Zak Killian
Opinions and content posted by HotHardware contributors are their own.
Recent posts
You may recall that earlier this year your author here was quite excited about the launch of Monster Hunter Wilds. That enthusiasm, like much of the community's, was somewhat muted after we actually put a few dozen hours into the game. It's not that the game is bad; rather, Monster Hunter Wilds is a considerable...
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The concept of a full hard drive might become a thing of the past sooner than you think. In a massive leap forward for data storage, scientists have developed a new type of molecular magnet that could pave the way for hard drives with a full 100 times the capacity of today's 24TB behemoths. This breakthrough doesn't...
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If you read that headline and got excited while thinking we were seeing the return of LucidLogix and its "Hydra" or "Virtu" technology, then I'm sorry to say this isn't nearly that cool. It is pretty funny, though: a Redditor purchased a new ASUS TUF Radeon RX 9070 XT 16GB card and found that while it had the correct...
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HP Omen Max 16 RTX 5090 Gaming Laptop: Starting at $2599, $4639 as tested HP's fastest-ever gaming laptop impresses with sharp looks, a superior display, and bestial gaming performance. Killer Gaming Performance Surprisingly Compact For This Speed Awesome OLED HDR Contrast & Response Sturdy Solid Chassis & High Build Quality Nearly...
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If you're reading this site, chances are high that you're familiar with the saga of melting power connectors on modern high-end NVIDIA GPUs. We've already written very extensively about this problem, but what if you could entirely avoid it along with the annoyance of having to plug in a power cable to your GPU? That's...
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SEGA's fiscal year 25 ended at the end of March of this calendar year, and the long-lived game publisher posted up its financial results in May. While looking over them, ResetEra forum user "--R" noticed that one of the documents, on a page redacted with a large grey box, contained sales information for a selection of...
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It's been about two weeks since the Nintendo Switch 2 went on sale, and if you're someone who specifically enjoys Nintendo games, you've already got one. Though there are plenty of other game console options out there, there's likely a huge swath of people who might wonder if they should pick up Nintendo's latest...
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Before we get into this news, let's talk about HDMI 2.2, since we didn't actually cover its launch. HDMI 2.2 was indeed unveiled at CES, just as was rumored in December, and it brings along two major new features: the HDMI Latency Indication Protocol, and support for up to 96 Gbps of display stream bandwidth...
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At this year's VLSI Symposium in Kyoto, Intel offered a closer look at what to expect from its next-gen 18A manufacturing node. The biggest takeaway is that Panther Lake, the follow-up to last year's Lunar Lake, is shaping up to be a serious leap in performance and efficiency for mobile chips, and Intel could actually...
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There has been a major emphasis from hardware vendors lately, especially NVIDIA, on the technique of interpolation, better known as frame generation. Whether using AI as in NVIDIA and Intel's methods, or less complex frame interpolation as in AMD's FSR 3, the ultimate result is the same: "generated" frames that are...
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AMD's RDNA 4-based Radeon RX 9000 series graphics cards are a major step up from the RDNA 3-based Radeon RX 7000 series across multiple key metrics, but arguably the most notable is the added support for the company's FSR4 upscaling. FidelityFX Super Resolution 4 represents a paradigm shift in AMD's image upscaling...
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We're welding together a few different Nova Lake rumors in this coverage. Keep in mind that everything here is totally unsubstantiated rumor, so keep the salt shaker handy, but they do come from sources that have been reliable in the past, which is why we're reporting on them. Here's the skinny: Intel's...
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For high-end gaming PCs, many users will immediately flock to AMD's CPUs with 3D V-Cache, but for an entry-level machine, you can often do better for the money with prior-gen Intel hardware. A good example is the ten-core Core i5-12600K at $149, which gives you very similar performance to a Ryzen 5 7600X in games, yet...
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X3D versions of AMD's Zen 6 are still at least a full year away, and while Intel's Panther Lake mobile chips look compelling for later this year, the company's Nova Lake next-generation desktop CPUs won't be until the middle of next year—and they may not be the most compelling choice for gamers if the Core Ultra 200...
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The Nintendo Switch used regular old MicroSD cards for storage expansion. This was possible because it was a slower machine, and there are plenty of MicroSD cards out there (particularly those with "A2" rating) which could satisfy the Switch software's I/O needs. The Switch 2 is faster, and needs faster storage, so...
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A newly disclosed Secure Boot vulnerability is putting a large number of PCs at risk of bootkit attacks, with security researchers urging immediate patching. The flaw, tracked as CVE-2025-3052, was uncovered by Binarly Research and involves a signed UEFI module that allows attackers to bypass or disable Secure Boot...
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If you read that headline and thought "Who, now?" then you're probably not a PC enthusiast or under the age of 30. If you instead thought "That's a name I haven't heard," then you clearly don't work in the medical imaging or digital signage industries. Matrox might not be a direct competitor with AMD or NVIDIA...
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Back in January of last year, Ayaneo formally unveiled its Flip series of gaming handhelds, composed of two models: the Flip DS and Flip KB. Both models had 7-inch flip-up screens, but the Flip KB had a full QWERTY keyboard underneath, while the Flip DS had a second screen, making it perfect for emulating classic...
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Way back when VIA introduced the Mini-ITX standard in 2001, it was initially aimed at low-power systems and highly-integrated machines. VIA's designers probably never imagined a future where you could slap a 150-watt 16-core CPU and a 575W 32GB GPU into a Mini-ITX machine. That's exactly the use case for something...
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Summer Games Fest 2025 was last night, and North American game industry hype man Geoff Keighley was on the scene to promote over fifty different games from a wide variety of publishers and developers. Actually, there were even more games than this in the "Day of the Devs" show that proceeded immediately afterward. We...
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A new variant of the BADBOX malware campaign has taken root in over a million Android-based devices worldwide, and if you’ve picked up a cheap smart TV box or projector off Amazon or AliExpress lately, you might be part of the problem. BADBOX 2.0 is a sprawling botnet targeting Android Open Source Project (AOSP)...
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At Computex 2025, veteran overclocker Pieter-Jan "Skatterbencher" Plaisier set a new world record for graphics processor frequency by pushing Intel's upcoming Core Ultra 9 285K to its absolute limit—specifically, the simply-named "Intel Graphics" integrated GPU, which hit an eye-watering 4250 MHz. While there's no...
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