Reviews 51924 Published by

Here a roundup of todays reviews and articles:

Actiontec PWR51WK01 Powerline Adapter Kit Review
BeQuiet Shadow Rock 2 Heatsink Review
BeQuiet Shadow Rock Slim Heatsink Review
BlackBerry Z30 Review
Braven 570 Bluetooth Speaker Review
Computex 2014 ADATA Booth Tour: 2TB SX930 SSD, Micro SSDs, Power Banks, Wireless Chargers and More
Computex 2014: Booth Babes
Corsair Vengeance K70 Keyboard Review
Humble Bundle: PC and Android 10 Review
Kingston HyperX Cloud Pro Gaming Headset Review
MSI Z97 MPOWER MAX AC Motherboard Review
The Intel SSD DC P3700 Review Part 2: NVMe on Client Workloads
Updated NZXT Kraken X40 Liquid Cooler Review
Zalman Reserator 3 Max Dual Ultimate Liquid CPU Cooler Review



Actiontec PWR51WK01 Powerline Adapter Kit Review

Most everyone has a wireless network in their home. They are cheap, easy to set up and use, but they have their limitations. For many users, like those surfing the web, these limitations are insignificant. But as more and more homes are looking at cutting the cord or already have, the limitations become ever present. For streaming applications Wi-Fi networks are often too slow to keep up with the high bandwidth required throughout the home. For transmitting HD video a wired connection is always best, but is often impractical.

So what options do you have if your home isn't hard wired?

Wireless repeaters or extenders. While these can increase the range of your network, they have a fundamental flaw. They are typically placed in an area that has moderate signal strength so you can push your range a little further. The problem is this moderate signal means a reduced bandwidth capacity. So even if your device shows a fast link speed to the repeater your bandwidth to the router is often too slow to support streaming.

Read full article @ Bigbruin.com

BeQuiet Shadow Rock 2 Heatsink Review

In this review Frostytech is checking out the boxy BeQuiet's Shadow Rock 2 heatsink which stands 159mm tall and weighs in at 1120grams. This heatsink has a footprint of 122x122mm without a fan, 122x149mm with the supplied 1600-800rpm, 120mm PWM fan installed.

Read full article @ Frostytech.com

BeQuiet Shadow Rock Slim Heatsink Review

BeQuiet's Shadow Rock Slim heatsink stands 159mm tall and has a footprint of 130x74mm so it will fit most motherboards where space between the memory slots and videocard is on the tight side. The Shadow Rock Slim heatsink weighs 730 grams and is constructed around four 6mm diameter copper heatpipes onto which are swaged raw aluminum cooling fins.

Read full article @ Frostytech.com

BlackBerry Z30 Review

If you would have told me that I would be starting a report with that title 3 weeks ago, I would have said you were nuts. A necessary evil of my work, I have been carrying around a Blackberry for several years now and have never been impressed. I am sorry but it is true. Right now, I have in my hands the Blackberry Z10, as well as the Z30, and you will be hard pressed to get either away from me any time soon. The only reason that Blackberry hasn’t stolen millions of smartphone sales away from IOS or Android is an unfortunate amount of bad press, and bad timing with respect to release of this phone.

Read full article @ TechnologyX

Braven 570 Bluetooth Speaker Review

Up for review today I have the Braven 570 Bluetooth speaker but it’s much more than that as it is also a speakerphone but more importantly it’s also a portable battery to keep your devices charged. The 570 has a 1200mAh battery inside with a standard USB port so you can keep your devices charged while on the go. The Braven 570 is sort of an all-in-one device I guess you could say and it just sounds very good really. The 570 is made of an impact resistant polymer so it can withstand daily use surely and it comes in many different color choices. Read on to learn more…

Read full article @ TestFreaks

Computex 2014 ADATA Booth Tour: 2TB SX930 SSD, Micro SSDs, Power Banks, Wireless Chargers and More

We already covered ADATA's DDR4 last week but they had a ton of other interesting products at their booth. I'll start with the SSDs as they are the most intriguing for me.

ADATA didn't announce any new SSDs at Computex but they had all their existing products along with some unreleased drives shown at the booth. The most interesting drive was the SR1020, which is an SF3700 based enterprise drive that comes in capacities of up to 2TB and is rated at up to 1,800MB/s and 150K IOPS.

Read full article @ Anandtech

Computex 2014: Booth Babes

Computex Taiwan is the leading computer tradeshow in the year. Thanks to its asian location the booths are full of hot show girls in short skirts. TechPowerUp brings you the complete collection with 130 girls - including high-res images.

Read full article @ techPowerUp

Corsair Vengeance K70 Keyboard Review

Mechanical keyboards are far from a new technology; they are decades old and some of the first mass produced personal computers came with mechanical keyboards back in the 1980's. After a transition to lower cost keyboards during, however, many users have rediscovered the benefits of high quality mechanical switches, and today they are among the most widely promoted type of keyboard. Today we have Corsair's latest Vengeance K70 in for testing. Note that this is not the version with RGB LED backlighting, but it is the same core design; read on for our full review.

Read full article @ Anandtech

Humble Bundle: PC and Android 10 Review

Of the base games, both Draw a Stickman: EPIC and Galcon Legends are fun and enjoyable, and therefore worth picking up. The bonus Galcon Fusion game could still use some work on the Android version. Symphony has just failed to impress me and succeeded in frustrating me for about as long as I have owned it, and its presence in this bundle has not changed that.

Read full article @ OCC

Kingston HyperX Cloud Pro Gaming Headset Review

When you hear the name Kingston you usually think about memory, flash drives, and maybe SSD’s. However what you don’t think about are Headsets. Designed in Sweden with a companycalled Qpad, we bring you the Kingston HyperX Cloud Pro Headset. Qpad is known all over Europe for high end quality gaming gear and HyperX promotes and supports some of the best players on the planet. With that in mind the Kingston HyperX Cloud Pro Headset has some big expectations to live up too. Let’s see how it does!

Read full article @ ThinkComputers.org

MSI Z97 MPOWER MAX AC Motherboard Review

It is very important to know when and where to pick your battles. While we continually see countless motherboards coming to market with enormous amounts of features, there comes a point where something else has to give in order to support another. There are only so many PCI lanes, only so many controllers. Once they are filled, either an additional controller must be added, or another feature must go away, there is just no way around it. So, with so many boards out there, and so many of them looking practically identical on paper….how does one choose?

Read full article @ HiTech Legion

The Intel SSD DC P3700 Review Part 2: NVMe on Client Workloads

Last week we reviewed Intel's first NVMe drive: the DC P3700. Based on a modified version of the controller in Intel's SSD DC S3700/S3500, the P3700 moves to an 18-channel design, drops internal latencies and sheds SATA for a native PCIe interface. The result is an extremely high performance enterprise SSD that delivers a combination of high bandwidth and very low latencies, across a wide span of queue depths.

Although Intel's SSD DC P3700 is clearly targeted at the enterprise, the drive will be priced quite aggressively at $3/GB. Furthermore, Intel will be using the same controller and firmware architecture in two other, lower cost derivatives (P3500/P3600). In light of Intel's positioning of the P3xxx family, a number of you asked for us to run the drive through our standard client SSD workload. We didn't have the time to do that before Computex, but it was the first thing I did upon my return. If you aren't familiar with the P3700 I'd recommend reading the initial review, but otherwise let's look at how it performs as a client drive.

Read full article @ Anandtech

Updated NZXT Kraken X40 Liquid Cooler Review

Updated with newest LGA2011 / 200W synthetic thermal test data! The NZXT Kraken X40 is a small self contained CPU liquid cooling system based on the exceptionally popular Asetek platform. As with most all-in-one liquid coolers, the Kraken X40 is differentiated from its sister model - the Kraken X60 - by its thinner 140mm-sized aluminum heat exchanger.

Read full article @ Frostytech.com

Zalman Reserator 3 Max Dual Ultimate Liquid CPU Cooler Review

Today we are going to take a look at the Zalman Reserator 3 Max Dual. The Reserator 3 Max Dual, if you didn't catch by the name, is essentially a dual version of the Reserator 3 Max combined into a single solution. With more cooling surface, we now have more room to dissipate heat that our CPU may be throwing off, also giving overclockers an added benefit to push their processor to the limits with little worry.

Read full article @ Legit Reviews