The DLSS-NR project on AMD by Daniel Blanco was first released on September 3, 2026, bringing DLSS 5 Neural Rendering to Radeon GPUs; in the latest 0.8.0 update, however, it makes all the main DLSS features available, featuring DLSS SR, Frame Generation, Ray Regeneration, and the newest DLSS NR model, along with more performance improvements.

While AMD has equivalents for most DLSS features like FSR upscaling, frame generation, ray regeneration, and anti-lag, it’s not as commonly supported by most games compared to Nvidia’s offerings. Even if players could use the AMD equivalent features, Neural Rendering is one that AMD just doesn’t have an equivalent for yet, which is why mods like DLSS-NR on AMD were made.

Daniel Blanco wanted to fill the gap with NR in its initial release, but in the latest update, he added all the DLSS features: DLSS Ray Reconstruction, Super Resolution 4.5, Frame Generation, and the latest 310.9.16 improved Neural Rendering build that we covered recently with modders using it on unsupported games. Interestingly, the update notes say it includes FSR 4.1.1 upscaling; AMD GPUs already use FSR, but having FSR 4.1.1 specifically gives the mod a consistent version of FSR to work with, instead of having to be compatible with the various implementations of FSR in different scenarios.

The mod currently supports three generations of Radeon GPUs: RX 9000, 7000, and 6000 (RDNA4, 3, and 2, respectively), in any DirectX 12 game that uses FSR, DLSS, or XeSS. You can install the mod by downloading the NeuralHub mod loader, which provides a UI for you to install it into the games it detects. You then enable FSR, DLSS, or XeSS in the game, and the mod will insert itself into that upscaler pipeline, allowing it to inject any of the settings you configured for the game in the NeuralHub; it even provides an overlay to tweak the DLSS settings without leaving the game.

With a few improvements from the first version, the developer says the output quality is very similar to what DLSS produces on Nvidia GPUs natively, except for “some effects that may not be working 100%.” In the developer’s own testing, he found it to be playable at 90-100FPS at 1080p on an RX 9070 XT, while saying that he’s making improvements every day, planning to match the performance of a 5070Ti.

Real-world results are mixed, however, as Reddit users report showing no performance loss over native FSR, while others experience losing single-digit FPS to up to 25% lower FPS in various games. The developer still has to account for many factors since there are a myriad of PC configurations, but the results look promising as he bridges the gap between AMD and Nvidia GPU features — though it won’t work with anti-cheat, unfortunately.

Anycubic's Kobra X Multicolor 3D Printer is at the lowest price it's ever been since reaching retail availability. Prime members who head over to the Anycubic store on Amazon can now snag this well-reviewed device for just $299.99 for a limited time. The 17% or $60 off its MSRP makes the Kobra X a bargain, as it was highly praised as a contender in the entry-level four-color printer category by our reviewer earlier this year. It even won a coveted Tom's Hardware Editor's Choice award.

• Check out this Anycubic Kobra X 3D printer deal on Amazon

Though it may appear to be a Bambu Lab A1 clone at first glance, we praised the Kobra X for its multimaterial system, the ACE Gen 2, which is built directly into the toolhead. This is a great timesaver for prints with lots of color changes, and we calculated that on a four-color print with 776 color swaps, the Kobra X was a shocking 10 hours faster than the rival A1, despite similar printing speeds.

The Anycubic Kobra X Multicolor 3D printer was launched earlier this year, with consumer shipments starting in late March / early April. We reviewed it in February and gave it a great score for its innovative ACE Gen 2 system, fast filament swaps, and reliable 49-point full-auto leveling and vibration compensation. It also "worked flawlessly" throughout the testing period. The only stain on its glowing report card was due to the spool holder guide making loading awkward.

This 600mm/s 3D printer expands up to 19 colors if combined with four ACE 2 Pro units. It also packs a 720P camera with real-time monitoring and instant error alerts, plus AI-driven anti-foreign object and spaghetti detection, and reasonably quiet operation at ≤48 dB.

Now at its lowest price to the public since launch, at just $299.99, this Bambu Lab A1 rival is a compelling choice for 260 x 260 x 260mm (10.23 x 10.23 x 10.23-inch) build volume projects in PLA/PETG/TPU/PVA/PLA-CF/PETG-CF/ASA materials.

The U.S. Air Force has just successfully conducted an airborne test where an F-22 Raptor pilot directed an Anduril YFQ-44A Fury drone during simulated combat. According to The Defense Watch, the fighter pilot gave tactical commands to the autonomous wingman, which then interpreted them into a series of tasks and flight maneuvers to achieve the desired outcome.

The successful test is part of the USAF’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), which seeks to integrate drones into fighter squadrons. These uncrewed aircraft must be able to respond to the fighter pilot’s tactical commands and then operate autonomously, though. That’s because fighter pilots already have a heavy workload — flying their own aircraft, managing sensor data, threat assessment, and weapons release decisions — so requiring them to manually fly a drone is next to impossible. Command integration means that the F-22 Raptor pilot could assign the Fury drone a specific tactical task, like monitoring for and engaging enemy air defenses, while they focus on the primary mission, such as taking out enemy fighters.

This does not mean that the USAF can start deploying drones alongside fighter jets in frontline squadrons, though. Successful command integration is just the first of several hurdles that the program must go through before it can achieve operational status. The program needs to determine the limits of the drone’s tactical autonomy, safe flight control, and weapons authorization, all of which are separate functions that must be tested accordingly. The Air Force also needs to see how the drone performs with electronic interference, and how it could continuously operate if it cannot receive instructions due to interrupted communications. Aside from figuring out the drone’s capabilities and incorporating it into fighter doctrine, it must also be integrated into the USAF’s logistics and supply chain. This includes drone maintenance and service, weapons handling, deployment procedures, and forward airbase operations with limited infrastructure.

Even though the latest test is seemingly successful, the CCA still needs to go a long way before it can start operational deployment. Nevertheless, the USAF is intent on pushing the project forward, as it sees autonomous drones as a force multiplier for crewed aircraft, allowing a single pilot to command multiple jets to achieve missions at a lower cost compared to using all-crewed aircraft. Other nations, like Sweden and China, are also experimenting with a similar concept of having a single operator take command of multiple drones, but the most significant difference of the CCA is that it focuses on air power instead of ground-based operations.

You don’t need the latest and greatest PC hardware to have fun or even break overclocking world records. OC expert Luumi has demonstrated this very capably by achieving a new HWBot world record using an ancient Intel Core i5 4670K, a modest amount of DDR3, and (inevitably) a flask or two of LN2. Overclocker Luumi recently knocked the four-cores Intel Core i5 4670K Cinebench R11.5 record holder off their perch after 12 years, achieving a multicore score of 10.8 cb.

The HWBot-crowned system is built around Haswell-era Intel silicon, the Core i5 4670K to be precise. This is an unlocked 4C/4T CPU with a stock base/boost of 3.4 / 3.8 GHz, 84W TDP, with a 6MB cache and HD 4600 graphics, built on Intel’s 22nm process. You had to buy an i7 chip back in this era to get 4C/8T.

Luumi’s system hosted the CPU on an ASRock Z97 OC Formula motherboard, which was fitted with 4GB of DDR3 RAM from XPG, and fed ample power via a Corsair AXi 1600. To achieve the Cinebench R11.5 benchmark record liquid nitrogen was used to cool the 4670K, and the validation files show the CPU ran at a blistering 6,301.00 MHz.

Again, we’ll comment that this isn’t a world record Cinebench R11.5 score for any / all quad-core processors. It's just in the Core i5 4670K category. Nevertheless, it is great to see retro hardware achievements like this, 12 years later. As one other HWBot community member commented, it is brilliant to see an OC result on the HWBot homepage that involves neither an X3D CPU or RTX 5090 GPU. You don’t need the latest, greatest, most expensive, nor unobtainuim components to get featured on the online home of competitive overclocking.

Out of curiosity I decided to give ye olde Cinebench R11.5 a spin on the laptop I’m currently working on. With its 12C/24T CPU, it trounced the old-but-record-breaking Haswell desktop, of course. Even though the laptop is running in cool/quiet mode I achieved 4x the 4670K score.

Mostly I was happy that this older version of Cinebench still works on modern hardware and Windows 11 without any fuss. Some apps which were popular benchmarking staples, like 3DMark tests from DX10 and earlier eras, have issues on modern computers making the results you can wheedle out of them invalid for HWBot rankings. Luumi used Windows 7 64-bit Pro for their Haswell CPU Cinebench R11.5 testing.

In the evolution of gaming monitors, there is nothing more significant than the advent of G-Sync and FreeSync (AKA, Adaptive-Sync or VRR). By syncing the video card output and monitor refresh rate in real time, all frame tearing and stuttering are eliminated. But there is one thing this tech cannot fix – motion blur.

LCD panels continuously display each frame until the next one arrives. This inevitably results in blur unless frame rates are very high. At least 500Hz is needed to truly call LCD motion resolution perfect. How to combat this? Well, you can buy one of the best OLED gaming monitors, which has a much faster panel response. You could employ overdrive, where the LCD panel anticipates the next frame. It’s also known as overshoot. If done precisely, that eliminates nearly all blur. Or you can insert a black frame by strobing the backlight. But this reduces light output.

Earlier this year, I reviewed my first G-Sync Pulsar display, the Acer XB273U F5. G-Sync Pulsar syncs the backlight’s LED array with the frame rate in real time. It’s a form of strobing but without the brightness penalty. And it’s the only way an LCD can achieve perfect motion resolution, i.e., when moving objects are as clear as stationary ones.

Thought of another way: an OLED pixel, or an LED, can flash 20,000 times per second. The TFT layer of an LCD panel is fast if it can flash 500 times per second.

Today, I’m reviewing another G-Sync Pulsar monitor, Asus’ ROG Strix XB27AQNGV. It’s a 27-inch QHD IPS panel with 360 Hz, HDR, and wide gamut color. Let’s take a look.

Asus ROG Strix XG27AQGNV Specs

As a ROG Strix display, the XB27AQNGV is a little less expensive than the ROG Swift line and gives up only a few minor features. Anything pertaining to game performance is included. The max refresh rate is 360 Hz at QHD 2560x1440 resolution. The panel is IPS, or as Asus calls it “Ultra-Fast IPS”. And it is, as you’ll see in my Nvidia LDAT tests on the next page. G-Sync Pulsar is there with low frame rate compensation that eliminates flicker when speeds drop. You also get a traditional overdrive with three presets and a user control with 400-step precision.

Color-wise, the XB27AQNGV can be considered wide gamut, but it doesn’t quite achieve full coverage of DCI-P3. I’ve termed it an sRGB+ display because it covers around 120% of sRGB with bonus color across the board. For tweakers who like to calibrate, there is a super cool gamma control that lets you move the luminance curve in 0.01 increments rather than the usual five or six presets that differ by 0.2. You can also dial in the color temperature with precise RGB sliders. And the brightness adjuster is graduated in nits for fine control.

For extras, the XB27AQNGV has a full suite of GamePlus options with aiming points, frame counters, timer, stopwatch, and alignment marks. And there are six picture modes including sRGB and G-Sync Esports. LED lighting comes with a backlit ROG logo and the full set of Aura RGB and Sync options. A handy joystick and four control keys provide access to everything, or you can use the top-mounted ambient light sensor for automatic control of color and brightness.

The XB27AQNGV is selling for $500 at this writing, which is closer to premium than most 27-inch QHD screens. But it’s one of only four monitors that offer G-Sync Pulsar, and if you don’t want to buy an OLED, it’s the only LCD variant that is as smooth and responsive.

Assembly and Accessories

The XB27AQNGV ships in a plain brown carton with the words “For Those Who Dare” stenciled on the side. Dare to what? I cannot say. But I dared to open it and found the monitor packed in crumbly foam (hate that stuff). The upright is already attached, so all that needs doing is to attach the base with a captive bolt. To expose the inputs, remove the snap-on plastic cover. The cables and external power supply come in a zippered pouch and include DisplayPort and USB.

Product 360

The XB27AQNGV doesn’t show much from the front besides the screen. The bezel is 8mm thin with a flush mount and a wider trim strip across the bottom adorned with a small ROG logo. The base is a solid metal plate with a small and stable footprint. The upright includes a cable hole to keep wires tidy. Ergonomics include 5/20 degrees tilt, 45 degrees swivel, a 90-degree portrait mode, and 4.25 inches of height range. Movements are very stiff with no hint of play. The XB27AQNGV will stay put even when you’re shaking things up on the virtual battlefield. On top of the stand is a quarter-inch threaded socket for things like webcams and other peripherals. Also on top is the ambient light sensor, which can automatically adjust brightness and color temperature.

Around the back right is the OSD joystick and three control keys plus a power toggle. Two of the keys can be programmed by the user. The large ROG logo is backlit with a glowing border around a reflective material. You can see in the photo that the panel’s back is smoothly tapered left to right and top to bottom.

The input panel is hidden under a cover with a small hole to let the cables out. It’s a little tricky to plug in large connectors because the ports are very recessed. I/O options include a DisplayPort 1.4 with Display Stream Compression (DSC), two HDMI 2.1 ports, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and a large array of USB ports. There’s a USB-B upstream and three USB-A downstream.

OSD Features

Press the XB27AQNGV’s joystick and a large OSD appears. You can move it to a corner if you like. It’s divided into eight sections.

First up is the G-Sync Processor and Pulsar options. You can toggle the feature off if you prefer overdrive. Remember that there is no ELMB here because it’s part of the Pulsar technology. This menu also has toggles for adaptive brightness and color, which are controlled by the top-mounted sensor. The Gaming menu continues with a three-level overdrive which becomes active when you turn off Pulsar. You can also adjust the amount of overshoot with a 400-step slider. The suite of GamePlus options includes a frame counter, aiming points, timer, stopwatch, and display alignment marks. GameVisual is the six picture modes. The default and best option there is Racing. You can engage an sRGB mode as well.

The Image menu has the luminance controls along with a redundant toggle for adaptive brightness. The color space options are sRGB and wide gamut, which is around 120% of sRGB. In the Color menu are preset color temps plus a very precise set of RGB sliders. The gamma control is something that I hope to see imitated by others because it is the most useful way to achieve precise gamma. Typically, there are five or six presets that are 0.2 apart, making gamma adjustments very coarse. You can almost never land right on 2.2 that way. The XG27AQNGV has a user gamma slider that moves in 0.01 increments. And that’s a good thing because the 2.2 preset is lighter than 2.2. You can read more about this on page four.

Two of the control keys can be set to one of seven different functions for easy access to picture modes, GamePlus, and others. The Lighting Effect menu has options for Aura Sync, where the LEDs change along with screen content. Or you can choose an effect and color using Aura RGB. This pertains to the backlit ROG logo in the back.

Asus ROG Strix XG27AQNGV Calibration Settings

The XG27AQNGV comes out of the box with decent grayscale tracking, but its default gamma is too light. With a few tweaks to the RGB sliders and changes to the user gamma (coolest thing ever!), I achieved near-perfection. The color gamut is a bit larger than sRGB but smaller than DCI-P3. You can choose between gamuts in the Display Color Space sub-menu. I recommend choosing this rather than the preset sRGB mode because that way, you can still calibrate. I also reduced contrast to solve a clipping issue that affected HDR luminance tracking. You can see the two recommended settings in the table below.

Gaming and Hands-on

Gameplay on the XG27AQNGV is instantly addictive. Though it doesn’t have the deep contrast and vivid color of an OLED, its motion quality and responsiveness are indistinguishable from that premium technology. G-Sync Pulsar is truly a game changer for LCDs.

Playing Doom Eternal in HDR mode, I noted that my contrast settings did not carry over from SDR, so I had to change the slider whenever I switched. And since there’s no dynamic dimming, there was no more contrast or depth to the image. But it was a little more colorful thanks to the intentional oversaturation Asus included. You can read more about that on page five.

The image was plenty sharp enough, but what struck me the most was how much the XG27AQNGV felt like an OLED. Its smoothness and responsiveness are the same as any premium display. Though I would buy an OLED for myself, I realize that some users prefer LCD. If you want OLED performance in an LCD, a G-Sync Pulsar monitor is the best way to achieve that. It’s better than a 500 Hz LCD, or a 540 Hz LCD for that matter. There is no motion blur whatsoever, and input lag is super low.

Since I had no problem running over 300fps, there was no need for the low-speed compensation option. But it’s nice to know it’s there for systems that don’t have a GeForce RTX 4090 video card. I never needed the overdrive, and with Pulsar engaged, it was grayed out. When I tried it out, it worked well and reduced blur but didn’t eliminate it. The 400-step control was super cool though.

The XG27AQNGV is a solid choice for productivity with 109ppi pixel density and a sharp, colorful image. If you’re used to a Quantum Dot screen with its jumbo gamut, you’ll notice a little less color here, but the difference isn’t huge. It’s a worthwhile sacrifice to make for the incredible gaming performance on offer.

I spent time browsing the web and using Photoshop, and for that, the XG27AQNGV functioned as well as any bread-and-butter display. 27 inches is a good compromise between footprint and screen real estate, and the image is clean and detailed. I noted the extra USB ports, which many monitors don’t have. And though there were no internal speakers, I could plug into the 3.5mm jack when I wanted game sound. The stand is a quality piece, and it keeps everything solid and secure despite its small base. The inputs were a bit fiddly because they’re very recessed and hard to manage with cables that have large connectors.

Takeaway: The XG27AQNGV is an excellent all-around display and a superlative gaming monitor. G-Sync Pulsar delivers the same smooth and responsive performance as a premium OLED. It was very bright for both SDR and HDR, but I missed a dynamic dimming option for greater contrast. I noted slightly less color saturation than other speedy screens, but the XG27AQNGV is still more colorful than a typical sRGB monitor.

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To compare the XG27AQNGV’s performance, I pulled data from my other G-Sync Pulsar monitor review of the Acer XB273U F5. We also have the XV273U F5 540 Hz display. The other screens include KTC’s M27T6S and H27E6 plus HP’s Omen 27qs G2.

Pixel Response and Input Lag

Click here to read up on our pixel response and input lag testing procedures.

In the response chart, I only showed the screens tested with Nvidia’s LDAT sensor. The XG27AQNGV is now the fastest LCD I’ve ever tested, with a super quick 1.79ms draw time for the one-inch white square. It’s quicker than Acer’s Pulsar display and much quicker than typical LCD panels.

In the lag test, the XG27AQNGV is on par with both Acers. It easily hangs with a 540 Hz panel, no small achievement. The KTCs and the HP are a bit slower but still fast enough to provide perceptually instant response to control inputs.

Test Takeaway: The XG27AQNGV with G-Sync Pulsar engaged is the fastest and smoothest LCD panel I have tested to date. Visually, its motion resolution is indistinguishable from a 240 Hz OLED, and that is a major statement. Only a few other monitors have less input lag, which makes the XG27AQNGV a top contender for pro-level competition.

Viewing Angles

The XG27AQNGV does reasonably well in my viewing angle tests for an LCD panel. You can see a red tint in both the horizontal and vertical planes. But at 45 degrees to the side, there is no loss of gamma or brightness.

Screen Uniformity

To learn how we measure screen uniformity, click here.

The XG27AQNGV almost achieves visual perfection in the uniformity test, but my sample had a slight hotspot in the lower right. It wasn’t obvious in content, but I could see it in the black field test pattern. Other colors and brightness levels were free of artifacts. This is solid performance.

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To read about our monitor tests in-depth, please check out Display Testing Explained: How We Test PC Monitors. We cover brightness and contrast testing on page two.

Uncalibrated – Maximum Backlight Level

The XG27AQNGV is a very bright monitor with a little more SDR output than its nearest rival, the XB273U F5. 534 nits is searingly bright for an indoor setting but lends itself well to outdoor use or near a sunny window. With a black level of 0.4773, you can expect contrast to be a little over the IPS average at 1,119:1. There is no dynamic dimming available to increase this.

After Calibration to 200 nits

I lost a little contrast after calibrating because I had to reduce the contrast slider five clicks to solve a clipping issue. Though it’s now 973.1:1, gamma is more true, which improves depth and color saturation. ANSI contrast is at 826:1, which is lower than the competition but still near the IPS average.

Test Takeaway: The XG27AQNGV delivers contrast and black levels typical of the IPS panels I’ve tested. It is a little above average out of the box, but my calibration lowered the ratio a bit. There is no dynamic dimming, either field or zone, to increase contrast.

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The XG27AQNGV ships, like all Asus gaming monitors, in its Racing picture mode, AKA GameVisual. You can access all the calibration options, including the most awesome gamma control I’ve ever seen on a display.

Grayscale and Gamma Tracking

Our grayscale and gamma tests use Calman calibration software from Portrait Displays. We describe our grayscale and gamma tests in detail here.

The XG27AQNGV can be enjoyed without calibration, but the picture is a bit flat due to the light gamma. Grayscale has no visual errors, but with a few tweaks, it rises to reference level. The best part here is the gamma adjustment. In addition to the presets that are widely spaced, you get a user gamma slider that adjusts in 0.01 increments. I lowered the contrast slider a few clicks, then tweaked gamma until it averaged precisely 2.2. The trace became flatter as a result. This one control improves picture quality more than anything else.

To measure the sRGB mode, I selected sRGB from the Display Color Space menu rather than engaging the sRGB mode in GameVisual. This leaves the calibration controls available. I didn’t calibrate it for this test, but you can see that it performs similarly to the Racing mode’s default state.

Comparisons

The XG27AQNGV posts the best out-of-box grayscale score with a 2.05dE value. If gamma were as close to reference as that, I would say calibration isn’t necessary, but the light gamma needs addressing. With a few tweaks to the RGB sliders, I got the average grayscale error down to 0.55dE which is pro-level performance.

Gamma started out too light, but with Asus’ awesome adjuster, I put it right on 2.2 with a setting of 2.37. The range of values is tighter too, at 0.12 from lowest to highest. Of course, there is zero percent deviation. This control is something that all displays should have, monitors, TVs, and projectors alike. Over my twenty years of calibrating displays, I’ve never seen a control this useful and thoughtfully designed.

Color Gamut Accuracy

Our color gamut and volume testing use Portrait Displays’ Calman software. For details on our color gamut testing and volume calculations, click here.

The XG27AQNGV has excellent color accuracy both before and after calibration. The gamut is bigger than sRGB with around 120% coverage. There is bonus color in all parts of the triangle. The tweaks I made to grayscale and gamma improve color saturation and hue accuracy. This is excellent performance.

The sRGB mode is a tad undersaturated at the inner points of the gamut, but the 100% points are on target. This chart shows the XG27AQNGV’s uncalibrated state. If you choose sRGB from the Display Color Space options, you can tweak the RGB and gamma sliders for better performance.

Comparisons

The XG27AQNGV doesn’t post the lowest color numbers, but it’s right in the mix with the other screens. 1.97dE is well below the point where errors can be seen by the naked eye.

The only weakness here is color volume. Though the XG27AQNGV covers 120% of sRGB, that equates to 88.5% of DCI-P3. Though it is a tad more colorful than the G-Sync Pulsar XB273U F5, it is less colorful than the KTCs with their Quantum Dot screens. The sRGB option covers a near-ideal 98.38%.

Test Takeaway: The XG27AQNGV is reasonably accurate out of the box and does not require calibration. But with a few changes to the RGB and gamma sliders, it achieves reference quality. The gamma slider is something I have not seen before, and it is a game changer for sure. By providing precise 0.01-click control, it lets you achieve perfect luminance tracking, which has a positive impact on color saturation and picture depth.

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Our HDR benchmarking uses Portrait Displays’ Calman software. To learn about our HDR testing, see our breakdown of how we test PC monitors.

The XG27AQNGV improves upon other Asus HDR monitors by providing just a single picture mode for HDR10 content. It allows adjustments to contrast, which, as you’ll soon see, is a good thing.

HDR Brightness and Contrast

The XG27AQNGV offers the same peak brightness for HDR content as for SDR, around 524 nits. There is no dynamic dimming available, so contrast is the same as SDR, 1,046.9:1 in this case. The top-finishing KTC uses a zone-dimming Mini LED to achieve 44,331.6:1 contrast.

Grayscale, EOTF and Color

The XG27AQNGV has visually perfect HDR grayscale tracking with all errors below 3dE and most below 1dE. It doesn’t get better than that. I’m showing two charts here to demonstrate the effectiveness of the contrast slider, which remains adjustable. The default chart shows the curve to be a bit dark, which makes detail a little less crisp. By raising contrast, you can move the curve closer to the reference. I noted that the tone-map transition point did not change, which is a good thing. The only rub is that you must change the contrast setting whenever you switch between SDR and HDR.

The XG27AQNGV’s color test shows slight oversaturation of the inner points, which is what most HDR monitors do to increase impact. Tracking is linear, so there is no loss of detail. In the DCI-P3 test, color runs out at 90% red and 80% green, but blue is fully covered. In the BT.2020 test, color runs out at 80% red, 65% green, and 95% blue.

Test Takeaway: The XG27AQNGV is accurate to the HDR10 standard and includes adjustable contrast so you can dial in the luminance tracking precisely. It also has visually perfect grayscale tracking. Two weaknesses are its smaller color volume, which covers 88% of DCI-P3, and its lack of dynamic dimming, which means HDR has the same contrast performance as SDR.

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When G-Sync Pulsar first appeared at the beginning of 2026, I expected there to be many monitors coming out with this new tech. It delivers OLED-level smoothness and responsiveness to the LCD genre with no downside. But there have been no new additions to the four initial offerings from Asus, Acer, AOC, and MSI. And I have been trying to get samples from AOC and MSI with no luck so far.

I could speculate about price since the Asus ROG Strix XG27AQNGV sits right in the middle of the range of 27-inch QHD 240 Hz OLEDs currently available. But aside from the OLED’s contrast and color volume advantage, a G-Sync Pulsar monitor is visually identical. It games the same.

Once I spent some time playing games, I noted a few things. The XG27AQNGV is exactly like an OLED in feel. Motion resolution is perfect in that moving objects and camera pans are just as sharp as static images. Input lag is super low, to the point where I experienced instant response to every control input. Color is bright and saturated, but a tad less vivid than a typical OLED. And nothing can match OLED’s black levels. The XG27AQNGV would benefit from a dynamic dimming option for HDR.

My favorite part, though, was its gamma control. This parameter has a huge impact on image quality, and in every other monitor I’ve reviewed, you get five or six presets that are far apart. It’s often impossible to land right on 2.2. The XG27AQNGV lets the user tweak gamma in 0.01 increments. That’s a huge improvement because you can land exactly on 2.2. And that has positive effects on perceived contrast and color saturation. Also in the fine control department is the 400-step overdrive. That’s something I’ve only seen on a few screens.

If you want the smoothest possible gaming but don’t want an OLED, the Asus ROG Strix XG27AQNGV delivers the same feel and responsiveness for around the same price. With unprecedented adjustability, it will satisfy any gamer from casual to hardcore. G-Sync Pulsar is a game-changing technology that you should definitely check out.

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A Brazilian electronics and IT distributor, Oderço, has gone on Instagram after failing to find answers about a missing shipment of RTX 5090 GPUs worth around $470,000 or R$2,500,000. According to its Instagram post [machine translated], the company has never faced an experience like this in its 38-year history. It was expecting two pallets of Zotac RTX 5090 GPUs at Guarulhos International Airport in São Paulo, which supposedly arrived there but then disappeared. The company has not provided any details, like the shipment’s arrival date or any tracking numbers, but claims that there hasn’t been any official response regarding its shipment inquiries. Because of this, the company went on the social media platform pleading for answers.

RTX 5090s are currently in short supply across the world, with the top-tier card disappearing from online retailers in the middle of September. There have been rumors that Nvidia has ceased production of the GPU to focus on more expensive professional AI cards, although it insists otherwise. Still, it doesn’t help that the flagship GPU is marked “not carried” in Micro Center’s online retail store, making it insanely difficult to find one of the best gaming GPUs you can buy today.

We don’t have any idea how many GPUs are missing, as the distributor only mentioned two pallets’ worth of RTX 5090s. A Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 5090, which goes for around $8,000 on Amazon presently, is listed at R$33,999.99 on a Brazilian online retailer Promotech. This means that the company is missing 63 GPUs at the minimum, although this is likely going to be so much more considering that the $R2,500,000 amount the company said is its acquisition cost, not the retail price that it’s expected to go for.

We’ve seen various scams where retail customers lose their GPU shipments on the way to their home or delivery address, as well as unscrupulous buyers stripping off the GPU core and memory modules from an RTX 5090 and then shipping it back to the seller. This also isn’t the first instance that a shipment of high-value graphics cards has been stolen — one brazen crew has even rammed security escorts to hijack an AI hardware shipment, while another group stole two trailers marked with the Nvidia logo, only to find that it contained sand.

A new 3D web game where you live "A Day in the Life of a Semiconductor Wafer Factory Worker" has gone viral in Taiwan, where it was developed. Available in Chinese, English, and Japanese, Fab24hr is a work simulator where you play one of several semiconductor engineer roles in a blocky isometric 3D factory. Though the graphics might look basic, Taiwan’s TVBS news says that the game is so realistic that it resonates with fab workers but not always in a good way – some have likened it to "a horror game" or "prison" [machine translation].

If you head over to the Fab24hr site, the game UI loads pretty quickly and you are asked to input a character name and ‘Clock in.’ Then two game modes are presented. You can play the main story, dubbed ‘The life of a chip’ where you character works through 12 chapters shepherding a hearing-aid chip from the R&D line into the hands of an end user. In this mode your blocky fab worker character will simulate dealing with equipment failures, process anomalies, and production progress emergencies. You might also have to file reports about operational errors. Apparently there are three endings to this 12-chapter game, depending on your progress and decisions.

Another game mode is called ‘A day in the fab.’ Here you pick a factory location and role. For example, you can choose to be a Process Engineer. Your day started with the ETCH-03 semiconductor tool breaking, and “everyone is waiting for you to say what time it will be fixed.” Though this might sound like you’ve been thrown in at the deep end, if you pay attention to the handover from the previous shift, there should be clues to get you by. Technical terms are explained in the game so even those with no semiconductor industry experience should be able to ‘enjoy’ this escapade.

I briefly tested the game in my browser, where it ran without issues. It didn’t take long to understand why some Taiwanese fab veterans felt this simulator was kind of stressful, or even “super scary.” It isn’t the kind of free-time escapism I’m looking for.

A new version of DLSS 5 on NBA 2K27 was just released, and modders have already extracted it and are running it on unsupported games. Modders are comparing performance between the older and newer Neural Rendering (NR) model and found it up to 40% faster than the previous one.

While many are still experimenting with leaked and first-release builds, Renan Maniero has already extracted the new 310.9.16.0 DLSS NR build, letting other modders use it in unsupported games and compare performance. Gaming Optimized on X compared the new NR model to the old one and found massive improvements of up to 90% in The Witcher 3 running DLSS 5 natively.

Running a full NR model to modify your game's image is resource-intensive, just as LLMs require a lot of RAM; DLSS NR does, too. To improve performance, Nvidia made the AI model 24% smaller, using 20% less VRAM at 4K, and, according to Nvidia, processes its neural rendering workload up to 2x faster.

Typically, improving an AI model means increasing its parameters and size—in other words, giving it a bigger brain. However, because consumer GPUs have limited, non-upgradable VRAM, Nvidia can't improve by adding a bigger model; instead, the AI needs to become more efficient while reducing resource usage.

These comparisons were much easier than switching back and forth between updates, since the latest version still includes the older model as a preset. The new DLL has two Neural Rendering presets: Preset A is the old model, and Preset B is the newer model.

As with many other DLSS 5 experiments like those Valery Kryzhanovsky does, DLSS is injected into the graphics pipeline using RenoDX or OptiScaler, both of which let you tweak the DLL settings to get different results. To run DLSS NR on older RTX GPUs, the modding community also modified the runtime to support RTX 20-series GPUs, as the OptiScaler GitHub README notes.

Nvidia plans to release DLSS 5 to RTX 40-series GPUs, but there are no reports of it officially coming to RTX 30- or RTX 20-series cards; the modding community seems to have done it anyway.

MIT engineers have built a soft, wearable shape-sensing sheet with self-tracking movement that could be useful for controlling games, virtual reality, and physical therapy applications, reports MIT News. The technology, which leverages optical fibers to track the sheet’s own 3D shape, keeps its error below half a centimeter in lab tests. Qifan Yu, an MIT mechanical engineering graduate student on the team, put rigid-sensor designs at around 1 to 2 cm and called the result “at least on par with existing technologies.” The sheet also still works even when damaged, but the fibers remain thicker than ideal for garments.

The news follows a paper, “Toward fully soft and multifunctional shape sensing via optical waveguide arrays,” recently published in Advanced Intelligent Systems. It details that the waveguides respond to bending in both directions, “bi-directional,” with the array laid out to discern shapes. Combined fiber responses mean fewer sensing elements are needed, and that can also improve damage resilience. The fibers respond to pressure, so they can sense external force, such as a press on the forearm in a physical therapy demo.

Normally, a plain fiber, a transparent core inside a light-trapping cladding, will have less light reach the far end when bent; measuring the light output helps measure the bend. MIT’s changes here include using a flexible rubber core instead of glass, with black-dyed cladding. One side is roughened intentionally so that bending the fiber toward that side, or toward the opposite side, causes different amounts of light to be lost. This enables directional sensing.

Many such fibers are embedded in a silicone sheet, with an LED at one end of each fiber and a light sensor at the other. The sensing surface is fully soft, but the sheet doesn’t stretch as a whole. An external circuit board handles the data collection with an algorithm translating it into a full sheet and 3D shape. The 14 waveguides are each 160 mm long in two layers of seven, zig-zagged within a 16 x 16 x 0.5 cm silicone sheet. The electronics remain at the edge, including analog-to-digital converters that feed microcontrollers over I2C. The reconstruction runs in MATLAB about three times a second, a rate that includes sensor sampling, data logging, and plotting.

To pick the layout, the team first simulated sheets with different waveguide arrangements: it generated the light output each fiber would give for a known shape, ran those readings through the reconstruction algorithm to estimate a 3D shape, and compared the estimate with the known one. One zig-zag spacing pattern had the closest fit. In simulations, between 3 and 20 waveguides per layer were used at angles of 0 to 35 degrees on six target shapes, with 10% added noise, over 30 trials each. The researchers discovered that angling the waveguides improved accuracy more than adding additional ones.

Resilience was tested with a few fibers cut or disconnected, with the rest still able to reconstruct the overall shape. In simulation, the error stayed under 0.3 cm with up to three of the 14 waveguides disabled, and rose to about 1 cm or more from five on.

A real sheet was then built on the pattern findings and put to the test with diagonal folding. For accuracy, the sheet was laid over three 3D-printed molds of known shapes, with the metric being the root-mean-square distance between real and reconstructed surfaces: 0.37, 0.28, and 0.45 cm. The force sensing does not have a calibrated force reading to tell how hard, and this detection runs separately from the shape mode. Each wearable demo was done by one author on their own body, with a simpler scaling method for wrist and elbow angles, because stretching at those joints throws off the shape algorithm, with no comment on comfort.

Yu said the setup targets fully soft sensing surfaces, so it’s potentially safer around people. Kaitlyn Becker, an MIT assistant professor of mechanical engineering and co-author, said the team hopes to build tools that help physical therapists track and quantify a patient’s progress over time, comparing sessions more precisely. Outside of this, the tech could also be used in virtual reality to mimic motion or could be used for the teleoperation of robots, or even just soft robots.

As thinner fibers would have a wider applicability, the researchers plan to target a thinner sheet first. The 1 mm thick fibers of today could get as thin as tens of micrometers, thinner than a human hair. A higher fiber count could then make for smart garments. They also suggested future work could focus on a faster solver rather than the general-purpose one in MATLAB, more waveguide layers and narrower waveguides for better detail with thinner sheets, a separate sheet to gauge force and shape simultaneously, and stretchable electronics.

When the IETF decided to allow Unicode characters in domain names, many techies saw the move as commendable, but also fraught with danger, as hundreds of unique characters can look similar or identical across multiple alphabets. This can be used for typosquatting attacks, wherein bad actors create functioning websites with deliberately misspelled web addresses that look identical to the real URL, thus launching attacks against unsuspecting visitors who land on the site due to search results generated when the user mistypes an address. The Chromium browser has the most advanced ruleset for finding and preventing mischievous domains masquerading as legitimate ones, but even the best code has odd edge cases, as a blog post from Have I Been Squatted (HIBS) explains in great detail.

Using "аррӏө.com" as an example — which is in fact not identical to the real "apple.com" — the researchers show how specific combinations of characters can still evade multiple layers of protection, thanks to the particular circumstances surrounding the use of specific Cyrillic characters. This alphabet has lookalikes for many Latin letters. For example, а → a, е → e, о → o, р → p, and с → c. We forgive you if you can't spot the differences.

Trying to sneak the one homoglyph into the middle of standard Latin ones triggers Chromium's safeguards and makes the browser display the domain name in its Punycode format. For example, using the Cyrillic "а" with "pple.com" would show up as "xn--pple-43d.com". With few exceptions, domain names with non-Latin characters ending in .com only pass the check if they're all from the same alphabet.

Having said that, opting to try "аррӏе.com," using all Cyrillic lookalikes, would also go bust. Chromium keeps a list of 29 Cyrillic characters that routinely masquerade as their Latin counterparts, and composing a domain name using only characters from that list is a no-no.

So how does "аррӏө.com" pass? Allow us to illustrate with bigger text below. Note how the right-hand Cyrillic character is actually an oval with a line across it.

[e] ≠ [ө]

As you can surmise by now, the "ө" character is not in that special list of 29. While a more recent release of Chromium can and probably will add it, this reveals the difficulty of the problem: since there's no one-size-fits-all solution for detecting typo-squatting, even the best set of rules will sooner or later end up on the wrong side of a corner case.

It takes many watchful eyes to play Unicode Pokémon and catch'em' all, especially given the character set continually evolves and now counts nearly 173,000 entries — though only a subset of those are eligible to be used as domain names or TLDs in practice.

Chromium is reportedly the best browser at detecting domain lookalikes, as a 2020 study showed that it caught 64.1% of the attempts, with Firefox and Safari trailing behind. As a reminder, Chromium underpins the Chrome, Edge, and Brave browsers.

Besides many other rules and per-alphabet verifications, Chromium keeps a list of over 8,000 popular domains bound to be typo-squatted, and runs stronger checks against 836 of them. Domain registries, likewise, make reasonable efforts to prevent typo-squatting, like having strict rules about what characters can go into which TLDs, but that's not nearly enough to fully solve the problem.

All things considered, HIBS recommends that companies afraid of impersonation try to register any lookalike domains and try to encourage passkey use by users. Passkeys are always tied to a specific domain, so a user wouldn't be able to log in to a sneaky website with them.

More than 300 local data center construction moratoriums haven’t had a massive impact on planned buildouts, with only three projects at about 2.3 out of 21 gigawatts (GW) of data centers in moratorium areas likely to be delayed, with a total of 38 GW projected to come online next year, SemiAnalysis shared on X. Per-project audits of the moratoriums indicate that they tend to miss the site, the permit, or the timeline.

The crux of the report is that, while everyone thinks the moratoriums are killing the U.S. buildout, its forecast has “barely moved over the last 12 months.” This forecast includes 38 GW of U.S. data center IT capacity in 2027, which is more than double that of 2026. Of that, 22 GW is under vertical construction, and the other 16 GW is mostly financed, with site work being done. The enacted local moratoriums cover about 20 GW with only about 1.5 GW of it delayed; New York’s pause adds 0.8 GW more. “We think moratoriums COULD delay the buildout, but they just aren’t yet at scale.”

The firm defines a moratorium as a “temporary legal pause,” and almost always a “freeze on accepting new applications.” More than 400 local instruments are tracked across 17 states, the enacted ones including a few permanent zoning bans, as of September. Four states acted in under two months this summer: New York, Texas, Pennsylvania, and Oregon. To test each active restriction against the records of thousands of projects, the firm’s analysts worked alongside “an army of state-of-the-art research agents.”

Several reasons are given for moratorium ineffectiveness, starting with the fact that they don’t revoke existing approvals. Short ones may expire before later projects need approval, and litigation or equipment lead times may already set the schedule. A moratorium moves the delivery date only if every condition holds, including that it reaches the parcel, is in force, overlaps the timeline, and covers the use in a way the project can’t work around. Capacity already under construction or fully permitted is also out of reach.

For example, Michigan has 45 enacted moratoriums but effectively zero pipeline exposure, and a Google campus there sits on industrial land already zoned for data processing. The firm says SpaceX’s planned data center in Brownsville, Texas, is on land the city removed from its limits and thus out of reach of the city’s moratorium. For a moratorium that did work, a township adopted a pause before NorthPoint, in Pennsylvania, filed for its special exception, with local approval pushed to next year. The company is still pursuing it.

The 2.3 GW figure is also incomplete, as it leaves out the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) pause. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott told the TCEQ to issue no permits for data center projects. Law firm Bracewell says this applies whether a project is in the Electric Reliability Council of Texas’s (ERCOT) queue or not, and expects the pause to last until ERCOT finishes its review in mid-December. Pauses like the TCEQ’s, and how they play out, could impact buildout forecasts.

The post quotes another by The Economist’s Archie Hall, from a trip that covers Michigan and Ohio, with the reporter stating that data center moratoriums are “much more bark than bite” for the time being. He puts the bigger risk at deterring newer projects, though he guesses that affects where data centers end up more than whether they get built. His impression is that politics also plays a role, and according to the firm’s poll in August, more Americans have a negative rather than positive impression of data centers.

The analysis concludes that moratoriums would need to be “materially more widespread and restrictive” to delay the buildout. On the firm’s weekly podcast last month, Jeremie Eliahou Ontiveros, one of the report’s authors, said the firm would be worried by a strict, state-level moratorium that blocked even off-grid projects, citing Texas as an example. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, in addition to Abbott, also found ways to bypass their legislatures for pauses they control and can revoke. The next move to watch is the TCEQ’s compliance report to Abbott’s office, due Monday.

Anthropic is quietly lobbying for an AI safety bill that will allow the government to block an AI model’s release only if it poses a risk of causing $1 billion in damages or killing or injuring more than 50 people. According to Politico, an independent third party registered with the Department of Commerce would periodically evaluate the lab and its AI models. It also noted that the lab may pay the evaluators, but only if the payment does not affect their independence.

“This bill represents the proposals outlined in Anthropic’s Advanced AI Framework, which we have been advocating for with federal and state lawmakers since June,” an Anthropic spokesperson told the publication. “These are sensible policies we believe Congress should act on.”

The bill says the risk should come from the potential creation or release of a bioweapon, AI-powered or -enabled cyberattacks, or an AI lab losing control of an AI model or agents. If there is a chance that any of these events are about to happen, it requires the evaluator to report it to the department within 72 hours, after which the department would have to bring all the evidence in front of a federal judge in the District Court for the District of Columbia, who would then determine if the model release should be halted or not. However, the proposed law also notes that no other department, agency, or officer in the U.S. can order an AI lab to stop releasing its model, except the Commerce Department.

Talk about AI safety has been growing in recent months, especially after several high-profile incidents were reported in the latter half of this year. One of the first major incidents reported was OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 Sol and other unreleased AI models breaking out of their testing environment and hacking Hugging Face, with evidence showing that multiple agents worked together, even leaving messages on defunct webpages and old wikis to communicate surreptitiously. In one case, an OpenAI agent failed to respond to a “kill switch,” bypassing multiple fail-safes and eventually requiring manual intervention to stop running.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has warned about a “swarm” of AI-driven botnets taking over the internet in the next 6-to-12 months, which is why he proposed a controlled slowdown to AI development — something that OpenAI’s Sam Altman and SpaceXAI’s Elon Musk agreed to. The company more recently said a self-replicating AI worm could spread without data centers, which is why it listed “existential risks to humanity” as one of its risk factors in its IPO prospectus. Top AI labs are also reportedly planning for a catastrophic AI event, building contingency plans and running scenarios for a runaway AI that wreaks havoc.

These incidents have seemingly alarmed the authorities, with Congress already working on a proposal to enforce kill switches on the most powerful AI models. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has even gone beyond that, proposing a 20-year prison term for anyone developing AI superintelligence, putting it on par with illegal nuclear weapon development. The Anthropic AI safety bill would add another bill for Congress to consider on AI safety, but whichever one passes, let’s hope it’s enough to ensure humans remain in control of AI.

A group of AI researchers at the Swedish Defense Research Agency (FOI) has developed an AI system that can identify concealed handguns using Wi-Fi signals, offering a non-intrusive alternative to visible cameras and cumbersome metal detectors. Detailed in a paper posted on arXivWi-Fi on October 13, the system, called WiFireNet, analyzes channel state information from how an object distorts ambient Wi-Fi signals. The full system comprises a Wi-Fi transmitter, a Wi-Fi receiver, and the WiFireNet AI.

When ordinary Wi-Fi signals encounter an object in their path, they penetrate and bounce off in ways specific to that object, based on its shape, orientation, and material. This data, the channel state information, can be analyzed to identify the object with high accuracy. Security researchers previously disclosed a technique that lets ordinary Wi-Fi routers identify people with 99.5% accuracy.

To build the WiFireNet system, the researchers first created a dataset, dubbed the WiFire Dataset, by simultaneously recording RGB footage and the reflected Wi-Fi signals of people walking around with objects ranging from phones to handguns. The researchers then trained a deep learning model on the massive dataset, using video clips to match the visuals of a concealed handgun with its specific Wi-Fi signature, or channel state information. To ensure the system could specifically distinguish a handgun from everyday items of similar shape or material, the researchers trained it on recordings of a plastic handgun, a metal water bottle, a real metal handgun, and a phone.

After training, the final AI system, WiFireNet, could detect concealed handguns solely based on Wi-Fi CSI, with varying accuracy. In controlled trials tracking up to four moving individuals in a small indoor space, the system achieved an average handgun-detection precision of 72.5%. However, under stricter localization requirements, such as pinpointing the weapon’s exact location on the carrier, precision dropped to 53.8%. The neural network also struggles to perform accurately in unfamiliar, untested indoor layouts.

That said, the system is still experimental, with a roadmap of planned improvements. The prototype was built using a modified implementation of the older 1999 wireless IEEE 802.11a standard to establish proof of concept. Subsequent phases will use modern Wi-FI 7 and Wi-Fi 8 networks with higher-resolution CSI for better detection. The researchers made the project open source, releasing the code, models, and dataset to support further research in the field. Wi-Fi sensing is gaining popularity as an effective surveillance technology that doesn't require complex gear or setups. However, critics argue that the technology's ubiquity and the lack of regulatory frameworks raise serious privacy concerns.

DJI has delivered a battery-swapping drone dock, the Dock 4, with an automated 25-second swap this week, according to a company press release. The dock bypasses the normal recharging process, which would take about 30 minutes, and DJI promises a turnaround of under 45 seconds from landing to takeoff. The drone-in-a-box solution is the first of its type by the company, although not in the industry, and is aimed at applications like emergency response but is not FCC-authorized or for sale in the U.S.

The company emphasizes the safety angle, pitching the Dock 4 as a “dock-as-a-first-responder (DFR)” solution. Its product page calls it “Always There, Always Ready.” Swapping the battery takes less than half a minute, and the drone is back in the air within 45 seconds of landing. The dock also charges two 925 g battery packs, rated at 260 Wh for 400 cycles, at once, estimated to take 27 minutes to get each from 15% to 95%.

The packs also double as backup power, rated at about 4.5 hours each, in sequence. Additionally, with at least two packs loaded, the dock is able to continue swapping even when grid power is lost, although backup power doesn’t charge the packs. This configuration should enable a drone to handle back-to-back calls even in less-than-ideal circumstances. The new dock, 66 kg bare, also has the same 400 x 400 mm mounting holes as the Dock 3, but it only works with the Matrice 5TD drone and requires the DJI O4 Ground Station.

The Matrice 5TD drone is rated for almost an hour of forward flight, measured from 100% to 0% at 15 m/s and with no payload, with a few minutes less of hover time. It can move at up to 21 m/s, or 47 mph, but only in “FlyTo” tasks. It carries three 50 MP cameras: wide, 70 mm equivalent medium telephoto, and telephoto at 252 mm equivalent, which DJI calls 11x. It also has 1280 x 1024 native thermal and 2560 x 2048 in DJI’s UHR infrared mode, color night vision without a spotlight, and a laser rangefinder up to 3,000 m.

For sensors, it has rotating LiDAR, mmWave radar facing forward, up and down, and six-direction vision, and DJI says it is capable of detecting power lines at night. On-board AI allows for the detection of 17 object types, “such as cars, boats, or animals,” and DJI FlightHub 2 can search the feed by text or image and send alerts. The dock and drone are rated for temperatures from minus 40 degrees to 50 degrees Celsius (minus 40 to 122 degrees Fahrenheit) with IP56 and IP55 ratings, respectively. The drone is rated for winds up to 12 m/s, or about 27 mph.

For payload, the drone carries up to 450 g across three mounts for a speaker, spotlight, and parachute. The previous model, the Dock 3’s Matrice 4TD, has a lower-resolution 640 x 512 thermal camera, a 168 mm telephoto, a shorter 1,800 m laser range, and is only good down to minus 20 degrees Celsius (minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit). The drone upgrades are nice, but the new dock capabilities are the real selling point, especially for the intended applications. Currently, DJI partners in China are taking orders for a kit with the Dock 4, Matrice 5TD, and O4 Ground Station at 167,999 yuan, or about $25,000, for the hardware alone.

The new dock and drone sound great for other markets, but DJI’s own spec sheet has no FCC figures. This is likely because the FCC added all foreign-made drones and their critical components to its Covered List in December of last year. New models can’t get FCC authorization or be sold in the U.S. unless the Department of War or the Department of Homeland Security determines they don’t pose a security risk. DJI sued the commission earlier this year.

A separate FCC proposal published in August could pull previously authorized foreign drones that carry LiDAR or thermal sensors from sale, along with previously authorized docking stations. The FCC’s docket shows no final order on it as of Oct. 17, and the proposal would give sellers 180 days after Federal Register publication to stop importing and marketing covered gear.

MapQuest, a long-time online mapping and navigation service that predates Google Maps, just released an app update that added a new Surveillance Layer. The company said on Bluesky that it plots the locations of known license plate readers on the map and that it covers devices from Flock, as well as other companies like Motorola Solutions (Vigilant), Genetec, Axis Communications, Axon, Leonardo (ELSAG), Neology, Rekor, PlateSmart, Ubicquia, Verkada, and other brands.

The Roads Have Eyes! 👁️Turn on the Surveillance Layer in Map Options to see known license plate readers from Flock Safety, Motorola Solutions (Vigilant), Genetec, Axis Communications, Axon, Leonardo (ELSAG), Neology, Rekor, PlateSmart, Ubicquia, Verkada, and other outdoor surveillance cameras.

— @mapquest.com (@mapquest.com.bsky.social) 2026-10-18T02:31:11.890Z

It’s unclear how the app developers found all this data, but it is similar to the Flock Surveillance Map that one security researcher built using Flock’s own data. Beyond showing each camera's location, it also indicates the direction it faces, allowing anyone who doesn't want to be captured by an automatic license plate recognition (ALPR) system to avoid known cameras, if possible.

While cities and police forces argue that systems like these help keep people safe by making it easier to track potential criminals, many people say that they’re a massive invasion of privacy, citing multiple incidents of police officers abusing the system and administrative mistakes, like one resulting in the detention of an innocent car reviewer. This is why some cities whose constituents have complained have started removing them.

A Canadian YouTuber built a “Flock-like” camera that tracked police vehicles and was visited by officers who, in an ironic twist, raised privacy concerns. These are the exact concerns critics have about ALPRs, especially when they connect to a wider federal or national system that lets police officers from another city or state track vehicles without a warrant. It’s unclear how police would react to this functionality, but many police departments have previously complained when Waze released a 2015 update that let users report officers' locations.

This new MapQuest feature can help you get around known ALPR camera locations. But if your destination has heavy camera coverage, you’ll have no choice but to pass through one and be detected, unless someone in the neighborhood has put a “Flock Sock” on one of them.

This one will be short and sweet. So remember how there are apparently no more RTX 5090s available most anywhere, even though Nvidia's Senior Vice President just said that the company definitely hasn't stopped making them? If you had been saving up for Nvidia's greatest card, there's still hope for you. Best Buy has an MSI Infinite ZS in stock with an RTX 5090 ensconced within for $7,599, making for roughly $5,300 for the RTX 5090 and $2,300 for the rest of the PC.

Yes, over five grand is definitely a lot to ask for a graphics card, but it's worth ponying up the cash if you want the best gaming card in recent years (and likely future, too). Besides, it's not like these will be in stock anytime soon (if ever), and they were commanding $7,500 or more in stores before they vanished.

The rest of the PC around the humongous card is equally powerful. The Ryzen 9 9950X3D ($670) is probably the best desktop CPU in the current market, offering a high core count of 16 cores and 32 threads, fast clocks with a 5.7 GHz turbo speed, and 128 MB of cache. It'll run games and heavy applications with equal aplomb.

That chip sits atop an MSI B840-VC motherboard ($250 est.) with PCIe 5.0 support thanks to its AMD B840 chipset. An MSI CoreLiquid 360mm CLC ($110) keeps the processor cooled. There are 32 GB of RAM ($450 est.) on tap — though MSI doesn't mention the speed, 6000 MT/s is a good, reasonable guess for a high-end machine.

The machine is powered by an unspecified MSI 1300W Gold PSU ($170 est.), and all the hardware sits inside a MSI MEG Prospect 700RL case ($250 est.). A Windows 11 Home license currently sets you back about $130. For those keeping track at home, the PC core goes for over $2300. There are no weak spots we could find, too — pre-builts often skimp on one of their core parts, but there are no shortcuts here.

HyperX has decided to toss its hat in the ring of open-back gaming headsets with its newest, the Cloud Alpha Air. It's definitely not the first open-back headset we've seen in the past few years — others include the $200 Corsair Virtuoso Pro, the $180 Turtle Beach Atlas Air, and, of course, the $900 Audeze LCD-GX. The Cloud Alpha Air is at least somewhat budget-friendly at just $149.99.

The Cloud Alpha Air is a wired over-ear open-back gaming headset designed for comfort and immersion. It features dynamic 40mm drivers with a frequency response range of 20 - 20,000 Hz and a special "HyperX Bass Tube" to keep the low end present without compromising the open-back design. And, like other HyperX headsets (which are some of the best gaming headsets we've tested), it's extremely lightweight and easy to wear for hours at a time.

Design and Comfort of the Cloud Alpha Air

The Cloud Alpha Air is a wired over-ear (circumaural) open-back headset with a detachable boom microphone. It has large, plastic oval-shaped earcups with metal grilles attached to a padded steel headband. It's a fairly lightweight headset — HyperX has its weight listed at 9.6 ounces (272g) without the boom mic attached (the boom mic is listed at approximately 0.42 ounces / 12g), but we found the headset weighed closer to 10 ounces (283g) (the boom mic, however, weighed closer to 0.07oz / 2g), and came in at just under 10.6 ounces (300g) with both the boom mic and cables attached. This still makes it one of HyperX's lightest headsets — slightly lighter than the HyperX Cloud Stinger 3 Wireless and Turtle Beach's Atlas Air open-back headset.

The Cloud Alpha Air's earcups are pretty roomy, with thick memory foam padding covered in soft ultrasuede material. The earcups tilt and swivel a little, but they're not as flexible as the earcups on many gaming headsets — and they don't swivel flat. The headset features a steel headband with leatherette-covered padding at the top and metal-reinforced yokes, so that explains the rigidity. The earcups are independently height-adjustable, with about an inch of extension for a maximum inner headband measurement of approximately 12 inches (300mm).

I found the Cloud Alpha Air to be very comfortable, despite the headband's relative rigidity, since the whole package is pretty lightweight and well-padded. However, I can see users with larger heads having problems with the top of the headband, as the padding did press on my crown slightly.

This is a wired headset, so there aren't a lot of ports or on-ear controls. The left earcup has two 3.5mm jacks, one for the detachable boom mic and one for the primary audio cable, as well as a microphone mute button, and the right earcup has a volume wheel.

The Cloud Alpha Air is wired, but the wires are detachable, and it comes with everything you need in the box to plug it into various devices. The main cable is a standard 4-foot (1.2m) 3.5mm, and it comes with two extension cables: a 4.5-foot (1.37m) 3.5mm to USB-C extension (with a USB-C to USB-A converter attached) for plugging it into a PC or console, and a 3.5-foot (1m) PC extension cable with separate audio and microphone jacks. That gets you about 8 - 8.5 feet of cable when you're plugged into your PC, which is decent — though I would personally prefer single long cables instead of the extension system, as the extension system means there's a weight (where the cables connect) in the middle. The cables are braided and seem high-quality, if a bit heavy. The headset also comes with its detachable boom microphone in the box, as well as a thick drawstring carrying bag for keeping everything together.

Specs

Audio Performance of the Cloud Alpha Air

The Cloud Alpha Air features dynamic 40mm neodymium drivers, with a frequency response range of 20 - 20,000 Hz (still pretty standard for gaming headsets, despite several companies coming out with premium models that have wider ranges).

Music sounds very good on the Cloud Alpha Air. The headset has a mostly neutral sound profile, with bright, detailed highs, a full, present mid-range, and solid but not overly powerful bass. It definitely has a wider sound stage than its closed-back counterparts, though it's not quite as wide or as open as some open-back headsets (such as the Audeze LCD-GX). Mid-range-heavy songs such as K-931's Lonely World and Enya's Orinoco Flow sounded especially dynamic. The headset has a built-in "HyperX Bass Tube" designed to maintain powerful bass, despite its open-back style. This works decently well — while I still found bass to be more powerful on closed-back headsets such as the Razer BlackShark V3 Pro, the bass was definitely present (and fairly detailed — I could hear the full run of the bass drum in Lorde's Royals).

Games sound even better on the Cloud Alpha Air, thanks to the open-back design. Games with multi-layered audio environments, such as Uncharted 4 and God of War: Ragnarok, really stood out on the headset — I could hear every individual creature in jungles and make out conversations with (possibly unrealistic) clarity in cities. Directional audio was also very good, though I would probably still opt for a closed-back headset for competitive first-person shooters where the direction of footsteps and gunshots is paramount. But you can't beat open-back headsets for exploring an open world (and for being able to hear things happening in the real world).

Microphone of the Cloud Alpha Air

The Cloud Alpha Air has a detachable 10mm boom microphone with a unidirectional polar pattern. It sits at the end of a 3-inch flexible metal gooseneck you can bend toward your mouth for better pickup, and the arm has a small red indicator light near the microphone end that lets you know when it's muted. It's the same microphone found on HyperX's other premium headsets, including the Cloud III S Wireless and the Cloud Alpha 2 Wireless.

The mic performs about as well as expected — it's good for a headset mic, but it's definitely still a headset mic. My voice was clear and full-sounding over both voice chat and in recordings. But the mic's pickup was pretty low by default — for other HyperX headsets I've been able to adjust the gain in its Ngenuity software, but I wasn't able to get Ngenuity to recognize the Cloud Alpha Air (I imagine if it had recognized it, it would have been adjustable, however). Hopefully this is fixed in a software or firmware update soon.

The mic mute button is easy to press, and the indicator light is a nice thought — but it was too low and too dim to be useful to me (I had to keep moving the mic up to see it, which seems like it sort of defeats the purpose of having an unobtrusive indicator light). I also had the same issue I did with the mute mic button on the HyperX Cloud III wired headset, where pressing the mute button caused a noticeable blip in my recordings.

Features and Software of the Cloud Alpha Air

The Cloud Alpha Air is supposed to be configurable with HyperX's Ngenuity peripheral software, which should let you do things such as tune the EQ and adjust the microphone's input gain. But, again, I couldn't get any version of Ngenuity to recognize the Cloud Alpha Air.

Bottom Line

If you've been thinking of getting an open-back gaming headset, the Cloud Alpha Air might be the headset you've been waiting for. As long as you don't mind the wires, it's an excellent headset for the price — it's comfortable, lightweight, and it sounds great whether you're listening to music, watching movies, or gaming. While I couldn't get it to connect to Ngenuity, I honestly don't count that as much of a point against it — peripheral software often causes more headaches than it's worth, especially for a headset that's mostly analog to begin with.

Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 5090, undeniably one of the best graphics cards of our time, vanished overnight without a trace and is now selling for $8,500 on Amazon. In a recent development, Reddit user DallasGrave showcased a custom quad 8-pin power conversion kit designed for the notorious melting 16-pin (12VHPWR) power connector and the later 12V-2x6 revision. This invention, an upgrade over a previous mod, could reduce the risk of power-related meltdowns.

Unlike the endless stream of aftermarket adapters designed solely to prevent 16-pin power meltdowns, DallasGrave's iteration is more like a power-conversion kit. The direct-mount kit sits above the graphics card and uses a custom harness soldered to the graphics card’s PCB power rails. The quad 8-pin power conversion kit bypasses the 16-pin connection and redistributes the massive power draw more evenly across four conventional 8-pin PCIe power connectors.

Each 8-pin PCIe power connector can deliver up to 150W, so all four combined in this custom configuration match the 16-pin connector’s maximum capacity of 600W. However, this configuration addresses concerns with the 16-pin power connector, which channels 50A through a small, tightly packed set of pins. The power-conversion kit instead spreads the load across four 8-pin PCIe power connectors, which are physically larger and allow a wider pin pitch.

While 8-pin PCIe power connectors are not entirely immune to melting or other power-related failures, such incidents are far less common than issues with 16-pin power connectors. The 16-pin power connector is significantly more compact than a single 8-pin power connector and carries 4X the wattage, so it is more prone to higher current density and heat buildup.

According to PCI-SIG specifications, each of the six power pins inside the 16-pin power connector is rated for a maximum current of 9.5A. This means that, in theory, the power connector's total capacity reaches up to 684W or 57A. For example, 600W (50A) requires each power pin to carry about 8.33A, which is already close to the recommended safety limits.

By contrast, a standard 8-pin PCIe power connector contains three power pins. Combining four of these connectors in tandem provides 12 power pins. When distributing a 50A load across 12 pins, each pin carries just 4.17 amps, about half the current per pin of the 16-pin power connector design. This lower current per pin dramatically reduces wire and terminal temperatures and lowers the risk of heat-related damage.

The quad 8-pin power conversion kit tricks the sense pins on the 16-pin power connection into recognizing the full 600W. However, the Redditor claims they have tested the kit for up to 800W with a shunt mod. The beauty of the kit is that users can use it as a standalone power source or alongside the native 16-pin power connector, essentially acting as a parallel load spreader.

DallasGrave is developing a custom backplate that will enhance the power conversion kit's visual appeal. Notably, it is not limited to the GeForce RTX 5090 or any specific brand. According to the Redditor, they are preparing a range of models for production that cover nearly every variant on the market, including Nvidia’s Founders Edition. However, the creator has not yet revealed key details such as the official release date, pricing, or installation logistics.

Over the past several years, MOZA Racing has become one of the most recognizable names in sim racing, earning a reputation for producing high-quality racing wheels and peripherals. Founded in 2012 by a group of automotive engineers and sim racing enthusiasts, the company initially focused on manufacturing and selling videography equipment before entering the sim-racing market.

More recently, MOZA has expanded into the world of flight simulation, bringing the same focus on build quality and performance that has made its racing products so popular. Today, we’re taking a look at the MOZA AY210 Force Feedback Base and MFY Yoke. We’ll be putting both products through their paces in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, testing them across a variety of challenging flight scenarios to see how they perform in the cockpit.

Inside the Box

While you can purchase the base and the yoke separately, they also come in a bundle. With the bundle, you get both the yoke and the base in the box, along with a toolkit and user manual. The base comes with a power cable and a USB Type A to Type B cable.

MOZA also sent us a couple of table clamps for the yoke to secure it to our test setup. The clamps are sold separately.

Customization

The base and yoke feature several programmable buttons and switches, but the real depth of customization comes from MOZA Cockpit Software. The software provides an impressive range of options for fine-tuning the yoke to your preferences. You can adjust individual settings to create your ideal feel, or choose from one of MOZA’s presets or community-created profiles.

Build Quality

The base is constructed from aluminum alloy, giving it a sturdy, durable, and premium feel. An aluminum quick-release mechanism allows you to swap yokes quickly while keeping them securely attached.

Under the hood, the AY210 is powered by a 280 MHz processor and features a 15-bit high-resolution magnetic encoder. This is designed to provide precise and responsive inputs across the full range of motion, whether you’re making small, delicate adjustments or larger, more aggressive inputs. Combined with MOZA’s proprietary active force-feedback system, the AY210 is designed to deliver a high level of control while adding another layer of immersion to the flight experience.

The MFY Yoke features a premium build made from high-quality synthetic engineering thermoplastic and ergonomic design that closely replicates the feel of a yoke found in a real commercial aircraft.

How Does it Feel?

The star of the show is undoubtedly the force feedback. With up to 9 Nm of torque and 210 N of push force, the system adds a level of immersion that simply isn’t possible with conventional yokes that lack force feedback.

When flying the PMDG 737, the yoke gives the aircraft a noticeably heavier feel through the control column, closely mimicking what we experienced in a 737 simulator. As airspeed increases, the yoke becomes progressively harder to deflect in both pitch and roll, accurately reflecting the aerodynamic forces acting on the aircraft.

But the force feedback goes far beyond simply simulating control forces. You can feel the vibrations from the engines, as well as the movement of the flaps and spoilers. After takeoff, the yoke conveys the increasing resistance of the airflow as the aircraft accelerates. Approaching a stall during a climb produces a noticeable buffet through the controls, while landing provides feedback as the wheels make contact with the runway.

The AY210 also replicates the movement of the aircraft's controls when the autopilot is engaged, with the yoke moving under the control of the autopilot servos.

All of these effects work together to create a remarkably convincing connection between the aircraft and the controls. It’s a level of immersion that most other yokes simply cannot replicate.

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 Testing

We tested the AY210 Force Feedback Base and MFY Yoke in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 primarily using the PMDG 737-800. While the iFly 737 MAX is a great addon with a superb flight model, especially in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020, it is not yet natively built for MSFS 2024. As such, it does not handle wind and turbulence effects entirely well in MSFS 2024. We wanted to stick with MSFS 2024 because of its more realistic flight dynamics. We also tested the yoke with the PMDG 777. For our tests, we used the latest 737 NG and 777 profiles from Tonyaviation on Flightsim.to. Tony is a real-life pilot with experience in the 737 and 787. The 787 and 777 share many of the same flight characteristics.

We tested the base and yoke in three different scenarios:

1. Basic maneuvering. Flying at 5,000 feet, we performed gentle turns and pitch changes to evaluate the precision of the base during small, accurate control inputs.
2. Turbulent approach. We performed an approach into Las Vegas under hot, windy conditions with strong updrafts and downdrafts. This scenario required larger, more frequent control inputs to assess how the base handles turbulence and rapid corrections.
3. Curved approach. Finally, we flew the RNAV Visual approach to Runway 1R at San Francisco International Airport. This approach is available in MSFS 2024 if you use the Navigraph database, but it is missing the RF leg between the waypoints KLAUS and SQIRL, so we added it to the navigation database of the PMDG 737 and 777 ourselves. The procedure features a sweeping right-hand arc that continues until roughly one mile from the runway threshold, requiring the aircraft to remain in a turn at very low altitude. The approach demands precise tracking of the flight path while also requiring a smooth, accurate transition to the runway centerline after the final waypoint. This scenario tested both the precision and responsiveness of the AY210 Base.

Basic Maneuvering

Basic maneuvering feels precise and smooth with the right settings. That last part is important, however, because the AY210 does not necessarily deliver this experience out of the box. Based on our previous experience with a 737 simulator, even with significant pitch input, the control column should maintain a smooth and consistent feel throughout its movement. With the AY210, we found that the motion could feel less natural and “sticky” unless Pitch Friction Correction was enabled in the MOZA Cockpit Software. Fortunately, this setting significantly improves the feel, giving the control column a response that is much closer to what we experienced in a 737 simulator.The 280 MHz processor and 15-bit high-resolution magnetic encoder also contribute to the AY210’s precise and responsive inputs. We were able to make accurate turns and precisely set our desired descent rate, with even small control inputs translating smoothly and predictably into the simulator.

Turbulent Approach

Here, we perform our usual turbulent approach, landing in Las Vegas during the summer. The combination of extreme heat, strong winds, and thermals along the approach path can create significant turbulence, making for a much less stable approach. Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is able to replicate these conditions through its Live Weather system, providing a challenging environment for testing the AY210.

The level of immersion provided by the AY210 is simply incredible. Through the force feedback system, you can feel the effects of wind and turbulence directly through the yoke, rather than relying solely on visual cues or the aircraft’s instruments. This provides useful feedback that helps you anticipate and make the necessary control corrections. The AY210 handled these conditions exceptionally well, accurately conveying the changing forces throughout the approach and giving us a much better sense of how the aircraft was responding.

Curved Approach

The RNAV Visual approach to Runway 1R at San Francisco International Airport contains an RF leg between the final two waypoints – KLAUS and SQIRL – which is a sweeping right-hand arc. The AY210 was responsive and precise throughout, allowing us to follow the arc all the way to SQIRL, at which point we were able to accurately align with runway 1R and perform a smooth landing.

By comparison, the Thrustmaster TCA Boeing Yoke felt noticeably jerkier throughout the approach. The two products are also in completely different price tiers, so this is not necessarily a direct or entirely fair comparison. However, the TCA Boeing Yoke is a popular choice among simmers flying Boeing aircraft in Microsoft Flight Simulator, making it a useful reference point. The difference was immediately noticeable, and the AY210’s ability to provide smoother, more natural control while conveying the effects of turbulence is a clear example of what you gain from its more premium design and force feedback system.

Bottom Line

The MOZA AY210 Force Feedback Yoke Base delivers one of the most immersive experiences available in desktop flight simulation. It comes at a premium price, but after spending time with the AY210, it is genuinely difficult to go back to a yoke without force feedback. The combination of realistic feedback, precise control, and the level of detail conveyed through the yoke adds an entirely new dimension to the flying experience.

It is not without its flaws. Some of the force feedback effects could be stronger, while the control column can feel slightly unnatural and “sticky” out of the box. Fortunately, both issues can be addressed to some extent through the extensive customization options in MOZA Cockpit Software.

Overall, the AY210 is an impressive piece of hardware. For those willing to pay the premium, its force feedback and overall level of immersion make it a compelling upgrade for any serious home cockpit.

Last week, gamers still holding any hope that the GPU market would somehow stabilize had their hopes dashed. A while after Nvidia reportedly put the RTX 50 Super series on hold, rumors started flying that production of the already-rare RTX 5090 was stopping, likely to use precious silicon manufacturing capacity for more AI accelerators. Now, the company's senior VP Jeff Fisher reportedly said that card was not discontinued and would continue to be shipped. The statement comes after a myriad of websites, including Tom's Hardware, have asked the company for official comment, but to no avail.

The information comes from Taiwanese websites including 4Gamers and SJTV, which both are quoting a purported post-event interview where Fisher offered a brief explanation of the situation. According to the VP, supplies of the GPU are limited, but Nvidia is seemingly going all out to get the product to market (paraphrased from the Taiwanese reports).

"The supply chain (capacity) is indeed somewhat constrained, but NVIDIA is doing everything it can to get the product on the market. Although there are other variants of the RTX 5090 (chip), production has not been discontinued, and NVIDIA will continue to ship, which is very important," Fisher reportedly said to 4Gamers.

He also reportedly reiterated a common quote from Nvidia execs, stating that without GeForce, Nvidia wouldn't be where it is today, and likewise, the AI market wouldn't exist as it does today.

The claim that the card isn't gone after all merits some spot-checking, so we did a cursory browse of the common retailers. At Amazon, RTX 5090s are selling for about $8,500, but from third-party sellers. Best Buy has a grand amount of naught cards on offer, while Newegg lists 5090s for about $7,300, but from what are likely Chinese sellers, judging by the shipping time. The ever-famous U.S. tariffs would likely add quite a chunk of change to that price tag, too. Finally and perhaps most poignantly, the card remains absent from Nvidia's own marketplace and Micro Center as of this writing.

Some would say that these statements are nothing but a means to keep the company in gamers' minds, even though gaming-related revenue is now a vanishingly small piece of Nvidia's ever-larger money pie.

Jensen's firm isn't the only one seemingly keeping up appearances, as Intel has repeatedly stated that its long-awaited refresh of consumer GPUs isn't dead, and last year AMD said it still intends to deliver "the best mainstream gaming GPUs on the market." Yet there are no new GPU launches from any of the three, and their quarterly launch figures keep doubling down on AI.

We reached out to Nvidia for comment on the situation and received no reply.