About Tom’s Hardware: Our Staff, Ratings and History
Helping you make the most of computer hardware since 1996.
Our Mission
Tom's Hardware is the leading destination for tech enthusiasts of all skill levels. Whether you're building a PC, searching for the best CPU or graphics card, overclocking, buying a laptop or pre-built PC, or just trying to find the best gaming chair, we've got comprehensive editorial resources and a vibrant expert community to help you on your journey.
Tom's Hardware Team
Our Team
As a teenager, Paul scraped up enough money to buy a 486-powered PC with a turbo button (yes, a turbo button). Back when floppies were still popular he was already chasing after the fastest spinners for his personal computer, which led him down the long and winding storage road, covering enterprise storage. His current focus is on consumer processors, though he still keeps a close eye on the latest storage news. In his spare time, you’ll find Paul hanging out with his kids or indulging his love of the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals.
Read the latest stories from Paul Alcorn
Matt began piling up computer experience as a child with his Mattel Aquarius. He built his first PC in the late 1990s and tried his hand at some mild PC modding in the early 2000s. He’s spent 18 years covering emerging technology for Smithsonian, Popular Science, and Consumer Reports, while testing components and PCs for Computer Shopper, PCMag, and Digital Trends. When not writing about tech, he’s often walking — through the streets of New York, over the sheep-dotted hills of Scotland, or just at his treadmill desk at home in front of the 50-inch 4K TV that serves as his PC monitor.
Read the latest stories from Matt Safford
Anj provides content layout and development support, and coordinates editorial initiatives for the talented group of authors and editors at Tom's Hardware. She enjoys putting her love for technology and her past IT experience to good use. With a background in Enterprise software that started with Cybermedia she eventually caught the hardware bug and hasn't looked back. Outside of Tom's, she's mom to two tech-savvy girls who keep her busy with questions about Minecraft modding.
Read the latest stories from Anj Bryant
Andrew oversees laptop and desktop coverage and keeps up with the latest news in tech and gaming. His work has been published in Kotaku, PCMag, Complex, Tom’s Guide and Laptop Mag, among others. He fondly remembers his first computer: a Gateway that still lives in a spare room in his parents' home, albeit without an internet connection. When he’s not writing about tech, you can find him playing video games, checking social media, and waiting for the next Marvel movie.
Read the latest stories from Andrew E. Freedman
Jeff Kampman has been building his own PCs since the mid-aughts and has been a professional PC hardware obsessive for over 10 years in both media and industry roles. He's especially focused on GPU performance and the ways that PC components work together to deliver the best gaming experience, but he can tell you all you need to know about almost any component that goes into or plugs into a PC. As Tom's Hardware's graphics guy, Jeff covers everything from integrated graphics processors to discrete graphics cards to the hyperscale GPU installations powering our AI future.
Read the latest stories from Jeffrey Kampman
Brandon has been tinkering with PCs since childhood and received his first "real" PC, an IBM Aptiva 310, in the mid-1990s. He next went on to build his first custom PC with an Intel Celeron 300A processor overclocked to 450MHz on an Abit BH6 motherboard. Brandon has written about PC and Mac tech since the late 1990s, first at AnandTech before moving to DailyTech and later to Hot Hardware. When Brandon is not consuming copious amounts of tech news, he can be found enjoying the NC mountains or the beach with his wife and two sons.
Read the latest stories from Brandon Hill
Jake Roach has been bending pins and busting solder joints since the mid-2000s. From trying to run scratched CDs of Delta Force and Unreal Tournament to spitting out virtual machines on a Threadripper, Jake has been on the hunt for the latest hardware and highest performance for decades. That eventually spun up a career, with Jake serving as Lead Reporter at Digital Trends, as well as contributing to outlets like XDA, PC Invasion, Business Insider, and WIRED. At Tom’s Hardware, Jake is focused on consumer and workstation CPUs. Outside working hours, you’ll find him knee-deep in the latest roguelite taking over Steam, spending way too much money on Magic: The Gathering, or forcing his lazy corgi onto walks.
Read the latest stories from Jake Roach
Sarah is a hardware enthusiast and geeky dilettante who has been building computers since she discovered it was easier to move them across the world — she grew up in Tokyo — if they were in pieces. She's best-known for trying to justify ridiculous multi-monitor setups, dramatically lowering the temperature of her entire apartment to cool overheating components, typing just to hear the sound of her keyboard, and playing video games all day "for work." She's written about everything from tech to fitness to sex and relationships, and you can find more of her work in PCWorld, Macworld, TechHive, CNET, Gizmodo, Tom's Guide, PC Gamer, Men's Health, Men's Fitness, SHAPE, Cosmopolitan, and just about everywhere else. In addition to hardware, she also loves working out, public libraries, marine biology, word games, and salads. Her favorite Star Wars character is a toss-up between the Sarlacc and Jabba the Hutt.
Read the latest stories from Sarah Jacobsson Purewal
Stephen is Tom's Hardware's News Editor with almost a decade of industry experience covering technology, having worked at TechRadar, iMore, and even Apple over the years. He has covered the world of consumer tech from nearly every angle, including supply chain rumors, patents, and litigation, and more. When he's not at work, he loves reading about history and playing video games.
Read the latest stories from Stephen Warwick
Sayem's first foray into building PCs dates back to the 90s, where he helped his dad run a small PC business from their garage. After getting tired of installing Windows using a stack of floppy disks, he eventually became obsessed with disassembling video game consoles, without his parents' permission. His love for gaming led him to build his first gaming PC, using an Intel Core i5-2500K that spent most of its life overclocked, alongside a hand-me-down GeForce 9800 GTX. Since then, he's worked as a professional tech journalist since 2015, writing for Gamespot, IGN, and Dexerto. When Sayem isn't focused on the latest tech, he can usually be found playing his guitar or reading old fantasy novels.
Read the latest stories from Sayem Ahmed
Stewart has loved PCs since he was a child, dabbling with BASIC on a ZX Spectrum 48K and still gets far too excited about building and playing on PCs now. He loves to tune and overclock his computers to smooth and stable clocks and run his favorite games and applications on the best settings without compromising quality and framerates. A firm believer in “Bang for the buck” Stewart likes to research the best prices and find the best coupon codes on computers, peripherals and components. Stewart also needs a spare room to house all his old PC parts and peripherals and maybe needs an intervention to stop him from buying more headphones, mice, and keyboards.
Read the latest stories from Stewart Bendle
Joe has been playing with computers since the early 1980s with a Radio Shack Tandy TRS-80. After college in the late 90s/early 2000s, he built his first custom PC and got into modding, overclocking, and eventually extreme overclocking, competing at Hwbot.org. Joe started writing around 2010 for Overclockers.com, covering the latest news and reviews that include video cards, motherboards, storage, and processors. In 2018, he went ‘pro’ writing for Anandtech.com, covering news and motherboards. Eventually, he landed here at Tom’s Hardware, where he writes news, covers graphics card reviews, and currently writes motherboard reviews. If you can’t find him benchmarking and gathering data, Joe can be found working on his website (Overclockers.com), supporting his two kids in athletics, hanging out with his wife, catching up on Game of Thrones, watching sports (Go Browns/Guardians/Cavs/Buckeyes!), or playing PUBG on PC.
Read the latest stories from Joe Shields
Ben has been writing about Windows and PC hardware (among other things) since 2018, with bylines that include How-To Geek, Tom’s Guide, and Cloudwards. Since his earliest days tinkering with Windows 95 on a classic Pentium MMX PC, Ben’s been obsessed with understanding how technology works, chatting about it with anyone who’ll listen. Along the way, he’s worked as a UK college lecturer, teaching IT to adults and teenagers, and as a PC technician, tackling all kinds of tech problems. He’s now busy tracking down brilliant bargains on all kinds of hardware, but when he doesn’t have his deal hat on, he’s adding to his homelab, watching old Star Trek episodes, or taking two hyperactive pugs on a much needed walk.
Read the latest stories from Ben Stockton
Tom's Hardware Contributors
Our Contributors
- Anton Shilov, Contributing Writer (News)
- Mark Tyson, Contributing Writer (News)
- Zhiye Liu, Contributing Writer (News & RAM)
- Jowi Morales, Contributing Writer (News)
- Kunal Khullar, Contributing Writer (News)
- Hassam Nasir, Contributing Writer (News)
- Jon Martindale, Contributing Writer (TH Premium)
- Zak Killian, Contributing Writer (News)
- Bruno Ferreira, Contributing Writer (News)
- Christian Eberle, Contributing Writer (Monitors)
- Denise Bertacchi, Contributing Writer (3D Printers, Laser Engravers)
- Shane Downing, Contributing Writer (Storage)
- E. Fylladitakis, Contributing Writer (Power Supplies)
- Niels Broekhuijsen, Contributing Writer (PC Builds)
- Albert Thomas, Contributing Writer (CPU Coolers & Cases)
How We Test and Rate Products
Tom’s Hardware is renowned for its benchmark testing. We subject every product we review to a rigorous set of quantifiable tests based on a combination of homegrown, Tom’s Hardware-only benchmarks, and industry standard benchmarks where applicable. You can find our central how we test article here.
All product reviews are rated on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the best. Each product may also receive an Editor's Choice badge, which designates it as the best within its niche. The ratings mean the following:
5 = Practically perfect
4.5 = Superior
4 = Totally worth it
3.5 = Very good
3 = Worth considering
2.5 = Meh
2 = Not worth the money
1.5 = Buy for an enemy
1 = Fails horribly
0.5 = Laughably bad
30 Years of Tom's Hardware
Tom’s Hardware has its name and roots in Dr. Thomas Pabst, who was one of the first people to bring technology journalism to the internet, as early as 1996. Back in these early days, the site was still called “Tom’s Hardware and Performance Guide” and its domain was sysdoc.pair.com — pair.com being a Pittsburgh-based hosting company.
One of Tom’s Hardware’s journalistic milestones was Tom’s findings regarding the Intel Pentium III 1.13 GHz processor, which forced the chip company to postpone its launch by months. Since then, Tom’s Hardware has kept up the tradition with unrivaled scrutiny of technology.
The current domain, tomshardware.com, was added on September 11, 1997, followed by additional language versions, including the French, German and Italian sites, all of which are run by independent teams. Pabst moved on to other pursuits in 2008, Tom's Hardware and sister site, Tom's Guide, became part of the Purch company in 2013 and Purch was purchased by Future Plc in 2018.
Today's Tom's Hardware is more than just a site for PC builders. While we've maintained our rich tradition of thorough component testing and reviews, we've expanded our coverage to meet a broader swath of enthusiasts with different needs and levels of experience. If you'd rather buy a laptop or desktop, you're on your first PC build, or you want to share your love of tech with your family, we're there to empower you with accessible editorial and a helpful, supportive community.
We also offer Tom's Hardware Premium, a subscription service with longer-form news, analysis, testing, and features, for those who want to dig even deeper into our core coverage areas. It features Bench, a benchmark browsing tool to let subscribers explore the wealth of hardware testing data we regularly create.
International Tom's Hardware Sites
The following sites have an official license to operate as Tom's Hardware in non-English languages. They work completely independently, have their own editorial staffs and are owned by different parent companies.
Contact Info
Trying to get in touch? Here's how to reach us:
Contact the editors: editors@tomshardware.com
Send a confidential tip: tips@tomshardware.com
Need Forum help? community@futurenet.com
Need subscription help? help@magazinesdirect.com
US Sales: elizabeth.bagdasarian@futurenet.com
UK Sales: sasha.mcgregor@futurenet.com
For information on using our logos, quotes, and review content, click here or email licensing@futurenet.com.
Mailing address:
Tom's Hardware
Future Plc
135 West 41st Street, 7th Floor
New York, NY 10036
(212) 378-0448
Affiliate and Advertising Disclosure
We are committed to helping you find the best products and services for your needs and connecting you with trustworthy retailers where you can purchase them at competitive prices. Within our editorial content, we often provide links to products and services on retailer sites for which we can receive compensation – called an affiliate fee – if you click on those links or make purchases through them. That affiliate fee is paid to us by the retailer and does not directly affect the price you pay for the product or service.
Our expert editorial teams are independent. This means the products and services they select to appear in our articles are chosen based on their unbiased, expert judgement and relevance to the readers' needs and article content. While our editors may be informed by commercial insights to understand the market, our goal is always to provide independent, objective, valuable and useful advice to our readers.
Our curated product widgets that you see in some of our articles are intended to help you find the best products and services, at competitive prices, at trusted retailers. Those widgets are powered by our own software, called Hawk, which displays the latest product and price information from thousands of retailers. We will always do our best to ensure that we display the most up-to-date information possible. On occasion, a retailer may have updated their prices, up or down, before the adverts displayed by Hawk are updated. Retailers may also add delivery or other costs to the purchase – please see the retailer's site for more information. The affiliate fees we receive help us to continue developing Hawk as well as helping to pay our teams and other website costs.
We also run advertising in various forms. Ads on our websites are designed in a way that makes them clearly identifiable as ads and distinguishable from our editorial articles.
From time to time, we also publish paid-for editorial content on the site. This content is labelled so you can see who has funded it and how it was created. We have a full guide to content funding on Tom's Hardware. You can also see the full terms and conditions that apply to your use of our sites right here.
Privacy Policy
Tom's Hardware adheres to a strict privacy policy, which complies with local laws. For more details, see the official Future Plc privacy policy page.
Ethics and Standards
Tom's Hardware is a member of the IPSO (Independent Press Standards Organization) which regulates the UK print and digital news industry. We abide by the Editors’ Code of Practice and are committed to upholding the highest standards of journalism. If you think that we have not met those standards and want to make a complaint, please contact legal@futurenet.com. If we are unable to resolve your complaint, or if you would like more information about IPSO or the Editors’ Code, contact IPSO on 0300 123 2220 or visit www.ipso.co.uk.
Tom's Hardware has received a 100 (out of 100) rating from NewsGuard, a service that rates news outlets based on their journalistic standards.