CPS PCCOOLER, a brand best known for its gaming PC coolers and cases, has announced a new modular PC in the form of its new Fusion Core Series (FC300-CS) all-in-one solution. Like several solutions that integrate a mini PC into a display stand, the key difference here is that it brings a level of customization you normally find only in the desktop DIY space.

The Fusion Core Series (FC300-CS) takes a two-in-one approach to its physical design: a 27-inch display that connects to a PC Host via a standard VESA mount. This means you can swap out the display for something else, while the compact PC Host offers expandable memory and storage thanks to dual SO-DIMM DDR5 memory slots (supporting speeds up to 5600MHz), a single M.2 2280 NVMe SSD, and a single SATA Gen3 port.

It's an impressive design: the compact all-in-one Fusion Core Series (FC300-CS) PC from CPS PCCOOLER ships with a 12-core, 14-thread Intel Core Ultra 5 125U processor (Meteor Lake), 16GB of DDR5-4800 memory, and 512GB of storage. The IPS display offers 2560x1440 (2K) resolution, a 165Hz refresh rate, and 350 nits of peak brightness.

At a recent event at NVIDIA's headquarters in Santa Clara, California, Chairman and CEO of LG Corp Kwang Mo Koo and NVIDIA Founder and CEO Jensen Huang signed a 'memorandum of understanding' that included the development of a next-generation "bipedal humanoid robot."

According to the press release, the humanoid robot will be unveiled to the public in early 2027, presumably at CES 2027, and will be built using NVIDIA Jetson Thor and NVIDIA Isaac GR00T, and powered by NVIDIA's open reasoning humanoid foundation model. On the LG side, the company will bring together LG Electronics, LG Innotek, and LG Energy Solution technologies under a single banner covering actuators, sensors, batteries, and all the physical stuff you expect from a robot.

At Computex 2026, NVIDIA unveiled its NVIDIA Isaac GR00T Development Platform, an open-source platform built specifically for humanoid robotics, created in part to speed up development. It includes lab-based simulation to generate data and training information, and lets developers demonstrate, iterate, and test advancements before real-world deployment.

Built on Intel's Intel 7 process, Raptor Lake powered the company's 13th- and 14th-generation Intel Core desktop processors, which first debuted in 2022. Although that's not that long ago, the processor technology built on aging 10nm tech is starting to show its age. However, with the current memory and storage crisis, Intel is committed to continuing to supply Raptor Lake-powered processors for "years to come."

This news comes from an interview with Intel's Robert Hallock (via Tom's Hardware), the company's Vice President of its Enthusiast Channel Business, which includes desktop processors. "Going forward, 10nm products like Raptor Lake; that is a core part of the portfolio that I want to offer to people for years to come," Hallock tells Tom's Hardware. "LGA 1700 is still a good socket. Lots of people (are) still interested in DDR4, so we'll keep offering, and you'll see (pricing) smooth out over time. It'll come back to normal. That's the plan."

Two big takeaways stand out from this comment. The first is the obvious one: because Raptor Lake exists in both the DDR4 and DDR5 space, it will remain available to new builders and those looking to upgrade their PC in the current RAM shortage climate. The second is also worth highlighting: Intel believes PC hardware pricing will return to a "normal" state at some point in the future.

With NVIDIA's Rubin and Rubin Ultra GPU architectures rolling out now and on the immediate horizon in the AI and Data Center spaces, the company's next-generation 'Feynman' architecture is in development. According to a new report from DigiTimes, NVIDIA's 'Feynman' GPU technology is targeting the second half of 2028 for mass production and release, and it's going to use TSMC's most cutting-edge process to date - A16.

Yes, apparently NVIDIA will skip TSMC's N2 or 2nm process family for its 'Feynman' products and instead move to the more advanced A16 1.6nm process. This represents a significant jump, as Rubin and Rubin Ultra are based on TSMC's N3 process. However, separate to the node shrink, what makes this notable is that 'Feynman' will be the first NVIDIA technology to feature 3D chiplets via TSMC's System on Integrated Chips (SoIC) technology, backside power delivery, and next-generation packaging.

Compared to the 3nm Rubin and Rubin Ultra, this represents a major evolution in design. Of course, much of the timing depends on TSMC expanding capacity, with the DigiTimes report adding that the company is accelerating construction of its AP7 and AP8 facilities to ramp up SoIC production. This includes earlier-than-expected deployment for new equipment, cleanrooms, and various operations.

According to the latest report from TrendForce, global OLED monitor shipments grew 26.1% in the second quarter of 2026 compared with the first quarter. Even more impressive is that when you compare that to the same period last year, this represents 98% growth, or basically double the amount of OLED shipments year-over-year.

The report says new models drove the growth, with more people buying 27-inch QHD monitors and strong demand in China. In fact, China's 618 shopping festival contributed significantly to OLED shipment growth, helping ASUS maintain and expand its leadership as the number one OLED monitor brand with 23.1% market share. Samsung, which sits in the number two spot, has 13.1% market share.

According to the report, Samsung's significant decline in OLED monitor market share can be attributed to its withdrawal from the Chinese market. This has seen MSI's market share surge to 12.8%, putting it only 0.3% behind Samsung. Of course, Samsung remains one of the global leaders in supplying OLED panels, so the company's presence in the space isn't exactly drying up.

SK Hynix appears to be running out of replacement SSDs, leaving some customers with refunds instead of replacement drives at a time when storage prices have surged. A Reddit user recently reported that their warranty claim was approved, but SK Hynix told them it did not have a replacement unit available and would instead refund the original purchase price.

Under normal circumstances, a refund would be a reasonable solution. The problem is that SSD prices have increased substantially during the ongoing memory and storage shortage, meaning the amount refunded may no longer be enough to buy a comparable drive today.

SK Hynix's SSD warranty policy explicitly allows the company to issue a refund when it cannot repair or replace a product. More importantly, the policy states that the original purchaser may receive either the original purchase price or the product's fair market value, whichever is lower.

Kingdom Hearts 4 finally showed its hand at D23, revealing the first confirmed world for the long-awaited sequel and a late 2027 release window. The new world is the Land of the Dead from Pixar's Coco, and the trailer that debuted during the Disney Entertainment Showcase is easily the game's biggest gameplay reveal since its announcement in 2022.

The footage shows Sora exploring the vibrant afterlife city alongside Miguel and Héctor, taking on waves of Heartless while sporting skull face paint inspired by Día de los Muertos. He also picks up a Coco-themed Keyblade along the way.

The trailer also offered a few story-related details. Sora is shown collapsing after seeing ghostly apparitions of Donald and Goofy. Mickey is seen researching how to free Sora from the afterlife and turning to Hades from Hercules for help. Donald and Goofy, meanwhile, are searching for Sora across Quadratum, the realistic, Tokyo-inspired hub city that has been central to Kingdom Hearts 4's setup since its reveal.

Just when entry-level GPUs looked like the last affordable corner of PC gaming, that corner is apparently about to get squeezed too. PC Partner Group, the Hong Kong company behind ZOTAC, INNO3D, and Manli, warned in its first-half 2026 financial results that graphics card shortages are set to get "even more" severe in the entry-level segment specifically, with average selling prices expected to climb further in the back half of the year.

According to the company, the culprit is the same one we've been hearing about all year: rising graphics memory costs, driven by AI demand, eating into GDDR6 and GDDR7 supply. PC Partner didn't name specific models, but cards like the RTX 5050, RTX 3050, and the recently launched Radeon RX 9050 are already selling above MSRP in several markets, and this warning suggests that gap is only going to widen.

It's not just graphics memory either. PC Partner says lead times for CPUs, standard DRAM, and other core components have gotten "significantly longer" too, apparently making the entire PC supply chain harder to plan around. Standard DRAM prices have already surged repeatedly this year on the back of data center demand, so the warning aligns with a pattern we've seen play out again and again in 2026.

Intel's handheld lineup might be about to get a cheaper little sibling. According to leaker Jaykihn, who has a solid track record with Intel spec leaks, the company appears to be prepping a Panther Lake handheld chip with a "4+0+4+4" layout, which apparently means four P-cores, zero E-cores, four LPE cores, and four Xe3 graphics cores.

That's a noticeably smaller setup than the Arc G3 and Arc G3 Extreme chips Intel already ships in handhelds like the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+, which pair a 14-core design (2 P-cores, 8 E-cores, 4 LPE cores) with 10 or 12 Xe3 graphics cores depending on the SKU.

What's interesting is that this smaller 4+0+4+4 configuration has been seen before. It's already shipping in Panther Lake U laptop chips like the Core Ultra 7 355 and Core Ultra 5 325, currently found in machines like the Dell XPS 14 and XPS 16. So it looks like Intel, or possibly an OEM partner, is simply repurposing an existing laptop chip for a cheaper handheld tier rather than designing something new from scratch.

AMD apparently really didn't want anyone testing the Radeon RX 9050 before it landed on shelves. According to Hardware Unboxed, AMD skipped sending review samples entirely, and reportedly blocked its own board partners from shipping cards out to independent reviewers too.

The channel says it eventually tracked one down through unofficial channels, though it can't name the partner or show the card since the source asked to stay anonymous. Now that the numbers are out, it's easier to see why AMD may have wanted this one kept quiet.

The RX 9050 is the smallest RDNA 4 desktop GPU AMD has released so far, built on a cut-down version of the Navi 44 die that powers the Radeon RX 9060 XT. It ships with 16 Compute Units, 1,024 Stream Processors, and 8GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus, half the shader count of the 9060 XT, at a launch price around $279. That much seems good enough, but then we get to the benchmarks.

Jacob Navok, a former Square Enix business development director, thinks Sony killing off PlayStation discs will actually make digital games cheaper, not more expensive. That's the opposite of what most players expect, given the backlash Sony's disc phaseout has already received.

Navok's argument is that current PS Store prices are tied to physical retail pricing. Once discs disappear, he thinks publishers will compete more directly with each other on the PS Store, similar to how pricing behaves on Steam. He points to Final Fantasy XVI's falling Steam price as an example, arguing that competition between publishers, not competition between storefronts, is what actually pushes prices down over a game's lifecycle.

He also pushed back on the idea that Sony sets digital pricing directly. According to Navok, publishers set their own prices on the PS Store, a point a former PlayStation executive has made before. Sony's Store operates more like a marketplace than a price-setter, at least on paper. He argues that competition between storefronts like Steam and the Epic Games Store mostly changes the cut developers keep, not the price players actually pay.

A Redditor's warranty saga with Crucial is making the rounds, and it doesn't paint the brand in a good light. According to a post on r/pcmasterrace, Reddit user Forsaken_Bet3568 filed an RMA for a defective DDR5 SO-DIMM kit, but that was perhaps a poor decision in hindsight.

Crucial apparently agreed to replace it, then walked that back and offered only a refund at the original price, saying they had no replacement inventory. When the user asked for the defective kit back instead, hoping to try a warranty claim through the original seller, Crucial refused that too.

Crucial's email response, screenshotted and shared by the user, cites the wind-down of the Crucial consumer business as the reason it can't facilitate any outbound shipments of returned warranty products. It also declined to reimburse the roughly 14 euros the customer spent shipping the RAM back in the first place. That's excessively stingy, as the user hadn't even asked for that money back.

More details have emerged about Intel's upcoming CPU lineups. Prominent leaker Jaykihn has shared two new details about Intel's upcoming Razor Lake-AX chip. Apparently, the processor will reuse Nova Lake's CPU cores instead of moving to a newer design, and it won't support overclocking.

According to Jaykihn, Razor Lake-AX pairs Coyote Cove P-cores with Arctic Wolf E-cores, the same combination Intel confirmed for its Nova Lake lineup. That's notably different from the newer Griffin Cove and Golden Eagle cores expected on Razor Lake-S and Razor Lake-H, which are Intel's standard desktop and laptop chips in the same family.

Razor Lake-AX is Intel's answer to AMD's Strix Halo and Gorgon Halo APUs. Previous leaks point to a massive BGA4326 package, up to 32 Xe3 GPU cores, and a return to on-package memory, likely LPDDR5X or LPDDR6. That memory setup hasn't shown up in an Intel chip since Lunar Lake, and it's probably necessary to feed a GPU this large without bottlenecking on bandwidth.

Epic Games has announced development of a Linux version of the Epic Games Launcher as part of the app's massive rework that is already underway. In an AMA on the Epic Games Discord server, one of the company's developers answered a question from a member regarding Linux support and confirmed that part of the ongoing work to rework the Launcher will include a native Linux application.

The staff member's wording confirms that Epic Games is not merely working on a port of the Launcher for Linux, but that it is developing a fully native version for Linux users. There's no word on what compatibility layer Epic will be using, but it could be a completely home-brewed version, a port of Wine, or a ported version of Valve's Proton. That said, Epic Games never mentioned a compatibility layer, so in a worst-case scenario, the new Epic Games Launcher might only run games on Linux that have a native Linux port.

Introducing Linux compatibility to the Epic Games Launcher will give Linux gamers another library to use, without the headaches of running the Windows version in a compatibility layer. Currently, some popular methods to use the Epic Games Launcher on Linux are through the Heroic Games Launcher or Lutris. But these methods are missing some features, including cloud saves, and are not guaranteed to work with all games, especially if the game comes with anti-cheat software.

Valve has kept quiet on the Steam Frame's exact launch date and price since its initial summer 2026 target, but a developer appears to know more than they can say. ANB_Seth, the developer behind VR shooter Gunman Contracts, posted in the game's official Discord that both he and publisher 2080 Games have decided to launch alongside the Steam Frame, adding that they feel confident a launch date is "just around the corner."

"As long as Valve has not announced any public information on it, so can't I," ANB_Seth wrote. While the developer cannot share the details publicly, it's hard not to read the coordinated launch as a sign that the studio has some internal visibility into Valve's timeline. 2080 Games has since confirmed the coordinated launch and said Gunman Contracts will support SteamVR-compatible headsets from day one.

Valve has also been dropping several hints of its own. The company recently introduced a "Great on Frame" category on Steam highlighting games expected to work well with the headset, while expanding its Frame compatibility verification program that began in late June. The headset has also received FCC certification, typically one of the final regulatory steps before a consumer hardware product reaches the market.

Pokémon Pokopia has sold more than five million copies worldwide in just over four months, Nintendo and The Pokémon Company confirmed Thursday. The Switch 2 exclusive launched on March 5 and sold 2.4 million copies within its first four days on the market. The new milestone covers both physical and digital versions, including Game-Key Cards.

To put that in perspective, Nintendo has sold around 23.68 million Switch 2 units as of June 2026, meaning roughly one in five Switch 2 owners now has a copy of Pokopia. The only Switch 2 game ahead of it is Mario Kart World at 15.39 million, which launched alongside the hardware and was bundled with consoles. Pokopia has surpassed Donkey Kong Bananza to become the second-best-selling Switch 2 exclusive.

Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Red and Blue Rescue Team holds the record for the best-selling Pokémon spin-off at approximately 5.85 million copies. Pokopia is now less than a million units away from that mark, with the rest of 2026 still ahead of it.

CD Projekt Red's Witcher multiplayer game, codenamed Project Sirius, has been hit with another round of layoffs, and it looks like the project's development priorities are shifting again.

According to Kotaku, nine people were let go from the Sirius team, with another nine moved onto other projects within the studio. CD Projekt confirmed the cuts in a statement, saying four staff in its Boston office and five in Warsaw were affected. Before this round, 83 people were working on Sirius. That number is now down to 65.

Project Sirius was first revealed back in 2022 as a single-player and cooperative multiplayer Witcher game being developed by The Molasses Flood, a studio CDPR acquired the year before. It was rebooted in 2023, when 29 developers were laid off, and the project apparently went back to the drawing board.

The unreleased Xbox Elite Series 3 controller just leaked again, and this time the story around it might be more interesting than the hardware itself.

A Redditor going by u/ssuberlex posted photos in r/Controller claiming they bought the pad for $200 on OfferUp, a local marketplace app, apparently without knowing exactly what it was. They said they live in Seattle, which is worth noting only because Microsoft's Redmond campus sits right next door. Shortly after posting, the account went quiet, and parts of the thread were wiped, though some comments and images survived through screenshots and reposts elsewhere.

According to what is left of the post, the controller looks like a heavily reworked take on the original Elite Wireless Controller lineage, with a redesigned D-pad, relocated paddle mounts, and a removable battery secured with Torx T6 screws. That last detail is important as it could point to a more repairable design than earlier Elite pads.

A Redditor has stumbled onto a surprisingly effective way to keep a gaming laptop running cooler, and it does not involve spending a single dollar on new cooling gear. Posting in r/GamingLaptops, user MentalReserve2351 explained that switching from a wooden desk to a metal surface made a noticeable difference to his laptop temperatures in an air-conditioned room.

Temperatures while playing Cyberpunk 2077 reportedly dropped from the 80-90°C range down to 75-83°C, just by changing the material underneath the machine. The user was initially worried about the metal getting too hot to touch, but said it stayed cooler than the wood the entire time, and never hot enough to be uncomfortable.

It looks like the explanation comes down to how many laptops pull intake air from the bottom panel before exhausting it out the side vents. Metal simply conducts and dissipates heat far better than wood, so it stays cooler than a wooden table, especially in a room with air conditioning. The Redditor even put up an image of his metal table in the replies, which is nothing out of the ordinary.

From developer S-GAME, Phantom Blade Zero is a new Unreal Engine 5-powered cinematic action role-playing game out on October 28, 2026 for PC and consoles. The highly anticipated game has been garnering a lot of attention for its classic Wuxia storytelling and fluid combat (with the developer working with martial arts legend Donnie Yen), so it could be this year's big Black Myth Wukong-style breakout hit. For a closer look at how it plays, check out this 11-minute gameplay demo that was released earlier this week.

With the game coming to both PC and consoles, NVIDIA has confirmed that the PC version of Phantom Blade Zero will feature ray-traced reflections, shadows, and caustics to enhance cinematic visuals and lighting. And with that, on day one it will launch with native DLSS 4.5 support, including Super Resolution and Multi Frame Generation to enhance performance and smoothness.

This Phantom Blade Zero announcement was made during NVIDIA's latest DLSS roundup, which covers new games launching or adding DLSS support. For something a little closer, the massive multiplayer first-person shooter Hell Let Loose: Vietnam, which is out this week, is also launching with DLSS 4.5 Super Resolution and Dynamic Multi Frame Generation support.