hardware

I published a new tool on the site: the GPU Upgrade Value Calculator . This one started as a follow-up to my RX 6700 XT vs RTX 4070 Ti comparison . Revisiting that upgrade made something obvious: the interesting part of the decision was not simply "which card is faster?" The more useful question was: After selling the old card, accounting for power and PSU requirements, and thinking about what I …

I spent the last month building a power meter for sledgehammer strikes: a pad you hit that tells you how hard you hit it, and whether you can do it again tomorrow. This is the founder story: what I built, why I chose it, and what a month of hardware taught me. The engineering writeup will come later, once I've talked to someone who actually understands IP strategy. For now, the public home for th…

New 10 GbE USB adapters are cooler, smaller, cheaper For years, the best way to get 10 gigabit networking on laptops was to buy an expensive, large, and hot 10 GbE Thunderbolt adapter. With new RTL8159-based 10G USB 3.2 adapters coming onto the market, the bulky adapters might be a thing of the past. Just look at the size of the thing in comparison to my Thunderbolt adapters: 2.5G and even 5G USB…

The chips that power AI today weren't built for AI at all. They were created for video games. With some adaptation, GPUs quickly became the engine behind modern AI, powering everything from image recognition to large language models. But they were never designed for what came next.

title: "AIO vs Air Cooler: CPU Temp Tests + When Liquid Cooling Is Worth It (2026)" published: false description: "Tested 10 CPU coolers. Here's when AIO wins and when air is still better." tags: pc, gaming, hardware, tech canonical_url: cover_image: AIO liquid cooler or air cooler? AIO looks cooler but costs more. Air is reliable and cheaper. I tested both to show you exactly when each makes sen…

Whether you want a detachable tablet or a laptop screen that spins, these 2-in-1 devices manage to balance being both a tablet and a laptop.

This was a long one–I spent a fair bit of time with the Orange Pi 6 Plus over the past few months, and what I expected to be a quick look at another fast ARM board turned into one of those test runs where the hardware looks promising on paper, the software is wonky in exactly the wrong places, and you end up diving far more into boot chains, vendor GPU blobs and inference runtimes than you ever i…

You’ve somehow managed to get your hands on all the components for a brand-new PC, including RAM and storage, hopefully without paying inflated prices. That alone deserves some credit. You’ve put everything together, hit the power button, and the system boots on the first try. At that point, it’s tempting to call the job done. But that would be a mistake. A PC that powers on is not necessarily re…

My poor (potentially perforated) eardrums. I’ve been putting my lugs under a tremendous amount of strain since picking up the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2025). That’s because one of the world’s fastest gaming laptops not only runs incredibly hot, but equally loud, too. When you’re dealing with a super-skinny laptop that houses Nvidia’s mobile RTX 5080 GPU, a whole lot of heat and all the decibels are…

Not to go all Taken on you, but I have “a very particular PC setup; a setup I have acquired over a very long career." Sorry, Liam. I’ll stop stealing your one-liners. What I’ve just pilfered from Mr Neeson is true, though: I have an absurdly specific tech layout in my home office. One that has “taken” me a long time to figure out, and also one that has only come together due to a piece of equipme…

Most people install an SSD, let Windows handle the basics, and call it a day. While Windows's built-in monitoring tools might seem adequate, your SSD's manufacturer already has a free, purpose-built program that can run circles around anything Windows has to offer. These vendor utilities aren't bloatware either. They're often the only way to unlock firmware features, performance modes, and secure…

Buying new PC hardware seems almost impossible in 2026, thanks to the AI boom that has increased component prices to heights never seen before. Personally, if I were to build a new PC in times like these, I'd opt for a used GPU rather than buying a new one to stay within budget constraints. One great option might be the 5-year-old RTX 3060 that holds up well even when running some modern AAA game…

AI accelerator hardware explained: learn the types (GPUs, TPUs, FPGAs, ASICs, NPUs), key workloads, real-world examples, and how to choose the right one.

For years, Apple fans have wondered if the company would ever add touch capabilities to its laptops. Now, fresh reports suggest that a touchscreen MacBook Pro might finally arrive by the end of 2026. This shift could mark a major evolution in how users interact with macOS devices. Longtime enthusiasts remember how Steve Jobs once...

The Multi-Party Computation (MPC)-in-the-Head (MPCitH) framework enables the construction of post-quantum Digital Signature Algorithms (DSAs), offering competitive public key sizes. However, this comes at a cost of high computational complexity, resulting in high signature generation and verification times. In this work, we propose a compact and efficient hardware accelerator for Mirath, an MPCi…

The Lenovo ThinkPad T1g Gen 8 has arrived as a powerful successor to the high-performance laptops of the past. This fresh 16-inch model aims to satisfy both strict business professionals and dynamic content creators who require serious computing power on the go. Lenovo has successfully revived the spirit of the X1 Extreme series which had...

OpenAI is officially moving into the hardware space, with leadership confirming that its highly anticipated AI device is on track for a 2026 announcement. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, OpenAI’s Chief Global Affairs Officer, Chris Lehane, confirmed to the crowd that the company expects to unveil its first physical product in the [...] The post OpenAI confirms its debut hardware de…

Our CMO, Maria Alexander, on CES 2026: why hardware is back, and why building it just got more complex.

Why AI Needs GPUs and TPUs: The Hardware Behind LLMs Most AI notetakers just transcribe. Granola is the AI notepad that helps you stay focused in meetings, then turns your conversations into real progress. Engineers use Granola to: Draft Linear/Jira tickets from standup notes Paste code into Granola Chat and instantly receive a pass/fail verdict against the requirements that were discussed in you…