Here a roundup of today's reviews and articles:

Apple iPhone 11 Pro Review
ASRock Radeon RX 5700 XT Taichi OC+ Review
ASUS ROG Phone II Review
Asus X570 ROG Crosshair VIII Hero Wi-Fi Review
Contra: Rogue Corps Review
Corsair Virtuoso RGB Wireless Review
Corsair Virtuoso RGB Wireless SE Review
Guru3D Rig of the Month - September 2019
Intel Iris Plus Graphics G7 iGPU Beats AMD RX Vega 10: Benchmarks
Not So MMO: GreedFall Review - Caught Up In The World
Patriot Viper VP4100 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD Review
Scythe Big Shuriken 3 CPU Cooler Review
The Xeon vs. EPYC Performance With Intel's oneAPI Embree & OSPray Render Projects
Thermaltake S500 TG Review
Velocilinx Brennus Gaming Mouse and Mechanical Gaming Keyboard Review
VR Wars: the RTX 2080 Super vs. the RTX 2080 Ti using the Vive Pro
Windows 10 version 1909: new and changed features

Apple iPhone 11 Pro Review

We take a look at Apple's iPhone 11 Pro - is it worth the asking price? Today we are looking at the latest flagship phone from Apple – the iPhone 11 Pro. With prices starting at £1049 for the 64GB model, we know that the top-end iPhones are up there with the most expensive smartphones money can buy. With this new iteration, Apple has implemented a new triple-camera system, an updated Bionic processor and significantly increased battery capacity. Is this the best phone around?

If you watched Apple’s keynote at the beginning of the month, you will have noticed how the majority of the event was dedicated to the iPhone 11 Pro’s new triple-camera system. The most obvious upgrade is the addition of that third camera, sporting an ultrawide 13mm-equivalent focal length, but there’s also the addition of a software-based night mode and updated Smart HDR image processing.

Read full article @ KitGuru

ASRock Radeon RX 5700 XT Taichi OC+ Review

ASRock has one of the finest custom Radeon RX 5700 XT graphics cards finally available; its new RX 5700 XT Taichi X 8G OC+ graphics card is one of the best-looking and most uniquely-styled RX 5700 XTs yet. If you're building a new gaming rig then I would suggest grabbing AMD's new third-gen Ryzen 3000 series CPU alongside ASRock's own X570 Taichi motherboard. The X570 Taichi motherboard has PCIe 4.0 support (the RX 5700 XT supports PCIe 4.0 and while there's no benefits, it's cool to just geek out over) as well as the same Taichi/gear-infused design as the new RX 5700 XT Taichi X 8G OC+ we're looking at here today. ASRock is targeting gamers and enthusiasts with their Taichi line of graphics cards, with close attention made to its design as the company respects that consumers are looking for this very style. It works, and it looks great inside of any gaming PC. But I'm liking the overall direction ASRock is moving in, where it is smartly unifying their design through the graphics card and motherboard products in its Taichi range.

Read full article @ TweakTown

ASUS ROG Phone II Review

The concept of mobile gaming is still a relatively new phenomenon. The idea that a user can have a smartphone dedicated to gaming that isn’t in of itself a console or handheld platform from Nintendo seems very odd – here’s a device that does everything a phone can do, as well as play the same games, so what makes it a “Gaming Phone”, especially if it has almost the same hardware inside? ASUS’s new ROG Phone II, designed under its Republic of Gamers brand, is ultimately a product designed to showcase that there are things you can do with a phone to make it more gaming focused. We take the device (and some of its accessories) for a spin.

Our smartphone reviews here on AnandTech, and in the wider ecosystem, always come from the standpoint of ‘this is a phone’. This mindset implies, both consciously and sub-consciously, that the calling and texting functions on the device should be of primary importance, and should be at the foundation of the device, with everything else layered on top. The ecosystems we have on modern smartphones, particularly Android smartphones, have built around this nascent idea that we are dealing with a smartphone first and foremost, and the ability to take great pictures, slow motion video, access the internet, or create reams of social media content are all secondary in that respect. Perhaps the point should be – would you buy a device that is around six inches, could access the internet, can take great photos, has a large application ecosystem, and can be a creative bastion, but didn’t accept calls?

Read full article @ Anandtech

Asus X570 ROG Crosshair VIII Hero Wi-Fi Review

Asus’s sub-$400 X570 ROG motherboard is well worth considering thanks to its plethora of speedy USB, SATA, and other features, as well as robust cooling and solid performance.

The Asus X570 motherboard lineup includes options from the TUF, Prime, Strix, WS (Workstation), and ROG lines in ATX form-factor only (currently). If you are looking for an ITX board, it will have to be from Gigabyte or ASRock for now, while Micro-ATX boards can be found in Asus, MSI, ASRock, and Gigabyte lineups. The OG Crosshair VIII Formula leads the pack, followed by the Hero and WS, with the Strix, Prime and TUF lines mixed in on the way down the product stack. With a total of 10 motherboards in its lineup, Asus has enough options to suit most builds.

Read full article @ Tom's Hardware

Contra: Rogue Corps Review

Run and gun: a word whose etymology clearly begins with the Contra lineage some three decades ago. One-hit kills, twirling somersaulting jumps, and the all-powerful Spread Gun have remained constant throughout the Contra series even as the formula changes from 2D to 3D and back again. Players have had to wait for nearly a decade since the last Hard Corps title was developed by Arc System Works and even longer for titles actually developed by Konami proper. Having to go on for two console generations without a real Contra has been maddening, but Konami has answered the player’s damning cries with a complete reboot of the series with Contra: Rogue Corps.

Read full article @ Wccftech

Corsair Virtuoso RGB Wireless Review

Corsair just released a new line of high-end gaming headsets. The Virtuoso RGB Wireless is the company's best and most complete gaming headset to date, offering fancy looks, good sound quality, excellent battery life, great versatility and the best wireless headset microphone yet.

The higher end of the gaming headset market has been quite active lately, and Corsair wasn't sitting idly. The company just introduced a brand-new line of gaming headsets, called the Virtuoso. It currently consists of two products, both surpassing the company's other two gaming headset families – the HS and Void/Void Pro – in every possible way. The full names of Corsair's newest and best headsets are the Virtuoso RGB Wireless and the Virtuoso RGB Wireless SE. This review will focus on the "regular" Virtuoso RGB Wireless. The SE version is different enough that it deserves a separate review, which you can read here.

Read full article @ TechPowerUp

Corsair Virtuoso RGB Wireless SE Review

Corsair's most expensive and luxurious gaming headset, the Virtuoso RGB Wireless SE, offers a couple of upgrades from the "regular" Virtuoso RGB Wireless but also surprisingly falls behind in the microphone department.

Corsair freshly introduced two new gaming headsets, both of them wireless and both of them aiming high in terms of features, performance and, subsequently, the price. The less expensive one is the excellent $180/€180 Virtuoso RGB Wireless. Then there's the "Special Edition" of that headset, dubbed the Virtuoso RGB Wireless SE, which we'll focus on in this review. It costs $30/€30 more and improves upon the "regular" Virtuoso RGB Wireless in a couple of areas, but, surprisingly, not all of them. If you're only interested in what's worse, jump to the Microphone Performance section of this review - that's where you'll find out why I think the less expensive Virtuoso is a better choice for pretty much everyone.

Read full article @ TechPowerUp

Guru3D Rig of the Month - September 2019

Meet the September edition of the Guru3D Rig of the month 2019, right here

Read full article @ The Guru of 3D

Intel Iris Plus Graphics G7 iGPU Beats AMD RX Vega 10: Benchmarks

Intel is taking big strides forward with its Gen11 integrated graphics architecture. Its performance-configured variant, the Intel Iris Plus Graphics G7, featured in the Core i7-1065G7 "Ice Lake" processor, is found to beat AMD Radeon RX Vega 10 iGPU, found in the Ryzen 7 2700U processor ("Raven Ridge"), by as much as 16 percent in 3DMark 11, a staggering 23 percent in 3DMark FireStrike 1080p. Notebook Check put the two iGPUs through these, and a few game tests to derive an initial verdict that Intel's iGPU has caught up with AMD's RX Vega 10. AMD has since updated its iGPU incrementally with the "Picasso" silicon, providing it with higher clock speeds and updated display and multimedia engines.

Read full article @ techPowerUp

Not So MMO: GreedFall Review - Caught Up In The World

GreedFall caught my attention with its setting that isn't seen very often in games, with its black powder rifles and Magic existing in the same world. The story and choices I've made in GreedFall kept me immersed and wanting more, but the combat kept me from 100% enjoying myself. But how does the experience hold up?

Read full article @ MMORPG

Patriot Viper VP4100 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD Review

It's an incredibly fast PCIe Gen 4 SSD from Patriot. The VP4100 takes over as the flagship SSD drive in Patriot’s Viper gaming division product line from the PCIe Gen3 X4 Viper VPN100 (which we reviewed here). At the heart of the new drive is one of Phison’s PS5016-E16 controller’s, the world’s first PCIe Gen4 x4 controller. The 8-channel controller looks after the Toshiba BiCS4 96-layer 3D TLC NAND that the drive uses. There is also 1GB of DDR-2400 cache.

The Viper VP4100 line comprises just two capacities (at the time of writing this review), the 1TB model and the flagship 2TB drive. Both drives have the same official Sequential and random 4K performance. The Sequential figures are up to 5,000MB/s for reads and up to 4,400MB/s for writes. Random 4K performance for the drives is rated as up to a very impressive 800,000 IOPS for both reads and writes.

Read full article @ KitGuru

Scythe Big Shuriken 3 CPU Cooler Review

In the world of small form factor or ITX air cooler you do not have a whole lot of options that provide sufficient cooling. Well Scythe wants to change that with their Big Shuriken 3. This is of course an update to the Big Shuriken 2, which has been out for quite a long time now. The update brings a beefier design, new fan, and better overall style. At only 69 mm tall the Big Shuriken 3 should be able to fit in even the tightest spaces. It even has a cut-out for memory compatibility, and features Scythe’s Flex 12 Slim fan. Is this the CPU cooler you need for your small form factor build? Read on as we find out!

The Scythe Big Shuriken 3 comes in a very nice retail box. One thing I’ve always liked about Scythe’s packaging is that it is loaded with information, the Big Shuriken 3 packaging is no different. We have a full list of specifications, dimensions, and details on many of the features throughout the retail box.

Read full article @ ThinkComputers.org

The Xeon vs. EPYC Performance With Intel's oneAPI Embree & OSPray Render Projects

With Intel seemingly ramping up work on their open-source OSPray portable ray-tracing engine now that they have pulled it under their oneAPI umbrella as part of a forthcoming rendering tool-kit, I figured it would be the latest interesting candidate for benchmarking of AMD EPYC 7742 vs. Intel Xeon Platinum 8280 performance. In addition, the Embree ray-tracing kernels are also being benchmarked as part of this performance comparison.

Read full article @ Phoronix

Thermaltake S500 TG Review

The Thermaltake A500 chassis with its aluminium panels and potent liquid-cooling options has become a popular choice with the enthusiast crowd. However, with a fairly high price tag of around $250, it is certainly not an option for a large crowd. Thermaltake has done a great job of taking the look and feel of the A500 along with its core functionality and making it available at a much more attainable price point when designing the S500 TG. Gone is the second glass panel and some visual elements, like the hinges and elaborately shaped glass panel. In addition to this, the interior frame is different but essentially just as functional. Gone is also the USB Type-C port and Thermaltake's approach to modularity called "DMD".

What you are left with is a sweet-looking case that is extremely sturdy and manages to delivery tangible functionality where it counts at a fraction of the price. You may still install multiple large radiators with ample storage options for most users left, even though some may want more than just two 3.5" trays. On top of that, there is a ton of space both in the main compartment and behind the motherboard tray to assemble everything, especially considering you can essentially remove every panel for access during assembly.

Read full article @ TechPowerUp

Velocilinx Brennus Gaming Mouse and Mechanical Gaming Keyboard Review

As a company that is high on quality technology and products for the home, Velocilinx wanted to make a foray into the world of gaming peripherals. The fruits of their labor have brought us the Brennus Collection. Enter the Brennus Optical Gaming Mouse and Wired Mechanical Gaming Keyboard bringing their vision for gaming peripherals to the market. This is our review.

Read full article @ MMORPG

VR Wars: the RTX 2080 Super vs. the RTX 2080 Ti using the Vive Pro

VR Wars: the RTX 2080 Super vs. the RTX 2080 Ti using the Vive Pro Concluding BTRs September VR Month, this review follows up the evaluation in which we upgraded from an Oculus Rift CV1 and compared its performance with a Vive Pro using five cross-platform games. 

Read full article @ BabelTechReviews

Windows 10 version 1909: new and changed features

Microsoft has yet to reveal the release date for Windows 10 version 1909, a new feature update for Windows 10 that does not have many of the characteristics of a feature update. It is expected to be released in October 2019 via Windows Update and other updating systems.

Windows 10 version 1909, it is also called 19H2 meaning second half of 2019, will be delivered unlike any other feature update up to this point. Microsoft plans to push it to devices like any other cumulative update for the operating system which means that there will be less downtime and interruption when installing the update.

Read full article @ gHacks