Here a roundup of todays reviews and articles:

3x Lenovo Y50-70 review: does WD's SSHD work as advertised?
AORUS Thunder M7 MMO Gaming Mouse Review
ASUS ROG GeForce GTX 980 Poseidon Review
ASUS ROG Gladius Gaming Mouse Review
Asus TP300L Transformer Book Flip Review
Case Mod Friday: Ex-Box PC
Droid Turbo vs MotoX 2014
G.Skill Phoenix Blade (480GB) PCIe SSD Review
Gigabyte H81M-S2PH Motherboard
Intel Core i7-5960X Review
Lenovo IdeaPad Y50-70 UHD 4K review - Amazing
Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro Hands-On Video Review
Seagate to launch affordable 8TB Archive consumer Hard Drive
Surface Pro 3: Six Months Later
Tesoro Durandal Ultimate Mechanical Keyboard Review
Xbox One TV Tuner Review

3x Lenovo Y50-70 review: does WD's SSHD work as advertised?

This article features three almost identical laptops, but with good reason. Sometimes, you may run into somewhat unusual results while testing products, which demands additional research. This takes time, but as far as we're concerned, it's well worth the effort. We encountered such unusual results for the Lenovo Y50-70, which is why we ended up introducing a total of three test models to our test bench.

The Lenovo Y50-70 is a laptop that has clearly been designed for speed fanatics. Offering a combination of a 15.6″ Full HD display and a GeForce GTX 860M, it's also more than capable of running most games. Pricing is rather competitive, starting at a little over 900 euros. The most high-end model of the lot is significantly more expensive at an average price of some 1450 euros. We will highlight the differences later during this article.

Read full article @ Hardware.Info

AORUS Thunder M7 MMO Gaming Mouse Review

The AORUS Thunder M7 MMO Gaming Mouse is a 16 button fully-programmable gaming mouse. Featuring an advanced 8200dpi laser and the utlra-durable Omron switches. Combine these features with AORUS’s robust “Macro Engine”, and you’ve got yourself one sweet little mouse. We at Benchmark Reivews have been given the opportunity to review a few of their products, in this review we’re going to be talking about the AORUS Thunder M7 MMO Gaming Mouse. Let’s dive in!

Read full article @ Benchmark Reviews

ASUS ROG GeForce GTX 980 Poseidon Review

We test the ASUS GeForce GTX 980 Poseidon, available under product code ASUS POSEIDON-GTX980-P-4GD5. Armed with a massive liquid cooling block (DirectCU H2O), a custom PCB, quality components and a factory overclock this product is bound to perform, whilst staying silent. The card has 4 GB graphics memory, is energy efficient and factory overclocked for you. Oh and hey, it overclocks very nicely! The customized product is equipped with a massive cooler that can chill down the graphics card with air-cooling, but preferably you can connect it to a liquid cooling loop. Yup, you get to decide how to use it. Even on air the card remains quiet and keeps temperatures under 70 Degrees C. This particular GeForce GTX 980 is part of the Republic of Gamers lineup and will feature DIGI+ VRM, highly-durable black metallic capacitors and the DirectCU H2O cooler which combines air and liquid cooling to allow for better performance and quieter operation.

The PC market is interesting, it has been on a decline for sure, but here at Guru3D.com we've noticed an opposite trend. Gaming PCs are getting more and more popular, much like an American muscle car, or should we say card. We all want a beast of a gaming rig as, let’s face it, PC gaming as an experience is just so much better than anything else out there. Roughly a year and a half ago it became apparent that Nvidia was brewing a new GPU architecture under codename Maxwell. Yes, named after the mathematical physicist. The Maxwell family of GPUs is actually the 10th generation of GPU architecture for Nvidia. With several design goals in mind (higher performance and lower power consumption) Nvidia was hoping to reach 20nm by the time their high-end product would be released. It is now September 2014 and it is abundantly clear that the 20nm nodes are not yet viable for volume production of wafers with huge transistor counts. So Nvidia pretty much had to go with plan B and stuck with 28nm, this makes their silicon sizable, in relative proportions of course. None the less, Nvidia has moved forward and today the 2nd Maxwell based products (GTX 750 was actually the first trial) are being released as GM204 based GPUs. Yes, correct, GM204 and not GM210, meaning Nvidia is once again using the ‘high-end’ and not ‘enthusiast class’ chip to empower the product series we are about to review. Armed with voltage, power and load limiters, Nvidia these days can harvest massive performance out of chips when you think about it. They did the very same with Kepler really, GK104 versus GK110 anyone? So Nvidia certainly is doing something right. Today is testimony to that as we see a product performing in the GTX 780 Ti range of performance, but which will consume much less power. That’s actually a primary feature design target for Maxwell, more performance with less power consumption. The GPU used thus is the 28nm GM204, and the two derivatives created from it are the GeForce GTX 970 and 980. Ah, you noticed? Yes, correct, Nvidia decided to skip the 800 series to avoid confusion with some of their rebranded mobile parts. Maxwell is a new and sound architecture and as such it is released with a new series name. In this article we will have an extensive look at the architecture behind Maxwell, we will look at gaming performance from Full HD to Ultra HD, we will look at power and thermal characteristics and will serve you that on a silver platter with a nice photo-shoot here at Guru3D.com, of course.

Read full article @ Guru3D

ASUS ROG Gladius Gaming Mouse Review

ASUS has brought forward a gaming mouse that complements the Republic of Gamers product family that's sure to grab your attention with its fierce appearance, high end features, and a strangely familiar ergonomic design. The ROG Gladius is named after the signature handheld weapon of Ancient Roman generals to complement the Maximus motherboard named after the title given to highly respected generals. This neat tidbit is printed on the inner side of the front flap on the box. It's rare to see ASUS produce gaming peripherals, but the ROG Gladius is hardly their first gaming mouse and ASUS has more than proven their design and production capabilities in several computer hardware categories.

Read full article @ Legit Reviews

Asus TP300L Transformer Book Flip Review

The Asus TP300L Transformer Flip is a 13.3-inch thin and light laptop that doubles up as a Windows 8.1 touch screen tablet. This is a neat trick that hinges, ahem, around the hinge. Instead of simply allowing you to open the screen and fold it back to a comfortable viewing angle you can swing the screen through a full 360 degrees until it ends up on the underside of the keyboard.

Read full article @ KitGuru

Case Mod Friday: Ex-Box PC

Welcome to another Case Mod Friday showcase! This week we have Aaron Howe's “Ex-Box PC” build. Here is what he had to say about it: I used to work for xbox tech support, and after leaving their employment I repaired 360's on the side. Due to this I had some extras lying around, and wanted to see if it was possible to put a computer inside of one without any major components sticking out. All previous builds you could see GPU fans, or CPU coolers sticking out, and I felt like that was ugly. I wanted to make it be a 'sleeper' - so that is what I set out to do, and believe I accomplished.

Read full article @ ThinkComputers.org

Droid Turbo vs MotoX 2014

This fall I had the chance to take a look at two of the most popular Android phones on the market and compare how well each of them performed compared to each other. The response to that was overwhelmingly positive. So to follow up with that today I will be taking a look at another pair of flagship Android phones, this time the Droid Turbo and the latest version of the MotoX. While both phones have a lot of similarities, a lot of you might still be wondering which phone is best for you. Today I’m going to run through their features, performance, and find out if one or the other stands out from the crowd.

Read full article @ LanOC Reviews

G.Skill Phoenix Blade (480GB) PCIe SSD Review

G.Skill hasnt been a very visible SSD OEM lately. Like many DRAM module companies, G.Skill entered the market early around 2009 when the market was very immature and profits were high, but lately the company has more or less been on a hiatus from the market. Even though G.Skill has had an SF-2281 based Phoenix III in the lineup for quite some time, it never really did anything to push the product and a Google search yields zero reviews for that drive (at least from any major tech review outlet). However, back at Computex this year G.Skill showcased a prototype of its next generation SSD, the Phoenix Blade, and we finally got a sample that we put through our extensive testing. 

Read full article @ Anandtech

Gigabyte H81M-S2PH Motherboard

We analyzed the Gigabyte H81M-S2PH, a value socket LGA1150 motherboard based on the Intel H81 chipset. It has only two memory sockets, one PCI Express x16 slot, two USB 3.0 ports, two SATA-600 ports, and supports legacy serial and parallel ports.

Read full article @ Hardware Secrets

Intel Core i7-5960X Review

Intel's Core i7-5960X is its first ever eight-core processor for the general public. You could have bought a vastly more expensive octocore Xeon to drop into an old PC, but this is the full Core monty. And it's a bit special.There sure is a lot of silicon given over to the graphical components of most of today's other processors though. Intel's standard Haswell architecture throws millions of transistors at its HD graphics component, and AMD's latest Kaveri chips are only a couple of percentage points from being a complete half-and-half split between processor and graphics.For us enthusiast-type folk, though – more used to strapping a big shiny graphics card to our motherboard than relying on weak-heart integrated GPUs – that's a lot of redundant die space we're paying for. It also sounds like an awful lot of space we could be shoving extra CPU cores into, doesn't it? And that's exactly what Intel's high-performance CPU range has been doing for the last few years. The Extreme line of Intel's processors represents the pinnacle of its desktop chips, cramming in more cores than any desktop chip available. For the most part, anyway.But despite shrinking in production process, even the Extreme range has been stuck fast at six cores for a long while. That's despite AMD already banging the octo-core drum – albeit to little effect – and Intel's own server parts rocking six cores and 12 threads over four years ago.Finally though, Intel has decided to up the ante on its Extreme consumer chips and is giving us a bona fide eight-core processor with the top end of its new Haswell-E processors. The Core i7-5960X is that chip, and is the first octo-core chip with Intel's powerful Core architecture squeezed inside.

Read full article @ Techradar

Lenovo IdeaPad Y50-70 UHD 4K review - Amazing

Let's talk hardware. Here's a very long and thorough review of Lenovo IdeaPad Y50-70 high-performance gaming laptop, with 15.6-inch UHD 4K (3840x2160px) display, hybrid Nvidia GTX 860M and integrated Intel 4500HD graphics, four-core eight-thread fourth-gen i7 processor, 16GB RAM, and 1TB storage, covering design, look & feel, initial setup, customization of Windows 8.1 and removal of promotional software, Classic Shell and local account setup, 4K versus 1K display considerations and real-life use, Steam and games, boot time, suspend & resume, battery life, Wireless connectivity (2.4GHz and 5GHz), peripherals, BIOS/UEFI setup with hard disk password and Secure Boot, Ubuntu 14.04 live session testing, hardware detection and resizing of partitions with GParted, imaging, backups, other tests, and more.

Read full article @ Dedoimedo

Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro Hands-On Video Review

The Yoga 3 Pro one of the first hybrid ultrabooks to hit the market powered by Intel's new low power Core M Broadwell processor.

In a nutshell, you can think of Broadwell as a full-featured Intel Core series notebook processor that performs at near-tablet power consumption envelopes (4.5 Watt TDP)...

In our flurry to dive into our detailed performance review of the new Yoga 3 Pro, we had to forgo the video hands-on demo we typically like to pull together for a hot new notebook like this. However, today we're making good on our effort to bring you an up close and personal perspective of what's hot in the land of mobile tech this holiday season, with a quick hands-on video review to follow-up our deep dive...

Read full article @ Hothardware

Seagate to launch affordable 8TB Archive consumer Hard Drive

Seagate's new 8 Terabyte Archive HDD hard drive will launch in January 2015.

Storage is one of the few things where regular platter-based drives beat Solid State Drives in. Not only do these hard drives offer storage capacities at the higher end that SSDs don't offer yet, they are also much cheaper when you compare the price per Gigabyte or price per Terabyte.

There are only a couple of hard drive makers left, most notable Seagate and Western Digital (which owns HGST as well) that produce platter-based drives and it comes down to selecting a drive or drives from one of the two companies.

Read full article @ gHacks

Surface Pro 3: Six Months Later

It's a keeper. On June 20, 2014, Microsoft released the Surface Pro 3, and the company has since filled out the product lineup with additional models and dramatically expanded availability around the world. I've been using Surface Pro 3 since day one—which actually dates back to May—and was thinking it may be time to follow-up my Surface Pro 3 Review with some longer-term thoughts.

Read full article @ WinSupersite

Tesoro Durandal Ultimate Mechanical Keyboard Review

Today I woke up and realized, "Woah, Christmas is only thirteen days away!" This month is an oddity for myself, because it is the first time in three years where I do not have the burden of studying for finals. On the other hand, it is also the first time I only have a week off for the holidays. Unfortunately there are some things that never change, including the difficulty of finding gifts for people. Without fail, every year when December rolls around, I come to the realization I have zero gift ideas for everyone on my list. It is not like I hide in a hole for the other 364 days of the year, ignoring people. However, gifts are not on my mind until the twelfth month of the year. In my case, there are three groups for my friends, and none of them are mutually exclusive. The first group of friends are the ones that do not know what they want, or do not want anything. You may think this is the worst group of friends to deal with, especially since they are as clueless as I am. However, these people are easy to shop for, since you can just ask them what they like. It might be predictable, but at least it works. The second group are the people who are pickier than others, and are opposed to receiving certain types of gifts. The third group of friends are those who have everything they want. If they ever see something they want, they end up buying it themselves. The problem is everything they like is probably already in their possession. Do not get me wrong, I still like buying and giving gifts to my friends, but some are easier to shop for than others. However, when it comes to products, the reverse is true. The bigger problem is when the product does not have anything, and you are left wanting more. Likewise, if the product has all the features I want already, it does not make me wish for more. As for today's review of the Tesoro Durandal Ultimate, I can ask the same questions. Is it lacking features that keep it from its "ultimate" status, or is it the full package, with everything users want in a mechanical keyboard? Luckily, I have the privilege of answering these questions today. My only hope is this review is easier to deal with than gift shopping.

Read full article @ APH Networks

Xbox One TV Tuner Review

Besides gaming, the Xbox One is pretty handy as an all-in-one home entertainment tool. Oneguide and the overall integration with your cable box is certainly impressive, but the key item is the cable box. If you're using free-to-air TV, there hasn't been any integration at all. Until now. For selected markets in Europe there's now this, the Xbox One TV Tuner and for all intents and purposes it's designed to provide the same exact experience as plugging your cable box into your console. Only without the cable box.

Read full article @ Windows Central