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
BioWare plays it totally safe with storytelling in Dragon Age: The Veilguard but there's one emotional gut punch that really got me
By Nick Evanson published
Gut punch The Veilguard paradox: how an unhappy thing makes me happy that there's an unhappy thing, but I'm still unhappy about it.
Blacklyte Atlas review
By Nick Evanson published
Rising RGB Imitating a Secretlab desk and then charging more money for it? Bold move, Cotton.
Due to export restrictions, Huawei has been forced to develop a weird hybrid SSD/tape storage drive for data archiving
By Nick Evanson published
news SSD speed with tape's low cost and reliability. A match made in heaven or the worst of both worlds?
Not that any PC gamer will care but Intel is lining up low-power Arrow Lake chips for launch in January
By Nick Evanson published
news Unless you want the bare minimum of heat coming from your PC, there's just no reason to consider getting one
Material scientists create a new compound that has a thermal resistance up to 72% lower than some of the best liquid metals
By Nick Evanson published
news It's been designed to help reduce the costs of cooling datacentres, not your average gaming PC though.
AMD's 2025 laptop plans sure do include a lot of refreshed and rebranded APUs, but who cares when you've got Fire Range, Strix Halo, and four RDNA 4 mobile GPUs heading our way next year
By Nick Evanson published
news Hopefully, this will mean a lot more vendors will offer AMD-based laptops next year, too.
Intel admits the Arrow Lake launch missed the mark and promises performance fixes by December, but my testing suggests you shouldn't get your hopes up
By Nick Evanson published
news The chances of some Windows and BIOS updates transform Core Ultra 200S chips into AMD beaters are going to be slim.
Best CPU for gaming in 2024: 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.
Best PC controllers in 2024: the pads I recommend for PC gamers
By Dave James last updated
Total control Grab one of the best PC controllers for when your keyboard and mouse simply won't do.
Five things I always tell people before they buy a new gaming CPU
By Nick Evanson published
New CPU guide I've been buying and using CPUs for PC gaming for over three decades, so now you can learn from the mistakes I've made in the past.
Five things I always tell people before they buy their first SSD
By Nick Evanson published
I've been buying and using SSDs for over 20 years, and here's my quick guide to making sure you get the right one for your gaming PC.
Red Dead Redemption appeared on consoles 14 years ago—here's the kind of gaming PC it could have been ported to back then
By Nick Evanson published
Red Dead PC So much has changed since then but one thing still remains true: the PC is the platform to enjoy gaming at its very best.
Some of AMD's next generation of laptop APUs will be absolute monsters at gaming, all thanks to the magic of 3D V-Cache
By Nick Evanson published
news Even workstation Threadripper uber-chips will be joining the cache party.
Early PlayStation 5 Pro shipments reveal some big upgrades over the original but that AMD GPU isn't quite what I was expecting
By Nick Evanson published
news RDNA 3? RDNA 2? Something in-between?
It's the end of an era: Nvidia replaces Intel in a key Dow Jones index, as Team Blue's fortunes tumble
By Nick Evanson published
news AMD has been in a worse situation but even it wasn't booted from the Dow Jones.
Microsoft's building data centres out of wood hoping we'll forget AI's made its carbon emissions 29% higher than when it pledged to go 'carbon negative' in 2020
By Nick Evanson published
news Well, they're not entirely made from wood and the computers certainly aren't, so there's still more scope for going totally carbon zero.
I've tested Asus' new Turbo Game Mode for AMD CPUs and my verdict is simple: Don't use it
By Nick Evanson published
news When worse is supposed to be better but turns out to actually be worse. Or the same. Which is essentially still worse.
What a difference a year makes: Nvidia's RTX 40-series share of the Steam Hardware Survey is 80% larger than this time last year but its last-gen RTX chips still rule the roost
By Nick Evanson published
news RDNA 2 chips are AMD's best performer, outstripping all the rest of Team Red's GPUs combined.
Horizon Zero Dawn's fresh remaster is the best way to enjoy the game, even on handheld gaming PCs
By Nick Evanson published
New Dawn The new version is way better looking, with more options to make it run silky smooth.
Intel's Arrow Lake chips aren't winning any awards for gaming performance but I think its new E-cores deserve a gold star
By Nick Evanson published
E's alright E-cores are rubbish, yes? Not anymore.
Red Dead Redemption may still look like a 14-year-old game, but it's absolutely brilliant on handheld gaming PCs
By Nick Evanson published
Red Dead Finally It was a hell of a long time to wait, though.
Intel Core Ultra 5 245K review
By Nick Evanson last updated
Baby Arrow Arrow Lake squares up to Raptor Lake and Zen 5 in the battle for the budget CPU crown.
UK prime minister reckons new laws will help publishers fight back against unapproved AI data scraping
By Nick Evanson published
news 'This landmark legislation will help rebalance the relationship between online platforms and those, such as publishers, who rely on them.'
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