I’m not sure how much point there is studying the end of the world given that, should the end of the world come about, all bets will be off. But such thoughts of futility do not deter academics, and their latest wheeze is to have a look at what happens in an MMO game that is going to shut off: A virtual end of the world affair.

The game in question is the Korean MMO ArcheAge and players were studied during a beta test that was scheduled to last 11 weeks. Thus the study had a decent time range and could look at a whole host of (anonymised) player data over this period. Players knew that the beta would end at the point it did, and so the academics reckoned that, with a whole range of caveats, it might give us some idea of what will happen when the asteroid is about to hit, or Musk a…

Noctua has announced two new fans as a part of a new Home line-up. First, its desk fan is finally here. The Noctua NV-FS1 is designed to keep the sweat from your brow while you game, which should come in handy as we head into another ripper summer. Second, the NV-FS2 is a multi-purpose fan set for use cooling any device that might get a little too toasty in the heat.

The NV-FS1 desk fan is a modular kit. You can either purchase each part individually, so you can build it with a fan you already own, or buy it as a complete kit. The kit includes a pivoting frame, an “airflow amplifier”, a PWM fan controller, a multi-region power supply, and an NF-A12x25 fan.

That’s a pretty great choice of fan—it’s our pick for the best PC fan right now—though it’s far from the che…

If you’re shopping around for a budget gaming PC this Amazon Prime Day, Newegg actually has the best deal right now on a gaming PC with an RTX 4060 Ti. It’s on sale for only $999—that’s $300 off its normal price and the cheapest RTX 4060 Ti-powered system we’ve seen so far that we’d recommend. 

The Skytech Nebula gaming PC features an Intel Core i5 12400F, 16GB DDR4 RAM, 500GB NVMe SSD, and an Nvidia RTX 4060 Ti GPU. It’s an excellent choice if you’re aiming for high-quality 1080p gameplay or if you’re seeking an affordable system that meets the requirements to play Baldur’s Gate 3, the game where you can have intimate interactions with a bear, which will be released soon.

The Intel Core i5 12400F is an impressive budget CPU from the previous generatio…

I’ve just had some time to play around with the ROG Ally X over at Asus HQ in Taiwan—only moments before the handheld is made available for pre-order at $799.

The new handheld gaming PC, which is more of a mid-generation upgrade than something new altogether, includes a number of key improvements, including to the RAM, battery, SSD, fans, layout, thumbsticks, d-pad and buttons.

The biggest and best upgrade of the lot is the improved battery size: the ROG Ally X has an 80Wh battery—that’s double the ROG Ally at 40Wh.

“What’s crazy is that we did it without drastically increasing the weight or the thickness of the device,” Whitson Gordon, Asus senior manager of product marketing, says at Asus HQ.

The new ROG Ally X weighs 678 grams—70 grams more t…

It’s Memorial Day deals time, folks, and I can’t think of a better upgrade for your PC than a new monitor. Unlike CPUs and GPUs, monitors don’t tend to date overnight when a new model with twice the performance appears.

What’s more, while the price of so many PC components has been going up of late, screens have been getting cheaper. Don’t believe me? Today you can get a big-brand 34-inch ultrawide 1440p panel using IPS technology and offering 144Hz for under $250. Or you can go 16:9, 1440p, and 170Hz for well under $200.

A little higher up the scale, high refresh 4K gaming is attainable for just over $400. There are even deals on some OLED monitors, with Samsung having already slashed $500 off its 49-inch G9 uber-wide monster. OK, it’s still $1,100 and OLED monitors remain …

Though PC Gamer is first and foremost a website dedicated to PC gaming and hardware, we’ve been covering the escalating technology and chipmaking dispute between China and the US and its allies. Whether it’s the blocking of vital chip making equipment, or banning of the sale of certain AI chips, this latest act in the tit for tat tech dispute could directly affect how much we pay for our rigs.

Following the new US proposal to ban the sale of Nvidia’s most advanced AI chips to Chinese businesses, China has announced new controls on the export of various gallium and germanium materials and products. According to Bloomberg, these controls will come into effect on August 1. Companies exporting the metals must apply for licenses and provide information about who they’re selling to and …

Update: It turns out that, yet again, the trailer takedown was not about the game, but about licensing rights. A Sony rep told Kotaku that “as part of normal business, we delist assets with licensed music when the licenses expire.” The only music in the trailer is a clip of the Star Wars theme, which is owned by Disney, and it seems odd to me that a teaser for a licensed Star Wars game would be pulled because it has licensed Star Wars music, but I am not a businessman and so my understanding of how these things work may be flawed or incomplete.

In any event, this doesn’t necessarily confirm that the KOTOR remake isn’t in trouble, but at the very least this particular incident doesn’t mean that it is—it’s just business.

Original story:<…

I’m a sucker for weird but brilliant peripherals. I like customisation, clever ideas and solid implementation. And every time I see this Mountain Everest Max modular keyboard on discount, my heart jumps a little. I mean, come on. Take another look at the photo. It’s everything I want in a keyboard, and I reckon it might be everything you’re looking for, too.

Currently available at Amazon for $140 as part of the Prime Day sales, this Swiss army knife of mechanical keyboards swings for the fences. It’s been out for a while now, but when we reviewed it back in 2020 we found that its impressive modularity and excellent construction really did live up to the promise of a keeb with very few compromises.

For a start, let’s talk about that numpad. You can magnetically attach it to e…

You’re stressed out at work, which means, naturally, you wanna throw a stapler off the roof and tell your boss exactly what you think of them. Then you see a calming montage of your family, vacation photos, and an inspirational picture of a cat hanging on a washing line, set to calming music, and the rage quietly fades away. Yes, everything is fine again, back to generating value for the shareholders. All is well.

How weird would that be in your actual day-to-day? Well, it’s real, and a bank in the United States is rolling out this sort of system to its customer call centres, as American Banker’s Penny Crosman reports.

First Horizon Bank is opting for this system as a way to keep its call centre agents relaxed over long shifts of dealing with the public—I get it, peopl…