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It can be a terrifying experience to shell out almost $1,000 for the newest and most potent CPU, particularly if you’ve heard that it has some problems with purportedly compatible motherboards. This appears to be the case with AMD Ryzen 9000 chips and ASRock AM5 motherboards, which have been experiencing an unusually high number of problems. The good news is that ASRock claims that the most recent BIOS fixes those problems. Granted, ASRock doesn’t appear to be very eager to…

Microsoft abruptly eliminated the Windows key + C keyboard shortcut for starting the Copilot AI helper in Windows 11 back in June 2024. Instead, a dedicated Copilot key was added to more recent keyboards. A keyboard shortcut for Copilot voice chat and a verbal launch trigger that said “Hey Copilot” were added later. The Windows key + C keyboard shortcut has been restored as of update KB5058502, the optional May patch that was made available yesterday for Windows 11 23H2.…

DisplayPort and HDMI have historically been the two connector types found on PC graphics cards. They might be introducing Thunderbolt as a third now. During Computex this year, Sparkle unveiled “Project Thundermage,” a prototype OPC graphics card that included two Thunderbolt connectors, DisplayPort, and HDMI. The partner, Intel, was the tell, though, as their “Barlow Ridge” Thunderbolt 5 controller was partnered with their “Battlemage” Arc GPUs. The most recent DisplayPort or HDMI connectors, which both provide the bandwidth required for…

Biwin unveiled the Black Opal X570 Pro, a brand-new PCIe 5.0 SSD that nearly fully utilizes the PCIe 5.0 interface and achieves sequential read rates of up to 14,000 MB/s, at Computex 2025. The M.2 2280 SSD has a capacity of 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB and is connected via four PCIe 5.0 channels. The Silicon Motions SM2508 SSD controller, which Biwin supplies with a DRAM cache to buffer write access, is included with the Pro model. For every 1 TB…

The company’s gaming-specific accessory line, Logitech G, is ready for a new addition. As part of its award-winning G5 series, Logitech is introducing the new G522 gaming headset today, which is an improvement on the well-liked G733 headset. With Pro G drivers installed, the Logitech G522 can produce crystal-clear, detailed audio at 48 kHz and 24 bits. Blue Voice and 48kHz 16-bit audio recording are supported by the built-in microphone, and the audio can be filtered using various settings. With…

Although OLED gaming monitors are great—I’m writing this on one right now—they aren’t flawless. In addition to being more expensive, they are still not quite as quick as gaming LCDs and have less brightness than previous, less colorful panels. Samsung’s most recent OLED monitor will help close that gap, but it will cost money. Then make further payments. I’m saying that it’s costly. The 27-inch, 1440p display of the new Odyssey G60F is perhaps the industry standard for PC gaming…

It looks like new AMD graphics cards are on the horizon. The RX 9060 XT has been the subject of rumors for weeks, and a few days ago, a listing appeared on a Brazilian retail website. However, it appears that the big A itself is giving away the information this morning: Amazon lists two separate 9060 XT cards, with the less expensive one costing “just” USD 450. On the American version of the website, VideoCardz noticed two XFX models relaxing…

Testing has shown that SSDs placed into an M.2 slot on an Intel X890 motherboard will not operate at their peak efficiency, which is another setback for Intel’s “Arrow Lake” or Core Ultra 200S architecture. In contrast to the 14GB/s sequential read rates that PCI Gen 5 SSDs are capable of, the SSD Review (via Tom’s Hardware) discovered that SSDs installed into an X890 motherboard only managed 12GB/s sequential read speeds. Intel verified the site’s testing and said that a…

On Wednesday, Intel said that it is integrating its XeSS 2 technology into even more games, including high-end titles like Assassin’s Creed: Shadows and Diablo IV, putting them in the “definitely playable” category by boosting framerates by an astounding four times. During the announcement, Intel also disclosed that more than 200 PC games currently support XeSS in some way. At the end of 2024, XeSS 2 was introduced alongside the $250 Intel Arc B580 (“Battlemage”) architecture, a “budget” graphics card…

Microsoft has secretly increased the prices of its older Surface devices to make up for the lower-priced, smaller Surface devices that were introduced this week. A new 13-inch Surface laptop and a 12-inch Surface Pro were introduced by Microsoft, with prices starting at $899.99 and $799.99, respectively. Both the Surface Pro 11th Edition and the current, older Surface Laptop 7th Edition have starting costs of $999, making them somewhat less expensive and slightly smaller than the current Surface Laptop and…