Are your motherboard's M.2 heatsinks making good contact with your SSD? We tested 20 modern Intel and AMD motherboards to verify
We tested 20 motherboards for proper M.2 contact and were surprised at the results – not all make good contact.
Hardware
30 Georgia homes are being acquired via sale or eminent domain to expand power grid — one affected family member says it’s ‘for the data centers’
Georgia's largest power supply company is reclaiming 30 homes that lay in the path of its power line expansion project through sale or eminent domain. The company says the project is not for a data center, but the substation the line is connecting to sits less than five miles from a massive data ...
32GB Corsair Vengeance DDR5 is $369 in this Woot sale — the lowest standalone RAM price right now, thanks to a $132 discount
Get Corsair Vengeance DDR5 for just $369 at Woot.
Grab a great-value gaming laptop with a generous amount of memory for only $1,199 — save $100 on Gigabyte's Aero X16 gaming laptop with 32GB of DDR5 and RTX 5060 graphics
Save $100 on a Gigabyte Aero 16X gaming laptop with a Ryzen AI 7 350 CPU, 32GB of RAM, and an RTX 5060 GPU in today's limited-time sale
Legendary Windows developer codes Task Manager for the Mac, says Apple’s ‘Activity Monitor blows’ — Microsoft gave original Windows Task Manager dev permission to reference Windows XP source code
Legendary Windows developer Dave W. Plummer has shared details and screenshots of a version of Task Manager for Apple Mac computers.
Save 33% on this 27-inch LG OLED 1440p gaming monitor with an ultra-fast 280Hz refresh rate, now just $399 — limited-time deal nets you a big discount on this high-spec panel with Nvidia G-Sync and AMD FreeSync support
This 27-inch LG OLED gaming monitor with a 280Hz refresh rate has dropped is on sale right now for $399.99 in a deal that'll save you $200.
Gamers compress 80TB map of Minecraft's oldest anarchy server down to a 15TB download — custom .zvcr compression format and 28 bots map 1 million blocks on infamous 2b2t server
Minecraft enthusiasts come together to archive Minecraft's 2b2t server, which currently weighs over 80TB but is compressed to a mere 15TB.
Firm that uses AI to locate ancient lost shipwrecks is hiring a literal pirate to salvage sunken treasure, paying up to $500,000 a year — AI mines 500 years of Spanish colonial records spanning 80 million pages to find undiscovered wrecks and lost cargo
AI and software research firm looking for a real-life pirate — extremely remote lob listing requires nautical and diving experience
Pennsylvania town lists 43 specific demands to approve new AI data center project — developer calls local demands 'too difficult' as council slams response as 'approval by tantrum'
One township in Pennsylvania gave a specific list of demands for a data center developer to follow if they want to build their project in the area. Instead, they retracted their initial application and sent in a second one challenging the regulations.
Microsoft says physical discs should not have stopped working during the Xbox outage — clarifies issue with entitlement checks that failed to read licenses correctly, update on the way
Microsoft has confirmed that you should've been able to play your discs offline during the Xbox outage yesterday. The company has identified an issue with entitlement checks that prevented the correct ones from loading during the outage, breaking intended functionality.
Seagate to start qualifying record-setting 50TB HDDs in 2027 — most drives are sold out through 2028
Seagate expects to begin customer qualification of its 50TB-class HAMR hard drives in late 2027 with shipments in 2028 as AI-driven storage demand keeps production largely sold out through 2028.
Nvidia employee implicated in escalating Supermicro smuggling scandal, but demand only intensifies for Nvidia hardware
An Nvidia employee has been implicated in the Supermicro smuggling scandal, with his home and desk searched. He's been detained over allegations of forgery and breach of trust. Meanwhile, Nvidia is collapsing its buyer list in order to root out potential smuggling chains.
Valve says that Steam Machine reservations won't be fulfilled until ‘the end of this year’ — company also releases CAD files for the PC console’s external shell under Creative Commons
Everyone who reserved the Steam Machine can get the chance to buy one before the year ends. Valve says availability differs between models and regions, and that some areas have already completed the reservations, meaning the company is opening the sale of the PC console to waitlisted buyers.
An inside tour of Lenovo’s North Carolina AI server manufacturing line expansion — Chinese firm expanding US-native production to meet exploding demand
Lenovo is fulfilling demand for homemade servers to fuel the AI boom.
GPU repair service will upgrade the 11GB of VRAM on your RTX 2080 Ti to 22GB — mod involves physically adjusting the strap resistors on the PCB to support a new BIOS
A GPU repair shop in the UAE is promising to upgrade the VRAM capacity of an RTX 2080 Ti from 11GB to 22GB by swapping the 1GB GDDR6 modules with 2GB chips and modifying the strap resistors to recognize the new VRAM.
Testing laptops on battery and AC power — Comparing Intel, Qualcomm, Apple, and AMD
We tested laptops with processors from Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, and Apple to see the differences in how they perform on and off the charger.
Teacher arrested for clapping in support of opposition at an AI data center meeting — gigawatt-scale project gets approved anyway despite community resistance
A Physics teacher was arrested for clapping multiple times during a public hearing to rezone land for a proposed gigawatt-scale data center near Emporia, Kansas. The man refused to cooperate when the police asked him to leave and was subsequently dragged out of the venue by four officers.
MSI Cubi NUC AI+ 3MG review: Panther Lake in an understated mini PC
The MSI Cubi NUC AI+ 3MG is a compact, understated design, providing an Intel Core Ultra 9 386H in a tiny desktop. It’s easy to upgrade and relatively quiet but could do with a few more ports at the back and a more attractive price.
How to buy second-hand PC hardware without getting scammed — essential rules of engagement for finding used parts and machines in an inflated market
Buying second-hand can be a great way to pick up a bargain on PC hardware, but you'll need to keep this advice in mind to make sure you avoid the scams.
Memory maker SK hynix's profit rises 557% amid global shortage, expansion costs climb to $27 billion — shares slide despite mammoth earnings as expectations outpace reality and global AI selloffs continue
SK hynix has reported second-quarter revenue of 79.32 trillion won, and operating profit of 60.54 trillion won, the latter up 557% year over year.