GPU prices went crazy, so I invested $600 in a more immersive upgrade instead

Buying a high-end graphics card is never easy for most of us. It’s a significant investment that may even force you to upgrade other parts of the build to fully use the GPU’s potential. After using the RTX 3080 for around three years, I wanted to switch to the RTX 5080 last year. It had launched with an MSRP of $999, which was lower than I had expected, and it promised a considerable performance uplift over my Ampere card. Before I could make the decision, however, the AI-induced DRAM crisis hit us all and sent the prices of RAM, SSDs, and GPUs through the roof. The RTX 5080 that was available for under $1,000 soared to $1,500, and my GPU upgrade plans were shelved. However, I had already saved up for the upgrade, and decided that an OLED gaming monitor would still enhance my gaming experience, possibly even more than a new GPU. I had been using a 1440p 144Hz IPS display for around four years, and desperately wanted to experience gaming on an OLED monitor.

Ana Luisa Bustos
Mexico

I quit using Adobe Firefly for a free open-source alternative

The controversies around image and video generation are hard to ignore; whether training data was scraped without consent, or artists are getting compensated, or whether the outputs are doing something genuinely new or just laundering someone else's style. Adobe Firefly was the one that felt the least icky since it's...

Emily Brown
Houston

Your cheap USB-C cables will fail with USB4

There's sometimes a negative connotation that anything cheap must be of bad quality, but that couldn't be further from the truth. More affordable mechanical keyboards can oftentimes be just as good as more expensive typing machines. The same goes for a bottle of red sauce or even a monitor, so...

Emily Brown
Houston

‘Solve all diseases,’ you say?

Let’s unpack what Demis Hassabis said at the end of yesterday’s Google I/O keynote. This is Optimizer, a weekly newsletter sent from Verge senior reviewer Victoria Song that dissects and discusses the latest gizmos and potions that swear they're going to change your life. This week's issue is a special...

Emily Brown
Houston

Cron inside WSL beats Windows Task Scheduler for one reason: it actually works the way I think

You've probably already heard the standard pitch for WSL. Windows Subsystem for Linux gives users an environment to run Linux apps, commands, and graphical tools. That pitch is accurate, and the fact that you can access Linux without dual-booting or spinning up a separate VM is reason enough to install...

Michael Johnson
Chicago

4 Android Auto tweaks that transformed my car’s infotainment system

Most of us treat Android Auto as a utility to set up once and never touch again, trusting Google's default settings, hoping the experience is safe and functional for the widest audience possible. For me, though, functional isn't as good as a personalized user experience, and even in its current...

John Doe
New York

I replaced GitHub Copilot with a self-hosted AI and I won’t go back

I'm a fairly novice coder, even though I've dabbled in one language or another over the last few decades. I'm also terrible at formatting, so I really appreciate autocomplete and formatting help from agentic coding tools. I've been using GitHub Copilot, partly because it's the default in VS Code, but...

Sophia Wilson
Atlanta

SpaceX just filed for what could be the biggest IPO ever

Elon Musk's final frontier is officially open for business now that SpaceX has formally filed its S-1 prospectus with the SEC. That kicks off what could be the largest initial public offering ever when it lists on the Nasdaq stock exchange with the ticker SPCX. SpaceX generated $18.67 billion in...

Emily Brown
Houston

Your Pixel comes with these 4 fantastic apps, and they deserve a spot on your home screen

Phones these days come with a wide range of apps installed out of the box, ranging from the essentials to the bloatware we all want to remove. But somewhere in the middle are genuinely useful apps that you might not immediately realize you need until you start using them. These...

Michael Johnson
Chicago

I fixed my home network lag without buying a new router or a mesh system

When people think of home network upgrades, mesh Wi-Fi or a fancy router is usually what they think about. After all, the marketing around mesh networks makes it seem that they're a silver bullet to every Wi-Fi problem. However, many mesh systems cause the exact problems that they promise to...

Emily Brown
Houston

Your Kindle doesn’t need to be hacked to escape Amazon’s walled garden

When you buy a Kindle, you only focus on reading books on it, like most folks. Only after owning one do people look for tutorials and guides to remove the niggles. Several tutorials, forum threads, and video comments are packed with people seeking guidance on jailbreaking the Kindle.

Emily Brown
Houston

My UGREEN DXP4800 Pro NAS quietly replaced half my home lab, and I didn’t expect that

I bought the UGREEN DXP4800 Pro NAS expecting it to behave like a better storage box. That was the sensible role for it, at least on paper. It had room for drives, enough performance to handle my files, and a more appliance-like personality than the random assortment of mini PCs...

John Doe
New York

I ignored BIOS updates for three years until I realized they were fixing my entire platform

BIOS is something that users touch only while building a PC, enabling DOCP/XMP, or reinstalling Windows. Once that is done and the PC starts working again, the BIOS becomes invisible. I was in the same situation; I built my PC about three years ago and went back to the BIOS...

Jane Smith
Los Angeles

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GPU prices went crazy, so I invested $600 in a more immersive upgrade instead

I quit using Adobe Firefly for a free open-source alternative

Your cheap USB-C cables will fail with USB4

‘Solve all diseases,’ you say?

Cron inside WSL beats Windows Task Scheduler for one reason: it actually works the way I think

4 Android Auto tweaks that transformed my car’s infotainment system

I replaced GitHub Copilot with a self-hosted AI and I won’t go back

SpaceX just filed for what could be the biggest IPO ever

Your Pixel comes with these 4 fantastic apps, and they deserve a spot on your home screen

I fixed my home network lag without buying a new router or a mesh system

Your Kindle doesn’t need to be hacked to escape Amazon’s walled garden

My UGREEN DXP4800 Pro NAS quietly replaced half my home lab, and I didn’t expect that

I ignored BIOS updates for three years until I realized they were fixing my entire platform

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