Phison has just announced that its 8TB M.2 2280 SSD memory module has passed the required certification for space flight required by Lonestar Data Holdings and its initial data center mission into space.

Lonestar's upcoming mission to the Moon will see the Phison 8TB SSD inside of their systems, with space logistics company Skycorp being a p[partner to Lonestar's engineering design and manufacturing for the mission. Phison had certification for NASA Technology Readiness Level 6 -- TRL-6 -- by checking all the required boxes for flight and space tests.

This includes conditions like the vacuum of space, and deep cryogenic temperatures that the Phison 8TB SSD will have on the surface of the Moon. Phison also had to complete testing with their SSD against environmental and stress testing, working with SpaceX and its Falcon 9 rocket at Silicon Valley commercial and governmental testing facilities.

Adrenaline junkie Travis Pastrana decided to wind down 2022 by releasing "Gymkhana 2022" - a video of him driving a tricked out 1983 Subaru GL Wagon able to produce more than 850 horsepower.

Of course, a simple driving video wouldn't be any kind of fun for Pastrana and company. Instead, the video needs to feature cameos of a fighter jet, helicopter and 3000-hp Chevrolet El Camino - along with Pastrana managing to grind his car like it's some kind of insanely oversized skateboard.

The car has full active aero, AWD sequential transmission, rear-mounted radiators and a 2.3-liter billet Subaru Boxer 4-cylinder engine - with carbon fiber roof racks and carbon fiber found throughout the rest of the vehicle.

The release of AMD's next-gen RDNA 3 GPU architecture is right around the corner, with AIB partners preparing their new custom Radeon RX 7900 XTX and Radeon RX 7900 XT graphics card designs.

XFX's new custom Radeon RX 7900 XTX MERC 310 graphics card

XFX is the latest to have its upcoming Navi 31-based Radeon RX 7900 XTX MERC 310, and Radeon RX 7900 XT MERC 310 graphics cards leaked out ahead of their official December 13 reveal. XFX will be using a thicker triple-fan design, and an interesting black and silver design aesthetic.

XFX originally launched its "Speedster" series graphics cards a few years ago now, but the company is making a rather large -- and I don't know if I like it -- change to the backplate on their upcoming Navi 31-based Radeon RX 7900 XTX and Radeon RX 7900 XT MERC 310 graphics cards.

ASRock is preparing its new custom Radeon RX 7900 XTX AQUA graphics card, which is quite the beautiful Navi 31-powered beast, ready for your custom loop water cooling setup.

ASRock's new custom Radeon RX 7900 XTX AQUA graphics card (source: VideoCardz)

The new custom ASRock Radeon RX 7900 XTX AQUA graphics card uses the same board as ASRock's other custom Navi 31-powered GPU -- the Radeon RX 7900 XTX Taichi -- but it's designed with a dual-slot, custom full-cover water block that will slot right into your custom loop water-cooled gaming PC.

ASRock has crafted its new Radeon RX 7900 XTX AQUA graphics card to go hand-in-hand with its flagship motherboard, with the high-end ASRock motherboards featuring pre-installed monoblocks that keep your CPU and VRMs nice and cool, as well as rocking the beautiful black and silver design aesthetic that ASRock has used.

If the Activision-Blizzard buyout deal closes, then Microsoft will focus even more on distribution of games, content, and services while simultaneously running its Xbox platform in parallel.

Today Microsoft outlined a big part of its post-merger plans and how it relates to its Xbox games division as a whole. Approval of the Activision merger will see Microsoft become more focused on expanding content to as many devices as possible, as evidenced by the significant 10-year Call of Duty deal it has offered to its competitors Nintendo, Valve, and Sony. Microsoft is no longer solely focused on expanding the Xbox storefront per se, but the Xbox ecosystem, further evolving the Xbox platform into a combination of games and services.

Here at TweakTown I've been saying for years that Xbox is no longer a console, but a service that bridges multiple platforms together. The inclusion of Activision Blizzard Kind games will supercharge Xbox's evolution as a broadly accessible platform-market-ecosystem hybrid that delivers a wide variety of content across multiple access points, whether it be platform availability, or distribution model (digital, physical, or subscription).

The merger drama continues as Microsoft fires off a hail Mary pass to the end zone with a deal that can't be beat.

Last night, Microsoft's Phil Spencer delivered a big surprise in the ongoing $68.7 billion Activision merger news cycle. Spencer confirmed that Microsoft has entered in a decade-long commitment to bring Call of Duty to Nintendo and Steam, two of Microsoft's largest direct competitors. Both Nintendo and Valve will be offered 10 years of access to Call of Duty. This deal directly counters one of Sony's core arguments against the merger concerning the $31 billion franchise being locked to Xbox platforms.

Microsoft has also offered the same 10-year deal to Sony, however it appears that Sony has yet to accept the offer or negotiate other terms. Microsoft's previous offer, which would have guaranteed only 3 years of post-contractual access to Call of Duty games up until 2027, was considered grossly inadequate by Sony.

Microsoft throws a curve ball that directly counters many of Sony's anti-merger arguments.

Last night, Phil Spencer announced surprise deals that Microsoft has offered two of its major competitors. If the Activision-Blizzard merger is approved, Spencer said, then Microsoft will bring Call of Duty to both Nintendo and Steam. The tech giant has offered both Nintendo and Valve a significant 10-year licensing deal for the $31 billion shooter franchise. Call of Duty hasn't been on Nintendo since 2013 when Ghosts released on Wii U.

"Microsoft has entered into a 10-year commitment to bring Call of Duty to Nintendo following the merger of Microsoft and Activision Blizzard King," Spencer said in a Tweet. 

Starting in 2023, Microsoft will join the rest of the games industry and start charging $69.99 for its new games.

New first-party Xbox Series X/S games will cost $70 from next year onward, Microsoft has told IGN. This includes new games like Starfield, Redfall, new Forza Motosport titles, the upcoming next-gen Fable game, MachineGames' Indiana Jones project, Perfect Dark, Hellblade II, and many other first-party games.

"This price reflects the content, scale, and technical complexity of these titles. As with all games developed by our teams at Xbox, they will also be available with Game Pass the same day they launch."

GAINWARD impressed me with their mighty GeForce RTX 4090 Phantom "GS" graphics card that I reviewed during the GeForce RTX 4090 launch insanity, but now the company is launching its new custom GeForce RTX 4080 Phoenix "GS" graphics card.

GAINWARD's new GeForce RTX 4080 Phoenix "GS" graphics card

The new GAINWARD GeForce RTX 4080 Phoenix "GS" graphics card is another "Golden Sample" hence the "GS" branding, with higher GPU clock speeds out of the box, a monster triple-fan cooler and 3.1-slot design. Inside, it's like every other NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 graphics card: the AD103 GPU with 9272 CUDA cores, joined by 16GB of GDDR6X memory clocked at 22.4Gbps on a 256-bit memory bus.

GAINWARD is factory overclocking its custom GeForce RTX 4080 Phoenix "GS" graphics card, with a 4.1% factory overclock out of the box boosting the GPU clock speed from 2508MHz to 2610MHz, but I'm sure you'll be squeezing much more out of that AD103 GPU with some manual overclocking and tweaking.

Micron has just unveiled the first client SSD shipping with over 200 layers of NAND flash, with the introduction of the new Micron 2550 SSD that delivers an injection of performance in PCIe 4.0 SSDs.

The new Micron 2550 SSD packs 232-layer NAND flash and falls on the current-gen PCIe 4.0 standard, but the PCIe Gen4 SSD standard will be here in PCs and devices through to 2026. Praveen Vaidyanathan, vice president and general manager of the Client Storage Group at Micron said: "We focused on delivering a superior user experience for PC users with this SSD".

"The new 2550 SSD builds on our established and broadly adopted PCIe Gen4 architecture. It also incorporates Micron's industry-leading 232-layer NAND and focuses on thermal architecture and power design. These capabilities deliver impressive application performance and phenomenal power savings".