Latest News - Page 11

LIAN LI's next-generation UNI FANs are here with the UNI FAN FLEX Series, adding something we didn't even know we wanted on a fan: LCD customization. Yes, the new LIAN LI UNI FAN TL LCD FLEX and SL-INF LCD FLEX fans both feature an integrated 1.8-inch LCD screen with 400 x 400 resolution, a 60 Hz refresh rate, and 500-nit brightness.

According to LIAN LI, each LCD screen has 512MB of onboard flash memory, so it can be preloaded with imagery and system monitoring presets and controlled wirelessly via the L-Connect 3 system, which means no USB connection is required. With USB, you get full access to features like loading videos onto your system fans and synchronizing all the RGB components in your build.

The UNI FAN FLEX Series gets its name from the new FLEX Receiver system, which means you can control it via L-Wireless, USB, or direct motherboard PWM/ARGB sync connections. And there are four models, in total: TL FLEX, TL LCD FLEX, SL-INF FLEX, and SL-INF LCD FLEX. Here's the quick breakdown.

When it comes to PC gaming, the keyboard-and-mouse combination is known not only for its precision but also for its performance and low latency. That said, wired and wireless gamepads or controllers are commonplace, but they often trade performance and latency for console-like comfort and ease of use. However, that doesn't look to be the case for the new Raikiri II Pro PC Controller from ASUS, as it supports 8K polling over wireless.

This is a near-instantaneous level of performance for a controller that you simply can't find in the console space. Powered by ROG SpeedNova technology, the Raikiri II Pro PC Controller delivers 8,000 Hz polling or a latency of only 0.125ms. This is significantly faster than most 1,000 Hz or 1ms controllers for PC, while making standard Xbox and PlayStation controllers, with their 4ms of latency, feel like ancient technology.

The new Raikiri II Pro PC Controller supports 8K polling in both wireless and wired modes and is packed with other cutting-edge, premium controller technology.

We all remember Ryse: Son of Rome, right? It launched alongside the Xbox One in November 2013 as a cinematic action game starring Roman centurion Marius Titus on a revenge quest against barbarian invaders. New details from former Crytek staff, reported by IGN, reveal the game was originally meant to be the opening chapter of a much bigger historical franchise, one Microsoft reportedly saw as its answer to Assassin's Creed.

According to the developers, planning for future entries started while the first game was still in production. The team discussed taking the series to Viking-era Europe, feudal Japan, and the fall of the Ottoman Empire, with a loose connecting theme built around the rise and fall of civilizations. Sound familiar?

Some pitches even floated the idea of linking each game's story to the next. Sequels were reportedly planned to ditch the corridor-style level design of the original for a more God of War-like semi-open structure, along with real PvP and vehicle sections that never made it into the launch game.

Lenovo has quietly confirmed its first ThinkPad laptops built around Intel's Wildcat Lake chips, adding new configurations to the ThinkPad E14 Gen 8 and ThinkPad E16 Gen 4 in its official product specifications database. This is the first time Intel's budget Core Series 3 platform has shown up in Lenovo's business laptop lineup.

Wildcat Lake officially launched earlier this year as Intel's Core Series 3 family, sitting a notch below the Core Ultra 300 "Panther Lake" chips that already power higher-end ThinkPad models. Both the E14 and E16 will offer buyers a choice between the two platforms, giving Lenovo a cheaper entry point without dropping the newer silicon entirely.

The listed SKUs include the Core 5 315, Core 5 320, Core 5 330, and a Core 7 360 model, each carrying two "Cougar Cove" P-cores paired with four "Darkmont" low-power E-cores, for six cores and six threads total. P-core boost clocks reportedly range from 4.4 GHz to 4.8 GHz, depending on the SKU.

Modders are always looking for ways to improve old hardware while preserving its soul. A new hardware mod has pushed the original 1994 PlayStation well past its factory spec, expanding system RAM from 2MB to 16MB. The project comes from modder TunerTom, working with the PSX.dev Discord community, and was demonstrated on video by Tito Perez of Macho Nacho Productions.

The mod isn't adding new capability so much as unlocking something that was already there. The upgrade activates memory support that Sony originally built for its arcade hardware but never enabled on retail consoles. TunerTom reportedly studied those arcade boards, which used two 8MB memory banks, and found the PS1's CPU could address the same configuration.

The install itself, however, is far from simple. The console detects the upgrade as two separate 8MB banks, and getting there means replacing the four factory 512KB EDO DRAM chips with eight 2MB chips pulled from old PC memory modules. Four chips go in normally, while the other four are stacked on top of them, with custom wiring and trace cuts needed to route the signals correctly.

ZeniMax Online Studios has been affected by Xbox's layoff spree, but as it stands, the studio still has enough manpower to produce meaningful content for the popular The Elder Scrolls Online MMO.

With over 26 million lifetime players, ESO remains an important part of Xbox's live game strategy. The MMORPG has kept the Elder Scrolls franchise alive and kicking as Bethesda continues its glacial pace on TES6, raking in millions of dollars in spending. Xbox's recent layoffs definitely affected ZeniMax Online Studios (and Bethesda in general), but new info helps clarify and contextualize what's actually going on.

The admins of the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages (UESP.net) attended the yearly Elder Scrolls Tavern event in Europe, where the ZeniMax team shared new information on the studio's current status. The details show that ZeniMax Online Studios is now the same size as it was when it put out Wrothgar in the Orsinium update as well as the major standalone Summerset expansion. This indicates that ZOS is still capable of putting out new expansions, DLCs, and updates for the game, warding off worries about team size.

id Software has issued a statement clarifying the current status of the team, confirming that it's currently as big as it was when it made Doom 2016.

Xbox plans to lay off a total of 3,200 people over the next year. The restructuring has already led to 1,600 layoffs across all divisions, including Texas-based Bethesda subsidiary id Software. Recent reports said about half of the studio had been let go, and that id was now relegated to a support studio, but that isn't the case.

id affirms that it still has enough people to make new games: "We still have the crew we need to build the games and tech we're known for. The team today is about the same size we were when we made Doom 2016. We have always had a flat studio where everyone is a maker, and we will remain true to that philosophy moving forward."

Apple has filed a federal lawsuit against OpenAI, the creators of the popular ChatGPT LLM, accusing it of 'a pattern of theft' undertaken by former Apple employees. The suit claims OpenAI has gained access to data on unreleased Apple products and confidential information. Apple is seeking undisclosed damages, and an injunction to force OpenAI to stop using its trade secrets.

In its legal filing, Apple claims that Tang Yew Tan, OpenAI's Chief Hardware Officer and former Vice President of product design for iPhone and Apple Watch, divulged confidential company information. The Apple suit goes further, alleging that Tan encouraged Apple employees to bring Apple hardware to job interviews.

Another former Apple employee, Senior System Electrical Engineer Chang Liu, allegedly used an Apple-issued work laptop to access and download confidential Apple files, including information regarding unreleased products, engineering presentations and technical specifications while he was employed by OpenAI.

EA Sports College Football 27 is the first game in the revived franchise to land on PC, and by most accounts, the on-field gameplay is a real step up over last year's entry. That improvement is, however, getting buried under a wave of Steam reviews, with the game currently sitting in "Mostly Negative" territory after only about a quarter to a third of reviews came back positive.

The anger is focused mainly on Dynasty and Road to Glory, the two single-player career modes that let you run a college program or take a created player through their career. Previous entries let players adjust XP sliders to speed up progression at their own pace. That option is gone in College Football 27, replaced with "College Football Points" that let you pay real money to skip the grind.

Reviewers say reaching the max coach level under the new default pacing could take well over a hundred simulated seasons without paying, and some estimate maxing out a coach through points alone would cost more than the game itself. A few content creators who got early access have also claimed these systems weren't present in their preview builds, making accusations that EA slipped the monetization in right before launch to avoid tanking early impressions.

The infamous RTX 5090 power connectors just keep melting, and even a dedicated safety feature couldn't stop this latest one. VideoCardz reports that a user who goes by the name of Riptide just had their PSU native power connectors melted, while being plugged into an RTX 5090 with the TempGuard cable.

Apparently, the user also had their ASRock PG1000-PSF power supply keep running after its native 12V-2x6 connector started melting, despite the PSU's TempGuard cable being installed specifically to catch this kind of failure. The setup paired an MSI GeForce RTX 5090 GAMING TRIO OC with ASRock's TempGuard cable, a product built to monitor connector temperature and shut the PSU down before things get bad.

That's exactly what didn't happen in this case. The protection never triggered, and the user only noticed the burned connector after the fact. Making things worse, this was reportedly the same user's second RTX 5090 connector failure, with the first involving a Founders Edition card and a Corsair SF1000 PSU. That's some serious bad luck.

Most of the CPU swap stories we cover end badly for the buyer. This one might be different, and that alone makes it worth a look.

A Reddit post on the r/pcmasterrace subreddit is making the rounds, and it is from a Ukrainian buyer who ordered a tray version of the Ryzen 7 7800X3D for roughly $350 from a local retailer. What showed up instead was a chip marked as a Ryzen 7 9800X3D, a processor the same store was listing for around $475. On paper, that's a free $125 upgrade, and a newer, faster gaming chip to boot.

The catch is that nobody has actually confirmed the chip is legit yet. The buyer hadn't tested it by the time the post went up, and several people in the comments pointed out it would be smart to verify the die is genuine and hasn't been tampered with before treating this as a win. However, the buyer later added an update that it was indeed a legit Ryzen 7 9800X3D, so he really lucked out on that one.

With DRAM chip manufacturers including Samsung, Micron, and SK Hynix kicking consumers to the curb and prioritizing the production of high-margin enterprise DRAM and HBM products, consumer DRAM vendors are looking to source ICs from alternative manufacturers, including China based CXMT. Lexar's THOR II desktop memory is one such example, and now Colorful is another brand looking to source its chips from CXMT.

Colorful used the memory to show off the capabilities of its iGame X870E VULCAN OC V14 motherboard. It used the board with a Ryzen 9 9950X3D processor and a 2x16GB iGame Shadow II DDR5-6000 kit overclocked to DDR5-8600 at CL46. The system successfully completed a 100% MemTestPro test. Colorful joins MSI and ASUS in validating CXMT based memory on its motherboards.

It's a good sign now that several motherboard manufacturers have demonstrated support for CXMT-based memory. 8600 MT/s is an impressive number for a kit without an integrated clock driver. A CUDIMM could conceivably be just as fast as one with chips from the established manufacturers. When next-generation CPUs come to market, there's every chance we'll start to see more CXMT memory kits.

At Computex in Taipei last month, ASRock showed off a range of PC components to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Taichi brand. The products certainly looked production ready, prompting us to ask when the range would reach store shelves. At the time, ASRock representatives were non-committal, stating the company had not yet reached a decision on whether to sell them. A month on from Computex, it seems as though a release is less likely than ever. As spotted by Videocardz, the 10th anniversary range was only ever meant to be a showcase, and none of the six showcased products will be released.

The products consisted of a pair of motherboards, a power supply, a Radeon RX 9070 XT, a monitor and the 360 HOLO 360mm AIO cooler. We wrote about the X870E and Z890 Taichi 10th Anniversary models. My opinion was that they looked great.

ASRock has even prepared a fully detailed microsite, detailing the brand's history. However, clicking on any of the product images also shows the following quote:

Sony CEO Hiroki Totoki has sold 225,000 shares of company stock worth $4.7 million, just days after PlayStation made the controversial announcement to end game disc production in 2028.

Sony's decision to phase out game discs has not gone over well with PlayStation faithful. Meanwhile, amid the controversy, Sony executives are making millions by selling off company stock. The timing has added a bit of fuel to Sony's ongoing PR fire, as it was uncovered that Sony CEO Hiroki Totoki made a particular multi-million dollar stock disposal just 2 days after the PlayStation game disc announcement.

As it turns out, glancing at the company's EDGAR filings shows that multiple high-profile Sony executives have also recently sold stock; four members of Sony's leadership team including Chief Strategy Officer Toshimoto Mitomo, have all made sales of thousands of Sony shares. However, none were worth as much as Totoki's hefty $4.7 million exchange

Ubisoft has secured a hit with its latest Assassin's Creed remake as the company faces down an uncertain future.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced is a multi-platinum sales success as Ubisoft confirms the pirate sim has now shipped over 2 million copies on all platforms. The milestone was achieved in a day's time, putting Black Flag Resynced up against the fastest-selling games of 2026.

These sales come at an important time for Ubisoft. The company recently restructured its business into five creative house subsidiaries, with the biggest one, Vantage Studios, being a joint venture between Ubisoft and Tencent. Black Flag's favorable performance will give Ubisoft momentum at a period when it needs it most, especially after layoffs, cost adjustments, and other market pressures force the group to make serious decisions about its future.

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 NZXT to give one lucky winner a major PC building bundle covering the case, CPU cooling, system airflow, and power supply.

There will be one winner in total, and the prize includes an NZXT H6 case in black, NZXT Ultra RGB fans in black, an NZXT Kraken Elite 360 RGB AIO liquid cooler, and an NZXT C Series Gold 1200W power supply.

The NZXT H6 provides the foundation for the bundle. It is a compact dual-chamber ATX case designed to combine strong airflow with a clean showcase appearance. Its panoramic tempered-glass design places the system's internal components on display while keeping the power supply and much of the cabling hidden in a separate chamber.

Ubisoft tells the critics of Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced that the $85 worth of DLC is "never a requirement," and technically, they're not wrong. It's just that the optics of this DLC launch are downright terrible.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced launched on July 9 to a genuinely strong start. It reportedly sold over five times as many pre-launch Steam copies as AC Shadows, and the remake earned solid reviews from critics for its combat overhaul and visual upgrades. For a couple of days, it looked like Ubisoft had actually pulled off a comeback.

Then, players noticed the updated Steam store page. Alongside the $59.99 base game (which is already a hard sell for a remake) sits roughly $85 worth of day-one DLC, ranging from $5 map packs to $10 cosmetic and time-saving bundles. Even the $70 Deluxe Edition only covers two of those packs, which makes it look even worse.

NVIDIA is reportedly working on a new GPU called the GeForce RTX 5090 SE, according to a report from Russian outlet GameGPU. The card would supposedly slot between the RTX 5080 and RTX 5090, possibly replacing an RTX 5080 Ti that never made it to market.

The leaked specs point to a cut-down GB202 die, with 110 of the 192 streaming multiprocessors enabled. That works out to 14,080 CUDA cores, roughly 31% more than the RTX 5080's 10,752 cores, but still well short of the RTX 5090's 21,760. Rumors also point to a 500W power draw, down from the 5090's 575W, but a big step up from the 5080's 360W. A 1,000W power supply would likely be needed either way.

Now we get to the confusing part. The leak claims 32GB of GDDR7 on a 384-bit bus, the same capacity as the RTX 5090 despite the narrower memory interface. That math doesn't really work with NVIDIA's standard memory configurations. A 384-bit bus paired with 2GB modules gets you 24GB, and 3GB modules would push it to 36GB. Hitting exactly 32GB would apparently require mixing chip densities, something NVIDIA has avoided in the past due to signal integrity and validation headaches, not to mention the GTX 970 controversy that mixed-pool memory caused years ago.

id Software is facing major layoffs, and the once-mighty FPS developer has been downsized as part of Xbox's restructuring. Original id co-founder John Carmack shares his thoughts and commiserates with the developers who lost their jobs.

Microsoft is laying off 3,200 people at Xbox, and half of those cuts occurred just a few days ago. The other half, which will see 1,600 more people lose their jobs, will take place from now until June 2027. id Software was hit hard by the layoffs, with Xbox shedding half of the studio while still somehow prioritizing id's Doom and Quake franchises.

The layoffs have captured attention from old guard veterans like John Carmack, one of the original founders of id and creators of Doom. On Twitter, Carmack shared his thoughts on id's current situation, lamenting the layoffs while also calling into question whether or not Xbox is actually a good steward for id and Doom moving forward.

New reports from Bloomberg say that Minecraft's profits helped fund other games in the Xbox software portfolio, indicating that proceeds from highly-profitable titles like Minecraft helped create other titles for Game Pass.

A recent Bloomberg article has caused a bit of a stir for Microsoft; the coverage says that profits from Minecraft were used to fund other games at Xbox. There's a lot to unpack here, especially since Minecraft is a huge driver for the Xbox business. In fact, when it comes down to it, Minecraft and Call of Duty are the most valuable properties insofar as sales and engagement--Minecraft is the second best-selling game of all time with 300 million copies sold.

It was also revealed that Minecraft was the highest-earning Xbox game pre-ABK, and that it makes significant profits. "Minecraft is one of the most profitable, if not the most profitable first-party game," Xbox CFO Tim Stuart said during the FTC v Microsoft trial of 2023.