Previously serving as the president of SIE Worldwide Studios for Sony and then becoming the head of PlayStation Indies in 2019, Shuhei Yoshida retired last year. He has since taken to giving industry analysis over on X. With the Steam Machine and its mighty price tag serving as a big discussion point, Yoshida has had a couple of hours with the machine. So far, he doesn't seem mighty impressed.

Yoshida recently said on X, "3D performance is just…meh", going on to add, "The system recommends to default to 1080p—am I going back to PS4 days?"

This middling performance is something our Andy said of the device in his review. We saw performance sitting at significantly less than even comparably priced mini PCs, with the Atomman G1 Pro handily beating it. The Steam Machine's RDNA 3-era graphics hardware seems to particularly struggle with ray tracing, but it's not particularly pretty across the board when you consider the price.

Yoshida is critical of this, saying, "But the price was very unfriendly. Hard to recommend to people unless for research." He also finds that games take a "loooooooong" time to boot.

Yoshida also had thoughts to share on the new Steam Controller. Though he likes the notion of having touchpads in a controller, he does complain that they are very "touchy" and hard to use.

He also finds the sticks are looser than he'd like. Assuming the ex-PlayStation head of indies likes the PS5 controller, these two complaints make some sense to me. I lament the lack of stick drift protection in the DualSense, but they do have tactile, snappy sticks, and the touchpad is pretty out of the way (unless you play with a claw grip like I do).

Still, not all is bad, according to Yoshida. The ex-Sony president likes SteamOS as a UI, enjoys that you can turn on the system through nothing but the Steam Controller, and he praises the changeable face plate. He also enjoys the boot-up videos. Ultimately, he says, "It allows me to play Steam games on my living room TV, which is a reason enough to keep it."

Yoshida does clarify he has only gotten a few hours with it so far, but I suspect his observations will be fairly common for Steam Machine owners, considering our own testing. It's a pricey and underpowered device. Yoshida does offer one bit of praise to finish out his thoughts, though: "The small form factor and quietness is super good."

Categorically, I cannot afford to buy my own Steam Machine. Much to my chagrin, the most basic 512 GB model still costs $1,049. Even Valve's own engineers wish their game box was cheaper. Thankfully, a French retailer is stepping in to try and do what even Valve could not: offer a compact PC for very slightly less than a grand.

LDLC has unveiled its own compact gaming PC, even going as far as to initially dub it the 'Stim Machine.' The retailer has since dropped this name in favour of the less ire-tempting 'LDLC PC box' (via VideoCardz). Though no longer available to buy, the 500 GB model used standard PC components and went for €1,000 as a kit you would need to assemble yourself.

A pre-built model was also briefly available. This went for €1,040, a price point directly comparable to how much the Steam Machine is selling for in Europe. The compact desktop even came with a tutorial on how to install SteamOS, though obviously that's not a hoop you would have to jump through to get the Steam Machine up and running.

So, what was the 'Stim Machine' offering beyond a potentially sub-1,000 euro price tag with some assembly required? For a start, the specs sheet includes a more recent RDNA 4 GPU in the cheap and (mostly) cheerful AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT. This GPU has a few extra compute units (and a much newer architecture) compared to the Steam Machine's semi-custom RDNA 3 card.

The LDLC PC Box has a Ryzen 5 8400F processor, whereas Valve's offering enjoys a similar, semi-custom AMD Zen 4 6C / 12T chip. So far, so comparable. Thanks to its standard Mini-ITX motherboard, the LDLC PC Box also has 16 GB of upgradeable DDR5 memory, as well as 500 GB of NVMe storage with two additional SATA slots on top. The Steam Machine also features a single 512 GB internal SSD, plus a MicroSD slot.

While achieving such comparable specs for less than a grand is impressive, that's still a whole lot of Euros for a relatively low amount of gaming horsepower (thanks, memory supply crisis). In other words, even if LDLC's PC Box was still available to buy and I was based in France, it's still a little rich for my blood. Ah well, I'll just hit repeat on Daft Punk's 2005 banger—that's almost just as good, right?

Arm chips are making increasing inroads into the realm of PC gaming. Valve is already all over the chip architecture, and is planning to launch an Arm-specific version of SteamOS alongside its Snapdragon-based VR headset, the Steam Frame, later this year. But what about the Steam Machine?

We asked Valve engineers Yazan Aldehayyat and Pierre-Loup Griffais whether Arm was in consideration for the Steam Machine 2. "Definitely, yeah," Pierre-Loup answered, "[In addition to our work on] things like FEX, we're just trying to be able to support everything, right?"

For those unfamiliar, FEX is a translation layer that allows games built for x86 architecture to run on Arm chips, similar to how Proton gets games made for Windows to run on Linux. Pierre-Loup adds, "If we have more options to pick from, and if users have more options to pick from [...] to play all the latest games in their back catalog library, they'll have a better outcome in terms of finding something that is cheaper for the horsepower that they need."

Arm chips are an enticing alternative to x86 CPUs for gaming PCs specifically. So, we may see something of a chip architecture slap fight before long (especially after Nvidia went all-in on a custom Arm architecture for their RTX Spark lineup). Many game developers are also already working on Arm game ports, and wholly Arm-native versions; our Dave was especially impressed to see an Arm-native version of Alan Wake 2 running on a pre-release model of Microsoft's Surface Laptop Ultra earlier this year.

On the subject of the Steam Machine and potential follow-ups in an Arm-based future, Pierre-Loup says, "When we're designing a system like that, we're just like users: Picking parts, trying to figure out what makes sense. So for us, yeah, things like FEX and the work that we've done on SteamOS and Proton are more like catalysts to get to a better outcome in terms of price performance, and all that—for sure, we would consider any platform."

Mind you, don't expect an Arm-based follow up any time soon. Though Valve has said that the Steam Machine won't have "as long of a timeframe" as the Steam Deck, new models are constrained by "a matter of when it makes sense to [upgrade], at what price point, at what time, on what games are available."

The memory supply crisis has had a significant impact on more things than the game box's price, with Valve even unsure whether it was gonna have any Steam Machines to sell at the start of 2026. Bearing in mind the RAMpocalypse likely won't ease until maybe 2028, we're unlikely to see a sequel any time before then.

Cards on the table, the first thing that piqued my interest about the Steam Machine's initial reveal were the interchangeable faceplates. After all, I am but a simple hardware creature with a penchant for the aesthetic. Unfortunately, Valve has no plans to release a whole slew of custom plates for their tiny game box.

We caught up with Valve engineers Yazan Aldehayyat and Pierre-Loup Griffais to talk all things Steam Machine, including customisation options. "Right now the two plates that come with the two terabyte SKU are what we're doing," Pierre-Loup explains, "And we don't really have any specific plans around what else [we might do]."

The 2TB Steam Machine comes with the 'red fabric and solid walnut' faceplates but, just because Valve has no plans to make more, that doesn't mean fresh faceplates are no-go from other sources, though. "We want to make sure that third parties can do everything they need to there, and that people tinkering at home can also do that," Pierre-Loup adds, "So, like usual, we'll be releasing all the CAD [3D files] and the dimensions for the outside, the attachment points for the magnets and the sizing of all that so that folks can make their own stuff."

Valve has already released the new Steam Controller's CAD files for easier customisation, though at time of writing we're still waiting on these files for the Steam Machine. That hasn't stopped some from taking matters into their own hands though.

Perhaps most notably, peripheral and accessory maker Dbrand teased custom Companion Cube housing for the Steam Machine last year. Unfortunately, they've had to start issuing refunds since the game box's release as it turns out the company had never actually got Valve's permission to make it.

To be clear, this was a third-party customisation being sold commercially, hence why Valve asked for it to be taken down. Fresh faceplates made for fun and not profit are unlikely to attract the same ire. So, yes, if you wanted to make your own Companion Cube inspired housing, you could—you just couldn't sell it like Dbrand attempted to.

I'm no 3D modelling wiz, so a single swappable faceplate appeals more to me anyway. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to gather a bunch of cute Decoden bits, clear my schedule, and make my Steam Machine look like a tasty little snack (complete with fake whipped cream, my temps be damned).

Hardware development, much like games, is all about iteration. So, it's fair to say we wouldn't have the Steam Machine without the Steam Deck. We recently spoke to Valve engineers Yazan Aldehayyat and Pierre-Loup Griffais, and asked them whether they felt Valve's ongoing work on the Steam Deck meant there'd be less to fix with the Steam Machine.

"Oh, for sure, yeah." said Pierre-Loup. He goes on to acknowledge that the Steam Machine required a lot of focus on specific aspects Valve didn't have to worry about for the Steam Deck—things like the "discrete GPU, VRAM management, ray tracing performance, all this stuff."

But those unique features aside, the foundation of the two platforms is very similar. He says, "The other 99% of the work [on the Steam Machine was] already done in a sense."

Yazan also highlights that the way many people were already using their Steam Decks presented a compelling use case for the Steam Machine. "People were using their Steam Deck docked to their TV, and they're having a great experience without us doing any specific work," He says, "So, it was almost proven before we even started working on it in some ways."

Though our Wes rated the Steam Deck when it debuted back in 2022, the handheld gaming PC didn't enjoy the smoothest launch due to stock issues. The platform itself also had its share of teething troubles, including but not limited to a whiny fan, stick drift caused by a software problem, and a buggy dock. Valve continues to support the device and these kinks, plus a number of other quirks, have all been significantly ironed out. In other words, much of the foundation was already laid for whatever Valve would do next.

"We tend to want to work like that—incremental steps that always add up. When we worked on Steam Input, and just input stuff in general, the [original] Steam Controller, we were solving and kinda thinking around a lot of the same issues that we were trying to solve with Seam Deck," Pierre-Loup adds, "And we just kinda kept working on the same thing, just adding a little bit to it every time, right? It was very incremental and I think we're still working towards more increments, towards completing the experience overall."

None of that is to say it's been clear skies for the Steam Machine. For one thing, Valve feared stock issues would strike again at the start of this year. The impacts of the memory supply crisis on the Steam Machine cannot be understated, with 'Making it cheaper' sitting top of the list of things the engineers wish they could change about the hardware.

Getting back to Valve's further iterations, what can we expect from a Steam Machine sequel? According to Pierre-Loup and Yazan, the Steam Machine won't have as long of a timeframe as the Steam Deck, but new models are 'just a matter of when it makes sense.' In other words, with no end in sight for the RAMpocalypse until maybe 2028, don't expect to see a Steam Machine 2 (or a Steam Deck followup for that matter) any time soon.

I've wanted to revisit Dragon Age: Origins on PC for years. I played the PS3 version back in 2009, which isn't as bad as people say it is, though it does lack the PC version's tactical view and, of course, mod support.

Origins has been on my wishlist for well over a decade, but I finally scooped it up during the current Steam Summer sale. It's a negligible $3 for the Ultimate Edition, which bundles in the Awakening expansion and a bunch of other stuff (there's no Standard Edition on Steam anyway). I probably would have gotten around to revisiting Origins earlier had it not been for the Steam Deck 'Unsupported' badge warning me off.

There's a decent enough reason for this, I suppose: when I bit the bullet and downloaded Origins on my Deck, the first thing I saw was a very unpromising, antiquated 4:3 game launcher. After I tinkered with the graphics settings here, I had no option to save my changes and back out. In other words, pending the results of any troubleshooting, I needed to make do with a 800x600 display, with graphics detail set to low.

But wait! Origins isn't one of those long-in-the-tooth PC games that makes you back out to its launcher to change graphics settings. From the game itself I was able to change the resolution to the Deck's native 1280x800, and turn graphics and texture detail up to "very high". At those settings I'm getting an unwaveringly locked 60 fps, though if you must have 90 fps you can do that too, though it's not as consistent.

The next obstacle is the fact that Dragon Age: Origins for PC doesn't have gamepad support like its console versions obviously have. Thankfully, there's an amazing Community Layout for that. Khar's Dragon Age: Origins marries the immersive control of a third-person action game while retaining the essential mouse controls. Movement is mapped to the left stick, while the mouse pointer is mapped to the right track pad (it's also mapped to the right stick but that feels really bad). As I'm moving around I can use the mouse pointer to activate objects, trigger conversations, or make selections from the hot bar at the bottom of the screen.

The only problem I've found with this config is that, for some reason, it maps quick load to L4. I was accidentally pressing this instead of L5 (which serves as a right mouse click) and that is obviously problematic. So to be safe, I changed it to open the map instead, and then mapped quick save to to upper D-pad button.

I've been loving my return to Origins, and despite the 'Unsupported' badge it's absolutely perfect on Steam Deck. It takes far less tinkering than some 'Playable' games I've booted. Who knows, now I may even get around to playing Dragon Age 2. That one's meant to be good, right?

If you signed up for a spot in the Steam Machine reservation queue, you might want to take a quick look at your email, because the notices for those who made it into the first wave—and those who did not—have been sent.

I did not personally order a Steam Machine for several reasons, which in truth can be boiled down to one reason:

Instead, I heard about the email sendout from Game Awards host Geoff Keighley, who apparently took the shotgun approach to the lottery and came out of it with a reservation for a 512GB model.

Videogame deals poster Wario64, who also claimed a golden ticket, took note of an added bonus: Buying one will net you a veritable butt-ton of Steam Summer Sale trading cards.

Buying a Steam Machine can earn you at least 105 Summer Sale 2026 Trading Cards during the Summer Sale.

— @wario64.bsky.social (@wario64.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2026-06-26T20:56:05.574Z

randomized lotteryAs explained by PC Gamer hardware hero Jacob Ridley, Valve opted against a first-come, first-served approach to selling the Steam Machine, and instead went with a randomized lottery: Everybody who wants one puts their name in the metaphorical hat, and from there a random selection of potential buyers are selected and notified.

I say "potential" because those whose names are drawn have three days to complete the purchase after the unit they were selected for is available—if they don't, their reservation will be cancelled and the next person in the queue will get the shot instead.

• We're keeping track of all the Amazon Prime Day PC gaming deals here

That provides a very small sliver of hope for those who missed the bus: As others on social media have shared, those folks received an email saying, "As we work our way through the reservation queue, some customers may cancel their reservations. If that happens, you may be moved into the reservation queue, and you'll be notified by email that you have a reservation after all."

Valve said when it announced the randomized reservations to "limit resellers," because as we've seen in the past, when high-demand hardware shows up, scalpers are never far behind. And yes, it's happening here too: Valve may have limited resellers but it hasn't eliminated them completely, and listings for preorder access are already appearing on sites like eBay, with obscenely inflated prices attached.

You do you, but me? I think I'd rather just wait.

I'll be honest, my Steam Deck is still trucking along just fine, even with four years of light between today and its 2022 release date. Nevertheless, there are more than a few people who'd quite like a Steam Deck 2 (though, uh, even they are probably prepared to wait for prices to become sane). It's been a while, after all.

Well, perhaps some good news, then: in our chat with Valve engineers Pierre-Loup Griffais and Yazan Aldehayyat, the pair said that the Steam Machine is a bit of a different beast. "I don't think we're thinking about [the Steam Machine] with quite as long of a timeframe as something like the Steam Deck," said Griffais.

• We're keeping track of all the Amazon Prime Day PC gaming deals here

"The Steam Deck, by its nature, needs a little bit more of a fixed performance target for both developers and users to make sense of, 'What can I play on this?' and not have that picture change once every year, every two years," said Griffais. "Whereas the Steam Machine is very much in line with gaming PCs. There's a big gradient of it: low-end CPUs, high-end CPUs and GPUs—Steam Machine is somewhere on that gradient, right? So I think it's a little bit less important to have a fixed performance target for, like, five years for a product like that."

So, there you have it, right? Steam Machine 2 imminent, perhaps releasing concurrently with Steam Machine 3? Well, not quite. While Valve doesn't think the Steam Machine needs to hew to Steam Deck timeframes, that doesn't mean it's diving right into a second iteration.

"At the same time," continued Griffais, "we don't really have immediate plans to be like, 'In N years we'll have a different performance target,' or something. We're actually really curious to see how things pan out… there's a lot of questions about the new systems generation, how that's gonna roll out, how games are gonna adapt." In other words, Valve is paying attention to how console manufacturers and other tech firms are handling the transition to a new generation in our current, RAM-crisis-afflicted world.

Aldehayyat was quick to point out that the next iteration of Steam Machine hardware isn't right around the corner, either, and that's partially just a reflection of PC gamers' modern habits. "I think we're seeing a natural slowdown of the upgrade cycle for gaming PCs," said Aldehayyat, "so in some ways that probably means that the Steam Machine is a viable product for longer than you would have expected if it was launching 10 years ago." That means the Machine as-is "probably has more longevity… it's gonna basically be in line with typical PC upgrade cycles and what people typically do.

"It's just a matter of when it makes sense to [upgrade], at what price point, at what time, on what games are available. Like if a bunch of new games come out on Steam that require more performance, that would probably make us wanna upgrade the Steam Machine faster." Alright, guess we're waiting for Cyberpunk 2 then.

It is a singularly bad time to purchase computer parts or release a computer product. The RAM crisis has made memory and storage costs astronomical, and the most recent indignity it's inflicted around our neck of the woods is the price of the Steam Machine—a box whose min-spec edition will still set you back $1,049. Valve itself wishes it was cheaper.

But I guess even an expensive box is better than no box at all, which—to hear Valve tell it—may have been a possibility. When we sat down and chatted with Valve engineers Yazan Aldehayyat and Pierre-Loup Griffais, we got to chatting about how the company's overall stock of Steam Machines is looking as it gears up to ship them. The answer? Less than there would be in a pre-RAM-crisis world, but way better than the beginning of the year, when Valve wasn't certain it would have any Steam Machines at all.

• We're keeping track of all the Amazon Prime Day PC gaming deals here

Griffais said the stock of Steam Machines is "a little bit less" than it would have been pre-crisis, but that Valve's built up "a sizable amount compared to what it initially looked like. Things looked really dire at the beginning of the year. We weren't sure if there was gonna be anything at all."

Compared to that, I suppose any number of boxes seems good, and heck, securing supply even in non-apocalyptic circumstances is hard: "I wanna emphasise that, even under the best of circumstances, getting enough quantity for day one is always hard-slash-impossible, I think," said Aldehayyat. "From our perspective, we still got to a pretty good place," said Griffais.

"Typically what happens with a product like this, is the day one demand is going to be a big, big percentage of the year one demand," Griffais continued. "You just cannot have your factory building for six months… there's always gonna be some gap between supply and demand the first couple of days, couple of weeks." Thus, the Steam Machine reservation system that has been running since last Monday, which lets people enter themselves into a queue which is set to be all shaken up today, ideally achieving a modicum of fairness in distribution.

"I'm really proud of where we're at in terms of, like, our sourcing guys did a great job. I think the quantities we have are really good given the circumstances, and our hope is to kinda catch up to demand as quickly as possible," said Griffais. It's certainly better than nothing.

Valve has a new cube coming out, and boy is it pricey. The Steam Machine finally broke cover last Monday, revealing that its absolute cheapest model would still set you back $1,049—for which you can thank the RAM crisis. It caused some consternation, with a lot of people who might have thought themselves day-one buyers balking at the sum. Well, Valve balked too.

PCG sat down and chatted with Valve engineers Yazan Aldehayyat and Pierre-Loup Griffais ahead of last Monday's reveals and, yep, they're not happy about the price either. We asked the pair, if they could snap their fingers and magically change one thing about the Steam Machine, what would it be? Their answer was quick: the price.

• We're keeping track of all the Amazon Prime Day PC gaming deals here

"Make it cheaper," laughed Aldehayyat, in response to the question. "Yeah, I mean, that's an easy one," agreed Griffais. But it sounds like Valve went through the wringer when it came to negotiating memory and storage for the Steam Machine. "Things that, two years or a year ago—commodity things—you would just say, 'Yeah, I need that much,' and you just pay the normal price for it and it's all good. Now you have to negotiate really hard just to secure a few thousand."

As for the hardware? Valve's pretty chuffed with it, sounds like. "It's kind of perfect for what I need because we've shaped it like that, right?" said Griffais, though Aldehayyat added "We're open for feedback. I think we're pretty biassed, obviously."

Oh, there was one thing: "We always want more ports," said Griffais. "People want more ports. The thing would be full of ports on all the sides if we listened to everyone." Mark it down, folks: Steam Machine 2 to feature a trypophobic mess of ports on all available surfaces.

Anyway, the result of Valve's hardware travails is that a min-spec Steam Machine costs $1,049. And Valve says it's not gonna subsidise the cost owing to its "religious" refusal to "build a more closed system." On the plus side, you could always turn your own PC into a Steam Machine, provided you're using an AMD GPU. As of SteamOS 3.8, Valve has given its official blessing to SteamOS installs on non-Valve hardware.

Mostly what I do here at PC Gamer is wait for my colleagues to post about their tech issues in Slack and tell them to install Linux in response. Webcam broken? Linux. Frame drops? Linux. Distant relationship with your father? Linux can fix that. I am unfathomably, incandescently popular and no one wants me to be quiet.

A common response to my implorations goes something like this: "I'm waiting for SteamOS." Well, stop waiting for SteamOS. SteamOS is here. Amid the hubbub of yesterday's Steam Machine hardware announcements, Valve slipped in a surreptitious little software note too: as of SteamOS 3.8, you can now officially stick Valve's Linux distro on whatever hardware you want, with the caveat that it's gotta be running an AMD GPU, at least for now.

• We're keeping track of all the Amazon Prime Day PC gaming deals here

This was not, to be clear, a rank impossibility before yesterday. In fact, our Dave James stuck an older version of SteamOS onto a Framework laptop last year. But now you've got Valve's actual, official blessing, and hopefully a slightly easier time of it.

The notice was tucked in at the end of the Steam Machine's FAQ, where Valve writes, "we are continuing to work toward enabling SteamOS to be used on more hardware than just ours. In fact, with the newly-released SteamOS 3.8, you can run the same code and operating system as Steam Machine on your own living-room PC using whatever PC parts you want… Right now, only AMD GPUs are supported, but we're working on expanding support for the future." Valve's working on support for additional GPUs, though, but I suspect we might have a while to wait.

As any Nvidia owner on Linux (hello, that is me) will know, team green drivers can be a bit of a faff. Where pretty much every AMD owner on Linux will default to using the very good, open-source Mesa drivers—you usually don't even have to do anything; they'll just install by default—Nvidia's driver situation for its modern cards is a hybrid of open-source and proprietary tech. While there are totally open-source Nvidia drivers out there—the Nouveau project—they're not up to snuff for games.

The short and tall of which is that I and my RTX 4080 are gonna have to wait to take SteamOS for a test run (you can always install Bazzite, with its out-of-the-box Nvidia support, for a similar experience), but hey—if you're an AMD user, you can check out Valve's guide to installing SteamOS right now, and embrace the sunlit uplands of Linux on the desktop.

The Steam Machine is finally here, with pre-orders now live, so long as you can get lucky in the reservation system lottery that is. And, honestly, we're kinda underwhelmed with the thing, beautiful wee companion cube though it is. Though that's more the fault of the AI apocalypse hoovering up all the memory and making the price of the Steam Machine utterly prohibitive for the entry level PC gamers it was originally aimed at. But Valve is still committed to improving the system, and has announced ahead of launch it is working directly with AMD to bring FSR 4 support in for the Steam Machine and its RDNA 3-powered GPU.

"We’ve been working with AMD on FSR 4 support for Steam Machine," we're told by Valve, "and can confirm that it will be coming soon."

Unfortunately that's all it's saying in regards to an actual release date, but then AMD itself has been rather cagey about when it's going to be getting FSR 4 support opened up beyond the original RDNA 4 target GPUs. Back in May AMD said it would be bringing FSR 4's machine learning-based upscaling to RX 7000-series graphics cards in July, but notably said during Computex that no decision had been made about whether it would be opened up to the RDNA 3.5 GPUs housed in its Ryzen AI Max APUs or the chips powering the latest AMD-powered gaming handhelds.

Which seems to suggest that July launch date is very much just for the RX 7000-series graphics cards alone and not a blanket level of support for the RDNA 3 architecture and above. That would also explain why Valve would have to be working directly with AMD to ensure its semi-custom 28 CU RDNA 3 GPU is going to get support for the improved upscaler in FSR 4.

"We can’t say more about timing," Valve notes, "but are excited for you to test it on your Steam Machine press units once it’s available. It should offer a significant improvement in upscaling graphical quality."

While the improvement in upscaling quality will definitely be a benefit for the Steam Machine, it's a double-edged sword of a feature. The Steam Machine's relatively weak GPU component needs upscaling and frame generation to be able to cope with modern games at decent graphics presets and at the sort of resolutions you'll want to see on a modern TV in your living room. So, chances are almost every game you play on the Steam Machine will want to be using upscaling.

That means it's a win that you'll get the best image quality AMD can muster for that upscaling experience. However, the machine-learning model of the improved FSR 4 upscaler is more performance intensive, especially for hardware that it was not initially designed for, namely RDNA 4 GPUs. And when performance is at a premium with the Steam Machine, that little bit extra hardware overhead for FSR 4 could mean that it's not an automatic on for some users, and could just be another balancing act owners are going to have to juggle with their new PC console.

The other thing to note is that FSR 4 support is not natively enabled in a whole lot of games right now. The list of supporting titles for FSR Redstone (inc FSR 4, AKA FSR Upscaling) looks extensive on first glance, but only around 20-odd have it natively built in; all the other games on the list need to have it enabled via the Adrenalin Driver software. How those games can get FSR 4 enabled in SteamOS is going to be interesting to see, if it happens at all.

You can now sign up for a chance to buy a Steam Machine. Yes, a mere chance, not a preorder, as Valve is doing something different with the launch of its Linux-powered cube. Rather than forming an orderly queue, it's taking names, throwing them in a hat, and drawing them out at random to decide who gets a reservation and who gets lumped on the waitlist.

The Steam Machine starts at $1,049 for the 512 GB model, and if you're still interested in purchasing one after hearing the price, you're going to want to take heed of the new reservation process. It's different to what Valve has done in the past, and for good reason.

"In an effort to improve the purchase experience and limit resellers, we're implementing a reservation system," Valve says.

• Starting right now, you can sign up for the Steam Machine model/bundle you're interested in.
• If you're busy now, no problem: You can sign up anytime before Thursday June 25th at 10 a.m. Pacific.
• At that time, we will close signups and do a one-time randomization to determine the reservation order.

"Based on the reservation order, you will receive an email on June 25th indicating one of two things:"

• You've been added to the reservation queue and a Steam Machine has been reserved in your name.
• You've been added to the waitlist and we'll let you know when more units become available.

In theory, this deters bots from hammering the reservations faster than any real human and securing units for resellers to sell at inflated prices. It also means that it's become a lottery for all involved.

By signing up on June 25, you give yourself the best chance of purchasing one before the end of the year. Those lucky enough to make it into the reservation queue will begin receiving emails asking them to make their purchase from June 29.

If you miss this date, you'll be added to the back of the waitlist and presumably in for a long wait.

Valve has said it intends to get through the reservation queue by the end of 2026. That means those on the waitlist are unlikely to be able to purchase a Steam Machine before 2027—unless people drop out of the queue without purchasing one, in which case the offer extends to whomever is next in line. Those offered a unit will have 72 hours from receiving their notification email to checkout before Valve passes it onto the next person in the queue.

What you need

To make your initial sign up, you have to have a few things in order:

• a Steam account in good standing
• made a purchase on Steam prior to April 27, 2026.

There's also a limit of one per household. Valve says it will check payment information, shipping address, and other information to remove duplicate entries. So if you're in shared accommodation with a bunch of fellow PC gamers, looks like you'll have to share your Steam Machine, too.

Each region has its own sign-up list. These are North America, United Kingdom, European Union, and Australia, which Valve is organising directly. Valve's official distributor, Komodo, will be dealing with orders in Japan, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.

So, why the new system? Why not just do what it did with the Steam Deck and have a first-come, first-serve system?

Valve says it's both because of resellers and lower availability than it would have liked for components used in the Steam Machine.

"Over the past year or so, that has changed quickly and significantly, most visibly for RAM and storage components… the overall effect is that our original goal for the price of Steam Machine is no longer viable," Valve says in an FAQ.

"Price wasn't the only thing impacted by all of this: availability was as well. We found we couldn't source some of our components at all, at any price. More than anything else, this impacted our launch quantity."

We've heard this before: memory chips are a precious commodity right now and they're being sucked out of the market before ever reaching us consumers by big businesses with even bigger bank accounts. Even the biggest companies are feeling the heat. Valve is no small fry, but it's nowhere close to the size of OEMs like Dell, HP, or similar. Everyone's scrambling for whatever the major memory manufacturers can give them, which isn't enough.

When a manufacturer is this honest about availability concerns from the get-go, that usually means things really are tough out there. This launch is going to be a very long, drawn out affair from the sounds of things. Make sure you're there before June 25 for the best chance at a Linux console this year, or be prepared to be patient. Heck, as Valve points out in its FAQ, you could always build your own Steam Machine with SteamOS 3.8 as a shortcut.

Good luck.

Valve has announced the price of a Steam Machine, its new SteamOS-powered gaming PC. There are a few options available—two storage capacities and with/without a Steam Controller—and if you're still interested after seeing the price, you can sign up for a chance to buy one from today.

• 512 GB: $1,049 USD / 1,509 CAD / 1,039 EUR / 879 GBP / 1,609 AUD / 4,389 PLN
• 2 TB: $1,349 USD / 1,919 CAD / 1,359 EUR / 1,149 GBP / 2,109 AUD / 5,739 PLN

• 512 GB w/ Controller: $1,128 USD / 1,628 CAD / 1,108 EUR / 938 GBP / 1,728 AUD / 4,698 PLN
• 2 TB w/ Controller: $1,428 USD / 2,038 CAD / 1,428 EUR / 1,208 GBP / 2,228 AUD / 6,048 PLN

Both 2 TB models come with two additional faceplates, red fabric and solid walnut, which are attached with magnets. Though you could as easily make your own, as Valve tells us it will be releasing the CAD files.

The bundle with a Steam Controller is better value than buying one separately: it costs $99 on its own, but adds only $79 here. Not to mention availability of the Steam Controller is shaky, and you may end up having to wait until 2027 to purchase one individually.

Availability for the Steam Machine is also likely to be quite poor. Due to the ongoing memory crisis, Valve admits that some components it had originally intended to use in the PC have increased in price. Furthermore, some were altogether unavailable to purchase "at any price".

"More than anything else, this impacted our launch quantity," Valve says.

To deal with this limited launch quantity and to avoid a system which "tends to reward bots", Valve is rolling out a randomised reservation system for the Steam Machine. Similar to those for the Steam Deck and Steam Controller, wherein a user registers their interest in the product to purchase at a later date, where the Steam Machine reservations differ is in how the queue is formed.

Here's Valve's explanation:

• Starting right now, you can sign up for the Steam Machine model/bundle you're interested in
• If you're busy now, no problem: You can sign up anytime before Thursday June 25th at 10 a.m. Pacific.
• At that time, we will close signups and do a one-time randomization to determine the reservation order

After that one-time randomisation, Valve will let you know whether you successfully reserved a unit or were put into the waitlist for further units down the line. Valve hopes to have got through the reservation queue by the end of the year, which means those on the waitlist may be waiting a very long time indeed, likely into 2027 and beyond.

Valve explains that it felt it had a "good understanding" of how costs might change over time when it first started sourcing parts in 2023. This all changed with the memory crisis.

"Over the past year or so, that has changed quickly and significantly, most visibly for RAM and storage components," Valve says. "There are a variety of reasons, all of which are affecting hardware products everywhere. The overall effect is that our original goal for the price of Steam Machine is no longer viable. So the prices we're sharing today reflect the state of the world for manufacturing; or, more accurately, it reflects the price the components as we've secured them over the past 6 months."

It's that final line that gives me pause. Most PC gamers will likely have experienced price hikes for components and systems over the past eight months or so, especially with RAM but increasingly SSDs, too. Manufacturers have since warned of further sticker shock to come, as stockpiles of components dwindle and they are forced to buy new parts at further inflated prices. If Valve is delivering a price that's based on stock over the past six months, should the next six months be any worse, I think this leaves the door open to a price rise later on.

Valve recently increased the price of the Steam Deck due to increased component costs and 'global logistical challenges'.

We've heard mixed reports on RAM and SSD availability. There's been some suggestion that RAM prices may have levelled off since earlier in the year, but SSDs are still going up, but also reports from those in the know that prices are likely still to rise yet.

Valve also explains why it isn't "subsidizing" the price of the Steam Machine, ie putting some of that sweet, sweet Steam cash into making an affordable PC—profits be damned. The company's answer, it's not what PC gaming is about.

"When companies sell their hardware under cost for competitive advantage, or buy exclusive content for it, they're doing that to build a more closed system, one where you don't get to choose what software you want to use.

"We don't want that for PC hardware, and we don't think you should want it either. You shouldn't feel like you have to buy Valve hardware; you should be able to view it as just one option alongside all the devices for playing games, and select the one that makes sense for you."

For now, your best shot at a Steam Machine in 2026 is to sign up for that reservation system before June 25. Then cross your fingers and toes for an email landing you in the right queue and not on the waitlist.

I've just finished reviewing the Steam Machine, Valve's TV-friendly gaming PC for the masses. I think that was the initial idea, at least. Unfortunately, Valve's magic box has, thanks to the memory crisis, ended up with a price tag that simply doesn't add up.

For those who haven't heard, the base-level, 512 GB, non-Steam Controller-including Steam Machine retails for $1,049. Add a controller into the mix, and it comes in at $1,128. Back when we first took a whirl at predicting Steam Machine pricing, our average guess was around $525 for the base model.

Oh, how wrong we were. To be fair to myself, Valve, and my hardware team colleagues, this was back in November of last year. The pre-RAMpocalypse times, as we now call them. Before the AI server market swallowed memory module manufacturing capacity, and consumer electronics began to climb rapidly in price.

We adjusted our guesses more recently, and actually came kind of close, for the most part.

Still, the final pricing has me all hot and bothered, even if it's not far off what we eventually predicted. Because the Steam Machine, thanks to some lower-spec internal components now sold for high prices, represents poor value—and I feel like it deserves more than that.

And I haven't even got to the 2 TB model I reviewed yet, which is $1,349 without a controller, and a wallet-trembling $1,428 with one. That's a huge sum of money for a machine that struggles against budget gaming PCs, some of which come from the previous generation.

Gaming benchmarks

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora (1440p Ultra)Cyberpunk 2077 (1440p RT Medium)Cyberpunk 2077 (Quality upscaling, 1440p RT Medium)Baldur's Gate 3 (1440p Ultra)Black Myth: Wukong (1440p Very High)Black Myth: Wukong (Quality upscaling, 1440p Very High)Metro Exodus: Enhanced Edition (1440p Ultra)

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Steam Machine

21

17

AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX

44

38

Lenovo Legion Tower 5i | RTX 4060 | Intel Core i5 14400F

33

25

Custom PC #11 (issue 413) | Arc B570 | Intel Core Ultra 7 265K

28

24

015304560

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora (1440p Ultra) Data

Product	Value
Steam Machine	21 Avg FPS, 17 1% Low FPS
AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX	44 Avg FPS, 38 1% Low FPS
Lenovo Legion Tower 5i | RTX 4060 | Intel Core i5 14400F	33 Avg FPS, 25 1% Low FPS
Custom PC #11 (issue 413) | Arc B570 | Intel Core Ultra 7 265K	28 Avg FPS, 24 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Steam Machine

16

12

AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX

32

26

Lenovo Legion Tower 5i | RTX 4060 | Intel Core i5 14400F

24

19

Custom PC #11 (issue 413) | Arc B570 | Intel Core Ultra 7 265K

26

23

010203040

Cyberpunk 2077 (1440p RT Medium) Data

Product	Value
Steam Machine	16 Avg FPS, 12 1% Low FPS
AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX	32 Avg FPS, 26 1% Low FPS
Lenovo Legion Tower 5i | RTX 4060 | Intel Core i5 14400F	24 Avg FPS, 19 1% Low FPS
Custom PC #11 (issue 413) | Arc B570 | Intel Core Ultra 7 265K	26 Avg FPS, 23 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Steam Machine

28

20

AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX

86

69

Lenovo Legion Tower 5i | RTX 4060 | Intel Core i5 14400F

60

49

Custom PC #11 (issue 413) | Arc B570 | Intel Core Ultra 7 265K

81

74

0255075100

Cyberpunk 2077 (Quality upscaling, 1440p RT Medium) Data

Product	Value
Steam Machine	28 Avg FPS, 20 1% Low FPS
AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX	86 Avg FPS, 69 1% Low FPS
Lenovo Legion Tower 5i | RTX 4060 | Intel Core i5 14400F	60 Avg FPS, 49 1% Low FPS
Custom PC #11 (issue 413) | Arc B570 | Intel Core Ultra 7 265K	81 Avg FPS, 74 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Steam Machine

46

26

AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX

59

42

Lenovo Legion Tower 5i | RTX 4060 | Intel Core i5 14400F

60

40

Custom PC #11 (issue 413) | Arc B570 | Intel Core Ultra 7 265K

57

24

015304560

Baldur's Gate 3 (1440p Ultra) Data

Product	Value
Steam Machine	46 Avg FPS, 26 1% Low FPS
AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX	59 Avg FPS, 42 1% Low FPS
Lenovo Legion Tower 5i | RTX 4060 | Intel Core i5 14400F	60 Avg FPS, 40 1% Low FPS
Custom PC #11 (issue 413) | Arc B570 | Intel Core Ultra 7 265K	57 Avg FPS, 24 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Steam Machine

20

16

AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX

26

20

Lenovo Legion Tower 5i | RTX 4060 | Intel Core i5 14400F

23

17

Custom PC #11 (issue 413) | Arc B570 | Intel Core Ultra 7 265K

17

13

07.51522.530

Black Myth: Wukong (1440p Very High) Data

Product	Value
Steam Machine	20 Avg FPS, 16 1% Low FPS
AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX	26 Avg FPS, 20 1% Low FPS
Lenovo Legion Tower 5i | RTX 4060 | Intel Core i5 14400F	23 Avg FPS, 17 1% Low FPS
Custom PC #11 (issue 413) | Arc B570 | Intel Core Ultra 7 265K	17 Avg FPS, 13 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Steam Machine

31

26

AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX

37

33

Lenovo Legion Tower 5i | RTX 4060 | Intel Core i5 14400F

48

42

Custom PC #11 (issue 413) | Arc B570 | Intel Core Ultra 7 265K

27

17

015304560

Black Myth: Wukong (Quality upscaling, 1440p Very High) Data

Product	Value
Steam Machine	31 Avg FPS, 26 1% Low FPS
AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX	37 Avg FPS, 33 1% Low FPS
Lenovo Legion Tower 5i | RTX 4060 | Intel Core i5 14400F	48 Avg FPS, 42 1% Low FPS
Custom PC #11 (issue 413) | Arc B570 | Intel Core Ultra 7 265K	27 Avg FPS, 17 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Steam Machine

45

30

AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX

52

36

Lenovo Legion Tower 5i | RTX 4060 | Intel Core i5 14400F

53

36

Custom PC #11 (issue 413) | Arc B570 | Intel Core Ultra 7 265K

50

31

015304560

Metro Exodus: Enhanced Edition (1440p Ultra) Data

Product	Value
Steam Machine	45 Avg FPS, 30 1% Low FPS
AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX	52 Avg FPS, 36 1% Low FPS
Lenovo Legion Tower 5i | RTX 4060 | Intel Core i5 14400F	53 Avg FPS, 36 1% Low FPS
Custom PC #11 (issue 413) | Arc B570 | Intel Core Ultra 7 265K	50 Avg FPS, 31 1% Low FPS

It's not like the Steam Machine makes up for its shortcomings with a completely smooth user experience, either. It feels, at the time of writing, a little half-baked. I still found myself hunting through the settings menus to configure it properly on my home TV. I still had to enable compatibility game settings to get past some Linux… quirks.

It's got crunch, in places where, for the money, I'd hoped it would be more refined. It's virtually a premium product now, after all. But it doesn't quite feel like it in terms of the overall user experience. And it doesn't run demanding games like it, either.

In many ways, this isn't Valve's fault. The Steam Machine's diminutive, RDNA 3-graphics powered specs sheet clearly indicates that it should have been affordable, and was designed with a lesser price in mind. It should have been a lightweight, somewhat-entry-level machine that lives underneath your TV, capable of running indie games with little issue, and demanding ones if you were prepared to make significant compromises. For reasonable money.

I'd be pretty keen on it then, even with its flaws. Something deep within my heart wanted another Steam Deck-like PC gaming hardware moment. A budget machine with just enough go (and just enough convenience) to make it attractive. Another entry point into this expensive hobby of ours. A people's champion.

But no, it's got RAM modules. And an SSD. And therefore, it needs to be much pricier now than it was supposed to be when it was first specced out, if Valve is to make any money on it at all.

As a hardware reviewer, my job is to provide consumer advice. There's no point in recommending that you, the reader, buy something simply because it's interesting—without taking into account the value you get for your money. And at this price, the value proposition simply doesn't add up.

In some sense, I don't think my take on all this really matters. The Steam Machine will sell, I'd put good money on that. There are enough well-heeled enthusiasts out there to swallow up whatever launch stock Valve has on offer, even if it ends up being more of an executive-level desk toy than the great equaliser the rest of us might have hoped for.

It won't be a catastrophic failure for Valve, of that I'm fairly certain. But, given all of the above, the Steam Machine has, to my mind, become a damning representation of where we are in regards to PC gaming hardware in 2026.

We now live in a world where we're paying serious sums for meagre specs. And given that the memory crisis is expected to rumble on (and perhaps even worsen) into 2027 and beyond, this may be just the beginning of our woes.

I hate that. I hate that the AI-demand behemoth is pricing out average gamers from reasonably priced hardware, and reasonable hardware upgrades. I hate that I'm forced to give an interesting, if flawed, machine a lower score because it simply doesn't make any value-based sense—whereas for the right price, it just might.

Valve has worked really hard on the Steam Machine, and that's obvious to see. Even if it does feel underpowered, and a little rough around the software edges. But when all's said and done, I simply wouldn't spend this much money on one. And that, as much I wish it wasn't the case, is the truth.

It's finally here. The much-anticipated Steam Machine, a mini gaming PC designed for your living room, is in my possession—and it's a lovely device to behold. It's sleek, futuristic, and very, very Valve. I've been testing it thoroughly over the past week, and I'm sure you're anxious to know the results. Have all my mini gaming PC Christmases come at once?

Well, not quite. Because while Valve's attempt to bring PC gaming to your TV—and thereby the masses—has plenty of admirable qualities, it's got one giant caveat hanging over it: The price.

The 2 TB, Steam Controller-included Steam Machine bundle in my possession costs $1,428 (£1,208 / AU$2,228). The controller-less 2 TB variant is $1,349 (£1,149 / AU$2,109), while the 512 GB version, again without controller, is $1,049 (£879 / AU$1,609). Add a controller to the 512 GB variant, and you're looking at $1,128 (£938 / AU$1,728).

Much has been made over the Steam Machine's delayed launch and increased price tag, brought on by the ongoing memory crisis crippling the consumer electronics market right now. But holy moly, that's a lot of money for a mini gaming PC. Especially one with internals that, in 2026, feel underpowered before it's even officially released.

The RDNA 3-based GPU inside the Steam Machine has left me feeling, if I'm honest, rather deflated. It's certainly possible to drop the settings, bump up the upscaling, and squeak some smooth gaming performance out of the little black box. But the drawbacks feel like a step too far when you're paying this sort of cash.

The idea might be to bring the PC gaming experience to your living room, but if that experience includes smooth frame rates in demanding games, you're going to have to make some major compromises. And, because of its Linux origins, it hasn't been a flawless experience getting some of those games to run properly to begin with, either.

I want to get excited about the Steam Machine, I really do. It's a fascinating piece of design, and an admirable attempt to bring PC gaming from your desktop to your couch in one bite of the cherry. But like so much hardware these days, it's been hampered with a price tag that, given what you actually receive, feels like far too much to pay.

Steam Machine features

The Steam Machine is, by default, a black cube. Measuring 15.2 x 15.6 x 16.2 cm, its top is a touch smaller than a handspan. Or mine, at the very least. Underneath the removable magnetic front face plate (two extras are included in the box with the 2 TB bundle) is a small panel consisting of a power button on the right hand side, two USB 3.0 Type-A ports, and a microSD card slot.

Above them lies an RGB strip, which by default lights up in blue while you're gaming or downloading, and turns off at idle. Around the back are two USB 2.0 Type-A ports, a single USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port rated to 10 Gbps, and a 1 Gbps ethernet connection. For display options, you've got a choice of a DisplayPort 1.4 connection, or an HDMI 2.0 port.

And of course, it can be bundled with a Steam Controller, which is a sizable symmetrical-style unit with twin TMR thumbsticks, eight face buttons, four rear grip buttons, two trackpads, haptic rumble, gyro controls, and a 35+ hour battery life. It's perhaps not the prettiest of objects, but as our Jacob found in his review, it sure is comfortable. Useful, too.

On the outside, the Steam Machine is a very unassuming little device, which is certainly by design. It's the internals, however, where things get really interesting.

Under the hood lies a semi-custom AMD Zen 4 CPU with six cores and 12 threads, alongside 16 GB of system RAM. The GPU is also a semi-custom AMD RDNA 3 job, with 8 GB of dedicated GDDR6 VRAM, 28 compute units, a sustained max clock speed of 2.45 GHz, and a 110 W TGP.

Being a semi-custom GPU, it's difficult to make a direct comparison with existing RDNA 3 graphics cards—although the budget RX 7600 XT from the same generation features 32 compute units and a similar game clock speed.

The Steam Machine comes in two different storage flavours: 512 GB and 2 TB. I've got the 2 TB model, which provides plenty of storage for many, many games. Should you opt for the 512 GB variant, you'll want to keep an eye on install sizes.

Speaking of games, the Steam Machine makes use of SteamOS 3, an Arch-based Linux implementation with the KDE Plasma interface, allowing you to directly interface with your Steam library and the storefront. Steam Deck users will be very familiar with this design, although there are of course more options to tweak in the settings menus for the Steam Machine itself. More on that later.

For connecting to the outside world, beyond the already-mentioned ethernet port you also get a 2x2 Wi-Fi 6E connection and Bluetooth 5.3 support. The Steam Controller connects via an integrated 2.4 GHz wireless adapter, although requires the included puck or cable to be used for pairing on initial setup.

It's pretty impressive to think of the sheer amount of hardware and connectivity options Valve has crammed inside such a relatively small chassis design. Especially when you consider that, in terms of cooling, air is moved by a single 120 mm fan around the back.

As our Jacob found when he held a caseless prototype model, inside is a substantial heatsink which obscures the motherboard almost entirely, distributing heat away from all of the internal components.

Overall, the Steam Machine feels… solid. More solid than I was expecting, actually, despite its reasonable 2.6 kg weight. Given the form factor, you could easily shove it in a decently sized backpack to take around a friend's house. Although the design here is definitely specced to fit within an under-TV living room unit—where it'll live, faceless and mysterious, next to your other consoles and set-top boxes.

Steam Machine performance

And so we reach the first major sticking point. The Steam Machine 2 TB bundle is, in essence, a $1,428 mini gaming PC. As a result, it's only fair the little black cube goes up against our gaming PC benchmark suite in competition with similarly-priced machines.

Put aside the tidy form factor, the SteamOS experience, and the delightful "Valve-ness" of the thing for a second. If you're buying one of these, you're going to want your games to run well, and for it to deliver comparable performance to a gaming PC you could have spent your cash on instead.

And I'm not going to sugar-coat it—the benchmarking results are a little ugly.

Gaming benchmarks

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora (1440p Ultra)Cyberpunk 2077 (1440p RT Medium)Cyberpunk 2077 (Quality upscaling, 1440p RT Medium)Baldur's Gate 3 (1440p Ultra)Black Myth: Wukong (1440p Very High)Black Myth: Wukong (Quality upscaling, 1440p Very High)Metro Exodus: Enhanced Edition (1440p Ultra)

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Steam Machine

21

17

AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX

44

38

Lenovo Legion Tower 5i | RTX 4060 | Intel Core i5 14400F

33

25

Custom PC #11 (issue 413) | Arc B570 | Intel Core Ultra 7 265K

28

24

015304560

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora (1440p Ultra) Data

Product	Value
Steam Machine	21 Avg FPS, 17 1% Low FPS
AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX	44 Avg FPS, 38 1% Low FPS
Lenovo Legion Tower 5i | RTX 4060 | Intel Core i5 14400F	33 Avg FPS, 25 1% Low FPS
Custom PC #11 (issue 413) | Arc B570 | Intel Core Ultra 7 265K	28 Avg FPS, 24 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Steam Machine

16

12

AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX

32

26

Lenovo Legion Tower 5i | RTX 4060 | Intel Core i5 14400F

24

19

Custom PC #11 (issue 413) | Arc B570 | Intel Core Ultra 7 265K

26

23

010203040

Cyberpunk 2077 (1440p RT Medium) Data

Product	Value
Steam Machine	16 Avg FPS, 12 1% Low FPS
AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX	32 Avg FPS, 26 1% Low FPS
Lenovo Legion Tower 5i | RTX 4060 | Intel Core i5 14400F	24 Avg FPS, 19 1% Low FPS
Custom PC #11 (issue 413) | Arc B570 | Intel Core Ultra 7 265K	26 Avg FPS, 23 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Steam Machine

28

20

AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX

86

69

Lenovo Legion Tower 5i | RTX 4060 | Intel Core i5 14400F

60

49

Custom PC #11 (issue 413) | Arc B570 | Intel Core Ultra 7 265K

81

74

0255075100

Cyberpunk 2077 (Quality upscaling, 1440p RT Medium) Data

Product	Value
Steam Machine	28 Avg FPS, 20 1% Low FPS
AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX	86 Avg FPS, 69 1% Low FPS
Lenovo Legion Tower 5i | RTX 4060 | Intel Core i5 14400F	60 Avg FPS, 49 1% Low FPS
Custom PC #11 (issue 413) | Arc B570 | Intel Core Ultra 7 265K	81 Avg FPS, 74 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Steam Machine

46

26

AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX

59

42

Lenovo Legion Tower 5i | RTX 4060 | Intel Core i5 14400F

60

40

Custom PC #11 (issue 413) | Arc B570 | Intel Core Ultra 7 265K

57

24

015304560

Baldur's Gate 3 (1440p Ultra) Data

Product	Value
Steam Machine	46 Avg FPS, 26 1% Low FPS
AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX	59 Avg FPS, 42 1% Low FPS
Lenovo Legion Tower 5i | RTX 4060 | Intel Core i5 14400F	60 Avg FPS, 40 1% Low FPS
Custom PC #11 (issue 413) | Arc B570 | Intel Core Ultra 7 265K	57 Avg FPS, 24 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Steam Machine

20

16

AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX

26

20

Lenovo Legion Tower 5i | RTX 4060 | Intel Core i5 14400F

23

17

Custom PC #11 (issue 413) | Arc B570 | Intel Core Ultra 7 265K

17

13

07.51522.530

Black Myth: Wukong (1440p Very High) Data

Product	Value
Steam Machine	20 Avg FPS, 16 1% Low FPS
AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX	26 Avg FPS, 20 1% Low FPS
Lenovo Legion Tower 5i | RTX 4060 | Intel Core i5 14400F	23 Avg FPS, 17 1% Low FPS
Custom PC #11 (issue 413) | Arc B570 | Intel Core Ultra 7 265K	17 Avg FPS, 13 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Steam Machine

31

26

AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX

37

33

Lenovo Legion Tower 5i | RTX 4060 | Intel Core i5 14400F

48

42

Custom PC #11 (issue 413) | Arc B570 | Intel Core Ultra 7 265K

27

17

015304560

Black Myth: Wukong (Quality upscaling, 1440p Very High) Data

Product	Value
Steam Machine	31 Avg FPS, 26 1% Low FPS
AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX	37 Avg FPS, 33 1% Low FPS
Lenovo Legion Tower 5i | RTX 4060 | Intel Core i5 14400F	48 Avg FPS, 42 1% Low FPS
Custom PC #11 (issue 413) | Arc B570 | Intel Core Ultra 7 265K	27 Avg FPS, 17 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Steam Machine

45

30

AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX

52

36

Lenovo Legion Tower 5i | RTX 4060 | Intel Core i5 14400F

53

36

Custom PC #11 (issue 413) | Arc B570 | Intel Core Ultra 7 265K

50

31

015304560

Metro Exodus: Enhanced Edition (1440p Ultra) Data

Product	Value
Steam Machine	45 Avg FPS, 30 1% Low FPS
AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX	52 Avg FPS, 36 1% Low FPS
Lenovo Legion Tower 5i | RTX 4060 | Intel Core i5 14400F	53 Avg FPS, 36 1% Low FPS
Custom PC #11 (issue 413) | Arc B570 | Intel Core Ultra 7 265K	50 Avg FPS, 31 1% Low FPS

Yes, that's a 28 fps average result in Cyberpunk 2077 at 1440p Medium RT, with Quality FSR enabled, no frame gen. RDNA 3-era graphics hardware usually struggles with ray tracing, and the Steam Machine's 28 CU semi-custom GPU is no exception.

It's particularly shocking when you compare it with the AtomMan G1 Pro, an RTX 5060-equipped (albeit with 1 TB of storage) mini PC currently available for around $10 more, which manages 58 extra frames on average at the same settings.

Similarly, the Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora benchmark gives the Steam Machine some serious trouble, resulting in a 21 fps average at Ultra settings. Compare that with the G1 Pro, which churns out over double the frame rate. In fact, even the RTX 4060-equipped Lenovo Legion Tower 5i manages a respectable 33 fps result at the same settings, which goes to show roughly where we're at.

That's not to say the Steam Machine gets completely trounced in every benchmark. It beats one of our custom, Intel Arc B570-equipped PC builds in Black Myth Wukong, both with and without upscaling. If we were to build that PC today, it would be slightly more expensive than the Steam Machine 2 TB bundle—mostly due to the beefy Core Ultra 265K CPU and pricey RAM.

Still, you could save some money with a weaker CPU and (slightly) cheaper RAM, and get very similar gaming performance. Again, the RTX 4060, Intel Core i5 14400F-toting Legion Tower 5i powers ahead of the Steam Machine in Black Myth (with upscaling enabled) quite convincingly. That's a budget gaming PC with last-generation components, no two ways about it. And it's got the little Steam Machine thoroughly licked across almost all of my benchmarks.

Steam Machine real-world testing

It's important to remember that the Steam Machine is designed for your living room TV, which these days is likely to be a 4K-native model. So, putting our comparative benchmarks aside for a second, I decided to jump into three relatively demanding (and very popular) PC games at 4K resolution, and see how far I had to drop the settings to get a mostly-solid 60 fps.

In the case of Cyberpunk 2077, I managed to get a 58-61 fps average by dropping the settings to Medium (no ray tracing), bumping FSR into its Performance mode, and enabling 2x frame generation. That means the base frame rate is still trundling away at somewhere around the 30 fps mark, even with the upscaler working at its hardest.

Which means added latency, and some messy visuals. It's not a straight-up bad experience at these settings, but you can definitely see the FSR/frame gen combo struggling with details and fast movement on a regular basis. Could I play Cyberpunk 2077 like this? Sure, I guess. Would I feel good about it, having dropped $1,000+ on a new piece of hardware? Hmm. Pass, I think.

In the case of the newly-released (and fairly well-optimised) Forza Horizon 6, you can forget ray tracing if you want 60 fps at 4K. At this point, that's probably no surprise. However, you can just about keep things smooth with a combo of FSR Performance and High settings.

There's the occasional dip into the low 50s in downtown Tokyo, but it's plenty playable. Cutscene characters look a bit fuzzy, though, and given that frame gen in this game is an Nvidia-only option, you'll need to drop things further if you want higher/more consistent frames.

And then there's Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Night. At Medium settings, with FSR set to Performance and with frame generation enabled, you can indeed live your best Batman life at 4K 60 fps. Just about. Again, there's the odd dip, and the base frame rate is pretty low, so the extra latency is definitely palpable.

And again, FSR in all its older iterations looks rough around the edges at Performance settings. Valve says it's working on FSR 4 support for the Steam Machine, but for now, older FSR is what you get as an AMD-specific option.

You might be finding this all a bit obvious. The Steam Machine isn't particularly powerful, so why would I expect high resolution and 60+ frames from my tiny under-TV box? Well, Valve said as much when it first unveiled the Steam Machine last year, stating that 4K60 in your Steam games was its benchmark. And 4K TVs are pretty much the standard at this point. While you can drop the res below native, you're really not going to want to if image quality is a concern.

And as for smooth frame rates? It's sort of PC gaming's thing, man. Especially when you're spending proper PC gaming money.

Can the Valve box deliver in the demanding stuff? Sometimes. As long as you're prepared to make some pretty major compromises in the upscaling, frame generation, and settings departments.

Steam Machine software

First time setup involves attaching the included power cable (and the rather meagre 1.8 metre HDMI cable), booting up the box, and connecting the Steam Controller via the wireless puck. After entering your Wi-Fi details and your Steam account login (and adjusting your screen scaling, which I'll go into below) you're then presented with the SteamOS interface, after any incidental updates.

Anyone who's used a Steam Deck (or indeed, the Steam interface in general) will feel like they're in familiar territory here. A press of the central Steam Controller button opens up a side menu to access your Library or the storefront itself, while also providing a litany of options menus. More still can be accessed with the three-dot button at the bottom of the input device.

One slight hang-up I experienced involved connecting the Steam Controller to the Steam Machine itself, so I could ditch the wireless puck. The menu system is a little obtuse, as the settings appear to want you to shutdown the controller while connected to the puck, boot it up, disconnect it, and then hold down a combination of buttons and bumpers to pair it with the internal connection while booting it up again. A three finger job.

I think. It took a few goes, and I'm not quite sure which combination I used to eventually cause it to pair. In fact, if I had one overall critique of the Steam Machine software experience, it's that the option menus often feel overly complicated.

Some are simple toggles, others are drop down menus, some are sliders, some are in strange orders, some are accessed with one button, some another… it's all a bit much when you're trying to lie back on the couch and game.

The onboarding process has other quirks, too. This could be user error, but on first setup I adjusted the scaling to fit my particular (ancient) 1080p TV, which the Steam Machine merrily ignored once I was booted into the OS itself. This led to much head-scratching as I figured out how to adjust it again from within the slightly unclear (and now poorly scaled) menu options.

Switching over to my 4K monitor, SteamOS seemed to recognise the native resolution immediately, and displayed the appropriately-scaled menus. I then jumped into several games, only to find the resolution maxed out at 1080p. According to Valve, this 1080p default is deliberate Steam Machine behaviour, designed "to ensure a good gameplay experience out of the box."

Though I thought this was supposed to be a 4K-ready device?

After some hunting around in the SteamOS menus, I discovered a secondary resolution option under the Advanced Display settings that was set to "default" in a dropdown menu. Adjusting this manually to the native resolution of my 4K screen allowed me to select higher resolutions in games. It had me stumped for a good 10 minutes or so, though, as the main resolution scaling settings didn't do the trick.

I've had the odd game-specific issue, too. Baldur's Gate 3, for example, repeatedly crashed on boot—until some searching revealed a similar issue with the Steam Deck. The fix is to enable a Proton experimental setting in the Compatibility menu, which handily works for the Steam Machine, too.

So, does Valve's new box provide a seamless PC gaming experience? Well it hasn't for me, I have to say. And while this sort of tweakery is common for those of us who do battle with the PC gaming gods—especially those of us who run Linux operating systems on the regular—I had hoped for a smoother ride from a living room-first machine. Valve says it's working on various aspects of the interface for a better experience, but for now, it definitely feels like a work in progress.

Steam Machine aesthetics

Opinions will vary here, but I'm a big fan of the Steam Machine's design. There's something high-tech, slightly ominous, and very Valve about the aesthetic. It looks and feels like an ancient artifact you'd find in a sci-fi shooter, some sort of key that unlocks a machine designed to bring about the end of the universe. I'm riffing here, but if you pick up one for yourself, you'll see what I mean.

Should the all-black, all-knowing cube design not be to your tastes, there's always the option to swap out the faceplates. These are attached with small magnets at all four corners to the front of the chassis, and pull themselves into place with a meaty thock.

Something I accidentally discovered is that, such is the force of the magnets, you can stack two together at once, although a single plate locks smoothly in line with the front I/O panel below. My top-end 2 TB Steam Machine bundle includes two extra plates, one covered in red fabric, and the other with a wood finish.

Tapping my finger against the latter, it appears to be an actual piece of tree—rather than a cheap walnut-style veneer. Very nice indeed, if you're into that sort of thing.

My main point, however, is just how unassuming the Steam Machine looks when tucked among my other set-top boxes and routers, even with a jazzy face plate attached. It looks like it'll blend in just about anywhere, and the front LED strip can be configured in a multitude of ways. You can set it to pulse through the RGB spectrum to deliver a gaming PC-like aesthetic, or you can turn it off entirely, among other options.

At which point, you may end up forgetting you've got a Steam Machine under your TV at all. It's well-sized enough that I don't think anyone will have a problem integrating it into their setup with ease.

As for the controller? Well, it's a sizable beast, that's for sure. Still, with an all-black, relatively muted design, I don't think your average non-gamer would notice much of a difference between this and a standard Xbox controller unless they picked one up.

Temperatures and noise

The Steam Machine is quiet. I mean, really, really quiet. The single, geometry-optimised 120 mm fan at the back does an admirable job of moving large amounts of air at whisper-like levels, so much so that I don't think you'd notice it at full pelt over any other ambient noise.

Temperatures

Gaming TemperaturesIdle temperatures

Avg CPU Temp (°C)

Max CPU Temp (°C)

Avg GPU Temp (°C)

Max GPU Temp (°C)

Steam Machine

68

74

65

69

AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX

89

91

77

67

Lenovo Legion Tower 5i | RTX 4060 | Intel Core i5 14400F

64

76

67

71

Custom PC #11 (issue 413) | Arc B570 | Intel Core Ultra 7 265K

57

81

66

71

0255075100

Gaming Temperatures Data

Product	Value
Steam Machine	68 Avg CPU Temp (°C), 74 Max CPU Temp (°C), 65 Avg GPU Temp (°C), 69 Max GPU Temp (°C)
AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX	89 Avg CPU Temp (°C), 91 Max CPU Temp (°C), 77 Avg GPU Temp (°C), 67 Max GPU Temp (°C)
Lenovo Legion Tower 5i | RTX 4060 | Intel Core i5 14400F	64 Avg CPU Temp (°C), 76 Max CPU Temp (°C), 67 Avg GPU Temp (°C), 71 Max GPU Temp (°C)
Custom PC #11 (issue 413) | Arc B570 | Intel Core Ultra 7 265K	57 Avg CPU Temp (°C), 81 Max CPU Temp (°C), 66 Avg GPU Temp (°C), 71 Max GPU Temp (°C)

CPU (°C)

GPU (°C)

Steam Machine

38

41

AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX

51

38

Lenovo Legion Tower 5i | RTX 4060 | Intel Core i5 14400F

29

30

Custom PC #11 (issue 413) | Arc B570 | Intel Core Ultra 7 265K

37

46

015304560

Idle temperatures Data

Product	Value
Steam Machine	38 CPU (°C), 41 GPU (°C)
AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX	51 CPU (°C), 38 GPU (°C)
Lenovo Legion Tower 5i | RTX 4060 | Intel Core i5 14400F	29 CPU (°C), 30 GPU (°C)
Custom PC #11 (issue 413) | Arc B570 | Intel Core Ultra 7 265K	37 CPU (°C), 46 GPU (°C)

It runs relatively cool, too. Certainly much cooler than the AtomMan G1 Pro when you crank it up to its top whack, which is significantly noisier, too. Valve has clearly prioritised refinement when it comes to both the Steam Machine's size and sound, which is a good instinct to follow when it comes to a living room-friendly box.

Steam Machine value

When the Steam Machine was first announced, we on the PC Gamer hardware team took a look at the specs and all came to the same rough conclusion. It's relatively low-powered, it's designed for your living room, and it's gunning for a position next to your other consoles. Therefore, it'll have to be reasonably priced.

That was in the before times, of course. Back when cheap memory modules were abundant, and the idea of a $550-$600 base-level Steam Machine seemed quite possible. Then the AI server market hoovered up all the manufacturing capacity, the consumer market got stuffed, and we've been living in a world of ridiculous pricing ever since.

Given all this, on the surface, the $1,049 Steam Machine 512 GB seems almost reasonable. Let's put it this way, it's not as highly-priced as we feared, given everything that's going on at the moment and the recent price hike of the Steam Deck. But the unfortunate truth is that budget gaming PCs—while being much larger, noisier, and more unwieldy than Valve's magic box—can still be found for the same sort of figure.

A perusal of our cheap gaming PC deals page reveals several 1 TB-equipped, RTX 5060-toting models for under $1,000. And, as I've shown with the AtomMan G1 Pro, anything with Nvidia's current-gen budget card is likely to give the Steam Machine a good thrashing in the performance stakes.

Speaking of which, the AtomMan machine can be found (at the time of writing) for $1,439 at Amazon. That's pretty pricey for a mini PC, but it does come with a beastly laptop CPU, said RTX 5060, and 32 GB of RAM. You only get a 1 TB SSD, it's true. And like the PCs above, it doesn't have an included controller, nor a couch-native SteamOS interface.

But it's only $11 more than the top-spec Steam Machine 2 TB. And Steam Big Picture mode in Windows works great for gaming on your TV. As for the controller? A suitable model doesn't cost a whole lot extra (particularly if you go for something budget-yet-brilliant, like the GameSir Nova Lite).

I just can't square the Steam Machine's performance with any idea of consumer value. I really can't. The first question you need to ask yourself as a hardware reviewer is this: Would I buy one?

And despite the little black box's lovely design, excellent controller, and sheer curiosity value, the answer is no. Not when I can still pick up a regular gaming PC for the equivalent cash, with much better overall gaming performance.

Because, when it comes to the PC gaming experience, I think you should ask yourself what it means to you. To me, it means better graphics than consoles. It means higher frame rates. It means flexibility, and it means spending more money in return for a better experience when I actually play the games.

Having a neat little PC gaming box tucked away underneath your TV is all well and good, on paper. But when it feels underpowered (and internally outdated) right out of the gate, while still costing north of a grand for the base-level model? I'm simply not sure it makes much sense.

After a standard spell in beta, the latest iteration of SteamOS—Valve's Arch-based Linux distro for use on Steam Deck, Steam Machine, and Steam Frame—has hit the big three-eight. Or, well, three-point-eight. SteamOS 3.8 is out, is what I'm saying, and if you turn your face to the wind and inhale, you can detect the first notes of upcoming hardware.

Specifically, the Steam Machine, for which SteamOS 3.8 brings "initial support," as well as support for waking a SteamOS device from sleep via a connected Steam Controller. Alas, no word on the Steam Frame in these patch notes, but consider me as eager as ever to get my hands on Valve's living room box, presuming the RAM crisis has not made it cost $5,000 dollars.

But this is a pretty big release even excluding the GabeCube stuff. I'll stick the full patch notes down below, but there are a number of tweaks and new features that leap out to me as a longtime Deck user. Chief among them is that yer Deck now defaults to Wayland rather than X11 in desktop mode.

Those are two different display servers for Linux desktops—the gubbins that make your GUI function when you're not working straight in the virtual console like god intended. To cut to the chase: X11 is the old one (and as such, tends to have greater compatibility and work better for some particular tasks, at least for now) and Wayland is the new one (though it's been out in some form for nearly 20 years)—it's more secure and generally a bit more dextrous for most tasks.

So swapping to Wayland-by-default means that SteamOS has reduced "several cases of reduced performance in Desktop Mode compared to Game Mode" on your Steam Deck, desktop mode also has better scaling on TVs, support for external HDR displays, and support for VRR displays. The kind of stuff you might care about if you were making an OS for a device that's expected to live underneath people's TVs.

There are also new BIOSes for the LCD and OLED Decks, which will be installed as part of the general 3.8 update when you run it. The LCD one, sorry to say, isn't too exciting, save that it adds preliminary support for device hibernation. OLED, though? Valve's updated the Deck so that the charging LED now respects your device charging settings. If you set your Deck to top out at 80% charge for battery health reasons, then the LED will turn green—meaning fully charged—when it reaches that point, rather than remaining standard 'charging' white for eternity.

All good stuff, then. Here are the full patch notes for your perusal.

General

• Updated Arch system base
• Initial support for upcoming Steam Machine hardware
• Added support for waking from sleep via connected Steam Controller
• Substantially improved speed of future OS updates on high-speed connections
• Improved support for screen casting in Game Mode (e.g. OBS/Discord)
• Fixed dropdown menus not appearing in some games
• Fixed excessive trackpad sensitivity on certain early Steam Deck LCD models
• Improved support for games that attempt to open PDF files in external viewers
• Fixed an issue where video output could become frozen while using Remote Play
• Fixed a possible session crash when using Game Recording with certain "Maximum video height" settings
• Fixed an issue affecting certain titles (such as "SpongeBob SquarePants: Titans of the Tide") where the game window could have an incorrect position
• Fixed closing certain titles (such as "STAR WARS Jedi: Survivor™" and Starfield) resulting in a session crash
• Improved support for certain USB racing wheels and USB devices that boot in a non-standard mode
  • Frequently these are devices that appear as USB storage devices with a driver installer, and must be switched to their normal mode by the OS
• Steam Deck controller firmware updates now display update progress on the splash screen
• Fixes issue on specific Steam Deck revisions where firmware updates could render the left controller inoperative for that session
• Numerous stability and security updates

Display / Performance

• Updated graphics driver with performance and stability fixes
• Added preliminary support for HDMI VRR for devices with native HDMI output
• Fixed an issue where "Allow Tearing" wouldn't have the intended effect in certain configurations
• Improved VRR frame pacing
• Fixed FSR badge remaining off in the performance overlay, even if it was actually active
• Fixed a case where per-app performance settings would intermittently fail to apply when launching a game
• Added missing graphics features needed for titles such as "Crimson Desert"
• Fixed an issue on certain TCL TVs where the display may remain blank using the Steam Deck Dock when VRR is enabled (requires a Dock firmware update)

Bluetooth / WiFi

• Fixed a case where WiFi performance could become degraded until the device was put to sleep or manually reconnected
• Re-re-enable Bluetooth Wake for Steam Deck LCD
  • Fix for more spurious wake issues that were present in earlier attempts

Audio

• Detect HDMI channel count and expose surround configuration if available
• Add a setting to allow using Bluetooth headset mics (Bluetooth playback quality will be worse while capture is active)
• Restore internal audio device on reboot if set to "Off" in desktop mode
• Increase suspend timeout for HDMI devices so initial audio isn't cut off after a few seconds of inactivity
• Fixed a bug with switching input devices when a wired headset is plugged in
• Fixed an issue where audio underruns could be experienced after sleep/resume
• Fixed a bug on Steam Deck OLED where rebooting would occasionally cause a loss of speaker output until rebooted again
• Fixed a case where FPS limits would fail to apply when downscaling games from a higher resolution

Accessibility

• Added an option to force mono audio output

Desktop Mode

• KDE Plasma updated to version 6.4.3 from 6.2.5, and now uses wayland by default

  • Fixes several cases of reduced performance in Desktop Mode compared to Game Mode

  • Improved support for rotated displays

  • Better scale factor out of the box on TVs

  • Adds support for external HDR displays

  • Adds support for VRR displays

  • Adds support per-display scale factor

  • For more information, see Plasma release announcements

  • https://kde.org/announcements/plasma/6/6.3.0/

  • https://kde.org/announcements/plasma/6/6.4.0/

• Keyboard layout and language are now obeying Game Mode settings

• Improved windowing behavior for games running in Proton

• Fixed a bug in Desktop Mode causing previously open applications to not be remembered when using the 'Return to Gaming Mode' shortcut to logout

• Fixes for experimental nested desktop mode

• Fixed Desktop Mode night color settings inappropriately remaining active when switching back to Game Mode

System Firmware

• Includes Steam Deck LCD BIOS v133

  • Security updates

  • Added "Memory Power Down" setup option

  • Preliminary support for hibernation

• Includes Steam Deck OLED BIOS v114

  • Security updates

  • Charging LED now changes color when charge limit is reached, rather than only at 100%

Non-Deck

• Improved compatibility with recent Intel and AMD platforms

• Greatly improved video memory management on discrete GPU platforms

• Fixed a compatibility issue with the SteamOS chainloader that could cause a boot failure on some desktop systems with recent UEFI firmware

• Power button short and long presses now supported across a wide variety of devices

• Improved controller support for OneXPlayer F1 series, GPD Win 5, GPD Win Mini, Anbernic Win600, OrangePi NEO, and Lenovo Legion Go

• Added controller support for OneXPlayer X1 series and Lenovo Legion Go 2

• Added system and controller firmware update support for the Lenovo Legion Go 2

• Added preliminary charge limiting support for Legion Go, Legion Go S, and Legion Go 2 - currently only accessible in Desktop Mode

• Added controller RGB LED color settings for the Lenovo Legion Go 2

• Added controller, TDP control, and speaker audio support for the ASUS ROG Xbox Ally series

• Reduced handheld controller input latency from 5-8ms to 100-500us

• Night mode, color vibrance, and color temperature sliders in Steam now work on Z2E and later AMD APUs

• Seamless boot fixes for Z2E and later AMD APUs

• Automatically handle internally rotated display for some third-party handhelds

• Improved motion control support for handhelds with BMI260 IMUs

• SD card reliability improvements for some third-party handhelds, including ASUS ROG Xbox Ally, Legion Go 1, Legion Go S, Legion Go 2, and MSI Claw

• Fixed washed out colors for Zotac and OneXPlayer handhelds with OLED

• Fixed some GPU hangs on Phoenix APU devices (Tales of Arise, Octopath Traveler II)

• Fixed ASUS ROG Ally power consumption from fingerprint reader while shut down

• Fixed trackpad losing functionality after sleep/resume on the Legion Go

• Fixed spurious wake-ups when using a Logitech Bolt receiver

• Add controller support for MSI Claw devices (A1M, 7 AI+ A2VM, 8 AI+ A2VM, A8 BZ2EM)

• Add controller support for OneXPlayer APEX and X1 series.

• Improved gyro response for devices that use AccelGyro3D (Legion Go 1, Claw A1M)

• Fixed a system crash on international Asus ROG Xbox Ally models

• Fix Bluetooth not working on some Intel handhelds

• Add initial firmware for upcoming Intel handhelds

Developer

• Desktop Mode now uses Wayland by default

  • X11 support may still be selected via Steam developer settings, or via `steamosctl`

• Updated Linux kernel to 6.16

• Steam now uses steamos-manager to query available desktop sessions and trigger desktop session switching

• Added support for setting the desktop password in developer settings

• Initial support for running as a Virtual Machine guest (virtio guest drivers)

• Added support for third-party devices to trigger the SteamOS boot menu via EFI variable

• Added `custom-update` verb to `atomupd-manager` for easier testing of specific builds

• System reports now include more audio debug information

• Initial support for LAVD CPU scheduler via `steamosctl set-cpu-scheduler lavd`

SteamOS, once the purview of the Steam Deck alone, eventually opened itself to other handhelds. Officially that extends only to the the Legion Go S, but beta versions of the operating system have since supported the Asus ROG Xbox Ally and "Other AMD powered handhelds."

The key term there being 'AMD', because until very recently, SteamOS had only supported handhelds running an AMD processor. Now, though, a new SteamOS beta seems to have added support for Intel and one YouTuber has got it up and running on an MSI Claw (via VideoCardz).

The 3.8.7 beta lists "Improved compatibility with recent Intel and AMD platforms" and, more conspicuously, controller support for MSI Claw devices and "SD card readability improvements" for the same. Excluding a recent deviation, the MSI Claw is of course an Intel-based handheld.

This, on its own, doesn't imply that Intel-based handhelds will actually run SteamOS well and have games playable on the platform. But thankfully ETA Prime on YouTube has actually tested it out using a Claw 8 AI+ with a Lunar Lake CPU, the Intel Core Ultra 7 258V.

They struggle to bring up the menu with the left-side button, meaning they have to go into desktop/mouse mode to do so, and they also note an inability to adjust TDP, meaning a third-party plugin is required to do so.

Apart from this, everything seems to work just fine, although games will need some optimisation, as ETA PRIME says Cyberpunk, for instance, does run better on Windows on the handheld.

We should remember this is only a beta, but it's a promising look at what's to come. I doubt Valve would be working on it if it didn't plan on getting the release out there officially for Intel handhelds.

It's certainly a good time for Valve to be working on adding Intel support to SteamOS, not least because of MSI's upcoming Panther Lake-powered Claw 8 EX AI+. That handheld certainly impressed our Dave when he tried it, and in the beta notes Valve does mention new "initial firmware for upcoming Intel handhelds", so it's exciting news on that front, too.

Well, assuming anyone will be able to afford the new Claw in the first place, that is—pricing isn't looking pretty.

I'm very intrigued by the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+. For one, I enjoyed my time with the previous iteration, the MSI Claw 8 AI+ A2VM. For a second, it's got Intel's new Arc G3 Extreme processor nestled inside. And for a third, our Dave got his hands on one at Computex, and said it "feels like the standard all new handheld gaming PCs will be judged by."

Exciting stuff. Except MSI has now listed its new mega handheld for pre-order, at the low low price of... $1,799? Holy moly, that's an expensive slice of portable gaming hardware (via Wccftech).

To be quite honest, it's not an entirely surprising figure. Earlier leaks indicated the MSRP would be well north of $1,500, and a 32 GB/1 TB handheld with a brand spanking new (and presumably very performant, given my testing of the Arc B390) Panther Lake-based chip was always going to make for a pricey machine.

Still, it didn't stop me from sucking air through my teeth when I spotted the listing earlier today. However, if you're really desperate for one, you could potentially save some cash at other retailers.

Best Buy also has a listing for the new handheld at $1,700, although as it's currently unavailable, that could well go up by the time it's actually in stock and ready to ship.

But honestly, this seems to be the pricing world we live in now when it comes to high-powered handhelds. Our best handheld gaming PC, the Lenovo Legion Go S SteamOS, used to be a regular feature on our deals pages for around $750 to $800. Now you'll find it listed for north of $1,500 at most retailers that still stock it.

As our Jacob Fox recently opined, handhelds have quickly reached a point where the average gamer will struggle to afford one, and the new Panther Lake offerings are expected to be very expensive across the board. At least looking in comparison to the pre-memory/everything else crisis pricing models.

It seems like only yesterday we were complaining that the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X had a ludicrous price tag at $1,000. As that MSRP is currently holding, it's actually starting to look like a genuine value proposition less than a year after its launch. Especially when a Steam Deck OLED 1 TB with an ageing APU now costs a mere $50 less.

As convenient as handheld gaming PCs are, I'm really struggling to come to terms with these prices in regards to buying advice. While true portability and the option of playing your PC games comfortably in bed is a wonderful thing, it sure does come with a hefty premium these days.

Still, here's hoping the new Claw is as good as our early impressions suggest. It'll have to work pretty hard to justify this sort of cash, I can tell you that much for free.

To showcase the introduction of neural rendering technologies in its next-gen mobile GPU architecture, Arm has teamed up with game studio Sumo Digital and recently dropped a short video of it in action. With ray-traced graphics, AI-denoising, and frame generation, the demo suggests that there's a better home for the tech than a humble phone: handheld gaming PCs.

Using Unreal Engine 5.6, along with its Megalights feature, Neural Dawn will eventually be released as a complete, albeit very short, game later this year. But 120 minutes of gameplay is fine when you consider that it's really just an interactive tech demo, showing what Arm's neural rendering is capable of more than anything else.

Specifically, it's highlighting two things: Neural Super Sampling and Denoising (NSSD), and Neural Frame Rate Upscaling (NFRU). The former is Arm's equivalent to Nvidia's DLSS Ray Reconstruction, and the latter is akin to DLSS Frame Generation.

Of course, we've had this tech on gaming PCs for a few years now, with frame gen first appearing with DLSS 3 in 2022, and ray reconstruction following it in 2023's DLSS 3.5 update. Getting all this onto a phone is certainly impressive and should help such devices run even more complex graphics in the future.

But I wonder if this isn't the best platform for it all, given the increased attention that Windows on Arm has been receiving of late. It could be argued that handheld gaming PCs would actually be better served by switching to mobile phone hardware, rather than using laptop-based APUs.

After all, high-end phones sport displays that make those in the best handheld PC's look basic in comparison, so it's not like mobile GPUs aren't capable of handling the resolutions that the ROG Xbox Ally X or Legion Go S use. In a larger form factor, phone processors can run at higher frequencies for longer, as demonstrated by the Apple MacBook Neo, which is essentially an iPhone 16 Pro in a laptop shell.

Nvidia might not be interested in stepping into the handheld market just yet, but Intel certainly is, so perhaps there is scope for an enterprising portable PC vendor to try something different and go 100% Arm, rather than sticking to one of AMD's much-favoured APUs or Intel's new chip.

However, I suspect hardware isn't the barrier to this transition ever happening, but rather having game developers fully onboard with coding for yet another set of rendering technologies. After all, AMD's FSR 4 isn't supported anywhere near as much as Nvidia's DLSS 4 is, and when it comes to Intel's XeSS, it's almost like developers have never even heard of it.

It would be great to have a handheld gaming PC that's not just super-powerful, but also highly power-efficient, using hardware that's truly designed to be mobile. Unfortunately, for as long as the RAMpocalypse continues to rage, the economy of such a venture wouldn't make sense, and until it's all over and things go back to normal (assuming they ever will), it'll be a long time before we see a 100% Arm handheld PC throwing ray-traced graphics all over the place.

Neighbour shot my PC through the wall from r/pcmasterrace

It's not every day you hear about a PC incidentally saving someone's life. It's even rarer that you hear about a dog shooting a gun. Somehow, this morning on the PCMR Subreddit, one user shared their own harrowing experience, which is a horrid mix of the two.

User angelbabyzz took to the Subreddit to share a picture of their PC, with a bullet hole shot clean through their motherboard (and to add even more horror, straight through their RAM too). In the middle of the night, they were woken up by a gunshot and pieces of tempered glass hitting their face. The tempered glass side panel of their PC was now scattered all over their room having been shattered by a bullet.

Their teary-eyed neighbour came to check on them, "in a complete mess sobbing and shaking and terrified that she had hurt someone" and claiming their dog had somehow accidentally discharged her gun. That shot had passed through the wall and hit the PC in the redditor's room. "The police said that the PC changed the trajectory of the bullet," writes the OP, "and it would have hit me while I was sleeping if the PC hadn’t been there."

It reportedly took three days to clean up all of the glass, and though they are both hoping the neighbour's insurance will cover the PC, the neighbour has agreed to cover the price of the rig if not.

There's naturally a lot of scepticism in the original thread about whether the dog actually caused the discharge of the gun, with the top comment claiming it's a new version of the "dog ate my homework" excuse. Logistically, the thought of a paw somehow getting into the trigger certainly gives pause (paws?) for thought, and if the firearm is faulty enough to go off without touching the trigger, that rings even louder alarm bells. It certainly suggests the gun's safety mechanism was off or not working, either way.

The redditor says, "While I’m not sure about the dog story, it’s very clear from how she responded at the time that it was an accident. She was more messed up about it than I was and could barely speak from crying so hard and her whole body was shaking, and she just kept apologising over and over."

The redditor also claims that they feel the neighbour has paid "her dues" with a criminal charge, confiscation of her gun, the cost of replacing everything, and the constant apologies.

The redditor hopes to rebuild their PC but the memory in their machine has likely risen in price over time, so here's hoping they're still able to get a similarly powerful rig that doesn't cost the earth. But, a gun going off and through a wall with no death or injury is just short of a miracle, even if the memory crisis will make replacing the PC much harder.

We managed to get hands-on experience with Framework's new "MacBook Pro for Linux users" just last week, and we were mighty impressed with it. If you, too, were impressed and placed your preorders for its June release, I have some bad news. It's now going to be released one month later.

In an email sent to PC Gamer and those who have preordered the device, Framework says it has discovered two issues that have made the company push back the release from late June to late July.

The first issue is with the haptic touchpad. Supposedly, Framework engineers spotted a bug with the touchpad where it would "rarely" reset itself after repeated clicking. An investigation discovered that this is partly caused by an electrical issue in the PCB, so now Framework are awaiting the testing period of the new PCB to make sure it is ready to ship en masse.

The second issue is with the display. Framework says that the 13.5-inch 2880x1920 custom display ran into a bug with the current panel, which took a firmware update to solve. Should you want to buy the display by itself, that has also been delayed until July.

One thing that hasn't been delayed is the 13 Pro Mainboard shipments. You can still buy both the Ultra Series 3 and Ryzen AI 300 variants, and if you already have a preorder, you can expect that to arrive by June. Unfortunately, though, Framework clarifies that press reviews of the laptop will go live in July, so those who have preordered mainboards won't be able to catch full reviews before it's in their hands.

The Framework 13 Pro can be selected from Framework with either Windows or Linux, is designed to give strong battery life, has a full CNC aluminium chassis, and has a "power-optimised" display with touch support. The haptic trackpad, as we were told last week, is supposedly a bridge gap for Mac users looking to make the swap. Our Dave said, "They [Mac users] want to be able to touch any part of the trackpad to actuate a click and that's exactly what the new trackpad enables."

Notably, the Linux pre-loaded version of the laptop was actually outselling the Windows configuration when we spoke to CEO Nirav Patel last week. On one hand, that's a good sign of how far Linux has come recently. On the other hand, Framework devices do tend to be a bit more involved due to their breadth of customisation options, so the ultra casual Windows users might not have the 'Framework MacBook Pro' on their wishlist.

We'll have to get even more hands-on time with the 13 Pro to see if the wait and cost are worth it, but we've certainly been pretty into what we've seen so far.

Prime Week might be over (it officially ran between 23-26 June this year), but many of the deals are still active. I'll continue to track the best prices on gaming laptops on our regular page, here:

👉Best deals on gaming laptops👈

Whether you're looking for a low price on an RTX 5050 or RTX 5060 budget machine, an RTX 5070 mid-ranger, or an RTX 5070 Ti/RTX 5080 games-crunching monster, there's still a fair amount to choose from, even as the listings begin to return to normal.

Where to buy the best Prime Day gaming laptop deals

• Amazon: All Amazon's best gaming laptop deals
• B&H Photo: RTX 5070 slim gaming laptop for $1,400
• Best Buy: Slim 240 Hz OLED RTX 5060 Acer machine for $1,430
• Walmart: Cheap RTX 5050 gaming laptop we'd actually buy for $885
• HP: Regular discounts on plenty of well-specced machines
• Acer: RTX 5050 cheap and cheerful Nitro machine for $885
• Asus: 16-core, 32-thread AMD CPU with RTX 5070 power for $1,738
• Newegg: Asus 18-inch mega-sized RTX 5070 gaming laptop for $1,500
• Razer: Some of the best gaming laptops around
• MSI: Huge selection of MSI gaming laptops at Newegg
• Lenovo: Legion gaming laptops aplenty
• Target: Acer gaming laptops from $800
• Dell: Up to $600 off Alienware laptops

💻 RTX 5050 - Acer Nitro V 16 | $885 @ Walmart
💻 RTX 5060 - Lenovo LOQ | $1,080 @ Walmart
💻 RTX 5070 - Acer Nitro V 16S | $1,400 @ B&H Photo
💻 RTX 5070 Ti - Asus ROG Strix G16 | $1,800 @ Best Buy
💻 RTX 5080 - MSI Vector 16 HX AI | $2,322 @ Walmart

Amazon Prime Day gaming laptop deals under $1,000

$1,000-$1,500

$1,500+

Handheld gaming PCs

• Back to top ^

Amazon Prime Day UK gaming laptop deals

• Amazon: Big discounts on current gen and previous gen gaming laptops
• Currys: Regular deals on many gaming laptops from major brands
• Lenovo: Legion machines with regular discounts
• Laptops Direct: £100s off RTX 50-series gaming laptops
• Overclockers: Big savings on MSI gaming laptops
• Scan: Regular discounts on gaming laptops from major brands
• PC Specialist: Configurable RTX 50-series laptops
• Cyberpower: Up to £900 off gaming laptops

• RTX 5050: Medion Erazer Scout 15 | £800 (save £149)
• RTX 5060: Medion Erazer Deputy 15 | £950
• RTX 5070: Gigabyte Gaming A16 | £1,250 (save £50)
• RTX 5070 Ti: MSI Vector 16 HX AI | £1,500 (save £399)
• RTX 5080: MSI Vector 16 HX AI | £2,299

• Back to top ^

One concept was continually repeated by Nvidia at Computex 2026, and it's this idea of "reinventing the PC." The phrase has been used in reference to the company's RTX Spark SoC—powering "the world’s first Windows PCs purpose-built for personal agents"—and from a hardware perspective, it's an interesting bit of kit.

However, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang went further into the "reinvention" of the PC at a Q&A session later in the show. "Your personal computer is really the world's largest edge device, and it's 40 years old," said the Nvidia chief. "And [it] has to be reinvented for agentic systems…. just like we have to reinvent the car."

Huang then used an example of modern autonomous cars as edge devices, while satellites "put intelligence in the sky." Later, the Nvidia chief had this to say about the future of the PC platform as a whole:

"Our computer sits at our desk waiting for us to use it. In the future, when we leave it… we're talking with it all the time," said Huang.

"I'll be chatting in WhatsApp with my agent, and it's doing stuff... and my agents are going to have names, and they're on my WhatsApp, and we're just chatting all the time. I'll be talking to it, and it's going to be talking back. It'll call me."

"That is the personal computer future. Tell me that's not R2-D2. Tell me that's not robotics. Tell me that's not cool," Huang continued. "I believe that many, many people will have this at home, just like they have a car at home. Soon, the agent is going to be so valuable to you, you want it to be sitting in a nice box, sitting in a nice computer, secure, performant, something you could carry with you, something you would use for a long period of time."

That's a nice sci-fi-style piece of imagery. Who among us hasn't imagined the idea of the ever-present "computer" (summoned with a cut-glass British accent, of course), working away in the background to not just respond to our commands, but to intelligently work with us to satisfy our needs, even at great distances?

The problem, however, is when that thinking runs into the cold, hard wall of reality—and all the extra consequences that entails. As things stand, our PCs are enablers of our own intelligence in a relatively direct way. We input commands, the computer responds. We control the machine, to a considerable degree. We are the agent.

But transforming our PCs into something with more agency, more AI-handled tasks, strikes me as risky business. It's putting the user further away from the machine, and letting AI do much of the heavy lifting instead. And in a world where concerns around the wider scope of the tech are well-publicised, this sort of AI-first thinking seems like a misread of the public perception surrounding it.

It reminds me of a joke/meme I read a long time ago, which I'll reprint here:

"Tech enthusiasts: Everything in my house is wired to the Internet of Things! I control it all from my smartphone! My smart house is Bluetooth-enabled, and I can give it voice commands via Alexa! I love the future!

Programmers/Engineers: The most recent piece of technology I own is a printer from 2004, and I keep a loaded gun ready to shoot it if it ever makes an unexpected noise."

AI is far from perfect. And while it continually improves, the level of public trust around it seems shaky at best. We continually read stories of AI deleting work, breaking existing systems, and hallucinating. It can also be manipulated, sometimes with surprising ease. In this upcoming agentic AI PC world, can we really trust it to integrate itself so smoothly into our digital lives? And more crucially, do we want it to?

Looking at the wider picture of public perspective around AI, the temperature seems to be rising. Students are actively booing speakers who tell them about the wonderful AI future they're walking into.

Microsoft's head of AI, meanwhile, has expressed puzzlement around negative reactions towards the tech, while the company itself is in the process of scaling back AI integration into Windows 11 features, after complaints that the operating system wasn't focusing on the fundamentals. Which are, of course, the traditional functions of your PC.

Personally, I like the fact that my PC is a box that I control directly, not an AI agent platform I work with from afar. It makes me feel empowered. And while there are already lots of unseen processes running under the hood to make that happen for me, I'm not sure a swarm of AI agents will improve the experience.

"We're now reinventing the computer. It's an agentic computer. It's an agent now, it's an assistant, not a tool. And that's the big idea," says Huang. That's a shame. I like tools. They enable me, a human being, to directly express myself. Agentic AI assistants handling many tasks for me, reducing my primary role to some sort of bizarre conductor, though? Is this really what we, the end users, want?

Nevertheless, the artificial intelligence beast continues to spread its tentacles into our daily lives, and we're often told that if we don't get on board with the tech, we're going to be left behind. Don't worry, though. It's a good thing. Agentic AI will make our lives better, and soon we'll all… I don't know. Have more time to go to the beach, or something.

I guess I'll believe it when I see it. But it's difficult not to feel that, as end consumers, we don't really have much of a choice as to how our technological future develops. Our brave new AI-dominated world looks to be coming for us whether we like it or not, and we'd better hope it's everything that was promised. Will I be writing about how awesome my new agentic AI PC is in future? Will I even, thanks to AI, be writing about anything at all?

I've no idea, but it doesn't feel great. How about you?

Custom PCs aren't often the most efficient or the most cost-effective, but they sure do look neat, and this gachapon-inspired build on the Computex show floor is no different. It has a big pink and white floating heart spinning on the top, and that's not even the silliest (positive) thing about it.

For the unaware, gachapons are a form of vending machine that has historically been very popular in Japan, where you pay cash for a chance of getting one of many minifigures or collectables. Without it, the gacha game genre wouldn't exist (or at least it would have a different name).

As shown off by TechLin, we actually saw a version of this PC four months ago over on its YouTube channel, but the updated Computex version has some fun flair to celebrate the yearly tech event.

Built on top of a Thermaltake Tower 600, which already sort of looks like a vending machine thanks to its curved glass panel, it's stuffed with an RTX 5060, Ryzen 5 9600X, and custom water cooling.

TechLin 3D printed a replacement front panel, plus a whole lot of detailing, like a spinning dial to replicate the crank in a gacha machine, plus a price tag icon and a handful of gacha capsules along the side.

The Computex model takes all the best bits of the build from a few months ago, but replaces the Care Bears in the capsules on the side of the PC with tiny sticks of RAM. They're very cute, thematically coloured, and presumably much, much cheaper than that memory would actually cost.

It even has a CPU cooler that plays a custom gacha animation directly in the centre of the PC. This isn't the only custom PC we've seen this Computex, but it is perhaps my favourite. darkFlash's Floatron caught my eye the other day with its custom evil scientist-like build, and we even got a look at one based on the Taipei 101 skyscraper, complete with rock climber Alex Honnold scaling the side of it.

As for custom-styled cases you can actually buy, the Venom-like ferrofluid case and the Corsair military-themed Warthog this year, and I'd quite like to take both home.

In a year marked by severe component price hikes and shortages, Valve is still determined to release Steam Machine and Steam Frame by the end of summer. The company confirmed as much as it announced the expansion of its Verified program, which goes into effect today despite neither Steam Machine or Steam Frame having a firm release date.

Valve's Verified program categorises Steam games based on their performance on Valve's hardware and compatibility with Proton, which makes it possible for Windows games to run on Linux. The Verified system was introduced with the release of Steam Deck, but will now expand to account for the new hardware. We learned a bunch about these changes at GDC, but overall: if a game works well on Steam Deck it'll work well on Steam Machine.

Interestingly, devs are being asked to use the Steam Deck to ensure compatibility in the absence of Steam Machine dev kits, as per the Steamworks documentation. "Steam Machine dev kit units are not currently available. The best way to ensure compatibility on Steam Machine is to work on your title's compatibility with Steam Deck. If your game runs well on Deck, it will also run well on Machine with no extra work required from you."

Steam Deck dev kits were available to studios in advance of its February 2022 release, and Steam Frame dev kits are already out in the wild. Is the absence of Steam Machine dev kits an indication of just how tightly Valve is rationing its access to components?

Whatever the answer may be, the fact that Valve still plans to release its hardware at all will come as a relief to those willing to fork out for what will likely be costly pieces of kit. The AI industry's run on DRAM and NAND memory has caused widespread scarcity and massive attendant hikes in prices. Even the Nintendo Switch 2 and PlayStation 5 have received dramatic price increases in 2026. I wouldn't be surprised if Valve simply said: "The time isn't right, let's put these things on ice for now."

Though Valve hasn't set a price for Steam Machine, it seems increasingly unlikely that it'll be cheap. PC Gamer's hardware editor Jacob Ridley predicted a $529 price tag on a 512GB model in late 2025, but in February had revised that upwards to "around $899". And that was three months ago: things have only gotten worse since then.

But, as Valve's Lawrence Yang told PC Gamer in May, everyone's in the same boat. "You know, it's unavoidable that it will impact basically anything we make that has any of those parts in them. So we're doing our best to make sure that we can make the product and have it still available at as good and competitive a price as we can. But yeah, it's challenging for sure," he said.

Computex is both a proving ground for newly released tech and an excuse for companies to throw stuff at the wall and hope enough people like it. As such, we tend to see a lot of weird tech (here's looking at you, ferrofluid case and GPU with Swarovski crystals in it). However, while laptops have been a little dry this year, MSI has somehow made my favourite and least favourite devices.

Starting with my favourite, I love the Prestige 14 Flip AI+, and its Vincent Van Gogh-themed look. One version is based on Starry Night, and the other is based on Starry Night Over the Rhône. They are more or less just the artwork put on the back of a laptop, with a similarly coloured keyboard, but that's good enough for me, as it's still gorgeous art that would look lovely any time it's pulled out of a backpack.

They also come with a themed mouse pad, box, Bluetooth mouse, and even an ID badge. It's a bit over the top, as one would expect from MSI's Prestige collection, but lovely nonetheless. You're getting Intel Core Ultra processors and no dedicated GPU, so it's not quite a fully-fledged gaming laptop, but it should still handle some games, and it's got an OLED display to back that all up.

It's definitely a bit much for watching YouTube or messing with Excel spreadsheets, but it'll be the nicest laptop in your local cafe. The last MSI artisan laptop (Ukiyo-e edition) was also gorgeous looking. We don't yet have a price, but the Ukiyo-e edition sits around the $1,500 to $2,000 mark.

If you are looking for a gaming laptop to stand out in… other ways, let me introduce you to the MSI Titan 18 HX Dragon Edition Draco Epic (yes, that's its full legal name). It comes with an Intel Core Ultra 9 processor and an RTX 5090 mobile. MSI has truly thrown everything at it, with a 240 Hz Mini-LED display, Cherry MX mechanical keys, a dedicated vapour chamber cooler, and a premium box with limited edition coins, a mousepad, and a gaming mouse.

It's even got super speedy SSD storage, with a total of four M.2 slots that can be linked together as a SuperRAID 5 array, plus a 6-speaker surround sound system, and a wealth of ports (including Thunderbolt 5, USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A and C, plus an SD card reader).

Unfortunately, though, I simply don't like the chunky backplate or the RGB trackpad, and the dragon design is too much for my tastes. It looks impressive in a lot of ways, but I think I'd feel actively embarrassed for just a moment taking it out in a public space. In fairness, those specs imply a very high price point, so I don't think I'd ever feel comfortable taking it out of the house anyway.

I can see the level of artistry on show here, and perhaps if I were on the Computex show floor and saw it in person, my perspective would change. But I don't think I've ever longed for a big RGB-infested, dragon-displaying gaming laptop before, and I don't know if MSI could change my mind.

I caught up with Framework CEO, Nirav Patel at Computex this week, and got my hands on the new Framework 13 Pro for the first time. I've been eager to get hold of what it calls 'the MacBook Pro for Linux users' since it was first announced and, while we'll have to wait just a little longer for our review sample to arrive, my first impression is that it's everything you'd want a premium Framework 13 to be.

And everything about that Apple-baiting tagline makes even more sense now I've got to touch the device and talk about exactly what Patel means by it. Though I'm super-excited to get the 13 Pro in and start throwing some games at the Panther Lake Core Ultra 7 and its integrated B390 GPU core, obviously the target is not specifically gamers, it's software developers.

And, more precisely, the volume of software developers Framework has been talking to who are growing increasingly frustrated at the Mac operating system. Nirav Patel explains that the Linux operating system is the preferred platform for software developers, but the struggle has been that folk coming over from Apple hardware don't want to give up on the feel of that hardware.

Part of it is the premium chassis, and Framework has absolutely nailed that with the new black anodised aluminium surrounds it has created for the Framework 13 Pro. I've been using the standard 13-incher for years, and the laptop chassis is fine, but you wouldn't call it premium. The 13 Pro, however, feels incredibly solid, sturdy, and serious very much like a MacBook or the Razer Blade I'm typing on right now.

Framework hasn't given up any of the repairability, nor has it lost the compatibility, either. You could fit this shell around any Framework 13 device from the past five years or so.

But one of the key things for Patel has been the introduction of the haptic touchpad. He notes that while it might not be a huge thing for PC folk shifting over to the 13 Pro, for MacBook users he saw it as essential to making that shift as smooth as possible for those who want to move away from MacOS but don't want to change how their machines feel to use. They want to be able to touch any part of the trackpad to actuate a click and that's exactly what the new trackpad enables.

The Framework 13 Pro releases later this month, and already the preloaded Linux versions are outselling the Windows options in the pre-orders. "It's actually outselling the Windows configuration," Patel tells me, "which is crazy to see."

Gaming might only be the third pillar of the 'who is RTX Spark for?' foundations, but that doesn't mean it's been an afterthought. Especially not when Nvidia's developer relations team is going out and helping the likes of Remedy make a completely native version of Alan Wake 2—one of the most graphically intensive DX12 games out there—and making it run great on Nvidia's RTX Spark.

I've been playing this native Arm build of Alan Wake 2 on a pre-release version of Microsoft's Surface Laptop Ultra and, while I'm under careful watch so I don't go digging around in the settings, the experience is smooth and the game looks great. And crucially I'm not seeing the telltale smearing of text, input lag, and fine detail screwiness that would tell me it's using a ton of multi frame gen just to get the game running at the 2560 x 1600 resolution I'm playing at. Though I'm confident it is running some level of frame gen in there to get this game running so smoothly on this machine.

Microsoft has been working on this laptop with Nvidia for about three years, Nvidia has been working with MediaTek for two and a half years to make the silicon. And that would suggest Remedy's had ample time to get working on the native Arm port for Nvidia hardware, but Nvidia currently won't be drawn on exactly how long it has taken to get this fully native version up and running.

But it looks damned good to my eyes, and plays well either on keyboard and mouse or with a controller plugged in. Obviously though, this is a tightly controlled demo, and I can't dig in to see what the specific settings are inside the game, but this is still a DirectX 12 game, with a native Arm port running smoothly on this thin-and-light gaming laptop without blowing a gale out the back.

During my time prodding and poking every single RTX Spark laptop and desktop that has made it up to Nvidia's demo floor—from Microsoft, to Dell, Lenovo, Asus, and MSI—I've also had a chance to play with emulated versions of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle and Pragmata. Not new beta versions, but simply downloaded from Steam and running on these 64 GB versions of the RTX Spark chip.

"What we're showcasing here is, if you're a developer and your game is running through an emulator, we're going to work with you to make sure it's a good experience," says Jo Vivoli, senior manager in Nvidia's tech marketing team. "If you want to make a native arm build, we're going to work with you to make sure it's a good experience."

And it's something a Microsoft engineer, who has been working on RTX Spark for the past three years echos as I step up to play Indiana Jones.

"It's running through emulation," he says, "and so we wanted to highlight the deep investment that Nvidia and Microsoft has made to make sure that gaming is truly an activity that you can participate on an RTX Spark, and it delivers the expected performance and visuals that you would get out of an RTX graphics card."

And it's all working. I also inexpertly bashed through Pragmata, though this is actually the first time playing the game so I had zero idea what the hell I was doing, why there was a little bot-girl on my back, and why this other robot-with-a-sword wanted to chop us into itty bitty bits. But the game ran super smoothly, even if my gaming skills did not.

Now, this is surely not going to be the universal experience for every game, no matter how commited to the experience either Microsoft or Nvidia are—there is simply too large a back catalogue of games in the PC's long library and there will surely be titles that do not play ball.

But it has been focused on at least what it sees as the biggest games. "We've been looking at the 200 largest, most used creative applications, most used games," another Microsoft representative tells me. "And we're on track to have those working in time for launch."

Maybe suspiciously, this is an Nvidia demo suite and there's no hint of Cyberpunk 2077. Will that work for launch? I'm told they think it does, but I guess we'll find out in the autumn.

US-based Maingear has been offering custom and prebuilt desktop PCs, laptops, and workstations for around 24 years, and most recently, it has launched an updated version of its gaming-focused MG-1. What makes this particular model stand out is that, amongst the raft of hardware configurations you can choose from, there's the option to fit the rig with AMD's latest 3D V-Cache monster: the Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Dual Edition.

For its review sample of the new MG-1 Mk.II, Maingear sent over a build with this 192 MB L3 cache processor, mounted in an MSI MAG X870E Tomahawk Max PZ motherboard, and paired with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition, 32 GB of Kingston DDR5-6000 CL30 memory, and a 2 TB Samsung 9100 Pro Gen5 SSD.

It also houses 120 mm Phanteks D30 RGB fans on the AIO cooler and case exhaust, with the redesigned case fielding three 140 mm fans up front. Almost everything can be tweaked with a custom MG-1, though Maingear is currently using a mixture of Team Group and Adata SSDs in the options list.

Because the review build is a little bit of a one-off, exact pricing isn't possible, but the closest configuration you can currently get that tallies with the one I've been using for a week will set you back around $7,273 (excluding shipping). That's one almighty price tag, and even the simplest of MG-1 configurations (Core Ultra 5 225F, RTX 5060, 32 GB DDR-6000, 2 TB Gen SSD) costs $2,491.

In the case of my review sample, the price is somewhat understandable. Getting hold of a Founders Edition RTX 5090 is nigh-on impossible these days, so you're looking at well over $3,500 just for the graphics card. The Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Dual Edition has an MSRP of $899, and the DRAM kit and SSD together come to $944.

Or, to put it another way, those four components alone account for 73% of the total cost of the MG-1 Mk.II gaming PC. The memory and storage prices explain why the base configuration is so pricey, too.

There's naturally always some measure of a mark-up with prebuilt gaming PCs, custom or otherwise, though when you add in everything else (the Phanteks fans, the 1250 W power supply unit, the MSI motherboard with all its connectors on the rear, the non-generic chassis, Windows licence, etc), you'll find that Maingear isn't making a vast sum of money with each sale.

The global memory supply crisis has caused DRAM, SSD, and graphics card prices to balloon and narrow the range of different components that system vendors can choose from to help maximise profits. In Maingear's case, it had to turn to the only thing it could do for shaving pennies off the bill of materials: the PC case.

That's unfortunate because the new chassis is the primary selling point of this update. Don't get me wrong, it looks very nice and that front panel, magnetically attached to the rest of the system, lights up a treat and can be swapped for an array of different designs (though they're none-too-cheap, starting at $99). And thanks to the three 140 mm front fans, internal airflow isn't a problem.

The issue is that the rest of the case is very cheap-feeling. The metal side panel feels no different to something you'd find in a $45 case, and both sides are very fiddly to remove and reinstall. The metal pins/pins that are there to help the panels lock in place are too small, and they pop out far too easily if you install the panels incorrectly.

Although it performs admirably well enough, as we'll soon see in the benchmarks, the Maingear-branded 360 mm AIO cooler is also a little cheap-feeling. The mounting system is as basic as it gets, and the coolant pipes and radiator are somewhat on the slim side.

Fortunately, the Maingear MG-1 Mk.II is a bit of a wolf in sheep's clothing, thanks to the rest of the hardware.

Gaming performance

Gaming performance

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora (1440p Ultra)Cyberpunk 2077 (1440p RT Medium)Cyberpunk 2077 (upscaling) (1440p RT Medium)Baldur's Gate 3 (1440p Ultra)Black Myth: Wukong (1440p Very High)Black Myth: Wukong (upscaling) (1440p Very High)Metro Exodus: Enhanced Edition (1440p Ultra)3DMark Time Spy Extreme

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2

137

77

NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D

146

61

Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K

142

69

Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K

87

37

Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF

102

44

037.575112.5150

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora (1440p Ultra) Data

Product	Value
Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2	137 Avg FPS, 77 1% Low FPS
NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D	146 Avg FPS, 61 1% Low FPS
Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K	142 Avg FPS, 69 1% Low FPS
Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K	87 Avg FPS, 37 1% Low FPS
Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF	102 Avg FPS, 44 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2

124

92

NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D

124

54

Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K

120

83

Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K

83

70

Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF

83

59

037.575112.5150

Cyberpunk 2077 (1440p RT Medium) Data

Product	Value
Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2	124 Avg FPS, 92 1% Low FPS
NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D	124 Avg FPS, 54 1% Low FPS
Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K	120 Avg FPS, 83 1% Low FPS
Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K	83 Avg FPS, 70 1% Low FPS
Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF	83 Avg FPS, 59 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2

269

179

NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D

262

138

Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K

256

161

Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K

196

139

Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF

191

70

075150225300

Cyberpunk 2077 (upscaling) (1440p RT Medium) Data

Product	Value
Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2	269 Avg FPS, 179 1% Low FPS
NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D	262 Avg FPS, 138 1% Low FPS
Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K	256 Avg FPS, 161 1% Low FPS
Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K	196 Avg FPS, 139 1% Low FPS
Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF	191 Avg FPS, 70 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2

171

87

NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D

151

68

Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K

92

60

Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K

112

70

Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF

101

65

050100150200

Baldur's Gate 3 (1440p Ultra) Data

Product	Value
Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2	171 Avg FPS, 87 1% Low FPS
NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D	151 Avg FPS, 68 1% Low FPS
Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K	92 Avg FPS, 60 1% Low FPS
Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K	112 Avg FPS, 70 1% Low FPS
Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF	101 Avg FPS, 65 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2

92

80

NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D

92

78

Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K

91

64

Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K

67

50

Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF

65

45

0255075100

Black Myth: Wukong (1440p Very High) Data

Product	Value
Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2	92 Avg FPS, 80 1% Low FPS
NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D	92 Avg FPS, 78 1% Low FPS
Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K	91 Avg FPS, 64 1% Low FPS
Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K	67 Avg FPS, 50 1% Low FPS
Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF	65 Avg FPS, 45 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2

119

103

NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D

118

97

Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K

121

77

Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K

92

79

Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF

92

73

037.575112.5150

Black Myth: Wukong (upscaling) (1440p Very High) Data

Product	Value
Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2	119 Avg FPS, 103 1% Low FPS
NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D	118 Avg FPS, 97 1% Low FPS
Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K	121 Avg FPS, 77 1% Low FPS
Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K	92 Avg FPS, 79 1% Low FPS
Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF	92 Avg FPS, 73 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2

224

128

NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D

191

53

Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K

158

70

Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K

156

79

Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF

142

47

075150225300

Metro Exodus: Enhanced Edition (1440p Ultra) Data

Product	Value
Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2	224 Avg FPS, 128 1% Low FPS
NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D	191 Avg FPS, 53 1% Low FPS
Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K	158 Avg FPS, 70 1% Low FPS
Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K	156 Avg FPS, 79 1% Low FPS
Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF	142 Avg FPS, 47 1% Low FPS

CPU index

GPU index

Overall index

Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2

14565

25229

22732

NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D

7292

25622

18606

Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K

13775

24941

22237

Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K

13855

16357

15925

Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF

15310

15986

12354

07,50015,00022,50030,000

3DMark Time Spy Extreme Data

Product	Value
Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2	14565 CPU index, 25229 GPU index, 22732 Overall index
NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D	7292 CPU index, 25622 GPU index, 18606 Overall index
Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K	13775 CPU index, 24941 GPU index, 22237 Overall index
Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K	13855 CPU index, 16357 GPU index, 15925 Overall index
Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF	15310 CPU index, 15986 GPU index, 12354 Overall index

Testing the gaming performance of PCs with RTX 5080 and 5090 graphics cards at 1440p might seem a little odd, but using this resolution helps to bring the review samples' CPUs into play, and the results give a broader overview of the system's capability. Realistically, these are 4K gaming rigs, and at that resolution, the only thing that really matters is the GPU.

Taking all of the gaming performance figures into account, especially the 1% low frame rates, it's clear that the Maingear MG-1 Mk.II is the most powerful gaming PC we've tested for a very long time. Which is, of course, what you'd expect when the CPU is the most potent that AMD makes for desktop PCs, the DRAM is right at the sweet spot in terms of clock speeds and timings, and there's an RTX 5090 right next to the pair of them.

The problem for the new Maingear isn't its performance; it's the bang-for-buck. At the time of writing, you can get an RTX 5090 NZXT Player Three Prime for $5,399, and that comes with 64 GB of memory and 4 TB of storage. The Alienware Area-51 build is more expensive than NZXT at $6,280, but both are noticeably underneath the MG-1's price tag.

However, the Maingear PC is sporting faster DRAM than the NZXT, and both of these PCs have faster SSDs than that in the Alienware. Plus, there's the fact that the 9950X3D2 Dual Edition is twice as expensive as a 9800X3D, and it's not really a gaming CPU, as such.

Content creation performance

Content creation performance

Cinebench 2024Blender 4.2.0 (junkshop)7zip 24.07Handbrake UHD to 1080p conversion3DMark Storage

Single core index

Multi thread index

Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2

143

2240

NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D

129

1293

Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K

132

2182

Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K

141

2364

Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF

139

2031

07501,5002,2503,000

Cinebench 2024 Data

Product	Value
Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2	143 Single core index, 2240 Multi thread index
NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D	129 Single core index, 1293 Multi thread index
Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K	132 Single core index, 2182 Multi thread index
Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K	141 Single core index, 2364 Multi thread index
Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF	139 Single core index, 2031 Multi thread index

CPU (samples)

GPU (samples)

Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2

216

3864

NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D

99

3873

Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K

155

3783

Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K

172

2316

Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF

142

2228

01,0002,0003,0004,000

Blender 4.2.0 (junkshop) Data

Product	Value
Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2	216 CPU (samples), 3864 GPU (samples)
NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D	99 CPU (samples), 3873 GPU (samples)
Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K	155 CPU (samples), 3783 GPU (samples)
Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K	172 CPU (samples), 2316 GPU (samples)
Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF	142 CPU (samples), 2228 GPU (samples)

Compressing (GIPS)

Decompressing (GIPS)

Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2

219

289

NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D

121

128

Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K

168

187

Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K

197

198

Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF

150

159

075150225300

7zip 24.07 Data

Product	Value
Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2	219 Compressing (GIPS), 289 Decompressing (GIPS)
NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D	121 Compressing (GIPS), 128 Decompressing (GIPS)
Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K	168 Compressing (GIPS), 187 Decompressing (GIPS)
Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K	197 Compressing (GIPS), 198 Decompressing (GIPS)
Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF	150 Compressing (GIPS), 159 Decompressing (GIPS)

Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2

137

NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D

83

Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K

116

Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K

95

Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF

104

037.575112.5150

FPS

Handbrake UHD to 1080p conversion Data

Product	Value
Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2	137
NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D	83
Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K	116
Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K	95
Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF	104

Overall index

Avg bandwidth (MB/s)

Access time (us)

Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2

3692

624.25

48

NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D

2501

429.78

72

Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K

3958

672.33

45

Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K

3335

562.46

53

Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF

928

151.41

184

01,0002,0003,0004,000

3DMark Storage Data

Product	Value
Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2	3692 Overall index, 624.25 Avg bandwidth (MB/s), 48 Access time (us)
NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D	2501 Overall index, 429.78 Avg bandwidth (MB/s), 72 Access time (us)
Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K	3958 Overall index, 672.33 Avg bandwidth (MB/s), 45 Access time (us)
Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K	3335 Overall index, 562.46 Avg bandwidth (MB/s), 53 Access time (us)
Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF	928 Overall index, 151.41 Avg bandwidth (MB/s), 184 Access time (us)

Where the MG-1 really comes to the fore is when you switch from gaming benchmarks to those that replicate the sort of workloads you get in content creation tasks, such as offline rendering, code compiling, and video encoding. Here, AMD's cached-to-the-max Ryzen really shines, though it's mostly due to it having 32 threads and high clock speeds.

However, Maingear is very much pitching the MG-1 as being a gaming PC, and if you are considering buying one just for that purpose, then I strongly suggest you don't choose the Dual Edition processor, even if you can afford one. The Ryzen 9950X3D option is $343 cheaper, but you're just going to be far better off picking the Ryzen 7 9850X3D, which knocks an enormous $630 off the price tag.

And there's another reason for choosing a different processor: the MG-1's AIO cooler isn't quite up to the job of managing the 9950X3D2's 250 W peak power consumption.

Power and thermals

Thermal performance

Gaming TempsCreator tempsIdle temps

Avg CPU Temp (°C)

Max CPU Temp (°C)

Avg GPU Temp (°C)

Max GPU Temp (°C)

Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2

63

68

51

53

NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D

63

64

56

69

Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K

52

59

65

68

Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K

54

63

60

46

Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF

53

62

64

48

020406080

Gaming Temps Data

Product	Value
Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2	63 Avg CPU Temp (°C), 68 Max CPU Temp (°C), 51 Avg GPU Temp (°C), 53 Max GPU Temp (°C)
NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D	63 Avg CPU Temp (°C), 64 Max CPU Temp (°C), 56 Avg GPU Temp (°C), 69 Max GPU Temp (°C)
Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K	52 Avg CPU Temp (°C), 59 Max CPU Temp (°C), 65 Avg GPU Temp (°C), 68 Max GPU Temp (°C)
Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K	54 Avg CPU Temp (°C), 63 Max CPU Temp (°C), 60 Avg GPU Temp (°C), 46 Max GPU Temp (°C)
Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF	53 Avg CPU Temp (°C), 62 Max CPU Temp (°C), 64 Avg GPU Temp (°C), 48 Max GPU Temp (°C)

Max CPU temp (°C)

Max SSD temp (°C)

Max SSD temp (°C)

Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2

94

57

48

NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D

88

43

61

Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K

82

63

49

Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K

88

51

Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF

72

35

0255075100

Creator temps Data

Product	Value
Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2	94 Max CPU temp (°C), 57 Max VRM temp (°C), 48 Max SSD temp (°C)
NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D	88 Max CPU temp (°C), 43 Max VRM temp (°C), 61 Max SSD temp (°C)
Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K	82 Max CPU temp (°C), 63 Max VRM temp (°C), 49 Max SSD temp (°C)
Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K	88 Max CPU temp (°C), 51 Max SSD temp (°C)
Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF	72 Max CPU temp (°C), 35 Max SSD temp (°C)

CPU (°C)

GPU (°C)

Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2

49

46

NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D

43

41

Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K

30

38

Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K

50

32

Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF

35

27

015304560

Idle temps Data

Product	Value
Maingear MG-1 Mk.II | RTX 5090 | 9950X3D2	49 CPU (°C), 46 GPU (°C)
NZXT Player Three Prime | RTX 5090 | 9800X3D	43 CPU (°C), 41 GPU (°C)
Alienware Area-51 | RTX 5090 | 285K	30 CPU (°C), 38 GPU (°C)
Corsair One | RTX 5080 | 285K	50 CPU (°C), 32 GPU (°C)
Acer Predator Orion 7000 I RTX 5080 I 265KF	35 CPU (°C), 27 GPU (°C)

To be fair to Maingear, a great many AIO coolers aren't good enough, either, but while the self-branded system is happy as a lamb in a spring field in gaming, when you bring all of AMD's threads to the battle, the processor's temperature rapidly hits 94 °C and the chip throttles its clock speeds back a little.

Realistically, this processor needs something far beefier in content creation workloads, such as an Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro, as it has a deeper radiator, with more coolant and fin surface area to absorb and dissipate the heat. The MG-1 review sample shipped with MSI's control app installed, but without the cooling control module installed, so the system was just using the default BIOS fan settings.

I ran the tests again with every fan at 100% rpm, and that certainly helped keep the peak temperature under 90 °C, but the airflow noise was exceptionally loud, particularly that from the exhaust fan. Not painfully so, but certainly not something you could live with.

At least the RTX 5090 never got even slightly warm, even with the default fan speeds, and I carried out some heavy 4K rendering workloads to really stress the system. At no point did the graphics card get even remotely hot, and the amount of hot air being blasted out of the chassis is a testament to the chassis airflow.

Speaking of graphics cards, the MG-1 has one of the most robust GPU mounts I have ever seen in a PC. A thick arm is bolted to the motherboard tray and card itself, and it felt so stiff that you'd need a small horse standing on the card before you experienced any degree of sagging.

Leaving the price aside for a moment, the Maingear MG-1 Mk.II is one of the better pre-built gaming PCs I've used in a long time. Yes, the case panels are disappointing, but the rest is very good, and the cable routing and overall management are top-notch. I'd prefer to see Velcro strips rather than zip ties holding everything in place, though, as it makes things far easier to handle when the inevitable upgrade comes along.

The overall performance is exactly what you'd expect with this combination of hardware, and while the cooling performance favours the graphics card rather than the CPU, that's sensible given the use of an RTX 5090.

To my eyes, the aesthetics are a nice balance of RGB bling and understated styling, though I feel that Maingear has missed a trick by not using a classier finish to the metal surfaces. The Havn BF 360 Flow, for example, feels like pure luxury, everywhere you lay your hands, and the MG-1 would benefit from a similar feel.

Even the external ports on the top of the case aren't quite what you'd expect from such a premier brand: just two USB (one Type-C, one Type-A) and an audio jack.

As it is, I'm not convinced that the modicum of RGB lighting and customisable front panel is quite enough to justify the price tag, regardless of how well the MG-1 is put together. The review sample is exceptionally expensive, mostly because of the components inside, but also demanding over $2,000 for an RTX 5060 build is certainly an eyebrow-raiser. There's an awful lot to like about the updated Maingear MG-1, but given how pricey gaming PCs have become, it really needs something extra to warrant considering it over cheaper, just as powerful alternatives.

Nvidia's first full SoC for the PC, RTX Spark, is finally here. But could it form the basis of a killer gaming handheld? Superficially, that seems like a bit of a no-brainer, what with Nvidia's dominance in gaming graphics. But comments from Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang yesterday make that appear unlikely.

Speaking after his Computex keynote, Huang responded to a question about the possible use of RTX Spark in a handheld.

"If somebody wants to do it, you know, we'll work with them on it. But right now we're really focused on doing something that is just such a big deal, reinventing the PC after 40 years," Huang said.

He went on to explain what a "gigantic project" it is for Nvidia just to launch a PC chip. "Remember all of these applications in the Windows world, the x86 world, we have to prove that they work fantastically, and all the games they have to have anti cheat turned on. And so all of that stuff is really, really hard," Huang explained.

"It took us three years working with Microsoft and two and a half years working with MediaTek to get here, hundreds of people, that's how hard it is, and that's why everybody's so excited about it," Huang says of RTX Spark.

It's all part of his plan, it seems, to reinvent the PC in the age of AI. "Can we help reinvent the PC? And, boy, if you get a chance to reinvent the single most important instrument, the single most important tool of humanity, what you and I grew up with defined just about everything about our lives, and we have an opportunity after 40 years to go reinvent it for the age of AI. Wow, we're not going to sit around, not let it get done," Huang said.

In that context, you can see how making a gaming handheld out of RTX Spark is a bit, well, tangential. Is it yet another indication that gaming is now a very low priority at Nvidia? Possibly.

Of course, the full RTX Spark Chip is probably not a goer for handhelds. It's got 20 Arm cores and a GPU with pretty much identical specs to a desktop RTX 5070 GPU. That's surely too big and too powerful for a handheld, even if Nvidia is claiming its battery life will be "much better than anything you've seen before on RTX laptops."

As I understand it, however, there is a smaller version of RTX Spark coming with fewer CPU cores and a GPU less than half the size, codenamed N1 as opposed to N1x for the full-size RTX Spark chip. And that could be a much better candidate for a gaming handheld.

The thing is, if Nvidia was actively working with partners on an RTX Spark-based gaming handheld, you'd think Huang would have answered that question quite differently. As it is, he's clear that's not where Nvidia's "focus" is right now. Which probably shouldn't be a surprise, as gaming really doesn't seem to be a high priority at Nvidia of late.

So Nvidia has announced the RTX Spark chip, its first CPU—or should that be APU—for the PC. Except the chip is basically a rebadge of the GB10 superchip in the DGX Spark desktop AI box that it launched in October last year. And it uses pretty ancient CPU cores licensed from Arm. So when might we see a true Nvidia CPU in the PC?

Actually, it looks a lot like Nvidia answered that question in its Computex keynote. CEO Jensen Huang revealed a roadmap for RTX Spark stretching a further two generations and out to 2030. And here's the really important bit: Nvidia plans to launch an RTX Spark using Nvidia's Vera CPU in 2028.

As Nvidia has already announced, Vera is the company's first CPU with cores designed in-house. The CPU in the first generation RTX Spark has Nvidia's Grace chiplet, which was designed in a collaboration with Mediatek and has CPU cores licensed from ARM.

What's more, those CPU cores aren't even Arm's latest designs. Grace has two different Arm cores, one is a generation old, the other two generations old. But Vera is Nvidia's first in-house CPU design using its new Olympus cores and when Nvidia initially announced it as a processor for AI servers, we hoped and wondered if those Olympus cores would ever come to the PC.

Well, now this roadmap seems to indicate that they are and even when they're coming, in 2028. Exactly how good Vera's Olympus cores are isn't totally clear. We've only just had the first third-party benchmarks, albeit with workloads somewhat dictated by Nvidia.

One caveat here is that Nvidia hasn't explicitly called out "Olympus" cores for the Vera Rubin Spark chip. But it would certainly be odd if the company used the same "Vera" codename to describe two very different CPU architectures.

For what it's worth, in the Computex keynote, Huang said Vera's single-threaded performance "has to be world class, absolutely the best," which obviously bodes well. Where things get more complicated is software support.

Nvidia is unsurprisingly making lots of positive noises about game support on RTX Spark. But the problem is that the next-gen Vera CPU in 2028 will inevitably be very different from the Arm-licensed cores in the first-gen RTX Spark's Grace CPU. So, it's not clear that any work done for the first Grace-based RTX Spark making game ports or optimising Windows' Prism emulation layer for x86 applications running on Arm CPUs will automatically benefit the next-gen Vera CPU.

You could argue it's a little odd that Nvidia is launching the whole RTX Spark thing with the Grace Blackwell generation. In many ways, it would seem to make more sense to wait for the Vera Rubin generation in 2028 with Nvidia's own CPUs, which will presumably form the basis of future RTX Spark CPUs, including the Rosa Feyman generation which Huang also revealed is due in 2030.

As it is, RTX Spark is launching with some relatively ancient licensed CPU cores which will duly be dropped in favour of Nvidia's surely far superior cores in 2028. Perhaps all this generation of RTX Spark is supposed to do is get the ball rolling in terms of relationships with hardware vendors for laptops, with Microsoft regarding x86 emulation and with game devs for porting x86 titles.

But at least now we know when the first true Nvidia CPU for the PC is arriving. And it's 2028. Here's hoping those Olympus cores are still "absolutely the best" by then.

With the RAMpocalypse doing its very best to ruin PC gaming, with memory and storage now ludicrously expensive, the handheld market has struggled to keep things affordable. Acer's solution to all this is simple: bin everything needed to play games locally, and just make a streaming device instead.

Officially called the Nitro Blaze Link, Acer's newest handheld joins the rest of the Blaze lineup. But where they're all packed with a punchy little AMD Ryzen 8000-series APU, lots of NVMe storage and fast DRAM, the Blaze Link is essentially a 'dead' box. You won't be playing any games locally, because it only has 1 GB of memory and 8 GB of eMMC storage for its Linux operating system, according to PC Mag.

Naturally, with such little gubbins in the Link, there's not much to say about specifications. The display is a 7-inch touchscreen with a 1920 x 1200 resolution, though there's no word on its refresh rate. I can see no word as to what chip is powering the device, but that doesn't really matter, and at least it has Wi-Fi 6E support.

Since there's no APU with lots of fast DRAM, nor a speedy SSD, power demands are pretty low, hence why it only has an 18 Wh battery. This also explains its 464 grams (16 ounces) weight, but it should also hopefully mean the fans are near-silent for the most part.

So far, so good, but there is one major caveat with the Blaze Link: It will only work with a compatible Acer laptop and the company's own streaming ecosystem. Apparently, it will use Sunshine and Moonlight to handle the streaming. It might work with other streaming systems, but Acer is unlikely to help you out in that respect.

Since you can only use the Blaze Link on the same wireless network that your main Acer gaming PC is connected to, you won't be using the new handheld on your travels. However, for a sneaky bit of gaming in bed, or on the couch away from your den, it could actually be quite nice to use.

After all, the fact that Sony's PlayStation Portal is streaming-only didn't exactly hurt its sales, and it's obvious that Acer is hoping for the same kind of success. Naturally, it will all come down to what Acer sets the price tag at, and we won't know that until we're nearer the device's launch window towards the end of the year.

It's been a long time coming, but we finally have sight of Nvidia's very own Arm-based CPU. And as if to remind us it's not all a fever dream, we have sight of some actual laptops that will feature the chip, like the MSI Prestige N16 Flip AI+.

The first thing you've probably noticed is that this thing looks thin. And that's kind of the point, here. There's no discrete RTX GPU to fatten it up, rather Nvidia's all-in-one N1X-based "superchip" called RTX Spark, which seems to want to meld the gaming and AI spheres together (from Nvidia? Who'd have thunk it).

That permits a gaming-capable laptop to have such things as a "16-inch UHD+ Tandem OLED display, 99.9Wh battery, MSI Nano Pen, MSI Action Touchpad, and a versatile flip form factor for mobile productivity and entertainment."

Make no mistake, though, it's a gaming PC. And with RTX Spark machines all signs point towards that meaning some actual gaming performance. We'd heard rumours of RTX 5070-level frame rates from an upcoming Nvidia processor for a very long time, and now Nvidia confirms that this was correct, although it will depend on the game.

That game-dependent caveat exists in large part because the RTX Spark isn't a standard x86 CPU. It's Arm-based, meaning it runs Windows-on-Arm and will have to emulate some apps through Microsoft's Prism layer. So you probably shouldn't expect a standard experience in all respects from this MSI machine. But thus is the penalty for progress.

It's certainly an exciting prospect now we can see just how thin an RTX 5070-level laptop can be. The two-in-one flip design we see here (use it as a tablet or laptop, or in between in 'tent' format) would certainly have seemed a stretch to combine with such gaming performance on more traditional hardware with a discrete GPU.

There's no mention of price, though, and on that front I can't imagine anything other than a sharp sting.

The Asus ROG Xbox Ally X is undeniably a great device, but it's an expensive one. So when I saw Asus had unveiled an upgraded anniversary edition, bundled with a pair of AR glasses, I felt a little pain for my bank account.

The Asus ROG Xbox Ally X20 bundle includes an Xbox ROG Ally X with a snazzy black and gold theming (including a 'custom gold internal structure'), TMR thumbsticks, and even the addition of a 7.4-inch OLED screen.

For context, the standard ROG Xbox Ally X comes with a 7-inch IPS LCD screen, so this is already a major upgrade. Both screens have a 120 Hz refresh rate. The TMR thumbsticks are a welcome addition, meaning you're less likely to have to take the thing apart due to stick drift. TMR sticks should also make for a slightly better battery life, too.

Finally, it comes with a new D-Pad that can be swapped between four-way and eight-way input.

In the new models, you can expect almost the same processor (the Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme in the X20 has an NPU, but other than that, it's exactly the same as the Ryzen Z2 Extreme), which means pretty much identical game performance, as well as 24 GB of LPDDR5X memory, a 1 TB SSD, and an 80 Wh battery. The X20 is around 40 g heavier, but everything else remains the same.

Unfortunately, we don't know the answer to the biggest questions here. We don't have a confirmed price point or a release date. There are some random numbers on the side of the page when you get to the 20th anniversary section, so they could correlate, or they could… not.

As for price, I'm expecting a very heavy hit here. Not only are you getting some meaningful upgrades on the original $1,000 Xbox Ally X, but you're also adding in a pair of ROG XReal R1 AR glasses, which fetch around $1,000 by themselves. This is all before mentioning that the ongoing memory crisis has been a major pain when it comes to reasonably priced hardware, and 24 GB of memory is quite a lot.

The sell for this X20 bundle is the pairing of the glasses and the handheld. You can plug the 240 Hz glasses into the top and get what appears to be a 171-inch screen right in front of you. It is tethered to the device, though, so you likely won't be whipping out that bad boy on the train. Given what I expect its cost to be, I wouldn't want to bring it out of the house anyway.

I'm not exactly jazzed about our current AI moment, where machine learning major players seem to want to inject LLMs into everything. Well, during this year's Computex, MSI unveiled the MEG Vision X2 AI⁺, a gaming desktop that features "a first-of-its-kind AI Holostage" built in. Excuse me while I attempt to contain my excitement.

In other words, this is a gaming desktop with an AI cyber prison attached to it (no wonder I initially misread this tower's unique selling point as being an 'AI hostage'). Taking centre stage inside this gaming desktop will be "LuckyClaw, MSI's agentic AI companion," though MSI's press release suggests "digital companions, desktop pets, and custom third-party AI avatars" may also be available down the line.

MSI's own agentic AI companion LuckyClaw will be available from first-time setup. "LuckyClaw responds to natural speech commands, enabling seamless, hands-free control of performance profiles, MSI monitor settings, RGB lighting, and more," MSI claims, "Future skill updates ensure LuckyClaw grows alongside its user, continuously expanding its capabilities over time."

MSI pitches this unholy union between AI and hardware as redefining "human-computer interaction by transforming the gaming PC from a passive device into a living, interactive presence." I'm not sure about you, but I'd rather not let an AI anywhere near my rig's performance settings. I know I've joked in the past about making my gaming desktop into a shrine to Miku Hatsune, but the RGB inside my desktop tower is 'interactive' enough for me, thanks.

The LuckyClaw avatar looks like a pudgy red dragon with lobster-style gauntlets. This armour could potentially be a nod to OpenClaw, the open-source LLM-based AI agent—though given the recent story about Summer Yue's own run-in with this particular bot, that association isn't really selling me on LuckyClaw.

AI-integration aside, details about the MEG Vision X2 AI⁺ as a gaming desktop are thin on the ground. The press release suggests the MEG Vision X2 AI⁺ will ship with an Intel CPU and an Nvidia GeForce RTX GPU, though it doesn't nail down any specifications beyond that, including the all-important price tag

This announcement really hinges on touting the "cylindrical display interface integrated directly into the chassis," and the introduction of LuckyClaw; there's no word yet on a release window for the MEG Vision X2 AI⁺ gaming desktop.

Computex has not even really started yet and already I've seen the two most exciting gaming developments I'll see this week. One is the new Nvidia RTX Spark Arm-based hardware, and the other is Intel's G3 family of handheld processors. It's a game-changing bit of hardware that is delivering on the twin pillars of gaming performance and far longer battery life than we've seen in a handheld PC up to now.

And all with an x86 CPU at its heart.

But as Intel's Tom Petersen tells me in downtown Taipei this morning, "you need frame gen to get a good experience" on handheld gaming PCs. But the added latency that's inevitable with frame generation is still the thing that's pushing people away from enabling and embracing the feature. Personally, I will happily enable frame gen in games where I'm not going to notice a latency hit (where I've already got a high enough input frame rate) and where it's going to noticeably smooth things out. But it is still an issue when you don't have a high input frame rate… such as in handhelds.

But is that added latency inevitable with frame gen? "We're actually going to be reducing that latency," states Petersen going off script for a moment. "There are two techniques that people like to think about. One is extrapolation.

"Latency is primarily derived from the time it takes to get the second frame. Just because of turning on XeSS MFG, you're picking up about eight milliseconds of latency. Now that is a big problem, right? That's why a lot of people don't like frame gen. In this handheld environment, you actually have more latency in the controllers than that eight milliseconds that we're talking about, but it's still not good enough."

So Intel is planning on doing something about that latency and that means shifting away from the now traditional interpolation method to extrapolation instead. In the current implementation of frame gen it's the waiting around that introduces the latency problems.

"We got the first frame, and then we waited this whole time until we got a second frame," says Petersen. "And when we got the second frame, we did all of our magic and generated three frames, and when we got that all done, guess what we did. We showed you the first frame.

"So the first frame has just been sitting around waiting for this entire process to happen, and now we're ready to show you four frames. So that's where the latency you feel is coming from.

"With extrapolation, we don't do that. With extrapolation, we get the first frame and we show it to you, and then instead of waiting for the second frame, we're using AI to predict where we think you're going to be. So, thinking about where you've been, the direction you're going, you're probably going to keep going that way. So, we're going to predict the frames, we're going to generate them.

"Now, we're going to mispredict sometimes—and that's why extrapolation is hard—but that's definitely the technology that will change the experience. There's one more that will make it better, which we're not ready to talk about yet, but you can do the same projection, the same prediction, without doing extrapolation."

So, how far away are we from getting extrapolation in our frame gen feature set? I'm expecting the answer to be years off, but Petersen explains that actually, he was hoping to have a demo of the extrapolation technique ready to show off today. But sadly it didn't make the show alongside the G3 Extreme.

Though if there was even a chance that an extrapolation demo was going to make Computex then maybe it's not too far off from becoming a reality.

The new Nvidia RTX Spark is an Arm-powered system-on-chip (SoC) set to be the heart of new super thin-and-light gaming laptops and mini PCs. It comes packing up to 20 Grace CPU cores and up to 6188 CUDA cores in its GPU, alongside up to 128 GB unified LPDDR5x memory. And one of the most tantalising things of having an Arm chip powering a genuinely gaming-capable skinny laptop is the promise of unprecedented gaming battery life.

During our pre-Computex briefing on the introduction of the new "superchip" product marketing lead, Mark Aevermann was careful not to make any definitive promises of extreme battery life, despite calling it "the most efficient pc chip ever built". But he did note that we "should expect it to be much better than anything you've seen before on RTX laptops."

Which is certainly promising. While we're expecting all-day battery life for standard non-gaming workloads, when you're really pushing gaming workloads it's going to stress the battery a whole lot more.

"Gaming battery life... it's going to vary on a whole lot of factors," says Aevermann. "Just like any laptop out there, literally any laptop, if you pull the maximum you can out of a battery you're only going to get 45 minutes to an hour. That's true of every laptop on the market. So it very much depends on if things like frame rate targets, the settings of an individual game, what the laptop's battery capacity is, so on and so forth."

But with frame rate targets and such, Intel's G3 Extreme handheld chips are getting up to five hours of gaming battery life in intense 3D gameworlds, and up to 11 hours in something less-intense, such as Team Fortress 2. Maybe we won't get up to that level with a super-thin RTX Spark gaming laptop, but maybe with the right settings we could get close.

One of the issues that gaming on Linux has right now, and one of the main reasons why Windows is still the dominant platform for gaming, is because there are still games that resolutely will not work on SteamOS or any other Linux-based distro. And one of the main reasons for that is a lack of support for some of the biggest anti-cheat software in use today, specifically the kernel-level ones.

That means you get no Fortnite, you get no Battlefield, you get no Valorant, you get no FC26 (okay, that one's just for me). Nvidia gets this and has been explicit in the announcement of the new Arm-powered RTX Spark "superchip" for Windows on Arm that is working hard with all the leading anti-cheat developers to ensure the software works out of the box on its systems.

Nvidia has told me that: "We are working closely with game developers to ensure all the top games run great. Our ongoing collaborations are bringing Fortnite, VALORANT, League of Legends, PUBG and more to run on RTX Spark.

"One of the biggest challenges is native ARM anti-cheat that online games rely on. We are working with developers to bring support for major anti cheats like Easy Anti‑Cheat, BattlEye, and Denuvo among others. We'll have even more game news to announce over the coming months."

Nvidia's also told us that devs are working on both Prism-optimised versions of their games as well as wholly native game versions for RTX Spark and Windows on Arm.

RTX Spark is its new family of Nvidia SoCs, targeted at creators, AI devs, and gamers, and the top chip has the same level of graphics power as an RTX 5070. Well, depending on whether you're talking about emulated games or native versions, so actual performance could be above, below, or the same as an RTX 5070. Though Nvidia has noted that GPU-bound games will likely be less impacted by Microsoft's Prism emulation layer, which is kinda promising at least.

We're expecting RTX Spark laptops and mini PCs in the autumn this year, though don't expect the full 20-core CPU, 6188 CUDA core GPU, with 128 GB of unified memory to be cheap. Though we've been told there will be smaller versions of the chips, potentially more gaming-focused versions, from 16 GB all the way up to the top 128 GB versions. Watch this space, I guess.

After a lot of leaks, a whole lot of rumours, and me boring the crap out of Nvidia's PRs about it many times over the years, the N1X CPU, now incorporated in the RTX Spark SoC, has finally been unveiled. It's been one of the most well-known secrets in the industry—that Nvidia would one day release a laptop SoC, pairing a MediaTek Arm chiplet with an Nvidia GPU core, to create its own notebook platform and here we are.

With the full RTX Spark "superchip", codenamed the N1X, users can expect up to 20 Grace CPU cores and 6144 RTX Blackwell GPU cores, alongside up to 128 GB of unified LPDDR5x memory. And I think the 'up to' parts of that statement are doing a lot of heavy lifting here, because this isn't just a single laptop processor but a full lineup of notebook SoCs starting in the autumn of this year.

And that's welcome news, because in a RAMpocalypse world of ever-increasing hardware prices, a chip that's wedded to 128 GB of any kind of memory is going to be prohibitively expensive. But, while Mark Aevermann, consumer product marketing lead of RTX Spark, wouldn't be drawn on details of the different chips we might expect to see, he did note that "RTX Spark is going to be a family of products that are going to attack a lot of different price points" and that "across the entire family you'll see configurations from 16 GB all the way up to 128 GB."

Not that I expect a 16 GB RTX Spark laptop to be cheap but at least that will be a far more affordable SKU, and likely a more gaming-oriented chip, too. Though I wouldn't necessarily expect to see laptops using those lower-end chips at launch in the autumn, as right now Nvidia has only shown off six very premium machines from Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Microsoft, and MSI.

"Over time," says Aevermann, "you can expect over 30 laptops and over ten or so desktops initially planned."

But with Nvidia promising wattage figures from up to 80 W down to the "low, low single digits" that does make me think about handhelds, especially after Intel's announcement of the G3 Extreme in the past week. Aevermann introduced the RTX Spark as "the most efficient PC chip ever built… a new type of SoC that is both built for the future of computers as agents, as well as a fantastic creation and gaming experience on a single device with exceptional portability." If that doesn't get jammed into a new Shield handheld my ghast will be utterly flabbered.

Though Nvidia was also very careful in the briefing ahead of today's announcement to note that it was not making any comments about handhelds.

Laptops are not the only form factor Nvidia has been talking about, though, as it's also said that mini PCs, along the same lines as the Linux-powered DGX Spark, will also be releasing in the autumn with the RTX Spark chip inside. The likes of Acer, Asus, Dell, Gigabyte, HP, MSI, and Lenovo will have systems ready to roll, which could make for a real interesting comparison with the Steam Machine whenever that does arrive.

The biggest issue for the RTX Spark as a gaming SoC, however, is the fact that it's running a custom Arm and not an x86 CPU core. That means running Windows-on-Arm as the operating system, and that means leaning heavily on the Microsoft's Prism emulator. This is the layer which translates x86 code for WoA devices right now, such as those from Qualcomm, and Nvidia seems pretty confident that it's worked out a lot of the kinks.

Though Aevermann does also note that, while you can theoretically get RTX 5070-level performance out of the RTX Spark's GPU core, that is heavily dependent on the application. And I think you can translate that to mean it's completely dependent on how well a given application copes with that emulation layer.

Nvidia has a lot of skin in the game here, but also a lot of deep contacts with the gaming world, and it has noted that developers are running the gamut from purely optimising their games for Prism, to porting existing games to Arm, to coding entirely natively for the Arm ecosystem.

The company is also engaged with developers to ensure the ecosystem supports all the current anti-cheat software around, something that's been a struggle for Linux gaming.

"We are working closely with game developers to ensure all the top games run great," an Nvidia rep tells me. "Our ongoing collaborations are bringing Fortnite, VALORANT, League of Legends, PUBG and more to run on RTX Spark.

"One of the biggest challenges is native ARM anti-cheat that online games rely on. We are working with developers to bring support for major anti cheats like Easy Anti‑Cheat, BattlEye, and Denuvo among others. We'll have even more game news to announce over the coming months."

Here's hoping Nvidia's confidence in both the Prism emulation and the game developers proves warranted when the RTX Spark systems see the light of day towards the end of the year.

From my time playing around with the new Panther Lake-powered MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ I've found some seriously extreme things about this handheld gaming PC. Mostly that's a good thing, but it being 2026—and the fact I'm talking about a new gaming handheld mere days after the Steam Deck price hike—you can probably already guess what the not-so-good extreme thing is…

• It's powered by the new Intel G3 Extreme processor
• It's extremely quiet
• It's battery life is extreme
• It feels extremely good in the hands
• And the price is obviously extreme

Yeah, that. There isn't yet a final price for the handheld yet, and there is likely only going to be one model at launch towards the end of June, but we've been told today at a pre-Computex hands-on event with the Claw that we're looking at $1500. So long as MSI can maintain production costs and keep it at that price point. Which is maybe a tiny bit concerning.

It is worth re-iterating that the Steam Deck has just had a hoofing great price hike itself, and has still somehow sold out of its entire stock for North America. Not that I'm making excuses for that eye-watering price, but if Valve's ageing handheld—and a far weaker setup at that—is going to set you back around $1,000 maybe we shouldn't be surprised that a system that looks to be the benchmark by which all other handheld gaming PCs are rated is going to cost a chunk more.

Now I've got that one negative out of the way let's get onto the more positive stuff… and there's a lot of it.

MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ specs

The MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ is using the top chip in the new G3 range of dedicated handheld Intel chips, the G3 Extreme. That means you're getting the full 14-core processing array, along with the 12 Xe core Arc B390 iGPU. While there is a more affordable 10 Xe core version in the straight G3 chip, MSI is not looking at using that just yet.

I asked the question and was told: "So far we're starting with the G3 Extreme and we're going to be sticking with this one in our first wave."

Those 14 cores breakdown into just a single pair of Cougar Cove Performance cores, with eight Darmont Efficient cores, and a further four low power E-cores capable of operating on their own while leaving the rest of the more power-hungry cores turned off.

Which is the right way to structure it, if you ask me. I don't need a ton of high-performance CPU cores in my handheld. I get that it's fun to do the whole 'I used my handheld as a full desktop computer' thing, but if I've got a handheld I want it to be doing mobile stuff with a great battery life, and power budget saved by not spooling up some beefy cores will be my personal preference.

Along with that you're getting 32 GB of LPDDR5x-8533 and a 1 TB SSD. That SSD is of the standard 2280 variety, which means users have a greater number of options to choose from if they wish to upgrade the storage down the line. Though it bears saying that, owing to the limitations of the chassis, you're only able to use single-sided SSDs in there.

In terms of the I/O, there's a pair of Thunderbolt 4 ports on the top, with a MicroSD card reader, fingerprint reading powerbutton, and a 3.5 mm audio jack. You're also getting new "HD haptic" linear resonant actuator (LRA) modules to deliver a new, more accurate, quieter, and lower powered vibration motor in the handles.

There are some things that notably haven't changed from the previous version of the MSI Claw, namely the screen, the Hall effect triggers and sticks, and the 80 Whr battery. So, you're still getting a 1200p IPS-level panel, with a peak luminance of 500 nits and support for VRR, from 48 Hz to 120 Hz.

MSI is also sticking with Windows, too. It's obviously going to have the Xbox mode of the Xbox Ally X, with MSI creating a lightweight quick settings screen that mimics what Asus has done with its Armoury Crate software. So, it will be a more tailored handheld experience, but SteamOS it is not.

Though MSI has tested SteamOS after Intel recommended giving the Claw a whirl with alternative operating systems, but I'm told "with SteamOS, there are still technical barriers." With my own experience of trying Valve's Linux OS out on various non-Asus, non-Lenovo, non-Valve handhelds, I would have to agree. MSI has tested other Linux operating systems in the labs, but when I ask if they're working okay I'm told they're "workable, but just for engineers".

MSI is also testing out TMR sticks in the labs, but the results of those experiments have come too late to get into this version of the Claw at least.

Even though it is using the same big ol' battery, the new Claw is a little lighter than the old one, coming in at 785 g versus 795 g for the old version. Which actually surprised me. Having picked it up and played around with it, it feels so much lighter than that in the hand. It's well balanced, and the flared grips, closer to that of the ROG Xbox Ally X and the Xbox Controller it's based on, make it feel far more comfortable than the previous device when you're actually holding it.

MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ battery life

"I promise you battery life that should be more impressive than the current Lunar Lake one we have right now," the MSI product manager for the new Claw tells us. "Thanks to Intel technology support for that."

Given the previous version was pretty impressive in that regard I cannot wait to see what the battery life is when we actually get one in our hands for proper testing outside of the MSI HQ in Taipei where I'm currently pawing at the device. MSI isn't giving out a specific battery life figure itself, but the Lunar Lake version just about topped two hours in the PC Mark gaming battery life test.

And one Intel rep I spoke to had been playing 007 First Light on his flight over to Taipei and hadn't thought about plugging it in until around four hours into the game.

There is a new Endurance mode, which drops the CPU cores down to just 8 W, leaving the whole thing with around a 17 W TDP. Of course, if you want to push it you can get the G3 Extreme up to 45 W if you want to run it in console mode plugged into the wall.

MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ performance

It's quick. That's something which should surprise no-one given how well the Arc B390 Panther Lake iGPU has performed in 12 Xe core laptops. I wasn't allowed to benchmark it per se, but was able to mess around with Hogwarts, F1 25, and Battlefield 6. At its native 1200p resolution—especially with XeSS frame generation doing its thing—you're going to be able to match its 120 Hz refresh rate in those first two at least.

BF 6 is a bit tougher on the GPU, but you'll still be able to top 60 fps at 1080p with some judicious use of XeSS, though without frame gen as yet.

I did have the Claw 8 EX AI+ running at 4K on a TV in MSI's office, with F1 25 running at between 80 and 90 fps, but I will say the use of frame generation, while necessary, wasn't doing good things for the visual stability or a smooth experience.

MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ hands-on verdict

I'm into it.

I'm into the Void Purple colourway MSI is going with for this initial release. I'm into the performance of Panther Lake, especially with a smartly specced out G3 chip, which prioritises the iGPU over jamming in more P-cores. I'm into the style and feel of the device in the hand. And I'm definitely into the battery life, too.

I worry about the price, and given the potential power/battery life balance of the 10 Xe version of the Intel G3 series, I'm a little disappointed that MSI is resolutely sticking to just a single expensive SKU. It's also a shame the Claw doesn't seem to be particularly supportive of Linux, but that may well just be a G3 thing.

Having played around with the device, and its quick settings/Xbox mode layout, it's still far more finicky than the standard Big Picture Mode experience you'll get with a simple Bazzite installation. I do reckon you'll quickly get used to it and its foibles, however.

But I've come away from my time with it impressed by what MSI and Intel have created here. There are other G3-powered handhelds I'll get my mitts on over the next few days at Computex, with Acer and OneXPlayer both having other machines here in Taipei, but while the first two MSI Claw devices felt very much like the company was partnering with Intel in a more experimental way, this is the first of its handhelds that really feels like a finished, premium product to me.

But that's just based on a few hours playing with the thing and chatting with MSI and Intel folk about the device and its design. The real proof will be when we get it home and start properly messing around with it.

If you recognise the name 'Anbernic', it's likely because you've had your eyes on the company's gorgeous retro gaming handhelds. You might want to think twice before buying one, though, as some folks have accused it of quietly downgrading the DDR4 memory to DDR3 and cutting memory size in half, with Anberic reportedly only denying the latter part of that allegation.

As reported by our friends over at Tom's Hardware, a user on Reddit noted that the Anbernic RG 34XXSP they bought reportedly came with 512 MB of LPDDR3 memory, instead of the 1 GB advertised on the website.

A quick look through an archive of the Anbernic websites shows the RG 34XXSP used to advertise 2 GB of LPDDR4 memory, but now merely says 1 GB. Speaking to Tom's Hardware, Anbernic says "the current standard memory capacity is 1GB" and that the 512 MB model was "an unexpected error". It also claims it will "assist with a replacement as a priority" for anyone affected.

That means anyone who has bought an Anbernic device recently should check that it does indeed have the advertised memory. As noted on Reddit, the downgrade to 512 MB of memory is "low enough to become an actual usage problem".

Notably, Anbernic did not seem to respond to the LPDDR3 downgrade claim, and replacing 'LPDDR4' on the website specs certainly doesn't paint the best picture about what memory you can expect in your device. As has become the norm with the memory crisis, that means buying the handheld now gets you a worse one than you would have gotten just a year ago, for the same price.

512 ram RG34xxSP - Update - Samsung 740 K4E4E324EE EGCF - 512 LPDDR3 from r/ANBERNIC

The problem many have with this downgrade is that it doesn't appear to have been signposted by Anbernic itself, outside of a specs sheet most will glaze over. If it instead got a price increase, people would notice immediately, but simply changing the spec sheet won't be enough to inform many of what has actually changed.

The memory crisis has hit many gaming companies over the last year. Just a few months ago, Wallace Santos, the CEO of gaming PC builder Maingear, told me, "In the two plus decades I've been doing this, this is the first time where I'm seeing no light at the end of the tunnel, at least for the next two years. It's not a multi-week problem, it's a multi-year problem that we're facing right now."

We've seen price increases, in turn, from Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, and Valve on their respective gaming devices. And that's before mentioning the Steam Machine, which I'm not fully convinced we'll see soon, or at a reasonable price. Still, if you've got an Anbernic device, it might be worth cracking that bad boy open to see if all is in order.

Intel has just announced some new processors for handheld gaming PCs, and everyone knows what that means: a new MSI Claw. While other handhelds were lapping up AMD chips, the MSI Claw boasted Intel, so it's almost a given that the new G-series chips will tuck themselves inside a new Claw—and now it looks like we might have an actual image of what the handheld will look like.

A supposed Vietnamese promo image for the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ was recently posted on Reddit (via VideoCardz) after being spotted on the MSI Claw Discord server. VideoCardz also has a different photo of it, and the site claims it has obtained this separately, which increases the likelihood that it's legit. Nevertheless, there's still an 'unverified' caveat to all this, so take the salt and pinch it.

First look at the design of the new MSI CLAW 8 EX AI+: Alleged leaked promotional image from r/MSIClaw

The Redditor who posted the image says, "The leak seems to originate from press images leaked through a Vietnamese media outlet, and I obtained it from the MSI Claw Discord server."

According to my trusty buddy ChatGPT, the image's text translates to "MSI officially announces Claw 8 EX AI+ equipped with Intel G3 Extreme." That sounds about right to me, especially given we'd seen this name for the handheld show up at online retailers previously, so I won't question my non-sentient little friend.

The main thing worth mentioning here is its design, which seems to straddle both standard and ROG Xbox Ally X styles of handheld. The latter introduced controller grips that jut away from the screen in the style of the PlayStation Portal. This allows for a bigger screen while maintaining grip comfort. It hasn't gone the whole hog like the ROG Xbox Ally, though, with the screen just jutting down a little.

The recently announced Intel Arc G-series Acer handheld, on the other hand, has gone with more of a Lenovo Legion Go S kind of design: smooth, rounded grips and nary a jut in sight. Both are likely to be more comfy than the older, angled but non-jutted designs that you'd find in, say, an original Asus ROG Ally. Handheld makers seem to have learned a lot about what makes for a comfy device.

We haven't seen an official announcement from MSI yet, so no word on an official price or release date yet. But all signs point towards something very expensive. The retailer listings I mentioned earlier had the new Claw working out, after currency conversions, to $1,800+.

So, likely not one for those on any semblance of a budget, but we'll have to wait and see. Perhaps there'll be a non-Extreme G3 version with less storage at a more reasonable price.

The once budget handheld gaming PC, the Steam Deck, recently received an astronomical price hike, with Valve citing "global logistical challenges" (otherwise known as the global memory crisis) for this decision. Epic CEO Tim Sweeney soon weighed in on the matter, drawing attention to Gabe Newell's $500 million superyacht in the process.

Commenting on X, Tim Sweeney says, "Everyone’s being too harsh here. There has been a significant rise in the cost of components that Steam customer spending ultimately funds, and economic trends have created severe disruptions in the component parts supply chain for megayachts."

For the unaware, the Leviathan is a 111-meter superyacht built for Gabe Newell with an on-board hospital, submarine garage, and 15 gaming PCs. It's the 50th-largest yacht in the world right now. It also comes with two gyms, a 250 square meter beach club with a spa and bar, and diving platforms. It's luxurious is the point I am trying to make.

It does sort of seem like Sweeney is just taking swings for the sake of taking swings here, because, although Gabe Newell does own a superyacht (that was likely super expensive), it's hard to believe the Steam Deck price hikes will exactly cover that cost.

The price of memory is sharply surging upwards, and Valve is just one of many companies that have raised prices to accommodate it. Without knowing the specific price of the hardware, it's hard to say if Valve is making a bigger profit or not from the rise than it was pre-memory crisis.

The comments on Sweeney's post are not very happy with it. The top one, as of the time of writing, says, "Hey Tim when was the last time Valve laid off their employees? Oh yeah never?"

It seems like the last public round of layoffs made at Valve was back in 2019, where 13 were let go. And tens of staff were let go six years prior, in 2013. Epic Games, on the other hand, let go of 1,000 employees just two months ago, with one employee saying, "We only had a slight hint that the company revenue wasn't doing well."

Despite prices of Steam Deck models rising by almost 50%, it still somehow sold out in North America less than 24 hours after the hike. If the Steam Deck can be successful way above its original price, it does make me a little worried that I'll need a superyacht to afford a Steam Machine for my living room, even if it may not be Valve's fault.

It feels like about time that we get some new and exciting handhelds, don't you think? Yesterday, Intel announced new Panther Lake chips designed specifically for handhelds, called the Arc G-Series (Arc G3 and G3 Extreme), and while we've already seen MSI's expensive Claw offering featuring one of the new chips, Acer has now also sprung one on us in the form of the Predator Atlas 8.

To my eyes and noggin, it seems very much like the Lenovo Legion Go S in design, which isn't a bad thing at all because that handheld is very comfy.

The new Acer even shares the exact same screen specs: 8 inches, 1900 x 1200 resolution, VRR support, 120 Hz max refresh rate, and 500 nits of peak brightness. And again, that's no bad thing at all because the screen on the Legion Go S is just about perfect for a handheld, in my opinion—well, perfect excluding an OLED.

So how about differentiators? Well, the most important differences will, I think, come primarily of course from the new G3 and G3 Extreme processors, but also from the battery. The latter is rated to 80 Wh, which is great for a handheld and matches the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X, which holds its juice for an impressive amount of time.

Combine that with a new Panther Lake chip, though, and we'll hopefully have a handheld that can stay awake for a very long time. Acer SVP and GM Jim Johnson mentions the handheld's "exceptional battery life", and I'm cautiously optimistic about that actually being the case, though our previous tests with Panther Lake had it pretty neck-and-neck with previous-gen Lunar Lake on the battery efficiency front, so we'll see. Intel's Lunar Lake was already good on that front anyway, I suppose.

One possible downside is that the handheld will be quite heavy. If you get the version with a 60 Wh battery, you're looking at "under 770 g", and if you go the whole hog with an 80 Wh battery, it'll be "under 810 g." For reference, the ROG Xbox Ally X weighs 715 g for the version with an 80 Wh battery.

The new Acer handheld also has an 'AeroBlade' fan, which the company says is the "first metal fan in a handheld" and delivers up to a 10% increase in airflow compared to a plastic fan.

The Predator Atlas 8 will offer a maximum of 1 TB of storage, and it will max out at 24 GB of RAM rather than 32 GB. That limitation is a little more acute with handhelds, too, given that memory will be shared between the system and the GPU. Still, 24 GB should be more than enough for handheld gaming.

In all, to my eyes, this looks like it'll essentially be a slightly heavier Legion Go S with the benefits of new Windows/Xbox software and, of course, the new Intel chip. It'll all come down to how well that performs. Oh, and pricing, of which there's no word yet. Acer says it will be available in North America, EMEA, and Australia from October 2026, so we shouldn't have too long to wait to find out.

So, Intel has announced its new chips for handheld gaming PCs, the Intel Arc G-Series. And you know what? They're probably going to be pretty good given they're basically versions of the well-received Panther Lake processor. In fact, they could well be the fastest handheld chips on the market. Well, at least at launch. There are good reasons to doubt how committed Intel will be to Arc G in the longer term.

But here's the thing. The only reason why the top-of-the-range Intel Arc G3 Extreme could be the fastest gaming handheld chip at launch is because AMD has been dragging its feet horribly when it comes to APU technology.

AMD's Strix Point APU came out about two years ago. Strix Point was a decent advance on its predecessor, Phoenix, but it used the same TSMC N4 silicon, limiting the upgrade potential.

AMD has since launched the Gorgon Point APU, the follow up to Strix Point. But it's just a warmed over Strix Point APU in truth and, again, is still on N4 silicon.

Since Phoenix came out in 2023, AMD APUs have been stuck on the same silicon node for several years. But what you might call AMD's true next-gen APU, codenamed Medusa Point, isn't out until next year.

Now it's not entirely clear what node Medusa Point will be on. AMD has said that Zen 6, which Medusa Point will use for its CPU cores, is already in production on TSMC's new N2 node. But that's Zen 6 for Epyc server CPUs. It doesn't automatically follow that every Zen 6-based chip will be on N2.

Still, you'd expect Medusa Point to make the move to at least TSMC N3 silicon, which would represent the first node shrink for an AMD APU since 2023. And even N3 should allow AMD to squeeze in a much more powerful iGPU.

Oddly, however, the rumours suggest that Medusa Point will both stick with RDNA 3.5 graphics technology and actually regress from 16 graphics compute units (CUs) to just eight. If this is true, I'm not sure what to make of it all.

There are a couple of possibilities here. AMD could do a cut-down version of its Medusa Halo APU, which is rumoured to be getting up to 48 CUs, which fits into a handheld power budget. And that could represent a big step forward.

It's also possible that something suitable for handhelds could come out of the broader collab' on Xbox chips with Microsoft. Maybe there's a more performant mobile Xbox APU that could be used broadly in gaming handhelds.

Of course, whatever AMD has coming, it's just that—coming rather than here. Which is why the door has been left open for Intel. But, personally, I think that's a real pity.

However good Intel Arc G-series turns out to be, it's based on an essentially dead GPU architecture. Intel hasn't made an official announcement. But it didn't bother releasing its new big Battlemage GPU for gaming and all the indications are that the Arc experiment is over, with Intel set to replace Arc iGPUs in its chips with Nvidia graphics tech in a generation or two.

I don't know about you, but I wouldn't be super confident about paying what, in current market conditions thanks to the AI boom, will inevitably be a lot of cash for an Intel Arc G handheld. How much effort and money will Intel be putting into Arc drivers now that it has already decided to throw the towel in and let Nvidia do the gaming graphics?

Intel is promising "Day-0" driver optimisations for Arc G. But, frankly, I'll believe when I see it. And that will be doubly true a couple of years from now.

Intel has just announced the Arc G3 and G3 Extreme, new Panther Lake-based chips for handheld gaming PCs that promise "seamless gaming experiences on the go." A year or two ago, new handheld chips would have properly tickled my anticipation bone. But with the way 2026 is going, I'm not so sure. Will anyone be able to afford them?

Timing itself drives this point home: Intel's announcement comes right off the back of Valve massively increasing the price of the Steam Deck OLED. Valve's handhelds have traditionally been great value, even as other handhelds have climbed up and up in price. But no longer, as the 1 TB version now costs $949, up from $649.

"These new prices," Valve said, "reflect the current state of component costs and other global logistical challenges across the industry as a whole."

Seems about right. 2026 is seeming like the year when the harsh realities of AI industry-induced memory shortages, geopolitical conflict-induced material shortages, and general economic decline finally set into the consumer market. And there's been no hint that it will get better any time soon.

Talking handhelds specifically, I was pretty disheartened by the prices that they started climbing, even before there was much of a whiff of memory shortages. I got my hands on the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X in August last year at Gamescom and still held some slivers of hope about the handheld market. But that console ended up costing $1,000, almost $200 more than the Lenovo Legion Go S, which I also thought was priced too high even at launch, despite how much I love it.

Those are both AMD handhelds, though. The main one you look towards if you want intel is the MSI Claw—specifically, for the latest Intel version, the Claw 8 AI+ A2VM. That's a high-end handheld and launched at $900 for the 1 TB, 32 GB version. Now, though, you're looking at far north of $1,000 for one.

Now, let's return to handhelds that will feature Intel's latest Arc G-series chips. We've already seen retailer listings on multiple occasions (in Australia and EU markets) for G-series MSI Claw handhelds that suggest a very high initial price tag, translating to around $1,800 USD or more.

And let me repeat: those are initial prices. Bearing in mind the Lunar Lake Claw's price hikes over time, and the fact that now even the Steam Deck OLED has shot up, and then throw in the fact that tech CEOs are predicting companies will literally have to go bankrupt because of memory shortages... well, let's just say I'm not holding my breath that handhelds with these upcoming Intel chips will actually end up in many consumers' hands. Gone are the days when a handheld could mean a cheap alternative to a gaming PC.

Computex 2026 hasn't even begun yet, and Intel is already rolling out the big guns. Its long-awaited Panther Lake-based handheld gaming PC processors have just been officially announced, and they're called the Intel Arc G3 and the Intel Arc G3 Extreme.

We've long mooted the idea that Panther Lake's efficiency and overall performance seem perfectly suited to a handheld chip, and after much teasing, the new processors look designed to do exactly that.

Intel says the new chips feature "up to Intel Arc B390 graphics" (that'll be the Extreme variant, then) and two P-Cores, eight E-cores, and four LPE-cores worth of processing grunt.

The blue team also says that handheld designs using the new processors will launch in the coming months, "beginning with Acer's Predator Atlas 8, MSI Claw 8 EX AI+, and OneXPlayer."

The press release promises "smooth, immersive gameplay and exceptional battery life without compromise" from the new offerings, and having messed around with a top-end Panther Lake laptop chip myself, I can believe it.

A big part of that "smooth gameplay" will likely be down to XeSS 3 support, which is highlighted alongside the new chips for its AI-based upscaling and Multi-Frame Generation chops. The company also points to Intel Precompiled Shader tech as an advantage to prevent stuttering, as it downloads prebuilt shader files in a similar way to Microsoft's competing solution.

Details are somewhat thin on the ground at the moment, although the company says we'll be getting more info at Computex 2026 itself. Still, it's a nice early official reveal, at the very least. I was just finishing my lunch, Intel. You couldn't have held on for five more minutes?

If you own a Lenovo PC, it turns out you're far from alone. The company has announced its Q4 and full year financial results over 2025/26, and in among the celebrations over the "strongest year in the group's history" is a fun fact—its global PC market share topped out at 24.4%, which means it retains its place as the number one PC manufacturer in terms of units shipped.

Which is probably slightly annoying news for HP, which looks to have kept its position as number two in the rankings. According to Lenovo, the gap between the two has widened to the largest in 15 years. Ah, you can't win 'em all, can you?

According to a Gartner report earlier this year, the first quarter of 2026 was actually pretty good for PC manufacturers, as preliminary results indicated that worldwide shipments actually increased by 4%.

Before we all go jumping up and down, though, it's important to remember that the memory crisis wasn't affecting the market quite so badly at that point, as manufacturers and retailers were still moving stock produced before the RAMpocalypse really started to bite. Yes, I am a downer at parties. How did you know?

Going by those preliminary figures, the next manufacturer on the list in third place is Dell, followed by Apple, and then Asus.

On that Mac-based note, the Cupertino fruit-based giant has been predicted to overtake Dell in the laptop-manufacturing stakes by the end of this year, thanks to the runaway success that is the MacBook Neo.

Outgoing Apple CEO Tim Cook has said the PopularBook is now supply limited, as the company didn't anticipate such a massive demand for a stylish $599 work machine. I could have told him it'd sell well, but he never called. Next time, perhaps?

Going back to those Lenovo financials for a second, the company reported revenue reaching an all-time forth quarter high of $21.6 billion, a 27% increase year-on-year. And yes, a lot of that was down to AI-related shenanigans.

We'll have to see how the rest of the year plays out in regards to consumer PC sales overall, and what the figures look like once the ongoing memory crisis and associated price increases have been factored in. Still, I don't want to entirely spoil the party. Cheers, Lenovo. How does it feel sitting at the top?

Last month I reported on tech YouTubers Jakkuh and Zip Tie Tech modding an Apple MacBook Neo with external custom water loop cooling to achieve world record benchmark scores on the budget laptop. Now, YouTuber Salem Techsperts has outdone them in at least some benchmarks with the help of dual-sided chip cooling and a giant industrial air blower.

The previous record-holders said "come at me bro" with a 3DMark Solar Bay Extreme score of 1,450 and Salem Techsperts apparently beat that score the very next day, but only by one point. He then set out to break that record: "I am determined to have the fastest MacBook Neo in the world, and no one is going to beat it after today. (I really hope JayzTwoCents doesn't do a liquid nitrogen build.)"

The Apple MacBook Neo has garnered attention thanks to its cheap price tag in an increasingly inflated market. And while its six-core A18 Pro chip is little more than an iPhone processor, it runs surprisingly well, especially using Apple's optimised software. But there's always more headroom that can be cranked out of a chip with enough effort, as Salem Techsperts finds out.

He sets about achieving this with "PTM 7950, 30-degree air, an industrial air blower, a heat sink, a Peltier cooler... and Upsiren thermal putty."

The PTM 7950 is a phase change thermal pad, and the latter putty is designed to replace thermal pads, which is useful in the case of the MacBook Neo, because such a pad is exactly what is slapped on top of the chip by default. And finally, a Peltier cooler is a kind of thermoelectric cooler that uses an electric current to encourage heat transfer from one side to the other.

To begin, the YouTuber put the putty on top of the integrated circuits (ICs) on either side of the chip, laid the regular sticker on top, and had two copper shims sitting next to the chip with a heatsink on top of it, using a PTM 7950 thermal pad as the conductor between the two. However, he did eventually swap out the PTM 7950 for some Upsiren thermal putty to crank the score up as it ended up working better.

The final trick was to put the Peltier cooler underneath the chip to sandwich it, which involves disconnecting the logic board and removing the display. And then using the giant industrial air blower to churn a load of air from the window to cool the top-side of the chip down. The Peltier cooler underneath has to be blocked off from the flow of air, though, as that could interfere with the thermoelectric cooling process. The result is getting things down to a nice and chilly 10 °C at idle

After all this, the A18 Pro consistently hits 11 W of power consumption; by default it should max out at about 10 W and stay much lower than this over extended periods.

The chip managed to beat the previous-highest Cinebench scores, with a score of 2,076 in the multi-threaded test and 639 in the single-threaded one, which is only slightly below what an M4 Max chip scores. However, for some reason the chip in the modded setup wouldn't beat the 3DMark (ie, the GPU) score, hitting different scores between 1,400 and 1,450; apparently the score was higher before all the modding.

With the sandwich cooling method, the Neo achieved 50 fps in Cyberpunk, although that was at 1080p on low settings with resolution scaling and FSR 3.1 frame gen turned on.

Salem Techsperts even gets pretty decent results putting the chip and board back into the case with just the pads and putty mods, achieving 28% higher multi-core and 25% higher single-core score. So although he notes the keyboard does get a little warmer, that might be a mod that's worth actually trying at home, if you're feeling adventurous.