Here a roundup of today's reviews and articles:

802.11ac Wi-Fi Router Round-Up: ASUS, Netgear, D-Link, and TRENDnet
Dell ProSupport Plus Review
First embedded-focused Skylake Mini-ITX SBCs arrive
G Skill Ripjaws KM780 RGB mechanical gaming keyboard
Looking For Group – A New Gaming Center in Pittsburgh
MSI GS40 6QE Phantom Preview
MSI GT72S 6QE Dominator Pro G Review
Mushkin Striker 480GB SSD Review, Mush On! (MKNSSDST480GB) Review
Noctua NH-D15S CPU Cooler Review: How the Best Got Better
QNAP TurboNAS TS-453Mini-8G NAS Server Review
Silverstone Raven RVZ02B-W & SX500-LG
Tt eSports Cronos AD Review

802.11ac Wi-Fi Router Round-Up: ASUS, Netgear, D-Link, and TRENDnet

Wireless routers are going through somewhat of a renaissance right now, thanks to the arrival of the 802.11ac standard that is "three times as fast as wireless-N" and the proliferation of Internet-connected devices in our homes and pockets. Whereas before we merely had a handful of laptops and PCs connected to the internet at various times, we now have homes with many devices connected all the time, including our phones, tablets, computers, smart televisions, game consoles, and even our smoke detectors. Though wireless N wasn't bad at the time, it's simply not ideal when dozens of devices are connected at the same time, and certainly not in a house that's very large. That's where 802.11ac comes in, as it offers much-improved speeds and the ability to support a lot more clients at the same time. Now that there are several bad-ass routers on the market that are able to take full advantage of everything 802.11ac has to offer, we figured we'd round up the best-of-the-best and put them through their paces.

Read full article @ HotHardware.com

Dell ProSupport Plus Review

Imagine you're on a business trip halfway around the world and your hard drive crashes. What do you do? Are you out some $2,000 to buy a replacement notebook, or do you go to a local computer repair facility and risk having your data exposed to an unknown technician?If you own a consumer laptop, you're looking at wasting at least a few business days in downtime and lost productivity while you wait for Apple's Genius Bar, Best Buy's Geek Squad or similar consumer-based warranty service to diagnose and repair your broken notebook. Business users choose an enterprise notebook specifically for the enterprise-class warranty, which promises a reduction in downtime. In addition to the basic protection, some warranty programs promise to do more than others. If you're a small business and don't have much budget to staff an IT department, Dell's ProSupport and ProSupport Plus are excellent options that maximize your investment in Dell's hardware by providing added value, and Dell's technical representatives can also provide basic IT-level service should you need help in getting the equipment in your office up and running.

Read full article @ TechRadar

First embedded-focused Skylake Mini-ITX SBCs arrive

Arbor and Advantech unveiled Linux-ready Mini-ITX boards using Intel’s 6th Gen Skylake CPUs, with options ranging from a 25W Xeon to a 65W Core i7-6700. A month before Intel’s formal announcement of its 6th Gen Core (Skylake) processors in early September, several Windows-based, gaming oriented Mini-ITX boards were announced from ASRock, Asus, Gigabyte, EVGA, and ECS. Now Advantech and Arbor have announced more embedded-oriented Mini-ITX boards that support Linux, as well as Windows. Arbor’s website does not list Linux support, but a spokesperson told us it will likely support Ubuntu LTS.

Read full article @ Linux Gizmos

G Skill Ripjaws KM780 RGB mechanical gaming keyboard

G Skill may be better known for their memory and storage products, but they are expanding their portfolio. Today we look at their new keyboard – the Ripjaws KM780 RGB. This keyboard incorporates Cherry MX mechanical switches and clear housings to deliver uniform RGB backlighting.

It also packs a metal piped frame, detachable wrist rest, media keys, macro switches and a number of other fancy functions, all into a brushed aluminium frame. This is no budget product, as RGB mechanical keyboards tend to be – but can it justify the price tag?

Read full article @ KitGuru

Looking For Group – A New Gaming Center in Pittsburgh

Gaming centers are nothing new to the Pittsburgh area. We have seen quite a few come and go over the years and it seems no one has really got the right recipe for a gaming center that lasts. Well a new gaming center has sprung up in the Brookline area of Pittsburgh offering a unique mix of PC and Console gaming with a co-working space as well. Last week we visited Looking For Group or LFG to see what they were all about.

Read full article @ ThinkComputers.org

MSI GS40 6QE Phantom Preview

The starting point for this preview of the MSI GS40 6QE Phantom is a little background reading. KitGuru recently reviewed the 15.6-inch GS60 which has a great deal in common with this 14-inch GS40. Both laptops use the same Core i7-6700HQ CPU and Nvidia GTX 970M graphics and both are incredibly thin and light. The big change for the GS40, apart from the smaller chassis and screen, is that the panel is Full HD rather than 4K, which makes perfect sense. 14-inches is far too small for a 4K display and in any case the GTX 970M cannot drive that many pixels when you are playing games.

Read full article @ KitGuru

MSI GT72S 6QE Dominator Pro G Review

Skylake struts its stuff in a monster gaming laptop. Keeping close to the bleeding edge of PC technology can be a costly endeavor at the best of times, and if you find yourself waiting for the next big innovation, it can be time consuming, too. Such obstacles are however of little significance to the hardened enthusiasts who frequently turn to gaming laptops as a means to obtain the latest and greatest in PC hardware.

If that sounds like you, take a look at one of MSI's latest revamps, the GT72S 6QE Dominator Pro G. The name doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, but this new addition to MSI's arsenal continues the GT72 tradition of packing bleeding-edge components into a 17.3in, portable machine.

Read full article @ Hexus

Mushkin Striker 480GB SSD Review, Mush On! (MKNSSDST480GB) Review

Mushkin has been around since 1994 and become an industry leader and recognized for its high quality performance products and their design philosophy of continual innovation and delivering product “Wow” through quality products and unparalleled customer service. In their continual drive to innovate Mushkin announced the Striker line of SSD’s at CES 2015 promising improvements over their Chronos line of SSD’s. Delivering the Striker 480GB SSD with the Phison PS3110-S10 Quad core 8 Channel controller the 7mm drive is rated to run at 565MB/s read and 550MB/s write. With those specifications Mushkin is delivering blazing speeds as fast as any Sata 3.0 (6Gb/s) drive on the market and doing so in a more universal 7mm form factor than most.

Read full article @ Bjorn3D

Noctua NH-D15S CPU Cooler Review: How the Best Got Better

Slim is in but large air coolers refuse to be fat-shamed out of relevance, adapting smarter implementations to ease their installation to match the convenience of smaller heatsinks. The Noctua NH-D15 released last year is one such cooler, fighting back against the trend of All-in-One liquid cooling systems and winning the hearts of many who prefer a more silent solution. … Read more.

Read full article @ Modders-Inc

QNAP TurboNAS TS-453Mini-8G NAS Server Review

When NAS servers made their main debut in the market well over a decade ago they were designed to be a easy to deploy centralized storage solution which could provide local systems with large amounts of available storage capacity and data. Since then however things have changed for the best and so currently NAS servers can be used for many things including file sharing, web hosting, direct and torrent downloads, local backups, media streaming and sharing and of course as email servers. With the recent arrival of the Virtualization feature high-end NAS servers can also be configured to run your OS of choice thus further widening their range of uses. Still if there's one thing i always felt missing from that market that's a compact yet high-end NAS model which i could place even in my own bedroom and not worry about it waking me up in the middle of the night. Well QNAP seems to share my thoughts and so they just released the TurboNAS TS-453Mini, a powerful yet quiet 4 bay NAS.

QNAP Systems, Inc., as its brand promise "Quality Network Appliance Provider", aims to deliver comprehensive offerings of cutting edge network attached storage (NAS) and network video recorder (NVR) solutions featured with ease-of-use, robust operation, large storage capacity, and trustworthy reliability. QNAP integrates technologies and designs to bring forth quality products that effectively improve business efficiency on file sharing, virtualization applications, storage management and surveillance in the business environments, as well as enrich entertainment life for home users with the offering of a fun multimedia center experience. Headquartered in Taipei, QNAP delivers its solutions to the global market with nonstop innovation and passion.

Unlike the SilentNAS series again by QNAP which featured good hardware specifications but nothing exciting in order to support their passive cooling system the TS-453Mini is actually amongst the most powerful NAS servers to ever reach our lab. This is not only because of the quad-core Intel Celeron J1900 CPU running at 2GHz (64Bit, 2MB L2 cache, 22nm) with its Intel HD Graphics Mesa DRI Bay Trail running at 688MHz (OpenGL 3.0 Mesa 10.2.2) found under the hood of the TS-453Mini but also due to the amount of DDR3L RAM which in our model is 8GB running at 1333MHz (this is also the maximum amount supported by this CPU). The TS-453Mini also has room for up to four 3.5/2.5" SATA III drives, 2 Gigabit RJ45 Ethernet ports, 3 USB 3.0 ports, 2 USB 2.0 ports, HDMI v1.4a port and a build-in IR sensor which can be used with their RM-IR002 remote control (included in the bundle). In terms of software features the TS-453Mini supports everything we've seen so far with most NAS models by QNAP but ontop of all of these it also supports their latest Virtualization station which basically allows the end user to install other operating systems (for example Windows and Linux) in separate drive partitions. So let's move forward with our review to see just how good this "silent" NAS model by QNAP really is.

Read full article @ NikKTech

Silverstone Raven RVZ02B-W & SX500-LG

In the second quarter of 2014 we happened upon one of the best small form factor gaming cases yet, the Silverstone Raven RV01. The RV01 quickly gained recognition for being the ultimate Steam Machine enclosure as it is able to cram a fully-fledged enthusiast PC into an impressively small space.

Despite weighing just 8.17lbs (3.71kg) with a tiny 14L capacity, the RVZ01 was destined for big things with support for enthusiast gear including a dual-slot GPU that's up to 13" (330mm) long -- technically leaving enough room for the GeForce GTX Titan X.

For our build we went with a more wallet friendly GeForce GTX 760 and the results were still very impressive. The RVZ01 wasn’t just made practical as a Steam Machine due to its hardware support, but also the price which is quite reasonable at $100, not bad at all for such a unique computer case.

Read full article @ Legion Hardware

Tt eSports Cronos AD Review

This is our third outing with the Tt eSport Cronos, which so far as a product seem to be providing split decisions. The original Cronos made a good impression yet the Boosted Bass Edition never really made any real improvements. Well today we take a look at the most dramatic changes the Cronos has seen, including a redesigned headband, moving to a suspension design while keeping the same, soft lycra cushioning as previously seen. The microphone is now retractable rather than the huge boom seen on the previous Cronos headsets and the 40mm drivers are tuned for a better bass experience.

Read full article @ Vortez