Jacob Ridley
Jacob earned his first byline writing for his own tech blog. From there, he graduated to professionally breaking things as hardware writer at PCGamesN, where he was one half of a popular weekly YouTube show. He would go on to run the team as hardware editor before joining PC Gamer's world-class staff as senior hardware editor. Today, he's managing editor of the hardware team, and you'll find him spending his days reporting on the latest developments in the technology and gaming industries. He's found reporting from floors, benches, and, if he's lucky, plush press rooms at the biggest tech shows, such as Computex and CES. But more often than not he's hunched over the office test bench evaluating the newest PC components.
When he's not writing about GPUs and CPUs, you'll find Jacob trying to get as far away from the modern world as possible by wild camping.
Latest articles by Jacob Ridley

Five things I want you to think about before you buy your first gaming laptop
By Jacob Ridley published
Laptop livin' Gaming laptops can be excellent, but you need to shop wisely to avoid making a mistake. Here's my advice.

Meta Quest 3S review
By Jacob Ridley published
Budget VR A Quest 2, but better. Or a Quest 3, but worse. Either way, this is the best VR headset on a budget.

This Half-Life 2 themed RTX 4080 Super almost makes up for the fact we're about to hit the game's 20th anniversary and there's still no Half-Life 3 in sight
By Jacob Ridley published
News Almost...

iBuyPower RDY Y40 Valorant VCTA R003 review
By Jacob Ridley published
Shipshape A ready-made machine with a lot to offer.

Havn HS 420 VGPU PC case review
By Jacob Ridley last updated
Havn it large One of the best ways to show off your build.

Five things I always tell people before they buy their first gaming chair
By Jacob Ridley published
Saddle up I've been testing gaming chairs for seven years, and here's what I always tell people looking to buy one.

AMD's top Ryzen AI mobile chip featuring Zen 5 and a juiced GPU is headed to a handheld gaming PC next month
By Jacob Ridley published
News The handheld I've been dreaming of since my hands-on with the HX 370.

What the heck, my BIOS screen is 1080p now
By Jacob Ridley published
News Asus has upgraded its BIOS screens to 1080p, starting with X870/E motherboards.

Mouse, keyboard or headset? Try to guess the Logitech product from the model name alone in our silly little quiz
By Jacob Ridley published
News Difficulty: hard (unless you work at Logitech).

This streamer's Twitch chat can actively ruin his game by activating a modded headset that temporarily blinds him or setting off an IRL jumpscare
By Jacob Ridley published
News Let him cook, chat.

This new keyboard built with switches also used in ATMs across Japan has led me down a rabbit hole of typing championships where contestants compete for a golden keyboard
By Jacob Ridley published
News Ever heard of Topre keys? They're the king.

Ayaneo Flip DS review
By Jacob Ridley published
Clever clamshell A compact clamshell containing everything you need for gaming on the go.

This computer built inside Minecraft has 1,107,419 blocks, over 15 million views on TikTok, and all started 'for the fun of it'
By Jacob Ridley published
Bits 'n' blocks "How do I surpass building a massive calculator? My answer to that question was to build a 32-bit computer," says creator Ryan Boulds.

The top 100 PC games
By Phil Savage published
Class of 2024 Welcome to the 2024 edition of the PC Gamer Top 100—our annual list of the best PC games around.

Intel Core Ultra 200S desktop CPUs deliver 'one of the largest power reductions Intel has seen in quite some time' but may fall short of 14900K in some games
By Jacob Ridley published
News Intel talks Arrow Lake—price, performance and power savings for the less bendy chips of the next generation.

I asked Amazon's AI to show me the best Prime Day deals and thankfully I'm still better at this than a bot
By Jacob Ridley published
Prime Day deals Rufus is trying to tread on my patch. So, let's see if it's actually any good.

Google's AI generated a 'podcast' from one of my articles and it's incredibly convincing at mimicking humans talking
By Jacob Ridley published
The rest is bots A podcast generated in minutes by a bot—and yet I've heard worse.

Razer's bringing good vibrations to Razercon with a $300 vibrating seat cushion
By Jacob Ridley published
News I've tried it, it was weird.

I'm trembling at the potential power of a 21,760-core RTX 5090. And the price. Actually mostly the price
By Jacob Ridley published
Sticker shock "I'll never financially recover from this."

'This is a big deal': Meta announces neural AR glasses powered by AI and of course Nvidia's CEO showed up wearing a pair
By Jacob Ridley published
News Even Jen-Hsun Huang is impressed.

Mark Zuckerberg announces Meta Quest 3S: $300 VR headset to mostly match the Quest 3, coming October 15
By Jacob Ridley published
News 'Same defining features as Quest 3', sans pancake lenses, for up to $200 less.

Here's why I'm hoping to score Lunar Lake inside my next handheld gaming PC: Intel's Core Ultra 7 258V tested in games
By Jacob Ridley published
Lunar Lands With performance and battery life figures like this, Intel's 200V-series is a firm favourite for my next pocket-sized PC purchase.
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