WikiForce

TBH a ban might be a bit harsh, a forced name change and some other form of.. actually nevermind.

Summary
A small time developer and publisher "Very Positive", creator of a game no-one has probably heard of Emoji Evolution has had their game removed from Steam and been banned after Valve alleges they were attempting to deceive customers. How were they deceiving customers? With their name...
 
Quotes

(Image: Valve/Kotaku)
 
The developer has argued the reason for the ban; "review manipulation" as being incorrect as it was not review manipulation, but rather developer name manipulation.
 
 
My thoughts
I think it was pretty intentional they were trying to game the system and trick people in to thinking the reviews were positive. Steam reviews do impact customers purchasing decisions and I personally would be more inclined to buy a game that had a positive rating. The way Steam displays the recent reviews & all reviews looks very similar to the developer and publisher and I think that's something they tried to take advantage of.
 
Was anyone actually deceived in to thinking it was a better game and bought it as a result? Who knows, probably not. Nothing really noteworthy here but I just thought it was a quirky situation and a rather interesting reason for a developer to be banned from Steam. I guess Valve really do take developers attempting to manipulate ratings seriously.
 
GG, you played yourself.
 
Sources
https://www.kotaku.com.au/2021/02/valve-bans-very-positive-developer-for-trying-to-trick-steam-users/amp/
https://www.kotaku.com.au/2021/02/somethings-fishy-about-this-steam-games-very-positive-reviews/

I still don't really get it. Why should google pay news sites to have their links come up in the search results? Google is the reason for the majority of their traffic to begin with. Could google not just blacklist news sites so they don't come up? Can someone explain to me why this would make any sense? Sounds to me like the news sites "biting the hand that's feeing them".

Smart move, running with an iGPU till you can find a good deal on a GPU. Unfortunately that rules out AMD, as there aren't any high-end AMD CPUs with integrated graphics (waiting for those 5000 APUs, AMD...). This is what I would get-
 
PCPartPicker Part List Type Item Price CPU Intel Core i7-10700 2.9 GHz 8-Core Processor €285.22 @ LK-Webservices Motherboard Asus PRIME H410M-K Micro ATX LGA1200 Motherboard €66.02 @ Alza Memory Kingston HyperX Predator 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory €74.90 @ Amazon Deutschland Storage Crucial BX500 480 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive €47.99 @ Amazon Deutschland Case Deepcool MATREXX 30 MicroATX Mini Tower Case €32.99 @ Amazon Deutschland Power Supply KOLINK Classic Power 500 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply €49.90 @ Amazon Deutschland   Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts     Total €557.02   Generated by PCPartPicker 2021-02-19 13:05 CET+0100    

What is up with all these attachments?

decent performance, attractive, reasonably good quality parts, can't ask for much else.

First of all I wanted to thank the LTT Forums community for all the help I've gotten here from the amazing people who helped me with my stupid questions and queries. As the title mentions it, this is not only my first ever PC, but my first ever PC build after years of watching LTT and dreaming of building a PC with whatever I could get my hands on, so I was really nervous and scared too as I didn't want to mess anything up.
 
Anyway, here's my baby, it's not much but I was mainly aiming for a build that could deliver solid 1080p performance and I didn't want to go all out and get really expensive components and end up breaking something. It took around 2 hours to complete the build and it was honestly the most nerve racking experience of my life, for some parts. Putting the processor in was no issue but I was really surprised by how much force had to be applied to close the cover(?) on top of it and I was really worried I might break it by pushing the lever too hard. I decided to save a few Rupees and stick with the stock cooler for now as it's definitely good enough for an i3 but it does get a bit loud under load, but I hardly ever notice it since I'm wearing headphones most of the time. Installing the motherboard in the case was probably the most difficult part as mine came with a pre-installed IO-shield so lining the motherboard and avoiding the back of it form getting scratched from the standoffs was kind of hard to do. However, once it got lined up and screwed in, the rest of the build went relatively smoothly. Overall, a great first time experience and now I'm definitely looking forward for the next build, whenever that is going to be.
 
Thank you!
 
Parts
CPU: Intel Core i3 10100
GPU: MSI Gaming X 1650 Super
Motherboard: Gigabyte B460M Aorus Elite
Memory: Corsair Vengeance RGB
Storage: 500GB WD Blue (will be adding a HDD next month)
Fans: Cooler Master MF120 Halo
PSU: Corsair CV650
Case: Cooler Master MB520
 
Photos
Complete Photos: Imgur

Without the remaster, the game still looks good.

welp that sucks

I'd say 1-2 TB is what most people actually need nowadays. Non-gamers can get away with much less.

It depends on your use case.
If you don't need much storage, then just one SSD.
If you do need lots of storage but for not very much money, then a smaller (~500GB) SSD boot drive and a 2+TB HDD.
I personally use a 128GB SSD for my boot drive and then hard drives for everything else, though you can make your own choices.

Not sure about the rest of the world, but currently Intel is the better value option whereas ryzen is the better pure performance option. Especially when you compare prices of 10th gen to 5000 series.

Because you only live once

What GPU shortage?

userbenchmark is the dumbest benchmark on earth, do a thread why is ub bad and see

@AndresDashieYou'll run fine on the highest settings at 1080p with high fps (100+) but for 1440p you'll get relative the same but more dips. (I play warzone almost everyday so I know what I'm talking about)

You won't notice any difference between the three of them so just get the wd sn550

How about the Fractal Design Focus Mini G?

Any type of scalping should be illegal everywhere. Point blank period.

Summary
AMD will respond to the upcoming Intel Alder Lake Processors with a series of Zen 3+ based processors in 2021 and then in 2022 with the brand new Zen 4 architecture.
Zen 3+ is expected to be AMD's first AM5 CPU design. Rumors are talking about a 5/7% IPC increase, while there could be a massive 25% IPC increase with Zen 4.
 
 
Quotes
 
 
 
My thoughts
I like how AMD is not slowing down after the recent success of 5000 series. Next Gen Intel seems to be a massive improve over 10 gen series, so Lisa Su needs to keep pulling cards out of her sleeve if she wants to stay on the top.
I hope this battle keeps going since we are the real winners. 
 
Sources
https://hothardware.com/news/amd-zen-4-ryzen-6000-cpus-25-percent-ipc-lift
https://www.techpowerup.com/278321/amd-zen-4-reportedly-features-a-29-ipc-boost-over-zen-3

I was building a PC for a friend and he only wanted something stealthy and best bang for his buck. Found these T-Force Dark Zα 16GB 3600 MHz Cl18 kit. This series is available up to kits of 32 GB and 4000 MHz while having this ‘batarang’ design from its aluminium heatsinks. I like the all metal 0.8 mm thick aluminium heat spreaders with an aggressive design which is very reminiscent of Batman’s armour.
 
Gave them some tests in my A4 build and I must say they blend really well if you are after a non RGB build. 
 
Besides the stock X.M.P/D.O.C.P value of 3600 MHz for 1.35v @ CL18 settings I tired try to overclock them further to see how much free performance I can squeeze out of them. Also I am not an expert on memory OC'ing and mostly looking after quick/safer settings. This been said, I managed a stable 4000 MHz for the same exact D.O.C.P values of 1.35v and latencies. Then tried to take it to another level but anything above 4266 MHz even with 1.5v (VCCSA 1.35v and VCCIO to 1.3v) it became a bit of too on the limit and gave some hiccups with stability. 
 
In R15 got some weird ones, The ‘simple’ OC behaves unoptimized maybe due to the higher (tRC of 91 vs 82) when compared to the stock D.O.C.P profiles, if anybody has any ideas. Then In R20 things scale a bit better. Next with AIDA64, I didn't get any better results vs stock form while in Geekbench, I saw some closer results to R15. In the end I get a nice surprise in Valhalla when the game scaled pretty well with OC values.
 
All in all, they look like a sweet spot for realistic general needs and considering the asking price, you can’t go wrong here. They blend in any build (besides specific VLP necessity), they look great and they should offer some decent overclock headroom if you take your time with tweaking the sub-timings. 
 

I'd take the i7-2600 over the i5-3570K. More games will appreciate the hyperthreading today over the raw clocks of the 3570K. 
Unless you anticipate that your friend will be playing a lot of, say, CS:GO or League of Legends, I'd use the 2600.

Its a pretty bad deal when you have the Tomahawk with better VRMs for €20 less. The only advantage is a second m.2 on the B450F.

maybe the hackers can fix the cyberpunk now