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Here a roundup of todays reviews and articles:

Alpenföhn Brocken ECO CPU Cooler Review
Antec Edge Series 650 W
Beginner: How to Install Google Chrome in Ubuntu 14.04
Fractal Design Node 804
GoPro HERO3+ Silver Edition Review
How to Create Fillable Forms with MS Word 2010
HP Stream 13 First Impressions
NZXT H440 Razer Edition Case Review
NZXT S340 Case Review
QNAP TS-653 Pro SMB NAS Review
Rig of the Month - November 2014
Samsung Powerbot VR9000 robot vacuum cleaner (video) Review
Speedlink Phantom Hawk Flight Stick Review
SSD mega round-up: Sixty 256/512 SATA600 SSDs tested
Synology DS215j Review
Ubuntu 14.10 MATE edition - Almost fabulous
VicoVation Marcus 1 1080p Full HD Car Camcorder GPS Pack Review



Alpenföhn Brocken ECO CPU Cooler Review

Alpenföhn are a very well established name in the CPU cooling business, created in 2008, by EKL AG , they have been able to establish themselves in a very tough and competitive market. Alpenföhn concentrate solely on cooling, whether it its VGA, CPU or case cooling they have got you covered. They also have a small line of accessories such as fan controllers and thermal paste. With products such as the very successful K2- Mount Doom, the Brocken and Brocken 2 on their list you should always be expecting a good product.

Today we are going to be looking at the Alpenföhn Brocken ECO, basically a slimmed-down, cheaper version of the Brocken series. With a price difference of around £13 lets see if it doesn’t lose performance with the price loss.

The Brocken Eco comes with the Alpenföhn RockMount system which assures mounting options on Socket 2011, 1366, 115x, AM3(+), AM3, AM2(+), AM2 as well as FM1. platforms The rest of the Specifications can be found below.

Read full article @ eTeknix

Antec Edge Series 650 W

Antec recently released a fresh mid-capacity series for enthusiast users. The EDGE unit with 650 W will be evaluated today. All EDGE units use a fully modular cabling design and are 80 Plus Gold certified, and Seasonic is their OEM, so we expect great things from them.

Read full article @ techPowerUp

Beginner: How to Install Google Chrome in Ubuntu 14.04

If you've tried to install Google Chrome in Ubuntu Linux, you may have noticed that it’s not available in the Ubuntu Software Center. However, it’s easy to download a package file for Google Chrome and install it on your system, and well show you how.

Read full article @ Howtogeek

Fractal Design Node 804

With the small form factor market growing we are finally starting to see a nice variety of case designs available for people who are looking to build Mini-ITX and Micro-ATX PCs. Fractal has been producing a variety of cases for that market basically from their inception. When they introduced their Node 804 I was extremely excited about it. Not only did they keep things fairly small, but they also went with a split design that I am a huge fan of working with on cases. What I mean by a split design is that the power supply and some of the components fit behind the motherboard tray leaving the motherboard side of the case clean. Add to that Fractals typical clean styling and we have the makings of a great case. Well today we have the chance to dig in and check the Node 804 out and find out if it is as great as it looks.

Read full article @ LanOC Reviews

GoPro HERO3+ Silver Edition Review

I've written a thorough review of GoPro HERO3+ Silver high-performance life capture wide-angle camera, covering spec & features, default equipment, additional accessories, Wi-Fi connectivity and app, quality of audio and video, value, other considerations, and more. Enjoy.

Read full article @ Dedoimedo

How to Create Fillable Forms with MS Word 2010

Creating forms with Microsoft Word is easy, but the challenge comes in when you decide to create fillable forms with options that you can send to people and have them fill out digitally. Whether you need a form for gathering information about people or if you are trying to take a survey to test out user response to software or a new product, MS Word has the solution for you.

Read full article @ Howtogeek

HP Stream 13 First Impressions

Bigger and better, depending on your needs. The HP Stream 13 holds no surprises, and that's a good thing: As you might expect, it's basically just a larger version of the excellent HP Stream 11, one that is probably a better fit for most adults. And since it costs just $30 more than its smaller sibling the HP Stream 13 is also an excellent value as well.

Read full article @ WinSupersite

NZXT H440 Razer Edition Case Review

Razer, creator of all things peripheral, has finally released their hotly anticipated entry into the chassis market. This is the NZXT H440 – Designed by Razer. With a completely new appearance featuring a matte black exterior and interior, four black NZXT fans, a large tinted window, and plenty of LED lighting, this chassis will be sure to make every Razer fan’s wish list, especially given that it retains the original H440 quality and simplicity.

Read full article @ Benchmark Reviews

NZXT S340 Case Review

The NZXT S340 is a really clean mid-tower case, with no external drive bays and where the power supply and hard disk drives are placed hidden from the user's view. It has a big transparent windows at the left panel, where only the motherboard area is visible. Let's take a look at this very unique case.

Read full article @ Hardware Secrets

QNAP TS-653 Pro SMB NAS Review

The TS-653 Pro NAS from QNAP is built on a solid Intel platform and while using the chassis from last year, the power consumption is noticeably less, while keeping a high level of performance. Thanks to the Intel Celeron J1900 Quad-Core, we also have transcoding capabilities up to 4K and we would also like to remind the QvPC technology which permits using the TS-653 Pro as a regular PC.

Read full article @ Madshrimps

Rig of the Month - November 2014

We just adore hardware. And sometimes some you guys really make a PC that really stands out. We ask you to answer a few simple questions and send in photo's of your rig. Each month we'll have a look at the entries and perhaps pick you and post your PC with photo's and everything here at Guru3D.com Here you can find out what you need to do and win a nice prize package courtesy of Corsair.

Read full article @ Guru3D

Samsung Powerbot VR9000 robot vacuum cleaner (video) Review

Anyone reading this old enough to remember Fraggle Rock will remember the little creatures called Doozers who just never stopped working. The Samsung Powerbot VR9000 is a little like that.

Read full article @ Silicon Republic

Speedlink Phantom Hawk Flight Stick Review

Over the last few weeks I’ve been diving into the world of flying games, with everything from War Thunder to Star Citizen: Arena Commander taking up my time. While mouse and keyboard do a pretty reasonable job for flight sims, it’s a far cry from the real deal and can be a little cumbersome at the best of times. Control pads such as the Xbox 360 controller are a nice middle ground, they provide dual analogue sticks that are great for arcade style flying, but they lack the controls needed for more sim-friendly flying. This leaves only one option, a flight stick and that’s exactly what I’ll be testing today.

There are countless flight sticks out there to choose from, from several manufacturers such as MadCatz, Cyborg, Speedlink and more. It doesn’t take long to realise that if you want to get to grips with a realistic flight stick, you need to spend a fair amount of money. This is why I’ve chosen to put a budget friendly model through its paces, the Speedlink Phantom Hawk. It’s relatively cheap, with prices around £25 from most retailers, so I’m not expecting industry leading performance here. I am however eager to find out just how good it really is, despite its low price tag.

Read full article @ eTeknix

SSD mega round-up: Sixty 256/512 SATA600 SSDs tested

Nearly all SSD manufacturers refreshed their line-up this year. Armed with the test results of sixty 240/256 and 480/512 GB models, we'll be more than able to tell you which SSDs are the best choice right now.

We'll briefly cover the SSDs that we've tested on the next few pages. If you're looking for more extensive reviews, our website should contain one for almost all models that make an appearance in this round-up. Those who keep an eye on our reviews will know that we have a very extensive test procedure. We'll cover all important benchmarks in this article, and you can leisurely peruse this humongous comparison table for a more comprehensive overview. You can also use the products discussed in this review block to the right of this article to generate a more manageable table for those SSDs that have piqued your interest.

Those who would rather get an impression of the SSDs' performance at a single glance are advised to take a look at the Hardware.Info SSD Performance Score 2013/2014 page. This score is a weighted and normalized average of the most important benchmarks that we run. The fastest SSD from our previous mega round-up has a score of 100 points. For regular consumer applications, the PCMark 7 and PCMark 8 benchmarks are the most important ones, as these tests are based on the disk usage of real world applications.

Read full article @ Hardware.Info

Synology DS215j Review

The end of the year is upon us and as is customary, Synology are on hand with their latest, 2015 edition NAS solutions. This week, Synology announced their new DS215j. The DS215j is a two-bay NAS which replaces the older DS213j. Very little has changed from an external standpoint but inside we now have the delights of a dual-core processor which should aid us when multi-tasking in the new DSM 5.1 software suite.

If you aren’t familiar with Synology’s naming system, it’s very intuitive - Diskstation (DS) represents the number of bays (2), the year of production (15). The variable at the end of each of the product range such as + or j symbolise - Performance (+) Entry Level, storage focussed (j) or no symbol for a mixture of the both – performance and storage. So the unit that we are focussing on today is designed for home and personal usage and thus comes with a lower-price tag too.

Read full article @ Vortez

Ubuntu 14.10 MATE edition - Almost fabulous

The name is MATE, Yerba MATE. So here's a long, enthusiastic review of Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn 64-bit with the MATE desktop environment, covering live session and setup in a quad-boot configuration on a laptop with Intel graphics and SSD, including look & feel, customization, network connectivity - Wireless (2.4GHz and 5GHz), Bluetooth, super-fast Samba, installation and associated problems with partition formatting, package management and updates, applications, multimedia playback - MP3 and Flash, system management, extremely light resource usage, excellent responsiveness, stability, suspend & resume, printing with no Samba option, other usability considerations, and more. Have fun.

Read full article @ Dedoimedo

VicoVation Marcus 1 1080p Full HD Car Camcorder GPS Pack Review

Around a week ago while i was driving on the right lane and minding my own business the person driving a car in the middle lane decided to cut me off and if i was going any faster than i did chances are i might be typing these lines from the hospital right now. Luckily i wasn't so i managed to avoid his car hitting mine just in time. The funny thing with that incident was that had he hit me with the rear end of his car he might had gotten away with it based on the current laws in my country. Now although i always have a dash camera installed (usually for testing purposes) in the car the courts don't really accept such evidence, officially that is. Unofficially however it's up to each judge to decide on whether or not he will see/accept such evidence so having a dash camera installed in your car can certainly come in handy. The Marcus 1 by VicoVation is one such car dash camera and today we'll be putting it to the test.

VICO is the core value of our brand. The four letters stand for Vision, Integration, Creativity and Observation. Our attitude toward the brand is sustaining development. We apply the latest technologies for all product development. Our management strategy focuses on both globalization and localization. We have great ability of integration toward optical related products. We choose the most competitive key components with best performance, such as lens, sensor, compression chipset, and accessories. As for the software, we communicate with component suppliers and do the deep integration to present the best user-friendly operation interface. We are the team with new ideas. All features and operation interfaces are the outputs of the brainstorming. We believe that the unique features are made by a team of creativity. We have sharp observation on market demands and trends. This makes us to develop the most updated and competitive products. VicoVation® products are always easy operated and useful in life. VicoVation® is the combination of Vico and Innovation. We manage to make innovation on top of our core value. VicoVation® only presents the most in and best performed products.

Some of you may recall our review of the Marcus 3 car dash camera again by VicoVation a while back which offered a very impressive XHD 1296p video recording resolution (2304x1296@30Fps) with the help of the brand new Ambarella A7LA SoC. Well the Marcus 1 model is nearly identical to the Marcus 3 with just two large differences, it only supports up to Full HD 1080p (1920x1080@30fps) video recording with a horizontal angle of 140 degrees (the Marcus 3 has a angle of 160 degrees). That aside the Marcus 1 shares the same exact housing, 3.1MP CMOS sensor, F2.2 6G Mega Pixel lens, 2 inch color TFT screen, built-in 3 axis G-sensor, microSD card slot (supports cards up to 32GB in capacity) and external GPS mouse support. Now Full HD 1080p may not be something new in the market and is certainly not as "impressive" as XHD 1296p but for most uses the first is plenty and has very little to be jealous from the 2nd.

Read full article @ NikKTech