Here a roundup of today's reviews and articles:

Acer Liquid Jade Z smartphone review
BIOSTAR GAMING Z170X Motherboard Review
EKWB EK-XLC Predator 240
EVGA GTX 950 FTW Review
Fable Legends DirectX 12 performance revealed
Fractal Design Core 500 Review
Gigabyte Z170XP-SLI Review
Gigabyte's Z170X-Gaming 7 motherboard reviewed
MSI Z170A XPower Gaming Titanium Edition Review
NZXT S340 Razer Edition Case Review
Seasonic XP2 Platinum 660W Fully-Modular Power Supply Review
Streacom ST-F12CS Aluminium ATX HTPC Chassis
XFX R9 390X Review

Acer Liquid Jade Z smartphone review

The third installment in Acer’s Liquid Jade series of smartphones, the Liquid Jade Z is more aggressively priced than its immediate predecessor, the Jade S. Back at around the £150 mark, the Jade Z enters a very saturated market. Can it make its mark above phones including the great Vodafone Smart ultra 6 and the Motorola Moto G?

Read full article @ KitGuru

BIOSTAR GAMING Z170X Motherboard Review

The Gaming Z170X motherboard from Biostar was built on the strong foundation Z97X had and features plenty of expansion possibilities, including the new USB 3.1 Type-C port, no less than three M.2 slots, two which are hidden under the plastic shroud and one visible, plenty of SATA-Express and SATA ports, three PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots for enabling tri-Crossfire support, the Realtek ALC898 8-channel CODEC, dual-LAN (Intel and Killer NIC) and more. We also have a set of touch-sensitive buttons which include BCLK and multiplier modifier on-the-fly, 8-phase VRM for the CPU and DDR4 memory support up to 4000MHz in UEFI.

Read full article @ Madshrimps

EKWB EK-XLC Predator 240

EKWB has burst onto the all-in-one liquid cooler scene with their Predator 240. Like its name sake it eats the competition alive, redefining what one should expect from a pre-filled liquid cooler. Elegant and functional it is for those that can't be bothered with a custom loop.

Read full article @ techPowerUp

EVGA GTX 950 FTW Review

Recently Nvidia released the GTX 950, a GPU featuring the power and efficiency of the Maxwell architecture, Direct X 12 support, and solid FPS capability @1080p, without the heavy drain on your wallet. Today we are taking a look at the EVGA GTX 950 FTW, which is one of the budget friendly 950’s available on Amazon for 179$. Featuring a serious factory overclock, ACX 2.0 Cooling, and the great looking as well as functional backplate, it is sure to be a sought after GTX 950 variation. The EVGA GTX 950 FTW is based on a 28nm process on the GM206 core, the same hardware you will find on a EVGA GTX 960. The core contains 2.94 billion transistors and 768 shaders, with 64 TMUs and 32 ROPs paired with 2GB of GDDR5 on a 128-bit memory bus. It features VXGI for realistic lighting, support for smooth, tear-free NVIDIA G-SYNC technology, and Dynamic Super Resolution for 4K-quality gaming on 1080P displays. The GTX 950 is not as limited compared to a GTX 960 as the “budget” tag would have us believe. Will you be satisfied with the performance? Let’s jump in and get a look at what the EVGA GTX 950 FTW has to offer.

Read full article @ Bjorn3D

Fable Legends DirectX 12 performance revealed

Fable Legends is one of the first games to make use of DirectX 12, and it produces some truly sumptuous visuals. Here's a look at how Legends performs on the latest graphics cards.

Read full article @ The Tech Report

Fractal Design Core 500 Review

The Core 500 from Fractal Design appears to be a rather interesting mini-ITX case. Despite the small size it offers plenty of space, which means you can install high-end graphics cards as well as standard ATX power supplies. Therefore this small cube is perfectly suitable for HTPC builds and apart from that you could even create a very small LAN party rig.

Read full article @ ocaholic

Gigabyte Z170XP-SLI Review

Entry to Club Skylake needn't be expensive. Competition for decent Intel Z170-based motherboards is hotting up nicely. Good availability of the two K-series Skylake processors is coupled with every board manufacturer now having a multitude of offerings in the marketplace. And you don't have to spend a great deal of money to purchase a perfectly serviceable Z170 - £100 buys you a base that's good enough for all but the real enthusiast. Gigabyte is also of this thinking, you see. The pick of the budget bunch is, arguably, the Z170XP-SLI, priced at £110, so let's take a look.

Read full article @ Hexus

Gigabyte's Z170X-Gaming 7 motherboard reviewed

Gigabyte's Z170X-Gaming 7 motherboard has more next-gen storage connectivity than you can shake a stick at, Techicolor LED lighting, and premium Creative audio. Does all of this add up to a high-end board that ticks all the right boxes? Read on to find out.

Read full article @ The Tech Report

MSI Z170A XPower Gaming Titanium Edition Review

MSI has made a bold move by giving the company’s Z170 XPower motherboard a Titanium theme. What exactly does that mean? Well firstly the motherboard features a unique metallic styling which is sure to turn heads. And then there’s the application of a sixteen phase power delivery system that makes use of Titanium chokes. Titanium typically sees use in high-performance, weight- and temperature-critical applications such as aircraft structures and jet engine components. Can MSI’s Z170A XPower Gaming Titanium Edition live up to the metal’s high-performance nature?

Read full article @ KitGuru

NZXT S340 Razer Edition Case Review

Razer launched their “Designed By Razer” case licensing program with NZXT’s H440, we actually reviewed that edition of the case. For its second designed by Razer case, the company also has gone back to NZXT and has chosen their S340 mid-tower chassis. Designed by Razer brings the Razer style and theme to different products. For the S340 that means a matte black design with Razer logo in the front, tinted window, green illuminated power button, green underglow, and green USB ports. So if you are a Razer fan this will be the ultimate case for you! We actually reviewed the S340 back in October, but it was done by Derek. I have not taken a look at the case so this gives you a fresh look at the case, not just a rehash of the original review. Let’s jump in and see what this case is all about!

Read full article @ ThinkComputers.org

Seasonic XP2 Platinum 660W Fully-Modular Power Supply Review

Seasonic is one of the most established names in the power supply industry, not only do they make many of their own very high quality products, they’re also an industry leader for manufacturing high-end PSUs which are used and sold by a whole host of other brands; there’s a good chance you own a Seasonic PSU and don’t even know it. Seasonic products have proven to be award winners many times before, not only from us here at eTeknix, but in reviews all around the world. The unit we have today is a mid-range 660W unit, so I’m not expecting earth-shattering performance, but it does have a few features that are worth getting excited about.

The SS-660XP Active PFC F3 PSU comes with an 80 Plus Platinum efficiency, which should make it very cost-effective to run in your system. It also comes with a powerful +12V single rail design, an active/hybrid fan design and fully modular cables.

Read full article @ eTeknix

Streacom ST-F12CS Aluminium ATX HTPC Chassis

Streacom may not be a name you hear every day in the chassis business, but it’s one that always puts a smile on my face. Their products are well-known in the industry for extremely high build quality and super-sleek designs. They’re a popular choice with the enthusiast HTPC market and even just from the image above, you can no doubt guess why. Of course, premium build quality and design don’t come cheap, so expect to pay triple figures, even for some of their smaller chassis designs.

The model we’re looking at today is huge, as it’s the first Streacom chassis that will support ATX hardware, which means it’s going to be well suited to a gaming build; a pleasing thought for those who loved their HTPC designs and are planning an HTPC style gaming system or Steambox build.

Read full article @ eTeknix

XFX R9 390X Review

The XFX R9 390X does what a next generation card should do. It outperforms the previous generation when it comes to the FPS performance delivered in each of the tests run for this review. Thanks to the improvement in core clock and memory speed over last year's R9 290X, you get a boost in performance that in several cases delivers stock performance between the GTX 970 and GTX 980. It puts the performance versus price of the R9 390X in an odd position of competing price wise with the GTX 980, but competing performance wise in most cases with the GTX 970 that retails for about $80 less than an R9 390X. If you push price to the side you get good playable performance at 2560 x 1440 across the entire test suite.

Read full article @ OCC