Here a roundup of todays reviews and articles:

5x AMD Radeon R9 280X review: ASUS, MSI, Sapphire and XFX
Advatronix Cirrus 1200: a Storage Server Under Your Desk
Asus Radeon R9 280 DirectCU II TOP Review
be quiet! 140mm Silent & Pure Wings 2 Review
be quiet! Dark Rock 3 & Dark Rock Pro 3 Cooler Review
Crucial MX100 SSD Review: Meet the New Price/Performance Champ
ECS LIVA Mini PC Kit
Event Coverage Computex 2014: Booth Babes Part 2
Genius Zabius HS-G850 Gaming Headset Review
HyperX again claims new DDR3 frequency WR at 2282.8MHz
MSI Z97I Gaming AC Motherboard Review
OCZ RevoDrive 350 480GB PCIe SSD Review
Patriot Supersonic Magnum 128 Gigabyte Review
PowerColor Radeon R9 295X2 Review
Roccat Syva Review
Sentey Revolution Pro Gaming Mouse Review

5x AMD Radeon R9 280X review: ASUS, MSI, Sapphire and XFX

As the "new" AMD Radeon R9 280X cards are based on the Radeon HD 7970 manufacturers were able to release their own models into the market straight off the mark. We received several models of the 280X cards over the last few months, so it is time to compare models from ASUS, MSI, Sapphire and XFX in an extensive test.

AMD released new graphics cards in October and November at a very high pace. The new high end models Radeon R9 290X and 290 took their time to come to the market in custom versions, but as the 280X is basically a rebranded Radeon HD 7970 most manufacturers already had custom versions on the market. This meant that custom 280X cards came out almost at the same time as the cards were introduced. The cards we review in this test therefore have been on the market for quite some time already.

Read full article @ Hardware.Info

Advatronix Cirrus 1200: a Storage Server Under Your Desk

The Advatronix Cirrus 1200 tries to distinguish itself from the average tower server offering with a cube shaped desktop that has many hot pluggable hard disk bays. Will the low power, low noise, and low latency storage be enough to convince potential buyers to invest in such a solution? Read on for our full review of this storage server.

Read full article @ Anandtech

Asus Radeon R9 280 DirectCU II TOP Review

It's a great time to be in the market for a video card. AMD and Nvidia are duking it out for our hard-earned cash, and it's the consumers who benefit from the battle royale through better performing GPUs at an unbelievably low price.The saying in the GPU market used to be there are no free lunches, meaning what you pay for is the performance you'll get. But AMD has changed all that with its fierce pricing strategy – giving consumers seriously strong performance per dollar spent.Asus has come into the graphics card market with a killer mid-range AMD offering: its R9 280 DirectCU II TOP. Like other AMD Radeon R9 280s, the DirectCU II TOP features a base clock speed of 850MHz and a boost speed of 980MHz, but the card also sports 1792 stream processors, 3GB of video RAM, and a 250W TDP rating.

Read full article @ Techradar

be quiet! 140mm Silent & Pure Wings 2 Review

The fans I compared to the Pure & Silent Wings 2 are be quiet!'s direct competitors. The Noctua and Phanteks fans in the comparison are all meant to be very quiet at max RPM's and they are for the most part. The be quiet! fans do not out perform them in sheer power, but they do beat them where it counts: Noise to air ratio. The Silent Wings 2 have the highest airflow to noise ratio of any fan I have personally seen or used. They are more than enough to keep a CPU cool under decent overclocked settings while adding nothing to the accumulated noise. The competitors are noticeable when there are no other noise producing components in a system. In the event that you don't want noise unless you are gaming or otherwise noise occupied, there are PWM versions of the Silent and the Shadow fans allowing silence to occupy office work for those of more sensitive hearing and keeping everything cool when stressing the computer with gaming.

Read full article @ OCC

be quiet! Dark Rock 3 & Dark Rock Pro 3 Cooler Review

Those who have been around the electronic/computer industry for a few years can probably remember when processor coolers were aluminum finned components held in place with a wire clip. Most were not more than ¾” high, and some were anodized for looks or made of copper, but they did the job. But Moore’s Law was always in play and over the years processors gradually not only gained power but also produced more heat. Redesign of the processor and better manufacturing techniques/materials helped control the heat generated, but soon bigger heatsinks and fans were needed to keep the processor cool.

As the years went by water (some with a peltier), nitrogen and other techniques of cooling gained popularity, but they all required special precautions against water spills or condensation. Then the heat pipe was introduced onto the scene and they have become dominate with their ability to keep that processor cool without fear of spilled liquids. However, Moore’s Law is as applicable as ever and so that heat problem is still nagging the computer industry.

Read full article @ Neoseeker

Crucial MX100 SSD Review: Meet the New Price/Performance Champ

Famed for its quality memory modules, Crucial has also become a trusted name in the solid-state drive business. Its RealSSD C300 made waves back in 2010 as the first consumer SSD series to natively support 6Gb/s SATA, though at $600 for the 256GB model, it was too pricey for most.

The company has since offered various successful upper-end products, including the M4 (2011's C300 successor) as well as the M500/M500DC for enthusiasts and data centers. However, Crucial's entry-level efforts have been less than laudable to date. In fact, the biggest hitch along the company's road has been its budget-minded v4 series.

Read full article @ Techspot

ECS LIVA Mini PC Kit

Today, we take a look at ECS's LIVA Mini PC Kit, a small and affordable PC with very low power consumption, a small price, and lightweight computing capabilities. With a sub-US$200 price tag, expecting top-notch performance would be ill advised, yet what can you get for $200 that fits in the palm of your hand? An ECS LIVA Mini PC Kit, of course.

Read full article @ techPowerUp

Event Coverage Computex 2014: Booth Babes Part 2

Because there's no such thing as too many babes. You may apply your screen protectors liberally now. You have been warned. Here we are, TechwareLabs.com bringing you the second part of our Computex 2014 Booth Babes Gallery.

Read full article @ TechwareLabs.com

Genius Zabius HS-G850 Gaming Headset Review

The main attraction to the HS-G850 is the red LED outline strips. I have not seen many headsets with LED’s that will light up to the bass, so I will be very interested in putting this headset in a number of tests to test out the sound quality, microphone quality, comfort, and how well the LED’s can respond to the audio that is playing. Benchmark Reviews has this sample on hand, so let’s take a look at the features and specifications of the Genius Zabius HS-G850 Gaming Headset.

Read full article @ Benchmark Reviews

HyperX again claims new DDR3 frequency WR at 2282.8MHz

The two Gigabyte in-house overclockers HiCookie and Sofos set a new memory frequency record during the HyperX OC event at Computex 2014. The previous record, done by the same crew was set at 2250Mhz; today they set the bar at a new level at blistering frequency of 2282.8MHz.

Read full article @ Madshrimps

MSI Z97I Gaming AC Motherboard Review

The mini-ITX form factor has really exploded over the past year and both motherboard manufacturers and case makers have really caught up. Building a mini-ITX system means that it is going to be small and that you are going to be able to easily take it with you to LAN parties. Because of this we have seen many mini-ITX gaming motherboards. With Intel’s release of the 9-Series chipset of course we expected to see new mini-ITX motherboards and today we are taking a look at our first. The MSI Z97I Gaming AC gives you the full power of the Z97 chipset, a single PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slot for your high-end graphics card, KillerNIC Gigabit Ethernet, Audio Boost 2 technology, 802.11ac WiFi, USB 3.0 and even four SATA 6GB/s ports. Did I mention that this board only measures 6.7-inches x 6.7-inches! Let’s take a look...

Read full article @ ThinkComputers.org

OCZ RevoDrive 350 480GB PCIe SSD Review

OCZ Storage Solutions was the first to venture into the PCIe SSD drives for consumer machines back in mid 2010 and the last one we saw was a hybrid version from late 2011. Not many other companies were keen on putting out PCIe drives for consumer applications and back then, most if any, drives were hitting the SATA III threshold. However, as the SATA III bandwidth continues to be a limiting factor for a growing number of drives and the next generation SATA interface still out a ways on the horizon, it’s a good time to leverage the ample bandwidth PCIe brings. So, OCZ has forged ahead with the RevoDrive series and sent over the shiny new RevoDrive 350 480GB drive for us to bang on for a bit and as always, we were duly impressed...

Read full article @ Legit Reviews

Patriot Supersonic Magnum 128 Gigabyte Review

Today we are going to test a high-performance thumbkey from Patriot. Supersonic Magnum promises very high speeds, with a capacity of 128GB and USB3.0 header with eight channels. Patriot offers 5-year warranty and models with 64, 128 or 256GB.

Read full article @ ocaholic

PowerColor Radeon R9 295X2 Review

Having what could be billed as the fastest video card on the planet is tantamount to having your cake and eating it too. Looking at the specifications alone and knowing how potent the R9 290X is, there is not a game out that can bring it to its knees at 1920x1080 using the maximum in-game settings. That's a pretty tall order because this card is fully ready for some 4K gaming at its finest using better-than-medium settings. Packed with the best graphics processors AMD has to offer, there are no neutered cores in this rendition of CrossFireX on a single PCB from AMD like we have seen in the past. The downside is that AMD's Hawaii GPU on the 290X is a hot-running core, as we saw looking at the reference versions earlier this year. We also saw that, when equipped with adequate cooling, the cores would no longer throttle the clock speeds at stock speeds, nor as quickly when voltage and additional clock speed were added to the equation.

Cooling has been made a primary concern at this point, and AMD and its partners have equipped the R9 295X2 with an all-in-one water cooling system from Asetek to handle the thermal load of not one, but two cores. Building a card of this caliber puts it into rarefied air, both for the performance it can deliver and the engineering that had to take place to get this kind of firepower on one PCB. That kind of graphics power does not come cheap by any means. A pair of water cooled R9 290X cards currently run about $1400, while the R9 295X2 is going for a $1499 price point. I've been waiting a while to get my hands on one of these, so let's see what it has to offer for the hardcore gamer.

Read full article @ OCC

Roccat Syva Review

Syva are the latest headset from Roccat and the product has been designed for gamers and others who simply want to listen to music or make phone calls with their smartphone/tablet. This headset is characterized by an aggressive design and a practical dual-function in-line remote control as well as a light blue/black flatband cable.

Read full article @ ocaholic

Sentey Revolution Pro Gaming Mouse Review

Up for review today I have a gaming mouse from Sentey called the Revolution Pro and it is a very feature rich product. The mouse can be adjusted from 200dpi up to 8200dpi and you can even create your own macros and save them to five different profiles that you can create. Sentey includes configuration software that you can use to gain access to all of the features of the Revolution Pro but you don’t have to use as there are defaults pre-programmed into the mouse that you can use. Sentey also included a very nice and protective carrying case with the Revolution Pro along with some gamer related swag to brighten up your living space. Read on to learn more…

Read full article @ DragonSteelMods