By now you surely know the drill-- Gartner and IDC report EMEA Q3 2013 PC shipments are in decline as consumer demand contracts, budgets shift to tablets and economies remain weak.

According to Gartner Q3 2013 EMEA shipments total 22.4 million with a -13.7% Y-o-Y drop (or -8.2% Q-o-Q), making the period the 6th consecutive quarter of shipment declines.

"During Q3 2013 many vendors went through product transitions to Intel Haswell and Bay Trail processors, while preparing for the October launch of Windows 8.1. These product transitions and the clearing of old inventory that is taking place through Q3 and Q4 2013, have played a part in the slowdown of the PC market in EMEA," Gartner says. "Many PC vendors also introduced Android tablets as a main part of their portfolios and this initiative drove PC sales downward."

All EMEA territories see slowdown in PC demand, with E. European demand falling due to weak Russian Ruble while MEA (particularly the M. East) grows increasingly partial to tablets.

The fantastically named "carbon nanotubes" (CNT) might look like just another supposed silicon killer (such as graphene and its ilk), but Stanford University researchers manage to create a first-- a basic computer using the semiconductor material.

First described in a Nature paper, the CNT computer consists of 178 logic gates, can count up to 32 and performs counting and number sorting tasks. It runs code written in MIPS, fetching instruction from memory before execution at a clock rate of 1KHz.

In other words, it is a very basic machine but for one difference-- the logic gates are of the experimental 9-nanometer CNT variety, and make the latest 22nm gates look positively gigantic. It also proves the technology has actual potential to becoming a replacement to silicon.

Following the SteamOS announcement game developer turned online game merchant Valve unveils the extent of its hardware making ambitions-- it will also start selling SteamOS PCs complete with an own-brand gamepad, the Steam Controller.

As the company puts it, "we are working with multiple partners to bring a variety of Steam gaming machines to market during 2014, all of them running SteamOS." Such machines are still a work in progress, and thus the company will first run a very limited beta program by shipping "high-performance prototype[s]" free of charge to all of 300 Steam users.

No further details are available on the Steam Box(es), other than that the prototypes feature "an array of specifications, price, and performance" and are freely hackable by users. One will even be able to replace SteamOS with a different operating system, although Valve boss Gabe Newell would surely frown at the idea of his company's hardware running on the "giant sadness" that's Windows 8...

The iMac all-in-one desktops follow the iPhone in getting an Apple refresh-- the latest generation gets Haswell Intel processors, faster graphics, PCIe flash storage and 802.11ac wifi connectivity.

The new iMacs come in either 21.5- or 27-inch sizes. The 21.5-inch number features either 2.7GHz Intel Core i5 and Intel Iris Pro graphics, or 2.9GHz CPU paired with Nvidia GeForce GTX 755M graphics.

"You can't have an Intel presentation without talking about Moore's Law," Intel CEO Brian Krzanich says as he shows off the next stage of CPU shrinkage at Intel Developer Forum 2013-- the first 14-nanometer PC.

Seen inside a "fully operational" ultrabook (or at least one operational enough to play Cut the Rope), 14nm Broadwell architecture promises a 30% power consumption improvement over 22nm Haswell chips.

"14-nanometer is here, it's working, and will be shipping by the end of this year," Krzanich continues.

However, Intel is not quite done with Haswell yet-- seen at IDF is Haswell-Y, a fanless laptop processor using just 4.5W of power.

Acer keeps the All-in-One (AIO) PC category alive at IFA 2013 with product launches and refreshes-- including the Android-based DA241HL, the sleek Aspire U5-610 and a refresh of the Z Series desktops.

The DA241HL uses Android 4.2 instead of Windows 8 as touch-based OS, and Acer claims around 700000 should work fine on the device. It features a 24-inch 1920x1080 display adjustable to tilting angles of 20 to 75 degrees, with MHL connectivity allowing the sharing of content with tablets or smartphones.

Powering all is a Tegra 3 quad-core CPU offering "the same familiar experience as with tablets and smartphones."

Meanwhile the Aspire U5-610 is a 23-inch successor to the Aspire 7600U-- one updated with 4th generation Intel Core (Haswell) processors, Nvidia GeForce GTX 760M graphics, up to 16GB RAM, Dolby Home Theatre v4 surround sound and Harman Kardon speakers.

Intel celebrates the 10th anniversary of the Extreme processor line with the launch of Ivy Bridge Extreme series-- the latest generation of high-end CPUs aimed at gamers, 3D artists and video enthusiasts.

“We are thrilled to debut our latest generation of "Extreme" desktop CPUs,” the company says. “With 12 processing threads and 4 memory channels on our latest 22nm manufacturing process, this processor delivers exceptional performance for desktop PC power users.”

The product line consists of 3 CPUs-- the 6-core i7-4960XCore and i7-4930K, and the 4-core Core i7-4820K. All feature slightly higher  clock speeds than the earlier LGA 2011 Sandy Bridge-E processors (4GHz, up from 3.9GHz), quad-channel memory controller, 1866MHz DDR3 memory support and up to 40 PCIe 3.0 lanes.

Are your customer' Raspberry Pi microPCs overheating? element14 has a solution with a miniature heatsink for the case-free credit card-size device.

Designed for the Pi CPU, the heatsink features a self-adhesive thermal layer and offers thermal resistance of 25°C/W. Through simple, passive cooling requires no fan and has a low profile (13x13x10mm) allowing it to fit in most cases.

The heatsink kit is available now for all of £4.98.

Go Pi Heatsink Kit