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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Thursday, 13 April 2023 09:01
Well, today is the day, RTX 4070s have hit the stores and yesterday Nvidia took the wraps off of their stocked clocked RTX 4070s that sell at the $599 MSRP. Of course that doesn’t include any of the overclocked cards and luckily today we have the RTX 4070 Amp Airo from Zotac which has their unique Airo cooler design which is significantly larger than the Nvidia RTX 4070 Founders Edition and also has an overclock. I haven’t had the chance to check out any Zotac cards this generation and I’ve never seen the Airo design in person so today I’m going to take a closer look at the design and then put it through our test suite to see how it performs, especially focusing on power, cooling, and noise where aftermarket cards can make the biggest difference.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Wednesday, 12 April 2023 13:36
The Nvidia Founders Edition isn’t the only base MSRP option out on the market. In fact, it is only available in a few places to buy and is often harder to come by than the MSRP options from everyone else. A good example is the MSI RTX 4070 Ventus 3X 12G which is also a $599 option. MSI has gone a different direction from Nvidia’s card, the Ventus has the same clock speed but it is larger and has three fans, not two. Today I’m going to check out the MSI RTX 4070 Ventus 3X 12G and see how the different direction changes the card performance and to see if the Ventus is a good option for those looking for an RTX 4070 at the entry price.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Wednesday, 12 April 2023 13:07
I know at least for my wife and myself, when shopping for our PC upgrades the highest-end cards are typically out of our budget and frankly that is fine because with our monitors we are also not normally gaming at 4k where those cards are needed. That’s why when new generations of cards start getting down into the middle of the product stack things start to get exciting and with tomorrow's launch of the Nvidia RTX 4070 we are starting to get into that range. So today I’m excited to check out the RTX 4070 Founders Edition to see how Nvidia’s new GPU performs. Before doing that I will dig into the specs to see what it has going on and then take a closer look at the card itself. So let’s dive in!
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Category: Cooling Hardware
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Published: Friday, 07 April 2023 11:26
Lian Li hit the nail on the head when they brought out their Uni Fan line of fans and they have also done a good job of expanding the lineup with a few variations. They have even started to improve on their original designs with fans like the Uni Fan SL V2 and today they are announcing the Uni Fan AL V2 which brings a lot of those same features to the AL series and today I’m going to take a closer look. I have a chance to check out the new SL V2 design when they were launched this holiday season so I’m excited to get a first look at the V2 changes and see how Lian Li has improved on the already popular design.
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Category: Power Supplies
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Published: Friday, 07 April 2023 11:26
If going completely over the top with lighting in your build is what you are after, one of the biggest go-to’s has to be the Lian Li Strimer lineup. Rather than the standard color-matched individually-sleeved cable extensions, the Strimer lineup offers cable extensions with RGB lighting that run the length of the cable. Lian Li even upgraded the lineup with the Strimer Plus V2 last fall. The one thing missing however are cables to go with the recently introduced 12VHPWR plug that some GPUs have been moving to. To remedy that, they now have three new 12VHPWR Strimer Plus V2 cables and today I’m going to check two of them out.
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Category: CPU's
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Published: Wednesday, 05 April 2023 09:00
At CES this year AMD announced three upcoming additions to their 7000 Series of CPUs which all featured 3D V-Cache like the popular Ryzen 7 5800X3D. Then late in February, the first two models were released but the third and lowest-priced model of the three, the Ryzen 7 7800X3D wasn’t included. Well, today the embargo lifts on the new 7800X3D and we can finally dive into its performance ahead of it being available in stores tomorrow. So why waste any time, let's quickly go over what sets it apart and then get into its performance.
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Category: Power Supplies
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Published: Friday, 31 March 2023 19:05
I took a look at the FSP Hydro PTM Pro two years ago when we used it in our TrueNAS project build and I have been happy with its performance so I was excited to see FSPs latest power supply be announced, the Hydro G Pro which like with a lot of new power supplies is FSP moving into the latest ATX 3.0 standard. That includes the addition of the new 12VHPWR connection. The Hydro G Pro is available in 850-watt and 1000-watt options and both are rated at 80 Plus Gold which means decent efficiency while potentially also being a reasonable value where the higher efficiency ratings get expensive quickly. Reasonably priced ATX 3.0 options would be great to see so I’m excited to see what FSPs latest power supply has going on.
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Category: Audio
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Published: Tuesday, 28 March 2023 16:44
When sleeping no matter where I am I always have a fan on and I prefer to have the TV on as well with something playing. I’ve found however that those two things together can end up being a bit of a noise battle when I want to hear the dialog. So I have been tossing the idea of using earbuds to pipe the audio in so I could hear it better and to keep from annoying my wife with it being way too loud. The problem is, most earbuds aren’t designed with that in mind, specifically with their size and I’m a side sleeper so I would imagine that would lead to discomfort. I then came across the Sleep A10 earbuds from soundcore which are designed specifically for sleeping. They also have other features like sleep tracking, a built-in alarm, and the ability to play different white noises to help cover up snoring. Today I’m going to take a closer look and go over my experience with them so let’s dive in!
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Category: Audio
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Published: Thursday, 23 March 2023 12:40
Every time I see a TikTok or YouTube video where I see someone interviewing people using a phone as a microphone I die a little inside. There are a lot of different microphone options out there and Anker under their AnkerWork brand is jumping into the mix with their new M650 Wireless Microphone. The M650 is a pair of wireless microphones with a few mounting options paired up with a receiver that can be hooked up to your mobile phone or a DSLR or can be used remotely to store recordings. The design is focused on content creators or businesses who are recording content that want a simple way to get quality audio, today I’m going to take a closer look and see what all the M650’s have going on and how they perform.
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Category: Smart Home
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Published: Monday, 20 March 2023 16:41
The eufy security brand from Anker has had a range of indoor and outdoor camera options including multiple that we have taken a look at. Up until now though each has been an improvement on products that we have seen from other companies like the Floodlight Pro 2 having a pan and tilt camera, the Video Doorbell Dual having a second camera to keep an eye on packages, and most recently the Video Smart Lock which combines a smart lock, doorbell, and video camera. Their latest camera though is a little different. The S100 Wired Wall Light Cam takes what they have been doing with the floodlight cameras and does the same thing with another outside light. In some situations, it is nice to have your camera visible as a deterrent, but other times something more discrete is better for the job and that’s where the S100 fits in with it being a camera in an outside wall sconce. So today I’m going to check it out, install it, and then see how it performs.
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Category: Power Supplies
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Published: Thursday, 16 March 2023 09:02
With Nvidia’s latest generation of cards all having the new 12VHPWR connection (at least with the Founders Editions), it didn’t take long for power supply companies to follow suit with Intel’s new ATX 3.0 standard which adds the new cable into the mix. This also means that we are seeing a lot of new power supplies hitting the market as most companies have been adding ATX 3.0 into their product stack and be quiet is no different. Their first generation of ATX 3.0 power supplies is the Dark Power 13 lineup and they have sent their 850-watt model over. Today I’m going to check out what features they have included, be quiet power supplies have been quality units for a long time now and I’m excited to see what they have done to put their spin on things with the Dark Power 13 so let’s dive in.
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Category: Audio
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Published: Tuesday, 14 March 2023 17:21
This month I’m celebrating my 15 anniversary of doing reviews and in that time I’ve covered a lot of amazing products. But when you have access to a wide variety of hardware what you use day to day changes up often, but there is one product that I have been using for 8 years now. Sound blaster’s X7 DAC and amp paired up with a set of bookshelf speakers and a powered sub. Not only do I use the X7 with my speakers but also for my wired headphones as well. So when I saw Sound Blaster launched the X5 which is an external dual DAC along with a headphone amp I had to check it out. So today I’m going to see what the new X5 has to offer and put it to the test to see how it performs.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Thursday, 09 March 2023 11:44
The AMD RX 7900 XT and RX 7900 XTX launches this past December were exciting. AMDs latest generation of cards showed that the giant cards that Nvidia had recently launched weren’t the only option with the upcoming generation and they had impressive performance as well. Sadly I didn’t get to see Sapphire's take on the new generation of cards but that changes today. They sent over the Sapphire RX 7900 XT Pulse and today I’m going to dive in and see what it has going on and then put it through our test suite to see how it performs. I’m especially curious to see how it compares to AMDs reference design as well as the RTX 4070 Ti and we can take a second look now and see how the 7900 XT fits in the market now that things have had time to settle down post-launch. So let’s dive in!
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Category: Mobile
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Published: Tuesday, 07 March 2023 23:28
Just last week in the middle of the night we had a train derailment about a block up the road from my house which took out the power for a day. While I had a few lights I could run, I let all of my UPS’s run down not knowing it would be a long outage. I ended up being not prepared at all to keep my mobile devices charged up. I ran my phone down not being able to sleep watching videos so in the morning without power I couldn’t charge it. I was able to charge it in the car as well as my drone which even with three batteries was also completely dead. But it left me wondering what I could do differently. The typical USB battery backup is nice but I’m the worst at keeping them plugged in. I came across an option from Anker that I thought might help me though, their 733 Power Bank (GaNPrime PowerCore 65W). It is essentially a three-port 65-watt USB adapter but with a battery built in as well and the idea for me at least is that I would keep it plugged in using it as a charger and have something fully charged and ready to go if the power goes out. Today I’m going to check it out and see if it will fit the bill, so let's dive in!
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Category: Other
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Published: Thursday, 02 March 2023 15:33
When it comes to mobile computing there is a wide variety of the types of devices that you can go with but one thing that is consistent with them is that adding additional desktop real estate can be complicated. Unlike with a desktop PC where you can buy whatever monitor you would like and add as many as you want as well. Doing that with your laptop is like buying an anchor. Either you will only be able to use it when docked at that location or you are transporting a large monitor which short of LANs isn’t something that I would do. Thankfully there are portable monitor options and like with desktop monitors they have been improving. Today I’m going to check out the 16B1P3300 from Philips which is a 15.6-inch 1080p IPS display with HDR support to see if it fits the bill to pair up with my 13-inch Razer Blade Stealth 13.
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Category: CPU's
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Published: Monday, 27 February 2023 14:04
AMDs 7000 Series CPU launches brought along with it the new AM5 socket which now uses an LGA socket style as well as DDR5 and PCIe 5.0 as well. For CPUs they have a variety of options and their performance has been impressive. The one exception to that is looking at gaming performance when compared to AMDs own Ryzen 7 5800X3D CPU which was the first desktop processor to have a stacked 3D L3 cache. This was a late addition to the 5000 series of CPUs and offered staggering performance in cache-limited situations, especially gaming. Well for the 7000 series they have announced three 3D CPUs, the Ryzen 7 7800X3D, Ryzen 9 7900X3D, and the flagship Ryzen 9 7950X3D. The two Ryzen 9 CPUs are launching tomorrow February 28th and they did send over the 7950X3D for testing so today I’m going to see how it performs.
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Category: Storage
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Published: Thursday, 23 February 2023 15:41
When it comes to external or portable storage there is just about any option you may be able to think of available. But because they are external, the enclosure takes up a lot of extra space and you are limited to the connection option that it comes with originally. SanDisk recently introduced a new lineup to their professional lineup that they call Pro-Blade and with that, they have M. 2-based SSDs in compact mags and then multiple dock options depending on how you are planning to use it. I’ve been looking for external backup options for our main server and these stood out as a good option paired up with the Pro-Blade Transport and today I’m going to put them to the test to see how they perform.
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Category: Motherboards
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Published: Thursday, 09 February 2023 09:56
With the launch of Intel’s new 13-gen CPUs, they did also introduce a few new 700 series chipsets with the flagship Z790 chipset being the only one available at the time of launch. Like with the 600 series chipsets, Intel has left the memory to be flexible with motherboard manufacturers having the choice to go with DDR4 or DDR5 which means there are a LOT of options available and one of those is the MSI MPG Z790 Edge WiFi DDR4 which falls into the middle of the pack for MSI’s lineup overall but is their highest end DDR4 motherboard with a unique silver theme for its cooling. Today I’m going to check out more of what the Z790 Edge DDR4 has to offer, so let’s dive in.
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Category: Storage
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Published: Tuesday, 31 January 2023 17:13
Lexar has continued to expand their SSD lineup including the addition of their Lexar NM800 Pro which is available with and without a compact heatsink. The NM800 Pro sports an NNOGRIT 1G5236CAA controller which gives it PCIe Gen 4 capabilities and Lexar has it listed with read speeds up to 7450 MB/s and 6500 MB/s for its write speeds, at least on the 2TB model. This lines up well with other Gen 4 SSDs. Lexar is a long-respected brand and they gave their Pro-branded SSD a five-year warranty so I’m excited to put their new drive to the test and see how it performs. Today I will take a closer look to see what secrets it has to offer then we can run it through our test suite to see how it performs to find out if this is the drive to consider next time you are shopping for a new SSD.
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Category: Storage
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Published: Thursday, 26 January 2023 16:22
It feels like most of the time there are the same names over and over again but every once in a while someone new does jump into the mix. The brand Fantom Drives isn’t new to the industry, they and their parent company Micronet Technology have been around since 1988 but even after all of that time today is the first time that we have had a Fantom Drives product come into the office. Today I’m going to check out the Fantom Drives Venom8, a PCIe Gen 4 NVMe M.2 SSD. I’m going to take a closer look at the drive to see what it is all about then put it through our test suite, so let’s dive in and see how it performs!
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