Jacob Ridley

Jacob Ridley

Managing Editor, Hardware

Jacob earned his first byline writing for his own tech blog, before graduating to breaking things professionally at PCGamesN, where he was one half of a popular weekly YouTube show. Joining PC Gamer in 2020, Jacob is now managing editor of the hardware team, and you'll usually find him testing the latest components or building a gaming PC. He says he's determined to build a fort as big as a house out of case boxes. Jacob enjoys heading out of the office to report from floors, benches, and, if he's lucky, plush press rooms at the biggest tech shows, such as Computex and CES.

When he's not writing about components, you'll find Jacob trying to get away from the modern world as fast as possible by bike and pitching up camp in murky woods.

Latest articles by Jacob Ridley

MSI Claw 8 EX AI+
Intel bringing faster upscaler to Valve's Proton - XMX accelerated XeSS could come to SteamOS in boost to future Intel-powered handheld gaming PCs

By Jacob Ridley Published

News Intel giving SteamOS a little more love?

News
GameSir Nova Lite 2 controller in white colourway on a desk.
GameSir Nova Lite 2 review

By Jacob Ridley Published

Score: 87% The best deal in controllers at $30 or less right now.

Score: 87%
Three screenshots from a video showing a man receiving an RTX 5090 as a wedding gift.
Man moved to tears by RTX 5090 on his wedding day - $9000+ price tag brings a tear to my eye too

By Jacob Ridley Published

News Who among us wouldn't feel the same?

News
The Steam Frame's pancake lenses on display.
Valve is toying with a Steam Frame OLED and some Reddit users are already wondering whether to wait an excruciatingly long time for it even though it may never happen

By Jacob Ridley Published

News Gluttons for punishment.

News
Valve's new Big Art Mode in the Steam client in Big Picture Mode.
Steam's new Big Art Mode is a lovely visual upgrade for my living room setup

By Jacob Ridley Published

News Big Art Mode is looking fiiiine.

News
Intel Core i5 14600K on a blue box with Intel logo on it.
Gigabyte deletes blog post on Intel LGA1700 chips in early 2027, but it can't put the cat back in the bag

By Jacob Ridley Published

News Looks like Gigabyte made an error when it posted about Intel's upcoming LGA1700 chips last week.

News
Valve's Steam Frame headset design in its CAD file release.
Here come the weird and wonderful mods for the Steam Frame, as Valve drops the full CAD files for free

By Jacob Ridley Published

News I bet someone is already mocking up cat ears for this thing.

News
Hunt: Showdown with motion blur on and off.
Motion blur is the worst effect in games (confirmed)

By Jacob Ridley Published

Yuck With 7,000 votes cast across our knockout tournament, we now know with near-scientific certainty that motion blur is cheeks.

23 Comments
Yuck
Intel Core i5 14600K inside a Z790 motherboard.
Intel to release new CPUs on old socket in early 2027 says Gigabyte - memory crisis making DDR4 desirable again

By Jacob Ridley Published

News Likely to offer new options with DDR4 support.

8 Comments
News
Pimax's new mini PC looks pretty familiar...
All hail the long steam machine, Pimax's new SteamOS-ready mini PC

By Jacob Ridley Published

News It looks like a Steam Machine, and it runs SteamOS, so it must be a steam machine.

7 Comments
News
Pimax's new VR headset, the Crystal Pro, on a black background.
Pimax says 'I'll have what Valve's having' as it announces new wireless VR headset, foveated streaming, updated controllers, and long Steam Machine

By Jacob Ridley Published

News Imagine a Steam Machine but taller… yep, you got it.

News
Motion blur and chromatic aberration in games.
The final showdown: Motion blur vs chromatic aberration

By Jacob Ridley Published

Vote now Only one can be crowned the worst graphical effect in games. You decide.

48 Comments
Vote now
The left and right Steam Frame controllers on the Steam Frame box.
Turns out you can download more battery as Valve's latest update for Steam Frame adds up to 12%

By Jacob Ridley Published

News Some power efficiency improvements for Steam Frame in the 0.4.3 beta update.

News
A Secretlab Titan Evo and ThunderX3 Solo 360 gaming chair on a green background with a PC Gamer Recommended label on top.
Best gaming chair in 2026: I've tested loads of gaming chairs and these are my top picks

By Jacob Ridley last updated

Take a seat These gaming chairs have earned our recommendation over hundreds of hours of testing.

Take a seat
Marcus Fenix wearing a bandana in Gears of War: E-Day.
Gears of War: E-Day system requirements require ray tracing-capable graphics card to play, alongside 115 GB of free space on an SSD

By Jacob Ridley Published

News The game's minimum requirements are pretty forgiving.

23 Comments
News
Phasmophobia and Hunt: Showdown in a split screen template to show different in-game effects.
Motion blur vs film grain - which is worse?

By Jacob Ridley Published

Vote now It's time for round 2 of our worst graphical effects in games tournament.

18 Comments
Vote now
Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra speaks at the Milton J. Rubenstein Museum in Syracuse, New York, on April 25, 2024.
Micron CEO says it'll be tougher to get memory in the next couple of years than it is today, and keeps saying it over and over again

By Jacob Ridley Published

News Alright, I get it already.

7 Comments
News
The X-Plorer controller that came bundled with Guitar Hero II on Xbox 360.
A love letter to the Guitar Hero X-Plorer Controller

By Jacob Ridley Published

My precious Simply the best.

My precious
Marathon and Cyberpunk 2077 with vignette and chromatic aberration effects enabled.
Vignette vs chromatic aberration - which is worse?

By Jacob Ridley Published

Vote now It's time for round 2 of our worst graphical effects in games tournament.

27 Comments
Vote now
A split screenshot showing Deadlock and Phasmophobia.
It's time to decide the worst graphical effect in games: film grain vs bloom

By Jacob Ridley Published

Vote now Whenever I think of bloom, I think of Wind Waker HD. Anyone else?

8 Comments
Vote now
My first MMO character #6: Jacob Ridley

By Jacob Ridley Published

Games
Motion blur and lens flare in two games split diagonally.
It's time to decide the worst graphical effect in games: motion blur vs lens flare

By Jacob Ridley Published

Vote now Let's pretend we don't already know the outcome of this one.

19 Comments
Vote now
The Steam Frame in a stage of disassembly from which I don't know if I can fully recover.
My failed Steam Frame teardown... and iFixit's successful one

By Jacob Ridley Published

Breakdown I got too nervous to fully take apart my Steam Frame, so boy am I glad iFixit's just shown me how.

Breakdown
Meta's new VR Glasses worn by a person.
Meta's new VR headset isn't really a headset and doesn't look like it's meant for gamers

By Jacob Ridley Published

News Lightweight glasses with a pocket-size compute puck, micro-OLED displays, Snapdragon XR2 Gen 3 chip; however, just a 70-degree FOV and no controllers included.

News
Micropost: I use my ring finger for right mouse button. Am I okay?

By Jacob Ridley Published

Games
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