About SpecPicks — PC Hardware Research, Spec Comparisons & Buying Guides
SpecPicks is a product research site focused on three niches we care deeply about: modern PC gaming hardware, retro gaming (consoles, handhelds, emulation, cartridges), and retro PC building (period-correct parts from Pentium-era IDE cables to AGP graphics cards).
What we do
We maintain a catalog of over 158,000 products sourced from Amazon and eBay, enriched with specification data, pricing history, and ratings. We publish buying guides, head-to-head comparisons, and category overviews so you can answer questions like "what's the best GPU for 1440p under $500" or "which Voodoo5 5500 drivers actually work on Windows XP" without digging through a dozen forum threads.
How we pick products
Our rankings combine benchmark percentile rank within the category, Amazon review distribution, spec-per-dollar value, and a category-specific signal, then apply category validation rules — see the methodology for the weights. A graphics card that doesn't match the GPU keyword fingerprint never shows up in our "Best GPUs" guide. We flag anything we can't verify. Every product listing links out to the retailer (Amazon or eBay) so you buy directly from them.
Who edits SpecPicks
SpecPicks is edited by its founder, Mike Perry, and covers modern gaming hardware, retro computing, and local AI inference rigs. The majority of our content synthesises community benchmarks, manufacturer specifications, user review aggregation, and publicly available performance data. The SpecPicks Retro Lab (launched 2026) publishes first-party hardware reports with raw measurement datasets — tagged specpicks-lab and covered by a separate methodology disclosure on each report. See our full methodology →
- Mike Perry — Founder & Editor-in-Chief. Synthesises community benchmarks, manufacturer specifications and public performance data into SpecPicks buying guides, with a focus on GPU performance across gaming, rendering, and local-LLM inference.
Article bylines link to author profile pages where available. Our methodology page documents how we synthesise benchmark sources and rank products across each category.
How we make money
SpecPicks participates in the Amazon Associates and eBay Partner Network affiliate programs. When you click a "View on Amazon" or "View on eBay" button and buy something, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. That revenue pays for the catalog, hosting, and the editorial work behind the guides. See our full affiliate disclosure for details.
Editorial independence
We do not accept payment for favourable reviews or guaranteed rankings. Sponsored content, when it appears, is clearly labelled. Our category rules and ranking logic are deterministic — we don't hand-tune the order of products in a guide to please any retailer.
Contact
Questions, corrections, or partnership inquiries: see the contact page. For privacy / data requests, see our privacy policy.
Recent reviews & guides
Browse all reviews →- Halloween Talking Prop: Qwen3 4B on Jetson Orin Nano Super vs Raspberry Pi 5 16GB
- FLUX.2 Klein 4B for Halloween Art: RTX 3060 12GB vs RTX 5060 8GB
- 9800X3D + RTX 5070 Ti PC Build 2026: 1440p High-Refresh
- Qwen 3.6 35B-A3B on a 16GB GPU: RTX 5060 Ti vs RX 9060 XT Quant Table
- Gemma 4 31B on a 16GB GPU: RTX 5060 Ti vs RX 9060 XT vs Arc A770 Quant Table (2026)
- Local-LLM PC Build on a 16GB Card: What r/LocalLLaMA and r/buildapc Concluded (2026)
- Used RTX 3090 vs New GPU for Local LLMs: 2026 Reddit Consensus
- gpt-oss on a 12GB GPU: 2026 Community Consensus (RTX 3060)
- RTX 3060 12GB Local LLM: Reddit Consensus on What Runs (2026)
- Qwen 3.6 27B on 16GB: RTX 5060 Ti 16GB vs RX 9060 XT 16GB by Quant (2026)