In this episode of The Full Nerd, Gordon Mah Ung, Brad Chacos, Alaina Yee, Keith May, and Adam Patrick Murray hash out the best PC hardware of 2021.
It’s immediately fireworks as Gordon nominates Intel’s 12th-gen Alder Lake as the best CPU of the year and Alaina counters that AMD’s Ryzen 5 5600G should be the pick given the current state of GPUs and its bargain price.
The heated talk bleeds over into the best GPU of the year as Alaina again makes the argument that AMD’s Ryzen 5 5600G gives hope to those who cannot get unobtanium discrete GPUs, while Gordon argues best doesn’t mean settling.
The crew also discusses their picks for best laptop, best accessory, best game, best innovation, and worst trend as we begin to close out 2021, which has been a doozy of a year for the PC.
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You can witness it all in the video embedded above. You can also watch The Full Nerd episode 197 on YouTube (subscribe to the channel while you’re there!) or listen to it on Megaphone.fm if you prefer the audio alone.
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Author: Gordon Mah Ung, Executive Editor
One of founding fathers of hardcore tech reporting, Gordon has been covering PCs and components since 1998.