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Computex 2026: RTX Spark, DLSS 4.5, AM5 Forever, and Everything Else That Matters

  • Writer: Brandon Ryan
    Brandon Ryan
  • Jun 5
  • 3 min read

Computex 2026 is in full swing in Taipei, and the announcements have been coming fast. This year's show is headlined by AI — both on the chip level and in the software stack — but there's plenty of exciting hardware news for builders, gamers, and creative pros alike. Here's the breakdown of the biggest news from the show floor.

Nvidia RTX Spark: A Whole New Kind of Windows PC

The headline announcement of the show is without question Nvidia's RTX Spark — a new Windows-on-Arm system-on-a-chip (SoC) that puts an Arm CPU and a Blackwell-class GPU on one piece of silicon. The chip packs 20 Arm CPU cores, 128 GB of LPDDR5x unified memory with 300 GB/s of bandwidth, and a Blackwell GPU with 6,144 CUDA cores, targeting 1 petaflop of AI compute.

Jensen Huang called it a reinvention of the PC for the era of personal AI agents — and the hardware specs back that up. Microsoft is already on board: the Surface Laptop Ultra will ship with the RTX Spark chip and 128 GB of RAM. RTX Spark systems are expected to arrive later in 2026, though pricing hasn't been announced yet.

For creatives: Nvidia confirmed that RTX Spark brings the full CUDA and RTX stack — meaning OptiX rendering, TensorRT, and DLSS — to this new platform. That has real implications for portable workstations down the road.

DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction — Coming to Blender This Fall

Nvidia also announced the next phase of DLSS 4.5: Ray Reconstruction. This uses the neural rendering capabilities built into all modern RTX GPUs and applies them to ray tracing, promising cleaner particle effects, less ghosting, and improved lighting accuracy. DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction rolls out in August 2026 for all RTX GPU owners.

Big news for 3D artists: Blender 5.3 will receive DLSS 4.5 support this Fall. If you render in Cycles on an RTX card, expect noticeable quality and speed improvements coming your way.

Intel Arc G3: Panther Lake Comes to Gaming Handhelds

Intel took the wraps off its Arc G3 platform aimed squarely at gaming handheld PCs — the Steam Deck competitors and mini gaming systems. The G3 Extreme chips are based on Intel's Panther Lake architecture, and hands-on time at the show floor shows real promise. MSI's Claw 8 EX AI running the G3 Extreme was a standout device spotted on the show floor.

Intel Xeon 6+ Clearwater Forest — 18A Hits the Data Center

On the workstation and data center side, Intel announced the Xeon 6+ (codenamed Clearwater Forest) — the first Intel data center CPU built on the 18A node. The top-end Xeon 6990E+ packs 288 Darkmont E-cores with 576 MB of L3 cache, targeting AMD's 192-core EPYC 9965 with a claimed 30% per-thread performance advantage. It drops into existing LGA 7529 socket platforms, which is good news for upgrade paths. Intel also confirmed that next-gen Xeon 7 'Diamond Rapids' CPUs will launch in 2027 on the Intel 18A-P process.

AMD: AM5 Lives Until 2029 + Ryzen 7 7700X3D Returns

AMD made a crowd-pleasing commitment at Computex: the AM5 socket will continue to be supported by new processors through at least 2029. If you're building on AM5 today, your platform has a solid lifespan ahead of it. AMD also brought back the Ryzen 7 5800X3D — the fan-favorite 3D V-Cache chip — priced at $329, giving budget-minded AM5 builders a compelling 3D V-Cache option. Additionally, AMD announced a global rollout of the RX 9070 GRE GPU.

ASUS ROG Turns 20 — and Goes All Out

To celebrate the ROG brand's 20th anniversary, ASUS unveiled a series of wild hardware. The centerpiece is the ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5090 Edition 20 — a GPU with a full wraparound AMOLED display on the shroud. They also debuted a 3,000W power supply (yes, 3,000W), a new NUC mini PC, and a matching PC case. The gold-plated ROG gaming mouse and mystery keycap box rounds out one of the most theatrical product showcases of the show.

What This Means for Your Next Build

Computex 2026 is shaping up to be a watershed year for PC hardware. The RTX Spark platform signals where laptops and compact desktops are heading — though traditional desktop builds still hold the performance and value edge. AMD's AM5 longevity pledge is great news for anyone looking to buy or upgrade this year, and Intel's handheld push adds serious competition to a market that's been growing fast.

If you're thinking about a new build or an upgrade and want to talk through what makes sense for you, reach out — Ryan's Rigs is here to help you sort the signal from the noise.

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