Tag Archives: Review

Continuing our recent focus on gaming motherboards, we have the Gigabyte Z97X-Gaming 7 in for review. Hitting retail with an aggressive sub-£140 price tag, Gigabyte is aiming to lure in potential buyers with the Gaming 7 motherboard's gaming-orientated features, striking colour scheme, and four-year warranty.  Fusing together the company's high-performance G1 Audio with …

The MSI A88X-G45 Gaming is a handsome AMD A88X motherboard that sports a long list of features including triple graphics slots. That explains the ‘Gaming' part of the name and as you would expect the A88X chipset means this MSI board supports the latest FM2+ range of Kaveri APU. There …

Today we look at a new rig from system builder Cyberpower. The Achilles Pro incorporates the latest Intel i5 4690 processor, alongside a Gigabyte GTX780, Gigabyte Z97 Gaming motherboard and a 256GB Plextor PCIe SSD. Cyberpower have decided to adopt the exciting new In-Win 904 case as well in this …

Sitting in the middle of ASRock's current Z97 gaming motherboard line-up, the Fatal1ty Z97X Killer targets the fierce sub-£130 marketplace. Can its feature set, overclocking capabilities, and general performance allow it to stand out in a hotly-contested segment of the market? ASRock supplies its Z97X Killer with a number of popular …

Some system builders will want to create a new PC with up to 7 hard drives, have it booting from an SSD with tool-free accessibility and yet won't want to spend more than £55 for the experience. If that sounds like you, then BitFenix has been working on a case …

With the price of Ultra HD 4K screens dropping this year there has never been a better time to upgrade your system. Today we look at the latest high end graphics card from Club3D – the R9 290X RoyalAce. This card ships with a custom cooler design and a healthy …

If you find yourself jumping from rooftop to rooftop, wallrunning your way between kills and blasting away at 30ft tall metal behemoths on a regular basis you are either playing Titanfall or need to reduce your meds. Either way though, you will probably appreciate the style of Turtle Beach's latest …

We have already seen the be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 3 stamp its authority on the high-end air cooler market. Now the company is aiming for another fight with its single tower Dark Rock 3 CPU cooler. Can a balance between cooling performance and noise make the Dark Rock 3 a worthy contender? Using …

Nvidia have always said that the GTX Titan and GTX Titan Black graphics cards were never released to target the gaming audience, however that hasn't stopped demanding enthusiast gamers buying them by the bucket load. As the GTX780 Ti is ‘only' equipped with 3GB of GDDR5 memory the move to …

Last summer Phanteks won our hearts with the Enthoo Primo aluminium case – which claimed a ‘Must Have' award despite a price tag of £199.99. This success led to a huge amount of anticipation for the upcoming Phanteks Enthoo Pro as we were promised a case that carried over the …

In the wake of Zardon's amazing Top 10 listing of the greatest headphones 2014 we look at a much more affordable pair of headphones in this review. No more Grado or Sennheiser headphones weighing in at well over £1,000 as Mionix are aiming the ‘regular luxury' part of the market. …

Synology describes its new DS414j as the successor to the DS413. It’s a 4-bay NAS device, aimed at home users and SOHO environments requiring up to 20TB of storage, and they put the emphasis on the ‘retro looking black chassis, dual core CPU … and USB 3.0 which combine to …

Gamers have long been one of the core consumer groups for the DIY computing industry, but recent months have seen the popularity of gaming-branded components hit a new level. Motherboards are a great example of this; in the eleven months since the inception of Intel's Z87 chipset, the number of …

Intel's Z97 chipset has launched and TUF series motherboards are part of the Asus welcoming party. Sporting the new Intel chipset and old TUF features that have made previous generation Sabertooth boards lucrative components, we put Asus' Sabertooth Z97 Mark 1 in the firing line of our critical analysis. Do …

Intel's Z97 chipset has arrived, bringing with it a handful of new features, including native support for PCIe-based storage. Motherboard manufacturers have been busy working on their boards based on the 9-series chipset. As of May 11th, the LGA 1150 socket motherboards with Z97 and H97 chipsets are available to purchase. We …

If you are in the market for a compact, yet powerful, watercooled system – but don't want to build it yourself, then today's review may just tickle the taste buds. The AWD Ignis Aqua 290X 250D Mini ITX PC is built around a Core i5 4670k processor – overclocked to …

Not everyone has a lot of money to buy the most expensive components. With this in mind the folks at BitFenix have taken a look at the needs of users on a budget and created the BitFenix Comrade in black. KitGuru examines the case for low cost chassis. Unashamedly aimed …

Microlab is a relatively small company in the audio world but that isn't stopping it from delivering decent quality speaker systems. Previously we have had a look at the Solo 6C as well as the FC360 2.1 speaker systems and were impressed by both. Can Microlab deliver similar sound quality …

If you use your rig to listen to music then there is a good chance you won't be happy with the onboard sound from the motherboard. ASUS have released the STX II and STX II 7.1 to build on the huge success they experienced from the earlier Essence STX solution. …

2014 has been an incredible year for top grade, high wattage power supplies. We have reviewed the Super Flower Leadex Platinum 1,000w, The Antec High Current Pro Platinum 1,300w and the Corsair AX1500i Titanium – all of which have claimed top awards. Today we look at the latest Cooler Master …

At the beginning of April we reviewed the incredible Antec High Current Pro Platinum 1300 W. This power supply ranked as one of the best we had ever reviewed, and today we look at the more cost effective 850W model. Can the HCP 850W power supply cement Antec's standing in …

The Gigabyte P35K UltraBlade is a sleek 15.6-inch laptop that measures a mere 21mm thick when the lid is closed. Open the lid and the main part of the chassis is less than 17mm thick which is pretty amazing when you discover the P35K is powered by a Core i7 …

Have you just built a mining rig featuring four high end graphics cards or are you currently configuring a system incorporating dual AMD R9 295X2 graphics cards? Regular KitGuru readers will have seen our recent review of the Overclockers UK Infinity Vesuvius system – which could demand almost 1,200 watts …

The Corsair Graphite 730T is a budget version of the 760T which means you miss out on the polycarbonate side panel and don't get any fan controllers. Also, like a Model T Ford, the 730T only comes in black, whereas the 760T is available in black or white. On the …

It has been three years since we looked at the OCZ RevoDrive 3 x2 480GB – at the time it was the fastest SSD that the desktop audience could buy. As it connected via the PCI Express interface it wasn't a victim of the SATA bottleneck, which is still a …

KitGuru review a range of gaming systems every month, from penny pinching £500 builds to wallet sapping £3,000 beasts. Today we take a look at one of the latest high end systems from etailer OverclockersUK. This £4,000 monster features a watercooled, overclocked Core i7 4770k, an Asus Z87 Extreme motherboard, …

The Obsidian Series 450D has an elegant brushed aluminium front panel and a solid steel body. The interior is designed for superior cooling efficiency, with a modular removable drive cage system and dual SSD bays that mount behind the motherboard tray and out of the airflow path. I have to …

While overclocked Core i7 systems with dual GTX Titan Black graphics cards are the wet dream of any enthusiast user, most of us have to make do with a more modest configuration. If you are working with a limited budget of £500 then today's review system will certainly be interesting. …

Today we are going to look at one of the latest, and perhaps most interesting notebooks in Dell’s range, the XPS 12. This aluminum convertible Ultrabook offers a ‘flip and fold' motion and features a Corning Gorilla glass screen with Full HD Display. Dell refer to the XPS 12 as …

Go back just a single decade and you would find many high end gaming PC's with 80GB boot drives or some with even smaller 36GB Raptor drives – for added performance. Today multi-terrabyte drives aren't something we bat an eyelid at and most modern smartphones ship with tens of gigabytes …