Here a roundup of the latest reviews and articles:

Antec SPZero: A Portable Bluetooth Wireless Speaker
be quiet! Dark Rock 3 CPU Cooler Review
be quiet! TFX Power 2 Gold Review
Cambridge Audio DacMagic XS Review
Hands-On: My new Asus laptop, UEFI and Linux
In Depth: 50 best iPhone apps 2014
Intel Iris Graphics 5100: Windows 8.1 vs. Ubuntu 14.04 Linux
Kinivo ZX120 Mini Portable Speaker Review
LaCie Fuel Review
LibreOffice vs. Microsoft Office, Part Deux
MSI Nightblade Review (Dual SSD, i7 4770K, R9 290X)
OCZ Vertex 460 SSD Review
PowerColor R9 290X PCS+ 4GB Review
ROCCAT Ryos MK Pro Keyboard Video Review
Rosewill Legacy MX2-B Mid-Tower Case Review
Satechi BT Touch Bluetooth Speaker System Review
Seagate Business Storage 8-Bay 32TB Rackmount NAS Review
Testing SATA Express And Why We Need Faster SSDs
Thermaltake Core V71 Full Tower
Thermolab ITX30 Review
Toshiba Chromebook Review
XFX R9 290X Double Dissipation Review

Antec SPZero: A Portable Bluetooth Wireless Speaker

Mobile accessories, especially Bluetooth accessories are all the rage these days ever since mobile revolution exploded. Bluetooth speakers come in various shapes and sizes and carries price tag ranges from $50 to $200. Antec has launched the SP1 speaker we had reviewed a few months ago targeting at those who need a portable speaker. The company has recently launched the little brother of the speaker, the SPZero, that it has sent us a unit to review.

The SPZero features very similar design as the SP1 except that it is smaller, about ½ of the size of the SP1. The SPZero has a dimension of 86mm(L) x 57mm(W) x 94mm(H) and weighs 218 g. While the SP1 is small and light enough to be portable, the SPZero is even more portable, making it even easier to tag alone with your purse or gym bag.

Read full article @ Bjorn3D

be quiet! Dark Rock 3 CPU Cooler Review

It seems that we are always caught in some type of balancing act in our lives. There is give and take to almost everything, and it is finding the point in the middle ground where we are most comfortable that is often the task. Take working for example. We could all work seven days a week, in order to accumulate the most money possible. But, then you would have no time to enjoy the money you were making….and would likely be in ill health due to exhaustion and stress….and would probably be a bit batty from lack of social contact. So we seek to balance having enough money with still having enough time to be happy.

Obviously, this does not simply apply to lifestyle. I have said on many occasions that enthusiast CPU cooling is far more of a balancing act than it is about flat out performance, especially of you are in the same room as your build. You need to cool your components effectively, but also in a manner that doesn’t cause noise to the point of disturbance. Since all forms of cooling rely on air movement to work, there is going to be at least some noise involved, and the tolerable level is going to vary from individual to individual. Beethoven may have been fine with a cooler churning out 70 dB and keeping his cooler at 72 degrees under load. However, Beethoven was also hearing impaired, so the noise would not have been as important as the cooling in his balance. To those who find the noise factor important, they would be more likely to find a five degree increase very acceptable if it got the noise down to an almost imperceptible 25 dB. It is really all about finding the balance of these two factors that will make a cooling choice right for you.

Read full article @ HiTech Legion

be quiet! TFX Power 2 Gold Review

Think of a power-supply unit (PSU) and, chances are, the rectangular ATX form factor, measuring 150mm (W) x 86mm (H) x 140mm (D), springs to mind. Larger-capacity models often increase the depth to accommodate a greater number of internal components, up to 210mm in some cases, but they fit into most enthusiast chassis just fine.

However, the PC industry has made a concerted effort to reimagine the desktop box into a smaller, sleeker package. Helping this ideal along are smaller-form-factor PSUs that are otherwise identical to their ATX cousins. Here's a list of common form factors in production today.

Read full article @ Hexus

Cambridge Audio DacMagic XS Review

As we all know, digital audio has been around for awhile and is practically a standard on most of our audio devices. Unfortunately, there are still select motherboards out there that don't offer a digital output, so we're stuck using an analog connection and laptops that only offer an analog audio jack. Cambridge Audio has the solution with their DacMagic XS. It's a pocket size device that connects via any USB port and converts the audio to a digital signal.

Read full article @ PureOverclock

Hands-On: My new Asus laptop, UEFI and Linux

This is my first time with UEFI on an ASUS laptop, and I am very pleased and impressed.

Read full article @ ZDNet

In Depth: 50 best iPhone apps 2014

The ecosystem is what sets Apple's mobile platform apart from its rivals, and the highest-quality iPhone apps are typically best in class.But, like any app store, it is sometimes difficult to find out what are truly the best apps, the ones that stand out from the rest - because they offer a tool or service that is far beyond anything else available.Sometimes the best apps are free, other times you will have to pay a little bit for them. Here we showcase the best available and offer up everything you need to know about the app and how much it will cost. This round-up compiles our favourites, from top-quality creative tools and video editors to the finest productivity kit and social networking clients.

Read full article @ Techradar

Intel Iris Graphics 5100: Windows 8.1 vs. Ubuntu 14.04 Linux

Under the Linux microscope today is the Intel Iris Graphics 5100 (GT3) found on the Core i7 4558U CPU within the ASUS Zenbook UX301LA "Haswell" ultrabook. How do the Intel Iris Graphics performance compare between Windows 8.1 and the soon-to-be-released Ubuntu 14.04? We can tell you the answer today with a fresh round of multi-OS OpenGL benchmarks from this high-end Intel ultrabook.

The Intel Iris Graphics 5100 sports 40 execution units and a 1.2GHz clock speed to offer up to 832 GFLOPs of power on the graphics core. Sadly compared to the Iris Pro 5200 Graphics, there isn't the 128MB of embedded DRAM, but at least the graphics performance of the Iris 5100 is still a big upgrade over the HD Graphics 4400/4600 found more commonly on Haswell processors. The Intel Core i7 4558U processor on this ASUS UX301LA is a dual-core part with Hyper Threading and runs at a base frequency of 2.8GHz but its Turbo Frequency tops out at 3.3GHz. The max TDP of the CPU is 28 Watts. The Iris Graphics 5100 are capable of driving three displays simultaneously.

Read full article @ Phoronix

Kinivo ZX120 Mini Portable Speaker Review

Today for review I’ve got the Kinivo ZX120 mini portable speaker which is just like it sounds, a small speaker you can take with you. The ZX120 is basic but it’s inexpensive, it’s not wireless but it does have an integrated 3.5mm audio cable so you don’t have to take one with you. The battery life is excellent at ten hours on a single charge and the ZX120 is well made and even comes with a carrying case. Read on to learn more..

Read full article @ TestFreaks

LaCie Fuel Review

The LaCie Fuel wireless media drive can supplement your smartphone or tablet storage. It lets you carry most, if not all, of your music, photos, and videos with you and share them with a small group of devices.

Read full article @ TechReviewSource.com

LibreOffice vs. Microsoft Office, Part Deux

The Year of LibreOffice? Perhaps, perhaps not. This is why you will have to read my latest Netrunner Magazine article, pitting the open-source office suite darling against the Microsoft overload. Let's see what gives.

Read full article @ Netrunner

MSI Nightblade Review (Dual SSD, i7 4770K, R9 290X)

A tiny 16 litre case housing a i7 4770k, overclocked R9 290X and dual SSD's in RAID 0? You are looking at just some of the possibilities from the latest MSI NIGHTBLADE.

Read full article @ KitGuru

OCZ Vertex 460 SSD Review

OCZ Storage Solutions, formerly OCZ Technology and now a Toshiba Group Company, was quick to produce its first performance product under the new company banner: Vertex 460 solid state drive. The new OCZ Vertex 460 SSD features an Indilinx Barefoot 3 (BF3-M10) controller and Toshiba 19nm Multi-Level Cell (MLC) NAND flash components with secure AES-256 data encryption and Trim support. Vertex 460 is good for 540 MB/s read and 525 MB/s write speeds over a SATA 6-Gb/s connection, and replaces the Vertex 450 as the fastest solid state drive in the product series. In this article Benchmark Reviews tests the 240GB OCZ Vertex 460 SSD, model VTX460-25SAT3-240G, against the leading competition.

Read full article @ Benchmark Reviews

PowerColor R9 290X PCS+ 4GB Review

In our whirlwind tour of R9 290X cards, one thing is becoming evident: with the right amount of attention to cooling, AMD’s flagship GPU is truly able to shine. We’ve seen the likes of XFX, Gigabyte and ASUS equip their wares with increasingly impressive heatsinks and the results have been nothing short of spectacular. Now PowerColor is about the join their ranks with their R9 290X PCS+ and at the risk of preempting our own conclusion, this might very well be the best Hawaii-based graphics card around.

There have been a large number of complains that AMD’s GPU sales are being dominated by folks using their cards for crypto currency mining. From the epic price premiums being commanded by the entire Radeon lineup to some pretty drastic stock shortages, there are a huge number of reasons for concern but AMD and their board partners have been reaping the short-term benefits. This situation has also resulted in perks for end users as some companies have begun over-building their cards in an effort to improve longevity under the constant stresses of mining. PowerColor’s aims are exactly that; design the PCS+ for optimal performance in games but also reinforced its design with heavily upgraded components in an effort to reduce RMA frequency.

Read full article @ Hardware Canucks

ROCCAT Ryos MK Pro Keyboard Video Review

Today Kaeyi Dream looks at the Ryos MK Pro from ROCCAT, featuring per-key illumination and a choice of CHERRY MX key switches in blue, black, brown, and red.

Read full article @ HardwareHeaven.com

Rosewill Legacy MX2-B Mid-Tower Case Review

The Rosewill Legacy MX2 Mid-Tower case line is currently made up of two models, the MX2-B and MX2-S; the MX2-B is black, while the MX2-S is silver. The Legacy MX2 line has a very minimalist look to it, however the curved edges and open bottom give it a high end look. The exterior is made out of brushed aluminum, while the interior is steel. The front panel feature a slim slot load optical drive bay, standard headphone/microphone jacks, dual USB 2.0 and dual SuperSpeed USB 3.0 ports...

Read full article @ Legit Reviews

Satechi BT Touch Bluetooth Speaker System Review

Up for review today I have another Bluetooth speaker, and it’s another speaker that features touch sensitive controls. Today I have the Satechi BT Touch which has two 2.5 watt speakers in it for stereo sound and touch controls for calls and music playback. The BT Touch offers up to six hours of play back on a single charge and it has a 3.5mm auxiliary port so you can use it with devices that aren’t Bluetooth enabled, so it’s good for most anything. It’s inexpensive but yet it sounds great, so read on to learn more..

Read full article @ TestFreaks

Seagate Business Storage 8-Bay 32TB Rackmount NAS Review

Seagate's acquisition of LaCie in 2012 made quite a bit of sense as most of their product lines were complementary in nature. However, they had a bit of an overlap in the NAS market, particularly in the SOHO ARM-based segment. Early last year, we reviewed the LaCie 5big NAS Pro, a desktop form factor x86 NAS with an embedded Linux OS developed in-house by LaCie. With Seagate not having a presence in this space, it was an ideal segment to target with the help of LaCie's expertise. As a result, we have the Business Storage 1U rackmount lineup. Read on for our review of the fully populated 8-bay variant.

Read full article @ Anandtech

Testing SATA Express And Why We Need Faster SSDs

The Serial ATA International Organization didn't have much to worry about when hard drives were the primary (only) media. The laws of rotational physics ensured hard drive speeds would not increase dramatically and hence updates to the SATA spec were only seldom needed. However, with SSDs that all changed. NAND provided so much lower latencies and higher throughputs that SATA-IO faced an issue: they couldn't keep up with the speed of SSDs. As a result the SATA-IO had to look elsewhere to increase interface bandwidth but at the same time they had to ensure backwards compatibility. SATA Express, a combination of SATA and PCIe, was born as a result. But what exactly is it and how does it perform? Read on to find out.

Read full article @ Anandtech

Thermaltake Core V71 Full Tower

When i first started my journey in computers around 25 years ago things were very simple when building your own system so you pretty much had to choose between just a handful of mainboards and CPUs, even less memory modules and sound cards and if that wasn't already bad enough things were even worse when it came to HDDs, graphics cards, monitors, peripherals and of course PC Cases. Back then variety was non-existent (you could probably count every consumer available brand with just your fingers) so the only thing we could do was to look forward for new technologies announced and compared to now it took many years for most of those to reach us. Just imagine that it took roughly a decade before i could even find a PC Case that wasn't just 6 flat metal plates joint together and painted white. Well the exact opposite happens today but things aren't that much different since because of the countless models in the market some people have it equally hard to find the PC Case best suited for their needs. Thermaltake has been in the "special" PC Case industry right from the start and they just rolled out one of the most impressive cases of the year the Core V71 Full Tower which we have here with us today.

Read full article @ NikKTech

Thermolab ITX30 Review

In the past the Korean company Thermolab has been able to surprise with high quality products, which were able to compete with the best in corresponding product categories. With the ITX30 the company has been working on a small cooler for mini ITX builds, like for instance HTPCs, and at a first glance this is a rather interesting little cooler, since it has been made entirely from copper.

Read full article @ ocaholic

Toshiba Chromebook Review

Chromebooks are a bundle of contradictions, budget laptops that are both weird and brilliant, underpowered yet potent. They pack basic computing functionality into the Chrome OS, a web browser masquerading as an operating system. The search giant's OS and mobile computer spec are just a few years old, but companies like HP, Samsung and Acer already have several models on the market.The other firms may have a headstart but the Toshiba Chromebook has come out swinging, the first with a larger 13.3-inch screen, plus two USB 3.0 ports.Size and speedy ports aside, the Toshiba Chromebook is nearly identical to its competitors on paper. Looks, however, are a different story.DesignSave for the Google branded HP Chromebook 11, these frugal Google machines are largely lacking in personality.

Read full article @ Techradar

XFX R9 290X Double Dissipation Review

Priced at $649 as of the date this article is published, the XFX R9 290X DD is selling for a premium (much like most AMD-based cards recently, thanks to cryptocurrency mining) over the R9 290X launch price of $549. This puts it price-wise right between the GTX 780 and GTX 780 Ti price points of $500 to $700. At that point, you have a tougher choice making that call. If you are looking for a R9 290X, the XFX R9 290X Double Dissipation equipped card is one that addresses the short comings of the reference design and looks oh so much better doing it. It's cool, it's quiet, and it easily delivers excellent FPS with high settings.

Read full article @ OCC