TechPowerUP NEWS

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Creative has expanded its Aurvana Ace family of xMEMS driver-equipped true wireless earbuds—two new models are on show at this year's CES trade event. The Aurvana Ace SXFI and Aurvana Ace Mimi were revealed prior to CES 2025's commencement, with reviewers in Singapore (where Creative is headquartered) already picking up samples for evaluation. The latest additions also house solid-state xMEMS drivers that works in conjunction with 10 mm dynamic diaphragm units. The TechPowerUp team took a look at the demonstration units on hand at Creative's station—a sense of familiarity was apparent with one of these models.

The collaboration between Creative and Mimi Hearing Technologies has produced the aptly named "Aurvana Ace Mimi"—from the outside this looks like a slight recoloring of the 2023 Ace and Ace 2 models. The Mimi's pricing is apparently somewhere in between the older iterations. A major change addition lies under the hood, due to the implementation of Mimi's Sound Personalization technology. A user can perform a hearing test via the Creative App. It is claimed that this analysis will produce a custom sound profile/EQ—tuned specifically for "every individual."

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[NextPowerUP]

Keychron brought its full lineup of keyboards to the CES 2025 show, but the star of the show is definitely the new Keychron K2 HE which uses Gateron magnetic switches. The Keychron K2 HE is a fully customizable 75% layout wireless keyboard combining metal and wood frame and double-shot PBT keycaps. The keyboard also comes with a custom wood siding, which is available in light and dark finishes and can be personalized with laser-engraved design or text of your choice directly from Keychron's website.

The Keychron K2 HE is not all about the looks though, as the key feature of this keyboard are pre-lubed Gateron double-rail magnetic switches. These linear switches not only offer fast response time and precise control, but also allow adjustable actuation point with 0.2 mm to 3.8 mm actuation range. As they use pressure-sensitive hall effect sensors to detect a keypresses it is possible to set the depth of the actuation with 0.1 mm precision.
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Over the past year, generative AI has transformed the way people live, work and play, enhancing everything from writing and content creation to gaming, learning and productivity. PC enthusiasts and developers are leading the charge in pushing the boundaries of this groundbreaking technology. Countless times, industry-defining technological breakthroughs have been invented in one place—a garage. This week marks the start of the RTX AI Garage series, which will offer routine content for developers and enthusiasts looking to learn more about NVIDIA NIM microservices and AI Blueprints, and how to build AI agents, creative workflow, digital human, productivity apps and more on AI PCs. Welcome to the RTX AI Garage.

This first installment spotlights announcements made earlier this week at CES, including new AI foundation models available on NVIDIA RTX AI PCs that take digital humans, content creation, productivity and development to the next level. These models—offered as NVIDIA NIM microservices—are powered by new GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs. Built on the NVIDIA Blackwell architecture, RTX 50 Series GPUs deliver up to 3,352 trillion AI operations per second of performance, 32 GB of VRAM and feature FP4 compute, doubling AI inference performance and enabling generative AI to run locally with a smaller memory footprint.
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While we expected more ZOTAC ZBOX mini-PCs at the CES 2025 show, it appears that it was just too early for some of the new models to be announced. In the meantime, ZOTAC was keen to show off a single ZBOX mini-PC that was quite a feat to design considering it is aimed at healthcare solutions with EN60601-1 compliancy.

This one uses a slim 2.66-inch metal chassis with rounded edges, and is based on Intel Core i9-13900HX 24-core/32-thread processor paired up with NVIDIA RTX 5000 Ada Laptop GPU with 16 GB of GDDR6 memory. It offers up to 682 AI TOPS. The rest of the specifications include support for up to 64 GB of DDR5-5600 RAM in two SO-DIMM slots, two M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 storage slots, dual 2.5 Gbps Ethernet, Wi-Fi 6, and Bluetooth 5.2 connectivity, as well as two HDMI 2.1 and two DisplayPort 1.4a outputs, one Thunderbolt 4 and five USB 3.2 ports. It supports VESA mounting as well as L-shaped mounting.

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ZOTAC unveiled its full lineup of NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50 series graphics cards at CES 2025, including the full the new AMP Extreme INFINITY models and the whole new SOLID series of graphics cards. According to ZOTAC, the SOLID series uses cooling technologies derived from the flagship model and represents a high-performance graphics card in a minimalist package. As far as we understood, the SOLID series is meant to be the working horse of Zotac graphics card lineup, offering both performance and durability, while the AMP Extreme INFINITY will be the flagship series with all the bells and whistles. Currently, ZOTAC will offer GeForce RTX 5090, 5080, and 5070 Ti will be offered in the AMP Extreme INFINITY series and SOLID models, while the 5070 products will be offered only in SOLID series.

ZOTAC also turned a new page when it comes to design, breaking away from the traditional design of the graphics card by going for elegance and simplicity, making them more suitable for current trend of "sleek, designer-like premium PCs". With the AMP Extreme INFINITY series, ZOTAC is implementing a die-cast metal backplate with flow-through air channels, Infinity Mirror, and SPECTRA 2.0 ARGB lighting. Both the AMP Extreme INFINITY and the SOLID series will now have rounded corners, as these both look better and take up less space, which could be important to system integrators.
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[NextPowerUP]

Epomaker brought four of its latest gaming peripherals to the 2025 International CES. We begin our tour with the Epomaker Carbon 60, which as its name suggests, is a 60% format keyboard, with a carbon fiber pattern along its top and body. The keyboard offers three kinds of connectivity—USB, 2.4 GHz RF (1000 Hz polling rate), and Bluetooth 5.0. They included keycaps are PBT. The switches are hot-swappable, and you choose between Epomaker's in-house Mulan or Wisteria Linear switches. Completing its industrial look is yellow pull-tag.

Next up, is the Epomaker Luma84, a slick business-class keyboard which looks like it could go well with a Mac mini or similar-looking NUC. The keyboard features an 84% layout, and comes with low-profile white PBT keycaps. The keyboard comes with an aluminium top and backplate, with a similar curved-edge to a MacBook Pro. Much like the Carbon 60, the Luma84 comes with three kinds of connectivity.
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Congratulations, Sinner. As a non-productive citizen of the Panopticon, the only way to reduce the million-year prison sentence assigned at birth is through the redeeming fire of combat. FREEDOM WARS REMASTERED, the cult classic action game originally released on PlayStation Vita, is now available worldwide for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, and PC via Steam.

The cult hit was remastered by the game's original developer, and brings enhancements including 4K resolution, upgraded textures, improved online multiplayer, a new "Deadly Sinner" higher difficulty mode, and 60 frames per second for current gen platforms. The story remains unchanged, but upgraded player systems help streamline looting, crafting, and other player interactions from the original release. For more information, visit the official website. Choose to provide value to society through combat and helping support the Panopticon and productive citizens or die a Sinner.
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[NextPowerUP]

Cougar at the 2025 International CES brought two new power supply lines in the performance segment, the GEX Pro series, and the GLE series. The latter is the more premium of the two, and comes in wattage variants ranging between 650 W and 1200 W. These offer a compact build that's 15 cm in depth, full modular cabling, and modern connectivity. The GLE series meets ATX 3.1 and PCIe 5.1 specs. These use a single 135 mm hydro dynamic bearing fan to keep cool. The GLE series offers Cybenetics Platinum switching efficiency, and Cybenetics A- acoustic rating. All models 750 W and above come with a 600 W-capable 12V2x6 connector, the 650 W model does 450 W on this connector.

The GEX Pro is more of an upper mid-range product. It comes in 650 W, 750 W, and 850 W models, and is a little more compact than the GLE series, with a depth of just 14 cm, relying on a 120 mm HDB fan to keep cool. The PSU meets ATX 3.1 and PCIe 5.1 specs, and offers Cybenetics Gold switching efficiency, along with Cybenetics A+ acoustics rating. You get fully modular cabling, and a 12V2x6 connector that's capable of 600 W continuous output in the 750 W and 850 W models, but 450 W continuous on the 650 W model. Under the hood, both PSU lines rely on a single +12 V rail design, with most common electrical protections, against over/under voltage, overload, overheat, and short-circuit.

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Microsoft announced updates to the DirectX API that would pave the way for neural rendering. Neural rendering is a concept where portions of a frame in real-time 3D graphics are drawn using a generative AI model that works in tandem with classic raster 3D graphics pipeline, along with other advancements, such as real-time ray tracing. This is different from AI-based super resolution technologies. The generative AI here is involved in rendering the input frames for a super resolution technology. One of the nuts and bolts of neural rendering is cooperative vectors, enable an information pathway between the conventional graphics pipeline and the generative AI, telling it what it's doing, what needs to be done by the AI model, and what the ground truth for the model is.

Microsoft says that its HLSL team is working with AMD, Intel, NVIDIA, and Qualcomm to bring cross-vendor support for cooperative vectors in the DirectX ecosystem. The very first dividends of this effort will be seen in the upcoming NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50-series "Blackwell" GPUs, which will use cooperative vectors to drive neural shading. "Neural shaders can be used to visualize game assets with AI, better organize geometry for improved path tracing performance and tools to create game characters with photo-realistic visuals," Microsoft says.

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If the recent RDNA 4 performance leaks are anything to go by, the AMD Radeon RX 9070 and the RX 9070 XT GPUs are sizing up to be excellent mid-range contenders. That is, of course, if the pricing is sane enough. A subsequent leak revealed that the RX 9070 XT AIB models will command a price tag of roughly around $549, which would easily allow it to undercut the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070.

Now, a further leak has revealed a product listing of an RX 9070 XT by a retailer based in the Philippines. The variant in question is Gigabyte's Gaming OC model, with base and boost clocks of 2,400 and 2,970 MHz respectively. Moreover, 16 GB of GDDR6 memory is also offered, on a 256-bit memory bus. 4,096 shading units and 64 RT cores are present as well - nothing out of the ordinary.
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KeysFan brings you genuine, globally valid software at the beginning of the year, so you can plan your next-generation PC build in time for Spring-Summer. Spend more on your hardware by saving big on genuine software. Get Windows 11 Pro at just $14.80. Pair it with the powerful productivity suite Office 2021 Professional Plus at $38.98 on its own, or $52.79 in a combo. Save big when you buy multi-PC packs, or older editions of Windows or Office.

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Morse Micro, the world's leading provider of Wi-Fi HaLow chips based on the IEEE 802.11ah specification, has announced the launch of its highly anticipated second-generation MM8108 System-on-Chip (SoC). Building on the success of the first-generation MM6108 SoC, the MM8108 offers even better performance in all key areas of range, throughput, and power efficiency while also reducing the cost, effort, and time to bring the next generation of Wi-Fi HaLow enabled products to market.

The MM8108 delivers class-leading data rates of up to 43.33 Mbps using world-first sub-GHz 256-QAM modulation at an 8 MHz bandwidth, making it ideal for a range of applications in agricultural, mining, industrial, home, and city environments. Its integrated 26dBm power amplifier (PA) with exceptional power efficiency, and low-noise amplifier (LNA) ensure exceptional performance and enable global regulatory certification without the need for external Surface Acoustic Wave (SAW) filters. The exceptional power efficiency significantly extends battery life and enables the uptake of solar-powered Wi-Fi HaLow connected cameras and IoT devices.
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MSI worked hard to make its Cubi NUC AI series stand out at CES 2025. Showing off small—almost nondescript—black boxes is normally a big ask, but the TechPowerUp team's collective eye was caught by a presentation piece that exhibited an exploded view of MSI's Cubi NUC AI+ 2M model's outer and inner workings (see photo below). Competing devices did not get the same treatment elsewhere in Las Vegas—printed diagrams and spec sheets only go so far in showcasing PC products.

MSI's dissected Cubi NUC AI+ 2M was mounted on a plinth that featured plenty of useful markings and labels surrounding the mainboard. Naturally a fully assembled plus operational demo unit was close by—as evidenced by being hooked up to (and powered by) an MSI PRO MP251 E2 monitor. Cubi NUC AI+ 2M is advertised as the "Ultimate" Windows 11 Copilot+ mini PC—TechPowerUp spotted a dedicated Copilot button on the box's front fascia. An Intel Core Ultra "Lunar Lake" processor (with AI NPU boost) is soldered onto the NUC AI+ 2M board—a product placard states that the top variant can run Team Blue's Core Ultra 7 258V mobile CPU.
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GameSir has showcased its brand new G7 Pro wireless gaming controller at this week's CES trade event, where they teased a very compelling sub-$100 price point. It seems that a lucky few have already playtested early sample units—leaks from late last year revealed the existence of Xbox and Steam variants. During a showroom visit, the TechPowerUp team discovered that GameSir had left the oft-rumored Valve-licensed "prototype" back at HQ. Fortunately, their Xbox G7 Pro model was available for close up inspection in Las Vegas—reports suggest that a launch is lined up around Spring time.

Highlights from the G7 Pro's feature list include: TMR analogue sticks (first introduced via their Tarantula series), 1000 Hz polling rate (wired on Xbox, wireless on PC), optical microswitch face buttons, two rear programmable back buttons + two programmable shoulder triggers, swappable faceplate system, and a new tactile D-pad. TechPowerUp also spent time with some other new controller models—GameSir has another affordable-tier Nova controller (white example is pictured below) incoming, as well as a retro-gray Tarantula model.
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EcoFlow revealed its latest power generation solutions at CES 2025, with the Delta 3 series power stations leading the pack. The flagship Delta 3 Plus features lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery cells rated for 4,000+ charge cycles, with a total capacity of 3,024Wh and maximum output of 3,000 W. The unit's X-Stream charging technology enables 0-80% charging in 40 minutes when connected to AC power, while supporting 1,200 W maximum solar input. The base Delta 3 model offers similar specifications but with a 2,048Wh capacity.

For small-scale applications, the River 3 Plus delivers 1,200 W continuous output from its 512Wh battery pack. Operating at 30 decibels under normal load, the unit includes two 120 V AC outlets, three USB-A ports, and one USB-C port capable of 100 W output.
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