Tom’s Hardware Verdict Be Quiet’s MC1 Pro offers good thermal performance in a petite profile that’s compatible with all form factors, including consoles like the PlayStation 5. Pros Low profile ensures compatibility with all PC systems and consoles Passes PCIe 5 stress tests without throttling when paired an air cooler Double-sided SSD cooling support Fully silent operation (no fan) Cons A few dollars more expensive than competitors Why you can trust Tom’s HardwareOur expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you....

The list in brief1.Best Overall2.Best RGB3.Best Budget RGB4.Best Hybrid Surface5.Best Hard Surface6.Best XL7.Best XL with RGB8.Best Alternate Size Hard Surface9.Best Wrist Rest10.Other Mouse Pads Tested11.How We Test12.Shopping Tips13.Discounts A mouse pad might seem unnecessary these days, especially whenthe best gaming micewill work on just about any surface. But just because you don’t need a mouse pad for your mouse to work doesn’t mean you don’t need one for your gaming setup: a level, consistent surface that’s designed for gaming might be exactly what you need to stay ahead of the competition....

Manufacturers use several types of panels in today’s gaming monitors: Twisted Nematic (TN), Vertical Alignment (VA), In-Plane Switching (IPS, and Organic Light-Emitting Diode (OLED). Of the four panel types, OLED is the newest and most expensive but is growing in popularity among elite gaming monitors. So, what makes OLEDs a popular choice for today’s top gaming monitors? Well, part of the reason is in the name itself. Each pixel in the panel can emit light when a current is passed through....

Whoops! Bitcoin Depot is reportedly informing nearly 27,000 users of its crypto-dispensing ATMs that someone made off with their personal information in June 2024. For the uninitiated: unlike traditional ATMs, which transform some of the make-believe money in a bank account into cold hard cash, a Bitcoin ATM converts said cash into the make-believe money people can leave untouched in their cryptocurrency wallets until they finally decidethey’d rather havebillions of dollars....

Yesterday, Blur Busters (best known for itsUFO Test Refresh Rate testing utility, as well as extensive monitor testing and documentation resources) has released and open-sourceda new CRT filter in the form of a GPU shader that fully simulates CRT beams. It’s what Blur Busters and others are claiming to be a CRT-authentic, superior alternative to Black Frame Insertion (BFI) as a method of increasing motion fidelity on modern LCD and OLED displays,especiallyOLEDs....

Following the announcement of flagship SKUs atCES,NvidiaandAMDare now bringing their latest architectures to the budget segment with their 60-class GPUs. According to leaker Hoang Anh Phu, who has a decent track record when it comes to all things AMD, the RX 9060 XT series is scheduled for announcement at Computex, which kicks off on May 20th. This is to be followed by the retail launch two weeks later in early June....

While it’s not necessary to stay on the bleeding edge, keeping most of your drivers updated is good practice for both performance and stability reasons. However, if you try to install drivers from a third-party source, you may face verification issues during the installation. Even when installing using the manufacturer’s driver manager, the installation can still sometimes fail due to faults with the driver manager tool itself. In this article, we’ve detailed all such cases, as well as what steps you can take to successfullyupdate the driverin Windows....

Celebrate Father’s Day this Sunday, 16th of June, with a new iBUYPOWER RDY prebuilt gaming PC. Whether it’s a gift for yourself or the father figure in your life, a shiny new gaming PC is just the ticket for a nice relaxing gaming session. Plus, if you combine one of iBUYPOWER’s PC deals with one of ouriBUYPOWER coupons, you could save even more on a new gaming rig. iBUYPOWER’s RDY lineup of gaming PCs all come pre-installed withWindows 11Home and offer a selection of different curated PC specifications to cater to different tiers of gaming PCs in not only performance but also price....

China has enacted a new regulation, effective October 1, asserting state ownership over its rare-earth materials required in semiconductor production, reportsNikkei. This move aims to secure national and industrial interests, though outside of China the move is considered to be leverage in the ongoing trade war with the U.S. The new regulation prohibits any individual or organization from unlawfully accessing or damaging rare-earth resources. We could interpret the rule as basically an explicit declaration of state ownership of important rare earth metals, suchas gallium and germanium....

A new 16-core processor from Hygon—a fabless chip maker in China that uses AMD’s first-gen Zen IP—has popped up onGeekbench. It offers 60% better performance than a similar eight-core Hygon processor wecoveredin the past. The performance bump isn’t substantial when you consider the chip has twice the number of cores, but since the manufacturer is stuck on a now seven-year-old architecture—Zen 1—there isn’t much that can be achieved apart from increasing core counts....

A new challenger has entered the battle for Chinese GPU and graphics card dominance. Lingjiu Microelectronics, creators of the brand-new GP201 graphics card, have apparently matched the performance of AMD’s decade-old integrated GPU. The card can’t be found on any U.S. shopping websites, yet, butIT Homereports it has begun mass-production and is available for purchase in China. Lingjiu’s press deck shows incredible performance… when compared to the AMD E8860, an integrated graphics card from ten years ago....

Intel’s upcoming Core Ultra 9 285K, the flagship of theCore Ultra 200Slineup, has been spotted in CPU-Z (viamomomo_us) and Blender (viaHXL). The initial performance is somewhat disappointing; however, that may be attributed to the test bench used and the operating conditions, at least in CPU-Z. Ironically, CPU-Z indicates that this CPU is manufactured using a “7nm” process. However, in reality, the Compute Tile uses TSMC’s N3B (3nm) node. Anyhow, here, the 285K is clocked at 5....

Adding additional cables (or just making sure they’re all fully seated) with a modular PSU is usually a pain once the PSU is installed because the ports face the inside of the case – and they’re usually obscured by cable slack. Corsair’s RMx Shift line solves that issue (in most cases, at least), by putting the power cable plugs on the side of the power supply.I’ve used the 1000W version in a few builds and found it quite convenient....