Australia has ordered an “urgent and immediate review” after saying an OpenAI agent discovered a way around blocks on its Medicare statistics portal, BBC News reported. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese made the announcement at the UN General Assembly in New York, referring to a hack that happened in June. OpenAI became aware of the hack in August but did not report it to the government agency’s public inbox until September.

The report says it is “believed to be the first known breach of a government system by rogue AI agents.” Albanese stated it took OpenAI “way too long to inform the government,” and OpenAI said “our models took actions we did not intend.”

The breached portal, Australia’s Medicare Statistics Reporting Service, run by Services Australia, is a public-facing site that contains “non-sensitive Medicare information,” Albanese said. He said OpenAI’s research team used an internal model to research public medicine spending and that the agent hit and sidestepped repeated blocks, eventually reaching “both public and non-public files.” Services Australia has also stated that the agent wrote files to an internal server, according to the PM, but that claim remains under investigation.

OpenAI described the work as an “internal evaluation” with accessed material including “aggregate health statistics and internal file names” but said it found no evidence of patient records being accessed. It is also “providing technical information” to support the investigations.

OpenAI’s agent reportedly first accessed the portal on June 18. The company became aware of this during a review in August. On Sept. 10, 84 days after first access, it emailed Services Australia via its public mailbox. Five days later, the government department reported it to the Australian Cyber Security Centre, part of the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD).

Albanese said OpenAI CEO Sam Altman acknowledged that the company’s protocols “were not up to scratch here.” Katy Gallagher, the minister for the public service, also admitted that inbox handling could be managed better, with it only being “looked at once a day” and being prone to receiving hoaxes.

On Sept. 16, OpenAI published “Our framework for reporting model misalignment” with six reports, just six days after the email. The outlet observes that the blog post didn’t appear “to mention this incident,” despite OpenAI being aware by August. OpenAI’s framework appears to allow for such a delay by design, for security reasons. Cases that affect a third party go on what OpenAI calls its “Slow Track,” where the company intends to publish “an initial notice as soon as possible.” The six existing reports came from faster tracks, which would explain the Australian case’s absence.

A taskforce led by the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, with assistance from the National Cybersecurity Coordinator, the Office of AI, ASD, the Australian AI Safety Institute, and Services Australia, will review whether existing processes are appropriate to respond to AI-related cyber incidents. A separate ASD-aided forensic investigation is underway as the government seeks urgent advice on whether any offenses occurred. The taskforce’s findings will also inform the development of Australia’s AI standards legislation.

This event follows increasing questions about AI safety, including British Columbia recently suing OpenAI and Altman over the technology’s use related to the Tumbler Ridge shooting. Rogue agents, particularly ones that stray into government systems, act to fuel uncertainty about current safeguards. The widely reported Hugging Face breach in July is part of a worrying timeline as agent autonomy continues to grow into a real-world AI safety issue. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s recent stark warning that “we have to shut the labs down” if AI experiments are unsafe reinforces the contined need for vigilance.

Paying for your new games or in-game content like new levels and skins might be about to get even easier if a newly published PlayStation patent is anything to go by. The patent, titled “Video Game Controller-Driven Information Transfer,” details a system that would allow a PlayStation controller to accept payments whenever a gamer taps it with their credit card or smartphone. It would work with gift cards, too.

The patent was first filed way back in March 2025, but it was only made public on September 17 this year before being spotted by Dexerto.

The patent includes artwork that shows how the payment system would potentially work. One example shows a TV displaying the question "Do you wish to purchase this game?" with a PS5 DualSense controller beside a smartphone. Another shows a "Gift card received!" message, confirming that we may be about to see the end of entering long strings of text just to top up a PlayStation Store balance.

PlayStation's patent also suggests that gamers could be prompted to buy a game after playing a demo at a retailer or event. The console would handle payment once a card or phone has been presented to a controller, although it's unclear if gamers would need to sign in to their PlayStation account for the purchase to be completed. The patent does allow for both NFC and Bluetooth to be used, so it's possible the PlayStation smartphone app may play a part here.

However, those hoping the patent would hint at a future PlayStation console or controller will be disappointed to learn that is very much not the case. Imagery used in the patent shows a recognizable PS5 console and DualSense controller.

There have been rumors of a PS6 launch as soon as 2027, but given the current state of play with regard to component shortages and price hikes, that's far from confirmed at this point. A delay until 2029 has also been rumored.

Just because Sony has a patent doesn't mean this idea will hit real PlayStations. Companies apply for (and are granted) patents all the time. Not everything depicted in those patents turn into shipping products or features. There are no guarantees this new payment system will ever see the light of day.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has a simple solution for frontier labs like OpenAI and Anthropic that have recently called for increased regulation for their models — "we have to shut the labs down," Huang said in an interview with The New York Times' Ezra Klein. Huang's comments are pragmatic ones, stating that if frontier labs can't contain their experiments, those experiments must end.

"Now, if they say the alternative, which is: There is no way to contain our experiments, there’s just no way; when we test our A.I. models, it will get out, and it will damage the world — then I think the answer is that we have to shut the labs down," Huang said. "Because the cost to humanity, the damage is too great. The shareholder, the liabilities — it could be civil liabilities, it could be criminal liabilities. I mean, the liability’s incredible."

The conversation around increased AI regulation comes on the back of a highly publicized incident where an OpenAI agent hacked popular model hosting platform Hugging Face — a platform that Nvidia now owns, and one that likely would've sought damages from OpenAI had it been under Nvidia's purview at the time. Following that incident, various frontier labs, including those at Anthropic and Alphabet (Google), have used the idea of rogue agents as equal parts marketing tool and call to regulatory action, likely in an attempt to be the first at the table to shape those regulations.

Huang has not been keen on those regulatory calls. Just days ago, the executive countered extreme claims that AI would destroy the world by 2030, and said that frontier labs "never should ship products before they're ready and deliver products that are unsafe."

Although the labs and their chief hardware vendor, Nvidia, have mostly been aligned when it comes to AI policy, the push for regulatory capture has created a rift. Multiple labs, including OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceXAI, agreed mutually to slow the pace of model development. Now, they're facing an antitrust lawsuit, with claims these plans are "self-serving."

Huang's comments to Klein shift the responsibility away from collective development and toward individual leaders. "These are companies with agency," Huang said. "If I believe that I'm about to launch a product that is unsafe, it is completely in my ability... to not launch that product. And so I can't buy into the idea that somehow, all of Americans, around 400 million of us, are pushing them to launch untested products that are unreliable."

Although one side of the argument (from the frontier labs) is seemingly pushing for more regulation, that doesn't mean Huang is against regulation. In his own words: "I’m saying that we have lots of laws and regulations. Apply it." The executive argued that labs, particularly those at OpenAI and Anthropic, have rapidly gone from research institutions to companies likely worth hundreds of billions of dollars, and that they should carry themselves as such. "I’m not against laws and regulations. I’m against, currently, the distraction," Huang said.

Reports of rogue AI agents continue to mount. Earlier this month, Anthropic disclosed a fourth instance where one of its models hacked an external system, and just days ago, Google confirmed a report that its Gemini models hacked three companies earlier this year.

Bookstores in Japan are enjoying a boom in sales right now. However, this welcome spurt in business, where used books are bought in the 100s or even by the ton, is causing mixed feelings among owners of these businesses, reports NTV Japan (machine translation). It is suspected that many of the well-read hardbacks and paperbacks, often directed to “a logistics center in Okayama Prefecture,” will be scanned and then pulped by one of the foreign AI tech giants.

We’ve previously reported on AI companies scanning and then destroying millions of books in the U.S. and Europe. Now reports indicate that the AI vandals are running similar schemes in Japan.

According to NTV, there has been a large swell of orders being placed with bookstores that sell via online marketplaces. In interviews, some stores have reported selling 100s of books per day via these channels, or even days when sales have multiplied fivefold.

The Japanese news site notes there are records of a 50-ton consignment of Japanese books being shipped to the U.S. to be churned through Anthropic’s destructive scanning process. It has also heard that a used bookstore in Western Japan has received an email from a foreign company inquiring about an order of tens of thousands of books.

There are several other AI-is-vacuuming-up-my-culture tells in the new NTV story. The Japanese news site says that while the multiple accounts are responsible for the surge in bulk orders, they all request shipment to a logistics center in Okayama Prefecture. Unfortunately, the logistics center operator wouldn’t comment or answer questions from NTV.

The genre purchasing pattern of the bulk buyers also hints at an AI scan and shred operation. A Tokyo bookstore owner told NTV that it used to be novels and comics that sold the most. However, the increased orders have recently been in genres like philosophy, history, political history, medicine, law, and topics such as “life and culture in the Edo period.”

There are mixed feelings among the used bookstore owners who were interviewed. There’s something of a boom to be enjoyed now, with sales rocketing. Clearly, though, if used books are fully removed from circulation, there will be impacts on the prospects of businesses – like stock availability and pricing.

There’s also the question of the removal of important cultural works from circulation if this trend continues. Another moral question concerns the use of copyrighted works for AI learning. This is still legal in Japan, unless it can be demonstrated that the scanning unfairly harms the interests of the copyright holder. With underhand bulk operations like these, it isn’t likely anyone will be asked for permission about their book being scanned.

The Blue Yeti launched back in 2009 and went on to become one of the most popular USB microphones for creators, podcasters, and streamers. Now, eight years after acquiring Blue Microphones, Logitech is finally launching its successor. The new Yeti 2 arrives as a more modern version with a cleaner design and features a 3D proximity sensor, AI-based noise reduction, and even a built-in display. Unlike the original Yeti, however, it will be available in only two colors — Black and White — at a starting price of $159.99.

• Grab the Logitech Yeti 2 microphone from Amazon

Logitech says the proximity sensor on the Yeti 2 is capable of tracking audio in 3D and can automatically adjust various settings in real time, including gain, equalizer, and pickup patterns. As for the AI denoiser, it can actively filter out unwanted background noise such as keyboard clacks, mouse clicks, and fan noise to ensure crystal-clear audio.

The Yeti 2 also retains the USB connectivity that helped make the original microphone popular, while adding several features aimed at making it easier to adjust settings on the fly. The integrated 1.3-inch colored LED display features an easy-to-use interface with an 8-bit Yeti mascot that provides quick information and helpful tips. It also allows you to tweak settings or switch between presets using the dial, without having to rely on dedicated software. Alternatively, the mic offers direct integration with Logitech’s G Hub software for deeper settings control, community-powered Blue VO!CE profiles, and custom avatar uploads.

In addition to its latest microphone, Logitech also announced some gaming-focused products under its G Pro series. The new gaming lineup includes the Pro X3 Superstrike mouse, Pro X Control mousepad, Pro X2 Rapid keyboard, and Pro X3 Lightspeed headset, all designed with input from professional esports athletes.

The Pro X3 Superstrike uses Logitech’s proprietary HITS technology and is claimed to deliver 50% improved power efficiency in a lightweight design. The Pro X Control mousepad measures 400 x 460 mm and features a knitted cloth surface, 6 mm foam cushioning, stitched edges, and a high-friction base for stability. The Pro X2 Rapid keyboard comes with magnetic switches, Rapid Trigger, Key Priority, and an OLED display that allows users to make quick adjustments. Finally, the Pro X3 Lightspeed headset features a 48 kHz microphone, customizable EQ, and extended battery life aimed at long competitive gaming sessions.

With RAMageddon, the storage apocalypse, GPU stagnation, and GPU price increases all happening more or less simultaneously, this is the worst time to build a PC that I can remember — and I built my first PC in the previous century (powered by an AMD K6-2). If you have a rig that meets your needs at the moment (even if just barely), current prices probably make you more interested in keeping it running than in considering major upgrades or, even more daunting, starting over from scratch with a new build.

But fret as we might about the future of our much-beloved component-swapping hobby, a few articles and experiences in recent weeks have given me glimpses of the PC-building future, and I don’t think it’s all bad — at least so long as you have time to research and tinker, you can live without the highest-end components, or you have enough of a build budget that price doesn’t matter much.

Old parts get a new life, with some patient tweaking

First off, we recently tested AMD’s BC-250, a 2021-era APU that started off as defective or cut-down PS5 silicon, repurposed as a cryptomining card. But more recently, a community-developed BIOS and drivers have turned this custom hardware into a Linux-based competitor to Valve’s much-hyped Steam Machine, while costing roughly half the price of a similarly configured system, once you source the power supply and other necessary parts. It even comes with 16GB of shared GDDR6, sidestepping the current RAM pricing issue altogether.

Now, this is more of a project than a PC. You have to source the card (from places like AliExpress, eBay, or Etsy), then research and figure out how to flash the board so that it will even boot, followed by getting Linux and the requisite drivers installed, before you can even think about playing games. But depending on your sample, you might also be able to unlock extra CPU cores and compute units for even better performance.

It’s far from a simple setup. But this kind of community-led hardware repurposing and enhancement reminds me of two distinct hardware eras: The very early days of PC kits (which I wasn’t really around for), and the early 2000s, when you could unlock AMD Athlon and Duron multipliers with a pencil (or later, conductive silver lacquer). Unlocking higher clocks and extra performance without paying for a much pricier chip is exactly the kind of achievable dream that the PC enthusiast hobby was founded on, and it’s good to see it making a comeback – even if it’s with this one very specific piece of hardware.

But as AI hardware development continues — and especially if (or when) specific areas of the hardware bubble pop or deflate – I expect to see more situations where communities of tinkerers figure out how to get discarded hardware to run games and other compute tasks, giving budget buyers hope for acceptable performance at reasonable prices. Ironically, AI tools like Claude Code will almost certainly make breakthroughs in hardware repurposing much easier.

To boldly go (to price brackets) where no PC has gone before

On the other end of the PC price spectrum, I recently assembled a PC using parts from Asus’ ROG Edition 20 line. The anniversary hardware, which debuted earlier this year at Computex, ignores affordability concerns entirely. Asus instead opted to celebrate two decades of its Republic of Gamers sub-brand by taking several of its already expensive parts and peripherals, adding a few (mostly aesthetic) features and some gold accents, and charging even more for them.

How much more? The finished PC, with about $2,000 worth of peripherals, a $3,300 motherboard and cooler combo, and a $6,000 RTX 5090, costs roughly $15,000 – and that’s with a modest 2TB SSD and 32GB of RAM. If you opt for a more fitting 128GB kit with tight timings and 8TB of solid-state storage, you could easily spend $20,000 on a build like this.

As tough as it is for many of us to swallow, there’s likely a large enough customer base of gamers and PC enthusiasts who can and will pay whatever it takes to own high-end, high-performance PCs to keep options like this afloat. Because while the cost of individual parts has certainly increased, the luxury PC market has existed for decades. I know because in the years before I joined Tom’s Hardware, I reviewed several PCs with custom cooling loops and multiple graphics cards (up to quad-SLI) from the likes of Digital Storm and Maingear. That market isn’t going away; it’s just getting more expensive.

The murky future of mainstream desktop gaming PCs

So what about the mainstream PC gaming market? Things are tougher there, and I suspect that space will continue to shrink due to, well, everything I linked to up top. Those looking for gaming options in the sub-$2,000 range that “just work” without much tinkering are more likely to make do with consoles (which are, of course, also getting more expensive), gaming laptops or handhelds, or console-like PCs like Valve’s Steam Machine.

Intel and AMD are reviving or extending the lifespan of chips and platforms that support last-gen DDR4, but older memory isn’t getting any cheaper either. And our own testing has shown that DDR4 is increasingly holding back gaming performance.

There was a brief hope that Chinese memory makers like CXMT might help bring down DDR5 prices. But U.S. approval for that seems unlikely, especially as the FCC is busy banning humanoid robots and robot vacuum cleaners built overseas. And, of course, companies like CXMT aren’t looking to be PC saviors. They want to sell their RAM to AI hyperscalers for the same high prices as SK hynix, Micron, and Samsung. And even if DDR5 somehow suddenly became more affordable, GPU prices are also continuing to climb, and storage (SSDs and hard drives) faces similar pricing issues.

Can software save the day?

Like it or not, we’ll certainly see further advancements in AI upscaling and other VRAM tweaks and tricks that make modern gaming possible on older and current-gen cards with 8GB or even 4GB of VRAM before the price of RAM, storage, and GPUs drop significantly.

Will it be enough to keep PC gaming enticing and affordable enough to prop up the mainstream PC gaming market? That’s tough to say with any certainty at this point, but if being a PC enthusiast since the 1990s (and a PC gamer since the late 1980s) has taught me one thing, it’s that this hobby is resilient. Some will pay what they need to pay for high-end hardware. Some will find suitable solutions by tinkering with repurposed silicon. And others will forge a middle ground that works for them.

I transitioned from a PC enthusiast to a full-time professional covering the PC and related hardware space in 2008. Even back then, people were telling me that the desktop was dead or dying. Instead, it has evolved and survived for nearly 20 years, through the smartphone revolution, past soldered-on laptop components, through two cycles of Steam Machines, and the death of physical game media. Meanwhile, game stores like Steam rake in record profits, indicating that the demand for PC gaming remains high. All this tells me that PC building and PC gaming will need to continue to evolve, but it’s not quite on the endangered hardware list yet.

A Chinese tech firm’s crowd-funded project has touched off a firestorm over U.S. export controls after an analyst spotted a heavily restricted, military-grade AMD chip in its design selling for pennies on the dollar. The discovery — and the analyst’s subsequent call for a treason investigation — puts a sharp spotlight on how easily dual-use silicon can bypass strict U.S. national security sanctions through third-party supply chains ... despite corporate denials of direct sales.

Dylan Patel, the head of top semiconductor analysis company SemiAnalysis, has discovered that China's Puzhi Electronic Technology is crowdfunding development of a system based on AMD's Zync UltraScale+ XCZU47DR RFSoC, which is a U.S. export-controlled dual-use component. He called on the government to investigate AMD for treason.

"AMD found a business opportunity in dumping U.S. military chips for ¼ of the cost in China," Patel wrote in an X post. "U.S. list price is $36K for this chip, with $4K – 5K to U.S. companies at volume, but it is getting quoted $1K in China to crowdfunding campaigns. AMD needs to be investigated for treason. It is not just export violations, but it is literally selling military end use components to an adversary for less than your home country."

In a statement to Tom's Hardware, AMD denied selling or shipping the chips directly into the restricted region. The company says it investigates suspected diversion cases to determine whether any violation of law occurred, although it did not explicitly confirm that it had opened an investigation into this particular case.

"AMD is committed to full compliance with all U.S. and global export regulations and has a clear policy requiring our distributors, resellers, and customers to do the same," a spokesperson told Tom's Hardware. "Any shipment into restricted regions is a direct violation of our policy. This recent instance is unrelated to any direct AMD sales or shipments. We investigate all suspected diversion cases and if we find any violation of law, we will report it to relevant authorities and cease all business with the company."

AMD told Patel the same, according to another X post he made as a follow-up on the matter.

AMD's Zynq UltraScale+ XCZU47DR RFSoCs pack four general-purpose Arm cores, two Cortex-R5F real-time cores, an FPGA with 930,000 gates, and DSP engines with 4,272 DSP slices. It also has eight 14-bit analog-to-digital converters (ADC) capable of up to 5 GSPS and eight 14-bit digital-to-analog converters (DAC) operating at up to 9.85 GSPS to receive, process, and generate RF signals in real time without relying on separate data converters.

Devices based on Zynq UltraScale+ RFSoCs are used for software-defined radios, radar and phased-array systems, wireless and satellite communications, electronic test equipment, and other applications that require high-bandwidth, low-latency signal processing. Puzhi Electric officially positions its upcoming systems based on the Zynq UltraScale+ RFSoCs for 'professional engineers' and 'advanced researchers in universities,' though such systems can be used for completely different applications.

AMD's Zynq UltraScale+ XC-series RFSoCs are designed for commercial and industrial applications, but AMD also offers separate XQ-series defense-grade RFSoCs for aerospace and defense applications, although there the XCZU47DR does not have a direct XQZU47DR counterpart. Yet, the closely related ZU48DR is available in both XC and XQ versions. The latter adds defense-oriented qualification, ruggedization, and support rather than fundamentally different processing capabilities.

Therefore, while the XCZU47DR is technically aimed at civil, commercial, and industrial applications, the chip is a dual-use component featuring a 3A001.a.14 ECCN classification under the U.S. Commerce Control List (CCL) and therefore its exporting, re-exporting, or transferring normally requires a BIS export license to non-allied destinations (e.g., China) on anti-terrorist and national security concerns. This means that any shipment to China requires a license, but in practical reality, that license will almost certainly be denied. However, there is a license exception that allows shipping such items to commercial companies from the Group B countries, which means legitimate exports to dozens of states from where such goods could get to China illegally.

This might explain how Puzhi obtained its XCZU47DR devices, but it does not explain the enormous apparent difference between the prices available to Chinese and American buyers. The $1,000 figure, however, is Patel's reported price for the chip rather than a publicly advertised retail offer.

Xilinx, which AMD later acquired, introduced its 3^rd Generation Zynq UltraScale+ RFSoC family, including the XCZU47DR, in February 2019, and the devices reached production status in 2020, meaning that they have been on the market for almost six years now. Xilinx and then AMD have sold the unit to tens, if not hundreds, of companies in different countries, so determining the origin of the units that Puzhi has might be difficult.

It should be noted that lead times for XCZU47DR at various resellers like Avnet and DigiKey are 40 to 52 weeks, which indicates that the components are in high demand in the U.S. and Europe. Meanwhile, Puzhi claims it can ship its system based on the RFSoC on November 6, 2026.

GMKtec already has an AMD Strix Halo mini PC in its stables, in the form of the Evo-X2. Now, just six months later, we have another AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 processor-packing mini PC from GMKtec in the labs. The obvious difference is that the Evo-X3 has a brand new chassis and cooling design, it also comes with 128GB of LPDDR5X-8000 as standard. Those are welcome changes. Half a year later, though, the price has basically doubled as seemingly every electronics product with RAM and NAND chips inside has been affected by the ongoing component shortage.

The result is a desirable computer that will offer strong appeal to enthusiasts who want machines with a large pool of fast, unified RAM, in a competently revamped case. But you will have to have quite a compelling reason to part with the $3,799.99 our 128GB/2TB configuration costs in mid-2026.

Design of the GMKtec Evo-X3 AI Mini PC

GMKtec has thoroughly revamped its Evo-X family with the new X3. Gone is the short-but-stout design, where we saw a plastic inner case sandwiched by some brushed aluminum. Now GMKtec has gone almost entirely metal, with the exception of a textured and vented soft-touch green plastic cap. This towering new design, which is over 14-inches tall with the base attached, features a metal CNC chassis. That body feels very strong, the panels seem thick, and the base is made from a matching material. Where the mini PC meets the desk, there’s a pair of broad padded rubberized feet that you stick on after unpacking and fixing the metal base on the device.

While still in mini PC territory, the Evo-T3 is pushing it a bit at roughly 2.7 liters. Its flat base is about 4-inches wide, which helps it stay very stable on the desk. There are no side feet, which makes running it on its side inadvisible. Users will also have to hide away the large power brick if they are after the cleanest minimal workspace.

GMKtec Evo-X3 specifications

Ports and Upgradeability

GMKtec keeps the front of its mini PC simple with just three ports and the power button. In the top third of the tower’s facade, there’s a central green power button with a white LED ring lit when it is powered up. The middle third of the front is left plain, but the lower third has one USB 3.2 Gen 1, one USB 2.0, and a 3.5mm audio combo jack. I wish there was a Type-C port on the front, preferably USB4 or better.

Around the back it has a good variety of ports, but I wouldn’t describe them as numerous. You will find a USB‑A 3.2 Gen 2 port, a USB4 Type‑C (PD 3.0 / DP-alt) port, an HDMI 2.1 port, an OCuLink PCIe Gen 4 ×4 port, an RJ‑45 2.5G LAN port, and a DC‑IN barrel jack. Ideally, I’d like to have a full size DP port, as well as a second USB4 port, plus more USB-A ports. If I were to use this as a daily driver I think I’d need to connect a fast USB docking solution for the oodles of peripherals I like to have ready and connected.

Wireless connectivity seems adequate enough, with an M.2 2230 card inside providing Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4. I had no problems with either during the test period.

Access to the components inside the GMKtec Evo-X3 is straightforward, but takes time as there are eight Torx-6 screws securing the side panel in place. Once they were all unscrewed I needed to use a guitar pick and a bit of gravity to tilt the heavy panel off. Removing of the panel allowed access to the two M.2 PCIe 4.0 x4 slots, one of which was already populated with a Crucial P310 2TB M.2 NVMe SSD fitted with a slim heatsink. In the opposite corner of the chassis I saw an M.2 2230 socketed MediaTek wireless card. There are no other internal user upgrade or repair options as the 128GB of LPDDR5X-8000 RAM is soldered to the motherboard.

Test System Setup

Productivity Performance on the GMKtec Evo-X3

GMKtec describes the Evo-X3 as a machine that targets AI workloads, but first we ran through our standard mini PC benchmark comparison suite, which targets more general computing usage.

A brief glimpse at the tech specs of the X3 reveals that it has lots of modern fast CPU cores, supported by one of the best iGPUs, and plenty of RAM and storage. It should make light work of our productivity benchmarks, and indeed its 16C/32 core AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 CPU left its mini PC rivals eating dust, most strikingly in multi-threaded tests.

As we expected, the single core tests show the GMKtec Evo-X3 is a competent performer in the context of the competition in our charts. It isn’t the only Zen 5 machine in this race, so it doesn’t get a chance to dazzle yet.

Moving onto the multi-core tests is where the Ryzen AI Max+ 395’s 32 threads show their potential for real-world data crunching performance. For example, in Y-cruncher it completed its Pi compute in around 60 seconds. That’s twice as fast as its nearest competitor in our mini PC charts, the Beelink SER10 Max.

Rendering in Cinebench is also strong. In Cinebench 2026, the X3 scored roughly 7,300 points in multi-core. That’s over 40% faster than its nearest competitor, the Arctic Senza AI 370. Video transcoding performance is also in a new class, with the Evo-X3 crushing the competition, achieving around 24 frames per second.

For some added AI benchmarking stats, we did a few tests in Geekbench AI and LM Studio Bionic to weigh the GMKtec Evo-X3 against the Evo-T2. These are both machines with large unified memory pools by default and which the makers claim to be local LLM champs.

Using Geekbench AI with the ONNX framework and DirectML backend the Evo-X3 achieved a half precision score of ~37,100. On the Evo-T2 using the same options, a score of ~23,060 was achieved.

However, machines like the GMKtec Evo-X3 and T2 might be picked up by consumers to work with local LLMs considerably larger than most consumer GPUs can load. With this in mind, I ran LM Studio Bionic chat sessions powered by the new Qwen3.8 27B Q4_K_M model on both machines. To use this 27 billion parameter model as intended, a machine needs around 20GB of ‘VRAM’ of shared memory to avoid undesirable side effects like out-of-memory errors and slowdowns.

I prompted the same tasks on both machines then analyzed the logs and found prompt processing was pretty similar between the platforms, ranging either side of 200 tok/s. However, the AMD Strix Halo Evo-X3 far outpaced the Panther Lake Evo-T2 by generating responses at up to 28 tok/s, compared with around 8 tok/s at best, respectively. It would be possible to tune these LLM speeds for each machine, but I didn’t tweak settings for the comparison tests. With 128GB of unified memory in the Evo-X3, allowing up to 96GB to be dedicated to the GPU, even larger models can be utilized for the most capable local AI chatbots, agents, generation workloads.

During our demanding tests, the GMKtec Evo-X3 stayed admirably cool and quiet. All our tests were done with the default 85W balanced profile, as the system shipped. Owners can also choose to run this system in Silent Mode (54W) or push it to Performance Mode (peak 140W).

Gaming and Graphics on the GMKtec Evo-X3

The GMKtec Evo-X3 is pretty good at gaming, thanks to its powerful CPU and iGPU with lots of fast memory onboard. Remember, the Ryzen AI Max 395+ has 16 Zen 5 CPU cores with 32 threads, and its Radeon RX 8060S iGPU features 40 CUs and 2,560 shader cores – more CUs than a vanilla PlayStation 5. The capacious LPDDR5X-8000 memory pool has a 256-bit interface.

Before moving onto our standard synthetic and AAA PC gaming tests, I decided to run around in Star Wars Outlaws. I chose the High preset, at 1440p, and kind of enjoyed this game, experiencing a performance level of mostly between 60 and 90 frames per second. The graphics weren't anything special, but I noticed the game was using about 9GB of VRAM which could have meant dips and stutters on systems packing 8GB GPUs and using the same graphics settings. While the CPU usage was mostly under 20%, the iGPU was nearer to 90%.

Next up, our benchmarks include a trio of 3DMark synthetics and two iconic PC gaming standards. In the 3DMark Solar Bay test, which seems most appropriate to the mini PCs we have tested in 2026, the Evo-X3 left the competitors in the dust with over 50,000 points. It was almost twice as fast as the Panther Lake B390 iGPU, and about three times as fast as the Radeon 890M machines that came with fast dual-channel RAM (like the aforementioned Arctic and Beelink mini PCs).

In 3DMark Steel Nomad we got a respectable score of 2,132, and the frame rate reached 21 FPS. It was a similar story in 3DMark Speed Way, where the Evo-X3 managed a score of 2,046. For some context this Speed Way result still lags behind my Asus Zephyrus G16 laptop with RTX 4060 Laptop GPU, which scored up to 2,425.

Moving on to real AAA games, let’s check the data provided by the multi-scene benchmarks built into Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Cyberpunk 2077. The former scales well with processor resources and can still often look and run great on humble iGPUs. As for Cyberpunk 2077, it can really push even the strongest modern GPUs, so here we've used two settings to show how the GMKtec Evo-X3 can perform. I thought both these titles looked better than Star Wars Outlaws, too.

The Shadow of the Tomb Raider High 1080p test resulted in an impeccably smooth 138 FPS on average, with the low of 126 FPS, on the Evo-X3. That’s a great score for a mini PC without a discrete graphics card. I was inspired to re-test at 1440p High, and the X3 still achieved an average 96 FPS / low 86 FPS.

In Cyberpunk 2077 the Evo-X3 managed to achieve 96 FPS using the 1080p High preset, with 1% lows at 78 FPS. This is certainly another candidate for moving up to 1440p and/or higher quality presets. CD Projekt Red also provides lots of upscaling tech (DLSS, FSR, XeSS) settings to adjust in this futuristic RPG, to try and get your sweet spot performance / resolution / quality setting dialed in.

Power, Heat, and Noise when using the GMKtec Evo-X3

When I left the GMKtec Evo-X3 to idle, my power meter measured wattages around 16W from the wall for the whole system. When the PC was pushed with simultaneous CPU and GPU benchmarks running, power draw seemed to peak at a little under 150W. GMKtec shipped this device with ‘Balanced Mode’ set in the BIOS, allowing the processor to consume up to 85W. The supplied 230W power brick had plenty in reserve, and it might need it in ‘Performance Mode’ where GMKtec says that the processor alone will demand up to 120W with peak power spikes to 140W.

System tools showed that during light activities like browsing the web, and typing reports like this one, the CPU temperature stuck around 42 degrees Celsius (in a 22 C room). Playing games for 30 or 40 minutes, the reported CPU temperature seemed to stay between 75 C and 82 C most of the time. The peak CPU temperature I saw was 85 C.

GMKtec’s powerful mini PC was a quiet operator at idle and under load. My measurements from about half a foot in front of the device show noise levels under 30 dBA at idle, which is very quiet and under the measurement threshold of my meter. Stressing the system with multiple CPU and GPU loads I managed to get nearly 37 dBA out of the system. This seemed an exceptional result during my testing, as most of the time the max noise level during benchmarks was nearer 33 dBA.

Software and Warranty on the GMKtec Evo-X3

The GMKtec Evo-X3 ships with Windows 11 Pro installed. Unlike its Evo-T2 brother, I found no pre-installed AI apps and tools on the X3. However, I note that the product page mentions GMKtec Claw and Wrangler as features. I installed LM Studio Bionic and Comfy UI for some AI testing, though.

GMKtec sells the Evo-X3 with a one-year warranty.

GMKtec Evo-X3 configurations

GMKtec sells only two Evo-X3 configurations in the U.S. Both machines feature the same processor and generous amounts of RAM. The only configuration choice is between a 2TB SSD (our model) and a 4TB SSD equipped model.

At the time of writing our 2TB configuration is listed at $3,799 but the product page says the price is normally $4,100. The 4TB model is currently $3,999, discounted from $4,349. We don’t know when the prices might get adjusted. Pricing for computers and devices with lots of RAM and storage is volatile right now.

Bottom Line

I was impressed by many aspects of the GMKtec Evo-X3 mini PC. Computing on a machine with so much RAM felt quite liberating. Especially when so much of it can be allocated to the system's iGPU. Moreover, the CPU and iGPU components of the SoC are plenty powerful for the compact form factor. I was also impressed by the X3's sleek design, solid build quality, and quiet operation.

No machine is perfect, though. For example, despite having a variety of ports available including USB4 and OCuLink, I felt there were not enough ports in total. To use this as my daily driver I’d feel pinched by the Evo-X3’s design offering just a single USB4 port, and one HDMI out.

The price is high, even considering the spec, but that's unfortunately common during this component shortage.

GMKtec sells its new Evo-X3 direct at the offer price of $3,799, as mentioned and linked above. At the time of writing we note that our GMKtec Evo-X3 128GB/2TB configuration is also available from Amazon U.S. at the same price, if you prefer.

If you like what you’ve seen of the Evo-X3, the nearest competitors that we have experience of are the Evo-X2, also from GMKtec, and AMD’s first-party, turn-key Strix Halo mini-PC. However, we know there are several next-gen Ryzen AI Max 495+ machines coming to retail soon. Depending on market pricing, configurations, design, and port selections of these refreshed ‘Gorgon Halo’ models, they might be worth waiting for. We saw Minisforum, Lenovo, GMKtec, Chuwi, and AceMagic with AI Max 495+ designs at IFA 2026 earlier this month.

With the RAMpocalypse in full swing and little relief in sight, we need to look for combo deals to get the best prices on items like RAM (and even those are fleeting today). This 3-item combo from Newegg is one of the better ones lately, offering the wicked-fast gaming processor Ryzen 7 9800X3D, 32GB of Corsair Vengeance DDR5-6000 RAM, and a quality motherboard in the Asus TUF Gaming X870E-Plus Wifi for only $1,050. A savings of $149. And if you apply the discount to the RAM, it’s only $351, which many would consider reasonable (for the times).

• Check out this deal at Newegg

First is one of the most popular and fastest current-generation CPUs for gaming: the Ryzen 7 9800X3D. This 8-core/16-thread Zen5-based processor has a base clock of 4.6 GHz and a max boost of 5.2 GHz, which is plenty of speed for any task. The X3D variant's 96MB of L3 cache helps with gaming (among other things), making it one of the fastest gaming CPUs available. It is also a well-rounded performer that excels in games and suits most applications. This combo also includes a free Rosewill FrostMax 240mm AIO with digital display (a $70 value), which easily handles the 120W processor.

The RAM portion of the bundle, Corsair’s Vengeance RGB 32GB (2x16GB) DDR5-6000 CL36 RAM kit, is currently available on Newegg for a wallet-emptying $499.99 (the price keeps going up) when bought separately. The good news is that the discount brings this RAM down to $351. This black kit matches the Asus TUF Gaming X870E-Plus Wifi board in this combo and features a frosted RGB light bar that runs the length of the sticks. If RGB lighting isn’t your thing and you prefer a stealthy, unassuming look, you can turn it off. The DDR5-6000 speed lands in the sweet spot for the AM5 platform and is a worthwhile, good-looking option. The SK Hynix ICs under the heatsink pair nicely with the board and offer plenty of overclocking headroom.

Last, the Asus TUF Gaming X870E-Plus Wifi 7 is a solid all-around motherboard for the AM5 platform. It delivers sufficient power to support flagship-class processors and easily handles the 9800X3D in the combo, even with some overclocking. It comes with four M.2 sockets (one PCIe 5.0), two SATA ports for storage, fast networking with integrated Wi-Fi 7 and 2,5 GbE, ample USB ports on the rear IO (13, including two USB4 40 Gbps Type-C), and a quality audio solution based on the last-gen Realtek flagship (ALC1220P). Asus’ AI solutions (AI Cache Boost, Overclocking, Cooling II, and Networking II) and the DIY-friendly design make it easy to build and get the most out of your system.

Newegg used to offer several Combo deals with RAM. Still, over the past few weeks, as stock continues to dwindle, we’ve seen them whittle down to only a couple that are worthwhile, so when you see something like this and are ready to pull the trigger, do it, as you never know how long it will last. If you’re in the market to buy a new AM5-based system, this 3-item $1,050 combo from Newegg, sporting 32GB of RAM, the venerable Ryzen 5 9800X3D, and a quality motherboard (don’t forget the free 240mm AIO and AMD game bundle!), is currently one of the least expensive ways into the platform.

Micron is reportedly pulling the plug on its 2 GB (16Gb) GDDR7 memory chips, ending production and sales of both the 28 Gbps and 32 Gbps variants. According to an X post by UNIKO’s Hardware, the chips — some of which shipped on some GeForce RTX 50 graphics cards — are now designated as “End of Life” on Micron's site. Tom’s Hardware can confirm that the pages for module norms return “No results found.”

Micron just began supplying its 2GB GDDR7 to Nvidia earlier this year, with Samsung and SK Hynix being the main GDDR7 suppliers. As a result, Micron's 2GB module only shipped on a few Nvidia models, such as retail variants of the GeForce RTX 5060. Samsung and SK Hynix cover the vast bulk of 2 GB GDDR7 modules for the standard RTX 50 retail lineup, so the risk of immediate shortages is minimal. Micron’s uncompetitive position in the 2 GB segment also appears to have made a fast exit logical to free up fabrication capacity.

The company is reportedly shifting its focus toward higher-density 3 GB (24 Gb) GDDR7 chips. These larger packages are considered impractical for Nvidia's RTX 50 lineup because they are more expensive and result in less conventional consumer memory capacities. However, they yield higher profit margins and are actively utilized in Nvidia's high-end RTX PRO Blackwell GPUs tailored for generative and agentic AI workloads.

Micron’s decision follows the ongoing trend of memory suppliers prioritizing AI-facing technologies over their consumer and retail counterparts. The company exited its Crucial consumer memory and SSD business earlier, explicitly saying that surging AI data-center demand had prompted it to prioritize larger strategic customers in faster-growing segments.

As the world's only supplier of EUV lithography systems, ASML is Europe's largest company by market capitalization, currently valued at around $660 billion. But it earned almost nothing in Europe this year, down from 1% of total profits in 2025 and 5% in 2024. Why? European chipmakers bought no lithography equipment from ASML in 2026 — and the company is calling on EU authorities to help create demand for European chips.

"We are selling absolutely nothing in Europe," said Frank Heemskerk, executive vice president of public affairs at ASML, while speaking at a panel discussion from the Dutch political and cultural center De Balie. "Because Europe is not investing and because no chip factories are being built in Europe. That is genuinely worrying. […] [Our revenue share in Europe is 0%], it used to be 1%."

Indeed, Europe accounted for 1% of ASML's revenue share in 2025, 5% in 2024, 4% in 2023, and 2% in 2022, based on the company's presentations for investors. In the first two quarters of 2026, however, Europe accounted for 0% of ASML's revenue, according to ASML's earnings reports.

"There simply is no demand here for these kinds of highly specialized machines," Heemskerk said. "That is the problem. So apart from trying to attract investment with capital on the supply side, we should do much more to create demand. […] So, we at ASML are also making an enormous effort, and we are talking with Ursula von der Leyen in Europe, saying: 'try to harness the market power and dynamism that ultimately do exist in Europe in a number of areas.'"

So far, the European Union has been keen on subsidizing building new fabs in Europe (something that did not help to lure Intel in). But ASML is calling on European governments to help aggregate and guarantee demand for European-made chips — which will encourage major European chip consumers to source locally, giving semiconductor manufacturers an economic reason to build or expand fabs in Europe.

"We need to make sure that some of those buyers — the customers of our customers — start talking much more closely with European manufacturers again. In areas such as artificial intelligence for industry, for example, there are still plenty of opportunities that Europe can seize. But you have to organize this collectively."

New fabs are being built…

That said, the ASML EVP may be too pessimistic about Europe's semiconductor industry.

Intel runs its massive Fab 34 near Leixlip, Ireland, and recently announced plans to invest €5 billion in the facility to expand production of CPUs on Intel 4 and Intel 3 process technologies. While the new investment dwarfs Intel's plans to invest roughly €80 billion in its Magdeburg, Germany, fab complex, with two first fabs alone accounting for over €30 billion, it still represents Intel's commitment to its Ireland campus.

In addition, ESMC — which is backed by TSMC, Bosch, Infineon, and NXP — is building a brand-new fab near Dresden that will cost around €15 billion. The fab will be capable of producing chips using 12nm/16nm-class FinFET and 22nm/28nm planar transistor-based process technologies used in a wide range of automotive applications. The same nodes are also used for various consumer electronics and edge applications.

Infineon also opened its new €5 billion Smart Power Fab in Dresden in July 2026, which marked the largest single investment in the company's history and effectively doubled its manufacturing capacity at the site. The 300mm facility produces power semiconductors as well as analog and mixed-signal chips for automotive, industrial, renewable-energy, and AI data-center applications.

Last but not least, GlobalFoundries officially broke ground on the latest major expansion and upgrade of Fab 1 in Dresden this March to increase capacity for its specialty process technologies, including 22nm FD-SOI (22FDX), embedded non-volatile memory (eNVM), and the BCD (bipolar-CMOS-DMOS) node for power management ICs. To some degree, the upgrade was forced by headwinds that GlobalFoundries faced when building the €10.4 billion joint fab with STMicroelectronics in the Grenoble, France, region.

With numerous semiconductor fab projects in place in Europe, ASML will continue to sell its tools to companies in the EU for years to come; the semiconductor industry is far from dead in the bloc. Of course, the important detail is that all of these production facilities are built by multinational corporations (sometimes in collaboration with local companies) — but this is largely a global trend rather than a major issue.

…But there's a catch

Although the fab projects in Europe are large in terms of investment, they pale in comparison with those being built in Taiwan, South Korea, the U.S., and Japan, where tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars are being invested in new semiconductor production facilities.

What is perhaps more important from ASML's standpoint is that none of the ongoing fab projects in Europe are leading-edge fabs set to use EUV and eventually High-NA EUV lithography scanners. The tools that European fabs use today and that new facilities are set to use in the future are mature tools that cost considerably less than advanced EUV or immersion DUV scanners. This is perhaps a concern for ASML, as the company is naturally interested in selling its more sophisticated and expensive equipment.

Another concern is that even advanced silicon produced in Ireland or at ESMC is then shipped to other regions for packaging, meaning that European companies have largely lost their ability to produce sophisticated chips entirely in Europe. In turn, this means that, for now, there is hardly any strategic point for European authorities to create demand for chips that are 'Made in Europe' because they are either not assembled in Europe, not produced in Europe, or not developed in Europe. We have no idea whether this is eventually going to change, but there are currently no signs that it will.

A 3D artist looking to purchase an RTX 5090 for their work claimed that they scored an unopened Asus ROG Astral RTX 5090 White OC from the secondhand market. According to Wccftech, the artist purchased the GPU expecting that it was signed by an Asus executive in celebration of the company’s 30th anniversary. But when they opened the package, they found the Nvidia chief’s signature on it instead.

Jensen Huang autographed the GPU and showed it off on camera last year, after which it was supposed to be given away by one lucky gamer. The artist did not mention how much they bought the “used” GPU for, but brand-new models of the RTX 5090 now hit $5,000 and can go up even higher, depending on the model. They also said that after opening the box, they did not use or test it, opting to sell it instead because of the immense value that such a limited-edition graphics card held for the right buyer.

This specific GPU is now in the hands of the Bonhams auction house, with bidding set for Oct. 4 to 14, 2026. It’s estimated that the graphics card will fetch somewhere between $10,000 and $15,000, especially as it bears the signature of Nvidia’s founder. However, it should be noted that an Asus ROG Matrix RTX 4090 sold for $16,000 back in 2023, while an Asus ROG Astral RTX 5090 Dhabab OC Edition was auctioned off last year for $24,200. Both GPUs were also autographed by Jensen, so there’s a good chance that this graphics card could fetch a much higher price.

Another Jensen Huang-related object was put on the auction block earlier this year and hit a record price. The leather Tom Ford jacket that the CEO wore at the Hon Hai (Foxconn) Tech Day in Taipei way back in October 2023 went up on Sotheby’s, where it was estimated that it would fetch somewhere between $40,000 and $60,000. However, the final price ended up at $960,000 — more than a hundred times higher than the jacket’s $9,000 price tag from the manufacturer.

Even though Jensen Huang isn’t a celebrity in the traditional sense, his approachable public persona and success story have made him quite popular among his fans. This “Jensanity” is prevalent in Taiwan, where he was originally from, and many see him as the bearer of Taiwanese pride and treat him like a pop star. It seems that this translates to his rich fans, too, with a few who are willing to spend thousands of dollars just to get their hands on autographed “artifacts” from the billionaire.

Components from one of the free world’s most advanced fighter jets are now in the possession of the Chinese, according to a Bloomberg report. An Australian F-35 stealth fighter cockpit canopy and weapons-bay door, sent back to Lockheed Martin in the U.S., went missing en route. The source report suggests something irregular happened with the shipment, resulting in it stopping in South Korea, then being routed through Hong Kong, where Chinese authorities took possession of the consignment.

Talking to Bloomberg, sources who preferred to not be identified said that the Australian F-35 parts were sent to the U.S. for inspection, and possible repair or disposal. The components may also be of interest to potential military foes as they are “coated with radar-absorbing material that enhances their stealth capabilities,” notes the report. The coating’s secret recipe may be more sensitive than the actual airplane parts.

We’ve put together a timeline to make the chain of events thus far as clear as possible:

• Late May 2026: Australia sends F-35 cockpit canopy and weapons-bay door to the U.S. for inspection, possible repair, or disposal.
• On its way to the U.S., the cargo plane stopped in South Korea. It isn’t clear why the shipment paused here.
• Then the F-35 parts consignment was diverted through Hong Kong “inexplicably,” says the source.
• The Chinese government took possession of the parts in HK.
• China hasn’t returned or released the parts. The Chinese Foreign Ministry in Beijing says it is unaware of the missing parts.

Bloomberg reports that the Chinese have targeted espionage efforts on the F-35 for years, trying to learn as much as possible about one of the world’s most advanced fighter jets. Only the U.S.’s closest allies can build military capabilities around this cutting-edge stealth warplane. Concerns regarding soft targets for Chinese espionage meant a U.S. bid to sell F-35s to the UAE during the first Trump presidency collapsed. Any Saudi Arabian sale would probably meet the same fate.

Australia says that it is looking closely at the chain of events leading up to the loss of the parts from its end. However, it seems confident its return process was not at fault. This makes one wonder whether the rerouting of the shipment through Hong Kong was a vulnerability in the shipping company's process, or whether a Chinese agent managed to interfere.

The Pentagon says it is working to retrieve the “unserviceable F-35 components.” Moreover, this incident’s investigation will surely lead to a process review to prevent further military high-tech spills. Lockheed echoed the Pentagon’s language regarding the unserviceable nature of the parts and the low risk of them being exploited, though it insists it uses government-mandated secure carriers. Lastly, Bloomberg says that UPS disclosed the incident to U.S. authorities but has made no further comment.

President Xi Jinping arrived in the U.S. yesterday evening for a state visit hosted by President Donald Trump. We’re sure they will have plenty to talk about.

External GPUs (eGPU) have been tried time and again, and while they have found their niche among laptop users, they're not commonplace. Now that the AI craze is in full swing, more people are looking into owning a graphics card of some sort for the single purpose of running LLMs locally. The WiCi One is designed with that specific scenario in mind, but adds wireless connectivity, multi-device support, and onboard storage.

That list of words usually doesn't belong in the same sentence as GPUs, so it merits close inspection. First and foremost, the WiCi One leverages the WiFi 7 protocol to transmit data to and from the card. The firm says that client machines keep a GPU driver that makes the operating system think it's a graphics card just like any other, while in reality they'll be talking to the WiCi One over the network.

However, as WiCi explains in great detail, just blindly doing that would make for a terrible eGPU, as the standard communication between host and card is extremely chatty. That's not a problem with the sub-microsecond latency of PCIe 5.0, but would quickly turn even basic status querying operations into multi-second affairs. Large computations with lots of data shuffled back and forth could hypothetically take hours.

The company claims its driver software performs a great deal of data caching, deduplication, and compression, and is also very judicious about what type of hardware requests can be handled locally versus those that really do need to go over the airwaves.

This mode of operation and its corresponding separation of concerns bring several advantages: theoretically, the one GPU could be used on multiple machines. There are Python libraries for passing the WiCi One as any other GPU to LLMs, and also a standard HTTP API for network access, once again lending credence to the fact that multiple clients could use the WiCi One without any special configuration.

Running LLMs means shuffling a substantial amount of data back-and-forth, and contemporary models with a Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) architecture can run locally using an SSD as a fallback. WiCi took a clever approach and incorporated a 4 TB PCIe 5.0 SSD directly into the enclosure, in a bid to store model weights to both enable larger models and indirectly save on cross-network transfers.

WiCi also mentions that the card can also run games without modification, but doesn't elaborate on what kind of performance is expected. The documentation only ever mentions Vulkan and Direct3D, and hedges the fact that "[not] every API must be complete on day one." WiFi makes for a poor technology to underpin a real-time endeavor like pushing millions of polygons and textures in, and the resulting images out, in just 16.67ms for 60 FPS, so we'll venture that gamers will be best served with conventional eGPUs.

The base spec comes with an RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB graphics card, and is slated for a 2026 Q4 preview, with no release date set in stone. WiCi plans to offer a variant with an RTX 5090 and its 32 GB of VRAM, albeit there's no word on when that will arrive, much less at which price — especially considering those cards alone are currently going for well over 7 grand, and have been spotted selling for far more.

The asking price for all this is $1,999 for early signups, and $2,599 otherwise, for the base spec. Those figures might sound steep, but they're actually fairly reasonable if the WiCi packaging and software stack deliver. A quick skim of Newegg puts an RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB graphics card at $800 or more, while an NVMe 4 TB PCIe 5.0 SSD is a little pricier at $850. Once you factor in a hypothetical $100 for a power supply and another $100 for the case, Wi-Fi card, and assorted bits and bobs, you're at $1,850 already.

Despite strong launch sales, the Lisuan Tech LX 7G100 was clearly more of a domestic win for China than a contender against the best graphics cards on the market. Recent benchmark results published by German outlet PC Games Hardware (PCGH) show that the Chinese-made LX 7G100 still has a long way to go, offering only comparable performance to the nine-year-old Radeon RX 580 — but trailing by as much as 35% behind the seven-year-old GeForce RTX 2060.

Originally touted as a competitor to the GeForce RTX 4060, the LX 7G100 hit the market with high expectations. Initial benchmarks, however, quickly dispelled much of the early hype. Now, four months after its launch and following several driver updates, we once again see the LX 7G100 in the spotlight, but despite ongoing driver refinements, the graphics card's performance looks like it has flatlined.

The LX 7G100’s current performance closely matches AMD’s Radeon RX 580 and delivers a modest 5% boost over the Polaris-based card. It also outpaces Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 1060 6GB by a notable 23%. In its current state, the LX 7G100 does not have what it takes to challenge more modern models in the upper echelon of the mid-range graphics card market.

The LX 7G100 lags by more than 2.2X behind current models, such as the GeForce RTX 4060 or GeForce RX 5050. When benchmarked against the latest GeForce RTX 5060, the LX 7G100 delivers only about a third of the performance. An obvious technological gap remains between Lisuan Tech and industry giants such as Nvidia, AMD, and even Intel, and it still has a lot of catching up to do.

Lisuan Tech LX 7G100 Benchmarks

In its defense, the LX 7G100 has already cleared one of the biggest hurdles that typically hinder Chinese chipmakers: driver support. Many graphics cards from emerging Chinese manufacturers have historically suffered from poor compatibility and software support. Lisuan Tech not only became the first Chinese chipmaker to obtain WHQL support for a graphics card, but the LX 7G100 launched with stable DirectX 12 gaming compatibility from the get-go. This alone has enabled the LX 7G100 to run a wide variety of modern games, including Cyberpunk 2077, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Assassin’s Creed Shadows, and Battlefield 6, to name a few.

Lisuan Tech is clearly committing to improving its drivers. In the past four months alone, the Chinese chipmaker has rolled out three WHQL-certified driver updates. Drivers take time to mature, and given that the LX 7G100 has not even been on the market for a year, it is unreasonable to expect Lisuan Tech to match decades of expertise like Nvidia and AMD.

From a hardware standpoint, the LX 7G100, which leverages TSMC’s N6 FinFET process node, is not a bad graphics card. The silicon houses 6,144 shading units and clocks up to 2,000 MHz to deliver a peak FP32 performance of 24.5 TFLOPs. The LX 7G100's 12GB of GDDR6 memory runs across a 192-bit memory interface to provide a maximum bandwidth of up to 432 GB/s. On paper, these metrics place the LX 7G100 close to the GeForce RTX 3060 12GB or Radeon RX 6700 XT. Currently, the GeForce RTX 3060 12GB is twice as fast as the LX 7G100.

A 2X performance gap is certainly not something that's easy to close. Who knows just how much is left in the tank for the LX 7G100. Maybe Lisuan Tech has already pushed the hardware to its limits, or maybe some driver magic will put the LX 7G100 a few steps closer to the GeForce RTX 3060 12GB. Only time will tell, and it will be interesting to revisit the LX 7G100 in a few months' time.

British Columbia is suing OpenAI to pay for a new school after a mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge earlier this year, according to an Ars Technica report. B.C. accuses OpenAI of “aiding and abetting a mass shooting,” alleging that ChatGPT reinforced the shooter’s violent ideation and that OpenAI failed to warn police.

B.C. and the local school district are suing both OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman for related costs, including the costs of the emergency response and a replacement school and wellness center. In addition, the province is demanding that ChatGPT make safety changes and also wants the shooter’s chat logs produced. OpenAI only shared said logs with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police after the shooting. The lawsuit involves eight counts, including negligence, and is seeking both punitive and compensatory damages.

The shooting took place in February. The shooter killed their mother and half-brother at home, and then went on to kill five students and an education assistant at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School. This occurred in a town of about 2,400 people. The school never reopened, and demolition began in August. The federal and provincial governments have committed $100 million each for new construction, according to the complaint.

OpenAI flagged the shooter’s ChatGPT account as early as June 2025 due to gun violence-related scenario discussions. According to the complaint, the reviewers who examined the related chats concluded the shooter posed a credible risk and recommended a referral to the authorities. OpenAI leadership declined, saying the case did not meet a “higher threshold” for “credible and imminent” threat reporting. OpenAI deactivated the account, but the shooter continued to use ChatGPT via a second account. Although OpenAI stated that respect for the shooter’s privacy backed the decision, Altman later apologized for not alerting police.

The complaint also targets OpenAI’s Model Spec, its guidelines for how AI models should behave. B.C. says the spec advised ChatGPT to “assume best intentions” without asking the user to clarify intent before making a refusal decision. By spec, the model must “try” to prevent imminent real-world harm, but refusal is required if the user signals illicit intent. If the user’s intent is unclear and the request isn’t otherwise off-limits, the model follows that no-questions rule. According to OpenAI’s spec, its production models do not fully follow these guidelines, and the complaint adds that an anti-violence “red line” was only added in December 2025.

B.C. also challenges OpenAI’s counterargument on privacy, as the company already had confidential information including the user’s name, email, and IP addresses, and IP-derived general location for both of the shooter’s accounts. OpenAI’s privacy policy outside the EU and U.S., including the version in force in June 2025, does allow for the sharing of personal data with government authorities to protect the public. These terms leave calling the police optional.

This follows 37 other U.S. lawsuits over Tumbler Ridge since the shooting. OpenAI has yet to respond to the complaint but could argue against the California filing for reasons of geographic convenience. The province wants those logs produced immediately, which will affect the complaint. OpenAI is also facing other lawsuits related to safety, including one in Florida over claims it marketed its service while concealing potential risks, including those to children. More important and lasting than any compensation is how the outcome of these cases will impact AI safety and privacy in the future.

If you’re one of the many consumers who are still struggling to find ways to spend your hard-earned money in the PC space, we found a deal that has nothing to do with ridiculously priced components like RAM, video cards, and storage, but still makes a difference in your computing experience. Newegg recently dropped the price of the MSI MAG 272QP QD-OLED X24 monitor to a palatable $359.99 (from its $499.99 MSRP) when using promo code SSF73849, just $10 away from its all-time low ($349.99), according to Camelcamelcamel. It's currently one of the best deals around on a high-quality 27-inch 4K QD-OLED with a high refresh rate.

Check out this deal on Newegg

This monitor is ready for any type of gaming you can throw at it, from MMOs that don’t need the high refresh rate but lean into the wide color gamut (98% RGB/99% DCI-P3/138% SRGB, Delta E≤2), to first-person shooters (FPS) where the blazing-fast 240Hz refresh rate and the highest VESA ClearMR rating (13000) make a difference. Even if you’re not a gamer, productivity activities also look good, and the long 3-year burn-in warranty, along with MSI’s OLED Care 2.0 technology (with Pixel Shift, Panel Protect, and other features), should move burn-in worries to the back burner.

The panel itself is a 26.5-inch 10-bit, QD-OLED sporting 4K UHD resolution (3,840 x 2,160). It has a typical contrast ratio of 1,500,000:1, a 0.03ms (GTG) response time, and a 172 pixels per inch density. It’s also VESA-certified DisplayHDR 400 True Black. This means you're getting a display that looks incredible and is a significant improvement over older monitors that can’t display the same colors or have as fast response times.

While a 4K QD-OLED for under $360 is an incredible deal right now, other features make it really useful for gaming. Functions like crosshair mode, which displays one of several crosshair styles on the screen regardless of background color, help with your aim/centering. A really useful feature for FPS games in particular, where point-and-click in the center is key.

It’s also AMD FreeSync and Nvidia G-Sync compatible (officially on Nvidia’s list!), which eliminates screen tearing by syncing your GPU's output with the monitor’s refresh rate. As far as connectivity goes, it has the usual suspects: two HDMI (2.1) ports, one DisplayPort (1.4a), and a USB Type-C (DP alt.), so you can connect this monitor to other items outside of your PC, including your laptop, handheld, a console (it even has a Console Mode that optimizes for gaming consoles such as the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S).

If you’re in the market for a new 4K OLED monitor, you won’t find any with these specifications for less right now. I can tell you from personal experience (I own the 32” 4K version of this monitor) that the colors are awesome, blacks are true black, and ghosting in high-action games is non-existent. Priced at $359.99 with promo code SSF73849, the 272QP QD-OLED X24 deal won’t be around for long. So if you’re thinking about moving up to 1440P OLED monitor, you’ll want to jump on this deal while you can.

A “routine” update for a Samsung smart fridge model in South Korea has broken the refrigerators for thousands of users, with the incident happening ahead of a major holiday. According to Seoul Shinmun [machine translated], the company pushed an erroneous update to some customers during testing, which resulted in the refrigerators getting stuck while updating.

Unfortunately, several customers only found out about the issue hours after the process had started (and, subsequently, gotten stuck). One customer said in a Samsung Members forum that when she arrived at 7 pm, she noticed that the fridge’s auto-open feature refused to work, the light inside it didn’t turn on, and the temperature inside the unit was starting to warm up. She even tried resetting the power to the fridge, to no avail. Another user lamented the same problem, noting that they'd owned the unit for less than a year, while others complained about food spoiling.

Even worse, this happened just a couple of days before a major South Korean holiday. Chuseok, also known as "Korean Thanksgiving," is a three-day mid-autumn harvest festival set from Sept. 24 - 26. The holiday, which lands partially on a weekend, meant that service was going to be delayed. There were multiple reports that technicians couldn’t visit the affected customers until Oct. 1, with another user saying that they wouldn’t get serviced until Oct. 7.

This is a big problem as many families have stocked up on food for the celebration. One consumer said that this has ruined the holiday for customers who used these fridges, while others said, “All my Chuseok food is going to spoil,” “What am I supposed to do with the eel and premium beef?” and “I stocked up on food for the holiday, but it’s all melting.” One user claimed, “I threw away 20kg of spoiled food today — how am I supposed to spend the holiday now?”

Samsung soon recognized the gravity of the situation and promised that all affected customers would have their refrigerators restored by Sept. 24. The company also said that it would deploy emergency on-site services to attend to urgent issues such as refrigerator and freezer malfunctions. As for the spoiled food, Samsung said it is reviewing whether it will offer compensation.

Samsung said in 2023 that it plans to put AI chips in all its home appliances, which will supposedly make them smarter and run more efficiently. However, this incident raises the question of whether we really need these features. While it may offer marginal quality of life improvements for some users, the fact that a software update could break your AI fridge (or any other home appliance, for that matter) raises red flags for users. Faulty updates aside, there have also been privacy and security concerns — which we’ve previously seen on robot vacuums after one user accidentally gained control of over 6,700 units, and was also noticed on an LG washing machine that was allegedly sending almost 3.7GB of data daily.

Nvidia Founders Edition GPUs are often harder to come by compared to cards from AIB partners, and they’re typically sold on specific retail channels only. However, it seems that CyberPowerPC got its hands on these graphics cards, and you can now get them inside pre-built gaming PCs sold by the company on Walmart. These PCs are also on sale as part of the Nvidia GeForce Week from September 21 through 27 on the retail platform. Aside from coming with these coveted GPUs from Nvidia, these pre-built gaming PCs are also on a huge discount, giving gamers savings of $580 to over $1,300. Unfortunately, these units are only available in limited quantities, so we’re unsure how long stock will last.

• Get the CyberPowerPC RTX 5070 FE + Intel Core i7-14700KF pre-built gaming PC on Walmart.
• Get the CyberPowerPC RTX 5070 FE + AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D pre-built gaming PC on Walmart.
• Get the CyberPowerPC RTX 5080 FE + AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D pre-built gaming PC on Walmart.
• Get the CyberPowerPC RTX 5080 FE + Intel Core Ultra 9 285K pre-built gaming PC on Walmart.
• Get the CyberPowerPC RTX 5090 FE + AMD Ryzen 7 9850X3D pre-built gaming PC on Walmart.

Nvidia has recently sold Founders Edition GPUs in a pop-up retail store at QuakeCon 2026 while also having them available at the PAX West gaming convention in Seattle, Washington, earlier this month. The company calls these retail pop-up stores “Verified Priority Access IRL,” meaning only real people can buy the cards, which are sold at MSRP. The VPA program started with the launch of the RTX 4090 FE, but the company brought it back with the arrival of the RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 to help prevent scalping.

The aggressive discounts on these pre-builts suggest that CyberPowerPC acquired these Founders Edition GPUs at MSRP. The RTX 5070 FE PC with an Intel i7-14700KF, which had an SRP of $2,139.99, now only costs $1,549.00, offering savings of $590.99, while the AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D version is priced at $1,599.00 — a $580.99 discount from its $2,179.99 regular price.

The RTX 5080 FE pre-builts offer bigger savings: the AMD Ryzen 7 version is now only $2,299.00, saving you $680.99 from its $2,979.99 SRP, while the Intel Core Ultra 9 option has its prices to $2,399.00 from $3,149.99 through its $750.99 discount. Finally, the RTX 5090 FE pre-built gaming PC has a regular price of $5,649.99 but is on sale at just $4,299.00, giving you $1,350.99 in savings.

These prices will let you get your hands on some of the best gaming GPUs on the market right now without breaking your wallet. According to the Tom’s Hardware GPU Price Tracker, the cheapest RTX 5090 is the Asus TUF Gaming RTX 5090, and it’s already priced higher on Amazon at $6,699.00, making this entire pre-built cheaper than that standalone GPU. While the RTX 5080 and RTX 5070 GPUs in the list are cheaper than these CyberPowerPC units, you’re still getting a complete system with a modern processor and a PSU, plus RAM and an SSD, which are some of the most expensive components you can find today. You also don’t have to worry about other specifications — even though the listing does not mention the brands and models of the other components included in the gaming PCs, they’re still decently specced with 32GB of DDR5 RAM and a 1TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD (2TB for the RTX 5090 version). You’ll have to act quickly, though, as they seem to be selling out fast.

Microsoft is finally updating its lowest-end computers: the 13-inch Surface Laptop and 12-inch Surface Pro. Both systems are getting the Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 Plus processor (including an 80 TOPS NPU), up from a first-gen Snapdragon X Plus. The company announced the new Surfaces on its blog, in timing with Qualcomm's Snapdragon Summit.

Both new devices will launch on October 13. The Laptop will start at $1,199, while the Surface Pro will be $1,149. These are substantial increases over the previous versions, which started at $899 and $799, respectively, when they launched.

Microsoft claims that the new systems are 17% faster in Microsoft Office workloads, up to 18% more efficient on battery, offer "more than" 60% faster graphics, and have up to 95% faster AI inferencing on the NPU. Those are all compared to previous-generation Snapdragon X Plus processors.

Both systems are getting a new black color and 25% brighter displays than previous generations. The 12-inch Pro will also receive optional 5G connectivity, but only in enterprise versions of the device.

The Surface Pro will also introduce Ink Canvas, a new sketching and annotating app for Windows 11. It comes preinstalled on the new tablet and will be available for other Surface and supported Windows 11 devices through the Microsoft Store.

Surface Mouse

Beyond the two new Surface systems, the company is also announcing a new Surface Mouse. The $79.99 mouse includes haptic feedback, which has only been on some Surface notebooks so far. This can take advantage of features built into Windows 11 that allow for haptic responses for actions such as hovering over the exit button or resizing windows. Logitech's recently released MX Master 4 mouse also supports haptics.

Microsoft's pointer is designed for ambidextrous use (unlike the MX Master 4), connects over Bluetooth 6.0, uses two AAA batteries, and comes in both black and platinum colors. Like the laptops, it will launch on October 13.

A court in Germany has granted court injunctions against Micron, marking a win for YMTC on the European/German front in the 3-year legal war between the two companies over memory technology patents.

According to a Digitimes report, the court ruled on Sept. 18 that Micron did infringe YMTC’s 3D NAND technology patents in two instances. The injunctions could restrict Micron’s supply in Germany and impact the broader European NAND market. Micron said it disagreed with the court ruling and has already filed an appeal. It is also challenging the validity of the related patents in separate legal cases across various countries.

YMTC filed the lawsuit that won the recent injunctions in late 2025 at the Munich 1 Regional Court, opening five cases involving four German utility models and a European patent. The court granted injunctions on two of the utility models with 10-year protection periods — DE202020006166U1 (case No. 7O12615/25) and DE202021004551U1 (case No. 12614/25) — and adjourned the others. The injunctions are only first-instance rulings and can be suspended if Micron successfully appeals at the Munich Higher Regional Court.

The ruling is the latest development in a years-long dispute between the two memory makers that started in 2023 when YMTC sued Micron in California, alleging violations of eight 3D NAND architecture patents. The dispute has since snowballed into a multi-front war involving over 20 patents, with suits and countersuits on both sides. The cases cover patent infringement, declaratory judgment, spyware, libel, false advertising, and invalidation actions, and have been filed in courts across China, the U.S., the U.K., Germany, and in other parts of Europe.

Micron has vehemently denied any wrongdoing and has filed multiple patent invalidation challenges since 2024, the first of which came after YMTC dragged the company to court in China over related issues. Seven of the disputed patents have already been declared invalid, and Micron has said it will continue pushing to safeguard its intellectual property.

3D NAND is a flash-memory storage technology that stores data in products ranging from smartphones and SSDs to enterprise storage systems. Unlike older planar NAND, where memory cells are arranged side by side on a flat surface, 3D NAND stacks cells vertically in multiple layers, allowing manufacturers to pack more storage into a given area while increasing density and lowering cost per bit. Modern NAND chips can contain hundreds of these layers, making the architecture and manufacturing techniques behind them commercially valuable intellectual property.

The Micron-YMTC fight is playing out against the backdrop of the much larger technology dispute between the U.S. and China. Washington has tightened restrictions on China's access to advanced semiconductor manufacturing equipment and other chip technologies, while Beijing has placed export restrictions on many critical raw materials.

Alibaba Cloud has released a new lightweight image generation AI model, called Qwen Image 2.1. Sporting just 7 billion parameters, it's an extremely lean open-weight model, able to run on even older consumer graphics cards like the RTX 3090. Despite its lightweight design, its developers claim it is more capable than a range of closed-weight models, including Google's Nano Banana 2.0.

That is on its own internal benchmark, so we'd like to see some additional testing before making any concrete claims, but early reports suggest it's a very capable image model, with native transparency support and the ability to create unified images from a range of reference images.

One area that has raised eyebrows, though, is the change to the Qwen Image 2.1 licensing agreement. Unlike the previous version, this one explicitly forbids commercial resale of the model, requiring anyone who wants to use it for that to obtain a separate license directly from the developer.

Competing with the best?

Qwen Image 2.1 introduces a number of new features that improve its utility and help it better compete with established alternatives. It supports native transparency, so you can have it generate images with transparent backgrounds, which can make it particularly useful for artists wanting to use AI as part of something else, or for print-on-demand products like stickers.

It also improves image editing, with the ability to use up to 10 reference images. Cited examples include taking an existing image of a person, feeding the model images of clothing items, and then it can composite an image of the person wearing those clothes. The Qwen team promises consistency across images, preserving people and products effectively.

The standout feature of Qwen Image 2.1, though, is its compact size. Its visual generation component has just 7B parameters, making it one of the leanest models of its kind. In first-party comparison testing, the only model with fewer parameters was LongCat-Image developed by Meituan, coming in at 6 billion parameters. Most other models are several times that size, or closed-weight entirely.

It's those closed-weight models that Qwen Image 2.1's developers claim it can compete directly with, though. On that same internal benchmark, its model scored 60.2 on the Qwen Image Benchmark. In comparison, OpenAI'S GPT Image 2.5 Sunburst scored 67, Muse Image 62.34, and Google's Nano Banana 2.0 59.82.

Preliminary testing on AI Arena suggests it's not quite as strong as that in less favorable benchmark conditions, but still very close. There, it achieved a score of 1228, while Nano Banana 2 managed 1260. Musw Image is ranked a few steps higher again, with a score of 1276, while GPT 65 Sunburst sits at the top with a score of 1423.

On the image editing front, AI Arena claims it's now the best of the open-weight options:

These are still early results, and more testing will be needed to fully confirm or refute the Qwen team's claims, but so far they seem to track pretty closely to reality. Although we can't know how many parameters the proprietary models lean on to achieve their higher scores, Qwen Image 2.1 appears to be nipping at their heels with its modest weights.

It works well on local hardware

Reports from individual early adopters of Qwen Image 2.1 claim it runs just fine on their consumer graphics cards. Hacker News forum member Vunderba, developer of the GenAI Showdown site, claims they were able to convert a 1MP image using Qwen Image 2.1 in around five seconds on an RTX 4090.

On the Stable Diffusion subreddit, user cgs019283 praised its capabilities, stating that it could generate 1MP images in around 25 seconds on modern Nvidia 50-series graphics cards like the RTX 5070 and 5080. They did, however, state that it can take a lot longer if you use lots of reference images, and that editing an image was the slowest function of the model in their testing.

Others have the model working on older and much lighter hardware. One user claims to be using it to generate 2K resolution images in around 50 seconds using an Nvidia RTX 3060 and 64GB of memory.

One user is lucky enough to have an RTX 6000 Pro to play around with. There, the powerful hardware is able to put out 1024 x 1024 images in just a few seconds.

Although the setup and use of local AI is still a far cry from the accessibility of cloud-based platforms like Google's Nano Banana and OpenAI's GPT Image models, the early results appear, at least on the surface, to be impressive. If the feature set holds up under more rigorous testing, those wanting the kind of rapid, quality image generation but running locally with full control and no need for cloud accounts or subscriptions could make it a fierce competitor.

The licensing conundrum

Of all the commentary from Qwen Image 2.1 early adopters, a discussion that keeps coming up is how the developers are handling licensing. The wording comes across as ambiguous:

"You are granted a non-exclusive, worldwide, non-transferable, and royalty-free limited license under our intellectual property or other rights owned by us embodied in the Materials to use, reproduce, distribute, copy, create derivative works of, and make modifications to the Materials FOR NON-COMMERCIAL PURPOSES ONLY. "

It then says that anyone wanting to use those "Materials" for commercial purposes would need to acquire a license from the Qwen team specifically for that use case. It's caused enough concern among the community that the Qwen team released a statement on Twitter/X:

That mostly seems to clear things up. Whatever you generate with the model shouldn't be classed as a licensed material, so it shouldn't be covered by this clause.

What this does mean, though, is that the model itself cannot be re-sold without a license from Alibaba. That's quite different from the Apache model the original Qwen Image was based on, and potentially stretches the definition of open-weight. It's certainly not as open as it could be.

But for most people, this is no concern. You can run Qwen Image 2.1 on your local hardware to make some pretty effective generated imagery and use them however you wish. With such a lightweight design offering such impressive capabilities, the response from closed-weight model developers will be interesting to see.

Forget RGB, OLED screens, figurines, and dioramas. We've never seen anything like the Cherry Bloom PC from Aftershock PC in Australia, though. This liquid-cooled, high-end gaming PC includes a Cherry Blossom tree, featuring 70 handcrafted, heat-reactive titanium-alloy cherry blossoms that unfurl when the machine heats up.

What makes this even more remarkable is that the PC — heat-reactive blossoms included — is actually commercially available, and isn't a one-off custom mod. You can buy one from Aftershock PC right now. There are no motors to break; the blooming blossoms are completely 'powered' by the heat generated from the high-end components in the PC, too. Those components include an AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D processor, 64GB of fast DDR5 memory, a 1300-watt modular power supply, and most notably, a GeForce RTX 5080 graphics card.

The presence of an RTX 5080 might be surprising considering the price we mentioned in the headline; yes, this PC costs approximately $14,150 USD ($20,000 AUD, or around £10,650 GBP). But if you've got the cash to spare and are eyeing the PC up, just note that the eye-watering price doesn't include shipping. At that price, it's fair to expect truly top-end components, like a Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Dual Edition and a GeForce RTX 5090 (as found in the very best PCs for gaming), but honestly, this machine is as much a work of art as a functional PC. You're not merely paying for the components; you're paying for the brilliant display inside.

The chassis used for the Cherry Bloom is the "V2" by Taiwan's Advanced Performance Nexus, better known as APNX. The case has what APNX calls "one of the largest viewing area in its class," with wrap-around glass on three sides to allow you to admire the gorgeous sculpture in your case. Along with the previously mentioned components, you also get a 2TB Lexar NQ790 PCIe 4.0 SSD, a custom open-loop liquid cooling setup, eight Aftershock Chrome RGB fans, and Windows 11 Professional, naturally.

Obviously, the Cherry Bloom PC isn't something that many people are going to buy. Much like the KFC console before it, it's a curious piece of marketing from Zotac Gaming, which designed the PC, according to the product listing. Nevertheless, the mechanism is indeed mind-bending enough. You can check out Aftershock's website and click through the slideshow to view videos showcasing the petals of the 'tree' unfurling; if nothing else, it's impressive to see the mechanism working in motion.

When I look at my collection of computer monitor reviews from the past 13 years, I see a tremendous number of displays from manufacturers that begin with the letter A. But there are lesser-represented companies with the same level of engineering expertise and high quality as mainstream brands when it comes to the best gaming monitors.

If you’re old enough to remember CRTs, then you’ve heard of the Sony Trinitron tube. This was an evolved display with a cylindrical shape rather than the bubble screens that fronted other CRTs. It wasn’t completely flat, but it curved only along one axis. And it was coveted by users for its sharp and undistorted image.

Today, you can still buy a premium gaming monitor from Sony, and here is its latest: the INZONE M10S II. It’s a 27-inch OLED with QHD resolution and 540 Hz refresh rate. It runs at 720 Hz in HD and supports Adaptive-Sync, HDR, and wide-gamut color. Let’s take a look.

Sony INZONE M10S II Specs

The M10S II starts with an OLED panel that runs natively at 2560x1440 QHD resolution and 540 Hz. A dual-refresh mode bumps that up to 720 Hz at HD, 1280x720 pixels. Adaptive-Sync runs on both AMD and Nvidia platforms, and you get HDR support with the ability to calibrate for HDR10 content. The screen coating is unusual in that it’s matte, while nearly every OLED that crosses my desk is shiny. That finish is extremely effective at rejecting image-spoiling ambient light. It literally swallows up reflections and displays the image without any visible grain.

The M10S II delivers a huge color gamut that, in my tests, covered nearly 110% of DCI-P3. I found that calibration was necessary, but the reward was a beautifully saturated image. There’s an sRGB mode available if you need that smaller gamut for photography or graphics work. You also get variable brightness to stretch dynamic range. It has two settings that had a positive impact in both practice and testing. I’ll tell you more about that on page four. Peak output is around 475 nits in SDR mode and 543 nits in HDR mode when measuring a 25% window pattern.

For gaming, you get plenty of goodness in the form of static and dynamic aiming points, OLED anti-flicker, black frame insertion for blur reduction at low frame rates, an FPS indicator, and a set of timers. Missing are internal speakers and LED lighting, but you do get USB ports for peripherals. There’s panel protection in the form of advanced heat management and OLED care options, such as panel refresh and pixel orbiting. The latest I/O ports also include one DisplayPort 2.1 and two HDMI 2.1 ports. A pair of headphones can be plugged into the provided 3.5mm jack. There’s a comprehensive OSD for control, or you can use Sony’s INZONE Hub app, which is free to download.

The M10S II sells for $1,100 at this writing, so it’s primed to compete with other speedy competition displays. While it isn’t quite as loaded as an Asus ROG Swift screen, it delivers equal performance and image quality.

Assembly and Accessories

The M10S II’s carton gets the full cardboard treatment with no crumbly foam in sight. The panel, upright, and base assemble without tools. If you plan to use an arm, there’s a 100mm VESA mount with fasteners included. Also in the box are a DisplayPort cable, an external power brick, and a sheet of INZONE stickers, in case you want to decorate your Trapper Keeper.

Product 360

The M10S II’s most visible feature is its small-footprint base. Honestly, when I took it out of the box, I was dubious about its stability. It’s a heavy metal disc just six inches across. The upright bolts to its center with an offset that extends the depth to almost eight inches. It looks like it would fall over easily, but I gave it a few shakes, and it remained stable. This is geometry at work. The swivel point is where the upright and base meet, allowing you to swing the screen 360 degrees. You also get a 5/35-degree tilt and a 4.8-inch height range, no portrait mode, though. Movements are firm and smooth with no wobble or play.

Reach around the back right, and you’ll find a small protrusion with a power button and a joystick for the OSD. Uniquely, the power LED is positioned on the side, just the right spot to light up your hand when you press the button. It isn’t visible from the front, but you can turn it off if you wish.

The side view shows a thick component bulge attached to a thin screen backed by a metal plate. It’s just 5mm thick, and the bezel is narrow too: 7mm on top, 8mm on the sides, and 12mm at the bottom. It’s flush, so you can’t see it when the power’s off.

The I/O panel is up and under and includes two HDMI 2.1 ports, one DisplayPort 2.1, and USB, one upstream and two downstream ports. There are no internal speakers, so you can plug headphones into the 3.5mm jack. An additional USB port is there for service and firmware updates.

OSD Features

Pressing the M10S II’s joystick brings up an efficiently organized OSD. It’s divided into nine sections and has plenty of calibration and convenience options.

The OSD begins with picture modes, eight in total. The default is Game, and it looks good but needs a bit of tweaking to align it with broadcast standards. The other modes are aimed at specific game types or tasks, and there’s an accurate sRGB mode. I found the best results using Standard with a grayscale calibration, which you can read about below and on page four.

Gaming Assist includes the refresh rate switches and 24.5-inch modes which deliver 1080 vertical pixels while maintaining a 1:1 mapping. That way, there’s no scaling to soften the image. You also get motion blur reduction via a backlight strobe, which works well at low frame rates. It cuts brightness by around 30%. Anti-VRR flicker is unique to OLED monitors and prevents flickering during rapid frame-rate transitions. Hint: if your video card is fast enough to keep the action above 300 Hz, you won’t get flicker. Also in this menu are an FPS counter and aiming points, both static and dynamic.

In the Picture adjustment menu, you’ll find the variable brightness options, which Sony calls Brightness stabilizer. It’s counter to other monitors I’ve encountered, in that off means variable brightness is fully engaged. I experimented with all three settings and found the best gamma, and therefore quality, on the Mid setting. Also, here are gamma presets and color temps with a set of RGB sliders. There is no color gamut selector, but you can opt for sRGB in the sRGB picture mode.

For panel care, the M10S II includes pixel shift, a screen saver, and refresh routines. Sony differentiates between pixel and panel refresh. I ran the pixel refresh when I first powered up my sample. Selecting panel refresh prompted a message that it should only be run once a year, so I concluded it was a very aggressive refresh routine.

Sony INZONE M10S II Calibration Settings

The M10S II arrived set to its Game mode, which had a cool grayscale and light gamma. I could fix the grayscale but not the gamma, so I turned to Standard mode, which was much better. After a few clicks of the RGB sliders, I had much improved grayscale, gamma, and color tracking. The gamut volume is just under 110% of DCI-P3, which is too large for the SDR standard but looks great, nonetheless. If you want sRGB, it’s there in the preset mode list. It has good gamut accuracy and supports grayscale calibration but not gamma adjustment. My recommended settings are below.

For HDR content, the M10S II switches over automatically and provides four specific picture modes. Game works the best, and I noted that it allowed grayscale calibration and brightness adjustment. You can see those test results on page five.

Gaming and Hands-on

Sony’s marketing for the M10S II clearly targets competition and hardcore gamers, and for those users, it delivers. Whether you need 540 Hz or not, it is super quick. Motion resolution is perfect, which means moving objects and backgrounds have the same clarity as stationary elements. Camera pans are free from blur or smearing. Adaptive-Sync worked perfectly for me when using a GeForce RTX 4090 video card. Frame rates in Doom Eternal set to max detail ranged from 350 to 540fps.

The M10S II has a couple of features designed to reduce motion blur and smooth out the image, but I didn’t find any need for them. Anti-flicker, which I’ve seen from Asus as well, is there to remove any flickering during frame rate transitions. I saw plenty of those with rates rapidly shifting 80-100fps by the second. There was no flicker. You also get blur reduction via backlight strobe. It only works below 270 Hz, and since my speeds never went below that, it wasn’t needed. To engage it, turn off Adaptive-Sync first. The M10S II will automatically reduce the refresh rate. It works well and shows no evidence of phasing or ghosting.

Input lag is low enough that I perceived instant response to control inputs during the most frenetic battle maneuvers. My skills are average, but I see this monitor’s benefit to a competitive gamer. The 720 Hz mode felt super quick even though its input lag is only a tad lower. Full-screen resolution is limited to 1280x720, but you can achieve dizzying frame rates in the process. Also available are 24.5-inch modes in which the picture occupies a portion of the screen. You can do 1920x1080 at 720 Hz this way or opt for 2368x1332 pixels in a 1:1 mapping.

In all scenarios, color and clarity are as good as it gets for the OLED genre. The M10S II has a huge color gamut, almost 110% of DCI-P3, and that shows in both SDR and HDR content. HDR has the additional capability of calibration, something most HDR monitors cannot do. I also liked the variable brightness options. The terminology is a little counterintuitive in that when Brightness stabilizer is off, variable brightness is engaged at maximum. The other settings, Mid and High, are less aggressive at modulating light output. I found the best gamma, and therefore picture quality, came from the Mid option.

As a 27-inch QHD flat panel, the M10S II is well suited for productivity and delivers a clean and colorful picture for general use. Small text is sharp and free of color fringing. Graphics and photos are deeply textured, and video looks great as well. The monitor makes a great personal TV. The only things I noted missing were internal speakers and LED lighting. But everything you need for gaming, entertainment, and work is there.

Takeaway: The M10S II is a competitor’s dream with its speedy response, smooth motion resolution, and multitude of refresh and resolution options. It delivers a clean and colorful picture for both SDR and HDR content. The anti-glare layer is among the best I’ve seen, with no effects seen from ambient light reflections. It’s a premium purchase for sure, but there is nothing it cannot do well.

MORE: Best Gaming Monitors

MORE: How We Test PC Monitors

MORE: How to Buy a PC Monitor

540 Hz OLEDs aren’t common, and I could only find one other in my database to compare to the M10S II: Asus’ PG27AQWP. Also in the mix are Alienware’s AW2726DM, Gigabyte’s MO27Q28G, ViewSonic’s VX2738-2K, and Asus XG27AQWMG.

Pixel Response and Input Lag

Click here to read up on our pixel response and input lag testing procedures.

I can only include monitors tested with the Nvidia LDAT for a fair comparison, so I had to exclude the Asus screens from the response test results. The M10S II shows a difference between 540 and 720 Hz of 0.20 ms and 0.12 ms, respectively. You can’t see this difference as it is well below the human eye’s capabilities. Notice that the 240 Hz ViewSonic draws the one-inch white box in the same amount of time, and the Alienware is just behind at 0.24ms. Do you need a 540 Hz OLED? 240 Hz is enough for perfect motion resolution.

Faster refresh rates typically mean lower input lag, though not universally. The M10S II is quick at 14.9 ms, but again, it’s pipped by a 240 and a 280 Hz screen. At 720 Hz, it sits on top. Note the 540 Hz PG27AQWP can only muster 22ms. Is that a problem? Not if you consider that human reaction time is typically around 200ms.

Test Takeaway: The M10S II is certainly a fast monitor and among the quickest 27-inch QHD OLEDs currently available. It gains a slight advantage in test results at 720 Hz, but not enough to make a visible difference. If you can drive it at 540 Hz in QHD resolution, you’ll be rewarded with a superb feel and perfect motion resolution, with moving objects rendered as clearly as static ones.

Viewing Angles

The M10S II shows a barely visible red tint at 45 degrees from the center, in both horizontal and vertical orientations. This is likely due to the anti-glare coating, which makes it the least shiny screen I’ve encountered. There’s no reduction in light output or gamma, and even the top view has good detail rendering. This is excellent performance.

Screen Uniformity

To learn how we measure screen uniformity, click here.

The M10S II has screen uniformity on par with the best monitors I’ve measured, OLED and LCD alike. 2.55% is about as good as it gets. I used the pixel refresh routine right after unpacking, which took five minutes, then ran moving patterns on the panel for a few hours before starting my tests. This is excellent performance.

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To read about our monitor tests in-depth, please check out Display Testing Explained: How We Test PC Monitors. We cover brightness and contrast testing on page two.

Uncalibrated – Maximum Backlight Level

The M10S II includes both constant and variable brightness options. To find the peak luminance, I tested all three Brightness stabilizer settings. Off means variable brightness is fully engaged, measuring 478 nits with a 25% window pattern. A full field was 283 nits. Mid is 426 nits, and Off is the same 283 nits for any size window pattern or a full field. As you’ll see on the next page, Mid delivers the best gamma and is the setting I used for my hands-on tests. Black levels and contrast could not be measured.

After Calibration to 200 nits

Calibration doesn’t change black levels or contrast. I found the best gamma on the Mid setting of the Brightness stabilizer, so I used a 25% window to set the slider to 200 nits. This is typical OLED performance.

Test Takeaway: The M10S II has typical brightness and contrast compared to other OLED displays with a variable-brightness option. It stands out by having three options instead of two. It also performs best in gamma tests and looks the best when the Mid setting of the Brightness stabilizer is used.

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The M10S II includes a variety of picture modes tailored to different game types and tasks. They offer different levels of control for users who want to calibrate.

Grayscale and Gamma Tracking

Our grayscale and gamma tests use Calman calibration software from Portrait Displays. We describe our grayscale and gamma tests in detail here.

The M10S II’s Game mode is visibly cool in tone. No surprise, as its default color temp setting is neutral. You can find some relief from the Warm preset, but calibration is the best way to go. Gamma is a tad light as well. Adjustments also affect color tracking, which you’ll see just below.

The RGB sliders are a bit coarse in operation, so I couldn’t quite get all the errors below 1dE. But aside from 90 and 100% brightness, they are all under 2dE, not too bad. I switched to Standard mode as well, which has better gamma. Though it’s a little skewed, more of it sticks close to 2.2, so the picture gains some texture and depth. This is solid performance.

I measured the sRGB mode at its default settings. You can’t change brightness or gamma, but you can adjust the color temperature. The above result shows the default state. Gamma is too light in the darker parts of the image, while highlights are a tad dark.

Comparisons

The M10S II’s out-of-box grayscale is clearly blue in tone. A 6.17dE error is visible to the naked eye. Changing the color temp to warm improves it; it measures around 3dE. The best option is to calibrate, which brings the error down to 1.51dE. Then, there is no visible issue.

In the gamma test, the range of values is a bit wider than the other monitors, at 0.18 (low to high). But the numbers stay close to 2.2, so the deviation is only 0.45%; the actual value is 2.21. This is mainly because I changed the picture mode from Game to Standard.

Color Gamut Accuracy

Our color gamut and volume testing use Portrait Displays’ Calman software. For details on our color gamut testing and volume calculations, click here.

The first chart is the main reason why the Game mode isn’t the best choice. The blue grayscale pulls the gamut tracking off target, resulting in visible hue errors across every color. Yellow is too green; magenta is too blue, and so on. The good part is that there is linear oversaturation, which delivers richer color without going over the top to a cartoonish look.

You can see what a difference calibration makes. Hue errors are now almost gone, and saturation points are at or near target. This makes a visible improvement in picture quality, making it look more natural.

Comparisons

It’s nigh impossible to find a bad OLED when it comes to color. Though the M10S II isn’t at the top of this group, it has no visible errors once calibrated. 2.22dE is still in the realm of excellent performance. I noted that the sRGB average error was 1.34 dE.

In the volume test, the M10S II proved itself to be one of the most colorful monitors you can buy in this category. OLED gamuts don’t get much bigger than 109.5% of DCI-P3. The 96.61% sRGB coverage is nearly ideal. The M10S II is suitable for color-critical work once calibrated.

Test Takeaway: The M10S II doesn’t come out of the box in its most accurate picture mode, but a few tweaks in the OSD take performance to a higher level. You can simply select the Standard picture mode with Warm color temp or calibrate for the best possible result. The sRGB mode is also accurate, and unlike most monitors, it can be calibrated for grayscale tracking. The M10S II’s overall color performance is on par with other premium OLED displays.

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Our HDR benchmarking uses Portrait Displays’ Calman software. To learn about our HDR testing, see our breakdown of how we test PC monitors.

The M10S II accepts HDR10 signals and switches automatically to reveal four new picture modes. I noted that some adjustments were possible, which is unusual in a good way. Most monitors have no HDR picture options.

HDR Brightness and Contrast

The M10S II’s brightest HDR picture mode is also the default, Game. A 25% window pattern measures over 543 nits, which puts it mid-pack in this comparison. In practice, and with its infinite black levels, it delivers punchy images with deep shadows and bright highlights with sharp detail throughout.

Grayscale, EOTF and Color

In the grayscale and EOTF test, the M10S II in Game mode proved to be one of the most accurate HDR monitors I’ve reviewed. The first chart above shows grayscale after a couple of tweaks to the RGB sliders. It’s one of the few HDR monitors that allow color adjustments. The EOTF tracks very closely to the reference with a correct tone-map transition at 68% brightness. This is where it should be given the measured white and black points.

In the color test, there is significant oversaturation in red and just typical oversaturation in blue and green. This isn’t all that different from other HDR displays, but some red-dominant images I viewed showed clipping. Most HDR monitors are engineered this way, but Sony goes a bit further than others. Hue tracking is good, though with only slight deviations in yellow and magenta. In the BT.2020 test, the M10S II runs out of color at 90% red, 80% green, and 98% blue.

Test Takeaway: The M10S II has superb HDR luminance and grayscale tracking. Color is a little oversaturated, but most users will not complain about a monitor this colorful. It fills more of the BT.2020 color space than nearly every monitor I’ve reviewed, including professional models. Brightness is on the high side of average with punchy highlights and deep shadows, all well detailed.

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Based on the number of gaming monitors on offer, Sony might not be the first brand one thinks of, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t among the best. Its model line may be small, but it is no less mighty. Competitors looking for the fastest and most flexible OLED display should take a closer look at the INZONE M10S II.

With a 540 Hz refresh rate at QHD resolution, the M10S II delivers speed right out of the gate. Then it adds performance options like 720 Hz at HD and two 24.5-inch modes that sport 1920x1080 and 2368x1332 resolutions with 1:1 pixel mapping. Add in blur reduction and anti-flicker, and you have a monitor that delivers smooth, responsive gaming on any PC or console.

Image quality is given equal attention. The OLED panel used here covers almost 110% of DCI-P3 and, with a few tweaks, delivers a color-accurate picture with the deep contrast and true blacks OLEDs are known for. The M10S II also includes variable brightness and HDR calibration, features not found in many OLED displays. I also noted the matte screen coating, which rejected ambient light better than any other OLED I’ve reviewed.

The Sony INZONE M10S II is a premium purchase for sure, and though it doesn’t include internal speakers or LED lighting, it performs on par with the very best. If you have the budget and you want a competition weapon for your gaming PC or console, you should definitely check it out.

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UK-based “neocloud” Nscale built its business on a major deal with a ByteDance subsidiary named Spring, which accounted for $24 million of its $33 million annual revenue in 2025. This contract allowed Spring to access 2,304 Nvidia B200 chips at Nscale’s Glomfjord, Norway, data center. Even though the Financial Times reports that this was legal and exploited loopholes in the U.S.’s ongoing export controls against China, it still exposes the company to regulatory and reputational risk, especially as Washington continues to restrict Chinese access to its most advanced AI accelerators.

This information only came to light after Nscale released its S-1 documents as it filed for an initial public offering in the U.S. There was also no direct mention of the TikTok owner or its subsidiary anywhere in its S-1 filing; instead, it was noted in a supporting document, a $105 million loan agreement with Macquarie, that Spring (SG) Pte Ltd, a Singaporean ByteDance subsidiary, was a significant customer. This credit, alongside a $35 million in equity, helped fund the purchase of advanced Nvidia AI GPUs, which also caught the attention of the chipmaker.

A month after Nscale drew the first tranche of the loan, it closed a deal with Microsoft and Nvidia, with Jensen Huang committing to invest more than $660 million into the company. This funding is part of an agreement between Nscale and Nvidia, under which the latter promised to buy large volumes of AI chips in the future. Nvidia has since increased its commitments to over $2 billion, plus an additional $860 million guarantee on Nscale’s lease at a Texas facility. Nscale has since been able to secure larger deals with other AI hyperscalers, such as a $44 billion deal with Microsoft and another $45 billion contract with Anthropic. The company said that this would make its Spring contract fall to below 20% of its overall revenue, and it is expected to shrink further as Nscale secures other Western clients.

Because of Spring’s link to ByteDance, Macquarie compelled Nscale to monitor how the Chinese subsidiary used the AI chips and report “compute anomalies or suspicious configurations” that might be in violation of the U.S.’s export controls. Nscale also had a third party conduct due diligence on both the TikTok parent and the Singapore-based subsidiary to ensure that the deal complied with the law.

Chinese companies have been taking advantage of these loopholes in the U.S.’s export controls to gain access to advanced AI chips. While they cannot import the most advanced Nvidia AI GPUs, like Blackwell and Vera Rubin, into China, they could still rent these AI chips from companies based abroad or by using subsidiaries founded outside of China to purchase them directly. However, the U.S. has recently closed the latter loophole, with the Trump administration working to close the former, too. It’s unclear if these moves would affect the Spring-Nscale deal, but the recent delays on gigawatt-scale data center projects in the U.S. mean that Nscale could potentially get more clients as AI hyperscalers race to secure compute from smaller facilities.

Alibaba unveiled its powerful new Zhenwu V900 chip and ambitious Qwen model plans at the Apsara Conference 2026, the AP reports. Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu calls the Zhenwu 900 the most powerful AI chip in China, with three times the performance of the previous-generation M890. The chip is meant to support the training of future Qwen models in the 5 to 10 trillion parameter range, an increase over both the 2.4 trillion Qwen3.8-Max and Moonshot’s Kimi K3 and its 2.8 trillion parameter basis. The announcement follows Huawei’s new chip launch last week.

Alibaba describes the Zhenwu V900 as an AI training and inference processor with 216 GB of GPU memory and 1,200 GB/s of inter-chip bandwidth. Aside from performance being multiples of the last generation, the chip can scale out to a supernode cluster “comprising up to 500,000 cards.” The AI accelerator is due for mass production and commercial release in the first quarter of 2027, Alibaba says.

The company’s May roadmap placed the V900 in the third quarter of 2027, so the timeline has moved up. As of May, Alibaba chip arm T-Head had shipped more than 560,000 Zhenwu chips to over 400 external customers, a count Alibaba now puts above 650, with a Zhenwu refresh expected annually.

The technical specifications do not include FLOPS, a process node, foundry, power figures, or memory bandwidth claims. The prior M890 had 144GB of memory with 800GB/s of inter-chip bandwidth. The M890 could work in a supernode of 128 chips, while T-Head says more than 1,000 V900 chips can work as a single system.

For comparison, Huawei’s Ascend 960PR, due in the third quarter of 2027, is slated for 192GB of memory capacity, 2.4TB/s of memory bandwidth, and a 2.2TB/s scale-up interconnect. Alibaba’s most-powerful and three-times claims currently rest on no absolute figure for compute, but maximum achievable FLOPS are often far below calculated figures to begin with, so delivered performance will be the ultimate judge.

Alibaba Cloud’s greater goal is to reach a data center capacity of “more than 20 gigawatts” by 2032, the company said. However, global shortages in the AI supply chain “are currently limiting the speed at which we can scale our compute infrastructure,” Wu said. Alibaba also anticipates significant growth in its own annual AI chip shipments. Domestic demand remains high as Huawei had to shelve its global Ascend rollout. The report compared these goals to SpaceX, which has around 1.4GW of AI compute with a target of more than 10GW in 2027.

On the model side, Qwen 4 is “currently in training,” Alibaba said, and the Qwen 4.5 and 5 families will scale up further on the roadmap. As far as the achievements of its current models go, the company claims that Qwen3.8-Max ran “33 iterative cycles” over a month of automated runs to produce an Artificial Analysis score gain from 40 to 45. Meanwhile, a separate chip-design experiment with more than 10,000 EDA tool calls over more than 60 hours of test time showed an area cut of 42% without performance loss.

The announcements come ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s summit with President Donald Trump in Washington on Thursday. AI remains a top subject on the agenda, following U.S.-proposed AI mechanisms. The AI talks in New York did not have export controls for chips or tools on the agenda.

As it stands, Alibaba’s V900 is months from commercial release and the 5-to-10-trillion-parameter model it promises remains untrained. Capacity targets remain six years out. The announcement is nevertheless timely as the two largest national AI powers come together to discuss and define AI security.

While RAM, video cards, and storage have become the most expensive parts of a PC build or upgrade, monitors haven’t really flinched price-wise. They can still offer a tangible upgrade, whether for gaming or productivity, for your PC. After all, you are staring at it the entire time you use your PC. Acer is currently offering an incredible deal on the Nitro (XV270U). Just $179 (a whopping 45%/$150 off the $239.99 MSRP) buys a 27-inch 2560x1440 IPS panel with a wicked-fast 270 Hz refresh rate without breaking the bank.

• Check out this deal at Newegg

This IPS panel uses a matte anti-glare surface and supports up to 99% sRGB, making it suitable for a wide range of tasks, specifically gaming, entertainment, and basic creative work. It also supports brightness up to 250 cd/m², a 1ms (MPRT) response time, wide 178-degree viewing angles, and Acer VisionCare, a suite of technologies to reduce eye strain, headaches, and fatigue, including BlueLightShield, flicker-less technology, and a low-dimming feature for a more comfortable viewing experience during prolonged use. It also supports AMD FreeSync Premium technology to help prevent screen tearing and stuttering for a better visual experience.

The monitor features a thin bezel on three edges for a cleaner look; however, it's not an ultra-thin bezel, so it may not be ideal for a surround setup. It comes with a stand that offers tilt adjustment from +25 degrees to -5 degrees, plus ~30mm of vertical height adjustment, and you can mount it on the wall using the standard 100x100mm VESA mounting holes on the back. As for I/O, the XV270U offers the standard fare of two HDMI (v2.0) and one DisplayPort (v1.4), which supports the panel’s specifications. It also has a single 3.5mm headphone out and two integrated speakers (2W x2).

If you’re in the market for a new gaming monitor, or even a secondary monitor, and just don’t have the cash for a much more expensive 4K OLED (which, chances are, also requires a potentially prohibitively expensive video card upgrade), you can still reap the benefits of a more pixel-dense, high-refresh-rate display. Acer’s XV270U is only $179, an incredible 45% off, and while it’s not at an all-time low, it is the cheapest it’s been in several months. It's a great deal for a 27-inch, 1440p, 270 Hz, FreeSync Premium-capable IPS panel.

AMD has started to add support for GDDR7 memory and several new graphics IP blocks to its open-source Linux kernel driver, which indicates that software enablement for the company's next-generation standalone GPUs is underway, reports Phoronix. While AMD does not identify the upcoming architecture, the changes are likely tied to its RDNA 5 project — but they don't necessarily herald an imminent launch.

AMD's existing Radeon RX 9000-series graphics processors based on the RDNA 4 architecture use GDDR6 memory, so the addition of GDDR7 identification to drivers is arguably the most explicit confirmation that AMD is setting the stage for its next-generation discrete Radeon graphics processors based on the RDNA 5 architecture.

AMD also submitted patches that enable IH 8.0, a new version of its Interrupt Handler IP block, as well as NBIF 7.10, the latest revision of the company's New Bus Interface. Several smaller patches make additional preparations for the new hardware. These changes follow earlier Linux driver work involving Display Core Next 6 (DCN6) as well as GFX 13.0.x, suggesting that AMD is gradually upstreaming support for multiple components of an upcoming GPU architecture. Yet, while enablement of IH8, NBIF 7.10, DCN6, and GFX 13.0.x clearly point to new graphics hardware, it does not necessarily point to new discrete GPUs, unlike the mention of GDDR7.

As revealed in August, 2025, Laks Pappu, Senior Fellow at AMD, is the lead architect for AMD's next generation datacenter GPU and discrete graphics platforms. Pappu was building next-generation "competitive 2.5D/3.5D chiplet-based and monolithic graphics SoCs on various packaging technologies," according to his LinkedIn profile before it was edited to remove those disclosures.

Essentially, Pappu's profile indicated that AMD's next-generation GPU architecture could support multiple physical implementations — including multi-chiplet and monolithic — depending on performance, cost, market requirements, and AMD's willingness to compete in certain market segments

AMD has already used a multi-chiplet design with its Navi 31 GPU, an implementation that kept graphics processing hardware on a large Graphics Compute Die (GCD), but disaggregated memory interfaces and caches into smaller Memory Cache Dies (MCDs). A more ambitious implementation could potentially distribute graphics processing resources between multiple dies, although Pappu's profile did not disclose how AMD intended to partition its future GPUs.

Such an approach would be considerably more complicated than separating memory and cache functionality. Multiple compute dies would require high-bandwidth, low-latency connections as well as mechanisms for synchronization and coherency, while software would ideally continue to see the set of chiplets as a single graphics processor.

Based on conventional GPU development cycles of roughly 2.5 to 3.5 years, RDNA 5 could already have been approaching tape-out or early post-tape-out stages when the information surfaced in August 2025, which means that the company is already likely to be testing the new GPUs internally.

Officially, AMD hasn't disclosed any details about its RDNA 5 architecture nor launch schedule, so take these developments with a grain of salt. For now, all we know for sure is that AMD is working on standalone RDNA 5-based GPUs, and they're likely to use GDDR7 in at least some configurations, assuming the AI-driven memory crunch doesn't choke supply of those chips even further for consumer applications.

Meta has announced plans to build and install a new subsea cable that will connect France and the United States at a breakneck 1 Pbps (1 petabit per second or 1,000 terabits per second). It will become the most advanced subsea cable at its length and blow Meta's own 0.5 Pbps Anjana cable system out of the water. Figuratively, of course.

Anjana runs from Spain to the US for a total distance of 4,425 miles at a relatively leisurely 480 Tbps thanks to its 24 fiber pairs. But Petal ratchets things up a notch, using 48 fiber pairs and a two-core fiber-based solution (with 24 pairs each) to achieve 1 Pbps across transatlantic distances.

Meta claims that the new cable will have enough network capacity to allow 75% of the planet's population to stream music at the same time — so long as they stick to 160 kbps MP3s or lower, that is. No lossless streaming for you.

Either way, you'll have to wait a while for your theoretical music fix. Meta says that Petal is expected to enter service in 2029. It'll be built in partnership with NEC and Sumitomo Electric Industries, with support for the French landing from Orange.

Subsea cables might not be at the top of many internet users' minds, but they're vital to the way our connected world functions today — and they've often been the subject of sabotage plots as a result. As the number of connected devices continues to grow, these cables become all the more important. And they need to be fast and reliable.

Meta says that its decision to use a two-core fiber design for Petal brought complications along with its huge performance. Minimizing crosstalk is key, as is ensuring low attenuation throughout the length of the cable.

The fix for the attenuation involves using ultra-pure synthetic silica during the manufacture of the preform, while crosstalk is minimized by "carefully controlling for high refractive indexes in the cores against lower indexes within the surrounding medium and counter-propagating the optical signals."

Meta says that a subsea cable of this length typically needs around 100 repeaters to get the signal from one end to the other without degradation. Petal uses single-body 96-amp repeaters, each with single-core fiber amplification and a Fan-In/Fan-Out (FIFO) interface to convert two-core fiber into two single-core fibers inside the repeater before converting it back to two-core fiber following amplification. The theory is that this approach will allow Petal to retain the efficiency and reliability afforded by single-core amplification.

As for why Meta feels the need to build such a cable, it points to its desire to bring "greater capacity, stronger resiliency, and future-proof infrastructure to Europe as demand for communications and reliable connectivity continues to increase." We hope that dual-core fiber isn't twice as tasty to the average shark.

RAM prices are still out of whack and will be for the foreseeable future. Combo deals certainly help to bring this outlandish pricing down to something reasonable for the time being. This gray Corsair Vengeance DDR5-6000 kit is now $439 with promo code SSF73844 and is the cheapest standalone kit we could find right now matching our white 32GB V-Color Manta XSky kit we found earlier this week for less, but that’s now the same price.

• Check out this deal at Newegg

Deals like this, and the combos when active, are by far the best way to buy new RAM in the ongoing RAMpocalypse. Sadly, the days when you can get 64GB of DDR5-6400 RAM for around $225 (what I paid for a G.Skill Trident Z Royale kit in April 2025) are over, and you’re left with what we have now…the best prices in an extremely expensive market.

As for this specific Corsair Vengeance kit, it’s a great option for any build, performance-wise. The DDR5-6000 speed sits squarely in AMD’s sweet spot for price-to-performance and is much faster than older DDR4 modules. Sadly, we didn’t review this specific kit, but below are performance numbers from a similar DDR5-6000 CL38 kit from Team Group (Vulcan CL38 kit) that show how well it performs in our CPU test suite.

The Corsair Vengeance kit comes in gray without RGB lighting and includes two DDR5-6000 modules with CL38-48-48-96 timings at 1.35V. Though the timings are a bit higher than we’d like to see, they'll work well for any use case, from gaming to workstation productivity, and you’ll get the most out of your system at these speeds, especially on the AM5 platform. If you were considering this kit for an Intel system, it will also work well, but is a bit on the slower side for the platform.

While $439 for 32GB of Corsair Vengeance DDR5-6000 RAM (read: any RAM) makes most of us shudder in disappointment these days, considering what RAM prices were in early 2025, it is one of the best deals available for 32GB DDR5-6000 in gray/black. If you’re in the market to start a DDR5-based build or upgrade what you have and need it soon, I wouldn’t pass up this Newegg deal.

China has launched nine satellites — including its first integrated “rocket and satellite” AI computing project — as part of its push to put AI computing in orbit. According to a Digitimes report, the Kinetica 1 Y18 rocket, operated by Chinese commercial launch provider CAS Space, lifted off on September 20, carrying the nine satellites to their planned orbits.

The payload of greatest interest is the “Supercomputing-1” satellite, developed by Chinese AI computing infrastructure company S-AIDC. Also known as the S-AIDC-1, the satellite is designed to capture and process Earth-observation data in orbit instead of sending data back to terrestrial data centers. Keeping the processing local is meant to cut cross-regional data processing times from hours to minutes. The satellite features both a high-res optical payload and the image-processing AI computer.

According to Digitimes, the launch highlights China's efforts to develop orbital computing as part of a “broader integrated computing network.” In early June, the Chinese government approved the Space Computing Industry Innovation Center, which aims to bring together rocket and satellite manufacturers, semiconductor fabs, and AI tech companies to build a space computing network. A couple of factors are driving this spike in the development of off-planet computing, foremost among them being the AI boom.

The demand for artificial intelligence has spurred the construction of numerous data centers to house AI accelerators. These data centers, some of which can house hundreds of thousands of accelerators, consume unprecedented amounts of electricity, placing significant strain on the grid. This, along with land use, water consumption for cooling, and noise, has fueled growing anti-data sentiment, with local residents blocking $68 billion worth of new data center projects in Q2 2026.

Despite numerous economic and practical challenges, space might offer an alternative with unlimited area, access to solar power, constant cold conditions, and a dead-quiet vacuum. These advantages have made orbital computing a serious topic of discussion. SpaceX is leading the charge with the AI1 satellite, a proposed orbital data center that will deliver 150 kW of peak compute power. The company aims to achieve 1 GW per year of space AI compute by 2027 and has begun constructing the 11-million-square-foot Gigasat facility that would manufacture the 6,000 satellites required to meet this goal.

Beyond the large-scale serving of AI models, putting edge compute capacity in space is already useful for a range of applications. Earth-observation satellites can process images onboard to identify wildfires, storms, floods, ships, or other objects of interest, sending only the useful results back to Earth instead of dumping enormous amounts of raw data to ground stations. The same approach can speed up weather monitoring, disaster response, communications, and even the management of satellite constellations, where spacecraft could make more decisions independently rather than waiting for instructions from Earth.

The launch of a single satellite with edge AI capabilities on board is a far cry from an entire orbital data center, but China's approach could prove to be a more practical and immediate application for advanced computing capabilities in orbit.

Valve's Steam Deck portable PC, the same one you might play your favorite games on, isn't just for fun, as Airbus has just proven. The aerospace firm is using the Deck to control a prototype Mars rover throughout its development and testing process.

The ExoMars rover, a device that will be autonomous when it reaches the Red Planet, is being developed in the UK by Airbus. The rover and its Steam Deck companion made an appearance in a video shared by YouTube personality Tom Scott following a visit to Airbus' facility. And while ExoMars is being tested on Earth, it's hoped that it will eventually be capable of controlling itself when it rolls out onto the Martian terrain.

For now, engineers need a way to control the rover during its development and testing in a Mars-like environment. And for that, Airbus has settled on a Steam Deck.

The video shows a Steam Deck running unspecified custom software. Just like playing the games Steam Deck owners are familiar with, Scott can be seen using the thumbsticks, triggers, and face buttons as a method for controlling the rover.

While novel, the decision to use a Steam Deck in this way probably shouldn't be all that surprising. It's a handheld PC in every sense of the word — it's powered by Linux and has both physical and touchscreen controls, not to mention Wi-Fi and Bluetooth support. If you're so inclined, you can even install Windows on a Steam Deck, too.

All of these things make the Steam Deck the perfect way to control something as advanced as a Mars rover. Doubly so if specialist software is required, something that traditional controllers like Sony's DualSense and Microsoft's Xbox controllers can't offer. With that in mind, it's perhaps only a matter of time until we see Valve's Steam Frame also used for testing of a future Mars rover.

As for today, Airbus teams in Stevenage, UK, are working on a project to design the mechanical, thermal, and propulsion systems for the landing platform that will help a rover land on Mars in 2030. That rover will be officially called the Rosalind Franklin, and getting it to Mars safely will be "the culmination of more than 20 years’ work," says Kata Escott, the managing director of Airbus Defence and Space UK. Even if Valve's handheld doesn't prove necessary for controlling the Franklin rover once it's on Mars, it can still claim a cool spot in the history of the platform's development.

The flash shortage has driven up prices for nearly all consumer storage devices. Fortunately, for a limited time, Nintendo Switch 2 owners have a rare opportunity to secure a high-performance Samsung P9 512GB microSD Express card for just $99.99, the original MSRP before the shortage began. Amazon’s $50 checkout discount makes this deal even more enticing, since the microSD Express card typically retails for $149.99.

• Check out the Samsung P9 512GB deal on Amazon

The Samsung P9, one of the best microSD Express cards available, offers blazing-fast sequential read speeds of up to 800 MB/s. That performance is enough to ensure games on your Switch 2 load quickly, and gameplay stays smooth. Samsung does not explicitly state the sequential write speed; however, microSD Express cards in the 512GB class generally offer sustained write speeds of up to 300 MB/s.

High write speeds mean faster data transfers and game installations. Still, 300 MB/s is more than enough for most Switch 2 owners to install large games and updates with little waiting time. In normal usage, the Switch 2 reads more data than it writes, so high read speeds are always a plus.

The Samsung P9 512GB is an incredible steal at $99.99, especially since Amazon typically lists it for $149.99. In fact, $99.99 is the lowest price this card has reached in the past three months, and it's a rare event given the ongoing flash shortage. Even Samsung’s own website currently sells this exact card for a staggering $199.99, making Amazon’s current offer stand out even more.

Deals like this are few and far between, especially for a microSD Express card of this caliber and capacity. If you are running out of space on your Switch 2 or want to prepare for the wave of incoming AAA titles, the Samsung P9 512GB is a smart investment since you are paying 20 cents per GB, the lowest price available right now. Act fast before it's gone.

Taiwan-based manufacturer Durabook has introduced a highly rugged mobile workstation with not one, not two, but three integrated 14-inch 1080p displays. The Z14I-DX3 comes in a traditional clamshell design with two additional displays attached on either side that fold inwards during transportation. The laptop is MIL-STD-810H and MIL-STD-461G certified and is primarily meant for field professionals including military, public safety and emergency services, engineers, and other industrial operations.

All three displays are DynaVue sunlight-readable touchscreens with capacitive multi-touch and built-in OSD controls. Offering up to 1200 nits of peak brightness, all three can be synchronized or adjusted individually. The displays also support finger, water, glove and stylus inputs, which can be useful depending on the working conditions.

The additional displays increase the overall weight of the machine to a whopping 21.6 lb or 9.8 kgs, significantly heavier than the standard single-screen model at 3.6 kg. And at 5.4" thick (137.5mm) when closed, this system is best understood as a luggable workstation rather than anything resembling a traditional laptop.

The notebook can be configured with Intel’s Meteor Lake Core Ultra 5 or Core Ultra 7 mobile processors with up to 64GB of DDR5-5600 memory. Unusually for a ruggedized system, Durabook also offers several Nvidia discrete GPUs including the RTX A500 AI accelerator, RTX 3500 Ada and RTX 5000 Ada for up to 682 TOPS of AI performance.

The Durabook Z14I-DX3 also offers support for a wide range of connectivity options including Thunderbolt 4, dual RJ-45 Ethernet, two RS-232 serial ports, ExpressCard 54, Nano SIM and eSIM, as well as USB options ranging from USB 3.2 Gen 2 to USB 2.0. Wireless connectivity options include Intel Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4, along with optional dedicated GPS, 4G LTE, and 5G connectivity. Durabook touts the use of this connectivity for highly customized application-specific configurations like the addition of joysticks for drone controls.

Given its likely customers, the Z14I-DX3 has several multi-factor authentication options, such as a smart card reader, optional Windows Hello webcam, RFID/NFC reader, and fingerprint scanner. The system also comes with quick-release dual NVMe PCIe SSD drives, allowing users to swap storage drives without requiring any tools. While the main battery is a 6,900mAh unit, the company lists an optional secondary 4,700mAh battery and a 6,700mAh battery for the two additional screens.

There is no information regarding the price, however, customers interested in the rugged mobile workstation can visit Durabook’s official website for a quote.

The indomitable GeForce RTX 5090 is getting harder and harder to find at any price, let alone for anywhere near its $1999 MSRP. If you can find one in stock, it's likely from a third-party seller, and prices from those sources are often over $8000 right now. But it's GeForce Week at Walmart, and as part of that deals event, you can get MSI's Gaming Trio RTX 5090 for just $4299 direct from a reputable seller — a screaming bargain in today's market.

• MSI Gaming Trio RTX 5090 32GB OC for $4299 at Walmart

The RTX 5090 needs no introduction as the most powerful gaming graphics card on the market today. If you're trying to max out path-traced lighting effects with all of Nvidia's DLSS 4.5 technology enabled at 4K (or even beyond), the RTX 5090 is still the king of graphics performance today.

It's also an amazing card for fast local AI work like LLM inference and image generation, and that multi-purpose appeal is part of why prices have shot up of late. New GeForce cards are still nowhere in sight, so if you're looking for the best gaming upgrade possible, the RTX 5090 is still it.

In our 2026 GPU Hierarchy testing at 4K, the RTX 5090 comes out on top, no matter what you throw at it. Whether you're trying to push raster or RT performance to the max, this card can do it all, without question.

If you're contemplating an RTX 5090 upgrade, be sure that your power supply is up to the task and that you're using a quality 12V-2x6 cable with it to minimize the chances of a costly meltdown. Be sure to consider an upgrade to one of our best picks for a 4K gaming monitor, too, as this card really is wasted on any other resolution.

The current AI boom means graphics card prices only seem set to rise for the foreseeable future, so even at this elevated price versus its MSRP, this MSI RTX 5090 is a rare opportunity to get the very best gaming GPU at a relatively attainable price. If you've been waiting, now is the time to jump.

Bambu Lab has swung for the fences with its second go at making a laser cutter, and this time, it knocked it out of the park. The Bambu Lab R1 is a standalone, 55W CO2 laser with a roomy 600 x 300 mm work area, a bird’s eye camera for remote positioning, and a well-designed software suite. Priced at $2,499, the laser is a steal compared to other CO2 lasers of the same size and caliber.

You might recall the company’s first laser, a 40w diode packaged inside the H2D, was met with skepticism. Though the company pitched the H2D as the ultimate mini manufacturing machine for makers, many people felt a laser was too dirty to house in the same box as an expensive Core XY printer. Bambu must be listening, because they took everything that was good about the H2D’s diode system and gave it a standalone case with a massive CO2 laser.

The R1 has the same simple unboxing and setup experience as a Bambu Lab printer, making it easy to get started without a ton of prior experience. The only thing it is currently lacking is a more comprehensive set of material presets. Bambu Suite really shines in a market where good hardware is often let down by bad software.

While the Bambu Lab R1 is not a small machine, it does have a smaller footprint than other lasers with a similar work area. It requires a stout work table – and two people to cart it into position – as the machine is over 70 pounds. In its base configuration the R1 has a work area of 600mm x 300mm. With the optional conveyor and riser base, that 300mm can be extended to 3000mm, or 9.8 feet. Of course, you’ll need a lot of space in front of and behind the machine to pull that off. Bambu Lab did a wonderful job putting all of the controls and frequently used ports near the front of the R1 since you won’t want to move it much unless you are lasering something large.

The only flaw I found was the need to manually change focus lenses to cut thicker material. The process to change lenses is tedious, with six screws needing to be removed and replaced with the new lens. The two screws for the toolhead cover are ridiculously small. This process is reminiscent of the early Bambu Lab printer nozzles that required the heater and thermistor to be detached, then reinstalled with thermal paste. Hopefully Bambu Lab will come up with a quick-release lens at some point in the future.

Specifications: Bambu Lab R1

Bambu Lab R1: Included in the Box

The Bambu Lab R1 arrives fully assembled with its accessory pack bundled inside the laser enclosure. Accessories include a tool kit, exhaust hose, ventilation fan, antifreeze, funnel, laser alignment sensor, calibration board, and a material pack of basswood plywood and clear acrylic. You will need to supply 1500ml of distilled water to dilute the antifreeze. For the review, we also received the medium and long focus lenses, the conveyor and the riser needed for its use, the auto fire extinguishing system, and a smoke purifier.

Design of the Bambu Lab R1

The Bambu Lab R1 is a beast of a machine, but a well-thought-out one. It’s more compact than other CO2 lasers with the same working area, despite this, weighing over 70lbs. It’s not an easy machine to move. Bambu Lab put all of the controls, ports, and the safety key thoughtfully within easy reach at the front of the machine. The color touchscreen and start button are on top of the machine.

The automatic fire extinguisher ports, USB-C, and safety key are located on the left side of the laser.

The emergency stop button is located on the right side of the laser.

Only the power switch, the exhaust fan, and the coolant filling point are located on the rear of the unit.

Unlike most other lasers, a CO2 laser has a large, glass, liquid-cooled laser tube at the rear of the unit. Antifreeze is mixed with distilled water for the coolant to prevent the glass tube from freezing should it be kept in a garage, basement or even if you lose power in your house during the winter.

The laser fires a beam which is directed to the tool head with mirrors.

On some lasers, calibrating these mirrors can be a chore. Bambu Lab developed a laser alignment sensor, which clips to the toolhead and allows the laser to align the mirrors itself in just about a minute.

The Bambu Lab R1 has an excellent positioning system. There is a bird's eye camera on the lid of the laser, which requires that the lid be up when measuring. This takes a little getting used to since I reflexively shut the lid of a laser when I walk away from it. There is a camera mounted on the toolhead as well as a distance-measuring laser, instead of a clunky mechanical probe. The R1 tracks the toolhead position with XY encoders. The system worked great out of the box with no camera calibration needed. The camera is listed as having a .2mm positioning accuracy.

The Bambu Lab R1 is rated to cut up to 18mm wood and 20mm acrylic but doing so requires changing the focus lens in the tool head and then doing a five minute vision accuracy calibration. To change lenses, you need to remove two extremely tiny 1.5mm screws from the toolhead cover and four screws from the focus lens. It would be nice if they could develop a quick release for the lens, since as it is, this is not a process I’d want to have to do frequently.

A built-in air assist works to keep charring down and keep the laser lens clear. It is not adjustable, being either on or off, and it's powerful enough to move lightweight objects if they are not stuck down.

Given its size, the R1 is not likely to be used anywhere other than a shop or workroom, which is great because this thing is loud. The cooling fans in the laser don’t ever stop, and they are pretty loud on their own. When the laser is activated, it sounds like a jet engine spooling up. Between the noise of the laser and the air purification, it’s the loudest laser I’ve reviewed.

Assembling the Bambu Lab R1

The Bambu Lab R1 is fully assembled out of the box. Setup requires removing the accessory box, removing a cage around the tool head, and removing two stops holding the XY carriage in place for shipping. At initial power up the printer walks you through these steps from the touch screen.

There is a short calibration routine that automatically calibrates the laser’s mirrors by clipping the laser alignment sensor to the toolhead. In no time at all, you are ready to go.

The riser base comes in four large assemblies that are screwed together. You need to remove the base plate from the laser before setting it atop the riser. A data cable runs from the laser to the riser base, and requires deft hands to attach. Rubber feet on the bottom of the main laser unit hold it the correct position

The laser is cooled with a mixture of distilled water and antifreeze, which is poured into the rear of the laser with an included funnel. Pay close attention to the instruction booklet when adding coolant. The instructions call for “preparing” 1500ml of distilled water, then adding antifreeze to an indicated level on the rear sight window. But what it means is to pour in the antifreeze, then add as much of the 1500ml of water as needed to hit the correct level. Getting this backward makes a bit of a mess. After mopping up, I added the correct amount of water and coolant to the laser. The coolant must be topped off after turning the laser on, so don’t move the laser into a position where you cannot access the coolant port until you do this.

Safety Precautions for the Bambu Lab R1

The Bambu Lab R1 is a fully enclosed and safe Class 1 laser by itself. When running with the riser base and conveyor, it moves to a Class 4 laser. Operating a Class 4 laser requires laser-safe glasses that are not provided with the laser. I was not able to see any leakage of laser light through the riser base, but it is unavoidable when running with the conveyor. Laser light can cause severe damage to eyes and skin, and care should be taken to keep small children and pets away while the laser is in use.

The R1 has a number of built-in safety features. There is an equipment key preinstalled on the left side of the laser. When not in use this key can be pulled to prevent unauthorized access. The laser will not operate with the enclosure’s lid up and will quickly pause the job if the lid is raised while in use. If there is a problem with the job, the machine can be stopped from the touch screen, and for major problems, there is a red kill switch on the right side of the machine, which will quickly cut power to the machine completely. The laser has flame sensors which will stop the job if they detect any issues. Bambu Lab provided its optional auto fire-extinguishing system for the review. This unit has a replaceable gas canister and plugs into the left side of the laser.

Even with a good air purifier, some materials should not be burned with a laser due to their chemical makeup. Dallas Maker Space has published a list of safe and hazardous materials to use with their laser. The list of no-nos includes some plastics like PVC, fiberglass, and certain types of foams.

Software for the Bambu Lab R1

Bambu Suite was developed to run the lasers on the H series and also handle the cutting function on H2 and A2 printers. It might be the easiest to use laser software I’ve seen. The laser is connected to Wi-Fi from the touchscreen, and Bambu Suite connects to it just like a 3D printer. You import whatever you want to cut or engrave, choose the process type, hit Prepare, then select Measure, line up your art with the material, and pick the material you are using. Finally, you press Make and off it goes.

The only thing that the software doesn’t have is a large list of default materials. The basics are there, but hopefully more will be added over time. As it is, a number of the projects I did required internet searches and guesswork to find material settings that worked.

Makerworld is accessible directly from Bambu Suite, and it has an expanding group of shared laser projects to help you get started.

Engraving / Cutting with the Bambu Lab R1

For the first job, we used the test file from Bambu Lab that includes line drawing, engraving, and cutting on 3 mm basswood plywood. The test file did not list the settings, but the overall job took under two minutes to complete and looks really good. The cuts show much less charring than you would see on a diode laser.

Next, I tried a really intricate butterfly decoration from PabloLab on Makerworld.com. Using the default material settings for 3mm basswood, 75% power at 30 mm/s, the cut was perfect. The butterfly and the interior cuts dropped out of the material with no weeding needed. I should point out I broke off one of her antennae in handling.

The Bambu Lab R1 is rated to cut up to 18mm black walnut and 20mm acrylic, but the thicker wood requires the optional medium or long focus lenses. I tested cutting on a piece of pine lumber that is 19.5mm thick but is much softer than black walnut. There was no material default for anything thicker than 3mm. The cut on the left used the long focus lens and did the best cut at the lowest power, using 80% power at 10mm/s and 4 passes. The cut in the middle used the medium focus lens at 85% power at 5 mm/s and required 5 passes. The short focus lens really did not totally punch through the bottom of the material. The cuts are charred due to using 100% power at 4 mm/s through multiple tries.

For cutting out stickers out of sheets of sticker paper, we used the material preset for 200g kraft paper, 45% power at 250mm/s. The cuts were perfect and only took a few seconds. With a jig mounted on the cutting plate, the results are repeatable page after page.

There was no material preset for PETG so with a little trial and error we stepped that down to 65% power at 35mm/s for 2mm PETG and 20% power at 20mm/s for 1mm PETG. With air assist, the results were terrific, with just a very little smoke cloudiness at the edges of the PETG cuts. At these speeds, the cuts all took less than a minute.

Where most lasers just pass right through clear materials, CO2 lasers run at a high enough frequency to cut and engrave them. Using the shape library in Bambu Suite for the designs, we cut a bunch of blanks for use with our UV printer out of clear PETG sheets and clear acrylic. The material settings in Bambu Suite were perfect for 3mm clear acrylic at 80% power at 10mm/s speed.

CO2 lasers can also engrave glass with no masking needed, though a thin smear of liquid soap is suggested to keep chipping down. There was no material preset for glass, so a quick internet search led to settings from a competitor’s 55-watt CO2 laser. Using 30% power and 250mm/s, with air assist on, the engraving took just seconds and looks excellent.

CO2 lasers can’t cut metal, but they do a good job engraving coated metal. The Bambu lab R1has a curved surface machining mode for curved surfaces like this flask and tumblers. The auto measure function creates a 3D map of the material’s surface and shows the engravable area. Using the settings for aluminum business cards, 70% power at 400mm/s, the job took less than a minute and looks sharp and clear.

Bottom Line

The Bambu Lab R1 is an impressive step into the laser market. Good hardware with even better software makes the R1 an excellent choice for makers and small businesses needing an easy-to-use CO2 laser. It’s simple enough for a beginner to use, leaving you with more time to focus on making art, not fussing over settings.

Retailing at $2,499, the R1 is more expensive than a hobby-level diode, but a downright bargain compared to the competition. If you’re serious about making cool things or running a small business, the price is worth it.

By combining a 55W CO2, a generous 600 x 300 mm work area, and automated mirror calibration, it delivers high-grade cutting performance through wood, acrylic, and glass with minimal charring. While the manual lens swap process is a minor hassle and the operational noise requires a dedicated workspace or shop environment, its performance outclasses most competitors in its price range.

If you’re not ready to invest in a professional-grade machine, check out the Creality Falcon A1 Pro, a very capable 20W for $1,099. If you’re thinking about engraving glass or handling materials without charring, the xTool F2 Ultra UV is a great “cold” laser that runs for $4,299. If you want to take your laser with you, a portable xTool F1 laser is a heck of a deal at $819.

Something, something, going back to your roots. I guess that's what Glorious is doing (or, thinks it's doing) with the GMMK Eternal — its new wired mechanical gaming keyboard.

The GMMK Eternal is, at a glance, pretty basic: it's wired, it has regular mechanical (not magnetic) switches and a standard 1,000 Hz polling rate. It comes with bright backlighting, double-shot ABS keycaps, and some gamer-friendly features such as multiple onboard profiles and macro-recording via Glorious Core. It also has a hot-swappable PCB and three layers of sound-dampening material in the case — it's not supposed to be a revolution, but it is a pretty solid option if you're looking for something compact and relatively budget-friendly. The GMMK Eternal is available now in black, with GMMK's Fox MX linear switches, for $99.99.

Design and Construction of the GMMK Eternal

The GMMK Eternal is a wired mechanical gaming keyboard with a compact 96-percent layout — it has a full function row, arrow keys, and a 10-key numberpad, but everything is squashed together (and it ditches most of the navigation keys), so it takes up significantly less space than a full-size keyboard but has almost as many keys. It sports a fairly simple, minimalist overall design — edge-to-edge keys with virtually no bezel, black anodized aluminum top plate over a black ABS plastic bottom case, and no obvious branding on the top or sides.

The keyboard measures approximately 14.6 inches (372mm) wide by 4.8 inches (122mm) deep, and is 1.7 inches (44mm) thick at its thickest point (including the keycaps). That's significantly smaller than a full-size keyboard, and is even small by 96-percent keyboard standards — perhaps my favorite 96-percent keyboard, the Asus ROG Strix Scope II 96 Wireless, is slightly larger than the GMMK Eternal at 14.84 x 5.16 inches (377 x 131mm), though at 1.57 inches (40mm) thick, it's slightly lower-profile. This is because the GMMK Eternal has double-shot ABS keycaps with shine-through legends in an OEM profile (the ROG Strix Scope II 96 Wireless comes with keycaps in a mid-height profile that's very close to the Cherry profile).

While the GMMK Eternal is pretty compact, even by 96-percent keyboard standards, you won't feel too cramped for space. There's enough room to leave some separation between the alphanumeric keys and the arrow keys (though not much), and there's enough room in the top row that the Function keys are grouped into visibly distinct groups of four. There are five navigation keys next to the Function row and above the numberpad: PrintScreen, Delete, Insert, Page Up, and Page Down. So you really shouldn't miss too much about your full-size board once you get used to the numberpad being right on top of you.

The GMMK Eternal has some weight to it, but it's not too hefty: it weighs in at just under two pounds (1.94 lbs / 879 g), which is about what we'd expect for a board of this size and construction. For comparison, the wired Corsair Vanguard Pro 96 weighs about 2.2 pounds (998g), while the wireless Asus ROG Strix Morph 96 Wireless weighs just under 2.5 pounds (2.48 lbs / 1,125 g). The GMMK Eternal is heavy enough that it shouldn't move around on your desk too much during heavy gaming sessions, but it's not so heavy that it would be difficult to travel with.

The bottom of the keyboard is where you'll finally see Glorious' branding. The Glorious name is stamped across the back, debossed with a shiny finish. There are also a couple strips of anti-slip rubber, as well as two sets of plastic flip-out feet for adjusting the keyboard's angle. The GMMK Eternal is a wired keyboard, and it has one USB-C port in the center of the board.

The GMMK Eternal comes with just two accessories in the box: a 6-foot (1.8m) rubber-coated USB-C to USB-A cable and a 2-in-1 combination keycap and switch puller.

Specs

Typing and Gaming Experience on the GMMK Eternal

The GMMK Eternal is a mechanical gaming keyboard with a hot-swappable PCB that takes both 3- and 5-pin switches. It comes pre-built with Glorious' Fox switches, which are pre-lubed linear switches with an actuation force of 55g — a little heavier than your average linear switch, but I kind of liked the extra force. The switches are otherwise typical linear switches, with smooth, stable keypresses that have no tactile bump or audible click. They're rated for 50 million clicks.

The keyboard features three layers of sound-dampening material in the case: a molded silicone layer and two layers of PU foam around the PCB, for a "deeper, more satisfying thock." And I'll admit that I was pretty impressed with how the GMMK Eternal sounded out of the box — especially for a sub-$100 keyboard from a mainstream gaming company. There was a small amount of rattle as I typed, but the case, at least, was solid and ping-less, and bottoming out did give a deeper sound (if not quite a "thock").

The GMMK Eternal comes with double-shot ABS keycaps in an OEM profile, which is the standard, medium-height profile you'll find on most mainstream gaming keyboards. The keycaps have lightly cupped, textured tops with shine-through legends and secondary legends printed on the sides in white. While I usually prefer lower-profile keycaps, I didn't mind these — the keyboard is fairly compact and low-profile to begin with, so I didn't find the standard height OEM profile to be uncomfortable (nor did I feel like I needed a wrist rest).

The GMMK Eternal is a solid option for both typing and gaming — I didn't have any issues with accuracy, speed, or response time in my testing, minus the normal learning curve of getting used to having the arrow keys right on top of the alphanumeric keys.

Features and Software of the GMMK Eternal

The GMMK Eternal is configurable with Glorious' universal peripheral software, Glorious Core, which I don't have any real problems with, save for the fact that it requires a restart upon install. The keyboard has onboard storage, and you can set up up to three profiles in Glorious Core to save directly to the hardware.

You can use Glorious Core to adjust the keyboard's settings, including polling rate, input latency, and lighting standby timer, as well as switching between Windows and Mac modes. This isn't a magnetic switch keyboard, so there's not much else to set up in terms of performance. You can also remap keys — up to two layers deep, and the software has a built-in macro recorder and manager.

You can also customize the keyboard's lighting, which looks great — the board features bright RGB backlighting with a north-facing PCB, and the board's otherwise boring design really lets the lighting shine. There are 17 different lighting presets in Glorious Core, and you can also customize the lighting for each key individually (if you want).

The Bottom Line

The Glorious GMMK Eternal isn't the most exciting keyboard on the market, especially not for gaming. It's a wired keyboard with mechanical switches and a standard 1,000 Hz polling rate, so it's not trying to be the fastest, lowest-latency, RapidTrigger-enabled keyboard that will launch you into a pro-eSports career. Instead, it's a simple, compact keyboard that offers a very solid typing and gaming experience with hot-swappable switches and pretty RGB lighting for the relatively budget-friendly price of $100. While you can definitely find keyboards for less than $100, you probably won't find one that sounds and feels better than the GMMK Eternal.

An Nvidia-backed startup plans to establish a Bitcoin mining operation in space before the year is out. Starcloud will fire up its cryptocurrency mining ASICs after its second spacecraft reaches orbit later this year. “We’ll be the first to mine Bitcoin in space,” claimed Starcloud CEO Philip Johnston in a recent interview with Documenting Bitcoin.

Starcloud was founded in 2024 with the headlining goal of moving data centers to space. “As launch costs fall, data centers in space will leverage continuous solar energy and radiative cooling, rapidly scaling to gigawatts while avoiding permitting constraints on Earth,” reads its mission statement. The firm spells out its proposition in far greater detail in a white paper on its website, highlighting the appeal of training AI in space. However, the ample supply of solar energy is also great for cryptomining.

So, when Starcloud-2 reaches orbit, it will be tasked with raising some crypto-cash. In the embedded interview segment, Johnston said: “We’ll have some Bitcoin mining ASICs on the second spacecraft launching later this year.” At the time of writing 1BTC is worth roughly $86,000, quite a way down from highs several months ago.

Starcloud-2 is just the second of four currently planned satellite launches from the startup. It is framed as the company's first commercial mission, and like the prior satellite, will feature a GPU cluster. Interestingly, the official Starcloud-2 project page doesn’t mention Bitcoin mining or ASICs, so Johnston’s reveal is quite eyebrow-raising. Moreover, for something that seems a bit like an afterthought, “Potentially it [Bitcoin mining] is one of the most compelling use cases of space compute,” the Starcloud CEO told Documenting Bitcoin.

Johnson provided some financial insight into why there is now a Bitcoin side gig or pivot being considered. He cited the lower costs of ASICs vs. GPUs: they are about 30x cheaper than GPUs per kilowatt, he told the host. A specific example given was a 1KW Nvidia B200 chip at $30,000 vs. a 1KW ASIC at $1,000. Solving the energy supply situation in space for GPUs, or for ASICs, isn’t relevant to the business, said Johnson. We wonder what Nvidia will think about that.

While the availability of near-uninterrupted solar power is a big attraction of space-based compute, there are downsides. For example, satellites aren’t easy to service, and convection cooling doesn’t work in a vacuum. Commercial space-based data centers are so new that some of the problems and solutions will only become entirely clear after pioneering deployments like the Starcloud-2.

The U.S. and China have proposed developing a hotline for AI incident reports to address the risk of a rogue AI model getting out of control and to prevent misinterpretations of attacks that could trigger rapid autonomous escalation, Reuters reports. This news comes ahead of a planned visit by Chinese Premier Xi Jinping to Washington on September 24. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has also confirmed that follow-up AI safety discussions are scheduled between the two nations in two months' time.

All of this sits against the backdrop of ongoing U.S. China trade and relations talks, in addition to various frontier AI agents seemingly breaking out of their containment and hacking organizations without oversight from humans.

While some are raising the alarm about the humanitarian risk posed by AI models, the U.S. and China are taking steps to ensure that if either party does end up triggering a dangerous AI event, there may be the opportunity for a joint response from both nations ahead of any potential perceived threat or escalation.

As artificial intelligence continues to make headlines circling around safety, both the U.S. and China now appear to be building global safeguards through a dedicated hotline to discuss any AI-related issues that escalate to national security threats.

Keeping humans in the loop

Following discussions between Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng in New York over the weekend, the two sides have proposed that President Trump and Xi Jinping discuss various AI safety mechanisms, including a notification system focused around national security. This could include warnings of detected rogue AI actors operating anywhere in the world, as well as informing the other partner if an autonomous system performed an action that could be misinterpreted as an attack.

The scenario both parties want to avoid is an AI-driven autonomous weapon system — be they kinetic or something more asymmetric in nature, like AI-driven cyber attack capabilities — responding to provocation without consideration by a human. That could then trigger an escalated response in another AI system, leading to rapid escalation to full-blown conflict at a pace where humans wouldn't be able to intervene.

The proposed system could also help both parties develop joint responses to positive goals, as well as potential threats. This could form the basis for joint development pacing, considering the recent calls from U.S. AI firms to slow AI development to improve alignment and safeguards. China is less keen, suggesting that such a move could be used to hamper Chinese AI developments.

It's not clear at this time how keen China is to implement the proposed notification system, but analysts and experts on both sides have called for a system like this to be developed. Both the U.S. and China have agreed to further broach AI safety concerns in the coming months.

Laying the groundwork

We're still in the very early days of these discussions, with only the bare bones of a proposal for a hotline in place, and much to discuss on alignment between the two major AI-developing countries. The next step will be the talks between the two leaders, where much more than AI will be discussed.

If the relationship between the U.S. and China can move beyond its ongoing rivalry, the potential is there for much firmer agreements on the specifics around AI integration in national security and military actions. Although some analysts remain sceptical of firm agreements because of the limited trust between the two parties, there is some hope that agreements can be made on the direct weaponization of AI, core principles of AI safeguarding, and preventing them from targeting or damaging critical infrastructure.

The hope for a successful meeting is very much bipartisan. Leading Democrat in the U.S. House, Representative Ro Khanna, said that the first thing President Trump and Xi Jinping should work on in their meeting is developing core AI principles. Particularly around banning recursive self-improving AI and removing the option to use such autonomous systems on biological and nuclear weapons technology.

Washington's summit between President Trump and Xi Jinping is scheduled to begin in just a few days, where much more will be discussed beyond AI safety, as the rest of the world waits with bated breath, as the meeting between the two leaders could set the stage for another round of discussions surrounding the two nations' economic relations.

Bundle deals are often the best way to sidestep today's inflated pricing of memory, SSDs, and GPUs. However, a well-configured prebuilt can be even more compelling, offering compatible components and the convenience of a fully assembled system out-of-the-box. One such prebuilt is the ABS Cyclone Aqua that is currently listed on Newegg for $1,299.99, down from its original price of $1,699.99, resulting in savings of $400. Customers can get an additional $100 discount using the promo code SSF73826 during checkout, bringing the final cost down to $1,199.99 for the Cyclone Aqua and an overall saving of $500.

• Check out this deal on Newegg

The ABS Cyclone Aqua gaming PC features hardware suitable for modern AAA gaming at 1080p. It is powered by an Intel Core i7-14700F, which is a solid 20-core (8 P-cores + 12 E-cores) processor with 28 threads and boost clock speeds of up to 5.4 GHz. The CPU is paired with an ASRock B760M-C/D4 motherboard with 32GB (2 x 16GB) of DDR4 3200 MT/s memory from G.Skill (Ripjaws V). The motherboard also comes with onboard Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth. For storage, the system includes a 1TB Patriot P410 M.2 2280 PCIe 4.0 SSD offering read speeds of up to 5,000 MB/s and write speeds of up to 4,500 MB/s.

Graphics duties are handled by the Zotac Gaming RTX 5060 Solo with 8GB VRAM, which is essentially Nvidia’s latest entry-level 1080p card. While it may not be ideal for high-end AAA gaming, it's good enough for less demanding titles, especially if you are into competitive FPS shooters. The rest of the features include a Cooler Master Hyper 212 CPU air cooler, a 650W 80+ Gold power supply unit, and a decent ABS Cyclone Micro ATX mid-tower case with a glass side panel, as well as two 120mm ARGB fans at the front and one at the rear.

If you've been holding off on a new gaming PC due to high component prices, this deal at $1,199.99 is definitely worth your attention. Considering that sourcing comparable components individually would likely push the total cost beyond $1,500, this prebuilt offers excellent value for the money.

Memory prices are at record highs due to demand from the AI sector and are not going to drop any time soon. In fact, the cost of manufacturing memory chips on a per-area basis can be higher than the price of silicon processed using TSMC's N2 and N3 fabrication technologies, which are used to make compute chips, according to an observation made by Kurnal Insights. While the comparison has merit, it has an important caveat.

Based on media leaks, Kurnal from Kurnal Insights considers that a 300-mm wafer processed using TSMC's N3 technology costs $20,000, which translates to approximately $0.283 per mm² when the wafer price is divided by its area. For TSMC's N2, the analyst assumes a considerably higher wafer price of $30,000, or around $0.424/mm². These calculations are based on unofficial information and do not account for unusable wafer edges, dicing, test structures, defects, or yield, so they should be viewed as nominal wafer-area prices rather than the actual price of usable silicon.

The calculation for DRAM works differently. Kurnal assumes a DRAM price of $1.50 per Gb and then multiplies it by the bit density of different generations. At 0.219 Gb/mm², 1y DRAM works out to $0.329/mm², whereas 1z DRAM with its 0.273 Gb/mm² density reaches $0.410/mm². Finally, 1b DRAM at 0.436 Gb/mm² produces a figure of $0.654/mm², considerably higher than the nominal $0.424/mm² calculated for an N2 wafer.

There is an important distinction here. The N2 and N3 numbers represent assumed prices charged by TSMC for processing a wafer, whereas the DRAM figures represent the potential selling value of the memory contained within a square millimeter of silicon, thus illustrating how much revenue a DRAM maker can theoretically get from a given die area at the assumed memory price.

Interestingly, Kurnal Insights' $1.50/Gb assumption is almost exactly in line with the current spot price of DDR5 eTT memory. According to DRAMeXchange, 16Gb DDR5 eTT chips carried a session-average price of $24.80 on September 21, equivalent to $1.55/Gb. At that price, 1b DRAM with a density of 0.436 Gb/mm² would be valued at approximately $0.676/mm², just 3% above Kurnal's $0.654/mm² estimate.

It goes without saying that producing DDR5 memory is considerably cheaper than making logic chips using TSMC's N3 process technology. However, with DRAM in short supply, memory makers are getting considerably more money for their silicon than they did historically.

There are a few important caveats that make the comparison somewhat less straightforward. The calculations do not account for packaging costs, with logic requiring more expensive techniques. Additionally, TSMC manufactures chips on a contract basis, and the actual price of a processed wafer depends on the volumes, customer, and other commercial terms. Thus, comparing estimated TSMC wafer prices with DRAM spot prices is not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison. Even TrendForce notes that DDR5 spot procurement remains limited and transactions are sporadic, which means spot prices do not necessarily reflect the prices at which Micron, Samsung, and SK hynix sell the bulk of their DRAM.

Therefore, contract DRAM prices would provide a considerably better basis for an economically meaningful comparison. However, we do not know contract prices, and while they are clearly higher than historical memory prices, they may not be as high as spot prices. To that end, we cannot state for sure that DRAM makers get more money for their wafers than TSMC does for its logic wafers.

Raspberry Pi users are effectively being blocked from swapping the RAM chips on their SBCs for repairs or upgrades. In a reply on the firm’s forums, Raspberry Pi Engineer & Forum Moderator PhilE told users that the company has been “locking devices to their original RAM size” for some time. This decision was made for the sake of device reliability, says the rep. However, the move seems to go against the grain for a company so involved in the maker, DIY, and tinkerer side of computing.

PhilE explains the problem that faced Raspberry Pi and some users, airing the company’s side of the argument. “If labor is cheap enough then there may be a minor financial gain in buying a part with say a 2GB part, swapping it for an 8GB part of dubious origin, and reselling it as an 8GB device,” says the forum mod. “However, this brings an element of risk to the user - the board hasn't been tested by us - and is a potential support burden for us, with customers complaining of unreliable devices. We therefore remove the commercial incentive by locking devices to their original RAM size.”

In addition, the Pi’s firmware currently “program in some other device attributes, meaning that switching parts of the same size may not work,” says PhilE. This isn’t great for genuine users who might want to tinker with or upgrade the RAM chips or have to replace an IC for repair. The forum mod underlines the effective block by telling would-be RAM MacGyvers to “don't waste your time trying - it won't work.”

Some readers might feel sympathetic towards Raspberry Pi’s RAM tinkering blockade, given PhilE’s reasoned explanation. One surprising aspect of the decision, though, is that the firmware locks of RAM IC swaps began to roll out in updates from late 2024 onwards. So, this change was made well before the crazy RAM chip pricing upswing precipitated by the AI data center boom. Also, it means that if you want to sidestep this RAM tinkering block, you would need to grab and flash a pretty old firmware to your Pi model (if available).

Naturally, the Pi community isn’t celebrating this RAM upgrade/repair block. Some high-profile Pi advocates like Jeff Geerling suggest that implementing a ‘warranty bit’ (similar to older models), or a one-time firmware flag to void support for modified boards, would have been a more agreeable path for Raspberry Pi to take. Here’s a lookup table that you can use to check your Pi’s factory RAM configuration.

Component prices have been through the roof for far too long because of the AI apocalypse, with RAM, video cards, and storage among the biggest increases. And while the prices are nowhere near what they were just a scant year and a half ago, we are seeing some deals that are good for the times. For example, Newegg has a great price on the budget-friendly MSI Spatium M461 2TB PCIe 4.0 SSD for only $299.99, or 10 cents per GB, after the promo code (SSD73852). This mid-range SSD is one of the least expensive name-brand drives available.

• Check out this deal at Newegg

While this isn’t the fastest PCIe 4.0 SSD, it’s exponentially faster than your average HDD and SATA-based SSD, with solid all-around performance for random and sequential reads and writes. The M461 uses a PCIe Gen 4x4 (64 Gbps) backbone, the NVMe 1.4 standard interface, and a Phison E21T controller with 3D NAND flash. This lets the 2TB MSI Spatium reach speeds of 5,000/4,200 MBps reads/writes, which is plenty fast for game storage or even an OS drive, and a notable upgrade over old storage technology and PCIe 3.0 drives.

MSI backs the M461 with a long five-year warranty and 900 TBW, which should be plenty of write cycles for the average user. You’ll likely reach the five-year time limit before you blow through 900 TB of writes. The Spatium also includes built-in data security and error correction capabilities, standard for this type of drive.

If you’re in the market for more NVMe-based storage, the 2TB MSI Spatium M461 for only $199 (with promo code SSF73852) is an excellent deal, since it’s one of the least expensive name-brand Gen 4x4 drives available on the market at only 10 cents per GB.

Enterprise SSD brand DapuStor revealed a new dual-mode configuration for its J5060 enterprise drive that combines SLC (single-level cell) and QLC (quad-level cell) flash on a single drive. The drive’s new firmware runs “selected QLC cells” in a faster pseudo-SLC (pSLC) mode, trading capacity for speed.

As an example, the 30.72TB model trades around 4TB of QLC for 800GB of pSLC, a ratio closer to 5:1 than 4:1. The other two configurations put aside 400GB or 1.2TB with a cost between 6% and 20% of the QLC capacity. “No dedicated SLC NAND is required,” as this uses a “software-defined media configuration,” DapuStor said. Announced last month during FMS 2026, the drive still lacks pricing, a named customer, and a general availability date.

Typical consumer QLC drives have a pSLC cache that fills with super-fast performance, with the data later transferring over to QLC. However, this pSLC mode is dynamic and variable in size. DapuStor’s implementation uses a fixed region sized by the operator, and the regions are exposed as individual block devices to the host. The J5060 is also higher capacity, from 15.36 to 122.88TB, and in the U.2 form factor for PCIe 4.0 x4. Endurance is rated at 0.5 DWPD (Drive Writes Per Day) over five years. The stock 30.72TB model is rated at 30,000 random-write IOPS at 16KB. Its write latency is 35 microseconds.

The capacity trade-off improves what QLC is worse at, random writes, by more than seven times, DapuStor said. It also says average 4K random-write latency is below 8 microseconds. The pSLC has over 25 times the program/erase cycles of the QLC region, although without region-specific DWPD or TBW numbers. DapuStor achieves this with three firmware changes: die-level isolation, optimized SLC reserve allocation, and region-aware I/O scheduling. The high-performance region targets workloads that benefit, namely “database journals, write-ahead logs (WALs), and metadata caches.” The idea is that this drive configuration precludes the need for specialized SLC drives where failure could be an issue; however, you still end up with a dead dual-mode drive on a failure.

The NVMe specification has defined this arrangement since 2019, with an NVM Express presentation at FMS 2019 claiming the goal was to “enable one SKU to be configured by customer for their use case.” An FMS 2019 example showed that some media units run as a small fast region, while the rest run at full density. A prior drive with the same idea, via a Phison firmware split and a host driver, was the consumer Enmotus/Phison FuzeDrive P200 with our 2021 verdict stating that “excessive pricing isn’t for everyone.” Enmotus wound down the same year. It’s also possible to mod a QLC drive to SLC, as we covered in 2024. The difference here is that DapuStor hands the host a second and separate block device with storage software control.

Competitors have other solutions. Sandisk’s bet is on Direct Write QLC on its UltraQLC platform, “which eliminates SLC buffering by enabling power-loss safe writes on the first pass,” Sandisk said, but there are still performance differences, according to our own reporting. Alternatively, Micron’s solution offers a separate cache drive in its XTR. The drive uses 176-layer TLC entirely in SLC mode and is rated at up to 35 DWPD. The drive acts as an optional write buffer for arrays of Micron’s 6000-series SSDs. For reference, Micron rates the XTR at 15 microseconds for QD1 writes.

Product promises are valuable, but any full comparison requires seeing the drives in actual use. Questions remain specifically regarding DapuStor’s drive, as pSLC region specifications are lacking. It is uncertain what commands the drive employs and whether the region split is modifiable live; usability depends much on the undemonstrated storage software. More details for the QLC-based, PCIe 5.0 sibling R6060 would be nice, too. Utilizing multi-bit flash in a single-bit, SLC mode for performance or endurance reasons is not a new idea, but balancing those with the increasing need for capacity remains a challenge.

China's DRAM champion CXMT has begun mass production using its 5th-generation DRAM process technology.

CXMT says its new process technology — G5, as the company calls it — reduces DRAM’s active-area half-pitch to 11.95nm using quadruple-patterning lithography. The 11.95nm half-pitch corresponds to an active-area pitch of 23.9nm, something that puts this particular dimension roughly in the range of other advanced 10nm-class DRAM technologies. However, it cannot be directly translated into a conventional DRAM node designation. Separately, CXMT says its DRAM-optimized high-K metal gate (HKMG) process reduced the height of the core cell array to 6,762nm.

The company also says it modified its process flow and introduced unspecified new materials to enable storage capacitors with a depth-to-width aspect ratio of about 45:1.The figure is certainly difficult to compare directly with competing DRAM process technologies, but SK hynix says that capacitor aspect ratios will need to exceed 100:1 as DRAM critical dimensions eventually fall below 10nm.

A 45:1 aspect ratio means CXMT’s storage capacitors are 45 times deeper than they are wide, which is what enables the company to reduce DRAM cell area and fit more memory arrays onto a wafer and retail predictable capacity. However, increasingly high aspect ratios make etching, deposition, mechanical stability, and ultimately high-yield manufacturing considerably more challenging.

The first disclosed mass-produced devices using G5 are said to be 24Gb LPDDR5X devices, which have already entered mass production. The chips offer 50% more capacity than CXMT's previous comparable products and are available in two package formats for different mobile-device designs. According to the Chinese report, the 24Gb LPDDR5X products are already entering mainstream Chinese flagship smartphones.

A nanometer caveat?

Meanwhile, there are some important caveats.

First up, CXMT's 11.95nm figure represents the active-area half-pitch rather than a conventional process-node designation, so calling G5 a 12nm process is a large degree of simplification at best.

Secondly, the two revealed physical dimensions do not mean technological parity with the latest DRAM processes from Micron, Samsung, and SK hynix, as density, capacitor scaling, transistor characteristics, power consumption, and, arguably most importantly when it comes to commodities, yields matter.

Thirdly, CXMT says G5 provides at least 50% more gross dies per wafer than G4, but without actual numbers, this is obsolete. CXMT also did not disclose yields, which makes it impossible to determine the increase in productivity, not to mention known-good dies or the actual manufacturing cost per bit. Yet again, even a claimed 11.95-class DRAM node is an achievement.

Anthropic and OpenAI are reportedly scrambling to secure smaller AI data center deployments as they race to bring more compute capacity online while gigawatt-scale projects undergo construction. According to a September 18 CNBC report, the two AI giants are exploring agreements for existing facilities with roughly 20-30 MW of capacity, despite already committing tens of billions of dollars to much larger AI infrastructure projects.

Anthropic has reportedly sounded out potential deals of that size across the UK and Nordic countries, according to CNBC, citing four people familiar with the discussions. OpenAI has also explored smaller deployments in the Nordics, while sources said both companies have discussed similar opportunities in the United States.

“We’re building a diversified compute portfolio to meet growing demand for AI around the world,” an OpenAI spokesperson told CNBC. The company added that different workloads require different infrastructure and that it evaluates potential deployments based on performance, reliability, timing, and cost. Anthropic declined to comment.

The smaller facilities would complement the enormous AI campuses both companies are already pursuing. Anthropic, for example, reportedly signed a roughly $45 billion agreement with Nscale for around 460 MW of compute capacity at a West Virginia development. OpenAI, meanwhile, said earlier this year that its Stargate infrastructure commitments had already surpassed the project's original 10 GW target, before announcing another 3 GW in Georgia and 8 GW in Ohio.

These projects provide the large clusters of accelerators needed to train increasingly large AI models, in which thousands of GPUs must work together via high-bandwidth interconnects. However, they also take years to develop, requiring land, grid connections, substations, cooling infrastructure, and huge amounts of power before the accelerators can begin operations.

Meanwhile, both OpenAI and Anthropic need immediate capacity to meet the inference demand for their models. As it turns out, inference can be distributed across multiple smaller clusters, making smaller data centers appropriate for these tasks and increasing the demand for such facilities.

Smaller deployments also circumvent some of the issues plaguing large data center buildouts. In the U.S. alone, local opposition blocked 45 data center projects worth $68 billion in the second quarter of 2026 over land usage, noise pollution, and electricity and water consumption. Existing, small facilities do not face the same pressure.

“Securing a few megawatts at an existing powered site can be more practical than waiting for a much larger block in one location,” Jabez Tan, head of research at Structure Research, told CNBC. “For workloads that can operate across separate sites, a collection of smaller deployments can add up to substantial capacity.”

Renting capacity is already standard practice for AI companies, as AI labs lease capacity from hyperscalers, dedicated data center operators, and rapidly expanding GPU-focused neoclouds. This allows them to spread workloads across multiple providers.

Apple’s latest iPhone 18 Pro series went on sale last week, and the company’s decision to use QLC-based NAND for higher-capacity storage variants appears to come with a trade-off. Bilibili channel Homolab recently tested a 1TB iPhone 18 Pro Max and found that its storage performance can drop significantly under sustained heavy workloads. Since QLC stores four bits of data per memory cell when compared to three bits with TLC, it allows manufacturers to offer higher capacities using the same physical space. However, this higher storage density comes at the cost of slower performance, particularly when handling large amounts of data.

Homolab compared the 1TB QLC-based iPhone 18 Pro Max with a 512GB TLC-based iPhone 18 Pro. While both storage types perform fairly similarly in 4K read tests, the QLC model falls behind by 38% in a low-queue-depth mixed workload, scoring 8,168 compared to 11,285 for the TLC model. Under heavier workloads, the gap narrows, although the TLC storage model still maintains a 12% advantage.

The drop in performance is even more apparent when it comes to sustained write tests. The iPhone 18 Pro Max uses a fast SLC cache that can deliver speeds of up to 3,000 MB/s. Once that cache is exhausted, a secondary TLC-based buffer takes over, averaging around 578 MB/s. When both cache buffers are exhausted, the phone has to write directly to the underlying QLC NAND. At that point, sustained write performance can fall to 79.4 MB/s, with speeds occasionally dropping as low as 25.6 MB/s.

That is significantly slow and comparable to the performance of many budget microSD cards (microSD Express cards are much faster). Things look even worse once the storage starts filling up. At 60% capacity, the available SLC cache drops from 250GB to just 58GB. This also causes the secondary buffer to slow down to 396 MB/s, while direct QLC writes average just 45 MB/s and occasionally fall to as low as 1.1 MB/s.

It’s important to note that these are synthetic benchmarks and are meant to represent a worse case scenario. Users should not experience any performance issues during typical tasks such as web browsing, messaging, gaming, or taking photos. Any slowdown is likely to be noticeable only during specific workloads, such as 4K or ProRes recording, large file transfers, or data backup restores. Having said that, testing by Homolab does point to the trade-off involved in using QLC NAND for a high-capacity flagship smartphone, particularly for users who regularly deal with storage-intensive tasks.

Powered by a Ryzen 7 9800X3D and a GeForce RTX 5080 Founders Edition, the $2,299 CyberPowerPC SLC8500WST is one of the best gaming prebuilt deals on the market right now. A custom GeForce RTX 5080, which starts at $1,579, and the $449 Ryzen 7 9800X3D already add up to $2,028. In today’s market, there is no way you will find 32GB of DDR5 memory and a 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD for $271, much less put together an entire system.

• Check out the CyberPowerPC gaming PC deals at Walmart

The Ryzen 7 9800X3D needs no introduction. The octa-core Zen 5 chip with 96MB of L3 cache has been on the market for two years now and still reigns as the best CPU for gaming. Although Intel and AMD have released many processors, nothing comes close to the Ryzen 7 9800X3D in terms of performance and gaming value that the Zen 5 processor offers.

Meanwhile, Nvidia's GeForce RTX 5080 Founders Edition, one of the best graphics cards, joins the Ryzen 7 9800X3D in the SLC8500WST to deliver strong 4K (3840x2160) performance and exceptional frame rates at lower resolutions. It is worth noting that it is the Founders Edition, a coveted model that is rarely available on the market anymore, even if you are willing to overpay for it. It comes with DLSS 5 support, as well, and we've found solid DLSS 5 performance on the RTX 5080 in our testing.

Sometimes prebuilt systems are a mixed bag, pairing high-end hardware with weaker components to cut corners. However, the SLC8500WST makes no compromises. The gaming system comes equipped with 32GB of DDR5-6000 memory to ensure seamless gaming and future-proofing of your system.

While the Walmart page does not list the exact specifications of the kit used in the SLC8500WST, it is worth noting that the most affordable 32GB (2x16GB) DDR5-6000 C30 memory kit on the market currently sells for $429.

On the storage side, the SLC8500WST has a spacious 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD. It provides ample room for your games and loads them instantly. The capacity is a good starting point given current storage prices due to the AI-induced shortage. Again, we do not know the SSD model. However, a budget 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD typically starts at $149 nowadays.

You do not see offers like the CyberPowerPC SLC8500WST every day, especially at the $2,299 price point. If you have been holding off on upgrading your gaming system or buying a new one, this SLC8500WST deal is definitely one you should consider.

If you're looking for more savings, check out our Best PC Hardware deals for a range of products, or dive deeper into our specialized SSD and Storage Deals, Hard Drive Deals, Gaming Monitor Deals, Graphics Card Deals, gaming chair, or CPU Deals pages.

Edit: 8/24/2026 6:25am PT: Energy provider Entergy reached out to clarify the savings to customers outlined below, stating, "The correct number is $2.65 billion over 20 years in customer savings. This information is found in our Meta fact sheet that is publicly available at www.entergy.com/datacenters and in our press release first announcing the savings on March 27, 2026." We have corrected the story below accordingly.

Amended article follows:

Local opposition blocked or delayed $68 billion in data center projects between April and June this year, according to a September 21 Bloomberg report citing data from research group Data Center Watch. The report says 30 state houses have implemented rules on data center location and resource consumption, with communities pursuing moratoriums on planned construction even before developers apply for permits. Conversely, hyperscalers have spent over $1 trillion on data infrastructure since 2023, with an additional $745 billion in Capex expected in 2026 alone.

The blocked-project figures reflect widespread opposition to data centers across the United States over concerns about land usage, noise pollution, and electricity and water consumption. In July this year, 142 AI data center protests were simultaneously staged across 42 states in one weekend. Data Center Watch’s research estimates that there are 843 opposition groups across all U.S. states except Hawaii.

One leading concern is the environmental impact of AI data centers. Each consume huge amounts of water to cool hundreds of thousands of accelerators powering artificial intelligence, with AI reportedly set to consume up to 600 billion gallons of water by 2030. The hyperscalers, on the other hand, insist the issue is being blown out of proportion.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says 38,000 ChatGPT queries use as much water as producing one almond, while Microsoft says its new data center architecture consumes as little water as a restaurant. Meanwhile, in May this year, an AI data center project secretly consumed 29 million gallons of water within a year and three months before low water pressure alerted nearby residents to its existence.

Protesters also commonly cite electricity consumption as a major concern. Analysts project that data centers will consume 20% of U.S. power by 2035. Local residents are already feeling the effects. An AI data center in Virginia led to an irreversible 76% hike in residents’ electricity bills, prompting the state to eventually mandate hyperscalers to cover the cost of the transmission infrastructure required exclusively for the project.

Many regions are now implementing similar mandates, with hyperscalers offering to offset the bills in many cases. These concerns, along with the extreme power demands of AI data centers, have also led hyperscalers to build on-site power, with some offering to supply power back to the grid. Meta, for example, recently signed an agreement with utility company Entergy Louisiana for 7 GW of power for its Hyperion facility. Entergy claims Meta's payment provide other customers with $2.65 billion in savings over 20 years.

Meanwhile, the shift to off-grid, on-site power generation is creating yet another issue driving the protests. Due to their scalability and speed of availability, many hyperscalers are relying on gas plants, which mostly burn fossil fuels to generate electricity. Elon Musk's Colossus 2 data center recently came under fire after 59 unpermitted natural gas turbines powering the data center released thousands of tons of pollutants into predominantly black communities in Mississippi. Elsewhere, Amazon’s custom 35-turbine gas plant has been authorized to emit 33 million tons of greenhouse gases annually, a move that will make it the largest single source of CO₂ pollution in the U.S.

The growing sentiments present a sort of dilemma. AI is proving to be quite the revolutionary technology and has seen massive adoption and skyrocketing usage. To meet demand, hyperscalers are erecting data centers at breakneck speed, which residents now oppose. Proponents say data centers are an absolute necessity and any opposition stifles growth.

Opponents, on the other hand, say they are only demanding responsible execution and have nothing against AI. President Trump has condemned communities that have opposed data centers, saying that they “want to end up being backwards and poor.” He has also implied that China could be behind the sentiment, orchestrating movements behind the scenes. Meanwhile, officials across the country are reportedly facing death threats and gunfire over AI data center projects, even as AI data center investments are projected to hit $32 trillion by 2050.

AMD's market cap has crossed the $1 trillion mark for the first time, following a rally in its share price over the last week. At market close on Friday, AMD's share price was around $557. On Monday morning, shares immediately jumped to $607 on the market open and have continued to rise, finally pushing AMD over the $1 trillion mark.

Saša Marinković, AMD's senior marketing director, shared the milestone on X. Since posting, AMD's share has fluctuated a bit, bringing the market cap down below $1 trillion for brief periods. Undoubtedly, the buzz around the milestone will cause some turmoil in the share price throughout the day, though it should eventually stabilize.

Just a week ago, AMD was quite a ways off hitting the trillion-dollar milestone. AMD's share price has risen by around 29% over the past month, and 21% of that jump came in just the last five days. On Monday alone, AMD's shares jumped around 9% within the first few hours of the market opening.

If you're unfamiliar, market cap is a shorthand for understanding the value of a company. It looks at the number of outstanding shares multiplied by the share price. It's not necessarily tied to revenue or profit, at least not directly. Rather, market cap is a read on the value of a company in the eyes of Wall Street, fluctuating as the share price does.

AMD joins a club of fewer than two dozen companies around the world that have passed a $1 trillion market cap, including SK hynix, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Nvidia, Broadcom, and Micron. Although AMD has now joined the club, it's still far behind its rival in the AI accelerator space, Nvidia, which sits at a market cap of around $5.4 trillion currently.

However, AMD was able to beat Intel to the milestone. Intel's market cap currently sits at around $648 billion. Interestingly, Intel has actually seen a larger rally in its share price over the past month. Share prices have risen 37% in the past month, with 25% of that growth coming in the past five days. Similar to AMD, Intel opened on the market Monday morning with a 13% jump.

Following AMD's Q2 earnings, where it beat revenue expectations by 2%, shares traded down, creating an opportunity to hold. That's paying off now as both AMD and Intel shares jump.

Although AMD's AI accelerators have made inroads into the data center, Nvidia still largely dominates that market. AMD's unique positioning comes from its CPUs, which have become a focal point of agentic AI data centers over the past year.