Reviews 51924 Published by

Here a roundup of today's reviews and articles:

10TB HDD review: five models compared
A Look at Desktop Environments: XFCE
AMD Ryzen Game Optimization Begins: Ashes Of The Singularity Patched And Tested
ASRock Z270 Gaming-ITX/ac Motherboard Unboxing Video
Asus ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1080 Ti OC Review
Best Android Phones: Q1 2017
Cooler Master MasterCase Pro 6 Review
Galaxy S8 hands-on review
GeForce GTX 1080 Ti FCAT Frametime Analysis Review
Intel claims its 10nm process is a full generation ahead of rivals
Intel defends its process-technology leadership at 14nm and 10nm
MJX Bugs 3 Brushless Drone Review
MSI GT83VR Titan SLI Review: GTX 1080 SLI!
MSI X370 XPower Titanium Motherboard Review
NVIDIA Vulkan Driver Shows Impressive Mad Max Performance Over OpenGL
Philips Brilliance 328P 32″ 4K Monitor Review
Rig of the Month March 2017
Testing ECC Memory & AMDs Ryzen - A Deep Dive
WD Black PCIe NVMe SSD Review (512GB) – Does It Live Up To Its Lineage?
Zephyr Linux: Zippy Performance, Zero Decor



10TB HDD review: five models compared

The highest capacity of currently available hard drives is 10 TB, that are suited for those who want to put a single hard drive in their system despite their high price- or if you are using a NAS with a limited amount of bays. In this article we compare five models.

Last year we saw the introduction of the first 10 TB hard drives, about a year-and-a-half after the first 8 TB-models were released. For some time now there is a degree of stagnation on the market for hard drives, because traditional production methods were no longer sufficient in order to increase the storage capacity. However, thanks to new technologies such as Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) and filling the drives with helium it is now possible to release hard drives with more storage.

SMR is primarily used for budget-drives, while the more expensive helium-technology can be found in the higher positioned models. The five models in this test are all helium-drives. We test four Seagate drives and one Western Digital drive. Seagate was the first manufacturer that managed to reach 10 TB, which explains why their line-up is more extensive than that of Western Digital. Aside from these two, HGST also offers a 10 TB drive. Unfortunately we were unable to receive it for our review.

Read full article @ Hardware.Info

A Look at Desktop Environments: XFCE

Xfce is yet another lightweight but highly customizable desktop environment many people use for GNU/Linux, and is the environment of choice for systems such as Xubuntu, and Manjaro (Although Manjaro does come in other flavours, Xfce is known as the Manjaro teams initial focus and was their primary DE for a while.).

Read full article @ gHacks

AMD Ryzen Game Optimization Begins: Ashes Of The Singularity Patched And Tested

AMD captured the attention of PC gamers and performance enthusiasts everywhere with the launch of its Ryzen 7 series processors. The trio of 8-core chips take on Intel's venerable Core i7 series at the high-end of its product stack and forthcoming Ryzen 5 Series CPUs from AMD are expected to compete with Intel's Core i mid-range products. However, with the extra attention and lime light AMD garnered, came significant scrutiny as well. And with any entirely new platform architecture, there are bound to be "corner cases" and a few performance anomalies -- as was the case with the now infamous "1080p gaming" situation with Ryzen.

Today, we have some early proof-positive of that Ryzen gaming can be optimized, as Oxide Games, in concert with AMD, released a patch for its title Ashes Of The Singularity. Ashes has been a "poster child" game engine of sorts for AMD Radeon graphics over the years (especially with respect to DX12) and it was one that ironically showed some of the wildest (negative) variations in Ryzen CPU performance versus Intel processors...

Read full article @ HotHardware

ASRock Z270 Gaming-ITX/ac Motherboard Unboxing Video

Today, on OCinside.de we have published an unboxing video in German with English subtitles of the new ASRock Z270 Gaming ITX/ac, which is an ITX size motherboard with a great basic equipment and Intel LGA 1151 Kaby Lake processor support. The full written review of this ASRock Z270 Gaming-ITX/ac motherboard is coming soon as well.

Read full article @ OCInside.de

Asus ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1080 Ti OC Review

Move over Founders Edition, this is GTX 1080 Ti done right. Enthusiast gamers wanting the very best in graphics technology needn't waste time pondering which GPU to buy. If there's room in the budget, Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1080 Ti is without a doubt the stand-out choice. The more pertinent question for hardcore gamers is which specific GTX 1080 Ti is best?

Nvidia's Founders Edition laid the foundation but isn't ideal when it comes to cooling or real-world frequencies. We've seen Inno3D go one better with the iChill GeForce GTX 1080 Ti X3 and today we turn our attention to one of the best-known partner cards, the Asus ROG Strix.

Read full article @ Hexus

Best Android Phones: Q1 2017

Flowers are blooming and temperatures are rising, which means it’s time for our Q1 2017 Best Android Smartphones guide. There’s been a flurry of phone announcements over the first few months of the year. HTC launched its new U series phones, including the flagship HTC U Ultra, which has a 5.7-inch IPS display with a secondary 2.0-inch ticker display along the top, and the smaller, less-expensive 5.2-inch HTC U Play that comes with a MediaTek Helio P10 SoC. We also saw several new phones announced at MWC 2017, including Huawei’s P10, which shares much of its internal hardware with the larger Huawei Mate 9, and LG’s redesigned G6, which seems to correct some of the G5’s shortcomings while adopting a new, elongated 18:9 aspect ratio for its display that provides some extra screen area without making it more difficult to hold by increasing the phone’s width. Samsung took a similar approach with the recently announced Galaxy S8 and S8+ that also come with taller, 18.5:9 displays with rounded corners.

There were a number of mid-range and low-end phones announced too. At CES 2017, Huawei announced the $250 Honor 6X, which comes with a 5.5-inch IPS display and has a much better look and feel than the Honor 5X. Motorola unveiled the similarly priced Moto G5 Plus at MWC, and ZTE announced a trio of phones in its Blade V8 series: Blade V8 Pro ($250, 5.5-inch, Snapdragon 625), Blade V8 Mini (5.0-inch, Snapdragon 435), and Blade V8 Lite (5.0-inch, MediaTek MT6750).

Read full article @ Anandtech

Cooler Master MasterCase Pro 6 Review

Despite the higher number in the name, the MasterCase Pro 6 sits behind the MasterCase Maker 5t since the Maker line is Cooler Master’s current flagship model with the MasterCase right in the middle and the MasterBox bringing up the rear.

Read full article @ Modders-Inc

Galaxy S8 hands-on review

Flagship wows with its 'Infinity' display and enterprise credentials. Samsung has officially unveiled the Galaxy S8 and S8+, and thanks to the huge number of leaks building up to Wednesday's launch, it's pretty much exactly what you expected.

You'll find a 5.8in QHD+ curved "Infinity" display, a 10nm processor under the hood and Samsung's Bixby artificial intelligence (AI) assistant pre-loaded, although many will be disappointed to discover that the Siri competitor won't be available to in the UK at launch.

V3 went hands-on with the Galaxy S8 ahead of its official unveiling, and you can read our first impressions below.

Read full article @ V3

GeForce GTX 1080 Ti FCAT Frametime Analysis Review

We check out and review the frame-pacing and frametimes with the all new Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, will FCAT reveal some stuff we need to know?

Read full article @ Guru3D

Intel claims its 10nm process is a full generation ahead of rivals

Intel's 10nm transistor density is approximately double that of rivals like Samsung or TSMC. On Tuesday Intel presented at its Technology and Manufacturing Day in San Francisco. The show streamed live to analysts, investors and media worldwide and Intel used it as a showcase for its new tech initiatives. As well as deeper tech presentations by the likes of Mark Bohr, Stacy Smith, Kaizad Mistry, and other Intel luminaries, it published the triumphant 'Leading at the Edge' video, below.

Read full article @ Hexus

Intel defends its process-technology leadership at 14nm and 10nm

As process sizes grow smaller and smaller, Intel believes that the true characteristics of those technology advances are being clouded by an over-reliance on a single nanometer figure. At its Technology and Manufacturing Day this week, the company defended its process leadership and proposed fresh metrics that could more accurately describe what a given process is capable of.

Read full article @ The Tech Report

MJX Bugs 3 Brushless Drone Review

The rate of innovation in the PC monitor market over the past two years or so has been, frankly, explosive. Ultra-wide 21:9 aspect panels, curved screens, 4K-plus resolutions, panel sizes of 40 inches and beyond – all of this and more is now routine if not necessarily achievable and affordable in a single screen.

Read full article @ ModSynergy.com

MSI GT83VR Titan SLI Review: GTX 1080 SLI!

Do you want the most powerful gaming laptop money can buy? Do you also have a spare $5,000 just lying around? Look no further than the MSI GT83VR 7RF Titan SLI, a monster gaming laptop with dual GeForce GTX 1080s inside. This is, quite simply, the most powerful gaming laptop we've tested at TechSpot.

Read full article @ TechSpot

MSI X370 XPower Titanium Motherboard Review

Today we're taking a look the MSI X370 XPower Titanium, an X370 chipset motherboard that hopes to bring the best out of AMD's latest Ryzen 7 CPUs. It's almost among the most expensive of X370 motherboard offerings, targeting overclocking enthusiasts who are going to want to make use of built-in features like the 6+4-phase power delivery system and beefy power connections.

Read full article @ Neoseeker

NVIDIA Vulkan Driver Shows Impressive Mad Max Performance Over OpenGL

Hours ago I posted some RADV vs. RadeonSI results on Mad Max which showed much progress for this first Feral Interactive Vulkan Linux game while the NVIDIA results do show much more impressive performance capabilities with this new graphics API. Here are some of my initial NVIDIA GeForce results for OpenGL vs. Vulkan with Mad Max on Linux while additional tests are on the way. It was just today that Linux game porter Feral Interactive rolled out a public beta of a Vulkan renderer for this originally DX11 Windows game.

Read full article @ Phoronix

Philips Brilliance 328P 32″ 4K Monitor Review

The rate of innovation in the PC monitor market over the past two years or so has been, frankly, explosive. Ultra-wide 21:9 aspect panels, curved screens, 4K-plus resolutions, panel sizes of 40 inches and beyond – all of this and more is now routine if not necessarily achievable and affordable in a single screen.

Read full article @ KitGuru

Rig of the Month March 2017

The March edition of the Guru3D Rig of the Month 2017 is here. The turn goes to Ben Whittle who decided his dinner table and a big sheet of plywood could be transformed into PC, guess what? He succeeded alright.

Read full article @ Guru3D

Testing ECC Memory & AMDs Ryzen - A Deep Dive

The debate about ECC memory and Ryzen has been raging for the last few weeks. In this article we detail what you can expect right now for ECC compatibility on AMD's Ryzen processors.

Read full article @ Hardware Canucks

WD Black PCIe NVMe SSD Review (512GB) – Does It Live Up To Its Lineage?

WD Black hard drives have long been the go-to hard drive for many storage consumers. They satisfy the needs of those looking for fast, reliable storage and although they are priced on the high side, they come with a 5-year warranty, which is hard to beat. However, with the release of so many SSDs into the market, WD had been falling behind. Consumers now demand faster storage than what HDDs can offer. WD had no choice but to finally enter the SSD market. Due to this, WD acquired SanDisk, which in turn gave them the necessary tools to make their entrance.

After some months of waiting, they finally released their first SSD, the WD Blue SSD (http://thessdreview.us7.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=3d9b6193ffd32dd60e84fc74b&id=0926332fd6&e=312ec141fb) . Similarly designed to that of a current generation SanDisk SSD, the WD Blue proved to be a good first go. For many enthusiasts, on the other hand, other SSD manufacturers are in the limelight. There is what seems to be a plethora of PCIe NVMe SSDs in the marketplace, but WD hasn't had anything to show, until now. Back at CES 2017, WD unveiled the latest edition to the WD Black family, the WD Black PCIe (http://thessdreview.us7.list-manage.com/track/click?u=3d9b6193ffd32dd60e84fc74b&id=18551ba74c&e=312ec141fb) . With an M.2 2280 form factor and PCIe NVMe interface, this SSD delivers speeds that are more than three times faster than SATA SSDs and magnitudes faster than a typical HDD. But, will it stand out in the sea of NVMe SSDs or will it fall short of WD's Black brand lineage? Read on as we take a closer look at it in today's review.

Read full article @ The SSD Review

Zephyr Linux: Zippy Performance, Zero Decor

Zephyr Linux is a newcomer to the Linux scene, and it is still morphing from developmental releases. However, it takes an interesting approach to removing desktop clutter and default software bloat. Zephyr is a collaboration between Leonard Ashley and other developers. Ashley built this distro on Devuan, a fork of Debian, and with it he gives the concept of minimalist design a fresh twist.

Read full article @ Linux Insider