Reviews 51945 Published by

Here a roundup of today's reviews and articles:

ASRock Fatal1ty X299 Professional Gaming i9 Review
ASRock X299 Gaming i9
Budget All-round PC - September 2017
Cougar Immersa Pro Gaming Headset Review
Distrust: PC Survival Game Review
Intel Skylake-X HCC CPU Delidded by Der8auer, also not Soldered
MSI X299 SLI Plus LGA 2066 Motherboard Review
The ECS Z270H4-I Durathon 2 Mini ITX Motherboard Review



ASRock Fatal1ty X299 Professional Gaming i9 Review

Does the ASRock board with the excessive name have the excess features to make it worth $100 over its base model?

Read full article @ Toms Hardware

ASRock X299 Gaming i9

Like any other platform, ASRock has given Intel's X299 the Fatal1ty treatment, in the form of the X299 Gaming i9. This isn't a value-oriented board product; this one comes straight out of ASRock's Professional Series and has a much higher price tag than the Taichi we looked at earlier.

Read full article @ techPowerUp

Budget All-round PC - September 2017

The all-round PC is a PC with comprehensive features for around £650 - £750 that can do a little bit of everything. It should have enough speed and capacity to meet your needs for some time. Currently it can run all applications, and you're able to upgrade it with small future investments when you need more power or storage capacity.

Read full article @ Hardware.Info

Cougar Immersa Pro Gaming Headset Review

Launched in early August, the Cougar Immersa Pro gaming headset is an update from the original Immersa release. While it uses the same dual headband support and soft leatherette covered ear cups, the Immersa Pro now has the sound level control and mute switch on the right and left earcups, respectively. This means you no longer need to use the in-line controller on the USB cable to adjust either of these settings.

Read full article @ Neoseeker

Distrust: PC Survival Game Review

It was supposed to be a rescue mission, but an explosion caused the chopper to crash-land near an abandoned Artic base, akin to John Carpenter’s classic The Thing. Although only one other team member has survived the wreck, you’re hardly alone. Fall asleep, and you might not wake up. Stay awake long enough, and you’ll experience a dream state of distorted reality. This is a survival game, and almost everything is against you… especially the odds. In this article for Benchmark Reviews we play DISTRUST, built on the Unity 3D game engine.

Read full article @ Benchmark Reviews

Intel Skylake-X HCC CPU Delidded by Der8auer, also not Soldered

Overclocking poster-boy Der8auer has seemingly gotten his hands on some early samples of Intel's Skylake-X high core count (HCC)HEDT CPUs. The upcoming 12 to 18-core enthusiast-class CPUs are being launched on the same X299 platform on socket LGA 2066 that Intel has already launched 4 (Kaby Lake-X), 6, 8 and 10-core parts already, and are supposed to bring Intel towards a level playing field - and then some - with competitor AMD's Threadripper CPUs, which boast of up to 16 cores.

From this delidding process with Der8auer's own delidding tool, Delid-Die-Mate-X, seems to result a die that is much larger - as expected - than Intel's 10-core i9-7900X. At the same time, it seems that Intel is still opting, again, for not soldering its enthusiast-targeted CPUs, which would result in better temperatures and, potentially, overclocking potential. The fact that Der8auer managed to delid the i9-7920X and didn't recommend against doing it likely means that there is minimal risk of damaging your CPU while subjecting it to this process.

Read full article @ techPowerUp

MSI X299 SLI Plus LGA 2066 Motherboard Review

MSI is one of the world's largest and most well-known motherboard manufacturers. In recent years, MSI has become a brand which is focused on PC gaming to the point of rebranding almost all its products and motherboards with "Gaming" branding. Most of these parts have a red and black color scheme and sport a dragon logo on them. MSI, like many other manufacturers has diversified its product portfolio in recent years to include graphics cards, laptops, and other computer related products.

MSI's X299 SLI Plus is a bit different as it isn't part of the gaming brand and lacks the gaming themes typical aesthetic. Given that the X299 Express chipset is intended for motherboards in the HEDT market, MSI's X299 SLI Plus needed to be more mature and not have a sole focus on gaming. It is part of MSI's Pro series and not the gaming series. It's black and white color scheme is far more conservative. It's not as colorful as many of MSI's other offerings. Not that MSI is a particularly bad offender in this area. The HEDT market is fickle and people build systems with 6, 8, or greater core CPUs for a wide variety of purposes. MSI's X299 SLI Plus looks like it would be as at home in a professional workstation as it would a gaming box and I like the elegant simplicity MSI is capable of sometimes. With the right CPU, there is support for 68 PCIe lanes, multi-GPU with either Crossfire or SLI. There are nine power phases with black, solid electrolytic capacitors and an external clock generator which allows a great deal of freedom in overclocking. MSI uses high quality components for its power phases which results in stability and longevity. At least in theory, which is something I will talk about in more detail later.

Read full article @ HardOCP

The ECS Z270H4-I Durathon 2 Mini ITX Motherboard Review

In this review, we are having a look at the ECS Z270H4-I Durathon 2, a Mini ITX motherboard based on the Intel Z270 chipset and marketed towards gamers and overclockers. A quick look at its specifications reveals very interesting features for a motherboard that retails for $109, which we will closely examine in this review.

Read full article @ Anandtech