When Intel's Arc B580 unveiled the company's new Battlemage architecture over a month ago, it was met with glowing reviews, universally hailed as an affordable 1440p ray tracing GPU. For only $250 (if you could get it at that price), it was comfortable beating the likes of RTX 4060 in almost all titles. Soon after, however, reports started coming in that the Arc B580 had a serious performance overhead issue in the very segment it was targeting.

Nvidia's GeForce RTX 5090 is the most powerful consumer graphics card you can buy in 2025. One of the main reasons it costs $2,000 is that it has no competition from AMD and Intel. However, even if you can afford to spend that much money on this flagship graphics card, you have to be very careful because there are some important factors to consider before you put it inside your case. Otherwise, you may have to spend even more on additional components to enjoy all the performance gains it brings to the table.

Counter-Strike 2 is the best esport on the planet. Compared to League of Legends, Dota 2, Overwatch, Valorant, and countless others, I truly believe that it's the absolute best out there. I say this from a position of working a significant amount in esports, and even watching tournaments in other games too, like Valorant and Deadlock. I know how much of an audacious claim that is to some, but there are a lot of reasons why I believe it's the case.

While you might love boasting about the benefits of your dedicated battlestation over a laptop or mobile device, there are almost certainly times when you want to be able to access your PC from your phone or tablet. It could be for something as simple as controlling media playback or emailing a PC-only file to yourself. It could also be to help a family member or friend with a tech issue or wake your PC up to bring your Plex server online.

Everyone takes notes, and everyone has their own way of doing it. I used pen and paper for the longest time. Nothing beats the tactile experience; but, as you know, it has its drawbacks. Carrying a notebook everywhere is not always practical. A better choice would be a note-taking application such as Notion, Evernote, or a simpler alternative like Apple Notes or Google Keep. The issue is that notes are often private, which makes self-hosted note-taking apps an attractive option. These apps store data locally on your device or on a server you manage, ensuring privacy. Below are four self-hosted note-taking apps to consider.

For anyone working in Photoshop, performance issues can be a frustrating obstacle to creativity. Laggy tools, long loading times, or even crashes during complex tasks can quickly derail your workflow and sap your productivity.

There are lots of reasons you might choose to use open-source tools, whether it’s to avoid the Adobe corporation and find the best open-source alternatives to Adobe tools, or because you want to be in control of your privacy and security. The future of creative tools and software lies in open-source options for many reasons. Open-source tools will never diminish your creativity or limit your results.

Network-Attached Storage devices are typically used to enhance the backup and file-sharing provisions of your computing setup, but there are plenty of cool things you can pull off with your storage server. If you don’t have a dedicated home server, your NAS can double as a decent distro-testing and self-hosting platform.

Benchy is a fantastic tool for testing 3D printer settings and identifying potential issues. Each model tests different printer functions, such as retraction settings, bridging, and overhang angles. Examining these diverse prints allows you to understand how your machine works in various situations.

We at XDA love making stuff instead of buying them. After all, if you can make it, you can repair it or make a new one when things go wrong. So, when I saw an adorable home lab setup that you can 3D print yourself, you know I had to check it out.

Keeping your PC secure these days can be tricky. If you rely solely on a PIN or password, your system is more vulnerable to unwanted access. With Windows Hello integration, which introduces biometric data, things have improved. But if your PC doesn’t offer it, or you want something tangible, you might want another solution. However, you might not want to buy a dedicated security key like a YubiKey or a Thetis FIDO U2F. However, have you considered turning that old USB drive in your drawer into a secure unlock key instead?

OpenAI has revealed another new agentic feature for ChatGPT called deep research, which it says can operate autonomously to “plan and execute a multi-step trajectory to find the data it needs, backtracking and reacting to real-time information where necessary.” Instead of simply generating text, it shows a summary of its process in a sidebar, with citations and a summary showing the process used for reference.Users can ask questions using text, images, and additional files like PDFs or spreadsheets to add context, and then it will take “anywhere from 5 to 30 minutes” to develop a response provided in the chat window, with promises that in the future it will also be able to include embedded images and charts. OpenAI also notes limitations for deep research, saying it can “sometimes hallucinate” and make up facts, struggle with telling the difference between authoritative info and rumors, and register how certain it should rate a response.Developing ways for generative AI tools to be more useful and worth paying for is the future companies like OpenAI have promised for agents, and it claims that deep research is capable of operating at the level of a research analyst. The demo video included here begins with a request for info on changes in the retail industry over the last three years, with a response that includes bullet points and tables.ChatGPT deep research exampleThis feature closely follows OpenAI’s launch of Operator, a tool that can use a web browser to complete tasks for you, and is similar to the Project Mariner research prototype Google showed off in December. Google’s tool is not available to the public yet, but deep research is launching “with a version optimized for Pro users today.”OpenAI is offering up to 100 queries per month for those paying the $200 monthly fee and “limited access” promised for Plus, Team, and eventually, Enterprise users, calling the ability “very compute intensive,” requiring more inference compute the longer it takes to research something. It also says that all paid users will get higher rate limits in the future when a faster, more cost-effective version is available.A press release says that the model powering deep research scored a new high for accuracy on an AI benchmark dubbed “Humanity’s Last Exam,” which asks for responses to expert-level questions. The OpenAI deep research model reached an accuracy of 26.6 percent with browsing and python tools enabled, well above GPT-4o’s 3.3 percent, and the next highest scorer, its o3-mini (high) model evaluated only on text, at 13 percent.