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Here a roundup of todays review's and articles:

Acer Predator XB280HK 4K display with Nvidia G-Sync
ASRock Fatal1ty Z170 Gaming K4 Review
ASRock Z170 Extreme7+ Review
Asus ROG Poseidon Platinum GTX 980 Ti Review
be quiet! Dark Power Pro 11 550W review
be quiet! Dark Power Pro 11 550W Review
Creative Sound Blaster Review Roundup
Easy Recovery Essentials BCD Error Fix - Windows 10
ECS LIVA X2 Mini PC Review
G.Skill Ripjaws V 3600 MHz DDR4 (2x 4 GB)
Home Theatre PC - September 2015
Kingston microDuo 3C Type-C Flash Drive Review
Mionix Castor Optical Gaming Mouse Review
NZXT GRID+ V2 Fan Controller Review
NZXT S340 Razer Special Edition Mid-Tower Chassis Review
Tesoro Kuven Pro Review
The TR Podcast 185: Honey, I shrunk the Fury
Z170 Charts: 10 Boards



Acer Predator XB280HK 4K display with Nvidia G-Sync

The Predator sounds a dream display for gaming. It’s a 28-inch 4K monitor that supports Nvidia’s G-Sync technology. It has a high quality TN panel and although it only goes up to 60 Hz rather than 144Hz like many other G-Sync displays, it’s still enough for the intended effect of tear-free gaming up to 60fps. With such a good specification and a price tag that’s competitive with other high-end gaming monitors, should the Predator XB280HK be your next display purchase?

Read full article @ KitGuru

ASRock Fatal1ty Z170 Gaming K4 Review

Today, we'll be looking at the ASRock Fata1lty Z170 Gaming K4. This motherboard is a low-tier offering which has been has been designed to offer basic features for those on a tighter budget.

Read full article @ Vortez

ASRock Z170 Extreme7+ Review

With the Extreme7+, ASRock has a well equipped motherboard in its portfolio, which comes with a plethora of features. In case of the Z170 version the vendor makes no exception and especially the variety of connectors for storage media is interesting. There are for example no less than three Ultra M.2 slots which offer up to 32 Gigabit of bandwidth.

Read full article @ ocaholic

Asus ROG Poseidon Platinum GTX 980 Ti Review

The Asus Poseidon Platinum GTX 980 Ti is a Hybrid cooling GPU that features a Direct CU H20 water Cooling under a huge dual fan air cooling system. The same GPU core that drives the Titan X is featured on the Poseidon Platinum GTX 980 Ti. It’s a slightly modified core placing it between the GTX 980 and the Titan X but leaning heavily to the Titan X side of the family. The core itself is a GM200 A1 which is nothing less than a slightly clipped GM200 Titan X core pushing data across a 384-Bit bus to a luxurious 6 GB of GDDR5. Based on a 28nm Fab packing 8 Billion Transistors and 2816 Shaders the three largest differences between Titan X and the Asus Poseidon Platinum GTX 980 Ti are, Shaders, Memory and Price. The Asus Poseidon GTX 980 Ti has 2816 Shaders 256 less than Titan X and while the Poseidon GTX 980 Ti has 6GB of GDDR5 the Titan X gets 12 GB. The pricing for Titan X runs in the $1150 Range while GTX 980 Ti runs $650 to $700 depending on model.

Read full article @ Bjorn3D

be quiet! Dark Power Pro 11 550W review

An impressive supply for quality single-GPU builds. German PSU manufacturer be quiet! released an update to its popular, premium Dark Power Pro line just a short while back. Now referred to as the 11-series range, the original trio, understandably, focused on higher wattages and premium pricing. The 850W, 1,000W and 1,200W models performed well and were ripe for a recommendation to the enthusiasts who wanted super-stable power at high loads, but those with more modest energy requirements were left wanting 80 PLUS Platinum-level efficiency.

Though that isn't the case as of today; be quiet! has extended the Dark Power Pro 11 range to accommodate 550W, 650W and 750W capacities. Designing for lower capacities is inherently more tricky, explaining why the mainstream supplies are later to market.

Read full article @ Hexus

be quiet! Dark Power Pro 11 550W Review

Be quiet! are a name KitGuru consider synonymous with quality. Today we look at their latest Dark Power Pro 11 550W unit – a new lower capacity model set to supplement the 850W, 1000W and 1200W units released in May this year. The 850W model earned our highest award back in May (http://www.kitguru.net/components/power-supplies/zardon/be-quiet-dark-power-pro-11-850w-psu-review/) so we have high hopes for this 550W unit.

Read full article @ KitGuru

Creative Sound Blaster Review Roundup

We’ve been slowly working our way through Creatives products, primarily focusing on PC items but also dipping into their mobile and console compatible items too. Given there has been so much we felt it worthwhile bringing it all into one place for you to see. Welcome to our Creative Sound Blaster Round-Up.

If you want more info on each product then you can click the links through to the full reviews…but before we begin it’s also worth noting that we offer a great set of custom drivers for Creative sound cards. Designed by Robert McClelland to offer a great alternate experience to the stock Creative drivers they also contain tweaks which optimise for maximum performance and can also resolve bugs found in other versions. You can find download links over here, or chat to Rob about them on our Forum.

Read full article @ Hardwareheaven

Easy Recovery Essentials BCD Error Fix - Windows 10

When we first upgraded from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10, we noticed a problem off of the bat as Windows failed to update to 10 on the first try. We persevered, and continued to upgrade a second time. Once it finished, the PC rebooted and we were without a graphics driver. We ran Windows Update and it installed our graphics driver. Upon reboot we were greeted with a blue screen of death (BSOD), with the error code 0xc0000098. Read on for more details on how we fixed our error code!

Read full article @ TechnologyX

ECS LIVA X2 Mini PC Review

Where can I begin, but to say that I was amazed by the ECS LIVA X2 and what it had to offer for the size. I am a fan of the really small form factor PCs and I have normally gone to the trusty Raspberry Pi for what I needed, but that may change. For the size, the performance was pretty good, and the video playback was amazingly clean and jitter free. The ability to place the unit in open environments or hide it with the VESA plate that is included makes it a versatile PC. It's definitely easy to say the LIVA X2's place is in the media and office space.

Read full article @ OCC

G.Skill Ripjaws V 3600 MHz DDR4 (2x 4 GB)

Intel's new Skylake platform comes with DDR4 at increased memory speeds, and the first to help us investigate the benefits of high-performance DDR4 is G.Skill's latest design, the Ripjaws V. Wrapped in a new look, these ultra-fast 3600 MHz modules push the limits of your Skylake CPU.

Read full article @ techPowerUp

Home Theatre PC - September 2015

A Home Theatre PC (HTPC) or media centre PC is the centrepiece of the digital living room. The fact that it will reside in the living room puts unique demands on the device, such as an attractive design, being dead silent and being able to handle all common codecs.

You can install different OS'es on our Home Theatre PC system, such as Windows or Kodibuntu, a distribution with the popular media player software Kodi (the old XBMC) in its core. As a matter of fact, the choice for a 'real PC' offers more flexibility than you'll get with a Smart TV or media player. We keep it to the basics in this advice, but it's also possible to watch and record live TV with additional hardware.

Please note: the PC Buyer’s Guide is compiled based on independent component tests performed by Hardware.Info. If no new, superior products are released that should replace one or more of the components, then the component(s) will remain the same as the previous month.

Read full article @ Hardware.Info

Kingston microDuo 3C Type-C Flash Drive Review

With a new USB connector, we will be seeing many new devices that include the Type-C connector. Kingston has already released an updated version of their DataTraveler microDuo flash drive that has both USB 3.1 and Type-C ports called the DataTraveler microDuo 3C. It is currently available in three sizes with prices starting at under $12 for the smallest 16GB capacity drive.

Read full article @ Legit Reviews

Mionix Castor Optical Gaming Mouse Review

Every gamer i know from casual ones and up to eSports professionals has invested quite a bit in a good graphics card and several gaming peripherals but for some weird reason casual gamers don't see the real value in investing in keyboards, mice, mats and headsets. I don't know if that's due to the fact that they prefer single player games and so they don't need to worry about having the edge over serious competition coming from other players but regardless of the reason that's just how things are. Through the years I’ve used and reviewed a very large number of gaming peripherals and so have most editors i know but there aren't that many manufacturers that come to mind when talking about gaming mice like Mionix and since they just launched their latest model called the Castor we just had to have it on our test bench.

Mionix was founded in Sweden 2007 by Peter Nygren with the mission to create the world’s best performing and most ergonomic gaming mouse. We proved that a small dedicated Swedish clan could do this. And it was just the beginning... Today, our complete gaming range is crafted with the same level of innovation and attention to detail.

The Castor is a next generation gaming mouse that uses the brand new PMW-3310 low power optical (IR) gaming sensor by Pixart which features zero acceleration, maximum resolution of 5000DPI, frame rate of up to 6500fps, acceleration of up to 30g, speed of up to 130IPS, programmable angle-snap, angle tunability and a low-power sleep/wake mode. Of course as we've come to expect from Mionix thanks to several firmware modifications and a 32bit ARM CPU running at 32MHz (paired with 128Kbit of onboard memory) they have managed to boost the performance of this already fast Optical/IR sensor to an impressive 10000DPI resolution and 215IPS speed. The Castor also features 6 programmable buttons, AURORA lighting effects, 4 layers of rubber coating and fully supports all grip types (palm/fingertip/claw).

Read full article @ NikKTech

NZXT GRID+ V2 Fan Controller Review

When building an epic new rig we focus on the exciting main items like the motherboard, processor, ram, and of course the GPU! Often times that could leave you missing some important items when you actually start to put the build together. I feel one of the most overlooked items is the fan controller. Often times there is a solution included with the case, but if your build is deserving of the adjective “epic” then you will need more than the included controller or hub. Hoping to be there for you when you need plenty of power and specific control, NZXT is bringing to the market the third iteration of it’s very popular fan hub, the GRID+ V2. Follow along as we find out if this hub has what you need to keep your case nice and chill.

Read full article @ ThinkComputers.org

NZXT S340 Razer Special Edition Mid-Tower Chassis Review

NZXT are one of the go-to brands for people building a gaming system, and that’s hardly surprising given that they’ve created some of the coolest looking and best-performing gaming chassis available and have been doing so for many years! From their legendary Phantom and Switch series to the more recently popular H440 and now their S340. Today we’re taking a look at the latest entry in their S340 series, which is at its absolute core the same S340 they launched at the end of last year, but it has been given a cosmetic makeover courtesy of popular gaming brand Razer.

The new chassis still features the same specifications as the original S340. There’s a good amount of storage space, room for large graphics cards, lots of cooling support and much more.

Read full article @ eTeknix

Tesoro Kuven Pro Review

Headsets with multichannel audio rendering are popular with many people for various reasons. This could be due to their promise of heightened spatial awareness/directional audio or perhaps due to various other reasons which can all be added to the list in the good quality stereo headset VS real surround headset debate, but the end game is, there is a market for them. So it's not surprising to see various manufacturers offering a 'real 5.1 surround headset' as part of their range. This is what it seems Tesoro have done, by taking their Kuven v7.1, which is a solid stereo headset, and offer it as a real 5.1 surround alternative in the form of the Kuven Pro.

It features attractive violet lighting and four drivers in each ear cup (40mm subwoofer, 3x 30mm Front/Rear/Centre). Included with the Kuven Pro is a control box/amplifier to which the headset connects via HDMI, this control box allows individual volume adjustments for each channel as well as the ability to mute the volume and microphone.

Read full article @ Vortez

The TR Podcast 185: Honey, I shrunk the Fury

In this episode of The TR Podcast, Scott, Ben, and Jeff put AMD's Radeon R9 Nano under the magnifying glass. We also discuss Intel's support of VESA Adaptive-Sync, Cooler Master's MasterCase 5, and Galaxy Note 5 owners putting their pens in backwards, and we take questions from the peanut gallery.

Read full article @ The Tech Report

Z170 Charts: 10 Boards

In our comparison tables, meanwhile you find benchmark values regarding 10 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