I'm not usually one for all this New Year malarkey—time ticks over at the same rate as it ever did, and I'm no big believer in astrology, so what does the calendar date matter? (And bah, humbug ...

The last year has seen some significant launches for PC hardware enthusiasts from AMD's Ryzen 7 9800X3D to Nvidia's RTX 40 Super series graphics cards, but has also been marred by disappointments.