PC Gamer's Tech Update: RTX 4060 rumours, affordable 13th Gen CPUs, and VR oil painting overlays.

A frankly cybershook Katie Wickens here, having some issue with the pricing and performance of today's tech.

Never in all my life have I considered spending more on a keyboard than, say, an RTX 3080. Yet here's Drop trying to charge a whopping $810 for a 'Cyberboard' with a screen on it—a screen that points AWAY FROM THE USER. What, does this thing code for me or something?

Moreover, I'm aghast that rumours of the RTX 4060 point to a somewhat less impressive desktop GPU than its mobile counterpart. Sure that was the case with the last-gen RTX 3060, but has the company not learned a lesson or two yet? I mean, what has Nvidia ever done for us, anyway?

Thankfully our review of Intel's 10-core, 16-thread Intel Core i5 13400F has restored my faith in cheap-but-good hardware. And although we're a step closer to the AI singularity, at least someone invented a VR oil painting overlay so we can capture the beauty of the post-apocalypse, following the incoming robot uprising.

I'm getting the fear about the next generation of mid-range graphics cards. The latest rumours surrounding the specs of the upcoming RTX 4060 GPU are pretty meagre, to say the least.

Here's a deal on an actual RTX 40-series-powered PC. And they said it couldn't be done. This PC comes with Nvidia's RTX 4070 Ti, which is a mighty 4K beast powered by the Ada Lovelace architecture. It's ultimately a pricey card, deal or no deal, and that's reflected in the price tag before you today, but for the performance we can just about make peace with $1,800.

This UltraGear is a great gaming monitor with a solid compromise between picture quality and speed. This monitor is a great upgrade if you're moving on from 1080p. $300 is not a bad deal to hit that PC gaming sweet spot of 1440p resolution at 144Hz. And it's got HDR10 support!

If you don't want a hulking gaming laptop, let me introduce the Zephyrus G14: a 14-incher with DDR5 memory and a nice bulk of storage. No-nonsense specs in a delightful package, and coming in with a tasty saving.

Of all the VR painting apps around, Vermillion is the one we've got our eye on right now. It brings the joy of painting with realistic, analog colour mixing into VR games, and one artist has been taking full advantage of its features in Half-Life: Alyx.

Intel's latest cutting-edge foundry was set to cost a whopping €17 billion, with around €7 billion to be covered by government funding. Intel wants to up that government contribution to over €10 billion to get the job done.

In case you haven't updated to Nvidia's latest GeForce Experience version, now is the time to do so. Anything older than version 3.27.0.112 could leave your PC wide open to cybersecurity risks.