connect lcd panel to pc psu site www.tomshardware.com manufacturer

As shared by @momomo_us on Twitter,(opens in new tab) ASRock has built a new accessory for PC builders that allows you to turn your PC chassis" side panel into an LCD monitor. The gadget is a 13.3" side panel kit designed to be tapped to the inside of your see-through side panel, giving users an additional display for monitoring system resources and temperatures or being used as a secondary monitor altogether.

The screen is a 16:9 aspect ratio 1080P IPS 60Hz display, measuring 13.3 inches diagonally. This screen is the equivalent of a laptop display. It uses the same connection method as laptops, featuring an embedded DisplayPort (eDP) connector.

Unfortunately, this represents a problem for most PC users. The connector was originally designed specifically for mobile, and embedded PC solutions, meaning the connector is not available on standard desktop motherboards or graphics cards.

As a result, only ASRock motherboards support the side panel, and only a few models at best, with less than ten motherboards featuring the eDP connector. The list includes the following motherboards: Z790 LiveMixer, Z790 Pro RS/D4, Z790M-ITX WiFi, Z790 Steel Legend WiFi, Z790 PG Lightning, Z790 Pro RS, Z790 PG Lightning/D4. H610M-ITX/eDP, and B650E PG-ITX WiFi.

Sadly adapters aren"t a solution either since eDP to DP (or any other display output) adapters don"t exist today. Furthermore, creating an adapter is problematic because eDP runs both power and video signals through a single cable.

It"s a shame this accessory won"t get mainstream popularity due to these compatibility issues. But for the few users with the correct motherboard, this side panel kit can provide a full secondary monitor that takes up no additional space on your desk. The only sacrifice you"ll make is blocking all the shiny RGB lighting inside your chassis.

I have tried many ways to turn the monitor on but it does not work. Is it because of the motherboard or is it because of something else because everything that I brought are brand new. When plugging in the HDMI or a VGA to DVI port to the graphic card, the monitor doesn"t turn on and it said "no signal". Also, everything boost up and light comes up. I have tried many ways and read many threads that are related to this problem, but it seems that it does not help me in solving this issue. I m so desperate for this new computer, Please help me, PLEASEEE!!!!!

checking: is the seasonic your new or old PSU? If new, what was the old PSU? From information I"ve seen others post, AMD apparently fixed the issue by changing having too much power drawn from the 6 pin vs the old way of too much power from the MB PCIe. (though your card uses an 8 pin? More watts avaiablbe in spec with 8 pin) If the seasonic is your new PSU, the old PSU"s over wattage draw could have damaged the PSU (the not turning obviously possibly sign of bad PSU, hence why you replaced it) Granted, the direct connect from the 6 pin should handle the over-wattage better, but not a guarantee it does. The more wattage the more heat produced obviously. This applies to your video card as well if concern about damage there: are the card"s vrm"s or other circuitry damaged by PSU delivery issues? Though not a certainty, it is a consideration. A PSU that was failing for other reasons (bad manufacturer or bad luck of the draw) could be an issue in power delivery as a consideration as well.

You can never have have enough screens, even if some of them are inside of your case. Gigabyte"s new Aorus P1200W power supply features a full-color LCD screen, which can display custom text, pictures, GIFs, and even videos on its LCD screen. Yes, just imagine watching your favorite movies on the side of your PSU!

This isn"t the first time we"ve seen a power supply with a screen slapped on it. The ASUS ROG Thor has one, but it only displays power draw, not your favorite films. Of course, the more practical use case for a screen on a PSU is showing stats such as your fan speed or temperature.

Unfortunately, Gigabyte hasn"t listed the exact size or resolution of the screen nor do we know what its refresh rate will be. Could one even play games on it? I guess we"ll have to find out.

Designed to compete with the best power supplies, the P1200W features all of the bells and whistles most high-end power supplies come with: an 80-Plus Platinum rating, fully modular cables, 140mm fan, an input current of 15-7.5A, full-range input voltage, >16ms hold up time, active PFC, and Japanese capacitors.

The P1200W brings a lot in a small package, with one 24-pin and 10-pin connector, two CPU EPS-12v power connectors, six peripheral connectors, and six PCIe connectors, and of course, the LCD screen.

Getting the best graphics card is key if you"re looking to buy the best gaming PC or looking to build a PC on your own. The graphics card is even more important than the CPU. Unfortunately, the process of figuring out how to buy a GPU can be intimidating. There"s so much to consider, from the type of monitor you"re using (for recommendations, see our Best Gaming Monitors(opens in new tab) page) to the size of your PC case to the game settings you plan to play at.

Below are the things you need to keep in mind when shopping for your next GPU. For specific recommendations, see our best graphics cards list of the current options, as well as the GPU Benchmarks Hierarchy to see how today"s cards compare to older cards that you might be looking to upgrade and replace.

Thankfully, the supply and GPU prices on Nvidia"s RTX 30-series cards as well as AMD"s RX 6000 cards continues to improve. After 18 months of extreme prices, most cards can now be found online for only 20–30% over MSRP, sometimes less. However, note that next-generation GPUs are around the corner, like the Nvidia "Ada" RTX 40-series and AMD"s RDNA3, so keep that in mind.

Why you can trust Tom"s HardwareOur expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test.Save some money for the CPU. If you spend all your money on graphics and don"t opt for one of the best CPUs, your system might score well on synthetic benchmarks but won"t do as well in real game play (due to lower minimum frame rates).Match your monitor resolution. Many mainstream cards are sufficient for gaming at 1080p resolutions at between 30-60 fps, but you"ll need a high-end card for resolutions at or near 4K resolution with high in-game settings on the most demanding titles. So be sure to pair your GPU with the best gaming monitor for your needs.Consider your refresh rate. If your monitor has triple-digit refresh rates, you"ll need a powerful card and processor to reach its full potential. Alternatively, if your monitor tops out at 60Hz and 1080p, there"s no point in paying extra for a powerful card that pushes pixels faster than your display can keep up with.Do you have enough power and space? Make sure your PC case has enough room for the card you"re considering, and that your power supply has enough watts to spare, along with the correct type of power connectors (up to three 8-pin PCIe, depending on the card).Check the MSRP before buying. A good way to tell if you"re getting a deal is to check the launch price or MSRP of the card you"re considering before buying. Tools like CamelCamelCamel(opens in new tab) can help separate the real deals from the fake mark-up-then-discount offerings.Don"t get dual cards—they"re not worth it. Game support for Multi-card SLI or CrossFire setups has basically died. Get the best single card you can afford. Adding a second card is usually more trouble than it"s worth.Don"t count on overclocking for serious performance boosts. If you need better performance, buy a more-powerful card. Graphics cards don"t typically have large amounts of overclocking headroom, usually only 5-10%.

There are hundreds of graphics cards from dozens of manufacturers, but only two companies actually make the GPUs that power these components: Nvidia and AMD — though Intel"s Xe Graphics has started to ship for laptops and should also come to desktops in the next few months. With its RX 6000 cards, AMD is more competitive than it has been in years with Nvidia and its current-gen Ampere cards, like the GeForce RTX 3080, in general performance.

That said, the realistically lit elephant in the room that we"ve been ignoring thus-far is real-time ray tracing. Introduced as a major new feature with Nvidia"s now previous-generation RTX 20-series cards, "Team Green" is now on its second generation RTX with 30-series GPUs. AMD ("Team Red") stepped into this game in a big way in 2020 with its RX 6000 cards, but it"s still on its first go-round with real-time ray tracing, and so lags behind Nvidia on this front.

Our Ray Tracing GPU Benchmarks Hierarchy breaks things down using six demanding RT games. Games that only use a single RT effect, like reflections, tend to be less demanding and less impressive overall. So weigh the importance of ray tracing performance with how interested you are in these games, how important the best possible visuals are to your enjoyment, and how much future-proofing you want baked into your GPU.

Also, don"t forget DLSS, Nvidia"s AI-assisted resolution upscaling. It can deliver improved performance with less of a hit on frame rates than is typical from maxing out your monitor"s resolution the traditional way. Support for this feature is limited to a subset of games, admittedly a growing one — many of the complete ray tracing games support DLSS. AMD has its own open source alternative to DLSS, called Fidelity FX Super Resolution (AMD FSR), and FSR 2.0 should further improve things, but DLSS is more widely supported in games that really need upscaling.

For more on these subjects as well as screen-smoothing variable refresh technologies, see our AMD vs Nvidia: Who Makes the Best GPUs? and FreeSync vs. G-Sync: Which Variable Refresh Tech Is Best Today? features.

The price of video cards varies greatly, with super low-end cards starting under $100 and high-end models going for $2,000 or more in the case of the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti. As is often the case, top-end cards aren"t worth the money unless for some reason you absolutely have to have the best performance possible, or if you do professional work where 10% more performance will pay for itself over time.

Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 Super, Nvidia GTX 1650; AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT, RX 6400, RX 5500 XT 4GB/8GB. Older: Nvidia GTX 1060, GTX 1050 Ti and GTX 1050; AMD RX 590, RX 580, RX 570, RX 560Budget cardsDecent for playing games at 1080p or lower res at medium-to-low settings

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti, RTX 3070, RTX 3060 Ti, RTX 3060, RTX 2080 Ti, RTX 2080 Super, RTX 2070 Super, RTX 2070, RTX 2060 Super; AMD Radeon RX 6800, RX 5700 XT. Older: Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti, GTX 1080; AMD Radeon VII, RX Vega 64High-endGood for VR headsets and gaming at resolutions at 1440p or high-refresh 1080p monitors.

If you want to use your GPU with a PC VR HMD, you need at least a mid-range card, with optimal performance coming from a card like the Nvidia RTX 2060 Super/AMD RX 5700 or higher. The lowest-end cards you can use with these headsets are the AMD Radeon RX 570and Nvidia GTX 1060. And the card requirements of course increase with newer, higher-resolution headsets. Obviously, this isn"t a critical factory if you have no interest in VR.

We discussed this above, but to briefly recap, Nvidia"s latest RTX 30-series GPUs are the best solution for ray tracing and DLSS. AMD"s RX 6000-series GPUs have similar ray tracing performance to Nvidia"s RTX 20-series, but they lack support for DLSS and AMD"s FidelityFX Super Resolution isn"t quite the same thing. Intel for its part will support RT in hardware and has a competing XeSS upscaling solution that uses Xe Matrix cores, basically the same idea as Nvidia"s Tensor cores. From what we know, Intel"s RT performance will be very low, given even the fastest Arc A770 only has 32 ray tracing units — though we don"t yet know how fast the RTUs are in comparison to Nvidia"s RT cores.

Game support for DXR (DirectX Raytracing) and DLSS/FSR continues to improve, but there are tons of games where it"s simply not an important consideration. If you like to turn on all the bells and whistles, placebo effect increases in image quality be damned, that"s fine. We expect RT performance to become increasingly important in the coming years, but it could be two or three more GPU architectures before it"s a make or break deal.

Even after you decide what GPU you"re after (say, for example, an RTX 3060 Ti), you"ll usually be faced with plenty of options in terms of cooler design and brand or manufacturer. Nvidia makes and sells its own cards under the Founders Edition moniker for higher-end models, while AMD licenses its reference design to other manufacturers. Both companies" GPUs appear in third-party cards from several different vendors.

More expensive third-party cards will have elaborate coolers, extra fans, lots of RGB lighting, and often higher clock speeds, but they can also be more expensive than the reference card. Overclocking gains are often minimal, with gains of just a few FPS, so don"t feel bad if you"re not running a blinged-out card. That said, beefier cooling can often translate to cooler, quieter operation, which can be important given that high-end graphics cards are usually the noisiest, most heat-generating parts in a PC build.

We"ve also noticed that Nvidia"s RTX 3080 and 3090 Founders Edition cards (along with several custom models) can get particularly hot on their GDDR6X, so it pays to do some research. For much more on this discussion, see our Graphics Card Face-Off: Founders Edition or Reference GPUs vs 3rd-Party Design feature.

Once you"ve considered all the above and are ready to narrow down your choices, you can head to our GPU Benchmarks and our Best Graphics Cards to help finalize your buying decision. Here we include a condensed version of our current favorite cards for common resolutions and gaming scenarios below. Keep in mind that there are third-party options for all of these cards, so you may want to use these picks as a jumping-off point to finding, say, the best AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT model for your particular gaming build.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050(opens in new tab) almost looked too good to be true, promising full RT and DLSS support with a starting price of $250. At launch, it immediately sold out and we saw prices of over $400. Three months later, you can actually find the cards in stock for just $250. Some might argue that"s not really a "budget" price, but dropping down $50 to the RX 6500 XT results in 35% less performance and effectively useless DXR support. If you want to go lower than $250, we suggest looking at previous generation cards and perhaps even a used graphics card. That"s a big can of worms to open, but when the cheapest GTX 1650 Super cards(opens in new tab) cost well over $300, there"s no point in even considering them.

AMD Radeon RX 6600The AMD Radeon RX 6600(opens in new tab) nominally costs the same $329 as the RTX 3060 below, and performance outside of DXR/DLSS games is basically tied. However, AMD"s GPU can actually be found for close to MSRP, while Nvidia"s card costs nearly 50% more. Winner: AMD

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060(opens in new tab) upgrades the memory and GPU quite a bit compared to the budget 3050, delivering 35% more performance on average. 12GB of VRAM also means you won"t need to worry about running out of memory any time soon. Nominally priced at $329, the RTX 3060 still tends to cost more than we"d like, but keep an eye out for future price drops.

Just a bit more money than the RTX 3060 will get you an AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT(opens in new tab), and a honking 37% boost to performance in most games. It"s about a tie in DXR performance, making AMD"s card the easy pick this time. You"ll also get great 1440p gaming performance, with over 60 fps in most games even at ultra settings, and 12GB of VRAM should be plenty for the next several years at least.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080If you"re looking for the champion of graphics cards, right now it"s the GeForce RTX 3080(opens in new tab). Technically there are slightly faster cards, but they all cost more (i.e. RTX 3090 Ti, RTX 3090, RTX 3080 Ti) or have very lackluster ray tracing performance (RX 6900 XT, RX 6800 XT). The RTX 3080 can max out all the graphics settings at 4K in most games, and DLSS can do wonders for ray tracing performance. Just beware that Nvidia"s next-generation Ada GPUs are slated to arrive around the September timeframe.

If you’ve got a large, permanent desk at your home or office, it’s cheap and easy to connect your laptop to one or more external displays. However, if you’re on the go, you can’t lug a 27-inch monitor in your bag nor can you likely fit it on a tiny hotel or co-working table. That’s where the best portable monitors come in.

Portable monitors typically range from 13.3 to 17 inches and most come with a 1920 x 1080 resolution, though some can hit 4K and the cheapest models may be just 1366 x 768. These monitors weigh just a couple of pounds and most of them can draw power directly from your laptop’s USB ports, meaning you don’t have to carry yet another power brick in your bag.

Most portable monitors are designed for productivity work, providing a helpful second screen for your laptop that’s often the same height as its built-in display. However, people also use portable monitors for console or PC gaming, with some operating at up to 144Hz. You can even connect one that uses HDMI to your Raspberry Pi.

Below, we’ve listed the best portable monitors you can buy right now. If you want to stay productive on the road, don’t leave home without one. For your permanent desk, check out our lists of best gaming monitors, best 4K gaming monitors and best budget 4K monitors.

Why you can trust Tom"s HardwareOur expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test.Make sure it connects to your device(s). Some monitors connect over standard HDMI, which lets them work with almost anything, while others use USB-C’s alternate mode. A select few provide DisplayLink connectivity, which allows them to plug into any USB 3.0 capable port, even an old-fashioned type-A connector.

Pay close attention to monitor kickstands. A kickstand can be a make-or-break proposition for some portable monitors. The best portable monitors have a built-in kickstand that allows you to easily adjust the display for the best possible viewing angles. On the other hand, some monitors have separate, magnetic origami-style covers that double as a kickstand. These are rarely (if ever) better than a good built-in kickstand and can ruin an otherwise good display experience.

Battery or no battery? Most modern portable monitors draw power over USB-C, either via a dedicated wall charger or by drawing power directly from your laptop. However, some models, like the Asus ROG ROG XG16AHPE and XG17AHPE, have a built-in lithium-ion battery that allows you to game without being plugged into a wall. So, if you prefer to connect to your laptop via HDMI, you could do so with just a single cable with battery-equipped monitors.

Productivity or Gaming? Most portable monitors come with a standard 60Hz refresh rate, which is perfectly fine for productivity tasks and suits most consumers. However, some alternatives like the Asus ROG ROG XG16AHPE and ViewSonic VX1755 offer up to 144Hz refresh rates and support for Adaptive-Sync technologies for those that want to game on a portable display that’s larger than what their laptop natively offers.

For more guidance picking a monitor of any resolution – gaming or otherwise – check out our PC Monitor Buying Guide and list of the Best Computer Monitors.

When you think of displays with a 300Hz refresh rate, you typically picture desktop monitors with a Full HD resolution. However, Nexigo offers something on a smaller scale in the form of the NG17FGQ. This is a 17.3-inch portable monitor that offers a 300Hz refresh rate and connects to a laptop or desktop via HDMI or USB-C (DisplayPort Alt-Mode).

To take advantage of that fast 300Hz refresh rate, you"ll need to connect over USB-C with a computer that supports full bandwidth capabilities. If you decide to connect via HDMI, you"re limited to 240Hz, which is still heady for a portable monitor.

Gaming performance across the board is excellent with the NG17FGQ, and it can produce some amazing colors once the panel is calibrated. Its overall good build quality also means that it should stand up to the rigors of behind tossed around in a bag while traveling.

The Asus ROG Strix ROG XG16AHPE is a gaming-centric portable display that supports a 144 Hz refresh rate and Nvidia G-Sync compatibility from its IPS panel. That"s a nice departure from the standard 60 Hz panels typical in this class. The ROG XG16AHPE also is formidable on the endurance front, thanks to its built-in battery.

The ROG XG16AHPE measures 15.6 inches diagonally and has the typical 1920x1080 resolution. Thankfully, the IPS panel provided excellent viewing angles in our tests, but it features a rather odd kickstand that cuts diagonally across the back of the monitor. However, we found that this unorthodox design allows the ROG XG16AHPE to easily transition to portrait mode.

The aforementioned built-in battery’s capacity is 7,800 mAh and is rated for 3 hours when operating at 144 Hz. In our testing at 144 Hz, our runtimes managed to come in right around Asus" factory estimate.

Asus pulled out all the stops with the ZenScreen Go MB16AWP, which is an impressive 15.6-inch Full HD portable monitor. At first glance, the ZenScreen Go MB16AWP seems like your run-of-the-mill entry in this segment with its Full HD IP panel and 60 Hz refresh rate, but Asus has baked in plenty of features that make it unique.

For starters, there"s an integrated 7,800 mAh battery that is good for three hours of runtime before a recharge is needed. Our testing also showed that the battery could be juiced from 0 percent to 100 percent in just over two hours. The other standout feature of the ZenScreen Go MB16AWP is integrated Wi-Fi connectivity.

With Wi-Fi enabled, you can mirror your device"s screen to the ZenScreen Go MB16AWP without plugging in a USB-C or HDMI cable. When you couple this with the integrated battery, you have a completely wire-free experience with this portable monitor. Asus provides broad compatibility, with support across Windows, macOS, Chrome OS, Android and iOS operating systems.

Other features include a built-in accelerometer that allows the ZenScreen Go MB16AWP to switch from portrait to landscape mode with ease, two USB-C ports, and a single Mini-HDMI port. Throw in excellent color performance across sRGB and DCI-P3 color spaces, and it"s hard not to recommend the ZenScreen Go MB16AWP.

The Viewsonic VX1755 shares a similar design theme with the Viewsonic TD1655, right down to its black front, minimal bezels, color scheme and downward-firing speakers. It is constructed of high-quality plastic, with metal being reserved for the pop-out stand.

It supports a 144 Hz refresh rate like the ROG XG16AHPE, and backs that with AMD FreeSync Premium Adaptive-Sync technology. Not only could you pair the VX1755 with a laptop to expand your workspace or simply provide a larger screen to game on (versus, for example, a laptop’s built-in 13-inch display), but you could easily use it with an Android smartphone (via USB-C) or with an Xbox Series X or PlayStation 5 console.

When it was time to hit our benchmark stand, color performance was similar to the VD1655, which is below average. We measured 64.2 percent of the sRGB color space and just 45.5 percent of DCI-P3. On the plus side, we measured 250.6 nits for brightness, which is dead-on with ViewSonic"s 250-nit claim.

The Innocn is a mold-breaker in the portable monitor space. We typically expect OLED panels to come with a hefty price premium over their IPS rivals, but the Innocn 15A1F delivers OLED goodness for under $400. Not only is this pricing comparable to IPS panels in the 15.6-inch size class, but the color, brightness, and contrast are far superior on the 15A1F.

The 15A1F measures 15.6 inches diagonally and features a 1920x1080 resolution with a refresh rate of 60Hz. Brightness is rated at 400 nits, and we came remarkably close to that figure in our instrumented testing. sRGB and DCI-P3 color gamut performance were admirable, and it"s hard to beat the contrast made possible with an OLED panel.

The Lenovo ThinkVision M14t comes in a bit on the smaller side compared to other portable monitors, measuring in at 14 inches across. It maintains a 1920 x 1080 resolution at 60Hz and features excellent image quality from its 8-bit IPS panel.

Lenovo boasts 300 nits brightness with the ThinkVision M14t, although on our light meter, it peaked at 250 nits. One of the standout features of the monitor is support for 10-point multi-touch input. A stylus is also included if you"d like to draw or write text on the screen. The stylus has multiple sensitivity levels when drawing, and the built-in handwriting recognition in Windows 10 and Windows 11 can convert your handwriting into ASCII text.

When it comes to connectivity, we should mention that the only way to connect the ThinkVision M14t to a laptop is by using USB-C (DisplayPort Alt Mode), which is a limiting factor. Many monitors in this price range (and cheaper) at least offer HDMI connectivity as an alternative.

For most gamers, 144 Hz is more than adequate, particularly for a portable monitor. However, if you’re an eSports gamer and need even more speed, the Asus ROG Strix XG17AHPE is a great choice, because it can do up to 240 Hz.

If you thought that the Asus ROG Strix ROG XG16AHPE was brawny, you haven"t seen anything yet. Its overachieving sibling, the ROG Strix XG17AHPE dives deeper into enthusiast gamer territory with a larger 17.3-inch IPS display.

The monitor has two USB-C ports (DisplayPort Alt-Mode supported) and Micro-HDMI for connectivity, features a 3ms response time, boasts a maximum 300 nits brightness, and a contrast ratio of 1,000:1.

In our testing, the monitor lasted roughly 2 hours per charge when running full-bore at 240 Hz at 80 percent brightness, with the speakers blaring at full volume. On the opposite end of the spectrum, pegging the refresh rate at 60 Hz with 50 percent brightness saw runtimes extend to four and a half hours.

If you need your portable monitor to do video or photo editing, it helps to have vibrant colors and lots of pixels. Not only does the Zion Pro feature a dense 3840 x 2160 resolution for a 15.6-inch monitor, but it also uses AMOLED display technology that allowed it to cover the full DCI-P3 gamut in our tests. This means rich colors that are unmatched in this category, but the infinite contrast means that you get inky blacks and a huge color gamut.

On the connectivity front, you"ll find one HDMI 2.0 port and a single USB-C port. Two speakers are onboard; there"s even 10-point multi-touch for those that like navigating through the Windows 10/Windows 11 user interface using your fingers. This is truly a portable monitor that won"t disappoint when it comes to color performance and features.

However, no monitor is perfect, and the Zion Pro gets some demerits for its icon-based OSD and tedious adjustments needed for proper calibration. We"d also be remiss if we didn"t mention the price, which comes in at a hefty $600. But if you’re looking for a beautiful display that can match (or exceed) the color performance and clarity of the best built-in laptop monitors, the Zion Pro is hard to ignore.

Whether you"re shopping for one of the screens that made our list of best portable monitors above or something else, you may find savings by checking out our best monitor deals page, along with our lists of Dell coupon codes, Lenovo coupon codes, LG coupon codes, HP coupon codes, Monoprice coupon codes and Newegg promo codes.

The best gaming laptops come in various sizes and shapes, for different needs and budgets. So while a tricked out $5,000-plus model with the highest-end graphics and best display might give you the best gaming laptop experience, most of us can"t afford a rig like that. Our picks here are often high-end models (we"re an enthusiast site, after all), but most come in various configurations at various price points. For those on a tight gaming budget, we"ve have dedicated pages for the best gaming laptops under $1,500 and the best gaming laptops under $1,000.

Thankfully, there are more gaming laptop options now than ever, from budget-friendly to desktop replacements. Some come with full-size Nvidia GeForce RTX graphics cards, while others go for the more efficient Max-Q designs that enable thinner chassis and (sometimes) quieter fans.

Why you can trust Tom"s HardwareOur expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test.

While many of the best gaming laptops come with a 1080p display and high refresh rates, some include 4K screens, so you can pick between fidelity and resolution. Several gaming laptop go as fast as 360 Hz. There are also an increasing number of 2560 x 1440 display options, giving you an option other than 1080p or 4K. Additionally, some more expensive, premium options include OLED for deeper blacks and more vivid colors.

There is more choice than ever in components, too. While Intel is still a popular option, AMD"s Ryzen processors are becoming more common. On the GPU side, Nvidia"s RTX GPUs are in most laptops, though AMD is slowly starting to pair its own graphics cards with hits CPUs for what it calls an "AMD Advantage." (We"re not seeing AMD GPUs with Intel CPUs).

The latest technologies in processors include Intel"s 12th Gen "Alder Lake" processors, which use a hybrid design with Performance and Efficient cores, and AMD"s Ryzen 6000 CPUs, though we haven"t seen as many of those comes through as our lab. With Intel and AMD both having moved to their next generations on the desktop, we"re expecting to see updates to laptops in the next few months.

Nvidia"s RTX 40-series has started to hit desktops, but they"re not on laptops quite yet. We"re expecting to see that in the next few months, so stay tuned.

To help you find the best gaming laptop, we"ve compiled a list of the best models we"ve tested and reviewed recently. For much more on how to narrow down your list of best gaming laptop considerations, check out our best gaming laptop buyer’s guide. But here are a few quick tips to get you started down the road to the right portable gaming rig for you.

While many gamers may go to desktops to get the most performance for their money, try lugging a tower, monitor and keyboard around in your backpack. When you need a powerful rig you can take with you, there"s no substitute for a gaming laptop.

Quick Gaming Laptop Shopping TipsFocus on the GPU: Most games are dependent on the GPU, and those aren’t upgradeable. If you splurge on a powerful GPU now, you’ll be gaming comfortably for a few years.

You can upgrade some parts later: While the best CPUs for gaming and GPUs are almost always soldered down, most gaming laptops let you replace the RAM and storage, so you can buy cheaper now and add more memory and a bigger hard drive or SSD down the road. Thicker, more powerful laptops are often easier to upgrade than thinner ones, so be sure to do some research before buying. (We include this information in our reviews).

Battery life will probably be bad: Very few gaming notebooks get 8 hours or more on a charge, and you need the power supply to get the best gaming performance anyway. However, we"ve seen some strong times from AMD"s Ryzen processors, and Nvidia suggests its improved Optimus technology may help turn the tide. For peak gaming performance, however, you"ll want to be sure to be plugged in while playing.

If you"re looking for a laptop with desktop-level power, the MSI GE76 Raider is about as close as you"ll get, though you may also have to spend a ton of money to get there. Still, with its high-end components like the Intel Core i9-12900HK and Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti.

We"d be remiss to point out that the Raider has a large RGB light bar on the front, which, when combined with per-key lighting, makes for quite an effect in the dark (or you can turn it all of if you prefer something a bit less showy).

The 17.3-inch, 1080p display goes up to 360 Hz, which is great for esports players, but everyone else might want to consider a 1440p or 4K display, depending on available configurations.

We tested this laptop at $3,999, which is enough to make you tear up when you check your bank account. That"s an awful lot to spend on a laptop (we imagine DDR5 memory partially brings that price up), but it"s also the best performer we"ve seen recently.

You still get a variety of ports, like Thunderbolt 4, both USB Type-C and Type-A as well as an SD card reader, so there"s plenty of expansion for peripherals and extra storage for games. It would even work great for productivity, though we did find some competing gaming laptops were better in non-gaming benchmarks.

To get Razer"s premium look and feel, you do have to pay a premium. This notebook starts at $2,499 and we reviewed it at $2,999. It"s pricey, but it"s also maintained a spot among our favorite gaming notebooks for years for a reason.

The Alienware x17 R2 goes up to an Intel Core i9-12900HK and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, some of the most powerful parts on the market. In our review, the laptop showed strong performance in both gaming and productivity.

Alienware"s design, which debuted last year, is lovely. It"s still clearly a gaming notebook, but it"s futuristic and minimal. That being said, it"s a bit larger than some competitors, and at 6.82 pounds, you probably won"t want to carry this around too often.

The Acer Nitro 5 has long been our favorite gaming laptop for those on a tight budget. The latest model we"ve tested, with an Intel Core i5-12500H and Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 Ti offers decent performance for the price, as long as you"re willing to turn down the settings on some games.

Acer has given the Nitro 5 a new, more adult design. It"s less angular, and with fewer red accents, doesn"t scream as much that it"s a gaming notebook. We"ve seen that aesthetic become popular on expensive notebooks, it"s nice to see a toned-down design on a gaming laptop that"s $899.99. (Don"t worry, there"s still an RGB backlit keyboard for those that are into that sort of thing.

There"s a bit of room to upgrade inside, too. Acer includes a SATA cable in the box for people who want to open the laptop and add a 2.5-inch hard drive or SSD. The RAM, NVMe SSD, and Wi-Fi card are all easily accessible, too.

HP"s Victus 15 secures a slot on this list by deftly balancing what you can get at the extreme low-end of gaming laptops. We tested this laptop near its entry-level configuration, at $799.99 with an Intel Core i5-12450H and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650.

For $800, you can"t expect greatness. Most games will play at at least medium settings, though you"ll have to turn some to low from the day you buy it. But for the games that can push high frame rates with the GTX 1650, you get a 1080p, 144 Hz display. That 12th Gen H-series Intel processor is no slouch when you want to use the Victus for productivity work, perhaps at work or school.

If you"re looking to spend as little as possible, you can squeeze value out of the Victus. You won"t get the best display or webcam around, but you"ll spend well under $1,000. One tip, if you can, is to make sure your purchase includes dual-channel RAM. Some stores, like HP"s, let you configure this, and it should improve performance somewhat. Ours didn"t have this, and we wish it did.

If you"re a PC gamer on the go, a thin PC like the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 may be up your alley. The Zephyrus uses an AMD Ryzen 9 6900HS and an AMD Radeon RX 6800S, as well as the company"s proprietary features like SmartShift (to move power between the CPU and GPU) and SmartAccess Memory.

For the latest update, Asus added a webcam, which was a glaring omission on previous models. The all-AMD model has also moved to a taller, 16:10 aspect ratio.

If you want top-tier esports performance, the Asus ROG Strix Scar 17 SE is the way to go. Yes, it"s expensive, but with an Intel Core i9-12950HX and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, this laptop can handle intense graphics from high-budget games, but can also push esports to the limit.

The design is functional, albeit with lots of gamer-focused elements, like lots of RGB, some see-through plastic and some designs that light up under UV light. The one issue it the lack of a webcam; You"ll have to bring your own.

The Lenovo Legion 5i Pro offers strong performance with a screen that lets you switch between high refresh rate gaming meant for esports or high resolution for more cinematic games. It"s a 16-inch, 2560 x 1600 panel that goes up to 165 Hz. That"s not the fastest we"ve seen on a gaming notebook, but it"s a nice balance.

We were pleasantly surprised by the Legion"s battery life. The laptop ran for seven and a half hours on our battery test, which is longer than most gaming PCs. That suggests that you could use it for quite a bit as a productivity machine (especially in conjunction with the tall 16:10 screen to see your work).

Asus" latest ROG Zephyrus Duo uses AMD"s top-end RYzen 9 5900HX paired with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 for powerful results, while using a second screen that lifts up to provide more ventilation to improve cooling.

The keyboard and mouse are in an awkward position, like most dual-screen notebooks on the market (most people will likely use an external mouse for gaming). So you"ll have to decide if that second screen — which is great for chat programs, gaming guides or music apps — is worth a more difficult typing experience.

Whether you"re shopping for one of the best gaming laptops or another model that didn"t quite make our list, you may find some savings by checking out our lists of Dell coupon codes, HP coupon codes, Lenovo coupon codes, Razer promo codes or Newegg promo codes.

We first got a look at the Thermaltake Divider 550 TG Ultra at the company"s Expo event, coinciding with CES 2022 in January. Now the firm has released a full set of product pages for this showy mid-tower case with triple tempered glass sides and a 3.9 inch LCD screen atop of the front panel.

The Divider 550 TG Ultra"s USP is clearly its front embedded display panel. If not for this add-in, it would be a pretty standard hefty ATX case with a lot of tempered glass and room for a full sized (5.25 inch) optical drive to slot into the top.

From the images it looks like Thermaltake has decided to craft an LCD screen to fit into such a gap, but sadly the display area doesn"t fill the space, as it has quite significant bezels. Thermaltake quite breathlessly describes this 3.9 inch LCD screen as "a new way to monitor your PC’s performance and at the same time to show your own personality." In 2022 it might be more useful than an optical drive bay, but it isn"t revolutionary.

The display can be used for various monitoring and personal styling purposes. You customize what is on the display using the TT RGB Plus 2.0 software. This allows you to display any still images or animated GIFs. More practical uses of the display are for processor and RAM monitoring. For processors you can monitor temperature, frequency, load, and other real-time stats of your CPU and GPU. For memory you can use the display for checking capacity, frequency, temperature and load. Moreover, the display can sync with other Thermaltake components like the AiO cooler range.

From the front you will also see Thermaltake has boldly fitted a trio of RGB fans. These are also configured using TT RGB Plus 2.0 software. Users can make the fan lighting work in harmony with the LCD display. Alternatively, it is possible to control and sync the fan LEDs with RGB motherboard software from Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, and ASRock. Anti software bloat purists can decide to control the fan lighting using the dedicated RGB button on the I/O panel. This button turns the RGB LEDs on and off and cycles through 27 color schemes and modes.

That more or less covers the Thermaltake Divider 550 TG Ultra"s "special sauce" that center around its triple RGB fan and LCD display fronted appearance. If you have got this far you might be interested in the essential tech specs such as case size, capacity, and maximum compatibility stats. We have tabulated this data below for your convenience.

Some niceties that are worth highlighting are the rotational PCIe slots, to make the case vertical or horizontally orientated GPU friendly. A rizer cable bracket and GPU support is included with the case too. Lastly, we are thankful Thermaltake has both USB Type-A and Type–C ports in the easy access I/O section atop of the case.

At the time of writing we don"t have any release date or pricing specifics to share. As Thermaltake has moved from the announcement stage to the product page population phase, an actual hard launch shouldn"t be far away.

If readers are interested in acquiring a new PC case in the meantime, you would be advised to check out our recently updated guide to the Best PC Cases of 2022.

It would be an understatement to say that PC gaming has seen a bit of a resurgence in the last few years, in spite of ongoing GPU supply issues and price gouging. So it"s not entirely surprising that when Valve announced the Steam Deck ($399 to start, $649 as tested), players jumped at the opportunity to play their favorite games on what appeared to be a high-quality handheld device. After all, previous handheld PCs like the Aya Neo aren"t exactly household names, and usually cost much more.

Following a hyped launch and one delay, it"s now time for the Steam Deck to start shipping. And having spent quite a bit of time with it, I think this thing is pretty great, even when it"s a bit wonky. As someone who started my life gaming on consoles before transitioning to being more platform agnostic, I find that the Steam Deck combines the simplicity I appreciate with the customization options I"ve learned to love. It also lets me play games however I"m comfortable playing them, much like the Nintendo Switch.

The build quality is strong and solid, and the anti-glare display is beautiful. I don"t think anyone will be surprised that the battery life isn"t stellar for most titles. But what will compel some people and shock others is how much of a PC this is. Some of that comes from the fact that Valve is still tinkering on the software side, and based on the improvements I"ve seen in my time with the device, I expect it to seem more fully baked soon. Yet it"s also due to the fact that there is so much you can change, and how there are little quirks you"ll have to live with or try to fix.

Most people don"t need a Steam Deck (not that you"ll be able to buy one easily for a long time, anyway), but many will enjoy it, despite any oddities. It"s good for single-player games, indies and for hobbyists who want to mess with Linux or install Windows.

Those who care most about playing their games on the go and are willing to sacrifice fidelity for the cause will be surprised just how much computer they"re getting here.

One note: We got to spend more time with the Steam Deck than we do with some other products, but that came with the caveat that the software was being finished up until release. We didn"t see any major performance changes as our testing progressed, but some features were still being worked on until the very end, and we may write more about those in updates to this review or in upcoming coverage.

Valve"s handheld is an imposing, black plastic machine, measuring 11.73 inches wide, 4.6 inches tall and 1.93 inches deep (298 x 117 x 49 mm). A standard Nintendo Switch is 9.4 x 4 x 0.5 inches, so this is far longer and thicker. Still it"s much smaller than the best gaming laptops.

The build quality is really solid here. Everything feels nice, with the exception of seams that go around the sides. This, however, lets you open the device, which we"ll get to later on. There are a handful of decorative lines that give it a bit of a gamer edge, but they"re tone-on tone and don"t stand out too much. A Valve logo is on the back of the system. There"s a significant bezel around the 7-inch touchscreen. In practice, it didn"t bother me much, but I wish it were smaller so Valve could have fit a slightly larger display in this chassis.

Valve has jammed a lot of inputs into a small space. There"s a D-Pad, two thumbsticks, A/B/X/Y buttons, a pair of trackpads with haptic feedback, as well as view and menu buttons for games and "Steam" and a "..." options button for Steam OS (these two buttons appear to have pad printed legends, which is one of a very few areas about this thing that feels cheap). On the rear, there are four more buttons you can hit with your fingers, like you can see on many controllers aimed at gamers playing FPS titles who don"t want to take their thumbs off the sticks. Additionally, you get standard bumpers and triggers.

The D-pad is next to the left thumb stick, and the A/B/X/Y buttons are to the right of the right stick. This is very unlike what has been popularized by Xbox and PlayStation, but it does work. I"m 5 feet, 8 inches tall and have fairly average-sized hands. For those with smaller hands, I could see an issue where you may have to stretch to reach both the thumbsticks and triggers. One such small-handed person in my life told me they felt they were using their "full wingspan" to get their hands around it.

When you first pick the Deck up, you"ll notice how hefty it feels. It weighs just under 1.5 pounds, which is a lot compared to the Switch, which is about 0.88 pounds. But the Steam Deck has far more powerful hardware packed in.

At first, I did worry about the weight. But as I used it, I rarely had an issue with it. Yes, it"s heavier than the Switch I played hours of Stardew Valleyon, but my hands weren"t cramping up after several hours of games I"ve been bouncing between, like Guardians of the Galaxy and Ace Attorney Chronicles.

I have to say, I love the inputs. The thumbsticks feel excellent: smooth with just a bit of heft. Most controllers do eventually drift, but the fact that these feel solid gives me the impression that they will last a while. The D-Pad, too, feels excellent, and I"m pretty picky about these things. I think some people might wish it were a bit larger, but there"s just the right amount of resistance and click.

The A/B/X/Y buttons are a bit softer than on my go-to Xbox wireless controllers and make far less noise. That lack of a click felt a bit odd at first, but I grew to appreciate the buttons quietly popping up immediately so I could mash them down again.

The haptic feedback on the touchpads is, frankly, weak. I mostly used the touchpads in games where a mouse would be better than a joystick (or as the mouse on the KDE Plasma desktop), but at least it gave me a small sense of where the cursor was moving. Still, the touchpads work great as a mouse replacement in games like Civilization VI, which was surprisingly playable on the Steam Deck.

Those two Steam OS-focused buttons are inset with the rest of the chassis. This makes it extremely unlikely that you"ll press them by accident during gameplay, but I found that it also made them harder to access than they should be when you need them. They require a much harder press than anything else on the system. Start strengthening those thumbs.

There are very few ports on the Steam Deck. Most of them are located along the top. There"s a 3.5 mm headphone jack next to the volume buttons, and then an all-important USB Type-C port next to the power button. This USB-C port is used for charging (a 45 watt charger is included), but this is a computer, so you can also use USB hubs to connect keyboards and mice or external storage.

On the bottom of the Steam Deck, there"s a microSD card slot. For the 64GB configuration, this UHS-I slot is going to be a must-have for quick and easy expandability.

Occasionally, I used the Deck with a powered USB-C hub to use a mouse and keyboard. Valve says an official Dock is coming in the spring, but right now, that doesn"t help. I wish the Steam Deck had a kickstand built in so that it could be used with controllers or other peripherals anywhere. For now, you may have to turn to the 3D printing community.

The Steam Deck is running on a custom AMD Zen 2 "Van Gogh" APU that the company has dubbed "Aerith." The CPU has four cores and eight threads, with a base clock of 2.4 GHz and a boost clock up to 3.5 GHz. It also has 8 RDNA 2-based compute units.

That"s all paired with 16GB of LPPDR5 RAM. Storage comes in three variations: 64GB of eMMC, which is likely to be quite slow, a 256GB M.2 NVMe SSD, or, in our review unit, a 512GB M.2 NVMe SSD.

The potential library of games on Steam is massive, and over the coming months, a lot of people are going to tweak their favorite games to find out how they play. To test the Steam Deck, I played some games on my own, but I also ran some benchmarks.

Those tests were a mix of the ones we run on gaming laptops and desktops, as well as some games from my personal library. But because we"re trying to find out how Steam Deck runs games in different ways, we ran most of them at multiple settings. In each case, we ran the benchmark at the Steam Deck"s native resolution of 1280 x 800, though I imagine some gamers may see bumping down to 720p (1280 x 720) in the hopes of saving a few frames.

Additionally, we wanted to see if there was a noticeable difference between installing a game on the SSD or an SD card, so we ran the benchmarks again off the external storage. The SD card we used in this test was a 512GB SanDisk Extreme(opens in new tab). Your results may vary on other memory cards.

One other note: the weekend prior to the review embargo, Valve implemented a change to SteamOS. Specifically, it created a toggle that, when turned on, caps frame rates at 30 frames per second (fps) and, when flipped off, tops out at 60 fps. VSync was also turned on at the system level, ignoring game settings. Valve told Tom"s Hardware it intends on implementing a more granular slider and the ability to turn VSync off. We have chosen to publish benchmark numbers from tests we ran prior to the implementation, which should give a more accurate showing of what the Steam Deck can do when not tied down. Note that frame rates above 60 fps, when retested, dropped to the cap. Others, however, remained largely unchanged.

First up was Shadow of the Tomb Raider, which has a native Linux version. As of our testing, Steam marked it as "Playable." For this game, we turned off anti-aliasing, but otherwise used the game"s normal graphics presets. On the "Lowest" preset, the game ran at an average of over 63 frames per second, passing just about anyone"s bare minimum for playability. You could even boost it up to low (54 fps) or medium (42 fps on SSD) for a slightly better picture. Even on the highest preset, it ran at 38 fps. I have to imagine that part of why this game performed so well is that it runs on Linux, and doesn"t have to go through the Proton compatibility layer.

I"ve been playing a lot of Guardians of the Galaxy recently, and it happens to have a built-in benchmark. That runs through the Proton compatibility layer (as do the rest of our games, and the majority of games on Steam). On low, it played at 32 frames per second, and at its medium preset the game only lost one frame, but had far lower minimum frames, effectively rendering it unplayable.

Red Dead Redemption 2 is one of our more punishing benchmarks, so I ran it using Vulkan with every setting as low as it goes. (Additionally, the presets are specific to your hardware.) The game played at an average of 49 frames per second off the SSD and 50 fps of the SD card, a negligible difference.

Borderlands 3 was also extremely playable by its benchmark"s metrics. It was just shy of 60 frames per second on the very low preset, dropping to 51 fps on the low preset and 42 fps at medium. Jumping to high, however, was unplayable at an average of 28 fps.

Of the games we benchmarked, Horizon Zero Dawn is the only one that"s fully Steam Deck verified. On the "Favor Performance" preset, it ran at 48 frames per second, and it reached 40 fps on the "Original" preset designed to emulate the PlayStation 4 version. At "Favor Quality," it reached 35 frames per second, but at "Ultimate Quality," even with a 30 fps average, too many frames ran below that to recommend it.

Civilization VI showed well across its various presets on the Steam Deck. It"s marked playable on the Steam Deck, but even though there"s a native Linux version of the game, you have to force it to use Proton to work, so these numbers are through the compatibility layer.

You may notice from our charts that running games off of the SD card proved effectively identical as playing the game from the built-in SSD. In the few cases where there was a difference, they were actually in the SD card"s favor, although only by a single frame or so. If I didn"t run these tests myself, I wouldn"t believe it, but here we are. Anecdotally, I did find that some initial loading times were longer off the SD card, but these numbers suggest that you shouldn"t worry about getting some external storage, though again, ours was quite fast.

Valve suggested to me that people underestimate SD card read speeds, though write speeds are an issue. The company has made it so whichever drive is playing games won"t see background downloads to avoid them reading and writing at the same time, which could slow down gaming. Valve devs also suggested that many current games don"t use SSDs to their full potential. I"m curious to see how that may change now that the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S come with solid-state storage.

We also ran a stress test on the Steam Deck (again, ahead of the current 60 fps cap and without VSync). Unfortunately, the Metro Exodusbenchmark was a non-starter, as it requires a separate executable that you can"t launch through Steam OS (we may revisit it with Windows later). Instead, I used the built-in performance overlay, which uses MangoHud, to record myself playing a bit of Deathloopat the Deck"s native 1200 x 800 resolution and the Very Low graphics preset.

On the charts, we cut out the time downloading updates for the game, so they start when the game revs up. We also removed idle time at the end of the test, used to jump back to SteamOS and stop logging.

In our first chart, which shows frames per second and temperature over time, you can see the temperature for the CPU and GPU cores in shades of red, which are very similar here. The GPU is slightly higher. While this could vary based on the game you"re playing, this isn"t terribly surprising, as they"re on the same silicon. There"s a peak temperature of around 90 degrees Celsius near the end of the test, but under full load, the temperatures hovered around the 80 to 85 degrees Celsius range. The fps data, in blue, shows slightly higher performance during the opening part of the game, possibly because there are some more menus involved there that aren"t as intensive, also possibly because the GPU is a bit cooler. But there"s no sign of severe throttling for either the CPU or GPU. You may notice, in the middle, a point where I died in the game, causing a brief period in which I had to go through menus, which weren"t too hard for the GPU. There, the frame rates appeared to skyrocket.

Besides benchmarking games, I also spent a bunch of time playing them. Valve is moving through games to mark them as "verified," "playable," "untested," or that they don"t work at all. For much of my time with the Steam Deck, my library showed a mix of these, with most of them falling into the untested category. You can check the status of the games of your library with Valve"s tool here.

Untested doesn"t mean that a game doesn"t work. For most games, I"m told, it"s just a matter of getting to testing. I found it to be a mixed bag. For instance, as of this writing, no one got around to Ace Attorney Investigations, Tacoma or SoulCalibur VI, and those largely worked just fine (except for some small text in Tacoma). But Halo Infinite doesn"t launch at all. Cyberpunk 2077launches, but then often shows an error message.

When I played Guardians of the Galaxy, I found that the graphics tended to have some bugs, including lighting elements occasionally flashing when they weren"t supposed to, which was distracting but didn"t break the game. The game is listed as "playable." Early on in my testing, I had to avoid certain items that reveal deeper lore. Picking those up reliably crashed the game. At the time, the game was untested, but I went back to find that bug had been fixed. In fact, I finished the game on the Steam Deck.

Valve has previously suggested that if a game doesn"t work on Steam Deck, it considers that to be a bug. It ends up, some of that work can be fixed on Steam"s end.

"Most of the things that are causing games to not run well now are usually things that we have to fix in Proton or in the graphics driver, or in the SteamOS itself, to get the game to the same point where, you know, it would run on a normal Windows PC," Steam Deck developer Pierre-Loup Griffais told Tom"s Hardware. So if a game isn"t working now, there is hope.

Other aspects, like text legibility or controller support that would move a game from "playable" to "verified" would need to be fixed by the developer. When I tried Splitgate, the game was a bit confused: It knew I had a controller connected, but wanted me to go to the settings and change it away from the keyboard and mouse setting. Luckily, it let me use the controller for that, just not for the game. Once that was set, it all worked well. Hopefully, that"s the type of thing that can be easily fixed.

To get through the massive Steam catalog, the company is working with third-party testing houses it has worked with previously on projects like verifying content on Steam. Those testers play the game and check them against criteria.

Games that are rated tend to work as advertised. Verified games like Cuphead, Portal 2 and Horizon Zero Dawn were effectively launch-and-play. Playable games required slightly more work. Civilization VI needs to be launched through Proton, despite being Linux native, and when it does, it can"t auto-set GPU settings. Do it once, and you"re good. Dead Cells downloaded a specific version of Proton it works well with to work after an update.

Another fun issue has been games with launchers. It"s not something you expect with a console, but SteamOS is seemingly doing its best to adapt here. The switch from Steam to a launcher designed for Windows makes for a dramatic, sometimes awkward transition, and launchers sometimes need keyboard and mouse controls (the latter can often be used through the trackpad) or the touch screen to work. I found third-party controllers also sometimes were better at navigating them than the built-in controls.

SteamOS 3.0 is Arch Linux based, but for most people, it"s just going to be the user interface to get to your games. And if you know Steam on a PC, SteamOS will look and feel quite familiar to you.

You will need an internet connection the first time you log in to the Steam Deck with your Steam account. Once you do, you"ll get a quick tour of the system, letting you know which hardware buttons do what and a reminder of where the SD card reader is.

Entering the library shows you all of your games on Steam. A few need to update their cover art, but most look quite nice here. You can sort the games by which ones are "Great on Deck," which means they"re verified to work, or sort by favorites or installed titles. I appreciate that they extended the verification system to the store, so that you can get an idea of how a game will work before you buy it.

There are additional tabs in the menu to bring you to the store, which is effectively the same as what you see on PC, but with an interface that works better with the controller and 7-inch display. Valve has also added a new "Great on Deck" space that highlights only verified games. A tab for your friends and chat lets you communicate via voice or text (though you"ll probably want to plug in a physical keyboard for the latter. Typing on the on-screen keyboard isn"t nearly as fast.)

The Media section lets you check out screenshots you took with the Steam + R1 shortcut on the Deck, and you can upload those to Steam"s servers to view elsewhere. I wish there were an option to move these images to a microSD card or external drive.

Perhaps the meatiest section is settings, which features everything from time zones to internet options, audio, bluetooth, display brightness, family sharing and more. Basically, anything else is tucked in here somewhere.

On the right side of the unit, the "..." option brings up quick settings that you can change no matter where you are in the system (it also shows your notifications and friends list at a glance). You can also check battery levels, change brightness and turn rumble and haptics on and off here. Finally, there are toggles for airplane mode, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and night mode.

Pressing the Steam menu button while in a game brings up more specific options for it, including letting you scroll over to a map of the controls, in case you need a quick reminder. If you have multiple apps open, you can also quickly switch between them here. This works great if you"re moving to a web browser or a music player, but if you try to launch a second game, Steam will toss up a warning that this may impact performance.

A small handful of sections of SteamOS require the use of the touch screen as the input method. I found these when looking at profiles and adding friends. I was instructed, by an icon at the top of the screen to "Use touch." It worked, but didn"t seem as polished as the rest of the OS, which can use several input methods.

These will be invaluable for those who want to stretch out battery life as long as possible. Some games have FSR built in, but using it or other scaling filters system-wide can save energy in games that don"t include it. Setti