Here a roundup of today's reviews and articles:

Crucial Ballistix Sport 2400MHz Quad Channel DDR4 16GB Memory Kit Review
Liztek HDDS1BS USB 3.0 Hard Drive Dock Review
Project CARS Benchmarked: Graphics & CPU Performance
Workshop: sanding CPU for better cooling performance
XTracGear Carbonic XXL Mousing Surface Review

Crucial Ballistix Sport 2400MHz Quad Channel DDR4 16GB Memory Kit Review

Memory, the most vital part of any computer that gets overlooked the most. There’s not a lot to say about RAM apart from its expensive and very confusing. DDR4, the newest iteration of RAM is currently the fastest version of the consumer RAM, with speeds exceeding 3333MHz.

Crucial are one of the big players in the RAM game, providing us with solid performance at a more affordable price. Today’s kit is the Ballistix Sport 2400MHz, one of Crucial’s cheaper sets, providing us with minimal heatsinks and the base unit to use a black PCB. Let’s see how this set compares to the likes of Corsair, G-Skill and our base 32GB Crucial DDR4 set.

Read full article @ eTeknix

Liztek HDDS1BS USB 3.0 Hard Drive Dock Review

Up for review today I have a hard drive dock from a company called Liztek that doesn’t really have a name just the HDDS1BS. The dock is equipped with USB 3.0 and it’s vertical loading, you just slide the drive in and you’re ready to go. I’ve tested it with a couple drives I have on hand and from my tests performance over USB 3.0 is virtually that same as the performance of SATA. Read on to learn more…

Read full article @ Technogog

Project CARS Benchmarked: Graphics & CPU Performance

Like Gran Turismo and Forza Motorsport before it, Project CARS intends to deliver a highly realistic driving simulation. But to distinguish it from the pack, developer Slightly Mad Studios has made the game an open experience that allows players to choose from a variety of motorsports paths and grants immediate access to all tracks and vehicles.

Project CARS has been funded by the community and developers without financial aid of a publisher, which is the traditional route. During a lengthy closed beta period, contributors could buy 'Tool Packs' that allowed them access to development in roles like content creation, QA, and marketing media depending on the pack.

Read full article @ Techspot

Workshop: sanding CPU for better cooling performance

By sanding your processor and CPU-cooler you can improve the cooling performance significantly. How big this improvement is and how to perform this sanding you can read in this workshop.

If you're not satisfied with the performance of your CPU-cooler and get online to serach for possible solutions, you'll probably have come across it: the phenomenon called "sanding", in other words the smoothing of the heatspreader of your CPU and/or the bottom of your CPU-cooler to improve the contact between the two of them and therefore lowering your processor's temperature. The idea behind sanding is simple: the surface of the CPU and cooler is always quite rought, which means there are miniscule dents in it that can worsen the connection between them. The dents are obviously filled with coolingpaste, but the smoother both of the surfaces are, the better the direct connection is and therefore better cooling. Another thing is that CPU-coolers - and to some extent also CPUs - the surface isn't completely straight, but often slightly spherical. you can also smoothen out this 'sphere' by sanding.

Read full article @ Hardware.Info

XTracGear Carbonic XXL Mousing Surface Review

Today's review unit of the XTracGear Carbonic XXL arrived from XTracGear's offices down in Salt Lake City, Utah. Traveling with United States Postal Service, and transferring to Canada Post, this box arrived in good condition. There is a slight dent showing signs of compression near the bottom of the rectangular prism, but otherwise there are no issues or causes of concern. I must say this is one of the most irregularly shaped boxes I have received before. The only odder box I have seen was a triangular prism, and it was used to ship a poster. Either way, this shape is quite understandable, especially when you see the retail container of the Carbonic XXL.

Read full article @ APH Networks