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

An official app for PS VR2 on PC has just been listed on Steam
By Jacob Ridley published
News It's happening.

AMD delays Ryzen 9000-series retail launch by a couple of weeks after discovering an issue with the first batch of chips
By Jacob Ridley published
News The Ryzen 9000-series is now expected to be available from retailers on August 15, AMD says.

Call yourself a bass head? Walk around wearing a pair of Ol' Thumpy headphones, I dare you
By Jacob Ridley published
News They come with Helmholtz resonators tuned to pump up the low frequencies.

Tesla will roll out 'genuinely useful' humanoid robots to factory floor next year says Musk
By Jacob Ridley published
News Could we get one to tidy the PC Gamer office?

CrowdStrike CEO apologises for global IT outage that has seen planes grounded, health services halted and the BSOD appearing in oh so many places it shouldn't
By Jacob Ridley last updated
News You think you're having a bad day.

Lenovo Legion Pro 5i 16 Gen 9 review
By Jacob Ridley published
Unbalanced Excellent gaming performance doesn't make up for a lacklustre spec for the money.

Join me as I build a wicked gaming PC for ~$1,000 out of Prime Day sale parts
By Jacob Ridley last updated
Prime Day Live Let's build ourselves a tasty machine that'll play the latest games at 1440p or better.

Looking for the best Prime Day gaming laptop deals? The sales are still ongoing even after the official event has ended
By Jacob Ridley last updated
Prime Day Live There are still serious discounts on gaming laptops right now, from Amazon and further afield.

So, Jacob 1 and Jacob 2, why do you enjoy Prime Day? In unison: 'Because our fav Sennheiser headphones are 30% off or more.' Thanks, Jacobs
By Jacob Fox published
Prime Day The Jacobs have spoken, and spoken wise words they have.

The greatest PC deals this Prime Day are all the RTX 4070 gaming laptops under $1,200
By Jacob Ridley published
Prime Day Forget the RTX 4060 above $1,000—you can get a whole lot more silicon for the same money.

I hope these July 4 SSD sales aren't a sign of things to come for Prime Day—they're pretty trash
By Jacob Ridley published
Deal The power of freedom wasn't enough to quash today's high prices, but I'm hopeful for decent deals come Prime Day.

The internet is not a free-for-all—we shouldn't let big tech companies wish copyright out of existence
By Jacob Ridley published
Hands off Is everything on the internet fair game for AI? Nope, and it never has been.

Don't sweat it—Zenless Zone Zero's system requirements demand nothing more than a ten-year old GPU and 8 GB of RAM
By Jacob Ridley published
News Budget gamers, you're good to go.

Nvidia could face antitrust charges in France as 'the risk of abuse by chip providers' scrutinised by competition authority
By Jacob Ridley published
News Follow-up to raids at Nvidia's offices in September.

Samsung was either feeling generous or someone messed up big time when it temporarily slashed £1,400 off a 49-inch 240 Hz OLED gaming monitor
By Jacob Ridley published
News I missed it!

This RTX 4080 Super is cheap enough at $950 to make it exceedingly tempting
By Jacob Ridley published
Deal Newegg's Video Card Sale, unsurprisingly, offers up low prices on AMD and Nvidia cards.

The ideal desk fan for a PC builder: I've kept the best of Britain's lacklustre summer away with Noctua's quiet, effective and pricey desk fan
By Jacob Ridley published
Cool off Noctua's desk fan is everything you'd expect it to be.

AMD's new 890M mobile GPU could be over 30% faster than the 780M currently used in most handheld gaming PCs
By Jacob Ridley published
News The new Ryzen AI 300-series chips will likely be the chip of choice for future handheld gaming PCs.

An origami USB connector and a games console that'll fit in your wallet—two entries in a contest to make business cards exciting
By Jacob Ridley published
News Hackaday's business card contest has seen some awesome entries in 2024.

The company that invented the AIO cooler has seen its share price plummet 40% due to a slump in demand
By Jacob Ridley published
News Things might get worse before they can get better for Asetek.

Tough day at the office? How about a mandatory photo montage to calm you down, ordered by an AI that's monitoring how close you get to breaking point
By Jacob Ridley published
News A bank is using AI to monitor call center workers' stress levels and automatically play photo montages when it all gets too much.

Hyte Thicc Q60 AIO cooler review
By Jacob Ridley published
THICC Almost more mobile phone than CPU cooler.

PCIe 5.0 SSDs are yet to reach tipping point: 'The percentage of Gen5 shipping to the percentage of Gen 4 is very small' but Micron says that might change next year
By Jacob Ridley published
News In around nine months' time these speedy drives may become more affordable, Micron tells me.
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