Here a roundup of today's reviews and articles:

AMD A10-7890K, A10-7860K, and Athlon X4 880K
Ashes of the Singularity Review
ASUSTOR AS1002T Review
AVG Antivirus Free Review
DeepCool CAPTAIN 240 White Liquid CPU Cooler Review
Killer Ethernet E2400 and Wireless-AC 1535 Review
MSI C236A Workstation
MU-MIMO Router Head-to-Head: Linksys EA7500 vs. Netgear Nighthawk X4S
Plextor M7V 512GB SSD and M.2 SSD Review
PNY CS2211 XLR8 SSD Review
Thermaltake Lumi Color 256C Magnetic LED Strip Control Pack Review
WD My Cloud EX2 Ultra NAS Review
Win10 Security Plus Review
Z170 Motherboard Charts: 18 Models tested - Gigabyte X170-Extreme ECC

AMD A10-7890K, A10-7860K, and Athlon X4 880K

About two months ago AMD did a large product line refresh that focused around the newly introduced Wraith Cooler, at the time we took a look at the cooler. Then closer to our LAN event they sent out samples for some of the other CPUs and APUs introduced. In their FM2+ mainstream line they refreshed the Kaveri APUs as well as an Athlon X4 CPU. Well with our LAN event keeping my schedule tied up I’m just now finally getting a chance to see what the new A10-7860K sample and Athlon X4 880K that they sent out a that time. Then on top of that just last week the A10-7890K came in to round things out. So today I’m going to run through AMDs FM2+ refresh and see how they perform. I’m especially interested I the Athlon X4 880K to find out if it’s a worthwhile budget replacement for someone considering an AM3+ build.

Read full article @ LanOC Reviews

Ashes of the Singularity Review

Now is the time to consider if it is worth joining the Post Human Coalition, or perhaps look to a different future. Honestly, it is hard for me to decide. Ashes of the Singularity is definitely fun, but it does have some issues that can take too much time to really work around. For now I think my recommendation will be that if you really want it, go for it, but there is nothing wrong with waiting for a sale. In fact waiting is not a horrible idea to begin with as there are plans to add and improve several features throughout the course of the year. If you are not sure, go ahead and wait and see how it develops with a major patch or two, but if you just love RTS games, go ahead. The graphics look good, as they should for an RTS, and with the possible requirement of turning off asynchronous compute, it runs fairly well. The story, from what I have seen, is nothing too special, but provides a backstory to the two factions and a purpose to the campaign. The gameplay has some parts to it that could be better polished (the Army system specifically) but is still a good RTS, if you can adapt to work within the flaws. Of course, you might not be as vexed by them as I am either. Not a bad experience, and with some time it can definitely come to stand as a good example of the genre. For now though, it stands as a good example of some new technologies, and I am looking forward to what comes from it.

Read full article @ OCC

ASUSTOR AS1002T Review

ASUSTOR has been on the scene since 2011, which may not sound like a particularly long time but in their time within the networking sector they’ve made inroads to a rather competitive arena. Their current portfolio includes a large selection of network-related devices for personal/home use all the way to small-medium businesses. In five years ASUSTOR has brought to market some 30+ models which is an impressive feat and this is actually our first outing with the company – having heard great things, expectations are high!

In the spotlight today is the AS1002T – an entry-level two-bay NAS design for personal/home use. AS1002T is a stylish unit which can carry up to 16TB of storage and transform productivity across any home network.

Read full article @ Vortez

AVG Antivirus Free Review

AVG AntiVirus Free is a longstanding security program for Microsoft Windows that protects computer systems from viruses, trojans and other malicious code. One interesting fact about AVG is that it maintains two free antivirus solutions, namely AVG AntiVirus Free and AVG Protection Free.

Read full article @ gHacks

DeepCool CAPTAIN 240 White Liquid CPU Cooler Review

Finding white hardware components for a new PC build may not be the easiest thing to do but at least DeepCool has your CPU covered with their CAPTAIN 240 AIO liquid cooler model.

Read full article @ NikKTech

Killer Ethernet E2400 and Wireless-AC 1535 Review

Let's settle the debate: can a Killer NIC really improve your network experience? Have a potential PC upgrade brewing in the back of your mind? We imagine you'd be considering, among other things, a newer CPU, a faster GPU, more memory and a high-speed SSD. These are the pillars of any new build, but hands up, how many of you have given any real consideration to the system network interface controller (NIC)?

The answer, we assume, is not many. And we can see why - network controllers tend to just work, and they're one of those integral components that require no user intervention outside of the occasional driver install. They're frequently supplied by Intel or Realtek, with the former gaining preference based on brand recognition, yet it's usually a case of either one will do.

But would it pay to give the network controller greater consideration? After all, won't practically all of your new PC's usage scenarios revolve around a web connection? The folks at Killer reckon it's time to revisit the NIC and see if there's value to be had in its latest-generation wired and wireless solutions.

Read full article @ Hexus

MSI C236A Workstation

With having a clean Windows 10 installation around for the benchmarking of Ubuntu Bash on Windows 10 and Windows vs. Linux Vulkan benchmarking, I also took the opportunity to run a number of OpenGL benchmarks on both Windows 10 and Ubuntu 16.04 Linux with the same hardware and set of graphics cards. In this article are benchmarks of Windows 10 vs. Ubuntu 16.04 with various NVIDIA GeForce GTX 900 series graphics cards.

Read full article @ Phoronix

MU-MIMO Router Head-to-Head: Linksys EA7500 vs. Netgear Nighthawk X4S

The second wave of 802.11ac routers are now shipping, and they offer a tantalizing performance benefit over the previous routers we’ve reviewed (at least with their older firmware) — the ability to broadcast multiple data streams to several clients at once. This technology, named MU-MIMO, which stands for Multiple User: Multiple Input, Multiple Output, is just now starting to roll out, and is different in one obvious way to the previous technology, named simply MIMO.

The previous solution was only able to broadcast multiple streams of data, but could only transmit to one client at a time, whereas this new MU-MIMO technology can send multiple data streams to multiple users at the same time, so it could represent quite a leap forward in performance when multiple MU-MIMO enabled systems are connected through the router. The industry, and users like ourselves, have been looking forward to this advancement for quite some time...

Read full article @ HotHardware

Plextor M7V 512GB SSD and M.2 SSD Review

Plextor released a new value series SSD tagged under the M7V series SSDs, with that 'V' not for vendetta or victory, it's for value. At 26 cents per GB the M7V series is all about delivering a product at alow price to you. Street prices could be even lower.

Read full article @ Guru3D

PNY CS2211 XLR8 SSD Review

PNY released two new consumer SSDs that employ Phison's S10 controller. Today, we're looking at the CS2211 model, sporting Toshiba MLC flash. This enthusiast-oriented drive was designed for gaming and 4K video.

Read full article @ Toms Hardware

Thermaltake Lumi Color 256C Magnetic LED Strip Control Pack Review

Thermaltake is adding to the RGB craze with its own multicolor case LED lighting kit the Lumi Color 256C. Though we’re seen RGB lighting being increasingly used within the past year and a half – now even motherboards and video cards have them, amusingly RGB LED strips for computer cases have been around for much longer. The first NZXT HUE launched nearly four years ago well ahead of the trend, but today we’re looking at Thermaltake’s new head-on challenger.

Besides the colors of the lights, what also makes the Thermaltake Lumi Color 256C is the magnetic mounting which makes it convenient to mount and reposition the LED strips inside a steel desktop computer case. Experimentation is valuable for entry-level case modding and the magnets embedded into the strips are a big quality of life improvement over the 3M tape which by the way is included with the Lumi Color 256C. We’re about to see if all this is worth $44.99 (Amazon.)

Read full article @ Legit Reviews

WD My Cloud EX2 Ultra NAS Review

WD or Western Digital has been making hard drives for quite a long time.  A few years ago they introduced their WD Red drives that were made specifically for network-attached storage (NAS) devices.  WD currently offers three different levels of NAS devices.  The My Cloud devices are aimed at the general consumer, the My Cloud EX (expert) are prosumer devices, and finally you have the business series which is made up of the My Cloud DL devices.  Today we will be taking a look at the My Cloud EX2 Ultra, which is a 2-bay NAS devices powered by a Marvell Armada 385 1.3 GHz dual-core processor and 1GB of DDR3 memory.  With those specs the My Cloud EX2 should be able to handle whatever you might throw at it.  It also features WD’s My Cloud OS 3, which should make setting up and managing the NAS quite easy.  Let’s jump in and see what the WD My Cloud EX2 Ultra NAS is all about!

Read full article @ ThinkComputers.org

Win10 Security Plus Review

Win10 Security Plus is a free tweak program for Microsoft's Windows operating system that has a strong focus on security modifications. What may be confusing right from the get go is that it is not compatible only with Windows 10, but also previous versions of Windows all the way back down to Windows XP.

Read full article @ gHacks

Z170 Motherboard Charts: 18 Models tested - Gigabyte X170-Extreme ECC

In our comparison tables, meanwhile you find benchmark values regarding 18 recent Z170 motherboards. Furthermore we do not comment the benchmark values. The idea and also the goal is to present to you a market overview which helps you choose the right motherboard.

Read full article @ ocaholic