Tag Archives: Review

Phanteks has introduced its new Eclipse P400 with a price that starts just above £50. In the world of enthusiast cases that is amazingly cheap. The basic Eclipse P400 is available in black or grey at £52, or you can pay a £3 premium for this white version. Add another …

Cyberpower has taken an interesting approach with its Infinity Luxe 805 GT gaming PC. On the one hand they have pushed the specification of the hardware with an overclocked 4.7GHz Core i7-6700K and GTX 980Ti graphics card while on the other they have also emphasised the look of the PC …

Vibox has created a gaming PC called Rapture-Chaos MX2 that uses a long list of high end components. The result is an overclocked powerhouse that storms through games at 1080p, with the added bonus that it looks superb. Watch our video and you will see that Rapture-Chaos MX2 lives up …

The Razer Black Widow has become very popular over the years, often being touted as one of the finest gaming keyboards around. Today, we are looking at the brand new 2016 edition, using Razer's own high specification mechanical switches – could this be the best option for gamers in 2016? …

Back at launch in July 2015 we reviewed the OCZ Trion 100 SSD's. These were the first OCZ drives to feature a Toshiba controller and A19 TLC NAND flash. Today we look at the latest iteration of the Trion series, dubbed the ‘Trion 150'. The Trion 150 feature 15nm Toshiba …

MSI has given its ten litre small form factor Nightblade MI a serious upgrade, although you are unlikely to spot the changes as the chassis remains very similar on the outside. If you know what you are looking for you will see that one of the ports below the power …

Only the highest of memory speeds are worthy of G.Skill's Trident series branding, so it should come as little surprise to see that the starting point for the vendor's Trident Z DDR4 sets is a lofty 2800MHz. Today we are taking a look at a dual-channel 16GB Trident Z kit …

PC Specialist has configured a mid-range Skylake laptop called Octane II that packs enough punch for gaming. You get a choice of GeForce GTX 970M or 980M graphics as well as support for as many as four storage drives and SSDs. Our sample arrived with a Core i5-6600 CPU, 16GB …

AMD released their R9 Fury back in July 2015, and our review at the time was fairly positive with concerns mainly leveled over the pricing. Today we look at the Sapphire Nitro R9 Fury 4GB – a new triple fan custom solution featuring enhanced out of the box clock speeds. …

DDR4 memory has made its way to the mainstream with the introduction of Skylake and the Z170 platform, however many buyers were not happy with the operating latencies of some DDR4 kits. Raw memory speeds for DDR4 kits are typically higher than those of DDR3 predecessors, however the timings can …

Back in December, Cooler Master announced the CM Storm Sentinel III, its latest gaming mouse bringing new features including an improved tracking sensor, a customizable OLED display and new RGB lighting. Today, we are finally going to put it through its paces and see just how well it performs.  The …

Aorus, the high-end brand created by Gigabyte, has put a lot of work into the X7 Pro-Sync and the result is an exceptionally slender laptop that packs a severe gaming punch. The chassis only measures 22.9mm thick at the widest point behind the lid hinge, near the exhaust vents. Measure …

Motherboards aimed at professional usage have quite different requirements to those aimed at consumer activities like gaming. For a start, whilst gamers are swiftly moving onto the Z170 chipset and Intel Skylake procesors, because quad-core is usually enough, workstations have generally stuck with X99 and Haswell E processors, due to …

Kingston has earned a reputation with its HyperX brand over the last few years. Today, we are taking a look at the HyperX Savage 128GB USB drive, which supports first-generation USB 3.1 technology and promises ‘blazing fast' read and write speeds. How does it hold up? Let's find out! Kingston …

The iKlips from Adam Elements may look like a lowly USB flash drive, but its main purpose it as removable storage for iOS devices. On one end is a USB 3 connector, while at the other, a Lighting connector that plugs into an iPhone and iPad, supplementing any internal storage …

It’s no surprise that ultra-wide curved screens such as the 34-inch Philips Brilliance BDM3490UC are becoming popular as they present a compelling alternative to traditional 16:9 displays. The extra width and subtle curvature gives a cinema-like experience in movies, and for desktop use, the extra pixels means more documents open …

Right now, the mini-ITX scene is extremely popular for gamers and enthusiasts. A combined effort by component manufacturers has seen greater emphasis being put on innovative mini-ITX cases, short graphics cards, and more confined cooling solutions. And let's not forget the system builders deploying small form-factor (SFF) offerings such as …

Acer’s XB270HU is a 27-inch G-Sync display with a bright IPS panel. It supports a native WQHD resolution of 2,560 x 1,440 and a refresh rate of 144Hz, with Nvidia’s ULMB technology to boot, rounding off an impressive specification that puts it directly in competition with high-end adaptive-sync gaming displays …

As much as Beats may have gone a long way to making the idea of having decent quality headphones cool, not everyone wants bass heavy cans, or giant over-the-ear sets. Some prefer an in-ear design for their stealth and ability to stay in place during vigorous activity. It is to …

MSI has given its mighty Titan gaming laptop a serious upgrade. You have to look fairly closely to spot the differences on the outside, however the evidence is there if you know where to look. Turn to the rear of the laptop and you may well spot that one of …

Thermaltake Core X71 is a full tower ATX case that stands 677mm tall. That's huge. The easiest way to get an idea about Core X71 is to imagine that Thermaltake has taken a tower case such as Core V51 or Suppressor F51 and then stood it on a pedestal. The …

Tackling the premium gaming market, MSI outfits the Z170A Gaming M7 with a number of features that will have eager buyers licking their lips. Alongside the eye-catching red and black colour scheme, hardware features include an enhanced audio system, two high-speed M.2 slots, and USB 3.1 Type-A and Type-C ports. …

Towards the end of 2014, Logitech jumped on the RGB craze with a brand new flagship keyboard, the G910 Orion Spark – not only did the keyboard offer fantastic lighting but it also had a row of additional macro keys and featured Logitech's own mechanical Romer-G switches. Unfortunately, given its …

The availability of multiplier-locked Skylake chips has sparked an even greater emphasis on the need for low-cost motherboards to partner with such processors. ASRock's affordable Z170 Extreme4 utilises the Z170 chipset's host of worthwhile features but minimises add-on components in order to maintain aggressive pricing. Aside from the Z170 chipset's …

We had a good look at a preview model of the ROG G752VT but there is nothing quite like the experience of unboxing a brand new full retail gaming laptop. The headline features are Intel Skylake Core i7, Nvidia Maxwell graphics and a Full HD 17.3-inch IPS screen with G-Sync …

Corsair Carbide 400Q is the junior sibling of the Carbide 600C we saw quite recently. The Q suffix stands for Quiet and C for Clear (i.e. it has a windowed panel) and both Carbide 400 and 600 come in Q and C variants. Unboxing the 400Q reveals a case that …

When we looked at MSI's GS40 6QF Phantom a few weeks ago we were impressed at just how much gaming power it was able to squeeze into a 1.6kg chassis. It managed to make the grueling Grand Theft Auto V and Tomb Raider both playable at the maximum possible quality …

When it comes to building a gaming PC these days, a high-end sound card is likely pretty far down on your list of priorities. However, if you are serious about audio and want to get the best out of your speakers or high-end headphones, then you will find that your …

The NVIDIA Quadro M4000 has been out since August, but as the successor to the K4200, it's the flagship mainstream professional graphics card. So we are reviewing it here to show how it compares to its predecessor (and the higher-end K5200). In terms of specification, it's another step forward, despite …

NZXT has updated its HUE lighting controller and while the HUE+ name may sound familiar the system has undergone a radical overhaul. Previously you had a control unit that sits in an optical drive bay with three rotary controls that adjust the behaviour of the LEDs. By contrast the HUE+ …