Jake Roach

Jake Roach

Senior Analyst, CPUs

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.

Articles by: Jake Roach

The Nanggang Exhibition Center with an Nvidia banner strewn across it.

Tom's Hardware Unfiltered: Computex 2026, Day 2 — Interviews, roundtables, and the first day at the Nanggang Exhibition Center

By Matt Safford, Jake Roach, Joe Shields, Jeffrey Kampman Published

Premium As Computex 2026 fully kicks off, our team finally enters the halls of the Nanggang Exhibition Center in Taipei in the latest in our series of daily blogs.

AMD Computex 2026 presentation

AMD says new EXPO ‘Ultra Low Latency’ DDR5 memory should be 'effectively the same price' as current kits — feature will work on existing chipsets, but will require new DIMMs

By Jake Roach Published

AMD provides us with a bit more detail about its upcoming EXPO Ultra Low Latency mode, which should be available from leading memory partners soon.

Core Ultra 250K Plus and 270K Plus on a box

Intel addresses Arrow Lake blunder: 'We needed to build back our reputation' — says Arrow Lake Refresh's low price a key first step, laying the groundwork for Nova Lake

By Jake Roach Published

Intel knows that Arrow Lake dealt a blow to its reputation among enthusiasts. Arrow Lake Refresh was an effort to correct that issue, laying the groundwork for Nova Lake later this year.

AMD Ryzen 5 7600X3D

AMD is considering a potential Ryzen 5 9600X3D — company says six-core Zen 5 X3D chip 'maybe something we look at doing... later this year'

By Jake Roach Published

AMD says that six-core X3D chips don't make sense for a broad market for a number of reasons, but a six-core X3D chip with the Zen 5 architecture is something the company is considering.

A pedestrian holding a blue polka-dot umbrella walks past a large Intel Xeon 6 processor advertisement during preparation for COMPUTEX

Intel Xeon 6+ Computex roundtable interview transcript — Kira Boyko and Tim Wilson on 18A wafer allocation, Clearwater Forest, and dropping hyper-threading

By Jake Roach Published

Premium Intel launched its Xeon 6+ processors at Computex, and on Monday, two of the individuals responsible for the product sat down with the press to answer questions.

A Street in Taipei with signs for Nvidia and Computex in the background.

Tom's Hardware Unfiltered: Computex 2026, Day 1 — night markets, taking the MRT train, and a slew of demos

By Paul Alcorn, Matt Safford, Jake Roach, Jeffrey Kampman, Joe Shields Published

Premium The Tom's Hardware team in Taipei reports back on what they've been up to as Computex 2026 begins to gather momentum. Take a look at how we're making

5800X3D

AMD ‘had to re-engineer’ the Ryzen 7 5800X3D for a re-release — 10th Anniversary Edition chip had ‘a whole body of engineering work’ put into it

By Jake Roach Published

AMD just reintroduced the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, but it wasn't as simple as spinning up the old manufacturing process, as the original bonding method TSMC used was no longer available.

Acer Predator Atlas 8 gaming handheld on a desk

Intel Arc G3 interview transcript — Intel's Senior Product Director talks new handheld chips, Arrow Lake Refresh, and RTX Spark

By Jake Roach Published

Premium Intel's Nish Neelalojanan talked with us about Intel's shifting strategy for G3, budget CPUs for more affordable systems, and the state of the PC industry.

Best RAM deals

Intel says 'something has to give' with memory prices — company says it 'will continue to make sure that there are products which can take care of older memory technologies'

By Jake Roach Published

Intel sat down with Tom's Hardware at Computex 2026, and the company says it recognizes the importance of Raptor Lake and DDR4 platforms as the memory crunch continues.

Intel

Watch Intel's Computex 2026 keynote here — CEO Lip-Bu Tan takes the stage in Taipei at 10:30pm PT on June 1

By Jake Roach Published

Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan is set to take the stage at Computex 2026 for a keynote address at 10:30 pm PT on June 1

A street in Taipei

Tom's Hardware Unfiltered: Computex 2026, Day 0 — peek behind the curtain to see how we're covering the biggest trade show of the year

By Paul Alcorn, Matt Safford, Joe Shields, Jeffrey Kampman, Jake Roach Published

Premium We peel back the curtain in our new series of daily blogs.

AMD ULL

AMD promises 13% uplift with new EXPO ‘Ultra Low Latency’ overclocking on DDR5 DIMMs — automatic memory overclocking delivers 4% improvement over standard EXPO, says AMD

By Jake Roach Published

AMD’s upcoming EXPO ‘Ultra Low Latency’ automatic memory overclocking promises a 13% improvement over standard DDR5 speeds, as well as a 4% jump compared to standard EXPO.

A representation of the RTX Spark platform

Intel warns it has 'a healthy dose of paranoia' over Nvidia entrance into PC market — company says RTX Spark is 'great for the market' while touting the virtues of x86

By Jake Roach Published

Intel reacts to Nvidia’s RTX Spark announcement, and says that it’s treating the green giant’s entrance into consumer SoCs with “a healthy dose of skepticism."

Intel Xeon 7 ‘Diamond Rapids’

Intel Xeon 7 ‘Diamond Rapids’ CPUs officially launching in 2027 on Intel 18A-P — next-gen P-core Xeon features PCIe 6.0, 50% higher core counts, and twice the memory bandwidth

By Jake Roach Published

(Un)officially delayed to 2027, Venice comes first.

Xeon 6+ CPU specs

Intel Xeon 6+ ‘Clearwater Forest’ puts 18A in the data center with up to 288 cores, 576 MB of L3 cache — new Xeon 6990E+ is 30% faster per thread than 192-core AMD Epyc 9965, says Intel

By Jake Roach Published

Intel is putting its 18A node into the data center with new Xeon 6+ Clearwater Forest CPUs, which pack up to 288 E-cores for dense compute.

Nvidia

Watch Nvidia's Computex 2026 keynote here — Jensen Huang takes the stage for Computex and GTC Taipei at 8pm PT / 11pm ET on May 31

By Jake Roach Published

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is set to take the stage at Computex 2026 and GTC Taipei. Here's how to watch the keynote address, where we could hear more about the rumored N1X.

AMD

AMD confirms AM5 support through 2029 — Zen 4 and 5 platform will likely see two more generations, at least

By Jake Roach Published

AMD confirmed it will support its current AM5 socket through 2029, extending the timeline by two years and likely lining up at least two more generations on the socket.

AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D benchmarks.

AMD brings back Ryzen 7 5800X3D, launches Ryzen 7 7700X3D to combat rising component prices — eight-core X3D CPUs arrive under $350 for AM4 or AM5, DDR4 or DDR5

By Jake Roach Published

AMD is rereleasing the Ryzen 7 5800X3D and introducing the Ryzen 7 7700X3D, both eight-core chips with 3DV-Cache targeting midrange gamers who’ve been under the thumb of rising component prices.

Acer gaming laptops

Acer unveils its first Ryzen 9 9955X3D gaming laptop — refreshed Nitro 16 joins new Predator Helios 18 AI and streaming-only Nitro Blaze Link handheld

By Jake Roach Published

Acer has two new gaming laptops for Computex, including its first laptop with the Ryzen 9 9955HX3D CPU, and a device that sports triple PCIe 5.0 storage.

Super Micro Server rack

Supermicro says it assisted Taiwanese authorities in server smuggling bust that led to three arrests — company issues statement on working with US, Taiwan to block illicit diversion of servers to China

By Jake Roach Published

Supermicro says it worked directly with Taiwanese authorities on a server smuggling bust that led to the seizure of 50 servers and three arrests.

Intel Arc G-series logo

Intel challenges AMD’s handheld dominance with new Arc G3 chips — Panther Lake silicon brings up to 14 cores, Arc B390 graphics to handhelds

By Jake Roach Published

Intel has revealed the Arc G3 and G3 Extreme chips, which are built on Panther Lake dies with up to an Arc B390 iGPU. The chips will show up in devices from partners like Acer and OneXPlayer.

$100 CPU Shootout

$100 CPU Shootout: Comparing the Ryzen 5 5500, Core i3-14100F, and Core i3-12100F to find the top DDR4 CPU

By Jake Roach Published

Dust off the DDR4; this one’s a doozy.

A Ryzen AI Max chip.

AMD Ryzen AI Max 400 ‘Gorgon Halo’ packs up to 192GB of unified memory — refreshed APU uses Zen 5 and RDNA 3.5, and can clock up to 5.2 GHz

By Jake Roach Published

They’ll show up in Ryzen AI Halo boxes “soon,” and pre-orders for Ryzen AI Halo with Strix Halo open in June, starting at $3,999.

Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus vs AMD Ryzen 5 7600X3D

Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus vs AMD Ryzen 5 7600X3D faceoff — Battle for the fastest mid-range gaming CPU

By Kunal Khullar Published

We tested both CPUs across gaming, rendering, encoding, efficiency, and pricing to determine whether Intel’s Arrow Lake Refresh can finally challenge AMD’s X3D dominance in the mid-range segment.

9950X3D2 box

AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 vs Ryzen 9 9950X3D faceoff — How far does dual cache take you?

By Hassam Nasir Published

AMD's new Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 is a unique CPU, but how does it stack up to the single-cache Ryzen 9 9950X3D? We put the two head-to-head in a six-round gauntlet.

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