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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Thursday, 10 October 2013 08:20
Every new launch means new custom PCB designs from the manufactures. The first to hit our office this time around was an R9 270X from Gigabyte with their Windforce cooler design and an overclock. In the past I have been impressed with Gigabytes Windforce designs for their pure cooling power, I’m excited to see what three cooling fans on a large heatsink will do for keeping the R9 270X cool. But first let’s take a look at the card.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Wednesday, 09 October 2013 12:06
In the world of Small Form Factor builds you are always compromising. You either have to give up some performance for a smaller size or give up some size to get the performance you are looking for. Recently though, this trend has been starting to change. My last LAN build was easy to carry around while having (at the time) the second fastest GPU from Nvidia and a high end CPU. Of course because of my GPU I couldn’t go any smaller. Asus has a new GPU that is going to change that. Their new GTX 670 Direct CU Mini is the same length of a MiniITX motherboard. With that size, my LAN rig is going to need a complete rebuild.. To go smaller!
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Category: Mobile
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Published: Tuesday, 08 October 2013 16:27
Here in just a few months it will have been two years from when Motorola introduced their Razr MAXX. That length of time is significant for a few reasons. First, most of you know that a lot of people run on two year contracts for their phones so a lot of the original Razr MAXX owners will be on the market for replacements here at the start of the year. Two years is also important because it wasn’t long before the original MAXX was introduced that Google purchased the company for a whopping 13 Billion dollars. In that time as well things have changed in the phone market. Sure the iPhone is still around but who would have thought that Blackberry would still be around and that the phones that were once so powerful and huge are now considered slow and normal in size. What a perfect time for Motorola to introduce its third MAXX phone. This time the they dropped the Razr name all together and just went with the Droid MAXX and its smaller battered brother is called the Droid Ultra. I’ve been using the MAXX for a while now and today I’m going to tell you a little about my experience.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Tuesday, 08 October 2013 10:23
If you have been paying attention at all, there has been a lot of talk about what AMD has been up to on the video card side of things. Part of this is related to them inviting some of their press and partners out to Hawaii to show off their upcoming product launch. Why Hawaii? Well this follows their islands name scheme. For those who didn’t make it out there they did a live video stream as well. There they showed off information about the cards but avoided specifications and major details. In place they focused on details about their new focus on in game audio for example.
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Category: PC Cases
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Published: Monday, 07 October 2013 12:46
If people left things alone and didn’t continue to innovate we would all still be driving around in Model T’s rather than the car options we have now. Lian Li has impressed me every time I have had a chance to check out their cases, but they haven’t been sitting on their hands. I recently had their new PC-10N come in. With their new rail design for motherboard installation and with its corners cut off the PC-10N does have a few new features while sticking with the all-aluminum design that Lian Li is known for. Of course I can’t leave it at that, I had to dig into the case and see what it is all about.
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Category: PC Cases
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Published: Friday, 04 October 2013 09:00
Years ago most every PC you came across was beige in color and a tower or desktop in size/shape. As things have progressed we saw that slowly move from beige to black and we now see a lot of manufactures offering white as well. It has happened so much other component manufactures have taken notice and we now see everything from RAM to power supplies that also come in white to match. When it comes to size, things have changed as well. We now have a range of options from large builds down to small table top PCs. Today I’m going to take a look at the Fractal Node 304 white. We have covered the Node 304 in the past but I’m excited to see what it looks like in white.
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Category: PC Cases
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Published: Thursday, 03 October 2013 14:06
Earlier this year we went hands-on with the R4 from Fractal, a mid tower solution to the Define product line. We were quite pleased with the humble case, the simple Fractal facade silently housing a myriad of features. Our one complaint was the weight of the chassis, to which Fractal responded by sending us the R4’s big brother full tower, the XL R2. I'll be installing a full ATX building and, against better judgement, showing it off at our upcoming LAN party.Take a look with us, we could use an extra hand lifting.
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Category: PC Cases
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Published: Monday, 30 September 2013 09:00
Five years ago if you were on the market for a case there were really only a few directions to go. More recently this has changed considerably; there are so many manufactures that weren’t even in the market five years ago. One of those manufactures is Corsair, moved into the market with a very impressive 800D and has been slowly filling out their product lineup from then on. The Obsidian Series 350D that I will be taking a look at today is the first mid tower from the Obsidian Series. With styling from the popular 800D we know it looks great, but the only way to find out where it stands otherwise is to look at it more in depth.
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Category: Input Devices
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Published: Friday, 27 September 2013 02:37
Quite a market has developed for high end mechanical gaming keyboards. Gamers, both professional and otherwise, have begun to migrate towards the tactile feedback each individual keystroke or double tap provides. With this growing market, the usual names have thrown their hats into the ring with offerings that both impress and amaze. Today I take a look at Thermaltake’s top of the pyramid offering, the Meka G-Unit Illumination Edition and see if this monster of a keyboard can tangle with its competitors.
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Category: PC Cases
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Published: Wednesday, 25 September 2013 19:57
We have been on a Mid Tower kick here lately with case reviews and a few have left us impressed while others leave us scratching our head with odd design choices. One of those cases was the Urban S21 from Thermaltake, a company generally known for good, solid case design. Today Thermaltake is back with another mid tower offering in a slightly higher price range, the A31 Chaser. While the color of the Thunder Edition was enough to catch everyone’s attention at CES, I will be putting the Chaser through a more thorough examination today.
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Category: Editorials
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Published: Thursday, 12 September 2013 13:00
It’s been a few days now and not only have I set all of the PCs around the house back up, I also took the time to do detail cleaning around my desk. Even after a few days I feel little tired, an impromptu nap that went until 3pm yesterday helped some but it’s going to be a little while before I’m back to normal. All of it means we had another successful LAN. Of course the work doesn’t stop on Sunday for me, but before I get too far into it I wanted to post up a little bit of a roundup. Read on to hear more about it.
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Category: Mobile
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Published: Wednesday, 04 September 2013 17:33
It’s amazing how far technology has gone when you look at the mobile phone market. It really wasn’t that long ago when the RAZR flip phone was the hip thing to have. Now most people have large screens, fast internet, and more processing power than you would ever have imagined. With that in mind, it does seem a little crazy that we still have to plug our phones in all of the time to charge them. When I picked up my Nexus 4, the wireless charging feature was one of the most interesting to me. Today I will finally be able to show off what it’s all about with the new TYLT VÜ wireless charging pad.
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Category: CPU's
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Published: Tuesday, 03 September 2013 07:01
Remember when everyone wanted Intel’s enthusiast CPUs? Pepperidge Farm remembers. With Ivy Bridge and then Haswell pushing the mainstream CPU lineup ahead quickly it seems like it has been ages sense the launch of X79 and with it Sandy Bridge-E. That’s not to say they still aren’t powerful, but with multiple competing launches from Intel alone the platform hasn’t exactly gotten a lot of attention. Well today we get to play a little catch up with the introduction of the Ivy Bridge-E CPUs. Specifically I’m going to take a look at the i7-4960X, their new flagship CPU. Let’s take a peek at what is new.
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Category: CPU's
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Published: Friday, 30 August 2013 13:00
When it comes to building PCs, the enthusiast builds that we here at LanOC focus a lot on are only a small part of the market. A lot of builds don’t require 6+ cores and multiple GPUs. In fact a lot of people don’t need or want dedicated GPUs at all. AMD and Intel both recognize this with their focus on upgrading the integrated graphics of their mainstream CPUs and APUs. When AMD sent over their new Richland-based APUs, the A10-6800K and A10-6700, I was excited to see how they compare to previous APUs we have taken a look at and to see if the APU would be capable of any gaming without adding a dedicated GPU.
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Category: Input Devices
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Published: Wednesday, 28 August 2013 15:00
If you are on the market for a new keyboard there is a good chance given the market trends that you might be considering a mechanical keyboard. Back with membrane keyboards all you really needed to consider was the keyboards features, software, and to some branding. Now, even once you have decided to go with a mechanical keyboard you have to consider what kind of switch type you want and of course most people don’t really know what the colors mean. This is one of the questions I’m asked all of the time, because of that I figured I would talk a little about it here. I hope it helps you on your decision.
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Category: Mobile
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Published: Tuesday, 27 August 2013 18:03
With the sheer amount of media we consume on a daily basis, the mobile market is constantly evolving with newer and newer ways for us to store and transfer all this data. A while back I reviewed Carry Technology’s Wi-Reader Pro and was impressed by the functionality and usefulness of a portable, wireless cloud device and today I am back again with another similar device. Join me as I take a look at Kingston’s MobileLite Wireless Reader and put it to the test to see if it can bring anything new to this budding market.
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Category: Input Devices
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Published: Friday, 23 August 2013 16:38
When Razer first introduced the Naga a lot of people made jokes and references to its phone like number pad on the side. Then soon after, not only did I see a lot of people sporting them, but a lot of the manufactures introduced their versions of the MMO mouse. Suddenly it was only partially crazy to have a full phone number pad under your thumb. Recently Razer introduced their new Naga 2014, the second major redesign of the Naga although I would consider the 2012 edition to be less of a “major” redesign. I’m really excited to see what they have learned from the last model and changed for this model. I have been using it for a little while now and I can finally tell everyone about my experience.
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Category: Networking
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Published: Thursday, 22 August 2013 06:11
When it comes to enthusiasts we put a lot of thought into the parts we put in our PC, but don’t often think about what connects us to the internet. Most people will grab any old router from a brick and mortar store that suits their needs. I feel that more information should be acquired, especially for something that is only purchased once in a blue moon. Will the router suit my needs? Will it suit my needs long term? Will it continue to hold up as the technology improves? All of these questions and more will be considered while looking at the Western Digital My Net AC 1300.
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Category: Input Devices
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Published: Friday, 16 August 2013 20:33
It wasn’t all that long ago that we took a look at the Razer Orbweaver, their mechanical gaming keypad. I was a little surprised when the latest product from Razer was actually another gaming keypad, the Razer Tartarus. The Tartarus is a non-mechanical gaming keypad that is sold along with the Orbweaver. That means it actually is replacing the Nostromo for Razer’s membrane gaming keypad. I’m excited to see what has changed, the Orbweaver made a few big improvements, I’m curious if any of those made it into the Tartarus.
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Category: Mobile
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Published: Wednesday, 14 August 2013 21:02
We just can’t seem to charge our gadget batteries enough these days. Whether on the go or simply during our day to day routines we are always on the lookout for ways to keep our phones and tablets from dying on us. Recently, I reviewed a portable, high capacity battery that offered the ability to charge our devices on the go and today I am back again with another. This time I take a look at the Neptor NP056K portable battery pack from Eagle Tech to see if this emerging market for pocket USB chargers is a competitive one or merely the latest fad.
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