Microsoft uses its Windows 11 Insider Preview Build program to roll out new Windows features, updates, and changes to a community of testers and early adopters before release. Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26200.5651 is the latest preview release, and it's a big one, as it adds a few new Copilot+ experiences.

The big one is an AI agent integrated into Windows Settings. If you ask a question or describe an issue, like "my mouse pointer is too small," the AI will point you in the right direction. This feature is currently only available on Snapdragon-powered Copilot+ PCs, with Intel and AMD systems set to get the AI-powered Settings update in the future.

Old-school Windows fans might be pleased to note that Microsoft is bringing back the bigger clock that shows seconds above the date and calendar when you click on the bottom right of the taskbar. That's not the only blast from the past featured in the latest Windows 11 Insider Preview Build. There's a bug that plays the "Windows Vista boot sound instead of the Windows 11 boot sound."

We are getting more and more details about Intel's next-gen Nova Lake-S desktop "Core Ultra 400" series CPUs, which will reportedly support DDR5-8000 memory natively, while also boasting 36 PCIe Gen5 lanes.

The new information on the RAM + Gen5 lanes for Nova Lake-S desktop processors is coming from leaker @jaykihn0 on X, after information was posted about the new Core Ultra 400 series CPUs featuring up to 52 cores (over twice the core count of Arrow Lake-S chips on the market today).

Intel is reportedly gearing up to provide 50% higher native RAM speed support (DDR5-6400 on Arrow Lake-S, with DDR5-8000 on Nova Lake-S and up to DDR5-10000 also supported). Intel officially supports DDR5-6400 memory through DDR5 and CUDIMM modules on the 800-series and Arrow Lake-S, but you can squeeze up to DDR5-9000+ speeds, but natively, only DDR5-6400 is supported.

PlayStation 5 exclusivity has ended and Final Fantasy 16 is now on Xbox consoles, but apparently at inferior quality.

Early analysis of Final Fantasy 16's Xbox port show signs that the game may look better on PlayStation 5 with the frame rate priority preset. According to Digital Foundry, the PS5 version has better visual quality than the Xbox Series X version when running in the game's performance mode, with things like foliage standing out on Microsoft's console.

"Both versions seem to use the TSC MAA+FSR1 combo that the PS5 version shipped with at launch, but the Xbox version is consistently lower resolution," Digital Foundry's Ollie Mack said.

TSMC Arizona has reportedly finished its first run of chips made in the USA for Apple, AMD, and NVIDIA, marking a major milestone for the semiconductor giant, and the USA.

In a new report from Ctee picked up by insider Dan Nystedt on X, TSMC reportedly pushed out its first run of chips for the three US-based companies, with NVIDIA's new Blackwell AI GPUs made in Arizona being sent back to Taiwan for advanced packaging.

Apple's new A20 series processors for the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max smartphones will be made on TSMC's 2nm process with WMCM (Wafer-Level Multi-Chip Module) advanced packaging at its AP7 plant in Chiayi, Taiwan. WMCM capacity at the AP7 plant is expected to reach 50,000 wafers per month by the end of 2026.

Intel's next-gen Nova Lake-S desktop "Core Ultra 400" series CPU details have leaked, teasing that we can expect up to 52 CPU cores, with up to 150W TDP on the new LGA 1854 socket.

The new information on the next-gen Nova Lake-S desktop CPUs comes from leaker @Chi11eddog on X, reporting that motherboard makers are "very early" in the development of their next-gen platforms based on the new 900-series chipset and LGA 1854 socket. We can expect next-gen tech features and support for even faster DDR5 memory, with CUDIMM at the center for users who want ultimate performance out of their gaming PCs.

Intel is expected to support up to ultra-fast DDR5-10000+ memory on its new 900-series motherboards, with leaks of 7 new SKUs of Core Ultra 400 series with the flagship Core Ultra 9 SKU featuring 52 cores (16 P-Cores + 32 E-Cores + 4 LP-E Cores) with a 150W TDP. Compare this with the current-gen flagship Core Ultra 9 285K "Arrow Lake-S" desktop CPU which features 8 P-Cores and 16 E-Cores for a total of 24 cores (with no LP-E cores), meaning we're in for a 2.16x increase in core count, with 2 x more P-Cores and E-Cores.

Devil May Cry is the latest video game franchise to see a surge in sales thanks to TV show adaptations.

Capcom's multiplatform multimedia content strategy appears to be working as intended and synergistically driving up game sales. Little over two months after releasing the Devil May Cry TV series on Netflix, the franchise broke a sales milestone, with Capcom revealing that Devil May Cry 5 game sales have now broken 10 million. The total DmC series is at 33 million, meaning DmC 5 makes up roughly 30% of sales.

Capcom directly attributes the spike in Devil May Cry 5 game sales to the positive and popular reaction from the Netflix show; after all, the DmC show had 5.3 million views. This isn't the first video game series to be uplifted by big-budget adaptations, with Sony seeing a major jump from The Last of Us series on HBO, CD Projekt seeing the same in Cyberpunk 2077 from the Edgerunners series, and the Castlevania Netflix series also uplifted franchise sales across Konami's classics collections.

New Borderlands 4 pre-orders reveal the game won't be $80 after all.

Today, pre-orders for Borderlands 4 opened up on all platforms, revealing a base $70 price tag for the game. Fans were worried that Gearbox's new sequel could be $80, especially with Nintendo opening up a $80 price point for new Switch 2 games, and it just so happens that Borderlands 4 is coming to the Switch 2. Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford was asked about the game's price, and his response didn't help the situation, actually kicking off a controversy with tidbits of rare insight into the video games industry.

It looks like the controversy may all have been for nothing--or maybe the high-combustion reaction from fans was the exact reason Borderlands 4 isn't $80. Whatever the case, it looks like the costs are being passed down through various editions. Borderlands 4 will have 3 digital versions: the standard edition for $70, a deluxe edition for $100, and a super deluxe edition for $130. Also, Borderlands 4 won't have a Switch 2 version at launch.

Gaming's top modding site, Nexus Mods, has purportedly been sold to a new mysterious owner that "gets" the modding community.

Today, Nexus Mods operator Robin Dark0ne Scott made a surprising announcement: Nexus Mods is being handed off to new management. Dark0ne says that he made this decision in order to focus on his mental health and relieve the stress of running such a gigantic ecosystem of content.

It's unclear what the terms of the deal are, and whether or not Black Tree Gaming Ltd, the current owner of Nexus Mods, has sold their ownership stake in Nexus Mods to another group or person. It's possible that this is an ownership change as in appointing new successors. Nexus Mods was created by Scott and managed under his company Black Tree Gaming Ltd. At the time of writing, Black Tree is still listed at the bottom of the Nexus Mods website.

ARK: Survival Ascended, the remastered take on Survival Evolved, has been in early access for a long time now, but the game has hit some fresh controversy.

Survival Ascended has always been under fire for its performance levels (with UE 5), and how far the graphics need to be notched down to get a smooth frame rate, and now we're told that the developer's solution is to enable frame generation - without informing the player.

As Sebastian Castellanos pointed out on X (see the above post), not only does ARK: Survival Ascended have FSR frame generation turned on, but you can't turn it off from the graphics settings. There's simply no option listed, so you wouldn't have a clue it's actually running.

Apple has said that a "very small percentage" of Mac mini computers with M2 chips suffer from a fault that means they don't power on, while letting affected users know how they can get a free repair.

This is the compact computer which was launched in 2023 and Apple clarifies that affected PCs were manufactured between June 16 to November 23 in 2024.

If you've got a Mac mini M2 and it's no longer coming on when you hit the power, you can use Apple's serial number checker (as flagged by Apple Insider) to see if your device is part of the free repair program.

AMD has a new budget gaming CPU option for gamers still on the AM4 platform, the Ryzen 5 5500X3D. This is the latest chip with the company's popular PC gaming-friendly 3D V-Cache technology, albeit the first-gen 7nm Zen 3 variant popularized by the Ryzen 7 5700X3D.

Like the Ryzen 5 5600X3D from 2023, the new Ryzen 5 5500X3D is a 6-core/12-thread CPU with a Base Clock speed of 3 GHz and a Boost Clock of a flat 4 GHz and the same 96MB of L3 Cache. It also sports the same 105W TDP rating and is based on the codenamed Vermeer architecture, as detailed in AMD's official product page for the new AM4 CPU.

According to reports, the new Ryzen 5 5500X3D is a new budget gaming CPU specifically for the Latin American market. It is the only piece of Ryzen hardware built for that specific audience. At this stage, it doesn't look like it will reach other regions.

Earlier this year, we reported on "Engineering Sample 34," an early Steam Deck prototype from Valve that sold on eBay for $2000 ($1000 less than the asking price of $3000). As seen in pictures, the prototype handheld features a different design than the retail unit with blue-colored buttons, more curves, and circular trackpads.

The buyer, SadlyItsBradley, loaned the rare piece of Valve hardware history to tech YouTube channel Bringus Studios for a deep dive into the hardware. That video is now online (you can watch it in full below), and it's a fascinating look at a very early version of what would become the Steam Deck.

The hardware inside has a late 2019 production date stamped on it, which suggests that it is more of a proof-of-concept device than a functional gaming handheld. In the video, we discover that the 'Picasso APU' is a Ryzen 7 3700U with integrated Radeon Vega 10 graphics, which is far less powerful than the custom Zen 2 APU with RDNA 2 graphics on the retail model.

A rare engineering sample of a GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition GPU with 20GB of VRAM was recently sold on eBay for $1,999.99. This is one of those big "what if" releases for NVIDIA, as the GeForce RTX 4080 Ti was a mid-generation launch designed to offer GeForce RTX 3090 gaming performance at a more affordable price point.

Ahead of the card's debut, several reports and rumors of GeForce RTX 3080 Ti 20GB graphics cards from companies like GIGABYTE and ASUS made their way to specific markets like Russia. There was also the case of an MSI SUPRIM X variant of the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti 20GB that went up for sale in Australia in 2023.

The sale of this Founders Edition model with 20GB of GDDR6X memory adds weight to the idea that NVIDIA changed the memory configuration of this graphics card at the eleventh hour. And there are, in fact, a number of these rare GPUs out in the wild.

MSI has officially released its new BIOS for multiple of its 800-series AM5 motherboards, supporting up to 256GB of RAM using 4 x 64GB DIMMs.

In a press release posted to its website, the company explains the new AGESA Combo PI-1.2.0.3e BIOS, with memory optimizations included to help support 4 x 64GB DIMMs for up to 256GB of system RAM. The new AGESA Combo PI-1.2.0.3e BIOS will support all AM5 motherboards, starting from the 600 series up to 800 series, meaning these RAM optimizations are available even for the A620 series mobos.

On some (not all) motherboards, you can run 4 x 64GB DIMMs in MSI's motherboards with the new BIOS update, and run the system with more stability than before. MSI goes as far as saying that the DDR5 memory can be overclocked to 6000MT/s or even 6400MT/s using large-capacity DRAM kits using Micron, SK hynix, or Samsung memory... all boasting up to 256GB capacities at those 6000-6400MT/s speeds.

Although NVIDIA hasn't formally announced a new budget desktop gaming GPU, several sources point to the company launching the GeForce RTX 5050 in July. The company's 50-Class GPUs are considered entry-level, with the RTX 5050 set to be built using the GB207-300 chip with 2560 CUDA Cores, which is 33% fewer than the RTX 5060's and 16% fewer than the RTX 4060's CUDA Core count.

As we learned in prior leaks on the upcoming RTX 5050, the GPU will be the first graphics card in the GeForce RTX 50 Series line-up to not feature fast GDDR7 memory. Instead, its memory configuration will include 8GB of GDDR6. However, according to a new post by MEGAsizeGPU over social media, the GDDR6 in the GeForce RTX 5050 will comprise 20 Gbps memory modules.

This is the same faster GDDR6 memory found in AMD's Radeon RX 9000 Series, which means it will be quicker than the 8GB of VRAM found in the GeForce RTX 4060.

Stellar Blade is a sci-fi action adventure from South Korean developer SHIFT UP Corporation that was a fan favourite and hit when it debuted on PlayStation 5 consoles last year. The game, which Sony Interactive Entertainment and PlayStation published, finally made its way to PC last week, and the Steam data shows us that it's on track to be one of the biggest PC game launches of 2025.

As far as single-player PlayStation games that Sony has published on Steam go, Stellar Blade is the publisher's biggest hit to date. This past weekend, the Steam peak concurrent player count for the game hit an impressive 192,078, more than double Ghost of Tsushima's peak concurrent player count of 77,154.

Looking at the PlayStation Publishing page on Steam Charts, which tracks who's playing what at any given moment, Stellar Blade is proving to be more popular than massive PlayStation franchises like God of War, Marvel's Spider-Man, Horizon Zero Dawn, The Last of Us, and Uncharted.

A user has been scammed with not one, not two, but four different GeForce RTX 4090 graphics cards, with fake AD102 GPU labels being laser-engraved onto RTX 3090 and RTX 3080 graphics cards, a new scam exposed by a Japanese technician on YouTube. Check it out:

The technician tore apart some faulty GeForce RTX 4090 graphics cards that a customer send to him, with none of them working, only to discover that three of them were modded RTX 3090 and RTX 3080 graphics cards, which were picked up from seeing changes to the substrate.

Most users wouldn't be able to discover this on their own without completely tearing apart their expensive -- what they thought to be RTX 4090 graphics card -- but once they were torn down, the repairer noticed that one of fake RTX 4090 cards had a protruding capacitor in the top right, which would normally be seen on an RTX 30 series GPU. There's also a small QR code in the bottom left, which is a little higher than its usual location on the GPU.

You might not have heard about Sycom, but they're a Japanese system integrator that works on weird and wonderful things... like its new GeForce RTX 50 Silent Master graphics cards. Check it out:

Sycom released custom versions of NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 40 series last year with the RTX 4080 SUPER and RTX 4070 Ti Silent Master graphics cards cooled by Noctua fans, and now the Japanese company is back with its new GeForce RTX 50 Silent Master series, cooled by Noctua fans.

The GeForce RTX 50 series GPUs have those iconic brown-and-beige Noctua fans, high-performance fans that are also ultra-quiet, with Sycom looking like they're cooking up new custom GeForce RTX 5070 and RTX 5060 series graphics cards cooled by Noctua fans. There's only a single 8-pin PCIe power connector on the smaller card, and a single 16-pin power connector on the bigger GPU.

Apple should have its foldable iPad and foldable iPhone hitting the markets in late 2026, with some new specs revealed teasing the monster-big 18.8-inch foldable iPad that the company is reportedly working on.

In a new report from GF Securities Hong Kong analyst Jeff Pu picked up by insider @Jukanrosleve on X, we're looking at some of the final specs of Apple's purported foldable iPad and iPhone. Apple is reportedly gearing up with a large 18.8-inch foldable display supplied by LG Display for its foldable iPad, with an SZS hinge and on-cell touch technology.

Apple is looking at a 2 to 3-month product life cycle on the foldable iPad, with mass production reportedly penciled in for Q4 2026 with Foxconn manufacturing the foldable iPad and iPhone. As for the foldable iPhone, the purported iPhone Ultra will feature a 7.74-inch foldable display with an Amphenol and SZS hinge, with the same on-cell touch technology but a far longer product life cycle of between 16 and 18 months.

Most PC gamers don't even have a Gen5 SSD yet, but the world of Gen6 SSDs won't be thrusted upon us for years to come, says the founder and CEO of Silicon Motion.

In a new interview with Tom's Hardware, Wallace C. Kou, the founder and chief executive officer of Silicon Motion, said we won't be seeing any Gen6 SSDs for consumer PC systems until 2028. Gen4 SSDs already drive 7GB/sec+ right now, with Gen5 SSDs either requiring active cooling, a specific Gen5 SSD slot on your motherboard or inside of your laptop, but they'll drive upwards of 14GB/sec+ if you use one.

PC OEMs have zero interest in Gen6 SSDs right now, with AMD and Intel not even wanting to talk about them yet. We did see Gen6 teased at Computex 2025 in Taipei just a few weeks ago, but Gen6 SSDs won't be hitting the market until at least 2030.