AMD's small portfolio of current-gen (RDNA 3) mobile-oriented Radeon dedicated GPUs pales in comparison to a wide selection of related desktop offerings—a certain demographic of PC gamers have wondered whether the incoming RDNA 4 generation will produce more options for portable platforms. An extensive Notebookcheck article indicates that Team Red is not (immediately) interested in catering to mobile dGPU enthusiasts—the online publication conducted an interview with Ben Conrad, director of product management (client-side). The "Navi Mobile" Radeon RX 7000M range is an uncommon sight on gaming laptops—relative to NVIDIA's wide rollout of dedicated GeForce RTX 4000 Mobile GPUs—normally, higher-end models are present on ultra-expensive specification sheets (paired with "Dragon Range" Ryzen HX CPUs). Industry experts believe that lower-end options are more likely to turn up inside external enclosures.

One of Notebookcheck's questions focused in on this topic—they believe that: "the number of AMD dGPU-based laptop SKUs have been pretty anemic." Their interviewee was ambushed with a query regarding his company's outlook for mobile RDNA 4 options. In response, Conrad stated: "our current graphics strategy is focused on the desktop market with RDNA 4. So, I think you'll see those types of products first in the future. Certainly, RDNA 4 and future graphics technologies will make it into mobile, whether they be on APUs or future products." VideoCardz has read "between-the-lines" and posits that Team Red could skip a generation—UDNA is possibly a better fit for a new wave of laptop dGPUs. A sort-of stopgap has appeared on the horizon—in the shape of AMD's forthcoming "Strix Halo" RDNA 3.5-based integrated solution. The flagship chip's Radeon 8060S iGPU looks promising when compared to a current-gen dGPU, but it will likely struggle when pitted against Team Green's "Blackwell" dedicated mobile platforms. Upcoming competition in the APU field will arrive in the form of Intel's "Panther Lake" processors—slated for launch later this year. Its next-gen iGPU is said to utilize the Xe3 "Celestial" architecture.

Greetings Ratdom, the next chapter of the rat tale is here, and we couldn't be more excited to share it with you. Arlo's journey awaits, filled with brutal combat, towering bosses, and the frozen landscapes of the Northern Wastes. And for a limited time, we're offering a 20% launch discount—don't miss out!

The wait is over: Arlo's adventure has officially begun! To celebrate the release of Tails of Iron 2: Whiskers of Winter, we're offering a 20% launch discount for a limited time. Don't miss your chance to embark on this epic journey at a reduced price! Want to see the game in action? Join us for an exclusive stream where we'll showcase the first hour of gameplay. Get a sneak peek at the brutal combat, stunning visuals, and the icy landscapes of the Northern Wastes. Don't wait—the Northern Wastes won't liberate themselves. Grab your copy and join the fight today!

Cloud storage options abound, but not all of them are secure. If you want cloud storage you can rely on, try Internxt. This GDPR compliant secure cloud storage uses Post-Quantum Encryption to keep your files safe, and it's not lacking in space. For a limited time, a 10 TB lifetime subscription is $244.99 (reg. $2,999). Internxt stands out for its focus on privacy and security. They're offering a decentralized cloud storage solution that gives users full control over their data. Zero-knowledge file storage and end-to-end encryption mean nobody can access your files without your permission. This platform is also entirely open-source, so you can even review the code yourself.

You can easily access your files from any device, including desktops, mobile phones, and web browsers. Whether you're using Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, or iOS, Internxt has you covered with apps that sync and share files seamlessly. Uploads are fast, and you can easily make links to any files you want to share. This subscription lasts for life with no recurring costs. You can use it on an unlimited number of devices, and updates are included, too.

Use code STORAGE30 by February 2 at 11:59 p.m. PT to get a 10 TB Lifetime Subscription to Internxt Cloud Storage for $244.99.

Intel executives are reportedly dealing with a major challenge that affects its portfolio of European manufacturing facilities—a recent RTÉ News article placed focus on Team Blue's Fab 34 site, located in Leixlip, Ireland. Energy costs are climbing across the globe, but inside sources believe that company leaders have expressed concern regarding the cost of powering the Irish facility. Last week's report posits that senior Intel figures are committed to keeping Fab 34 alive for a while—seemingly unaffected by a widespread cost-cutting initiative—this high-volume production site remains: "critical to its European operation for at least the next seven years."

Intel is reportedly already engaged in talks with the Irish government—likely negotiating over strategies that will lower its local energy bills in County Kildare. Additionally, other channels are—supposedly—being explored via the EU Chips Act. RTÉ News gathered comments from unnamed senior sources at the recently concluded Davos World Economic Forum—one individual stated that Ireland's (advantageous) lower labor costs are sharply offset by the higher cost of energy. The report claims that Team Blue: "estimates that in Ireland energy costs are 15 cent per kilowatt-hour, around double that in other markets where Intel operates." Fab 34's operating costs have been compared to similarly-equipped facilities in the USA and Israel. Executive sources believe that Ireland-specific problems stem from infrastructure backlogs in the renewable sector, and the fixed cost of delivering energy from offshore wind farms—the latter tends to pass expenses on to customers.

Greetings, Flameborn! That's right, your eyes are not deceiving you: we have the full Enshrouded roadmap for 2025! But before we move on, we have just published the Pact of the Flame update, with a long list of improvements and quality of life updates! Check out the announcement here, or better yet, open the link in a new tab and read it after.

But first things first: why is there a full roadmap for 2025? Well, as we said right from the start, your support has meant that we could the world of Enshrouded a lot bigger than we originally thought, with more features, more biomes, more quests, basically, more of everything! But as you know we're not a big team, and making games takes time, effort, and a lot of praying to the machine gods for the build not to crash. As a result, and with a full update schedule for 2025, we are locking down a Spring 2026 release date for the full 1.0 version of Enshrouded.

Broadcom Inc. today announced an industry-first—the new, innovative Emulex Secure Fiber Channel Host Bus Adapters (HBA)—a cost-effective, easy-to-manage solution that encrypts all data as it moves between servers and storage.

Encrypting mission-critical data is no longer a nice-to-have, but a must-have. The cost of ransomware attacks continues to rise with attacks in 2024 costing USD $5.37 million on average per attack. Upcoming generative AI and quantum computers magnify the risk if data is not encrypted at all points in the data center including the network.

Earlier in the month, AMD introduced multiple Ryzen 200 series CPU models—these mainstream laptop and desktop offerings are based on well established architectures. Team Red is once again treading familiar ground with its selection of "Hawk Point" hardware—featuring "Zen 4" CPU cores, as well as (RDNA 3) Radeon 700M series integrated graphics solutions. AMD's latest mild re-branding of existing designs—notably the Ryzen 8000 mobile APU series—are expected to arrive within the second quarter of 2025. Several of these "new" products will sport NPUs, but marketing/press material is surprisingly free of all things AI-related.

Yesterday, a Lenovo China product manager revealed that the entire Ryzen 200 product stack will adopt the FP8 chip package—formerly exclusive to the region-exclusive Ryzen 7 8745H APU. The Beijing-based company representative disclosed—via a Weibo blog post—that the incoming Ryzen 200 processor series will not use the "FP7 and FP7r2" formats. Additionally, they also introduced a previously unannounced SKU: "the FP8 package version of Ryzen 7 8745H will be launched in 2025 as Ryzen 7 255H." This model is likely another Chinese exclusive—the Weibo comment section provides further evidence of new Lenovo ThinkBook products being based on this Ryzen 7 255H. AMD's official listings have quietly confirmed that their Ryzen 200 series will be FP8-exclusive. Team Green is likely making matters easier for itself, by streamlining its packaging options for this affordable-tier of laptop-oriented chips.

The Story So Far—You and your co-op partner play together as Mio & Zoe, two writers stuck in a simulation of their own stories while visiting the shady new Rader Publishing headquarters in pursuit of a lucrative publishing deal. An accident puts Mio and Zoe inside the same shared simulation, throwing them back and forth between their own sci-fi and fantasy fiction while the nefarious publishing company tries to steal all of their ideas.

What Are Side Stories?
If you've played A Way Out or It Takes Two before, you'll know that Hazelight Studios are masters of co-op gameplay variety. In addition to all of the incredible sci-fi and fantasy variety featured in the Split Fiction main story, you will encounter mysterious, out of place portals that you can enter to explore all new and vastly different worlds and locations that are completely optional.

NVIDIA's third graphics card from the RTX 50-series "Blackwell" generation, the GeForce RTX 5070 Ti, reportedly launches on February 20, 2025, according to a VideoCardz report. Reviews of RTX 5070 Ti priced at the NVIDIA MSRP of USD $749 should go live on February 19, with reviews of cards priced above MSRP following on February 20. All cards go on sale from February 20.

The RTX 5070 Ti is based on the same 5 nm "GB203" silicon as the RTX 5080 that launches later this week, but while the RTX 5080 maxes the silicon out, enabling all 84 SM, the RTX 5070 Ti is slightly cut down, with 70 out of 84 SM being enabled, resulting in 8,960 CUDA cores, 280 Tensor cores, 70 RT cores, 280 TMUs, and an unknown number of ROPs. The memory size is 16 GB, across the chip's full 256-bit GDDR7 memory interface, although NVIDIA didn't confirm memory speeds. Its TGP is down to 300 W compared to the 360 W of the RTX 5080.

be quiet!, the German manufacturer for premium PC components, is proud to announce Power Zone 2. Almost twelve years after the introduction of the legendary Power Zone series of power supplies, be quiet! has revived this award-winning series and future-proofed it for a new generation of gamers. Power Zone 2 features an impressive 140 mm fan and is be quiet!'s first power supply to feature semi-passive cooling with post-ventilation and a Cybenetics Platinum rating. In other words: Power Zone 2 is energy-efficient, quiet, and cool across all load scenarios, making it a reliable investment for the future.

Power Zone: A legendary heritage
When it was released in 2013, the original Power Zone stood out in the be quiet! power supply lineup - not only did the name not fit the usual nomenclature, but it was also the company's first (and for a long time, only) single-rail power supply. Fast-forward to 2025 and Power Zone 2 is pushing the boundaries again, introducing new features to be quiet!'s portfolio of power supplies, while still sticking to its single-rail design.

Intel has implemented substantial price cuts across its Xeon 6 "Granite Rapids" server processor lineup, marking a significant shift in its data center strategy. The reductions, quietly introduced and reflected in Intel's ARK database, come just four months after the processors' September launch. The most dramatic cut affects Intel's flagship 128-core Xeon 6980P, which saw its price drop from $17,800 by 30% to $12,460. This aggressive pricing positions the processor below AMD's competing EPYC "Turin" 9755 128-core CPU both absolute and per-core pricing, intensifying the rivalry between the two semiconductor giants. AMD's SKU at 128 cores is now pricier at $12,984, with higher core count SKUs reaching up to $14,813 for 192-core EPYC 9965 CPU based on Zen 5c core. Intel is expected to release 288-core "Sierra Forest" Xeon SKUs this quarter, so we can get an updated pricing structure and compare it to AMD.

Additionally, Intel's price adjustments extend beyond the flagship model, with three of the five Granite Rapids processors receiving substantial reductions. The 96-core Xeon 6972P and 6952P models have been marked down by 13% and 20% respectively. These cuts make Intel's offerings particularly attractive to cloud providers who prioritize core density and cost efficiency. However, Intel's competitive pricing comes with trade-offs. The higher power consumption of Intel's processors—exemplified by the 96-core Xeon 6972P's 500 W requirement, which exceeds AMD's comparable model by 100 W—could offset the initial savings through increased operational costs. Ultimately, most of the data center buildout will be won by whoever can serve the most CPU volume shipped (read wafer production capacity) and the best TCO/ROI balance, including power consumption and performance.

ENDORFY, the go-to brand for tech enthusiasts, gamers, and content creators, is returning to the British market. Renowned for its well-priced, high-performance PC cooling solutions, cases, PSUs, and gaming peripherals, ENDORFY will officially launch its product range in the UK in mid-January 2025 through a strategic partnership with Exertis, one of the UK's leading technology distributors. This strategic partnership with Exertis, one of the UK's most prominent distributors of technology products, will make ENDORFY's solutions and products available to a broad range of retailers, e-commerce platforms, and brick-and-mortar stores across the United Kingdom. The first shipment of ENDORFY products is set to arrive in mid-January 2025, marking the beginning of a new chapter for the brand in the British market.

Kioxia Corporation, a world leader in memory solutions, today announced the open-source release of its new All-in-Storage ANNS with Product Quantization (AiSAQ) technology. A novel "approximate nearest neighbor" search (ANNS) algorithm optimized for SSDs, KIOXIA AiSAQ software delivers scalable performance for retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) without placing index data in DRAM - and instead searching directly on SSDs.

Generative AI systems demand significant compute, memory and storage resources. While they have the potential to drive transformative breakthroughs across various industries, their deployment often comes with high costs. RAG is a critical phase of AI that refines large language models (LLMs) with data specific to the company or application.

ASUS is working on a new line of NUC mini PCs powered by the AMD Ryzen AI MAX "Strix Halo" mobile processors that come with oversized iGPUs and CPU core counts as high as 16-core/32-thread "Zen 5." This was sniffed out in shipping manifests by Olrak29_ on its way to being tested by the BIS (Bureau of Indian Standards) for regulatory certification similar to CE, with the manifest describing the NUC model as the "NUC14LNS," meaning that this box is from the NUC 14 series. The manifest describes the NUC sample as featuring the top of the line Ryzen AI MAX+ 395.

The Ryzen AI MAX+ 395 maxes out everything on the silicon, featuring 16 "Zen 5" CPU cores across two CCDs with full 512-bit FPUs, with 80 MB of "total cache" (L3+L2) between them; a 50 TOPS-class NPU that can locally accelerate Microsoft Copilot+, and that large RDNA 3.5 iGPU with 40 compute units (2,560 stream processors), 80 AI accelerators, and 40 ray accelerators. What's interesting about this NUC is that it will not come with SO-DIMM slots, since the "Strix Halo" SoC features a 256-bit wide LPDDR5X memory interface. It will either have hardwired memory, or use a pair of LPCAMM2 modules (each with a 128-bit bus width), which is less likely. With all the rage about AI developers using M4-powered Mac minis to accelerate DeepSeek, is ASUS eying a slice of the AI market?

TechPowerUp today released the latest version of TechPowerUp NVCleanstall, our lightweight utility that lets you take control of your NVIDIA GeForce software installation, giving you fine control over which of its components and subcomponents you want installed, many of which the "Custom" option in NVIDIA's installer doesn't expose. It also simplifies the process of keeping your GeForce software up to date. Version 1.18.0 adds full support for NVIDIA App, the new software configuration frontend application for gamers by NVIDIA. NVCleanstall now lets you fetch the latest version of the NVIDIA App, or lets you opt out of its installation altogether. The release also fixes a compatibility issue we've been facing with GeForce Software version 566.36 WHQL and later. Grab NVCleanstall from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: TechPowerUp NVCleanstall 1.18.0

When the next-generation AMD Radeon RX 9000 series of GPUs, headed by RX 9070 XT and RX 9070, are surrounded by rumors, AMD's officials are coming to the rescue. According to the Bulgarian retailer's disclosure, AMD's initial pricing strategy for the new cards caused concerns, given their reported performance levels. The RX 9070 XT was reportedly positioned at around $899, matching the price point of the RX 7900 XT. The standard RX 9070 was said to carry a $749 price tag. To clarify the situation, AMD's Frank Azor jumped on social media platform X and explained, "While we aren't going to comment on all the price rumors, I can say that an $899 USD starting price point was never part of the plan."

Earlier reports indicate AMD has distributed its first wave of RDNA 4 graphics cards to various partners and retailers globally. However, these companies are currently unable to sell the new GPUs, as AMD has apparently set a March timeline for their release. This information gained additional credibility when a retailer in Bulgaria provided insights into AMD's preliminary launch strategy for the RX 9000 series. The retailer demonstrated the PowerColor Red Devil RX 9070 XT, one of three RX 9070 XT models that PowerColor unveiled during CES. While several AMD board partners have completed their RX 9070 XT designs, they have not yet disclosed official specifications or retail prices. Until March, we have limited information on pricing strategy.

The United States, currently led by the Trump administration, could be preparing a surprise package to its close silicon ally—Taiwan. During a House GOP issues conference in Florida, US President Donald Trump announced that he would impose 25% to 100% tariffs on Taiwan-made chips, including the world's leading silicon manufacturer, TSMC. Trump addressed the conference, saying, "In the very near future, we are going to be placing tariffs on foreign production of computer chips, semiconductors, and pharmaceuticals to return production of these essential goods to the United States. They left us and went to Taiwan; we want them to come back. We do not want to give them billions of dollars like this ridiculous program that Biden has given everybody billions of dollars. They already have billions of dollars. […] They did not need money. They needed an incentive. And the incentive is going to be they [do not want to] pay a 25%, 50% or even a 100% tax."

The issue for TSMC is its massive reliance on US companies to drive revenue. The majority of its cutting-edge silicon is going to only a handful of companies, including Apple, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, and Broadcom. With tariffs, the supply chain economics, especially in the world of semiconductors, will break. TSMC's most significant export country is the US, and US companies with trillions of US Dollars of market capitalization rely on Taiwanese silicon. As a result, TSMC will most likely raise its wafer prices, with results trickling down to US companies raising their product prices with additional price hikes. TSMC plans to bring its advanced manufacturing on American soil, but given that these tariffs might break the economic model it currently operates under, it may need to happen sooner. Taiwan-based silicon giant has planned to leave US facilities trailing behind by a generation or two of advanced manufacturing, while domestic facilities produce the newest nodes. If Trump decides to go through tariffs, TSMC could make additional changes to its US-based manufacturing plans.

NVIDIA is expected to release the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti and the all-important RTX 5060 in early Q2-2025. The RTX 5060 series releases last as it gives the market time to absorb inventory of the RTX 4060 Ti and the RTX 4060, both of which are very popular in their market segments. Maxsun has filed regulatory paperwork for its custom design RTX 5060 Ti and RTX 5060 graphics cards. The company is planning several custom design graphics card models under its iCraft line of graphics cards for both GPUs. What's interesting, though, is that the RTX 5060 Ti series appears to have two memory based variants just like the RTX 4060 Ti—16 GB and 8 GB.

The filings point to seven RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB custom graphics card SKUs, seven of them for the RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB, and eight of them for the RTX 5060 (non-Ti), which comes with a memory size of just 8 GB. Our recent reviews of the Intel Arc B580 "Battlemage" graphics card concluded that 8 GB was holding back performance of the RTX 4060 in games with ray tracing workloads, with the B580 enjoying not just 50% more memory at 12 GB, but also that much more memory bandwidth than the RTX 4060. It looks like NVIDIA will address at least one of the two shortcomings—bandwidth. The company is rumored to give both the RTX 5060 Ti and RTX 5060 faster GDDR7 memory.

AMD Radeon engineers are spending newly allocated extra time on optimizing their upcoming FidelityFX Super Resolution 4 (FSR 4) technology—industry watchdogs believe that a finalized version will launch alongside the initial lineup of RDNA 4 graphics card, now scheduled for release in March. Recently, David McAfee—Vice President and General Manager of Ryzen and Radeon products—revealed that his colleagues were working hard on maximizing performance and enabling "more FSR 4 titles." Insiders have started theorizing about how the current landscape of FSR 3.1-compatible games will translate with next-gen "AI-driven" upscaling techniques—several outlets believe that a freshly patched PC version of The Last of Us Part I is paving the way for eventual "easy" updates.

Kepler_L2—an almost endless fountain of Team Red-related insider knowledge—picked up on a past weekend VideoCardz report, and proceeded to add some extra tidbits via social media interaction. They started off by claiming that Team Red's: "RDNA 4 driver replaces FSR 3.1 DLL with FSR 4." When queried about the implication of said development, Kepler believes that all FSR 3.1 game titles will become ready to support FSR 4 on day one. The upgrade process—possibly achieved through a driver-level DLL swap—is reportedly quite easy to implement. According to the insider: "yeah, it should just work."

Hello, Engineers! The day has come—Space Engineers 2 Alpha has officially launched on Steam Early Access! After months of anticipation and hard work, we're excited to take this first step together. The thrilling journey of Space Engineers 2 starts now, and we invite you all to be part of it. The release of the Alpha and Vertical Slice1: Creative Mode is just the beginning—there's so much more ahead!

We're taking a unique approach to developing Space Engineers 2 with our Vertical Slice strategy. A Vertical Slice is a fully playable portion of the game that showcases specific core features and improvements implemented at production quality. It serves as a milestone in the game's development, allowing us to focus on delivering polished gameplay in stages while more features are added in subsequent slices.

AMD has just published its "How to Sell" Ryzen AI MAX series guide—several news outlets have pored over the "claimed" gaming performance charts contained within this two-page document. Team Red appears to be in a boastful mood—their 1080p benchmark results reveal compelling numbers, as produced by their flagship Zen 5 "Strix Halo" processor (baseline 55 W TDP). According to Team Red's marketing guidelines, the Ryzen AI Max+ 395 APU: "competes with a GeForce RTX 4070 Mobile GPU at similar TDP and form factor." The first-party produced comparison points to their Radeon 8060S integrated graphics solution being up to 68% faster—in modern gaming environments at 1080p settings—than the competing Team Green dedicated laptop-oriented GPU, limited to 65 W TGP due to form factor restrictions. Overall, the AMD test unit does better by 23.2% on average (referring to Wccftech's calculations).

According to the document, AMD's reference system was lined up against an ASUS ROG Flow Z13 (2023) gaming laptop specced with an Intel Core i9-13900H processor, and a GeForce RTX 4070 mobile graphics card. The Ryzen AI Max+ 395's "massive iGPU" can unleash the full force of forty RDNA 3.5 compute units, paired with up to 96 GB of unified on-board memory (from a total pool of 128 GB). Non-gaming benchmarks place the flagship Team Red processor above Intel Core Ultra 9 288V and Apple M4 Pro (12-core) CPUs—as always, it is best to wait for verification from independent evaluators. Saying that, the "Strix Halo" APU family has generated a lot of excitement—even going back to early leaks—and the latest marketed performance could drum up further interest.

People Can Fly is thrilled to be working on Gears of War: E-Day, the next mainline game in the renowned Gears of War series, as a co-development partner with The Coalition. We are honored to return to the world of Gears of War, a franchise deeply embedded in our studio's history. As lead developer of the iconic Gears of War: Judgment and co-development partner on Gears of War 1-3, we have always been passionate about the series and its legacy. "Returning to collaborate on the next chapter of this legendary saga is both a privilege and an exciting opportunity to build upon the intense, visceral action and rich storytelling that fans have come to love. We are deeply grateful for our partners' trust and support on this journey" says PCF's CEO, Sebastian Wojciechowski.

"Gears of War: E-Day is not just our next major game; it's a return to what makes Gears of War games special and authentic. We're pleased to be partnering with the talented folks at People Can Fly who have been a part of our franchise's legacy for so long."—Mike Crump, Studio Head, The Coalition. "Our team at People Can Fly, made up of dedicated Gears of War fans, is pouring everything we have into creating an experience that will exceed expectations. While we can't share more just yet, we're eager for the day when we can show all the exciting things we've been working on" - says Guillaume Barry, Development Director at PCF.

Gplay.BG's YouTube channel uploaded a fascinating video feature over the past weekend—providing another look at PowerColor's Radeon RX 9070 XT Red Devil special edition retail package. The Bulgarian retailer's CEO—Ivan Hinov (aka DonBrutar)—appeared to have a sealed box in-hand. Gplay's presentation implies that they have joined the ranks of other European shops having RDNA 4-based cards in-stock, although VideoCardz reckons that special/limited edition Red Devil bundles (of recent generations) are normally distributed to media outlets. Hinov repeatedly referred to one of VideoCardz's recent news articles—regarding a speculated AMD Radeon RX 9070 GPU series launch window. Industry insiders reckon that AMD had—initially—formed a release strategy focusing on late January, possibly on the 23rd. The new cards will be launched around March time, according to an official Team Red statement.

Gplay's video provides some extra insight on this topic—Hinov confirms (in a roundabout way) that his company received information about a January release window, prior to Team Red's announcing of a postponement. The VideoCardz insider network discovered possible launch MSRPs of: "around $899 for the RX 9070 XT, and $749 for the non-XT." Interestingly, Gplay's chief commented on these rumors during his comparison segment: "delay of the Radeon RX 9070 (non-XT) and Radeon RX 9070 XT has created uncertainty. These cards were expected to launch at prices significantly higher than the Radeon RX 7800 XT and close to the Radeon RX 7900 XT, which makes little sense. For example, the Radeon RX 9070 XT was rumored to cost 500 BGN (~$269 USD) more than the RX 7900 XT while offering only marginally better performance. This pricing strategy was a clear mistake."

Thursday, January 23 was a big day for all of us at Compulsion Games. In addition to being a part of Developer_Direct, where members of our studio team shared more about the gameplay, look, and feel of South of Midnight, our third-person action-adventure game set in the American Deep South, we announced our release date of April 8, 2025, and early access beginning April 3. If that wasn't enough, we also released our brand-new story trailer, which expands on the narrative of South of Midnight, while including all-new gameplay, characters, and mythical creatures from the game. We're so excited to share more about South of Midnight, which is available now for pre-orders.

The Story of South of Midnight
In our story trailer, protagonist Hazel and her mother are preparing for the impending hurricane. The storm proves massive, causing catastrophic flooding-and causing their own home to be swept down river with her mother in it. Its aftermath shows the fictional town of Prospero, located in the southern United States, eerily calm while irrevocably changed from the hurricane's destruction. Here, Hazel undertakes a journey in search of her mother, while finding out more about herself and her family's lineage in the process. Hazel begins to see fantastical phenomena all over Prospero, including meeting Catfish, an enormous—and talking—creature in his own right, stuck in a tree following the hurricane's destruction. Catfish tells Hazel she is a Weaver, someone who possesses magical powers and can see how our threads connect to form the woven tapestry of our fates.

Last week, Samsung introduced its brand-new Galaxy S25 smartphone series—press material focused largely on various implementations of AI features, but industry watchdogs noted the crucial selection of Qualcomm-designed processors. A "first-of-its-kind customized Snapdragon 8 Elite Mobile Platform for Galaxy chipset" is the natural choice for this generation of Samsung flagship phones, given that proprietary Exynos designs have reportedly missed the mark (yet again). Samik Chatterjee—a J.P. Morgan analyst—believes that the latest collaboration will swell Qualcomm's revenues; he predicts a gain of $2 billion (USD). Snapdragon 8 Elite processors are utilized by the entire range of globally-released Galaxy S25 models.

The previous-gen S24 series featured a mix of Qualcomm-designed chips and Samsung Exynos silicon (for different regional markets)—market analysis estimates a total of 40 million unit shipments back in 2024. Previously, Qualcomm had a 70% share of Galaxy S24 chipsets—fast-forwarding to the present day, it becomes 100% with the rollout of Galaxy S25. Late last year, press outlets posited that the South Korean company's foundry division had moved on from a "problematic" 3 nm Gate-All-Around (GAA) process. Samsung's flagship-tier Exynos 2500 SoC was linked to this node, but insiders reckon that alternative external production avenues were explored—most notably with an arch-rival: TSMC. Industry moles reckon that Samsung's leadership has slashed foundry budgets for 2025—reports from last week suggest investments being halved, as teams move onto two nanometer processes.

Assassin's Creed Shadows launches on March 20 on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Amazon Luna, Macs with Apple silicon via the Mac App Store, and Windows PC through the Ubisoft Store, Steam, and Epic Games Store. Set during the late Sengoku era in Japan, players will play as both the stealthy shinobi Naoe and the formidable samurai Yasuke. No matter who you're playing as, the development team wanted to ensure that as many people as possible are able to enjoy everything that Assassin's Creed Shadows has to offer. To learn more about the team's approach to accessible design, we spoke with UX Director Jonathan Bedard.

Assassin's Creed Shadows is an evolution for the franchise, with many elements being rebuilt from the ground up. In what ways did that allow you to change your approach to accessibility?
Jonathan Bedard: Having changed the way we built the game, we had to redo many things, and it allowed us to revisit some elements that weren't working as well as we'd hoped. Certain features benefited from this by being retooled or by simply changing the interface itself - or in some cases, the functionalities - to elevate our offer and our experience to higher standards. One example of that is our input remapping. Not only can you adjust the inputs of any of the buttons, but you can adjust the action of that input, whether you want it to be a hold or a press.

Late last week, the official PowerColor website was updated with dedicated product pages for their Radeon RX 9070 XT Hellhound and Reaper custom designs going live. As expected, a bare minimum of information is displayed alongside multiple promo images—we witnessed this exact same pattern with the Red Devil's official listing, half-way through January. AMD's board partners are seemingly keeping quiet about first wave RDNA 4 hardware specifications—TechPowerUp and other tech news outlets have, so far, ascertained the fundamentals from leaks and accidental listings.

An extensive hands-on experience—at CES—was covered in our news section, but PowerColor's showroom representatives were not overly chatty when asked about under-the-hood details. Allegedly, the company's Radeon RX 9070 (non-XT) Reaper model has turned up at a British e-tailer's warehouse—printed SKU info indicated the presence of 16 GB VRAM. Judging from photos and renders, the Navi-48 GPU-based Hellhound and Reaper are relatively svelte when compared to the chunkily-proportioned (triple-slot) Red Devil. The new Hellhound model occupies the middle of PowerColor's graphics card product stack—this dual-slot design features a smattering of RGB lighting and a dual BIOS switching system, the latter implies that a factory overclock has been implemented. The slightly smaller (SFF-friendly) affordable-tier Reaper card is reportedly specced with reference clocks—looking at photos, there is no physical mode switcher present on this design. The barebones Reaper aesthetic does not encompass fancy integrated lighting systems—anti-RGB champions will find this choice most pleasing.

When you ask fans, "What's the quintessential action game?" the NINJA GAIDEN series is one of the legendary names that is guaranteed a mention. With roots as far back as the original 1988 arcade game NINJA GAIDEN (Ninja Ryukenden in Japan), the series has captivated fans in various forms over the years, from 2D to 3D, with its focus on swift traversal, eye-catching swordplay, and ninjutsu techniques, all jam-packed into exhilarating action gameplay.

In particular, the Xbox version of NINJA GAIDEN, released on Xbox consoles in 2004, stood out for its smooth controls and elegant action, earning its place as a revolutionary action game. The series' biggest allure lies in deeply satisfying and challenging battles featuring its iconic lead character, master ninja Ryu Hayabusa. The NINJA GAIDEN series has gained a reputation for being notoriously difficult, but with a near-unmatched sense of accomplishment upon clearing levels and defeating bosses that drives players to persevere. Celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, Team NINJA, the studio behind the majority of these iconic titles, has declared 2025 to be "The Year of the Ninja."

The Last of Us Part I (PC version) was updated to version 1.1.4 last Friday—at the time, patch notes revealed that Iron Galaxy Studios/Nixxes Software had added support for AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) 3.1 Super Resolution and FSR 3.1 Frame Generation. Several popular first-party PlayStation titles received similar updates mid-way through last year, so industry watchdogs have questioned the timing of this latest upgrade—up until late last week, The Last of Us Part I was ticking along with support for FSR 3.0 (super resolution and frame generation).

Naturally, Team Red is in the process of preparing FSR 4.0 for an upcoming product launch—now delayed, due to the engineering team requiring: "extra time to optimize the software stack for maximum performance and enable more titles." AMD's latest graphics technology was showcased at CES earlier this month, alongside their new (RDNA 4) Radeon RX 9070 XT and 9070 (non-XT) graphics cards. According to Team Red, it is relatively easy to go from version 3.1 up to 4.0. The Last of Us Part I's development team (for PC platforms) could have everything ready to go in a couple of weeks, and be prepared well in advance for the game's sequel (due in April).

Businesses across every industry are rolling out AI services this year. For Microsoft, Oracle, Perplexity, Snap and hundreds of other leading companies, using the NVIDIA AI inference platform—a full stack comprising world-class silicon, systems and software—is the key to delivering high-throughput and low-latency inference and enabling great user experiences while lowering cost. NVIDIA's advancements in inference software optimization and the NVIDIA Hopper platform are helping industries serve the latest generative AI models, delivering excellent user experiences while optimizing total cost of ownership. The Hopper platform also helps deliver up to 15x more energy efficiency for inference workloads compared to previous generations.

AI inference is notoriously difficult, as it requires many steps to strike the right balance between throughput and user experience. But the underlying goal is simple: generate more tokens at a lower cost. Tokens represent words in a large language model (LLM) system—and with AI inference services typically charging for every million tokens generated, this goal offers the most visible return on AI investments and energy used per task. Full-stack software optimization offers the key to improving AI inference performance and achieving this goal.

Solidigm, a leading provider of innovative NAND flash memory solutions, today announced a multi-year extension of its agreement with Broadcom Inc. on the use of high-capacity solid-state drive (SSD) controllers to support artificial intelligence (AI) and data-intensive workloads. Solidigm is the leading provider of high-capacity storage for AI, and Broadcom's custom controllers have served as a critical component of Solidigm SSDs for more than a decade. With more than 120 million units of Solidigm SSDs shipped featuring Broadcom controllers, the partnership between the two companies has continued through key industry SSD milestones including Serial ATA (SATA), Serial-Attached SCSI (SAS) and Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe).

The agreement also includes collaboration on Solidigm's recently announced 122 TB (terabyte) Solidigm D5-P5336 data center SSD, the world's highest capacity PCIe SSD that delivers industry-leading storage efficiency from the core data center to the edge. "With our new 122 TB SSD, Solidigm further extends our high-capacity QLC (quad-level cell) leadership from 8 to 122 TB drives that all share the same controller from Broadcom, making our drives easier for customers to qualify," said Solidigm Co-CEO Kevin Noh. "Our relationship with Broadcom is pivotal to Solidigm as we collectively work to help our customers achieve efficiency benefits in the buildout of AI infrastructure."

The DeepSeek open-source large language model from China has been the hottest topic in the AI industry over the weekend. The model promises a leap in performance over OpenAI and Meta, and can be accelerated by far less complex hardware. The AI enthusiast community has been able to get it to run on much less complex accelerators such as the M4 SoCs of Mac minis, and gaming GPUs. The model could cause companies to reassess their AI strategy completely, perhaps pulling them away from big cloud companies, toward local acceleration on cheaper hardware; and cloud companies themselves would want to reconsider their orders of AI GPUs in the short-to-medium term.

All this puts the supply chain of AI acceleration hardware in a bit of a spot. The NVIDIA stock is down 12 percent in pre-market trading as of this writing. Microsoft and Meta Platforms also faced a cut, shedding over 3% each. Alphabet lost 3% and Apple 1.5%. Microsoft, Meta and Apple are slated to post their quarterly earnings this week. Companies within NVIDIA's supply chain, such as ASML and TSMC, also saw drops, with ASML and ASM International losing 10-14% in European pre-trading.

A die-shot of NVIDIA's GB202, the silicon powering the RTX 5090, has surfaced online, providing detailed insights into the "Blackwell" architecture's physical layout. The annotated images, shared by hardware analyst Kurnal and provided by ASUS China general manager Tony Yu, compare the GB202 to its AD102 predecessor and outline key architectural components. The die's central region houses 128 MB of L2 cache (96 MB enabled on RTX 5090), surrounded by memory interfaces. Eight 64-bit memory controllers support the 512-bit GDDR7 interface, with physical interfaces positioned along the top, left, and right edges of the die. Twelve graphics processing clusters (GPCs) surround the central cache. Each GPC contains eight texture processing clusters (TPCs), with each GPC housing 16 streaming multiprocessors (SMs). The complete die configuration enables 24,576 CUDA cores, arranged as 128 cores per SM across 192 SMs. With RTX 5090 offering "only" 21,760 CUDA cores, this means that the full GB202 die is reserved for workstation GPUs.

The SM design includes four slices sharing 128 KB of L1 cache and four texture mapping units (TMUs). Individual SM slices contain dedicated register files, L0 instruction caches, warp schedulers, load-store units, and special function units. Central to the die's layout is a vertical strip containing the media processing components—NVENC and NVDEC units—running from top to bottom. The RTX 5090 implementation enables three of four available NVENC encoders and two of four NVDEC decoders. The die includes twelve raster engine/3D FF blocks for geometry processing. At the bottom edge sits the PCIe 5.0 x16 interface and display controller components. Despite its substantial size, the GB202 remains smaller than NVIDIA's previous GH100 and GV100 dies, which exceeded 814 mm². Each SM integrates specialized hardware, including new 5th-generation Tensor cores and 4th-generation RT cores, contributing to the die's total of 192 RT cores, 768 Tensor cores, and 768 texture units.

According to Nikkei, Fujifilm Holdings is reportedly set to invest ¥100 billion ($640.5 million) by March 2027 to expand production capacities in the U.S., Japan, South Korea, and India. The main focus of the expansion is semiconductor materials, which are vital for the modern semiconductor supply chain. While the company has not officially confirmed the plan, it follows global efforts to straighten material supply chains as chipmakers ramp up the construction of cutting-edge fabs in these regions. The investment, doubling Fujifilm's semiconductor materials spending over the past three years, targets rising demand driven by new fabs from Intel, TSMC, Samsung, and SK Hynix, particularly for AI and HPC. Fujifilm, ranked fifth globally in photosensitive materials, is one of only five companies worldwide producing ultra-pure photoresists for extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography.

These photoresists must meet rigorous standards due to EUV's 13.5 nm wavelength, requiring precision in sensitivity, resolution, and compatibility with mask materials. Fujifilm strategically locates facilities near major hubs to strengthen partnerships with key clients. In Japan, a ¥13 billion ($83.27 million) plant in Shizuoka Prefecture is underway, while a South Korean site in Pyeongtaek will receive upgraded equipment by autumn. A Cheonan facility, set for spring 2027, aims to boost the output of chemical mechanical planarization (CMP) agents by 30%. The company also eyes India's emerging semiconductor sector, exploring partnerships or joint ventures to establish local production post-2027.

MSI has officially confirmed that its upcoming GeForce RTX 50 series graphics cards will face limited availability when they launch on January 30, coinciding with the second day of the Lunar New Year. According to MSI's official account, the constrained supply originates from an insufficient allocation of GPU cores provided by NVIDIA, making it difficult for the manufacturer to meet the expected high demand. Some retailers even claimed they only receive single-digit quantities of these cards, leading to a dramatic price hike in certain regions. In extreme cases, prices have been observed at nearly twice the official MSRP, leaving many potential buyers concerned about availability and affordability. Taiwanese media outlet BenchLife.info previously indicated that "communication issues" between NVIDIA and its board partners contributed to the limited supply. These complications and holiday-related manufacturing and shipping disruptions have constrained how many units can be delivered to stores by launch day.

As a result, enthusiasts aiming to purchase a new GPU at MSRP—or even at slightly higher prices—might face an uphill battle. Despite the rocky start, supply levels will gradually improve in February. The precise rate of this improvement is unclear, but many anticipate that more stock will arrive as production normalizes and communication between NVIDIA and its partners recovers. For now, consumers should prepare for limited stock and potentially inflated prices, especially on day one of the launch. Those hoping to upgrade immediately may need to secure a pre-order or wait until supply becomes more stable in the coming weeks. Scalpers are already reserving "guaranteed" slots for RTX 5090 GPU at up to $7000 per GPU, indicating that supply is tight. However, we must wait for the official launch day to see if the situation improves.

Intel tends to release exclusive desktop processor SKUs for the Chinese market, which tend to come with core configurations and other specs not found in regular SKUs available in the West. The latest such SKU is the Core Ultra 5 230F "Arrow Lake." This chip comes with a unique IHS (integrated heat spreader) design that sees the bulge over the die contracted to a corner. It still has the metal flanks that receive pressure from the socket's retention module. The chip is positioned a notch above the Core Ultra 5 225F, but with an identical core configuration of 6P+4E.

The China-exclusive Core Ultra 5 230F comes with clock speeds of 3.40 GHz base and 5.00 GHz boost for the P-cores, while its E-cores tick at 2.90 GHz base, and 4.40 GHz boost. In comparison, the generally available Core Ultra 5 225F does 3.30 GHz base and 4.90 GHz boost for the P-cores, and 2.70 GHz base with 4.40 GHz boost for the E-cores. Both the 230F and 225F lack integrated graphics. As non-K SKUs, both lack unlocked base frequency multipliers. Each of the six "Lion Cove" P-cores comes with 3 MB of dedicated L2 cache; while the sole "Skymont" E-core cluster shares 4 MB of L2 cache among its cores. The P-cores and E-core cluster share 20 MB of L3 cache. What's with the oddly shaped IHS? We have a theory. It's likely that the chip underneath has the same compact Compute tile as the "Arrow Lake-H" mobile processor, which physically only has 6P+8E cores and 24 MB of L3 cache. The modular nature of "Arrow Lake" also makes it possible for the Graphics tile to be physically absent on F-SKUs. We can't wait for someone to delid this chip.

A few days ago, we reported on the US reading a massive 500 billion US Dollar package called "Stargate Project" to build AI infrastructure on American soil. However, China is also planning to stay close behind, or even overlap the US in some areas, with a one trillion Yuan "AI Industry Development Action Plan". Translating into around 138 billion US Dollars at the time of writing, the Chinese AI plan is similar to the US Stargate project: develop AI infrastructure through data center expansion and AI accelerator scale-up. Unlike the Stargate project, led by private initiatives and OpenAI at the helm, the Chinese AI Industry Development Action Plan is an entirely state-sponsored initiative that will fund firms like Baidu, ByteDance, Alibaba, and DeepSeek with additional AI accelerators (or sanction-abiding GPUs) to create more advanced AI systems.

Over the past few days, DeepSeek, a branch of a Chinese hedge fund, has not only open-sourced its R1 reasoning model but made it entirely free to use for everyone. This has challenged moat of Western competitors like OpenAI, pushing its CEO Sam Altman to offer an O3-mini reasoning model for up to 100 queries per day for the ChatGPT Plus user tier. Not only did DeepSeek provide a model equally intelligent to OpenAI's best, but it also offered it completely free. This has stirred up the tech community quite a bit and showed that Chinese companies are not much behind Western competitors. With this AI action plan, the Chinese government wants to push its domestic AI makers even further ahead and allow them to overtake cutting-edge model development potentially. Of course, getting GPUs for these projects remains an intricate task, but with export control loopholes and domestic AI accelerator development, the AI arms race is picking up quite a bit.

Time flies and we're already at the end of January and we have another packed week of new releases. This week's major release is already a couple of years old if you own a console, but it's only managed to swing its way onto PC now. This is followed by doing some engineering in space, going on an epic adventure to prevent the world from crumbling, some shape shifting action, being part of the French resistance and finally you can be the first sentient AI running a city. In addition to the games below, this week also brings: Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap, Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector, Virtua Fighter 5 R.E.V.O. and Tails of Iron 2: Whiskers of Winter.

Marvel's Spider-Man 2 / This week's major release / Thursday 30 January
Be Greater. Together. The incredible power of the symbiote forces Peter Parker and Miles Morales into a desperate fight as they balance their lives, friendships, and their duty to protect in an exciting chapter of the critically acclaimed Spider-Man franchise on PC. Steam link

Yes, the title is correct. One of NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 5090D "China" edition GPUs, not the regular RTX 5090, managed to run at 3.4 GHz under liquid nitrogen. With a staggering 575 W default TDP, Tony Yu, ASUS China's general manager, has performed physical modifications that allow the card to run up to 1000 W TDP. The RTX 5090D is a China-exclusive variant with virtually no difference from the regular RTX 5090, just limited general AI capability due to US export regulations. ASUS China used its top-end Astral OC variant for this stunt, which, as we proved in our review of the regular ASUS RTX 5090 Astral OC, has some pretty good chip binning, allowing the card to reach the highest overclock. We pushed the regular RTX 5090 Astral OC GPU on air to 3086 MHz, a +277 MHz over the stock boost setting. However, the RTX 5090D equivalent under LN2 manages to reach 3,390 MHz at peak loads, which is a +581 MHz difference.

For memory, the overclock is equally impressive with 34 Gbps. Regarding performance, the LN2-overclocked RTX 5090D surpassed stock performance by approximately 16%. During benchmark tests, the GPU outperformed multiple previous-generation graphics cards, including a dual RTX 3090 Ti configuration in Port Royal and a quad GTX 1080 Ti setup in Fire Strike. Power consumption figures indicate that 1,760 W was used in total for a rig with ASUS ROG Astral RTX 5090D, which is paired with the Ryzen 7 9800X3D on the ASUS ROG X870E Hero motherboard. This roughly yields a 1,000 W power consumption by the card, which has seen its PCB get physical modifications to output such high power.

A set of newly leaked benchmarks has revealed the performance capabilities of NVIDIA's upcoming RTX 5080 GPU. Scheduled to launch alongside the RTX 5090 on January 30, the GPU was spotted on Geekbench under OpenCL and Vulkan benchmark tests—and based on the performance, it might not make it among the best graphics cards. The tested device was an MSI-branded RTX 5080 labeled as model MS-7E62. This setup had AMD's Ryzen 7 9800X3D processor, which many consider one of the best CPUs for gaming. It also included an MSI MPG 850 Edge TI Wi-Fi motherboard and 32 GB of DDR5-6000 memory.

The benchmark results show that the RTX 5080 scored 261,836 points in Vulkan and 256,138 points in OpenCL tests. Compared to the RTX 4080, its previous version, the RTX 5080 has a 22% boost in Vulkan performance and a small 6.7% gain in OpenCL. Reddit user TruthPhoenixV found that on the Blender Open Data platform, the GPU got a median score of 9,063.77. This score is 9.4% higher than the RTX 4080 and 8.2% better than the RTX 4080 Super. Even with these improvements, the RTX 5080 might not outperform the current-gen top-tier RTX 4090. In the past, NVIDIA's 80-class GPUs have beaten the 90-class GPUs from the previous generation, but these early numbers suggest this trend might not continue for the RTX 5080.

SNK CORPORATION has announced an Open Beta test for FATAL FURY: City of the Wolves. The beta for SNK's highly anticipated fighting game will be available from February 20 to February 24 (PST) on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, and Steam. Participation in the beta test does NOT require an active PlayStation Plus or Xbox Game Pass Core/Ultimate subscription. FATAL FURY: City of the Wolves is set to release on April 24, 2025.

Rev Up for Open Beta
From February 20, 2025 (12 AM PST) through February 24, 2025 (11:59 PM PST), PC and console players can choose from eight total characters and throw down with friends in three online modes: Ranked Match, Casual Match, or Room Match. Those eager to hone their skills and learn dynamic combo routes can practice in the offline Training mode. FATAL FURY: City of the Wolves introduces a stunning, comic-inspired art style that's a visual treat for series fans, combined with fights fueled by the cutting-edge REV System to deliver dynamic matches. The open beta offers the public their first opportunity to experience the modernized action of City of the Wolves at home, featuring two distinct control schemes tailored to engage both newcomers and seasoned pros.

The Xbox Insider program has outlined a major upcoming feature upgrade for their home console lineup—Tuesday's Alpha Skip-Ahead Ring (2502.250120-2200) release notes reveal newly implemented support for larger capacity external hard drives. Naturally, inside program members get to play around with this early build—we presume that support will eventually trickle down to public level in the near future. The major announcement stated: "we are enabling support for external USB drives larger than 16 TB, so you can be sure your favorite games are always ready to play! Newly formatted drives that are larger than 16 TB will be formatted with multiple partitions to utilize all available space for games and apps. These will appear as multiple devices in the storage devices list."

Xbox-licensed external storage devices are only available with a maximum capacity of 12 TB—Western Digital's WD_BLACK D10 model wears the crown here. Console gaming enthusiasts—with a penchant for storing a huge library of titles on hard disk drives (HDD)—are best served by not selecting official Xbox-branded storage devices. Manufacturers do offer products with 18 TB to 28 TB capacities, but potential buyers will be greeted by hefty asking prices. There are a couple of caveats—for owners of 16+ TB drives—as noted in the Alpha Skip-Ahead Ring notes: "drives greater than 16 TB that have already been formatted will be unaffected by this change and would need to be reformatted to take advantage of the updated support for larger drives. Please be aware that we have identified an issue with formatting drives larger than 16 TB, and we're working on a fix." Interestingly, the notes do not disclose information regarding a new upper limit for compatible storage devices.

"Your worlds, your way" is not just a motto for Obsidian—it's truly how they think about their players. Freedom lives within everything they do, informing how they design quests, regions, combat, and more—it's these elements that help make an "Obsidian RPG" great (and why "Obsidian RPG" is a term you can immediately recognize in the first place). Ahead of the Avowed launch on February 18, 2025, I spoke with the team behind the upcoming fantasy role-playing game to learn more about the process that offers players such a huge level of agency—and how this philosophy is being pushed in this game more than ever.

"There are choices you can make and consequences of actions you can take or not take, whether they are forecasted to you or not, that will impact the future of entire settlements, individual people, groups of people—the whole spectrum basically," says Region Director Berto Ritger. This felt evident as soon as I got off the boat in the game's first region, Dawnshore, as the entire zone is essentially laid out in front of you, waiting to be explored. Everywhere I looked was an opportunity to engage with this world, either through circumnavigating old houses to find loot, or talking to locals that would yield side quests—and this was all before I even stepped foot outside of the port city of Paradis.

Intel's Platform Engineering and Client Segments groups are actively looking into ways of reducing computer e-waste, and (in parallel) enhance product repairability. The company's newly proposed "Modular PC Design" is set to take a "sustainable approach" across three key modularity levels: factory, field and user. Team Blue's blog post goes into great detail about revised laptop and mini-PC designs—with the "right-to-repair" movement serving as a major influence. Many "consumer activists and environmental groups" have advocated for improvements in personal computer design—Intel appears to be listening, but a firm release timeline has not been set.

Intel's proposed new standards will revolve around repairability and upgradability—as explained in their blog: "the right-to-repair emphasizes the importance of being able to fix and upgrade PCs on one's own. Improving repairability requires fundamental changes starting from the design methodology." Team Blue's Modular PC program—for laptops—breaks away from the tradition of utilizing an "all-in-one motherboard." A reference diagram shows off three internal modules: a motherboard package and two "universal" left and right I/O units. These separate boards can be: "utilized across various platforms or market segments leads to cost savings by streamlining the duration of the design cycle and minimizing the engineering investment required. The I/O boards for Premium Modular designs are engineered to be common between the fan-less Thin & Light system, which operates within a 10 W power envelope, and the premium fanned designs, which function within a 20 W (single fan) and 30 W (dual fan, Wi-Fi only SKU) power envelope." Framework recently celebrated its fifth year of operation—its modular laptop designs have seemingly "inspired" a few copycats.

After several months of teasers, the Ayaneo 3 gaming handheld has finally witnessed its official launch. The product will be available with two APUs - the Ryzen 7 8840U for the entry variant, and the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 for the high-end variant. The system can be equipped with up to 64 GB of LPDDR5X-7500 memory, and a whopping 4 TB of SSD storage. The handheld will also feature modular controllers, which can be detached with the click of a single button.

The Ayaneo 3 will also give customers the option to chose between an LCD or an OLED panel, and as VideoCardz notes, selecting the OLED option does not change the final price. As mentioned earlier, the system will be available with either a Zen 4 or a Zen 5 APU. The Strix Point variant leads the Hawk Point part by almost around 50% in multicore tests, and the HX 370's integrated Radeon 890M iGPU is somewhere around 25% more performant than the 8840U's Radeon 780M. Clearly, the performance gap between the two variants will be substantial.

Hello everyone, following the release of our PC specs for Assassin's Creed Shadows, we wanted to share additional insight directly from our tech team on the use of ray tracing in the game. Assassin's Creed Shadows features three distinct ray tracing modes on PC.

Selective Ray tracing
This mode uses ray tracing only within the Hideout portion of the game. The reason behind this, is that the Hideout allows extensive player customization at a level never seen before on Assassin's Creed. Because of that, we cannot use traditional, pre-calculated, global illumination techniques, and therefore need to adopt a real-time approach with ray tracing. In all other gameplay situations, such as in the open world, ray tracing will not be used.

Silkland, a tech brand specializing in cables and accessories, has announced the launch of its new 80 Gbps DisplayPort 2.1 cable (Model Number: S1334). As the first 6.6 feet (2 meter) VESA-certified cable available on Amazon, the cable is designed to enhance both visual and audio experiences, catering specifically to the needs of high-end gamers and professionals.

The 6.6 feet VESA Certified 80 Gbps DisplayPort 2.1 Cable offers an impressive 80 Gbps bandwidth, supporting ultra-high resolutions and refresh rate like 16K@60 Hz, 8K@240 Hz, 4K@960 Hz with DSC, and uncompressed 8K@60 Hz, 4K@240 Hz, 2K@540 Hz. Compatible with UHBR 20, dynamic HDR10+, 3D, and HDCP 2.3, this cable ensures exceptional visual quality. Additionally, it offers backward compatibility with DP 1.4 and DP 1.2.

Mid-week—at the World Economic Forum in Davos—India's government announced that its native semiconductor industry will release its debut product at some point this year. A similar announcement was made at last year's event, but the reported 28 nm "Made in India" chip would eventually miss its (then) projected December 2024 launch date. Press outlets have focused on Ashwini Vaishnaw's latest prediction for 2025—the Union Minister believes that everything will align neatly for his nation's fledgling semiconductor industry. Additionally, industry stakeholders have expressed confidence in the Semicon India program (initiated back in 2021).

He stated: "Our first 'Made in India' chip will be rolled out this year, and now we are looking at the next phase, where we can get equipment manufacturers, material manufacturers and designers in India...For materials, from parts per million purity, we need to go to parts per billion purity levels. This requires huge transformative changes in the process and the industry is working to achieve this." Vaishnaw is chief of India's AI Mission—this program has set itself some ambitious goals for 2025 and beyond. A primary objective is the founding of a common compute facility that will make use of 10,000 GPUs. The Minister for Electronics and Information Technology outlined the country's next phase of AI industry development—the creation of an indigenous AI model, and homegrown AI chip designs.

A day after the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 launch, scalpers are already in action to profit from the hype train. Many of these sellers on eBay claim to have "guaranteed" early access through connections with retailers, while others ask for astronomical prices that dwarf the rumored official MSRP. Currently, the graphics card is not widely available, yet eBay and similar sites list it at up to $7,000. Some individuals go so far as to promise customers "guaranteed slots" to secure the product, often with no refund or return policy. These tactics exploit consumer fear of missing out, especially after repeated GPU shortages and scalper-driven price hikes in recent years. NVIDIA has reportedly taken steps to manage supply, planning to "nitpick" distribution and limit bulk business-to-business sales, at least in some regions.

While these efforts may reduce scalping, other jurisdictions lack similar protections. Rumors from German outlets point to NVIDIA aiming to curb large-volume B2B purchases, but no equivalent strategy has been confirmed for markets like the United States or Asia. Interestingly, there are reports from Vietnam of select shops selling RTX 5080 cards before the launch date, heightening fears of a black market for the entire RTX 50 lineup. Additionally, some sellers have disclaimers that shift blame for any potential defects to manufacturers, leaving buyers with minimal recourse. E-commerce platforms typically permit dispute resolutions for damaged goods, rendering these disclaimers largely ineffective. Buying from scalpers encourages price hikes, and there are no guarantees of the product arriving/working, and there is no warranty for after-purchase care.

Abelard, announce that over 1 million Lord Captains have claimed their Warrant of Trade and ventured boldly into the Koronus Expanse! To be the paragon of Humanity, unbroken by adversity, to walk bravely first into darkness, to unite and reclaim what was lost, to triumph over nightmares untold, to hold boldly the reins of fate, to walk steadily the road of thorns, through pain to greatness. This was no easy task, but you have succeeded, Lord Captains. The Emperor protects!

Made in a close partnership with Games Workshop, Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader is a story-rich classical RPG from Owlcat Games, developers of the critically acclaimed game, Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. Begin your adventure aboard your personal, giant voidship, traveling between the multitude of systems within the Koronus Expanse, a barely charted and incredibly perilous region of space. Despite being considered a backwater of the Imperium, this region encompasses an enormous stretch of the void, filled with dangerous creatures and prodigious opportunities for profit and exploration.

Team Green's CUDA 12.8 release notes have revealed upcoming changes for three older GPU architectures—the document's "Deprecated and Dropped Features" section outlines forthcoming changes. A brief sentence outlines a less active future for affected families: "architecture support for Maxwell, Pascal, and Volta is considered feature-complete and will be frozen in an upcoming release." Further down, NVIDIA states that a small selection of operating systems have been dropped from support lists, including Microsoft Windows 10 21H2 and Debian 11.

Refocusing on matters of hardware—Michael Larabel, Phoronix's editor-in-chief, has kindly provided a bit of history and context. "Four years ago with the NVIDIA 470 series was the legacy branch for GeForce GTX 600 and 700 Kepler series and now as we embark on the NVIDIA 570 driver series, it looks like it could end up being the legacy branch for Maxwell, Pascal, and Volta generations of GPUs." Larabel and other industry watchdogs reckon that the incoming "Blackwell" generation is taking priority, with Team Green likely freeing up resources and concentrating less on taking care of decade+ old hardware. VideoCardz believes that gaming GPU support will continue—at least for Maxwell (e.g. GeForce GTX 900) and Pascal (GeForce GTX 10 series)—based on a playtesting of the toolkit's latest set of integrated drivers (version 571.96).

HXL/9550pro and HardwareLuxx's Andreas Schilling shared evidence of the ASUS PCIe Q-Release Slim—the manufacturer's latest ejection mechanism—causing damage to graphics card PCIe connectors. Recent feedback suggests that repeated usage can scrape or grind off material present on a card's interface. HXL gathered critiques from multiple sources (owners of Intel 800 and AMD 800 series boards), and linked a relevant Bilibili video. The footage presents a damaged GALAX RTX 4070 Ti HOF OC LAB model, following sixty quick release cycles—paired with a ROG Strix B850-A Gaming Wi-Fi S motherboard. Tony Wu, ASUS China's general manager, eventually weighed in on community discussions—stating that he will investigate this matter and report back with his findings.

Schilling expressed similar frustrations—his chosen platform is producing unwanted results: "I'm not happy with the solution either. We use the Strix X870E-E Gaming for testing the graphics cards. So I have had to remove graphics cards from the slot a few dozen times. This didn't always go smoothly and very often the (GeForce RTX 5090) card got stuck in the slot. First damage visible." Press outlets have picked up on the recent surge in Q-Release Slim user feedback—several publications have gathered additional examples of the new mechanism inflicting damage on a variety of graphics card models.

Intel and 2K Games are teaming up to launch the Intel Builder Bundle, featuring the highly anticipated Sid Meier's Civilization VII. Starting today, gamers who purchase qualifying Intel Core Ultra processors (series 2) or Intel Core desktop processors (14th Gen) from participating sellers will be eligible to receive a digital copy of Civilization VII to play when the game launches on February 11, 2025.

"It's hard to come up with franchises in the PC gaming industry more iconic than Sid Meier's Civilization, and Intel is thrilled to continue its years-long partnership with 2K Games and Firaxis on the series' latest installment. Whether it's a marathon session with friends or just 'one more turn' before logging off, gamers around the world can depend on Intel Core and Core Ultra processors to deliver the best Civilization experience on a PC."

• Roger Chandler, VP and GM, Enthusiast and Workstation PC, Intel

In the design of wearable devices, every millimeter matters. As AI technology becomes deeply integrated, wearable devices demand not only enhanced performance but also the ability to deliver more functionalities within highly limited spaces. Recently, Longsys introduced a 7.2 mm × 7.2 mm subsize eMMC, providing a groundbreaking memory solution for optimizing the physical space of AI wearables.

Ultra-Compact: Unlocking New Possibilities for Wearable Design
7.2 mm × 7.2 mm is one of the smallest subsize eMMCs currently available on the market, achieving maximum space efficiency. Its 153 solder balls nearly cover the entire panel, pushing the design to the very edge of physical limits. Compared to the standard 11.5 mm × 13 mm eMMC, its surface area is reduced by approximately 65%, with a thickness of just 0.8 mm. Featuring a lightweight design, it weighs only 0.1 g (approx.), nearly 67% lighter than the standard 0.3 g eMMC. This ultra-compact design frees up additional space for other internal components, enabling wearable devices to maintain a sleek and lightweight form while integrating more functional modules to meet diverse user demands.

GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY Co. Ltd, a leading manufacturer of motherboards, graphics cards, and hardware solutions, proudly announces the remarkable overclocking achievement by Z890 AORUS TACHYON ICE motherboard with the latest Intel Core Ultra (Series 2) processor. Featuring the exclusive LN2 SWITCH function, which is key to breaking through in this overclocking attempt, and V-COLOR Manta Xfinity RGB, esteemed overclocker HiCookie has once again pushed the limits and set an astonishing record of DDR5-12726. This achievement reinforces GIGABYTE's commitment to providing cutting-edge technology for overclocking enthusiasts.

Besides the astonishing memory frequency, Z890 AORUS TACHYON ICE also break another three world records of 3DMARK CPU Profile 1T/2T/8T.

A brave Vietnamese high-end GPU enthusiast uploaded photo evidence of a freshly made purchase—COLORFUL's iGame GeForce RTX 5080 Ultra W OC model—onto the NVIDIA subreddit. Undoubtedly, a retailer in the Southeast Asia region had thrown caution to the wind and let stock prematurely float onto shelves. The plucky customer claimed that the transaction had taken place around a week ago—so well in advance of the official January 30 launch. The original post and several photos have been deleted, but several news outlets have preserved these details. The buyer alleges that they handed over $1400 for this "beautiful" triple-slot custom design—emblazoned with a funky graffiti-inspired lighting system and street art graphics.

The $401 upcharge above baseline MSRP ($999 in the U.S.) indicates that COLORFUL has outfitted this particular model with a beefy cooling solution and other premium features (e.g. stainless steel I/O plate with an attached one-click overclocking button). This custom GeForce RTX 5080 "Blackwell" GPU-based model was added to a working PC build—one photo shows off a B650 motherboard—but the lucky owner will have to deal with a lack of publicly released drivers. Fortunately, they have skipped ahead a step—less fortunate day one customers (across the globe) are seemingly faced with an incoming storm at retail.

Endless Legend is back! We are thrilled to return to turn-based strategy in our beloved Endless Universe, where rich lore intertwines with strategic depth and unique factions. For those who have eagerly anticipated this long-awaited sequel to our acclaimed science-fantasy strategy game, we promise you, we have great things (and a few surprises) in store.

A New World to Explore
Welcome to Saiadha, a world of wondrous beauty and harsh seasons, of great riches and greater risks. Once a part of the galaxy-spanning empire of the Endless, remnants of their power are scattered across the world, and with them the secrets of Dust, the magical substance they used to defy nature itself. Venture into the untamed wilds of Saiadha and face its dangers, and you just might uncover its mysteries.

Montage Technology today announced that it has successfully sampled its Gen 2 Multiplexed Rank Registering Clock Driver (MRCD) and Multiplexed Rank Data Buffer (MDB) chipset to leading global memory manufacturers. Designed for DDR5 Multiplexed Rank DIMM (MRDIMM), this new chipset supports data rates up to 12800 MT/s, delivering exceptional memory performance for next-generation computing platforms.

The release comes at a crucial time, as AI and big data analytics drive increasing demands for memory bandwidth in data centers. MRDIMM technology has emerged as a key solution to address this challenge, particularly as server processors continue to increase in core count.

As a leader in innovative technology, Acemagic is excited to announce the upcoming pre-sale launch of the F3A AI 370 MINI PC by the end of January 2025. Powered by AMD's latest Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 processor, this high-performance mini PC combines outstanding computational power with cutting-edge cooling technology, designed to meet the needs of professionals, content creators, and high-end users.

The F3A AI 370 MINI PC features an advanced 12-core, 24-thread processor, built on AMD's Zen 5 and Zen 5c architecture. With a base clock speed of 2.0 GHz and a turboboost up to 5.1 GHz, it delivers exceptional multithreaded performance and processing power. Additionally, the F3A is equipped with the third-generation Ryzen AI NPU (Neural Processing Unit) based on the XDNA2 architecture, offering up to 50 TOPS of AI computing performance. With seamless collaboration between the GPU and CPU, the F3A achieves an impressive total performance of up to 80 TOPS, making it ideal for high-demand applications like deep learning and AI inference.

Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS), a globally recognized leader in motherboards, mini PCs, and laptops, will participate in the renowned Bett 2025 education technology exhibition in London from January 22 to 24, 2025. ECS will showcase its new series of education laptops integrated with AI technology and multifunctional mini PCs, designed to enhance teaching efficiency and the learning experience. These products not only offer exceptional performance and portability but also incorporate innovative solutions to provide smarter technological support for the education sector.

A New Series of AI-Powered Education Laptops, Delivering Smart Learning Solutions
At Bett 2025, ECS will feature a series of lightweight AI laptops tailored for higher education, including the 14-inch UP40ML, UP42KP, and UP42PW models, as well as the 15.3-inch UP52PW model. These laptops are focused on improving the teaching and learning experience by offering powerful computing capabilities and advanced features. They support multiple processor platforms, such as Intel, AMD and Snapdragon, providing flexibility to meet various needs while maintaining a high-quality metal chassis for durability in campus environments.

Rugged embedded computer brand—Cincoze has launched the latest addition to the Rugged Computing - DIAMOND product line, the Entry Performance & Compact industrial computer DC-1300 series. It packs maximum performance and expansion flexibility in a compact 185 x 131 x 56.5 mm chassis. The new generation DC-1300 series can be equipped with an Intel Alder Lake-N processor, supports the essential I/O interfaces for industrial applications, and provides complete wireless transmission solutions (Wi-Fi, 5G, GNSS, etc.). The DC-1300 continues the legacy of the DC series for successful integration in space-limited industrial automation applications, providing customers with the latest solutions.

The new generation DC-1300 series addresses the continued performance demands in automation applications. It supports the latest Alder Lake-N platform Intel Core i3-N305 processor, with computing performance of 4.5 times that of the previous generation. The DC-1300 supports up to 16 GB DDR5 4800 MHz in a single memory slot. It offers flexible storage options, such as 2.5-inch SATA HDD/SSD or Half-Slim SSD. Additionally, it supports expansion via the M.2 slot for NVMe SSD to meet the needs of different application scenarios.

Philips Monitors will launch their first TCO Certified, generation 10, business line to be with a 5-year warranty, demonstrating the company's commitment to providing products with long-term durability and reduced environmental impact. These models are part of Philips Monitors' ongoing focus on sustainability, in line with global standards for environmental responsibility throughout the product lifecycle. More details on the specific models will be announced progressively as they are launched. Philips Monitors is responding to the growing demand for sustainable products that are both high-performing and environmentally responsible. The introduction of a 5-year warranty reflects the ongoing efforts to reduce the environmental footprint of electronics through product longevity.

Intel today released the latest version of the Arc GPU Graphics Drivers. Version 101.6460 Beta comes with Game On day-zero optimization for "Final Fantasy VII Rebirth." It improves the performance in this game by up to 12.8% at 1080p with high settings, and up to 11.6% at 1440p with high settings, when tested with an Arc B580. On Core Ultra 200-series integrated graphics, the uplift can be up to 9% with medium settings at 1080p. The drivers fix no new issues, but identify several new teething problems with the Arc B-series GPUs that will be fixed in near-future driver releases.DOWNLOAD: Intel Arc GPU Graphics Drivers 101.6460

Did you catch our launch review of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition graphics card? If you did, you'd have noticed the hoops we had to jump through to disassemble the card without breaking anything. As we carefully peeled the card's aesthetic finery and worked out way down to the GPU, we found that NVIDIA is using a liquid-metal thermal interface material (TIM) between the "GB202" GPU and the unified vapor chamber plate of the Double Flow Through cooling solution. After our photography the problem arose of putting the card back together, and we wondered if using a mainstream thermal paste would be a suitable replacement since we didn't have the patience to toy with liquid metal given our review volume. So we pulled out our trusty tube of Arctic MX6, gave it a suitable application, skipped the gasket, and put the card back together.

Here's what we found—the GPU temperatures rise by about 2°C on average over the stock liquid metal TIM. In the graph below, you will see both TIM applications compete with each other over a 370-second stress from a benchmark run. In the chart the start temperatures are slightly different, this does not mean that idle temperatures are higher with liquid metal. At the end of test the maximum temperature reached with the stock liquid metal TIM is around 77.6°C. The Arctic MX6, on the other hand settles to 79.4°C. This +1.8°C temperature increase really isn't significant at all—room temperature changes between summer and winter will cause bigger swings. We also tested performance, and it was spot on, the same as pre-disassembly—not a hint of thermal throttling. Both values are safely below the 90°C thermal threshold for the RTX 5090—that's right, NVIDIA raised the thermal throttle point, it's not 83°C anymore like on the RTX 40-series Ada. Taking the RTX 5090 apart and putting it back together was a challenging experience, but we're glad we didn't have to do a liquid metal application to ensure trouble-free operation. This is good news for all DIYers—don't bother with replacing the liquid metal—a thin thermal paste application works fine, too.

Cooler Master, a leading provider of PC components, gaming peripherals, and tech lifestyle solutions, today announced the MasterLiquid Core II, a next level liquid cooler that comes in both 240 mm and 360 mm sizes. This latest version of Cooler Master's MasterLiquid series builds on the excellence of that renowned series of liquid coolers while bringing an array of new features to the table. With a refined G9R dual chamber pump, updated CPU compatibility, and more, the MasterLiquid Core II is an upgrade fit for the next generation.

Features

• Dual chamber pump: Upgraded design resulting in a compact cooler with superior performance.
• Updated CPU compatibility: The Core II is compatible with all the latest AMD and Intel CPUs.
• Innovative design: An infinity mirror pump cover gives the Core a stellar aesthetic.
• Revamped fans: Brand-new fan blades and revamped visuals deliver outstanding performance with a fresh look.
• Easy installation: Now includes a quick-mount kit compatible with all mainstream processor sockets, along with pre-installed fans.
• Optimum tubing length: 400 mm of tubing enables effortless mounting in any orientation.

Cooler Master, a global leader in PC components, has released the SickleFlow Edge 120 ARGB 3-Pack Fan Kit and the SickleFlow Edge White 120 ARGB 3-Pack Fan Kit. The SickleFlow Edge 120 represents the pinnacle of Cooler Master's air-cooling technology and is now made available in a highly convenient 3-pack variant in both black and white colorways, allowing for easy cooling expansion.

Features
This release of the SickleFlow Edge 120 features all the same great performance specs of the original release, now with a few updates. The fan blade design has been further enhanced to provide higher fan speeds, air pressure, and airflow while maintaining low noise levels. Further improvements have been made to the loop dynamic bearing system to provide additional noise reduction. The fan's frame has been redesigned to reflect a more cohesive aesthetic, and an A1 mini-LED controller has been included with the fans to allow for the ultimate in fan control and customization.

Patriot proudly announces the launch of the PDP31, a portable PSSD designed specifically for the mobile lifestyle. Supporting the USB 3.2 Gen 2 standard, the PDP31 boasts a high-speed transfer rate of up to 10 Gbps, with exceptional sequential read and write speeds of up to 1000 MB/s, making it the ideal choice for tech enthusiasts and professionals alike.

To ensure ample storage for all your important files, the PDP31 is available in capacities ranging from 120 GB to 2 TB, making it perfect for storing everything from creative video projects to large work files. It also features a versatile USB Type-C interface for easy connection to desktops, MacBooks, Windows laptops, tablets, and smartphones.

Cooler Master, a leading provider of PC components, gaming peripherals, and tech lifestyle solutions, today announced the launch of the Hyper 612 APEX, an all-new CPU air cooler engineered for users who demand top-tier cooling in a streamlined form factor. The Hyper 612 APEX features in-house designed superconductive composite heat pipes and a powerful Mobius 120P fan, delivering superior cooling while remaining 30% smaller than its predecessor. This reduction in size ensures compatibility with large memory modules, making it easier to install without sacrificing performance. Ideal for gamers, content creators, and overclockers, the Hyper 612 APEX balances high performance and aesthetics.

"The Hyper 612 APEX is designed to meet the needs of users who want efficient cooling without the bulk," said Jimmy Sha, Cooler Master CEO. "With our advanced heat pipe technology and compact design, this cooler delivers high-performance results while staying user-friendly for a wide range of builds."

Razer, the world's leading lifestyle brand for gamers, partners with Sanrio, the global lifestyle brand and home to Kuromi, the cheeky but charming mischievous character beloved around the world. Marking two decades of encouraging personal expression and individuality, Kuromi celebrates her 20th anniversary in 2025! Following immense fan enthusiasm and a successful teaser in China, Razer and Sanrio have collaborated to launch this collection globally. Crafted for Kuromies (Kuromi's fans) and those who enjoy causing a bit of trouble wherever they go, this collection combines Kuromi's rebellious charm with Razer's renowned high-performance peripherals, all in Kuromi's iconic black and lilac color scheme.

Celebrating Kuromi's unique charm and rising popularity, the Razer | Kuromi collection allows fans to Kuromify the world while stylishly expressing their individuality with high-performance gaming gear adorned with cheeky personality.

Cooler Master, a leading provider of PC components, gaming peripherals, and tech lifestyle solutions, today announced the MasterLiquid 360 Atmos Stealth, a brand-new, all-black, non-LED version of the high power MasterLiquid 360 Atmos AIO cooler. The Atmos series is known for its signature engineering seen in features such as the dual chamber design and customizable pump top cover. Now all those features come packaged in a sleek and stealthy aesthetic.

Features

• Refined dual chamber design: Our signature dual chamber pump has been refined for enhanced cooling synergy.
• Customizable pump top cover: Removable pump top cover, customizable with your own 3D-printed designs.
• Eco-friendly pump cover: The entire pump cover is manufactured with eco-friendly recycled plastics, putting our environment first.
• Mobius 120 black fans: Pre-installed Mobius 120 mm, 2400 rpm fans further improve cooling performance and simplify user installation.
• Daisy-chaining fan connections: Reduces the number of cables needed, leading to a cleaner and more organized system.
• Updated CPU compatibility: The Atmos Stealth is compatible with all of the latest AMD and Intel CPUs.

Igor's Lab conducted an in-depth analysis of the power management system of the new NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 graphics card, including the way the card draws peak power within the tolerances of the ATX 3.1 specification. This analysis should prove particularly useful for those still on older ATX v2.51 PSUs, and plan to use the included power adapter that converts four 8-pin PCIe power connectors to a 12V2x6. Igor's peak power analysis shows that the RTX 5090 is capable of excursions as high as 627.5 W for 10 ms to 20 ms durations; as high as 738.2 W in 5 ms to 10 ms durations, as high as 823.6 W in the 1 ms to 5 ms category, and as high as 901.1 W in spikes under 1 ms in duration.

An excursion is a brief increase in power draw beyond the continuous power delivery limit of the connector (600 W in case of the RTX 5090's single 12V2x6 input and adapter that converts four 150 W 8-pin PCIe inputs). There is nothing particularly alarming about these numbers, and the excursions part of Igor's analysis fall within the specification of the ATX 3.1 standard, which calls for excursions of up to 200% (1200 W) up to 1 ms. Any PSU meeting the ATX 3.1 specs that even has a continuous power output of less than 1200 W will be capable of handling these spikes. It's only with the much older generations of PSUs, such as ATX v2.51 (mid-2010s) that excursions can trigger OCP. Find other great insights in the Igor's Lab review linked below.