PC Hardware News, Reviews & Buying Guides — Page 22 of 61
Daily news digests, benchmark roundups, and long-form buying guides on GPUs, CPUs, home AI workstations, local LLM runtimes, retro PC builds, and the tools real builders use in 2026.
Showing articles 1051–1100 of 3046.
Browse 14 Categories
- Intel Arc vs NVIDIA 2026: Local LLM Tokens per Dollar — Intel Arc B580, A770 16GB, and Arc Pro B60 24GB vs NVIDIA — community benchmarks and published specs map the tokens-per-dollar gap in 2026… Mike Perry · 2026-07-09
- SteamDSXL Yay or Nay? Dual-Screen Steam Deck Dock Review — SteamDSXL adds a second screen to the Steam Deck for NDS, 3DS, and Wii U emulation. Here's what community reports reveal about real-world… Mike Perry · 2026-07-09
- AMD Revives Zen 2: Ryzen 7 4700LE in $800 RTX 3050 Prebuilts — AMD's Ryzen 7 4700LE resurfaces Zen 2 in $800 RTX 3050 prebuilts. Synthesis of public benchmarks and community analysis breaks down who… Mike Perry · 2026-07-09
- Why PSU Fans Aren't Built for Repairability — PSU fans resist easy replacement due to high-voltage safety requirements, integrated thermal tuning, and proprietary connectors… Mike Perry · 2026-07-09
- Alienware AW3426DW Review: QD-OLED Ultrawide Gaming at $699 — Alienware's QD-OLED ultrawide brings near-infinite contrast and 175Hz gaming to 3440×1440 at $699, based on specs and reviews from Tom's… Mike Perry · 2026-07-09
- AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D Re-Review: DDR4's Last Gaming Champion in 2026 — Is the Ryzen 7 5800X3D still worth it in 2026? For AM4 owners feeling CPU-bound, yes — Tom's Hardware's re-review confirms the 3D V-Cache… Mike Perry · 2026-07-09 · 9 min read
- Best 4K Monitor for PS5 and PC Under $500: KOORUI QD-Mini LED vs Samsung Odyssey — Best 27-inch 4K gaming monitor under $500 for PS5 and PC? KOORUI QD-Mini LED wins on HDR peak brightness; Samsung Odyssey wins on polish… Mike Perry · 2026-07-09 · 9 min read
- Best Budget AM4 CPU for a 2026 AI + Gaming Build: 5800X vs 5700X vs 5600G — Which AM4 Ryzen for a 2026 gaming + AI build? The 5700X wins on price and thermals, the 5800X earns its slot for LLM offload, the 5600G is… Mike Perry · 2026-07-09 · 9 min read
- Replace a Dying IDE Drive With CompactFlash in a Win98 Retro PC — How to boot Windows 98 from a CompactFlash card in a retro PC. A Transcend CF133 plus a passive CF-to-IDE adapter gives you a silent… Mike Perry · 2026-07-09 · 10 min read
- Adafruit's Cyberdeck Raspberry Pi Music Workstation Guide Lands — Adafruit's fresh cyberdeck build guide pairs a Raspberry Pi 4 8GB with dual displays and a Linux audio stack. Here is what the base board… Mike Perry · 2026-07-09 · 9 min read
- OpenAI Just Beat Every Human at AtCoder — Can You Run a Coding LLM Locally? — What hardware runs a capable local coding LLM in 2026? A 12GB card, an 8-core Ryzen, and 32GB DDR4 handle 7-14B code models at full-speed… Mike Perry · 2026-07-09 · 10 min read
- Can the RTX 3060 12GB Run Qwen3-27B Locally in 2026? — A 12GB RTX 3060 runs Qwen3-27B, but not fully in VRAM. Expect CPU offload, single-digit tokens per second on 27B at q4, and 14B as the… Mike Perry · 2026-07-09 · 10 min read
- Lossless Scaling on Steam Deck: Is It Worth It? — Lossless Scaling adds frame generation and upscaling to any Windows game — but Steam Deck's SteamOS blocks it. Here's when the $7 tool is… Mike Perry · 2026-07-09
- Raspberry Pi Zero 2W: Privacy-Preserving Ring Alternative — Ring's cloud model raises real data-sharing concerns. Here's how the Raspberry Pi Zero 2W enables a fully local, encrypted home camera… Mike Perry · 2026-07-09
- 20GB Homelab Memory Left: What to Add Next — With 20 GB of homelab RAM free, the top uses are ZFS ARC caching, local LLM inference on 8B models, and additional Proxmox VMs — here is… Mike Perry · 2026-07-09
- Steam Deck: Linux's Trojan Horse for PC Gamers — SteamOS's Proton layer runs most of Steam's library on Linux. Here's how Steam Deck is quietly converting Windows gamers and what it means… Mike Perry · 2026-07-09
- MSI Raider 16 Max HX Review: Elite Gaming and Creator Power — MSI Raider 16 Max HX pairs Intel HX silicon with high-TDP NVIDIA graphics and a wide-gamut OLED display for creators and gamers who demand… Mike Perry · 2026-07-09
- MSI MPG 322UR QD-OLED X24: 4K 240Hz Performance Analyzed — MSI's 32-inch QD-OLED combines native 4K with 240Hz refresh and per-pixel OLED contrast — here's what public benchmarks say about real… Mike Perry · 2026-07-09
- Acer Nitro 65 Review: Solid Gaming, Connectivity Caveats — The Acer Nitro 65 pairs an RTX 4060 with a 144 Hz IPS panel for capable 1080p gaming, but port selection gaps and thermal constraints… Mike Perry · 2026-07-09
- $100 CPU Shootout: Ryzen 5 5500 vs Core i3-14100F vs i3-12100F — Ryzen 5 5500, Core i3-14100F, and Core i3-12100F benchmarked on DDR4: which $100 CPU wins for gaming, productivity, and total platform… Mike Perry · 2026-07-08
- Advanced Shader Delivery on the RX 9070 XT: Benchmark Results — AMD's Advanced Shader Delivery on the RX 9070 XT cuts load times and stutter in shader-heavy DX12 titles, per AMD's published data and… Mike Perry · 2026-07-08
- News: Mistral Enters Robotics With Robostral Navigate 8B — Mistral's Robostral Navigate is an 8B vision-language model built for monocular robot navigation. Weights are out; here's what to build… Mike Perry · 2026-07-08 · 3 min read
- News: ChatGPT Now Listens and Talks at Once — OpenAI shipped full-duplex voice for ChatGPT — you can interrupt it and it can interrupt you. Here's the mic + headphone upgrade that… Mike Perry · 2026-07-08 · 4 min read
- Mount a 90s Big-Box CD-ROM ISO on Win98 Without a CD Drive — Two working methods to install big-box 90s CD-ROM games on a Win98 machine without a working CD drive — CompactFlash + IDE adapter setup. Mike Perry · 2026-07-08 · 7 min read
- Noctua NH-U12S vs ML240L RGB on a Ryzen 7 5800X — For a stock AMD Ryzen 7 5800X in a case with real airflow, a well-mounted Noctua NH-U12S is enough — as of 2026 it holds all-core… Mike Perry · 2026-07-08 · 11 min read
- Crucial BX500 vs Samsung 970 EVO Plus: SATA vs NVMe Boot Drive — Samsung's 970 EVO Plus NVMe vs Crucial's BX500 SATA — the boot-drive comparison for 2026 builds, with real boot and game-load timings. Mike Perry · 2026-07-08 · 7 min read
- Build a Privacy-First Ring Alternative on a Raspberry Pi 4 in 2026 — A Pi 4 8GB running Frigate handles motion + person + package detection with local storage on NVMe. No cloud, no monthly bill, no third… Mike Perry · 2026-07-08 · 6 min read
- Mistral Robostral Navigate: An 8B Model Steers Robots From One Camera — Robostral Navigate 8B does monocular navigation with one webcam. The compute split that makes it work: Pi 4 for safety, RTX 3060 for the… Mike Perry · 2026-07-08 · 7 min read
- ChatGPT Full-Duplex Voice: What Real-Time Speech Needs on Your Desk — ChatGPT's full-duplex voice mode exposes every weakness in your audio path. The mic + headphone picks that make it feel like a real… Mike Perry · 2026-07-08 · 6 min read
- Gemini API Adds MCP + Background Execution: Build a Local Agent Host — Google added MCP tools and background execution to the Gemini API. A Raspberry Pi 4 8GB hosts the plumbing; a used RTX 3060 handles the… Mike Perry · 2026-07-08 · 7 min read
- Fable 5 as Manager: The Delegate-to-Sonnet-5 Cost Pattern — The manager pattern for agentic coding: Fable 5 to plan, Sonnet 5 to execute, a local 7B to finish. Cost math and the RTX 3060 12GB build. Mike Perry · 2026-07-08 · 7 min read
- Grok 4.5 Ranks #4 on GDPval: Cloud-vs-Local Math for 2026 — Grok 4.5 landed #4 on GDPval-AA v2 with aggressive pricing — here's the break-even math against a used RTX 3060 12GB local rig for 2026… Mike Perry · 2026-07-08 · 9 min read
- AMD Radeon RX 9070 GRE Review: Thoroughly Midrange — The AMD Radeon RX 9070 GRE brings RDNA 4 ray tracing, FSR 4 upscaling, and a competitive efficiency envelope to the 1440p midrange — here… Mike Perry · 2026-07-08
- Hands-On: Asus ROG Harpe II Extreme Edition 20 Gaming Mouse — Asus' ROG Harpe II Extreme Edition 20 pairs 24K gold-plated Omron switches with a 65,536-DPI optical sensor and 12,000Hz polling for its… Mike Perry · 2026-07-08
- Single vs. Dual Channel Memory: Intel Core Ultra 7 270K — Dual-channel DDR5-6000 roughly doubles memory bandwidth on Arrow Lake — public benchmarks show 10–18% gaming gains and near-2× LLM… Mike Perry · 2026-07-08
- What Is AI? A Practical 2026 Guide for Makers — What AI actually is in 2026, how the math works, and what hardware makers need for local LLMs, image generation, and edge inference… Mike Perry · 2026-07-08
- Ethernet WiFi Router on a Pi Pico 2W: What's Possible — The $6 Raspberry Pi Pico 2W can run a basic NAT router bridging Wi-Fi to wired Ethernet — here's what community builds achieve and where… Mike Perry · 2026-07-08
- Raycast FPS in COBOL: Can a 60-Year-Old Language Render 3D? — Community builders are proving COBOL can render pseudo-3D FPS scenes — if you bridge its fixed-point arithmetic to modern GPU shims and… Mike Perry · 2026-07-08
- Amazon RTX 5060 Deal: $324 Budget GPU for 1080p Gaming — Amazon's lightning sale drops the Nvidia RTX 5060 to $324 — here's how the Blackwell-gen card performs at 1080p and whether the deal is… Mike Perry · 2026-07-08
- Save $550 on iBuyPower RTX 5070 + 7800X3D 4K Gaming PC — A $550 markdown puts this liquid-cooled iBuyPower rig with RTX 5070 and Ryzen 7 7800X3D at $1,449 — below current DIY build cost per… Mike Perry · 2026-07-08
- AMD EXPO Ultra-Low Latency BIOS Updates: 600-Series Guide — AMD EXPO Ultra-Low Latency BIOS updates from ASRock, Gigabyte, and MSI tighten DDR5 subtimings on 600-series AM5 boards, delivering up to… Mike Perry · 2026-07-08
- AMD Challenges Nvidia DGX Spark with $3,999 Ryzen AI Halo — AMD's Strix Halo mini-PCs arrive at $3,999 — $700 under Nvidia's DGX Spark — delivering 128GB unified memory and native Windows 11 for… Mike Perry · 2026-07-08
- Double RTX 3070 VRAM: What's Actually Possible in 2026 — RTX 3070 owners hitting the 8GB VRAM ceiling face costly physical mods, free software workarounds, or a GPU swap. Here's what the evidence… Mike Perry · 2026-07-07
- Asus ProArt PA27USD 27-Inch OLED Review: Color Meets Gaming Speed — The Asus ProArt PA27USD pairs factory-calibrated 100% DCI-P3 OLED color with 4K 144Hz gaming — a synthesis of published specs, certified… Mike Perry · 2026-07-07
- Add AI Vision to a Raspberry Pi 4 8GB with an AI Accelerator (2026) — To add AI vision to a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B 8GB in 2026, pair it with a Coral USB Accelerator or a Hailo-8 M.2 module on a HAT, run a… Mike Perry · 2026-07-07 · 11 min read
- Raspberry Pi 5 vs Pi 4 8GB for Homelab: Which Should You Buy? — Pi 4 8GB is still the value pick for RAM-hungry homelab loads. Pi 5 wins on NVMe throughput and the incoming IOMMU story. Here's how to… Mike Perry · 2026-07-07 · 11 min read
- Throw a Modern Retro LAN Party in 2026: The Hardware Checklist — You need one gigabit unmanaged switch with enough ports for every rig plus a headroom port, twelve to twenty Cat6 patch runs in the… Mike Perry · 2026-07-07 · 13 min read
- Build a Silent Win98 Retro PC with CompactFlash Storage (2026) — To build a silent Windows 98 SE retro PC with CompactFlash storage in 2026, pair a fixed-disk-mode CF card (a Transcend CF133 4GB is the… Mike Perry · 2026-07-07 · 11 min read
- Best PC Game Controller for Every Genre in 2026 — *As an Amazon Associate, SpecPicks earns from qualifying purchases. Prices and availability current as of July 2026 and may vary.* Mike Perry · 2026-07-07 · 14 min read
- Best Retro Mini Console & Handheld in 2026 — The Sega Genesis Mini, SNES Classic, Nintendo Switch Lite, PS4 Pro, and PS4 Slim — the five retro-friendly consoles worth buying in 2026… Mike Perry · 2026-07-07 · 12 min read