Here a roundup of today's reviews and articles:

be quiet! Dark Base Pro 900 Rev 2 Review
Be Quiet! Dark Base Pro 900 rev. 2 Case Review
be quiet! Dark Base Pro 900 Rev.2 Review
Corsair K68 RGB Gaming Keyboard Review
Kingston Canvas & Toshiba Exceria Memory Card Comparison
Kingston HyperX Predator RGB DDR4-2933 CL15 Review
Logitech G513 Review
Ring Alarm Review
Ryzen 7 2700X vs. Core i7-8700K: 35 Game Benchmark
Samsung 970 Pro NVME M.2 SSD Review
Thermaltake Riing Silent 12 Pro Air CPU Cooler Review
Ultrawide gaming (3440x1440) benchmarks: what performance can you expect?

be quiet! Dark Base Pro 900 Rev 2 Review

be quiet! may have introduced some fabulous chassis in recent years - the Dark Base 700 being our pick of the bunch thus far - but the German manufacturer isn't resting on its laurels and is responding to user feedback with incremental upgrades across the range. In for review today is the Dark Base Pro 900 Rev 2, a £259 enthusiast chassis that takes the 2016 original and fixes just about every niggle we identified in our initial review.

The resulting product is, in our estimation, one of the best high-end PC enclosures available on the market today, so let's dig in and see what's new.

Read full article @ Hexus

Be Quiet! Dark Base Pro 900 rev. 2 Case Review

Mainstream PCs these days can easily fit into smaller and smaller form factors, but truly high-end builds with the latest many-core processors and massive AMD or Nvidia graphics cards aren't quite able to take advantage of the miniaturization trend. Cooling those chips and feeding them with massive amounts of storage capacity still demands massive cases, and actually building such a system can reveal unforeseen speed bumps even in cases that seem perfectly poised to accommodate high-end hardware.For just one example, when I put together our Ryzen Threadripper video-editing build earlier this year, mounting our 360-mm radiator in the top of that case required me to collapse the Fractal Design Define R6's many 3.5" bays into just two behind-the-motherboard mounting points.

Read full article @ The Tech Report

be quiet! Dark Base Pro 900 Rev.2 Review

So like be quiet! felt a need to improve on their flagship chassis, the 'new' Dark Base 900 PRO v2 on the outside looks similar to the one released two years ago - but they applied some tweaks and improvements. Dark, style and feature-rich and obviously silent with the help of noise dampening are just a few features that come to mind. The 900 Pro once again has been fitted with a coated tempered glass, the chassis will offer noise isolation thanks to padded dampening, well that and the use of some faster spinning Pure Wings 3 fans (three of them). As such we review the updated revision 2 quiet! Dark Base 900 Pro. Their case has been overhauled a bit with a new fan controller, new Silent Wings 3 fans, a PSU shroud cover, USB 3.1 Gen 2 support as well as 12V LED strip compatibility. The Pro model still retains that sweet Qi wireless charger for your phone. So yeah, silent fans and improved fan controller and LED support. Have a peek at the product we'll review today.

Released back in June 2016, the chassis still breathes aesthetics and offers a quality feel. Depending on the color combination you choose, the chassis is made with a dark interior. There are three color options available - black and orange, black and silver, or all-black (our sample). The Dark Base 900 PRO comes with a Qi wireless charger for your (compatible) smart-phone, e.g. the latest Galaxy 6 and upwards, as well as RGB LED lighting and more fan connectors. The LED lighting system has been improved, you can select colors and anims, but also link up and sync with your motherboard (12V) RGB solution. As mentioned, the PRO model has a tempered glass window. You might not realize it, but revision2 is a mid-tower chassis sized 243mm x 586mm x 577mm and made of a combination of metal, aluminum and also that tempered glass (4mm). You can house E-ATX, XL-ATX ranging down towards Mini-ITX motherboards in there. Storage things have changed with a visual aim, you can't complain about that as you'll see. be quiet! supplies multiple HDD trays, spaces for optical (3.5" trays can house 2.5" units), at the backside of the motherboard tray there's another SSD tray as well. The trays and bays can obviously be installed as part of a modability system. It is also a key feature of this chassis that you can install what you need. Besides a lot of room for HDDs, there is also proper room for large CPU coolers up to 185mm high and extra long VGA cards (32cm) and power supplies up-to a maximum length of 284mm. Included are three 140mm Silent Wing 3 fans, all connected to an adjustable fan controller. That controller has been improved (stepless dual-rail fan controller). Also on the PCB side of this controller, you can now switch in-between silent and performance modes. Included as well are two LEDs. But hey, this is just the introduction, let's start up the review shall we?

Read full article @ The Guru of 3D

Corsair K68 RGB Gaming Keyboard Review

At about this time last year, we took our first look at Corsair's offering into the spill-proof keyboard market with the K68. Since then, Corsair is taking another shot at the same idea, but this time with three significant changes to the design and feature set. What we do know from various videos found on the internet, as we would prefer to test our keyboards when and if a mistake happens, you can pour water over the keyboard and into the keys, and the K68 will continue to work. Mainly, this is dues to a rubber membrane that covers the sides of the switches, along with built-in holes, which allows the water to pass through the keyboard, without causing a short to the device. Perfect for those constantly splining drinks, or anyone who plans to type around splashing water.

In the latest version from Corsair, the most significant change is the move from red LEDs to RGB LEDs, which is a huge selling point for those looking for patterns of lighting or being able to match all components in the system with the same color LEDs. The second change comes about due to the RGB LEDs. Where the original had a red membrane to match the LED color, Corsair had to move to an opaque white membrane this time, to allow the keyboard to be flooded with RGB lighting, so it was not just passing through the top of the keycaps. The last thing to change is the software. Where it used to be clunky, and you needed multiple instances to run for various devices used, this new keyboard is part of the all-encompassing iCUE software.

Read full article @ TweakTown

Kingston Canvas & Toshiba Exceria Memory Card Comparison

When out to get a brand new memory card for our digital cameras, smartphones, tablets, car stereos and even MP3/MP4 players most consumers don't really care much about performance and so price and capacity are usually the two decisive factors. Still demanding users and professionals alike almost always look to equip their brand new devices/equipment with the fastest possible memory cards and so for them price usually comes third after performance and capacity. Recently the SD Association announced their new standard called SD Express which according to them by adding PCI Express and NVMe interfaces can boost performance of SD cards to an impressive data transfer rate of up to 985MB/s (roughly 3 times faster compared to the fastest models available today) with a capacity of up to 128TB (64 times larger compared to what we have today - 2TB). Because of this we decided to start a whole new reviews section by doing a comparison between the latest Canvas series of cards released by Kingston and the latest Exceria series of cards released by Toshiba.

Kingston Technology Company, Inc. is the world’s largest independent manufacturer of memory products. Kingston designs, manufactures and distributes memory products for desktops, laptops, servers, printers, and Flash memory products for PDAs, mobile phones, digital cameras, and MP3 players. Through its global network of subsidiaries and affiliates, Kingston has manufacturing facilities in California, Taiwan, China and sales representatives in the United States, Europe, Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, Australia, India, Taiwan, China, and Latin America.

Toshiba Memory Europe GmbH (TME) is the European business of the Toshiba Memory Corporation (TMC). Our company offers a broad product line of high-end flash memory products, including SD Cards, USB sticks, micro SDs and embedded memory components, in addition to solid state drives (SSD). TME maintains offices in Germany, France, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

Read full article @ NikKTech

Kingston HyperX Predator RGB DDR4-2933 CL15 Review

Kingston might be one of the most recognizable brands for those unfamiliar with PCs. They aren't quite like all the other companies out there, although they share the same market; Kingston really impresses in a different way. Ask someone if they have a USB key or SD card in their pocket or purse, and there is a very good chance that it is a Kingston one, and that's because they have yearly sales figures that top billions, not millions. For a company that only supplies memory products (DRAM, SSDs, Flash, etc. ) and doesn't own a foundry, that's quite impressive. That just points out the obvious: they aren't solely focused on enthusiast products, so they might not be the first name you think of when it comes to high-end enthusiast-grade memory, but that doesn't mean they don't make any.

If you've been into PC overclocking for as long as I have, Kingston's enthusiast-focused HyperX products including memory and SSDs, along with system peripherals, are definitely familiar, but what's familiar is without question that HyperX name. Within the products HyperX offers is a series called "Predator", one with a long legacy of providing top-notch products that offer exceptional performance and high reliability backed with everything their parent company Kingston has to offer, and thanks to all those USB sticks and flash drives, those resources extend quite far.

Read full article @ TechPowerUp

Logitech G513 Review

Today we’re looking at the Logitech G513 gaming keyboard, packed with all of the wonderful features you expect, including RGB backlighting, 1ms response times, 26 key rollover, mechanical switches and an aluminium alloy construction.

This time around, unlike the Logitech G413 that we looked at a year ago, there’s a choice of three distinct Romer-G mechanical keyswitches, tactile, linear or GX Blue. To compare them to the market leader, the tactile is akin to a Cherry MX Brown, linear is similar to a Cherry MX Red and the GX Blue is most like the Cherry MX Blue. Logitech have provided us with both the Linear and Tactile Romer-G switches to test.

Read full article @ Vortez

Ring Alarm Review

Last month, Ring began taking pre-orders for its Ring Alarm home security system, and today it begins shipping. I've had a chance to spend some time with Ring Alarm, and I've found it's an easy-to-use security system that's useful with or without professional monitoring.

Priced at 199 for the base kit, the Ring Alarm comes with a base station, a separate keypad, one motion detector, one contact sensor for a door or window, and a range extender to help make sure all of your Ring accessories remain connected to your network.

Read full article @ Mac Rumors

Ryzen 7 2700X vs. Core i7-8700K: 35 Game Benchmark

Today we're finally bringing you the epic gaming battle between the Ryzen 7 2700X and Core i7-8700K that so many have been requesting. From AMD, the Ryzen 2700X packs 8 cores and 16 threads clocked between 3.7 and 4.3 GHz, depending on the workload. From Intel, the Core i7-8700K offers two less cores for a 6 core/12 thread configuration, but what this chip lacks in cores it makes up for in clock speed, operating at between 3.7 GHz and 4.7 GHz.

Read full article @ TechSpot

Samsung 970 Pro NVME M.2 SSD Review

The 970 series of SSDs enter a market that’s more challenging than ever before. With competition like the WD Black nipping at the 960’s heels, the 970 line has something to prove if it wants to retain its place as atop the mountain of consumer mindshare. Samsung seemed keenly aware that their competitors were drawing in and in some cases even surpassing the 960 series in performance, thus with the quoted specs, release window, and last minute price drop all seem calculated to undercut the competition and defend their place in the market.

It’s not all pricing and flying high on reputation, however, as the 970s bring with them core improvements over the 960. Foremost is the new Phoenix Controller. The controller features five cores, like the 960, but one is dedicated to increasing the speed of communications with the PC while the others feature higher clock rates to deliver a solid performance boost. The PRO also features new 64-layer 3D flash to improve latency and reduce power consumption.

Read full article @ MMORPG

Thermaltake Riing Silent 12 Pro Air CPU Cooler Review

Over the years Thermaltake has slowly, but surely, built an excellent reputation for the range of products they have on offer. While perhaps best known for their power supplies and CPU coolers, they have in recent years branched out into more areas, but that doesn’t mean that they’ve forgotten about some of their most popular products.

As such, we take a look at the Thermaltake Riing Silent 12 Pro, their latest offering in the world of CPU cooling. With some RGB lighting effects and an interesting fan mounting design, this cooler certainly catches the eye.

We should note, as you’re probably already wondering, ‘Riing’ is not a typo, the name does have two I’s. It’s not important, but we just wanted to make that clear before you started criticising our spelling.

Read full article @ eTeknix

Ultrawide gaming (3440x1440) benchmarks: what performance can you expect?

At Hardware.Info, we always test GPUs from AMD and Nvidia at the three most popular resolutions. For some years now they have been full HD, WQHD and ultra HD. However, the UWQHD resolution of 3440 by 1440 pixels, i.e. an extra-wide WQHD, is becoming increasingly popular among gamers. What performance can you expect on an ultra wide monitor?

The fact that ultra wide monitors are becoming more and more popular is all too apparent in the Hardware.Info test lab. For Hardware.Info Magazine #2/2018 (dutch link) we tested no less than twenty different UWQHD monitors with a resolution of 3440 by 1440 pixels. In our recent QHD buyer's guide we already paid a lot of attention to it.

Read full article @ Hardware.Info