Welcome back to Paul’s Tech News. As the summer 
blazes on, one might anticipate a seasonal period of calm in the realm of PC hardware. But I caution 
you to not let your guard down. For it is amidst this very calm that YouTubers and other tech media 
desperate for clicks and revenue generating web traffic, debase and defoul themselves by resorting 
to the most unscrupulous means at their disposal. I refer, of course, to the ridiculously hyperbolic 
and overblown clickbait headlines, video titles, and thumbnails strewn across the internet with 
reckless disregard for the actual substance of the material, which is often the most benile tripe 
like Thread Ripper pricing coming out, Nvidia and AMD being able to sell AI chips to China again, 
and Firefox detecting heatwave induced Raptor-like CPU crashes. We should be able to register this 
information with mild indifference and get back to doom scrolling. But instead, we’re faced 
with a relentless onslaught of overstatement designed to instill fear, amplify agitation, and 
falsely promote a reliance on the message bringer, which is why PC gaming and PC building will 
never be the same and is doomed. But thankfully, you’re here. And I would never do that to 
you guys. And also, I can save you from all that stuff, too, because this is tech news 
and everything’s going to be okay. Cheers. for your next build. The NQ780 is a balanced 
drive that combines performance with value, offering impressive PCIe Gen 4 speeds, as 
well as a single-sided design, SLC cache, and intelligent power control. The NM1090 Pro features 
blazing fast PCIe Gen 5 read speeds up to 14,000 megabytes per second, twice as fast as PCIe Gen 
4. The NM1090 Pro also has a dual DRAM plus SLC cache and a sixnimeter controller to minimize heat 
output even under sustained workloads. Both drives are available in capacities up to four terabytes 
and come with a 5-year warranty. For more on the Lexar NM 1090 Pro and NQ780 SSDs, click the 
sponsor links in the video description. Let us begin with the hardest of the hardware newses 
this week. AMD’s official reveal of Thread Ripper 9000WX series pricing via a blog post on Thursday. 
As originally disclosed at Computex in May, these Zen 5-based workstation/proumer CPUs will scale 
all the way up to 96 cores and 192 threads in the flagship Thread Ripper Pro 995WX model, which we 
now know will cost $11,700 MSRP. Though, per AMD, they’ll initially ship in workstations built 
by regional system integrator partners as well as global OEMs, including Dell Technologies, HP, 
Lenovo, and Super Micro, starting July 23rd. If you’re a poor person and can’t afford the 96 core, 
there’s a 64 core for 8 grand, 32 core for 4,100, a 24 core for 2900, and a 16 core for $1,650. 
Thankfully, the Thread Ripper 9000 CPUs are still socket STR5, so they’ll work with existing 
WRX90 and TRX50 motherboards with a BIOS update, of course. And while the previous gen 7000 series 
also went up to 96 core, they were Zen 4-based. And so AMD is claiming up to 26% more performance 
via their benchmarks, at least for the flagship. They also compared the 9995WX to Intel’s Xeon 
W93595X, which it wiped the floor with pretty thoroughly. Kind of an unfair comparison if you 
ask me. The high-end desktop market overlaps pretty heavily with the workstation market, 
which has had the unfortunate effect of pushing prices up a lot, closer to the enterprise side 
than the consumer side, which in my opinion is why there’s generally less enthusiasm these days 
for this enthusiast segment of the market. Still, it’s fun to ogle, and these pricey WX CPUs should 
be joined at some point by the remaining true Hedt parts with the X, but not the W. the 64 
core 9980X, 32 core 99970X, and 24 core 9960X, which might provide slightly more value to home 
enthusiasts who can’t drop 10 grand or more on server grade hardware, however droolworthy the 
specs might be. And without the aid of 3D Vcash, it’s safe to say that these will not be optimal 
CPUs for a crossover system that can also do PC gaming. Although, that’s what editor Joe does 
with his 7970X, so maybe he can give his feedback. Ah, looks like it still works for gaming. What 
the [ __ ] Speaking of Intel offering next to no competition for Thread Ripper, let’s talk 
about Team Blue next. Intel news remains dismal this week alongside more rumors that the Aerolake 
refresh won’t be very refreshing with just bumped up clock speeds and nothing else. It’s also 
now confirmed that the ongoing layoffs have topped 5,000 souls just in Oregon alone, causing 
concern about the impact the lost income will have on state funding for things like schools 
and public safety. Another interesting tidbit related to Intel struggles came to light via a 
Firefox devs post on Masttodon. Back in 2024, we covered Intel’s Raptor Lake issues pretty 
extensively, as both 13th gen and 14th gen Intel CPUs were affected by the instability 
and degradation problems that took many months to figure out and mitigate as much as possible 
with BIOS updates and microode patches. Still, there are many unpatched systems in the wild, and 
since Firefox collects crash reports that include system specs, they have some hard data documenting 
the effects of the summer heat on these PCs. Hotter systems are more likely to experience 
instability. So, per Mosilla senior staff engineer Gabrielle Spelto, if you have an Intel Raptor 
Lake system and you’re in the northern hemisphere, chances are that your machine is crashing more 
often because of the summer heat. I know because I can literally see which EU countries have 
been affected by heat waves by looking at the local Firefox crash reports coming from Raptor 
Lake Systems. Selvelto’s team even disabled the crash report bot due to it becoming such a 
frequent issue. And in case you were wondering, the number one CPU affected was the 14700 K. So, 
one more friendly reminder to those of you on an Intel 13th or 14th gen CPU, update your BIOS. 
Speaking of updates, I guess the US government has apparently updated its stance on Nvidia and 
their ability to export certain AI capable GPUs to China. This actually affects AMD too though. 
But as shared in an Nvidia blog post Monday after Nvidia CEO Jensen Hong made recent visits to both 
Washington DC and Beijing, the US government has assured Nvidia that licenses will be granted 
for their H20 hopper data center accelerators to sell to customers in China. Do note that the 
H20 was already a cut down chip whose die size is a mystery and was produced specifically to 
slip in beneath US export restrictions that had been put in place before those restrictions were 
expanded to include it as well as AMD’s similarly configured Mi308 chip, which AMD says will also 
be resuming sales in China based on this news. What is less clear is how this will affect gaming 
chips. cards like the RTX 5090 were also blocked by the ban. And so Nvidia made the 5090D, which 
was also banned. And then a few weeks back, I had way too much fun discussing Nvidia’s doubleds, 
aka the 5090 DDD. But not only is that gloriously named graphics card now being referred to as 5090D 
V2, which is just abominable, horrible branding if you ask me. But it might just be unnecessary. 
Unnecessary. Forgive my presumption, but I don’t think anyone has ever claimed that doubleds were a 
necessity. It’s more about aesthetics and the joy they bring to the world. And yes, of course, I’m 
still talking about graphics cards. As a matter of principle, though, I think we should all be 
in favor of the 1590D getting the green light. Free the D sounds like a rousing battlecry to me. 
And hey, if they want to go ahead and free those double D’s, too, I won’t complain. Speaking of 
things that just can’t be contained, the remainder of the tech news was too much. and so it has been 
shrinkified into tech briefs. Valve made a change to Steam this week that I’m only going to lightly 
touch on as I have a feeling it will develop further. Their updated rules and guidelines 
for game developers now prohibit content that violates rules and standards set forth by Steam’s 
payment processors and related card networks and banks or internet service providers. On one hand, 
this means a lot of adultoriented games were just removed from Steam, which you may think is a 
good or a bad thing, but also much AI slop has been removed, which I think everyone will agree 
is nice. But on the other hand, this gives a lot of power to credit card companies, banks, and 
ISPs who are not usually known for level-headed arbitration when it comes to video game content 
that might be deemed controversial. Valve issued a statement after there was some backlash on 
this aspect of the changes, but it’s mainly promising developers some app credits by way 
of compensation for games that were taken down. It’s disappointing that Valve is passing the buck 
when it comes to this type of content moderation, and many who have chimed in with comments are now 
on alert to see if further censorship is forced down by Valve’s payment processing partners. Peak 
nostalgia for PC gaming dinosaurs like myself was loading up Jumpman Jr. via a cassette deck on our 
family’s Commodore 64 sometime back in the 80s. Memory is a bit hazy, but thanks to the efforts 
of the retro gaming community and Christian Perryic Simpson, Commodore is back and they’re 
actually going to ship new models with a basic, an RGB, and a gold Founders Edition option up 
for pre-order going for $300 to $500 each. The new Commodore is run on an AMD RTX 7 FPGA that 
allows for full compatibility with the 10,000 plus original retro games out there without the use of 
emulation. And they’ve even added Wi-Fi support. They expect to start shipping units in October. 
So, if you’d like to fire up Maniac Mansion or Bubble Bobble in the most legitimate way possible, 
you can find out more at commodore.net. Now, if you’ve wondered just how much money GPU 
manufacturers are making from high-priced video cards, consider that ASUS decided to pour 5 kg or 
11 plus pounds of pure gold worth roughly $540,000 at current market rates into the shroud and back 
plate of this custom one-off ROG Astral RTX 5090. This gloriously gilded graphics card was spotted 
by real victor_m on Twitter as it was displayed recently at the BillyBilly World 2025 event in 
Shanghai, China. And while this GPU certainly blows by the former world’s most expensive gold 
video card, the ROG Astral Dah Hab edition in terms of raw material cost and heft as it weighs 
in at 7.2 kg. So, you better get a golden anti-sag bracket, too. The DA HAB still gets the aesthetic 
win given the rough finish the molding process left on the all gold 5090. Kind of looks like 
a bad 3D print. I’m sure it’ll buff right out though. And actually a correction on peak GPU 
aesthetics. The true win in that category belongs to this GPU, the ROG Astro Hatsune Miku special 
edition RTX 5080, which you could totally pair up with all this other Asus Hatutsune Miku hardware 
if you wanted the best gaming PC ever. This 5080 actually costs double the MSRP of a typical 5080. 
But for once, I’m not going to complain about a GPU markup. Definitely worth it. But there you 
have it, guys. Tech news for the week. And if