This week's news recap includes some details on EVGA’s bricked RTX 3090 cards thanks to an interview with PCWorld (thanks, Gordon). There’s also some news with Windows 11, as Microsoft is set to start rolling out the new OS this October. Interestingly, Microsoft will not block unsupported machines from manually installing Windows 11, but there will be some serious caveats associated with that move. 

There’s more, so find the article and video embed below, as usual. 

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.

Hardware news starts in 2021 with some concluding storylines from 2020, but there are also a few new items -- mostly end-of-year stuff -- that popped-up to be covered this week. Among those, Steam has released its list of most played (by peak concurrent players) and highest grossing (revenue) PC games for 2020. We'll also be talking about Class Action complaints emerging surrounding CD Projekt Red's Cyberpunk 2077, thus far related to securities law, then PlayStation 5 sales volume, NVIDIA RTX 3050 Ti and 3050/3060 leaks from Lenovo, and more.

As always, the video embed and show notes both follow. We'll have an additional embedded video from our Disappointment PC 2020 video. You should watch at least the first 5 minutes of it for the special intro we made -- it was a huge amount of work.

It’s been another busy week in hardware news as we move closer towards an official GPU launch (RTX 3000). As an update, NVIDIA has moved the review embargo lift (and we're able to tell you about it) from Monday the 14th to Wednesday the 16th. RTX 3080 reviews will go live on Wednesday. The date was moved because of global shipping delays causing some other regions (outside North America) to receive cards late for reviewers; in effort to keep it fair between reviewers around the world, NVIDIA pushed its review embargo date back. On a similar note, AMD finally decided to let us know when we’ll see “Big Navi” (RDNA 2) and Zen 3. There’s also a bit of speculation on possible price changes for AMD’s upcoming GPUs, in light of Nvidia’s emerging RTX 3000 series. 

Elsewhere, Microsoft finally ended its game of chicken with Sony by revealing prices for its upcoming consoles, so the ball is firmly in Sony’s court. We also have some hardware specs on the now-confirmed Xbox Series S that will launch alongside the Xbox Series X.

Rounding-out the news for this week, there’s some interesting research being done on the possibility of embedded liquid cooling, some news surrounding Western Digital’s “5400 RPM-class” designation, and the return of Cryorig. As usual, the news article and video embed follow below.

Another week in hardware news has come and gone, capped by a dense information dump at Intel’s Architecture Day 2020 towards the end of the week. The presentation yielded new information on the rumored Alder Lake-S, Intel’s Xe Graphics, Tiger Lake, and Intel’s news manufacturing technology, SuperFin.

We’re also covering some interesting news on Nvidia teasing Ampere gaming GPUs, further fueled by what appears to be another leak -- this time on behalf of Micron and its upcoming GDDR6X memory, which is apparently slated to be equipped on the unconfirmed RTX 3090.

For the latest at GN, check out our latest piece discussing Intel’s less than fortunate position, according to conversations we’ve had with motherboard makers. We also take on the misconception that Ryzen is smoother. HW News article and video embed follow below. 

Another big week in hardware and technology news. It looks like the perpetually delayed Atari VCS is finally set to ship later this fall, hopefully. We also have news of Huawei’s Kunpeng 920 CPU, talk about Volta and Turing encoders shipping with the GTX 1650, news of Apple also ditching AMD, and more. 

At GN, we recently went over the basics of overclocking the Ryzen 5 3600 XT, Infinity Fabric, and memory. We also have extensive review coverage of AMD’s new XT series of CPUs: The Ryzen 3900X, the Ryzen 7 3800XT, and the Ryzen 5 3600XT. We further introduced our new GN PC Component shirt, and you can get one here. The GN store continues to be the best way to support our work. 

News follows below, with the article and video embed.

Hardware news is still rolling into the holidays, as one might expect, because this industry doesn't let its occupants sleep. We're also leading into CES 2020, which means leaks abound. Coverage today includes a few rumor topics -- the RX 5600 XT and Intel Z490, mainly -- with some other industry topics mixed-in. Kioxia (Toshiba) is developing new NAND, motherboard makers can't get rid of X299 fast enough, and Microsoft is talking about its Xbox Series X. Again.

We're always sort of surprised when hardware news steamrolls right through major holidays. It doesn't slow down. As we approach end of year, Microsoft dropped a major bombshell with its Xbox Series X console announcement, Intel has committed to making more 22nm CPUs, Plundervolt threatens CPU security, and more.

As always, show notes continue after the embedded video.

EA's Origin launcher has recently gained attention for hosting Apex Legends, one of the present top Battle Royale shooters, but is getting renewed focus as being an easy attack vector for malware. Fortunately, an update has already resolved this issue, and so the pertinent action would be to update Origin (especially if you haven't opened it in a while). Further news this week features the GTX 1650's rumored specs and price, due out allegedly on April 23. We also follow-up on Sony PlayStation 5 news, now officially confirmed to be working with a new AMD Ryzen APU and customized Navi GPU solution.

Show notes below the embedded video, for those preferring reading.

Our leading story for this week is AMD's semi-custom Gonzalo APU for consoles, getting finalized now, although we also share some of that lead-story limelight with Der8auer. Der8auer, the world's favorite delidder and second favorite overclocker (we won't say who's first) has handily beaten our high score in the 3DMark Hall of Fame, and we now must respond to his challenge. 

Plenty of other news for the week, too, like Intel's new Optane SSDs, IDC and Gartner reporting on CPU shortages, and the Spoiler exploit.