We all know that applying thermal paste to CPUs isn't the easiest thing to do, squirt a little on... move it around, make it kinda even... but now there's an idiot-proof method of applying the perfect layer thermal paste with X-Apply... check it out:

Igor's Lab worked with DigitalBlizzard, who "came up with the whole thing" explains Igor, and with a little help from an "industrial partner" and a few suggestions from Igor, X-Apply was born. The new X-Apply stencil allows the formation of the absolutely ideal pattern of thermal paste, with a perfectly even distribution across your CPU.

Most regular methods of thermal paste applications are about the same, but your final thermal paste application will most likely be uneven because it's just placed in small clumps or a few lines across your chip. This means that part of the IHS (integrated heat spreader) on your CPU doesn't have enough thermal paste, or none at all. X-Apply won't allow that, as it will fill those gaps with its specially designed stencil.

MSI seems to have fully pulled back from making AMD Radeon GPUs, with the company confirming with HardwareLuxx that it is solely concentrating on making custom NVIDIA GeForce RTX series GPUs.

Hardware Unboxed posted on X saying: "Did I miss this story? MSI has been completely removed from AMD's Radeon 7000 series, all existing products have been discontinued and they never released a 7700 XT / 7800 XT. This all seems to have happened very quietly". HBU isn't wrong, this has happened very quietly indeed.

MSI told HardwareLuxx: "When it comes to graphics cards, our focus at the moment is actually more on RTX cards. Nevertheless, the collaboration with AMD is essential and extremely relevant for us. We see a very positive development, particularly in the area of motherboards".

Super Display Co (SDC) has just released its new SDC 27X1U monitor, featuring a 27-inch 4K Nano-IPS panel with a super-smooth 165Hz refresh rate and the latest DisplayPort 2.0 and HDMI 2.1 connectivity.

The new SDC 27X1U monitor costs just $415, but it features DP2.0 and HDMI 2.1, as well as a 4K 165Hz panel for that price, which isn't too damn bad at all. It's also another DisplayPort 2.0 monitor to add to the pile, which will only work on AMD Radeon RX 7000 series GPUs and Intel Arc GPUs... NVIDIA GeForce RTX series GPU owners miss out on DP2.0 fun.

SDC uses a flat 27-inch 4K Nano-IPS panel from LG (model LM270WR8), which is used in some of LG's in-house gaming monitors, with the SDC 27X1U supporting 10-bit color, HDR600 with a measured brightness of around 680 nits in HDR mode. There's also support for Variable Refresh Rate (VRR), it's compatible with VESA VRR, and AMD FreeSync, NVIDIA G-SYNC, and VRR functionality works on the PlayStation 5 (48 to 120Hz).

Sabrent has just kicked off a new build/upgrade bundle that gives you 20% off when you order a new Rocket 4 SSD, a Rocket DDR5 RAM module, and an SSD enclosure. You can save 20% with Sabrent's new Build/Upgrade bundle here.

The Sabrent bundle includes their Rocket 4 1TB and 2TB SSDs, Rocket DDR5 16GB SO-DIMM and U-DIMM memory modules (both at $39.99 each), and their USB 3.2 Type-C tool-free enclosure for M.2 PCIe NVMe and SATA SSDs. If you purchase at least one of each, you'll get 20% off at the end.

Sabrent's Rocket 4 2TB SSD, Rocket DDR5-4800 16GB U-DIMM, and a USB 3.2 Type-C SSD enclosure come to $279.97, but with 20% off, you're reducing that to $223.97. That's not bad at all, a savings of $50 on that bundle alone.

LG revealed its 32-inch OLED sporting a 480Hz refresh rate back at CES 2024 in January, and the gaming monitor is now imminent, with the manufacturer having announced that it's in mass production.

The monitor offers a 480Hz refresh rate - providing your GPU can cope with that - at 1080p (which that lower resolution will help your graphics card with, of course). However, this is a switchable monitor, allowing you to transform it to 4K resolution with a 240Hz refresh rate for when you want detail rather than superfast frame rates.

While LCD monitors have gone as high as 540Hz, LG notes that at 480Hz an OLED panel complements that refresh rate with a faster response time and smoother overall feel to the picture as a result. That response time is rated at 0.03ms (GtG).

While the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro might be the flagship Google phones that everyone turns to and the Pixel Fold is the one that captures a ton of attention, the Pixel 8a could be the most important of them all. It's a phone that will offer a budget option for people who want a solid Android experience without spending huge sums. And it's leaking in a big way of what is expected to be a release next month.

In a leak shared via Android Headlines that detailed a number of different aspects of the new and as-yet unconfirmed Pixel 8a, we learn that Google has plans to make sure that the phone lasts as long as possible. According to what appears to be marketing material for the phone, the Google Pixel 8a will come with seven years of security updates, ensuring that the phone remains as safe and secure as possible for a long, long time. That isn't something that people have always been able to say about Android devices at all.

That is of course excellent news, although there is one question left open. The leak doesn't appear to confirm how long Google will offer Android OS updates for this particular device which means that it could end much sooner than those seven years. For comparison, the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro now come with seven years of Android updates, so it would stand to good reason that the Pixel 8a will as well. We'll await confirmation one way or another.

Following months of reports that suggested Apple has had a significant fall from grace in China, new smartphone sales figures suggest that there is no sign of a resurgence. Not yet, at least. In fact, things have gotten so bad that Apple now finds itself in fifth place in the Chinese smartphone market.

That will be particularly galling for Apple considering the company was once the number one smartphone company in China, and it's a problem that it will want to arrest as soon as possible.

The news comes via analytics company Canalys whose latest report covers the first quarter of 2024. The figures have Apple sitting in fifth spot behind other companies that are competing for sales in China, a vitally important part of the world for Apple.

When you buy a new iMac, Mac mini, MacBook Air, and the entry-level MacBook Pro, all of those computers will have one thing in common. That thing isn't the Apple logo, and it isn't the fact that they're all powered by Apple silicon, either. The common trait is that they all have just 8GB of RAM as standard, although you can of course choose to pay extra and upgrade to 16GB or more, depending on the machine in question.

Now, it seems that the decision to stick to 8GB of RAM at the low-end is once again making headlines. Apple had previously justified the decision by saying that more simply isn't needed for what most people use these Macs for. It also noted that the M-series chips that are used in modern Macs mean that the computers are performant enough to be perfectly fine with just 8GB of RAM. But whether or not you go along with that assertion, it seems that we might be able to blame CEO Tim Cook for the lack of RAM as well.

A chart put together by Mastodon user David Schaub, reported by the Accidental Tech Podcast recently, and now shared by MacRumors, charts the base RAM in Apple's computers from 1984 onwards. The graphs show that Apple often increased the base RAM every two years or so but that all changed when Steve Jobs left and was replaced by current CEO Tim Cook. Since Cook took over from Jobs there has only been a single base RAM increase.

Apple has removed three apps from the App Store after it was found that they were using generative AI to take photos uploaded by users and then turn them into nonconsensual nudes of their subjects.

The apps were first reported to Apple by 4040 Media earlier this week after ads promoting them were found in Meta's Ad Library. Other ads pointed to similar services that were web-based, but three were apps that were available for download via the App Store. Upon being informed, Apple asked for more information before removing the apps entirely. However, the apps were only removed once 404 Media had provided links to them, suggesting that Apple didn't know which apps were violating its rules.

Since the ads were discovered Meta has removed the offending ads from its platform, but apps like this are already proving to be a problem for many. The 4040 Media report notes that these so-called "undress" apps are already being used in schools across the United States. Just weeks ago two middle school students were arrested in Florida while another case saw several students from a Washington state high school investigated by police after using an app to remove the clothes of someone in a photo.

Apple announced the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro in September of last year and now we expect it to announce their replacements in September of this year. There are likely to be four new iPhones when they are all announced and we've been hearing various leaks here and there ever since the iPhone 15 launched. Now, we've been treated with a new leak that shows some of the features that we've been told to expect from this year's iPhone refresh.

The leak comes in the form of a post on the X social network, with leaker Majin Bu sharing three different CAD renders of what appears to be cases for the new phones.

The cases show one of what is sure to be the biggest addition to the new iPhones in the form of the Capture button, as has been rumored for months. It's going to come in the form of a new button that will reportedly be used as part of the camera setup, allowing people to more quickly and easily capture photos and videos, hence the name. The button is also expected to have pressure sensitivity which means that it will allow people to perhaps press slightly to focus and then press further to take the shot.

Capcom is set to deliver seven consecutive fiscal years of record-breaking operating income growth thanks to the overperformance of key games.

Capcom's games are selling so well that the publisher has significantly adjusted its earnings forecast. The company now expects to have made 152.4 billion yen (about $968 million) in net sales across the Fiscal Year 2023 period, which ended in March. This forecast represents an increase of +12.4 billion yen (about $78 million) over the last estimate.

Operating income is also expected to be up 1.8 points to 57 billion yen. If Capcom can hit this target, then it will have achieved seven consecutive fiscal periods of record-breaking operating profit results. Based on our findings, Capcom's operating income trajectory will have a CAGR of 20% when looking at results from FY17 through FY23.

A new update from HP for its laptops has implemented a change that a fair few people are hating, and that's a notification that pops up when you hit Caps Lock.

This is a giant padlock icon that says 'Caps Lock On' and takes over a huge amount of screen real-estate whenever you press the Caps Lock key.

We guess the idea is that it's very possible to accidentally press Caps Lock, and if you don't notice, and you're typing for a bit and not looking at the screen, you realize that you've written a VERY SHOUTY SENTENCE LIKE THIS BY ACCIDENT (ahem).

Windows 11 might just flag up a warning if your PC doesn't meet the system requirements to run AI Explorer, hidden code in the OS suggests.

This discovery was shared on X (formerly Twitter) by Albacore, one of the ever-present folks who while away spare hours sifting through the inner workings of Windows 11.

The clues were uncovered in preview build 26200 for the Canary channel, where Albacore found that AI Explorer checks for its requirements, and if the host PC doesn't meet them, a "warning will be present in its overlays."

Things get political this week on The TT Show when Jak and Kosta dig into the recent controversy surrounding Elon Musk, X, and the Australian government's attempt to censor specific content. Then, it gets even more political when the topic switches to the US government deeming Microsoft a security risk because all agencies depend on its software.

Plus, Intel partners with the Pentagon to develop microchips for what we can only assume is stuff you'd consider "not good." But hey, that's just the show's second half, as the first half is full of in-depth impressions for No Rest From the Wicked. Thel attest game from the studio behind the excellent Ori series blends Diablo with Dark Souls to deliver something special.

Jak and Kosta also talk about the upcoming rumors surrounding Ubisoft's Far Cry 7, which will feature Mr. Oppenheimer himself, Cillian Murphy, as the villain. Plus, Sony has announced a new PlayStation overlay with PSN Friends and Trophies for its PC games.

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang gave a hand-written note that he wrote for SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won, which said: "To our partnership and creating the future of AI and humanity together".

Chey posted the photo of him with Jensen on his personal Instagram account, with SK Group's memory affiliate -- SK hynix -- supplying NVIDIA with its ultra-fast HBM3 and new HBM3E memory for its AI GPUs. NVIDIA uses HBM3 on its industry-leading Hopper H100 AI GPU while throwing on ultra-fast HBM3E memory on its new Blackwell B200 AI GPU.

In the future, we can expect HBM4 to appear in 2025 while being used on future-gen AI GPUs in 2026 and beyond, and SK hynix is at the center of that. SK hynix recently announced a $14.6 billion investment on a new memory chip fab plant to meet the "soaring demand" of HBM, while it plans to work with TSMC on next-gen HBM4 memory, which will be used on future-gen AI GPUs from NVIDIA.

OpenAI is the first company to receive the powerful new NVIDIA DGX H200 GPU for accelerating generative AI, which was hand-delivered to CEO Sam Altman and president and co-founder Greg Brockman by NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang. And for those interested in the leather jacket count, two out of three (Greg Brockman and Jensen Huang, natch) were donning stylish black leather jackets.

Jokes aside, the DGX H200 is NVIDIA's and the world's most powerful AI GPU hardware. Jensen Huang signed the hardware with a simple message: "To advance AI, computing, and humanity."

The DGX H200 includes the new H200 Tensor Core GPU, with the Hopper-based hardware equipped with 141GB of HBM3e GPU memory and speeds of up to 4.8TB/s. Designed to accelerate AI workloads, the DGX H200 is more efficient than its DGX H100 predecessor and substantially more powerful.

We've extensively discussed AMD's Fluid Motion Frames technology at TweakTown. It presents a driver-based version of frame generation, meaning it can be enabled in countless games without needing game developers to integrate it per game.

It's a different approach to NVIDIA's DLSS 3 Frame Generation, requiring bespoke AI hardware only found in the GeForce RTX 40 Series and game integration. It's also a different approach to AMD's FSR 3 Frame Generation, which improved considerably in 2024, as AMD Fluid Motion Frames (AFMF) doesn't have access to a game's temporal data.

Like other forms of frame generation AFMF, its technology generates frames between those rendered natively by hardware. Thanks to latency reduction measures, it delivers a 2X boost to perceived performance while maintaining fluid movement. The good news? AFMF is now supported by ASUS's powerful ROG Ally PC gaming handheld.

The Senate officially passed new legislation that declares TikTok a national security threat, which forces the popular app's owner ByteDance to sell the software within 270 days.

If ByteDance doesn't find a US government-approved buyer within the designated timeframe TikTok will be removed from both app stores. The reasoning behind the new classification of a national security risk is the US government believes that TikTok could be used to scrape data on 170 million Americans for China while also being an avenue to spread misinformation.

Due to ByteDance being a Chinese company the US government believes there's a good chance that TikTok is sharing its data on US citizens with the Chinese government, hence ByteDance being forced to sell the US version of the app to a US government-approved entity. However, The Guardian has reported that ByteDance would rather shut down the US app if it has exhausted all other legal options to fight the legislation that would remove it from US app stores.

When it comes to physics-driven sandbox games with community mods and creations, PC classic Garry's Mod is up there as an all-timer. It's been a Steam staple for decades, with the game's history tied to the release of Valve's own iconic Half-Life 2 from 2004.

And now, in a very strange and out-of-nowhere move, Garry's Mod creator Garry Newman and Facepunch Studios have confirmed that they have received DCMA copyright takedown requests from none other than Nintendo. At first, many believed this was a hoax orchestrated by a copyright troll, but Garry Newman has taken to X to confirm that the takedown requests are "legit" and have been "verified by Nintendo."

What does this mean? Any mod or creation for Garry's Mod, including Nintendo content, characters, or IP, must be removed. And when you're talking about decades and thousands of uploads, it's "an ongoing process" with "20 years of uploads to go through."

The process of naturally making a diamond takes billions of years, as minerals under extreme pressure deep beneath the Earth's surface get mashed together to form the most popular gemstone made entirely out of carbon.

Waiting for new diamonds to form simply isn't feasible, which is why researchers have turned to synthetic diamond manufacturing to keep up with the global demand for diamonds. It still typically takes a few weeks to synthetically produce a diamond, but a team of researchers with an innovative approach to the problem has shaved a few weeks down to just a few minutes. Researchers from the Institute for Basic Science in South Korea have devised a new method that can also be scaled up for mass production.

The researchers have proposed a mix of liquid metals: gallium, iron, nickel, and silicon, which are enclosed in a custom-made vacuum system that's within a graphite casing. This casing is then rapidly heated and cooled while being exposed to methane and hydrogen, creating the pressure needed to make a diamond. How does it work? These conditions force the carbon atoms within the methane to move into the liquid metal, creating little diamond "seeds" within the liquid.