By Max Page @ FrostyTech

When you’re doing real work on a desktop PC, creating content in whatever its form, there is nothing more annoying than a loud fan droning on or a computer randomly restarting because some component is overheating under load. Cooling brings reliability and quiet cooling is the only way to go!

With that in mind, on the test bench today we have BeQuiet’s Dark Rock TF heatsink – a top-down dual tower heatsink which features a pair of BeQuiet SilentWings fans and stands 130mm tall. The Dark Rock TF heatsink is built around six 6mm diameter heatpipes which link a large primary aluminum fin stack and smaller secondary set of aluminum cooling fins to a chunky copper heatspreader below. The 135mm PWM fans are arranged in a push-pull configuration, exhausting downwards so related motherboard CPU VRM components benefit from the cooling air flow.

Read The Review Here

Author: SKYMTL @ Hardware Canucks

As NVIDIA’s GTX 980 gradually matures, their board partners are starting to take a few more chances with their custom designs. While cards like the Matrix and Classified series have pushed air cooled options to their max, water cooling has remained persona non grata for the most part. EVGA’s GTX 980 Hybrid is meant to bridge the gap between classically cooled options and those which require a pre-existing water cooling loop for optimal performance.

Read The Review Here

Check out these latest hardware announcements for today from around the web. Also included are some hardware news bits, and on some days, a few rumors tossed in for good measure. Click on the links below to read the official press release, visit the products web page, or to an independent news source.

• ZOTAC Unveils the GeForce GTX TITAN-X ArcticStorm Edition
• AMD Fiji to be Codenamed Radeon Fury
• AMD Radeon Fiji Pictured Again
• GIGABYTE Readies FM2+ Series Motherboards for Newly Launched AMD Godavari APUs
• ASUS Announces Support for AMD A-Series ‘Godavari’ APUs
• SilverStone Packs 700 W Into Teeny SFX-L Power Supply
• Be Quiet! Extends Dark Rock Family with Top Flow Model
• X2 Announces Affordable X2.Kimera 4007 Gaming Keyboard
• Thermaltake Announces the Suppressor F51 Mid-tower Chassis
• G.SKILL DDR4 Memory Achieves Fastest Air-Cooling Record at 4062 MHz
• OCZ to Unveil New TLC-Based Trion 100 and Z-Drive 6300 NVMe PCIe
• WD Redesigns World’s No. 1 Selling Portable Hard Drive
• Cryorig Teases its Computex 2015 Lineup
• ADATA Teases its Computex 2015 Unveiling
• Colorful To Become Second Largest GPU Vendor Globally

Today sees the release of the first gameplay trailer for Total War: Arena, showing exclusive Alpha footage of this energetic and exciting new entry to the award-winning series.

Total War: Arena is a free-to-play, team-based strategy game, putting players in the middle of epic-scale battles. Using key elements of award-winning Total War design, it is made from the ground-up for multiplayer realtime strategy fans, with players going head-to-head in 10v10 battles.

To join the Closed Alpha sign up at: www.TotalWar.com/Arena. The Closed Alpha is currently available in Europe, US servers will be added soon.

What’s more, this weekend sees the first live stream of an ARENA match, with games broadcast live from an exclusive ESL event in Cologne. To see more of the game, watch the first live stream on Saturday 23 May at 17:00 CEST on the official Total War Twitch channel: http://www.twitch.tv/totalwarofficial.

By Kenny @ PureOC

The X99 chipset has now had a little bit of time to mature. During its initial launch Gigabyte sent us the X99-UD4 motherboard for review. The X99-UD4 took home our Great Hardware Award for its simple aesthetics along with a solid performance to value. Now that we are six months into the release of the X99 chipset, we are seeing more motherboards become available at a much more affordable price.

Today, we are going to be looking at one of these motherboards that offer a similar performance to the X99-UD4 in a more simplified package and price. We introduce to you the Gigabyte X99-UD3P. Aesthetically, the Gigabyte X99-UD3P is very similar to the UD4 motherboard with some obvious changes.

Read The Review Here

Check out these latest hardware announcements for today from around the web. Also included are some hardware news bits, and on some days, a few rumors tossed in for good measure. Click on the links below to read the official press release, visit the products web page, or to an independent news source.

• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Launch Imminent
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Core Configuration Revealed
• EA Developer Teases Next-gen AMD Radeon GPU
• Razer Introduces the Firefly Gaming Mousepad with Customizable Lighting FX
• MSI First Motherboard Brand to be Windows 10 Certified
• EK Releases New Supremacy EVO X99 LGA2011v3 Water Block
• NVIDIA Back to Dirty Tricks with GTX 900M Series Overclocking
• FSP Launches 80 Plus Gold Power Supply with Optimized Cooling: Hydro G
• CRYORIG Announces New Line of CUSTOMOD Covers and CRYO-Paste
• Scythe Releases Slip Stream 120 DB Fan Series
• Anidees AI6 v2 Chassis In Stores
• Raidmax Intros XT-Series Entry-level PSUs
• OCZ Introduces Z-Drive 6000 Enterprise PCIe SSD Series with NVMe Support
• NVIDIA Gives Away “The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt” to GeForce GTX TITAN-X Owners
• It’s Now Been Over 160 Days Since a Catalyst WHQL Release
• Arctic Starts Selling Thermal Pads You Cut to Shape
• Noctua Presents Two Asymmetrical 140mm CPU Coolers

Source: Blue’s News

EA’s Battlelog announces plans for a Spring Patch for Battlefield 4 that will add include new weapons, a re-balancing of existing weapons, a return of the Gun Master mode, netcode updates, and more changes for the military shooter sequel.

DICE continues to constantly improve Battlefield 4 to make the best gaming experience possible. In the Spring Patch (releasing late May for all platforms), we’ve listened to your feedback and gave you what you wanted – more guns!

Click here to visit the Battlefield 4 Battlelog for complete list of changes.

Source: Legit Reviews

NVIDIA GeForce 352.86 WHQL video card drivers are out now and are the game ready drivers for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. This drivers has all the optimizations for GTA V and all the other game titles plus optimizations for the PC release of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt along with an updated SLI profile. GeForce 352.86 WHQL The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt drivers can be downloaded through the GeForce Experience or directly from GeForce.com.

The Game Ready driver for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt fully supports NVIDIA technologies like 4K, Dynamic Super Resolution (DSR), GameStream, GeForce Experience one-click Optimal Playable Settings, G-SYNC, HairWorks, HBAO+, PhysX, and SLI.

Source: NVIDIA

It’s a not-so-hidden secret. Game developers will let you know a game isn’t fully polished by calling it an “alpha” or “beta.” But once a game launches, there shouldn’t be anything “beta” about it. Gamers expect it to work.

We feel the same way about our graphics. We don’t want gamers beta testing our work when they play their games for the first time. So we created GeForce Game Ready drivers.

We release Game Ready drivers at or before each major game launch. And one of best ways to ensure they possess the highest level of quality is to secure certification from Microsoft’s Windows Hardware Qualification Lab (WHQL).

As the launch of Windows 10 and DirectX 12 nears, our GeForce drivers have taken a major step forward: WHQL certification has arrived.

It’s no small task. Next to the operating system, the graphics driver is one of the most complex pieces of code on a PC.

We worked closely with Microsoft to develop the new DX12 standard. And that effort has paid off with day-one WHQL certification.

Download the drivers here.

By John Dudek @ The Wargamer

USS Nevada, one of two Nevada class battleships was launched early in 1914 during the final pre-WWI leap in battleship building technology, was nearly sunk during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. However, she survived and went on to make a major contribution in a number of theatres during World War 2. Here John Dudek gives us an overview of this famous ship’s long and illustrious career.

Read on…