The long-rumored and leaked Intel Arc B770 desktop graphics cards were on our list of potential announcements and reveals at CES 2026. It was also on our list for Computex last year, and after leaked shipping manifests and its "BMG-G31" GPU appearing in various software updates in recent months, it was finally looking like Big Battlemage's time was near. But it was another no show.

With some outlets asking Intel about the Intel Arc B770 GPU, which would be the more powerful mid-range 16GB variant to the current Intel Arc B580, the company's representatives essentially said that they weren't commenting on any unreleased products. At CES 2026, Team Blue's big focus was the debut of its new Panther Lake mobile chips, which include next-gen integrated Arc graphics.

Even so, it's been made public that a pre-release Intel driver package for an HP 'Panther Lake' Core Ultra Series 3 laptop included firmware files for the "BMG-G31" GPU (via Reddit), aka the Intel Arc B770. This points to the GPU being real and consumer-facing, but with no CES announcement, one has to wonder whether the Intel Arc B770 GPU is still coming.

Valve's Steam just set a new concurrent player record with over 42 million users (42,042,778 to be exact) logging into the platform on January 11, 2026. Breaking the previous record of 41.6 million set in October 2025, this new milestone isn't tied to any specific game release, so, outside of it occurring during the tail-end of the holiday season, it's indicative of Steam's continued growth as the premier PC gaming platform.

Naturally, the record was set over the weekend, when most gamers jump in to play. The latest figures and records come from SteamDB, which also showcased Steam's growing user base mapped over the past decade. The chart shows that Steam's popularity has effectively doubled since 2020, rising from around 20 million concurrent users to over 40 million.

According to the report, out of the over 42 million users logged into Steam, over 13 million were playing games at the time.

Keychron is one of the better-known independent keyboard makers, and at CES 2026, it presented one of its latest limited-edition luxury designs: the Keychron Q16 HE 8K ceramic and marble 65% wired magnetic keyboard. And we're talking about the real stuff, too, with polished ceramic keycaps and a marble body.

These are the sorts of materials you'd expect to find in a high-end kitchen or bathroom, not on a PC peripheral. And yes, the end result is heavy for a keyboard. Although we couldn't quite get a sense of the thocky typing sound as we saw this at Keychron's booth at CES, the typefeel and the shiny ceramic keycaps both had a distinct premium feel.

As for the underlying hardware, you've got the company's flagship pre-lubed Keychron Ultra-fast Lime magnetic switches with Tunnel Magnetoresistance (TMR) sensors and per-key adjustable actuation. This custom Keychron Q16 HE 8K ceramic and marble keyboard is built for gaming, making it a great option for those firing up Arc Raiders in a luxury Italian villa.

At CES 2026, we were reminded that many companies make a wide range of keyboards for productivity, gaming, and more. One of the companies in the sea of PC peripheral-focused brands we saw creating some of the most impressive and stylish keyboards is NuPhy.

Having reviewed a few NuPhy keyboards, like the NuPhy Air75 V3, it's clear that its focus on blending retro-inspired designs with modern hardware and a fantastic-feeling typing experience is continuing as we head into 2026. At the show, we got a closer look at a pair of new keyboards from the brand: the productivity-focused NuPhy Node100 and the gaming-focused NuPhy WH80.

Although it will be available in three colorways, alongside a 75% TKL variant, the NuPhy Node100 in its beige form has the look of PC gear from the 1990s - albeit with the option to add a few bright, colorful keycaps. The full-sized variant has all the keys you expect, supports Mac and PC, and features a customizable touch bar running across the top of the keyboard.

With the Steam Hardware & Software Survey results for December 2025 available, we can take a look at the current state of the discrete GPU market for PC gaming as we head into 2026. Of course, Steam is only a single source, but Valve's PC gaming platform is far and away the place most PC gaming takes place.

Interestingly, Valve has had to amend the data for December 2025 due to a discrepancy, which means that AMD's RDNA 4 lineup briefly appeared on the list for the first time, with the Radeon RX 9070 appearing toward the bottom of the list before it was removed and placed back into the 'Other' category. So it seems that we're still waiting, more or less, to see RDNA 4 GPUs make the cut.

Without a Radeon RX 9000 Series GPU on the list, the December 2025 data shows that NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 50 Series launch has been a resounding success. Specifically, the GeForce RTX 5070, which has cracked the Top 10, making it one of the most popular discrete PC gaming GPUs.

Micron says that the DRAM memory shortages will NOT be improving before 2028, even with billions of dollars being invested right now. I had a chat with one of my industry sources on the floors of CES 2026 who told me the DRAM crisis would be here until 2031... which is even worse.

In an exclusive chat with our friends at Wccftech, Micron's VP of Marketing, Mobile and Client Business Unit, Christopher Moore, talked about the DRAM shortage. The chat with Moore centered on how much Micron is expanding its production capacity, and what impact this will have on consumers and the AI segment in the future.

Moore said that Micron's semiconductor fab expansion plans won't have any meaningful effects until 2028, with the buildout and customer certifications needing a lot of time, and that AI customers require perfection in terms of technology and yield rates, meaning setting up new fabs has become a much more extensive (and much more expensive) process.

Chinese chip maker Innosilicon has announced it has provided its domestic customers with its new LPDDR6/5X memory controller IP.

Innosilicon's new LPDDR6/5X PHY + IP Controller combo has been designed using an advanced FinFET process technology, allowing for low-power operation, high bandwidth, and low latency in a multi-packaged controller with multiple other core advantages.

The company says that its expertise with other DRAM technologies including GDDR6, GDDR6X, GDDR7, HBM3E, and even HBM4, allowed Innosilicon to develop a robust LPDDR6/5X solution for the mass market.

The only other word I heard more than "AI" at CES 2026 was "DRAM" and the on-going crisis, but now it could get worse with reports that NVIDIA's next-gen Vera Rubin AI systems will eat up MILLIONS of terabytes of SSD capacity in the years to come.

That's just Vera Rubin let alone Rubin Ultra, let alone NVIDIA's next-gen Feynman GPU architecture after that... but in a new X post by @Jukan, we're hearing from a Citi analysis of the subject.

Citi explained: "We estimate that approximately 1,152TB of additional SSD NAND will be required per Vera Rubin server system to support NVIDIA's ICMS operations. Accordingly, assuming Vera Rubin server shipments of 30,000 units in 2026 and 100,000 units in 2027, NAND demand driven by ICMS is projected to reach 34.6 million TB in 2026 and 115.2 million TB in 2027".

Intel launched its new Core Ultra Series 3 "Panther Lake" CPUs at CES 2026 last week, and it looks like the new Panther Lake-powered gaming handhelds should offer performance close to what we'll see out of Sony's next-gen PlayStation 6 handheld.

In a new post on X by leaker @Kepler_L2 who posted: "PTL handhelds might be a great ballpark estimate for how PS6 Handheld will perform/how PS5 games can be scaled down to very low TDP. Z2E is too slow and Strix Halo is too fast, but PTL @ 30W should be very similar to Canis @ 15W".

Panther Lake has a fantastic integrated GPU in the form of the Arc B390 with 12 Xe3 GPU cores that provides some great performance, a good chunk of CPU cores, and the NPU. In its handheld SKU form, we should expect Intel to cut the fat (NPU) and keep the gold (CPU + GPU) and then it can be fully unleashed for next-gen gaming handhelds.

If you want a new benchmark to bring your expensive GeForce RTX 5090 to its knees, then check out Radiance, a new Raymarching benchmark that even at 1080p, the RTX 5090 can only spit out 2-3FPS.

The new Radiance benchmark was built by former Tom's Hardware and Thresh's FiringSquad writer, Alan Dong, with Radiance using the DX12 API and analyzing FP32 compute performance from your GPU by running a "raymarched" version of breakout. You can download Radiance: A Raymarching Benchmark right here.

The benchmark solely relies on raymarched geometry, with no texture maps, no shortcuts, no pre-baked illumination, this is all pure mathematics that your GPU needs to crunch. There are a few resolutions to choose from: 480p, 720p, 1080p, 1440p, and 4K with varying levels of debris count: no debris, 80 debris, 160 debris, 320 debris, and finally, 640 debris.

If you're fed up hearing about price hikes for PC components - and at this point, who isn't? - here's some more bad news, sadly, about PSUs and processor coolers.

VideoCardz reports that a major tech distributor in China has sent a letter to partners indicating that the prices of power supplies and CPU coolers are going to rise by an appreciable amount soon (from February 2026).

The distribution firm in question is Guangzhou Xinhongzheng Electronic Tech Company, and VideoCardz has got hold of a letter that details anticipated price increases for these components.

Baldur's Gate 3 would have come to the Nintendo Switch 2 if it was up to Larian Studios, but that much-wanted port will not be happening, the developer has confirmed.

You may recall that rumors were swirling late last year about such a port for the Switch 2, and the topic came up in a Reddit 'Ask Me Anything' (AMA) session, as Gamespot noticed.

As you can see in the thread above, Larian's founder and CEO Swen Vincke chimed in to say:

CES 2026 has officially wrapped up, and after spending a week walking around the Las Vegas Convention Center, and ducking in and out of numerous casinos for private meetings with companies, I have gathered my thoughts on what we can expect out of the upcoming year in terms of new technology, road bumps, and what to get excited about.

The whole week of meetings involved being introduced to new products, but every conversation was plagued by conversations about memory pricing, which is undoubtedly going to be a hurdle consumers will be hit by in 2026. For those who don't know, DRAM pricing is skyrocketing due to AI companies gobbling up the limited supply.

As a result, DRAM has become such a sought-after component that it's causing the pricing of products that require even small amounts of DRAM to increase significantly. For example, Dell's XPS 14, the company's entry-level laptop, has increased its price from last year's model at $1,699 to $2,050 for the latest generation.

ASRock unveiled a selection of new OLED gaming monitors under its Phantom Gaming brand, and its new brand of Taichi gaming monitors, with the company now expanding its premium line of gaming products.

ASRock showcased three new OLED gaming monitors featuring QD-OLED panel technology and WOLED panel technology, and each is branded Taichi. Starting with the TCO27USA, a 27-inch QD-OLED panel that features a 4K resolution and a refresh rate of 240Hz.

The TCO27USA also features a 0.03ms (GtG) response time, 250 nits standard brightness, and a range of I/O ports, such as 2x HDMI 2.1 (48G), 2x DisplayPort 1.4, 2x USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-A, 1x USB3.2 Gen 1 Type-B, 1x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-C with DP Alt Mode PD 65W, 1x Type-A (upgrade only), 1x headphone out, and x2 3W speakers. There is also tilt, swivel, and pivot adjustment available.

GameStop is officially closing as many as 400 retail locations across the United States, as part of the company's stringent cost-saving method.

A GameStop may be closing around you, with a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing revealing the company is anticipating the closure of a significant number of stores in fiscal 2025. The same filing revealed that GameStop would pay out GameStop's CEO, Ryan Cohen, up to $35 billion in stock options if he is able to increase the company's market cap to $100 billion.

The US isn't the only place GameStop intends to make physical store closures, with plans also in place to reduce physical stores in both Canada and European countries. Since the stock spike in 2021, GameStop has really struggled to adapt to the exponentially growing digital landscape for video game purchasing, with many gamers now turning to services such as Steam, Xbox Store, and the PlayStation Store over making a trip to a local GameStop.

Elon Musk has revealed during a recent X post that X, formerly Twitter, will be receiving a new algorithm, which the social media owner said would be made open source.

Musk took to his personal X account to announce that X is receiving a new algorithm and that within seven days it will be made open source, revealing all code that is used to determine which organic and advertising posts are recommended to users. Musk wrote that it will be made open source in just 7 days.

Additionally, the Tesla CEO also wrote that every four weeks the revealing of the code will take place, and will be accompanied by detailed developer's notes that are intended to inform the public on the changes.

Malwarebytes, a very popular antivirus software company, has informed its users that it discovered a breach when it was performing a dark web check. Malwarebytes linked the breach to an Instagram API exposure that dates back to 2024.

According to reports, the discovery comes amid Instagram users reportedly receiving emails from Instagram requesting a password change. According to Malwarebytes, the leaked information, which includes email addresses, phone numbers, usernames, and more personal information, may result in more serious attacks taking place, such as phishing attempts, account takeovers, and other various scams.

Meta has yet to comment on the recent discovery, which has connected at least 17.5 million Instagram users with leaked information discovered on the dark web. It's currently unclear if the information has been sold to bad actors. In order to be completely safe, it's recommended you change your Instagram password to an encrypted password, and also turn on two-factor authentication if you haven't already.

AI companies are gobbling up all memory across the world, resulting in skyrocketing prices for memory modules for consumers. As memory supply constraints continue to grow OEMs are being forced to turn to alternative suppliers for memory, with Barron's analyst Tae Kim reporting HP is struggling to obtain supply, and is now looking to add Chinese memory suppliers to its list of component suppliers.

HP is reportedly looking to ship "limited" products into Asia and Europe. Kim also wrote that since supply is drying up from memory suppliers such as Micron, Samsung, and others, OEMs such as HP will begin to turn to Chinese memory manufacturers such CXMT, as the company's DRAM wafer output is estimated to reach up to 300,000 units per month in 2026, and while that figure is low compared to some of the other players in the market, CXMT is renowned for its DDR5 module supply, and its lack of HBM adoption.

CXMT is looking to raise $4.2 billion USD to expand production. One of the hurdles HP will need to overcome if it decides to go with a Chinese supplier such as CXMT is US regulations on sourcing semiconductors from China. Given the current situation of memory supply and the insatiable demand for more memory, it's likely new regulations are going to be put into place around seeking supply from Chinese memory makers. HP is reportedly acquiring supply from a Chinese memory maker to ship a "limited" range of products in Asia and Europe.

Valve revealed the Steam Machine in November last year, with the announcement stating the new device was to arrive sometime in 2026.

One of the biggest points of the Steam Machine's unveiling video and following interviews Valve conducted with the press was affordability and ease of use. Valve hasn't officially said how much the Steam Machine will be, and since the unveiling speculation has been all over the place with some hoping for approximately $500, and others warning that it will be a $1,000+ PC/console.

The latest leaks come from Czech retailer Smarty.cz, which lists the 512GB Steam Machine model for about $950 and the 2TB model for $1,070. It should be noted these prices are estimations, and were conversions, which means US buyers from local retailers may not have to incur some taxes or trade tariffs.

Patriot Memory showcased its product stacks at CES 2026, with an interesting little storage hub that fits in your hand, but can output a display from your phone, act as storage, and even charge all in the same fits-in-your-palm size. Check it out:

The Patriot MD330 Storage Hub is an industry-first design that combines 4K display output over HDMI, USB-C PC 3.0 fast-charging, and built-in storage into a small compact device. Providing users with Projection + Storage + Power, the MD330 provides up to 100W of USB-C power delivery, up to 1TB of on-board storage, and the ability to output to a monitor or TV using HDMI.

Patriot had an Android smartphone in their suite, with the MD330 storage hub plugged in, playing PUBG but using a monitor as their display, and not the actual display on the smartphone. It's pretty wild, as the MD330 is also up to 1TB of storage on-the-go.