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AMD's AM4 platform continues to attract buyers despite being several generations old, with the Ryzen 5 5500 and Ryzen 7 5800X3D posting strong sales during July. Recent retail data from Germany shows that buyers are still purchasing older Zen 3 processors in meaningful numbers. The trend appears to be driven partly by the rising cost of newer DDR5 based systems and by existing AM4

NVIDIA and AMD could see their combined share of China's AI chip market fall to about 10% in 2026 as domestic semiconductor companies increase production and local cloud providers rely more heavily on Chinese hardware. The forecast reflects two forces developing at the same time. China is investing heavily in domestic AI accelerators, while US export controls continue to restrict access to some of

Windows PC prices could rise again during the third quarter of 2026 as manufacturers face higher software licensing costs alongside already expensive hardware components. Microsoft has reportedly increased Windows OEM licensing fees by an average of 7% to 10% starting in July. PC makers are now dealing with higher operating system costs at the same time that memory, storage, processors, graphics cards and motherboards

Samsung has reportedly improved the production yield of its HBM4 memory to nearly 80%, giving the company a stronger position as it tries to gain ground in the AI memory market. The reported milestone is important because Samsung started mass production of HBM4 earlier this year with yields below 60%. Reaching close to 80% within roughly half a year suggests that the company has

NVIDIA's Vera Rubin platform is putting even more pressure on memory supply, with DRAM accounting for a much larger share of system cost than it did with Grace Blackwell. The Vera Rubin NVL72 rack uses 72 Rubin GPUs and 36 Vera CPUs. Together, they create a very large memory pool built from HBM4 and LPDDR5X, with total capacity reaching about 74.7 TB per rack.

AMD has introduced two new Ryzen 400 series laptop processors that remove the dedicated NPU found in the company's Ryzen AI models. The Ryzen 7 449 and Ryzen 5 439 are part of the Gorgon family and are aimed at mainstream laptops where lower system cost may matter more than dedicated AI acceleration. Neither processor carries Ryzen AI branding because both omit the NPU

TSMC has reportedly secured the land needed for two future 1.4nm semiconductor fabrication plants in Taiwan, clearing a major obstacle that had delayed expansion plans at the Longtan Science Park. The project had previously faced resistance from local landowners, which led TSMC to step away from the planned Phase 3 expansion in October 2023. That opposition has now eased, allowing the project to move

Acer has opened preorders for the Aspire Go 15, a lower cost Windows 11 laptop powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon C processor. The laptop is priced at £499 in the UK, putting it well below Apple's £699 MacBook Neo while matching its 8 GB memory configuration. Acer has kept the price lower by making several compromises, including a smaller 128 GB storage capacity and a

A Razer Blade 18 owner has reported a serious cooling failure that appears to be linked to the laptop's vapor chamber, with condensation visible near one corner of the cooling assembly. The problem became obvious after the laptop suddenly lost performance. The owner said the machine had been running normally while gaming, but later struggled to launch the same application. The fans were still

Major memory manufacturers have reportedly secured about $38 billion in advance payments, deposits and collateral as strong AI demand gives suppliers greater control over DRAM pricing and long term contracts. Samsung, SK hynix and Micron are among the companies benefiting from this shift. Large customers are increasingly committing money in advance to secure future memory supply, reducing uncertainty for manufacturers while giving buyers better

Microsoft is trying to make Windows 11 more efficient on PCs with 8 GB of RAM, but its built in Weather app shows how much work remains. Testing found that the Weather app can consume around 500 MB to 600 MB of memory while sitting mostly idle. When actively used, memory consumption can climb to roughly 1.5 GB, with brief spikes reaching around 1.6

Intel's upcoming Diamond Rapids Xeon 7 processors could include a flagship model with as many as 256 performance cores, putting the company on equal footing with AMD's highest core count EPYC Venice processors. The reported 256 core model has not been officially announced, so its final release is not guaranteed. However, current information suggests Intel is preparing a much larger P core configuration than

Intel's upcoming Nova Lake desktop processors could bring a much more powerful integrated GPU to desktop PCs, with one reported configuration allowing the graphics section alone to consume up to 40W. The chip is expected to be part of the Core Ultra 400S family and combine 16 CPU cores with 12 Xe3P graphics cores. Its reported maximum package power reaches 154W, considerably higher than

A hardware modder has demonstrated an unusual cooling experiment in which water was pumped directly onto the exposed silicon of an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060, reducing the GPU temperature from around 70°C to just 28°C. The experiment bypassed a traditional heatsink, water block and thermal interface material. Instead, a custom enclosure directed water straight onto the GPU die while the graphics card was running.

A Taiwanese retailer is offering NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 5090 only through large hardware bundles, with one package costing about $7,481 and including eight motherboards plus a 1000W power supply. The listing shows how difficult it can still be to buy high end GPUs as standalone products in some markets. Instead of selling the RTX 5090 separately, the retailer is pairing it with several other

Gigabyte's X870 AORUS Infinity is a flagship AM5 motherboard built for Ryzen enthusiasts who want strong overclocking support, modern connectivity and a platform that can remain useful for several processor generations. The board sits on AMD's X870 chipset and supports Ryzen 7000, Ryzen 8000 and Ryzen 9000 processors. It also benefits from AMD's longer term commitment to the AM5 socket, which is expected to

NVIDIA's upcoming RTX Spark platform has appeared in new Geekbench 7 results, giving an early look at the CPU performance of its ARM based SoC ahead of launch. The stronger 20 core version reached a multi core score of 23,126, putting it about 11% behind Apple's 14 core M4 Max result of 25,957. Single core performance remains a larger weakness, with the RTX Spark

A ZOTAC customer in the United States received an RTX 5090 as a replacement after going through four separate warranty claims involving faulty RTX 4090 graphics cards. The unusual case followed a long series of problems that reportedly included blue screen errors, system freezes, visual artifacts and PCIe related issues. After several replacement attempts failed to solve the situation, ZOTAC's U.S. RMA team sent

TSMC and university researchers have demonstrated a new transistor design that could help semiconductor manufacturing move toward technologies below 1 nanometer. The work focuses on one of the biggest problems facing future transistor scaling. As transistor channels become extremely thin and short, controlling the flow of electrons becomes more difficult. Traditional materials and manufacturing techniques start to introduce higher resistance and weaker gate control.

Anthropic is offering significantly higher compensation to research engineers working on AI driven chip design than to some of the engineers directly building its first custom silicon. A current research engineering role focused on teaching AI models how to design chips carries annual compensation between $500,000 and $850,000. By comparison, silicon engineering positions associated with Anthropic's custom ASIC development are listed at roughly $320,000