So, have you ever sniffed your PC? Like, really sniffed it?

Yes, it turns out people really were a bit too into their Steam Deck... | Valve asks Steam Deck owners to 'please refrain' from huffing its exhaust fumes, PC gamers immediately respond: 'No' | Acer Nitro 16 | RTX 4070 | AMD Ryzen 7 7735HS | 16-inch | 165Hz | 1600p | 16GB DDR5 | 512TB SSD | $1,029.99 at Best Buy (save $270) Created for ignoble.experiment@arconati.us |  Web Version December 17, 2023 CONNECT WITH PC GAMER       SIGN UP ⋅   SHARE First up Yes, it turns out people really were a bit too into their Steam Deck... (Future) It's the end of the year, the holidays are on their way, and you know we're kinda into another 'silly season' when the biggest story of the week has been Valve having to tell owners of its Steam Deck handheld gaming PC to please stop huffing the fumes from the air vent on the back of the device. Outside of nosing your Deck, however, Intel also released its first Intel 4-based Meteor Lake chips. But yes, you're 100% right, folk sniffing handhelds is far more interesting than Intel releasing its first chiplet processor ever. The Big Story (Valve, Disney) Valve asks Steam Deck owners to 'please refrain' from huffing its exhaust fumes, PC gamers immediately respond: 'No' When Valve introduced the Steam Deck, the company was adamant that its handheld gaming device was, at its core, a PC, with all the customizability and user freedom that entailed. "You shouldn't do any of this," Valve said in a teardown video, before proceeding to show everyone how to take apart the Steam Deck. So when Valve now tells Steam Deck owners they shouldn't be sticking their noses next to the handheld's exhaust vents and taking a big, deep breath, I have to wonder if, y'know, they really mean it. Okay, they probably do really mean it—but that's not stopping people from huffing anyway.   In a now-viral Reddit post from Tuesday, a Steam user messaged Valve support to ask if it's "safe to inhale the exhaust fumes from the top vent of the Steam Deck." Valve's customer support got back with a polite, amusingly dry response:  "As with all electronics, it is generally not recommended you inhale the exhaust fumes on your device. While there are no safety concerns with general usage, directly inhaling the device's vent fumes should be avoided. We understand that it may be a meme, but please refrain from this behavior for the safety of your health." Valve's response got picked up by IGN and Kotaku, but the plea to not breathe deeply of the Deck's warm, plastic-tinged exhaust has seemingly fallen on deaf ears. The most common answer from Steam Deck owners seems to be a resounding "no." Read the full story Pretty big deals Acer Nitro 16 | RTX 4070 | AMD Ryzen 7 7735HS | 16-inch | 165Hz | 1600p | 16GB DDR5 | 512TB SSD | $1,029.99 at Best Buy (save $270) (MSI) This is one of the cheapest RTX 4070 deals around at the moment and there's a lot to like here. The Ryzen CPU has a full eight cores, 16 threads, and that GPU is a high power version, with a 140W limit. The screen is fast and boasts a nice 16:10 ratio. However, the resolution is a bit high for the RTX 4070, so you might need to use upscaling more often than you'd like, and the amount of storage is pretty mean. But if you want to save as much as you can but still get a decent gaming laptop, this one's hard to beat. Skytech Gaming Nebula | Core i5 13400F | Nvidia RTX 4060 | 16GB DDR4-3200 | 1TB NVMe SSD | $849.99 at Amazon (SkyTech) This Skytech prebuilt has a lot going for it, starting with the perfect pairing of the Core i5 13400F and an RTX 4060 for well under $900. The only weak area is the fact that the RAM is DDR4 and not the newer DDR5, which the Intel CPU fully supports. It's not clear how many sticks of RAM it uses, so hopefully it's two 8GB rather than a single 16GB. Even if it does, though, this is a great 1080p gaming machine for the money. ASRock Phantom Gaming | 27-inch | 165Hz | 1440p | VA | FreeSync Premium | $197.99 at Newegg (save $42) (ASRock) ASRock's gaming monitors are always so darned cheap—we love them for that. This 1440p panel offers resolution and a rapid refresh rate for a potent PC gaming combo, though the built-in Wi-Fi antenna helps it stand out from the crowd. That's hardly essential, but could come in use for some. Hot in Hardware Watch out Razer, Asus' switch from plastic to an all-metal unibody gaming laptop design was hidden in plain sight all along We thought Asus' CES 2024 teaser trailer didn't say much, but by ditching the plastic chassis for metal it's going toe-to-toe with the Razer Blade aesthetic. TCL touts fully concave and 8K OLED PC monitors using new low-cost inkjet panel tech Should make for much cheaper OLED monitors. The latest round of PS5 Pro hardware rumours suggest that AMD's RDNA 4 could lift Radeon ray tracing up to Nvidia's level Let's just hope that it doesn't result in even worse PC ports, no matter what the new hardware is like. 'Still a slight risk of critical deformation': Noctua isn't happy with its next-gen 140mm fan so it's pushed until Q2 2024 at the earliest The fan should be worth the 9-year wait. Leaked 3DMark score puts Intel's mid-tier Meteor Lake on par with AMD's best handheld PC processor, for gaming at least Benchmarks don't always show you the whole picture but it does look promising for gaming on an integrated Intel GPU. Intel's slapped a 16GB dual-channel minimum entry requirement on Core Ultra laptops if you want top gaming performance To get an 'Arc Graphics' sticker, your Core Ultra laptop has to be dual-channel with 16GB of memory. How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood-themed Noctua PC builds? I honestly wood do it too, if I had the skill. No more fans: Phison's new PCIe Gen 5 controller sacrifices raw SSD speed in the name of silence The new E31T controller promises mainstream PCIe 5.0 SSDs that will still outperform the previous gen but without the need for silly active cooling. Intel's unified its Arc desktop and laptop GPU drivers 'on a technical basis' but manufacturer updates are still going to lag behind Bringing its desktop and laptop Arc drivers together means everyone will benefit from every performance bump Intel's engineers can deliver. Intel's new Core UItra laptops are here and beating my favourite AMD chip, in its own official benchmarks I mean, obviously it's beating the Ryzen 7 7840U in Intel benchmarks, but it means I now can't wait to get my hands on a new Core Ultra laptop to really see what it can do. Get ready to see frame generation everywhere as AMD finally releases its FSR 3 tools and source code into the wild Modders are especially happy but you might want to temper your expectations a little. Sign Up  |    Update Profile  |    Unsubscribe Privacy Policy  |    Cookies Policy  |    Terms and Conditions CONTACT US: FEEDBACK  |    ADVERTISE Future US LLC © Full 7th Floor, 130 West 42nd Street, New York, NY, 10036