Reviews 52118 Published by

Here a roundup of todays reviews and articles:

ASUS GTX 980 Ti STRIX Gaming 6 GB
Asus STRIX Radeon R9 390X Review: Hawaii Gets 8GB @ HotHardware.com
be quiet! Shadow Rock LP Low Profile CPU Cooler Review
Bitfenix Alchemy Stripe LED Magnetic Review
Comparing The Power/Performance Of A NetBurst Celeron & Pentium 4 To Broadwell's Core i7 5775C
Gigabyte's X99-Gaming 5P motherboard reviewed
Intel Core i7 5775C review: Broadwell on your desktop
Keycool Hero 84
NVIDIA SHIELD Android TV Review
QNAP TVS-x63 (TVS-463-8GB): AMD Powered NAS
Razer Leviathan Review
Retested: Deepcool Captain 240 Liquid CPU Cooler
The 2TB Samsung 850 Pro & EVO SSD Review
Vertagear SL2000 Gaming Chair Review
Y-cam HomeMonitor HD Review



ASUS GTX 980 Ti STRIX Gaming 6 GB

The new ASUS GTX 980 Ti STRIX delivers the highest performance of all GTX 980 Ti cards we tested so far, thanks to a large overclock and increased Boost Clock range. The DirectCU III triple slot cooler turns off its fans in idle, media playback and light gaming. Price-wise the card clocks in at $670, similar to other custom GTX 980 Ti cards.

Read full article @ techPowerUp

Asus STRIX Radeon R9 390X Review: Hawaii Gets 8GB @ HotHardware.com

AMD has certainly kept our test benches busy lately, with the debut of two Fiji-based flagships, namely the liquid-cooled Radeon Fury X and its surprisingly capable air-cooled little brother, the Radeon Fury. Now it’s time to turn our attention to the Radeon R9 390X, specifically Asus' handsome STRIX offering, which utilizes Asus’ DirectCU III cooling solution with triple wing-blade fans and boasts “0dB Fan Technology”, along with a healthy 8GB of memory and healthy GPU oveclock...

Read full article @ "=?utf-8?Q?HotHardware.com?="

be quiet! Shadow Rock LP Low Profile CPU Cooler Review

So the Apple watch has finally hit the streets, along with the Motorola, Samsung and LG. While they are not quite the wrist worn micro computers we have seen in sci-fi films, we are definitely getting closer. On the PC front, the Raspberry Pi has led the charge in downsizing, albeit with limited capabilities. This has certainly carried over into fully capable desktops with small form factor components becoming increasingly popular. With that, there has been a corresponding increase in coolers built specifically for this need. With the Shadow Rock LP, we find be quiet! making their way into this market, promising a perfect balance of cooling power and silence.

Read full article @ HiTech Legion

Bitfenix Alchemy Stripe LED Magnetic Review

Bitfenix is not only a case manufacturer, the company also sells fans and power supplies as well as a selection of modding products. Today we're going to have a close look at the Alchemy 2.0 LED strips, which feature practical magnets for simple installation.

Read full article @ ocaholic

Comparing The Power/Performance Of A NetBurst Celeron & Pentium 4 To Broadwell's Core i7 5775C

With my Intel Core i7 5775C Linux review having gone out earlier this week, out of curiosity one of the other follow-up tests I wanted to run was comparing the performance and efficiency to an old Pentium 4 and Celeron Socket 478 CPU from the NetBurst era.

Last month for the 11th birthday of Phoronix, as part of a bunch of historical performance comparison tests, I dug out an old Socket 478 system with Intel 875p "Canterwood" + ICH7R chipset and some old CPUs from around the start of Phoronix: a Pentium 4 "C" 2.8GHz and Celeron D 320 (2.4GHz). With that old system and the two NetBurst CPUs, I compared the Linux performance and efficiency to some modern Intel hardware. With now having the Core i7 5775C socketed Broadwell CPU, I decided to run those same tests on this new configuration.

Read full article @ Phoronix

Gigabyte's X99-Gaming 5P motherboard reviewed

Gigabyte's X99-Gaming 5P gives buyers a full-featured Haswell-E board with a gaming twist. We dug into its features and ran it through our testing gauntlet to figure out what makes this premium motherboard tick.

Read full article @ The Tech Report

Intel Core i7 5775C review: Broadwell on your desktop

At the start of June, Intel introduced the Broadwell generation processors for desktops. For laptops, these 5th generation Core processors have already been available for a while, for desktops it proved to be unclear if Intel would make chips from this generation available at all. This has now finally happened with the Core i7 5775C and Core i5 5675C. Both processors are mainly special because of the integrated graphics card: the Intel Iris Pro Graphics 6200 is a so-called "GT3e" version, with 48 GPU cores and moreover 128 MB L4-cache which is used primarily by the GPU. With that, the 5775C and 5675C are the first separately sold processors with Iris Pro graphics. We tested the Core i7 extensively.

Read full article @ Hardware.Info

Keycool Hero 84

While I have been a huge fan of TenKeyLess keyboards, for those who don’t have a lot of desktop space and especially for LANs. I recently jumped into smaller form factors, I took a look at the 60% Infinity and even bought a Poker 2 as well for my personal collection. I love the 60% boards but if you are used to a TKL you might miss a few things. For me it is the direction pad. Well because of that I had my eye on an interesting keyboard from Keycool called the Hero 84 that pack most of the keys that you get on a TKL into a smaller format, similar to the 60% keyboards. Well Massdrop was nice enough to help get a sample from Keycool and I have been using it off and on for nearly a month in between our other keyboard reviews. Today I can finally sit down and recap how it has performed and go into detail on what the Hero 84 is all about.

Read full article @ LanOC Reviews

NVIDIA SHIELD Android TV Review

When you have revenue topping a billion dollars, you can afford to take a few risks. That's exactly what NVIDIA did when it released the original SHIELD back in 2013. Fast forward to today and SHIELD has become a whole ecosystem. The original device, now referred to as SHIELD Portable, catered to hardcore PC gamers looking for a little more mobility than a laptop provides. The follow-up, the SHIELD Tablet, provided a more mainstream device and was the most powerful tablet available at the time. Continuing the trend of one new SHIELD device per year, this year we have the SHIELD Android TV.

The SHIELD Android TV is like a super-charged SHIELD Tablet without the screen. As the name implies, it runs Android OS and it connects to your TV. The retail edition ships with everything you need to get started: the unit, a game controller, a power cable, a USB cable, and an HDMI cable. There are also two optional accessories you can purchase separately: a remote and a stand. The fact that the retail bundle comes with a controller and not a remote should tell you exactly what crowd NVIDIA is catering to; although that shouldn't really be surprising.

So how does the SHIELD Android TV stack up against its brethren and the competition? Let's find out.

Read full article @ OCC

QNAP TVS-x63 (TVS-463-8GB): AMD Powered NAS

Generally speaking two bay or four bay NAS devices are dominated by ARM SoC while higher capacity unit for SOHO or enterprise devices are using x86 Intel Atom or Core processor. Atom was originally designed for Netbooks with its low power usage. However, the first Atom processor is just not fast enough to really deliver a good computing experience. Luckily for Intel, Atom processor found its way into the NAS systems where combining the lower power consumption than typical desktop/laptop CPUs and higher performance than ARM SoCs yield a much better experience for Home/SOHO NAS devices.

While Intel dominated the high-performance NAS market, the other big x86 player, namely AMD, has not shown any interest until now. The QNAP TVS-x63 marked the world’s first NAS featuring AMD processor. AMD’s new strategy is targeting the markets with high profit return and the company is returning to the server market. NAS, by extension, is like a small scale server, so it makes sense to see AMD putting their processors into these devices.

I wonder why it took AMD so long to decide to put its processor into NAS. While NAS market is not as big as desktop, laptop, or smartphones, it is growing market. Our computing usage has shifted to mobile and portable devices where people are moving away from the desk. As a result, there is a greater demand for cloud storage and centralized data storage. This is where NAS steps in where it is no longer for small business and enterprise market but can be a very useful tool for home users.

Read full article @ Bjorn3D

Razer Leviathan Review

Soundbars have gained popularity because of their ability to reproduce multichannel audio while being compact form factor, this allows for simple setup and positioning without the hassle of dealing with various satellites while enjoying a wide multichannel soundstage. The Razer Leviathan comes in at quite a competitive position in consideration of other options, though is one of the few to specifically target gamers. Featuring a 3.5mm jack and optical inputs you can get sound from your TV, PC and games console in one hit while it also features Bluetooth and aptX for high quality wireless playback from a mobile device and for convenience you can even connect via NFC.

Powered by two 2.5" drivers and two 0.74" tweeters that dish out a total of 30W, there should be enough punch for a bedroom or living room situation. Not to forget that it supported by a 5.25" subwoofer at an additional 30W, we can expect deep and precise bass to help bring things alive.

Read full article @ Vortez

Retested: Deepcool Captain 240 Liquid CPU Cooler

We previously tested the DeepCool Captain 240 liquid CPU Cooler and weren’t very impressed with the results. As it turns out neither was DeepCool when they saw our results so they decided to send us a second test unit after all. Fortunately this one arrived from Hong Kong with the thermal paste intact so we got to work immediately retesting.

Read full article @ ThinkComputers.org

The 2TB Samsung 850 Pro & EVO SSD Review

For the past two years, client SSD capacities have been stumbling at 1TB. The cost of NAND is still too high to make terabyte drives a mainstream capacity, but the prices have fallen enough to create a market for multi-terabyte SSDs among enthusiasts and professionals. Samsung has historically held density records (e.g. 1TB mSATA) thanks to its advanced NAND and packaging technology and with the release of 2TB 850 Pro and EVO models Samsung is the first SSD manufacturer to enter the multi-terabyte era. 

Read full article @ Anandtech

Vertagear SL2000 Gaming Chair Review

Legit Reviews has been doing hardware reviews targeted to PC gamers for more than a decade, but believe it or not, we have never reviewed nor owned an actual gaming chair. We've used a handful of office chairs over the years, but nothing that was aimed specifically at gamers. When our friends over at 4GamerGear offered us the opportunity to look at Vertagear's new S-Line of Racing Chairs we figured that we'd give it a shot. Vertagear is a brand new company and this is their first gaming chair line that will be available in both North America and Europe. The sample we received is the Vertagear SL2000 in the Black/Red color combination

Read full article @ Legit Reviews

Y-cam HomeMonitor HD Review

A simple to use and cloud-enabled indoor home surveillance camera. Home-security cameras are growing in popularity as consumers seek to bring the advantages of the Internet of Things (IoT) to new aspects of daily life. Y-cam is a company seeking to take advantage of this trend with a simple strategy of making WiFi security cameras that can be placed in and around your home, whether that be inside or outside. The company's latest product, the Y-cam HomeMonitor HD, attempts to offer a plug-and-play solution to indoor home surveillance.

The advantageous design traits of the Y-cam HomeMonitor HD are the convenient cloud-based solution and simple setup process. Home users benefit from free rolling seven-day cloud storage which is provided 'forever' and has no capacity limitations. The cloud storage also provides an additional layer of security since footage is stored off-site.

Read full article @ Hexus