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Category: Cooling Hardware
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Published: Wednesday, 27 November 2024 21:07
Noctua has a reputation for having some of the best quality and performing PC fans on the market and with that, they are also known for taking all of the time needed to bring even the smallest of products to market. If it isn’t perfect in their eyes, they keep working on it or scrap it altogether. Their desk fan and with it the entire Noctua Home lineup is a great example of that. They had prototypes at Computex back in 2018 and that lineup just hit shelves this year. With that, I’m excited to finally check it out. I have been running a basic USB fan on my desk 24 hours a day for 10 to 15 years, replacing a full-sized fan that would be in my office before then. But that fan does raise the base noise level in my office and I always have to turn it off anytime I’m doing any noise testing. I even toyed around with replacing it years ago when Noctua brought out their 5v lineup of fans using 3D-printed stands. Anyhow, let’s get into it and see what all of Noctua Home lineup has to offer and see how their new fan performs.
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Category: Other
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Published: Monday, 25 November 2024 15:09
For a small trip one of Ankers's many small battery backups will be more than enough to keep your devices charged. But what if you are looking to power other devices beyond USB-powered devices or what if you need more capacity? The same goes for a power outage at your house as well, if you want to keep your internet up, power your laptop, or a medical device like a CPAP you might want a larger battery backup without going completely in on a gas-powered generator. Anker with their SOLIX line has been in the power station market for a while now. But bridging the gap between a small pocketable battery backup and the larger whole-house solutions they have introduced the SOLIX C300 as well as the similar C300 DC which doesn’t have the built-in AC outlets. They don’t advertise it as a UPS, but it has UPS capabilities, so I’m curious to see how it can handle that. Having a buffer keeping the modem and router up for short power outages would be helpful so let’s see what the Anker SOLIX C300 is all about.
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Category: Audio
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Published: Wednesday, 20 November 2024 19:04
Asus’s ROG product lineup covers just about anything you might want to use for gaming and that includes a full range of peripherals and headsets. While I have had a lot of Asus hardware in the office over the years, I haven’t had one of their headsets in to test for a whopping 9 years. Going back to 2015 when I took a look at the Strix 7.1 Gaming Headset. They have continued to evolve their designs including adding wireless options. That Strix 7.1 headset had multiple issues in my testing, so I’m excited to see how their latest headset, the ROG Delta II will compare. So let’s dig in and see what the ROG Delta II has to offer and how it performs.
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Category: Motherboards
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Published: Monday, 18 November 2024 19:42
With the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D hitting the market strong, the X870 and X870E motherboards that launched back at the end of September move more into the spotlight. You can run the 9800X3D on the 600 Series chipsets as well, but if you are building a high-end gaming PC with the 9800X3D for your CPU you might just be looking at the latest and greatest for motherboards with all of those PCIe 5.0 lanes. I’ve already taken a look at a few options from Gigabyte and Asus but I haven’t taken a look at anything from MSI yet. Today I’m going to check out the MSI MPG X870E Carbon Wifi and see how it compares.
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Category: Motherboards
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Published: Wednesday, 13 November 2024 23:09
After taking a look at a few of Asus’s full-sized options, it's high time we check out what they have to offer for smaller builds. Currently, Asus has just one X870 board smaller than ATX and that is their ROG Strix X870-I Gaming Wifi. I was impressed with the ROG Strix X870E-E so I’m excited to see what they packed into the Strix X870-I Gaming Wifi. With the next generation of X3D CPUs around the corner, I can’t be the only one starting to think about a new SFF build to save some space in my office and to hit a few LANs. Will the Strix X870-I Gaming Wifi be the ticket?
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Category: CPU's
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Published: Wednesday, 06 November 2024 14:22
Back in June AMD announced their Ryzen 9000 Series CPUs with the 9950X, 9900X, 9700X, and 9600X. The Ryzen 9 9950X and Ryzen 9 9900X hit reviews and later stores in August. The Zen 5 based CPUs have been popular, but like with the 7000 Series there has been a large group waiting to see what Intel would have to offer and even more importantly to see AMD's introduction of their 3D V-Cache based offers and last week they finally lifted the cover on the new Ryzen 7 9800X3D processor. With the new 2nd generation 3D V-Cache and the Zen 5 architecture, they teased that they were seeing an average of 8% gaming performance improvement compared to the previous generation and 20% average over the competition people have been excited. Well, today’s the day, the embargo’s lifted and we can finally dive into performance testing the new Ryzen 7 9800X3D to see if AMDs teasing was true so let’s not waste any more time and get to it!
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Category: Motherboards
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Published: Thursday, 31 October 2024 22:25
This last week Intel launched their new Core Ultra 200 Series CPUs and with that the Z890 chipset as well. I started off our testing by taking a look at the Iced-out Gigabyte Z890 Aorus Pro Ice, but that wasn’t the only motherboard that came in. Asus sent over a few boards as well and now that I have a little more time I can finally dive in and see what they have to offer. I’m starting off with the Asus TUF Gaming Z890-Plus Wifi which isn’t Asus’s cheapest Z890 board but does look to be a good mix of features without costing as much as some of the other gaming-focused boards. I was really impressed with the Asus TUF Gaming X870-Plus Wifi that I took a look at last month. Will their Z890 TUF Gaming board do the same? Let’s find out!
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Category: Motherboards
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Published: Thursday, 24 October 2024 19:37
With new CPUs and a new socket also come new chipsets and motherboards. The launch chipset to go alongside of the new Intel Core Ultra CPUs is Z890 which follows the same making scheme that Intel has used in the past. I am surprised though that it didn’t change alongside of the new CPU naming scheme. To start things off, the first board to come in was the Gigabyte Z890 Aorus Pro Ice. Gigabyte is launching 17 models in total with four of those being the Ice model like we have here which have a white theme. Some of those have a matching non-Ice model as well but the Z890 Aorus Pro Ice doesn’t. Today I’m going to dive in and see what kind of features they have included with this board and run it through our test suite as well. So without wasting any more time, let’s get to it!
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Category: CPU's
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Published: Thursday, 24 October 2024 16:36
Earlier this month Intel officially announced their next generation of desktop processors. They were formally known as Arrow Lake and now have their new CPU naming as their Core Ultra 200 Series of CPUs. These are the successors to the 14th-generation Core CPUs and the new naming is going to be a little confusing to some as it is not only the addition of Ultra in the naming but the CPU numbers themselves which have followed the same format for 14 generations are changing as well. This includes dropping the number of numbers in the CPU name down to three from 5. The two CPUs that they sent over for testing at launch are the Core Ultra 9 285K and the Core Ultra 5 245K. This generation's focus according to Intel is to reset their performance per watt trajectory. They have a new memory controller, new P and E core microarchitectures, larger P-core L2 cache, and more. So let’s dive in and see how the new CPUs perform!
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Category: Mobile
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Published: Monday, 14 October 2024 14:41
Over the years phones haven’t exactly gone down in price, especially on the higher end of the spectrum. With that, cases have been huge for me in keeping my expensive devices safe but I have also toyed around with a few cases that have integrated kickstands or holding devices on them but they have never fit the bill. When I got the Samsung S21 Ultra three years ago now, its size (and price really) pushed me to find a solution. My wife was able to get a case with a pop socket integrated but my only option was to add one to my case and while it functioned well. It was thick and has caused problems with any wireless charging and any situation that tries to clamp to the phone like with the remote for my drone. I came across the OhSnap 4 a while back but put it off and they recently reached out and suggested that the Snap 4 Luxe which also has MagSafe support could be useful in other ways, like when streaming as a secondary screen. So today I’m finally going to check it out and see If it is worth the pickup.
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Category: Motherboards
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Published: Monday, 30 September 2024 15:45
Moving along as I check out a variety of the X870 and X870E motherboards that Asus has launched today. I first took a look at the Asus TUF Gaming X870-Plus Wifi, now we move on to check out something from their ROG lineup. This board is the ROG Strix X870E-E Gaming Wifi and is the first X870E board I am testing. Being from their ROG line, the Strix X870E-E Gaming Wifi starts to die into some of Asus’s overclocking-specific features without going completely off the deep end like some of their even higher-end boards like the Crosshair X870E Hero which moves past the Strix brand and into the full ROG. I’m curious to see what Asus has to offer for someone looking to go high-end, but maybe not the highest end. So let's dive in and see what the Strix X870E-E Gaming Wifi is all about!
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Category: Motherboards
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Published: Monday, 30 September 2024 15:33
Asus always has a wide variety of boards and the new X870 and X870E chipsets are no different with Asus launching initially with 9 different models. I’ve got a few different Asus X870 boards on hand to check out but I’m going to start with their only TUF Gaming model, the TUF Gaming X870-Plus Wifi. I was a big TUF fan when it first launched but this is the first TUF board I’ve had in the office for years now. I liked what I saw from the TUF lineup on the GPU side when I took a look at the ASUS TUF Gaming RTX 4070 Ti SUPER earlier this year. Let’s dive into the TUF Gaming X870-Plus Wifi and see if it continues that trend.
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Category: Motherboards
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Published: Monday, 30 September 2024 15:22
Back at Computex this year AMD announced two new motherboard chipsets for their then upcoming Ryzen 9000 series of CPUs, the X870 and X870E. The new chipsets would continue using the AM5 socket but have improvements including having USB 4.0 standard as well as PCIe Gen 5 for GPUs and NVMe on all of them as well. They also improved support for higher memory speeds using AMD EXPO. With the new chipsets, it's no surprise that the big names in the industry have a whole slate of new motherboard designs to go along with it, Gigabyte included. To start things off they sent over their X870 Aorus Elite Wifi7 and I’m going to check out what it is all about today.
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Category: Audio
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Published: Tuesday, 13 August 2024 13:22
While gaming headsets have improved over the years, they still don’t compare to a quality pair of headphones. Especially if you spend a lot of time listening to music on your headset as well. If you go that route you are left without a microphone. You can run a desktop microphone, but if you have background noise, a microphone that is closer to you is still ideal. This is where Antlion Audio’s ModMics have always come in. Not only do they offer an option to use with headphones, but they have also always been focused on the Modmic being a better microphone than what you can get on your typical gaming headset. Well, Antlion Audio is launching two new microphones, their ModMic USB 2 and ModMic Uni 2. Today I’m going to check out both and see how they perform, so let’s dive in.
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Category: Mobile
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Published: Friday, 09 August 2024 13:06
With just about everything these days using USB charging including higher powered devices. It is easy to have multiple devices at your desk or in your “charging area” that together will require high-wattage charging. I’ve taken a look at Anker’s charging options a few times now as they are consistently changing and upgrading things. They have a lineup of new products in their Prime Series which they advertise that it is using Gallium Nitride (GaN) semiconductors along with Anker's PowerIQ 3.0 (and 4.0 on some products) to meet those power requirements. They sent over a majority of the lineup and today I’m going to check them out and see what they are all about including a new compact 65-watt power bank, a desktop forced 250-watt charger with an integrated display screen, and 6 charging ports, a slim 240-watt charger which has 2 AC plugs as well as 6 charging ports, then of course their new smaller 100-watt charger and one of the new Prime USB-C charging cables. It’s a lot to get through so we better get started!
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Category: CPU's
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Published: Wednesday, 07 August 2024 17:35
This year at Computex AMD announced the next generation of their Ryzen CPU lineup, the 9000 series which is built on the Zen 5 microarchitecture. They announced four different CPUs, The Ryzen 5 9600X with 6 cores, the Ryzen 7 9700X with 8 cores, and then two Ryzen 9 CPUs, the 9900X with 12 cores and the 9950X with 16 cores. AMD was originally launching these at the end of July but they did push things slightly with the 9600X and 9700X hitting stores on the 8th and the 9900X and 9950X hitting stores on the 15th. So today I will be checking out the Ryzen 5 9600X and Ryzen 7 9700X to see what they are all about ahead of that store launch. Let’s dive in!
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Category: Other
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Published: Tuesday, 16 July 2024 16:40
Most people have heard the saying If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Well these days it is more like if someone pulls out in front of you when you are driving and you don’t have a dashcam, is it their fault or yours? In situations where two drivers are blaming each other, there is a good chance you will end up taking some of the fault. It’s even worse when it comes to people trying insurance fraud. Having footage can be important and having multiple angles is even better which is why some of today's dashcams have 2, 3, or even 4 cameras. I’ve been testing out the Nextus 5 from Vantrue which has 4 cameras and spoiler, just a day into my testing we hit a deer. In the long drawn-out process of getting things repaired, we ended up still having damage after the repair and the footage from the Nexus 5 helped prove that the deer did hit that area. So today I’m going to dive into the Nexus 5’s features, talk about the installation, and of course, show you how it performed. So let’s check it out!
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Category: Input Devices
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Published: Tuesday, 09 July 2024 22:38
There is a keyboard design for just about everyones taste and Logitech has done a good job trying to cover a wide range of the typical designs. I’ve had a few of their compact keyboards in recently and the G515 Lightspeed TKL that they announced today is compact as well but in a little different way this time around. It is a TKL so it is shorter, but the big news here is the G515 is a low-profile design utilizing low-profile keycaps and switches to make the keyboard thinner and more like an old membrane keyboard. For testing today I have the Lightspeed wireless model in black to check out, so let’s dive in and see what it’s all about.
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Category: Pc-hardware
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Published: Thursday, 06 June 2024 15:25
Last year I put together a new camera server using Blue Iris along with a few components from companies like Silverstone, Intel, Noctua, Cooler Master, MSI, and Kingston. I skimped out on hard drives at the time hoping to find a deal in the future and over the last year I’ve seen a few areas where we can improve on things. With that, it is time to revisit the Icyu build to give things a little polish, and hopefully finish things off.
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Category: Input Devices
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Published: Tuesday, 04 June 2024 21:04
Back in September Logitech launched their updated Pro X Superlight 2 mouse and the Pro X TKL LIGHTSPEED Gaming Keyboard and I had the chance to get a feel for their latest gaming-focused wireless peripherals. The TKL keyboard is compact but smaller 60% keyboards have been growing in popularity and we are starting to see most of the big brands have their own versions except for Logitech. Well, that changed recently when they introduced their new G Pro X 60 LIGHTSPEED Gaming Keyboard. As usual with Logitech’s Pro lineup, they collaborated with a range of pro gamers to fine tune things but Logitech has also made significant changes to their G Hub software to help with the compact design as well. So today I’m going to see what Logitech’s take on a 60% keyboard is all about, let’s dive in!
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