Although 2020 is a year most want to leave in their rearview mirrors, there’s still some lovely graphs for us to summarise 2020 in PC hardware as selected by you all: the customers.
The following graphs represent all the PCs ordered by customers during the 2020 period. Compared to 2019, 2020 had a 40% increase on the number of PCs processed.
2020’s most popular graphics cards
A reminder that each GPU’s data is a combined total of OC, special order, liquid cooled, etc. editions to give a more complete representation of each GPU strain.
This time it’s worth reminding you that the RTX 30 series GPUs only launched September onwards. We also sold a significant amount of RTX 30 series GPUs as individual units which this post does not aim to count.
Once again this year, no AMD graphics cards represented. In fact, upon double checking, it seems that we didn’t sell a single AMD GPU this year in a PC (thanks, shortages). Can we change this trend next year?
There was quite a few Quadro cards, but they were quite spread so they didn’t make it to the top 10.
2020’s most popular CPUs
CPU variants are combined. Example: 10900F, 10900, 10900KF, 10900K are all represented under the 10900 umbrella.
2020 brings the i7 a win, albeit from the 9th gen with the 9700. Remember that Intel’s 10th gen only hit during this year, with stock shortages for some time, so the 9th gen overstayed its welcome a little bit, but is now well and truly out the door. For the best, because Intel has their eyes set on their 11th gen CPUs for early 2021!
Sadly due to AMD’s 5000 series launching quite late this year, and their low stock availability, there wasn’t enough numbers to have one take out one of the top 10 positions. Perhaps next year!
2020’s most popular cases
Combined case variants for each chassis. Eg: Corsair 100R & 100R Silent shown as simply 100R, same goes for white/black variants.
Last year was quite dominated by Corsair, and this year isn’t too different, but we are seeing a rise of MSI cases. MSI does offer some nice features at a reasonably price point, so it’s nice to see our customers are willing to stray a little from the trusty Corsair brand to get something a little more ‘unique’.
2020’s most popular RAM configurations
A new-comer category, thanks to a new way we aggregate data. Unlike other categories, we’re able to show every option available to customers due to the limited RAM configurations on offer: 8GB, 16GB, 32GB, 64GB, 128GB, and 256GB.
As with the other items, 16GB Core, 16GB OC, 16GB RGB OC will all be combined to just 16GB – this applies to all RAM configurations.
We are turning away from 8GB PCs as much as possible, so the only people ordering 8GB are manually opting for this through the power of our custom PC builder. Fine for those wanting a basic gaming/home/office PC, but most power-users or serious gamers/home/office customers should really look to having 16GB at minimum. 32GB isn’t quite getting our recommendation unless you’re looking to play MSFS2020 or similar, but perhaps that recommendation is getting closer to being a standard.
256GB is obviously not something our everyday customers are going for, fairly certain it’s just the highest of high end customers with serious workstations/servers who need that. Truly for the 1%…
Customisable PCs; still relevant
2019’s average PC price tag was $3,300 which was an increase of just $100 compared to 2018. This year, we’re up to $4,000, which is an increase of about $700. This can likely be explained by the RTX 30 series, and, well… just about anything else that this year consisted of (global shortages, global logistics issues, temporary shutdowns, etc).
2019’s most expensive PC as previously reported was $13,000, which was at the time the second most expensive PC we’d built for a customer ($14,000 in 2017). This year we’ve smashed all records. Most expensive PC sold this year was $22,500 (yes; that’s a single PC, no; we’re not including a monitor or any other items). We’re very happy with this, but also quite sad that we probably won’t be able to beat this record very easily. Time will tell!
2020 was a very demanding year. We think we’ve done our best, and our customers thank us for this. Thank you, too.
Onto 2021
We’ll be out of the office after our last day on the 24th of December (Christmas Eve) where we try to put PCs in the hands of as many of our remaining customers as possible. But, we will of course be back next year, 4th of January. Any orders place between now and then will be processed when we’re back in the office.