Here a roundup of today's reviews and articles, including Best Gaming Laptops and Notebooks - Holiday 2013, Corsair Graphite 230T Battleship Grey Mid Tower Case Review, iBuypower Chimera 4SE FX Ultimate: AMD Gaming PC, Tesoro Kuven A1 Review, and ASUS R9 270X DC II TOP 2 GB



Best Gaming Laptops and Notebooks - Holiday 2013

We're in the midst of updating all of our best of guides for the holiday season, and we've already covered what is likely the most popular category: Budget Laptops. Some of what we said there also applies to gaming laptops, and our budget gaming recommendations in particular will be rehashed here, along with any other potential candidates. But here we'll also be looking at higher performance offerings that can handle all of the latest games, perhaps even at maximum details. To be clear, not everyone needs or even wants a gaming laptop, and the presence of a discrete graphics chip pretty much requires that laptops include better cooling, which means they're also likely to weigh more and be bulkier. However, where other laptops can do most tasks except gaming, gaming laptops can actually handle pretty much everything a laptop that's fast enough for gaming is also fast enough for office work, image and video editing, etc. About the only area where gaming laptops sometimes struggle and this is more due to the notebook manufacturers not taking time to properly optimize for power draw is battery life.

Read more: Best Gaming Laptops and Notebooks - Holiday 2013

Corsair Graphite 230T Battleship Grey Mid Tower Case Review @ Legit Reviews

Corsair has several case lines, Obsidian, Vengeance, Carbide and Graphite. Legit Reviews has been fortunate to have been given the opportunity to take a look at most of these cases. Today, we are taking a look at the latest in the Graphite Series, the 230T mid-tower case line. While the Corsair Graphite series is made up of four models of the 230T, each of them are pretty similar with minor cosmetic differences. These differences are mainly about color, there is the battleship grey, black and orange. There are technically two versions of the black, one with a side window and one without. Read on to find out more about this case!

Read more: Corsair Graphite 230T Battleship Grey Mid Tower Case Review @ Legit Reviews

Workstation Graphics Card Comparison Guide Rev. 7.7 @ Tech ARP

These days, there are so many workstation graphics card models that it has become quite impossible to keep up with the different configurations. Therefore, we decided to compile this guide to provide an easy reference for those who are interested in comparing the specifications of the various workstation graphics cards in the market as well as those already obsolescent or obsolete.

Currently covering 167 workstation graphics cards, this comprehensive comparison will allow you to easily compare up to 24 different specifications for each and every card. We hope it will prove to be a useful reference. We will keep this guide updated regularly, so do check back for the latest updates.

Read more: Workstation Graphics Card Comparison Guide Rev. 7.7 @ Tech ARP

MP4Nation Brainwavz HM9 Headphones @ techPowerUp

MP4Nation is well known for their budget friendly headphone lineup. These solid over-ear headphones also come with a huge bundle and are built for a life on the go. Their pre-order price of $119 makes them a good price/performance option, too.

Read more: MP4Nation Brainwavz HM9 Headphones @ techPowerUp

Buying advice: Gaming PC - Updated @ ocaholic

This buying advice is all about selecting the right components for your new gaming rig. What we've done is we've put together several configurations for different budgets and we also included links to Toppreise.ch and Geizhals.at with prices, that are being updated automatically.

Read more: Buying advice: Gaming PC - Updated @ ocaholic

Razer Kraken Forged Edition Headphones @ Custom PC Review

For those living in the United States, it’s Thanksgiving. It’s the day where most of us gather together to celebrate what we’re thankful for over the past year, get together to eat copious amounts of food, then idiotically stand in line in front of Best Buy for hours just to fight for the opportunity to buy a $3 microwave on 90% discount netting a total savings of $27. Oh what a beautiful $27 savings that is…

However, unlike most Americans, Razer has a different idea of celebrating Thanksgiving. Instead of taking the day off work and spending the whole day eating from dawn till dusk, Razer decides that Thanksgiving is the day to unveil one of their finest, most premium headphones they’ve ever built.

That pair of headphones my friends, is the Razer Kraken Forged Edition. Handcrafted in the deep, dark depths of… China, constructed of aircraft grade aluminum, and tuned by Razer’s finest sound engineers, the Kraken is Razer’s first and most daring leap into the enthusiast audio market and luckily, we were given the opportunity to be one of the first to review this ultimate new product.

Read more: Razer Kraken Forged Edition Headphones @ Custom PC Review

All signs point to Kaveri being an evolutionary upgrade @ The Tech Report

We talked a little bit about AMD's upcoming Kaveri APU in our latest podcast. Some of the discussion centered on how Kaveri will compare with current offerings a topic about which AMD provided several hints during its APU13 conference earlier this month. In case you missed the podcast, here's some of what we learned.

Read more: All signs point to Kaveri being an evolutionary upgrade @ The Tech Report

iBuypower Chimera 4SE FX Ultimate: AMD Gaming PC @ HotHardware.com

iBuypower is offering an AMD-based system in its Chimera 4SE line, which is designed to give users serious gaming performance without a wallet-busting price tag. The Chimera is part of iBuypower's Signature Series, which includes iBuypower's highest-priced and most powerful gaming systems, like the Revolt and Valkyrie.

The centerpiece of the Chimera 4SE FX Ultimate is an all AMD-based CPU/GPU combo. The processor is a 4.7GHz (5.0GHz with Turbo), eight-core AMD FX-9590, designed with overclockers in mind. It's cooled by a closed-loop liquid cooler, which seems to be the way most custom builders are going these days. That's likely due to not only the headroom they give overclockers, but also to the stability of their relatively lightweight physical connections inside the case...

Read more: iBuypower Chimera 4SE FX Ultimate: AMD Gaming PC @ HotHardware.com

Corsair Flash Voyager GS 128GB Review @ Vortez

Corsair have built a sterling reputation for themselves over the years for excellent quality peripherals, cooling solutions and power supplies, but it all began for them with memory; RAM to be specific. We’re not quite back to the old days today as we’re talking non-volatile rather than volatile memory, but we are today's review would have been classed as Corsair’s ‘core business’, before they diversified to their current extent.

Competition is hotting up in the USB 3.0 Flash Drive arena, with manufacturers moving away from re-housed USB 2.0 or low-speed controllers capable of less than 100MB/s read rates. Corsair are keen to differentiate their latest products from their rivals, and are releasing a number of USB thumb drives to satisfy a wide range of users.

Read more: Corsair Flash Voyager GS 128GB Review @ Vortez

Tesoro Kuven A1 Review @ ocaholic

After gaming keyboard and mouse, Tesoro offers now also a headset called Kuven, which is available in black and white. The Kuven is a stereo headphone that offer the possibility to be used in a virtual 7.1 mode. The design is unique and it might not be everybodies darling. Other than that it appears to be a high quality product with attractive pricing.

Read more: Tesoro Kuven A1 Review @ ocaholic

Sennheiser G4ME Zero Gaming Headset Video Review @ HardwareHeaven.com

Today DaveChaos reviews the Sennheiser G4ME Zero Headset.

Read more: Sennheiser G4ME Zero Gaming Headset Video Review @ HardwareHeaven.com

ASUS R9 270X DC II TOP 2 GB @ techPowerUp

The ASUS R9 270X DC II TOP comes overclocked out of the box and features the well known ASUS Direct CU cooler. This results in excellent temperatures and very low idle noise levels. During gaming the card ends up a bit noisier though. With a price of $210 it's just marginally more expensive than the cheapest R9 270X on the market.

Read more: ASUS R9 270X DC II TOP 2 GB @ techPowerUp

NVIDIA SHIELD Review @ OCC

In the end, it's up to you whether you feel $300 USD is justified. For what the SHIELD offers, the price is more than acceptable, but if you don't plan on utilizing all that it offers, you'll be in for a tougher decision. Still, if you have a high-end NVIDIA PC or are planning on buying a new GPU, the SHIELD will make a great addition to anyone's holiday wishlist. Just don't forget to factor in an additional $39.99 for the official carrying case, because you're going to want that to.

Read more: NVIDIA SHIELD Review @ OCC

Alienware X51 R2 review: compact gaming system @ Hardware.Info

Alienware has been part of Dell for years now, but keeps designing unique and powerful gaming systems. Take the X51 R2, for example, a very sleek desktop gaming PC that's compact enough for the living room.

Once upon a time gaming PCs were synonymous with huge and loud tower desktop systems. While of course still much more expensive, they are getting closer and closer to the size of a traditional gaming console. The X51 R2 also resembles one of Dell's compact business PCs, but with much more...

Read more: Alienware X51 R2 review: compact gaming system @ Hardware.Info