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Here a roundup of today's reviews and articles:

Aerocool Aero 800 Case Review
Assassin's Creed Syndicate Review
ASUS Radeon R9 390 STRIX Gaming 8GB Review
be quiet! Straight Power 10 600W Power Supply - Unboxing and Overview
Boyon Portable Touch Control LED Desk Lamp Review
D-Link DIR-880L Wireless AC1900 Dual Band Gigabit Cloud Router Review
G.SKILL RIPJAWS MX780 RGB Laser Gaming Mouse Review
Google Nexus 6P Review: One of the best smartphones of the year
Kingston HyperX Savage 128GB USB 3.1 Flash Drive Review
MSI BIOS update enables overclocking non-K Skylake CPUs
NZXT Hue+ LED Lighting Controller Review
Reeven Ouranos
Samsung Gear S2 Smartwatch Review: Tizen Excels
Samsung turned our SSD Endurance Experiment into something incredible
UtechSmart Venus 16400 DPI Laser MMO Gaming Mouse Review



Aerocool Aero 800 Case Review

Aerocool has a history of delivering budget cases but the Aero-800 is far and away the cheapest case we have seen to date. It’s a steel chassis with blue painted finish on the top and side panels – the window is smoked and the finishing touches are a plastic front panel and colour co-ordinated blue skids that act as supports. The Aero-800 is also available in grey, white or black. At only £41 inc vat is this the cheap yet effective case you need to be shortlisting for a new system build?

Read full article @ KitGuru

Assassin's Creed Syndicate Review

Once more into the Animus! Last year we saw the release of the unimpressive Assassin's Creed Unity, unless you consider its many issues impressive. This year Assassin's Creed Syndicate takes us to Victorian London where we hope to save the city and British Empire from Templar rule, and possibly save the franchise from becoming a buggy mess. Will the game and Frye twins succeed?

While I will go into more detail on the issues I experienced in the later sections, I want to mention here that I did have significant trouble capturing video. Both capture solutions I have used before, OBS and ShadowPlay, were unable to record video properly and at seemingly random times would freeze on a single frame, while the audio continued. This means the most awesome of awesome fights could be going on, but you would still just see me walking down a street from minutes earlier. Two videos I recorded with ShadowPlay were actually usable, so they will be embedded, but both also stutter despite the fact that the game did not stutter at those moments. Luckily ShadowPlay captures the FPS counter in the corner of the screen, allowing you to see the framrate I actually experienced.

Like the other games in the franchise, Syndicate is an action, adventure, and stealth title, but unlike previous games you get to play as two Assassins: twins Jacob and Evie Frye. While some missions do require you to play as a particular sibling, you are free to run around as the one you wish. Both characters have their own skill trees and gear, with some skills and gear being unique to them. (You cannot have Jacob running around with one of Evie's capes.) Items and experience are shared between them though, so playing as one will not neglect the other.

Read full article @ OCC

ASUS Radeon R9 390 STRIX Gaming 8GB Review

The ASUS Radeon R9 390 STRIX Gaming 8GB is an extremely powerful R9 390 custom graphics card. The cooler on this particular card is amongst the most capable models available these days. Apparently, this combination sounds rather compelling, so we're interested to see what it can do in our review.

Read full article @ ocaholic

be quiet! Straight Power 10 600W Power Supply - Unboxing and Overview

As a company that prides themselves on their name and producing products that are near silent to the human ear, one can only hold the same expectation and standard to that of other products. Today we have the privilege of upgrading our Z77 test bench to include the be quiet! Straight Power 10 600W Power Supply.

Read full article @ TechnologyX

Boyon Portable Touch Control LED Desk Lamp Review

Up for review today I’ve got a small and portable LED desk lamp from a company called Boyon. The lamp is touch enabled to make using it very easy and it’s rechargeable over USB. The lamp isn’t very bright at only about three watts but it’s good enough for reading or enough to light up your keyboard at night. Overall it’s a decent lamp, read on to learn more…

Read full article @ Technogog

D-Link DIR-880L Wireless AC1900 Dual Band Gigabit Cloud Router Review

Although i know of many people, offices, stores and even companies that use plenty of standalone routers to complete their local networks to date I’ve always chosen modem/routers and smart switches over them for both my home and the lab. I can't really say if that has been the right choice since there are many routers out there with much better feature sets and Wi-Fi performance compared to even the best modem/routers available currently but at least in terms of space saving and ease of use the advantages are evident from the get go. Still with so many router models currently in the market promising lightning fast wireless speeds thanks to the new 802.11ac standard we feel it's crucial for all of you (including us of course) to know which of those models actually work as advertised. With us today we have one of the latest 802.11ac compatible routers to hit the market by D-Link the DIR-880L Wireless AC1900 Dual Band Gigabit Cloud Router.

D-Link helps you connect to more of everything with our innovative approach to computer networking. From relatively modest beginnings in Taiwan the company has grown over the last 29 years into an exciting global brand offering the latest network solutions. Whether it is for the home consumer, business or service provider we pride ourselves on offering award winning networking products and services. We will continue to lead the way in building networks for people around the world.

For the DIR-880L D-Link has used the Broadcom BCM4708A (running at 800MHz) CPU along with 256MB of DDR3 RAM, 128MB NAND flash memory and two power amplifiers by Skyworks (SE2623L/2.4GHz-SE5003L1/5.0GHz). Now as many of you know we've pointed out numerous times in the past that although much faster than all previous standards the new 802.11ac doesn't really support WiFi speeds of over 1300Mbps so once again in our hands we have a router that supports the simultaneous broadcast of two bands, 802.11n (2.4GHz 600Mbps) and 802.11ac (5GHz 1300Mbps) to achieve the advertised wireless performance number of 1900Mbps. The DIR-880L also features three 5dBi dual-band dipole antennas and supports beamforming technology (focuses the wireless signal where it detects connected devices) with Turbo QAM (for the 802.11n band) a feature which we've seen quite a few times in the past and basically "boosts" wireless performance to 600Mbps from the standard 300/450Mbps (just as long as the receiver supports it). Also available on the DIR-880L are 4 Gigabit Ethernet ports, Gigabit WAN port, USB 3.0 port (right side) and a USB 2.0 port (rear).

Read full article @ NikKTech

G.SKILL RIPJAWS MX780 RGB Laser Gaming Mouse Review

RIPJAWS MX780 is the first entry of G.SKILL in the gaming mouse peripheral market and they have aimed to make a good impression by using good quality materials, a proven Avago ADNS9800 laser sensor with DPI available up to 8200, 512KB internal storage for saving profiles, adjustable weight system and its ambidextrous design allows both lefties and right-handed people to use the product in optimal conditions by simply changing the side grips. Also, we would like to remind of the adjustable mouse back via the supplied tool and the four separate light areas which can be customized via the software interface.

Read full article @ Madshrimps

Google Nexus 6P Review: One of the best smartphones of the year

Last year’s Nexus 6 wasn’t a hugely successful smartphone. For 2015’s successor, Google enlisted Huawei to build a new Nexus in a slightly more manageable body and true high-end hardware under the hood -- two of the main gripes from last year's model. The result is the Nexus 6P, and it’s one of the best Android smartphones you can purchase today.

Read full article @ TechSpot

Kingston HyperX Savage 128GB USB 3.1 Flash Drive Review

Over the past few years USB speeds have really increased! We were stuck on USB 2.0 for quite a long time maxing out at 480 mbps. Not that long ago we were introduced to USB 3.0 which was a significant upgrade up to 5 gbps, which is 10 times the speed of USB 2.0. Just this year we have another upgrade to USB 3.1 which doubles the speed up to 10 gbps. With USB 3.1 with have a whole slew of new devices and of course some of those include flash drives. These make transferring and carry data with you extremely easy. Today we are taking a look at Kingston’s HyperX Savage 128GB USB 3.1 flash drive. This drive features read and write speeds of 350MB/s and 250MB/s respectively, a pretty cool design and a 5-year warranty.

Read full article @ ThinkComputers.org

MSI BIOS update enables overclocking non-K Skylake CPUs

ASRock was first to announce BCLK adjustment in its Z170 motherboard BIOSes.

Read full article @ Hexus

NZXT Hue+ LED Lighting Controller Review

The NZXT Hue+ is an advanced LED controller for those who want to trick out their PC's lighting. The system is simple to install and manage, and NZXT has done its best to make this totally optional add-on into a must-have for PC enthusiasts. At $80, the Hue+ costs as much as some computer cases, but those looking to customize their computer's look should look no further.

The exterior of the Hue+, with its angular plastic shroud, makes it a nice addition to your case. The previous Hue featured large buttons and sat in an external bay, but the Hue+ is meant to be slotted in to a 2.5-inch slot inside your case. The glossy top of the Hue+ easily picks up fingerprints, so you'll want to wipe it clean after installing for maximum aesthetics. There is a small white LED on the top, only visible in certain orientations, that provides a visual indicator that the device is receiving power. Otherwise, the Hue+ is an unobtrusive addition to your system.

Read full article @ Hardware Canucks

Reeven Ouranos

Reeven has a solid contender on their hands with the Ouranos CPU cooler. Offering an offset design for better memory compatibility, it makes a compelling case for itself. Granted, it doesn't hurt that it performs well and is nearly completely silent in most situations.

Read full article @ techPowerUp

Samsung Gear S2 Smartwatch Review: Tizen Excels

The nascent smartwatch market has delivered a number of near-winners thus far. The Apple Watch and Microsoft Band, for example, are better-than-average fitness trackers and smart timepieces. The 2nd generation Moto 360 is impressive from an aesthetics standpoint. The Huawei Watch hits the mark for those looking for a good-looking, functional, timepiece that also happens to feature smartphone notifications. And then, there's Samsung.

In a bid to be first to market, the original Galaxy Gear was launched with a less-than-optimal design, poor battery life, and a camera that wasn't very useful. That was just over two years ago though, and the company has since popped out a multitude of wearables since. The Galaxy Gear 2 eventually arrived, as did the Gear Fit and the original Gear S. For one company to have three distinct smartwatches selling simultaneously makes you wonder if it were just testing multiple designs to see which would take off.

Whatever the case may be, we've now got the Gear S2. It's a clean, no-nonsense looking device, which runs Tizen rather than Android Wear. It follows the design language of a conventional timepiece (unlike the Dick Tracy-styled Galaxy Gear) and it could just be one of the best smartwatches we've seen yet...

Read full article @ HotHardware

Samsung turned our SSD Endurance Experiment into something incredible

TR's SSD Endurance Experiment showed just how many bytes of writes today's SSDs can handle before expiring. We concluded our experiment with a take on Gloria Gaynor's I Will Survive, and now Samsung has turned our version of that song into a real, live, epic performance.

Read full article @ The Tech Report

UtechSmart Venus 16400 DPI Laser MMO Gaming Mouse Review

Up for review today I have a gaming mouse, but this one has lots of buttons, and I mean a lot of them numbering at eighteen in total. The mouse is from UltechSmart, it’s called the Venus, and it’s a gaming mouse for MMO type games but you can use it for anything of course. The mouse is very configurable with five profile options and virtually an unlimited number of colors to choose from and there’s even a weight kit for even more customization to make the mouse your own. I’ve been using the mouse for a while now and I like it a lot, it’s not bad, read on to learn more..


Read full article @ Technogog