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Here a roundup of todays reviews and articles:

Acer Aspire Switch 10 Hybrid Review
Graphics Card Coil Whine; An Investigation
Heres a Fix for Some OneDrive Problems in Windows Technical Preview Build 9879
iPhone 6 Plus vs Galaxy S5 head-to-head Review
Raijintek Morpheus Review
Reeven Brontes RC-1001 Review
SanDisk iXpand Flash Drive Review
Sony Xperia Z3 Review: The sweet spot between design, performance and battery life
The TR Podcast 165: Game reqs get inflated, benchmarks get weird, and Asus nails the X99-A
Ubisoft Now Blames AMD For Assassins Creed Unity Failure, Poor Performance



Acer Aspire Switch 10 Hybrid Review

When Microsoft first released Windows 8, the company hoped that hardware manufacturers would get creative with form factors and customers would be enticed by the intriguing new PC designs. One of the clear leaders to emerge since Windows 8's launch is the Lenovo Yoga series of laptops, which fold in half to mimic tablets or can be used in tent and stand modes. A similar approach that has also seen some success are 2-in-1s that essentially split in half, so you can use the display as a tablet without dragging around the weight of the keyboard. The Acer Aspire Switch 10 is one of these 2-in-1 detachable systems...

Read full article @ HotHardware.com

Graphics Card Coil Whine; An Investigation

Coil whine. It’s long been the bane of graphics cards and judging from the reaction on many forums the current darlings of NVIDIA’s lineup, the GTX 970 and GTX 980, may suffer from the same nagging issue as previous Radeon and GeForce products. Multiple posts and retailer feedback sections show a number of coil noise complaints but how widespread is it? There are plenty of frustrated, vocal folks out there who spent plenty of money for a brand new GPU and have been beset by high electrical noise footprints.

Before we continue too far down this path, it’s important to discuss coil whine from a slightly less emotional perspective. It typically happens when a high amount of stress is put on the PWM, causing the inductors to vibrate within their housings. Many companies have begun to combat so-called coil whine with measures that include but are not limited to concrete-core chokes and isolated inductor housings.

Typically those upgrades are present on higher-end products that cost a premium while reference-based examples are more likely to have baseline components. However, based on our testing (more on this below) less expensive cards seem to be no more susceptible to this phenomenon than many of their expensive siblings.

Read full article @ Hardware Canucks

Heres a Fix for Some OneDrive Problems in Windows Technical Preview Build 9879

Doesn't fix the underlying issue, but ... If you're experiencing problems with OneDrive syncing after updating to the latest Windows Technical Preview build, I might have received a fix for you. Microsoft contacted me after I started complaining at this problem on Twitter, and it seems like the fix they provided will work.

Read full article @ WinSupersite

iPhone 6 Plus vs Galaxy S5 head-to-head Review

We pit Samsung's Android titan against Apple's first phablet. The Galaxy S5 was one of 2014's best handsets when it hit the market in April. Featuring a reworked design and radically improved internal components compared with its predecessor, Samsung's Galaxy S5 came come close to achieving V3's hallowed five-star ranking.

A few months on, though, the Galaxy S5 has met one of its biggest challengers yet, in the shape of the iPhone 6 Plus. The iPhone 6 Plus is the first phablet from Apple and comes with, on paper at least, an equally impressive portfolio of software and hardware features.

Read full article @ V3

Raijintek Morpheus Review

Effective cooling for high-end GPUs. High-end graphics cards have increased in performance with rapid pace. The flagship parts of current-generation GPUs offer more than double the performance of what was on offer two generations ago. Compare the AMD Radeon R9 290X to the Radeon HD 6970, or the Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 compared to the GeForce GTX 680. One thing that hasn’t improved as dramatically as performance is the standard of reference cooling solutions.

AMD’s R9 290(X) is one of the biggest offenders in that regard, frequently reaching its thermal throttling point of 95 degrees Celsius under typical gaming loads. Nvidia, on the other hand, has made some headway with its coolers; the well-crafted GeForce GTX titanium-alloy style offers a nice balance of acoustic performance and cooling. However, that also has a tendency to reach its thermal throttling point of 80 degrees Celsius, especially when overclocking or gaming for prolonged periods.

Read full article @ Hexus

Reeven Brontes RC-1001 Review

Like the Steropes, the Brontes fills a different niche that is defined more by space constraints than by overall capacity. So again, I have to look at it from a different perspective, which is for its targeted use. Most HTPC systems are not driven to the thermal limits like some gaming systems are. Is the Brontes meant for the heat generated by heavy gaming, or overclocking? Probably not. There are better choices out there, and Reeven has a several larger tower-style coolers for just that purpose. There is of course always the AIO water cooled setup, but that will definitely cut into your budget, and even the AIO can be a challenge to fit in a small case.

Read full article @ OCC

SanDisk iXpand Flash Drive Review

My wife and I recently returned from our honeymoon in the American Southwest. We toured the Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, Lake Powell and the Hoover Dam over the course of nine wonderful days. If you haven't been to that part of the country, I highly encourage you to go, especially to Lake Powell and Bryce Canyon, two of the most surreal landscapes I've ever had the pleasure of exploring. But when you go, there's something you must bear in mind: what the Southwest has in gorgeous, magical, sun-drenched scenery it lacks in internet connectivity.For my wife, this wasn't much of an issue. She packed her Nikon D3000, and an extra memory card, which allowed her to snap more than a thousand photos without ever worrying about where she'd store them. I, however, was armed only with my iPhone 5S, a choice I wouldn't have had much of an issue with had we traveled to DisneyLand instead of the high elevation and remote isolation of the Southwest. Because we were so deep in the boondox and so high into the hills, there was no way for me to offload the images I was taking without wiping old ones from my camera roll. On my first day of this adventure, after having taken only 30-odd photos of the sunburnt Bryce Canyon hilltops, Apple curtly warned me I was running low on storage. Embarrassingly, I hadn't backed up to iCloud since activating my new phone and I wasn't exactly sure what was copied and what wasn't.

Read full article @ Techradar

Sony Xperia Z3 Review: The sweet spot between design, performance and battery life

Compared to the Z2, Sony has made some minute changes in the Xperia Z3. We’re looking at a slightly upgraded Snapdragon 801 SoC, a marginally smaller 3,100 mAh battery, a thinner design, and a few software tweaks. The camera and display are essentially the same. It’s clear Sony has been tinkering with the perfect smartphone formula, and while those on the six-months-old Z2 can probably skip this, it might make users of competing phones consider a switch.

Read full article @ Techspot

The TR Podcast 165: Game reqs get inflated, benchmarks get weird, and Asus nails the X99-A

In this episode, our fearless panelists answer a variety of live questions from our Twitch.tv livestream. They also cover a wide slew of tech news and reviews including the woe of Zalman, the coming of Oculus, and bane of Pentium... plus other things that don't sound like Greek tragedies.

Read full article @ The Tech Report

Ubisoft Now Blames AMD For Assassins Creed Unity Failure, Poor Performance

Life is hard when you're a AAA publisher. Last month, Ubisoft blamed weak console hardware for the troubles it had bringing Assassin's Creed Unity up to speed, claiming that it could've hit 100 FPS but for weak console CPUs.

Now, in the wake of the game's disastrous launch, the company has changed tactics -- suddenly, all of this is AMD's fault...

Read full article @ HotHardware