Here a roundup of the latest reviews and articles:

30 750-850 Watt Power Supplies Review
Acer Iconia B1 Tablet Review
ASUS Rampage IV Black Edition Motherboard Review
CM Storm Alcor and CM Storm Mizar Review
CM Storm Pulse-R Aluminum Gaming Headset Review
Corsairs Obsidian Series 450D enclosure reviewed
Creative Airwave Wireless Bluetooth Speaker Review
GeForce GTX Titan vs. GTX 780 Ti
In Win tou Review: All-Glass Case Offers Plenty of Flair, for a Price
iRocks Spirit Cocoon Illuminated Mouse Review
iSAW EXtreme Action Camera Review
Jawbone Up24 Review
Kingston 32GB DataTraveler microDUO OTG USB Flash Drive Reviewed
Kingston SDXC UHS-1 Speed Class 3 Flash Card (64GB) Review
Megacon 2014 Mega Gallery 2
Netgear VueZone VZSX2800 Wireless Surveillance Camera Kit Review
Rosewill RGS-108P POE Gigabit Network Switch
Sapphire R9 280X Vapor-X Tri-X OC Video Card Review
Sapphire R9 290X Tri-X Edition Review
Sapphire Radeon R9 270 2GB Dual-X Edition Video Card Review
SilverStone Grandia GD08 HTPC Case Review
SilverStone Raven RVZ01: One Of The Best Mini-ITX Cases For Building A Linux/SteamOS PC
The Facebook, Oculus deal makes sense for everyone
Wavemaster STAX 2.1 Speaker Video Review
What is an SSD

30 750-850 Watt Power Supplies Review

Power supplies with 750 to 850 watt are very popular among enthusiasts with serious gaming rigs. We tested and compared 30 different models.

If you are configuring a gaming pc with a powerful graphics card you will most likely be choosing a power supply of 750 to 850 watts. Our test system consists of a Core i7 3960X, a X79 motherboard and a single SSD, paired with a high end graphics card it will draw around 305 to 400 watt on average. Obviously a socket 1150 based system will use less, but especially if you start over clocking you can easily use another 100 watts. Considering that power supplies are the most efficient when operating between 50 and 70 percent of their maximum wattage a 750 watt power supply is a good choice for a gaming rig. With a 850 watt model you could start looking at adding a second graphics card. Another thing to consider is that the fan inside a power supply will start to spin faster as you are drawing more watts from it, thus creating more noise.

The amount of power supplies you can choose from in this segment is massive. We asked several large brands to sent us their latest models and together with some previously tested models we have a total of 30 different models for this test.

Read full article @ Hardware.Info

Acer Iconia B1 Tablet Review

The Acer Iconia B1 is a low-cost, seven-inch tablet with a MediaTek MT8317T processor (two Cortex-A9 cores, 1,2 GHz, PowerVR SGX531 graphics engine at 200 MHz), 1024x600 touchscreen, 512 MiB of RAM and 16 GiB of storage space (also sold with 8 GiB). It has a VGA (640x480) front camera for video chat, and the operating system is the Android 4.1 ("Jelly Bean"). Let's test it and see if it is a good buy.

Read full article @ Hardware Secrets

ASUS Rampage IV Black Edition Motherboard Review

As you will see today, the old axiom that you can't improve upon perfection is just not true anymore...at least when you give ASUS two years to work on it. Although the Rampage IV Extreme was by no means starting to show its age, you had to expect that ASUS would react to the launch of Intel's flagship Ivy Bridge-E LGA2011 processors with an optimized new flagship motherboard of their own. The result is the Rampage IV Black Edition. This is only the second such Black Edition model to appear from the Taiwanese manufacturer, the previous being the Rampage III Black Edition, and it is clearly positioned as the undisputed champ of all LGA2011 motherboards on the market today.

Starting from the basics, the Rampage IV Black Edition, also referred to as the RIVBE, is based on the X79 chipset and takes full advantage of its capabilities. This model features a full complement of eight DDR3 memory slots, which allows for up to 64GB of RAM and overclocked memory speeds up to DDR3-2800. It has four mechanical PCI-E 3.0 x16 slots with support for both 4-way SLI and 4-way CrossFireX. On the storage front, there are six SATA 6Gb/s ports, four SATA 3Gb/s ports, two eSATA 6Gb/s, six USB 3.0 ports, four USB 2.0 ports, as well as a number of USB headers allowing for further expansion. Rounding out the connectivity is the onboard dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi/Bluetooth 4.0 with an external antenna.

Read full article @ Hardware Canucks

CM Storm Alcor and CM Storm Mizar Review

A few days ago Cooler Master has introduced the two computer mice CM Storm Mizar and Alcor.
It is becoming harder to find good sounding names for computer hardware.
In this case, however, Cooler Master managed to choose two names for their latest creation, arising not from imagination, because at Mizar and Alcor are two stars that are located in the constellation Big Mouse uh Ursa Major.
But instead of the evening view of the starry sky, we consider in this review to take a look at the two shooting stars at hardware heaven.

Read full article @ OcInside

CM Storm Pulse-R Aluminum Gaming Headset Review

Regarding gaming headsets and other gaming related peripherals, there are really a lot of brands competing in this market such as CM Storm, Steelseries, Ozone Gaming Gear, Mionix, just to name a few. They all have different types of products featuring various aesthetical traits, special features, striking looks, and much more.

We do need some kind of sound device with our computers, since a desktop does not typically have a speaker built-in. If you like music, play games or simply watch movies on your computer, then I really recommend a good set of speakers or a headset/headphones. With these we will just have much a better sound experience then we would with sound from a monitor. One aspect that I really like to see on a headset is good comfort and ergonomics. For instance; if you watch a movie, listen to music, or if you are in the middle of a multiplayer game it is always nice if the headset you are wearing sits comfortably on your head. Otherwise you will the experience painful. Secondly, I really like to see retractable microphones on a headset; removable microphones can get lost and permanent microphones can really get in your way. I am also a really big fan of braided cables so to see that (or flat tangle free cables) is also great. And at last a really obvious thing is the sound quality, if you buy a headset you do want to have some good graded sound quality.

Read full article @ FunkyKit

Corsairs Obsidian Series 450D enclosure reviewed

Corsair has added another case to its Obsidian Series family. The 450D is more compact than other ATX models in the lineup, but it still fits full-sized motherboards and plenty of other hardware. It's no slouch in the cooling department, either. Read on for a closer look.

Read full article @ The Tech Report

Creative Airwave Wireless Bluetooth Speaker Review

Whoa. That’s a lot bigger than I thought it was going to be. That was my initial reaction when I first saw the Creative Airwave Wireless Bluetooth Speaker. It’s not like I haven’t seen a broad range of Bluetooth speakers before, but you would have never guessed these kinds of dimensions based on the photos you see of the Airwave. Does this mean that this particular speaker is totally large and in charge or is it just unnecessarily big for no reason in particular?

Read full article @ MEGATech

GeForce GTX Titan vs. GTX 780 Ti

A gamer simply can't get enough graphics power in their rig, which makes the upgrade question omnipresent. To show you whether it makes sense to upgrade from one generation to another we created this series of articles, where we will compare graphics cards from different generations. Today we're having a close look at the differences between the GeForce GTX Titan and the GeForce GTX 780 Ti.

Read full article @ ocaholic

In Win tou Review: All-Glass Case Offers Plenty of Flair, for a Price

I recently helped a friend build a high-end gaming system -- somewhat of a 'spare no expense' deal with an Intel Extreme Edition CPU, 3-way GTX 780 Ti SLI cards and so much RAM that it could hold an OS and games, though several SSDs were employed for that task. Choosing an equally impressive case wasn't so straightforward, especially if you're looking for something unique such as the In Win D-Frame.

We reviewed the D-Frame last June and it remains one of the coolest cases I've seen. Despite receiving mostly negative feedback from you guys, it was fun to look at, fun to work with and just fun to own. It was expensive for a mid-tower at $400 but not impossible to justify and my friend would have happily paid the price. Unfortunately, the D-Frame wasn't big enough for everything he wanted in the build.

After considering the CM Cosmos II and the Lian Li PC-P80NB, he settled on the Corsair Obsidian 900D despite being a bit boring for his taste. Now months later, he is thinking about swapping to an In Win case that we just recently found: the tòu, an $800 enclosure inspired by glass architecture and named after the Chinese word for "transparent" -- precisely the sort of flair my friend had been looking for.

Read full article @ Techspot

iRocks Spirit Cocoon Illuminated Mouse Review

Gaming mice are great at stealing all the glory, they’re often packed with high-end features and functions that put regular desktop mice to shame. Of course all is not lost for the humble desktop mouse, for not everyone needs 19 buttons, 1000 macros and ultra high DPI laser sensors, many people just want a mouse that looks great, feel nice to use and performs reliably. Enter the i-rocks Spirit Cocoon, a fairly standard looking mouse if I ever saw one, apart from the fact that it is finished in a chrome effect of course, and while it is for all intents and purposes a regular mouse, it does have a trick up its sleeve, but we’ll get to that in a moment.

If I’m honest I’d never even heard of i-rocks before, this mouse landed on my desk as a bit of a surprise and it also came with a fair amount of enthusiasm from i-rocks that there was more here than meets the eye. Naturally I had to investigate what could be so interesting about this mouse, and while I suspected it was the chrome plating it’s really got more to do with got some very funky lighting effects that will leave you in a trance.

Read full article @ eTeknix

iSAW EXtreme Action Camera Review

The iSAW EXtreme Action camera is an impressive gadget - it can handle up to 1080p and 120 fps recording and has support for 802.11n WiFi with a retail price of only £250? It can even be used underwater.

Check out our indepth review today with videos of the camera in action

Read full article @ KitGuru

Jawbone Up24 Review

The smart and sporty Jawbone Up24 is the most fashionable, lightweight and comfortable fitness tracking wearable you can buy, and it has a beautiful app to match. Its activity and sleep tracking internals are also just about as brainy as the Fitbit Force and Nike FuelBand SE.Some functionality is sacrificed in the name of vanity. There's no display on the device itself for on-demand workout stats or a web-based portal to chart the quantified self data it silently collects. All metrics have to be synced to an iOS or, as of this month, an Android app. The good news is that Jawbone Up24 is able to wirelessly sync these accurate step and sleep quality numbers through Bluetooth. This is a major improvement over the original Jawbone Up transfer method that required physically plugging in the device for each and every upload. Now, as the Jawbone Up24 name suggests, this new version can truly be worn 24 hours a day without the need to take it off between syncs. Combined with the 3.0 version of its colorful app and newly released Android support, this is one of the top wellness motivators, unless of course you own a Windows Phone 8 or other non-compatible device.

Read full article @ Techradar

Kingston 32GB DataTraveler microDUO OTG USB Flash Drive Reviewed

USB flash drives are starting to feel a lot like cheap Christmas ornaments these days. If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. The only important things that separate them are software bundles or their USB speed interface. Suppose you could utilize one for PC and any Android 4.0 smart device? The Kingston 32GB DataTraveler microDUO OTG, which our friends at MEGATechNews highlighted during CES earlier this year, offers this functionality.

I’ve used it both ways the last couple weeks and found that it gives me the option for keeping media files readily on hand without consuming more tablet and smartphone storage. After you have a look, I think you’ll agree it’s time to pick up one of these clever OTG USB flash drives. Given the pricing, maybe you should pick up three!

Read full article @ Futurelooks

Kingston SDXC UHS-1 Speed Class 3 Flash Card (64GB) Review

Each day in the technology field there is a new advancement or improvement, whether that be faster solid state drive’s, televisions with increased visual quality, or cameras that take pictures in extreme detail. However, with these improvements it is common to find a subfield that slows down the process, such in the case of videography and it’s storage. As the demand for higher resolution video content increase (I.e., 4K television), so does the demand for storage options that can handle the content. The dilemma here lies when a videographer is filming a video in a high-resolution, the content not only requires larger than normal storage capacities, but also the transfer speed must be able to accompany the content. No one wants to waste their valuable time watching as Windows transfers the video file in slow motion.

Read full article @ The SSD Review

Megacon 2014 Mega Gallery 2

Coming to you from our guest photographer Krystyn Rogers is gallery two of Megacon 2014. Packed with more costume loving mayhem in some really professional photos.

Read full article @ TechwareLabs.com

Netgear VueZone VZSX2800 Wireless Surveillance Camera Kit Review

If I was to go out onto the street and ask people what they thought surveillance was, I’d imagine a high percentage of those asked would answer with CCTV or constant video recordings for security. Now for the most part, this is what surveillance is however there are other applications for remote cameras, where the surveillance is not necessarily for security. Take lorries and HGV’s for example, most of them today have a surveillance system built into the cab with a camera situated on the rear of the vehicle so that the driver can easily see what is behind him, whilst in other situations, cameras are used for monitoring wildlife and animals to save them from the disruption of a person being present in the area.

Another area of use for remote cameras could be for monitoring a baby or young child in their bedroom once they have gone up to bed. Baby monitors are a highly popular product with today’s generation of parents with new borns and infants, with the piece of mind factor there for users to see that their child is safe and well. Now whilst there are dozens of applications for cameras and monitoring applications, the biggest use for them is we all know in today’s world is security. With dozens of different types of cameras and numerous environments that they are built to work in, choosing a product that is suited for your needs and user level is a somewhat daunting task and consequently home security is a rather empty market in respect to commercial use.

Netgear’s VueZone camera system that I’m looking at today is designed specifically for the consumer market. With such a wide variety of situations where cameras could be of an assistance, the totally wire-free system and the ability to record in low light conditions makes this system ideal for the home user, where the speed of installation and simplicity to operate and maintain is far more important than what it is at the commercial level.

Read full article @ eTeknix

Rosewill RGS-108P POE Gigabit Network Switch

The Rosewill RGS-108P Gigabit switch is an unmanaged switch that is capable of Gigabit wire speeds on each port with a bonus. The RGS-108P can also supply Power Over Ethernet.

Read full article @ Modders-Inc

Sapphire R9 280X Vapor-X Tri-X OC Video Card Review

Sapphire originally released their R9 280X Vapor-X back when the R9 280X’s were launched. The card was factory overclocked and featured Sapphire’s Dual-X cooler. Well Sapphire is releasing a new version of the card that makes use of Sapphire’s own exclusive Vapor-X cooling with its new Tri-X triple fan design. This should keep the Tahiti GPU nice a cool. On top of that this card is again factory overclocked, features Black Diamond chokes and a full Solid Cap design, and has dual BIOS support. Is this the R9 280X that you are looking for? Read on as we take a look…

Read full article @ ThinkComputers.org

Sapphire R9 290X Tri-X Edition Review

Today we are taking a look at the R9 290X Tri-X from Sapphire. The 290X is known to run extremely hot and throttle down, so to keep this beast cool Sapphire designed a massive triple fan cooler that promises to keep the temps low and prevent the performance loss from throttling. Read on to see how it performed.

Read full article @ TechwareLabs.com

Sapphire Radeon R9 270 2GB Dual-X Edition Video Card Review

I don’t know about you, but I hear about it all the time. That friend who went on vacation and got upgraded to a really nice suite instead of their basic hotel room because they didn’t have enough room. Or maybe they were that passenger on the plane who got bumped up to first class because the airline happened to sell their seat out from under them and had a seat in first class available. I think that many of us dream of being that person, especially when you are going on vacation. That would be what any of us would call starting out a vacation on the right foot.

So can I get an upgrade? I certainly have never been one to get free upgrades at hotels or airports, but I have been known to upgrade a few electronic components. One thing for sure is I don’t usually jump right out at the most expensive item. Maybe a lower priced item will do the job just fine, or maybe I can buy two of them for the same price as a higher end model. GPUs are definitely one of those items where I like to shop around and usually end up going for the higher mainstream model. The Sapphire Radeon R9 270 Dual-X edition is a great example of one of these types of GPUs.

Read full article @ HiTech Legion

SilverStone Grandia GD08 HTPC Case Review

SilverStone makes many different sizes and styles of HTPC cases. The chassis we'll be taking a look at today is their Grandia GD08 which supports a full-size ATX motherboard and power supply along with dual optical drives and as many as eight 3½" and two 2½" hard drives. Provisions for cooling are spacious as well with up to four 120mm intake and two 80mm exhaust fans plus extra venting in the top and rear.

Read full article @ OCIA.net

SilverStone Raven RVZ01: One Of The Best Mini-ITX Cases For Building A Linux/SteamOS PC

When opening the box to the SilverStone Raven RVZ01 there is a disclaimer printed on the packaging in multiple languages about being a "unique product" and recommending users first reading the included manual. This statement isn't just some marketing verbage to build up hype or purchasing confidence in the product, but with being able to accommodate up to a 13-inch PCI Express graphics card and four drive bays within this petite mini-ITX chassis, it truly is a unique product. Today at Phoronix we're looking at SilverStone's Raven RVZ01 mini-ITX chassis, the SFX 450W ST45SF-G power supply, and SST-CP11 SATA cabling for building a great Linux HTPC or your own Steam Machine/Box Linux gaming system.

The RVZ01 is one of SilverStone's newer creations and is trying to do to the mini-ITX/SSF space what the original Raven RV01 did to the desktop/ATX space. This mini-ITX / DTX case introduces the Raven Z series with a focus on a very slim design, support for large graphics cards through a PCI-E riser adapter, triple fan configuration, and even support for liquid cooling if desired.

Read full article @ Phoronix

The Facebook, Oculus deal makes sense for everyone

I know guys. I know. I’m mad too. I’m sad, disappointed, even betrayed, but these are all things I’m feeling and I bet you are too. We’re having an emotional reaction to two companies worth multiple billions of dollars doing a business deal and though I can’t help but wish it hadn’t happened, I know that if I look at it logically, it makes sense for everyone.

Read full article @ KitGuru

Wavemaster STAX 2.1 Speaker Video Review

DaveChaos reviews the STAX 2.1 stereo speaker system from Wavemaster audio.

Read full article @ HardwareHeaven.com

What is an SSD

Have you ever wondered how a smart phone, IPOD or even an IPAD can work at such speed and instant access, yet your computer takes over a minute to start? That question just might be the reason that you have joined us in our series ‘Learning To Run With Flash’ and, if so, congratulations! You are about to enter a world that will change the way you look at PCs forever. Together, we are going to cover as many bases as we can in an effort to, not only educate you on our world of solid state drives but also, we are fairly confident that you will want to buy a SSD on conclusion of our reports. When that occurs, we will be right here to help you along with purchase, installation and any wrinkles you may encounter along the way.

Read full article @ The SSD Review