Here a roundup of todays reviews and articles:

AMD Radeon R7 Series 240GB SSD Review
Corsair H2100 Wireless 7.1 Gaming Headset Review
Deepcool Gamer Storm Maelstrom 120
Exploring Performance Consistency in USB 3.0 Flash Drives
GeForce GTX 970/980 Linux Benchmarks With NVIDIA 346.16 Driver
Kubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn with Plasma guns
Microsoft EMET 5 review - Familiar goodness
Razer Blackwidow Ultimate Chroma
SilverStone FQ122, FW122, FW121 Cooling Fans Review
Understanding Frame Rate – Uncovering The Truth Behind 30 VS 60 FPS
Western Digital Red Pro (WD4001FFSX) 4 TB Hard Disk Drive Review

AMD Radeon R7 Series 240GB SSD Review

It was only a matter of time before AMD and/or NVIDIA got into the SSD mix and ultimately AMD ended up being the first to slap their Radeon brand on a consumer drive. It makes sense that in doing so, they partnered with an existing SSD maker like they did with their Radeon branded RAM offering. This time the partnership is with OCZ (Toshiba). Ultimately, it's basically a hybridization of the OCZ Vector 150 and ARC 100 drives with the brains of the operation being the powerful Indilinx Barefoot 3 M00 controller which is paired with Toshiba A19nm MLC NAND. The AMD version is officially named the Radeon R7 and we received the 240GB version to see what it can do but it's also available in 120GB and 480GB capacities.

Read full article @ Legit Reviews

Corsair H2100 Wireless 7.1 Gaming Headset Review

If you've owned any Corsair Gaming mouse, keyboard, or headset, it is likely you have been more than satisfied with it. One of the latest devices added to its stable, the Corsair H2100 Wireless Dolby 7.1 Gaming Headset, boasts the features that, on paper, make it stand out as one that should be on your short list if you are in the market for a wireless gaming headset. Today at Benchmark Reviews, we will take a closer look at the Corsair H2100 Wireless Dolby 7.1 Gaming Headset and share with you our thoughts.

Read full article @ Benchmark Reviews

Deepcool Gamer Storm Maelstrom 120

Deepcool looks to grab a share of the all-in-one liquid CPU cooler market with the affordable Maelstrom 120. It features a red and black theme, a single fluid dynamic bearing 120 mm fan, and solid performance. So if looks, memory clearance, or space are an issue, the Maelstrom 120 from Deepcool has you covered.

Read full article @ techPowerUp

Exploring Performance Consistency in USB 3.0 Flash Drives

SSD technology has advanced to a stage where it is possible to have flash drives with bona-fide SSD controllers. The addition of a SATA to USB 3.0 bridge provides an ubiquitous high-speed direct attached storage interface. We have already looked at the Phison S9-based Corsair Flash Voyager GTX and the SandForce SF2281-based Mushkin Ventura Ultra. Our review of the Mushkin Ventura Ultra 120GB drive had a comment about the devices thermal throttling issues. This piqued our interest and we set out to see if any of the other units evaluated before had such issues. Obviously, we were also interested in determining whether our Ventura Ultra sample had the problem. In the case of throttling, we also wanted to make our review complete by bringing out the circumstances under which it would trigger. As we will see further down in this piece, our experiments did find evidence of throttling in the Mushkin Ventura Ultra.

Recently, we also received a sample of another SSD controller-based flash drive. Putting that drive through our throttling test revealed even worse results compared to the Mushkin Ventura Ultra. Upon our feedback, the manufacturer is contemplating a firmware update. In this piece, we will refer to the unit as BrandX 240GB (a complete review of the unit with benchmark numbers will be published once the manufacturer provides us a resolution for the throttling issue). The list of DAS units put under the performance consistency scanner is provided below.

Read full article @ Anandtech

GeForce GTX 970/980 Linux Benchmarks With NVIDIA 346.16 Driver

This week NVIDIA introduced the 346 Linux driver beta with a huge amount of changes and new features -- from GPU over-volting to NVENC and VP8 support. Curiosity got the best of me so I've now ran some GeForce GTX 970 and GTX 980 Linux benchmarks to see if the performance of these new, high-end Maxwell GPUs have changed at all with this latest proprietary driver release.

Read full article @ Phoronix

Kubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn with Plasma guns

Faith in desktops restored. This is a long, enthusiastic review of Kubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn 64-bit with Plasma 5 Tech Preview desktop, tested in a quad-boot setup on a laptop with Intel graphics and SSD, covering live media and in-vivo upgrade attempts, look & feel, customization, system settings, applications, printing, system resources, stability, problems, glitches, future prospects, tons of screenshots, and more. Fanboys, unite! Enjoy.

Read full article @ Dedoimedo

Microsoft EMET 5 review - Familiar goodness

All your anti-virus are belong to someone else, because you don't it. You have EMET. And so, here's a fresh if short review of Microsoft Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit v5, covering installation setup, first-time wizard, system and application setups, trust certificates, other options, value over conventional security tools, and more. Have fun.

Read full article @ Dedoimedo

Razer Blackwidow Ultimate Chroma

Earlier this year I had the chance to take a look at the Razer Blackwidow Ultimate 2014 with its new key switches. Razer hasn’t exactly been sitting on their hands between then and now though. A few weeks ago I had the new Razer Blackwidow Ultimate Chroma come in. This is part of a whole series of products with full RGB lighting. In the past I have knocked Razer for going with green a color that only a few people are building their PCs in. With the Chroma line this shouldn’t be an issue. Will this be enough to win people over? Let’s find out.

Read full article @ LanOC Reviews

SilverStone FQ122, FW122, FW121 Cooling Fans Review

Have you ever tried to deny something to get the other person to say the opposite? For example, a lot of people try a false humility tactic by saying they are really bad at doing something, only to hope the other person they are talking to would say "No way! You are awesome at [insert thing here]!" It is funny how it actually works more times rather than not, which is not something I would use to boost my own self-esteem, haha. Of course, there are those people who actually are quite hard on themselves when they genuinely are great at what they do. Then there are people who deny something, when everyone knows it is actually true. I have a friend, whom I will keep unnamed, that continually insists he has no admiration to a band with a certain direction, nor to taking photos with his front-facing camera on his iPhone. However, he still brings up this singular direction band when he meets new people, and he takes self portraits, sometimes for no reason. Despite his own insistence both of these are false claims, it always seems like he brings these topics up frequently. Joking aside though, you can see both of these examples show that talk is cheap. Rather, true actions speak louder than words. You can make all the claims you want, but unless it is backed up by evidence, your words are useless. Furthermore, evidence against your claim will also deny your denials. This brings us to the SilverStone FQ122, FW122, and FW121 fans from a new line of chassis cooling fans. These two fan series have different intentions from the get-go. The FW lineup is intended to be a high quality performer at a low price, while the FQ series look to strike a balance between performance and quietness. These claims can be made by any manufacturer, but how do they actually play out in real life? Hopefully, today's review will answer these questions and more.

Read full article @ APH Networks

Understanding Frame Rate – Uncovering The Truth Behind 30 VS 60 FPS

As someone who loves video games, I spend a lot of time discussing them on the internet via various Reddit communities, forums and when I can stomach it; the YouTube comment section. One topic that seems to keep coming up in the ever-growing battle between PC and Console is the difference between 30 and 60 FPS or rather the lack thereof, in the case of some arguments. In this report, we’ll be taking a look at some of these arguments and attempt to clarify some of the misinformation that is often used in them.

Read full article @ TechnologyX

Western Digital Red Pro (WD4001FFSX) 4 TB Hard Disk Drive Review

The popularity of Network-Attached Storage (NAS) devices is rapidly ramping up in both small businesses and homes, fueled by their usefulness and their increasing affordability. This surge in interest has led Western Digital to add a NAS-specific family of hard disk drives - the WD Red family of NAS hard disk drives.

They have since extended that to a new line of NAS hard disk drives - the Western Digital Red Pro. Targeted at larger NAS systems that support 8-16 drives, the Red Pro drives are a refinement of the work Western Digital had previously done on their Red drives.

Today, we are going to take a look at the top-of-the-line 4 TB Western Digital Red Pro (WD4001FFSX) model.

Read full article @ Tech ARP