The real threat to the PC isn’t death. It’s losing control

A couple of months ago, I floated the idea of renting a PC. Specifically a Valve Steam Machine, in the hopes of getting the concept to take. I wanted it to live. But the problem with thought exercises is they can end up disconnected from the world.

Recent rulings and settlements dumped ice-cold reality on me. Not just the fact that companies are not our friends, which has always been clear; the Ticketmaster lawsuit drives that point home, as does the NZXT settlement for PC rentals that never made financial sense. But also: We now apparently live in a time where war is being waged over ownership. Or more precisely, who controls our hardware, software, and even fundamental right to privacy.

I see this theme as a central thread in current news. For example: The French government announced an accelerated plan for digital sovereignty, with a planned move from Windows to Linux for workstations, a switch of file transfer tools, and by the end of 2026, a migration of health data to a new platform.

California residents have sued two healthcare providers over use of third-party AI tools that transcribe conversations between patients and practitioners. 

Netgear won an exemption to sell its consumer-grade routers in the U.S. again, but the terms of the deal remain undisclosed.

Mail-order prescription company Hims & Hers and travel agency Booking.com experienced data breaches, with some personal data lost.

My colleague and mentor Gordon Mah Ung used to talk about the death of the PC often. I, having grown up almost a generation after him, always viewed this as a sort of trauma—I figured that experiencing such an existential threat left an indelible mark on him. Meanwhile, I got my start in PCs during an era of bounty. I took it for granted that component sizes would shrink, performance would improve, and prices would go down.

But now I think I better understand him. As he said often, the PC stands for openness. You can build what you want, how you want, and then use it as you want.

If you can’t own that experience, the PC dies as a concept. You don’t have control. Gordon saw this danger in devices like iPads and gaming consoles. I see it the way the French government does; I understand its focus on digital sovereignty. Software and services are now the prime battleground for true ownership. The information that flows through a PC should be in theory yours alone. Only others with permission should get to handle the data, including applying any updates. If that’s not the case, then is that pile of hardware truly yours?

So to protect the PC now, enthusiasts may have to stop thinking about smaller nodes and higher efficiency, at least for the moment. Instead, growth might be sideways—progression that serves openness and freedom at scale. We’ve done this before, during the dawn of the internet era, making the most out of what little we had. Fighting for what we had.

Perhaps our roots will be our saving. Because otherwise, if everyone lets this slide, we all could lose big time.

In this episode of The Full Nerd

In this episode of The Full Nerd, Adam Patrick Murray, Brad Chacos, Alaina Yee, and Will Smith discuss the NZXT class action lawsuit and settlement terms—a win for investigative journalism (and specifically, the Steve & Gamers Nexus team). We also chat about our recommendations for fresh Windows installs; perhaps unsurprisingly, we have a lot of opinions on the right way to approach a sparkling new PC build.

(Brad’s take for normies is probably the best checklist to use whenever you’re drafted as unpaid tech support for loved ones.)

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And if you need more hardware talk during the rest of the week, come join our Discord community—it’s full of cool, laid-back nerds.

This week’s jumbled nerd news

You know that meme from 30 Rock, where Liz Lemon says “What a week” and the response is “Lemon, it’s Wednesday”? The news that crossed my desk sure had that vibe in aggregate. Cheap storage is now expensive, Framework’s founder thinks the PC may already be dead, and solar flares just went on my list of concerns.

On the bright side though, Alienware announced a $350 OLED monitor.

• A $350 OLED monitor: Yeah, I looked out the window. No pigs. (Brad has this Alienware monitor in for testing, and I am eagerly awaiting his take.)

• Discord, WYD: If you needed further proof that Discord’s handling of age verification could be problematic for teens and parents alike, well…

• No such thing as too much: At least, not for this one creator who built a dome with Noctua fans. Specifically $600 worth of Noctua fans.

• Too late: Microsoft’s new head of Xbox may feel Game Pass is too expensive, but the damage has been done. It’s gonna take a lot to come back from this one, in my opinion.

• More bad dream fuel: Didn’t have “solar flares” on my list of worries. I guess I also now understand why Gordon was a low-key prepper.

• Is personal computing as we know it dead? Framework’s founder thinks so.

• Not a fan: I thought the Ryzen 7 5800X3D was a beautiful send-off for AM4. The rumor it could be revived in acknowledgement of Ryzen’s 10th anniversary? Less attractive.

• Didn’t need the reminder: But I will give an A+ to this Tom’s Hardware headline for a 25th anniversary retrospective on Clippy. The digital assistant no one liked. No one.

• Ouch: I swear I say this word almost every week, but seeing my colleague Mike lay out just how much SD and flash drive prices have gone up is pretty painful.

• An expensive lesson: Nothing like destroying a $5,000 Nvidia RTX 5090 in your quest to learn how to overclock.

• What a name: My colleague Sam shares tips several times a week (you should sign up for his newsletter, just sayin’)—and this particular tool, which helps you change Windows privacy settings from one centralized interface, has quite the moniker.

Catch you all next week, when I’m maybe less embarrassed about the initial results of my annual tech spring cleaning. What I’m learning about myself is not pretty.

Alaina

This newsletter is dedicated to the memory of Gordon Mah Ung, founder and host of The Full Nerd, and executive editor of hardware at PCWorld.