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Category: Storage
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Published: Wednesday, 18 September 2019 12:54
The PS4 launched with a 500GB hard drive and later came out with a 1TB model. If you were really lucky maybe you have the ultra-rare 2TB 500 Million limited edition model. But for the most part you are going to be a little limited in storage capacity on the PS4. It is 6 years old now! The Xbox One isn’t much different as well. But games still continue to get larger. My wife and I picked up Red Dead Redemption 2 at launch and it took up 99 gigs and required 150GB of space to install. Talk about a quick way to take out a big chunk of your storage and frankly I don’t want to have to uninstall it and have to go through that full installation later, it takes forever. Both can get an upgraded hard drive, but if you don’t want to go through that trouble Western Digitals WD_Black gaming-focused lineup has expanded to add a few different options. Today I’m going to check the P10 Game Drive which is a USB based external hard drive designed to expand gaming storage on your PC, PS4, and Xbox. I’m going to see what the new drive has going for it and then check out its performance as well. With capacities of 2TB, 4TB, and 5TB even the smallest model isn’t going to get clogged up from a single game install.
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Category: Storage
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Published: Thursday, 12 September 2019 18:53
M.2 SSDs and heat have been an ongoing issue for a while now. They don’t always need to worry about heat, but they often end up in areas like behind a motherboard where there is no airflow or right under your hot video card that is spewing out heat from the bottom right on to the drive. Motherboards have added heatsinks but a lot of them are more like metal covers that hold heat in. On our Crush build a few years ago I had issues with our drive overheating and adding small stick on heatsinks was the solution. That said when heat isn’t an issue heatsinks aren’t needed at all. But all of this has ended up with a few companies bringing out SSDs with heatsinks like the SN750 that I took a look at. Well, Viper Gaming sent over their VPN100 a while back and today I’m going to check it out and see how the drive performs as well as how well the heatsink it ships with performs.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Saturday, 07 September 2019 18:33
Before I head out for vacation I have been working on a lot of testing of video cards. We have a stack of RX5700 and RX5700 XT’s upcoming but there have been delays here and there on those. I have had the chance to spend some time with the RTX 2070 SUPER Gaming X from MSI. I’ve had one other 2070 SUPER aftermarket card in the office and I was impressed with it. MSI, on the other hand, hasn’t disappointed me yet when it comes to their Gaming X cards. So I’m excited to take a closer look at the card and then check out how it performed in our test suite. If you are ready to throw down on an RTX 2070 SUPER, would this be the card for you to get? I’m going to find out soon, let's go!
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Saturday, 24 August 2019 15:25
With all of the GPU launches this summer it has been exciting to see the aftermarket cards trickle in as well. The RTX 2070 SUPER performed really well in my initial review of the Founders Edition card. Well, Gigabyte sent over their RTX 2070 SUPER Gaming OC 8G and I have been putting it to the test. Today I’m going to check out what Gigabyte is doing differently with theirs compared to the Founders Edition. I’m also curious to see how the extra overclock will compare with the RX 5700 XT as well. All in all, today I’m going to find out if the RTX 2070 SUPER Gaming OC 8G is the 2070 SUPER to get, let’s take a look.
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Category: Input Devices
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Published: Tuesday, 20 August 2019 23:01
I touched on Corsairs CAPELLIX LEDs which are significantly more efficient than conventional LEDs in my Corsair Dominator Platinum RGB review. Beyond being brighter than normal LEDs and smaller, they are more power-efficient allowing them to finally be used in their higher-end memory. But another area where I knew they would also come in handy is with wireless peripherals where LED lighting is the norm for wired devices but going wireless with RGB lighting can mean big and heavy batteries or short battery life. Corsair is introducing their K57 RGB Wireless keyboard today and it is taking advantage the CAPELLIX LEDs as well as Corsairs SLIPSTREAM wireless tech. The K57 isn’t a mechanical keyboard, even though it looks like one, but I am curious to see how it performs. Could this be a way to clean up wiring on your desk or maybe be a proper keyboard for your living room VR setup? Let's find out.
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Category: Motherboards
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Published: Friday, 02 August 2019 20:31
With all of the launches stacked, when I covered the Ryzen launch of the 3000 series of CPUs I only really had the chance to touch on the X570 chipset that was launching with it for a little while. The motherboards that AMD sent with their launch kit were put to use immediately for testing and only over the last few days have I had to a chance to finally take a closer look at them and do motherboard specific testing. Today I want to check out the Asus ROG Crosshair VIII Hero WiFi that has been pulling double duty as our CPU test platform and our GPU test platform. The Hero isn’t Asus’s highest-end X570 board, but it is close so I’m excited to see what they have packed into it.
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Category: Other
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Published: Thursday, 01 August 2019 09:29
If you are like to keep your desk all organized there is a good chance you have a headphone stand or have considered getting one. I personally have had a few different designs. I’ve even seen people use banana stands as a cheaper alternative, especially before a lot of the “gaming” companies got into the market and started making them. Well, recently a few companies have been making them up adding other features including Cooler Master. They showed one-off at Computex and they have finally released it. They call it the GS750 and in addition to being a headphone stand it also has a wireless phone charger built-in, USB ports, a 7.1 sound card, and of course… RGB lighting. Well, today I’m going to check it out, it most certainly isn’t going to fail from lacking features. But is there too much going on? Is this something people want? I’m going to check it out today and find out.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Tuesday, 23 July 2019 14:09
Three weeks ago Nvidia launched their RTX 2060 SUPER and RTX 2070 SUPER and I had the chance to check out both on those in their Founders Edition versions. At the same time, they also announced the RTX 2080 SUPER as well but performance details weren’t released. So while we have been checking out the Founders Edition cards, the new AMD cards, and later the new aftermarket SUPER cards I’ve been waiting to check out the RTX 2080 SUPER. Well, today's the day. I’ve had a little while to put the RTX 2080 SUPER Founders Edition through our test suite and now we can check out what is different with the card and how it performs compared to the old RTX 2080 as well as the 2080 Ti, Radeon VII, and Vega 64. The other SUPER cards had significant performance jumps, will the 2080 SUPER do the same? Let's check it out.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Monday, 22 July 2019 23:54
With the recent Nvidia SUPER launch, it also means all new aftermarket cards. I had the chance to check out MSI’s highest-end RTX 2060 SUPER. Well, I also had two different cards come in from Gigabyte. The Gigabyte RTX 2060 SUPER Windforce OC which has an overclock over the Founders Edition model but sells for that same base price point and a Gigabyte RTX 2060 SUPER Gaming OC. The Gaming OC isn’t Gigabytes highest-end card, but it has the upgraded triple-fan cooling and a huge overclock which was well over all of the competition so I’m curious to see how they both perform and how they compare. Is the Gaming OC fast enough to justify a little more money and is the Windforce OC a better choice than the Founders Edition at the same price. Today we are going to find out!
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Category: Pc-hardware
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Published: Thursday, 18 July 2019 17:57
Patriot Memory s gaming focused brand is called Viper Gaming and in the past, I’ve had a few of their peripherals come into the office to check out but it was only recently when I had Viper Gaming RAM come in. I was curious about what they are doing to set their gaming lineup apart from the normal Patriot Memory RAM. They sent over their Viper Steel 2x8GB kit which is running at 3866 MHz. The Viper Steel lineup uses a simple styling that avoids the flashy lighting that a lot of other kits use and is available in up to 4400MHz which is the fastest kit in the Viper Gaming lineup. The kit I’m checking out today isn’t as fast as that 4400MHz kit but I’m excited to take a closer look at the new styling and see how our 3866Mhz kit performs as well.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Tuesday, 16 July 2019 18:14
Man, its been a crazy couple of weeks. Nvidia launched their RTX 2070 SUPER and RTX 2060 SUPER a week and a half ago. I had the chance to check them out and was impressed with the jump in performance they were both offering over the previous models. But then this past weekend AMD brought out their RX 5700 and RX 5700 XT which stepped things up even more. So today I’ve got our first RTX 2060 SUPER aftermarket card in, the MSI RTX 2060 SUPER Gaming X and today I’m going to see how MSI’s Gaming X improves on Nvidia’s design as well as checking out how an overclocked 2060 SUPER compares with the new AMD cards. Let’s dive in!
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Thursday, 11 July 2019 17:02
Well I’m a little late to the party on this one, during the mad dash to the combined NAVI and 3rd gen Ryzen launch I ran into a lot of issues with our GPU test bench and late in the process after spending almost a full week in the original testing I dropped everything to switch the bench over to X570 and redid all of the work. The good news that gave me time to come in with numbers running on a faster and more accurate system to what a lot of you might be looking to run the RX 5700 and RX 5700 XT on. So today I’m going to take a look at what AMD has going on with their long-anticipated launch, check out the two reference models they sent, then put them through our tests to see how they perform. The Ryzen 9 3900X was a monster, it will be interesting to see how an all AMD system will perform.
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Category: Audio
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Published: Tuesday, 09 July 2019 11:32
The pro lineup of mice and keyboards from Logitech has been by far my favorite thing that they have been working on over the last few years. Don’t get me wrong I like a lot of their other products, but the pro products have been a lot more subtle with their styling and clearly more in tune with the enthusiasts that you will find on product specific forums and subreddits. For example, the keyboard enthusiasts hating the “gaming” fonts used on so many keyboards and giving the pro keyboard thin bezels. On the mouse side of things, the enthusiasts on Reddit are extremely vocal about mice needing to be lightweight and aiming for shapes that are similar to classic mouse designs. Well, last year Logitech introduced their pro headset which moved away from the scratchy materials and went with a cleaner styling. Here almost a year and a half later they are introducing their refreshed lineup with the G Pro X Gaming Headset and the G Pro Gaming Headset. Today I’m going to check out the X model and see if it can win me over. I haven’t taken a look at a Logitech headset in a few years, I’m excited to see how the G Pro X performs. Let’s check it out!
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Category: CPU's
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Published: Sunday, 07 July 2019 09:01
It doesn’t feel like its been over two years now but back in March of 2017 AMD introduced their Ryzen CPUs and without a doubt changed the entire PC market. Things were stagnant in just about every PC market, but especially in the CPU market and the introduction of Ryzen quickly changed things. Before that time the mainstream CPU market got its yearly refreshed quad-core CPU and that was about it. Now today AMD is releasing a mainstream CPU with 12 cores and 24 threads and their low-end APUs are rocking 4 cores. Its been a wild ride and it has had Intel on the defensive. Well today's the day we finally get to take a closer look at the new lineup and AMD sent over the Ryzen 9 3900X and the Ryzen 7 3700X for me to check out. Before I do that I want to dive into the new 3rd generation of Ryzen and the Zen 2 architecture that is powering it. Then from there, we can see how both CPUs perform. Let's go!
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Tuesday, 02 July 2019 09:18
I took a look at the new RTX 2060 SUPER Founders Edition first and was impressed that Nvidia basically turned it into the RTX 2070. With that in mind, it only made me wonder even more where that put the also announced RTX 2070 SUPER. So today I’m going to dive into the changes, take a look at the Founders Edition card, and then run the RTX 2070 SUPER FE through our ever-expanding benchmark suite. After that, we can take a look at pricing and see where the new card fits into the market. I don’t think I will ever get used to the SUPER branding when Nvidia had a few throwback options like GT and Ultra that they have used before. But beyond that, I’m excited to see how the 2070 SUPER performs.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Tuesday, 02 July 2019 09:00
Nvidia launched their RTX lineup 9 months ago with the RTX 2080 Ti and RTX 2080 and at the time there weren’t really games available to take advantage of the RTX specific features. RTX was one of those chicken or the egg situations where the cards to be able to handle real-time ray tracing needed to be available before any games were going to offer it as an option. Well, this years E3 showed a lot more games with ray tracing support in the pipeline and Nvidia hasn’t slowed down their RTX push, even with their launch of a few GTX cards early this year. In fact, now that they have been working with Turing for a little while now they have been able to pull a little better performance out of their cards. Of course, normally this would be when they launch their Ti cards but that was used last year so today they are introducing a few new cards with the SUPER designation. They have the RTX 2080 SUPER, RTX 2070 SUPER, and the RTX 2060 SUPER. Right now I’m going to take a look at the new RTX 2060 SUPER Founders Edition card to see what makes these new cards SUPER and then put it to the test through our benchmark suite as well.
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Category: Audio
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Published: Thursday, 27 June 2019 13:45
If everyone could afford to pick up high-end headphones everyone would have them but for people getting their first gaming setup (PC, Console, or Mobile) or someone who wants to save money for the “go fast” parts it is important to have a lineup that fits that budget. I’ve had a few headsets come in that fit that range but up until now, Corsair has stayed a little higher with mid-range offerings like their HS50 and HS60. Well, today they are introducing a new more budget-friendly option in the HS35. It is still a full size over the hear headset but at a $39.99 price point. Not only that but Corsair is offering four different color options which is a little unusual for them but it fits perfectly in this price range. I can imagine brothers getting different color HS35’s to prevent fighting or LAN centers using them to prevent confusion. Either way, I have been testing them out for a few days now and with them launching today I thought I would give everyone the rundown on their features and performance. So let’s check them out.
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Category: Mobile
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Published: Wednesday, 26 June 2019 22:00
OnePlus has their new OnePlus 7 out now and leading as their flagship but with the 7 being available it also pushed down the pricing on the Oneplus 6T. I’ve been using the 6T for a while now and with the new discounted price I thought it would be a good time to check it out and see how it compares with a few of today's top phones. I’ve got the Note 9 and S9+ to test alongside of the 6T today which are both similar in size and the S9+ is similar to the 6T in that it was a flagship that was recently surpassed by the S10. So let's check out what OnePlus has to offer with the 6T then run it through all of our tests to see how its performance compares.
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Category: Pc-hardware
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Published: Tuesday, 11 June 2019 18:25
At CES earlier this year Corsair’s biggest introduction was their new CAPELLIX RGB’s which drop the conventional package that PC LEDs have been using to create a much smaller, brighter, and energy efficient LED. Now smaller means the potential for much higher density and energy efficiency could mean you could see them used more in wireless devices. But the first product they introduced with CAPELLIX LEDs was the Dominator Platinum RGB memory kits. So in addition to being the first Corsair RGB kit to come into the office, I’m also excited to see what the CAPELLIX LEDs can do. I will also talk a little more about the benefits later as well.
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Category: Power Supplies
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Published: Monday, 03 June 2019 11:43
At this point, I couldn’t even count how many SFX power supplies that have come into the office. I love the form factor, even when building in smaller cases that can fit a full ATX power supply. Early on the SFX form factor was limited in power and because of the overall density struggled with heat and with that noise. That has improved a lot over the years, especially with Silverstone being a champion for SFX all the way from the start. They used to be the only option available if you wanted an SFX power supply with modular cables. Recently they introduced a few new SFX power supplies and one really stood out. This time it wasn’t about the jump in wattage, this model, in fact, has the same 450-watt rating of the early Silverstone SFX PSUs. The NJ450-SXL stands out for two reasons, it is 80 Plus Platinum rated which is great and also because it has no fan at all. The noise issues of the past can’t be an issue if there isn’t a fan to make noise right? Well, today I’m going to check it out and while we don’t do full PSU testing I am going to take a look at the thermals of the NJ450-SXL while under load to see how it does for cooling with no fan.
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