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 14^th-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!

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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!

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 8^th and the 9900X and 9950X hitting stores on the 15^th. 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!

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!

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.

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.

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!

It’s really easy to get excited with the higher-end video cards and get hung up in trying to keep up with others to have the flashiest or fastest PCs. But the reality is even in the latest Steam hardware survey that 58% of stem users are running a resolution of 1080p and another 8% of users running below that. With that in mind, there are a LOT of people who don’t need the latest and greatest but may still need an upgrade to keep up with current games at 1080p. Well, there are a few cards targeted at that market, the Radeon RX 6500 XT and Nvidia RTX 3050. Nvidia even leaned into this with a new 6GB model earlier this year. Well, today I’m going to check out both the Radeon RX 6500 XT 8GB and also compare it with the RTX 3050 6GB which is in the same budget price range, and see how they perform. Which would be a good pickup when doing a budget build, let’s find out.

Over the last few years, I have been slowly upgrading our network. Some of it was just to clean things up but I have also been addressing issues that I have run into here and there as well. Most of that has been running smoothly but it seems like on the rare situations where I go on vacation or on a trip, that is when an issue will pop up and it always seems to require something to be restarted in person. That can be a little hard when you are 2000+ miles away. How do we address that? Well a Smart PDU can help, and EnGenius now has them. They sent over the ECP106, their 6-plug Switchable Smart PDU, and today I’m going to see what it is all about so let’s dig in!

Wired or wireless which do you prefer? In a perfect world, I prefer the audio quality of a wired headset but the convenience of wireless is worth it. You don’t have your cord getting in the way and you can keep your headset on even when you get up from your PC. Not to mention cord damage is one of the big failure points for a headset. Well, Corsair introduced their new HS80 Max Wireless headset last fall, improving on their original HS80 design with an impressive triple of its battery life. I haven’t seen what Corsair has to offer for headsets in a long time and I’ve got the HS80 Max in the office, let’s see what it’s all about!

Last year Crucial impressed with their first PCIe Gen 5 SSD the Crucial T700. Its performance was extremely impressive even when compared to fast PCIe Gen 4 devices. Well here we are at it once again and Crucial is stepping things up again with their latest drive the T705. Like with the T700, the T705 comes in a version with a heatsink and one without but like with PCIe 4.0 drives and especially with a PCIe 5.0 drive, you are going to want to pair this up with either your motherboard M.2 heatsink or get the model with a heatsink. They do have a new white heatsinked model as well. Let’s dive into the new SSD and see what is different then put it to the test to see how it performs.

It’s kind of crazy to think but the last time I had a Razer desktop microphone in for review was back in 2015 when I took a look at the Razer Seiren Pro. That wasn’t Razer’s first desktop microphone but it was part of their first generation of Seiren microphones and Razer has continued to evolve their lineup in the last 9 years. Well, today they have updated that lineup with their new Seiren v3 models. That lineup consists of two different models, the Seiren v3 Chroma and the Seiren v3 Mini. The Seiren v3 Mini is their budget-friendly option and then the Seiren v3 Chroma is the larger flashier option. Today I'm going to check out both and see what they have to offer then put them to the test to see how they sound compared to the competition. I’m excited to see how their design has changed over the years and to see how these new microphones compare to the current competition like the Yeti Orb and Yeti GX that I took a look at last fall.

AMD launched, well relaunched their RX 7900 GRE today and I already took a look at the Hellhound that AMD sent over but Sapphire did also send their PURE RX 7900 GRE. I was a huge fan of the PURE the last time so I’m excited to see if their latest version is going to live up to that hype. One thing is for sure though, the PURE branding seems like it would be a great fit with the GRE which is aiming to get top level 1440p and solid 4k performance while keeping costs down. Let’s check out what Sapphire’s latest PURE has to offer and find out how it compares to the competition before these hit stores tomorrow morning.

AMD’s GPU lineup started off with the RX 7900 XT and RX 7900 XTX models on the high end and later they filled in things with the RX 7800 XT and cards below that. But the gap between the RX 7900 XT and RX 7800 XT is a large one, especially with Nvidia having competition there with cards like the RTX 4070 Ti and the recently introduced RTX 4070 SUPER. Funny enough AMD has had a card between the RX 7800 XT and the RX 7900 XT, they just didn’t have it in most markets but that is changing. Today they are introducing the RX 7900 GRE which is a slightly cut down version of the RX 7900 XT and XTX helping to bridge that gap. This is only available in aftermarket cards so to check it out AMD sent over a PowerColor Hellhound RX 7900 GRE so we could put the new GPU to the test. So let’s dive in.

With the launch of the RTX 4080 SUPER, I took a look at the Founders Edition to check out the performance of Nvidia’s new GPU. The Founders Edition cards however aren’t available from some retailers and you might find yourself looking at other options. Lucky for us Asus sent over their ROG Strix RTX 4080 SUPER to check out. I’ve had the chance to check out a few of their TUF cards recently and have been extremely impressed with them but I haven’t had any of their ROG cards in the office for a while now. Today I’m going to take a closer look at the ROG Strix RTX 4080 SUPER to check out what Asus is doing differently here then we can put the ROG Strix RTX 4080 SUPER through our test suite and see how it performs.