Here a roundup of todays reviews and articles:

ASRock Announces X99 WS-E/10G: Dual 10GBase-T and Quad x16
Crucial MX100 Review
Dragon Age: Inquisition Benchmarked: Graphics & CPU Performance
EVGA GeForce GTX 970 FTW ACX 2.0 Review
EVGA GTX 980 Classified Video Card Review
Func MS-2 Gaming Mouse Review
Gigabyte X99 Gaming G1 WiFi (LGA 2011-3) Motherboard Review
How to install Cacti (Monitoring tool) on ubuntu 14.10 server
How to Manage Files and Use the File System on Android
How to play Unity Games offline
How to Use SSH Tunnelling on Chrome OS
LUXA2 Groovy Duo Wireless Speaker Review
MSI GS30 Shadow and GamingDock Preview
Tesoro Tizona Elite Mechanical Gaming Keyboard & Numberpad Review
Workshop: making your PC as energy efficient as possible

ASRock Announces X99 WS-E/10G: Dual 10GBase-T and Quad x16

Regular readers of my twitter feed might have noticed that over the past 12/24 months, I lamented the lack of 10 gigabit Ethernet connectors on any motherboard. My particular gripe was the lack of 10GBase-T, the standard which can be easily integrated into the home. Despite my wishes, there are several main barriers to introducing this technology. Firstly is the cost, whereby a 10GBase-T Ethernet card costs $400-$800 depending on your location (using the Intel X520-T2), followed by the power consumption which requires either an active cooler or a passive plus good airflow to shift up to 14W. The bandwidth can be as important (PCIe 2.1 x8 for the X540-BT2, but can work in PCIe 3.0 x8 or x4 mode), but also it is limited to those who need faster internal networking routing. When all these factors are added together, it does not make for an easy addition to a motherboard. But step forward ASRock.

Read full article @ Anandtech

Crucial MX100 Review

Since their inception, Solid State drives have been the preserve of high end, enthusiast users whose craving for speed knew no limits. More recently, with the advent of ultra books and such, SSDs have become much more common place. So much so that even some entry level PC's now come equipped with a solid state drive thanks in part to the cost of this technology which has tumbled over recent years. Speed isn't everything though and the purchase of an SSD, despite the prices coming down did have its drawbacks, mainly storage capacity. It wasn't so long ago that a 480GB SSD would cost more than £1 per GB and as such was priced out of many people's budget. Today however, we have a drive that costs a little under 32p per GB!

Read full article @ Vortez

Dragon Age: Inquisition Benchmarked: Graphics & CPU Performance

PC gamers can expect a crisper, more detailed world, though precisely how crisp and detailed will depend on your setup. We test the latest AMD and Nvidia graphics cards, in total 25 DirectX 11 graphics card configurations from both companies covering

Read full article @ Techspot

EVGA GeForce GTX 970 FTW ACX 2.0 Review

EVGA’s GTX 970 lineup is one of the most extensive among NVIDIA’s board partners and their FTW version is arguably the fastest available. Considering we’ve already looked at examples from ASUS, Gigabyte, PNY, GALAX and even EVGA, this isn’t an idle boast at all.

The back-story behind EVGA’s Maxwell lineup is an interesting one since it has been beset by wild successes and some very public speed bumps. Their GTX 970 cards have been in high demand since they combine a low price with awesome performance and legendary customer support. However, many early adopters reported coil whine on their cards, an issue that EVGA readily admitted to and has since rectified. We reported on this last week and found that revised cards have made their way into the channel so you can buy with confidence. Fan speed profiles on the new ACX 2.0 cooler weren’t optimized either; idle noise was far too loud at launch but a new BIOS was rolled out that put things right.

Read full article @ Hardware Canucks

EVGA GTX 980 Classified Video Card Review

Overclocking puts a unique strain on video cards and while reference designs can overclock rather well there is a limit to what the stock VRM can supply in terms of clean usable power. For this reason many hardware enthusiasts look for cards with custom PCBs in hopes their overclocking experience will be better. Another perk to custom designed cards is out of box performance, given that these cards often come with higher clocks and better cooling your game performance will beat stock every time .

In this review we will be looking at the EVGA GTX 980 Classified. Like in previous versions the GTX 980 has been matched up with the EVGA epower VRM to create a monster video card that can deliver outstanding out of box performance, enhanced overclocking and superior LN2 experience when matched with a custom unlocked BIOS.

Read full article @ Hardware Asylum

Func MS-2 Gaming Mouse Review

HThe Func MS-2 mouse has given us a good impression as the MS-3 version before it and is able to deliver a good gaming experience for mainstream gamers and seems to be better suited for fingertip grip users with smaller hands. The soft-touch coating offers a good grip which is important during long gaming sessions while the extra buttons are carefully placed for easy accessibility.

Read full article @ Madshrimps

Gigabyte X99 Gaming G1 WiFi (LGA 2011-3) Motherboard Review

A trend that is observable with higher end “gaming” motherboards is that they tend to be geared primarily towards performance junkies, overclockers and all-round enthusiasts, rather than just pure gamers. Gaming motherboards based on Intel’s X99 chipset are a perfect example of this because the reality is that most gamers would get a better deal by opting for a Z97 motherboard and a Core i7 4790K. As a result a gaming X99 motherboard appeals to a specific type of gamer who has the need for a large amount of CPU horsepower and memory to assist with things like video editing, rendering and streaming. Today we have Gigabyte’s G1 Gaming WiFi motherboard which takes Gigabyte’s “gaming” feature-set of upgraded quality audio and Killer networking and pairs that up with the performance of the X99 platform and various tools for overclockers such as voltage read-off points and onboard buttons. There’s also a shed-load of connectivity such as dual-LAN, AC WiFi, SATA Express, M.2 and more USB ports than you can shake a stick at. In basic terms, the Gaming G1 WiFi is Gigabyte’s flagship motherboard for the X99 Gaming series, but the reality is that any Gigabyte X99 motherboard is going to be “high-end enough” for you to be contented.

Read full article @ eTeknix

How to install Cacti (Monitoring tool) on ubuntu 14.10 server

Cacti is a complete network graphing solution designed to harness the power of RRDTool's data storage and graphing functionality. Cacti provides a fast poller, advanced graph templating, multiple data acquisition methods, and user management features out of the box.

Read full article @ Ubuntu Geek

How to Manage Files and Use the File System on Android

Androids user-visible file system is one of its advantages over iOS. This allows you to more easily work with files, opening them in any app of your choice. But Android doesnt include a file manager app by default.

Read full article @ Howtogeek

How to play Unity Games offline

When you play games in your web browser, one of the following four technologies is being used usually: Adobe Flash, Java, Unity or HMTL5. There are exceptions to the rule but the majority relies on at least one of the technologies listed above.

Read full article @ gHacks

How to Use SSH Tunnelling on Chrome OS

Chromebooks offer built-in support for SSH tunnelling with their included crosh shell and SSH command. An SSH tunnel allows you to use an SSH connection like a VPN or encrypted proxy, sending your browsing traffic through the secure tunnel.

Read full article @ Howtogeek

LUXA2 Groovy Duo Wireless Speaker Review

LUXA2, a division of Thermaltake, embraces the philosophy that simplicity is the ultimate sophistication and with this belief incorporates functionality and premium aesthetic appeal into their product designs. From concept to reality, they are committed to creating the best user experience. Today Benchmark Reviews examines the Groovy Duo Live Wireless Speaker, two portable Bluetooth speaker modules with the capability of stereo sound.

Read full article @ Benchmark Reviews

MSI GS30 Shadow and GamingDock Preview

One of the major problems when buying a gaming laptop is that you are stuck forever with the graphics inside. Within 18 months they are very often struggling to keep up with the latest game engines. MSI is looking to resolve this problem with their upcoming MSI GS30 Shadow Super Portable laptop which can be paired up with a full sized desktop graphics card. Need more frame rate horsepower? – order a standard GPU online.

Read full article @ KitGuru

Tesoro Tizona Elite Mechanical Gaming Keyboard & Numberpad Review

Tesoro are one of my favourite keyboard manufacturers, as they offer up some unique aesthetics, class leading performance and great build quality; although I’m sure they’re the kind of features we can all get behind! Everything I’ve tested from Tesoro, both professionally and personally has always been impressive and a little bit different from everything else on the market; today’s review is no exception. At my disposal I have not one, but two Tesoro products; the Tizona Elite mechanical gaming keyboard, and the Tizona Numberpad.

The Tizona Keyboard and the Tizona Numberpad are independent peripherals which are can be used separately, but they also have the ability to work together. The Tizona is a TKL style keyboard, which means it has no numberpad on the right hand side, but the numberpad can be bought separately and attached to the keyboard, or used separately as an extra programmable controller of its own, so this should be an interesting aspect to test today; it’s also one that will make more sense in a moment.

Tesoro love giving their products cool names, with a bit of back story to each. “The Burning Blade – Tizona is the sword carried by El Cid which was used to fight the Moors in Spain. It is now one of Spain’s most cherished relics.” This keeps in theme with other Tesoro products which are named after historical or mythological weapons.

Read full article @ eTeknix

Workshop: making your PC as energy efficient as possible

Although PCs have steadily grown more energy efficient over the last few years, there's still room for improvement. We tried to find out how you can make a Haswell system as efficient as possible. We first tried using different components, then attempted tweaking various (BIOS) settings, and finally tried undervolting.

Generation after generation, processors (especially Intel's) have become more energy efficient. Nevertheless, a desktop computer will still consume tens to hundreds of watts under load, depending on its configuration. Those who choose more efficient components for their PC and/or make the right adjustments in the BIOS, can substantially reduce their PC's power consumption. Those who don't mind a small drop in performance can achieve even greater reductions. Read on to learn how you can do this!

Read full article @ Hardware.Info