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Here a roundup of todays reviews and articles:

ADATA Premier SP610 512GB SSD Review
AMD A10-7870K Godavari: RadeonSI Gallium3D vs. Catalyst Linux Drivers
BenQ EW2440 Review
Cherry MX Board 6.0
HyperX Savage SSD 240GB Review
Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga 12 Review
QNAP Turbo NAS TS-453 Pro 4-Bay Enthusiast and SMB NAS Review
Samsung's SM951 PCIe SSD reviewed
Silicon Motion SM2256 SSD Controller Preview: TLC for Everyone



ADATA Premier SP610 512GB SSD Review

The ADATA Premier SP610 512GB SSD is an affordable high capacity alternative when looking for a mainstream drive. The 7mm shell encases a four channel controller by Silicon Motion (SM2246EN). Yes, a four channel controller, other popular brands use twice that. Should this be a problem? Likely not, since a two channel controller would saturate the bandwidth of SATA 6G. NAND Flash is Synchronous MLC and the Memory bears ADATA’s name. Read and Write speeds for the 512GB version are listed as 560MB/s and 460MB/s with an IOPS of 73K/72K. The 1TB version equals the performance of the 512GB version but as you decrease in capacity the Write Speeds and IOPS decrease from there. Die sizes appear to be 16GB per chip which would explain why the drive needs at least 512GB to run at full speed. The ADATA SP610 has an MTBF of 1,500,000 and as an added bonus there is a license key to download Acronis backup software. ADATA does have its own SSD utility (SSD ToolBox) that can be downloaded from their web page. The software is capable of monitoring drive health, tweaking system settings, and executing secure-erase commands.

Read full article @ HiTech Legion

AMD A10-7870K Godavari: RadeonSI Gallium3D vs. Catalyst Linux Drivers

Last week I started posting AMD A10-7870K Linux benchmarks for this "Godavari" APU that's effectively a Kaveri Refresh and slightly faster for its four CPU cores and Radeon R7 Graphics over the former high-end Kaveri, the A10-7850K. In today's articles are some benchmarks of the Radeon R7 Graphics on the A10-7870K when running Ubuntu and testing the open-source RadeonSI Gallium3D driver against Catalyst on Linux.

The same A10-7870K configuration as last week was used with the ASUS A88XM-E motherboard, 2 x 8GB of DDR3-2400MHz memory, and 250GB Samsung 850 SSD. Ubuntu 15.04 x86_64 was running on the system while testing its stock Radeon driver stack (Linux 3.19 + xf86-video-ati 7.5.0 + Mesa 10.5.2), then testing an upgraded stack with the Linux 4.1 kernel and Mesa 10.7-devel via the Oibaf PPA, and then testing the Catalyst Linux driver packaged for Ubuntu Vivid via fglrx-updates (fglrx 15.20.2 / OpenGL 4.4.13374

Read full article @ Phoronix

BenQ EW2440 Review

BenQ is looking to add its Midas touch to the EW2440 ($220, £140, AU$285) with a golden edition. Fortunately, the tone is more subdued than gaudy, and the result is a monitor that still maintains professional and understated aesthetics, but with an added splash of color.With a 1080p full HD panel, the EW2440 doesn't come with frills, such as 3D display, built in color calibration or touch support. The EW2440 competes against monitors with screen sizes ranging between 21 and 27 inches. Notable competitors include the 27-inch Philips Brilliance 272P ($462, £295, AU$600) with QHD resolution, 23-inch Viewsonic VX2363S ($169, £108, AU$218) with 1080p display and touch-enabled 1080p 21.5-inch Acer UT220HQL (150, £96, AU$195). You're paying a premium for the EW2440's more accurate rendering of colors.

Read full article @ Techradar

Cherry MX Board 6.0

This past January Cherry revealed an upcoming keyboard design called the Cherry MX Board 6.0. We have taken a look at the 3.0 but the 6.0 that they showed was a complete departure from anything they have done in the past. For one the entire keyboard was backlit and it had a heavy duty aluminum casing. But more importantly with it they were showing off a new technology called RealKey. Basically Cherry designed a way to almost completely drop any key lag while also giving full N key rollover and no ghosting. To do that they actually had to step back and go back to analog rather than the standard digital signals that all of the keyboards use today. Well after a few delays, I can finally say that I have spent nearly two weeks testing the Cherry MX Board 6.0 and I’m finally ready to sit down and talk a little about the keyboard and RealKey technology that it introduces.

Read full article @ LanOC Reviews

HyperX Savage SSD 240GB Review

Kingston have long been a household name within the storage sector and the HyperX brand bears the attributes of this success. HyperX has made a concerted effort in recent times to differentiate itself from the Kingston brand -- even appearing as a completely separate entity at events. The primary focus for HyperX is to appeal to enthusiasts and gamers, while Kingston focuses on the consumer.

Today we’ll be exploring the delights of a newly announced product from HyperX – the Savage SSD. Savage uses the Phison S10 controller which boasts quad-core, 8-channel architecture. This controller promises to deliver some of the fastest read/write transfer rates possible to the SATA 6G interface – so we’re expecting good things from this new solid state drive.

Read full article @ Vortez

Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga 12 Review

Lenovo’s convertible ultrabook offers great design but weak battery. The Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga 12 is a fast, well-built ultrabook/tablet hybrid that's flexible in more ways than one. Still, a weak battery and high starting prices mean it won't be the convertible to end all convertibles.

Pros:
Powerful, outstanding build quality, great keyboard, runs full Windows, versatile choice of hardware

Cons:
Low battery life, quite heavy, expensive, poor camera

Read full article @ V3

QNAP Turbo NAS TS-453 Pro 4-Bay Enthusiast and SMB NAS Review

Today I’m taking a look at one of QNAP’s bestsellers, the TurboStation TS-453 Pro NAS. The TS-453 Pro isn’t just an ordinary NAS and it is one that can carry the Pro label with pride. It is a powerful, reliable and scalable NAS for SMBs and power users alike.

Built around the Intel Celeron 2.0GHz quad-core processor with a burst speed of up to 2.41GHz, we know that the TS453 Pro won’t limit it on the CPU side. There is plenty of performance at its disposal to run a lot of simultaneous apps, features and functions without the risk of slow-downs or bottlenecks.

RAM wise QNAP offers two versions, the standard one with 2GB that should be sufficient for most users but also a model that comes factory equipped with 8GB RAM in two 4GB modules and that is the one that I’m having a look at today. Users can also upgrade and switch memory modules themselves and it’s as simple as sliding the top cover off.

Read full article @ eTeknix

Samsung's SM951 PCIe SSD reviewed

Samsung's SM951 SSD squeezes a quad-lane PCIe Gen3 interface onto a diminutive M.2 form factor. It offers incredible performance under the right conditions, but it also struggles in some scenarios. Our in-depth review explains the drive's strengths, weaknesses, and unique enthusiast appeal.

Read full article @ The Tech Report

Silicon Motion SM2256 SSD Controller Preview: TLC for Everyone

The SSD industry has been talking about TLC NAND for over three years now. We published our first post, Understanding TLC NAND, back in early 2012, but in three years we have actually seen very little TLC NAND making it to the SSD market. Samsung was an early adopter back in 2012, but aside from it and SanDisk weve yet to see any TLC drives enter the market. Silicon Motions SM2256 is set to change that because its the first commercially available controller and firmware combo with TLC support, which will enable companies like Kingston, ADATA and the like to use TLC NAND in their SSDs. We got an early reference design sample from Silicon Motion in for testing to see how the SM2256 stacks up with the competition, so read on to see our preliminary thoughts on the new controller.

Read full article @ Anandtech