WELCOME to our final issue of 2021. What a year it’s been, filled with crazy upsand-downs, and still stuck in the middle of a pandemic that refuses to budge. But before we get on to next year, next issue, and our predictions for what’s going to happen in the world of tech in 2022, we need to wrap up these last 12 months in style. To that end, this edition of the mag is jam-packed with a ton of epic content to really celebrate this orbit around the sun. We have the annual Maximum PC Gear of the Year awards, a guide on how to get into PC modding from our own resident system-building guru Kris, a full explainer on how supercomputers predict the weather and earthquakes from Ian, and a fantastic history of image editing and graphic design as well from Sam.