Reviews 51924 Published by

Here a roundup of today's reviews and articles:

ASRock G10 Gaming Router Review
ASUS ROG Matrix GeForce GTX 980 Ti Platinum Review
ASUS Transformer Book T100HA Review
Bitfenix Alchemy 2.0 Magnetic LED Strip Review: Modding Made Even Easier
Crabby Digital Premium 6ft Micro USB Cable Review
G.SKILL Ripjaws MX780 RGB Gaming Mouse Review
HTC One A9 Review
Lenovo Yoga Tab 3 8 Review: A Budget-Friendly Android Slate
Meizu M2 Note Full Body PU Leather Case Review
Microsoft's Surface Pro 4 is a nightmare to repair
MSI GeForce GTX 980 Ti Lightning 6GB
Novachips Scalar 4TB & 8TB SSD Review – HLNAND Enables High Capacity, Speed & Low Power
Sapphire FirePro W9100 Review
Scythe Iori CPU Cooler Review
Tt eSPORTS Poseidon Z RGB Gaming Keyboard Review
Underwater Internet Cables At Risk of Tech Warfare
Xiaomi Mi4c review: flagship phone for half the price



ASRock G10 Gaming Router Review

The G10 is the first 802.11ac router from ASRock, a firm that until now has been better known for its motherboard designs. It supports up to quad-stream 802.11ac wireless speeds, along with older standards such as 802.11n over both 2.4GHz and 5GHz. With a few extras as well, including a wireless access point / media streaming dongle, it looks like quite a compelling offering.

Read full article @ KitGuru

ASUS ROG Matrix GeForce GTX 980 Ti Platinum Review

We review the ASUS ROG Matrix GeForce GTX 980 Ti Platinum edition. it's is the most high-end series from the ASUS Republic of Gamers team, a graphics card that was redesigned to perform and to be tweaked. The product comes factory overclocked at fairly high levels and has got that all new DirectCU based cooling design. The card has RGB LEDs that change color based on the workload, a defroster that prevents condensation build-up with sub-zero overclocking, and even a safe-mode button that can rescue you from overly-zealous overclocks.

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 1076 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 varies a little with board partner products released after Computex, based on their own design and cooling. With a card like the ASUS ROG Matrix GeForce GTX 980 Ti Platinum edition 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 maximum allowed board design power draw is roughly 250 Watts, not bad considering the caliber of this product.

Read full article @ Guru3D

ASUS Transformer Book T100HA Review

ASUS recently announced their plans to expand their Transformer Book Family with a brand new update to their successful Transformer line of highly mobile devices. The cool think about the ASUS Transformer line is that these devices are designed to run the latest Windows Operating system as well as give you a full-functionality as a tablet and or ultra-light laptop. While I love the style and functionality of Apple’s iPad, it really is difficult to get any work done on the machine itself. It’s great for serving up content, but when you want to work with a spreadsheet. give a presentation, or even respond in depth to a an e-mail, the native iPads are very difficult to get content into.

Read full article @ Legit Reviews

Bitfenix Alchemy 2.0 Magnetic LED Strip Review: Modding Made Even Easier

With case modders featured in commercials by companies such as Intel and even showcased in TV shows worldwide, the hobby has officially hit mainstream acceptance. The term "modding" in itself has a very broad definition and is evolving as the number of modders increase. This popularity is followed by streamlined modding solutions directly offered by manufacturers, making what once required … Read more.

Read full article @ Modders-Inc

Crabby Digital Premium 6ft Micro USB Cable Review

Are all USB cables created equal? I don’t think so, some are better than others, not only in how they’re made or what they look like but in what they can handle in terms of power or voltages and amperage’s. Today for review Crabby Digital has sent me over what they call their Premium Micro USB Cable which is six feet long and it’s flat making it tangle free, but what’s more important is that the cable can handle up to 2amps of power allowing you to charge your devices quickly. Read on to learn more…

Read full article @ Technogog

G.SKILL Ripjaws MX780 RGB Gaming Mouse Review

The main problem I found with this mouse is with using cloth mouse pads – lifting the mouse would cause it to stop working momentarily when sat back down as if it were recalibrating. Using a hard surface the mouse worked perfectly. I used a Ratpadz hard pad, an XTracGear Ripper cloth pad, and a Corsair Gaming Mouse Mat cloth pad. Only the hard plastic pad worked reliably when lifting the mouse and setting it down. Optical mice can benefit from irregular or more obvious patterns and textures – it helps them with their tracking. The cloth pads were such a fine mesh that the sensor seemed to have to recalibrate after a liftoff. If this was disclosed then this review would have been nearly perfect. Other than that, this mouse performed very well and if the price is right it is definitely worth checking out!

Read full article @ OCC

HTC One A9 Review

Let's get a couple of things straight: the HTC One A9 isn't a flagship phone, which explains why so many iconic elements have been left out. And yes, it looks a lot like an iPhone 6S.But that would miss the point of this phone. It's a 'fashion' device, one for those that want a slightly cheaper smartphone with decent build and some attractive specs, sitting apart from the usual bun-fight for attention that happens twice a year when Sony, Samsung, HTC, LG and Apple throw their new phones into the ring.I'll get to the points about design later on in the review, but let's deal with something now - this is an iPhone in shape to the untrained eye, something most people commented on when they saw this phone. The argument is already raging about whether or not this is HTC's DNA in the phone (the brand did popularise the metal-body-with-plastic-strips look on the original One) but the fact is: it looks like an iPhone 6S. Whether Apple copied HTC or HTC copied Apple is irrelevant. The iPhone is the world's most popular single device and as such is easily identifiable. Any brand that makes a phone that looks remotely similar does so with both eyes open.

Read full article @ TechRadar

Lenovo Yoga Tab 3 8 Review: A Budget-Friendly Android Slate

Tablet makers are continually in the process of slimming down their devices and boosting battery life, even in the entry-level space, where products like the Android-based Lenovo Yoga Tab 3 8 play. Lenovo gave this tablet an aggressive price point of $169.99 and designed it for entertainment use, which ought to make the Yoga Tab 3 8 appealing to a broad range of potential consumers.

So, we decided to take the tablet for a spin and see if it has something to offer savvy, frugal consumers this holiday season...

Read full article @ HotHardware

Meizu M2 Note Full Body PU Leather Case Review

Despite the fact that we are not talking about a top brand which manufactures these two products, we were impressed by the quality, the good fit and also the ease of use with these cases. They are incredibly cheap at $4.92 and Everbuying is shipping these without additional costs (flat rate shipping). In our case they were delivered by PostNL and we had them in our hands after about two weeks since the order.

Read full article @ Madshrimps

Microsoft's Surface Pro 4 is a nightmare to repair

iFixit bemoans teardown as a 'hazardous chore'

Read full article @ The Inquirer

MSI GeForce GTX 980 Ti Lightning 6GB

MSI's new GTX 980 Ti Lightning is amazing. It's the fastest, quietest and coolest GTX 980 Ti we ever tested. All at the same time! What a fantastic product, if only the price was lower. Clocking in at $780, it's over $150 more expensive than the cheapest GTX 980 Ti variants.

Read full article @ techPowerUp

Novachips Scalar 4TB & 8TB SSD Review – HLNAND Enables High Capacity, Speed & Low Power

Novachips has just introduced the worlds largest capacity notebook SSDs through its development of HLNAND and The SSD Review has the exclusive first review of both. Their Scalar 4/8TB SSDs are the first single controller 2.5" SSDs of these volumes, and both have top tier SATA 3 speedsa along with a low heat and power draw. Also featuring thermal & power loss protection, 256-Bit encryption, support for ASPM, DEVSLP and TCG OPAL 2.0, a 3-year warranty and the fact that they are now available to oem and enterprise and will soon be available to the consumer, tech has yet again taken another big step.

Read full article @ The SSD Review

Sapphire FirePro W9100 Review

AMD's premier workstation card examined. AMD is most commonly known as the provider of consumer Radeon GPUs and a wide range of APUs and CPUs for mainstream and enthusiast PC desktops and laptops. But just like rival Nvidia, AMD has a professional range of graphics cards designed for the workstation market.

Such graphics cards are known as FirePro and are based on very similar architectures to their consumer Radeon cousins, but they're different insofar as the software is validated for applications used in the fields of compute, life sciences, engineering and design.

The professional nature of the intended market means people are willing to pay for the privilege of enhanced reliability, and it's an area that AMD, right now, is underrepresented in. Latest research indicates that Nvidia has an 75 per cent market share leaving just 25 per cent to AMD.

Read full article @ Hexus

Scythe Iori CPU Cooler Review

Today we are testing the Scythe Iori CPU cooler with top-blow design on OCinside.de. Because of their flat design, top-blow coolers are suitable for small environments such as a HTPC. Iori is the Japanese word for a small mountain hut as place of refuge. We will find out, if a CPU can find safe refuge with the Scythe Iori.

Read full article @ OCInside

Tt eSPORTS Poseidon Z RGB Gaming Keyboard Review

Tt eSPORTS has has their Poseidon Z line of gaming keyboards out on the market for a while now. These keyboards are made to give gamers a solid no-frills full-size gaming keyboard, which many gamers will appreciate. You are not going to find extra macro keys, unnecessary buttons, or even a wrist rest. Tt eSPORTS also saves you the gamer money by using their own mechanical switches instead of the more expensive Cherry MX keys. At the time of writing this keyboard is selling for only $119.99. We’ve previously taken a look at the Poseidon Z Illuminated and the Poseidon ZX and really enjoyed them for their functionality and simplicity. With the Poseidon Z RGB Tt eSPORTS has added full RGB backlighting so you can really show off the keyboard! Let’s take a look and see what this keyboard is all about!

Read full article @ ThinkComputers.org

Underwater Internet Cables At Risk of Tech Warfare

Most consumers do not realize how the data travels from your home over the Internet to its destination and then back again. Some may assume that being connected at home, just means you are tapped into the Internet and everything is just there running down a cable just outside of your home. The reality is, the Internet is so vast and connected, that continents are connected by fiber optic cables running under the seas which keep everything connected around the globe. This interconnected submarine cable network connects the United States and other countries together so that we can communicate with everyone from Skype calls to playing video games with one another and from banking transactions to even Internet warfare. The entire underwater cable network is managed by 44 vessels which are responsible for new installations, repairs and on going maintenance of more than 300 submarine cables with some like the SEA-ME-WE-3 or otherwise known as the South-East Asia – Middle East – Western Europe 3 is over 24,000 miles long with 39 landing points. This particular fiber optic line can transfer up to speeds of 1 Tbps (Terabytes per second)! Just imagine how much data could be flowing through this one of three hundred unique cables under the sea, sitting on the seafloor of the ocean.

Read full article @ Geek Inspector

Xiaomi Mi4c review: flagship phone for half the price

What I wanted was simple: A form factor of 5" or smaller, hardware upgrades across the board, at least 32 Gigabyte of storage space, and a high resolution display.

Most phones these days seem to come in extra large only and while that is useful to some, I always disliked those devices as they were less comfortable to carry around or use.

I had high hopes for the Nexus 5x but its shortcomings and price made me look for alternatives. Then I found out about the Xiaomi Mi4c and made the decision to give it a try.

Read full article @ gHacks