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Here a roundup of today's reviews and articles:

Aerocool XPredator II Review
Fierce PC Dragon Shield Review
G.SKILL Trident Z 3200MHz DDR4 32GB Review
G.Skill TridentZ 3200 MHz 32GB Quad Channel DDR4 memory review
Gears of War 4 Review And Benchmark Performance Quick Take
Kworld S25 Earphones Review
MSI X99A Tomahawk Motherboard Review
WD Blue SSD Review (1TB) - WD Steps Into The Ring



Aerocool XPredator II Review

The well-known manufacturer Aerocool released a real beast with their new Xpredator II case. With this case they are going big, not only in terms of size. With its agressive design and the window it addresses mainly gamer and modder who want to show which hardware they have inside. Its predecessor has been available in many different color designs while the Xpredator II is only available in the classic colors white with blue fans and black with red fans as of now.

Read full article @ OCInside.de

Fierce PC Dragon Shield Review

In the world of computing not everyone has the expertise to building their own custom PC. To many it can appear a daunting task to undertake and not least of all because there is a requirement to choose compatible hardware. Further to this, adding in custom watercooling configuration is perhaps an even greater feat.

Although many computer etailers allow for the purchase of individual components, system integrators have put considerable time into designing and building their own systems for consumers to purchase. So if you don’t have the know-how, you can still get on the road to gaming stardom (or whatever else) without having to build the system yourself.

In the spotlight today is the Dragon Shield from Fierce PC. This computer system is a high-end offering which is laden with features. This rig takes advantage of Intel’s Z170 chipset and therefore makes use of the Intel Core i7-6700K. Accompanying this CPU there is 16GB DDR4, GTX 1070 and a trio of storage drives including M.2 NVMe technology. Not only has Fierce PC overclocked the CPU and GPU but they’ve also installed a custom water cooling configuration in order to achieve extremely low-temperatures.

Read full article @ Vortez

G.SKILL Trident Z 3200MHz DDR4 32GB Review

Looking at the performance delivered by this set of G.SKILL Trident Z modules, it's clear that the modules do stand up well with the tighter timings. However, the secondary timings were loose enough that comparative performance took a hit when you look at the performance delivered by a similar kit from the competition. The looser secondary and tertiary timings let the modules overclock much further than the comparison modules, but you have to work a bit to tune these modules and the board for better performance. That being said, these modules will overclock to at least 3400MHz using the XMP 2.0 applied timings. To get there I needed to crank up the voltage to the modules to 1.5v to get the modules stable at 3400MHz 14-14-14-34. I cannot advocate pushing 1.5v through your modules, but G.SKILL has a limited lifetime warranty on the modules should anything happen.

Read full article @ OCC

G.Skill TridentZ 3200 MHz 32GB Quad Channel DDR4 memory review

We review a 32GB TridentZ 3200 MHz CAS14 DDR4 memory from G.Skill. It's fast, it's cool and runs XMP 2.0 memory profiles on Intel platforms as well. Join us as we review some of the fastest clocked bars of memory your money can get you.

Read full article @ Guru3D

Gears of War 4 Review And Benchmark Performance Quick Take

Yesterday, Gear of War 4 landed with boots on the ground for Microsoft Windows and the Xbox One console. This fifth entry in the series marks the first time a Gears title has launched simultaneously on both the PC and Xbox. It's also breaking new ground with cross-play functionality between the two platforms and is part of the Microsoft Xbox Play Anywhere program.

Also, Gears of War 4 is a great looking game that makes impressive use of Epic Games' Unreal Engine 4 and the rich visual effects and rendering the powerful game engine offers. Gloriously, those playing on the PC have over 30 graphics settings (#PCMasterRace)...

Is Gears 4 the blockbuster we'd hope for? How does it perform on modern PC setups? That's what we'll aim to lay down for you on the pages ahead...

Read full article @ HotHardware

Kworld S25 Earphones Review

The S25 Elite Mobile Gaming Earphones are gold in color, have 9mm drivers, and look very similar to a bullet casing. A very stylish look that had some people turning their heads when I was wearing them out in public, as it appeared I had a couple of 9mm rounds stuffed into my ears. In this article for Benchmark Reviews, I’ll be putting the Kworld S25 Elite Mobile Gaming Earphones to the test. Do these golden bullets live up to Kworld’s claims? Let’s find out…

Read full article @ Benchmark Reviews

MSI X99A Tomahawk Motherboard Review

MSI has been keenly expanding its range of X99 motherboards, particularly gaming-oriented varieties, in reaction to Intel’s Broadwell-E CPUs for LGA 2011-3. Prospective X99 buyers now have a formidable number of options to choose from in the wider X99 marketplace, as well as from within MSI’s own range.

Read full article @ KitGuru

WD Blue SSD Review (1TB) - WD Steps Into The Ring

Many of us know Western Digital as one of the largest HDD manufacturers in the market and that they have, for the most part, solely relied on HDD storage sales to become the giant they are today. In recent times they've adopted flash into their products. This resulted in the current WD Blue SSHD and back in 2014 the WD Black2 drive, which we saw was basically an SSD and HDD slapped together in our review (http://thessdreview.us7.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=3d9b6193ffd32dd60e84fc74b&id=0fc36fb7b5&e=1230c2ab07) . These, however, are not and were not stand alone SSD products. They still have mechanical parts that are prone to failure and just cannot match the capabilities of a true SSD.

Because SSDs are taking ground in storage sales and, inversely, HDD sales falling quarter after quarter in recent years, WD had to do something more than just infuse NAND with their HDD components to maintain their competitiveness. In late 2015 we learned that their decision on the matter was to simply acquired an SSD company and their target of choice was none other than SanDisk. After months of back and forth discussion and agreements WD finally purchased SanDisk for roughly $16-$19 billion in May. This purchase has allowed them to easily gain precious SSD IP and other related assets, most importantly, access to a NAND supply. Since the acquisition, WD has stayed quiet on the SSD front...until now. Today marks the release of their first full-fledged SSD, the WD Blue SSD.

Read full article @ The SSD Review