Nick Evanson
Nick, gaming, and computers all first met in 1981, with the love affair starting on a Sinclair ZX81 in kit form and a book on ZX Basic. He ended up becoming a physics and IT teacher, but by the late 1990s decided it was time to cut his teeth writing for a long defunct UK tech site. He went on to do the same at Madonion, helping to write the help files for 3DMark and PCMark. After a short stint working at Beyond3D.com, Nick joined Futuremark (MadOnion rebranded) full-time, as editor-in-chief for its gaming and hardware section, YouGamers. After the site shutdown, he became an engineering and computing lecturer for many years, but missed the writing bug. Cue four years at TechSpot.com and over 100 long articles on anything and everything. He freely admits to being far too obsessed with GPUs and open world grindy RPGs, but who isn't these days?
Latest articles by Nick Evanson
Alan Wake 2 set such a high technical bar last year that few games in 2024 came anywhere near, but it wasn't all abject disappointment
By Nick Evanson published
Year of the patch A year of great games and some great graphics, but far too much not-so-great performance.
PC Gamer Hardware Awards: The best gaming motherboard of 2024
By Nick Evanson published
Gear of the year Last-gen doesn't mean last place as some of the best motherboards of 2024 ably demonstrate.
PC Gamer Hardware Awards: The best gaming CPU of 2024
By Nick Evanson published
Gear of the year AMD wins, no matter what. But which chip?
Out of all the new PC hardware in 2024, my top choice is technically over two years old. Even though it was new
By Nick Evanson published
Gear of the year Does that make it old-new or new-old?
Best Sandbox 2024: Satisfactory
By Wes Fenlon published
🏆 Take a lush, alien world. Turn it into a factory.
PC Gamer Hardware Awards: The best gaming SSD of 2024
By Nick Evanson published
Gear of the year Big, little, or just plain portable, which SSD will take the crown this year.
Best CPU for gaming: these are the chips I recommend for gaming, productivity and peace of mind
By Jacob Ridley last updated
Happy Cores Fire up your rig with the best CPU for gaming. More cores, more clocks, more of everything that matters.
Intel reveals the four fails of Arrow Lake in a new blog post, promising more performance fixes in January
By Nick Evanson published
news Too little, too late or just what the doctor ordered?
Critical metals for electronic components and gadgets jump in price, as China's trade restrictions with the US begin to bite
By Nick Evanson published
news Gallium, germanium, and antimony are all vital to the semiconductor industry.
Putty, not pads: Thermal Grizzly's new thermal materials might be the best thing for your graphics card just don't ask for any numbers
By Nick Evanson published
news Do you want moderate, good, or excellent?
All of today's mighty CPUs owe a debt of gratitude to the Intel 8080, which just turned 50
By Nick Evanson published
news I bet Intel would love some of Mr Faggin's engineering magic right now.
Nvidia's corporate blog goes full fan mode with its description of Jen-Hsun Huang: 'Tech Leader, AI Visionary, Endlessly Curious'
By Nick Evanson published
news Good to know that Jen-Hsun will be wearing his leather jacket at CES 2025. Along with this unwavering vision, if you were worried about it wavering.
OpenAI claims Elon Musk 'demanded absolute control, and to be CEO' while also agreeing to ditch its non-profit status back in 2017, despite him now suing it for turning decidedly for-profit
By Nick Evanson published
news It's not just a case of 'he said, she said': OpenAI has released DMs and emails about the whole thing.
Shipping document suggests that a 24 GB version of Intel's Arc B580 graphics card could be heading to market, though not for gaming
By Nick Evanson published
news AI setups love RAM and matrix cores, so a stack of big VRAM B580s would be snapped up.
The next version of HDMI is said to launch at CES 2025, with 'a wide range of higher resolutions and refresh rates' and a new cable
By Nick Evanson published
news HDMI 2.1 is good enough for 4K 240 Hz so goodness knows what 2.2 will be bringing to the table.
It's the end of an era: Crucial starts calling time on its popular SATA SSD, the MX500
By Nick Evanson published
news Was it a good SSD? No. It was the best.
The best left-handed mouse for gaming
By Dave James last updated
Lefties Shopping for the best left-handed mouse for gaming doesn't have to mean wading through right-handed options that might just work.
Best external hard drives
By Nick Evanson last updated
TB on the go Grab one of the best external hard drives to increase your storage space or backup your PC.
Blacklyte Atlas review
By Nick Evanson last updated
Rising RGB Squaring up against Secretlab in the boutique gaming desk market? Bold move, Cotton.
Blacklyte Kraken gaming chair review
By Nick Evanson last updated
Painful perch Naming a gaming chair after a beast from the depths of the ocean is rather prophetic in this instance.
Just to cap off Intel's annus horribilis, Time picks AMD's Dr Lisa Su as its CEO of the year
By Nick Evanson published
news Definitely a better choice than last year's pick, that's for sure.
Raspberry's Pi 500 is the perfect throwback to the 1980s golden age of home computing and I'd love to relive those moments again with a modern machine
By Nick Evanson published
news Best of all, there's not a single cassette tape in sight.
AMD's flagship Strix Halo APU makes its Geekbench debut with a monstrous name and RTX 4060 levels of GPU compute
By Nick Evanson published
news It's not much to go on but at this point in time, I'll take it.
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