It's no great secret that I'd work entirely from the Windows Terminal if I could. I've customized its look and feel, and swapped a bunch of resource-hungry apps for TUI versions. I've done the same for my Linux distros, and it just feels like home. Maybe that's because I started my computer journey on ProDOS and MS-DOS, so I learned the command line before anything else.

As 2025 winds down and 2026 stares right at us with its mountain of new releases, hype cycles, and the inevitable chaos of gaming discourse, I can't help but think about one thing. We gamers love this medium, but also find all the ways in the world to collectively self-sabotage the joy out of it.

What if Valve’s Steam Machine were a 3.8-liter tower instead of a 3.8-liter cube, with a desktop-grade Nvidia RTX 5060 GPU instead of an AMD RX 7600 — plus a more powerful CPU and many faster ports? Well, it’d cost you nearly $1,500 and be called the Minisforum AtomMan G1 Pro. Minisforum is one of the only companies shipping such powerful discrete GPUs in mini-PCs, and its earlier AtomMan G7 PT is the closest thing anyone’s sold to Valve’s own spec. But the new G1 Pro might be a better competitor now it’s got an integrated power supply (like Valve) and even beefier components. The most surprising feature is a full but lilliputian desktop graphics card — look how cute it is in the render below! — that fits into the top of the chassis. (Minisforum doesn’t claim it’s upgradable, just FYI, but does boast that it offers the full 145W of power you’d get in other desktop 5060 cards.) And, in “Beast Mode,” Minisforum says it can drive the AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX CPU at 100W while that GPU stays at 145W. You also get not one but two M.2 2280 slots for NVMe SSD storage, two SO-DIMM slots for up to 96GB of DDR5 RAM, and five display outputs (2x DP2.1, 1x DP 1.4, and 2x HDMI 2.1) for up to four displays at once. It’s on sale now with 32GB and 1TB for $1,440, shipping mid January — which is honestly starting to look like a decent deal now that RAM prices are out of control. There’s also a bring-your-own-RAM-and-storage barebones version for $1,040, though it’s not available to order yet.Valve still isn’t talking price yet, but I’d hope it’s more affordable than this one. Even so, Valve says it put a lot of work into cooling, noise, and wireless connectivity, and Linux drivers are still more mature on the AMD GPU side of things if you’re considering a Bazzite or SteamOS install. GamersNexus’ new video does include Linux benchmarks for desktop RTX 5060, maybe check those out?

Building a custom PC is supposed to be an exciting time, but there are some common mistakes that ruin the experience. One of those is daisy-chaining too many case fans to a single motherboard header, which could lead to several major issues.

When I upgraded to the Alienware AW2725DF 360Hz OLED from the Zowie XL2546K last year, I expected a big jump in motion smoothness. The 240Hz panel was already pretty fast and ideal for competitive gaming, but I wanted to experience what the next step actually felt like, especially since I mainly play esports titles like Valorant and Counter-Strike 2. After using a 360Hz monitor almost every day for a year and a half, I can confidently say that the upgrade is not as impressive as I thought it would be.

Many productivity apps can technically handle my entire workflow pipeline - note-taking, linking, organizing, filtering, and some extras like images and AI assistance. AFFiNE is kind of like my second brain, Obsidian is great for handling deep research, Google Docs for drafting, and the list goes on. The problem is, a lot of these tools are either really good at only one thing, or, if they are multi-tools, they usually lack a couple of functions that stop them from replacing the rest of the stack.

We've seen plenty of laptops go on sale over the past week, but this has to be one of the highlights ahead of Black Friday. It's an affordable Windows laptop that can actually handle everyday use. So if you've been looking for a new laptop to surf the web, watch videos, pay bills, punch up some documents that isn't going to cost you a whole lot — the Asus Vivobook 14 is going to be it.

Counterpoint Research is predicting Apple’s iPhone 17 lineup will help it nudge Samsung out as the number one phone manufacturer in the world this year, as reported by CNBC and Bloomberg. The report estimates Apple will ship 243 million phones this year, while Samsung will ship 235 million, landing Apple a 19.4 percent share of the global smartphone market, less than 1 percent ahead of Samsung. Counterpoint says the newly introduced iPhone 17 series garnered 12 percent more sales in its first four weeks than the iPhone 16 lineup, with sales boosted by “lower-than-expected” impact from tariffs. Different analysts have reported different stats about who is the leader in phone shipments over the last few years, but by Counterpoint’s evaluation, this will be the first time Apple has passed Samsung in phone shipments in 14 years. Based on Counterpoint’s report, it seems like reports of a muted reception for the iPhone Air and ongoing questions about Apple’s progress with AI technology didn’t hold back the iPhone 17 line-up as a whole. Next year, Apple is expected to release a cheaper “17e” model in the spring, and eventually, its first foldable iPhone.

Thanksgiving Day is a time of gathering for many people, celebrating the good times and company from throughout the year. But it's also a time when a lot of aspects of entertainment go hand-in-hand with the holiday, including video games. One major event that people tune into every year is the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, where a number of beautiful floats and balloons are guided through New York City in celebration of Thanksgiving Day. Within those displays have been inclusions of iconic and popular video game characters that everyone loves.

You've often seen, read, and heard recommendations on how best to manage your home network. Most would agree that wired networking is the best form of networking since it helps avoid congesting the wireless bands. It's also great for dealing with interference and ensuring latency is low. But these aren't the only reasons why I prefer using cables for my LAN. I get to enjoy better performance and enhanced security.

Raspberry Pi projects can leverage the computing chops of the tiny SoC to build something very cool. In my college days, it was mostly about attaching a sensor to the Pi and then creating a device out of it. But as the computing prowess of Raspberry Pi grew, it became a perfect fit for self-hosted services. You can run customized operating systems on it, or apps that can help you switch to privacy-focused alternatives and save a lot of money on subscriptions.

The skyrocketing price of RAM is trickling down to custom PC makers, including CyberPowerPC and Maingear. On Wednesday, CyberPowerPC announced that it plans to adjust the pricing across all of its systems on December 7th, as reported earlier by PCMag.“Recently, global memory (RAM) prices have surged by 500% and SSD prices have risen by 100%,” CyberPowerPC says in a statement posted on X. “This has had a direct impact on the cost of building gaming PCs since 10/1/25.” Meanwhile, Maingear is trying to stave off price increases for as long as it can. “I anticipate that the prices will continue to rise and then we will eventually have to increase our lead times as stock and allocation becomes constrained, but we are in constant communication with our vendors and will delay these increases for as long as we possibly can,” Maingear CEO Wallace Santos tells Wccftech.The price of RAM has fluctuated greatly over the past month as AI companies buy up more RAM and data storage for their sprawling data centers. Some physical stores have resorted to pricing the components at market prices, not unlike how seafood restaurants sell the catch-of-the-day. CyberPowerPC predicts that the “price increases will be temporary,” and will go back down “when market conditions change.” Maingear CEO Wallace Santos tells Wccftech that customers might want to start “shopping now” if they need a memory or storage upgrade. Though this may seem like another way to boost sales for Black Friday, Santos appears to be genuinely warning of an increased shortage, and says the PCs he’s selling this Black Friday have been “sheltered from these price increases.” Skytech Gaming, another company that specializes in prebuilt and custom PCs, said in a post on Facebook that it’s “getting hit with RAM price increases too,” though it’s unclear whether these changes are impacting the prices listed on its website yet.