- Details
-
Category: Video Cards
-
Published: Wednesday, 24 March 2021 16:31
The RX 6700 XT has been exciting, having already taken a look at one other card we know that it performs well in the 1440p range and is a monster for 1080p for anyone looking to run a high refresh rate monitor. The first card I took a look at was an overclocked one from MSI but XFX also sent over a card. I was impressed with their new styling when I took a look at the Merc 319 6800 XT and from what I’ve seen the Merc 319 6700 XT has a similar setup. The name alone tells us that this is their high-end model and it has the triple-fan cooler. So it will be interesting to see if the 6700 XT performs even better with the cooler and we get the chance to check out card-to-card performance as well which is a rare chance in the current market. So let’s jump in and see what it is all about and find out if it’s the 6700 XT to pick up.
Read more ...
- Details
-
Category: Video Cards
-
Published: Wednesday, 17 March 2021 13:10
Well, today's the day, AMD announced the RX 5700 XT on their video launch at the start of March. There have been performance leaks and lots of information but today is the day where everything is released. I don’t have a reference card coming in to test but I do have an overclocked card from MSI. Their RX 6700 XT Gaming X. Today I’m going to put it through our normal test suite to see how it performs and to get an idea of where it stands in today's very complicated market.
Read more ...
- Details
-
Category: Input Devices
-
Published: Friday, 05 March 2021 13:12
In late 2018 Logitech introduced their G Pro Wireless gaming mouse which for the first time showed that lightweight mice could be wireless. Weight was just starting to take off with enthusiasts and Logitech was quick to innovate on the wireless side. At the time I was already sporting the G703 with their PowerPlay mousepad that wirelessly charges so the move to a mouse that is similar in shape to what I prefer that would be lighter weight and wireless was a no-brainer. Even with all of the other mice that have come into the office, on my main PC, I always end up back using the G Pro Wireless. So when rumors of a new lighter weight model starter to take off I couldn’t wait. Well, I finally got my hands on the new Pro X Superlight and I can see what all has changed.
Read more ...
- Details
-
Category: Cooling Hardware
-
Published: Wednesday, 03 March 2021 16:06
Let’s be honest, for the most part, innovation in the AIO cooler market these days consists more of adding more RGB lighting than anything on the performance side of things. But Cooler Master did recently pair up with Intel and change that up. They introduced the MasterLiquid ML360 Sub-Zero. They added a TEC cooler into the loop to push AIO cooling into the sub-ambient cooling range. If you haven’t heard of a TEC cooler, I wouldn’t blame you. TEC is a shortened version of Thermoelectric Unit and they can also be known as a Peltier cooler. In short, they use electricity to cool and while they are effective they aren’t particularly power efficient which is why fridges and air conditioners use refrigerant-based cooling options. But they have been used for cooling computers before, in fact, Cooler Master themselves have used them with their V10 design that I took a look at 11 years ago. So today I’m going to check out the ML360 Sub-Zero and see how they have incorporated the TEC cooler in with an AIO and step away from our normal cooler testing which is normally on a range of Ryzen CPUs to test this on the Intel 10900K as this is an Intel exclusive cooler.
Read more ...
- Details
-
Category: Video Cards
-
Published: Friday, 26 February 2021 20:42
With my first look at the newly launched RTX 3060, I had the chance to take a look at the XC Black which has a stock 3060 clock and is designed to reach the target MSRP Nvidia announced. But what other kinds of options are out there? MSI sent over their RTX 3060 Gaming X Trio which has an overclock out of the box and a significantly larger three fan design. I’m excited to see what MSI has going on with their higher-end RTX 3060 and to see how the 3060 performs with an overclock. So let’s dive in and see what the Gaming X Trio is all about!
Read more ...
- Details
-
Category: Video Cards
-
Published: Thursday, 25 February 2021 14:37
The video card market has been a little like groundhog day for four or five months now with card demand being through the roof and availability being limited. Big jumps in cryptocurrencies have brought mining back in vogue as well which has exacerbated things as well. Well, today is the big day for the new Nvidia RTX 3060 which was announced back in January. Nvidia has already put miners on notice that they are taking firmware and software action to limit mining performance, at least with Etherium with the hope that their new cards can get into gamer's hands. This is extremely important because the RTX 3060 follows up the RTX 2060 and the GTX 1060 which were huge sellers. Today I’m going to check out the EVGA RTX 3060 XC Black and see how the new GPU performs in EVGAs more compact dual-fan SFF friendly design.
Read more ...
- Details
-
Category: Pc-hardware
-
Published: Friday, 12 February 2021 21:54
When it comes to crazy RGB accessories for your PC full RGB extension cables always top the list. They are bright and in your face and if you hate RGB then they are exactly what you think of when complaining about it and if you love RGB it might just be your next pickup. I took a look at the Strimer Plus set last year which was Lian Li’s second RGB extension set. Our friends at Gelid Solutions which we haven’t seen around for a while recently jumped into the market with their own addressable RGB cable extensions that they call the Astra. Rather than doing the same thing as Lian Li, the Astra cable extensions have a weaved design that makes for a very unique and interesting effect. So today I’m going to check them out and see if they are worth the pickup for those of you who love your lighting.
Read more ...
- Details
-
Category: Audio
-
Published: Tuesday, 02 February 2021 18:37
Over the years I’ve had the chance to check out the ModMic from Antlion Audio in nearly all of its different variations. My first introduction to them was on Massdrop (now Drop) and later seeing them at our LAN events. But after getting to check them out, I was impressed with their performance, sitting worlds ahead of all of the microphones available on gaming headsets. The biggest downside is you do have to pick out a nice pair of headphones to go with them which can quickly start to add up. Well, Antlion Audio has helped with that by putting together bundles that pair a ModMic of your choosing with a range of headphones. With options ranging from a $99 combo up to a $259 option when paired with the wireless ModMic. While I’ve previously taken a look at the ModMic USB, they sent over their ModMic 480i bundle to check out. So today I’m going to see how the $149 bundle compares with headsets like the Arctis Pro, Kraken Ultimate, Cloud Revolver, and the Pro X which are all in a similar range and from the normal gaming brands.
Read more ...
- Details
-
Category: Storage
-
Published: Monday, 25 January 2021 23:11
Sabrent has been killing it when it comes to pushing the SSD market forward with great prices and high capacity options that almost no one else has been willing to bring out. Along with all of that, they have also been filling out a variety of options like heatsinks for M.2 drives and external enclosures. When they sent over their Rocket Q4 in the 2TB capacity they included the heatsink model. So today along with checking out the performance of the Rocker Q4 1TB we can also get a look at the optional heatsink to see what it is all about.
Read more ...
- Details
-
Category: Storage
-
Published: Tuesday, 12 January 2021 12:12
Corsair has been in the SSD game going all the way back to when it started and while the focus recently has been on PCIe Gen 4.0 drives for most companies. Corsair was early to that back when PCIe 4.0 was first available over a year ago at the X570 launch. With that in mind, they are still launching PCIe 3.0 drives as well to give new options for those who don’t have 4.0 or don’t want/need the extra speed or costs. So they introduced the MP400 this past October. It is available in 1TB, 2TB, 4TB, and 8TB options and features 3D QLC NAND. Today I’m going to check out the 1TB model which is Corsair's cheapest 1TB SSD option to test its performance and see how it fits in today's market.
Read more ...
- Details
-
Category: Other
-
Published: Friday, 08 January 2021 21:02
Porsche Design is a subsidiary of Porsche SE or better known as the company that makes Porsche cars. Porsche Design has been around for 48 years, designing car accessories early on but in the last four years moving also into the electronics markets including working with AOC on a few of their highest-end monitor designs. They have partnered up once again with the PD27 which incorporates a car roll cage like design for the monitor stand with a high-end gaming monitor with a 240Hz refresh rate, Freesync Premium Pro, HDR, and a 1000R curvature for a premium gaming experience. Today I’m going to check out the Agon PD27’s design and performance and see if it lists up to the high pedigree of the Porsche name and its premium price.
Read more ...
- Details
-
Category: Other
-
Published: Friday, 18 December 2020 10:16
In the office, I use three monitors on my main PC as well as a fourth for whichever test bench I am using at that time. But when I leave the office it is almost a culture shock as I work from a single 13 inch Razer Blade Stealth. It isn’t that I don’t like the extra real estate a large laptop offers, I used to roll with a 20 inch monster of a gaming laptop at one point. But after that, I have gone small and portable, too large and I never bother to even take my laptop with me. I’ve considered adding in a portable monitor for a while but have never made the jump but recently AOC sent over their 16T2 which is a 15.6 portable touchscreen monitor that runs on USB Type-C and has a built-in battery backup as well. So I’m going to give the 16T2 a try and see if expanding my screen real estate is worth it. With COVID we haven’t had many chances to work on the road, but I imagine once things settle down my wife and I will be making up time and it might just come in handy. So let’s see what the 16TG2 is all about.
Read more ...
- Details
-
Category: Games
-
Published: Thursday, 17 December 2020 14:39
There is a good chance that by now you have been playing Cyberpunk 2077 or you have it on your list of games that you plan on playing in the future. It is without a doubt the most hyped-up release of the year and everyone has been talking about it. It is an extremely demanding game and amazing detail. On top of that, it also has DXR or DirectX Ray Tracing capabilities as well as support for DLSS from Nvidia as well. Nvidia sent over a copy of the game and I’ve already seen a lot of outlets test out performance in the game. Rather than go that direction again, I just want to check out what ray tracing features it has and see if it's worth the investment to make sure your GPU supports them. So let's dive in and take a closer look!
Read more ...
- Details
-
Category: Power Supplies
-
Published: Wednesday, 16 December 2020 23:33
I don’t think there are any companies who have embraced the RGB trends more than Corsair has, both with their product lineup which has some of the best RGB fans, RGB lighting for your office, RGB memory, and of course keyboards and mice as well as on the memes side of things as well. Corsair has been on point with RGB memes, embracing it and doing April fools jokes like RGB thermal paste. Even the first gif that pops up on Twitter when you type in RGB is their social media manager with RGB glasses and keyboard. But even with all of that their PSU lineup hasn’t had an RGB model available with the competition doing it years ago. But that changed recently with the Corsair CX-F lineup, and today I’m going to check out the CX750F RGB and see what the new lineup is all about so put on your RGB glasses and get ready!
Read more ...
- Details
-
Category: CPU's
-
Published: Friday, 11 December 2020 23:03
Well, I may be a little late to the party with the Ryzen 5000 series, but we didn’t get one in at the launch. But here we are a little over a month later and we can finally check out the Ryzen 5 5600X which is the mid-range CPU of the new Zen 3 CPUs. This is also one of the most sought after models as well, with its MSRP being $299 and being much more reasonable for a build. Availability is still a constant issue, as it has been with ALL of the launches packed into the end of the year this year. But I’m excited to see the performance improvements promised, especially the single-core/IPC improvements which play a big role in gaming performance. Is the Ryzen 5 5600X going to be what is in your next build? Let’s find out.
Read more ...
- Details
-
Category: Storage
-
Published: Monday, 07 December 2020 21:43
With portability being a big focus, Ultrabooks and almost the entire laptop market except for gaming laptops have traded features like DVD/BluRay drives, Ethernet ports, and expandable storage in the name of keeping laptops thin. This has even pushed some to focus on the newer Type-C connection and with it Thunderbolt for nearly everything including charging. For some this hasn’t been a big deal, but others have leaned on dongles and other adapters to add things back. Even I have been using portable SSDs for supplemental storage on my own laptop, especially now with a lot of laptops even soldering on the SSD. Well, TerraMaster has their TD2 Thunderbolt3 Plus which is at its core an external Thunderbolt 3 enclosure for two hard drives, but once I started to dig in I noticed it is much more. Let's take a look.
Read more ...
- Details
-
Category: Storage
-
Published: Friday, 04 December 2020 20:23
While I am in the process of building a FreeNAS server to get some experience with it, I wasn’t planning on switching all three of our NAS over to the one system. I’ve been running two Qnap NAS for a while now and I love the flexibility they offer on the software side. So with the move to getting our data storage tucked away better in our rack, it was a perfect time to check out a rack-mounted NAS from Qnap. Specifically, their TS-453DU which has a matching non-rack mounted option in the TS-453D with that version also having 6 and 2 disk models and the rack-mounted version having 8 and 12 disk capacity options as well as a second 4 disk model with a redundant power supply. These are Celeron J4125 quad-core based and feature dual 2.5G network ports. This means we can do some testing to see how the 2.5G network that is coming with a lot of net motherboards can offer in real-world performance. So let’s dive in and see what the Qnpa TS-453DU has to offer for hardware, software, and performance!
Read more ...
- Details
-
Category: Video Cards
-
Published: Tuesday, 01 December 2020 09:07
Every GPU launch cycle we go and get excited about the biggest and best cards in the market and the flagship cards like the RTX 3090 are exciting. But they are often beyond what people are looking to spend and beyond what a lot of people need if not gaming at high resolutions. So as Nvidia fills out their product stack, the cards that people are waiting for are farther down. Like the RTX 3060 Ti that is launching today. While the latest-gen cards, in general, are extremely hard to find still, Nvidia is finally starting to let loose the cards that fill the middle of the range that. Even right now four and a half years later, the GTX 1060 dominates the Steam hardware usage charts at 10.9% and the top 15-20 are almost all in that same xx50-xx70 range. I’m excited to see what Ampere does and to see what people looking to upgrade in that range can look forward to.
Read more ...
- Details
-
Category: Storage
-
Published: Friday, 27 November 2020 12:16
Western Digital just recently expanded their PC Gaming lineup and I don’t mean their introduction of the Call of Duty branded parts. They introduced PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSD with the new SN850, an NVMe SSD Game Dock with the D50, and an NVMe SSD add-in card with the AN1500. The AN1500 is an interesting product and a little different than you might normally see from WD as it is actually a RAID add-in card. So unlike the new SN850, the AN1500 stays on the older PCIe 3.0 interface which older Ryzen chipsets and all of Intel’s current lineup have. Offering performance beyond their PCIe 3.0 flagship SN750 without being limited to just the newer Ryzen chipsets like the new SN850. Well, today I’m going to take a look at the AN1500 and see how it performs, check out the PCIe Cards RGB lighting, and see where it fits in the market.
Read more ...
- Details
-
Category: Video Cards
-
Published: Wednesday, 25 November 2020 16:06
Some of you may have noticed we didn’t have coverage of the AMD Radeon team's launch of the RX 6800 and RX 6800 XT last week. Sadly we haven’t gotten in the reference cards, at least not yet. But I have had the chance to spend some time with one of the aftermarket RX 6800 XT’s, the XFX Speedster MERC 319 AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT BLACK to be exactly. The full name is a mouthful, but I was excited to see how XFX would follow up the 5000 series. They have changed things up completely with a new series of cards (Speedster) as well as Merc which stands for mercury, not mercenary which designates this is their high-end model. Today we get to get our first official look at the 6800 XT as well as put XFXs new cooler to the test. But only after I take a closer look at what all it has going on. So let’s dive in!
Read more ...
