Favorite Things – Ron’s picks for Best of 2020

On the eve of the old year and the dawn of the new, Content Manager/Editor Ron Davies shares a few of his of his favorite things from the past year. ~Raven Knighte, Ed.

This past year has been really an interesting one. The global pandemic has really stressed supply chains. But it’s also gotten more people into working on their own PCs since they have had more time at home. 

Favorite Power Supplies

2020 was the year of smaller form factor power supplies, as more people got into small form factor and ITX case builds. My favorite SFX power supply is the FSP Dagger Pro. This SFX psu comes in a 550W and 650W 80 Plus Gold variants, with higher wattage PSUs coming in 2021.  This is a great little unit that is perfect for any ITX cases; it’s also a great alternative to the Cooler Master and Corsair SFX line ups.

FSP released the Focus G Pro line up in 4Q of 2020. This is one of my power supply picks for the year. The Focus G Pro line comes in 750W, 850W and 1000W 80 Plus Gold variants. These are perfect for the new GPUs that AMD and Nvidia have released. What makes the line up special is that they are housed in a 150mm by 150mm footprint. This is perfect for the ITX system that can allow ATX power supplies, or for the individual that just wants more room in their case to manage their  cables.

Best pick: Graphics Cards

The new graphics cards are here from both AMD and Nvidia. My pick of 2020 in the 1440p – 4K category would be the AMD RX 6800 XT. It has great rasterization performance, with the ability to take advantage of ray tracing. Overall, the AMD RX 6000 series line up is great – and if found at MSRP is a great value. The RX 5700 XT is a solid 1440p card by Sapphire; our writer Johnny was able to take a look at that GPU.