Here a roundup of today's reviews and articles:

AMD demonstrates Zen running Doom
AntLion ModMic 4.0 Uni-directional with Mute Review
ASUS ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1080 Review
Asus RT-AC88U AC3100 MU-MIMO Router Review
Crucial MX300 750GB Limited Edition SSD Review
Crucials MX300 SSD reviewed
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1080 G1 Gaming Review
Gigabyte GTX 1080 G1 Gaming 8 GB
Kirin 650-Powered honor 5C Smartphone
Limited Edition 750GB Crucial MX300 SSD Review
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 On Linux: Testing With OpenGL, OpenCL, CUDA & Vulkan
Silverstone Argon Cooler Round Up
Synology DiskStation DS216+ NAS Review

AMD demonstrates Zen running Doom

AMD has released a short video where its lead system engineer Louis Castro running Doom on its Summit Ridge, Zen-based processor .

This means that the silicon is in good shape and the processor was taped our probably late last year with no major issues. AMD’s CEO Lisa Su has already said that the desktop version shall arrive first, and this was the CPU demonstrated in the video.

Read full article @ Fudzilla

AntLion ModMic 4.0 Uni-directional with Mute Review

Although I'm sure I wasn't the only one to complain, it seems my complaints from the first version were heard. The length of the cable was a challenging, tangling, mess if you weren't careful. The addition of the accessory pack and the ability to connect the ModMic cable to my headphones cable is a much cleaner and less "permanent" solution than zip ties. So I'm happy to hear I was heard, even if was everyone else complaining too. It's always nice to see "response" in future releases. The ModMic sounds significantly better than my lazy Logitech web cam mic and best of all, lets me use MY favorite headphones. No matter what companies claim about having studio quality headsets, they just never seem to measure up. Take my last review for example, the Kingston Cloud Revolver. They were listed as a top end model with supposed epic sound. They personally fell short and left me hanging just to have a darn mic. They were also up there in the spectrum of cost and honestly didn't feel worth it to me. But this conclusion isn't about them; it is however about the epic ModMic that lets me have whatever the hell I want! Heck yes! I pick my audio quality, shitty or good, and attach a little mic that sounds damn good and go with it. The ModMic is just as impressive as its first generation model and has grown up a little with some additional features and accessories, making it a priority over any conventional headset on the market.

Read full article @ OCC

ASUS ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1080 Review

ASUS unleashes their first GTX 1080 ROG card, the STRIX edition is now positioned inside that Republic of Gamers line and was just unleashed, set free to run in the wild. It is armed with an all custom design including the STRIX cooler and a very healthy factory tweak. This is a Royale with cheese alright, something many of you have been waiting for, all custom, all tweaked and now with AURA RGB LED lighting as well. Join us in a review of the darm matter in an 8 GB form from ASUS, the ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1080 located under SKU code ROG STRIX-GTX1080-O8G-GAMING.

The GPU industry has been on hold, waiting for a smaller GPU fabrication process to become viable. Last generation GPUs were based on a 28 nm fabrication, an intermediate move to 20 nm was supposed to be the answer for today’s GPUs, but it was a problematic technology. Aside from some smaller ASICs the 20 nm node has been a fail. Therefore the industry had to wait until an ever newer and smaller fabrication process was available in order to shrink the die which allows for less voltage usage in the chips, less transistor gate leakage and, obviously, more transistors in a GPU. The answer was to be found in the recent 14/15/16 nm fabrication processors and processes with the now all too familiar FinFET + VLSI technology (basically wings on a transistor). Intel has been using it for a while, and now both Nvidia and AMD are moving towards such nodes as well. Nvidia is the first to announce their new products based on a TSMC 16 nm process fab by introducing Pascal GPU architecture, named after the mathematician much like Kepler, Maxwell and Fermi. That stage has now passed, the GeForce GTX 1070 and 1080 have been announced with the 1070 and 1080 cards slowly becoming available in stores as we speak. Both models are equally impressive in its product positioning, though I do feel the 1070 will be the more attractive product due to its price level, the 1080 cards really is what everybody want (but perhaps can't afford). The good news though is that the board partner cards will offer SKUs for less opposed to the Nvidia reference / Founder edition cards. Obviously the higher-end all customized SKUs will likely level with that founders edition card price level again, but I am pretty certain you'd rather spend your money on a fully customized AIB card that is already factory tweaked a bit opposed the the reference one.

Read full article @ Guru3D

Asus RT-AC88U AC3100 MU-MIMO Router Review

A second wave of 802.11ac wireless routers have begun to appear, and the new must-have feature is MU-MIMO, short for Multiple User, Multiple Input, Multiple Output. We already reviewed the first two MU-MIMO routers we could get our hands on from Linksys and Netgear, and now Asus has entered the fray with a dual-band AC3100 router dubbed the RT-AC88U. This is a flagship router that has all the bells and whistles one would expect at a $300 price point, but it differentiates itself from the competition by offering Link Aggregation and eight LAN ports, which are uncommon features in a consumer-class router...

Read full article @ HotHardware

Crucial MX300 750GB Limited Edition SSD Review

While the PCI-Express interface is currently the way forward for performance SSD drives, 3D NAND technology holds the key to SSD capacities never even dreamed of before; Samsung’s 16TB PM1633a being the perfect example of this. 3D NAND can help achieve these huge capacities because its fabrication process allows for the creation of much denser NAND chips than the standard 2D Planar process.

Samsung has had quite a head start in offering drives that use 3D NAND into the consumer marketplace but other drive manufacturers are slowly but surely entering the fray. Crucial have thrown their hat into the ring with the MX300 750GB Limited Edition.

Read full article @ KitGuru

Crucials MX300 SSD reviewed

Samsung's not the only one thinking in three dimensions these days. Micron is debuting its 3D NAND technology with an update to its MX series of SSDs. We put the MX300 750GB drive through the wringer to find out if 3D NAND and TLC balance each other out.

Read full article @ The Tech Report

Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1080 G1 Gaming Review

Since first testing the reference Founders Edition GTX 1080 a month ago, we have been eagerly anticipating getting our hands on the board partner versions. The Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1080 G1 Gaming is a triple fan cooled 1080 that also boasts a redesigned PCB. Even though it's currently out of stock pretty much everywhere, we expect availability to improve shortly.

Read full article @ Techspot

Gigabyte GTX 1080 G1 Gaming 8 GB

The Gigabyte GTX 1080 G1 Gaming comes at $649, which is $50 cheaper than NVIDIA Founders Edition pricing. The card is overclocked out of the box and its heatsink works much better than the one on the FE. It features idle-fan off, runs cooler, without throttling and is still quieter in gaming.

Read full article @ techPowerUp

Kirin 650-Powered honor 5C Smartphone

Powered by the new Kirin 650 chip, the new honor 5C runs on the latest Android 6.0 Marshmallow and sports a list of flagship features. Best of all, honor is pricing it at less than US$ 220!

Read full article @ Tech ARP

Limited Edition 750GB Crucial MX300 SSD Review

Crucial announced a new €˜limited edition€™ SSD today that the company believes well help show off their brand new Micron 3D TLC NAND Flash memory technology. Yes, Micron is the latest semiconductor manufacturer to move from planar 2D TLC NAND to 3D TLC NAND! Micron says that the move to 3D NAND improves performance and prolongs endurance. By moving to 3D TLC NAND it means that they will have to change controllers to support the move to and went with the Marvell 88SS1074 controller with Crucial custom firmware on the new Crucial MX300 SSD series. Read on to see how the Crucial MX300 750GB SSD performs.

Read full article @ Legit Reviews

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 On Linux: Testing With OpenGL, OpenCL, CUDA & Vulkan

If you were amazed by the GeForce GTX 1080 performance under Linux but its ~$699 USD price-tag is too much to handle, the GeForce GTX 1070 is now shipping for $399~449 USD. NVIDIA sent over a GeForce GTX 1070 and I've been putting it through its paces under Linux with a variety of OpenGL, OpenCL, and Vulkan benchmarks along with CUDA and deep learning benchmarks. Here's the first look at the GeForce GTX 1070 performance under Ubuntu Linux.

Read full article @ Phoronix

Silverstone Argon Cooler Round Up

As the desktop PC continues to become more efficient the components tend to shrink. What once required a full sized motherboard with three expansion cards can now fit on a single Mini ITX in a case with a third of the volume. Despite all the advancement one thing holds true. OEM heatsinks work but, really suck.

In this round up we’ll be taking a look at three coolers from Silverstone to find out which is best for your application. The first cooler, the Argon SST-AR06 is a low profile cooler designed to maximize cooling performance in the Silverstone Raven RVZ02 and other slim style cases. The other two, the Argon SST-AR07 and Argon SST- AR08 are both tower style heatsinks that feature a very aggressive fin design, three 6mm heatpipes with direct heatpipe contact technology or, core contact as I like to call it.

Read full article @ Hardware Asylum

Synology DiskStation DS216+ NAS Review

Synology is a company we know for great network-attached storage (NAS) devices.  They have really made a name for themselves by making setting up and using a NAS very easy.  Today we will be taking a look at their DiskStation DS216+ which is part of their Plus Series of devices that are made for workgroup and small / medium business use.  Being part of the Plus Series the DS216+ features a Intel Celeron N3050 dual core 1.6 GHz processor, 1GB of DDR3 memory and two hard drive slots for a total storage capacity of us to 16TB.  Built into the DS216+ you have the AES-NI hardware encryption engine, support of Windows AD, LDAP, and Domain Trust, and 4K Ultra HD video transcoding, all backed by high-speed data transfer rates.  Like all Synology NAS devices the DS216+ is running Synology’s award winning NAS OS, DiskStation Manager.  This makes configuring your NAS and getting it setup a breeze.  Let’s check out the DS216+ and see what it is all about!

Read full article @ ThinkComputers.org