Reviews 51951 Published by

Here a roundup of today's reviews and articles:

20 of the Worst PC Setups – June 2016
BenQ PV3200PT 32-inch UHD Pro Monitor Review
Buying Guide: 10 best 50 and 55-inch TVs of 2016
Buying Guide: The 10 best 4K TVs of 2016
Corsair K70 Rapid Fire Review
EVGA GeForce GTX 1070 SC Gaming Review
Gigabyte X99-Ultra Gaming (with Broadwell-E)
Hands-on review: StarTech HDMI over Wireless Extender
HyperX Cloud Revolver Gaming Headset Review
Micron 9100 MAX NVMe PCIe Enterprise SSD Review
Microsoft makes multi-GPU support easier for DX12 devs
Mint 18 - Forgetting Sarah Linux
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB Video Card Benchmarks Leaked
PNY GTX 950 2GB and GTX 960 4GB XLR8 OC Gaming Review
Streacom FC10 Alpha Fanless Chassis Review
Summer 2016 mobile staff picks
Tesoro Ascalon Gaming Mouse Review
ZOTAC GTX 1080 AMP! Extreme Review



20 of the Worst PC Setups – June 2016

I'm sure at some point you've had a bad PC setup.  Maybe moving into a new place, waiting for a new desk to arrive or you just ran out of room.  I can remember my horrible PC setups from when I was living at the dorms in college.  If you have ever ventured over to the Shitty Battlestations sub-reddit you will find a lot of horrible PC setups.  We will are going to pick 20 each month and feature them as 20 of the Worst PC setups for that month.  Here are some of the bad ones from June!

Read full article @ ThinkComputers.org

BenQ PV3200PT 32-inch UHD Pro Monitor Review

Ultra HD is best enjoyed on a jumbo screen, so today we’re looking at a new BenQ professional video editing display, the 32-inch IPS-based PV3200PT.

Read full article @ Tom's Hardware

Buying Guide: 10 best 50 and 55-inch TVs of 2016

The 55-inch mark was once the pinnacle of TV-dom. It has now though become the latest battleground in the fight for space in your living room. As people are upgrading their TVs they're looking to bolster their screen size too and the 50 to 55-inch mark represents the absolute sweet spot between brand new technologies, large screen sizes and great prices.Right now, this is where it's at. For a great many of us the 65-inch TVs are far too big for our living rooms, but even just that little step down to 55-inch screens can make a big difference without compromising at all on quality.

Read full article @ Techradar

Buying Guide: The 10 best 4K TVs of 2016

The best 4K UHD TVs are always in flux. Check out the current line-up below to find our picks for the best of the best in 2016.In a few short years 4K TVs have gone from incredibly niche high-end technology to more or less mainstream. At the budget end of the spectrum 1080p panels still rule the roost, but even at mid-range prices the 4K options are affordable.We're also finally seeing native 4K content become available. Both Netflix and Amazon have updated their services to stream in 4K, and the first Ultra HD Blu-ray players are starting to hit the market.

Read full article @ Techradar

Corsair K70 Rapid Fire Review

With their K70 Rapid Fire, Corsair offers a new mechanical keyboard equipped with Cherry MX Speed switches. Based on a standard layout and without any additional buttons, this is a high-end product suitable for anybody who likes keyboards with linear actuation force. Apart from that there is a red backlight and the F-keys come with two pre-defined functions.

Read full article @ ocaholic

EVGA GeForce GTX 1070 SC Gaming Review

In today's review we'll be zooming in at the new EVGA Superclocked Gaming edition of the GeForce GTX 1070. The SC (short for SuperClocked) editions are factory tweaked and cooled better. The GTX 1070 SC GAMING as tested today comes with a rather cool ACX revision 3.0 cooler. The 1070 has been a hit ever since the its release a coupld of weeks ago. Crazy stuff, and that is testimony to the fact that you guys have been waiting very long on the new graphics cards from both AMD and Nvidia. It's for good reason, the graphics card industry, or the GPU industry has been on hold, waiting for a smaller GPU fabrication process to become viable. Last generation GPUs were based on a 28 nm fabrication, an intermediate move to 20 nm was supposed to be the answer for today’s GPUs, but it was a problematic technology. Aside from some smaller ASICs the 20 nm node has been a fail. Therefore the industry had to wait until an ever newer and smaller fabrication process was available in order to shrink the die which allows for less voltage usage in the chips, less transistor gate leakage and, obviously, more transistors in a GPU. The answer was to be found in the recent 14/15/16 nm fabrication processors and processes with the now all too familiar FinFET + VLSI technology (basically wings on a transistor). Intel has been using it for a while, and now both Nvidia and AMD are moving towards such nodes as well. Nvidia is the first to announce their new products based on a TSMC 16 nm process fab by introducing Pascal GPU architecture, named after the mathematician much like Kepler, Maxwell and Fermi. That stage has now passed, the GeForce GTX 1070 and 1080 have been announced with the 1080 slowly becoming available in stores as we speak, the 1070 cards you'll start to see selling by next week (June 10th 2016). Both cards are equally impressive in it's product positioning, though I do feel the 1070 will be the more attractive product due to it's price level, the 1080 cards really is what everybody want (but perhaps can't afford). The good news though is that the board partner cards will sell for less opposed to the Nvidia reference / Founder edition cars. Obviously the higher-end all customized SKUs will likely level with that founders edition card price level again, but I am pretty certain you'd rather spend your money on a fully customized AIB card that is already factory tweaked a bit opposed the the reference one.

Read full article @ Guru3D

Gigabyte X99-Ultra Gaming (with Broadwell-E)

We test the Gigabyte X99-Ultra Gaming with the latest Intel 20-core Broadwell-E processor. This new motherboard comes with both Intel and KillerNIC LAN, U.2 and M.2 drive support, USB 3.1 Type-C, and audio-tailored for gaming. It also supports multiple videocards and to look pretty it provides fantastic LED lighting.

Read full article @ techPowerUp

Hands-on review: StarTech HDMI over Wireless Extender

Wireless technologies inside and outside the office are now well and truly established, but cables still remain prevalent nonetheless. Take the computer monitor or a presentation display for example – they are still tethered most of the time and while you cannot really pull away from the mains just yet, there are plenty of options around for streaming content from a device to an HDMI-enabled display.Google's Chromecast and Apple's AirPlay are both variants of Miracast, which is itself a take on Wi-Fi Direct, allowing two devices to easily set up an ad-hoc, temporary network to exchange data. Miracast dongles are relatively cheap – you can get one for as little as a tenner but they do come with their own issues including compatibility and overall performance.

Read full article @ Techradar

HyperX Cloud Revolver Gaming Headset Review

Back in 2014, the HyperX Cloud gaming headset launched to rave reviews including our own and quickly became a big hit amongst gamers around the world across all platforms. This level of success was unprecedented for a high-end gaming headset, yet its good sound quality, outstanding construction, and comfortable design, easily made it the best value competitive gaming headset despite the price. Building on the tremendous success of the Cloud is an all new premium competition gaming headset from HyperX called the Cloud Revolver.

Read full article @ Legit Reviews

Micron 9100 MAX NVMe PCIe Enterprise SSD Review

Micron announced its 9100 Series NVMe enterprise-class solid state drive back in April. The drives come in multiple flavors and form factors, with the Micron 9100 PRO series targeting read-centric environments, while the 9100 MAX targets mixed-use cases. Capacities for the drives in the Micron 9100 series range from 800GB on up to 3.2TB, though all of the drives are outfitted with similar controllers and NAND.

Although news of the drives has been circulating for a couple of months now, it was just recently that we got our hands on one for some in-house testing. We’ve been experimenting with a Micron 9100 MAX 2.4TB HHHL NVMe drive for a couple of weeks and will detail its performance on the pages ahead...

Read full article @ HotHardware

Microsoft makes multi-GPU support easier for DX12 devs

"Basic multi-GPU support," will be provided via a new abstraction layer. Microsoft's DirectX 12 is available to the majority of PC gamers, as Windows 10 has become the dominant platform according to a recent Steam Hardware and Software Survey. The API contains various features designed to help users get more out of their modern hardware – however one of the more highly anticipated features, Explicit Multi Adaptor (EMA) support, is rather difficult for developers to implement. Thus the kind of multi-GPU support seen in Ashes of the Singularity is an exception in modern DX12 gaming, rather than the rule.

Read full article @ Hexus

Mint 18 - Forgetting Sarah Linux

Let me entertain you, maybe, with this long, fairly negative review of Linux Mint 18 Sarah 64-bit Cinnamon edition, tested on a laptop with UEFI, Secure Boot, 16 partitions, and a multi-boot setup with Windows and Linux, covering live testing, installation and post-install use and tweaks, including look & feel, networking support - Wireless, Bluetooth, Samba sharing and printing, awful smartphone support - iPhone, Ubuntu Phone, and Windows Phone, no multimedia support live and a failure to use codecs, partitioning, new update manager options, applications, second-attempt MP3 and HD video playback, resource usage, responsiveness, performance, battery life, suspend & resume, Mint-Y theme, customization and associated niggles, various problems like network issues, software defaults, some hardware bugs, and more. Have fun.

Read full article @ Dedoimedo

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB Video Card Benchmarks Leaked

The very first leaked benchmark results from the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 have made it online courtesy of XFastest! Last week we published what appeared to be leaked...

Read full article @ Legit Reviews

PNY GTX 950 2GB and GTX 960 4GB XLR8 OC Gaming Review

If the persistent rumours are anything to go by, Nvidia will imminently extend Pascal to its mid-range with the launch of a GTX 1060. This means that, on paper at least, the GTX 960 will be superseded, though there is yet no inclination as to the fate of the GTX 950.

Even with the imminent arrival of the GTX 1060 the GTX 960 has significant shelf-life remaining. If rumours are anywhere close to accurate, a price of around £250/$250 for the GTX 1060 means the GTX 960 is still an attractive and viable option starting at £160/$180, this price will likely only become cheaper as retailers seek to clear existing stock.

Read full article @ KitGuru

Streacom FC10 Alpha Fanless Chassis Review

Just like many of you my very first 80286/80386/80486(DX2) systems were all housed inside horizontal desktop cases (primarily made out of steel) which i also used to place my CRT screens on them to give them more height (most people i know did that since temperatures were not an issue back then) so that's the reason i could never understand why shortly after it was pretty much impossible to find anything but tower cases in the market. Now it goes without saying that in my line of work full towers and open air benches are the best two ways to go since these types make swapping hardware components a lot easier. However for people with space restrictions or people who just want to use a small PC case to blend beneath their TV set these are not really options and although desktop cases are not very easy to come by they are far from extinct (as a matter of fact there are more models available now than 10 years ago). Streacom is among the very few manufacturers of "premium" desktop cases and today we'll be checking out there latest FC10 Alpha model.

Streacom was founded in 2010 by a small but experienced team that shared a common vision of producing uniquely designed and engineered computer cases. With our head office in Holland and manufacturing base in China, we entered the market by focusing on SFF and passive cooled products all made from premium grade aluminium. This combination of premium quality and compact design has established Streacom as a global player in the PC component market and earned us a reputation for making stylish well-crafted products. With a truly multinational team, we have the perfect balance of European design, Asian manufacturing and Global sales channels. This mix of influences also give us the ability to think outside of the box, pushing the design envelope, finding new and innovative solutions for our products and manufacturing processes, and importantly, allows us to fully understand and support the needs of our customers. Unlike many brands on the market, Streacom directly designs and manufactures all of its cases. Our production facilities don’t produce cases for anyone else which is one of the reasons Streacom cases are truly unique. From our design, engineering and fabrication process right through to end user support, our years of experience ensure a product and service that is unsurpassed.

Read full article @ NikKTech

Summer 2016 mobile staff picks

The Tech Report staff has scoured the Internet and drawn on our experience with the latest tablets, laptops, and phones to compile a list of the mobile devices we think are most worth your hard-earned cash this summer.

Read full article @ The Tech Report

Tesoro Ascalon Gaming Mouse Review

Today we are going to look at the Aerocool Strike-X Air which is a very innovative chassis, designed to appeal to those enthusiasts who spend a lot of time inside their PC and change hardware frequently. It uses an open design, similar to a test bench, which features a large mesh cover to hide the components .

Read full article @ KitGuru

ZOTAC GTX 1080 AMP! Extreme Review

NVIDIA’s flagship next-gen graphics card the GeForce GTX 1080 has been the dominating topic in hardware circles for the past month. This new release has proved itself to be both thrilling and frustrating; thrilling, because the GTX 1080 is NVIDIA’s most powerful single-GPU to date but frustrating because of the widespread lack of stock availability. But there is hope; in the coming weeks this should eventually clear up and cards such as the one we’ll be analysing today will be easy to obtain.

Under observation today is the ZOTAC GTX 1080 AMP Extreme. As tradition would have it, AMP editions arrive with a factory overclock but this graphics card goes further than that by offering a substantial overclock to the GPU and memory and boasting a superior cooling solution, compared to the standard AMP edition. Joining the RGB revolution, 1080 AMP Extreme also arrives with Spectre lighting which is adjustable through ZOTAC’s FireStorm software, presenting the user with the option to tweak the colour and animation effect.

Read full article @ Vortez