Here a roundup of today's reviews and articles:

20 of the Worst PC Setups – January 2016
4K Video Editing PC - February 2016
Acer Predator G6-710 Review
ASRock H97 Anniversary Motherboard Review
Corsair Carbide 400Q Case Review
Gainward GTX 960 Phantom 4GB Review
GeForce GTX TitanX vs. Radeon R9 FuryX
GIGABYTE GTX 980 Ti G1 Gaming Review
HP Pro Slate 8 Review: Nifty Duet Pen, Premium Pricing
Linux Mint 17.3 Rosa Xfce - Absolutely fantastic
NZXT Manta Review
Rise Of The Tomb Raider PC Game Benchmarks
Samsung 950 Pro 256GB / 512GB review: super fast PCIe M.2 SSDs
Swiftech H320 X2 All-In-One Watercooling Kit Review
The Zalman ZM-K700M Mechanical Gaming Keyboard Review

20 of the Worst PC Setups – January 2016

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 January!

Read full article @ ThinkComputers.org

4K Video Editing PC - February 2016

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 4K resolutions.

4K digital video editing requires a hefty amount of processing power, and our video editing PC delivers that in spades. Often overlooked in off-the-shelf PCs is the power supply - a video editing PC will be running longer and more frequently at full load, which stresses the PSU quite a bit. We choose high-end components that will work fine for some years down the road, ensuring stable operation for the rig's entire lifetime.

Read full article @ Hardware.Info

Acer Predator G6-710 Review

Is PC gaming dead or is it on the rebound? That's a debate that never grows old, but PC game revenue appears healthy, and as we head deeper into 2016, a number of big-name manufacturers are looking to cement their place in the eSports arena.

The likes of Lenovo, Asus and Acer, who between them are estimated to have produced a staggering 35 per cent of all PCs shipped in 2015, are all making a big push in terms of gaming PC and hardware. For Acer, this move is realised beneath the Predator umbrella, a sub-brand comprised of high-end gaming desktops, laptops, tablets and monitors.

Read full article @ Hexus

ASRock H97 Anniversary Motherboard Review

Today's LGA1150 is the last H97 board at a mainstream price that will go on the bench for my scrutiny. It's a little different in a couple of interesting ways, as we'll find out.

Read full article @ Toms Hardware

Corsair Carbide 400Q Case Review

Corsair is breaking new ground, for them at least, with the 400Q and 400C in offering a mid tower case that has zero 5.25″ bays. Allowing maximum airflow with the least amount of obstructions. Is the Carbide 400Q a contender for similarly sized cases that feature sound dampening and no 5.25″ bays? That’s one of the questions we’re going to answer in this article for Benchmark Reviews.

Read full article @ Benchmark Reviews

Gainward GTX 960 Phantom 4GB Review

Today we are checking out Gainward’s premier GeForce GTX 960 graphics card, the Phantom 4GB. Equipped with twice the memory buffer of standard cards, it is designed for extreme 1080p gaming. Therefore it will be interesting to see how the Phantom 4GB compares to a 2GB GTX 960...

Released a year ago now the GeForce GTX 960 is still Nvidia’s go to mainstream graphics card for gamers looking to spend around $200. The GTX 960 bangs heads with the Radeon R9 380, as both occupy the same price range and deliver similar performance.

Out of the box the Radeon graphics card typically has an edge over the GTX 960. That said, due to superior efficiency the GeForce can nudge ahead in the hands of those willing to dabble in the art of overclocking.

Read full article @ Legion Hardware

GeForce GTX TitanX vs. Radeon R9 FuryX

With the GeForce GTX TitanX NVIDIA has a very powerful pixel accelerator in its portfolio, which is really expensive at the same time. The AMD Radeon R9 FuryX is also a highly powerful graphics card but comes at a way more reasonable price. In this article we're going to check which card is faster and we're putting this into relation to the price.

Read full article @ ocaholic

GIGABYTE GTX 980 Ti G1 Gaming Review

The GTX 980 Ti was released eight months ago and since then we have seen numerous custom designs which range from the absolutely insane to the more mundane. Regardless of NVIDIA’s board partners’ efforts, the number of new products using the GM200 core has leveled off since the architecture is nearing the end of its lifespan. While not entirely close at hand, both Pascal and AMD’s competing Polaris architectures are about six months away (granted, a lifetime in PC market time) so for the most part everyone is just digging in with their current product stacks.

This situation has led to a bit of stagnation but also some interesting price fluctuations with custom, overclocked cards routinely going for less than NVIDIA’s $649USD reference MSRP. Naturally, with the falling loonie we here in Canada are staring down the barrel of $900+ price points for these cards but there’s not much to be done about that.

Mentioning price provides us with a perfect introduction to Gigabyte’s GTX 980 Ti Gaming. While this is an overclocked and heavily upgraded version of the GTX 980 Ti, it routinely sells for about $650USD or not a dime more than NVIDIA’s reference cards. Gigabyte has also effectively undercut several of their competitors like EVGA’s GTX 980 Ti Superclocked, ASUS’ GTX 980 TI STRIX OC and even MSI’s similarly-named GTX 980 TI Gaming 6G. They seem to have injected some much-needed value into what many believe to be a heavily over-priced segment.

Read full article @ Hardware Canucks

HP Pro Slate 8 Review: Nifty Duet Pen, Premium Pricing

If you like the idea of using a stylus with your mobile device, then you probably prefer the precision and additional functionality over the convenience of a fingertip. That, or you've picked up a brand-new HP Pro Slate 8, a tablet targeted at working professionals that includes a rather useful and unique accessory dubbed the "Duet Pen" that enables some pretty interesting features.

In the HP Pro Slate 8's case, you can still poke its 7.9-inch screen all you want with a finger. The stylus, an accessory that ships with the tablet, isn't an absolute necessity. You don't need it for everyday use but it's definitely a nice feature add...

Read full article @ HotHardware

Linux Mint 17.3 Rosa Xfce - Absolutely fantastic

Redemption: A long, super-enthusiastic review of Linux Mint 17.3 Rosa 64-bit edition with the Xfce desktop, covering live session, dual-boot setup with Windows 7, and post-install use, including look & feel, network support - Wireless, Bluetooth, Samba sharing and printing, multimedia support - MP3, HD video, Flash, smartphone support - Ubuntu Phone, Windows Phone, iPhone, partitioning and slideshow, package management & updates, Nvidia and Broadcom proprietary drivers, applications and extra software, resource usage, stability, performance, responsiveness, hardware support, suspend & resume, visual customization and tweaks, tiny bugs, and more. Have fun.

Read full article @ Dedoimedo

NZXT Manta Review

NZXT has gone from strength to strength with their computer case designs. Over the years we’ve seen them rise up as a prominent force within this category with the Phantom series taking a notable spotlight. One aspect which seems fairly evident with the brand is their passion to innovate and think outside the box and today we’re to look at their very first attempt at designing a case for the Mini-ITX Form Factor.

Read full article @ Vortez

Rise Of The Tomb Raider PC Game Benchmarks

Lara Croft is back on the PC thanks to the highly anticipated release of Rise of the Tomb Raider. NVIDIA, Square Enix and Crystal Dynamics teamed up for some internal testing and found that to get 60 FPS at 1920 x 1080 you'll need a GeForce GTX 970 with the high-detail graphics preset. That feels pretty extreme, so we wanted to take a look ourselves! Read on to see what our own benchmarking tells us on six different AMD Radeon R9 and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 900 series video cards!

Read full article @ Legit Reviews

Samsung 950 Pro 256GB / 512GB review: super fast PCIe M.2 SSDs

Finally: the first fast M.2 SSD has hit the consumer market. The Samsung 950 promises much higher speeds than other currently available SSDs, with max speeds of over two gigabytes per second.

Nearly one and a half years ago, Samsung released the 850 Pro SSD, which was a little faster than its predecessor, the 840 Pro. This drive still used a SATA-600 connection, whose speed limitations have been causing a bottleneck for SSD speeds for quite some time.

Read full article @ Hardware.Info

Swiftech H320 X2 All-In-One Watercooling Kit Review

All-in-one (AIO) water cooling units have brought the performance and silence of water cooling to the masses with the simplicity of installing an air cooler. AIOs offer simple installation without the need to bleed the loop. Simply attach the hardware and power cables and you are all set.

Read full article @ Modders-Inc

The Zalman ZM-K700M Mechanical Gaming Keyboard Review

Zalman joins the market of mechanical gaming keyboards with the ZM-K700M, a keyboard based on Cherry MX switches and with white backlighting. The primary difference between this keyboard and most other gaming keyboards is that Zalman has designed it to perform the majority of its extra functions directly through hardware, independently from the OS.

Read full article @ Anandtech