For tech media like Hot Hardware, the new year means a plethora of new tech, as CES in Las Vegas kicks off just after the holiday. It’s always exciting to see the new products and fresh announcements, but the multitude of reveals and unveilings can be tough to track, especially if you’re at the show. If — like us — you’re all about the latest and greatest PC and gaming gear, however, we’ve got you covered. We present to you our list of the 10 best items we found the most exciting from this year’s show.
It’s impossible to see everything at a massive event like CES, but here are the announcements that we found the most interesting at CES 2025…
Lenovo’s Thinkbook Plus Laptop With Expandable Display
People have been predicting rollable screens since at least the 1950s, but it’s only very recently that the technology became practical. In this case, though, it’s not a tablet that you can roll up and stick in your back pocket, but rather a laptop with a screen that can be extended to alter the aspect ratio and allow for additional workspace.
You can check out our video where we saw it in person, but the design is pretty wild. Lenovo says that the 14″ screen gains “nearly 50% additional screen space” when fully extended to the maximum 16.7-inch screen size. Despite that, the overall machine is quite trim indeed, with weights and measures right in line with other 14-inch-class laptops. This system is expected to ship in Q2 of this year.
LG’s 5K2K Bendable OLED Gaming Monitor Goes Flat Or Curved
On the topic of displays doing interesting things, we also have to mention LG’s bendable gaming monitor. The company actually announced this before CES, but it was on display at the show and pretty wild to see. The idea is that the 45-inch OLED can quickly convert from a flat to a curved display at the touch of a button is really cool. It can flex all the way to a 900R curvature, which is an extremely tight curve for a 45″ display. Hopefully it supports intermediate positions too.
MSI’s MegVision X AI Gaming Desktop
The Meg Vision X “AI Gaming Desktop” from MSI is a compact desktop gaming PC that includes not only the latest and greatest hardware from Intel and NVIDIA, but also a 13-inch LCD touch panel on the front. MSI refers to it as the “AI HMI”, and it can do all sorts of nifty tricks, like displaying performance metrics, system status, a clock, and more.
Using “AI” in the name is definitely a bit buzzwordy, but there really are some AI functions to be found here, The machine supports Microsoft’s Copilot for voice commands, and MSI claims that one of the functions of the screen is to serve as an “AI control center,” but it’s unclear what that actually means. Of course, the company also says that the cooling system is “AI-driven” in some way. We’re awaiting details from MSI, and perhaps a review unit, but at the ver least the system looks totally sick.
Alienware’s Newly Revamped Area-51 Gaming Desktop
After a lackluster reception for the Alienware Aurora R15, the R16 model debuted last year with a fully-revised design that remains distinctive, while also being both easier to work on and more space-efficient. Now, the top-end Area 51 is adopting a similar (albeit larger) design with a very attractive and understated aesthetic.
That doesn’t mean it’s any less powerful, mind you. The Area 51 still offers Dell’s best gaming experience, including top-end hardware from Intel and NVIDIA. No word on an AMD model at this time, but the new design does boast a positive pressure airflow configuration that, according to Dell, offers both improved cooling performance and reduced noise. We’re pleased to see the company responding to feedback in an affirmative manner this way, and eager to see how the new Area 51 stacks up for ourselves. It’s certainly great to see such impeccible wiring on a system from a large vendor like Dell. That kind of stuff is usually reserved for smaller, boutique builds.
ASUS’ Crazy Powerful 3-Liter ROG Gaming NUC
The idea of a gaming NUC is nothing new. Intel was doing it for years when it was still making its own NUCs. ASUS ROG has a way of taking ideas like this to the next level, though. The company launched a gaming NUC last year, and it was impressive, but the 2025 model looks like a real step forward for the concept of an absolutely tiny — but powerful — gaming machine.
Like the Area 51 above, the new NUC supports Intel and NVIDIA’s latest and greatest, but unlike that spacious desktop system, the 2025 ROG NUC uses laptop hardware. That’s how it’s able to cram a 24-core Intel Core Ultra 9 285HX CPU and a powerful GeForce RTX 5080 GPU into a chassis barely bigger than an Xbox Series S. Incredibly, the system even supports overclocking. Bravo, ASUS.
HP’s Wicked Fast Z2 Mini SFF Workstation PC
ASUS wasn’t the only one showing off small PCs that are both stylish and super-fast. HP’s Z2 Mini workstation machine is smaller than a tissue box, yet packs in up to sixteen Zen 5 CPU cores and a Radeon GPU more powerful than many of AMD’s recent discrete GPUs. It supports 128GB of unified memory, and the system can allocate up to 3/4 of that RAM (96GB) to the GPU, allowing users to do things you simply can’t accomplish on a typical discrete GPU machine.
Notable features of HP’s Z2 Mini include the integrated power supply—no brick necessary—and the dual Flex I/O bays where users can install up to two modular components to expand the connectivity, with options like 10-Gigabit Ethernet or regular old RS-232 serial. It’s a cool function considering that compact PCs like this often struggle with limited connectivity.
AMD’s Strix Halo Finally Hits The Scene
Part of the reason that the Z2 Mini above is so cool has to do with the SoCs that it’s based on. AMD’s Ryzen AI MAX processors, code-named “Strix Halo”, combine one or two Zen 5 CCDs with a massive cIOD that includes a powerful RDNA 3.5-based Radeon GPU and a unified 256-bit memory interface. As we noted above, that means you get up to sixteen Zen 5 CPU cores and a whopping 128GB of LPDDR5X memory.
This is really a unique chip for the PC market; there’s nothing else like it. It has specific advantages over other parts too, like the double-wide memory interface and the ability to load massive data sets for AI, simulation, or really any other use you like. The powerful 20-WGP Radeon GPU and the 50-TOPS NPU both provide ample processing power alongside the Zen 5 CPU cores, and in a TDP of 45-120 watts. Props to AMD for truly advancing the market with innovative new products like this.
Intel’s XeSS 2 Makes Integrated GPU Gaming Great Again
Of course, AMD’s rival Intel isn’t exactly standing still. The blue team announced its new laptop CPUs at CES 2025, and one of the key features of “Arrow Lake H” is that its powerful integrated GPU now includes XMX matrix math accelerators. That makes it very good at AI processing, which is why it can now handle the more advanced from of XeSS previously exclusive to Arc discrete GPUs.
We caught up with Intel at CES 2025, and the company gave us an interesting demo of XeSS Frame Generation (FG) in F1 2024. We’ve already written about that demo at length, but it was compelling, especially in the context of upcoming gaming handhelds based on Intel SoCs, like MSI’s Claw 8 AI+. The potential of dropping power to just 15W while maintaining visual fluidity in a demanding game like F1 24 is promising.
NVIDIA’s DIGITS Is A Fully NVIDIA-Powered Micro Desktop
NVIDIA brought all kinds of goodies to CES 2025, and we’re going to talk about Blackwell here in a bit, but first we wanted to shine a spotlight on the DIGITS micro-desktop. The goal of this machine is to give developers a platform where they can prototype their programs before bringing them over to a massive NVIDIA supercomputer, like a DGX. In fact, the DIGITS even looks like a tiny, palmtop version of a DGX.
The machine is a remarkably potent little powerhouse, though, with a 20-core NVIDIA Grace CPU, 128GB of unified memory, and a Blackwell-based integrated GPU that NVIDIA claims will crank out 1 PFLOP—that’s 1,000 TFLOPS—of FP4 AI compute. It could make a pretty darn capable desktop for general work, too, except for one major wrinkle: the $3,000 price tag. It’s still a fascinating machine, though.
The GeForce RTX 5090 Makes A Stunning Entrance
Last but certainly not least, we have another new item from NVIDIA which is both quite intriguing and also expensive: the GeForce RTX 5090. The GeForce RTX 4090 was already unchallenged as the fastest gaming GPU in the world, and the GeForce RTX 5090 looks to leapfrog that part by as much as 30% before we even start talking about the new DLSS 4 Multi-Frame Generation feature.
There’s only so much we can assume from specifications, but the nearly 1.8 TB/second memory bandwidth of the GeForce RTX 5090 is enough to make one sit up and take note on its own. That’s basically an 80% uplift over the GeForce RTX 4090. The card also boasts ludicrous amounts of compute throughput and raster horsepower, as expected. Despite all that, NVIDIA has apparently managed to keep it cool under a relatively modest two-slot heatsink, bucking the trend of bigger and bigger GPUs. The $2,000 price tag will put it out of reach for many, but those who want the best gaming experience on earth will pony it up with pride.
At the end of the day, CES 2025 had a lot going on, and seeing all the
announcements as they rolled out was exciting. Of course,
there is much that we could not hit in this list, so check out the CES2025 tag for everything we have covered so far, and keep an eye on HotHardware for future announcements, including reviews of some of this very hot hardware!
