Here a roundup of today's reviews and articles:

AMD Ryzen 5 2500U Raven Ridge Benchmarks Revisited: HP Envy x360 15z SSD Update
Antec Mercury 120 Review
Arozzi Verona V2 Gaming Chair
ASRock Z370 Killer - Powerful VR Ready Motherboard
Corsair HS50 Stereo Gaming Headset Review
Cougar Conquer Review
Creative Sound BlasterX Kratos S5 Review
Gamdias Hermes M3 RGB Mechanical Keyboard Review
Make your Rig a True 4K Gaming PC for the Holidays
Marley Smile Jamaica Bluetooth Earphones Review
MSI GTX 1080 Ti Gaming X Trio Review
Nitro Concepts S300 Gaming Chair Review
Noctua NH-U12S SE-AM4 CPU Cooler Review
Samsung PM981 NVMe SSD Review
Songbringer Review
Windows 10 reaches 600 million active monthly devices
Zotac GeForce GTX 1070 Ti Mini Graphics Card Review

AMD Ryzen 5 2500U Raven Ridge Benchmarks Revisited: HP Envy x360 15z SSD Update

When we launched our early preview look at AMD Ryzen Mobile performance with the new HP Envy x360 15z laptop last week, we expected it would pull in a few eyeballs. Our benchmark results were likely some of the first anyone had seen that showed what AMD's Ryzen core CPU architecture, coupled with its Radeon RX Vega GPU on the same piece of silicon, could do versus a plethora of Intel 7th and 8th Gen Core series laptops. We wanted to paint a detailed picture of its performance characteristics across various workloads and answer a few other questions a long the way regarding other aspects, like battery life. But in the end, we were left with a few questions as well, after testing the model we picked up at retail, as it was configured "out-of-the-box", so we updated it with an NVMe SSD and re-tested the machine to see how its performance was affected...

Read full article @ HotHardware

Antec Mercury 120 Review

All-in-one coolers have found their way into domestic PCs for several years and we were already able to test dozens of them. Most AIO designs are very similar. Antec is trying to set some accents in the Mercury series with some eye-catching attachments and a very special lighting. We tested the model with the 120mm radiator and show in the current Antec Mercury M120 review how the new CPU cooler performs.

Read full article @ OcInside.de

Arozzi Verona V2 Gaming Chair

The Arozzi Verona V2 gaming chair comes in seven different color combinations, includes basic ergonomics, features a typical sports-bucket-seat design, and is priced at an affordable $299 in the US and €259 in Europe, which makes it a good choice for users on a tight budget.

Read full article @ TechPowerUp

ASRock Z370 Killer - Powerful VR Ready Motherboard

The Z370 Killer SLI/ac by ASRock features support for 8th Generation Intel Core processor (Socket 1151)

Read full article @ DailyTech

Corsair HS50 Stereo Gaming Headset Review

Targets mainstream with £50 offering. Corsair has built upon a range of Void gaming headsets with newer iterations released on a regular cadence. These headsets have select combinations of surround sound, RGB lighting and wired and wireless support, though starting at £85, they are out of the reach of the casual gamer.

Addressing this concern is the wired HS50 Stereo Headset, primed for gaming on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox and a multitude of mobile devices.

Read full article @ Hexus

Cougar Conquer Review

The Cougar Conquer is not your everyday chassis. It does not aim for a sensible high-end price tag due to unique features and functions. But delivers on looks first and foremost, with an excellent quality mix and a simple, yet well-rounded and functional feature set second.

Read full article @ TechPowerUp

Creative Sound BlasterX Kratos S5 Review

Following in the footsteps of the awesome Sound BlasterX Katana, the Kratos S5 comes in as a 2.1 speaker system equipped with the Aurora Reactive lighting system, which allows the user to select from several advanced preset lighting effects, or customise their own illumination options.

Read full article @ Vortez

Gamdias Hermes M3 RGB Mechanical Keyboard Review

Being the first 87-key RGB Low-Profile mechanical gaming keyboard, the Hermes M3 focuses on fast key response and accurate actuation in a small and compact form factor. An aluminum back plate creates the backbone to the keyboard to give it a premium look and feel, and the compact design does allow for more room for a mouse. This keyboard does come in four variants; blue, brown, red, and black switches. Our friends at Gamdias were kind enough to send Benchmark Reviews their Hermes M3 with blue low-profile mechanical switches for this review. Let’s take a look at its features, specifications, and a quick overview in the next section.

Read full article @ Benchmark Reviews

Make your Rig a True 4K Gaming PC for the Holidays

The holiday shopping season is in full effect and thankfully Black Friday and Cyber Monday are both behind us. The vast majority of holiday season shopping will occur over the next four weeks and now that you’ve got your loved ones covered you can look around for some deals for yourself. There are a bunch of holiday sales on 4K monitors right now. For example you can pick up a 32″ 3840×2160 4K 60Hz HDR FreeSync IPS monitor that has a 2ms response time for $379.99 shipped right now.

If you are looking to your enhance computer experience by upgrading to a 4K monitor you can now do it without breaking the bank. These 4K displays (also known as UHD) boast a whopping 8.2 million pixels and all those extra pixels mean more graphical power is required. Most all 4K displays are capped at a 60Hz refresh rate (60 frames per second), but only the latest discrete graphics cards will let you have an enjoyable gaming experience at that resolution. The good news is that these 4K displays will deliver ultra-high-definition graphics that are crisp and lifelike in your favorite game or even if you are streaming Netflix. Many gamers might be wondering if the time is right to upgrade to a 4K monitor for the very first time, so we wanted to show you what you might be missing out on.

Read full article @ Legit Reviews

Marley Smile Jamaica Bluetooth Earphones Review

Today I am going to taking a look at some Bluetooth in-ear headphones from the brand Marley – called the Smile Jamaica Wireless. Marley have been increasing in popularity over the past couple of years and their products are now all over the high street. They are known for their superior quality, eco-friendly materials and commitment to charity causes.

The Smile Jamaica Wireless earphones are priced at £49.99 (at time of review) and are available in Denim, Signature Black and Copper.

Read full article @ Play3r

MSI GTX 1080 Ti Gaming X Trio Review

Any way you cut it, the MSI GTX 1080 Ti Gaming X Trio is one hell of a video card. Starting from the word "go," it delivered performance well above that of the GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition card in each and every benchmark. No doubt this is because of the factory boost clock speed of 1683MHz. As we all know, the factory boost clock is just the starting point for core clock speed as every Pascal-based card I have tested has outpaced the factory rating by a wide margin. At least until the thermals start ramping up. At this point, the GTX 1080 Ti Gaming X Trio has an advantage over Founders Edition cards. This card is able to stay cooler for longer, resulting in a higher longer-term average core clock speed that drives FPS performance.

Read full article @ OCC

Nitro Concepts S300 Gaming Chair Review

Nitro Concepts is a new name in gaming chairs here in North America, but the company does have a somewhat of a good pedigree. Today we are reviewing the first Nitro Concepts chair available in USA, the S300. The S300 is a more cost conscious chair, but still carries with it a German engineered design.

oday's review is of the Nitro Concepts S300 gaming chair. When we first received this chair, it was selling at Newegg for $280, but has been on sale since Black Friday for $200, however that sale ends today.

The Nitro Concepts' marketing is very much targeted to the gaming crowd, and as you can see that its S300 color combinations are as well. We went with all black this time around as the other colors were a bit too vibrant for my personal liking.

Read full article @ HardOCP

Noctua NH-U12S SE-AM4 CPU Cooler Review

Noctua makes some of the best air CPU coolers out there. When it comes to Ryzen they were one of the only manufacturers to have a full line of AM4 coolers ready. We’ve already taken a look at the big boy NH-D15 SE-AM4, with its amazing cooling performance. While the NH-D15 SE-AM4 is one of the best coolers for Ryzen it can be overkill for many people, and its shear size might not make it for everyone. Well Noctua has a smaller cooler made for Ryzen in their NH-U12S SE-AM4, which of course is their very popular NH-U12S with an AM4 mounting bracket. This single tower cooler features 5 large heatpipes and a 120 mm cooling fan. On top of that it has 100% RAM compatibility, so you shouldn’t run into any clearance issues.

Read full article @ ThinkComputers.org

Samsung PM981 NVMe SSD Review

We have Samsung's new high-performance NVMe SSD under the microscope. We found Samsung's PM981 SSD in Asia. This new OEM model is the early foundation for Samsung's next-gen enthusiast SSD that will likely be called the 980. This drive features Samsung's new 64-layer V-NAND and a high-performance controller that delivers up to 3,500 MB/s of sequential read throughput and 250,000 random read IOPS.

Samsung, like other major flash foundries, has business units that supply products to OEM customers like Lenovo, Dell, and HP. Many of the drives they supply to the OEMs go through a slight refinement and then come to the retail channel for the DIY upgrade market. In the past, we've reviewed Samsung OEM models that were better than the existing models in the retail market. That's simply because they are early versions of the next generation drives.

Read full article @ Toms Hardware

Songbringer Review

At the end of the day, Songbringer is fun, but at the same time it is not an easy recommendation for me to make. I want to recommend it, but I feel like it needs to be with the warning that the most enjoyment will either come from repeated playthroughs to learn everything you need to know, or by researching the same information on the Internet. The latter is not ideal and the former could be appealing for some. If it is not appealing to you, then this might not be the game for you.

Read full article @ OCC

Windows 10 reaches 600 million active monthly devices

Meanwhile Microsoft details its Redmond campus refresh project with 18 new buildings. Microsoft has announced that it will be developing its 500 acre Redmond campus to include 18 new buildings, 6.7 million square feet of renovated workspace, $150 million in transportation infrastructure improvements, public spaces, sports fields and new green space. It says that once the multi-year project is complete it will have 131 buildings, 47,000 employees stationed at the campus, and room for expansion with up to 8,000 more people.

Read full article @ Hexus

Zotac GeForce GTX 1070 Ti Mini Graphics Card Review

Before this year ends, NVIDIA released a new graphics card to combat AMD’s Radeon RX Vega graphics cards; specifically the RX VEGA 56. That graphics card is none other than the GeForce GTX 1070 Ti, a slightly cut down version of the GTX 1080 and uses slightly different configuration. Today we review the Zotac GeForce GTX 1070 Ti Mini graphics card, currently the only GTX 1070 Ti available that features a small form factor design. Most probably by this time, you have seen Zotac released the GTX 1080 Mini (our review here), and we were quite impressed about it. Then the company released the GTX 1080 Ti Mini; quite impressive that they were able to shrink a 1080 Ti to that size. And finally they released the GTX 1070 Ti Mini; and I was expecting Zotac to release a “Mini” version of the new graphics card. Are you currently in the market looking for a new graphics card? Or are you just curious how a GTX 1070 Ti Mini performs, specially compared to other full sized GTX 1070 Ti? Then please proceed and continue reading our Zotac GeForce GTX 1070 Ti Mini review below.

Read full article @ The PC Enthusiast