If you're one of those Windows enthusiasts who finds Windows' hardware volume controls absolutely infuriating, there's good news: The latest Windows 11 Insider Build restores sanity to the universe.

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 22533 is currently rolling out for the Dev Channel, which means the code isn't guaranteed to roll out to the stable channel of existing Windows 11 PCs. But given the level of distaste for the current flyout structure, there's a good chance it will.

What do we mean? If you use your laptop's hardware controls to adjust the brightness or volume, the control typically appears way up in the top left-hand corner of your screen, with some odd vertical slide bar controlling the experience. It doesn't look anything like Windows, really.

With the updated flyout experience, you'll see the new hardware indicators for brightness, volume, camera privacy, camera on/off, and airplane mode “align with Windows 11 design principles,” according to the Windows blog post announcing the changes. So you'll see a transition between the old flyout, and the new, like so:

Microsoft isn't changing the way the volume controls are handled on the taskbar, however. If you click the Action Center down in the lower right-hand corner of your screen, you'll still see the familiar horizontal volume slider. Now, however, you'll also see the horizontal controls when you use your keyboard's control keys, too.

The new build also includes a new Calls interface within the Your Phone app. Remember, you can actually place phone calls on your PC, using the PC's Bluetooth connection to route your PC's microphone to your nearby phone. The phone interface has been updated to bring it in line with the Windows 11 UI, too.

Microsoft

Finally, the changes Microsoft is making to Widgets—bringing the weather icon to the Windows 11 taskbar, as it announced last year for Windows 10—is being pushed back. “[O]ur intention is to quickly expand the rollout to the majority of Insiders in the Dev Channel,” Microsoft said of Widgets.

When Apple finally released its M1 Max processor in October, the Internet predictably saw dark days for PC laptops. Some even felt bad for PC laptop makers being uncompetitive with the MacBook Pro for perhaps “years.” Those predictions may have to be retuned a bit now that Intel and Nvidia have both come out swinging at Apple, however.

Nvidia was the first to step on Apple's sneakers when it announced its new GeForce RTX 3070 Ti and GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Laptop GPUs. Nvidia casually compared not just its newest GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Laptop GPU against Apple's fastest M1 Max, but also the far more pedestrian GeForce RTX 3060 Laptop GPU using Autodesk Arnold, Blender, Chaos V-Ray, OctaneRender and Redshift.

As you can see from the comparison with the MacBook Pro 16's M1 Max, both the new GeForce flagship and the far blander RTX 3060 Laptop GPU simply crush the M1 Max. And by crush, we mean crush, because when a GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Laptop GPU takes 10 minutes to perform a render and a GeForce RTX 3060 Laptop GPU takes 22 minutes using Autodesk Arnold, versus 78 minutes for the M1 Max, it's a beat-down. That's an 87 percent decrease in rendering time for the RTX 3080 Ti vs. the M1 Max, and a 78 percent advantage for the RTX 3060. That's a shellacking no matter how you count it for working creators, but it should be pointed out that many of these apps have long been optimized for Nvidia's GPUs, giving GeForce a home field advantage.

Nvidia

For example, it's not clear if the testing Nvidia did for Blender Cycles used the version that's currently being ported to Apple's M1 and Metal API. We'd guess not since the presentation would have been based on numbers likely prepared well before CES 2022 to meet approval for public dissemination. With Blender support still in pre-beta stage, it's highly doubtful the Blender score is running an alpha version.

So is it fair if Nvidia shows off a stack of benchmarks arguably optimized for its GPU versus the unknown quantity of M1 Max support? It depends.

If your idea of a good time is to get into a yelling match on Twitter while wearing an Apple team jersey over the “unfairness” of Nvidia's results, then it's definitely not fair. If you're a working professional who gets paid to shovel pixels in Autodesk Arnold, Blender, V-Ray, OctaneRender, or Redshift, then it's most certainly a fair test, since the only thing you probably care about is how fast your hardware can make you money.

Intel steps up too

After Nvidia poked Apple in the nose a few times, Intel jumped into the ring later that morning by saying that its new 12th-gen “Alder Lake” laptop CPUs are faster than not only its older 11th-gen Tiger Lake H CPUs and AMD's Ryzen 9 5900HX, but also Apple's M1 Max. So yes, as the slide below says, the fastest mobile processor. Ever.

Intel

What's that based on? Fortunately, responsible companies show their homework as Intel did. In fact, Intel shows way more of its work than Nvidia did in its video, which publishes the results, but no information about how it tested the laptops.

Intel says its performance results for the Apple M1 Max is estimated based on: “public statements made by Apple on 10/18/2021 and measurements on Apple M1 Max 16″ 64GB RAM Model A2485. The metric used is the geometric mean of an n-copy SPECrate run of the C/C++ integer benchmarks in SPEC CPU 2017.”

For the uninitiated, SPEC is published by Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation, an industry group that has come together to create various agreed-upon tests and proclaims itself a “beacon of truth for 30 years.” Members include a who's who of tech companies including AMD, Apple, Intel, and Nvidia. You're typically required to publish much of the fine print, including wh at was used to compile the executables for the test too.

In Intel's case, it said it used ICC for the Windows laptops and Apple's Xcode 13.1 for the M1 Max. To its credit (although some would say it's just to avoid further Imperial entanglements), Intel discloses far more details on how it achieved its claim here.

Intel

Still, the upshot of Intel's tests says that even at 28 watts or so of power consumption, it's easily outperforming the M1 Max in a test even Apple has signed onto. As you push the wattage envelope of the Core i9-12900HK you're looking at perhaps near 45 percent more performance than that M1 Max.

So, what should you believe? One problem with SPEC benchmarks, though sometimes based on actual application code, is the lack of relatability for consumers. They can be useful for computer science students arguing in the quad, but for most people they're pretty esoteric. We'd probably want to see something we can relate to before determining if and how much of a beat down the new 12th-gen Alder Lake gives the M1 Max. It's very hard to argue against a test published by a benchmarking group even Apple is a member of though.

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And it's good Intel published its homework. We wish Nvidia would have said a little more about how it tested the laptops against the Apple M1 Max—did the workloads include ray tracing features that GeForce GPUs pack dedicated hardware for? But it's hard to complain about what Nvidia did when Apple has been publishing results like the one below. This is a benchmark result Apple showed off for the M1 Max's launch and, frankly, we still have no idea what Apple based it on. The dark gray line represents MSI's killer GE76 Raider gaming laptop that's actually—to Apple's credit—displayed as being faster than the M1 Max. The lighter gray line is a Razer Blade Advanced, which is slightly slower than the M1 Max. Both are outfitted with a GeForce RTX 3080 Laptop GPUs.

Apple

The M1 Max may lose or come close to Nvidia's GPUs in raw performance, but Apple's real victory is its power consumption. Apple's M1 Max and its TSMC 5nm process is indeed impressive for the power it consumes. At the same time, just what the hell was Apple testing? We have no doubt the M1 Max is indeed efficient, but of the three “our bars are longer” presentations, Apple's is the thinnest on actual details and mostly leaves you wondering just how it determined what it did. If you're concerned over Nvidia or Intel being fair, you should be even more concerned about Apple's claims.

In the end, consumers should always take any vendor's claims with a grain of salt. Wait for independent reviews using tests that relate to what you actually do with your laptop before deciding what to buy.

CES returned to Las Vegas in 2022, but most of the major PC players decided to stick to the safety of remote events. The parade of PC hardware went on regardless. Big names AMD, Intel, and Nvidia all made splashy announcements, and PC manufacturers followed in their wake with new products, many coming soon. Peripherals and displays proved just as exciting. We also witnessed some deeply interesting reveals that had nothing to do with computers whatsoever, like a chameleon-like color-shifting BMW.

No time to sift through all our CES coverage? No problem! Read on for our Best of CES picks—the most intriguing and innovative products we saw. (If you're looking for higher-level impressions from the show, be sure to check out our roundups of 5 laptops trends and 5 monitor trends that PC enthusiasts can't ignore.)

CyberPowerPC Kinetic case

CyberPower

We've seen a lot of PC cases in our time, but none that has the wild take on practicality of CyberPowerPC's new Kinetic series. This futuristic case features a set of small, angular panels on its front that automatically open and close to manage airflow. Between the geometric design, sleek white and copper aesthetic, and mechanical wizardry, it looks like something straight out of a sci-fi movie. The company demurely refers to its design as “intelligent airflow,” but it's a hell of a way to stand out among the field of mid-tower ATX cases. —Alaina Yee

Dell XPS 13 Plus

Dell's XPS 13 is arguably one of the most high-profile laptops around thanks to its history of setting the stage for what all laptops strive for. For example: Before the first XPS 13 with InfinityEdge bezels appeared, all laptops rolled with bezels about as ridiculous-looking as bell bottom corduroy pants.

Dell's vaunted line once again reaches for the brass ring with the new 14-core XPS 13 Plus, which gives off a gorgeous and minimalistic look with its integrated haptic trackpad. The trackpad is still there in the central part of the palm rest but rather than using a conventional piano-hinge design, it “clicks” similarly to how your phone shakes.

Dell also isn't shy to take the Internet's slings and arrows with the integration of, well, not a touch bar, but a bar you can touch for the function keys striped across the top. Sure, the tech press that previously lauded Apple's Touch Bar as “futuristic” and “smart” are now out in force saying the XPS 13 Plus' capacitive touch function key is a bad idea—but that's the fickle press for you.

The Dell XPS 13 Plus grabs onto another controversial design decision with both hands by ditching the beloved 3.5mm analog headset jack. Dell said it dumped the jack to save space (also the reason it ditched physical function keys), which lets it stuff way more hardware inside.

Obviously, everyone will wonder if it's worth losing that headset jack and physical F4 key, but we'd guess there are plenty of folks that would call those worthy sacrifices to get a 14-core CPU in a laptop weighing less than three pounds.

What we can tell you is to win big, you have to take risks, and the XPS 13 Plus swings for the fences like Dell did years ago, when it basically forced all other laptop makers to catch up. — Gordon Mah Ung

Alienware 34 QD-LED

Dell

We've seen a few OLED screens aimed at PC gamers before, but they've generally been repurposed TV panels with a few extra bells and whistles (and of course, that lucrative “gamer” branding). Alienware seems to be the first out of the gate with a screen built from the ground up with PC gaming in mind. This massive 34-inch monitor is still tiny by comparison to previous designs, fitting into the popular 34-inch ultrawide category.

But it's not wanting for bells nor whistles. In addition to the usual RGB lighting, G-Sync support, and plethora of inputs expected from a premium PC gaming monitor, the Alienware QD-OLED 34 combines quantum dot technology with the perfect blacks and vivid colors of OLED for a brighter overall panel, overcoming some of the technology's inherent weaknesses. It's a common theme among the new TVs at CES, so it's great to see that (finally) going right into a PC monitor. On top of that you get a speedy 175Hz native refresh rate (impressive for this size), a USB hub, and a host of gamer goodies as well.

In short, while there are bigger and more impressive OLED “monitors” on the show floor, this is the one I'm going to be extremely tempted to spend (lots and lots) of money on in 2022. —Michael Crider

12th-gen Intel ‘Alder Lake' laptop CPUs

Intel

We wouldn't be lying if we said CES 2022's bushel of laptop CPUs was an embarrassment of riches, with AMD first announcing Ryzen 6000 mobile CPUs using its impressive Zen 3+ cores, and then Intel firing back with its 12th-gen Alder Lake mobile CPUs. What's better? Well, we don't honestly know yet to be honest. Both lines offer pretty spectacular feature sets, such as the new RDNA 2-based GPU cores in AMD's Ryzen 6000 processors, which offer twice the performance of the older chips. Intel's CPUs, meanwhile, bring core counts to unheard-of levels with three pound laptops wielding 14 cores on tap.

So you can see our predicament in trying to pick the best laptop CPU announcement at CES—everyone's a winner! “Best of” awards never get shared, however, so that means we have to pick a winner and with phaser to our head, we declare Intel's 12th-gen Alder Lake laptop lineup as the best laptop CPU of the show.

Offering a hybrid architecture with up to six performance cores sitting aside another 8 efficiency cores, a combination expected to offer more than 40 percent increased performance over Intel's already pretty awesome 11th-gen Tiger Lake CPUs, Intel's 12th-gen chips will be very difficult CPUs for even AMD's new Ryzen 6000 series to unseat in terms of raw performance. —Gordon Mah Ung

Samsung Freestyle portable projector

Samsung

Projectors may seem out of fashion these days, given the ubiquity of fancy monitors and televisions. But given world circumstances right now, the idea of setting up a big-screen viewing experience almost anywhere hits just right. Whether you want to have outdoor movie nights or make the most of ultra-tight living quarters, the Samsung Freestyle can adapt to the situation. It takes the same amount of room as a thermos, can run off of a USB PD power bank, and even screws into standard E26 light bulb sockets. No one needs this projector, but I definitely want one. (You can get the full lowdown on the Samsung Freestyle over at TechHive, our sister site.) —Alaina Yee

Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 3

Lenovo

You know what's better than one display? Two displays. The Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 3 certainly raised some eyebrows at CES this year due to this rather unusual feature. That said, it's a cool bit of hardware that makes multitasking a whole lot easier. The secondary display, which lives on the right side of the keyboard, is 8-inches with a resolution of 800-by-1280. The screen is made of glass and touch-enabled, and it allows you to quickly access apps like Microsoft Outlook or Edge. It's a great productivity machine for business professionals looking to get some serious work done, that's for sure. —Ashley Biancuzzo

AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT

AMD

Over three long years after Nvidia's GeForce RTX 20-series kicked off the real-time ray tracing revolution, the first sub-$200 graphics card capable of handling those beautifully strenuous lighting effects is finally here—and it came from AMD, not Nvidia. The Radeon RX 6500 XT is a humble $199 desktop GPU pitched more as a budget successor to the popular Radeon RX 570 than a true ray tracing powerhouse, but flipping on AMD's new Radeon Super Resolution feature (which will speed up performance in all your games) should help pick up the slack.

The sheer fact that a $199 graphics card exists in the midst of a severe GPU drought is worth cheering, and since AMD outfitted the 6500 XT with 4GB of RAM, it can't be used to mine Ethereum—the primary cryptocurrency helping to drive up graphics card costs. Time will tell if you'll actually be able to get your hands on one of these for around its sticker price, but I'd wager you'll probably have a lot better odds finding a Radeon RX 6500 XT in stores than Nvidia's newly announced $249 RTX 3050, whose juicy 8GB memory buffer puts it squarely in the sights of miners. The Radeon RX 6500 XT could be just what desperate PC gamers need in 2022. Fingers crossed. —Brad Chacos

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 Ti

Nvidia

In a world where gamers are grateful to buy four-year-old used GPUs at their original list price, Nvidia's mic drop reveal of the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti (it's pronounced “tie”) felt like a slap to everyone's face. It's also, frankly, the most gangster move ever, akin to casually drinking from a diamond-encrusted Evian bottle while surrounded by masses of people dying of thirst. 

If you were offended by it though, you're missing the whole point of the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti's existence in the first place. 

Coming as the replacement for a card so luxurious that most reviewers said to skip it (ourselves included), the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti does two things: It gives those trying to scrimp by on $200 million NBA Super Max contracts something to buy to replace their old GeForce RTX 3090 with, and it flexes muscles in AMD's and—more importantly to Nvidia—Intel's face in a year we're likely to see a GPU cat fight the likes of which we've never seen before. So while the 3090 Ti may not be the best GPU at CES (that honor goes to the Radeon 6500 XT), it's definitely the best BFGPU at CES. —Gordon Mah Ung

L'oreal Colorsonic

L'oreal

Back when CES used to be something we visited in person, I got pitched my fair share of beauty-tech products. But unlike the “magic mirrors” products of yore, which showcased cool tech but didn't actually solve a widespread problem, the L'oreal Colorsonic piqued my curiosity in the same way as innovations in PC cases and smart home products—it's tech that aims to eliminate common hassles.

L'oreal says this hair-dyeing wand simplifies the process of at-home coloring by making it far less messy and ensuring even application of dye (the two biggest issues for DIYers). You simply choose one of 40 shades, load in the cartridge from the haircolor kit, and then brush the device through your hair for dye application. We'll see how effective this product will be for dark hair (which typically needs to be bleached first), but color me intrigued. —Alaina Yee

Alienware x14

We never owned Alienware's original netbook-sized gaming laptop, the M14x, and to this day we still pine about the “one that got away.” But maybe—just maybe—we'll have our chance again to own an ultra-portable gaming notebook, as the new Alienware x14 claims the title of being the “thinnest gaming laptop in the world.” 

Yeah, we know, you wrinkle your nose at “thin laptops,” but nothing motivates sales like a thin laptop, while also challenging engineers to make faster laptops with increasingly limited amounts of space.
Alienware's x14 measures a mere 12.66×10.4 inches at just 0.57-inches (or 14.5mm) thick. How thin is that? Most gaming laptops chest pound for being 19.5mm, so the x14 is 25 percent thinner. In fact, the Alienware x14 “out thins” Apple's new MacBook Pro 14 by a millimeter.

Despite its stature, the x14 packs in plenty of hardware with up to a 14-core 12^th-gen Core i7 cooled with Alienware's Element 31 thermal interface, and a GeForce RTX 3060 6GB GPU along with a 144Hz FHD panel and G-Sync plus Optimus Advanced.

While other thin gaming laptops have tended to tone down the gamer aesthetic to go “legit” the x14 embraces its heritage. Sure, to get there you have to use soldered down LPDDR5/5200 RAM, but that also helps with battery life on a laptop that you likely won't mind actually carrying in your really thin bag. —Gordon Mah Ung

AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D

AMD

Like laptop CPUs, the desktop CPU news at CES was beefy AF, with Intel filling out its entire desktop line up of 12th-gen CPUs, from $42 budget chips to the non-K CPUs most people buy. Intel closed off with news and a demo of a special edition “KS” chip that can run all of its performance cores at 5GHz while gaming. AMD, likewise, talked up its next-gen Ryzen 7000 processors due in the second half of the year—which can also run games with all cores at 5GHz. The CPU that might have the most impact for gamers, however, was AMD's Ryzen 7 5800X3D, which packs 64MB of high-performance L3 cache on top of an 8-core Ryzen 7 5800 die (hence the “3D” in the name).

That cache, AMD says, is just what games love, and will boost the Ryzen 7 5800X3D to gaming performance at and above that of Intel's top-end Core i9-12900K chip. It's so fast that AMD laid claim to it being the “fastest gaming CPU.” Sure, Ryzen 7000 is sexy and Alder Lake's full roster is exciting, but the value of a “fastest gaming CPU” sticker on the box is going to make most consumers gooey inside and easily qualifies as the best desktop CPU announcement at CES. —Gordon Mah Ung

BMW iX Flow 

BMW's iX Flow is a concept, but one that should be familiar to PC users. What would happen if you took an ordinary BMW SUV and instead replaced the “paint” with a bunch of E-Ink panels? The result is the BMW iX Flow, which can change colors on the fly. Since they're E-Ink, you can only switch between black, white, and limitless combinations of gray, black, or various patterns/combinations, but it's simply way cool, as you can see in the tweet above. —Mark Hachman

Dell UltraSharp 32 4K

Dell / YouTube

This seems so obvious I'm surprised it hasn't been done before: The Dell UltraSharp 32 4K is a desktop monitor that doubles as a Thunderbolt I/O dock. Maybe it just strikes me as particularly genius now that I'm working from home more often than not and finding myself regularly moving between my personal desktop and my work laptop, while having just one large monitor and one desk between them.

With the UltraSharp 32 4K, I could connect both machines to my 3240×2160 IPS display, as well as my mouse and keyboard, and use the KVM switching feature to seamlessly move between the two PCs as needed, using all the same peripherals, without adding any extra clutter—in the form of a standalone dock or switcher—to my already-cluttered desk. Shoot, you could possibly even daisy-chain a second monitor. At the same time, the UltraSharp's dock would be keeping my laptop charged without the need for its own power cable. How great is that? Ports include DisplayPort 1.4, USB-A ports, 10Gbps USB-C connections, an RJ45 port for Ethernet, and audio. It even has a built-in webcam. —Katherine Stevenson

Acer Predator Triton 500 SE

Acer

Acer's Predator Triton 500 SE strikes a balance between work and play, something that will hopefully become a trend in the future. Why have a gaming laptop and a productivity laptop, when one notebook can do both? Sure, there's a powerful 12th-gen Core and an Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti GPU inside, but the real story is just the workmanlike exterior and lack (yes, lack) of RGB bling. Long battery life, a high-res display, and gaming chops is a trend we like to see. —Mark Hachman

TP-Link AXE11000 Tri-Band Archer AXE200 Omni

TP-Link

Routers packing Wi-Fi 6E—the cutting-edge networking standard worth investing in—showed up in force at CES 2022 after sticking mostly to rare, high-end models in 2021. We saw Wi-Fi 6E routers rolled out by Netgear, TP-Link, Asus ROG, and even Comcast at the show, every one featuring blazing-fast speeds and killer next-gen features. My favorite though? The TP-Link AXE11000 Tri-Band Archer AXE200 Omni, and for a very, very dumb reason. It features mechanically self-adjusting arms that have a practical purpose—maximizing throughput from this ultra-fast router—but just as importantly, look absolutely badass.

As Wes Davis put it in his coverage, the whirling robo-arm setup “delights me—as someone who grew up with an '80s family-friendly sci fi-fueled vision of the future wherein all houses are full of whirring gizmos with superfluously-rotating, undulating, oscillating whatsits and doodads—on a purely superficial level.” And as a simple man who likes simple pleasures, all I can say is amen, brother. —Brad Chacos

LG C2 42-inch OLED TV

LG

Prior to LG's announcement this week, using an OLED television as a monitor meant going big—displays started at 48 inches and only went up from there. Having one sitting just a couple of feet from your face was borderline unwieldy. The upcoming 42-inch version of the LG C2 doesn't sound all that much smaller, but the six-inch difference should make desk usage feel far more comfortable. And at that close distance, you'll be able to properly enjoy OLED's deep black levels in all of your favorite dark, moody games and movies. The only bummer about LG's announcement is that the 42-inch and 48-inch version of the C2 lack the brighter EVO panels of their larger siblings. (For more info on the LG C2 lineup and other OLED TV announcements from CES, head over to our sister site TechHive.) —Alaina Yee

Lenovo Legion 5i Pro

Lenovo

With its glacial white chassis and barely-there bezels, the Lenovo Legion 5i Pro is sure to turn heads. The minimalistic, sophisticated aesthetic is a most welcome departure from the traditional gamer look. But it's more than just a pretty face. The 2960-by-1600 resolution IPS display features a lightning-fast adaptive refresh rate of 240Hz. The sky-high refresh rate is a major selling point, as it means smoother gameplay. The laptop is also driven by a 12th-gen Intel Core processor and RTX graphics. If it's power you're looking for, the Legion 5i Pro should have everything you need. —Ashley Biancuzzo

Editor's note: Originally published on January 7, updated on January 11 to add the Dell XPS 13 Plus and Alienware x14.

It may be incredibly small, but Micron's new 2400 SSD is still capable of packing up to 2TB of storage and PCIe 4.0, the company said Tuesday.

Micron said the teeny-tiny SSD (the smallest one above) measures 22mm x 30mm but is still capable of hitting 2TB of capacity and decent performance thanks to the company's new 176-layer QLC NAND. Micron calls its 176-layer ultra dense NAND an “unprecedented” development for PC storage for not only decreasing the physical space, but also upping the performance over its previous tiny 22x30mm SSD. The company said the new 2400 series SSD can deliver 33 percent higher I/O as well as 24 percent less latency compared to the previous Micron SSD built on its 96-layer technology.

Micron is actually offering the 176-layer QLC NAND in the less runty 22x42mm size as well as the familiar 22x80mm “gumstick SSD” size in capacities of 512GB, 1TB and 2TB. Performance of the 2TB versions (no matter the size) is rated at 4,500MBps sequential read and 4,000MBps write.

Power consumption is also impressive on the new QLC NAND, with active idle power of the highest capacity drive at under 150 milliwatts. It's enough that Micron said the drives are capable of meeting Intel's Evo (or “Project Athena”) requirements that mandate at least nine hours of battery life on a laptop even with a high-resolution display.

So why buy this tiny SSD? For most people with a desktop it likely makes no sense, and most laptop owners will simply buy the standard 22x80mm drives. But as PC makers increasingly look to shrink laptop footprints without giving up storage performance and capacity, smaller 22x30mm SSDs may increase in popularity.

Proving that whenever you buy something new, a better thing immediately comes out, the PCI-Sig Group announced the release of PCIe 6.0 on Tuesday, which will double the raw data rates of the PCIe 5.0 technology that only just debuted in Intel's 12th-gen ‘Alder Lake' Core processors.

PCI-SIG, the group that oversees the specification, said PCIe 6.0 will support 64 Giga Transfers per second, which equals about 256GB/s over a 16 lane configuration. To reach that blistering speed, PCIe 6.0 will use Pulse Amplitude Modulation with 4 levels, or PAM4, as well as updated packet management and flow control. Of course, like all versions of PCIe, it will be backwards compatible with previous versions.

Long-time chair and president of the PCI-SIG, Al Yanes, said the new standard will be initially aimed at data centers, but like previous versions of PCIe, will scale out to other uses over time. The spec has been brewing for some time but the final release means vendors can finally begin making hardware to support it.

Intel alder Lake are the only CPUs with pcie 5.0 support currently

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For normal people with normal desktop and laptop PCs, the announcement isn't something to worry about in the here and now, as the vast majority of modern computers are lucky to feature PCIe 4.0, which was introduced four years ago. PCs using PCIe 5.0 were only just introduced late last year with Intel's 12th-gen Alder Lake CPU, with AMD announcing last week that Ryzen 7000 CPUs scheduled for the second half of this year will also support it. Although no GPUs have been announced with PCIe 5.0 support yet, Samsung, Adata and a few other storage companies have demonstrated SSDs using the new interface—and yes, they're stupidly fast.

Even so, transferring 256GB/s is well beyond most personal computer needs right now, so you may wonder why PCIe 6.0 is being announced now. Beyond the fact that data centers and many high-performance computing applications do need more interconnect performance, personal PCs benefit by having the infrastructure in place ahead of time.

In short, think of what the PCI-SIG does for the personal computer as building out the freeways of the PC before the roads get congested rather than waiting for them to become a gridlocked version of Los Angeles.

Although it may look like PCIe 6.0 is “too soon,” the PCI-SIG has generally kept to fairly ambitious and reliably predictable schedule of doubling bandwidth every “three years.” The longest drought lasted from PCIe 3.0 to PCIe 4.0, which took seven years to be finalized as a spec, with hardware arriving two years later in AMD's fantastic Ryzen 3000-series processors.