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TimeCheck The Intel Core i7-4770K launched close to 10 years ago, back in June 2013. It delivered a solid update to Intel's third-generation processors, but it was also partially responsible for launching Intel into its dark ages. Is it still a capable budget CPU in 2023, and should you upgrade if you have one?

In what might possibly be the deal of the century, a Redditor found a returned 12C/24T AMD Ryzen 9 5900X selling for just US$3 in a local store. The CPU had bent pins and a couple of missing ones, but the OP managed to straighten the bent ones, successfully POST the CPU, and even stress test it. The missing pins apparently correspond to integrated audio, but they didn't seem to affect the processor's functionality.

The RTX 4060 Ti is rumored to pack an AD106 Lovelace GPU, 4352 CUDA cores, 8 GB of GDDR6, and a TDP of 160 W. Latest reports from leaker kopite7kimi and MyDrivers suggest that the board will only bring a conservative performance uplift over the RTX 3060 Ti while costing less than US$500.

A CD Projekt Red spokesperson has said Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty will be the company's largest expansion to date, suggesting it could eclipse The Witcher 3's Blood and Wine expansion. The expansion does not have a release date, but should ideally be ready before 2023 ends.

AMD's latest Adrenalin drivers for the RX 6000 series were ruled out from the list of possible suspects after more than a week of testing with brand new GPUs. Digging even deeper into the root of the problem, the German GPU repair service discovered that most customers had no original invoices, having bought the defective cards at around the same time from online third parties.

This specialized mini PC can be configured to act as a firewall or router thanks to the inclusion of six 2.5 GbE cards. Despite a fanless design, these solutions also come with Alder Lake-U processors that can provide enough power for multimedia tasks.

Apple’s ruthless Trade In service has come under the spotlight after a tech journalist discovered that a Mac Pro that cost US$52,199 three years earlier was given a current trade-in value of just US$970. Disconcertingly, the same Mac Pro was apparently still available via the Apple store at the identical original price of US$52,199.

Square Enix and Luminous Productions' Forspoken will be quite resource-heavy, as confirmed by its system requirements on PC. It requires at least 16 GB of RAM and 150 GB of hard drive space on top of beefy hardware. The game will launch on PC and PlayStation 5 on January 24.

Using a chipset often hailed as the best budget solution for 1080p gaming, the MSI Radeon RX 6600 MECH 2X 8G is a video card coming with a high list price of US$399.99. However, the ongoing 23% Amazon discount takes its price tag to a more reasonable US$309.95, less than 10% down from the US$329 launch price.

Affordable AM5 motherboards could be imminent as several GIGABYTE and ASUS A620 motherboards have visited the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC). Additionally, some of these boards have also been listed for sale on the Chinese e-commerce site Goofish. The appearance of wallet-friendly AM5 boards is welcome since there is no true budget option among the currently available products.

With a boost clock of up to 2622 MHz and 12 GB GDDR6 192-bit memory, the Gigabyte Radeon RX 6700 XT Gaming OC video card is now available on Amazon with a generous 38% discount. However, the discounted price of US$599 is still high for an RX 6700 XT, since most of its competitors (with slightly lower frequencies) retail for less than US$400.

The Ryzen 7 5700X is currently going for US$189.99 on eBay with free shipping and returns. The processor packs 8 cores, 16 threads, and 36 MB of total cache. Like other Zen 3 CPUs, the chip can be slotted into any AM4 board that supports Zen 3 CPUs.

ComputerBase tested AMD's Adrenalin 22.12.2 drivers to see if power efficiency has improved in any way. As mentioned in the driver notes, 4K video playback now draws less power, but it is still higher compared to RDNA 2 cards, or even RTX 4000-series cards. A pleasant surprise, though is the significantly reduced power draw for games running at fixed frame rates.

WB Games has revealed the minimum system requirements for Hogwarts Legacy, which include a Core i5-6500/Ryzen 5 1400, GeForce GTX 960/Radeon RX 470, 16 GB RAM and 85 GB hard drive space. The game is up for pre-order now and will be playable on February 10.

The Intel Core i9-13900KS desktop processor has only just been made official and has already topped two benchmark charts. The new Raptor Lake chip has appeared on both PassMark and UserBenchmark, pushing past every other part in its way. The 24-core i9-13900KS utilizes a high base power of 150 W for processing duties.

Microsoft has confirmed the ultimate end of Windows 7 support by finally pulling the last vestige of updates available to the OS. The Redmond giant has also now announced that its 8.1 successor is also now at the end of its life, although it will not be extended the same prolonged security-update palliative care of the preceding version.

Intel has unveiled the Core i9-13900KS. Calling it the “world’s fastest desktop processor”, the company claims the Core i9-13900KS will be able to hit an absurd 6 GHz max boost clock without overclocking. The processor will be up for sale from today at a starting price of US$699.

Although it launched with a US$289 price tag, the Intel Core i5-12600K processor is now listed by Intel with a recommended customer price of US$318 - US$328. On Amazon, the list price is even higher, but the US$342.50 tag is currently replaced by a reduced price of US$247.99, thanks to a 28% discount.

No less than 48 unrepairable RX 6800 / 6900 graphics cards popped up over the past 3 weeks at a German GPU repair service. All these cards were running on the latest Adrenalin driver, but the driver alone is probably not the culprit here, as some of the cards also exhibit a cracked GPU die.

Microsoft has announced Developer Direct, an event where it will show off various titles coming to Xbox/PC and Game Pass in 2023. Starfield will not be a part of the demo as the company plans to showcase it at a different time.

AMD's official product page for the Ryzen 7 7800X3D, Ryzen 9 7900X3D and Ryzen 9 7950X3D confirms the processors will be launched on February 14. Unfortunately, their prices continue to remain unknown. Update: An AMD spokesperson has confirmed the processors will not launch on February 14, but at an unspecified date in the same month.

Although it lacks height adjustment and uses a TN panel, its 1 ms response time and 75 Hz refresh rate make the BenQ GL2780 an attractive choice for gamers on a tight budget. The ongoing discount (on both Amazon and BenQ's website) brings this FHD 27-inch monitor to US$149.99, 29% down from the list price of US$209.99.

Released in mid-2022, the Samsung Odyssey Neo G7 is a 32-inch curved gaming monitor with 4K UHD resolution, 165 Hz refresh rate, and 1 ms response time. With a US$1,299.99 list price, it is compatible with AMD FreeSync Premium Pro and NVIDIA G-Sync. After Amazon's 23% discount, its price is US$999.99.

ViewSonic has unveiled the VX2722-4K-OLED, another professional monitor by the company. Equipped with a 27-inch panel sourced from JOLED, the VX2722-4K-OLED measures 27-inches across, outputs at 4K and is VESA DisplayHDR 400 True Black certified. ViewSonic has included plenty of ports too, including a USB Type-C port that supports DisplayPort Alt Mode and USB Power Delivery.

With an impressive refresh rate of 165 Hz and 1 ms GtG response time, the Dell G2722HS gaming monitor also sports a 99% sRGB color gamut and comes covered by a 3-year advanced exchange service and premium panel exchange limited warranty. With an estimated value of US$279.99, the G2722HS is now available from Dell US for just US$149.99.

After releasing NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 and RTX 3080-based Noctua Edition graphics cards, Asus and Noctua are now giving the same silent treatment to the RTX 4080. The new Asus GeForce RTX 4080 Noctua Edition integrates two Noctua NF-A12x25 fans alongside an optimized heatsink and vapor chamber.

Praised by many home users and reviewers as one of the best sub-US$100 WiFi 6 Gigabit routers, the TP-Link AX1800 (Archer AX21) features wireless speeds up to 1.8 Gbps, beamforming, as well as a USB 2.0 port for easy file sharing. The 30% discount takes its US$99.99 Amazon list price to US$69.99.

Lenovo has announced the Legion Tower 5/5i desktop computers with AMD Zen 4 and Intel Raptor Lake processors. When they come to the market in March, the PCs will feature up to an RTX 4070 Ti, the latest desktop GPU from Nvidia which is a re-badged RTX 4080 12 GB.

Lenovo has unveiled the Legion Tower 7i (34L, 8) with a new case, updated internals, and plenty of ports. The mid-tower ATX casing of the PC measures 211 x 464 x 492 mm with a total volume of 34 L. Per Lenovo, the Tower 7i can be configured with either air or water cooling.

Razer has officially announced the Kiya Pro Ultra 4K webcam and Leviathan V2 Pro soundbar at CES 2023. Both bring incremental upgrades over their predecessors and come with Chroma integration. The soundbar costs US$400 and the webcam US$299.

Lenovo has presented the Yoga AIO 9i, a stylish all-in-one desktop powered by Intel Raptor Lake processors and an Ada Lovelace-based GPU. Launching later this year, the Yoga AIO 9i also has a 4K IPS panel that offers up to 600 nits of peak brightness, among other features.

The new Lenovo ThinkCentre Neo 50q Gen 4 is a desktop of just one liter (l) in volume, yet is rated to fit SSDs and HDDs of up to 1TB in size, as well as up to 32GB of DDR4 RAM. It is also WiFi 6-capable thanks to choice of its 13th-gen Intel platforms, and supports business-class IGEL operating systems as well as Windows 11 installs.

Released at the end of August, the Crucial X8 lineup of portable SSDs uses the USB 3.2 interface, provides up to 4 TB of storage, and speeds up to 1050 MB/s. Now, the 4 TB version is available on Amazon for roughly half the US$479.99 list price, so those interested can get it for US$249.99.

The highly-anticipated Zen 4 X3D processors from AMD are finally here in the form of the Ryzen 7 7800X3D, Ryzen 9 7900X3D and Ryzen 9 7950X3D. All three SKUs come with a second-generation V-cache but have slightly power TDPs an boost clocks compared to their non-3D counterparts. The processors will hit shelves in February 2023 for an unspecified price.

HP has added new hardware options for its Omen 45L, Omen 40L and Omen 25L gaming desktops. They can now be configured with 13th-gen Intel Raptor Lake processors and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4000 graphics cards. They will go on sale later this year and HP plans to reveal their prices soon.

With the introduction of the latest PN64-E1 mini PC models, Asus in finally adding Thunderbolt 4 support to its mini PC lineup. The new models integrate two Thunderbolt 4 ports and processor options could include up to an i7-13700H Raptor Lake mobile processor. Additionally, there is now support for dual M.2 PCIe 4.0 X4 storage and up to five video outputs via a configurable port.

Dell now lets users configure the Alienware Aurora R15 gaming desktop with AMD's new Zen 4 processors. One can pair it with most Ampere and RDNA 2 graphics cards, but Ada Lovelace SKUs are restricted to the RTX 4090. One can buy it on January 5 starting at US$1,750.

Intel has officially unveiled the 65 and 35 W Raptor Lake desktop SKUs. The lineup includes the Core i9, Core i7, Core i5, and Core i3 processors with and without integrated GPUs. Among the announced chips, the Core i9-13900 is the most expensive at US$549, while the Core i3-13100F is the cheapest at US$109.

MediaTek and Federated Wireless have announced that products such as 5G hotspots and Ethernet gateways powered by Filogic chips for either Wi-Fi 7 or 6E stand to benefit from improved capacity, speed and range, as they are now more compatible with the 6GHz band on Automated Frequency Coordination (AFC) systems. The chips' new certification is touted as an important step toward their inclusion into standardized devices approved by the Federal Communication Commission (FCC).

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Ti aka GeForce RTX 4080 12 GB has been benchmarked on 3DMark, where it performs on par with the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti, but lags behind the Radeon RX 7900 XTX and 7900 XT. Nvidia is said to launch the graphics card at CES 2023.

Although it launched with a US$314 price tag, the 12-core, 20-thread Intel Core i7-12700F (without an integrated graphics solution and bundled with a cooler) is now listed on Amazon for US$380. However, the ongoing 24% discount brings it down to US$289.99. Sadly, this is less than 8% off the aforementioned launch price.

Released at the end of September, the 8-core, 16-thread unlocked desktop processor AMD Ryzen 7 7700X arrived on the market with a US$399 price tag. However, its Amazon list price is noticeably higher, but the US$449 tag has been replaced with one that reads US$346.98 thanks to the ongoing 23% discount.