Having gone over the best CPUs, cases, some motherboards, and soon coolers, we’re now looking at the best GTX 1080 Tis of the year. Contrary to popular belief, the model of cooler does actually matter for video cards. We’ll be going through thermal and noise data for a few of the 1080 Tis we’ve tested this year, including MOSFET, VRAM, and GPU temperatures, noise-normalized performance at 40dBA, and the PCB and VRM quality. As always with these guides, you can find links to all products discussed in the description below.

Rounding-up the GTX 1080 Tis means that we’re primarily going to be focused on cooler and PCB build quality: Noise, noise-normalized thermals, thermals, and VRM design are the forefront of competition among same-GPU parts. Ultimately, as far as gaming and overclocking performance, much of that is going to be dictated by silicon-level quality variance, and that’s nearly random. For that reason, we must differentiate board partner GPUs with thermals, noise, and potential for low-thermal overclocking (quality VRMs).

Today, we’re rounding-up the best GTX 1080 Ti graphics cards that we’ve reviewed this year, including categories of Best Overall, Best for Modding, Best Value, Best Technology, and Best PCB. Gaming performance is functionally the same on all of them, as silicon variance is the larger dictator of performance, with thermals being the next governor of performance; after all, a Pascal GPU under 60C is a higher-clocked, happier Pascal GPU, and that’ll lead framerate more than advertised clocks will.

In keeping up with our end of the year coverage, such as The Best CPUs of 2017, The Best PC Cases of 2017, and Best RAM sales, we’ve now put together the most noteworthy gaming monitors of the year. Monitors aren’t something we’ve spent much time with this year, although there are a couple we’ve gotten hands-on with and recommend. As the holidays approach—and thus, the most consumer-centric time of the year—we hope this guide of top-rated monitors will help take some of the guesswork out of any purchasing decisions.

We’ll look at best monitors in categories such as UltraWide, 4K gaming, budget 1080p, 1440p, G-Sync, FreeSync, and a handful of honorable mentions. This list includes Black Friday and other sales for monitors.

This was largely a video-focused content piece, but we’re providing the show notes below.

The biggest sale weekend of the year is coming up, and we’re not very good salesmen. What we’re going to do is highlight a couple of actually good sales, tell you what’s wrong with them, and then let you decide if the good outweighs the bad. We’ll be pulling a couple components from each major category. We’ll put timestamps on the left in the video with the respective categories. We have a GTX 1080 Ti also coming out today.

Before getting started, one of our current advertisers (iFixit) also has a few promos and sales going. They did not sponsor this content (but are an active advertiser), though we figured we’d point you over there for tool purchases for things we actually use daily.

With the US Thanksgiving holiday right around the corner, sales and discounts have begun making it almost affordable to build a PC again after months of high prices. One component that has seen huge price increases over 2017 has been DRAM, with little respite over the months. We found some deals on DDR4 RAM this week, so if you are in the market for a new kit or an upgrade, this is good news. Additionally, if you are someone looking for a CPU to go with a new kit of RAM, consider checking out the recent AMD CPU sale article or the Best CPUs of 2017 article for more.

We’ve been staying on top of sales round-ups lately, and noticed that several of our choices in our Best Cases of 2017 content are now on sale. This includes the Meshify C, Define C, Corsair 570X & 270R, Thermaltake View 71 & P5, and a couple of NZXT and Rosewill cases.

Continuing our holiday buyer’s guides, hardcore overclocker Buildzoid has joined us to analyze the best AMD motherboards currently on the market, looking at X370 and B350 for overclocking. The boards scale from $75 to $350 as we step through nearly every single AM4 motherboard out there, with clear guidance as to which boards are most suitable for different tasks. This was primarily done as a video, but the written section below will recap the highlights. Timestamps are also provided, if the video is preferred.

For this AMD motherboard buyer’s guide, we’re primarily highlighting boards in the $120 to $200 price range, but do talk about some of the budget Ryzen motherboards. VRM capabilities and heatsinks, BIOS menus, and memory overclocking compatibility all factor into our choices.

In the calm before the global celebration of consumerism, it would seem that the entire range of AMD processors has gone on sale – or most of it, anyway. Several of these have tempted us for internal machines, at this point. The Threadripper 1950X has been available as low as $800 (from the usual $1000) price-point, the R7 CPUs are cut into R5 prices -- $260 for the 1700X is now common, and R5 CPUs have also been dropping in price. The timing is excellent, too, as we just posted our Best CPUs of 2017 Awards, which include several of these sale items.

As we continue to push through the busiest week of the year, we’re ramping into more end-of-year recap coverage pieces, pooling a year’s worth of testing into central locations. The first Awards Show was for the best cases of the year, and our next is for the best CPUs of 2017. This covers multiple categories, including gaming, hobbyist / small business production, overall value, and adds some special categories, like “Biggest Upset” and “Biggest Disappointment.”

As launch years go, 2017 has been the most packed of any in recent history. The constant back-and-forth between Intel and AMD has largely taken the spotlight from the rest of the industry, as each company moves to ship directly competing products in rapid-fire fashion.

This content looks at the best CPUs for 2017 in gaming, production (3D modeling, animation, and video rendering), budget gaming, and overall balance.

We’ve reviewed a lot of cases this year and have tested more than 100 configurations across our benchmark suite. We’ve seen some brilliant cases that have been marred by needless grasps at buzzwords, excellently designed enclosures that few talk about, and poorly designed cases that everyone talks about. Cases as a whole have gone through a lot of transformations this year, which should seem somewhat surprising, given that you’d think there are only so many ways to make a box. Today, we’re giving out awards for the best cases in categories of thermals, silence, design, overall quality, and more.

This awards show will primarily focus on the best cases that we’ve actually reviewed in the past year. If some case you like isn’t featured, it’s either because (A) we didn’t review it, or (B) we thought something else was better. It is impossible to review every single enclosure that is released annually; at least, it is impossible to do so without focusing all of our efforts on cases.

Here’s the shortlist:

This year’s case manufacturers will primarily be focused on shifting to USB Type-C – you heard it here first – as the upcoming trend for case design. Last year, it was a craze to adopt tempered glass and RGB LEDs, and that’s plainly not stopped with this year’s CES. That trend will carry through the half of 2017, and will likely give way to Type-C-heavy cases at Computex in May-June.

For today, we’re looking at the best PC cases of 2017 thus far, as shown at the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES). Our case round-ups are run every year and help to determine upcoming trends in the PC cases arena. This year’s collection of the top computer cases (from $60 to $2000) covers the major budget ranges for PC building.

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