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

AMD Oberon APU from PlayStation 5 on a DualSense controller
Sony hikes the PS5 price by $100, PS5 Pro by $150: 'this was a necessary step'

By Jacob Ridley Published

News Ouch, and for a generation that's over five years old.

News
A diagram showing the SR Pedal Stand Pro from SR Rigs.
This simple gaming chair bracket could have saved me years of sim racing with two wooden blocks holding my pedals in place

By Jacob Ridley Published

News Seems like a smart fix for a very annoying issue.

News
Cloudfest server throwing championship in Germany.
Tossing servers for sport: IT experts are once again seeing how far they can fling a server rack

By Jacob Ridley Published

News Rage against the machine.

News
A Keychron K2 HE on a background with the word 'Deals' and the PC Gamer logo.
You can grab a Hall effect gaming keyboard that we've consistently ranked as one of the best for $112 in Amazon's Big Spring Sale

By Jacob Ridley Published

Deal The Keychron K2 HE is pretty classy.

Deal
An image showing the retail boxes for an AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D and Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus, against a gradient green background, with a PC Gamer Recommended logo in the top right corner
Best CPU for gaming in 2026: 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.

Happy Cores
Framework AMD mainboard running in a Cooler Master chassis, with SteamOS on it
Big update to SteamOS improves support for non-Valve handhelds, newer platforms, discrete GPUs, and Steam Machine

By Jacob Ridley Published

News Wayland has also arrived.

News
A Corsair PC case, the 3200D, on a desk with various panels removed and ready for a PC build.
Corsair 3200D review

By Jacob Ridley Published

Score: 86% The price is a pleasant surprise.

Score: 86%
Intel Arc B580 graphics card
Intel must also hate waiting for shaders to compile as it begins rollout of pre-compiled code from the cloud for faster load times

By Jacob Ridley last updated

News A handful of games supported at launch, including COD: Black Ops 7 and Cyberpunk 2077.

News
V-color single working DIMM RAM with dummy DIMM included.
You know it's bad when RAM manufacturers launch dummy kits to make it look as though you have dual-channel memory when you actually don't

By Jacob Ridley Published

News Hey, dummy.

7 Comments
News
The Antec Flux Pro Noctua Edition on a desk with various parts disassembled.
Antec Flux Pro Noctua Edition case review

By Jacob Ridley Published

Score: 88% The only excuse you need for a Noctua build.

Score: 88%
The Wooting 60HE v2 with a split spacebar on a desk alongside the Wooting 80HE with a normal spacebar.
Split spacebars are surely the next big gaming keyboard trend

By Jacob Ridley Published

Amicable split Watch this space.

Amicable split
A PNY RTX 5070 Ti OC graphics card on a desk with a desk mat and pink light.
PNY GeForce RTX 5070 Ti 16 GB OC review

By Jacob Ridley Published

Score: 80% A solid pick.

Score: 80%
The Thermaltake Minecube 360 Ultra ARGB Sync set up on an open test bench.
Thermaltake Minecube 360 Ultra ARGB Sync review

By Jacob Ridley Published

Score: 70% Four screens, good performance, high price.

Score: 70%
G-Wolves Lycan 8K mouse
This upcoming gaming mouse weighs just over 28 grams without poking holes in it

By Jacob Ridley Published

News That is actually very impressive.

News
A Meta Quest 3S, alongside a Quest 3 and Quest 2, on a stack of PC Gamer magazine.
Meta's new FrameSync feature aims to make VR a little less nauseating

By Jacob Ridley Published

News As performance demands grow for Quest headsets, Meta's updating its frame timing technique.

News
Ubuntu's user screen in the settings.
Resistance to operating system age checks coming from *checks notes* open source calculator and an OS that may just exclude Californians altogether

By Jacob Ridley Published

News Open source operating systems are wrestling with how to comply with age-checking bills.

7 Comments
News
The Yoti homepage on an iPhone.
Scientists warn against crappy age verification: 'if implemented without careful consideration… the new regulation might cause more harm than good'

By Jacob Ridley Published

News Scientists and researchers from respected institutions lay out the case against age verification as we're beginning to know it.

News
The Legion Go Fold Concept in horizontal mode.
Lenovo is going long with a foldable 12-inch handheld gaming PC concept

By Jacob Ridley Published

News Not sure what's weirder: the screen size or the tiny analogue clock displayed on the controller.

News
The Wooting 60HE v2 with the PC Gamer Editor's Pick logo in the top right.
Wooting 60HE v2 review

By Jacob Ridley Published

Score: 93% Its best yet.

Score: 93%
Kevin O’Buckley was senior vice president and general manager of Foundry Services at Intel. Now at Qualcomm.
Intel Foundry exec leaves to head up Qualcomm's semiconductor biz as Intel shake-up continues

By Jacob Ridley Published

News Intel has lost a few key execs over the past 18 months.

News
Two RTX 5060 Ti graphics cards lined up next to an RTX 4060 Ti.
Nvidia getting more serious about gaming on Linux and Arm: hiring engineer to work on 'native-speed x86-64 gaming on Linux/ARM64 platforms'

By Jacob Ridley Published

News Along with a few more job roles with similar remits.

7 Comments
News
The Pimax Crystal Super with the Micro-OLED and QLED optical engines.
Micro-OLED is the VR upgrade I've been waiting for

By Jacob Ridley Published

Mega OLED This is something worth shouting about for high-end tethered headsets.

Mega OLED
A still from a YouTube video showing a man with his mouth agape while using the Apple Vision Pro VR headset
Apple adds the Steam Frame's most anticipated feature, foveated streaming, to the Vision Pro

By Jacob Ridley Published

News That's a good idea, that.

News
Lenovo Legion Go S SteamOS and Valve Steam Deck on a yellow background with PC Gamer Recommended label
Best handheld gaming PC in 2026: my recommendations for the best portable powerhouses.

By Jacob Ridley Published

Portable PC

Portable PC
A huge Asus RTX 5080 Noctua Edition GPU with a matching Noctua gaming PC.
Asus GeForce RTX 5080 Noctua OC Edition review

By Jacob Ridley Published

Score: 72% Big, chilly, and hella headroom.

Score: 72%
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