Here a roundup of today's reviews and articles:

AMD Radeon RX 570 4GB Review
AMD Radeon RX 580 Linux OpenGL/Vulkan Benchmarks
AMD RX 480 successfully flashed to RX 580
ASRock Z270 Taichi Review
Asus Prime X370-PRO AM4 Motherboard Review
BIOSTAR reveals world first mini-ITX for AMD Ryzen CPUs
Cooler Master MasterAir Pro 3 and 4 CPU Cooler Review
Dell Inspiron 17 7000 - A Premium Laptop featuring 7th Gen Intel Core i7 in a 2-in-1 Frame
Game Max Onyx RGB Tempered Glass Mid-Tower Chassis Review
GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 1060 Mini ITX OC 6GB Graphics Card Review
How to convert XPS to PDF - Guide
iFi Audio nano iDSD LE
Intel to Accelerate Basin Falls Unveil, Coffee Lake Launch
MSI Cubi 2 Review
Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 570 4GB Graphics Card Review
The Best CPUs
ThermalTake Riing Silent 12 Pro Cooler Review
TUNAI CLIP Review
User Patch Unlocks Windows 7 and 8.1 Updates for Core Kaby Lake and Ryzen
XFX RX580 8GB GTS

AMD Radeon RX 570 4GB Review

With the Radeon RX 570 4GB, AMD introduces the successor to the the immensely popular Radeon RX 470 4GB, which defined its market segment last year.

Read full article @ Toms Hardware

AMD Radeon RX 580 Linux OpenGL/Vulkan Benchmarks

For those curious if the Radeon RX 580 "Polaris Evolved" graphics card is worthwhile as a Linux gamer, here are the initial Phoronix figures for the RX 580 8GB graphics card that launched yesterday. These initial tests were done with AMDGPU+RadeonSI/RADV under a variety of OpenGL and Vulkan workloads.

Read full article @ Phoronix

AMD RX 480 successfully flashed to RX 580

Several AMD Radeon RX 480 graphics cards have been successfully BIOS flashed to Radeon RX 580, allowing them to run at higher GPU clock speeds.

Originally published by Techpowerup.com, one of the users at its forums has managed to flash its XFX RX 480 8GB graphics card to RX 580 by using the Sapphire RX 580 BIOS. This allowed the card to hit 1411MHz clock without any problems and the card appears to be stable in both The Witcher 3 and Furmark.

Read full article @ Fudzilla

ASRock Z270 Taichi Review

With the ASRock Z270 Taichi we test an another Intel Z270 motherboard for Intel Kaby Lake processors today on OCinside.de. After the unboxing video of the ASRock Z270 Taichi there is now the detailed test report. New for the review are also infrared thermal images of the Z270 motherboard with Intel Core-i5 7600 K Kaby Lake CPU.

Read full article @ OCInside.de

Asus Prime X370-PRO AM4 Motherboard Review

We've been playing around with a few high-end AM4 motherboards recently, including the fantastic ASUS RoG Crosshair VI Hero X370, but not everyone wants to spend well over £200 for a motherboard, nor does everyone need to. The new ASUS PRIME X370-PRO looks set to tick all the right boxes for those who want high-end performance, without too many complications or the added cost that can often come with the flagship boards.

Read full article @ eTeknix

BIOSTAR reveals world first mini-ITX for AMD Ryzen CPUs

We've all been waiting for mini-ITX motherboards ready for AMD's new Ryzen CPUs, and here we are: BIOSTAR has finally announced the world's first mini-ITX motherboards for AMD's new AM4 platform.

Read full article @ TweakTown

Cooler Master MasterAir Pro 3 and 4 CPU Cooler Review

Today is a big day for Cooler Master, as we're taking a look at not one, but two of their latest coolers! The new MasterAir Pro 3 and Pro 4 look set to replace some of the long-standing classics that have been a big part of the Cooler Master catalogue, most importantly their 212X series, as these new CPU coolers fit more in line with their updated naming system and design choices.

Read full article @ eTeknix

Dell Inspiron 17 7000 - A Premium Laptop featuring 7th Gen Intel Core i7 in a 2-in-1 Frame

This Dell Inspiron features a 17.3-inch FHD (1920 x 1080) Truelife LED-Backlit Touch Display with Wide Viewing Angles.

Read full article @ DailyTech

Game Max Onyx RGB Tempered Glass Mid-Tower Chassis Review

Today is a very exciting day here at eTeknix HQ, as we're taking a look at our very first Game Max chassis! The Onyx is already a popular product, having sound quite well, we're eager to see what all the fuss is about. With a focus on competitive prices, while still delivering the high-end features you would expect from most brands premium products, it's easy to understand why it's so popular, but we're here to take a much more in-depth look that the specifications table doesn't let you appreciate.

Read full article @ eTeknix

GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 1060 Mini ITX OC 6GB Graphics Card Review

Making a high-performance graphics card is easy these days, just take a large PCB, stick a huge heat sink on it, and a bunch of fans, and overclock the heck out of it. There's only one problem, that graphics card is going to be pretty big, and not much use to those eager to build a compact mini-ITX gaming system. With the introduction of the latest Pascal architecture, the latest Nvidia cards are not only faster but also more efficient than ever before. Lower power requirements mean less heat, which also means it's easier to cool. This has allowed GIGABYTE to create a GTX 1060 in a tiny form factor with the GTX 1060 Mini ITX OC!

Read full article @ eTeknix

How to convert XPS to PDF - Guide

I've written a tutorial explaining how to convert XPS documents into PDF files using libgxps and GhostPDL tools. This may be of interest, especially if you want to convert XPS files to PDF, and you don't know how. Like duh.

Read full article @ Dedoimedo

iFi Audio nano iDSD LE

iFi Audio's nano iDSD LE is a little DAC/amp with big ambitions. It packs all the knowledge from the bigger DAC/amps in iFi's huge portofolio of products into a small package. Despite being small, it still features RCA line-outs, a very respectable headphone amplification circuit, and a 1000 mAh battery.

Read full article @ techPowerUp

Intel to Accelerate Basin Falls Unveil, Coffee Lake Launch

According to DigiTimes, sources among Taiwan-based PC vendors have indicated that Intel's upcoming Basin Falls platform, which includes Skylake-X and Kaby Lake-X processors on a new X299 chipset, will be unveiled at Computex 2017 (May 30th, June 3rd), in Taipei - two months earlier than expected. This move comes accompanied by an accelerated launch of the Coffee Lake microarchitecture, which still uses the 14 nm process, to August 2017 from an initial January 2018 launch. If true, this is big in a number of ways - that Intel would bring forward a product launch 4 months has some interesting implications - or at least, confirmations.

Remember that Coffee Lake is supposed to carry an increased number of cores in its mainstream designs. And we all know how Intel's line-up has almost been torn apart by Ryzen's aggressive core and thread-count, with AMD offering more cores and threads than Intel at virtually all price-points. And even if an argument is made regarding Intel's better gaming performance, that's one scenario out of many. Future proofing, professional work, multimedia, all of these assert AMD's dominance in a pure price-performance ratio. I, for one, would gladly give up some FPS in some games and accept an increased number of cores than go the other way around (especially with AMD's platform support and the number of patches that have increased game performance on Ryzen CPUs.)

Read full article @ techPowerUp

MSI Cubi 2 Review

Looking to downsize your PC? They don't come much smaller than this. Remember the Intel NUC? Heralded as the 'Next Unit of Computing,' the ultra-small form factor was designed to revolutionise the traditional PC with a footprint and performance level that appealed to the masses. Fast forward half-a-decade and the NUC hasn't really taken off, with price serving as the most obvious obstacle. The majority of NUC-like machines are today sold as barebone solutions, so when you add the memory, storage and operating system, cost tends to exceed that of a modern laptop.

Can a fully-equipped model breathe new life into the flagging form factor? MSI reckons so, and is hoping to score a hit with its latest-generation mini-PC, the Cubi 2. Priced at £450 and designed to work right out of the box with no additional hardware, this itty-bitty machine requires no configuration and seems ideal for anyone needing a quick and easy replacement for a traditional tower.

Read full article @ Hexus

Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 570 4GB Graphics Card Review

Sapphire are one of the best when it comes to making award winning 3rd part AMD graphics cards, and with this week's release of the Radeon Rx5xx series of graphics cards, we are eager to see what they have to offer. We kick things off today with a look at the latest Sapphire Nitro+ RX570. While it's already well known that this is a refresh for the RX4xx series of cards, we've already seen some significant improvements, and I'm looking forward to seeing which new technologies and performance improvements Sapphire have to show today.

Read full article @ eTeknix

The Best CPUs

After extensive testing, we've come up with this quick guide to bring you the best CPU choices available right now, divided into four categories: The Best Enthusiast/Value Gaming CPU, Best Extreme Desktop CPU, Best All-Round High-End CPU and Best Budget CPU.

Read full article @ TechSpot

ThermalTake Riing Silent 12 Pro Cooler Review

ThermalTake are back with a new air cooler – the Riing Silent 12 Pro. As the name suggests, this cooler comes fitted with one of ThermalTake’s own Riing LED fans, something which should be well received as these fans have certainly proved popular with consumers in the past. How does the Riing Silent 12 Pro stack up against the competition?

Read full article @ KitGuru

TUNAI CLIP Review

TUNAI Creative is a new company here for us at ThinkComputers.  Looking at their product lineup they currently offer two products, the CLIP, which we are taking a look at today and the Firefly.  Both are Bluetooth audio products.  The clip is an interesting product as its main function is to bring wireless connectivity to your favorite set of wired headphones.  It also gives you a voice assistant, microphone for taking calls, and has a range of 250 feet in the open air.  CLIP comes along at an interesting time where many mobile devices are dropping support of the 3.5 mm jack.  If you have a favorite pair of headphones that are wired this could be the perfect thing for you!  Read on as we take a look...

Read full article @ ThinkComputers.org

User Patch Unlocks Windows 7 and 8.1 Updates for Core Kaby Lake and Ryzen

Microsoft, in a bid to ensure users of 7th generation Intel Core "Kaby Lake," AMD A-series "Bristol Ridge," and AMD Ryzen "Summit Ridge" processors stick to Windows 10, ensured that the three platforms don't receive software updates when running older Windows 8.1 or Windows 7 operating systems. A new user-made patch removes this draconian restriction, letting you install Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 on your new-generation CPU powered machine, and receive regular software updates through Windows Update.

The patch is open-source, so you can inspect its code, and available on GitHub. The author of the patch, Zeffy, discovered two new functions to system file wuaueng.dll after the March 2017 update for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1, labeled "IsCPUSupported(void)" and "IsDeviceServiceable(void)." This library is patched to toggle those two functions "1," telling Windows Update that the CPU is "supported" and that the platform is "serviceable," making it eligible to receive updates.

Read full article @ techPowerUp

XFX RX580 8GB GTS

With the official RX 500 series launch, we learned that the new 500 series cards are hopped up versions of the 400 series of cards. With that in mind, all of the aftermarket cards have to up their game to keep things cool. So today I’m going to check out a second card and see how much they ended squeezing out of the card and what they had to do to keep things cool and quiet. That card is the RX580 8GB GTS from XFX. XFX kept their old cooler design on some of their cards, but for their flagship the GTS they went a completely new design. I’m excited to see how that looks and how it performs. Let’s dive into it.

Read full article @ LanOC Reviews