Here a roundup of the latest reviews and articles:

8 Most Useful Keyboard Shortcuts For Beginner Eclipse IDE Users
8 reasons to replace your VPN client with OpenVPN
Acer Nitro 5 2018 Gaming Laptop Revealed
Acer Predator Triton 700 Gaming Laptop Review (Max-Q GTX 1080)
AMD Announces Official Price-Cuts for Ryzen Processors
AMD announces Ryzen 3 Mobile
AMD Reveals CPU, Graphics 2018-2020 Roadmap at CES
AMD Shows Off Ryzen Processor Roadmap and Slashes Prices
AMD updates GPU roadmap with 7nm Vega
AMD Zen+ 12nm Ryzen and X470 motherboards to launch in April
AORUS Z370 Gaming 7 Motherboard Review
Arctic Freezer 12 Review
ASRock Fatal1ty AB350 Gaming ITX/ac & X370 Gaming ITX/ac review: more AM4 ITX options
Battle of the 16-cores: Intel’s Core i9-7960X vs. AMD’s Threadripper 1950X
Corsair PBT Double-Shot Keycaps WHITE upgrade your board
CPU Usage Differences after Applying Meltdown Patch at Epic Games
DinoPC Primal Comet Ryzen Gaming Package Review
Docker Performance With KPTI Page Table Isolation Patches (Meltdown Fix)
EWin Champion Series Ergonomic Computer Gaming Chair Review
Fractal Design Define R6 Mid-Tower Case Review
Intel 8th Gen Core chips now house Radeon RX Vega Graphics
Intel Launches 8th Gen Core With Radeon Graphics And A New Hades Canyon NUC SFF Mini PC
Intel launches its Core G-series NUC VR Machines
Intel NUC Goes Hades Canyon - Check Out The NUC8i7HVK and NUC8i7HNK
Kanto YU6 Desktop Computer Speakers Review
Lenovo Legion Y720 Laptop Reviewed
Middle-earth: Shadow of War review
MSI Z370I Gaming Pro Carbon AC Motherboard Review
Raijintek Coeus Evo Computer Case Review
Seagate IronWolf Pro ST12000NE0007 12TB Hard Drive Review
SOHO NAS/DAS Synology RS217 Two-Bay RackStation Review
Upcoming Ryzen X470, Coffee Lake-S Z390, H370, H310 and B360 motherboards from ASRock
Wine Takes Minor Performance Hit Running Windows Programs On Linux With KPTI (Meltdown Vulnerability)
Xtorm XB202 DISCOVER 17.000mAh Power Bank Review

8 Most Useful Keyboard Shortcuts For Beginner Eclipse IDE Users

This article was originally written for Eclipse Juno but has since been updated for Eclipse Oxygen. I recently had two pair-programming assignments, each in Java and each with a separate partner. Going into this without much knowledge, my first partner suggested using Eclipse IDE, and that turned out to be a great choice. If youre just starting out in Java, Eclipse is the way to go. In the past, Id tried learning the notorious VIM editor, but despite all the VIM tutorials out there, I found the learning curve too steep.

Read full article @ MakeUseOf

8 reasons to replace your VPN client with OpenVPN

Take full control over your VPN connection with this powerful freebie.

Read full article @ TechRadar

Acer Nitro 5 2018 Gaming Laptop Revealed

Acer just announced its new *Acer Nitro 5 2018 gaming laptop*, designed for casual gamers seeking great performance in an attractive laser-textured design. It is powered by the new *AMD Ryzen Mobile* processor and *Radeon RX 560* graphics!

Read full article @ TechARP

Acer Predator Triton 700 Gaming Laptop Review (Max-Q GTX 1080)

There was a time when the term ‘gaming laptop’ meant something big, fat and often just totally ugly. However, those days are long behind us – now manufacturers are all competing to build the slimmest, most attractive laptops that still pack the necessary grunt required to play the latest games. With its Predator Triton 700, Acer will be hoping that it has ticked all the boxes when it comes to building a portable gaming powerhouse.

Read full article @ KitGuru

AMD Announces Official Price-Cuts for Ryzen Processors

Following its Ryzen 5 2400G and Ryzen 3 2200G socket AM4 APU announcement, AMD announced price cuts for its Ryzen family of processors, across the board. These are official price cuts, and not seasonal retailer discounts. The price cuts have been made in a bid to make its existing socket AM4 Ryzen processors more competitive against 8th generation Intel Core "Coffee Lake" processors.

Among the notable changes, are bringing the entire Ryzen 7-series lineup under the $350-mark, with the 1800X being priced at $349, the 1700X at $309, and the 1700 non-X at $299. These changes make the three competitive against the Core i7-8700K (which is scraping the $400-mark in many places), and the i7-8700 non-K (around $330). The Ryzen 5-series six-core parts also receive much-needed price-cuts to make them competitive against the Core i5 six-core SKUs, such as the i5-8600K and i5-8400. There are marginal changes in the Ryzen 3 series and Ryzen Threadripper series. All price cuts are tabled below.

Read full article @ TechPowerUp

AMD announces Ryzen 3 Mobile

Today AMD is also announcing Ryzen 3 Mobile. AMD Ryzen 3 2300U/2200U Cheaper variants of mobile Ryzen processor are set to launch this quarter, according to AMD.  The Ryzen 3 2300U is a quad-core CPU with 6 Vega Compute Units enabled. This chip boosts up to 3.4 GHz with a base clock of 2.0 GHz. A slower variant of Ryzen CPU with two cores enabled (and four threads) comes with three Vega Compute Units on board.

Read full article @ VideoCardz.com

AMD Reveals CPU, Graphics 2018-2020 Roadmap at CES

AMD at CES shed some light on its 2018 roadmap, while taking the opportunity to further shed some light on its graphics and CPU projects up to 2020. Part of their 2018 roadmap was the company's already announced, across the board price-cuts for their first generation Ryzen processors. This move aims to increase competitiveness of its CPU offerings against rival Intel - thus taking advantage of the blue giant's currently weakened position due to the exploit saga we've been covering. This move should also enable inventory clearings of first-gen Ryzen processors - soon to be supplanted by the new Zen+ 12 nm offerings, which are expected to receive a 10% boost to power efficiency from the process shrink alone, while also including some specific improvements in optimizing their performance per watt profile. These are further bound to see their market introduction in March, and are already in the process of sampling.

On the CPU side, AMD's 2018 roadmap further points towards a Threadripper and Ryzen Pro refresh in the 2H 2018, likely in the same vein as their consumer CPUs that we just talked about. On the graphics side of their 2018 roadmap, AMD focused user's attention in the introduction of premium Vega offerings in the mobile space (with HBM2 memory integration on interposer, as well), which should enable the company to compete against NVIDIA in the discrete graphics space for mobile computers. Another very interesting tidbit announced by AMD is that they would be skipping the 12 nm process for their graphics products entirely; the company announced that it will begin sampling of 7 nm Vega products to its partners, but only on the Instinct product line of machine learning accelerators. We consumers will likely have to wait a little while longer until we see some 7 nm graphics cards from AMD.

Read full article @ TechPowerUp

AMD Shows Off Ryzen Processor Roadmap and Slashes Prices

AMD kicked off the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas to go over their roadmap plans for 2018 and it looks pretty good. Come on over and take a look!

Read full article @ Legit Reviews

AMD updates GPU roadmap with 7nm Vega

AMD confirms 7nm architecture in 2018 AMD has unveiled new GPU roadmap with 7nm Vega. A new version of Radeon Instinct Vega will start sampling this year providing better performance for machine learning. The new roadmap effectively ends rumors of 12nm Vega refresh. Instead, AMD is jumping straight to 7nm fabrication process. The 7nm Vega is likely the Vega 20 GPU we have mentioned multiple times before -- a more power efficient version of Vega 10.

Read full article @ VideoCardz.com

AMD Zen+ 12nm Ryzen and X470 motherboards to launch in April

AMD 12nm Ryzen launches in April AMD has confirmed in official press slides that second-generation Ryzen high-performance CPU will launch in April 2018. AMD promises that first 12nm Zen+ processors will have higher clocks and support Precision Boost 2 technology. Additionally, AMD has confirmed that X470, second-generation chipset for Ryzen CPUs will also launch in April 2018. According to AMD, X470 platform is to be optimized for 2nd Generation Ryzen CPUs. AMD 2nd Gen Ryzen Threadripper in 2H 2018

Read full article @ VideoCardz.com

AORUS Z370 Gaming 7 Motherboard Review

Introduction Originally founded in 2014, the AORUS branding was reserved for GIGABYTE's high-end gaming laptops and gaming peripherals. However, at CES 2017 GIGABYTE unveiled their AORUS branded line of motherboards and graphics cards, replacing their G1 GAMING line. AORUS motherboards first appeared with the launch of Intels 7th generation Core Processors. Now, less than a year later, Intel has introduced …

Read full article @ Modders-Inc

Arctic Freezer 12 Review

For the slim purse and/or slim case, Arctic offers the Freezer 12, a compact heat pipe cooler with 92mm fan tower design. We test the cooling performance and will check today on OCinside.de with the new AM4 test system, whether reserves for overclocking remain.

Read full article @ OCInside.de

ASRock Fatal1ty AB350 Gaming ITX/ac & X370 Gaming ITX/ac review: more AM4 ITX options

A while ago we reviewed the first socket AM4 mini-ITX board that reached our test lab. ASRock is the second manufacturer with an ITX model for AMD Ryzen and they immediately sent us two boards: the Fatal1ty AB350 Gaming ITX/ac and X370 Gaming ITX/ac. Which one should you buy if you're building a small-size Ryzen build?

Read full article @ Hardware.Info

Battle of the 16-cores: Intel’s Core i9-7960X vs. AMD’s Threadripper 1950X

I feel like I’m not very good at choosing the best time to post content. After completing a huge round of benchmarking on six processors, news hit the web of a massive security hole found in many processors, and at the current time, it seems Intel’s the most affected party.

Currently, it’s expected that a security patch will reduce the performance in some workloads, though how much degradation will occur is yet to be seen. It originally felt like performance could be severely impacted, but initial tests conducted by other outlets around the world haven’t really given much reason for concern (although it does seem like it’s largely I/O-intensive workloads that will be affected).

If it’s discovered that this patch notably decreases performance (as in, it impacts the benchmarks), I’ll revisit testing. At this point, I don’t expect the results in this review to greatly change, though if you want to remain cautious, you’d get no sneer from me.

Read full article @ TechGage

Corsair PBT Double-Shot Keycaps WHITE upgrade your board

Corsair have released 2 PBT Double-Shot Keycap sets for their mechanical keyboards. One in black if you like a more traditional look but want more durable keycaps thanks to their PBT double-shot construction. Another in white if your RGB mechanical keyboard is starting to look a little boring and you want it to complement your set up. They are both priced at £39.95 for a full set that will suit US,EU & UK keyboards.

Read full article @ KitGuru

CPU Usage Differences after Applying Meltdown Patch at Epic Games

The Fortnite team at Epic has published a new announcement that offers insight into what effect the Meltdown patch could have on multiplayer gaming. Judging by the chart, the impact on CPU usage is rather significant. The company warns that "unexpected issues" may occur as its cloud services continue to be updated.

Read full article @ HardOCP

DinoPC Primal Comet Ryzen Gaming Package Review

Today we take a look at the Dino PC Primal Comet Ryzen Gaming package; this is more than just a pre-built computer system. We see the inclusion of a Full-HD 24" AOC monitor and an ASUS Cerberus gaming mouse, keyboard, headset and mousemat. Grab a desk and some kind of seating and you're ready to delve into the world of PC gaming.

Read full article @ Vortez

Docker Performance With KPTI Page Table Isolation Patches (Meltdown Fix)

Overall most of our benchmarks this week of the new Linux Kernel Page Table Isolation (KPTI) patches coming as a result of the Meltdown vulnerability have showed minimal impact overall on system performance. The exceptions have obviously been with workloads having high kernel interactions like demanding I/O cases and in terms of real-world impact, databases. But when testing VMs there's been some minor impact more broadly than bare metal testing and also Wine performance has been impacted. The latest having been benchmarked is seeing if the Docker performance has been impacted by the KPTI patches to see if it's any significant impact since overall the patched system overhead certainly isn't anything close to how it was initially hyped by some other media outlets.

Read full article @ Phoronix

EWin Champion Series Ergonomic Computer Gaming Chair Review

So, here it goes: I love it! To me, it is very comfortable, very accommodating, and certainly makes my gaming experience and even plain old web browsing more pleasant. Some of my excitement may come from the fact that my old chair was a low-end office chair that I had actually recovered a couple of times to extend its life. So going from that to the EWin Champion chair is like going from a skateboard to a Cadillac. Well, maybe not that drastic, but my point is that this chair definitely delivers the comfort. Pull the lever, lean back to the full recline position, and in a few minutes, it's lights out for me. The different accent colors that are available also allow for some variety.

Read full article @ OCC

Fractal Design Define R6 Mid-Tower Case Review

The Define series is best known for quality construction that features customization, sound-dampening, and enthusiast level cooling options. Three years ago we awarded the Define R5 a strong 9.5 out of 10. What has Fractal done to improve and remain relevant as we head into 2018? In this article for Benchmark Reviews, I take a closer at the Fractal Design Define R6 Tempered Glass mid-tower computer case, detailing the latest features.

Read full article @ Benchmark Reviews

Intel 8th Gen Core chips now house Radeon RX Vega Graphics

G-series with Radeon on-package. Back in November 2017, Intel released high-level details of a bold, new play for the gaming notebook market, identified as a high-growth area for 2018.

The news centred on a partnership between Intel and AMD, where the latter would supply its graphics know-how and enable Intel to build a single chip containing its own class-leading CPU cores, AMD graphics, and HBM2 memory.

The purpose of such a chip is to provide a robust gaming experience in a thinner laptop profile and with less power than if going down the Intel CPU and discrete AMD/Nvidia GPU route alone. And there's a fair chance that any products equipped with this new processor will be cheaper, too.

Read full article @ Hexus

Intel Launches 8th Gen Core With Radeon Graphics And A New Hades Canyon NUC SFF Mini PC

Intel and AMD rocked the tech industry late last year, when the pair announced that some forthcoming Intel Core processors would feature integrated Radeon graphics. We had heard rumors of the two rivals working together in such a fashion for well over a year, but it seemed like such a far-fetched idea that we didn't lend much credence to the potential.

Read full article @ HotHardware

Intel launches its Core G-series NUC VR Machines

NUC8i7HVK and NUC8i7HNK are based around new 8th gen Intel Core / AMD Vega SoCs. Earlier today you may have read through all the latest information about the new Intel 8th Gen Core chips with AMD Radeon RX Vega graphics, from CES 2018. The editor shared a rundown of the architecture behind the new SoCs, some essential overview slides, and some preliminary benchmarks (Intel in-house testing). These Intel chips, with integrated AMD graphics, are highly anticipated and from what was shared earlier show significant promise for 1080p laptop gaming. Furthermore, the Intel benchmarks show the faster Core i7-8809G beats a Core i7-770HQ combined with a GeForce GTX 1060 Max-Q GPU (often listed as an entry level VR-ready GPU).

Read full article @ Hexus

Intel NUC Goes Hades Canyon - Check Out The NUC8i7HVK and NUC8i7HNK

Intel has just released the most power NUC model they have ever come up with and it is so powerful that Intel is calling it a VR-capable system! This impressive feat was due to the fact that it is powered by the newly announced 8th Gen Intel Core i7 processor with Radeon RX Vega M graphics. The new Intel NUC (formerly code-named Hades Canyon) will come in two versions: NUC8i7HVK and NUC8i7HNK. Read on to find out the specifications, prices and release dates!

Read full article @ Legit Reviews

Kanto YU6 Desktop Computer Speakers Review

Compared to previous Kanto speakers, the YU6 has kept its minimalist look while evolving its sound in both amplitude and characteristics.

Read full article @ APH Networks

Lenovo Legion Y720 Laptop Reviewed

Starting with DX11 data, when running at 1080p plugged in or not had some impact, but not too much. The average FPS while charging, so there should not be any throttling for power, was 150.5 FPS (6.65 ms), and when on the battery it was 145.2 FPS (6.89 ms). The percentile data starts showing a difference, with the 0.1% having a frame rate of 110.95 FPS (9.01 ms) while charging and 71.35 FPS (14.01 ms) when on the battery. The amount of time spent below 60 FPS (frame time longer than 16.7 ms) is fractions of a percent for both states and the frame time difference between consecutive frames for both were with +/-2 ms, when looking at 1% to 99% of the data. The even more outlier difference data of 0.1% and 99.9% shows the on-battery test being less smooth, but the greater of these two was 7.43 ms, which still leaves plenty of time (for this game) to render the frame before the display cycles.

Read full article @ OCC

Middle-earth: Shadow of War review

Middle-earth: Shadow of War is a new game in the series of games based on the books by Tolkien. The story continues where Shadow of Mordor ended, the developers have done a lot more with the format of the game world and explored all the possibilities that lie within it. What hardware, then, do you need to tackle a load of Orcs?

Shadow of War was developed by Monolith Productions who were also responsible for Shadow of Mordor and the titles in the F.E.A.R. series. The official release of Shadow of War was on the 10th of October and it is available across all platforms (PC, PS4 and Xbox One) along with the mobile version for Android and iOS. On PC, Shadow of War utilises DirectX 11, based on a heavily-modified LithTech engine which got its own name – Firebird.

The story is chronologically placed between The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. The story of Talion from the previous game continues here. The gaming press were moderately enthusiastic about the game, where the enthusiasm was curbed by the presence of micro transactions. The question of why the loot boxes have such a big influence arises, while we also get to enjoy a very diverse game play in such a large world.

Read full article @ Hardware.Info

MSI Z370I Gaming Pro Carbon AC Motherboard Review

Does MSI’s top-mini gaming board go as long as its name in features, overclocking, performance, and value? We test it!

Read full article @ Toms Hardware

Raijintek Coeus Evo Computer Case Review

Since building my first ever full PC all the way back in March 2014 all the way up to present day I’ve updates almost every component at least once. However, since that first build I have never bothered to update my case from the original amazon purchase of a Black Corsair Vengeance C70. However today all of this changes, as today we have in for review the Raijintek Coeus Evo computer case.

So as we always do, let us jump in on the easy part of the review and introduce the specs.

Read full article @ Play3r

Seagate IronWolf Pro ST12000NE0007 12TB Hard Drive Review

The Seagate IronWolf Pro ST12000NE0007 12TB is where colossal capacity meets class-leading performance and industry-best warranty for network attached storage systems of any size.

Read full article @ APH Networks

SOHO NAS/DAS Synology RS217 Two-Bay RackStation Review

The RS217 is Synology's two-bay entry-level appliance for the rackmount market. This solution features a 1U form factor built on the Marvell Armada platform offering dual-Gbe NICs capable of 221 MB/s read and 171 MB/s write utilizing link aggregation while being eco-friendly at 12.9W in hibernation and 21 watts full access. Taking things further, Synology has taken the 1U form factor and compacted it down to 12 inches deep allowing this unit to be mounted in two-post or wall mount racks where space is at a premium. The icing on the cake comes in the form of DSM or DiskStation Manager which offers a premium desktop platform for managing your NAS with File Station, Cloud Station, and Surveillance Station to name a few.

Read full article @ TweakTown

Upcoming Ryzen X470, Coffee Lake-S Z390, H370, H310 and B360 motherboards from ASRock

We have an update from ASRock regarding their upcoming motherboards. First Ryzen 2000 motherboards A new series of Ryzen motherboards are already in the making. We can confirm the following Fatal1ty X470 ASRock motherboards: ASRock Fatal1ty X470 Gaming K4 ASRock Fatal1ty X470 Professional Gaming ASRock Fatal1ty X470 Gaming-ITX/ac It appears that ASRock is sticking to the existing naming scheme for Ryzen Refresh. We are in the process of confirming other series, such as Killer/Taichi and Pro. New Coffee Lake-S motherboards ASRock is also planning to add more Coffee Lake-S motherboards. There are four new chipsets currently in production.

Read full article @ VodeCardz.com

Wine Takes Minor Performance Hit Running Windows Programs On Linux With KPTI (Meltdown Vulnerability)

With word this morning that Wine performance may be impacted by the Linux KPTI patches stealing the spotlight this week, I ran some basic benchmarks of Wine in different configurations looking at the performance impact of the kernel page table isolation patches.

Read full article @ Phoronix

Xtorm XB202 DISCOVER 17.000mAh Power Bank Review

The XB202 DISCOVER 17.000mAh may not be the most feature-rich model manufactured by Xtorm but it makes up for that with its high build quality, A-Class battery cells, three USB outputs and support for Qualcomm's Quick Charge 3.0 Technology.

Read full article @ NikKTech