AI killed the metaverse, meanwhile more powerful gaming handhelds are on the way

This week we've been unapologetically punching up. As we watch the big kids throw their toys out of the pram after falling behind in AI advancement, we're finding it hard to believe the claims that whatever comes out of the coming TruthGPT LLM is "unlikely to annihilate" us all...

While catching up on reviews before I head off on my holidays, I've had the pleasure of highlighting some awesome tabletop city builders. They're a great alternative if the price of GPUs is still getting you down.

I have the future in my hands. Well, in the PC Gamer test rig anyways. Yes, the lightning speed promise of PCIe 5.0 SSDs is fulfilled by a Crucial T700 drive that finally uses the 'good NAND,' with performance two-thirds quicker than any previous SSD we've tested. And that's just from an engineering sample which isn't yet fully validated or optimised.

This is a surprise: a discount on the best RTX 4080 laptop I've tested. It's a fantastic notebook, offering performance that can often match and sometimes beat an RTX 4090-based system. There's a high-performance CPU to back it up, a decent, bright 1600p screen, and a fair amount of storage. All with a $100 discount. Neat.

Our favourite SSD for gaming but in a 2TB package. Again, there's a premium to pay for the speed the SN850X offers, but it's worth it if you are chasing performance

Not to be confused with the far inferior BenQ Mobiuz EX240N, the BenQ Mobiuz EX240 without the 'N' is proof that decent gaming hardware can still be had for sensible money. As we found in our Mobiuz EX240 review, it's quick, has decent image quality, a reasonable feature set, good build quality and looks great. And all for $160. Remarkable.

Hackers are threatening to publish stolen data from a recent breach of Western Digital's systems in March unless the company pays a hefty ransom. But the hard drive maker is not playing ball.

Asus, the big tease, has been hinting all over about the upcoming ROG Ally, the company's own Steam Deck rival. While there's no official release date as yet, Asus has taken to Twitter to let us know "it may be sooner than you expect." Alongside this little stir, rumours are now coming thick and fast around a leak that potentially nails which GPU this powerful little handheld gaming device's custom SoC is going to be built around.

Turns out I'm a very forgiving sort. I'll take all the bad things the rise of generative AI can throw at me so long as I can pull something positive out of it. And in this case it's the potential end of having to ever refer to Zuckerberg's goddam metaverse ever again.