Hardware

The RAM shortage of 2026 has fundamentally altered the landscape for PC enthusiasts, forcing builders to abandon the luxury of choosing memory based on aesthetics, overclocking potential, or adherence to qualified vendor lists. Availability has contracted sharply while prices have climbed, pushing many toward compromises that would have seemed unthinkable just months earlier. Builder Adaptations During the Crisis PC builders have split into distinct camps as they navigate the scarcity. Those fortunate enough to have completed builds before the shortage intensified are redirecting budgets...

Enterprise hard drive storage technology stands at a critical juncture as traditional recording methods reach their physical limits and data demands surge. Western Digital has confirmed that conventional Perpendicular Magnetic Recording without energy assistance has peaked at approximately 28TB per drive, constrained by fundamental physics rather than market factors. The company now advances two parallel pathways to overcome this barrier: energy-assisted PMR, which currently achieves 32TB when combined with UltraSMR technology, and Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording, which targets 100TB...

Each June in Taipei, the PC hardware industry converges for Computex, a sprawling trade show that highlights new laptops, displays, cooling, storage, CPUs, and motherboards. This year’s edition carried the theme “AI Together,” and exhibitors reflected the industry’s split between cost-conscious refreshes and ambitious, expensive hardware intended to support AI workloads and novel manufacturing techniques. Market forces and product mixSuppliers emphasized two contrasting responses to rising hardware costs and changing demand. Some vendors pushed for more affordable...

Intel outlined a suite of data center updates on June 1, 2026, centered on new Xeon processors, an expanded Ethernet portfolio, and progress on its next-generation AI accelerator. The company framed these releases as a systems-level response to increasingly agentic AI workloads, arguing that CPUs remain the orchestration and data-movement hub for scalable AI deployments across cloud, network, and edge environments. Intel Xeon 6+ processorsIntel introduced the Xeon 6+ family as an extension of Xeon 6, built on the Intel 18A process and targeted at high-density, power-constrained data center...