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

Intel is laying off 15,000 people: 'We are making some of the most consequential changes in our company's history'
By Jacob Ridley published
News Announces revenue of $12.8 billion for the quarter with operating income of zilch.

A law firm is investigating whether to launch a class action case against Intel for 13th/14th Gen CPU instability issues
By Jacob Ridley published
News And you can register your interest via an online form.

Thank you, Freeware: I was just saved from USB disconnect/reconnect hell by a simple logging tool
By Jacob Ridley published
<3 God bless USBLogView.

Zen 5 tested: AMD's Ryzen AI 300-series brings new cores and a revamped RDNA 3.5 GPU for chunky performance gains in laptops and handhelds
By Jacob Ridley published
Zen 5 tested AMD's thrown everything at its new mobile chip to top Meteor Lake, and it does just that.

Keyboards might be cheating now: what is Snap Tap/SOCD and why is it causing a crisis for competitive shooters?
By Jacob Ridley published
Tap this! One new feature on a gaming keyboard and everyone loses their minds!

Asus ROG Azoth Extreme review
By Jacob Ridley published
Big money One of the gaming greats weighed down by an absurdly heavy price tag.

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.

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!

Best gaming PC builds: budget, mid-range and high-end recommendations
By Jacob Ridley last updated
DIY From an $800 penny-saving PC to a $4,000 monster.

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.
The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.