Handheld Gaming PCs

I often use Armoury Crate on my desktop gaming PC to control certain ROG and TUF components, but most of the time it sits idly in the background. It's not the best software, vulnerabilities aside, but it seems to get the job done. I've read tales of some specific ASUS desktop hardware absolutely requiring Armoury Crate to function properly, but for other ASUS gaming devices, it can be replaced entirely. Let me introduce you to G-Helper. It's designed to work with ASUS laptops and gaming handhelds, doing what Armoury Crate does in a streamlined, unbloated app that only eats up about 5MB of spac

I highly doubt that MSI set a $1,799 price for its new gaming handheld just so it could make a few quick bucks off of those who still have a big PC gaming budget. The original MSI Claw 8 AI+ that launched in 2025 had an $899 price tag attached, nearly half that of the new EX AI+ version arriving officially on June 23. The massive jump in price has a small part to do with upgraded hardware and new performance chips, but it has a massive part to do with RAM and storage costs. AI data centers are eating through the world's supply of these components, and practically all tech costs more than it di

A $1,799 gaming handheld is a hard sell anytime, never mind in our current economy. At this price point, it's competing with full gaming laptops with discrete GPUs and, as mentioned, a bundle of consoles. Yes, the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ is far more portable than anything else with the same level of performance, but I don't doubt that a lot of gamers will be happy to sit at a desk and play after saving hundreds of dollars. 👉 Gaming handhelds are the new netbooks — will they suffer the same tragic fate? The average gamer is going to have a hard time coming to terms with such a high cost for one devic

The Steam Machine's CPU is definitely trailing some chips that are already on the market, but context matters a lot in this scenario. AMD's custom chip for the Steam Machine features 6 cores, 12 threads, and a boost clock up to 4.86GHz. The Z1/Z2 Extreme and Core Ultra 7 chips feature 8 cores running at a higher TDP, which makes a big difference, especially in compact devices. So, yes, the Steam Machine might not have the strongest CPU power, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to perform worse than premium gaming handhelds.