Here a roundup of todays review's and articles:

4K Gaming PC - August 2015
AMD Radeon R9 Nano tipped for launch on Thursday
AVerMedia Live Gamer Extreme GC550 Review
Chillblast Helios Review
Corsair Strafe Mechanical Keyboard Review
EVGA Z170 FTW Motherboard Review: An Overclocking Gambit
Gears of War Ultimate Edition Review
How to Upgrade a Linux Dual-Boot System to Windows 10
Inno3D iChill GeForce GTX 980 4GB Ultra Review
Intel Core i5 6600K Skylake Linux CPU Benchmarks
Intel Launches New Socketed 5x5 mini-PC Motherboards
Kingston HyperX Savage 480GB SSD Review, The Savage VS The Laptop Platter Drive
Netis WF2150 N600 Wireless Dual Band USB Adapter Review
Nubee NUB8500H Temperature Gun Non-contact Infrared Thermometer Review
Seagate Personal Cloud 2 Bay Review
Tenda W568R Wireless N900 Concurrent Dual-band Gigabit Router Review
Top 10 Hidden Windows 10 Features

4K Gaming PC - August 2015

After a few years in which little happened in the area of PC displays, the 4K revolution is finally taking place. Graphics cards have to render four times as many pixels to drive a 4K display, while the game textures are only getting more detailed. In short: you need real horse power to game in 4K.

A fast processor and especially a graphics card is a must. For now, you even need a couple of the latter. However, the rest of the configuration needs to be balanced as well. Since many gamers prefer to overclock their PC to improve performance, it is important to choose a motherboard that is suitable for this.

Having the right accessories is equally important. The goal of our 4K Gaming PC is to be able to run virtually all new PC titles on the highest settings. That means high graphics quality settings, a good frame rate, and surround sound. And let’s not forget a good gaming mouse and a decent keyboard with features to enhance your PC gaming experience. Besides that, a nice gaming monitor will also help bring your gaming experience to the next level.

Read full article @ Hardware.Info

AMD Radeon R9 Nano tipped for launch on Thursday

And new comparative benchmarks were shown by AMD at the Hot Chips symposium. AMD's 'ground breaking' Radeon R9 Nano will launch this week, says a new report. Thai tech site Zolkorn says that its sources indicate that the launch date is Thursday 27th August. Just under a month ago we heard that the Nano cards were already shipping to retailers.

Back in June when we saw the AMD Radeon R7 300 and Radeon R9 300 series and the AMD Radeon R9 Fury family officially launched we were told to expect the R9 Nano to appear in Q3 this year, so the above date is very plausible. Add to this the AMD UK tease last week suggesting that the Nano "is just around the corner". Does a weekend form a corner in time?

Read full article @ Hexus

AVerMedia Live Gamer Extreme GC550 Review

Video games used to be an exclusively offline affair, especially since the Internet wasn't really a commercially-available reality until several years later. Then, we were introduced to online gaming, providing us with the opportunity to play with other people without having to leave our mother's basements. Today, we've gone several steps further with the rising popularity of live game streaming and you need to have the right hardware to do that.

When you are gaming on your console of choice, you might want to look into the recently launched AVerMedia Live Gamer Extreme. The external game capture card connects to your PC via USB 3.0 to provide uncompressed full HD 1080p video at 60 frames per second, all with "almost no latency" as it passes through to your monitor or TV. Does this take game recording and streaming to the extreme? Let's dig in and find out.

Read full article @ MEGATech Reviews

Chillblast Helios Review

Featuring a slim-and-light design, silver aluminium unibody casing and black chiclet-style keyboard, there's no prizes for guessing who Chillblast is trying to appeal to with its 14-inch Helios ultrabook. All that's missing is a black fruity logo.At £700 (around US$1,098, or AUS$1,501) it's around £150 (around $253 or AUS$321) cheaper than Apple's entry-level 13-inch MacBook Air while offering a higher-resolution display and a faster Intel Core-i5 processor.It's around a third cheaper than Dell's entry-level XPS 13, which packs an impressive practically borderless Infinity Display, but it's slightly more expensive than Asus's impressive Core M-powered ZenBook UX305.DesignWindows ultrabooks that ape the MacBook Air's design usually fall into two camps: those that do so subtly and others that don't try to hide it. The Helios falls in the latter, and just like the Air you'll either find its minimal style bland or elegant depending on your taste.There's an indent at the front of the base unit which makes it easier to raise the lid, but we noticed that the lid's rim can feel quite sharp to the touch as there is a slight overlap on the display.In all other respects, both the casing and the hinge feel sturdy and secure – there's no noticeable flex during handling.

Read full article @ Techradar

Corsair Strafe Mechanical Keyboard Review

We have reviewed quite a bit of Corsair gaming keyboards in the past and we can say that while they are a bit more expensive, the quality is top-notch and the experience is quite unique. With the Strafe, Corsair wants to introduce its premium products to more budget-conscious people, by eliminating some of the elements like the aluminum layer, the wrist rest or using a single-color LED for the Red/Brown Cherry-MX switches. The product is accompanied by the powerful CUE (Corsair Utility Engine), which offers the same levels of customization as on the more expensive variants and within it we can also update the keyboard firmware to its latest version. For added value, Corsair has also included two sets of keycaps, which are meant for MOBA and FPS players; these keycaps have a slightly different shape and special texture in order to add extra grip and comfort during longer gaming sessions.

Read full article @ Madshrimps

EVGA Z170 FTW Motherboard Review: An Overclocking Gambit

It is called a motherboard for its encompassing domesticity as a hub of function and like its biological counterpart, a motherboard is judged by her matronly efforts to maintain a stable environment and realize the potential of those she houses. This applies to motherboard expandability and is especially true now when it comes to overclocking that voltage regulation is handled … Read more.

Read full article @ Modders-Inc

Gears of War Ultimate Edition Review

At the beginning of 2014, Microsoft purchased the Gears of War franchise from Epic Games. Future titles in the series such as the upcoming Gears 4 would be developed by Microsoft's Vancouver-based studio The Coalition (formerly Black Tusk Studios) rather than Epic. But how would the new team ensure that Gears 4 felt like a true successor rather than the slightly disappointing Gears of War Judgment? As it turns out, The Coalition would first cut its teeth on Gears of War: Ultimate Edition for Xbox One (and soon Windows 10). A remaster of 2006's original Gears of War, Ultimate Edition packs the same revolutionary third-person shooting gameplay that made the first game such a killer app on Xbox 360. It also boasts new single-player and multiplayer content, vastly improved graphics, and several welcome improvements – all for the low price of $39.99. Check out our comprehensive review with video to learn how Ultimate Edition makes Gears of War just as relevant in 2015 as it was in 2006.

Read full article @ Windows Central

How to Upgrade a Linux Dual-Boot System to Windows 10

If youre a Linux user, theres a good chance youve installed Linux alongside an existing Windows 7 or 8.1 system in a dual-boot configuration. You can get the free Windows 10 upgrade without damaging your existing Linux system.

Read full article @ Howtogeek

Inno3D iChill GeForce GTX 980 4GB Ultra Review

Today NVIDIA unveiled the latest addition in their 9 line of cards, the entry-level GeForce GTX 950 (uses a cut-down version of the GM206 also used in the GTX 960) but since i never was into testing brand new models (i prefer to wait for more "mature" drivers before doing so) we went ahead and did our best to acquire what might just be the "hottest" GeForce GTX 980 model in the market currently. As many of you are aware you can find many GeForce GTX 980 models in the market some of which make use of the reference NVIDIA cooler and feature default clocks (or slightly upped ones) while others come ready with custom air and water cooling solutions and feature substantial overclocking right from the factory for the more demanding users. Well after comparing the specification sheets of no less than 15 different GeForce GTX 980 cards by pretty much every NVIDIA card manufacturer in the market the one that always came up ontop was the iChill GeForce GTX 980 4GB Ultra by Inno3D.

InnoVISION Multimedia Limited is a pioneering developer and manufacturer of a diverse range of cutting-edge multimedia PC hardware products established in 1998 Hong Kong. Our manufacturing operations have been set up since 1990 in Shenzhen, China. In this short period of time we focus on manufacturing OEM/ODM products as well as contracting out extensive production and research facilities to specialist companies. We have accomplished international recognition by PC’s top reviewers as becoming an outstanding success and one of the most fast growing companies in Asia. Our company's objective is to deliver the ultimate multimedia experience to the masses of PC users and multimedia professionals at an affordable cost. InnoVISION was then created to build brand awareness for the continuously growing product range in order to meet the fast growing market. InnoVISION's product scope comprises the successful Inno3D brand - a comprehensive variety of 3D graphic board accelerators and multimedia components and devices.

A couple of weeks ago we reviewed the GeForce GTX 970 a card which in many ways is very similar to the GTX 980 especially since both are based on the same 28nm GM204 Maxwell processor. Of course as we pointed out then the GeForce GTX 980 is a more powerful version since it sports 2048 shader processors, 16 streaming multiprocessors, 128 texture units, 64 ROPs and a 256bit memory interface (not to mention it makes use of all of its 4GB GDDR5 RAM). By default the GeForce GTX 980 has a core clock set at 1126MHz and a memory clock set at 1750MHz but the iChill Ultra model boosts those clocks to 1266MHz for the core and 1800MHz for the memory modules. To achieve these clocks and also to allow for higher ones with issue Inno3D has equipped the iChill Ultra with their latest HerculeZ X4 Air Boss cooler which features their very own A.P.C.S (active power cooling system) and although i have to admit that it's somewhat bulky compared to other models in the market (the entire cooling system consists by four fans, three 6mm heatpipes, two 8mm heatpipes and a 118 aluminum fins) it allows for efficient cooling not only for the core but also for the PCB/components and VRM.

Read full article @ NikKTech

Intel Core i5 6600K Skylake Linux CPU Benchmarks

Earlier this week I began my Intel Skylake Linux benchmarking by posting some initial results from the HD Graphics 530, the new Intel "Gen9" graphics. While more Intel Linux HD Graphics 530 results are on the way, completed for this weekend are the initial CPU benchmark results comparing the Core i5 6600K to various other Intel Haswell/Broadwell processors as well as some AMD APUs and CPUs.

This article is offering a first glimpse at the Core i5 6600K performance under Linux. All the tests in this article were done from Fedora 22 x86_64 with all available stable release updates plus the Linux 4.2 Git kernel from the Rawhide NoDebug kernel repository. The results are just looking at the CPU performance today and all of the tests were built from source using Fedora 22's GCC 5.1.1 compiler. Most of the tests honored the CFLAGS/CXXFLAGS of "-O3 -march=native" as indicated on the graphs on the following pages.

Read full article @ Phoronix

Intel Launches New Socketed 5x5 mini-PC Motherboards

Over the last couple of years, the ultra-compact form factor (UCFF) has emerged as one of the bright spots in the troubled PC market. Kickstarted by Intels NUC (Next Unit of Computing) designs, it has been successfully cloned by other vendors such as GIGABYTE (BRIX), Zotac (C-series nano) and ASRock (Beebox). With platform performance increasing every generation, and performance requirements getting tempered by the rise of the not-so-powerful smartphones and tablets, Intel could pack a heavy punch with their 102x102mm NUC motherboards.

Atom-based units (using Bay Trail) could provide very good performance for most users. Intel tried to shrink the PC even further by releasing a Compute Stick based on the Bay Trail Atom Z series SoCs earlier this year. ECS, with their LIVA designs, has adopted the Mini Lake reference design for their UCFF PCs. All of these UCFF PCs come with BGA CPUs / SoCs. The configurability aspect is minimal from an end-users perspective. Looking at the mini-ITX form factor immediately leads us to a hole in the mini-PC lineup between it and the NUC.

Read full article @ Anandtech

Kingston HyperX Savage 480GB SSD Review, The Savage VS The Laptop Platter Drive

We’ve taken a look at the HyperX Savage 240GB and now we have its big brother, the Savage 480GB SSD on the bench. Outfitted with the same quad-core, 8-channel Phison S10 controller as the 240GB drive, it provides speeds up to 560MB/s Read and 530MB/s Write. Found on most current desktops, SATA III’s 6Gbps speed limit is 600MB/s, and for laptops it’s not unusual to find SATA II with 3Gbps of bandwith. Thankfully, many laptop manufacturers are catching onto the SSD revolution quickly.

What we wanted to do is take the Seagate ST9500420AS and the HyperX Savage and hook them up to a desktop, then run both of them in the same laptop. We have several laptops lying around the lab and our high-end Samsung looked good for the testing until we looked at its specifications and found an 8GB cache SSD which might or might not skew our numbers, so we went further into the Bjorn3D well of equipment and came up with a basic, everyday-use laptop. We randomly picked a 16-inch Toshiba Core i3 Wal-Mart $499 special, model number C55-A5311.

We should get some good, realistic numbers using a desktop/laptop setup. To make everything fair, the drive on both the laptop and desktop were cloned to both the platter drive and SSD and they both ran the same files and operating system.

Read full article @ Bjorn3D

Netis WF2150 N600 Wireless Dual Band USB Adapter Review

Most of the existing stationary PCs don’t have wireless network capabilities out of the box and there can be more than one reason to add it at a later time. There are quite a few ways you can do that, but the easiest is probably with a USB-type WiFi dongle. Today I’m taking a closer look at just such a device as I’m having the Netis WF2150 600N Dual Band Wireless USB Adapter on the test bench.

The Netis WF2150 is a Dual Band wireless solutions that provides you with access to the better and less crowded 5GHz band as well as giving you a legacy 2.4GHz connection, both at 300Mbps. The 5GHz is clearly the best band to use whenever possible as you don’t need to worry about the interferences from the mass of existing 2.4GHz wireless devices and household appliances that may disturb with their wireless signal.

Whether you’ll be using the wireless connection for online gaming, video streaming, or VoIP phone calling, the Netis WF2150 should ensure a high-quality connection at all times. Connecting the PC itself to a wireless network is however not the only way you can use the newly gained WiFi abilities. Pretty much every WiFi add-on available right now can be set to work as an access point too, allowing you to connect your other WiFi devices to your network through this adapter. Always have the best possible wireless connectivity for your smartphone and tablets right next to your system.

Read full article @ eTeknix

Nubee NUB8500H Temperature Gun Non-contact Infrared Thermometer Review

Tools, I love getting tools for review and not just power tools and such but electronic tools like IR thermometers. Infrared thermometers can be very handy for computer work and for just around the house in general. Today for review I’ve got the Nubee NUB8500H Temperature Gun Non-contact Infrared Thermometer and it seems accurate and it’s well made. The thermometer has several options on it and nice large and easy to read display and even a red dot laser so you can visually see what you’re measuring. Read on to learn more…

Specifications and Features

Nubee Temperature Gun Non-contact Infrared Thermometer MAX Display & EMS Adjustable

-Max temperature function: it can take the highest temperature of the area tested by scanning and save the data at the bottom of the screen
-Ems adjustable function each object has its suitable emissivity, it can make test more accurate by adjust suitable emissivity for different objects
-Measures in Celsius or Fahrenheit (range: -50 to +500 /-58 Degree F to +932 Degree F), auto shut-off & low battery indicator
-Red laser pointer for precise aiming, powered by one 9-volt battery(include); take accurate temperature readings with this handheld gun
-U.S. FDA, FCC, CE, ROHS approved

Read full article @ Technogog

Seagate Personal Cloud 2 Bay Review

The Personal Cloud from Seagate is essentially a NAS system, but it is not marketed as such. Aimed at families, it allows users to store all their files in a central location and access them anywhere. With plug-and-play functionality, you simply attach the Personal Cloud to your router via an Ethernet cable and, after a painless setup, the Personal Cloud is now accessible on your network.

Read full article @ KitGuru

Tenda W568R Wireless N900 Concurrent Dual-band Gigabit Router Review

Tenda has quite a long list of network products and today I’m taking a closer look at another one of them. The Tenda W568R is a wireless N900 Dual-Band Gigabit Router that promises a great performance and coverage.

With the power of a dual-band router, you can easy use the slower and better reaching 2.4GHz band to check your mail and browse the internet while you use the faster 5GHz band for streaming and gaming. The Tenda W568R offers 450Mbps transfer speeds on both bands for a total of up to 900 Mbps throughput. That makes this router ideal for tasks such as 3D HD video streaming and multiplayer gaming.

Read full article @ eTeknix

Top 10 Hidden Windows 10 Features

Many of Windows 10’s key features have been talked about at length, but the operating system actually comes with a lot of great features that aren’t as immediately obvious to everyday users and even enthusiasts. These features don’t get the attention that they should, so without further ado, let’s get on with the top 10 hidden features of Windows 10.

Read full article @ TechSpot