Gaming

Leaving RGB lighting aside, the MS-Y1000 and MS-Z1000 micro-ATX cases from Sharkoon come with a front panel that sports Y-shaped or Z-shaped airflow openings, four pre-installed fans, as well as room for a 240 mm radiator in the top. An optionally available kit for installing graphics cards up to 27 cm long is also available for both cases.

Not only does MSI equip the latest GS66 generation with a brand-new Alder Lake CPU, but also with an updated Ampere GPU. The GeForce RTX 3070 Ti of the base 12UGS variant already promises enough performance to handle the QHD display.

Some astonishing Nvidia GeForce RTX 40 series-related power requirement rumors have surfaced. A well-known leaker has claimed that the flagship Lovelace AD102 GPU, which should appear in an RTX 4090 or 4090 Ti card, has a high-end TGP figure of 850 W. This would mean a 1,500 W and above PSU would be required to eke out full performance levels.

LG is preparing to release a super-sized gaming monitor under its UltraGear brand. The 48-inch affair will have an OLED panel, DisplayPort and HDMI 2.1 connections, plus subtle UltraGear branding.

Reportedly, Activision has pulled the Call of Duty game planned for 2023, leaving the series without a major release next year. In its place will arrive a new free-to-play game and more content for both CoD: Warzone 2 and CoD: Modern Warfare 2022. Apparently, Activision will instead release Treyarch's next CoD game in 2024.

Design-wise, the PlayStation VR2 headset is taking quite a few cues from the PS5 console itself, while the hardware upgrades include a 4K HDR display with 90 / 120 Hz refresh rate and foveated rendering, plus haptic feedback, eye tracking and more.

Dell has launched the G15 5520, a refreshed version of the 5510. The G15 5520 arrives with a choice between two Intel Alder Lake-P processors, GeForce RTX 30 series GPUs and three display options. Also, the G15 5520 has DDR5 RAM, up to 1 TB of storage and an 86 Wh battery.

Zotac has officially listed three Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti desktop graphics card variants featuring a GA103 GPU. Other than the GPU swap, it seems to have identical specs to its GA104-toting sibling, including 8 GB of GDDR6 VRAM and 4,864 CUDA cores.

Xiaomi's Black Shark 4 Pro has finally joined its vanilla 4 sibling on its brand's international webstore today (February 23, 2022). It offers the slightly outdated, yet still quite powerful, Snapdragon 888 flagship-grade processor, complete with a "sandwich" liquid cooling system to help preserve its gaming performance. Then again, it also offers a 144Hz AMOLED display refresh rate and 120W charging for under $600.

Digital Foundry has determined that Cyberpunk 2077 does not play at 4K on either the PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X, despite CD Projekt Red claiming that this was now the case. The company's lauded ray-tracing features only introduce minimal visual improvements to Cyberpunk 2077 on Patch 1.5 too.

RedMagic has unveiled the global variant of its 2022 flagship gaming smartphone today (February 22, 2022). The 7 has a top-end 165Hz refresh rate for its AMOLED display, and boasts a comprehensive cooling system for its Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 SoC. However, it has launched with some compromises on the specs of its original, Chinese-market version.

This 1440p Dell monitor is a sweet spot for many gamers due to its native 1440p resolution, 27-inch screen size, and fast response times. The high quality stand and lack of an external power brick make the monitor even better than most monitors from lesser-known brands.

Halo The Series will reveal the Master Chief's face for the first time in 20 years of the franchise. The producers said that they are cognizant of the mixed reactions this decision would elicit but reiterate its importance to the story. Halo The Series will premiere on March 24 on Paramount Plus in the US.

The Lenovo Legion Y700 8.8-inch Android tablet has appeared in a multitude of review and unboxing images as the review embargo for the device is lifted in China. One tech blogger has shared the impressive full specs of the Legion Y700, which will sport 12 GB of RAM, while a noted leaker has suggested an attractive price tag for the perceived iPad Mini 6 rival.

Lenovo's Vantage software is included from the factory in most of the OEM's laptops nowadays. While it provides the usual warranty and diagnostic information, here are some extra-neat features that may prevent you from uninstalling it immediately.

Capcom has officially announced Street Fighter 6 via a countdown website. A teaser was revealed, showing the iconic Ryu who was being challenged by Luke. More details of Street Fighter 6 are expected to be released during summer 2022.

With multiple choices that can take its price above the 1,000 Euros threshold, such as cable management accessories or monitor arms, the FlexiSpot E7 standing desk starts at roughly 450 Euros (frame price alone). Until the end of the month, customers from Germany, the Netherlands, and Austria can take advantage of a 120 Euros discount.

A new series of gaming tests pitting the new Redmi K50 Gaming Edition against the Nubia RedMagic 7 Pro has now shown what Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 performs like in proper gaming-focused implementations.

AMD's upcoming Ryzen 6000 series of processors were benchmarked across various games and synthetic benchmarks. Both the Ryzen 5 6600H and Ryzen 6800H easily trounced their 12th-generation Intel Alder Lake counterparts. The former uses an RDNA2-based Radeon 680M iGPU with 12 CUs, and the latter cuts that down to 6 CUs.

Generational performance improvement estimates for the upcoming Nvidia Lovelace family and AMD RDNA3 next-gen graphics cards have seemingly left the rivals looking evenly matched. Figures were compared to the performance of the GeForce RTX 3090. A noted tipster has also signaled that GPU prices will fall “dramatically” in March.

The Legion Y90 is Lenovo's upcoming flagship gaming smartphone for 2022. The OEM's latest teaser for this device outlines the specs to come in its updated RGB-enabled chassis. They include the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor, LPDDR5 RAM - and "heterogenous" storage that combines an SSD with the more usual UFS 3.1 mobile memory chip.

The incredibly valuable haul of retro games for example includes a rare factory-sealed copy of Chrono Trigger for the legendary Super Nintendo console, which alone could be worth more than US$2,400.

The e-commerce behemoth from Seattle offers the Core i7-12700K, one of Intel's quickest Alder Lake desktop processors, at its lowest price to date with a considerable discount compared to its regular list price of US$409.

Steam has now removed suspicious mods of the popular game Cities: Skylines after users complained of performance regressions upon installing a redesigned Harmony mod. Turns out that the redesigned mod was created by a notorious developer named Chaos, who put users' computers at serious risk of getting infected by trojans, keyloggers, and Bitcoin miners.

The soon-to-launch Nintendo Switch Sports game will likely feature AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) image upscaling when the Switch is connected to a 1080p display. Evidence for this was found in the EULA of the Switch Sports game that is slated to launch in the coming weeks.

Razer is now accepting orders for its refreshed Blade 14 equipped with AMD's latest Zen 3+ Ryzen 6900HX CPU, DDR5 RAM, and GeForce RTX 3070 Ti or 3080 Ti graphics. Prices range from $2000 up to $3500 USD with shipments expected to begin on March 17.

Some fans argue that buying a luxury electric car does not align with the anti-capitalist and socialist views of the popular political commentator HasanAbi, while some even call the successful Twitch streamer a hypocrite. However, the Porsche Taycan is not his first extravagant purchase that has caused some controversy.

The latest, cloud-based Amazon Web Services (AWS) are based on AMD's server-grade silicon and is rated to run even the high-performance computing (HPC) necessary for scientific research on a cloud. The company asserts that its latest and Milan-enhanced instances, or virtual servers, can deliver improved cost-effectiveness, high bandwidth and the use of up to 192 virtual processors, to its customers.

Since regular list prices for Razer's flagship wireless gaming mouse are usually pretty high, gaming enthusiasts may be excited to hear that Amazon currently sells the Razer DeathAdder V2 for just US$69 after a steep 46% discount.

The Steam Deck console has appeared on Geekbench with the CPU part of the custom AMD APU producing a similar result to desktop Ryzen 3000 APUs. The Steam Deck’s chipset has a CPU component based on Zen 2 architecture and the console also has an RDNA 2 GPU advantage.

While the i7-12700H + RTX 3050 Ti combo may seem questionable, the US$1,099 price point is undoubtedly enticing. Colorful's latest X15 XS models also come equipped with 16 GB of DDR4-3200 RAM and a 512 GB NVMe SSD, plus there is an i5-12500H model for US$999, as well.

Nubia's high-octane Android phone brand RedMagic has just unleashed its latest 7 and 7 Pro flagships on the world. The 7 Pro in particular is rated for a number of industry-leading upgrades, a world-first under-display camera (UDC) panel in a gaming phone included. However, with its 165Hz screen, the 7 does not lag that far behind.

ASUS has opened pre-orders for the latest version of the ROG Zephyrus G14, which relies on AMD Ryzen 6000 and Radeon RX 6000 hardware. The ROG Zephyrus G14 (2022) is available with up to a Ryzen 9 6900HS and Radeon RX 6800S, but ASUS has made other improvements to its 14-inch gaming laptop too.

The Philips Momentum 3000 series consists of the 27M1N3200VA, 27M1N3200VS, 27M1N3200ZA, all 27-inch gaming monitors capable of outputting at 1080p and 165 Hz. The trio offer low response times too and three video outputs. The Momentum 3000 series starts at €269 and rises to €309 for the 27M1N3200ZA.

CD Projekt Red has admitted that Patch 1.5 is causing some Cyberpunk 2077 installations to crash at launch on PC. Supposedly, incompatible audio drivers are the cause, even though they were fine pre-Patch 1.5. CD Projekt Red is also investigating the option of raising the FPS cap on Xbox Series S too, among other requests.

Say goodbye to the Radeon RX Vega series and hello to the Radeon 680M. AMD will finally be migrating its integrated graphics to the RDNA 2 architecture complete with larger compute units and wider LP/DDR5 bandwidth.

The Sharkoon V1000 got the RGB treatment, thus becoming the V1000 RGB. This micro-ATX features three preinstalled RGB LED fans, an addressable RGB controller, a tempered glass side panel, and can accommodate micro-ATX and mini-ITX mainboards. The manufacturer's suggested price is 79.9 Euros (roughly US$91).

The Lenovo Legion Y700 release date has seemingly been confirmed in new promotional material published by the Chinese OEM. An upcoming product launch event, which has been penciled in for February 28, is likely to feature not only the Legion Y700 tablet but also the Y90 smartphone and a range of gaming laptops.

It seems that CD Projekt Red has done a good job with its free next-gen update for Cyberpunk 2077. Extensive videos show that the game loads considerably faster on current-generation consoles than it did previously. Performance and graphics improvements are evident in Patch 1.5 too.

Nintendo has now confirmed that the Wii U and 3DS eShops will cease operations after March 2023. The company will gradually be disabling features such as ability to use credit cards and gift cards from May this year. What's probably more disheartening is that Nintendo actually removed a Q&A section that indicated Virtual Console games will not be available in any other manner and users will have to contend with the paltry selection available via Nintendo Switch Online subscription.

Xiaomi has now debuted its first performance-focused device for the year, the Redmi K50 Gaming Edition. The new phone is powered by a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 and is equipped with the necessary cooling, as well as cool shoulder triggers that should appeal to smartphone gamers.

According to insider sources, the RX 6x50 XT refresh would include RX 6950 XT, RX 6750 XT and RX 6650 XT SKUs, but no RX 6850 XT. The new GPUs are rumored to get upgraded with 18 Gbps GDDR6 VRAM and the high-end cards would also see a TGP bump.

The excellent and versatile wireless gaming mouse Logitech G Pro is now heavily discounted on Amazon and has thereby hit its all-time lowest sales price of a very reasonable US$79.

The RedMagic 7 smartphones have now been confirmed as the first of their flagship series to come with a dedicated co-processor. This "Red Core 1" has been developed to boost a number of gaming-focused specs and features on the devices, their haptic feedback, audio and touch-sampling rate included.

CD Projekt Red has unveiled native versions of Cyberpunk 2077 for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S|X consoles. Available as a free download to owners of the game and at half price for the next few weeks, Cyberpunk 2077 has effectively received something of a soft re-launch. CD Projekt Red has delivered Patch 1.5 too, a huge update for the game with hundreds of fixes and optimisations.

From Software has officially revealed the system requirements for Elden Ring. One will need an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 3GB, Intel Core i5-8400, 12 GB of RAM, 60 GB of storage and Windows 10 to play the game at minimum settings.

One of the fastest 14-inch gaming laptops in the market seem to be always on sale every few weeks or so. This time, a fully configured model can be had for hundreds of dollars less than the competing Razer Blade 14 equipped with the same GeForce RTX 3060 GPU.