Here a roundup of todays reviews and articles:

17-Way Linux Graphics Card Comparison With Civilization Beyond Earth
ASRock, Biostar, ECS, Gigabyte and MSI BIOS Downloads December 2014
Assassin's Creed Unity Performance and Overview
Be Quiet! Straight Power 10 800W Power Supply Unit Review
How to configure fail2ban to protect Apache HTTP server
How to disable Flash Player protected mode in Firefox
Kingston HyperX Savage 1866MHz 16GB DDR3 Dual Channel Memory Kit Reviewed
Kingston Savage 8Gb 2133Mhz Memory Kit Review
MSI GT80 Titan Gaming Laptop Sneak Peak
SanDisk 64GB Ultra PLUS and Extreme SD
Then and Now: 5 Generations of GeForce Graphics Compared
Under Pressure: Parvum F1.0 VS NoiseBlocker eLoop B12.2 Static Pressure Fan Comparison
WinPrivacy review: new program of WinPatrol maker

17-Way Linux Graphics Card Comparison With Civilization Beyond Earth

On Thursday, Sid Meier's Civilization Beyond Earth was finally released for Linux. With being able to properly automate the benchmarking of CivBE on Linux, here's our first performance results out for this high-profile, turn-based strategy game for Steam on Linux. Seventeen AMD Radeon and NVIDIA GeForce graphics cards were benchmarked for this article and the results are quite interesting.

The performance of Civilization: Beyond Earth on Linux is quite demanding. The OpenBenchmarking.org test profile of Civilization Beyond Earth uses roughly the high image quality settings and for this article the tests were done at 1920 x 1080. As the results are about to show, even with modern graphics cards, it's quite a chore putting out a decent frame-rate at 1080p for this strategy game.

When Beyond Earth was being ported to Linux, Aspyr Media who was porting the game to Linux / OS X was looking at dropping Intel and AMD graphics support due to performance/compatibility issues they were encountering. However, since then they've worked with Intel and AMD to overcome their Linux driver issues but using the proprietary drivers is still recommended for this game over the Mesa/Gallium3D drivers. For this article, the proprietary AMD Catalyst and NVIDIA Linux graphics drivers were used. Civilization: Beyond Earth tests on the open-source Intel/Radeon/Nouveau drivers may come once Mesa has matured enough to be able to adequately run this game with high image quality settings.

Read full article @ Phoronix

ASRock, Biostar, ECS, Gigabyte and MSI BIOS Downloads December 2014

Hardwarespot.de published a BIOS download list with the latest BIOS versions for ASRock, Biostar, ECS Elitegroup, Gigabyte and MSI motherboards.

Read full article @ Hardwarespot

Assassin's Creed Unity Performance and Overview

Personally, I love to get engulfed in a great story. It doesn’t matter if it is a great movie, a book, or a game with a storyline. There is nothing as interactive though as a good game. Books certainly can make you think and suck you into a story, and most movies are a good opportunity to zone out, but a great game can provide so many hours of entertainment. I also firmly believe that games used properly can be a great way to learn about many things. This can range from solving puzzles and working the mind, or learning history, and math.

Read full article @ HiTech Legion

Be Quiet! Straight Power 10 800W Power Supply Unit Review

I recall a time long ago when you would walk into a computer store and the only power supply units you'd find were low-cost OEM models which surprisingly enough would last long if you were lucky. Fast forward to today and if you visit a computer store chances are that you will find yourself in front of a wall of power supply units from a very large number of manufacturers, with power outputs ranging anywhere from 250W and up to 1500W and various 80 plus efficiency certifications. Low-cost OEM models do exist even today aimed towards casual users who don't wish to spend much on one such device but today you can also find models that cost even more than a brand new laptop. Today with us however we have something more affordable and more specifically the latest offering by our friends over at be quiet! the Straight Power 10 800W power supply unit.

be quiet! is a premium brand manufacturer of power supplies and cooling solutions for your desktop PC. be quiet! products are convincing which is proved by reaching and defending the market leadership in PSU business in Germany for five consecutive years *. This is validated and accompanied by numerous awards for both power supplies and cooling solutions. be quiet! is awarded for five times in a row as manufacturer of the year in the power supply category by the readers of the well-known German hardware magazine PC Games Hardware. Another first and second rank in the categories “fans” and “cooler” underline the high acceptance of our products. be quiet! sticks to its name: Ten years’ experience in the field of noise reduction and silence make be quiet! products probably the most silent one on the market. Undoubted fans have a large impact of the noise levels of be quiet! products. Due we are using our specially developed Silent Wings fans in nearly all of our range. They are equipped with various noise reducing features. Thanks to these we ensure a really silent operation - our products reach the best balance between cooling performance and a virtually inaudible operation. If you choose be quiet! you can be sure to get premium quality and second to none silent operation from the quietness experts.

The Straight Power 10 line of power supply units actually consists out of two subcategories, one with semi-modular models and one with non-modular models (cables hardwired into the chassis) all of which are 80 Plus Gold Certified. Both lines have a total of four different models available beneath them but whereas the semi-modular line includes 500/600/700/800W models the non-modular line includes 400/500/600/700W models. Moving to the sample at hand the 800W model features a total of 4 +12v rails (can deliver just over 97% of the units total power output), 4 PCI-E connectors, 135mm SilentWings PWM Fluid Dynamic Bearing fan, ErP 2014 support, ATX v2.4 support (Intel Haswell ready), Energy Star v.6 support and a full set of electrical protections (OCP/OVP/UVP/SCP/OTP/OPP). So time to see just how all these translate to real world performance.

Read full article @ NikKTech

How to configure fail2ban to protect Apache HTTP server

An Apache HTTP server in production environments can be under attack in various different ways. Attackers may attempt to gain access to unauthorized or forbidden directories by using brute-force attacks or executing evil scripts.

Read full article @ Xmodulo

How to disable Flash Player protected mode in Firefox

Adobe added Protected Mode to Flash for Firefox back in 2012 to improve the security of it. We covered the release back then and suggest you check it out if you want additional information about the mode.

Read full article @ gHacks

Kingston HyperX Savage 1866MHz 16GB DDR3 Dual Channel Memory Kit Reviewed

In our last memory review, we took a look at the Kingston HyperX Fury 1600MHz 16GB DDR3 memory kit. While Fury is a fantastic looking, and highly compatible, memory kit, it’s considered a mainstream series for entry level systems. However, the HyperX Savage series takes performance up a notch, boasting higher quality modules and improved timings. Savage sports a candy apple red aluminum heat spreader that hints to its speed. We took the Kingston HyperX Savage 1600MHz 16GB DDR3 memory kit for a spin around the lab track to find out how much speed!

Read full article @ Futurelooks

Kingston Savage 8Gb 2133Mhz Memory Kit Review

Memory is by far the single most produced hardware component (Powers Supply Unit come in at a very close second.) that goes into your computer in the PC Industry to date. It's no wonder that when it comes to choosing a good set of Memory for your first RIG, that things can quickly get overwhelming. Does this scenario sound familiar? …

Read full article @ Modders-Inc

MSI GT80 Titan Gaming Laptop Sneak Peak

Next year MSI officially release their 'state of the art' GT80 Titan Gaming laptop. This machine is loaded with the highest spec hardware and for the first time ever - a few mechanical gaming keyboard. MSI loaned us their one and only pre-retail sample today for a sneak preview. Its big, bold, chunky and powerful - a true desktop replacement system!

Read full article @ KitGuru

SanDisk 64GB Ultra PLUS and Extreme SD

SanDisk is a flash memory giant, needing no introduction. The latest in the SanDisk SD lineup are the 64GB Ultra PLUS and Extreme cards, targeting different consumers who have varying speed needs. And with very attractive price tags, these little SD cards promise solid value. In a hint of what's to come during testing, the speed results were a very pleasant surprise, despite what the labels might seem to indicate in terms of speed expectations.

Read full article @ PureOverclock

Then and Now: 5 Generations of GeForce Graphics Compared

When new GPUs arrive we usually compare them to their predecessor but rarely go back more than one generation. Today we'll be testing six cards covering three key Nvidia architectures: Fermi (the GTX 480 and GTX 580), Kepler (theGTX 680 and GTX 780) and Maxwell (the GTX 980). Many of you who haven't upgraded GPUs in over a year may be pleased to see how performance scales and what to expect in modern games.

Read full article @ Techspot

Under Pressure: Parvum F1.0 VS NoiseBlocker eLoop B12.2 Static Pressure Fan Comparison

It hasn't been since the last few years that the case fan has evolved from the same standard design to companies now introducing fans that serve a specific component purpose. With watercooling setups becoming more and more common among mainstream systems, it was only a matter of time before the standard case fan became obsolete and the enthusiast market demanded …

Read full article @ Modders-Inc

WinPrivacy review: new program of WinPatrol maker

WinPrivacy is a new program by the maker of the popular WinPatrol application that has been released as a beta version today. The program, just like WinPatrol, is not free but commercial. It has been designed to improve user privacy on the Internet in numerous ways.

Read full article @ gHacks