In a first tariff-induced hit against the PC gaming sector, ASRock is talking about increasing costs and moving its graphics card manufacturing away from China - Related to grounds, 11, ways, details, there

Arm won't keep chasing after Qualcomm on the grounds of licensing shenanigans—but the legal jostling isn't over

Listen, I'm only human and I love a big business slap fight about as much as the next guy. Unfortunately, these legal bouts sometimes end with a bit of an anticlimax, and that brings us to the current state of British semiconductor design corporation Arm's throwdown with Qualcomm.

Rather than keep fighting, Arm has decided to stop trying to terminate Qualcomm's license to produce chips based on its technology (via The Register). This means that Qualcomm is free to continue producing its Arm-based range of laptop chips, the Snapdragon X CPU line, thereby bringing some closure to a legal dispute that's been raging since August 2022. Alas, there are no knockouts here—I should've stuck to watching pro-wrestling.

Specifically, Arm was trying to terminate Qualcomm's architecture license agreement (ALA) which, if successful, would've meant game over for Snapdragon X and potentially large numbers of Microsoft's Copilot+ AI PCs as well. But 's most recent quarterly financial research, Arm is withdrawing its most recent legal challenge and, as of January 8, "has no current plan to terminate the Qualcomm ALA, while reserving its rights pending the outcome of the ongoing litigation."

To briefly recap, this all began with the startup Nuvia, which was acquired by Qualcomm back in 2021. Nuvia had previously signed an ALA with Arm, allowing the startup to design its own CPU cores that would be compatible with Arm's tech. Nuvia's whole deal was attempting to build ARM-based server chips, though its expertise would be used elsewhere in the end. Qualcomm is also an Arm ALA licensee, and decided it would quite like Nuvia's CPU designs for its own integrated Snapdragon chips, hence the startup scooping.

Arm felt that sharing these designs based on their tech without their say-so seemed like a breach of both Nuvia and Qualcomm's ALAs. This, among a number of unsuccessful legal challenges over the years, has most in the recent past resulted in Arm throwing all of its toys out of the pram to issue Qualcomm with a 60-day notice in October 2024. In January of this year, Arm notified Qualcomm it would be withdrawing this notice. Anticlimactic, right?

This doesn't mean the dust has settled by any stretch of the imagination though. As previously referenced, litigation is still ongoing from a court case brought before a jury back in December 2024. Arm had argued a massive loss in revenue, but the jury found that Qualcomm had not violated its ALA as claimed (via The Register).

, both sides are still seeking to clarify exactly where they stand in light of the jury's verdict through post-trial motions—with another legal rumble potentially on the cards in the future. Time will tell.

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Microsoft nixes details of its Windows 11 TPM 2.0 security bypass though there are still other ways of getting the latest OS on 'unsupported' hardware

Sticking the latest version of Windows onto an old PC is a great way of making it feel up to date. Unfortunately, Microsoft doesn't quite see it that way. It turns out a workaround that allowed Windows 11 to be installed on older machines lacking the latest security hardware has been removed from Microsoft's website.

This could be more than a minor inconvenience given the Microsoft has also introduced the end of Windows 10 support is inked in for later this year.

The hardware in question is the TPM or Trusted Platform Module version [website] TPM is a security technology that protects critical data such as encryption keys and ensures the authenticity of hardware and operating systems. While it was introduced two years before Windows 11 in 2019, plenty of PC's lacked support when Microsoft debuted its latest operating system.

For that reason, Microsoft .2 module. It was a fairly straight forward workaround, provided your PC had that TPM [website] module, and amounted to little more than the creation and enabling of a registry key.

Well, as spotted by Neowin, Microsoft has removed all mention of mentioned workaround on the support webpage in question. It's not clear if the workaround still works or has somehow been disabled, but there's a Waybackmachine link anyways. You're welcome.

For owners of older PCs, this still isn't good news. The immediate response would be, meh, okay, I'll just run Windows 10. Who needs that highfalutin' Windows 11 upgrade?

But there's a catch. Last year, Microsoft introduced that Windows 10 support would be ending later this year, on 14 October to be precise. Now, that doesn't mean Windows 10 suddenly stops working on that fateful day. But as Ian pithily mentioned, "from then on, it won’t receive any more updates and will remain vulnerable to whichever zero-day exploit or AI-crypto-quantum hack comes along next."

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It is possible that a CPU or perhaps more likely a CPU and motherboard upgrade would get you over the line when it comes to TMP [website] support. But it's a pity that Microsoft isn't more supportive of older PCs. After all, a decent spec PC from 10 years ago is well capable of running Windows 11 in terms of pure performance.

Alternatively, you could just use a boot tool, such as Rufus, which will allow you to download the latest Windows 11 ISO from the Microsoft website and check a box to get around the TPM [website] restriction. Job done.

There are other workarounds, too, outside of the workaround we're linking to up there for posterity. You can also use FlyBy11, which does a similar job. So, why Microsoft is suddenly against such actions, again, is anyone's guess.

On its own website, Microsoft says, "climate change requires swift, collective action and technological innovation. We’re committed to meeting our own goals while enabling others to do the same."

So, it would be welcome if Microsoft didn't force owners of old PCs to choose between landfill and limited security, wouldn't it?

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In a first tariff-induced hit against the PC gaming sector, ASRock is talking about increasing costs and moving its graphics card manufacturing away from China

As part of Trump's seemingly isolationist strategy to grow the country's economy (and apparently combat fentanyl use), the US President in the recent past introduced tariffs against China, Mexico, and Canada. Although the latter two have been delayed, tariffs against China are in force, and we're already seeing signs of potential impact in the PC gaming sector.

Motherboard and graphics card manufacturer ASRock told PCMag that it will be moving at least some of its manufacturing away from China: "As for the 10% tariff applied to other products like GPU cards, we need some time to transfer the manufacturing to other countries."

This is just a concrete example of what we'd already been warned of by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA): that tariffs on videogame-related hardware could harm the gaming industry in the US. Whether the tariff strategy is a good move overall, politically and economically, some negative impact can't be denied.

To again get a little more concrete, ASRock also says that "in the transition period [between manufacturing in China and manufacturing elsewhere], we may absorb some of the cost and also increase some in price to reflect the increased cost." This, despite the fact that "since the market is still highly competitive, it is not easy to raise price[s]."

This isn't likely to be an isolated issue, either. Tons of PC gaming hardware companies do some or all of their manufacturing in China. MSI, for instance, makes its motherboards in Shenzhen, China.

TSMC, too, has some production in China in addition to Taiwan, this being its Nanjing fab. However, this facility's older 16 nm and 12 nm FinFET process, once used for Nvidia 10-series cards, is now used for things not so gaming-related, such as TVs. There could be smaller things—chip controllers, for instance—still made on this node, though.

But any effects on a business's margins can have a knock-on effect. it's estimated that prices for TSMC's 7 nm or smaller processes will be raised by over 15% this year. These effects will no doubt be expounded by export controls: in addition to import tariffs, advanced chips also require authorisation to be sold to China.

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Unless Trump follows through with threats of massive tariffs against Taiwan, however, the main effects on the PC gaming industry will be not on chip fabs but on the likes of manufacturers such as MSI and ASRock—any component or peripheral manufacturers that have some or all of their process based in China.

We already saw signs of this late last year, when PC Partner decided to relocate its headquarters from China to Singapore (via Tom's Hardware). This corporation is the second-largest graphics card manufacturer, making PCBs for brands such as Inno3D and Zotac.

Some might not realise just how reliant on Chinese manufacturing a lot of the component and PC market actually is. To give just one example, Corsair, an American business, has some of its PSUs made by Seasonic, and while Seasonic's offices are based in Taiwan, its factory is located in mainland China.

Ultimately, this will probably mean that a lot of manufacturers have to raise prices or move manufacturing out of China as ASRock is planning on doing. And I suppose Trump could consider companies upping and leaving China a long-term political and economic victory, but any price hikes will ultimately hit American individuals.

None of this is to mention other potential practical or administrative knock-ons. The United States Postal Service (USPS), for instance, not long ago unveiled that it was suspending millions of daily packages from China, although these have now resumed.

As with most things economic, little is certain. But with ASRock now seeming to plan on shifting its manufacturing away from China and talking about price increases, we're seeing some real effects of the tariffs in the PC gaming hardware industry. And these are just 10% tariffs, much lower than many expected. Who knows what 100% tariffs against Taiwan would cause?

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