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Tag: windows pcs

  • The Alienware Aurora Gaming Desktop Punches Above Its Weight

    It also came with two sticks of Kingston Fury 16-GB RAM and a Wi-Fi 7 card. All that for $1,550 is a really solid deal. There are cheaper ways to get RTX 5070-level performance, such as this iBuyPower system, but the Alienware Aurora is also far from the most expensive either. The Asus ROG G700, for example, is hundreds of dollars more, even when similarly configured. I haven’t tested these yet myself, so I don’t know how equivalent the performance or fan noise is. But the Alienware Aurora Gaming Desktop is a great deal, especially if you catch it on sale.

    The Alienware Aurora Gaming Desktop performs fine enough. It’s about 5 percent behind the typical RTX 5070 scores in 3DMark Steel Nomad, a standard benchmark for measuring gaming PCs. The RTX 5070 is considered primarily a 1080p video card that can occasionally jump up to 1440p, depending on the game. You can see the frame rates in the chart below, all of which were tested at max settings without ray tracing, frame generation, or upscaling. Cyberpunk 2077 and Black Myth: Wukong are both more GPU-intensive, while Marvel Rivals and Monster Hunter Wilds are more bottlenecked by the CPU.

    The performance in Cyberpunk 2077, in particular, felt impressive. I was even able to average 71 fps (frames per second) in the Ray Tracing Ultra preset in 1080p without relying on DLSS. It’s really too bad that it couldn’t get Black Myth: Wukong over 60 fps at 1080p, though. It’s a heavy game, but when you spend over $1,500, you hope that you can play modern games at 1080p at smooth frame rates. You can always drop the graphics preset in the game settings or sprinkle in some light DLSS upscaling for better performance. It was also around 5 percent behind our testing of the RTX 5070 Founders Edition on our test bench.

    While performance didn’t blow me away, I was overall impressed by what’s on offer with the Alienware Aurora Gaming Desktop. This isn’t the PC to buy if you want ultimate control over upgrades in the future or even the most powerful gaming desktop. But if you want a pretty computer that you can upgrade the graphics for in the future, it does the job—just make sure to get it with the 1,000-watt power supply.

    Luke Larsen

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  • The Razer Blade 14 Is Still One of the Best Compact Gaming Laptops

    The OLED looks great, but one of the benefits of OLED is HDR in gaming, thanks to the incredible contrast from being able to turn off individual pixels. OLED isn’t known for being bright, but lately, that’s improved on laptops and external monitors. The OLED display on the Lenovo Legion 7i Gen 10, for example, can be cranked up to over 1,000 nits, creating an impressive HDR effect. The Razer Blade 14, however, only maxes out at 620 nits in HDR and 377 nits in SDR. Because of that, I could hardly tell HDR was even turned on. It’s still a pretty screen, and OLED has other benefits over IPS panels, including faster response times, less motion blur, and higher contrast.

    Unfortunately, the Razer Blade 14’s OLED panel is not as colorful as the one I tested on the Razer Blade 16, with a color accuracy of 1.3 and 86 percent coverage of the AdobeRGB color space. Also, the 120-Hz refresh rate is standard for OLED laptops, but you can get 240-Hz speeds on laptops that use IPS, like the Alienware 16X Aurora, which happens to be a much cheaper device.

    The Razer Blade 14’s biggest competition is the ROG Zephyrus G14. I haven’t tested the latest model yet, but it’s a laptop we’ve liked for years now, and it’s on sale often enough for less than the Blade 14. The only real difference is that the Blade 14 uses a more powerful AMD processor, the Ryzen AI 9 365. Not only does it perform better in anything CPU-intensive, such as certain games and creative applications, but it’s also a more efficient chip.

    That leads to some improved battery life—at least, better than your average gaming laptop. I got 10 hours and 19 minutes in a local video playback test, which is about the most you can expect to get from the device. On the other hand, Asus offers higher-powered configurations of the Zephyrus G14, including one that includes the more powerful Ryzen AI 9 HX.

    The RTX 5070 Takes Charge

    Photograph: Luke Larsen

    Bad news: The RAM is no longer user-upgradeable on the Razer Blade 14, so you’ll have to configure it up front with what you need. My review unit had 32 GB, but you can also choose either 16 GB or 64 GB. Because it’s soldered, the memory speeds are faster. As for internal storage, you still get one open M.2 slot to expand space if you need it, supporting up to 4 TB.

    Luke Larsen

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  • HP’s EliteBook 6 G1q Laptop Has Always-Connected 5G, but That’s About It

    Benchmark scores were unsurprising, turning in slightly above-average numbers across the board when compared to other Snapdragon X Plus laptops. Even its battery life of just over 17 hours when playing a full-screen video via YouTube (over Wi-Fi, not HP Go) is about in the middle of all Qualcomm-based systems I’ve encountered—though that’s admittedly still an excellent mark compared to all laptops.

    The industrial design is utilitarian, though just shy of being completely boring. The silver machine, crafted from partially recycled aluminum and plastic, has a look that feels dated, and at 24 mm thick and 3.2 pounds, it’s also very heavy for a 14-inch system. (It feels heavy in the hand and on the lap as well.) Props, however, for the textured surface on the keyboard caps, which makes for a more pleasant typing experience than most laptops provide—though note it does not offer any backlighting. The trackpad is spacious without being obtrusive in size.

    Port selection is also solid, including two USB-C ports with USB4 support, two USB-A ports, a full-size HDMI jack, and a drop-jaw Ethernet port. The SIM card slot is also accessible from the side of the device; users can bring their own data plan if they don’t want to use the multicarrier HP Go, which works via eSIM.

    Poor Value

    Photograph: Chris Null

    The G1q is a Copilot+ PC and, as with more general workloads, it turned in perfectly acceptable scores on AI-based jobs like image generation and computer vision tests. It’s plenty stable in daily use; in fact, the only trouble I encountered was during initial setup, when it lost its internet connection midway and forced me to start over from scratch—annoying, but a one-time problem that never cropped up again.

    Christopher Null

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  • Time’s Up on Windows 10. Upgrade to Windows 11 With One of These Laptops

    You’ll want to read our extensive guide on How to Choose the Right Laptop, but for the basics, you’ll want to decide what category of laptop you need. Most people should buy a 13-inch or 14-inch laptop, and spending around $750-$1,000 is a good place to start. You should expect a laptop around this price to get good battery life, have a decent screen, perform well enough for basic tasks, and have a comfortable keyboard and touchpad. You should also expect at least 16 GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage. Anything more than that gets into premium territory where you’re paying for higher specs, more performance, or extra features. If you want something with a discrete GPU for either gaming or creative workflows, you’ll need to spend more than this.

    A laptop like the Dell 14 Plus is the ideal example of what you can get while shopping in this price range. You can even find laptops with OLED panels, up to one terabyte of storage, depending on how good discounts happen to be. I would consider anything under $750 to be a cheap laptop, and will therefore come with some significant compromises, especially around the quality of the panel and the touchpad. Fortunately, laptops that use the Qualcomm Snapdragon X chip get great battery life, despite often falling under $750 in price.

    Here’s a list of important specs to consider:

    CPU: For thin and light laptops, I would recommend one of the Snapdragon X, X Plus, or X Elite chips. They get the best battery life and performance for their class of laptop. As an alternative, the Intel Core Ultra 7 258V is also quite good.

    GPU: As of now, the Intel’s Lunar Lake chips, such as the Core Ultra 7 258V, have the best integrated graphics. For discrete options, you’ll want to pick something with one of the latest Nvidia RTX 50-series GPUs, such as the RTX 5060. The biggest leap in performance there is between the RTX 5070 and the RTX 5070 Ti, which increases VRAM to 12 GB.

    RAM (or memory): Stick with at least 16 GB if you can. Since the advent of the Copilot+ designation, it ha become the new standard. You’ll even find laptops as cheap as $600 that have 16 GB of memory. Gamers and content creators should upgrade to 32 GB if possible.

    Storage: Similar to memory, many laptops have moved to 512 GB as the new standard, and you’ll find lots of affordable laptops with 512 GB as the base configuration. Upgrading to one or two terabytes, where possible, will make your life that much easier, especially since many laptops don’t offer expandable storage.

    Display: Laptops are usually categorized by screen size, with 13-inch, 14-inch, and 16-inch being the most common. You’ll want to consider size, resolution, refresh rate, and panel type here.

    Portability: Outside of display size, thickness of the chassis and weight are the primary factors here, determining how portable a laptop is to travel with. Other dimensions are important too, but more often than not, that is determined by the screen size.

    Ports: Many laptops are limited to just USB-C and headphone jack these days, with some exceptions where USB-A or HDMI are included. Make sure your laptop has what you need, or else you’ll need a USB Hub or laptop docking station to get more ports or to increase external display support.

    Luke Larsen

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  • The Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i Has MacBook Pro Vibes at a Much Lower Price

    We shouldn’t expect any Windows laptop with a powerful discrete GPU to truly replicate what the MacBook Pro does. Yes, there are more powerful systems out there, but efficiency is just not what those systems are about. Even with the improvements Nvidia has made in Advanced Optimus (automatic switching between discrete GPU when needed), the battery life suffers, especially while running heavier applications. On a local video playback test, the Yoga Pro 9i 16 lasted for around 12 hours. Despite using the same 84-watt-hour battery, this appears to be a slight improvement over last year’s model, though it’s hard to get an apples-to-apples comparison. I do know that its battery life diminishes quickly under heavy load, as it died in just 45 minutes while running a benchmark. You’ll want to be plugged in if you’re doing anything too serious.

    Regardless of the task, you’ll get over twice the battery life on an M4 Max MacBook Pro. Not until we get ARM-based systems with powerful integrated graphics that rival the M4 Pro and M4 Max will there be competition for Apple. The closest thing we’ve seen so far is AMD’s unique Ryzen AI Max+ processor, which showed up on the Asus ROG Flow Z13 and used a massive integrated graphics chip to challenge traditional discrete graphics. But we’ve still got a long way to go.

    The only other Windows laptop that could be better is the Asus ProArt P16, which I’ve yet to test. It now even comes with an RTX 5070 or 5090 option, which could make it significantly more powerful than the Yoga Pro 9i. However, it’s also a much more expensive laptop, configured with a 4K OLED screen and only higher-end GPUs. The Yoga Pro 9i is also hundreds of dollars cheaper than the Dell 16 Premium when similarly configured.

    The Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i 16 gets a lot of things right—plenty enough to make it worth a recommendation as a valid MacBook Pro competitor. Ultimately, it’s the performance, display, and premium quality that make it a worthy content creation machine, and the Yoga Pro 9i succeeds on all those fronts, perhaps better than any other Windows machine I’ve tested.

    Luke Larsen

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  • I’ve Been Reviewing Gaming Laptops for Over a Decade. Here’s What to Look for When Shopping

    ROG Strix is Asus’s performance-focused subbrand. This is where the company’s thicker, more conventional gaming laptops are found. Pricing can range widely, as it includes affordable options like the ROG Strix G16 with the RTX 5050, which starts at just $1,300.

    TUF Gaming is the company’s entry-level gaming laptop subbrand. These TUF gaming laptops used to be some of the most affordable gaming laptops you could buy, but they’ve gone up in price over the past few years. There aren’t any Asus gaming laptops under $1,000 that feature the latest RTX 50-series GPUs, though you can find plenty of older models for less on Amazon or Best Buy.

    Dell’s gaming laptop lineup is fairly sparse these days. All of Dell’s gaming laptops fall under the Alienware brand, which the company acquired back in 2006. Alienware has been through many cycles of reinvention with its gaming laptops, but in 2025, there’s really only four laptops in the stack right now: the Alienware 16 Aurora, Alienware 16X Aurora, Alienware 18 Area-51, and Alienware 16 Area-51. I like the simplicity of the new lineup, which focuses on what Alienware has always been known for: its brash, gamer style and higher-end performance.

    The Alienware 16 Aurora is the company’s attempt to reach a cheaper demographic, starting the laptop at just $1,100 right now for an RTX 5050 configuration.

    HP’s Omen gaming brand has been around for over a decade, but it really feels like the company has started to build some momentum around it over the past few years. Interestingly, HP breaks down its options into three categories of thickness and performance. Omen Max is the chunkiest at almost an inch thick, and supports up to an RTX 5080. Omen 16 is the middle ground, capping out at an RTX 5070. Omen Transcend, which offers a 14-inch model, still supports up to an RTX 5070, but brings the thickness down to 0.7 inches. There are 16-inch size options available across all three subbrands; however, none of the laptops are as thin as some of the competition. There’s also an Omen 16 Slim, which blurs the lines a bit.

    Apart from Omen, HP also launched its “Victus” subbrand in 2021, which represents its budget-oriented options. HP only has a few configurations of the HP Victus 15 and Victus 16 available right now.

    Razer, MSI, Acer, and Others

    Photograph: Luke Larsen

    • Razer is solely committed to PC gaming, unlike many of the laptop brands on this list. Its Blade gaming laptops have become iconic in the industry for their minimalist aesthetic. Like many companies, Razer has a Blade 14, Blade 16, and Blade 18, which all have an identical design, but scale up in terms of size and performance.
    • MSI has made quite a name for itself in the gaming space, especially with its high-end, performance-focused, monster gaming laptops like the MSI Titan HX. Beyond Titan, MSI has a mind-boggling amount of other options, though, including the Raider, Stealth, Vector, Katana, Sword, and its budget-oriented Cyborg series. There’s a lot to dig into.
    • Acer’s Predator line has its own fanfare about it. Predator Helios is its high-end, performance-driven line with tons of options across 14-inch, 16-inch, and 18-inch sizes. Triton is its thin-and-light sub-brand, but it hasn’t been updated in 2025 so far. The company also has its Nitro budget brand, which comes in 14-, 15-, and 16-inch options and with support up to an RTX 5070.

    Beyond these mainstay brands, you also have PC gaming companies that have dipped into gaming laptops, such as Gigabyte, Origin, and Maingear. Just stay away from the no-name brands that have popular listings on Amazon despite lacking discrete graphics cards—like this.

    Gaming on Non-Gaming Laptops

    • Photograph: Luke Larsen

    • Photograph: Luke Larsen

    • Photograph: Luke Larsen

    • Photograph: Luke Larsen

    While there’s an entire ecosystem of laptops marketed toward gamers, that doesn’t mean you can’t play games on other devices. Laptops with dedicated graphics cards can often play games just as well as gaming laptops, but they’re often targeted more at creatives who need better graphics to run creative applications. These include laptops like the Dell 14 Premium, Acer Swift X 14, and the Asus ProArt P16.

    If you’re buying a laptop primarily to play games, though, I wouldn’t recommend one of these. They usually don’t support the higher-tier GPUs like the RTX 5080 or 5090, and you won’t get super-fast refresh rates beyond 120 Hz. If you’re more of a casual gamer and just want a high-end laptop that can do it all, these are good options. They’re especially good if you despise the “gamer” aesthetic and want something a bit more subtle.

    Luke Larsen

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  • Lenovo’s Legion 7i Is the All-White Gaming Laptop You’ve Always Wanted

    None of that means you’re going to get good battery life, though. I was only getting around four and a half hours in a very light video playback test. That’s pretty short, limiting the laptop’s viability as a hybrid device for travel, work, or school.

    Close Competition

    Photograph: Luke Larsen

    The RTX 5060 model is available only at Best Buy, starting at $1,870. I would not buy this right now—at least not at this price. Currently, the better deal is over at Lenovo.com, where you can pick up an RTX 5070 model for $1,795 on sale. Though I haven’t tested it (and both GPUs come with only 8 GB of VRAM), stepping up to the RTX 5070 is certainly worth it. Both configurations get you 32 GB of RAM and one terabyte of storage.

    The Legion 7i Gen 10 is one of the most expensive gaming laptops to use the RTX 5060. You’re paying extra for the keyboard backlighting, faster HX-series Intel chip, higher-resolution OLED display, and superior design. These all add a lot to the laptop experience, but they are, for the most part, quality-of-life additions. For example, the Alienware Aurora 16 (a laptop I’ll be reviewing soon) also starts with an RTX 5060 and a similar resolution screen, but it’s IPS instead of OLED.

    Just be careful with the cheap RTX 5060 laptops out there, such as the Gigabyte Aero X16, which is on sale for just $1,150 right now. I haven’t tested it yet, but it uses the 85-watt variant of the RTX 5060, which will mean a significant drop in performance compared to the Legion 7i Gen 10. That’s rock bottom for RTX 5060 gaming laptops. Lenovo has its own version of a cheaper RTX 5060 right now, the LOQ 15, which will be available in October, gets you an RTX 5060 for close to $1,000, but comes with a standard 1080p IPS display.

    With that in mind, the Legion 7i Gen 10 is clearly not for those who value performance above all. But it’s one of the nicest looking gaming laptops I’ve reviewed lately that isn’t a Razer Blade, and it has enough performance and high-end features to make it worth the money—just make sure to opt for the RTX 5070 while it’s still on sale.

    Luke Larsen

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  • Lenovo’s New Laptop Concept Can Swivel the Screen From Landscape to Portrait

    Lenovo isn’t shy about trying new things. Last year, the PC maker teased a concept laptop with a transparent screen. Earlier this year, the ThinkBook Flip concept employed a flexible OLED display that folded over the top of the laptop lid, ready to flip up whenever you needed the extra screen space. At CES 2025, we saw a ThinkBook with a rollable OLED screen that expanded upward automatically at the touch of a button—this one is a real product you can actually buy.

    Get ready for another whacky concept. At IFA 2025, the tech exhibition in Berlin, Lenovo unveiled its latest idea: the Lenovo ThinkBook VertiFlex. This is a laptop with a screen that can manually swivel from a standard horizontal orientation to vertical.

    Portrait Mode

    By default, the ThinkBook VertiFlex Concept looks like a normal 14-inch laptop. Look closely at the screen’s edge, however, and you’ll see a second layer jutting out; that’s the actual screen. Grab the right corner edge of the screen and push it upward, and the display will smoothly swivel up into a vertical orientation.

    The back panel the screen is mounted on has a felt backing to keep everything smooth and scratch-free, and you can even prop a phone up here in this orientation. There’s a mechanism inside that manages the motion and keeps it operating smoothly. Despite this, the PC is still fairly slim at 17.9 mm, and it weighs roughly 3 pounds. (The 14-inch MacBook Pro is around 15 mm thick and weighs 3.4 pounds.)

    I use a dual-screen setup with one vertical monitor next to my main ultrawide monitor at home. Having a vertical screen is a game-changer, as it’s perfect for applications that utilize more vertical space. Email is a great example, so are apps like Slack, anything to do with PDFs, and even most word processing software. But I’ve yet to change my screen orientation in the middle of a workflow.

    Julian Chokkattu

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  • Framework’s New Laptop Lets You Upgrade the Graphics Card

    It has been a big year for repairable-laptop maker Framework. After launching the Framework Laptop 12 and the Framework Desktop this summer, the company is now rolling out a big update to the Framework Laptop 16. The machine can be configured with (or upgraded to) an Nvidia RTX 5070 laptop graphics card. You can also upgrade to the new 2025 mainboard, which includes the next-gen AMD Ryzen AI 300 series chips.

    Why is this a big deal? Well, Framework is a company we’ve grown to appreciate a lot over the past few years. The company has been pioneering a more sustainable (and fun!) approach to designing computers, making as many parts of the device as modular as possible. That has included things like the RAM and storage, naturally, but also the CPU, battery, Wi-Fi card, and much more.

    The idea is to swap out components on the laptops when new modules come out (or if something breaks down), reducing the need to buy a new laptop every few years and sending fewer parts to the landfill. But upgrading discrete graphics on laptops has always been elusive. Companies like Alienware have tried modular discrete GPUs in portable PCs before, and they never lasted. But with the new RTX 5070 graphics module upgrade, Framework proves it can be done.

    Courtesy of Framework

    The original Framework Laptop 16 arrived at the beginning of 2024, launching as an AMD-exclusive system with the Ryzen 7 7840HS (or Ryzen 9) and the discrete Radeon RX 7700S for graphics. At the time of testing, GPU performance landed somewhere around a mobile RTX 4060. On paper, that makes the jump to an RTX 5070 not only a great demonstration of the Framework ethos—but also a big deal for performance. Framework says it’s a 30 to 40 percent increase in GPU performance over the RX 7700S.

    More power doesn’t come free, so Framework is shipping a 240-watt USB-C charger that uses the USB Power Delivery 3.1 spec. That’ll make it one of the only laptops with an RTX 5070 that is powered solely by USB-C. Other 240-watt power adapters often use a proprietary power port (see almost every gaming laptop).

    The Framework Laptop 16 was the follow-up to the original Framework Laptop 13 and added more than just the discrete graphics module. It also had a unique approach to customization, letting you arrange the keyboard and trackpad however, using modules and spacers to customize it. The new model also comes with a better webcam and a more rigid top cover (on the lid).

    Luke Larsen

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  • Everything You Need to Know About Microsoft Copilot+ PCs

    Everything You Need to Know About Microsoft Copilot+ PCs

    In addition to these features, Copilot+ PCs have proven more than capable of running general business apps like Microsoft Office products, web browsers, and the like. Their benchmarks are outpacing Intel and AMD laptops at similar prices much of the time. Battery life is also great on Copilot+ PCs across the board, thanks to the lower power consumption required by ARM CPUs.

    So What’s the Catch? What Can’t They Do?

    There’s a tiny problem with the ARM world. For decades, Windows has been written and rewritten and rewritten again to run on x86 chips. Throw a new chip architecture into the mix and you have to rewrite your code. That’s not easy when there are thousands of apps on the market.

    Application compatibility on ARM is better today than it was five years ago, in part because Microsoft’s Prism emulator can bridge the gaps between code written for x86 and the ARM CPU, but not all of them. So problems remain. Some apps won’t run at all. Some are still in the works. Some require emulation—and emulation invariably means a significant reduction in performance. There’s no canonical guide to what’s supported, but this site has the most comprehensive list I’ve seen.

    The short of it is that the more you try to do with your computer outside the basics, the more likely you are to run into a compatibility issue. Various games and specialized apps like VPNs often don’t work (or don’t work well). Even some mainstream apps like Google Drive for Desktop aren’t supported on ARM. Many common Windows-based benchmarks won’t run on ARM either, which can make apples-to-apples comparisons with x86 machines difficult.

    Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge Copilot+ PC

    Photograph: Christopher Null; Getty Images

    Graphics performance to date has also been uniformly poor on Copilot+ PCs, as the Snapdragon chipset’s integrated GPU isn’t up to snuff compared to Intel and AMD—and these laptops don’t support more powerful discrete graphics. If you are serious about gaming or GPU-heavy work like video rendering, a Copilot+ PC may not be for you.

    These caveats won’t apply to Intel- or AMD-based Copilot+ PCs once they become available, as they won’t have ARM-based compatibility issues, though don’t expect the same kind of battery life.

    Should You Buy a Copilot+ PC?

    Today, Copilot+ PCs are ideal for anyone who wants exceptional battery life but isn’t exactly pushing their laptops to the limit. Some of the Copilot+ PC AI features are useful—the Live Translate feature is downright amazing—while some are little more than novelties. Will a feature like Recall become a must-have or be shunned by those concerned about being tracked? Time will tell, and soon enough.

    Meanwhile, consider Copilot+ PCs on their own merits, as performance, features, and price vary more widely than you’d think.

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    Christopher Null

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  • The WIRED Guide to Motherboard Sizes

    The WIRED Guide to Motherboard Sizes

    When you first learn how to build a PC, everything can seem super complicated, but one of the most confusing things you’ll come across is motherboard sizing. Depending on the type of case you’ve bought for your build (and what kind of hardware you want to put in your computer in general) you can have a ton of different size options. Below I’ll go through all of the main modern motherboard iterations and what they mean.

    Looking to learn more about gaming or PC gear? Be sure to have a look at our guides for the Best Gaming Keyboards, Best Gaming Mice, Best Gaming Headsets, and Best Gaming Controllers.

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    What Is ATX?

    Ever wonder why most modern computer motherboards look the same? That’s because they almost all use ATX, a standard for motherboards, power supplies, and desktop cases that defines size, position, and power delivery. This set of rules helps every component work together, regardless of manufacturer.

    For our purposes, we’re interested in the physical dimensions. Some elements, like the size and location of the ports on the back, are consistent across all of the ATX variations. Other aspects of the standard, like the width and length of the board, are indicated by their own acronyms, helping you quickly identify the size and compatibility.

    Just ATX

    Photograph: Amazon

    ATX is both the name of the standard and also how we refer to the most common size. If you’ve ever cracked open the side of a computer case, this form factor will likely look familiar. Measuring in at 305 x 244 mm (12 x 9.6 inches), this size of motherboard has plenty of room for four or more RAM slots, multiple PCIe cards at several lengths, and two to four M.2 slots.

    For example: The ASUS TUF Gaming B650-Plus WiFi ($200) is a full-size ATX motherboard for the AMD AM5 platform. It boasts four RAM slots, two M.2 slots, and a PCIe 5.0 slot.

    These are a great choice for basically any PC build, from your humble living room email checker to a powerful gaming rig. They’re typically the first to release when a new generation launches, and have all the new features and options without paying a premium price. You don’t need a fancy computer to appreciate the benefits, since ATX motherboards also come in the widest variety of budgets and feature sets.

    Micro ATX

    Left A black and blue packaging box for a computer component. Right A black electronic board with wires connectors and...

    Photograph: Amazon

    A slightly smaller option, micro ATX (or mATX for short) is increasingly common, thanks to constantly improving energy and thermal efficiency. These boards are the same width as the full-size boards, but shortened on one end to be a 244 x 244 mm square. You’ll also find many of the same options and features that you can on ATX boards, without too much of a price increase, making these a popular choice for midrange gaming PCs.

    For example: The reasonably priced MSI Pro B760M-P ($99) has the CPU slot for the latest generation of Intel chips, a PCIe 4.0 slot, and only one M.2 slot.

    Brad Bourque

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