Your monitor's USB hub does more than a docking station, and costs nothing extra
…Related 5 upgrades I'm making to my PC setup (none of them are PC components) Not all PC setup upgrades need to be expensive to matter. I'm making five affordable…
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A $40 label maker and QR codes completely changed how I manage my home lab
Rich Edmonds Apr 14, 2026, 8:00 PM EDT Richard is the PC Hardware Lead at XDA and has been covering the technology industry for almost two decades. He's been building…
Your cheap unmanaged switch might be the bottleneck you forgot existed
…Add one new mini PC with a 2.5GbE port, or finally pull the trigger on that 10GbE NIC for the NAS, and the cheap switch becomes the active bottleneck for that…
I thought I needed a new router, but turning my old one into an access point fixed more than I expected
…You can then connect your laptop directly to a LAN port on the old router with an Ethernet cable to configure it. Do not connect the two routers together just yet. Next…
Your router's parental controls are security theater, and here's the firewall rule that actually works
…ways including interviewing the CEO of Razer, AMD's Director of Product Marketing and the VP of Lenovo. Passionate about gaming and PC technology, she has built countless computers, keyboards and other…
This lesser-known USB-C feature never really took off
…ways including interviewing the CEO of Razer, AMD's Director of Product Marketing and the VP of Lenovo. Passionate about gaming and PC technology, she has built countless computers, keyboards and other…
You're paying $100+ extra for motherboard features you'll never use
…port for faster networking, but at that point, you're just trying to future-proof your build instead of paying for something you'll actually use today. Related Future-proofing my PC…
I fixed my TV's flickering black screen with a $15 HDMI cable and a hidden menu setting
…ways including interviewing the CEO of Razer, AMD's Director of Product Marketing and the VP of Lenovo. Passionate about gaming and PC technology, she has built countless computers, keyboards and other…
The Steam Deck taught PC handheld makers the wrong lesson
…The Steam Deck proved that a portable PC market existed, and hardware makers opted to copy the form factor but ignored the philosophy. They chased raw performance metrics, turning what should be…
4 USB-C features that felt like magic the first time I used them
…Because USB Power Delivery is a bidirectional negotiation rather than a fixed, direct connection, two devices can communicate when connected to determine which has the most charge to direct the flow of…