Welcome to a particularly interesting edition of the Australian PC Awards. Unlike most years in tech which are clean, tidy periods where everything runs smoothly and we all buy loads of nice new things, 2022 turned that upside down with one drama after another, all in a market where actual products you could buy were scarce, expensive, or delayed.
This is not to say the actual products were duds – au contraire – the tail end of 2022 in particular saw a spectacular period of new GPUs and CPUs, along with exciting new motherboard platforms. DDR5 got its act together and became good, and affordable, laptops leapt into new realms of low power and high performance, and some standout new techs blew us away, like QD OLED monitors.
The editorial teams here at APC, Tech Radar, PC Gamer and PC PowerPlay thoroughly enjoyed compiling these finalists, and then selecting the winners. It was a fascinating year with highs and lows. The highs weren’t in short supply, it’s just that the lows exceeded the expected quota by an alarming amount.
But, we have selected our winners and they are clear to us as the best of the best. Read on and see what got the big gongs, as well as what gear made our finalist lists. Maybe you agree, maybe you have differing opinions. That’s all good, 2022 was a confusing year, but thanks to these 2023 Australian PC Awards the cream has been separated and all the good stuff properly rewarded.
Motherboards
We were really spoiled for choice when it came to motherboards in 2022. Both AMD and Intel released new platforms meaning we had a huge variety of boards to choose from.
In September, AMD released its AM5 platform, which added support for DDR5 memory. High end X670E boards were joined by X670, B650E and B650 boards. Four chipsets? Actually, they all use the same chip. It’s just that the X series uses two of them, while the B series uses one. AMD says it intends to support AM5 for several years to come. If it has a long life like AM4 did, then you can expect to be able to upgrade to a Zen 5 or Zen 6 processor with just a BIOS flash. Just a month later, Intel released its 13th Generation CPU range accompanied by Z790 motherboards. Z790 is more or less an evolution over Z690 with a better I/O thanks to the inclusion of more PCIe 4.0 lanes.
This means Z790 boards typically have improved support for high bandwidth devices and controllers, including things like more PCIe 4.0 M.2 slots or things like USB 4 or Thunderbolt 4 controllers.
Sadly, high quality motherboards are now expensive. It wasn’t long ago that a $500 motherboard was regarded as ultra-premium. Now, $500 is considered mid-range.
But if you are prepared to pay, at least you can expect a high-quality product. Things like
