2026 has been a dramatic theme park ride of a year when it comes to PC hardware, with a zig zag of exciting climbs and punishing drops. Nvidia kicked off by launching the mighty GeForce RTX 5090 in January, while introducing us to its latest multi-frame gen tech with DLSS 4. Then AMD unleashed its first truly competitive GPU for years with the Radeon RX 9070 XT, and its FSR suite of technologies has been improving as the year has gone on.
Meanwhile, over on Planet CPU, AMD’s 3D V-cache has ruled the roost for gaming. Unveiled at CES, the company’s new Ryzen 9 9950X3D gave us a chip that could do a damn fine job of handling both gaming and multi-threaded content creation workloads.
While loads of great (and not so great) hardware has materialised this year, we’ve also suffered hardware shortages and high prices. In the first half of 2025, it was hard to find any GPUs at MSRP, particularly in the US. Now, a chronic RAM shortage has caused a maelstrom of pricing chaos that looks set to continue into 2026 and beyond.
Don’t let that depress you, though – there’s still loads of quality hardware available without ludicrous price tags attached to them, particularly when it comes to monitors and CPU coolers. Let’s take a look back at the great kit that really stood out in our expert tests and reviews, with our rundown of the best PC components and accessories from 2025.
Best CPU
AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D
£608 / $679
Pros
- Stunning multi-threaded pace
- Fantastic gaming performance
- Cool running
- Reasonably energy efficient
Cons
- Expensive
- 9800X3D is just as quick for gaming
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Best at everything: AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D
Best gaming: AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D
Best value: AMD Ryzen 5 7500X3D
All hail the new king of CPUs. AMD’s new Ryzen 9 9950X3D proved that you can absolutely have the best of all CPU worlds when it launched earlier this year, without compromising. You get all the gaming goodness of AMD’s acclaimed Ryzen 7 9800X3D, but with an extra eight cores to help out with multi-threaded tasks. There’s basically no desktop workload this chip can’t handle – it offers the best of everything out there.
There’s no desktop workload this chip can’t handle.
The core spec is split across two 8-core chiplets, and they’re both engineered quite differently. One of them is basically a 9800X3D, with eight cores and a big 64MB slab of 3D V-cache mounted underneath it. When you’re playing games, this extra local memory substantially reduces the likelihood of a cache miss, reducing the need to page your slower system RAM. It has a profound effect on gaming performance, enabling it to focus on setting up frames without being interrupted.
Unlike AMD’s 9800X3D, though, this CPU also has a second 8-core chiplet, which can boost to up to 5.7GHz. This part comes into play when you’re running heavily multi-threaded workloads, meaning this CPU absolutely flies in Cinebench. It’s not cheap, but if you want a CPU that can do everything, AMD’s new Ryzen 9 9950X3D is absolutely the chip to buy.
If gaming is your top priority, AMD’s cheaper Ryzen 7 9800X3D from last year is still our top recommendation. With its extra cache mounted under its CPU cores, rather than on top of them, it has more thermal headroom than the 7800X3D. This means it can boost to a higher clock speed and, unlike the 7800X3D, you can even overclock it yourself if you have a decent CPU cooler. Importantly, it’s just as fast in games as the 9950X3D, so this is the chip to buy if you’re unlikely to task your CPU with heavily multi-threaded workloads.
At £399, even the 9800X3D isn’t exactly cheap, though, so we were delighted when AMD released its new Ryzen 5 7500X3D at the end of this year. With six cores based on AMD’s last-gen Zen 4 architecture, it’s obviously not as quick as the 9800X3D, but it still has that same 64MB of 3D V-cache under its heatspreader. This makes all the difference in games, making this new CPU a great-value offering if gaming is a priority, but you don’t have a huge amount of cash.
Best graphics card
Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090
£2,299 / $2,849
Pros
- Incredible gaming performance
- Loads of VRAM
- Full DLSS 4 support
- Awesome two-slot cooler on Founders Edition
Cons
- Very expensive
- Hard to find at MSRP, particularly in US
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Best 4K: Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090
Best QHD: AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT
Best FHD: AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB
Nvidia really did pull out all the stops when it unleashed this beast of a GPU at the start of 2025. We already thought Nvidia’s RTX 4090 spec was beefy, but RTX 5090 basically tells its predecessor to hold its beer. RTX 5090’s massive 750mm² die contains a whopping count of 21,760 CUDA cores, and it’s equipped with 32GB of super-fast GDDR7 VRAM with a super-wide 512-bit memory bus.
With a total memory bandwidth of 1.79TB/s, and a frankly ridiculous level of shader power, RTX 5090 makes a big statement as Nvidia’s current gaming flagship. If you’re lucky enough to get a Founders Edition, you also get an amazing bit of cooler design. Despite the huge amount of silicon horsepower inside it, Nvidia’s own card only takes up two slots, and it doesn’t make a horrible noise either.
Based on Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture, RTX 5090 also supports DLSS 4 in its entirety. This includes multi frame gen, a clever new bit of AI tech that can insert up to three extra frames between each pair that’s genuinely rendered by the GPU.
RTX 5090 basically tells its predecessor to hold its beer.
It won’t fix a broken frame rate, and Nvidia’s claim that it made RTX 5070 as fast as RTX 4090 came back to bite it on the arse, but we’ve found it’s a great tool in the box to smooth out motion. If your starting frame rate is already fast, and that’s a probable outcome on RTX 5090, you can enable this tech to turn your 60fps 4K frame rate into a smooth 200fps+, which looks great if you have a monitor with a high refresh rate.
Sadly, very limited stock has made this monster of a GPU virtually impossible to find at MSRP for most of this year, with prices being particularly egregious in the US. At £1,939 / $1,999, it was already extremely expensive, but it’s even pricier in the real world. If you really want the best of the best, though, and you have the money, this is an absolutely banging GPU.
For those with less cash to splash, AMD came out with a blinder when it unleashed its Radeon RX 9070 XT this year. With competitive pricing, awesome performance, and more VRAM than RTX 5070, it looked great when it first launched. Unfortunately, as with RTX 5090, stock shortages made a similar mess of Radeon RX 9070 XT pricing for the first few months. We’re glad to see 9070 XT can genuinely be bought for £578.99 in the UK now, though – it’s a fantastic GPU for that price.
AMD did a grand job of catering for the budget end of the market this year as well. With twice as much VRAM as Nvidia’s RTX 5060, Radeon RX 9060 XT is a great GPU for its £349.99 price. That large amount of memory gives you future proofing, and enables you to run your games at settings that simply aren’t possible on an 8GB card, such as Indiana Jones and the Great Circle above the Medium preset.
Best motherboard
MSI MEG X870E Godlike X
£1,249.99
Pros
- Sublime build quality
- Abundant connections
- Stacked feature set
- Beautiful showpiece
Cons
- Intimidatingly expensive
- Minor differences versus non-X
- Limited number of units
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Ultimate pick: MSI MEG X870E Godlike X Edition
Best value: Sapphire Nitro+ B850A WiFi 7
Best mini-ITX: Asus ROG Strix B850-I Gaming WiFi
After claiming the top spot last year, MSI is back here once again thanks to its MEG X870E Godlike X Edition. While this limited edition board isn’t a massive departure from the almost-as-lovely vanilla version, it’s difficult to think of any other motherboard we’d rather have in our PCs.
It’s difficult to think of any other motherboard we’d rather have in our PCs.
This board boasts aesthetic and technical splendour in spades that any discerning enthusiast will easily appreciate. Whether you’re admiring the bountiful PCIe and USB bandwidth, or tinkering with one of its many features, such as the EZ Bridge, the whole setup feels all the more special thanks to some limited edition flair. That is, of course, providing you have four figures to splash on this mighty motherboard.
Moving on to more palatably-priced pastures, 2025 saw the arrival of AMD’s value-focused B850 chipset, with the Sapphire Nitro B850A WiFi 7 standing out the most from the pack. For £160 / $189, this board arrives with a solid set of features that’ll steer any mainstream AM5 build right.
This motherboard’s easy on the eyes too, bringing those trademark Sapphire Nitro+ stylings across the PCB, from VRMs to heatsinks. Shoutout to Sapphire for also including the largest thermal pad we’ve ever seen underneath the primary M.2 slot.
Finally, this year we also crossed paths with Asus’ ROG Strix B850-I Gaming WiFi. This small and mighty motherboard proved itself not once, but twice, both during our initial review and as the base for an absolutely ripping mini-ITX build.
This stout and stunning motherboard does command a small premium, but in return, it provides you with a reliable, powerful, and petite conductor for your hardware. Packing a PCIe Gen 5 expansion slot and room for two Gen 5 M.2 SSDs, this board is small in size but big in nature.
Best storage
WD_Black SN8100 2TB
£234 / $280
Pros
- Class-leading sequential speeds
- Solid random read performance
- Up to 8TB capacities
- Cool under load
- Five-year warranty
Cons
- Middling random write speeds
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Best performance: WD_Black SN8100 2TB
Best value: Kioxia Exceria Plus G4
In the world of storage, 2025 marked the year that PCIe Gen 5 drives got sensible. Drives like the WD_Black SN8100 put older SSDs with the same interface to shame, forgoing extravagant cooling methods without compromising on top-tier speed.
WD_Black SN8100 put older SSDs to shame, forgoing extravagant cooling without compromising on speed.
Sporting sequential read performance of up to 14,900MB/s across all capacities, SanDisk’s inaugural WD_Black drive is unparalleled in this regard. Importantly, this SSD doesn’t lose its cool at such speed, with peak operating temperatures of just 55°C underneath an everyday motherboard heatsink. Make no mistake, this is the ruler of the roost.
Of course, not every drive needs to push the limits of PCIe Gen 5 to be successful, as the Kioxia Exceria Plus G4 proves. Costing a mere £160 at release, this SSD represents excellent value with sequential read performance of up to 10,000MB/s.
The NAND shortage sadly hampers the affordability and availability of all SSDs, including our favourites of the year. While this is a shame, external market forces don’t diminish the shine of these drives.
Best case
Fractal Design Meshify 3 XL Ambience Pro
£217
Pros
- Makes PC building easy
- ARGB hub
- Gorgeous looks
- 180mm fan support
Cons
- No vertical GPU mount
- Comparatively pricey
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Premium pick: Fractal Design Meshify 3 XL Ambience Pro
Best panoramic: Arctic Xtender VG
Best value: be quiet! Pure Base 501 DX
We’ve seen several great case designs this year, with both classic towers and panoramic fishtanks attempting to woo PC builders their way. Ugly cases are out; gorgeous looks and premium build quality are in, and we love to see it.
At the top end of the scale, we absolutely adored Fractal Design’s new Meshify 3 XL Ambience Pro. Its roomy interior gives you loads of space for practically any motherboard, including massive EE-ATX models, plus all the cooling gear you could want. Its easy-access design makes PC building and cable routing a breeze, and its vented panels give you loads of airflow too. To top it all off, it looks great, especially with its tasteful RGB lighting.
If you like to show off your hardware behind glass windows (and we’re with you all the way here), then you’ll want to check out Arctic’s Xtender VG – our favourite panoramic case of 2025. That latter initialism stands for “vertical GPU”, meaning you can proudly exhibit your graphics card in all its glory behind its two glass panels. It’s an awesome case, combining dashing good looks with superb fans, all for a surprisingly reasonable price.
Ugly cases are out; gorgeous looks and premium build quality are in, and we love to see it.
You don’t have to spend loads of cash to get a decent case with RGB lighting either, as proved by the new be quiet! Pure Base 501 DX. Despite costing under £100, this smart-looking, well-designed chassis makes light work of assembling a tidy build, and its bright RGB lighting looks great as well.
Best cooling
Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro 360 ARGB
£79.99
Pros
- Unrivalled thermals
- Great thermal paste included
- Beautiful RGB lighting
- Unbeatable value
- Six-year warranty
Cons
- Short, bottom-loaded cables
- Can’t rotate faceplate
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Best all-round AIO: Arctic Freezer III Pro
Best quiet AIO: be quiet! Silent Loop 3
Best value cooler: Arctic Freezer 8
Arctic is on a roll right now, and its latest range of Liquid Freezer III Pro coolers offers outstanding performance for the money. We were really impressed by the 360 ARGB model in our review this year, with its superb performance, great looks, and outstanding value. This bargain cooler now goes for just £79.99, despite its fans and pump all having RGB bells and whistles. Its cooling abilities are top-notch as well, and it had no trouble keeping our Core i9-13900K in check.
If your top priority is low-noise operation, then the latest lineup of be quiet! Silent Loop 3 coolers also come highly recommended. Its pump and fans are incredibly quiet in action, and the 420mm model we tested had no trouble taming the temperatures from our toasty Core i9-13900K test chip with a 253W load, even with its fans running at just 600rpm. It looks good too, with the glowing fins on its pump giving it a steampunk electric heater vibe. If you have three 140mm fan mounts ready and waiting, the 420mm version is the Daddy.
Arctic has also thoroughly proved itself at the budget end of the cooling scale this year. With an astoundingly low price of just £16.49, the Arctic Freezer 8 is a solid, no-nonsense upgrade from a stock cooler. It’s quiet, compact, eminently affordable, and ideal for cooling a 6-core or 8-core chip at stock speeds.
Best PSU
be quiet! Dark Power 14 1,000W
£189.99
Pros
- Great efficiency
- Superb overall performance
- Excellent noise characteristics
- 10-year warranty
- ATX 3.1 and PCIe 5.1 compatibility
Cons
- Nothing of note
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Best high-end: be quiet! Dark Power 14
Best mid-range: be quiet! Pure Power 13
best budget: Endorfy Vero L6
Often overlooked when speccing up a new PC, it’s essential to buy a PSU that’s up to the job of powering your hardware, and it’s good old-fashioned common sense to opt for one that’s supremely stable, efficient, and future proof. The be quiet! Dark Power 14 blew us away when we reviewed it, firmly ticking all these boxes and more.
This excellent PSU is an investment that will stand the test of time.
With both 80 Plus Titanium and Cybenetics Titanium certification, low-noise operation, and compatibility with the ATX 3.1 and PCIe 5.1 specs, this power supply is about as good as it gets. In our tests, this PSU’s efficiency was well over 90% at every load between 200W and 1,000W (and it hit 95% at 500W). It’s not cheap at £189.99 for the 1,000W model, but this excellent PSU is an investment that will stand the test of time.
You can still get a great PSU without spending this much cash, though, as demonstrated by the be quiet! Pure Power 13 M 850W. Offering full ATX 3.1 and PCIe 5.1 certification, quiet operation, and modular cabling, it’s a solid buy for its modest £135 price. Its 80 Plus Gold certification guarantees decent efficiency too, and we measured its efficiency at over 90% in most of our tests, with it only dropping to 88.64% at a low 85W load.
There’s no need to worry if you don’t have big bucks to spend on your power supply either. The Endorfy Vero L6 750W ably demonstrated that you can still equip your rig with a decent ATX 3.1 and PCIe 5.1 PSU for just £65. You don’t get modular cabling, naturally, but you do get a solid 750W helping of power, and our tests showed its efficiency was over 86% in usual loads. That’s a bargain for the money.
Best monitor
MSI MPG 271QR QD-OLED X50
£900
Pros
- Brighter QD-OLED panel
- Excellent colour accuracy
- Great connectivity
- Robust OLED care
- Three-year warranty
Cons
- Text fringing
- Middling cable management
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Best gaming: MSI MPG 271QR QD-OLED X50
Best productivity: Philips Brilliance 5K 27E3U7903
Best value: iiyama G-Master G2741QSU-B1c
No monitor left a stronger lasting impression on us this year than the MSI MPG 271QR QD-OLED X50. Pushing QD-OLED forward with a higher refresh rate and improved brightness, this display provides a gaming experience that’s nothing short of stellar.
If you have the hardware capable of achieving 500Hz in tandem with a QHD resolution, there’s no other monitor we’d recommend pairing with your system. That’s not forgetting its other compelling qualities, such as cracking colour accuracy, a USB hub complete with KVM switch, and an AI care sensor that makes it simpler to keep burn-in at bay.
Meanwhile, iiyama’s G-Master G2741QSU-B1 gave us cause to celebrate on the budget end of the monitor market. It still surprises us that iiyama is somehow able to pair a solid IPS panel and USB hub for just £150. If you can’t tolerate the stand’s lack of height adjustability, you can get the same package plus that feature for another tenner. Bargain.
2025 wasn’t all about gaming monitors, though, as the Philips Brilliance 5K 27E3U7903 impressively gave Apple’s Studio Display a run for its money. There really was a screen for everyone this year, and monitor prices are great right now too.
Best system
PCSpecialist Defiance 16
From £1,499
Pros
- Great GPU performance
- Well-calibrated display
- Solid build quality
- Three-year warranty
Cons
- Relatively small battery
- Middling speakers
- No automatic refresh rate switch
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Best laptop: PCSpecialist Defiance 16
Best desktop: PCSpecialist Luna Recon Master
Best handheld: MSI Claw 8 AI+
Best mini PC: Geekom GT1 Mega
As much as we enjoy piecing together a PC, the convenience and quality of prebuilds like the PCSpecialist Luna Recon Master make for a welcome change of pace. This system ticked all the boxes, arriving promptly, at a fair price, with oodles of performance, and a gorgeous finish that’s difficult not to ogle. This specific machine is sadly no longer available to buy, but we were really impressed by the spec and build quality for the money, and we can’t wait to see what PCSpecialist brings us in 2026.
In addition to putting together our favourite desktop of 2025, PCSpecialist also launched our top laptop, via the Defiance 16. Featuring up to an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti, paired with an Intel Core i7-14650HX, you’ll find plenty of power lurking in this stylish 16in shell.
Sticking with mobile for the moment, the MSI Claw 8 AI+ came as a welcome surprise in the handheld space. Both MSI and Intel have thoroughly redeemed themselves after prior lacklustre efforts, with this new handheld competing strongly with AMD-based alternatives, and with better efficiency to boot. What a comeback.
2025 really proved that you can cram an inordinate amount of processing power into a tiny PC.
2025 also really proved that you can cram an inordinate amount of processing power into a tiny PC box. We’ve seen loads of mini PCs this year, but the standout one is Geekom’s GT1 Mega. With its 16-core Intel Core Ultra 9 185H CPU, and up to 64GB of DDR5 memory, this little rounded square is a mini powerhouse. It’s also equipped with loads of ports, and its integrated Intel Arc GPU is surprisingly potent in games, beating several AMD-based competitors we’ve reviewed.
Best network storage
QNAP TS-432X
£399 / $579
Pros
- 10GbE SFP+ port
- Great performance
- PCIe expansion
- Feature-packed QTS
- Tool-free installation
Cons
- No M.2 SSD support
- No HDMI output
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Best NAS: QNAP TS-432X
Best portable NAS: QNAP TBS-h574TX-i5UC-05S01 NASbook
Setting its laser to focus on high performance, QNAP played a blinder with the TS-432X. You can now pick up one of these four-bay NAS boxes for £399 from Amazon, and it has everything you need to set up a really fast networked hard drive system. Key to that feature set is 10Gb Ethernet support, of course, and there’s also a pair of 2.5Gb ports.
It’s all bolstered by a solid arsenal of hardware, including a quad-core 2GHz Alpine AL524 ARM CPU and 4GB of DDR4 RAM, with the bonus that you can upgrade the latter yourself to 16GB using its SODIMM slot. Similarly, there’s also a PCIe Gen 3 x4 slot for you to add your own expansion cards. There’s no M.2 support out of the box, but if your top priority is setting up a four-bay high-speed NAS with the latest wired networking tech, this is the box to get.
Focusing its laser on performance, QNAP played a blinder with the TS-432X.
QNAP also takes the award for our favourite portable NAS this year, with its TBS-h574TX-i5UC-05S01 NASbook proving you could still get fast performance from a NAS box you can take on the move. Its five M.2 slots can be loaded with up to 19.2TB of solid state storage, while its 16GB of RAM and Intel Core i5 CPU keep it working quickly.
All the latest network standards are supported, including both 10Gb and 2.5Gb Ethernet, and there’s also a pair of Thunderbolt 4 ports. These won’t run at 40Gbps, sadly, but their 20Gbps speed is still plenty quick enough for you to work on 4K video files from your laptop.
