Square Enix plans to embrace game streaming and cloud in a big way...and it doesn't get any bigger than Final Fantasy.

Photo: Seirra259

Square Enix has talked about game streaming, subscriptions, and cloud gaming for a while now. Final Fantasy XIV remains the biggest tentpole for its online endeavors, but most others have more or less floundered, relegating the games-maker to more traditional mainline dedicated game sales. Now with 5G tech on the horizon and a steady rollout of big platforms to tap 5G like Project xCloud, Google Stadia (which Square Enix is already supporting), and even Amazon's and Verizon's upcoming game-streaming platforms, Square Enix might finally be ready to make good on its cloud ambitions.

CES 2020 - BenQ has just announced its new ZOWIE XL2740 gaming monitor, offering a new 27-inch TN Film panel with a native 1920 x 1080 resolution and super-fast 240Hz refresh rate.

The new ZOWIE XL2740 monitor is aimed at esports gamers, with LFC for low frame rate, a super-fast 0.5ms GtG response time along with the 240Hz refresh rate. But it's the addition of DyAc+ technology that impresses me, with BenQ and ZOWIE touting it improves accuracy and reduces motion blur... kay. DyAc+ (Dynamic Accuracy Plus) can be used instead of Adaptive-Sync, minimizing blur when the frame rate better matches the display refresh rate.

BenQ is using a 27-inch 1080p TN Film panel display, 0.5ms GtG response time, 1000:1 contast ratio, 32 cd/m2 brightness, 170/160-degree viewing angles, 8-bit color, and standard sRGB color gamut. We have tilt, height, swivel, and rotate adjustments with a slew of connectivity between DisplayPort 1.2, HDMI 2.0, HDMI 1.4, and old school dual-link DVI connectors. There's also some USB ports, as well as a 3.5mm headphone and mic jack.

CES 2020 - Dell has just announced its new UltraSharp U4320Q monitor, offering a large 42.5-inch size and native 4K resolution on an IPS panel.

The new Dell UltraSharp U4320Q has been made for users who want a premium monitor that has the ability to replace multiple smaller screens, since its 42.5-inch size and native 3840 x 2160 resolution fit the bill. We have 350 nits of brightness, 1000:1 contrast ratio, 5ms GtG response time, 178-degree viewing angles. It's a 60Hz refresh rate, so don't go expecting any insane 49-inch 5120 x 1440 @ 240Hz action here.

One of the points of Dell's new UltraSharp U4320Q monitor is the built-in Picture-by-Picture and Picture-in-Picture feature, which lets you have 4 different PCs on the monitor at once. You'll have to have your inputs all set up correctly, but having 4 completely different PCs being displayed on a single monitor is a helluva thing.

CES 2020 - Dell has just unveiled the flagship office monitor, with its new 86-inch Interactive Touch Monitor set to get purchased by the 1% business types who want the absolute best.

The new Dell Interactive Touch Monitor has an 85.6-inch 4K IPS-based panel, with both anti-glare and anti-smudge coatings (you wouldn't want to get fingerprints on this, would you -- but it is a touchscreen after all). Dell has its ComfortView technology included, which will adjust the blue light for easier-on-your eyes meetings.

Dell's new monitor supports up to 20 simultaneous touch points, so you can have people playing finger Twister on this without a problem, or they can be drawing all over it with Dell's new and improved dual-tip styluses. Dell includes dual 20W speakers, a bunch of HDMI outputs, USB Type-A, USB Type-B, and USB Type-C connectors, and even a full-sized DisplayPort.

CES 2020 - Samsung has just introduced some new members of its Galaxy Book family of laptops, but with cheaper models including the new Galaxy Book Flex Alpha.

Samsung's new Galaxy Book Flex Alpha rolls out as a cheaper 2-in-1 laptop wqith a QLED display, so in reality it's a slightly less premium version of the Galaxy Book Flex, but also cheaper. We have a rotating 13.3-inch 1080p QLED display, with a square design and thinner bezels than the previous-gen units.

Inside, Samsung configures the new Galaxy Book Flex Alpha with Intel's latest 10th-gen Comet Lake CPUs, either 8GB or 12GB of RAM, and either 256GB or 512GB of SSD storage. Samsung is touting up to 17.5 hours of battery life from a single charge, which is all done through an easy single USB-C cord.

CES 2020 - The Consumer Electronics Show is always a special time of the year, it has some of the most fringe tech out there -- but we also find hidden gems like this: BlackBerry has teamed with Damon Motorcycles on a new EV superbike.

BlackBerry is known, at least now, for its Android-based smartphones -- but the original part of its company in Research in Motion (RIM) is here in BlackBerry Limited form, making enterprise software. This software comes in the form of BlackBerry's QNX operating system, which will be the basis for the CoPilot warning system on Damon Motorcycles' new Hypersport Pro Electric Superbike.

The Hypersport Pro Electric Superbike system as a whole will feature radars, cameras, and other sensors that will track speed, and the direction of objects moving close to the bike. The early warning system would warn riders when there is an upcoming safety concern, with BlackBerry promising that the advanced collision system is "highly secure" and that it has "enhanced situational awareness" and provides an "increased peace of mind" for riders.

CES 2020 - Segway is making waves at CES 2020 this year, teasing off its new prototype electric vehicle that it is calling the S-Pod -- and it looks like a wild ride.

Segway teamed with Ninebot on the new prototype TV that weighs 330 pounds and has a top speed of 24.8 miles per hour, while in its current prototype state it has up to 43.5 miles of travel in it from its battery. Segway's new S-Pod is a personal transport vehicle that the company describes as a "first-class smart transporting pod".

The S-Pod is powered by gyroscopic, self-balancing technology that makes sure you'll never fall out of it -- and while the original Segway could be controlled by leaning forward or to the side, the new S-Pod has its movement manipulated with a tiny joystick in the right side of the seat for maximum laziness. Segway says it'll also have a detachable built-in pad, too.

CES 2020 - Samsung has unveiled its beautiful new premium 8K TVs, meaning the rumors were real on the exciting new bezel-less TV from Samsung. We now know it's real, with Samsung packing an insane 8K resolution, with it also setting a "new standard" for TV screens with its Infinity Design.

There's virtually no bezel or frame on Samsung's new TV, and it's oinly 15mm thick, too. Samsung is powering the new TV with an AI "quantum processor" that handles the revamped UI, and upscales any source of video up to 8K. It will also access your TV through your antenna, streaming services, or more through a universal guide.

Samsung packs in what it calls AI ScaleNet technology that streams 8K on networks that only have bandwidth that handles 4K, where it will compress an 8K video source down to 4K, stream it over the internet -- which is where the AI takes over, upscales it it back to 8K resolution. Interesting, but it's something I'd want to try in person. I use an 8K monitor myself and 8K videos from YouTube require around 120Mbps -- but throw in compression and AI and we have some interesting stuff going on.

ASRock is coming out swinging with its own leaks on their custom Radeon RX 5600 XT graphics card, that the company will be calling their RX 5600 XT Phantom Gaming D3.

The new ASRock RX 5600 XT Phantom Gaming D3 is a factory-overclocked Radeon RX 5600 XT, offering up the Navi 10 at its fastest GPU clocks yet (before it's even announced) at 1355, 1560, and 1620MHz boost GPU clocks respectively. It still has 6GB of GDDR6 at 12Gbps on a 192-bit memory bus, all powered with a single 8-pin PCIe power connector.

ASRock is using a smaller PCB here with its RX 5600 XT Phantom Gaming D3, at just 29cm -- but the card has a larger cooling system that runs right over the PCB. I'd love to see a custom version of this with the cooler running up to the edge of the PCB for smaller, mITX gaming PCs powered by the ASRock RX 5600 XT Phantom Gaming D3 graphics card.

CES 2020 - ASUS has just had its new Zephyrus G15 gaming laptop leak, with the ASUS Zephyrus G15 packing an unannounced AMD Ryzen 7 4800HS processor.

ASUS will be offering up two different models of its ASUS Zephyrus G15 gaming laptop and its 15.6-inch displays, with a 1080p 144Hz IPS panel and a 240Hz display. As for the GPU, we won't be seeing Navi inside of gaming notebooks just yet so ASUS is providing either a GeForce GTX 1660 Ti 6GB or GeForce RTX 2060 6GB graphics card.

Inside, the ASUS Zephyrus G15 gaming laptop can be configured with up to 32GB of DDR4-3200 RAM, 512GB or 1TB of NVMe storage, Wi-Fi 6 technology, a 76Wh 4-cell battery, a 180W PSU, and it comes in at 2.1kg in total.

Today is the day of custom Radeon RX 5600 XT graphics cards leaking, with our first look at the custom MSI Radeon RX 5600 XT MECH (and MECH OC) models but now we're getting a look at XFX's own custom RX 5600 XT.

XFX's upcoming Radeon RX 5600 XT THICC II PRO STAGING has a strange name, and I seriously do not know why it's called this. The original THICC branding was kinda cool as a tongue-in-cheek thing, but PRO STAGING? Yeah, I don't know. The new XFX Radeon RX 5600 XT THICC II PRO STAGING has factory overclocking at up to 1460MHz in game mode, but we don't know anything more about its boost clocks.

We should see the XFX Radeon RX 5600 XT THICC II PRO STAGING coming in faster than MSI's second-best RX 5600 XT MECH OC (the GAMING series will beat the MECH series). But XFX's new card will also include the same 6GB GDDR6 at 12Gbps on a 192-bit memory bus.

AMD is expected to unveil its new Navi 10-based Radeon RX 5600 XT grapphics card at CES 2020 in the next couple of days, but now we have some leaks from MSI's new MECH range of cards.

MSI's upcoming Radeon RX 5600 XT MECH graphics cards have been leaked, with teh MECH series cards finding their place just under the flagship GAMING series. MSI's upcoming cards will come in two SKUs with an OC and non-OC model in the upcoming Radeon RX 5600 XT MECH graphics cards.

The overclocked RX 5600 XT MECH OC graphics card has 1185, 1420, 1600MHz GPU clocks for base, game, and boost mode respectively. The non-OC version of the RX 5600 XT will have its Navi 10 GPU clocked at 1130, 1375, and 1570MHz for base, game, and boost clocks respectively. Both models include 6GB of GDDR6 memory at 12Gbps on a 192-bit memory interface and a single 8-pin PCIe power connector, with a TDP that should find itself at 150W or so.

Dell has just unveiled a few new Alienware gaming monitors, with its latest Alienware 25 gaming display unveiled with a Fast IPS panel and 240Hz refresh rate.

The new Alienware 25 (AW2521HF) gaming monitor packs a 25-inch "Fast IPS" panel, with a native 1920 x 1080 resolution, 240Hz refresh rate, 1ms GtG response time, and 178-degree viewing angles. Dell is including AMD FreeSync technology support, with pending NVIDIA G-Sync compatibility.

Connectivity wise we have either DisplayPort or HDMI, but Dell didn't announce detailed specs for its Alienware 25 gaming monitor. It does rock its gorgeous alien-inspired design, with cable management that is both practical, and looks great. The new Alienware 25 goes on sale on March 11, 2020 with no pricing just yet.

In a world of custom and AIO coolers in all shapes and sizes, it blows my mind to be writing about a beasty 32C/64T AMD EPYC processor and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 graphics card being passively cooled -- yeah, fanless.

AnandTech has the scoop on TureMetal's new system that packs an AMD EPYC 7551 processor (32C/64T) with its own 180W TDP, joined by GIGABYTE's own GeForce RTX 2070 graphics card with a 175W TDP, meaning the entire system has 355W between the CPU and GPU alone and yet it is passively cooled.

TureMetal uses a Supermicro ATX motherboard, and then builds it inside of its in-house UP10 chassis. The chassis has support for a 140W CPU and 160W GPU for 300W total, but with some adjustments the company was able to cram in the 32C/64T processor and Turing-powered GeForce RTX 2070 graphics card.

Samsung knows how to shake CES 2020 up: tease their event where the next-gen Galaxy smartphones will be unveiled, where we should be introduced to the new Galaxy S20 (or Galaxy S11 depending on the rumor), and the new Galaxy Fold 2 among other devices to be shown off on February 11.

Samsung has announced it'll be February 11 when it unveils its next handsets, with a tease on Twitter saying "Say hello to a whole new Galaxy. Unpacked on February 11, 2020 #SamsungEvent". We are to expect Samsung to take the new Galaxy up to another level, where we should expect things like 5G, an 8K-capable camera, and gorgeously-smooth 120Hz display.

As for Samsung's new Galaxy Fold 2 it should be cheaper, pack a lesser battery, and reportedly offer up foldable goodness through a clamshell-style design. It was only yesterday that Samsung unveiled its new Galaxy S10 Lite and Galaxy Note 10 Lite smartphones, more affordable versions of the popular 2019 smartphones from Samsung.

Intel recently announced its new codename Horse Ridge chip, a new cryogenic control chip that will assist quantum computing systems. The new chip is being made available to commercially viable quantum computers, with the company co-developing the Horse Ridge chip between Intel Labs and QuTech.

Horse Ridge is an exciting cryogenic control chip that is capable of controlling multiple qubits (quantum bits) at the same time, with Intel explaining that this specific part of a quantum computer system is an "essential feature". Quantum computing is still in its early days, with Intel putting its efforts into the interconnects and control electronics -- and not the production of the qubits.

Right now, quantum computers use existing electronic tools to link quantum systems inside of a cryogenic refrigerator -- this actually holds back qubit performance so Intel is being Intel and wants to push that. Current quantum chips and computers require absolute zero cooling to work, while Horse Ridge can actually work at just over absolute zero -- 4 Kelvin.

Intel has stepped it up with its new NUC (Next Unit of Computing) in the new NUC 10, with the new Frost Canyon NUC packing some super great internals into a small PC that c an easily fit anywhere on your desk.

The highest-end configuration of Intel's new NUC can pack Intel's latest 10th-gen Core i7-10710U processor, which boosts at up to 4.7GHz, has 12MB of cache, and rocks Intel's latest UHD graphics. This means that lower-end games, emulated games (this is a big market for PCs like this as well), and even esports titles can run without an issue at 1080p.

If you want this speed in a new Intel NUC you'll be spending $1295, but for that you'll get yourself 64GB of RAM (!!!), and a 1TB Samsung 970 EVO NVMe M.2 SSD. There are lower-end offerings with just 4GB of RAM and a 120GB for $705.

CES 2020 - Lenovo has just refreshed its ThinkPad X1 Carbon laptop with Intel's latest-gen Comet Lake CPUs, with the 2020 laptop also rocking a new privacy screen.

Lenovo steps it up with new ThinkShield privacy and security on the new ThinkPad X1 Carbon laptops, with ThinkPad PrivacyGuard shielding your display from someone looking at your display, or alerting you when someone is looking at it. Lenovo goes as far as including a physical slider to block the built-in webcam, something the company calls ThinkShutter.

The new ThinkPad X1 Carbon can be configured with Intel's latest 10th-gen Comet Lake CPUs, with Lenovo offering vPro versions of the laptop, too. Lenovo offers either 8GB or 16GB of LPDDR3 RAM, up to 2TB of PCIe-based SSD, 2 x USB 3.1 Gen 1 ports, 2 x Thunderbolt 3 ports, HDMI 1.4 output, and a 3.5mm headphone jack.

CES 2020 - Samsung has just unveiled some new QLED gaming monitors at CES 2020, with its new flagship Odyssey G9 gaming monitor turning into my most-wanted monitor of CES 2020, and the show hasn't even started yet.

The new Samsung Odyssey G9 gaming monitor rocks a gigantic 49-inch curved panel with a sublime native resolution of 5120 x 1440, and even smoother 240Hz refresh rate backed by with support for AMD FreeSync 2 and NVIDIA G-Sync. You will need quite the graphics card to power it, as running 5120 x 1440 at 240FPS is not going to be easy so you'll be wanting NVIDIA's flagship GeForce RTX 2080 Ti -- that is until AMD's new Big Navi and NVIDIA Ampere GPUs begin launching this year.

The design of the monitor is really something else, with an Iron Man-style arc reactor style on the back making even the back of the Odyssey G9 kick ass. Back inside of teh monitor, we have a 1000R curvature on the Samsung Odyssey G9 while the QLED panel has a 1ms response time and a HDR1000 rating compared to HDR600 rating on the mid-range Odyssey G7 panels.

Samsung is working on its successor to its first foldable smartphone that it released in 2019 as the Galaxy Fold, with rumors that the new Galaxy Fold 2 might have much-improved charging abilities.

The first-gen Galaxy Fold doesn't have any super-fast charging but rumor has it that the new Galaxy Fold 2 will support Super Fast charging, something that the XDA Developers noticed in a string of code from the Android 10 update to the Galaxy Note 9 smartphone. We should expect the Galaxy Fold 2 to feature up to 45W wired charging, the same as the flagship Galaxy Note 10+ handset.

The new Samsung Galaxy Fold 2 is rumored to be a clamshell-like design while retaining its game-changing foldable display like its predecessor, which had slow charging in comparison. Samsung is also said to use a smaller battery inside of the Galaxy Fold 2, and while it will continue to use two batteries like the original Fold, they should combine at up to just 3000mAh.