Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus vs AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D faceoff — battle of the upper mid-range CPUs
 Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus vs AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D faceoff — battle of the upper mid-range CPUs

AMD’s 3D V-Cache takes on Intel’s latest Core Ultra architecture as we compare the two across various metrics including gaming, productivity, power consumption, and value.

,
Open-source stealth USB hides an encrypted partition behind an 8GB decoy drive — ‘Phantom Drive’ appears as a regular USB stick until you create a text file to unlock the hidden data
 Open-source stealth USB hides an encrypted partition behind an 8GB decoy drive — ‘Phantom Drive’ appears as a regular USB stick until you create a text file to unlock the hidden data

This USB looks like a standard 8GB drive, but it unlocks a hidden partition when you create a text file with the password inside. The password is never actually written to storage; it’s instead intercepted by the custom firmware and copied into the microcontroller’s SRAM during hashing.

, ,
Micron reportedly offers pennies on the dollar for Crucial RAM return, only offers to reimburse original MSRP despite it being only 37% of market value — chipmaker later reverses course with a better solution

Crucial memory owner recounts their experience with Micron’s warranty process since the company has axed the Crucial brand.

,
Owner of original Intel 8080 pre-production layout seeks restorer — handcrafted Rubylith mask shows 5,000 transistors and interconnect patterns of the fabled 2 MHz CPU
 Owner of original Intel 8080 pre-production layout seeks restorer — handcrafted Rubylith mask shows 5,000 transistors and interconnect patterns of the fabled 2 MHz CPU

The owner of ‘the original engineering copy of the Intel 8080 rubylith mask’ is looking for a skilled restorer.

,
Nvidia RTX 5090 ships in bizarre 8-motherboard bundle — retailers hold GPUs hostage similar to the crypto boom

Taiwanese ecommerce platform PChome24h is packaging RTX 5090 GPUs with a crazy number of motherboards, entry-to-mid-range GPUs, and several other components. While interesting, these combos are alarming as they show the direction that the PC building industry is headed.

,
Save $160 off AMD’s ultimate gaming CPU combo, includes motherboard and chip cooler — $458 combo features Ryzen 7 9800X3D, B850 motherboard, and a 240mm liquid AIO
 Save $160 off AMD’s ultimate gaming CPU combo, includes motherboard and chip cooler — $458 combo features Ryzen 7 9800X3D, B850 motherboard, and a 240mm liquid AIO

Newegg is offering a big discount on a Ryzen 7 9800X3D bundle that includes an MSI B850 Gaming Plus WiFi motherboard and an MSI MAG Coreliquid A13 240 AIO liquid cooler.

,
China’s memory-making champion smashes DDR5-8800 barrier on AMD platform — CXMT chips close the gap with SK hynix
 China’s memory-making champion smashes DDR5-8800 barrier on AMD platform — CXMT chips close the gap with SK hynix

Colorful shows off the overclocking potential on new memory kits equipped with CXMT integrated circuits.

,
We tested the impact of SSD speed on gaming performance in 11 titles — we analyzed from SATA to PCIe 5.0 to see whether upgrading to a faster NVMe SSD would have an impact
 We tested the impact of SSD speed on gaming performance in 11 titles — we analyzed from SATA to PCIe 5.0 to see whether upgrading to a faster NVMe SSD would have an impact

We tested gaming performance with both NVMe and SATA SSDs across 11 games to determine if upgrading to a faster drive is worth it.

,
Hardware researcher spins up ‘CPU deoptimization’ project to find the slowest single x86 instruction, creates hall of shame — worst offender takes 198 billion cycles spanning 62 seconds to execute
 Hardware researcher spins up ‘CPU deoptimization’ project to find the slowest single x86 instruction, creates hall of shame — worst offender takes 198 billion cycles spanning 62 seconds to execute

One hardware researcher, Christopher Domas (@xoreaxeaxeax on GitHub), is taking a different approach with the CPU Deoptimization leaderboard, which looks not to make Assembly instructions run as fast as possible, but as slow as possible to find the single instruction with the highest latency.

,
Scientist says RAM pricing has risen to normalized 2007 levels, AI shortage undid 20 years of progress in a matter of months — memory prices had been falling exponentially for decades
 Scientist says RAM pricing has risen to normalized 2007 levels, AI shortage undid 20 years of progress in a matter of months — memory prices had been falling exponentially for decades

The per GB price of memory modules have gone back to 2007 levels because of AI demand. This is the first time that prices have shot up in the realm of tech, Lemire says.

,