PCPer Podcast 844: AMD Ryzen news, RTX SUPER rumor, Sapphire B850 motherboard, and MORE

[music] Hello and welcome to a special edition of the PC Perspective podcast.

We're missing some people, but we're doing it anyway.

We're doing it live.

I wouldn't really say we're missing them.

>> Yeah.

[clears throat] >> All right. Uh podcast panelists, please introduce yourselves.

>> Jeremy Holstrom here, >> Josh Barref, and I'm Sebastian Peak.

and Brett >> and Kent cannot be here tonight.

So, we are just uh a trio, the three musketeers.

You know what they say, when the cat's away, the mice come out and play.

I'm not sure who the cat is.

>> I'm waiting for the mice to show up.

>> Yeah, would be >> the cat, but I don't know.

Kent Kent gives a bit of a a cat vibe.

Kent cat.

>> Yeah. I mean, he kind of lays around.

He looks at you funny and then he licks his balls.

[laughter] >> We've seen We've all seen it. We all see the you.

>> Our Patreons know what we speak of.

>> It's the behind the scenes.

>> By the way, live feed at Kent's house right now.

[snorts] >> Nothing there.

[laughter] >> Put the lens cap back on the camera.

Sorry guys. False alarm.

Okay. Uh, so this will be a weird show.

It'll be even weirder live.

The the edited version will be 17 minutes long, >> hopefully.

>> If that. We would like to remind you at this point that we have a Patreon account.

So go to patreon.

com/pcpur and put your name here.

Seriously, just and you could name yourself your name here >> and it will look like I just put a placeholder there, but it really is the name that you put in.

>> I mean, it is up to you to help support my Coke Coca-Cola habit.

>> Yes. Hey, and another habit that Josh has eating.

>> Eating.

>> Would you like to report on your your uh culinary adventures?

>> Yeah. Well, you know, there was a uh a new gal at uh Born in the Barn, and I placed my order.

The naughty, of course, uh because they didn't have a burger special.

It was like a wing special, and I didn't want wings.

I wanted a burger. Damn it.

So, I I got the naughty. I made the order and I'm just sitting there and waiting and and she comes out with just the the burger stacked on top of the the carton.

of of fries. And she's like, "Do you have a order to go?" I was like, "Well, yes.

" And she like reaches out and I look at it. She's like, "Well, do do you want a bag?" I was like, "Sure.

" [clears throat] And then she turns.

And the burger didn't turn with her.

And the burger fell to the ground.

And there we both were looking at the burger laying on the ground.

And I just had this sad defeated look because it hasn't been a great week.

Hasn't been a great couple of weeks.

And I thought it's it's like the Gary Larsson thing.

You know, the worms, they're eating the dirt and how much worse can it get?

There's a hair in my dirt. I'm a worm.

And and so yeah, there's my burger laying on the ground, but at least it was wrapped.

And she's like, "Well, do you still want the burger?

" [laughter] >> Yes.

>> Right. I want that burger.

>> Just give me the burger. And And she put in a bag and we got sent sent on our merry way.

And this this is the burger.

Post post trauma. It was a little bit anymore.

You saved it.

>> Yeah. I mean, you know, the the cheese kind of got a little little uh you know, hey, look at look at that resolution.

>> I'll tell you, cell phones have really helped my photography.

Used to not be this way. No, used to be blurry messes, 20K JPEG pictures, you know, 600 pixels wide if if you're lucky.

But no, you know, the naughty really came through for me, though.

I mean, it was it was an excellent um excellent combination of American cheese, chipotle ketchup. Uh they put a lot of really good fresh jalapenos that had a nice bit of spice to them.

And then the bacon. The bacon was perfectly done.

Not like overdone like what you get with Burger King where you know they overdo the bacon and then they let it sit around, then they put it on the burger and it's it's like rubber.

No, this was this was crispy. It was it was outstanding.

Um, so you know, and the fries were good. They're nice, crispy, crunchy, maybe a little overdone, but I prefer overdone than, you know, underdone.

Weren't soggy at all. And, uh, a reasonable amount of seasoning on it.

Not overseason, not under.

So, even though it, [sighs] you know, had a traumatic beginning, my my burger of the day was pretty pleasant.

And then I got fired from my job.

So uh patreon.com/pcper.

>> Yeah. Support Josh. Help support me.

[snorts] >> Yes.

Bad.

>> Okay. I didn't get fired.

>> So, Josh, AMD had a financial analyst day.

>> Yes.

>> Yesterday.

>> All their trouble seemed so far away.

It really did. I mean, it was a lot of people that went and talked, letting Dr. [snorts] Lisa Sue. Um, they went over a lot of stuff and the long and short of it is AMD has experienced a lot of growth and they are continuing to experience a lot of growth and they will in the future make even more money and experience more growth because the environment we live in requires so much compute that they're buying up everything that they can fab.

It's like 20 2003 2003 again where every chip that they made was bought.

2003 2004 with the introduction of the AMD Athlon 64.

[snorts] Everything they could produce got sold and they're back in that groove. Everything that they're producing is getting sold.

They have made uh impressive shares in the x86 server market.

I mean, if you look at the total market overall, there's ARM, there's AMD, and then there's Intel.

Um, overall, they they they have made advances, but it's not as big.

Who has lost the most obviously is Intel because ARM and their partners are are growing that as well.

AMD is growing.

Intel is not. They're they're shrinking.

Um AI of course is the big push and they have multiple products all going there and they they then talked about future Ryzen and future RDNA the biggest thing is with the the Ryzen stuff Zen 6 they're they are going the way that kind of ARM has been doing. Uh so you know ARM a few years ago they they released their first NPUs. Um they didn't call them that.

They're the ethos products.

They they never took off in consumer but they did take off in other things like you know video and and photography.

And instead of integrated NPUs, integrating these NPUs into their core um products, they expanded current products of CPUs and GPUs to support more data formats, more friendly towards AI uh type uh workloads.

And they've done very well.

And it looks like AMD is doing the same kind of thing with their CPUs and GPUs and making them more AI friendly.

But that's not to say that they're not doing NPUs because they do currently have an NPU with their Ryzen 8000 series of mobile chips as well as their stricks uh the AI 390 395, but that's neither here nor there.

Um, regardless, uh, AI is is the future.

And I mean, they're they're they're continuing the development of next generation GPUs.

Uh, they're going to the the the what cDNA um the compute DNA and they're con combining RDNA and CDNA.

I can't remember what they're calling it because it's too many.

[clears throat] >> Yeah. But anyway, [snorts] uh no, but you know, in in the next couple of years, they foresee, uh the market being gosh, $500 billion being spent, and they obviously are not setting their sights on that entire $500 billion.

But if they can grow one percentage point per year, that turns out to be just $10 billion per percentage point in the markets that they're chasing.

And that's AI, that's servers, that's networking. Uh I mean, they they they bought the networking group, they they have XYlinks as well.

and they're continuing to integrate uh that functionality into a wide variety of products.

um it's nothing but upside for AMD according to them and pretty much according to all the other analysts that have been looking at this is that yes they they've improved rockom they've got people like Stanford to start utilizing their hardware to teach students as well so you can do CUDA you can do rockom that's a big thing in the university level Um they they've got partnerships with AWS, Microsoft, all these other guys, Open AI.

It's just a a absolute amazing amount of growth for the company. And even though they're going from what 9.2 billion this quarter to probably 9.6 billion, as long as the bubble, and there's a lot of debate whether this is a bubble or not, and I've seen some really good arguments that it isn't.

um they're going to just continue to grow and they are executing at a very very steady rate.

They have good partnerships with TM TSMC and their software guys for designs.

Uh they they continue to hire people.

They get people from Intel to come over and work for them.

Um, yeah, things are coming out roses for AMD and I think they're going to be much more uh uh competitive in the GPU space, not only just because of software, but if we look at the jump from the Radeon 7000 series to the 9000 series, it was a significant upgrade of capabilities and overall performance.

Um, and I think we could expect much the same from the next generation of parts.

They they're spending money on uh R&D that they haven't been able to do in years past.

And yeah, they're they're their share price just keeps on going up.

And there's a reason to because they keep selling a lot of product and the market still seems strong.

And of course, you know, a bubble never pops until it does. But again, that's maybe a discussion for another day if we're actually >> in a bubble and and to what extent.

It's not 1998.

It's a very different world.

Some people are actually monetizing AI.

Open AI maybe not so much as they're, you know, a big driver, but there are others.

And >> Nvidia, >> there are other workes other than just >> what's that? Who?

>> I said Nvidia is monetizing AI.

>> They certainly are.

>> I haven't heard.

>> They bet the phone.

>> Just see.

>> I'm I'm also talking about, you know, OpenAI's got the sore AI out there that people make the 5 10 second, you know, terrible videos that are now crushing Facebook.

And I've got my wife coming up to me.

It's like, look at this dog protecting this child from the earthquake.

It's like, Tina, that's that's AI. This makes me so angry.

It's like well yeah but you know anyway um but yeah there other companies actually have products that utilize machine learning and AI to do actual work that people pay for data analysis video analysis video all kinds of stuff. I mean it's just it's not just silly stuff on the internet or writing out your term paper. I mean, there's most of this >> there's good stuff and then there's the 98% that's absolute slop.

[laughter] >> Can we talk about hardware, >> please?

>> The leadership CPU core road map slide.

Maybe you've seen this, but if you're just listening to the podcast, I will explain that currently they're on 4nometer and 3nometer. That's Zen 5, Zen 5C.

They are moving to an industry first two nanometer to extend their leadership with Zen 6 and Zen 6C with some you know AI data type support and more AI pipelines.

And then the last thing on this chart, future node nextg, they don't say 1.3 nanometer, whatever.

What is this? New matrix engine AI data format expansion.

They're talking about new instructions, full 512-bit AI vectors.

Well, okay, we can go back and and talk a little bit more because, you know, AVX was an extension of x86.

Well, [snorts] sort of. But anyway, um you know, it's it's 512 bit wide.

Um matricy uh calculations um used to be done under x87, but it was painfully slow.

But these things also can be extended to support fully. and uh the future is is packed full of matricy multiplication.

Um so yeah getting these things I mean we've we've got NPUs that are already available with the mobile parts eventually they will come to um desktop but also yeah a big chunk of that I mean where you know Nvidia had it right with the uh first generation of RTX 2000 series is they did matrix multiply natively and uh It had a huge impact on not only neural nets and AI but a bunch of other really heavy duty scientific stuff.

Just as an aside, um I had a statistician who worked with me. He wanted me to uh redo a kernel on a machine so that he could get an extra 2 and 12% performance on matricy multiplications because he had something that was going to take about 4 weeks to do. And that 2.5% turned out to be, you know, a a significant chunk of change. But we were able to guide him along and say, "Hey, we've got this workstation machine with an RTX 2000. It was a 2080 Ti.

It's got native stuff. R uh supports this.

CUDA supports this. Go do your matrix multiplication on this." And instead of 3 to 4 weeks, it took 2 days.

And so there are workloads that these things have.

and they are continually adding to x86.

Um, in fact, [clears throat] we could probably have an entire show going over what what an impact uh AMD's x8664 had on the marketplace when they introduced it in 2002.

Um, and Intel followed.

And anyway, that's another discussion for another day.

But yeah, uh this stuff is I mean our our workloads are expanding into what they need and people are adjusting software and the hardware people are following suit and uh actually you know providing users with stuff that they need.

So yeah, more complex interesting things that make multiple workloads faster in the next couple years.

Somewhat related, we're talking about AMD Ryzen a little bit in there perhaps.

AMD Ryzen X3D, not that this will be a surprise to anybody in the DIY enthusiast space.

The X3D CPUs outsold Intel's entire CPU lineup on Amazon last month.

That momentum isn't going to slow down anytime soon. You don't build a system with an Intel Core Ultra.

>> No, they they've got Intel's got issues at the gaming PC and high-end desktop.

Um, and AMD is is kicking it, which is, you know, great to see. Uh, you know, it is a more complex part. You do pay a little bit of a premium for them, but not that big of a premium versus the competing Intel part. Um, but you get just so much more performance.

Do you know you do pay a premium for Intel's 14th gen parts though? They those prices went up >> because nobody's buying ultra.

That's not You can't even match the performance of a high-end 14th gen with current Intel gen.

So, it's just this is just a lost >> generation.

We need to move on.

We're going to get another chipset.

We're going to get another socket >> and we're going to get hopefully some better performance next generation and at least catch up with 14th gen with better connectivity and more features perhaps.

I know they'll probably just AI everything, NPU performance, etc. But actual enthusiasts are not buying Core Ultra, I don't think. No.

And the the Amazon numbers are showing this.

>> Yeah. But the the sad thing is for AMD is that retail is a very different animal than OEM sales. So yes, you know, >> still the vast majority are are the pre-builts and and whatnots.

[sighs and gasps] So one more thing, the 9700X is still a pretty good gaming CPU from AMD.

That's what I'm using in my main machine.

My main test machine's got the 9800 X3D, but I just don't notice the difference in the stuff that I've got, you know, from here to there. It's just just when you start running the benchmarks and finding those sweet sweet 1%s that that X3D really makes a huge difference at at lower resolutions especially.

>> Yeah. Yeah. But a little bit even at the higher resolutions with the 1%s for sure.

Hey, by the way, here's something about Nvidia.

Soft Bank. They had $5.83 billion in Nvidia. They have offloaded all of it. They've sold off all the stock and they're going to use the money to fund a major investment in Open AI.

>> No, they dumped almost twice that in Tee Ocean, too.

Store 9 bill.

So, yeah, they're going to buy a chunk of Open AI.

So apparently SoftBank some years back before the really big jump for Nvidia sold off the majority of their shares >> at that point. And uh Jensen Wong was teasing uh um the head of Soft Bank, what's his name? Miyazaki.

>> Sounds right. Not 100%. I don't I'm not that Miyazaki could be a a artist.

Um anyway, uh he was teasing that you lost out on $178 billion with that sale and so they're selling the rest of what they own for 5.83 billion.

So yes, timing is everything.

But it's strange that they're investing it all in open AI, which means billions are going to AMD and Nvidia directly.

>> Yes.

>> Which for AMD and Nvidia, that's that's a nice thing. Mhm. I I just don't get it.

>> We've been talking doom and gloom about NAND and DRAM.

Guess what else is going to be in short supply?

Hard drives. No way.

AI data centers reds.

>> They need spinning rust.

and hard drives are on back order for two years.

I don't know which hard drives.

I should probably read the article.

Digi Times is reporting that storage is taking a hit.

Delivery times for enterprisegrade hard drives delayed by two years.

>> 24 month lead times. That is crazy.

But I guess it, you know, it's just following the trend. Got to build up those.

I have noticed when uh I ordered some WD Red 12 TB that the the prices were higher than what they were 2 months ago when I specked out a uh system for a client.

That's a bummer. Yeah.

Uh but you know, it's it's I think really the next two years is going to be Oh gosh, what's what's a good word for it that I'm looking for?

Um [clears throat] the pronounced lead times of everything is going to be the news.

We've got 5year lead time on transformers. We got about 5 year lead time on uh generating uh turbine generators for any kind of high-pressure steam whether it be nuclear, coal, natural gas, doesn't matter.

It's a multipleyear lead time and people are talking about building all these gigawatt data centers and it's just not only does it eat memory, it eats NAND and now it eats spinning Rust hard drives, never mind transmission lines, permits turbines to power the power plants and transformers to make the high volt voltage low amp transmission.

Is that correct?

They're high voltage low amp so it doesn't melt the wires and then transformers make it into, you know, shorter >> length >> usable power.

Um I wonder what else is going to get hit.

Will GPUs get hit again?

>> Time twin says copper. Yeah, it'll be they'll just be out of it.

with the price on it been going up steadily.

>> Masa Masa, you're right.

Thanks for medium. Anyway, he's Masa is uh is the softbank guy.

>> If you ever want to read something interesting, read about his life and the choices he made in the 80s and 90s that have made him [snorts and clears throat] a billionaire.

It's it's fascinating.

But anyway, but yeah, uh scarcity it's this is I mean if it doesn't pop it's we are going to be in a scarcity economy when it comes to AI because they just can't produce enough can't produce enough wafers.

You can't Yeah, it's it's it's going to be weird being an enthusiast that wants to play games on the computer.

But at least Valve has, you know, an answer for that we can talk about later.

>> Yes.

>> Yes.

>> And I don't know, Nori, I'll try, but I'm not naturally attracted to crocodile.

So, I think that's a major >> problem.

But you've got the mullet and you've got the you've got the handlebar mustache, the the the biker.

So, you could you're halfway there to Florida, man.

You just need to go down to Florida and do some really crazy stuff.

>> Yeah. and [clears throat] not throw at your back >> or both.

>> Yeah, >> man.

Throws out back while molesting alligator again.

[snorts] >> It It was not on the Well, should we wait for gaming quick hits to talk about what should probably be the biggest story of the day or talk about the Steam deck or the Steam?

fits in either scene now.

>> No, >> I mean Halfife 3 is essentially confirmed.

>> Not.

>> Let's Yeah, I guess we'll wait again.

>> It's coming up. Stay tuned for Gaming Quicks because we'll talk about Steam's exciting announcement today.

>> Real quick, let's get through a couple more news stories. There was one, this is weird, but hey, it's Microsoft and it's in it's in beta like their OS.

They're testing mouse vibration feedback. You may know about Apple's tactic engine.

They can have a trackpad that doesn't move, but it feels like it's moving under your finger.

Things like that. There is a option for haptic signals with a signal intensity slider in the Bluetooth and devices mouse section of uh the Windows settings panel.

This is 2622070.

>> Got it. And if you have that >> MXM 4, you might even be able to play with it.

>> Nice. Yeah, you you you'll need a touchpad.

>> There's a mouse that is theoretically compatible.

>> But that'll be a thing. What if it is a thing?

>> That's >> Do you remember the mouse that was on a post and you moved it around and it gave you the haptic feedback because it couldn't do haptic without that freaking post.

So your your your the amount you could move the mouse was small, but it had force feedback to it with this, you know, haptic thing.

It never sold worth a damn, but it was available.

And I'm trying to remember the group that introduced it. It was like 2003.

It's a long time.

>> It was a bunch of Thein enthusiasts, I think probably.

But yeah, that was a dumb one that died the death it should.

So >> yeah, >> but the group had they licensed their software to other >> companies and so you still see that logo now and then because of the haptic feedback stuff that they developed.

>> I'm trying I mean >> I may remember it by the end but probably not.

>> That these were the days of the buttkicker chair and the headphones that also punched you in the head.

It was haptic everything for a bit.

It was unpleasant and didn't last.

But there was a butt kicker chair.

That was the name. And it may well have been the same company that uh created the software for the Theramin mouse.

Finally, in our news of the week, the RTX50 Super launched. There were some rumors that have been cancelled.

It's been delayed. The current rumor is that it's not happening even in the first half of 2026. There's issues with I think GDDR 7 specifically 3 GB memory chips that are needed for the larger memory capacity of these super variants.

Memory shortages specs possibly changing.

Who knows 16 gig version would be >> Mhm.

>> Um the minimum that they could put out without causing a huge outcry.

>> Yeah.

It's >> 12 and eight. People are not going to be happy.

>> If you've been waiting for >> and good job. Keep keep up.

>> Keep up the good job.

>> Just put on put the current gen on your Christmas list if that's what you want.

There won't be anything better for a while.

>> Now, Jeremy, are you >> ask for a down payment?

>> Oh, you know what? One more story.

One more story. Let's throw this in there.

I I'm trying to honor Brett's uh list of stories because he put together quite a few show notes for us even though he could not be present for this podcast recording due to uh in an internet outage that he is suffering through right now at home.

But uh Tom's guide has a story here.

Google is cutting off support for first and second gen >> and second generation Nest >> thermostats.

Yes. So you can still use them to turn your furnace on like the old Honeywell.

just rotate that thing it but you won't be able to use the smart features because you know it's it's a IoT device and they die their support dies anyway and then they're turned into bricks perhaps.

I don't know if they're bricking these but uh yeah oh don't worry they will eventually.

>> Yeah because you know one Google loves cancelelling things and two yeah it's IoT garbage that will die.

Lifetime support means the lifetime of the product, not you. And those products die more frequently than goldfish.

And this depressing story is the perfect leadin to our most depressing segment of the week.

Welcome to Insecurity Corner, your weekly reason to drink. The first story, uh, Microsoft fixes Windows 10 bug blocking extended security update enrollment.

>> Wow, that was kind of a selling point for keeping Windows 10, right?

>> Yeah, you could pay them >> to YouTube, >> but you're not going to get support >> and fix this bug.

>> Oh jeez.

[clears throat] And this is of course after having spammed them last week with a whole bunch of uh perfect uh messages sent to these people who signed up for the ESU saying you are no longer going to get coverage. Your coverage has expired.

You need to upgrade to Windows.

Oops. Sorry. We didn't mean to.

Oh, I guess it looks bad that we just broke the entire enrollment tool that lets you enroll a PC in it to be able to continue to get updates. And well, this is a minor problem here in North America where you did have to pay for this in the EU where they were forced to offer these to at least uh some of the customer base.

[sighs] Yeah.

uh all of a sudden now they're completely totally failing this enrollment and in order to get the issue extended security updates and Microsoft offered the Miaopa sorry about that we're we're going to try and fix it.

Uh if you do if you do another update, assuming the update will actually run cuz you know you might not have the extended service update installed that you need to install the it's a Microsoft thing but there is a command to be able to enable it just automatically enroll via PowerShell.

So, there's been workarounds but when you've hit the point where you're giving Microsoft 30 bucks or more a month, this just does not look good.

And hopefully, you will believe your tech when he says or she says that, "No, there's literally nothing I can do but yell at Microsoft. In fact, I am right now until you interrupted me and now I have to tell the tech everything over again because they've got the attention span of a rabid gerbble. If you tell them something and let them think on it for 10 seconds or more, they will have forgotten you.

You will have to tell them everything over again. It It's just the way the game works cuz all they want is to close that ticket.

So, yeah, that's that's been a great joy.

And it it's getting to the point where it'd be funny if it wasn't just so damn frustrating.

It's going to affect my bonus this year.

That's all I'm saying.

>> Of course.

>> Thanks, Microsoft. Appreciate it.

[snorts] >> Next, Synology has fixed Bstation Zero Days demoed at Pone to Own Ireland.

You know, I'm sure these companies love events like Pone to Own because it puts them in the news.

Stories like this, >> you know, if if they had the right attitude toward it, they could use it as a tool to make their product better.

But marketing executives rule these things. If you ask engineers who work at these companies, and of course, you know, bad news is bad news.

It's not like, you know, if your name's in the news, then at least your name's in the news.

>> There is no bad >> bad publicity.

>> Exactly. Uh in this case, uh yeah, instead of you know, utilizing this tool, make your product better, they actively try to shut stuff down.

But go ahead. Yeah, this is uh Belink the for the BS stationation OS devices from Synology which you know it's a a personal cloud for the home user and so this was you know stuff that is generally just being sold at a relatively lower price compared to other [snorts] uh NAS devices because the high-end NAS devices are really expensive especially now that you can't get large scale hard drives for them and so these personal clouds Well, unfortunately, uh, it allows some arbitrary code execution and be being a personal cloud, it generally is internetf facing and probably not particularly well secured.

And so, oopsie. Yeah, this is a major problem.

Don't worry, there is no particular patch but if you do upgrade uh the actual OS to 132 65 648 or above, then you should be uh safe.

But now we're talking about an entire OS upgrade, which on an NAS is always going to go perfectly smoothly and not lead to any data loss whatsoever.

So yeah, go right ahead and do that if you believe me.

Don't don't believe me. It's not going to be great.

QAP also got hit a bunch of nasty stuff.

Had nasty stuff.

>> For this next one, what is P H A S?

Is that >> that's fat >> fishing as a service.

>> You are correct, sir.

That is >> route redirect. I didn't know that fishing as a service was something that the industry uh >> it wasn't >> okay >> until the grand brand new quantum route direct all-in-one Swiss Army knife fishing as a service service you can sign up for. So even the least skilled person who wants to become a threat actor can actually pull off really really welldone fishing attacks with the help of this automated platform.

It covers everything.

Rrooing the traffic to make sure that the bots and everything else gets put somewhere normal and the users actually get sent off to where you want them to go and will create misalicious domains.

You get like a bunch to choose from.

You don't even have to set them up.

They're ready for you. You won't need database stuff to be able to track your victim once they've actually clicked through on that docuign request or launched that.

Uh, hey, I didn't realize we had a voicemail system.

I better listen to it.

It's probably really important.

Or scanned that QR code and been fished.

Well, now you can even handily track them.

Uh, this has just been spotted relatively recently uh by No.

They're spotting over a thousand of these domains which are hosting uh what are now because it's a a quantum uh route redirect they're just calling them QR fishing pages to let you know that these are the the full service automated uh ones and you just literally pay and that it will filter between bots and humans as I said before it is literally a full service platform with dashboard board of course for any idiot with a couple of bucks who wants to fish someone.

It is ridiculous nasty. It's been going after guess what?

Microsoft 365 accounts.

>> Of course it is. Vast majority in the US.

But uh you're not the only ones that are getting it. Have you noticed that uh >> the if you're doing a a DNS search on some of these fishing sites, >> tell me where their physical location is at.

And I I'll laugh >> because I I know you know.

>> You've never you've never done a reverse search on DNS for a lot of these fishing things?

No, I've been busy yelling at Microsoft.

>> Oh, okay. Well, there is a shared office space in Reikavik, Iceland that like 95% of these things are all using as their physical address for these DNS entries for a lot of these, you know, fishing websites.

Um, yeah, apparently the the laws there in in Iceland are rather lax uh when it comes to this kind of stuff.

But yeah, we've we've had like a hundred domains that we have traced.

It's like where is this from? Oh, it's on that street in Reik, Iceland. It's the it's the shared office space that people send their mail to.

So [sighs] anyway, that's okay.

They've got different Bitcoin addresses.

So >> yeah, get your money effectively.

It will be stuck >> and Buork won't get her hands on it.

>> You know what? I I maybe I should just quit it, live as a popper, and review force feedback hardware and just live on my $250 a month somehow. Fif live review uh vintage hardware is what I was trying to say.

only like at great expense to yourself on eBay at inflated vintage hardware prices.

Buy things like the Wingman forced feedback joystick.

Unbox them, review them.

>> Yes.

>> Discover that stuff is inside of it and it doesn't work properly.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah.

[snorts] >> And so and so ends insecurity corner the sad edition.

But now we get to talk about something really exciting.

The return of the Steam machine as we begin with gaming quick hits. Yes, we buried the lead.

Your games on the big screen.

Stop us if you've heard this before.

stop us if in the Windows 8 era when people were really frustrated with Microsoft, Gabe stepped in and introduced Steam OS and there were all these Steam boxes from partners and now Valve has their own Steam machine.

Building on the success of the Steam Deck, the enhanced compatibility with popular games, your Steam library, your favorite AAA titles in a little box that plugs into your television.

It's cool. It's quiet. It's a very small form factor.

It's about a 6 in cube.

It has Let's read the specs. If I scroll past all the marketing stuff here, >> it's it's custom AMD silicon.

>> Yeah, semicustom Zen 4. It's 6 core 12thread up to 4.8 GHz, 30 watt TDP.

So, we're talking kind of laptop constraints here cuz it's small form factor.

Semi-custom RDNA 3 GPU. It's 28 CUS.

>> 2.50 watt is is not mobile.

>> No, that's it's 140 watt. Yeah, it's 140 watt uh thing. But, you know, they they've focused on graphics, which as it should be, pretty fast Wi-I it's Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 53.

It's got an integrated Steam Controller wireless adapter.

Decent display support. I mean, it's it's display port 1.4 HDMI 2.0.

This is meant to just connect to your typical >> living room TV.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah. So the only problem that I see >> Yeah.

>> Uh memory I mean it is running essentially Linux, right?

>> Yeah.

>> Still it's it's 16 gigs of system memory and 8 gigs of video RAM.

>> Yeah.

>> What do we what do we say for 8 gigs of video RAM?

>> I know not today. it. I saw someone I think was tweeting about this and they said this is obviously going to be leaning very heavily into uh scaling.

You have to render at a much lower resolution these titles. Yeah.

>> Yep. It is. But that's okay cuz who knows how much it costs. But it's it's kind of a fun piece of hardware to look at.

And it's, you know, not just a console, but it's actually a PC.

You can do PC things with it easily.

And it's got it's got the beef to do PC things.

[snorts] That's true. And it it doesn't run Windows.

That is perhaps the most important part of all we're we're once again >> people are going to be introduced to this weird concept of hey you can own hardware and decide what software to run on it.

You don't just have to be a slave to Microsoft.

Even if you build a $4,000 gaming PC, you don't have to put Windows 11 on it. Same goes for this little box.

However much it costs, I can't imagine it'll be super expensive, but who knows?

I mean, the cost of every component in it is probably more expensive than it was just a few months ago.

There's storage and memory to be amortized over the course of this product, but this is Steam OS optimized for gaming, but as they're saying, and as Josh saying, this is also a PC. There's there's a lot of other stuff you can do with the Linux box.

>> And you can also use the new Steam controller, which is essentially a Steam Deck that they ripped the screen out of and then glued the controllers together.

H. This is archbased and it runs the KDE plasma desktop by default. If that means anything to you. KD is fine. I feel like that's a friendly It's a Windows user friendly.

>> It's got an LED strip as well on the front of the case.

>> It does, which is always >> pretty.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah.

>> And if you look, Arch is the most the most uh the largest used DRO on Steam to this point.

Is that because of Steam Deck though?

>> I have a feeling [clears throat] it's because of the Steam Deck and the fact that Valve knows what to do with this.

So, they're going to stick with it.

>> Yeah.

>> And there's some sort of VR headset, too, that I don't did not look at.

I probably should, but [gasps and sighs] >> the specs look pretty good. 4K 21 by 2100 by 2100 and did some interesting things with um uh fiated vision and it's got a beefy ARM based Snapdragon processor in there 16 gigs of RAM and the unfortunate thing is that uh you can connect it to your PC via wireless >> so there's no HMI or display port uh support in uh in the uh the the the the VR headset, which you know, if if you're a racing guy like I may be, it's not great. It's not great, but >> and an average of one technical or a yawn an hour.

So, >> but we don't know how much it costs either.

They have not released that.

>> Yeah.

>> No prices on any of this. So, a lot of the stuff with the engineering with the VR goggles, it it's not quite up at the Apple level, but it's not that far away.

Uh, it's got the external cameras, it's got the internal cameras.

You can do gaming on it. Uh, where does it compete with, you know, the Apple stuff at the high end or or the Oculus 3 or or the other ones that Meta has put out?

So, I don't know. I guess we'll see.

Moving on from Game Rant.

November 18 will be the end of an era for Halo.

I hear it's moving to Unreal Engine 5.

Is that right?

>> Wow. Repetitive corridors and new higher textures.

>> 2002 was a long time away.

Yeah, >> it was it was it was 23 years ago where the original Xbox and and Halo was was amazing because they, you know, had some original kind of normal mapping and interesting lighting and split screen co-op with with Halo and it looked really good.

It was a long time ago. Did either of you guys play uh uh Halo uh Infinite Infinity?

Infinite. Infinite.

Yeah, I didn't either. Weird.

So, Operation Infinite will be the last major content update for the game according to some November community live stream they held.

Operation Infinite is a last harrah for Halo Infinite.

So, >> I thought they'd har their last harrah quite some time ago, but >> yeah.

>> What do I know? By the way, if you go to PC perspective on YouTube, you will see a video about a Sapphire Nitro Plus product that is not a graphics card.

As I say in the review, they have products.

They have the the Nitro, they have the Pulse, they have the Pure.

Now, they have a Nitro Plus motherboard.

>> And they're no stranger to motherboards.

They made them in the past.

We talked about them in the past. They even made Intel boards like X79 of all things. And they've had stuff >> crazy talk.

>> I know. In the AM5 era, they've had boards whether you I I miss their uh AMD uh what 3200R or or no ATI 3200, >> the white and red boards way back in the day.

>> They were pretty back in the day.

>> So, it's B850 chipset. They have a couple variants of it.

They have microATX. They have full ATX.

The only way to get the Wi-Fi 7, which this one features, is to get the full ATX version.

The microATX does not have Wi-Fi 7, but otherwise pretty much identical specs between the two.

This is a lowcost board, too. This is $189.

The power I thought was was fine. 12 + 2 + 1, 55 amps per phase. And most people are probably going to be getting some sort of X3D, and those are lower power draw anyway, like 120 watts max.

has good memory overclocking support and the BIOS, the Sapphire Core BIOS is excellent.

Uh, I have some footage in the video review if you watch to the end, the impressions and things.

I have some B-roll of what the BIOS setup looks like.

And it it's it's really simplistic in a good way. It's nothing more than you need.

It's easy to find everything.

>> Hey, I I really like the natural lighting of of of your uh videos.

It looks looks sharp, >> especially the the the soft uh you know blonde wood that you're featuring in there >> really adds to the warmness of the scene.

And then you als you you also interesting the the the the golden sunlight coming through the green leaves uh that the the bokeh and >> and that is it's it's really outstanding.

You you should really consider a a a profession in uh you know content creation [laughter] in Yeah, >> it was a long walk, but >> yeah, >> I overexposed this shot a little bit, but I did like the way the sunlight looked uh through the leaves of that fern that sits by the window.

And, you know, various product shots.

Talking about the IO, one of the drawbacks of this, only 10 Gbit per second USB support.

There's no Gen 2.

[clears throat] There's no USB 4, anything like that.

You're not going to get that from this platform.

you are going to get uh you know solid.

I was only able to test Wi-Fi 6 and only sadly just one gigabit.

>> Is it a 2.5?

>> Yeah, but I wasn't able to test that.

>> I need to buy some switches. I I need to buy >> inexpensive.

There's there's a there's a group called Nick.

Uh >> okay.

>> Nick uh >> as some other people have said, I think it was Patrick Norton who said network testing is pain. And I said, "Oh, come on.

No, it's And then I did my first review.

I did an uh wireless card review and it is pain cuz trying to control things when you don't have controlled environment.

It sucks.

>> Here's the thing. I remember the first DLink sent me and I know this is getting off topic.

Sent me a big wireless networking thing, some of the fastest that >> I put it in the back. I went into my living room, started getting some numbers.

They're pretty good.

My wife walks by and suddenly everything dropped.

It just hit into tens of kilobytes per second.

It's like, what the hell happened and it's just networking wireless is awful.

>> Yeah.

>> Awful.

>> You can't have other people around >> and neighbors.

>> That's good advice.

But >> yeah, and suddenly testing Yeah.

goes to hell because suddenly 20 you live in a block with an apartment complex and 20 people have wireless stuff all around you.

Mhm. I just want to become I just want an important >> It runs this fast in the afternoon and this fast at 6 p.m.

>> Yeah.

[laughter] By the way, look look at this uh Simo setup. It's so clean and simple.

That reminds me of the type of uh interface we had with the Intel Nook Extreme units where you just had a few screens with some drop downs.

Everything was clearly labeled just like this.

You want to turn something off, it's right there.

You don't have to go through four sub menus and find something >> infil weird category that doesn't even make sense.

It's all right here. It was easy to set up.

fan profiles and overclock the memory and memory timings, all that stuff.

It's it's all it's very polished.

My only concern about the BIOS was the fact that there just isn't uh there hasn't been a single BIOS update since this board was released.

The BIOS revision on their website is still from September 1st and we've had new adj.

And so it that's my only concern about buying from Sapphire is that are you going to get the same kind of update cadence that you would have from one of the big four. I don't know.

[sighs] >> But when you when you actually use this board and here's some more B-roll on the lazy Susan on the coffee table.

If if you actually use this system like I have been for the last two months, I have never had a system lockup. I have never had >> Hey, blue screen. I've never had any issue with this. And we've been using this as the primary living room gaming PC for a while.

And I that kind of reliability I have not had from some of the big four lately.

I'm not going to name names Gigabyte, but I've had issues with stability on boards.

My son's computer build has had all sorts of problems. [snorts] >> And so it was it was a very pleasant change.

just build a system, install Windows, and then that was it.

And so maybe the fast update cadence isn't the best cuz this is a rock solid BIOS that's on it.

And very interesting product.

This is the most expensive board that Sapphire sells and it's 189.

The MicroATX is uh I think 20 or $30 less and then it goes down.

>> Yeah.

>> From there. So very affordable but again not you can see it right here not the highspeed connectivity all the USB is limited to 10 Gbit >> per second even from the front panel header not there's no there's no 20 Gbit or anywhere on this board sadly.

[sighs] So, check out the full video.

It's it's uh it's a little over eight and a half minutes long of uh me just talking like a podcast segment. There's no music.

>> I didn't try to turn it into some glitzy, you know, production.

It's just eight and a half minutes talking about a motherboard and showing pictures of it.

And >> it's the website. You're George Strait in pure country and you got rid of all the distractions and it's just you sitting on the stage in Vegas with your guitar >> and it's not AI generated country like the current number one country song in America.

It's real.

>> Yeah, that's >> I'm I'm speaking from the heart.

>> You are >> in this one.

>> There's an R&B >> blue jeans and an old pickup truck and she's gone.

dead dog in the back of your >> Yeah.

Wnebago and >> the septic tank is full and >> Whoa.

Steman Sebastian's brother like Chris Gaines.

That's rude because wasn't Chris Gaines the rock and roll alter ego of Gar Brooks?

>> Gar Brooks? Yes, it was.

>> Okay.

>> Except he had a little kind of crazy goatee thing.

>> Yeah, it's true.

>> Yeah.

[snorts] All right. Uh Josh, I don't even see a pick for you. What is going on?

>> Oh jeez.

>> You have a pick of a week?

>> No. Hell. I mean, cuz you know what?

>> SSDs are overpriced, right? Screw it.

Good. Good.

>> Memory memory memory prices are overpriced.

>> Mhm.

>> Uh sim rigs I've I've covered adnauseium.

Uh, spinning rust is going up in price. So, you know, I I can't talk about like buying stuff for a Naz.

What What What is there? I mean, maybe you can get one of the retro Logitech uh immersion tech haptic force feedback mice cuz I did find that. If you want to look in the PC per staff and go to that, we can talk about it shortly. Yes. Yes.

Let's go look for it.

>> I'll cut to that here. Hold on.

>> Cut to it.

>> Link slowly.

Slowly.

>> Okay, here we go.

>> All right. It'll be a seamless edit.

>> Hold on. Let me close this thing.

Scroll down.

Gone. Keep going.

>> Not that one. Not that one.

>> Not that one.

>> Keep You'll know it when you see it.

>> There. Yeah. Oh, the wingman. Yeah.

Yeah. No, no, no. Click on the wingman force feedback mouse. Now, if you notice, this is not a wireless mouse on the left.

No, it's because the power comes from a big post in the middle of that mouse.

You only had about 3 in total of wiggle room on moving a mouse, but it was haptic feedback by Immersion Corporation.

immersion is still around and they're licensing out feedback for things.

But yeah, I remember uh thinking I I think I went to uh wasn't CES, wasn't com, it was uh gosh, it was one of them held in Santa Clara or San Jose.

But anyway, it was it was Logitech had set that up and I tried it and it felt pretty cool. You can kind of lift it up and uh you know move it so you can get more than just 3 in of play on your mouse. But uh yeah, go find one of those.

It's probably worth a pretty penny because I don't think many of them were sold.

Now, I remember having an old Wingman joystick with a haptic, which was always entertaining when you rebooted a system because it needed power to maintain itself erect.

So, when it lost power, it >> droop off to one side. And at some point during the boot process, it would get the power back and you would just get this and [laughter] if it was something in the way, it was a thunk.

>> Oh, >> sometimes part of your body >> speaker Oops. would be in the way.

>> Yes. Often you're reaching around to try and find something and you get it right in the funny bone.

>> It was entertaining >> and then it died when I had to get a different >> like all things.

[snorts] >> Do you have a pick, Jeremy, or just another trip down memory lane?

>> I mean, I don't want to have a pick anymore cuz Josh got away with it.

So, maybe I'll just replace these with like felt pads or rubber nubbins or something.

[laughter] >> Nubbins.

I did buy some felt pads recently.

They were very nice.

>> Hey, when's the last time I skipped out on pick of the week? Huh? Ever?

>> I can't remember. Be so mad at me.

>> Not since I took >> I'm sure she watches every week >> posting.

Never. Josh always has a pick.

>> No, I picked a me, but it's a decent start to a brand new system if you're up here in Canada.

>> The uh second highest selling memory.

[laughter] Well, no.

Are you Are you bad?

Are you crazy?

>> But no, 9800 X3D, a B850, uh, and, uh, MSI Mag Core Liquid E3600 all-in-one cooler for just under a,000 bucks, which is about 1430ome savings.

Not amazing, but if you're building something new, not bad at all to start with.

And once you've got those, yeah, you can save up four or five months worth of paychecks to buy a stick of RAM and another four or five months to get that second stick. Other than that, you should be able to transplant other stuff.

I looked for a memory deal.

There weren't any.

But thank you, Jeremy. I didn't hear any of that cuz I was on the other side of the basement grabbing something for my pick of the week. Inspired by Josh.

And of course, I have to hand a variety of useless things from days gone by.

Not useless if you care about connecting peripherals to old PCs that can actually make use of them. But I have here the Logitech Wingman Force.

Uh, it's the stick that pushes back.

>> Yep, it sure is.

>> And this one I bought completed box, possibly new open box. I don't remember now.

And at some point I will uh record the unboxing process and try to get it working and [snorts] play some vintage game that can make use of a serial port.

Actually, no. This one might be USB.

>> Should be USB.

>> It looks >> It's going to be game port.

>> Totally.

Let's see.

It looks like it's all there.

Wow, that's some impressive packaging.

Back in the day, I had one of these, but I had bought it used. And the sad thing about buying gaming stuff back in those days, I don't know if anything's changed, is that you would get a joystick or a racing wheel and I think at least 50% of the time it came from a smoker's house and then it would have a particular kind of feel to it and a particular kind of a smell plastic, >> if you will. Yes.

>> That I could not get off no matter what I tried.

No. So, I just dealt with it.

I like the smell of tobacco smoke.

I just don't like the smell that it leaves behind on plastic.

[laughter] I don't know why.

It just smells kind of skunky to me.

>> Maybe it wasn't tobacco.

[snorts] >> Maybe.

>> But yeah, the seal is broken.

I will have to discover whether it works or not. But that I mean, it's been kind of a weird show, but I think we're going to have to call it.

I think that was the end of the PC perspective podcast for this week.

We want to thank you for listening, >> watching just three people in rectangular boxes, >> not even centered [music] on the screen.

I think >> you know what three people used to be like, Jeremy, it was Ryan, you and me.

>> Yep.

>> And before that Lee would come in now and then, but then after I came on, he stopped.

>> [laughter] >> Maybe you two had some differences [music] that he just couldn't uh >> No, I I just have rarely ever talked to the guy.

So anyway, I think he he just wanted to retire. He was he was he was done.

>> Well, he was retired and and Brian had convinced him to keep on because he had the insane uh PSU testing machine and uh yeah, but Lee was getting tired and just didn't want to do it anymore.

>> And that was 2008.

Plus, the power supply review game is [music] a weirdly political one.

There's all these >> firmly [music] entrenched people on one side or another and which OEM is better and are you really testing [music] or are you just being paid by Corsair to say that and all this other nonsense like what do you want?

>> It's I would be curious what he would think about the current high power 12vt [music] stuff.

Oh, he would [laughter] >> he would have an opinion.

>> Oh, yeah.

You know that stuff we used to use uh three eight pins for on those really high powered cards?

>> Yeah.

>> Let's take it all the way down to one that's smaller than a single eight pin and with thinner wires.

>> Yeah. And a questionable connector.

>> Yeah. It's made out of plastic instead of metal.

[music] At least the clip could have been metal.

I mean, come on.

Maybe that would have conducted too much heat.

It would have conducted heat and it would have arked.

>> Yeah, that would be >> maybe if they made the clip out of magnesium.

>> Ooh.

>> Oh, >> take a page out of Lenovo's book.

They made some beautiful magnesium [music] cases for think pads back in the day.

>> True.

>> All right. Well, that's it.

Uh, the show's over. Thank you.