Here a roundup of today's reviews and articles:

AMD Radeon Pro WX 8200 Professional Graphics Card Review
AMD Radeon Pro WX 8200 Review
AMD Radeon RX 590 spotted at 3DMark database
Arozzi Arena Leggero Gaming Desk Review
Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 PC Review
Cooler Master Hyper 212 Black Edition CPU Cooler Review
Cooler Master MasterAir MA410M CPU Cooler Review
Cooler Master's MP860 dual-surface RGB LED mouse pad reviewed
Google Pixel 3 And Pixel 3 XL Review
How to Play Assassins Creed Odyssey with Low-End Hardware
Intel to announce Core i9-9980XE ‘Basin Falls Refresh’ CPU
Intel Will Update Graphics With Gen 11 For Ice Lake
KDE Plasma 5.14 - Phasers on stun
Metallicgear Neo Micro Aluminum Case Review
Microsoft Surface Laptop 2 Review
Microsoft Surface Pro 6 Review
Ooma Butterfleye Smart Security Camera with Facial Recognition Review
Pathfinder: Kingmaker Review
PC Buyers Guide Autumn 2018
Philips Momentum 436M6VBPAB 43in Monitor Review
QSAN XN3002T 2-bay NAS Review
Retested Intel i9-9900K comparisons show just 12 percent increase over AMD’s Ryzen 7 2700X
Samsung 970 EVO 500 GB Review

AMD Radeon Pro WX 8200 Professional Graphics Card Review

This is a great professional video card from AMD - read on to find out why. AMD’s processors have made a big comeback in the professional market, but its most recent workstation graphics haven’t met with the same fanfare. The Vega-based Radeon Pro Vega Frontier Edition and WX 9100 are capable 3D accelerators, but the former is a limited edition, and the latter a £1,500 high-end card in the same price range as the NVIDIA Quadro P5000. The Vega range didn’t offer anything hugely competitive below £1,000 for professionals. That’s all set to change with the AMD Radeon Pro WX 8200.

The WX 8200 isn’t just sub-£1,000, it’s sub-$1,000, although these days there’s not so much difference between the two currencies. Nevertheless, the WX 8200 should undercut the NVIDIA Quadro P4000 in price, perhaps by as much as £100. Yet it’s not so far behind the much more expensive WX 9100. Where the latter has 4,096 Stream Processors, the WX 8200 still has a very healthy 3,584. The innovative HBM2 memory is still used, but you only get 8GB instead of the 16GB of the WX 9100.

Read full article @ Kitguru

AMD Radeon Pro WX 8200 Review

Back in August, during SIGGRAPH, AMD announced the latest addition to its professional graphics card line-up, the Radeon Pro WX 8200. Like its predecessors, the Radeon Pro WX 8200 features the distinctive YInMn blue signature color of other Radeon Pro WX cards and is geared towards content creators and creative professionals. This latest addition to the line-up, however, is actually a slight step-down from the current flagship Radeon Pro WX 9100 – sort of. The two cards are both based on AMD’s Vega GPU architecture, but the core counts and memory configurations differ between the two. AMD’s goal with the Radeon Pro WX 8200 was to drive prices down, while maintaining a similar level of performance...

Read full article @ HotHardware

AMD Radeon RX 590 spotted at 3DMark database

TUM APISAK discovered new entries of yet unannounced Radeon RX 590 graphics card. AMD Radeon RX 590: Polaris strikes back? What is Radeon RX 590? Well, no one really knows. Rumors about a 'new' Radeon card started appearing last week (actually they started appearing a few months ago, but it was hard to believe at the time -- still is). What is believed now, however, is that Radeon RX 590 would feature Polaris architecture, except on 12nm the fabrication node. This would improve performance and power efficiency, but it would certainly not provide a proper response to NVIDIA's Turing.

Read full article @ VideoCardz.com

Arozzi Arena Leggero Gaming Desk Review

Choosing a desk is a bigtime commitment. It is something you?ll use every day, and you want it to be reliable, sturdy, and maybe have a unique feature or two. But what if you're limited on space? Well, the desk you may be looking for is the Arozzi Arena Leggero and this is our official review.

Read full article @ MMORPG

Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 PC Review

For fans of the series, Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 needs to be good since the last two entries in the series were stale and lacked innovation. Call of Duty is somewhat like a popular TV show on its 15th season that has been relying on nostalgia and on its brand name. Call of Duty: WW II and Infinite Warfare felt like rushed and boring titles with lackluster map design and with little to no innovation for such a major franchise.

The jetpack/wall-running experiment is over and we are once again back with a boots-on-the-ground experience with Black Ops 4. Treyarch has long been a favorite developer of the community and they have taken a gamble by focusing on a new Battle Royale mode dubbed “Blackout,” and they have even removed the single player campaign. Black Ops 4 now has three main modes: Zombies, Blackout, and the classic Multiplayer. Has Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 done enough to secure its franchise future?

Read full article @ BabelTechReviews

Cooler Master Hyper 212 Black Edition CPU Cooler Review

Cooler Master have what is quite possibly the best reputation when it comes to inexpensive coolers. Don’t, however, be fooled into thinking that they deal primarily with the entry-level though. Over the years, we’ve seen various models released in terms of functionality, performance and price!

In terms of inexpensive coolers though, for quite a significant time now, the Cooler Master ‘212’ series has proven to be one of the best ‘bang for buck’ products on the market in terms of providing excellent performance but within an ‘entry-level’ price. In fact, I think it’s fair to say that if you to ask most people what the best sub-£30 cooler is, they’d probably say it was the ‘212’ because most the time the only cost-effective option is sticking with the stock cooler.

That isn’t, however, to say that Cooler Master has sat on their laurels with this model. Over the years they have regularly updated it and in this instance, we have the latest to test! Namely, the Hyper 212 Black Edition.

Read full article @ eTeknix

Cooler Master MasterAir MA410M CPU Cooler Review

The RGB craze doesn’t seem to go away, just when you’ve thought you’ve RGB’d out everything in your system Cooler Master brings out the MasterAir MA410M CPU Cooler, which has addressable RGBs built into it. This creates a very cool effect inside your system, but on top of that this cooler should do a good job keeping your CPU nice and cool. It is a single tower cooler with 4 heatpipes that make direct contact with your CPU and is ventilated by two of Cooler Master’s own MF120R cooling fans. Should you consider picking up this cooler for your system? Read on as we find out!

Read full article @ ThinkComputers.org

Cooler Master's MP860 dual-surface RGB LED mouse pad reviewed

When Cooler Master asked me to review its MasterAccessory MP860 mouse pad, I said "sure, why not?" This is the era of the RGB LED, and mouse pads are already common hosts for those multicolored diodes. For those who don't follow every Cooler Master product launch religiously, the MP860 is a reversible mouse pad with RGB LED accents. It has a low-friction cloth side and a hard-and-smooth aluminum side. RGB LEDs ring the outer edge and shine through the Cooler Master logo on the cloth side. The logo on the hard side is just painted on in purple.

Read full article @ The Tech Report

Google Pixel 3 And Pixel 3 XL Review

Google unveiled an array of new hardware at a posh event in New York City last week, including the Pixel Slate, the Google Home Hub, and the products we’ll be showing you here, the Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL. The Pixel Slate is an Intel-powered convertible tablet running Chrome OS, the Home Hub is a touch-screen equipped Google Home device, and the Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL likely need no introduction – they are Google’s latest flagship smartphones running the recently released Android Pie...

Read full article @ HotHardware

How to Play Assassins Creed Odyssey with Low-End Hardware

The newest game in the Assassin's Creed series takes us further into the past with Odyssey, a game built to take advantage of current-day gaming builds. If you are stuck with a PC under the minimum requirements is there anything you can to increase performance after you have lowered all the settings?

Just like the previous game in the series (Assassin's Creed Origins), the game runs on the latest version of Ubisoft's internal AnvilNext Engine and both games have very similar minimum system requirements. This is an Engine intended for current-generation games on powerful PCs, but it can be made to work reasonably well on entry-level GPUs.

Here are the official minimum requirements from game publisher Ubisoft, but as we'll see, you can get by with some pretty low specs.

Read full article @ Tom's Hardware

Intel to announce Core i9-9980XE ‘Basin Falls Refresh’ CPU

Today Intel announces Basin Falls Refresh (Skylake-X) series. Intel HEDT up to 18-cores According to Wccftech, the LGA2066 socket will soon support more than just 7th Gen HEDT series. Intel is allegedly skipping 8th Gen Core HEDT series and goes directly to 9th Gen Core. This is particularly interesting because the new series are not even new chips, but refreshed Skylake-X silicon. The 'flagship' model called 9980XE features 18-core and 36-threads. The clocks are unknown, but they are obviously going to be higher than 7980XE's.

Read full article @ VideoCardz.com

Intel Will Update Graphics With Gen 11 For Ice Lake

Staring with the new Core “i” series in 2010, the company has been steadily improving their integrated graphics solutions. Over time, the performance has gotten to the point where they are quite usable for basic tasks. Intel is also planning to enter the discrete GPU market, inviting more analysis for their graphics architecture. Ahead of the possible launch next year, we now have more details about the new Gen 11 graphics architecture.

Perhaps due to the delays with 14nm and 10nm, Intel is working with a somewhat aging graphics solution. The current Gen 10 graphics Intel uses are largely based on Gen 9 graphics from Skylake in 2015. Furthermore, the changes made since then are relatively minor. Gen 9.5 and Gen 10 simply just add more display output options. For the new Gen 11, it looks like it will be much of the same for now. The new graphics will add support for DisplayPort 1.4a and DSC, allowing 5K and 8K output.

Read full article @ eTeknix

KDE Plasma 5.14 - Phasers on stun

Linux is much like the stock market. Moments of happiness broken by crises. Or is the other way around? Never mind. Today shall hopefully be a day of joy, for I am about to test Plasma 5.14, the latest version of this neat desktop environment. Recently, I’ve had a nice streak of good energy with Linux, mostly thanks to my experience with Slimbook Pro2, which I configured with Kubuntu Beaver. Let’s see if we can keep the momentum.

Now, before we begin, there are more good news woven into this announcement. As you can imagine, you do need some kind of demonstrator to test the new desktop. Usually, it’s KDE neon, which offers a clean, lean, mean KDE-focused testing environment. You can boot into the live session, try the desktop, and if you like it, you can even install it. Indeed, neon is an integral part of my eight-boot setup on the Lenovo G50 machine. But what makes things really interesting is that neon has also switched to the latest Ubuntu LTS base. It now comes aligned to the 18.04 family, adorned with this brand new Plasma. Proceed.

Read full article @ OCS-Mag

Metallicgear Neo Micro Aluminum Case Review

It is pretty amazing when a high-end case manufacturer takes on the down-market head on. The down-market, or what some call “normal consumers” is a very particular group when it comes to what they spend money on. Some go for cases with 200 drive bays (because they have two drives but, may want to buy more in the future (hint: they never do)). Or, they want exotic cooling because some techTuber told them cases without front vents are garbage. Whatever their kink is for choosing a product they will always want more, and never use it.

In this review we will be looking at the Metallicgear Neo Micro. Metallicgear is a brand we were introduced to during Computex and while most of the press (and videos) were focused on the new Phanteks Evolv X there was an entire room dedicated to Metallicgear and reasons behind launching a new brand.

Read full article @ Hardware Asylum

Microsoft Surface Laptop 2 Review

Little has changed with the Surface Laptop 2, but it's still a thrill to use.

Unlike the Surface Pro, the Surface Laptop launched as a version 1.0 device with very few flaws. Sure, the port selection was meager, and it is expensive, but there really wasn't much to criticize. The Surface Laptop delivered what people had been asking Microsoft for: a traditional Surface clamshell PC the rivaled Apple's MacBook.

Just 16 months later, Microsoft is giving us the Surface Laptop 2. Like the Surface Pro 6 there's not a lot that's new, but the upgraded processor and new black color option make this PC even more desirable. That's not to say all is perfect, as this refresh can easily be thought more of a Surface Laptop 1.5 rather than a full generational upgrade. Here's why.

Read full article @ Windows Central

Microsoft Surface Pro 6 Review

Microsoft is in a bit of a unique place in the PC space compared to other manufacturers. Other than Apple, Microsoft is the only company that controls both the hardware and software sides, and when the Surface lineup launched way back in 2012, Microsoft’s goal was to showcase the advantages of their platform with a premium hardware lineup. On October 2nd 2018, the company unveiled their sixth iteration of what is now a staple in the PC space, the Surface Pro 6.

On the outside, it would be easy to write this refresh off as a spec bump, but there are tangible improvements throughout the Surface Pro which make this a worthwhile successor to the 2017 Surface Pro. The company hasn’t completely reinvented Surface Pro since the Surface Pro 3 launched in 2014, with the move to the new thin and light form factor, showcasing the 3:2 aspect ratio display. Surface Pro 4 stretched the display from 12-inches to 12.3-inches in the same size device, and moved from Haswell to Skylake, and Surface Pro 2017 made some more small tweaks, and with the move to Kaby Lake finally solved the power management issues that plagued the Skylake generation of Surface devices.

Read full article @ Anandtech

Ooma Butterfleye Smart Security Camera with Facial Recognition Review

Recently Ooma has been branching out into the smart home segment utilizing their VoIP Telo units as a hub. Their smart home/home security offering has all the devices you would expect... cameras, motion sensors, door/window sensors, smoke alarms, water sensors, etc. But today we are looking at their latest product, the Ooma Butterfleye, which is an HD wireless security camera with facial recognition.

Read full article @ Bigbruin.com

Pathfinder: Kingmaker Review

Much like Dark Souls, Baldur’s Gate has become the easy comparison for traditional RPGs, and while I strive to avoid such lazy writing, I think Pathfinder: Kingmaker might be the exception. Pathfinder: Kingmaker is a lot of things, but most obviously, it is a spiritual successor to Baldur’s Gate. If you played that series back when it first released in multiple disc sets (the first game was six discs!), or on the Steam re-release, you’ll know exactly what I mean. From the camera positioning to the character portraits and incredibly detailed class system, everything about Pathfinder: Kingmaker will be familiar to those who’ve played the classic cRPG.

If none of that makes any sense, let me guide you through the complexity of games based on pen and paper RPGs. Pathfinder: Kingmaker is not a simple game. Even making my character took over half an hour as I meandered through the various menus creating my beloved half-elf bard. Picking a race, class, portrait that looks something like your character, and all the skills and spells is no easy feat, especially if you have no idea what to expect. Once you get into the game proper things don’t get any easier, though.

Read full article @ Wccftech

PC Buyers Guide Autumn 2018

Come all, come all, it's that time of year again! I think I said the same thing last time, but I digress. As usual, we are making this guide to show you what can be done at various price points in the PC gaming hardware space. As always, please note that the following guides are 'templates' only, and that availability in your local area, as well as pricing, could drastically affect what you are able to go for.

Since the summer version of this guide, there has been just one big launch, and that being Nvidia's new Turing graphics cards, i.e. the RTX 2000 series. Right now, the only options available are the RTX 2080Ti, and RTX 2080. However, their release (as you will soon see, or may have already seen) does not render the older Pascal line entirely null and void. There is nothing new in the AMD GPU space, however, meaning that the somewhat embattled RX Vega will be going up against RTX Turing as a fairly major underdog. Still, let's see, shall we?

Read full article @ Guru3D

Philips Momentum 436M6VBPAB 43in Monitor Review

Your monitor not big enough? how about this 43 inch model from Philips ? You might think that a huge 4K monitor is only for those with Russian-donated gold mines. Certainly if you’ve just got £100 to spend, Full HD and 24in will be your limit. But if your budget is more like £750, how about the 43in 4K Philips Momentum 436M6VBPAB?

Admittedly, £750 is still quite a wedge of dosh. But that’s also about how much a smaller premium gaming screen could cost, and quite a bit less than overclocked NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 graphics. So if size really does matter to you – and pixel count – the 436M6VBPAB might be the right side of your budget.

Read full article @ KitGuru

QSAN XN3002T 2-bay NAS Review

Most of you probably have never heard of QSAN Technology as this is the first time even we have come across a product from this brand. QSAN was founded in 2004, so it is not a new company. Its main purpose is the building of storage systems spanning across the FAS, SAN, DAS, and NAS categories.

QSAN has six NAS lines and today, we will take a look at the XN3002T belonging to QSAN's most affordable line. The XN3002T also has a large brother with 4+1 bays instead of 2+1. The first thing to impress is its nice external design, which doesn't resemble that of any of the competition's offerings. It is always nice to see something new, especially when it has such a distinctive look.

As already stated, the XN3002T can take two 3.5" drives, and it has an additional slot for another 2.5" drive on its side, most likely for an SSD for cache purposes. This NAS is home-oriented even though it has enough RAM (4 GB) because it is equipped with a mainstream CPU that won't be able to cope with tough tasks.

Read full article @ TechPowerUp

Retested Intel i9-9900K comparisons show just 12 percent increase over AMD’s Ryzen 7 2700X

Last week, Intel-commissioned benchmarks from Principled Technologies were heavily chastised for their misleading comparisons to competition. Originally claiming to be up to 50 percent faster than the Ryzen 7 2700X, promised re-tests under fair conditions show that the Intel i9-9900K is actually a much more marginal 12 percent quicker than competition.

With reviewers under a strict NDA , consumers had to rely on Principled Technologies (PT) to explain just how much bang for buck Intel’s new i9-9900K was compared to competition. In an attempt to match lofty expectations of its first mainstream 8-core/16-thread CPU and justify its $488 price tag minus a cooler, the Intel-paid benchmarks claimed that the i9-9900K was the “world’s fastest gaming processor” with a 50 percent performance increase over the $299 AMD Ryzen 7 2700X.

Read full article @ KitGuru

Samsung 970 EVO 500 GB Review

Samsung is one of the world leaders in digital technology, making pretty much any electronic device you can think of. Their products are used by millions of people around the world.

Being a leader in DRAM and flash memory production, it comes as no surprise that they are also a player in the SSD business. Their EVO and PRO Series SSDs are highly popular among upgraders, system builders, and enthusiasts.

Today's review covers the Samsung 970 EVO, which is the smaller sister to the 970 Pro we reviewed last week. Unlike the 970 Pro, which uses MLC flash, the 970 EVO uses TLC chips, which are cheaper to make because they store 3-bits per cell instead of two. Both Samsung 970 EVO and 970 Pro use the same Samsung Phoenix controller, which is a new model for the 970 Series. For host connectivity, the PCI-Express x4 interface is used, which guarantees the highest possible throughput.

Read full article @ TechPowerUp