Reviews 51951 Published by

Here a roundup of todays reviews and articles:

Antec EDGE 750W PSU Review
ASUS RAMPAGE V EXTREME Motherboard
Be Quiet! Pure Power L8 730W Power Supply Unit Review
Cooler Masters NovaTouch TKL keyboard reviewed
Mobile Maxwell: NVIDIA Outs GeForce GTX 980M, 970M
Noctua A-series NF-A9, NF-A8 & NF-A4x10 5V Review
Noctua NH-D15 CPU Cooler Review
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M & GTX 970M Preview
OCZ RevoDrive 350 480GB PCI-E Solid State Drive Review
QNAP TS-451 Turbo NAS Server Review
Reeven Steropes RC-1206 Review
Silverstone Raven RV05 Case Review
Tt eSPORTS Team DK Edition Gaming Set Review



Antec EDGE 750W PSU Review

Antec have been around for a very long time and have earned a good reputation with the enthusiast audience. We have reviewed many of their power supplies over the years and today we look at the new EDGE 750W retailing in the UK for around £105 inc vat. This modular power supply is 80 Plus Gold Certified and ships with a full 5 year Antec warranty with lifetime 24/7 support.

Read full article @ KitGuru

ASUS RAMPAGE V EXTREME Motherboard

The ASUS RAMPAGE V EXTREME is a high-end motherboard for the new Intel high-end "Haswell-E" processors, based on the new LGA2011-v3 socket. It includes four PCI Express 3.0 x16 slots, 12 SATA-600 ports (with two SATA Express connectors), 14 USB 3.0 ports, a high-end audio controller, an integrated Wi-Fi 802.11ac interface, and an overcloking panel. Let's take a good look at this board.

Read full article @ Hardware Secrets

Be Quiet! Pure Power L8 730W Power Supply Unit Review

Alien Isolation was just released for PC and already many of you have asked us about which graphics card and power supply combo to choose so you can have the maximum gaming experience possible. Naturally since the new GeForce series was just released by NVIDIA our primary choice is the excellent GTX 970 model since it offers a much better price/performance ratio compared to its slightly faster and quite more expensive brother the GTX 980. As for which power supply to use well the GTX 970 is a very good graphics card across the board so although it surpasses almost every single GPU model in the market (aside the GTX 980) it hardly ever gets over 200W while gaming, still we do recommend getting at least an 650W model just to be on the safe side. Because of this today we will be focusing our efforts in testing one of the latest PSU models to hit the market the Pure Power L8 730W (L8-CM-730W) by be quiet!

be quiet! is a premium brand manufacturer of power supplies and cooling solutions for your desktop PC. be quiet! products are convincing which is proved by reaching and defending the market leadership in PSU business in Germany for five consecutive years *. This is validated and accompanied by numerous awards for both power supplies and cooling solutions. be quiet! is awarded for five times in a row as manufacturer of the year in the power supply category by the readers of the well-known German hardware magazine PC Games Hardware. Another first and second rank in the categories “fans” and “cooler” underline the high acceptance of our products. be quiet! sticks to its name: Ten years’ experience in the field of noise reduction and silence make be quiet! products probably the most silent one on the market. Undoubted fans have a large impact of the noise levels of be quiet! products. Due we are using our specially developed Silent Wings fans in nearly all of our range. They are equipped with various noise reducing features. Thanks to these we ensure a really silent operation - our products reach the best balance between cooling performance and a virtually inaudible operation. If you choose be quiet! you can be sure to get premium quality and second to none silent operation from the quietness experts.

There are actually two sub-lines in the Pure Power line of PSUs by be quiet! the "regular" one the 700W variant of which we had the chance to test a while back and the modular one which we have here with us today. However since this line is not the high end one by be quiet! but rather the "essential" one (as stated on the box) we don't see a fully modular design so the mainboard 24pin cable is hardwired in the chassis. That being said the Pure Power L8 730W features an 80 Plus Bronze efficiency certification (up to 88% power conversion efficiency), 120mm Rifle-Bearing-Technology SilentWings L8 fan, two independent +12V rails for optimal power stability (both deliver up to 87% of the units total power output), 4 PCI-E power connectors, industrial protections (OCP/OVP/UVP/SCP/OTP/OPP) and support for Energy Star 5.2, ErP 2014, Intel Haswell platform and Intel’s Deep Power Down C6/C7 mode. So basically compared to the 700W variant of the regular line you are getting 30W more and modular cables with the 730W variant of the modular line. The question however is how well it performs especially since modular units are known to be slightly worse in terms of rail stability compared to their wired brothers.

Read full article @ NikKTech

Cooler Masters NovaTouch TKL keyboard reviewed

This $200 keyboard from Cooler Master features genuine Topre switches modified to fit Chery MX key caps. Is it a good mix? We investigate.

Read full article @ The Tech Report

Mobile Maxwell: NVIDIA Outs GeForce GTX 980M, 970M

When NVIDIA launched the powerful GTX 980 and 970 last month, it was obvious that these cards would be coming to mobile sooner rather than later. The significant leap forward that Maxwell offers in performance-per-watt means that these GPUs would shine in mobile contexts -- maybe even more than in desktop.

Today, NVIDIA is putting paid to that hypothesis with two new mobile GPUs -- the GeForce GTX 970M and 980M. Both cards are based on Maxwell's 28nm architecture, and both are trimmed slightly from the full desktop implementation. The GeForce GTX 980M is a 1536-core chip (just like the GTX 680 / 680M) while the GTX 970 will pack 1280 cores. Clock speeds are 1038MHz base for the GTX 980M and 924MHz for the GTX 970M -- significantly faster than the GTX 680M's launch speeds...

Read full article @ HotHardware

Noctua A-series NF-A9, NF-A8 & NF-A4x10 5V Review

Noctua has added to their A-series by giving us a collection of smaller fans. Their line now runs from 40mm to 140mm. But do the smaller fans hold up their end? Do they perform as well for their size as their larger brethren do? Noctua sent us 40mm, 80mm and 92mm fans. Let us run them through their paces and see how they do.

Noctua is well-known for its premium fans, the complete set of accessories that accompany each of these fans, and the elegant packaging that protects them all. These fans are no different, but they come with Noctua’s A-series packaging, the accessories labeled with model numbers, and the A-series suite of acoustic and aerodynamic features built in to each fan.

Read full article @ Vortez

Noctua NH-D15 CPU Cooler Review

Everyone who is looking for a performance air cooler, have already heard the name - Noctua.
Its predecessor NH-D14 was regularly in the upper echelons of cooler charts.
However, the Austrian company will not rest, and now publish the successor of this great cooler, the Noctua NH-D15.
We like to clarify in this review, if this Noctua NH-D15 builds on the successes of its predecessor.

Read full article @ OcInside.de

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M & GTX 970M Preview

NVIDIA’s Maxwell has already made waves in the mobile market with the GM107 core which graced the second generation GTX 860M. In many ways that unassuming core heralded subsequent iterations of the architecture including the desktop-centric GTX 980 and GTX 970. Now this core design is getting a reintroduction to the notebook space with the GTX 980M and GTX 970M.

While the GM107 represented a so-called “first generation” Maxwell design, that initial version of the architecture has since been refined. Now there is even more emphasis upon performance per watt and some additional latent features have been added as well. As a result, the GTX 980M and GTX 970M may be in the same lineup as the GTX 860M and use the same generalized core design but their actual capabilities have been drastically augmented.

For those wondering, the quick movement away from the GTX 880M series (they were initially launched in March) is due to a number of different reasons. First and foremost, the notebook gaming market is still expanding at a rapid pace and gamers are constantly searching for the best possible solution that combines performance and the capability to actually push playable framerates when they’re using battery power. While the Kepler architecture was extremely efficient for its time, Maxwell’s primary focus is to enhance efficiency, making it a perfect fit for this demanding segment. In many ways the rebranded high end 800M-series cards were a stop-gap solution put in place until NVIDIA’s notebook product stack could go exclusively with the newer architecture.

Read full article @ Hardware Canucks

OCZ RevoDrive 350 480GB PCI-E Solid State Drive Review

Solid state drives are all but common now. Almost everyone I know has a solid state drive for at least an OS drive. Most solid state drives people are using are SATA-based drives. While these drives do provide much faster speeds than traditional hard drives, they are still limited by SATA bottlenecks. To overcome this bottleneck many companies are using the PCI-Express bus. OCZ’s RevoDrive series has been around for a good while now. With each revision it seems like the drive is getting better. Today we are taking a look at the most recent revision the RevoDrive 350. Available in capacities ranging from 240 GB – 960 GB this PCI-Express solid state drive boasts sequential read and write speeds of 1800 MB/s and 1700 MB/s respectively. OCZ is labeling the RevoDrive 350 as a Workstation product and given its performance it will set you back much more than your typical solid state drive. The 480 GB version that we are taking a look at today sells for $809.99 at my favorite online retailer. If you are looking for one of the fastest solid state drives and want pure performance this is one of the drives you should be looking at. Let’s drive in!

Read full article @ ThinkComputers.org

QNAP TS-451 Turbo NAS Server Review

The QNAP TS-451 Turbo NAS is part of a new hardware platform for QNAP that brings a high level of performance to the small tower-based format, at a lower cost than was possible before. The four new TS-x51 towers are being promoted as home-based NAS servers, based on their high performance, low cost, and a bunch of new software functionality that is ideal for the modern home. While recent QNAP launches have leveraged the tremendous potential of 10GbE networking for the business user, the home and the SOHO market aren’t there yet. The home market is very sensitive to pricing, so the best thing to do is to re-engineer the daylights out of the surrounding infrastructure and pump a little more juice into the system controller. More power, new features – lower price?

Read full article @ Benchmark Reviews

Reeven Steropes RC-1206 Review

Earlier this year, I reviewd the Reeven Justice RC-1204 and the Hans RC-1205. At that time, I was unfamiliar with Reeven, but after reviewing those two coolers, I have a sense that Reeven isn't just a flash in the pan. Reeven's product line includes coolers, fans, and a nice fan controller. There is even an Extreme Cooling Cup for "Professional Extreme Overclockers" with a warning that "This is not for everybody."

If you have a general understanding of Greek and Roman mythology, then the names of the latest Reeven coolers may make some sense. Steropes, Brontes, Okeanos, and Ouranos fill out the list of new coolers from Reeven, and without going into too much detail, the Steropes RC-1206 CPU cooler is named after one of three cyclops sons of Uranus and Gaia. Steropes, Brontes, and Arges were essentially blacksmiths of the Olympian gods. It was Steropes who had the power of lightning and helped build Mount Olympus. Who knows, maybe he built the first CPU cooler?

I will be reviewing all four of the new releases and today we start with the Steropes RC-1206.

Read full article @ OCC

Silverstone Raven RV05 Case Review

Since the launch of the first Raven chassis back in 2008 the product line has served as a test bed for radical new directions in chassis design. The most famous of these is the patented rotated motherboard design that orients the motherboard 90 degrees so that all of the cables exit out the top of the case. Despite the strange orientation the design has several benefits including a cleaner case design and improved cooling.

In this review we will be looking at the new Silverstone Raven RV05. As you may have guessed this is fifth edition desktop chassis in the Raven lineup and brings with it another radical push in chassis design. Unlike the previous RV04 the Raven 5 features the rotated motherboard layout and familiar bottom up cooling method. From there things take an interesting turn and with any luck we’ll be able to outline those in this review.

Read full article @ Hardware Asylum

Tt eSPORTS Team DK Edition Gaming Set Review

October has arrived and that means that the end of the baseball season is upon us in the United States. It has been a pretty intense year with the majority of the typical powerhouse teams getting knocked out of the playoffs before they even started. It is shaping up to be an interesting World Series with some matchups that have never happened before in baseball history. My favorite team happens to be one of those that typically makes it to the playoffs and didn’t this year, however, I am still representing, as usual, with my sportswear.

E-sports is something that seems to be continuing to gain ground in viewership. Many of the big matches are being streamed through the internet and some of them are even getting distributed through normal television networks. Many gamers have their favorite sports teams and it is nice to be able to find gear to represent a favorite e-sports team at the PC where I do battle. The gaming industry seems to be growing in my eyes so I think that the e-sports industry will continue to grow.

Read full article @ HiTech Legion