Here a roundup of the latest reviews and articles:

ASUS R9 280X DirectCU II TOP & R9 270 DirectCU II OC Review
CeBit 2014: MSI Press Conference
CyberPowerPC Zeus Mini System Review
Enermax unleash 1,700W PSU (peak 1,800W+) PSU
Intel 730 240GB Review
OCZ Vector 150 240GB Solid State Drive Review
PowerColor Radeon R7 250X 1GB Video Card Review
Sapphire R9 290X VaporX 8GB
Synology DS214play 2-bay NAS Review
Thermolab ITX30 Low Profile CPU Cooler Review
Thermolab LP53 Low Profile CPU Cooler Review

ASUS R9 280X DirectCU II TOP & R9 270 DirectCU II OC Review

To reach the fully stable 1170MHz core clock, I set the core voltage to 1300mv in GPU Tweak and started raising the core clock speed until my testing failed, and then backed off 10MHz. At 1170MHz, it still leaves performance on the table when compared to Sapphire Toxic edition, but it takes time and the luck of the draw to bin cards that high. Considering this card comes with a 1070MHz baseline core clock speed increase of 100MHz, or just under 10% improvement in clock speed, is not a stretch expectation. From the factory, the memory clock speed is running at 1600MHz. Boosting up the clock speed on the GDDR5 memory was accomplished using the same process as on the Tahiti core and essentially delivered an identical 100MHz boost in memory clock speed improvement for your time and effort. These are not the highest clock speeds I have seen on a Tahiti-based card, but do offer up another level of performance if you spend the time to work for it.

Read full article @ OCC

CeBit 2014: MSI Press Conference

Even though the Hannover Messe only officially starts tomorrow, MSI already wanted to highlight some of their brand new products to the present media. Apparently this is just a part of what will be shown at the CeBIT Fare; at least one Taiwanese manufacturer remains loyal to the Hannover Messe. Other big brands alike ASUS & Gigabyte have opted to skip CeBIT. A small warning: the word gaming will be repeated all the time in this brief article, as this is where MSI will focus on in the upcoming months. MadShrimps will show you parts of the presentation and some pictures of the displayed hardware.

Read full article @ Madshrimps

CyberPowerPC Zeus Mini System Review

One of the latest trends in the enthusiast hardware world is to build high powered small form factor machines. This might be a response to SteamOS and the promise of playing PC games in the living room or the realization that you don’t need a monster motherboard to build a high-end system. Regardless of the reason the hardware to build a SFF system has been around for years however, there has been a distinct lack of good cases on the market and has stifled demand.

That is unless you build a case yourself and is exactly what CyberPowerPC has done.

Read full article @ Hardware Asylum

Enermax unleash 1,700W PSU (peak 1,800W+) PSU

The mining of cryptocurrency has caused a worldwide shortage in the supply of key components for high end power supplies. If the latest launch from Enermax is anything to go by, it’s not getting better anytime soon.

Read full article @ KitGuru

Intel 730 240GB Review

Intel is renowned for building some of the fastest components on the planet, especially when it comes to CPUs. Dominating the CPU market is however not enough for the American mega-corp. They have their fingers in a lot of pies and with a variety of divisions come a wealth of scientific research enabling them to continue to expand into other markets. The advent of solid state drives has meant the importance of precision engineering found in mechanical drives has now passed on to the microchip and so it is hardly a surprise that Intel are heavily involved in this market.

Read full article @ Vortez

OCZ Vector 150 240GB Solid State Drive Review

As time progresses on, it has become quite a wakeup call to me that I am really not that young anymore. Being a person born in 1990, I have witnessed the end of the non-digital age (You know, where people did not have cell phones and actually talked to each other, went outside to ride bikes, and actually did homework research in the library by reading real books), and the massive shift in people's lifestyle as we embrace the changes brought upon us in the consumer electronics and internet revolution of the early 2000's. To see how generations have adapted to this change, I went around and asked some people if they know what a fax machine is. The first person I asked was someone born in 1997. "Of course I know what a fax machine is," she said. "I just never really used one." I then asked someone who was born in 1999. "Oh, I know about the fax machine. It sends documents and stuff. But why didn't people just use email instead?" Finally, I asked someone born in 2003. "Fax machine? Is it that thing where you type things and it prints onto a page?" Looking back, we have really gone a long way. This is no different in the digital storage world. Roughly ten years ago, the Western Digital Raptor 36GB 10,000RPM hard drive was a seriously fast hard drive. I remember reading a review that said the Raptor "manages the best transfer rates ever for an ATA drive", quoting its "impressive" 45MB/s minimum transfer rate. Trying using the same Raptor now, and you will be so frustrated by its slow sequential performance, poor IOPS capability, and high access time, you would have wished you had a 5400RPM drive from 2014 instead. Today, SSDs continue to shatter performance barriers as OCZ shows off their flagship Vector 150. Promising a 150% increase in write endurance over the original Vector -- hence the name -- do we have yet another winner in our hands? Read on to find out!

Read full article @ APH Networks

PowerColor Radeon R7 250X 1GB Video Card Review

Last month AMD released the Radeon R7 250X, an entry level discrete graphics card that is part of the Radeon R7/R9 ‘new’ product line. The AMD Radeon R7 250X sells for around $99 and fills the small gap between the AMD Radeon R7 250 at $89 and the the Radeon R7 260 at $109. The next step up from that is the Radeon R7 260X that goes for between $119 with 1GB of memory to $129 for 2GB of memory. This means that AMD now has offerings on the market at $10 price increments between $89 to $129! The mainstream discrete video card market is certainly not lacking enough cards to pick from and it feels like there is almost too many cards to pick from right now. The AMD Radeon R7 250X graphics card that we are taking a look at today is the PowerColor AXR7 250X 1GBD5-HE...

Read full article @ Legit Reviews

Sapphire R9 290X VaporX 8GB

Sapphire are showcasing two new R9 290X 8GB solutions at Cebit - we have some photographs of them both

Read full article @ KitGuru

Synology DS214play 2-bay NAS Review

DS214play is one of the latest 2-bay NASes from Synology which has at its core the Intel Evansport CE5535 processor coupled with 1GB of DDR3 RAM; this product is capable of doing on-the-fly Full HD transcoding to DLNA-enabled devices and runs the latest DSM software version.

Read full article @ Madshrimps

Thermolab ITX30 Low Profile CPU Cooler Review

Just over five years ago we took a look at a cooler from what was a new company to us... ThermoLab. The review of their Baram cooler left us impressed and hoping to see more from them. While it definitely took longer than expected, we finally have another ThermoLab cooler in house, this time in the form of an ultra low-profile unit intended to cool Intel 1155 and 1156 processors with a maximum TDP of 100W.

The promotional image above shows off the ThermoLab ITX30, which as the name may imply is 30mm tall and ideally suited for compact Mini-ITX systems. The heatsink construction is entirely done in copper, and it features two heatpipes to increase the transfer of heat from the processor to the air being pushed by the slim 80mm fan.

Read full article @ Bigbruin.com

Thermolab LP53 Low Profile CPU Cooler Review

You have probably heard the expression “find something you are good at and stick with it”. Incredibly simple advice that makes more sense than most people realize. This piece of common sense applies to design every bit as much as it does to charting a life path. If you design an item that works effectively and efficiently, based on simple principles, there is probably little reason to stray from this type of design. We have seen it over and over again, manufacturers with excellent products going in an ill-advised direction trying to re-invent the wheel when the initial round one works perfectly as is.

I see this effect quite often when new coolers arrive in for testing. On occasion, the changes make sense, and sometimes actually show benefits, but even the changes that seem to make logical sense don’t always pan out. Cooler Master had great performance success using vertical vapor chambers on the TPC812/800, but the follow up pieces using contact vapor chambers didn’t live up to expectations. To date, the old tried and true formulas for success have seen the most of it. When we looked at the Thermolab ITX30 recently, the design was absolutely tried and true, and it was the use of better materials that gave it a huge performance boost, not any type of radical design or gimmick. I am glad to see that Thermolab is staying with this formula for a larger cooler.

Read full article @ HiTech Legion