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This time we'll be taking a closer look at the Samsung's 840 EVO series offering. This particular EVO unit offers a whopping 750 gigabytes of storage space. This is enough space for most setups to be run with a single drive. Is the speed there?
Walkera Ladybird V2 model offers a toy like price but includes all the features that a larger model would have. Let us see if this is the next gadget you just need to buy!
Func is probably a bit less well known computer accessory manufacturer. After a few years of silence Func published the MS-3 high-end mouse and the Surface 1030 XL mouse mat. Now we are going to take a look at these new products.
RC model airplanes and single rotor copter are so yesterday. Multicopters are taking the world by storm and this series of articles will clarify all the needed terminology, technology and skills needed to make one for yourself!
azer's newest gaming mouse, Ouroboros, is a wireless mouse with customizable ambidextrous ergonomics and excellent adjustment possibilities. Let's see if the newcomer is as good as Razer claims!
In last spring Silverstone published two HTPC cases to Grandia series. The cases' model names are GD07 and GD08 and their most important features are extensibility, cooling perfonrmance and silence. This time we are about to take a closer look at the GD07 model.
Lian Li is considered as a company that produces high-end and very well finished cases. Let's see if PC-7H can face the presumptions.
Classic hand-held gaming devices near to your heart? Take a look at this project where I combine one of the real classics with another arcade icon.
Competition open for Finnish readers.
Need something to shock your friends? Levetron Mech 5 gaming keyboard gets the looks for sure but how well it will fair in real work usage? Read and find out!
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- 3 Days to Kill (2014) Cinema Review - TweakTown
Director 'McG', otherwise known as Joseph McGinty Nichol, has a career littered with bombs such as This Means War, disappointments like Terminator Salvation, and downright clunkers, including Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle. It's a real shame, too, because the former music video director has an obvious eye for visuals and good sensibilities for action. It's just that short of his first film, the hyperkinetic Charlie's Angels some 15 years ago, he hasn't really found a vehicle to channel his talents all that successfully. However, in 3 Days To Kill, which just happens to be his lowest budgeted film ever (at just under $30 million) and coupled with Writer and Producer Luc Besson, McG finally seems to be suitably matched. Despite nearly capturing an internationally wanted terrorist known only as the Albino (Tomas Lemarquis) in a foiled plot, CIA Agent Ethan Renner (Kevin Costner) has been felled by cancer that has left him with a decidedly negative prognosis: only a few months to live. Ejected from the agency, Renner shuns his formerly nomadic life to return to his wife Christine (Connie Nielsen) and young daughter Zoey (Hailee Steinfeld) to spend his remaining time. Connecting to the young teenager proves difficult when it is obvious he knows little about her, as he missed almost all her life milestones. Just when his affairs begin to come into order, Renner is approached by sultry CIA agent Vivi (Amber Heard) promising an expensive and experimental drug that could extend his life in return for completing his final mission and bringing the Albino to justice. 3 Days To Kill has been knocked around a bit critically, at this point enjoying the dubious honor of a 31 percent rotten rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Whilst I'm cognizant of standing out amongst my compatriots, I feel the need to break rank on this one. I found 3 Days To Kill to be overwhelmingly entertaining of the heavily salted popcorn variety. The hand of Luc Besson is more than noticeable, with much of the action harkening back to the likes of The Transporter and Lockout. Coming just a few months after the disappointing Jack Ryan reboot (which also featured Kevin Costner), it's interesting that 3 Days To Kill features a similar concept with a wildly divergent tone. Whereas Jack Ryan illustrated the outlandish with stony-faced seriousness, Ethen Renner is just as quick to offer a comedic quip as he is to take out a villain or focus on family life for an extended period as he is to blow up a building in spectacular fashion. Kevin Costner is, of course, an old hand at the type of material, but he sure looks like he is having fun. Hailee Steninfeld does an admirable job at coming around to her formerly absentee father. However, the highlight of the cast is the downright gorgeous Amber Heard, whose career seems to be on an upward trajectory. Every scene she is in instantly grabs the interest and keeps the film kicking along. 3 Days To Kill isn't an action classic for the ages and probably resides towards the bottom of Kevin Costner's filmography, but for an infinitely entertaining Saturday night actioner, you can do much, much worse. ... Read the rest in your browser!
- Leef Pro 16GB MicroSDHC Memory Card Review - TweakTown
Like the new craze around OTG hybrid drives, microSD cards have had a long and fruitful life without our smartphones. Along with smartphones, microSD cards live in our cameras, camcorders, and even tablets, offering enhanced storage capabilities in a very small form factor. Leef is a rather new company to the market, with beginnings around 2010. Today, we have the distinct opportunity to look at one of their latest products, the Leef Pro 16GB microSDHC card. This card features UHS I compatibility along with a Speed Class of 10. Available in capacities ranging from 16GB to 64GB, the MSRP of the Leef Pro is listed at $24.99 for the 16GB and up to $84.99 for the 64GB capacity. Each of these drives come with a five-year warranty. The Leef Pro came packaged in the standard plastic retainer for the card. Here we have our first look at the card and included adapter. The front of the card carries a design that would certainly grab your attention in a retail situation. The Leef Pro is factory formatted with the FAT32 file-system. Usable capacity after formatting is 14.6GB. Above, you can see the Leef Pro did quite well. We were able to reach 51MB/s read and 12MB/s write. In our price/performance chart, we found the Leef Pro coming in second to the Strontium Nitro we reviewed a few months back. With this being my first product from Leef as a company, I came away pleasantly surprised with the level of design and overall aesthetics put into their SDHC card. When a company pays enough attention to design their products to catch your eye, more often than not it's going to be something above the standard. Performance of the Leef Pro microSDHC card was well within expectations and would be a great solution for point-and-shoot cameras and, of course, smartphones and tablets. MSRP of the 16GB Leef Pro microSDHC card comes in at $24.99 with a five-year warranty. Current market pricing can be found below. PRICING: You can find the 16GB Leef Pro microSDHC card for sale below. The prices listed are valid at the time of writing, but can change at any time. Click the link to see the very latest pricing for the best deal. United States: The 16GB Leef Pro microSDHC card retails for $24.99 at Amazon. ... Read the rest in your browser!
- Sapphire Radeon R9 290X TRI-X 4GB OC Overclocked Video Card Review - TweakTown
Introduction The other day, we got the chance to have a look at an R9 290X 4GB from MSI and found ourselves quite impressed with the Twin Frozr Gaming OC variant of the model. Today, we've got another R9 290X 4GB on our hands. This time it's from Sapphire. The particular version of the R9 290X 4GB we're looking at today comes in under the TRI-X name, which is one we've seen in the past. The TRI-X and Dual-X series are two of the more recent additions to the Sapphire line up, and they've both done a great job of impressing us. The latter series is reserved for more mid-range models. There isn't a whole lot for us to say about the R9 290X 4GB or just the R series in general. Since the launch of the series last year, we've found ourselves extremely impressed with what AMD has been offering us. The company has been able to offer not only cards with excellent performance and a fantastic set of features, but they've also managed to do this at an excellent price point. Today, we'll be finding out if Sapphire is able to keep that trend going with the TRI-X version of the card. While normally we'd move from here to a look at the box, today we don't have the cover for the outside of the box. Saying that, though, we do have the full bundle. So while we won't be looking at what the exterior of the package offers us, we will be able to dive into the bundle to see just what Sapphire is offering. So with that all said and done, let's see just what's going on with the Sapphire R9 290X TRI-X 4GB OC bundle. Package Checking out the bundle, you can see all the standard inclusions that you'd expect to get. We've got our Sapphire registration card along with a Quick Install Guide and Driver CD to round off the normal paperwork. From a cable perspective, you can see we've got a Dual-Molex to 8-Pin PCIe power connector along with a Molex to 6-Pin PCIe power connector. Along with that, you can also see the standard HDMI cable that Sapphire includes on a lot of their mid-range and up models.... Read the rest in your browser!
- Cougar CMX V3 850W Power Supply Overview - Modders-Inc
Power supplies play a critical role in the PC. It provides all the necessary power to run everything inside the computer. In order for everything to function correctly, the power supply must be able to deliver clean reliable power to all the components and efficiency levels that are not going to cost ton to run, ...The post Cougar CMX V3 850W Power Supply Overview appeared first on Modders-Inc, Case Mods and Computer Hardware.
- Phanteks Enthoo Primo Ultimate Chassis Review and Build - Modders-Inc
Phanteks Enthoo Primo Ultimate ~ Full Tower Luxury Water Cooling Case Phanteks leaps into the chassis market with elegance, grace, finesse and beauty. A Prima Donna and as the companies First Lady on stage she may just ROCK the house down. Phanteks eye for design and color palette is proven alive and well with the ...The post Phanteks Enthoo Primo Ultimate Chassis Review and Build appeared first on Modders-Inc, Case Mods and Computer Hardware.
- BitFenix Shadow ATX Case Review - Modders-Inc
Review Sample Provided by: BitFenix and Lutro0 Customs Product Name: Shadow INTRODUCTION October 2013, Bitfenix released the Shadow, a small ATX stone carved monolithic looking case. BitFenix: “Combining a deep understanding of gaming and other high-demand computing applications with superior engineering and design know-how, the BitFenix team is dedicated to creating the go-to computing products and ...The post BitFenix Shadow ATX Case Review appeared first on Modders-Inc, Case Mods and Computer Hardware.
- Enterprise Flash Virtualization: Flash In The Pan or Here to Stay? - TweakTown
Introduction This time last year, you would have been hard pressed to find an article, seminar, or tech commercial that was not about "the cloud." Cloud storage, cloud services, apps in the cloud, security of the cloud. The word cloud has been so completely overhyped since then that I am to the point where anytime someone even mentions it, I feel like giving them my best impersonation of Marcellus Wallace from Pulp Fiction. "Say cloud one more time!" As we are getting a new year underway, I am curious to see what phrase will end up taking the top spot for 2014. So far, I would have to say my money is on "flash." There are more array vendors than possible to keep track of, each pitching their version of a better mousetrap: all-flash using SSDs, all-flash with custom boards, or the hybrid route of some flash and some spinning disk. PURE, Tegile, Tintri, Nimbus, Nimble, Skyera, Whiptail, Violin, XtremIO...the list goes on. Then there are the PCIe players: FusionIO, PMC, LSI, and who knows how many upstarts. Now, there are the flash virtualization players like Pernix Data, Sandisk's FlashSoft product, or VMWare's vFlash. There is no doubt that flash arrays and accelerator cards have staying power, but what about this last bunch of software defined storage solutions? To answer this question, we need to first define what exactly these products do. Implementations Traditionally, a single physical server houses multiple VMs that all compete for a share of flash resources. As shown in the image below, each of the three virtual machines share the SSD and flash controllers in their respective individual physical servers. The drawback to this implementation is that a hungry application can suck up the limited available resources inside a single server, choking the performance of other applications that reside in that same server. Of course, infrastructure architects think of this ahead of time and attempt to align applications to servers with the appropriate specifications, but it is difficult to anticipate unforeseen spikes. Not to mention, VMs are moved around so often now that predicting what application traffic will be where is becoming increasingly difficult. This is where virtualizing the server side flash comes in. The bottlenecks that exist with the traditional server implementation can be overcome by creating a flash hypervisor, in which a new shared pool of flash is created and is presented across all VMs, thus removing the per server resource allocation issue. Extrapolate this across a data center and there is now a large pool of fast flash storage that can be utilized by VMs on an as-needed basis, with no limitation to where the VM resides. The result is an increased flexibility that will flatten the rollercoaster of application workloads as they blend across the infrastructure.... Read the rest in your browser!
- Supermicro X9DR7-TF+ (Intel C602J) Server Motherboard Review - TweakTown
Introduction We have had many server motherboards in the lab recently, most ranging from general purpose boards to some focused on storage. The Supermicro X9DR7-TF+ makes its way in as a heavy hitter that can handle GPU/Xeon Phi applications with ease. This board is powerful enough to run huge databases directly from RAM and number crunch at the same time. Throw in robust storage capabilities with room for top-end network cards and this motherboard takes center stage for advanced server infrastructures. Supermicro breaks this down into two main systems that can use the Supermicro X9DR7-TF+ motherboard. The first is the SuperServer 6027R-72RFT+, which is a 2U system that can handle 2x PCI-E 3.0x16 and 4x PCI-E 3.0x8 low-profile expansion cards. Next up is the SuperServer 6037R-72RFT+, which is a 3U system that can have 2x GPU/Xeon Phi cards installed. A third possible configuration is a 3U storage box based on the SuperChassis 836BE16-R1K28B case that can hold up to 16 drives. There are also many other cases that can use this motherboard, so please refer to the product page to see the full list. We only received the motherboard for our review. According to Supermicro's website, you should receive the following: Parts List (retail) X9DR7-TF+ Motherboard 2 SATA CABLE 2 30AWG 50CM iPass to 4 SATA cable 1 STD I/O shield And, we assume, a drivers disk ... Read the rest in your browser!
- Top 10 TweakTown Content from the past week [24 February 2014] - TweakTown
Here are our top 10 articles, reviews and guides from the past week!AMD Mantle Radeon R9 290X CrossFire at 4K Preview - Is It All That It's Cracked Up To Be?be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 3 CPU Cooler Review - A winner in terms of performance and quietness?GIGABYTE Z87X-UD4H (Intel Z87) Motherboard ReviewTYAN S7053GM2NR (Intel C602) Server Motherboard ReviewLarkooler SkyWater 330 Liquid Cooling System CPU Cooler ReviewNVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti 2GB Reference Card Video Card ReviewCRYORIG R1 Ultimate CPU Cooler ReviewBuffalo BS-G2124U 24 Port Business Gigabit Switch ReviewBattlefield 4 Second Assault Maps vs. Battlefield 3 Maps - 116 Glorious Comparison Screenshots
- Last Vegas (2014) Cinema Review - TweakTown
Put together four veteran character actors with a collective six academy awards under their belt, a veteran stage actor and frequent comedian, a director and writer whose filmographies are overwhelmingly punctuated with films for Disney and Pixar, along with the glittering lights of Las Vegas and what do you get? Surprisingly, one of the funniest and heartwarming comedies seen for some time, which touches on universal themes of friendship, love, and growing old. When successful businessman Billy Gherson (Michael Douglas) announces his upcoming nuptials to his partner some four decades his junior, his childhood friends Sam (Kevin Kline) and Archie (Morgan Freeman), both whose advanced years have deteriorated into mundane lives, propose a bachelor party in Las Vegas to see him off. The challenge is to also reunite the "Flatbush Four" with sole holdout Paddy (Robert De Niro), whose falling out with Billy in previous years has split the group. Following a well-meaning misrepresentation to Paddy, the group is reassembled, albeit with animosity on clear display. However, their encounter with kindly cabaret singer Diana (Mary Steenburgen) has the potential to either settle their differences or exacerbate them. If you've had a chance to catch the theatrical trailer, you'd be excused for imagining Last Vegas as merely The Hangover for a more mature crowd. To a certain degree, you'd be right. However, Last Vegas has more laughs than the two Hangover sequels and more heart than all three combined. Whilst it might look from the outside that the accomplished cast are somewhat wasted in an ensemble comedy, it's through their immense talent that a six decade friendship becomes a totally believable and genuine pact. What Dan Fogelman's script might lack in surprise is more than made up for by its relatable quips and intelligence. It's rather pleasant to have a comedy touch on more thoughtful life lessons, such as growing old and primal emotions such as jealousy and loss. It would be remiss if I didn't address a glaring issue with the film's distribution by Universal Pictures, which comes some four months after the theatrical release of the film in the United States. Most egregiously, our release of Last Vegas also comes a month after the Blu-ray release of the film in its country of origin. This worrying trend seems to be rearing its head in Australia once again, after having (for the most part) been rectified in recent years. Other recent examples such as The Monuments Men and The Lego Movie, even despite its Australian production, join Last Vegas with an arbitrarily staggered release strategy. In this day and age of print-less, digital distribution, there is no excuse whatsoever to treat Australians as third-class citizens. Whilst I don't for a single second advocate piracy on any level, for the sheer unavailability of a product in another market, it's hard to feel sorry for studios that treat their consumers with such disdain. ... Read the rest in your browser!
- RoboCop (2014) Cinema Review - TweakTown
We're barely six weeks into 2014, and Hollywood has already launched its first big budget remake of the year, ahead of a raft of sequels and reboots that will inevitably follow in the traditionally safe summer blockbuster season. RoboCop circa 2014 is a black horse, however, abandoning much that makes it still memorable today in favor of a more populist, slick, and toned down re-imagination. Will this decision have fans up in robo arms? Read on. The year is 2028 and drone technology has improved to the point where mechanized robots patrol previously violent hotspots around the globe--everywhere except for the United States, thanks to the obstructions of Senator Dreyfuss (Zach Grenier). OmniCorp CEO Raymond Sellars (Michael Keaton) continues to lobby for the domestic rollout, in order to strengthen sagging profits, and seizes his chance when Alex Murphy (Joel Kinnaman), one of the few good Detroit cops, is mortally injured in an explosion. With this event, Sellars has all the ammunition he needs to sell the benefits of his controversial program by putting a thinking man inside an OmniCorp battle suit. Rights holder MGM and Sony Pictures have toiled away for a number of years to bring the RoboCop reboot to fruition and they can't be accused of sitting on the laurels as far as any justification goes. The changes to the origin story are deeply rooted in reality and encompass thought-provoking moral dilemmas such as modern warfare, artificial intelligence, and at what point does someone scientifically cease to be human. Still, there are olive branches to fans of the original, with homages including "I'll buy that for a dollar," the impossibly designed ED-209 mechas, and even a surprise update of Basil Poledouris' theme tune. Much of the criticism levelled at the film revolves around the eschewing of the hard 'R' rating of the original, which reveled in blood, severed limbs, and language, one that even after 25 years still has the power to shock. RoboCop 2014 is a much more sanitized and accessible feature, which admittedly pushes the boundaries of a PG-13 even if it doesn't make sense (a mass shootout is played in the dark with bad guys donning infrared glasses, ignoring that RoboCop's visor is similarly equipped), but results in a significantly different tone and end product. However, to be fair, I don't necessarily agree that RoboCop needs to be ultra-violent to carry the franchise name, although perhaps I just don't hold the original that close to my heart. Despite my general antipathy to the deluge of reboots and the like, it's hard to ignore the obvious efforts and well-meaning intentions both in front of and behind the camera. Still, I can't help but feel that something is 'off', and the writers have not capitalized enough on the moral questions the film raises. Ultimately, RoboCop just isn't that engaging; it's a sugar hit of effects that won't have much longevity, it's gotten fans of the original instantly off side, and, at the end of the day, it's just not a property that needed to be remade. Its worst crime, however, is that it put my girlfriend to sleep, and that's a damning indictment. ... Read the rest in your browser!
- Xigmatek Aquila SFF Chassis Review - TweakTown
Introduction Ever since BitFenix launched the Prodigy and took the chassis market by storm, there are many build logs out there with the use of that chassis, either stock or somewhat modified. There were some limitations like PSU choices, and of course it was a Mini-ITX only chassis, but none the less, it is still a chassis that even made manufacturers stand up and notice the bomb that had just been dropped. There is a flipside to that coin though; any design that has that much fuss surrounding it is going to be taken in by other companies as they release variations of a similar design to try to get their piece of that pie, even if they had no idea that pie was there for the taking in the first place. Xigmatek happens to be one of those companies that saw just how much action surrounded that design, and put their engineers to work on the task of making a similar chassis. But they wanted to make it their own design, do things differently, and add something that the Prodigy could not do, at least not the original version. This design is uniquely Xigmatek, there is no way you will confuse the two, and from what we have seen, Xigmatek does raise the bar ever so slightly. If the originator wasn't exactly your cup of tea, options are always a good thing, as they allows for personal taste to also come into your future build plans. It has been quite some time since we saw anything from Xigmatek, cases or coolers, as they seemed to concentrate on their PSU segment for a while there. This is almost a re-learning experience for me as well, as it has been long enough that they may have a whole other approach to what they do now. So join me as we get to know Xigmatek again, and this new Aquila SFF chassis. Let's see how well it stacks up to the obvious competition, and by the end of this, you will definitely know if this chassis from Xigmatek is the new choice, or whether the Aquila is the knock off that should be avoided.... Read the rest in your browser!
- InWin R400-03 4U Rackmount Chassis Review - TweakTown
Introduction Over the past few months, I have been slowly building up and adding onto my test regiment for network storage and switches alike. After ramping up to five systems, I quickly came to the realization that using a desktop ATX chassis just wouldn't work. As anyone who has built multiple systems knows, typical ATX cases can take up a lot of vertical space, and this quickly leads to cluttered desks and tables. The solution to this is to build your systems into a rackmount chassis. Server racks, like most things, started in the enterprise arena. They allowed businesses to maximize space, and build for the future. This has started to slowly trickle down to the average consumer. Today, we have a 4U rackmount chassis from InWin: the R400. The R400 is compatible with ATX, CEB, and EEB form factors, and allows PS2 and 1+1 mini redundant power supplies to be used. Features, Pricing and Availability The InWin R400 rackmount chassis features a typical 4U rackmount footprint at 22" x 19" x 7". Additional features include a locking front door, adjustable PCI card retainer for full height and low-profile cards, in addition to a tool less drive bay design with optional storage kits. Without the kit, you still have six 5.25" bays, and two 3.5" bays, along with another two available internally. Cooling of the chassis is maintained via two 80mm fans placed at the rear of the chassis. Pricing of the InWin R400 at the time of writing sits at $129.99 at several online retailers. Warranty of the chassis is listed at two years.... Read the rest in your browser!
- Battlefield 4 Second Assault Maps vs. Battlefield 3 Maps - 116 Glorious Comparison Screenshots - TweakTown
Introduction Battlefield is one of those gaming franchises that has seemed to get it right with every single new release, and Battlefield 4 is no exception. Sure, the game has had its fair share of EA launch bugs, but the game is actually one of the best FPS titles ever made. The core game is loads of fun, and I am really digging the attack boats on maps like Paracel Storm and Hainan Resort. The China Rising DLC is fun, but I have yet to really get into any of the maps, and I often find myself defaulting back to the core set. That brings us to Second Assault, the latest Battlefield 4 DLC for PC. Xbox One players have had access to Second Assault since December, but the low-resolution textures really do not do the game justice. A PC is really needed to show off the beauty that is Second Assault 2014. When I first logged into Battlelog yesterday and loaded up my first round of Metro 2014 I was, for lack of better words, blown away. Frostbite 3 and the new high-resolution textures really give Metro a whole new look and feel while retaining that familiar feel. With each of the re-released maps containing new elements, Levolution features, and better textures while remaining quite similar to their predecessors, I decided to write up this article and post some side by side comparisons to show our readers just how much better the 2014 edition levels look, as well as showing off how much each has changed in the years since that have passed between Battlefield 3 and Battlefield 4. In the upcoming pages, you will see several screenshots from each game side by side. I tried to position them as close to each other as possible, which was no simple task, by the way. All images captured for this comparison were taken on my main gaming rig. The PC, while a bit dated, managed to run BF3 and BF4 almost flawlessly at Ultra settings. Specs have been listed below. PC Specs: AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE clocked to 4.1GHz GIGABYTE 890FXA-UD5 16GB Avixxer RAM Sapphire Radeon R9 270X Battlefield 4 Specs: Graphics set to Ultra AMD Mantle 1080p Resolution Average Frame Rate 68 Battlefield 3 Specs: Graphics set to Ultra DirectX 11 1080p Resolution Average Frame Rate 103 ... Read the rest in your browser!
- Buffalo BS-G2124U 24 Port Business Gigabit Switch Review - TweakTown
Introduction After our first unmanaged switch review (the Linksys LGS124), I wanted to see if there was any difference between switches, and if so, where those differences would come out. With so many manufacturers out there marketing switches, I wanted to find something that hasn't been reviewed a multitude of times. Buffalo Technology is well known for their storage solutions and wireless routers, with many of those devices coming through the lab here at TweakTown. Little did I know, Buffalo dabbled in network switches too, so today we will be looking over their 24 port unmanaged switch: the GS-BS2124U. The Buffalo G2124U carries 24 gigabit ports, with 802.3, 802.3u, and 802.3ab compliance. Additionally, the switch is capable of saving power by disabling ports not in use. As of this writing, the Buffalo BS-G2124U carries a MSRP of $109.99, and a three-year warranty.... Read the rest in your browser!
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