The Hardware Awards - 2020 : TechGoggles

2020 has been one hell of a year. We’ve seen a lot of good and bad stuff go down over the year, and if you’re a gaming and tech enthusiast, I don’t need to tell you what a crazy ride it’s been. One after another, there have been some impressive launches throughout 2020, by both team red and team green. First with AMD’s Ryzen 5000 processors, then NVIDIA’s RTX 3000 series graphics cards followed closely by AMD’s own Radeon RX 6000 GPUs. It’s been an exciting time for PC gamers, and budding PC enthusiasts have more options than ever to choose parts for their new Battlestations. So, why not see which ones take the crown this year? Welcome to The Hardware Awards 2020, where we’ll be making our picks for the standout gaming hardware launched this year. Without further ado, let’s jump into it.

Best Overall Performing CPU – AMD Ryzen 5900X

The AMD Ryzen 5900X is rightfully the king of CPUs right now, offering brilliant single and multi-core performance, which makes it the best CPU right now for both gamers and content creators alike. Not only does it offer a significant bump in performance over previous generations of Ryzen CPUs, it completely blows the competition from Intel out of the water. For a no-compromise, high-end experience, the 5900X is definitely the easiest choice.

Best Gaming CPU – AMD Ryzen 5 5600X

Ever since the initial launch of the Ryzen processors a few years ago, AMD has continuously impressed gamers and enthusiasts alike, offering an incredible price to performance ratio. But for the longest time, Intel still held the crown when it came to pure gaming performance. That story has changed too, with the red team’s Ryzen 5000 series, and now we can’t help but hand it over to the Ryzen 5 5600X, which has proven itself to be the best CPU available in the market for gamers.

Best Budget Gaming CPU – AMD Ryzen 5 3600

For gamers on a budget, there’s no better option than the Ryzen 3600 right now. It gives solid gaming performance regardless of resolution and settings, and can pretty much breeze through the latest and greatest of AAA titles with ease as long as you pair it with a capable graphics card. The name of the game is price to performance, and there seems to be no match for the Ryzen 3600 when it comes to that.

Best Budget CPU For Content Creators – AMD Ryzen 7 2700X

If you’re a content creator on a tight budget, worry not, because our winner for the best budget CPU here is an amazing pick. The Ryzen 7 2700X was popular as the go-to all round CPU when it first came out, and even though Ryzen 3000 and 5000 CPUs provide a significant bump in single-core performance, the 2700X’s raw multi-threaded power is still a force to be reckoned with.

Best Mid-Range All Round Performer – AMD Ryzen 7 3700X

Now this was a close call, but we feel that for the best all-round performance, you can’t go wrong with the Ryzen 7 3700X. For pure gaming the Ryzen 5 5600X is a better fit, but with its two extra cores, the 3700X provides a good balance for gamers who are also into content creation. And considering the similar price points, we think the 3700X comes out on the top as a better value for money option.

Best Budget GPU – NVIDIA GTX 1660Ti

Budget Graphics cards are always in high demand, but sadly we haven’t seen the latest options from either AMD or NVIDIA For this gen in the budget range. So, in the meanwhile, our budget GPU king is the NVIDIA GTX 1660Ti, and rightly so. It’s economical and offers impressive performance across the board, especially at 1080p.

Best Mid-Range GPU – NVIDIA RTX 3060Ti

This is probably the sweet spot for most people looking to make the best of their wallets. And thanks to NVIDIA, we have the perfect mid-range card: the RTX 3060Ti. Now, it’s kinda weird that “mid-range” now costs upwards of INR 30,000, but that’s just the world we live in these days. Anyway, with performance that easily rivals the 2080 Super, it’s hard to not be impressed by the 3060Ti, considering there’s almost a 50% drop in launch price. But the competition in this price segment is tough, because if AMD decides to drop the price for the RX 5700XT, that would definitely take the crown. So it’s going to be interesting to wait and see what the red team has in store for us.

Best 1440p GPU – AMD Radeon RX 6800XT

This was a bit of a surprise for us, but when it comes to raw 1440p performance, AMD’s 6800XT doesn’t seem to have any competition. Sure, it lacks some NVIDIA specific features like DLSS and RTX ray tracing (for now), but considering the support for both technologies is still limited in terms of number of games, it’s not hard to see why the 6800XT would come out on top. Not to mention, 16 gigs of VRAM is nothing to kid about, especially when you’re gaming at higher resolutions. Combine that with the fact that the 6800XT has a recommended PSU of 650W AND runs with a lower power draw than the 3080 and 3090, and the case for the RX 6800XT only gets stronger.

Best 4K Gaming GPU – NVIDIA RTX 3080

For 4K Gaming, we wholeheartedly think that the RTX 3080 is the best option available right now. Yes, we’re aware that the 3090 exists, but it also costs a fortune. With its performance features and price, the RTX 3080 is the perfect fit for a 4K gaming experience without compromises.