It’s been an interesting week or so for hardware and technology news alike, with Nvidia and LastPass making waves. Nvidia is attempting to stem the flow of GPUs to miners by artificially limiting the hashing power of its upcoming RTX 3060 GPUs, as well as announcing its new CMP HX line of dedicated mining cards. 

LastPass, makers of the popular LastPass password manager, have announced some abrupt and contentious changes to its free plan, much to the chagrin of its users. 

At GN, we recently looked at various Xbox Series X thermals, including memory, SoC, and VRM temperatures. We also reviewed the Arctic Liquid Freezer II 420 AIO, and discovered that frequently entering "Arctic 420" into search engines makes for some interesting targeted ads that aren’t about CPU cooling.

This week comes with more industry news as it relates to semiconductor manufacturing and supply chain expansion in the US. Additionally, as cryptocurrency prices heat up, miners are turning to laptops in the wake of persistent GPU shortages. Elsewhere, Raja Koduri is back with another Intel Xe Graphics tease, Intel is suing a former employee, and we have a GTX 1050 Ti rumor.

At GN, we’ve made our return to case reviews, as we recently looked at the be quiet! Silent Base 802 and MSI’s MPG Sekira 500X. We also took a look at PS5 vs. Xbox Series X airflow, where we used Schlieren photography to gauge air patterns and movement.

This week, we’re covering Intel’s GPU getting a showcase, the Right to Repair movement gaining an impressive amount of traction among the states for 2021, and new product launches. On the Right to Repair front, several states will be proposing bills aimed at addressing repair laws, and the next few weeks and months will be interesting as these bills potentially get off the ground.

We’ve also got some news on the silicon manufacturing industry at large, discussing the future of GAA FETs as well as Micron’s new DRAM process. Cooler Master recently held its Virtual Showcase, and revealed a couple of noteworthy products worth looking at. 

At GN, we recently took a look at the much requested Scythe Ninja 5 CPU Cooler, and tore down the Atari VCS, which was unexpectedly impressive. We also covered the NZXT H1 fire issue, which resulted in NZXT killing sales of the product.

This round of HW News comes as an all digital CES 2021 comes to a close, so we’re focusing mostly on non-CES news here. We say mostly, because a couple of stories do have a bit of overlap as it relates to what was announced at CES 2021.

At any rate, most notably we have more confirmed price adjustments regarding graphics cards, with EVGA, Zotac, and MSI all joining Asus in raising prices due to expired tariff exemptions. There’s interesting news in Qualcomm acquiring Nuvia, and what it could mean long-term for Qualcomm’s CPU design ambitions. We also have news on TSMC possibly already receiving orders from Intel for non-CPU products, and how TSMC may be making some of Intel’s Core i3-series chips this year.

There’s more of course, so hit the article and video embed below.

As we enter 2021 and head towards CES, the pace of news has picked up considerably. To start 2021 of in earnest, we have Linus Torvalds with one of his classic diatribes, this time targeting Intel and ECC memory. Rising cryptocurrency prices are also cause for concern, as they could be forecasting a GPU market like that of 2018. Admittedly, the GPU market already isn’t in a great place, but skyrocketing Bitcoin and Etherum prices won’t help that.

We also have AMD news on a new patent as well as new AGESA microcode updates. There’s an inderting blunder on Gigabyte’s part that seemingly outed Intel’s Rocket Lake release date, NZXT revising its recalled H1 case, and more. 

As we begin the new year, GN is easing back into our more regular content schedule after an end-of-year respite. We recently reviewed the Scythe FUMA 2, Fractal Meshify 2 XL case, and you can find our coverage of the big Intel, AMD, and NVIDIA news from this week on our channel.