All the PC Gamer hardware reviews from 2022
Every. Single. One.
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It’s been an interesting year for PC gaming hardware. After a supply shortage that spiked both demand and pricing we’ve had a slew of new goodies hitting our test labs, and maybe even your desktops. Though maybe it’s not been the most exciting year.
We’ve had both the new graphics card architectures from AMD and Nvidia, as well as the first flush of Intel’s Arc GPUs, too. There have also been new processor generations from both Intel and AMD as well, with the red team finally launching a whole new socket with its AM5 Zen 4 chips. But somehow they still feel entirely predictable, rather iterative and/or infeasibly expensive, and rather risk-free.
But we have, of course, had the Steam Deck.
Outside of that we’ve had a host of stunning SSDs, great peripherals, new, ultra speedy memory, and a finally OLED gaming monitors. Of course, there have been some kit that hasn’t quite made the grade, however, and for some reason it always seems to have been me dishing out the absolute lowest scores of the year. Am I a bad person?
With scores ranging from 43% all the way up to a heady 98% (for a power supply no less) this has been a fascinating year of PC gaming hardware. December was the worst month for review scores, marking a rather inauspicious end to the year, with an average of just 74%. Though much of that is going to be down to me giving the faux-LEGO gaming keyboard our worst score of the year, dragging everything else down.
Our best month, by contrast, was April with an average review score of 83%. There were no less than four separate products netting a score above 90% in April, and a lot of high 80s in there, too. February, the month of the Steam Deck, also averaged 83%, but over just 11 reviews. For us, that means April’s score spread over 18 reviews wins.
In total, we’ve reviewed 209 different products over the year, so let’s look back, month-by-month at every single one of them from 2022.
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January 2022
95%
Without the unprecedented overclocking potential inside the i5 12400 I’d be heartily recommending this chip forms the basis of your next budget gaming PC build. With it, this processor stands a good chance of becoming the legendary processor of Intel’s Alder Lake generation.
February 2022
85%
It’s a handheld gaming system first and foremost, and it does that so well it’s almost comical how much cheaper it is than other handheld PCs, which tend to cost around $1,000. It doesn’t even make sense to call them competitors. The Steam Deck is in a class of its own.
March 2022
95%
It’s been an incredibly long time coming. But OLED awesomeness has finally come to the PC. LCD technology still has the edge for latency, but this quantum dot-enhanced OLED screen is incredible when it comes to contrast, HDR performance, and response. Net result? Simply one of, if not the, best gaming monitors ever.
April 2022
93%
Mountain has taken all it’s learnt from its first keyboards and created the best-feeling, most usable 60% gaming keyboard I’ve ever used. It’s solid, reliable, responsive, and offers the best typing experience around. It’s also good-looking and surprisingly expandable with the numpad accessory, alternative switches, and PBT keycaps.
May 2022
88%
The Arctis Nova Pro Wireless headset delivers smashing sound quality that sits above many of its peers in the wireless gaming space. With impressive connectivity, fast charging, hot-swappable batteries, and great adjustability, it’s supremely versatile. It comes at a steep price, but I’m ok with that.
June 2022
88%
The Ducky One 3 sets a high standard for gaming keyboards. It looks great, feels great, and is built to survive the apocalypse. Plus it comes in cheaper than some premium keyboards today.
July 2022
98%
The Corsair AX1600i is the highest performance PSU available on today’s market, even several years after its release. Corsair did well to be the first to adopt GaN MODFETs and the totem-pole APFC converter in a desktop PSU and this gamble paid off. If there were a PSU to get close, it’d be the Be quiet! Dark Power Pro 1500W, but Corsair takes the top spot here.
August 2022
91%
The Wooting 60HE is also a success in once again proving a company needn’t be a massive operation to create a practical, fully-featured, and fairly priced product. The Wooting 60HE certainly isn’t cheap at$175(opens in new tab), though it feels a fair price for what you’re getting: a supremely well-rounded gaming keyboard with unmatched flexibility.
September 2022
83%
Zen 4’s least interesting chip might just surprise you.
October 2022
83%
In itself, however, the RTX 4090 is an excellent graphics card and will satisfy the performance cravings of every person who could ever countenance spending $1,600 on a new GPU. That’s whether they’re inconceivably well-heeled gamers, or content creators not willing to go all-in on a Quadro card. And it will deservedly sell, because there’s no other GPU that can come near it right now.
November 2022
92%
The NZXT Streaming Plus BLD Kit is easy to recommend, and a great option for anyone looking to buy a gaming PC right now. Sure, you’re going to have to spend some time piecing it together, but you’ll do so knowing that all the components are guaranteed to work well together and you’ll potentially get a better understanding of your PC in the process.
December 2022
81%
If the $999 price tag on the RX 7900 XTX can meaningfully stick around for a while, and by that I mean you have to be able to buy this card for that price tag or similar, the RX 7900 XTX will exist as a great 4K graphics card for an ultra high-end PC build in 2023. Yes, there are better, and the RTX 4090 is now undeniably the top dog for gaming, but It’s all about weighing up what you really need and what you can afford—i.e. probably not an RTX 4090.
Dave has been gaming since the days of Zaxxon and Lady Bug on the Colecovision, and code books for the Commodore Vic 20 (Death Race 2000!). He built his first gaming PC at the tender age of 16, and finally finished bug-fixing the Cyrix-based system around a year later. When he dropped it out of the window. He first started writing for Official PlayStation Magazine and Xbox World many decades ago, then moved onto PC Format full-time, then PC Gamer, TechRadar, and T3 among others. Now he’s back, writing about the nightmarish graphics card market, CPUs with more cores than sense, gaming laptops hotter than the sun, and SSDs more capacious than a Cybertruck.
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