Thermaltake, the leading PC DIY premium brand for Cooling, Gaming Gear, and Enthusiast Memory solutions, is thrilled to announce the first lineup of the Thermaltake S Series Steel Tempered Glass Edition Chassis - the S500 TG is available on the market. It combines sophistication and elegance and is all built with a modern steel construction. The chassis is manufactured with one tempered glass side panel, two preinstalled standard fans, 140 mm at the front and 120 mm at the rear to enable outstanding ventilation. It incorporates a full modular design, vertical radiator & GPU mount, patented rotational PCI-E slots, and the support for 200 mm fans. The S500 TG Tempered Glass Edition Mid-Tower Chassis is a great fit for PC builders who are looking for a modern and stylish chassis.

Sleek Steel Design
The S500 TG is made with full metal, glass construction, and sleek front panel design. This case hides the ample air intakes, and the removable power supply cover that gives you plenty of space to route cables and clean up the build.

ZOTAC GAMING is excited to introduce the new GeForce RTX SUPER series of graphics cards pushing more CUDA Cores, more GDDR6 memory, more memory bandwidth, and more power. Continuing the push for next-gen gaming, each SUPER Series enable extraordinary performance with real-time ray tracing with ray tracing cores and tensor cores. Each ZOTAC GAMING GeForce RTX SUPER series is equipped with the most powerful cooling hardware, IceStorm 2.0 cooling, and beautifully lit with SPECTRA lighting.

According to Wccftech, Frank Azor, a co-founder, vice president and general manager of Alienware, will be joining AMD as Chief Gaming Officer. Starting on the third of July, Frank will be leaving Dell and will officially join AMD, as Wccftech suggests. The announcement from AMD should follow after third of July if that is the case. Frank has worked for Alienware/Dell for almost 25 years in its purpose to bring alien like gaming PCs to the market.He posted on Alienware community website:

"Family, as you saw in Ray's earlier announcement, I'll be leaving Dell as of July 3 to take on a new challenge.
A little over 21 years ago, I met a couple of lunatics who had an idea they called Alienware. When I met them and learned about the company they were trying to build, I thought to myself, "This would be the coolest job ever." I was right, but none of us ever dreamed the brand would come this far - which is a result of all of you, your hard work and passion... ". You can read it fully here.

These speculations about the move to AMD aren't confirmed yet and the situation is likely to change, so take this with a grain of salt.

El Chapuzas Informático has posted an early review of the AMD Ryzen 5 3600 which was tested on a Gigabyte Aorus Gaming 7 WiFi motherboard, G.Skill FlareX DDR4 @ 3200 MHz and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti FE graphics card. Looking at the data presented, it becomes clear the performance on offer if real looks to be quite impressive. The site compared AMD's latest offering to the Intel Core i9-9900K and the AMD Ryzen 7 2700X with the Ryzen 5 3600 typically slotting in between the two and in some cases beating both. This is interesting to note as the Ryzen 7 2700X offers similar clock speeds to the Ryzen 5 3600 but the former has a 2C/4T advantage. Even so, the newer AMD CPU tends to outpace the Zen+ based Ryzen 7 2700X in multiple tests. In Cinebench R15, for example, the Ryzen 5 3600 had the lead in single-core performance while multi-core was held by the Ryzen 7 2700X. Cinebench R20 roughly mimics these results as well.

While memory latency was quite high 80.5 ns, it didn't seem to impact performance to any serious degree. In fact, in wPrime 2.10 32M running on a single core showed the Ryzen 5 3600 coming in just behind the Intel Core i9-9900K while being faster than the previous generation Intel Core i7-8700K, i7-8600K, and AMD Ryzen 7 2700X and 1700X. That said, the previous generation Ryzen processors were far slower here were as the Intel chips were still competitive. In the multi-core test, the Ryzen 7 2700X took a slight lead while the Ryzen 7 1700X was a bit slower than the Ryzen 5 3600. One interesting quirk of note was the lack of write speed on the memory with the Ryzen 5 3600 only hitting 25.6 GB/s which is quite a drop from the 47 GB/s seen on the Ryzen 7 1700X and Ryzen 7 2700X. However this could be due to the X470 motherboard being used or maybe an issue with sub timings on the memory, something that will need to be verified in future reviews.

Mad Catz Global Limited, leading gaming hardware innovators for 30 years, announced today the limited edition R.A.T.8+ 1000 Optical Gaming Mouse, in celebration of the Company's 30th birthday. Proudly serving the gaming community for 30 years, Mad Catz has stood the test of time, embedded in the lives of players looking for quality, value and innovation in gaming hardware.

Marking the anniversary in a way that only Mad Catz can, the Company will be launching a commemorative R.A.T.8+ 1000 Optical Gaming Mouse, strictly limited to just 1000 units worldwide. The cutting-edge R.A.T.8+ is already a favorite amongst gamers looking for the winning edge, and this limited edition version comes complete with stunning, premium collector's packaging, designed to store the mouse and a host of accessories, displaying the R.A.T. in style when not in use.

Colorful Technology Company Limited, professional manufacturer of graphics cards, motherboards and high-performance storage solutions is thrilled to introduce its latest product to gamers. The new Sigma M500 Desktop computer is COLORFUL's brand new offering for gamers who want plug-and-play solution for their gaming needs. No need to configure or setup anything, the new SIGMA M500 comes ready for battle.

The new SIGMA M500 line of pre-built desktops come in preconfigured specifications and combinations providing great gaming experience as well computing performance. COLORFUL makes this happen with 8th-gen and 9th-gen Intel Core processors. Also, as the pride of COLORFUL's product line, all SIGMA M500 desktops come equipped with COLORFUL GeForce graphics cards. This is complimented by fast DDR4 memory together with SSD storage. The iGame SIGMA M500 line comes in Basic, Advanced, Prime and Ultra configurations with MSRP of $749, $839, $899 and $1145 respectively.

CORSAIR, a world leader in PC gaming peripherals and enthusiast components, today announced the launch of the NIGHTSWORD RGB and M55 RGB PRO, two brand-new gaming mouse designs that join the company's portfolio of high-performance gaming peripherals. The NIGHTSWORD RGB boasts the latest cutting-edge technology, including an 18,0000 DPI optical sensor and a smart tunable weight system that tracks the current mouse weight and center of gravity in real-time. The M55 RGB PRO is a new ambidextrous gaming mouse, with a symmetrical design optimized for multiple grip styles. The new mice broaden CORSAIR's already formidable lineup, adding even more options to suit players of all kinds, from esports professionals to newcomers to PC gaming.

While at Computex we made sure to visit Gamdias and let's just say they had quite the diverse lineup on display. Starting with peripherals the company had the HEBE P1A headset on hand. Sporting RGB lighting like the majority of products on display it did have some impressive specifications. Starting with the drivers, Gamdias went big cramming 53mm units into the headset with a noise canceling system. Taking things a step further on the sound front the HEBE P1A also offers simulated 7.1 surround sound. For comfort and ease of use, it has oversized earcups along with a flexible unidirectional microphone. Meanwhile, impedance is quite low with it being rated at 32 Ohm meaning it won't need an amp to get the most out of it.

Sharkoon appeared quite ready to take a bite out of the competition at Computex 2019. They came to the show with a full assortment of cases, keyboards, mice, gaming chairs and even a mini USB DAC for gamers which was quite nice to see as it was unexpected and unique coming from Sharkoon. Dubbed the Gaming DAC Pro S, it packs a powerful high-resolution gaming DAC with TRRS microphone input. It can also act as a USB soundcard with headphone Amp for an immersive crystal clear audio experience. It is worth noting that it is compatible with Android on top of the Windows and macOS.

Delux may not be well known in the west, but they are looking to make a splash with a diverse product range which they had on display at Computex 2019. The company had quite a few keyboards to check out including partial gaming keyboards like the T6 which was designed with Fortnite in mind. It featured blue mechanical switches with RGB backlighting that comes with six effects. It also used a pluggable Type-C braided cable which was quite a bit different compared to more contemporary designs as well.

Another unique offering was the KM16 which has Bluetooth built in and through which supports mobile devices. It has adjustable height feet that use a rotating design delivering a more user customizable experience without having to flip the keyboard over to make said adjustments. When it comes to the keys themselves, they are fully programmable and feature N-key rollover.

Turtle Beach, the global leader in gaming headsets and audio accessories, today revealed new products the Company will be showing for the first time at next week's Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) 2019. For PC gamers, Turtle Beach's Hamburg, Germany-based ROCCAT team will be debuting its groundbreaking Kain series of PC gaming mice, which introduces an all-new design with an innovative click-mechanism that will be available in three models set to launch by the end of 2019.

Additionally, Turtle Beach will showcase its latest standout gaming headset, the Recon Spark, which is a great entry-level wired gaming headset that dons a distinct white and lavender look and is perfect for gaming on any system.

As the worldwide leading gaming brand, MSI has launched its first gaming chassis - the MPG GUNGNIR 100 Series and received an enthusiast response from customers. At this point, MSI has now wielded years of experiences in gaming to dedicate to developing brand new gaming chassis. Now we are proud to introduce our line up - MPG SEKIRA 500, with innovation, advanced technology and highly customizable remarkable design to bring gamers more than what they imagine.

MSI MPG SEKIRA 500 series gaming chassis is inspired by the legendary axe in the hands of Perun, the God of Thunder in Slavic mythology. Its sharp and neat design combines with an inclined line on the front panel as if an axe is killing the devil spirit, which reflects the supreme power of the axe of Perun.

For those who came in late, Secretlab is a Singapore-based company that specializes in gaming seats and chairs. Founded in 2014, they were among the very first to establish a foothold in the now-burgeoning gaming chair market, and arguably have led the way from day one. Our own Erasmia was left extremely impressed with their 2018-series Titan chair, to where it was selected among the best of 2017 in the product category as well. We were invited to a sneak peak launch event in New York City earlier this month, where Secretlab shed more light on their 2020 series updates to their popular Omega and Titan lineup.

These updates include over three years of rigorous research and testing, both internal at the company and in collaboration with independent research/testing institutes in Singapore. This level of testing has led to product certifications galore, something virtually unheard of in the gaming chair market. An immediate benefit is an increase in product warranty to 5 years, compared to the industry standard 1-2 years, and this is but one of several updates and improvements we will go over in more detail past the break.

The folks over at Videocardz have treated us to a leak on MSI's upcoming X570 motherboards. The company's mid-tier MPG motherboards usually include the likes of the Gaming Carbon and Gaming Plus motherboards, and this round of motherboard development is no different. Both motherboards join leaked designs from other brands that showed active cooling being mounted on top of the chipset, a throwback to another era.

The leaked Gaming Plus is the lower-tier of the two leaked solutions of today, cutting on reinforcements on some expansion ports (such as the PCIe 16x slot). The Gaming Pro Carbon features a fancier design (with RGB lighting); the chipset hroud also serves as cooling for M.2 slots you can populate underneath (or so it seems). The Gaming Pro Carbon has more attention to detail on the placement of connectors such as SATA, and seems to have a slight advantage on the overall motherboard power delivery circuits, but these are just being eyeballed. One thing we can see is that while the Gaming Pro Carbon features MSI's Audio Boost feature, the Gaming Plus doesn't. Expect more details to be available closer to launch.

Sony Corporation (Sony) and Microsoft Corp. (Microsoft) announced on Thursday that the two companies will partner on new innovations to enhance customer experiences in their direct-to-consumer entertainment platforms and AI solutions.

Under the memorandum of understanding signed by the parties, the two companies will explore joint development of future cloud solutions in Microsoft Azure to support their respective game and content-streaming services. In addition, the two companies will explore the use of current Microsoft Azure datacenter-based solutions for Sony's game and content-streaming services. By working together, the companies aim to deliver more enhanced entertainment experiences for their worldwide customers. These efforts will also include building better development platforms for the content creator community.

Thermaltake have announced the Level 20 RGB Battlestation Gaming Desk, the ultimate gaming desk for gamers (certainly not) on a budget. The Level 20 includes an RGB lighting strip on the edges of the desk, for when you are feeling that particularly kaleidoscopic fondness, and want to cut on turning on your ceiling's lighting. The desk is electrically adjustable (a feature I've always found slightly underwhelming in the premium/usefulness department), with memory for a total of four different height adjustments - particularly useful if you had Tyrion pass by your house in the intervening time.

The RGB is software controllable (Alexa and Razer Chroma are supported), and the entire surface is adequate for (computer) mice to roll through. Its height can be adjusted between 70 - 110 cm, and the top is a 165 cm x 75 cm affair, which should be more than enough space for everything you're cramming on top of your desk right now. And if you want this piece of kit in your life, rest assured that it only costs $1,199. It's a matter of value, on your mind, as a customer. Just beware the shipping doesn't end up more expensive than the Battlestation itself: this thing weighs 75 Kg inside the packaging.

Yesterday, a US senator called Josh Hawley announced a bill to legalize banning of so-called "manipulative" video game design in the United States. The decision was proposed yesterday to US Congress.

The "Protecting Children from Abusive Games Act" would prohibit all games geared towards children, that implement a "pay to win" model where a player is progressing through the game by paying for it. The Senator also added that titles with paid-for in-game awards, such as loot boxes, are supposed to get banned. For overseeing and enforcing the ban, the Federal Trade Commission would be in charge. The FTC in-turn would hire state attorneys to prosecute companies violating the ban.

Jon Peddie Research has released a new report on the state of gaming and its future, with the research firm estimating a total of 20 million PC gamers will make the shift to console gaming by 2022. It does make sense, as the no-frills architecture of consoles and highly specialized hardware and development - alongside the lower cost of entry) have been calling gamers from all ages and budgets. Add to this the fact that IQ considerations are becoming smaller and smaller between a high-end gaming PC and their console counterparts - at least when it comes to global, base IQ of settings - and it does make sense that makers make the shift.

Adding to this is the expectation of increased doubling-down on exclusives from games consoles, with the exception of Microsoft, which will be bringing all of its exclusives to the PC market as well. The increased attention to game streaming, with Google's Stadia and Microsoft's own xCloud will prompt change in the way gamers consume content - no dedicated hardware may mean no consoles, but it will also mean no need to purchase expensive, high-end PC gaming hardware to run the latest games with the latest graphics technologies - that will all be run in the cloud. Smart TVs, for instance, may be all the investment required for a premium, lag-free gaming experience with maximum details, should worldwide internet access improve as it has been. Of course, the ratio of high-end PC gamers making their way to consoles is lower than that of gamers with basic or entry-level PCs that are capable of gaming - those will make up the vast majority of the quoted 20 million shift.

CORSAIR , a world leader in PC gaming peripherals and enthusiast components, today announced the addition of two new high-performance mice to its rapidly expanding gaming peripheral lineup. IRONCLAW RGB WIRELESS, a wireless version of the acclaimed IRONCLAW RGB launched in early 2019, uses hyper-fast SLIPSTREAM CORSAIR WIRELESS TECHNOLOGY alongside an 18,000 DPI optical sensor to provide gamers with cutting-edge wireless performance and superb accuracy and tracking. GLAIVE RGB PRO sees the popular GLAIVE RGB, featuring three interchangeable side grips, updated with a new 18,000 DPI sensor and additional RGB lighting. Whether gamers choose the wireless freedom and palm grip-friendly shape of IRONCLAW RGB WIRELESS or the customizable grip of GLAIVE RGB PRO, they'll find a CORSAIR mouse that elevates their gameplay and in-game performance.

IRONCLAW RGB WIRELESS retains the palm grip-optimized shape and rubberized side of the wired version, while adding CORSAIR's industry-leading 2.4GHz SLIPSTREAM WIRELESS. With unbelievably fast sub-1ms wireless latency, a wireless range of up to 33ft, and Intelligent Frequency Shift (IFS) ensuring a stable signal even in heavy wireless traffic, SLIPSTREAM WIRELESS offers a wired mouse gaming experience, without the wire.

In a move that's certain to make forays into the Chinese gaming market (worth $30bn) for game developers and publishers, country regulators have launched a new wave requirements for game release approvals. Besides more and more information now being required to be submitted by developers for any game that they want to launch in China (which may include scripts, mechanisms to curb game addiction implemented into the code, and other).

While the Chinese gaming market is an extremely significant one, the previously existing (and now updated) regulations mandate that every single game be single-handedly inspected and curated before its approval into the Chinese domestic market. A freeze in the process of games approval that lasted for 8 months (from February 2018 through to December) has already created a backlog of thousands of games pending approval - not to mention all of those that have undoubtedly been submitted since. It's expected that fewer than 5,000 games will be greenlighted for launch this year, so a lot of companies will likely have to review their revenue forecast - depending on how heavily they banked on the Chinese market.

It seems NVIDIA's partners are gearing up for yet another launch, sometime after the GTX 1650 finally becomes available. ECC Listings have made it clear that partners are working on another TU117 variant, with improved performance, sitting between the GTX 1650 and the GTX 1660, which will should bring the fight to AMD's Radeon RX 580. Of course, with the GTX 1660 sitting pretty at a $219 price, this leaves anywhere between the GTX 1650's $149 and the GTX 1660's $229 for the GTX 1650 Ti to fill. With the GTX 1660 being an average of 13% faster than the RX 580, it makes sense for NVIDIA to look for another SKU to cover that large pricing gap between the 1650 and the 1660.

It's speculated that the GeForce GTX 1650 could feature 1024 CUDA Cores, 32 ROPs and 64 TMUs. These should be paired with the same 4 GB GDDR5 VRAM running across a 128-bit bus at the same 8000 MHz effective clock speeds as the GTX 1650, delivering a bandwidth of 128 GB/s. Should NVIDIA be able to pull the feat of keeping the same 75W TDP between its Ti and non-Ti GTX 1650 (as it did with the GTX 1660), that could mean that a 75 W graphics card would be contending with AMD's 185 W RX 580 - a mean, green feet in the power efficiency arena. A number of SKUs for the GTX 1650 Ti have been leaked on ASUS' side of the field, which you can find after the break.

We knew this was coming, especially after Google's teaser from earlier this month. Project Stream was a proof-of-concept in collaboration with Ubisoft, to see whether AAA gaming was possible over the internet. Things were smooth most of the time in our own experience, but there remained questions over how the concept would translate over to a finished product, especially with infrastructure challenges on the client side of things. Google's keynote at GDC just wrapped up, and the main focus was Stadia- the now named cloud gaming service borne out of Project Stream.

Stadia is built with instant access in mind. An example demo came in the form of Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed Odyssey, which was used in the public test before. It is integrated with partner YouTube channels such that a trailer for a supported game would have an option to play said game, which would then launch immediately. Stadia is built with support from a wide partner network including AMD, Unity, id Software, and more, with details seen past the break.

While the RPCS3 emulator has been in development since 2011, it is only recently that it has begun to see rapid improvements thereby Bringing PS3 games to the PC platform in a playable way. In their latest update video, the development team behind RPCS3 showed off the most recent performance improvements they have made. Multiple titles have seen tremendous gains thanks to Nekotekina, who managed to approximate Xfloat. This has allowed more games to benefit from the SPU LLVM recompiler which delivers better performance compared to ASMJTT. It also results in LLVM seeing better compatibility with a broader range of titles that before did not run with it or had game breaking issues. They also demonstrated Improvements to SPU cache building with LLVM now being multi-threaded. This change cut the cache build time from 12 minutes and 34 seconds to a 1 minutes 28 seconds on an AMD Ryzen 7 1700.

To display their hard work the development team used Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time which saw a roughly 20-30% performance increase but is still not considered fully playable as of yet. Even so, the performance uplift means Sly Cooper is running in the low 40-50 FPS range which is an excellent start all the same. They also chose a first party title in Uncharted Drake's Fortune which thanks to the same changes received a massive uptick in performance of around 50%. While this means the game only went from 20 FPS to 29 FPS, it is still a sizable improvement.

The Division 2 is shaping up to be one of the hottest releases of 2019 - particularly as the other shared world, third-person shooter, Anthem, has fared somewhat below expectations. And while Anthem offers very impressive visuals, it also comes with relatively steep performance requirements - at least comparing with The Division 2's requirement of an RX 480 for 1080, 60 FPS gaming. For 4K, 60 FPS, you'll require a much bigger hardware commitment, in the form of AMD'S Radeon VII or NVIDIA's RTX 2080 Ti graphics cards, with a minimum of 16 GB system RAM and a Ryzen 7 2700X or Intel Core I7-8700X CPU.

The Snowdrop engine The Division 2 makes use of, developed in-house by Massive Entertainment, features a particularly impressive DX12 implementation, which should offer some 10-20 fps improvement in certain scenarios. DSO Gaming, testing in the private Beta, saw differences between 59 FPS under DX 11 and 80 FPS, in the minimum frame rate, for the same scene. So if you're not running DX 12 or a DX 12 capable card, know that even a graphics card with the same performance as yours, but that supports the DX12 renderer, will bring tangible performance benefits - particularly if you have an AMD card, due to the title's extensive use of Async Compute. The Division 2's release is set for March 15.

Microsoft has confirmed that their latest Windows 10 update (KB4482887), which released on march 1st, can actually degrade graphics and mouse performance in some games. As Microsoft themselves put it, "After installing KB4482887, users may notice graphics and mouse performance degradation with desktop gaming when playing certain games (eg: Destiny 2)."

There's no word yet on a definitive listing of games that suffer this performance degradation, but Microsoft is hard at work fixing this for the next Windows release. Until then, users facing graphics and mouse performance degradation can simply uninstall the KB4482887 update.