Reviews 52123 Published by

Here a roundup of today's reviews and articles:

ASRock H170 Pro4 & Pro4S Motherboard Review
be quiet! Silent Loop 240mm Liquid CPU Cooler Review
Be Quiet! Silent Loop 280 Review
be quiet! Silent Loop 280mm AIO CPU Cooler Review
Drobo 5N 5-Bay NAS Review
How to Install and Use ZFS on Ubuntu (and Why You’d Want To)
LaCie Porsche Design Mobile Drive 2TB USB 3.0 Review
MSI X99A XPower Gaming Titanium Review
NVIDIA Teases Xavier, a High-Performance ARM SoC for Drive PX & AI
Patriot Viper 4 8GB DDR4 3400MHz Memory Kit Review
Plextor M8PeG 256GB M.2 NVMe SSD with Heatsink Review
Raijintek Aeneas
Review: ZOTAC GeForce GTX 1070 AMP! Graphics Card
Zalman ZM-K900M Gaming Keyboard Review
Zoostorm EVOLVE Desktop PC Review



ASRock H170 Pro4 & Pro4S Motherboard Review

ASRock presents the last two H170 boards in our recent sample group, in full ATX. We’ll compare these to the rest of the group to see how they differ from the smaller boards I favor in my own builds.

Read full article @ Toms Hardware

be quiet! Silent Loop 240mm Liquid CPU Cooler Review

be quiet! has expanded its product range to add three All In One liquid coolers called Silent Loop. be quiet! already lists cases, air coolers and power supplies so liquid coolers are a logical next step. It seems appropriate that Silent Loop is designed by German company Alphacool for its German neighbour be quiet!.

Read full article @ KitGuru

Be Quiet! Silent Loop 280 Review

Yep, they enter the AIO liquid cooling market as well! We test and review the be quiet! Silent Loop 280, an All-in-One Liquid cooling kit that is decent in performance with a 280mm rad and two Pure Wings 2 fans. These liquid cooling kits are pre-fitted and based on a single loop and ready to install straight out of the box. Armed with pretty nice looks and an attractive price, be quiet! offers a competitive model in the massive LCS kit arena.

The Silent Loop is an all-in-one liquid cooling solution for desktop PCs and is available in 120mm, 240mm and 280 versions. The 280 kit that we test is a self-contained (AIO) CPU cooling unit based on liquid cooling. It does not require much setup installation. With a pump and radiator ship pressure tested, pre-filled, and sealed directly from the factory to provide maintenance-free operation for years. This ease of use extends to its support of the latest Intel and AMD sockets; including the latest Intel LGA 1155/1156/2011 and AMD FM2 sockets. The series is equipped with high-density water micro channel and copper nickel plated mirror finish block to offer an efficient thermal conduct along with Aluminum fin to maximize its cooling performance. Fan replacement is available with the standard built-in mounting holes.

Read full article @ Guru3D

be quiet! Silent Loop 280mm AIO CPU Cooler Review

be quiet! is one of the biggest names in the cooling business, offering up multi-award winning air coolers that have long been some of the best performing and quietest coolers on the market. While the company has expanded their ranges over the years to include high-end power supplies and even chassis, they've never bothered to follow the trend for water cooling, at least that was true until today.

Read full article @ eTeknix

Drobo 5N 5-Bay NAS Review

I've reviewed quite a few NAS devices in my time here at eTeknix and tried a lot more NAS devices before and during that I haven't written about, but the one I'm taking for a spin in the testing area this time is something different and not like other NAS devices: the Drobo 5N.

Read full article @ eTeknix

How to Install and Use ZFS on Ubuntu (and Why You’d Want To)

Official support for the ZFS file system is one of Ubuntu 16.04s big features. Its not installed and enabled by default, but its officially supported and offered in Ubuntus software repositories.

Read full article @ Howtogeek

LaCie Porsche Design Mobile Drive 2TB USB 3.0 Review

With a relatively high price tag as its only drawback the Porsche Design Mobile Drive 2TB by LaCie has it all, excellent performance, superb build quality and one of the thinnest enclosures in the market today.

Read full article @ NikKTech

MSI X99A XPower Gaming Titanium Review

The X99A XPower Gaming Titanium is a very well equipped motherboard in its portfolio, which comes with lots of features and a great looking as well as unique design. There are for example M.2 and U.2 connectors and no less than five full-size PCIe slots. No wonder we're curious to find out how this board stacks up on the following pages.

Read full article @ ocaholic

NVIDIA Teases Xavier, a High-Performance ARM SoC for Drive PX & AI

Ever since NVIDIA bowed out of the highly competitive (and high pressure) market for mobile ARM SoCs, there has been quite a bit of speculation over what would happen with NVIDIA’s SoC business. With the company enjoying a good degree of success with projects like the Drive system and Jetson, signs have pointed towards NVIDIA continuing their SoC efforts. But in what direction they would go remained a mystery, as the public roadmap ended with the current-generation Parker SoC. However we finally have an answer to that, and the answer is Xavier.

At NVIDIA’s GTC Europe 2016 conference this morning, the company has teased just a bit of information on the next generation Tegra SoC, which the company is calling Xavier (ed: in keeping with comic book codenames, this is Professor Xavier of the X-Men). Details on the chip are light – the chip won’t even sample until over a year from now – but NVIDIA has laid out just enough information to make it clear that the Tegra group has left mobile behind for good, and now the company is focused on high performance SoCs for cars and other devices further up the power/performance spectrum.

Read full article @ Anandtech

Patriot Viper 4 8GB DDR4 3400MHz Memory Kit Review

Today we review the Viper 4 DDR4-3400 dual channel memory kit (PV48G340C6K) from Patriot, promising great performance for Intel X99-based systems at well under $60 USD.

Read full article @ Neoseeker

Plextor M8PeG 256GB M.2 NVMe SSD with Heatsink Review

The time where we were limited by the SATA3 bus and its 600Mbps bandwidth limit is gone and history and while M.2 modules are the small and cool way to go, they aren’t an option for everyone. This is where PCI-Express add-in cards come into play with their naturally higher compatibility with a wider range of systems. Today I’m taking a closer look at Plextor’s latest offering in this sector – the M8PeY PCIe NVMe drive with 512GB capacity.

Plextor designed the M8Pe series of drives with gamers in mind as well as those who just want that extra bit of performance from their system. With a performance rating of up to 270K IOPS at read operations and 150K IOPS write operations along with sequential performance up to 2500MB/s reading and 1400MB/s writing, the drive can easily handle the most intense games that require heavy read and write operations from the drive and it might give you that extra advantage in competitive gaming such as eSports.

Read full article @ eTeknix

Raijintek Aeneas

The Raijintek Aeneas is an mATX chassis that allows for multi-GPU and liquid cooling within a compact frame. It also aims to provide a lot of extras at an attractive price point by including unique lighting elements and plenty of fans right out of the box.

Read full article @ techPowerUp

Review: ZOTAC GeForce GTX 1070 AMP! Graphics Card

When NVIDIA first announced the Pascal-based GeForce GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 graphics cards back in May, it was very clear that they had a pair of winners on their hands. Fast forward four months to today, and it seems that the company is still commanding the high-end GPU market with no competition expected...

Read full article @ Custom PC Review

Zalman ZM-K900M Gaming Keyboard Review

he Zalman ZM-K900M is a gaming mechanical keyboard featuring Kailh blue switches with RGB illumination and a slew of lighting effects. What is the main reason to spend money on a “gaming” mechanical keyboard vs a regular keyboard? With membrane based gaming keyboards, your purchase depends mainly on features that you can only utilize during gameplay. But with a gaming mechanical keyboard, your priorities in performance to value are more broad. You’re looking for a long life keyswitch that offers tactile feel and a comfortable typing experience as well. This is what we should all look for in a gaming mechanical keyboard, does the Zalman ZM-K900M live up to their own expectations? We’ll find out in this article for Benchmark Reviews.

Read full article @ Benchmark Reviews

Zoostorm EVOLVE Desktop PC Review

Here at eTeknix, we endeavour to critique a wide range of systems featuring different component choices which cater to contrasting target demographics. The overwhelming majority of these have some form of gaming credentials and designed to be used as a console replacement. Saying that, it’s important to acknowledge that some users simply require an affordable and reliable pre-configured PC for basic tasks including web browsing, office work and media playback. Even though PC gaming is a wonderful hobby, the level of enthusiasm isn’t shared by those who feel intimidated by technology or didn’t grow up with a fondness for captivating video games. Whatever the reasoning, I’m fairly confident that the desktop form-factor shouldn’t be disregarded for low-end usage scenarios and there’s still a number of key benefits over a tablet or traditional laptop. For example, desktops are easy to repair and encourage a better posture while typing.

Zoostorm recently informed us of their latest PC range which has been specifically tailored for consumers with modest power demands. The EVOLVE series starts from a ludicrously cheap £139.90 and goes all the way up to £579.99. To reiterate, none of the EVOLVE units includes a dedicated graphics card and that’s perfectly acceptable given the target usage scenario. The unit sent for review purposes sports a dual-core Intel Pentium G4400 operating at a base frequency of 3.3GHz, 8GB DDR4 2133MHz memory and a rather fetching mouse and keyboard set. Additionally, the system is powered by a 250-watt PSU, has a stylish chassis and comes with a DVD re-writer as standard. Priced at £319.98, the Zoostorm Evolve looks like an excellent product for home office use and I’m fascinated by the notion of desktops remaining relevant for low-end computing.

Read full article @ eTeknix