Okay so just about everyone and their moms have AIO kits in their PC these days. They have gone down in pricing and when it comes to the nicer builds there are now a lot of good options available. A lot of the companies even now pre-sleeve their kits for an even cleaner look. But if you are running an AIO, the one thing you can’t do that you can with a custom water cooling kit is change the color of your coolant. Well, CableMod came out with another option last year and I put it to use in our D-Frame Mini build this week. They have sleeving kits for your AIO kit available in a few different colors. Today I’m going to take a quick look at them and see how easy they are to install and find out if they are worth picking up.

You would think with a few desk, a large photo area, and a full sized workbench I would have room to work on things around the office. The truth is though that the workbench fills up with projects quickly and everything else overflows into the photo area because of the space it provides. That isn’t a problem in itself, but the damage I have done to our past photo backdrops when everything was white was an issue. With the new wooden setup the idea was that dings, scratches, and scuffs wouldn’t be as big of a concern and for the most part they haven’t been. But I want to take good care of the space when getting into big projects. I’ve been looking for a mat to work on for a while and it just so happens that Alphacool has one that was perfect both for protection but also with nice information on the surface to help with projects. Today let's take a quick look and see if it ended up doing what I needed it to do.

My office space has been evolving for a few years now, going back to when I first upgraded my desk to a solid wood desktop and cleaned everything up with new audio hardware, monitors, and a monitor stand. Recently I also upgraded my photo area and added a proper workbench as well. Both of those are set to a standing height to get me on my feet more during the day. With testing and writing though I still spend far too much time sitting each day and over the past few years of me doing all of this full time it has played a big role in my health. To start working on that, a while back, I reached out to Autonomous about upgrading my desk to a SmartDesk 2 Business Edition. I’ve been living with it for a while now and I want to sit down, or in this case, stand and talk a little about how the whole process has worked so far.

At this point, there is a whole list of companies who are now selling their one racing style gaming chairs and it is starting to make it hard to figure out who you might want to go with. One of the new companies that reached out to us about checking out their chairs is OPSEAT. Unlike some of the other brands, the OPSEAT has a brand name that is taken right from gaming. OP is a term used in games to describe a champion or weapon overpowered. Their Master Series is their first line of chairs, but I’m curious to find out if they really are overpowered. One thing is for sure though, they do seem to be one of the only brands with a chair priced where a lot of people can afford it. If the OPSEAT is good, this could end up being a good buy, so let's get it put together and see what it’s all about.

So when it comes to office chairs, just a few years ago most of your options were going to be just what you might find in an office supply store, electronics store, or a department store. None of them were built for the extended use that you might put an office chair when gaming or even just working at your PC day to day. Today though there are more options than you could possibly consider, all in the gaming chair market. I’ve had the chance to check out a few different options over the years. Recently I took a look at Arozzi’s new Arena desk and when they sent that they also sent one of their chairs, the Mezzo. So now that we have been using the chair off and on over the past month or so I can finally “sit down” and talk a little more about it and see how it fits into the market.

It’s funny how we spend sometimes thousands of dollars on our PCs and peripherals but at the end of the day don’t give much thought to our actual desk setups. I bet a lot of you are using the same desk that you used years ago, I know I did. But a few years ago I started thinking about options for new desks and frankly there really aren’t that many out there. Sure you can pick up the cheap desks at your local discount store, but is there anything out there that’s better. Are there any options focused on gamers? Well if you search around you will find a few options that are “gamer” focused, but none were very good. So when I saw the Arozzi Arena Gaming Desk online it caught my eye. They didn’t just add colors and call it a gaming product, it actually has a cloth mouse surface over the entire top of the desk. With all of the people buying large desk pads and putting them under their keyboard and mouse, the Arena seemed like an extension of that so I reached out to Arozzi to take a closer look.

When case modding was getting started everyone who wanted to light up their PC turned to cold cathodes for lighting. Things progressed and we later saw LEDs starting in plastic pucks and then later on strips becoming popular. While I don’t use lighting in every build, I have used them in a few. A few years ago we even took a look at lighting options from Bit Fenix. At the time they were still a relatively new company and they were starting to expand their product lines. Well a few years later Bit Fenix reached out, excited to show off the latest version of their LED lighting, the Alchemy 2.0. This time around they dropped the adhesive and went with magnets to keep the lighting in place. Considering how much we liked their first kits, I couldn’t turn down taking a look at the new design. So today I’m going to take a quick look and find out what they are all about. 

It’s funny I spend so much time in the office playing with hardware and tech and gaming throughout the year that completely miss out on some of the cool tech that requires me to get outside a little. When we plan out trips I sometimes take that chance to bring things along with me that require a little more time out of the office. Well for the second year in a row my wife and I decided to make the trip down to Florida to visit family. Along the way we spent a few days at the Mid-Season Invitational League of Legends games, snuck off to Disney World, and spent a few days on the beach in Daytona. Well I decided this would be a great time to check out something completely different.  As an old school car guy and a tech nut I keep my ear to the ground when I can and I have seen GM pushing their OnStar with 4G LTE. I thought it would be interesting to see just what they have going on the tech side of things. I reached out to GM and they were surprisingly happy to drop of a 2015 Chevy Trax with all of the bells and whistles. We took the Trax down with us giving us a great chance to check out what they have going on.

I don’t know about everyone else but finding the best place to put my headset when I’m not using it can be a challenge. Over the past few years there have been a few options popping up. We have seen cases have headset hangers built into the side, desktop hangers from Thermaltake and Silverstone, and even some of the people who come out to our LANs use banana stands to hold their headset. Well In Win has also been on the hunt for a solution. I’ve seen their glass table top headset stand as a prize at a few of the LANs we make it out too. They recently introduced a new option as well, their iEar Headphone Hanger. This is a simple product that allows you to hand your headset on any flat surface like your PC, the wall, or even the side of your desk.

You might know the saying “for every butt there is a seat” well I get the feeling DXRacer recognizes this with their wide selection of seating options. I have taken a look at a few of their chairs in the past and after visiting their US office I can say for sure that they have a wide selection of seats. They have seven different chair series as well as a ton of colors in each series. When it was time to upgrade my wife’s office chair I decided to go with DXRacer’s latest line, the K Series.  The high weight capacity wasn’t needed for her but the large size is great for when she sits in her chair Indian style. On top of that, the high weight capacity means when we have people over for small LANs we won’t have to worry about big buys like me breaking the chair.

As some of you know we use a few projectors at our LAN events. In between events I have been known to setup a projector in the office to watch a movie, watch eSport streams, and even play a few games. The problem I have in the office is our textured walls don’t exactly give the best picture. Because of that and because we would like more flexibility for setting up at our events I have been on the lookout for a projector screen for a while now. My requirements were something that is portable, so it can be taken to our events no matter their location, easy/quick to setup, and of course, I would like it to give the best picture possible in different environments.  I came across a company called Elite Screens that manufactures a wide selection of screens and found the ezCinema Plus Series that fit our requirements and even didn’t break the bank. Today I’m going to take a look at the ezCinema Plus in its largest size (100 inches) and see how well it performs.

Although my wife would most likely argue against this, we as gamers don’t always spend all of our time at our PCs. The market for console gaming is huge and DXRacer recognized that and has jumped into the market with chair designed specifically for it. Their new TV Lounge Chair shares a few features with their office chairs but the overall design is drastically different and focused specifically on living room gaming. I took the opportunity to bust out the PlayStation again and put in a little game time in the living room.

I’ve spoken about it in a few previous reviews but it’s really important to remember that there are a few things beyond your PC itself that will really improve your gaming experience. A few of the obvious examples are your keyboard and mouse but there are others that you might not even consider. A perfect example of something that most people skimp on is their chair. The ironic thing is that your chair is used more than any other product at your desk. As someone who spends both their work and recreational time in front of a PC, a high quality chair is even more important. I have been using the same “racing” style office chair for nearly 10 years now, after being repaired multiple times the chair has seen better days. When I came across the chairs from a company called DXRacer they fit the bill perfectly. Let’s see if their M-Series Gaming Chair can keep me gaming for the next 10 years.

As a necessary evil, gadget batteries, require charging from time to time and in this era where gadgets now dominate our everyday life it has become difficult to even find room to even plug them all in. For the most part longer battery life and charging stations have been the answer, but thanks to Newer Technologies there is a much easier solution to this problem and it is as simple as changing the wall outlet you plug everything into already. Follow me as I take a look at the do it yourselfers’ solution to the charging problem, the Power2U AC/USB wall outlet.

In the modern age, where smart phones are king, and people are constantly on the move, computers are getting smaller and smaller and everything is stored digitally. What happened though when you want to back up files from a tablet or mobile device and you don’t have a computer around to use. Well Plextor thinks they might have the answer. They have sent us a PlexEasy, a product that is used for the backup, burning, and sharing of most forms of digital media, all without the use of a computer. Join me as we explore the use of this unique device to find out if it is indeed the answer to our data transfer problems.

When I reviewed the Aver Media Game Capture HD late last year there were a couple of things I felt were missing. The first was the ability to record HDMI gameplay footage, and the second was the ability to stream any gameplay. Roxio has sent us one of their new capture boxes. The Game Capture HD Pro claims to offer many of the same features of the Aver Media card with the added bonus of being able to do HDMI gameplay and live stream all of your gameplay footage with the click of a button. Let’s take a look at the box and compare its features to that of the other.

One of the reason’s Mini ITX builds have been slowly becoming more popular is their portability. Packing up your rig and carrying it into a LAN is much easier when you have a nice handle to hang onto. We recently took a look at the Silverstone FT03, although I found it to be a perfect case for LAN use, I also felt it was hard to carry. Because of that Silverstone sent over their Sugo Pack for us to check out with the FT03. With extra carrying space and a way to carry your small form factor case around the Sugo Pack could be a great way to get your gear to the next LAN, let’s find out if it’s as great as it looks.

Case modding is something that gamers’ have done to their system since there has been a reason or opportunity to show them off.  It is a chance to set your system apart from all the others that may be around.  The case modding scene has grown in the past couple of years and has seen a wide range of products for both expert and amateur modders.  Today we take a look at the Alchemy Connect LED-Strip lights from BITFenix.

There have been moments in time where I have performed the impossible. Moments when I have slayed entire hordes of enemies with no health or mana, moments when I have scored the last second touchdown to win the Super Bowl, and moments when I have done silly things not meant for the eyes of minors. These moments have all been lost in time and no one seems to believe that they actually happened. With the Game Capture HD from AverMedia this will never happen again. The Game Capture HD looks to be an easy to use capture card for console gamers. It requires no internal installation and is incredibly easy to set up. This capture device is an alternative to cards that go into your PC, and while you may not be able to get 1080p quality videos, it is certainly much less daunting to set up and use.

We have taken a look at glasses from a few different manufactures that claim to help relieve eye strain while working on your PC. From our experience they can be very helpful as long as you can get over the yellow tint that they all have. Even then the designs we have seen have resembled normal glasses or in one case even they looked just like a pair of hunting glasses. The problem with that is when you’re trying to game with your headset on they can still become uncomfortable. SteelSeries has been working with Gunnar glasses to design a few pair of glasses designed specifically to be comfortable with your headset on. Today we will be taking a look at one of those glasses called the SteelSeires Desmo. We know how the glasses perform but will they be comfortable for gamers? Let’s find out!