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
![An aerial photo of Samsung's Hwaseon S3 and S4 manufacturing plants](https://cdn.statically.io/img/cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/CBiCPfVsWppEZZh5t8kudf-320-80.jpg)
Workers' strikes and a gloomy forecast for its foundries take the shine off Samsung's AI-boosted revenue and profits
By Nick Evanson published
news All while TSMC enjoys a market cap just shy of one trillion dollars.
![An image of a Lenovo LOQ 15APH9 gaming laptop against a teal background with a white border](https://cdn.statically.io/img/cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/pLfeBE33Ee9c2XxZcQZGhH-320-80.jpg)
At just $850, this is the best budget RTX 4050 gaming laptop I've seen in a very long time
By Nick Evanson published
deal Nvidia's little RTX chip is perfect for 1080p gaming and a great match for the speedy AMD Ryzen inside.
![A photo of a quantum computer hanging from the ceiling of a clean room laboratory](https://cdn.statically.io/img/cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/QADz6rKcfmeHv7t9ngzekF-320-80.jpg)
Multiple governments around the world have secretly agreed to restrict the export of quantum computers
By Nick Evanson published
news The move has stumped the scientific community as there's no obvious reason for it.
![An image showing a rendering gold padlock against a digital background depicting technologies in security systems](https://cdn.statically.io/img/cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/M3mHWJTZ6C4ToPjQSegNSo-320-80.jpg)
An infamous dataset of leaked login details, updated last week, now houses 9,948,575,739 passwords and poses the biggest threat to our online security ever
By Nick Evanson published
news Another 1.5 billion passwords have just been added to the RockYou dataset, all harvested in only three years.
![A screenshot of the launch presentation of the Ling Long portable PC](https://cdn.statically.io/img/cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/UADL5yvxt5J4gd83zwxmKT-320-80.jpg)
Rip the display off a laptop, snap its keyboard in the middle, and you've got this portable PC you can stick in a pocket
By Nick Evanson published
news Excuse me while I whip this out. Now any of y'all kind folks got a monitor and mouse handy?
![An image showing three internal NVMe SSDs angled and lined together, against a teal background with a white border](https://cdn.statically.io/img/cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/4htRXih7GpVbQyWdJDDi88-320-80.jpg)
Amazon Prime SSD deals
By Jacob Ridley, Nick Evanson last updated
Prime Day SSDs An SSD can do wonders for your load times and there are some great deals on these flashy wonders right now.
![A collection of NVMe SSDs on orange.](https://cdn.statically.io/img/cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/TS44xiDUQAMviLKqDZYhgh-320-80.jpg)
Best cheap 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.
![An image of a close-up of a human eye on lap top computer in a domestic kitchen, at night](https://cdn.statically.io/img/cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/pooR83RSQqkqUb6KURuLy6-320-80.jpg)
Microsoft patents a technique to display encrypted documents so only you can see them
By Nick Evanson published
news It seems to be a better system than AMD's Privacy View feature but like all of them, it can't solve one key issue.
![A promotional image of two Micron GDDR7 memory modules against a dark background](https://cdn.statically.io/img/cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/8tYK8R5hWKRWraABLJyJDW-320-80.jpg)
Micron expects GDDR7 will improve ray tracing and rasterization performance by more than 30%, compared to previous gen VRAM
By Nick Evanson published
news Does 30% more memory bandwidth mean 30% more fps? Let's put it to the test.
![A screenshot of the Ultra test in GPUScore's Breaking Limit ray tracing benchmark tool](https://cdn.statically.io/img/cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/bokCUaaFMm38VPXGRgp7jW-320-80.jpg)
There's a new ray tracing benchmark in town and it paints an all-too-familiar picture of today's GPUs
By Nick Evanson published
news No prizes for guessing which vendor handles ray tracing the best.
![Kioxia Exceria Plus SSD](https://cdn.statically.io/img/cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/RfeudjxPHyx8mR5pVB8ohm-320-80.jpg)
SSD storage is set to use 1,000 layer memory chips by 2027, potentially offering 20 TB NVMe drives for under $300
By Nick Evanson published
news Given the pace in NAND flash development, that's certainly not impossible, even the price.
![ABS Vortex-X Ruby gaming PC against a teal background, with a white border](https://cdn.statically.io/img/cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/MmBUbKYthWk5epbPYTWMaj-320-80.jpg)
It's not often you find an RTX 4080 Super gaming PC for under $2,000. Well, today's your lucky day
By Nick Evanson published
deal High-end gaming PCs should be all about the GPU so it's only right that you should be getting Nvidia's 2nd fastest one.
![A stock photo showing a close up of an Ethernet cable and connector, with fiber optic cables in the background](https://cdn.statically.io/img/cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/zFLSWv5Cyn7zzyFfTSJG6V-320-80.jpg)
Internet speed record of 402,000,000 Mbps achieved using standard optic fibre cabling, fast enough to download Baldur's Gate 3 in less than four milliseconds
By Nick Evanson published
news A gaming PC with the fastest CPU, DDR5 RAM, and Gen5 SSD would be a massive bottleneck though, so there's no chance you could use this at home.
![Intel Meteor Lake CPU](https://cdn.statically.io/img/cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/k5GBTN8VpocH6CDhEaVMs7-320-80.jpg)
Intel's Arrow Lake chips could be using a brand new core layout for the first time in years
By Nick Evanson published
news The change could be about boosting multithreading performance. Great news for content creators but not necessarily for gaming, unfortunately.
![AMD Strix Point APU chip, held in a hand, with the reflected light showing the various processing blocks in the chip die](https://cdn.statically.io/img/cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/MJ7bphMH9WHYqXXHgbZ8tb-320-80.jpg)
AMD's Zen 5 APUs are mighty on paper but could've been made mightier and AI is partly to blame
By Nick Evanson published
APU dreams It's a shame that we'll probably never get to see a truly massively capable APU but I'll never stop dreaming.
![Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart PC port screenshot](https://cdn.statically.io/img/cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/2Y5Hv6Xcz6UAKv69E4AMBE-320-80.jpg)
AMD's FSR 3.1 finally arrives, sporting an improved upscaler for less ghosting, flickering, and shimmering in games
By Nick Evanson published
news The frame generation algorithm is also now fully decoupled to allow older Nvidia RTX and Intel Arc cards to use it with their DLSS and XeSS upscalers.
![A photo of a Razer DeathAdder V3 HyperSpeed gaming mouse resting on an office desk, with a PCGamer Editor's Pick Award logo in the top right corner](https://cdn.statically.io/img/cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/ZdAxgwbzz3HSSKYCWt2cXk-320-80.jpg)
DeathAdder V3 HyperSpeed gaming mouse review
By Nick Evanson published
Take a DeathAdder V3 Pro, swap its hardware for something simpler, hack down the price and you've got a brilliant gaming mouse.
![Two Lexar NVMe SSDs against a teal background, with a white border](https://cdn.statically.io/img/cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/4jJZ8JPmKvHPhDLpuwudo-320-80.jpg)
With or without DRAM, both of these super fast 2 TB SSDs are great value for money at just 7 cents per GB
By Nick Evanson published
deal With the perfect balance of price tag and performance, you can't go wrong with either of these Lexar SSDs.
![Two photos of artificial skin applied to a structure resembling a human face with eyes](https://cdn.statically.io/img/cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/iKZ9fmWvv3PF29QBFF2F8k-320-80.jpg)
Scientists create a face for robots out of 'cultured human cells' and it's something that I wish I could unsee now
By Nick Evanson published
news That's not a smile, it's a grimace, cursing its existence and longing for the silence of dark eternity.
![A stock photo of a hand holding a NFC card on a sensor, performing a security/id check](https://cdn.statically.io/img/cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/tTjfG8tQhNJVUJLn6Mrnnn-320-80.jpg)
Ever wanted to rip open an NFC travel card to see how it all works? One engineer has done just that and it's way cooler than you'd think
By Nick Evanson published
news Compared to CPUs and GPUs, the 'processor' used is so small that it honestly beggars belief.
![A promotional composite image for Microsoft Teams, showing the software running on a table and phone, surrounded by emojis](https://cdn.statically.io/img/cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/Sv3GL5WkoS3VdhqTitd9sY-320-80.jpg)
Grab your popcorn as Microsoft lands in hot water again with the EU for its 'insufficient' changes to how it bundles Teams
By Nick Evanson published
news There's a potential fine of up to $20 billion if the Commission finds Microsoft guilty of breaching antitrust laws.
![MSI RTX 4070 Ti Super graphics card](https://cdn.statically.io/img/cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/Basjh9SuxUYCUwZw9EKBuE-320-80.jpg)
MSI is using cut-down RTX 4090 GPUs in at least one of its RTX 4070 Ti Super models, with a higher TGP but no extra performance
By Nick Evanson published
news No amount of BIOS hacks will turn it back into a full-blown RTX 4090, though.
![A photo of a Corsair M75 Wireless gaming mouse](https://cdn.statically.io/img/cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/thdjYVsn9opsApvpkDErfM-320-80.jpg)
Corsair M75 Wireless gaming mouse review
By Nick Evanson published
Ambidextrous delight Righties and lefties rejoice! A wireless gaming mouse that's genuinely suitable for any hand.