Paul Syverson

Data center GPUs such as the NVIDIA H100 trade display outputs and fans for more memory, ECC and server cooling; gaming cards like the RTX 4090 drive monitors.

DDR5 runs at higher transfer rates and lower voltage than DDR4, but the two are not interchangeable; your motherboard and CPU decide which one you can use.

A drive enclosure turns an internal drive into an external one; match it to the drive's size and interface, and pick a link speed the drive can actually use.

A wired headset needs no charging, a wireless one runs on a battery over a USB receiver or Bluetooth, and the mic style decides how clearly others hear you.

A KVM switch lets one keyboard, monitor and mouse control two or more computers; match its port count, video link, resolution and refresh rate to your setup.

A mid tower fits a standard ATX board and suits most builds, a full tower adds room for big boards and cooling, and small cases trade space for size.

Wattage is how much power a PC power supply delivers, while an 80 Plus rating such as Gold says how efficiently it does it; they are separate choices.

A gear driven wheel is the cheapest, a belt driven wheel is smoother, and a direct drive wheel bolts the rim to a large motor for the strongest feedback.

Refurbished grades describe looks, not how a device works; each seller sets its own names, so compare the wording, battery rule, warranty and return window.

Rack height is counted in rack units (U) of 1.75 inches, the standard rack is 19 inches wide, and 42U is the common full-height cabinet; depth varies.

A tower server stands alone like a desktop and suits an office without a server room; a rack server mounts in a 19-inch rack and suits growing server rooms.

A standalone VR headset has its own processor, storage and battery, while a PC VR headset uses a Windows PC and its graphics card; some do both.

ATX, Micro ATX and Mini ITX are standard board sizes that set which cases fit and how many slots you get; ATX is the most common size we list.

An air cooler moves heat through metal fins and a fan, an all-in-one (AIO) liquid cooler pumps coolant to a radiator, and both are sized to the CPU's power.

Home consoles plug into a TV, handhelds carry their own screen and hybrids do both; a digital edition skips the disc drive, and a PS5 draws 200 to 220 watts.

VRAM is the memory on a graphics card that holds textures and other image data; Corsair suggests at least 8GB for 1080p gaming, 12GB for 1440p and 16GB for 4K.

Pick the case style first (tower, compact or all-in-one), then match CPU, RAM, storage and graphics to your heaviest task; 16GB is our most common RAM size.

A mini PC is a small desktop that saves space and power; a tower gives more room for graphics cards and upgrades, which matters most for gaming.

DPI sets how far the cursor moves per inch of mouse travel; at 800 DPI one inch moves it about 800 pixels, and most gamers play at 400 to 3,600.

An SSD stores data on flash chips and is many times faster than a spinning hard drive; NVMe SSDs are faster still, and SSD life is rated in terabytes written.

RAM is the laptop's short-term working memory; 16GB is the most common size among the laptops we list, and some features set their own minimum.

Every price on a product card comes with the date and time we read it, and a price older than 24 hours is not shown at all.

Storage holds your files when the laptop is off; 1TB is the most common size among the laptops we list, and 1TB means 1,000GB.

Refresh rate, in hertz, is how many times per second a screen draws a new image; a 120Hz screen redraws twice as often as a 60Hz one.