Budget GPU whiplash, Linux driver wins, and 10GbE on the cheap (PC Hardware Roundup) - Feb 13, 2026
Happy Friday. Here's the PC hardware roundup for the evening -- five stories that actually move the needle, plus a little context on why they matter if you're building, upgrading, or just watching the industry's mood swings.
I'm keeping this one grounded in what's verifiable today. If a claim feels squishy, I'll say so and link you straight to the source.
1) AMD's Radeon RX 9060 XT 8GB pops back to a $299 MSRP (and that's the real headline)
In a market where "MSRP" has sometimes felt like a mythological creature, Tom's Hardware is reporting that the Radeon RX 9060 XT 8GB is back down around its $299 list price. The way they frame it is important: this isn't just a one-off coupon situation -- it reads like an actual normalization after the latest AI-driven supply squeeze.
If you've been watching budget GPU tiers get squeezed from both sides (higher-end cards pulled upward by AI demand; entry-level cards inching up because everything else got expensive), a return to a clean $299 anchor matters. It's not just "good news for one SKU" -- it's a signal that board partners and retailers may be willing to compete again, rather than simply ride scarcity.
The thing to keep an eye on over the next couple weeks: whether this pricing holds across multiple brands and cooler designs, or whether it's isolated to a narrow set of models. If it sticks, it gives budget builders a real choice again instead of the usual "buy used or settle."
2) Asus ROG Crosshair X870E Dark Hero review: overkill, yes -- but it's a useful kind of overkill
Motherboard reviews are often where you can see platform priorities in high resolution: which I/O standards are "must have," what vendors think the next wave of builders will actually pay for, and which features exist mostly for bragging rights.
Tom's Hardware's review of the Asus ROG Crosshair X870E Dark Hero is firmly in the "premium AM5 board" category. Even if you'll never buy this exact model, it's a good snapshot of what top-tier X870E boards are optimizing for: clean power delivery headroom, the expected high-end storage layout, and the usual ROG tuning features that target folks who want BIOS knobs for everything.
The practical takeaway is simple: if you're shopping AM5 right now, you can decide whether you're paying for useful extras (more flexible M.2 / USB connectivity, better onboard networking, better firmware experience) or if you're paying for aesthetics and extreme headroom you'll never touch. A board like this can make sense for a workstation that will see multiple CPU/GPU refreshes over a few years, but it can be total waste if you're building once and moving on.
3) Nouveau gets open-source GSP driver support for NVIDIA GA100 -- a small headline with big long-term implications
Phoronix spotted NVIDIA posting open-source Nouveau GSP driver support for GA100. If that sentence sounds like alphabet soup: GA100 is a datacenter-class Ampere GPU, and "GSP" is NVIDIA's GPU System Processor approach that moves more of the driver/control plane into firmware running on the GPU itself.
Why you should care even if you don't own a GA100 (and most people don't): getting better open-source support around the GSP pathway is part of the slow-but-steady trend toward more functional Nouveau support on modern NVIDIA hardware. It doesn't magically replace the proprietary driver tomorrow -- but each chunk of functionality that becomes visible and maintainable in the open helps the Linux ecosystem in the long run: better debugging, better distro-level integration, and fewer "black box" moments when something breaks.
It also hints at how NVIDIA is choosing to engage: not an overnight strategy shift, but a drip of targeted contributions that make very specific workflows possible. If you build Linux workstations, run compute clusters, or just want your GPU to behave without drama, these kinds of upstream-facing changes matter more than they look on first read.
4) How much does AMD SEV-SNP cost on EPYC 9005 VMs? Phoronix measures it
Security features are always a trade: you're buying protection with performance, complexity, or both. The question is how much you're paying -- and whether it's worth it for your threat model.
Phoronix ran testing on the performance impact of AMD SEV-SNP (Secure Encrypted Virtualization - Secure Nested Paging) on EPYC 9005 virtual machines. SEV-SNP is a big deal for anyone running multi-tenant infrastructure, sensitive workloads in the cloud, or internal virtualization where "trusted admin" isn't a sufficient assumption.
The useful part of this kind of benchmarking isn't a single number -- it's seeing where overhead shows up. Some workloads barely notice. Others pay a more obvious tax. If you're building a homelab or a small business virtualization host and you've been wondering whether to enable "all the security things," this is the sort of data that lets you make a grown-up decision rather than flipping toggles blindly.
Also: EPYC 9005 is new enough that ecosystem maturity matters. Early platform generations can have rough edges in firmware and kernel support, and it's nice to see real-world testing that's not just vendor slides.
5) 10GbE without the usual price pain: YuanLey AQC113-X1 10Gbase-T NIC review
If you've priced 10GbE upgrades lately, you know the pattern: the "right" cards are great, but the total cost of doing it cleanly (NIC + switch + cabling + power + noise) makes you talk yourself out of it.
ServeTheHome reviewed the YuanLey AQC113-X1 10Gbase-T PCIe network card, built around the Marvell/Aquantia AQC113 family. Budget NICs are always a little scary because the failure modes are annoying: flaky drivers, weird link negotiation, thermal throttling, or power draw that turns your tiny router box into a toaster.
That's why reviews like this are valuable: they don't just answer "does it work," they answer whether it behaves like grown-up hardware under sustained load. If the card is stable and the platform driver support is decent, it becomes a practical path to modernizing a home server or workstation without going straight to SFP+ (which is great, but not always convenient if you're already wired for copper).
My personal rule for cheap networking gear: if it's going to live in a machine you actually rely on, you want someone else to have tried it first -- and STH is exactly the kind of site that does the unglamorous testing.
Bonus context: GNOME 50 Beta lands stable VRR
This isn't a hardware launch, but it's a quality-of-life win for a lot of Linux desktop users: Phoronix notes that GNOME 50 Beta is out with stable VRR (variable refresh rate), plus display/login improvements. If you game on Linux or you just hate tearing and stutter, VRR support in the "mainstream desktop stack" matters. It's the kind of feature you don't think about once it works -- which is exactly the point.
That's it for tonight. If you want one practical to-do from this roundup: if you've been waiting on a budget GPU purchase, it might be worth watching the RX 9060 XT's pricing over the weekend to see if the $299 "reset" holds across multiple listings.
As always, if there's a specific build you're planning (gaming box, quiet workstation, NAS/homelab), send the parts list -- it's easier to give useful advice with actual constraints.
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