It’s that time yet again, friends. In this episode of the Full Nerd, Gordon Mah Ung, Brad Chacos, Alaina Yee, and Adam Patrick Murray crown the best PC hardware of 2018 after plenty of healthy debate, occasional audience tiebreakers, and a political deal (or two) to secure votes for chosen candidates.
The rules: Everybody brings a favorite pick or two for each category. Then the group argues until we reach an agreement on the best product. If we can’t determine a winner via majority vote, we ask the live viewing audience to help break the tie. It’s a ton of fun—even though tapping into the hivemind resulted in at least one ludicrous (but justifiable) champion. (The GeForce RTX 2080 Ti was robbed! —Brad)
You can witness it all in the video embedded above. You can also watch The Full Nerd episode 79 on YouTube (subscribe to the channel while you’re there!) or listen to it on Soundcloud if you prefer the audio alone.
If you don’t have time to watch us debate for an hour and a half, here’s the list of our champions. But the best part of this episode is all the arguing and cajoling, so tune into the full thing if you can! Note that this is the Full Nerd podcast’s favorite hardware—not the entire PCWorld staff’s.
- Best CPU of 2018: AMD Ryzen 7 2700X ($309 on Amazon)
- Best GPU of 2018: AMD Ryzen 3 2200G with Vega 8 graphics ($100 on Amazon)
- Best storage of 2018: Adata XPG SX8200 Pro ($215 on Amazon)
- Best case of 2018: NZXT H500 ($70 on Amazon)
- Best accessory/peripheral of 2018: Creative Labs Super X-Fi audio amp ($150 on SXFI.com)
- Best laptop of 2018: MSI GS65 Stealth Thin 8RE ($1,699 on Amazon)
- Best innovation of 2018: Auto-overclocking software easily maximizing performance
- Worst trend of 2018: Sky-high GPU prices
You can also subscribe to the Full Nerd in iTunes (please leave a review if you enjoy the show). We’re also on Stitcher, Google Play, or you can point your favorite podcast-savvy RSS reader to: http://feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:226190044/sounds.rss
Have a PC- or gaming-related question? Email thefullnerd@pcworld.com and we’ll try to answer it in the next episode. Be sure to follow PCWorld on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitch to watch future episodes live and pick our brains in real time!