Nvidia’s RTX Spark just turned Arm into a real PC threat

For hardware enthusiasts, Computex 2026 could have felt subdued—if you only looked at the x86 side of the fence.

The usual players offered low thrills. AMD trotted out a $350 rehash of its venerable Ryzen 7 5800X3D and a new $329 Ryzen 7 7700X3D. (For comparison, the current street price for the Ryzen 7 7800X3D is $340.) Intel’s biggest consumer news focused on mobile, with Wildcat Lake and Arc Extreme G3 CPUs appearing in laptops and handhelds. (Certainly great news for handheld fans, but…eh.)

Arm, though? Nvidia pulled no punches.

As predicted, Team Green’s long-rumored N1X showed up in Taiwan. Officially dubbed the RTX Spark, its specs match earlier guesses: a combined 20 CPU cores and 6,144 CUDA graphics cores housed in one package. AMD may have coined “APU,” but Nvidia is blowing up associations of that term with budget performance. This supercharged SoC is designed for heavy individual AI workloads, particularly agentic AI—and it’s meant for consumers. Sort of.

Developers and creators get named repeatedly in the marketing for RTX Spark laptops and mini-PCs. But these thin, light, and compact devices—plus direct conversations with partners like Microsoft—suggest a vision where everyone will want AI-optimized hardware. In the same breath as the reveal, Nvidia promised future RTX Spark generations upfront, for both laptops and desktops.

I never considered a world where Arm could overcome x86. But the RTX Spark is the most powerful boost Arm has ever gotten in the consumer sphere. if Nvidia gets its way, Arm could actually rise past x86 in popularity—and change what DIY PC building looks like.

Currently x86 dominates, in large part due to software support across generations. Windows on Arm has always been a compromise, particularly if you rely on local apps and don’t care about power efficiency. But with Nvidia now releasing Arm chips, the lack of parity between Arm and x86 apps could disappear—including for games. One demo I saw this week was Alan Wake 2 running natively on Arm, with Nvidia showing off the game and its DLSS 4.5 enhancements on a Surface Laptop Ultra.

I got to wondering: What will desktop PCs look like in a few years, when Nvidia’s released another generation or two of RTX Spark chips?

I could see a future where PC building is split between two camps. One populated by those who build or service small, extremely compact computers with powerful, Arm-based APUs. The other represented by those still loyal to x86 and wanting more raw power and traditional software support (no matter the system’s budget). This outcome wouldn’t fully bother me; I’m all for choice and ease when putting together a new rig.

I also could see the x86 fans becoming the equivalent of muscle car enthusiasts—a more niche group among those who tinker with hardware. I don’t hate that idea, but it does sadden me a bit, especially after the community’s growth and wider mainstream visibility during the pandemic. 

Of course, we don’t know yet how the RTX Spark will land with consumers. Or how AMD and Intel will respond. But assuming wider and wider spread of such SoC designs over time, I can easily picture many people becoming convinced to buy hardware that only ever looks forward. Even some of us who’ve followed x86 since home computing’s early days.

In this episode of The Full Nerd

In this episode of The Full Nerd, Adam Patrick Murray and guest Nick Cole of Gear Seekers chat about Computex 2026 live from Taiwan! As Adam put it, it was a tale of two Computexes—one with little activity and apprehension about the future, and another bustling with activity and surprise reveals.

Honestly, I’m surprised Adam was able to debrief at length with a long-time friend of TFN. He flew solo the whole week and often up late into the wee hours—be sure to catch all his footage from the show on the PCWorld YouTube channel!

Missed our live show? Subscribe now to The Full Nerd Network YouTube channel, and activate notifications. We also answer viewer questions in real time!

Don’t miss out on our other shows too—you can catch episodes of Dual Boot Diaries, The Full Nerd: Extra Edition, and Expedition: Handheld through our channel!

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 collaborative nerd news

Surprise! Two of us are sharing interesting tidbits from the web. Welcome to Alex Wawro, PCWorld’s newest editor. (But also still old-school—he used to be with us back in the day!)

For my part, I got caught up in enthusiast news ranging from 9600X3D chatter to more high-tech fanless cooling from Frore Systems. Also the unfortunate news of bot traffic eclipsing human traffic. Alex picks up with potentially good news about the future of Google Search, plus equally hope-inducing reports that puts tech back under consumer control.

• Busy busy: Mark and Mike wrote their hearts out this past week, detailing the biggest news from Computex and Microsoft Build. (I penned a couple of things, too.)

• Aw, crap: Brad and I might be about to lose our bet with Adam about a Ryzen 5 9600X3D. (Ultimately it’d be a win for PC builders, though.)

• A champion: Respect to the MAVEN orbiter, now officially declared lost to us. We know so much more about Mars because of it.

• Nice: Frore Systems’ latest fanless cooling solution just popped up in an Intel Wildcat Lake laptop.

• I’m nervous: Intel’s newest mobo socket may have two retaining arms. Will this be my newest PC building kryptonite? (Please don’t let me crush any socket pins.)

• Are you real? Am I real? Cloudflare says that bot traffic has now exceeded human traffic on the web. It’s a little weird to think I’m part of a generation that started life offline, flocked online, and may end up again offline for human contact.

• Please: UK regulators ordered Google to put clearer links in AI-generated summaries and let publishers opt out of AI features without penalty—hopefully Google’s response will spread worldwide.

• Heck yeah: Alberta-based Ursa Ag says demand is booming for its newly-announced low-tech tractor, which costs half as much as a John Deere competitor and is easier to repair.

• Seeing is believing: Curious about the demo of Alan Wake 2 running natively on Arm? Watch it for yourself. (Alex says seeing this run on a thin and light laptop gives him hope that Nvidia’s new SoC will have what it takes to revolutionize PC gaming on the go.)

• Demystified: Why is porting Doom to the Neo Geo functionally impossible? The answer reveals some intriguing insights into the design of SNK’s classic console.

• Nature does it better? In 2023 scientists were flummoxed by an unexplainable neutrino detected at the bottom of the Mediterranean. Now a new paper suggests it may have been rocketed at us by a “blazar,” which is basically a natural cosmic particle accelerator.

• Ugh: Marketers are spamming places like Reddit in an effort to manipulate the advice AI chatbots give you.

• Sedans too please: Slate Auto is building a bare-bones pickup without any modem or infotainment system onboard—a good sign for those of us who like the idea of owning a vehicle that doesn’t sell your data or require firmware updates.

Next week you’ll likely hear much more from Alex—personally, I can’t wait to see what’s caught his attention. (Mine is currently locked on how I could have gotten a cheaper, cooler looking ModRetro M64 instead of the Analogue 3D I stupidly pre-ordered. Bah.)

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.