Mark Tyson
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Windows XP debuted 25 years ago today — Microsoft's biggest launch since 95 was its first consumer OS to remove the DOS underpinnings
Hugely popular OS would enjoy nearly 13 years of support.
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Peripherals
Peripherals reviews, news and features, created for the hardcore PC enthusiast by the experts at Tom's Hardware.
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Rare archival footage tours the CompUSA NYC store in November 2000 — soak up some Y2K Pentium III, Athlon, PowerPC, Windows Me, chunky laptop, and bulging CRT nostalgia in glorious 360p
Footage was filmed when Presarios and iMacs with translucent acrylic cases ruled the retail world.
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Wolves roam into Finnish villages after Google destroys 1,300 acres of forest for AI data centers — forest where wolf packs used to live is now an expanse of mud
This is thankfully a less common but still very serious side effect of an AI data center being built nearby.
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The original Apple iPod debuted 25 years ago today — Steve Jobs’ $399 device fit 1,000 songs into a package the size of a deck of cards with 5 gigabytes of storage
The chunky little original iPod packed a 1.8-inch Toshiba HDD, and used FireWire because the USB of the era was too slow and didn't offer charging.
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Retro Atari VCS platform will end with the closure of its software store in February 2027 — OS update will be released removing reliance on Atari servers and opening up homebrew development
The modern VCS with its AMD APU-powered architecture only received a tepid response when it arrived in 2021.
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Windows 98 SE users get a Thunderbolt 4 driver, thanks to AI assistance — vibe-coded xHCI98 driver works in Microsoft OSes up to Windows 7
If you've ever wanted to run Windows 98 SE on your mid-2010s or newer PC with fast USB hub support, here's your chance.
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Electronics hobbyist converts $120 DDR5 SODIMM kit into ‘$1000’ desktop kit to fight RAM crisis — ICs from SK hynix DDR5-5600 16GB modules used to create DDR5-7800 desktop sticks
You have to be lucky to find such cheap DDR5 SODIMMs, and specialist equipment and skills are required for success.
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French rioters ransack eSports team premises and are seen looting RAM sticks from PCs — Team Vitality’s ‘V.Hive’ Paris HQ was wrecked during unrest
Reports also highlight eSports trophies being stolen, with gaming chairs being piled up in street fires.
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Claude Code AI agent caught a crypto miner hiding on a developer’s overheating Mac — XMRig task was hogging ‘about 1175% CPU, roughly 12 cores’ pushing temps to 112 degrees
'Explains why my Mac has been running like s**t,' said the afflicted Redditor.
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Free web-based chip fab engineering game goes viral in Taiwan — game is a realistic and stressful simulation, ‘basically a horror game’ say some players
Fab24hr: A Day in the Life of a Semiconductor Wafer Factory Worker is a no-install 3D web game with a 12-chapter story mode.
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Cinebench world record that stood for 12 years gets toppled — OC expert scores 10.8cb in Cinebench R11.5 using an Intel Core i5 4670K at 6.3 GHz
Overclocking enthusiasts are still having fun with Haswell CPUs and DDR3 in 2026.
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Cooling
CPU Cooling reviews, news and features, created for the hardcore PC enthusiast by the experts at Tom's Hardware.
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DRAM
DRAM reviews, news and features, created for the hardcore PC enthusiast by the experts at Tom's Hardware.
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Applications
App reviews, news and features, created for the hardcore PC enthusiast by the experts at Tom's Hardware.
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Modder discovers that putting a GPU in the 'wrong place' can deliver a 19 degree cooler hotspot — breaking convention can produce great results despite decades of PC DIY evolution
The absolute best GPU result wasn't good for CPU temperatures, so the tech tinkerer also shared the best overall configuration, optimized for both CPU and GPU.
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AMD tried to crush the 'megahertz myth' 25 years ago today, debuting its Performance Rating system
Athlon XP chips introduced the scheme, which endured until Intel lost its clock speed advantage with Pentium M
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The Atari 800XL returns with a 'faithful' but modern Retro Games Ltd redesign — classic 8-bit home computer revamp sports mechanical keyboard and HDMI connectivity
$219 device’s 25 built-in games and working cartridge port appeal, but it still comes with that terrible palm-gouging joystick.
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EV charging company plans to deploy 100,000 Nvidia GPUs in pods at its roadside sites across the US — aims to offer ‘world’s first edge inference compute network using idle EV charging capacity’
We hope charging location security will be adequate with up to 48 Nvidia Hopper or Blackwell Ultra GPUs worth roughly $2M+ in each pod.
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Google AI data center project investigated after 420 football fields of Finnish forest razed — trees were removed before a mandatory environmental impact assessment, say reports
300 hectares of Finland's forest gobbled up by data center development.
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ChatGPT-6 Astra cracks 217-year-old Napoleonic code in just six hours — single-prompt AI run solves 24 rows of custom symbols from a single image, reveals lost troop orders
OpenAI’s model completed the task after being fed just a single image and prompt.
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Free browser-based Taipei GTA clone hits 1.2 million concurrent players in three days — vibe-coded game cost $10,000 in AI tokens to build, is set on the streets of Taipei
Get a taste of Taipei with the added spice of crime.
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New portable Bluetooth CD player has a glow-in-the-dark transparent green finish, modern features — limited edition has USB-C, Bluetooth 5.3, rechargeable Li-ion, and won’t get lost in your dimly lit den
Product made by Sincere Inc, Japan, hits retail at 12,980 yen ($83).
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First Intel Panther Lake mini PC cooled with solid-state AirJet tech operates at less than 21 dBA — Aaeon claims its fanless Up Xtreme PTL Edge Air is also slimmer, lighter than actively-cooled rivals
An enterprise specialty system with up to a Core Ultra X7 358H processor.
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Maingear’s new program offers instant trade-ins for gaming PC buyers — delivers quotes for old laptops, phones, tablets, smartwatches, headphones, cameras, lenses, and microphones in ‘minutes’
And the firm is kicking off the new scheme with 5% trade-in boosts for those using the code EXTRA5.
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PS3 emulator devs warn of fake Blu-ray drives on Newegg and AliExpress — ‘Beware of fake Blu-ray drives’ devs warn retrogamers. scammers use spoofed firmware to disguise older mechanisms in high-end shells
Only order from reputable outlets with buyer protections.
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Sony released the first CD audio player on this day in 1982 — player cost $3,700 when adjusted for inflation, but it would be another decade before the CD-ROM-driven multimedia PC era began
The Sony CDP-101 cost around $1,060 at today’s exchange rate, or around $3,700 adjusted for inflation.
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Console Gaming
Discover more about Console Gaming with insights from the experts at Tom's Hardware.
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The Ethernet spec was first drafted on this day in 1980 — DEC, Intel, and Xerox defined the standard several years before the internet existed
Ethernet ports are still desirable on desktop PCs, hanging on alongside the likes of the 3.5mm audio jack and IEC mains connector.
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Peripherals
Peripherals reviews, news and features, created for the hardcore PC enthusiast by the experts at Tom's Hardware.
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Sony Japan tries an anti-scalper lottery system for PS5 Pro orders, locks systems behind a 60-hour playtime requirement — strict lottery system blocks scalpers and tourists in Japan, requires a domestic account to buy
PS5 Pro has been around nearly two years, and has been the victim of AI-inflation, but the impending release of GTA 6 has spurred demand.
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Tech Industry
Discover more about Tech Industry with insights from the experts at Tom's Hardware.
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Console Gaming
Discover more about Console Gaming with insights from the experts at Tom's Hardware.
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Tech Industry
Discover more about Tech Industry with insights from the experts at Tom's Hardware.
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Data center developer offers $10,000 checks to 4,500 households if the 1,300-acre facility is approved — locals push back over noise and 'bribe' concerns
Report says that many residents are rejecting the offer due to fears of noise, falling property values, and mistrust.
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Video Games
Discover more about Video Games with insights from the experts at Tom's Hardware.
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G.Skill wins PC enthusiast as 'customer for life' simply by honoring its warranty replacement policy — enthusiast gets new module for kit that cost $150 but now sells for $1,200
Here’s a happy story regarding broken DDR5 RAM modules, for a change.
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Custom 24-carat gold mini PC costs around $1.7 million, weighs nearly 29 pounds for up to 50% faster heat transfer — copper would have been far cheaper and offers even better thermal conductivity
28.7 pound Kubb Fanless mini PC was a special order by a lover of 24-carat gold.
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Linux enthusiasts see 10-second kernel compilation times on the horizon — AI-assisted patches cut build times by nearly a third without a RAMdisk
Upcoming advances like Zen 6, PCIe Gen6 storage are expected to help get us into single figures.
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Taiwan's chip talisman snack faces production halt after 94% strike vote — snacks are seen as a good luck charm in the computing industry, but workers demand share of $176 million factory sale to ASE
Ironically, the snack maker is relocating to Taiwan’s Silicon Valley. That’s roughly 45 minutes south of its current location.
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ChatGPT-6 Astra cracks 85-year-old 1941 Enigma-coded message in two days — autonomous AI coded its own simulator to crack code that was unsolved since it was shared online back in 2005
Before it started cracking, the LLM developed Python and C++ software for an Enigma simulator and Enigma Bombe.
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Console Gaming
Discover more about Console Gaming with insights from the experts at Tom's Hardware.