Here a roundup of today's reviews and articles:

Akitio 10 Gigabit Thunderbolt 3 Ethernet Adapter Review
Alphacool Eissturm Hurricane Copper 45 Review
AMD Athlon 200GE 3.2 GHz Review
Asus ROG Swift PG27U 4K Gaming Monitor Review
ASUS ROG Thor 1200w Platinum Power Supply Review
Budget Game PC - October 2018
Corsair Force MP510 SSD (960GB) Review
Corsair MP510 Review
Crucial P1 1000GB NVMe M.2 SSD Review
Crucial P1 M.2 1000GB SSD Review
Enermax T.B. Silence ADV 120 and 140 Fan Review
How to Enable the Group Policy Editor on Windows Home Editions
HP EX920 SSD Review
HyperX Fury RGB SSD Review
HyperX Savage Exo 480-GB external SSD Review
Nokia 6.1 Plus Review
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 Founders Edition Review
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 OpenCL, CUDA, TensorFlow GPU Compute Benchmarks
Synology DiskStation DS-119j 1-bay NAS Review

Akitio 10 Gigabit Thunderbolt 3 Ethernet Adapter Review

The iMac Pro comes with 10 Gigabit Ethernet out of the box, which is great for connecting to high speed networks and devices like NAS boxes. But what if you have a regular iMac or MacBook Pro? You can use Akitios Thunder3 Dock Pro (review), which provides 10 Gigabit Thunderbolt 3 Ethernet, but that may be overkill if you just need to upgrade your network connection.
If that describes your situation, youll be happy to know that the prolific Thunderbolt 3 hardware manufacturer has the T3-10G, a much smaller bus-powered 10 Gigabit Thunderbolt 3 Ethernet adapter. Watch our hands-on video review for the details.

Read full article @ 9to5Mac

Alphacool Eissturm Hurricane Copper 45 Review

Alphacool is well-known among the liquid cooling community for its high-performance radiators and watercooling complete kits. Their Eissturm (German for ice storm) Hurricane Copper 45 3x 140mm kit features a full-copper NexXxos XT45 (45mm thick) radiator, which boasts the ability to cool an entire, overclocked PC build with room to include a graphics card, if it so tickled your fancy.

For the ever-valuable overclocking dollar, few complete watercooling kits come close to offering the cooling capability for such an attractive, all-inclusive price. Pro tip: make sure you have a large enough case.

Read full article @ Tom's Hardware

AMD Athlon 200GE 3.2 GHz Review

Today, we have with us the most affordable piece of hardware that combines two big buzzwords in client computing: "Zen" and "Vega." Priced cheaper than a copy of the year's "Call of Duty," the new Athlon 200GE is targeted at entry-level desktop builds and overcomes a major product differentiation failure of its predecessors over the past couple of generations - the lack of integrated graphics.

The once-flagship Athlon brand, much like Intel Pentium, has been relegated to the entry-level segment of the market. Before "Zen" and AM4, AMD built Athlon-branded processors on its APU platforms, such as FM2+, by configuring them to be essentially A-series APUs with their integrated graphics disabled, turning them into a weird product you had to pair with discrete graphics cards. That meant you couldn't really build mom-and-pop PCs using the A-Series processors. With its Athlon "Zen" generation, AMD finally corrected this mistake.

Read full article @ TechPowerUp

Asus ROG Swift PG27U 4K Gaming Monitor Review

Ask 10 users what constitutes the ultimate gaming monitor and you’ll likely get 10 different answers. A few common threads will emerge though. There can never be too much resolution, and there’s no such thing as a refresh rate that’s too high.

Aside from cost, the Asus ROG Swift PG27U has no flaws of consequence. It’s extremely capable for gaming, video, color-critical work and general tasks. And once you’ve experienced games at Ultra HD resolution and 144Hz, it’s hard to imagine playing any other way.

Read full article @ Tom's Hardware

ASUS ROG Thor 1200w Platinum Power Supply Review

ASUS ROG (Republic of Gamers) is perhaps one of the most prestige gaming brands currently in the PC and laptop market. It is a brand that has become exceptionally well known for their high-end products which include motherboards, laptops and even mobile phones now!

In terms of actual PC components though, there is very little that carries the ASUS ROG brand outside of motherboards, it seems though that that is about to change!

Earlier this year we had the chance to get a close look at the ASUS ROG Thor power supply. During the event we attended, ASUS had it actually mounted on a pole (to represent Thor’s hammer). At the time we expected big things from it, not least because it was one of ASUS first ‘high-performance’ power supplies to carry the Republic of Gamers branding.

Read full article @ eTeknix

Budget Game PC - October 2018

The Hardware.Info Budget Game PC Advice has a balanced configuration for playing video games, without having to spend too much. The components have been selected to offer the best bang for your buck.

That means you cannot always expect the highest settings, resolution and frame rate, but at the same time you should be able to play all modern games in Full HD resolution without making huge concessions to either the image quality or your enjoyment of the game.

Our advice covers a basic configuration, but we'll frequently name a few options to make your PC faster, more futureproof or easier to upgrade.

Read full article @ Hardware.Info

Corsair Force MP510 SSD (960GB) Review

The Corsair Force Series MP510 may appear at first glance to be an incremental update to the earlier MP500, but under the sticker it's an entirely new and far better drive. The MP500 was Corsair's take on the Phison E7 first-generation NVMe SSD controller paired with planar MLC NAND. The MP510 adopts the new Phison E12 controller and Toshiba's 64-layer 3D TLC NAND. The result is a drive that aims for the high end and actually makes it this time.

Earlier this year, we previewed the Phison E12 controller and its M.2 SSD reference design. The Corsair Force MP510 is based on that same hardware platform and features the same firmware version number, so not much should have changed except for the application of a Corsair logo and price tag. The Phison E12 is the high-end controller from their second generation of NVMe controllers, with the E8 as the entry-level NVMe controller with fewer PCIe lanes and NAND channels. Phison has close ties to Toshiba, and most Phison drives use Toshiba's NAND flash. Toshiba's transition to 3D NAND was relatively late and that stuck many Phison SSD vendors with uncompetitive SSDs last year, including most drives with the E7 controller. Toshiba's 64-layer 3D TLC has reversed that situation and is giving Phison SSD vendors access to cutting-edge flash that is fast, cheap, and power efficient. Phison's E12 controller allows drives to make the most of that flash.

Read full article @ Anandtech

Corsair MP510 Review

The MP510 launches with four capacities, 240GB, 480GB, 960GB and 1920GB and boasts sequential read and write speeds of a lofty 3480MB/s and 3000MB/s respectively. Corsair also claim the drive can manage 610,000 4K IOPS read and 580,000 4K IOPS write. Providing all of that horsepower is the new Phison E12 controller and Toshiba's latest BiCS3 64-layer 3D TLC NAND modules.

Read full article @ Vortez

Crucial P1 1000GB NVMe M.2 SSD Review

The biggest limitation to storage performance is the interface. Some can argue that the device itself can be slow or fast but, even the fastest device will be bottlenecked if it cannot transfer data quickly enough. This is on reason why RAID was an important feature back in the day and why PCI Express based SSD have become a faster alternative over SATA based drives. However if you happened to catch the Hardware Asylum Podcast episode about SSDs you’ll know that even M.2 drives can be slow because they are actually a SATA drive on a different form factor.

In this review I’ll be going over the Crucial P1. The P1 is a new drive from Crucial that has combined the Micron QLC NAND technology with a NVMe PCI Express based controller. The drive is M.2 form factor and comes in capacities of 500GB and 1000GB with sequential read/write speeds up to 2,000/1,700 MB/s. The P1 provides performance through hybrid-dynamic write acceleration and a unique SLC cache implementation. The Crucial P1 SSD leverages Micron quad-level cell (QLC) NAND technology and narrows the affordability gap between hard drives and flash storage, enabling increased speeds and capacities at a more affordable price point.

Read full article @ Hardware Asylum

Crucial P1 M.2 1000GB SSD Review

NAND flash memory (the storage memory used inside an SSD) has become cheaper thanks to the new 64-layer fabrication and this year and the next we'll see a move to QLC NAND as well. MLC writes 2 bits per cell, TLC 3 bits per cell and QLC four bits per cell. You can see both the complication and advantage here, you can store more data in the NAND cells, increasing volume sizes. But you can also see a performance hit with an increasing write bottleneck (which you can buffer with SLC cached, DRAM or Host Memory Buffer on NVMe). Endurance is also a factor, there should be less of it however with modern age wear and care technologies it still is not an issue. We'll talk a bit more about that on the next page though.

An SSD targeted towards gaming laptops and high-end PCs, it's thin and is available in 500 and 1000 GB volume sizes. This SSD series offer peak read performance of up to 2000 MB/s and a peak write speeds up to 1700 MB/s. Small side note, performance will differ with different volume sizes, we'll put that into a table on the next page, but smaller versions use less NAND channels and thus have slower writing. That said, whatever size you choose, the perf will be great. The random performance rated up-to 170K random read IOPS and up to 240K write IOPS. Being M.2., you do need a modern motherboard with capable NVMe supported M.2 (PCI-Express Gen 3.0 x4 (and not x2) connected) interface, please do check out your motherboard manufacturer for that. But ever the past year or two all Intel and AMD chipset released in the mainstream to high-end class support it very well. M2 is interesting stuff, these smaller form factors storage units are evolving from being "just as fast" as a regular SSD towards double, tripling, heck... even quadrupling that performance. It comes in a different package, M.2. The M.2 interface is so much more capable as it can deal with way more bandwidth using PCI-Express lanes. As such, M.2 solutions are intended for enthusiast class motherboards. The series M.2 SSDs are a breathtaking series of storage technology as they offer enthusiast class performance yet remain reasonable in pricing depending on NAND type.

Read full article @ The Guru of 3D

Enermax T.B. Silence ADV 120 and 140 Fan Review

Today we have tested on OCinside.de the Enermax T.B. Silence ADV 120 and Enermax T.B. Silence ADV 140 fans. The ADV version is a new development of the well-known T.B. Silence fans from Enermax, which should be up to 20 percent quieter than the predecessor. We are curious how good these fans are in practice.

Read full article @ OCInside.de

How to Enable the Group Policy Editor on Windows Home Editions

Tweaking Windows settings that are not available in standard menus will commonly require modifications to be made from the registry or Group Policy Editor (gpedit.msc). We regularly reference these throughout our tips, so we thought those of you on Windows Home will appreciate being able to use Gpedit like everyone else.

Read full article @ TechSpot

HP EX920 SSD Review

The HP EX920 has been the "it" NVMe SSD for most of the summer. The series was first on display at CES in January 2018 and by early May in warehouses with attractive pricing compared to Samsung's 970 offerings. Prices have dropped across the board for all SSDs since then. Today we see if the HP EX920 is still the best NVMe value and we do it in all three capacities.

HP is a brand you know, but these drives don't come from the same Hewlett-Packard your notebook comes from. A company called Biwin licenses the brand to sell SSDs under the HP name. Biwin is a large SSD manufacturer that manufactures several popular SSDs that sell under different names across the world. The HP-branded drives must meet a robust series of tests dictated by HP. Each drive goes through a certification process by the big HP Company to work with its servers, desktops, and notebooks. When you buy an HP-branded SSD, it's going to work in your HP system. The EX920 is an NVMe product, so your system has to support the protocol, but other than that little detail, it's going to work.

Read full article @ TweakTown

HyperX Fury RGB SSD Review

The people asked, HyperX listened. Fresh from the warehouse from the gaming arm of Kingston comes the HyperX Fury RGB, a classic SATA based SSD that deliver speedy performance storage and a more affordable rate than its M.2 based cousin. There's no NVMe that can shine like this one either - check out review to learn more.

Read full article @ MMORPG

HyperX Savage Exo 480-GB external SSD Review

Storage is likely one of the last stops for gamers looking to convert dollars into fun. One might expect that games would at least load faster on more expensive drives, but our testing over the years has repeatedly disproved that theory. But that doesn't stop manufacturers from trying to seduce the gamer market with outlandishly named and styled SSDs. Even with that in mind, would any company be crazy enough to attempt to sell gamers on external solid-state storage? Hold HyperX's beer.

Read full article @ The Tech Report

Nokia 6.1 Plus Review

The Nokia 6.1 Plus is one of HMD's best phones to date, pairing a solid design, a crisp screen and a good camera into a one-handed package that's among the best gadgets you can buy today.

The first thing you'll notice about the Nokia 6.1 Plus is just how small and light it is. I really do have to emphasise just how well it fits in the palm of your hand, and how utterly satisfying that is after using a larger phone that I struggled to navigate with using just one hand. It fits like a glove, and while I started to miss the larger screen of my daily driver when looking at videos, it truly was a pleasure to know thee, O one-handed comfort. The phone is also much lighter than most others you'd find, making it all the more pleasing to handle.

Read full article @ Neowin

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 Founders Edition Review

GeForce RTX 2070 is NVIDIA's most affordable RTX-capable graphics card today. We ran it through 23 games at three resolutions, and the performance results are encouraging. The card sits right between the GTX 1080 and GTX 1080 Ti, with pricing being lower than GTX 1080 Ti, and you get all the new features like DLSS and RTX.

Back in September, NVIDIA launched its GeForce RTX 20-series graphics card family with two high-end SKUs: the RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 Ti. Close to a month later, the company is launching its third-fastest card in the family, the GeForce RTX 2070. This is an important product for NVIDIA because even at a relatively steep price of $500, it is the most affordable one offering real-time ray-tracing in games, or at least a semblance of it. The RTX 2070 is being offered to the vast bulk of gamers that play at 1440p resolution or lower.

NVIDIA has had a less than stellar track record in making sure its products are actually available at the MSRP prices announced. $500 is the baseline price for the RTX 2070. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 Founders Edition card, which we have with us for review today, is priced at $599. With the lack of a reference-design card in the market at the baseline price, NVIDIA's board partners have often had a free hand at pricing even their cheapest custom-design offerings above the baseline. With the RTX 2070, however, NVIDIA reportedly cracked the whip on this practice. All partners are required to have at least one RTX 2070 product priced at $500.

Read full article @ TechPowerUp

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 OpenCL, CUDA, TensorFlow GPU Compute Benchmarks

Here are the first of our benchmarks for the GeForce RTX 2070 graphics card that launched this week. In our inaugural Ubuntu Linux benchmarking with the GeForce RTX 2070 is a look at the OpenCL / CUDA GPU computing performance including with TensorFlow and various models being tested on the GPU. The benchmarks are compared to an assortment of available graphics cards and also include metrics for power consumption, performance-per-Watt, and performance-per-dollar.

Read full article @ Phoronix

Synology DiskStation DS-119j 1-bay NAS Review

It has an updated 64-bit CPU, has a hardware encryption engine built in and costs less than £100. Synology’s entry-level single drive NAS, the DiskStation DS115j, has been soldiering on for quite some time but now a new entry-level single disk model has arrived, the DiskStation DS119j. It sports an updated 64-bit processor, has a hardware encryption engine built in and costs less than £100.

Read full article @ KitGuru