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Here a roundup of today's reviews and articles:

39 System Intel & AMD CPU Benchmarks On Linux
be quiet! Dark Power Pro 11 1000W
Best of MWC 2016: Smartphones, VR and more
Best SSDs: Q1 2016
Case Mod Friday: My 1995 IBM Aptiva
Fractal Designs Define Nano S reviewed
FSP Hydro G 650 Power Supply Review
Gigabyte Z170N-Gaming 5
Patriot Supersonic Magnum 2 256GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive Review
Raidmax Monster II Review
The Toshiba Q300 SSD Review: Toshiba Becomes a Retail Brand
XCOM 2 reviewed: hit the ground running and never stop
XFX Radeon R9 Fury Triple Dissipation Video Card Review



39 System Intel & AMD CPU Benchmarks On Linux

Yesterday I published the interesting and extensive tests around a 9-way Intel Xeon E3 v5 Skylake processor comparison plus a few extra AMD/Intel CPUs for reference. For some Friday benchmarking fun, that comparison has been extended to a total of a 39 system Linux CPU comparison of AMD/Intel hardware!

Read full article @ Phoronix

be quiet! Dark Power Pro 11 1000W

The Dark Power Pro 11 line is be quiet!'s high-end PSU line with six Platinum-certified members that offer great, silent performance. Today we will test the second-strongest member of the line with a capacity of 1 kW.

Read full article @ techPowerUp

Best of MWC 2016: Smartphones, VR and more

It’s been a busy week as more than 90,000 people stormed Barcelona to catch the latest mobile announcements and innovations. This year’s Mobile World Congress brought us new smartphones, hybrid mobile devices, more VR hype as well as wearables and IoT gear. Lets take a look at the highlights of the three-day event.

Read full article @ TechSpot

Best SSDs: Q1 2016

Since the November edition of our SSD guide, SSD prices have shifted downward a bit and several new value SSDs have hit the market. Some of the newest models are still priced at or near MSRP, but will probably drop down to competitive prices soon. The low-end segment is shifting to 15-16nm TLC that does no favors for performance or durability but does bring some improvements to price and power consumption. In the meantime, were waiting for new 3D NAND and new PCIe SSD controllers to hit the market and really shake things up.

Many SSD manufacturers have been predicting that the 120-128GB class of SSDs will reach price parity with hard drives this year. If they do, it probably wont matter. As higher capacity 3D NAND rolls out and pushes price per GB down, 128GB drives face a dilemma: use the newer and more cost-effective flash while losing performance due to a reduction in the number of dies to spread operations across, or stick with lower capacity dies (made on an inferior process) to retain better performance through a larger number of chips. Samsungs new 750 EVO chooses the latter option by adopting 16nm planar TLC even as Samsungs third-generation 3D NAND is about to hit the market.

Read full article @ Anandtech

Case Mod Friday: My 1995 IBM Aptiva

Welcome to another Case Mod Friday showcase! This week we have gilmour509's “1995 IBM Aptiva” build. Here is what he had to say about it, "I wanted to share my build, as it's really been a labor of love for the past month. I trash picked it from a local computer store in December, and it's come a long way since then. It started life in 21 years ago 1995 with a 486dx2 running at a mind blistering 66mhz, with a massive 4mb ram, and 1mb video memory. The 3.5 floppy disk could hold a maximum data capacity of 1.44MB. As of a few days ago, it now has a an Intel i7 6700k running at 4.3ghz, 16GB's of 3000mhz ddr4 ram, and 8GB's video memory. The 3.5 floppy drive can read up to 512GB of data from a single diskette. This was not a plug & play build. Massive amounts of cutting, fabrication, welding, grinding, a filing were required. It was awesome."

Read full article @ ThinkComputers.org

Fractal Designs Define Nano S reviewed

Fractal Design's Define Nano S is a shrunken version of the company's Define S ATX mid-tower for Mini-ITX systems. We put the Nano S to the test to see whether Fractal makes full use of the larger-than-average volume of this case.

Read full article @ The Tech Report

FSP Hydro G 650 Power Supply Review

FSP recently released a new PSU platform that mostly addresses gamers. The Hydro G line includes three units, and today we're testing the 650W version. The PSU is 80 Plus Gold certified and features fully modular cabling. Let's see how it performs.

Read full article @ Toms Hardware

Gigabyte Z170N-Gaming 5

With companies finding ways to pack more and more features into Mini-ITX motherboards the small form factor market has flourished over the past few years. We are finally seeing a lot of people running smaller builds at events as LAN rigs and the idea of a higher end build doesn’t require a case that hardly fits in your car and needs a backbelt to pickup anymore. In fact, even when looking past the smallest builds we have been seeing cases designed for Mini-ITX that are still more mid tower designs. This is because most builds only need a single video card these days and built in NICs have improved in quality, ITX boards now sometimes have wireless, and even onboard audio has improved (and some people have moved to USB audio). All of that means most people don’t really need huge builds. I already took a look at MSIs Z170 ITX gaming board and today I’m checking out the Gigabyte Z170N-Gaming 5, Gigabytes highest featured ITX board to see what they have packed into the ITX form factor.

Read full article @ LanOC Reviews

Patriot Supersonic Magnum 2 256GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive Review

The Magnum 2 quadruples the capacity and promises to double the speed of the original Magnum. To see if it lives up to its claims, we benchmarked the heck out of one to find out.

Read full article @ APH Networks

Raidmax Monster II Review

The Monster II is one of the latest mid-tower chassis from Raidmax, which offers plenty of interior space, which allows building powerful gaming systems. Apart from that there are quite a few neat little features, like for example a dust filter bay, a reasonable price and a cover for the power supply area.

Read full article @ ocaholic

The Toshiba Q300 SSD Review: Toshiba Becomes a Retail Brand

Today were looking at Toshibas Q300 SSD. The Q300 is the entry-level model from the Toshibas first line of SSDs sold directly to consumers and through retail outlets. Based on the same platform as their OCZ subsidiarys Trion 100, it competes in the crowded market for low-end drives using TLC NAND flash.

Read full article @ Anandtech

XCOM 2 reviewed: hit the ground running and never stop

XCOM 2, the sequel to XCOM: Enemy Unknown, is out now, and it has some big boots to fill. We went bug-hunting to see whether Firaxis Games has delivered another worthy entry in the long-running XCOM series.

Read full article @ The Tech Report

XFX Radeon R9 Fury Triple Dissipation Video Card Review

What happens when you take the AMD Radeon R9 Fury X video card with the Fiji GPU and disable 512 or 12.5% of the stream processors? You end up with the lower cost AMD Radeon R9 Fury video card that should still perform well on most game titles at the most demanding resolutions. It's been over seven months since we have looked at any Radeon R9 Fury card and there has been a bunch of new games that have come out since then as well as the new Radeon Software Crimson Edition drivers. We had the opportunity to take a look at the XFX Radeon R9 Fury Graphics Card that is sold under part number R9-Fury-4TF9 and jumped at the chance to take a look at it!

Read full article @ Legit Reviews