Here a roundup of today's reviews and articles:

A Quick Guide To Customizing Your Windows Desktop Experience
AMD helps Firaxis create a truly exceptional DirectX 12 renderer
Be Quiet! Dark Base Pro 900 Review: A Great PC Case
Core i7-6900K vs Core i7-5960X - 2D Performance
Corsair Neutron XTi 480GB Review
CPU Overclocking Guide: How (and Why) to Tweak Your Processor
ECS LIVA Core Mini-PC
GTX 1070 SLI Testing
Huawei MateBook Review
Linux 2017 - The Road to Hell
MSI GeForce GTX 1070 Gaming X in SLI
Razer OSVR Hacker Developer Kit 1.4 Review
True Performance Of The Radeon RX 480 Examined

A Quick Guide To Customizing Your Windows Desktop Experience

If you are like me, the Aero themes under the Personalize menu in Windows 7 and Windows 10's minimalist design language are just not enough to give your PC a unique look. You want more than a new wallpaper, some icons, and simple color changes.

There are utilities out there, both free and commercial, that will give you a custom desktop far beyond anything you can get from the Windows theme presets. You can go with the out of the box look, or customize things on your own with a little fiddling...

Read full article @ HotHardware

AMD helps Firaxis create a truly exceptional DirectX 12 renderer

So features like Async Compute and Explicit Multi-Adapter will boost Civilization VI. AMD has announced that it is working closely with 2K and Firaxis Games in a technical partnership, in order to help implement a "world class DirectX 12 experience with full support for Asynchronous Compute and Explicit Multi-Adapter". We are told that PC gamers will feel the benefit of the "truly exceptional DirectX 12 renderer" in the upcoming Sid Meier's Civilization VI game.

Read full article @ Hexus

Be Quiet! Dark Base Pro 900 Review: A Great PC Case

In its most basic form, the new Be Quiet! Dark Base 900 is a large well-made enclosure that makes good use of steel, aluminum and glass. However take a closer look and it's without a doubt one of the most flexible and customizable computer cases on the market and possibly the best full-tower of 2016.

Read full article @ TechSpot

Core i7-6900K vs Core i7-5960X - 2D Performance

There is a variety of customer groups in need of as much processing power as possible. Especially in the field of content creation, which includes editing pictures and videos or even rendering a complex scenery with beautiful effects, performance improvements quickly translate into higher income by the end of the month. With this series of articles we're going to compare two processors. The CPUs tested are being run at stock clocks as well as overclocked and apart from that we will also vary the memory frequency. It is our goal to show which CPU is how much faster or slower than another one.

Read full article @ ocaholic

Corsair Neutron XTi 480GB Review

Just like the Neutron XT, the XTi uses the Phison PS3110 S10 controller but this time it is paired with Toshiba 15nm MLC NAND. The XT series used 19nm NAND.

Read full article @ KitGuru

CPU Overclocking Guide: How (and Why) to Tweak Your Processor

Learn the pros and cons of overclocking your CPU, the physics behind changing your clock rate and the basics of overclocking an Intel or AMD processor.

Read full article @ Tom's Hardware

ECS LIVA Core Mini-PC

ECS has yet another LIVA iteration in stores now, ready to add basic compute functionality to all those home theatres without "smart" features. The tiny LIVA Core features faster HDD tech to make media playback features better, so it's not just ready for HT use; it's capable of more! Presenting the LIVA Core!

Read full article @ techPowerUp

GTX 1070 SLI Testing

Well, I finally got my hands on two GTX 1070’s and you guys know what that means. As soon as I finished up writing about the second card, I jumped right into SLI testing. With the card availability being tough getting two matching cards might be tough, so before you do that I thought it would be good to see just how much you can benefit from running two cards. On top of that, I wanted to find out if you are better off getting a single GTX 1080 over the GTX 1070 pair. So I ran the cards through our normal benchmark suite. Unlike a card review, though, I jump right into the testing and for the most part I let the numbers speak for themselves. So hang on.

Read full article @ LanOC Reviews

Huawei MateBook Review

The Huawei MateBook 2-in-1 PC is the latest high-end convertible tablet to hit the market running Windows 10 Home. With clean lines, leather accents and a sharp 12 inch IPS TFT LCD display featuring a screen resolution of 2160 x 1440 pixels, the MateBook will certainly turn some heads as will the $699 entry price point. That price point is lucrative as it is $200 less than the lowest priced Microsoft Surface 4! Read on to see how the Huawei MateBook performs!

Read full article @ Legit Reviews

Linux 2017 - The Road to Hell

I'm worried. What shall become of our favorite operating system? I honestly don't know, but it sure feel like it's not going to be good, not in the desktop space. If you feel like reading a bit more, take a look at my most recent OCS-Mag article.

Read full article @ Dedoimedo

MSI GeForce GTX 1070 Gaming X in SLI

Sometimes incredible, sometimes not, we take a closer peek at performance. Appreciating that we hadn't given Pascal the SLI makeover, MSI sent in a second card for some multi-GPU fun. Ensconced in our test system with ease and connected to its graphics partner in crime through a new high-bandwidth SLI bridge, we set about finding how SLI shapes up in 2016. The results are interesting, to say the least, especially if you have a mind to play games with the DX12 API, so read on to find out what we discovered in some head-scratching testing.

Read full article @ Hexus

Razer OSVR Hacker Developer Kit 1.4 Review

The Razer OSVR HDK 1.4 offers VR on a budget. The HMD features a lower resolution than the typical VR systems, which lowers the GPU requirements for VR gaming, but can a 60Hz 1080p display really deliver a compelling VR experience?

Read full article @ Tom's Hardware

True Performance Of The Radeon RX 480 Examined

In this article, we will examine the drop in performance caused by the reduced power consumption. Then we will compare it to the boost in performance from the Radeon Software 16.7.1 driver. Check it out!

Read full article @ Tech ARP