Here a roundup of the latest reviews and articles:

Asus R9 290X Matrix Platinum
G.Skill Ripjaws 4 DDR4-2666 Memory Review – Exceptional Overclocking Performance
GTX 960 Gaming Rig Under $900 – Our Build Of The Week
MSI GT80 Titan SLI Review
MSI GTX 960 Gaming 2G Video Card Review: Aggressive yet Refined
MSI X99S MPower Board
OCZ Challenge update: 1x ARC 100 dies at 322TB
Phanteks PH-TC14S CPU Cooler Review
Plextor M6e Black Edition PCI Express SSD Review, M.2 In The Slot
Sennheiser Urbanite On-Ear Headphones Review
SteelSeries Siberia Elite Prism Gaming Headset Review
The Best CPU for the Money: AMD FX vs. Intel Budget Shootout
Thermaltake Toughpower 1500W Gold PSU Unboxing & Overview
TP-LINK Archer C9 AC1900 Dual-Band Router Review – Competitive Pricing and Performance!

Asus R9 290X Matrix Platinum

While Nvidia now has their latest GPU out, AMD is still relying on their 290X to lead the pack. Asus sent over their R9 290X Matrix Platinum so that we could finally put it through our benchmark suite and find out if AMDs flagship card with a healthy overclock can keep up with the latest and greatest from Nvidia. I’m especially curious to see how it performs compared to the competition in some of our higher resolution testing. With all of the fuss about memory issues on the GTX 970 it will be great to see how AMDs current flagship card is holding up.

Read full article @ LanOC Reviews

G.Skill Ripjaws 4 DDR4-2666 Memory Review – Exceptional Overclocking Performance

G.Skill has created quite a reputation for itself over the years among gamers, overclockers and enthusiasts alike, for creating exceptional memory kits, which are highly capable of overclocking for very competitive prices. So, it is no surprise that their latest in their flagship Ripjaws line, the Ripjaws 4 has been used to set the world record for DDR4 overclocking at an earth-shattering 4,255MHz! So, naturally, when G.Skill offered to send us a kit for review, we were thrilled and very excited to test this record-breaking memory.

Read full article @ TechnologyX

GTX 960 Gaming Rig Under $900 – Our Build Of The Week

Hey everybody, we’re back this week with another Build Of The Week, this time doing a GTX 960 Gaming Rig under $900. We originally wanted to do a build featuring the Nvidia GTX 960, What we ended up with is a system capable of doing Ultra/Max settings at 1080P 60FPS

Read full article @ TechnologyX

MSI GT80 Titan SLI Review

As popularity continues to grow for gaming on-the-go and large gatherings such as LAN parties, the mobile gaming platform has seen significant rise in demand. It’s true to say that gaming systems certainly becoming more portable but not everyone wants to transport their home system to an event. Gaming notebooks are certainly more portable as the user only has to drop the product into a satchel and away they go. To play games at a competitive level the best hardware is essential and today’s review sees us cast a critical eye over one of the most highly anticipated and much sought after gaming notebook ever.

Last month MSI used the glitz of CES 2015 to announce their new behemoth gaming notebook – GT80 Titan SLI. This new notebook refuses to take gaming lightly by offering a catalogue of ultra-high-end components such as: Intel core i7 4980HQ, 32GB DDR3, NVIDIA GTX 980M SLI and 4x SSDs in Raid0 to name but a few. GT80 Titan SLI also carries with it a strong lineup of innovative features and MSI are using this new product to showcase the “World’s first” mechanical keyboard to feature on a notebook. This is an extremely exciting product, so let’s delay no further and begin the review!

Read full article @ Vortez

MSI GTX 960 Gaming 2G Video Card Review: Aggressive yet Refined

The $200 segment of the video card market  is where the bulk of the mainstream PC gaming buyers run towards. It is a safe market to aim for just for the sheer number of interested parties, yet oddly enough the variant offerings introduced with the latest NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 video card are far from predictable, milquetoast and boring, especially … Read more.

Read full article @ Modders-Inc

MSI X99S MPower Board

The X99 platform has introduced many great features and new levels of performance for overclockers and professionals. The MPower series of boards are at the top of the enthusiast market, designed for serious overclocking beyond what standard liquid cooling can handle. We mean extreme as in LN2 and DICE. Frosty! The MPower brand is a favorite of custom system builders, overclockers and gamers that take things to a new level. As we move on in this review we will touch on some of these features that allows this board to withstand extreme overclocks and be a platform for professionals.

Read full article @ PureOverclock

OCZ Challenge update: 1x ARC 100 dies at 322TB

Regular readers will know of the challenge submitted to KitGuru by OCZ – to kill 5 of their ARC 100 Solid State Drives. If you need a recap, then head back to this original page posted on December 10th (http://www.kitguru.net/components/ssd-drives/zardon/ocz-challenge-kitguru-to-kill-5x-arc-100-ssd-drives/) .

The drives all passed the warranty figure of 300TB on 3rd February 2015 – but one of them has just failed with 322TB showing before failure.

Read full article @ KitGuru

Phanteks PH-TC14S CPU Cooler Review

Phanteks has been making a good name for themselves in the case market recently, but we have to remember they came into the industry making fans and CPU coolers. Today we will be taking a look at one of their latest CPU coolers, the PH-TC14S. This cooler incorporates the dual tower design and performance of the PH-TC14PE but in a slimmer form. The reason for the slimmer form factor is better compatibility. So this cooler is 100% compatible with tall RAM modules and larger motherboard VRM heatsinks. The cooler also features a dual-tower design, six large heatpipes and a single Phanteks PH-F140HP II PWM high static pressure fan. Can this cooler still gives us great performance? Read on as we find out!

Read full article @ ThinkComputers.org

Plextor M6e Black Edition PCI Express SSD Review, M.2 In The Slot

Last year, Plextor introduced its M6e family of solid state drives. The drives are / were offered in M.2 and PCI Express flavors, though technically the PCIe-based models were the same M.2 drives parked in a PCIe-to-M.2 adapter card. Regardless of the technicalities involved, the Plextor M6e’s specifications and performance were relatively strong, with peak read speeds topping the 770MB/s mark.

The original Plextor M6e, however, wasn’t much to look at. It featured a basic, green PCB and the M.2 SSD sat right in the middle for all to see. Plextor decided to kick things up a few notches with a new revision of the M6e, dubbed the Black Edition. The upcoming Plextor M6e Black Edition is similar to last year’s model in terms of its underlying technology, but it has been revamped with a new black and red aesthetic that may appeal to modders and gamers...

Read full article @ HotHardware.com

Sennheiser Urbanite On-Ear Headphones Review

Whenever we receive a set of headphones to review, we have a set criteria that we compare them to: quality, performance and price. While there are other factors that come into play, these really are the main three concepts that we focus on. When we first got the Sennheiser Urbanite on-ear headphones, we knew that we could expect the audio quality to be at the higher end – just by the manufacturer alone. As we opened it up and starting listening, we were thrown aback. We encourage you to keep reading as we break down our thoughts on the Sennheiser Urbanite.

Read full article @ TechnologyX

SteelSeries Siberia Elite Prism Gaming Headset Review

If things go as they should and all game publishers manage to roll-out their latest PC titles as planned 2015 may just turn out to be a great year for gamers around the world. The list of PC games scheduled for release in 2015 is very long but some of them really stand out like Grand Theft Auto 5, The Witcher 3, Batman Arkham Knight, Battlefield Hardline, Call Of Duty 12, EVE Valkyrie, Mad Max, World of Warships, Star Wars Battlefront, Entropy, Just Cause 3, Dreadnought, Galactic Civilizations 3, HomeWorld Remastered and Carmageddon: Reincarnation because let’s face it, gamers have been waiting for them for quite some time now (HomeWorld Remastered, Carmageddon Reincarnation and Grand Theft Auto 5 especially for many years now). Unfortunately whereas titles like EVE Valkyrie require players to spend a nice amount of money on VR headsets like the Occulus Rift just to be able to play (unless this changes until launch that is - we hope it does) the rest require the usual gaming peripherals for the best possible experience. Headsets are particularly important when playing games and the latest Siberia Elite Prism virtual surround sound headset by SteelSeries should be all you've ever wanted and then some.

SteelSeries is a gaming brand that leads the market in building peripherals with quality, innovation and purpose. The company’s passion has been the driving force behind many first-to-market innovations and technologies that continue to become the industry standard and have-to-have requirements of gamers. The global brand continues to support the growth of competitive gaming tournaments and electronic sports leagues through professional team sponsorships, partnerships and community support. The company surrounds itself with the passion and the commitment to being the best. It is with this mentality that SteelSeries chooses to partner with some of world’s most respected and recognized brands that work together to push the growth and evolution of the gaming industry into an even greater proposition.

The Siberia Elite Prism is not entirely new since it's basically an upgrade over the excellent Siberia Elite SteelSeries released in late 2013 so once again we find the same design featuring a retractable microphone, suspension headband, very large foam cushions (although painted dark grey), dual control dials and colorshift illumination on the exterior of both earcups. SteelSeries however used a new USB sound card model and did improve the specifications of the headset so although the new 50mm drivers share the same exact frequency response of 16Hz-28KHz with 32Ohm impedance as the old ones their sensitivity has been moved up to 120dB something which we all welcome since that should result to better/easier driver response. However the uni-directional microphone is what SteelSeries has changed quite a bit compared to the original Siberia Elite since it's entirely new so although it features noise cancelling technology like is predecessor it now has a frequency response of 100Hz-10KHz (as opposed to the 75Hz-16KHz of the original) with impedance of 2.2kOhm (same as the original) and -44dB sensitivity (the original had -38dB). This is indeed a little strange since the new microphone seems to be a step down from the old one but SteelSeries never leaves anything to luck. Of course the real question is whether or not the new Siberia Elite Prism is better compared to its predecessor the original Siberia Elite so let's find out for ourselves

Read full article @ NikKTech

The Best CPU for the Money: AMD FX vs. Intel Budget Shootout

These days you might expect buying a new processor to be fairly straightforward. The choice seems clear: Intel has proven to offer superior core performance with considerably greater efficiency. However, many enthusiasts argue that AMD offers better overclocking on its more affordable processors and therefore delivers a better bang for your buck. We put that notion to the test.

Read full article @ Techspot

Thermaltake Toughpower 1500W Gold PSU Unboxing & Overview

Thermaltake has been making power supplies for quite some time. They have models for all segments of the market, from entry level to PSUs that meet even the most extreme enthusiast’s demands. In fact, we’d venture to say, if you’ve been building systems for a while, odds are you’ve used a Thermaltake PSU at one point or another. Today we have a close up look at Thermaltake’s latest behemoth of a PSU, something that is definitely built for the enthusiast in mind, the Toughpower 1500W Gold.

Read full article @ TechnologyX

TP-LINK Archer C9 AC1900 Dual-Band Router Review – Competitive Pricing and Performance!

If there’s one thing everyone always seems to need, it is a new wireless router. Whether you’re using the mediocre solutions provided by your cable company, or an aging bargain model that you picked up at Target, chances are you could use a new one. In fact, we’ll venture to say that your old wireless router is literally the cause of your life’s problems. – Okay, maybe not. But still, it definitely isn’t helping.

We here at Technology X want to help you solve your problems, and to do so we’re bringing you a review of the all new TP-LINK Archer C9, which is an AC1900 dual-band wireless router.

Read full article @ TechnologyX