Reviews 51923 Published by

Here a roundup of today's reviews and articles:

AIO Watercooler Challenge - 6 Way Round-up
AMD Athlon X4 845 Processor (Carrizo ) Review
AMD Radeon RX 480 And Crimson Edition v16.7.1 Drivers With Power Consumption Fix Tested
AMD's New Radeon RX 480 Driver Fixes Power Issues
ASUS STRIX GAMING GTX 1080 Graphics Card Review
Asus' RT-AC88U router & RP-AC68U repeater reviewed
Cooler Master Hyper 212X
Cooler Master MasterBox 5 Case Review
Cougar Attack X3 Keyboard Review
Cryorig H5 Ultimate CPU Cooler Review: A Matter of Perspective
Edifier Studio R2730DB Speaker Review
Micron 9100 MAX Enterprise NVMe SSD Review (2.4TB)
NVIDIA Announces The GeForce GTX 1060, Linux Tests Happening
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB Video Card Coming For $249 on July 19th
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 Revealed
OCZ RD400 (512GB) PCIe MVM2 M.2 SSD Review
Samsung EVO Plus microSDXC UHS-I Card Review (256GB) – So Much V-NAND!
Steelseries Apex M500 Review



AIO Watercooler Challenge - 6 Way Round-up

Following on from our round-up of SilentiumPC air coolers – which you can read HERE (http://goo.gl/cNWCIS) – we decided to take the next logical step and do the same for some AIO watercoolers on the market. We were sent 6 different AIOs from 5 different companies – which one comes on top when it comes to performance and value for money?

Read full article @ KitGuru

AMD Athlon X4 845 Processor (Carrizo ) Review

AMD recently released some new SKUs in their processor and APU line-up (announced Q1 2016). Basically you noticed three new models A10-7860K, A6-7470K, and an Athlon X4 845 APUs. All APUs obviously are based on existing architecture with tweaks mostly found in clock frequencies. That AMD Athlon X4 845 processor might have been released silently, but it is based on Carrizo architecture and is a quad core 3.5/3.8 (core/turbo) MHz processor with its 2MB cache is tagged with a TDP of just 65 Watt, and close to that wattage is it's price as well as these puppies only cost $69.99 USD which you can spot under SKU codes AD845XYBJCSBX and AD845XACKASBX. The processor can take DDR3-2133 MHz memory to get it a little more bite in memory bandwidth. The processors have four x86 cores cores each with a cache memory of 2 MB.

The Athlon X4 845 have DDR3-2133 supported memory controllers, and a TDP (thermal design power) of only 65 making these solutions close to idea for media computers, small servers, a net-top or two and hey, maybe even an excellent home grown NAS or file server as the chipset offers really fast SATA3 connectors as well. Just not for a HTPC as this processor does not have a integrated graphics.

This processor is not a 'K' model, hence overclocking isn't an option either. However at that price you could build a simple enough gaming PC for under 400 EURO. The AMD Athlon X4 845 is based on Carrizo architecture, known from AMDs mobile platform, the CPU cores are based on Excavator cores fabbed at 28nm.

Read full article @ Guru3D

AMD Radeon RX 480 And Crimson Edition v16.7.1 Drivers With Power Consumption Fix Tested

AMD just made available the Radeon Software Crimson Edition driver v16.7.1 with fixes for the Radeon RX 480’s power consumption issues. The driver is available for download on AMD’s website now, and includes a long list of fixes and known issues. In case you missed the news over the last few days since its launch, the Radeon RX 480’s power draw over the PCIe slot was exceeding the spec, which is a cause of concern for motherboards that can’t handle the load. The cards’ overall power consumption was exceeding the rated 150 Watt TDP too. Some stories quickly surfaced of motherboards reportedly crippled by the Radeon RX 480’s power characteristics as well. Under-volting some cards also resulted in power savings and -- counter intuitively -- improved performance. It has been an interesting few days to say the least.

AMD, however, acknowledged the issues right away and immediately got to work on a potential fix through software, which brings us to today’s release of the Radeon Software Crimson Edition v16.7.1 drivers...

Read full article @ HotHardware

AMD's New Radeon RX 480 Driver Fixes Power Issues

AMD released a new driver to address some of the power and current issues we discovered in our Radeon RX 480 measurements. Is the problem now solved?

Read full article @ Tom's Hardware

ASUS STRIX GAMING GTX 1080 Graphics Card Review

ASUS’ STRIX division has been a mark of quality since its formation and provides exceptional reliability. Not only that, the range is characterised by products featuring a stylish, premium design which consumers can rely on. In particular, STRIX graphics cards utilise impressive power circuitry and arrive with a hefty factory overclock. The GTX 1080 is already a resounding success and demand often outweighs current supply levels. There’s a huge number of custom models available today vying for your hard earned cash and it can be difficult for users distinguish between each unit. Often, people select a graphics card based on a combination of factors including aesthetics, warranty length, cooling proficiency and the aforementioned factory overclocks.

The ASUS STRIX GAMING GTX 1080 is one of the most exciting products to ever grace the graphics market and looks spectacular. By default, this edition ships with a 1759MHz base clock and 1898MHz boost. Also, the memory has a slight increase from 10,000MHz to 10,010MHz. Of course, there has been some controversy regarding profiles on press samples. Please note, the OC mode comes as standard for review purposes which runs at a base of 1784MHz and rated 1936MHz boost clock. This is to save time for reviewers and ensure they all use the same performance setting. Consumers can manually enable this using ASUS’ GPU Tweak II software. Whenever a graphics card is provided, we will clearly outline the tested profile for your convenience. Given the hefty overclock and extreme cooling solution, I’m expecting this particular model to excel in gaming benchmarks.

Read full article @ eTeknix

Asus' RT-AC88U router & RP-AC68U repeater reviewed

Asus sent us some of its best wireless networking gear to help us boost internet coverage at the annual TR BBQ. Join us as we put our own spin on Wi-Fi testing and push the limits of these devices.

Read full article @ The Tech Report

Cooler Master Hyper 212X

Cooler Master is updating the Hyper line of CPU coolers with the Hyper 212X. Featuring a time-tested, single-tower design much like its predecessors, the Hyper 212X looks to build upon their success. Bringing better performance and lower noise levels to the table, this evolution on the 212 EVO could very well become the next go-to budget cooler.

Read full article @ techPowerUp

Cooler Master MasterBox 5 Case Review

The Cooler Master MasterBox 5 is the newest addition to the Master series of cases offered by Cooler Master. This budget friendly mid-tower case offers a straightforward design that features multiple interior layout options. Supporting both air and water cooling, as well as interior expansion options, the MasterBox 5 lets you decide the inside through multiple routing holes and conveniently placed cutouts. In this article for Benchmark Reviews, we test the MasterBox 5 Black Mid-Tower with Internal Configuration.

Read full article @ Benchmark Reviews

Cougar Attack X3 Keyboard Review

The moderately priced Cougar Attack X3 looks to attract potential buyers with simplicity and low cost as opposed to a long string of features.

Read full article @ Tom's Hardware

Cryorig H5 Ultimate CPU Cooler Review: A Matter of Perspective

It was accepted for many years that Large CPU coolers were something you simply had to compromise with in terms of clearance, versatility and difficulty of installation. Thankfully, CRYORIG thinks it's a matter of perspective and disagrees, offering a wide range of CPU coolers of varying sizes that are very user-friendly and clearance aware.

Read full article @ Modders-Inc

Edifier Studio R2730DB Speaker Review

The Edifier Studio R2730DB Bluetooth speakers are aimed at those who want uncompromising audio quality, a range of connectivity options and appealing aesthetics – all without breaking the bank. The speakers certainly look good, but how do they perform? We will find out.

Read full article @ KitGuru

Micron 9100 MAX Enterprise NVMe SSD Review (2.4TB)

It has been quite some time since Micron has released a new PCIe SSD into its product portfolio. With the many new NVMe products being released in the market, it was about time Micron caught up, and not only did they catch up, their latest drives look to be some of the best out. First announced back in April (http://thessdreview.us7.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=3d9b6193ffd32dd60e84fc74b&id=739d163163&e=312ec141fb) , Micron showed us the new 9100 Series and we were quite eager to get our hands on one of these new SSDs. These PCIe SSDs leverage the NVMe protocol to enable blisteringly fast speeds at very low latencies.

Within the family are PRO and MAX variants and with capacities ranging from 800GB to 3.2TB and SKUs for read-centric or mixed-workloads, the 9100 series should have you covered for anything you want to throw at it. The difference between the MAX and the PRO models is simply the amount of over provisioning. The 9100 MAX SSDs have upwards of 66% over provisioning to provide for the best mix of performance and endurance for while the 9100 PRO SSDs are all about capacity and price per GB, though their performance is nothing to laugh at either. They deliver sequential reads and writes up to 3GB/s and 2GB/s respectively, over 750K IOPS random read and 300K IOPS random write performance, and an extremely tight QoS. With these stats, the Micron 9100 MAX 2.4TB we are reviewing today looks to be an absolute beast on paper! But, does it have what it takes when we put it to the test? Read on to find out!

Read full article @ The SSD Review

NVIDIA Announces The GeForce GTX 1060, Linux Tests Happening

One week after the launch of the Radeon RX 480, NVIDIA is lifting the lid this morning on the GeForce GTX 1060 Pascal graphics card with pricing at $249+ USD while delivering GeForce GTX 980 class performance. I already have been testing the GeForce GTX 1060 under Ubuntu Linux, but unfortunately that embargo doesn't expire today... But here's the run-down on all of the technical details on the GTX 1060.

Today's just the soft announcement for the GeForce GTX 1060 while it will begin shipping worldwide on 19 July. Not until that hard launch date does NVIDIA's embargo expire for being able to provide GTX 1060 benchmarks, but at least all of the technical details are fair game today as well as pictures/videos.

Read full article @ Phoronix

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB Video Card Coming For $249 on July 19th

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 will be coming on July 19th for as little as $249 from board partners and will feature GeForce GTX 980-level performance! NVIDIA will also be releasing a special limited GeForce GTX 1060 Founders Edition, basically the reference model, that will be available only directly from NVIDIA for $299. Read on to find out more!

Read full article @ Legit Reviews

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 Revealed

Today, NVIDIA extends the NVIDIA Pascal family with a new addition – the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 graphics card! Get the full details and check out the video presentation!

Read full article @ Tech ARP

OCZ RD400 (512GB) PCIe MVM2 M.2 SSD Review

Back when the SATA based SSD was in its infancy, OCZ’s RevoDrive was one of the drives that plugs into a PC’s PCI Express slot, as it is designed to offer higher performance for those who demand the best performance. The original RevoDrive from OCZ was no more than a couple of regular SATA drives running in a RAID array on a board that inserts into the motherboard’s PCIe slot. Subsequent RevoDrives also featured hybrid form factors where a HDD was paired with an SSD in order to provide the performance of an SSD while offering the storage capacity of the HDD. Despite the innovation and the performance, the RevoDrive has never gained wide market support. This is partly due to the fact that booting a PCIe drive can sometimes be problematic due to motherboard and OS support. In addition, TRIM support is also missing for SSDs in a RAID array.

SATA has been around for a long time and the SATA III standard has been around since 2009. SATA is designed with harddrives in mind, and while its 6 Gbps was plenty fast for a hard drive, it is seriously bottlenecking the blazing speed of SSDs. Thus, a much better solution is needed in order to push the storage performance forward, and that answer is PCIe. Capable of delivering 8 Gbps per lane for the current PCIe Gen 3 and up to 16 lanes, we can see the performance benefit of switching to the newer interface. Non-Volitle Memory Host Express (NVMe) is the new industry standard that has been designed from the ground up in order to better take advantage of PCIe’s bandwidth. Not only that, but NVMe is designed to support PCIe storage, and is also designed with SSDs in mind, that way it takes full advantage of the features that SSDs have over HDDs, such as low latency and high parallelism. If you have not heard of NVMe, you will be hearing a lot about it pretty soon since all major storage players such as Samsung and Intel have already launched their NVMe M.2 drives, and more manufacturers are gearing up to release their performance drives based on the same technology.

Read full article @ Bjorn3D

Samsung EVO Plus microSDXC UHS-I Card Review (256GB) – So Much V-NAND!

Released earlier last year, the Samsung EVO Plus line of microSD cards has been quite a success. In light of this, Samsung has decided to continue momentum and push boundaries by expanding the capacity availability. Today, Samsung has released the world's largest microSD card, and in order to do so, they have integrated their latest 48-layer TLC V-NAND into it! At 256GB, it is more capacity than some laptops and now you can have this kind of capacity in your phone or tablet, action cam, or any device that accepts microSDXC cards!

Read full article @ The SSD Review

Steelseries Apex M500 Review

With the Apex M500, Steelseries offers a gaming keyboard with mechanical switches and standard layout. As with all other high-end gaming keyobards these days also this one features a backlight and there are different macro modes. Apart from that Steelseries chose to use very solid plastic for this keyboard, which adds a lot to the stability and the overall feel.

Read full article @ ocaholic