Here a roundup of todays reviews and articles:

20 of the Worst PC Setups
ASUS PB287Q 28-in 4K Single Stream 60Hz Monitor Review
Complete Guide to Surface Pro 3
CPU Overclock, Video Card Overclock, Backup and Benchmark Software Roundup 05/2014
Five Free VPN Services You Should Check Out
MSI B85M Gaming Motherboard Review
MSI Radeon R9 280 OC Review
Noctua NH-D15 Review
Test-Driving NVIDIA's GRID Virtual GPU Cloud Computing
The TR Podcast 155: Surface Pro 3 and a trio of gaming mice
Watch Dogs Review
Watch_Dogs Review
X2 Aurel Noise Cancellation Headset Review

20 of the Worst PC Setups

I’m sure at some point you had a bad PC setup. Maybe moving into a new place, waiting for a new desk to arrive or you just ran out of room. I can remember my horrible PC setups from when I was living at the dorms in college. If you have ever ventured over to the Shitty Battlestations sub-reddit you will find a lot of horrible PC setups. We will are going to pick 20 each month and feature them as 20 of the Worst PC setups for that month. Here are some of the bad ones from May!

Read full article @ ThinkComputers.org

ASUS PB287Q 28-in 4K Single Stream 60Hz Monitor Review

Legit Reviews jumped onto the 4K bandwagon back in 2013 with the Sharp PN-K321 32-inch class 4K LED-Backlit display. At the time this monitor was around $3500 and the display defaulted to 30 Hz, which meant that games weren’t smooth. In order to produce a 4K Ultra HD display with a more user friendly 60Hz refresh rate, monitor makers are moving over to a single stream (single tile) implementation. This means that as long as you are using DisplayPort 1.2-capable graphics solution that you should be able to just plug and play. There is just a single stream to be had, so the video card driver issues that once plagued so many are gone and 3840x2160 at a 60 Hz refresh rate should be standard. One of the first displays to support for 4K resolutions at 60Hz via DisplayPort's Single-Stream Transport (SST) mode is the ASUS PB287Q. Read on to see what the ASUS PB287Q has to offer.

Read full article @ Legit Reviews

Complete Guide to Surface Pro 3

Everything you need to know, all in one place. From the moment that Microsoft announced its innovative Surface Pro 3, I've been steadily documenting my experiences with the device as I use it and learn more. This guide provides access to everything I've written about Surface Pro 3, and will be updated as I publish my review and other articles in the days, weeks and months ahead.

Read full article @ WinSupersite

CPU Overclock, Video Card Overclock, Backup and Benchmark Software Roundup 05/2014

OCinside.de updated the overclocking software page again with dozens of small tools to tune, benchmark and test the PC components.
If you like to overclock, backup, or monitor your PC hardware or if you just like to check your components, this is the right place for you.
There are useful older Shareware and Freeware tools, as well as the latest tweaking tools to change the CPU multiplier, voltage or FSB and to overclock current nVidia or AMD video cards in Windows 8.1, Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, Linux and Mac OS X.
Additionally, the latest SiSoftware Sandra, FinalWire AIDA64, Futuremark 3DMark and PCMark benchmark programs are hosted in the most current version on the ocinside.de Servers.
The overview contains direct downloads, links to the developers, a small description and the size of the respective software.

Read full article @ OcInside.de

Five Free VPN Services You Should Check Out

Virtual private networks were conceived to connect computers in different geographic locations as if they were part of one same local network. They rely on encryption, tunnel protocols and masking mechanisms to fulfill their purpose in a reliable and secure fashion. These same attributes which are indispensable to create safe networks through the internet have made VPNs the go to technology for anyone looking to keep their location and online activities private.

In general, totally free high quality VPN services are few and far between. The current business model being used by some is to offer a free basic application with the option to upgrade to a paid, more feature rich version. However, for users simply looking for some extra privacy or sporadically accessing a geo-restricted website these free versions get the job done.

Read full article @ Techspot

MSI B85M Gaming Motherboard Review

For the longest time Gaming and Overclocking were considered the same thing when it came to motherboard design. This basically grouped the two activities together making the overclocking side somewhat limited and the gaming side more expensive. This wasn’t a bad thing and gave gamers an excuse to experiment with performance tuning. The problem is most modern systems are plenty powerful and gaming performance is no longer determined by the motherboard but rather by the accessories you choose to install.

In this review we will be looking at the MSI B85M Gaming. This is an entry level gaming motherboard designed for the latest Haswell based processors and using the “Business” 8-series chipset called the B85. For those of you that don’t know the B85 chipset is similar to the Z87 in terms of performance but doesn’t allow overclocking. As a result the price should be lower making it almost perfect for the gamer on a budget.

Read full article @ Hardware Asylum

MSI Radeon R9 280 OC Review

Today TechwareLabs is taking a look at the MSI Radeon R9 280 OC. The Twin Frozr is known to be one of the best coolers available and with a factory overclock in the mix as well, this card shows some promise. Read on to see how it stacks up.

Read full article @ TechwareLabs.com

Noctua NH-D15 Review

We will put the Noctua NH-D15 dual-fan heatpipe cooler to the test in a review today. The new flagship product from Noctua is huge in both size and performance. The successor for the NH-D14 premium CPU cooler has a six heatpipe dual radiator design to improve on cooling performance and noise levels. Obviously what catches the eye is that dual radiator allowing you to use one or even two 140mm fans (included).

In an extensive and impressive line of CPU coolers Noctua recently added a new flagship product, the Noctua NH-D15. And, I know that I have mentioned this a couple of times before, there is merely a handful of manufacturers out there that offer processor coolers of the caliber that Noctua offers. These are the guys that make kit and gear that really stand out in the cooling arena. I consider Noctua to be a member of that small selection of top dog manufacturers that never seem to fail with their products. Ever since we got our grubby little paws on one of the first coolers they made (many years ago), we have been nothing but impressed. To date that sentiment has not changed. With every product review that passed by, ever since Noctua started making cooling solutions, the product reviews have been mentioning nothing other than quality and low noise. Noctua's heatpipe design really works well -- next to that they have a trump card -- as they have amongst the best fan designs in the business. When you start to accumulate design and innovation like that, you just know you can't go wrong with a Noctua cooler. Looking at this from Noctua's side, that must be a little weird and even complicated as it is a daunting task to uphold the level of quality and performance they have set for themselves. None the less, Noctua is trying to raise the bar even higher, with the biggest and most bad-ass cooler they have ever put on the market to date, the NH-D15.

Read full article @ Guru3D

Test-Driving NVIDIA's GRID Virtual GPU Cloud Computing

NVIDIA's GRID is a virtual GPU technology that allows for hardware acceleration in a virtual environment. It's designed to run in concert with products from Citrix, VMWare, and Microsoft, and to address some of the weaknesses of these applications. The problem with many conventional Virtual Desktop Interfaces (VDIs) is that they're often either too slow for advanced graphics work or unable to handle 3D workloads at all. Now, with GRID, NVIDIA is claiming that it can offer a vGPU passthrough solution that allows remote users to access a virtualized desktop environment built around a high-end CPU and GPU. The test systems the company is using for these 24-hour test drives all use a GRID K520. That's essentially two GK104 GPUs on a single PCB with 8GB of RAM...

NVIDIA announced that it would offer a free 24-hour test drive of NVIDIA GRID to anyone who wanted to see what the technology could do. We took the company up on its offer and what we've seen is damned impressive.

Read full article @ HotHardware

The TR Podcast 155: Surface Pro 3 and a trio of gaming mice

Don't miss this jam-packed episode with your favorite TR panelists, two wonderful guests, three gaming mice, and much more.

Read full article @ The Tech Report

Watch Dogs Review

If you're a PC gamer pissed off that GTA V has not come to our beloved platform, forget that and get Watch Dogs instead. Rockstar may not support the PC gaming community, but Ubisoft continues to do so and the PC remains the best place to experience the studio's games. This is especially true if you're an NVIDIA user, as you get to enjoy TXAA and HBAO+ for even prettier graphics, but even without those two things, the game is great. In fact, unlike Batman: Arkham Origins, where you were really missing out if you couldn't enjoy PhysX and Turbulence, those features aren't utilized in Watch Dogs and thus it isn't as "detrimental" to the experience if you happen to choose the red camp over the green camp.

Read full article @ OCC

Watch_Dogs Review

Watch_Dogs was announced to a great deal of fanfare at Ubisoft's E3 2012 press conference, swiftly gaining a media narrative as the first truly next-generation title. More so both presentation and marketing latched onto the Zeitgeist surrounding the potential for a monolithic surveillance state - real or imagined - administered by powerful corporations tracking your every move. The Edward Snowden leaks and further revelations on the nature of government spying by the NSA et al unsurprisingly lent Watch_Dogs an aura of relevancy long before concrete details of the project were known.

Trailers looked stunning, naturally, but the major development milestone was the concept of drop-in multiplayer – playing a game which was for all intents and purposes single player and then being 'invaded' by competing players to fight over some objective. And yet even though hacking was a major plot point the mechanics were heavily downplayed, giving way to fare more in common with major action/adventure franchises such as Grand Theft Auto or Uncharted. Nonetheless being able to do all this in a near seamless open world is alluring.

Unfortunately since its announcement Watch_Dogs went through a series of delays; at one stage due to be a launch title for the PS4, the game was pushed to the Spring (and finally May 27th) with only weeks to go. Hopefully Ubisoft have had enough time to smooth out the rough edges and unveil a title which excels on all platforms.

Read full article @ Vortez

X2 Aurel Noise Cancellation Headset Review

X2 Products comes to us from a team of PC enthusiasts based in the Netherlands. X2 has sent over for review today the X2 Aurel audio headphones with passive noise cancellation. Despite having an in-line microphone, the Aurel seem to be emphasized more for their audio headphone performance rather than portrayed as a true gaming headset. X2 advertises the Aurel series 2.0 as genuine audio headphones designed for style and functionality with gold-plated cables, passive noise cancellation and superb and crystal clear sound.

Read full article @ OCIA.net