The sails on the CPU rumour mill are really churning at the moment, with reports that AMD’s successor to its Zen 4 chip design will be launched this year. New processors also means new motherboards and it’s being reported that the top-of-the-line X870E chipset will go one better than the current X670E by offering full USB4 40Gbps connection. However, this will require an additional chip to be added on the motherboard, rather than being part of the X870E device itself.

Take a look at any of the good X670E motherboards on the market right now and you’ll see that there are two AMD-stamped chips embedded in the circuit board; one so-called upstream chipset and one downstream chipset. Well, they’re usually buried under heatsinks, so they’re not always obvious. 

Some manufacturers will sometimes include another chip, just to expand the connectivity options. For example, the Asus ROG Crosshair X670E Hero has an Intel Thunderbolt chip for its USB4 ports. For its next genera…

After a lot of teasing, Prison Architect 2 has finally made a break for it. The sequel to Introversion’s 2015 (or 2012, if you count its first alpha) build-a-prison sim—now handled by Double Eleven—will release on March 26, and everyone’s a lot less flat than they used to be.

I mean that literally. Where the original Prison Architect was a wholly 2D affair, the sequel promises to round-out your cast of wardens and ne’er-do-wells, “enabling players to construct intricate compounds with a high degree of creative freedom in a 3D environment.”

So, more layers to take into account as you establish a penitentiary for your various inmates, who all look alarmingly like Funko Pop Mudokons now, and better AI to contend with too. PA2 boasts that its yardbirds are “the smartest inmates ever,” and that your charges will now “form distinct relationships that influence behaviour, make decisions based on wants and needs, and plot their paths better than ever.” 

PA…

They say great UI is the sort you never notice, but perhaps the crosshair is the exception that proves the rule. I’m laser-focused on my Deadlock crosshair like my life depends on it because it’s one of the few MOBAs where good aim makes or breaks your gold farming, team fighting, and kill securing.

While the stock crosshair is a perfectly good workhorse of a graphic, its small size and subtle color won’t be a good fit for all players. Thankfully, Valve made it painless to customize the crosshair to your liking, and console commands allow you to go beyond what’s possible in the settings menu.

Best Deadlock crosshair

Personally, I like the stock crosshair, but I prefer to rein it in so it’s even more precise and change the color to bright pink so I never lose track of it in chaotic team fights. I increase the height of the pips (the little lines surrounding the center dot) and offset the increased noise by adjusting the width of each pip,…

After a roaring start, rave reviews and a microtransaction-free launch, Tekken 8’s honeymoon phase appears to be over. Steam reviews have slumped in the last few weeks, bringing the recent score down to a measly ‘Mixed’ rating of 54% as of writing, quite the difference from the game’s overall rating of 80%. The culprit? Microtransactions, mostly.

Fans have taken to the game’s store page to vent about their frustrations with Bandai Namco’s handling of its unexpected monetisation, which some are calling “scummy” and “greedy”. It started in February, a month after release, when a surprise cash shop reveal left the community divided. Some were able to get behind promises that the money would go directly back into the game’s development, while others expressed their anger at the fact that Bamco waited an entire month into launch to even mention a word about monetisation.

Things have seemingly only gone downhill from there, too. Tekken 8 recently received a battle pass with so…