Hardware component guidelines

Building a great Windows device starts with selecting the right components. This section provides engineering guidance and recommendations for the following components.

In this section

Topic Description

Audio

This document provides recommendations for the design and development of audio devices, including audio playback and audio input devices intended for use with Microsoft’s Speech Platform.

Battery

This section provides battery performance recommendations.

Power Management for Storage Hardware Devices

This section provides power management guidelines for NVMe and SATA/AHCI storage devices.

Bluetooth

This topic provides a list of features and recommendations for Bluetooth in Windows 10. For power-efficient support for Bluetooth LE beacons and related scenarios, we recommend that OEMs use Bluetooth components capable of Hardware Offload and able to support the Microsoft-defined Host Controller Interface (HCI) extension.

Display

This topic covers guidelines for Display components in Windows 10.

Dynamic Lighting Devices

This topic covers guidelines for Dynamic Lighting devices in Windows 11.

Ethernet

This topic covers recommendations for Ethernet in Windows 10.

Graphics

This topic covers guidelines for Graphics in Windows 10.

Mobile Broadband

This topic covers recommendations for Mobile Broadband components in devices that run Windows 10.

Near Field Proximity (NFP/NFC)

This topic covers recommendations for near field communications (NFC) in Windows 10.

Peripheral Component Interface Express

This topic provides recommendations for PCI Express (PCIe) in Windows 10.

Radial controller devices

This topic provides recommendations for radial controller devices in Windows 10.

Sensors

This topic provides recommendations for integrated sensors for Windows 10 and Windows 11.

Simple Peripheral Bus (SPB)

This topic covers recommendations for Simple Peripheral Bus in Windows 10.

Trusted Platform Module (TPM)

This topic provides recommendations for Trusted Platform Module (TPM) technology for Windows 10.

Windows Digitizer Class Input Devices

Touch interfaces can be found today across myriad devices ranging from mobile phones to slates, to kiosks, to horizontal/vertical displays of 30 inches. This section presents implementation and validation guides for the various Windows touch technologies.

Legacy Touchscreen and Pen Resources

The topics in this section present legacy resources for Windows Touchscreen and Pen devices. This information applies to Windows 8 and earlier operating systems.

Universal Serial Bus (USB)

This document provides recommendations for the design and development of USB components, including minimum hardware requirements, Windows Hardware Compatibility Program requirements, and other recommendations that build on those requirements. The goal of this document is to enable ecosystem partners to build a device with optimized USB functionality.