New titles, new games, new(ish) consoles, and yet we still use the same technology in our game controllers. Sure, the PlayStation 5 controller has some advanced features such as adaptive triggers, but after many months of gaming, you may notice something odd about your Xbox, Switch, or PlayStation controller. Perhaps, your characters walk without input, or the camera moves around slowly. Sure, you wiggle the analog sticks and it’s fine … but only for a moment. One of the sticks has begun to drift on its own. Enter the Hall Effect game controller. They promise to address the annoying issues th ..read more

(Information on Steam’s top games were gathered for this article from Steam Charts) Back in January 2020, I crafted a neat little piece discussing the Logical Increments tier needed to enjoy each of the top games on Steam at the time. Fast forward to now, and oh, how the scene has shifted! Back around that period, we were seeing trade tariffs causing a good bump in prices for PC hardware​. As we ventured into late 2020, high demand meant the cost of PC parts kept climbing, and 2021 brought even higher prices—especially for graphics cards due to a cryptocurrency boom. Oh, and let’s not forget ..read more

Today we’re taking a look at used vs. new GPU prices, and whether buying a used graphics card is worth your while. But before we dive in, some context:   Graphics Cards are Expensive in 2023   Regular readers of this blog will know that, arguably, PC parts are headed in the wrong direction. To illustrate that point, let’s go back in time. With the help of the wonderful Internet Archive, we can see that as recently as 2017 there were very affordable GPUs on the Logical Increments charts, starting as low as $50, and appearing in the “Minimum” tier. From about 2018 on to the present d ..read more

ASUS announced a potent Steam Deck competitor May 11th and released the spec sheets for two models that vary in more ways than the different Steam Deck options from Valve. We’ll be looking at the official tech specs for each device and comparing them side by side. There’s some juicy differences ahead, so let’s get started! ROG Ally vs. Steam Deck: APU   First, we’ll be comparing the APU between each device, which is the combination processor (CPU) and graphics unit (GPU) that makes the funny man on the screen do the little dance. Higher-performance APUs can process more little dances per ..read more

The i9-12900KS is now among us, and it computes its way across the land like a fearsome giant. Until the next generation of chips releases in the (not-too-distant) future, this is the best CPU for gaming that is available. It is also a CPU with a massive power draw and large thermal requirements . . . but fear not! If you are considering the route offered by this beefy component, you don’t have to walk the path alone. In this article, we’ll be taking a look at how to build an absurdly powerful top-tier gaming system with the 12900KS—all while maintaining system balance and even room for upgra ..read more

  The prices for building a gaming desktop PC have improved over the past few months, but they might still be too high for you. In fact, they even be so high that you consider purchasing a gaming laptop instead. As the name suggests, a gaming laptop is a laptop made with gaming in mind; big companies like Razer, Dell, and MSI make lots of these nowadays. These laptops can be attractive options for more on-the-move, lower-budget, and/or younger players as they tend to be a little cheaper and a lot more portable than desktop alternatives. In this article, I will explore if this is a viable ..read more

When you think of gaming on a PC, you probably think of a mouse and keyboard. Controllers have long taken the back seat in PC gaming history but, believe it or not, there’s a handful of games out there that play better with a controller than mouse and keyboard. Yeah, I said it, and I’m not taking it back. There’s a lot of controllers out in the wild, but which ones are the best? Out of the thousands of controllers, how can you possibly choose? Where do you even begin!? Well, right here is a pretty good place to start, because this article is all about the 7 best options for PC gamepads you ca ..read more

Consumer VR has only been around for a few years, but that hasn’t stopped it from improving (and sometimes failing) at breakneck speeds. We’ve come a long way from the early days of 2016 VR being limited to expensive, tethered-only HMD’s and room-placed trackers as the only option. Now more than ever, we’re witnessing a generational leap—everything from the amazing market penetration of standalone HMD’s such Meta’s Quest 2 (It’s still an Oculus Quest in my heart) to proposed new tech in PlayStation’s VR 2 and Valve’s patent sprees. Not to mention the idea of a “Metaverse” becoming an actual p ..read more

CES 2022 has come and gone. And with it being the first in-person CES after an online-only hiatus (with a new Covid-19 strain, at that), it is not surprising to say that CES had a rocky year, presentation-wise. Lots of issues cropped up, including everything from big tech companies canceling their attendance to the entire event being forced to run a day shorter due to health concerns. But regardless of the doom and gloom, CES has not failed to deliver another exciting year filled with the latest, greatest, and wackiest that tech has to offer. Here’s our top 5 choices of discrete devices, cutt ..read more

Virtual Reality is an amazing thing. It lets you temporarily escape whatever mortal problems you grapple with in life: politics, expensive GPUs, your in-laws… the list is endless! But in order to power an entire virtual universe for you to freely explore and withdraw into, you’ll need quite a beefy computer to handle it. That’s why, in this article, we’ll be taking a look at building a PC with Intel’s new flagship CPU—the powerful i9-12900K. Building around that new chip, we’re aiming to put together a computer that will crank out VR performance with incredibly high fidelity. Before we start ..read more