Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems IPMS have developed a new compact package for their 2K OLED microdisplay. The microdisplay package integrates MIPI DSI-2 control and the generation of all required display voltages. The new solution will be presented for the first time at SEMICON Europa 2026 from November 10 to 13, 2026, in Munich - at the Silicon Saxony joint booth in Hall B1, Booth B1-221-25.

OLED microdisplays are frequently used in portable applications such as helmets and smart glasses as well as in optical devices. The new microdisplay package simplifies the integration of Fraunhofer IPMS's 2K microdisplays into such systems, as it combines the microdisplay with the complete electronics required for its control. An integrated 20 mm x 20 mm system-on-module (SoM) implements the MIPI DSI-2 interface via D-PHY, which is widely used in mobile processors and transmits image data and control commands serially at high speeds. The microdisplay package supports up to four data lanes with a data rate of up to 2.5 Gbit/s per lane.

ASRock Rack is promising up to 4 TB of DDR5 on a single socket with its DMRD16-2L+, one of the first motherboards built for Intel's upcoming Xeon 7 "Diamond Rapids" processors. The board was shown at the OCP Global Summit 2026 and has since been detailed by ServeTheHome. It has 16 DIMM slots in a one-DIMM-per-channel layout, matching the 16-channel memory setup Intel detailed at HOT CHIPS. Regular RDIMMs top out at 128 GB per module and 8000 MT/s, while MRDIMMs run at up to 12,800 MT/s, with taller 2U MRDIMMs reaching 256 GB each. Populate all 16 slots with those, and you hit 4 TB, along with a theoretical bandwidth of roughly 1.6 TB/s.

Expansion is unusual, with no standard PCIe slots and no OCP NIC 3.0 connector. All I/O goes through up to 16 MCIO x8 connectors, each rated for PCIe 6.0 or CXL 3.0, for 128 lanes in total. The rest is fairly basic: one PCIe 5.0 x4 M.2 slot, two Intel I350 Gigabit Ethernet ports, an ASPEED AST2700 BMC with a dedicated management port, and VGA output. ASRock Rack fits it all on a 12 x 13-inch EEB PCB, about the size of a large E-ATX board, so it could squeeze into some bigger workstation cases. Pricing and availability have not been shared yet, but that is hardly surprising, since Intel has the Xeon 7 family slated for a 2027 debut on the new LGA9324 socket. The board is aimed at servers, though anyone planning a high-memory workstation for local AI will probably keep an eye on it.

X user GOK has shared photos of a huge red graphics card that carries four Polaris GPUs on a single PCB, jokingly asking whether it might be the biggest PCIe graphics card in the world. The four GPUs sit in a 2x2 layout, and each one appears to be surrounded by eight GDDR5 memory chips, which would mean 8 GB per GPU and a gigantic 32 GB across the board. According to GOK, a sticker on the card identifies it as a quad RX 470, which would work out to 8,192 stream processors in total. Feeding all of that are four 8-pin power connectors, while the only display output is a single HDMI port. A second photo shows the card lying next to a motherboard, and it's noticeably bigger than the board itself.

The PCB does carry an AMD logo next to a "DYII-XQ570 V1.0" marking, but it looks like AMD may not have built this one. GOK pointed out that the card has no board OPN (part number) and that the marking doesn't follow AMD's official format, adding that small factories in China sometimes put the AMD logo on their own designs. He also identified the PCIe switch as a PI7C9X2G, a PCIe 2.0 part, and thinks the card was likely made by one of those factories for crypto miners. He hasn't tested it yet, since he doesn't have a heatsink for it. Multi-GPU Polaris mining boards aren't new either, as Sapphire had a dual RX 570 mining card with 16 GB and a single HDMI port back in 2021.

As spotted by Club386, two motherboards based on Intel's Z970 chipset have shown up in the NBD shipping database, which logs Vietnamese customs records. Going by the names, both appear to be from ASRock: the Z970 LiveMixer WiFi and the Z970 Pro-A WiFi. The entries refer to PCBs shipping at the end of September 2026. The Z970 chipset is rumored to support CPU multiplier overclocking, but not the base clock tweaking that Z990 is expected to offer. Leaker Jaykihn has also previously reported that it will replace most of the market the B860 covers today. If that ends up being the case, it would be a big change, since Intel has kept CPU overclocking on its most expensive chipset for years, while AMD allows it on most of its B-series boards.

Intel's Robert Hallock has previously said the goal is more unlocked SKUs over time, and that overclocking shouldn't be reserved for the people paying the most. It looks like that approach could extend to motherboards too. Of course, Intel hasn't announced Z970 or Z990 yet, so this is all unofficial, and we don't know what the prices of either would look like. Moreover, shipments this early don't necessarily mean retail boards are close. Intel has reportedly promised more details at CES in January 2027, which fits the rumored CES 2027 launch window. If Z970 does arrive at B860 prices, it could be the most interesting platform for most builders.

GIGABYTE, a global leader in high-performance computer hardware, today announced the WRX90 AI TOP workstation motherboard, supporting AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO series processors. Engineered specifically for local AI workloads and intensive computing, the motherboard features multi-GPU PCIe 5.0 expansion slots, high-capacity ECC memory support, and enterprise-grade BMC remote management. It provides a robust, highly extensible hardware foundation for professionals to deploy dedicated local AI platforms and manage model development on-premises.

Scale Up for AI Development
To support evolving AI applications, the WRX90 AI TOP allows organizations to configure and expand their hardware as computational workloads grow. Equipped with seven PCIe 5.0 x16 slots and two MCIO 8i connectors, the motherboard offers extensive bandwidth capable of supporting up to nine GPU devices through compatible expansion hardware. Complementing this expansion capacity, eight-channel DDR5 memory support accommodates up to 2 TB of ECC RDIMM for large datasets and memory-intensive applications. The inclusion of Error-Correcting Code (ECC) memory automatically detects and corrects data corruption, ensuring data integrity during prolonged AI computing sessions.

Printed circuit boards (PCBs) are the foundation of every PC component, as they mount everything and connect the entire system using electrical components, wiring, and more. However, we are about to enter another phase of consumer electronics price hikes, as these PCBs are now experiencing severe component shortages projected to last until 2030. According to Nikkei Asia, an unnamed executive from an American PC maker told the publication that PCB manufacturers are confirming this situation, with some predicting that orders placed today may not be fulfilled until late 2028.

American PC Maker for Nikkei AsiaEven though PC shipments could decline again next year, we are still struggling to secure enough PCB supplies to meet our needs.

Reddit user DallasGrave, who recently soldered a dual 8-pin board to an RTX 5090's 16-pin header, is back with a more ambitious take on the same idea. The new "Quad 2x8 Header Conversion" mounts four 8-pin PCIe connectors right on the card, tapping the contact points of the 12V-2x6 header, so the 16-pin connector can either stay in use alongside it or be skipped entirely. Each 8-pin carries three 12 V conductors, which spreads the load over twelve wires instead of six.

According to the modder, current per conductor is "almost perfectly halved" compared to the native connector, landing at roughly 4.1 to 4.4 A per wire at 600 W, with wire temperatures dropping by around 20°C. The sense pins are set for 600 W, and the board has apparently been tested up to 800 W on a shunt-modded card, where the PCB itself reportedly sat at about 45°C. Videos covering installation, live current data, and a 24-hour sustained load test are apparently being shot now, and custom backplates are in the works to make the mod look more factory-made. Versions for nearly every card, Founders Edition included, are also going into production.

Vince "KINGPIN" Lucido has blamed NVIDIA for the troubled launch of the EVGA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti KINGPIN, the last graphics card to carry his name. In the first video on his new Overclocking Kingpin YouTube channel, the overclocker said he wanted the card to have two 12VHPWR power connectors, while NVIDIA wanted it limited to just one. The disagreement, in his words, "really screwed up the production timeline", and he also holds it responsible for how few units were made afterward. The card did eventually ship with both 16-pin connectors when it went on sale for $2,500 with a bundled 1600 W power supply, about three months after the RTX 3090 Ti itself came out. This is only Lucido's side of the story, and it isn't clear why NVIDIA pushed for a single connector.

In September 2022, EVGA ended its partnership with NVIDIA and stopped making graphics cards, with CEO Andrew Han pointing to a souring relationship between the two companies. Every card in development was canceled, KINGPIN models included. Lucido is now working with ASUS, which sent over the hardware shown in the video, although no ASUS-made KINGPIN card has been confirmed. He did lay out one condition for such a card: the PCB and power delivery have to let the GPU reach its full potential under liquid nitrogen without the buyer modifying anything. An earlier plan with PNY never produced a card, and Lucido ended up skipping the RTX 50 generation entirely.

TrendForce's latest notebook industry research reveals that the primary risk facing the market in 2027 is expected to shift from supply constraints to the impact of rising costs on demand. Global notebook shipments are currently projected to decline by a low-single-digit percentage in 2027. However, if DRAM and CPU prices remain elevated, brands may be forced to pass more of these costs on to consumers. These higher retail prices could further extend replacement cycles, potentially pushing the full-year shipment decline into the high-single-digit range.

In 2026, improved CPU availability, early procurement by brands, and the pull-forward of some replacement demand helped support notebook shipments. However, this does not indicate a meaningful recovery in end-market demand. With some purchases originally expected in the second half of 2026 and beyond already brought forward, replacement momentum in subsequent periods is likely to weaken. Furthermore, as lower-cost inventories are gradually depleted, brands will face more direct pressure from rising CPU, DRAM, and SSD prices.

Samsung Foundry may be on the verge of securing a significant deal with AI lab Anthropic to manufacture AI accelerators. According to the latest report, Anthropic is developing its custom AI accelerator on Samsung's SF2 2 nm node, which will initially be produced in a lower volume of around 200,000 chips. The design and implementation of this ASIC are being handled by Broadcom, targeting around 4,000 TOPS of INT8 compute, with a TDP of 1,300 W per chip. This will be supported by either 192 GB of HBM3E or even 288 GB of HBM3E, if the design allows. The current production volume is low, as ASIC projects are typically counted in millions of chips. However, Anthropic is likely evaluating the project's viability, which requires a complete custom infrastructure with networking, rack design, power supply, cooling, and many other factors.

The current Samsung SF2 node is built using Low-NA EUV lithography and is manufactured in South Korea, with a new facility soon to be established in Taylor, Texas. For packaging these chips and integrating them with HBM, Samsung is likely to employ its I-Cube technology, which rivals TSMC's CoWoS and allows for 2.5D packaging. Combined with the 2 nm dies, Samsung can position itself as a serious manufacturing plant for external customers and slightly close the gap with TSMC and its contract manufacturing business.

The ICY DOCK EXLink MB308A5 is a PCIe 5.0 x16 NVMe host adapter card with dual MCIO 8i (SFF-TA-1016) connectivity, designed for next-generation high-speed NVMe cabling. With an integrated PCIe Gen 5 redriver and 100 MHz clock buffering, it helps maintain signal integrity for 32 GT/s links across longer trace and cable routing commonly found in servers, workstations, and validation platforms.

PCIe 5.0 x16 Lane Bifurcation for Multi-Drive NVMe Topologies
With a PCIe 5.0 x16 interface delivering up to 512 Gbps of total bandwidth, the MB308A5 is designed for platforms that support PCIe lane bifurcation (x4 / x4 / x4 / x4). When enabled, the PCIe x16 interface can be allocated into four independent NVMe x4 links, allowing up to four NVMe SSDs to be addressed through MCIO cabling.

Melting 16-pin connectors keep making headlines, and some RTX 5090 owners have started taking the protection of their expensive cards into their own hands. Reddit user DallasGrave has modified an MSI GeForce RTX 5090 with two extra 8-pin PCIe power inputs that work alongside the card's original 16-pin connector. According to their post on r/pcmasterrace, a small pickup PCB is soldered to the contacts of the 16-pin header, and that board feeds a second PCB carrying the two 8-pin sockets. The card then runs on three cables in total. DallasGrave says each conductor now carries roughly 3 A, and that the wires never crossed 40°C during a 48-hour run at 550 W, even at the joint. More test data is apparently on the way, so for now these are the modder's own numbers.

The 12V-2x6 revision was supposed to fix the melting power connector issues. In early 2025, NVIDIA said the 16-pin melting issues were over, pointing to the updated connector on the RTX 50-series. However, the first melted RTX 5090 Founders Edition was reported shortly after, in that case with a third-party cable. Since then, several RTX 5090 power connectors have reportedly melted, including one with an undervolt and a -100 W power limit. Moreover, last month Hardware Unboxed watched its RTX 5090 power cable reach 175°C with a single wire pulling around 22 A.

When it was first revealed that EVGA would be leaving the GPU industry, there was speculation that the hardware maker was leaving the industry partly due to direct competition from NVIDIA's own Founder's Edition cards—reference designs that were previously under the purview of EVGA at launch. In a new blog post on his personal blog, former EVGA Product Manager, Brendon Ray Hedrick, confirmed in a recent blog post that these concerns were real, and that they were felt inside EVGA when NVIDIA started selling its own Founder's Edition GPUs more prominently around the launch of the Pascal generation.

When NVIDIA introduced the Pascal Founders Edition cards in 2016, I remember people at EVGA worrying about what that meant for us. We were used to selling NVIDIA's reference designs with our name on them. NVIDIA had sold its own cards before, but this was when the tension became clear to me: the company supplying our GPUs was also making a prominent pitch to sell finished cards directly to our customers. At that launch, the GTX 1080 Founders Edition carried a premium over the announced starting price for partner cards. The concern was the relationship itself. We depended on NVIDIA while competing with it for the same buyers.

The Tiwaz is an open-source split keyboard product that started as a DIY project and morphed into something a little more concrete and comprehensive. Unlike traditional split ergonomic keyboards, like the MoErgo Go60 and ZSA Voyager, which generally eschew any thoughts of gaming prowess in favor of ergonomics, the Tiwaz was designed with gaming in mind. Specifically, its designer, Timo Strube, explains in the project's GitHub that "each half works standalone as a one-handed controller or macro pad," allowing it to be used by left-and right-handed users. The keyboard uses hot-swap sockets compatible with standard MX-style mechanical switches, giving it a wider degree of customization.

The Tiwaz uses a split ortholinear layout, meaning the keys are arranged in straight rows and columns, instead of the offsets present in both columnar stagger and row stagger layouts. Another interesting feature in the Tiwaz is that it features two thumb joysticks—one on the inner side of the keyboard itself. These can be configured to output cardinal directions, analog directions like a gamepad, or even mouse movements. The actual layout of the keyboard is also rather unorthodox, even for a split keyboard, with a total of 76 keys (38 per side), which is already a lot for a split keyboard, which usually hover around 50-60 keys at most. It also has a gasket-mounted case design, which also runs counter to many split ergonomic keyboards that forego features like gasket mounts in search of thinner cases for ergonomics purposes.

Samsung and Qualcomm are reportedly forming a 2.1D Packaging Alliance to provide customers with access to advanced chip packaging using bridges that connect silicon dies. Interestingly, Samsung and Qualcomm are developing an organic bridge technology that will serve as the adhesive to hold two chips together. For example, Intel already uses a similar approach with its Embedded Multi-die Interconnect Bridge (EMIB) advanced packaging, but it employs small silicon bridges. The new 2.1D packaging alliance will use organic bridges made from materials commonly found in traditional PCBs, such as organic polymer materials like epoxy and copper wiring, to interconnect multiple chips.

This organic bridge uses redistribution layers (RDL), formed by multiple layers of fine circuitry with extremely small wires and space between them. This makes the technology more similar to PCB manufacturing than silicon manufacturing, enabling packaging densities that closely match modern silicon-based EMIB. Reportedly, Samsung will manufacture this 2.1D package using multiple RDLs packaged inside a flip-chip ball grid array package. Ultimately, the company aims for the organic bridge's line width and spacing to be 1.5 to 2 micrometers each, with via sizes of 4 to 5 micrometers. Die-to-die pattern density is targeted at 500 to 1,000 per millimeter.

NVIDIA today quietly added another card to its pro-viz product lineup with the RTX PRO 5500 "Blackwell" workstation GPU edition. Featuring 84 GB of GDDR7 memory, it is equipped with a GB202 die that includes 21,760 CUDA cores. This is the same CUDA core count as the consumer GeForce RTX 5090 SKU, but it is now certified for professional workloads and has a much higher memory capacity. The 84 GB of GDDR7 is connected to the GB202 with a 416-bit memory bus that delivers about 1,398 GB/s of memory bandwidth. This would put each GDDR7 memory chip at about 26 Gbps per pin, which is a standard GDDR7 memory speed, but not the fastest available on the market. Additionally, to achieve the massive 84 GB capacity, there need to be 28 memory modules. NVIDIA placed 14 GDDR7 modules on the front side with the GPU die and 14 GDDR7 modules on the back of the PCB, effectively sandwiching the PCB.

Compared to the rest of the RTX PRO lineup, the new RTX PRO 5500 "Blackwell" sits just a tick below the flagship RTX PRO 6000 SKU, which has a slightly higher CUDA core count of 24,064 and a 96 GB memory capacity. However, the RTX PRO 5500 is also much more powerful than the RTX PRO 5000 in the 5000 tier. The RTX PRO 5000 "Blackwell" has a much lower CUDA core count of 14,080 cores, with up to 72 GB of memory. Technically, the new SKU is much closer to the RTX PRO 6000 than the RTX PRO 5000 SKU, just with a slightly lower core count and memory capacity. The official specification sheet follows, courtesy of PNY.

Modders at the Brazilian YouTube channel TecLab have an RTX 5090 running on three standard 8-pin PCIe connectors instead of the 16-pin design that keeps melting on high-end NVIDIA cards. The team stripped a Galax GeForce RTX 5090D HOF OC LAB XOC down to the bare PCB, removed both native 16-pin inputs, and soldered three 8-pin connectors straight to the power regulators. Sense pins were rewired so the card would still request full power, with liquid cooling keeping temperatures in check.

During a livestream, the modders ramped the card from 400 W to 900 W across the three cables, pulling over 120 A while holding a 3,400 MHz clock. Two connectors still delivered 66 A at 3,200 MHz, and even a single 8-pin managed 65 A at 3,100 MHz. The mod stayed entirely at the hardware level, with no BIOS or software tweaks involved. Throughout the test, the modified RTX 5090 stayed within its power and thermal limits, and passed all tests with flying colors.

A Brazilian modder going by fmklab has built a working RTX 3070 Ti with 16 GB of memory, a configuration NVIDIA reportedly planned years ago but never brought to market. Instead of bolting bigger memory chips onto a retail 3070 Ti board, Fabio, aka fmklab, started with an ASUS TUF RTX 3070 PCB, which already runs on regular GDDR6 rather than the GDDR6X found on the real 3070 Ti. The RTX 3070 GPU was pulled and replaced with an actual 3070 Ti chip, and the original Samsung HC14 (8 Gb) memory modules were swapped for HC16 (16 Gb) units to double capacity. GPU-Z still reported 8 GB after the swap, so fmklab used NVIDIA's BIOS Reader tool to work out which memory straps needed rewiring. A few tweaks later, the full 16 GB buffer was showing up.

Once that was sorted, MATS testing came back clean, and the card ran a local LLM using nearly the full 16 GB pool. Moreover, Call of Duty: Warzone paired with a Ryzen 7 9800X3D was pulling over 13 GB with no signs of instability. NVIDIA had reportedly explored a 16 GB RTX 3070 Ti as far back as 2020, and the idea resurfaced through leaked engineering samples before NVIDIA reportedly shelved it. Fabio's Superposition score landed a bit below typical retail 3070 Ti runs, likely because GDDR6 is slower than GDDR6X, a fair tradeoff for doubling the memory this way. The base RTX 3070 has seen similar VRAM mods before, but this looks like the first working recreation of this specific 16 GB 3070 Ti variant.

Another increase in motherboard prices looks likely, according to a report from the Chinese industry forum Board Channels. The source claims that motherboard production costs have risen by at least 10%, while the price adjustments manufacturers actually made in August averaged only about 3%, a gap that suggests further increases are coming. PCBs appear to be the biggest driver, with prices reportedly up 15% to 50% depending on board type. Capacitors are said to have climbed by around 50%, and Wi-Fi modules are up an estimated 10 to 20%. Those are bill-of-materials costs, before manufacturing and logistics get factored in.

The August price increases were apparently uneven. MSI reportedly raised prices across its whole lineup, while ASUS and Gigabyte stuck to select higher-volume models. If accurate, that 3% bump falls well short of covering the reported cost increase, which suggests that manufacturers have been absorbing part of the difference so far. It's worth noting that this is not an official manufacturer statement, so these figures should be treated as industry chatter for now. Still, multiple outlets have independently sourced similar numbers, and earlier reports already pointed to ASUS, Gigabyte, and MSI prepping Q3 pricing changes.

Hardware Unboxed has become the latest hardware channel to watch a 12V-2×6 connector melt on an RTX 5090 test bench. The setup paired an ASUS ROG Astral RTX 5090 with a be quiet! Dark Power 13 PSU, and host Steve reportedly only caught the fault after touching the cable and finding it hot enough to burn his hand. A thermal camera later confirmed readings above 150°C, climbing to roughly 175°C under load. A Thermal Grizzly WireView Pro caught the underlying problem immediately: a severe current imbalance where some pins carried almost nothing while a single wire was pulling around 22A. Oddly, the damage turned out to be worse on the PSU side rather than at the GPU.

The cable had fused inside the Dark Power 13's connector and needed pliers to remove, while the card's own connector escaped without visible marks. Hardware Unboxed says the cable was fully seated and isn't blaming the incident on installation. This is far from an isolated case, as this connector is notorious for melting. We have reported RTX 5090 connectors melting even after users apply undervolts and power limits, and reported on at least one instance where an ASRock PSU's thermal cutoff saved a card from a similar fate. Some frustrated modders have gone so far as to solder wires directly to the PCB just to sidestep the connector altogether.

According to the latest report from ETNews, citing supply chain sources, TSMC is reportedly still holding back from investing in the silicon packaging technology known as hybrid bonding for HBM memory integration. For those unfamiliar, hybrid bonding creates a permanent bond between two silicon chips using embedded metal bumps that are fused together to form a single chip. Multiple dies or entire silicon wafers can be connected by stacking the back ends of two chips together. This technology eliminates traditional chip bumps and directly bonds copper interconnections between the two chips. In modern packaging, chip solder bumps, which stick out before the chip is soldered to the PCB, are roughly 100 micrometers in size, while microbumps are approximately 20 micrometers. Hybrid bonding reduces this size to 1 micrometer. Microbumps are used to interconnect silicon with other chips inside a package, as seen in CoWoS-S and CoWoS-L, where microbumps are prevalent for chip-to-interposer connections.

For TSMC, the future may involve bypassing hybrid bonding technology for packaging HBM memory and investing in microbumps that are 5 micrometers in size. Reportedly, TSMC is preparing its supply chain for 5-micrometer microbumps, which will be even smaller than what is currently available, to enhance performance in packaging. South Korean and Japanese suppliers are reportedly collaborating with TSMC to achieve this, with mass production of 5-micrometer microbumps expected in the second half of 2028. As a reminder, AMD's 3D V-Cache technology uses hybrid bonding to put SRAM on top of logic, but TSMC reportedly plans to keep integration of HBM memory into packaging on microbumps for now.

Aside from the pricey ASUS ROG Falcata and Sunder keyboard line-up, there are very few split, ergonomic, Hall effect keyboards for gamers who either want the comfort of a split keyboard for everyday use or want a small form factor that allows them to keep just one half of the keyboard on the desk at a time. Now, thanks to a new open-source project, there is at least one third option available in the Silakka54 HE project, which is an adapted version of the popular, affordable Silakka54 split mechanical keyboard.

The Silakka54 HE features an identical layout to the original Silakka54, meaning it has 54 keys in total, arranged in a grid of six columns and four rows, with two three-key thumb clusters. It is built on the RP2040 Zero MCU, and runs on open-source QMK firmware with support for the VIAL browser-based configuration tool. The keyboard is fully wired, and the two halves connect to each other via TRRS cable, which might limit the polling rate, although reports claim the mechanical Silakka54 is capable of at least 1 kHz.

Brazilian YouTube group TecLab has bypassed the RTX 5090's notorious melting problem in the most direct way possible. The group removed the 16-pin connector from the equation entirely and soldered power wires straight onto the PCB. The demonstration used a Galax RTX 5090D HOF OC LAB XOC, an extreme-overclocking variant with two 16-pin inputs and a custom BIOS rated for up to 2,000W, far above the 575W TDP of a standard RTX 5090. TecLab framed the mod as a sarcastic jab at NVIDIA, saying that enthusiasts are tired of hearing about connectors melting and that they wanted to show how it should have been done from the start.

The team stripped the card's stock cooler entirely, running the bare GPU under an industrial liquid chiller with two loosely mounted fans for extra airflow. Two adapters converted standard 16-pin PSU cables into bare wires, which were then soldered directly onto the connector traces on the board. No temperature readings were shared, but a roughly 50A draw on the 12V rail put the card at around 600W during testing, and it booted and ran benchmarks without issue.

In a time when DDR5 memory prices keep soaring to unprecedented levels, we have seen consumers resort to older DDR4 memory, but not like this. X user @watagjt shared an unusual experience with a DDR5 memory stick that contained no DDR5 memory chips inside. The memory stick, seemingly from Kingston, reportedly had DDR4 memory chips soldered onto the PCB instead, making it clear that it wasn't a regular purchase. According to the buyer, the Kingston FURY Beast DDR5 module was bought unopened, with no visible damage, and its heatsink and label looked normal at first glance.

The teardown, however, revealed a messy soldering job with flux residue and unused PCB pads, leading the buyer to suspect the swap. Interestingly, the DDR4 chips themselves showed valid DDR5 identifiers, which made the swap even more convincing. Of course, what makes this scam deeply concerning is that it is impossible to spot without disassembling the stick, and even then, a trained eye is needed to make the conclusion. The advice for buyers is to stick with brand-new or trusted used components, and never purchase anything from a suspicious third-party vendor.

Keywell mechanical keyboards are generally reserved for the most ergonomic designs, like the MoErgo Glove80 and the Bastard Keyboards Charybdis, but KBDØ has incorporated a keywell design into its 60% Curve0 mechanical keyboard (stylized as CurveØ) since 2024. Now, KBDØ has officially announced the Curve0 v2, a 75% redesign of the original Curve0, delivering a more refined implementation of both the Curve0's keywell design, with a redesigned bottom row, and its industrial aesthetic.

KBDØ argues that "a flat typing surface is not very comfortable," since your fingers have to move towards the key and then down to press the key and actuate the switch. The company claims to solve this problem by putting the keys on a curve and lining up the travel path of the switches with your finger's natural movement direction. The keyboard employs a heavily flex-cut PCB mounted in a folded and rolled stainless steel case that also serves as a switch plate.