DigiTimes reports global Q2 2014 graphics card shipments are set to fall by 30-40% Q-o-Q as vendor are suffering from excessive inventories, at least according to unnamed industry sources.

Apparently graphics card players and channel retailers are urging AMD and Nvidia should boost demand by slashing prices, but the two companies insist on reducing shipments in order to maintain profits and inventory-new shipment balance.

Further impacting graphic card sales is a drop in GPU demand for Bitcoin mining, the sources continue. Cryptocurrency production used to be a GPU-intensive activity, but a change in the difficulty of the mining process resulted in the reduction of need for GPU grunt.

In these days of increasingly small hardware, it's good to see a massive old fashioned PC. Like the DK-01X and DK-02X, PC cases so big they double as a desk. No, seriously, they have legs and everything!

Presented at Computex by Taiwanese case maker Lian Li, the DK-01X and DK-02X are aluminium work desks featuring a lockable sliding drawer with enough space for an HPTX-size motherboard. Or two in case of the DK-02X, since it is large enough to house an extra mini-ITX system.

The drawer inside the DK-01X is 90cm long, while the DK-02X is 125cm. Both support 360mm radiators on the side, have removable front brackets, carry up to 3 monitor mounts and have space for plenty of ports, connections and storage.

The European Commission (EC) signs a directive with the aim of cutting the costs involved in the rollout of high-speed broadband across the EU, even in areas where deployment is currently too costly.

The result of two years of work, the directive outlines best practices in 4 main areas-- enhanced facility sharing (such as ducts, poles or masts), efficient coordination of civil works, faster and simpler permit granting and equipping of new buildings and major renovations with high-speed internet infrastructure.

Member states have until 1 January 2016 to include the directive into national legislation, but stakeholders can start "exploit[ing] synergies right now," as the EC puts it.

IDC lowers 2014 IT spending forecasts from 4.6% growth to 4.1%, a decline from the 4.5% growth seen in 2013 as spending remains "volatile" due to "macroeconomic wild cards" hitting on business confidence and investment.

Such wildcards include the crisis in Ukraine and slowdown in China.

Another weak spot is the slowdown in mobile device growth caused by price erosion and a more mature installed base.

“As smartphone growth continues to cool from the phenomenal expansion of the past few years, tablet shipments have performed weaker than expected over the past couple of quarters,” IDC says. “This volatility, coupled with the macroeconomic uncertainty in many emerging markets, is somewhat masking a more positive underlying foundation for enterprise IT spending.”