Ahead of CES 2026, Sapphire is showing off a pair of "PhantomLink" (its equivalent to ASUS' BTF) AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT GPUs and motherboards. Both will come in white or black colorways and are (for now) China-exclusives. This launch from Sapphire shows a continued push from AIB GPU partners and motherboard manufacturers to minimize cable

For Windows' BitLocker drive encryption, performance has been a long-standing pain point, especially as high-speed NVMe drives have become more dominant in the market. Fortunately, Microsoft has taken note and will soon be introducing hardware-accelerated BitLocker drive encryption and decryption on supported hardware, with future updates

The long-awaited "double X3D" CPU, which AMD once denied would ever happen, has finally confirmed its existence with new leaks over at Geekbench and Passmark. We'll cut to the chase: neither benchmark result is particularly interesting, as both show performance nearly identical to the extant Ryzen 9 9950X3D in these specific benchmarks. However,

Over on X, Kepler_L2, one of the more trusted leakers in the industry, claims that AMD's next-generation RDNA 5 graphics architecture is slated for a mid-2027 release date, with chips being built on TSMC's N3P process. This claim emerged as a direct response to a quote tweet where another leaker, Jukan05, claimed AMD RDNA 5 would be made on

Santa is back at the North Pole kicking back and relaxing before getting started on next year's batch of gifts. A year is a long time to wait if you didn't get what you hoping for, but the good news is you can take matters into your own hands with several deals that are still in effect the day after Christmas. That includes a $100 on selection

LG is rolling out a brand new UltraGear evo (stylized with a lowercase 'e'), which it will show off in more detail at the Consumer Electronics Shows (CES) in Las Vegas early next month. In the meantime, LG is providing a few details about three upcoming models, one of which is a 39-inch curved OLED display that it's pitching as the world's

Sorry folks, but ASUS is not likely to save us from the current DRAM crisis that is expected to not only persist through all of next year, but potentially far beyond. Rumor has it that ASUS is toying with the idea of making its own DRAM chip production line to serve the consumer market, which if true, could help alleviate the shortage. However,

A lot of gamers likely picked up new hardware thanks to the solid discounts that happened during the holiday shopping season. Now it’s time to buy some new games that can take advantage of those upgraded rigs, and thankfully Humble Bundle has a great selection of titles on sale. Here are the picks that stood out to us. Silent Hill f - $41.99

We'd like to take this opportunity to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, from our family here at Hot Hardware, to you and your family--we consider you all our larger extended family here on the web. We hope whatever you had on your wish-list, naughty or nice, that your yuletide dreams came true. And if you still need some

Two recent studies have highlighted gaming's potential benefits for mental health and acuity. The most recent is a study published this month by JMIR Serious Games, named Super Mario Bros. and Yoshi Games' Affordance of Childlike Wonder and Reduced Burnout Risk in Young Adults: In-Depth Mixed Methods Cross-Sectional Study. This study, authored

Because of the way we interact with these features, it's easy to think of Intel XMP and AMD EXPO as binary, 'yes or no' features, but both standards have actually gone through a few revisions. Right now, we're on revision 1.1 of AMD's EXPO, but it looks like 1.2 is on the horizon, and we know that because it has just appeared in the patch

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, and deal hunters far and wide, do yourself a solid and don't sleep on the Mac mini if you're in the market for a compact PC (yes, Macs are technically PCs too). They're great systems, and the model with an M4 chip inside is on sale right now for 20% below Apple's regular asking price, making this a really

Do you know what stinks about buying earbuds for gaming? The vast majority only support Bluetooth for wireless connectivity. That's fine and dandy for listening to music and making phone calls, but for playing games, a 2.4GHz wireless connection keeps latency at bay. The good news is, there are a few earbud options that feature 2.4GHz wireless

AMD's next-generation Zen 6 processor with 3D V-Cache may kick things up in a big way to compete with Intel's upcoming Nova Lake chips. How so? According to a popular leaker on X, AMD will offer single CCD (core complex die) variants with up to 144MB of L3 cache, and dual CCD models with up to a whopping 288MB of L3 cache. To put those capacities

Maingear, a well-respected boutique PC builder, has taken note of the ongoing RAM crisis and is attempting to offer a potential solution, beyond simply raising prices. Its solution is a new "BYO RAM", or "Bring Your Own RAM" program, which accepts a user's shipment of DDR5 RAM with an order of a custom PC. Maingear will take the RAM, install

GamesIndustry.biz does a yearly analyst roundtable, gathering predictions for what the next year will bring to the industry. This year's post paints a picture of an industry stuck in cautious recovery mode, with growth returning slowly, platform boundaries continuing to blur, and a handful of massive releases and technologies threatening to

One of the most influential names in the FPS genre, Vince Zampella, passed away at the age of 55 on Sunday, December 21st, in a tragic car accident with one other unidentified person. Vince Zampella worked on the Medal of Honor series, which spawned Call of Duty, which spawned Battlefield and eventually Respawn's own Titanfall. Between corporate

There was some significant controversy this summer when some customers complained of Gigabyte's GeForce RTX 50 series GPUs leaking the "server-grade thermal gel" that the board vendor touts on its product pages. Gigabyte acknowledged that some early-run cards used too much goop and that the quantity was adjusted on later models, but now it

Two intelligence services from at least two NATO nations have raised alarms over a potential "weapon of fear" currently under development by Russia. This anti-satellite system is reportedly being developed to target Elon Musk’s Starlink constellation, which has become a critical backbone for Ukrainian military communications and battlefield

Are you still shopping for a holiday gift? First and foremost, check out our staff picks of ho-ho-hot tech selections, then have a gander at our roundup of last minute stocking stuffer deals. Of course, it's a bit late in the game with Christmas now just two days away, but if you're shopping for yourself (or are okay with printing a picture

Astronomers have finally captured a black hole twisting the very fabric of spacetime. This phenomenon, known as frame-dragging or Lense-Thirring precession, confirms a cornerstone of Einstein’s general theory of relativity by showing that massive, rotating objects don’t just spin in situ—they drag it along with them like a spoon stirring honey

Nintendo confirmed in a roundabout way that it is discontinuing its Switch 2 + Mario Kart World bundle after an internal GameStop memo stating as much was leaked on X. However, it's not all bad news. If you're quick, you can still find the bundle in stock, and at a great discount to boot. More on that in a moment. CONFIRMED: the Switch

NVIDIA has made available a new out-of-band hotfix driver for GeForce GPU owners that aims to resolve a trio of quirky issues, one of which addresses slight banding that is sometimes observed on gradients in SDR color mode. As is always the case, you really should only install the hotfix if you're affected by any of the specific issues it

Spotify is the victim of what may be the greatest act of music piracy in history and the company is not happy. Recently, Anna's Archive released a massive 300 TB of torrents, which reportedly includes the metadata of 265 million tracks, 186 million unique IRSCs, and 86 million songs. The metadata composes "99.9% of tracks", while the 86 million