Here a roundup of today's reviews and articles:

1More Triple Driver On-Ear Hi-Res Headphones Review
AMD Ryzen 7 2700 CPU Review
Antec DF500 RGB Review
Apple MacBook Pro 13-inch (2018) Review
ASRock Fatal1ty B450 Gaming K4 Motherboard Review
ASUS ProArt PA328Q Monitor Review
Casting 3D Printed Parts
Crucial Ballistix Elite 4x8GB DDR4-3000 Review
Fnatic miniSTREAK Review
Gigabyte AORUS P850W 850W Power Supply Review
Gigabyte B450 Aorus Pro WIFI Review
Kingston UV500 960GB 2.5 Inch SSD Review
Razer Huntsman Elite Review
Satechi MacBook Stand Review
Silicon Motion SM2262EN SSD Controller Preview: Good And Bad Amplified
Thermaltake Pure Plus 12 Radiator Fan Kit Premium Review
Thermaltake Smart BX1 RGB 650w Power Supply Review
Wifi performance in smartphones analysed

1More Triple Driver On-Ear Hi-Res Headphones Review

The premium headphone market is an interesting one. You can pick up some decent brand name headphones for around £100, in fact, it’s pretty darn hard these days to find a bad pair. Sure, there are your lifestyle brands like Beats, which are fashion first, sound quality second. However, with brands like 1MORE, it’s sound quality as an absolute first. At around £200, the Triple Driver Over-Ear Headphones are pretty expensive. However, in the world of premium audio, £200 is barely getting started.

We reviewed their in-ear Quad Driver headphones not so long ago; the world’s first THX-certified in-ear headphones. That’s a pretty groundbreaking achievement for in-ear headphones, and they sounded out of this world! Now if that’s what they can do with in-ear, I’m dying to hear what they can do with a triple-driver over-ear set of Hi-Res headphones.

Read full article @ eTeknix

AMD Ryzen 7 2700 CPU Review

AMD's Ryzen 7 2700X has proven itself an impressive range-topper for the second generation of Ryzen CPUs, but that chip's 105-W TDP and attendant cooling requirements aren't the right fit for every PC. On one end of the spectrum of PC enthusiasm, small-form-factor systems and low-noise builds want a lower-TDP chip that can be cooled using slimmer hardware than AMD's own Wraith Prism.On the other end, overclockers  who are going to shelve or sell the AMD stock cooler probably don't want to shell out for the Ryzen 7 2700X's stock-clocked smarts and fancy heatsink.

Read full article @ The Tech Report

Antec DF500 RGB Review

The RGB is great, but what about the case itself? Antec DF500 RGB is a budget PC case that comes with three 120mm RGB fans at the front and a tempered glass panel that shows off the interior of the build. Those are two key features for any case manufacturer that wants to grab the attention of the buying public. Wrap up the package with a reasonably low price and it may well seem at first glance that you have a winner of a product. Let us take a deeper look however.

Read full article @ KitGuru

Apple MacBook Pro 13-inch (2018) Review

Apple’s 2018 MacBook Pro refresh offers strong CPU performance and blazing fast SSDs worthy of the Pro name, but could use longer battery life and more ports. Dual-core processors just aren’t enough for real professionals anymore. Graphics work, video editing and photo manipulation require more power than ever. And while Apple caught flack for a lack of power in the 13-inch MacBook Pro last year, the company’s update to quad-core chips packs a punch. The Core i7-8559U on our review config was speedy, and the laptop also features some of the fastest SSD storage we’ve ever seen. Additionally, it offers some features from the iPad, like True Tone and “Hey Siri,” for the first time on the Mac. But the design hasn’t changed, so if you’re not a fan of low travel keyboards and don’t want to live the dongle life with only Thunderbolt 3 ports, it still has shortcomings.

Read full article @ Tom's Hardware

ASRock Fatal1ty B450 Gaming K4 Motherboard Review

Today, we’ll be taking a look at the ASRock Fatal1ty B450 Gaming K4 Motherboard. This motherboard aimed at the mainstream market, and utilizes the latest AMD B450 chipset which is suitable for both 1st and 2nd gen AMD Ryzen processors. It comes packed with a wealth of features which is quite surprising considering the price.

These include the new 7.1 channel audio supporting Creative Sound Blaster Cinema 5, Polychrome Sync for RGB, Gigabit LAN, PCI-E steel slots, 2 x M.2 slots for PCI-E Gen3x4 SSDs, 2 x USB 3.1 Gen2 (Rear Type-A+C), 6 x USB 3.1 Gen1 (2 Front, 4 Rear), supports triple monitors, as well as DDR4-3200+ OC and AMD CrossfireX.

Read full article @ FunkyKit

ASUS ProArt PA328Q Monitor Review

ASUS has quickly become one of the go-to companies for high-end professional workstation displays, a market that has been dominated by Dell for a very long time. ASUS might not have the same presence as Dell in the market, but that doesn't take away from the fact that the Taiwanese company is kicking serious ass in the display business right now. Right off the back of the ASUS ProArt PA27AC, the company asked if I would like to review their 32-inch model... but teased me "if you thought the PA27AC was good, you haven't seen anything yet". My contact at ASUS is one of the most enthusiast-driven marketing guys in the industry, and he knows his stuff - and he was right yet again. The ASUS PA328Q is a work of art, and as I was told "it would be hard to go back to anything else" and yet again, he's right.

Read full article @ TweakTown

Casting 3D Printed Parts

So you have had a shiny new 3D printer for a few months, your house now is full of little plastic tchotchkes. There are Little Yoda heads in the living room, some benchy boats in the bath, and an R2D2 on your desk. What’s next? You can buy fancy filaments with metal powders embedded in them so you can make your gnomes rusty or green but they’re still plastic. How does one make something metal with a 3D printer? You can spend a huge sum of money and buy a printer that can sinter metal powders together. Unless you’re NASA or SpaceX that is a lot of money. Sure, you could slap a MIG welder nozzle on your printer but that is not very precise and would take a lot of tinkering to get something useful out of it. Instead of going high tech, let’s go low tech. Casting liquid metal into sand molds is a process humans have been doing for centuries. What if you used a 3D printer to create the mold patterns for the sand in a few hours instead of the day(s) it would have taken to do by hand?

Read full article @ LanOC Reviews

Crucial Ballistix Elite 4x8GB DDR4-3000 Review

Does eight ranks of memory (banks of “chips”) improve Crucial’s Ranking? Crucial takes the concept of “more memory ranks” to its ultimate end by producing this four-module Ballistix Elite 4x8GB DDR4-3000 kit filled with dual-rank DIMMs. More ranks often means more performance when all else is equal, but all else can’t be equal when the additional components limit overclocking capability or latency optimization. By the end of our testing, we simply weren’t able to push the Ballistix Elite DDR4-3000 kit far enough to overcome the data rate advantage of its closest competitor.

Read full article @ Tom's Hardware

Fnatic miniSTREAK Review

Tenkeyless mechanical keyboards are growing in popularity thanks to their compact size and the fact they share pretty much the same feature set as their full-sized counterparts - except for the numpad of course. All the big players in the industry offer a tenkeyless keyboard, and now Fnatic Gear wants in on the action too. Enter the Fnatic miniSTREAK, essentially a more petite version of the Fnatic STREAK mechanical keyboard.

Read full article @ Vortez

Gigabyte AORUS P850W 850W Power Supply Review

We are the first one to crack open Gigabyte's latest AORUS P850W 850W power supply and check out what is inside.

I have had my share of embarrassing moments in my life, but the one featuring my uncle at a Chinese restaurant is certainly among the top three. Earlier this year, we were eating at a chain Hong Kong style cafe while visiting my extended family in Toronto. After lunch, my uncle waved down the waitress -- an average-sized Asian lady with a buzz cut and glasses -- to ask for the bill. "Excuse me, mam", my uncle said in Cantonese. The waitress looked at my uncle awaiting his request when my uncle paused for a moment. "Oh, sorry, I mean sir." At that instant, our faces collectively hit our palms while my uncle continued on. The waitress delivered the bill without saying a word, and with our faces were still firmly planted in our palms, my uncle was a little bit perplexed as to why we all responded in this way. "What? I was just trying to be respectful." There was no doubt in anybody's mind the waitress is a woman, but clearly my uncle was not used to seeing women with hair that short. We all have our biases and expectations, and for me, I am no exception. When Gigabyte announced their new P850W power supply from their gaming brand AORUS, I just assumed it was a PSU with RGB LEDs. I mean, what is gaming product without RGB in 2018, especially since we looked at products like the GAMDIAS ASTRAPE P1-750G 750W? As it turned out, the Gigabyte AORUS P850W 850W is a conventional PSU with no RGB LEDs. But is it any good? Well, we cracked one open for a detailed inspection as always, so read on to find out!

Read full article @ APH Networks

Gigabyte B450 Aorus Pro WIFI Review

AMD's refreshed B450 chipset doesn’t disappoint. Gigabyte’s B450 Aorus Pro WIFI takes features from the Aorus 7 and delivers a value that’s hard to beat. AMD's Ryzen 2000 CPUs (like the Ryzen 7 2700X) might be old news by now, but AMD's new budget-focused B450 chipset comes out of the gate ready to inject more value into the AMD AM4 platform. Our success with the X470 Aorus Gaming 7 WIFI gives us high hopes for the lesser B450 Aorus Pro board, but Gigabyte does hold back on some features that could have made this board spectacular. Regardless, the B450 chipset is a sweet spot for builders and gamers who don’t need X470’s added feature set, and Gigabyte delivers a great product with the B450 Aorus Pro WIFI, at a surprisingly affordable $120 MSRP.

Read full article @ Tom's Hardware

Kingston UV500 960GB 2.5 Inch SSD Review

In the spring of 2018 Kingston introduced their UV500 line of mSATA, M.2, and 2.5" solid state drives available with capacities ranging from 120GB all the way up to 1920GB. All drives in this series are based on Marvell brand controllers, and are Kingston's first 3D NAND-enabled solid state drives to feature full-disk encryption. In this review we are going to take a look at a 2.5" UV500 SSD with a capacity of 960GB that was sold as part of a "SSD Upgrade Kit".

Read full article @ Bigbruin.com

Razer Huntsman Elite Review

Enter the opto-mechanical switch. Mechanical gaming keyboards have soared in popularity, and with a vast number of players looking to secure their slice of this lucrative pie, manufacturers are having to think outside the box in order to stand out from the burgeoning crowd.

Corsair went all out with the feature-packed K95 RGB Platinum, Tesoro offered a thinner option in the form of the Gram XS, Asus moved the volume roller on the ROG Strix Flare, and Roccat's Horde Aimo attempted to find a middle ground between mechanical and membrane. Plenty of variation, and now Razer is hoping to go one better with the Huntsman Elite.

Read full article @ Hexus

Satechi MacBook Stand Review

There are a lot of laptop stands on the market, but the majority of them aren’t very convenient to travel with, or use on the go. That’s why Satechi’s folding Aluminum Laptop Stand caught my eye. With a solid, simple build, colors to match all MacBook and MacBook Pros and more, this useful accessory is worth checking out.

Satechi is a San Diego-based company that offers a variety of great Apple accessories with a focus on making sleek, affordable products. I wanted to test out the Aluminum Laptop Stand (space gray) as it looked like a great mix between a sturdy everyday option and a portable offering.

Read full article @ 9to5Mac

Silicon Motion SM2262EN SSD Controller Preview: Good And Bad Amplified

Silicon Motion's second-generation NVMe SSD controllers have all but taken over the consumer NVMe SSD market. Drives like the HP EX920 and ADATA SX8200 currently offer great performance at prices that are far lower than what Samsung and Western Digital are charging for their flagship products. These Silicon Motion-based SSDs are using the SM2262 controller - the high-end member of SMI's current lineup - but they're almost as cheap as the entry-level NVMe drives that use low-end controllers with limited performance. Phison's second-generation high-end E12 controller still hasn't hit the shelves, so Silicon Motion has no serious competition for the SM2262.

But Silicon Motion isn't standing still. They've prepared an update to the SM2262 controller called the SM2262EN. This was first previewed at the same time that the SM2262 was announced, but Silicon Motion didn't provide much guidance on the timing. The SM2262 controller hit the market with the Intel SSD 760p in January, and the SM2262EN is almost ready for release. With the SM2262EN, Silicon Motion is promising substantial performance improvements that go well beyond what we usually see from firmware optimizations, though the hardware changes relative to the SM2262 are minimal. The updated controller should hit the market in time to compete against Phison E12 SSDs and the first wave of drives with 96-layer 3D NAND.

Read full article @ Anandtech

Thermaltake Pure Plus 12 Radiator Fan Kit Premium Review

For the PC connoisseur, part of an impressive build these days often revolves around the implementation of lighting effects. What is a blinged-out system without a bit of RGB lighting? As such, with consumers starting to really think about its usage, we have seen many manufacturers start to really take it seriously. Of those, perhaps one of the biggest brands doing that at the moment is Thermaltake.

There is very little in the Thermaltake branding these days that doesn’t incorporate some form of RGB lighting effects. Even their PSU’s, something where lighting is not often seen, has begun to include it.

Read full article @ eTeknix

Thermaltake Smart BX1 RGB 650w Power Supply Review

Thermaltake is a brand that is rather quickly earning itself an excellent reputation throughout the world. In recent months we have seen a variety of their products come to the market. They are, however, making a particular effort to push their power supplies. There is no small coincidence that we’ve been reviewing so many of them in recent weeks.

Being one of the few manufacturers who apply RGB effects in their PSU’s while this is clearly a standout feature, we have on more than one occasion been highly impressed with the exceptionally good test results their power supplies have given.

Read full article @ eTeknix

Wifi performance in smartphones analysed

Mobile networks are constantly being improved. We see faster and faster versions of 4G, while 5G is already being developed. Yet there are plenty of scenarios in which you have to rely on that other wireless connection - wifi. It is time we compared wireless performance of a large number of devices.

Although free roaming is now possible within the European Union, unlimited data use - certainly without significant additional costs - is still a utopia. If you like to watch streaming video or stream yourself, listen to high quality streaming music or preferably communicate via Facetime and other video chats, you will eat through your data in no time, even if it allows multiple gigabytes. This is sufficient reason for many of us to connect via Wi-Fi instead of the mobile data network wherever possible. Also, when the connection falls back to 3G or the dreaded E(dge) icon appears, wifi is an attractive alternative.

Read full article @ Hardware.Info