SafeDisk (AKA SoonHo Jeong) has tinkered with an AMD Ryzen 7 8700G APU and ASUS ROG Crosshair X670E GENE motherboard combination—earlier today, the professional overclocker set a validated/verified memory speed of DDR5-10600 world record on Team Red's AM5 platform. This has surpassed a previous result global-leading from late last week—DDR5-10346 was achieved with the same processor, but on a GIGABYTE B650E AORUS Tachyon board. SafeDisk has a distinct advantage in memory overclocking stakes, due to his workplace being the ASUS ROG labs in Taipei, Taiwan—his closest competitor, Benny Lodewijk Nitolo Lase (an Indonesian overclocker) now sits behind him in second place.

SafeDisk's test setup included the aforementioned APU plus motherboard combo, a Thermalright (not ASUS!) AIO, a twin pack of G.Skill Trident Z5 (F5-7800J3646H16G) DIMMs, and an ASUS GeForce GT 730 2 GB Silent graphics card. The ROG Crosshair X670E GENE's default set of VRM heatsinks were removed completely during test conditions. The two memory sticks were set at their default CL36 7800 MT/s speed at 1.45 V—SafeDisk's record breaking DDR5-10600 overclock was achieved with timings of 50-62-62-127-127. Wccftech noted that the: "overclock was able to boot directly into the OS and (SafeDisk) says that the whole OC procedure was very easy."

Hey, everyone! We're excited to bring you some big (and heartwarming) news today! Today is the day! Get ready to trade in John's bang-bang gun for a watering can, and embark on a tranquil new life in Octopia. (Don't worry, you'll still need that frying pan 🍳). In Eastward: Octopia, Sam and John return in a parallel world adventure, leaving the miasma and monsters behind them, to start a simpler life, living off the land. Get ready to trade swords (or may we say rusty pans?) for shovels and embark on a tranquil world of rural life, fishing, and culinary magic in Octopia, the brand-new DLC for Eastward, landing on Steam and Nintendo Switch TODAY at $5.99 / £4.99 / €5.89 / 700円 / ¥22 CNY, with a special launch offer of 15% off the DLC running from today until February 14th! We're also running special limited-time offers on the base game & bundle too.

"I haven't played Eastward! Do I have to play the base game to get the most out of the DLC?"
Eastward: Octopia takes place in a parallel universe, so there's no need to have finished (or even started) Eastward's base game story to enjoy the simple life—you can even play it straight from the menu. However, please note that a copy of Eastward is required to access the DLC. Although many familiar faces appear in Eastward: Octopia, the plot, gameplay and character 'settings' will be a completely new experience. Once you've purchased and downloaded the DLC, make sure the DLC is 'checked' in the base game properties. After starting the base game of Eastward in your Steam Library, you can then travel to the pastoral time and space of Eastward: Octopia is a single click from the main menu interface! 🚞

Newegg Commerce, Inc., a global e-commerce leader for technology products, today announced the launch of Newegg's GPU Trade-In Program, allowing customers to trade in an eligible GPU device and receive a trade-in value credit toward the purchase of a new qualifying graphics card also known as a graphics processing unit (GPU).

Newegg's GPU Trade-In Program not only helps customers upgrade to a newer GPU model, the program also helps limit electronic waste. By offering a resource for customers to exchange their unwanted GPUs for new ones, the program simultaneously contributes to waste reduction and facilitates cost-effective PC upgrades.

Keen-eyed hardware tipster momomo_us this week spotted that an upcoming AMD data center "Siena Dense" CPU has received verification, in the general sense, for SATA and PCI support - courtesy of the Serial ATA International Organization (SATA-IO). The information dump was uploaded to SATA-IO's online database on April 6 of this year - under the heading: "AMD EPYC 8004 Series Processors." As covered by TPU mid-way through this month the family of enterprise-grade processors, bearing codename Siena, is expected to be an entry-level alternative to the EPYC Genoa-X range, set for launch later in 2023.

The EPYC Siena series is reported to arrive with a new socket type - SP6 (LGA 4844) - which is said to be similar in size to the older Socket SP3. The upcoming large "Genoa-X" and "Bergamo" processors will sit in the already existing Socket SP5 (LGA 6096) - 2022's EPYC Genoa lineup makes use of it already. AMD has not made its SP6 socket official to the public, but industry figures have been informed that it can run up to 64 "Zen 4" cores. This new standard has been designed with more power efficient tasks in mind - targeting intelligent edge and telecommunication sectors. The smaller SP6 socket will play host to CPUs optimized for as low as 70 W operation, with hungrier variants accommodated up to 225 W. This single platform solution is said to offer 6-channel memory, 96 PCIe Gen 5.0 lanes, 48 lanes for CXL V1.1+, and 8 PCIe Gen 3.0 lanes.

Asobo Studio and Focus Entertainment have announced via Twitter that their smash hit survival adventure game - A Plague Tale: Requiem - is now officially verified on Steam Deck. Valve has bestowed a verified badge upon the critically acclaimed sequel to A Plague Tale: Innocence (2019), and the official Twitter for the series posted about that confirmation yesterday, along with a witty tagline: "They say "keep your friends close but keep your enemies closer", so make sure to bring the rats with you wherever you go!"

A Plague Tale: Requiem has been granted "Great on Deck" status, but early user feedback indicates that the survival horror game is still not fully optimized for Steam Deck's hardware - stuttering in-game performance and crashes are being reported by early adopters. Asobo's flagship title has been quite demanding on home console systems and PCs alike - so it is not surprising that Valve's handheld is struggling through the technical showcase. Many hope that the development team will get onto optimization work, pronto.