Reviews 51945 Published by

Here a roundup of todays reviews and articles:

Addonics AD25MSD mSATA to 2.5-inch SATA Drive Adapter Review
AMD Radeon R9 295X2 and XFX R9 290X DD TriFire Review
ASRock Z97 Extreme6 Review
ASUS Maximus VII Ranger Preview
ASUS Z97-A Motherboard Review
Fractal Design Node 804 Review: Powercube
i-Rocks K10 Rock Series Gaming Keyboard Review
Lenovo ThinkPad 10 Preview
Lumsing 10400mah Portable Power Bank Review
More light bulbs? Yep, more light bulbs
MSI Z97 Gaming 7 LGA 1150 Motherboard Review
Phanteks Enthoo Pro Review
RaidSonic ICY BOX IB-RD3662U3S External HDD RAID Enclosure Review
ROCCAT Ryos MK Glow Gaming Keyboard Review
SanDisk Connect Wireless Media Drive (64 GB)
Synology DS214se Network Attached Storage (NAS) Review
Toshiba Exceria Pro 32GB UHS-II SD Card Review
Updated: Windows 8.1 Review



Addonics AD25MSD mSATA to 2.5-inch SATA Drive Adapter Review

Addonics Technologies is a company that has been around since 1998 and they have become one of the go to companies for those looking for unique storage products. If you are ever looking for an adapter to make something work, the Addonics product catalog is one of the first places that you should be looking. Addonics Technologies came out with Addonics 2.5-inch Flash Drive conversion kit (model AD25MSD) for mSATA SSDs way back in 2011. The adapter runs around $24.99 plus shipping and allows you transform your mSATA SSD drive into a traditional 2.5″ notebook drive. Why would you want to do this? Read on to find out!

Read full article @ Legit Reviews

AMD Radeon R9 295X2 and XFX R9 290X DD TriFire Review

This review sits atop two previous articles; the first is our AMD Radeon R9 295X2 Video Card Review. The AMD R9 295X2 video card was announced on April 8th, 2014 and has an MSRP of $1,499. This dual-GPU video card on a single PCB sports two fully speced R9 290X GPUs running at 1018MHz each. This video card employs a liquid cooling setup for fast and silent operation. Our performance results proved that this card has what it takes to enjoy Eyefinity gaming.

The second is our video card evaluation covering AMD Radeon R9 295X2 CrossFire. This is full Quad-GPU performance known as QuadFire. Our performance proved that this is the fastest setup on the planet, and gave us performance at 4K we've never experienced before. However, there was one major drawback; power usage requirements are insanely high and expensive to make this kind of a setup work.

In this third article we are seeing if you can plug in a single-GPU Radeon R9 290X video card alongside the Radeon R9 295X2 to give us triple-GPU, "TriFire" performance.

Read full article @ HardOCP

ASRock Z97 Extreme6 Review

With the Extreme 6, ASRock usually has a well equipped motherboard in its portfolio, which comes with a plethora of features. In case of the Z97 version the manufacturer seems to make no exception and especially the variety of connectors for storage media is interesting. With this motherboard ASRock introduces an Ultra M.2 slots that offers no less than 32 Gigabit of bandwidth.

Read full article @ ocaholic

ASUS Maximus VII Ranger Preview

When Intel introduced their Z87 Chipset almost one year ago, ASUS decided to round-off the lower end of their Maximus portfolio with the Maximus VI Hero. Meanwhile Intel has launched the Z97 chipset and they're again expanding their ROG lineup by another entry level model. This time the board is called Maximus VII Ranger and the new model marks the entry into ASUS's ROG class. With this board the worlds largest motherboard maker is targeting mainly gamers and therefore there should be quite a few interesting features.

Read full article @ ocaholic

ASUS Z97-A Motherboard Review

The Z97-A is a little above typical value oriented motherboards and knocking on the mainstream segment pricing. It certainly can justify that with the excellent build quality, SATA Express support and a ton of ASUS exclusive feature set.

Read full article @ Modders-Inc

Fractal Design Node 804 Review: Powercube

Fractal Design showed us a very interesting case on the Cebit, called the Node 804. This case shaped like a cube has enough space to house large amounts of hardware parts, as well as a lot of room for liquid cooling for enthusiasts. This Swedish company has made some unconventional design choices in the past, and we were very curious how the case would do in our real world tests for computer cases. May 6th was the official release date for the Node 804, and we can tell you now what we think of the newest Fractal case.

The Node 804 is a micro-ATX case, but this is not a disadvantage anymore. The latest motherboards in this form factor do not have limitations compared to the bigger form factors. Internally the case is split into two parts, as we show a bit further in the review. This should result in better heat dissipation through the entire case. The recommended retail price for the Node 804 is $ 109.99, which positions this very versatile case firmly in the mid-range segment.

The cube shape is remarkable, but in no means is it a unique concept. We have seen smaller models like the Xigmatek Gigas and also larger ones like the Corsair Carbide Air 540. What is unique about this case is the amount of space available for hardware, the front panel and the extensive possibilities to add more, different or quieter means of cooling your system.

Read full article @ Hardware.Info

i-Rocks K10 Rock Series Gaming Keyboard Review

Today on our test bench we will be taking a look at the K10 gaming keyboard from i-Rocks. The K10 is from the ROCK series of peripherals, which includes a mouse, the M09 and the A05 headset along with the C10 mouse mat and is promoted as a serious alternative to mechanical gaming keyboards, with an extra-long key stroke distance for a standard membrane keyboard.

Read full article @ HardwareHeaven.com

Lenovo ThinkPad 10 Preview

The ThinkPad tablet you've been waiting for?

Lenovo today announced the ThinkPad 10, a 10.1-inch tablet that is a successor of sorts to the ThinkPad Tablet 2. But the ThinkPad 10 is much more interesting, with a full-sized screen, a more powerful quad-core Atom processor, and a full slate of useful accessories, including a pen and a docking station. Best of all, it comes with a 64-bit version of Windows 8.1.

Read full article @ WinSupersite

Lumsing 10400mah Portable Power Bank Review

More power is needed for our mobile devices and today I have another portable battery pack for review from our friends over at Lumsing. Today I have a 10400mAh portable battery pack or power bank that features two USB ports that can charge tablets or phones or both at the same time or virtually anything else that charges via USB. The 10400mAh capacity of the battery will allow you to charge you devices multiple times so it’s a great power pack for just a day or even a weekend on the go and it will make sure you’ve got power when you need it most. Read on to learn more..

Read full article @ TestFreaks

More light bulbs? Yep, more light bulbs

The Internet is a strange and wonderful place. A couple of months ago, I posted a Friday night topic on light bulbs that incited a fair amount of discussion. Not long after that, I kid you not, I started receiving press releases and phone calls from the world's light-bulb brands, as if it made perfect sense for a website with the tagline "PC hardware explored" to be writing about LEDs versus CFLs.

This is a dangerous development.

Read full article @ The Tech Report

MSI Z97 Gaming 7 LGA 1150 Motherboard Review

For those who’ve been closely following the Z97 launch these past couple weeks, you’ll know that it hasn’t been anywhere near the smoothest chipset launch in Intel history. Despite Intel’s NDA set for May 11, we’ve literally known practically everything about Z97 for months and almost every motherboard maker has been either leaking their own products or breaking some sort of NDA to get their products some early media coverage.

With Intel’s NDA now expired and Z97 chipset based motherboards now rolling out at major retailers (with Intel’s new Haswell Refresh CPUs following suit), today we’ll be reviewing our first Z97 motherboard, the MSI Z97 Gaming 7.

Read full article @ Custom PC Review

Phanteks Enthoo Pro Review

Last summer Phanteks won our hearts with the Enthoo Primo aluminium case (http://www.kitguru.net/components/cases/henry-butt/phanteks-enthoo-primo-case-review/) – which claimed a ‘Must Have’ award despite a price tag of £199.99. This success led to a huge amount of anticipation for the upcoming Phanteks Enthoo Pro as we were promised a case that carried over the core thinking behind the Primo, but at half the price.

Read full article @ KitGuru

RaidSonic ICY BOX IB-RD3662U3S External HDD RAID Enclosure Review

Continuous price drops in the storage industry have made it possible for many people to currently have at least one brand new external 2-3TB drive sitting ontop of their desks. Unfortunately not everyone can afford to get new drives all the time and so if you happen to have a couple of let’s say 1TB ones laying around chances are that you will want to make good use of them and to do so you obviously need an external HDD enclosure that can fit both. There are many available USB 3.0 compatible models in the market some of which can even hold up to 8 drives but there aren't really many that allow the owner to use the drives in anything other than single and/or BIG mode. Today on our test bench we have the latest dual bay addition in the ICY BOX line by RaidSonic, the IB-RD3662U3S External HDD RAID Enclosure.

RaidSonic Technology GmbH was founded in Hamburg 1999. To realize our future visions and the rising requirements, RaidSonic moved to Ahrensburg (20 min. away from Hamburg) in May 2004.The capacity of our new warehouse, our permanent improving logistic and the expanded technical support lets us look into the future very optimistically. Our vision in a constantly growing IT market is to develop products, which will become your future dreams. Our extensive product portfolio, which we distribute Europe-wide, combines all internal and external solutions for the application of mass storage, for industrial and professional applications as well as for the private sphere, too. Through our all along increasing know-how, good results in research and development and our good cooperation with our long-time customers we could achieve a dynamic growth.

The ICY BOX IB-RD3662U3S External HDD RAID Enclosure is made out of aluminum and although it may not hold many drives as some of its brothers it's very special for three very important reasons. So aside the fact that you need just to slide both drives inside to get started (trayless) it also features both USB 3.0 and eSATA connectivity which means it can cover a wider range of systems (old and new) and it also allows the user to use both drives in 4 different modes (single/JBOD, RAID0, RAID1 and BIG). RaidSonic has also equipped the IB-RD3662U3S with HDD activity LEDs and a small and rather silent 60mm fan which is used to cool both drives inside. So if you happen to be on the lookout for a feature-rich dual bay external HDD enclosure the ICY BOX IB-RD3662U3S seems to be ideal but the time has come for us to see just how well it does in terms of performance.

Read full article @ NikKTech

ROCCAT Ryos MK Glow Gaming Keyboard Review

Many gamers have heard of the company Roccat before as it is a gaming accessory company based out of Europe. They have been bringing their high end products to the USA for a few years now. One of their big sellers was their ISKU gaming keyboard which had many different macro combinations you were able to utilize thanks to the Easy Shift[+] Zones they incorporated to the keyboard along with the Thumbster keys. Now that Rocact has moved into mechanical keyboards and they have used the ISKU platform and changed a few things around and tossing in some Cherry MX Black switches which lead to the birth of the Roccat Ryos MK Glow keyboard.

Read full article @ ThinkComputers.org

SanDisk Connect Wireless Media Drive (64 GB)

The SanDisk Connect Wireless Media Drive is a small device, less than half the size of your average cell phone. It has an aesthetically pleasing look to it, as well. So what does it do? Well, in short, it’s a way to add storage to your wireless multimedia devices. It broadcasts its own Wi-Fi network, which you connect to with your wireless device, and streams audio/video content.

Read full article @ TechnologyX

Synology DS214se Network Attached Storage (NAS) Review

Hello readers, today we will take a closer look at Synology's Diskstation DS214se. This is what they have to say about it: "Synology® DiskStation DS214se is a budget-friendly two-bay NAS device with the capability to host, share and protect data. Optimized to be an excellent personal NAS server, the DS214se runs on Synology’s award-winning DiskStation Manager (DSM). Synology’s feature-rich Package Center helps beginners explore the infinite possibilities of Synology NAS."

This is my first NAS I have ever worked with, and maybe it was not bad this was a simple low-end model so I could get used to it. In the time when I was using it I really loved it, you can do all kinds of cool things like downloading big files without leaving your pc on the whole night, access movies, music and files on the go from your phone/tablet with the Synology apps, access all your files from all around the world and much more!

I also want to thank Synology for providing me a sample of this NAS!

Read full article @ FunkyKit

Toshiba Exceria Pro 32GB UHS-II SD Card Review

Toshiba has recently introduced the Exceria Pro UHS-II compatible SD card designed for the most demanding users. This small storage device is capable to run with speeds up to 260MB/s read and 240MB/s write. That already looks amazing for an SD card. Let us now move along to check the performance of the Toshiba Exceria Pro in our benchmark suite of tests.

"Toshiba delivers technology and products remarkable for their innovation and artistry - contributing to a safer, more comfortable, more productive life.
We bring together the spirit of innovation with our passion and conviction to shape the future and help protect the global environment - our shared heritage.
We foster close relationships, rooted in trust and respect, with our customers, business partners and communities around the world."

Read full article @ FunkyKit

Updated: Windows 8.1 Review

We've updated our review with details about Windows 8.1 Update 1, and some hands on impressions with the refreshed operating system. Jump straight to Page 8 to check out the updates.Windows 8.1 has now been out for a few months and is a freely downloadable update. Microsoft has already released what is the equivalent of a first Service Pack for it, Windows 8.1 Update 1.The latter should already have landed automatically on Windows 8 systems via Windows Update; you need to have Windows 8.1 already installed beforehand.

Read full article @ Techradar