eufy Security Garage-Control Cam Plus

When we moved into our house and moved our camera system over getting a camera inside of our detached garage was one of the key locations. We had previously had an attached garage where I felt like I would at least be able to hear if someone was in there. But being detached just about anything could be going on in there without us knowing it and with our cars, lawn equipment, and a lot of tools inside being able to keep an eye inside was important. It also turned out to be a great indication of when my wife and I were home. I later added an app-based garage door controller as well but both were tied into two different systems meaning more than one app. Eufy Security recently introduced a new camera that combines both of these. They aren’t the first to have a similar product, but if you are already in the eufy ecosystem having it all together is a big benefit. They have two models of the eufy Security Garage Control Cam, one for a single door setup and a second that can handle two garage doors. Today I’m going to check out the Garage Control Cam Plus and see how eufy’s attempt at garage control and surveillance works out.

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Lian Li Uni Fan SL-Infinity 120 RGB Fans

If you would have asked me years ago who was innovating in the fan market Lian Li wouldn’t have been on my list at all. They surprised everyone with their Uni Fan design which cleans up wiring through a daisy chainable design back in 2020 and since then they have brought out a few other variations which have been extremely popular. Their most recent design is the Uni Fan SL-Infinity and today I’m finally going to get the chance to check out the new design which integrates an infinity mirror design. It’s a look I’ve never seen used on a fan so I’m excited to see what it looks like.

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Intel i9-13900K and i5-13600K

It’s been a crazy month with launches from everyone all packed together. We just finished checking out AMD's new CPUs and Intel announced their new 13th-generation CPUs. Sadly right in the middle of all of that fell my pre-planned vacation. So while everyone else has taken a look at the new CPUs I’m late to the party and had both the Intel i9-13900K and the i5-13600K waiting for me when I got home. I jumped into testing and today I can finally step back and take a look at all of the numbers to see how Intel’s CPUs compare with the last few generations of CPUs from AMD and Intel. Let’s not waste any more time and dive right in!

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Be Quiet Silent Wings 4

This past July Be Quiet! introduced their new Silent Wings 4 fans which as the name implies is the replacement of their popular and great performing Silent Wing 3 fans. The new lineup includes a variety of options including standard, PWM, and high-speed fans in 120mm and 140mm and Silent Wings Pro 4 options as well in both sizes. I’ve been excited to check the new lineup out after I saw them and Be Quiet! has done a few unique things to their new fans which I haven’t seen in the past. Today I have a few of the basic Silent Wings 4 140mm and the Silent Wings Pro 4 in the 120mm option that will let us see what the basic option has to offer as well as the higher-end pro model. So let's check them out!

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Nvidia RTX 4090 Founders Edition

Two weeks ago during their GDC Keynote Nvidia announced the first few video cards from their upcoming 4000 series of GPUs based on the Ada Lovelace architecture. They announced the RTX 4090 and two RTX 4080 cards, one with 16GB of VRAM and the other with 12GB which in addition to the memory those cards have a different base GPU as well. But today the performance embargo for the RTX 4090 is lifted so we are going to focus on that and the RTX 4090 will be available for sale tomorrow should you be interested in picking one up. Today I’m going to dive into the 4000 series of cards to tell you a little about them if you haven’t read about them yet then we will check out the RTX 4090 Founders Edition closer and then dive into testing, it’s a lot to go over so let’s dive in!

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Project Icyu– Blue Iris Build Part 3

That last time we worked on the Icyu project build, which is a rack-mounted upgrade to our Blue Iris security camera server, I put together our cooling and cleaned up our server rack. With that out of the way, it’s finally time to dive into the big hardware. So today I’m going to talk about what CPU I went with, which motherboard, and the memory we are going with and then I get it all installed. So let’s jump in and see what will be powering the new server and get things up and running.

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AMD Ryzen 9 7900X and 7950X

Ahead of AMD’s Ryzen 7000 series launch, I took a look at the Ryzen 5 7600X and the Ryzen 7 7700X but at the time we didn’t have the two other 7000 series CPUs to test. That said AMD did end up sending over the Ryzen 9 7900X and the 7950X for testing and while a little late today I’m going to check both of the Ryzen 9 CPUs out and see what they are all about. Both CPUs double up the core count from the 7700X and 7600X with the 7950X having 16 cores and the 7900X having 12 cores and they have similar clock speeds so I’m excited to see how they perform.

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AMD Ryzen 5 7600X and Ryzen 7 7700X

On March 2 2017 we published our first of many Ryzen reviews and AMDs long awaited CPU refresh and new at the time AM4 socket turned the CPU world on its head quickly accelerating what was a very stale CPU market. Just the last two years alone have felt like 10 years making the 5 and a half years from that launch to now feel like it has been 20 years. So much has changed with one exception, AMD has still been using that same AM4 socket. Well, tomorrow Zen 4 will be available for sale, and along with it the new AM5 socket as well and today I’m taking a look at the new Ryzen 5 7600X and the Ryzen 7 7700X CPUs to see what they are all about. So let’s dive in and check them out!

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Asus ROG Crosshair X670E Hero

To go along with the Zen 4 launch AMD is also launching their new AM5 chipsets and motherboards. They have four new chipsets, the X670E, X670, B650E, and B650 but for the launch, I am testing with the highest-end X670E with Asus’s ROG Crosshair X670E Hero. To go with today's coverage of some of the new CPUs I’m also going to check out what the X670E Hero has to offer for features and put it through a few tests as well. With a new LGA style socket, USB 4, and PCIe 5.0 as just a few quick highlights when looking at the specifications I’m excited to see what else it will have to offer!

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Project Icyu– Blue Iris Build Part 2

In our first look at our latest project build Project, Icyu which is a rack-mounted upgrade to our Blue Iris security camera server setup I dove into some of the issues that I’ve been running into and some of the goals for the new build. I also started putting the hardware together for the build with the case, hard drive storage, the power supply, and the rack rails and got all of that set up and installed in our server rack. Today I want to continue on that and get into cooling and noise by checking out what I’m going with to keep the CPU cool, the case cool, and hopefully keeping noise levels for the system overall down. To do that I’ve partnered up with Cooler Master and Noctua which we have worked with a lot in the past.

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Taking a look at Ankers charger lineup

For years the biggest issue that I would have with my mobile devices was keeping things charged and ready to go. I’m always really bad about remembering to charge devices and when phones took a long time to charge this would lead to me panicking hours before I leave the house trying to get at least some charge into my phone and often plugging in for the drive to get a little more. That has gotten a lot better with quick charge options, a lot of devices can get a full charge in that “panic” window but you do need to have AC adapters and cables that can handle it, we are now seeing their capabilities reach the point where one adapter can fan charge your phone and laptop and Anker is a big name in that area. They recently introduced their new GanPrime lineup and before I go on vacation this year I wanted to check out a few of their new and older devices to see if I could improve on my charging setup so today I’m going to check out some of what Anker has to offer and see what they are all about.

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Lian Li SP850 SFX PSU

Last year Lian Li introduced their SP750 SFX power supply which focused on the high-end/high-wattage SFF builds and today they are expanding on that with their new SP850 which ups the wattage to 850 watts. The SP850 is SFX, not the usual SFX-L and while this isn’t the first 850-watt SFX option out there, it is only one of a few. This is however the first that is also coming with a new PCIe 5 power connector included which can deliver up to 400 watts to one supported device which means no need for adapters on the last generation of Nvidia Founders Edition cards and if the rumors are correct the next generation of cards as well. So let’s dive in and check out what the Lian Li SP850 is all about.

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Crucial P3 2TB

Crucial recently launched their two new latest drives the P3 and the P3 plus and I recently took a look at the P3 Plus. The P3 Plus is their budget-focused PCIe 4.0 drive and the standard P3 sticks with the PCIe 3.0 interface of their past drives for those who don’t need 4.0 performance or don’t have the hardware to take advantage of the performance. I was impressed with the P3 Plus, especially with its price point considering its performance. So today I’m going to check out the P3 in the same 2TB capacity as I did with the P3 Plus and we will find out how it performs and if it is also a good value so let’s get to it!

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AOC Agon Pro AG254FG

It’s interesting how for a lot of people higher resolution and larger screen size are important, but when it comes to competitive gaming. The pros have a slightly different focus, huge monitors aren’t useful or even possible for events and the singular focus is a high refresh rate. Part of getting that high refresh rate also means that high resolutions aren’t a good idea because of the processing power needed to get your performance up in the range to match with an ultra-high refresh rate so 1080p is still the norm. This is where monitors like the Agon Pro AG254FG from AOC come into play. It is pushing the limits for LAN events with its 24.5-inch screen size that they consider 25 inches but it is running 1080p with a refresh rate of 360  Hz which even just a few years ago would have been a crazy number. Of course, AOC didn’t just touch on those main features, the AG254FG does have a lot more going on so today I’m going to check it out and see what it is all about.

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Soundcore Space A40 and Space Q45

Soundcore has a whole series of earbuds and headphones under their life brand including the Life Q30’s which if how much they are talked about on the Anker subreddit are extremely popular. Well, today Soundcore is launching a new lineup they are calling Space and while some of the Life models have adaptive noise canceling both the Space A40 and Space Q45 launched today have stepped that up a notch with upgraded adaptive noise canceling that is advertised to reduce noises by up to 98%. That is a step up from the Q30’s for example that could do up to 95% and would explain the new Space branding. So today I’m going to check out both the Space Q45 and Space A40s to see what they are all about.

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Razer Basilisk V3 Pro

The last few mice that I’ve had in the office from Razer have had a huge focus on being lightweight and to do that those mice keep their features extremely limited. Razers launch today goes the other direction with a big focus on features and this is a much more mainstream-focused mouse even with it having Pro in its name. The Basilisk series of mice is Razer's direct competition to Logitech’s G502 lineup and with the Basilisk V3 Pro, they have brought their latest sensor and switches that I loved on the Deathadder V3 Pro and Viper V2 Pro while still having things like the crazy lighting that helped Razer make their name back in the day. So let's take a closer look at the Razer Basilisk V3 Pro and see what it is all about as well as the new Mouse Dock Pro which I pair up with it for charging and to get 4000 Hz HyperPolling for the wireless connection.

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eufy RoboVac X8

It’s interesting because you would think given my interest in technology and smart home devices not to mention laziness when it comes to cleaning that we would have had a robotic vacuum in the house years ago. With having pets and a multi-story house I didn’t think a robotic vacuum would meet our expectations and given how much they cost I didn’t want to waste that money so we invested in a Dyson Animal vacuum and called it a day. Since then though we have moved and have most of our house on one level and I’ve seen that at least some of the robotic vacuums can better handle pet hair. Already having a few eufy devices in the house their RoboVac’s caught my eye and their latest RoboVac X8 which has dual motors has the potential to handle our situation so I thought I would give it a try and find out. So today I’m going to check out what features the X8 has then go through my experience setting it up and using It in our home so let’s dive in!

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Crucial P3 Plus 2TB

Back in May Crucial announced two of their latest NVMe-based M.2 SSDs with their P3 and P3 Plus. These drives continue their P lineup which has had the P1 and the P5 as their budget and flagship drives and later the P2 replaced the P1 and they introduced the P5 Plus to push things farther being their first PCIe 4.0 drive. Well the P3 and P3 Plus drop in the middle of the lineup as a cheaper PCIe 4.0 option behind the P5 Plus and today I have the P3 Plus in the office to test to see how it performs. Crucial is normally great at offering a good value in this part of their lineup so I’m excited to see if the P3 Plus continues that so let’s dig in.

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Project Icyu– Blue Iris Build Part 1

If you have been a reader for a while now you may have noticed that while I do sometimes love smart home products and some of the cloud-based services that go along with them. I have a strong hate for anything that requires a monthly payment and I try to host as much as I can on our own rather than have potentially important data in someone else’s hands. I’ve moved things like Google Photos over to our own storage and even before all of the cloud-based camera services came out we were running our own IP cameras with a basic server running on my main PC. Eventually, to take the load off of that I used a small SFF system that I had to run Blue Iris and then stored the data on a NAS. With me trying to tidy up our server rack I have been hoping to get that server rack mounted but I have also been running into issues with our current setup in just about every way possible so it’s high time that I stop putting this off and rebuild our security server, welcome to Project Icyu.

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Razer Deathadder V3 Pro

I picked up my first Razer mouse in a CompUSA back in 2005 and it was the newly introduced at the time Diamondback Plasma which looked crazy and was the first time I had given any thought to the performance of my mouse. While I did like it the shape didn’t fit my hand at all so I later picked up the newly launched Deathadder which was larger and fit my hand perfectly. In fact, I liked it so much that later on, I picked up two more for $25 each on sale. I eventually would upgrade when Razer offered better sensors and over the years I have switched back and forth between the Deathadder and the Sensei shape but I always come back to the Deathadder from time to time. Well 16 years after the original Deathadder launch Razer is now introducing their new Deathadder V3 and I’ve got the wireless Deathadder V3 Pro here in the office to check out today so let’s see what's new!

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