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August 2026
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124 articles
- August 9
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- Wolfbox MF60 Compressed Air Duster is nearly 40% off in a limited-time deal — powerful rechargeable device's propulsion fan runs at up to 110,000 RPM
- Turtle Beach Command Series KB5 Review: A touchscreen and a numberpad in one keyboard?
- Noctua finds more than half of tested PC cases misstate CPU cooler clearances — hands-on checks reveal errors ranging from -3.5mm to +10mm, internal compatibility team conducted measurements of more than a hundred cases
- Modder pumps liquid directly over bare GPU silicon via 3D-printed block — drops RTX 2060 Super load temps to 28°C despite initial leaks
- Musk’s Terafab projected to be larger than the Pentagon, Apple Park, Mall of America, and Giga Texas, combined — all-in-one chip manufacturing facility visualized to show the project’s massive footprint
- x64 port of Microsoft Word for Windows 1.1a arrives — you can now run this seminal 1990 word processor natively in Windows 11
- Two variants of Nvidia's RTX Spark show up on Geekbench, revealing a cut-down 18-core model — Full 20-core beats most x86 mobile chips across multi-core and single-core tests
- FCC moves to ban LiDAR-equipped foreign drones from US — classifies the technology as "military-grade" in a proposal that could also hit thermal models and the swarms used in drone light shows
- Amazon’s new 7.65GW Texas AI data center power plant could become the largest source of CO₂ pollution in the US — custom 35-turbine gas plant authorized to emit 33 million tons of annual greenhouse gases
- Kansas town silences public comment on gigawatt AI data center after receiving death threats, moves to virtual meetings — shift follows physics teacher's arrest for clapping at data center hearing
- Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus vs AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D faceoff — battle of the upper mid-range CPUs
- Open-source stealth USB hides an encrypted partition behind an 8GB decoy drive — 'Phantom Drive' appears as a regular USB stick until you create a text file to unlock the hidden data
- Mind-bending self-replicating GIF code prints an exact copy of itself, is both a program and its own visual output — champion coder shows off 'Piet Quine' technique
- Micron reportedly offers pennies on the dollar for Crucial RAM return, only offers to reimburse original MSRP despite it being only 37% of market value — chipmaker later reverses course with a better solution
- Dominate school and the leaderboard with the best Alienware gaming laptop deals at Best Buy
- Owner of original Intel 8080 pre-production layout seeks restorer — handcrafted Rubylith mask shows 5,000 transistors and interconnect patterns of the fabled 2 MHz CPU
- After 24 years, Return to Castle Wolfenstein is finally distributed uncut in Germany — game was censored due to strict laws regarding Nazi symbolism
- August 8
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- Nvidia RTX 5090 ships in bizarre 8-motherboard bundle — retailers hold GPUs hostage similar to the crypto boom
- Save $160 off AMD's ultimate gaming CPU combo, includes motherboard and chip cooler — $458 combo features Ryzen 7 9800X3D, B850 motherboard, and a 240mm liquid AIO
- Amazon circumvents community vote for massive AI data center using 45-year-old rules — Gilroy residents locked out of public comment window
- Pulsar Feinmann F01 Noctua Edition Review: Extra cool
- China's memory-making champion smashes DDR5-8800 barrier on AMD platform — CXMT chips close the gap with SK hynix
- Atari ST Public Floppy Database now open for everyone — online archive originally designed for ST flash cart packed with classics and homebrew
- We tested the impact of SSD speed on gaming performance in 11 titles — we analyzed from SATA to PCIe 5.0 to see whether upgrading to a faster NVMe SSD would have an impact
- Intel's proposed orbital data centers would manage thousands of simple LEO satellites — two-tier network puts the brains of satellite constellations in higher orbit
- Hardware researcher spins up 'CPU deoptimization' project to find the slowest single x86 instruction, creates hall of shame — worst offender takes 198 billion cycles spanning 62 seconds to execute
- AI creates 16 new viruses that never existed in nature after learning DNA’s pattern from 9 trillion nucleotides — experts warn such applications are way ahead of necessary guardrails
- NASA modded space station's laptops so everyone could use the same charger — standardizing ISS chargers eliminated useless weight and reduced failure points
- Modder turns Steam Controller trackpad haptics into stereo speakers with custom HID tool — Wired connection transmits 16-bit audio that sounds surprisingly full
- August 7
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- Scientist says RAM pricing has risen to normalized 2007 levels, AI shortage undid 20 years of progress in a matter of months — memory prices had been falling exponentially for decades
- Amazon cracks down on 'CPU waste' among engineers as agentic AI crunch intensifies — CPU demand makes low-utilization EC2 instances a hot commodity [Updated]
- Protesters haul a guillotine to city council meeting about a potential AI data center, company rep cornered by protestors — ‘ it no longer felt safe to stay,’ developer escorted out by police
- This week on Tom's Hardware Premium: August 8, 2026 — Inside China's lithography efforts, co-packaged optics get a spotlight, and Samsung debuts next-gen memory tech
- Grab an entire RTX 5090 PC for just $380 more than the standalone graphics card — save $1,550 off Alienware's Area-51 gaming rig
- Introducing Bench 2.0 — a revamped benchmark analyzer, exclusively for Tom's Hardware Premium subscribers
- HyperX Omen Max 16 review: All bark and no bite
- Apple revealed the first Mac Pro 20 years ago today — its Intel Xeon-powered flagship desktop took the reins from the Power Mac G5
- Nvidia sells RTX 50-series GPUs at MSRP during QuakeCon 2026 — graphics cards sold at launch prices more than a year after release are now considered an attraction
- MSI's magnificent 32-inch 4K OLED gaming monitor returns to its lowest-ever price of $599 — save $130 on the MAG 321UPXB, the perfect 240Hz upgrade
- Elon Musk's massive Terafab chip-making facility starts to take shape — 100 million square feet of manufacturing space and $16.8B initial capital investment
- Save $370 on this 1440p gaming PC with an RTX 5060 Ti 16GB — formidable ABS Cyclone Aqua rig ships with 20-core Intel Core i7-14700F, 16GB DDR5 and a 1TB SSD, now only $1,329.99
- Anthropic co-designing custom AI inference chips to bypass costly Nvidia GPUs — Samsung reported as manufacturing partner for Claude maker
- Claude Opus 5 mistakenly deletes dev’s entire profile directory during routine backup, responds with 'Sorry, typo' — AI tool mistakes user's home directory as temporary backup, proceeds to wipe everything to undo the error
- August 6
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- Pre-modded 22GB RTX 2080 Ti cards surface on eBay for $500 as VRAM-hungry local AI fans chase down every spare FLOP — Hong Kong-based seller offers AI-friendly memory mod for a reasonable price
- After severe 76% electricity price hikes due to AI data centers, Virginia requires firms to pay for all dedicated upstream electrical infrastructure — state regulators crack down, governor says move will save civilians ‘hundreds of millions of dollars’
- $1 billion of iPhone 18 Pro chips 'on the shelves awaiting packaging' due to DRAM shortages — memory shortages reportedly put a wrinkle in Apple's launch plans
- Nashville attempts to block controversial data center near zoo with eminent domain — city could force developer to sell the land for public use, rather than $700 million installation
- Samsung debuts three next-generation memory technologies for AI data centers — zHBM, zNAND-O, and BV-NAND all rely on advanced wafer bonding technologies
- New term, new laptop? Why the Dell XPS 13 is the smart choice for students
- PC gamer vibe-codes a safeguard against RTX 5090 power connector failures — monitors per-pin power draw, shuts down system if it exceeds 9.5A for more than 15 seconds
- Sandisk Optimus GX 7100M 2TB SSD review: The best 2230 drive you can buy for the Steam Deck
- Apple is taking OpenAI to court over alleged theft of trade secrets — ChatGPT maker suggests it doesn't want Cupertino's knowledge anyway
- Beelink SER10 Max Mini PC review: Gorgon Point comes ready to dual-boot Windows and Ubuntu
- $200 slashed off Gigabyte's 4th-Gen WOLED gaming monitor — 280Hz beast also packs a KVM and tactical gaming switch for just $399
- Save $1,400 on this RTX 5090 gaming PC from HP with 64GB DDR5 right now; RAM and GPU cost $5k alone — $5,599 sale price for top-spec Omen Max 45L rig with 24-core Intel CPU and 2TB of SSD storage
- VPN provider built a script to block Microsoft's hidden GDID tracking on Windows — Windscribe's "deGDID" erases existing identifiers and blocks new ones from being created
- Rogue OpenAI models behind 'unprecedented cybersecurity incident' teamed up to break out of their testing environment — multiple agents left each other messages for months, communicating undetected
- Kentucky family snubs $26 million offer to convert their farmland into an AI data center — 'they call us old stupid farmers, you know, but we’re not,' says landowner
- August 5
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- Microsoft wants the next-gen Xbox Helix to play every Xbox game ever made as it urges publishers to opt in — New report also claims Xbox 360 games coming to PC soon
- $4,429 order for a ROG Astral RTX 5090 cancelled by Nvidia due to a 'late' price increase, with Asus blamed — marketplace buyer refunded after immediate $500 increase, with top-spec GPU now almost 2.5x higher than MSRP
- China's CXMT targets 30% DRAM memory market share by 2030 with sixth mega-fab — future plans bottlenecked by access to advanced chipmaking tools
- Microsoft quietly purges 32GB of RAM recommendations from its website — company reels from the effects of the memory shortage as it released 8GB base models for Surface laptops this year
- Score all the essentials of a great gaming PC for only $983.98 — $155 savings nets 9800X3D, 1TB Samsung 9100 SSD, 16GB of DDR5 RAM, Asus B850 motherboard, and free MSI AIO
- US military GPS jamming exercise suspected of contributing to civilian plane crash in New Mexico — medevac flight lost signal before flying into a mountain, killing everyone onboard
- Elon Musk says SpaceX will exclusively use Nvidia GPUs 'because they are the best' — says optimized Vera Rubin NVL72 will be launched into space next year
- Huge $750 saving makes this Gigabyte OLED gaming laptop with an RTX 5070 Ti an absolute steal right now — just $1,999 for 1600p rig with 32GB DDR5, 1TB SSD, and a 24-core Intel CPU
- Frore claims its LiquidJet can drop Nvidia Rubin GPU temperatures by 10°C — can also boost performance by 15% as hyperscalers eye using delidded GPUs in production environments
- Montech TG3 Panoramic Mid-tower case review: a fantastic value, with four included RGB fans and panoramic views
- Best Buy has slashed $900 off this MacBook laden with memory — 14-inch M4 Pro with 48GB of memory and 2TB of storage now only $2,999
- Glorious Wireless InfinitePlay Gaming Headset Review
- Crazed modder turns NAS into a gaming PC with RTX 5060 hanging from the side, boosts frame rate by 828% — Frankenstein rig hides dedicated PSU in drive bay, breaks Time Spy world record for the onboard CPU
- August 4
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- AMD doubles data center revenue year over year, but gaming revenue plunged by 31% — CEO Lisa Su says prices have 'weighed on' consumer demand but is 'optimistic' about client market
- More GPU price hikes loom for Asia as Japanese distributor warns of new increases — CFD Sales signals 20% to 40% higher prices on Gigabyte graphics card orders starting this month
- US mulling ban on key Chinese networking tech in data center component crackdown — White House wants to impose restrictions in 2026, China says it will respond if necessary
- Texas slams on the brakes for 1,800 data centers, power grid requirements are five times higher than peak record demand — 474 gigawatts of power requests are now subject to new moratorium
- Kioxia and Sandisk demonstrate the world's highest-density 3D NAND flash — 332 active layers and up to 4,800 MT/s interface
- New HBF spec outlines tech that can give GPUs terabytes of extra memory — Sandisk and SK hynix unveil spec with up to 16-Hi NAND stacks, 3 TB/s bandwidth, UCIe
- PC cooling outfit Arctic reverses tariff-era price hikes after US government refund — lowers prices across lineup, including coolers and case fans
- Chinese chipmaking tool roadmaps examined — Beijing's nascent lithography tools target DUV production at five machines a year, and an EUV prototype with no chips
- At least 37 people arrested in 2026 so far for protesting against data centers, most for breaking 'petty rules' — most taken into custody acted peacefully
- Lenovo LOQ Essentials 15 Gen 11 Review: A good display meets a low-power RTX 5060
- ‘Apple is getting this wrong,’ says OpenAI — startup blasts iPhone maker over lawsuit alleging it stole confidential information through ex-Apple employees
- Chinese ship spotted lurking over Taiwan-US undersea cables — 'research vessel' seen loitering above the 8,000-mile Pacific Light Cable Network fiber-optic system
- Grab a new Secretlab sit-to-stand desk for $699 — Save $50 as the Magnus Evo receives its first-ever discount
- 16GB GPUs and 8-core CPUs officially become the most popular configs on Steam — Latest hardware survey shows modern gaming's growing hunger for more resources
- Three major PC makers now using Chinese memory to fight 'unprecedented memory shortage,' report claims — HP, Asus, and Acer using 'small amounts' of CXMT chips in limited number of notebooks for non-US market
- China cracks down on copycat chip designs with new regulations and penalties — new guidelines enforce originality and independent development
- This 144-piece toolkit is a must-buy for hobbyists and PC builders for under $40 — pocket a 20% saving on this screwdriver set with two drivers, 120 magnetic bits, and 22 repair tools for your projects
- August 3
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- New Micron lawsuit reignites fight over New York fab — complaint alleges 'forever chemicals' will flow into Oneida River
- In a troubling sign, Nvidia RTX 50 series prices jump up to 30% in South Korea — TSMC wafer hikes and $20 GDDR7 modules push RTX 5090 past $5,100
- AI companies are now racing to the bottom — crashing token prices and competitive models push companies to cut costs
- Drone flyover reveals rapid progress at Elon Musk’s new ATCF chip fab — Texas site prepares for all-in-one logic, memory, and packaging facility
- Lexar lists 32GB DDR5 memory with homegrown Chinese chips — 3,999 Yuan ($592) price undercuts hopes for cheaper CXMT-powered RAM
- Microsoft raises European Xbox prices by up to £200 — RAMpocalypse and component shortages force major console markups
- Asus ProArt PA32UCDMR 32-inch 4K professional OLED monitor review: Precision, speed, and flexibility
- Gaming on the 4GB Radeon RX 6500 XT and GTX 1650 Super in 2026 — upscaling makes low-end GPUs viable for esports and internet cafes
- AI enthusiast unlocks and mods BIOS with Claude Code — AI defeats RSA-2048 signature checks and unlocks 55 hidden settings
- Co-Packaged Optics (CPO) foundry roadmaps — breaking down TSMC, Intel, Samsung, and GlobalFoundries' approach to next-generation scale-up connectivity
- GPU prices keep surging in 2026 — Lack of sale discounts and rising VRAM costs keep current-gen prices sky-high
- Arm yourself with a Hall Effect controller for just $9 — GameSir's Tegenaria Lite PC controller is 50% off for a limited time
- World’s smallest GPU silicon passes real-world testing — 240,000-transistor TinyGPU v2.0 renders 3D graphics at up to 15 FPS while v3.0 prepares for 2026 release
- Hideo Kojima unveils a Death Stranding 2-themed wireless CD player — Limited edition device costs ~$160, comes with Bluetooth 5.3 & exclusive artwork
- Grab 32GB of Corsair DDR5 for an effective $230 right now in this 9950X3D combo deal — Newegg RAM bundle ships with 16-core AMD X3D chip alongside an MSI X870E board and a free 240mm cooler for $1,308
- Ten years later, the iconic GTX 1080 Ti still holds up in 1080p gaming, but not without showing its age — Redux testing highlights the wonders of 11GB VRAM & the woes of time
- August 2
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- Grab this 240 Hz QD-OLED gaming monitor at just $300 — Gigabyte's 27-inch GO27Q24A is now $150 off at Newegg
- Errant SpaceX rocket stage set to smash into the moon at 5,400 mph, seven times the speed of sound — NASA and South Korean orbiters prepare to track 3-ton TNT impact
- Microsoft Paint used as a 'monitor' to run Doom at up to 35 fps, project released by firm's Azure CTO — runs actual Doom engine and loads real shareware DOOM1.WAD
- Iran suspected of conducting cyberattacks on US water suppliers in 45 municipalities — small towns mostly targeted, with utilities switching to manual control
- Commemorative golden Doom floppy disks go up for pre-order — pair of limited edition dummy ‘imitation gold plating’ disks and a box are $30 at GameStop
- AMD's upcoming Zen 6 processors could fix microstutters and improve 1% lows in games — Next-gen CPUs tipped to feature per-core optimizations for thermal and power budgets
- First open-source firmware for AM5 officially launches — Dasharo v0.9.0 brings Coreboot and openSIL to Zen 4 APUs on MSI B850
- SpaceXAI says it will remove all 69 of its unpermitted turbine power generators, but expects process to take a year — trailer-mounted generators to be replaced by 1.2GW power plant
- RTX 5060 Ti survives car crash after being bent in half — short PCB saves the day, single memory chip resolder restore full performance
- Gem Mint signed 1983 Steve Jobs business card opens at $70,000 — second signed card from that era after $180,000 record sale
- Prolific Team Fortress 2 collector is selling his in-game case arsenal for an estimated $100,000 — 1.7 million items collected over 10 years are enough to fund a house purchase
- August 1
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- Dell founder shows how a $100 billion empire started 42 years ago — CEO says ‘This one page changed my life’
- Score the ultimate AMD AM4 starter pack with a six-core CPU and 16GB RAM for only $280 — kickstart your next PC build with $138 in savings
- Microsoft vows to make Windows 11 fly on 8GB RAM amid memory shortage — optimizations to reduce OS memory footprint have begun
- Snag a premium SteamOS gaming handheld at pre-shortage prices — unreal discount brings the Legion Go S to just 4% of its original MSRP
- Anthropic's Claude hacked three real-life companies during security capabilities test — test environment with internet access and unwitting targets' lax cybersecurity practices led to bots running rampant
- 'Nozzlegate' erupts as Prusa CORE One 3D printer kits arrive with soft steel nozzles — Bondtech admits machining flaws with no quick fix (Updated)
- Sony doubles down on axing physical game discs — CFO reiterates 'we’re going to cautiously move this forward'
- 97 untouched Duck Hunt and Super Mario Bros. cartridges worth thousands discovered in retro shop storage room — never-before-seen version of popular NES games include five perfect 10 PSA items
- Lost one-of-a-kind Nintendo DS cartridge hits eBay for $9,100 — PokePark Fishing Contest designed to delete itself after 12 hours, game so rare it was only distributed to theme park attendees in 2005