The current memory crisis is such that NVIDIA has officially brought back the now-aging GeForce RTX 3060 12GB graphics card, with new models selling at prices notably higher than its launch-day $329 MSRP. And with recent widespread and substantial price increases hitting NVIDIA's current GeForce RTX 50 Series lineup, we're not surprised to see GeForce RTX 3080 cards hit the second-hand market and be sold at higher-than-expected prices.

That said, like the recent return of the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, which saw modders double the Turing generation's flagship memory to 22GB of VRAM, the same is now happening for the GeForce RTX 3080. As VideoCardz spotted, China's second-hand GPU market is now full of GeForce RTX 3080 graphics cards with 20GB of GDDR6X memory.

This is double the 10GB of memory of the stock version, making it a more viable 1440p PC gaming option. These GeForce RTX 3080 20GB cards seemingly cover a wide range of makes and models, from large triple-fan models to cards with a more old-school blower-style cooling solution. The prices vary, but it looks like they're being sold for around $445 USD.

Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme (X2E-96-100) is the company's latest flagship laptop processor for premium Windows on Arm devices. With its direct premium Windows laptop competition being Intel's Panther Lake-powered Core Ultra X9 388H and AMD's Ryzen AI 9 465, a new Signal65 study shows the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme outperforming both with ease.

Granted, Qualcomm sponsored the whitepaper and performance analysis, so even though Signal65 is a well-respected third-party outlet for benchmark data and reporting, the conclusion is that Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme devices offer the best performance per dollar, as they're generally cheaper than their x86 Intel and AMD counterparts.

For its results, the company tested three different retail units: the ASUS Zenbook A16 (X2 Elite Extreme), MSI Prestige 16 (Core Ultra X9 388H), and HP OmniBook X 16 (Ryzen AI 9 465), all priced between $1,649 and $2,299.

Hydra is a custom GPU overclocking and monitoring tool created by Yuri Bubliy (1usmus), and a notable 2.3B update is expected to drop next week for Early Access subscribers on Patreon. This update is currently making headlines because it's set to introduce advanced VRAM overclocking and power-limit controls for GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs.

According to the post, owners of GeForce RTX 50 series graphics cards from any vendor will be able to increase and overclock GDDR7 memory speed up to 36 Gbps. For most cards in the lineup, this would equate to a +3000MHz increase, with the developer noting that it achieved this with a custom solution that's not "a security hack, a VBIOS modification, or some kind of 'magic' driver."

To accompany the announcement, the developer showcases images of their ASUS ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5090 GPU hitting an impressive 2.3 TB/s of memory bandwidth thanks to the new 36 Gbps overclock. They also note that 36 Gbps is an intentional limit "with user safety in mind," meaning that the ceiling could go even higher.

Originally envisioned as a compact console-like gaming PC, Valve's Steam Machine went from one of the most highly anticipated hardware releases of 2026 to one of the most controversial. The reason is simple: the price. Basically, Valve fell victim to the current climate of ever-more-expensive memory and storage, turning what could have been an affordable entry-level PC gaming solution into a $1,049 USD box with limited value.

With its semi-custom 28 Compute Unit AMD RDNA 3 GPU with 8GB of VRAM being the equivalent of a Radeon RX 7600 graphics card, the value proposition seemingly goes out the window the moment the Steam Machine price gets close to $1,000 USD. Since then, we've seen many custom Steam Machine builds pop up online, with one of the most notable being a new entry from Hardware Unboxed.

This custom build, which uses the 8-liter ASRock DeskMeet X300 barebones mini PC as its foundation, cost the team $1,050 USD to put together, matching the same price as the entry-level Steam Machine with 512GB of storage.

Announced back in 2012, Star Citizen has since raised over $1 billion in funding. And although there's no clear idea when we might see Version 1.0, over the decade-plus the game has been in development, the scope of the galaxy-sized space sim and shooter has kept growing. Case in point, the release of an instanced Destiny raid-style FPS Siege of Orison mission built to showcase the game's dynamic, strategic, team-based, FPS combat.

Community sentiment on the current test build of the mission is mostly negative, with the consensus that Siege of Orison is a buggy mess. And with that, the developers at Cloud Imperium Games dedicated a full episode of its Star Citizen Live show to livestream the team playing the mission on internal servers to give players a good look at how it's supposed to play out.

Turns out, "a buggy mess" with major performance issues is only part of the problem, as the developers themselves became visibly frustrated with each other and the game during the livestream. From broken mechanics to glitches, the team couldn't complete the mission and cut the stream short.

A hacker or hacker group called Cyberleek has posted gameplay clips allegedly from Grand Theft Auto 6. With both clips, each roughly a minute long, we get to see GTA 6's protagonist Jason Duval play what looks to be a realistic recreation of pickup basketball alongside him driving on a highway where he gets into a collision that ends with some melee violence.

Adding weight to the footage leaked being legitimate, Rockstar Games and Take-Two Interactive have sent Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) notices to individuals and accounts posting the gameplay footage on social media platforms like X. Neither Rockstar nor Take-Two have issued a statement on the leaks, with known industry insider NateTheHate adding that the gameplay we see is from a Grand Theft Auto 6 build that's more than a year old, potentially from 2023.

Cyberleek, which leaked the gameplay, issued a manifesto saying it made the footage public to draw attention to Rockstar and Take-Two's anti-consumer behavior. This includes no physical release, no planned offline mode, and charging extra for the single-player content in the Ultimate Edition. Naturally, any gameplay leak related to Grand Theft Auto 6 is big news, so here's a rundown of what the footage has revealed.

A memo apparently circulating out of Fort Stewart, Georgia, is offering soldiers a pretty unusual re-enlistment perk: four days off specifically to play GTA 6 when it launches in November.

The document, which has been circulating on social media, is addressed to personnel of the 9th Brigade Engineer Battalion. It reportedly promises a four-day pass to any soldier who signs a re-enlistment contract between August 1 and November 14, 2026, timed to line up with GTA 6's November 19 release on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. The exact days off would apparently be worked out between each soldier and their chain of command, but the memo ties them to a window of November 20-23.

It's worth noting neither the Army nor Fort Stewart has confirmed the memo is genuine, and outlets covering it haven't verified its authenticity either. Details like the commander's name and formatting reportedly check out based on soldiers familiar with the unit, so it looks credible, but it hasn't been officially confirmed as real. This also isn't an Army-wide policy, just one battalion using it as a retention incentive.

We all knew it would break all kinds of records, but now there are finally some numbers behind the hype. GTA 6 has pulled in roughly $429 million in pre-order revenue so far, according to new estimates from analyst firm Sensor Tower. That figure comes from about 4.38 million copies sold worldwide, months before the game even launches on November 19.

The analysis also covers the platform split, which leans heavily toward Sony. Sensor Tower's numbers show PS5 accounting for 77% of pre-orders, with Xbox Series X|S making up the remaining 23%. In raw numbers, that works out to 3.38 million copies on PS5 for $331 million in revenue, and just over 1 million copies on Xbox for $98 million in revenue.

Apparently, this tracks with what Take-Two has already said about pre-order demand. CEO Strauss Zelnick previously called the numbers "astonishing and unprecedented," and it looks like the Ultimate Edition is doing most of the heavy lifting here too. Sensor Tower's earlier data pegged the $100 edition at nearly 90% of all pre-orders, well above the industry norm, where premium editions usually account for a much smaller share of day-one sales.

It doesn't look like it's a great time to be a Crucial customer, as this is the second warranty complaint we have seen against Crucial in the same week. In this latest one, a Reddit user posted in the r/homelab subreddit about their terrible warranty experience with Crucial.

Apparently, Crucial offered the customer a refund of just $259.99 for a failed 128GB (2x64GB) DDR5 kit that now sells for around $1,800 at major retailers. That's just 14% of the current value, and assuming the customer accepts, they would have to buy a replacement at the inflated RAM prices. It's the second warranty complaint of this nature we have covered recently, and it's playing out identically to the first case.

Crucial initially approved an RMA and promised a replacement within 14 to 21 business days. After the customer shipped the RAM to Crucial, the company changed its mind. The reason they gave is that they have stopped making RAM for the consumer market. So, instead, they offered a refund based on what the customer originally paid. However, that refund is roughly 14 percent of what a comparable kit costs right now.

German PC cooling manufacturer Noctua has publicly confirmed that the company has no plans to introduce RGB lighting or screens to its products, unlike the vast majority of its competitors. In an interview with Club386, Noctua's chief product officer, Jakob Dellinger, stated that Noctua would rather focus on improving cooling performance than divert resources toward cosmetic features that have no impact on the product's actual performance.

Dellinger stated that Noctua isn't putting any of its competitors down for implementing RGB lighting; instead, Noctua's decision is a "general" one where it would rather put all of its resources on engineering. "We like catering to a specific audience who value quietness, performance, and quality, rather than those who might put their priority on visuals. But that's not to say we're above anything like that [RGB]. It's just our focus."

Furthermore, Noctua's chief product officer noted that Noctua wants to provide the highest quality possible in its products by improving thermal efficiency and acoustic performance. However, Dellinger was reportedly careful not to say Noctua would "never" build a cooler with screens or RGB lighting, instead specifying that the chances Noctua would do the former are extremely slim.

Decompiling Nintendo 64 games is relatively new: it involves reverse-engineering a game and rebuilding it in common programming languages like C to run on modern PC hardware and other devices. Unlike emulation, a decompiled native PC port of a Nintendo 64 game lets modders and developers easily add support for widescreen resolutions, uncapped frame rates, and mods that overhaul visuals and lighting. Yes, this also means ray tracing and more.

Unlike emulation, a native port doesn't rely on proprietary hardware or the source code, so it's technically legal. That said, things like art and music are still copyrighted, so you need to supply a backup or ROM of the original N64 release for the port to work. This is how we've gotten native PC ports of classics like Super Mario 64, Mario Kart 64, Perfect Dark, and Banjo Kazooie.

Now, with the announcement that the iconic first-person shooter GoldenEye 007 has been 100% decompiled by KholdFuzion, a native recompilation and PC port is underway. Like the Perfect Dark recompilation, it's expected to support 4K and 60 FPS, plus an enhanced UI and other updates.

Ahead of Gamescom 2026 and Blizzard's big in-person BlizzCon 2026 event, it seems that one of the big announcements from the show has leaked courtesy of billbil-kun and Dealabs, citing retail data as the source. It looks like the long-rumored Diablo 4 port for the Nintendo Switch 2 is right around the corner, with the game set to launch on Nintendo's portable-hybrid on Tuesday, September 15, 2026, in what's dubbed the Diablo IV: Age of Hatred Collection.

With Gamescom taking place between August 26 and August 30 and BlizzCon 2026 taking place at the Anaheim Convention Center on the weekend of September 12 and 13, this tracks. The main source is classification boards in Indonesia and Taiwan, and the game is set to launch with a $69.99 USD price tag.

Although this might seem like a higher-than-expected price for a game that first hit the scene back in 2023, it makes sense when you factor in that 'Age of Hatred Collection' refers to it being a definitive version of the game.

With the current memory crisis leading to DDR5 pricing doubling and tripling over the past year, there's been a lot of focus placed on alternatives that aren't sourced from the Big Three - Micron, SK hynix, and Samsung. As demand still outstrips supply by a huge margin in recent years, we've seen Chinese memory maker CXMT emerge as a new and serious player in the space.

Although CXMT memory in products released in the United States and other Western markets is still relatively rare, the company's evolution in the space has been noteworthy. Recently, it was reported that CXMT's 17nm DDR5 memory yields hit the 90% milestone, suggesting its production quality and facilities are quickly approaching those of its rivals.

On top of this, CXMT memory performance continues to improve. Case in point, an AMD system running COLORFUL's iGame X870E VULCAN W OC motherboard with 48GB (24x2) of CXMT-powered DDR5 memory has achieved an impressive speed of 9,000 MT/s, rivaling kits with chips from the biggest names in the memory space.

In a new interview with The Wall Street Journal, Sony CEO Hiroki Totoki addressed the status of its upcoming PlayStation 6 console. Although details on hardware and games remain a rumor, it's widely accepted that the hardware spec has been finalized and that Sony is in that 'getting games ready for launch' phase of the next-gen console's development cycle.

Unfortunately, the current memory crisis raises big questions about when the console will launch and how much the PlayStation 6 will cost gamers. Although Sony has previously confirmed that it has sourced memory for the next year of PlayStation 5 sales, with high memory prices expected to continue through 2027, alongside supply constraints due to the AI and data center boom, it looks like these aspects of the PS6, the release date and price, are still up in the air.

"We have not yet decided on at what timing we will launch the new console, or at what prices," Hiroki Totoki told The Wall Street Journal. "So we would like to really observe and follow the situation."

Lexar has announced its new Thor Ultra series of PCIe Gen 5 SSDs for desktop and laptop PC gamers and enthusiasts. Available in 512GB, 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB capacities, the Lexar Thor Ultra series can reach sequential read speeds of up to 11 GB/s and sequential write speeds of up to 10 GB/s on the higher-capacity models. Interestingly, the 512GB model's read speed is listed as up to 9 GB/s.

Elsewhere, random performance hits 2.2 million IOPS for reads and 1.9 million IOPS for writes, with Lexar noting that the Thor Ultra series is also efficient. The DRAM-less design includes an advanced 6nm controller optimized for thermal performance and power efficiency, making it an ideal choice for those looking for both speed and reliability. The compact, single-sided, power-efficient design also suits laptops and desktop builds.

Rounding out the design, the dynamic SLC cache makes the Thor Ultra series suitable for demanding AI workloads in addition to PC gaming. For gaming, Lexar confirms the Thor Ultra series supports Microsoft's DirectStorage technology to accelerate loading and data streaming.

Gaming monitors have been one of the last remaining bright spots in an otherwise brutal period for PC hardware prices. While RAM, storage, laptops, smartphones, and gaming PCs have all climbed sharply over the past year, displays stayed relatively affordable, with OLED panels and high refresh rate monitors dropping to prices that would have seemed impossible a few years ago.

KTC, a Chinese monitor manufacturer that holds around 17% of the global mini LED monitor market, has issued a formal warning that price increases are coming across its product lineup. In its announcement, the company said rising global costs for components have pushed monitor production expenses to a point where it can no longer absorb them internally.

"Due to the continued rise in the prices of core components globally, the production cost of monitors has increased significantly, and we can no longer absorb this pressure on our own," KTC said.

The latest Linux kernel has made the Time Stamp Counter (TSC) a hard requirement for x86 processors, ending decades of compatibility code that allowed the operating system to run on hardware without reliable TSC support. The change, committed to Linux 7.2 under the title "x86/cpu: Make CONFIG_X86_TSC unconditional," removes the configuration logic that previously allowed the kernel to be built without TSC support.

Before you panic, this is not Linux's equivalent of Windows 11's TPM 2.0 requirement. The TSC has been present in x86 processors since the Intel Pentium launched in 1993. If your CPU was made within the last three decades, it almost certainly has one. The change is really about finally removing compatibility code for hardware that is unlikely to be running a modern Linux kernel anyway.

The TSC itself is a 64-bit register that provides high-resolution timing and can be read far more quickly than platform alternatives such as HPET or the ACPI PM timer. Reading a TSC-based timer can take tens to hundreds of CPU cycles, while falling back to a motherboard-based timer can take roughly 0.8 to 1.0 microseconds.

OpenAI has launched Computer History, a new feature for the ChatGPT macOS app that tracks clicks, keystrokes, app switches, and keyboard shortcuts to build a timeline of your activity.

The feature is opt-in rather than opt-out, something that is becoming increasingly important when it comes to how apps collect and use user data. Computer History does not capture screenshots, screen recordings, audio, video, or private browsing activity.

Users can exclude specific apps and websites, pause recording from the menu bar, and delete individual entries. On Business and Enterprise workspaces, an administrator must enable the feature before users can turn it on themselves.

A Redditor on r/eWasteFinds says he pulled a working RTX 2080 Super out of what he called his "local dump." Apparently that find turned into a massive free upgrade over the card he was running before.

According to the post, the user was previously running an MSI HD 6950, a card that's about as far from a modern GPU as you can get. The HD 6950 launched back in 2010 with 2GB of GDDR5 and no support for DirectX 12, ray tracing, or any of the upscaling tech that's become standard in PC gaming. Going from that straight to an RTX 2080 Super is roughly the equivalent of skipping several console generations in one sitting.

The 2080 Super with its 8GB of GDDR6 and Turing-generation ray tracing hardware also supports DLSS upscaling, something that simply didn't exist yet when the HD 6950 was new, so the jump in playable settings and frame rates should be substantial across the board.

A Redditor's warranty repair turned into a headache after his Lenovo Legion 5 gaming laptop came back with only 32GB of RAM installed, half of the 64GB he shipped it with.

Reddit user GRINZ_DOCTOR says he bought the laptop through Best Buy's website last December, configured with a Core i9-14900HX, an RTX 5070 Laptop GPU, 64GB of DDR5 memory, and a 2TB SSD. The laptop reportedly ran fine for eight months before it started throwing repeated blue screens and had to be sent in for warranty service.

When it came back, one of the two 32GB DDR5 modules was gone. Best Buy's paperwork apparently claimed the laptop could only support 32GB of memory. It does match Lenovo's own spec sheet for the Legion 5 15IRX10, which lists a maximum of 32GB DDR5, despite the laptop having two SO-DIMM slots and clearly running fine with double that for months.