Here a roundup of today's reviews and articles:

AMD Launches the A8-7670K: Filling in the Gaps
ASRock X99 OC FORMULA/3.1 (Intel LGA 2011-3)
CineRAID CR-H236 Dual SATA Drive Docking Station Review
Crucial 16GB Ballistix Elite 2666MHz Review
Gigabyte BRIX S BXi5H-5200 PC Kit Review
Gigabyte MU70-SU0 (Intel C612) Server Motherboard Review
Huawei Talkband B2 Review
Intel Broadwell Core i7 5775C Review
MSI Gaming 6G 980TI Review
MSI Radeon R7 370 GAMING 4G Review
MSI X99A GODLIKE Gaming Motherboard Review
Plextor M6V 240 GB SSD Review
PNY GTX 960 XLR8 Review
Roku 3 (2015) Streaming Media Player Review
Sapphire Tri-X R9 390X Graphics Card Review
Sapphire Tri-X R9 Fury 4GB Graphics Card Review
Tesoro Excalibur Spectrum Keyboard Review
The 5 Best Screen Recorders for Capturing Mac OS X
The Apple Watch Review
The Tech Report System Guide, July 2015 edition
Upgrade to Windows 10 and you will lose these 5 features
ZOTAC GeForce GTX 980 Ti AMP! Extreme Edition Video Card Review

AMD Launches the A8-7670K: Filling in the Gaps

AMD and Intel, in the last few years, have taken different approaches to how many CPUs enter the mainstream line of the market. Intel has historically had a large product stack, with processors at almost every frequency varying by 100 MHz and slowly rising in core count as well as cache and integrated graphics. AMD’s approach on the other hand is to release a handful of new models every quarter, initially covering the bases on day one and slowing updating the mid points (as well as new high end models) as a lithography node improves in yield and performance and the design matures. We recently took a look at the last launch, the AMD A10-7870K, as well as one at the beginning of the year in the shape of the A8-7650K. The A10-7870K was the first in a line known as the Kaveri Refresh models, or as per AMD’s internal codename ‘Godavari’. The A8-7670K is the second iteration of this line.

The Kaveri Refresh line, or so we are told, is a result of an improved production methodology for better frequency/voltage characteristics and better binning. In the case of the A10-7870K, we were told that the CPU has a minor +0.05 volt increase in the average stock voltage to account for the extra frequency, but due to the improvements the TDP remained the same (95W). In this circumstance, AMD improves on the A8-7650K with an extra 300 MHz to the base frequency (usually the main TDP killer) and an extra 100 MHz on the turbo. This is combined with a 37 MHz increase in the graphics side of the equation, again within the same TDP.

Read full article @ Anandtech

ASRock X99 OC FORMULA/3.1 (Intel LGA 2011-3)

ASRock's updated X99 OC FORMULA is here, now called the ASRock OC FORMULA/3.1. Fitted with the latest in USB technology, the ASRock X99 OC FORMULA/3.1 is ASRock's top-level overclocking board built to smash clock records time and again. USB 3.1 isn't everything: we've got SATA Express, Ultra M.2, Xeon, and ECC support - every high-speed item you could ask for when overclocking X99 is here.

Read full article @ techPowerUp

CineRAID CR-H236 Dual SATA Drive Docking Station Review

PC cases offer a large number of HDD trays nowadays allowing people to mount and use several drives without ever having to worry about storage capacity. Still for professionals and even enthusiasts there's no such thing as sufficient storage space and because of that external HDD enclosures offer a good way to expand drive capacity without much hassle. HDD enclosures may not be hard to use and usually it doesn't take long to mount a drive inside but for people looking for the easiest and fastest possible way to use 3.5/2.5" drives nothing beats the simplicity of a HDD/SSD docking station. Docking stations however have evolved quite a bit over the years so dual bay models are not only the easiest way to access two 3.5/2.5" drives but also to clone one onto another and the CR-H236 by CineRAID which we have here with us today is one such model.

With more than 20+ years of experience in the data storage industry, we know storage. Our parent company Tekram USA was founded in 1990 and was recognized as one of the most influential and famous storage solution providers and manufacturer in Taiwan, when SCSI and cache controller cards were the latest storage controllers. In fact, Tekram was the first company to develop caching disk controllers for the VL-Bus , greatly enhancing system performance back then. Tekram innovations like its bus-mastering enhanced IDE chip, S1040 SCSI controller ASIC have given us the structure and background to always keep advancing with the latest storage developments. During the transition between SCSI and SATA/SAS, Areca Technologies was founded in 1999 with a commitment for the research and development of newer disk array technologies. Using the existing knowledge and experience from Tekram, Areca has been able to continue delivering storage innovations with their own custom ASIC and released the first RAID 6 controller to hit the market. Today, Tekram USA created a division called CineRAID, strategically partnered with Areca Technologies in order to provide creative professionals a broad range of high performance, reliable and low cost disk array solution fully optimized for digital content and streaming media applications.

CineRAID is a name we've all heard in the past but since it's aimed towards the USA market mostly up to date we never had the opportunity to cooperate with them. The good news is that their product line includes several storage related models manufactured not only from them but also from other companies under Tekram some of which are quite famous around the globe. Getting back to the CR-H236 this is a compact USB 3.0 hot-swap dual bay docking station that features separate power buttons for each drive, SATA III ports (most similar models still feature SATA II) and fully supports UASP under Windows 8/8.1/10 for the best possible read & write performance. You can also use the CR-H236 to easily clone drives up to 6TB in capacity (the target drive always needs to be at least the same capacity as the source) just by pressing a single button. On paper the CR-H236 seems to have it all but is that really the case?

Read full article @ NikKTech

Crucial 16GB Ballistix Elite 2666MHz Review

Random Access Memory (RAM) is one of those items that a lot of computer users love to have a lot of. And in reality, you can never have too much RAM for your computer systems. What our Operating System (OS) doesn’t fully use, we will find a way to use, while optimizing our computers at the same time. The one thing that limits our amount of memory usage isn’t so much our computers, but our wallet. How much money can we afford spend on our memory? So the need exists for us to find a large amount of memory that is not only fast, but also affordable enough for us to purchase and use for our computers.

Read full article @ Bjorn3D

Gigabyte BRIX S BXi5H-5200 PC Kit Review

Today, we will be taking a look at the Gigabyte BRIX s GB-BXi5H-5200 kit that can be found online for $364.99 with free shipping. It comes with the Intel Core i5-5200U Dual-Core processor with Hyper-Threading. This processor was launched in early 2015, and is part of Intel’s 5th generation Core processors. It features a 15W TDP, 2.2Ghz speed, with a 2.7Ghz Turbo, Intel HD Graphics 5500 and will support up to 16GB of dual-channel DDR3L memory (1333, 1600, & 1966Mhz). This particular model of the BRIX s adds an 802.11ac Dual Band WiFi card that includes Bluetooth 4.0. If NFC is important to you, Gigabyte has included that as a feature of the BXi5H-5200 as well.

Read full article @ Legit Reviews

Gigabyte MU70-SU0 (Intel C612) Server Motherboard Review

Intel’s C612 chipset brought along a lot of improvements for the workstation and server platform, not just support for Haswell-EP Xeon E5 processors, but also DDR4 memory support at full speed. Today I’m taking a look at one of Gigabyte’s many great server solutions and while most people aren’t that familiar with Gigabyte’s server-side of things, I can assure you that it is a quite impressive line-up. This is the first time we’ve taken a look at a server motherboard, and while we’ve analysed workstation type boards, you will see us opening up our site to a lot more content revolving around servers, their components and everything in between. With that in mind, I’m pleased to start our new server motherboard review section off with a feature packed, small but mighty motherboard from Gigabyte; the MU70-SU0.

Read full article @ eTeknix

Huawei Talkband B2 Review

Hey! Do you know what would be really, like, super useful? If you could pop your fitness tracker out of its strap and use it as a Bluetooth headset to take a call, said no one ever. Welcome, then, to the weird world of the Huawei TalkBand B2, a wearable that's also a Bluetooth headset. It arrives with an air expectation unparalleled outside of a sequel to Battlefield Earth. What I'm saying is, the original TalkBand B1 was possibly the worst wearable ever. So expectations are not stellar. Battery and screen Pop it out of the mostly pleasing packaging and the TalkBand comes 90% charged.

Read full article @ Techradar

Intel Broadwell Core i7 5775C Review

The computer industry is quite odd, we are inundated with new products on almost a daily basis. When you truly think about it are these new releases actually new are or they just a rebrand, refresh or speed bump. A perfect example would be SATA 6G SSDs, read and write capacities have been capped due to the limitations of the 6G bandwidth for almost two years yet we still see manufacturers launching new models. Some may say that they should be considered new since a new or different memory controller is added. I would have to disagree, 550MB/s is 550MB/s whether it’s on memory controller A or B, without having to get into IOPS and MTBF which are pretty close now anyway.

We also have the argument of refresh or rebrand when we talk video cards, what I would consider a rebrand you may consider a refresh when we should actually consider it a speed bump. By simply increasing the frequency and decreasing power consumption by 5 or 10 watts is simply rebranding (speed bump) since this is what should be expected as a wafer matures.

Last but not least are CPUs this is where the word speed bump was first used. We have seen CPU manufacturers increase frequencies on already established working wafers for years. Granted there have been some minor micro code, thermal interface material and wattage decreases but overall the same chipsets are being used and in the end it’s just a speed bump. Intel likes to call their speed bumps tics opposed to their tocs which are complete architectural and chipset changes. Intel’s latest tic is the Broadwell desktop processor and we just can’t call it a speed bump. The Broadwell processor still takes advantage of the Series 9 chipset and in theory uses the same micro architecture as predecessor Haswell but this time there are actual differences.

Read full article @ HiTech Legion

MSI Gaming 6G 980TI Review

For many years now MSI has been known and respected for their custom heatsink and fan designs. Specifically their Twin FROZR designs have cooled many an enthusiasts’ overclocked video card over the years, and now the latest version, aptly called the Twin Frozr V, intends to continue this enviable tradition. However, this new generation has a few tricks up its sleeve to make the MSI Gaming 6G 980TI even more enticing to consumers.

Read full article @ Realhardwarereviews

MSI Radeon R7 370 GAMING 4G Review

The latest graphics card we've been testing the past few weeks under Linux is the MSI Radeon R7 370 GAMING 4G. This mid-range graphics card is equipped with a very quiet heatsink fan and will work on both the latest open and closed-source AMD Linux graphics drivers. Of interest to many Linux enthusiasts who are concerned about noise is that with MSI's ZERO FROZR feature, the fans will stop completely while the system is idling or just engaging in light gaming or multimedia tasks.

Read full article @ Phoronix

MSI X99A GODLIKE Gaming Motherboard Review

We review the MSI X99A GODLIKE motherboard, this motherboard from the MSI Gaming series isn't shy when it comes to naming. But truth be told, it is among the best X99 chipset based motherboards we have tested to date. It ticks all the right boxes and has a feature-set that is amazing. I'm not talking about the RGB LED system even, multiple Killer NICs, the best AC WIFI solution e ever tested and well, just so much more in regards to SLI/Crossfire support, SATA3 connectors, M.2., overclock features, a very nice audio solution and much more. Join us in a the MSI X99A GODLIKE review, a product that is bound to please the PC gamer.

The Intel Core i7-5960X and other Haswell-E chips have been released on the market for little less than a year now, September 2014 and are based on socket LGA2011-V3 infrastructure with DDR4 quad channel memory. The Haswell-E series are Intel's best consumer class processors, available in three models, two 6-core and one 8 core processor series intended for the most high-end desktops. With Haswell-E processors came a new chipset and slightly revised processor socket. Intel still uses Socket 2011, but its a revision 3 socket, meaning that the older Socket 2011 will not work on the new X99 chipset motherboards. That of course goes both ways, you can not use Haswell-E on say an X79 motherboard. Interesting is a first introduction towards DDR4 memory. The new memory allows for lower voltage memory modules, this memory defaults towards 2133 MHz at 1.2 Volts. However the memory controller is quad-channel compatible. As a result with overclocked memory at roughly 3 GHz, you can reach 70 maybe 80 GB/sec on your memory bandwidth, which are insane numbers. In this article we'll have a chat about a X99 motherboard in terms of the chipset and then will throw a decent photo-shoot and a benchmark suite at the products and get an indication what performance is like with the Intel Core i7-5960X and X99 Platform.

Read full article @ Guru3D

Plextor M6V 240 GB SSD Review

We review the all new Plextor M6V series SSDs. These SSDs are all about value for you hard earned money. This Toshiba NAND based SSD is positioned to be Plextors effective product in their value series. It is fitted with the latest iteration of Toshiba Toggle NAND flash memory. We are not disappointed at all in regards to performance and price.

Yes, in a storage world dominated by the big guns like Micron and Samsung margins are getting smaller and smaller. Plextor needed to address that to get the price per gigabyte down and offer a competitive solution that is fast, will be excellent in any PC and obviously a product that can compete more along the lines of the Samsung 850 EVO in both price and performance.

To do so Plextor is now offering the M6V series SSD, a Silicon Motion SMI-2246 based controller steers all new 15nm Toggle based NAND flash memory from Toshiba to drive their SSDs to a bargain level. The drive comes in capacities of 128 GB, 256 GB, and 512 GB, with DRAM cache sizes of 128 MB, 256 MB, and 512 MB, respectively.

Read full article @ Guru3D

PNY GTX 960 XLR8 Review

To start with, I have to say I am impressed with what PNY has brought to the table with its GTX 960 XLR8. There is not a single game in my testing where it fell below 35FPS at 1920x1080 using moderately high settings. Running at the stock clock speed (for this card at least), it was a higher performer than the GTX 960 comparison card, and in some games better than the R9 285. From a performance perspective, the card is spot on. Of course, you can use NVIDIA's ecosystem to tune and tweak the settings to get the highest FPS possible, using tools like GeForce Experience that has a library of settings for a plethora of the most popular games being played today. If tweaking the settings does not offer enough performance, you can add a second GTX 960 XLR8 in an SLI configuration to get that FPS fix.

Read full article @ OCC

Roku 3 (2015) Streaming Media Player Review

The deceptively simple notion of "watching TV" has continued to change dramatically over the years. We started with only a few select channels in black and white, quickly progressing to all sorts of network television, local stations and special interest channels. These days, so much of "watching TV" has nothing to do with traditional TV at all, since it is delivered in streaming format over the Internet. If you don't have a smart TV (or even if you do), you might consider adding the new Roku 3 to your home theater to best tap into this increasingly impressive range of content.

Read full article @ MEGATech

Sapphire Tri-X R9 390X Graphics Card Review

Sapphire is AMD’s larger board partner so as expected that have a pretty nice selection of AMD’s 300 series graphics cards. Sitting at the top of the 300 series is the Radeon R9 390X. This is of course a rebrand of AMD’s previous R9 290X, but with 8GB of GDDR5 memory. Also the rebrand has given AMD time to fine-tune the chip and add new features. This card is 100% DirectX 12 compliant and has AMD specific features like FreeSync, Super Virtual Resolution, and Eyefinity. Sapphire’s take on the card brings with it their Tri-X cooling solution that uses Intelligent Fan Control II technology that will turn the fans off when the GPU is not running hot and a massive 10mm heatpipe to keep things cool, 16K hours capacitors to lengthen the lifespan of the card, a dual BIOS, and the card is of course factory overclocked. Let’s jump in and see what this card can do!

Read full article @ ThinkComputers.org

Sapphire Tri-X R9 Fury 4GB Graphics Card Review

Something that we don’t really get much of a buzz from is the ‘second best’ graphics card, Okay the R9 390 is good, but we all want to know about the R9 390X; so why has the hype kept momentum even after the R9 Fury X launch, ready for the R9 Fury? The main reason is likely the fact that it’s water cooled from the factory, even though most people want water cooling, it can be problematic or even just too large to fit inside some cases. Those who held off buying the Fury X are now in for a treat thanks to AMD allowing sub-vendors the ability to customise the R9 Fury.

Sapphire is one of the manufacturers who take the reference card and just make it better without over-complicating the process, which pushes the price up. By using the reference PCB, Sapphire has tweaked components and the legendary Tri-X cooler to make the Tri-X R9 Fury as good as it could possibly be.

Sapphire are undoubtedly the largest AMD graphics card supplier in the world and that shines through to the products. All of the cards have support for the likes of Liquid VR, FreeSync, Eyefinity, and VSR technologies, which really give them the edge against the competition.

Read full article @ eTeknix

Tesoro Excalibur Spectrum Keyboard Review

Many enthusiasts probably haven’t heard of Tesoro Technology, which is perhaps understandable, since the company is so secretive their web page doesn’t even have an “About Us” section. Apparently based in Milpitas, California, Tesoro started out making mechanical keyboards a few years ago and has since branched out into mice and headsets, all aimed at gamers. Benchmark Reviews has just received their latest product, the RGB-illuminated and programmable Excalibur Spectrum mechanical gaming keyboard, so let’s take a look at it!

Read full article @ Benchmark Reviews

The 5 Best Screen Recorders for Capturing Mac OS X

From Apple’s QuickTime to the widely used ScreenFlow, Mac screen recorders — like dedicated screenshot applications — are useful for teaching and training purposes, communicating computer problems, and making presentations.

Some screen recording solutions are as simple as click-and-record, while others provide a more complex tool set for advanced recording and editing.

Let’s check out what’s available.

Read full article @ MakeUseOf

The Apple Watch Review

Prior to the launch of the Apple Watch, there had been rumors that Apple would make a watch for quite some time. In a broader sense, the wearables industry has become an area of significant interest as the next growth market after devices like tablets and smartphones as the high-end market became saturated and much of the growth that previously existed in the mobile space started to level out.

About two years ago, we put out our first wearable review, which examined Samsung’s Galaxy Gear. In the time since then, Android Wear has been launched, with numerous OEMs launching some form of wearable using Google’s wearable OS. However, Apple remained curiously absent from the field despite numerous rumors suggesting that Apple would soon launch a wearable. Last year, Apple announced the Apple Watch, but it wasn’t until just a few months ago that it finally went on sale.

In the time since, weve managed to get an Apple Watch for review. To find out how the Apple Watch fares in our testing, read on for the full review.

Read full article @ Anandtech

The Tech Report System Guide, July 2015 edition

In this edition of our System Guide, we update our recommendations to account for Nvidia's GeForce GTX 980 Ti and AMD's Radeon R9 Fury X graphics cards. The Breadbox Mini-ITX build makes a return for the college-bound.

Read full article @ The Tech Report

Upgrade to Windows 10 and you will lose these 5 features

Usually, a new version of an operating system changes existing features and adds new ones, but sometimes the changes mean that old features aren't available any more. The full-screen Start screen of Windows 8.1 isn't the only casualty and you can make the new Start menu bigger, although you can't bring back the full-screen list of installed apps, just the big view of pinned tiles.Software and hardware compatibility is good with Windows 10; elderly applications should still work. As usual, you're going to need new versions of security and anti-virus software, and probably of most system-level tools (although handy utilities like ClipMate and WinDirStat continue to work without any problems).

The Windows 10 advert you'll have seen on your PC that lets you reserve your free upgrade also performs a compatibility check, so it will warn you of any software or peripherals that won't work with Windows 10. For example USB floppy drives will need a new driver (there's one on Windows Update that works with most models).

Read full article @ Techradar

ZOTAC GeForce GTX 980 Ti AMP! Extreme Edition Video Card Review

The new NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti recently hit the planet like a bolt of lightning offering more CUDA processors and memory bandwidth to satisfy the extreme gaming enthusiast. The Maxwell GPU shares all the familiar features of the original GTX 980 which is a very powerful GPU in its own right, but still ones ups it on paper. The ZOTAC GeForce GTX 980 Ti AMP! Extreme Edition, is the first wave of enhanced, non-stock models that boast the fastest internal frequencies to date. With three cooling fans, heat pipes, extreme frequencies and 6GB of video memory, this video card is poised to beat all others right out of the box.

Read full article @ Futurelooks