Here a roundup of todays reviews and articles:

AMD Athlon 5350 & ASUS AM1I-A Review
Crucial M550 256GB and 512GB review: new generation Marvell controller
Custom-cooled Radeon R9 290X cards from Asus and XFX reviewed
EVGA SuperNOVA 750 G2 Review
Four Places To Find Your Windows 8 Product Key
G.SKILL RipJaws SO-DIMM 8GB 1600MHz DDR3 Review
PAPAGO P2Pro Full HD DashCam Review
Samsung Galaxy Gear 2 video review
Turtle Beach Titanfall Ear Force Atlas Headset Review
VisionTek CryoVenom R9 290 Review

AMD Athlon 5350 & ASUS AM1I-A Review

The AMD Athlon and Sempron return... sort of! These new Athlon and Sempron parts (codenamed Kabini) are nothing like the ones of days past. These puppies sport an on-chip GPU (Radeon R3, Radeon HD 8400 graphics) making them APUs, AMD's System on Chip (SoC) innovation. It incorporates all of the I/O functionality that has traditionally been built into a separate south bridge chip, now in a brand new socket: the AM1.

AMD first released the Kabini last year as the quad core A4-5000,A6-5200 and the dual core E1-2100, E1-2500 , E2-3000. Kabini and it's sibling, Temash, by conventional definitions are the first System on Chip (SoC) released into the wild. These previously released Kabini APUs were designed for the laptop market while Temash was aimed at the tablet market. The new Kabini socket AM1 caters to the entry level desktop market and contains either 2 or 4 Jaguar cores depending on the model. As an aside, it may be interesting to note that both the Xbox One and the PS4 are powered by 8 Jaguar core chips from AMD.

In this review I be looking at the AMD Athlon 5350 APU and the new socket AM1 mini-ITX AM1I-A motherboard from Asus. Let's take a peek at the specs for both the Athlon 5350 and the ASUS AM1I-A.

Read full article @ Neoseeker

Crucial M550 256GB and 512GB review: new generation Marvell controller

Crucial's new M550 SSDs are based on a new generation of Marvell controller, the 88SS9189. As usual we don't have a lot of information about the controller itself, Marvell usually doesn't share too many details about their controllers. One thing is clear however, as with their other controllers the manufacturer of the SSD has to develop their own firmware. This means that the performance can vary significantly between SSDs with the same controller.

In addition to the Marvell controller the M550 SSDs are equiped with Micron's newest generation of 20nm MLC flash-memory. In the 512GB and 1TB models Crucial has used chips with 128 Gigabit per die, similar to the M500 SSDs. In the M500 however this caused some performance loss in the 240GB and 120GB models and for this reason Crucial has chosen to go back to 64 Gigabit per die for these.

Read full article @ Hardware.Info

Custom-cooled Radeon R9 290X cards from Asus and XFX reviewed

Radeon R9 290X prices are creeping down into normal territory once again. Just in time, we have a look at two custom-cooled cards from XFX and Asus that aim to banish the thermal throttling issues found in cards with AMD's reference cooler.

Read full article @ The Tech Report

EVGA SuperNOVA 750 G2 Review

The best price-performance 750W PSU out there? EVGA is best-known as a manufacturer of retail graphics cards based on Nvidia's GPU technology. However, like many firms, EVGA realises that having all of its eggs in one basket is a high-risk strategy that can come unstuck should Nvidia's fortunes stall.

Diversification is the standard economic response at mitigating obvious risk. To this end, EVGA has released a number of motherboards, chassis, mobile products and a burgeoning line of power supplies.

EVGA's premium line of supplies are grouped under the SuperNOVA banner, currently encompassing eight units. Four of these PSUs - 750W, 850W, 1,000W and 1,300W - are suffixed with the G2 model, and we have the 750W model in for review today.

Read full article @ Hexus

Four Places To Find Your Windows 8 Product Key

Windows 8 and 8.1 PCs no longer have a Certificate of Authenticity (CoA) sticker with their product key printed on it. This helps prevent theft people cant just glance at a sticker on your laptop to get your Windows product key. On the other hand, you cant simply look at a sticker on your Windows PC when you reinstall the operating system. Youll have to find the 25-digit product key elsewhere. Having your product key is necessary if you want to download Windows 8 or 8.1 installation media from Microsoft. Their downloads require a valid product key.

Read full article @ MakeUseOf

G.SKILL RipJaws SO-DIMM 8GB 1600MHz DDR3 Review

Hunting for the best notebook deal can mean compromising on certain components such as the memory. If you’re on a tight budget, sometimes cutbacks have to be made initially but there is no reason not to upgrade specific parts later on down the line. Upgrading the memory on a notebook has never been easier, in just a few steps you can be well on your way to benefits in a range of scenarios and today we’re going to be demonstrating how a simple memory upgrade on a notebook can significantly boost performance.

Last month G.SKILL announced their new SO-DIMM DDR3 memory and today we are to review an 8GB 1600MHz kit (F3-1600C9D-8GRSL) by installing it within an MSI GE620 notebook to reveal the precise advantages that can be had from a simple upgrade.

Read full article @ Vortez

PAPAGO P2Pro Full HD DashCam Review

Three years ago while i was driving on the far right lane of the interstate a car with half erased license plates pulled up from the center lane and onto the far right side of the road and although i managed to avoid hitting him dead on i couldn't control the rear end of my car so the rear right wing ended up getting severely damaged. Unfortunately by the time i pulled over and got out of my car the guy had already gotten into his car and left and although i did try to chase him i lost him in traffic. So i ended up having to pay for the damage from my own pocket (actually my insurance covered 70% and that's pretty much the only good thing about all this). Looking back i now know that this entire incident could had been avoided had i used an dash camera like i do now since i would have recorded the car and the visible part of its license plate. Today’s review is about one such product and more specifically the latest P2Pro Drive Recorder by PAPAGO.

Read full article @ NikKTech

Samsung Galaxy Gear 2 video review

SAMSUNG launched its Gear 2 smartwatch in the UK earlier in April with a 1.63in Super AMLOED display and an updated 2MP camera.

Although its predecessor the Galaxy Gear failed to catch consumer interest, Samsung is hoping to change this with its second iteration, the Gear 2, adding some extra features such as a slimmer design and a focus on fitness.

Read full article @ The Inquirer

Turtle Beach Titanfall Ear Force Atlas Headset Review

A few months ago Kaeyi took a look at the Turtle Beach PX4 in video form. She found that the headset was an exceptional product for PS4 users... Maybe even the best around. Today we take a look at the other side of the console divide with the Xbox One (and 360/PC) focused Ear Force Atlas which is a Titanfall branded unit.

Read full article @ HardwareHeaven.com

VisionTek CryoVenom R9 290 Review

It has been several months since AMD shook up the GPU market a bit with its R9 series of GPUs. Now that the dust has settled there has been time for AMD partners to design better cooling solutions for the Hawaii based GPUs at the top end of the R9 lineup. When the 290 and 290x first released there was a firestorm of complaints surrounding the massive amounts of heat generated and the lack of significant cooling solutions. Basically the reference design cooler was a major flop that actually caused performance loses. The 290 and 290x GPUs were known to throttle down to lower core speeds to stay within the thermal envelope. In some cases, this resulted in a 290 outperforming a 290x in benches or other counter intuitive results… OUCH!

AMD partners proved to be up to the challenge though, releasing GPUs with their custom cooling solutions that offered better heat dissipation without adding to the noise penalty suffered by the reference cooler. This is all fine and dandy, but where does any of this leave the hardcore water cooling enthusiast? It leaves many researching to see which GPU from each manufacturer is and is not compatible with certain water blocks and adding additional cost to an already costly product. One of those OEMs, VisionTek, wanted to lend a hand in this process by taking away all guess work, and even the installation. They are now offering a GPU which comes ready to be incorporated into a custom waco system out of the box. I am happy to introduce the CryoVenom R9 290 LiquidCooled series GPU.

Read full article @ PureOverclock