When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. PC building is more fun when you have no idea what you're doing A strange little hacker gadget reminded me that confusion, failure, and experimentation were always the best parts of building computers. I don't know about you, but the whole reason I got into upgrading and building PCs is because I wanted to play . My age hadn't hit double digits by the time the game shipped on DOS in '94, but a year or two later I got my hands on a copy and realized our old family PC didn't have the chops to run id's latest. Thus began my 30+ years of PC enthusiasm, starting with me getting frustrated by memory management (death to HIMEM) and leading me here as a PCWorld veteran who can work a screwdriver and a solder gun almost as well as anyone.

PCWorld reports that Valve's SteamOS is now available in beta for Intel-based handhelds, starting with the MSI Claw, potentially challenging Microsoft's Windows dominance in PC gaming. Intel's new Arc G3 processors are debuting in handhelds from MSI, Acer, and OneXPlayer, aiming to compete with AMD in the portable gaming market. Early benchmarks show SteamOS performing slightly behind Windows 11 on Intel devices, but this expansion could establish SteamOS as the unofficial standard for PC gaming handhelds. The Steam Deck didn't invent the handheld gaming form factor, or even debut it for PC hardware, but it's certainly the iPhone equivalent for this particular moment. And the vast, vast majority of the Steam Deck-inspired market has been underpinned by AMD's integrated chips.

The MSI Claw features Intel's new Arc G3 Extreme chipset, while the Asus ROG Ally X20 includes an OLED display that the Claw lacks. These devices represent significant advances in portable PC gaming with distinct specifications targeting different user preferences and performance needs. This year we saw a slew of cool new PC hardware unveiled at Computex 2026, but for my money the most exciting announcements were the debut of new gaming PC handhelds from Asus and MSI.

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Valve has spent the last decade tunneling into Microsoft's vault. Now, the heist is on. Microsoft's big focus for Windows is AI integration . Meanwhile, Valve has been not-so-quietly pilfering the entire PC gaming ecosystem from Microsoft, turning the Linux-based SteamOS into a real competitor to Windows.

It's funny how things in reality can be so far removed from what we imagined. A classic example of this is how I imagined there to be a horde of scientists at Nvidia HQ hunched over their PCs and all working to train the next generation of Nvidia DLSS algorithms -- between enjoying bouts of Call of Duty with colleagues, of course. But as it turns out that's only part of the story… Yes, there are scientists at Nvidia working on these projects, but doing a large portion of the work in training and developing new DLSS technology for us PC gamers to enjoy is also an AI supercomputer, and it's been doing that non-stop 24/7 for going on six years now. That nugget of information was delivered by Brian Catanzaro, Nvidia's VP of applied deep learning research at CES 2025 in Las Vegas. Catanzaro dropped that gem on stage casually as a throwaway comment while discussing details about DLSS 4. But as it turns out, that reference has been the catalyst for a ton of talk about the topic.

While the AI features touted by Microsoft's Copilot PCs are a flat miss, the new Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite hardware inside Copilot PCs is a definite win. Finally, after more than a decade of effort, Windows on Arm is a viable alternative to traditional x86 processors--and it's especially alluring if you long for longer battery life. There's reason to be skeptical., Games are often developed with a highly specific platform target. Even ports that seem simple, like a move from PlayStation 5 to Xbox Series X S, can take a lot more effort than you might think.

I've been a gamer pretty much all of my life. When I was a kid, my dad taught me how to navigate the puzzles and defeat the bosses in Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past on the original Nintendo. Those are some of my earliest childhood memories, which is why console gaming will always have a special place in my heart. That said, now that I'm in my mid-thirties and value comfort and convenience above all else, I've mostly switched to PC gaming these days. I'm not going to lie, my argument for switching to PC gaming is mostly rooted in my persnickety personality.

If you thought Nvidia's latest DLSS 3 (opens in new tab) frame-rate speedifyin' technology was pretty trick, you ain't, as they say, seen nothin'. May we introduce you to NeRFs or Neural Radiance Fields, (opens in new tab) a terrifyingly clever AI-accelerated method for generating full 3D scenes from a handful of photos. The idea is conceptually simple. Take a few 2D images of something. It's similar to photo scanning to create 3D scenes but with added AI goodness.

I had a very particular idea of what I wanted the sound to feel like. And then the big question was: How do I push my skin to feel different without it being technically better? How can you get creative with -- these are random things but -- a gunshot? I used, as a base layer, a snare drum and a kick drum together -- something that I use in my world a lot, and it gives you a similar punch, like a shot would. But that was the base layer, and I built on that and just experimented.

AMD recently released its Radeon Super Resolution (RSR) feature, which promises to speed up the performance of your games. AMD already offered a similar technology dubbed "FidelityFX Super Resolution," or FSR, and it's been adopted at a blistering rate since its introduction last summer. Don't let the names get lost in translation, however. We'll explain exactly what each one does, along with when you should use them. And trust us--having both of these available means better PC gaming in general. AMD, Intel, and Nvidia all have their own versions of upsampling technology.