Hardware News

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• Save $500 on this beastly gaming rig with an RTX 5060 Ti 16GB, Ryzen 7800X3D, and 32GB of RAM — Skytech's desktop gaming PC now just $1,499

  Looking for a solid gaming PC but tired of seeing exorbitant prices on every retailer's website? We've got you covered with this prebuilt, equipped with high-quality components ready for 1440p gaming and more, with a clear upgrade path once prices settle down.

• More than 75 data center build-outs worth $130 billion have been successfully blocked in the first three months of 2026 — bipartisan opposition mounts nationwide over fears of soaring power and water costs

  A research firm says the number of blocked data centers in the first quarter of 2026 already matches the number of projects stopped in 2025. The opposition also comes from both sides of the aisle, despite President Trump's push for more AI development inside the U.S.

• AMD challenges Nvidia's DGX Spark with $3,999 Ryzen AI Halo with Windows 11 support — Strix Halo desktop undercuts Nvidia by $700, packs 128GB of unified memory

  Powered by the Ryzen AI Max+ 395 processor and 128GB of unified memory, AMD's developer kit arrives as a direct competitor to Nvidia's DGX Spark, which recently saw a price increase to $4,699.

• Netgear countersues TP-Link, saying firm 'remains, at its core, a Chinese company selling Chinese-made products' — alleges its 'American company' rebrand is false advertising

  Netgear filed counterclaims against TP-Link in federal court in Delaware on June 11, accusing its larger rival of false advertising under the Lanham Act.

• Nvidia raises RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell GPU pricing to $13,250 — 55% increase over MSRP in a year's time

  Nvidia now sells the RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell graphics cards for $13,250, while partner offerings start at $11,359.99.

• AI costs spike as subscriptions hit pricing wall — firms turn towards Chinese LLMs, open-source models to extend budget

  Companies look for cheaper alternatives as token costs for frontier AI models skyrocket, potentially impacting OpenAI and Anthropic's bottom lines. Subscriptions also take a bite out of these startup's profitability, as utilization rates higher than 5.7% could lead to losses.

• Intel reportedly preparing surprise return to DDR4 systems with 'Raptor Lake Next' — LGA 1700 platform apparently slated for first half of 2027, takes a page from AMD's book by extending budget platform longevity

  The name came up a few times during our conversations at Computex. Intel has declined to comment on it.

• U.S. gov't orders Anthropic to disable its newest AI models worldwide due to security threats — ban on Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 bars access by any foreign national, even its own employees

  Anthropic disabled its two most capable AI models, Claude Fable 5 and Claude Mythos 5, for every customer worldwide on Friday.

• Ukraine used ten AI-controlled ‘Terminator’ drones to kill Russian soldiers two years ago, marking first autonomous killings of humans — autonomous killer quadcopters left ‘everything dead’ says senior Ukrainian defense industry figure

  A watershed moment occurred on the battlefields of Ukraine in 2024 when 10 fully autonomous AI-controlled quadcopter drones were sent to the front lines against Russia with ‘Terminator Mode’ engaged.

• Dev releases ‘unblockable’ ASCII video stream software, stoking fears of unstoppable ads — delivers 360p video at 30 FPS and acts as a ‘bridge for AI’

  A new and unique video streaming solution is pitched as a 'high-performance, real-time ASCII video rendering engine' that can be used to broadcast 'an unblockable video stream.'

• Nvidia preps to sell its Vera CPUs into China as its GPU sales stay frozen — customers encouraged to place orders for CPU shipments as early as August

  Nvidia has told Chinese clients that its Arm-based Vera server CPUs could be available as soon as August.

• Amazon Prime Day

  Amazon Prime Day

• Thrustmaster's new specialized T.Flight Hotas 5 Microsoft Flight Simulator Edition provides a plug-and-play flight sim setup for just $109 — featuring 5-axis control with 16-bit precision and dual-rudder system

  Rocking 16-bit precision, dual-rudder yaw, 5-axis control and a plug-and-play profile for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, the new T.Flight Hotas 5 is a solid entry point to flight sims. It works with PlayStation consoles and PC out of the box, with convenient features like a detachable throttle.

• Radeon RX 9070 XT finally appears in Steam Hardware Survey — RDNA 4 flagship surprisingly lands just behind RTX 5080

  AMD’s Radeon RX 9070 XT graphics card has finally penetrated the Steam Survey video card results table, going straight in at position 25.

• Nvidia's high-speed AI data center storage servers break cover, touting 2.9 petabytes of storage and extreme PCIe 6.0 performance — Wiwynn shows off SCADA server with GPU-accelerated storage

  Wiwynn is among the first to demonstrate Nvidia SCADA server that promises to offer AI systems petabytes of ultra-fast storage thanks to GPU-accelerated storage acceleration.

• Microsoft's bug-hunting nemesis extends vendetta with more zero-day attacks — Nightmare Eclipse publishes RoguePlanet and GreatXML local privilege escalation exploits

  Nightmare-Eclipse's vendetta against Microsoft and Windows continues apace — researcher publishes RoguePlanet and GreatXML local privilege escalation zero-day exploits

• Various vendors add AMD EXPO Ultra-Low Latency to 600-series motherboards in latest BIOS updates — tech tightens memory subtimings on compatible kits, boosting FPS by up to 4%

  New BIOS updates featuring AMD EXPO Ultra Low Latency support are being released across a plethora of 600-series motherboards by multiple vendors.

• Republican lawmakers urge federal agency to block imports of infringing TSMC chips as patent ruling nears — five asserted U.S. patents come from United Microelectronics Corporation

  Four Republican members of Congress have urged the U.S. ITC to block imports of foreign-made chips found to infringe U.S. patents

• Save $300 on Gigabyte's Gaming A16 gaming laptop at Walmart — Budget RTX 5060 -powered 16-inch laptop is now only $1,199

  Save $300 on Gigabyte's Gaming A16 gaming laptop at Walmart. Budget RTX 5060 -powered 16-inch laptop is now only $1,199.

• Save a massive $751 on this RTX 5070 Ti gaming PC with a 9800X3D right now — liquid-cooled, 4K-ready Skytech rig with 32GB DDR5 and a 2TB SSD is now just $2,249

  Save $750 on this Skytech gaming PC for gaming at 1440p and 4K, featuring a 9800X3D, RTX 5070 Ti, 32GB DDR5, and a 2 TB SSD.