The Best Hardware of 2016

November

Sapphire Radeon RX 480 Nitro+ OC 4GB and 8GB


It took us a while to get to these cards, but we're glad we did. Demanding only a small premium over reference RX 480 cards, this pair from Sapphire offers a wealth of upgrades: core overclocks, VR-friendly display outputs, RGB lighting, backplate, and a cooler design that's attractive and understated. They're really quite difficult to fault, and with pricing as good as it is, we'd say they're the best buys on the market for around £200 (4GB) or £250 (8GB).

Thermaltake Tower 900


Three quarters of a metre tall, more than 25kg on the scales, and boasting a volume of over 150 litres, the Thermaltake Tower 900 looks like a case that fell into a bunch of anabolic steroids. It is an absolute monster, and the only reason we included it on this list is because we're scared of what it would do to us if we didn't.

Overclockers UK ForceBox Gamer


November also saw the launch of Nvidia's GTX 1050 Ti, which comfortably nestled in between the RX 460 and RX 470 in both price and performance. It's a decent gap-filler, but hardly a headline product. Still, we were impressed by the system that Overclockers UK sent us that used it, mainly because it took advantage of the card's low power requirements and high efficiency to offer a tiny yet powerful system. We also found that it offered excellent value, great performance all round, and quiet and cool hardware. For £800, it's a great little system.