Starforge Systems, the leading pre-built PC manufacturer preferred by streamers, has released CPU upgrades to several of their top gaming PCs this week including the Explorer Pro, Explorer Elite, Voyager Pro and Voyager Elite. Through the latest upgrades, the Explorer Pro and Explorer Elite, the sleek wood-trimmed PC geared toward creatives and gamers, now features Intel Arrow Lake via Intel Core Ultra 7 265K on the Explorer Pro ($2,6949.99) and Intel Core Ultra 9 285K on the Explorer Elite ($4,699.99). With these upgrades, customers can expect added productivity performance, making these the perfect workstation PCs for those looking for a PC that can do it all.

Additionally, the Voyager Pro ($3,299.99) and Voyager Elite ($4,699.99) have been upgraded to include AMD's Ryzen 7 9800X3D CPU, bringing added productivity and gaming performance to the powerhouse PCs. Starforge Systems' Voyager line can be customized with a variety of case print bundle designs including the recently released Dragonlight case.

DeepComputing partners with Canonical to unveil a huge boost to the DC-ROMA RISC-V Laptop family. The DC-ROMA RISC-V Laptop II is the world's first RISC-V laptop pre-installed and powered by Ubuntu, which is one of the most popular Linux distributions in the world, providing developers with an outstanding mix of usability and reliability, as well as a rich ecosystem with security and support.

Equipped with octa-core 64-bit RISC-V AI CPU
Adding to a long list of firsts, the new DC-ROMA laptop II is the first to feature SpacemiT's SoC K1 - with its 8-cores RISC-V CPU running at up to 2.0 GHz with 16 GB of memory. This significantly doubled its overall performance and energy efficiency over the previous generation's 4-cores SoC running at 1.5 GHz. Moreover, SpacemiT's SoC K1 is also the world's first SoC to support RISC-V high performance computing RVA 22 Profile RVV 1.0 with 256 bit width, and to have powerful AI capabilities with its customised matrix operation instruction based on IME Group design principle!

Calling out to all necromancers! Necrosmith 2 is now available on Windows and macOS ☠️Return to the world of the necromancy! This time, raise your undead against dreadful monsters, utilizing the newest features to create titans and control them to lead your army to victory. They await your command to begin the battle!

Like a dead man reanimated by dark sorcery, the necromancer simulator is back. Assemble your undead from different body parts, combining the abilities of various fantasy races. Upgrade your tower and give it a unique look. Fight your way through hordes of enemies in a procedurally generated world and take titans under control. Give the undead the ability to fly over mountains and swim across rivers, explore a fully generated world at night and fend off enemy hordes during the day. Start a new, uhm, life.

The stars align this GFN Thursday as more top titles from Ubisoft and Square Enix join the cloud. Star Wars Outlaws will be coming to the GeForce NOW library at launch later this year, while STAR OCEAN THE SECOND STORY R and PARANORMASIGHT: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo are part of eight new titles joining this week. Additionally, four other games are getting NVIDIA RTX enhancements, all arriving at next week's Game Developers Conference.

NARAKA: BLADEPOINT and Portal with RTX are adding full ray tracing and NVIDIA DLSS 3.5 Ray Reconstruction capabilities. This month's Diablo IV update will add ray tracing. And Sengoku Dynasty—available to stream today—was recently updated with DLSS 3 Frame Generation.

Brazilian tech enthusiast Paulo Gomes, in association with Jefferson Silva, and Ygor Mota, successfully modded an EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 "Turing" graphics card to 16 GB. This was done by replacing each of its 8 Gbit GDDR6 memory chips with ones that have double the density, at 16 Gbit. Over the GPU's 256-bit wide memory bus, eight of these chips add up to 16 GB. The memory speed was unchanged at 14 Gbps reference, as were the GPU clocks.

The process of modding involves de-soldering each of the eight 8 Gbit chips, clearing out the memory pads of any shorted pins, using a GDDR6 stencil to place replacement solder balls, and then soldering the new 16 Gbit chips onto the pad under heat. Besides replacing the memory chips, a series of SMD jumpers need to be adjusted near the BIOS ROM chip, which lets the GPU correctly recognize the 16 GB memory size. The TU104 silicon by default supports higher density memory, as NVIDIA uses this chip on some of its professional graphics cards with 16 GB memory, such as the Quadro RTX 5000.

An Ebay Store—customgpu_official—is selling memory modified GeForce RTX 2080 Ti graphics cards. The outfit (located in Palo Alto, California) has a large inventory of MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Ti AERO cards—judging from their listing's photo gallery. Workers in China are reportedly upgrading these (possibly refurbished) units with extra lashings of GDDR6 VRAM—going from the original 11 GB specification up to 22 GB. We have observed smaller scale GeForce RTX 2080 Ti modification projects and a very ambitious user-modified example in the past, but customgpu's latest endeavor targets a growth industry—the item description states: "Why do you need a 22 GB 2080 Ti? Large VRAM is essential to cool AIGC apps such as stable diffusion fine tuning, LLAMA, LLM." At the time of writing three cards are available to purchase, and interested customers have already acquired four memory modded units.

They advertise their upgraded "Turbo Edition" card as a great "budget alternative" to more modern GeForce RTX 3090 and 4090 models—"more information and videos" can be accessed via 2080ti22g.com. The MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Ti AERO 11 GB model is not documented within TPU's GPU database, but its dual-slot custom cooling solution is also sported by the MSI RTX 2080 SUPER AERO 8 GB graphics card. The AERO's blower fan system creates a "mini-wind tunnel, pulling fresh air from inside the case and blowing it out the IO panel, and out of the system." The seller's asking price is $499 per unit—perhaps a little bit steep for used cards (potentially involved in mining activities), but customgpu_official seems to be well versed in repairs. Other Ebay listings show non-upgraded MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Ti AERO cards selling in the region of $300 to $400. Custom GPU Upgrade and Repair's hype video proposes that their modified card offers great value, given that it sells for a third of the cost of a GeForce RTX 3090—their Ebay item description contradicts this claim: "only half price compared with GeForce RTX 3090 with almost the same GPU memory."

This GFN Thursday levels up PC gaming on mobile with higher-resolution support on Android devices. This week also brings 10 new games to the GeForce NOW library, including Enshrouded. Pixel Perfect—GeForce NOW transforms nearly any device into a high-powered PC gaming rig, and members streaming on Android can now access that power from the palms of their hands. The GeForce NOW Android app, rolling out now to members, unlocks a new level of visual quality for Ultimate members gaming on mobile, with improved support for streaming up to 1440p resolution at 120 frames per second.

Explore the vibrant neon landscapes of Cyberpunk 2077, stream triple-A titles like Baldur's Gate 3 and Monster Hunter: World, and play the latest releases in the cloud, including Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown and Exoprimal—all on the go with higher resolutions for more immersive gameplay. Ultimate members can stream these and over 1,800 titles from the GeForce NOW library on select 120 Hz Android phones and tablets at pixel-perfect quality. Plus, they can take gameplay even further with eight-hour sessions and tap GeForce RTX 4080-powered servers for faster access to their gaming libraries. Sign up for an Ultimate membership today and check out this article for more details on how to set up Android devices for PC gaming on the go.

Hello heisters, we hope you're having a wonderful week - and if you're not, we have some cool news for you to dig into when it comes to Payday 3! This is the much anticipated sequel to one of the most popular co-op shooters ever. Since its release, Payday-players have been reveling in the thrill of a perfectly planned and executed heist. That's what makes Payday a high-octane, co-op FPS experience without equal.

Post Launch Plans
We're nearing the launch date on September 21 (Early Access on September 18), but today we wanted to give you a glimpse of what's to come for Year One of Payday 3 and its future content. Besides 4 DLCs, with names yet to be fully determined, we'll also look at seasonal events, playable characters, new enemy, weapons, Unreal Engine 5 upgrade, cosmetics, quality of life improvements, new features and much more. Let us know in the comments which part you're the most excited for!

CD Projekt Red outlined some of its ambitions for Cyberpunk 2077's upcoming Phantom Liberty expansion at Gamescom Opening Night Live, but there was a bit of confusion within the audience regarding how new feature sets will pan out alongside the release of Update 2.0 (for the base game). The free batch of improvements and content is scheduled to arrive just before the launch of Phantom Liberty on September 26, across PC and modern consoles. The Polish video game developer has sought to clarify these details with the publication of new information. They recommend that you: "check out this handy infographic (see below) about the main features coming to Cyberpunk 2077 together with the Phantom Liberty expansion—and the ones that will be added to the game in the free Update 2.0!"

The Gamescom Phantom Liberty presentation included a preview of a revised police behavior system, but this appears to count as an improvement bundled with Update 2.0: "Take a look at one of the new features coming to Cyberpunk 2077 in the free Update 2.0 for the base game, which will be available on current-gen consoles and PCs: a revamped Police system! We rebuilt the system on clear, simple rules: criminal activity is punished, runners are chased and cyberpsychos are flatlined, no questions asked. All features in the system are designed to support clarity and the simple but expanded prevention loop." CDPR's infographic lists a new location as well as additional storylines, characters/enemies, quests, weapons and enemies being reserved for their ($29.99 RRP) DLC campaign.

Technology is creating amazing opportunities for our industry and the world, and Windows 11 is at the center of innovation with new experiences that transform how we interact with the Windows PC and each other. With Windows 11, we're seeing record engagement, our highest customer satisfaction over any previous version of Windows in the U.S., and accelerated growth in commercial deployments. In fact, we recently shared as part of our latest earnings report that over 90% of Fortune 500 companies are currently trialing or have already deployed Windows 11.

In February, we brought the new AI-powered Bing to the taskbar and other features to improve the way people get things done on their PCs. Today, we are providing a look at new features and enhancements for Windows 11 that will start to become available tomorrow, May 24, that focus on business needs, such as security and IT management, and new benefits that enhance professional and personal usability. For developers building on Windows, this week we are announcing new innovation at Microsoft Build.

A press release (dated April 27) states: "We plan to release Debian 12.0 "Bookworm" on June 10. If you want to celebrate it, please consider attending a Debian release party, or hosting your own! See wiki.debian.org/ReleasePartyBookworm for more information. The release process typically takes the whole day and the release isn't done until the early hours of Sunday UTC."

Full Freeze Date
With the release date set, it's time to announce the Full Freeze date: Wednesday May 24. This means that from that moment on, every package requires a manual unblock by the release team if it needs to migrate to bookworm. Please note that, as with all freezes, the newrules apply for all packages that haven't migrated to testing yet (not only for uploads after the freeze). For all uploads, please review the Freeze Policy once again to make sure you know what is appropriate at this phase of the release.

Steam Client Beta updates do not normally attract much attention - Valve's iterative patch notes for the digital service application read in a mostly mundane way - but this week's trial system upgrade has turned heads. Valve has managed to introduce some interesting new features with this latest update - the in-game overlay system has been overhauled so users are offered the option to pin related windows over/on top of an active game session. Players are granted multiple options in the adjustment of overlay window opacity levels - so web browsers, document apps and image browsers can be customized to best suit the in-game experience. Users will also be happy to discover that they can now watch their favorite movies, TV shows or streaming platform within the same screen space as their chosen game - no need to minimize and arrange multiple app windows or shift everything across multiple monitor setups. The screenshot manager has been enhanced to a greater degree - Valve states that: "it's responsive, you can choose from large or small thumbnails, view recent screenshots rather than by game, and you can manage online screenshots as well as local screenshots".

A new Notes App has been introduced via the latest Steam Client Beta update - users can now jot down their thoughts and observations during game sessions. Valve boasts that the application offers: "rich text formatting, the ability to have multiple notes per game, and can even be used in offline mode." The blog also provides explanations of other handy features and improvements: "The new toolbar gives you access to anything you may need in the middle of a game - friends chat, achievements progress, guides, discussions, a browser, and more. We've picked a couple windows by default, and you can pick and personalize the pieces of content you'd like to see in your overlay - settings are saved between games. This toolbar can be switched between an icon view and a list view in Settings. The Game Overview is your one-stop shop to see what's going on with the game since you last played it. For example, it shows what achievements you have in progress, which friends are playing the same game, top guides, news, and more."

Each week we're bringing you the latest news on games launching with NVIDIA DLSS and advanced ray tracing. Last week, the list of supported DLSS games and apps surpassed 290, and this week we're adding even more games! Today, Returnal upgrades its DLSS integration to DLSS 3, giving GeForce RTX 40 Series players even higher frame rates in the fast-paced shooter, The Lord of the Rings: Gollum shows off its DLSS and ray tracing tech in a new trailer, and another 3 games add support for DLSS 2. Read on to learn more.

The Returnal: DLSS 3 upgrade launches today. Returnal, Sony and Housemarque's critically acclaimed third-person roguelike shooter, launched on PC in February, featuring out of the box support for DLSS 2 and ray tracing. After crash-landing on a shape-shifting world, players must guide astronaut Selene through the barren landscape of an ancient civilization for her escape. Isolated and alone, she finds herself fighting tooth and nail for survival. Again and again, she's defeated - forced to restart her journey every time she dies.

THE NEXT ERA OF COUNTER-STRIKE BEGINS THIS SUMMER

Counter-Strike 2 is the largest technical leap forward in Counter-Strike's history, ensuring new features and updates for years to come. All of the game's new features will be revealed when it officially launches this summer, but the road to Counter-Strike 2 begins today as a Limited Test for select CS:GO players. During this testing period, we'll be evaluating a subset of features to shake out any issues before the worldwide release.

Counter-Strike 2 arrives this summer as a free upgrade to CS:GO. So build your loadout, hone your skills, and prepare yourself for what's next! Read on to learn more about some of the features of the Counter-Strike 2 Limited Test.

For those that don't remember the early days of ASRock, the company started out making some rather unusual motherboards, often with some wild and wacky upgrade paths, such as both a slot and a socket for a CPU or both AGP and PCIe graphics card slots. Since then, ASRock has become a much more mainstream motherboard maker, but the company appears to have gone back to its roots with what the company calls the X670 Xpansion Kit. Right now, the expansion card appears to be working with the B650 LiveMixer motherboard and it's unknown if it's compatible with other models from ASRock. It seems to be limited to ASRock motherboards only, due to the fact that the add-in card requires not only a x4 PCIe slot with all lanes attached, on the motherboard, but also a custom cable that is most likely for "low-speed" I/O's such as I2C, SPI and so on.

As the name suggests, the X670 Xpansion Kit allows B650 motherboards to be turned into X670 motherboards, more or less. The card is home to a second chipset, which enables not only two additional M.2 slots for PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs, but it also features two SATA ports, a 10 Gbps USB-C port, three USB-A ports and—maybe most interestingly—a 10 Gbps Ethernet interface. It's unclear if this will be a retail product, but the card provided to Level1Techs doesn't appear to be an engineer unit, but a full retail ready product. It's definitely an interesting upgrade path for those that have invested in a B650 motherboard and there's no real reason why this shouldn't work as well as having the second chipset on the motherboard, especially as ASRock appears to have fitted a signal re-driver on the add-in card to make sure the PCIe signals are handled properly.

XPG, a provider of high-performance products for Gamers, E-sports Pros, and Tech Enthusiasts, is pleased to announce that the warranty period for the XPG PYLON 80 Plus Bronze certified power supply unit has been extended to 5 years. Previously the unit's warranty was limited to 3 years. XPG actively works to ensure the highest level of quality and reliability in all their products and happily extends that guarantee to the gamers.

The XPG PYLON is an 80 Plus Bronze certified power supply unit that can reach efficiency levels as high as 89%, delivering performance nearly rivaling that of Gold certified power supplies. It was designed for 24/7 continuous power system operation and comes in four wattage options - 450 W, 550 W, 650 W and 750 W - to meet the specific needs of various types of users and performance scenarios. All models feature DC-to-DC circuit 100% +12V. XPG PYLON complies with the Intel ATX Power Supply Design Guide's sleep mode function requirements and features a power delivery system that remains consistent and efficient, making it ideal for supporting mid to high-end graphic cards and CPUs. Its 120 mm Fluid Dynamic Bearing (FDB) fan runs nearly silent for a quiet user experience. Combined with its 105°C Japanese main capacitors, the XPG PYLON is whisper-quiet, highly efficient, and built to last.

TEAMGROUP, has announced today the upgrade of TEAMGROUP ELITE U-DIMM DDR5 Standard Memory in response to the evolution of future DDR5 memory specifications and development trends. Developed from TEAMGROUP's outstanding R&D capabilities and excellent product quality, the TEAMGROUP ELITE U-DIMM DDR5 Standard Memory complies with JEDEC standards and supports high-performance specifications of frequency 5600 MHz and 1.1 V voltage. The TEAMGROUP ELITE U-DIMM DDR5 Standard Memory has also been sent to major motherboard manufacturers for verification. As the world welcomes the advent of the DDR5 era, TEAMGROUP will continue to launch memory products with comprehensive compatibility and upgraded specifications.

TEAMGROUP is making an early play in the field of DDR5s. Last year, the company launched the TEAMGROUP ELITE U-DIMM DDR5 4800 MHz 1.1 V Standard Memory ahead of the industry and is now announcing an increased frequency from 4,800 MHz to 5,600 MHz with the same 1.1 V voltage, ensuring users can enjoy high-performance experiences while still conserving energy. The latest TEAMGROUP ELITE U-DIMM DDR5 Standard Memory will also be available in different storage capacities, including 2X8GB, 2X16GB, and 2X32GB, to deliver smooth multi-tasking and an outstanding product that is stable, high-performance, and energy-efficient.

Razer, the leading global lifestyle brand for gamers (Hong Kong Stock Code: 1337), announced its collaboration with leading watch manufacturer, Fossil, to launch a limited-edition smartwatch: the Razer X Fossil Gen 6 Smartwatch. The co-branded wearable leverages Fossil's most innovative smartwatch platform to date, the highly anticipated Fossil Gen 6. It also features three exclusive Razer watch faces including Analog, Text, and Chroma, as well as two stylish interchangeable straps. The Razer X Fossil Gen 6 will be launching globally this month for $329 USD in a limited quantity of just 1,337 units.

The Gen 6 is the first smartwatch powered by the Snapdragon Wear 4100+ Platform—providing users upgrades in speed and performance, including faster application load time, highly responsive user experiences, and more efficient power consumption. With an overall 30% increased performance* and running Wear OS by Google, the smartwatch does way more, way faster to give gamers a fashionable cutting edge. The Razer X Fossil Gen 6 Smartwatch also boasts top wellness features as a nod to both brands' commitments to wellness and comes only a few months after the launch of Razer's dedicated wellness initiative for gamers, Champions Start From Within.

Microsoft Windows 11, now nearing its third month since release, is for all intents and purposes, a flop. Market research by Lansweeper, which surveyed over 10 million PCs across the commercial and personal market segments, reports that less than 0.21% of the users it surveyed, had upgraded from Windows 10 to the newer operating system. The upgrade is free of charge. There may be several factors contributing to this lukewarm market response, but one of them is certain to he the steep hardware requirements. Windows 11 requires a trusted platform module (TPM 2.0), which disqualifies PCs older than 2018 for upgrades, unless the user is willing to try out workarounds to the limitation. Another factor could be the clunky user interface (UI), a less functional Start menu than Windows 10, and several UI-related bugs.

According to Lansweeper's data, there could be more people running outdated Windows XP, Vista, Windows 8, etc., than Windows 11, and this poses a great security risk, as these operating systems are no longer supported by Microsoft for regular security updates. Windows 10, on the other hand, is eligible for them until mid-2025—plenty of time for people to upgrade hardware to meet Windows 11 system requirements, or to simply make up their mind on switching over to the new operating system. In related news, Microsoft could give the Windows 11 Start menu a functional update. Test build 22509 introduces the ability to add more pins to the menu, or make room for more recommendations. The UI could see many such minor updates.

DeepCool, a global brand and manufacturer of computer hardware and peripherals for enthusiasts, today announced that it will provide free-of-charge mountings kits for Intel's upcoming LGA1700 platform, enabling customers to continue using their existing DeepCool CPU coolers on the new 12th generation Intel Core CPUs (Alder Lake S). Additionally, current and future DeepCool coolers will also include the new mounting hardware.

Intel's new CPU will follow a new hybrid architecture that will be more powerful than previous generations through the use of high-performing, efficient cores. This new architecture will have a direct impact on the appearance of the CPU, as Alder Lake features an additional 500 contacts compared to its predecessors (i.e., 1200 to 1700); as a result, the socket had to be greatly enlarged.

Some of you might remember Intel's Upgrade Service, aka software locked CPUs that launched back in 2010 with the Pentium G6951 that could have an extra 1 MB of cache and Hyper-Threading unlocked for a mere $50. Well, it seems like Intel is working on something similar, but for Xeon CPUs this time around, although the exact details aren't clear as yet.

Phoronix spotted a Linux patch on GitHub for something called Intel Software Defined Silicon or SDSi for short. It's clear that it's for Xeon CPUs and the GitHub page mentions that SDSi "allows the configuration of additional CPU features through a license activation process." There's very little to go by beyond this, but it's not hard to draw parallels with Intel's Upgrade Service from last decade, just this time Intel is targeting its business customers rather than consumers.

GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY Co. Ltd, a leading manufacturer of motherboards, graphics cards, and hardware solutions, announced that the BIOS of their series motherboards, including Intel X299, C621, C232, C236, C246, 200, 300, 400, 500 lineups, as well as AMD TRX40, 300, 400, 500 motherboards are TPM 2.0 function ready, which can pass the upgraded Windows 11 OS. verification.

Windows 11 is the latest operating system from Microsoft, and features dozens of exciting new functions and Android APP support to effectively improve productivity, system security, and gaming performance. However, most of the users might be confusing that Windows 11 requires TPM 2.0 support means they need a TPM module on board for Windows 11 upgrade.

Microsoft, in a tweet late last week, announced that while Windows 11 launches later this year in 2021, the operating system won't be made available as a free upgrade to existing Windows 10 users before the first half of 2022. This would mean that existing Windows 10 users wanting to try Windows 11 out this year, might have to purchase a retail or OEM license to Windows 11. "Windows 11 is due out later in 2021 and will be delivered over several months. The rollout of the upgrade to Windows 10 devices already in use today will begin in 2022 through the first half of that year," tweeted the official Windows handle.

The Apple M1 processor features integrated memory directly on the chip to reduce latency, power, and size. While this design may be good for the overall user experience it does not bode well for upgradability requiring users to pay up for a more expensive model. Some Chinese engineers have recently shown how it is possible to upgrade the soldered memory and storage components given you have the time, skills, and money. The DRAM and NAND chips are soldered to the M1 chip and motherboard but can be removed and replaced with higher capacity chips using a specialty soldering station. The engineers upgraded the base model M1 Mac Mini with 8 GB RAM and 256 GB storage to 16 GB RAM and 1 TB storage. The upgrade didn't require firmware modifications according to the source which is very impressive if true.

CD Projekt Red has announced that their upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 will be upgraded, free of charge, to a revised version in the wake of both next-gen console systems from Sony and Microsoft being released. This means that users who ordered (or will order) the game for current-gen systems will see their version be automatically upgraded to a next-gen one when they boot up their next-generation games console. This next-generation re-release of Cyberpunk 2077 will take advantage of the new consoles' much increased horsepower in both graphics and storage system terms.

The update, much like the game, will be ready "when it's ready". Only CD Projekt Red knows when it is hoping to release this update. We would think that a release next-year, after the entire planned DLC packages for the game are released, would be a great time to launch the updated version and re-release the game for next-gen systems as a "Game of the Year" version or a next--gen remaster. Of course, PC users don't have to fiddle with any of these upgrades - we'll be getting the games definitive version, including ray tracing support, on day one.