Reviews 52118 Published by

Here a roundup of today's reviews and articles:

Alienware 15 R3 Review
AMD announces RYZEN 8-core processor
AMD crests Summit Ridge with Ryzen CPUs
AMD eight core SKU beats up Chipzilla
AMD To Attack Performance Desktop Market With RYZEN, More Zen Architecture Details Revealed
Bloody B840 LK Optic Mechanical Keyboard Review
Corsair Dominator ROG 3200C16 Review
Corsair Force Series MP500 M.2 NVMe PCIe SSDs is its fastest yet
Crucial MX300 525GB SSD Review
Intel Compute Stick Core m3 Review: Skylake On A Thumbstick
MSI GS63VR Stealth Pro Gaming Laptop Review
MSI Z170A Gaming Pro Carbon ATX Motherboard Review
Radeon Crimson Driver December 2016 Performance Analysis
ROCCAT SUORA FX Review
Rosewill RMS-16003 Dual Arm Monitor Desk Mount
Scythe Kabuto 3 CPU Cooler Review
Simplify3D
The AMD Ryzen CPU Preview; Zen Architecture Matures
The Plextor M8Pe (512GB) SSD Review
ThinkComputers Holiday 2016 Staff Wish List
Winter 2016 mobile staff picks



Alienware 15 R3 Review

Up for review today is the latest Alienware 15. Fully configurable with a wide range of hardware, with prices ranging from $1,350 for the base model to $2,700 for the top-spec system, expect GeForce 10 graphics and Alienware level of design and polish.

Read full article @ TechSpot

AMD announces RYZEN 8-core processor

Last week I was in the Sonoma, the USA. AMD hosted an exciting event talking about new technologies and products that are upcoming. Yesterday we have already shared a thing or two about the new Radeon Instinct MI accelerators and related, a thing or two on VEGA. But As we know there are several products, architectures and technologies in the pipeline for AMD starting in Q1 2017, among them the artists formerly known as ZEN. Alongside the AMD live-stream we are allowed to share a few things about what probably is the biggest and most important release for AMD next year, their new processor series.

Read full article @ Guru3D

AMD crests Summit Ridge with Ryzen CPUs

AMD's Zen CPUs for the desktop, formerly code-named Summit Ridge, now have an official name: Ryzen. Along with the new name, AMD demonstrated the performance of some fresh Ryzen silicon and shared some new details of these chips last week at a summit in Sonoma, California. Here's what we learned.

Read full article @ The Tech Report

AMD eight core SKU beats up Chipzilla

AMD was keen to show some performance figures of its upcoming eight core Ryzen SKU at the New Horizon event and has compared it to Intel's US $1049.99 priced Core i7-6900K eight core Broadwell-E CPU.

AMD noted that Intel's Core i7-6900K is currently the only eight core/16-thread CPU on the market so it was impressive to see it compared to AMD's Ryzen SKU, core to core and thread to thread. While these two might be matched in terms of cores and threads, AMD's Ryzen SKU was running at a 3.4GHz base clock  rate without Boost while Intel's Core i7-6900K was left at the starting gate with a  3.2GHz base and a  3.7GHz Turbo CPU frequency.
AMD picked two CPU "intense benchmarks", Blender and Handbrake tests, both which ought to  scale well with multi-core and multi-thread CPUs.
In Blender, both AMD Ryzen SKU and Intel Core i7-6900K were neck to neck, although running at different clocks, which is quite impressive. In the Handbrake test, an open-source video transcoder, AMD's Ryzen was actually faster in transcoding the Ryzen video to AppleTV 3 preset.

Read full article @ Fudzilla

AMD To Attack Performance Desktop Market With RYZEN, More Zen Architecture Details Revealed

We’ve been hearing about AMD’s next-generation Zen-based processors for quite a while now, though the company has just officially unveiled that desktop variants will now be branded RYZEN. Over the past few months, we’ve seen Zen in action in both high-performance desktop and server applications and have been able to disclose a handful of features, specifications, and performance details. Today however, with AMD poised to host its “New Horizon” webcast, we have some more information to share related to the RYZEN branding, along with the ZEN architecture and AM4 platform as a whole.

First and foremost is the actual branding for its Zen-based processors for desktops, formerly codenamed “Summit Ridge”. AMD will be branding its Zen-architecture based desktop processors RYZEN -- pronounced Rye-Zen (like horizon, without the “ho”). We’ve also got some new details regarding RYZEN’s speeds and feeds, and some additional performance-related data to share...

Read full article @ HotHardware

Bloody B840 LK Optic Mechanical Keyboard Review

A4Tech is a Taiwanese company whose “Bloody” gaming division was launched in 2012. Bloody produces gaming keyboards and mice using a unique switch technology: rather than metal contact points closing an electrical circuit when a key is pressed, Bloody’s mechanical switches use infrared LEDs and photosensors, which Bloody claims provides faster key response and a more reliable and durable switch. Benchmark Reviews checks out the Bloody B840 LK Optic Mechanical Gaming Keyboard, equipped with next-generation “clicky” optical key switches.

Read full article @ Benchmark Reviews

Corsair Dominator ROG 3200C16 Review

With their Dominator ROG modules Corsair has some of the best looking DRAM modules on the market. The customer receives a red illumination, which in combination with the red anodized heatspreader, looks really great. Apart from that the specs are interesting as well and DDR4-3200 should definitely pack some punch.

Read full article @ ocaholic

Corsair Force Series MP500 M.2 NVMe PCIe SSDs is its fastest yet

Uses Phison PS5007-E7 NVMe controllers and PCIe Gen. 3 x4 M.2 2280 interfaces.

Read full article @ Hexus

Crucial MX300 525GB SSD Review

With a price/capacity ratio far better compared to its direct competitor the MX300 525GB SSD by our friends over at Crucial represents an even better investment than its brother the 750GB Limited Edition SSD.

Read full article @ NikKTech

Intel Compute Stick Core m3 Review: Skylake On A Thumbstick

Intel's first generation Compute Stick turned quite a few heads, including ours, as it was a remarkable thing to consider that a fully functioning PC could be crammed onto a device roughly the size of a bloated USB flash drive. It wasn't especially powerful—Intel pairing an Atom processor based on its Bay Trail-T platform with just 2GB of single-channel RAM and 32GB of onboard storage—but for $149 with Windows pre-installed it was an intriguing device...

Read full article @ HotHardware

MSI GS63VR Stealth Pro Gaming Laptop Review

The thin and light MSI GS63VR Stealth Pro-034 contains a 6th generation Intel Core i7 and Nvidia's new GTX 1060 Pascal GPU. At just under 0.7", can the Stealth Pro perform well, or does its thin profile introduce unnecessary compromises?

Read full article @ Toms Hardware

MSI Z170A Gaming Pro Carbon ATX Motherboard Review

The Z170A Gaming Pro Carbon promises a little more durability, style, and stability compared to budget-oriented rivals. We take a closer look at its integrated features, overall performance and overclocking capabilities.

Read full article @ Toms Hardware

Radeon Crimson Driver December 2016 Performance Analysis

In this article we'll take the AMD Radeon Software Crimson 16.6.2 - 16.7.3 - 16.10.3 - 16.12.1 drivers and test them with a Radeon RX 480.As such we'll have a quick peek at driver performance compared to several other AMD Catalyst drivers. In this article we'll fire off the multiple games from the Guru3D benchmark suite at multiple drivers with the Radeon RX 480 to see how much performance you will really gain (or not).

Read full article @ Guru3D

ROCCAT SUORA FX Review

The SUORA is ROCCAT's compact and most raw gaming keyboard. It features robust TTC mechanical switches that are rated for 50 million clicks in the brown flavour (let's think chocolate here). These switches are then mounted directly into a blackened aluminium plate, and have been given all the performance gamers would expect including N-Key Rollover (anti-ghosting), and a 1ms refresh rate (1000Hz polling). Though designed as a driverless keyboard ready for plug and play action with a dedicated Game Mode button, though with the power of ROCCAT SWARM, you have access to key remapping, 6 dedicated macro keys, and per-key customisable illumination.

Read full article @ Vortez

Rosewill RMS-16003 Dual Arm Monitor Desk Mount

Although it has now been several years, we have reviewed plenty of Rosewill brand products over the years. They started out as the computer peripherals brand of online retail giant Newegg, and they have grown to offer far more, including all sorts of IT items, office furniture, and even some small appliances. In this review we will be staying with their computer peripheral offerings by checking out the RMS-16003 dual arm monitor desk mount, shown in the promotional image below

Read full article @ Bigbruin.com

Scythe Kabuto 3 CPU Cooler Review

Today we are back with another CPU cooler from our friends at Scythe. The Kabuto 3 is a refined version of their very popular Kabuto 2 top-flow CPU cooler. Scythe has designed this cooler to deliver uncompromised performance with compact dimensions and maximum compatibility. They have taken extensive customer feedback on the previous version of the cooler and hope to make it better not only performance-wise, but also to improve user experience. The Kabuto 3 is a top-flow CPU cooler which sets the heatsink stack in a horizontal position rather than a vertical one like we see in tower coolers. This design is great for small form factor builds as it is not as tall as tower coolers. Sitting on top of the cooler is one of Scythe’s GlideStream 120 mm cooling fans. Let’s jump in and see what this cooler can do!

Read full article @ ThinkComputers.org

Simplify3D

I have been using the suggested software MatterControl. Setup was easy because they work directly with SeeMeCNC and it had the profiles for both printers. Beyond that, it was easy to use, but over time I started to notice more and more limitations and I was really curious what else was out there. Well, one of the more popular programs for handling most 3d printers is called Simplify3D. They happened to be based out of Ohio like we are, so I reached out and they send over a copy and I have been testing it alongside my testing of the Rostock MAX v3. So today I’m going to dive in and check out what their software is all about.

Read full article @ LanOC Reviews

The AMD Ryzen CPU Preview; Zen Architecture Matures

Hardware Canucks is pleased to present our article entitled "The AMD Ryzen CPU Preview; Zen Architecture Matures". AMD's upcoming Zen-based processors now have an official name. Called Ryzen, one of these CPUs will have 16 threads and 20MB of cache. Let's take a closer look at it!

Read full article @ Hardware Canucks

The Plextor M8Pe (512GB) SSD Review

The Plextor M8Pe is their second PCIe SSD and their first to support PCIe 3.0 or NVMe. The M8Pe is a M.2 SSD based on Marvells 88SS1093 controller and Toshiba 15nm MLC NAND flash. Plextor sells the M8Pe in three configurations: as a bare M.2 module, with a heatspreader over the M.2 module, or in a PCIe x4 adapter card that provides a large heatsink and LED lighting. The M8Pe is Plextors flagship SSD and is positioned in the mid- to high-end segment of the PCIe SSD market.

Read full article @ Anandtech

ThinkComputers Holiday 2016 Staff Wish List

It is that time of year again, the Holidays! This time of year everyone is looking to get new hardware and gadgets, whether its from relatives or if you just want to splurge for yourself. Even though here at ThinkComputers we get to look at a lot of really cool hardware, there are some things we still can’t get our hands on. With that he have compiled our Holiday 2016 wish list of things we would love to get this holiday season! Take a look!

Read full article @ ThinkComputers.org

Winter 2016 mobile staff picks

In this edition of The Tech Report's mobile staff picks, we dig ourselves out of the snow to bring you the latest and best in tablets, Chromebooks, laptops, and phones.

Read full article @ The Tech Report