Here a roundup of todays reviews and articles:

Alien Isolation Community Preview event
AMD FX-8370 and FX-8370e Review
BitFenix Pandora
Blackberry Passport Review
Corsair Carbide Air 240 mATX Case Review
G.Skill Ripjaws4 DDR4-2400 16GB Memory Kit Review
Gamdias HADES Extension Laser Gaming Mouse
Genius GX Gaming Maurus X Optical Mouse Review
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 980 G1 Gaming Review
Guru3D Rig of the Month - September 2014
Lepa LV12 CPU Cooler Review
Mach Xtreme MX-ES Ultra SLC USB 3.0 Flash Drive Review (64GB)
Micron M600 (128GB, 256GB & 1TB) SSD Review
Micron M600 SATA & M.2 Solid State Drive Review
Micron M600 SSD Review (256GB/1TB) Review
Microns M600 solid-state drive reviewed
MSI 970 Gaming Motherboard Review
Raijintek Agos Mid-Tower Chassis Review
Sapphire Dual-X R9 280 OC Edition Review
Scythe Mugen Max Cooler Review
Silverstone AR06 Cooler Review
Sony Xperia Z3 and official Magnetic Dock Review
The Mi 10,400 mAh Power Bank Teardown
The typical enthusiast PC is more decked-out than you might think
Turtle Beach Earforce Z22 & Z60 Amplified PC Gaming Headset Review

Alien Isolation Community Preview event

Kitguru were lucky enough to receive an invitation to Creative Assembly’s offices last week for an early look at Alien Isolation. We thought that Sam Grant, being a big brave gamer type, would be the right person for job. We were wrong. Here is his account.

Read full article @ KitGuru

AMD FX-8370 and FX-8370e Review

The auto industry is something that seems to go through this endless cycle of refreshing car designs. Most years you don’t see any changes in the body styles of the vehicles but there are some minor tweaks made to the interior or the features that the car has available. At some point there comes a time when they have to make major changes though and make a brand new body style to entice people to purchase a vehicle. Maybe the new designs are futuristic looking and sleek, or maybe they are just efficient so that the gas mileage is improved. Regardless, everyone likes something that is shiny and new.

In a sense the computer industry goes through these same type of cycles. Components get more powerful but also tend to get smaller. Once a certain point is reached with the reduction of size a bigger bump in performance can be made by increasing the size of the components again. This is within reason of course, I don’t see us going back to the days of vacuum tubes, where one computer could take up an entire room. Those of us who are into computers are similar to the car buyer to the point that we always want the newest technology. I find myself having to constantly judge if the upgrade is worth it or not, and often it comes down upgrading at every other iteration.

Read full article @ HiTech Legion

BitFenix Pandora

BitFenix is looking to step things up in terms of the material mix with the Pandora. While plastic and steel have dominated their cases until now, the Pandora utilizes aluminium side panels and a bolder design. Will the Pandora bridge the gap between function and design or will it remain as elusive as a planet on which tall, blue creatures live?

Read full article @ techPowerUp

Blackberry Passport Review

Blackberry delivers proof that it's not hip to be square. THE BLACKBERRY PASSPORT is the Canadian phonemaker's comeback smartphone, and the firm is hoping the handset's "innovative" design will convince corporate buyers to ditch their Apple iPhone and Samsung Galaxy handsets.

While some might find the design of the Blackberry Passport baffling, the firm claims the handset's square display makes it the must-have smartphone for business users, offering more real estate than "boring" narrow smartphones, while acting as the perfect window for viewing documents and spreadsheets.

If you've read our Blackberry Passport hands-on review, you'll know that we weren't immediately won over by the smartphone. Read on to see if our opinions have changed.

Read full article @ The Inquirer

Corsair Carbide Air 240 mATX Case Review

Founded in 1994, Corsair quickly became known for their award winning memory and flash drives. Over the years, they slowly entered other computer peripheral markets such as keyboards, headphones, mice and cases. Each time they showed their strength in knowing what it takes to make high end hardware, while at the same time keeping the price reasonable. Their computer case line consists of the Vengeance, Graphite, Carbide and Obsidian; Legit Reviews has taken a look at many of these and has always been impressed with the quality and features. Releasing a new model is always met with anticipation and high expectations. Recently they introduced the Carbide Air 240, a micro ATX cube case that included a wide range of cooling and storage options. Read on to see how the Carbide Air 240 does when we use it on a system build.

Read full article @ Legit Reviews

G.Skill Ripjaws4 DDR4-2400 16GB Memory Kit Review

Recently we took a look at our first DDR4 memory kit, which was from Crucial. It was their JEDEC kit so it had no XMP profile and runs at the stock 2133 MHz as well as no fancy heatspreaders. Well the kit we are taking a look at today is much different. It has a nice set of heatspreaders and runs at 2400 MHz with timings of 15-15-15-25 at 1.2V. The kit we are talking about is G.Skill’s F4-2400C15Q-16GRK kit, which is a 16 GB kit. G.Skill will also be offering these kits in three different color options so you can match them to your motherboard, case and other components. Let’s get these modules in our X99 system and see what they can do!

Read full article @ ThinkComputers.org

Gamdias HADES Extension Laser Gaming Mouse

Standing out in the peripheral sector is a difficult thing to achieve. You can add a super sensitive sensor, adjustable weights, a silicon shell, an array of buttons, complex back end software - and gamers are likely to roll their eyes unless you give it all away at a price with zero margin. Gamdias opted to try something a little different with its HADES Extension Laser gaming mouse - opting for a hard plastic shell and magnetically attached finger grips.

Read full article @ KitGuru

Genius GX Gaming Maurus X Optical Mouse Review

As you may have read in my past review of the XTracGear Ripper, my family and I were looking for a car. After countless trips between the kitchen table and the Toyota dealership, we finally picked a car. The sleek new design and reliability of the 2015 Corolla S won us over. However, there were still many decisions to make after deciding on the model. We had to choose a color, the package we wanted, accessories, and payment options. With certain colors only available with certain packages, this painted a great big cloud above my head; no pun intended. This was not to mention all the accessories the dealership quite literally tried to push onto the table. They placed 3M samples, body side moldings, and door sill protectors in front of us. In the end, we chose the shiny Slate Metallic with an upgrade package. The final decision we had to make was all based on personal preferences, but could be summed up in two words: Form versus function. For me, my car has to look good, but more so, it has to be reliable and feel good at the same time. I feel the same applies to a mouse. As a tool that is essential in everyday computer use, a mouse must be both aesthetically pleasing and reliable. If the mouse had hands, they would have to fit in mine like it was made just for me, or meant to be. The candidate today in question is the Maurus X from Genius GX Gaming. GX Gaming was started by Genius back in 2011 to provide consumers with a customizable gaming gear at an affordable price tag. Clearly, the Maurus X does not look like your traditional two button left and right click mouse. With looks to boot, will it be the mouse with performance and reliability to stay on my desk? Let us find out.

Read full article @ APH Networks

Gigabyte GeForce GTX 980 G1 Gaming Review

An over-the-top cooler on Nvidia's finest GPU. Nvidia has used the leaner, meaner GeForce GTX 980 architecture to construct a GPU that's faster and far more energy efficient than the GeForce GTX 780 Ti going before it. Also cheaper to produce on the same 28nm manufacturing process, the GTX 980 has no single-GPU performance peer... and Nvidia knows this. Performance leadership is asserted through premium pricing. Basic GTX 980 cards start at £430 and rise to £500 for custom-designed models that elevate frequency and gaming potential in equal measure.

So while the GTX 970 is certainly the preferred option from a value point of view, the headline GTX 980 is where performance-seekers gravitate to. Charging more than £450 requires a partner company to invest in reference-beating cooling, enhanced frequencies and potential to overclock like the clappers. Hoping to hit all of these right notes is Gigabyte.

The Taiwanese manufacturer's recipe for producing high-end cards remains unchanged by the passage of time. Take the reference board as a blueprint, replace the cooler with a WindForce variant specified to a stupendous TDP, and then mesh the two together in one blockbuster package.

Read full article @ Hexus

Guru3D Rig of the Month - September 2014

We just adore hardware. And sometimes some you guys really make a PC that really stands out. We ask you to answer a few simple questions and send in photo's of your rig. Each month we'll have a look at the entries and perhaps pick you and post your PC with photo's and everything here at Guru3D.com Here you can find out what you need to do and win a nice prize package courtesy of Corsair.

Read full article @ Guru3D

Lepa LV12 CPU Cooler Review

When we have something provided to us, for example, our cars come painted nicely from the factory, and that paint job will surely last the lifetime of the vehicle, why is there the need to paint cars a custom color? Or to replace the wheels and tires on our cars when the tires are not worn out yet? There are thousands of aftermarket parts available for pretty much any car on the market, and yet a lot of those parts do not increase the drivability of our cars. They may increase appearance, or comfort, but if parts are not worn out, why is there the need for such a large market for aftermarket parts? The way I see it, each one of us is made up of the same composition, however, we are very different in what we like or dislike.

Read full article @ HiTech Legion

Mach Xtreme MX-ES Ultra SLC USB 3.0 Flash Drive Review (64GB)

In examining the flash industry over the past eight years, I don’t think many would argue that there has been insurmountable growth, paired with enough growing pains and obstacles along the way to frustrate even the best in the business. Flash technology has grown so fast that today it would be seemingly impossible to find anyone not tied to flash in some way. Within the business, you could harness exabytes of differing opinions yet, in this lies one thing all would agree upon; single level cell (SLC) flash reigns supreme. It is the best. If you are looking for endurance, it is untouchable. Our report of the Mach Xtreme MX-ES Ultra Flash Drive speaks to the first SLC flash drive that we have reviewed and, at least for those new to an understanding of flash memory, promises to provide us with a very educational report.

Read full article @ The SSD Review

Micron M600 (128GB, 256GB & 1TB) SSD Review

Those that have been following the SSD industry for a couple of years are likely aware that Micron does not sell retail drives under its own brand (unlike, e.g. Samsung and Intel). Instead Micron has two subsidiaries, Crucial and Lexar, with their sole purpose being the handling of retail sales. The Crucial side handles RAM and SSD sales, whereas Lexar is focused on memory cards and USB flash drives. The Micron crew is left with business to business sales, which consists of OEM sales as well as direct sales to some large corporations. Since the MX100 Micron and Crucial have had separate product planning teams and the M600 is the first Micron-only product to come out of that. Read on to see how the M600 differs from the retail MX100.

Read full article @ Anandtech

Micron M600 SATA & M.2 Solid State Drive Review

Samsung made some waves earlier this year with the introduction of its 850 Pro family of solid state drives and the first commercial iteration of 3D stacked flash memory. Micron is striking back with lower-geometry 16nm conventional NAND, however, and a new drive technology it claims will accelerate performance more effectively than other competing solutions.

The new Micron M600 family of solid state drives will launch at capacities ranging from 128GB to 1TB across multiple form factors. Conventional 2.5” SATA drives, mSATA, and the PCIe-capable M.2 platform are all supported with multiple drive sizes and form factors...

Read full article @ HotHardware.com

Micron M600 SSD Review (256GB/1TB) Review

As a reader on our site, you should be very familiar with Crucial and their highly regarded consumer SSDs. Most recently recently, they announced their newest drive the MX100. In our review, we found it to be a great value SSD as it offers its owners many enterprise grade features at a very competitive price, due in part to Micron’s latest 16nm MLC NAND.

On the other hand, Micron is typically known for their joint NAND flash venture with Intel, called IMFT. They are also known for their OEM and enterprise flash memory products. Their client level drives are typically developed with the Crucial consumer SSDs under the same team. This time around, Micron decided to split up development for their next generation client SSD and Crucial’s latest consumer drive, the MX100. Today, Micron we are reporting on their latest client level drive, the M600.

Read full article @ The SSD Review

Microns M600 solid-state drive reviewed

Micron's new M600 SSD has a dynamic write cache that can treat any block on the drive as high-speed SLC NAND. This unique feature is designed to help lower-capacity SSDs keep up with larger drives that have more NAND-level parallelism, and we've tested the 256GB and 1TB versions to see how well it works.

Read full article @ The Tech Report

MSI 970 Gaming Motherboard Review

As model names go, the MSI 970 Gaming sends a direct message in no uncertain terms. This motherboard uses an AMD 970 chipset that supports socket AM3+ and is aimed at punters who wish to build a PC using an AMD FX processor. The Gaming part of the name comes from the features that have been added to appeal to gamers, such as the Killer Gigabit NIC, Audio Boost 2, the Gaming Device Port and support for dual graphics cards in CrossFire or SLI.

Read full article @ KitGuru

Raijintek Agos Mid-Tower Chassis Review

Raijintek have been on a winning streak ever since they hit the market, launching one award-winning product after another. Their real strong point has been class leading performance at affordable prices when compared to the competition and their CPU and GPU coolers are a prime example of this. Raijintek are now looking to tackle the chassis market and we’ve got their budget friendly Agos at our disposal to see if they can do the same for the chassis market, as they have for the cooling market.

The Agos is certainly affordable, with a price tag of just under £40 from most major retailers. This is a fiercely competitive part of the market and while many of us dream of owning ultra high-end chassis products that cost £100, the reality is that £30-50 is where most of us end up spending our money, so it’ll be interesting to see what the Raijintek Agos has to offer for this kind of money.

The chassis comes equipped with all of the features you could ask for when building a gaming rig; lots of airflow with dust filters, modular storage bays, USB 3.0 support, water cooling support, room for large air coolers, space for extra fans, tool free drive installation and room for large graphics cards of up to 410mm; more than enough for even the largest cards on the market.

Read full article @ eTeknix

Sapphire Dual-X R9 280 OC Edition Review

With the Dual-X R9 280 OC Edition, Sapphire has a Radeon R9 280 graphics card in their portfolio, which is based on a custom PCB as well as a custom cooler. Apart from that this pixel accelerator also features an attractive price and therefore we're rather curious to find out what this card is actually capable of.

Read full article @ ocaholic

Scythe Mugen Max Cooler Review

The research and design crew at Scythe put together an idea for an entry into the XL cooler market by taking their popular Mugen Cooler series to a new level, the fruits of their labor being the Mugen MAX cooler. With a 140mm GlideStream fan and PWM controller, you get the cooling power you need to keep your CPU temperatures from reaching thermal shutdown.

Weighing in at only 720 grams without the fan, the Mugen MAX has a shifted heat pipe and cooler plate design. The taller design implements an increased spacing (2.6mm) between the larger dissipation plates, allowing for more airflow across these plates at fan speed settings monitored by the PWM controller. The slightly shifted design also allows for better compatiblity with the tallest of RAM heat sinks.

Using the exclusively designed Hyper Precision Mounting System (H.P.M.S.), this cooler assures precise contact with the system CPU. You can add a second fan using the supplied fan retention wire clips to further enhance the cooling potential. Now we just need to unbox this large but lightweight cooler and get some test results for comparison with ther tested coolers, but first let's take a look at the specifications, packaging and overall construction.

Read full article @ Neoseeker

Silverstone AR06 Cooler Review

Today we look at a very compact cooler in our Silverstone AR06 Review.

Read full article @ HardwareHeaven

Sony Xperia Z3 and official Magnetic Dock Review

Today I'm excited to bring you a user review of the new Sony Xperia Z3 as well as the accompanying Magnetic Charging Dock.

The Z3 comes in 4 colours, White, Silver Green, Copper and Black.

I have long been a Samsung smartphone user previously owning the Galaxy S2, S3, Note II and Note 3. I became accustomed to the way Samsung present their devices both in terms of hardware and software and that worked for me on the most part. Where it didn't work I knew I could customise the look and feel how I wanted it, after all customisation is what Android is all about!

Read full article @ Neowin

The Mi 10,400 mAh Power Bank Teardown

The Mi 10,400 mAh power bank is one of the most popular power banks in town, and why not? For only RM 36 (~US$ 11.50), you get a really slick and well-made power bank with four high-quality 18650 lithium-ion cells. That's DIRT CHEAP, especially when it comes with the following quality components :

Texas Instrument BQ24195 lithium cell charger (92% charge efficiency at 2 A)

ABOV 8-bit microcontroller with a 12-bit analogue-to-digital converter

Four units of LG or Samsung 18650 lithium ion battery cells (each with a capacity of 2,600 mAh)

So how does it look like inside? That's what we intend to show today with this teardown of the Mi Power Bank. Take a look!

Read full article @ TechARP

The typical enthusiast PC is more decked-out than you might think

Typical PC enthusiasts may spend more on their PCs than you might think and by the looks of it, their taste for high-end hardware isn't just limited to core components. Those are two of the main takeaways from the TR Hardware Survey 2014, in which we invited readers to answer 26 questions about their PCs. Around 4,000 of you participated over a period of about a week and a half, and the results paint an enlightening picture of current trends in the hobbyist PC realm.

Read full article @ The Tech Report

Turtle Beach Earforce Z22 & Z60 Amplified PC Gaming Headset Review

When it comes to PC gaming headsets there are few manufacturers in the industry that need no introduction. Today, Technology X has the privilege to delve deep into this category with none other than Turtle Beach. Turtle Beach has more than 35 years of audio experience, which means they have probably been producing high quality audio headsets longer than most of their users have been able to walk or talk.

Read full article @ TechnologyX