Here a roundup of today's reviews and articles, including Apple Mac Pro (2013) Review, Seagate 600 480 GB vs. Kingston HyperX 3K 480 GB SSD Review, ADATA Premier Pro 32GB UHS-1 microSDHC Memory Card Review, Creative Sound Blaster AXX 200, and Headset Roundup December 2013



Apple Mac Pro (2013) Review @ TechReviewSource.com

The Apple Mac Pro (2013) is a powerhouse in a surprisingly small package, leveraging innovative design and extreme connectivity to completely re-imagine the professional desktop workstation.

Read more: Apple Mac Pro (2013) Review @ TechReviewSource.com

Goodbye, consoles @ The Tech Report

In his latest blog post, TR's Geoff Gasior explains why he's ditching game consoles for good. After years of feeling like second-class citizens, gaming PCs are finally competent players in the living room.

Read more: Goodbye, consoles @ The Tech Report

Seagate 600 480 GB vs. Kingston HyperX 3K 480 GB SSD Review @ Hardware Secrets

Solid state drives have come down significantly in price over the last few years, so it's now cheaper than ever to upgrade your PC. While 120/128 GiB units offer the best compromise between price and capacity in most cases, some users may opt for a 480 GiB model instead if extra storage space is required. Today, we are going to look at two of the latest 480 GiB models; the Seagate 600 and the Kingston HyperX 3K.

Read more: Seagate 600 480 GB vs. Kingston HyperX 3K 480 GB SSD Review @ Hardware Secrets

WD Black Dual-Drive 120GB SSD + 1TB HDD Hybrid Review @ Legit Reviews

Ever since the emergence of Solid-State Drives, there's been a conundrum facing laptop users in regards to storage options. Storage could be fast, large capacity, or low price pick two of the three. We've seen hybrid drives that mesh SSDs with HDDs using a caching method to boost performance but generally the SSD portion is less than ideal. Western Digital has a new spin on this concept with a hybrid drive of a different sort that they've aptly named Black. With it, they've actually combined a 120GB SSD and a 1TB HDD on a single drive, although separate save for the the SATA III interface they share. Before you go wetting yourself with anticipation, have a look at the performance numbers and our impressions to see if it truly delivers full SSD performance with HDD capacity...

Read more: WD Black Dual-Drive 120GB SSD + 1TB HDD Hybrid Review @ Legit Reviews

ADATA Premier Pro 32GB UHS-1 microSDHC Memory Card Review @ eTeknix

In today’s connected world, storage is a fundamental part of our day-to-day activities in one way or another. With a rapidly increasing number of smartphones coming on to the market, having enough storage to hand for all of your photos and music [for example] is one of the key decisions that comes into play when it comes picking the right phone for you. Whilst there are many phones out there that offer large storage capacities out of the box, such as iPhones and a number of Android phones, there are also a large number that do not. To fight back the problem of not having a great deal of storage space, a number of handsets offer up a microSD card slot, allowing the user to buy a card, insert it and instantly boost the storage capacity on their phone.

Looking at other market areas, digital cameras for the most part utilise full-sized SD cards or CompactFlash (CF), however there are a small number of cameras that only accept microSD format cards. When we look at what microSD cards are actually available on the market, it soon becomes clear that the range is actually quite small. Out of all the vendors that do produce microSD cards, ADATA are one of the few that manufacture high performance models alongside the likes of Kingston and Sandisk. Given the relatively small size of a microSD card, there is still enough space to cram up to 64GB of storage into the tiny plastic housing with speeds that fast enough for Full HD recording.

The Premier Pro line of SD and microSD cards are some of the fastest cards that ADATA have to offer and with speeds of 45MB/s read and 40MB/s write on offer, the Ultra-High-Speed Class 1 cards offer up more than double the performance of a standard class 10 card. With a large number of cards only coming close to their rated speeds, is ADATA’s Premier Pro worth the extra cost?

Read more: ADATA Premier Pro 32GB UHS-1 microSDHC Memory Card Review @ eTeknix

Kitsound Hive Bluetooth Speaker Review @ eTeknix

Whether you’re at the beach or having a party in the garden, music will no doubt feature within the ambience. In the past this would mean hooking up a portable stereo to an outlet somewhere or carrying a portable radio with an average quality speaker. Not the best way to get the best out of music I’m sure many will agree!

Thankfully wireless technology has evolved dramatically over the last few years and we have a whole range of portable speakers that can pair up with phones and tablets to stream all media and communications with little to no loss in quality.

Today I’m going to review the Kitsound Hive Bluetooth Speaker which Gearzap have kindly provided. Kitsound have a healthy collection of products in the portable audio market. They say “By understanding music we stay true to its craft. Pure, rich, incredible sound. We settle for nothing less.”

Read more: Kitsound Hive Bluetooth Speaker Review @ eTeknix

Noctua NH-U14S 140mm Tower CPU Cooler Review

It's entirely possible the next product needs no introduction the Noctua NH-U14S is the newest version in Noctua's NH-U series of CPU coolers that were first introduced in 2005. For years, Noctua has been synonymous with premium performance cooling and the new NH-U14S model looks to continue the tradition. Designed to be the premier option for the NH-U series the 140mm NH-U14S and its 52mm wide heatsink promise quiet performance while still clearing RAM modules, even on sockets like LGA2011. Combined with the NF-A15 140mm fan and an entire host of cutting-edge trademark technologies from Noctua, will this cooler be worthy of the Noctua name? Benchmark Reviews has a chance to see where the NH-U14S ranks among the competition.

Read more: Noctua NH-U14S 140mm Tower CPU Cooler Review

Creative Sound Blaster AXX 200 @ Custom PC Review

Last year when we reviewed the Creative Sound Blaster AXX SBX 10 and SBX 20 it was probably one of the coolest products we’ve ever come across. Whereas generally you’d get a product that’s a Bluetooth speaker, or sometimes you’d get a product that’s an external sound card, or sometimes you’d get a product that’s a desktop microphone – with the Sound Blaster AXX, you get it all in single product. While we were impressed with what Creative had done with the first generation Sound Blaster AXX, once we got some hands on time with it, we noticed that there were a couple features that we felt were lacking.

Now only a year after the initial release of the first generation Sound Blaster AXX, Creative has gone back to the drawing board and have released the second generation Sound Blaster AXX, which promises to improve on the already feature filled Sound Blaster AXX with a whole slew of new features and functionality. Whereas the first generation Sound Blaster AXX was already a feature-packed device containing a speaker, a dual microphone array, a sound processor (SB-Axx1), and Bluetooth connectivity, the second generation refines on the original and adds to that by adding a battery, a quad microphone array, NFC connectivity, and more.

Read more: Creative Sound Blaster AXX 200 @ Custom PC Review

SteelSeries Rival @ LanOC Reviews

When it comes to mice, SteelSeries over the past few years has basically stuck with a single design that they have used on multiple mice. We first saw it with the Xai and later the Sensei but they have also used it on various branded mice and a smaller version on the Kinzu as well. When SteelSeries announced that they were bringing out a new mouse design with the Rival I was very interested, but also a little worried about messing with a good thing. After a short wait, we finally have the Rival in hand and can put it through its paces and see how the new design performs.

Read more: SteelSeries Rival @ LanOC Reviews

EyeFinity Update Video with Kaeyi Dream @ HardwareHeaven.com

A few months ago Kaeyi Dream introduced us to her EyeFinity setup, now we return six months on to see how she's getting along.

Read more: EyeFinity Update Video with Kaeyi Dream @ HardwareHeaven.com

Headset Roundup December 2013 @ HardwareHeaven.com

Here we round up some of the best headsets of the last few months, if you are a gamer, mobile user, console enthusiast or just want a headset that's good for everything then this is the place to start.

Read more: Headset Roundup December 2013 @ HardwareHeaven.com