Here a roundup of todays reviews and articles:

AOC Q2770PQU 27″ PLS Monitor Review
ASUS A88X-Pro AMD Motherboard Review
Bloody B540 Mechanical Keyboard and TL8A Laser Gaming Mouse Review
CM Storm Havoc Gaming Mouse Review
Coolermaster Nepton 140XL & 280L All-In-One CPU Water Cooler Review
Kingwin KF-252-BK Internal Hard Drive Hot Swap Rack Review
Lenovo ThinkPad 8 Tablet: Windows 8.1 And A Gorgeous Display
Microlab M-1910 Review
Noctua NH-D15 Review
Noctua NH-U12S
NVIDIA 337.50 Driver Performance Review
NZXT H440 Review
Raijintek Pallas Low Profile Heatsink Review
Should You Select MBR Or GPT When You Install A New Drive
Silverstone Raven Z RVZ01 Mini-ITX Case Review
Tivax MiTraveler 3D-8 Review
Windows Phone 8.1 Screenshot Gallery and Information
XFX Radeon R9 290 CrossFire Video Card Review at 4K Ultra HD
Xtorm LAVA CHARGER Universal Solar / USB Charger Review

AOC Q2770PQU 27″ PLS Monitor Review

For content writers and image editors such as myself, having a large display with a high-resolution to work on and maximise our workspace is virtually a must have and whilst a 1920 x 1080 workspace is usable, it’s not ideal – especially when you’re referencing from a data sheet or a reviewers guide. There is of course the option to have two displays side by side and this is great as it does give you the capacity to view two separate items at once with loads of space to work in, but having even more space to work within is highly sought after – in short a 1920 x 1080 resolution doesn’t quite cut it for me these days.

Going up from a standard HD resolution does mean that we generally have to go up in a physical dimension as well and above 24″ the next step is 27″. At this point we move to the 2560 x 1440 and 2560 x 1600 set of resolutions and whilst there is only a small difference in the height of each resolution, surprisingly there is a bigger gap in the price. This is part of the reason why many users stick to the standard HD workspace. Fortunately for the professional user group the number of monitors coming to market sporting the slightly lower 1440 pixel height is quickly growing and with 4K panels appearing in growing numbers, the price associated with moving up from 1920 x 1080 is dropping at a steady pace.

The Q2770PQU is one of AOC’s latest creations and like a number of their other products it’s not short of any features. On top of the 2560 x 1440 resolution, the display boasts a 80,000,000 : 1 dynamic contrast ratio, 5ms GTG (Grey to Grey) response time, 300cd/m² brightness, a pixel pitch of 0.233 x 0.233 mm and a super wide viewing angle of 178° (horizontal & vertical) – all from a LED backlit PLS panel. Top this off with a set of built-in 2W speakers, DVI-D, VGA, HDMI and DisplayPort inputs, a height adjustable and rotatable stand and finally a pair of USB2.0 & USB3.0 ports and what you’ve got is one mouth-watering package.

Read full article @ eTeknix

ASUS A88X-Pro AMD Motherboard Review

With the new Kaveri APUs out in full force, the Mantle API being used for high-profile games like Battlefield 4, and HSA finally coming into its own, FM2+ motherboards are all over the place. The A88X chipset paired with an FM2+ APU is a solid platform all by itself, but manufacturers have to spice things up in order to sell motherboards. In this article, Benchmark Reviews takes a look at the ASUS A88X-Pro FM2+ Motherboard.

Read full article @ Benchmark Reviews

Bloody B540 Mechanical Keyboard and TL8A Laser Gaming Mouse Review

Today we will be taking a look at more of their latest products and the first is a step up from the keyboard we looked at last time, the B540. It is a mechanical gaming model and pairs nicely with the TL8A from the Bloody ambidextrous gaming mouse range.

Read full article @ HardwareHeaven.com

CM Storm Havoc Gaming Mouse Review

Most people know Cooler Master’s gaming brand CM Storm and their long line of cases, keyboards, headphones, mice, and other peripherals. What seems to be missing is a high performancemedium-sized mouse. Well not anymore. Cooler Master sent us their new medium-sized CM Storm Havoc 8200 DPI Laser Gaming Mouse with an Avago 9800 Laser sensor and Omron micro switches. We put it through our test so let’s see how it performs.

Read full article @ ThinkComputers.org

Coolermaster Nepton 140XL & 280L All-In-One CPU Water Cooler Review

The water cooling market offers up some very fierce competition these days, there are so many great products to choose from that it is becoming harder and harder to find a product that is best for your system. The overall quality and performance of all-in-one water coolers has been increasing steadily over the years and with every company trying their hardest to be the best it’s near impossible to buy a poor water cooler, so long as you stick with brand names such as Enermax, Corsair, Cooler Master, Antec, etc. Cooler Master have long been a popular choice for CPU coolers, many of their air and water cooling products have won awards year after year for their performance and that’s something we’re hoping to see reflected again here today. With a few rival products recently launched the Nepton does have some tough competition on their hands, but the Nepton has proven to be a great product before, and these new ones promise to be even better.

In the office today I have not one, but two new product from the Nepton range and I’ll be putting the new Nepton 140XL 140mm cooler and the Nepton 280L head to head to see what they have to offer, while also seeing how they stack up against the competition. Obviously we’re expecting the bigger, more expensive 280L to perform better, but we really want to find out how much better. When you’re out shopping for a new CPU cooler, it’s important to balance your budget and performance needs, perhaps you’ll discover that the 140XL is more than enough for your rig, or if you’re in the market for the 140XL, you might find out that you really need the bigger 280L.

Read full article @ eTeknix

Kingwin KF-252-BK Internal Hard Drive Hot Swap Rack Review

Kingwin's KF-252-BK has shown to be an effective way to save time and desk space while working with multiple hard drives. This hot-swappable rack installs quickly inside a spare 5 ¼" bay and is compatible with both 2.5" and 3.5" SATA drives in any capacity. Construction is solid and all necessary cabling and installation hardware is included for a very fair price of $16.

Read full article @ Tweaknews

Lenovo ThinkPad 8 Tablet: Windows 8.1 And A Gorgeous Display

Lenovo is targeting its ThinkPad 8 at business users, which makes sense. Everyone values portability and power, but it’s the business user who’s most likely to say “I need my tablet to be capable of doing everything that my main PC can do.” With a full 32-bit version of Windows 8.1 and a 19200 x 1200 display, the Lenovo ThinkPad 8 very nearly can...

Intel’s Bay Trail Atom CPU powers the Lenovo ThinkPad 8. The Intel Z3770 quad-core Atom chip in the ThinkPad 8 runs at up to 2.39GHz, thanks to Intel Turbo Boost. That’s a bit faster than the chip running the Dell Venue 8 Pro (a rival 8-inch, Windows 8.1 tablet) we recently reviewed, but it’s not the processor that’s going to get the attention of customers comparing the ThinkPad 8 to a Dell tablet: it’s the ThinkPad 8's extremely sharp 1920x1200 full HD display, which we'll discuss on the following pages, that will turn heads...

Read full article @ HotHardware

Microlab M-1910 Review

It can become quite a chore to find a do it all 5.1 surround speaker system that can provide the versatility that people increasingly desire for their multimedia uses. Considering most sub £100 5.1 systems come equipped with simply multi-channel RCA and/or 3.5mm jacks for the front, centre/sub, and rear speakers, the M-1910 from Microlab addresses this need. Equipped with four input sources that can be selected via the included remote control, the M-1910 allows for various media devices to be connected all at once. To top it off, the use of PCM technology allows the M-1910 to stream uncompressed audio for high quality lossless sound.

Read full article @ Vortez

Noctua NH-D15 Review

Today we’re looking at the brand new Noctua NH-D15, which despite what the name may indicate, will not sit alongside the NH-D14. Instead, it replaces it as a new model.

The NH-D15 is one of the more hotly anticipated CPU coolers in recent memory. Part of this has to do with just how well the NH-D14 performed. I think what really got people excited though, was the NH-U14S. This single tower cooler, paired up with Noctua’s custom “14cm fan on a 15cm frame” NF-A15 fans, was able to outperform the venerable NH-D14 and in fact all other dual tower coolers it went up against. A lot of this performance was attributed to the new fans as well as an improved heatpipe design.

As you can guess, people immediately wondered what would happen if Noctua came out with a new cooler that combined the fan and heatpipes of the NH-U14S, but in a dual tower “D series” design. Well here it is – the NH-D15.

Read full article @ HCW

Noctua NH-U12S

Noctua has always been known for their quality products and high performance air coolers. The issue with tower air coolers is that they often tend to be large, heavy and cover up portions of your motherboard under their bulk. While most companies have shifted their focus to the less intrusive all-in-one liquid coolers, Noctua has stayed true to their air cooling roots. Today we take a look at their NH-U12S performance cooler; a tower cooler in a smaller, more space friendly package that promises the same performance you would get out of larger, bulkier models and run it through our tests. Is the age of air cooling at an end or just in transition? We’ll find out.

Read full article @ LanOC Reviews

NVIDIA 337.50 Driver Performance Review

At the Game Developers conference a few weeks ago, Microsoft started outlining DirectX 12. With partial feature-based backwards compatibility with many current DX11 GPUs, cross-platform implementation, performance optimizations aplenty and a focus on minimizing API overhead, it could bring PC gaming to the next level. We’ve already covered DX12 and what it means to developers and GPU manufacturers alike. Both AMD and NVIDIA are striving towards building optimizations for today’s workloads alongside preparations for Microsoft’s new API rollout in 2015. AMD’s foray into API tuning, called Mantle, has already made waves in the developer and gaming communities but now NVIDIA is trying their hand at low level, high gain performance optimizations through the new 337-series drivers.

The timing behind the 337-series driver was highly strategic, coinciding perfectly with AMD’s R9 295X2 launch. While the new drivers were used in our R9 295X2 review, I decided against refocusing my writing attention at a critical time within the AMD review so this article is only going live now. NVIDIA’s new drivers are well tailored as a weapon of mass distraction for reviewers because, well, they’re very good.

Read full article @ Hardware Canucks

NZXT H440 Review

The NZXT H440 aims to make the new and revamped H series part of the mid-tower market. Offering no external drive bay is either gutsy or naïve, but let us take a closer look to figure out whether NZXT managed to gun for the glory among silent mid-tower cases this time around.

Read full article @ techPowerUp

Raijintek Pallas Low Profile Heatsink Review

Standing just 69mm tall, the Raijintek Pallas CPU cooler is probably the largest low profile heatsink Frostytech as tested in recent memory. Raijintek's low profile Pallas heatsink is constructed around six 6mm diameter copper heatpipes and a 120x140mm array of nickel-plated aluminum fins. A chunky copper base plate helps spread the heat to the six heatpipes.

Read full article @ Frostytech

Should You Select MBR Or GPT When You Install A New Drive

Whenever someone installs a new drive into a Windows-based PC, there's the inevitable question, "Which should I choose - MBR or GPT?"

This is because once you boot up after installing the new drive, Windows will display a pop-up window, asking you to initialise the disk so that Windows can access it. It is at this point you have to choose between the MBR (Master Boot Record) and the GPT (GUID Partition Table) standards for partitioning the drive.

To top it off, there's a note that the GPT partition style is not recognized by all previous versions of Windows. To a newbie, that's not a note. That's a warning that sets off alarm bells.

Read full article @ TechARP

Silverstone Raven Z RVZ01 Mini-ITX Case Review

With the arrival of Big Picture mode on Steam and Valve's Debian-based SteamOS, the call for Mini-ITX boxes has exploded as many gamers look for a solution that is more flexible than consoles and more compact than desktops. Having taken notice, case makers including Silverstone are answering that demand.

Unveiled at CES this year, the latest member to Silverstone's Raven family quickly gained recognition for being the ultimate Steam Machine enclosure. Called the Raven Z RVZ01, this gaming chassis is among the best compact designs we've seen for cramming a fully-fledged enthusiast PC into an impressively small space.

Read full article @ Techspot

Tivax MiTraveler 3D-8 Review

The tablet marketplace has become extremely buoyant in the last 3-4 years – so much so that it can almost be guaranteed that the average household will own at least one of these products. The bigger, well-known brands have mostly dominated the spotlight by being at the very forefront of innovation. Emerging from their shadows, a number of brands also want a slice of the pie and for consumers a competitive market place can bring down prices, which can only be a good thing.

Today we are to look at a new android-based tablet which boasts viewable 3D technology without the need to use 3D glasses. 3D-8 uses JellyBean for its Operating System and promises to deliver captivating visuals along with the usual plethora of mobile features.

Read full article @ Vortez

Windows Phone 8.1 Screenshot Gallery and Information

Ghacks reader Swapnil was nice enough to send over a truckload of Windows Phone 8.1 screenshots and information, and I decided to post them as a gallery here on the site. This is not your typical Ghacks post though so keep that in mind. I merely linked all the information that he provided me with and uploaded all photos that he took to the site.

Read full article @ gHacks

XFX Radeon R9 290 CrossFire Video Card Review at 4K Ultra HD

If you are looking for a graphics card for a high-end gaming system that can push a 4K Ultra HD display or triple panel configuration you have a number of choices from both AMD and NVIDIA. More than likely the AMD Radeon R9 290 series and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 series are going to be the cards that have the horse power to get the performance you need to accelerate all those pixels at a playable frame rate. If you are looking at AMD cards, the AMD Radeon R9 295X2 is pretty sweet, but it carries a rather impressive $1499 price tag when it releases on April 21st, 2014. If you have a high-end gaming rig and a 4K display you can likely afford that, but what about those that don’t want to spend that much money on a graphics card. We recently reviewed the XFX Radeon R9 290 Double Dissipation and had the opportunity to get a second card in for additional thermal testing. Since we had two identical cards sitting on the test bench we figured that we’d flash the BIOS in order for the cards to be identical and run some CrossFire tests with AMD’s latest Catalyst 14.4 Beta drivers...

Read full article @ Legit Reviews

Xtorm LAVA CHARGER Universal Solar / USB Charger Review

Summer is almost here and so just like every other summer in the past we've all started to look around for gadgets that will make your life easier during your long awaited vacations by the beach. With the sun being the dominant feature of the summer period our eyes and minds are of course turned towards solar powered gadgets and although there aren't that many reputable manufacturers out there that offer such products still we did manage to find a few to test their products. Up until 2 years ago the popularity of portable battery packs was not really that great but with the continuous advancement of tablets and smartphones today pretty much every person i know of owns at least one. Xtorm may not be a name that many of us have heard in the past but they are a well-established manufacturer of power banks inside the EU and today we will be testing their latest offering called the LAVA CHARGER.

Read full article @ NikKTech