Once complete, you marvel at the resulting monstrosity and then come crashing back to reality when you see the price tag. We’ve all “been there, done that.” Today we will be looking at that dream PC, the Maingear Shift with Super Stock options. The Shift is Maingear’s highest performing consumer desktop system to date, featuring a custom-built chassis from SilverStone. Pricing starts at just over $2,300 and depending on the options selected, you could shell out close to 30 grand for a fully pimped out system....

Steam’s latest hardware survey suggests anything even remotely resembling a modern “gaming” PC should be able to play Mass Effect 3. Those wanting to enjoy the game maxed out at resolutions up to 1680x1050 can do so with an HD 5770, HD 6770, HD 7750 ($110) or GTX 550 Ti ($120). The Steam report shows that 8.24% of its users have an HD 5770, 6.68% have a GTX 560 and 6....

Microsoft removed a compatibility block this week for Windows 11 users who hadn’t already installed the 22H2 update. Users awaiting the update should see it appear in Windows Update within the next few days. The switch confirms Microsoft’s confidence that it has fixed enough of 22H2’s bugs to resume its global rollout. Redmond initially launched Windows 11 22H2 in 190 countries in late September, but many users encountered problems with it, including blue screens of death (BSODs)....

Microsoft has blessed the Lumia 640 with a tough, vibrant and minimalist design that’s fairly typical for an entry-level smartphone. For a five inch design, the Lumia 640’s body is reasonably large thanks to sizable bezels. I’m not a fan of the plastic feeling used on the back, though this is not unusual in the budget market. The Lumia 640 packs respectable hardware across the board. The 5.0-inch 720p IPS display is decent, with great outdoor visibility....

Microsoft has revealed on the softwares’ official product pages that it will stop directly issuing licenses for Windows 10 Home, Pro, and Workstation. The disclaimer states that January 31, 2023, is the last day consumers can download the operating systems from Microsoft’s site. The notice emphasizes that despite stopping downloads, Windows 10 will continue to receive security updates protecting PCs from viruses, spyware, and other malware until October 14, 2025....

Last week, Twitter ignored Musk’s bid to buy the company outright for $41 billion — it’s worth less than $36 billion. Instead the board of directors initiated a poison pill strategy to prevent him from executing a hostile takeover. The plan calls for Twitter to offer more stock to its shareholders if Musk acquires a 15-percent stake in the company, thus diluting shares and making a takeover much more expensive....

Unsurprisingly, gaming PCs are in huge demand right now and at the opposite end of the spectrum so too are small form-factor computers. Driving both ends of the market is Intel with its highly efficient Skylake processors. Intel has been a real champion for small form factor computing with its NUC family of tiny computers. More recently, the company introduced three new types of mini PC designs in the Compute Stick, Mini Lake and 5" × 5", or mini-STX as it is now commonly referred to....

With the ongoing silicon shortage significantly raising prices on consumer-oriented graphics cards, some gamers have turned to cloud services for their gaming fix. MSI has taken this one step further by introducing a dedicated cloud gaming machine to their Trident range of gaming PCs. This slim 2.6-liter tower is configurable with up to an 8-core AMD Ryzen 5700G APU with integrated Radeon graphics, two M.2 SSD slots, and up to 64GB of DDR4 3200MHz SO-DIMM system memory....

In addition to offering power savings over AMD’s other solutions, the Z-01 packs a significant advantage over anything Intel currently offers: the 276MHz Radeon HD 6250. The ViewSonic ViewPad 10Pro’s Atom Z670 “Lincroft” processor uses the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 600, which is comparatively slower than AMD’s integrated engines. As you can see on the pictures, the WindPad 110W like most other Windows tablets sports a fan to dissipate heat....

Reports last month suggested that the Netherlands and Japan were close to implementing bans on the export of advanced chipmaking devices to China following talks with Washington. While the sensitive nature of the deal means it hasn’t been publicly announced, several people familiar with the matter say an agreement was reached on Friday. Part of the reason the talks took so long to conclude was fear over how a ban would impact the nations’ chip giants: ASML in the Netherlands and Tokyo Electron and Nikon in Japan....

The Panasonic Toughbook 40 and its 2.1-inch (53.3mm) thick shell results in a rugged 3.35kg (7.4 lbs) notebook that’s highly configurable and modular, making it an ideal digital companion for the military, law enforcement agencies or utility companies with demanding work conditions. This new model is a Windows 11 Secured-core machine that brings advanced firmware-level security features from Microsoft and partners to protect against data theft and sophisticated attacks. Under the hood is an 11th-gen Intel Core i5 or i7 vPro chip with 16GB of RAM (2 x DIMMS upgradeable to 64GB) and a quick-release 512GB SSD that can be increased up to 2TB....

Like most software and applications, Twitter’s privacy policy is often glazed over, misunderstood, or simply clicked through and overlooked. Twitter Data Dash, a retro 2D platformer that runs on your browser, was released in an attempt to make the company’s often-skipped privacy-related legalese somewhat more digestible. The game lets players take control of the game’s main character, a blue puppy named Data, to travel through PrivaCity (see what they did there) collecting bones....

Inside, you’ll find custom 12.6mm dynamic drivers with a PEN (Polyethylene Naphthalate) + PU (Polyurethane) diaphragm. Unlike the company’s first buds that were tuned by Teenage Engineering, Nothing has taken it upon itself to tweak the sound of the Ear (stick). The Bluetooth 5.2-enabled buds measure 29.8mm (height), 18.8mm (width) and 18.4mm (depth) and tip the scales at 4.4 grams. They feature three high-definition mics that work together with noise reduction algorithms....

When testing with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 at 2560x1600 the GeForce GTX 590 averaged 94fps providing 62% more performance than the GTX 580. However despite this it was actually 7% slower than the Radeon HD 6990. This is surprising given that the GeForce GTX 590 was found to be 77% faster than the Radeon HD 6970 and 47% faster than the HD 5970. Call of Duty: Black Ops Fraps was used to benchmark CoD: Black Ops in single-player mode....

We watched a rerun of that episode only a few short weeks later when Nvidia elbowed its way into the sub-$300 market. The company’s GK106-based GTX 660 launched at $230, landing right between AMD’s mid-range offerings. In addition to being only 14% slower and 23% cheaper than the GTX 660 Ti, the GTX 660 offered more value than the Radeon HD 7870 while matching the 7850’s price-to-performance ratio. Having attacked the mid-range and upper-end markets, Nvidia has its sights set on the sub-$200 range, unleashing its GTX 650 Ti....

The GTX 750 Ti performed well in Dirt 3 with 60fps at 1920x1200 and although it was still 13% slower than the R7 265’s 69fps, it was 22% faster than the GTX 650 Ti and just 10% slower than the GTX 660. Nvidia’s GTX 750 Ti stole the lead from the R7 265 in Far Cry 3, albeit by just 3% with 34fps at 1920x1200, which was also 42% faster than the GTX 650 Ti....

The two new Maxwell GeForces occupied the top spots when testing with Thief. The GeForce GTX 980 crushed the competition with a 20% margin over the rest of the pack. Meanwhile the GTX 970 was a match for the older top guns, the Radeon R9 290X and the GTX 780 Ti. Watch Dogs results are similar to Thief’s, with the new GTX 970 able to beat the R9 290X by a small margin, and gaining a comfortable 23% lead over the R9 290....

GTAV fans that game at 4K resolutions will enjoy what the GeForce GTX 980 Ti has to offer, as we saw a very playable 44fps at 2160p. This meant that the GTX 980 Ti was just 6% slower than the Titan X, while it was 22% faster than the GTX 980 and 33% faster than the R9 290X. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt was tested using the ultra-quality settings which means Nvidia’s HairWorks was fully enabled....

This situation has put more pressure on the more affordable GeForce RTX 3070. The card’s launch was pushed to October 29, allowing Nvidia to build up a larger stockpile for release day. Hopefully your chances of buying a new RTX 3070 in two days’ time when they hit shelves are much higher. Moving on from availability woes, the GeForce RTX 30 series is bound to remain an attractive option for gamers for months and even years to come....

The RTX 4090 Laptop chip is built using AD103 silicon – the largest that could feasibly fit into a laptop form factor given constraints to size, power, and cooling. This leaves the RTX 4090 Laptop with 9,728 shader units, the same number as the desktop RTX 4080 – as well as several other specs that are shared between those two, such as the 16GB memory capacity and 256-bit bus....