Cooler Master today announced the QUBE 540 Stainless Steel, combining stainless steel panels with a chassis that adapts to different hardware configurations and workspaces. The case supports ATX motherboards, graphics cards up to 415 mm long without front fans installed, and horizontal or vertical placement. QUBE 540 Stainless Steel is available now on the Cooler Master website in North America. This special edition uses SUS304 stainless steel panels for corrosion resistance and rigidity. Custom forming tools preserve the QUBE 540's geometry, while two surface treatments serve different purposes: an 8K mirror-polished exterior creates a reflective surface, while the interior's matte hairline finish provides a subtle contrast and helps make minor handling marks less noticeable.


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Audio-Technica announces the introduction of its ATH-AWX7000 Closed Back Dynamic Wooden Headphones, combining ultimate audio performance with exquisite Japanese wood craftsmanship to create the company's finest headphones ever. The new ATH-AWX7000 features newly developed HMD (Hybrid Matrix Diaphragm) technology along with additional advancements and sets an extraordinary new sonic standard in audiophile dynamic headphones. The housings of the ATH-AWX7000 are crafted from Kiso cypress, a prized wood used to construct Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples. The wood is hand-finished in traditional Echizen lacquer to bring out the natural color of the wood's grain. Over time, the color will darken, to add to the wood's beauty and distinctive character. The headphones' frame and other components are finished in the traditional Japanese deep navy hue of kachi-iro (the traditional lucky color of the samurai).


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The LattePanda Team today launched LattePanda Sigma 2, an x86 single-board server designed to bring high-performance local AI computing directly into intelligent products and systems. Built around the Intel Core Ultra X7 358H processor with Intel Arc B390 graphics, LattePanda Sigma 2 delivers up to 180 TOPS of total AI performance at INT8 in a compact form factor. As "The Embeddable AI Single Board Server," LattePanda Sigma 2 combines high-performance computing, up to 64 GB of memory, high-speed networking, flexible expansion, and real-time hardware control in a single board. Rather than sitting alongside a product, it is designed to be integrated directly into the product itself, supporting applications from autonomous robots and vision systems to professional instruments and private AI appliances.


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The Razer Viper Mini has been a highly sought-after mouse since it launched, with the Razer Viper Mini Signature Edition being held in even higher regard by small-mouse enthusiasts. Now, it seems as though Razer may finally be moving to update the internals of the Viper Mini series, six years after the original Viper Mini launched in 2020. Alongside new leaks purportedly tipping the existence of what appears to be a Razer Viper Mini HyperSpeed and a new Razer mouse with some sort of magnetic tech to challenge Logitech HITS, new images have appeared of a potential special edition Viper V4 Pro. [Editor's note: Our in-depth review of Razer Viper V4 Pro is now live] The Razer Viper Mini HyperSpeed was revealed to be launching sometime in Q1 or Q2 2027, and the Razer HITS mouse at some point in Q2 or Q3. It's still unclear how exactly Razer's HITS competitor will work, but the leaker calling it HITS may suggest that it will also feature the haptic feedback featured in Logitech's system. In slightly less exciting news, Razer also appears to be launching a new special edition colorway of the Viper V4 Pro gaming mouse with a black and green mesh pattern on the top, almost resembling something between a topographic map and tattered material. The leak comes courtesy of screenshots of an OLX listing in Brazil that was


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AMD has published HIPRT 3.2, the latest version of its ray tracing library for HIP, and the release notes name the integrated graphics of its upcoming Zen 6 "Medusa" processors outright. Under new features, AMD lists Medusa support for three GPU architecture IDs: gfx1170, gfx1171, and gfx115E. HIPRT is mostly used by rendering apps like Blender, so this says nothing about gaming performance. Still, the link between these IDs and Medusa has so far rested on compiler patches and leaks, and now the Medusa name sits right in AMD's own changelog. The gfx117x IDs belong to RDNA 4m, which first showed up in LLVM back in February. AMD added GFX1171 and GFX1172 targets in March, merged GFX1171 into Mesa 26.3 in August, and pushed RDNA 4m firmware later that month. Despite the name, RDNA 4m sits in the GFX11 family with RDNA 3 and 3.5, plus a few RDNA 4 style additions like FP8/BF8 conversion and new matrix instructions. The gfx115E entry is the more curious one. GFX115x covers the RDNA 3.5 graphics in Strix Point and Strix Halo, so it looks like at least one Medusa chip could stick with RDNA 3.5. The same release fixes a bug that truncated architecture numbers containing a letter, gfx115E included.


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Earlier in 2026, when Microsoft announced the Xbox Reset that saw 1,600 employees lose their jobs immediately, with 1,600 more on the chopping block for later, and several game studios either cut loose or shut-down entirely, Arkane Lyon was mentioned as one of the studios at risk of closure. Now, according to a report by Le Monde, it seems as though the Dishonored and Deathloop studio has until November 13 to find a buyer before Microsoft will officially shut it down. Arkane has already been forced to cancel the Blade game it was working on, as a result of the recent layoffs, and if no agreement is reached before the projected date, 217 jobs are at risk. According to a French union delegate representing employees at the studio, the search for a buyer has not gone well. French businesses with more than 1,000 employees are legally mandated to look for a buyer for any business they wish to close for at least three months, and that obligatory search ends on November 13. The union says it has asked for an extension on that deadline and in order to buy more time in the negotiations over the employee redundancy plan, in the hopes that the studio and its workers would be saved, although the negotiations with Microsoft have not gone well.


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AI image generators can draw a character once, but keeping that character's look consistent across page 12 usually means regenerating images repeatedly. Turning those images into a laid-out book takes another program on top of that. IllustratorMagic generates the story, illustrations, and page layout together, and a Pro Plan lifetime subscription is on sale for $39.99 (reg. $499). IllustratorMagic comes from the team behind EbookMagic. You describe the story, the characters, and an art style, and the tool writes the text and illustrates every page. Characters keep the same look from the first page to the last. You can choose from four styles: watercolor, 3D cartoon, clay animation, and sketch. Finished books export as 300 DPI PDFs with typography and drop caps, so you can print, share, or sell them. Comic books and coloring books use the same workflow.


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MSI has launched the MPG COREFROZR AP15, its first air cooler with an integrated display built into the top cover. The cooler uses a dual-tower design with asymmetric tower widths, six 6 mm copper heat pipes, and a copper base. The DIGI-DISPLAY top cover module connects via magnetic POGO-PIN contacts and MSI's EZ Conn single-cable connection, showing real-time CPU, GPU, and memory temperatures, loads, and frequencies without additional software. In terms of dimensions, MSI says that the heatsink measures 168 x 126.5 x 128 mm and has 102 fins. The two included 120 mm ARGB fans operate at different speeds. The front fan runs at 2000 RPM with 66.41 CFM and 1.98 mmH2O static pressure at 31.1 dB(A), while the mid fan is quieter at 1600 RPM, 54.14 CFM, 1.30 mmH2O, and 25.06 dB(A). Both are PWM controlled. MSI MPG COREFROZR AP15 cooler is compatible with Intel LGA1700 and LGA1851, and AMD AM4 and AM5 platforms. According to MSI, the cooler was designed with AMD Ryzen X3D processors in mind, so even without any official information regarding its thermal capabilities, it should handle pretty much all CPUs well. In China, it's priced at 549 yuan, around $82, however international pricing and availability have not been confirmed yet.


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Sony has stopped shipping the UBP-X700/K in Japan, its last standalone 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray player in the country. Shipments ended on October 22, and according to Sony retailer Kunkoku, the remaining stock on Sony's Japanese store sold out almost immediately. There's no word on a successor. That leaves the disc-equipped PlayStation 5 as the only Sony product in Japan that can still play 4K Blu-ray movies. The UBP-X700/K only launched on May 17, 2025, as a cut-down version of the 2018 UBP-X700 without streaming apps, and it was last listed at ¥58,300. Sony will keep selling the BDP-S1700/K, though that one only handles regular Blu-ray discs. The PS5 is not a perfect stand-in for home theater enthusiasts either. It handles 4K Blu-ray with HDR10, but it lacks Dolby Vision support, which the UBP-X700/K offered. Sony has also announced that new PlayStation games will stop shipping on disc from January 2028, and it hasn't confirmed whether the PS6 will even have a disc drive, despite an earlier report of a detachable one. If it doesn't, the PS5 becomes Sony's last disc player, and with a successor on the way, its days are numbered too. Sony already announced in February that it would phase out all of its Blu-ray recorders in Japan with no successors, so this was somewhat expected. For now, the player exit seems to be limited to Japan, as Sony's US store still lists the UBP-X700U. However, it's hard to see the standalone player sticking around for long elsewhere if Sony is winding down its disc


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Ubisoft has confirmed that New Game+ is coming to Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced next week. The announcement came through the official Assassin's Creed account on X, which thanked players for their patience and paired the news with a GIF of a grinning Edward Kenway. Ubisoft hasn't given an exact date or said what the mode will include, so we don't know yet whether players will carry over gear, upgrades, or anything else into a fresh run, although that is to be expected from a New Game+. The feature has been a long time coming, as Ubisoft first promised New Game+ content back in July when the game crossed 3 million sales. Around the same time, game director Richard Knight told YouTuber JorRaptor that the team was already working on New Game+ and that it was one of the first things on the list. He also called it relatively low risk, since Assassin's Creed Shadows already had its own version of the mode. Black Flag Resynced launched on July 9 and has done well for Ubisoft so far, hitting 2 million sales in 24 hours and selling 3.5 million copies in its first two weeks, which already exceeded Ubisoft's expectations for the whole year. New Game+ will likely give players who finished the story over the summer a reason to jump back into the Caribbean. Ubisoft had reportedly tied the future of its remakes to how Black Flag performed, and an Assassin's Creed 1 remake is said to be


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Microsoft 365 Personal now costs $99.99 per year after Microsoft bundled its Copilot AI into the plan. For a one-time payment of less than a third of an annual subscription, a Microsoft Office Professional 2021 for Windows lifetime license is on sale for $27.97 (reg. $219.99). This is the Professional edition, so it includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, and Access, plus Publisher and the free version of Teams. Access is the database app that Office Home editions leave out. Microsoft ends support for Publisher in October 2026. Your license installs on one PC running Windows 10 or 11 and ties to that device instead of a Microsoft account. Because this is Office 2021 and not Microsoft 365, there are no monthly or annual fees. A Microsoft-verified partner sells the license.


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