Here a roundup of today's reviews and articles:

ASUS ROG Strix X470-F Gaming Motherboard Review
ASUS ROG STRIX X470-I Gaming Motherboard Review
ASUS ZenBook UX331 Review
Banner Saga 3 Review
Cooler Master MASTERLIQUID ML240L RGB CPU Cooler Review
Corsair H100i Pro RGB CPU Cooler Review
GIGABYTE X470 Gaming 7 Wi-Fi Motherboard Review
Go Vacation Review
Icy Dock MB973SP-1B FlexCage Review
Insidious New NetSpectre Vulnerability Can Be Exploited Over Network
Mushkin Source SSD Review
Netgear XR500 router, EX8000, SX10 (10GigE) Switch Review
QNAP TVS-1282-i7-64G 12-bay NAS Review
Sennheiser GSP 500 Review
TEAMGROUP T-Force Xcalibur RGB Review
Toshiba RC100 240GB SSD Review
We Test a $1,000 CPU From 2010 vs. Ryzen 3
XPG SX950U Review

ASUS ROG Strix X470-F Gaming Motherboard Review

The introduction of AMD’s X470 chipset was an unspectacular affair, bringing only a handful of incremental improvements over the preceding X370 chipset. X470 motherboards reflect this trend too with manufacturers, like ASUS with its ROG Strix X470-F Gaming, using X470 as a justification to refresh existing X370 motherboards with some of the latest features and design innovations that have developed since.

The similarities between the ASUS ROG Strix X470-F and X370-F Gaming motherboards in terms of design and specification are numerous while the differences are few and far between. The ASUS X470-F is certainly not aimed at existing X370 motherboard owners, but those not yet using AMD’s AM4 platform and looking for a route in.

Read full article @ KitGuru

ASUS ROG STRIX X470-I Gaming Motherboard Review

ASUS is one of the most well known and influential motherboard manufacturers on the planet. ASUS is best known in DIY and PC enthusiast circles for motherboard manufacturing but the company has an ever diversifying product portfolio. ASUS also makes motherboards, monitors, routers, laptops, desktops, workstations, and even cell phones. ASUS also diversified its product lines even further by creating its Republic of Gamers brand. This brand targets gamers and computing enthusiasts.

ASUS recently added a STRIX moniker to its ROG motherboard lineup to create an "ROG STRIX" line. This falls under the flagship ROG "vanilla" motherboards and comprises the midrange to low end of the ROG motherboard family. Not that any ROG motherboard falls into a "low end" category. We expect to see more segmentation between ROG and ROG STRIX in the future as it pertains to feature set.

Read full article @ HardOCP

ASUS ZenBook UX331 Review

the ZenBook UX331 is bit cheaper than the ZenBook 3 Deluxe while offering most of the same great experience.

ASUS stepped up its ZenBook game lately, and laptops such as the ZenBook Flip S and ZenBook 3 Deluxe have really taken the PC maker into the upper echelons of the premium space.

The UX331 is a less expensive laptop that offers the essence of the highest-end ZenBooks at a reduced price and assuming you can actually get your hands on one, there's a lot of laptop for it.

Read full article @ Windows Central

Banner Saga 3 Review

It’s been a long, difficult journey, but we’ve finally arrived at the end of the world. For those just joining us, The Banner Saga is an apocalyptic Norse epic, which boils turn-based tactical RPGs, old-school text-based adventure games, and 70s Ralph Bakshi swords and sorcery ‘toons together to create a uniquely pungent fantasy broth. A surprise success on Kickstarter, The Banner Saga series has been a model for other crowdfunded projects to follow, delivering on its promises in a timely fashion and selling a healthy number of copies in the process.

But does The Banner Saga 3 wrap the trilogy up in style? Or does it fumble the third act? Is it The Return of the King or The Dark Knight Rises? Sharpen your axe, it’s time to test The Banner Saga 3’s mettle…

Read full article @ Wccftech

Cooler Master MASTERLIQUID ML240L RGB CPU Cooler Review

As Cooler Master entered the liquid cooling game, things started off for them with the Seidon series of coolers. A year or so after that, they dropped the Neptune series, and what differentiated them, outside of the size of the units we tested, is that the former used a round head unit, while the latter was square. Another year or two passed, and Cooler Master dove into what they called the MASTERLIQUID coolers. In this series, we have seen them followed with things like Maker, and Pro, even ML, but this time around the moniker merely is MASTERLIQUID followed by the size of the radiator, but it is what comes at the end that makes all the difference. The most important letter towards the end of the name is an "L."

In the terminology that Cooler Master has developed, this letter stands for Lite. What they intend to do with the Lite series, is to dial back the noise, dial back performance, and even dial back the price. The second bit of the end of the name is that this cooler is RGB capable. This can be handled in one of two ways. There is support for various motherboard makers RGB LED Sync systems, or the other option is to use an included controller system, which enables those without Sync capabilities the ability to still have the desired color or pattern of lights displayed.

Read full article @ Tweaktown

Corsair H100i Pro RGB CPU Cooler Review

Corsair is, without a doubt, one of the best-known brands for PC components. Put simply, there is very little that they don’t make. From Power Supplies to gaming peripherals, they are a brand that people know and more importantly trust. Aside from RAM though, one of their most popular products is their AIO liquid coolers. Having tested (and owned) a number of their CPU coolers myself over the years, it’s not hard to understand why people trust them for their cooling solution.

With this in mind, we take a look at Corsairs latest product. The H100i Pro RGB CPU Cooler. This is an absolutely brand new 240mm cooler from Corsair and offers impressive lighting effects as well as the adoption of software to control the lighting effects. He have reviewed similar H100 coolers in the past and we therefore know, before we have even opened it, that this is a quality cooler. Then again, who are we to take that on face value?

Lets, therefore, take a look at the Corsair H100i Pro RGB and see just how good it really is!

Read full article @ eTeknix

GIGABYTE X470 Gaming 7 Wi-Fi Motherboard Review

The GIGABYTE X470 Aorus Gaming 7 Wi-Fi is specifically aimed at gamers looking to make the most of the benefits of AMD’s newest AM4 based chipset, X470. Like most major vendors, GIGABYTE has partitioned its gaming range under the Aorus brand, including waves of RGB enabled components and a more aggressive style than the regular line of products. The Gaming 7 hopes to push Aorus as a brand, retaining the everlasting aesthetics and stylings GIGABYTE offerings have been notable for.

Read full article @ Anandtech

Go Vacation Review

I don’t often go on holiday. Or, vacation, as our American friends call it. It’s lovely to get away, of course, but it’s also expensive and stressful. More expensive. In fact, how do people afford to travel? I struggle to figure out how people afford food so seeing friends on Facebook jet-setting around the place tends to make me feel sick with rage.

That’s why Go Vacation was actually a nice change of pace, both from the usual kinds of games I play and review, and an enjoyable change of scenery. So often I’m playing games that demand perfect strategy, combat skills, epic scale and a touch of destiny, but in Go Vacation things are much more relaxed.

Read full article @ Wccftech

Icy Dock MB973SP-1B FlexCage Review

Today we test the Icy Dock FlexCage MB973SP-1B removable frame. Homeserver or self-built or finished NAS solutions are gaining popularity again. Almost all finished network attached storages have so-called hot-swap bays, which makes it easy to change the hard disks. But what if the performance of a NAS is not sufficient, but you don’t want to do without the comfort of the hot-swap bays? Many consumer cases or 19-inch cases in the lower price segment only have internal 3.5-inch and additional external 5.25-inch slots. Since you rarely need optical drives in home servers, these drive bays are ideal for installing an Icy Dock FlexCage removable frame.

Read full article @ OCInside.de

Insidious New NetSpectre Vulnerability Can Be Exploited Over Network

The "Spectre" family of vulnerability, an exploitation of the speculative execution features of modern processors (mostly Intel), was scary enough. Up until now, running malware that implements Spectre needed one to run the program on a local machine. Running it remotely was limited to well-crafted JavaScript executed on the victim's machine, or cloud hosts made to process infected files. This is about to change. Security researchers from Graz University of Technology, including one of the discoverers of the "Meltdown" vulnerability, Daniel Gruss; have discovered NetSpectre, a fully network-based exploit that can let attackers read the memory of a remote machine without executing any program on that machine.

NetSpectre works by deriving bits and bytes from the memory based on measurements of the time the processor to succeed or recover from failure in speculative execution. As a processor is executing code, it speculates what the next instruction or data is, and stores their outcomes beforehand. A successful "guess" is rewarded with tangible performance benefits, while an unsuccessful guess is penalized with having to repeat the step. By measuring the precise time it takes for the processor to perform either (respond to success or failure in speculative execution), the contents of the memory can be inferred.

Read full article @ TechPowerUp

Mushkin Source SSD Review

Most storage news right now revolves around falling SSD prices but there are a number of new low-cost products coming to market. Just last week we tested the Inland Professional SATA III sold by MicroCenter that sells for just $75 (480GB). This week we look at the Mushkin Source, a Silicon Motion, Inc.-based (SMI) SSD using the latest 3D flash memory technology. Mushkin announced the Source series not long after CES this past January. The company moved to a full lineup comprised of SMI controllers with the NVMe Pilot series at the top and the Source on the very bottom.

Read full article @ Tweaktown

Netgear XR500 router, EX8000, SX10 (10GigE) Switch Review

Gaming routers are a hot topic these days, with online gaming you need your data-packets delivered as fast as possible! To cater to the gamers, Netgear now offers a 2.6Gbps capable Dual Band Wi-Fi Router. This router is fitted with a dual-core processor outputting at 1.7 GHz. It should not only offer proper WIFI ranges but also performance. MESH is the new hot topic as well, as such we'll pair the router with the EX8000 Mesh, meaning you can expand your WIFI range for every little gap in your house to be filled with a WIFI signal, WIFI everywhere! And you know what, this puppy looks mean as well. I mean, Netgear really tried to design something that appeals more to gamers and that XR500 router will man as it looks like it's something not from this planet. As stated we'll pair and test the router configured as a mesh setup as well, e.g. we'll add the EX8000 Mesh from Netgear, boosting the range and filling every little corner in the house with a WIFI signal.

In this review we test:

Nighthawk Pro Gaming router (XR500)
NightHawk X6S Range Extender (EX8000)
NightHawk Pro gaming (SX10) 10 Gbit/s switch

Read full article @ The Guru of 3D

QNAP TVS-1282-i7-64G 12-bay NAS Review

If you've got nearly 3 grand for a top of the line NAS, this could be for you. QNAP’s TVS-1282 is the flagship 12-bay model of the TVS-x82 high-performance NAS range aimed at SMBs. The TVS-x82 series has been designed to support Tiered Storage, Network Traffic Distribution and Application based Partitioning among others. Powered by an Intel Core i7-7700 quad-core CPU, the TVS-1282 comes with three PCIe Gen 3 expansion slots to boot.

The TVS-x82 family is made up of the TVS-1282 12-bay (8x 3.5in, 4x 2.5in), TVS-882 8-bay (6 x 3.5in, 2 x2.5in) and the 6-bay TVS-682 (4 x 3.5in, 2 x 2.5in). Within each of these model lines there are CPU and memory options to choose from.

The flagship TVS-1282 (in terms of CPU and memory) is the one QNAP kindly supplied for review, the TVS-1282-i7-64G. This is powered by an Intel Core i7-7700 quad-core CPU clocked at 3.6GHz and backed by 64GB of DDR4-2133MHz memory, the maximum amount the motherboard supports. Keeping with the i7 CPU but with only 32GB of memory as standard is the TVS-1282-i7-32G. Next model down the food chain is the TVS-1282-i5-16G, powered by an Intel Core i5-7500 3.4GHz quad-core CPU with 16GB of memory and finally, there is the entry-level unit, the TVS-1282-i3-8G powered by an Intel Core i3-7100, 3.9GHz CPU and 8GB of memory.

Read full article @ KitGuru

Sennheiser GSP 500 Review

Open-back gaming headsets are few and far between, but Sennheiser didn't forget about users who prefer them over their closed-back brethren. Let's find out if the Sennheiser GSP 500 offers enough to justify its hefty $230/€229 price tag and if it's a worthy replacement for the company's excellent Game One gaming headset.

Sennheiser released two new gaming headsets in 2018—the GSP 600 (reviewed here) and, shortly afterwards, its open-back twin brother dubbed the GSP 500, which I'll talk about in this review. They serve as replacements for the famous Game Zero and Game One headsets. Meaning, if you're after the best gaming headset Sennheiser has to offer, the GSP 500 and 600 are the ones you'll choose between nowadays.

Read full article @ TechPowerUp

TEAMGROUP T-Force Xcalibur RGB Review

Once upon a time, the pivotal aspect to DRAM was the capacity, frequency and CAS timings, but in 2018, it’s all about that RGB. Yes, RGB is now in full-swing and DRAM manufacturers are tussling over who can be the brightest, eye-catching and vibrant. TEAM GROUP, who are relative newcomers to this market have been actively pushing RGB products – even unveiling the first RGB SSD.

So, in the spotlight today is, as you may have guessed another RGB LED-based product – Xcalibur RGB DDR4. This kit is available in “General Edition” and “Special Edition”. The difference being that the SE kit has a pattern and slightly different design. As well as a 120° ultra-wide angle and support for all of the major motherboard vendors RGB technologies, Xcalibur RGB is available in 16GB (8GBx2) and either 3600MHz or 4000MHz – so if you’re after fast memory, this kit does not shy away from high frequencies.

Read full article @ Vortez

Toshiba RC100 240GB SSD Review

When most people think of NVMe SSD’s they think of high-end expensive drives that are incredibly high performance. Today we will be looking at something a little out of the ordinary and something aimed at the more budget-minded consumer looking to get a bit more out of his storage.

Today we will be looking at the Toshiba OCZ RC100 which is a DRAMless SSD but features something rather cool which may help make the difference in performance. A new technology called Host Memory Buffer (HMB) Host Memory Buffer is a low level shared memory interface at the OS level that allows the Toshiba RC100 to access part of the DRAM for its own caching space in place of having memory on the device itself.

Read full article @ Wccftech

We Test a $1,000 CPU From 2010 vs. Ryzen 3

Today we’re going to have a bit of benchmark fun as we test out a processor we reviewed in 2010. Recently we got our hands again on a Core i7-980X processor. This is a 32nm “Gulftown” part, and while we tested the "Bloomfield" 45nm CPUs extensively -- and were big fans of the Core i7-920 -- we never paid much attention to Gulftown after launch.

Although Bloomfield and Gulftown processors share the same LGA1366 socket, the 32nm parts are a bit special in the sense that they pack six cores. In fact, the Core i7-980X was Intel’s first ever hexa-core desktop CPU and if you imagine it being expensive, well you’d be right. This sucker came in at $1,000 back in early 2010.

Read full article @ TechSpot

XPG SX950U Review

The SX950U makes use of 3D NAND flash as well as SLC Caching and a DRAM Cache to help improve speeds while LDPC ECC and RAID Engines ensure your data remains stable during prolonged gaming sessions, demanding absolute integrity.

Having listened to that, today we’re looking at a new solid state drive from ADATA’s performance division, XPG; this SX950U SSD is available in 120GB, 240GB, 480GB and 960GB capacities and is aimed directly towards gamers.

The SX950U makes use of 3D NAND flash as well as SLC Caching and a DRAM Cache to help improve speeds while LDPC ECC and RAID Engines ensure your data remains stable during prolonged gaming sessions, demanding absolute integrity.

Read full article @ Vortez