Here a roundup of today's reviews and articles:

AMD Athlon 200GE Review
AOC Agon AG352UCG6 Gaming Monitor Review
Cooler Master MasterMouse MM531 Review
EasySMX Cool 2000 Headset Review
MSI MEG X399 Creation Threadripper Motherboard Review
PNY Elite microSDXC UHS-I 512GB Memory Card Capsule Review
Qsan XN3002T Two-Bay NAS Review
Seagate IronWolf 12TB NAS HDD Review
Seagate IronWolf Pro 14TB NAS HDD Review
Sennheiser HD 660 S Review
Toshiba OCZ RC100 240GB Solid State Drive Review

AMD Athlon 200GE Review

AMD's most affordable Zen based processor yet, the Athlon 200GE is just dual-core, but before your shrek louder than the coil whine of a cheap graphics card, consider the price, this is a $55 processor. Clocked at 3.2 GHz, there's 5MB of cache in total, and the integrated Radeon GPU packs just 3 compute units. The TDP rating has been set at just 35 watts.

Read full article @ TechSpot

AOC Agon AG352UCG6 Gaming Monitor Review

We’re testing out AOC’s AG352UCG6, a 35-inch monitor with G-Synch, 120Hz refresh rate, an 1,800R curve and 3,440 x 1,440 resolution. The AOC Agon AG352UCG6 doesn’t significantly improve upon its predecessor’s gaming experience, but it offers a 120Hz refresh rate and G-Sync-enhanced performance. Achieving accurate color requires contrast compromises. But a clear bright picture, excellent build quality and good value may appeal to gamers looking for a high-performance, ultra-wide, curved display.

Read full article @ Tom's Hardware

Cooler Master MasterMouse MM531 Review

I used to know a guy who hated Mercedes cars because they didn't have names. Instead, Mercedes simply gives its vehicles identifiers like E300, SL550, or AMG GLE43. I imagine that guy probably wouldn't like Cooler Master's newest mouse, either. It's simply called the MM531.

OK, technically it's the MasterMouse MM531. You might think that MM stands for MasterMouse, but you'd apparently be as wrong as I was. Fortunately, Cooler Master refers to the mouse primarily as the MM531, so that's what we're going to use too.

You've probably already divined this from the picture above, but this is a by-the-numbers seven-button gaming mouse. It features RGB LED lighting, an ergonomic right-handed shape, and not much else. Like the Cooler Master CK552 keyboard that I just reviewed, there really aren't any gimmicks here. We don't get any adjustable weights or interchangeable side panels, or really anything beyond the essentials.

Read full article @ The Tech Report

EasySMX Cool 2000 Headset Review

Today we have tested the EasySMX COOL 2000, an inexpensive over ear headset. We will see if the company EasySMX from Shenzhen, founded in 2012, can convince us with this headset. The results can now be seen in the following EasySMX Cool 2000 headset review on OCinside.de, including a small audio sample and video.

Read full article @ OcInside.de

MSI MEG X399 Creation Threadripper Motherboard Review

MSI's MEG X399 CREATION motherboard gets put to the test like no motherboard we've ever reviewed to date. We beat the hell out of this motherboard on all of our test benches over the last month. We used the MEG for most all our Threadripper 2990WX and 2950X testing so we have a good handle on just how good it is.

Read full article @ HardOCP

PNY Elite microSDXC UHS-I 512GB Memory Card Capsule Review

High-capacity microSDXC cards have started to appear in the market, thanks to the advent of 3D NAND. In August 2017, the 400GB SanDisk Ultra microSDXC UHS-I card was introduced. At the 2018 Computex, we saw multiple vendors (ADATA, PNY, and Team Group) demonstrating 512GB microSDXC cards.

Digital cameras and camcorders employ memory cards (flash-based removable media) for storage of captured content. There are different varieties of memory cards catering to various performance levels. CompactFlash (CF) became popular in the late 90s, but, has now been overtaken by Secure Digital (SD) cards. Many computing systems (PCs as well as smartphones) also support SD / microSD cards for augmenting local storage capabilities. We recently started in-depth evaluation of the performance of various memory cards. This piece evaluates one of the highest capacity microSDXC card currently available in the market - the PNY Elite microSDXC UHS-I 512GB version.

Read full article @ Anandtech

Qsan XN3002T Two-Bay NAS Review

Before this article, I had only heard of Qsan in passing or while researching competing NAS platforms. The fact is, Qsan is a relatively new company to the North American SOHO / SMB market but they are gaining ground quickly with their NAS and DAS products. Qsan reached out mid-June and offered up their two-bay entry-level platform for review, Let's see what it has to offer.

The XCube is the sub-branding behind the entry-level two and four-bay NAS platforms. These platforms are design for SMB and Workgroup use cases and offer a N+1 hardware design, meaning N for the given amount of 3.5" bays or large form factor storage and +1 for the 2.5" "cache" bay hidden behind the enclosure front. Moving into further hardware specifications, Qsan has designed the XCube platform to offer the latest in processor technology, the XN3002T in house packs an Intel Celeron Quad Core operating at 1.1GHz paired with 4GB of DDR3.

Read full article @ TweakTown

Seagate IronWolf 12TB NAS HDD Review

We’ve had NAS HDDs for a while and it is a common choice for those who archive data, content creators who want large storage for RAW images and videos, folks with network storage for SOHO or small enterprise services. WD has the Red and the Red Pro series, while Seagate has its IronWolf and IronWolf Pro series.

This is the Seagate IronWolf Pro NAS HDD with 10 TB storage capacity. Seagate uses AgileArray technology these HDDs which is optimized to work in always-on and multi-user access situations on RAID-enabled NAS. The word ‘Pro’ applies to NAS drives up to 16 HDDs with higher mean time between failures and other optimization. Warranty period differs between the variants as IronWolf honours three years warranty while IronWolf Pro honours five years warranty and two-year cover for data recovery services with registration. Additionally, the IronWolf Pro have rotational vibration sensors which work by spreading the vibration throughout its casing. Therefore, any possible issue due to system vibration is reduced dramatically.

Read full article @ Hardware BBQ

Seagate IronWolf Pro 14TB NAS HDD Review

It has only been about 2 years since Seagate introduced the world to their Guardian series which consists of three different HDDs. There’s the SkyHawk for NVR/DVR usage, the Barracuda for desktop usage, and the IronWolf for NAS usage.

In those two years which have passed, Seagate has managed to increase the capacity by 40% and we now have 14TB versions in all three types. There are Pro drives too which come with better warranty and endurance over the none-pro versions. We’ve previously had a look at all types, so check out our reviews on them if you’d like. Today we focus on the IronWolf NAS drive.

Read full article @ eTeknix

Sennheiser HD 660 S Review

One of the first lessons you learn after diving into the world of hi-fi audio is that no pair of speakers or headphones can ever be declared as the best. Even if you're rich (or mad) enough to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on your audio setup, there's still a chance someone will listen to it with a straight face and remain utterly unimpressed. The main reason for this is that not everyone enjoys the same character of sound. What you could potentially find ideal, someone else may consider lacking in certain aspects. For example, I generally don't like when the bass is heavily emphasized, but there are plenty of users who wouldn't give a second thought to a pair of speakers or headphones that aren't exceptionally bass-heavy. That's okay, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

With that in mind, it's quite impressive what Sennheiser managed to pull off at around the turn of the century: they released two products that were met with universal acclaim by users and critics alike. In 1997, they released the now legendary HD 600, followed by the equally famous HD 650, launched some six years later. Both headphones share many characteristics—both were positioned as the company's flagship products, open-back, and almost universally liked, nay, loved by their owners. With a launch price of around $500, neither were exactly cheap, but for countless users, they represented the "endgame"; that last pair of headphones they'd ever need to buy. Over time, their price dropped significantly; nowadays, you can pick up the HD 600, as excellent as ever, for no more than $300, and the HD 650 for around $400. Let's not forget the Massdrop-exclusive HD 6XX, which is basically the HD 650 with a navy blue instead of a black color scheme—more than 40,000 users bought them (and continue buying them) for a measly $200, which is a bargain of a lifetime.

Read full article @ TechPowerUp

Toshiba OCZ RC100 240GB Solid State Drive Review

When you think about NVMe solid state drives you typically think of high performance, high cost drives. Well Toshiba has a new class of NVMe drives in their OCZ RC100 series drives that will help bring NVMe drives into the mainstream. These new affordable NVMe drives have a DRAM-less design, but make use of Host Memory Buffer (HMB) which accesses the system DRAM for its own caching space. The drives also make use of a PCIe Gen 3 x2 interface (whereas most NVMe drives use an x4 interface). With that you have sequential read and write speeds of 1600 MB/s and 1050 MB/s respectively. While this speed is not on the level of high-end NVMe drives it is definitely faster than a normal SATA-based solid state drives and much, much faster than a traditional hard drive. Can this be the drive to bring NVMe speeds to the mainstream? Read on as we find out!

Read full article @ ThinkComputers.org