Here a roundup of todays reviews and articles:

Acer Predator X34 Curved G-SYNC Monitor Review
AMD releases new FX-6330 Black Edition CPU
AMD's 2016 Linux Driver Plans & GPUOpen Family of Dev Tools: Investing In Open Source
AMD's GPUOpen; Power to the Developers
Corsair Strafe RGB Mechanical Keyboard Review
Razer Kraken Mobile Review
The EKWB EK-XLC Predator 240 Liquid Cooler Review
TRENDnet TEW-824DRU AC1750 Dual Band Wireless Router Review

Acer Predator X34 Curved G-SYNC Monitor Review

If you're a PC gamer or into enthusiast computing, how would you describe your ideal monitor? For many, it might go something like a 32 - 34-inch IPS panel with a high refresh rate of 100Hz or higher, 4K resolution, along with NVIDIA G-SYNC or AMD FreeSync technology. And with displays this big, adding a slight curve might be high on your wish list as well. The good news is, with the recent advancements in display technologies, that "holy grail" set of specifications is beginning to take shape, as display manufacturers like Acer, ASUS, Samsung, Dell and others begin to build all this great new tech into bigger and better high-end displays.

In fact, the new Acer Predator X34 series captures three out of four of those "ideal" spec check box items, maybe hitting all of them, depending on your perspective. Acer offers two variants of curved 34-inch IPS panels with adaptive refresh technology, the Predator XR341CK which is an AMD Freesync enabled model and the Predator XR341CKA that we'll be digging into here, which is the NVIDIA G-SYNC-enabled version. This panel also has a 100Hz overclock setting, a fast 4ms pixel response time and 100% sRGB color gamut capability...

Read full article @ HotHardware.com

AMD releases new FX-6330 Black Edition CPU

Based on pretty much the same specifications as the earlier available FX-6300 CPU, the new FX-6330 Black Edition CPU features six Vishera CPU cores, 6MB of L2 and 8MB of L3 cache, unlocked multiplier, DDR3-1866 memory support and 95W TDP. It also comes with somewhat higher 3.6GHz base and 4.2GHz Turbo clocks. 
With these clocks, the FX-6330 Black Edition fits right between the earlier available FX-6300, clocked at 3.5GHz base and 4.1GHz Turbo clocks, and the faster AMD FX-6350 Black Edition 125W TDP SKU with 3.9GHz base and 4.2GHz Turbo clocks.

Read full article @ Fudzilla

AMD's 2016 Linux Driver Plans & GPUOpen Family of Dev Tools: Investing In Open Source

Earlier this month AMD’s Radeon Technologies Group held an event to brief the press of their plans for 2016. Part of a larger shift for RTG as they work to develop their own identity and avoid the mistakes of the past, RTG has set about being more transparent and forthcoming in their roadmap plans, offering the press and ultimately the public a high-level overview of what the group plans to accomplish in 2016. The first part of this look into RTG’s roadmap was released last week, when the company unveiled their plans for their visual technologies – DisplayPort/HDMI, FreeSync, and HDR support.  

Following up on that, today RTG is unveiling the next part of their roadmap. Todays release is focused around Linux and RTG’s developer relations strategy, with RTG’s laying out their plans to improve support on the former and to better empower developers on the latter. Both RTG’s Linux support and developer relations have suffered some from RTG’s much smaller market share and more limited resources compared to NVIDIA, and while I don’t think even RTG expects to right everything overnight, they do have a clear idea over where they have gone wrong and what are some of the things they can do to correct this.

Read full article @ Anandtech

AMD's GPUOpen; Power to the Developers

For many, PC gaming can never be replaced with consoles but it has a deeply rooted problem that may hamper future growth. I’m not talking about pay-to-play initiatives, rampant DLC, a general lack of creativity or the continued rehashing the same tired franchises year after year. While all of those are hallmarks of what every gamer - regardless of the platform- has to deal with these days, today’s PC game publishers are looking straight down the double barrels of ballooning development costs coupled with limited developer resources. With those factors taken into account, PC games often receive the short end of the stick as those developers focus upon their (typically) higher grossing console sides.

With this unfortunate situation in hand, we are seeing a dearth of unique PC-exclusive titles and a general reduction in the quality of PC games. This comes as developers try in vain to properly port their games over from lower-powered consoles, a process which has proven time and again to be a laborious task that very rarely turns out well. For all the Witcher games there are a dozen Assassins Creeds and Batman Arkham Knights out there.

Meanwhile, AMD, NVIDIA, Intel and Microsoft have all been trying to facilitate the PC development process in some way or another. NVIDIA has turned to their Gameworks tools to add unique in-game visual features, Microsoft’s DX12 seeks to harmonize cross-platform development and Intel has a large-scale developer relationship program of their own. AMD and by association the Radeon Technology Group are in a rather unique position since they are now poised to drastically change the way PC game development moves into the next generation.

Read full article @ Hardware Canucks

Corsair Strafe RGB Mechanical Keyboard Review

The Corsair Strafe RGB MX Silent mechanical keyboard worked perfectly after installing the drivers from the Corsair website! Lighting options worked well, colors reproduced correctly, and there was a long list of default lighting effects to choose from. Furthermore, users can create and share custom lighting effects through the Corsair website. The Cherry MX Silent Red key switches are amazing. They are not truly silent, but are much quieter than the original Cherry Red key switches and other variants. Adding O-rings to the key caps did not seem to further quiet the key switches, so isn't worth the effort. The "clackity" nature of the Cherry switches seems to be love or hate for everyone; if you miss the noise, Corsair also offers the Strafe RGB with the classic Red, Brown, and Blue key switches.

Read full article @ OCC

Razer Kraken Mobile Review

It seems like most of the population is carrying a mobile device with them these days, whether it is a phone, a tablet or a laptop, and you can see the changes it’s made in society on a daily basis. People are walking down the streets sporting earbuds, Bluetooth headphones and earbuds, headphones and yes, even headsets. The audio quality of your particular cans is now balanced by style, and some headsets range up to $2000. At this point you are probably paying more for the name than the quality. Razer’s forte has always been gaming, and they have done that well and become a world leader in gaming devices. Their products have proven to be so deadly to your virtual foes, that the minute you get hands on one you’re a lifetime member of “The Cult Of Razer”. Now Razer is branching out into the audio field for mobile devices, and have produced the Razer Kraken Mobile. The Kraken Mobile is aimed at Apple IOS users, but has thoughtfully designed adapters for Android, and we’ll be jamming to the Android version of the Kraken Mobile in two shell shocking, almost “Nuclear Neon” colors.

Read full article @ Bjorn3D

The EKWB EK-XLC Predator 240 Liquid Cooler Review

Today we are having a look at the EK-XLC Predator 240, the first AIO liquid cooling solution from EKWB. EKWB is a company that specializes in and is known by their custom liquid cooling products, but with the EK-XLC Predator 240, the company is trying to bring the performance of their custom liquid cooling solutions to the AIO market. We are thoroughly examining and comparing their new product in this review. 

Read full article @ Anandtech

TRENDnet TEW-824DRU AC1750 Dual Band Wireless Router Review

During testing time and also for two weeks while we have used the router to download all kinds of files from one computer to another or from the Internet via torrents or watching TV shows through streaming, we could say that this new TEW-824DRU model from TRENDnet has proven itself quite stable and we haven’t seen slowdowns which could have resulted in the need of a router reboot. Despite the fact that the router does not have external antennas, we have got decent reception two rooms away but the overall speed was better on the TP-LINK Touch P5. Another interesting feature is DD-WRT firmware support, which can be flashed from the manufacturers' website.

Read full article @ Madshrimps