I always look forward to the annual announcements at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), with a specific eye toward new hardware platforms and innovations well suited for running VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) in a lab environment. This year is no exception, although acquiring affordable memory may require a few sacrifices given the skyrocketing prices driven by the insatiable demands of AI.
At CES 2026, Intel and AMD introduced their next generation consumer processors, Intel Core Ultra Series 3 (Panther Lake) and AMD Ryzen AI 400 Series (Gorgon Point), which will power many of the newly announced hardware platforms.
Most of the hardware vendors seem to have prioritized LPDDR5 (soldered memory), which offers higher bandwidth for AI workloads but it comes at a premium on top of the exploding prices. I was also hoping to see some announcements for systems supporting the new LPCAMM2 or SOCAMM2 memory standard, which could enable configurations with up to 256GB of memory. I suspect due to the supply chain constraint and overall costs, such platforms may only be reserved for AI focused systems in the future.
Whether you are refreshing a home lab, looking for an ideal AI platform for exploration, new gaming rig or general curiosity, I have compiled a comprehensive list of all the new Mini PCs and Small Form Factor (SFF) systems that should be arriving in 2026.
