Australian PC Awards 2023 presents: the nominees for the best PC gear

(Image credit: Future)

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Excellence Award
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2022 won’t be forgotten quickly by PC fans! Over the course of that tumultuous year we witnessed a depressing continuation of scarcity and high pricing in some sectors, only for that to be reversed towards the end of the year for graphics cards – ever so briefly as crypto mining slowed GPU demand and saw availability go up again – only for Nvidia to wreck the whole ball game again by setting new standards for high prices.

Then, in the closing quarter of the year there was suddenly more to cheer about than we see in most years, as a flood of innovative and highly desirable gear was released, all seemingly at about the same time. Intel dropped its 13th Gen CPUs, regaining the fabled ‘gaming crown’, before AMD hit back just a few weeks later with Ryzen 7, levelling the field again. This also saw a maturation of Intel’s P+E core architecture – though we’re a little saddened to see the maximum number of P cores seems to be eight, for this generation at least.

2022 wound up with a still-not-over battle royale between the RTX 40 series and AMD’s supposedly sensibly priced 7900 cards. And we can tell you that as we choose finalists and winners for these awards, value has never been a more important consideration.

The same is true for every category. While the onwards march on innovation slowed slightly in some areas, companies did their best to keep us all excited with new technologies and features. The price, though, the price... Inflation has bitten hard, so as tech shoppers you and we here are all super mindful to chase value as a top priority.

It’s all a fascinating melting pot of things to consider, and the editorial teams here at Tech Radar, APC, PC PowerPlay, PC Gamer and Tom’s Guide have been engaged in careful debate, because when we choose finalists here – which we’re announcing today – as well as winners – which will come on March 10 – there’s so much to take into account.

Our awards cover all the main categories that affect the PC, as well as our special awards:

Excellence Award: Presented to the person, product or technology that advanced the PC more than any other in 2022.

Gold Award: For the best overall company operating in the PC space for 2022. This list includes every one of the finalists across all the other categories – and has been carefully considered by our expert panel of judges.

And, for the first time we feel compelled to add a new category recognising the standout failures of the year – and in 2022 there were many. Thus we present the Epic Fail Award, and you’ll find our finalists for that one below.

So, with that we reveal the finalists for the latest round of the Australian PC Awards. Each product or company here has proven its chops, delivering gear that stands out, advances the PC scene and is something we think is a great choice for you to buy and enjoy.