Reviews 51949 Published by

Here a roundup of today's reviews and articles:

Adata i-Memory 64GB Flash Drive Review
AMD Athlon X4 880K CPU Review
Aorus X5S v5 Camo Review
ASRock Fatal1ty Z170 Gaming K6+ Motherboard Review
Budget Game PC - April 2016
Corsair Gaming M65 PRO RGB Gaming Mouse Review
Crucial Ballistix Elite, Sport and Tactical 16GB DDR4 Memory Group Test
Fnatic Gear RUSH G1 Keyboard Review
How to Build Your Watercooling Loop? What is Needed
How To Upgrade Ubuntu 14.04 LTS to Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
Intel C236 Gaming?
Scythe Shuriken Rev.B Low-Profile CPU Cooler Review
Shuttle XH170V review: Skylake mini



Adata i-Memory 64GB Flash Drive Review

Data transfer and backup has always been one of the hot topics when it comes to i-products. Have you backed up lately? Do you need to again? Also, are you even near your computer when you thought of this? Will you remember later? The questions can go on for days, but there is an answer and a great one at that, Adata's new i-Memory 64GB Flash Drive!

Read full article @ TechnologyX

AMD Athlon X4 880K CPU Review

Continuing to build upon their Athlon X4 lineup, AMD released the Athlon X4 880K CPU on March 1st, 2016, positioning it with a 4.0 GHz base operating frequency and a turbo mode frequency of 4.2 GHz. Packaged with a "near silent" heatsink featuring four heatpipes and a thermal dissipation rating of 125W (identical to the AMD Wraith thermal solution but without the shroud or LED logo), the Athlon X4 880K is designed to provide higher performance than previous Athlon X4 models along with smoother video performance when paired with a quality graphics card.

Based on the Godavari core using 0.028 micron technology, the newest lineup of Athlon X4 CPUs have a low 95 watt Thermal Design Power (TDP). With the aforementioned thermal solution included in the retail versions of the unlocked CPU, users have some headroom for mild overclocking out of the box without the added expense of an aftermarket heatsink installation.

Today I am going to test the Athlon X4 880K CPU on an Gigabyte F2A88X-UP4 motherboard provided by AMD with two different sets of 16GB DDR3 RAM: one set at 1600 MHz and the other at 2133 MHz. Then I'll compare those results to the AMD FX-4350 CPU on an MSI 970 Gaming Motherboard with the same set of 16 GB DDR3 memory models at 1600 MHz, which should show how the two different CPUs compare with the same RAM set against the Athlon X4 880K performance at its maximum design 2133 MHz RAM frequency.

Read full article @ Neoseeker

Aorus X5S v5 Camo Review

Premium 15.6in gaming laptop gets a limited edition MultiCam makeover.

Read full article @ Hexus

ASRock Fatal1ty Z170 Gaming K6+ Motherboard Review

ASRock has been collaborating with Fatal1ty on gaming motherboards for sometime now.  For the Z170 series ASRock’s gaming line is made up of six motherboards.  Today we will be taking a look at the Fatal1ty Z170 Gaming K6+ which sits right below the high-end Fatal1ty Z170 Professional Gaming i7.  It has a very powerful feature-set included a 12-phase all digital power design, NVIDIA quad-SLI and AMD Quad CrossFire support, Killer E2400 gaming networking, ASRock’s Purity Sound 3 audio, USB 3.1 support and much more!  Being a gaming board you get some extras too like ASRock’s F-Stream software and tools as well as 3-month premium license to XSplit broadcaster.  Let’s jump in and see what the Fatal1ty Z170 Gaming K6+ Motherboard is all about.

Read full article @ ThinkComputers.org

Budget Game PC - April 2016

The Hardware.Info Budget Game PC Advice has a balanced configuration for playing video games, without having to spend too much. The components have been selected to offer the best bang for your buck.

That means you cannot always expect the highest settings, resolution and frame rate, but at the same time you should be able to play all modern games in Full HD resolution without making huge concessions to either the image quality or your enjoyment of the game.

Unlike previous Budget Game PC guides, we are no longer focusing on the upgrade aspect of this configuration. This is to keep the price down by saving on powerful components with unused potential.

Read full article @ Hardware.Info

Corsair Gaming M65 PRO RGB Gaming Mouse Review

Today, we’re taking a look at a new gaming mouse from Corsair that’s not really all that new. Welcome the M65 PRO RGB, a refreshed M65 RGB with a new tracking sensor and some other small cosmetic changes. That mouse launched in 2014 alongside the Corsair Gaming branding which was met with substantial mockery for the “tramp stamp” logo.

The new M65 PRO RGB is the same mouse as the M65 RGB with some updates. As such, much of what we have said about the M65 RGB in our review can be extended to the M65 PRO RGB. It retains the same overall mouse design with eight buttons including a “sniper” thumb button, three zone RGB lighting, and weight tuning. The one and only new feature in the M65 PRO RGB is the 12,000 DPI sensor which is updated from the 8200 DPI sensor in the M65 RGB.

Read full article @ Legit Reviews

Crucial Ballistix Elite, Sport and Tactical 16GB DDR4 Memory Group Test

The introduction of the Skylake platform by Intel successfully brought DDR4 to the “mainstream” market, previously DDR4 uptake had been limited by the high entry costs of the only supported consumer platform at the time, X99. As a direct result of the larger market for DDR4 afforded by Skylake there has been an explosion in the number of kits available and, helpfully for prospective buyers, the last 6 months or so have seen the cost of DDR4 fall sharply, almost converging with per-GB DDR3 prices. DDR4, in short, is no longer limited to the ultra high-end market.

Read full article @ KitGuru

Fnatic Gear RUSH G1 Keyboard Review

The London-based company Fnatic currently offers four products: the Rush keyboard, the Flick mouse, and two types of mouse pad. Today Benchmark Reviews will look at the Fnatic Rush G1 Mechanical Gaming Keyboard equipped with Cherry MX Red switches. Fnatic says that the RUSH keyboard is “…pro-player tested and approved for the highest levels of competitive play.” Let’s take it for a spin and see if they’re right.

Read full article @ Benchmark Reviews

How to Build Your Watercooling Loop? What is Needed

If you take the same strategy and apply it to a modern PC using modern hardware the results are not so dramatic. For instance a Core i5 6600k is a overclockable 91w CPU that is already extremely fast and easily maxed out with a quality aircooler. Because of this you no longer need to watercool to get the same performance and can shift your focus from being the fastest to simply looking awesome.

Watercooling also has some practical drawbacks in terms of overall cost, increased maintenance and failure points. A simple coolant leak can damage PCBs or at best cause the system to run dry if not monitored. Dust bunnies can block airflow to the radiator lowering your cooling performance while a total pump failure can quickly overheat your system causing a meltdown that could tear a hole in the fabric of space and time.

Or, more realistically just cause the PC to crash and shut down.

Read full article @ Hardware Asylum

How To Upgrade Ubuntu 14.04 LTS to Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

Want to know how to upgrade Ubuntu 14.04 LTS to Ubuntu 16.04 LTS? Read on; we walk you through the process, step-by-step.

Read full article @ OMG! Ubuntu!

Intel C236 Gaming?

You might have noticed, that in the past few months, motherboard vendors have come up with a variety of boards, which are based on the C236 chipset from Intel. This is actually a server chipset which also supports Xeon processors and ECC memory, but still the motherboard makers have a selection of boards in their portfolios which target gamers and enthusiasts. Since we’re about to come up with a review of such a C236 based motherboard, we thought it might be informative and helpful to first publish an article on what are the differences between C236 and Z170 chipset.

Read full article @ ocaholic

Scythe Shuriken Rev.B Low-Profile CPU Cooler Review

It may not be a new member in the low-profile CPU cooler family but thanks to its very good price/performance ratio the Shuriken Rev.B by Scythe is still a solid choice.

Read full article @ NikKTech

Shuttle XH170V review: Skylake mini

We recently published a summary of mini PCs and barebones. When we wrote that article, we didn't have access to any of the models featuring Intel's newest-gen processors, but now we do. We received the XH170V from Shuttle, the successor of the XH97V which we tested in the earlier article.

The XH170V is very compact, although it is clearly larger than models with Intel's NUC platform. With a 3L volume, there's no way it could be called large, and it should be pretty easy to find space for it anywhere. Shuttle also sells barebone systems, but only to companies.

Just like the previous version, the XH170V can be placed horizontally or vertically. Shuttle supplies a case or a VESA mount kit for the latter option. It looks all right, but it's not a terribly beutiful piece of equipment. This isn't really surprising, given the fact that most of these PCs will be used in business environments. Still, we feel like this little computer would look perfectly at home among audio-visual devices.

Read full article @ Hardware.Info