The Best Hardware of 2016

August

Arctic Liquid Freezer 120


For its first foray into all-in-one liquid-cooling, Arctic played it safe design-wise. It doesn't have fancy RGB lights or software-based fan control, for example, but with a sub-£50 price tag, excellent performance, and pleasantly low-noise fans, it made the more expensive models on the market look rather silly. Simple but effective is the name of the game here, and it's our standard recommendation for a products of its type now.

SilverStone Strider Platinum 1,000W


The need for PSUs of this wattage is declining rapidly as hardware becomes ever more efficient and especially with Nvidia having made greater than two-way SLI pointless for anyone who isn't chasing record-breaking benchmark scores. Nevertheless, the Strider Platinum 1,000W from SilverStone ticks all the boxes enthusiasts tend to look for: fully modular, outstanding efficiency, single-rail, a quiet and semi-passive fan, and solid electrical performance on all fronts.