User reviews

G.Skill FlareX DDR4-3200 C14-14-14-34 1,35v Review Hi and welcome to our test and review of G.Skill´s new FlareX series. Introduction: Motivation and a look into history When you look back in history of memory, the name “Flare†might sound familiar to you. Around seven years ago, a year after AMD released its AM3 socket and processors, G.Skill decided to release a memory model series optimized for AMD systems, including overclocking profiles for these which could be loaded. This was the original Flare series, which was very successful not only because of their AMD optimization but because they used well binned PCS X ics which proved extremely useful…

introduction Behind many waters, far far away in some land...there was engineering Office. And there few smart people, put their heads together and created ROG hardware for enthusiast and overclockers:) It was more than 10 years ago. LOng time ago until last generation the "Extreme" products were focused for LN2 directly. Others ROG boards could work very well with LN2 also, but Extreme was something more. DRAM switches, PCIe switches, voltage points etc... However, this year in January was presented new series "APEX", which functionally replaces Maximus Extreme. To Maximus Extreme will include other water - literally Apex is motherboard for LN2 with all stuff…

I am planning to build a new PC since I will be giving my old Haswell system to my kid as we use the same PC and the same Overwatch account. He's doing good in school so I guess he deserves to be rewarded with his own rig and account. Also, I couldn't play with him sitting on my chair and messes up my competitive points. I've been asking in the forums about a good bang for the buck motherboard to start with and received a lot of good suggestions from other members. I took their recommendations seriously and came up with something I could be proud of and I guess making this thread is a nice way to share what I have. First of, let me start with the unboxing of the …

This year in the IT world, the most popular trend and the most sought after topic would be the VR application, the so called “age of VR.†Its impact on the PC industry extends all across the gaming world and not just gaming desktop PC and gaming notebook; even its multimedia capability will be influential in future. However, the requirement for the hardware is still considerably high; for PC it will need at least a GTX970, or a GTX980M for the notebook, specifications usually carried in higher end PC. Our test subject for today is MSI’s GT62VR 6RD DOMINATOR. MSI has been working diligently in the gaming market, especially with its notebook products often r…

In the past, it was more common for workstations to position themselves among computers on the PC market. Their built-in graphics card could significantly enhance the level of work efficiency for 3D CAD or video editors. Combining these two working environments’ demands, nearly three years later companies started to produce their workstations as a brand product line. After all, all workstations position themselves as high-end products with the specifications required by the professional users who prepare a certain budget for this kind of product. I’d like to share an overview of MSI WS72 6QJ. As you can see on the box, the logo is different from the Gaming …

During the past 2 years, laptops positioning as Gaming products became almost major brands on a battleground. Along with PC gaming having global prevalence, gaming products also possesses a very important position on the notebook market. Dell considered an early-entry gaming brand, however MSI has already been dedicating itself to gaming notebooks market for years. In pursuit of high performance, MSI featured product line includes GT series and more affordable GE series, also slim and lightweight of GS series, and the recent new GP series which is more affordable than GE as a mainstream gaming. Each price range offered at a different product segment, which let…

In pace with the growth of the gaming laptop market and major brands releasing more types of products due to the competition, MSI took an early start on the market. Releasing many product lines after 2011, today MSI already had 4 main gaming notebook segmentations, from low-end to high-end, respectively: GP, GE, GS and GT. Differing by design and positioning, its gaming laptops offer a much richer choice comparing to the company’s competitors. Performing at the highest level GT series, the first model was a 17-inch GT72, designed at the end of the last year, which was then first followed by an introduction GT80 18-inch featuring Cherry mechanical keyboard,…

The latest Intel 14nm generation 'Skylake' CPUs are now released, and coming with it, LGA1151 and Z170 PCH. Gigabyte's OC series motherboards started with the X58A-OC, And we've now seen orange-and-black boards for Z77, X79, Z87, Z97, X99, and now at the centre of this review - the Z170X-SOC Force. The biggest update - DDR4 - is now brought to the enthusiast level, with speeds starting at 2133mhz, and top end 4266mhz kits just starting to be shown by memory manufacturers, DDR4 is here and speeds that were once the top end of DDR3, are now the new mid-line. Without further ado, the Z170X-SOC Force. Inside the box you will find: -User manuals and softwa…

In the past, DELL, was the one offering a wider range of gaming notebooks. Yet, more and more brands have emerged. MSI has stood out among these brands in recent two years and has launched notebooks in various sizes for more gaming or especially dedicated for workstations. Besides the GT Series which is a bit heavy yet with the optical drive embedded, MSI offers the light and thin model such as GS Series. The GS30, for example, is a 13.3-inch notebook. The look of the laptop is very similar to an Ultrabook, but the whole system is equipped with high performance GPU with Docking. The MSI gaming notebook series with the highest performance has always been the…

MSI Computers have shifted to Gaming market and gotten more and more attention in recent years. Couple years ago, I found out that expanding MSI product line not only enhance various products but also elevate MSI repute in users mind. Recently, MSI has published a high end 18” Gaming Laptop featuring mechanical backlit Keyboard which catches eyes . The original 17” GT70 has been replaced by whole new GT72 since last quarter, 2014. Today’s major character is new GT72, which separate into two editions due to market segmentation. Featuring nVIDIA GTX 970M along with 256GB SSD: GT72 2QD Dominator Featuring nVIDIA GTX 980M along with 512GB SSD: GT72 2QE Dominat…

Hey folks, it's been a while I've benched stuff but after a break of almost 2 years I am now slowly coming back to my old passion for overclocking. Having wasted way too much money in the past the GTX 970 for just around 320 Euro looked like a good deal to check out about GPU performance these days. I compared to a lot special editions of the past like GTX 580, 7970 and new 780 Ti. Let's skip all this "cooler, specs, fancyness" and go directly to performance in games and benchmarks - these are my final charts up to now: When it comes to power consumption this card is like a camel you've just feeded - it doesn't need anyt…

Users’ impression of SanDisk mostly is memory card brand. Actually, they have been working for high speed SSD for long time. The main product line is Extreme series. Two years ago, I have test the first generation SanDisk Extreme 240GB. Last year, they unveil Extreme II and this year is Extreme PRO during Computex. It’s the product this review. SanDisk Extreme PRO has 3 capacities. There are 240, 480 and 960GB. This review will test 240 and 480GB. As SSD using experience, SandForce240GB performance is higher than 480GB a little. Recently, more products use Marvell controller. Some 480GB performance is higher than 240GB official spec. The key difference of E…

EK kindly agreed to sponsor my build log in the TX10-D with their new Supremacy Evo Universal CPU Block. I noticed then a lot of reviews up with only a few done rigorously and even so people were taking those results as universal despite the clear disclaimer about each CPU being different. Being a grad student at a reputed university, I have access to a few things that few others do- such as a hotbox in a sound proof room built 2 stories under ground level in a vibration proof floor. The good thing about this is that I can control and maintain ambient temps inside the hotbox to within +/- 0.05 ºC so that eliminates ambient temps as a possibility variation factor here. So …

Recent years, MSI really focus on Gaming market of their Notebook product line, MSI Gaming series notebook already launched 5 type of products, the GT series comes with Top Level performance and gaming features, the Ultra-thin but powerful gaming notebook is GS series, the only pure AMD platform gaming notebook is GX series, good cost/performance value of GE series, and entry gaming of GP series. MSI offered more different level of Gaming product line for more consumers to choose. This time I want to share MSI latest mechanical design product, it belongs to Ultra-thin style GS series. High-end Gaming Notebook always gives people feel its heavy on both perf…

Windwithme have shared two Cherry mechanical keyboards in 2008. I am irrevocably committed to mechanical keyboard. I have been using Cherry G80-1865 for 6 years. I am very satisfied with Cherry MX Brown Switchdurability and tactile bump. Cherry MX Switch has Green, Brown, Black, White and Red, the most popular one. One is Gaming gears become more popular, and the other is Red switch has more advantages. Comparing to the keyboard market years ago, mechanical keyboard brands are more and more. Price range is also enlarged due to competition, not only for high end market now. For mechanical keyboard fans, more options are good. This article is about USA CORSAIR…

Intel just launched the latest Haswell platform this June, PC and NB brand keep refreshing their product lines, the Notebook platform runs faster than before, there are lots of new platform products in the market right now. MSI focused on the high performance and gaming platform, and refreshed very fast too. MSI NB main product line is Gaming series, they also come out latest GE40 as 14" gaming laptop. For Top Level still keep GT70 and GT60, High Performance gaming will be GE70, GE60 and GE40. Since MSI performance gaming notebooks are same price range as regular high end notebooks, but they still presents more features and performance advantages on gaming note…

ASUS ROG LGA1150 Lineup comes with two new boards - mini-ITX Maximus VI Impact and mid-range Maximus VI Hero. ASUS Maximus VI Hero offers the build quality and some exclusive features like any other ROG board, but for more reasonable price. In the past, those overclockers who wants a ROG board, but can't afford a price of flagship Maximus Extreme had only one possible option - Maximus Gene, even if they actually don't need mATX board. Now they have another alternative in the list - Maximus VI Hero with ATX form factor and the price almost the same as Maximus Gene (currently Gene is only $5 cheaper than Hero newegg). I had opportunity to test ASUS Maximus VI Hero for a…

ASUS Gryphon Z87 is the first The Ultimate Force (TUF) Series board in mATX form-factor. By default it comes without "thermal shield" but you can order TUF Gryphon Armor Kit separately if you wish. The price tag is only $170 that makes this board interesting for using in compact PC builds. It's not ROG board but it still has some features, which is more than enough for daily aircooling OC. Let see what OC results we can do with this board and Intel Core i7-4770K CPU. Specification Vendor: ASUS Model: Gryphon Z87 CPU Support: Intel Core i5/i7 LGA1150 System bus: DMI 2.0, 20 GBps Chipset: Intel Z87 (Lynx Point) RAM support: 4x DDR3 DIMM slots up to 32 GByte…

DDR3 has been in the market for long time. It changes year by year. Ex: price change or capacity improves. Like last year, 4~8GB became the mainstream capacity. Most users use 4GX2 or 8GX2 as their PC spec. Besides capacity, high clock DDR3 is the other key factor of performance improving. CORSAIR focus on high performance DDR3 for years. High clock DDR3 products are Dominator series mainly. After that, it's with GT or GTX code. Last year, CORSAIR launched DDR3 most high end series, Dominator Platinum. This review is the current highest clock modules, Dominator Platinum. The model is CMD16GX3M4A2800C11. This is DDR3 2800 CL11, the top specs. The high end D…

These years, Solid-State Drive becomes key weapon to enhance PC performance. For 3D performance, VGA is the key. For multi-tasking and graphic design, high end CPU is the must. Besides these, for on/off PC, saving files or executing programs all need SSD. Intel and AMD launched several native SATA3 chipset in 2 years. Now, every SSD providers are designing for the best performance in SATA3 6Gb/s. So far, CORSAIR has 6 series SSD product lines. They use different controllers and NAND Flash to rich SSD performance and diversity. As mainstream SSD, Corsair has specific models for SandForce and Marvell controllers, CORSAIR Performance and Force Series. In 2012, the…

Swiftech H220 Review Introduction: Swiftech has been a company in the hardware cooling sector for around 20 years fullfilling the needs of an ever growing computer enthusiast and novices alike croud with the desire to go for better than stock cooling on their hardware , with such a vast experience under its belt they accomplish a task no other company has done before , yes that's right the have breach the gap between the all in one liquid cooling closed loop kits and the do it yourselves customizable kits , a huge milestone accomplished by Swiftech that will change forever the way you look at the all in one closed loops kits available on the market. This is wh…

Swiftech H220 Teaser of my upcoming review of the Swiftech H220 all in one liquid cooling kit , fully upgradable and customizable. What if there was an all in one liquid cooling kit fully upgradable that could be customized to your needs ? The wait is over Swiftech H220 all in one liquid cooling system is here and this kit can do that and much more. A quick teaser of what I have been working on for the last few days , installed on a i7-3770K in a loop with an MSI HD 7970 Lightning . added one Swiftech MCW-82 7900 Series vga water block to the loop and overclocked both cpu and gpu, what do you guys think the outcome will be ? Part 1 of 2 of my review co…

Rewrite of the review i did recently of this kit.. Presenting Kingston Hyper X Blu 1600Mhz 8GB kit (P/N:KHX1600C9D3B1K2/8GX ). The kit is stated as "Extreme Gaming Memory for Overclocking and Gaming Enthusiasts",lets see how extreme it is..shall we? First up a screenshot of the SPD at stock. As we can see the kit is XMP ready.So with an Intel system setting up wont be a problem. Please continue to next page for more. Let spice up the review with some pics of the kit and the ram itself..shall we? With the simple themed design this kit would look good on any s…

Intel Core I Gen 3 is named Ivy Bridge which is launched in April. In the beginning, there were only mid to high end models, Core i5 and Core i7. For lower price Ivy Bridge Core i3 was launched in Sep. Now you can save some budget for Ivy Bridge CPU to buy Core i3 instead of Core i3. There are three models for new Core i3, Core i3-3220, i3-3225 and i3-3240 from low to high. Each is 100MHz difference. i3-3225 built-in Intel max performance HD4000 GPU. i3-3220 and i3-3240 are HD2500. This is the simplest way to distinguish. This guide is using Intel Core i3-3220, the cheapest one of three models. The clock is 3.3GHz. It?s physical 2 Cores and none Hyper-T…

Hey guys,just received my new graphics card and thought it would be nice to post some benchmarking scores from my daily pc. Some words about the card: The card itself is an option made from Msi.It uses the dual slot cooler called Twin Frozr. The custom pcb and the aftermarket cooler are there for anything a user can require from the card. But anyway you are not here to read specifications and long texts. I assume you are here to see the results of the card in combination of my 3770K.Right? So just for the record what I used for the review: Hardware: Intel i7 3770K Evga Z77 FTW Avexir 4x4Gb 2400MhzCl10 ThermalTake ToughtPower Xt 1350W Dimastech Easy W…