Here a roundup of today's reviews and articles, including A Quick Look at Battlefield 4 Performance with Mantle on AMDs Kaveri 7850K APU, Sony Xperia Z1 Compact review, Hauppauge HD PVR Rocket Video Review, ASUS Z87I-PRO (Intel LGA 1150), and An Update Regarding OCZ's Warranties



A Quick Look at Battlefield 4 Performance with Mantle on AMDs Kaveri 7850K APU @ HCW

Another day, another Kaveri article! If you haven’t yet, be sure to first read our full Kaveri review, then perhaps move on to see how it performs when overclocked to 4.7 GHz with 1020 MHz GPU. Also if you’re curious, you may want to check out how gaming performance scales with memory speed, up to DDR3-2400.

Today is extra exciting, because we finally get to see some real Mantle performance figures. Battlefield 4 has been updated to support the Mantle API, but we’re still waiting for a public beta release of the Catalyst 14.1 driver that will enable its use. However we do have a private beta driver from AMD that will allow us to take a quick early look at Mantle performance on the Kaveri APU in Battlefield 4.

This driver feels very early still, which is probably why it’s not publicly available yet. However with some effort, we were able to update everything, and get it working to show you some benchmarks. We’ll be using our standard BF4 benchmark run, comparing it to DX11 results on a stock Kaveri 7850K APU with DDR3-2400.

Read more: A Quick Look at Battlefield 4 Performance with Mantle on AMDs Kaveri 7850K APU @ HCW

Retesting the ASUS Rampage IV Black Edition Audio and the Pitfalls of Audio Testing @ Anandtech

In the motherboard section of AnandTech, we rarely touched the audio section of the motherboard until fairly recently. Audio is a delicate issue, and knowledge on the subject falls into a wide range from the tone deaf all the way to the hyper enthusiast. Professional and prosumer audio equipment can be honed to perfection and cost an appropriate amount, where discussion on quality over $10k per meter cables can happen. It is very hard to quantify an audio experience into a single set of rules, but as the motherboard arena can feature rather elaborate audio setups designed to enhance the quality or provide sufficient electrical filtering, and that these can be some of the major selling points, several of our readers asked us to start testing the audio.

Read more: Retesting the ASUS Rampage IV Black Edition Audio and the Pitfalls of Audio Testing @ Anandtech

Sony Xperia Z1 Compact review @ V3

The first ever powerhouse mini Android smartphone. Powered by a top-end, quad-core processor and featuring the best camera we've experienced on an Android smartphone, the Sony Xperia Z1 Compact is the best smartphone in its class. But the perks come with a premium £450 price tag.

Read more: Sony Xperia Z1 Compact review @ V3

Silverstone PT13 and AR04 @ LanOC Reviews

When it comes to small form factor builds our main focus has been on builds that can fit high powered video cards for LAN use. But the truth to the matter is there are a lot more people who are looking to build small PCs for routers, HTPCs, and just to save room on your desk. As someone who has HTPCs all around the house I completely get it. After juggling a few parts around I realized I had a half height Mini-ITX motherboard sitting around and I decided to make use of it. I came across the Silverstone Petit PT13 case and the AR04 cooler from Silverstone as well. Together they should make for a small but powerful PC, let’s see how performs.

Read more: Silverstone PT13 and AR04 @ LanOC Reviews

QNAP TurboNAS TS-470 NAS Server @ NikKTech

Up until roughly 5 years ago whenever i needed to download large chunks of data from the internet i had to use my HTPC system which naturally consumed a lot less power than my Intel Core i7 systems. Still even that used almost 90W at idle and although compared to my other systems this was nothing having it turned on almost 24/7 was not really good for my wallet. That all changed however when i received my very first NAS server and i haven't looked back ever since. True NAS Servers can't do everything a small PC can right from the box but currently these little devices can do most of what a PC can without however taking up the same space while at the same time their electrical requirements are many times less something that concerns many people especially those who use such devices nonstop for long periods of time. For the past two weeks we've been putting through rigorous testing yet another NAS Server by our friends over at QNAP and more specifically their latest and quite powerful TurboNAS TS-470.

Read more: QNAP TurboNAS TS-470 NAS Server @ NikKTech

Hauppauge HD PVR Rocket Video Review @ HardwareHeaven.com

Today Kaeyi Dream takes a look at the Hauppauge Rocket, a HD PVR aimed at gamers.

Read more: Hauppauge HD PVR Rocket Video Review @ HardwareHeaven.com

MSI GTX 760 Gaming ITX Review @ ocaholic

MSI is pushing hard with their Gaming Series graphics cards these days and meanwhile they've even released their mini graphics cards, with extra short PCB. Apart from the complete custom design you also get a decent factory overclocking and a typical boost clock that really isn't too bad at all.

Read more: MSI GTX 760 Gaming ITX Review @ ocaholic

Cooler Master Elite 130 Mini-ITX Chassis Review @ eTeknix

Coolermaster have long been one of my favourite chassis manufacturers, we loved their HAF range and we loved their Elite 120 when we reviewed it earlier last year. Their latest model the Elite 130 looks to take the Elite 120 to new levels and while in many ways this is just a refresh, it’s always great to see a manufacturer revisit their popular products and bring them up to date for a new audience, rather than throw away something great and forget about it. With some of the best chassis on the market, Coolermaster are proving a popular choice with system builders, they’ve often been praised by us here at eTeknix for their durable build quality, great feature sets and affordable prices, so we hope to see more of the same with this product today.

The Elite 130 is a smaller chassis designed to be the perfect choice for LAN gaming, or any compact gaming build that needs to be portable, small enough to fit in with a home entertainment centre as a HTPC / SteamBox style build or even just for those that want a small and affordable chassis for their office. It supports mini-ITX motherboards, has room for a few hard drives, it’s compatible with full size ATX power supplies and long graphics cards, and even a 5.25″ drive. So while we do stress this is a small form factor chassis, it is one of the bigger options in the mini-ITX category.

Read more: Cooler Master Elite 130 Mini-ITX Chassis Review @ eTeknix

Cooler Master's QuickFire Ultimate mechanical keyboard reviewed @ The Tech Report

With an embedded steel plate and a beefy body, Cooler Master's QuickFire Ultimate may be one of the sturdiest mechanical keyboards around. We take a closer look at this affordable backlit model to see how it holds up.

Read more: Cooler Master's QuickFire Ultimate mechanical keyboard reviewed @ The Tech Report

GIGABYTE Z87X-UD5 TH Intel Z87 Thunderbolt Motherboard Review @ Legit Reviews

GIGABYTE recently sent out one of their latest boards for me to play with, the GIGABYTE Z87X-UD5 TH. The Z87X-UD5 TH is is an Intel based motherboard with an Intel Z87 chipset at its heart. Having the Intel Z87 chipset at its core means that it supports the latest and greatest Intel 4th Generation Core i-series processor like the Core i7-4770K ‘Haswell’ CPU that I will be using for testing. Read on to see how this motherboard performs.

Read more: GIGABYTE Z87X-UD5 TH Intel Z87 Thunderbolt Motherboard Review @ Legit Reviews

ASUS Z87I-PRO (Intel LGA 1150) @ techPowerUp

We continue our foray into mITX motherboards by taking a look at an high-end enthusiast option from ASUS, the P87I-PRO. Featuring a huge 12+2 VRM design, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, plus all Intel Z87 features, the ASUS P87I-PRO also carries the standard high-level ASUS experience we've all come to expect.

Read more: ASUS Z87I-PRO (Intel LGA 1150) @ techPowerUp

SilverStone ML05 HTPC Case Review @ Benchmark Reviews

The deceptively small ML05 HTPC case from SilverStone sits in a class of its own. Part of the Milo series of entry-level HTPC cases (designed to incorporate features from the Grandia series in a slim form factor), the ML05 is one of the most inexpensive home theater enclosures on the market. Essentially half the size of the previously reviewed micro-ATX ML04, the smaller Milo ML05 still checks a lot of the home-theater specific boxes: short depth, available optical drive, room for additional storage, and enough airflow to keep things quiet. Benchmark Reviews has a chance to evaluate the SilverStone ML05 Mini-ITX HTPC case (model SST-ML05B) to see what building a different kind of computer in a different kind of case is like.

Read more: SilverStone ML05 HTPC Case Review @ Benchmark Reviews

An Update Regarding OCZ's Warranties @ Anandtech

There's been some level of uncertainty regarding OCZ and especially the outstanding product warranties. I covered OCZ's situation and its position at Toshiba in our Vertex 460 review but now we've finally got the official word about warranties as well. In short, all OCZ's latest SSDs will be covered by warranty normally, but the unfortunate news is that all non-SSD products (such as PSUs, DRAM, USB drives etc.) will not be supported at all. Outstanding product warranties were excluded from the acquisition terms, so it appears that Toshiba is only willing to cover the most necessary products, those being OCZ's most popular SSDs. Bear in mind that the acquisition only included OCZ's consumer and enterprise storage divisions -- last time I heard OCZ was looking for a buyer for its other units but it seems that they've not been able to find one.

Read more: An Update Regarding OCZ's Warranties @ Anandtech

Intel NUC Kit (Haswell edition) Review @ The Inquirer

Intel updates tiny PC barebones kit with processor, faster graphics and more ports. THE FIRST Intel Next Unit of Computing (NUC) machines made a good impression last year thanks to tiny motherboards, embedded processors and a thriving enthusiast community, but the systems were hampered by poor performance and a confusing selection of boards and kits.

This year's Intel NUC Kit addresses both of these issues. Under the bonnet is an Intel Haswell processor with an updated integrated graphics core, and Intel has configured this mainboard with better ports and sockets than the inconsistent selections on the older PCBs.

Read more: Intel NUC Kit (Haswell edition) Review @ The Inquirer