Here a roundup of today's reviews and articles:

20 of the Worst PC Setups – June 2018
Agony Review
ASUS ROG Rapture GT-AC5300 router +AIMesh Review
BIOSTAR B360GT5S (Intel B360) Motherboard Review
Cooler Master MasterBox K500 Review
CORSAIR HS70 Wireless Gaming Headset With 7.1 Surround Sound Review
Crucial MX 500 500GB SSD Review
GEIL Super Luce 16GB 3000MHz RGB DDR4 Review
How many CPU cores do you need for gaming?
Intel Cascade Lake Xeon Scalable Chips to Support 3.84 TB of RAM per Socket
Linux Mint 19 Tara - Tara Cognita
MSI H370 Gaming Plus Review
NZXT H500i (White) Case Review
Revisiting the In Win D-Frame Mini 4 years later
Seasonic PRIME Ultra 1000W Power Supply Review
Steacom DA2 and Canvas: Hands-on
SteelSeries Rival 110 Review

20 of the Worst PC Setups – June 2018

I’m sure at some point you’ve had a bad PC setup. Maybe moving into a new place, waiting for a new desk to arrive or you just ran out of room. I can remember my horrible PC setups from when I was living at the dorms in college. If you have ever ventured over to the Shitty Battlestations sub-reddit you will find a lot of horrible PC setups. We will are going to pick 20 each month and feature them as 20 of the Worst PC setups for that month. Here are some of the bad ones from June.

Read full article @ ThinkComputers.org

Agony Review

Is it worth visiting Hell for Agony? I think it is, if you know what you are in for. This is a horror game where that horror is meant to disgust you, not just terrify you. It also has some flaws to it, and the lighting issue is especially serious, but I think it is reasonable to expect that to be fixed. In fact it might already be fixed by the latest patch, which naturally released after I finished playing. (Almost without fail, there is a patch the day or day after I finish playing, finishing writing, or the review is actually published.) I think if this game is of interest to you, get it, but probably wait to see more patches release, or at least wait to play it for these patches. I would not consider this a must-get horror game though, at least not from one campaign playthrough I have experienced. One odd thing about this game, and I mentioned it in the Gameplay section, is that as I have been writing this review I have become more interested in returning to it than when I actually finished playing it.

Read full article @ OCC

ASUS ROG Rapture GT-AC5300 router +AIMesh Review

We review the ROG Rapture GT-AC5300 Dual and Triple Band Wi-Fi Router from ASUS, these AIMesh ready quad-core processor monsters of a router have been introduced last year and recently got some added functionality. It offers proper WIFI ranges and performance. Recently these routers have been granted new AIMesh compatibility, meaning you can combine multiple of these puppies (or other compatible devices) to start your own in-house mesh. WIFI everywhere! It's very fast, very sexy and offers performance and ranges on both LAN and WIFI as you may expect from a ROG product.

Routers these days. You can purchase a dime a dozen and most of them end up all being the same, as such the more predominant manufacturers continuously seek to add new features to their product in order to differentiate themselves in the market. And that's difficult as there isn't a lot of extras you can do with a router really, you are tied to industry Ethernet and WIFI standards, you can make sure the throughput of the devices is good enough for modern age high-bandwidth file throughput and you can make the firmware as sexy as possible with a nice GUI and extensive feature set. The Asus ROG Rapture GT-AC5300 Wi-Fi Router is based on the design of the popular ASUS router series now with nostalgic Republic Of Gamers looks. This model though, has a Broadcom BCM4908 quad-core 1.8 GHz processor, 1024 MB DDR3 DRAM, eight removable antennas and even comes USB 2.0/3.0 connectivity ports for a bit of UPnP NAS functionality. Following the latest standards, the AC5300 is compatible with 802.11a, 802.11ac, 802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11n and will manage up to a combined 2,167 Mbps on two 5 GHz bands and one 2.4 GHz band. We'll advance on that, even triple band is possible combining the three together. A nice feature of the router is that it offers multiple guest networks as well, so your friends and family can use their iOS or Android smartphone or tablet on your network completely isolated and secured from your LAN. Network Map is a visual topology map that shows all the devices that are connected to the network. Users can simple manage each device by clicking on its icon and change parental control settings, select wireless bands, filter by device type, or even remove devices from the network, plus more. The router can be used a gigabit switch as well, you'll spot 8 Gigabit ports, and if you need some redundancy and have two internet service providers (who doesn't right you can use one Gigabit jack and set up some load-balancing or a failover.

Read full article @ The Guru of 3D

BIOSTAR B360GT5S (Intel B360) Motherboard Review

While many people like to build high-end gaming machines, many of those machines might never be overclocked, and in that case, Intel is offering up new chipsets. At the low-end is the H310 chipset, but the B360 chipset bridges the gap between the H310 and H370 chipset and aims to provide support for 8th Generation Core processors at much more reasonable prices while retaining high-end features such as USB 3.1 Gen 2. Today we take a look at an affordable model from Biostar.

The B360GT5S features dual M.2 slots, Gbit LAN port, USB 3.0, USB 3.1, and SATA6Gb/s.

Read full article @ TweakTown

Cooler Master MasterBox K500 Review

Tempered glass and RGB lighting for the masses. Cooler Master has been busy updating its chassis product line in 2018, and amid the numerous new additions, it has high hopes for the MasterBox K500. Designed to offer gaming appeal at a £75 price point, the mid-tower enclosure is Cooler Master's interpretation of what today's PC gamers are looking for in a mainstream case.

Given the industry trends that have developed in recent years, it is no surprise to find that glass and RGB lighting are key selling points. MasterBox K500 flaunts an "edge-to-edge," 4mm-thick tempered glass side panel that is lightly tinted and held in place by a bottom hinge and two top thumb screws. It's a sure-fire way of adding an extra layer of elegance and will suit those who want to show off their hardware.

Read full article @ Hexus

CORSAIR HS70 Wireless Gaming Headset With 7.1 Surround Sound Review

Featuring a 2.4GHz wireless connection, up to 16 hours of battery life and everything you liked about the award winning HS60 the brand new HS70 Wireless Gaming Headset With 7.1 Surround Sound by CORSAIR could be the cable-free solution you've all been looking for.

Read full article @ NikKTech

Crucial MX 500 500GB SSD Review

Crucial, a subsidiary of Micron is a brand known for memory and storage for over a decade, has recently released its MX 500 SSDs which compete at the higher end of consumer SSDs with brands like Samsung. Its previous MX 300 drives were also quite successful and on the budget end their BX 300 drives also did well in the budget segment. Those asking where the MX 400 is, may not know in some languages the word for the number 400 to be derogatory term.

After looking at the budget focused MyDigitalSSD SuperBoot 2 512GB and Patriot Burst 480GB today we’re looking at one of the highest end drives in the SATA form factor. The drive features Microns own 64-layer 3D TLC V-NAND which is in lower 256GB dies lower than the older models 384GB dies, which means they no longer have the odd capacities of the older drives and have shrunk the physical size of the NAND down 30% and allows them to do away with the capacitors used on the PCB for power loss protection while still providing the feature. Which leads to a lower total cost.

Read full article @ Wccftech

GEIL Super Luce 16GB 3000MHz RGB DDR4 Review

Since they’ve been making DDR memory for longer than I can remember, GeIL has been one of the most popular gaming memory brands on the market. It’s fair to say they’ve learnt a trick or two to make a great kit too. From enthusiast overclockers to high-end gaming PCs, they’ve got fast memory that loves to overclock for everyone. Their latest kit, the Super Luce 3000 MHz looks set to dazzle with blazing performance and stunning RGB lighting. Furthermore, with support for ASUS AURA Sync, Gigabyte RGB Fusion and MSI Mystic Light, it’ll sync up with a lot of other RGB hardware on the market too.

What GEIL Had to Say
“Coming with heat spreaders in stealth black and frost white, SUPER LUCE RGB SYNC series starts at a clock speed of 2133MHz and scales up to 3200MHz. To guarantee the best product compatibility, GeIL also releases Super Luce RGB SYNC series in AMD Edition, severely verified by combinations of AM4 motherboards and AMD RyzenTM processors.” – GEIL

Read full article @ eTeknix

How many CPU cores do you need for gaming?

For years, you could find up to four computer cores in a consumer processor, but for some time now the number of cores has been on the rise. This can be a big advantage for many content creation programmes, but what about games? For a long time, the common wisdom was that four cores were enough, but is that still true in 2018? Or are you nowadays better off with a multi-core monster PC if you don't want to lose frame rate? To answer this question, we ran multiple benchmarks so you can read our findings here.

How many processor cores do you need? The last time we asked - and answered - that question was in 2014, four years ago. At the time, we were running the test on an Intel Core i7 4960X, a hexa-core processor with HyperThreading. At the time, this processor was the top model in the consumer segment. We combined it with 16GB DDR3-1600 memory and an ASUS P9X79 Pro motherboard. The whole system was running on Windows 7, the most predominantly used operating system at the time.

Read full article @ Hardware.Info

Intel Cascade Lake Xeon Scalable Chips to Support 3.84 TB of RAM per Socket

Intel is giving finishing touches to a new wave of Xeon Scalable processors based on its new "Cascade Lake" silicon. One of its first parts is a 28-core chip with a 6-channel DDR4 memory interface, support for 3 DIMMs per channel, resulting in 18 DIMM slots per socket. Its integrated memory controllers support a theoretical maximum of 3.84 TB of memory. The best part? The memory needn't be DRAM-based.

With its next-generation of enterprise processors, Intel is introducing support for Optane Persistent Memory. This 3D X-point based memory module has a performance footprint between NAND flash SSDs and volatile DRAM; while being close enough to the latter to work as primary memory. Its USP is persistence - the ability to not lose data after power loss or reboot; allowing large data centers to quickly power down/up nodes in response to load, without wasting several dozen minutes in repopulating DRAM with data from a hibernation image.

Read full article @ TechPowerUp

Linux Mint 19 Tara - Tara Cognita

Ta-ra-rasputin, lover of the Linux thing, there was a long, thorough review of Linux Mint 19 Tara Cinnamon edition, tested in a multi-boot setup with Windows and Linux on a laptop with UEFI, GPT and Intel graphics, covering live session, installation and post-install usage, including look & feel, fonts, networking - Wireless, Bluetooth, Samba sharing, and printing, multimedia playback - HD video and MP3, smartphone support - Android, iPhone (iOS) and Windows Phone, partitioning, package management, updates, system snapshots, applications, hardware compatibility, stability, suspend & resume, performance, responsiveness, resource utilization, customization, system settings, various problems and regressions, other observations, and more. Have fun.

Read full article @ Dedoimedo

MSI H370 Gaming Plus Review

With the H370 Gaming Plus, MSI has a well equipped mid-range motherboard in its portfolio, which comes with a bunch of interesting features. There are for example four PCIe x1 slots, two PCIe 3.0 slots and one M.2 connector. Apart from that the Gaming Plus features a black color scheme with red accents. At the moment this model is listed for 98 Euro on Geizhals.

Read full article @ ocaholic

NZXT H500i (White) Case Review

Hey another case review, lots of fun to be had seeing how your components look in another enclosure along with checking out various special capabilities.

This time it’s our old friend NZXT, I have used their cases since the early 2000’s back when they had names like Nemesis and came with a big piece of rather heavy armour plating on the front door. Back then we were sort of just emerging from the doldrums of beige boxes, and NZXT supplied cases and parts which looked good and weren’t ridiculously priced.

Today I have the NZXT H500i in White which follows a very popular design, what can they add to make this case stand out?

Read full article @ Play3r

Revisiting the In Win D-Frame Mini 4 years later

So every year our first article of the year is me going back and doing a quick recap of our year and then I take a look back at anything that won our editors choice award and see if it lived up to what I expected. I recently also started going back even beyond that and looking at Editors Choice winners from past years, only showing what is still in use. When you get back a few years, there just isn’t much that is still being used. But back in 2014, I reviewed the In Win D-Frame Mini and not only did it win an editors choice award, but it has been rocking and still in use to this day. In fact, it has a lot of miles on it with it going to just about every LAN that I’ve visited in that time. Well recently In Win announced new color options and one of them was bright orange with blue trim, aka LanOC colors. So I decided it would be fun to build a new PC in it and see how that same design has held up 4 years later.

Read full article @ LanOC Reviews

Seasonic PRIME Ultra 1000W Power Supply Review

In the power supply realm, when consumers think of quiet and efficient power supplies one of the first companies that comes to mind is Seasonic. Today we our looking at a brand new Seasonic unit that is part of their PRIME Ultra series. In this review, we will be looking at the 1000W model (SSR-1000TR).

Seasonic is one of the older companies producing consumer power supplies having been founded in 1975 and entering the PC power supply production market in 1980. During that more than 40 years as a company Seasonic has cultivated lines of power supplies that are today some of the standard bearers for efficiency and quiet computing. This focus, and its reputation for quality, has lead to an explosion in production as Seasonic can be found providing OEM services on various model lines for Antec, XFX, Corsair, PC Power and Cooling, and of course under its own Seasonic brand.

Read full article @ HardOCP

Steacom DA2 and Canvas: Hands-on

We recently went hands-on with two of Streacom's latest creations unveiled this Computex. The Streacom DA2 is bigger than it looks in the images, yet small enough for a build sized just right for an executive's desk. The case is airy because of the gaps between the side panel and the top and bottom panels that aid convection; and the perforated side panel lets you suspend a 240 mm x 120 mm radiator. This is easier to show in a render where you can easily crop the length of an AIO liquid cooler's coolant tubes to be just right. The real-world demo build had a fairly tall top-flow air cooler. The SFX-L power supply mounted towards the front of the case, with its inlet facing the right side panel unclutters the interiors, and lets you mount a fairly long 2-slot graphics card into the ITX motherboard's sole PCIe slot.

Read full article @ TechPowerUp

SteelSeries Rival 110 Review

Minimalistic, low-profile, ambidextrous, and with a lightweight design and good sensor—a lot of FPS gamers crave a mouse with these specifications. SteelSeries has done it before, and they did it rather well, but it needed some tweaking. The Rival 110 has brought some anticipated upgrades to the renowned Rival 100, making it an eSports-ready, yet inexpensive choice of weapon, and of course it has RGB too.

Read full article @ TechPowerUp