Here a roundup of the latest reviews and articles:

AMD R9 280 Preview; Tahiti Lives Again
ASUS Cerberus gaming headset Review
ASUS Z87 Maximus VI Impact ITX Motherboard Review
Benchmarking Free to Play: World of Tanks, Dota 2, PlanetSide 2 and League of Legends Tested
BF4 AMD Mantle Video Card Performance Review Part 1
EVGA GeForce GTX 750 Ti FTW ACX Review
iPro Lens for iPhone 5/5S Review
LifeProof Realtree Edition Waterproof Iphone Case
Logitech G430
Meze 11 Deco In-Ear Headphone
PowerColor R9 290X PCS+ 4 GB
Radeon Open-Source Performance Over Three Years, Compared To Catalyst
Silicon Power Stream S03 USB 3.0 Portable HDD Review
Speedlink Jugger 2.1 Speaker System Review
WD My Cloud EX2 2-Bay Personal Cloud NAS Review
Western Digital My Cloud EX2 2-bay NAS Review
XSPC RX360 V3 Radiator
ZTE Grand Memo II hands-on Review

AMD R9 280 Preview; Tahiti Lives Again

In what is becoming an almost biweekly occurrence, AMD is launching another graphics card into the channel. After the R7 265 some folks may have been under the impression that things would quiet down for a while but, in AMD's eyes there still wasn’t an R-series competitor for the GTX 760. Enter the R9 280, a simple rebrand of the HD 7950 Boost ASIC. If you know how the HD 7950 Boost performs, you may as well stop reading now since there’s absolutely nothing new to see here.

Read full article @ Hardware Canucks

ASUS Cerberus gaming headset Review

While ASUS might be more well known for motherboards than peripherals, that doesn’t mean their headsets aren’t worthy of consideration and today we look at one of their latest models. It’s called the ASUS Cerberus, and with a peripheral named after the three headed, dog guardian of Hades our interest is certainly piqued.

Read full article @ KitGuru

ASUS Z87 Maximus VI Impact ITX Motherboard Review

There was a time not so long ago when ITX and even micro ATX motherboards were thought of as underpowered and lacking the necessary capabilities and features that would endear them to enthusiasts. Now that more gamers are looking to downsize the physical dimensions of their respective systems, there’s a burgeoning market for small form factor boards and manufacturers are rushing to fill the void. ASUS has been on the leading edge and their Maximus VI Impact clearly demonstrates how much can be crammed onto an ITX motherboard.

Being part of the Republic of Gamers series automatically makes the Maximus VI Impact an enthusiast-oriented motherboard and that may be a lot to ask considering its diminutive size. Due to past experiences we’ve got an unusually high set of expectations for anything that comes out of ASUS’ version of Skunk Works and this is, well, a really small board that just can’t be stuffed to the gills with features. Right? Not so fast. If you’re still tied at the hip to those low-grade mini ITX system expectations, prepare to be floored by what ASUS has accomplished here.

Read full article @ Hardware Canucks

Benchmarking Free to Play: World of Tanks, Dota 2, PlanetSide 2 and League of Legends Tested

Typically we focus our gaming performance articles on AAA titles like Battlefield 4 because these are usually the games pushing the envelope and showing us what the latest graphics processors are capable of. But that's not to say we're not paying attention to the evolving free-to-play market. While Battlefield 4 started at $80 plus $30 for its China Rising DLC, you don't have to spend that kind of money for high-quality content.

World of Warcraft was considered a massive success with its peak of 12 million players (8 million today), yet it's dwarfed by World of Tanks' 1 million concurrent players and 75 million total users -- a following that is growing by more than 2 million a month. These kind of numbers aren't entirely unique to World of Tanks, either.

You can find more than half a million people playing Dota 2 on any given day and League of Legends has over 7.5 million players online during peak hours. Granted, registered users aren't the same as paying subscribers, but successful free-to-play developers can still extract money from a small percentage of their most loyal players.

Read full article @ Techspot

BF4 AMD Mantle Video Card Performance Review Part 1

The long awaited, and much delayed, AMD Mantle API has been available in Battlefield 4 for a month now. We have taken this time to thoroughly investigate AMD's Mantle API within Battlefield 4 on AMD's complete lineup of current video cards. We did encounter an issue though, explained at the bottom of this page you need to read before continuing.

We have tested performance differences between DirectX 11 (D3D11) and Mantle. We have tested performance differences between D3D11, Mantle, and NVIDIA's complete lineup of video cards running in D3D11. We have tested performance in D3D11 today, compared to Battlefield 4's initial release at the end of October 2013. We've evaluated highest playable gameplay experiences differences from the game's launch to now. We have a lot of testing and real-world gameplay that has gone into this evaluation to give you our experiences and opinions about AMD Mantle in Battlefield 4.

We set out in this evaluation trying to answer some important information as it pertains to Mantle and BF4. Primarily, we wanted to know in which price segment of AMD GPUs does Mantle benefit gamers the most? Which GPUs receive the best performance increase, and what type of gameplay experience can gamers achieve with Mantle? Does Mantle favor high-end or low-end cards?

Read full article @ HardOCP

EVGA GeForce GTX 750 Ti FTW ACX Review

It's no reach to say the Maxwell-driven GeForce GTX 750 Ti GPU sets the foundation for Nvidia's graphics products for the next two years. The existing Kepler architecture has been overhauled and simplified to such an extent that energy efficiency is, quite literally, off the scale.

Nvidia is liberally playing on this power-efficient theme by launching mainstream GPUs equipped with low-end TDPs. The GTX 750 Ti, for example, uses a maximum of 60W, but has enough gaming clout to run modern titles at high-quality settings alongside a 1080p resolution.

We've already been witness to partner-overclocked GTX 750 Tis from Asus, Palit, and Gigabyte. It's now EVGA's turn to show what it can do with Nvidia's latest graphics.

Read full article @ Hexus

iPro Lens for iPhone 5/5S Review

The iPro Lens comes to us as iPhoneography is now being helped with lens accessories and attachments. And if you're looking to expand the capabilities of your iPhone 5 or 5S' camera, you could do with the likes of iPro Lens.Similar to Olloclip, you slap lens attachments over your iPhone's camera, and you've either got telephoto, macro or wide angle capabilities.There's something to be said about working within the confines of the iPhone camera's natural field of view and how it forces us to be more creative within that space. But if you've been pushing those limits for years now, the iPro Lens can help you take your art to another level.HardwareFirst, let's start with the hardware. Most iPhone lens attachments come with cases or clips that allow the lenses to be affixed to the phone. In the case of the iPro Lens, you have to use the case that comes with the package.

Read full article @ Techradar

LifeProof Realtree Edition Waterproof Iphone Case

For those that are known to abuse their phones more than others, LifeProof has the case for you. You get protection from impact, water, and dirt without all the weight and extra bulk of the other cases on the market. Read on to see how it performs.

Read full article @ TechwareLabs.com

Logitech G430

Most of you are familiar with most of Logitech’s product line at this point from having owned one or knowing someone who uses Logitech products. For the most part their product line has stayed the same, with just a few exceptions and with small refreshes like what they did this past year. One area where they expanded their product line this past year though was their audio line. Before they just had the G35 and the G930, but they have now added the G430 and the G230. You may have seen them with their funny commercials during LCS this year. Today I am going to find out how the G430 compares to the G930 and gaming headsets from their competition.

Read full article @ LanOC Reviews

Meze 11 Deco In-Ear Headphone

A few days back, I was heading out and happened to glance at the Meze packaging on the Test Bench, as I had so many days prior, and thought, “What the heck.”. I grabbed them and threw them in my case. Hours later, they just seemed to be a pain in the case so, for the first time, I spent some time listening to this set of Meze 11 Deco In-Ear headphones. The first song that happened to play on my Samsung Note II was Joe Cocker – The Letter and I remember the awe of the saxophone reproduction that caught my attention. The second was Funky Nassau by the Blues Brothers and I can still hear the clarity and ‘warmth’ of the low bass. Where have these earphones been? Don’t answer that!

Read full article @ TechnologyX

PowerColor R9 290X PCS+ 4 GB

PowerColor's R9 290X PCS+ uses a large triple fan, triple slot cooler, which promises improved temperatures and noise levels over the AMD reference design. The card is also overclocked out of the box by +50 MHz GPU and +100 MHz memory, making it the highest clocked R9 290X out there.

Read full article @ techPowerUp

Radeon Open-Source Performance Over Three Years, Compared To Catalyst

Yesterday on Phoronix I published results showing the Radeon Gallium3D performance getting close to Catalyst for the Radeon HD 5000 series and newer GPUs that are supported by the mainline Catalyst driver. On the open-source side the hardware is supported by the R600 and RadeonSI (for the GCN hardware) Gallium3D drivers. Yesterday's results showed that on Ubuntu 14.04 for many OpenGL workloads the R600/RadeonSI Gallium3D drivers were now ~80% the speed of the proprietary Catalyst driver in many instances. While this is a great feat, how does it stand for older generations of AMD Radeon hardware? In this article are Radeon HD 4870 benchmarks looking at the performance of the open-source AMD Linux driver over three years of Ubuntu Linux releases and compared to the legacy Catalyst driver from 2011.

Read full article @ Phoronix

Silicon Power Stream S03 USB 3.0 Portable HDD Review

The Stream S03 USB 3.0 HDD from Silicon Power comes in a sleek chassis with a matte finish and features an activity LED which shows us the current transfer speed (USB 2.0 or USB 3.0). The product can be picked up in both 500GB or 1TB variants and the internal drive has a rotation speed of 5400RPM.

Read full article @ Madshrimps

Speedlink Jugger 2.1 Speaker System Review

Today I’ll be taking a look at the new Speedlink Jugger 2.1 speaker system, a budget friendly solution for those who want to give their multimedia an extra kick and bigger sound, but that don’t want to stretch their budget too far.

With 16 years industry experience, Speedlink have already sold over 10 million sound systems, making them one of Europe’s leading brands for multimedia solutions, and this is especially true for the PC and gaming markets. With that experience, they’ve no doubt got plenty of knowledge and experience, so I’m expecting to see much of that reflected in the product we’ll be taking a look at today.

Priced at around £45 Inc. shipping here in the UK the system is obviously not enthusiast grade audio equipment, but it’s priced just right to go head to head with systems from Wavemaster, Logitech, Creative and similar brands who all have products around the same budget, and many of those products are pretty good too (for this price), so it will be interesting to see how the Jugger 2.1 holds up and how well it holds up to Speedlinks own words about its performance (see below).

Read full article @ eTeknix

WD My Cloud EX2 2-Bay Personal Cloud NAS Review

WD's Personal Cloud Storage devices aimed at home network-attached storage (NAS) users has been steadily growing since the My Cloud was first announced in October 2013. WD followed that up with a 4-Bay model called the My Cloud EX4 in November 2013 for those that were looking for data redundancy and more storage capacity. The one obvious product that was missing was a 2-bay product, but that all changed with the announcement of the My Cloud EX2 today. The My Cloud EX2 is WD's answer to those looking for a fully featured 2-bay NAS device. The My Cloud EX2 uses the same firmware and user interface as the other My Cloud products, but utilizes a different hardware platform...

Read full article @ Legit Reviews

Western Digital My Cloud EX2 2-bay NAS Review

The market for 2-bay and 4-bay NAS units has been growing at a much faster rate compared to other configurations. This trend is only expected to accelerate over the next few years. As the 'cloud' becomes a more common buzz-word, the time is ripe to educate the average consumer about the benefits of purchasing a NAS system. Western Digital is aiming to tap into this opportunity with the My Cloud product line. Having already introduced 1-bay and 4-bay variants, they are launching their 2-bay product, the EX2 today. Read on for our hands-on experience with the Western Digital My Cloud EX2.

Read full article @ Anandtech

XSPC RX360 V3 Radiator

The 2013 was an exciting and busy year for XSPC. The company introduced over a dozen new products: the new Photon reservoir, G1 Sniper M5 motherboard water-block, eye-catching compression fittings and the pump tops – just to name a few.

Once again XSPC has unleashed another revision of the RX radiator series. The RX radiator series are the most popular radiator among the water-cooling enthusiasts for the value and performance. Despite this, its design technology is a bit dated and today’s modern radiators from competitors have been surpassing the RX radiators. That brings us to today’s review. We’ll analyze the new and improved version of the RX360 V3 radiator to see how it stacks up to its predecessor and its competition.

Read full article @ PureOverclock

ZTE Grand Memo II hands-on Review

Budget phablet is unlikely to lure buyers away from the Galaxy Note 3. Improving on the original ZTE Grand Memo, for those who like big screens at least, the Grand Memo II touts a larger 6in display, despite its slimmed down 7.2mm thin casing. This sees ZTE upping its game in the ever competitive Android phablet market, as it eyes the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 and HTC One Max.

Read full article @ The Inquirer