German utility provider and energy retailer SWK Energie just launched a new marketing strategy targeting gamers. According to ComputerBase [machine translated], meinGAMING has a lot of gamer-focused marketing, like comparing its reliability to “your favorite server” and influencer marketing by game streamers like Limcube. However, this doesn’t mean that the company infused its power grid with some magic gaming juice to let gamers squeeze extra FPS from the outlets. Instead, it offers an electricity plan designed for high-consumption households, whether you’re running four RTX 5090 gaming PCs or charging four EVs simultaneously every day.

The company says this in its FAQ section — the plan is worthwhile for households with a consumption of over 2,500 kWh annually, either “through gaming, streaming, or simply because many devices are running.” Even though it claims to be cheaper than the competition, meinGAMING has a higher base price, so it does not recommend the service if you do not hit the minimum recommended power use. But even if you’re a Germany-based gamer who uses a lot of electricity, that doesn’t mean that you should switch to this service right now. Instead, you should compare your current rates with what the company is offering, as the tariff may vary depending on your location.

Many companies have been targeting gamers in their marketing material, from computer components, peripherals, and furniture to food and beverages, promising to improve their performance and reaction times to gain an edge over their opponents. While some of these gamer-branded things do offer an item or service that’s a little better compared to the average consumer item, a lot more are unfortunately snake oil with RGB slapped on and prices afflicted by “gamer tax.” Still, many buy them because gamer branding and marketing are quite eye-catching.

Even government agencies have dived onto the gamer marketing bandwagon — the U.S. Army has targeted gamers in its recruitment drives while the FAA’s last hiring campaign focused on gamers and hit 94% of its hiring goal. Even the Royal Navy has recognized gaming as one of the hobbies of its sailors, with its latest ship hosting eight high-end gaming PCs for LAN parties on the high seas.

While meinGAMING won’t make you a better gamer, it could potentially help you save on electricity costs if you consume a relatively high amount of electricity. As an additional bonus, the company says that its power is 100% sourced from renewable energy, reducing the load on your wallet and conscience as you spend hours in front of your gaming PC. However, how it ensures the power used actually comes from renewable sources remains an open question.

When a PC gamer's GPU with a 12VHPWR or 12V-2x6 power connector melts, it's often in a computer they built by hand, and they typically only have one chance at recourse — hoping their GPU is under warranty and making a claim.

But it ends up that when someone else built your PC, it could open up a can of worms that has two companies pointing the blame at each other while a customer sits with a burned-up RTX 5090, power supply, and power cords.

That's what happened to Tom's Hardware reader Anthony DeMarco, whose father purchased a Digital Storm Corsa for him ahead of his first job after graduating from college. DeMarco says he suggested his father purchase the system before RAM prices went up. The system was delivered in May of 2025. DeMarco says he tested the system, then packed it up for when he got a job. That jealousy-inducing system included an AMD Ryzen 9 9950X, 2TB Crucial T700 Pro SSD, 64GB of Kingston Fury RGB RAM, and, crucially, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 from PNY. The computer cost $5,245.00 before tax.

DeMarco says he got the computer from his father in August 2026, upon starting his job. He says the problems started two weeks later.

"I noticed a strange burning smell from near my computer," he recalled to Tom's Hardware, wondering if it was an issue with dust from another PC he owned. "The next day I noticed my monitor screen kept flickering. I then used Claude to try to figure out the issue and it pointed to the GPU, and then I checked the wires and noticed them very melted and burned. I immediately powered off my computer so hopefully my GPU is still functional."

But that's hard for him to tell. The cable was "fused" into the connector, and while he managed to separate the pieces, some of the connectors are still stuck together.

The damage went beyond the GPU, with the "most severe" damage at the power supply, a 1,000-watt semi-modular model from Digital Storm with an 80-Plus Gold rating. This is the cheapest, default option you get when you pick an RTX 5090 on the Corsa configurator, though his PSU cables are an upgrade with custom blue sleeving. "The cable into the power supply is completely melted and the cable head is completely fused into the power supply with bare wires exposed at both ends of the cable," he said.

DeMarco claims that he checked that all the cabling was in place after his father formally gave him the PC.

Pictures of the damage

The photos that DeMarco sent us are brutal. Perhaps the worst are the photos of the ends of the power cable, which are wrecked on both ends. But there's burns on the cable itself, too. The part going into the GPU appears to have some sort of bend, though we don't have many photos to judge perspective.

Who do you go to for help?

DeMarco had two options to go to for help. Digital Storm, which built the PC, and PNY which made the GPU.

This is where buying the system early bit DeMarco. Digital Storm offers a one-year warranty on parts and three years on its labor, and that one-year warranty on parts was up. But the components are separately supported by manufacturers, and PNY warranties its GeForce RTX gaming GPUs for three years.

He went first to Digital Storm, raising a support ticket under his father's name on Aug. 26, according to records Tom's Hardware reviewed. He later uploaded photos. That ticket was closed on Aug. 31 following a phone call, a summary of which explains that while there is a "faulty 12VHPWR cable that melted" that DeMarco would attempt to RMA (Return Merchandise Authorization) with PNY, the GPU vendor, due to being "Due to being far out of warranty." DeMarco also claimed on the call that he could get the GPU fixed at a repair center to replace the power connector on the GPU.

On Sept. 8, DeMarco had a back and forth email chain with PNY, requesting an RMA of the GPU and highlighting the 3-year warranty. He also inquired if PNY offered a repair service for his existing GPU. Following supplying the receipt and photos of the damage, a PNY service representative said there was an issue with the fact that Digital Storm had used its own cables.

"We want to clarify an important part of the warranty regarding the power connection to the GPU. All PNY GPUs that require a 16-pin (12VHPWR / 12V-2x6) input include a PNY-approved power cable or adapter in the box. This cable is the only configuration covered under warranty," the PNY support rep wrote. "If a third-party power cable, adapter, or PSU cable is used and damage occurs — including melting, burning, overheating, or deformation of the connector — PNY cannot accept the product under warranty. Damage caused by non-PNY cables falls under the responsibility of the manufacturer of that cable or power supply."

"We are always happy to help with any PNY-related issues," they added, "but in cases where the damage was caused by unsupported cabling, we are unable to process an RMA."

DeMarco responded with a series of questions. Does PNY publish a list of approved cables? Is the bundled adapter the only supported configuration, and not an ATX cable included with a PSU? Are system builders covered when they use PNY's cables?

The answers to the first two (no, and not automatically) don't change much. On the third, PNY's rep wrote that machines from authorized system builders are covered, it doesn't mean their cabling is.

Without knowing what else to do, on Sept. 16, DeMarco filed a report on the Consumer Product Safety Commission SaferProducts.gov database.

"PNY stands behind its GeForce RTX graphics cards, including those sold through our authorized system builder partners," the company wrote in a statement to Tom's Hardware when asked about its policies. "We are presently reviewing this case and will be engaging the customer directly. PNY’s ongoing commitment to its customers includes providing clear terms, policies and processes, and making adjustments where appropriate."

Digital Storm did not respond to requests for comment.

DeMarco then asked if PNY has a repair service he could pay for out of pocket (they do not), and then came to Tom's Hardware with his plight. He had seen another story of PNY rejecting an RMA for using a cable that came with their power supply — an ASRock rated for 1,600 watts.

In Digital Storm's warranty, it says that "After the first year, Digital Storm will help replace any defective parts for the customer as long as those parts are still under warranty with the manufacture [sic]." DeMarco says Digital Storm said that because PNY had denied him, there was no use getting involved, but there is no corroborating record of this.

What does he want? What should he get?

If it were up to DeMarco, he wouldn't get another GPU. He'd get a refund for the component:

"In an ideal situation I would get a refund for my PNY RTX 5090 instead of [having] it replaced because I do not feel safe leaving my computer to run anymore without me if it has a PNY RTX 5090 in it."

In his email, DeMarco writes that there is a "a known problem with the PNY RTX 5090 power connector melting that is happening to many people."

In this area, he's incorrect, at least when it comes to PNY. There have been plenty of reports over the years of GPUs with a 12VHPWR connector that have melted across both RTX 4090 and RTX 5090 graphics cards, and many of those are other brands. This is a widely known issue with the connector, which is standardized by the Peripheral Component Interconnect Special Interest Group, or PCI-SIG. In 2022, PCI-SIG sent a notice to members about the connector, ensuring they test for safety and help avoid user error.

If DeMarco were to get a refund and turn around and buy an RTX 5090 from another manufacturer, it's possible he could see the same fate. Digital Storm doesn't guarantee a PNY RTX 5090. "Digital Storm will use a top brand name graphics card from the likes of ASUS, PNY, MSI, etc... An example would be the ASUS TURBO series," the website reads.

One could say that either company could step up and help DeMarco out as a way of engendering goodwill. PNY's warranty isn't specific about which power cable you can use, though reviewing other GPU vendors' policies leads to an equally mixed bag. MSI's is more specific, stating that the warranty can be voided based on "any breakdown or damage caused by the use of parts or software not authorized or recommended by MSI[.]" Asus' warranty has similar vague language to PNY's. PC building is often a hobby where parts from various manufacturers are used.

In most cases, going to Digital Storm would be the obvious answer. But DeMarco and his father let the expensive system sit in a box for over a year. While he was right to test it out of the box to make sure it worked, a gesture of goodwill buying in advance ultimately backfired when it ran out the clock on the warranty, and the system builder doesn't seem to have any further obligation here.

What should you do if you buy prebuilt?

When you build your own PC, it's up to you which power cables you use. When you buy one elsewhere, that's on them.

Reviewing the warranty for every single component in a system (if you even know it — DeMarco didn't know which GPU he was getting here) is onerous. But reviewing the single warranty from any system builder could give you an understanding of how much support you might get in the future.

Alternatively, if you're really worried, you could buy a system from the company that makes the GPU and PSU, like Asus or MSI sometimes do. It's hard to blame the cabling when they chose it.

If you're buying a gift, buying it in time for the recipient to get most of the warranty is the best idea, especially on an expensive purchase where parts can fail. Or, at the very least, you may want to purchase extended coverage.

DeMarco says he checked all the connections. That's a good idea. You shouldn't have to do it, but better safe than sorry. While you're at it, you can also make sure the RAM and GPU are properly seated.

What if I'm building my own PC?

If you're building your own PC, you're handling each warranty individually. In theory, if you want to be extremely conservative, you could be sure to only use the PSU adapter that comes with most RTX 4090 and 5090 graphics cards: a 16-pin power connector that connects to four standard 8-pin PCIe power connectors, from the power supply.

But that also eliminates a lot of cables that come from perfectly good power supplies that might eschew the need for adapters, making for cleaner, simpler builds.

While DeMarco is out of warranty with Digital Storm, PNY's policies could be more representative of what PC building is really like. And so can Asus, MSI, Gigabyte, and anyone else who makes a GPU, including Nvidia itself. Perhaps, with the most expensive GPUs, it's time for companies to be putting both adapters and full on 16-pin ATX cables in the box.

PC building is all about customization. And it seems the more custom you get, the less likely companies selling the most expensive GPUs are going to be flexible about helping to replace those parts if there's a problem, even, if, like the 16-pin connector, it's a possibility that could strike almost anyone.

Embedded and industrial computing specialist Aaeon has launched a fanless mini PC featuring up to an Intel Core Ultra X7 358H processor. The PC, dubbed the Up Xtreme PTL Edge Air, utilizes Frore’s AirJet ultrasonic membrane technology for active cooling.

The use of this cooling tech means that the Up Xtreme PTL Edge Air is virtually silent, operating at less than 21 dBA. Moreover, Aaeon boasts that it has allowed its mini PC designers to make this device “35% thinner and 43% lighter” than a traditional heatsink and fan-cooled model.

The Aaeon Up Xtreme PTL Edge Air doesn’t look very much like a regular consumer mini PC. That’s because it is designed for the embedded and industrial market. Aaeon mentions that this model might be purchased “for integration in space-constrained applications such as ultra-thin kiosk setups, low-clearance AMR housing, and compact mobile healthcare units.” Besides being virtually silent, thin, and light for those use cases, Aaeon touts the appeal of “its elimination of fan-induced vibration” in those target markets as well as robotic controllers, actuators, sensors, and cameras.

The I/O makes it clear this isn't a consumer-grade system. In addition to the commonly seen USB-A and USB-C ports, LAN, audio, and various video outputs, the Up Xtreme PTL Edge Air packs in a pair of COM ports for RS-232/422/485, and a 40-pin GPIO. This mini PC can be connected to up to four displays simultaneously.

Three Up Xtreme PTL Edge Air can be specced with an Intel Core Ultra X7 358H, Ultra 7 356H, or Ultra 5 325 processor. The X7 model features the potent Intel Arc B390 iGPU with 12 Xe-cores. Inside you can fit two DDR5 SODIMMs up to 128GB total and speeds of 7,200 MT/s. Two M.2 2280 SSDs can be fitted, and an M.2 2230 slot is earmarked for the wireless card.

We see a couple of sacrifices made to go slim, light, and quiet with the AirJet cooler. Specifically, Aaeon says that there is “a 6% increase in power consumption and a narrower operating temperature range of -10°C to 45°C” with this design.

As is typical for this kind of business-facing announcement, we don’t get any clear pricing. Normally, businesses will contact the likes of Aaeon directly with pricing inquiries based on how many units and so on. If you do manage to get a hold of one of these UP Xtreme PTL Edge Air mini PCs, you can run Windows IoT Enterprise or Ubuntu 24.04 LTS on it, according to the spec sheets.

The only other mini PC we've seen cooled using AirJet cooling is Zotac's ZBox PI430AJ mini PC, which was built around Intel's low-end N300 Atom CPU with a TDP of 7W.

American custom and prebuilt computer seller Maingear has launched a new instant trade-in program in partnership with SELLIT9. The new collab gives customers instant credit on any new Maingear desktop or laptop PC. A broad range of used tech can swiftly be exchanged for Maingear gift cards, including laptops, phones, tablets, smartwatches, headphones, cameras, lenses, and microphones. Instant trade-ins are live today, and until October 14, all those taking advantage of this low-friction old-for-new plan can earn an extra 5% on their traded-in products using the code EXTRA5.

In a press release sent to Tom’s Hardware, Maingear says that it knows that “Memory prices are up. Component prices are up. Meanwhile, perfectly good tech is collecting dust in drawers across the country.” This old and neglected tech can help you get your next hand-built gaming rig, suggests the company.

Naturally, Maingear sings the praises of its collab with SELLIT9’s recycling and refurbishment business. The New Jersey-based PC firm says the quotes its customers can get through SELLIT9 are truly instant. For example, it says that you will get a quote in minutes, and a Maingear gift card on the spot. That means you won’t have to wait for a shipping carton for your used gear to arrive, then make its way to SELLIT9, and subsequently pass inspections. However, we note some wording indicates that there’s “a temporary hold on the shopper’s card” until any traded-in gear “checks out.”

We have no experience of Maingear’s chosen partner SELLIT9, but its 4.6/5 score on TrustPilot looks pretty good for such a service, which can easily attract ire. SELLIT9 is a Canadian business that recently raised $4.1 million to expand across North America. Perhaps this Maingear partnership is its first foray into the U.S. We’ll have to see what else happens on Oct 1.

I checked some CAD prices for various used tech stuff on SELLIT9 and converted them to USD, suggesting you could get the following sums for used tech in the U.S.:

• Ryzen 7 9800X3D – up to $141
• Core i7-14700K – up to $120
• RTX 4080 Super – up to $530
• GTX 1080 Ti – up to $71
• 32GB desktop DDR4 RAM – up to $42
• iPhone 14 Pro 128GB – up to $278
• PS5 Slim (Digital Edition) – up to $160

We aren’t sure if these prices are directly translatable to the U.S. market, but they should give you a rough idea. Maingear also highlights that using its new trade-in service offers minimal friction for customers. That means “no listings, no lowball offers, and no meeting strangers in parking lots.”

When this article goes live, the new instant trade-in service goes live. Make sure to nose around the offers and let us know what you think.

The $1,999 iBuyPower Slate arrives with a formula that's hard to argue with: an RTX 5070, a Ryzen 7 7700X3D, a 360mm liquid cooler, and a tempered-glass chassis with plenty of RGB lighting. It even goes beyond expectations by including gaming peripherals that don't feel like afterthoughts.

But in an increasingly competitive mid-range desktop market, attractive extras and gaming prowess alone aren't always enough. The question is whether the Slate's gaming-first focus justifies its price when rivals offer stronger all-around performance for similar money.

Design of the iBuyPower Slate Gaming Desktop

There’s no mistaking the Slate for anything but a gaming machine. It’s designed to be seen inside and out, with a full-view tempered glass side panel. The front panel’s triangle glass partially shows off a trio of 120 mm RGB fans. The tower sits firmly in mid-tower territory, at 8.7 x 19.3 x 19.5 inches.

The mesh covering the rest of the front and top permits airflow and should do a decent job of blocking dust, though the case’s only removable air filter is under the bottom-mounted power supply.

Inside, the Slate’s blacked-out interior offers an RGB light strip running along the power supply compartment and up the front panel. Additional lighting comes from the two memory DIMMs. The GPU, an Asus Dual RTX 5070 in our review unit, lacks illumination. The lighting can be controlled via the Hyte Nexus app, though not on a per-component basis. (See the Software section later in this review.)

iBuyPower Slate Gaming Desktop Specifications

Ports and Upgradeability on the iBuyPower Slate Gaming Desktop

Mid-tower desktops tend to include lots of ports, and iBuyPower’s Slate doesn’t disappoint. The top-mounted front connectivity includes one USB-C and two USB-A (all 5 Gbps) plus separate headphone and microphone jacks. The positioning of these ports works best if the desktop is placed on the floor; it’s less ideal on a desk.

Rear connectivity on the ASRock B650M-CX motherboard includes one USB-C 3.2 (10 Gbps), one USB-A 3.2 (10 Gbps), two USB-A 3.2 (5 Gbps), four USB 2.0, Ethernet, HDMI, and audio jacks. Though there are no truly high-speed ports, they aren’t expected outside of high-end towers with pricier motherboards. The desktop also includes Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth – the antennas must be connected as shown here for meaningful range.

The side panels come off with a tug at the top rear, hinging outward and away. Seven 120 mm fans – three front, three on the top-mounted 360 mm CPU cooling radiator, and one rear – provide plentiful airflow. Cabling is reasonably tidy, though the bundle of unused cables from the non-modular 750-watt power supply is a bit of a mess.

The CPU cooler is more than a basic model, with an LED screen showing CPU temperature, frequency, and load. The display can’t be customized, though it can be toggled off in the Hyte Nexus app.

The Slate’s expansion options include one open PCIe x16 slot and four DIMM slots, two of which are unpopulated. The motherboard offers two M.2 2280 drive slots. There are two 2.5-inch drive sleds behind the motherboard, but no room for a 3.5-inch drive.

Gaming and Graphics on the iBuyPower Slate Gaming Desktop

We are testing the iBuyPower Slate with a Ryzen 7 7700X3D processor, GeForce RTX 5070 GPU, and 32GB of RAM.

Playing 007 First Light, at 3840 x 2160 with High settings and DLSS enabled, I observed between 60 and 70 frames per second (FPS) in outdoor scenes and closer to 80 FPS indoors. Using DLSS was required for smooth gameplay, as I saw roughly half the FPS without it.

Our comparison desktops include the Asus ROG G700 (Core Ultra 7 265KF, RTX 5070, $2,029.99 when reviewed) and the CyberPowerPC Gaming Desktop GXi3800BSTV2 (Core Ultra 7 270K Plus, RTX 5070, $2,309.99), both mid-tower systems with the same GPU but Intel processors.

At 1080p, iBuyPower’s Slate proved competitive overall, matching the Asus and CyberPowerPC in Shadow of the Tomb Raider (Highest settings), Cyberpunk 2077 (Ray Tracing Ultra), and Black Myth: Wukong (Cinematic). However, its Ryzen 7 7700X3D paid dividends in Far Cry 6 (Ultra), where its 185 FPS was well ahead of the Asus (110 FPS) and CyberPowerPC (141 FPS). It led by a similar amount in Red Dead Redemption 2, with 145 FPS against the Asus’ 120 FPS and the CyberPowerPC’s 126 FPS.

The Slate generally didn’t differentiate itself from the other desktops at the 4K resolution, an expected result since that resolution is almost always GPU-limited and these systems all rely on an RTX 5070. The exception was Far Cry 6, where the Slate’s 97 FPS greatly outperformed the 80 and 81 FPS produced by the Asus and CyberPowerPC, respectively.

Overall, despite its Ryzen 7 7700X3D not being nearly as powerful for general use as the Core Ultra 7 265K and Core Ultra 7 270K Plus featured in our competing systems, it can outperform both chips in games.

We stress-test gaming desktops running 15 loops of the Metro: Exodus benchmark at RTX settings. The iBuyPower desktop posted highly stable performance, averaging 145.7 FPS across all runs with less than a one frame variance across all runs. The Ryzen 7 7700X3D’s average temperature was 43 degrees Celsius and its average clock was 4.29 GHz. The RTX 5070 ran at 64 C and had an average core clock of 2.64 GHz.

I noticed a decent amount of fan noise from the Slate particularly when the CPU was stressed, causing the triple-fan CPU cooler to quickly ramp up to high speed. The fan noise was hardly noticeable for daily use and was relatively low while gaming as well.

Productivity Performance on the iBuyPower Slate Gaming Desktop

We tested the iBuyPower Slate gaming desktop featuring a Ryzen 7 7700X3D processor, 32GB of dual-channel DDR5-5200 RAM, and a 1TB PCIe 4.0 solid-state drive (a Patriot P410 as tested).

Productivity performance isn’t a strong point for this Slate configuration. Though its Ryzen 7 7700X3D remains potent for gaming, its previous generation eight-core architecture is outmuscled by the Core Ultra 7 K-class chips in both the Asus and CyberPowerPC systems, particularly the latter with its refreshed Core Ultra 7 270K Plus. The delta was significant: iBuyPower's system scored 14,222 in Geekbench multi-core versus 22,485 for CyberPowerPC, and took 3:35 to complete our 4K to 1080p Handbrake transcoding test versus just 2:03 for the Asus and 1:45 for the CyberPowerPC. The iBuyPower system does, however, include a decent storage drive, proving competitive in our 25GB file transfer test.

Despite the Slate’s performance delta versus the Core Ultra 7 systems, this PC is still highly capable for daily productivity and moderate content creation, such as video editing. Only those squeezing every last drop of performance out of their CPU will find it compelling to go with a more powerful chip than the Ryzen 7 7700X3D.

Keyboard and Mouse with the iBuyPower Slate Gaming Desktop

The Slate includes much better than average peripherals. The mechanical keyboard is the standout. Though not stated in the specs, it feels like it uses linear switches favored by gamers for their predictability. It felt rock solid in my testing and wasn’t overly loud. The keyboard supports RGB backlighting, though not per-key – the lighting can be set in the included Hyte Nexus app for various colors and patterns. You can also control the lighting through keyboard shortcuts – Fn+Ctrl cycles colors, Fn+Left/Right arrows alter brightness, Fn+Space Bar disables lighting, and Fn+Alt cycles through 16 backlighting patterns, such as breathing, pulsing, and steady. It’s also nice to see that the keyboard uses a detachable USB-C cable.

The mouse is also better than average, though it’s only for right handers. The standard buttons offer a solid feel, with two side buttons and a notched scroll wheel. The DPI button behind the scroll wheel switches between 1,200, 2,400, 3,500, 5,500, and 7,200 DPI, which are visually indicated by the DPI button illuminating in red, blue, green, purple, and yellow, respectively. The mouse fits my medium-size hand well. It’s internally backlit in RGB color, which can be configured in Hyte Nexus or toggled through 10 modes pressing the button on the underside. Patterns include color streaming, steady, and breathing, to name a few.

Software and Warranty on the iBuyPower Slate Gaming Desktop

Besides the usual preinstalled Windows 11 apps, iBuyPower only preloads one app – Hyte Nexus. It provides basic component temperature and frequency monitoring, but its real focus is RGB lighting control.

The menu is confusing – there are tiles for different components, such as the case, but these have no effect since the particular case used in the Slate isn’t recognized. Instead, all the action happens in the Lighting section. Many preset lighting recipes are included, such as Rainbow, Aurora, Ice, Fireplace, and Forest, which even apply to the keyboard and mouse. There are also options for screen mirroring, audio visualization, and static colors. You can save your settings in profiles.

That said, there’s no way to control lighting on a per-component basis – colors and patterns apply to all components at once since they are all connected to ARGB header 1. Confusingly, the app lets you change settings for the other headers, but this has no effect since nothing is connected to them. If the app indicated that those headers aren’t connected, this would have been more straightforward. The Slate nonetheless allows a decent amount of lighting customization despite lacking an advanced lighting controller, which would have increased the cost.

iBuyPower covers the Slate with a one-year parts and labor warranty.

iBuyPower Slate Gaming Desktop Configurations

We tested the iBuyPower Slate Gaming Desktop with a Ryzen 7 7700X3D processor, GeForce RTX 5070 graphics card, 32GB (2x 16GB) of DDR5-5200 RAM, and a 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD. A mechanical backlit gaming keyboard and mouse are included in the box.

Best Buy offers several other variations of the Slate. A $1,679.99 starter model included a Core i7-14700F and RTX 5060 while a $1,799.99 model stepped up to a Core Ultra 7 265F and RTX 5060 Ti. Above our test model, a $2,299.99 variant included a Ryzen 9 9900X3D, while a range-topping $2,999.99 model offered a Ryzen 9 7900X, an RTX 5080, and a 2TB SSD.

Bottom Line

iBuyPower’s Slate gets the mid-tier gaming desktop formula almost exactly right. Visually, its RGB lighting is attractive and reasonably configurable even if it lacks per-component control, and its RTX 5070 and Ryzen 7 7700X3D comfortably power through today’s games at 1080p and 1440p, with 4K possible using dialed-down visual quality or DLSS. iBuyPower goes above expectations by including a liquid CPU cooler with a built-in screen and by including a mechanical RGB keyboard and gaming mouse.

Where the Slate stumbles, as least in our reviewed configuration, is processing power. Though the Ryzen 7 7700X3D remains potent for gaming, it’s outclassed by Core Ultra 7 K-class chips for general use, which can be had in systems costing similar money. But for pure gamers, this Slate is a standup performer.

GMKtec has launched the Evo-X5 Pro, its latest agentic AI mini-PC, featuring AMD's flagship Ryzen AI Max+ Pro 495 processor and 192GB of LPDDR5X-8533 memory. The model with a 2TB PCIe 4.0 SSD retails at $6,799, while the 4TB model will set consumers back $7,099.

The Evo-X5 Pro launches today to go head-to-head with rivals, such as Acemagic’s F9A and Minisforum’s MS-S1 Max-P495, which use similar recipes: AMD's Ryzen AI Max+ Pro 495. The processor is the most performant SKU from the Ryzen AI Max+ 400 (codenamed Gorgon Halo) family. Unlike the regular Ryzen AI 400 (codenamed Gorgon Point) series, which uses a hybrid Zen 5 and Zen 5c setup, Gorgon Halo keeps only the full-size Zen 5 cores and drops the space-efficient Zen 5c cores.

Armed with 16 Zen 5 cores and 32 threads, the Ryzen AI Max+ Pro 495 stands out as a powerhouse in the mobile segment. It boasts a 3.1 GHz base clock, 5.2 GHz boost clock, and 64MB of L3 cache. The 16-core, 55W chip is essentially the mobile version of the renowned Ryzen 9 9950X (though with a far lower power budget). With abundant processing power, it is easy to see why the Ryzen AI Max+ Pro 495 is the elected candidate for these agentic AI mini-PCs.

The Evo-X5 Pro supports three performance profiles for the Ryzen AI Max+ Pro 495. The silent and balanced modes keep the chip at 54W and 85W, respectively, while performance mode allows up to 120W sustained and 160W peak. The mini-PC features a vapor chamber cooling system to keep the hardware cool, along with one 80 x 80 x 15mm system fan and two other 80 x 80 x 30mm cooling fans.

GMKtec Evo-X5 Pro Specifications and Pricing

The Ryzen AI Max+ Pro 495 supports up to 192GB of LPDDR5x-8533 memory, pushing past the 128GB available on Nvidia's GB10 chip and AMD's previous Strix Halo chips. Eight 24GB chips are soldered to the motherboard in close proximity to the Ryzen AI Max+ Pro 495. Gorgon Halo pairs the 192GB of LPDDR5X-8533 memory with a 256-bit interface to maximize memory bandwidth for local AI. This configuration delivers up to about 273 GB/s of bandwidth. Meanwhile, the Evo-X5 Pro enables allocations of up to 160GB to serve as VRAM for large AI LLM models.

GMKtec sells the Evo-X5 Pro with a 2TB or 4TB PCIe 4.0 SSD. The price difference is $300. It is a shame the company doesn't offer a bare-bones version of the Evo-X5 Pro, since some enthusiasts could reuse their existing drives or buy a new SSD at a lower price. The mini-PC has three PCIe 4.0 M.2 slots for PCIe-based drives, so users can have up to 24TB of fast storage. However, only two M.2 slots run at x4, while the third is limited to x1.

Super early bird and early bird customers are eligible for 6% and 3% off, respectively. Consumers can get the 4TB and 2TB versions for as low as $6,699 and $6,399, respectively. To further incentivize early adopters, only the first 30 units of the Evo-X5 Pro are eligible for super early-bird pricing. GMKtec includes a complimentary three-month subscription to the Z.ai coding plan and a 1.5X return in GMKtec Points.

Existing owners of the Evo-X2 and Evo-X3 models are eligible for an exclusive $50 discount on the Evo-X5 Pro when they use the X5P39550 EDM code at checkout.

In addition to its early-bird and upgrade offers, GMKtec is trying to seduce buyers with bulk-purchase discounts for the Evo-X5 Pro. However, these "offers" sound like a joke. Buying two, three, or five units nets consumers $10, $20, and $40 in discounts, respectively. If you are spending $32,995 on hardware, you would expect more than a meaningless 0.12% discount, but apparently GMKtec does not see it that way.

There's a real advantage right now to buying a pre-built gaming PC. The RAMpocalypse has made it difficult, from a budget point of view, to build new gaming PCs. Instead, the real value is to buy a rig with the specs that'll allow you to game for the next few years. This ABS Cyclone Aqua machine with an RTX 5060 Ti 16GB GPU is the perfect example, giving you 1440-capable performance for just $1,399.99.

● Check out this deal at Newegg

You're getting a spec sheet that would be tricky to put together if you were building a rig yourself. The RTX 5060 Ti is the star of this particular show, but the rest of the build includes 16GB of DDR5 RAM, a 1TB SSD, and a 20-core Intel Core i7-14700F processor. We're still seeing the 14700F in pre-builts as an affordable option that can still deliver great gaming performance.

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Ti means you're getting one of Nvidia’s latest-generation cards, with this GPU sitting in the mid-tier. You're getting 4,608 CUDA cores and a boost clock speed of 2,527MHz here. You only need a single eight-pin PCIe connector to deliver power, unlike the RTX 5090, so you don't need to worry about this PC requiring huge amounts of power to run.

As our RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB review explains, you're getting an impressive set of performance with this Blackwell GPU for 1080p and 1440p gaming. The charts below show how great it is for ray tracing for its price, especially compared to rival cards. You're also getting full Nvidia DLSS support here, giving you the full set of Nvidia's software capabilities for improving performance in-game, including multi-frame generation. MFG will give your games a frame rate boost, inserting AI-generated frames to help deliver performance in the most resource-heavy games at higher resolutions.

16GB of GDDR7 VRAM, meanwhile, makes this GPU a far better option than the 8GB variants you could pick up at this price. That gives you far more headroom, performance-wise, in games that are resource-heavy, especially for 1440p gaming.

Meanwhile, the Intel Core i7-14700F is still a good, if older, CPU option for gaming. This Raptor Lake Refresh CPU comes with 20 cores, split across eight performance cores, which are the good ones for gaming, along with 12 efficient cores for multi-threaded work. You also get a max turbo clock speed of 5.4 GHz and a 65W TDP. At 1080p or 1440p, you aren't going to see the 14700F as a bottleneck in modern gaming.

Some builds at this price are sticking with older specs, including DDR4 RAM, but luckily, you're getting faster DDR5 here. 16GB of G.Skill Flare X5 DDR5 RAM is included, rated for speeds of 6,000 MT/s. Given how pricey RAM is becoming, it's a compromise that it isn't a higher capacity like 32GB, but it could be worse. DDR5 does add to the longevity of this build, however, and you do have scope to upgrade at a later date.

You also get a 1TB Patriot P410 SSD here. It offers Gen 4 speeds, along with space for a couple of the biggest AAA games alongside Windows. There's also Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2 wireless connectivity included here, along with gigabit Ethernet for a wired connection to your local network.

The $1,399.99 sale price for this ABS Cyclone Aqua gaming PC is a good option in the current market. The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16GB ensures you've got a rig for 1080p and 1440p gaming, but given how fast prices are rising across the PC hardware market, there's no guarantee that it'll be around for long.

A chrysophile has ordered a special edition mini PC with a pure 24-carat gold passive chassis reports Fanless Tech. It’s a premium custom version of the ~5-inch (120 x 120 x 120mm) Kubb Fanless PC, but costing around $1.7 million with its opulent gold chassis. As well as its choice of materials pumping up price, this mini PC’s weight has increased from its default 4.6 to 28.7 pounds (2.1kg to 13kg). But as a bonus, which probably still doesn’t make it worth it for most folks, gold has significantly better thermal conductivity than aluminum.

In its social media post, Fanless Tech calls the Kubb Fanless in gold a “cooling marvel.” Its news post on the topic elaborates on this claim, explaining that the thermal conductivity of gold is “about 30% to 50% faster than aluminum.” That might help its Core Ultra chip perform a bit better, all else being equal. However the sacrifice to portability, as this compact gold PC is over 6x heavier, could be a major drawback. As well as the price.

We looked up the thermal conductivity of aluminum and gold, as well as some other common materials. The chart below could be useful for your own passive computing projects.

In contrast to its gilded construction, this mini PC's specs are very modest. Standard configurations of the Kubb Fanless are as follows:

• Intel Core Ultra 5 225H, or Intel Core Ultra X7 358H, or AMD Ryzen AI 5 340
• 16GB DDR5, up to 128GB
• 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD, optional second M.2 SSD
• Intel: 1x USB 3.2 (Type A), 1x USB 3.2 (Type-C, DP1.4a), 1x USB4/Thunderbolt 4 (Type-C, DP 2.1), Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4
• AMD: 1x USB 3.2 Gen2 (Type A), 2x USB4 (Type-C, DP 1.4a), Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.3
• Side ports: 2x Port RJ45, 2x HDMI 2.1 TMDS, 2x USB 3.2 Gen 2 (Type A)
• 19V DC, 6.32A, 120W power adapter (100–240V AC)
• Windows 11 Pro
• 3 years guarantee

Kubb Fanless mini PCs are usually made from aluminum, and finished in graphite, blue, or bronze. With an Intel Core Ultra 5 225H at their heart, all those colors are all listed at €1,595 ($1,822) at Kubb.eu, but there is no stock. At that kind of price, the Arctic Senza AI 370 we tested earlier in the year looks like it would be a knockout passive computing competitor. We aren’t sure if Arctic would accept the 24 carat gold chassis special order, and the Senza is designed for discrete under-desk-mounted silence.

We previously reported on the fanless Kubb Mini range of 3 x 3 x 3-inch mini PCs which packed Intel Twin Lake chips, came in cute/bright color finishes, and were priced around $500 (€430).

Developers of SharpEmu — an experimental, open-source PS5 emulator — have successfully run PS5 games at a playable 60 FPS on the emulator. According to an X post on September 25, the developers reached this milestone for six of 55 titles tested, with 12 — including the six playable — reaching gameplay. According to the developer, the six games are yet to be tested from start to finish; the “playable” designation means the games currently run without issues, although minor graphical or audio issues may persist in some.

The six 60 FPS titles are Dreaming Sarah, Void Terrarium, New Joe & Mac: Caveman Ninja, Tetris Forever, Hoa, and Tomb Raider IV-VI Remastered. The breakthrough was achieved with SharpEmu v0.0.4-release.2, the emulator’s latest public build released on September 25. According to developers, the build includes upgrades such as improved SPIR-V shader translation and updated Vulkan API support.

Developed in C#, the SharpEmu PS5 emulator supports Windows, Linux, and macOS and uses Vulkan and MoltenVK for graphics API calls. PlayStation 5 relies on an AMD Zen 2 x86-64 CPU architecture; therefore, SharpEmu can execute the console's CPU instructions natively on a standard PC rather than translating them from an unfamiliar instruction set. The emulator focuses on loading a game's eboot.bin executable and required system modules, partially handling kernel functions, and processing the game's shader, resource, and AGC graphics submissions.

For now, SharpEmu is still far from handling demanding 3D titles, with only 12 of 55 tested titles reaching a game ready state. Of those 12, only six performed cleanly enough to be designated as “playable” at a full 60 FPS. The developers stress that SharpEmu is still in its early stages, noting that “SharpEmu is an experimental emulator intended for research and educational purposes. This project does not contain any copyrighted system firmware, game data, or proprietary PlayStation assets.” Meanwhile, another emulator, KytyPS5, recently ran the PS5 version of GTA V at roughly 40 to 60 FPS on a high-end Ryzen 9 9950X3D and Radeon RX 7900 XT system, crashing after the game's opening mission.

There's a brilliant price right now on a top-end gaming PC, thanks to Walmart. You can pick up this HP Omen 35L rig with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti, Intel Core i7-14700F CPU, 32GB of DDR5 RAM, and a 1TB SSD for $1,899.99. That's an unbelievable price for a rig with this spec in the current market, one that makes it hundreds of dollars cheaper than many of its rivals. If you bought the same machine on HP's website with the same configuration, it would set you back $3,639.99, over $1,700 more than you'd pay here.

● Check out this deal at Walmart

This version of the HP Omen 35L is a recent refresh, with a modern set of specs that'll keep you gaming for years into the future. It ships with a 35-liter case, so it's a more manageable option for your desk compared to the HP Omen Max 45L. It's a fairly understated design, though, with a minimal black colorway, although some RGB lighting is available through the cooling fans.

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti is the focal point in this PC. You're getting one of Nvidia's current-gen mid- to high-tier powerhouses here, featuring the best of Nvidia's latest tech, including DLSS with multi-frame generation at your disposal.

Specs-wise, it has 8,960 CUDA cores, along with 16GB of GDDR7 VRAM on a 256-bit memory bus, as our RTX 5070 Ti review explains. The boost in VRAM compared to the cheaper 8GB GPUs on sale is important here if you want to hit the highest frame rates at 1440p and 4K. For 4K, you'll probably need to tweak your graphics settings a little, especially in the most graphically-intensive games. Luckily, multi-frame generation will give you an AI-generated frame rate boost if you run into any difficulties.

1440p will be much more solid, though. As the GPU benchmarks from our review show, you'll manage 1440p above 60fps on average pretty consistently with the highest ultra graphics settings.

You're also getting the Intel Core i7-14700F in this HP build. This Raptor Lake Refresh CPU is a little old now, but it's still a popular choice in pre-built systems, and it still delivers good performance for gaming. You're getting 20 cores with the 14700F, eight of which are performance cores for gaming, along with 12 efficient cores which will prove useful for multi-threaded work.

Other specs include support for Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 connectivity. You're also getting a 1TB NVMe SSD with Gen 4 speeds here, so you'll manage to install at least a few of the newest and biggest games. 32GB of DDR5 RAM means you're not forced to compromise on memory, even at this price, insulating you from the RAMpocalypse affecting industry pricing at the moment.

The $1,899.99 price for this HP Omen 35L gaming PC isn't being listed as a deal on Walmart's website, but don't be fooled. This kind of spec is usually priced well above $2,000 in the current market, so we'd expect the price to jump up soon or stock to run out. If you want a 4K-capable RTX 5070 Ti gaming PC for less than $1,900 from a trusted brand, you'll want to grab this one while you can.

With RAMageddon, the storage apocalypse, GPU stagnation, and GPU price increases all happening more or less simultaneously, this is the worst time to build a PC that I can remember — and I built my first PC in the previous century (powered by an AMD K6-2). If you have a rig that meets your needs at the moment (even if just barely), current prices probably make you more interested in keeping it running than in considering major upgrades or, even more daunting, starting over from scratch with a new build.

But fret as we might about the future of our much-beloved component-swapping hobby, a few articles and experiences in recent weeks have given me glimpses of the PC-building future, and I don’t think it’s all bad — at least so long as you have time to research and tinker, you can live without the highest-end components, or you have enough of a build budget that price doesn’t matter much.

Old parts get a new life, with some patient tweaking

First off, we recently tested AMD’s BC-250, a 2021-era APU that started off as defective or cut-down PS5 silicon, repurposed as a cryptomining card. But more recently, a community-developed BIOS and drivers have turned this custom hardware into a Linux-based competitor to Valve’s much-hyped Steam Machine, while costing roughly half the price of a similarly configured system, once you source the power supply and other necessary parts. It even comes with 16GB of shared GDDR6, sidestepping the current RAM pricing issue altogether.

Now, this is more of a project than a PC. You have to source the card (from places like AliExpress, eBay, or Etsy), then research and figure out how to flash the board so that it will even boot, followed by getting Linux and the requisite drivers installed, before you can even think about playing games. But depending on your sample, you might also be able to unlock extra CPU cores and compute units for even better performance.

It’s far from a simple setup. But this kind of community-led hardware repurposing and enhancement reminds me of two distinct hardware eras: The very early days of PC kits (which I wasn’t really around for), and the early 2000s, when you could unlock AMD Athlon and Duron multipliers with a pencil (or later, conductive silver lacquer). Unlocking higher clocks and extra performance without paying for a much pricier chip is exactly the kind of achievable dream that the PC enthusiast hobby was founded on, and it’s good to see it making a comeback – even if it’s with this one very specific piece of hardware.

But as AI hardware development continues — and especially if (or when) specific areas of the hardware bubble pop or deflate – I expect to see more situations where communities of tinkerers figure out how to get discarded hardware to run games and other compute tasks, giving budget buyers hope for acceptable performance at reasonable prices. Ironically, AI tools like Claude Code will almost certainly make breakthroughs in hardware repurposing much easier.

To boldly go (to price brackets) where no PC has gone before

On the other end of the PC price spectrum, I recently assembled a PC using parts from Asus’ ROG Edition 20 line. The anniversary hardware, which debuted earlier this year at Computex, ignores affordability concerns entirely. Asus instead opted to celebrate two decades of its Republic of Gamers sub-brand by taking several of its already expensive parts and peripherals, adding a few (mostly aesthetic) features and some gold accents, and charging even more for them.

How much more? The finished PC, with about $2,000 worth of peripherals, a $3,300 motherboard and cooler combo, and a $6,000 RTX 5090, costs roughly $15,000 – and that’s with a modest 2TB SSD and 32GB of RAM. If you opt for a more fitting 128GB kit with tight timings and 8TB of solid-state storage, you could easily spend $20,000 on a build like this.

As tough as it is for many of us to swallow, there’s likely a large enough customer base of gamers and PC enthusiasts who can and will pay whatever it takes to own high-end, high-performance PCs to keep options like this afloat. Because while the cost of individual parts has certainly increased, the luxury PC market has existed for decades. I know because in the years before I joined Tom’s Hardware, I reviewed several PCs with custom cooling loops and multiple graphics cards (up to quad-SLI) from the likes of Digital Storm and Maingear. That market isn’t going away; it’s just getting more expensive.

The murky future of mainstream desktop gaming PCs

So what about the mainstream PC gaming market? Things are tougher there, and I suspect that space will continue to shrink due to, well, everything I linked to up top. Those looking for gaming options in the sub-$2,000 range that “just work” without much tinkering are more likely to make do with consoles (which are, of course, also getting more expensive), gaming laptops or handhelds, or console-like PCs like Valve’s Steam Machine.

Intel and AMD are reviving or extending the lifespan of chips and platforms that support last-gen DDR4, but older memory isn’t getting any cheaper either. And our own testing has shown that DDR4 is increasingly holding back gaming performance.

There was a brief hope that Chinese memory makers like CXMT might help bring down DDR5 prices. But U.S. approval for that seems unlikely, especially as the FCC is busy banning humanoid robots and robot vacuum cleaners built overseas. And, of course, companies like CXMT aren’t looking to be PC saviors. They want to sell their RAM to AI hyperscalers for the same high prices as SK hynix, Micron, and Samsung. And even if DDR5 somehow suddenly became more affordable, GPU prices are also continuing to climb, and storage (SSDs and hard drives) faces similar pricing issues.

Can software save the day?

Like it or not, we’ll certainly see further advancements in AI upscaling and other VRAM tweaks and tricks that make modern gaming possible on older and current-gen cards with 8GB or even 4GB of VRAM before the price of RAM, storage, and GPUs drop significantly.

Will it be enough to keep PC gaming enticing and affordable enough to prop up the mainstream PC gaming market? That’s tough to say with any certainty at this point, but if being a PC enthusiast since the 1990s (and a PC gamer since the late 1980s) has taught me one thing, it’s that this hobby is resilient. Some will pay what they need to pay for high-end hardware. Some will find suitable solutions by tinkering with repurposed silicon. And others will forge a middle ground that works for them.

I transitioned from a PC enthusiast to a full-time professional covering the PC and related hardware space in 2008. Even back then, people were telling me that the desktop was dead or dying. Instead, it has evolved and survived for nearly 20 years, through the smartphone revolution, past soldered-on laptop components, through two cycles of Steam Machines, and the death of physical game media. Meanwhile, game stores like Steam rake in record profits, indicating that the demand for PC gaming remains high. All this tells me that PC building and PC gaming will need to continue to evolve, but it’s not quite on the endangered hardware list yet.

GMKtec already has an AMD Strix Halo mini PC in its stables, in the form of the Evo-X2. Now, just six months later, we have another AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 processor-packing mini PC from GMKtec in the labs. The obvious difference is that the Evo-X3 has a brand new chassis and cooling design, it also comes with 128GB of LPDDR5X-8000 as standard. Those are welcome changes. Half a year later, though, the price has basically doubled as seemingly every electronics product with RAM and NAND chips inside has been affected by the ongoing component shortage.

The result is a desirable computer that will offer strong appeal to enthusiasts who want machines with a large pool of fast, unified RAM, in a competently revamped case. But you will have to have quite a compelling reason to part with the $3,799.99 our 128GB/2TB configuration costs in mid-2026.

Design of the GMKtec Evo-X3 AI Mini PC

GMKtec has thoroughly revamped its Evo-X family with the new X3. Gone is the short-but-stout design, where we saw a plastic inner case sandwiched by some brushed aluminum. Now GMKtec has gone almost entirely metal, with the exception of a textured and vented soft-touch green plastic cap. This towering new design, which is over 14-inches tall with the base attached, features a metal CNC chassis. That body feels very strong, the panels seem thick, and the base is made from a matching material. Where the mini PC meets the desk, there’s a pair of broad padded rubberized feet that you stick on after unpacking and fixing the metal base on the device.

While still in mini PC territory, the Evo-T3 is pushing it a bit at roughly 2.7 liters. Its flat base is about 4-inches wide, which helps it stay very stable on the desk. There are no side feet, which makes running it on its side inadvisible. Users will also have to hide away the large power brick if they are after the cleanest minimal workspace.

GMKtec Evo-X3 specifications

Ports and Upgradeability

GMKtec keeps the front of its mini PC simple with just three ports and the power button. In the top third of the tower’s facade, there’s a central green power button with a white LED ring lit when it is powered up. The middle third of the front is left plain, but the lower third has one USB 3.2 Gen 1, one USB 2.0, and a 3.5mm audio combo jack. I wish there was a Type-C port on the front, preferably USB4 or better.

Around the back it has a good variety of ports, but I wouldn’t describe them as numerous. You will find a USB‑A 3.2 Gen 2 port, a USB4 Type‑C (PD 3.0 / DP-alt) port, an HDMI 2.1 port, an OCuLink PCIe Gen 4 ×4 port, an RJ‑45 2.5G LAN port, and a DC‑IN barrel jack. Ideally, I’d like to have a full size DP port, as well as a second USB4 port, plus more USB-A ports. If I were to use this as a daily driver I think I’d need to connect a fast USB docking solution for the oodles of peripherals I like to have ready and connected.

Wireless connectivity seems adequate enough, with an M.2 2230 card inside providing Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4. I had no problems with either during the test period.

Access to the components inside the GMKtec Evo-X3 is straightforward, but takes time as there are eight Torx-6 screws securing the side panel in place. Once they were all unscrewed I needed to use a guitar pick and a bit of gravity to tilt the heavy panel off. Removing of the panel allowed access to the two M.2 PCIe 4.0 x4 slots, one of which was already populated with a Crucial P310 2TB M.2 NVMe SSD fitted with a slim heatsink. In the opposite corner of the chassis I saw an M.2 2230 socketed MediaTek wireless card. There are no other internal user upgrade or repair options as the 128GB of LPDDR5X-8000 RAM is soldered to the motherboard.

Test System Setup

Productivity Performance on the GMKtec Evo-X3

GMKtec describes the Evo-X3 as a machine that targets AI workloads, but first we ran through our standard mini PC benchmark comparison suite, which targets more general computing usage.

A brief glimpse at the tech specs of the X3 reveals that it has lots of modern fast CPU cores, supported by one of the best iGPUs, and plenty of RAM and storage. It should make light work of our productivity benchmarks, and indeed its 16C/32 core AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 CPU left its mini PC rivals eating dust, most strikingly in multi-threaded tests.

As we expected, the single core tests show the GMKtec Evo-X3 is a competent performer in the context of the competition in our charts. It isn’t the only Zen 5 machine in this race, so it doesn’t get a chance to dazzle yet.

Moving onto the multi-core tests is where the Ryzen AI Max+ 395’s 32 threads show their potential for real-world data crunching performance. For example, in Y-cruncher it completed its Pi compute in around 60 seconds. That’s twice as fast as its nearest competitor in our mini PC charts, the Beelink SER10 Max.

Rendering in Cinebench is also strong. In Cinebench 2026, the X3 scored roughly 7,300 points in multi-core. That’s over 40% faster than its nearest competitor, the Arctic Senza AI 370. Video transcoding performance is also in a new class, with the Evo-X3 crushing the competition, achieving around 24 frames per second.

For some added AI benchmarking stats, we did a few tests in Geekbench AI and LM Studio Bionic to weigh the GMKtec Evo-X3 against the Evo-T2. These are both machines with large unified memory pools by default and which the makers claim to be local LLM champs.

Using Geekbench AI with the ONNX framework and DirectML backend the Evo-X3 achieved a half precision score of ~37,100. On the Evo-T2 using the same options, a score of ~23,060 was achieved.

However, machines like the GMKtec Evo-X3 and T2 might be picked up by consumers to work with local LLMs considerably larger than most consumer GPUs can load. With this in mind, I ran LM Studio Bionic chat sessions powered by the new Qwen3.8 27B Q4_K_M model on both machines. To use this 27 billion parameter model as intended, a machine needs around 20GB of ‘VRAM’ of shared memory to avoid undesirable side effects like out-of-memory errors and slowdowns.

I prompted the same tasks on both machines then analyzed the logs and found prompt processing was pretty similar between the platforms, ranging either side of 200 tok/s. However, the AMD Strix Halo Evo-X3 far outpaced the Panther Lake Evo-T2 by generating responses at up to 28 tok/s, compared with around 8 tok/s at best, respectively. It would be possible to tune these LLM speeds for each machine, but I didn’t tweak settings for the comparison tests. With 128GB of unified memory in the Evo-X3, allowing up to 96GB to be dedicated to the GPU, even larger models can be utilized for the most capable local AI chatbots, agents, generation workloads.

During our demanding tests, the GMKtec Evo-X3 stayed admirably cool and quiet. All our tests were done with the default 85W balanced profile, as the system shipped. Owners can also choose to run this system in Silent Mode (54W) or push it to Performance Mode (peak 140W).

Gaming and Graphics on the GMKtec Evo-X3

The GMKtec Evo-X3 is pretty good at gaming, thanks to its powerful CPU and iGPU with lots of fast memory onboard. Remember, the Ryzen AI Max 395+ has 16 Zen 5 CPU cores with 32 threads, and its Radeon RX 8060S iGPU features 40 CUs and 2,560 shader cores – more CUs than a vanilla PlayStation 5. The capacious LPDDR5X-8000 memory pool has a 256-bit interface.

Before moving onto our standard synthetic and AAA PC gaming tests, I decided to run around in Star Wars Outlaws. I chose the High preset, at 1440p, and kind of enjoyed this game, experiencing a performance level of mostly between 60 and 90 frames per second. The graphics weren't anything special, but I noticed the game was using about 9GB of VRAM which could have meant dips and stutters on systems packing 8GB GPUs and using the same graphics settings. While the CPU usage was mostly under 20%, the iGPU was nearer to 90%.

Next up, our benchmarks include a trio of 3DMark synthetics and two iconic PC gaming standards. In the 3DMark Solar Bay test, which seems most appropriate to the mini PCs we have tested in 2026, the Evo-X3 left the competitors in the dust with over 50,000 points. It was almost twice as fast as the Panther Lake B390 iGPU, and about three times as fast as the Radeon 890M machines that came with fast dual-channel RAM (like the aforementioned Arctic and Beelink mini PCs).

In 3DMark Steel Nomad we got a respectable score of 2,132, and the frame rate reached 21 FPS. It was a similar story in 3DMark Speed Way, where the Evo-X3 managed a score of 2,046. For some context this Speed Way result still lags behind my Asus Zephyrus G16 laptop with RTX 4060 Laptop GPU, which scored up to 2,425.

Moving on to real AAA games, let’s check the data provided by the multi-scene benchmarks built into Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Cyberpunk 2077. The former scales well with processor resources and can still often look and run great on humble iGPUs. As for Cyberpunk 2077, it can really push even the strongest modern GPUs, so here we've used two settings to show how the GMKtec Evo-X3 can perform. I thought both these titles looked better than Star Wars Outlaws, too.

The Shadow of the Tomb Raider High 1080p test resulted in an impeccably smooth 138 FPS on average, with the low of 126 FPS, on the Evo-X3. That’s a great score for a mini PC without a discrete graphics card. I was inspired to re-test at 1440p High, and the X3 still achieved an average 96 FPS / low 86 FPS.

In Cyberpunk 2077 the Evo-X3 managed to achieve 96 FPS using the 1080p High preset, with 1% lows at 78 FPS. This is certainly another candidate for moving up to 1440p and/or higher quality presets. CD Projekt Red also provides lots of upscaling tech (DLSS, FSR, XeSS) settings to adjust in this futuristic RPG, to try and get your sweet spot performance / resolution / quality setting dialed in.

Power, Heat, and Noise when using the GMKtec Evo-X3

When I left the GMKtec Evo-X3 to idle, my power meter measured wattages around 16W from the wall for the whole system. When the PC was pushed with simultaneous CPU and GPU benchmarks running, power draw seemed to peak at a little under 150W. GMKtec shipped this device with ‘Balanced Mode’ set in the BIOS, allowing the processor to consume up to 85W. The supplied 230W power brick had plenty in reserve, and it might need it in ‘Performance Mode’ where GMKtec says that the processor alone will demand up to 120W with peak power spikes to 140W.

System tools showed that during light activities like browsing the web, and typing reports like this one, the CPU temperature stuck around 42 degrees Celsius (in a 22 C room). Playing games for 30 or 40 minutes, the reported CPU temperature seemed to stay between 75 C and 82 C most of the time. The peak CPU temperature I saw was 85 C.

GMKtec’s powerful mini PC was a quiet operator at idle and under load. My measurements from about half a foot in front of the device show noise levels under 30 dBA at idle, which is very quiet and under the measurement threshold of my meter. Stressing the system with multiple CPU and GPU loads I managed to get nearly 37 dBA out of the system. This seemed an exceptional result during my testing, as most of the time the max noise level during benchmarks was nearer 33 dBA.

Software and Warranty on the GMKtec Evo-X3

The GMKtec Evo-X3 ships with Windows 11 Pro installed. Unlike its Evo-T2 brother, I found no pre-installed AI apps and tools on the X3. However, I note that the product page mentions GMKtec Claw and Wrangler as features. I installed LM Studio Bionic and Comfy UI for some AI testing, though.

GMKtec sells the Evo-X3 with a one-year warranty.

GMKtec Evo-X3 configurations

GMKtec sells only two Evo-X3 configurations in the U.S. Both machines feature the same processor and generous amounts of RAM. The only configuration choice is between a 2TB SSD (our model) and a 4TB SSD equipped model.

At the time of writing our 2TB configuration is listed at $3,799 but the product page says the price is normally $4,100. The 4TB model is currently $3,999, discounted from $4,349. We don’t know when the prices might get adjusted. Pricing for computers and devices with lots of RAM and storage is volatile right now.

Bottom Line

I was impressed by many aspects of the GMKtec Evo-X3 mini PC. Computing on a machine with so much RAM felt quite liberating. Especially when so much of it can be allocated to the system's iGPU. Moreover, the CPU and iGPU components of the SoC are plenty powerful for the compact form factor. I was also impressed by the X3's sleek design, solid build quality, and quiet operation.

No machine is perfect, though. For example, despite having a variety of ports available including USB4 and OCuLink, I felt there were not enough ports in total. To use this as my daily driver I’d feel pinched by the Evo-X3’s design offering just a single USB4 port, and one HDMI out.

The price is high, even considering the spec, but that's unfortunately common during this component shortage.

GMKtec sells its new Evo-X3 direct at the offer price of $3,799, as mentioned and linked above. At the time of writing we note that our GMKtec Evo-X3 128GB/2TB configuration is also available from Amazon U.S. at the same price, if you prefer.

If you like what you’ve seen of the Evo-X3, the nearest competitors that we have experience of are the Evo-X2, also from GMKtec, and AMD’s first-party, turn-key Strix Halo mini-PC. However, we know there are several next-gen Ryzen AI Max 495+ machines coming to retail soon. Depending on market pricing, configurations, design, and port selections of these refreshed ‘Gorgon Halo’ models, they might be worth waiting for. We saw Minisforum, Lenovo, GMKtec, Chuwi, and AceMagic with AI Max 495+ designs at IFA 2026 earlier this month.

Bundle deals are often the best way to sidestep today's inflated pricing of memory, SSDs, and GPUs. However, a well-configured prebuilt can be even more compelling, offering compatible components and the convenience of a fully assembled system out-of-the-box. One such prebuilt is the ABS Cyclone Aqua that is currently listed on Newegg for $1,299.99, down from its original price of $1,699.99, resulting in savings of $400. Customers can get an additional $100 discount using the promo code SSF73826 during checkout, bringing the final cost down to $1,199.99 for the Cyclone Aqua and an overall saving of $500.

• Check out this deal on Newegg

The ABS Cyclone Aqua gaming PC features hardware suitable for modern AAA gaming at 1080p. It is powered by an Intel Core i7-14700F, which is a solid 20-core (8 P-cores + 12 E-cores) processor with 28 threads and boost clock speeds of up to 5.4 GHz. The CPU is paired with an ASRock B760M-C/D4 motherboard with 32GB (2 x 16GB) of DDR4 3200 MT/s memory from G.Skill (Ripjaws V). The motherboard also comes with onboard Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth. For storage, the system includes a 1TB Patriot P410 M.2 2280 PCIe 4.0 SSD offering read speeds of up to 5,000 MB/s and write speeds of up to 4,500 MB/s.

Graphics duties are handled by the Zotac Gaming RTX 5060 Solo with 8GB VRAM, which is essentially Nvidia’s latest entry-level 1080p card. While it may not be ideal for high-end AAA gaming, it's good enough for less demanding titles, especially if you are into competitive FPS shooters. The rest of the features include a Cooler Master Hyper 212 CPU air cooler, a 650W 80+ Gold power supply unit, and a decent ABS Cyclone Micro ATX mid-tower case with a glass side panel, as well as two 120mm ARGB fans at the front and one at the rear.

If you've been holding off on a new gaming PC due to high component prices, this deal at $1,199.99 is definitely worth your attention. Considering that sourcing comparable components individually would likely push the total cost beyond $1,500, this prebuilt offers excellent value for the money.

Powered by a Ryzen 7 9800X3D and a GeForce RTX 5080 Founders Edition, the $2,299 CyberPowerPC SLC8500WST is one of the best gaming prebuilt deals on the market right now. A custom GeForce RTX 5080, which starts at $1,579, and the $449 Ryzen 7 9800X3D already add up to $2,028. In today’s market, there is no way you will find 32GB of DDR5 memory and a 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD for $271, much less put together an entire system.

• Check out the CyberPowerPC gaming PC deals at Walmart

The Ryzen 7 9800X3D needs no introduction. The octa-core Zen 5 chip with 96MB of L3 cache has been on the market for two years now and still reigns as the best CPU for gaming. Although Intel and AMD have released many processors, nothing comes close to the Ryzen 7 9800X3D in terms of performance and gaming value that the Zen 5 processor offers.

Meanwhile, Nvidia's GeForce RTX 5080 Founders Edition, one of the best graphics cards, joins the Ryzen 7 9800X3D in the SLC8500WST to deliver strong 4K (3840x2160) performance and exceptional frame rates at lower resolutions. It is worth noting that it is the Founders Edition, a coveted model that is rarely available on the market anymore, even if you are willing to overpay for it. It comes with DLSS 5 support, as well, and we've found solid DLSS 5 performance on the RTX 5080 in our testing.

Sometimes prebuilt systems are a mixed bag, pairing high-end hardware with weaker components to cut corners. However, the SLC8500WST makes no compromises. The gaming system comes equipped with 32GB of DDR5-6000 memory to ensure seamless gaming and future-proofing of your system.

While the Walmart page does not list the exact specifications of the kit used in the SLC8500WST, it is worth noting that the most affordable 32GB (2x16GB) DDR5-6000 C30 memory kit on the market currently sells for $429.

On the storage side, the SLC8500WST has a spacious 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD. It provides ample room for your games and loads them instantly. The capacity is a good starting point given current storage prices due to the AI-induced shortage. Again, we do not know the SSD model. However, a budget 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD typically starts at $149 nowadays.

You do not see offers like the CyberPowerPC SLC8500WST every day, especially at the $2,299 price point. If you have been holding off on upgrading your gaming system or buying a new one, this SLC8500WST deal is definitely one you should consider.

If you're looking for more savings, check out our Best PC Hardware deals for a range of products, or dive deeper into our specialized SSD and Storage Deals, Hard Drive Deals, Gaming Monitor Deals, Graphics Card Deals, gaming chair, or CPU Deals pages.

It’s been nearly two years since Apple updated the Mac mini. And for better or worse, things have changed a lot during that time. The last Mac mini with an M4 processor went on sale in early November 2024, with a starting price of $599. The latest Mac mini that we’re testing today starts at $899, which we can directly blame on the rising costs of components due to the voracious demand for everything related to artificial intelligence (AI).

A $300 price hike in less than two years is unprecedented, but it’s a sign of the times, and we have to factor those realities when evaluating any product today. So with that context in mind, we’ll take a look at Apple’s newest Mac mini, which looks very familiar on the outside, but has undergone some internal hardware upgrades, to deliver some significant performance improvements over its predecessor.

Design of the Apple Mac mini (M6)

The Mac mini hasn’t changed on the design front, and that’s mostly a good thing. I’m always impressed with not only the minimalist style of this small form-factor computer, but also its tiny size. It has a 5-inch x 5-inch footprint, while standing just 2 inches tall. My only gripe is the power button, which remains stubbornly on the bottom of the system (back left corner). You’ll need to lift the system any time you want to turn it on (or force it to shut down in the event of a crash), and you’ll need to double-tap the power button when setting up Touch ID with an Apple Magic Keyboard for the first time. However, this is just a minor annoyance, as interacting with the power button on a modern Mac is a rarity.

Despite its trim dimensions, you do get a fairly decent number of ports on the exterior of the Mac mini. However, let’s get this out of the way first: Apple doesn’t give you any USB-A ports on the Mac mini, so keep that in mind before purchasing. So, if you have USB-A devices around, you’ll either need to keep some cheap USB-A to USB-C adapters on hand, or invest in a USB-C or Thunderbolt dock for connecting legacy devices.

Instead, our Mac mini review unit features two USB-C ports (10 Gbps) and a 3.5 mm headphone jack up front, along with three Thunderbolt 4 ports on the rear (M5 Pro systems swap the Thunderbolt 4 ports for Thunderbolt 5). You’ll also find a 2.5 GbE port (up from 1 GbE), an HDMI port, and the power port on the back. We should note that while our review unit was specced with the 2.5 GbE LAN, you can individually option a 10 GbE port for $100 extra. A 10 GbE USB-C adapter would set you back around $100, so Apple’s upgrade is surprisingly reasonably priced, and you don’t lose a port in the process.

When it comes to wireless connectivity, the Mac mini uses Apple’s new in-house N1 wireless chip instead of relying on a third-party design. It provides tri-band Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 support, which is an upgrade from the Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 on the previous generation.

One thing to keep in mind with the Mac mini is that what you see is what you get when you purchase one. There are no internal upgrades available for the system once you’ve purchased it, so choose wisely before you click the buy button. Base systems come with an M6 chip (12-core CPU, 12-core GPU), 16GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD. Our review unit features the M6 chip, 24GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD. If you want to add storage post-purchase, we’d suggest taking a look at one of the best external SSDs.

Apple Mac mini (M6) Specifications

Productivity Performance on the Apple Mac mini (M6)

Although the Mac mini is available with a more potent M5 Pro processor, our review unit came with the base M6 processor (12 CPU cores, 12 GPU cores). It also incorporates 24GB of LPDDR5X memory and a 512GB SSD.

This is the first system we’ve tested with the new 2-nanometer M6 processor. So, we were eager to see how it would perform against not only the M4 Pro in the previous Mac mini, but also the M5, which can be found in the current-generation MacBook Air and base MacBook Pro.

The M6 chip in the Mac mini had no trouble dispatching the M4, M4 Pro, and M5-equipped systems in the Geekbench synthetic CPU benchmark. In fact, it was 21 percent faster than the last M4 Pro Mac Mini in the single-core test. It also completely obliterated the M4 (10-core CPU, 10-core GPU) version of the Mac mini. The advantage versus the M5 system was lessened, but it was still a clear victory for the M6. The M6 actually slightly trailed the M4 Pro Mac mini (21,045 versus 22,661) in the multi-core test, which wasn’t too surprising given that the 12-core M6 was going up against a 16-core M4 Pro. But it was still a strong showing for the M6, given the architectural improvements that allowed it to get that close.

We had some trouble obtaining consistent performance from our usual 25GB file transfer test, so we fell back to the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test for benchmarking the 512GB SSD. Needless to say, it presented a marked improvement over the preceding M4 Mac mini.

Storage performance was comparable to the M5 MacBook Pro on sequential writes, but slightly behind for sequential reads. It also slightly outperformed the M4 Pro Mac mini in writes, but was over 1,000 MBps ahead in reads. However, the M6 Mac Mini nearly doubled the write performance and more than doubled the read performance of the M4 Mac mini.

The similar multi-core performance in Geekbench was mirrored in our HandBrake test, during which we transcoded a 4K video file to 1080p. The M6 Mac mini completed the task in 2 minutes and 46 seconds, while the M4 Pro version was just one second behind. The M6 Mac mini was nearly 2 minutes faster than its M4 counterpart.

We ran Cinebench 2026 through 10 runs with the Mac mini, keeping track of its scores along the way. The Mac mini started off with a score of 5403, which rose to 5557 for the second run. For the remaining eight runs, the Mac mini was highly consistent, hovering between 5530 and 5554.

The M6 used in the Mac mini isn't yet fully supported by TG Pro, so we could only use the average of the available temperature sensors (power management sensors, power supply, and SSD). At idle, the fan spun at just around 1,000 revolutions per minute (RPM), with an average system temperature of 44 degrees Celsius. However, when running Cinebench 2026, the average system temperature rose to 64 degrees C, while the fan settled at around 2615 RPM.

Gaming and Graphics on the Apple Mac mini (M6)

Gaming shouldn’t be the primary goal with the Mac mini, but it can do some light lifting. I played Cyberpunk 2077 for a bit and benchmarked it. Although I was provided an Apple Studio Display (5K resolution) to test with the Mac mini, I ran benchmarks at 2560 x 1440 and 1920 x 1080, because the native 5K is a bridge too far for this game, given the hardware.

Using the "For this Mac" global setting, the Mac mini achieved 37.33 frames per second (fps) at 1440p and 58.11 fps at 1080p. With frame generation turned on, those numbers jumped to 62.61 fps and 96.24 fps, respectively.

If you don't mind turning the detail settings down a bit, you can achieve playable frame rates with the Mac mini. However, moving the detail slider to Ray Tracing (Medium) dropped frame rates into the 20 fps range even with frame generation turned on at 1440p.

macOS Golden Gate and Apple Intelligence

The Mac mini ships with macOS 27 Golden Gate, which was first made available to the public last week. macOS 27 is not a complete rethink of the desktop operating system formula for Apple, but it does provide a number of quality-of-life improvements for users.

One of the headlining features is new and improved Siri AI. While Siri was one of the first digital assistants to debut on a smartphone, it hasn't exactly been "smart," at least compared to its contemporaries. Siri AI now digs its fingers deeper into the operating system, allowing it to glean contextual data from your photos, mail, messages, and documents. You can access Siri AI from Spotlight (search) or using the dedicated Siri AI app. Siri AI is also vastly more useful, as it will more consistently answer general questions asked, rather than throw up its digital hands and say "Here's what I found on the web."

Apple's Shortcuts app is an incredibly powerful tool that has been available for years across the Mac, iPhone, and iPad product families. However, the granular control and seemingly limitless options can make creating a new shortcut daunting for newbies. So with macOS 27, you can now create a new Shortcut using natural language. For example, you could input, "Create a shortcut that sets the AC to 74 degrees when I leave work, and let my wife know what time I'll arrive at home," and it will take care of the rest.

Liquid Glass was one of the more controversial additions to macOS 26, with some people not liking the translucent makeover. MacOS 27 gives users more control over Liquid Glass, with sliders to adjust the intensity of the transparency effect.

Apple has also introduced plenty of system-level optimizations to improve performance across the board. For example, Apple says that AirDrop is up to 80 percent faster in macOS 27 than macOS 26, and a lot more reliable. Apps also open faster – any lagginess or stuttering that was perceptible in macOS 26 has been eliminated with this newest release. The best comparison I can make for the macOS 26 to macOS 27 upgrade is the fine-tuning that Apple did going from Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard to Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. There weren’t any major feature additions with that latter release, but there were a plethora of under-the-hood optimizations that made it much faster and more stable.

In addition, macOS 27 doesn’t install the Rosetta x86 translation software by default; you’ll need to download it when you first run a legacy x86 app. However, starting next year with macOS 28, you won’t be able to run apps that aren’t Apple Silicon-native, so Rosetta will be completely off the table.

Apple Mac mini (M6) Configurations and Warranty

The base Mac Mini comes with an M6 processor, 16GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD for $899. Before Apple's June 2026 price increases, the base Mac mini with M4, 16GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD cost $599. After the price increases, that $599 jumped to $799. Now, we're looking at another $100 increase for the base Mac Mini. There’s one standalone upgrade option: $100 extra gets you a 10 GbE port instead of the standard 2.5 GbE.

Apple also allows you to upgrade to 24GB or 32GB of RAM, along with 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB SSD options. A fully-loaded M6 Mac mini with 32GB of RAM, a 2TB SSD, and 10 GbE costs $2,399.

For people who require a bit more processing power, perhaps for AI tasks (as Apple seems so inclined to believe), the base M5 Pro Mac Mini (15-core CPU, 16-core GPU), with 24GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD, costs $1,699. However, you can go bonkers with the options, topping out with an M5 Pro (18-core CPU, 20-core GPU), 64GB of RAM, an 8TB SSD, and a 10 GbE adapter for a whopping $6,599. At that price, it’s probably worth looking at the Mac Studio.

All Mac minis come with a 1-year manufacturer warranty.

Bottom Line

The base M6 chip provides better single-core performance and nearly matches the multi-core performance of the optional M4 Pro in the previous-generation Mac mini. Compared ot the standard M4 Mac mini, the new M6 version blows it away in CPU and SSD performance.

These are the kinds of generational improvements we’ve come to expect with Apple Silicon, which seems to be firing on all cylinders these days. The new Mac mini also gets other, less-highlighted improvements, like faster standard wired networking (2.5 GbE versus 1 GbE) and Wi-Fi 7/Bluetooth 6.0 instead of Wi-Fi 6E/Bluetooth 5.4.

However, the elephant in the room is pricing for the Mac mini. Earlier this year, you could grab a base Mac mini for $599 – although availability was spotty after Q1, thanks to OpenClaw and anticipated price hikes. More importantly, over the years, going from one Mac mini generation to the next typically yielded performance benefits with no (or minimal) price increase. The AI revolution has rewritten the hardware rulebook, so we’re now faced with a new generation that is $300 more expensive than the previous model ($200 June price increase + another $100 increase for this new generation).

So in a matter of months, what was for years a screaming bargain for anyone looking for a cheap entry point into the Mac desktop ecosystem has gotten a lot more expensive. 16GB of memory and a 256GB hard drive are easier to justify at $599, but it’s a tougher pill to swallow at $899, and especially so with our review unit’s as-tested price of $1,399.

Earlier this year, Apple discontinued the Mac Pro, leaving the Mac Studio as its top-end desktop. With the new M5 Ultra chip, Apple's relatively diminutive system is more than ready to take on the mantle.

While you might not have a ton of PCIe connections and both RAM and storage are set, the Studio offers a ton of ports for accessories, monitors, and peripherals, memory options up to 256GB (with 512GB coming later), and a clean, quiet design.

Starting with an M5 Max at $2,499, the Mac Studio could be poised as a creator system for video editors, photographers, or game designers. At $12,299 as tested with the top-end M5 Ultra, 256GB of unified memory, and 4TB of storage, it effectively becomes an enterprise device, possibly a remote server, that could handle any task with aplomb, including local AI.

Design of the Mac Studio (2026)

Apple hasn't made any changes to the Mac Studio's design. It's a silver, squared-off block that's 7.7 x 7.7 inches on your desk that stands 3.7 inches tall. The aluminum chassis has a shiny Apple logo on the top. The M5 Ultra version we tested weighs 8 pounds, a 2-pound increase over the M5 Max variant. This is largely because the M5 Max version uses a cooler with a thin aluminum stack and a copper heat pipe, while the M5 Ultra uses a heavier copper fin stack and a copper vapor chamber.

The back of the system is also home to the power button, as well as a bunch of air holes for exhausting heat.

The air comes in through more holes in a small stand built into the bottom of the system. (There's also a Kensington lock slot, though its placement on the bottom necessitates a special adapter.)

Mac Studio (2026) Specifications

Ports and Upgradeability on the Mac Studio (2026)

On the front, there are two Thunderbolt 5 (USB Type-C) ports along with an SDXC card slot. The rest of the ports are on the rear, including another four Thunderbolt 5 ports, two USB Type-A ports, HDMI 2.1, a 10Gb Ethernet jack, and a 3.5 mm headphone jack.

There is no upgrading the Mac Studio. The RAM is soldered to the board, so be sure to get what you need when you're first buying the system, and Apple doesn't sell replacement SSDs (Some third parties may sell reverse-engineered NAND, but it will certainly void your warranty, and Apple doesn't support it. You're best off using external storage)

M5 Ultra

If you pony up for the most expensive Mac Studio configurations, you'll get Apple's most powerful chip. This is the only machine that Apple currently puts that chip inside.

M5 Ultra is Apple's first quad-die chip, connecting a pair of dual-die M5 Max SOCs over its UltraFusion connection. Apple claims that UltraFusion increases bandwidth between the dies to over 4.4 TB/s. Memory bandwidth is up to 1.2TB/s, which lets users store and run huge LLMs entirely on device.

Each of the 80 GPU cores features a neural accelerator, and there's a 32-core neural engine. There's now a media engine with hardware-enabled H.264, HEVC, hardware-accelerated AV1 decode, and four ProRes encode and decode engines.

Cinebench estimates that the M5 Ultra runs single-core at 4.6 GHz and multi-core at 4.3 GHz.

Productivity Performance on the Mac Studio

The Mac Studio is an absolute workhorse. The system stayed largely quiet (though the fan can make itself known) as it powered through our benchmarks. Anything you might want to do on a Mac, you can do on this one.

In fact, while we ran our basic desktop suite on this, we also ran some extra tests, as we don't test many workstations. Instead of pitting this system against other desktops, we pitted it against other workstations to get a better idea of how the M5 Ultra performs. While that's a bit antithetical to the way Apple designs its products (it doesn't sell chips separately; it designs them as part of its computers), it does give us a reference point to the chips powering the Windows and Linux workstations.

On Geekbench 7, the Mac Studio was the clear winner, with the ARM-based chip leading the pack in the bursty workload with a single-core score of 3,770 and a multi-core score of 52,293, despite having fewer cores than the competitors.

The Mac continued its lead on Handbrake, transcoding a 4K video to 1080p in 1 minute and 4 seconds. The next closest, the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 9980X, took 8 seconds longer.

On Blender's benchmark testing CPU-based rendering, the Studio with M5 Ultra fell behind the previous- and current-gen Threadrippers (7980X and 9980X, each with 64-cores), as well as the 56-core Intel Xeon w-3495X.

The Mac Studio with M5 Ultra copied 25GB of files at a rate of 2,983.08 MBps, surpassing the speeds of the M3 Ultra and M4 Max from the last generation.

The Mac Studio was consistent over our 10-run Cinebench 2026 stress test. Its lowest score, 17,825, was actually the first run. When the cooling kicked in, the rest of the results were slightly higher. The sixth run was the highest at 18,069, but it was so similar to the other runs that it's within the margin of error.

During the test, the CPU measured an average of 78.29 degrees Celsius.

Local AI on the Mac Studio (2026)

The M5 Ultra's GPU cores feature neural accelerators, granting it some extra matrix math horsepower, and Apple has boosted the chip's memory bandwidth to 1.2 TB/s, double that of the M4 Max we previously tested for AI.

The M5 Ultra's prompt processing speeds are even faster than Nvidia's DGX Spark's, and its tokens-per-second throughput is double that of the M4 Max and almost four times higher than the DGX Spark across the board.

Our tests, here using Qwen 3.8-27B-Q4_K_M, a dense model that relies heavily on memory bandwidth, are largely aimed at GPU performance in isolation. But combined with the blazing-fast single- and multi-threaded performance of the 36-core CPU, the Mac Studio with M5 Ultra looks to be ready for anything one might want to do with local or agentic AI workloads — and that's before someone tries to put it into an MLX cluster.

In addition to its raw performance, our M5 Ultra sample's 256GB of memory means you can fit very large, intelligent single models or a range of different models onto a single node. I spent time running models far larger than our tests with Hermes and LM Studio with strong performance. If you are interested in local AI, this will definitely do the job.

Gaming and Graphics on the Mac Studio (2026)

While the M5 Ultra and its 80-core GPU are more than capable of gaming, the Mac Studio isn't a gaming-first rig. For the price, systems with Nvidia's high-end graphics cards are far more competitive.

To stress the Mac Studio, I booted up InZoi, a life simulator that isn't graphically imposing but is hard on the CPU and memory. I set both the simulation performance and graphics to ultra settings, and set the game to 1080p, but allowed for upscaling with MetalFX's Performance mode, which upscaled from 960 x 540. The game ran between 45 and 65 frames per second, dropping to the lower end in outdoor environments with lots of other characters.

To compare more graphically demanding games, I picked out a few gaming PCs we've tested in the last year and pitted them against each other with the data from the Cyberpunk 2077 benchmark with the Ray Tracing Ultra preset, which we use for those kinds of rigs.

At 1080p, the Mac Studio ran the game at 66 FPS, falling behind systems like the HP Omen Max 45L and Maingear MG-1 with Nvidia's top-end GeForce RTX 5090. It was much more in line with the Acer Nitro 65, with an RTX 5070. At 4K, the Mac Studio didn't reach playable levels, though the RTX 5090 systems both reached 59 FPS.

Using Cyberpunk's "For This Mac" preset set the resolution to 1440p, turned off ray tracing, and mostly stuck to high settings and effects options.

On 3DMark's Steel Nomad graphics test, the Mac Studio still fell far behind the RTX 5090 system, but outperformed the RTX 5070-based Acer desktop.

Software and Warranty on the Mac Studio (2026)

The Mac Studio comes with macOS 27 Golden Gate. This is a great update over macOS 26 Tahoe, refining the Liquid Glass aesthetic and making it more customizable (I actually kind of like it in this iteration), and yes, thank heavens, consistent window shapes. It also adds the new Siri AI (be sure to get on the waitlist). The new Siri is far superior to the one you're used to.

Golden Gate also adds AI throughout apps, including more photo features, including a better Clean up option and spatial reframing, which lets you move a camera after you take a picture (the latter is kind of surreal). Better indexing makes it easier to search messages, emails, and calendar entries, and now you can use natural language to create automations in the Shortcuts app or come up with your own Safari extensions.

There's no bloatware, as usual. Apple's software suite includes Safari, Messages, Photos, Maps, Notes, and Reminders. Its services, including News and Apple TV, also have applications. Pages, Keynote, and Numbers are still in the dock by default, but they're the Creator Studio subscription versions, which require a subscription to get full features, including AI functionality, royalty-free graphics, and additional templates.

People using the Mac Studio as a server running AI models may not need all of those programs. For the first time in a while, I found myself wishing for something akin to macOS Server, but for better remote monitoring. I would also like to see an option for a system of this class to come with pared-down built-in apps, perhaps limiting it to the browser, App Store, Terminal, Activity Monitor, and other essentials and letting system admins decide what else needs or deserves to be there. A video editor might want to use Messages on the side. But you don't need that for a cluster running a huge model.

Apple sells the Mac Studio with a one-year warranty. Further repairs and support can be added as part of AppleCare+ ($6.49 monthly or $64.99 annually), or as part of AppleCare One or AppleCare Family.

Mac Studio (2026) Configurations

Our Mac Studio review configuration is clearly an enterprise machine. With the top-end M5 Ultra (36-core CPU, 80-core GPU), along with 256GB of RAM (currently the top-end option, with a 512GB configuration coming in late October), and a roomy 4TB SSD, it costs $12,299.00, but that's not stopping anyone: As of this writing, it's backordered between 16 and 18 weeks.

But there are a lot of steps below that. The base model is $2,499 with the M5 Max (18-core CPU, 32-core GPU), 36GB of memory, and 512GB of storage. There are two versions of each: the M5 Max and M5 Ultra. Going from a 32-core GPU to a 40-core GPU on the M5 Max costs $300.

The cheapest M5 Ultra system is $5,499 with a 30-core CPU and 64-core GPU, along with 96GB of memory and 1TB of SSD storage. Bumping up to the M5 Ultra we tested increases the price by $1,300. Moving from 96GB of RAM to 256GB adds $4,000. Bumping up from a 1TB SSD to 2TB is $500, while our 4TB SSD is a $1,500 increase.

The M5 Max configurations have slight port differences on the front of the desktop. The USB-C ports on those are 10Gb/s ports, while on the M5 Ultra, you get Thunderbolt 5 for up to 120Gb/s.

Bottom Line

At $12,299, the Mac Studio with M5 Ultra is effectively an enterprise computer, capable of difficult workloads like rendering and running AI models that are as close to frontier-grade as you're going to get right now on edge computing.

Much of that price also comes from RAM and storage. Given the fact that you can't really upgrade this computer, businesses and people using this for their job may see the extra cost as an investment. Really, its biggest weakness is in gaming, for professionals who may want to do that on the side. Discrete GPUs still win there.

Given the fact that an AMD Ryzen Threadripper 9980X, a 64-core monster that beats this CPU in Blender, is priced around $5,000 on its own before memory, storage, power supplies, or any other components, it may not actually be that crazy in this market, and the Mac Studio can be had in a much smaller case. (For wealthy homelabbers, businesses, and server farms, third-party accessory makers already make rack mounts to fit the Mac Studio; its shape hasn't changed since its last redesign).

For local AI, the M5 Ultra is seriously impressive, though that may still be a niche use case for some. But in a computer that can reach over $12,000, niche is the name of the game.

This all makes the M5 Ultra version of the Mac Studio an impressive package and further proof of the power and performance Apple can draw out of its own silicon in concert with its own software.

A PC enthusiast has showcased their new all-AMD build on social media, packing a Ryzen 7 9800X3D and Radeon RX 9070 XT. That’s an awesome combo to behold, paired with 32GB DDR5-6000 during the AI-RAM-pocalypse. However, this build has become headlineworthy entirely due to its steampunk-inspired aesthetics. If Thomas Edison and George Stephenson had teamed up to build a gaming PC, it might have looked like this. Meanwhile, the weight of Redditor voting suggests that most think it looks like some kind of espresso coffee machine.

The crafty PC builder behind this new battlestation is Old-Mate-Fetus. Key to its visual appeal is the extensive use of copper cooling apparatus and wood. The images clearly show this open-build PC made with a custom liquid loop using copper pipes, elbow joints, and welds. These pipes meander around the build, feeding the Alphacool GPU block, the Heatkiller IV CPU block, and circulating around a large radiator up top. A copper design feature that really stands out, though, is the “reservoir made from an old Primus Blowtorch with sight gauge fitted to it.” Nice.

Old-Mate-Fetus sits the PC on a base/backing frame they also handmade using a dark hardwood with an antique finish, and brass screws. We can’t see it in the photos, so it's probably pretty safe to guess that the Corsair 850W SFX power supply is hidden in the wood base. The builder says that they also made custom cables from the PSU to the various components.

Custom PC component list:

• AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D
• Gigabyte Aorus Elite B650M Wi-Fi
• Gigabyte Radeon RX 9070 XT Gaming OC
• 32GB Klevv DDR5-6000 CL28 (wanted 64GB)
• AlphaCool GPU Block
• Heatkiller IV CPU Block
• AlphaCool DDC pump with custom enclosure
• Corsair 850W SFX power supply
• Noctua Industrial 120mm Fans

If you are thinking the Old-Mate-Fetus design has some Billet Labs influence, and that it would be appreciated by them, “you are correct,” confirms the London-based copper pipe welder in the comments. The builder of this all-AMD machine warmly accepted the compliment. Redditors also joked about this new gaming PC possibly being the ultimate Steam Machine.

There's a powerful gaming rig from Newegg with the power you'd need for 4K gaming with a discount right now. This Newegg-built ABS Stratos II Ruby gaming PC features specs that include an AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D and Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti for $2,599.99 right now, saving you $300.

● Check out this deal at Newegg

ABS is Newegg's own brand, so you've got the quality and assurance from the big tech retailer to fall back on. This is a rig that sits near the top of the food chain for performance, with the 9800X3D still one of the best CPUs available for gaming right now. Couple that with this current-gen, high-end RTX 5070 Ti and you've got yourself a machine that'll deliver for years to come.

Our 9800X3D review makes clear that this eight-core AMD X3D chip is such a powerhouse for gamers. 3D V-cache is the reason why, as this game-changing tech boosts the amount of L3 cache to 96MB. This means that the CPU doesn't have to fall back on using the slower system RAM as often, which reduces latency, giving you much better and more stable frame rates for gaming.

While the 9800X3D isn't the fastest in our CPU benchmarks now, it still sits near the top of the tree, and is still our top recommendation for most gamers. Intel hasn't provided an option that can truly rival these X3D chips, so if you want 4K gaming with stable frame rates, a chip like the 9800X3D will give you the best performance to do so.

The 9800X3D is well coupled in this ABS rig with the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti. It has 8,960 CUDA cores, as well as 16GB of GDDR7 VRAM. You get to leave 1080p well and truly behind with this GPU, as this is a mid- to high-tier option that can handle 1440p and 4K. You've also got the latest Nvidia tech to take advantage of, including DLSS with multi-frame generation. 4K with all the trimmings, like ray tracing, will be helped by MFG, as it'll ensure you can hit the highest frame rates in the most demanding games.

High and ultra graphics presets will come as standard with the RTX 5070 Ti, especially 1440p, but you'll probably need to adjust your settings for the most intensive games at 4K. 16GB of VRAM leaves you with plenty of breathing room for those higher frame rates, though, especially compared to the budget-grade 8GB models like the RTX 5060.

The 9800X3D and RTX 5070 Ti are a good match, but you're getting a well-rounded rig all round with few compromises. 32GB of DDR5 memory, rated at 6,000 MT/s, is about the standard we'd hope for at this price point, and shouldn't be a bottleneck. A 2TB M.2 NVMe SSD means you aren't compromising on storage, either, and it'll give you enough room for a set of big games alongside Windows.

You'll be saving $300 if you pick up this $2,599.99 ABS Stratos II Ruby gaming PC on paper, but the RAMpocalypse is pushing prices up all of the time. 4K-focused gaming rigs are getting more and more expensive, and you may struggle to find specs this good, this cheap, next year.

With new gaming PCs continuing to rise in price, it's worth grabbing a discount or a deal where you can. This MSI Codex gaming PC features a 10-core Intel CPU, Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 GPU, 32GB of DDR5 RAM, and a 2TB SSD for storage, all for just $1,429, thanks to a $270 saving.

● Grab this gaming PC deal at Newegg

These are all the specs you'll want for a machine that will comfortably play games at 1080p. The current-gen Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 is top of the list, though, with features like DLSS that mean you'll be able to take advantage of both upscaling and multi-frame generation, making games smoother to play if you decide to boost up to higher resolutions or better graphics settings.

The RTX 5060 will be a significant improvement over an older graphics card or integrated GPU, too. It has 3,840 CUDA cores, along with 8GB of GDDR7 VRAM. With DLSS enabled, this'll let you run most games at 1080p with high graphics presets enabled.

You're also getting the best value GPU in our GPU hierarchy when looking at FPS per dollar at 1080p with the RTX 5060. The 8GB of VRAM isn't as limiting as you'd think with a build like this, because you're not going to be hitting 4K here. It has more than enough power for modern games, but you'll need to occasionally optimize for the mos demanding ones. 1440p is possible in some games, too, especially with MFG switched on.

As far as the CPU goes, the Intel Core i5-14400F processor is a little older these days, but still a well-sold and solid option in pre-builts at this price point. You get 10 cores, with six performance cores that offer the best performance for gaming. The other four are efficiency cores for multi-threaded work, with a clock speed that can boost up to 4.7 GHz in total.

You'd expect compromises elsewhere, especially with RAM and SSD prices flying through the roof at the minute, but you don't see that here. 32GB of DDR5 RAM is a good amount for a rig at this price, while a 2TB SSD with Gen 4 speeds leaves plenty of space for a growing games collection. Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 support gives you good wireless connectivity, with gigabit Ethernet for a faster wired hook-up to your network.

You won't really see many PCs priced as well as this $1,429 MSI Codex R2 gaming PC at the moment. Yes, this spec is pricier than it was a year ago, but you could easily pay more for less in the current market. If 1080p gaming, with DLSS-supported 1440p upscaling, is all you want and need, this is the rig you'll want to buy before the $270 discount disappears.

We've reviewed Asus' ROG Edition 20 anniversary kit. We've built a PC with it. It's about as premium as a gaming PC build can get. Right now, you can pick up the same kit for a whopping $10,849.96 on Newegg in a combo deal. To put it mildly, this is one expensive deal, but it's actually hiding a secret gem: it's the cheapest RTX 5090 graphics card on sale right now.

● Check out this deal at Newegg

Writing up a near-$11,000 combo set as a deal might seem silly, but one of the core components here is the Asus ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5090 Edition 20 that is priced as part of this deal at $5,999. You can't buy this Astral card on sale individually right now. In fact, you can barely buy an RTX 5090 anywhere. RTX 5090 stock has almost completely disappeared in the United States, with only sketchy third-party sellers offering it at prices approaching $10,000.

This premium GPU is now ultra premium and, for the time being, ultra rare. Does that make this $10,849.96 Newegg combo deal a good option? If money is no object, you're perversely getting some value for your money, as long as you don't think too hard about the RTX 5090's original $1,999 MSRP.

Yes, the GPU is an unstoppable force for any gamer. Our GPU benchmarks make that very clear. The RTX 5090 is the best GPU you can buy, and no other consumer GPU is going to beat it. It has 21,760 CUDA cores and 22GB of GDDR7 VRAM, with a 512-bit memory bus and bandwidth speeds of up to 1,792 GB/s.

This Astral is a world-beater of its own, though. It features an upgraded design, with a second BTF power connector to pull up to 800 watts, a glass backplate, and a curved OLED screen. It has faster clocks, hitting 2,750 MHz, with a 4.7-slot design. Performance-wise, the OG Astral is beating world records, so this is a card that you can really push to its limits (if you're not scared of charred power cables).

The $6,000 GPU aside, you're also getting a $3,299 Asus ROG Crosshair X870E Edition 20 motherboard. Asus has a few variants of this, but the Edition 20 board here has (alongside some beautiful gold accents) supports for up to nine M.2 SSDs, with five slots on the board and more via add-in cards. There are six USB-C ports, plus two 20 Gbps front-panel connectors. Large copper VRM heatsinks work with its integrated AIO cooler, with a curved 6.7-inch AMOLE screen and a huge copper heatsink. Probably overkill, but for $3,299, you want it all.

You're also getting a $899.99 Asus ROG Thor Titanium III 3000W Edition 20 power supply. It's a PSU, but 3000W isn't to be sniffed at, and it'll certainly provide enough power for the monstruous Astral RTX 5090. It’s fully modular, with another OLED display (magnetic, this time) which you can mount either side, or extend with a cable.

Finally, you get the Asus ROG GR20 open-frame EATX PC case, set at $649.99. This is a totally new design from Asus, supporting large EATX motherboards, and you can stand it vertically or horizontally. There's a crossflow fan to blow cool air onto the GPU, RGB light strips, and several fast USB ports. It's mostly aluminum, with some plastic, magnetically attached cosmetic covers around the sides.

$10,849.96 for this Asus combo kit is so much money for anyone to spend on a gaming PC build, but, unfortunately, we are where we are. As our Asus ROG Edition 20 build write-up mentions, this is a kit that few will buy and own. AI is pushing gaming PCs to new heights, and it's a real shame that we're now seeing current-gen flagship GPUs like the RTX 5090 becoming so rare to buy that combo offers like this are, perversely, almost good value. If you're spending $6K or more on a GPU, though, then it might make sense. You won't find an RTX 5090 cheaper (or, probably, at all, at least for some time) so if you want the best gaming PC build that you can find, this is the kit you'll want. For once, we don't imagine this will sell out soon, but Newegg might pull the deal at any point.

A pre-built gaming PC with one of AMD's top X3D chips inside is always going to be a formidable option, especially if it's coupled with a current-gen Nvidia GeForce GPU. That's exactly what you're getting with this all-white CyberPowerPC machine, down to $1,859.99 thanks to a $560 discount, that ships with a 9800X3D, RTX 5060 Ti, and 32GB of DDR5 RAM.

● Check out this deal at Walmart

That's a serious set of specs with few compromises to think about in a market that's seen huge price rises over the last 12 months. Building a new gaming PC has become far more expensive than buying a good pre-built, and the specs you're getting here set you up with a rig that'll let you play games at 1440p at high frame rates and the best graphics presets for years to come. This particular rig scored 4 stars in our CyberPowerPC Gamer Supreme review, with praise for its performance and room for upgrades later.

Featured in this rig is one of Nvidia’s current mid-tier graphics cards in the RTX 5060 Ti. It ships with 4,608 CUDA cores and a boost clock speed of 2,527MHz, along with that all-important 16GB of GDDR7 VRAM. Unlike the RTX 5090, this RTX 5060 Ti only requires a single eight-pin PCIe connector to deliver power, so you won't need a huge amount of electricity to run it.

Our RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB review is clear that this GPU is a very good option for mid-tier builds, with ray tracing performance proving to be much better than its rivals. You've also got the full support of Nvidia DLSS 4, giving you access to functionality like multi-frame generation to give your rig a frame rate boost in the most resource-heavy games, especially if you want to try and push to 4K.

At this price point, though, 16GB of VRAM is the serious winner. You're giving yourself much more headroom for better performance than the budget-friendly 8GB GPUs that you'd otherwise have to switch to. That'll mean that stable gaming at 1440p will be easier to achieve.

Couple that with the eight-core AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D. This continues to be the best CPU overall for gamers, even if AMD has launched faster models since, because of its price-to-performance value. It continues to offer outstanding gaming performance, as the CPU benchmarks show, with 1% low frame rates that ensure the smoothest possible gameplay. The power of AMD 3D V-Cache, stacking extra L3 cache (96MB in total) so that games don't need to drop down to the slower system RAM, gives you a serious performance boost.

You won't see much compromise elsewhere, either. 32GB of DDR5 RAM means you won't face memory bottlenecks, and a 2TB Gen 4 SSD gives you good storage capacity for several big game installations alongside Windows. You're also getting Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2 wireless connectivity, along with Gigabit Ethernet for a wired setup.

The $1,859.99 sale price for the CyberPowerPC Gamer Supreme rig on sale here is a good price given its performance potential. You're getting a solid 1440p-capable gaming PC, with the best CPU and a formidable GPU to match, with plenty of room to upgrade in the future, and a lot of longevity until then. Don't expect this $560 discount to be around for long.

A tech enthusiast says that they managed to put together a home lab-worthy Proxmox server using PC parts scavenged from the nearby county landfill. Furthermore, Tsuto told fellow Redditors that they now routinely raid the dump’s separate electronics recycling area once a week. We can’t blame them; their gallery of liberated hardware includes plenty of valuable trinkets like SSDs, HDDs, GPUs, even RAM, complete laptops, and more.

‘It’s wild what people throw away these days,’ says the successful tech scavenger. Tsuto seems to admit that many of the bits and pieces are “on the older end,” but even folks paying cold, hard cash at retail in 2026 are competing for components like RTX 3060s, AM4 motherboards/CPUs, and DDR4. That’s how hard the components shortage is hitting folks.

Tsuto also seems rather pleased with an Asus ROG laptop found at the landfill site. “The Asus ROG laptop just needed a $25 battery off Amazon and still has decent enough specs for casual gaming for my son,” they comment. Pixel peeping Tsuto’s gallery indicates that this portable gaming laptop packs an Intel Core i7-4710HQ (4C/8T) supported by 16GB of RAM, and allied with a GeForce GTX 860M 2GB GPU. It will be playing less demanding titles such as Stumble Guys, we see.

In a follow-up post, the Redditor explains that one of their home lab projects that has been built from the dumpster finds includes a Proxmox server. It’s a dusty-looking machine (it’s a shame Tsuto hasn’t found an air duster yet?), but it is ample for their needs. The ‘new’ Proxmox machine is said to pack in “Two mirrored 256GB SSDs for the OS, one extra 1TB SSD for fast storage, and three 2TB HDDs in RAID1 for ZFS storage.”

Despite the lavish tech finds from this landfill, Tsuto says they actually bought some key components off Amazon to finalize the system – a Core i7-7700 and 64GB of RAM. We hope the RAM wasn’t bought in recent months, with the prices as they are.

Where I live, you might as well rob a bank as try and swipe electronics from the local council recycling centers. There’s security and cameras around these trash = treasure hoards, which can be particularly appealing to folks who appreciate retro computing.

If you need to kickstart your hobbyist toolbox with a set of kit, then you'll want to take advantage of this Amazon deal. This Strebito 144-in-1 kit is just $39.99 right now, which gives you a 20% saving on its usual price for a set that includes both a precision and an electric screwdriver, along with 22 maintenance tools and 120 different magnetic driver bits to work with.

● Check out this deal at Amazon

Basically, this is the ultimate starter kit for anyone looking to build or repair any kind of electronics, including PCs and laptops, and at an affordable price. You're gaining a complete set with two different drivers, a whole set of bits, built-in LED lighting, and a set of tools to help you clean, scrape, and adjust for any kind of project you're working on.

The big deal here is those two drivers, which you'll each need for two different types of repair jobs. The mini electric driver has a 350 mAh battery, which you'll be able to charge up within an hour using a USB-C cable.

Specs-wise, it features adjustable torque options between 0.15 and 0.5 Newton-meters, along with speeds of 200 RPM. It's a good option for getting into tight spaces like a PC case, with a built-in LED light to help you see better. As for the precision screwdriver, that gives you a much higher set of torque, up to 7 Newton-meters in this case, for when you need to apply a bit of heavy pressure to get the job done.

Worried about not having the right bits? Not with this kit. 120 different options are available here, covering all of the major head styles. You've got flathead, Torx, Phillips, and Pozidrive bits to choose from here. There's even a magnetizer/demagnetizer tool to help your drivers keep hold of the screws, but if you're worried about the magnets damaging your electronics, you can demagnetize them, too. There's a 5.7 x 3.3-inch magnetic project mat included here so that you can keep it all organized while you're building or repairing, too. This Strebito set also includes brushes, scrapers, and a suction cup to round out the 22 extra repair tools, which you'll find useful for taking apart your electronics.

All in all, the $39.99 price for this Strebito 144-in-1 precision screwdriver set makes it an affordable must-buy for someone who needs to expand their kit. As we head towards the holidays, you can even put it aside as the perfect gift for the DIYer, hobbyist, or PC builder in your life, too. With Strebito's lifetime guarantee included, you'll be covered if you have any issues.

A self-taught electronics tinkerer called Mike recently shared details of his retro-computing project on Hackaday. It certainly is retro, as the design eschews modern computer component niceties like microprocessors or microcontrollers. Instead, Mike’s computer is “a modern 8-bit design, built with recycled 1950s vacuum tubes.” It uses 460 Soviet-era 6N3P (Cyrillic 6Н3П-ЕВ) double triode tubes, which were manufactured around 50 years ago, combined with era-appropriate germanium diodes.

The wall-mounted vacuum tube-based computer you see in the video above is apparently the third tube computer Mike has engineered this decade. Previous iterations have sometimes come to an explosive end…

Of course, there have been a number of famous historically significant computers based on arrays of these tubes or valves, which offer similar functionality to the transistors that largely succeeded them. There are plenty of reasons the computer industry moved from tubes to transistors, and then silicon ICs, but enthusiasts aren’t bound by such practicalities.

Mike notes a few drawbacks with vacuum tubes, actually. Most notably, this simple 8-bit computer design needs 460 of these fragile, rather bulky, white-hot glowing tubes to run. Furthermore, these used/old stock 6N3P models only have about a 500-hour operational life, so a few handy spares are required, as is a stepladder to reach the whole array of tubes, which may fizzle out at any time. The tubes run hot, so Mike's computer room is always toasty whether the season makes that a nice thing or not. A fire extinguisher is always kept handy, and the room smells of burning dust.

Performance and capabilities are about as limited as one might expect. Mike notes that starting The Tube Computer (MK3) means waiting 10 to 15 mins after power-on for the machine to literally warm up. This is followed by a mandatory reset to get the tubes into a unified operational state.

For compute functionality, Mike’s Tube Computer architecture uses an arithmetic logic design to perform just the five essential functions needed for its instruction set (sum, carry, not, increment, and XNOR). Meanwhile, its instruction cycle relies on a non-pipelined architecture with a six-step fetch and single-execute cycle.

Components:

• 460 × 6N3P vacuum tube
• 46 × 10 tube pcbs
• 1 × 190cmx130cm 4mm acrylic panel
• 3 × 2m 30mmx30mm Aluminium box section
• 5 × Backplane pcbs

User interaction with this wall-mounted homemade computer varies depending on the program in use. Currently, Mike has it set up to run an Airship Simulator piloting a British R80 airship from Brighton to Paris. “By pressing controls on the image of the bridge of the R80, you can direct the airship software,” says Mike. “These membrane buttons simply put 5 volts directly to the input board of The Tube Computer. You can control the ballast, gas release, engine power, elevators, rudder and the bow mooring gear, which is used to release the airship from the tower.”

Another charming feature of this admittedly “build it now, fix it later” computer design is the very audible accompanying ex-British Rail flip-digit display. That add-on will invoke another entirely different flavor of nostalgia for some of our readers.

As building a PC becomes prohibitively more expensive, buying a pre-built option continues to look like a much better way to get started with PC gaming in 2026. Right now at Newegg, you can score this ABS Cyclone gaming PC with a 20-core Intel CPU, RTX 5060 8GB, and 32GB of DDR5 RAM for just $1,379. That's $420 off a 1440p-ready rig that should see you through the next few years of the RAMpocalypse.

● Check out this deal at Newegg

The DDR5-6000 RAM in this PC is currently worth $400 alone, making this build a good value proposition over buying the parts yourself. Likewise, the GPU is worth $450, meaning that more than half your build cost is covered by just these two parts. This PC would be perfect as a beginner gaming rig or mid-range replacement for a DDR4 gaming PC. With a Raptor Lake refresh CPU and Nvidia's latest GPU technology, it's the perfect stepping stone into modern PC gaming without breaking the bank.

As you can see, without frame generation, the RTX 5060 can put out a respectable 41 frames per second across our 1440p test suite, and easily manages 60 frames per second at 1080p in our other testing. Using Nvidia's DLSS technology, you'll be able to bump that up no problem and enjoy high-fidelity gaming with good frame rates. With just 8GB of VRAM, this card won't be useful for 4K gaming but would make a great upgrade for someone on an older RTX 30-series card or integrated graphics.

The GPU is complemented by the excellent Intel Core i7-14700F CPU, with 20 cores (eight performance and 12 efficiency), perfect for productivity and gaming workloads. The Raptor Lake Refresh CPU offers boost clocks of up to 5.4GHz.

This is a great all-round build at the price point, as evidenced by the strong supporting cast of components. You're getting that all-important 32GB of DDR5-6000 RAM for multitasking and gaming, as well as a 1TB Gen 4 SSD — specifically Kingston's SNV3S — for storage.

The motherboard is an ASRock B760M-CX with room for M.2 expansion should storage prices settle down in the future. You also get a very capable Cooler Master Hyper 212 air cooler, more than enough for this CPU, as well as a 650W 80 PLUS Gold PSU.

It also features Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2, as well as a copy of Windows 11. For the price, this is a really good PC in the current market. You're getting a $300 discount, plus a further $120 off when you use the promo code SSF73457, for a $420 discount total. Thanks to the Intel's Gamer Days sale, you'll also get two free games to enjoy on your new PC: Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis and Star Wars: Galactic Racer, due to be released in February 2027 and October 2026, respectively. That's $120 of free upcoming new releases to enjoy on your new PC.

The price of PC parts continues to rise on a daily basis, so finding a monstrous gaming PC cheaper than it was in April is no small feat. Right now at Newegg, you can score an RTX 5080 gaming PC with a 9800X3D CPU, the ultimate in 4K gaming performance, for $2,999. A $500 saving that makes it cheaper than when we covered this same deal back in April.

● Check out this deal on Newegg's website

The individual cost of some of these components makes this a pretty remarkable deal in Fall 2026. The RTX 5080 GPU in this rig alone will set you back more than $1,500 in today's market. The CPU is nearly $500, bringing the cost of just those two components to 2/3 of the build's entire price.

RAM and SSD prices are heavily inflated, which means 32GB of DDR5 would normally set you back $400 right now. Add the storage to the bill of materials, and you've covered nearly the entire cost of this PC before you've added the case, fans, cooler, motherboard, and PSU. With the best CPU for gaming on the market and a huge GPU, this PC is no slouch either.

While the 9800X3D is not quite the fastest gaming CPU on the market these days, it is still the best all-rounder by some distance thanks to its combination of power efficiency and performance compared to the 9850X3D. This 8-core, 16-thread CPU chews through gaming titles, even at 4K, thanks to its 3D V-cache. Reducing reliance on slower RAM, this industry-leading tech makes AMD's X3D CPUs the best gaming chips on the market, as you can see from our testing data.

The RTX 5080 likewise needs no introduction. This behemoth features 16GB of GDDR7 VRAM and 10,752 CUDA cores. As you can see from our GPU hierarchy, that translates into average frames per second of 60 even at 4K, performance eclipsed only by the extremely powerful and expensive 5090. At 1440p, we clocked average fps of over 100. The 5080 will also unlock Nvidia's powerful DLSS 4.5 and new DLSS 5 technology for frame generation and neural rendering.

Headline components aside, this build features 32GB of Kingston Fury DDR5 6400 RAM, a fantastic addition considering it's easy to hide cheap, slow RAM inside a pre-built PC. The SSD is Team Group's NV5000 2TB Gen 4 drive, giving you plenty of storage and gaming performance. The motherboard is a Gigabyte B850 with Wi-Fi 6, giving you plenty of power and performance as well as room for expansion in the future. The build also features a 360mm AIO cooler for the CPU, Windows 11, and a 1000W 80 Plus Gold to keep everything running.

Hoto screwdrivers have become a key component in the Tom's Hardware staff toolkit in recent years, and this particular model has been one of my favorites. I've used it for DIY projects during my house reno, but it's also been useful for PC repairs and other odd jobs. The battery life means I've only had to charge it a couple of times in nearly a year of heavy usage. If that sounds good to you, you'll want to grab the 40% discount on this 25-bit Hoto electric screwdriver kit, now priced at just $29.98 for a limited time only.

● Check out this deal at Amazon

This kit is an upgraded version of the model I own; it's the same driver, but with extra bits and a better case, so it's a little bit more robust for users. The 40% discount brings it back to a price that we've seen a few times in recent months, but the kit does spike up and down, so you'll want to grab it while it's on offer.

You're getting the familiar 3.6V electric driver here, with a 1,500 mAh battery that Hoto claims allows you to drive over 1,000 screws without the need to charge it. That does match my own experience, as I've only needed to charge it a couple of times since I picked it up late last year. I use it extensively, pretty much every weekend, too. To charge it, you'll need to use the supplied USB-C cable, and it takes about two and a half hours to fully charge.

This is a fully adjustable driver, so it can handle a few different scenarios, with three different torque settings to choose from. It has an LED light at the top to help you see when you're driving in dark spaces like PC cases, and it'll stop immediately as soon as you release the button. It's magnetic, so keeping hold of tiny screws won't be a problem here.

You get an upgraded storage case with this Hoto model, which helps to both protect the driver and keep your bits organized, and it's a nice upgrade over the circular casing I received with the earlier NEX O1 Pro kit. You're getting 24 different screw bits here, along with an extended PH2 bit, giving you access to Phillips, Torx, flat, hexagon, and Pozidriv head bits, which are all rated for 60HRC on the Rockwell scale.

The $29.98 sale price on this 25-piece Hoto electric screwdriver set makes this a must-buy for hobbyists. If you need a starter set for a PC building kit, or just want a few handy tools for DIY-ing around the home, then this Hoto kit is a good place to start. It's versatile, lightweight, and a good option for when you just need a bit of extra power compared to manual driving.

Walmart is currently offering a 21% discount on an impressive all-rounder prebuilt system from CyberPowerPC. The Gamer Supreme desktop gaming PC is now $1,399, a saving of $370.99 from the original listed price of $1,769.99. With this component selection, you get both a gaming PC and an incredible computer for everyday work and productivity applications.

● Check out this deal at Walmart

Inside the glistening glass panel case is Intel's Core Ultra 7 270K Plus processor, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Ti graphics card with 8GB of VRAM, 16GB of DDR5 memory, and a 1TB SSD for storage. This selection of components makes for a complete and competent gaming and productivity PC, with plenty of room for upgrades in the future.

One of the standout component choices in this prebuilt gaming PC is Intel's Core Ultra 7 270K Plus processor. It's currently Intel's best value-for-money CPU on the market with impressive gaming performance, and even more impressive multi-threaded productivity performance. The 270K Plus can go toe-to-toe with AMD's Ryzen 9 9950X in productivity workloads — all while costing half the price.

You can see from our benchmarking charts below that the Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus isn't as fast as AMD's purely gaming-focused X3D offerings, but when it comes to single-threaded and multi-threaded workloads, it's a monster and is only superseded by a much more expensive chip. Not only that, but the 270K Plus is fully unlocked for overclocking.

Prebuilt gaming PCs have risen to the forefront when it comes to value these days, thanks to the ever-rising component prices of memory, graphics cards, and storage, which have driven the self-build enthusiast market to the edge. This CyberPowerPC build uses all current parts, including DDR5 memory and the impressive Core Ultra 7 270K Plus, giving you plenty of power and performance for the money you spend on this system.

A “beautifully preserved in working condition” Apple 1 computer motherboard signed by Steve Wozniak, accompanied by a letter signed by Steve Jobs, is up for auction next month at Bonhams in New York. The official estimate for this precious piece of computing history is US$500,000 - US$800,000, but we note that this ‘Hatfield’ Apple 1 previously sold for $686,000 in 2013. Let’s take a closer look at what you could get for your slightly under a million dollars.

This isn’t just an artifact to be encased in a glass cabinet. You could do that, of course, but Bonhams assures auction watchers that this Apple 1 is a working model. It also seems to come with all the essential accessories you'd need to get some computing done.

The motherboard is the centerpiece of the sale, of course. It is labeled “Apple Computer 1 / Palo Alto. Ca. Copyright 1976,” on the component side, with ‘NTI’ stamp underneath (second batch), and the board is complete with a white ceramic MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor, keyboard interface and connector, 3 original Sprague ‘Big Blue’ capacitors, 8KB RAM, expansion connector, cassette board connector, original Apple cassette interface board labeled ‘Apple 1 Cassette Interface Copyright 1976,’ explains the auctioneer description of the lot.

A period-appropriate monitor, cassette recorder, and pair of ASCII keyboards make up the 'Hatfield' Apple 1 hardware offering. Then there is also a selection of manuals, which would have come with the hardware bought in the late 1970s. An original Apple-1 Operation Manual; an original Preliminary Apple BASIC Users Manual with a green coversheet bearing Apple's original Newton logo, and an original Apple 1 Cassette Interface manual are included in the sale.

Another attraction of this auction is undoubtedly the Steven Jobs-signed letter. It is a letter from Jobs (dated 1978) to the original owner, Fred Hatfield, authorizing the exchange of the Apple 1 for an Apple II 4k board. The letter came in response to Hatfield complaining about the lack of software for the Apple 1. Jobs signed the letter making the offer, and it includes his title at the time: Vice President, Operations of Apple Computer Inc.

We’ve reported on Apple 1 auctions before, and this Hatfield sample is one of the most desirable Apple hardware artifacts, being from a batch personally designed and hand-built - then signed - by Steve Wozniak. The Apple 1 computer was first demonstrated in early 1976. Fellow Homebrew Computer Club members and Byte Shop visitors would buy up the first batch of (50) Apple 1 devices in the summer of 1976. Fred Hatfield, a computing enthusiast working at Computer Data Systems in Columbus, Ohio, bought his model sometime in 1976 from the second batch made available. In total, less than 200 Apple 1 systems were made.

The Hatfield Apple 1 last changed hands in 2013, achieving $686,000 at auction. Now, 13 years later, the estimated range of US$500,000 - US$800,000 might seem low, but sometimes auctioneers do this to catch broader interest. This Apple 1 will be sold as part of the History of Science, Technology & Computing auctions at Bonhams, New York, between October 4 and 14. You will be able to take part in the auction online.

Best Buy has stepped onto the stage with a huge selection of deals in its seasonal Labor Day sales, with decent price cuts on computers and tech. A standout budget-friendly offering is the iBuypower Slate Gaming PC with Intel Arc B570 graphics at just $899. Much cheaper than a Steam Machine and a perfect starter gaming PC for 1080p gaming, this cheap gaming PC deal gives you $300 off its $1,199.99 list price.

● Check out this deal at Best Buy

iBuypower's Slate gaming PC comes with a 10-core, 10-thread Intel Core Ultra 5 225F processor, an Intel Arc B570 graphics card with 10GB of VRAM, 16GB of DDR5 memory, and a 1TB NVMe SSD for storage. This is a great combination of parts for a 1080p gaming rig, and at just $899, it defies the current economic climate when it comes to PC pricing.

The heart of this PC is the Intel B570 graphics card, which comes with a generous amount of VRAM. For 1080p gaming, 10GB of VRAM is more than ample to handle the textures and shaders on high and ultra settings, but as with any other GPU, it will start to struggle in 1440p gaming when that VRAM gets swallowed up and starts using the CPU to compensate. The B570 is a budget graphics card, but it has come a long way since launching, thanks to driver optimizations and compatibility with more games.

You can see in our below chart from our rasterization benchmarking game suite that the B570 sits in the middle of the pack, competing with the Nvidia RTX 3060 12GB. You can check out our Intel Arc B570 review for more detailed information on this GPU's performance, where we put it through its paces in our suite of benchmarking tests.

Buying a prebuilt gaming PC is currently much cheaper than trying to construct your own gaming PC, thanks to the skyrocketing price of memory and storage. PC builders are able to grab these parts much cheaper than normal consumers can and have managed to offset the price rises with their stocks of components. This, however, cannot last, so you're definitely better off grabbing something soon, before the inevitable increase in prices.

Prebuilt gaming PCs also come with the added bonus of an easier warranty situation. Should anything go wrong with your computer, the whole system is covered, and you don't have to troubleshoot individual parts and manufacturers for an RMA, either.

For just $899, this is a superb deal for a starter gaming PC if you're just getting into PC gaming, or feel like stepping away from the higher prices on game consoles and digital game prices. PC gaming is currently much cheaper for game purchases, too.

Gaming PC building is getting more expensive by the minute, but price hikes on RAM, SSDs, and GPUs are filtering down more slowly to pre-built gaming desktops, making them better value than DIY in this economy. Best Buy has slashed $300 off this CyberPowerPC, which gets you a very potent 9800X3D CPU, RTX 5070 GPU, 32GB of DDR5, and a 2TB SSD for $1,999.

● Check out this deal at Best Buy

This gets you the best gaming CPU on the market, a mid-range GPU perfect for 1440p gaming, and ample RAM and storage in an economy where all of those commodities are increasingly hard to find. The 32GB of DDR5 RAM will cost you $400 alone, while a Gen 4 2TB SSD is around $250 minimum. The GPU in this build is also now $800, which means that on those three components alone, you'd be spending nearly $1,500. That's before you factor in the $464 CPU, accounting for nearly the entire price of this build before you've considered a motherboard, PSU, case, cooling, and the build cost.

The AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D is the best gaming CPU on the market thanks to its 8-core, 16-thread power with boost clocks of up to 5.2 GHz. The standout feature is its 3D cache technology, which drastically improves fram rates, as you can see from our gaming benchmark data below.

The RTX 5070 is an excellent pairing; with 12GB of VRAM, it's an ample card for 1440p gaming, or 4K at a push if you use Nvidia DLSS. As you can see, the 5070 averages 74 frames per second in our 19-game testing suite at 1440p.

The rest of this PC's specs are also pretty positive. 32GB of DDR5 RAM and 2TB of SSD Gen 4 storage are considered generous in today's market, so you've got enough RAM for multitasking and gaming as well as plenty of storage. Liquid cooling is more than enough for this processor, and the B850 motherboard will provide plenty of ports for connectivity as well as headroom for expansion.

Ultimately, the selling point of this PC is the price; given the current market cost of its components, you're saving a small fortune versus building a PC like this yourself. As mentioned, the $800 GPU, $464 CPU, $400 RAM, and $250 SSD make it a worthwhile purchase.

Buying a pre-built gaming PC remains one of the surest ways to skirt exorbitant RAM and SSD pricing, as AI drives up the cost of DIY components. Right now at Best Buy, you can get an HP Omen 35L Gaming Desktop with an RTX 5080, a graphics card selling for $1,500 right now, 32GB of DDR5 RAM, 1TB SSD, and an Intel Core i7 CPU for just $2,349, a $750 saving.

Get this deal at Best Buy

Thanks to a slightly older but no less capable processor, this is a bit of a sleeper deal that is really good value in the current market. As noted, the GPU alone now costs around $1,500 to buy. 32GB of DDR5 RAM is $400, so you've almost spent $1,900 on just two components, before you factor in the SSD, CPU, motherboard, cooler, PSU, and case.

As you can see, this PC doesn't contain a benchmark-busting X3D CPU from AMD; however, the Core i7-14700F is a capable 20-core Raptor Lake Refresh. It features eight performance cores and 12 efficiency cores, with boost speeds of up to 5.4GHz. Despite being a couple of years old, it still averages 150 frames per second in our 16-game testing suite at 1080p, and, thanks to its price, it offers the best value (FPS/$) of any CPU we've tested.

The RTX 5080 is the headline component here, as the second-best graphics card on the market, only behind the RTX 5090, which will cost you around $4,800 these days.

With 10,752 CUDA cores and 16GB of VRAM, this will chew through any title, even providing a solid base for 4K gaming, not to mention access to Nvidia's DLSS technology for even more frames.

The RTX 5080 makes the raw power of this gaming PC extremely appealing, and more than makes up for a slightly older CPU, a compromise worth taking in the current economy.

Other specs include a 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD, 32GB of DDR5 6000 RAM, Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth, an 850W PSU, and liquid cooling.

The AI-apocalypse is upon us, and regular consumers are paying that price in a big way. Apple went on a price-hiking spree in late June, leaving only iPhones and AirPods untouched. The bulk of Apple’s computing devices saw price increases ranging from a few hundred bucks to $1,300. Apple is now ushering in a new wave of price increases with the refreshed Mac mini and Mac Studio.

The new M6 Mac mini is now priced at $899, a $100 increase over the already inflated $799 price for the M5 version on June 25th. To put those increases in perspective, the M4 Mac mini had a base price of $599 when it originally launched in October 2024.

The new $799 base price is an even more bitter pill to swallow, given that the headless computer still comes with only 256GB of base SSD storage. One would think that the $300 price increase over the course of two months would at least lead to a doubling of the base storage, but the ongoing memory/storage shortage makes that wish unthinkable; at least in Apple’s eyes.

If you want to see more eye-watering pricing, take a look at the hardware upgrade costs for the base Mac mini. The system comes standard with 16GB of unified memory, but an extra 8GB (taking the total to 24GB) costs a whopping $200. If you want 32GB (the maximum allotment for the M6 chip), that’ll cost you an extra $400.

Things don’t look much better on the storage side, with an upgrade from 256GB to 512GB costing $200. The 1TB and 2TB storage options cost $500 and $1,000, respectively. Apple’s value-leader Mac mini is now in uncharted territory. A maxed-out Mac mini (M6, 32GB, 2TB) costs $2,229.

Even the M5 Pro version of the Mac mini couldn’t escape the AI tax, as the base configuration now costs $1,699, up from $1,599 for the M4 Pro version (June 25 pricing) and a far cry from the $1,399 price of the previous generation earlier in the year. That price gets you a 15-core GPU and a 16-core GPU, while stepping up to the uprated 18-core CPU/20-core GPU version adds $200. Memory upgrades are deflating to the psyche, as upgrading from 24GB to 48GB adds $600, while the 64GB option is $1,000.

Storage options are absolutely mind-boggling: a 1TB SSD requires an additional $300 outlay, while the max 8TB SSD configuration is listed at $3,800. The range-topping configuration (M5 Pro, 18-core CPU/20-core GPU, 64GB, 8TB) costs $6,699.

If there’s any consolation, the new Mac Studio holds the line on pricing ($2,499) in its base configuration (18-core CPU/32-core GPU, 36GB, 512GB). The price stasis is somewhat surprising given the hardware upgrades, including a new M5 Max SoC and PCIe Gen 6 SSD. However, upgrades are pricey, with the 18-core GPU/40-core GPU variant of the M5 Max adding $300 to your bill. The upgraded SoC is the only way to unlock additional memory options (48GB, 64GB, 128GB).

Stepping up the Mac Studio with M5 Ultra more than doubles the base, entry price of the M5 Max config at $5,499. This gets you a 30-core CPU and 64-core GPU, while the upgraded 36-core CPU/80-core GPU is a $1,300 option. 96GB of RAM comes standard, while 256GB is a $4,000 upcharge. SSD options are equally expensive: 2TB costs $500, and 16TB costs $7,500.

No matter which way you slice it, those firmly entrenched in the Apple hardware ecosystem are paying a heavy price for memory/storage shortages. Apple customers are doubly affected, as the company’s traditionally outrageously priced memory and storage upgrades have become even more expensive, putting Apple’s previously value-driven models like the Mac mini out of reach of bargain shoppers.

This RTX 5070 gaming PC is a real bargain right now, delivering performance for steady 1440p gameplay. You can pick up this MSI Codex R2 AI rig with an RTX 5070 for just $1,499 right now, a discount that knocks $500.99 off its usual price.

● Grab this MSI gaming PC deal at Walmart

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 is the best component in this build, and it delivers the power you'll need to game at 1440p. It's helped by current-gen Nvidia features like DLSS 4, which give you upscaling and multi-frame generation, powered by AI, to help make games even smoother to play.

As our RTX 5070 review explains, this mid-tier GPU is a solid performer, one that makes our best GPU list as the best all-round Nvidia GPU for gamers from its current generation.

The RTX 5070 ships with 6,144 CUDA cores and 12GB of GDDR7 VRAM, which operates on a 192-bit memory bus. For gamers, that means you've got a card that can deliver high frame rates at 1080p, even on Ultra graphics presets. 1440p is possible, too, although the most demanding games will require you to drop down a graphics preset or two. Our GPU benchmarks below confirm the RTX 5070's place compared to its rivals, offering modestly better performance compared to its predecessor, the RTX 4070.

This Intel-powered build comes with the Intel Core Ultra 7 265F. This Intel Arrow Lake CPU has 20 cores, eight of which are the performance cores, which work well for gaming. An additional 12 are efficiency cores, which are good for multitasking work. Arrow Lake didn't light up the gaming world for performance compared to AMD X3D chips like the 9800X3D, but it's a solid-enough performer when coupled with the RTX 5070.

A compromise that you'll have to make is on RAM. It's DDR5, so you're not dropping to cheaper, slower DDR4, but you're only getting 16GB here, although there's room to upgrade later. Storage, however, is covered by 1TB of SSD storage, which should leave enough space for a few big game installations.

The $1,499 sale price for this MSI Codex R2 AI gaming PC is a good deal in the current market. You'll be able to hit 1440p with decent frame rates in games with this rig, while giving you longevity for gaming into the future.

A simply incredible discount from HP means you could pick up an RTX 5090 gaming PC for less money than it'd cost you to buy the graphics card on its own, without the rest of the machine to power it. The $2,200 discount on this HP Omen Max 45L gaming PC brings the price down to just $4,799.99 right now.

For contrast, the cheapest available RTX 5090 GPU that you can buy, in stock, from a reputable retailer costs $4,829 right now. You're spending $30 less for the entire rig here, including 64GB of DDR5 RAM and a 2TB SSD for a fully spec'd, fully powerful gaming PC that'll handle high-end 4K gaming with good frame rates. Trying to build a comparable PC on your own would set you back thousands of dollars more at current market rates: you simply can't beat this deal right now.

● Check out this RTX 5090 gaming PC deal on HP's website

● Pick it up from Best Buy for the same price

Price aside, this isn't a budget build, but a machine made with serious gaming in mind. The HP Omen Max 45L is one of HP's flagship builds and, as our HP Omen Max 45L review shows, it's a seriously high-quality one. The case it ships with is huge, with three 120mm fans at the front. The model we reviewed had slightly different specs, but the design matches up completely.

While the hefty RAM and SSD storage are great for gamers, it's the graphics card that you're going to be wowed by. Our GPU benchmark data below confirms that the RTX 5090 is the best consumer graphics card you can buy. No other consumer GPU is able to match it. The RTX 5080 is its next current-gen rival, but the RTX 5090 has more than double its CUDA count (hitting 21,760) and has a massive 32GB of GDDR7 VRAM, using a 512-bit memory bus with bandwidth speeds of up to 1,792 GB/s.

The CPU in this machine is the Intel Core 9 Ultra 285K. This is a 24-core CPU, shipping with eight performance cores, which are typically best for the high-performance gaming you'll want to perform on this machine. You also get 16 additional efficient cores for multi-threaded tasks. The 285K is a fully unlocked and overclockable CPU, and the performance cores come with a standard clock speed of 3.7 GHz, which will boost up to 5.7 GHz.

Intel Arrow Lake CPUs like the 285K didn't really excite for gaming when they launched, trailing behind AMD powerhouses like the 9800X3D. That isn't a huge problem here, though, as the raw performance offered by the RTX 5090 is a significant counterweight against any deficiencies in the 285K, and will easily offset and heavily compensate for its shortcomings here. It also helps that updates since launch have improved the 285K's gaming performance to close some of the gap.

For gaming, thanks to the RTX 5090, you can expect to manage high frame rates at 4K and with ray tracing enabled using Ultra graphics presets. Nvidia DLSS 4 support means that, if you ever did hit a performance issue, multi-frame generation can give you a frame rate lift, using AI to boost frame rates in any intensive (or more likely, poorly optimized) games.

The 64GB of Kingston Fury DDR5 RAM is a good uplift to help keep performance high, too, and is worth around $700 in today's market. The RAM offers speeds of 5,600 MT/s and is split across four 16GB modules. You're also getting a 2TB NVMe M.2 SSD with this PC, offering Gen 4 speeds, which should give you a good amount of space to install a couple of big AAA games.

All in all, though, it's the price that makes this HP pre-built a must-buy for gamers. The RTX 5090 itself costs more than this PC does, and that's before you consider that you're getting 64GB of DDR5 RAM and 2TB of SSD storage in a world where AI has forced memory prices to skyrocket.

You won't beat the $4,799 sale price for this HP Omen Max 45L gaming PC, so if you want it, get it fast. You can pick it up from HP directly or, if it sells out, HP is selling it through Best Buy for the same price, too. Either way, you're getting a formidable machine, but don't expect that $2,200 saving to be around for very long.

Nvidia officially launched the latest DGX Station desktop at Computex 2026 earlier this year, but the announcement was not accompanied by an explicit price tag. The expectation of an MSRP withers away when it comes to enterprise-grade hardware anyway, but still, early chatter had pointed toward a $100,000 ballpark figure. That number has just been confirmed, as a DGX Station from Exxact was found listed for $94,930 on its website, featuring the all-powerful GB300 Superchip, ready to customize and buy.

The desktop tower in question is the Valence VWS-158270643 that was originally unveiled a few months ago and was part of the lineup shared by other OEMs such as Dell and HP. Since this hardware is not meant for regular consumers — those who can afford it can pay really any price for it — Nvidia's partners don't make its cost outright public information. Instead, you can ask for quotes or inquire about a proper deployment to get the number. That's why the Exxact listing is newsworthy.

The Valence VWS-158270643 starts at $94,930, and that gets you one GB300 enclosed in a standard full-sized tower. The main draw of the GB300 is the Blackwell Ultra GPU that comes with 252GB of HBM3e memory. It talks to a 72-core Arm-based Grace CPU through a 900 GB/s NVLink-C2C interconnect that shares a further 496GB of LPDDR5x RAM with the GPU.

Combined, you get a massive 748GB pool of unified memory that allows you to fine-tune and deploy AI models locally instead of worrying about token costs or any cloud vulnerabilities. For large enterprises that need to quickly iterate on the go and want maximum security, a DGX Station is considered a worthwhile investment even at $100,000, especially if the smaller DGX Spark isn't enough for your workloads.

The Valence VWS-158270643 in specific can be configured with different GPUs for video output (since the GB300 doesn't have one) and you get a few SSD options to choose from based on your training data needs. There are three "optimized configs" that go up to $96,316. The top-tier manual configuration costs $108,350 with an RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell (that has its own 96GB of VRAM) and 2x extra 2TB PCIe 5.0 SSDs.

The Valence VWS-158270643 comes with a 1,600W 80+ Titanium power supply (which is enough to cover a dedicated display-out GPU as well), so it can be plugged into any standard outlet, just like a regular PC. Though it comes with Linux-based DGX OS out of the box instead of Windows. Both the Grace CPU and the Blackwell Ultra GPU are liquid-cooled with a massive direct-to-chip (D2C) coldplate, and there are three fans up top for optimal airflow.

Front panel I/O is nonexistent, but there are 2x QSFP112 ports at the back driven by the integrated ConnectX-SuperNIC for 800 Gbps/s interconnect between two DGX Station towers. There's also 1x 10 Gbps RJ45 port, a dedicated 1Gbps RJ45 management port, 1x mini-DisplayPort for local BMC management (not display out), 1x USB Micro-B for direct serial access to said BMC, 4x standard USB Type-A, and a 3.5mm headphone jack.

Exxact did not disclose the exact materials of the tower, but we can infer from the pictures that it's made out of steel, and the design is rather sleek. For $100,000, you also get a 3-year warranty so you can rest assured your parts are insured against a potential popping of a bubble. You can order up to ten of these at the same time, but there's no standard checkout page; you still have to provide your details in order to be contacted back for a purchase.

A New York-based computer repair and custom gaming PC retail store is the latest victim of an alleged Amazon delivery scam. Sharing their experience in a Reddit post, one of the co-owners of PC Plug wrote that they ordered an AMD Ryzen 5 9600X a few days ago but received only the box, with the CPU missing. After immediately requesting a refund, they went on to purchase another CPU with next-day delivery. However, they once again received only the retail box, with no CPU inside.

The post also mentions that they record every product unboxing and maintain proper documentation specifically for such cases. Instead of ordering directly from Amazon or the manufacturer, one of the inventory managers accidentally purchased the CPU from “The Tech Group,” a third-party seller with decent ratings whose orders were fulfilled by Amazon. However, they claim those ratings could be fake.

The co-owner told Tom's Hardware that they order 90% of their hardware inventory through Amazon, which amounts to roughly $10,000 a month. “This is the first time we’ve received a product with no hardware in it, and it happened twice in the matter of three days.” They also shared that this may have happened around 10 times over the last five years, with packages arriving damaged or missing a few components.

They also claim to have security camera footage showing both Amazon packages being opened and found to contain only the CPU boxes. While they are not familiar with The Tech Group, they did notice a Reddit user claiming to have previously purchased from the seller without any issues. The store usually orders directly from Amazon or manufacturers on the platform, but the two Ryzen 5 9600X from the seller “slipped through the cracks.” Despite having a good track record with Amazon, the co-owner is now concerned that the attention surrounding the incident could potentially put their Amazon account at risk, as much of the business relies on Amazon Business Prime to purchase hardware inventory.

Such scams are quite common on Amazon, where buyers sometimes receive completely different, or in this case, no product at all. In a recent case, a Reddit user ordered a lightly used Ryzen 9 9900X3D from Amazon Warehouse but discovered that the box contained a much older Ryzen 9 3900X, a 2019 AM4 processor worth substantially less than the 2025 flagship originally ordered.

It is highly recommended to always purchase from reputable sellers and verify the seller’s ratings and reviews before placing an order, especially if you are planning to buy expensive computer hardware. Make sure you also record the unboxing, as video evidence can be useful if the package arrives damaged, tampered with, or missing an item.

With the RAMpocalypse in full swing and little relief in sight, we need to look at combo deals to take some of the sting out of these ridiculous prices. Newegg’s latest combo pairs the ‘new’ Ryzen 7 7700X3D gaming chip, a quality Asus ROG Strix B650-A Gaming Wifi motherboard, and 16GB (2x8GB) of Corsair Vengeance DDR5 RAM, plus a free Cooler Master 240mm AIO, for only $609.99. A savings of $124 (not including the freebie), which, when applied to the RAM, brings it down to a reasonable-for-the-times price (~$136), making this an inexpensive entry into the AM5 platform.

• Check out this deal on Newegg

While the Ryzen 7 7700X3D isn’t quite as fast as the 9800X3D, the 8-core 16-thread Zen 4 processor is still one of the top gaming chips and is well ahead of the recently re-released (and expensive, $349.99 at Newegg) Ryzen 7 5800X3D. Performance-wise, the 7700X3D is squarely between the faster 7800X3D and slower 7600X3D, and it clearly holds its own among its peers and is a great 1080p/144 0p gaming chip while not paying for the more expensive 9000 series X3D chips. Newegg also throws in a free Cooler Master Elite Liquid 240 AIO ($80 value), which pairs nicely with the processor.

Along with the processor is a 16GB (2x8GB) kit of Corsair Vengeance DDR5-6000 CL36 RAM in white to match the motherboard. This kit features a frosted RGB light bar that runs the length of the sticks, drawing attention inside your case. Or, if RGB lighting isn’t your thing and you prefer a stealthy appearance, you can turn it off. The DDR5-6000 speed lands in the sweet spot for the AM5 platform and is a worthwhile, good-looking option. The SK Hynix ICs under the heatsink pair nicely with the board and offer plenty of overclocking headroom if you choose.

Asus’ ROG Strix B650-A Gaming Wifi is a mid-range motherboard with a black PCB, silver/white heatsinks, and ROG RGB, providing a stark contrast of colors inside your chassis. The board offers capable power delivery, three M.2 sockets (one PCIe 5.0) and four SATA ports for storage, fast networking with integrated Wi-Fi 6E and 2.5 GbE, ample USB ports on the rear I/O including 20 Gbps Type-C port on the rear IO (8 other Type-A ports), a quality audio solution with the Realtek ALC4080 chip and Savitech SV3H712 combo, and finally, it offers a DIY-friendly design to help building your PC easier.

Together, this three-item combo can turn your AM5 upgrade dreams into reality without breaking the bank. At only $609.99, it’s a serious option for building or upgrading your gaming PC. And since it’s AM5, you can drop-in-upgrade to a 9000-series processor, AMD’s latest and greatest, like the Ryzen 7 9800X3D in the future.

Building a PC is more expensive and thereby more stressful than ever in 2026. A good old-fashioned pre-built is a great way to save yourself some time and a ton of cash on parts, with exorbitant RAM, SSD, and GPU pricing yet to fully filter down to the pre-built market. As such, you can score this Intel Core Ultra 9 285-powered CyberPowerPC with an AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB, 32GB of DDR5 RAM, a 2TB SSD, and more for just $1,849, a $500 discount.

● Check out this deal at Walmart

Considering 32GB of DDR5 RAM alone costs $400 right now, stacking up the cost of parts in this build reveals its value pretty quickly. The Intel Core Ultra 9 285 is around $700 at the moment, with the 285K retailing at $514. A 2TB M.2 PCIe 4.0 drive will set you back around $250, and the GPU in this build is $460. That's nearly the entire cost before you've factored in a case, motherboard, PSU, and cooler, not to mention the build cost.

The spec of this PC is admittedly a slightly strange combination of GPU and CPU. Intel's 285 Arrow Lake CPU is the company's current-gen 24-core flagship. With eight performance cores and 16 efficiency cores, it performs extremely well in multi-threaded Windows 11 testing. While it can't match AMD's potent X3D Ryzen chips in gaming, it was still more than enough to average 153 frames per second in our 1080p testing suite of 17 games.

As you can see from our GPU testing data, the Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB is on par with the RTX 5060 Ti 8GB, but lags behind the RX 9070 and RTX 5070, as is to be expected. With its 2048 shares and 16GB of VRAM, this card sustained averages of nearly 60 frames per second in our 1440p Ultra tests, making it a great mid-range card. You'll likely struggle at 4K without some compromise, but this is a great card for middle-of-the-road performance.

If you're not convinced, you could spend a little more for this slightly different spec, which gets you a less potent Core Ultra 7 265KF but the superior AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT, again with 16GB of VRAM. You still get the same 32GB of DDR5 and 2TB SSD for $1,999. This is a trade-off that might get you some more FPS in gaming at the expense of general productivity performance for other tasks.

Thanks to Intel's Gamer Days promo, both come with two free games: Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis and Star Wars Galactic Racer.

In these days of expensive SSDs, high RAM prices, and gaming GPU stagnation, it’s not often that even we find a good reason to build a PC. So when Asus reached out asking if we’d be interested in building a system based around its extensive Edition 20 anniversary lineup, I instinctively said yes. Having seen most of the components at Computex 2026 earlier this summer, I knew I was going to be dealing with premium, high-end parts that would make for a striking, powerful PC.

What I didn’t expect was to receive five large packages, weighing over 150 pounds, and for the motherboard and cooler to come in their own ROG suitcase (yes, that’s a thing), or for the 3,000W PSU to sell for $899 all on its own. This was clearly going to be a unique PC building experience, but it’s certainly not for everyone. In fact, considering the high price of pretty much all of the parts here, this is a build for the select few. But that doesn’t mean the build process wasn’t interesting.

Let's just get this out of the way early on, though: Building any gaming PC right now is expensive. Building one with an RTX 5090 is prohibitively pricey. Building one with these specific parts will set you back roughly $15,000, including the matching peripherals and OLED monitor with a translucent back panel. Think of this as the PC build for Saudi princes, the Elon Musks of the world, or for those of you who, unlike me, were smart enough to use your GPU for Bitcoin mining starting sometime in 2010, and cashed out when the cryptocurrency was trading high.

So yes, this might just be about the most expensive PC you could build today – at least with consumer-focused parts and not maxing out the RAM and storage. But many of us are likely finding ways to deal with the PC hardware we have right now; let’s take a look at what piecing together a new build is like if money is no object and you want the cohesive design that comes from sourcing all (or at least most) of your components from one company.

We’ll go step-by-step through the rather unique build process of this Asus ROG Edition 20 build shortly. But first, here’s a look at the parts, their prices, and, in some cases, how much the components weigh. Because, gold accents or not, there’s a whole lot of heavy metal involved in this build.

PC Case

Asus ROG GR20 Edition 20 open-frame EATX PC case

Many of the components here are based on existing parts, with some new aesthetic accents and features, but the ROG G20 is a new open-frame chassis that supports large EATX motherboards and can be converted to stand vertically, horizontally as a testbed, and even diagonally for a striking leaning-back look.

It has a crossflow fan that mounts on the bottom to blow cool air onto the GPU, RGB light strips around the edges, and four fast USB ports (two 5Gbps Type-A and two 20 Gbps Type-C) that can be mounted near the bottom (default) or up top. It’s extremely solidly built, mostly from aluminum, and weighs 20.5 pounds. But some of the cosmetic covers, particularly around the edges, are plastic and magnetically attached. They have a tendency to move and become misaligned easily. In fact, one was stuck to a steel part, several inches from where it belonged when I first took the case out of the box.

It sells for between $650 and $730. If that sounds like a lot for a case, it is. But if you’re feeling sticker shock already, buckle up because we’re just getting started.

• Asus ROG GR20 Edition 20 open-frame EATX PC available at Best Buy

Motherboard

Asus ROG Crosshair X870E Edition 20 motherboard with integrated ROG Ryujin 360 liquid cooler

Asus offers a few iterations of its Crosshair X870E E-ATX flagship board. This Crosshair X870E Edition 20 variant, apart from the gold accents of the Edition 20 lineup, supports up to nine M.2 SSDs (five on the board and four via two included add-in cards), and has more USB-C ports than any board I’ve seen outside of a trade show (six, plus two 20 Gbps front-panel connectors).

It also has large copper VRM heatsinks designed to specifically thermally mesh with the bundled Ryugin 260 Edition 20 AIO cooler. The cooler has a massive curved 6.7-inch AMOLED screen (actually two of the curved screens we’ve seen on some other AIOs, stacked on top of one another). The cooler also features a massive copper heatsink bigger than my hand. It’s arguably overkill for anything AMD has put out on AM5 to date. But of course, high-end motherboards and coolers are all about overkill. And when you’re paying $3,299.99 for a motherboard and cooler combo, some level of overkill should probably be expected.

• Asus ROG Crosshair X870E Edition 20 available at Best Buy

GPU

Asus ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5090 Edition 20 graphics card

How do you top the record-setting ROG Astral 5090? If you’re Asus’ design team, you add a second back-connector power option so it can pull up to 800 watts, a glass backplate, and a curved OLED screen all its own. Unfortunately, since the Crosshair Edition 20 motherboard isn’t a BTF model, we can’t test the card’s performance with extra power here.

The GPU’s curved screen also requires you to run a USB cable from the back of the GPU to the motherboard for power and data, which feels a little lame given the sky-high $5,999 asking price.

• Asus ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5090 Edition 20 available at Best Buy

PSU

Asus ROG Thor Titanium III 3000W Edition 20 power supply

Most RTX 5090 builds don’t need anywhere near this much juice, but the dual-voltage ROG Thor Titanium III 3000W Edition 20 is a PSU monster designed to deliver up to 3000W of power, specifically for the above Astral 5090 Edition 20 GPU (or, I guess, any other PC with extreme power needs). At 190 x 150 x 86 mm, it’s large, but not massive, given its power rating. It’s fully modular (naturally, for this class). And it sports its own magnetic OLED display, which can be mounted on either side, or extended via a cable to somewhere more visible in your case.

At $899, this PSU is an option you can easily skip if you aren’t looking to push the most power possible through Asus’ singular Edition 20 RTX 5090. Without a 230V power outlet, you’re going to be limited to 1600W from the Thor, anyway. You can get a good 1300W ATX 3.1 power supply for less than half this price, which would be more than enough to run an RTX 5090 system. But then, of course, you would have one less screen.

• Asus ROG Thor Titanium III 3000W Edition 20 is available at Best Buy

You can grab the above components separately or, if you want to save about $80, you could buy the board, cooler, case, GPU, and PSU together in a bundle from Best Buy for the small sum of $10,849.

• Asus ROG Edition 20 Package including GPU, PC Case, PSU and motherboard with liquid cooler is available at Best Buy

Peripherals

Asus’ ROG Azoth Extreme 75% Edition 20 mechanical keyboard

We covered the Azoth Extreme 75% Edition 20 pretty extensively ahead of Computex. It’s a reimagining of the carbon fiber-adorned ROG Azoth Extreme we looked at in 2024, with a mix of transparent and partially transparent keycaps. It’s $100 more expensive than the launch price of the previous Azoth, pegging this keyboard at $599. There’s also a gold metal jog wheel, gold accents along the back, magnetic gold feet (in two sizes), and even gold screws holding the whole thing together. And, naturally, the RGB backlighting under the switches defaults to a gold color out of the box.

• Asus ROG Azoth Extreme 75% Edition 20 is available at Best Buy

Asus ROG Harpe II Extreme Edition 20 gaming mouse

We also checked out the ROG Harpe II Extreme Edition 20 mouse ahead of Computex earlier this year. It packs a 65K sensor, a gold scroll wheel and side buttons, and a transparent chassis with RGB that illuminates the ROG 20th Anniversary logo. There isn’t much to complain about in terms of specs, although many will balk at the $259 price. Having used it extensively for a couple of weeks, it feels and performs well. My main concern is what the transparent plastic will look like after years of regular gaming.

• Asus ROG Harpe II Extreme Edition 20 gaming mouse is available at Best Buy

Asus ROG Swift OLED PG27AQWP-W Edition 20 gaming monitor

We tested the non-Edition 20 version of this OLED earlier this year and gave it a perfect score. It can do 540 Hz refresh at its native 2560 x 1440 resolution, or a wild 720 Hz at 720p. It was also bright and color accurate. The Edition 20 variant looks to have generally the same specs, and costs about $100 more for the addition of some gold plating, stealth-black futuristic looks, and an undoubtedly striking transparent rear chassis panel that matches the look of the above Harpe II Extreme Edition 20 mouse.

Its tandem OLED panel is rated to 1,500 nits of peak brightness, and a button below the screen lets you easily switch between the panel’s 540 Hz and 720 Hz modes. It’s a nice gaming screen, to be sure, and Asus hasn’t tacked on as much Edition 20 tax here as elsewhere, but high-refresh panels tend to kick out a lot of heat, and I have to wonder how soon the pretty back panel will start to change from clear to yellow, or just cloudy.

• Asus ROG Swift OLED PG27AQWP-W Edition 20 is available at Best Buy

SSD and RAM

Along with the above parts, we were also sent a speedy Fury Renegade PCIe 5 SSD from Kingston, as well as 32GB of DDR5 for testing the system. We added our own 9950X CPU.

I was hoping to get my hands on some of the Asus-branded RAM we also saw at Computex, but I was told by a rep that the Asus RAM is solely destined for the Chinese market. Perhaps it’s made by CXMT.

Kingston Fury Renegade G5 M.2 2TB PCIe 5.0 SSD

• Kingston Fury Renegade G5 M.2 2TB PCIe 5.0 SSD is available at Best Buy

Kingston Fury Beast 32GB (2x16GB) 6000MT/s DDR5 CL30 RAM

• Kingston Fury Beast 32GB (2x16GB) 6000MT/s DDR5 CL30 RAM is available at Amazon

Building an Asus ROG Edition 20 PC: The good, the bad, and the AMOLED

Asus offers up a 17-step system build guide for putting together a PC with its Edition 20 parts, complete with a nearly 19-minute YouTube video, which it points buyers to via a QR code stuck on the upper-right corner of the motherboard.

For the most part, the two key things I needed for installation were lots of space (the build process alternated between my workbench and my coffee table) and my trusty Hoto screwdriver. But as we’ll see later on, there was one instance where I needed a long screwdriver to get screws into some recessed holes inside the case.

I haven’t followed instructions much when building a PC for decades now, but I did here, in part because I was pretty pressed for time, but also because some of these components, like the case, motherboard, and cooler, have pretty specific features and assembly steps. And I also didn’t want to be sorting through five or more different manuals every time I ran into a roadblock.

To Asus’ credit, the video is pretty thorough and clear. Only a couple of times (as I’ll detail below) did I have to jump back several seconds to catch something I missed or, on one occasion, something Asus missed in its assembly guide.

Starting with the motherboard, you’ll first need to remove several covers, the two largest of which (on the right in the image above) are magnetically attached, and basically there in case you want to display the board as “art” on its own at some point. The large windowed frame over the socket and RAM area, and the layered section covering the PCIe slots can’t be in place if you’re actually using the board – at least presuming you are using this board with a GPU or anything else in the slots.

There are also two M.2 heatsinks covering the five drive slots native to the board. Both have latches and come away easily.

The primary heatsink is quite large, with a gold-metal base and heatpipe that is visible from the top, around the black aluminum of the rest of the sink. There are thermal pads on the top and bottom of all the drive areas, and Asus includes small rubber stoppers for single-sided drives, which go in between the bottom heatinks, to prevent PCB flexing. I naturally checked after installing the sink to make sure the thermal pad made contact with the Kingston drive. Like we saw in previous motherboard testing of a few other Asus boards, the pad definitely makes contact with the SSD, but the compression looks a little light. Still, as long as the drive is connected to the pad, the cooler should be able to do its job. I’m only installing one M.2 drive, so next were the fairly typical steps of installing the CPU and RAM.

Note that I initially installed a Ryzen 5 7600X here, because it’s the chip I had on hand while taking photos. But I eventually grabbed a Ryzen 9 9950X from the office to install in the system, as it’s a much more appropriate CPU for this otherwise top-end build.

Asus’ guide actually doesn’t tell you to install the RAM until much later, but I installed it after the CPU, because PC building muscle memory told me it was the right time to do it. I didn’t run into any issues, so you could install the RAM here or later on. Just, of course, make sure you put the RAM into the correct slots if, like me, you’re only installing two sticks.

Case, cooler, and power supply

With the SSD, RAM, and CPU in place, I snapped the plate cooler back on, and it was time to start dealing with the GR20 chassis. This is when I really started to realize just how heavy most of these parts are, although I did have to haul all the boxes up two flights of stairs a few days before this. The case weighs just over 20 pounds on its own, and when you start adding the board (10.8 pounds) and the GPU (7.4 pounds), the system gets very heavy, very fast.

You have to lay the case down in order to install the motherboard, which, since the case is an open frame, I needed to remove some parts from the rear first. A large cable cover pops off with a switch, then I needed to remove a few screws to take off the PSU and radiator brackets. With those parts off, I could put the case on its side (with the base hanging off the edge of my coffee table). I moved the case to the table because it’s lower and therefore a lot easier to install the motherboard.

Once aligned to the standoffs, the motherboard drops onto the case (rather dramatically, thanks to its weight) and it’s time to screw it down.

I often skip a few motherboard screws when building PCs. But with the weight of this board and the expensive, heavy GPU that was going to hang off of it, I made sure to install and carefully tighten all nine screws here. Asus’ guide also points out the importance of this, but I didn’t need the warning. In all, motherboard installation was pretty simple, in part because the case is open, so I wasn’t reaching inside a big box to install several screws.

Next, it’s time to stand the case back up and break out the AIO. The cooling block is so heavy with copper that the process feels substantial in a way that most AIO installations don’t. Of course, the sheer cost of the board and cooler probably has something to do with that feeling as well. At least Asus includes the nicest cooling accessory box I’ve ever seen. It has the ROG 20 logo on the top, so you can always remember this very expensive important moment.

First, you need to attach the radiator bracket to the radiator, and Asus’ guide nicely points out that you need to do so with the mounting tabs facing left. This saved me from doing it wrong and having to fix it later. Then, I mounted the bracket and the radiator to the back of the case via four slide-in tabs and two screws, put the case back down on its side, and took the protective plastic covering off the very large and heavy water block.

There are a few things to note there. First, there’s Asus’ ROG branding in its paste application. I am not sure this quite qualifies as one of our preferred methods of how to install thermal paste, but it is at least fairly evenly arranged. The blue strips are pre-installed thermal pads that help ensure good thermal transfer from the VRM sinks on the board.

Also note the pogo pins at the bottom of this photo. That is the power and data connection that, corresponding to pads on the board, means you don’t have to plug in any cables for the pump or the screen (the latter of which comes in a separate box and will go on later).

Next, you need to remove the motherboard’s mounting brackets, and the cooler’s pre-installed posts will drop right into the screw holes (carefully, mind you; this thing is hefty). You then need to install four regular screws to install the cooler, and three more proprietary screws around two of the sides to make sure the VRM cooling mates well with the large copper of the cooling plate.

This is, by far, the most secure connection I’ve seen on a consumer cooler. But with all the metal and money involved, that’s a good thing.

Next, surprisingly, the guide told me I needed to disassemble the upper-right corner of the case, so I stood the system back up. This step is a little involved, as you need to remove a couple of plastic covers that hide access to four screws that need to be removed. Then you need to unplug an RGB cable for the lights embedded in the frame. This lets you pass the AIO tubes through from the back, where the radiator is, to the front motherboard area. Later on, you can tuck the tubes nicely into the space above the motherboard, so they’re a little less visible, although the space does feel a bit cramped.

A note on these corners, as it’s one area where the design doesn’t feel or look as premium as I would like (especially given the price). There are pretty large plastic screw cap covers, which magnetically attach just by snapping onto the corner screws. They’re designed to blend into the design of the aluminum frame.

But since these covers are only held on by a small magnet, they have a tendency to move around, and often don’t line up correctly on their own. In fact, when I first took the GR20 case out of its box, one of these covers was stuck to another part of the case, several inches from where it belonged. It’s not entirely clear if this happened during shipping or just in the act of removing the case from its carton.

But I often found myself having to nudge them back in place, in part because their corner placement puts them exactly where you instinctively want to grab the case/system to slide it around. And speaking of sliding: the bottom of the chassis has small rubber feet that had a tendency to come off during the build process. They pop into holes in the metal, so reinstalling them wasn’t a problem. But they feel like a bit of an afterthought. Again, given the cost, I would like to see far more substantial rubber feet that don’t easily come off. Because the case and system weigh so much, if the feet come off it’s pretty easy to accidentally gouge your desk or table during the build process as you’re moving things around.

These are both fairly minor quality complaints, but given this is the most expensive system I’ve assembled or tested, at least since the days of quad-SLI, it doesn’t feel great to see parts that clearly cost pennies marring what is otherwise a premium system experience.

Swinging the system around on the bench – which I learned to do by walking it on its corners due to the rubber feet and the system’s heft – it’s time to install the power supply and radiator fans. First, the Thor PSU screws into the cage that was previously removed with four screws on the power plug end of the supply.

Then the cage and PSU slot back into tabs on the side of the case and attach via a screw. Don’t forget, as I did here, to move the PSU screen to the side of the PSU facing out. Otherwise, you’ll need to remove the PSU or radiator cage again later. Because the opposite side of the PSU and the radiator cage sit close enough together that you can’t remove the screen after installation.

With the PSU in place, it’s time to install the radiator fans. This is made quite easy by the fact that the three spinners come as a single fused unit and, if you follow along via the installation video, Asus points out that the Asus logos on the fan hubs should be facing out.

Screw them in via the long screws in the pretty cooling accessory box, and connect them via the single proprietary cable and right-angle connector that extends a few inches out from the top of the radiator.

If the plug doesn’t insert easily, turn it around so it angles out. I spent a half minute or so attempting to plug the cable in backward before I figured this out.

Now it’s time to install all the modular PSU cables, and the video guide here just kind of vaguely tells you to thread them all from the hole near the top of the PSU side to the bottom. I did this, somewhat against my better judgement, knowing full well that the supplemental PSU cables were going to need to plug in up top, and I had to fish them out and re-thread them to the top later.

I was a bit confused at first at these plastic, somewhat chintzy-looking gold ROG blocks stacked above most of the plugs. Turns out, they’re pre-installed cable combs, and spacing them out along the cables can make things look a lot better. Don’t waste them near the PSU side of your cable runs, though, because now it’s time to reinstall the cable shroud that covers up this mess.

With the PSU, radiator and fans, and cable cover installed, this is one of the cleanest-looking ‘backsides’ of a system I’ve seen in a while. Considering this is also an open-frame case, that’s pretty impressive. Again, as long as you don’t think about price.

Walking the system back around on my bench, it was time to remove the cable shroud here as well. There’s a single screw on the bottom, and then you need to push the shroud up to release its top tabs. This was surprisingly difficult, and I was worried about pushing too hard, because this is one of the other pieces of the case that’s plastic. But it eventually popped off.

At this point, it’s a good time to remove a couple of screws and move the front panel ports up to the top section if you want. Since I can’t imagine anyone putting this system on the floor, I left it in its default orientation, with the ports near the bottom.

Now it’s time to connect all (or nearly all) of the PSU and other cables. This is fairly straightforward if you’ve built a PC more than a couple times before. The one snag that I ran into was that the video didn’t make it very clear where to plug in the fused front-panel connector, and where I thought it should go, in the lower-right corner of the motherboard, looked to be in the way of putting the plastic cable shroud back on.

I eventually downloaded the manual, saw that I was right, and just had to be extra careful when reinstalling the shroud, running the bottom connection over it rather than down past where the connector lives. The black-and-gold cables look pretty nice, with their cable combs positioned. But most will be hidden when you reinstall the cable shroud on the right side.

Blower fan and GPU

It’s almost time to install the GPU, but first we need to feed it some active airflow. The GR20 ships with a blower fan, again in its own box, that slots into a large horizontal hole near the bottom. Installation is pretty straightforward. You stick the fan in the hole on the bottom of the case, and insert two screws on each side.

There are also thumb screws that you can loosen to move the fan forward and back a bit, but mostly the fan is just going to blow up across the bottom of the board and onto the ROG Astral 5090 – once it’s installed. First, though, you need to plug in the blower fan, which you can do on any number of fan headers around the board. But since the cable is long enough, I ran it behind the motherboard area and up to the CPU fan header.

Another wrinkle before we get to the GPU: You also have to install brackets for the motherboard’s port area and the GPU port area. The former feels like a decoration. Since the board is secured by several screws, it’s effectively a decorative frame for connectivity. But the GPU port bracket supports half of the very heavy GPU.

These aluminum brackets poke into small holes on the frame of the case, and this is the one area where I feel like the video installation guide seriously misses the mark. It tells you to attach these brackets from the back with a screwdriver, but it doesn’t say which screws to use, or even show screws being inserted. And because the screw holes are recessed, they are very hard to see, and were deep enough that I had to break out the long screwdriver that I usually use for installing large air coolers.

Once I did that and used the same screws from the bag in the previous step (installing the blower fan), getting both of the brackets installed was fairly easy again, easy after I wasted 5-10 minutes figuring out what I was supposed to do here. Again, since the GPU bracket is going to support the port side of your GPU, make sure that the bracket's two screws are tightly torqued.

On the opposite edge of the case (shown on the right side of the image above), you’ll also need to attach a GPU support bracket. This one you’ll want to leave somewhat loose at first, since you’ll have to adjust it once the GPU is installed.

And now, finally, it’s time to install the ROG Astral RTX 5090 Edition 20 GPU. You’ll probably want to (again, gently) lay the system down for this. It, as should be obvious, goes into the x16 slot just below the topmost M.2 heatsink. But because the sink is large and the GPU itself is very large, getting it slotted in requires some extra finesse.

But once the card is fully seated in its slot, you secure it first with the typical bracket screws on the port end, and then with three additional screws on the GPU support bracket side, with holes that you’ll need to adjust so they line up with the holes on the card. If you happen to be using a different card, hopefully this bracket adjusts enough so that it can be placed under the card to support it. Once it’s in place where you need it and the card is secured from both sides, you’ll want to tighten the screw that holds the bracket at the back, so it securely supports your graphics card.

Now, of course, you can attach the 12-pin power connector that was previously threaded out the bottom center of the case into the graphics card. As always, make damn sure it’s fully inserted. But hey, at least with this build, you can see the connector when the system is running, in case it starts smoking or melting.

At this point, you can also attach the glass backplate cover if you so choose. It effectively just sits on a hole in the backside of the GPU, held in place by some magnets. It looks nice, but I wish it would drop down slightly to be more flush with the top edge of the card.

Time to deploy the AMOLED

With the primary components in place, it’s time to install the curved screens, in the penultimate addition to this build. Both effectively just snap in place. The larger cooler screen requires that you line up a U-shaped groove under the liquid cooling tubes, insert the screen mechanism into a couple of tabs, and then press down gently until the pogo pins make contact with the pads on the cooler.

Note that Asus markets this screen as swiveling, but it really only moves two or three degrees forward or back. That might be enough to reduce some glare, but you’ll generally want to have the screen angled toward you if you want to easily see what’s on it. It’s also not really a single screen, but clearly a pair of curved screens stacked on top of each other.

The GPU screen is far easier to install, snapping right into the end of the card in the area where you can see the metal connection pads. But it has its own wrinkle. For this screen to work at all, you need to connect an included USB cable from the Type-C port on the card to a Type-A port on your motherboard. This is easy enough to do, and the motherboard has 8 Type-A ports, along with two more on the front of the case, so I doubt you’ll miss one port. But for a GPU with a screen that costs $6,000, it feels kinda lame to have to run a USB cable to get the screen to work.

Lastly, and I would argue most optionally, Asus also includes a large magnetic ROG logo that you can attach to the steel front of the otherwise plastic cable shroud on the front. It is pretty detailed and matches the gold accents of the rest of the system. But personally, I think it looks tacky here in a way that (somehow) the rest of the design doesn’t. If you really want to show off your devotion to the Republic of Gamers, this big magnet might look better on your refrigerator or somewhere else than on a $15,000 gaming PC that’s already adorned with screens that, by default, display the ROG logo on the regular.

Personally, I’m going to stick this large ROG magnet on the side of the beer fridge that lives under my test bench, next to my magnetic Corsair external SSD and my Orkney Skull Splitter ale sticker. If any of my non-gamer friends ask what it means, I’ll tell them it represents the Republic of Guzzlers. Really though, I just like a nice lunch beer – I swear.

Using the Asus ROG Edition 20 PC

I didn’t have as much time as I would have liked to benchmark this monster PC or get a long-term sense of what it’s like to use it as a gaming and productivity rig. I may add to this section in the coming days as I spend more time with the system, but after about a day of using it after it was built, installing an OS, drivers, and playing a few PC games, I did get some strong initial impressions.

First off, for a high-end rig in an open case, with the beefiest GPU I’ve ever personally used, this machine is surprisingly quiet. I didn’t do anything more strenuous than play Borderlands 4, and admittedly my air conditioner was droning away from a nearby window. But the cooler and blower fans remained quiet. And the four fans on the GPU were noticeable when I was standing in front of the PC, but remained at both a level and a pitch that I would expect from a mainstream gaming rig inside a traditional case, not a top-end monster rig with all its cooling inches from my ears. At some point, I’ll have to listen to the system again when it’s cool enough to live without my air conditioner.

On the topic of heat, though: this 5090 sure kicks out a lot of it when gaming. And to some degree that’s no surprise. My personal system with a 4090 sits below my desk, and when I’m gaming at high settings on my 4K OLED TV, the PC feels like a small space heater blowing on my legs. However, things were on another level when using the Asus PC on my bench. The blower fan was pushing air up from the bottom, and the GPU fans were busy dispersing the heat from rendering the menu screen of Borderlands 4. The taller-than-desk-height of my bench was also probably a factor. But all that heat was literally blowing in my face, while my air conditioner worked to cool me from one side, a few feet away.

After about 10 minutes, I needed a break from the hot air blowing on me. And while my setup isn’t typical unless maybe you tend to game at a standing desk, I think even in a typical gaming setup, you may want to put this machine a little further away from you than a typical gaming PC. It’s not that it generates more heat than other high-end rigs, but its open-frame nature and the bottom blower fan distribute that heat much differently than a more traditional case, where most of the heat is exhausted out the back or the top, away from you.

Here, most of the heat seems to come forward, directly off the motherboard. And if your desk is cramped, I don’t think that would lend itself to a comfortable gaming experience – at least during the warmer months. I’d suggest planning to position the system 3-4 feet from your monitor and your face. If that means you have to upgrade your desk, you should. The system also weighs nearly 60 pounds, so you might want to anyway – and if you spent this many thousands of dollars on a gaming rig, you can almost certainly also afford a new slab of furniture for it to sit on.

Also, I find it curious that Asus’ ROG 20th anniversary GPU supports two power connectors (a typical 12VHPWR and a back-connector power option, and yet the motherboard the company expressly pairs it with isn’t a back-connector board that lets you take advantage of the extra wattage the GPU can take and that the 3000W PSU can dish out.

Perhaps a couple of factors were involved in the pairing. U.S. households aren’t typically wired for the voltage required to pull significantly more than 1600W. And maybe the average well-off PC builder willing to spend over $10,000 on a GPU, motherboard, cooler, and power supply might not always be astute enough to play around with a GPU capable of drawing up to 800W all on its own. I could see the whole ROG 20th Anniversary line becoming a financial burden pretty fast if the company had to deal with a significant number of RMAs and customer complaints on what must be low-volume hardware that costs several thousand dollars. Those who really want to experiment with shoving 800W into an RTX 5090 can buy the GPU separately, along with one of Asus’ compatible BTF motherboards.

A cost-no-object, screen-packed powerhouse

Circling back to cost, there’s just no getting around the fact that this system is ridiculously expensive. Putting aside the peripherals, the RAM, the SSD, and the CPU, the core ROG 20 components here costOver $10,000. Even at today’s inflated prices, you can get a more typical RTX 5090, a capable 1300W power supply, a premium X870E motherboard, a good 360mm AIO cooler, and one of the best PC cases for well less than $6,000. Cut a couple of corners and wait for a deal here and there and you could get nearly the same level of performance for not much more than $5,000 – half the price of Asus’ ROG Edition 20 parts.

Of course, those components won’t have multiple curved AMOLED screens, several pounds of copper to cool your CPU and VRMs, or a unique open-frame case like the GS20. And Asus’ ROG line has always put performance, materials, and premium design over affordability. It’s not like anyone who has been paying attention to the brand for two decades was expecting it to celebrate its anniversary by putting out cheap parts. High-end ROG components have always demanded a premium, and now that nearly everything in this space costs more, the premium has increased as well – at least for this iteration of its product line.

Also, as much as I’m not typically the type to build a PC with parts from mostly the same company, it was refreshing to actually be able to control every bit of RGB lighting with a single piece of software. I just wish Armory Crate didn’t need to download and update what seemed like 12 different modules and require multiple reboots before it could recognize and adjust the lighting on all the components in this build.

• MORE: Best PC Builds for Gaming
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The cheapest Nvidia RTX 5090 in stock and available to buy right now costs at least $4,799, and even then, you won't be buying one from a reputable vendor. That makes this Dell Alienware desktop discount all the more enticing. Right now you can save $1,550 off the potent Alienware Area-51 Gaming Desktop, and score one for $4,779, cheaper than the standalone cost of the GPU.

● Check out this deal at Dell

With graphics card prices continuing to rise, the bar for selling a 5090 PC for less than the cost of the card is admittedly a little lower than it used to be, but this is still a crazy deal. For less than the cost of a 5090, you get the card, plus a 20-core Intel Ultra 7 265K processor, 32GB of DDR5 7200 RAM, 1TB M.2 Gen 5 SSD, and a 1500W power supply, all housed inside a sleek Alienware case. Other bonuses include a copy of Windows 11 and a 240mm AIO CPU cooler.

The standout of this build, as you've probably guessed, is the absolutely monstrous RTX 5090. The best graphics card on the market by some distance, its massive 32GB GDDR7 VRAM pool and 21,760 CUDA cores mean it will chew through any title at 4K, or a local AI workload without breaking a sweat.

The rest of this PC, while not the most premium spec, is definitely not to be sniffed at either. The Intel Core Ultra 7 265K is arguably a little underpowered at this level, but the RTX 5090 will more than make up for any shortcomings. The Arrow Lake CPU has excellent single-threaded performance, and when paired with a 5090 in our CPU testing data, can pump out 150 frames per second at 1080p on average across our 17-game test suite. That being said, if you'd like a bit of a CPU boost, you could opt to configure a Core Ultra 9 285, with more cores, cache, and a higher boost clock speed.

While we'd have previously hoped for 64GB of RAM in a build of this magnitude, the AI-induced component crisis means that is no longer a reality. Fortunately, you can upgrade the DDR5 6400 to DDR5 7200 with Intel 200S boost — which our testing shows can boost gaming performance by 7% — for free in this particular deal. You also get a 1TB Gen 5 SSD and a 1500W power supply.

While it might not feature AMD's benchmark-busting X3D CPU range under the hood, buying any PC for less than the going rate of the 5090 is not to be sniffed at in the current PC market. Indeed, CPUs and motherboards remain some of the only PC components with healthy discounts in the current climate, so buying this rig and doing a bit of surgery to the processor isn't out of the question either.

Prebuilt PCs usually get a bad rep but during these difficult times, they're actually a beacon of light as we navigate the component crisis. We've found a great deal on one such system — the Acer Nitro 85. It comes with an RTX 5070 graphics card and a 20-core Core Ultra 7 265F processor for just $1,499 on Walmart right now. That's $600 less than it usually retails for, and you get 16GB of DDR5 RAM along with a 1TB Gen4 SSD on top.

• Check out this deal on Walmart

The Acer Nitro 85 is perfect for 1440p gaming at the highest settings, and even a bit of 4K gaming with upscaling tricks thanks to Nvidia's rich software suite. You get features like DLSS, multi-frame gen and RTX HDR which all contribute to a better gaming experience. The RTX 5070 is third on our list of the very best gaming GPUs you can buy because of its exceptional value proposition, and this deal only enhances that. The 12GB of VRAM, while not a lot, is enough for demanding titles today.

Alongside the 5070, you also get an Intel Core Ultra 7 265F with 8 P-cores and 12 E-cores and a max clock speed of 5.3 GHz. This is a high-end chip capable of driving even faster GPUs, so you're set for both gaming and professional workloads. It's cooled by a 240mm AIO liquid cooler. Talking to the CPU is 16GB of DDR5 RGB RAM and a 1TB PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSD slotted inside a standard motherboard that supports Wi-Fi 7 and has a 2.5 Gbps ethernet port.

The whole system is powered by a 600W PSU and enclosed inside a sleek-looking panoramic case with RGB accents and three RGB fans. In terms of front panel I/O, you get 1x USB 3.2 5 Gbps Type-C Port, 2x USB 3.2 5 Gbps Type A Ports and 1x 3.5mm audio jack on the top. The entire system is also covered by a 1-year warranty, and you have plenty of room onboard to upgrade the PC beyond that when things normalize.

The Acer Nitro 85 is a powerful prebuilt that can easily cruise through whatever task you throw at it. We kitted out a very similar system on PCPartPicker and the total cost came out to over $2,000 and that's without a Windows 11 license. So, for just $1,499 on Walmart right now, you're really getting your money's worth. With no foreseeable end to the ongoing RAMpocalypse, don't miss out on a stellar deal like this.

If you're looking for more savings, check out our Best PC Hardware deals for a range of products, or dive deeper into our specialized SSD and Storage Deals, Hard Drive Deals, Gaming Monitor Deals, Graphics Card Deals, gaming chair, or CPU Deals pages.

If you need a top-tier gaming system that delivers on performance and aesthetics, the Predator Orion 6000 (PO6-605-UR15W) should do the trick. While Acer's prebuilt gaming beast usually retails for $2,799.99 at U.S. retailers, Walmart is currently offering a massive 25% discount, bringing the price down to $2,099 for a limited time. That is savings of up to $700 that you can put toward a new gaming monitor or other gaming accessories.

• Check out the Acer Predator Orion 6000 deal on Walmart

The Predator Orion 6000 is an exceptional choice of gaming system for demanding gamers. It features a powerful Core Ultra 7 265KF processor, liquid-cooled by a 240mm AIO cooler. The chip has 20 cores and a boost clock speed of up to 5.5 GHz. Paired with 32GB (2x16GB) of DDR5 memory, the Orion 6000 easily exceeds the requirements of today’s AAA games and is fully prepared for future releases.

The system doesn’t cheap out on storage, either. It comes equipped with a 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD that delivers lightning-fast load times and ample space to build your gaming library. In today’s market, with memory and SSD prices continuing to surge, a gaming system with 32GB of memory and a 1TB SSD is a rare sight.

While the Predator Orion 6000 is clearly a powerful gaming system, the GeForce RTX 5070 Ti, one of the best graphics cards, is undoubtedly the component that draws the most attention. Powered by Nvidia’s latest Blackwell architecture, the GeForce RTX 5070 Ti delivers great gaming performance at 1440p (2560x1440) resolution. Not only does it dominate at 1440p, but it is also an extremely competent performer at 4K (3840x2160) resolutions.

The Predator Orion 6000 is eligible for Intel’s Gamer Days campaign, running from August 10 through September 13. When you buy the Orion 6000, you’ll receive free digital copies of Star Wars: Galactic Racer and Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis, launching October 6, 2026, and February 12, 2027, respectively.

With prices for memory, SSDs, and graphics cards always fluctuating, building a custom PC may not always be the best route. Sometimes buying a prebuilt system is not just convenient; it can also offer big savings. When you factor in a significant discount, like the current deal that brings the price down to just $2,099, the Predator Orion 6000 is just hard to ignore.

If you're looking for more savings, check out our Best PC Hardware deals for a range of products, or dive deeper into our specialized SSD and Storage Deals, Hard Drive Deals, Gaming Monitor Deals, Graphics Card Deals, gaming chair, or CPU Deals pages.

For a budget-priced 1080p gaming rig with decent enough specs, you're going to need over $1,000 in the current market. Right now, one of the best specs at this price point is this ABS Cyclone Aqua gaming PC for $1,099.99 at Newegg. You're saving $300 on its usual price, and you're getting a machine that will deliver enough juice for solid 1080p gameplay.

● Check out this deal at Newegg

This system features an Intel Core i5-14400F processor, along with a current-gen Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 GPU, 32GB of DDR4-3200 memory, and a 1TB SSD. Right now, you'll struggle to find a competitor that offers similar performance for this machine at a lower price. The current state of the market has pushed 1080p budget machines like this above $1,000, with AI forcing RAM, SSDs, and GPUs to rapidly increase in price. ABS, a brand that Newegg owns and operates itself, is delivering good specs here for a price that still remains affordable.

This is inescapably a machine for 1080p gaming. First, the GPU, with the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 shipping with 3,840 CUDA cores, along with 8GB of GDDR7 VRAM. This is an entry-level GPU that sits above the RTX 5050, with Nvidia DLSS 4 support giving it the latest Nvidia software enhancements in-game. Multi-frame generation is the key DLSS 4 feature for gamers on this rig, as it'll give you a decent AI-generated frame rate boost in any resource-heavy games.

You're also getting the Intel Core i5-14400F with this ABS machine, and this Intel Raptor Lake Refresh CPU continues to be an option for gamers in budget pre-builts this year. It has 10 cores, six of which are the performance cores that you'll want for gaming, along with four efficiency cores for multi-threaded work, and a clock speed that can boost up to 4.7 GHz. Yes, the Intel i5-14400F falls behind its AMD rivals for performance these days, but at 1080p on a budget rig, the gap doesn't make much difference.

You're also getting 32GB of GSkill Ripjaws V Series DDR4-3200 memory in this rig. DDR4 is an unfortunate compromise at this price point, so no DDR5 here, but with RAM costs continuing to be as high as they are, we'll be expecting an extended lifespan for DDR4 machines anyway. You also get 1TB of SSD storage, thanks to the Kingston SNV3S M.2 2280, offering Gen 4 speeds and giving you enough storage for a couple of big game installations, at least.

RAM and SSD pricing means that even budget PCs are getting more expensive, but the $1,099 sale price for this ABS Cyclone Aqua RTX 5060 rig isn't a bad one in the current market. These specs will give you enough power for 1080p gaming for the next few years, at least, while the price makes it a competitive option that few other pre-built machines on sale can beat right now.

The strategy of using last-gen laptop parts in mini PCs used to mean excellent performance at competitive prices. At least, it did until the RAMpocalypse swept across tech. Nevertheless, Geekom is pushing the idea that its IT13 Max, using a Core Ultra 9 185H at $799, offers a value option in mid-2026. Looking at some of the other prices for mini PCs we’ve seen recently, it might be right.

Other than the reasonable Ultra 9 tier price for the performance, RAM and storage in the current market, Geekom delivers a very competent mini PC here. It looks like an unassuming, business-like machine from the outside, but has plenty of ports, easy internal access, and is very sturdy.

Design of the Geekom IT13 Max 2026

Geekom’s new IT13 Max 2026 follows a very traditional NUC design. With its just-under-a-liter volume, this black device is just slightly bigger in every dimension than the MSI Cubi NUC AI+ 3MG (0.8 L), and shares a lot of the matte dark understated design and subtle branding of that unit. Later on, you’ll notice this pair has a lot in common when it comes to performance, too, despite being two Intel generations apart and featuring a huge price gap.

Geekom uses a matte plastic outer shell here, but the perforated venting areas to the sides and removable bottom plate are metal, as is an inner chassis. It is pretty easy to get into the IT13 Max, as there are just four screws positioned in the center of the rubber feet.

Users have access to power and headphones on the front panel, and a wide range of fast USB, networking, and monitor connection options. Geekom hasn’t implemented any biometrics in the power button, for example, and also eschews the addition of a Copilot button.

Geekom IT13 Max 2026 Specifications

Ports and Upgradeability on the Geekom IT13 Max 2026

When I decided to look inside, two of the four rubber feet could be unscrewed by hand, but another pair were just a little too tight, so I had to reach for my Phillips-head screwdriver. Once you get into this Geekom mini PC, there’s not much you can do, as the RAM is soldered.

The only upgrades users have access to are swapping the installed M.2 devices. There’s an M.2 2280 SSD slot with the NVMe PCIe4 500GB Kingston drive and thermal pad in place. Under that is the system’s M.2 2230 wireless connectivity card. To the side of these, I saw a vacant M.2 2242 slot. Oddly, the spec sheet I got from Geekom mentioned 2.5-inch SATA SSD/HDD expansion options, and not M.2 2242. There seemed to be an unused SATA header area on the motherboard, so perhaps specs were changed at a late stage of development.

The system offers a good array of ports built-in, and I didn’t want or need to reach for a docking solution during testing.

On the front of this mini PC, there is a generous row of four USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports. One of these supports always-on smart device charging. Next to these ports is a 3.5 mm audio jack and an inset power button with a white LED to indicate it is powered up.

On the left side, there is a full-size SD card reader, and on the right, you will find a Kensington lock slot.

At the rear of the IT13 Max 2026, there’s a series of vents, and below them, most of the I/O. This includes a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A port, a USB 2.0 Type-A, two USB4 Type-C (both with DP-Alt, one offers Power in), two RJ-45 2.5 Gbps Ethernet ports, a pair of HDMI 2.0 ports, and a DC‑in barrel jack for the supplied power brick.

Test System Setup

Productivity Performance on the Geekom IT13 Max 2026

Geekom boasts of all-round flagship performance from this new mini PC and thankfully skips any outlandish AI-related claims. Now we are getting down to testing, we shall see if there are any glaring weaknesses that come from choosing Intel’s previous-previous-gen silicon.

Geekom has opted for older silicon in the IT13 Max 2026, utilizing Intel’s Core Ultra 9 185H (16C/22T), which boosts up to 5.1 GHz, and shares die space with an Arc iGPU featuring eight Xe cores. This is quite a lot of compute and GPU resources in a little SoC, and that’s why the Ultra 9 185H was one of the top mobile processors a couple of years ago. There’s an NPU on board, too, but it can only muster 11 TOPS according to Intel’s data sheets. The question is if that chip, alongside 24GB of RAM and a 500GB, still stands up.

In the comparison charts above, you can see how the IT13 Max squared up to more modern rivals. In Cinebench 2026, Maxon’s current-gen CPU rendering benchmark, the single-thread result of ~450 points does mean that the Meteor Lake machine does trail the pack, but it isn’t a disaster. Turning to the multicore result in the same test, the latest Geekom mini PC with its older “Meteor Lake” chip basically matches the MSI Cubi NUC AI+ 3MG based on Intel “Panther Lake” silicon. Admittedly, the former’s 16C/22T core/thread count and higher power limits lift it against the Intel Core Ultra 9 386H with 16C/16T in the MSI.

In HandBrake, the Geekom managed 13 frames per second on our standard video transcoding test. That’s neck and neck with the MSI, again, but only with very long videos would you likely notice how it lags behind.

Gaming and Graphics on the Geekom IT13 Max 2026

The Geekom IT13 Max isn't hopeless in gaming, but it sits in the lower portion of our mini PC game benchmark comparison tables. It mostly performs better than the MSI Panther Lake mini PC, again. Not bad for something from two generations prior.

For my traditional spell of gaming fun before serious benchmarking, I decided to go on a quick adventure in Borderlands GOTY Enhanced (2019). The game ran at an average of about 80 frames per second when using the High preset at 1080p. I didn’t have any problem with frame rates mostly in the 80s, periodic dips in the frame chart looked worse than they actually felt during the game. It is definitely an older game now, and while the iGPU ran at close to its max utilization on my uncapped frame rate run, the CPU was barely burdened.

I also ran a few synthetic gaming benchmarks, a trio of 3DMark tests. One of those was the cross-platform 3DMark Solar Bay, which is well-weighted for iGPU performance comparisons, delivering playable frame rates on this type of graphics hardware.

The Geekom IT13 Max 2026 earned a score of 13,430 in this test. The Meteor Lake mini PC’s score (with eight Xe-LPG) cores is about 18% faster than the newer Panther Lake rival (with four Xe3-LPG cores). Both of them, and the AMD Ryzen AI mini PCs we have tested crumble in comparison with the GMKtec Evo-T2 with the best Panther Lake iGPU, the 12 Xe3-LPG core B390.

Moving onto some popular AAA gaming titles, I next checked how Shadow of the Tomb Raider performed on the Geekom. Its average of 37 and minimum of 29 frames per second put it once more very squarely in the same territory as the MSI Cubi NUC AI+ 3MG mini PC.

Cyberpunk 2077 was technically playable using the Steam Deck 1080p preset that we have been using for mini PC comparisons. Its average and 1% low results were 36 and 30 frames per second, respectively. Very slightly behind the Cubi NUC AI+ 3MG this time by both those metrics. Running Cyberpunk 2077 at 1080p using the high preset (no upscaling tech) is not recommended, as the IT13 Max achieved an average of 21 frames per second.

The overall picture that emerged was that the Geekom IT13 Max 2026 isn’t bad at modern gaming with low-ish settings, with upscaling if available, but is more suited to lighter and older titles.

Power, Heat, and Noise when using the Geekom IT13 Max 2026

I tested the IT13 Max 2026 with the default power profile Geekom shipped it with, which is a Processor Base Power (PBP, PL1) of 45W, a Maximum Turbo Power (MTP, PL2) of 70W, and a PL4 of 120W, according to system information tools. During testing, I measured total system power consumption with a plug-in power meter, as well as reading the CPU temperatures using a Windows utility.

At low load, with Google Docs open for typing among a few other browser tabs, the system consistently pulled around 14W. At the same time, the CPU temperature would stick around 43 degrees Celsius.

During prolonged stress testing of the IT13 Max 2026, the highest wattage consumed by the whole system momentarily spiked to around 85W, but a stable sustained level of ~70W was generally observed. It also seemed to stabilize at approximately the 70 degrees Celsius level after initially climbing higher.

The Geekom is a quiet mini PC, but you can hear the small cooling fan blowing clearly if it is put through any demanding CPU or GPU task. My meter showed 29.8 dB when idling, which is good, but the noise level ramped to a more than noticeable 52.3 dB when the system was under a sustained load.

Software and Warranty on the Geekom IT13 Max 2026

This mini PC came with Windows 11 Pro preinstalled and activated. As usual, before testing, we ensured Windows and drivers were fully up to date.

There were no utilities added by Geekom. Checking the Installed Apps list on Windows revealed both Realtek Audio Console and Realtek Card Reader as the only non-standard components in a typical Windows install.

Linux is also fully supported, according to the official spec sheets.

Geekom sells the IT13 Max 2026 with a three-year warranty, though the company does require you to pay a return shipping fee.

Geekom IT13 Max 2026 configurations

Geekom sells just one configuration of the IT13 Max 2026 — the one we have tested with 24GB of soldered LPDDR5 RAM and a 500GB SSD preinstalled.

Those browsing and interested in this particular configuration should be careful, though. Geekom is still selling an older variant of the IT13 Max with very similar specs but with two SODIMM slots, making it expandable to 96GB of DDR5-5600 memory. This other Core Ultra 9 185H device comes with a single 16GB SODIMM and a 1TB SSD preinstalled. It is usually $899, but Geekom is currently selling this version for the same $799 if you prefer its RAM/SSD configuration.

Bottom Line

During my testing of the Geekom IT13 Max 2026, I found it to be a dependable device. In the current climate, the soldered dual-channel 24GB of RAM might be a sweet spot if you want your integrated GPU to access a decent chunk of the memory pool. It is interesting to see the prior IT Max model now moved down to the same $799 price if you don’t want to accept soldered RAM, would like more preinstalled storage, and are otherwise attracted to owning a tiny PC powered by Intel’s Core Ultra 9 185H with its 16C/22T and reasonable Arc iGPU.

It is very interesting to see this mini PC match the far more modern MSI Cubi NUC AI+ 3MG we tested recently (which costs far more, as is often the case for enterprise pricing) in many of the benchmark applications and games. The MSI uses a Core Ultra 9 386H, so this is a reasonably fair U9 vs U9 comparison. In practice, the Geekom even seemed to idle at a slightly lower wattage than the MSI, but admittedly, it would pull around 70W under load, which is 15W more than the MSI Panther Lake was observed consuming. This points to one of the biggest attractions of most mainstream Panther Lake CPUs being their efficiency, which is far more important in a laptop than a mini PC like this.

To conclude, this does indeed seem like a capable, moderately quiet under light day-to-day loads, and power-efficient offering for the ticket price in mid-2026. At $799 the prior model might offer some of the best competition if removable RAM, albeit just 16GB, and a 1TB preinstalled SSD can sway you.