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Here a roundup of todays reviews and articles:

Asus GL551 Review
Asus GTX980 Strix OC Review
ASUS X99-DELUXE Motherboard
Attitude One Rapira One Gaming Mouse Review
Cooler Master Hyper 612 V2 Cooler Review
Cooler Master Hyper 612v2 Review
Cooler Master Hyper D92 CPU Cooler Review
Enermax Revolution X't 430 W
GeForce GTX 980 2 and 3-way SLI Review
Gigabyte open up the GTX760 version of Brix for an upgrade
Hands-on review: Windows 10
History of PCs, Part 3: IBM Model 5150 and the attack of the clones
In Depth: Windows 10 combines the best aspects of Windows 7 and Windows 8
Maxwells Dynamic Super Resolution explored
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980: The Best GPU For Linux Gamers
SteelSeries Siberia Elite Prism
Up close and personal with Gigabyte’s 5 inch GTX760 Brix
XFX R7 250E Core Edition Review
XFX R7 250E Review



Asus GL551 Review

In general, gaming laptops are an expensive proposition. With most gaming laptops starting at $1,500 (about £923, AU$1,720) or more, a mobile gaming machine a hard sell when you can just as easily put together a desktop with better performance and for less money. A few machines, like the MSI GE60 Apache, help soften the blow at an affordable $1,250 (£1150, about AU$1,433). Now, Asus meets the new pricing floor with its $1,099 (about £673, AU$1249) GL551.

Read full article @ Techradar

Asus GTX980 Strix OC Review

Nvidia have been selling GTX970 and GTX980 cards by the truckload since the very successful launch earlier this month. We have already reviewed a handful of GTX970 partner cards and today we supplement our findings by analysing the latest Asus GTX980 Strix OC. This card features a hefty cooling system and hybrid fan configuration to lower noise emissions as far as possible.

Read full article @ KitGuru

ASUS X99-DELUXE Motherboard

The ASUS X99-DELUXE is a top mid-range motherboard for the new Intel high-end "Haswell-E" processors, based on the new LGA2011-v3 socket. It includes five PCI Express 3.0 x16 slots, 12 SATA-600 ports (with two SATA Express connectors), 14 USB 3.0 ports, a high-end audio controller, and an integrated Wi-Fi 802.11ac interface. Let's take a good look at this board.

Read full article @ Hardware Secrets

Attitude One Rapira One Gaming Mouse Review

Attitude One are still a relatively new brand on the gaming scene, but they’ve already released a few cool products with very affordable price tags. We’ve already reviewed their Tunguska headset and their Vintorez gaming mouse, which we really enjoyed and they’re very good products in their respective price ranges, so I’m eager to find out what they have to offer with their also very affordable Rapira One gaming mouse.

The budget market is full of great options these days, with big brands like Corsair, Cooler Master, Tt eSports and many more all offering something competitive at a low price tag, so Attitude One have got some stiff competition in this part of the market. The Attitude One will only set you back just under £30, so I’m not expecting record-breaking performance, but I’ll still be expecting a good range of features at this price point.

The Rapira One is reasonably well equipped; it comes with a rubber grip coating for extra control, a four level DPI toggle, an Avago 3050 sensor that can operate up to 3500 DPI, 7 full programmable buttons and built-in LED lighting.

Read full article @ eTeknix

Cooler Master Hyper 612 V2 Cooler Review

Recently Cooler Master added a new revision of a popular product to their catalogue and today we cover it in our Cooler Master Hyper 612 Ver2 Review.

Read full article @ HardwareHeaven

Cooler Master Hyper 612v2 Review

Mit dem Hyper 612v2 hat Cooler Master einen weiteren Budget-Kühler auf den Markt gebracht. Der Hersteller verspricht, dass dieser Kühler deutlich leistungsstärker sein soll als die boxed Kühler von Intel sowie auch AMD. Darüber hinaus ist der Hyper 612v2 zu einem äusserst attraktiven Preis erhältlich und soll im Verlgeich zum Vorgänger noch einmal leistungsfähiger sein. In diesem Sinne sind wir gespannt ob Cooler Master mit diesem Modell zu überzeugen kann.

Read full article @ ocaholic

Cooler Master Hyper D92 CPU Cooler Review

Design-wise, the Cooler Master Hyper D92ooler Master Hyper D92 is a re-engineered Hyper N520, improving upon its design based on current system building concerns such as better RAM heatspreader clearance compatibility, better looks and improved efficiency.

Read full article @ Modders-Inc

Enermax Revolution X't 430 W

It was nigh time to test a small PSU with less than 500 W since such units are among the most popular. The smallest member of Enermax's Revolution X't line will be our test subject today. This small fellow comes with Gold-certified efficiency, a semi-modular cabling design, and, like every modern PSU, support for the sleep states Intel’s Haswell CPUs introduced.

Read full article @ techPowerUp

GeForce GTX 980 2 and 3-way SLI Review

Last week we had a peek at the GTX 970 setup in SLI, this round however we bring in the big guns. We will arm our big daddy PC rig with two and even three GeForce GTX 980 cards, yep we'll zoom in an up-to 3-way SLI performance for the GeForce GTX 980. In this review we'll run the standard benchmarks, but we will also have a good look at Ultra HD gaming performance as well as a micro stuttering analysis with the help of FCAT. Next to that we'll not only overclock the 2-way setup, but also overclock the 3-way SLI setup to see how overclocking and tweaking goes with that many graphics cards.

Obviously we'll throw in some 970 SLI results as well as for the money, nobody will deny that, it is the cheaper alternative. We will be looking at performance from a single monitor point of view, so ideally with so much horsepower a WQHD resolution (2560x1440/1600) is the monitor resolution where you should start (but preferably Ultra HD of course). You will notice great performance increases with 2-way SLI as the cards scale nicely with so much horsepower, 3-way SLI will have a bit more scaling issues. Yeah, while Full HD (1920x1080/1200) and WHQL (2560x1440) have become the industry standard within the display industry, enthusiasts will never settle for just the 'standard' and are always looking for the next big innovation in technology. Ultra HD gaming is exactly that, the next evolution in immersion that gamers have been waiting for. Commonly addressed as Ultra HD, UHD or 4K, this new resolution refers to the ultra-high resolutions with approximately 4000 horizontal pixels. Ultra HD resolution also has four times the number of pixels of a typical 1920x1080 resolution. It will be interesting to find out how the GeForce GTX 980 cards will handle such extreme resolutions. Considering its nice 4 GB framebuffer but slightly dimmed memory bandwidth yet hefty GPU clocks, it's looking quite alright I'd say! With UHD (Ultra High Definition Gaming) becoming rapidly popular we'll test multiple multi-GPU setups on such a monitor. Next to that we'll perform FCAT tests to see where AMD is in Autumn anno 2014 in terms of micro-stuttering and frame pacing.

Read full article @ Guru3D

Gigabyte open up the GTX760 version of Brix for an upgrade

When your gaming rig is so small that it won’t hold 0.9 litres of liquid, then what are the chances that you can upgrade? Having taken us around the outside of his company’s latest foray into the world of micro-gaming-on-steroids, Gigabyte’s Andrew Ditchburn now opens up the Brix for a bit of internal reconstruction. We had our HD aperture wide open for this one.

Read full article @ KitGuru

Hands-on review: Windows 10

Yes, the Start menu is back. Yes, there are virtual desktops. No, the Charms bar hasn't gone away. And no, we don't know when Windows 10 will ship or what it will cost. But we've seen the technical preview of Windows 10 and the word to bear in mind for this release is productivity. Microsoft's Joe Belfiore repeatedly emphasised that this is a very early build without even all the features that have been announced, and that there might be rough spots. We didn't see any problems in the time we had to try it out at Microsoft's San Francisco event, but what's clear is that there is plenty more to come.

Read full article @ Techradar

History of PCs, Part 3: IBM Model 5150 and the attack of the clones

IBM's stature guaranteed the PC to initiate a level of standardization required for a technology to attain widespread usage. That same stature also ensured competitors would have unfettered access to the technical specifications of the Model 5150. This is the third installment in a five part series, where we look at the history of the microprocessor and personal computing, from the invention of the transistor to modern day chips powering our connected devices.

Read full article @ Techspot

In Depth: Windows 10 combines the best aspects of Windows 7 and Windows 8

By now we all know the fateful story of Windows 8. Released in August 2012, the new Microsoft operating system represented an avant garde approach to computing that excited tech enthusiasts and baffled the general consumer. Hailed for its sleek design, security enhancements and speed, Windows 8 was an attempt by Microsoft to usher in the era of hybrid laptop-tablet computing by offering touchscreen functionality and a revamped user journey that combined the richness of desktop computing with the sexiness of a tablet interface.Although it received an A for effort from the tech community, it failed to win over the hearts and minds of businesses and consumers.

Read full article @ Techradar

Maxwells Dynamic Super Resolution explored

One of the more intriguing capabilities Nvidia introduced with the GeForce GTX 970 and 980 is a feature called Dynamic Super Resolution, or DSR, for short. Nvidia bills it as a means of getting 4K quality on a 2K display. How good is it? We take a look.

Read full article @ The Tech Report

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980: The Best GPU For Linux Gamers

Earlier this month NVIDIA launched the GeForce GTX 970 and GTX 980 as their highest-end offerings based on their Maxwell architecture. Since the GTX 750 series debut I have been anxious to see Maxwell succeed Kepler in the high-end space and finally last week I got hands on time with the GTX 980. As long as you are not committed to using pure open-source graphics drivers, the GeForce GTX 980 is the best you can get as a Linux gamer/enthusiast for high performance graphics for ending out 2014.

Read full article @ Phoronix

SteelSeries Siberia Elite Prism

When SteelSeries introduced their Siberia Elite I couldn’t have been more excited. Sadly after testing I was left with a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. They weren’t as comfortable as the Siberia v2 and I had a few audio issues as well. To the point where we even tried replacing them mid testing thinking my set might have been bad. In the end they weren’t terrible, but considering their price they didn’t live up to what they should have been. At our last LAN SteelSeries pulled me aside and had me try out a prototype Elite with a few changes and later they invited me to visit their Chicago office to check out their revamped product lineup. Well they listened to both us and the customer reviews on Amazon and made a few big changes with their new Siberia Elite Prism headset. Today I’m going to kick the dust off the original Elites and compare the two headsets to see if those changes are enough.

Read full article @ LanOC Reviews

Up close and personal with Gigabyte’s 5 inch GTX760 Brix

While the tide may not have turned 100%, the days when computer chassis simply grew and grew are certainly behind us. There will always be a market for massive cases, but small is not only sexy, it is also cost effective and neat. KitGuru fires up the trusty camcorder.

Read full article @ KitGuru

XFX R7 250E Core Edition Review

Earlier this week I looked at an AMD R7 250X 1GB GDDR5 OC card from Gigabyte, which proved to be a solid entry level card with great potential and good value. Today I have yet another AMD R7 250 card on the review bench, the XFX R7 250E Core Edition. Why another R7 250 card you ask? The answer is very simple; different needs and usage scenarios require different types of hardware. In some situations, performance is not the main focus and other features such as size or noise levels are higher on the priority list. Depending on the projected build and actual limitations, it's very common to see performance sacrificed on the usability altar.

The XFX R7 250E Core Edition is a compact, single slot card that looks gorgeous, for a piece of hardware that is. This card lives to the high standards and excellent finish I come to expect from XFX. Although underneath the shiny new shroud, it's actually a rebadge of the Radeon HD 7750 that runs a conservative 800MHz GPU clock. Built around the 28nm Cape Verde PRO GPU, the XFX R7 250E Core Edition comes with 512 Unified Shaders, 32 TMUs and 16 ROPs. In terms of memory, we got 1GB of GDDR5 clocked at 1125MHz on a 128-bit bus for a total bandwidth of 72GB/s.

Read full article @ Neoseeker

XFX R7 250E Review

The high end video cards see all the glory when it comes to modern gaming, and for good reason when you look at the performance numbers and visual quality they provide in game. But not everyone is going to spend upwards of what can be a week or more salary on a single part of the system. When you get down to it, the high end is subsidized by the sheer volume of sub $100 to $250 video cards for sale. Today, I have one of the cards that fits in the sub $100 category, the XFX R7 250E, designed for the casual gamer and someone looking for an improvement in graphics performance over an integrated solution.

The XFX R7 250E is packed with XFX proprietary technologies, such as Ghost 1.0 Thermal Technology, Duratec VRM hardware, and a custom PCB using a 2oz copper layers. Where many discrete video cards are dual-slot solutions, this offering from XFX is a single-slot design that does not need any additional power outside of the power supplied by the PCIe slot to function; perfect for the role it should fill. Let's take a look at the XFX R7 250E and see what it has to offer.

Read full article @ OCC