Here a roundup of today's reviews and articles:

AMD A12-9800 Bristol Ridge APU (socket AM4) Review
AMD Ryzen Balanced Power Plan Benchmarked
Gigabyte Aorus GTX 1080 Ti Xtreme Edition review
Hykso Punch Trackers Review: Boxing Meets Wearable Technology
HyperX Cloud Revolver S Headset Review
Microsoft’s Project Scorpio: More Hardware Details Revealed
Synology DiskStation DS916+ 4-Bay NAS Review

AMD A12-9800 Bristol Ridge APU (socket AM4) Review

We were very hopeful about the Bristol Ridge series from AMD back in September when we released a preview on our Dutch site. We had also hoped that the processors would be available for purchase soon, however up until the day of writing the CPUs have yet to be released. We did find a few kits in Germany consisting of an AMD A12-9800 APU and an Asus A320M-C motherboard, which we tested to get an idea of the new APU series.

The A12-9800 is the flagship model of the new APU series, which has been available for a while now in pre-built systems from large manufacturers. The processor is made up of Excavator cores, the last generation of Bulldozer-based cores that AMD has been using since the Carrizo generation. There haven't been any new desktop processors with these cores however, save for the Athlon X4 845.

The graphical improvements to Bristol Ridge are also fairly modest. The Radeon GPU has been upgraded to the GCN 1.2 architecture, in other words the same generation as Tonga and Fiji. This means that H.265 and VP9 video can be decoded on a hardware-level.

Read full article @ Hardware.Info

AMD Ryzen Balanced Power Plan Benchmarked

Earlier this morning we were surprised with an e-mail from AMD offering a preview of a new Ryzen Balanced power plan for Windows that is said to improve performance on Ryzen processors. We pushed some of the things we were working on today off the agenda and started testing the new Ryzen Power Plan to see what performance gains were to be had....

Read full article @ Legit Reviews

Gigabyte Aorus GTX 1080 Ti Xtreme Edition review

We review the flagship graphics card from Gigabyte in the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti series, the spectacular Gigabyte Aorus GTX 1080 Ti Xtreme 11G. This GTX 1080 Ti comes customized with an impressive cooler, RGB LEDs, extra on-board HDMI connectors and the looks to impress.

Read full article @ Guru3D

Hykso Punch Trackers Review: Boxing Meets Wearable Technology

Last year, we took a look at an early version of Hykso’s Punch Trackers. Just in case you missed our initial coverage, Hykso’s wearable devices are meant to be worn under the wraps or wrist tape of boxers, martial artists, or anyone else that trains in combat sports – whether professionally or for fitness – and are designed to track a variety of punch types. On some levels, you can think of Hykso’s Punch Trackers like a "FitBit for combat sports," but the data provided by the devices and their associated mobile app is laser-focused and specialized.

The early version of the trackers we looked at was never meant for public consumption. However, the company was readying a sleeker, more durable, and easier to use version at the time, and interest was so high that the first run of product actually sold-out during the pre-order phase...

Read full article @ HotHardware

HyperX Cloud Revolver S Headset Review

The HyperX Cloud Revolver S is the latest flagship headset from Kingston’s gaming brand. The company is calling this product “the ultimate gaming headset”, thanks to improved comfort, new 50mm drivers, and a USB dongle that brings Dolby Surround 7.1 technology to the Cloud Revolver line for the first time.

Read full article @ TechSpot

Microsoft’s Project Scorpio: More Hardware Details Revealed

This news piece contains speculation, and suggests silicon implementation based on released products and roadmaps. The only elements confirmed for Project Scorpio are the eight x86 cores, 6 TFLOPs, 326 GB/s, its built by AMD, and it is coming in 2017. If anyone wants to officially correct any speculation, please get in touch. 

One of the critical points of contention with consoles, especially when viewed through the lens of the PC enthusiast, is the hardware specifications. Consoles have long development cycles, and are thus already behind the curve at launch – and that gap only grows over time as the life-cycle of the console is anywhere from five to seven years. The trade-off is usually that the console is an optimized platform, particularly for software: performance is a known quantity and it is much easier to optimize for.
Based on some of the discussion from the source, it would seem that AMD is implementing a good number of its power saving features from Excavator and Zen, particularly related to unique DVFS profiles per silicon die as it comes off the production line, rather than a one-size fits all approach. The silicon will also be paired with a vapor chamber cooler, using a custom centrifugal fan.

Read full article @ Anandtech

Synology DiskStation DS916+ 4-Bay NAS Review

The DiskStation DS916+ is the latest addition to the the Synology Plus product line aimed at Workgroups and Small & Medium Business users. The 4-Bay DS916+ features a Quad-core Intel processor and expandable memory.

Read full article @ KitGuru