Old-School AMD Boards Offer Budget Builders a Lifeline in the RAM Crisis
MSI has launched two sub-$90 AM4 motherboards at the worst possible moment for PC builders — and that timing is entirely deliberate.
Daniel Kovac Article Archive
All articles published by The Daily Perspective from 28 February to 29 March 2026.
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Daniel Kovac 
RAM's Share of PC Costs Has Doubled. Your Next Laptop Will Feel It.
HP revealed memory now eats 35% of its PC build costs, up from 15–18% one quarter ago, as AI demand cannibalises global chip supply.
Darren Ong 
Trump's 'Bring Your Own Power' Ultimatum to Big Tech Signals a Reckoning
Trump's new pledge demands Big Tech generate its own electricity for AI data centres. The policy has supporters and sceptics — and lessons for Australia.
Aisha Khoury 
RTX 5070 Ti Pre-Built Deal Lands Amid GPU Supply Squeeze
A US$2,199 deal on the Lenovo Legion Tower 7i Gen 10 with an RTX 5070 Ti cuts 41% from list price, arriving as GPU supply tightens globally.
Yuki Tamura 
China's Rare Earth Grip Tightens Despite Trade Truce, Leaving Chipmakers Short
US chipmakers are running low on scandium critical to 5G production, as China's export licensing regime defies a trade truce struck with Washington in October 2025.
Mitchell Tan 
Asus Puts AI Inside Your Router — But Is It Worth $900?
Asus's new ROG Rapture GT-BE19000Ai brings edge AI to the home router market, but at $900 USD it demands serious justification.
Tom Whitfield 
Nvidia Warns of GPU Shortage: Gamers Brace for Tighter Supply and Higher Prices
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has warned that gaming GPU supply will remain constrained for at least two quarters, signalling further price pain for gamers worldwide.
Tom Whitfield 
Corsair's $200 Carbon Fibre Mouse: Premium Feel, Premium Price
Corsair's new carbon fibre gaming mouse impresses on build quality but costs twice its plastic sibling, sparking debate about whether premium materials justify a premium price.
Fatima Al-Rashid 
The Last Disc Spins: Blu-ray's Slow Fade Into History
Buffalo Japan has ended production of its remaining Blu-ray drives with no successors planned, joining Sony, LG, and Pioneer in abandoning the format.
Daniel Kovac 
Anthropic Blacklisted by Pentagon After Refusing to Strip AI Safety Rules
Anthropic has been designated a US national security 'supply chain risk' after refusing Pentagon demands to remove guardrails preventing Claude's use in mass surveillance and autonomous weapons.
Mitchell Tan 
Amazon's $50 Billion OpenAI Bet Is the AI Arms Race at Its Most Extreme
Amazon has committed $50 billion to OpenAI in the largest private tech funding round ever, handing AWS exclusive cloud rights for the Frontier enterprise platform and cementing a new era in AI competition.
Jake Nguyen 
Eighteen Years, 95 Times Faster: Intel's Laptop Chip Revolution in Numbers
A Phoronix study testing 15 Intel laptop chips from 2008 to 2026 found the latest Panther Lake processor up to 95 times faster than its Penryn predecessor, with a geometric mean uplift of 21.5 times.
James Callahan 
Razer Brings Pokémon to Australian Desks as Franchise Turns 30
Razer's officially licensed Pokémon peripheral range has landed in Australia, marking 30 years of the iconic franchise with keyboards, mice, headsets and desk mats.
Darren Ong 
Washington Punishes Anthropic for Refusing to Unlock AI for Autonomous Weapons
President Trump has ordered every federal agency to stop using Anthropic's Claude AI after the firm refused Pentagon demands to remove safety guardrails on autonomous weapons and mass surveillance.
Yuki Tamura 
South Korean Police Lost $1.5M in Bitcoin Without Ever Losing the Wallet
Two suspects have been arrested after 22 Bitcoin vanished from South Korean police evidence — coins that were sitting in a wallet the police never fully controlled.
Sarah Cheng 
The Machine That Drinks the Desert: A Nobel Idea Inches Toward Reality
Nobel laureate Omar Yaghi's MOF-powered harvester claims to pull 1,000 litres of drinking water daily from desert air. The Pacific is watching closely.
Yuki Tamura 
A Breath of Fresh Air for Chipmaking: Imec's Oxygen Trick Lifts EUV Output by 20%
Imec has found that raising oxygen levels during a key chipmaking step boosts photoresist performance by up to 20%, potentially lifting EUV scanner throughput at no added materials cost.
Fatima Al-Rashid 
Newegg's $1,001 AMD Bundle Targets High-End PC Builders
Newegg is offering AMD's Ryzen 7 9800X3D, 32GB of Corsair DDR5 RAM, and a Gigabyte X870E motherboard together for US$1,000.77, saving buyers US$177.
Mitchell Tan 
RayNeo Air 4 Pro: The AR glasses that finally close the gap with your TV
The RayNeo Air 4 Pro arrives as the world's first HDR10-capable AR glasses, packing a Vision 4000 chip and B&O-tuned audio into a 76-gram frame for USD $299.
Daniel Kovac 
RTX 5070 Bundle Offers Rare Relief Amid Global Hardware Price Crunch
Newegg is bundling the MSI Shadow RTX 5070 with an 8TB WD Black SN850X SSD for US$1,364.98, a US$465 saving that stands out against a backdrop of rising GPU and storage prices.
Zara Mitchell 
Why That Giant CPU Retest Actually Matters for Your Next PC Build
A massive CPU benchmark overhaul is underway, covering chips spanning more than a decade. Here's why it matters for your next upgrade.
Ella Sullivan 
Japan's $1.7bn Chip Gamble: Strategic Masterstroke or Industrial Overreach?
Japan has injected $1.7bn into chip startup Rapidus, securing veto power over the company as it races to mass-produce cutting-edge 2nm semiconductors by 2027.
Sarah Cheng 
Corsair's Magnesium Mouse: Premium Materials, Debatable Premium Price
Corsair's new magnesium-shelled gaming mouse arrives at $150, splitting reviewers on whether the exotic material is worth the extra spend.
Bruce Mackinnon 
Nvidia's $700 Price Hike on DGX Spark Signals Deeper Memory Crisis
Nvidia has lifted the price of its DGX Spark AI workstation by $700 to US$4,699, citing global memory supply constraints — a sign that the AI hardware boom is now consuming its own supply chain.
Yuki Tamura 
AMD's MI355X Does More With Less Silicon — And It's Catching Nvidia
AMD has revealed the architectural tricks behind its Instinct MI355X at ISSCC 2026, showing how the chip doubles per-compute-unit throughput despite carrying fewer processing units than its predecessor.
Zara Mitchell 
The 1994 Linux Desktop Is Back, and It Runs in Your Browser
Developer Victor Larios has rebuilt the 1994 CDE Linux desktop as a fully functional browser app, complete with Netscape, XEmacs, and 76 colour palettes.
Meg Hadley 
US Military Laser Shoots Down Its Own Border Drone in Texas Friendly Fire Incident
The US military's LOCUST laser system shot down a CBP drone near Fort Hancock, Texas, after it entered military airspace unannounced, raising fresh concerns about command-and-control failures at the border.
Zara Mitchell 
Instagram to Warn Parents When Teens Search for Self-Harm Content
Instagram will begin alerting Australian parents when their teenage children repeatedly search for suicide or self-harm content, as Meta faces mounting legal pressure over its platforms' impact on young users.
Yuki Tamura 
AMD's New Gaming King Meets Intel's Workhorse: Who Actually Wins?
AMD's Ryzen 7 9850X3D leads in gaming and power efficiency, but Intel's Core i9-14900K punches back hard in productivity workloads.
Darren Ong 
Sony's PC Retreat: PlayStation Pulls Back from Steam to Protect Its Hardware Fortress
Sony is reportedly abandoning its strategy of releasing PS5 single-player exclusives on PC, a move that could reshape the global gaming market and how Australians access PlayStation titles.
Mitchell Tan