Computex 2026 Live: Every update and announcement from day one in Taipei
We're boots on the ground in Taiwan
An 18-inch laptop for the rest of us
Usually, an 18-inch laptop is a massive workstation or gaming rig. But at Computex, Acer has an 18-inch system, the Aspire 18 AI designed for everyday use. Above, it's pictured next to a 16-inch PC.
That 18-inch screen has just a 1920 x 1200 resolution, but for people who turn up the font size to read (no shame in it!), it may still help. The refresh rate tops out at 165 Hz.
Specs include a CPU up to an Intel Core Ultra 9 386H, up to 32GB of DDR5 RAM, up to 2TB of SSD storage, and Wi-Fi 7 support. Acer claims 22 hours of battery life. And hey, there's room, so you get a number pad.
Like much of what we're seeing at Computex, we don't have a price. But if you've been jonesing for a big screen without a discrete GPU, it is on the way.
How Intel is reacting to RTX Spark
With Nvidia's RTX Spark announced, CPU manufacturers are sizing up the field.
When we sat down with Tom’s sat down with Nish Neelalojanan, senior director of product management for Intel’s Client Computing Group, he told us how Intel is reacting:
“Nvidia puts out great products, right? And they know how to do gaming, they know how to do all these different things. So we always take everything with a healthy dose of paranoia, but we are also very, very confident with our products." He also pointed out Arm chips for Windows have typically had compatibility issues.
Read more: Intel warns it has 'a healthy dose of paranoia' over Nvidia entrance into PC market — company says RTX Spark is 'great for the market' while touting the virtues of x86
Who ISN'T having a milestone anniversary?
Lots of companies and brands at Computex seem to have started in years that end with 6.
- Asus ROG has a 20th anniversary product line
- MSI is celebrating 40 years, marked by the Titan 18 HX Dragon Edition Draco Epic laptop (pictured above).
- Gigabyte marked 40 years at the end of May, and is celebrating with its Infinity Design lanauage, including a GPU with rounded edges.
So consider this your reminder to at least get a card for your or a loved one's anniversary. Clearly everyone is celebrating.
Asus ROG Xbox Ally X20 finally brings an OLED screen
Among the many twentieth-anniversary branded Asus ROG gadgets the brand is releasing is a new version of the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X.
The ROG Xbox Ally X20 bundle includes an updated version of the handheld, with a clear shell, OLED display, TMR joysticks, and a transforming D-Pad with four and eight-way movement. It still has the same AMD Z2 Extreme processor as its predecessor.
ROG XREAL R1 Edition 20 Gaming AR Glasses, with a 171-inch, 240 Hz virtual display at 4 meters.
No pricing information is available just yet.
Vincent van Gogh, on a laptop
MSI is taking its Prestige 14 Flip AI+ and putting some prestige art on it. The company says the laptops are "inspired by The Starry Night and Starry Night Over the Rhône". That language makes it unclear if they're exact duplicates of the paintings, but either way, they don't look like anything else we've seen lately.
See what happened at the show before the show
Computex starts before the show floor opens. While it's nighttime in Taipei, you can still take a look at everything we saw early with our Day Zero Wrap Up.
You'll learn more about chips from Intel and AMD, monitors from Acer and Alienware, and, of course, learn a ton about Nvidia's RTX Spark system on a chip.
That should hold you over until the show floor doors open and we get into even more of the nitty-gritty.
Read: Computex 2026 Day Zero Wrap-Up: Nvidia launches RTX Spark Superchip assault on laptop and desktop markets, Intel readies Xeon 6+
A staggering 5090 from Asus
To celebrate 20 years of its ROG brand, Asus has unveiled a monster new ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5090 Edition 20, which includes a wraparound AMOLED display. There's also a 3,000W power supply, a new NUC, a PC case, peripherals, a gaming chair, and more.
Supermicro makes an appearance
Computex isn't all about consumer hardware, with plenty of B2B and industrial hardware on display too. We got a look at Supermicro's new Vera Rubin NVL72 rack, replete with a new type of cooling that the company says offers 1,000 times higher electrical impedance than standard.
Intel not resting on its laurels
Speaking to Tom's Hardware in response to news about Nvidia's RTX Spark, Intel says it treats all such developments with "a healthy does of paranoia," but touted the virtues of x86, warning of compatibility, DRM, and other issues that inevitably follow Arm CPUs entering the market.
A big EXPO boost
AMD is launching a new automatic memory overclocking feature. EXPO Ultra Low Latency promises a 13% uplift in performance compared to standard DDR5 JEDEC speeds, and a 4% uplift over existing EXPO.
Qualcomm hands on
Qualcomm's new $300 and up ARM laptops come with a mystery eight-core CPU and active cooling. Rocking the new Snapdragon C chip, our very own Paul Alcorn made a discovery that perplexed even the Qualcomm representative on the floor...
DLSS 4.5
Nvidia has confirmed that DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction, an advanced denoiser for better ray-tracing and path-tracing image quality when it releases later this year. Nvidia says it can process 35% more input data and uses 20% more paramaters using the same compute budget as the previous-generation.
Dell comes after the MacBook Neo
This $699 XPS 13 laptop built around Intel's Wildcat Lake platform is the company's answer to the popular MacBook Neo. Featuring between 8-32GB of RAM, a 13.4-inch display, and up to 1TB of storage, it comes with either the Intel Core 5 320 or an upcoming Intel Core Ultra 7 355 variant.
The return of a legend
AMD has announced it will bring back its legendary Ryzen 7 5800X3D, and is also launching a Ryzen 7 7700X3D to fight the rising price of PC building. The latter is a downclocked version of the 7800X3D for AM5 platforms, but the real headline is the 5800X3D, which supports DDR4 RAM and, in theory, should give users a more affordable way to build a potent gaming PC on AM4.
AM5 lives on
After previously only committing to supporting its AM5 platform through 2027, the company this week confirmed that it is actually going to support AM5 through 2029, with both Zen 4 and Zen 5 likely to see two further generations of CPU release. It's unclear if this is 2029 will mark the end of the line for AM5.
Jake is hungry!
"You ever get to the end of the day and realize you haven't eaten a thing." A quick look behind the scenes at Tom's Hardware, where CPU analyst Jake Roach has just realised that he hasn't eaten anything today. It's 8pm.
Radeon RX 9070 GRE
AMD's China-exclusive Radeon RX 9070 GRE is going global, with a $549 price tag when it launches on June 2. This GPU sits right between the 9060 XT and the RX 9070, and you'll be able to catch benchmarks on Tom's Hardware very soon.
Intel Crescent Island
Somewhat overshadowed by Nvidia, Intel has unveiled its new Crescent Island AI GPU, featuring up to 480GB of LPDDR5X memory. The data center GPU is "built for agentic AI," is built on Intel's Xe3P architecture, but details about raw specs are scant at this stage.
Surface Laptop Ultra
One of the first companies to get behind Nvidia's new RTX Spark, understandably, is Microsoft. The company has unveiled a new Surface Laptop Ultra, effectively its own version of the MacBook Pro. It features a 20-core CPU, Blackwell GPU, 128GB of unified RAM, and more. That's housed in a 15-inch chassis with a mini-LED display, replete with HDMI, USB-C, USB-A, and an SD card reader.
Nvidia enters the laptop and desktop market
If you're just joining us, then welcome. It is evening in Taiwan and there's a lot happening. Headlines from the first day of Computex include Nvidia's incursion into the desktop PC and laptop market by way of its new RTX Spark Superchip. RTX Spark is a Windows on Arm platform for laptops, which Nvidia claims is the most efficient every built. Top-spec chips offer 20 Arm CPU cores, a Blackwell GPU with 6144 CUDA cores, 128GB of LPDDR5X RAM, and up to 300 GB/s of memory bandwidth.
There's really nothing like Taipei during Computex:
Well, good morning, and a very (very) warm (and humid) welcome to our Computex 2026 live blog. Stephen from the UK here to see you through the first few hours of Monday. As mentioned, it has already been a jam-packed first day!