Here a roundup of today's reviews and articles, including Best SSDs For The Money: February 2014, OCZ Vertex 460 SSD Review (240GB) Great Performance At An Awesome Price, Cyberpower PC Ultra Fusion AMD Gaming System Review, Hands-on: 4K / UltraHD on the PC @ Hardware.Info, and Creative T4 2.1 Wireless Speaker System with NFC Review



Best SSDs For The Money: February 2014 @ Toms Hardware

This month, we take an abbreviated look at Mushkin's Ventura Ultra USB 3.0 Flash Drive, part of a new wave of USB-based SSDs. The Ventura pairs USB-attached SCSI and a SandForce controller in the hope of achieving SATA 6Gb/s-class performance externally.

Read more: Best SSDs For The Money: February 2014 @ Toms Hardware

Thecus N2310 @ techPowerUp

Good NAS servers don't have to cost an arm and a leg. Case in point is Thecus' fresh N2310 for use at home. It is equipped with an 800 MHz SoC processor and 512 MB of DDR3 RAM and can take up to two HDDs. Not here to break performance records, its very high price/performance ratio is simply amazing.

Read more: Thecus N2310 @ techPowerUp

Transcend 25A3 1TB USB 3.0 External Hard Drive Review @ HiTech Legion

We take many of the capabilities of our common devices very much for granted. This seems to be the case especially among the twenty-five and under grouping. You really can’t blame them, as it stems from a lack of exposure that is not wholly their fault. Technology has increased at such a rate that most in that age group never had the chance to see the pre-cursors to the smart phone or notebook, let alone a world where the internet could only commonly be accessed by dial-up modems. If WiFi has existed for you for your entire knowing life, you likely won’t appreciate it the way one who lived with dial-up would.

Most of the devices we use today can capably perform a number of functions. This, of course, was not always the case. Cell phones were just that….phones. Even placing calls on them was often challenging and sending a text was more of an annoyance than traveling to see the individual and delivering the message in person. There was no such thing as a USB flash drive or portable HDD. Backups were often done on tape for extreme reliability (unless, of course said tape happened to get to close to a magnet), but was slower than the aforementioned dial up modem, or the acclaimed Zip Disk which could back up a whopping 100MB in a blazing time of around five minutes. Thankfully, that has changed. It has become quite common to see USB 3.0 portable HDD with speeds that rival installed disks, are reliable and can offer data encryption for greater security.

Read more: Transcend 25A3 1TB USB 3.0 External Hard Drive Review @ HiTech Legion

OCZ Vertex 460 SSD Review (240GB) Great Performance At An Awesome Price! @ TechnologyX

The OCZ Vertex 460 SSD is the newest OCZ drive to be released, and is great way to start off 2014. OCZ has specified that the Vertex 460 can have sequential read speeds up to 545MB/s and sequential write speeds of up to 525MB/s. The OCZ Vertex 460 should be available in storage capacities of 120, 240, and 480GB, with the MSRP looking to be $99.99, $189.99 and $359.99 respectively. This turns out to be a very low price for a solid state drive, costing approximately $0.75 per GB.

Read more: OCZ Vertex 460 SSD Review (240GB) Great Performance At An Awesome Price! @ TechnologyX

Cyberpower PC Ultra Fusion AMD Gaming System Review @ eTeknix

When I get a full system in for review, typically I will find an Intel CPU lying at the heart of the system and whilst this is partly due to their high level of popularity,; along with their multitasking abilities – for some the overall cost factor can be a bit of an issue. Naturally this means that there is only one other route to go down and this is with AMD and their line of CPUs. From our own testing of AMD processors we know that they offer a slightly cheaper alternative to some of Intel’s top line chips – such as the i7-4770k, although we do find that in some tasks, they may struggle to keep up the blue teams performance. For gamers though, all-round performance is not the main priority – it’s having a system that can offer up a great level of gaming performance and for an affordable price.

Coming forward to the last few months, AMD recently announced the release of their latest CPU into the Piledriver group of FX chips – namely the FX-9590. Now like all new processor releases, it has come into the market with a mixed response from the enthusiast community, however it looks like it has proved its way and has settled itself down in the market as the new contender to Intel’s Ivy Bridge-E i7-4960X, offering a huge difference in price as we are used to seeing with AMD chips. We know as well that anyone looking for a high-end gaming system but on a tight budget is going to benefit from an AMD chip, although the trade-off is with performance in other workload areas as mentioned above.

Read more: Cyberpower PC Ultra Fusion AMD Gaming System Review @ eTeknix

Func HS-260 Stereo Gaming Headset Review @ eTeknix

Today we get to take a look at the first headset from Func, who some of you may know as the new gaming brand from Fractal Design. The new HS-260 is designed with the gamer in mind and aims to tackle the mid-budget market by offering high quality performance and design. Gaming headsets are big business and are becoming more and more popular with the increase in LAN gaming events, pro gaming and eSports, not forgetting of course the people who just want to slip into their favourite digital world at their desk without bothering everyone else in the house.

We first saw Func products at Computex last year and since then we’ve been eager to get our hands on them and put them through their paces. The timing for this HS-260 review couldn’t be any better given that produce launches this week and marks the first of several new products from the brand for 2014, and we’ll be taking a look at their gaming mice and keyboards later in the year. If the Func brand has even a hint of the pristine quality we’ve seen from the Fractal Design produce range, this they should all be something pretty special.

Read more: Func HS-260 Stereo Gaming Headset Review @ eTeknix

Cryorig R1 Ultimate Cooler @ PureOverclock

The running trend today in top-of-the-line CPU cooling performance seems to be water cooling. If it’s not under water then most seem to think you’re doing it wrong and will never achieve properly high performance. However, there are those enthusiasts who would rather have peace of mind, knowing that they will never have to worry about one of the lines in a water cooling loop springing a leak or their pump failing on them, destroying their high performance rig. How do you gain maximum performance while minimizing the risk? Cryorig seems to feel they have a proper solution with the R1 Ultimate.

Designed with the expressed intent of providing the strongest air cooled solution available, we are here to find out if it can provide the cooling performance the enthusiast craves without the mess and maintenance.

Read more: Cryorig R1 Ultimate Cooler @ PureOverclock

Mionix Avior 7000 Optical Gaming Mouse @ NikKTech

With highly anticipated games like Titanfall, Thief, Watch Dogs and The Witcher 3 being just a few months away from getting released now is perhaps more crucial than ever before to have a gaming mouse capable of delivering the best possible experience. However with gaming mice getting unveiled almost on a weekly basis by a very large number of manufacturers it's really not very easy to pick the right one for the job. Luckily for consumers there's just a handful of gaming peripherals manufacturers out there currently with a perfect track record and Mionix is without doubt one of them. Now although just a few months ago we tested their latest Avior 8200 Gaming Mouse which scored very high in all of our tests thanks to its Avago ADNS-9800 laser sensor it seems that Mionix is not done with the Avior line quite yet and so today we will be taking a look at the brand new Avior 7000 Laser Gaming Mouse.

Read more: Mionix Avior 7000 Optical Gaming Mouse @ NikKTech

Hands-on: 4K / UltraHD on the PC @ Hardware.Info

If you can afford to spend a few thousand quid on a computer screen, you can buy yourself an UltraHD or 4K monitor. But does your PC support such high resolutions? What do you need to get the most out of it, both as professional and as a gamer?

Last year August we reviewed our first 4K monitor, the 31.5-inch Sharp PN-K321N with a resolution of 3840x2160 pixels. That's four times Full HD and will set you back about $4,999 (£3,195).

Read more: Hands-on: 4K / UltraHD on the PC @ Hardware.Info

Func KB-460 Mechanical Gaming Keyboard Review @ Benchmark Reviews

The best way to test peripherals is to use them, so over the course of two weeks the Func KB-460 became my daily driver. I used it to type this (and other) reviews, as well as for any games or applications I used during that time (there were more than a few rounds of Battlefield 4 played on the KB-460, as well as some Mechwarrior: Online, ARMA III and X3: Albion Prelude to try a few different keyboard-heavy games). Along with my impressions, I'll also include a few tests using some online keyboard testing suites to help illustrate the capabilities of this keyboard.

Read more: Func KB-460 Mechanical Gaming Keyboard Review @ Benchmark Reviews

Creative T4 2.1 Wireless Speaker System with NFC Review @ Madshrimps

The newly released 2.1 speaker set from Creative features a solid subwoofer which has a SLAM architecture and delivers quite a boom and is accompanied by two smaller but high quality satellites which should fit without any issues on our work and entertainment desk or why not, to the sides of our TV. The control pod is very handy and besides that the setup features lots of connectivity options, but also an IR remote.

Read more: Creative T4 2.1 Wireless Speaker System with NFC Review @ Madshrimps

Interview with Natasha Sampson-Todd from AMD Product Marketing @ HardwareHeaven.com

Today we have an interview with Natasha Sampson-Todd, Product Marketing (Memory Products) for AMD. Discussing AMD's RAMDisk software.

Read more: Interview with Natasha Sampson-Todd from AMD Product Marketing @ HardwareHeaven.com