Equipment

The best 4TB SSD you can buy is on sale right now for the cheapest it’s ever been-

The WD Black SN850X is the best NVMe SSD you can buy right now, and both the 4TB and 2TB models are on sale. Walmart’s got the chunky 4TB drive for the all-time low price of only $341; the 2TB version is just $155 at Newegg. There are many SSD deals daily, but a sale on our favorite NVMe? That’s too good to be true! (It is true, though. Promise.)

The SN850X is pretty much the best Gen 4 SSD on the block, solving a major issue with its impressive predecessor, the SN850, by running so much cooler. Some might say that it’s the SN850X’s ‘X’ factor. I’m sorry. 

The 4TB and 2TB SN850X manage a speedy 7,300MB/s read and 6,600MB/s write speed. As for performance, they’re both a great all-around drive that would make a killer upgrade for your storage. For gaming, this means you’re looking at quicker load times and a generous amount of storage for even your biggest games.

According to our WD Black SN850X review, the SN850X isn’t the best step forward from the SN850 though it still manages to sit at the top of the very crowded field of lightning-quick SSDs. 

If you want to maximize your savings, you could instead pick up two 2TB SN850X SSDs for $310. Make sure your motherboard has enough M.2 slots to install an additional SSD since an older board might have one slot. If not, it might be time to consider upgrading your gaming PC, as that slot is unlikely to be PCIe Gen 4 compliant anyways.

I should mention that the sale is on the non-heatsink version of these drives, which isn’t a huge deal since this SSD’s thing is improved cooling. However, if you plan on sticking this inside a PS5, you should wait for a deal on a drive with the heatsink included since you’ll need one.

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Amazon Prime members have until midnight Pacific to get one of my favorite games for free-

As we advised last week, three games are currently available free for Amazon Prime subscribers, on top of its usual rotating freebie selection. Claim them before the Prime Day sales event ends at midnight Pacific on Wednesday night, and they’re yours forever.

The games are:

  • Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League
  • Rise of the Tomb Raider
  • Chivalry 2

If you’re a Prime subscriber, you can grab the free games here. To take advantage of the offer, you have to link your Amazon and Epic Games Store accounts, and Epic’s launcher is where you’ll be able to access your new games. 

  • We’re curating all the best Prime Day PC gaming deals right here.

If you aren’t already using the Epic Games Store and the thought of dealing with a new launcher puts you off, I’m sympathetic, though to complicate your decision I’ll say that I th…

Orcs Must Die’s next entry will bring a roguelite twist next year

The Orcs Must Die series is getting another entry next year with Orcs Must Die Deathtrap, which will be the fifth game in the series from developer and publisher Robot Entertainment. The new release will have players, alone or as a team of up to four, battle oncoming waves of enemies in third-person action gameplay. This time, players will “evolve through rogue-lite progression” as they defeat hordes of orcs.

The reveal trailer showed off four different characters: An elf with a crossbow, a wand-wielding sorceress, a lady with a gun, and a large angry bear. “Each hero is tailored to different play styles and can operate independently or work together with complementing heroes, ensuring versatile and mighty orc-smashing,” said Robot Entertainment.

Space Marine 2 board game aims to indoctrinate videogame fans into the Warhammer miniatures lifestyle

Coming to approved Warhammer retailers this Saturday, the Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 Recruit Edition board game is “designed to introduce new hobbyists to the world of Warhammer, especially those that want to recreate the battles of the latest videogame hit.”

In other words, if you enjoyed Space Marine 2, this is your invitation to adopt a full-fledged Warhammer hobbyist lifestyle. Accept it at your own risk: You may one day find that you’ve dedicated a portion of your home to the painting of little guys that you can’t stop buying.

The two-player game is designed for 30 minute sessions, and includes 12 miniatures: one Lieutenant Titus, 10 Tyranid Termagants, and one Ripper Swarm. It also comes with five colors of paint, “a range of starter tools and game components,” and a handbook.

If you don’t imagine him charging forward mightily, Lieutenant Titus comes across as a bit wobbly. The big-headed Warhammer proportions contribute to the sense that he’s an unst…

Newsflash- That bargain MSI 4K 240Hz OLED gaming monitor is actually available to buy for once-

MSI’s take on the killer 4K gaming OLED segment has always looked appealing. How so? In a word, price. At $899, it’s easily the cheapest of the bunch.

Of course, there’s a catch. You kind of can’t buy the MSI MAG 321UPX. At least, you barely ever could, it has been sold out almost all the time. But now you can for that $899 price from Newegg.

I reviewed this monitor back in May. At least, I reviewed the MSI MAG 321URX, which is identical save for having a USB-C interface with 90 W of power delivery. This 321UPX model (note the “P” second from last letter where the other model has an “R”) only serves up 15 W over its USB-C connection.

That detail aside, you’re getting the same stunning QD-OLED panel. Though it’s not perfect. Like all monitors using the Samsung QD-OLED panel tech, it’s a little on the warm side in terms of colour balance. And the quantum dot tech and lack of polarising filter means that the panel kicks some ambient light back out in re…

A $4 tweak to Noctua’s AMD Ryzen cooler bracket lowers CPU temperatures by up to 3ºC-

PC manufacturers are always chasing ways to lower component temperatures, often going as far as using exotic materials, cutting-edge manufacturing techniques, or innovative new cooling methods. But sometimes the best solution is the painfully simple one, as Noctua proves with its new offset mounting bracket—a part that costs under $5 and lowers CPU temps by as much as 3ºC.

Noctua’s latest AM5 mounting bracket is offset by 7mm. That might not sound like much, but it’s importantly the exact distance required to set the cooler more centrally over the hottest and most thermally sensitive parts of an AMD Ryzen CPU: the core chiplet die (CCD).

It’s AMD’s chiplet architecture that’s the important thing here. AMD has been using chiplets in its CPUs for many years now, and on the desktop that means an IO die (cIOD) and one or two CCDs. It’s the CCD that run hottest, containing up to eight Zen cores each, and in both one- and two-core configurations they sit slightly of…

Overwatch 2 developer calls smurfing ‘the bane of my existence’-

The Overwatch 2 developers explained the constant battle they have to fight for fair matchmaking in a stream today, and said one of the hardest problems to solve are players who smurf.

“To be clear: please don’t do that,” lead meta designer Scott Mercer said of players who make fresh accounts to see how fast they can climb the competitive ladder or to dunk on new players, otherwise known as smurfing.

Mercer and senior software engineer Morgan Maddren said smurfing ruins matchmaking for new players because the system was made to expect gradual skill improvement. Overwatch 2’s swap to free-to-play from the first game brought in tons of fresh accounts, and the new matchmaking system was carefully built to handle that.

“The situation we don’t want is like, ‘Hi, I’m a new player to Overwatch,’ and we totally misevaluate your skill and you lose a bunch of games because we think you’re way better than you are,” Mercer said.

The team had to build systems to anticipat…