Today (on March 26), wanderers can conquer the horrors of Hell with a suite of new graphical enhancements available to them with patch 1.3.5. Arriving alongside our next content update, Sanctuary will be further imbued with the luscious shadows and enhanced reflections of ray tracing, plus other visual enhancements.

BASK IN THE GLOW OF NVIDIA GeForce
Players using GeForce RTX 40 Series can max out their ray tracing settings and frame rates with NVIDIA DLSS 3 Frame Generation, while other GeForce RTX users can accelerate performance with DLSS 2's Super Resolution technology. With a GeForce RTX 40 Series GPU, you can multiply performance by up to 3X thanks to DLSS 3. NVIDIA Reflex is a game-changer, reducing system latency on GeForce graphics cards and laptops. Pinpoint accuracy and timing are key to overcoming Diablo IV's most difficult fights; NVIDIA Reflex reduces system latency, making gameplay smooth and more responsive, delivering the reaction time needed in critical moments. The newest GeForce Game Ready Driver delivers the optimum experience with ray tracing, available now for download.

ASRock has announced three new Phantom Gaming Z790 Series motherboards, the Z790 NOVA WiFi, Z790 Riptide WiFi and Z790 Lightning WiFi are ready for Intel 14th Generation Core processors. The launch of the new NOVA series reflects the most incredible burst of energy in the universe, such as supernovas and hypernovas. ASRock NOVA series motherboards embody this spirit to unleash immense power and unlock new levels of performance.

ASRock Phantom Gaming NOVA - New Flagship Gaming Concept
The ASRock Phantom Gaming Z790 NOVA WiFi is a new flagship gaming motherboard featuring a server-grade, low-loss 8-layer PCB with 2 oz copper, 20+1+1 Phase SPS Dr.MOS (90 Amp) VRMs and long-lasting 20K 105°C black capacitors that will truly unlock the full potential of any Intel chip. The optimized board layout maximizes potential DDR5 overclocking to speeds of 8000 MHz and more when paired with a premium DDR5 kit.

During The Wall Street Journal Tech Live conference, Greg Joswiak—Apple's SVP of worldwide marketing—begrudgingly said that Apple will comply with the European Union's USB-C charging mandate. He said that Apple has been in a "little bit of disagreement" with the EU over the change to a common charging standard. He made a comment about the fact that the EU initially wanted to standardise on micro USB for charging, but admitted that it never happened. He also claimed that neither USB-C or Apple's own lightning connector would exist today if micro USB had been mandated as the charging standard over 10 years ago, which may or may not be true.

According to Greg Joswiak, Apple feels that their change to chargers fitted with a USB-C port is good enough, since it allows anyone to plug in a USB-C cable into Apple's chargers and charge whatever device they like, regardless of the device connector. However, he conveniently forgot to mention that for such a scenario to work, everyone would have to carry a charging cable around with them, the part most people forget about. He also claimed that moving to USB-C means additional e-waste, due to a billion plus lightning cables being in the market already. The argument doesn't seem to hold though, as it's not as if current Apple device owners are just going to throw out their current devices, because Apple is being forced to move to USB-C. The same holds true for most people who have micro USB devices, they didn't throw them away just because they got some USB-C devices. In fairness, the Lightning cables would end up as e-waste at some point in the future, but so do many old cables of every single type over time. Apple would've preferred the EU not to interfere, as the company believes its solution is superior to USB-C for its customers.

Apple today announced the second generation of AirPods Pro, the most advanced AirPods ever. With the power of the new H2 chip, AirPods Pro unlock breakthrough audio performance—including major upgrades to Active Noise Cancellation and Transparency mode—while also offering a unique way to experience Spatial Audio that's even more immersive. Now, customers can enjoy Touch control for media playback and volume adjustments directly from the stem, along with longer battery life, a brand-new charging case, and an additional ear tip size for a better fit.
AirPods Pro (2nd generation) will be available to order online and in the Apple Store app starting Friday, September 9, with availability in stores beginning Friday, September 23.

"AirPods revolutionized the wireless headphone category with an innovative design and incredible sound quality. With the new AirPods Pro, Apple raises the bar once again," said Bob Borchers, Apple's vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. "The new AirPods Pro deliver even better sound quality, a more immersive listening experience with Personalized Spatial Audio, and transformative audio features like Adaptive Transparency. With up to double the noise-cancelling power of their predecessor, the world's bestselling wireless headphones just got even better."

This one is going to be a bit tricky to explain, but Samsung owned Harman, has launched a new brand called InfinityLab, which will be selling mobile charging and power products, that will compete with Samsung. We can't really explain this, but we're sure there's some kind of logic behind it all.

What we're looking at is a set of three USB chargers, comprising of a 20 W model for $19.95, a 30 W model for $29.95 and a 65 W model for $49.95, all with a USB-C port and the 30 W and 65 W models also get a USB-A port. The 65 W model is using GaN (that's a curse word in Taiwan btw) or Gallium Nitride power conversion parts and as such joins a growing ecosystem of compact chargers with fairly high output.

GameSir, a leading provider of innovative, high quality gaming peripherals is pleased to announce the launch of the new X2 Lightning model of the incredibly popular GameSir X2 mobile gaming controller which is fully compatible with iPhones on iOS 13 and above. GameSir has also announced that its GameSir F7 Claw Tablet Game Controller, compatible with iPads and Android tablets, is now available to purchase on Amazon. The X2 Lightning is available now from the GameSir website for $69.99/£51.99. Amazon and Amazon UK are expected to stock within the next months. The F7 Claw is now available on Amazon.com and the GameSir website for $39.99/£33.99.

Following on from the success and rave reviews of the X2 Type C and Bluetooth Mobile Game Controllers which were designed to give users an outstanding cloud gaming experience on platforms such as Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, Google Stadia, Nvidia GeForce Now and Vortex, GameSir has now developed a Lightning version of the X2, exclusively for iPhones with iOS 13 and above. The X2 Lightning version is compatible with Apple Arcade and MFi games and like its predecessors, is designed to provide a full array of controls. Thanks to the direct connection, lag is minimised to deliver the ultimate gaming experience. With iPhones getting bigger and more powerful to ensure they can handle the ever-increasingly complex games played on them, the X2 Lightning version will keep gamers ahead of delay, for the smoothest gameplay experience.

MSI, a world-leading motherboard manufacturer, proudly introduces the all new X570 motherboard, MAG X570 TOMAHAWK WIFI. For the 3rd Gen Ryzen processors, the new MAG X570 TOMAHAWK WIFI motherboard is optimized with best performance in every aspects. Military totem style coupled with a rugged and powerful heat dissipation design, the MAG X570 TOMAHAWK WIFI successfully subverts all other key players in the mainstream market. The 12X60A SPS Power Stages design, can stably supply the performance needs of multi-core CPUs, supports up to AMD Ryzen 9 3950X 16-core processors.

Coupled with MSI's exclusive heat dissipation technology, Extended Heatsink design, MAG X570 TOMAHAWK WIFI can maintain a stable processing frequency under severe conditions with high loads. The exclusive Frozr Heatsink design has Zero Frozr Technology that stops the fan when the temperature of the chip is at low power, reducing the generated system fan.

As AMD launched the 3rd Gen Ryzen processors and immediately gained lots of attention recently, MSI also released a bunch of motherboards for various use. To fulfill different gamers offer diversified options, MSI is pleased to introduce our new MEG X570 UNIFY motherboard into gaming market. Belonging to the top gaming segment MEG series, MEG X570 UNIFY is our brand new premium product with modest and pure black design, emphasizing on the true value of the motherboard instead of fancy LED decoration.

By eliminating all the redundant RGB LED from the motherboard and adopting the UV black printing, the heatsink shows the gleam and the shining reflection of the dragon to symbolize a mysterious and high quality image. For MEG X570 UNIFY motherboard, MSI put great efforts on those essential parts concerned by those enthusiast gamers, enhancing not only the thermal but also power solution to run with the AMD 3rd Gen Ryzen processors. Emphasizing the ultimate performance, MEG X570 UNIFY also brings astonishing overclocking records to enthusiast gamers. With AMD Ryzen 9 3900X processor, it is an incredible result to push CPU frequency to 5857 MHz, which is by far the top 1 of all records.

Can you believe it's been 10 years since MSI launched its flagship Lighting brand of graphics cards? Turns out we reviewed our first MSI Lightning card more than a decade ago! An MSI Lightning card has always been the indicator that a flagship GPU by NVIDIA or AMD has succeeded in winning the hearts, minds, and wallets of gamers, lest MSI wouldn't bother with one. MSI already released the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Lighting Z, and we reviewed it. Sources tell us that the MSI could be working on a second Lightning product based on the RTX 2080 Ti, which isn't a variation of the original, such as the RTX 2080 Ti Lighting Z with a water-block bolted on.

Named something along the lines of RTX 2080 Ti Lightning Z 10th Anniversary Special Edition, the card will look significantly different than the RTX 2080 Ti Lightning Z, and will ship with an on-card OLED display that puts out real-time monitoring data of the card's temperatures, clock-speeds, fan-speeds, voltages, memory utilization, or pretty much whatever you program it to. The card's cooler will also feature a more richly detailed RGB LED embellishment all around, and will be designed like a piece of jewelry. MSI may also touch up the card's electricals, BIOS, and overclocking-headroom to rival EVGA RTX 2080 Ti KINGPIN. MSI will unveil this card at the 2019 Computex exhibition.

When we first had a glance of the CORSAIR Hydro X custom watercooling loop parts in action, we suspected they might have a CES debut. CES has come and gone since, with no word of the company's entry into this field. Their direct competitors, including Phanteks and Thermaltake, have since added to their respective product portfolios comprising fans, water blocks, coolants and radiators. Perhaps CORSAIR wanted the launch to not be overshadowed by the other product launches at the recent trade show, and perhaps the listings of the Hydro X products on Digitech.ch is a sign of things to come sooner than later. Read past the break for a more in-depth discussion on the various parts listed, based on our experience with this industry as a whole.

Battlefield V became the first AAA title to support NVIDIA Deep-learning Supersampling or DLSS, a new-generation image-quality enhancement feature exclusive to NVIDIA GeForce RTX 20-series graphics cards, since it requires tensor cores. The feature was introduced as part of its comprehensive Battlefield V Chapter 2: Lightning Strikes Update late Tuesday. To use it, DXR must be enabled in the game. In its release notes for the update, EA-DICE describes DLSS as a feature "which uses deep learning to improve game performance while maintaining visual quality." The developers also improved the way the deploy screen displays on ultrawide monitors on the PC, particularly with the "Rotterdam" map.

Update: We have posted an article, taking a closer look at the DLSS implementation in Battlefield V.

MSI showed off their GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Lightning at CES 2019. This latest and greatest offering from them is built around overclocking with the graphics card having been designed with a 19-phase power delivery subsystem and 3x 8-pin power connectors. It offers a dual BIOS support with the default BIOS coming with a factory overclock of 1770 MHz while the second BIOS is configured for LN2 and comes with NVIDIA's reference clock speeds but offers a boosted power limit of 350-watts. Display connectivity options consisted of 3x DisplayPort, 1x HDMI and 1x USB Type-C output for VirtualLink.

Hexgears is, in their own words, "a global gaming brand with influences from the USA, Germany, and China". We briefly covered them before thanks to their first adoption of the new Kailh Sun switches, and at CES 2019 they had a booth on the showfloor for this very keyboard and other products. The GK760 from Hexgears is still the only keyboard announced to use those new Sun switches, which effectively allows for a central backlighting similar to Omron switches, while still retaining Cherry MX keycap compatibility. The GK760 is a full-size keyboard with 104 keys and ABS plastic keycaps, which also appear to be low in profile even though the actual switches are not necessarily so. There is an entire column of programmable G-keys (macro keys), as well as a dedicated volume scroll wheel and a thick plushy wrist rest. Read past the break to know more about the products they showed off at CES.

MSI is working on its next-generation flagship graphics card, the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Lightning Z (going by previous naming conventions for the Lightning). The card will be positioned above its current Gaming X Trio, as well as the liquid-cooled SeaHawk series, and it's possible there could be a sub-variant with factory-fitted full-coverage water-block. As with previous generation cards that bear the name, the card could have the highest factory overclock in MSI's product stack, the strongest VRM setup that's voltmod-friendly, and a gargantuan cooling solution for its air-cooled sub-variant. There's no word on when MSI could roll the beast out. MSI teased the card with a final slide in one of its media events in China, which depicts lightning bolts captioned "Coming Soon."

Back on September 27th, MSI talked candidly with PConline at the MSI Gaming New Appreciation Conference, in Shanghai. Multiple MSI executives were available to answer questions regarding products, launches, and potential issues. The first question asked was about the brewing US-Chinese trade war and if it will affect prices of graphics cards and CPUs. To which, Liao Wei, Deputy General Manager of MSI Global Multimedia Business Unit, and MSI Headquarters Graphics Card Products gave an actual answer. Stating that the since NVIDIA's GPU core is handled by a TSMC in Taiwan and memory is handled by Samsung and Hynix in South Korea and the United States respectively, there is little chance of further graphics card price hikes. However CPU side prices may increase on the Intel side, however, AMD is expected to be unaffected.

ADAM elements will be present at this year's CES in Las Vegas and showcase a new member of its highly successful and multi-awarded storage extension family for Apple's iPhone, iPad and iPod touch devices - the iKlips II. Connected to any of these via the Lightning interface, users can easily free up space on their mobile devices and use the iKlips app, now updated to version 4, for a multitude of other tasks.

Extra storage for iOS devices
The Apple MFI-certified (made for iPhone/iPad/iPod) iKlips II comes with both a Lightning and a USB 3.1 connector, so data exchange between iOS devices and a macOS or Windows computer is a breeze. Available with capacities of 32, 64 and 128 GB, these stylish flash drives support the exFAT file system, so there is no limit to the size of individual files. The iKlips II comes with a 3-year warranty. It will be available in the colors grey or red from mid-January 2018. Prices (MSRP) are as follow: £50 for the 32 GB, £70 for the 64 GB and £90 for the 128 GB version.

ADATA Technology, a leading manufacturer of high performance DRAM modules and NAND Flash products, today launched i-Memory AI720 flash drive that is chic in style. The Apple MFi-certified AI720 is merely 7.5mm thick and comes with both Lightning and USB 3.1 connectors. Thanks to its unique save-as-you-record function for 4K video, high-resolution videos will no longer occupy much space in your mobile phone. The AI720 supports strong encryption and has been designed to resist water and dust for more care-free user mobility thanks to nano coating technology. The AI720 is available in 32GB, 64GB, and 128GB capacities, with gold and gray schemes.

Dual connectivity, one elegant and stylish design
The AI720 is lightweight, thin, and beautifully shaped, making it a perfect match for iOS devices. It features a longer lightning connector to fit iOS devices perfectly even if the cover is extra thick or padded. And the metallic sandblasted surface not only makes it elegant, also fingerprint-resistant. The AI720 is available in two fashionable colors- gold and gray, for an urban vibe.

MSI's flagship Lightning series made a comeback to the green side with the NVIDIA GTX 1080 Ti GPU, and they are now available for purchase on Newegg.com in the USA. In a relatively pleasant surprise, they are also selling for a lot lower than what we were originally told by MSI, and at $869.99 for the top-of-the-line Lightning Z, it comes in at $170 more than what the NVIDIA reference (no more Founders Edition price hike, if you may recall) is listed for.

We took a detailed look at the MSI GTX 1080 Ti Lightning Z earlier this week and were quite impressed with the overall build quality and cooler: "MSI's GTX 1080 Ti Lightning is huge, having three slots, taking up 32 cm in length and 14 cm in height - make sure your case has room for it. As expected, a powerful thermal solution is included, which seems to be the best cooler I've seen in a long time. Temperatures are outstanding and better than any other GTX 1080 Ti, even with the overclock out of the box, which is higher than any other GTX 1080 Ti. At the same time, fan noise also matches the quietest GTX 1080 Tis (33 dBA), which clearly adds up to 'best cooler'."

MSI is proud to officially announce the latest of its legendary LIGHTNING graphics cards. Built to be perfect, the new GeForce GTX 1080 Ti LIGHTNING Z combines cutting edge new technology with proven features such as TRI-FROZR design with TORX 2.0 Fans, SuperPipe technology and Military Class 4 components. The GeForce GTX 1080 Ti LIGHTNING Z is nothing short of an engineering masterpiece.

MSI's reputation in thermal design is well-known to be excellent. The improved TRI-FROZR design on the GTX 1080 Ti LIGHTNING Z utilizes two 10cm and one 9 cm TORX 2.0 Fans combining the advantages of both traditional fan blade and dispersion fan blade, generating huge amounts of airflow while remaining virtually silent. Two 8mm SuperPipes transfer heat much faster to the fins, enabling up to a whopping 700W of heat dissipation.

MSI is set to make a debut of their top-tier, latest-generation graphics card under the Lightning branding, the GTX 1080 Ti Lightning Z, at this year's Computex. The new Lightning Z makes use of three TorX 2.0 (the same the company uses on its TWIN FROZR VI cooling solutions) fans, though the tripled configuration is set to use the TriFrozr moniker. This generation of the Lightning line of graphics cards sheds its iconic yellow streaks, however, in favor a RGB-capable LED lighting which supports MSI's own Mystic Light. This graphics card also makes use of MSI's Military Class 4 components.

The next MSI graphics card, however, promises to be the most interesting product. Even though MSI's Gaming X lines of graphics cards and Twin Frozr VI coolers are already well-known, those are not the highlights of the 1080 Ti Gaming X the company will be presenting at Computex. Rather, it's its adoption of a USB Type-C connector that's worth talking. This is something that is long overdue, with some monitors already offering this choice of interface, which promises to be the end-all be-all of display protocols, since it can leverage DisplayPort, Thunderbolt and HDMI. Let's see if this move by MSI sets off a trend. We suppose it will, considering how the industry works

BIOSTAR is proud to announce the full line-up for the new 2nd-generation RACING series motherboards featuring support for Intel's 7th-generation Core processors. Following the announcement last week of the flagship RACING Z270GT9, today BIOSTAR proudly announces the different level products of the new RACING series family with the introduction of the RACING Z270GT8, RACING Z270GT6 and RACING Z270GT4 motherboards featuring the latest technology from BIOSTAR inspired by the quest for the best in gaming features. The 2nd-gen RACING series Z270 motherboard lineup brings a new level of gaming experience and performance-oriented motherboards to gamers and enthusiasts.

ADATA Technology, a leading manufacturer of highperformance DRAM modules and NAND Flash products, today launched the Lightning Card Reader for Apple iOS devices, including iPhone, iPad, and iPod. Fully MFi certified, the accessory connects to Apple devices using the Lightning interface and brings users convenient interconnectivity and storage expansion with SD and microSD cards. It is the first peripheral in its segment with two-way data transfer, meaning read and write, and the first to combine SD and microSD on one reader. The Lightning Card Reader uses durable materials and a flexible cable to ensure long-lasting and reliable operation, and arrives bundled with a free data management app.

While existing Lightning card readers support one way data movement to import files from cards to devices, ADATA technology supports file import and export so users can freely move content to and from the reader to iPhone, iPad, and iPod. The Lightning Card Reader has SD and microSD slots, so it offers universal compatibility with one of the most popular storage mediums in the world. By comparison, other products in its segment feature either SD or microSD, but not both. This enables simple storage expansion for iOS devices which is also very cost-effective, as users can employ existing cards rather than having to purchase proprietary expansion cards or additional hardware.

MSI, which recently topped off its graphics card lineup with the air-cooled GeForce GTX 980 Ti Lightning, is preparing an addition to its coveted OC Series, with a new liquid-cooled graphics card it co-developed with Corsair. MSI teased this with an abstract image posted below on its Facebook page, with the tag "GraphicsCard," so we know it's not a motherboard. There's no other information in public about the product. We expect it to be an MSI-exclusive variation on Corsair's Hydro Series HG10 VGA bracket, which holds on to one of its Hydro Series AIO liquid cooling solution, but both MSI and Corsair are known to spring up surprises.

Ahead of its launch, press-shots of the upcoming flagship graphics card of MSI, the OC-series GeForce GTX 980 Ti Lightning, leaked to the web. The pictures reveal a card that MSI threw all its engineering expertise into. It retains the yellow+black design scheme of its predecessors, and is characterized by an even larger Tri-Frozr triple-fan cooling solution. The cooler consists of a large nickel-plated copper base, from which five 8-10 mm thick heat pipes make their way to two dense aluminium fin-stacks, ventilated by a trio of 100 mm spinners.

The cooler only makes up part of this product, a bigger chunk of engineering went into its custom-design 10-layer PCB, with a 15-phase VRM that draws power from a combination of one 6-pin and two 8-pin PCIe power connectors, and a plethora of overclocker-friendly features such as voltage measurement points, dual-BIOS with an LN2-friendly secondary BIOS, the ability to control speeds of individual fans, and more. The MSI GTX 980 Ti ships with a factory-overclock of 1203 MHz core, 1303 MHz GPU Boost, and 7.10 GHz (GDDR5-effective) memory; which certainly isn't the highest factory-OC out of the box, but this is probably MSI's way of inviting users to overclock it to Kingdom come.

Boutique memory modules designer Avexir unveiled its flagship DDR3 memory module, the RAIDEN. This double-height module features a plasma tube on its top, which lights up with a blue lightning-effect, which could look awesome in cyberpunk case-mods. The module could pair particularly well with ASUS Z97 Sabertooth Mark S, ASUS X99 series, and MSI Krait series motherboards.

Form aside, the module has some pretty formidable specs - an 8-layer main PCB, XMP profiles of up to DDR3-2400 MHz, a machined aluminium heatsink drawing heat away from the DRAM chips, and hand-binned DRAM chips for the best overclocked performance. The RAIDEN comes in speeds of DDR3-1866 and DDR3-2400, densities of 4 GB and 8 GB, and in dual- and quad-channel kits that are combinations of the two top-level specs. Avexir didn't reveal pricing or availability.