Hardware

By Brian Nyhuis @ Legit Reviews

Today we’re going to take a look at a brand new case that Thermaltake is announcing at CES 2016 in Las Vegas, NV. Kicking off our review coverage today, we’ll take a look at what this full-tower case all has to offer, and show you what makes it so special.

The Core X71 is a massive full-tower chassis, featuring two chambers for advanced cable management and/or various liquid or air cooling opportunities. Inside this case you will find no shortage of cooling potential, so right off the bat I think this case may be a hit amongst enthusiasts. We will have to find out how well these features look like they will work, along with how well the case is built.

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.

• GIGABYTE Launches High-End Desktop Motherboards and Next Gen. BRIX at CES 2016
• EVGA Readies GeForce GTX 980 Ti VR Edition Graphics Card
• MSI Showcases Future of PC Gaming at CES 2016
• Thermaltake Launches Pacific R360 D5 Water Cooling Kit
• EVGA Introduces New and Innovative Products at CES 2016 – VIDEO
• Kingston Digital Ships Encrypted USB with Keypad Access
• Thermaltake Unveils the Core X71 and Core X31 Chassis
• Syber Gaming’s New Mid-Tower and Small-Box PC’s are Ready for VR
• Thermaltake Announces Core W Series: W100 and WP100 at CES 2016
• Patriot Announces Release of New Viper USB and Mega USB Drives
• AMD Demoes Quiet and Groovy New Reference CPU Cooler – VIDEO
• Thermaltake Shows Off its First PSU with RGB Lighting
• Patriot Releases New SSD Enclosure with Type-C Connector
• OWC Announces Mercury Extreme Pro 1TB SSD
• Kingston Announces SSDNow KC400 Series
• Lexar Announces New JumpDrive C20i, a 3-in-1iOS Flash Drive
• Lexar Announces New Plug and Stay JumpDrive S45

Author: Grady McKinney @ HardOCP

On our test bench today is the XFX R9 380X Double Dissipation XXX OC 4GB video card. It features the latest Ghost Thermal 3.0 cooling technology from XFX and a factory overclock. We will compare it to the ASUS STRIX GTX 960 DCU II OC 4GB in a battle of the $229 price point video cards to determine the better overall value.

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.

• MSI Announces X99 and Z170 Carbon Edition Motherboards with Mystic Light
• ViewSonic Launches New Series of High Performance Gaming Monitors
• Corsair Introduces Three New Mid-Tower Cases: The Spec-Alpha, 400C, and 400Q
• Cooler Master MasterCase Maker 5 – MasterAir Maker 8 and MasterWatt Maker 1200
• ENERMAX Announces the Ostrog Advance Chassis
• Swiftech Launches Drive X2, Drive X2 Prestige AIO Liquid Coolers
• Creative Unleashes The X-Fi Sonic Carrier
• Patriot Releases the Hellfire M.2 and PCIe AIC into the World of SSDs
• Logitech Launches G502 Proteus Spectrum Gaming Mouse
• Linksys Introduces The Largest Portfolio Of MU-MIMO Home Networking Solutions
• Team Group Announces Dark Pro DDR4 Memory
• Velocity Micro Releases All-in-One PC with a Curved 34” Display
• Linksys And DD-WRT Announce Support For The Latest WRT Routers
• ZOTAC Reveals a 2GB/sec PCI-E SSD
• Amped Wireless Ultra-Fast AC2600 WiFi Router with MU-MIMO
• Samsung Electronics Announces Portable SSD T3
• Netgear Unveils New Routers, Range Extenders, Powerline Adapter at CES
• MAINGEAR Unveils 18-core ALPHA 34 All-in-One PC

Author: AkG @ Hardware Canucks

When searching for an optimal lag-free solution for online gaming, buyers typically go towards wired internet solutions since they tend to offer the best bandwidth and connection uptime. However, with the advent of 5GHz Wireless AC, WiFi has come all that much closer to achieving what gamers need and companies have begun to take advantage of that fact with new so-called “gaming grade” routers. While products from ASUS, Netgear and Linksys are the most visible in today’s market, ASRock is now introducing their own unique option: the G10 Gaming Router.

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.

• Cooltek Announces the GT-04 Green Edition Mid-tower Chassis
• ASUS Republic of Gamers Announces ROG Maximus VIII Formula Mobo with EK-waterblock and RGB Lighting
• Biostar Introduces Racing Series Motherboards
• Enermax Announces ETS-N30II Air CPU Cooler
• iBuyPower Announces the Revolt 2 eSports Gaming Desktop
• SilverStone Finally Releases the Argon Series AR07 and AR08 CPU Coolers
• ASRock Announces its Intel C232 Chipset Motherboards
• Dell Introduces U2417H InfinityEdge 23.8” 1080p IPS Monitor
• AOC Releases 4K LCD Monitor U2879VF With FreeSync
• Plextor Launches M8Pe NVMe PCI-e 4x SSD Next Week
• Dell SE2417HG 60 HZ Gaming Monitor Announced

Author: Grady McKinney @ HardOCP

In this evaluation we have a custom built Radeon R9 390 video card, the ASUS R9 390 STRIX DirectCU III 8GB. It features a factory overclock and the DirectCU III cooling system, alongside STRIX technology for silent gaming. We will compare it to a custom NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 video card, both using the highest overclock we achieved.

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.

• ASUS Announces E3 Pro Gaming V5 Intel Xeon Gaming Motherboard
• BIOSTAR Partners with Thermaltake for the Ultimate Gaming Experience at DreamHack Winter 2015 in Sweden
• BIOSTAR HyperOC Technology for Non-K Overclocking Revealed
• Creative Sound BlasterX G5 Portable Sound Card Now Available
• Aqua Computer Intros Spacer for Skylake CPUs
• Aerocool Presents 80Plus Gold Certified XPredator PSU Models
• AMD Dual-Fiji “Gemini” Video Card Delayed To 2016, Aligned With VR Headset Launches
• Introducing TRENDnet’s New AC2600 StreamBoostT MU-MIMO WiFi Router
• Aqua Computer Makes 3D-Printable Skylake CPU Delidding Tool

Source: Legit Reviews

Months ago NVIDIA promised GeForce video card owners that were using the Fermi GPU that Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) version 2.0 support would be coming in 2015. This is a big deal for many Fermi owners as they have patiently been waiting for mixed WDDM support and the other Windows 10 features. Windows 10 includes WDDM 2.0, which is designed to dramatically reduce workload on the kernel-mode driver for GPUs that support virtual memory addressing, to allow multithreading parallelism in the user-mode driver and result in lower CPU utilization.

The new NVIDIA GeForce 361.43 WHQL Drivers along with the Windows 10 November Update will now allow Fermi GPU owners to use WDDM 2.0 in single GPU configurations. For mixed-GPU configurations (Fermi being used in the same system with Kepler or Maxwell GPUs) you’ll be able to use WDDM 2.0 for the very first time. For those that are running Fermi GPUs in SLI, you are still stuck on WDDM 1.3.

Other than Fermi WDDM 2.0 support, the GeForce 361.43 WHQL drivers has support for GameWorks VR 1.1 including VR SLI support for OpenGL applications and support for the latest Oculus SDK. If you want the latest drivers for the best VR gaming experience, look no further.

You can download the new GeForce 361.43 WHQL drivers from GeForce Experience and GeForce.com.

By Bob Buskirk @ ThinkComputers

Mad Catz R.A.T. mice have a long history with PC gamers. If you’ve used a R.A.T. mouse you know it is unlike anything else out there, yet many people overlook these mice and I’m not sure why. Some people have told me they don’t choose these mice because they don’t look like they would be comfortable, yet they have never used them. Every R.A.T. mouse that I’ve used not only has been comfortable, but extremely functional. Mad Catz recently released two new R.A.T. mice, the PRO X and the PRO S. Today we will be taking a look at the PRO S which features a PixArt PMW3310 5000 DPI optical sensor, 8 programmable buttons, and an adjustable palm rest. The PRO S is designed to be a tournament mouse to it is also very lightweight. Let’s get to gaming and see what the PRO S is all about!

Read The Review Here