Methodology

Where specs come from

Every specification on this site is recorded from a vendor page that was actually fetched, and that page is registered in our source list. A hardware entry cannot exist here without at least one source attached to it, because the build refuses to publish one that lacks it.

When a vendor does not publish a figure, we leave it blank and say so. We do not estimate compute throughput, we do not carry a number over from a similar product, and we do not back out a spec from someone's benchmark run. A blank field means the vendor is silent, not that we were lazy.

Where prices come from

Prices are checked once a day against the retailer's own product page, loaded in a real browser. A price we could not load is recorded as unconfirmed rather than guessed, and the previous day's figure is left untouched. Search result snippets are never used, because they go stale without any visible sign of it.

The price shown next to a store's name is that store's price. We never pair one retailer's number with another retailer's link. Used listings disappear the moment they sell, so any listing older than 72 hours is hidden rather than shown.

What counts as a deal

At build time, a deal must have a matching in-stock retailer listing checked within the last 72 hours, at the exact advertised price. A used-value deal must match a used listing. Expired or unavailable listings do not qualify; their recorded prices and history remain on the product pages. These checks run when the site is rebuilt, not when you open the page. Confirm the current price and stock at the retailer before buying.

Deals are computed from our own recorded price history. Exactly four things qualify: a drop of at least 5 percent from the last check, a 30-check low that is also at least 3 percent under the median of that window, any confirmed price below MSRP, or a used listing at no more than 65 percent of the new price. The first rule that matches wins, so a box that is both freshly dropped and below MSRP is listed once. Forum chatter never sets a price or creates a deal. If nothing qualifies, the deals page says so.

What we publish, and when

We check for news every day and publish only when something material happened: a launch, a spec reveal, a real price move, an availability shift, or a tooling change that alters what a given box can run. Most days nothing clears that bar and nothing gets posted. A quiet week here means the market was quiet.

How we make money

Some links are Amazon Associates or eBay Partner Network affiliate links, and we earn a commission on qualifying purchases. This has no bearing on which hardware we list, how we rank it, or what we say about it. The catalog is chosen to cover what people actually shop for when building a local AI machine, and the ranking is arithmetic on specs and price.