Slapping screens on absolutely everything is the most unnecessary hardware ‘must-have’ I’ve seen to date, and I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed

Andy Edser, Hardware writer

Andy Edser, terrifying in blue — (Image credit: Future)

This month I’ve been testing: Two new mice at the same time—one of which is very heavy, one of which is very light. As a result, I now have one forearm bigger than the other. Stop writing your own punchlines, I beg of you.

Hardware fashion trends, they come and go. Some of them even stick around, like case windows, RGB lighting, or hidden cable internal designs. But there’s one relatively modern trend that I think is starting to turn from the sublime into the ridiculous, and that trend is slapping screens on components that really, really don’t need them.

Now, before I go full on “old man shakes fist at cloud”, I’m going to start off with a heavy caveat. I can appreciate that, for some people at least, CPU temperatures are a major concern.

Hidden underneath a substantial water block, or a skyscraper-esque tower of an air cooler, your machine’s processor is a mysterious beast. Modern chips have a tendency to run hot, and can clock themselves down significantly if they hit their thermal ceiling.

Plus, case windows are definitely here to stay. So, providing a large screen directly on top of a water block for at-a-glance CPU temp readings makes a whole lot of practical sense. After all, alt-tabbing out of your game to check your processor isn’t throttling itself back isn’t exactly the most practical solution, and while the Steam performance overlay (and various other alternatives) now keep you fully in the loop with your temperature readings, they’re fairly ugly affairs.

A quick glance to your right, if you have a desk-based setup? Much more convenient.

But, pray tell, what exactly is gained by the addition of a curved and motorised screen playing a video of your favourite anime character, à la the Lian Li Hydroshift II LCD Curve? Sure, it’s a bit of an eye-catcher at trade show events, and I believe that is mostly the point. Make it bright, make it move, make it ridiculous, and we’ll probably find ourselves wanting it. We all like to lust after ludicrous tech, and I am far from immune.

But should you actually, y’know, buy one? For $269? I say, ‘No’. Sure, it’s a bit of fun, and I don’t want to come off like a complete party pooper with no appreciation for an absurd aesthetic. But when fabulous CPU coolers like the (screenless) Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro deliver exceptional cooling for a touch under $100, it really does make me wonder why you’d pay the best part of $200 extra for a mostly-useless motorised doohickey.

And if you absolutely must know your temps at all times, why wouldn’t you save some cash and pick up the regular ol’ Lian Li Hydroshift II 360 CL? It’s got the same sized radiator, a (static) screen with all sorts of customisation options, and it’s nearly $100 cheaper. Still, I get it, I get it. Practical purpose, mixed with ridiculous aesthetics. Fine.

How about a screen attached to your keyboard, though, like the mahoosively expensive Asus ROG Azoth X? It’s an interesting keeb in many respects, but as our Jacob points out, the screen is… well, a bit pointless.

An Asus ROG Azoth X gaming keyboard on a desk with wrist rest and lighting enabled.

(Image credit: Future)

Sure, you can customise it to do many things. It can display temps, GPU frequencies, or exactly which song is playing on your Spotify playlist, among other functions. All very useful information, that I’m absolutely not going to crane my neck and look down upon while using my machine. C’mon, keyboard-with-screen users. Prove me wrong. How often do you take a gander at the top right of your keeb to glean useful info about your PC? Yep, I thought so.

Worse still, how about a screen on your mouse, like the SteelSeries Rival 710? It’s got an OLED display right in front of where your thumb would be, which I think we can all agree is the perfect place to view gifs.

No wait, that’s wrong. It’s the worst place to view anything ever, but hey, it’s there should you need it. Which you won’t. Did I mention it’s a wired mouse, currently available for $170—which is exactly the same price as the best wireless gaming mouse we’ve ever tested? No? That’s some food for thought, isn’t it?

Oh, but I haven’t even got to the most egregious example yet. That’d be the V-Color XFinitiy+ DDR5 kit, which includes a tiny OLED display on the side of each module for easy viewing of your RAM speeds, voltages, and profiles. Except it won’t be easy viewing, will it? Because it’s on the side of a bloomin’ RAM stick, which means you’ll be tilting your head at entirely the wrong angle around cables, coolers, and other internal components to see information that you’ll rarely—if ever—need to keep an eye on.

V-Color's XFinity+ DDR5 RAM with integrated OLED screen, lit up in RGB with the RAM voltage displayed on the side

(Image credit: V-Color)

I could go on, of course. But my point is, while it’s certainly impressive in a technical sense to mount tiny screens in all sorts of places where they wouldn’t usually go, the utility they provide is, at best, minimal. You sure can charge more for a product with a screen than without one, though, and us PC gamers are drawn to the shiny, the bizarre, and the backlit in a depressingly predictable way.

Again, I go to the shows. I coo and caw with the rest of you. I too consider opening my wallet for the bauble-like quality of a new screen-imbued component, before the crushing realisation of my actual bank balance brings me back to Earth with a thunk. It’s the nature of fashion, y’see. We don’t need it, but it sure is pretty in the photos—and for that reason alone, we want it.

And in lieu of actual innovation? If in doubt, stick a screen on it. It’s a way of getting people to pay attention to your products over others, at the very least, and you can charge a premium on the end result, too.

A Tryx all-in-one liquid cooler with a large screen over the pump unit.

(Image credit: Future)

And so, round and round we go. If you pay attention to the new hardware releases, it now seems like we’re in an era where the inside and outside of our machines are destined to eventually become coated in blinking, flashing, eye-catching displays, beaming info to the sides of our eyeballs that could otherwise usually be gleaned by looking at the big, honking display right in front of us.

Oh yes, I nearly forgot. We all sit in front of considerable displays in the first place, ideally angled and sized to provide any information about your PC you could possibly need at the click of a button. Beaming the same information, fragmented, into the side of my head or below my fingertips is not something I’m prepared to pay substantially more for on my own setup, and I don’t think you should either.

But hey, what do I know. I’m sitting next to an RGB-lit gaming PC with a case window as I speak, and back in the day I may well have railed against that. Time moves on, and perhaps I’m just becoming a curmudgeon in my old age. I’ll tell you something for free though—the first side-screened gaming headset that reaches my desk is going to have to work pretty hard to justify its existence. Oh for goodness sake… forget about it.