Here a roundup of today's reviews and articles:

20 of the Worst PC Setups – February 2015
Audience Announces NUE N100 Multisensor Processor
Corsair Carbide 100R Silent Mid-Tower Chassis Review
Corsair Carbide 100R Silent Review
Corsair H80i GT Review
Gaming PC - February 2015
Gigabyte Z97X-UD3H-BK Black Edition Motherboard Review
HD Video Editing PC - February 2015
OCZ ARC 100 480GB SSD Review
Seagate Seven External USB 3.0 Drive Review
SilverStone TS431S 4-Bay miniSAS DAS Storage Tower Review
The state of the desktop email client Thunderbird
Thermaltake Core V51 Chassis Review
Xigmatek Mach Mid-Tower Chassis Review

20 of the Worst PC Setups – February 2015

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 February!

Read full article @ ThinkComputers.org

Audience Announces NUE N100 Multisensor Processor

While Audience is traditionally focused on voice products, today they’re attempting to make their first moves into combined voice recognition and sensor hub products that leverage sensor fusion and neural networks. The NUE N100 is the first of this line of products, which is able to do keyword recognition and can keep the main CPU from waking until a command is received and registered. Audience focused on emphasizing how their solution eliminates the need for additional waiting once the initial wakeup occurs as it can cache the spoken command and feed it into a given system like Google voice actions. In addition, this solution is said to have reduced false wakeup rate, which means that there is far less power wasted on unintended activation. Audience’s solution can cache up to 5 key words, and can accurately distinguish between different people due to their use of neural network-based solutions, and can be programmed either by the end user or the OEM.

Outside of this VoiceQ system, Audience is also introducing MotionQ, which are contextual motion systems. In its current state, using various sensors present on a smartphone or tablet, the motion processing is able to determine whether the device is in a pocket, on a desk or in a person’s hand, whether the device is being held in a sitting, standing, walking or running position, and whether the device is in a car, train, bike, or many other contextual scenarios relying on the neural network algorithms as previously mentioned. The N100 also has OSP support, which means that OEMs can take the N100 and implement custom algorithms in addition to the work that Audience has already done. The N100 will be available for sampling in mid-2015, which means that devices shipping with this chip should appear around in 2016.

Read full article @ Anandtech

Corsair Carbide 100R Silent Mid-Tower Chassis Review

Corsair is one of the most recognizable names in the chassis industry, having many of the most popular chassis’ designs across many different price ranges. They’ve dazzled us with their flagship products such at gargantuan Obsidian 900D and the very funky Carbide 780T, but today I’ll be looking at something a lot further down the range; the budget-friendly 100R Silent. The new chassis isn’t designed to blow you away with extreme performance, but it has been designed to offer you a neat and tidy product, with an affordable price tag to match, so it’ll be interesting to see just how much you get for your money.

Read full article @ eTeknix

Corsair Carbide 100R Silent Review

In the last 6 months we’ve been struggling to keep up with Corsair’s onslaught of product releases. The multi-channel hardware giant has been relentless in their passion to supply enthusiasts with the latest computer tech. Today’s review sees us delve into the computer case arena by looking at yet another release from Corsair, this time from the Carbide Series.

The Carbide Series 100R is a low-cost, entry level computer case which comes in two different versions – standard and silent. The standard version comes with a side window, fan mounts at the top and just one cooling fan whilst the silent version uses closed panels, comes with an additional fan, fan controller and noise reduction material. This case hopes to deliver on styling, features and cost but will it win our seal of approval today? Let’s find out!

Read full article @ Vortez

Corsair H80i GT Review

The second of Corsairs new coolers gets tested in our Corsair H80i GT Review.

Read full article @ HardwareHeaven

Gaming PC - February 2015

This computer system is specifically geared towards gaming. That means a PC with a high-end graphics card and a processor that is fast enough to support the GPU.

The rest of the configuration needs to be balanced as well. Since many gamers also enjoy overclocking their PC to improve performance, it is also important to choose a motherboard and memory that is suitable for this. Keep in mind that you will pay extra for that overclocking potential.

Having the right accessories is also important. The goal of our gaming PC is to be able to run virtually all new PC titles on the highest settings. That means high resolution, high graphics quality, a good frame rate, and surround sound. And let’s not forget a good gaming mouse and a decent keyboard with features to enhance your PC gaming experience.

Read full article @ Hardware.Info

Gigabyte Z97X-UD3H-BK Black Edition Motherboard Review

Longevity and reliability are particularly important purchasing decisions for a component such as a motherboard. Quite simply, your system’s motherboard failing can be considered not too far off a personal disaster. Gigabyte aims to put those reliability concerns at ease with the 168 hour, server-level validation process used on its Black Edition motherboards.

The philosophy of Gigabyte’s Ultra Durable Black Edition series is to offer proven reliability and durability. Gigabyte backs up those quality claims with a certificate of validation from the 168 hour stress test, as well as an enhanced warranty program which covers the motherboard for 5 years.

Read full article @ KitGuru

HD Video Editing PC - February 2015

A few years ago, your PC just couldn't be fast enough for digital video processing. By now every average PC is able to process Standard Definition (PAL 720x576) as well as HD Ready, but technology doesn't stand still. By now just about every smartphone can record in HD or Full HD and the new frontier is Ultra HD, also known as 4K. This resolution and the 'accompanying' codec HEVC / H.265 require seriously powerful hardware.

That's the reason why a powerful PC can still really make a difference. You need a fast processor, lots of storage capacity, and good monitor able to display HD resolutions.

Read full article @ Hardware.Info

OCZ ARC 100 480GB SSD Review

Solid state drives may have been around in the consumer market for roughly 8 years now but they are still considered to be amongst the hottest PC/MAC hardware components aimed towards people who are after something more in terms of reliability and performance compared to regular mechanical drives. Certainly although once such drives were very popular mostly amongst gamers and professionals due to their price decrease over the past 2-3 years they've become a lot more mainstream thus you can find them even in low-cost desktop systems and notebooks. Still not SSDs have the same target audience not only because of their performance, capacity and price but also because of their durability and today we'll be taking a look at the latest model launched by OCZ the ARC 100 which always according to them it excels on all four.

Read full article @ NikKTech

Seagate Seven External USB 3.0 Drive Review

Seagate announced a handful of new products at CES 2015 and let it be known that this year will be the company’s 35th year in the storage business. Among the new products being announced was the Seagate Seven, which true to its name is a 7mm thick portable external drive. That makes it thinner than an iPhone 6 Plus and give it the title of being the World’s thinnest 500GB portable hard drive! Read on to see how it performs!

Read full article @ Legit Reviews

SilverStone TS431S 4-Bay miniSAS DAS Storage Tower Review

Connecting multiple storage drives externally doesn’t work equally well on every connection type. If you were to use a USB 3 connection you would get the speed necessary, but your access times would suffer. If you were to connect it via eSATA you would have the access times, but shared bandwidth between the connected drives.

The solution is a direct SAS connection and the SilverStone TS431S that I’m taking a closer look at today is just such.

Read full article @ eTeknix

The state of the desktop email client Thunderbird

Thunderbird's usage continues to grow according to Mozilla despite the fact that the desktop email client has been put on the backburner by the organization in mid-2012. Kent James, who is serving the chair of the Thunderbird Council currently, detailed in a blog post on Friday that Thunderbird usage continues to expand.

Read full article @ gHacks

Thermaltake Core V51 Chassis Review

The key feature of the Thermaltake Core V51 is its substantial size. It stands 540mm high and 560mm deep, which means it can support an EATX motherboard with eight expansion slots. You’ll get a better idea about the size of Core V51 when you hear it accommodates a graphics card up to 310mm in length without any trouble and if you remove the drive towers you can go all the way to 480mm.

Read full article @ KitGuru

Xigmatek Mach Mid-Tower Chassis Review

I must admit that I love a high-end chassis’ that are packed full of features with a high-end rig installed, as I’m sure many of you do too. However, not everyone has a need for an extreme gaming system, nor the budget for one. For many people, a nice simple chassis that is easy to work with and wallet friendly is what they need and that’s exactly what we have here today.

The Xigmatek Mach isn’t the greatest chassis ever, but that’s because it was never designed to be and with a price tag of just £25, you could pick one up with relative ease. Even our younger readers could afford one after saving their pocket-money for a little while. At this price range, we can’t expect too much from this chassis, but just like any other mid-tower, it’s still got an important job to do; it has to securely house all the components needed for a low-to-mid budget gaming rig.

Read full article @ eTeknix