Graphics cards, CPUs, and some bonkers monitors
Intel Core i9-12900HK
Alternative subheading: “A bunch of new Intel CPUs, including the Core i9-12900HK”. Intel did in fact detail dozens of 12th Gen chips to accompany its existing sixAlder Lakemodels, with the desktop contingent focusing on lower specs and lower prices. Together with the launch of mid-range and entry chipsets like B660 and H610, budget builders will have a lot more 12th Gen options for their rig.
You can usually count on the Razer Blade laptop series to stay up-to-late on the latest hardware, and the new Blade 14, Blade 15 and Blade 17 have wasted no time in stuffing themselves with freshly-announced AMD/Intel/Nvidia gubbins.
The Cloud Alpha Wireless headset stole the show, however, with its nigh-unbelievable 300 hours of battery life. It could manage only half of that and still be an absurdly long-lasting headphone/mic combo, and knowing from experience HyperX’s talent for crafting comfortable, great-sounding headsets, this could potentially be their best one yet. We’ll know for sure when it releases in February.
The originalROG Strix Flarekeyboard is an old favourite of mine, and the freshly revealed ROG Strix Flare II looks like a welcome update. It’s a sleeker, less moody-looking mech board that swaps in higher-quality PBT keycaps and a choice of either Cherry MX switches or Asus’s own ROG NX switches, while keeping features like media controls and a detachable wrist rest.
Most drastically, the little acrylic insert that you could customise on the original has been replaced by a dot matrix display, very much like the one on the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 gaming laptop. I can see the flashiness of this putting some people off, but as far as personalisation goes, it’s definitely easier to set a display than to stencil a slab of acrylic. Or wait for a custom sticker to arrive from Etsy.
Even thebest gaming monitorsso far haven’t been able to rustle up the dream combination of a 4K resolution and a 240Hz refresh rate. Enter the Odyssey Neo G8, a monitor that is at once a more sensible 32in alternative to Samsung’s sprawling Odyssey Neo G9 and an ambitious attempt to marry these two high-end specs.
It’s an enticing prospect for sure, yet even this like a little drip next to Samsung’s other monitor announce, the Odyssey Ark. This is 55in of curved 4K display that, unlike pretty much all bendy monitors, can rotate 90 degrees into a portrait mode – a portrait mode that towers over your seating position. In truth I like this thing for its wanton lunacy more than any realistic practical applications, though in fairness the screen is such a goliath it still looks there’s room to comfortably play games in a standard 16:9 window even when tipped on its side. It’s also worth noting that both these monitors use Samsung’s mini LED tech, a potentially generational upgrade to LCD displays that allows for brighter, more finely-controlled backlighting.
The refreshed Predator Orion 3000 and 5000 are immediately more desirable than the old versions ever were, mainly because they look like PCs and not a Bionicle figure’s shinpad. Amid the misery of recent graphics card prices, pre-built PCs have emerged as a often viable way to blunt the impact of rip-offery, even if they can’t avoid it outright - and if the DIY approach is truly out the question then the decent looks and toolless designs of these Orion rigs might well prove enough to sway some buying decisions their way.
Like Razer’s new Blades, the Predator Orion 3000 and 5000 get with the times by equipping 12th Gen Intel CPUs; the Predator Orion 3000’s RTX 3070 and the Predator Orion 5000’s RTX 3080 will also ensure they’re ready to handle games up to 4K, straight out of the box.
