Here a roundup of today's reviews and articles:

AMD Ryzen 7 2700 And Ryzen 5 2600 Review: Great Value, Solid Performance
ASRock X470 Taichi Review
Cities: Skylines - Good Traffic Guide
Corsair RM 750X Modular Gold Rated Power Supply Review
Intel VROC NVMe RAID Uncovered on ASUS Z370 Motherboards
Logitech PowerPlay Wireless Charging Review
Samsung 970 EVO 2TB SSD Review
Sennheiser GSP 500 Gaming Headset Review
SteelSeries Arctis Pro Wireless Review

AMD Ryzen 7 2700 And Ryzen 5 2600 Review: Great Value, Solid Performance

When AMD launched its 2nd Generation Ryzen processors, we initially examined to the two top-end “X” variants -- the current flagship 8-core Ryzen 7 2700X and its 6-core cousin, the Ryzen 5 2600X. Of course, we love looking at the latest and greatest high-end hardware around here, but as is often the case, scaled-down versions of a particular product commonly offer significant value, without sacrificing much in terms of performance or features. With that in mind, we were eager to see what the lower-priced Ryzen 7 2700 and Ryzen 5 2600 could do. These processor are virtually identical to their X-branded counterparts after all, and because they’re unlocked, tweaking a few settings could offer some big performance gains...

Read full article @ HotHardware

ASRock X470 Taichi Review

In this review, we look at a new motherboard from ASRock, this time with the X470 Taichi. A motherboard that positions itself in the high-end range of X470, nicely built motherboard really and good looking is what it screams. I specifically say high-end, as ASRock designed something nice here, but priced it accordingly as well in a €229,- (similar in USD) you get the benefits from the X470, and overall a very nicely built motherboard really. X470 offers a more fine-tuned experience for your Ryzen Gen2 processor.

Ryzen Generation 2 Zen+ was launched in April, aka Ryzen 2000 or 12nm optimized Ryzen processors, the 'refresh' SKUs so to say. The new 12nm Zen+ processors will work fine with your X370 chipset based motherboard and vice versa, however, AMD launched the X470 chipset alongside these new Zen+ processors. The new chipset offers small improvements in combo with the new 12nm products. For example, to better facilitate XFR2 options. It has been a year already ever since AMD launched the first generation Ryzen processors. It had a bit of a rocky launch with the inter-core latency discussion a 1080p gaming performance as well as memory support. But the tide definitely turned for AMD as more and more people are considering to purchase an AMD processor-based PC, for their next purchase. The memory compatibility issues are mostly all gone, of course, we'll look at game performance in this article as well. But yes, things are looking good. The new 12nm processor generation can be clocked a notch higher. The upper range frequencies at 4.2~4.3 now are feasible, that also means that on the lower end of the spectrum, AMD is now capable to increase base-clock performance ion the more high-end parts. All these little tweaks bring the benefit of an overall faster processor series. Add to that improved memory latency and improved XFR2 ranges and you'll notice that the new ZEN+ generation now has become a really viable and more competitive product. So the ones that have not made a move towards AMD Ryzen just yet, now potentially could or will. So if you go with a proper processor, you'll like want a proper motherboard as well eh? X470 will give a home to the new Zen+ procs, with socket AM4 and will provide faster DDR4 memory support (as well as all other modern usual suspects like USB 3.1 gen 2, SATA Express, as well as NVMe protocol based M.2 support and surely PCI-Express Gen 3.0).

Read full article @ The Guru of 3D

Cities: Skylines - Good Traffic Guide

We built this city. We built this city with Rocks 'n' Tux. Here be a guide on how to efficiently manage the transport infrastructure in Cities: Skylines, an urban building simulator game, including multi-roundabout polygon road networks, optimal paths, train and industry best practices, outside connections, pedestrians and cyclists, other modes of transit, other tips and tricks, and more. Enjoy.

Read full article @ Dedoimedo

Corsair RM 750X Modular Gold Rated Power Supply Review

Corsair is, by far and away, one of the best-known brands in terms of PC components. Outside of processors, graphics cards, and cases, there is very little that they don’t have a hand in. Perhaps what is one of their most popular line of products is their power supplies. With a significant range on offer though, it can sometimes be difficult to exactly know where to start. More so, which will be best suited to your computer to ensure optimum performance and, above all, reliability.

Given that the power supply is one of the most critical components of a system build, it’s often ill-advised to go cheap. Particularly if you are going to be asking your PC for some hard performance.

Read full article @ eTeknix

Intel VROC NVMe RAID Uncovered on ASUS Z370 Motherboards

While updating our CPU testbeds for some upcoming testing, we came across an odd listing on the UEFI updates page for our ASUS ROG STRIX Z370-E motherboard.

From the notes, it appeared that the release from late April of this year enables VROC for the Z370 platform. Taking a look at the rest of ASUS Z370 lineup, it appears that all of its models received a similar UEFI update mentioning VROC.
While we are familiar with VROC as a CPU-attached RAID technology for NVMe devices on the Intel X299 and Xeon Scalable platforms, it has never been mentioned as an available option for the enthusiast grade Z-series chipsets. Could this be a preview of a feature that Intel has planned to come for the upcoming Z390 chipset?
Potential advantages of a CPU-attached RAID mode on the Z370 platform mostly revolve around throughput. While the chipset raid mode on the Z370 chipset will support three drives, the total throughput is limited to just under 4GB/s by the DMI 3.0 link between the processor and chipset.

Read full article @ PC Perspective

Logitech PowerPlay Wireless Charging Review

For anyone who has been reading LanOC for a while now, you have probably seen me trying to find the perfect wireless headset. This is because I right with cables on my desk and really wireless options are hit and miss with most being miss. For wireless mice, I had mostly just given up. Sure wireless tech has improved and lag for my nonskilled self has been not at all noticeable. But frankly I just always forget to plug in my mouse or even turn it off. The best part about being wired is that you don’t have to think about it at all. So when Logitech introduced their PowerPlay Wireless Charging system I have been wanting to try it out for a while now. Well, they sent over the PowerPlay mat/mouse pad as well as both the G903 and G703 mice that support it. Has it lived up to what I expected? Well, you will have to read the rest of the review to find out, I’m not giving it all away just yet.

Read full article @ LanOC Reviews

Samsung 970 EVO 2TB SSD Review

The new SSD 970 series uses the latest Samsung 64-layer TLC V-NAND rather than the 48-layer used by the previous generation SSD960 series. Along with the new NAND, the new drives get a new controller called Phoenix, which replaces the Polaris controller of the SSD960. Samsung has kept details of the new controller pretty close to its chest but what is known is that it uses five cores (one of which is dedicated to communication duties between the controller and the host system) and has 8 NAND channels. With the launch of the SSD970 series Samsung has also introduced the 3.0 version of their NVMe driver.

The 970 EVO comes in a range of four capacities; 250GB, 500GB, 1TB and the flagship 2TB drive which Samsung kindly supplied for review. All the drives are built on a single sided M.2 format, and to enable the 2TB drive to be single sided it uses the 512Gb die version of the 64-layer NAND, while the rest of the range uses 256Gb die NAND.

Read full article @ KitGuru

Sennheiser GSP 500 Gaming Headset Review

The Sennheiser GSP 500 is a great gaming headset with an open soundstage to aid you in all your gaming desires.

At the beginning of last month, I went through a roller coaster of changes. The first thing on my list was to take possession of my own place. To be honest, there was a lot of steps that worked up to it, which taught me a lot of things. The search itself actually started last year in the fall season, when I looked at various neighborhoods in the northwest. I wanted a new place, but Calgary is very much a sprawling city and so my search was limited to the edges. After some turmoil with work and the situation, I actually thought I would stay put, but after a bit more settling down and finding a place I really liked, I pulled the trigger. The following events happened quickly, as I had to find and meet with a lawyer, meet with the bank, and make several phone calls to different places. There were also a lot of timing things I had to work out to ensure I would take possession on the expected date. I was pretty happy to learn all of these things at this time in my life, but it was also was pretty overwhelming at times. Thankfully, everything turned out okay and I have since been living at my own pad. Obviously, I still have a lot to learn about maintaining my house. In addition, I was telling some my family and friends how, even though all my things are in my new residence, I do not feel at home. However, when I go back to my parents' house, I feel at home even though I do not have any of my things. I guess this move will take a bit longer than a month to get used to. Today's review comes from Sennheiser, who is more than a veteran in the audio industry. However, we have a gaming headset, something we have not seen from them yet. With how "at home" they are in this space though, I fully expect to see some greatness from the Sennheiser GSP 500 today, so let us hope they do not let me down!

Read full article @ APH Networks

SteelSeries Arctis Pro Wireless Review

A stellar gaming headset with a lofty price tag. SteelSeries has updated its range of award-winning headsets with three new models launched under the Arctis Pro umbrella. The trio arrive as high-end successors to the hugely popular Arctis 7 line, and with multiple flavours to choose from, pricing can vary considerably.

The most basic model, dubbed simply the Arctis Pro, is a wired solution priced at £180. Up next is the Arctis Pro GameDAC, which for £250 adds an ESS Sabre digital-to-analogue converter and high-res audio certification. At the top of the range lies the Arctis Pro Wireless, a £300 flagship offering the ability to roam free on PC, PS4 or mobile. We have the latter in for review today.

Read full article @ Hexus