prebuilt pcs

Linus Tech Tips benchmarks the prebuilt PCs from its second Secret Shopper series, shares final thoughts on each integrator and picks a winner. Dell ranked last.

A demo of a Skyrim mod that uses Inworld AI to let players hold free-form conversations with NPCs. It previews LLM-driven characters in role-playing games.

LGR reviews the Book 8088 and Hand 386, newly built DOS retro PCs sold on AliExpress that use real legacy chips on custom boards. He covers what is neat about them and their compromises and odd design decisions.

A short clip of Steve Jobs at the D8 conference discussing the post-PC era, including his analogy of PCs as trucks that will remain for a minority of users.

Tech Tangents sets up original Doom's three-screen multi-monitor mode, which required a separate networked computer for each monitor. The video covers the hardware and setup work and the result.

Timothy Roscoe of ETH Zurich delivers the joint USENIX ATC/OSDI 2021 keynote arguing that operating systems must reckon with modern hardware, which is a heterogeneous collection of processors, firmware and coprocessors rather than a simple machine. It shows how much runs below and beside Linux.

An animated, profane rant critiquing Windows 8, especially its touch-first interface on desktop PCs. The author draws on a background in tech journalism to lay out the UX problems.

Matthias Wandel tests old and new code on a range of PCs, including a new mini PC, to measure how much faster modern hardware really is. He also shows optimization techniques such as branchless code, with benchmark programs on GitHub.

Linus Tech Tips argues that big air coolers beat AIO liquid coolers for most PCs. They compare quietness and temperatures, using the Noctua NH-U12A as the example.