June 13, 20256 min readAir-Conditioning Can Surprisingly Help the Power Grid during Extreme HeatSwitching on air-conditioning during extreme heat doesn’t have to make us feel guilty—it can actually boost power grid reliability and help bring more renewable energy onlineBy Johanna Mathieu & The Conversation US Imagedepotpro/Getty ImagesThe following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research.As summer arrives, people are turning on air conditioners in most of the U.S. But if you’re like me, you always feel a little guilty about that. Past generations managed without air conditioning – do I really need it? And how bad is it to use all this electricity for cooling in a warming world?If I leave my air conditioner off, I get too hot. But if everyone turns on their air conditioner at the same time, electricity demand spikes, which can force power grid operators to activate some of the most expensive, and dirtiest, power plants. Sometimes those spikes can ask too much of the grid and lead to brownouts or blackouts.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Research I recently published with a team of scholars makes me feel a little better, though. We have found that it is possible to coordinate the operation of large numbers of home air-conditioning units, balancing supply and demand on the power grid – and without making people endure high temperatures inside their homes.Studies along these lines, using remote control of air conditioners to support the grid, have for many years explored theoretical possibilities like this. However, few approaches have been demonstrated in practice and never for such a high-value application and at this scale. The system we developed not only demonstrated the ability to balance the grid on timescales of seconds, but also proved it was possible to do so without affecting residents’ comfort.The benefits include increasing the reliability of the power grid, which makes it easier for the grid to accept more renewable energy. Our goal is to turn air conditioners from a challenge for the power grid into an asset, supporting a shift away from fossil fuels toward cleaner energy.Adjustable equipmentMy research focuses on batteries, solar panels and electric equipment – such as electric vehicles, water heaters, air conditioners and heat pumps – that can adjust itself to consume different amounts of energy at different times.Originally, the U.S. electric grid was built to transport electricity from large power plants to customers’ homes and businesses. And originally, power plants were large, centralized operations that burned coal or natural gas, or harvested energy from nuclear reactions. These plants were typically always available and could adjust how much power they generated in response to customer demand, so the grid would be balanced between power coming in from producers and being used by consumers.But the grid has changed. There are more renewable energy sources, from which power isn’t always available – like solar panels at night or wind turbines on calm days. And there are the devices and equipment I study. These newer options, called “distributed energy resources,” generate or store energy near where consumers need it – or adjust how much energy they’re using in real time.One aspect of the grid hasn’t changed, though: There’s not much storage built into the system. So every time you turn on a light, for a moment there’s not enough electricity to supply everything that wants it right then: The grid needs a power producer to generate a little more power. And when you turn off a light, there’s a little too much: A power producer needs to ramp down.The way power plants know what real-time power adjustments are needed is by closely monitoring the grid frequency. The goal is to provide electricity at a constant frequency – 60 hertz – at all times. If more power is needed than is being produced, the frequency drops and a power plant boosts output. If there’s too much power being produced, the frequency rises and a power plant slows production a little. These actions, a process called “frequency regulation,” happen in a matter of seconds to keep the grid balanced.This output flexibility, primarily from power plants, is key to keeping the lights on for everyone.Finding new optionsI’m interested in how distributed energy resources can improve flexibility in the grid. They can release more energy, or consume less, to respond to the changing supply or demand, and help balance the grid, ensuring the frequency remains near 60 hertz.Some people fear that doing so might be invasive, giving someone outside your home the ability to control your battery or air conditioner. Therefore, we wanted to see if we could help balance the grid with frequency regulation using home air-conditioning units rather than power plants – without affecting how residents use their appliances or how comfortable they are in their homes.From 2019 to 2023, my group at the University of Michigan tried this approach, in collaboration with researchers at Pecan Street Inc., Los Alamos National Laboratory and the University of California, Berkeley, with funding from the U.S. Department of Energy Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy.We recruited 100 homeowners in Austin, Texas, to do a real-world test of our system. All the homes had whole-house forced-air cooling systems, which we connected to custom control boards and sensors the owners allowed us to install in their homes. This equipment let us send instructions to the air-conditioning units based on the frequency of the grid.Before I explain how the system worked, I first need to explain how thermostats work. When people set thermostats, they pick a temperature, and the thermostat switches the air-conditioning compressor on and off to maintain the air temperature within a small range around that set point. If the temperature is set at 68 degrees, the thermostat turns the AC on when the temperature is, say, 70, and turns it off when it’s cooled down to, say, 66.Every few seconds, our system slightly changed the timing of air-conditioning compressor switching for some of the 100 air conditioners, causing the units’ aggregate power consumption to change. In this way, our small group of home air conditioners reacted to grid changes the way a power plant would – using more or less energy to balance the grid and keep the frequency near 60 hertz.Moreover, our system was designed to keep home temperatures within the same small temperature range around the set point.Testing the approachWe ran our system in four tests, each lasting one hour. We found two encouraging results.First, the air conditioners were able to provide frequency regulation at least as accurately as a traditional power plant. Therefore, we showed that air conditioners could play a significant role in increasing grid flexibility. But perhaps more importantly – at least in terms of encouraging people to participate in these types of systems – we found that we were able to do so without affecting people’s comfort in their homes.We found that home temperatures did not deviate more than 1.6 Fahrenheit from their set point. Homeowners were allowed to override the controls if they got uncomfortable, but most didn’t. For most tests, we received zero override requests. In the worst case, we received override requests from two of the 100 homes in our test.In practice, this sort of technology could be added to commercially available internet-connected thermostats. In exchange for credits on their energy bills, users could choose to join a service run by the thermostat company, their utility provider or some other third party.Then people could turn on the air conditioning in the summer heat without that pang of guilt, knowing they were helping to make the grid more reliable and more capable of accommodating renewable energy sources – without sacrificing their own comfort in the process.This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Corsair Overhauls Prebuilt, 3-Chamber Airflow Case, & Transparent PSUJune 5, 2025Last Updated: 2025-06-05We take a look at Corsair’s upcoming i600 pre-built PC, Air 5400 case, Frame 4000D prototype, and moreThe HighlightsCorsair’s i600 pre-built PC is a new revision on the company’s i500 and overhauls its GPU cooler and CPU radiatorThe Corsair Air 5400 is an airflow-targeted case that has air ducts on the top and bottom of its chassisCorsair has partnered with Singularity to develop the Frame 4000D prototype, which has an interesting power board that handles cable managementTable of ContentsAutoTOC Grab a GN Tear-Down Toolkit to support our AD-FREE reviews and IN-DEPTH testing while also getting a high-quality, highly portable 10-piece toolkit that was custom designed for use with video cards for repasting and water block installation. Includes a portable roll bag, hook hangers for pegboards, a storage compartment, and instructional GPU disassembly cards.IntroWe visited Corsair’s suite at Computex 2025 and liked some of the stuff the company had to show. Editor's note: This was originally published on May 21, 2025 as a video. This content has been adapted to written format for this article and is unchanged from the original publication.CreditsHostSteve BurkeCamera, Video EditingMike GaglioneVitalii MakhnovetsWriting, Web EditingJimmy ThangCorsair Air 5400Corsair will release its Air 5400, which is an airflow-targeted case. On the back side of the case is a giant hole, which couples with a front-mounted radiator that will allow the case to shove air straight out of it. This design allows it to focus air flow for the GPU entirely from its own set of fans at the bottom of the case. This is probably the most interesting case from Corsair we saw at Computex this year. It should be around $220, though that’s dependent on the everchanging tariff situation. Internally, the Air 5400 has a duct at the bottom where the case has 3x120mm fans (the entire case is actually set up to support all 120mm fans, which simplifies things). The duct is there to guide air into the GPU. Corsair claims that the case is getting about a 1-2 degree improvement with the duct in a like-for-like test. If you do end up with a front radiator, then a potential area that gets abandoned in terms of airflow might be around the VRM area and some of the board components like system memory.  There are mounts for fans up on top of the case along with an additional duct. Looking at the back of the case, there are 2 holes on the back, which is surprising for a 120mm fan. The spacing doesn’t look like it would fit a 120mm fan, but Corsair’s plan is to include a bracket that would adapt a 120mm fan here and would actually cut out into the glass area on the back, which would make you lose about 40% of the fan. This should help but raises some questions about whether it may cause acoustic issues when you partially blast air into a glass wall. Speaking of glass, the Air 5400’s glass is laminated. A couple companies are doing this now. Corsair says this helps the glass stay more put together to prevent shattering. Looking at the back side panel, there’s a big acrylic sheet coupled with an area where air can escape. Opening up the back panel, there’s a huge amount of cable-management depth. You can also see that the motherboard tray is punctured all of the way through. This causes concerns around structural rigidity, but Corsair is using a .8mm thick steel, which helps a little bit here. The company has also strengthened the case’s top panel compared to Corsair’s 4000D case, which received negative feedback in that area. The Air 5400 is set to be priced at $220 with 3x120mm fans included. i600 Grab a GN15 Large Anti-Static Modmat to celebrate our 15th Anniversary and for a high-quality PC building work surface. The Modmat features useful PC building diagrams and is anti-static conductive. Purchases directly fund our work! (or consider a direct donation or a Patreon contribution!)Corsair is updating its i500 pre-built PC, which we hated, with its upcoming i600, and the company has improved it a lot. The i500’s GPU cooling solution had basically no contact with any of the power components. The i600, on the other hand, has massive overhauls here. The case itself has only slightly changed, but the changes made accommodate larger radiators. The block for the video card, including the power components, is totally different in a way that looks promising. The stuff that jumped out to us right away about the i600 is the fin stacks for the VRM, which is connected to a shared copper nickel-plated base plate for the GPU and memory. Everything is connected to the same base plate, which is connected to the liquid cooler. This means all of the heat gets dumped into the liquid cooler. There’s pros and cons to this design. The pro is that all of the other components get cooled better. The downside is that the GPU itself is sharing the heat dissipation capacity with all of the other components in the cooler. This means you typically see some increase in the GPU temperature as a result. There’s ups and downs to this approach. It doesn’t necessarily mean one solution is better than the other as long as it’s all cooled. The i600 has copper bars, which contact the MOSFETs. Otherwise, it’s very similar to the i500. Corsair has also modified its CPU cooler radiator, where the company has moved its tanks off to the side. The tubes are also running in a different direction. Corsair is also moving to 25mm thick fans, where previously they had the slimmer 15mm fans. That extra 10mm will help with pressure and performance a lot. We plan on doing a review of the PC as soon as we buy one.Corsair Frame 4000DWe saw a prototype of Corsair’s Frame 4000D, where the company changed a few things. Corsair partnered with Singularity for its powerboard. It’s somewhat similar to Elmore’s BENCHLAB, with the exception of it not logging power. With the case, you basically run all of the power cables into the power board and then route them to their final locations. We count 10 fan headers here along with a bunch of RGB headers. There’s a lot of possibilities with this. Currently, it’s mostly being used as a cable-management tool, but you could, in theory, expand this to include more switches, like fan-control switches. We would really like to see current monitoring. It would make it more expensive but that could be a potentially useful direction to go in where you could monitor on the 12VHPWR, for instance, which would become a great marketing point for Corsair and would be very useful for end users. The front panel is also different as it has a die-cut edge now.  The power supply setup is also different here with Corsair doing an acrylic wall for the PSU instead of steel. The challenge here is that plastic is an incredibly good insulator. This could raise some ESD (electrostatic discharge) concerns and may cause the PSU to lose some of the shielding that steel provides. As a part of this design, Corsair has customized the caps and PCBs so that they get nice color matching. It looks pretty nice. 3D PrintingCorsair was telling us how for its upcoming 4000D and its Frame series cases, it was getting into 3D printable panels and pieces. They showed us how one Corsair employee 3D printed a shroud-like duct, which takes air in through the bottom and shoves it up into where the pump and reservoir are in the image above. These 3D print files are available on Corsair’s account on Printables.  Corsair 5000DWe didn’t care too much about it but Corsair also showed off its new 5000D that has a screen on it, which is a thing companies are doing now. They also had a 5000D case without the screen, which is a larger variant of the Frame 4000D case. Corsair says that it should be priced around $180, but that’s in flux with the tariffs situation.  Corsair Open Concept Visit our Patreon page to contribute a few dollars toward this website's operation (or consider a direct donation or buying something from our GN Store!) Additionally, when you purchase through links to retailers on our site, we may earn a small affiliate commission.Corsair’s open concept at Computex is using some of the same Frame components, where the company is trying to make the Frame series modular and represents an open frame. There’s also an option for fan mounts as well. The company showed a gigantic radiator tower at the show, which is pretty cool to see.

NVIDIA is working with companies worldwide to build out AI factories — speeding the training and deployment of next-generation AI applications that use the latest advancements in training and inference. The NVIDIA Blackwell architecture is built to meet the heightened performance requirements of these new applications. In the latest round of MLPerf Training — the 12th since the benchmark’s introduction in 2018 — the NVIDIA AI platform delivered the highest performance at scale on every benchmark and powered every result submitted on the benchmark’s toughest large language model (LLM)-focused test: Llama 3.1 405B pretraining. The NVIDIA platform was the only one that submitted results on every MLPerf Training v5.0 benchmark — underscoring its exceptional performance and versatility across a wide array of AI workloads, spanning LLMs, recommendation systems, multimodal LLMs, object detection and graph neural networks. The at-scale submissions used two AI supercomputers powered by the NVIDIA Blackwell platform: Tyche, built using NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 rack-scale systems, and Nyx, based on NVIDIA DGX B200 systems. In addition, NVIDIA collaborated with CoreWeave and IBM to submit GB200 NVL72 results using a total of 2,496 Blackwell GPUs and 1,248 NVIDIA Grace CPUs. On the new Llama 3.1 405B pretraining benchmark, Blackwell delivered 2.2x greater performance compared with previous-generation architecture at the same scale. On the Llama 2 70B LoRA fine-tuning benchmark, NVIDIA DGX B200 systems, powered by eight Blackwell GPUs, delivered 2.5x more performance compared with a submission using the same number of GPUs in the prior round. These performance leaps highlight advancements in the Blackwell architecture, including high-density liquid-cooled racks, 13.4TB of coherent memory per rack, fifth-generation NVIDIA NVLink and NVIDIA NVLink Switch interconnect technologies for scale-up and NVIDIA Quantum-2 InfiniBand networking for scale-out. Plus, innovations in the NVIDIA NeMo Framework software stack raise the bar for next-generation multimodal LLM training, critical for bringing agentic AI applications to market. These agentic AI-powered applications will one day run in AI factories — the engines of the agentic AI economy. These new applications will produce tokens and valuable intelligence that can be applied to almost every industry and academic domain. The NVIDIA data center platform includes GPUs, CPUs, high-speed fabrics and networking, as well as a vast array of software like NVIDIA CUDA-X libraries, the NeMo Framework, NVIDIA TensorRT-LLM and NVIDIA Dynamo. This highly tuned ensemble of hardware and software technologies empowers organizations to train and deploy models more quickly, dramatically accelerating time to value. The NVIDIA partner ecosystem participated extensively in this MLPerf round. Beyond the submission with CoreWeave and IBM, other compelling submissions were from ASUS, Cisco, Dell Technologies, Giga Computing, Google Cloud, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Lambda, Lenovo, Nebius, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, Quanta Cloud Technology and Supermicro. Learn more about MLPerf benchmarks.

Silicon Valley nerds have been lonelier since Fry’s Electronics shut down in February 2021 in the midst of the pandemic. The electronics store chain was an embodiment of the valley’s tech roots. But Micro Center, an electronics retailer from Ohio, has opened its 29th store in Santa Clara, California. And so the nerd kingdom has returned. I see this as a big deal, following up on the opening of the Nintendo store — the second in the country after New York — in San Francisco earlier this month. After years of bad economic news, it’s nice to see signs that the Bay Area is coming back. No. To answer your question, nerds cannot live at the Micro Center store. But this isn’t just any store. It’s a symbol — a sign that shows tech still has a physical presence in Silicon Valley, in addition to places like the Buck’s Restaurant, the Denny’s where Nvidia started, the Intel Museum, the Computer History Museum, the California Academy of Sciences and the Tech Museum of Innovation. Other historic hangouts for techies like Walker’s Wagon Wheel, Atari’s headquarters, Lion & Compass — even Circuit City — have long since closed. But hey, we’ve got the Micro Center store, and the Apple spaceship is not that far away. The grand opening week has been going well and I got a tour of the superstore from Dan Ackerman, a veteran tech journalist who is editor-in-chief at Micro Center News. As I walked into the place, Ackerman was finishing a chat with iFixit, a tech repair publication which has its own space for podcasts inside the store. That was unexpected, as I’ve never seen a store embrace social media in such a way. Can you stump the geniuses at the Knowledge Bar at Micro Center? Nearby was the Knowledge Bar, where you can get all your tech questions answered — much like the Genius Bars in Apple Stores. And there were repair tables out in the open. There are a lot of things for tech enthusiasts can like about Micro Center. First, it’s not as sprawling as Fry’s, which had zany themes like ancient Egypt and a weird mix of electronics goods as well as household appliances, cosmetics, magazines and tons of snack foods. (The Egyptian-themed Campbell, California Fry’s store that I drove by often was 156,000 square feet, and now it’s home to a pickleball court complex). Fry’s was a store that stereotyped nerds and Silicon Valley, which also had its own HBO television show that carried on the stereotypes. Nvidia’s latest RTX 50 Series GPUs were in stock at Micro Center. The Micro Center store, by contrast, is smaller at 40,000 square feet and stocked with many more practical nerd items. For the grand opening, this store had the very practical product of more than 4,000 graphics processing units (GPUs) in stock from Nvidia (which just launched its 50 Series GPUs) and AMD, Ackerman told me. Some of those graphics cards cost as much as $4,000. Not to be outdone. AMD has a row of GPUs at Micro Center too. “There were people waiting to get to the GPUs,” Ackerman said. On display was a gold-plated graphics card that was being auctioned off for charity. It was signed by Jensen Huang, Nvidia CEO. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang signed this GPU being auctioned for charity at Micro Center. “I joke that whoever wins the bid should get a Jensen leather jacket as well,” said Ackerman. And this Micro Center store has a good location (5201 Stevens Creek Boulevard in Santa Clara) that is just a six-minute drive from Apple’s worldwide headquarters and (perhaps better yet) a one-minute walk from the Korean Hair Salon. Micro Center had a previous store in Silicon Valley, near Intel’s headquarters in Santa Clara. But that store close in 2012 because the company couldn’t negotiate better terms with the landlord. For its return to the Bay Area, Micro Center bided its time and came back at a time when many other retail chains were failing. It proves that the once proud region — the birthplace of electronics — still merits its own electronics store. You can buy dyes for liquid-cooled tubes at Micro Center. Sure, we have Target, Best Buy and Walmart selling lots of electronics gear. But there’s nothing like the Akihabara electronics district in Japan, which is full of multi-story electronics stores and gaming arcades. But this store is loaded with today’s modern top gear, like AI PCs, Ubiquity home networking gear, and dyes for multi-colored water-cooling systems. Vendors like Razer and Logitech had their own sections. Ackerman was pleased to show me the USB-C to USB-A adapter in stock, among many obscure items. And he showed me the inventory machine that could rotate its stock of 3D-printing filaments and give you the exact SKU that you scanned with a bar code. Tech hobbyists can find their love at Micro Center. “That’s super fun. I call it Mr. Filaments,” Ackerman said of the inventory robot. There’s a section for hobbyists who like single-board computing and DIY projects. There’s a set of video, audio and digital content creation tools for content creators. All told, there are more than 20,000 products and over 100 tech experts who can help. It even has the numbered cashier locations where you can check out — the same kind of checkout stands that Fry’s had. The Mr. Filaments robot inventory system at Micro Center. Customers can receive authorized computer service for brands like Apple, Dell, and HP, benefiting from same-day diagnostics and repairs, thanks to over 3,000 parts on hand through partnerships with leading OEMs. I only wish it had a help desk for Comcast. Micro Center has gear to entertain geeks. Micro Center started in 1979 in Columbus, Ohio. It’s a surprise there aren’t more nerd stores, given how ubiquitous tech is around the world these days. But Ackerman said, “These guys are really doing it right, picking and choosing, finding the right cities, finding the right locations. That’s why Charlotte is great. Miami is a big tech hub, especially for health tech. And we’re literally five minutes away from Apple headquarters and plenty of other places. People from HP and Nvidia and other companies are coming in today to hang out.” “Even though this store is big, the CEO (Richard Mershad) is really into curation, making sure it’s the right mix of stuff. He’s making sure it doesn’t go too far afield. So you’re not going to come in here and find, you know, hair dryers or lawncare equipment,” Ackerman said. “You’re going to find computer and home entertainment stuff, and DIY gear. There are components, just like in a Radio Shack, that hobbyists care about.” Dan Ackerman knows how to install a TV on your wall. As for the Micro Center News, Ackerman told me he has around 10 regular contributors and 20 more freelancers writing gadget reviews and other stories about tech gear. It is a kind of refuge for that vanishing breed of professional tech journalists. No wonder I was so nostalgic visiting Micro Center.

Pros Supports multiple big radiatorsExcellent dust filtrationSpace for open-loop cooling components Cons Not fully EATX-compliantMidpack thermal performance in our tests MSI MPG Velox 300R Airflow PZ Specs 120mm or 140mm Fan Positions 10 120mm to 200mm Fans Included 3 Dimensions (HWD) 20.6 by 9.3 by 19.5 inches Fan Controller Included? Front Panel Ports HD Audio Front Panel Ports USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A (2) Front Panel Ports USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C Included Fan Lighting Color Addressable RGB Internal 2.5-Inch Bays 5 Internal 3.5-Inch Bays 2 Internal Chassis Lighting Color None Maximum CPU Cooler Height 165 Maximum GPU Length 400 Motherboard Form Factors Supported ATX Motherboard Form Factors Supported MicroATX Motherboard Form Factors Supported Mini-ITX PCI Expansion Slot Positions 7 Power Supply Form Factor Supported ATX Power Supply Maximum Length 260 Power Supply Mounting Location Bottom Side Window(s)? Yes (Tempered Glass) Weight 23.5 All Specs MSI has built a formidable reputation over the past four decades, beginning with motherboards and working its way through servers and graphics cards before finally becoming a premier laptop manufacturer. Its name is synonymous with shopping for PC components, but its PC cases usually come to mind only when we think of its prebuilt desktop machines. Built from sturdy materials and loaded with popular features, its $149.99 MPG Velox 300R Airflow PZ is designed to leave a more lasting impression. Supporting MSI’s reverse-connector Project Zero motherboards and smartly designed for accommodating a substantive build that’s air- or liquid-cooled, the Velox is a worthy rival to Asus’ TUF Gaming cable-hiding case. PC builders weighing a Project Zero build to minimize visible cabling should shortlist this chassis, though the selection of reverse-connector-compatible PC cases is growing fast.Design: Packing in the Features for Project ZeroWith a sturdy steel structure making up most of its 23.5 pounds of heft, the MPG Velox 300R Airflow PZ is as weighty as its name is long. (We’ll call it“Velox 300R” from here on out.) Its numerous strengths include dust filters that cover every air inlet, giant 160mm ARGB intake fans connected to a factory-installed controller/hub, and even a logo-emblazoned low-restriction faceplate that will probably help make any dust that collects on the filter behind it slightly less noticeable as the PC waits for its next cleaning. A light tint on the 4mm-thick tempered glass side panel makes the black 120mm exhaust fan harder to spot against the case’s black interior. Mounted on four snaps and three guide pins, the faceplate easily pulls away to access the front panel’s plastic-framed nylon-sheet dust filter. Secured with three magnets on each side, the filter pulls easily away from the fans for cleaning.(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)Though “front-panel” ports and buttons often end up on the top panel of modern cases, the Velox 300R’s placement is somewhat unusual in that it’s a bit farther away from the actual front of the case than on most cases. Lined up along its right edge are a power button with a power-indicator LED window, an LED mode button, a headset (headphone/microphone) combo jack, two USB 3.2 Type-A ports, and a Gen 2x2 Type-C port. Unfortunately, there’s no reset button or drive-activity light.(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)The rear panel features the only Velox 300R vents that aren’t covered in dust filters, though that’s okay; these should probably be viewed as exhaust vents that flow filtered air from those big front-panel fans. We also see the ATX standard’s seven expansion slots, a 120mm exhaust fan screwed onto slots that allow a little vertical adjustment, a power supply mount with two sets of holes to allow inverted mounting, and two vertical vent sections running up the forward and rear portions of the right side panel.The expansion-slot panel is inset, which simplifies graphics card installation. (In short: There's no interference between the card bracket and the clearance area above the screws, as there sometimes is with cheaper cases with non-inset panels.) (Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)A long dust filter that covers most of the bottom panel slides out the back of the case from beneath the power supply bay.(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)The top panel and two long side panel vents are each covered internally with a perforated metal filter sheet, each of which uses magnetic tape around its periphery to stick to the steel panel.(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)The Velox 300R’s top panel is designed to hold a 360mm-format radiator up to 420mm long. (The radiator will have around 57mm of clearance above the motherboard’s top edge.) The Velox 300R’s top panel also includes a second set of mounting slots to enable three 140mm fans to be placed there instead.From this angle, we can also see that the power supply cover has two 120mm fan mounts, that an adjustable card brace is attached slightly forward of the power supply cover, and that a removable multi-purpose bracket is factory-mounted to the 120mm fan location at the front of the case’s bottom panel. The bracket is drilled to hold a single 3.5-inch or 2.5-inch drive, as well as a variety of open-loop liquid-cooling pump/reservoir combos.(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)Like the multifunction bracket that sits in front of it, the outer three-quarters of the power supply cover is removable. That fact eased the installation and removal of modular cables on our power supply.(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)The Velox 300R’s motherboard tray includes several extra pass-through holes designed to fit the connector locations of MSI’s Project Zero motherboards, but they are not excluded, in any way we can see, from otherwise supporting its largest competitor’s rear-facing-connector design, Asus BTF. A side mount that can hold up to three 120mm fans and/or 360mm-format radiators up to 440mm long is offset an inch behind the motherboard tray, so that a fan up to 38mm thick could fit behind an EATX motherboard if we add the length of the standoffs to that thickness. We wouldn’t call the Velox an EATX case, because it has no mechanical support to hold 13-inch-long boards, but some slightly bigger-than-ATX boards will fit without requiring such supports.(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)Behind the Velox 300R’s motherboard tray are its ARGB controller/fan hub and two drive trays. (Note that we also pulled the face panel off for our open case photos.) The controller’s hub supports four PWM fans and four ARGB devices.(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)Removing the plastic plugs above and below the front-face 160mm factory ARGB fans allows us to see that the fan rails running up and down the face are also removable. Had we also removed the factory-fitted 160mm fans themselves, we could have used the extra mounting holes you can see to move the brackets inward to 140mm or 120mm fan spacing. The 480mm of space (height) behind that mount exceeds the length of any 420mm-format radiator we’ve seen, so you could put a really big radiator up front if you so desire. That said, you'll probably want to keep these oversized fans if you are air cooling; they have a nifty design, with an offset circle of blades inside a larger circle(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)The drive trays include one dual-2.5-inch tray without 3.5-inch provisions and one with 3.5-inch provisions. Installing a 3.5-inch drive fitted with vibration-damping grommets precludes the use of any 2.5-inch drives in the second tray.Recommended by Our Editors(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)Building With the MSI Velox 300RLet's dig into the accessory kit. The Velox 300R includes an installation guide and a case sticker, four combo-head power supply screws, a Phillips-to-hex-adapter socket for installing standoffs, two spare standoffs, and lots of additional screws. These include 21 standard M3 screws, eight M3 and four #6-32 shoulder screws (for installing drives onto the grommet-filled drive tray), and 12 extra-long #6-32 screws (for installing 120mm fans to the top of the power supply cover). You also get a bag of six replacement snaps for the ball-snap side-panel attachments, and two hook-and-loop and six zip-style cable ties.(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)Case cables include a 19-pin USB 3.2 Gen 1 for the Type-A ports, a Type-E Gen 2x2 for the Type-C port, and an F_PANEL combo cable with breakout pins for a reset button that the case itself lacks. The ARGB controller/fan hub accepts PWM and ARGB control signals from the motherboard and is powered by a SATA-style power cable from your PSU.(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)Our standard ATX motherboard fit the Velox 300R perfectly, and its card brace slid up to meet the edge of our test graphics card’s fan bracket nicely.(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)The ARGB controller defaults to obeying the motherboard’s signal whenever its ARGB input is connected to the motherboard, but those who won’t be using motherboard control can also scroll through the controller’s inbuilt patterns via its mode button or even disable lighting entirely simply by holding the button for a few seconds.Here’s how the Velox looked all fleshed out with our standard test parts...(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)MSI also sent along one of its motherboards, based on the Z790 chipset, so we could show this PZ (Project Zero) case built with its cable concealment fully deployed. This photo shows how all the cable headers that would have been pointing outward on a traditional motherboard point backward on this model.(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)We’ll have to push some of those ARGB fan controller/hub cables aside to reach the ARGB and ATX12V headers of the Z790 Project Zero motherboard.(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)We’ll also have to stuff away a little more cable length since most of our cables are no longer required to reach around to the front of the board.(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)Though the displaced power and data cabling cleaned up the show side of our build nicely, we still have our graphics card’s supplemental power cable (12VHPWR) and our AIO CPU cooler’s tubes to contend with. Still, mighty clean and almost "Zero."(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)And though the Z790 Project Zero motherboard has far less lighting than the board from our standardized kit, some would argue that it still looks better thanks to the reduced cable clutter.(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)Testing the MSI Velox 300R: Twice-Benchmarked, Once With Project ZeroHere’s a list of the internal components from both of the above-photographed builds, along with the settings we used for our tests.The Velox 300R’s thermal performance is exactly mid-pack when using our standard test kit, and swapping in the rear-connector motherboard only resulted in a faster-warming voltage regulator (likely due to the lower mass of its heat sink). Its temperature control falls behind its most direct competitor, the Asus TUF Gaming GT302 ARGB, in both configurations.The reason the Velox 300R’s cooling performance fell behind the Lian Li Lancool 207 and GT302 ARGB appears fairly obvious when observing our noise charts: It’s quieter than both those cases.Both companies were aware that they could get better thermal results simply by spinning their fans a little harder, but MSI appears to have favored a quieter approach. Be aware that simply enabling the automatic fan profiles for your motherboard could potentially put all three of these cases into a tie with regard to both temperature and noise.

Thermalright is a Menace: Dozens of New Coolers, New Case, 17-Blade Fan, & Mini PCs, ft. CEOMay 30, 2025Last Updated: 2025-05-30We take a look at Thermalright’s crazy amount of air coolers, closed-loop liquid coolers, fans, and examine the company’s first caseThe HighlightsThermalright continues to overwhelm the CPU cooler market with a crazy amount of coolers at cheap pricesThermalright showed off its first case, the TR M10 MATXThermalright is experimenting with fans of all kinds, ranging from high-end all-LCP and metal fans to more modest PPT onesThe company also unveiled a number of new closed-loop liquid coolersTable of ContentsAutoTOCGrab a GN Soldering & Project Mat for a high-quality work surface with extreme heat resistance. These purchases directly fund our operation, including our build-out of the hemi-anechoic chamber for our acoustic testing! (or consider a direct donation or a Patreon contribution!)IntroWe visited Thermalright’s booth at Computex 2025 and the company handed us a big booklet showing everything the company was showing at the show. It’s impossible for us to remember the names of everything the company was showing at the event as there just too much of it, but we'll try to highlight the most interesting products.Editor's note: This was originally published on May 20, 2025 as a video. This content has been adapted to written format for this article and is unchanged from the original publication.CreditsHostSteve BurkeCamera, Video EditingMike GaglioneVitalii MakhnovetsWriting, Web EditingJimmy ThangThermalright Air CoolersThe biggest thing that Thermalright is doing when it comes to coolers is mostly in digital displays and screens. The company showed off many CPU air coolers at Computex and only a few don’t have them. Frost TowerThe company’s Frost Tower comes with a 140mm fan in the middle coupled with a 120mm front fan. The middle fan is 27mm thick and the front fan is a standard 25mm. Thermalright is targeting about $50 for the Frost Tower. The company is using LCP blades, which is very expensive, and a 30% fiberglass reinforced PBT for the frame, which is a balancing mechanism for cost. It uses a 6-pull fan and its fin-stack is soldered, which is higher quality than press-fit.Royal LordThe company’s Royal Lord cooler is supposed to be a $43 cooler and it uses 2 fans. Thermalright says it’s an extra $10 if you want to add an extra LCD to it. Like the Frost Tower, its fin stack is also soldered. It uses 7 heat pipes with a 30% fiberglass reinforced PBT for its fans, which are both 2x25mm. Thermalright FansR-Series Fans The company will release its R5 and R9 fans. The number denotes how many blades the fans will have. Thermalright says the R5 fans are designed to push air through radiators. The R9 fan has 9 blades and is a 28mm thick fan. The company is moving towards LCP on a lot of its fans. X12 FanThermalright showed off a fan with 17 blades that’s completely made out of metal. It’s got a zinc alloy frame and aluminum blade set. It’s just a prototype for now and costs the company $100 to make, which tells you a little about how much it might cost for the company to mass-produce it. The unit we saw was fully CNCed. 17 blade fans are very abnormal. The company says it would mostly be useful in mini PCs. The fan uses an all-metal design to get the blade-tip clearance to functionally be 0. The fan also has an inner ring to it. Thermalright Stream Vision Liquid Cooler Grab a GN15 Large Anti-Static Modmat to celebrate our 15th Anniversary and for a high-quality PC building work surface. The Modmat features useful PC building diagrams and is anti-static conductive. Purchases directly fund our work! (or consider a direct donation or a Patreon contribution!)Thermalright showed off numerous liquid coolers, but we’re only going to focus on one. Thermalright’s Stream Vision is supposed to be $100. The liquid cooler comes with a screen on it and there’s also a fan that cools the memory and VRM. One of our suggestions to Thermalright is to angle the grill on the sides of this fan away from the mounting brackets. The company is trying to compete in the liquid market more. Rainbow Vision and Wonder VisionThe company is also competing with Tryx’s panoramic cooler. Thermalright has an interchangeable screen with one of the 2 options providing a full separate cold plate. They are 2400x1800 resolution from what the company told us and leverage a 60Hz panel. One of the options is a 6.67-inch OLED display. Thermalright says that both options should be about $200. TRM10 CasesThermalright also showed off a case that it’s been working on, the TRM10. The company hasn’t made computer cases before. It’s one of the few products that it’s not making in its factory. Thermalright’s plan for cases is to do what they’re doing in the cooler industry, which is to be extremely competitive when it comes to pricing. The cheapest version of the TRM10 will be $45 and the more expensive one will be $65. The more expensive model will come with an LCD display on the side and a digital display on the front to display numbers like the time. The cheaper one, on the other hand, will most likely just come with a steel plate instead.  The mATX case is mostly steel with a bunch of perforations on the top and glass for its sides. The top of the case also has plastic that is made to look like brushed aluminum. Inside the chassis, there’s a good amount of depth for the cable management and it has passthrough for the cables at a side angle with the exception of the EPS12V, which is on the top. Everything else about the case is pretty standard. Looking inside the case, there’s a lot of perforation, like at the top and bottom of the hard drive cages, which is a good thing to see. The top of the power supply shroud is also heavily perforated along with the bottom of the case. There’s about as many holes as you can get in the case.  The case is going for airflow with its panel design, with the exception of the front, but the side makes up for some airflow. The steel in the middle of this panel adds some rigidity and is also probably a play on Thermalright’s logo.   Thermalright Mini PCsWith its mini PCs, Thermalright is trying to compete with Minisforum and the company tells us that the mini PCs we saw will be liquid cooled. This theoretically means it should have better thermals and be a little quieter compared to competing systems if it’s done well. Pricing is still TBD but Thermalright says they will be cheaper or equal to competing mini PCs, which we take as Minisforum. The company started running a benchmark on one of its mini PCs with a 100% load and we saw the CPU, which is an AMD 395 SOC, temps being 61 degrees C, though that may ramp up as it hits steady state. Thermalright showed off 3 models.One of the mini PCs at Computex was just there for show. The unit in the image above is fully CNCed. It looks super nice with its red accents, but it’s not something the company is planning to sell unless there’s a lot of demand for it.  Thermalright Tank PCLeveraging its factory, Thermalright wanted to build something cool and took 3 months to make a computer that looked like a tank. The company told us it’s composed of around 450 pieces.Thermalright CEO Interview Visit our Patreon page to contribute a few dollars toward this website's operation (or consider a direct donation or buying something from our GN Store!) Additionally, when you purchase through links to retailers on our site, we may earn a small affiliate commission.We also conducted a brief interview with Thermalright’s CEO. To check that out, make sure to watch that portion in our Computex video.

For homebuyers interested in new construction, common options range from customizing a builder’s model to working with a design-build firm to create a one-of-a-kind home. But in recent years, a quieter trend has emerged: Some buyers are skipping the blueprints and starting with a blank canvas by purchasing undeveloped, or “raw” land.While the pace of land sales has cooled slightly, a Realtor.com analysis still shows a 1.2% increase in transactions in 2023. The data coincides with broader real estate trends, from housing inventory shortages to a rising interest in multigenerational living. The top land markets, according to Realtor.com, are California, Texas, Georgia, Florida, and Colorado. “For many of my clients, [buying undeveloped land] comes down to freedom, creativity, and privacy,” says Harley Bush, a real estate agent with Caughman Realty in Midlands, South Carolina. “They want the ability to design every inch of their home, not just pick from a builder’s limited models. They want space to grow, the ability to orient their home around a lake view or sunset, or even create a small family compound.”That said, buying land to develop and build a house on comes with significantly more considerations than purchasing a home or building one in an existing neighborhood. Ahead, some tips from real estate pros on how to buy undeveloped land, including the steps you need to take and the hidden costs and hurdles that can pop up. Related StoriesIs it Worth it to Buy Undeveloped Land? Altaf Shah / 500px//Getty ImagesBuying undeveloped land is attractive to buyers who want customization that it allows for, but there is a unique set of risks and some extra due diligence that comes with going this route, says Matthew Coates, president and principal of Coates Design Architects. In addition to design freedom, those who buy raw land generally get more acreage, more mature landscaping, better views, and fewer neighbors, he points out. Buyers can also create a more sustainable and energy-efficient home, something that’s more difficult to retrofit into an old house.“The most successful buyers I deal with see it as a long-term project right from the start, rather than thinking it will be a quick endeavor,” Coates says. “They ask the right questions, assemble the correct team, and go in eyes wide open.”That long-term mindset is especially important when it comes to infrastructure. Buyers should be prepared for some logistical hurdles. The big four are water, power, sewage, and road access, says Elena Novak, the lead real estate analyst and researcher at PropertyChecker.com, a property records search site.“In rural areas, you may need to drill a well, install a septic system, and build a road to reach the site,” Novak says. “If electrical service is far away, utility companies may charge thousands to bring in a new line.” Some buyers also forget about internet and cell service, and may need to explore alternative options like satellite.How to Buy Undeveloped LandDan Reynolds Photography//Getty ImagesBecause buying undeveloped land is a more technical process than purchasing or building in a pre-existing neighborhood, you’ll want to assemble a team of professionals that can help you navigate the process. Work with a real estate agent who has experience with land deals and can help guide you through the many steps, like zoning research, soil testing, and well and septic planning, Bush recommends. Experts also recommend working closely with surveyors, builders, a real estate or land-use attorney—and, in some cases, a local planner or civil engineer—to help ensure there are no surprises leading up to closing.Here’s some key steps to take when buying undeveloped land with the intention of building a home on it, according to Novak. 1. Understand zoning and land use regulations.Start by confirming the property is zoned for residential use and investigating any limitations that could affect your building plans. “Not all residential-looking land is buildable,” Novak says. “A buyer should visit the local planning department to verify what can legally be built, whether permits are available, and if there are restrictions like easements, flood zones, or conservation overlays.” A land survey can also help you confirm property boundaries and flag any encroachments or easements.2. Coordinate soil and percolation tests.This is especially important in rural areas where a septic system may be needed.3. Consult with an architect and builder Bring in professionals to assess the land’s buildability based on slope, layout, and access. “Land might appear perfect on the surface, but hidden challenges can be expensive,” Novak says. “For example, steep slopes may require retaining walls, and wetlands or protected species on-site can limit where and how you build.”4. Have a title search and legal review performed This step helps uncover any liens, boundary disputes, or rights-of-way that could delay or derail your project, Novak says. It’s also worth noting that fraudulent listings of vacant land have become a common scam tactic. A proper title review can help protect you from being caught in one of these “title pirate” schemes.“Land deals are more technical than buying a home,” Novak says. “But with the right team, the right checks, and a bit of patience, it’s one of the most rewarding ways to create a home that truly reflects your values and lifestyle.”How to Finance Undeveloped Land RyanJLane//Getty ImagesThe most common path to financing undeveloped land is securing a lot loan, which typically requires a larger down payment and carries higher interest rates due to the lack of collateral, since nothing has been built yet.You’ll start by going through a pre-approval process, says Loren Fellows, Vice President, Mortgage Production Manager at Johnson Financial Group. The last thing you want is to sell your current home or be in the middle of drawing up plans before learning that you don’t qualify for the loan.Once you’re ready to build, your lot loan can often be rolled into the financing of the construction loan, she says. If you already own the land, you may be able to use the existing equity in your lot toward the down payment required on the construction loan.Construction financing usually happens in two phases. First, there’s short-term financing that covers the cost of building the home. During this phase, borrowers typically make interest-only payments based on the amount the builder has drawn so far. Once the home is complete and the final draw is made, the loan can then be converted into a long-term, fixed-rate mortgage.Follow House Beautiful on Instagram and TikTok.

Giant Sloths the Size of Elephants Once Walked Along the Ground. Here’s How the Massive Animals Evolved and Declined Researchers analyzed fossils and DNA to get a big-picture view of sloth evolution and determine what drove their immense size variation Researchers revealed that differences in sloth habitats drove the wide variation in size seen in extinct species. Diego Barletta Today, sloths are slow-moving, tree-dwelling creatures that live in Central and South America and can grow up to 2.5 feet long. Thousands of years ago, however, some sloths walked along the ground, weighed around 8,000 pounds and were as big as Asian elephants. Some of these now-extinct species were “like grizzly bears, but five times larger,” as Rachel Narducci, collection manager of vertebrate paleontology at the Florida Museum of Natural History, says in a statement. In a study published last week in the journal Science, Narducci and her colleagues studied ancient and modern sloth DNA along with more than 400 sloth fossils to shed light on the shocking differences in their ancient sizes—from the elephant-sized Megatherium ground sloth to its 14-pound relatives living in trees. While it’s clear that tree-dwelling lifestyles necessitate small bodies, scientists weren’t sure why ground sloths specifically demonstrated such vast size diversity. To investigate this, the team used their genetic and fossil analyses to reconstruct a sloth tree of life that reaches back to the animals’ emergence more than 35 million years ago. They integrated data on sloths’ habitats, diets and mobility that had been gathered in previous research. With a computer model, they processed this information, which ultimately indicated that sloths’ size diversity was mostly driven by their habitats and climates. “When we look at what comes out in the literature, a lot of it is description of individual finds, or new taxa,” Greg McDonald, a retired regional paleontologist with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management who was not involved with the study, tells Science News’ Carolyn Gramling. The new work is “more holistic in terms of looking at a long-term pattern. Often, we don’t get a chance to step back and get the big picture of what’s going on.” The big picture suggests that since the emergence of the oldest known sloths—ground animals around the size of a Great Dane—the creatures evolved into and out of tree living a number of times. Around 14 million to 16 million years ago, however, a time of global warming called the Mid-Miocene Climatic Optimum pushed sloths to become smaller, which is a known way for animals to respond to heat stress. Warmer temperatures might have also seen more rain, which would have created more forest habitats ideal for tree-dwelling sloths. Around a million years later, however, ground sloths grew bigger as the planet’s temperature cooled. “Gigantism is more closely associated with cold and dry climates,” Daniel Casali, a co-author of the paper and a researcher of mammalian evolution at the University of São Paulo, tells New Scientist’s Jake Buehler. A larger body mass would have helped the animals traverse environments with few resources more efficiently, Narducci says in the statement. In fact, these large ground sloths spread out across diverse habitats and thrived in different regions. The aquatic sloth Thalassocnus even evolved marine adaptations similar to manatees. Ground sloths achieved their greatest size during the last ice age—right before starting to disappear around 15,000 years ago. Given that humans arrived in North America around the same time (though recent research indicates they may have arrived as far back as 20,000 years ago), some scientists say humans are the obvious cause of the sloths’ demise. While tree-dwelling sloths were out of reach to our ancestors, the large and slow ground animals would have made easy targets. Even still, two species of tree sloths in the Caribbean disappeared around 4,500 years ago—also shortly after humans first arrived in the region, according to the statement. While the study joins a host of research indicating that humans drove various large Ice Age animals to extinction, “in science, we need several lines of evidence to reinforce our hypotheses, especially in unresolved and highly debated issues such as the extinction of megafauna,” says Thaís Rabito Pansani, a paleontologist from the University of New Mexico who did not participate in the study, to New Scientist. The International Union for Conservation of Nature currently recognizes seven—following a recent species discovery—and three are endangered. As such, “one take-home message is that we need to act now to avoid a total extinction of the group,” says lead author Alberto Boscaini, a vertebrate paleontologist from the University of Buenos Aires, to the BBC’s Helen Briggs. Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.

If you're seeking the absolute best of the best in PC gaming performance, look no further. As part of its Memorial Day Sale, Dell has dropped the price of its flagship Alienware Area-51 prebuilt gaming PC, equipped with the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 graphics card, for the lowest price I've seen. This particular model normally retails for $5,499.99, but a new $600 instant discount drops it to $4,899.99 with free shipping. The RTX 5090 is undisputedly the most powerful graphics card on the market and is pretty much impossible to find for under $3,000 by itself.Memorial Day Deal: Alienware Area-51 RTX 5090 Gaming PCNew ReleaseAlienware Area-51 Intel Core Ultra 9 285K RTX 5090 Gaming PC (32GB/2TB)This Alienware Area-51 gaming PC configuration drops to $4,899.99 after a $600 off instant discount. Specs include an Intel Core Ultra 9 285K processor, 32GB of DDR5-6400MHz RAM, and 2TB SSD storage. The Core Ultra 9 285K is Intel's latest flagship CPU and offers stellar workstation and gaming performance. It's not quite the performance uplift we wanted from the i9-14900K, but it's still the best all-around CPU that Intel has on offer. The processor is cooled by a massive 360mm all-in-one liquid cooler, and the system is powered by a 1,500W Platinum power supply.New for 2025: The Alienware Area-51 ChassisDell unveiled the new Alienware Area-51 gaming PC at CES 2025. The chassis looks similar to the 2024 R16 system with aesthetic and cooling redesigns and updated components. The I/O panel is positioned at the top of the case instead of the front, and the tempered glass window now spans the entire side panel instead of just a smaller cutout. As a result, the side panel vents are gone, and instead air intakes are located at the bottom as well as the front of the case. Alienware is now pushing a positive airflow design (more intake than exhaust airflow), which means a less dusty interior. The internal components have been refreshed with a new motherboard, faster RAM, and more powerful power supply to accommodate the new generation of CPUs and GPUs.The RTX 5090 Is the Most Powerful Graphics Card EverThe Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 has emerged as the most powerful consumer GPU on the market. Although Nvidia has prioritized software updates, AI features, and DLSS 4 technology to improve gameplay performance, the 5090 still boasts an impressive 25%-30% uplift over the RTX 4090 in terms of pure hardware-based raster performance. The 5090 also has more (32GB vs. 24GB) and faster (GDDR7 vs. GDDR6) VRAM compared to the 4090. This GPU is extremely difficult to find at retail price and is currently selling for $3,500-$4,000 on eBay.Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 FE Review by Jackie Thomas"The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 has officially taken the performance crown from the RTX 4090, but with less force than previous generations. When it comes to traditional non-AI gaming performance, the RTX 5090 provides one of the smallest generational uplifts in recent memory. However, in games that support it, DLSS 4 really does deliver huge performance gains – you just have to make your peace with the fact that 75% of the frames are generated with AI."More Alienware Prebuilt Gaming PC DealsAlienware Aurora R16 Intel Core Ultra 7 265F RTX 5080 Gaming PC (16GB/1TB)$2,349.99 at AlienwareAlienware Aurora R16 Intel Core Ultra 9 285K RTX 5080 Gaming PC (32GB/2TB)New ReleaseAlienware Area-51 Intel Core Ultra 9 285K RTX 5090 Gaming PC (32GB/2TB)Alienware Aurora R16 Intel Core Ultra 7 265F RTX 5070 Gaming PC$1,849.99 at AlienwareAlienware Aurora R16 Intel Core Ultra 9 285KF RTX 5070 Gaming PC (32GB/2TB)New for 2025Alienware Area-51 Intel Core Ultra 7 265 RTX 5080 Gaming PC (32GB/1TB)Alienware Aurora R16 Intel Core Ultra 9 285K RTX 5080 Gaming PC (64GB/2TB)Alienware Aurora R16 Intel Core Ultra 9 285K RTX 5080 Gaming PC (64GB/4TB)Why Should You Trust IGN's Deals Team?IGN's deals team has a combined 30+ years of experience finding the best discounts in gaming, tech, and just about every other category. We don't try to trick our readers into buying things they don't need at prices that aren't worth buying something at. Our ultimate goal is to surface the best possible deals from brands we trust and our editorial team has personal experience with. You can check out our deals standards here for more information on our process, or keep up with the latest deals we find on IGN's Deals account on Twitter.Eric Song is the IGN commerce manager in charge of finding the best gaming and tech deals every day. When Eric isn't hunting for deals for other people at work, he's hunting for deals for himself during his free time.