You've done the research, watched the reviews, and finally pulled the trigger on a blazing-fast M.2 NVMe SSD. You're dreaming of instantaneous game loads and file transfers that finish before you can blink. I've been there and enjoyed the instant boot-ups from a new SSD too, but try moving a massive game library, and watch in horror as the transfer speed plummets from a god-tier 7,000 MB/s to a glaring reminder of your old spinning disk. When the progress bar slows to a crawl, it can be because your SSD has run out of SLC cache and is now writing to NAND, or because the drive is simply too hot.

Whether you're a home labber looking to connect self-hosted services with a storage server or a casual user trying to pair your NAS with a Windows machine, you’ve definitely heard of SMB. Besides NFS, it’s one of the most popular network protocols for transferring large amounts of data on a home network. But unlike its rival, SMB is easy to set up, works well on the big three OS families, and doesn’t require a lot of mental calculus when creating permissions.

The Raspberry Pi 5 represents a significant leap forward compared to previous models, featuring faster CPUs, more capable GPUs, and support for PCIe devices that unlock a new world of possibilities. While you can certainly use it for the same lightweight projects you might have run on a Pi 4, that would be underselling its potential. The Pi 5 shines brightest when you throw heavier workloads at it, the kind that would have brought older Pis to their knees. These projects show off just how much muscle the Pi 5 has and why it’s no longer just a hobbyist’s toy.

The CMF Headphone Pro can be customized by swapping their ear cushions with alternate colors. | Image: Nothing CMF, the budget-focused sub-brand that Nothing plans to spin off into a standalone subsidiary, has launched its first pair of over-ear wireless headphones. The CMF Headphone Pro borrows features like a multi-function roller control from Nothing’s Headphone 1 that debuted in July, but while Nothing’s over-ears feature a polarizing boxy design, CMF’s go hard on the soft curves with round earcups, cushions, and a well-padded headband.The CMF Headphone Pro are available starting today in the EU and UK, but US customers will have to wait until October 7th, 2025, to grab a pair. At $99 they’re much cheaper than Nothing’s $299 Headphone 1 and offer more customizability. The Headphone Pro come in subtle dark gray, light green, and light gray color options, but you can add some color contrast with replacement $25 ear cushions that come in bright orange or light green.Like Nothing’s first over-ears, CMF’s Headphone Pro eschew touch-sensitive panels for tactile buttons designed to be easy to find and discern. In addition to a round power/Bluetooth button on one side and a matching action button on the other that can be customized using the Nothing X app, the Pro features a multi-function roller for adjusting volume, controlling playback, and adjusting the presence of ambient sounds. They also include a unique control called the Energy Slider that quickly adjusts the Pro’s treble and bass balance without having to open Nothing’s app to make EQ adjustments.The CMF Headphone Pro offer adaptive active noise cancellation that will automatically adjust the aggressiveness of the sound dampening based on the intensity of the ambient noise around you, but it does come with a big battery hit. CMF says you can get up to 100 hours of playback with the Pro’s 720mAh battery fully charged, but that’s reduced to up to 50 hours with ANC turned on. That’s still 15 more hours than you’ll get from the Headphone 1 with ANC active, and much better performance than Sony’s WH-1000XM6 which top out at 40 hours per charge, or 30 with ANC. But should you find the Headphone Pro have died at an inopportune time, like right before a flight, a five minute charge will give you up to four hours of listening, and they can even be recharged by plugging them directly into many smartphones using a USB-C cable.

Building out my own home automation network was an incredibly rewarding project. It provides high levels of customization and control over how I and everyone else within the home interact with all our smart home tech, be it a bulb or space heater. An issue we can quickly run into with smart home gear, however, is a reliance on proprietary hardware — namely, smart home hubs. It’s understandable why hubs exist. Companies want a way to make their hardware approachable to everyone, even people who don’t consider themselves tech-savvy.

During the September 2025 Nintendo Direct presentation, Nintendo revealed they were bringing the full library of Virtual Boy games to Switch Online classics. But they weren't just putting the games onto the service for Nintendo Switch 2 owners, but also bringing a Virtual Boy accessory to stores for everyone to buy and use with the Switch 2. This was a big shock to everyone, as it was completely unexpected. To many Nintendo fans, the Virtua Boy was a console that was a failure in the company's legacy, but was ambitious enough to try something very different at the time. And while it's not the best piece of hardware that Nintendo has released, it makes many gamers feel nostalgic.

Sometimes, in a weird little twist, a Windows update will remove things as well as add new ones. We recently observed this when we reviewed the details for Windows 11's 25H2 update, which ultimately appeared to remove more features than it added.

Overclocking could almost be considered a lost art at this point, thanks to modern technologies and algorithms that handle everything for you. Modern AMD and Intel processors can automatically adjust clock speeds, voltages, and more on the fly with extreme precision, allowing you to get the most out of the chip with your current cooling headroom. That said, it is still possible to tweak til your heart's content within the UEFI BIOS by working your way through advanced CPU power management settings. You can configure values for various terms such as PL1, PL2, EDC, and TDC, alongside many other toggles that aren't self-explanatory.

Are you tired of massive, resource-hogging integrated development environments that slow down your machine? You don’t have to sacrifice power for performance. A relatively unknown IDE called Geany proves that you can have the best of both worlds.

Sometimes, a game developer becomes so adept at a specific genre that you have to take note when they make something new. For instance, I don't think I'll ever let a roguelike developed by the Hades team, Supergiant Games, fly under my radar ever again.

If you've already put a few hours into Hollow Knight: Silksong, you've probably realized just how brutal Pharloom can be. Enemies hit harder, bosses have nastier movesets, and Hornet's faster playstyle doesn't always make things easier. That's why Crests are so valuable. They allow you to tweak your build, giving you an edge when things get overwhelming. Two of the most useful early to mid-game Crests are the Reaper's Crest and the Wanderer's Crest. Both can make Silksong far more manageable, but in very different ways. Below, we'll cover what they do, how to get them, and why you should consider slotting them into your build.

Do you remember the first time you used the web search feature in the Windows Start menu? I do; I entered what I wanted to search for, hit Enter, saw that it opened my query as a Bing search in Microsoft Edge, realised I couldn't change that regardless of how I set up my default browser, then promptly never used it again. Okay, that's a half-truth; I did use it, but only when I'd go to launch an app, misspell it, and end up asking Windows to open up Edge and search for it via Bing. Thanks, Windows.