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We're continuing our TweakTown giveaways, rewarding our registered members and newsletter subscribers with top-tier hardware every week. For our latest giveaway, we've teamed up with MONTECH for Heritage Week, giving one lucky winner a PC building bundle with a total prize MSRP of US$318.90.

There will be one winner in total, and the prize includes a MONTECH Heritage PRO Black case, a MONTECH HyperFlow ARGB 240 Black liquid CPU cooler, and a MONTECH Century G5 850W power supply. All three products go to the same winner.

The MONTECH Heritage PRO is the bundle's centerpiece, pairing a black chassis with brown eco-leather accents and a carrying strap for a distinctive look. Its compact layout supports Micro-ATX and Mini-ITX motherboards, including compatible back-connect designs that move cable connections behind the motherboard.

Blizzard has revealed that World of Warcraft Forever, aka Classic+, will have four rulesets as part of its new realmless design.

The WoW Forever beta is the talk of the town right now--its popularity has even surprised Blizzard. The devs have prepped MMO adventurers for the big Nov. 4 launch with news and clarifications on social systems. Blizzard previously confirmed that WoW Forever won't have realms, opting instead for rulesets, and now those have been revealed.

WoW Forever will have four rulesets: Normal, PVP, Roleplay, and Hardcore (this mode is coming post-launch). Blizzard also confirms that characters that die in Hardcore can transfer to other rulesets, including PVP. One key restriction with the PVP ruleset--you can only pledge to Alliance or Horde, not both.

Sony has filed a patent describing a system that would let its consoles diagnose and patch their own software problems without a single trip to customer support. As reported by patent aggregator site Patentlyze, the filing describes an AI server that regularly monitors connected devices, writes custom diagnostic firmware on the spot when it identifies an issue, and submits that code directly to the affected console.

The stated goal is to cut back on warranty claims, support tickets, and the back-and-forth troubleshooting steps players usually have to go through when a problem occurs. Rather than following a pre-written repair script, the AI model would generate a distinct fix tailored to the problem it detects, then decide whether the issue requires human intervention or can be handled automatically.

Large language models are prone to hallucination even in low-stakes writing tasks, and asking one to generate functional firmware for consumer hardware seems like a big risk. A flawed patch pushed to a PS5 wouldn't just fail to fix the issue, but could potentially brick the console entirely, turning a minor bug into a warranty replacement anyway. There's also a security concern. Putting this kind of code generation and deployment pipeline on a single cloud server creates one valuable target for attackers.

Sony announced it would end disc production for new PlayStation games starting in 2028, drawing backlash that led to a full-scale planned boycott and a "Don't Kill the Disc" petition that hit 120,000 signatures in four days. Microsoft appears to be taking notes and doing things differently.

According to images Power Up Gaming obtained from a since-deleted X post by @XBOXTIMDOG, Microsoft is running a survey through the Xbox Insider Hub app asking fans what features they want in Project Helix, the codename for the next-generation Xbox. Among the features listed is a question about whether users want the console to let them install games from a physical disc. Participants can rate each feature as Not Necessary, Nice to Have, or Must Have, with the latter effectively meaning they would not buy the console if that feature were absent.

The survey also touches on other ideas, including console lighting that changes to match the game being played and a system that automatically identifies and saves gameplay highlights. One Reddit user who took the survey noted that the disc question was framed as a priority choice between five features rather than a standalone yes or no. The other options included YouTube during gaming, cloud streaming, TikTok access, and keyboard-and-mouse support.

User reports are cropping up claiming that NVIDIA's DLSS 5 technology is causing RTX GPUs to die. This latest report, spotted by VideoCardz, comes from Wax469 on the r/RTX5080 subreddit, whose RTX 5080 reportedly died from running DLSS 5 mods in games.

The user reported that after upgrading to an MSI GeForce RTX 5080 Ventus 3X, the computer all of a sudden began producing artifacting and flashing on the user's two displays after running DLSS 5 mods. Specifically, the crashing occurred five minutes after playing GTA 5 with DLSS 5 at around 80 FPS on the second day of using DLSS 5 mods. The crash happened a month after the RTX 5080 owner began using their card and playing games without DLSS 5 for that whole month.

The user describes the failure as happening without warning, where the entire screen froze and began flashing violently, and the computer was completely unresponsive. Since the incident, the user has replaced the RTX 5080 with a working one and stopped using DLSS 5 mods since, noting that they'll wait until more games feature DLSS 5 support officially before running it.

AMD crossed $1 trillion in market capitalization for the first time, with shares hitting an intraday high of $615.52 before settling around $613. The milestone makes AMD only the fourth US chipmaker to reach the mark, joining NVIDIA, Broadcom, and Micron. Saša Marinković, AMD's senior marketing director, shared the milestone on X.

The stock is up more than 180% this year, riding a five-day winning streak that added roughly 25% on its own. AMD's Q2 2026 revenue came in at $11.54 billion, up 50% year over year, with Data Center revenue hitting $6.7 billion, a 107% increase that now represents 58% of AMD's total quarterly revenue. Client and Gaming combined for $3.8 billion. AMD CEO Lisa Su said last month the company expects to double data center sales in 2027.

For PC builders and GPU buyers, though, AMD's 2026 has looked quieter than expected. The company has not launched Zen 6 Ryzen processors or a new Radeon architecture this year. Instead, its Computex announcements leaned on existing architectures, including the Zen 4-based Ryzen 7 7700X3D, a Ryzen 7 5800X3D anniversary edition, and the wider release of the RDNA 4-based Radeon RX 9070 GRE.

Apple's new flagship releases just went under iFixit's knife, and the results are not what anyone looking for meaningfully easier repairs this generation would have liked to see. The headline number is a conditional 7 out of 10 repairability score, but that figure appears to hide some real benefits alongside one repetitive, unresolved problem.

Starting with the good news. The battery tray is held in place with 13 screws rather than adhesive, meaning technicians will have an easier time lifting the tray and cell out together without fighting glue. Although the cell is still bonded to the tray, iFixit found that an electrically releasable adhesive lets it separate with no trouble in about 90 seconds. The main camera assembly is also quite cooperative, sliding out without screws or glue once you're past the display.

That's the sticking point, though: getting to either component still requires opening the glued-down screen first, and that step went worse more often than not this time around. Across four teardown units, the white plastic frame surrounding the display broke or pulled away on three of them. iFixit couldn't identify the real problem and admitted the sample is too small to call it a recurring issue, but flagged it as the biggest open mystery behind this year's repairability score.

Project Diablo 2's upcoming Season 14 will make a big change to how hammerdins are played while also adding in new features like a revamped stash.

The latest PD2 Season 14 stream takes the liberty in retooling the paladin's most famous build--the hammerdin. For the first time in Diablo 2, the paladin's blessed hammer skill can now pass through walls. The collision mechanic has been in the game since D2 launched 26 years ago and is one of the trade-offs of choosing the build. Now gamers won't have to worry about their hammers fizzling when trying to fight in tight spaces.

The other big new change is PD2's new stash system, which does remove the beloved materials stash, but replaces it with something new. This stash system effectively turns your war chest into a museum collection. PD2 is getting its own form of the Chronicle that's actually interactive; there's now a section on the stash with tabs that have all the item types listed. The tabs open up pages that show where the item sits, and the system is query-able, allowing gamers to quickly search the item, find the listing, and even remove the item from the page itself.

Google's Googlebook laptops are officially available to preorder, with the first wave of devices set to reach consumers next month. Google has partnered with Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP, and Lenovo to introduce five Googlebook models, giving buyers several hardware options built around its new laptop platform.

As we reported earlier this month, Google had confirmed that Googlebook preorders would open on September 21, while pricing remained undisclosed. That has now changed, with the Acer Googlebook 14 starting at $899 and Dell's XPS Googlebook starting at $1,199. ASUS, HP, and Lenovo are pricing their respective models from $1,299, placing the new lineup firmly in the premium laptop segment.

Across the five models, manufacturers can differentiate their hardware while maintaining the same underlying Googlebook experience. Google has set a relatively high hardware baseline for the platform, including at least 16GB of RAM, a touchscreen, backlit keyboard, large haptic trackpad, premium chassis, and dedicated NPUs capable of 45 TOPS or more. Googlebook manufacturers must also include the signature exterior Glowbar, giving otherwise distinct laptops a recognizable visual identity.

Getting a graphics card right now feels like a steal, and not in the sense of finding a good deal. GPU prices are now 28% above MSRP on average, with NVIDIA's RTX 5090 soaring past $10,000, five times its original launch price. A large part of the blame sits with AI, with RTX 5090 cards being absorbed into AI servers in far greater quantities than they are ending up in gaming PCs.

So a brand-new premium graphics card is off the table for most people, which naturally turns attention toward the used market. There are plenty of reasons to be cautious there too, and we've covered a few, including an RTX 4080 being shipped without a GPU die or VRAM inside. Still, if you tread carefully, inspect everything thoroughly, and find a genuine listing, the used market has at least been a viable fallback. That may be changing.

Six weeks of daily price tracking on eBay US, covering 55 cards priced on both August 7 and September 19, shows used graphics cards rising 5.7% as a category over that period, the fastest increase across 88 tracked categories. To put that in perspective, the broader secondhand market across those same six weeks is essentially flat, down 0.2% overall. In other words, only GPUs are getting hit left and right.

MSI has introduced a new compact PC. "EdgeMesa N AI+," as MSI calls it, features NVIDIA's new RTX Spark N1X platform in the form of a 20-core Grace CPU and a Blackwell GPU, paired with up to 128GB of LPDDR5X unified memory. The system brings NVIDIA's latest AI-focused hardware to a compact desktop form factor running Windows 11.

RTX Spark is NVIDIA's new platform for Windows laptops and compact desktops, pairing Grace Arm CPU cores with Blackwell RTX graphics and unified memory. At the top end, the N1X configuration offers a 20-core CPU, a 6,144-core Blackwell GPU, and up to 128GB of LPDDR5X memory.

While the hardware is similar to NVIDIA's DGX Spark AI workstation, RTX Spark targets a broader Windows audience, with support for gaming, content creation, and local AI workloads. So MSI has not simply built another AI box. Instead, NVIDIA is repurposing the GB10 architecture as a proper Windows desktop platform.

AMD's new Ryzen 5 5500F and Ryzen 5 7500 have started showing up at retail in the US, and they're priced above what AMD suggested. On Amazon, the Ryzen 5 5500F is listed at nearly $120 and the Ryzen 5 7500 at $210, which is about $20 over their $99 and $189 suggested prices.

Both are sold directly by Amazon, so it looks like third-party sellers aren't behind the markup. Other outlets spotted slightly different figures, with the Ryzen 5 5500F fluctuating between $118 and $125, while the 7500 was spotted at roughly the same price. The listings may have moved around during the day.

AMD launched the two chips on September 10, but it seems they weren't available to buy in the US until now. Amazon looks like the only US retailer with listings for the time being, as Micro Center and Newegg don't appear to have them yet.

Eyes, up Guardians: Destiny is coming back as Bungie announces a new future for the series.

Destiny 2 won't stay in cryo sleep for long. Bungie today proudly proclaimed that more Destiny 2 stories and content is on the way, and fans are lighting up social media channels en masse. It gets better: All Destiny 2 content will also be removed from the DCV vault, meaning players will get access to tons more content. In short, Bungie is restoring the full Destiny 2 experience while simultaneously plotting new, never-before-played content.

"We are absolutely not done with Destiny. We have more stories to tell, but we have to do it right and give our teams the time they need to do justice to this amazing universe," said Bungie studio head Poria Torkan.

NVIDIA's next-generation GeForce GPUs are now reportedly slated for a 2028 launch. This comes from kopite7kimi on X, confirming the reported delay. While the exact reason remains unclear, the global memory shortage and NVIDIA's apparent prioritization of far more lucrative data-center hardware are obvious factors to consider.

For consumer-facing GeForce products, NVIDIA has targeted a near two-year cadence for the past decade or so. RTX 50 Blackwell GPUs debuted at CES 2025, so even in the best-case scenario where Jensen unveils next-gen GeForce at CES 2028, that's a 3-year or 36-month generation gap.

Several days ago, Moore's Law Is Dead alleged that NVIDIA is still planning to release next-gen RTX 60 products in H1 2027. Now, Kepler_L2 and kopite7kimi suggest a delay to 2028. This seems plausible given the lack of specification-centric leaks around the RTX 60 family. NVIDIA has been tight-lipped on this front as well, and as of yet, we officially do not know whether RTX 60 will employ the Rubin architecture.

Blizzard is starting to take action against crude and inappropriate character names in WoW Forever that violate the ToS, leading to bans/suspensions.

In a surprise move, World of Warcraft Forever lets players create a first and last name for their characters. Naturally, this has led to some pretty outrageously crude monikers as people are coming up with ridiculous combinations; "Roblox Groomer" or "Holyboner Bonerman" come to mind, or even the supremely witty "Dixon Maiyas."

While amusing, Blizzard has a beta to run, and they're starting to levy punishments on people who push the naming conventions too far. A recent Blizzard CS forum post confirms that gamers are being suspended for bad name choices.

With the entire computing industry caught by the DRAM crunch, memory makers appear to be pushing ahead with denser memory technology. Hardware sleuth Golden Pig Upgrade Pack suggests we could see 4GB and 6GB GDDR7 modules in the next two years. These could put workstation GPUs with up to 192GB of memory on shelves, assuming your pockets are deep enough, that is.

Today's GDDR7 market, largely used by NVIDIA's RTX 50 series, has settled around 28-32 Gbps, even though memory makers have demonstrated considerably faster modules. Samsung's 24Gb chips, for example, can reach up to 42.5 Gbps, while SK hynix has demonstrated operation up to 40 Gbps.

With the current RTX 50 SUPER refresh in limbo, higher-density 3GB modules have yet to see widespread adoption in consumer desktop GPUs. That being said, capacity per module may increase considerably over the next couple of years as well. Golden Pig Upgrade Pack suggests that 4GB (32Gb) and 6GB (48Gb) modules may be available by 2027-28.

Indian gaming startup ARC has unveiled the X1, an Android gaming handheld that combines a 120Hz Full HD screen with a 9,300mAh battery and an unusually repair-friendly design.

The device uses Qualcomm's 4nm Snapdragon G2 Gen 2 Gaming Platform, which includes an eight-core Kryo CPU and Adreno A22 GPU. Its single configuration includes 8GB of LPDDR5X memory and 128GB of UFS 3.1 storage, expandable to 1TB via microSD.

Games run on a seven-inch, 1920x1080 LTPS LCD panel rated for 500 nits, meaning it's decently bright and should deliver average handheld image clarity. Controls include TMR analog sticks, Hall-effect triggers with mechanical stops, microswitch face buttons and D-pad, two programmable rear buttons, six-axis motion sensing and dual LRA haptic motors.

AOC has launched the AGON AG277QSD, pairing a 320Hz QD-OLED panel with what the company claims is a first for gaming OLED monitors: factory calibration specifically for HDR content.

The 27-inch-class display uses a 26.5-inch, 2560x1440 Penta Tandem QD-OLED panel built around AOC's EL Gen 3 design. Its five-layer light-emitting stack includes three blue layers and two green layers, replacing the prior four-layer arrangement, and as a result, AOC says luminous efficiency has increased by 30%. This improvement should help extend panel life for buyers, which designers also considered when adding graphene cooling to manage panel heat.

For performance, the AG277QSD offers 0.03ms gray-to-gray (GtG) response time, 1.5 million:1 static contrast ratio, and 99% DCI-P3 coverage. It carries VESA DisplayHDR True Black 500 branding, while AOC rates peak HDR brightness at up to 1,000 nits. Its standout feature is more than likely the factory HDR calibration. AOC claims an average Delta E below 2 in DisplayHDR mode, including brightness error, while a separate DCI-P3 mode is rated below Delta E 1. Each monitor reportedly includes an individual calibration report.

Ubisoft may be preparing to bring the original Assassin's Creed back after the 2007 game's Steam listing received a quiet visual refresh.

SteamDB, a website that tracks changes on Steam listings, recorded a store-asset modification on September 16, 2026. The update added library artwork and a logo that align more closely with current franchise branding. Although the change has fuelled speculation about another "Resynced" remake, it does not confirm that one exists; however, it is assumed, given the success of Assassin's Creed Black Flag: Resynced, and some hints from the publisher.

Ubisoft has not announced Assassin's Creed Resynced, a remake of the first Assassin's Creed game, or attached a release window to the project. Nevertheless, there is reason to think the remake exists, as Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot confirmed in 2024 that multiple Assassin's Creed remakes were planned, saying they would allow the company to revisit and modernize some of its older games. Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced launched in July 2026 and is now a proven commercial success, selling two million copies on its first day and setting a franchise record on Steam.

One LG OLED owner has responded to concerns surrounding smart TV data collection by opening his new television and physically removing the hardware.

YouTuber tfm55x dismantled his LG G6 OLED after watching Gamers Nexus' investigation into LG's smart TV platform, which uncovered what could be one of the largest corporate spying networks in recent memory. During the teardown, as documented in a recently posted YouTube video, tfm55x disconnected or removed the television's internal microphones and wireless hardware associated with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

The owner said isolating the television on a private network did not provide enough reassurance, leading him to eliminate the components the good old-fashioned way, ripping them out.

Rockstar Games has published a sweeping set of modding guidelines establishing what creators can and cannot do with Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead Redemption, and its other properties, which include the upcoming Grand Theft Auto VI.

The new policy page, dated September 10, draws a particularly firm line around what modders are allowed to do with Rockstar's products. Modders are instructed not to expand or modify the company's established storylines, plots, missions, characters, or other narrative elements. Projects also cannot combine maps, locations, characters, or assets from different Rockstar games, which is one of the reasons the recently leaked early builds of GTA 6 environments, which are being modded into GTA 5, aren't being made publicly available on FiveM servers.

These policy changes would seemingly rule out unofficial story expansions, crossover projects, and mods that transfer locations or characters between games. Rockstar also prohibits modifying its titles to operate on consoles, hardware, or platforms where they were never officially released. This change is quite a common practice by developers. Notably, the wording doesn't prohibit emulation.