Reviews 51952 Published by

Here a roundup of today's reviews and articles:

Acer Predator XB1 XB271HU 144 Hz G-Sync Monitor Review
Cooler Master Masterkeys Lite L Review
Fedora 24 - And we represent!
Gigabyte G1 Gaming GTX 1080 Graphics Card Review
How This Long-Time iPhone User Switched to Android
MSI GeForce GTX 1060 Gaming X Review
MSI GeForce GTX 1060 Gaming X Review
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 vs. 760 vs. 960 vs. 1060 Linux Performance
Raijintek Atlantis Series Custom Loop Water Cooling Review
Review: Lexar Professional Workflow HR2 Hub, SR2 Reader, CFR1 Reader, DD256 Portable SSD
Seasonic Prime 750W Titanium Power Supply Review
SteelSeries APEX M800 Keyboard
Tt eSPORTS Ventus Z Gaming Mouse Review
Turtle Beach Elite Pro Gaming Headset Review



Acer Predator XB1 XB271HU 144 Hz G-Sync Monitor Review

There sure aren’t a whole lot of options on the market for WQHD (2560 x 1440) 144 Hz monitors, and even less options when you’re looking for an IPS display panel. Heck, you don’t have a lot of options for WQHD 144 Hz TN panels, either, especially when looking for 27-inches or larger. Today we’re going to take a look at the Acer Predator XB1 (XB271HU), which is a 27-inch WQHD panel capable of a 144 Hz refresh rate, or 165 Hz when overclocked, and 4ms gray-to-gray pixel response times, featuring NVIDIA G-SYNC technology. Some other features include 100% sRGB color gamut, a brightness of 350 nits, and built-in 2 watt stereo speakers. This monitor has been available since November 2015, but has been well received by gamers.

Read full article @ Legit Reviews

Cooler Master Masterkeys Lite L Review

Competition in the gaming market is fierce, with seemingly every brand pushing their own gaming peripherals for every budget imaginable. Mechanical keyboards are now packing all kinds of crazy features, and with RGB being the main focus for 2016, the price of premium keyboards is pushing into the realms of crazy for many consumers, with prices often hitting around £150 for a gaming model. Cooler Master are fighting back against this with their latest premium gaming bundle, which still clocks in at around £120, but comes with a well equipped RGB keyboard, as well as a high-performance gaming mouse in one tidy package.

The Masterkeys Lite L uses mem-chanial switches, a hybrid of membrane and plunger switches to give you that slick mech feel, without costing the Earth, and with other benefits like long switch life, super quiet performance, MX compatible keycaps, and more.

Read full article @ eTeknix

Fedora 24 - And we represent!

Let the sun shine down on me! Here's a very long and highly enthusiastic review of Fedora 24 64-bit Gnome edition tested on a Lenovo G50 laptop with UEFI, Secure Boot, 16 partitions and a multi-boot setup with Windows and numerous Linux distributions, covering live session, installation and post-install usage, including look & feel, network support - Wireless, Bluetooth, Samba sharing and printing, smartphone support - Ubuntu Phone, Windows Phone and iPhone, partitioning, package management and updates, extra repositories, applications, online accounts, multimedia support - MP3, HD Video, Skype setup and microphone audio, hardware compatibility, webcam, suspend & resume, resource utilization, performance, responsiveness, battery life, stability, customization, fonts and contrast, small niggles, and more. Have fun!

Read full article @ Dedoimedo

Gigabyte G1 Gaming GTX 1080 Graphics Card Review

The Gigabyte G1 Gaming GTX 980Ti rapidly became a firm favourite among hardware enthusiasts due to the exceptional Windforce 3X cooling solution and impressive factory overclocks. Even though it was eventually superseded by the Gigabyte XTREME GAMING GTX 980Ti as the company’s flagship offering, the astounding build quality bodes well for future G1 branded products. NVIDIA’s Pascal architecture was always heralded as the next major leap in graphics performance and greatly benefits from the new 16nm FinFET manufacturing process. Thankfully, the GTX 1080 provides a significant boost in framerates compared to the previous generation and consumer demand remains unbelievably high despite hefty retail prices.

Custom models from a number of hardware vendors have entered the market as an alternative to NVIDIA’s Founders Editions. Apart from the budget blower designs, these units offer reduced temperatures, quieter operation and enhanced overclocking headroom. Today, we’re taking a look at the Gigabyte G1 Gaming GTX 1080 which utilises a base clock of 1721MHz and 1860MHz boost when selecting the OC profile. This is a very important piece of information in lieu of the recent controversy surround press samples and the default mode. Please note, the Gaming profile consists of a 1695MHz base and 1835MHz boost. On both profiles, the memory has a 10MHz factory overclock. Judging by the quoted specification, this isn’t the fastest GTX 1080 model we’ve reviewed and I’m interested to see how it fares compared to the competition.

Read full article @ eTeknix

How This Long-Time iPhone User Switched to Android

I’ve been an iPhone user for over six years now and up until recently I had only used Android for minutes at a time and never as my daily driver. But hearing how Google's smartphone platform had evolved so significantly since I first became an iPhone user, both in terms of software and hardware, I decided it was time to give it a try. Read on for my experiences thus far.

Read full article @ TechSpot

MSI GeForce GTX 1060 Gaming X Review

Not a fan of the Founders Edition? Custom GTX 1060s are out in force. Wanting to spend up to £300 on a shiny new GPU? AMD's Radeon RX 480 and Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1060 are the two latest-generation parts vying for your hard-earned cash, and though both have plenty going for them, it's the latter that comes in a wider choice of flavours.

While fans of the RX 480 patiently await a Nitro, or indeed any other custom-cooled alternative, Nvidia's army of partners has already unleashed a tidal wave of diverse GTX 1060s. All the big names are lining up to send their cards in for review - heck, we may even have to turn some away at this rate - and though retail volume remains something of a question mark during launch week, there's no shortage of non-reference designs. First on the HEXUS test bench is the MSI GeForce GTX 1060 Gaming X.

Read full article @ Hexus

MSI GeForce GTX 1060 Gaming X Review

Are you ready to purchase a new monitor that has a better resolution than 1080p? Hopefully you are, PC gaming is being brought to a new level. For years mainstream gamers have been tied to a 1080p monitor due to the fact that mainstream video cards didn’t perform well enough to generate the frames per second at decent settings to ensure a great gaming experience. It’s time to stop banging your head on the table because your budget won’t allow you to purchase an enthusiast level video card. The 10 series NVIDIA GeForce GTX video cards with their newest GPU has arrived and its partners are launching their custom boards to coincide with it. The latest offering in the 10 series is the GTX 1060 which is built around the NVIDIA GP106 (P for Pascal) GPU.

Read full article @ HiTech Legion

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 vs. 760 vs. 960 vs. 1060 Linux Performance

To complement yesterday's launch-day GeForce GTX 1060 Linux review, here are some more benchmark results with the various NVIDIA x60 graphics cards I have available for testing going back to the GeForce GTX 460 Fermi. If you are curious about the raw OpenGL/OpenCL/CUDA performance and performance-per-Watt for these mid-range x60 graphics cards from Fermi, Kepler, Maxwell, and Pascal, here are these benchmarks from Ubuntu 16.04 Linux.

The x60 cards I have in my possession going back to Fermi are the GeForce GTX 460 Fermi, GTX 760 Kepler, GTX 960 Maxwell, and GTX 1060 Pascal. All of these tests were done with the NVIDIA 367.27 proprietary Linux driver. I didn't go back further than Fermi since that support is provided by the NVIDIA legacy Linux driver. Tests were done from the same Intel Xeon Skylake system running Ubuntu 16.04 LTS with the Linux 4.4 kernel.

Read full article @ Phoronix

Raijintek Atlantis Series Custom Loop Water Cooling Review

Air cooling is big business, with the majority of systems running some kind of stock or tower air cooler to get the job done, and this is perfectly fine as air is more than capable of running a systems cooling needs, at least for most people. Up from that, you’ve got AIO water coolers, offering increased cooling performance that can keep your system running cooler and quieter, as well as giving you headroom to overclock your system. However, today we’ll be going to the top level with custom loop water cooling hardware from Raijintek, taking a look at the latest components in their Atlantis series.

The Atlantis series features blocks, pumps, reservoirs, and liquid, giving you all the core components required for a custom loop cooling system, with the exception of needing to source your own radiators, fans, and tubing, but that’s easily done.

Read full article @ eTeknix

Review: Lexar Professional Workflow HR2 Hub, SR2 Reader, CFR1 Reader, DD256 Portable SSD

If you’re like us, you’re probably always on the lookout for a good workflow system to get images from either your camera or videocamera into the computer. With all the different devices out there demanding different types of memory cards, you’re bound to end up having several different memory cards with several different memory card...

Read full article @ Custom PC Review

Seasonic Prime 750W Titanium Power Supply Review

It has been talked about and teased for many months, but today we finally get to present our analysis of the new PRIME 750 watt power supply, a pivotal supply in a very important new range for market leading manufacturer Seasonic.

Read full article @ KitGuru

SteelSeries APEX M800 Keyboard

SteelSeries has partnered with professional gamers and mechanical switch experts to come up with a brand new switch type, the QS1. With this switch and a whole host of other features, the SteelSeries APEX M800 promises to be the fastest gaming keyboard available.

Read full article @ techPowerUp

Tt eSPORTS Ventus Z Gaming Mouse Review

Designed for long gaming sessions, the Ventus Z gaming mouse comes with a standard body design with a bit of an aggressive feel to it along with its aerodynamic engineered air-through ventilation system. The ventilation system helps reduce sweaty palms in order to increase comfort. On top of that, the Ventus Z includes five separate profiles, 10 programmable buttons, RGB lighting, a weight system, and of course, the Avago 9500 11000 DPI laser sensor. Benchmark Reviews is excited to review the Tt eSPORTS Ventus Z gaming mouse, so let’s go ahead and take a look at a quick overview of this product.

Read full article @ Benchmark Reviews

Turtle Beach Elite Pro Gaming Headset Review

Today is a very special day here at eTeknix, not just for us, but also for our friends at Turtle Beach, as they’ve sent us something pretty special. I am, of course, talking about their new Elite Pro Gaming Headset, and it’s by quite a margin, one of the most expensive headset combos we’ve ever tested, but it promises some pretty epic performance and features to go with it, so we’re eager to see if the saying “you get what you pay for” really does hold true today.

“To build the ultimate weapon for elite eSports pros like OpTic Gaming, Turtle Beach reimagined the gaming headset from the ground up. We asked top tournament gamers about the features and details that matter to them. The result is a new standard in gaming audio, the Turtle Beach Elite Pro®. From unparalleled comfort to unrivaled sound, the Elite Pro finally gives champion eSport competitors a headset that performs to their level.” – Turtle Beach

Equipped with a huge range of features, the Elite Pro Tournament Headset certainly has us excited to test it out, but the Elite Pro ecosystem is a little more complicated than just a headset in a box. In addition to the headset, you’ll find a range of expensive and fancy looking extra hardware, such as the Elite Pro Tactical Audio Controller, and the Elite Pro Tournament Noise Cancelling Mic; we’ve got both of these to test with the headset today. Beyond that, there is also a Tactical Adapter for Xbox One, and the A.M.P. for PlayStation 4; all of these are sold separately of course.

Read full article @ eTeknix