Race For The Galaxy

was the first game I played that forced me to use my plans as currency. What a concept!

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If last week’s dose of Cyberpunk 2077 RTX goodness wasn’t quite enough for you, Nvidia have released some more ray traced screenshots of the game’s fancy lighting effects in action. The images don’t give much away in terms of the specific ray tracing effects being used in each shot, or what each scene looks like without ray tracing switched on, but if you like shiny floors and glowing strips of neon, you’re definitely in for a treat.

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Today has brought the first of Fallout 76‘s Seasons, introducing one of those there season pass dealios with new items to unlock by levelling it up. Running until mid-September, Season One’s pass is themed about a Captain Cosmos board game, with 100 levels of rewards including sci-fi outfits, skins, building blocks, and an actual useful item or two. Today’s update also added Public Teams so you can easily group up with strangers around the world.

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Man alive, it is all go on the [cms-block] front today. If Aria selling a 250GB Samsung 860 Evo for a mere £36 wasn’t enough, then US folk will be glad to hear that for the next 16-odd hours, Amazon US have slashed 37% off the price of our very [cms-block], the WD Blue SN550, taking the 250GB model down to an all-time low of just $44. If it wasn’t disgustingly good value when it first came out, it sure is now.

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The president of the United States of America has been temporarily banned from video game streaming platform Twitch, is an actual event in the year of our Molyneux 2020. Donald Trump’s official account had rebroadcast old campaign speeches, which Twitch moderators identify as containing “hateful conduct.” So the account is on time-out to… think about what it’s done? Of all the channels on Twitch, this seems the least likely to reform its behaviour. Somehow, 2020 still has the capacity to surprise me.

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If you’re currently in the middle of building a new PC and have been looking at 16GB RAM kits like the one we recommend in our £1000 [cms-block] build, then do I have a deal for you. Indeed, you can currently get a 16GB Corsair Vengeance LPX set (the same make and model recommended in our RPS Rig) clocked at a nippy 3200MHz over at Amazon UK at the moment for an all-time low of just £61, which is cheaper than it was over Black Friday.

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Netherite

is a new material in Minecraft, added in 1.16 (the Nether Update). Netherite is tricky to get your hands on, but once you’ve smelted some Netherite Ingots you can make tools and armor that are even stronger than diamond. Read our below Minecraft Netherite guide to find out where to get Netherite, how to craft with it, and how much better Netherite tools are than their diamond equivalents.

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As outdoors continues to be called off, EGX has become the latest event to be cancelled and replaced with an online alternative. EGX Digital will team up with PAX Online, also organised by our corporate uncles, for nine days of 24-hour streams starting 12th September. Yes, nine days. Yes, all day and all night. That’s a lot. And it’s free. We here at RPS will be joining in to help fill that time, though I couldn’t yet tell you what we’ll be doing. Online things. About video games. If you bought tickets to EGX 2020, the London games show, you’ll get a refund.

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When Samsung launched their 860 Qvo SSD back at the end of 2018, it finally brought high capacity SSDs down to a more affordable price. Why was the 860 Qvo suddenly so much cheaper than the 860 Evo? Well, it was mostly down to the type of storage tech Samsung used inside the Qvo – what’s known as 4-bit MLC (multi-level cell) V-NAND technology, as opposed to the Evo’s 3-bit MLC. Historically, 4-bit has been a bit slower than 3-bit, hence the lower price. But as the 860 Qvo quickly proved, there really wasn’t a huge amount of difference between it and the 860 Evo, making the Qvo the de facto standard for anyone after 1TB or above.

Now, Samsung are back with the 870 Qvo, which uses their second generation 4-bit MLC tech and a new MKX controller that allows for capacities all the way up to 8TB in its slim 7mm chassis. Said 8TB SSD will still cost you a relative arm and a leg – £796 in the UK and a massive $900 in the US – but it’s the entry-level 1TB model I’ve got on test here today, which comes in at a much more affordable £111 / $130. That’s a still fraction more than the current 860 Qvo’s price of £98 / $125, but with Samsung touting a speed increase of up to 13% and a sustained performance boost of up to 21%, let’s see if it’s worth the extra money.

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There haven’t been many new additions to our roundup of all the best budget gaming laptop deals this week, but all the laptop deals we have managed to find pack surprisingly beefy components for under £1000 / $1000. The top picks this week both include RTX 2060 chips for under four figures – the MSI GF65 and the Asus TUF Gaming A15 – and there are plenty more great budget gaming laptop deals if you’re looking for something a bit cheaper. Read on for more information on picking the right option, and for details of the best gaming laptop deals available this week.

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