There was news this week on the DIY/enthusiast front, as updated mounting kits for Intel’s Alder Lake-S are arriving and AMD CPU market share is growing in most segments. We also have news of Nvidia finally admitting that its purchase of Arm may not go as planned and reports of an IPO from GlobalFoundries. 

There’s plenty more, of course, as you’ll find the news article and video embed below. 

This week, we have news on AMD and Valve striking a partnership that hopefully leads to better CPU drivers for Linux, as both companies will be working together to optimize the playing experience on the Steam Deck. Also in AMD news is the company's updated Radeon Pro W6000X-Series of GPUs, which probably aren’t that exciting if you’re not a Mac Pro user.

Moving on, we also have updates on SK Hynix’s purchase of Intel’s NAND flash business, as well as developments regarding the Nvidia-Arm deal. There’s also some Windows 11 news as it relates to TPM 2.0 supported motherboards, a new Steam survey to go over, Sony’s PS5 becoming profitable, and more.

News article and video embed below, as usual.

Hardware news has been busy the last few days. AMD has updates on its Zen 4, 3D V-Cache, and RDNA3 timelines, alongside updates to financials. Beyond AMD's news, but somewhat adjacent, Sony's PlayStation 5 now formally supports add-on SSDs of a certain class. We'll also go over Intel's Alder Lake updates, critical for end of year and early 2022 as Intel lines-up to compete with AMD on DDR5 platforms.

Show notes are below the video embed.

News this week will talk about rumored AMD RX 6600 & 6600 XT video cards (and a 6500 series card), alongside rumors of the NVIDIA RTX 3050 and 3050 Ti GPUs. We'll also be covering PlasticARM, an interesting project investigating the utility of plastic rather than silicon for semiconductors, and we'll recap Cooler Master's latest round-up of announcements, like the HAF 500 case.

There's other news, of course, as you’ll find the article and video embed below. If you haven’t already, check out our new GN Explosion & Repair poster, of which part of the proceeds are benefiting the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) and Fight to Repair organizations -- both of which are focused on the right to repair.

In this news recap, we talk about Nintendo finally announcing an updated Switch model, though the heavily rumored Switch Pro remains a mystery for now. We also have news on the Arm-Nvidia deal, this time in the form of commentary from Arm CEO Simon Segars. There’s also positive news on the right to repair, which is a topic we follow closely at GN. Additionally, we've covered the Steam Deck in a separate piece here.

In other news, Microsoft is working on its own AI-based resolution upscaling solution, and is also struggling to deal with a new critical security flaw affecting the Windows Print Spooler. There’s also news from Intel, Newegg, and more. 

At GN, we dove into a game streaming roundup, looked at Intel’s DG1 Iris Xe GPU, and reviewed our latest pre-built: The Lenovo Legion 5i.

This week, we have even more news on the ongoing developments regarding Nvidia’s proposed purchase of Arm. This time, however, we’re talking about Arm customers that actually support an Nvidia takeover, as opposed to Arm customers who object to the deal. Other big news includes Intel’s announcements at ISC 2021, where the company offered new details on its upcoming Sapphire Rapids Scalable Xeons and its Ponte Vecchio GPU. 

Other news items include some new details regarding Windows 11, such as Microsoft testing older CPUs for compatibility and hopefully a much improved PC Health Check App in the future. There’s also news from TeamGroup on the DDR5 front, mining GPUs hitting the used market, Samsung’s 3GAA process, and more. 

At GN, we took a deep dive into Noctua’s long awaited fully passive cooler, the Noctua NH-P1, and included our use of Schlieren photography. We also reviewed the Lian Li Odyssey X, and detailed EVGA’s first AMD motherboard and AMD’s Hydra overclocking tool in a special HW News video. 

This week's news talks about the Beast Canyon NUC, Noctua's NH-P1 cooler, Xbox consoles getting AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution and other topics, like a potential SiFive buyout by Intel.

At GN, we’ve been busy reviewing Nvidia’s latest additions to its RTX 30-series. If you haven’t already, check out our RTX 3080 Ti review and RTX 3070 Ti review.

This week, we can finally look forward to official news on the long-brewing Windows 10 update, code named Sun Valley, as Microsoft has officially named an event where it will disclose major changes coming to Windows. We also have major news in the form of TSMC’s Technology Symposium 2021, and a new lawsuit against Dell, targeting alleged false advertising for its Alienware Area-51M R1 laptop. 

In other news, there’s Atari announcing that it will bring its VCS console to public retail markets, Dell’s eGPU hardware being discontinued, the Steam Hardware and Software Survey for May 2021, and more. 

At GN, we’ve focused on Computex 2021 coverage, which includes Intel’s new products, AMD’s 3D V-Cache and FidelityFX SuperResolution, and more. We’ve also started digging into RTX 3080 Ti coverage, which so far includes a proper review and our usual teardown.

This week, we have news regarding the looming Alder Lake, and how Alder Lake-S CPUs will require updated mounting kits for CPU cooler compatibility. Alder Lake will see the arrival of the new LGA1700 socket, and a slightly different shape for the CPU itself, as well as a reduced package height. Also in Intel news, the company has made good on its previous declaration to tape-in its 7nm Meteor Lake compute tiles this quarter, which overall bodes well for Intel’s recently realigned 7nm process. 

In other news, there’s talk of Dynamic Flash Memory (DFM) as a potential alternative to DRAM, Valve’s reported Switch-like gaming handheld, Windows news, an update on PCIe 6.0, and more. 

At GN, we reviewed Cyperpower’s Gamer Xtreme i3200BST, and detailed how it almost didn’t suck. We also took a look at the Yeston RX 6700 XT Sakura graphics card, and detailed some big upcoming changes at GamersNexus.

This week, news is headlined by CPU market share updates for the first quarter of 2021, where we can see AMD struggling with supply constraints relative to Intel. We also have more PS5 news this week, as Sony isn’t expecting any supply improvements this year at all. Furthermore, we have Samsung’s new CXL-based DDR5 module, Phison commenting on SSD and controller shortages, and more Chia cryptocurrency news. 

At GN, we recently compared two high-end AIO coolers in our 6-Fan EK AIO Elite D-RGB 360 Review vs. Lian Li Galahad review. We also listed some of the best software users can get for gaming PCs, and we also finally decided to give up on NZXT’s promise to do the right thing with its H1 PCIe riser replacement.

News and video embed below, as usual.