Here a roundup of today's reviews and articles:

20 of the Worst PC Setups - September 2018
ASUS ROG Cascade Lake-X HEDT motherboard pictured
Cooler Master CK550 Mechanical Keyboard Review
Echo Show 2018 Review
Elgato Stream Deck Mini Review
Gigabyte Aorus B450 Pro WiFi Motherboard Review
GPU Performance Hierarchy: Video Cards Ranked
Run as Administrator: What Does It Mean?

20 of the Worst PC Setups - September 2018

"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 September.

Read full article @ ThinkComputers.org

ASUS ROG Cascade Lake-X HEDT motherboard pictured

We had a chance to see Intel’s upcoming Cascade-Lake-X motherboard at a ‘chilling’ 8086K launch event earlier this year. At the time, the ROG Dominus motherboard was clearly a prototype. Things might have changed since then, but we don’t know if the motherboard is still called Dominus.

According to the picture we are sharing ahead of the ‘fall desktop launch’, ASUS is ready to showcase their next-gen HEDT motherboard for the LGA3647 socket and six-channel memory.

Read full article @ VideoCardz.com

Cooler Master CK550 Mechanical Keyboard Review

The Cooler Master CK550 delivers an all-around great RGB keyboard at a competitive price. When I was a little kid, I was a very picky eater. One of the foods I did not like at all was cheese. I would eat a pizza with cheese on it, but I would not eat other stuff with the yellow substance. One day, I remember someone was going to be bringing burgers from a fast food place and I just wanted a plain burger. However, when the meal arrived, they were all cheeseburgers. Now, to a little kid this is devastating, which was really stupid. I ended up eating the cheeseburger and it was great! I did not like the change at first, but I realized how silly it was. Change at first always seems much worse than it really is, but moving forward or changing to something new can be very good. When I first received the Cooler Master CK550, I was excited that the red switch version arrived, but disappointed that it was Gateron and not Cherry MX. This disappointment was ill-founded, since I have never used Gateron switches before. They can be good or bad, but they are a change nonetheless. Otherwise, I have been using the same keyboard for years, which has Cherry MX Reds, so I have become exceedingly comfortable on this keyboard. Trying out a new keyboard at first always has its apparent flaws, but after some use a more objective picture can be seen. Read on to see how the Cooler Master CK550 turned out!

Read full article @ APH Networks

Echo Show 2018 Review

Even YouTube makes an appearance on the new $229 Echo Show. Lost among the slew of Amazon's recent device announcements was an update to the Echo Show. While Amazon absolutely mentioned the second-generation smart display, you may have overlooked it completely amidst all the other devices that debuted: a new Echo Dot, the Chromecast-like Echo Input, that infamous smart microwave, etc. But while it may not have grabbed as many headlines, Amazon gave the $229 Echo Show a fairly significant facelift with a bigger screen, more powerful speakers, and a redesigned outer shell.

The Echo Show remains the primary device that gives Alexa a "face" of sorts. But with that face comes the challenge of managing users' interactions with Alexa. Amazon's other Echo devices make Alexa interactions painfully simple—ask, and the virtual assistant answers. The Echo Show, and similar devices, both enrich and complicate interactions with virtual assistants with its touchscreen display.

Read full article @ ArsTechnica

Elgato Stream Deck Mini Review

Thanks to its 6 LCD keys and available actions/commands the Stream Deck Mini by Elgato can be a very useful tool for gamers and consumers in general who are just now taking their first steps in the world of online Streaming.

Aside all the essential and somewhat basic peripherals computer owners need to own (with the keyboard, mouse and mouse pad clearly occupying the first spots) there are countless more in the market aimed at people who want or need something "extra". For example LED illumination is far from what we'd call essential both in hardware and peripherals alike (it can come handy however when you try typing in the dark) but because of their looks such products have been extremely popular especially among gamers and enthusiasts. The same can also be said about numerous "niche" electronics which are far from necessary but the vast variety/selection for all pockets, tastes and needs is also one of the things one has to love about this specific market. The Stream Deck Mini by Elgato is the very first product released after their acquisition by CORSAIR and it has been with us for almost three weeks now.

Elgato is the leading provider of hardware and software for content creators, leveraging decades of experience to develop widely-accessible products that empower all creators to produce high-quality, professional content. A leader in game capture, Elgato offers four powerful game capture cards, the Stream Deck controller, and accompanying software that enables creators to easily record, upload, and livestream professional content. Designed in Germany and California, Elgato products are distributed by major retailers in over eighty countries around the world. In July 2018, Elgato was acquired by CORSAIR, and remains a separate brand within CORSAIR.

Read full article @ NikKTech

Gigabyte Aorus B450 Pro WiFi Motherboard Review

AMD B450 AORUS Motherboard with Hybrid Digital PWM, IntelDual Band 802.11ac WIFI, Dual M.2 with Dual Thermal Guards, Audio ALC1220-VB, Intel GbE LAN with cFosSpeed, CEC 2019 ready

Supports AMD 2nd Generation Ryzen/ Ryzen with Radeon Vega Graphics/ 1st Generation Ryzen Processors
Dual Channel Non-ECC Unbuffered DDR4, 4 DIMMs
Intel Dual Band 802.11ac WIFI & BT 4.2
HDMI, DVI-D Ports for Multiple Display
Integrated I/O Shield of Ultra Durable Design
Dual Ultra-Fast NVMe PCIe Gen3 M.2 (x4, x2) with Dual Thermal Guards
ALC1220-VB Enhanced 114dB(Rear) / 110dB(Front) SNR in Microphone with WIMA Audio Capacitors
RGB FUSION with Multi-Zone LED Light Show Design, Supports Digital LED & RGB LED Strips
Intel GbE LAN with cFosSpeed Internet Accelerator Software
Smart Fan 5 Features 6 Temperature Sensors and 5 Hybrid Fan Headers with FAN STOP
APP Center Including EasyTune and Cloud Station Utilities
CEC 2019 Ready, Save Power with a Single Click

Read full article @ FunkyKit

GPU Performance Hierarchy: Video Cards Ranked

When you want to run games or do high-end creative work like 4K video editing, your graphics card plays the biggest role in determining performance. Get a good GPU, and you can play recent games at smooth frame rates; get a great one and you can enjoy those games at high resolution, with the special effects turned up.

To help you decide which graphics card you need, we've developed the GPU hierarchy below, which ranks all the current chips from fastest to slowest. For comparison purposes, we've assigned each a score where the fastest card gets 100 and all others are graded relative to it. These numbers are based on the geometric mean fps from our Far Cry 5, Forza Motorsport 7, and Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation benchmarks, giving us a good mix of game genres and APIs.

Read full article @ Tom's Hardware

"Run as Administrator": What Does It Mean?

As a TechSpot reader you've surely opened software as an admin on Windows before -- maybe as recently as today -- so the function probably isn't foreign to you. However, we were curious to know more about what happens under the hood of Windows when you tell the operating system to run a program as an administrator, and why this process is necessary in the first place.

Read full article @ TechSpot