The Best Hardware of 2016

May

Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080


Some unfortunately timed travel plans meant that we didn't technically review a GTX 1080 until June, but May was when it launched. It was the first consumer-grade card to feature Nvidia's 16nm Pascal architecture and GDDR5X memory, and boy did it impress. Performance and efficiency (and pricing) were both off the charts, putting Nvidia ahead of the curve with a 4K-capable card that AMD simply had no answer to and still doesn't even as 2016 comes to a close. Credit where credit's due, Nvidia really delivered well here, but it can only be a good thing for all of us if AMD is able to provide solid high-end competition in 2017.

Synology DS216j


The humble NAS box doesn't get much of a look-in these days. As many of us rely more and more on the cloud for our media needs, their relevance is declining. That doesn't apply to everyone, however, and in June we saw that Synology is still very much leading the way in this field. The two-bay DS216j isn't designed for transcoding, but otherwise it'll serve all your home NAS needs for a decent price. The DSM software that accompanies it is first-class as well.

Intel Core i7-6950X


Soon after Nvidia dropped Pascal, Intel launched its Broadwell-E CPUs. The flagship model, the eye-wateringly expensive Core i7-6950X, sports 10 cores, 20 threads and a ridiculous 25MB cache. Few people need such power, and few applications can truly take advantage of it, but when it's truly unleashed in multi-core programs, it's in a league of its own. While it's a ridiculous proposition for most enthusiasts, costing more by itself than a decent gaming rig, the family does also include the six-core Core i7-6850K, which is the best balanced one of the lot and the least expensive way to unlock X99's full 40 PCI-E 3.0 lanes.