Nick Evanson
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Articles by Nick Evanson
Intel quietly bumps the price up of the best CPUs it's made in years to 'reflect current market dynamics'
A photo of an Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus processor, resting on an Intel-branded box with a colorful pattern. If you take a gander inside your gaming PC and randomly point at any component in there, you're almost certainly going to land on something that's noticeably more expensive than it was just 12 months ago. And if that so happens to be an Intel Core Ultra 200S Plus chip, then that's included too, as the recommended retail price has quietly jumped up.
Valve's aim for a console-like experience with its Steam Machine lands a little too close for comfort as one of the first cases of 'Red Line of Death' comes to light
A close-up of the blue LED strip on the front of the Steam Machine. Despite its high price and somewhat disappointing gaming chops, Valve's Steam Machine appears to be selling well, with lots of buyers showing off their new purchase on social media. And in what seems to be the first published instance, the consumer coverage also includes a console-like Red Ring Line of Death.
Meta magically merges DDR4 memory into a DDR5 server, thanks to the power of a custom CXL chip
Just imagine you're Meta. You've spent millions of dollars on new servers that only use DDR5 sticks, only to find that you still don't have enough memory. The solution? Yoink the DDR4 modules out of the old servers and, through the power of a custom chip, splice the two systems together to go ham with RAM. Even if you only have a little bit of knowledge about how CPUs and memory work together, you'll probably know that this shouldn't be possible.
Meta's solution to the global memory shortage is to use DDR4 in a DDR5 server, with a custom chip making the impossible possible
A stock photo of a computer motherboard with multiple memory slots filled with DRAM DIMMs for High Performance Computing (HPC). Just imagine you're Meta. You've spent millions of dollars on new servers that only use DDR5 sticks, only to find that you still don't have enough memory. The solution? Yoink the DDR4 modules out of the old servers and, through the power of a custom chip, splice the two systems together to go ham with RAM.
Nuclear reactor start-up targeting AI energy demands showcases its tech with an Nvidia DGX Spark, though the website demo needs its own power plant
A screenshot of a Valar Atomics promotional video, showing an employee holding an Nvidia DGX Spark, ready to be powered by a nuclear microreactor. Names poached from Tolkien's works. Glossy websites, packed with animations and all kinds of promises. Slightly ludicrous tech demonstration. All the hallmarks of today's tech companies, one might think.
Valve's aim for a console-like experience with its Steam Machine lands a little too close for comfort as one of the first cases of 'Red Line of Death' comes to light
If you want to enhance your SteamOS experience, Decky Loader is an easy way to start. If you want to enhance your SteamOS experience, Decky Loader is an easy way to start.
Intel's mega-core Nova Lake desktop processors look all but confirmed to have sustained full boost power limits at least 220 W higher than Arrow Lake
A close-up photo of the CPU power sockets on an MSI MEG Z890 Ace motherboard. Earlier this year, there was a rumour that Intel's next generation of desktop processors could consume up to 700 W of power. That was just for the so-called 'dual compute tile' models, with as many as 52 cores, but that claim now carries additional weight; one sharp-eyed leaker has noticed something about Nova Lake motherboards that points to the PL2 rating being way higher than it is now.
The maker calls it the 'world's worst USB drive' but to me, it's a thing of beauty
With AI data centers swallowing up every bit of memory storage around, it should come as no surprise that some creative engineers might be looking at alternatives. Most aren't going to be considering solutions from the 1950/1960s, of course, but that's precisely what one self-professed tinkerer did to create the "world's worst USB device".
'No bloat, no telemetry, no nonsense.' Former Microsoft coding wizard makes an OG Notepad clone that's just 2,686 bytes in size
Once nothing more than a basic text editor, Windows Notepad has been expanded in recent years to become almost a fully-fledged word processor. For some people, the little tool has become synonymous with Microsoft's penchant for bloat and unnecessary changes, so one former Redmond coder decided to do something about it. In contrast, the latest version of the Windows Notepad executable is 352 kB.
With 32 GB as a minimum and 64 GB as the recommended amount, Cinder City's RAM requirements are all kinds of wrong in today's AI-mangled memory market
Gun fight in the parking lot. As big-budget, blockbuster PC games have become increasingly more packed with cutting-edge graphics over the years, their minimum hardware requirements have naturally scaled upwards too. But there's one forthcoming game that has taken that quite a lot further than you'd expect, with the memory specs likely to cause more than a few raised eyebrows.
With 32 GB as a minimum and 64 GB as the recommended amount, Cinder City's RAM requirements are all kinds of wrong in today's AI-mangled memory market
Microsoft 365 2 hours ago I love the PC, but I’m no longer a fan of Windows PCWorld - Kris Wallburg • 2h Windows used to be the very foundation of the PC.
The latest SteamOS beta update includes a performance boost for GPUs with limited VRAM, though devices with iGPUs probably won't see any gains
A Steam machine sitting in front of a TV. If there is one thing that is common across all devices that natively run SteamOS, it's that the graphics chips inside them don't have access to a great deal of VRAM. That's a bit of a problem with some games, but thanks to the genius of a handful of coders, a solution has been rolled out in the latest 3.8.20 beta version of Valve's operating system.
AMD's next-gen Zen 6 CPU cores will come in a low-power compact flavour, which should help laptop batteries last even longer
AMD Strix Point APU chip, held in a hand, with the reflected light showing the various processing blocks in the chip die. Three years ago, AMD introduced a new type of CPU core for its Zen 4 microarchitecture. The idea behind them was to reduce the amount of die space taken up by a regular core, so that more of them could be packed into a chiplet. The compact design is now a staple part of the Zen family, but it turns out that Team Red has another one on the way for Zen 6.
GPU factories are churning out RTX 3060 cards again but with an RTX 5060 Ti price tag
Rumours of its resurrection rumbled away for months , but Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3060 12 GB graphics card has indeed been churned out from fresh runs of GPU production lines, with models hitting retailers' shelves in Germany. However, if you were hoping to pick up a cheap, older-generation card with lots of VRAM, then you're going to be disappointed when you see the price tag.
With the RAMpocalypse set to rage for years, memory kit makers are responding in one of two ways: Do nothing or go hell-for-leather
A promotional image of a dual-channel G.Skill Trident Z5 CK DDR5 memory kit. Unless you've been living on another planet, orbiting a star light years away, you won't have missed the fact that memory kits are painfully expensive right now. One of the world's biggest manufacturers of PCs has warned that the RAMpocalypse will continue for years, but so far, makers of DRAM kits have taken a somewhat binary approach in their responses to the crisis: do nothing or go extreme.
South Korea's president declares that it will invest over $580 billion in its AI chip industry, with Samsung and SK hynix coughing up most of the money
A photo of SK Hynix's manufacturing plant in Chongqing, China. When it comes to making bank off the currently insatiable demand for AI hardware, the companies with the biggest, ear-to-ear grins are those that make the processors, memory, and storage chips for such systems.
South Korea to invest $580 billion in chip making, with Samsung and SK Hynix paying most of it
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With the RAMpocalypse set to rage for years, memory kit makers are responding in one of two ways: Do nothing or go hell-for-leather
Politics 1 hour ago Supreme Court cements Trump's power over agencies long considered independent NPR - Andrea Hsu , Nina Totenberg • 1h The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday overturned a 91-year-old precedent that has prevented presidents from removing members of independent agencies at will.
South Korea to invest almost $600 billion in the AI chip industry, with Samsung and SK hynix paying for most of it
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Credit: SK Hynix When it comes to making bank off the currently insatiable demand for AI hardware, the companies with the biggest, ear-to-ear grins are those that make the processors, memory, and storage chips for such systems.
True to its word, AMD brings FSR 4.1 to Radeon RX 7000-series card owners with its latest Adrenalin drivers
A stylised image of AMD's RDNA 3 GPU design for its Radeon RX 7000-series graphics cards. The 26.2.2 driver set doesn't come with many other goodies (game support for Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced and Doom: The Dark Ages | Revelations), but I don't think many Team Red fans will care all that much, because FSR 4.1 is considerably more noteworthy. Compared to FSR 3, the quality of the AI-powered upscaling and frame generation is clearly superior and almost on par with Nvidia's DLSS 4.5 suite.
True to its word, AMD brings FSR 4.1 to Radeon RX 7000-series card owners with its latest Adrenalin drivers
After accidentally dropping its source code on GitHub last year and kicking the door wide open for modders, AMD has done something exactly what it promised to: It's added support for FSR 4.1 to Radeon RX 7000-series graphics cards in its latest Adrenalin drivers.
AMD is said to be holding talks with Samsung about making some of its future chips to offset TSMC's constrained supply of cutting-edge wafers
A promotional image showing a render of the two CCD chiplets in the Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Dual Edition processor. AMD and TSMC have enjoyed a very close working relationship ever since the former spun off its chip-making facilities into a separate business in 2008. Its latest Ryzen desktop processors, which comprise two or three chiplets, are made entirely by TSMC, but if one report is to be believed, future CPUs could well be made by the Taiwanese firm's biggest rival: Samsung.
AMD is said to be holding talks with Samsung about making some of its future chips to offset TSMC's constrained supply of cutting-edge wafers
AMD and TSMC have enjoyed a very close working relationship ever since the former spun off its chip-making facilities into a separate business in 2008. Its latest Ryzen desktop processors, which comprise two or three chiplets, are made entirely by TSMC, but if one report is to be believed, future CPUs could well be made by the Taiwanese firm's biggest rival: Samsung.
My quick test of Lumen Lite shows that it's probably good news for ray-traced gaming on handheld PCs, but I suspect that it will be used everywhere because of the pressure developers are now under
A screenshot of the Epic Games Electric Dreams Environment demo for Unreal Engine 5.8, with Lumen Lite being used for global illumination and reflections. At its State of Unreal event in Chicago, Epic Games officially unveiled Unreal Engine 5.8, and one of its key new features is Lumen Lite: a scalability setting that targets the use of ray-traced global illumination for the Nintendo Switch 2, with the goal of 60 fps.
My quick test of Lumen Lite shows that it's probably good news for ray-traced gaming on handheld PCs, but I suspect that it will be used everywhere because of the pressure developers are now under
At its State of Unreal event in Chicago, Epic Games officially unveiled Unreal Engine 5.8, and one of its key new features is Lumen Lite: a scalability setting that targets the use of ray-traced global illumination for the Nintendo Switch 2, with the goal of 60 fps. As the feature also works for PCs, I thought I'd dive in and check out just what the fuss is all about. Or if indeed any fuss ought to be made.
'[It] is going to change a lot about how games are made': Epic merges Unreal Engine 5 with Unreal Engine for Fortnite to give game devs around the world Unreal Engine 6
It's been six years since Epic first launched Unreal Engine 5, and at its State of Unreal event in Chicago today (head to 1h 40 mins in the above video) and in a separate blog post, we got our first look at what the next major release will offer to games, film, TV, and more industries. And it turns out that the biggest direction for the changes in the new engine came from Fortnite and UEFN.
Unreal Engine 5.8 launches with improved terrain and vegetation tools, a Lumen Lite option for faster global illumination, and for the times we now live in, an open standard plugin for LLM systems
It's probably fair to say that Unreal Engine is probably the most comprehensive tool around for creating games, animations, and video effects. And, with the launch of UE 5.8, it's becoming even more extensive and even a little bit more AI-friendly. Whether you're just an Unreal Engine hobbyist like me, or a full-time game developer, you can download version 5.8 right now via the Epic Games Launcher.
'[It] is going to change a lot about how games are made': Epic merges Unreal Engine 5 with Unreal Engine for Fortnite to give game devs around the world Unreal Engine 6
State of Unreal 2026 Official 4K Livestream | Unreal Fest Chicago - YouTube Watch On It's been six years since Epic first launched Unreal Engine 5, and at its State of Unreal event in Chicago today (head to 1h 40 mins in the above video) and in a separate blog post, we got our first look at what the next major release will offer to games, film, TV, and more industries. And it turns out that the biggest direction for the changes in the new engine came from Fortnite and UEFN.
Unreal Engine 5.8 launches with improved terrain and vegetation tools, a Lumen Lite option for faster global illumination, and for the times we now live in, an open standard plugin for LLM systems
19 hours ago State of Unreal (Live in 4K - Wednesday) with Gears of War + More www.youtube.com on YouTube • 19h Join Epic Ganes CEO Tim Sweneey and others for updates on the future of Unreal Engine and Epic. Subscribe to Watch more The Game Awards: http://bit.ly/tga18sub Follow The Game Awards on X: http://www.x.com/thegameawards Follow The Game Awards on Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/thegameawards Follow Geoff Keighley on X: http://www.x.com/geoffkeighley #thegameawards #gameoftheyear
Autonomous ErgoChair Ultra 2 review
A photo of an Autonomous ErgoChair Ultra 2. If the thought of buying an office chair from an AI-focused company is giving you pause for concern, then let me allay those fears now. The Autonomous ErgoChair Ultra 2 is a good chair that's well-built, comfortable, and genuinely fine to use for a full day of work, followed by a night of gaming. It's not perfect, and the price tag doesn't quite match what you're getting, but those are criticisms that can be cast at any gaming chair these days.
Consumer rights champion and tech-whizz Louis Rossman is taking Samsung to court over a failed 990 Pro SSD it says it can't replace, even though Amazon has plenty of them in stock
Even though many components inside our gaming PCs are exceptionally expensive, enthusiasts are still happy to buy them, partly because they know every item is backed by a warranty. However, that assumes a company is willing to honour that warranty in the first place, and in one such case concerning a Samsung SSD, the responses to the claim have been so negative that it's resulting in a lawsuit.
Possibly the first instance of Asus' anti-melting 12V-2×6 power cable…err…melting shows up, adding more fuel to the fire that is Nvidia's connector
An image of the Asus ROG Equalizer 12V-2x6 power cable, against a gradient green background. Two months ago, Asus announced the ROG Equalizer, a power cable for certain Nvidia RTX graphics cards designed to banish the fear of melting connectors once and for all. Well, perhaps not completely so, because it seems we now have the first case of a melted ROG Equalizer cable.
Arm's ray-traced demo of its neural technologies for mobile phone gaming proves that there's an alternate chip for handheld gaming PCs to use outside of AMD or Intel
To showcase the introduction of neural rendering technologies in its next-gen mobile GPU architecture, Arm has teamed up with game studio Sumo Digital and recently dropped a short video of it in action.
Louis Rossmann takes on Samsung with a lawsuit over a broken 990 Pro SSD
Even though many components inside our gaming PCs are exceptionally expensive, enthusiasts are still happy to buy them, partly because they know every item is backed by a warranty. However, that assumes a company is willing to honour that warranty in the first place, and in one such case concerning a Samsung SSD, the responses to the claim have been so negative that it's resulting in a lawsuit.
There's one AI machine that doesn't need a nuclear power station to run, and it points to a potential way forward in the memory crisis
A screenshot of a promotional video clip for Squeez Lab's CrankGPT, showing a person's arm rotating a crank attached to a small red box. AI is ruining everything, right? The economy, air quality, and computing as a whole have all felt the impact of the exponential growth in data centers for machine learning. However, there's one little hardware AI project that proves bigger isn't always better, and even shows a possible way out of the current memory crisis.
SK hynix reckons it will triple its chip output by 2034, ten years sooner than expected
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Credit: Future Any news on the current global memory crisis probably seems like a stuck record right now, but SK hynix reckons it has some good news for us: Its plans for constructing new chip factories have managed to shave ten years off the projected completion date. The only problem is that it's only brought it to 2034.
There's one AI machine that doesn't need a nuclear power station to run, and it points to a potential way forward in the memory crisis
Elon Musk 8 hours ago Massive Effigy of Elon Musk Raised Over Times Square to Protest Grok WIRED - Vittoria Elliott • 8h Activists raised a 40-foot-tall inflatable Elon Musk in Manhattan to draw attention to the risk he allegedly poses to investors. In the middle of New … Energy 12 hours ago Ranked: Where Electricity Costs the Most and Least Visual Capitalist - Bruno Venditti • 12h What determines the price of electricity?
Linux driver for vintage AMD GPUs gets an update with a helping hand from Copilot AI, keeping old hardware alive and kicking
An image of an ATI/AMD Radeon HD 5970 graphics card against a red gradient background. In the midst of the RAMpocalypse and the billions of dollars being thrown at AI, it's easy to become blind to the fact that the use of machine learning can be highly beneficial in lots of different scenarios. Case in point: an update to an old AMD GPU Linux driver was created with the help of Microsoft's Copilot.
Microsoft rolls out Windows Low Latency Profile, giving older PCs a bit more snap when opening the Start Menu and apps
Windows 11 new Start menu. Users of Windows 11 beta have had access to this for a while now, but with its latest OS update, Microsoft has brought its Low Latency Profile (LLP) to general users across the globe. By giving your CPU a brief kick up the pants when you fire things up, certain apps and tools will now launch quicker than before, giving older PCs that 'fresh installed Windows' feeling.
Microsoft rolls out Windows Low Latency Profile, giving older PCs a bit more snap when opening the Start Menu and apps
Microsoft warned customers on Tuesday that they may have issues installing the latest monthly updates on some Windows devices that were upgraded to …
Tech leaker claims that the RTX 50 Super refresh is still on, despite the RAMpocalypse, and it'll be joined by a 12 GB RTX 5060
MSI RTX 5060 graphics card. Back in November of last year, rumours were abounding that Nvidia had cancelled the expected Super refresh of its RTX 50-series of graphics cards, though at the time, I thought the whole thing was nonsense. However, six months on, and there's still no sign of them thanks to the RAMpocalypse, but it might not be totally game over, if one person is to be believed.
Intel adds 7 more games to its IBOT-boosted list, though few of them stand out as being in dire need of more CPU horsepower
A photo of an Intel Core Ultra 7 2750K Plus processor, resting against a colorful, Intel-branded box. For the launch of its Core Ultra 200S Plus processors, Intel released a software package called Binary Optimization Tool (IBOT for short), which promised to give certain games a substantial boost in performance. The chip giant also promised that it would be rolling out updates when possible, and true to its word, the first one has just landed.
Apple's virtual Siri-ball is a glowing reminder to Google and Microsoft that user interfaces really matter in software
A split image showing a promotional example of Siri AI's interface in visionOS on the left and the Copilot button in Microsoft Excel on the right. Now that AI is being shoehorned into every app or operating system these days, whether you want it or not, attention is being increasingly turned to the user interface. At one end of the spectrum, you have Google and Microsoft's unaccommodating efforts, and at the other, you have Apple's new orb-of-wonder, actively lighting its 'surroundings'.
Godot devs are getting a helping hand from Microsoft to bring their games to Xbox on PC
The playable characters from Slay the Spire 2 jumping to attack, an action shot against a red background. Although many developers turn to Unreal Engine or Unity to bring their gaming visions to life, open-source Godot is becoming increasingly popular, thanks to its lightweight structure and intuitive scripting language. Now Microsoft has taken a 'first step' to expanding its user base even further, by releasing a reference sample software package for creating Godot games for Xbox on PC.
AMD says that no decision has been made about bringing FSR 4.1 to RDNA 3.5 GPUs, which seems to contradict AMD also saying that it has no current plans to do so because of hardware reasons
A promotional, stylized image of the MSI Claw A8 handheld gaming PC, against a red/orange background, with a Ryzen Z2 Extreme processor imposed over the device's screen. Like all the major players in the PC industry, AMD had a big presence at Computex 2026, and all its top staff were busy conducting interviews with the press and media.
Cooler Master's concept AIO cooler looks like it could chill Venus into Pluto, and I'm already hunting down the back of my sofa to get the pennies to buy one
A photo of Cooler Master's G11M concept AIO CPU cooler, as displayed at Computex 2026. With all-in-one liquid CPU coolers now so commonplace in gaming PCs, you might think there's nothing left for manufacturers to innovate with. But if the concept device that Cooler Master showcased at Computex is anything to go by, then we'll almost certainly see a raft of copy-cat designs on the market very soon, especially when Intel's Nova Lake chips make an appearance.
AMD says that no decision has been made about bringing FSR 4.1 to RDNA 3.5 GPUs, which seems to contradict AMD also saying that it has no current plans to do so because of hardware reasons
There's a lot we still don't know about NVIDIA's RTX Spark AI chip — we're still waiting on deeper technical details and pricing for the first batch of systems — but it has a decent shot of changing the way we think of Windows PCs entirely. RTX Spark should offer the raw performance that the first …
Montech's new shuttered PC case is so odd, I can't decide whether I'm missing the sheer brilliance of it or if it really is totally pointless
This year's Computex has followed the usual theme of oddball excess, and while that's perhaps not totally appropriate for today's climate, it does allow vendors to showcase something rather unusual. In the case of Montech's new PC case, though, the design is so oddball that I genuinely blinked and shook my head when I saw it. At first glance, the F738 Pro just looks like a stylish mid-tower case, with the bulk of the chassis standing above a large base that houses the power supply.
Corsair's range-topping AX1600i power supply gets some much-needed upgrades, including pin monitoring, proper GPU power sockets, and a reduction in size
A photo of a Corsair AX1600i Shift PSU resting on a pink wall shelf. If there's one component in your beloved gaming PC that you should never cheap out on, it's the power supply unit, especially if you're using a high-end CPU and graphics card. Corsair's AX1600i has been the PSU of choice for many enthusiasts, but its design is somewhat lacking these days. Well, good news: it's been brought bang up-to-date with a whole host of much-needed changes.
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