Socket Shed started in a cramped two-bedroom apartment in 2019, on a workbench made from an old door balanced on two sawhorses. That's where Dan Reyes, a former IT systems technician, and Priya Nair, a mechanical engineer with a habit of over-researching everything she buys, built their first PC together for a mutual friend's video editing business. What should have been a weekend project turned into three weeks of late-night debates about VRM temperatures, PSU wattage headroom, and whether a particular RGB fan controller was actually worth the money. By the end of it, they had pages of notes, a spreadsheet comparing fourteen CPU coolers, and a realization: nobody was writing this kind of detailed, no-nonsense buying advice for people who wanted to build or upgrade a PC without getting lost in marketing spin.
Socket Shed was born from that spreadsheet. The name is a nod to the literal socket on a motherboard and the idea of a workshop shed — a place where things get taken apart, tested, and put back together properly. What began as a hobby blog with a handful of component reviews has grown into a site read by hundreds of thousands of builders every month, from first-time PC assemblers to enthusiasts planning their fifth rig.
Who's Behind the Site Today
Socket Shed is run by a small, independent team of writers and testers who actually build computers for a living and for fun. Our core contributors include:
- Dan Reyes — Co-founder and lead hardware tester, focused on CPUs, motherboards, and cooling solutions. Dan has built or repaired well over a thousand systems across his IT career.
- Priya Nair — Co-founder and technical editor, specializing in power supplies, thermals, and build architecture. Priya reviews every benchmark methodology before it goes live.
- Marcus Webb — GPU and gaming performance specialist, running our frame-time and thermal benchmarking rig.
- Sofia Álvarez — Storage, memory, and budget build specialist, and the person behind our popular monthly "best builds under $800" guides.
We're not a massive media conglomerate, and we like it that way. Every review on this site has been written or directly overseen by someone on this list, not outsourced to anonymous freelancers churning out content for pageviews.
How We Review and Pick Products
We built Socket Shed because we were frustrated by reviews that felt copy-pasted from spec sheets. So our process is deliberately hands-on:
- We buy or source real units. Whenever possible, we purchase components at retail price using our own budget. When manufacturers send review samples, we disclose it clearly in the article, and it never affects our conclusions.
- We test under real conditions. That means running components in actual build configurations, not just isolated synthetic benchmarks — checking thermals in a closed case, noise levels at normal room distance, and real-world performance in games, rendering, and productivity tasks.
- We track long-term reliability. Several components in our office rigs have been running for years. When something fails or degrades, we update the original review to reflect that, not just the first-week impression.
- We compare against direct competitors. A product is only "good" relative to what else is available at that price point, so every review includes honest comparisons rather than reviewing items in a vacuum.
- We revisit our picks regularly. Prices shift, new generations launch, and firmware updates change performance. Our "best of" guides are reviewed and updated at least quarterly.
What Makes Socket Shed Trustworthy
We know the hardware review space is crowded with affiliate-driven content, so we try to be transparent about how we operate:
- Affiliate disclosure: Some links on Socket Shed are affiliate links, and we may earn a small commission if you buy through them. This never influences which products we recommend or how we rank them — our rankings are decided before any links are added.
- No pay-for-placement. We do not accept payment from manufacturers in exchange for favorable reviews or higher rankings, period.
- Named authors, real accountability. Every article is credited to a real person on our team, not a generic "staff" byline, so you know who tested what and can hold us to it.
- Corrections policy. When we get something wrong, we fix it and note the correction at the bottom of the article rather than quietly editing it away.
Socket Shed exists because we remember what it felt like to stare at forty open browser tabs trying to figure out whether a $200 GPU was actually a good deal. Our goal is simple: give builders the clear, tested, honest information we wished we'd had on that workbench back in 2019 — and keep earning your trust one review at a time.