Here a roundup of today's reviews and articles:

20 of the Worst PC Setups – April 2016
AMD releases Radeon R3 SSD range
CM Storm Quick Fire XTi Gaming Keyboard
Comtrend PG-9172 Powerline Adapter Review: G.hn Gets Primed for Retail Push
Corsair Carbide Spec-Alpha Case Review: Solid looks, feature packed, great value
Corsair M65 Pro RGB Mouse Review
Cracked 2012 Nexus 7 Repair: Worth It Or A $55 Mistake?
Enermax Revolution X't II 750W PSU Review
Gigabyte Z170-Gaming K3 Motherboard Review
How to dual-boot Windows 10 alongside an Insider Preview build
HP Unveils Premium Chromebook: 3K Display, Intel Core M, 16 GB of RAM and USB-C
Intel Core i7 7700K Kaby Lake CPU benchmarks leaked
Intel NUC NUC6i5SYK Skylake Mini PC Review
Mirror's Edge Catalyst Beta Preview, Performance, And Impressions
MyDigitalSSD Bullet Proof 5 Eco M.2 SSD Review (480GB) – Untouchable Value
Phanteks Evolv ATX Tempered Glass Edition Review
Phiaton BT 110 Bluetooth Headset Review
Pittasoft BlackVue DR650GW-2CH Car Dashcam Review
Ubuntu 16.10 Won’t Use Unity 8 By Default
Ultra High End Gaming Notebook Roundup
Windows 10 Adoption Rate Slows Briefly in April

20 of the Worst PC Setups – April 2016

I’m sure at some point you’ve 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 April!

Read full article @ ThinkComputers.org

AMD releases Radeon R3 SSD range

Competitively priced SSDs use TLC NAND and Silicon motion SM2256KX controller.

Read full article @ Hexus

CM Storm Quick Fire XTi Gaming Keyboard

CM Storm's Quick Fire line of products includes a wealth of different options. Today, we will take a look at their fully sized multi-color backlit gaming keyboard dubbed the XTi. Like other recent Quick Fire keyboards, it uses Cherry MX key mechanisms and has a standard US-layout.

Read full article @ techPowerUp

Comtrend PG-9172 Powerline Adapter Review: G.hn Gets Primed for Retail Push

The battle between HomePlug and HomeGrid to emerge as the de-facto powerline networking standard was quite interesting between 2010 and 2013. However, despite silicon getting demonstrated at various trade shows, G.hn was unable to get a retail product out for a long time. This changed last summer, when Comtrend introduced the PG-9172, a 1200 Mbps G.hn powerline adapter. In this review, we take a look at the performance of the Comtrend PG-9172, and how it compares to some of the HomePlug products already in the market. With Arris launching a suite of G.hn networking products under the RipCurrent branding last month, we also analyze whether G.hn is finally ready for retail prime time.

Read full article @ Anandtech

Corsair Carbide Spec-Alpha Case Review: Solid looks, feature packed, great value

The ATX Mid-Tower has always been a favorite of PC builders. It can be transported with relative ease, while still managing to hold a respectable amount of very high-end hardware. The Spec-Alpha is Corsair's latest entry to the market and has gamers squarely in its sights. Priced at $80, this is a case that we very much expect to be a dominant force for a few reasons.

Read full article @ Techspot

Corsair M65 Pro RGB Mouse Review

At the end of 2014, we reviewed Corsair’s M65 gaming mouse. Now we have an updated version, named the M65 Pro. Aimed at FPS gamers – the M65 Pro has a healthy feature-set and certainly looks good on paper. Today we see how it fares in the real world.

Read full article @ KitGuru

Cracked 2012 Nexus 7 Repair: Worth It Or A $55 Mistake?

Everyone loves a good-looking glass screen. But scratch-resistant tempered glass likes to shatter. When it does, where do you draw the line on repair-worthiness?

Read full article @ Toms Hardware

Enermax Revolution X't II 750W PSU Review

It has been a really odd spring in New England this year, we have gone from summer temps to end winter temps in a matter of hours. Is this a symptom of global warming or is it just a fact of living in New England that you never know can predict what mother nature will decide to throw around. Personally, I feel like regions of the world go through heating and cooling cycles, although I am sure humans have effects on them. I don’t want to live without using electricity but I try and do what I can to limit that use to the best of my ability by turning off the lights when not in the room etc. But what about electronic equipment that gets left on all the time.

I know in my house my main computer gets left on all the time. Sometimes I need to remote into it at a friend’s house to get a file in order to fix something, or even just to be a bit more secure in certain circumstances. Usually the day I do a shutdown on the machine and leave it off is the day I find myself needing to access it. Now of course there are ways around this problem with wake on LAN but those technologies tend to be flaky. So what I do is size my power supply appropriately and try and have the most efficient one I can, especially considering the majority of the time the machine is in an idle state.

Read full article @ HiTech Legion

Gigabyte Z170-Gaming K3 Motherboard Review

Gigabyte’s Z170-Gaming K3 motherboard costs just £95 which makes it the most affordable Gaming branded Z170 motherboard in the UK. Yet, you may still be pleasantly surprised by how much you get for your money with the Z170-Gaming K3 – few sacrifices have been made to reach such an aggressive price point.

Read full article @ KitGuru

How to dual-boot Windows 10 alongside an Insider Preview build

Do you want to test the upcoming features of Windows 10 without upgrading your PC? Use this guide to setup a dual-boot system with the latest Insider Preview build.

The advantages with a dual-boot setup on your computer is that enables you to run two different operating systems without affecting each installation configurations, you can run programs that may not be compatible with other versions, and you don't have hardware restrictions as you would using a virtualization solution.

If you're a Windows 10 user, you may be tempted to install early preview builds of the operating system, which Microsoft makes available through the Windows Insider Program so that you can test upcoming features and changes.

Read full article @ Windows Central

HP Unveils Premium Chromebook: 3K Display, Intel Core M, 16 GB of RAM and USB-C

HP has announced a new family of Chromebooks, which  are powered by Intel’s high-performance processors and feature stylish design, aluminum body, high-resolution display and even Bang & Olufsen speakers. The new laptops will not be as affordable as many other mobile PCs running Google Chrome OS and will not be as powerful as Google’s Pixel, however, this is what HP believes to be the right balance between performance, style, portability and price.

When Acer and Samsung introduced their first notebooks based on Google’s Chrome OS in mid-2011, they praised their low price and mainstream computing capabilities. At the time, Chrome OS was a mystery for most people, netbooks were relatively popular and it made sense for the aforementioned PC makers and Google to address the entry-level segment of the market with something very affordable. As Chrome OS gained traction, PC makers began to install higher-performing components into their Chromebooks. However, they were still not ready to address the high-end market segment with such PCs, which is why Google released its Pixel laptop in 2013. The Chromebook Pixel is one the most advanced and stylish Chromebooks ever made because of its Core i7 “Broadwell” CPU, a display with 2560×1700 resolution and 3:2 aspect ratio. But, the Pixel costs $999 and not all users are ready to invest that sum in a Chromebook. Fortunately, different PC makers offer various systems that attempt to replicate some of the Pixel’s features. HP decided to build its own competitor for Google’s Pixel and while the product is not exactly affordable, it has a better screen than most Chromebooks and a number of other advanced features.

Read full article @ Anandtech

Intel Core i7 7700K Kaby Lake CPU benchmarks leaked

According to the results, the Core i7 7700K is a quad-core chip running at 3.60GHz (up to 4.2GHz Turbo) and features eight threads, 8MB of L3 cache, and includes integrated graphics with 24 execution units and the same 1,150MHz clockspeed as the Core i7 6700K (Intel HD Graphics 530, GT2, 24 units).
Running at the 4.20GHz Turbo clock frequency in Windows 10 x64 (and perhaps using an engineering sample), the benchmarks show 118.71 GOPS (giga-operations per second) across eight threads, 313.84 megapixels per-second in the multimedia test, 35.30 GOPS in the Microsoft .NET arithmetic benchmark, 5.59GB/s cryptographic performance, 23.2 nanoseconds DDR4 latency, and 37.41 megapixels per-second GPU performance.

Read full article @ Fudzilla

Intel NUC NUC6i5SYK Skylake Mini PC Review

The size of the PC market has been flat to decreasing in recent years, but Intel has always found ways to maintain solid profitability in their PC division. Right now Intel’s strategy appears to be focusing on the growing 2 in 1s and PC gaming market, but there is also growth and profitability to be had with the Intel NUC mini PC lineup. Intel has recently released their 4th generation NUC code named ‘Swift Canyon’ that features the latest 6th Generation Intel Core ‘SkyLake’ series of processors. Intel has also moved over to DDR4 memory for the very first time with this series, but if you wanted to see a Thunderbolt part on a Core i3 or a Core i5 NUC model you’ll have to keep on waiting.

The Skylake powered NUCs have been around for several months now, but we just recently got our hands on one and have been able to take it out for a test drive. The NUC Kit NUC6i5SYK / NUC6i5SYH are the mainstream Intel Core i5 powered models that we’ll be looking at closer today. The units have the same internal components, but the NUC6i5SYK ($376.99) comes with an enclosure that doesn’t support the room required for a 2.5″ storage drive while the NUC6i5SYH ($356.99) comes with a taller enclosure and cables that does support a 2.5″ drive. Both models feature the same hardware inside and have the same level of performance. The processor Intel is using on these models would be the 6th generation Intel Core i5-6260U processor with Intel Iris graphics 540 that has 64MB of eDRAM. This model has much improved graphics thanks to the Intel Iris Graphics 540 and is arguably the most wanted new feature for this NUC generation.

Read full article @ Legit Reviews

Mirror's Edge Catalyst Beta Preview, Performance, And Impressions

Fans of the original Mirror's Edge will be happy to hear that a follow-up title is in the works, dubbed Mirror's Edge Catalyst. ME Catalyst revisits the dystopian world of the original game with a fresh new story that expands on the origins of protagonist Faith Connors. The beta test just wrapped up last week. It offered a brief window into the look and feel of ME Catalyst, which is the unofficial reboot of the original 2008 parkour adventure from developer EA DICE...

Read full article @ HotHardware.Com

MyDigitalSSD Bullet Proof 5 Eco M.2 SSD Review (480GB) – Untouchable Value

We’ve been able to test our fair share of SSDs over the years and, to this date, there remains a constant. Prices drop. Where we once saw a 32GB SSD peak at $5000 in 2007, today’s world is vastly different and 1TB SSDs are now available at just over the $300 mark. Value is key in technology and has always been. On the test bench today, we have the MyDigitalSSD Bullet Proof 5 Eco M.2 480GB SATA 3 SSD and this SSD just may be the best value available for the dollar right now at $129.99. To think that this little SSD is just shy of that .25/GB mark is incredible…but can it perform?

Read full article @ The SSD Review

Phanteks Evolv ATX Tempered Glass Edition Review

You need to build a tidy PC inside the Phanteks Evolv ATX Tempered Glass Edition as both side panels are full frame tempered glass with a tiny painted black bezel so absolutely everything inside the case is on show. In addition to that Phanteks encourages you to light inside both panels with an RGB LED kit, which means there is simply no place to hide a sloppy build or dubious cabling.

Read full article @ KitGuru

Phiaton BT 110 Bluetooth Headset Review

With the BT 110 water-resistant earbuds, Phiaton sees to it that your are protected in sweaty, and rainy conditions. There are a handful of excellent Bluetooth wireless headsets in the sub-$100 segment, which is why Benchmark Reviews takes a closer look at the Phiaton BT 110 Compact Bluetooth 4.0 Earphones with Mic to determine if its price is reflected in the performance.

Read full article @ Benchmark Reviews

Pittasoft BlackVue DR650GW-2CH Car Dashcam Review

The DR650GW-2CH may not improve on the DR550GW-2CH as much as we had hoped but it does offer improved image quality and adds remote cloud access in the already long list of available features.

Read full article @ NikKTech

Ubuntu 16.10 Won’t Use Unity 8 By Default

Unity 8 will not ship as the default desktop in Ubuntu 16.10, the Ubuntu desktop team has said. Yakkety Yak will ship the tried and trusty — or tired and dusty, depending on your point of view — Unity 7 desktop as the default desktop environment.

Read full article @ OMG! Ubuntu!

Ultra High End Gaming Notebook Roundup

Gaming notebooks have gone from brick-like, underperforming duds to platforms that can rival all but the most powerful of desktops in a relatively short amount of time. Much of this change has been brought about by new graphics, storage and processor architectures that put an emphasis upon efficiency without sacrificing high level performance. The result is some increasingly blurred lines between desktops and more mobile platforms.

No other category personifies this shift better than the high end gaming notebook category and that’s exactly what we’ll be focusing on in this roundup. While all of the usual players like ASUS, Origin, Eurocom, Gigabyte, Acer and MSI are present and accounted for in this market, there’s not all that much variation from one product to another. AMD has for the most part been pushed out of every $1500+ price point since their processor and GPUs just haven’t been able to compete on the efficiency against alternatives from Intel and NVIDIA. We’re actually starting to see fully-enabled desktop components make their way into the portable space.

The performance delta between desktops and notebooks may have shrunk but that doesn’t mean high end gaming laptops are what I would call inexpensive. The price / performance ratio still lies very much upon the shoulders of desktop PCs and you’ll still need to make some pretty large financial sacrifices if you want to combine portability with high in-game framerates.

Read full article @ Hardware Canucks

Windows 10 Adoption Rate Slows Briefly in April

Microsoft saw a little slowdown in Windows 10 adoption for April, but its nothing to worry about.

Read full article @ WinSupersite