Here a roundup of today's reviews and articles:

Alienboard Hoverboard Review Video
AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 versus NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070
Arctic Summair Light Review
ASRock X370 Taichi (AM4) Motherboard Review
ASUS ROG Evolve Gaming Mouse Review
ASUS ZenFone 4 Max Pro (ZC554KL) Preview
Athlon II X3 vs. Ryzen 3: How AMD's Performance Has Evolved & Performance-Per-Watt
Kingston DataTraveler Ultimate GT 2TB review: monster stick
OCUK’s Andrew Gibson clears up RX Vega64 pricing disaster
Retesting AMD Ryzen Threadripper’s Game Mode: Halving Cores for More Performance
Samsung Portable SSD T5 Review
Sound BlasterX AE-5 Review: An Uncompromising Gaming Sound Card For Audiophiles
The Top 5 Worst CPUs of All Time
VirtualBox vs. VMware Player: The Best Virtual Machine for Windows

Alienboard Hoverboard Review Video

Today we have in the OCinside.de summer special no PC hardware, but we are testing something unusual with a high fun factor. We have published an Alienboard Hoverboard video review. The full written review of the Alienboard Batwings Hoverboard will follow soon as well.

Read full article @ OCInside.de

AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 versus NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070

On August 14th, AMD announced three new graphics cards based on the Vega GPU architecture: Radeon RX Vega 64 Liquid Cooled Edition, Radeon RX Vega 64 with air cooling and the Radeon RX Vega 56. The Radeon RX Vega 56 came a little sooner than we expected and we frankly weren't prepared for it when the card arrived. Now we've had more time and looked closer at how this card fairs against the GeForce GTX 1070 among others at 1080P, 1440P and 4K display settings...

Read full article @ Legit Reviews

Arctic Summair Light Review

Today, we’re testing the Arctic Summair Light USB fan in our OCinside.de summer special, which is not a CPU cooler or graphics card cooler. Even an overclocker can get warm, not just his hardware. We are therefore testing the USB fan Summair Light from Arctic, which is already well known for their PC cooling.

Read full article @ OCInside.de

ASRock X370 Taichi (AM4) Motherboard Review

ASRock has continued to make strides with their latest AMD Ryzen motherboards, especially when it comes to their Taichi lineup. Definitely one of my favorite motherboard manufacturers, ASRock continues to raise the bar when it comes to features and performance at any given price point. This trend continues today with their latest AM4 offering in the X370 Taichi motherboard which pushes the envelope of price/performance ratio and awesome factor.

Read full article @ FunkyKit

ASUS ROG Evolve Gaming Mouse Review

So this time I have a somewhat unusual gaming mouse from ASUS: The ASUS ROG Evolve Gaming Mouse. The mouse features Aura Sync RGB lighting to sync with all your Aura Compatible RGB lighting. The Evolve also features changeable top covers to enable four different ergonomic styles hence the Evolve name and is also perfect for those ambidextrous users. So join me on this RGB powered review!

Read full article @ Play3r

ASUS ZenFone 4 Max Pro (ZC554KL) Preview

Take a look at the specifications and key features of the *ASUS ZenFone 4 Max Pro*, as well as our hands-on preview of the first unit in Taipei!

Read full article @ Tech ARP

Athlon II X3 vs. Ryzen 3: How AMD's Performance Has Evolved & Performance-Per-Watt

Noticing I had an AMD Athlon II X3 425 system still racked up and hadn't been powered on in a long time, I decided to decomission it, but not before running some final benchmarks on that system. Having the recent AMD Ryzen 3 1200 / 1300X CPUs I decided it would make for an interesting comparison how the old Athlon II X3 compares to AMD's low-end CPU of today, the Ryzen 3 processors based on Zen. Here are those benchmarks that also include performance-per-Watt and overall AC system power consumption numbers.

Read full article @ Phoronix

Kingston DataTraveler Ultimate GT 2TB review: monster stick

We already saw it at CES, and in the meantime it has arrived at our test lab: the Kingston DataTraveler Ultimate GT 2TB. A USB stick with a storage capacity of two terabytes: please let that sink in for a minute. We only managed to get the same capacity on a 3.5'' hard drive back in 2009, however today it fits in our hand palm. Is this cool, 'just because', or is it actually worth having? 

Read full article @ Hardware.Info

OCUK’s Andrew Gibson clears up RX Vega64 pricing disaster

So what exactly is going on with Vega’s pricing? We got in touch with Andrew Gibson at Overclockers UK who gave us the full breakdown

Read full article @ KitGuru

Retesting AMD Ryzen Threadripper’s Game Mode: Halving Cores for More Performance

For the launch of AMD’s Ryzen Threadripper processors, one of the features being advertised was Game Mode. This was a special profile under the updated Ryzen Master software that was designed to give the Threadripper CPU more performance in gaming, at the expense of peak performance in hard CPU tasks. AMD’s goal, as described to us, was to enable the user to have a choice: a CPU that can be fit for both CPU tasks and for gaming at the flick of a switch (and a reboot) by disabling half of the chip. Initially we interpreted this via one of AMD’s slides as half of the threads (simultaneous multi-threading off), as per the exact wording. However, in other places AMD had stated that it actually disables half the cores: AMD returned to us and said it was actually disabling one of the two active dies in the Threadripper processor. We swallowed our pride and set about retesting the effect of Game Mode.

Read full article @ Anandtech

Samsung Portable SSD T5 Review

Samsung released its latest 3D V-NAND in the Portable SSD series again. The new T5 matches the previous generations' capacity, physical size, and pricing.

Read full article @ Toms Hardware

Sound BlasterX AE-5 Review: An Uncompromising Gaming Sound Card For Audiophiles

Creative Labs was instrumental in evolving PC audio with notable products, like the Sound Blaster 16, AWE 32, AWE64, Live!, Audigy, X-Fi, and Extigy, and algorithms like EAX technology. Most of its competitors through the last three decades, like Yamaha, ESS, Turtle Beach, Auzentech and M-Audio, evolved their product line-ups or faded into obscurity. There were acquisitions of Aureal and Sensaura technologies that further boosted Creative's technology portfolio, too. Sound cards seem passé nowadays, as motherboard manufacturers hop up high-definition audio codecs with higher quality op-amps, capacitors, shielding and S/PDIF outputs, that make discrete sound cards a harder sell. But despite all the optimizations and tweaks to on-board audio, there’s only so much you can do with cost-conscious audio codecs. That's where the Sound BlasterX AE-5 comes in...

Read full article @ HotHardware

The Top 5 Worst CPUs of All Time

We reach back over 20 years to think about what are worst CPUs we have ever had to deal with. Whether it be technical issues or for reasons of simply disappointing the market, these CPUs sucked in some way. Some CPUs you will remember, so you won't, and some you will wish that you did not remember.

Read full article @ HardOCP

VirtualBox vs. VMware Player: The Best Virtual Machine for Windows

If youve never used one before, virtual machines can be overwhelming. Not that theyre difficult to use, but theyre unlike any other kind of app and that unfamiliarity is what scares most off. In practice, virtual machines are simple and extremely useful. The toughest hurdle to getting started is deciding which virtual machine software to use. Several options exist, but if you dont want to pay a cent, then only two are worth discussing: VirtualBox and VMware Workstation Player. In this post, well compare both of them and help you decide which one you should use.

Read full article @ MakeUseOf