
Jacob Ridley
Jacob earned his first byline writing for his own tech blog. From there, he graduated to professionally breaking things as hardware writer at PCGamesN, where he was one half of a popular weekly YouTube show. He would go on to run the team as hardware editor before joining PC Gamer's world-class staff as senior hardware editor. Today, he's managing editor of the hardware team, and you'll find him spending his days reporting on the latest developments in the technology and gaming industries. He's found reporting from floors, benches, and, if he's lucky, plush press rooms at the biggest tech shows, such as Computex and CES. But more often than not he's hunched over the office test bench evaluating the newest PC components.
When he's not writing about GPUs and CPUs, you'll find Jacob trying to get as far away from the modern world as possible by wild camping.
Latest articles by Jacob Ridley

The top 100 PC games
By Phil Savage published
Class of 2024 Welcome to the 2024 edition of the PC Gamer Top 100—our annual list of the best PC games around.

Intel Core Ultra 200S desktop CPUs deliver 'one of the largest power reductions Intel has seen in quite some time' but may fall short of 14900K in some games
By Jacob Ridley published
News Intel talks Arrow Lake—price, performance and power savings for the less bendy chips of the next generation.

I asked Amazon's AI to show me the best Prime Day deals and thankfully I'm still better at this than a bot
By Jacob Ridley published
Deals Rufus is trying to tread on my patch. So, let's see if it's actually any good.

2 TB under $100: This is the best Prime Day SSD deal I've found to expand your Steam library on the cheap. Just $0.05/GB
By Jacob Ridley published
Deals This Silicon Power NVMe SSD offers superb value for mass game storage.

This gaming headset is best for blocking out unwanted noise and it's made a little more affordable with $100 off this Prime Day
By Jacob Ridley published
Deals The AceZone A-Spire features excellent active noise cancellation and competitive gaming chops.

These two superb ROG gaming keyboards cover most PC gamer's needs and both are discounted by $37 or more for Prime Day
By Jacob Ridley published
Deals Take your pick from these two top-tier gaming keyboards in 2024.

Prime Day has knocked $50 off the Corsair gaming chair I rate as the best on a budget even at full price, now just $200
By Jacob Ridley published
Prime Day Deals This TC100 gaming chair has become a bit of a budget hero.

This RTX 4070 Ti Super is down to a new low price of $750 for Prime Day as the next-gen looms large
By Jacob Ridley published
Prime Day Deals Come on Nvidia and co., you can clear shelves even faster if you drop prices more.

I reckon Alienware has already dropped the best October Prime Day gaming PC deal with this inexplicably cheap RTX 4070 Ti Super rig
By Jacob Ridley last updated
Deals Alienware has slashed the price of its Aurora R16 even more over the weekend, just in time for the Big Deal Days this week.

Not only is this RX 7700 XT a wicked GPU deal at $349 but it includes a free code for Space Marine 2
By Jacob Ridley published
Deal Save your Steam wallet with this superb GPU and free game combo.

Google's AI generated a 'podcast' from one of my articles and it's incredibly convincing at mimicking humans talking
By Jacob Ridley published
The rest is bots A podcast generated in minutes by a bot—and yet I've heard worse.

Razer's bringing good vibrations to Razercon with a $300 vibrating seat cushion
By Jacob Ridley published
News I've tried it, it was weird.

I'm trembling at the potential power of a 21,760-core RTX 5090. And the price. Actually mostly the price
By Jacob Ridley published
Sticker shock "I'll never financially recover from this."

'This is a big deal': Meta announces neural AR glasses powered by AI and of course Nvidia's CEO showed up wearing a pair
By Jacob Ridley published
News Even Jen-Hsun Huang is impressed.

Mark Zuckerberg announces Meta Quest 3S: $300 VR headset to mostly match the Quest 3, coming October 15
By Jacob Ridley published
News 'Same defining features as Quest 3', sans pancake lenses, for up to $200 less.

Here's why I'm hoping to score Lunar Lake inside my next handheld gaming PC: Intel's Core Ultra 7 258V tested in games
By Jacob Ridley published
Lunar Lands With performance and battery life figures like this, Intel's 200V-series is a firm favourite for my next pocket-sized PC purchase.

Logitech's new wheels and shifter accessories look to turn its 'Pro' wheelbase into a more serious racing kit
By Jacob Ridley published
News About time Logitech expanded the lineup.

Intel announces it will 'pause' plans for a manufacturing megafab in Germany due to ongoing money trouble
By Jacob Ridley published
News Bad news for Intel and Europe's chipmaking ambitions.

Should you buy a Steam Deck instead of a PS5 Pro? How about instead of a new car you buy a boat?—these things are not the same
By Jacob Ridley published
Apples, oranges Even as a Steam Deck fan, I'm surprised to see Valve's handheld suggested as some sort of like-for-like replacement for Sony's newest home console.

These new Asus Lunar Lake laptops with 27+ hours of battery life kinda prove it's not just x86 vs Arm when it comes to power efficiency
By Jacob Ridley published
News Intel's new Lunar Lake chips are helping Asus deliver battery life equaling, or even excelling, Qualcomm's ARM chips.

MSI is the first to bundle Intel's new Lunar Lake chip inside a handheld gaming PC alongside a chunky 80 Whr battery
By Jacob Ridley published
News Combining Intel's "most efficient x86 processor" with a bigger battery might be a powerful combo.

Intel says Core Ultra 9 288V leads AMD's HX 370 in games by 16%, Meteor Lake by 31% and the less said about Qualcomm the better
By Jacob Ridley published
News "I'm not going to call it a gaming CPU but, damn, it can play a game" claims Intel's Robert Hallock.
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.