Modders never rest. From one wild experiment to the next, nothing can escape the relentless creativity—sometimes for no reason and often with excess—of a modder. PenBar, a Chinese entity, has introduced a new janky-looking gaming laptop dubbed the BBook AI Original Edition, which is basically a Sony PlayStation 5 stuffed into a laptop-shaped enclosure with a display slapped on top.

Unsurprisingly, the whole project required a substantial number of modifications. Even then, there is barely any true laptop functionality in the product. For starters, the system cannot be used unless plugged into a wall, and for good reason - there is no battery inside. Oh and also, the keyboard doesn't work during gaming. And neither does the mouse. But at least, there is indeed an entire PlayStation 5 inside, with exactly the same specifications, of course.

God of War Ragnarök has been one of the most highly anticipated PC launches in recent history, although the launch has been somewhat controversial. After launching on PC via Steam and Epic Games on September 19, players discovered that the single-player narrative-driven action-adventure game would require an online PSN account in order to play. This account requirement somewhat predictably resulted in significant backlash, which, in turn, resulted in a third-party mod to remove the account requirement.

Shortly after the launch of God of War Ragnarök, the game's Steam page became inundated with negative reviews because of the PlayStation Network account required to play the game. Less than a week after launch, God of War's rating on Steam is a solid "Mixed," with only 69% positive reviews. That is compared to Metacritic's user reviews that place the PS5 version of the game at 8.1/10. Shortly after the review bombs started, though, a free mod called NoPSSDK appeared on Nexus Mods and GitHub that removes the PSN account requirement from God of War Ragnarök.

Sony and its exclusivity stuff has made the minds behind the Bloodborne on PC, tired of their promises. With their fed-up switch turned on, Bloodborne modders are working tirelessly to liberate another Sony title from console exclusivity. The gaming community is tired of waiting for Sony to release the PC Port of this game and have taken things into their own hands, once again, just like they did with Bloodborne.

The modders are trying their utmost best to make Read Dead Redemption run as stable as possible on PC with various updates. Over the past few years, we've many of our beloved games go under the chain and lock of the Playstation console exclusivity on their way to PC. And the results are not so great. While it's proven to be incredible additions to the console, they still haven't released any official ports for AAA games like Bloodborne. All these, pushed us gamers to the wall, and we certainly had to take laws into our hands, and we ended up bringing an emulator that could finally run Bloodborne on PC.

Gabriel Ferraz, maintainer of the TechPowerUp SSD database and content creator, recently published an article that shows the relationship between SLC (Single-Level Cell) cache technology and its performance impact on SSDs. Using a Pichau Aldrin Pro 2 TB SSD featuring an Innogrit IG5236 controller and YMTC 128-layer TLC NAND, Gabriel has uncovered both the advantages and potential drawbacks of this feature. The article reveals that with SLC cache enabled, which acts as a high-speed buffer, the SSD achieved remarkable write speeds of up to 6.5 GB/s, but only until 691 GB had been written. Beyond that, speeds dropped to 2.2 GB/s and then to 860 MB/s as the drive filled up.

Disabling the SLC cache delivers more consistent performance results that are 2.1 GB/s across the whole capacity of the SSD, but with lower peak performance. Testing also examined the impact on power consumption and efficiency. With the SLC cache active, the SSD consumed approximately 5 W of power while achieving over 3000 MB/s bandwidth. Disabling the cache reduced power consumption but at the cost of halving the bandwidth to around 1900 MB/s, resulting in lower overall efficiency. Maximum power consumption with cache enabled peaked at 7.3 W, compared to a lower figure when operating in constant TLC mode. Below, you can see some performance benchmarks published on The Overclock Page.

Antec Inc., leading provider of high-performance computer components and accessories for Casual and High-end gaming, is thrilled to announce the latest additions to its renowned line-up of cooling fans:

Tranquil PWM Fans: Offering an affordable cooling solution which compromises powerful airflow with low noise. Available as single fans or packs of 3 with 120 mm and 140 mm options, all with or without ARGB lighting. MSRP starting at €11.99 / £9.99 single fan and €29.99 / £24.99 for the 3 Pack.

Thermaltake, a leading PC DIY brand for premium hardware solutions, kicked off the "2024 Thermaltake RAM MOD Invitational" an annual competition that gathers modders from all corners of the world to mod the designated Thermaltake ram into their own masterpiece. This year we invited six modders from Austria, Italy, Japan, Thailand, and the United Kingdom to modify the TOUGHRAM XG RGB D5 Memory DDR5.

Participating modders are given a specific time frame to modify the RAM heatsinks, without changing the overall appearance and layout of the RAM itself. Contestants must only use our TOUGHRAM XG RGB D5 modules and cannot add the ram to a motherboard or a PC build. However, they can create a stand or platform for the modules but the overall modules must remain intact with the original design as the main focus.

Elgato, a brand of Corsair, today announced a limited-edition hardware line in collaboration with the award-winning publisher, Bethesda Softworks. The drop features four products—including a custom Stream Deck and dynamic mic—celebrating one of gaming's most beloved franchises, Fallout. It's now the second time Elgato and Bethesda have teamed up, following the release of Starfield in September 2023.

For Bethesda fans, the partnership is a chance to bring home an original Vault-Tec collectible, coinciding with the Fallout TV series debut on Prime Video. It marks a milestone for Elgato too, as the first time they've developed a custom dynamic mic (Wave DX), audio interface (Wave XLR), or boom arm (Wave Mic Arm LP). In addition to hardware, Elgato revealed a suite of digital assets, including a Pip-Boy-inspired voice modifier—offering creators new ways to express themselves online.

With Mods (short for modifications), you can tailor your gaming experience to your unique preferences. Uploaded by creators all over the world, you can pick between anything to create the city of your dreams. Along with Beach Properties, the first wave of Cities: Skylines II Modding will be available. The Beta release of Modding will initially support Map and Code mods. With the Map Editor, you can make maps with the Terraforming Tools you're used to, import hightmaps to create highly accurate depictions of your hometown, and upload your creations to Paradox Mods.

With the Code Tools, you can show off your coding skills and create Code Mods to meet your heart's desire! Future updates will improve on these tools and come to include support for Asset Mods. As we've talked about before, there will be updates to these tools that we are currently working on, and we will see some updates before the 1.0 release. We will be taking your opinion into consideration when we continue to work on the editor and are looking forward to seeing the feedback that you might have. If you're curious on what the process of Modding will look like you can already check it out on the Cities: Skylines II Wiki here.

At CES 2024 in Las Vegas, case maker InWin displayed several innovative new models for custom PC builds. The company continues its reputation for eye-catching designs with the debut of the adjustable flatpack POC One case and highly modular Mini Mod-II and Mod-III chassis. The POC One features interlocking panels for easy snap-together assembly, an advancement over the original April-launched POC line. It includes repositionable top or side handles for portable or horizontal setups. Using a mix of aluminium, other metals, and acrylic, the POC One initially comes in black/orange or blue/silver styles. Despite its minimalist flatpack form, it fits full-size components like 335 mm long triple-slot GPUs, 140 mm tall CPU coolers, and standard ATX power supplies. Three PCIe slots and an included riser allow vertical graphics card mounting.

InWin Development Inc. (InWin), a leading innovator in PC enthusiast and gaming hardware, has introduced the first ever fully modular case, the ModFree PC chassis. Fully interchangeable and expandable, it allows PC enthusiasts to freely transform the design, layout, and structure to meet their exact needs and preferences in hardware and cooling. InWin offers a Base Edition preset featuring Mod-I and Mod-II modules along with three InWin Jupiter AJ140 ARGB case fans. The Deluxe Edition preset comes with Mod-I, Mod-II, and two Mod-III modules, and four Jupiter AJ140 fans too.

ModFree: An Easy, Sustainable System
The ModFree ecosystem is designed around toolless interlocking clips that allow users to easily swap modules around. Unlike conventional chassis, ModFree uses an inverted motherboard design that allows users to showcase their hardware from the left side of the desk instead of competing for space with the mouse pad on the right. Investing in this ecosystem ensures an upgrade to add more cooling or more space is just a module away, which also helps to reduce the environmental impact considering you would no longer need to build an entire new system anytime you need to upgrade. ModFree offers a 3D interactive assembly guide with easy-to-follow demonstrations and ideas for how to use each module. Users can also experiment with designs directly in the app.

Useful Sensors, an AI-focused start-up, today launched the world's first low-cost, off-the-shelf AI module to enable intuitive, natural language interaction with electronic devices, locally and privately, with no need for an account or internet connection. The new AI-In-A-Box module can answer queries and solve problems in a way similar to well-known AI tools based on a large language model (LLM). But thanks to compression and acceleration technologies developed by Useful Sensors, the module hosts its LLM file locally, enabling its low-cost microprocessor to understand and respond instantly to spoken natural language queries or commands without reference to a data center.

Disconnected from the internet, the AI-In-A-Box module definitively eliminates user concerns about privacy, snooping, or dependence on third-party cloud services that are prevalent with conventional LLM-based AI products and services marketed by large technology companies. The AI-In-A-Box module is available to buy now at CrowdSupply, priced at $299.

First, an enormous thank you to all of you playing Starfield and your support. We are absolutely blown away by the response and all you love about the game. We're also reading all your great feedback on what you'd like to see improved or added to the game. This is a game we'll be supporting for years and years to come, so please keep all the feedback coming! Even if we don't get to your requests immediately, we'd love to do it in the future, like city maps. Our priority initially is making sure any top blocker bugs or stability issues are addressed, and adding quality-of-life features that many are asking for.

This first update is a small hotfix targeted at the few top issues were are seeing. After that, expect a regular interval of updates that have top community requested features including:

• Brightness and Contrast controls
• HDR Calibration Menu
• FOV Slider
• Nvidia DLSS Support (PC)
• 32:9 Ultrawide Monitor Support (PC)
• Eat button for food!

We are thrilled to announce that our Grapefruit GPBT keycaps are now available! Originally a limited-edition release, these keycaps were so popular that we decided to make them available to everyone.

Bursting with vibrant tones, the Grapefruit GPBT keycaps are the perfect punch of color for any desk setup. Made with super-durable PBT material, enjoy a satisfying typing experience with rich acoustics. The keycap set includes macOS F-row and modifier keys. Get your sweet set today for just $59.99.

A memory mod for the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 that doubles the amount of VRAM showed some impressive performance gains, especially in the most recent games. While the mod was more complicated than earlier ones, since it required some additional PCB soldering, the one tested game shows incredible performance boost, especially in the 1%, 0.1% lows, and the average frame rate.

Modding the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 to 16 GB VRAM is not a bad idea, since NVIDIA already planned a similar card (RTX 3070 Ti 16 GB), but eventually cancelled it. With today games using more than 8 GB of VRAM, it means that some RTX 30 series graphics card can struggle with pushing playable FPS. The modder benchmarked the new Resident Evil 4 at very high settings, showing that those additional 8 GB of VRAM is the difference between stuttering and smooth gameplay.

The PC port of The Last of Us Part I has gained a lot of attention for its shoddy technical performance at launch, with a flurry of patches issued by developer Naughty Dog to calm down matters following barbed community feedback. An unofficial modification project has been ticking along behind the scenes, with team members and contributors content to tinker with the game, rather than engage in arguments about poor optimization and crashes to desktop. The Voyagers Revenge project has this week revealed footage of a first person perspective mode implemented into the Windows version of The Last of Us Part I.

The mod is still a work in progress, so demonstrations have been captured in the form of gameplay footage and uploaded to YouTube - actual playable code is not available to the public. The modders have implemented a feature that Naughty Dog had previously abandoned, with vice president Neil Druckmann confirming that the development team had experimented with a first person perspective mode in the early days of production, but they ultimately decided to drop it in favor of sticking to an over-the-shoulder viewpoint.

A Half Life 2 modder, Igor Zdrowowicz, has managed to integrate path tracing into the game - with striking results, even at an early stage in development. His project - codenamed "HL2RTX" - has been in-progress for a handful of months, and the modder has managed to integrate a ray tracing system into Valve's classic shooter (sort of) via NVIDIA's RTX Remix SDK. That package has become open source only very recently, so Zdrowowicz stated that a Portal RTX-derived binary was the tool of choice.

NVIDIA's Lightspeed Studios has already created an impressive RTX conversion of Valve's fan favorite puzzle-platform game Portal (2007), and modders have been poring over the underlying technology and update technique processes. A number of old favorites, running on past iterations of the Source Engine (DirectX 8 and 9), are getting the amateur mod community sprucing up treatment. It is posited that Zdrowowicz will have an easier time with his current conversion project, thanks to an official release of NVIDIA's RTX Remix toolkit (albeit in early access).

Gaming communities have been engaged in discussions about Half-Life: Alyx being partly playable without a VR headset for the past month or two. The team behind the NoVR modification project has, as of late week, announced that the game's story experience - from start to finish - is totally VR free. This news should satisfy many excited fans who have been anticipating Half-Life: Alyx's campaign being displayed on the small/medium screen. Previous entries in the long running Half Life series have always been two-dimensional traditional monitor affairs.

The GB_2 Development Team cheerfully introduces its latest iteration of NoVR: "This is our biggest update yet and we have no plans on slowing down! With thousands playing Half-Life: Alyx NoVR we are happy to announce our largest update yet! As the titles state the entire game can now be played from start to finish, with the Gravity Gloves fully implemented along with combine fabricators providing weapon upgrades. Also since we are now updating the final parts of the game there may be spoilers! We will do our best to not spoil anything while ensuring we communicate these late game areas have been updated along with their gameplay mechanics."