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Here a roundup of todays review's and articles:

Ashes of the Singularity DirectX 12 vs DirectX 11 Benchmark
ASRock Z170 Extreme 7+ (LGA 1151) Motherboard Review
Cooler Master MasterCase 5 (Pro) Review
Cooler Master MasterCase 5 Review
EVGA SuperNOVA GS 650 W
First DX12 In-Game Benchmarks A Level Playing Field? Drama And Framerates Collide
First Look Hands-On With ASUS ZenPad S 8.0 Z580CA Intel-Powered Android Tablet
GIgabyte GA-Z170X-Gaming 7 Motherboard Review
HIS R7 370 IceQ X2 OC 2GB Video Card Review
How Much Memory Should You Get? 4GB vs. 8GB vs. 16GB Performance Tested
Kuna Smart Home Security Light with Video Intercom Review
Noctua NH-D15S CPU Cooler Review
Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 review: Hands-on
SilverStone Sugo SG12 Micro-ATX Case Review
The Cyonic AU-550x PSU Review
Thermaltake Luxa2 S100 & R200 Review - Welcoming Wireless Charging!
Toshiba AL13SXB600N 600GB SAS 6Gb/s HDD Review
Vodafone Smart Prime 6 Smartphone Review
Z170 Charts: 5 Boards
Zero Latency, Virtual Reality Gaming Center Opens



Ashes of the Singularity DirectX 12 vs DirectX 11 Benchmark

Today we'll be looking at one of the very first DirectX 12 game benchmarks by using Stardock's real-time strategy game, Ashes of the Singularity. Ashes of the Singularity was developed with Oxide's Nitrous game engine and tells the story of an existential war waged on an unprecedented scale across the galaxy. The Ashes of the Singularity Benchmark was never designed as a synthetic stress test, but a real world test that was used internally to measure overall system performance.

Read full article @ Legit Reviews

ASRock Z170 Extreme 7+ (LGA 1151) Motherboard Review

Z170 and Skylake are here, finally! The true successor to Haswell and Haswell Refresh and the first 100% successful 14nm process. Broadwell works, but due to limitations and problems, it was an extremely late release and didn’t really wow us. Skylake is set to change that by bringing back true overclocking with a fully unlocked BLCK to really allow users to fine tune an overclock thanks to the 1MHz increments. Along with this, Z170 also brings huge connectivity through 20 PCIe 3.0 lanes and 10 USB 3.0 lanes; although some manufacturers may not utilise the full amount of lanes.

ASRock is a big player in the motherboard market, producing the renowned Extreme series across both Intel and AMD CPU’s. The Extreme series offers top quality components with great style and functionality. In recent years, the series has taken multiple different colour schemes from blue and white, black and silver and now the best (in my opinion), black and copper. Along with that, the simply huge arrowhead style heat sink covers are gone and replaced with a much more subtle design.

Read full article @ eTeknix

Cooler Master MasterCase 5 (Pro) Review

It has been quiet at Cooler Master for a long time now, we have only seen small and little updates from some of their existing products in the past year. But at Computex it became clear that those guys have been busy working on something new, they have been working an a product concept. Now this concept will spread throughout ALL Cooler Master products, but today we start off with their new MasterCase chassis. A chassis that has the DNA of the Cosmos series, but taken to a new and next level. Armed with a vision Cooler Master is releasing the the first two products in their MasterCase 5 series chassis. A chassis series that you can purchase, install and use but also a series that you can take to the next level, as everything about this chassis series oozes and breathes building and creating your own style PC. A base product which you can expand with new products, a product that is moddable in many ways. Obviously Cooler Master will offer many proprietary products that fit inside that chassis ranging from FANs towards liquid cooling solutions so that you can make your build, your way. The base chassis will be the MasterCase 5 and is interesting to look at, it has space for motherboards up-to standard ATX form factors, it comes with dark side panels and a some new innovations. Yes it has finally arrived, it was at Computex in May this year where we got a sneak preview on the all new design, and admittedly back then I was both a little surprised and and intrigued.

The MasterCase series according to Cooler Master comes with a FreeForm Modular System. Yes there's a lot of marketing going on behind the new series, but that's not a bad thing as this chassis really was made to shape and form to something you want so that it fits your style, the idea behind that is called the Master concept. I'll let Cooler Master talk for a second here.

Read full article @ Guru3D

Cooler Master MasterCase 5 Review

The ultimate modular case. For real? Modular gadgets are the Holy Grail of the tech world. The idea that you could take the parts you most care about and put together a tailor-made device that's perfect for your needs carries obvious attraction, but the concept is often too good to be true and, after the initial excitement, modular hardware typically ends up being either too expensive or too ambitious, or both.

The modular Mini Lego computer and Project Ara smartphones are good examples of concepts that sound fantastic but have plenty to prove, and in the PC chassis arena, modular designs usually fall flat from the get-go. Razer's Project Christine never got going, and who still remember's the ill-fated Antec Lanboy Air?

It's a precarious business, so when Cooler Master told us it had made "the ultimate modular case," our immediate reaction was one of "uh oh". But having spent some time playing with the new chassis, we've discovered that it's different from all those who have failed because, well, this one succeeds.

Read full article @ Hexus

EVGA SuperNOVA GS 650 W

EVGA's SuperNOVA 650 GS unit is made by Seasonic and features 80 PLUS Gold efficiency and a fully modular cabling design. This model looks to be ideal for anyone who wants a well-performing mid-capacity PSU.

Read full article @ techPowerUp

First DX12 In-Game Benchmarks A Level Playing Field? Drama And Framerates Collide

Over the weekend press was handed access to one of the world’s first DirectX 12 benchmarks courtesy of Oxide’s Ashes of the Singularity. This isn’t a synthetic test like 3DMark’s API overhead feature test, but rather a true real-world benchmark using a pre-Beta version of the upcoming game. And we’ve all been salivating over a way to measure real-world performance improvements from DirectX 11 to DirectX 12 since first learning about Microsoft’s updated API.

Aside from being our first glimpse into how an actual engine for an actual game performs under DirectX 12, it’s also something crucially important to NVIDIA and AMD: How their drivers and hardware stack up under DirectX 12...

Read full article @ HotHardware

First Look Hands-On With ASUS ZenPad S 8.0 Z580CA Intel-Powered Android Tablet

ASUS is on a roll these days, especially in mobile technologies. In the past few months, the company has surprised us all with the affordable and powerful ZenPhone 2 smartphone (which starts at a very frugal $200 off-contract) and the even cheaper ZenFone 2E which takes the prepaid route via AT&T.

ASUS is again using its “Zen factor,” this time in the tablet space, with the introduction of its ZenPad S 8.0 Z580CA. And we’ve got a hands-on preview of the premium tablet for you today.

Front and center on the new ZenPad S 8.0 Z580CA is a crisp, 7.9-inch QXGA (2048x1536) IPS display that is covered in Gorilla Glass 3...

Read full article @ HotHardware

GIgabyte GA-Z170X-Gaming 7 Motherboard Review

Everyone’s looking for change or are they? Obama promised change and that change seems to have set us back 50 years. Clothing styles change but are they actually something new or is it just the rebirth of a style that already ran its course. Technology changes frequently but always progresses, well at least for the most part it’s not a refresh and this is why there have been so many advances in the short span of only the last 50 years.

Read full article @ HiTech Legion

HIS R7 370 IceQ X2 OC 2GB Video Card Review

As we have mentioned before, the R7 370 GPU from AMD is basically one of the most refreshed components from the 300 series since we have seen it since Radeon HD 7850, then in the R7 265/270 cards and now again. While the speeds have been boosted, we have the same architecture involved which basically means that older game titles should work fine at Full-HD resolution but newer titles need to be dialed down at lower detail levels in order to reach playable FPS.

Read full article @ Madshrimps

How Much Memory Should You Get? 4GB vs. 8GB vs. 16GB Performance Tested

Today's modern games and many productivity applications can consume 4GB on its own, so there's little argument for not going with 8GB. However, the need for 16GB of memory is a hotly debated subject, so today we are going see if and where this much memory might be useful for desktop users.

Read full article @ Techspot

Kuna Smart Home Security Light with Video Intercom Review

una hides in plain sight as a decorative light fixture but with some very special technologies built-in. For one, it has a camera which you can view in real-time but not only does it have a camera it also has an intercom which allows for you to listen to someone that may have just walked up to your front door. What’s even more is that there is two-way communications by using the Kuna app on your smart phone, you can talk back directly to the person at your front-door. In addition, it has built-in motion light detection which can be setup on a schedule, automatic video recording based on motion, and alerts that can be sent directly to your smartphone when someone approaches your door.

Read full article @ Geek Inspector

Noctua NH-D15S CPU Cooler Review

When it comes to the “Big Boy’s” of air cooling cooling there are a few names that come to mind, but one that always comes up in discussions is Noctua. There are known for their massive air coolers and their distinctive brown fans. It seems every time we review a Noctua product we are impressed and each product is designed for a specific scenario. This time we have the new NH-D15S, which is much like the NH-D15 that we reviewed about a year ago. The main difference between the two is the NH-D15S has a new offset asymmetrical design that makes more room for memory and PCI-Express card compatibility. Noctua has also removed one of the two fans so you have a center-mounted 140mm cooling fan. The fact that you don’t have a fan on the front or back also helps with compatibility with memory modules. Will these changes affect performance or do we have another winner from Noctua? Read on as we take a look!

Read full article @ ThinkComputers.org

Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 review: Hands-on

First impressions of the wafer-thin slate. The recent Samsung Unpacked 2015 event in London was primarily focused on showing off the Galaxy S6 Edge+, but we also had the opportunity to try out the Galaxy Tab S2 for the first time since it was announced last month.

Samsung will launch 8in and 9.7in editions and is - yet again - looking to take a chunk out of Apple's market share, this time by going after the identically sized iPad Air 2 series. Even the prices are the same as the iPad Air 2's: the 8in model will start at £319, and the 9.7in model £399. We got our hands on the 9.7in Galaxy Tab S2 version.

Read full article @ V3

SilverStone Sugo SG12 Micro-ATX Case Review

It seems that every month a new Android based HTPC comes out. This comes as no surprise as with the integration of XBMC, these devices keep getting cheaper and more attractive to the low-end market. Instead, SilverStone is trying to target a much different market, a market which many of our readers can feel identified with. SilverStone is a renowned designer of premium cases, offering a wide arrange of designs ranging from bulky full towers to small form factor HTPC cases such as the SilverStone SG12 Micro-ATX enclosure in this review.

Read full article @ Benchmark Reviews

The Cyonic AU-550x PSU Review

In this review, we are getting acquainted with a new PSU manufacturer, Cyonic. The newly founded brand offers just six units at this time, three of which are modular and three are of classic design, with power ratings ranging from 450 to 650 Watts. All the power supplues are based on the same underlying platform, and we are testing the modular 550 Watt unit in this review.

Read full article @ Anandtech

Thermaltake Luxa2 S100 & R200 Review - Welcoming Wireless Charging!

Today we get another innovative product from Thermaltake's mobile division - Luxa2 - the S100 Wireless Charging Pad and Receiver Kit as well as the R200 Dual Receiver. The S100 is an interesting product and from what we can see is a stepping stone to further wireless charging capabilities.

Read full article @ TechnologyX

Toshiba AL13SXB600N 600GB SAS 6Gb/s HDD Review

With 2TB solid state drives already available in the market and 4TB models announced to arrive pretty soon it's clear that although the price/capacity gap with 3.5" mechanical drives is still quite wide (currently 10TB 3.5" drives have already made their debut) the same no longer applies for 2.5" mechanical drives since as we speak the highest capacity model is a 3TB one. All of the above however are for the consumer market so when it comes to enterprise grade products things change quite a bit since SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) models cost a lot more compared to their SATA siblings. Because of that 2.5" enterprise grade mechanical hard drives still have the "edge" over enterprise grade SSDs in terms of price/capacity and thus many professionals and businesses still choose to go with them for their data arrays. Toshiba recently announced their latest AL13SXBxx 15.000 RPM 2.5" SAS hard drive line and not long after being the first ones to test the 12Gb/s SAS model with us we have the 6Gb/s SAS one.

Read full article @ NikKTech

Vodafone Smart Prime 6 Smartphone Review

Only a few weeks ago we took a look at the Smart ultra 6 – a great smartphone from Vodafone, which has unbelievable power for a fantastic price. Today we review its smaller brother, the Smart prime 6. Priced at £80, it is £45 cheaper than the ultra 6. Is it worth a look if you are tight for cash?

Read full article @ KitGuru

Z170 Charts: 5 Boards

In our comparison tables, meanwhile you find benchmark values regarding 5 recent Z170 motherboards. Furthermore we do not comment the benchmark values. The idea and also the goal is to present to you a market overview which helps you choose the right motherboard.

Read full article @ ocaholic

Zero Latency, Virtual Reality Gaming Center Opens

At Zero Latency gamers are watched by 129 PlayStation eye cameras and were Oculus Rift DK2 headsets with a backpack that holds an Alienware Alpha PC. Once you place the headphones and headset on you enter into the virtual world, even with other players in the same room that gives you and your friends the ability to freely roam around in the 4,300 square foot warehouse.

Read full article @ Geek Inspector