:

You saw it in the Steam Machine reveal, and now it's finally happening: E-Ink faceplates. The twist in this tale though is that Valve isn't the one making it.

Instead, that honour goes to Shenzhen-based peripherals and accessories brand Jsaux. If you want to be near the front of the queue for Color E-Ink, Mono E-Ink, or Color Dot Matrix faceplate, you can drop your email here.

Jsaux also shared a better look at all three designs via X. Beyond that, neither pricing information nor a release date has yet been announced (via The Verge).

Besides the plain black panel that comes standard with every Steam Machine, the 2 TB model also enjoys 'red fabric and solid walnut' faceplates. But despite showing off a bunch of funky options in the run-up to the Steam Machine's launch, Valve has said it doesn't currently have 'any specific plans' to make more.

Instead, Valve plans to release the CAD files for the Steam machine's housing so you can make your own. It has also already released the necessary files for its own internally developed 'inkterface'—though this may still not be the most beginner-friendly project (via Digital Foundry).

Despite Valve's pretty chill approach to DIY hardware customisation, that hasn't stopped some brands from getting ahead of themselves. For example, Dbrand touted a Companion Cube-inspired case for the Steam Machine that it ultimately had to cancel as the company never actually got Valve's permission to make it.

If the memory supply crisis would only ease up, and Valve were able to make its funky game box cheaper, I could be persuaded to have a go at making my own faceplate monstrosity. Now, where did I leave that ancient Decoden kit…?

Stara škola električara - najbolja from r/SerbiaGaming

It's never nice to have to replace your old hardware, but with the memory crisis in full swing, it has become more and more painful to watch old hardware break down. That's why it's particularly nice to see people save their old hardware with a little ingenuity, and one Redditor's dad used a whole heaping of it recently.

As spotted by Tom's Hardware, user External_Length_8877 took to the SerbiaGaming subreddit recently to share that their dad ripped a capacitor from an old radio to replace the broken one in their RTX 3070, saving 12,000 dinars (around $115) in the process.

In the process, the dad also swapped out the thermal paste for one used on high-voltage lines, and the original poster claims, "Now it runs better than before the repair."

The only downside so far is that the capacitor from the radio is bulkier than the original capacitor, so it now hangs outside of the GPU. That means you can see it noticeably on the side, and it also means it may struggle in a super tight case, but one can expect some hits to performance if your parts are super cramped anyway.

The Redditor claims the GPU hits "No more than 80 °C during Spider-Man on ultra graphics settings without frame generation. Maximum load—up to 99% on GPU and CPU. And temperatures—no more than 80 °C on GPU and 75 °C on CPU."

Those aren't exactly low figures, but the Redditor claims they were going above 100 °C during stress and 80 °C+ without stress prior to the swap. It seems like the paste is the real winner here. But the important thing is that the GPU works now.

And, I personally like the DIY angle of jamming in your own capacitor, even if it makes the card look less clean. There are likely very few people in the world who can claim the GPU running Spider-Man has been operated on by their dad.

Still, External_Length_8877 claims it's only a "temporary solution" while they look for a capacitor with the same size and dimensions as the original they lost.

Though at-home repairs can also be a bit risky, the one silver lining of the memory crisis is that more people are learning to fix their own gear and caring more about repairability. If taking apart a radio and learning about GPUs will save you up to hundreds of dollars, it's a great skill to hone. And there's absolutely charm in your GPU looking just a little DIY.

If you've spent any time on Steam from your Steam Deck, there's a good chance you recognise the 'Great on Deck' tag, signifying that games work, well, great on Deck. Well, Steam has just published its Great on Frame collection, and you get three guesses what that could be for.

As spotted by SadlyItsBradley on X, the new category is live now and comes with just four games. The games are Portal 2, Into Black, Aperture Hand Lab and The Lab. Into Black is the odd one out here, as it's the only title not published by Valve in the list, but that's a good sign too. It suggests there's some level of outreach from Valve to other companies.

The plan seems to be to add more games to this category over time, as the Upcoming section is currently entirely empty. Valve's Steam Frame is the only bit of new hardware from Valve that is not live yet. As Valve confirmed a Summer release window for it and the Steam Machine, all this points to an imminent launch.

As of last month, packages of the Steam Frame began arriving in the US. Those packages total 32,000 kg, so the likelihood is these aren't test builds or prototypes. All signs suggest that Valve is gearing up to actually put out the device in the near future.

The fact that the 'Great on Frame' collection is even live means Valve is either ready for the Steam Frame to launch very soon, or it was published by accident, and spotted by meddlesome analysts. The only problem with the Great on Frame collection is that the fact that games are appearing on it doesn't necessarily mean they actually work in VR. You can play flat games on the Steam Frame, so 'Great on Frame' could simply suggest it has been verified to work well in plain old 2D mode.

Still, even playing 2D games on the Steam Frame should serve to be plenty immersive. Valve has managed to entirely ditch the wires here, and it even has some neat built-in functions that help it stand out among its competition.

It has a special antenna for picking up a connection sent directly from a connector on your PC, which allows it to stream your games without any interference. And to top it all off, Valve has implemented foveated streaming, which means it focuses the bandwidth on exactly where your eyes are looking to get even better performance out of the headset.

The only question left, other than the exact release date, is the price point, and for that, I'm preparing for the worst. With all its little tricks and engineering feats, plus the Snapdragon chip and storage, I would have expected a hefty price even before the memory crisis. But now, its included 16 GB of LPDDR5X memory is sure to fetch a pretty penny, and Valve can't afford to eat the cost of production like console manufacturers can.

Either way, we're expecting to find out the answer to both questions in the coming weeks, assuming Valve sticks to its Summer promise.

This is the monitor I've been waiting for. As someone who has just entered another Counter-Strike arc that is sure to last an epoch, as my arcs tend to, I've been on the look-out for a 1080p monitor around the 360 Hz (ish) sweet spot that doesn't break the bank. Enter stage left: the KTC 25M1, at just $350. And I've already seen it on sale for under $300, which bodes well.

Of course, this price-to-refresh-rate ratio wouldn't matter if the monitor sucked, but I'm happy to report it doesn't. Far from it, I'm finding it a genuine pleasure to use for my late night Faceit matchmaking sprees. In what is proving to be both a blessing and a curse, gameplay is so smooth, clear, and snappy that I find it impossible to blame any blunders on the panel. Even if I could convince myself my opponents are using the $1,000, 600 Hz Zowie panel I recently tested, it wouldn't matter because the difference in practice is so slight that I highly doubt it would actually make my enemies any better.

The 24-inch, 1080p monitor, clad with detachable flappy side-wings (to prevent distraction), rear-side headphone stand, cable management feed, and the usual smattering of ports including a 3.5 mm headphone jack, is bred for one purpose: competitive shooters.

No matter how fast it is, you're probably not getting a TN panel for casual gaming or even competitive non-FPS gaming. Even though this panel's colour is damn good for TN, it's not as lush as an IPS and certainly not as vibrant as an OLED.

While it offers a solid 98% sRGB coverage, its DCI-P3 is only rated to 85%, meaning its HDR content is average at best, which is what I'd expect from a TN panel. That fits for my experience turning HDR on in Doom Eternal and eyeballing it: lighting seems a little more natural, but it's hardly night and day between that and sRGB mode.

The sRGB mode thankfully seems pretty well calibrated to my eyes. In addition to making casual gaming pleasant, this makes day-to-day use outside of gaming surprisingly comfortable, too—surprising, that is, for a TN panel.

HDR, though, is certainly not as good as what you get on the 320 Hz Alienware IPS panel I tested. Still, that was an IPS, not a TN. And more expensive esports TN panels like the 600 Hz Zowie one don't have it as an option at all.

For this monitor's real purpose, though, HDR is irrelevant. Sticking it in FPS1 mode but raising brightness a little, Counter-Strike displays flawlessly: enemies are clear and easy to spot, and movements are incredibly smooth.

I used an Nvidia Latency and Display Analysis Tool (LDAT) to test end-to-end latency—thus indirectly testing the response time—and it reported an average of 6.42 ms in-game over 150 muzzle flashes. That's well within a threshold where shooting feels and appears instantaneous to my eyes.

Latency performance

End-to-end latency

KTC 25M1

6.42

Alienware AW2525HM

6.09

Zowie XL2586X+

6.81

012345678910

Time (ms)

End-to-end latency Data

Product	Value
KTC 25M1	6.42
Alienware AW2525HM	6.09
Zowie XL2586X+	6.81

Tested using Nvidia's LDAT over 150 muzzle flashes in-game.

It's even quicker than the 600 Hz Zowie panel (6.81 ms), and only a little slower than the 320 Hz Alienware one with overdrive on (6.09 ms). These differences are all sub-millisecond, though, meaning they're imperceptible and for all intents and purposes we can say they perform about as well as each other when it comes to response times. I certainly didn't notice any difference in snappiness between the three when playing Counter-Strike.

For whatever reason, with this KTC monitor, I can't seem to find a mode that allows me to enable its 'Ultra Fast' overdrive, the fastest setting. But that's okay, because the middle 'Advanced' setting is snappy enough, and it's usually inadvisable to use the fastest overdrive mode in monitors anyway, as it risks inverse ghosting/halo effects. With the Advanced mode enabled, I haven't noticed any pixel overshoot.

Motion clarity is impeccable to my eyes, too, thanks to that 400 Hz refresh rate. As you can see from my slapdash moving photo of an also-moving UFO test, the high refresh rate really does make a difference. The top animation shown was running at 400 fps, the second at 200, the third at 100, the fourth at 50, and the bottom one at 25.

This difference is visible when eyeballing the moving alien targets, too: 400 Hz is just that much clearer than the rest. Admittedly, playing at 240 Hz in game will still be plenty clear, but this is just another example that goes to show what I've argued previously: around 360 Hz (or 400 Hz, in this case) is the sweet spot for competitive gaming.

To my memory, this monitor is also a bit clearer than I found the 320 Hz Alienware monitor to be when I tested it. I simply can't fault it for smoothness and snappiness.

The bonus here is you're getting the 360–400 Hz sweet spot for a damn good price. The 400 Hz Zowie equivalent costs $650, while this KTC monitor costs about $350 and can even be found for just shy of $300 when it's on sale. The 320 Hz Alienware monitor comes in cheaper than this, but honestly for the extra refresh rate and motion clarity boost, I'd say the KTC is worth it if you can afford it. If not, the Alienware will serve well.

With the KTC 25M1, you're hitting the refresh rate sweet spot just before diminishing returns kick in, which means you're getting some of the absolute best competitive/esports performance you can hope for before prices start to soar.

I feel KTC has struck the balance very well, keeping the price as low as possible for the performance on offer, and keeping things within a budget that doesn't only cater to pro players but also to your average competitive FPS gamer like yours truly. This would be the monitor I'd choose for competitive FPS gaming right now if my own money were on the line.

We've known for some time now that AMD was planning on launching next-gen Zen 6 CPUs in 2026, but hardware has been in a weird place for a while, so it's best not to assume something will be going into your rig / server until it's in your hands. And yet AMD has confirmed it will begin rolling out the next generation on the 22nd and 23rd of this month, starting with server-focused EPYC processors.

As spotted by Overclock3D, AMD's Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President, Mark Papermaster, announced as much at Raise Summit 2026. He said, "What we've done at AMD, you know, since we launched the new Zen processor back in 2017, we're now on our sixth generation. So at our advancing AI event on July 22nd and 23rd, we're rolling out this new generation."

AMD's next-generation EPYC processor, codenamed Venice, is said to give 1.7x performance and efficiency over the last generation and will have a 30% increase in thread density, according to AMD. We'll have to wait until they get into the wild to see if that matches with real-life testing, though.

Papermast claims it is 'optimised for standalone x86 traditional workloads', and given its placement in servers, this makes sense. Venice is built on TSMC's 2 nm process and is the first AMD CPU to do so. Many previous AMD processors are actually built on the ageing 5 nm process or on 4 nm, so big performance lifts are expected.

That swap to 2 nm could be very important for the eventual release of a Ryzen gaming chip, as not only should such a chip be plain more efficient given the ability to have more densely packed transistors, but it could technically cram 12 cores into each CPU chiplet, as opposed to the eight AMD currently gets in them. As our Jeremy said in May, "That opens up the possibility of both 12-core gaming-optimised CPUs with 3D V-Cache and monster 24-core dual-die models for heavily multithreaded applications."

It seems like, as of right now, AMD is still set for a 2026 launch for its desktop Zen 6 chips, but the memory crisis is naturally a huge elephant in the room. Both the Zen 6 desktop chips and Intel's Nova Lake are going to have to launch into a market where worldwide PC shipments are down, and RAM and storage are prohibitively expensive. How excited can one be for a shiny new processor when a memory bottleneck gets in the way?

Still, rumours so far are positive about desktop Zen 6. One hardware leaker claimed last month, with "100%" certainty, that it will run at over 6.5 GHz. It will seemingly have a lot of power on the top end, and yet it will also reportedly come in a low-power compact model, too. Best of both worlds. We'll have to actually test it for ourselves to see if it was worth the wait.

Rumours continue to swirl around Intel's upcoming Nova Lake launch. The latest of these comes from noted leaker Jaykihn, who has hinted towards some exciting highlights among the desktop lineup. On X, the leaker wrote, "Nova Lake-H has a 12 Xe segment, and Nova Lake-S has a 12 Xe SKU. These are Xe3p."

Basically, this leak suggests there will be both a next-generation Nova Lake mobile CPU rocking 12 Xe cores as well as a desktop variant also sporting the same number of Intel graphics cores (though if that's true, I should probably be calling it an 'APU').

A high-performance iGPU was something sorely missing from the previous Arrow Lake generation of desktop chips, and having heard from our Dave what a 14 Xe core chip can do in the new MSI Claw handheld, it's exciting to think what a slightly upgraded version of Intel's GPU silicon could do in a wee little desktop chassis.

Anyway, drilling down a little more, the Xe 3P core is an upcoming iteration of Intel's microarchitecture. The discrete GPU tech was codenamed 'Celestial' for a time and was even meant to make its debut alongside Panther Lake. However, that chip went with what was essentially Xe2 'Plus Plus', and Jaykihn also claims what was Celestial 'was canned long ago'.

In other words, Xe 3P has been cooking for a minute. When it finally arrives in the form of the expected Crescent Island GPUs later this year, it'll be primarily geared towards handling AI inference by leveraging LPDDR5X memory, rather than the pricier data centre du jour HBM. It's entirely possible a powerful bit of kit like that could also turn its hand to gaming, but it's unlikely Intel would bring that chip to any gaming-focused cards.

As for a possible mobile APU, Nick recently wrote that a Nova Lake mobile chip with a beefy iGPU would be great news for handhelds, but that it would likely be destined for edge computing only.

But decent integrated graphics? In my desktop processor? That's exciting for sure, but how likely is it? Well, let's look at the leaker in question. Jaykihn claimed back in January the B70 Pro would arrive 'soon' and it did. Then in April, they leaked details about Intel's Core 300 laptop chips that also appeared to mostly bear out. Sure, a broken clock can be right twice a day, but this leaker is noted for having a pretty good track record as these things go.

With the memory crisis in full swing, it's becoming harder and harder to justify that PC upgrade. Though some will simply have enough money not to care, or will be forced to upgrade through breakages, others will simply go to the Winchester, have a nice cold pint, and wait for all of this to blow over. Well, that waiting seems to have resulted in a pretty large decline in PC shipments, year-over-year.

According to analysis from the IDC, worldwide PC shipments have fallen by 4.9% between Q2 last year to Q2 this year (via Wccftech). This is reportedly "the first decline after nine consecutive quarters of growth" and, you guessed it, the memory crisis is to blame.

Tracking shipments last year and this year, ICD reports Lenovo dropping from 17 million units to 16.6 million, HP from 14.3 million to 13 million, Dell from 9.8 million to 9.3 million, and Asus at nearly flat growth. The only winner over the last year is Apple, which grew from 6.1 million to 6.7 million, representing a pretty substantial 10% increase. Apple also jumped from an 8.5% market share to a 9.9% market share.

Despite declining shipments, many of these companies aren't losing that much in revenue. That's because they can counteract the loss of sales through rising memory costs by getting consumers to pay for the price-inflated stock. Jitesh Ubrani, the research director for consumer devices at IDC, says, “The real story here is the disconnect between units and dollars: shipments are falling, but revenue is climbing because vendors are pushing through price increases faster than demand is dropping.”

IDC says that supply chain management and capabilities will continue to be incredibly important going forward. Some major manufacturers will be increasingly signing long-term contracts to supply memory and storage for devices, in order to keep selling through the memory crisis. That probably doesn't mean good things for smaller operators, as they'll have to navigate the larger companies' increased buying and negotiating power.

Others, such as Apple, have managed to capitalise on the problem with the launch of its budget-oriented MacBook Neo. Jean Philippe Bouchard, the vice president for consumer devices at IDC, says, “Apple’s share gain coincided with its latest product launch, the MacBook Neo, and while the company did raise prices in line with the broader market, it still remains well positioned against rivals facing the same cost pressures.”

It's worth noting that this is a report on global PC shipments, not necessarily gaming PC shipments, which have historically fared better during periods of decline. But these are far from normal times, and the memory crisis seems set to rage for another year at least.

Bernstein research analysts reckon SK hynix will significantly reduce its prices by the end of 2028, but we are likely to see more increases before then. And even then, that's a pretty optimistic outlook. If the memory crisis only lasts for another year and a half, I'd consider us rather lucky. It's anyone's guess what the PC market will look like by then, and who the winners of the memory crisis will be.

If 2026 has been a poor year in regard to hardware pricing, it's at least been a good one in terms of companies and architectures spreading their roots into unfamiliar territories. Primarily, I'm thinking about Nvidia RTX Spark, the company's first proper desktop/mobile processor announced just last month. And now, it seems Samsung has taken note, as it will reportedly be making its own Arm-based chip for desktop/mobile, or 'AI PCs' as they now unfortunately seem to be called.

Apparently it will be called Gaia—a strange name, perhaps, given the planet-eating energy consumption of AI datacentres. But enough cynicism, the double plus-side here is that not only will we be getting a new processor, but also hopefully some decent competition against Nvidia's RTX Spark alongside Qualcomm's Arm-based chips.

According to Seoul Economic Daily, "industry sources" have it that Samsung Gaia will be based on a 4 nm process and is targeting production as early as next year. Apparently, the company is already talking to PC manufacturers regarding the supply of the chip.

4 nm production is what AMD and Nvidia currently build on, but that's over on TSMC's side of the pitch. Samsung's own 4 nm tech hasn't been as widely adopted, but that's been changing over the last year, and now it seems Samsung deems it ripe for producing PCs.

Samsung certainly has experience making system-on-chips (SoCs), given its Exynos mobile processors, but we'll have to wait and see whether that experience will translate over to PC. Here's hoping.

None of this would be on the cards, of course, if Windows on Arm—the operating system's for-Arm fork, which largely relies on emulation via Prism—wasn't doing so well. But it's certainly doing well enough to support running Alan Wake 2 pretty well on RTX Spark, albeit natively and not via emulation, which won't be representative of the plenty of apps that must still be emulated.

At any rate, it will very much be a game of "wait and see", but even if the only effect is to push RTX Spark and Snapdragon X Elite/X2 Elite machines a little lower in price, positive changes could be afoot

Data centres require a lot of energy to run. It's why it's so frustrating to hear AI's major players attempt to play a game of misdirection by making claims along the lines of a single LLM prompt requiring but a fourteenth of a cup of tea. Worse still, as big tech continues to build out its AI infrastructure, data centres' power demands are only set to increase.

Worldwide data centre electricity consumption is expected to rise from 447 terawatt-hours in 2025, to 565 terawatt-hours in 2026. That will mark a 26% year-over-year increase, according to Gartner's latest forecast.

Data centres' power demand globally is expected to rise 27% this year, peaking at a predicted total of 132 gigawatts. That's up from 2025's 104 GW total, with analysts expecting to see power demand continue to rise—according to Gartner, data centre demand may cross the 290 GW mark by 2030.

Gartner's Director Analyst, Linglan Wang, explains, "Surging demand for compute-intensive AI workloads is driving unprecedented data center power growth, while AI capacity is now constrained by power availability, making data center power security the new battle ground for scaling and protecting margins in the global AI race."

Gartner estimates that AI-optimized server adoption will account for 31% of data centre power consumption this year, having grown by 84.2%. By 2027, the power demands of AI servers is expected to grow by 47.8%, surpassing that of 'conventional servers.' Comparatively, the power demands of the 'conventional server' segment grew by about 1.2% in 2026, and is on a trajectory to grow by 2.4% in 2027.

Given that recent analysis of Google's latest environmental report suggests the company's energy consumption is on a trend of exponential growth, an upward trend across the industry is unsurprising. It's also perhaps worth noting that not all of Google's energy comes from renewable sources, and that the total electricity consumption for this one company last year was 43 TWh. That's almost 10% of Gartner's global numbers.

Add to that a reported 80% of the world's data centres have been built in less than optimal climates, having to compensate with a whole lot of temperature control systems, and environmentally, things start to look all the bleaker for the climate conscious. In fact, Gartner lists the power consumption of the 'Cooling and other Infrastructure' data centre segment as having grown by 22.6% in 2026.

Not only that, but increased demand from data centres will likely tax local power infrastructure—not to mention any of the other reasons why data centres make especially poor neighbours.

It's amazing the lengths to which advertisers will go to serve a juicy new pop-up ad on your screen. From Windows itself suggesting apps, to motherboards automatically installing software, now to monitors prompting users to download antivirus trials. No, they won't be covering the bill after the trial ends.

As noted by TechSpot, user Mags_Smash took to the PCMR Subreddit last week to show that the LG Monitor App Installer was prompting them to get a free 30-day trial of McAfee. They claim the LG Monitor App Installer was silently installed via a Windows update without their consent. After searching through the technical details of the reliability monitor in settings, they found the LG app had been downloaded via one of their three LG monitors.

They urge users to not only disable this from happening by clicking through settings and activating the 'prevent automatic download of applications associated with device metadata' option, but also suggest users should completely disable the Windows Store, where the app was downloaded.

The comments section on this thread has many other users complaining about seeing the exact same pop-up, linked to the silent installation of LG's software. One user claims they don't hate Windows for its bloatware, "but this is the first time I've had it install bloatware without my knowledge and genuinely made me think it was a virus."

Notably, LG isn't the only brand accused of doing this in the thread. One user complains their Alienware monitor asks to install Dell/Alienware software, and we've definitely had experience of continual pop ups from Alienware screens reminding us to download the Alienware monitor software, however nothing has ever automatically installed without our consent. Though they aren't the only user to name-check Dell in the comments section.

However, one thing does make LG stand out above the rest here, in a negative sense. Where some peripherals prompt users to download their software, or just download it without asking in the worst cases, LG is prompting users to get a subscription to a service it doesn't directly own. As well as this, users would have to pay for McAfee after the 30-day trial, so LG is incidentally prompting users to spend cash.

I have reached out to both LG and Alienware for comment on this story, but have not yet heard back. Either way, companies being able to serve ads to your PC without asking and prompt you to get a subscription to a separate service, because you've bought a monitor from them, certainly rubs me the wrong way. I don't particularly like anything installing software without asking, but attempting to get me to download even more bloatware is more than a minor annoyance in my book.

I love the engineering hubris of seeing a device and saying "I can run Doom on that", but I never thought 2009 sandbox game Minecraft would become a similar measuring stick. Ever since one engineer got the game running on a Game Boy Color, I've found myself wondering 'what's next?'

YouTuber Game of Tobi recently shared their work, and it's a thing of beauty (via RetroDodo). They didn't just want to approximate Minecraft in a 2D environment; they wanted a game that actually looked and felt 3D.

As they point out, the Game Boy Color launched hardware generations before we would get portable tech hardware intended for 3D games. They say, "Honestly, I wasn't sure if it is even possible to have something like this on the Game Boy because it is in 3D, and it is recognisable as a 3D world where you can walk around."

Though it is worth noting that Game of Tobi's port isn't the full Minecraft. You can choose from a couple of worlds, and it doesn't seem to have a health or inventory system. You can also break and place blocks, but it doesn't appear to have mobs or secrets.

Tobi is not done here, though. "Of course, I could just call it a day with all of these features, but let's just be real. I really want to do something with this. So, I also added a Nether, of course. Not a lot of stuff you can do there, but it does work."

With the Game Boy Color's limited controls, it does look a tad awkward to navigate. It seems like the D-pad controls movement, and then you hold another button while pressing the D-pad to look around. This means looking around and moving at the same time seems impossible to do on the 1998 bit of hardware.

If you fancy giving the game a go for yourself, you can download it for free via Game of Tobi's Patreon. The game itself comes in a .gbc file format, so to play it on the original Nintendo hardware, you will need a flash card and a little technical know-how.

Textures are off by default, and Tobi explains this is because it slows the game to a crawl. Rather impressively, at half the speed and in black and white, Tobi's Minecraft ROM even works on the original Game Boy, the Color's 1989 predecessor.

Still, this is one of those experiments that seems to come out of wondering if something can be done, rather than because it offers a better experience. Minecraft runs on both Nintendo Switch consoles, plus the majority of handheld gaming PCs, plus it even runs on phones.

If porting Minecraft becomes anything like modders' fascination with running Doom on random hardware, I'm hopeful we'll see a port to a vape or a charging station by the end of the year.

Thank you again rural Walmart from r/pcmasterrace

Thanks to the very hungry AI industry and the resulting memory supply crisis, RAM is reaching prices I naively once thought impossible. Between the tail end of 2025 and now, I've had a bit of a rude awakening, let me tell ya. However, that doesn't mean you can't get RAM for a reasonable price—you just need to know where to look.

One lucky Redditor shared an amazing find, posting they'd picked up 32 GB of DDR4 memory for only $50. Then they found a second kit for the same price. That's 64 GB of RAM for 100 bucks total. Now, the obvious question is 'Where did this jammy poster make such a mythical find?' Apparently, in a rural Walmart though the poster has not yet specified a US state.

The really eye-widening detail is that the Reddit user got the two kits on clearance, with a bright yellow sticker on the box declaring that both kits had been reduced down from $319. An equivalent kit will set you back about $230 from Amazon at time of writing. This is your irregularly scheduled reminder to check out your local rural retailer.

Now, there's always the option to simply wait out the memory crisis. Our Nick did the testing earlier this year, and found that 16 GB of RAM is absolutely fine for PC gaming in 2026. Mind you, that does come with its share of caveats. Furthermore, sources say the memory supply crisis won't ease until at least 2028 when a number of major memory manufacturers complete their capacity-expanding builds.

All of that is to say, perhaps your rig is in a position where a memory upgrade just can't wait that long. As analysts reckon memory prices will continue to rise this year, with some even predicting a spike as significant as 50% in Q3, you may want to check your own rural retailer sooner rather than later.

Failing that, you can stick with us on the hardware team as we keep our eyes peeled for what few RAM deals there are. Though, to get 32 GB at an even sort of reasonable price, you may be better off scooping up one of the best cheap gaming PC deals instead.

Windows GDID (Global Device Identifier), its own telemetry service, has drawn ire from users for some time. Turns out the data it tracks can be used by law enforcement to incriminate alleged hackers, which is both a decent outcome and sort of worrisome if you think about it too much.

As noted by TechSpot, the US Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs recently announced the arrest of 19-year-old Peter Stokes. Linked to the hacking group Scattered Spider, who are reportedly responsible for 100 network intrusions and over $100 million in ransom payments, the thing that reportedly incriminated him was his Windows GDID.

Back in May last year, Scattered Spider reportedly called the IT helpdesk of a jewellery seller posing as employees and managed to talk them into handing over password reset details. This then gave the group access to three accounts, for which Scattered Spider asked for $8 million in ransom money. Though the jeweller didn't pay, it did reportedly cost the brand $2 million.

Despite using a VPN and a tunnelling service to mask his traffic, Stokes was reportedly caught due to his GDID, which logged information on the device. A court order seemingly forced Microsoft to hand over all the evidence linking Stokes to that machine, and this was used by the US government to justify its arrest.

This wasn't helped by the fact that Stokes seemingly showed off his wealth by posting photos of fancy hotels on Snapchat. The 39-page judgment details not only the GDID link but the Snapchat bragging.

Stokes was seemingly stopped at the airport by law enforcement, and he was reportedly carrying two hard drives with evidence in them, linking him to the crime.

Though stopping potential hackers is in the interest of those who don't want to be hacked, the way law enforcement caught Stokes is only more likely to stoke fears around GDID. Proton, a privacy-focused mail, drive, and VPN service provider, discusses "Windows as spyware", and though in this case, "the system worked as intended", it argues "GDID raises important questions about user consent and who actually owns the hardware you pay for."

Proton makes note of the fact that users don't explicitly consent to GDID and its data tracking trappings. "In all of Microsoft’s extensive online documentation, GlobalDeviceId merits a single mention buried in a highly obscure technical document that no one is ever likely to read."

As you might be able to guess, Proton's advice is that if you want to do away with GDID, you should swap to Linux. And with the last few years Microsoft has had, it's easy to see why one might want to move away from its software.

If shopping on Amazon has become a bit difficult because you keep inadvertently adding knock-off brands to your basket, there's now a Google Chrome extension to help.

Shared on X by creator Josh Pigford, once added to your browser, Knockoff.shopping declares the name of the brand on the listing. That means you no longer have to click in to verify it. It also greys out any brands that are not trusted or generally known for making knock-offs.

Pigford says "Sorry to brands like WNPETHOME, EHEYCIGA, YXYL, LU&MN, JOYIN, TOMY, GODONLIF, YOOJEE, LINGTENG, LANEIGE, VISCOO, BIODANCE, COOFANDY, BALENNZ, TOSY and LUENX".

As you might be able to tell, the naming conventions are part of how people catch knock-off brands. All capitals, random letters, and otherwise nonsensical names are a dead giveaway.

Effectively, the extension is a curated list of more than 5,000 brands, which are refreshed daily, with real brands being whitelisted and very new or potentially dodgy brands being flagged. The list is accessible in plain text, and it relies on community reporting to fix itself over time. That means if a trusted brand is accidentally caught in the filter, one can reach out to correct that mistake.

The browser extension is also built to allow a level of customisation, so you can set restriction levels, entirely hide (or just dim) knock-off brands, and even hide sponsored ads at the top of search. I can't tell you how many times I've searched for something and been fed something entirely irrelevant in the sponsored ads spot, so I'm quite grateful for a feature that hides it.

Notably, you can make your own custom lists too, so if you like a particular brand that is labelled a knock-off, you can personally let it through the filter. Not all knockoffs are bad, of course. That's especially true if the listing has been around for some time and has seemingly authentic reviews.

But still, arming users with more information before shopping can only be a good thing. I've tested it myself on a quick window shopping session, and I'm rather impressed so far.

The Asus ProArt lineup is, in essence, the company's range of fancy PC products for creative professionals—and my goodness does it contain some nice-looking stuff. Which is why I jumped at the chance to test out one of the latest additions, the Asus ProArt Mouse MD301.

It's certainly a handsome squeaker, designed to provide a subtle, refined, ergonomic option for those who have some serious work to do. It's all business, this mouse, and there's something desirable about a design that eschews gamer-like frippery and instead aims for a more executive flair.

It's also customisable, in the sense that you can remove its main button switches for something more serene, or more clicky. There's also a horizontal scroll wheel, à la the Logitech MX Master range, which feels beautifully dampened. Really, most of the controls here are of the premium, well-thought-out sort, and that's very pleasing to see.

However, this $100/£105 professional rodent has the odd quirk that gives me pause. The side buttons are a touch flimsy. The thumb rest is slightly small and a little awkward. I've also had the odd connection issue, and the software feels like an afterthought.

There's a lot to like about the MD301. But as a long-term tester of the Logitech MX Master 4, I can't help but feel that if you're going down the professional ergo mouse route, it's the better buy of the two. The ProArt MD301 is a lighter, leaner attempt at an ergonomic mouse with many admirable qualities, but it drops the ball a little too often to give it my full seal of approval.

Asus ProArt Mouse MD301 features

The Asus ProArt Mouse MD301 is an ergonomically-shaped mouse that feels a lot smaller than your average ergo squeaker, coming in at 114.8 mm long, 75.2 mm wide, and 46.8 mm tall. Sit it next to a Logitech MX Master 4, and it looks positively tiny. It's also cheaper, coming in at $100 compared to the Logitech's $120 MSRP.

It's got six programmable buttons, including all the usual suspects. A left and right click, a middle scroll wheel click, two side buttons, and a hidden DPI button underneath a ridged plastic surface integrated into the chassis behind the wheel. It looks, in many ways, like a default mouse—albeit with some subtle ergo touches

Oh, and it's also got a horizontal scroll wheel mounted to the left-hand side. Logitech really changed the game with the old MX Master 3S design, didn't it?

Another interesting feature to note is the switches underneath the left and right buttons. By default, the ProArt MD301 comes with two (deep breath in) TTC E169-60BB0G0 (80M) units, but these push-fit socketed models can be pulled out and replaced with supported TTC, Omron, and Kaith units, which Asus has handily listed here.

The scroll wheel has a party trick, too, in the form of Asus' SmartShift tech. This allows for precise, clicky control when spun slowly, and a free-wheeling action when you spin it at an appropriate speed. It's a lot like Logitech's magnetic solution on paper, but feels quite different.

Spin the wheel at high speeds, and you can still feel it notch underneath your fingertip, albeit very quickly. Whereas Logitech's infinite scroll feature frees the wheel up with a glass-like, smooth action, the MD301 has a tendency to keep some tactile feedback in play, which makes it easy to stop at a defined point with precision.

Asus says the MD301 has up to 180-day battery life, and can gain eight hours' worth of charge in a single minute over its USB Type-C connection. Speaking of which, it also comes with a braided Type-C to Type-A cable, and a small USB Type-A dongle for wireless connection. Bluetooth connection is also supported.

Sensor-wise, this Asus squeaker makes do with an 8,000 DPI optical unit, which, in combination with its 1,000 Hz maximum polling rate, is unlikely to set gamers' hearts a-fluttering. Still, the MX Master 4 does just fine with a similar sensor (and a much lower polling rate), so it's not unsurprising for a work-first mouse. It's also a fair bit lighter than Logitech's latest ergo effort, tipping the scales at 99.7 g compared to the MX Master 4's 150 g bulk.

Asus ProArt Mouse MD301 ergonomics

The first thing I noticed about the MD301 is its diminutive proportions, especially when sat next to the MX Master 4. It's a lot narrower, with a much smaller thumb rest. However, it's got a wider top "hump", which feels good underneath my palm.

Switching between the two, it's clear that the Asus is designed to rotate your hand over to the right side more drastically than most, although at nowhere near as extreme an angle as something like the Keychron M5. It doesn't feel aggressively ergo, though. More like a slightly chonkier gaming mouse with some interesting quirks.

Clicking and spinning my way around the controls, I've been continually impressed by the effort that's gone into the switchgear and material choices. The left and right switches have a very positive click action, and well-weighted buttons.

The scrollwheel feels notchy yet free-flowing in all the right ways, with its clicky, fast-speed scroll being something of a highlight. The same goes for the horizontal wheel, which is heavily dampened and weighty underneath my thumb. Nice.

I'm also a big fan of the smooth outer coating, which has a silky quality that feels rather pleasant underneath my fingertips. It's slightly fingerprint-prone, but no worse than any other black gaming mouse I test these days.

The DPI switch is hidden underneath a ridged plastic insert that runs down the middle of the design, and provides a small moment of delight when you realise it's exactly where you expect it to be, but tastefully obscured. This is a classy mouse. A device for grown-ups. A refined rodent, if you will.

The only real ergonomic drawbacks come in two forms. One, the left-side thumbrest is quite small, and dips inwards. Using the MX Master 4 on the daily, my thumb has become accustomed to lolling on its own throne-like protrusion of silicone—whereas here it needs to tuck itself into a diminutive (and firm) plastic seat. My digit has become lazy, it seems, and has a tendency to want to fall off.

And two, the side buttons don't feel as high-quality as the rest of the unit. They're perfectly functional, but sitting as they do beneath a gorgeously weighted horizontal scrollwheel, the contrast is immediately obvious. They're simply "fine," while the rest of the controls are pretty excellent.

Overall, though, the ProArt MD301 is an impressive-feeling device, especially given its relatively low weight compared to its chassis size and ergo design. If anything, I could stand for it to be slightly heavier, in return for better side buttons and a bit of extra room for my thumb.

Asus ProArt Mouse MD301 performance

Given this is an ergo mouse with a relatively modest sensor, it would be unfair to expect Razer Viper V4 Pro-like performance or tracking ability from the MD301. Lo and behold, it's not the sharpest-performing rodent on the block.

Still, the sensor tracks well enough for work and light gaming usage, as shown by the MouseTester charts below.

I have, however, experienced the odd connection drop out. This has manifested as a very occasional half-second pause, and has happened several times during my week-long testing. I've got a lot of 2.4 GHz wireless devices plugged into my machine, and several more around my front room, so it's possible that the dongle here is slightly interference-prone—although I haven't been able to pin down the exact cause.

I have two other gaming mice plugged into this PC at all times (the MX Master 4 and the Razer Cobra Hyperspeed), and neither have had any connection issues. I tried unplugging both mice to see if it fixed the problem, and managed a few days of solid connection—before again experiencing a very quick pause.

I also had one connection pause while using the mouse with a gaming laptop I'm currently testing, so it doesn't seem to be specific to my main machine. The problem is so intermittent as to be barely noticeable, but there's something in this room the MD301's 2.4 GHz dongle doesn't appear to like.

Asus ProArt Mouse MD301 aesthetics

I love the ProArt MD301's aesthetic design. It's somehow utilitarian, slightly luxury, handsome, and hardly noticeable all at the same time. The ridged plastic vertical insert framing the scrollwheel is about as simple as design touches come, and yet adds a certain something that both feels good underneath your fingertips, and looks ever-so-slightly special on your desk.

Do I miss RGB lighting, or a touch of gamer flair? Not a bit of it. This mouse is all business, and that by itself makes it stand out.

Asus ProArt MD301 software

The ProArt MD301 connects to Asus Gear Link, a web-based app that allows you to adjust the DPI, polling rate, and button response settings within a browser. In order to tweak macros and use some of the features, though, you also need to install a companion app as an extension, which somehow feels like the worst of both worlds.

Pick either a web app, or installed app, Asus. Having one in order to properly use the other feels like an extra level of annoyance.

The web app itself has the odd quirk, too. I regularly split my 32-inch, 4K screen into two side-by-side browser windows, but the Asus app complains that it doesn't have enough room in one panel, suggesting I "switch to a larger screen." What do you want, a 49-inch ultrawide?

There's an option to use it anyway, though that's a new one on me. It seems to scale the interface just fine if you override it, but it's a bit indicative of the software experience overall. Unfinished is the feeling I come away with.

Still, early annoyances aside, the web interface works well enough. It's a bit barebones, though, and given the premium-feel of the mouse itself, it strikes as a clunky afterthought tacked on to what is otherwise a well-put-together package.

Asus ProArt MD301 value

At its $100 MSRP, I'd say the Asus ProArt Mouse MD301 is well-priced for its bracket. It's a chunk cheaper than the Logitech MX Master 4, and looks and feels like a premium mouse for more reasonable money.

That being said, I can't help but feel you're getting a lot more for your cash with Logitech's offering. It's got a more comfortable thumb rest, near-silent switches as standard, and a set of controls that can match (and occasionally beat) the Asus in terms of feel. And, it must be said, the Logitech software experience is a lot more refined. Plus, I've not experienced any connection pauses with the Master in many months of everyday usage.

Which puts the ProArt squeaker in an odd spot. It's a lot lighter than the Master 4, which makes it more suitable as a gaming mouse. But it's still got an ergo-spec sensor, so I doubt many will be buying it for its gaming performance chops.

And while it's a good-looking object that would suit the *loudly coughs* executive-ergo-mouse-using-professional, I can't help but feel there are enough hang-ups here to cause them to sniff into their yuzu-infused lattes.

It's a good effort from Asus, and a mouse with many likeable qualities. However, the quirks slightly outweigh the advantages, and as a result, I struggle to recommend it over the competition.

AI slop. If you've heard the term, there's a good chance you are similarly exasperated with the onslaught of low-quality, AI-generated… well, slop. One team is now charging up to $10,000 per project to try and cut down AI-generated slop code and is, rather ironically, using AI to do it.

As reported by Tom's Hardware, the team is called Slopfix, and their aim is to cut down unnecessary AI-generated code by a certain amount, taking a percentage of the $10,000 fee depending on how much of the target they hit. The example given on their website is to cut down 100,000 lines to 35,000. This means, if they remove 65,000 lines, they would claim $10,000. If, however, they managed to cut it down by 32,500 lines, they would instead get $5,000.

The tool they use? Claude Code. But the team says they keep it "on a very short leash". The team of three claims to have "thirty years of combined experience about what maintainable code looks like" and says "the agent doesn't get a vote."

One of the biggest problems with vibe coding is not the eventual output, but that building on that codebase can be unstable. AI agents tend to produce the favoured output, but can't 'think' about the next steps, so AI code is often filled with duplications and inefficiencies, hence "AI slop".

This is a pretty common problem right now. Just a few months ago, the team behind a popular PS3 emulator asked users to stop "submitting AI slop code", and open-source game engine Godot was drowning in AI slop code at the start of the year. Just last month, Godot stopped accepting AI-generated code contributions as it couldn't "trust heavy users of AI to understand their code enough to fix it".

Cleaning up AI code doesn't fix problems with users not understanding their output, but it could make it easier for AI agents to build on. Whether or not clients will want to pay tens of thousands of dollars for a different team to use the same tools as them to clean up their codebase is anyone's guess, though. I, for one, am sceptical of whether or not the Slopfix website is human-made, and the text on the site doesn't give me the greatest confidence.

Still, one question sits in my mind. If those prompting AI-generated code are paying AI agents to fix up its mistakes, who makes sure that those AI agents are acting efficiently? And if the three engineers behind Slopfix are manually going through the code, what's the point of the coding bots in the first place?

A cybersecurity firm associated with the Chinese government reportedly has concerns about Anthropic's Claude AI models and has warned users against trusting it, at least before updating to the latest version.

As reported by Reuters, the Chinese National Vulnerability Database (NVDB) claims that recent Claude Code versions have a monitoring mechanism that transmits sensitive information to remote servers without consent from the user. This allegedly includes geographic location data and user-identifying information. This was all posted via the agency's official WeChat account, according to the outlet.

It reportedly affects users on version 2.1.91 and goes up to version 2.1.196. 2.1.196 was eventually replaced by 2.1.200 on July 3. The NVDB encourages users to either uninstall if they use the impacted version, or simply update.

As well as this, the NVDB has taken this opportunity to urge users to tighten controls and strengthen monitoring techniques for the data they allow Claude Code access to. I have reached out to Anthropic for comment on this story, but have not yet received a response.

This is not the first time that Anthropic's coding tool has drawn ire in China this month. Last week, Alibaba reportedly banned its employees from using Claude at work due to fears that it could identify Chinese users with information fed to it.

Anthropic's story with Alibaba goes deeper than this, with the Claude creator accusing Alibaba of training its AI models on Anthropic's work. Anthropic claims that Alibaba, between the end of April and the start of June, generated over 28 million exchanges with Claude through close to 25,000 fraudulent accounts to harvest information.

Interestingly, Anthropic has been blocking access to Chinese companies for some time, and those companies have been reportedly getting around this restriction through overseas subsidiaries and even plain old VPNs. Anthropic is, according to the Financial Times, looking to crack down on these workarounds in the future.

The relationship between Anthropic and China seems pretty strained right now, and it seems likely that Chinese agencies are looking to swap to homegrown AI models sooner rather than later.

The LiberNovo Omni Pro is what happens when a very good first‑gen idea goes in for a polish rather than a full redesign. If you've read my original LiberNovo Omni review, you know the bar here is high. That chair is still the comfiest thing I've ever sat in for ridiculous work‑and‑gaming days. The Pro turns that same formula up a notch in a few key areas—materials, finish, and a couple of tech tricks—but it doesn't fundamentally change how it feels to sit in.

Day to day, comfort is still excellent. The cushions are plush but supportive, and I can go from writing to gaming without my back complaining. LiberNovo re‑engineered the seat with multi‑density foam, but if I'm honest, I can't say I feel a big difference. The original already nailed it, so the Pro feels more like a refinement than a really tangible upgrade here.

The bigger change is how well that comfort can now fit your body. You can choose a 45 cm or 48 cm seat depth at checkout, which is great if you've ever had a chair either cut into the back of your knees or stop awkwardly short of your thighs. Average‑sized folks will be fine on 45 cm; if you've got longer legs, 48 cm gives you more support under there. And if you're properly tall or need something truly built for bigger frames, LiberNovo's Maxis line is really the one you should be looking at first.

The big change you notice while actually using the chair is the new five‑position recline system: 105°, 115°, 125°, 135°, and 160°. Each angle is pitched as a "mode." Deep Focus at 105° is your upright, camera‑on posture. Nudge it back to 115°—Balance mode—and your spine and shoulders relax a bit without dropping you into lazy‑boy territory.

At 125° (Solo‑Work), you're in that natural lean‑back zone that suits long editing or deep‑work sessions. 135° (Soft Recline) is where I ended up with a controller in hand, still close enough to the desk to reach controls without overextending. Then 160° is Spine Flow, the full lay‑flat angle for power naps and the motorized OmniStretch spinal stretch.

On paper it's a smart, lifestyle‑based ladder of positions. In practice, the tuning isn't perfect. The jump from 105° to 115° feels a little abrupt and less smooth in motion than the original Omni's recline. Once you're actually settled into Solo‑Work or Soft Recline it feels fantastic, but it does give off a bit of "we added more stops for the spec sheet" energy rather than solving a problem I actually had.

Where the Pro does clearly earn its name is build quality and materials. Overall construction feels a notch tighter than the original: cleaner stitching, subtle design flourishes on the wheelbase, and noticeably less creaking from the backrest when you shift around. It feels less like a Kickstarter experiment and more like a polished production chair.

The headline upgrade is that Gabriel Atlantic Danish fabric. Terrible branding, fantastic textile. It looks and feels genuinely premium—more high‑end task chair than shouty gaming throne—and it has the numbers to back it up: abrasion resistance rated for roughly a decade of heavy use, OEKO‑TEX certified, breathable, flame‑retardant, and machine‑washable without shrinking. In the real world, the question is how it handles crumbs, spills and kid‑induced chaos, and that's something only months and years of abuse will reveal. Right now, it feels like the right kind of overkill and looks stunning at my white Secretlab Magnus desk.

Ergonomically, most things are evolutionary. The 4D armrests are a bit less prone to spinning or drifting when you bump them, though they're still not perfect. The headrest has more adjustability and is lovely when you're reclined, but in a true upright focus posture it still doesn't come out far enough for my liking. It feels tuned first for lounging, second for locked‑in work.

The motorized lumbar system has been revised internally and should be more durable. The feel, though, is very similar to the OG Omni: you get depth adjustment but not height. If the default strike point doesn't line up with your lower back, it can still feel more like a mid‑back nudge than that sweet, targeted lumbar hug. In the reclined modes it's more forgiving; in upright, I still wish they'd added vertical adjustment.

Then there's the new party trick: Active Airflow Seat Ventilation. Under the seat is a centrifugal fan pushing air up through perforated foam and mesh, with two levels—Low and High—rated for up to 36 and 9 hours respectively off the built‑in 3000 mAh battery. There's a seat sensor so it automatically pauses when you get up and resumes when you sit back down, plus a memory function so it remembers your last setting.

Here's the thing: it's winter where I am, so I haven't been desperate for a cooled backside. When I did use it, the sensation is more of a gentle coolness than "there's a fan under my bum." I can see this being a genuine quality‑of‑life upgrade in summer or if you work somewhere hot, but right now it feels more like a clever extra than the killer feature that justifies the "Pro" price tag.

The rest of the electronics story is thankfully boring in the good way. Battery life remains excellent; even with mixed use—occasional lumbar tweaks, the odd Omni stretch cycle, some airflow thrown in—I never got close to killing it. Like my Omni, I don't expect to be charging this one very often which is a great convenience.

What hasn't changed is the warranty, and that's the part that continues to bug me. You get five years on the frame and only two on the electronics, even though all the Pro‑specific magic lives in those electronics. LiberNovo promises better long‑term reliability this time around, but until these have been out in the wild for a few years, that's just a promise. And the optional footrest? Still the weak link. I didn't rate it on the original and it's effectively unchanged here: okay for lounging, not something I'd build my daily ergonomics around.

So where does that leave the Omni Pro? It's clearly the flagship of the range. You're paying extra for nicer fabric, cleaner finish, a more articulated recline and the cooling seat. Comfort, however, hasn't really moved on. This is still one of the most comfortable chairs I've used, but it doesn't feel noticeably comfier than the original Omni. The gains are mostly in polish and feel rather than in raw, "my back is changed forever" ergonomics.

Does it really earn the "Pro" badge? Sort of. It's the best, most premium expression of the Omni idea, not a ground‑up reimagining. If you want the nicest version and you're happy to pay for upgraded materials and the tech flourishes, the Omni Pro will absolutely treat you well. If you're more budget‑conscious, or simply less excited about motors and fans in the thing you sit on all day, the Omni SE suddenly looks very smart: you lose the electric lumbar and airflow, keep the core comfort and ergonomics, and save around $400. For a lot of people, that's going to be the real sweet spot.

Honestly, I want to like the Geekom A9 Max, I really do. From a pure design perspective, the hardware, the engineering behind it, the connectivity bundled into this thing, it's on another level. And it's just a bloody pretty thing at that, at least as far as Mini PCs go. You'd think it'd be a shoo-in for our best SFF PC list, without question. But there's a catch, because of course there is.

I may as well rip the band-aid off right now. It's the memory. I can already see the PR team squirming as they read that sentence, and it genuinely does pain me to say it, I promise. Geekom has decided to ship the A9 Max AI with a single stick of 32 GB DDR5 @ 5600 MT/s. And that is a decision that has effectively starved AMD's Radeon 890M of any modicum of the performance it can actually generate. I know this because I have extensively tested this hardware most recently, in Acemagic's Mini PC Retro X5, which, like-for-like, practically has the same spec, bar a smaller SSD, and a slightly older CPU.

The performance impact that this one tiny decision has had on the overall architecture is nuts, and combined with the wildly high price tag being what it is, it's by far the thing that's decimated that review score. If Geekom turned around tomorrow and popped 2x 16 GB sticks in this config instead of this single-channel nonsense, I can happily tell you right now, the score would bounce up by a good 15%, because in almost every other way, the A9 Max is excellent.

And, breathe. I'll get back to that in a minute. Still, for £1,600 in the UK or $1,800 US, it's generally not a bad offering (memory aside). You get that 32 GB RAM capacity, a 2TB Kingston PCIe 4.0 SSD (it's not the best), AMD's Ryzen AI 9 HX 470 CPU, A Radeon 890M iGPU, and a hell of a lot of connectivity.

The chip itself is relatively new on the scene, only really landing with us in January of this year. Though it's effectively a refreshed Strix Point (HX 370 series) chip, still built out of the same silicon architecture as its predecessor. You get those four Zen 5 cores, and eight Zen 5c cores for a fat 12/24 multi-threaded config, and it's all still built on the back of TSMC's 4 nm process as well. What's different? Well… clock speeds have been bumped ever so slightly up (with an extra 100 MHz on boost), oh, and the "biggest" update comes in the form of the NPU, which has seen its performance flick up to 86 TOPS versus its predecessor's 80 (huzzah, our AI datacenter worries are finally solved).

Connectivity is wild, too. There's so much here if you're looking for a lightweight workstation that's not brimming with a dedicated GPU and full-fat processor. There's no less than five USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A, two USB 4.0 Type-Cs, twin 2.5 Gbe, along with support for twin HDMI 2.1 ports, as well as the other bells and whistles you'd expect. No Thunderbolt, of course, but you do get WiFi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4.

Alright, I'm going to give you some numbers now, and they're quite clearly bad. But, it's important that we all collectively have context on this before I act like a wailing harpie and impale this memory situation into the dirt with my shiny shiny words (honestly, it's a miracle I get paid for this).

So, we test our SFF PCs (with iGPUs) at 1080p on the medium graphical preset. For this little wee dissection, I'm going to be using that Acemagic X5 I mentioned earlier for comparison. It has the same Radeon GPU, the same memory speed, memory capacity, a better SSD (albeit smaller), and practically the same CPU for what it's worth (technically, the A9 Max has a better chip here). On average, across all our test titles, with and without upscaling, across five separate games, separate engines, separate developers, the A9 Max landed just 23.1 fps. The Retro X5, with its dual-channel memory, 47.6 fps.

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1 / 3

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1080p gaming performance

Black Myth Wukong (1080p Medium)Cyberpunk 2077 (1080p Medium)F1 24 (1080p Medium)Horizon Zero Dawn (1080p Original)Metro Exodus Enhanced (1080p High)

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Geekom A9 Max

9

7

Acemagic Retro X5

20

16

Black Myth Wukong (1080p Medium) Data

Product	Value
Geekom A9 Max	9 Avg FPS, 7 1% Low FPS
Acemagic Retro X5	20 Avg FPS, 16 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Geekom A9 Max

22

15

Acemagic Retro X5

38

22

Cyberpunk 2077 (1080p Medium) Data

Product	Value
Geekom A9 Max	22 Avg FPS, 15 1% Low FPS
Acemagic Retro X5	38 Avg FPS, 22 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Geekom A9 Max

30

24

Acemagic Retro X5

73

59

F1 24 (1080p Medium) Data

Product	Value
Geekom A9 Max	30 Avg FPS, 24 1% Low FPS
Acemagic Retro X5	73 Avg FPS, 59 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Geekom A9 Max

23

13

Acemagic Retro X5

43

32

Horizon Zero Dawn (1080p Original) Data

Product	Value
Geekom A9 Max	23 Avg FPS, 13 1% Low FPS
Acemagic Retro X5	43 Avg FPS, 32 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Geekom A9 Max

14

5

Acemagic Retro X5

23

8

Metro Exodus Enhanced (1080p High) Data

Product	Value
Geekom A9 Max	14 Avg FPS, 5 1% Low FPS
Acemagic Retro X5	23 Avg FPS, 8 1% Low FPS

You can clearly see how a memory bandwidth starved iGPU is hobbled by having single channel memory here.

1080p upscaled gaming performance

Black Myth Wukong | Upscaling (1080p Medium)Cyberpunk 2077 | Upscaling (1080p Medium)F1 24 | Upscaling (1080p Medium)Horizon Zero Dawn | Upscaling (1080p Original)

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Geekom A9 Max

14

11

Acemagic Retro X5

30

22

Black Myth Wukong | Upscaling (1080p Medium) Data

Product	Value
Geekom A9 Max	14 Avg FPS, 11 1% Low FPS
Acemagic Retro X5	30 Avg FPS, 22 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Geekom A9 Max

30

20

Acemagic Retro X5

52

27

Cyberpunk 2077 | Upscaling (1080p Medium) Data

Product	Value
Geekom A9 Max	30 Avg FPS, 20 1% Low FPS
Acemagic Retro X5	52 Avg FPS, 27 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Geekom A9 Max

30

26

Acemagic Retro X5

86

75

F1 24 | Upscaling (1080p Medium) Data

Product	Value
Geekom A9 Max	30 Avg FPS, 26 1% Low FPS
Acemagic Retro X5	86 Avg FPS, 75 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Geekom A9 Max

36

21

Acemagic Retro X5

63

44

Horizon Zero Dawn | Upscaling (1080p Original) Data

Product	Value
Geekom A9 Max	36 Avg FPS, 21 1% Low FPS
Acemagic Retro X5	63 Avg FPS, 44 1% Low FPS

The performance gap between the system with dual-channel memory and the one with single-channel memory doesn't get any better with upscaling enabled.

Synthetic gaming performance

3DMark Time Spy3DMark StorageFFXIV Shadowbringers

Index score

GPU index score

CPU index score

Geekom A9 Max

2301

2035

8948

Acemagic Retro X5

3532

3153

11109

3DMark Time Spy Data

Product	Value
Geekom A9 Max	2301 Index score, 2035 GPU index score, 8948 CPU index score
Acemagic Retro X5	3532 Index score, 3153 GPU index score, 11109 CPU index score

Index score

Avg bandwidth (MB/s)

Access time (ųs)

Geekom A9 Max

1306

226.22

139

Acemagic Retro X5

2460

415.65

72

3DMark Storage Data

Product	Value
Geekom A9 Max	1306 Index score, 226.22 Avg bandwidth (MB/s), 139 Access time (ųs)
Acemagic Retro X5	2460 Index score, 415.65 Avg bandwidth (MB/s), 72 Access time (ųs)

Geekom A9 Max

38.96

Acemagic Retro X5

20.45

FFXIV Shadowbringers Data

Product	Value
Geekom A9 Max	38.96
Acemagic Retro X5	20.45

Contrary to what Geekom says, the synthetic performance difference is actually less than real-world in-game benchmarks.

It's not a limitation that sits solely with gaming, either. In 7-Zip, compression and decompression were markedly slower, multi-core performance in CineBench was down too, and the only times it did beat out the HX 370 was in single-threaded tasks, where memory bandwidth is less of a thing. Not exactly a riveting score sheet then. Even 3DMark's Storage benchmark came out significantly slower, which I can't believe even for a second is entirely down to the drive being just that much sloppier than the EXT X200E found in the X5 is.

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Synthetic CPU performance

Cinebench R247-zip

Single-core index score

Multi-core index score

Geekom A9 Max

119

1101

Acemagic Retro X5

107

1169

Cinebench R24 Data

Product	Value
Geekom A9 Max	119 Single-core index score, 1101 Multi-core index score
Acemagic Retro X5	107 Single-core index score, 1169 Multi-core index score

Compression (GIPS)

Decompression (GIPS)

Geekom A9 Max

98.88

130.12

Acemagic Retro X5

110.45

131.4

7-zip Data

Product	Value
Geekom A9 Max	98.88 Compression (GIPS), 130.12 Decompression (GIPS)
Acemagic Retro X5	110.45 Compression (GIPS), 131.4 Decompression (GIPS)

This is likely where Geekom's claims about limited performance difference ring true, as you can see both systems performing well.

Cooling performance

Thermal performance

Max CPU temp (°C)

Max CPU package power (W)

Geekom A9 Max

86

64.98

Acemagic Retro X5

85

69.98

Thermal performance Data

Product	Value
Geekom A9 Max	86 Max CPU temp (°C), 64.98 Max CPU package power (W)
Acemagic Retro X5	85 Max CPU temp (°C), 69.98 Max CPU package power (W)

This is likely where Geekom's claims about limited performance difference ring true, as you can see both systems performing well.

Just to be doubly sure, I re-ran the whole benchmark suite, and triple-checked GPU frequencies, temps and power draw throughout that process too, noting down average frequencies as well (not typically something we report on for these machines). The X5 maxed out at 2,764 MHz and 2,100 MHz on average, at 60 degrees and with 50 W on max draw. The A9, 3,100 MHz at max, 2,300 MHz on average, with a top temp of 63 degrees and 55 W of power usage. By all accounts, then, the GPU itself was running at full tilt, but was just starved of memory bandwidth.

Geekom knows about this, too. In fact, I was pre-briefed that this was a decision it had made in advance. The justification being that it provides end-users with the option to expand their memory solution later down the line with an additional stick of 32 GB. Which, yeah, okay, I don't necessarily disagree with.

Geekom also notes that, actually, the performance drops are only in synthetic benchmarks, and don't affect real-world performance. Which I do disagree with.

You can quite clearly see that this does massively impact real-world results. In fact, more so than in the synthetic tests, by my calculations. What's particularly frustrating about all this is that nowhere on the product pages (at least at time of writing) does it suggest that the A9 Max ships with a single stick. It's all "dual-channel compatible", "up to 128 GB", or "32 GB RAM", "High-speed memory".

It's a difficult thing to just accept, because the truth of it is the A9 Max is an outstanding piece of design. It's cool, quiet, and it's clear that the CPU in particular is seriously potent, particularly in localised AI applications if that's your jam. The sad reality is, we've already seen what this hardware can do; it just came in a beige box at half the price.

There's something almost endlessly endearing about the wee Steam Machine box. It's beautifully designed, beautifully small, and it's a gaming PC that you wouldn't mind sticking in/on whatever furniture your TV sits on. But it's also hard to buy, was manufactured in small numbers, and commands an incredibly high price for a PC with a weak last-gen GPU and single-channel memory.

But, bless 'em, Valve is still trying to carry on as though it's all fine. And to that end, it has now listed the Windows drivers for its Steam Machine so users can easily switch from the installed SteamOS software to Microsoft's more-pervasive operating system. The drivers are all listed on the support pages for Steam Hardware, sitting just underneath the options for the different Steam Deck SKUs.

In the interests of choice and customisation, that's great. Having the option to switch from Linux to a more widely supported OS means that all the games which are blocked from SteamOS (such as most online shooters) are now available to you if you commit the sin of an operating system switch.

Okay, that's maybe a little harsh, but it does feel like one of the boons of the Steam Machine is innate support for SteamOS—something that's still not all that widespread for desktop PCs—making for a particularly ideal living room/TV-connected experience. Though I will say that the Steam Controller itself takes much of the pain out of using Windows from a sofa, which also kinda undermines the SteamOS positivity.

Anyways, if you're one of the (lucky?) few who managed to get hold of a Steam Machine, or at least have a golden ticket for the reservation queue, then you can download the latest Windows drivers ready for a clean install of the MS OS right now.

There are a few caveats, however. The first is that it's a binary choice, as currently there isn't a clean way to dual-boot both SteamOS and Windows on one Steam device. Valve says that it will release an installer with a dual-boot wizard "for SteamOS once it's complete" whenever that is. Though I would say you could easily just add in another Linux OS which will boot into the SteamOS gaming frontend, such as Bazzite or Nobara; that will allow you to dual boot.

You will also need to connect your Steam Machine via Ethernet to enter a Windows product key, as the Wi-Fi drivers don't get installed until later. I'm sure there would actually be a way to install the supplied Wi-Fi drivers during Windows installation, but you could also create your Windows install drive using Rufus and have it create a local account automatically to get around that.

Update July 9, 2026: The RTX 50-series Super variant listings have been removed from the Seasonic PSU wattage calculator tool, as noted by @unikoshardware. And not just the latest card that was added yesterday, either; the RTX 5080 Super, but also the RTX 5070 Super and RTX 5070 Ti Super that were added further back have also gone.

Now, that could mean different things. Either it was completely erroneous guesswork on the part of Seasonic, and after the publicity it's got from noting the GPU wattage in its calculator it's decided to stick to actually released cards, or it had the right information and was asked to remove it.

One means we're no closer to knowing when the Super series is coming, while the other suggests everything's finalised and ready to roll. Though, given that these cards were expected earlier this year, I would expect everything would already have been finalised even if the actual release has been pushed back to post-CES next year.

But it's not necessarily a case of no news is good news, it just means more questions.

Original story July 8, 2026: If you thought Nvidia's RTX 50-series Super cards were completely MIA at this point, think again. Seasonic's online PSU calculator tool has listed the RTX 5080 Super, RTX 5070 Ti Super, and RTX 5070 Super among its entries, with increased wattages ranging from an extra 10 to 17% depending on the card.

Granted, it's not exactly much to go on. But the individual listings for the various cards adds more credence to the idea we may eventually see Nvidia's fabled Super variants at some point in the future (via Videocardz).

In terms of individual wattages, the RTX 5070 Super is listed with a 275 W TGP, 25 W more than the non-Super card's 250 W spec. The RTX 5070 Ti Super has a listed TGP of 350 W, a 50 W increase, while the RTX 5080 Super is given a 415 W figure, 55 W more than the standard RTX 5080.

Which all seems fairly reasonable. The long-mooted RTX 50-series Super range is expected to be made up of several of the existing RTX 50-series GPUs with increased clock speeds and VRAM loadouts, which would explain the higher power allocations.

That being said, I would imagine the specifics of the extra wattage bumps are likely to be guesses, as Nvidia has been tight-lipped regarding the RTX 50-series Super refresh to date—although they do align with some of Kopite7kimi's earlier predictions. There's a good chance that all of the specifications for these RTX Blackwell updates have been known inside Nvidia for a good long while now, and it's not unreasonable to expect those details to have leaked out.

Ever since the memory crisis began to bite (and GPUs continued to increase in price beyond their MSRPs), rumours and speculation around the RTX 50-series Super cards has gradually slowed to a drip, although that seems to be on the turn.

Prominent tech leaker @Zed__Wang suggested last month that the RTX 50-series Super cards were "back on track," alongside a rumour that a 12 GB RTX 5060 was also now on the menu, perhaps under the name RTX 5060 Super.

Given the cadence of the tech launch calendar, I suspect we'd be looking at a potential CES 2027 launch for Nvidia's long-lost 50-series Super models, as the green team has likely been sitting on them for quite some time. And with the RTX 60-series on the way at some point, it'll want the cards on the market for a decent amount of time before they're superseded by the next generation.

The question is, with what are likely to be fairly marginal performance increases, will gamers want them? Especially as they're probably going to cost a decent chunk more than the regular RTX 50-series GPUs proper, which aren't exactly cheap at this point.

It's all still up in the air, but signs are starting to suggest that we'll eventually find out.

Sony's headphones come with some neat hardware designed for its own specially implemented spatial audio system. But on PC, that hardware often goes unused. That is, until now.

As posted to Reddit by user NSlattery43, you can now use the motion sensors in the likes of the Sony WH-1000XM5, WF-1000XM5, and ULT Wear headphones for head tracking in games like Microsoft Flight Simulator, Elite Dangerous, and Assetto Corsa.

Slattery made their own open-source software and posted it to GitHub, which means you can not only use it entirely for free but also build on it in new ways or fine-tune it. The way it works is that it catches the live orientation and gyroscopic data from your buds or headphones, then passes it over to head tracking software OpenTrack, which then connects to games. It doesn't require a webcam, infrared tracker, or any other hardware/software to get running.

To get it to work, simply download the software via GitHub, pair any compatible Sony device, open the application, and then use OpenTrack whilst the game is on to link the input. You may run into a problem with Sony devices failing to make the head tracking node, but the software has an option to register the tracker if so.

Though they haven't been tested, Slattery claims that the Sony Linkbuds (WF-L910, WF-LS910N, WF-L900, and WF-LS9000N) should all work, as Sony lists that they have the right head-tracking modules.

Notably, because the method outputs with OpenTrack, it should work with any FreeTrack-compatible game or any TrackIR or FreeTrack game.

As pointed out by a commenter, this means one could grab a pair of XR glasses and set them up in a display mode and get 360-degree tracking. You wouldn't need any other controller in order to look around you, as long as the game supports 3DoF (three degrees of freedom) tracking. My mind boggles at how useful this would be in a full-on cockpit. You would still want traditional controls for driving or whatever else, but it seems like a relatively low-effort way of getting intuitive head controls.

And you don't even need XR glasses to use this in a game. Given you can customise sensitivity and inputs, you could set it so that you look around sharply with controls and have fine-tuned movement with nothing but your head, similar to how one might use gyro controls in the likes of the Steam Controller. Not bad for a free bit of software.

Late last year, Australia implemented a social media ban for those aged under 16, and reports since suggest that things aren't exactly going as planned. For one, companies reportedly don't seem to be actually checking some accounts.

Reuters spoke to a team of software testers, who report that several companies failed to ask for proof of age on any of the 50 accounts they opened after the ban rolled out.

The team behind the accounts set their age as 16, but nine of the ten services the testers attempted to use reportedly failed to check their age in any way. This includes Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube. Kick, the streaming platform, reportedly did ask for proof of age in order to let users make accounts.

In an extreme case, one profile claiming to be 16 on X was reportedly served pornographic content. Reuters reports it was told by a Meta spokesperson that the test accounts weren't checked as it wasn't clear if they had "posted content or engaged in a way a true under-16-year-old user would". In other words, it may not have been clear through account history and usage whether they were the claimed age.

Andrew Hammond, a director at the testing firm who ran the original trial, says, "You ​should be asked to demonstrate how old you are, and not once have we been asked to verify our age or use age-assurance measures."

A spokesperson for the eSafety commissioner told Reuters that the regulator "remains confident that age-restricted platforms have the technology and resources they need to prevent Australian children under 16 from having accounts."

It seems like the ball is in the court of platform holders as to whether or not teenagers will be sufficiently vetted. And this is all before mentioning ways in which potential users can circumvent those age checks. Last year, we spotted that you could get around age verification checks on Discord with a phone and a copy of Death Stranding. A few months ago, we noted you could even use a 3D model in a browser to get around it.

It seems like there's not only an ideological battlefield in the implementation of age checks, but a technical one too, and it will need a lot of support to actually work.

It often seems like there's no light at the end of the memory crisis tunnel. That's not just my opinion; it's what I was told a few months ago by Maingear CEO Wallace Santos. But analysts from Bernstein have forecast something quite positive for DRAM at the end of 2028, as long as you can hold out for that long.

As spotted by tech analyst Jukan05, Bernstein research analysts recently made financial estimates for the margins of SK hynix over the next few years. For the unaware, SK hynix is one of the single biggest makers of memory right now (alongside Samsung and Micron), and will be making money hand over fist with the memory crisis in full swing.

Bernstein reckons SK hynix's gross margin on DRAM (percentage of revenue after taking away cost of goods) will be as high as 90.9% in Q2 2026, and will go all the way up to 92.7% in Q4 this year. To pair with this, Bernstein believes that the ASP (average selling price) will be as high as $1.85 per GB, which is more than three times what it was in 2025.

This is all to say that, for the rest of 2026, Bernstein reckons the price of DRAM will only rise. The research analysts think it will hit a peak of $2.23 per GB (almost five times higher than in 2025) by the end of 2027, with a gross margin of 94%.

However, there is some potential good news, too. Bernstein also estimates that 2028 will see a decline in gross margin and the ASP, with SK hynix expected to sit at a still very healthy 86.4%, with an ASP of $1.05 per GB. That's more than a 50% drop from the previous year and only a near 100% increase from 2025.

NAND revenue has received similar projections from Bernstein too, with it anticipating a drop from $0.32 per GB at the end of 2027 to $0.1 per GB at the end of 2028. That means, according to Bernstein's estimates, the end of 2028 will be a better time to buy both the memory and storage in your rig than the next two years.

Whether this is wishful thinking is anyone's guess, but I'm certainly a bit sceptical of the specifics of this claim. A drop of any kind would be good for consumers, but both NAND and DRAM seem set for a large drop, according to Bernstein. SK hynix certainly looks set to increase output in the future, with it investing over $60 billion in chip plants in South Korea, and it's looking to triple chip output by 2034, but SK hynix and Samsung are both set to steadily increase production to 'minimize the risk of oversupply.'

It takes time to build the factories necessary to increase output, and these companies don't seem to be throwing all their funds at them. That said, they are still putting a lot of money into future output.

The problem here is that, even if the supply of DRAM manages to catch up with demand over the next two years (which is a big 'if'), there's no guarantee that the prices will suddenly drop as a result. It seems likely they will instead slowly decline over time. And that's before considering whether or not the AI industry will continue to expand by then, or how things like the launch of the next Sony and Microsoft consoles will impact consumer supply. For the sake of my rig, I hope that Bernstein is right though, and that my scepticism is unwarranted.

The humble mouse has been through some changes in its time. When it’s not adding extra buttons all over the place it’s twisting your wrist into unlikely positions or looking like whatever the Mad Catz RAT was. A general theme over the years, however, is that they’re getting bigger, and perhaps there's a study to be done into whether PC gamers’ hands are getting larger too, the better to cradle and envelop them.

Logitech has taken the opposite approach with the Mobi—it’s truly tiny. This is a travel mouse, a mouse for the truly short of space, a sliver of silicone-wrapped plastic that folds in half when not in use, looking rather like the Surface Arc mouse Microsoft put out in 2017, but a little bit cheaper. Where that device folded flat for transport, this one goes the other way.

Hand the Mobi to someone and the conversation goes like this: “It’s a phone?” No. “It’s a phone stand?” No. “What is it then? I can’t believe I don’t know.” Click click click on the buttons. “Oh, it’s a mouse!”

While it may resemble a Star Trek communicator or a tiny flip phone to go with your geek pie hairstyle (“that’s well weapon”), the Mobi is in fact just a mouse. It has two main buttons, two further programmable buttons, a little touch-sensitive panel to act as a scroll wheel, a PAW3222 4,000 DPI optical sensor, and a USB-C port for charging. It connects to your PC (and two other devices) via Bluetooth with fast pairing, and will play nicely with a Bolt receiver if you ask it to, though one isn’t included in the package unless you buy a special ‘business’ version.

The folding nature of the mouse is actually a stroke of genius. When collapsed, it will slip neatly into your skin-tight futuristic space-catsuit without causing too much of a bulge. And when stretched out it fits in the hand, something many compact mice that just take a normal-sized one and shrink it can’t claim. Your third finger and thumb will go underneath the 120-degree (ish) central hump if you let them, and there's certainly space for them to do this, but most of the time there's just enough height in the body of the mouse for your thumb to rest on.

Unless you have insanely long fingers you won’t run out of space on top, and the third and fourth buttons are cleverly integrated under the scrollpad, with a press at the top or bottom activating them. These click much more loudly than the nicely damped main buttons, and you can use the Logi Options+ software for a degree of customisation about what they do, including a neat double-tap auto-zoom.

And while it may look a little flimsy, Logitech has some remarkable claims about how it’s not. It can, apparently, withstand 50,000 folding actions before it starts to wear out, which Logi thinks should take 15 years (or about 5,479 days, for an average of nine folds a day). Obviously that doesn’t take into account people constantly folding and unfolding it because of the novelty of the hinge mechanism, but in 15 years we’ll be controlling our PCs with brain implants anyway. Instead of a simple switch in the hinge to detect when it’s closed and switch it off, Logitech says there's an on-device AI that protects against unintentional clicks while you’re folding it. If that sounds absurd, it’s because it is, but that’s where we are in the space year 2026, requiring an AI to tell us whether we’re wearing pants or not.

Better is the battery life of 30 days from a full charge, and the ability to use it for 22 hours after a charge of just one minute. You won’t be able to use it while it’s charging thanks to the position of the USB-C port, which isn’t quite up to Apple Magic Mouse levels of egregiousness, but with a cable connected it feels enough like you’re about to snap the plug of in the socket to make you reconsider after a few seconds. The battery cover can be pried up with a screwdriver, and it looks like the cell could be replaced, though Logitech hasn’t mentioned anything about this.

Of course it’s possible to play games with it. You can game with a trackpad or the tiny red nub on a Thinkpad, and I’ve played Age of Empires II with much worse things than the Mobi. It doesn’t require any kind of special surface to glide over, seems quite happy on a trouser leg, and the pointer is reliable and accurate. The important thing here is how much better it is to use than a laptop’s trackpad, especially if you’ve not put in the hours required to get good at using one for gaming.

Sadly, that’s almost all the praise it’s possible to muster about the Mobi. Its four buttons are fine, but scrolling is a mess. Not only is the touchpad the same texture as its surroundings, so it’s quite possible to be lovingly rubbing your fingertip against one of the buttons instead of where the action is in the middle, but even if you do get it in the right place, the web page or camera zoom you’re controlling moves jerkily, as if it’s losing track of your fingertip.

A hand that’s used to a solid-bodied mouse can rebel against being asked to cradle something so slender, and you end up moving from what should be a straightforward palm caress to a crab-like grip on the edges. It’s possible to pick the back edge up, fold your fingers underneath, and keep only the sensor in contact with the tabletop, and this might be the best way to use it despite every promotional image showing it with front and back firmly on the ground.

So, yeah. The Logi Mobi Fold is a nice piece of engineering but inevitably can’t hold a candle to a proper gaming mouse. Perhaps that’s not the point, as we don’t expect products designed for extreme portability to perform precisely like their full-size counterparts. At 79 g it’s heavier than the Logitech G Pro X Superlight and the Corsair Sabre V2 Pro, so if you’ve got it tucked in your bag and fancy a bit of Total War it’s better than a trackpad, but a modern full-sized mouse is hardly a large piece of equipment to transport, so use that instead.

At the start of May, president Donald Trump thanked Michael and Susan Dell (yes, those Dells) for donating over $6 billion to 'Trump Accounts,' reportedly going toward at least 25 million children in America. In that thank-you speech, he urged listeners to "go out and buy a Dell." That was after Trump filed that he purchased somewhere between $1 million and $5 million in Dell stocks, and just before the War Department signed a $9.7 billion deal with Dell. Now, just under two months later, Trump has once again urged listeners to buy Dell.

As posted by Headquarters on X (and shared via live stream to the official White House YouTube page), Trump recently encouraged those attending a press conference to "Go out and buy a Dell Computer" and said he has "a son that loves their laptop". Referring to the over $6 billion donation figure, Trump points at Michael Dell and says, "We're gonna get him that money back one way or the other."

Trump follows this up by stating, while laughing, "and then I'll ask for another $6.25 billion."

President Trump does clarify that he thinks Michael Dell has not made that donation for Trump to advocate for his products. But given the public comments and deals made with Dell after that donation, I personally can't help but feel it's maybe not just a happy coincidence.

President Trump invested in Dell on February 10, 2026, and Dell's stock price has seen a huge uplift ever since. It would cost you $126 per share in Dell on February 10, and as of the time of writing, it will cost you $415 per share. That's actually a small downturn from when its stock price hit $465 on June 1 this year (according to Google Finance).

That was the highest Dell stock has ever been priced at. And means those buying in February would have tripled their potential investment by now.

The Code of Federal Regulations does outline that employees "may not use their public office for their own private gain; for the endorsement of any product, service, or enterprise (except as otherwise permitted by this part or other applicable law or regulation); or for the private gain of friends, relatives, or persons with whom the employee is affiliated."

It's not clear if Trump is himself bound by such rules, however, and there has certainly been no hint that he could be reprimanded for such a public endorsement.

Other companies that Trump put somewhere between $1 million and $5 million into include Nvidia and Apple, both of which he has talked about favourably this year. Trump also seemingly invested between $50,000 and $100,000 into Intel, and then made three further investments of between $15,001 and $50,000 into Intel this year alone. Intel has also received support from the American government, and Trump has spoken positively about the company, even announcing Intel's recent deal with Apple.

This is all to say it's my opinion that, whether it's the intended effect or not, putting significant amounts of money into public stock, then making government deals with, and talking positively about that company, is bound to have a favourable outcome on the stock you have just bought. That would seem to be especially true if you are the president of the United States.

You can't have too many screens. That's pretty much been the guiding moral in my life. Enter the new Asus ROG Strix XG129C and a minor existential crisis. This is a screen, but I have to ask—I can't believe I'm saying this—is there any real point to it?

For starters, this "gaming monitor" (Asus' words, not mine) measures just 12.3 inches. So, it's pretty puny. Actually, it's worse than that. It sports an ultra-wide 24:9 aspect ratio and thus isn't even as big as those 12 inches might imply. In terms of vertical viewable screen height, we're talking sub-4.5-inch.

But here's the thing. While I came in decidedly sceptical about the Asus ROG Strix XG129C, this isn't a proper monitor. It's a device for keeping track of, say, your PC's operating status or providing space for some supplementary application controls. Somehow, I ended up quite liking it. And not just because I'm a total sucker for screens. But more on my journey in a moment. First, let's cover off the core speeds and feeds.

The 24:9 aspect translates into a native resolution of 1,920 by 720 pixels and a pixel density of 166 DPI, the latter being about the same as a 27-inch 4K monitor. So, it's pretty crisp.

It uses IPS panel tech and tops out at 300 nits for brightness and 75 Hz in terms of refresh rate. Oh, and quite importantly, it supports capacitive 10-point multi-touch input. For the record, the touch functionality works essentially out-of-the-box provided you are connecting via USB-C.

Speaking of which, there are two USB-C ports. Both will drive the display, while one doubles as power in and the other supports 20 W of power out. So you can, for instance, connect via a single USB-C cable to both drive the display and power it, which is the ideal in terms of cable management.

That's easy from a laptop, but less of a given with a desktop PC. There are desktop graphics cards with USB-C out that support up to 30 W of power delivery and so would be able to power the display and drive it. But that setup would not support the touch functionality, which requires data passthrough.

So, for a true single-cable solution on a desktop, it all gets a bit complicated. In theory, you could do it with a motherboard that supports Thunderbolt and DisplayPort passthrough from the iGPU and thus have the Asus ROG Strix XG129C running from the iGPU in your CPU and your main monitor running off your graphics card.

I understand this setup is supported, for instance, on Intel Z890 motherboards, again in theory. In practice, results seem to vary and there can be issues with the Thunderbolt port supplying sufficient power. In a worst case scenario, then, you might need to use the HDMI port for the video signal, one of the USB-C ports to power the display and another to send touch data to your PC, which is pretty messy.

But I think a decent chunk of users will be able to get it working with two of the three ports hooked up. If one of those is the HDMI port, you'll then have one cable coming out of the side, one out of the top. It would have been tidier if Asus had located all the ports on one side. Never mind.

That ergonomic glitch aside, this is otherwise a really nicely built display. It feels high quality and the screw-in kick stand is very sturdy and capped with a rubberised foot to provide grip, as is the base of the display itself.

You also get a proper OSD with a joystick controller and full set of features, just like a conventional Asus monitor. What's more, you can control the OSD with the touchscreen input, which is a nice, well, touch.

If that's the features covered, what is the Asus ROG Strix XG129C like in use? Asus bundles a year's subscription to an OEM version of Aida 64, so you've got something to play with immediately.

That's handy, because it would be a nightmare to configure the standard version of Aida 64 to fit this display perfectly. As it is, you can use it to track CPU and GPU operating speeds and temps, storage use, that kind of thing. You'd have thought a permanent license would be part of the deal, but at least you have something to run immediately.

Outside of that, your mileage will vary depending on your preferences. You could use this display to do anything from keep track of social media feeds or work collab' platforms like Slack while you game, to using it to situate secondary controls or a timeline for video editing.

Much will depend on the exact applications you use and what kind of tools and controls they offer, how much configurability they support and so on. But what I would say is that, for this display to really deliver, those tools and controls need to be touch friendly.

That's generally quite a big ask, given that so many applications are either poorly or not at all optimised for touch. Ironically, that includes Asus' own Display Widget Controller app, which really doesn't work at all well on this display. Whatever, it's the ability to use the touch interface, as opposed to needing to "mouse over," and the immediacy that offers, that is most compelling.

Of course, that in itself can create problems with application focus, in-game. And there's no doubting the Asus RoG Strix XG129C works most reliably and consistently as a status display rather than something you directly interact with. But the shortcomings there are largely down to how Windows operates, rather than the display itself.

In the end, this little display is very much in the nice-to-have rather than must-have category. It's also the sort of device where your benefit from and use of it will depend on a whole range of factors.

Some people may be able to get quite a bit of value out of it as a touch device for controlling application tools and menus, such as video, image and music editing. But I would advise caution in that regard. You'll need to do a little homework to see what really works. Don't assume too much.

On the other hand, if you just like the idea of a small secondary display for keeping track of your PC's hardware status or viewing work and social feeds, you can be more confident that the Asus ROG Strix XG129C will deliver.

What's more, as someone who prefers a single ultrawide monitor to a pair of more conventional 16:9 panels, what this mini monitor offers is a way to have the status-tracking functionality that a second screen offers, but keep it small and ergonomically tidy. I don't need a huge screen to watch a bit of Slack or keep track of emails arriving in the background, in other words. The Asus ROG Strix XG129C does that kind of job rather nicely.

Which brings us to the final important factor, namely price. At $199, the Asus ROG Strix XG129C is either pretty reasonable for such a specialised device or crazy money given what 200 bucks buys you these days in the monitor market. This year during Amazon Prime week, I found some KTC 34-inch ultrawides for barely over $200, while $250 will get you a 27-inch 4K dual-mode panel and $150 a decent 1440p panel. It's all a bit bananas.

In that context, the Asus ROG Strix XG129C is definitely a luxury item rather than a value proposition. You'll certainly have to specifically want a smaller, and in some ways less functional, screen to choose it over a 27-inch 1440p panel for less money.

But, personally, I actually might. I already have a large ultrawide for my primary viewing. I don't want another full-sized screen hanging miles off to the side. This nifty little accessory display can sit below my main monitor and would be just the thing to have running discretely, keeping me up to date. I've just got to decide if that's worth $200 to me…

If you've found yourself with much less storage than you otherwise anticipated, to the tune of hundreds of missing gigabytes, there's a chance you've fallen victim to a new Windows 11 bug. That, or you're not very good at managing your storage (same).

As spotted by Windows Latest, this new bug involves the CapabilityAccessManager. This function in Windows 11 is responsible for app permissions like allowing apps to access your camera or microphone. It's a file that can reportedly grow in size, but it shouldn't take up to 500 GB, and it definitely shouldn't hold onto that storage indefinitely.

If you're wondering if you've been affected, you should be able to spot an anomaly if you go into storage settings and click on 'show more categories.' If 'System & reserved' is hundreds of GB large, or close to that, the bug has hit you.

Unfortunately, this method will only show you the problem if it's obvious and very large. Windows Latest does show another method for spotting the problem, using an elevated version of the command prompt. With Command Prompt on and run as administrator, type in the following command:

• robocopy "C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\CapabilityAccessManager" "%TEMP%\CAMCheck" /L /B /R:0 /W:0 /BYTES /NP

From here, you should be able to spot any anomalies in storage size. Some users have reported CapabilityAccessManager taking up to 500 GB in storage, with others reporting anywhere between 70 GB and 200 GB.

If you have been affected and want that storage back as soon as possible, you can opt to update to Windows 11 KB5095093 (builds 26200.8737 or 26100.8737), and this should fix the problem. You can get this update by clicking on Windows Update in Settings, going into advanced settings, and then clicking on optional updates. From here, you can check for optional updates and grab the latest patch.

If you don't want to willingly join optional builds of Windows 11, this update is expected to trickle down into a traditional Windows 11 update at some point in July. So, you can just hang on until then if it's not bothering you.

The next Windows 11 update comes with more than just that fix. For one, it introduces "a quieter, more focused Widgets experience", as it will no longer open on hover, and being more simplistic in use. It also introduces improved speed in File Explorer, new accessibility settings, and better Bluetooth stability among a greater range of devices. It's nice that this fix comes with some decent changes, but Microsoft's ability to accidentally implement the weirdest bugs is second to almost no one, other than maybe Dwarf Fortress.

A data centre is usually where the so-called magic of any larger scale AI workload actually happens. In order to fulfill its AI ambitions, big tech has overseen a rapid infrastructure build out. Resource-intensive and often loud, they make for exceptionally poor neighbours.

Wisconsin residents filed a class-action lawsuit against Microsoft on Wednesday, alleging that the company's Fairwater data centre situated in Mount Pleasant emits "unreasonable and excessive noise onto Plaintiffs’ properties." The suit is seeking an unspecified amount in damages. The filing alleges that the source of the noise pollution is "diesel generators and heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, including chillers, cooling towers, air-handling units, and condenser fans" (via Law360).

Speaking of class, the filing defines this as "All owner-occupants and renters of residential property residing within one and one-half (1.5) miles of Defendant’s Data Center at any time within the applicable statute of limitations." Reportedly, that could end up including more than 1,000 homes.

It's also alleged that this industrial noise can see the community facing levels between 48 to 60 decibels. However, the residents also allege the data centre creates a 'low hum' of infrasound that is not easily measured by the A-weighted decibel scale, and therefore is not subject to most municipal noise ordinances. One plaintiff claims they had to change their work schedule as "the constant noise [affected] his sleep."

As for Microsoft, the company committed $7 billion to the construction of Fairwater in the hopes it would become the 'the world’s most powerful AI data center'. Microsoft has been aware of some of its sound issues since at least April this year. It said in a blog post at the time that it was investigating the cause and that, "Microsoft prides itself on being a good neighbor in the communities where we operate."

On June 18, the company claimed to have put a number of noise mitigations in place, writing, "Several neighbors confirmed what our independent monitoring showed: that these mitigations fully resolved the issue."

However, the class-action lawsuit was then filed July 1, implying these mitigations may not have pleased all parties affected. The filing alleges, "Defendant has failed to follow proper industrial practices to prevent the offsite emission of noise, and has failed to absorb, capture, mitigate, and/or prevent noise from escaping its Data Center, thereby invading the homes and properties of Plaintiffs and the Class."

For years now, security researchers have been preparing to fight against cryptanalytic attacks from future quantum computers. But Microsoft has had to push up its timeline, as those attacks seem much closer than otherwise anticipated.

As reported by Bleepingcomputer, Microsoft recently published a blog post informing users of its new deadline. Microsoft plans to accelerate its Quantum Safe Program (QSP) to be quantum-apocalypse-ready by 2029.

Microsoft says that post-quantum cryptography "was framed as a future problem: important, inevitable, but distant. That perspective is evolving as technology advances and organizations prepare for the scale and complexity of the transition ahead."

Q-Day (or Y2Q) is the name given to the moment when quantum computers become so powerful that they can crack current encryption techniques with ease. That is what the original timeline was based around. Now, though, Microsoft believes "cryptographically relevant quantum computers could arrive sooner than previously expected—and the work required to prepare is significant so organizations need to start now."

There's also the 'harvest now, decrypt later' method to consider, in which threat actors take in whatever data they can find now in order to analyse and crack the info when quantum-cracking technology comes online. This means that companies are looking to make their data secure from quantum decryption in advance. It's not good enough to be secure now. Companies have to be secure in the future.

Most computers right now encrypt data with algorithms based on mathematical problems that can be easily solved with quantum computers, so post-quantum cryptography is intended to go one layer deeper.

However, even if the work is successful, it is still unproven. We still don't know if a future quantum computer could potentially crack newly made algorithms, partly because… well, we don't have access to future technology. Microsoft argues its QSP goes beyond future cryptography and is only part of a "broader effort to strengthen long-term resilience across identity, infrastructure, data, and supply-chain security."

From here, Microsoft says that customers should make themselves aware of the plan to bring forward this quantum safe timeline and learn more about how to implement it when they do. It seems like the next few years are very important for researchers, and security developers will have to do their best to outpace attackers.

England, a country built on brick designed to retain heat, experienced a historic heatwave last month. Having experienced the blistering 37°C/98.6°F peak myself, there's little I would not have done to escape that heat—even donning a silly-looking personal cooling wearable didn't seem beyond the pail.

Hardware channel Making Stuff with Mike is based in Denmark, which has also experienced its share of record-breaking heat. So, the YouTuber created a "functioning art piece" to keep him cool during the in-tents heat of BornHack 2026. The 'art piece' in question is a hard hat with an unusual centerpiece jutting out of it: A mini-chimney with a 120 mm Noctua fan mounted on top (via Hackaday).

The fan structure is 3D printed, with a custom USB-to-fan-header adapter inside. The fan itself runs off of 5000 Ah power banks, which Mike hopes will keep him cool for about six hours at a time. Airflow from the Noctua fan to Mike's bonce passes through a drilled out hole in the top of the hard hat, though this prototype's fan may still struggle when temperatures rise again.

The current fan setup isn't very powerful, running at five volts. Mike says he'd like to eventually upgrade to a 12 volt design for better airflow, though his chief concern is that this would drain the power bank much faster and require a physically larger unit that may not fit inside the chimney structure.

Mike also admits he's not thought much about cable management, electing to simply duct-tape the power bank to the back of the helmet for now. Though very silly-looking, it's hard not to be charmed by this particular project or its creator.

For example, when mounting the chimney template to the hard hat, Mike inspects his work and quips, "It's not perfectly straight but, you know what? Neither am I, so I don't care!"

Though an early prototype, Mike already has plans for how he'll further iterate on the DIY cooling device. Even at this early prototype stage, the 3D printed chimney features a spot to mount a PCB internally and potentially facilitate a light-up design down the road. Mike is also weighing up whether to leave the (now unsafe) safety hat bright yellow, or give it a steampunk makeover.

Buying a good laptop is an intimidating affair, as you need to check the TGP of the discrete GPU (if it has one), the speeds of the SSD, and the generation and performance of the memory. The memory crisis (and the associated NAND shortage) means laptop makers are making even more compromises in their builds, and this has left room for Chinese-made SSDs to finally hit the mainstream.

As reported by Notebookcheck, its review sample of the Lenovo ThinkBook 14 G9 IPL is kitted with an SSD from YMTC (Yangtze Memory Technologies Corp.), as opposed to the Samsung, Western Digital, or even Kioxia ones you might otherwise expect.

The fact that a relatively unknown brand can partner with a big one like Lenovo is a testament to what the memory crisis has done to laptop manufacturers. Like we pointed out with Chinese DRAM earlier this year, these alternatives will likely function as intended, but that doesn't mean you are getting a bargain with them as an end consumer—although big manufacturers are likely to secure good deals in bulk.

Notebookcheck got hands-on with the YMTC 512 GB SSD in its ThinkBook 14 G9 IPL review and notes the performance figures are below average for an SSD in an office laptop, with sequential read/write speeds of 3950 and 2514 MB/s, respectively.

One can assume Lenovo went with YMTC here as it was cheaper than going for more established brands, and that is how Lenovo (and likely others) has chosen to tackle the crisis. Selling similar rigs with cheaper parts, so as to make up for part of the rising cost of components.

In the grand scheme of things, YMTC is a relatively new company. It was founded in 2016 thanks in part to government funding. YMTC reports having over 8,000 employees worldwide and was valued at $22 billion just last year. Those are impressive figures, but wider adoption by non-Chinese brands could establish more of a foothold for the fledgling NAND creator.

Though that is good news for YMTC, it does mean just one more thing to check when you're buying a laptop. You might still be getting an SSD, but with reportedly reduced speeds, you will have to decide if the performance cut is worth it.

As a manufacturing hub, China sees plenty of unique hardware projects—like this gaming Megazord. But there's plenty of innovation to be found beyond one-and-done projects like this.

For instance, back when the US Department of Commerce restricted the export of Nvidia's RTX 4090 cards, Chinese manufacturers got creative. The so-called RTX 4080M card was one result of that, featuring laptop GPU silicon on top of a custom desktop PCIe board (via Videocardz). To be clear, this is not an unofficial Nvidia product and therefore doesn't enjoy official driver support or warranties.

In fact, Nvidia addressed the gap in the China market the 4080M attempted to fill with the export-only RTX 4090 D model back in 2023. However, testing by Bilibili user 杰某 (Jie Mou) suggests this curio is at least worth a closer look.

The Bilibili user carried out testing on a machine with an Intel Core Ultra 270K Plus CPU mounted on a Maxsun Z890-A motherboard, plus 32 GB of DDR5 RAM. The 4080M achieved a graphics score of 18,614 in 3DMark Time Spy. Though that's not unimpressive in itself, what's perhaps more interesting is that it did this by pulling a fraction of the power required by a traditional RTX 4080.

An official Nvidia RTX 4080 mobile can draw a maximum of 175 W TGP, though the unofficial RTX 4080M used only 100 W.

So yes, that would all be very impressive, were it not for the fact that the RTX 4080M is only available in China and currently costs between 2,700 and 2,800 RMB due to various component shortages. Very roughly equivalent to $400 or £300, this price tag makes it comparable to the going rate for both Nvidia's RTX 5060 Ti and AMD's RX 9070 GRE in China.

The unofficial 4080M did hold its own in gaming tests pitted against the similarly priced RX 9070 GRE (Both cards also enjoy 12GB of VRAM). Though the RX 9070 GRE had the edge in most games, the 4080M enjoyed about 10 more fps in Delta Force (4K, Ultra settings). PUBG proved another interesting outlier, with the 4080M achieving 100 more frames than the AMD card (2K, Ultra).

All of that said, the 4080M arguably isn't the card to go for if you're based in China—unless you're building an ITX system where limited thermal headroom is a concern. Otherwise, the Bilibili tester says that PC builders are generally better off going with a newer, more performant card that's similarly priced (though personally I'm still compelled to give the 4080M points for its small form factor cuteness).

As for PC gamers based in the US, you can keep track of the GPU market's ups and downs with our graphics card price watch.

Seven years ago, a user of the Steam Controller subreddit found a prototype of the original Steam Controller at a local Goodwill. Recently, in a strange bit of luck, a second prototype has been found at Goodwill. If one more pops up at the same chain, one must assume that Gabe Newell is simply dropping them off at Goodwills around America. It's the only rational assumption.

Taking to Reddit, user Waste-Set5032 shares that their dad happened upon the 'Chell' Steam Controller prototype at a Goodwill in Seattle. When one user ponders if the dad actually bought it, the dad steps in to confirm. He says, "I thought about letting this go, but I know my son is a fan of everything Valve, so I picked it up. On top of that, I now know my son’s Reddit handle."

Seven years ago, another member of this Subreddit found a Chell Prototype in a Goodwill. Well, would you look at this, it happened twice. My dad in Seattle found one. from r/SteamController

The son in question is 14 and claims "finding things from Valve is like finding ancient relics for me". He also says, "I love playing their older games like Portal 2 and Half Life because it feels like a bygone era of gaming and I love exploring it." You're not alone if reading that makes you feel like you're crumbling into dust.

The Chell Steam Controller prototype is believed to be from around 2013 or 2014, which means the prototype's new owner was around one or two years old when this prototype was created. It's got a fairly familiar design to those who know the original Steam Controller, with its inward curved shape and two big trackpads on either side.

It is, however, missing face buttons on the right-hand side, with these being scattered around the middle of the controller instead. The prototype also moves the Select and Start buttons to the bottom of the controller, and also misses out on any sort of thumbsticks. All of that is to say the prototype is even stranger than the 2015 model.

The 2026 Steam Controller launched just a few months ago and is altogether a much better device, though it still retains some of that Valve weirdness (complimentary), featuring two thumbsticks and two trackpads.

The original poster's dad has managed to give the controller prototype a try and claims it "works as a generic controller". However, he notes that the four buttons in the middle of the pad actually work as a D-Pad, with the top left button being up, the top right button being right, the bottom left button being left, and the bottom right being down.

Given it's a prototype without the button layout and thumbsticks you'd expect from a modern controller, the Chell prototype likely isn't something you'd use for competitive gaming, but it's a neat relic of the past to have. It's also a sign of how far Valve has come with regard to controller ergonomics in the last decade.

Unfortunately, we don't know much more about the controller in regard to feel or compatibility. We also don't know how much was paid for it. However, the prototype found seven years ago was reportedly bought for $8, which is $3 more than the OG Steam Controller was selling for when it was discontinued.