Here a roundup of todays reviews and articles:

5 Crazy Difficult Games You Can Get On Steam
Behind the scenes with Intels SSD division @ The Tech Report
Bitfenix Shadow Review
Cooler Master CM Storm Xornet Gaming Mouse Review
Cooler Master HAF Stacker
Cougar MX300 Midtower Gaming Case Review
Dark Rock Pro 3 by beQuiet! Review
Das Keyboard 4 Professional Review: Cherry MX Flavored Typing
Enermax TwisterOdio 16 CP-008 Notebook Cooling Pad Review
For Valve, is the Steam controller both a blessing and a curse
Infinite Crisis Beta Video Game Review
Intel Core i7-4960X 3-way SLI Gaming Performance Scaling
OtterBox Defender Series Case for HTC 8X Windows Phone Review
Plextor M6M mSATA SSD (256GB) Review
Rosewill R-Studio Ampbox Bluetooth Speaker Review
Seagate Desktop SSHD 4TB review: the ultimate hard drive
Windows 8.1 Update 1 Tip: Toggle the Power Button
Windows 8.1 Update Deep-Dive Review
Windows 8.1 Update hands-on review

5 Crazy Difficult Games You Can Get On Steam

If the success of Flappy Bird has taught us anything, its this: difficult games are NOT niche. Rewards taste sweeter when the effort required is greater, so it should be no surprise that difficult games are often more rewarding when you win. When was the last time you basked in the glory of hard-fought victory? Nowadays, difficult games are rare. Difficult games that are fun? Even rarer. But thanks to Steam, you can play these games without spending too much money. In terms of the ratio of price-to-glory, these games are the best value youll ever get. Are you ready...

Read full article @ MakeUseOf

Behind the scenes with Intels SSD division @ The Tech Report

Last month, we met with the Non-Volatile Memory Solutions Group responsible for Intel's SSDs. We got hard numbers on failure rates, details about efforts to make SSDs more reliable, and a peek behind the scenes at one of the firm's validation labs.

Read full article @ TR-News

Bitfenix Shadow Review

Bitfenix found its niche in the market for PC cases and one of their most successful cases certainly was the Prodigy. Today we're having another one of BitFenix' cases for review, which is called Shadow. It is basically a mid-range chassis and it comes with a few decent features as well as a sleek design.

Read full article @ ocaholic

Cooler Master CM Storm Xornet Gaming Mouse Review

CM Storm has proven once again that a quality gaming mouse doesn't have to carry a hefty price tag. For under $30 the Xornet provides the right amount of buttons, features, and quality parts to appeal to FPS gamers on a budget. If you prefer a claw-grip style of mouse and don't mind it being lightweight, the Xornet is an excellent choice.

Read full article @ Tweaknews

Cooler Master HAF Stacker

Cooler Master is joining the fray of extra large cases, but is making things modular in the process. With that in mind, the HAF Stacker was born. Will it show others how it is done, although late to the game? We take the HAF Stacker and shuffle its parts around a few times to see what it has to offer over offerings by other brands.

Read full article @ techPowerUp

Cougar MX300 Midtower Gaming Case Review

Do-it-yourself PC chassis manufacturers continue to bring new products to market at a steady pace. While many such manufacturers gear the bulk of their offerings to the mid-level and enthusiast market, some companies have recognized the need for more budget-builder-friendly versions, especially for gamers.

Read full article @ TechnologyX

Dark Rock Pro 3 by beQuiet! Review

Not new to the market, beQueit! has been manufacturing case fans, CPU coolers, power supplies, and additional accessories since 2006 and have become extremely popular in Germany and that popularity is trending in the same manner here in the states. The folks at beQuiet! put emphasis on performance "and" silence, which is not necessarily two things that go hand and hand in the aftermarket air cooler industry. Today we will be looking at their latest offering in their CPU cooler line, the Dark Rock Pro 3.

Read full article @ TechwareLabs.com

Das Keyboard 4 Professional Review: Cherry MX Flavored Typing

As a species, we've come a long way from the days of carving notes into stone. While our ancestors used chisel and rock, we now use keyboards to hammer out our thoughts and anything that needs to be documented. Some of us spend hours a day sitting in front of a PC, a large portion of which is dedicated to punching keystrokes at a frenzied pace. There's a good chance that your keyboard is actively used more than any other peripheral or accessory, save for your monitor, yet some people give little thought to their plank, as if to suggest that all keyboards are essentially the same.

Professional typists know better. So does Metadot, which started to build a better keyboard nearly a decade ago. You know it as the Das Keyboard and through several generations of refinements, it's evolved into what's now called the Das Keyboard 4 in both Professional (labeled key caps) and Ultimate (blank key caps) variants...

Read full article @ HotHardware.com

Enermax TwisterOdio 16 CP-008 Notebook Cooling Pad Review

It’s that time of the year when the leviathans of the Android market release their new phones, the HTC One M8 and the Galaxy S5. Both of these phones sport the latest and greatest specs and features designed to get your blood boiling to have the newest model. I will be the first to admit that when it’s time to get a new phone, I get a little excited. You pour over all the specs trying to decide which ‘next-gen’ phone will suit you best, but there tends to be two camps when it comes to cell phones: those who upgrade every two years regardless of the condition of their phone, and those who will keep their phone past its normal lifecycle when it starts to look like a soldier who has seen too much war. There is something to be said about the reliability of a well-made product..

I remember my original Motorola Razr flip phone lasted me at least seven years. When I finally retired that device the paint was all but gone, the buttons were mere nubs, and it was slow as hell. I do look back fondly on the Motorola Razr for lasting me all those years while my newer smartphones usually don’t break the three year mark and I am hoping the new M8 with its 90% aluminum body can finally breach the threshold. Aluminum stands out to me as a great low cost, high durability, and lightweight material that many higher quality PC components tend to take advantage of. The feeling of the Aluminum evens feel higher quality in your hands than a typical hard plastic body, and peripherals are no exception.

Read full article @ HiTech Legion

For Valve, is the Steam controller both a blessing and a curse

Valve's Steam controller looks great on paper. It promises not just greater accuracy than conventional console gamepads, but also support for point-and-click titles that traditionally required a mouse and keyboard. There's a downside, though. As TR's Cyril Kowaliski learned first-hand, the Steam controller has a pretty steep learning curve—steep enough, perhaps, to put off some potential converts.

Read full article @ The Tech Report

Infinite Crisis Beta Video Game Review

Infinite Crisis is a DC comics hero based multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA). Developed by Turbine Inc., in conjunction with Warner Brothers Entertainment Inc. This is sure to get DC comics fans pumped! Currently the game has servers in North America, Europe, and Russia. I’m not sure on future plans for expansion in Asian or South American regions.

Read full article @ Benchmark Reviews

Intel Core i7-4960X 3-way SLI Gaming Performance Scaling

In our 3-way SLI gaming performance scaling articles we're going to investigate 3-way SLI scaling factors with different CPUs and different clock speeds. In eight recent games and two theoretical benchmarks we want to find out what difference 3-way SLI makes, when we run benchmarks with the CPU at stock clocks as well as overclocked to 4.5 GHz. Let's kick off with an Intel 4960X CPU and three ASUS GTX 780 DirectCU II graphics cards and find out what the differences are going to be like.

Read full article @ ocaholic

OtterBox Defender Series Case for HTC 8X Windows Phone Review

Smartphone's are the obsession of this generation. It's a technological marvel among many things in this world that keeps us all connected. It's become so prevalent in our daily lives that some can argue we can't live without it. The Smartphone is a marvelous invention and has indeed changed the course of history. It has its obvious advantages, though it also has disadvantages that have and will continue to affect how our society communicates with one another. Nonetheless, because we are so consumed by this device and even sleep with our Smartphone by our side, it's only natural that accessory makers are everywhere to be found making various products such as protective cases to protect our beloved Smartphone.

Back in late 2010, Microsoft released what we know today as the Windows Phone mobile operating system. This mobile operating system was meant to compete with the best of them from Android, Apple, and BlackBerry. Say all you want about Microsoft, but at least they contributed to the industry by providing another choice in the hands of consumers. More than anything we need more competition and choice. Microsoft wanted a piece of the global pie and who could blame them, oodles of money was to be made.

Though I've had some qualms about the initial Windows Phone environment, it's now mature and there's no denying that Windows Phone is very simple to operate, especially for the older generation who isn't used to computers, tweaking and fiddling around with multiple settings and options. My parents were one of these groups of people who were illiterate with technology, one of them couldn't even operate a mouse! The only thing techy they were used to was their old basic flip phone where all it had was a little screen and dial-pad.

Read full article @ ModSynergy.com

Plextor M6M mSATA SSD (256GB) Review

If you happen to pop off the bottom casing of your laptop and find out that your 2.5″ disk drive is nowhere to be found, do not panic. Instead, it’s possible that your laptop may be utilizing a different form factor than the 2.5″ drive. When it comes to solid-state drives, there are three main form factors that you should know about. The first, as we have already mentioned is the 2.5″ form factor, which is the standard size for most desktop and laptop systems. The second, and the primary focus of today’s review, is a mSATA drive. A mSATA drive is roughly 2″ by 1″ in total size, and ideally used in the slim ultra books. The final size that you should know and is quickly increasing in popularity is the M.2 form factor, which is roughly 3″ by 0.75″. Looking back down at your open laptop, you may just see that mSATA, or even a M.2 drive. Regardless, it is still an easy upgrade just like the 2.5″ form factor drive.

Read full article @ TechnologyX

Rosewill R-Studio Ampbox Bluetooth Speaker Review

Rosewill is mainly known as the computer manufacturing division of Newegg, however they do many non-computer related products. As mobile devices become more prevalent, mobile products are becoming more important. Rosewill took a look at what they had to offer and realized they did not have a portable Bluetooth speaker. They have recently changed that with the R-Studio Ampbox.

Read full article @ Legit Reviews

Seagate Desktop SSHD 4TB review: the ultimate hard drive

n November of last year we tested the Seagate Desktop SSHD 2TB. Now, Seagate also has a 4TB model of this 3.5'' hard drive with built-in SSD cache available. We have now also extensively tested this model.

For those who aren't yet familiar with the concept of an SSHD: manufacturers such as Seagate present it as "the best of both worlds", and we find ourselves agreeing with this to a certain degree. Essentially, an SSHD is a conventional hard drive combined with a smaller SSD which serves as a built-in cache. Data is first written to the SSD, and is copied to the conventional disk at a later point in time. At the same time, an SSHD attempts to place as much frequently accessed data as possible on the SSD portion, such that read speeds are also increased by as much as possible. This approach allows an SSHD to, to a certain degree, combine the low price per gigabyte of hard drives with the improved performance of SSDs.

Read full article @ Hardware.Info

Windows 8.1 Update 1 Tip: Toggle the Power Button

In testing Windows 8.1 Update 1 on a wide range of PCs over the past few months, I've seen some interesting behaviors, including a few I can't yet explain. But here's a slightly more ordinary behavior that you can in fact toggle on or off in Update 1: That Start screen-based Power button.

Read full article @ WinSupersite

Windows 8.1 Update Deep-Dive Review

The just-released Windows 8.1 Update is a worthy attempt to bridge the significant divide between Windows 8's touch-oriented Start screen and Windows Store apps (formerly known as Metro apps) and the more traditional mouse-and-keyboard-oriented desktop and applications.

But while the update does well in bringing those two interfaces closer together, I found that it doesn't go quite all the way in making the operating system feel like a unified whole. And it also lacks an important feature that many desktop users (including me) have been asking for since the launch of Windows 8 -- the Start menu. For that, Microsoft says, people will have to wait an unspecified amount of time for another update.

Read full article @ Computerworld

Windows 8.1 Update hands-on review

As detailed by Microsoft, the update adds a number of changes to improve usability for desktop and laptop users working with a mouse and keyboard instead of a touchscreen. In doing so, the Windows 8.1 Update more successfully integrates the Desktop and Start screen environments than earlier builds of Microsoft's platform, though possibly not enough to please those hungering for the return of the Start menu.

We downloaded the Windows 8.1 Update by checking for it via Windows Update, but it only appeared once we had installed all other pending updates to bring our Windows 8.1 system completely up to date. Users who are not in a hurry do not need to do anything, as it will be distributed via Windows Update the usual way over the coming weeks. The update itself was over 800MB in size, and took some time to download and install.

Read full article @ V3