Here a roundup of today's reviews and articles, including Five Z87 Motherboards For Your Mini-ITX Build, Three super-fast GTX 780s, PowerColor Devil Radeon R9 270X 2GB Review, Battlefield 4 Windows 7 vs. 8.1 Performance Review, and Seagate NAS HDD 4TB review: competition for Western Digital Red



Five Z87 Motherboards For Your Mini-ITX Build, Reviewed @ Tom's Hardware

Z87 rules the PC enthusiast market by exposing the Haswell architecture's full feature set. We're particularly interested in mini-ITX-based platforms able to integrate Z87 in a compact form factor. Five boards contend for supremacy of compact computing.

Read more: Five Z87 Motherboards For Your Mini-ITX Build, Reviewed @ Tom's Hardware

Palit GTX 780 Ti JetStream OC Review (1600p, Ultra HD 4K) @ KitGuru

It has certainly been an interesting couple of months for the high end gaming enthusiast. In October AMD brought out their R9 290 and R9 290X which took the performance crown from Nvidia. We felt both cards were fantastic, but the substandard reference cooler forced us to offer a hesitant recommendation, and we have advised people to wait on the custom cooled solutions. The Nvidia GTX780Ti was then released earlier this month, reclaiming the crown. While AMD partners still scramble to bring improved R9 290/290X models to market, Nvidia are already a leap ahead. Today we review a highly customised, overclocked three fan card from market leader, Palit.

Read more: Palit GTX 780 Ti JetStream OC Review (1600p, Ultra HD 4K) @ KitGuru

Mad Catz S.T.R.I.K.E. 3 Gaming Keyboard @ NikKTech

Lately whenever i hear people talking about gaming peripherals mechanical keyboards seem to always steal the show and that's somewhat justifiable in a way since they do offer impressive MTBF times and tactile feedback compared to regular membrane keyboards. Of course not all is black and white in the market and so we've seen quite a few membrane keyboards during these past 2 years that share equally good MTBF times and offer a good amount of feedback as well like the S.T.R.I.K.E. 7 and S.T.R.I.K.E. 5 by Mad Catz and the APEX and APEX [RAW] by SteelSeries all of which we have reviewed in the past. Well it seems that Mad Catz is not ready to halt their S.T.R.I.K.E line of gaming keyboards and so just recently they announced the S.T.R.I.K.E. 3 gaming keyboard which is basically a cut-down version of its more expensive brothers featuring just basic functionality without sacrificing key precision and MTBF.

Read more: Mad Catz S.T.R.I.K.E. 3 Gaming Keyboard @ NikKTech

Three super-fast GTX 780s: EVGA's Classified, Gigabyte's GHz Edition and MSI's Lightning @ Hardware.Info

Since the May launch of Nvidia's GeForce GTX 780 graphics card, many partner cards have appeared and recently we received three pretty interesting ones. EVGA sent us the GeForce GTX 780 Classified, their flagship GTX 780 card. Gigabyte provided their GHz Edition, and we tested the overclocking card from MSI, the N780 Lightning. Here you can find our original GeForce GTX 780 review.

Read more: Three super-fast GTX 780s: EVGA's Classified, Gigabyte's GHz Edition and MSI's Lightning @ Hardware.Info

Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag Review @ OCC

Is it the pirate's life for you, or should Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag be allowed to sink beneath the waves? Grab you saber and prepare to set sail! I have found this game to be a lot of fun and a solid experience. It does have an odd place in the Assassin's Creed franchise, in my opinion, because of how Edward Kenway and your out-of-Animus character fit into the Templar-Assassin war, with both being ignorant of it for so much of the game, but that does not detract from it. In a way it actually helps you understand what the differences are between the two sides by exposing it all from different viewpoints than we have had before.

Read more: Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag Review @ OCC

EVGA GTX 780 Ti SC ACX Review @ Hardware Canucks

NVIDIA's GTX 780 Ti is currently the fastest single core graphics card on the market and EVGA's Superclock takes it to the next level, providing cooler temperatures and much higher performance.

Read more: EVGA GTX 780 Ti SC ACX Review @ Hardware Canucks

CM Storm Aluminium Keyboard, Mouse & Headset Round-up Review @ eTeknix

A few weeks ago we brought you three reviews from the aluminium loving peripheral range from CM Storm, this includes their Pulse-R headset, Mech keyboard and the Reaper mouse. All three of these products are designed to look great, not only on their own, but also when they’re put next to each other. CM Storm do not sell these three items as a complete set, but today we want to find out what it would be like to live with the trilogy together.

Naturally having already tested these products we know they’re great, their performance isn’t even in question today as they’ve all walked away with tasty eTeknix awards in their respective reviews.

Style isn’t everything, but it certainly can’t hurt to have it. With the dominance of eSports and LAN gaming events we are seeing more and more focus on appearance in the PC gaming community. This ranges from branding, sponsorship, customisation of implement, case mods, colour matching components and peripherals, branded clothes and more. Having the cool stuff with the LED lights on it and the matching T-shirt might sound pointless, but many of us are guilty of it.

Read more: CM Storm Aluminium Keyboard, Mouse & Headset Round-up Review @ eTeknix

Avermedia Game Capture HD 2 @ Rbmods

Today we are taking a look at something that we normally don’t review here at Rbmods. We are taking looking at the Aver media Game Capture HD 2, which basically is a device that records while you gaming. After recording one can then edit, fix the games, then upload them to for example Youtube. The question is though; does it work well? Let’s find out!

Read more: Avermedia Game Capture HD 2 @ Rbmods

PowerColor Devil Radeon R9 270X 2GB Review @ Hardware 360

The PowerColor DEVIL R9 270x is an amazing graphics card, it has performance and looks to spare and comes at only a $20 premium over the standard models. What the extra cash gets you though is a graphics card that is extremely fast out-of-the-box, has exceptional cooling, is quiet under load conditions and as we have said multiple times throughout the review it is just dead sexy. In addition, the DEVIL comes with a free gaming mouse pad that is comfortable and accurate adding to the already great value.

Read more: PowerColor Devil Radeon R9 270X 2GB Review @ Hardware 360

Battlefield 4 Windows 7 vs. 8.1 Performance Review @ HardOCP

Is in-game real world Battlefield 4 gaming performance better on the Windows 8.1 operating system or on Windows 7 We look at video card performance between Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 in this game and find out if upgrading to Windows 8.1 is worth it or not for the much rumored performance advantage.

Read more: Battlefield 4 Windows 7 vs. 8.1 Performance Review @ HardOCP

Seagate NAS HDD 4TB review: competition for Western Digital Red @ Hardware.Info

Last year Western Digital launch the Red series of hard disks intended for use in NAS devices. Seagate also has such a series now called the Seagate NAS HDDs. We tested the 4TB model and compared it to Western Digital's disks.
It's more than a marketing gimmick, special NAS hard drives. They have different software features and go through more rigid certification and compatibility tests. Seagate basically does the same with its NAS disks as Western Digital does for its Red disks.

Read more: Seagate NAS HDD 4TB review: competition for Western Digital Red @ Hardware.Info

Green House Releases 51-in-1 Media Card Reader @ TechPowerUp

To help people find their way through the labyrinth of media card formats Green House has developed and launched a reader claimed to support no less than 51 storage offerings. Dubbed GH-CRM1A-BK, the reader measures 69.2 x 42.2 x 13.6 mm, it has a USB 2.0 interface (USB 3.0 would have been nice) and supports SD, SDHC, SDXC, miniSD, microSD, microSDHC, microSDXC, MMC, Memory Stick, Memory Stick PRO, Memory Stick Duo, Memory Stick Pro-Duo, Memory Stick micro and Compact Flash cards.

Read more: Green House Releases 51-in-1 Media Card Reader @ TechPowerUp

Gigabyte BRIX i7-4500 Barebones Mini-PC Review (w/ G.Skill Ripjaws 1600MHz 16GB) @ KitGuru

With modern computer components continuing the trend of shrinking in size while also increasing in performance, the small form-factor (SFF) market is big business. Taking size reductions to the extreme, can Gigabyte's BRIX prove its worth to downsizing system builders?

Read more: Gigabyte BRIX i7-4500 Barebones Mini-PC Review (w/ G.Skill Ripjaws 1600MHz 16GB) @ KitGuru