Reviews 51949 Published by

Here a roundup of today's reviews and articles:

11 Changes You’ll Love In GNOME 3.20
Accessory Power Enhance GX-H3 Gaming Headphones Review - Power on a Budget!
AVG PC TuneUp Review
Building A Butcher Block Computer Desk To Comfortably Handle Six Monitors
Cooler Master Masterkeys Pro S Mechanical Gaming Keyboard Review
Far Cry Primal Review
Griffin PowerDock 5 USB Charging Station Review
How to Install Linux on VMware ESXi using ISO Image File from vSphere
Inno3D GTX 980Ti iChill Black Graphics Card Review
Intel officially ends Tick-Tock era
Logitech G910 Orion Spark Review
Mixcder Ausdom M05 Bluetooth Over-ear Headphones Review
MSI Z170A GAMING PRO Carbon Review
Nvidia Quadro M6000 updated with 24GB GDDR5
Rosewill Nighthawk 117 EATX/XL-ATX Full Tower Case Review
Samsung Portable SSD T3 500GB Review
Synology DiskStation DS416j Network Attached Storage Review
Tom Clancy's The Division review: tested with 22 GPUs
Windows disk space usage - unknown files
Z170 Motherboard Charts: 16 Models tested - ASUS Maximus VIII Extreme Assembly



11 Changes You’ll Love In GNOME 3.20

GNOME 3.20 is here, and it's packed with goodies. IN this post we look at the 11 best changes.

Read full article @ OMG! Ubuntu!

Accessory Power Enhance GX-H3 Gaming Headphones Review - Power on a Budget!

With Accessory Power pumping out a lot of new gaming peripherals for the gaming market it was a matter of time until we received a pair of GX-H3’s to review. With our review of their GX-H2’s (http://technologyx.us7.list-manage.com/track/click?u=3d9b6193ffd32dd60e84fc74b&id=461340ed9c&e=312ec141fb) already up on the site you will be able to see and compare the difference and similarities of these products and ultimately decide for yourself which of these two solid products you would like to purchase. Coming in at $35, these stereo headphones are still on the lower end of the price scale for similar products so let’s see how they compare to the rest.

Read full article @ TechnologyX

AVG PC TuneUp Review

AVG PC TuneUp is a commercial program that has been designed to identify and resolve issues on machines running the Windows operating system. The program is the successor of TuneUp Utilities, a program that has been released until 2014 under the name before AVG renamed it to AVG PC TuneUp.

Read full article @ gHacks

Building A Butcher Block Computer Desk To Comfortably Handle Six Monitors

With tiling the basement server room this month, I took the opportunity to build a new desk that's capable of easily handling six monitors while allowing for a better layout and more organization than before. Here are some details on building a butcher block wooden computer desk.

For managing the 60+ systems down there plus interacting with any PCs manually, working on ARM SBCs / developer boards, and similar situations, I had a few of these sub-$100 glass desks that I've been using for many years. Those glass desks continue to work out well for a cheap, L-shaped glass desk, but I wanted to make something more industrial to better handle the weight of being able to run many monitors off a single desk while not running into any problems. After all these years, you can still find these glass desks for just over $90 on Amazon where they are now up to 3,100 customer reviews with a 4.5-star rating. The benefit of moving to this heavier duty desk would also allow me to save space in the server room too by not having all of these glass desks around.

Read full article @ Phoronix

Cooler Master Masterkeys Pro S Mechanical Gaming Keyboard Review

Cooler Master are one of the biggest and best in the industry, not only for their high-end chassis such as the Master Case Pro 5, but also their power supplies, coolers and most importantly today, their peripherals. Dropping the CM Storm branding, their latest keyboard, the Masterkeys Pro S TKL, falls in line with their “maker” series of products. Last year so very little new products from CM and we knew they were cooking up something big. They came back after a long period of silence with a completely redesigned and focused product line, and their “make it yours” philosophy.

All the new products we’ve seen from Cooler Master have been beyond impressive, so I’m really eager to see what their new premium-grade mechanical keyboard has to offer. There are two models available, the full-size MasterKeys Pro L and the TKL MasterKeys Pro S, which is the one we have in the eTeknix office today.

Read full article @ eTeknix

Far Cry Primal Review

Is it worth entering the land of Oros and fighting for the survival of the Wenja? I believe it is. Far Cry Primal is a good game, with some weaknesses and good strengths. One thing I want to say is that it feels more like Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon than either Far Cry 3 or Far Cry 4. It is more like a specialized take on the franchise, than a full entry for the franchise. That is not necessarily a good or bad thing, but I want to mention it because I do not think it should be interpreted as the next Far Cry game, but as another Far Cry game. (Also I do not mean to suggest that if you enjoyed Blood Dragon specifically, you will enjoy this, but rather how both games seem to fit into the franchise.) The graphics are okay but could definitely be better, especially with the textures. The story does its job well, but could provide some better motivation for fighting the Izila tribe. The narrative, the telling of the story with a proto-indo-european language is very well done and does add to the experience. The gameplay is fun and works well, even though the setting leaves you without the machine guns and veritable cannons we may be used to having. The beast system does a good job adding to the experience and makes me interested to see how it might return in future games.

Read full article @ OCC

Griffin PowerDock 5 USB Charging Station Review

It seems every new device that we get comes with a USB charger. Phones, tablets, speakers and more and all charged using USB. When you start to load up on devices and they come with their own power brick and after a while you run out of places to plug them in! That is where USB charging stations come in. They make it easy to charge multiple devices at once and typically you are only taking up a single power outlet. Griffin’s PowerDock 5 gives you 5 powered USB ports for your devices and on top of that is designed to keep everything relatively organized and clean. If you have multiple devices that need charged via USB then this is definitely a product you want to look at. Let’s take a look and see what it’s all about.

Read full article @ ThinkComputers.org

How to Install Linux on VMware ESXi using ISO Image File from vSphere

On a VMware ESXi server, you can create a new VM and install a guest OS on the VM using a CD or DVD. For this, you need physical access to the server to insert the installation CD or DVD, which might not be possible, if the server is in a remote datacenter.

Read full article @ The Geek Stuff

Inno3D GTX 980Ti iChill Black Graphics Card Review

Closed-loop liquid coolers have become extremely popular in the CPU market due to the cleaner build, and greater space around the CPU socket compared to traditional air cooling hardware. This means you can install an all in one liquid cooler without having to make concessions in terms of memory compatibility or worry too much about your motherboard’s PCI-E arrangement. As you might expect, all in one liquid coolers have progressively moved into the GPU sector to offer improved overclocking headroom and a lower noise output. There are some interesting parallels between CPU and GPU all in one liquid cooling though which needs to be addressed.

Firstly, many air coolers like the Noctua NH-D15 can outperform Asetek units, while being much quieter. It’s a similar picture with graphics cards because proficient air cooling setups including the Gigabyte Windforce X3 and Sapphire Tri-X provide a superb noise to performance ratio. Liquid cooled graphics cards have a price premium and involve a more complicated installation process. It’s important to remember that Maxwell is a very mature and efficient architecture which allows vendors to enable a 0dB idle fan mode. Despite my own qualms about closed-loop liquid cooling, it’s fantastic to see products which cater to a different target market. There’s clearly a demand for pre-assembled liquid cooled graphics cards, and their appeal is bound to grow in the next few years.

Read full article @ eTeknix

Intel officially ends Tick-Tock era

Instead it will follow a triple step pattern of Process-Architecture-Optimization. Over recent months, in various Intel processor news articles, we have been wondering what happened to the Intel 'Tick-Tock' development process. Recent and new roadmaps from Intel seem to have lost their solid simplicity. The industrious chipmaker once reliably released new chips with defined improvements; with the Tick (process) and the Tock (architecture) refinements included in turn. However more recently we have seen an added Refresh (Haswell) and Intel's next new chip, Kaby Lake, will also be a Refresh or 'Semi-Tock' chip.

Read full article @ Hexus

Logitech G910 Orion Spark Review

Logitech is a broad and diverse company that was founded back in 1981 in Switzerland with the plan to revolutionize people’s interaction with the digital world. They started with a simple innovation that most of us take for granted called the mouse, but at that time the mouse was a technological innovation that allowed users to easily interact with the new GUI interface of computers of the day. Since then Logitech has become a household name with products encompassing computer accessories, gaming, Internet communication, digital music and home entertainment remotes.

The product we will be reviewing here is part of their Gaming or G series; it is their amazing new G910 gaming keyboard with many new innovative features. The first big feature is that this keyboard is designed around Logitech’s new Romer-G Mechanical switches; the second major feature is the ARX control which allows users to use their Smartphone as a screen to display in game stats. Another major feature is the customizable RGB backlighting that is built into every switch/key.

Read full article @ Bjorn3D

Mixcder Ausdom M05 Bluetooth Over-ear Headphones Review

Up for review today I’ve got the Mixcder Ausdom M05 Bluetooth over-ear headphones which feature Bluetooth 4.0 with EDR along with aptX for clear sound and even a microphone. The headphones have built-in multimedia controls and they’re very well made and comfortable to wear for long periods of time. The headphones have a carbon fiber design to them making them aesthetically pleasing in my opinion. Read on to learn more…

Read full article @ Technogog

MSI Z170A GAMING PRO Carbon Review

In recent years MSI have dedicated time and resources into their GAMING line, which encompasses a wide range of PC components designed and optimised specifically for avid gamers. GAMING components complement each other aesthetically and feature-wise, and are often built to the same high-quality and performance requirements; a system decked out in MSI GAMING hardware will be easy on the eye and offer killer frame-rates. Today we turn to MSI’s Intel 10 series GAMING PRO for some Carbon treatment.

The Z170A GAMING PRO Carbon adopts a super-sleek all-black livery with strong emphasis on styling. Throughout this motherboard there is a strong feature-set including an assortment of MSI’s customary tools – with the addition of RGB LED lighting to add some pizazz to your config.

Read full article @ Vortez

Nvidia Quadro M6000 updated with 24GB GDDR5

Doubling the memory installed, compared to last year's model. Nvidia's top end professional graphics card, the Quadro M6000 was launched a little over a year ago. It packed a fully enabled Maxwell GM200 GPU and brought that power to the pro graphics market. Now Nvidia has refreshed the Quadro M6000 with a 24GB GDDR5 version.

Basically the new Quadro M6000 card brings double the graphics RAM capacity to the model released a year ago.

Read full article @ Hexus

Rosewill Nighthawk 117 EATX/XL-ATX Full Tower Case Review

Rosewill's Nighthawk 117 targets power users with tons of features at a moderate price, but can a "more is more" case still beat its emptied-out rivals in overall performance?

Read full article @ Toms Hardware

Samsung Portable SSD T3 500GB Review

With the Portable SSD T3 Samsung has come up with the successor of their T1, which they've launched last year. Equipped with a fast USB3.1 interface and packed in a sleek looking aluminum enclosure, the T3 looks great at a first glance and should perform very well. Overall we're curious to find out what this drive can do.

Read full article @ ocaholic

Synology DiskStation DS416j Network Attached Storage Review

Every year we come across devices that offer numerous features on top of the traditional file sharing. A lot NAS (Network Attached Storage) manufacturers push more and more in to their devices as far as applications and features go and let’s face it, all of these features come with the price.

Read full article @ Modders-Inc

Tom Clancy's The Division review: tested with 22 GPUs

After Rainbow Six: Siege another game based on a book from Tom Clancy has been released, namely The Division. Contrary to Rainbow Six: Siege this is not a first person shooter, but a third person shooter. Nevertheless we were able to test it with 22 GPUs thanks to the built-in benchmark tool.

The plot of The Division is as follows: on Black Friday, a huge epidemic breaks out, the cause being a virus planted onto banknotes. In no time the disease spreads across the entire country and anarchy breaks loose. In this grave situation there is a group of people trying to keep order, the Strategic Homeland Division. You are part of this Division and you will have to perform various tasks, e.g. securing supplies.

Read full article @ Hardware.Info

Windows disk space usage - unknown files

I've written a short guide explaining how to troubleshoot, analyze and solve problems with unknown files resulting in disk space usage issues in Windows using Windirstat and TreeSize utilities. Enjoy.

Read full article @ Dedoimedo

Z170 Motherboard Charts: 16 Models tested - ASUS Maximus VIII Extreme Assembly

In our comparison tables, meanwhile you find benchmark values regarding 16 recent Z170 motherboards. Furthermore we do not comment the benchmark values. The idea and also the goal is to present to you a market overview which helps you choose the right motherboard.

Read full article @ ocaholic