We all have our own style preferences and this is no different when it comes to video cards. So when Gigabyte wanted to send out their GTX 960 I wasn’t about to turn it down enough though we have already covered a few other GTX 960’s. I wanted to see how Gigabytes offering compares to the competition, both with its performance and also with its styling. If we didn’t have variety we would all be running the exact same PC configuration and that wouldn’t be any fun. So today I’m going to put the Gigabyte GTX 960 through our standard benchmark suite as well as take a closer look at what makes it tick to find out if this is the best GTX 960 to pick up for your new budget build.

This weekend we’ll be braving the cold weather headed North to Ypsilanti, Michigan to game in the Grand Ballroom of Eastern Michigan University. The LanOC crew will be a few of the 300+ gamers taking part in the BYOC LAN that is Gamers for Giving 2015, as well as several cash-prize tournaments totaling over $20,000 in prizes. Augmenting the free and competitive play will be other staple activities such as a case mod contest, and an impressive list of industry icons including eSport founders and guest streamers will also be joining the cause. The team behind Gamers for Giving 2015 have done an excellent job teasing us with pictures and posts on their social media over the past few weeks leading up to the event, we’re very much looking forward to it!

A few years ago only a few people were running an SSD in their computer. These days though most enthusiasts and gamers are sporting one. Why? Because they speed up your computer in areas that even the fastest CPU or video card can’t do. The thing is if you got in on it all early, you are most likely running a small OS only drive. Well if you haven’t noticed prices have been dropping, for what you spent on that 60GB drive you can get the Corsair Force Series LX 256GB. Not only will that hold your OS but now you can installed a few more programs on it as well. In fact you should be able to run everything you need off of your SSD with the exception being if you are like me and install every steam game you own. You should keep some of that on a second hard drive. Today I’m going to take a look and see how the budget focused LX drive performs and find out if it is currently the best deal to be found.

When it comes to gaming mice, you might see a lot of mice that you don’t like but in reality there is no wrong answer. Every person has different preferences when it comes to the shape, materials, button locations, quantity of buttons, and even the sensor. On top of that, you have to consider price points as well. That said there is one mouse from back in the day that is still popular within some circles. That mouse is Microsoft Intellimouse. A lot of you have used one and if you haven’t chances are you have used a mouse designed to be similar. Well Cooler Master is careful to point out that their new Mizar was inspired by “classic, right-handed, and ergonomic styles” but we know what is going on. So today, I’m going to take a look at the Mizar and see if following in the footsteps of other great mice is the way to go. Enjoy!

You may not realize it but with our phones and tablets, we tend to live our life around them rather than get devices that let you live the way you want to live. What I mean by that is for the most part a lot of us continue to want faster, thinner, and a bigger screen but we tend to completely forget a few things when shopping for a phone. For starters, what good is a phone or tablet if the battery is dead before you know it. Additionally we are careful with our phones and tablets around dust, dirt, and water because generally all of those things will ruin your fancy new phone/tablet. Remember when you could push someone in the pool without worrying, now you have to be concerned that they don’t have their phone on them. Well Sony has been pushing a lot of their product lines towards focusing on people with an active lifestyle and that means they now have a few devices that are waterproof and dust resistant. Well today I’m going to take a look at their Xperia Z2 tablet and Xperia Z3v phone to find out if having a waterproof phone/tablet is a big advantage.

With the launch of the 900 series of cards MSI also launched their new Twin Frozr V cooling. Sadly up until now we haven’t had the chance to actually check out one. With the GTX 960 launch setting down MSI sent over their GTX 960 Gaming 2G for us to check out. This gives us a great chance to see what their new cooling is capable of and to be able to compare it to some of the competition. My expectations are high because MSI has done a great job on the cooling front for a long time now. So let’s put the GTX 960 Gaming 2G to the test and see how it performs.

While Nvidia now has their latest GPU out, AMD is still relying on their 290X to lead the pack. Asus sent over their R9 290X Matrix Platinum so that we could finally put it through our benchmark suite and find out if AMDs flagship card with a healthy overclock can keep up with the latest and greatest from Nvidia. I’m especially curious to see how it performs compared to the competition in some of our higher resolution testing. With all of the fuss about memory issues on the GTX 970 it will be great to see how AMDs current flagship card is holding up.

The final piece needed to get our In Win D-Frame Mini build together was a powerful video card that runs cool, quiet, and matches the red and black theme of the build. For a short while I ran a reference GTX 980 but quickly switched to the Asus GTX 980 Strix. Well today I’m going to take a closer look at the card to see what it Is all about, how it performs, and how well it overclocks. Going off previous Strix reviews we can expect it to run well and stand out in the noise department as well assuming the Strix cooler can keep the GTX 980 running cool.

Last month I had the chance to check out Corsairs 380T. It didn’t take long before it made it up near the top of my must buy list for a LANrig. Today I’m going to see what Corsair has going on in the full size market with their 760T. It shares a lot of the same features as the 380T so I have high hopes. Sadly, the 760T is only available in white or black so there isn’t an eye catching color like the 380T’s yellow but our “Graphite Black” sample still looked good at first glance. Let’s find out what it has going on when we give it a closer look.

So over the past few years I have been lucky enough to cover nearly every new and interesting mechanical keyboard I could find. This includes various models with RGB backlighting, unique switches, and even an ergonomic model. That said there have still been a few mechanical keyboards that I haven’t been able to get my hands on, mostly because they are a little less mainstream. Well last last year I had the chance to talk with a fairly new group buy website called Massdrop, some of you may have heard of it. Massdrop really caught my eye because they do group buys on enthusiasts focused products. It just so happened there mechanical keyboard buyer has seen our coverage in the past and was excited to work with us. I don’t think there is a more fitting product to cover than the ErgoDox Ergonomic Mechanical Keyboard Kit. This is what helped establish Massdrop and it is also one of the most unique keyboards you can get.

A while back I had the chance to check out the E1 from Sound Blaster. This was a small portable headphone amp that also doubled as a portable USB sound card. You could hook it up to our phone or portable gaming devices to increase the audio quality or if you wanted you could plug into your laptop or PC. Well Sound Blaster has been busy, after the introduction of the E1 they went on to introduce a Bluetooth version (the E3) and also the E5. What’s the E5? Well the E5 takes the same idea but rather than a sound card you get a full DAC (Digital Audio Converter). You get the same features of the E1 and the E3 but they really stepped things up even more on the audio quality side of things. Of course we can’t take their word for it, let’s dig in and see what the E5 is all about.

Having had the opportunity to work and support home and small office environments, the necessity for things like redundancy, ease of access, and perhaps more importantly granularity of access are extremely obvious. Things that a NAS can provide, but rarely are invested in for one reason or another. The fear of cost or expertise often leads to that heart-breaking conversation where you relay the news that their presentation went up in flames with their failed hard drive, or early morning support calls due to permission issues. Thecus has several NAS offerings on the table, and we've had a look at a few of them. Today we'll sit down with the N4560, a NAS targeted for this very SOHO situation, in which Thecus hopes to address a few of the examples here and beyond.

If no one had to worry about money we would all be running crazy high end PCs with 3 or 4 GTX 980’s or R9 290X’s. The reality is that most people can’t afford to do that and even when they can it’s hard to justify spending that much money on just one part of their PC. The fact is even just one of those cards can cost more than a budget PC and 4 of them can be more than some cars. Because of that we have to try to find a balance between price and performance and along with that make sure there is a card for every price point along the way. Nvidia launched their Maxwell based GTX 980 and GTX 970 back in September, they are now starting to fill in a little more of the 900 Series product line with the introduction of the GTX 960 today. So today I’m going to see how the GTX 960 performs by taking a look at the overclocked Asus GTX 960 Strix.   

With the introduction of their G502 Logitech introduced the world to a new styling direction and at the same time they also introduced the first mouse that they ever named. Well with the G402 we are back at it again with their second mouse sharing the same aggressive styling and yes it also has a name. The G402 is also known as the Hyperion Fury. The G402 is Logitech’s FPS focused mouse that sits as a price point just below the G502. This replaces the G400s, an evolution of the original G5 mouse that played a big part in creating the gaming peripheral market altogether. So you can say this mouse has big shoes to fill.

The market for Mini-ITX based LAN rigs has grown a lot over the past few years. This is both because people are realizing that you can get the same performance out of a small rig as a big one and also because companies are finally starting to produce the products we always needed to really go all out with our SFF builds. Corsair is one of those companies, they have introduced a few different Mini-ITX cases but the introduction of their 380T from their Graphite Series really caught my eye. For one they have been toying with the idea of bringing out a whole bunch of eye catching colored versions of the 380T. But additionally they put together a design that is easy to carry with a handle but it also has a large window inside. That means you can get it to LANs and also show off what is inside. That is having your cake and getting to eat it too.

Recently I had the chance to check out the 700M from Cougar. I went in with a little hesitation but I was pleasantly surprised. The mouse was good but on top of that I was really blown away that a relatively new manufacture had this good of software. This told me that Cougar was investing a lot into their move into the peripheral market, good software is hard to find and very expensive to develop. So today I’m sitting here with the 700M’s partner in crime, the 700K mechanical keyboard. Is the 700K going to be as impressive as the 700M was? Well there is only one way to find out.

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.

When I was putting together the last few parts for our In Win D-Frame Mini build I knew I wanted to stick with a black and red theme and get a power supply that matched the performance of the rest of the build. Going with a Thermaltake Power Supply really was the only option to get both. So they were kind enough to send over their Toughpower DPS G 750 Watt power supply. While it fit everything I needed, it also peaked my curiosity. I mean, this is a power supply that comes with software. So today, beyond taking a look at the power supply itself, I will also be taking a closer look at the included software to see what it is all about and find out If it is something you really need or if it is marketing fluff.

I think one of the most interesting things about video cards is that the performance you see from the cards is always changing. The cards are staying the same obviously, but after a launch we will see numerous driver updates, some of those include updates that improve and optimize in game performance both across the board and sometimes just with specific games. AMD recently introduced their Omega driver that included speed improvements and a LONG list of usability fixes. Well today I just happened to have an R9 280 from Gigabyte on hand. I’m going to see what sets their card apart from the competition and we will also have the chance to see how the new drivers perform as well. Along with that I am introducing a few new benchmarks into our 2015 benchmark suite, enjoy!

This past September AMD introduced a refresh of their FX CPUs that included a few new more power efficient CPUs along with a major pricing restructure to update the lineup. While I had the chance to test out most of the lineup there were a few that weren’t included. Recently AMD sent over one of the CPUs that I missed the FX-8320E. With the FX-8320E being a budget focused gaming CPU AMD also sent along with it a motherboard that matched its low price point and gaming focus, the 970 Gaming from MSI. Paired together you can get them for just a few dollars more than an i5-4670K with no motherboard or any of the 2011 socket CPUs. With 8 cores and a turbo clock speed of 4 GHz it should still be performer, but of course there really is only one way to find out, let’s check it out.