Here a roundup of today's reviews and articles:

ASUS ZenFone 6 Smartphone Review
Case Mod Friday: Red Dragon
Cooler Master Nepton 240M AIO CPU Cooler Review
Gigabyte FORCE M63 FPS Laser Gaming Mouse Review
Gigabyte X99M-Gaming 5 mATX Motherboard Review
How to update Windows 7 or 8 to Windows 10 using Windows Update
Lian Li PC-T80 Modular Test Bench Chassis Review
Linux Benchmarks Of NVIDIA's Early 2015 GeForce Line-Up
Noctua NH-D9L CPU Heatsink Review
Nvidia admits, explains GeForce GTX 970 memory allocation issue
Should I Upgrade My GeForce GTX 460 to a GeForce GTX 960
Synology DiskStation DS215j 2-Bay NAS Review
Test: the GeForce GTX 960 is the best HTPC GPU of this moment
WD Sentinel DX4200 Review

ASUS ZenFone 6 Smartphone Review

The ZenFone 6 is a new smartphone from ASUS, with a six-inch HD (1280 x 720) touchscreen and Android 4.4 "KitKat" operating system. It has an Intel Atom Z2560 1.6 GHz CPU, 2 GiB of RAM, and 16 GiB storage space (in the model we analyzed), a 13 MP main camera, and a 2 MP frontal camera. Let's take a good look at it.

Read full article @ Hardware Secrets

Case Mod Friday: Red Dragon

Welcome to another Case Mod Friday showcase! This week we have James Fislar's “Red Dragon” build. This is a completely custom system that James Fislar aka "Jjsky500 PC Mods" built for MSI for CES 2015. As you can see it has a very unique design featuring MSI's "Dragon" logo. The mod features an X99 system with a custom cooling loop and as you can guess lots of black and red!

Read full article @ ThinkComputers.org

Cooler Master Nepton 240M AIO CPU Cooler Review

Cooler Master are well known for their cases, power supplies and of course cooling products and with over 20 years experience it’s no surprise that they are a market leader in all of these areas. It’s always nice to see companies that are passionate about their products designing and developing new ones and more importantly see how they compare to whats currently on the market. One of the new products from Cooler Master is the Nepton 240M and we are going to look at it today. The Nepton 240M is a closed loop AIO cooling solution which promises high performance, good quality and an excellent user experience. With more and more AIOs hitting the market it will be interesting to see how this one compares. Cooler Master have promised a lot with this one so let’s see how well it does on our test bench and see if it can hold its own.

The box for the Nepton 240M follows the same theme as many of the other Cooler Master products, a picture of the product on a black background with purple trim. I really like this idea as when the products are on display at retailers they always look professional and you know straight away who makes the product. You instantly expect a certain standard from products you have already used and keeping to a certain style of packaging helps to remind you about products you may have used previously. Plenty of information is relayed on the sides of the box such as the specification and contact information. One interesting thing to note is that the Nepton 240M carries a 5 year warranty which is quite simply excellent, it gives you a piece of mind and it gives us an indication that Cooler Master have a lot of faith in this product.

Read full article @ eTeknix

Gigabyte FORCE M63 FPS Laser Gaming Mouse Review

Pro gaming, eSports, LAN gaming, competitive gaming, it doesn’t matter what moniker your hobby falls under, there’s no doubt a lot of you out there that take your gaming pretty seriously. This can be on a professional level, or just as someone who likes to sit at home and play a few games online. Being good at games is one thing, but having the right tools for the job can really make a difference. A high-quality gaming mouse is a good starting point, as an accurate sensor and a mouse that has all the features you need to help you win games can help improve your gaming experience overall.

Gigabyte have taken the advice of pro gaming communities to design their new FORCE M63 gaming mouse and while I immediate thought “yuck, this mouse looks terrible”, you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover as the specifications tell a different story. The mouse is fine-tuned with a high-quality sensor, high-quality switches, a weight tuning system and more; all of which should help you configure the performance of the mouse to your liking.

Read full article @ eTeknix

Gigabyte X99M-Gaming 5 mATX Motherboard Review

If you want to reduce the space taken up by your computer, without significant reduction in performance or functionality, opting for a micro ATX system has long been the most effective way of doing so. Can the performance of ATX parts be matched when the Gigabyte X99M-Gaming 5 motherboard’s LGA 2011-3 socket is compressed into the 24.4 x 24.4 cm micro ATX form factor?

Read full article @ KitGuru

How to update Windows 7 or 8 to Windows 10 using Windows Update

The only options you had previously to upgrade from an older copy of Windows to a new one was to run the installer either while the installed operating system was running or by booting from an installation disc or Flash drive to initiate it.

Microsoft wants to make things more comfortable and has added an option to upgrade to Windows 10 using Windows Update.

Windows Update is the operating system's updating service which is best known for delivering security patches once a month to supported Windows devices.

Read full article @ gHacks

Lian Li PC-T80 Modular Test Bench Chassis Review

Test benches are a vital part of the work we do here at eTeknix. They’re used for our motherboard, processor, CPU cooler, graphics card, hard drive reviews and no doubt many other components we’ve reviewed have been hooked up to a system on one of our test benches. Of course, we’re not the only people in the world with need of a good quality test bench, as there are many professional industries and enthusiast users that need easy access to their components for everything from product testing and design, through to overclocking and modding. With all that in mind, having a modular test bench that is capable of many different tasks can be a huge boost to your productivity and with Lian Li having already created some of the best test benches in the business, we’re eager to see what their latest one is capable of.

As you can see from the specifications below, the T80 is available in two models, silver (PC-T80A) and black (PC-T80X), both of which are made from aluminium, lending to them only weighing 6KG each. Both chassis are capable of holding an impressive array of storage devices and motherboards of up to XL-ATX.

Read full article @ eTeknix

Linux Benchmarks Of NVIDIA's Early 2015 GeForce Line-Up

Following yesterday's NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 launch, here's an 11-way comparison looking at all of NVIDIA's Maxwell GPUs as well as many Kepler and Fermi GeForce graphics cards under Linux. Beyond the raw OpenGL performance, the thermal and power efficiency data is also available for the tested range of GeForce 900/700/600/500/400 series graphics cards.

In yesterday morning's launch article for the GTX 960 there were some Linux benchmark results but it was limited by the time available with having this $200 Maxwell graphics card just a few days before launch and also running into various Catalyst 14.12 Linux driver issues. Running the AMD Radeon graphics card tests on Linux are messy with the Catalyst 14.12 Omega driver having big issues in running tests like Unreal Engine 4 and Metro Redux under Linux.

Read full article @ Phoronix

Noctua NH-D9L CPU Heatsink Review

It is amazing how quickly people seem to be discontent with the sizes of technology products. For one, smartphones are getting larger and larger, as more people are buying into the phablet motion. In fact, three years ago, standard flagship phones like the LG Nexus 4, Samsung Galaxy S III, and HTC One X were all around 4.7". In comparison, the iPhone 5 launched in 2012 had only a 4" screen, up from the previous generation of 3.5". Nowadays, flagship phones are at least five inches, if not larger. Obviously, one of the reasons behind this is the fact there is demand for larger phones. As such, it seems the Sony are one of the few companies still putting high end specs in small phones like the Xperia Z3 Compact, which features a "tiny" 4.6" screen (Heck, even the regular iPhone 6 is bigger). On the flip side, things like custom computers seem to be slimming down. The ATX motherboard has been the de facto for most custom computer owners, with mATX found in pre-built desktops. However, people are now pushing for ITX-sized builds and HTPCs, where building their computers with the smallest physical footprint possible is important. This is also apparent in OEM desktops, with computers like the HP Stream and Pavilion Mini. While these can be expected to perform relatively similarly to the nettops from back in 2008, it is still amazing how tiny these computers have shrunken to. With sizes changing back and forth, electronic and component manufacturers have to find ways to adapt their current products to these constraints. Today's review of the Noctua NH-D9L is one prime example. This 95mm cooler is intended for media PCs, and can fit in HTPC builds quite nicely. We have seen Noctua CPU coolers before, as they have always been great with their quality and performance, so how will the NH-D9L fit in? Will it be the Xperia Z3 Compact of fans, with performance at a small size? Let us read on to find out!

Read full article @ APH Networks

Nvidia admits, explains GeForce GTX 970 memory allocation issue

We've been tracking an issue with GeForce GTX 970 memory use for a little while now, most notably via a thread in our forums. Some GeForce GTX 970 owners have noticed unusual behavior from these cards compared to the GTX 980. Specifically, the GTX 970 sometimes appears to allocate less than its full 4GB of memory in cases where the GTX 980 does. Also, when asked to go beyond 3.5GB using a directed test, GTX 970 memory bandwidth appears to drop.

Read full article @ The Tech Report

Should I Upgrade My GeForce GTX 460 to a GeForce GTX 960

We often don't get a chance to compare 5-year old video cards to the latest and greatest cards, so we thought we'd take the time this week and compare the original NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 1GB reference card from 2010 to a brand new NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 2GB video card. NVIDIA has done a great job with their video card drivers so the latest GeForce 347.25 drivers (download link) that just came out this week will work on the GeForce GTX 460 that came out nearly 5 years ago. Read on to see how the two cards perform when tested on six game titles with FRAPS and then 3DMark Fire Strike.

Read full article @ Legit Reviews

Synology DiskStation DS215j 2-Bay NAS Review

It isn’t long since I had the pleasure to review the new Synology 1-bay NAS for home users, so I’m really looking forward to giving the 2-bay version a spin in form of the brand new Synology DS215j.

The J series, or Junior as I tend to call them, is aimed at average home-user. But since there really isn’t such a thing as an average home-user, Synology has created a cost-effective NAS that still covers all the important aspects, features, and functions. This might very well be the a perfect entry device into the world of NAS.

Read full article @ eTeknix

Test: the GeForce GTX 960 is the best HTPC GPU of this moment

Last Thursday, Nvidia introduced their GeForce GTX 960, and with it, the world's first graphics card that supports HDMI 2.0 and comes equipped with a hardware-based H.265 (or HEVC) video decoder. As such, this graphics card would be the ideal GPU for a future proof HTPC, at least in theory. We investigated whether it holds up in practice.

The GeForce GTX 960 is the first GPU that features a built-in H.265 decoder. But, does it work properly?

Read full article @ Hardware.Info

WD Sentinel DX4200 Review

At first glance it looks like little more than just another 4-bay NAS appliance, but the Sentinel DX4200 from Western Digital stands out from the crowd both in terms of the hardware involved and the Windows rather than Linux software it runs. Moreover, the DX4200 is very much aimed at businesses with existing Windows servers and expertise looking to add flexible network storage to the mix.A proper server in a boxHoused in a conventional desktop NAS cube, the DX4200 eschews the plastic panels found on lesser consumer products in favour of a solid, all-metal, construction. A somewhat bulky AC brick provides the power and, although only one PSU comes as standard, another can be purchased and plugged in to keep the appliance running should either of the pair suffer a failure.A large and quite noisy single fan located at the rear keeps the unit nice and cool with a couple of Gigabit network ports above, together with four USB 3.0 ports that can be used to attach external backup drives. You can also plug in a keyboard and mouse, and a screen via the VGA port alongside, to directly manage the DX4200 just as you would a standard Windows server. When not doing that, however, a small LCD panel at the front summarises what's going on inside with, underneath, a lockable door behind which the storage lies and it's here that things start to get interesting.

Read full article @ Techradar