
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

Monster Hunter Wilds: Best PC settings for graphics and performance
By Nick Evanson published
Hunting frames You'll need to use upscaling and frame generation to get the biggest gains, but there are other tweaks worth using.

AMD's 12-core Ryzen 9 9900X is the cheapest it's ever been, apart from yesterday, when it was four cents cheaper
By Nick Evanson published
Deal I mean, really? Was there any need to bump up the price by four little pennies?

Best liquid cooler for CPUs in 2025: I've tried all the best AIO 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.

Corsair Vengeance DDR5-8400 CUDIMM review
By Nick Evanson published
Wasted potential Ultra fast, ultra shiny, ultra expensive.

Bad news for portable Monster Hunter Wilds hopefuls: the Steam Deck can't manage 30 fps, even in maximum potato mode
By Wes Fenlon published
Underpowered The Steam Deck just can't handle this monster.

One eager beaver PC builder has decided it can't wait any longer and has spilt the beans on AMD's Ryzen 9 9950X3D mega chip, two weeks before all the reviews
By Nick Evanson published
news And the results are entirely unsurprising.

AMD's 'official' performance figures for RDNA 4 leak out early, with the RX 9070 XT claimed to be 42% faster than the RX 7900 GRE at 4K
By Nick Evanson published
news And compared to the RX 6900 XT, AMD's forthcoming GPU is over 50% quicker. Frame rate zoomies are incoming.

The curious tale of the missing eight: Some Nvidia RTX 50-series cards are shipping with missing ROPs in the GPU, Nvidia says only 0.5% of all cards are affected
By Nick Evanson published
news Blackwell is rapidly becoming Lackwell, if you ask me.

Instead of shelling out for an RTX 5070, grab yourself an entire RTX 4070 gaming PC for $1,200 instead
By Nick Evanson published
Deal Not that I'm expecting RTX 5070s to cost this much. Heavens above, I hope not.

Having spent many hours testing Avowed I've found these three top tips are the best way to boost the game's performance
By Nick Evanson published
Tweaking Eora It's not just monsters, beasts, and the undead that can give you trouble in Eora.

About darn time: Microsoft says it has fixed the annoying lag in Windows Explorer when working with cloud-based files
By Nick Evanson published
news It's been my biggest bugbear with OneDrive for ruddy ages.

Remember those 'choose your own adventure' fantasy books? Well, now they're coming back in this delightfully chonky e-ink console
By Nick Evanson published
news Poke ogre with a stick. Turn to page 23. You died.

GPUs powering AI will probably be the end of us all but at least they're being used to find small city smashing asteroids before they do
By Nick Evanson published
news Ten metres might not sound very big but just imagine dropping one on your toes.

Claims about AMD moving to a 12-core chiplet design for Zen 6 have got me all kinds of excited for the next generation of X3D processors
By Nick Evanson published
news I know, I know. Rumours. They're just rumours. BUT I WANT IT!

Unreal Engine often gets flak for games running poorly or stuttering, but as Avowed demonstrates, it's really about how devs use it and the pressures of time
By Nick Evanson published
Unreal expectations Don't blame the tools. Or the tool makers. Or the tool users.

Avowed's low frame rates but smooth-feeling gameplay makes me wonder if we PC gamers worry too much about the numbers
By Nick Evanson published
Ignorance is bliss Yes, I know that makes me sound like a steaming hypocrite.

Monster Hunter Wilds PC performance: From Nvidia's latest, past AMD's greatest, to Intel's failing silicon, this is what the game does to PCG's own rigs
By Dave James published
We put our own machines through the ringer with the Monster Hunter Wilds benchmark, to lesser or greater success.

Avowed PC performance analysis: Sometimes good, sometimes bad, frequently odd
By Nick Evanson published
Avowedly odd Temper your expectations, avoid upscaling, and just go by feel rather than frame rates.

We asked a PSU expert which adapters or extensions are okay for the RTX 50-series. His answer: 'DO NOT BUY adapters or extenders, they can all be dangerous'
By Nick Evanson published
news Spending $2,000 or more on a new GPU? Then get the right PSU and cables to go with it.

Just in case you've forgotten all about them, AMD posts a less-than-convincing argument as to why AI PCs are better than any other type of PC
By Nick Evanson published
news NPUs are the key, apparently, but don't ask about what doors they unlock.

I've been testing Nvidia's new Neural Texture Compression toolkit and the impressive results could be good news for game install sizes
By Nick Evanson published
news Big textures go tiny but there is a price to pay.

Why pay more? This 27-inch 1440p gaming monitor is perfectly priced at just $153
By Nick Evanson published
Deal IPS panel, high refresh rate, VRR support. It's all there.

Where the AF are all the graphics cards?! It's not just the new RTX 50-series that's impossible to buy, finding any decent GPU in stock at the major US retailers right now is like staring into an abyss of nothing
By Nick Evanson published
Barren shelves It's like the pandemic's back for another round of GPU misery.
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