HONEY, I SHRUNK THE PC!

s IF THERE’S ONE THING you can rely

NVIDIA BLACKWELL RTX DEEP DIVE

The biggest changes all revolve around AI

NVIDIA ARCHITECTURES PAST TO PRESENT

Throughout this deep dive, we’ll refer to prior-generation

TSMC 4N RIDES AGAIN

One of the expectations from Blackwell was that

MOBILE GPU SHENANIGANS

We’ve primarily focused on the desktop Blackwell GPUs,

NEURAL RENDERING

Beyond just upscaling and MFG, Nvidia has also

OTHER GPU UPGRADES

Outside of the core architectural upgrades, Blackwell has

MELTING 16-PIN, AGAIN?

Melted 16-pin connectors and adapters have been a

THE RISE AND FALL OF PACKARD BELL

In this new series, we’ll be exploring the companies and tech that made an impact on the computing landscape, but faded away. This month, we’ll be covering Packard Bell—a PC brand that dominated desk top computing, and should be familiar to anyone who experienced desk top multimedia in the ‘90s

IT X {A HISTORY}

From conception to evolution, how IT X changed computing

CHASSIS DESIGN OVER TIME

As the motherboard has developed over the last

WHAT DO YOU NEED FOR ITX?

Honestly, not a lot. The form factor is

CENTERFOLD

PERFORMANCE GEAR LAID BARE

BUILD A STEAM DECK

John Knight tries one of several SteamOS imitations, and is overwhelmed by the future possibilities for Linux PC gaming

LEGACY DESKTOP VERSION

We tried the desktop-only version of Bazzite for

LOW-END HARDWARE

2D platformers like Gris and

Bag a software bargain

Norton 360 Premium 2025 for $29.99

AMD Announces Radeon RX 9000

THE NEWS

FORTNITE CHEATERS PROSPER

EPIC OFFERS CHEATERS A SECOND CHANCE WITH NEW BAN POLICY

OPENAI PREVIEWS GPT-4.5

The latest model features more intuitive chat and fewer hallucinations.

Tech Triumphs and Tragedies

A monthly snapshot of what’s good and bad in tech

MICROSOFT ROLLS OUT WINDOWS 11

The optional update includes PC Game Pass

FRAMEWORK REVEALS ITS MINI PC

Framework enters the desktop market

Twitch monetization tweaks

VIDEO-STREAMING SERVICE Twitch is on track to make

Google simplifies removing info

Since a 2014 European court ruling, Google has

Gaming PC sales milestone

Research by IDC has shown that sales of

Help us, AMD RDNA 4! You’re our only hope

NVIDIA’S BLACKWELL ARCHITECTURE has landed with a bit of a wet splat. It’s not that the GPUs are bad; it’s that you simply can’t find any of them in stock at reasonable prices. There’s also the matter of the new cards offering relatively limited gen-on-gen performance improvements—unless you’re specifically using Multi Frame Generation (MFG) as a smoothing substitute for higher frame rates.

THE LIST

THE BEST MINI PCs

Stuck between a rock and a tariff place

THE CEOS OF NO LESSER CONSUMER TITANS than Best Buy and Target both think that tariffs are going to turn into higher prices for consumers. That’s right—just when you thought graphics card prices couldn’t get any worse, here comes something to mess things up all over again.

DOCTOR

THIS MONTH THE DOCTOR TACKLES...

TINY BUT MIGHTY

You still can’t buy that GPU, but this ITX Adonis delivers some astonishing 4K performance

AMD Ryzen 9 9900X

It has long been a staple part of

Asus ROG Strix X870-IGaming WiFi

STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE PG.22 One of the reasons we’ve

32GB (2x16GB) Corsair Dominator Titanium DDR5 @ 7400 C34

Hold up—is that stock standard Intel XMP memory

NZXT Kraken Elite 240 RGB

NZXT’s latest coolers are stunning to look at,

2TB Corsair MP700 Elite M.2 PCIe 5.0 SSD

Another Corsair product, this time hailing from its

Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 Founders Edition 16GB

What to say about Nvidia’s latest 5080 card

850W Phanteks Revolt SFX 80+ Platinum

Following on from our chassis decisions above, and

Fractal Design Era 2 ITX

The Era 2 is a remarkably beautiful chassis

THE UNDERDOG

LENGTH OF TIME: 2-3HOURS LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY: HARD

ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED

WE’VE REITERATED IT enough at this point, but

MICRO MACHINE

HOW WE TEST Numbers, numbers, and more numbers.

SYSTEM BENCHMARKS

For our system testing, we use a multitude

GAMING BENCHMARKS

Game tests are performed on Ray Tracing Ultra

SYNTHETIC GAMING BENCHMARKS

We’re using 3DMark’s latest Speed Way, Steel Nomad,

AI INFERENCE BENCHMARKS

For our AI testing, we use UL Procyon’s

LETTERS

WE TACKLE TOUGH READER QUESTIONS ON...

THE BUILDS

THIS MONTH’S STREET PRICES...

TIP OF THE MONTH

© WIKIMEDIA, STABLE DIFFUSION, MP3TAG , JELLYFIN, MICROSOFT

COOLING ORIENTATION

I’ve been having a lot of fun lately

Galaxy S25 Ultra

The pull-tab battery is the biggest advance in

How to detect AI content

YOU’LL NEED THIS EXIFTOOL (Optional) IN MARCH

DETECTING VIDEO DEEPFAKES

In 2017, the ‘Synthesizing Obama’ program modified footage

ANATOMY OF AN AI IMAGE

1. AI SHEEN Objects and people in

Build your own streaming server

YOU’LL NEED THIS JELLYFIN ( https://jellyfin.org )

ACCESS YOUR MEDIA

1. NAVIGATION Click the hamburger icon to reveal

REMOTE ACCESS 101

Want access to your Jellyfin libraries while on

Beat Games with Edge Game Assist

YOU’LL NEED THIS MICROSOFT’S NEW GAME BAR WIDGET

MEET THE GAME BAR

1. THE GAME BAR ITSELF From here, you

Pass on your passwords

YOU’LL NEED THIS KEEPASSXC ( https://keepassxc.org )

Samsung announces PCIe 5.0 SSD… finally

It’s here. It’s finally here

Editor’s Pick: Asus Zenbook Duo 2025

You won’t want to go back to one

Nvidia GeForce RT X 5080

Built for the Multi Frame Gen gaming experience

Dough Spectrum Black 32 OLED

OLED gets Gorilla Glass treatment

Gigabyte Z890 Aorus Elite WiFi7 Ice

A slick board, but the AMD alternative looms large

HP Omen 35L

HP’s Omen 35L is a gaming PC with a love of tidiness

Dell XPS 13 9350

OLED option gives battery life a beating

Asus Zenbook A14

There’s something light at the end of the tunnel

Gigabyte X870 Aorus Elite WiFi7 Ice

Bright, white, and packed with extras

Logitech G RS Wheel Hub and Track Wheel

The wheel upgrade we've been waiting for

NZXT Lift Elite Wireless

Light and lovely, there's just something missing to tip it into top-tier territory

Civilization 7

4X TURN-BASED STRATEGY

AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition vs Intel Graphics Software

Let the battle continue