The Best Hardware of 2016

December

Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1080 Xtreme Gaming Waterforce WB


We have nothing but positive things to say about this card. Fitted with a custom water block and complete with all manner of upgrades, it is absolutely ripe for easy integration into a high-end water-cooling build. It's pricey, yes, but not unreasonably so given the GPU it uses, the quality of the water block, and the warranty. The temperatures and overclocking potential we saw with this card are testament to everything that's great about water-cooling.

Razer Blade


Finally made available to EU markets this year, the Razer Blade family was also upgraded to use Nvidia's Pascal parts. The Blade is the middle model designed to strike that ever-delicate balance between performance and portability, and it does an admirable job. The black, aluminium chassis is enough to give Apple and Dell some pause for thought, while the RGB lighting, low-noise cooling solution, and excellent 1080p performance make this one potent gaming laptop. It's premium in price, but has a lot to show for it. We recommend sticking with the 1080p screen and 256GB SSD, however, as the upgrades offered by Razer are not worth the hefty extra sums they demand.