What is an AI PC, exactly? We cut through the hype

What is an AI PC, exactly? We cut through the hype

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An AI PC is the next big thing in PCs…or so a lot of companies would have you believe. But what is an AI PC, why should you buy one, and what — if anything — does an AI PC offer? While those answers are evolving over time, we can tell you what we know right now.

The short answer: Microsoft appears to have a definition of an “AI PC” that it’s working to define behind the scenes. But it’s very possible that you own an “AI-capable PC” right now. The difference between the two may be a list of specifications and maybe even a dedicated sticker to grace your laptop.

When the industry talks about an “AI PC,” it refers to a PC that can process AI tasks faster. But vendors understand that in different ways. Some, like Microsoft, appear to define it as a PC that can access “AI” like Windows Copilot, which currently lives natively in the cloud. Chip vendors like AMD, Intel, and Qualcomm feel strongly that AI should be processed locally, via its microprocessors, on your PC. And PC vendors? We’d like to think that they’ll choose any approach that nets them more sales.

So which is it? All three perspectives, actually. “AI PCs” have evolved from a nebulous concept, but Microsoft has a specific definition in mind that’s reminiscent of the Windows 11 hardware requirements. Let’s walk through where AI PCs came from, and where they’re going.

What AI is, and what it does

The simplest way to run AI is in the cloud: LLMs (AI chatbots) like Microsoft Copilot, AI art like the Bing Image Creator (now part of Copilot and Microsoft Designer), AI video from Adobe and Runway, and AI music like Udio. In this format, AI is just another website that you can interact with. You can do that with your PC. You can do that with your phone.

I love playing around with AI art, and one of my favorite apps to do so is Fooocus. I love playing around with AI art, and one of my favorite apps to do so is Fooocus. Mark Hachman / IDG I love playing around with AI art, and one of my favorite apps to do so is Fooocus. Mark Hachman / IDG Mark Hachman / IDG

This is where the concept of an “AI PC” becomes more PC-centric. If you work for a business, your IT department is probably paranoid about confidential information leaking on to the Internet. While you might ask Copilot for tips on how to save for your retirement, your company doesn’t want the possibility of Google or Microsoft learning about its plans. So if it chooses an LLM, it might want to run it within the protection of its corporate firewall. Likewise, you might want to experiment with AI art or ask an embarrassing question of an LLM that you don’t want recorded in the cloud. Privacy matters.

Local AI advocates also say that running AI locally may be faster than the cloud. In our experience, that’s not necessarily true. OpenAI, Bard, and Microsoft have spent considerable time and effort making sure their cloud AI is fast and responsive.

The final argument is that a local LLM can be “trained” to know you and your specific preferences and actions.

In Photoshop, I can use local AI to highlight and separate the USB-C hub to the right, filling in the remainder with an AI-generated background. This could all be done locally in the future. In Photoshop, I can use local AI to highlight and separate the USB-C hub to the right, filling in the remainder with an AI-generated background. This could all be done locally in the future. Mark Hachman / IDG In Photoshop, I can use local AI to highlight and separate the USB-C hub to the right, filling in the remainder with an AI-generated background. This could all be done locally in the future. Mark Hachman / IDG Mark Hachman / IDG

Applications can strike a balance. Photoshop is a good example, as it runs “AI” tools like the ability to remove objects from an image on your PC. But if you want to change a king’s crown to a baseball cap, for example, Adobe’s own cloud-based Firefly service performs those tasks. We’re always on the lookout for new AI apps that can justify local AI processing, as these will make or break AI PCs.

You probably already own an AI PC

As I noted earlier, most AI can be run through the cloud. But when you run AI locally on your PC, you have three (and maybe four) options.

A PC has three main processing engines: the CPU, the GPU, and a new addition, the NPU. CPUs and GPUs (or graphics cards) have existed for decades, and they’re just fine for running local AI art and LLMs — really! Running a local LLM on just your CPU is slow, but add in a dedicated GPU and performance dramatically speeds up. In terms of AI, the GPU is still the fastest local processor you’ll own, but it’s not the most efficient.

Put another way: if you own a gaming PC with a dedicated GPU, you already own an AI-capable PC.

Now, existing and upcoming processors have NPUs inside. Intel’s Meteor Lake/Core Ultra processor will compete with the AMD Ryzen 8000 series. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite is waiting in the wings, with a number of laptops scheduled to ship by midyear. Intel already claims that it’s shipped 5 million AI PCs, with about 100 million due to ship by the end of the year.

AI chatbots or LLMs can be run in the cloud, but sometimes if’s more comfortable to run them locally. AI chatbots or LLMs can be run in the cloud, but sometimes if’s more comfortable to run them locally. Mark Hachman / IDG AI chatbots or LLMs can be run in the cloud, but sometimes if’s more comfortable to run them locally. Mark Hachman / IDG Mark Hachman / IDG

What chip vendors would like to sell you on, though, is the concept of a Neural Processing Unit, or NPU. An NPU (ideally) is the heart of an AI PC. It’s actually conceptually similar to a GPU, in that it can perform repetitive tasks, quickly. In fact, that’s where the defining “speed” metric of an NPU comes in: TOPS, or trillions of operations per second.

We think of how fast CPUs are in terms of gigahertz: one billion hertz (or cycles) per second. NPUs are defined in TOPS, churning through trillions of operations per second. In a LLM, the speed of an NPU is also defined in tokens: the basic data units. One token generally equates to about four characters of text, so the “answers” an LLM provides are actually tokens, in AI-speak.

The effectiveness of the AI depends on how quickly and in what volume an LLM can process tokens, as well as how complex the AI model is. If the LLM runs on your machine, how fast it is in TOPS determines how quickly the LLM can spit out an answer.

Qualcomm has had an AI processor for its mobile Snapdragon processors for years now, allowing features like “portrait mode” in smartphones. Qualcomm has had an AI processor for its mobile Snapdragon processors for years now, allowing features like “portrait mode” in smartphones. Mark Hachman / IDG Qualcomm has had an AI processor for its mobile Snapdragon processors for years now, allowing features like “portrait mode” in smartphones. Mark Hachman / IDG Mark Hachman / IDG

Chip vendors typically define TOPS in terms of their NPU, or sometimes as their NPU, GPU, and CPU working together. I actually haven’t seen any application that can use all three in conjunction, but I’m sure those days are coming.

Here are the TOPS each of the big three PC chip vendors’ NPUs provides:

Intel Core Ultra (Meteor Lake): 34 TOPS

AMD Ryzen 8040 Series: 39 TOPS

Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite: 45 TOPS (75 total)

Intel said at CES that its upcoming Lunar Lake processor will deliver three times the AI performance (102 TOPS, presumably). That mobile chip is due before the end of the year, and will likely be called the Core Ultra Series 2.

Intel is already talking about “Lunar Lake,” the Intel Core Ultra Series 2 chip. Intel is already talking about “Lunar Lake,” the Intel Core Ultra Series 2 chip. Intel Intel is already talking about “Lunar Lake,” the Intel Core Ultra Series 2 chip. Intel Intel

Nvidia doesn’t release the performance of its PC GPUs in TOPS, but a GeForce RTX 4090 delivers between 83 to 100 TFLOPS, or trillions of floating-point operations. That’s generally considered to be more intensive than the “standard” integer operations used in TOPS.

There’s a wild card, too: AI accelerator cards, which we first saw earlier this year. Will they make a splash? We don’t know yet.

What’s an NPU good for in an AI PC?

Most enthusiasts think of chips in terms of performance: how fast is it? At least for now, NPUs are being positioned in terms of efficiency: how much AI performance can they deliver while minimizing power?

In this context, vendors are thinking about laptops running on battery. And right now the flagship NPU task is Windows Studio Effects.

While Windows Studio Effects performs background blurring like Teams or Zoom, it does so more efficiently using the NPU. While Windows Studio Effects performs background blurring like Teams or Zoom, it does so more efficiently using the NPU. Mark Hachman / IDG While Windows Studio Effects performs background blurring like Teams or Zoom, it does so more efficiently using the NPU. Mark Hachman / IDG Mark Hachman / IDG

Windows Studio Effects are Microsoft’s AI tools for improving Teams video calls. They consist of the ability to replace or blur your background; audio filtering; using the camera’s cropping ability to “pan and zoom” on your face as you move around, and a kind of creepy AI technique of making it seem like your eyes are always on the camera and paying attention.

By offloading that task to the efficient NPU, AI can keep your laptop on and powered up for a marathon day of video calls. Hurray for progress, am I right?

The AI PC’s hardware requirements, according to Microsoft

So we know what an AI PC is supposed to do, and what it’s good for. Is there going to be an approved, official AI PC?

Intel Intel Intel

I think so. Intel executives alluded to it in a conference call, revealing that for now there are three components of an “official AI PC:” a Copilot key, the ability of the PC to run Copilot, and a dedicated NPU inside. Additional reports have said that there is a TOPS requirement of 45 TOPS, but Microsoft hasn’t confirmed this.

If the latter requirement is true, that would mean that PCs with the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite chip inside would qualify as AI PCs, but PCs with Intel’s first Core Ultra inside would not. When you consider that Microsoft is expected to launch consumer versions of its Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 5 at its Build conference in May with Snapdragon X Elite chips inside, it all makes sense: this could be the formal unveiling of the AI PC.

Where can I buy an AI PC?

Microsoft hasn’t formally defined what an AI PC is. It’s possible that we’ll eventually see some sort of official badging, like the “Designed for Windows XP” stickers of old.

Every Intel Core Ultra PC and most AMD Ryzen 7000 and 8000 PCs — assuming they have Ryzen AI inside — include an NPU inside that can accelerate AI. But only the very latest (as of this writing) laptops include that Copilot key that Microsoft endorses.

NPU, Copilot key, and ships with Microsoft Copilot… the Asus ZenBook 14 OLED is an AI PC. NPU, Copilot key, and ships with Microsoft Copilot… the Asus ZenBook 14 OLED is an AI PC. IDG / Matthew Smith NPU, Copilot key, and ships with Microsoft Copilot… the Asus ZenBook 14 OLED is an AI PC. IDG / Matthew Smith IDG / Matthew Smith

Should you buy an AI PC?

We still, still don’t know whether Microsoft will run Copilot or a version of Copilot on local PCs or not, and that could be a big selling point for an AI PC — if the experience proves satisfactory. Likewise, we don’t know whether some killer app will, um, surface: will there be something that screams, you’ve got to own this? (My vote so far is for this killer AI-powered audio filtering that just obliterates background noise.)

It’s likelier that Microsoft will drip new AI features into Windows over time, making it more and more compelling. Remember, I think that it’s time to switch to Windows 11, but that’s in part because Microsoft will likely tie AI into its latest feature release of the Windows 11 operating system.

But really, it could be anything: an AI-powered character that is dropped into a hot new game, perhaps powered by Nvidia’s ACE, might prompt an AI-powered gaming shift. Maybe it will be updates to Teams, Zoom, and Google Meet that will all use AI. Something else, perhaps.

AI PCs aren’t here yet, but they will be. We’ll be watching to see what happens, and you should too.

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the tech term of the moment, and everyone in the PC space wants a piece of it. Every major computer company, from the ones that make the best ultrabooks and laptops to those that put together the best gaming PCs and desktops, as well as most component manufacturers, want to say they’re offering an AI PC.

But what is an AI PC, exactly? What does it do differently from the computer you already have? Do you need one at all?

Here’s how to cut through the noise to learn what an AI PC actually is:

The many definitions of an AI PC

Since every PC company and component manufacturer wants to say it is offering an AI PC, there are a ton of different definitions out there. Much of the press and the industry has seemingly coalesced around Microsoft’s definition, which Intel shared at an AI PC developer program showing off its Core Ultra “Meteor Lake” processors. That definition had three requirements, suggesting that an AI PC:

Includes the latest NPU (neural processing unit), CPU, and GPU

Comes with Microsoft Copilot

Has the Copilot key on its keyboard

(Image credit: Intel)

This definition did rule out some existing PCs that had AMD and Intel’s NPU and Copilot, but hadn’t included the Copilot key. Most major laptop releases since then have included that key. If you take the Copilot key away, previous Windows on Arm devices, like those running Qualcomm 8cx would also qualify, as those have NPUs and can run Copilot, too. The Copilot key is little more than a branding exercise as it simply launches Copliot by simulating Shift + WIndows + F23, and one could just hit Windows + C to get the same efffect.

Copilot+ PCs: Microsoft’s New Standard

Since then, Microsoft has introduced its Copilot+ PCs, with laptops from Asus, Dell, Acer, Samsung, HP, Lenovo, Samsung, and Microsoft’s Surface brand. Those all use Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite and Plus processors at the moment, though Microsoft has said upcoming AMD Strix Point (aka Ryzen AI 300) and Intel Lunar Lake chips may also fit the bill. To be considered a Copilot+ PC, laptops need to have at least 16GB RAM, 256GB storage, and an on-board NPU that’s capable of 40 TOPS (trillions of operations per second). The Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite chips support 45 TOPS on the NPU.

Copilot+ PCs, the first of which will launch on June 18, 2024, will have a series of four unique Windows AI features that other PCs cannot access. These include Cocreator (image generation in Paint), Windows Studio Effects (webcam blurring and special effects), real-time translation and captions for audio and Recall. Recall, the controversial feature which keeps a record of almost everything you do on your PC so you can remember it, was just pulled from the Copilot+ launch date build of Windows.

So, anyone who doesn’t buy a Snapdragon X-powered laptop will have to wait on those special Windows features, likely for many months. AMD recently confirmed that its Ryzen AI 300 PCs won’t be getting the Copilot+ features when they launch later this year, but will eventually. Desktop users are left out of the cold until at least the launch of Intel Arrowlake in Q4. And anyone with a current-gen laptop or desktop is probably left out permanently.

Given the weak set of Copilot+ features, anyone who is actually paying attention probably isn’t that sad about having to miss them or wait for them. There are many other ways to get an offline (or online) AI image generator, to do real-time translation and to blur your webcam background. Recall is somewhat unique, but many people won’t want it, because of the privacy risks associated with taking constant screenshots of your work.

Intel and AMD define AI PC more Broadly

Intel, on its website , has taken a more general approach: “An AI PC has a CPU, a GPU and an NPU, each with specific AI acceleration capabilities.”

AMD, via a staff post on its forums, has a similar definition: “An AI PC is a PC designed to optimally execute local AI workloads across a range of hardware, including the CPU (central processing unit), GPU (graphics processing unit), and NPU (neural processing unit).”

Who is making AI PCs?

If you’re following the definition that most of the industry is using: CPU, GPU, and NPU, then the answer is most laptop manufacturers are making them. They include Dell, HP, Lenovo, Asus, Acer, Samsung, Microsoft, among others.

These are laptops with Intel (Core Ultra “Meteor Lake”), AMD (Ryzen 7040 or 8040), or Qualcomm (Snapdragon X Elite or Plus) processors.

What is an NPU, exactly?

A neural processing unit, or NPU, are processors that specialize in parallel computing specifically for the purpose of AI workloads (GPUs often also use parallel processing in order to render advanced graphics). Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, and Apple have these attached onto the processor with the CPU and integrated GPU.

They’re also highly efficient, allowing for longer battery life than running these processes on a CPU or a GPU (even if, in some cases, those might be the more performant options). NPUs run matrix math, allowing them to do things such as video decoding, upscaling and background removal at a fraction of the power.

An NPU’s performance is measured in tera operations per second, or TOPS. Intel’s Meteor Lake processors and their NPUs can only do about 10 TOPS while Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X processors, AMD’s Ryzen AI 300 processors and Intel’s Lunar Lake chips will all deliver 45 or more TOPS from their NPUs.

What about desktop PCs? What about GPUs?

At the moment, every PC with an NPU is a laptop (or, in some cases, tablets or gaming handhelds). Intel has yet to put an NPU on a desktop chip, but AMD first did back in January with the Ryzen 7 8700G and Ryzen 5 8600G, each of which support 16 TOPS via Ryzen AI. (Those technically based on mobile designs, but with more power and in a desktop form factor). A big reason to include the NPU on mobile devices is that they are extremely power efficient, which helps with battery life. Desktop systems don’t have batteries, so processor manufacturers can still pump their processors using more wattage.

Additionally, desktops are more likely to have discrete GPUs, which have also proven to be extremely adept at certain AI tasks (though this is mostly high-end parts, like the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 , which has 24GB of RAM to work with).

In fact, in a recent blog post, Nvidia’s vice president of consumer AI, Jason Paul, suggested that the company started the AI PC boom all the way back in 2018, when it launched its first GPUs with RTX tensor cores and DLSS with the RTX 20-series and Turing architecture. That’s yet another different definition from the ones laptop and CPU companies are making.

While this doesn’t fit the conventional, NPU-focused definition that many are working with, there are a number of companies putting the AI label on desktop PCs, too.

Newegg, for example, is selling its ABS desktops (which start with consumer-grade parts like the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Super and an Intel Core i5-14400F for $1,800 and goes up from there), on an AI PC page alongside laptops using Intel NPUs, as well as desktop parts (“AI CPU,” “API GPU”). MSI lists a number of its desktops using 14th Gen Intel processors as “AI Gaming Desktops” because of software that the company includes.

The desktops that make more sense to call AI PCs are workstations that have the power to train some models. Maingear, for instance, sells its Pro AI systems with Intel Xeon chips and Nvidia’s RTX 5000 and RTX 6000 Ada GPUs. These range from $28,000 to $60,000 and are definitely not for people looking just to generate images or photos.

Are Macs AI PCs?

Apple is introducing its take on the AI to Mac laptops and desktops this fall. The company is launching a beta version of Apple Intelligence with generative writing, images, custom emoji, and a more capable version of its Siri assistant in macOS Sequoia this fall (as well as iPadOS 18 and iOS 18).

Apple will support Intelligence on Macs and iPads using its M1, M2, M3, and M4 families of processors. On the iPhone, it will support the A17 Pro on the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max (and presumably whatever is in the next iPhone this fall).

(Image credit: Apple)

Because Apple uses its silicon across all of its Macs, its desktops, like the iMac, Mac Studio, and Mac Pro also have NPU (or as Apple refers to them, Neural Engines). That means macOS will have AI-specific features on desktop running on NPUs before Windows.

Do I need an AI PC?

Right now? “Need” is a strong word.

AI features are still in their infancy. In many cases they’re still in beta. Many popular chatbots, like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google Gemini, are totally cloud-based, as is most of what Microsoft Copilot does.

That’s not to say there’s no features you’ll miss. On Copilot+ PCs, image generation built into Windows 11 and Restyle photo editing are exclusive to the new Snapdragon systems. Some other software, like the Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom, and Express as well as Da Vinci Resolve will use NPUs for some AI features and the cloud for others. Those NPU features may be slower — or non-existent on older computers.

NPUs are also being used to power background blur and other camera effects on some PCs, though you don’t inherently need an NPU for that kind of work (though it does free up the CPU and GPU).

But across the board, these features are still just rolling out, and it’s unclear which will be the most useful to you. Local AI is more secure, as you don’t have to send your information to another company’s servers, but if you’re using it in limited scenarios, the cloud functionality the most popular apps currently offer should more than suffice.

There’s a lot of hype around AI. And while it has some legitimately cool uses, there are still plenty of places where it’s unclear how much people will want to use it. If your current PC is still doing what you need it to do and is getting security updates, it may be worth waiting as more powerful tech comes out to support, presumably, more local AI tools, and see what you actually need.

It’s already clear that companies will lock certain features to newer PCs. While early adopters may jump at the chance to try them, there’s also no harm in letting those people be the beta testers (and many of these AI features are being labeled as beta by the companies that make them) and grab something when you know what you want.

Are AI PCs more secure?

One of the biggest pushes for AI on a laptop, rather than in the cloud, is security. After all, running an AI workload on an NPU in your computer means you don’t necessarily need to send your information to the cloud.

That being said, that also means AI features need to be built securely, too. After security researchers discovered how easy it was to steal data from, Recall, Microsoft’s new AI feature that takes screenshots of all your activity, for later reference was pulled from the initial Copilot+ set of features as Microsoft promised more security and testing with Windows Insider members.

If you are running a business and having an LLM manage top-secret corporate data, having it processed locally would be more meaningful. But most of the AI features currently being marketed are not mission-critical business tools. Perhaps if Microsoft 365 Copilot ran completely locally, that would be a plus for some companies.

No matter what type of PC you’re using, you should still adhere to good security practices. Other humans are still outsmarting us there.

Bottom line

Right now, the term “AI PC” is still somewhat vague. CPU vendors and Microsoft are using the term to sell you new computers (currently, new laptops only) that have powerful NPUs built into their processors. Most of the generative AI features people actually use today (chatbots, image generators) are free to use in the cloud, making them less than “must-haves” in their local form.

But NPUs do promise to save battery life by performing some common tasks such as video playback at much lower power. Some web browsers, such as Edge, can use the GPU today to do AI upscaling of videos, but soon that will be offloaded to the NPU. For creative professionals who are doing audio, video or photo editing while unplugged, the NPU will tackle tasks such as background noise removal at much lower power than your CPU or graphics card; of course, the software has to be optimized to do so. And, in the near future, we’ll see more tasks transferred to NPUs, which in turn, will increase system efficiency even more.

So, in the end, the killer feature of AI PCs (at least if they are laptops) could really be longer endurance. If your laptop goes from lasting 12 hours on a charge to lasting 20 hours on a charge because of NPU usage, that could be a huge deal. But the generative features are still in their infancy, so if you’re not ready to upgrade, there’s still time to wait and see what evolves.

Correction, June 17, 3:44 p.m. ET: This article has been corrected to point out that AMD has NPUs on the desktop with its Ryzen 8000G processors.

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KEY TAKEAWAYS:

An AI PC is a laptop or desktop computer with hardware specially designed to accelerate AI workloads.

is a laptop or desktop computer with hardware specially designed to accelerate AI workloads. Laptops with a neural processing unit (NPU) and/or a graphics processing unit (GPU) are more efficient at running AI apps and features.

(NPU) and/or a (GPU) are more efficient at running AI apps and features. A Copilot+ PC like the Vivobook S 15 (2024) has a powerful NPU with 40+ TOPS, making it ready to access Copilot+ features like Recall.

A custom-built desktop AI PC with a modern graphics card or a powerful laptop with a GPU are your best choices for getting premium performance in AI workloads.

in AI workloads. Ultracompact ASUS NUC Mini PCs put the power of AI into space-saving, highly configurable designs.

put the power of AI into space-saving, highly configurable designs. AI PC performance is measured in tera operations per second, or TOPS .

. An AI PC brings many advantages for productivity, gaming, creative work, communications, and everyday computing.

Right now, the tech landscape is witnessing its biggest change in decades. AI is here, and it’s revolutionizing everything. It’s changing how we search, how we game, how we create, how we communicate, how we stay organized, and so much more. Considering everything that AI can do today — and everything that we’re seeing on the horizon — now is a great time to get the lay of the land. What is an AI PC? How are people using it for work, play, creativity, and everyday computing? What PC hardware do you need to get started? Here, we’ll answer all these questions and more.

Do I need a PC to use AI?

If you’re just looking to dip your toes in what AI can do, you don’t need anything more than a device with an internet connection. Through apps like ChatGPT, AI-powered search engines like Bing, or new features on your smartphone like Google Magic Eraser, you can get answers to just about any question, a quick summary of a long email chain, advanced photo editing tools, and more.

While these cloud-based AI solutions are convenient, and they make it possible to access these powerful tools on devices with limited processing power, you might be better off with an AI PC. With a cloud-based AI service, you might be held back by request limits, long queues, or high subscription fees. You might need a locally operated AI solution due to privacy requirements. Perhaps you’re most interested in how AI can accelerate the PC apps you use for creative work and everyday productivity — or the games that you play after hours. For these reasons and more, many people are choosing an AI PC in addition to cloud-based AI solutions.

What is an AI PC?

On a technical level, an AI PC is a laptop or desktop computer with hardware specially designed to accelerate AI workloads. That specialized hardware might come in the form of a CPU with both a neural processing unit (NPU) and an integrated graphics processing unit (GPU). An AI PC might also harness the power of a modern discrete GPU. When you open an AI app or use an AI-powered feature like Generative Fill in Adobe Photoshop, your NPU or GPU runs the task quickly and efficiently. If your PC isn’t equipped with this kind of AI hardware, it won’t be able to run most AI-powered apps and features quickly enough for you to truly benefit from new technology.

But an AI PC consists of much more than a CPU and GPU stuffed in a box. An AI PC doesn’t just run AI apps and assistants; it uses AI (and similar technologies) behind the scenes to streamline everything about how you use your PC. With an AI PC, you can enjoy more performance, quieter cooling, better battery life for your laptop, and more. Since many of those features are functions of your motherboard, operating system, or BIOS, many folks think holistically of an AI PC as a complete solution, not just a specialized CPU or GPU.

Can a laptop be considered an AI PC?

Yes, there are many laptops that offer specialized hardware that’s ready for AI. If you’re looking for an AI laptop powered by an Intel CPU, it’s the latest Core Ultra processors that include an integrated NPU. AMD Ryzen 7040 and 8040 Series processors are built on AMD XDNA NPUs to provide AI acceleration on laptop PCs. The AI space is evolving rapidly, so watch for announcements from these companies about upcoming CPU designs that will boost your AI experience even further. One example of an AI-ready laptop that you can buy today is the all-new Zenbook 14 OLED powered by an Intel Core Ultra 7 processor.

Additionally, you can look for an AI laptop equipped with a discrete GPU. Since the last couple generations of GPUs from both NVIDIA and AMD are AI-ready, it’s quite easy to find an AI-compatible laptop that meets your needs and budget. NVIDIA began augmenting the AI capabilities of its graphics cards with its 20 Series GPUs, while AMD ushered in AI with their GPU solutions with its RDNA 2 architecture. A laptop like the 2024 ROG Zephyrus G14 gives you not only a CPU with an integrated NPU, but an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Laptop GPU.

We should note that Microsoft recently introduced a new category of PCs designed for AI called “Copilot+ PCs.” The first Copilot+ PCs, like the ASUS Vivobook S 15 powered by the Snapdragon X Elite Platform, are available for preorder now, and they’ll unlock new ways of using your PC by putting AI at the center of your PC experience. If using Copilot+ features is a must-have on your shopping checklist, we recommend looking for a laptop that specifically advertises compatibility with Copilot+. Even a laptop with an integrated NPU might not meet Microsoft’s hardware requirements for Copilot+.

Can I build my own AI PC?

Yes, you can build your own AI PC. By equipping your custom-built PC with a modern graphics card, you’re supplying it with the horsepower it needs for demanding AI workflows.

For its last three generations of graphics cards NVIDIA has built in AI capabilities with its specialized Tensor cores. The latest 40 Series GeForce RTX GPUs boast the company’s most advanced hardware for accelerating AI. Your options range from the affordable ASUS Dual GeForce RTX 4060 all the way to the top-of-the-line ROG Strix GeForce RTX 4090. On the AMD side, any 6000-Series or 7000-Series GPU is ready to get you rolling with AI.

Of course, you’ll need a complete PC to accompany that graphics card. For an AI PC, we recommend that you opt for high-bandwidth DDR5 RAM and speedy storage. A modern motherboard, like one of our Z790 motherboards, will not only support this cutting edge-hardware, but boost your experience with intelligent controls that react in real-time to monitoring data to ensure that you’re getting the most of your AI PC at every moment. The ROG Maximus Z790 Dark Hero, for example, uses AI Overclocking, DIMM Flex, AI Networking, AI Cooling II, and Two-Way AI Noise Cancelation to provide optimized performance, quiet yet powerful cooling, and crystal-clear communications — all with minimal setup.

Can I get an AI PC in an ultracompact design?

You might be surprised by how many options you have for getting AI performance in a compact PC. Through our ASUS NUC lineup, we provide businesses and everyday users alike with the powerful components, connectivity, and app support that they expect from a PC, but in surprisingly compact designs that offer the best performance per liter.

With the stylish ASUS NUC 14 Pro+, you’ll be able to harness a top-end Intel Core Ultra 9 CPU. Armed with Intel’s latest hybrid architecture, which integrates the CPU, GPU, and NPU (Neural Process Unit) into a single package, this chip puts exciting new AI capabilities at your fingertips.

The ASUS NUC 14 Pro can be configured with up to an Intel Core Ultra 7 CPU, a chip that’s ready to use the power of AI to supercharge your workflows through its CPU cores, integrated neural processing unit (NPU), and integrated Arc GPU. Additionally, you’ll get the Intel vPro Enterprise platform for business-class AI performance, comprehensive security, remote manageability, and proven stability. The ASUS NUC 14 Pro is the only PC powered by Intel Core Ultra CPUs that offers Local/Remote Platform Erase, Platform Service Record, and One-Click Recovery, all key vPro manageability features available to organizations that use Intel AMT.

Do you need the specialized hardware of a discrete GPU? The ROG NUC provides exceptional performance for AI workloads with the combination of an Intel Core Ultra CPU with up to an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Laptop GPU. That powerhouse duo has the chops to tackle demanding AI workflows and AAA gaming alike. For commercial and edge applications, consider the NUC 14 Performance. Capable of powering up to five 4K displays simultaneously, this PC is ideal for professional environments which require nimble AI performance in a multi-monitor setup.

How do I measure an AI PC’s performance?

If you’re looking for a quick and easy measurement to compare the relative performance of one AI PC to another, the answer is TOPS. Short for tera operations per second, TOPS indicates how many trillions of operations your AI PC can perform per second under ideal conditions. Last-gen CPUs offer single-digit TOPS; modern laptop CPUs easily triple that figure just looking at NPU performance alone; and the GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card boasts a jaw-dropping 1321 AI TOPS.

So how many TOPS does your AI PC need? Going by Microsoft’s requirements for a Copilot+ PC, the answer is at least 40 TOPS. But as with any other measure of PC performance, the question ultimately depends on the workloads that matter to you most. If you have a specific AI-accelerated app in mind like Blender, Stable Diffusion, Arnold, Mxnet, or others, we recommend researching benchmark comparisons for that specific application.

How can an AI PC accelerate your gaming?

PC gamers were among the first to boost their experiences with the power of AI. Today, you’ll find a robust set of AI-powered tools that increase the performance and visual fidelity of games, and they’re available in a wide range of today’s most popular games.

NVIDIA Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) uses AI computations to upscale lower-resolution input frames to the native resolution of your display, and the performance benefit can be quite substantial. DLSS 3 with Frame Generation goes even further to generate entirely new frames using the power of AI.

NVIDIA RTX features also let gamers play astonishingly with lifelike visuals at supremely fluid frame rates. One of the latest tools, Ray Reconstruction, is an AI model that allows for higher-quality ray-traced images than ever before.

How can an AI PC boost your creative efforts?

In the large and growing creative community, you’ll find a wide range of content creators who need potent AI PC hardware to efficiently bring their visions to life. Whether you’re a filmmaker, game developer, animator, graphic designer, architect, engineer, photographer, or a product designer, you can’t afford to miss out on the many ways that AI is transforming creative workflows.

3D Animation: With cutting-edge hardware – in particular, a discrete laptop GPU or desktop PC with a full-fledged graphics card – you’ll be able to model and render rich virtual worlds at game-changing speeds. AI denoising and tech like DLSS 3 let you preview the results faster so that you can fine-tune and finalize your projects efficiently.

With cutting-edge hardware – in particular, a discrete laptop GPU or desktop PC with a full-fledged graphics card – you’ll be able to model and render rich virtual worlds at game-changing speeds. AI denoising and tech like DLSS 3 let you preview the results faster so that you can fine-tune and finalize your projects efficiently. Image Generation: Generate images faster using Stable Diffusion and ComfyUI on NVIDIA RTX GPUs. One-step RTX-enhanced ControlNets unlock unprecedented workflow control.

Generate images faster using Stable Diffusion and ComfyUI on NVIDIA RTX GPUs. One-step RTX-enhanced ControlNets unlock unprecedented workflow control. Video Editing and Motion Graphics: Shoot, edit, and deliver faster in 4K, 6K, and even 8K with the dedicated encoders and decoders available with your graphics card accelerating video tasks, and the dedicated AI cores supercharging your AI-powered tools.

Shoot, edit, and deliver faster in 4K, 6K, and even 8K with the dedicated encoders and decoders available with your graphics card accelerating video tasks, and the dedicated AI cores supercharging your AI-powered tools. Photography : With the smartphone in your pocket, you can easily capture an image and apply a basic filter. But AI lets you do so much more. The latest AI-powered features in Adobe Photoshop let you expand an image in any direction with Generative Expand, change backgrounds on the fly, remove and replace unwanted elements with ease, upscale images with less noise, and more.

: With the smartphone in your pocket, you can easily capture an image and apply a basic filter. But AI lets you do so much more. The latest AI-powered features in Adobe Photoshop let you expand an image in any direction with Generative Expand, change backgrounds on the fly, remove and replace unwanted elements with ease, upscale images with less noise, and more. Architecture: Effortlessly visualize worlds and spaces in stunning reality using GPU-accelerated ray tracing in Unreal Engine 4, Chaos V-Ray and Enscape.

How can an AI PC make you more productive?

The tech that comes with your AI-ready CPU or GPU has wide-ranging benefits even when you’re not gaming or creating. AI can help you look your best in video calls, even in rooms with difficult lighting. Free Windows apps can use AI to accomplish many surprising tasks, like synchronizing subtitles for downloaded video files, creating clean transcriptions of recorded audio, upscale images without loss of detail or pixelation, splice music into separate tracks, and more.

Copilot+ PCs offer an intriguing set of new features to help boost your productivity, creative ambitions, and communication. The headlining feature is Recall, which builds a semantic index entirely on your device so that you can quickly and intuitively access virtually anything you’ve seen or done in the past. New AI features in Paint and Photos will let you bring your ideas to life in no time, and Live Captions will offer translations in real-time.

NVIDIA-exclusive tools make it tempting to select a PC equipped with an RTX 40 Series GPU. With ChatRTX, you can personalize a GPT large language model (LLM) that runs locally on your own PC and connects with your own photos, docs, notes, and other data. RTX Video Super Resolution can take a video stream from platforms like YouTube and Netflix and automatically scale it up to a crystal-clear 4K resolution. NVIDIA Broadcast lets you harness the power of your GPU to deploy AI-enhanced voice and video features when you’re in a video conference – or streaming your gaming experiences online.

More to come

AI has already changed the ways that we game, create, and learn. But there’s so much more on the way. As AI capabilities continue to expand from cloud-based platforms to accelerations built into the PC apps that you rely on the most, it’s going to be more valuable than ever to have a powerful, cutting-edge laptop or desktop PC.

The world of AI is changing quickly, and we’re here to help you stay on top. ASUS laptops, desktops, NUCs, and PC DIY components have what you need to take advantage of the emerging capabilities of AI. If your system doesn’t have the chops to keep up with the latest AI-powered apps and Windows 11 features, it’s time for an upgrade. Whether you’d prefer to build your own PC or hit the ground running with an ASUS NUC or laptop, we have the options you need for an incredible experience.

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