
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 ing 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 Us, 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 best PC cases in 2025: These are the chassis I'd use for my next gaming build
By Jacob Ridley last updated
Best Case You'll want the best PC case if you're building your perfect gaming PC.

Best wireless gaming headsets in 2025: the top cans I'd buy myself
By Dave James last updated
Untethered The best wireless gaming headsets allow you to enjoy your games and music tangle-free.

Best Steam Deck accessories in 2025: These are the add-ons that I'd let keep my handheld company on its travels
By Katie Wickens last updated
Decked out These are the best Steam Deck accessories to pair with your handheld gaming PC—peripherals, power, and protection.

Phanteks Eclipse G400A review
By Jacob Ridley published
Affordable Everything you need and more for a first gaming PC build.

Best SSD deals for gaming today
By Jacob Ridley last updated
deal Cheap and speedy NVMe drives to boost your gaming PC's capacity and lower those load times.

Computex 2025 showed that innovation in PC hardware often involves sticking a screen on something but don't let that distract you from the genuine improvements underneath
By Jacob Ridley published
Computex Look past the frivolous screens on the showfloor and you'll find some genuine upgrades headed our way.

Pump noise, what pump noise? Asetek's new liquid cooler pump is so quiet 'it's on a level where you can't hear it'
By Jacob Ridley published
Computex And it's still good for Us up to 400 W, apparently.

Best gaming PC builds: budget, mid-range and high-end recommendations
By Jacob Ridley last updated
DIY From an $800 penny-saving PC to a $4,000+ monster.

A fabric-covered PC case was not on my Computex 2025 bingo card but I'm surprisingly into it
By Jacob Ridley published
Computex Tryx is pushing the boat out with its new products this year.

I've seen every PC case that Computex has to offer and this new Havn chassis is my top pick thanks to its abnormally large fans, front grille and airflow optimisation
By Jacob Ridley published
Computex I've seen heaps of new cases at Computex this past week but one PC case left a strong impression: Havn's BF 360.

Cherry proclaims a 'new era' for keyboard switches: induction is 'half the cost of a regular mechanical switch', more reliable, and less power hungry than analog alternatives
By Jacob Ridley published
Computex Though whether it gets used for analog gaming keyboards is up to keyboard makers—Cherry says it is aiming at the mass market.

Wooting is adding knobs to its gaming keyboards and the good news is existing Wooting owners can knob themselves too
By Jacob Ridley published
Computex 2025 These new knobs actually replace a switch (or four) on existing Wooting keyboards.

AMD unleashes up to 96 cores of Zen 5 with its new Threadripper 9000 Series chips
By Jacob Ridley published
Computex Coming June 2025.

Hyte's ludicrous liquid cooler will soon be able to show entire system monitoring charts on its screen
By Jacob Ridley published
Computex This speaks to my nerdiest desires.

Hyte's latest case is a bold and colorful break from today's obsession with angular and understated
By Jacob Ridley published
Computex Computex is chocked full of colourful cases.

Corsair made a see-through PSU because everything looks better when you can see its innards... welp, that came out weird
By Jacob Ridley published
Computex I just mean translucent tech is cool, leave me alone.

The Corsair Air 5400 offers such a clever and unique approach to U cooling, I'm surprised no one did it sooner
By Jacob Ridley published
Computex This case has triple chambers, but not in the way you might imagine.

Asus just solved the biggest issue with its BTF graphics cards on most motherboards and in the process found a way to supercharge its GPUs over 600 W
By Jacob Ridley published
Computex Turns out, BTF cards won't work on non-BTF motherboards, but the newer versions will.

There are only 666 of this ROG Astral RTX 5080 Doom Edition being made and I'd go to Hell and back to get one if it wasn't $2,000
By Jacob Ridley published
Computex I'm about to rip & tear something over these darn high prices.

Asus is bringing two great features to ergonomic keyboards with its ROG Falcata
By Jacob Ridley published
Computex Hall effect and wireless connectivity.

I'm actually jealous of the workstation that gets to use this Maxsun graphics card containing two Intel Arc GPUs and 48 GB of VRAM
By Jacob Ridley published
Computex Dual-GPU cards might be dead for gaming but they're alive and well for AI inference.

Best gaming desk in 2025: my top picks for standing, sitting and everything in between
By Dave James last updated
Top Desks We've chosen the best gaming desks based on hours of playing on both sitting and standing desks, just to see which is worth your money.

Best U for gaming in 2025: 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 U for gaming. More cores, more clocks, more of everything that matters.
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