Reviews 51951 Published by

Here a roundup of todays reviews and articles:

Asetek granted GPU liquid cooling patent
ASRock FaTal1ty Z97 Killer Series Motherboard Review
ASRock Q1900M Mainboard with Intel J1900 Celeron Processor Review
be quiet! TFX Power 2 300W Gold Review
GIGABYTE Z97X-UD5H Motherboard Review
Gigabyte Z97X-UD5H-BK (LGA 1150) Black Edition Motherboard Review
How to find and kill misbehaving MySQL queries
Razer Kraken 7.1 Review
Samsung 845DC PRO 800GB Review
Samsung SSD 850 PRO Solid State Drive Review
Seasonic Platinum-1200 Power Supply Review
Steam In-Home Streaming and Gaming Future



Asetek granted GPU liquid cooling patent

An Asetek designed cooler is used in the AMD Radeon R9 295X2 reference design.

Read full article @ Hexus

ASRock FaTal1ty Z97 Killer Series Motherboard Review

We are looking at the newest variation from ASRock's popular Fatal1ty series. This is the ASRock Fatal1ty Z97 Killer Series Motherboard. With Haswell's refresh chipset in full swing, we have tested a number of great performing motherboards. But today, the ASRock Fatal1ty Z97 Killer Series has another advantage in this arena due to its aggressive pricing. So let's move forward and put this motherboard to the test and see what it can do with our Intel 4770K Haswell Processor.

Read full article @ PureOverclock

ASRock Q1900M Mainboard with Intel J1900 Celeron Processor Review

Today, we test another awesome power saving motherboard in the low-budget price segment here at OCinside.de, which could find a place in a small media player PC, NAS or office PC.
Let us see how fast the approx. 60 EUR inexpensive ASRock Q1900M Bay Trail-D Micro-ATX motherboard with integrated Intel Celeron J1900 APU is and if it is as good as an AMD Socket AM1 Kabini or some other PC systems.

Read full article @ OcInside

be quiet! TFX Power 2 300W Gold Review

We don't often need a 1500 watt power supply – actually most of our systems are probably consuming less than 300 watts under load. What if you are building a new mini or media system into a tiny, space restricted chassis and need some quality juice to power it? Today we look at something totally different from be quiet! – the TFX Power 2 300W power supply, designed for systems with low installation depth.

Read full article @ KitGuru

GIGABYTE Z97X-UD5H Motherboard Review

When the new Intel 9-series motherboards were first unveiled it has hard to get really excited about them since the new features and capabilities were promising, but there was no way to actually take advantage of any them. MOre than a month later and the same holds true since there are no serious SATA Express devices ready for primetime and M.2 SSDs are still few and far between. However, now that Intel's upcoming Devil's Canyon chips have been fully unveiled, there is finally a tangible reason to want one of these new Z97 motherboards since they are the only ones with native support for these enthusiast-oriented processors.

With this in mind, today we will be taking a look at the second highest-end model in GIGABYTE's mainstream Ultra Durable Series lineup, the Z97X-UD5H. The UD5H comes with a 12-phase power design, which is more than any of the other 9-Series models, but with slightly less sophisticated MOSFET components than the G1 Gaming or SuperOverClocked models. There are three PCI-E x16 slots and multiple graphics cards support is present in the form of 2-Way CrossFire and 2-Way SLI.

Read full article @ Hardware Canucks

Gigabyte Z97X-UD5H-BK (LGA 1150) Black Edition Motherboard Review

Gigabyte have given their Ultra Durable series a bit of a revamp for Z97 offering their boards up in Black Edition flavours. Whilst the implications of the Black Edition are fairly obviously, it is an overwhelmingly black-coloured motherboard, it also implies a new standard of durability. Gigabyte test all Black Edition series motherboards for an impressive 168 hours using server grade durability tests to ensure high reliability and stability. As if that wasn’t enough Gigabyte also go to town on offering a hefty 5 year warranty and use some of the highest quality components including their “DuraBlack” solid capacitors and their dual layer copper PCB. However, the Gigabyte Z97X-UD5H-BK isn’t just about reliability, this motherboard has bucket loads of features too. Among them this motherboard has dual Gigabit LAN, one provided by Intel and the other by Killer, it has extra SATA III ports, extra USB 3.0 ports, SATA Express and M.2, support for 3-Way CrossFire, a dual UEFI BIOS, high quality ALC1150 Realtek audio, voltage measurement points, onboard buttons and a hefty 12 phase CPU VRM. On paper the Gigabyte Z97X-UD5H-BK is a fantastic high-end board so let’s get on with our review and see how it shapes up in testing.

Read full article @ eTeknix

How to find and kill misbehaving MySQL queries

Sometimes the complexity of a relational database system can be overwhelming. Fortunately, sometimes that complexity is an advantage, as with MySQL's tools for managing queries.

Read full article @ Xmodulo

Razer Kraken 7.1 Review

The Kraken is a stereo headphone from Razer that offer the possibility to be used in a virtual 7.1 mode. The quality is on very good levels in perfect Razer's style. If you are curious to see how they behave, follow us in our review.

Read full article @ ocaholic

Samsung 845DC PRO 800GB Review

Does it live up to its datacentre credentials? The consumer solid-state drive (SSD) market has been characterised as a race to the pricing bottom, as manufacturers outdo one another by reducing margins and betting on the price of NAND flash. Such bets can realistically be taken on by those SSD guys who manufacture their own memory; doing so otherwise is fraught with danger.

But not all SSDs are created equal. Newer interfaces such as M.2 and PCIe remove some of the limitations inherent in SATA 6Gbps, notably sequential bandwidth, though many SSDs - composed of controller and NAND flash - are now engineered to meet a specific purpose. Consumer SSDs promulgate sequential speed and low cost, while enterprise drives focus on reliability, quality of service and performance consistency.

Read full article @ Hexus

Samsung SSD 850 PRO Solid State Drive Review

Solid State Drive technology has been revolutionary in that it delivers a very noticeable performance boost that surpasses upgrades to other components. As a result, companies who offer SSDs typically spend small fortunes marketing them to the consumer public. Samsung goes a different route, and relies on proven performance to sale units. This was especially true for the Samsung SSD 840 PRO, which generated its own interest by producing impressive transfer speeds. Powered by their own 32-layer 3D V-NAND technology, the Samsung SSD 850 PRO replaces the 840 PRO solid state drive and delivers up to twice the density and write speed of traditional 20nm planar NAND flash components. In this article, Benchmark Reviews tests the 256GB Samsung SSD 850 PRO against the fastest solid state drives available.

Read full article @ Benchmark Reviews

Seasonic Platinum-1200 Power Supply Review

Our evaluation of the Seasonic Platinum-1200 power supply is online for your viewing pleasure. If you are looking for a unit with qualities that include outstanding build quality, excellent voltage regulation, excellent efficiency, and low noise output, this could be the PSU for you.

Seasonic is one of our longtime favorite brands when it comes to enthusiast computer power supplies. Its new 1,200 watt powerhouse still outshines many PSUs that it competes with. Interestingly enough Seasonic's biggest true competition seems to be... well... Seasonic.

Read full article @ HardOCP

Steam In-Home Streaming and Gaming Future

Steam In-Home Streaming is a new feature that allows you to play games in a low-end computer anywhere in your home as long as you are connected to the same network as your gaming computer. This current feature from Valve, has been on Beta mode during the past months, however it is now available for anyone to use. Here at Benchmark Reviews we were curious of why Valve would release such feature, but with the upcoming Steam Machines, In-Home Streaming started to fit within Valve’s plans.

Read full article @ Benchmark Reviews