Reviews 51951 Published by

Here a roundup of todays reviews and articles:

AMD Radeon R9 Fury Review: Fiji On Air Tested
ASUS G751J Gaming Notebook Review
ASUS Radeon R9 Fury STRIX 4 GB
Asus' Strix Radeon R9 Fury graphics card reviewed
Case Mod Friday: Mid-Lif Cry-Sys
Griffin WatchStand Charging Dock for Apple Watch and iPhone Review
How to build the best Raspberry Pi 2 media server
NZXT Noctis 450 Mid-Tower Chassis Review
Palit GeForce GTX 980 Ti Super Jetstream Review
PC Specialist Lafité Notebook Review
Purism Librem 13 Review
Sapphire Radeon R9 Fury Tri-X OC Review
Sapphire Radeon R9 Fury Tri-X OC Video Card Review
Sapphire Tri-X Radeon R9 Fury 4GB Review
SuperMicro Gaming S5 Special Edition Mid-Tower Chassis Review
The AMD R9 Fury Performance Review
Turtle Beach Grip 500 Laser Mouse Review



AMD Radeon R9 Fury Review: Fiji On Air Tested

When AMD launched the liquid-cooled Radeon Fury X, we witnessed a company willing to commit to new architecture and bleeding edge technologies (Fiji and High-Bandwidth Memory, respectively). Beyond that, Fury X showed a level of ambition and hardware design chops we hadn’t seen from AMD in years. There’s no denying that between its exceptional thermals and strong performance, Fury X is a force to be reckoned with. However, it fell shy of the mark that enthusiasts and press hoped it would achieve, unable to quite deliver a definitive victory against NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 980 Ti. Today, AMD offers up their Radeon R9 Fury (sometimes referred to as Fury Air or Fury Pro), a video card that brings a compelling value proposition to the table.

Read full article @ HotHardware.com

ASUS G751J Gaming Notebook Review

The G-Series gaming Notebooks from ASUS are known for offering a lot of performance, a unique design and they also feature a great cooling system. Today we're going to find out, whether the latest incarnation of ASUS gaming notebooks can convince with the same attributes or not.

Read full article @ ocaholic

ASUS Radeon R9 Fury STRIX 4 GB

Today AMD has released their Radeon R9 Fury. Only two vendors are allowed to build designs for the Fury Non-X: ASUS and Sapphire. Today we are reviewing the ASUS R9 Fury STRIX, which comes with a new large DirectCU thermal solution, which helps to keep noise levels in check.

Read full article @ techPowerUp

Asus' Strix Radeon R9 Fury graphics card reviewed

The air-cooled version of AMD's Fiji GPU is here in the form of the Radeon R9 Fury. We go inside the second with the Asus version of this card, the Strix R9 Fury. We also finally get a look at R9 390 and 390X cards from XFX and Asus, respectively, that round out AMD's refreshed lineup of high-end Radeons.

Read full article @ The Tech Report

Case Mod Friday: Mid-Lif Cry-Sys

Welcome to another Case Mod Friday showcase! This week we have Buehlar's “Mid-Lif Cry-Sys” build. Here is what he had to say about it, "Alright guys, here's the deal. I'm 40 years young, over the hill and bored to death...so the title "Mid-Life Cry-Sys" kinda fits the um...build. Well, I had way too much hardware crammed into the Corsair C70 and as a result it was just impossible to maintain. The C70 was great but I'm the guy who likes to tinker and swap out hardware with my builds and I couldn't get a finger inside the chassis after it was complete. So here I go again after many months of contemplating on a new case for the build. I just want to do something that has a different attitude...classic style and in the end, easy to maintain."

Read full article @ ThinkComputers.org

Griffin WatchStand Charging Dock for Apple Watch and iPhone Review

With the introduction of the Apple Watch a new ecosystem of accessories has hit the market. While the accessory options at this point in time are fairly limited today we will look at an item that most Apple Watch owners should find interesting. Griffin Technology the company well known for their mobile accessories have released Griffin Watch stand. It boasts a simple design while offering a stylish appearance.

This pedestal prominently displays the Apple Watch when not being one on one’s nightstand, tabletop or desktop. In addition it functions as a charging stand as it houses the Apple provided Mag Safe charging cable.

Inside the pedestal is a cord management system, which allows an excess cord to be safely hidden away inside the WatchStand. The bottom of the WatchStand has a molded base that allows the iPhone to be displayed as well.

Read full article @ Technogog

How to build the best Raspberry Pi 2 media server

Who needs the likes of Sky Anytime or Virgin Media's On Demand services when you can build your own personally tailored digital media library? This is a library that contains your personal, curated collection of music, TV shows and movies. It's accessible from any room in your home (or outside it), and there's no digging through CDs, sitting through DVD intros or flicking through someone else's choice of content, 90% of which you have no interest in.In this tutorial, we'll show you how to build your own media server using the versatile – and incredibly cheap – Raspberry Pi 2.

We're not just talking about any bog-standard media server either – no, thanks to the Pi 2's quad-core processor and 1GB RAM, you can run the frankly fabulous Plex Media Server directly from it. We'll reveal the easiest way to get it up and running on your Pi, plus show you how to hook it up to all your stored media and configure it so you can access your content from anywhere – not just your own local network.How to turn your Raspberry Pi 2 into a retro games consoleThe Raspberry Pi 2 as a media serverYou might be wondering why you'd choose to build a dedicated media server when any modern PC or Mac (sporting a 2GHz dual-core processor or chipset with hardware accelerated video decoding) can do the job. Two reasons: convenience, and energy consumption.

Read full article @ Techradar

NZXT Noctis 450 Mid-Tower Chassis Review

NZXT is one of the first names people think of when you ask about PC gaming chassis. Time and time again they’ve delivered award-winning products that are unique in terms of design, but also deliver a range of innovative features at a competitive price. Their H440 has proven to be one of the most popular chassis on the market, but NZXT figured it would be a great idea to tweak the design of the H440 and create their Noctis 450, while leaving many of the core features that made the original H440 so great intact; let’s see if they succeeded.

As you can see from the specifications, the Noctis 450 is knock-for-knock with the H440, offering the same hardware capabilities. This is no bad thing either, as you’ve got room for plenty of air and water cooling, huge amounts of GPU clearance and a whole lot more.

Read full article @ eTeknix

Palit GeForce GTX 980 Ti Super Jetstream Review

In this review we benchmark the new Palit GeForce GTX 980 Super Jetstream, a product that will command and conquer as it offers massive game rendering performance at 100% quiet nose levels. Hey and it also looks terrific with a newly revised cooler, a sturdy design and a back-plate. Obviously this Super Jetstream edition comes factory overclocked. Arm that with the sweetness that is the the GTX 980 Ti GPU with its 6 GB graphics memory and you will quickly realize, this product lives and breathes for raw gaming domination.

The GPU that resides under the hood is the big Maxwell, and oh man it's a freak of nature with that kind of game rendering powah! You'd expect a product with "980" in it to have a similar slightly tweaked GPU, but no Sir. Nvidia shifted a thing or two around, the 980 Ti is based on the BIG Maxwell GPU, the same GPU that is powering the Titan X. Obviously the product has been trimmed down a tiny bit, but trust us when we say, there's plenty performance to be found. This product comes with a luxurious six Gigabytes of graphics memory and with these specs, the GTX 980 Ti should be fetching a lot of interest for the true gamers among us. The GPU empowering the GeForce 980 Ti is big, this one has a massive transistor count; it is a slightly revised GM200 A1 GPU that currently feeds the Titan X its horsepower. So yes, a slightly different iteration of the GM200. The card has five display outputs: three DisplayPorts, HDMI and DVI-I. Where the GTX 980 has 4 GB, this product has a nice 6 GB frame buffer, and close to a third more shader processors when compared to the GeForce 980, accumulating up-to 2816 of them playing the binary game in a GPU that has a whopping 8 Billion transistors (GeForce GTX 980 has 5 Billion). The card looks pretty identical to previous models with subtle changes here and there and with that familiar cooler shroud. Memory wise NVIDIA equipped its GeForce GTX 980 Ti with 7 Gbps memory, the fastest GDDR5 memory you can find on a graphics card today, that's until HBM (stacked memory) is released by the competition in the near future. Combined with GPU Boost 2.0 you will see this product is advertised in the 1,076 MHz range on its dynamic clock for the reference products. The reference base clock for 980 Ti is 1 GHz. It's not that the card can't go any higher, but it is done to keep the product in line power consumption wise. With a 250W TDP, we are not complaining at all, no Sir. For the GeForce GTX 980 Ti, monitor outputs include DVI, HDMI 2.0 and DisplayPort, this will vary a little with board partner products that are bound to get released after Computex, based on their own design and cooling. With a card like the GeForce GTX 980 Ti you will be able to play the hottest games including the Witcher 3 and Grand Theft Auto V at that whopping Ultra HD 8.2 Mpixels at a 3840x2160 resolution with a single card, in fact we are going to check that out in this review.

The all custom Palit GeForce GTX 980 Ti Super Jetstream comes with a default base clock set at 1,152 MHz, the Boost speed for this product is listed at 1,241 MHz To keep things cool the Palit GeForce GTX 980 Ti Super Jetstream comes equipped with the newly revised Jetstream fan that might be 2.5 PCI slots in size, but does cool well, extremely well if you consider that we still have not heard the product, it is that quiet. The product is armed with a back-plate. Anyway, have a peek at the photo below. Next page please.

Read full article @ Guru3D

PC Specialist Lafité Notebook Review

When I found out I’d be reviewing this laptop from PC Specialist I decided to check out their site and do some homework to see what I was getting. Having no hands on experiences with Intel’s new Broadwell chips previous to this meant I finally get a chance to see what all of the Broadwell fuss was out, or perhaps to discover it was just marketing hype. After a while of making the cheapest and most expensive builds possible to curb my curiosity my very own review unit had arrived. Reading the spec list I was given ahead of the arrival, features like “5th Gen i5 Broadwell CPU”, “1080p 13.3″ screen”, “250GB SSD” were all ticking the right boxes to me, but when I seen how remarkably thin the chassis was on the website photos it was then my interest peaked.

The question is though, is it as good as it looks or is it all style and no substance? Let’s get this unboxed and find out!

Read full article @ eTeknix

Purism Librem 13 Review

Just over six months ago I reviewed a prototype of the Purism Librem 15: a new 15" laptop geared toward privacy and security. Purism's goal is to replace all proprietary bits you find on a normal laptop with Free Software not just with a free operating system like a number of Linux-friendly vendors but by selecting specific hardware that can run on Linux with pure Free Software drivers to the point of replacing the closed BIOS with Coreboot: an Open Source BIOS replacement. Recently I got the opportunity to test a new Purism Librem 13 prototype: their 13" laptop to go alongside the larger 15" model in Purism's product line. In this article I'm going to go over what's happened with Purism since my last review and talk about my overall impressions of the Librem 13. There are quite a few things in common between the Librem 15 and Librem 13 so if you haven't read it yet, I recommend you check out my Librem 15 review first as I don't plan on covering all of the same material twice.

Read full article @ Linux Journal

Sapphire Radeon R9 Fury Tri-X OC Review

Meet the Fury X's younger, bigger brother. AMD unveiled the Fiji-powered Radeon R9 Fury X graphics card just under a month ago. Outfitted with a new, space-saving memory technology called HBM and packing in more GCN cores than you could reasonably shake a big stick at, AMD played on the small-yet-powerful theme by watercooling the 7.5in-long card.

The $649 Fury X's graphical punch isn't hard enough to dislodge the rival GeForce GTX 980 Ti or GTX Titan X from the top of our performance charts, particularly at a 4K resolution where it matters most. But at least AMD is back in the high-end graphics game.

Yet stock has been in severe constraint for AMD's best-ever single-GPU graphics card while news of other Fiji-based models - Fury and Fury Nano - has tempted some enthusiasts to hold fire.

Read full article @ Hexus

Sapphire Radeon R9 Fury Tri-X OC Video Card Review

When the AMD Radeon R9 Fury X video card that is powered by the Fiji GPU was revealed to the world in June 2015 we were promised by AMD that the less powerful, but more affordable AMD Radeon R9 Fury video card would be coming. Reviewing the flagship AMD Radeon R9 Fury X 4GB HBM memory card showed that AMD was able to catch back up to NVIDIA, but not everyone wants or can afford a $649 water cooled graphics cards for their gaming PC. The new AMD Radeon R9 Fury video card is basically a cut down version of the Fury X with slightly lower core clock speeds and air cooling for a suggested retail price of $549. Our friends over at Sapphire hooked us up with the Sapphire Radeon R9 Fury Tri-X OC video card for this launch. Read on to see how it performs!

Read full article @ Legit Reviews

Sapphire Tri-X Radeon R9 Fury 4GB Review

Today we take a look at AMD’s second graphics card based on the 28nm ‘Fiji’ Silicon. The Sapphire Fury card is the first to hit our labs, and it features a new version of their highly acclaimed ‘Tri-X’ cooling solution. To reduce the retail price against Fury X – the new (non X) Fury model ditches the all in one liquid cooler and has 56 of the 64 compute units on the silicon enabled to yield a total of 3,584 stream processors. At around £445 inc vat it is priced almost identically to rival GTX980 solutions – but can it compete?

Read full article @ KitGuru

SuperMicro Gaming S5 Special Edition Mid-Tower Chassis Review

SuperMicro is better known for their enterprise solutions. They create high-end workstation motherboards, server rack mounts and other professional solutions, but now they’re taking a shot at the consumer level market with the release of their Gaming S5 Mid-Tower chassis, a gaming focused tower and that is something that really caught our attention. It wouldn’t be the first time a company like this has gone from industrial to consumer markets, but SuperMicro has a rock solid reputation and a lot of industry experience, so we were very excited to be able to check out their first consumer chassis product.

The S5 has all the features you would expect from a mid-budget gaming chassis. There’s a gamer friendly design thanks to the nice mixture of black and red, enhanced even further by the use of brushed aluminium on the front panel. There’s also lots of storage space, tool-free drive installation, cable management with rubber grommets, dust filters and more. There are two versions available with one having a raw metal interior and one having a black powder coated interior which is what we’re looking at today, hence “special edition”

Read full article @ eTeknix

The AMD R9 Fury Performance Review

AMD’s R9 Fury X and its Fiji XT core have been the subject of hot debate since their launch late last month. While the Fury X’s performance wasn’t able to compete against NVIDIA’s GTX 980 Ti in every situation, it made a good accounting of itself at 4K and proved that with good enough cooling, even a relatively inefficient architecture can achieve competitive power consumption numbers.

With the Fury X launch behind us, there are still three cards left to roll out within AMD’s revitalized lineup: the Fury Nano, a dual GPU Fury and the standard Fury. Arguably the most important of these is the R9 Fury, which happens to be the subject of today’s review.

Read full article @ Hardware Canucks

Turtle Beach Grip 500 Laser Mouse Review

Last week, I was talking with a friend downtown, asking her what her favorite dog breed was. One thing I realized while guessing is the fact dogs, or even pets in general, are often a reflection of the owner. Much like the beginning of 101 Dalmatians, when Roger is in the park with his dog Pongo, he notices the dog owners act and look just like the dog. You could say it is the animal imitating the human; I would say both the owner and the pet adapt to each other, resulting in a similar personality and appearance. Therefore, when I was trying to determine her three favorite dog breeds, I knew I had to be careful about the breeds I guessed. If I guessed a dog like a Chihuahua, she might think I would be calling her high maintenance or even a bit ditsy, kind of like Paris Hilton. While the dog may not be necessary like this at all, other factors such as the media or previous experiences gives the breed this reputation. Other breeds like Pit Bulls or Rottweilers may make the owner seem rough or scary, partly because of the many news stories you hear with them. Then there are the more recent dogs like the Shiba Inu, or more known on the internet as Doge, which is seen as adorable but a tad clueless. The same could be said for my favorite dog breed, the Corgi, one of the derpiest of dogs at times. All in all, the things we choose, whether animals or items, often reflect on the personality of the us. As for today's review, we have Turtle Beach's latest mouse, the Grip 500. This laser gaming mouse is targeted at gamers and regular users alike, with its Avago 9800 sensor inside. Does the Grip 500 reflect well of the owner, or is it a poor choice? This review today will hopefully answer this question, so let us read on to find out!

Read full article @ APH Networks