PC Gamer Hardware Awards 2020: The best gear of the year

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080
As the first of the new Ampere generation of graphics cards the sheer performance of the RTX 3080 has blown us away. At near half the price of the top chip from the previous generation, the RTX 2080 Ti, it absolutely destroys it in terms of gaming performance. As a generation uplift that's pretty staggering. The RTX 3080 has also moved the ray tracing game along, to the point where the performance penalty has almost been negated. AMD's RX 6800 XT ran it close, but the added potential of ray tracing and DLSS is too big an offering to ignore.

AMD Ryzen 5 5600X
The fact that this $299 CPU produces similar gaming performance to the $540 Core i9 10900K is quite the feat and shows how far AMD has come. It also squeezes in support for PCIe 4.0, and comes with its own cooler, making this a formidable value proposition. It may 'only' be a 6-core, 12-thread chip, but that's going to be fine for gaming for a while yet. It's a frankly fantastic gaming CPU and will be the base of many a rig over the next few years.

Oculus Quest 2
This one came as a bit of a surprise to us, purely in how much we enjoy this headset as an all-round affordable alternative to a resolutely PC VR one. The specs sheet isn't as modest as you might expect, either: 1832 x 1920 per eye resolution, 90Hz refresh rate (in supported titles, otherwise it's a 72Hz standard), a new fast-switch LCD panel, and a snappy onboard Snapdragon XR2 processor. 

Razer Seiren Mini
Out of all the budget microphones we messed with this year, the tiny Razer Seiren Mini left the biggest impression. This cute $50 pill-shaped microphone is criminally easy to use and sounds just as good as microphones double (and some cases triple) the sound. It may not have 'luxuries' like a mute button, or any controls at all, but it means even a total n00b can completely change their audio production simply by plugging it in. And it comes in powder pink, and looks frickin' awesome.

Asus ROG Crosshair VIII Dark Hero
Asus has taken the release of AMD's Ryzen 5000 chips as an opportunity to take another look at the X570 chipset, and the result is one of the most-impressive X570 motherboards yet. Designed with Zen 3 in mind, this admittedly pricey $400 motherboard is capable of hitting higher overclocks and better memory speeds than we've seen with older boards. It also features a clean design while packing an incredible feature list. 

Sabrent Rocket PCIe 4.0 2TB
Built around the Phison E16 controller and Toshiba 96-layer TLC NAND flash, the Sabrent Rocket PCIe 4.0 SSD takes well-known components and packages them together at a great price. You'll hit sequential read and write figures of 5GB/s and 4.4GB/s, as well as manage impressive 4K random figures as well. This is a next-gen drive that you can pick up for last-gen prices, and that alone makes it a knockout option for us. You can also get it in slightly more affordable 1TB and 500GB spins as well.

Razer DeathAdder Pro V2
A little more reserved than the Naga Pro, but just as nippy with a 20k sensor. The DeathAdder Pro V2 manages to marry its no-frills 6 button setup, and simple ergonomics with the flawless tracking Razer prides itself on. It's not the lightest, stepping in to the ring at 2.9oz, but it sure packs a punch. Don't punch it back, though. Still, it's big enough for larger hands, unlike the G203, but does come with a much mightier price tag.

Logitech G915 TKL
A miniaturised version of the G915, the G915 TKL cuts off the numpad to offer a bit more space for your gaming mouse to manoeuvre. Besides that, it offers the same great Logitech wireless connectivity as its bigger sibling and features a decent 40-hour battery life with its per-key RGB lighting ablaze. 

Razer BlackShark V2 Pro
Razer's revamp of the classic BlackShark headset is an incredible sounding wired gaming headset at the shockingly low price of $100. The TriForce Titanium 50mm drivers rivals some of the best sounding, and more expensive headsets on the market. The BlackShark V2 Pro is the cable-free version and, while it is more expensive, the lag-free high-res wireless connection makes for an outstanding gaming experience with THX Audio as standard. 

Dell G5 15 SE
This fantastically priced Dell machine is a seriously affordable all-AMD gaming laptop. With awesome CPU performance, you're looking at great multitasking, productivity, and the ability to handle CPU heavy games without a hitch. And it cracks out around 63 FPS average in graphic intensive games, too, thanks to the rarely seen RX 5600M GPU. The 144Hz doesn't go amiss if you want your reflexes to matter, but there are some drawbacks with the weak built in sound system. With a nice headset, you shouldn't even notice it, though. Besides, you get a nice 1TB chunk of SSD storage to keep your gaming library downloaded on, too. And for under $900 it's stunning value.

LG Ultragear 27GN950
LG managed to make a display that features its own gorgeous 4K NanoIPS panel, a 144Hz refresh rate, and HDR for only $800. This is a feature list that we'd normally be expecting to cost us well over the $1,000 mark. The panel itself is beautiful, as you'd expect from LG's own manufacturing capabilities, and is as colourful as you could with. Pair this with one of those fancy new GPUs you managed to snag (or are planning to snag), and high-end 4K gaming is within your reach.