Upgrading or building a new PC in the year 2026 is proving to be anything but a straightforward affair. DRAM pricing has shot through the roof thanks to AI-induced shortages and big memory manufacturers allocating their nodes away from consumer RAM, and as a result, the price of a few key PC components has become ridiculously expensive. Despite that, not all hope is lost, especially if you already have a rig. Depending on what your upgrade needs are, there's a good chance you'll be able to safely afford these 5 components in 2026 and beyond.

So, you were excited to buy one of the best CPUs in the world. It came with a huge price tag, but you convinced yourself that you'd actually utilize all that extra performance. Maybe you bought it as a "just in case" investment, hoping to use all those cores someday. Maybe you expected more cores to net you more FPS in your favorite games. You might even have bought a Ryzen X3D CPU hoping to outshine every other chip on the market. However, the best laid plans often go awry, especially when you overspend on something that you never end up using. Here are three telltale signs that you wasted money on that expensive CPU.

USB-C is becoming a universal standard, and it's great that we won the war for a universal connector. But in turn, we've lost the battle for universal compatibility. Right now, you probably have five identical-looking cables on your desk; one charges your laptop at 240W but transfers data at USB 2.0 speeds, another handles 80 Gb/s data transfer but can't power a monitor and, lastly, you have the mystery cable that came with your electric toothbrush.

New TVs from TCL and Hisense, like the TCL X11L, are closing the performance gap to those from Sony, LG, and Samsung. For all the time that I've been covering technology, there's been a hierarchy when it comes to TV brands. The big three - Sony, Samsung, and LG - have been on top for a while. Pioneer and Panasonic were up there with plasma TVs, and Panasonic is getting back in the game in the States. Hisense, TCL, and Vizio battled it out as midrange tiers for years before Vizio pivoted from hardware profits to an ad-centric model under Walmart, leaving the other two to one up each other by offering the most bang for the buck.But over the past couple years, both TCL and Hisense have made impressive strides in performance, bringing them closer and closer t …Read the full story at The Verge.

I installed Home Assistant as a convenient hub. I use it for morning and night routines, manage smart lights and smart TVs, and automate small parts of my home. Since I like tinkering, I didn’t mind spending hours setting up and tweaking Home Assistant to suit my needs. Though it felt like a time-intensive hobby that only made sense to me, I’m glad I got into it. The Home Assistant managed to interest my family in everyday usage. It also taught me that I can build a smart home on a budget.

We'll say it time and time again, but a docking station is one of the best upgrades if you're looking to expand the functionality of your laptop or similar products. You get a concise piece of hardware that not only adds ports, but it also makes connecting additional devices a breeze.

I have been using OneNote for years, convinced that my system of notebooks, sections, and sub-pages was the pinnacle of organization. But recently, I realized I was spending more time navigating my own hierarchy than actually getting work done.

When it comes to the top VS Code extensions, we often see the usual list with popular add-ons. But every once in a while, you stumble upon a tool that makes you wonder how it’s still flying under the radar. That was my experience with Kilo Code. I originally installed it out of pure curiosity and expected it to be another niche utility that would eventually sit disabled in my sidebar.

Single-board computers open doors to niche use cases, and Raspberry Pi can fit into multiple such projects due to its versatile software support and the capability to interface with other devices via its GPIO pins. I'm yet to find another board with as good software support as the Raspberry Pi, and that's the reason why I've incorporated it into multiple areas of my life. It's super convenient to build many things for the Pi, often as a standalone device, or by combining it with another device you haven't found a good use for.

President Donald Trump has no shame in admitting what he wants to get out of attacking Venezuela and threatening other energy resource-rich nations. "We're gonna get the oil flowing the way it should be," he said January 3rd, soon after his administration stunned the world with what many policy experts and Democratic lawmakers are calling an unlawful incursion into Caracas that led to the arrest of President Nicolás Maduro.Trump's fixation on so-called "energy dominance" is also more pretext - on top of federal drug trafficking charges against Maduro - for a plain-old power grab. "Under our new national security strategy, American dominanc …Read the full story at The Verge.

Volvo is starting to trickle out some details about its upcoming midsize electric SUV, the EX60, before its official debut January 21st. The EX60 will have an estimated range of 400 miles (or 810km based on the generous WLTP standard in Europe). That's significantly more range than any previous Volvo EV - at least until the 434-mile-range ES90 sedan comes out. And the EX60 will be the first vehicle to benefit from the automaker's new megacasting production process to reduce weight and improve manufacturing efficiency."One of the things that we wanted to do was to create an electric vehicle with no compromises," Akhil Krishnan, head of prog …Read the full story at The Verge.

Internet debates can get intense no matter the topic, and talking about operating systems is no different. There will always be people defending either Windows 11 or Linux (maybe even macOS), and sometimes it may sound like people hate one or the other.