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
![Promotional image of Western Digital's SanDisk 4TB Extreme PRO SD card](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/bXGGNE4iuumJwTMK2LSJFP-320-80.jpg)
Western Digital will be shipping 4TB SD cards in 2025 for handhelds, laptops, or anything that needs tiny-BIG storage
By Nick Evanson published
news As well as for anyone wanting to lose a mountain of data because they can't find it in a drawer.
![Intel Core i5 13400F CPU in a motherboard socket](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/DKrBF5SxfH9BXhHNvdaYi9-320-80.jpg)
Intel's new LGA 1851 socket breaks cover giving us even more pins to mush with an errant thumb
By Nick Evanson published
news Arrow Lake looks like it will give us an even better chance of ruining things when mishandling the motherboard. Sweet.
![An AMD Ryzen 7 8700G APU resting on the screen of an Asus ROG Ally handheld gaming PC](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/LhFWv7M4jdByChqu3sp8XX-320-80.jpg)
Which is the best $700 AMD Ryzen gaming PC: a handheld or desktop PC?
By Nick Evanson published
APU or handheld? Putting a Ryzen 7 8700G system in a head-to-head with the Asus ROG Ally to see what's what.
![Gaming PC group shot](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/xXhrEsP3nMY9e43WUFUxSC-320-80.jpg)
After two years of misery, global PC shipments have finally started to increase but only by the smallest of margins
By Nick Evanson published
news And the good news continues with AI PCs expected to have higher price tags. Wait, that's good news?
![Nvidia graphics cards on a black background](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/CnA7QRL9t5ZF8Ud36aMjxJ-320-80.png)
UK online PC retailer publicly rebukes claim it sent a customer an RTX 3050 instead of an RTX 4070 Ti
By Nick Evanson published
news It's not often you see this kind of thing escalate into wider viewing.
![Intel Core i9 14900K CPU on a box and inside a motherboard socket.](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/dafyrnGsMwEY789QFppCxA-320-80.jpg)
Intel investigating CPU instability issues after South Korean Tekken 8 players kick up a fuss: 'Intel is aware of problems that occur when executing certain tasks'
By Nick Evanson published
news It's not just reports of games crashing, processors are apparently outright failing, too.
![Samsung 3nm](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/k82YkhmofpkeJVPwRuCVZH-320-80.jpeg)
Samsung predicts a bumper 2024, forecasting a 900% increase in profits for the first three months of the year
By Nick Evanson published
news It's good news for investors and the chip industry, but it's still half the amount that TSMC is making
![Nvidia RTX 4060 Ti graphics card](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/PMMpXnQopw8bvQNgi8tp5n-320-80.jpg)
Nvidia's mainstream GPUs might increase in price worldwide, as the demand in China outstrips supply
By Nick Evanson published
news You might want to wait until Battlemage and RDNA 4 are launched before getting a new graphics card.
![An Arctic Liquid Freezer III and Deepcool Gammaxx S240 pair of AIO liquid CPU coolers against a split grey background, with a PC Gamer Recommended logo in the top right corner](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/qLFKPicWok3KutXQkvmAhh-320-80.jpg)
Best AIO cooler for CPUs in 2024: I've tried all the best coolers and these are my top picks
By Nick Evanson last updated
Wetware These are the best liquid chip chillers to suit all budgets, form factors, and processors.
![photo shows a factory tool that places lids on data center system-on-chips at an Intel fab in Chandler, Arizona, in December 2023. In February 2024, Intel Corporation launched Intel Foundry as the world’s first systems foundry](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/aTURUqiXiEkH3Ht69DvpQP-320-80.jpg)
Intel's chip foundry keeps losing billions of dollars but CEO Gelsinger says this is it, this year is 'the trough'
By Nick Evanson published
news Internal restructuring and foundry investments are the first steps back to profitability.
![PC hardware](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/EAELQHoH7PyqG5GbiB4Gya-320-80.jpg)
Valve Hardware Survey for March—AMD still can't make a dent in Nvidia's massive lead
By Nick Evanson published
news No major changes this month but that's hardly surprising
![Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/UhqwyvNRp86wRWMUYuzDNj-320-80.jpg)
Mark Zuckerberg bromances Jen-Hsun Huang, claiming 'he’s like Taylor Swift, but for tech'
By Nick Evanson published
news I reckon it's better than being told you're like the tech version of Leonard Cohen.
![A photograph of a silicon wafer from TSMC, showing multiple rows of individual dies](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/dack3ubkkCLzGNpiVehom7-320-80.jpg)
TSMC makes the world's graphics chips and predicts 'within a decade a multichiplet GPU will have more than 1 trillion transistors'
By Nick Evanson published
news It seems like only yesterday when the one billion mark was passed in 2008.
![A photograph of a desktop PC next to a large monitor on a desk, with a keyboard and mouse](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/5oge55826hCwZQcCEDvitR-320-80.jpg)
Having built 500+ PCs in my time I can say this with confidence: Building is fun and rewarding but ironing out those inevitable BIOS, CPU, memory kinks is unbearable
By Nick Evanson published
PC building pains AMD, Intel—doesn't matter which one you go with, there's always something to trip you up.
![Person in armor with a lion face](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/p6E4Y2xTUgq9iiqx2v9DYZ-320-80.jpg)
Dragon's Dogma 2 is an object lesson in how system requirements pages are failing PC gamers
By Nick Evanson published
System Wrecks And that's especially true where games are released on Steam.
![Samsung Hwaseon S3 and S4 manufacturing plants](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/CBiCPfVsWppEZZh5t8kudf-320-80.jpg)
Elon Musk claims Tesla could build a silicon foundry and make its own chips, but says 'I sure hope we don’t have to'
By Nick Evanson published
news Oh, just do it Elon. I'm sure you'd make more money from it than you have from Twitter.
![Windows 95](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/igU4FMHNeKkDHoCyzNez4Q-320-80.png)
The disk 'Format' dialog in Windows was only meant to be a temporary solution but it's still chugging along, 30 years later
By Nick Evanson published
news Who'd have thought something cooked up one 'rainy Thursday morning' could have such longevity?
![Cyberpunk 2077 ray tracing](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/MGhzSCsxAWCFbHhuLMkR3Y-320-80.jpg)
Microsoft's new patent promises more efficient ray tracing for the Xbox and that could be a real boon for AMD's graphics cards too
By Nick Evanson published
news Not all patents ever see real-life applications but this one could be very popular with devs.
![A cartoon-stylised illustration depicting two robots fighting each other](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/GX4Dme5bvUfvHZYKSd6T8o-320-80.jpg)
OpenAI's GPT-3.5 is the champion of the Street Fighter III LLM Colosseum, beating Mistral on its home turf
By Nick Evanson published
news Beat 'em ups are clearly the superior way to test large language models.
![Fake Bitcoin on pile of coins](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/c5p5LbpFXR4NgeGpDMjzLE-320-80.jpg)
UK police bust a fast food worker turned £3 billion bitcoin scam member on a £7.5 million money laundering charge
By Nick Evanson published
news Posh houses, expensive jewellery, and private schooling were all bought with the ill-gotten virtual funds.
![A stylised photograph of a person acting as a hacker, break into servers and infecting them with a virus, as show by computer monitors displaying green text and codes](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/mFkytw2xMwt8YqnsfRjQj4-320-80.jpg)
Forget your money and identities, hackers are now after your water, according to the White House
By Nick Evanson published
news It seems like a little bit of basic cybersecurity is all that's required to keep it safe, though.
![A photograph of a wired set of headphones, resting on top of an open, silver metal coloured laptop, on a light wood desk](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/NAmArajEeRd5c6mhEcpcKU-320-80.jpg)
Music streamer that spent years streaming other artists' work as their own gets convicted of fraud in Denmark
By Nick Evanson published
news And it was a very profitable six years of streaming, too.
![Screenshot of Dragon's Dogma 2, showing a view of the centre of the game's main city, Vernworth](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/FUHGFG7xdggyyUC3Cugvm3-320-80.jpg)
Dragon's Dogma 2: The best settings for your PC
By Nick Evanson published
Deal with the dragon Get the perfect balance of graphics and performance with our recommended quality settings.