Here a roundup of today's reviews and articles:

Amazon Fire TV (2015) Second Generation Review
AMD Radeon Fury X PCI-Express Scaling
AMD Zen silicon might be in good shape
AZZA Nova 8000 Full Tower Case Review
Best Cooling
Best CPUs
Corsair Gaming Strafe Review
Corsair Strafe RGB MX Silent Red Mechanical Keyboard Review
Crucial BX200 480GB SATA 2.5 Inch SSD Review
Crucial BX200 SSD Review
Intel & AMD Processor Hierarchy
Kingston HyperX Savage 16GB Dual-Channel 3000MHz DDR4 Review (15-16-16-39) (HX430C15SBK2/16)
Monsoon Modular Reservoir System (MMRS) Review
QNAP TS-251 High-Performance 2-Bay Prosumer NAS Review
WD Purple 6TB Surveillance Hard Drive Review
Your guide to all the Microsoft Band v2 Enhancements

Amazon Fire TV (2015) Second Generation Review

Not long ago, Amazon announced a revamped Fire TV with a handful of new and upgraded features including 4K Ultra HD video support and Alexa functionality. Although the original Fire TV which we reviewed last year had voice capabilities, those voice controls were limited to searching for content and applications. With Alexa built in, the second-generation Fire TV now has additional features, such as the ability to provide sports scores, weather and traffic information, or play music.

As you’ll recall from our review of the Amazon Echo, we were impressed by the Alexa functionality and its utility in our everyday lives. A few months later, Alexa is still a common name spoken in our household on a daily basis. In addition to Alexa, the new Fire TV has a number of hardware upgrades as well. Most notably, the new Fire TV now supports 4K Ultra HD video thanks to a more powerful GPU...

Read full article @ HotHardware.Com

AMD Radeon Fury X PCI-Express Scaling

In this article we will investigate how performance of AMD's Radeon Fury X is affected when running on constrained PCI-Express bus widths such as x8 or x4, we also test all PCIe speed settings 1.1, 2.0 and 3.0. One additional test is to check how much performance is lost when using PCIe x4 slot provided by the chipset.

Read full article @ techPowerUp

AMD Zen silicon might be in good shape

The fact that AMD Zen "meets all expectations" got us excited until we looked a bit deeper. It turns out that the report is based on a guy who swears he knows a guy that use to work for AMD on K12 L2 cache design. It is not clear if he met the guy in a pub or not.
His other colleague that still works there tells him that the test chip has meet all of the expectations and the team didn’t find any significant bottlenecks and this got the partners on the server side very excited. We have had our share of AMD Zen exclusive news, but it will take a while until this chip hits the market, we expect it in late 2016. 
At the stage of development AMD should actually be in the end phase anyway and if everything went fine, the test chip should be running. The last few quarters are  used to further optimise the design.

Read full article @ Fudzilla

AZZA Nova 8000 Full Tower Case Review

AZZA is headed into its twentieth year of releasing computer components and peripherals. After its start motherboard manufacturing, AZZA evolved in 2004 to also produce computer cases and power supplies. In 2009, AZZA established its own brand and now boasts a varied line up of computer cases, power supplies, keyboards and mice. Today we are taking a look at one of their full-size computer cases, the Nova 8000.

At first glance it was hard to fathom just what was inside the Nova 8000 and how to even get into all of those compartments. Once I removed the case from its packaging and was able to open it up however, everything became apparent. The four external access 5.25” drive trays allow for installation of multiple types of disc or tape data storage, while the six internal 3.5” drive trays also have multiple configuration options; two tray slots have a hard drive back plate for quick change without having to mess with power and SATA cables, similar to the hard drive back plates seen in servers.

The two forward side panel hinged doors make for an easy access to the hard drives trays as well as the two hidden SSD mounts on the cable management side. You can even take the six-slot drive tray and turn it around so that the drive trays are accessible from the cable management side, or simply remove it entirely. With the air flow already afforded at the bottom of the case front, removing the drive tray would allow even for more air flow from the front mounted 120mm fan, thus increasing the cooling potential.

Read full article @ Neoseeker

Best Cooling

Here are the best CPU cooling solutions (air and liquid) for a range of systems, from small form-factor builds to overclocked big-rigs.

Read full article @ Toms Hardware

Best CPUs

Here are the best gaming CPUs for the money. These processors offer the best performance at their price and are suitable for overclocking.

Read full article @ Toms Hardware

Corsair Gaming Strafe Review

With their Strafe, Corsair offers a new mechanical keyboard equipped with Cherry MX Red switches. Based on a standard layout and without any additional buttons, this is a high-end product suitable for anybody who likes keyboards with linear actuation force. Apart from that there is a red backlight and the F-keys come with two pre-defined functions.

Read full article @ ocaholic

Corsair Strafe RGB MX Silent Red Mechanical Keyboard Review

The latest Corsair mechanical gaming keyboard is here at last! The Corsair Gaming STRAFE is their first new keyboard brand in years, although given the success of their K-series keyboards, as well as the RGB editions that followed, it’s easy to understand why Corsair haven’t been rushing to release a replacement.

This keyboard is designed for gaming, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t promise to offer a lot to day-to-day desktop users. Mechanical keys offer premium build quality that should last many years without the keys response fading, as you often find with membrane keyboards. We’ve got the MX Red edition of the STRAFE in the office today, so those fast keys should be quick and super responsive, which will be great for typing, such as the review I’m using it for right now, or for gaming, especially if you play frantic games such as DOTA II.

The STRAFE doesn’t bring a lot of new technology to the table, but it does pack some promising specifications that should satisfy the needs of any keen PC user. We’ve got super quick Cherry MX Red, Blue or Brown mechanical switches, per-key red LED programmable lighting, onboard memory, Cue-Software customisation and more; that’s certainly all the basics covered!

Read full article @ eTeknix

Crucial BX200 480GB SATA 2.5 Inch SSD Review

It’s hard for enthusiasts to grasp that as we near the end of 2015 that a large portion of PC users around the world have yet to experience the performance benefits that an SSD has to offer. The overall cost of SSDs has come down greatly over the past several years and the entry-level SSD market is faster and more affordable than ever. Crucial hopes to entice those users that haven’t made the move over to an SSD yet with the release of the new BX200 SSD series. The Crucial BX200 is available in three capacities 240GB, 480GB and 960GB.

Read full article @ Legit Reviews

Crucial BX200 SSD Review

Micron announced its 16nm TLC flash five months ago, and Crucial's BX200 is the first product to take advantage of the extra bit per cell. Is this late-comer competitive, or is it overwhelmed in a sea of superior solid-state storage?

Read full article @ Toms Hardware

Intel & AMD Processor Hierarchy

Here is a resource to help you judge if a CPU is a reasonable value: The gaming CPU hierarchy chart groups CPUs with similar performance.

Read full article @ Toms Hardware

Kingston HyperX Savage 16GB Dual-Channel 3000MHz DDR4 Review (15-16-16-39) (HX430C15SBK2/16)

When Skylake came out we were tantalized with the possibilities for high-speed RAM exceeding existing top end kits. Kingston was nice enough to send over a Kingston HyperX Savage 3000MHz kit for us to check out, and with 16GB of dual-channel Savage timed at 15-16-16-39 and 1.35V, we should be looking at a screaming fast set of enthusiast RAM. The new dual-channel DDR4 is specially built for the Z170 Skylake chipset and we have heard rumors of compatibility with X99, but unless it’s just an emergency, we highly recommend using dual-channel for Skylake and quad-channel for X99. The chipsets are set for, and expecting a specific type of RAM, and while we have run dual-channel in X99, we got slower speeds than using its native quad-channel. We tried some quad-channel in Z170, but had a lot of minor problems with that configuration. In short, while the pins and the layout is the same, and the RAM sockets are interchangeable, we recommend sticking with dual-channel in Z170 and quad-channel in X99.

Read full article @ Bjorn3D

Monsoon Modular Reservoir System (MMRS) Review

Of the all the reservoir types available in the market, the tube res has always been preferred mainly due to its large visibility and ease of installation. However, for the most part the design hadn't changed much until a couple years ago compression style reservoirs emerged into the market. Monsoon has developed their own compression style reservoir that has just …
Read more.

Read full article @ Modders-Inc

QNAP TS-251 High-Performance 2-Bay Prosumer NAS Review

QNAP created their TS-251 Turbo NAS as a great high-performance solution for home users as well as small and medium-sized offices, and today I’m taking a closer look at what it has to offer and how well it performs in our testing area.

The TS-251 provides a high performance and high-capacity storage solution thanks to a great combination of QNAP’s advanced QTS operating system and some great hardware. It is an easy-to-use yet powerful NAS for data backup, file synchronization, remote access, home entertainment, and it is also ideal for users to build a personal cloud where they can access their data easily and secure, outside of the prying eyes of strangers and commercial hosting solutions.

The QNAP TS-251 is built with an Intel Celeron 2.41GHz dual-core processor that has a burst speed up to 2.58GHz. It comes with two DDR3L memory slots and is available in two models, one with 1GB RAM and the one I’m taking a look at today with 4GB DDR3L RAM in two 2GB modules. The TS-251 has 512 DOM storage for the system itself and comes with two hot-swappable trays.

Read full article @ eTeknix

WD Purple 6TB Surveillance Hard Drive Review

In today’s review, I am taking a look at a mechanical hard disk, but it isn’t one that is intended for your desktop system. Western Digital created their Purple line of hard disk drives to be the perfect choice for digital video recording, network video recording, and surveillance systems. On the test bench today is the 6TB version of this WD Purple surveillance hard disk.

All hard disk drives may look the same on the outside, but there is a big difference in what is inside and how it works. That is also the main reason that you should pick a drive suited for the task at hand and not just any random drive of the shelve. As WD puts it: “You wouldn’t use a bicycle to transport cargo across the country because it is not the right tool for the job.”

Read full article @ eTeknix

Your guide to all the Microsoft Band v2 Enhancements

Both Rod and Rich are doing hands-on testing of Microsoft's latest iteration of its fitness wearable. Here's everything they've discovered so far, from the unboxing experience to pairing the Band with an Android phone and the Microsoft Health app to the ways you can optimize the experience of collecting data on how you exercise or sleep. Take a tour through the gallery or look at the breakdown of what they've done below.

Read full article @ WinSupersite