Here a roundup of the latest reviews and articles:

Alienware Alpha Review: A Compact, Powerful Steam Machine
ARCTIC P614 BT Bluetooth Headset Review
Asus Crossblade Ranger
Budget All-round PC - December 2014
GIGABYTE GA-J1800N-D2H Review: Dual Core Bay Trail-D at $69
GSkill F4-2400C15Q-16GRK DDR4-2,400 Review
JDS Labs O2+ODAC Headphone Amplifier And DAC Combo Review
Key Ingredient Recipe Tablet Review
Netgear ProSafe XS708E Switch Review
The Most Significant Linux Gaming Milestones Of 2014
Xiaomi Redmi Note 4G Smartphone Review

Alienware Alpha Review: A Compact, Powerful Steam Machine

The Alienware Alpha is a compact living room gaming PC that suits the gamer wanting better graphics, frame rates, and resolutions on a more consistent basis. On top of this, you get the advantages of gaming on a PC, such as a massive game library, cheaper games and the excellent modding community.

Read full article @ Techspot

ARCTIC P614 BT Bluetooth Headset Review

By the time you read this, Christmas will be over, and we will be heading into our second big shopping event within the span of two months here in Canada, also known as Boxing Day. In my experience, Boxing Day has always provided better deals than any other shopping event during the year. When I was younger, I would remember waiting for the flyers to come a few days earlier, ready to circle things to purchase the next day. Things have not changed too much, as I still do the same thing, except online sites now have "leaked" flyers a week before the twenty-sixth, which allows people to know the deals even earlier. With all the excitement comes all the stress of shopping. You might get stuck with some fellow shoppers who are completely incompatible with your shopping style (See the Kingston HyperX Fury 64GB review). Not to mention, the sheer number of people out shopping on this day is crazy. Despite people knowing the deals will generally last for more than just the single day, they are out in masses to get the "limited quantity" deals. Parking lots are insanely full, and the traffic to and from stores is horrendous. It seems right after Christmas, a holiday of giving, people are more interested in receiving. Compound this with generally disgruntled workers who have been up since 4 or 5 AM trying to set the store up, and you will not necessarily get the best of service. Finally, if you do head out, you may face the utter disappointment of missing out on deals because you were late. So readers, you could take the chance and go out shopping, or you could stay at home, shop online, and read today's review of the ARCTIC P614 BT. This headset is not the first ARCTIC audio review we have done, and hopefully, this will not end the same either. While the last ARCTIC audio review we did failed to impress us, I can only wonder if ARCTIC has upped the ante. Hopefully my last review of 2014 will bring us some holiday cheer.

Read full article @ APH Networks

Asus Crossblade Ranger

So last week I took a look at Asus’s AM3+ board, today I have the chance to take a look at a more recent AMD based ROG board called the Crossblade Ranger. Asus launched the Crossblade Ranger not to long ago and as you can tell from the lack of any numbers in the name this is their first Republic of Gamers FM2+ board. Why did they take so long to bring one out? Frankly the FM2+ platform was always designed to be more of a mainstream platform but that didn’t stop some people from using them for gaming. Asus noticed there was interest in a gaming focused board and here we are. Today I’m going to dive into the Crossblade Ranger and see what kind of features Asus packed in then after that I will get it on the testbench and make sure it performs like it should as well.

Read full article @ LanOC Reviews

Budget All-round PC - December 2014

The all-round PC is a PC with comprehensive features for around £650 - £750 that can do a little bit of everything. It should have enough speed and capacity to meet your needs for some time. Currently it can run all applications, and you're able to upgrade it with small future investments when you need more power or storage capacity.

Surfing, gaming, business applications, photo and video editing should all be possible on the all-round PC without giving you the feeling that it's lacking in performance.

This means a fast processor and graphics card with an excellent price/ performance ratio, in combination with more than enough memory and storage space. Let's not forget a good computer case and a power supply that will remain energy efficient and silent enough for some years to come. Since the monitor, mouse and keyboard will be used daily you should definitely not skimp on these peripherals.

Read full article @ Hardware.Info

GIGABYTE GA-J1800N-D2H Review: Dual Core Bay Trail-D at $69

Our recent review of the HP Stream 11 by Brett Howse, featuring a dual core Bay Trail-M, made me wonder about the utility of such a desktop system based on Bay Trail-D. Despite testing the J1800N-D2H earlier in the year but not writing a review, I thought it best to polish off the data and see if it still relevant alongside the $200 offerings and worth the potential extra cost for a full build to fill out a motherboard in exchange for the potential extra functionality (2T2R WiFi rather than 1T1R, SATA drives rather than eMMC). 

Read full article @ Anandtech

GSkill F4-2400C15Q-16GRK DDR4-2,400 Review

Value and performance in one tidy package. As we approach the end of 2014, the Intel X99 chipset remains the solitary consumer platform to use DDR4 memory. And while it's certainly arguable that the X99 platform represents a very small proportion of the total PC market, DDR4 will become far more mainstream in less than a year's time, particularly when Intel starts using it on upcoming Skylake processors in mid-2015.

The DDR4 premium tax stands at about 50 per cent when compared to widely available DDR3. £180 buys you 16GB (4x4GB) of DDR4-2,133 memory while a 16GB (2x8GB) of the same speed DDR3 costs around £125.

Looking to keep costs low for entry-level DDR4 is Taiwanese manufacturer G.Skill. It's now debuting a 16GB quad-channel DDR4-2,400 CL15 kit for £185, undercutting much of the competition by a handy degree. News of falling DDR4 prices may make users reconsider the X99 platform for their next build, particularly with the sub-£300 Core i7-5820K processor at the helm, so let's take a closer look at G.Skill's Ripjaws 4 budget offering.

Read full article @ Hexus

JDS Labs O2+ODAC Headphone Amplifier And DAC Combo Review

Over the years although I’ve had both the pleasure and privilege of testing a very large number of earphones and headphones by numerous manufacturers in the market i never did ask for more since i always found that the volume levels offered by most models were more than just sufficient for my taste. However we always seek to expand our reviews so when some of you asked us if we could start doing headphone amplifier reviews i really found it interesting and so without delay we all started looking for the best solutions currently in the market. As usual i won't lie to you, there are numerous interesting models by many manufacturers currently available that can boost volume levels but one topped our search both in terms of quality and features, the O2+ODAC Combo by JDS Labs. Now JDS Labs doesn't make just one of these tiny devices so you can choose between 3 different models (black, silver and custom) the third of which you can partially customize according to your liking (and we did).

JDS Labs brings you headphone amplification true to sound, all made in the USA. We go above and beyond American manufacturing. We built our in-house machine shop and production line to achieve product quality that we're proud of. JDS Labs's success comes from our obsession with brilliant audio engineering. Performance of our amplifiers and DACs pushes the market forward.

The O2+ODAC (Objective2 headphone amp + ObjectiveDAC) amp+DAC combo is based on the original "open-source" design introduced back in 2011 by a blogger named NwAvGuy (his blog is still online) who claimed that he could build a low-cost device which could match the audio quality of the almost ten times more expensive Benchmark DAC1 in a blind listening test (he gets no profits but under his license manufacturers need to follow his design). JDS Labs however is not new in the industry since they were first introduced back in 2007 with their premade (and again open-source) CMOY headphone amplifiers and although i had the chance to take a closer look at one (looked more like a candy/cigar metal box) i never did use it. The O2+ODAC model however is much more than just a headphone amplifier since the integrated Objective DAC (ODAC) allows you to connect it with PC or Mac via a powered USB connector to get audiophile digital to analogue conversion. This sounds great and to be honest with all of you we can't say whether or not the O2+ODAC model actually compares with the DAC1 since we don't have that model here but what we can do (and did) is for all of us to test it and see (or better yet listen) how it performs.

Read full article @ NikKTech

Key Ingredient Recipe Tablet Review

If you love to cook chances are you now have visited the the Key Ingredient website that gives you access to over 2 million recipes that you can search through and try cooking if you like. In recent years the people behind have come out with apps for mobile users as well tablets and readers that you can leave in the kitchen for even easier access to all your favorite recipes. Just recently they announced the Key Ingredient Recipe Tablet, which that is basically an off the shelf 7-inch tablet running a customized version of Android 4.4 Kitkat. Read on to see how it performs!

Read full article @ Legit Reviews

Netgear ProSafe XS708E Switch Review

10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) has been around for years, but high prices for both adaptors and switches have so far made it only accessible for deep-pocketed enterprise users. But with the Netgear XS708E, the jump is a lot more affordable and manageable, so upgrading the most congested parts of your business network to 10GbE is now a more realistic prospect.With an eight-port switch such as the Netgear ProSafe XS708E, and the Thecus C10GTR add-on adaptor installed in your servers, you can be sure there'll be enough network bandwidth to supply hundreds of clients. The ProSafe XS708E is priced at £600 ($815, AU$935), and the Thecus C10GTR card at £300 ($392, AU$450).

Read full article @ Techradar

The Most Significant Linux Gaming Milestones Of 2014

This year was huge for Linux gamers with titles like Civilization: Beyond Earth, Metro Redux, and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive seeing native Linux game releases. There were also new milestones reached for SteamOS, Linux drivers for better handling OpenGL games, etc. Here's a look at the most popular Linux gaming 2014 milestones along with a call for feedback for what you view as most significant to Linux gaming this year...

Read full article @ Phoronix

Xiaomi Redmi Note 4G Smartphone Review

The Redmi Note 4G smartphone has impressed us positively because if offers a lot for its value; the incorporated Snapdragon 400 MSM8928 SoC from Qualcomm may not have a very powerful 3D component but it compensates with good CPU performance, quite decent power consumption and thanks to that we did not have the feeling that the smartphone discharges pretty fast right in front of our eyes as we have seen with some MTK6592 units which have reviewed in the past.

Read full article @ Madshrimps