Gaming PCs sitting idle could one day earn their owners credits, or even cash, by training AI models, at least if a newly published Microsoft patent application ever becomes a product. Titled "Opportunistic Micro-training on Edge Devices Using Spare GPU Utilization," the filing US-20260349820-A1 from Microsoft Technology Licensing was submitted in April 2025 and made public on November 5. It describes chopping large training jobs into small micro-tasks sized to what each device can handle, then sending them to phones, laptops, and gaming PCs whenever they have spare capacity. Owners would have to explicitly opt in, after which the system could track the work done and apply credits to their account, redeemable for free software, access to the trained model, or money.

To stay out of the way, the system watches GPU and CPU load, memory use, temperature and power draw, and checks less often when the GPU is busy or hot. Apparently, tasks can be paused or stopped when limits are crossed, and results get cross-checked across devices to catch faulty or tampered work. The filing doesn't give a payout rate or list supported hardware, and Microsoft hasn't announced a Windows or Xbox service, so it's impossible to say whether the rewards would cover the extra electricity. Of course, this is only an application for now, and plenty of those never turn into products.

Intel's upcoming Core Ultra 4000 "Nova Lake-S" desktop processors will reportedly cap their maximum core frequency at 5.1 GHz whenever they run above 90°C, according to Intel leaker Jaykihn on X. He says the limit applies to the entire Nova Lake-S desktop lineup, works separately from regular TjMax throttling at 100°C, and can't be raised. He also notes that the information is still preliminary. In practice, it looks like a safety net that sits between normal boost behavior and full thermal throttling. Below 90°C, the chips should presumably boost as usual, and models that don't exceed 5.1 GHz in the first place wouldn't be affected at all.

Final Nova Lake clocks aren't official yet, though the current Core Ultra 9 285K already boosts up to 5.7 GHz, so a high-end Nova Lake chip that runs hot could lose a sizable chunk of its peak frequency. A 100°C TjMax would also be lower than Arrow Lake's 105°C, which can be manually raised to 115°C on the 285K. That puts more weight on cooling, since the 28-core Core Ultra 9 4970K BFC was reportedly set to pull up to 296 W at PL2 despite its 125 W rating, and staying under 90°C at that kind of power draw will probably take a really capable cooler. Nova Lake-S is currently expected to arrive in Q1 2027, and Intel hasn't confirmed any of this yet.

NVIDIA's DLSS 5 has been controversial ever since its announcement and eventual launch. Perhaps more concerning than the visual changes is its effect on the user's hardware. As reported by Videocardz, Korean outlet QuasarZone ran its own thermal tests on the RTX 5090's power connector with DLSS 5 enabled, to see if the technology really has a hand in recent reports of melting 12V-2x6 connectors. Testing an RTX 5090 Founders Edition in Cyberpunk 2077 at 4K with DLSS Quality and the Ultra preset over 20 minutes, the 12V-2x6 connector reached 91.7°C on the sense-pin side with DLSS 5 on, up from 80.9°C without it. The latch side climbed from 77.1°C to 83.4°C. An RTX 5080 FE tested the same way stayed far cooler, reaching just 48.6°C and 52.2°C at those two points with DLSS 5 enabled.

The increased heat aligned with a real jump in power draw. HWiNFO logged the RTX 5090's average power draw rising from 509.2 W to 575.1 W with DLSS 5 on, right at its 575 W limit. The RTX 5080 went from 298.2 W to 350.3 W, close to its own 360 W ceiling. External PCAT readings, which also catch short spikes, showed higher figures still: total board power rose from 527.3 W average and 582.5 W peak to 593.9 W average and 658.0 W peak. On the 16-pin 12V-2x6 connector alone, the RTX 5090 pulled 582.7 W on average and briefly spiked as high as 646.7 W. Of course, transient power spikes over 600 W are normal, and are not necessarily to blame for any melting connector issues. The increased power draw, however, lines up with Tom's Hardware's early DLSS 5 testing, which showed a noticeable jump in power draw with DLSS 5 enabled.

An MSI GeForce RTX 5080 16G Ventus 3X reportedly stopped working after its owner injected an unofficial version of DLSS 5 into a heavily modded copy of Grand Theft Auto 5. Reddit user "wax469" said the card had been running fine for about a month before the crash. According to the post, the screen began flashing uncontrollably about five minutes into a session, and the system refused to boot afterward. Swapping to his Ryzen 9 9950X3D2's integrated graphics let the PC start normally, and reinstalling the RTX 5080 brought the failure back. A replacement card of the same model has apparently worked without issues since.

It's worth being cautious here. NVIDIA has not released DLSS 5 for GTA 5, so the injection relied on unofficial tools, and the user says the card was running at stock settings with no overclock. There's no photo evidence of physical damage, and it's entirely possible a manufacturing defect was already present and just got exposed under load. Whether DLSS 5 had anything to do with it remains unconfirmed. The user was running a heavily modified version of GTA 5 Legacy, and adding unofficial DLSS 5 seems to be what eventually led to the failure.

With the ongoing issues seemingly related to the now-ubiquitous 12V-2×6 connectors melting from high power draw—seemingly made worse by power spikes caused by NVIDIA's DLSS 5—it seems prudent to find ways to reduce GPU power draw as much as possible, and one Redditor has conducted testing to prove it's possible to do so without affecting DLSS 5 performance.

In their testing, u/om_the_best found that undervolting an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 managed to reduce power draw by as much as 47 W while maintaining the same FPS and image quality using DLSS 5. According to the modder, the undervolt "can allow you to use DLSS 5 while keeping power consumption roughly the same as when running without DLSS 5 and without an undervolt."

NVIDIA App version 11.0.9 has added CPU temperature, clock speed, and power consumption to its built-in Statistics overlay. GeForce owners previously had to run a separate tool like HWiNFO or MSI Afterburner just to check processor thermals mid-game, so this brings one of the more requested features straight into NVIDIA's own software. To turn it on, open the NVIDIA app, press Alt+Z, head into the Statistics section, switch to Custom view, then enable the overlay with Alt+R. From there, pick which metrics show up, tweak the font size and color, and choose between a compact horizontal layout or a vertical stack if there's a lot on screen at once.

It works alongside DLSS override tracking too, so users can confirm which preset is actually running in a given game while keeping an eye on CPU numbers. That said, it's not a full replacement for dedicated monitoring software. VRAM and system RAM usage are still missing, and CPU utilization is reported as one overall number rather than broken out per core. Anyone who wants that level of granularity will still want RTSS running alongside it. For most GeForce users, though, this closes one of the more obvious gaps in the overlay, and it's nice not needing a third app open just to check the CPU temperature.

DLSS 5 seems to be contributing to increased power draw, and we have our first victim here. Videocardz reports a new melted-connector case on an MSI GeForce RTX 5090 Gaming Trio OC, which surfaced during DLSS 5 Neural Rendering testing in NBA 2K27, currently the only officially supported game. A reader nicknamed erek documented the incident, noting DLSS 5 pushed the card's power draw from around 450 W to over 600 W, which is above MSI's 575 W rating. A GPU-Z screenshot showed a peak board power reading of 613.5 W, which erek says held steady rather than spiking briefly.

Erek reported the card stopped working shortly after, and a burning smell led him to find that the connector's plastic had melted and fused to the socket. We already reported last week that DLSS 5 can push the RTX 5090's power draw unusually high, so this seems to be the first reported case where that added power draw has burned the notorious RTX 5090 power connectors. However, it should be remembered that GPU-Z tracks total board power rather than just the auxiliary connectors, since the PCIe slot also supplies power, so the reading doesn't necessarily mean the connector carried the full load.