The FPS Review Weekender Review Roundup – May 16, 2026

NewsTech
By David Schroth

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Forza Horizon 6 launched its early access window this week, and the PC hardware world met it with a flood of GPU benchmarks. Elsewhere, ASUS dropped a 20th-anniversary ROG Crosshair motherboard that looks like it time-traveled from 2006 and Igor Wallossek spent 109 minutes tearing down a SteelSeries headset so you don’t have to.

Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus — RAM Speed Scaling

Written reviews:

Consensus summary: The launch reviews established the 270K Plus as a genuine reset for Arrow Lake: productivity performance that beats the Core Ultra 9 285K at roughly half the price and a $299 price that changed the calculus on Intel desktop CPUs considerably. Our own May 11 follow-up answers a question the launch reviews only touched on: how much does RAM speed matter on this platform? Using Kingston Fury Renegade kits from DDR5-7200 up to DDR5-8800 CUDIMM, the results show scaling through the tested range, with CUDIMM’s improved signal integrity unlocking headroom that standard UDIMM can’t reach at equivalent speeds.

FPS Review take: This is our content, which always makes it worth a read (Ed: Amirite?) and the RAM scaling question is one of the more useful things you can benchmark on a new platform. If you’re building around a 270K Plus and wondering whether to spring for CUDIMM, the answer is in there.

Forza Horizon 6 PC Performance

Written reviews:

Video reviews:

Consensus summary: Forza Horizon 6 is shaping up as one of the best-optimized PC releases in years. DSOGaming found it ran above 60fps at 1080p max settings on hardware as old as the RTX 2080 Ti, and Notebookcheck confirmed playable performance on integrated graphics at lower presets. The ray tracing story is more complicated: Digital Foundry’s John Linneman praised RTGI as transformative, finding that it changes how light propagates through Tokyo’s urban environments, but PC Gamer flatly advised against enabling it even on an RTX 5090 — their take being that the visual payoff doesn’t justify the cost. The CPU bottlenecks at high framerates and is called out by PC Gamer in particular, with the ForzaTech engine using up to 10 threads heavily. The VRAM story from TechSpot echoes the RTX 5060 Ti narrative directly: 8GB cards struggle with the Extreme preset, which demands around 12GB.

FPS Review take: This is the kind of PC release we wish we saw more often — a massive open-world game that runs on a GTX 1650 at minimum and scales all the way to an RTX 5090 with DLSS 4.5 Multi Frame Generation. The VRAM crunch at ultra settings is real but avoidable if you’re sensible about settings, and the handheld benchmarks from TechPowerUp make for interesting reading for anyone running a Steam Deck or Ally. Digital Foundry’s technical breakdown is essential viewing if you want to understand what RTGI actually does in practice.

Colorful iGame X870E Vulcan OC V14

Written reviews:

Consensus summary: Reviewers broadly agree that Colorful has made a genuine flagship here, not just a spec-sheet exercise. The 18+2+2 phase power delivery with 110A Dr. MOS stages, two-DIMM DDR5 layout for high-speed memory work, dedicated BCLK buttons, and 2-inch Vulcan Smart Screen all mark this as a serious overclocking platform, and the board has the world OC records to back it up. Tom’s Hardware noted the high idle power draw (around 121W with C-states disabled by default in BIOS), and found competition stiff at the $700 price point from more established alternatives. Back2Gaming framed it as a genuine statement from a brand that has historically been a GPU maker first and motherboard maker second.

FPS Review take: Colorful breaking into the high-end AM5 overclocking conversation is worth following. Whether it earns a place in a build over the Asus X870E Apex or Gigabyte X870E Aorus Tachyon Ice at a similar price comes down to personal priorities, but it’s no longer dismissible as a regional curiosity (Ed: Unless they don’t end up shipping the boards worldwide). The Vulcan Smart Screen is a nice touch, even if the software needs work.

ASUS ROG Crosshair 2006 X870E (20th Anniversary)

Written reviews:

Consensus summary: Guru3D confirmed this is not a novelty board with a paint job: it shares its engineering backbone with the Crosshair X870E Dark Hero, meaning flagship 20+2+2 110A power delivery, full PCIe 5.0 support across storage and graphics, DDR5 up to 9600 MT/s, WiFi 7, and a 2-inch OLED display on the primary M.2 slot. The copper-look heatsinks are actually aluminum coated to appear copper. Guru3D’s one practical warning is that the dual USB4 rear ports share bandwidth with one of the Gen5 M.2 slots under heavy simultaneous load, which is a platform reality rather than a board flaw. Pricing is expected around $750 with limited availability.

FPS Review take: ASUS basically made a nostalgia bomb, and it worked — the white-and-blue color scheme, the copper heatpipes, the old-school ROG branding. The engineering underneath is current, so this isn’t just a collector’s item, though at $750 it’s priced like one. If you want the Dark Hero platform in a chassis that’ll make anyone who built PCs in the mid-2000s do a double-take, here it is.

NZXT H2 Flow (2026)

Written reviews:

Consensus summary: Both outlets position the H2 Flow as one of the more thoughtfully engineered Mini-ITX cases in recent memory. The vertical GPU mounting with a full-coverage mesh side panel creates a dedicated GPU airflow zone, which Guru3D found reduces thermal interference between the CPU and graphics card — usually the critical failure mode in SFF builds. NZXT’s assembly experience is cleaner than most in the Mini-ITX category, with logical build sequencing and adequate cable management routing behind the motherboard tray. At $150 it sits firmly in the premium SFF bracket. The trade-off, as with any airflow-first design, is that acoustics suffer somewhat compared to closed-panel alternatives.

FPS Review take: The SFF segment keeps getting better, and the H2 Flow is a strong option for anyone wanting to put high-end modern hardware into a compact box without cooking it. The vertical GPU layout is becoming the standard in this space for good reason. Just make sure you actually want the noise trade-off before committing.

ASUS ROG Harpe II Ace

Written reviews:

Consensus summary: The ROG Harpe II Ace has been out for a bit now (with us first seeing it at Computex last year), and KitGuru put out a review on it this week. They awarded a 9.0 and summarized it as a well-built FPS mouse that doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel but executes on everything that matters. Tweaktown called it a “sum of its parts” situation — 48 grams, 42,000 DPI AimPoint Pro sensor, 8K polling over both wired and wireless, optical switches, bio-based nylon shell, and ASUS’s improved Gear Link software that replaces the widely disliked Armoury Crate. Shape refinements from the previous Harpe Ace Aim Lab Edition are subtle but intentional, with the hump lowered slightly and side contours adjusted in collaboration with pro VALORANT players. Battery life hits around 84 hours with RGB on at 1,000 Hz polling.

FPS Review take: The Harpe II Ace sits at $169.99, which puts it in direct competition with the Razer Viper V4 Pro (also reviewed this week at multiple outlets). Both are ultralight, both run 8K polling, and both are targeting the same esports-focused buyer. The Harpe has the shape advantage for players who want something tested with actual pro input; the Viper V4 Pro has a more established software ecosystem. Either way, this corner of the market is very good right now.

SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro Omni

Written reviews:

Consensus summary: Igor Wallossek’s review is characteristically exhaustive: 109 minutes of reading (Ed: I think their estimator bonked), a full teardown, objective frequency response and latency measurements, and an external EQ correction profile. At €399.99, the Nova Pro Omni sits between the more widely reviewed Nova Pro Wireless and SteelSeries’ €650 Nova Elite flagship. The headline feature is OmniPlay — simultaneous mixing of up to four audio sources across PC, console, Bluetooth, and auxiliary inputs — combined with the Infinite Power System’s hot-swappable battery design, LC3+ codec support, and 96kHz/24-bit Hi-Res wireless audio. Igor’s measured conclusion: the Nova Pro Omni is not meaningfully worse than the Nova Elite in acoustic performance despite the significant price difference, which is either praise for the Omni or a critique of the Elite’s pricing, depending on your read.

FPS Review take: igorsLAB is one of the few outlets doing objective acoustic measurement on gaming headsets rather than purely subjective listening impressions, which makes their reviews worth seeking out even when the product isn’t a headliner. The Nova Pro Omni won’t make anyone’s “buy immediately” list at €400, but if you need multi-source audio mixing and a wireless setup that genuinely won’t die mid-session, the case is there.

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David Schroth
David is a computer hardware enthusiast that has been tinkering with computer hardware for the past 25 years and writing reviews for more than ten years. He's the Founder and Editor in Chief of The FPS Review.

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