Main Menu
- Welcome to SayIT.
- Log in
Mesaje recente
-
Topic de reduceri la jocuri
by Foxter
[30 May 2019, 16:46] -
See you on the other side
by FATHER
[03 April 2016, 16:44] -
Ghiduri de cumpărare
by Foxter
[29 February 2016, 17:32] -
Windows 10
by SoNic
[15 December 2014, 01:53] -
Hybrid Drives (SSD+HDD)
by SoNic
[14 December 2014, 07:12] -
SSD Drives
by Foxter
[23 November 2014, 16:35] -
iPad
by Foxter
[23 November 2014, 16:17] -
Noutăţi, prezentări, teste laptop
by Foxter
[23 November 2014, 15:48]
Members
Total Members: 370- Latest: Albertscofs
Stats
- Total Posts: 17,786
- Total Topics: 1,234
- Online today: 196
- Online ever: 318
- (17 October 2024, 13:29)
Users Online
Users: 0Guests: 97Total: 97After the hype from Corsair's K70 RGB since its announcement early this year, mechanical RGB keyboards became all the rage. Several companies even managed to beat Corsair to the punch and release an RGB mechanical keyboard first, such as the tenkeyless Rosewill RGB80 that we reviewed several weeks ago. However, what about users that like the prospect of customizable lighting but are either unwilling to spend a lot of money for a keyboard or simply prefer membrane to mechanical keyboards?
SteelSeries has the answer to that question in the form of their Apex Gaming Keyboard. The Apex is a keyboard developed especially for gamers that want customizable lighting and advanced features but would like to stick with classic rubber dome switch keys. It has a very impressive list of features, which we will go through in detail in this capsule review. However, it also retails for $87, placing it dangerously close to the league of good mechanical keyboards.
All the recent talk of Haswell-E and high-end refreshes has obscured the more casual computing market. The Bay Trail platform uses Intel’s Atom based Silvermont cores and competes directly against AMD’s Kabini for integrated computing, digital signage and cheap computing models. Today we compare two mini-ITX Celeron J1900 based motherboards: the GIGABYTE J1900N-D3V at $85 and the ASUS J1900I-C at $92, as well as the SoC itself.
As most technology enthusiasts already know, the number of the actual power supply unit (PSU) manufacturers is far smaller than the number of the companies that ship PSUs. Most companies use their own engineering teams to improve/modify an existing platform originally developed by the Original Design Manufacturer (ODM). A few examples from our recent reviews are Antec's EDGE 550W and Corsair's RM1000, which are based on Seasonic and CWT designs, respectively. The modifications that such companies perform on the original platform can be significant but the changes are frequently limited to aesthetic adjustments, essentially copying the original unit in everything but form (or even just color).
Most ODMs have their own retail divisions as well. Perhaps the best examples of such companies would be Seasonic and FSP Group. We reviewed two of Seasonic's newest designs recently, the sensible S12G 650W and the potent Platinum SS-1200XP3, but we have not had a look at a PSU from FSP since the Xilenser, well over two years ago.
Today we are going to look at their most recent and advanced unit, the Aurum PT 1200W power supply. It is an 80 Plus Platinum certified PSU designed with enthusiasts in mind, and it appears to be a direct competitor to products such as Seasonic's Platinum SS-1200XP3, Cooler Master's V1200, and Corsair's AX1200i. Can it hold its own against the very best units that the industry has to offer? We'll find out in this review.
With the exception of the Raptor K40 and a few HTPC options, all of the keyboard reviews we've posted this year are advanced to top-tier mechanical keyboards. Today we are going to look at something fundamentally different: a budget mechanical keyboard. Nixeus supplied us with a sample of the MODA, a tenkeyless USB keyboard that has been designed with simplicity and economy in mind. Even though the notion of calling a $70 keyboard a "budget" product appears rather controversial, the Nixeus MODA is one of the cheapest mechanical keyboards that money can buy. What kind of a mechanical keyboard can $70 get you?
During September we managed to get hold of some Haswell-EP samples for a quick run through our testing suite. The Xeon E5 v3 range extends beyond that of the E5 v2 with the new architecture, support for DDR4 and more SKUs with more cores. These are generally split into several markets including workstation, server, low power and high performance, with a few SKUs dedicated for communications or off-map SKUs with different levels of support. Today we are testing two 10 core models, the Xeon E5-2687W v3 and the Xeon E5-2650 v3.
I must confess that until recently, I wasn’t well-versed in semiconductor physics or technology. While it’s rather easy to understand what a transistor does and some of the terminology thrown around, going deeper was tough. A great deal of the information on the internet is simply too cryptic to understand, even for those that want to learn. Seeing as how this site is all about the results of semiconductor physics and technology, this was the best place to share the knowledge that I've acquired.
Every year NVIDIA launches quite a few new products; some are better than others, but they're all interesting. This fall, the big news is Maxwell 2.0, aka GM204. Initially launched last month as the GTX 980 and GTX 970, NVIDIA is hopefully changing the way notebook gamers get treated by launching the mobile version of the GM204 just one month later.
We've already covered all of the new features in the desktop launch, so things like DSR, FXAA, VXGI, DX12, and GameWorks are all part of the notebook launch marketing materials. Of course, as a notebook GPU there are a few extra features available that you don't see on desktop GPUs, mostly because such features aren't really needed. Optimus Technology has been around for several years now so there's not much to add; it allows laptops to dynamically switch between the lower power integrated graphics when you're not doing anything that requires a faster GPU, and it can turn on and utilize the faster discrete NVIDIA GPU when needed. BatteryBoost is a related technology that was first introduced with the GTX 800M series of GPUs, and it seeks to improve gaming battery life. Our test platform at the time didn't really give us the gains we were hoping to see, but NVIDIA assures us that the new GM204 mobile graphics chips will do much better at providing decent battery life while running games. We'll be diving into this in more detail once we get our test notebooks.
Sometimes it feels odd to review the cheaper elements of the motherboard market. The more expensive models have more to play with, whereas the sub $160 market for Z97 comes down to the choice of an individual controller or two. Here is where brand loyalty and styling seem to matter more than absolute feature set. To make matters worse for MSI, one of the other manufacturers is also branding their motherboards with ‘Gaming X’, making it harder to forge that nomenclature as a brand. Today we are looking at the MSI Z97 Gaming 5 at $160, which at the time of writing is sold out on Newegg.
Even though there are plenty of >1kW consumer power supply units available today, it is well known that these represent a very small portion of the actual market, as the power requirements of a typical home or office PC are far lower than that. After reviewing several top-tier products, such as the efficient Seasonic Platinum 1200XP3 and the ruthless Corsair AX1500i, today we will have a look at something a lot more sensible and appealing to the average user. In this review we examine the newest PSU series from Antec, the EDGE.
Antec is a company that has always been focused on efficient and practical products rather than developing numerous high output units. They do have one 1.3kW high performance PSU available but that's about it; the bulk of their PSU products exist in the 550W to 750W power range. This is the exact range of the newest EDGE series as well, which consists of three units starting at 550W and going up to 750W. We're looking at the least powerful model today, which still has ample power for the vast majority of home users and casual gamers.
ASRock is quietly confident of its OC Formula range. We awarded the Z77 version because of its aggressive tactics at the $240 price point and while the Z87 model offered even more but at $330 it missed that sub-$250 market which cheaper overclocking builds are built on. The Z97 OC Formula ditches the Lamborghini on the box and comes back down to earth at $210, although the feature set becomes lighter as a result. The mainstream overclocking motherboard market is always hot at $200, so today we are putting the Z97 OC Formula through its paces.