Here a roundup of todays reviews and articles:

ASRock Fatal1ty Z97 Killer Motherboard Review
Best SSDs: July 2014
Core i7-4790K Devils Canyon overclocking revisited
Crucial MX100 256GB Solid State Drive Review
Deepcool Steam Castle Review
First Look: The $799 Microsoft Surface Pro 3 with Core i3
Fractal Design Core 3300 Mid Tower Case Review
GeForce GTX 660 Ti vs. GTX 750 Ti
Gigabyte GeForce GTX Titan Black WindForce Review
Gigabyte Z97-D3H Motherboard Review
Gigabyte Z97MX-Gaming 5 – mATX Gaming Muscle from Gigabyte
GPU-Accelerated Virtual Desktops: The Future of Computing?
Hands-on review: OS X 10.10 Yosemite
Intel Pentium Anniversary Edition Review & Overclocking Build Guide
Intel SSD Pro 2500 Series 240GB Enterprise SSD Review
MSI AG240 All-in-One
Raidmax Scorpio V Review
SanDisk Extreme Pro SSD (480GB) Review
Thecus N2520 2-Bay NAS Review

ASRock Fatal1ty Z97 Killer Motherboard Review

ASRock has had a partnership with the Fatal1ty brand for a while now. With the introduction of Intel’s Z97 chipset ASRock has released three Fatal1ty-branded motherboards, today we will be looking at the Fatal1ty Z97 Killer. Of course being Fatal1ty-branded we know that this board is going to cater to gamers. With that said it does offer gaming features like the Killer E2200 Intelligent Networking Platform, ASRock’s Gaming Armor which has loads of features, Purity Sound 2 audio, ASRock Key Master software and you even get a 3 month premium license of XSplit to stream and broadcast your gaming skills. Is this the next motherboard for you? Read on as we take a look…

Read full article @ ThinkComputers.org

Best SSDs: July 2014

Given the recent product releases in the SSD industry, it is now a good time to do another purchase recommendation post. We did our first "Best SSDs" post in November last year and it received quite a bit of interest by providing simple recommendations instead of a several thousand word analysis like we usually do in our reviews. Quite surprisingly, our previous recommendations were still accurate until about a month ago when Crucial rolled out the MX100, so despite the fact that the article is now eight months old there was no immediate need for an updated post until now.

Read full article @ Anandtech

Core i7-4790K Devils Canyon overclocking revisited

Can a retail version of the Core i7-4790K paired up with a fancy MSI Z97 MPower motherboard reach higher speeds than our early sample? We're about to find out.

Read full article @ The Tech Report

Crucial MX100 256GB Solid State Drive Review

Coming off the back of our look at the 512GB model of Crucial’s new MX100 line of drives, our review today focusses on the mid-range 256GB drive which comes in at a level that many users tend to adopt due to the balance between performance and capacity. As we saw with the 512GB though, Crucial have re-written the pricing rule book with a drive that is priced lower per GB than any other drive on the market and overall costing around the same as a 256GB drive from many other brands.

Keeping with the trend of bargain bucket pricing, the 256GB MX100 comes in with a banker approved price of $109.99 in the states and £78.99 over here in the UK, making it once again the ideal solution for the upgrade market; where users want to get a good boost in their systems performance, but without a hefty price that is associated with many performance products.

Similar to the 512GB drive, the 256GB model utilises Micron’s latest 16nm NAND design with a Marvell 88SS9189 controller at the heart of the drive and performance wise we see the same 550MB/s read speeds, whilst the write speed is a little lower at a more modest 330MB/s. The IOPs performance is also down a little from the top line 512GB drive at 85k read and 70k write, however we do still get the same 72TB lifespan and the same three-year warranty as before.

Read full article @ eTeknix

Deepcool Steam Castle Review

Presented at Computex 2014, Steam Castle is a new cube case from Deepcool. The case features a unique design and is characterized by four large vents on top with multi-color LED backlight. Other than that the Steam Castle is compatible with mATX as well as mini-ITX motherboard. Since this is one of the first cases from Deepcool we're curious to find out what they've come up with.

Read full article @ ocaholic

First Look: The $799 Microsoft Surface Pro 3 with Core i3

Earlier this Summer Microsoft released Surface Pro 3, a fully equipped Haswell ULT based tablet in a chassis that was much more in line with what you'd expect from a tablet. From a hardware standpoint, Surface Pro 3 is the chassis design that Microsoft needed from the very start. If you've ever been tempted by the Surface Pro story, the latest model was bound to push you over the edge.

Unlike previous generations however, Microsoft delivered multiple CPU/GPU options with Surface Pro 3. The device's price range extends both lower and higher than any prior iteration. While the original Surface Pro launched at $899 and $999, the second version offered increased storage options that drove the max price up to $1799. Surface Pro 3 starts at just $799 and can be configured at up to $1949. In our review we were sampled one of the launch versions of the tablet, a $1299 configuration featuring Intel's Core i5-4300U. Until next month the Core i5 models are the only ones available, however starting on August 1st you'll be able to purchase cheaper Surface Pro 3s with a Core i3-4020Y or more expensive versions with a Core i7-4650U.

Read full article @ Anandtech

Fractal Design Core 3300 Mid Tower Case Review

In simplistic terms a fractal is defined as both a natural phenomenon and a mathematical object made up of a set of distinct objects. Fractal Design as a company has a manmade phenomenal success with its line of computer cases (an assembly of distinct objects?) and components, all designed, engineered, and tested with the user in mind. We are given the opportunity to test these aspects with its Core 3300 wide-body ATX Mid tower case under the review spotlight.

Designed as a low cost solution, the Core 3300 comes with a lot of advantages: a wide body design to allow for great cable management, multiple radiator support, room to install up to seven 140mm case fans (two are included), a vertical hard drive mounting system that supports 2.5/3.5” drives, a front panel textured finish, and much more.

It will be interesting to see if the Core 3300 can meet the quality, functionality and pricing standards set forth by Fractal Design. Let’s see if any of our observations will bring about any possible revisions or ideas for future products.

Read full article @ Neoseeker

GeForce GTX 660 Ti vs. GTX 750 Ti

Today we are going to compare the two Mid-range nVidia cards: the GTX 750 Ti with Maxwell GPU and the nVidia GTX 660 Ti Kepler GPU. The GTX 750 Ti is basically the first glimpse at NVIDIAs upcoming Maxwell GPUs and it will be quite interesting to see wether a lower end card from a new generation can keep up with a higher end card from the earlier generation.

Read full article @ ocaholic

Gigabyte GeForce GTX Titan Black WindForce Review

We review the Gigabyte GeForce GTX Titan Black WindForce GHz edition. You take the reference product, arm it with a custom WindForce cooler and you receive a 6GB Titan Black that has been factory overclocked towards 1111 MHz on the boost clock for you. How on this Earth is that not very interesting? A while ago Nvidia launched the GeForce GTX Titan Black. We never reviewed it as it was supposed to be solely a professional series product, not intended for gamers. Nvidia's board partners however have been rereleasing this product as a gaming product, as well as Nvidia who have been plugging the product in the gaming benchmarks on their own website ever since Watch Dogs was released. As such, we figured we need to review this puppy as well.

For those that wonder what is different in-between all the high-end enthusiast products from Nvidia, really it is all rather simple. The Titan Black is the Geforce GTX 780 Ti, with two differences:

It has 6 GB instead of 3 GB memory
It has double precision enabled (totally unimportant for gamers).

Read full article @ Guru3D

Gigabyte Z97-D3H Motherboard Review

Overall, for $118 it is a very solid offering considering it manages to provide M.2 and SATA Express options for an entry level Z97 board while having an excellent overclocking-oriented UEFI albeit non-noob friendly with its lack of warning or voltage guidelines.

Read full article @ Modders-Inc

Gigabyte Z97MX-Gaming 5 – mATX Gaming Muscle from Gigabyte

Gigabyte is a well-known name in the component industry and for good reason as they have made motherboards and graphics cards for a very long time. Among them some great boards such as the X58 OC board, some great P45 boards and I’m sure many more I’m not thinking of.

For Z97 they have a multitude of offerings from their entry-level, their gaming series and finally their OC based variants which have extreme OC features based around being able to push the limits. Today we have in hand the Z97MX-Gaming 5 which is a mATX model board from the Gaming line and with this includes some very cool gaming based features to help make for a better overall gaming PC build and experience.

Read full article @ Bjorn3D

GPU-Accelerated Virtual Desktops: The Future of Computing?

While we've long moved away from the early days of the mainframe and thin clients, there are some areas of computing where we're seeing a push back to similar architectures. We'll take a look at some of the more common advantages and disadvantages of virtual desktops, offer our general impressions on using them, and make some educated guesses as to whether virtual desktops truly are the future of computing or if they will likely remain a niche technology.

Read full article @ Techspot

Hands-on review: OS X 10.10 Yosemite

Later this year, Apple will release OS X 10.10 Yosemite, the latest version of its Mac desktop operating system. It will run on all the same Mac models as OS X 10.9 Mavericks, and will be a free download and update.That's all expected, but there are some unexpected changes coming with Yosemite. For a start, Apple is offering a public beta of the operating system, something Apple hasn't done since it was preparing to launch OS X in 2000. Anyone can apply, but bear in mind this release is for testing bugs, not a demo of the finished OS. If you apply and are successful, make sure you follow Apple's advice on backing up and installing somewhere safe carefully.I've been trying a beta build provided by Apple, though, and have had a chance to dig into the more important changes for most users: the extra features.

Read full article @ Techradar

Intel Pentium Anniversary Edition Review & Overclocking Build Guide

For more than a decade tech-savvy users on a budget would commonly buy a sub-$100 CPU and achieve performance comparable to $200-$300 chips by overclocking. These days Intel locks down its lower end parts, but to mark the 20th anniversary of its Pentium brand, they've released a fully unlocked dual-core Pentium G3258 for $72 -- just what the overclocking community has been waiting for. We'll put it through its paces in a couple of builds of our own.

Read full article @ Techspot

Intel SSD Pro 2500 Series 240GB Enterprise SSD Review

Intel has three different Solid-State Drive (SSD) product families; Data Center, Professional and Consumer. We have looked at plenty of SSDs by Intel in the consumer family, but we seldom look at Professional and Data Center drives. The Intel SSD Professional Family is designed with a little less emphasis on performance and more concern on stability, Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and lastly manageability and security/encryption features. This means that the Professional Family isn’t about having the latest cutting edge technology, but rather a reliable drive that has power efficient performance. The Intel Solid-State Drive Pro 2500 Series is the latest drive to become part of the Professional Family and Legit Reviews takes a look at the 240GB model today.

Read full article @ Legit Reviews

MSI AG240 All-in-One

It's funny: All-in-one PCs are often considered family computers. There are a lot of folks out there who assume that these touch-friendly machines are meant to stay in the living room or den and are solely used for homework, web browsing and, every once in a blue moon, streaming movies.Spend 10 minutes with the MSI AG240, and you'll throw that family friendly monicker out the window. Don't let the all-in-one form factor fool you, this is a gaming PC. And sure, it can be used for that other productivity stuff too, but there's an Nvidia GeForce GTX 860M graphics chip, 16GB of memory and a 4th generation Intel Core i7 processor inside that are begging to play BioShock Infinite and Assassin's Creed on their highest settings.If that doesn't cement the idea that this is a gaming rig, MSI will give you six months of one of the best game-streaming services available, XSplit, for free – just as long as you don't get turned off by the anti-flicker, but-awfully-glare-laden, screen first.

Read full article @ Techradar

Raidmax Scorpio V Review

Today we are taking a look at one of Raidmax's newest chassis in its ever expanding lineup. Raidmax was founded in 1988 with the mission of providing innovative design, excellent performance, and quality products. Its biggest market is gamers that are on a budget, but will not compromise quality. The Raidmax Scorpio V is the fifth revision and just over 10 years since the first one was released. It's priced competitively at $79.99 MSRP. This puts it slightly above the rest of the competition within the mid-tower chassis category.

With last year’s encounter with the Vampire chassis being a disappointment, and the Raidmax Horus passing expectations for a low budget chassis, Raidmax has been all over the place. Plus, CES 2014 was nearly sixth months ago, so companies are revising old series with new ones slowly trickling into the market one by one. So let's jump into this review and see what Raidmax is offering with this mid-tower.

Read full article @ OCC

SanDisk Extreme Pro SSD (480GB) Review

Recently SanDisk launched their latest range of SSDs, the Extreme Pro range. Today we take a look at the 480GB version and compare it to the best the competition has to offer.

Read full article @ Hardware Heaven

Thecus N2520 2-Bay NAS Review

In the NAS market, Thecus is one of the biggest names out there alongside QNAP and Synology and as we have seen in the past, the performance and features that they have to offer for the price are very well suited making them ideal for SOHO, SMB and enterprise users alike. Focusing today on the SOHO market, typical home users generally are in line to buy two and four bay systems for storing movies, music and photos on to share across their network to TVs, computers and wireless devices such as tablets.

Over the last year or so we have been seeing a slow migration by many vendors to produce products that are white in appearance to target the home user as they offer a cleaner and more conservative look to them that makes then more suited for a home environment rather than a black system that can look a little out-of-place or realistically – less stylish.

The N2560 that I’m having a look at today is one of the first white systems that Thecus have produced, the first being its little brother – the N2520 – and following its showing at CeBIT back in march, the storage giant has been making last-minute tweaks and adjustments to optimise its performance and functionality, in the process bringing the N2560 the line-up as well as the N2520. Over the previewed N2520, the N2560 offers up double the RAM with 2GB of DDR3 and a slightly faster Atom SoC, clocked to 1.6GHz over the N2520′s 1.2GHz chip.

Read full article @ eTeknix