Nvidia's new VRAM compression trick just gave it a reason to keep selling 8GB GPUs
…Exceeding the VRAM limit is a problem that way too many gamers are facing today, and that's because most of your GPU's memory budget is being eaten alive by static…
Search
People also ask
Is there a silver lining?
Right now, we are in a structural shortage that probably won't see relief for a good couple of years. As a result, so much consumer hardware feels like it's vanishing. With budget gaming PCs disappearing, Nvidia's Super Series potentially in jeopardy, and the Steam Machine currently in limbo too. The silver lining of all of this is that this crisis might force a software revolution where developers have to finally stop being lazy with RAM optimization. For now, the hardware we want is sitting on a shelf in a designer's drawer, waiting for the prices to drop to make it accessible for the averag
DRAM prices have tripled, and three products are paying the priceWhat's great about the AMD Ryzen 5 5500?
It's going to be all about the price right now. When a budget CPU falls to an even lower price, it's harder to ignore. This model features 6 cores, 12 threads, and a max boost that takes it up to 4.2GHz. It's built on AMD's AM4 platform, which means you can use DDR4 RAM and PCIe 3.0 SSDs. So, it's not the latest in terms of hardware and support, but it still provides enough power to do all the things you need to for everyday use. With that said, the upgrade path here is going to be a little more limited in the long run, but if this is the starting point, you still have a ton of CPU options to
This AMD Ryzen 5 chip proves you don't need to spend big for a solid budget buildTop stories
Ready to ditch Synology? This 2-bay NAS makes it easy to do so at its new low price
…We recently highlighted Ugreen's 4-bay NAS , but we think this 2-bay NAS from TerraMaster is also a good choice if you're on a tighter budget. The F2-425…
Console optimization is holding PC gaming back more than you think
…accessible for budget and mid-range PCs. You don't need a high-end GPU to get decent performance, even at 1440p, and while that's partly due to hardware improvements, it…
My old Pixel does more useful things for my home lab than my current phone ever will
Jasmine Mannan Apr 30, 2026, 11:00 AM EDT Jasmine is Software and PC Hardware Author at XDA with years of tech reporting experience ranging from AI chatbots right down to gaming…
It's not just you — MSI's confession proves it's the worst year ever for PC hardware
…By the time the year was done, we saw GPU price hikes, too, as VRAM got more expensive and manufacturers stopped caring about consumer hardware . Unlike previous hardware shortages, this AI-induced…
Intel's New Arc Pro GPUs show what the consumer cards should have been
…Sign in to your XDA account When Intel unveiled the Arc Pro B70 and Arc Pro B65 GPUs, it also left hardware enthusiasts with a special kind of frustration that's reserved…
High availability doesn't require matching servers — my three different mini PCs proved it works anyway
…The point isn’t to copy a data center with cheaper hardware. It’s to make a home lab more tolerant of maintenance, mistakes, and ordinary hardware failures. In that context, “good…
PCIe 8.0 is really fast, but it might require a new connector
…Sign in to your XDA account The PCIe slot is one of the longest-running pieces of consumer PC hardware still in active use. The card-edge connector you'd find on…
AMD's X3D CPUs only help with two things, and most gamers have neither
…If anything, the ones who game at lower resolutions usually have a budget or mid-range card in their builds, which means they're far more likely to be GPU-bound, anyway…
I manage my ESP32 boards with this free self-hosted tool
Ayush Pande May 22, 2026, 3:30 PM EDT Ayush Pande is a PC hardware and gaming writer. When he's not working on a new article, you can find him with…