Hardware Engineering

It's no secret that 2026 has been awful for trying to buy PC hardware. Even back in January, RAM prices had already skyrocketed, and things have only gotten worse since. Back then, I was hearing that the AI-caused RAM crisis would last into 2027, and now, 6 months later, it feels like that was the optimistic take.Now it feels impossible to build or buy a decent gaming PC at a good price. Even the Steam Machine, with its entry-level hardware, costs more than a thousand bucks. That's a hard price to swallow, for sure, but that's just the way hardware is going right now. But, if you w

Video game hardware prices may go up even more thanks to a potential new round of Trump tariffs targeting consoles, laptops, and servers.

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Jared Palmer, who was picked to work directly with CEO Asha Sharma on the division's "most complex" problems, has taken a role at AI company Cognition.

Valve's Steam Machine is finally launching next week, but the journey to this point hasn't been easy. The living-room PC has found itself at the center of an ongoing RAM crisis--one that has forced Valve to turn every Steam Machine into a little bit of a memory lottery if you do happen to get one. Regardless of which Steam Machine you decide to purchase, each one will ship with 16GB of RAM. You can, however, get one of two configurations: either two sticks of 8GB each, or a single 16GB stick. If you're familiar with PC gaming, you'll likely see the issue. A single stick of RAM will limit those