The best antivirus for PC gaming has to be the one that keeps its footprint to a minimum while still making your gaming PC safe from hackers and malware. Like a pro bodyguard, the best antivirus should protect without reminding you that you’re still alive; mid-game pop-ups are never welcome, but plenty of antivirus suites seem to be designed without gaming in mind. It should probably also not install unwanted apps either, even if they’re not enabled by default. Ahem, Norton. Most of today’s big antivirus suites are aware of and work to prevent this potential nuisance in the form…

Audio player loading… Intel is set to enter the Bitcoin mining business. No this doesn’t mean that it will set up mining farms, though it probably could if it wanted to. Rather, Intel is set to produce a bitcoin mining ASIC (application specific integrated circuit). The report comes via Tom’s Hardware stating that Intel is set to unveil its ‘Bonanza Mine’ chip for mining Bitcoin at the upcoming International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC).  Earlier today, Fox Business reported that crypto-mining startup GRIID has signed a contract with Intel to buy ‘BMZ2’ mining ASICs.  According to the company’s S-4 filing, it’s…

Audio player loading… When a game as simple and wholesome as Wordle comes along, it’s only a matter of time before the foul-minded get their hands on it. Thus, we have Lewdle, a new clone of Wordle created by Rogue One writer Gary Whitta (disclosure: he once edited PC Gamer). To call it a clone oversells it a bit: it basically is Wordle, except it only has five letter words you weren’t allowed to say aloud at school. I managed to win on the second line of my first attempt. Playing Lewdle will probably rank among the most frivolous, wasteful…

Steam Sale start dates are a guarded secret at Valve, but they always seem to slip out before the sales actually happen. Information is shared with developers and partners, but if customers knew exactly when a sale was going to drop, many would simply wait for the discounts.  Fortunately, Steam sales happen fairly consistently across the year, making them fairly easy to predict. Even amidst Covid-19 delays in 2020, Valve’s sales were full steam ahead. The same was true throughout 2021, and we can’t see it changing in 2022. The seasonal sales offer the broadest and deepest price cuts, and…

Monster Hunter Rise arrived on PC in January, close to a full year after it debuted on the Nintendo Switch in 2021. It was a long wait for PC players, but that wait did come with one advantage: 10 months of accumulated updates and event quests from the console version are ready and waiting on the PC from day one. That’s a whole lot of extra hunting available right away. Event quests are Monster Hunter’s way of delivering new challenges every month. Sometimes these include unique versions of monsters you haven’t been able to fight before, or reward you with…

I’ve been on a Dark Souls journey recently. I went from hating the game to loving it, spurred on by its wonderful streaming community, and have almost immediately launched myself into a second playthrough. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed getting to know the game and its secrets, and if there is any one curiosity I’ve thought about the most, it’s the Estus Flask.  The Estus Flasks is at the heart of Dark Souls. It’s your source of health and, in a game as brutal as Dark Souls can be, each sip is worth its weight in gold. It’s given to you by…