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More chips, more AI. We’re only halfway through 2024, and there’s no sign of AI-related announcements slowing down — especially with Computex 2024 here. This year’s Taipei-based convention starts on June 4th and ends on June 7th, and you can expect to see big keynotes from AMD, Qualcomm, Intel, Nvidia, and Arm detailing their upcoming strategies for processors that better handle the AI workloads we’re increasingly foisting on computers.
Prior to Computex, we heard a lot about new Copilot Plus PC laptops powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite and Plus chips, a bunch of new Microsoft Copilot features, and where Apple slots into the AI bandwagon now that it has competition from another Arm processor.
Keep on scrolling for all the latest news out of Computex.

Getty

More chips, more AI.

We’re only halfway through 2024, and there’s no sign of AI-related announcements slowing down — especially with Computex 2024 here. This year’s Taipei-based convention starts on June 4th and ends on June 7th, and you can expect to see big keynotes from AMD, Qualcomm, Intel, Nvidia, and Arm detailing their upcoming strategies for processors that better handle the AI workloads we’re increasingly foisting on computers.

Prior to Computex, we heard a lot about new Copilot Plus PC laptops powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite and Plus chips, a bunch of new Microsoft Copilot features, and where Apple slots into the AI bandwagon now that it has competition from another Arm processor.

Keep on scrolling for all the latest news out of Computex.

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MrBeast is now the most-subscribed YouTube channel. | Photo: Chris Unger / Zuffa LLC via Getty Images

Bollywood music label T-Series had the most-subscribed YouTube channel for years after Felix Kjellberg, aka PewDiePie, conceded his protracted and problematic fight for the top spot to it. But now that honor belongs to YouTuber Jimmy Donaldson, who posted yesterday that his MrBeast YouTube operation had ‘avenged’ PewDiePie by overtaking T-Series.
The news apparently prompted a rush, as Donaldson published a screenshot showing he’d gained 2 million more yesterday, which he said is a one-day record for the channel. The online tracker Social Blade now puts him at 268 million subscribers.

After 6 years we have finally avenged Pewdiepie pic.twitter.com/V1znbyqw27— MrBeast (@MrBeast) June 2, 2024

Donaldson made a big show of supporting Kjellberg’s campaign to stay on top back in 2019, having plastered every billboard in his town with ads promoting PewDiePie. He also showed up to the Super Bowl with several friends who wore shirts that together spelled out “SUB 2 PEW DIE PIE.” Given his 2-million-subscriber gain yesterday — a number it recently took T-Series a month to accumulate — it seems unlikely that T-Series will be able to catch up.

MrBeast is now the most-subscribed YouTube channel. | Photo: Chris Unger / Zuffa LLC via Getty Images

Bollywood music label T-Series had the most-subscribed YouTube channel for years after Felix Kjellberg, aka PewDiePie, conceded his protracted and problematic fight for the top spot to it. But now that honor belongs to YouTuber Jimmy Donaldson, who posted yesterday that his MrBeast YouTube operation had ‘avenged’ PewDiePie by overtaking T-Series.

The news apparently prompted a rush, as Donaldson published a screenshot showing he’d gained 2 million more yesterday, which he said is a one-day record for the channel. The online tracker Social Blade now puts him at 268 million subscribers.

Donaldson made a big show of supporting Kjellberg’s campaign to stay on top back in 2019, having plastered every billboard in his town with ads promoting PewDiePie. He also showed up to the Super Bowl with several friends who wore shirts that together spelled out “SUB 2 PEW DIE PIE.” Given his 2-million-subscriber gain yesterday — a number it recently took T-Series a month to accumulate — it seems unlikely that T-Series will be able to catch up.

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Maezawa in 2022. | Photo: Yoshikazu Tsuno / Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images

Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa had once planned to take eight artists on a flight around the Moon aboard SpaceX’s Starship. But now, with Starship still in development the flight already indefinitely delayed, Maezawa says he has canceled the trip.
The X account for the flight, called dearMoon, announced the news on Friday, followed by posts from the billionaire himself. In those, he said he had signed on in 2018 expecting to fly in 2023, but that it’s “still uncertain when Starship can launch.”
“I can’t plan my future in this situation,” Maezawa added.

Regarding the dearMoon project cancellation.I signed the contract in 2018 based on the assumption that dearMoon would launch by the end of 2023.It’s a developmental project so it is what it is, but it is still uncertain as to when Starship can launch.— Yusaku Maezawa (MZ) (@yousuckMZ) June 1, 2024

He also said he feels “terrible making the crew members wait longer.” Others he’d picked for the flight included DJ Steve Aoki, filmmaker Brendan Hall, musician Choi Seung Hyunm, and YouTuber Tim Dodd.
Maezawa posted in November that the flight had been delayed indefinitely, days before Starship’s second flight test that exploded shortly after launch. SpaceX is currently planning its fourth such test for June 5th, but as Ars Technica notes, the ship is still “at the beginning of a challenging technical journey.”
Other possibilities that Ars notes for the project’s cancellation include SpaceX’s focus on its government contracts, as well as Maezawa’s net worth, which is half what it was in 2018 (though it’s still pegged at over $1 billion). The billionaire has also already been to space once, when he rode a Russian Soyuz rocket to the International Space Station, where he stayed for 12 days in 2021.

Maezawa in 2022. | Photo: Yoshikazu Tsuno / Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images

Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa had once planned to take eight artists on a flight around the Moon aboard SpaceX’s Starship. But now, with Starship still in development the flight already indefinitely delayed, Maezawa says he has canceled the trip.

The X account for the flight, called dearMoon, announced the news on Friday, followed by posts from the billionaire himself. In those, he said he had signed on in 2018 expecting to fly in 2023, but that it’s “still uncertain when Starship can launch.”

“I can’t plan my future in this situation,” Maezawa added.

He also said he feels “terrible making the crew members wait longer.” Others he’d picked for the flight included DJ Steve Aoki, filmmaker Brendan Hall, musician Choi Seung Hyunm, and YouTuber Tim Dodd.

Maezawa posted in November that the flight had been delayed indefinitely, days before Starship’s second flight test that exploded shortly after launch. SpaceX is currently planning its fourth such test for June 5th, but as Ars Technica notes, the ship is still “at the beginning of a challenging technical journey.”

Other possibilities that Ars notes for the project’s cancellation include SpaceX’s focus on its government contracts, as well as Maezawa’s net worth, which is half what it was in 2018 (though it’s still pegged at over $1 billion). The billionaire has also already been to space once, when he rode a Russian Soyuz rocket to the International Space Station, where he stayed for 12 days in 2021.

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Image: Hyundai

The Hyundai Ioniq 5 will reportedly be the first car rolling out of the company’s new Georgia factory this fall. Moreover, company CEO Jose Muñoz tells Automotive News he expects the US-made version will net buyers the full $7,500 federal EV tax credit, which the South Korea-made vehicle isn’t otherwise eligible for (outside of a leasing loophole).
Hyundai will start producing the Ioniq 5 at the Georgia plant in October, but the company won’t be making batteries there for “about a year,” Automotive News writes. For now, the article says the company will source its batteries from a Hungarian factory operated by Hyundai’s partner for its Georgia battery production, SK On.

One important question, though, is whether or not the first vehicles off the line will use the North American Charging Standard (NACS), which has quickly become the go-to standard for major US EV automakers. The company said in October last year that its cars will get Tesla Supercharger access in the fourth quarter of 2024, and that starting in the same period, all of its “new or refreshed” EVs will come with NACS charging ports.
But the quarter covers October all the way to December, meaning there’s plenty of room for some US-made Ioniq 5s to roll out of its Georgia factory with CCS ports instead. It seems logical to assume they will. When asked, Hyundai representative Christopher Paukert referred The Verge back to that previous October announcement but declined to explicitly confirm whether the first US-made models off the line will definitely have NACS ports to start.

Image: Hyundai

The Hyundai Ioniq 5 will reportedly be the first car rolling out of the company’s new Georgia factory this fall. Moreover, company CEO Jose Muñoz tells Automotive News he expects the US-made version will net buyers the full $7,500 federal EV tax credit, which the South Korea-made vehicle isn’t otherwise eligible for (outside of a leasing loophole).

Hyundai will start producing the Ioniq 5 at the Georgia plant in October, but the company won’t be making batteries there for “about a year,” Automotive News writes. For now, the article says the company will source its batteries from a Hungarian factory operated by Hyundai’s partner for its Georgia battery production, SK On.

One important question, though, is whether or not the first vehicles off the line will use the North American Charging Standard (NACS), which has quickly become the go-to standard for major US EV automakers. The company said in October last year that its cars will get Tesla Supercharger access in the fourth quarter of 2024, and that starting in the same period, all of its “new or refreshed” EVs will come with NACS charging ports.

But the quarter covers October all the way to December, meaning there’s plenty of room for some US-made Ioniq 5s to roll out of its Georgia factory with CCS ports instead. It seems logical to assume they will. When asked, Hyundai representative Christopher Paukert referred The Verge back to that previous October announcement but declined to explicitly confirm whether the first US-made models off the line will definitely have NACS ports to start.

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Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

It sounds like Apple’s WWDC plans go beyond sprinkling AI fairy dust on everything (though that’s going to be a big part of it, too). Besides Siri gaining new AI-powered app control, the company also plans to overhaul things like the Settings apps for iOS and macOS, Control Center, Messages, Mail, and more.
A new, “cleaner” Settings app UI will mean better organization and improved search, Mark Gurman writes in his Power On Newsletter for Bloomberg today. He adds that a similar revamp is also coming to the macOS System Settings app.
Apple will also update Control Center, the slide-down menu of quick settings in iOS, with a new music widget and “improvements to how it operates smart home appliances.” Gurman didn’t specify what would change, but as handy as the Home widget is right now, I could certainly see room for improvement — being able to customize which devices show up there would be handy, for instance.

Messages will get a new feature that lets you animate individual words in a text message, Gurman writes, backing up a MacRumors report from Friday. He adds that Apple will also add new Tapback icons — the reaction emoji-style icons that appear when you long-press a message. And Apple will reportedly bring UI changes to Photos and update the Mail app with “several improvements,” as well.
Apple will apparently also announce visionOS 2.0, with native versions of first-party apps. Right now, visionOS only has iPad versions of Apple apps like Home, Calendar, Podcasts, and Pages.
Gurman reiterated, though, that Apple’s biggest focus at WWDC 2024 will be on AI. One big rumored feature is that without any setup from users or developers, Siri can offer to perform tasks within apps themselves based on your device’s analysis of what you’re up to — a little like Rabbit’s promised “Large Action Model” but with shades of Clippy. Some examples he’s reported include Siri offering meeting summaries, cropping photos for you, or moving notes in the Notes app from one folder to another.
Some AI features will reportedly come this fall when iOS 18 rolls out, according to Gurman. Past rumored iOS AI features include Voice Memos and Notes apps will get real-time voice transcription. There’s also that custom, AI-created emoji feature that may be coming. WWDC 2024 is set for June 10th, so we won’t have to wait long to learn what Apple has up its sleeve for its AI, iOS, and macOS updates this year.

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

It sounds like Apple’s WWDC plans go beyond sprinkling AI fairy dust on everything (though that’s going to be a big part of it, too). Besides Siri gaining new AI-powered app control, the company also plans to overhaul things like the Settings apps for iOS and macOS, Control Center, Messages, Mail, and more.

A new, “cleaner” Settings app UI will mean better organization and improved search, Mark Gurman writes in his Power On Newsletter for Bloomberg today. He adds that a similar revamp is also coming to the macOS System Settings app.

Apple will also update Control Center, the slide-down menu of quick settings in iOS, with a new music widget and “improvements to how it operates smart home appliances.” Gurman didn’t specify what would change, but as handy as the Home widget is right now, I could certainly see room for improvement — being able to customize which devices show up there would be handy, for instance.

Messages will get a new feature that lets you animate individual words in a text message, Gurman writes, backing up a MacRumors report from Friday. He adds that Apple will also add new Tapback icons — the reaction emoji-style icons that appear when you long-press a message. And Apple will reportedly bring UI changes to Photos and update the Mail app with “several improvements,” as well.

Apple will apparently also announce visionOS 2.0, with native versions of first-party apps. Right now, visionOS only has iPad versions of Apple apps like Home, Calendar, Podcasts, and Pages.

Gurman reiterated, though, that Apple’s biggest focus at WWDC 2024 will be on AI. One big rumored feature is that without any setup from users or developers, Siri can offer to perform tasks within apps themselves based on your device’s analysis of what you’re up to — a little like Rabbit’s promised “Large Action Model” but with shades of Clippy. Some examples he’s reported include Siri offering meeting summaries, cropping photos for you, or moving notes in the Notes app from one folder to another.

Some AI features will reportedly come this fall when iOS 18 rolls out, according to Gurman. Past rumored iOS AI features include Voice Memos and Notes apps will get real-time voice transcription. There’s also that custom, AI-created emoji feature that may be coming. WWDC 2024 is set for June 10th, so we won’t have to wait long to learn what Apple has up its sleeve for its AI, iOS, and macOS updates this year.

Read More 

Nvidia leans into RTX AI PCs. | Image: Nvidia

Nvidia and AMD are gearing up to launch gaming laptops that include the AI Copilot Plus features that Microsoft just announced for Qualcomm-powered laptops. At Computex today, Nvidia briefly teased that “RTX AI PC” laptops are on the way from Asus and MSI that will eventually include Copilot Plus PC features.
“Newly announced RTX AI PC laptops from ASUS and MSI feature up to GeForce RTX 4070 GPUs and power-efficient systems-on-a-chip with Windows 11 AI PC capabilities,” says Nvidia in a blog post. Nvidia confirmed to The Verge in a briefing that these laptops will come with AMD’s latest Strix CPUs.
AMD hasn’t officially detailed its AMD Strix laptop CPUs yet, which it will undoubtedly announce during its own keynote later today. Nvidia has also dropped a hint that the first AMD-powered Copilot Plus PCs might not get Microsoft’s round of AI features at launch, though.

Image: Nvidia
Nvidia’s RTX AI laptops with Copilot Plus features are coming soon.

“These Windows 11 AI PCs will receive a free update to Copilot+ PC experiences when available,” says Nvidia in a blog post. That suggests that Microsoft might not be ready to launch Recall and the other AI-powered Windows features on AMD chips, or that there could be some period of exclusivity for the Windows on Arm Qualcomm-powered hardware that launches on June 18th. Either way, we’ve reached out to Nvidia to clarify what its brief mention of this free update means.
Nvidia is also in a battle of sorts to remain relevant for AI-powered tasks on laptops. While Microsoft is pushing ahead with offloading AI models to NPUs, Nvidia is gearing up to make its GPUs useful in this AI battleground on PC. Nvidia is leaning hard into its branding of “RTX AI laptops,” noting that its GPUs are more capable of running heavier AI workloads than an NPU.

Image: Nvidia
The RTX AI Toolkit arrives in June.

It’s even launching an RTX AI Toolkit in June that includes tools and SDKs for model customization, optimization, and deployment. These tools will take something like Meta’s Llama 2 model and optimize it to run with far less VRAM requirements and with more performance.
Nvidia is also collaborating with Microsoft on the underlying AI models that are being built into Windows 11. “The collaboration will provide application developers with easy application programming interface (API) access to GPU-accelerated small language models (SLMs) that enable retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) capabilities that run on-device powered by Windows Copilot Runtime,” says Nvidia.
Microsoft announced its Windows Copilot Runtime at Build last month, and Nvidia says its work to accelerate AI models using RTX GPUs will be released in developer preview later this year. Microsoft’s Windows Copilot Runtime is designed to make it easy for developers to add AI-powered features to their apps, all while relying on NPU hardware to accelerate those features, or GPUs from Nvidia soon.
Since NPUs are currently at the ~40 TOPS performance mark and Nvidia’s PC GPUs can handle more than 1,000 TOPS for AI acceleration, there are clearly some big differences in performance for developers to think about here. NPUs are designed for smaller models and important high power efficiency in laptops, but GPUs can do a good job handling larger models with higher performance in PC desktops where battery life isn’t relevant.
It’s going to be interesting to watch this AI battle on PC shakeout, especially as Microsoft holds the keys to lighting up these experiences natively in Windows for Nvidia, AMD, Intel, Qualcomm, and its many OEM partners.

Nvidia leans into RTX AI PCs. | Image: Nvidia

Nvidia and AMD are gearing up to launch gaming laptops that include the AI Copilot Plus features that Microsoft just announced for Qualcomm-powered laptops. At Computex today, Nvidia briefly teased that “RTX AI PC” laptops are on the way from Asus and MSI that will eventually include Copilot Plus PC features.

“Newly announced RTX AI PC laptops from ASUS and MSI feature up to GeForce RTX 4070 GPUs and power-efficient systems-on-a-chip with Windows 11 AI PC capabilities,” says Nvidia in a blog post. Nvidia confirmed to The Verge in a briefing that these laptops will come with AMD’s latest Strix CPUs.

AMD hasn’t officially detailed its AMD Strix laptop CPUs yet, which it will undoubtedly announce during its own keynote later today. Nvidia has also dropped a hint that the first AMD-powered Copilot Plus PCs might not get Microsoft’s round of AI features at launch, though.

Image: Nvidia
Nvidia’s RTX AI laptops with Copilot Plus features are coming soon.

“These Windows 11 AI PCs will receive a free update to Copilot+ PC experiences when available,” says Nvidia in a blog post. That suggests that Microsoft might not be ready to launch Recall and the other AI-powered Windows features on AMD chips, or that there could be some period of exclusivity for the Windows on Arm Qualcomm-powered hardware that launches on June 18th. Either way, we’ve reached out to Nvidia to clarify what its brief mention of this free update means.

Nvidia is also in a battle of sorts to remain relevant for AI-powered tasks on laptops. While Microsoft is pushing ahead with offloading AI models to NPUs, Nvidia is gearing up to make its GPUs useful in this AI battleground on PC. Nvidia is leaning hard into its branding of “RTX AI laptops,” noting that its GPUs are more capable of running heavier AI workloads than an NPU.

Image: Nvidia
The RTX AI Toolkit arrives in June.

It’s even launching an RTX AI Toolkit in June that includes tools and SDKs for model customization, optimization, and deployment. These tools will take something like Meta’s Llama 2 model and optimize it to run with far less VRAM requirements and with more performance.

Nvidia is also collaborating with Microsoft on the underlying AI models that are being built into Windows 11. “The collaboration will provide application developers with easy application programming interface (API) access to GPU-accelerated small language models (SLMs) that enable retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) capabilities that run on-device powered by Windows Copilot Runtime,” says Nvidia.

Microsoft announced its Windows Copilot Runtime at Build last month, and Nvidia says its work to accelerate AI models using RTX GPUs will be released in developer preview later this year. Microsoft’s Windows Copilot Runtime is designed to make it easy for developers to add AI-powered features to their apps, all while relying on NPU hardware to accelerate those features, or GPUs from Nvidia soon.

Since NPUs are currently at the ~40 TOPS performance mark and Nvidia’s PC GPUs can handle more than 1,000 TOPS for AI acceleration, there are clearly some big differences in performance for developers to think about here. NPUs are designed for smaller models and important high power efficiency in laptops, but GPUs can do a good job handling larger models with higher performance in PC desktops where battery life isn’t relevant.

It’s going to be interesting to watch this AI battle on PC shakeout, especially as Microsoft holds the keys to lighting up these experiences natively in Windows for Nvidia, AMD, Intel, Qualcomm, and its many OEM partners.

Read More 

G-Assist is a real tech demo from Nvidia. | Image: Nvidia

When Nvidia first announced G-Assist it was an April Fools’ prank in 2017 that joked about an AI assistant being able to help you play a game while you ran to the door for your pizza delivery. Now, seven years later, G-Assist is back as a real demo of a powerful GeForce AI assistant that Nvidia might eventually bring to life for game developers and RTX GPU owners.
Project G-Assist is only a tech demonstration right now, but it’s a brief look at how an AI assistant could guide you through PC games and even configure optimal settings for you based on chat inputs in the future.
In a demo, Nvidia shows G-Assist responding to voice queries asking “what’s the next early game weapon and where do I find the crafting materials for it?” inside ARK: Survival Ascended. The assistant can even understand what’s happening on the screen as you play, so it can tailor itself to how many skill points you have in a game and help guide you through. Microsoft showed off a similar demo for its vision of how its Copilot AI assistant could guide Minecraft players through the game last month.

We are taking Copilot to the next level. Copilot will see, hear, speak and help in real time.Watch this demo to see what I mean. Soon your AI companion will start to live life alongside you, whether playing Minecraft or helping you navigate life’s most difficult challenges.… pic.twitter.com/ij6p3CgeYG— Mustafa Suleyman (@mustafasuleyman) May 20, 2024

Nvidia’s own AI assistant can also optimize and tune PC settings, including providing charts of PC latency and frames per second over the past 60 seconds. It can scan your system and notice you’re only playing at 60Hz when your monitor supports 240Hz. You can also ask the assistant for recommendations to increase performance in a game, hit a 60fps performance target, or even overclock your GPU.
I’m a sucker for a slick demo as much as the next person, but until G-Assist is an app I can download and play with, I’m hesitant to buy into the AI hype given how generative AI regularly makes mistakes. The fact that Microsoft and Nvidia are both demonstrating AI assistants that could eventually guide people through games makes me think that this will progress from demo to reality real soon.

G-Assist is a real tech demo from Nvidia. | Image: Nvidia

When Nvidia first announced G-Assist it was an April Fools’ prank in 2017 that joked about an AI assistant being able to help you play a game while you ran to the door for your pizza delivery. Now, seven years later, G-Assist is back as a real demo of a powerful GeForce AI assistant that Nvidia might eventually bring to life for game developers and RTX GPU owners.

Project G-Assist is only a tech demonstration right now, but it’s a brief look at how an AI assistant could guide you through PC games and even configure optimal settings for you based on chat inputs in the future.

In a demo, Nvidia shows G-Assist responding to voice queries asking “what’s the next early game weapon and where do I find the crafting materials for it?” inside ARK: Survival Ascended. The assistant can even understand what’s happening on the screen as you play, so it can tailor itself to how many skill points you have in a game and help guide you through. Microsoft showed off a similar demo for its vision of how its Copilot AI assistant could guide Minecraft players through the game last month.

Nvidia’s own AI assistant can also optimize and tune PC settings, including providing charts of PC latency and frames per second over the past 60 seconds. It can scan your system and notice you’re only playing at 60Hz when your monitor supports 240Hz. You can also ask the assistant for recommendations to increase performance in a game, hit a 60fps performance target, or even overclock your GPU.

I’m a sucker for a slick demo as much as the next person, but until G-Assist is an app I can download and play with, I’m hesitant to buy into the AI hype given how generative AI regularly makes mistakes. The fact that Microsoft and Nvidia are both demonstrating AI assistants that could eventually guide people through games makes me think that this will progress from demo to reality real soon.

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Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge

Nvidia just gave the PC gaming industry a reason to shrink its biggest graphics cards and produce smallish cases. It’s not what I expected, but I think it might actually help. Read before you judge, friends — I was definitely ready to call out some Nvidia BS, but I’ve mostly come around.
When leakers revealed last month that Nvidia would help steer its graphics card partners toward smaller gaming PCs, I began to daydream. Might we finally see a genuinely small Nvidia powerhouse like AMD’s old R9 Nano? Could Nvidia at least convince partners to produce two-slot GPUs like many of its own Founders Edition cards?
Unfortunately, no. Nvidia’s just-announced “SFF-Ready Enthusiast GeForce Cards” aren’t actually that small — even a 2.5 slot thick, 304mm long, and 151mm wide RTX 4070 can qualify. That means supposedly “SFF” GPUs will not fit into my SFF case, and I have a hard time calling these “SFF” at all.

Image: Nvidia
Nvidia’s optional guidelines specify these maximum dimensions.

This still looks like a pretty large case to me.

But if you, like me, want to help smaller gaming PCs get a larger foothold, this could help — because it’s not just about the cards; it’s about knowing you can fit a certain amount of graphics horsepower in a given case because both the case and the card identify themselves as compatible with one another.
“I’m giving them a guideline to say, hey, leave this much space, and then you’ll be able to fit an enthusiast graphics card in there like a 4080, a 4070. That’s the purpose of this program,” Nvidia senior desktop products director Justin Walker tells me.
Indeed, the list of cards that Nvidia is sharing today only includes RTX 4070 or higher: it’s not promoting a fat 4060, for example.

Images: Nvidia
Here’s a list of validated cards and cases so far. It’s not exhaustive, but these partners are on board.

Today, figuring out if a given card will fit is often a matter of painstakingly trolling manufacturer websites for length, width, and height twice: once for the card and once for the case. Now, you might just be able to look for “SFF-Ready” and move on with your day. You may still have to hit up those manufacturer websites, though, as Walker says there’s not necessarily going to be a Newegg sort filter for “SFF Ready” or a badge on the actual product yet.
He tells me these guidelines should reduce uncertainty for case manufacturers, too: “I’m making a small case, and I want it to fit a high end graphics card… right now I have no idea, there’s so many sizes and shapes. Right now I don’t know how to make a case that fits everything.” Now, there’s a target.
While I personally still wish Nvidia had tried harder to shrink the sizes of partner cards themselves — again, their own Founders Edition cards are generally just two slots thick! — there is some hope for more such GPUs. Walker says it’s no mistake that there’s only a single RTX 4080 on the SFF-Ready list, and he hopes more partners will rise to the challenge.
“It takes a lot of work and a very intentional design to put a 4080 in this form factor,” he says. “I get that it’s not a tiny Mini-ITX thing, but I want to let someone be able to put a 4080 into that case.”
Speaking of which: just a few days ago, hardware leaker kopite7kimi attested that Nvidia’s RTX 5090 Founders Edition card will have a dual-slot cooler.

Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge

Nvidia just gave the PC gaming industry a reason to shrink its biggest graphics cards and produce smallish cases. It’s not what I expected, but I think it might actually help. Read before you judge, friends — I was definitely ready to call out some Nvidia BS, but I’ve mostly come around.

When leakers revealed last month that Nvidia would help steer its graphics card partners toward smaller gaming PCs, I began to daydream. Might we finally see a genuinely small Nvidia powerhouse like AMD’s old R9 Nano? Could Nvidia at least convince partners to produce two-slot GPUs like many of its own Founders Edition cards?

Unfortunately, no. Nvidia’s just-announced “SFF-Ready Enthusiast GeForce Cards” aren’t actually that small — even a 2.5 slot thick, 304mm long, and 151mm wide RTX 4070 can qualify. That means supposedly “SFF” GPUs will not fit into my SFF case, and I have a hard time calling these “SFF” at all.

Image: Nvidia
Nvidia’s optional guidelines specify these maximum dimensions.

This still looks like a pretty large case to me.

But if you, like me, want to help smaller gaming PCs get a larger foothold, this could help — because it’s not just about the cards; it’s about knowing you can fit a certain amount of graphics horsepower in a given case because both the case and the card identify themselves as compatible with one another.

“I’m giving them a guideline to say, hey, leave this much space, and then you’ll be able to fit an enthusiast graphics card in there like a 4080, a 4070. That’s the purpose of this program,” Nvidia senior desktop products director Justin Walker tells me.

Indeed, the list of cards that Nvidia is sharing today only includes RTX 4070 or higher: it’s not promoting a fat 4060, for example.

Images: Nvidia
Here’s a list of validated cards and cases so far. It’s not exhaustive, but these partners are on board.

Today, figuring out if a given card will fit is often a matter of painstakingly trolling manufacturer websites for length, width, and height twice: once for the card and once for the case. Now, you might just be able to look for “SFF-Ready” and move on with your day. You may still have to hit up those manufacturer websites, though, as Walker says there’s not necessarily going to be a Newegg sort filter for “SFF Ready” or a badge on the actual product yet.

He tells me these guidelines should reduce uncertainty for case manufacturers, too: “I’m making a small case, and I want it to fit a high end graphics card… right now I have no idea, there’s so many sizes and shapes. Right now I don’t know how to make a case that fits everything.” Now, there’s a target.

While I personally still wish Nvidia had tried harder to shrink the sizes of partner cards themselves — again, their own Founders Edition cards are generally just two slots thick! — there is some hope for more such GPUs. Walker says it’s no mistake that there’s only a single RTX 4080 on the SFF-Ready list, and he hopes more partners will rise to the challenge.

“It takes a lot of work and a very intentional design to put a 4080 in this form factor,” he says. “I get that it’s not a tiny Mini-ITX thing, but I want to let someone be able to put a 4080 into that case.”

Speaking of which: just a few days ago, hardware leaker kopite7kimi attested that Nvidia’s RTX 5090 Founders Edition card will have a dual-slot cooler.

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Image: David Pierce / The Verge

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 40, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, send me all your recommendations immediately, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)
This week, I’ve been reading about Shein and Reese Witherspoon and Hollywood Ponzi schemes, journaling in Papery, testing Lazy for all my link dumps and notes, drinking a lot of Poppi soda, developing a mac and cheese recipe my toddler will actually like, and pricing out plane tickets for the Wu-Tang Clan listening party in Australia.
I also have for you a great new app for capturing video, a nifty new Chrome trick, a MoviePass documentary worth watching, a smartwatch for kids, and much more. It’s a short week, so we have a relatively light one but still plenty of good stuff to talk about. Let’s go.
(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you into right now? What should everyone else be playing, reading, watching, eating, or making? Tell me everything: installer@theverge.com. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer, tell them to subscribe here.)

The Drop

Kino. The team at Lux doesn’t really miss. They made Halide for photos, the nifty Orion iPad monitor tool, and now Kino, a video app that is somehow both really simple and absurdly powerful. I love a good noir filter. (I got a lot of recommendations for this one this week — thanks to everyone who sent them in!)

The Fitbit Ace LTE. This smartwatch is for kids, but… I want one. It has some fun games designed to get you moving, a really charming bunch of colors and accessories, and a surprising amount of power inside. Don’t love the $230 price, but love just about everything else.

Jim Henson Idea Man. I don’t know if it’s just that I have a toddler who’s obsessed with Sesame Street and the Muppets, but even the trailer for this Disney Plus doc made me cry. It’s a story about creativity and wonder and is full of fun behind-the-scenes Muppets stuff.

Carrot 6.0. Some really fun updates to the most fun weather app! I like the new layouts and data viz stuff in particular, and the game-mechanic robot gardener feature is charming but not really my thing. Still: more silliness in weather apps, you love to see it.

Jon Bellion on The George Janko Show. This episode has been all over my For You page on TikTok, with Bellion explaining how the Ticketmaster / Live Nation monopoly works and the overall business of being an artist in 2024. Really interesting listen.

Chrome’s Minimized Custom Tabs. A terrible name for a really clever product: basically, picture-in-picture for a browser tab that makes the whole in-app browser idea much more seamless. It’s only Chrome for Android for now, but Google says it’s hoping every browser supports the feature, and I hope so, too.

Trip Tunes. Large language models turn out to be really, really good at making playlists. This app is only for iOS and only for Apple Music, boo, but I love the whole mixtape-y aesthetic and that you just tell it where you’re going and the mood you’re in, and it fills the ride with music.

The Nomad Tracking Card. I had an AirTag in my wallet for a while, but it was just a little too big. I’d much rather just slide this into the card slot since Nomad says it’s only as thick as two credit cards. The battery apparently lasts five months and charges via any MagSafe charger.

MoviePass, MovieCrash. I mentioned this last week, but figured I’d re-up now that it’s out. It’s really good! I covered MoviePass a lot, and I still learned a lot about how this company took off — and how it failed so spectacularly and so quickly. (Also, more on this coming on Tuesday’s Vergecast, so keep an eye out.)

Screen share
You know those people you hear on podcasts all the time and you’re, like, best friends even though you don’t know them and have never met them? For me, Sean Rameswaram was one of those people until very recently. He’s one of the co-hosts of Today, Explained, the wonderful daily news show from our friends over at Vox — and over the last couple of months, they’ve let me guest host a few times! (We did a really interesting episode this week about storm chasers and extreme weather if you want to take a listen.)
Anyway, Sean’s one of those people who seems to be interested in everything, always, all the time, so I wondered what his homescreen would reveal about what he truly cares about most. Here it is, along with some info on the apps he uses and why:

The phone: I had an iPhone SE (the original one) for six or seven years. Retiring it reminded me of an episode of Married… with Children — the one where Al Bundy had held onto his car so long that the manufacturer was going to hook him up with a new one on the house for hitting 1,000,000 miles. I wondered if I qualified for a similar deal for sticking with the original SE for a Senate term but never asked. I eventually replaced it with an iPhone 13 Mini. I don’t like the big phones. It looks like there’s an iPad in your pocket.
The wallpaper: It’s Leo hailing a cab in NYC with a no-hands whistle. He’s done it a few times in the movies, too — most recently in Killers of the Flower Moon. For more years than I care to remember, I’ve wanted to learn how to belt one. I think living in New York City for half a decade was the impetus. I’ve tried to sit down and master it a few times but almost passed out from shortness of breath. Recently, I found out it’s a months-long learning process. I keep Leo as my background to remind myself to figure it out before I die.
The apps: WNYC, Calendar, NYTimes, KCRW, Merriam-Webster Dictionary, YouTube, Calculator, Seek, Yelp, Chrome, Camera, Weather, Apple Music, Slack, Settings, Mail, Instagram, Photos, Clock, App Store, Podcasts, Google Maps, Spotify, Radio Garden, Phone, FaceTime, Messages, WhatsApp.
I promise I don’t organize my books by color, but I couldn’t help it with my apps. In the four corners, we’ve got my main squeeze: audio (née radio). Radio Garden is the most unbelievable (and admittedly underused) on the page. It enables you to spin around the globe and listen to thousands upon thousands of live radio streams. It’s the cheapest vacation you’ll ever take. Shouts to Breakmaster Cylinder for the intro.
The rest of this screen is pretty stock and self-explanatory, but I want to single out Seek and all apps like it for helping us identify bugs, birds, plants, and trees. This is the future we were promised.
Has anyone else used this weather app? It’s constantly wrong.
I also asked Sean to share a few things he’s into right now. Here’s what he sent back:

I was lucky to do a decent amount of traveling this past year, and I was constantly looking for restaurant recommendations online. Eater’s “38 Essential Restaurants” was consistently the best curator. Since the Eaters are colleagues of mine, I had the chance to ask their publisher, Amanda Kludt, why they always shoot for 38. She said, “It’s just a great number.” Fair!
I swear I like things that aren’t produced by Vox Media, but have you played Cinematrix? I hit the Vulture homepage every morning because I’m a geriatric millennial who still appreciates a homepage. When I first saw Cinematrix, I thought it was cute but didn’t make it a habit. Then one day, a dear old friend texted me and my brother his grid, and we were all immediately hooked because — duh — it’s a social game. It’s a daily conversation starter and a really fun ritual when you’re doing it with other people. My personal Cinematrix universe has since expanded with a few colleagues. We’re all feeling very Vulture blue-pilled.
Am I the first person to plug a strip show on Screen Share? No, because Magic Mike Live is not what you’d expect. Sure, there was a butt, but it was mostly a rapturous and liberating celebration of sexuality, consent, and some really impressive six-packs. Remember when you were watching the original movie, and all of a sudden, you were blown away by how good a dancer Channing Tatum was? This is that, on steroids. Maybe literally. Dare to skip the Sphere the next time you’re in Vegas and hit the Sahara for MML instead. Or at least try and do both.

Crowdsourced
Here’s what the Installer community is into this week. I want to know what you’re into right now as well! Email installer@theverge.com or message me on Signal — @davidpierce.11 — with your recommendations for anything and everything, and we’ll feature some of our favorites here every week. For even more recommendations than I could fit here, check out the replies to this post on Threads.
“My go-to phone games are Flipflop Solitaire and Retro Bowl (both of which are available through Apple Arcade). Retro Bowl is a fun riff on Tecmo Bowl, and Flipflop Solitaire is a fun twist on solitaire, which I play a lot when I’m killing time and don’t want to get sucked into social media.” — Jared
“​​TV Launcher is an awesome utility that gives a full TV guide, which can deep link into most streaming apps and open the exact channel automatically. It basically turns my Apple TV into a full-blown replacement for a cable box.” — Bilaal
“Kinda controversial but Yann LeCun & Musk trash talking on Twitter. Also, I ended up re-reading a bunch of Yann’s old papers because why not.” — Kruti
“After searching for years for the best open-ear earbuds that allow me to roam about outside without endangering myself by blocking out traffic or other noise or blocking out the voices of my family when I’m at home, I was pleased to discover that they exist and are sometimes on sale for even less than their list price of $50.” — Christopher
“This week’s The Jeff Gerstmann Show (hosted by this week’s surprise host: Jeff Gerstmann, joined by guest Arthur Gies) was full of insight on the upcoming summer gaming events.
Always recommend Jeff’s work during this time of year.” — Paul
“The greatest game ever made: Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door.” — Max
“Watched The Fall Guy, which was honestly a treat for anyone who has worked with / around / or on movies in general just from the variety of stunts showcased. It hit streaming early due to fairly mediocre box office performance.” — Amanda
“I am addicted to Threes. I don’t know if anyone plays it anymore, but I love it so much. I played those ‘free versions’ for so many years I can’t even remember now.” — Kruti
“DaisyDisk. Like WizTree and SequoiaView but for Mac and a really nice-looking UI.” — Sinan
“Been playing three years’ worth of Destiny 2 campaigns after they were included in PS Plus. The game is hilariously lacking in onboarding for return players, but even just sticking to solo story missions, there’s a staggering amount of content from the (IMO) best FPS studio to ever do it.” — Jonathan

Signing off
It’s important to me that you know how hard I try not to talk about Dune: Part Two every week in this newsletter. I want to talk about it all the time! But did you know Dune: Part Two is streaming now? Which means, if you haven’t seen it, you can watch it — and then watch this awesome video about its sound design and this other awesome video about its sound design and this great interview with Hans Zimmer about the score and this truly epic scene breakdown with Denis Villeneuve and this great chat with cinematographer Greig Fraser and all of the 50,000 other eye-opening YouTube videos about this terrific movie. My YouTube recommendations have been basically all Dune for two months, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Hope you enjoy it as much as I have.
See you next week!

Image: David Pierce / The Verge

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 40, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, send me all your recommendations immediately, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)

This week, I’ve been reading about Shein and Reese Witherspoon and Hollywood Ponzi schemes, journaling in Papery, testing Lazy for all my link dumps and notes, drinking a lot of Poppi soda, developing a mac and cheese recipe my toddler will actually like, and pricing out plane tickets for the Wu-Tang Clan listening party in Australia.

I also have for you a great new app for capturing video, a nifty new Chrome trick, a MoviePass documentary worth watching, a smartwatch for kids, and much more. It’s a short week, so we have a relatively light one but still plenty of good stuff to talk about. Let’s go.

(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you into right now? What should everyone else be playing, reading, watching, eating, or making? Tell me everything: installer@theverge.com. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer, tell them to subscribe here.)

The Drop

Kino. The team at Lux doesn’t really miss. They made Halide for photos, the nifty Orion iPad monitor tool, and now Kino, a video app that is somehow both really simple and absurdly powerful. I love a good noir filter. (I got a lot of recommendations for this one this week — thanks to everyone who sent them in!)

The Fitbit Ace LTE. This smartwatch is for kids, but… I want one. It has some fun games designed to get you moving, a really charming bunch of colors and accessories, and a surprising amount of power inside. Don’t love the $230 price, but love just about everything else.

Jim Henson Idea Man. I don’t know if it’s just that I have a toddler who’s obsessed with Sesame Street and the Muppets, but even the trailer for this Disney Plus doc made me cry. It’s a story about creativity and wonder and is full of fun behind-the-scenes Muppets stuff.

Carrot 6.0. Some really fun updates to the most fun weather app! I like the new layouts and data viz stuff in particular, and the game-mechanic robot gardener feature is charming but not really my thing. Still: more silliness in weather apps, you love to see it.

Jon Bellion on The George Janko Show. This episode has been all over my For You page on TikTok, with Bellion explaining how the Ticketmaster / Live Nation monopoly works and the overall business of being an artist in 2024. Really interesting listen.

Chrome’s Minimized Custom Tabs. A terrible name for a really clever product: basically, picture-in-picture for a browser tab that makes the whole in-app browser idea much more seamless. It’s only Chrome for Android for now, but Google says it’s hoping every browser supports the feature, and I hope so, too.

Trip Tunes. Large language models turn out to be really, really good at making playlists. This app is only for iOS and only for Apple Music, boo, but I love the whole mixtape-y aesthetic and that you just tell it where you’re going and the mood you’re in, and it fills the ride with music.

The Nomad Tracking Card. I had an AirTag in my wallet for a while, but it was just a little too big. I’d much rather just slide this into the card slot since Nomad says it’s only as thick as two credit cards. The battery apparently lasts five months and charges via any MagSafe charger.

MoviePass, MovieCrash. I mentioned this last week, but figured I’d re-up now that it’s out. It’s really good! I covered MoviePass a lot, and I still learned a lot about how this company took off — and how it failed so spectacularly and so quickly. (Also, more on this coming on Tuesday’s Vergecast, so keep an eye out.)

Screen share

You know those people you hear on podcasts all the time and you’re, like, best friends even though you don’t know them and have never met them? For me, Sean Rameswaram was one of those people until very recently. He’s one of the co-hosts of Today, Explained, the wonderful daily news show from our friends over at Vox — and over the last couple of months, they’ve let me guest host a few times! (We did a really interesting episode this week about storm chasers and extreme weather if you want to take a listen.)

Anyway, Sean’s one of those people who seems to be interested in everything, always, all the time, so I wondered what his homescreen would reveal about what he truly cares about most. Here it is, along with some info on the apps he uses and why:

The phone: I had an iPhone SE (the original one) for six or seven years. Retiring it reminded me of an episode of Married… with Children — the one where Al Bundy had held onto his car so long that the manufacturer was going to hook him up with a new one on the house for hitting 1,000,000 miles. I wondered if I qualified for a similar deal for sticking with the original SE for a Senate term but never asked. I eventually replaced it with an iPhone 13 Mini. I don’t like the big phones. It looks like there’s an iPad in your pocket.

The wallpaper: It’s Leo hailing a cab in NYC with a no-hands whistle. He’s done it a few times in the movies, too — most recently in Killers of the Flower Moon. For more years than I care to remember, I’ve wanted to learn how to belt one. I think living in New York City for half a decade was the impetus. I’ve tried to sit down and master it a few times but almost passed out from shortness of breath. Recently, I found out it’s a months-long learning process. I keep Leo as my background to remind myself to figure it out before I die.

The apps: WNYC, Calendar, NYTimes, KCRW, Merriam-Webster Dictionary, YouTube, Calculator, Seek, Yelp, Chrome, Camera, Weather, Apple Music, Slack, Settings, Mail, Instagram, Photos, Clock, App Store, Podcasts, Google Maps, Spotify, Radio Garden, Phone, FaceTime, Messages, WhatsApp.

I promise I don’t organize my books by color, but I couldn’t help it with my apps. In the four corners, we’ve got my main squeeze: audio (née radio). Radio Garden is the most unbelievable (and admittedly underused) on the page. It enables you to spin around the globe and listen to thousands upon thousands of live radio streams. It’s the cheapest vacation you’ll ever take. Shouts to Breakmaster Cylinder for the intro.

The rest of this screen is pretty stock and self-explanatory, but I want to single out Seek and all apps like it for helping us identify bugs, birds, plants, and trees. This is the future we were promised.

Has anyone else used this weather app? It’s constantly wrong.

I also asked Sean to share a few things he’s into right now. Here’s what he sent back:

I was lucky to do a decent amount of traveling this past year, and I was constantly looking for restaurant recommendations online. Eater’s “38 Essential Restaurants” was consistently the best curator. Since the Eaters are colleagues of mine, I had the chance to ask their publisher, Amanda Kludt, why they always shoot for 38. She said, “It’s just a great number.” Fair!
I swear I like things that aren’t produced by Vox Media, but have you played Cinematrix? I hit the Vulture homepage every morning because I’m a geriatric millennial who still appreciates a homepage. When I first saw Cinematrix, I thought it was cute but didn’t make it a habit. Then one day, a dear old friend texted me and my brother his grid, and we were all immediately hooked because — duh — it’s a social game. It’s a daily conversation starter and a really fun ritual when you’re doing it with other people. My personal Cinematrix universe has since expanded with a few colleagues. We’re all feeling very Vulture blue-pilled.
Am I the first person to plug a strip show on Screen Share? No, because Magic Mike Live is not what you’d expect. Sure, there was a butt, but it was mostly a rapturous and liberating celebration of sexuality, consent, and some really impressive six-packs. Remember when you were watching the original movie, and all of a sudden, you were blown away by how good a dancer Channing Tatum was? This is that, on steroids. Maybe literally. Dare to skip the Sphere the next time you’re in Vegas and hit the Sahara for MML instead. Or at least try and do both.

Crowdsourced

Here’s what the Installer community is into this week. I want to know what you’re into right now as well! Email installer@theverge.com or message me on Signal — @davidpierce.11 — with your recommendations for anything and everything, and we’ll feature some of our favorites here every week. For even more recommendations than I could fit here, check out the replies to this post on Threads.

“My go-to phone games are Flipflop Solitaire and Retro Bowl (both of which are available through Apple Arcade). Retro Bowl is a fun riff on Tecmo Bowl, and Flipflop Solitaire is a fun twist on solitaire, which I play a lot when I’m killing time and don’t want to get sucked into social media.” — Jared

“​​TV Launcher is an awesome utility that gives a full TV guide, which can deep link into most streaming apps and open the exact channel automatically. It basically turns my Apple TV into a full-blown replacement for a cable box.” — Bilaal

“Kinda controversial but Yann LeCun & Musk trash talking on Twitter. Also, I ended up re-reading a bunch of Yann’s old papers because why not.” — Kruti

“After searching for years for the best open-ear earbuds that allow me to roam about outside without endangering myself by blocking out traffic or other noise or blocking out the voices of my family when I’m at home, I was pleased to discover that they exist and are sometimes on sale for even less than their list price of $50.” — Christopher

“This week’s The Jeff Gerstmann Show (hosted by this week’s surprise host: Jeff Gerstmann, joined by guest Arthur Gies) was full of insight on the upcoming summer gaming events.

Always recommend Jeff’s work during this time of year.” — Paul

“The greatest game ever made: Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door.” — Max

“Watched The Fall Guy, which was honestly a treat for anyone who has worked with / around / or on movies in general just from the variety of stunts showcased. It hit streaming early due to fairly mediocre box office performance.” — Amanda

“I am addicted to Threes. I don’t know if anyone plays it anymore, but I love it so much. I played those ‘free versions’ for so many years I can’t even remember now.” — Kruti

“DaisyDisk. Like WizTree and SequoiaView but for Mac and a really nice-looking UI.” — Sinan

“Been playing three years’ worth of Destiny 2 campaigns after they were included in PS Plus. The game is hilariously lacking in onboarding for return players, but even just sticking to solo story missions, there’s a staggering amount of content from the (IMO) best FPS studio to ever do it.” — Jonathan

Signing off

It’s important to me that you know how hard I try not to talk about Dune: Part Two every week in this newsletter. I want to talk about it all the time! But did you know Dune: Part Two is streaming now? Which means, if you haven’t seen it, you can watch it — and then watch this awesome video about its sound design and this other awesome video about its sound design and this great interview with Hans Zimmer about the score and this truly epic scene breakdown with Denis Villeneuve and this great chat with cinematographer Greig Fraser and all of the 50,000 other eye-opening YouTube videos about this terrific movie. My YouTube recommendations have been basically all Dune for two months, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Hope you enjoy it as much as I have.

See you next week!

Read More 

$799 for twice the battery, twice the storage, and loads of small improvements. When Valve introduced the Steam Deck OLED, I called it “everything the original should have been.” Asus is trying to do the exact same thing with the new ROG Ally X.
After months of leaks, teases, and exclusive early details from yours truly, it’s official: the ROG Ally X handheld gaming PC is going on preorder today for $799.
When it ships on July 22nd, it’ll come with double the battery, double the storage, double the USB-C ports with quadruple the USB bandwidth, 50 percent more (and faster) 7500MHz memory for up to a 15 percent performance boost, dramatically revised ergonomics, an overhauled internal layout, and an extensive list of other tweaks.

ROG Ally (top) vs. ROG Ally X (bottom).

There are so many changes, in fact, that I spent two hours on the phone with Asus technical marketing director Sascha Krohn to hear about them all. I also went to the company’s US headquarters to open up an ROG Ally X with my own screwdrivers and play with the new build. I took plenty of pics, because I want you to nerd out with me.
But first, let me remind you what the ROG Ally X is not. Here’s what I wrote last month:
Don’t call it an Ally 2: when it ships in the second half of the year, the Windows-based Ally X will have the same AMD Z1 Extreme chipset and the same 7-inch 48–120Hz VRR screen. It’s not quite like the Steam Deck OLED, where Valve got AMD to revise its chip for better battery life and stability and added a larger, brighter, gorgeous new OLED panel with improved response time and slimmer bezels.
The ROG Ally X is a revision, not a sequel, and it’s a pricier one. It still runs Windows, and I still firmly believe Windows drags gaming handhelds down. But the Ally X might be the best Windows handheld yet — because Asus has crammed a monster 80 watt-hour battery into a handheld that doesn’t feel heavy, one that fits my average-sized hands better than any Windows handheld I’ve tried.

At 1.49 pounds (678g), the ROG Ally X is only 0.15 pounds (70g) heavier than the original, and it’s only 0.18 inches (4.5mm) thicker at its thickest point. It’s almost exactly the same weight as the original Steam Deck, and almost half an inch thinner, but with twice as much battery capacity inside.
How? While the bigger battery added over 120 grams of weight, Asus was able to offset half of it by making other components lighter. Krohn says a stronger, thinner, lighter chassis offered the biggest savings — the weight of the talcum-filled ABS / polycarbonate composite went from 176 grams to 134 grams by the time Asus was done. (I did run into one side effect of the stiffer plastic blend: it’s harder to pop it open for repair.)
The Ally X has lighter circuit boards, too, shaving away lots of unnecessary board, and a lighter cooling module — including 23-percent smaller fans that are actually more powerful, because the company’s in-house design team created its own custom set of 77 ultra-thin blades that trump the 47 of the original. Krohn says you might see the Ally run a couple degrees cooler, and the thinner blades help reduce the audible noise bump at around 5,000Hz, too.
And, there’s a new series of vents that let the Ally X cool its touchscreen more effectively — up to 6°C cooler.

The joysticks are another place where they’re both better and lighter: completely revised modular boards now use the same high-grade potentiometer based ALPS sticks you’ll find in a PS5 or Xbox gamepad, with far tighter throw than the original Ally, delightfully tacky concave tops a la Steam Deck OLED, wider bases for better dust resistance, and low friction POM plastic stems for smoother action when they scrape against the joystick ring’s edge.
They’re rated to 5 million rotation cycles, up from 2 million, and if that’s not enough, they’re modular — ready for a drift-resistant Hall Effect magnetic joystick upgrade kit that Gulikit already has in development. (Krohn says not enough gamers prefer Hall Effect sticks for them to come standard, which… maybe?)
And, Asus has seemingly addressed almost all of the biggest complaints about I/O:
You get a full-length M.2 2280 PCIe 4 SSD slot now, one which supports double-sided drives too, opening up both the highest capacity and the most cost effective storage options on the market.

Ports and vents: ROG Ally X vs. ROG Ally. Tap here for a closer look.

Asus has also ditched its proprietary XG Mobile eGPU port for a second USB-C port, one that offers all the benefits of Thunderbolt 4 too: 40Gbps speeds, 100W USB-C PD charging, DP 1.4 video output, and 4 lanes of PCIe for standard eGPUs. (No Oculink, sorry.)
Both ports are top-mounted, but Krohn says that lets even the weaker one offer 100W charging and 10Gbps data.
And yes, Asus says you get a new SD card reader that is not the same as the one that Asus won’t admit has an issue.

The ROG Ally X one-pager. 24GB RAM means the GPU and system basically no longer need to share.

Here are some of the smaller details I learned:

The D-pad is not only eight-way now, it’s also larger and more comfortable. I vastly prefer it.
The face buttons are 3mm taller, inside a longer tube for more stability. I found they have a flatter press.
The speakers have a slightly larger chamber for slightly more volume and bass.
The haptic actuators have moved to the edges of the device, beneath palms, for more pronounced feedback and weight distribution.
The shoulder buttons are mounted differently on the board so they don’t break as easily in a fall.
The triggers are wider and made of smoky semi-transparent plastic that looks cool.
The rear intake vents are slightly larger.
The joystick tops are now attached with screws, so you could theoretically 3D print your own tops or stem extenders.
Similarly, the new back buttons are screwed into the rear shell now, so you could theoretically move their position in your own 3D printed rear shell.
There’s a ring around the fingerprint power button now to find it easier by feel.
The Turbo mode still operates at 25W, but Silent has been bumped from 10W to 13W, and Performance from 15W to 17W.
The battery is now rated to have 80 percent remaining capacity after 3 years of cycling, up from 70 percent
The handheld uses a different IMU now.
It still has magnetic Hall Effect triggers, but revised slightly to make sure they don’t interfere with the speakers or vibration motors.
While it does support 100W charging now, it still comes with the same 65W adapter.
It’s not compatible with existing cases and mounts, but Asus is in touch with fan favorites JSAUX, Deckmate and Dbrand to offer new ones.
Existing Ally owners will be able to migrate settings to an Ally X with a cloud backup.

Last but not least, there’s an easter egg in the comfy new grips — just like the PS5’s controller is studded with incredibly tiny PlayStation symbols, the ROG Ally X’s grips are covered with “ROG ROG ROG”:

Touch the ROG.

Enhance.

I can’t wait for a review unit of this handheld, because battery is king in handheld gaming PC world, and the Ally X is about to be king of handheld battery packs. Just don’t necessarily expect it to dethrone the Steam Deck OLED, because there’s only so far Asus can go without a more efficient chip and screen — and because I’m still not sure how I feel about Asus’ deteriorating reputation for support.
Some small news today there too, though: Asus has just announced that all ROG Ally devices in North America now have a two-year warranty.
Photography by Sean Hollister / The Verge

$799 for twice the battery, twice the storage, and loads of small improvements.

When Valve introduced the Steam Deck OLED, I called it “everything the original should have been.” Asus is trying to do the exact same thing with the new ROG Ally X.

After months of leaks, teases, and exclusive early details from yours truly, it’s official: the ROG Ally X handheld gaming PC is going on preorder today for $799.

When it ships on July 22nd, it’ll come with double the battery, double the storage, double the USB-C ports with quadruple the USB bandwidth, 50 percent more (and faster) 7500MHz memory for up to a 15 percent performance boost, dramatically revised ergonomics, an overhauled internal layout, and an extensive list of other tweaks.

There are so many changes, in fact, that I spent two hours on the phone with Asus technical marketing director Sascha Krohn to hear about them all. I also went to the company’s US headquarters to open up an ROG Ally X with my own screwdrivers and play with the new build. I took plenty of pics, because I want you to nerd out with me.

But first, let me remind you what the ROG Ally X is not. Here’s what I wrote last month:

Don’t call it an Ally 2: when it ships in the second half of the year, the Windows-based Ally X will have the same AMD Z1 Extreme chipset and the same 7-inch 48–120Hz VRR screen. It’s not quite like the Steam Deck OLED, where Valve got AMD to revise its chip for better battery life and stability and added a larger, brighter, gorgeous new OLED panel with improved response time and slimmer bezels.

The ROG Ally X is a revision, not a sequel, and it’s a pricier one. It still runs Windows, and I still firmly believe Windows drags gaming handhelds down. But the Ally X might be the best Windows handheld yet — because Asus has crammed a monster 80 watt-hour battery into a handheld that doesn’t feel heavy, one that fits my average-sized hands better than any Windows handheld I’ve tried.

At 1.49 pounds (678g), the ROG Ally X is only 0.15 pounds (70g) heavier than the original, and it’s only 0.18 inches (4.5mm) thicker at its thickest point. It’s almost exactly the same weight as the original Steam Deck, and almost half an inch thinner, but with twice as much battery capacity inside.

How? While the bigger battery added over 120 grams of weight, Asus was able to offset half of it by making other components lighter. Krohn says a stronger, thinner, lighter chassis offered the biggest savings — the weight of the talcum-filled ABS / polycarbonate composite went from 176 grams to 134 grams by the time Asus was done. (I did run into one side effect of the stiffer plastic blend: it’s harder to pop it open for repair.)

The Ally X has lighter circuit boards, too, shaving away lots of unnecessary board, and a lighter cooling module — including 23-percent smaller fans that are actually more powerful, because the company’s in-house design team created its own custom set of 77 ultra-thin blades that trump the 47 of the original. Krohn says you might see the Ally run a couple degrees cooler, and the thinner blades help reduce the audible noise bump at around 5,000Hz, too.

And, there’s a new series of vents that let the Ally X cool its touchscreen more effectively — up to 6°C cooler.

The joysticks are another place where they’re both better and lighter: completely revised modular boards now use the same high-grade potentiometer based ALPS sticks you’ll find in a PS5 or Xbox gamepad, with far tighter throw than the original Ally, delightfully tacky concave tops a la Steam Deck OLED, wider bases for better dust resistance, and low friction POM plastic stems for smoother action when they scrape against the joystick ring’s edge.

They’re rated to 5 million rotation cycles, up from 2 million, and if that’s not enough, they’re modular — ready for a drift-resistant Hall Effect magnetic joystick upgrade kit that Gulikit already has in development. (Krohn says not enough gamers prefer Hall Effect sticks for them to come standard, which… maybe?)

And, Asus has seemingly addressed almost all of the biggest complaints about I/O:

You get a full-length M.2 2280 PCIe 4 SSD slot now, one which supports double-sided drives too, opening up both the highest capacity and the most cost effective storage options on the market.

Asus has also ditched its proprietary XG Mobile eGPU port for a second USB-C port, one that offers all the benefits of Thunderbolt 4 too: 40Gbps speeds, 100W USB-C PD charging, DP 1.4 video output, and 4 lanes of PCIe for standard eGPUs. (No Oculink, sorry.)

Both ports are top-mounted, but Krohn says that lets even the weaker one offer 100W charging and 10Gbps data.

And yes, Asus says you get a new SD card reader that is not the same as the one that Asus won’t admit has an issue.

The ROG Ally X one-pager. 24GB RAM means the GPU and system basically no longer need to share.

Here are some of the smaller details I learned:

The D-pad is not only eight-way now, it’s also larger and more comfortable. I vastly prefer it.
The face buttons are 3mm taller, inside a longer tube for more stability. I found they have a flatter press.
The speakers have a slightly larger chamber for slightly more volume and bass.
The haptic actuators have moved to the edges of the device, beneath palms, for more pronounced feedback and weight distribution.
The shoulder buttons are mounted differently on the board so they don’t break as easily in a fall.
The triggers are wider and made of smoky semi-transparent plastic that looks cool.
The rear intake vents are slightly larger.
The joystick tops are now attached with screws, so you could theoretically 3D print your own tops or stem extenders.
Similarly, the new back buttons are screwed into the rear shell now, so you could theoretically move their position in your own 3D printed rear shell.
There’s a ring around the fingerprint power button now to find it easier by feel.
The Turbo mode still operates at 25W, but Silent has been bumped from 10W to 13W, and Performance from 15W to 17W.
The battery is now rated to have 80 percent remaining capacity after 3 years of cycling, up from 70 percent
The handheld uses a different IMU now.
It still has magnetic Hall Effect triggers, but revised slightly to make sure they don’t interfere with the speakers or vibration motors.
While it does support 100W charging now, it still comes with the same 65W adapter.
It’s not compatible with existing cases and mounts, but Asus is in touch with fan favorites JSAUX, Deckmate and Dbrand to offer new ones.
Existing Ally owners will be able to migrate settings to an Ally X with a cloud backup.

Last but not least, there’s an easter egg in the comfy new grips — just like the PS5’s controller is studded with incredibly tiny PlayStation symbols, the ROG Ally X’s grips are covered with “ROG ROG ROG”:

Touch the ROG.

Enhance.

I can’t wait for a review unit of this handheld, because battery is king in handheld gaming PC world, and the Ally X is about to be king of handheld battery packs. Just don’t necessarily expect it to dethrone the Steam Deck OLED, because there’s only so far Asus can go without a more efficient chip and screen — and because I’m still not sure how I feel about Asus’ deteriorating reputation for support.

Some small news today there too, though: Asus has just announced that all ROG Ally devices in North America now have a two-year warranty.

Photography by Sean Hollister / The Verge

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