Here a roundup of the latest reviews and articles:

15-Way Radeon/GeForce Source Engine Comparison On Ubuntu 14.04 LTS
BitFenix Flo Gaming Headset Review
Cooler Master Nepton 280L CPU Cooler Review
Corsair Graphite 760T Full Tower Case Review
Crucial M550 512 GB
Dell Chromebook 11 Review
Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls Video Review
Intel 730 SSD Review
Kingston DataTraveler microDuo 16GB USB2.0 Flash Drive Review
Linksys EA6900 WiFi Smart Router AC1900 Review
Media Players and Video Formats: A Detailed Battery Life Analysis
MSI Nightblade Barebone System Review
NZXT H230 Case Review
Raidmax Cobra Z Case Review
RaspBMC (XBMC) Review
Razer Blackwidow Ultimate 2014
Scan 3XS Z87 Hadron Hydro review
Silverstone NB04 Notebook Cooler Review
The benefits of solid state drives

15-Way Radeon/GeForce Source Engine Comparison On Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

For ending out March here are benchmarks of 15 different AMD Radeon and NVIDIA GeForce graphics cards on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS when running several of Valve's Source Engine games: Half-Life 2: Lost Coast, Portal, Team-Fortress 2, and Counter-Strike: Source.

Read full article @ Phoronix

BitFenix Flo Gaming Headset Review

BitFenix, a company best known for their chassis development, has decided to venture into the peripherals market. The BitFenix Flo gaming headset, model BFH-FLO-KWSK1-RP, is their first attempt at the audio accessory market. The BitFenix Flo is a headset that is aimed at both PC gamers, and users on the go. With a removable microphone and interchangeable cables, the Flo can be used for that heavy gaming session at the PC or easily converted to be taken on the road.

Read full article @ Benchmark Reviews

Cooler Master Nepton 280L CPU Cooler Review

Bolstered by the success of their Seidon series of all in one water coolers, Cooler Master is stepping things up a notch by introducing the Nepton 280L. This represents an effort to offer up higher performance by utilizing the niche 280mm form factor and implementing several design additions to set the Nepton apart from its competition.

“Supersize me” is a fitting term for Cooler Master’s latest effort since everything built into the Nepton 280L has been upsized. It uses two 140mm fans, has a thicker radiator, boasts massive (for an AiO at least) tubing and even includes a completely custom water block design that’s supposed to drastically improve flow rates and CPU heat dissipation. Considering that most entrants in this market simply tow the same line by using rebadged Asetek and CoolIT derivatives, Cooler Master is hoping to breathe some new life into a somewhat stagnant market. However, is you might expect, there are risks associated with taking the path less travelled.

Read full article @ Hardware Canucks

Corsair Graphite 760T Full Tower Case Review

Corsair is constantly releasing new enclosures and expanding their products lines. The Graphite series of cases is one of four lines, and so far includes two models, the entry level Graphite 230T and the enthusiast grade 600T; both of which are mid-tower cases. Corsair has now expanded the line with the Graphite 730T and 760T, a full tower model. Read on to find out what the differences are on the new 760T chassis...

Read full article @ Legit Reviews

Crucial M550 512 GB

Crucial's new M550 SSD is based on an updated version of the Marvell controller, which means it no longer uses overprovisioning: you get to use the whole capacity. In our real-life testing we also see a slight performance improvement, which is great, especially considering the M550's competitive pricing.

Read full article @ techPowerUp

Dell Chromebook 11 Review

Introduction and designIt's official: manufacturers are hot on Chromebooks. Recently, Toshiba came out swinging with it's first browser-powered machine, and now Dell has followed suit. While more laptops is always good news, Chromebooks have grown stagnant, with every model using the same hardware. That's mostly because every unit runs Chrome OS, Google's cloud and browser-focused operating system. Other than some new Google Now implementation and an expanded app store, there has been little change to Chrome OS since it first debuted in May 2011.

Read full article @ Techradar

Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls Video Review

Today Kaeyi Dream reviews Reaper of Souls the latest expansion to Blizzard's epic action RPG Diablo III, find out how Kaeyi got on.

Read full article @ HardwareHeaven.com

Intel 730 SSD Review

Intel recently announced the series 730 SSD, and here we review it. The arrival of the new 730 series for consumers and is interesting as it is a product that uses the server slash data-center SSD DNA from Intel's current gen enterprise class products, and that my fellow gurus means reliability, durability and very fast performance. Let's check out the product in a nice lengthy review.

So, this is the arrival of new 20nm MLC based 730 series for consumers, it is aimed at high-end and enthusiast class consumers. The product tested today is in fact Intel's new flagship SSD. The new 730 SSDs debut in storage capacities of 240 and a whopping 480 GB, perhaps we'll see a 960 GB version in the future as well. The series 730 will be based on a 3rd generation Intel controller. The biggest change is to be found in the transition of using newer NAND flash memory which is now 20nm based on MLC, performance tweaks and endurance improvements.

Now, we've been testing NAND Flash based storage ever since the very beginning. And I've stated it a couple of times already, it really is surprising to see where we have gotten. The SSD market is fierce and crowded though. While stability and safety of your data have become a number one priority for the manufacturers, the technology keeps advancing at a fast pace as it does, the performance numbers a good SSD offers these days are simply breathtaking. 450 to 550 MB/sec on SATA3 is the norm for a single controller based SSD. Next to that, over the past year NAND flash memory (the storage memory used inside an SSD) has become much cheaper as well. Prices now roughly settle well under 1 USD per GB. That was two to threefold two years ago. As such SSD technology and NAND storage has gone mainstream. The market is huge, fierce and competitive, but it brought us to where we are today... nice volume SSDs at acceptable prices with very fast performance. Not one test system in my lab has an HDD, everything runs on SSD while I receive and retrieve my bigger chunks of data from a NAS server here in the office. The benefits are performance, speed, low power consumption and no noise. You can say that I evangelize SSDs, yes Sir... I am a fan, an SSD addict if you will.

Read full article @ Guru3D

Kingston DataTraveler microDuo 16GB USB2.0 Flash Drive Review

In many of my flash drive reviews I have mentioned that USB flash drives are so common these days that they are literally being given away to us and it is only once we move above the 16GB marker and over to USB3.0 compatible drives that we start to see the price rise up along with the performance. The basic recipe for a flash drive has barely changed – if at all in many years and this is simply a USB plug mounted on to a small PCB with a controller and some flash storage on the other end. Apart from the advances in performance, capacity and the maturity to the USB3.0 platform – a flash drive has always been a flash drive, but this has started to change as we are now seeing a new breed of flash drive come on to the market that is targeted for the mobile user as opposed to just the desktop and notebook user.

This new type of USB standard is called USB On-The-Go or USB-OTG for short. With mobile devices now becoming more integral in our lives, the need to have more storage to hand is greater than ever. For a couple of years now we have seen wireless hard drives flowing of the shelves and whilst they offer up a simple solution for expanding your storage capacity, they are not exactly small and they are not necessarily the cheapest way to solve the problem. An alternative solution to expand the storage capacity on a number of devices is to insert a microSD card, but once again this is not always possible with many products not having microSD card readers on them. Across every mobile device however there is one option that is available to work with – USB.

Read full article @ eTeknix

Linksys EA6900 WiFi Smart Router AC1900 Review

Today on our test bench we will be taking a look at the new top of the range Wi-Fi router from Linksys (now part of the Belkin group) the EA6900. Boasting a range of high end features and supporting the latest 801.11AC standard this product looks to set itself apart from the competition.

Read full article @ HardwareHeaven.com

Media Players and Video Formats: A Detailed Battery Life Analysis

Over the course of the last two weeks, I’ve been digging deep into what the optimal playback setup is for lengthening battery life. Throughout more than 145 hours of testing, I’ve looked at a range of Windows video players, including the stock Windows 8 app, Windows Media Player, VLC and MPC-HC, plus many encoding formats such as H.264, Xvid, and the all-new HEVC format.

This article won’t give you a rundown of every possible playback combination on every hardware platform – testing this would take far too long to be reasonable – but the results compiled so far are certainly enlightening.

Read full article @ Techspot

MSI Nightblade Barebone System Review

What if I told you that you can get about the same performance from a full system that is less than half the size of a mid tower. The MSI Nightblade packs all that into a tiny package, but can it perform. Let us find out.

Read full article @ Modders-Inc

NZXT H230 Case Review

NZXT is one of those chassis manufacturers which always seems to surprise with each entry by having some sort of special feature or tweak that makes it just that little bit more easy to use or maybe even adds to overall awesomeness in appearance. So needless to say we were intrigued when we got the H230 in house as it is designed to be a very budget friendly model with a MSRP of around $70 dollars and a present street price of $59.99 at our favorite etailer. Now we wanted to tear into it and show you what we find inside, so read on to see what the new H230 has in store for your budget friendly Mid tower building pleasure.

Read full article @ ThinkComputers.org

Raidmax Cobra Z Case Review

Are you in the market for a budget priced chassis that looks like you spent more? Introducing the Cobra Z from Raidmax, a mid tower case that offers a wide variety of hardware configurations and cooling support. Raidmax frequently leans toward a more budget build of case, yet they don’t seem to be lacking the interesting character which appeals to many builders. Does the new Cobra Z live up to the expectations builders look for in a budget case? Read on to find out!

Before we begin, Let’s hear from Raidmax…

Read full article @ PureOverclock

RaspBMC (XBMC) Review

And now for something completely different: a review of RaspBMC, a custom build of the XBMC free, cross-platform media center for Raspberry Pi micro-computer hardware, covering installation & setup, initial configuration, updates, media library, system performance, network sharing, and many associated problems like unreliable and slow network, low quality of metadata detection, no ability to install add-ons or setup weather locations, and more. Have fun.

Read full article @ Dedoimedo

Razer Blackwidow Ultimate 2014

Even though it seems like the mechanical keyboard market has been blowing up. It might surprise some of you when you think about the fact that the mechanical keyboard switch market hasn’t changed a bit. The closest thing to change was a few companies putting to use a few rarer keyswitches from Cherry, the manufacture of nearly all of today’s mechanical keyswitches. If you don’t have a lot of knowledge about mechanical keyboards, Razer’s introduction of their latest Blackwidow keyboard may not of caught your attention. But they did something no one else on the market is doing. They introduced a keyboard with their own mechanical keyswitch design. At first glance the switch looks a lot like a standard Cherry switch, but today I’m going to take a closer look to see what it’s all about and how it compares to what everyone else is running.

Read full article @ LanOC Reviews

Scan 3XS Z87 Hadron Hydro review

Core i7-4770K and GTX 780 Ti in a small, liquid-cooled PC. Scan Computers has turned its attention to the burgeoning small-form-factor (SFF) market, and with a long-standing reputation for producing high-performance machines, you won't be surprised to hear that the system integrator's latest compact gaming PC packs a serious punch.

Dubbed the Z87 Hadron Hydro, this new addition to the 3XS range is priced at a jaw-dropping £1,949 for the base-unit only, and is designed to prove that high-quality gaming can be delivered in small packages.

Read full article @ Hexus

Silverstone NB04 Notebook Cooler Review

Notebook coolers are a product that I know end users don’t often get excited about, and that is pretty understandable given that they serve a more practical purpose, rather than a function that you can enjoy. They do however provide a vital role when it comes to mobile computing and with more and more people using an ultra book, gaming notebook or similar style system as their main computer, there are one or two shortfalls that need to be navigated to fully enjoy them.

When you’re out and about, your system is in a low power state and you’re just doing some web browsing, then things are typically nice and cool inside your system, it doesn’t have to work too hard. When you’re at home with your rig, or perhaps you have a high-end laptop instead of a desktop that you only use at home or in the office, then there is a good chance that you’ll be running it from mains power, with all the settings dialled up to 11, playing games and plenty of other high-end tasks, this is when your system starts to break a sweat. Having some extra cooling under your system can have a massive impact on the overall system temperature and lower temps can often translate to better performance, as well as improve the lifespan of various components. Let’s not forget noise, laptop fans are often small with ultra high RPM, so offloading much of the work to a larger and quieter fan in a notebook cooler can bring benefits to your ears too.

Read full article @ eTeknix

The benefits of solid state drives

Is it time to ditch the mechanical hard disk? Think of any computer you have purchased over the last decade or two and, chances are, it was a system whose storage requirements were served by a hard disk drive (HDD). Armed with fast spinning disks and various moving parts, HDDs have been the dominant storage device in personal computing for quite some time but are now being replaced in certain environments where a modern-day solid-state drive (SSD) is a better fit.

Designed as a successor to the hard disk, an SSD technically contains no 'disks' in the traditional sense and instead uses flash memory modules to store data. This fundamental change means SSDs have no moving parts and are consequently more robust - there are fewer small parts at risk of failure, heat build-up is minimised, there is no perceptible noise, and flash-bashed drives are inherently more resistant to vibration and shock.

Read full article @ Hexus