The Steam Summer Sale is in full swing, and there are deals to be had everywhere you look. But most of them—especially the more popular and more recent games—only have modest discounts at best. I’ve picked out some of my favorites that have the biggest savings.

In no particular order, here are the best Steam Summer Sale deals on the games I personally love and think everyone should check out. Fill up your Steam backlog at a steep discount right now!

1. Fallout 76 — $9.99 (75% off)

Fallout is all the rage at the moment thanks to the Amazon series, but sadly it’s been years since the last mainline game—and it’ll be years more before a new one comes out.

Take this opportunity to get Fallout 76 at a huge discount and dive into the rich lore of this post-apocalyptic world, presented as a prequel to every other Fallout game. The rest of the series is deeply discounted as well, including fan-favorite Fallout: New Vegas.

2. Horizon: Zero Dawn Complete Edition — $12.49 (75% off)

This is one of my all-time favorite games, and the PC version of Horizon: Zero Dawn—with its more precise controls and even prettier graphics—is the best way to experience it.

This package includes the original open-world, robo-dino-hunting game and the excellent Frozen Wilds DLC at an amazing price. If you enjoy this one, you’ll want to move on to the sequel Horizon: Forbidden West… if your PC can handle it.

3. Tunic — $14.99 (50% off)

Tunic is a top-down, Zelda-inspired action-RPG that’s absolutely adorable, animating like a series of kids’ toys come to life. But don’t let the cutesy graphics fool you. With its expansive setting and punishing combat, there’s more than a little Dark Souls flavor to this comely adventure.

4. Disco Elysium: The Final Cut — $3.99 (90% off)

If you want to sink your teeth into a narrative-heavy RPG, you’ll find none deeper than Disco Elysium, which became an instant classic upon release.

Its stunningly original world and neo-noir trappings will suck you in, even as you acquaint yourself with its original take on role-playing and exploration. Make sure you have plenty of free time before you start, as this game will devour it.

5. Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor + Shadow of War — $6.99 (90% off)

These games are a bit old now, but they combine Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings setting (albeit a sort of fanfiction version) with the excellent combat of the Batman Arkham games.

Even better, the legendary Nemesis system always gives you dynamic and interesting orcs to fight (and eventually recruit to your own army). Start with Shadow of Mordor, then move on to Shadow of War—this bundle makes them an incredible bargain.

6. Civilization VI — $2.99 (95% off)

What can I say about Civilization VI that hasn’t already been said? Nothing, that’s what. If you have any love for the classics of turn-based empire building, or if you’re just curious to see what all the fuss is about, there’s never been a better time to pick it up.

7. Doom (2016) — $3.99 (80% off)

Doom‘s reimagined reboot from nearly ten years ago arguably kicked off the modern boom of boomer shooters, and it’s easy to see why.

An incredible blend of classic and modern elements makes this a demon-punching joy from start to finish, with super-fast movement, satisfying shooting, and fantastic levels. Play Doom (the slightly less old one) for a taste of a nearly perfect shooter.

8. Dead Cells — $12.49 (50% off)

You got your roguelike in my Metroidvania! Dead Cells is one of those rare indie games that nails just about everything it sets out to do, from its colorful pixel art to its smooth-as-butter platforming to its punishing-yet-satisfying combat.

If you’re looking for a challenge and you’re strung out on 3D soulslikes, give this one a go. It’s an absolute winner.

9. Slay the Spire — $8.49 (66% off)

The one that popularized today’s deluge of digital deck-building games, Slay the Spire mixes simple mechanics and deep strategy with a hearty dose of randomness for maximum engagement.

After a few runs, you’ll start to seek out the card combos and battle techniques that can make the difference between a flub and an epic run. Warning: this one can be seriously addictive!

10. Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun — $14.29 (35% off)

The grimdark future of Warhammer 40K and the pixelated perversity of boomer shooters make for a perfect combination, and Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun proves it.

Step into the chunky size-18 boots of a legendary space marine and rid a beleaguered planet of its demonic infestation. Come for the breathless, non-stop shooting—even if your PC can’t handle the newer Doom games—and stay for the deep lore.

11. Yakuza: Like a Dragon — $11.99 (80% off)

The Yakuza series is legendary for its alternately serious and wacky atmosphere, but its usual beat-em-up combat doesn’t appeal to everyone. If you prefer your role-playing games with turn-based combat, this more recent entry should be more your style.

The surrealist setup of Yakuza: Like a Dragon makes everything wackier in a way that’s charmingly anime, and the new protagonist means you don’t need to have played any of the other Yakuza games to dig in.

Recording your video game sessions isn’t exactly a new idea. It’s the entire basis of Twitch and its countless game streamers, both professional and aspirational. But game streaming requires a collection of special tools and techniques if you want to stand out.

Or, at least, it used to. Now, with its latest beta update, Steam will basically do it all for you. Steam has long been able to take screenshots and stream game sessions around a local network, but this new feature is laser-focused on recording and sharing your experiences.

With Nvidia’s Shadowplay now on the outs, this new one by Steam is probably the tool that’s most likely to be installed on gamers’ PCs already (or it will be once it moves from beta to full release). This should make Steam the most prolific game recording software in the world, even before most users are aware of the capability.

I tried out the tool with a few sessions of Hades II and found it remarkable how well the tool runs without even thinking about it.

Set it up to work in the background—shaving a bit of performance off your GPU, but not anything I particularly noticed—and your game sessions will just appear in your recordings and screenshots folder. (You can always navigate to the non-DRM files in Windows Explorer, but Steam includes a video player within its own interface, too.)

From this view, you can clip and export sections of your session, grab a screenshot, or send it to other PCs or even your phone, all without leaving the player window.

Here’s a quick snippet I grabbed in just a few seconds with no editing. Note how the tool preserves my ultrawide monitor’s 21:9 aspect ratio, something a lot of similar software struggle to do.

By default, Steam saves sessions in 120-minute chunks and at 12Mbps video (which was about the level of a YouTube stream for me), and it asks just under 11GB of space to keep the buffer running.

Naturally, all of that is adjustable within the Game Recording menu, as are the shortcuts to add specific markers. You can even bind a shortcut to a controller button—those back-mounted “paddle” buttons showing up on more and more gamepads seem like a perfect fit here.

Valve says that game developers will be able to automatically add markers and snippet sections to these recording sessions at some point, though I’m not seeing them at the moment. Other features include an easy-to-share QR code link generator and temporary links for “Hey, look at this!” shares with your friends. Oh, and it works on the Steam Deck.

All of this reminds me of the social tools baked into the PlayStation and Xbox, but with more options available for modern tech-savvy users. Valve’s continual work to make Steam the de facto platform for PC gaming seems to be paying off.

You can try out the tool by enabling the Steam beta and then checking out the Game Recording tab in the Steam Settings menu.

Recently Apple reversed a long-standing policy that disallowed retro game emulator apps, so now gamers have access to decades of classic ROMs on the iPhone and iPad without work-arounds. But it appears that tolerance does not extend to emulating classic PC platforms, for games or any other purpose. Developers of DOS and early x32 emulators have been shown the door on the App Store.

According to a report from The Verge, Apple told developers that retro PC emulators run afoul of the App Store’s App Review Guidelines, section 4.7. These are the same rules that have proven so problematic for services that stream games from external servers. Though it now explicitly allows “game emulators” and “retro game console emulator apps,” that privilege apparently does not extend to apps that emulate more utilitarian software like DOS and Windows.

The developers of iDOS 3 and the UTM SE virtual machine both had their app submissions rejected, and social media posts indicate that Apple took exception to the programs specifically because they weren’t “emulators of retro game consoles.” The fact that both of these programs can and often are used to play PC games over 30 years old doesn’t seem to enter into the equation.

Apple was characteristically unhelpful in nailing down the guidelines. Would a Commodore 64 count as a console or a PC? Apparently the former, since C64 emulators are available on the App Store right now, despite the fact that the device was sold as a personal computer and could run a wide variety of productivity programs. As usual, developers are at Apple’s mercy when it interprets its own rules, and won’t find out that their app is in violation of those rules until it’s rejected.

It’s worth pointing out that Google’s Play Store for Android phones and tablets allows more or less any emulation app for any platform, so long as they don’t actually contain copyrighted content in the form of system files or ROMs. Apple seems to have changed its position earlier this year, around the same time that European Union legislators forced the company to allow third-party app stores on iOS, something already possible on Android. Users in the EU may be able to run PC emulators on the iPhone and iOS when this functionality becomes available, albeit without the ease of access granted by the App Store walled garden.

It seems like the cryptocurrency boom has created a never-ending well of hucksters looking to steal your money. It’s scams all the way down.

According to a recent alert from the FBI, a new breed of scam is specifically targeting people who’ve already been scammed, posing as law firms that specialize in recovering funds lost to crypto schemes.

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation’s public service announcement (spotted by BleepingComputer) says that fraudsters will reach out to people who have already been victims of cryptocurrency scams via social media. They’ll pose as a lawyer or a law firm that specializes in recovering assets stolen via crypto scams, sometimes even claiming that they work with the FBI or the separate Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Targeting people who’ve already fallen for a crypto scam seems incredibly scummy… but it makes sense in purely mercantile terms. Such victims have already shown that they’re susceptible to social engineering.

The scammers, who may or may not be the same people who ran the original scam, will claim that they’re actively seeking judgment against the original criminals. That’s the bait. The hook is personal banking information, a straight payment for “services,” or more complicated ruses involving fees or “back taxes.” Once they have enough info to steal your identity or just get paid, they vanish.

The FBI report says that this secondary round of scamming is on the rise, with an estimated $9 million stolen from victims between February 2023 and 2024. That’s a drop in the bucket of the larger cryptocurrency scam cottage industry, where pump-and-dump “rug pulls” and phishing scams to drain crypto wallets are now the norm. But it seems especially despicable to steal from people who’ve already been scammed.

Law enforcement can, on rare occasions, track and recover cryptocurrency to reimburse victims. And it’s certainly possible to pursue legal action against someone who’s scammed you, which means lawyers will be involved at some point. But they don’t typically reach out to victims on social media.

The sad truth is that most people who’ve been victimized by cryptocurrency scams either don’t know the real identities of their scammers or have no real legal recourse against them.

I’ve reviewed several Logitech gaming keyboards and I usually come away less than impressed. The company tends to bank on its brand and legacy to sell high-priced hardware, while falling far short in features and especially software.

Which is why the new Logitech G515 Lightspeed TKL keyboard intrigues me by the simple fact of it being reasonably priced.

At $140 for a wireless gaming keyboard, the G515 is decidedly average as a value play—but it’s nearly $100 cheaper than the G915 TKL, a design that’s years old and far from competitive even when it came out, so someone at Logitech is paying attention to the larger market.

With a low-profile build and switches compatible with low-profile keycaps on the Cherry-style stem, it offers at least some options for customization. Logitech also built in some RGB lighting and topped it off with high-quality PBT keycaps, a feature that even some premium gaming keyboards omit. (Lookin’ at you, Razer BlackWidow.)

The G515 is a bit chunky for “low-profile,” but then again it doesn’t take much to feel skinny next to most of the gaming keyboards on the market, which might be charitably called “big-boned.”

Despite the skinny dimensions, the proprietary GL switches feature 1.3mm of travel, which is less than half of a standard MX switch but far more than most of the trendy thin keyboards and laptop-style designs.

The G515 includes Logitech’s standard—and very good—tri-mode wireless with Bluetooth and a 2.4GHz dongle plus multi-device support. Battery life is rated at “up to 36 hours,” though that’s presumably with the full light show active. If you can resist the RGB bling, it should go for weeks or months.

The G515 is available in black or white, with linear (smooth) or tactile (slight bump) switch options. Sadly, there’s no hot-swap capability. The keyboard should be showing up in online and brick-and-mortar retailers very soon.

Did you know that it’s entirely possible to use Windows 11 with a local-only account, the way it worked way back when computers still used floppy drives?

You’d be forgiven for not knowing, because it seems like Microsoft is going out of its way to hide this option from you, hoping to push you onto a connected Microsoft Account instead. In fact, they’re straight-up erasing information that might tell you otherwise.

Microsoft keeps a pretty sizable collection of short, to-the-point guides for some of the most frequently searched functions on Windows. For example, this page tells you how to move from a local-only, non-connected user account to a full-on Microsoft Account.

But that page used to say a lot more. Tom’s Hardware discovered that the most recent version of the page has deleted information on how to go in reverse, to transition from a Microsoft Account to a local account. The change was made last week, just as the newest Surface devices hit the market. The original version of the page is still visible via the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.

It’s disheartening, but not surprising. Microsoft has been incorporating more online, always-connected features into Windows for decades (including several unwelcome pushes to buy Microsoft Office or switch to the Edge browser). And this push only seems to be accelerating as Microsoft bets big on generative AI with Copilot, even going as far as offering a paid upgrade for more functionality.

It’s still possible to operate Windows 11 as a local user, only logging into Microsoft services via web browser like in ye olden days. But you have to set up an account first, then manually move yourself off of it.

Microsoft appears to be increasing that difficulty with intention. The recent changes to the Windows 11 setup process—and now yeeting instructions off its own support page—show that Microsoft wants every user to send over data constantly.

Best Prices Today: Keychron Q1 HE keyboard

Keychron is one of my go-to recommendations for keyboards. The company makes a ton of high-end mechanical boards that are both accessible and customizable, at a price well below those of the competition. With its apparent desire to fill every single possible niche, it was inevitable that the company would try its hand at adjustable actuation. So here we are with the Q1 HE.

The Q1 HE is a keyboard with magnetic hall-effect switches, meaning you can adjust the point at which they activate — how hard or soft you need to press the keys. It’s also the first adjustable actuation keyboard on the market with hot-swap switch sockets, something I’ve previously said is essential. That’s an impressive milestone, and the Q1 HE keeps up Keychron’s great build and feature set.

But because of the lack of options for switches, and a lack of one crucial feature for gamers, I’m not sold on this design. The Q1 HE does do what it says on the box, but its advantages over the Q1 Max are slight, and you give up a much wider selection for customization. It only makes sense for a tiny sliver of potential buyers.

Further reading: See our roundup of the best mechanical keyboards to learn about competing products.

Keychron Q1 HE design and features

From the outside the Q1 HE looks more or less like every Keychron Q keyboard, just with a snazzy red accent for the Enter and Escape keys. If you’ve been following the keyboard world for the last couple of years, you know the look: 75 percent layout, high-profile keycaps, big chunky aluminum case, and a volume knob. It ain’t broke, and Keychron ain’t fixing it.

Michael Crider/Foundry

Michael Crider/Foundry

Michael Crider/Foundry

I’ll spare you the breakdown of all of Keychron’s features, and just say that the HE has everything that the Q Max series (which I’ve already reviewed) does. That includes the above metal case and knob, plus:

• High-profile PBT keycaps
• Hot-swap switch sockets
• RGB lighting
• Multiple internal layers of foam and padding
• Triple-device Bluetooth
• 2.4GHz wireless dongle with 1,000Hz polling mode
• Screw-in stabilizers
• Gasket mount PCB
• Programming with QMK and the Keychron web tool

It’s hitting all the right notes for a high-priced mechanical keyboard. Purists might bemoan Keychron’s gasket quality and stabilizers compared to boutique designs. But we’re talking about a relatively small subset of users who will either build their own keyboard, or pay someone else $400+ to do it. For a high-quality, customizable board you get out of a box, Keychron remains damn hard to beat.

The big differentiator in the HE model is those magnetic switches, allowing for adjustable actuation. For why this is important (and why you might care about it), check out my breakdown of adjustable actuation keyboards. Tl;dr, you can adjust how hard or light you need to press each key, which gives you one more degree of customization, and opens up some interesting options for the most demanding PC gamers.

Michael Crider/Foundry

Michael Crider/Foundry

Michael Crider/Foundry

Keychron takes this feature one step further than competitors like Razer, Corsair, and Wooting by adding in the option to swap out the switches. Adjustable actuation is complex whether you’re doing it with light or magnets, so previous designs simply omitted this option. On the Q1 HE, like most of Keychron’s premium designs, you can remove the switches in every socket and install alternatives.

But there’s a pretty big caveat here. Due to the way these magnetic switches work, they’re still incompatible with switches that use the standard Cherry MX format and far simpler electrical circuits. So while you can swap them out, you can’t replace them with almost any other switch on the market. At the time of writing the Gateron Nebula purple switches can only be replaced with other Gateron switches conforming to this specific standard, with just two other choices: Dawn yellow and Aurora green. All three choices are linear, pre-lubed switches with the only difference being their spring stiffness. So if you want a clicky or tactile switch in this board, you’re out of luck.

Michael Crider/Foundry

Michael Crider/Foundry

Michael Crider/Foundry

Granted, that’s two more choices for switches than you get on any other adjustable actuation keyboard. But it’s an extremely specific and still limited option. Gateron may make more switches in this series in the future, but at the moment the biggest differentiator between the Keychron Q1 HE and its competition is barely a difference at all. Fortunately the switch stems are still standard, so custom keycaps will work just fine.

How is the Q1 HE for typing and gaming?

As I said earlier, the Q1 HE is almost identical to the Q1 Max, and that means it’s a very good keyboard. The fit and finish for this hunk of heavy metal is as good as anything else on the market, and its expanded wireless options (Bluetooth for flexibility, 2.4GHz USB dongle for reliability and speed) mean it’ll fit into just about anyone’s workflow. The 1,000Hz wireless option with the dongle even makes it suitable for gaming, though it doesn’t boast the same customization options as a dedicated gaming keyboard.

Using the Q1 HE as my primary board for a few weeks left me with no complaints…except two. One, Keychron’s big flagship designs still don’t have adjustable feet. You’re stuck with the same typing angle for all of them, and it’s a bit lower than I prefer. I’ve taken to buying these stick-on rubber feet specifically to alleviate Keychron’s deficiency. Other all-metal designs have feet options, and dammit, I’m tired of telling Keychron that they’re missing out here.

Michael Crider/Foundry

Michael Crider/Foundry

Michael Crider/Foundry

The other quirk of the HE versus the Max series is that it appears to be very power-hungry, presumably because all those magnetic sensors are suckin’ down juice. To address this, Keychron made the HE particularly aggressive in terms of battery saving for wireless mode. While Max keyboards will automatically wake up with any key press, the HE needs you to press and hold the space bar for a second or so if you leave it unattended for 30 minutes or more.

This can be finicky, and it feels like about half the time the keyboard just won’t wake up. This meant I needed to toggle the wireless switch to “Cable” and back to dongle mode in order to reboot and reconnect. I updated the firmware twice in the course of this review, and the problem persists, forcing me to do this cumbersome move two or three times a day. It’s a drag.

Michael Crider/Foundry

Michael Crider/Foundry

Michael Crider/Foundry

Other than that, the typing and user experience on the HE is excellent. It’s notably stiffer than other Keychron boards — either the gaskets aren’t as springy or the magnetic sensors are really weighing down the PCB. But that doesn’t really affect things for me, and the smooth, lubed switches are above average, as are the latest revisions in the stabilizers.

Note that because of the metal case and linear switches, the Q1 HE is pretty noisy as mechanical keyboards go, even though it has internal foam padding. And with only three extremely similar linear switch choices, there’s no way to go with a “silent” switch upgrade. If you’re concerned about disturbing others around you with typing noise, this isn’t the keyboard for you…though neither are any of the other adjustable actuation boards on the market.

New software

One of Keychron’s signature features is compatibility with QMK and VIA tools for programming. The Q1 HE still works with QMK, the more finicky and difficult option. But in place of VIA, Keychron now has its own self-branded tool available via the browser. In an impressive show of backwards compatibility, it should also work with most of the programmable keyboards they’ve released in the last few years, as well. I tried it out with my own personal K9 Pro, and it booted right up even without a firmware upgrade.

Keychron

Keychron

Keychron

Keychron’s self-branded tool is good. It hits all the necessary points that VIA does, without the somewhat cumbersome need to import a custom profile (if the board isn’t already in VIA’s database). It’s also more straightforward, immediately applying changes as they’re made over a wired connection. And once identified, it dynamically added the “HE Mode” menu relevant to the Q1 HE’s adjustable actuation.

Keychron

Keychron

Keychron

This includes setting custom actuation distance, short or deep, for keys individually or in groups. You get all the usual goodies: rapid trigger mode, analog-style input for individual keys, and the option to activate multiple keys or macros at different depths. In fact Keychron enables four different functions on one key, if you somehow have the superhuman dexterity to precisely depress a 4mm switch to that many places.

It’s easy, it works, and it’s straightforward. Overall, it’s a great addition to Keychron’s products. So it’s a shame that in one particular area, it doesn’t go far enough.

Not enough for gamers

The Keychron Q1 HE’s box advertises it as a keyboard “for peak gaming experience.” The website mentions gaming five times, including competitive gaming. And it makes sense. While normal users might appreciate the ability to adjust how light or hard you need to press your keys, the real benefits are for gamers, and gamers who are far more intense and customize to a much deeper degree than most of us.

Michael Crider/Foundry

Michael Crider/Foundry

Michael Crider/Foundry

So I have to evaluate the Q1 HE as a gaming keyboard. And even with the great new programming tool, it falls at the same hurdle as Keychron’s Lemokey L3: There’s no way to assign per-game custom profiles or activate them upon game launch. Keychron representatives tell me this feature is in the works, but I’m not sure it’s even possible with a web-only programming tool. And as always, I can only review the hardware in the state it’s in at the time — a product can’t get extra credit for what it might be later.

The tool does give you three different profiles to customize, but they need to be manually selected in the browser. This might be enough for most gamers, but that lack of auto-launching functionality inevitably makes it less useful than competing gaming keyboards. And you still need to have the Q1 HE connected via USB to use the tool, undermining its excellent wireless features.

Should you buy the Keychron Q1 HE?

As I wrap up my time with the Q1 HE, I find it difficult to recommend for almost all users. For anyone who wants a high-end mechanical keyboard, the Q1 Max (or any of the Max series keyboards) will offer all of the same features minus adjustable actuation, at a slightly lower price. And they’re compatible wth hundreds and hundreds of different Cherry MX-style switches, not just three interchangeable linear-only options.

If you really do want that adjustable actuation function, it’s available elsewhere, with software that includes the crucial ability to set and auto-launch per-game custom profiles. The only way Keychron beats out offerings from Razer and the like is in its excellent wireless setup. Only SteelSeries also offers adjustable actuation in a wireless package, and it’s not a particularly good one…but it can still handle different game profiles.

Michael Crider/Foundry

Michael Crider/Foundry

Michael Crider/Foundry

So the vast majority of people interested in the Q1 HE should go for either a Q Max keyboard, or Razer’s Huntsman V3 Analog at around the same price. Only if you love Keychron’s premium designs, want adjustable actuation, you’re okay with only three switch choices (at the moment), and you’re okay with just one layout setting most of the time, does the Q1 HE make sense versus the alternatives.

Between that tiny slice of potential users and the annoying battery and wake issues, the Q1 HE is a rare miss for Keychron. I hope they can bring both this and their other gaming-focused boards up in the future.

Microsoft’s Arm-powered Surface Pro tablet and Surface Laptop are the next big thing in PC hardware, but what happens when they break? That’s when you head over to iFixit, search for a repair guide, and maybe even look for replacement parts.

As they’ve done for several years, iFixit has torn down the latest Microsoft Surface hardware to see how easy they are to fix.

Microsoft has been pushing devices that can be repaired by end users (or, at least, by someone who knows their way around a Torx screw). And according to iFixit’s presenter Shahram Mokhtari, the latest devices live up to that even though it seemed as if the Qualcomm Snapdragon-based hardware would make it a harder job.

The new Surface Laptop is extremely accessible when it comes to its main compartment, with just four screws under the removable laptop feet and a few magnets holding the bottom cover in place. From there you just need to remove a few screws with a 3IP Torx driver to get the battery out.

The rest of the components are mostly simple, too, at least as far as mobile electronics go, Microsoft even includes “wayfinder” guides printed on the parts, plus a QR code linking to repair guides on its site.

The only major bummer is that the RAM is soldered into place next to the Snapdragon processor, though that’s hardly a surprise. Maybe a CAMM2 infusion can help address that in the future.

The Surface Pro tablet is much harder to repair, given its more dense arrangement and the fact that you need to remove the display first to access anything except the M.2 storage drive. (The drive can come out without even opening the case, as seen on previous models.)

Even so, it’s remarkably repairable for a tablet, with most of its components coming out without any glue or just a few flexible thermal shields covering them.

iFixit is giving both the new Surface Laptop and Surface Pro tablet an 8 out of 10 provisional repairability score, a big win for Microsoft. For sake of comparison, the entirely modular Framework Laptop gets a 10 out of 10, while the most recent iPad Air (which shares some Arm DNA with the Surface Pro) gets just 3 out of 10.

Microsoft is getting even more brownie points for posting the service manuals for both new Surface devices on day one.

Hot damn! We’re finally seeing some great deals on OLED monitors. Getting a standard LCD display in a 49-inch, super-mega-ultrawide format at $900 would already be a decent deal, but this is an OLED gaming monitor from Gigabyte. It’s $200 off the initial price, the best price we’ve seen yet for an OLED this large.

The Aorus CO49DQ features a massive resolution of 5120×1440—that’s basically two QHD panels smooshed together with a slight 1800R curve—with a 144Hz refresh rate. That’s not the fastest around, but it’s about as much as you’ll need for any gaming PC that’s pushing this many pixels in any sort of taxing game.

But this monitor is more than just a pretty face. In addition to certification for AMD FreeSync and VESA HDR True Black 400, you get DisplayPort 1.4, double HDMI 2.1, and USB-C video support.

At 18 watts, it’s not going to power a gaming laptop alone, but two extra USB-A ports should be good for a few extra goodies. Plus, there’s a one-button switch to hop between USB-C and regular video inputs.

And yes, it has those 5-watt speakers that manufacturers keep putting into monitors (which you absolutely should not use). The display supports standard VESA mounting, though you’ll probably need an extra-sturdy monitor arm if you don’t want to use the included stand.

Looking for a gorgeous way to show off your gaming PC’s prowess at an incredible bargain price? Head over to Amazon and snag this Gigabyte 49-inch monster for $200 off!

Video production requires some serious power, but that doesn’t mean your PC has to be a massive RGB-laden behemoth. Adam Patrick Murray and Alex Esteves are looking to shrink down their PC footprint with two of the most stylish small form factor cases on the market. You can watch the whole thing, start to finish, on our YouTube channel.

Adam’s AMD-based build is going in the brand new Fractal Design Mood, a vertical SFF case that was revealed at Computex. Alex’s Intel machine is a little more conventional in the SSUPD Meshroom S, which is all about maximum airflow in a tiny 14.9-liter space. Both of them are getting some serious parts in there despite the small dimensions and might need some PC building expertise to fit everything in.

The full double-machine build is just over three hours long — a great background video if you happen to be building your own PC, or I dunno, assembling some Ikea furniture. Give it a watch to see how the pros build itty-bitty and subscribe to PCWorld on YouTube if you want to see more live builds.

At a glance

Expert's Rating

Pros

• Fantastic value
• Easy layout switching
• Hall-effect sticks

Cons

• Short trigger travel
• Some games don’t like Switch format

Our Verdict

The Nova HD has all the features you want in a basic controller, plus a ton of extras like hall-effect analog sticks. It’s not great for driving fans, but everyone else will love its value and flexibility.

Best Prices Today: Gamesir Nova HD controller

Retailer

Price

$35.99

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Gamesir

35.99

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Price comparison from Backmarket

Controllers are expensive. They always have been, at least if you insist on buying the first-party gamepads for consoles or Microsoft’s de facto standard for PC, the Xbox controller. And there have always been cheaper alternatives, the bane of visiting gamers and younger siblings everywhere. Gamesir’s Nova HD hopes to buck that trend. 

And it does. Shockingly well, in fact: Not only does the Nova HD have several features you won’t find on standard console controllers, it can go multi-platform, switching between PC, mobile devices, and the Nintendo Switch with ease. And unlike some other controllers that require adjustment for Nintendo’s stubborn insistence on its weirdo layout, the Nova HD can swap between standard and Nintendo face buttons on the fly, no driver software required. 

Michael Crider/Foundry

Michael Crider/Foundry

Michael Crider/Foundry

While it lacks the fit and finish of “premium” controllers, its extra features — specifically that layout swap option and hall-effect analog sticks — mean that Gamesir’s option is a legitimate contender for anyone who wants to save a little cash. For $35, you give up nothing versus the Xbox controller or Switch Pro controller, and even gain a few options. 

Gamesir Nova HD features

I was sent the Nova HD in its “retro” colorway, with muted beige, grays, and purples clearly meant to evoke the Super NES. Not really my style, but I appreciate the theming, especially since Gamesir’s logo goes along with it — not every brand is that flexible. It’s also available in a more radical ’80s-flavored transparent teal.

The rear of the controller is more monotone, but once you turn it on you get a bit of a light show. Multicolor circles light up around the analog sticks, a trend that’s common enough to be spotted here on budget controllers and on premium devices like the ROG Ally. Again, not to my taste, but you can turn it off if you like. More on that later. 

Michael Crider/Foundry

Michael Crider/Foundry

Michael Crider/Foundry

Other than that, this is a bog-standard Xbox-style controller. Buttons feel good if not amazing, the layout is nice and familiar, the sticks are a bit on the loose side (common with hall effect). If I have a complaint, it’s that the triggers, which feel more like the PS5 controller than anything else, are a little short on the travel. 

In addition to a mode switcher on the front and one extra contextual button to be compatible with the Switch, you get two assignable buttons on the back, a feature that’s become more and more popular as of late. While you’re back there, note a very light diamond texture on the back of the grips — appreciated if you’re prone to sweating in long sessions, like a gamer who shall remain nameless. (It’s me. I’m talking about me.) 

Michael Crider/Foundry

Michael Crider/Foundry

Michael Crider/Foundry

The package also includes a free carrying case. I’d have preferred a USB dongle instead, but hey, at this price beggars can’t be choosers.

Good all-round, not great for driving

Playing through an unhealthy amount of Hades II, I never encountered any serious issues. Initially the sticks were prone to float a bit, causing Melinoë to walk slowly in a circle. Call it a side effect of those hall-effect components having no friction points. But it seemed to work itself out after a few hours and never showed up again. Well worth it for a design that is, as far as I know, immune to the dreaded stick drift. 

Michael Crider/Foundry

Michael Crider/Foundry

Michael Crider/Foundry

Playing plenty of Brawlhalla left me with no complaints, though I imagine that a more serious fighting game fan might wish for clickier face buttons. When trying racing games I found the Nova HD passable, but those triggers are much more prone to clicking at full throttle than slowly ramping up to it. Any driving-heavy game is one I’d avoid with this controller. 

Pairing and layout options

The Nova HD offers three pairing modes in addition to its generic controller default: Switch, Android, and “Receiver,” activated by powering on with the home button + X, B, and Y, respectively. I didn’t get to try the controller’s USB-based receiver, I was all-Bluetooth, all the time. I don’t even see a receiver on Gamesir’s store, so I’m not sure what the deal is. 

Michael Crider/Foundry

Michael Crider/Foundry

Michael Crider/Foundry

Anyway, I found very little difference in the pairing modes, especially since Steam lets me customize controls already. And I was already anticipating that need, since the default layout is Switch-style, with the A button on the east position. But it turns out I needn’t have bothered. In addition to a bunch of other settings adjustments baked into the firmware, the Nova HD lets you swap between the Nintendo default layout and the Xbox, with A on the south position. 

All you have to do is hold the Mode switch button, M, and B, for two seconds. Bam! The controller swaps between the two primary layouts used in just about every game platform, and it remembers it when you turn off the power. This is the first time I’ve seen a controller with this option, no external software required. It’s freakin’ brilliant. Though there’s nothing it can do about the actual legends printed on the buttons, this means it can effortlessly swap between my gaming PC and the Switch that also lives on my desk. 

Michael Crider/Foundry

Michael Crider/Foundry

Michael Crider/Foundry

The Nova HD needs no other software to pull its party tricks. The LED lights on the sticks can be adjusted — brightness, effect animation speed, or general color — with the M button and other combos. Ditto for enabling dead zones in the sticks, and programming macros or turbos into the rear “paddle” buttons. You’ll probably need to keep the manual handy (or download the PDF) for a while as you learn all the combinations, but before long you’ll be doing it without thinking. 

Compatibility issues

There is one big let-down for this otherwise excellent controller, and it’s that games that just don’t like the Switch Pro gamepad (which it emulates, including a gyroscopic sensor) don’t like the Nova HD either. For example, Rocket Racing in Fortnite just would not cooperate and detect the controller’s triggers. This, even though the closely related Rocket League worked fine, caused it to instantly default to both Xbox-style inputs and matching interface indications. 

So yeah, there may be an occasional headache with some games. I think you’ll be able to overcome them between individual game settings and Steam’s excellent “all are welcome” controller support, but consider yourself forewarned. 

Should you buy the Gamesir Nova HD? 

For just $35, the Nova HD is a fantastic budget pick, rivaling even the excellent 8BitDo in terms of value and capability. For someone who wants to use the same affordable controller on Switch, mobile, and PC, it’s darn hard to beat. 

Michael Crider/Foundry

Michael Crider/Foundry

Michael Crider/Foundry

Racing fans won’t like the triggers, and I wish it came with a USB dongle in the box. But considering that you get a full controller with customizable rear buttons, rumble, and hall-effect sticks, plus the option to swap between the two most common layouts on the fly, I’m more than willing to forgive those shortcomings. 

If you need a multi-platform controller for dirt cheap, Gamesir’s Nova HD should be at the top of your shopping list. 

Windows updates don’t just exist to annoy you and make you reboot your computer twice as often as you normally would. They often include some actually important stuff.

This week’s update has a critical patch for a known Wi-Fi vulnerability, which Microsoft rates as an 8.8 out of 10 in terms of danger—so, go ahead and spin up Windows Update sooner rather than later.

As The Register reports, the CVE-2024-30078 bug fix prevents remote code execution (that means “running scary stuff on your PC from somewhere else”) via a Wi-Fi driver. The details of this vulnerability aren’t public, and it doesn’t appear to be being exploited “in the wild,” but Microsoft isn’t leaving things up to chance. Hackers might be able to figure it out now that it’s been addressed.

The same can’t be said for the critical CVE-2024-30080 patch, which allows remote code execution via the Microsoft Message Queuing system. This one’s dangerous enough that it gets a 9.8 rating, and it may be being exploited at the moment.

Rounding out the security patches is an older issue, CVE-2023-50868, which can be used as a remote denial of service method by overloading resources using Domain Name System Security Extensions. It’s mostly a server issue and less important for regular users.

These fixes should be applied for all Windows 10 and Windows 11 users, so don’t delay. That’s the KB5039214 update for builds 14393.7070, 22621.3737, and 22631.3737 — if you see any of those numbers on your System>About page, you’re all set.

Small form factor PC builds are as popular as they’ve ever been, maybe more so. But it’s become pretty rare to see a case that’s actually designed to take advantage of the small size and let you carry it around. The new Jonsbo T6 does just that, and adds in some practicality for when it’s sitting on your desk, too.

Jonsbo is a smaller China-based case manufacturer that doesn’t pop up much here in the west, but I’ve admired some of its unique designs, like the D41 that puts a case-mounted screen somewhere it might actually be useful. The T6 is more about trending wood aesthetics and teeny-tiny mini-ITX sensibilities, but it’s also got a few ideas that make it more useful than the standard SFF design. The top-mounted handle not only matches the front wood finish, it makes this thing “luggable” in the old-fashioned sense.

“But Michael,” I hear you cry, “I haven’t been to a LAN party since 2003. After I build my fabulously stylish mini-ITX PCs, they sit on my desk until I build another one.” I’m glad you pointed that out, convenient strawman reader. If you prefer your SFF builds a little more sedentary, you can move that handle to the front of the case where it makes a perfect headset holder. You can even put it on the side to…hold tiny figurines, apparently. Of course if you prefer a cleaner look, you can just leave the handle off entirely.

Jonsbo

Jonsbo

Jonsbo

The T6 comes in black and silver models, both with a glass panel on the right side of the case in a bit of a departure from the standard; the motherboard is mounted to the left side. The entire bottom is taken up by space for a 140mm-long power supply (looks like a tight fit for modular cables), with two 2.5-inch drives mountable above it. As Tom’s Hardware points out, you might want to opt for an SFF PSU just to be on the safe side.

It has plenty of room for an air-cooled CPU with a 160mm of cooler clearance, but if there’s an Achilles heel it’s the GPU support. You can only get a 215mm length card in there, severely limiting your options. Even with Nvidia’s new SFF standard, that’s going to max out your power at approximately the RTX 4070 level (if you’re lucky).

Jonsbo

Jonsbo

Jonsbo

Even so, I bet there will be plenty of builders eager to try out this new design. It has that trendy cottagecore wood aesthetic with the good old “maximum power, minimum footprint” feel. There’s no indication of how much it’ll cost or when you can buy it, but Jonsbo cases tend to be on the more affordable side of the market.

Framework has quickly become the darling of tech media and power users alike thanks to its completely modular and upgradeable laptop systems. And, with motherboard options from Intel and AMD, to say nothing of compatibility with Windows, Linux, and Chrome, it’s also multi-platform. Add one more to the list: the company is now offering a RISC-V motherboard for the Framework 13.

If RISC-V isn’t ringing any bells, that’s probably because it’s not all that relevant to standard PCs. Reduced Instruction Set Computer Five is an open-source architecture for both basic hardware, including the CPU, and the software that runs on it. It’s a popular option for a lot of integrated electronics like the internals of your new washing machine or your car’s computer. But thanks to no licensing fees and extreme flexibility, it’s increasingly showing up in more conventional consumer electronics like smartwatches and fitness trackers.

The RISC-V motherboard for the Framework 13 was developed in conjunction with DeepComputing, with a quad-core Starfive JH7110 processor. Unlike Framework’s consumer-focused motherboards, this one has memory soldered in place and thus is not upgradeable, though you can still use a MicroSD card for swappable storage. The initial, pre-production design will be shown off at the RISC-V summit in Munich starting on June 24th.

Though the hardware is at the prototype stage, it should be available to “developers, tinkerers, and hobbyists” through Framework’s Marketplace store at some point, along with all the necessary components for Linux support.

While computer monitors seem to be more or less the same once you get past the size and the ports, that’s not really true. Even the most common type, the humble LCD, has a lot of sub-types. And while the differences between them are subtle, they can vary greatly in how they perform and how you use them. 

The simple idea of a monitor hasn’t changed a lot since we all moved from cathode ray tubes (CRT) — the big, old-fashioned gray boxes that some of you are too young to remember seeing in real life — to relatively tiny liquid crystal displays (LCD). LCDs have been around for decades, first being paired with simple computer displays way back in the 1970s.

The physics of how they work are fascinating, complex, and frankly too much to cover in an article you probably Googled just to figure out something on a spec sheet. I’m going do my best to bottom-line the most common variants, and why you should know and care about them. I’ll be linking to the relevant Wikipedia articles if you want to do some deep dives on the actual physics behind these displays.

There are three major types of LCD panels used in computer monitors, including the screens built into laptops. These are twisted nematic field effect (TN), in-plane switching (IPS), and vertical alignment (VA).

Further reading: The best monitors

TN monitors 

Twisted nematic LCDs are the oldest type of LCD still in use, with technology iterated since the original digital watch designs decades ago. The name comes from the fact that the molecules of liquid crystal that become electrified are literally twisted by 90 degrees between two glass plates. 

Light shines through the liquid crystals and polarization filters, activating the pixel on the screen. Red, blue, and green pixels are combined in a sub-pixel array, and combined at variable brightness to create the desired pixel color.

Wikimedia Commons

Wikimedia Commons

Wikimedia Commons

As an older and simpler technology, TN panels are generally reserved for budget monitors these days. TN panels are some of the cheapest on the market (if you can even find them), with poorer color accuracy, lower brightness, and slower refresh rates than the alternatives. Most dramatically, TN panels have notably poor viewing angles — move to either side of a TN screen, and the color will begin to distort.

Dell

Dell

Dell

TN panels aren’t bad, per se, and they’re definite improvements on using a CRT. They also have surprisingly fast response times (the time between when the electrical signals for the image are sent to the monitor and when the image is displayed). But unless you’re deliberately looking for a bargain with an older monitor, you really shouldn’t be considering it for a new purchase. 

IPS monitors 

IPS stands for in-plane switching, referring to the fact that the molecules of liquid crystal are aligned parallel to the glass on either side, even when powered on. Once again, the reasons for this (and why it’s better than the crystal being twisted) are extremely complex. 

But the benefit for consumers is that IPS monitors have fantastic color reproduction, allowing at least some of them to be incredibly accurate to true-life color. Some high-quality IPS monitors can cover 100 percent of the Digital Camera Initiative color space (DCI-P3). 

Dell

Dell

Dell

That means that if you’re working with graphics that will appear on anything professional, including a website, photograph, television broadcast, or signage, you want an IPS-LCD monitor instead of any of the alternatives. Since I do a lot of work in Photoshop for this job, I use IPS-LCD monitors at my desk. With IPS and VA monitors side by side, I can spot the latter’s lack of white balance even at a glance. 

Further reading: The best gaming monitors

Here’s a photo of a close-up color grid taken by a Reddit user showing the color and brightness of IPS versus VA and TN in a relative visualization. Colors are brighter and more consistent on IPS with better viewing angles, which should be clear no matter what screen you’re actually looking at right now.

Reddit user /u/RampageIV

Reddit user /u/RampageIV

Reddit user /u/RampageIV

The downsides to IPS screens are that they’re the most expensive LCDs to make, pricier than both TN and VA, and they’re not as fast as VA in terms of refresh rates (expressed in hertz, starting at 60hz). So IPS isn’t great for gaming or anything dealing with high-speed animations, at least most of the time. It also has relatively slow response times, meaning a relatively slow rate between clicking your mouse and seeing the result on the screen.

This response time is still extremely fast in relative human terms — 5 to 10 milliseconds for typical panels — but it’s far slower than other LCD panel types, which can make a big difference for gamers. There are exceptions to this — see below. 

VA monitors 

If you find a monitor for less than a couple of hundred dollars, odds are excellent that you’re looking at a VA screen. These vertical alignment panels (with liquid crystals perpendicularly aligned to the substrate) are inexpensive and bright, so they’re great for most basic uses. 

Matt Smith/Foundry

Matt Smith/Foundry

Matt Smith/Foundry

In addition to being bright, they’re also fast, which makes them ideal for gamers who want high refresh rates (expressed in hertz, the number of times the screen redraws its image per second). 120Hz or 144Hz is far more common with a VA monitor, with up to 175Hz being fairly easy to find even at lower prices. This makes them especially good for gaming.

MSI

MSI

MSI

While better than TN panels in terms of both brightness and viewing angle, and far faster than IPS panels, VA panels still aren’t as good as IPS for color accuracy or consistency. That’s a relative degree, of course — for most applications the colors are fine, especially if you like high saturation. But VA panels generally aren’t good enough for professional photo editing or video production. 

The best of both worlds — fast IPS 

What if you need the color accuracy of an IPS monitor, but you still want to do some gaming with higher refresh rates? Well you can — if you’re willing to spend a little more. Over the last few years monitor manufacturers have improved the refresh rates of IPS monitors, making them on par with budget and mid-range VA monitors. 

These “fast IPS” screens offer much higher refresh rates than standard IPS, and some are among the fastest on the market. They’re also available in large sizes popular with gamers. But you will be paying a premium for a high-quality, high-speed panel, and that speed probably won’t be as fast as a VA design in the same price range. Anyone who needs “esports”-caliber speed probably won’t be satisfied. 

Matt Smith

Matt Smith

Matt Smith

For my uses — a desktop setup that needs constant photo work in the day and the occasional high-speed game at night — a fast IPS screen is ideal. 

Other types of monitor panels 

There are many variations of the tech above that get into finer technical degrees, but there are a few others you might want to know about too. 

OLED 

“Organic Light-Emitting Diode” panels are considered some of the best on the market at the moment — possibly the best for some applications. OLED screens are already widespread on phones and wearables, and they’re gaining traction in high-end TVs and tablets, too. 

Matthew Smith / Foundry

Matthew Smith / Foundry

Matthew Smith / Foundry

OLEDs use a simpler structure than conventional LCDs, with a diode that emits light directly (instead of being backlit with a separate component) and doesn’t need a liquid crystal layer. The biggest advantage there is that when an OLED pixel is off, it’s completely off, with no backlight illuminating it even partially. 

This gives OLED panels incredible contrast with “perfect” black levels, in addition to vibrant and accurate colors. They can also be made very speedy, with 240Hz being common. 

So why not go with OLED all the way? Because despite being mechanically simple, large OLED displays are still very expensive, being produced in small numbers at monitor sizes. Prices are dropping, but at the time of writing an OLED monitor will still be double or triple the price of a similarly equipped LCD panel of any kind. Because of the sub-pixel layout on OLEDs, they’re also not great for reading text for extended periods of time.

Quantum Dot LEDs 

This tech is sometimes shortened to QLED (not to be confused with OLED, though some companies might like you to!). Quantum dot screens are fundamentally similar to standard LCD panels, but they use incredibly tiny light-emitting particles as a backlight instead of the old cathode tubes or an array of LEDs. 

This allows for much smaller lighting zones for an LCD panel, resulting in better contrast and brightness. The contrast of a high-quality quantum dot LED screen can get close to that of a “perfect” contrast OLED panel, but with more brightness and (sometimes) far lower cost.  

MiniLED and MicroLED

Both of these technologies are essentially the same, with smaller and smaller light-emitting diodes replacing older and clunkier backlighting methods. Again, the advantage is that with a larger array of smaller LEDs being used to light up the picture, the brightness and contrast can be more finely and accurately controlled. 

TCL

TCL

TCL

MiniLED and MicroLED monitors are both variations of conventional LCD technology, offering a better picture while still not being quite as eye-popping as OLED. Again, you’ll generally find them at much lower prices. 

eInk and ePaper 

These monitors are extremely rare, expensive, and often only available in black and white. They’re also small compared to LCDs, and slow, with refresh rates at a fraction of even the slowest conventional screens. 

So why would anyone want one? Because they’re easy on the eyes. And that’s not a euphemism, it’s literally true. With no backlight, and high contrast on a paper-like background, eInk and ePaper displays can let you read small text for hours in comfort. This is what makes eReaders like the Kindle so popular. 

Boox

Boox

Boox

Even the ones with an integrated light are front-lit (like really old phones or the original Game Boy), so the light is bouncing off the surface of the screen and isn’t shining directly into your eyes. 

But at a price even higher than OLEDs, and with super-slow speeds that can make even browsing the web a bit of a chore, eInk displays are only useful if you’re reading text for hours at a time. They simply aren’t practical for a primary monitor in an all-around capacity. 

Which monitor should you buy?

If all that stuff is making your head spin, or you don’t want to read any more spec sheets, you should check out PCWorld’s roundup of the best computer monitors. It’s constantly updated with the best and latest picks for gaming monitors, work monitors, monitors on a budget, ultrawide and large-format monitors, and more.

Gaming laptops are fantastic, but rarely affordable. You really have to hunt if you want to find a deal. But that’s what we’re here for! Today Woot has a 16-inch Gigabyte gaming laptop, complete with a Core i7 processor and RTX 4060 discrete graphics card, for $899.99. That’s barely a premium over a non-gaming laptop, and over $500 off its original price.

The Aorus 16’s 13th-generation Core i7 processor is among the best you can get in any laptop at the moment. And the Nvidia RTX 4060, while not the beefiest GPU ever, should be more than enough to handle even the latest 3D games. The screen is impressive too: with 2560×1600 resolution and 240Hz of refresh, it’s a notable upgrade over most laptops even at this size. The keyboard is big enough to include a number pad if that’s your jam.

A 1TB Gen4 SSD should be big and fast enough for anything you can throw at it, and the 16GB of DDR5 RAM is sufficient for multitasking in Windows. But if you want to upgrade either one, that’s an option — the Aorus 16’s beefy body (with a capacious 99 watt-hour battery) gives you access to to the removable M.2 and SO-DIMM slots. The Aorus 16 has plenty of ports, even dedicated Ethernet and a MicroSD card reader, so you should be good to go even without a dock.

Unlike Woot’s standard deals, this one is good for multiple days — there are four days left on the ticker at the time of writing. That being said, Woot’s overstock deals are limited by how many they have on hand, so if you’re ready to buy it’s best to place an order.

PC sales have been struggling this year, and giving the “Copilot+” label to laptops equipped with newer hardware and the latest Microsoft AI features was supposed to give them a shot in the arm.

The first round of these next-gen laptops, powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X chips, are finally available to buy… minus the much-touted Recall feature, which has been put on hiatus for the launch.

If you buy a new laptop with the coveted “Copilot+” label, be aware that one of the key differentiating features that Microsoft has been pushing so hard won’t actually be available at launch.

Recall—the Copilot+ tool that records more or less every interaction you have with Windows and its applications—has been recalled delayed. After a huge amount of initial feedback (including privacy and safety concerns), Microsoft has decided to test the feature with Windows Insiders first before releasing it to the general public at a later date.

The showpiece for the Copilot+ program is the new Surface line, including the refreshed Surface Laptop and Surface Pro, but there are plenty of other choices from the big manufacturers. Dell, HP, Lenovo, Samsung, and Asus all have laptops with Snapdragon X processors and their integrated NPUs with a claimed 45 TOPS performance capacity.

There’s little hard data on the capabilities of the new Snapdragon X chips versus more conventional Intel and AMD offerings. Considering how poorly previous attempts at Windows on Arm have gone, it’s only natural that consumers would be skittish.

What little data we’ve been able to get indicates that the Snapdragon X Elite is at least roughly comparable with the latest laptop processors from the competition, though emulation for games and other intense applications could be an issue. As you might expect, the Arm hardware does seem to have a marked advantage in efficiency.

We’re currently testing the new Surface hardware and other Snapdragon X laptops here at PCWorld, and we’re preparing in-depth reviews for your eager eyeballs. Stay tuned.

Adam loves PC gaming handhelds. The Steam Deck kicked off the trend when it dropped in 2022, but now we have more chunky gaming handhelds than we can hold. Is it too much of a good thing? He cornered Steve from GamersNexus on the Computex show floor to hash it out.

Long story short: Yes, there are too many PC gaming handhelds right now—at least according to Steve, who notes that while there are plenty of innovations and unique features, it’s all way too complicated for regular consumers who will generally default to the Steam Deck anyway. We apologize for crushing the dreams of Computex vendors.

So, if there are too many options right now, is it a passing fad? Will we see all these devices abandoned within a couple of years? Adam hopes not.

The Nintendo Switch and Steam Deck have shown that there’s demand for gaming devices of this size, and it seems to be particularly popular outside of the US, where smaller homes and mass transit make this niche much more relevant for a larger number of buyers.

Who’s going to thrive if the space endures? Valve seems like they’re in an unassailable position at the moment, but if there’s a runner-up, it’s probably Asus. Steve has some entirely justified reservations about the brand, but the ROG Ally X shows that they’re willing to make substantive changes in design even before upgrading the core Ryzen chip inside.

Intel is technically in this space, too, with its MSI Claw. But Adam seems to think that they’re kind of screwed at the moment, as the Meteor Lake laptop processors have proven to be way behind AMD’s APU designs. Lunar Lake—coming to the Claw 8 AI+ and the original 7-inch handheld—might be a different story… but we’ll have to wait and see.

Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon chips are all the rage for laptops, but we haven’t seen them in handhelds yet. They might be a dark horse for this market, if they have the will to enter it.

For more news on the latest gaming PC handhelds, be sure to subscribe to PCWorld on YouTube.

OLED monitors are the new hotness for PC gamers, but that doesn’t mean they’re affordable. Thankfully we’re starting to see prices push lower and lower—and while they’re nowhere near the impulse buy zone, they’re at least somewhat attainable.

Today’s deal puts an LG 34-inch ultrawide gaming monitor at the lowest price we’ve seen yet of $750.

This monitor has a familiar set of specs if you’ve been hunting for an OLED deal: 34 inches wide, the usual 3440×1440 resolution, 240Hz refresh rate (very speedy for this size), yadda, yadda. All good stuff.

LG’s UltraGear 34GS95QE also includes support for Nvidia G-SYNC and AMD FreeSync plus HDR10. If you’re building a multi-monitor setup, note that the 800R curve degree is much higher than most 34-inch monitors, but it still supports VESA monitor arms.

The LG 34GS95QE has a two-port USB hub and headphone jack in addition to DisplayPort and double HDMI inputs. But it does not support USB-C video or charging—there’s a mistake on the Amazon listing, and I’ve checked the original specs and reviews to be sure.

Also of note is a two-year warranty on the OLED panel, which should cover any burn-in errors.

This deal was previously available at Best Buy, but the monitor is back up to its more typical $900 price there. Amazon still has it for $750 right now, which is an impressive $550 off retail, but it’s a limited-time deal so get it before it runs out if you’re interested.

LG has its bigger and more dramatic (but still 3440×1440) 45-inch model for just $1000 today as well.

One of the smaller, less bombastic stories to come out of Computex is that Nvidia has created a new set of SFF guidelines for graphics cards that can fit within more compact builds. These small GPUs are a big deal for builders put off by the ballooning sizes of modern graphics cards.

Nvidia’s standard keeps the cards under 50mm thick (2.5 slots in case terms), 304mm long, and 151mm tall—and Asus and Zephyr are now showing off the first cards that fit the new standard.

These SFF (“Small Form Factor”) cards still aren’t as svelte as the old one- and two-slot powerhouses from back in the day, but they should open up considerably more options for builders who want to get a polygon-pushing gaming PC into an ITX case like the Fractal Design Terra or Cooler Master NR200P.

Nvidia

Nvidia

Nvidia

Asus showed off a series of SFF cards in the RTX 40 family at the start of this month, but Tom’s Hardware says that at least some models are going on sale via international retailers. That means they should show up in US retail stores soon, too.

RTX 4060 Ti, RTX 4070, and RTX 4070 Super cards (all with base model Prime and slightly boosted Prime OC branding) were shown off. Notably, the 4070 and 4070 Super manage to cram triple-fan coolers into those dimensions. A little measuring in Photoshop says they’re 80mm each.

Zephyr

Zephyr

Zephyr

There’s also a new card from Chinese brand Zephyr of the anime girl GPU designs. This RTX 4070 ITX edition is a teeny, tiny single-fan model in the Sakura series and gets the appealing blue-and-pink-on-white colorway.

According to a post on the Chinese social network Bilibili spotted by VideoCardz.com, the adorable card is just 172mm long and 42mm thick. Sadly, the card isn’t yet on the company’s western-facing storefront… and there’s no indication of whether it might ever come there.