The Full Nerd awards: Our favorite PC hardware of 2020

It’s that time of year once again. In this episode of the Full Nerd, Gordon Mah Ung, Brad Chacos, Alaina Yee, Adam Patrick Murray, and you—the live Full Nerd audience—engage in fierce debate (and occasional swooning) to crown the best PC hardware of 2020. And what a year it’s been for PC hardware, even though much of the most impressive new gear remains impossible to acquire.

These aren’t PCWorld’s formal picks—they’re the opinions of the Full Nerd podcast gang alone. We didn’t hold staff-wide meetings or create elaborate Excel spreadsheets full of information about every gizmo we've reviewed. Instead, each member of the Full Nerd crew brings a single nominee for each category. Then the group argues, pleads, and deals until we reach a consensus victor. If we can’t determine a winner for a category via majority vote, we ask the live viewing audience to help break the tie. You helped select a champion in not one, but two categories this year. (Subscribe to our YouTube channel if you want to catch us live in the future.)

To add to the celebration, we also announced the launch of official Full Nerd merchandise at the beginning of the show! You can grab shirts, hoodies, mousepads and more at PCWorld’s Design By Humans storefront, or hats, beanies, totes, and aprons at our Spreadshirt site.

But the spectacular PC hardware and software nominees are the real stars here. The joy of this award show lies in passionate debate, in the group discussion—in the journey. You can witness it all in the video embedded above. You can also watch The Full Nerd episode 162 on YouTube or listen to it on Soundcloud if you prefer the audio alone.

If you want to know our favorites without sitting through the full show, here’s a list of the winners. But the best part of this episode is all the arguing and cajoling, so tune into the full thing if you can! Doing so will clue you in to the complete list of nominees—this was a banner year for PC hardware. And once again, note that this is the Full Nerd gang’s favorite hardware—not the entire PCWorld staff’s best-of picks. Hearty congratulations to the winners and nominees alike.

Dig it? you can subscribe to The Full Nerd in iTunes (please leave a review if you enjoy the show). We’re also on Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify, or you can point your favorite podcast-savvy RSS reader to: http://feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:226190044/sounds.rss  

If you want to wear your geekiness on your sleeve, check out our Full Nerd shirts, hoodies, and mousepads. We’ve got Full Nerd hats and beanies, too!

Have a PC- or gaming-related question? Email thefullnerd@pcworld.com and we’ll try to answer it in the next episode. You can also join the PC-related discussions and ask us questions on The Full Nerd’s Discord server. Finally, be sure to follow PCWorld on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitch to watch future episodes live and pick our brains in real time!