At AMDs press event, AMD displayed a slew of motherboards based on their upcoming X370, B350 and A320 chipsets which will support AMD’s upcoming Ryzen CPUs. The motherboards on display include well known manufacturers including Asrock, ASUS, Biostar, Gigabyte, MSI, and more.

AMD’s flagship chipset is the X370 chipset which will support overclocking and dual GPU configurations. AMD’s new chipsets will also support NVMe, M.2 SATA devices, USB 3.1 Gen 1/Gen 2 and PCI-E 3.0. This finally puts AMD motherboards on the a more level playing field in comparison to Intel’s 200 series chipset.

Currently no additional information was provided about [...]

Yesterday Asrock announced their new Fatal1ty Z170 Professional Gaming i7 motherboard, Yes the name is long, although it is definitely deserving of the branding. Designed for Gamers and overclockers the board boasts features like 4 PCIe x16 slots allowing triple and quad graphics setups as well as dual Intel gigabit LAN chips.

The Fatal1ty Z170 Professional Gaming i7 also features a 12 phase VRM for heavy overclocking. On the storage side Asrock goes for broke with 10 Sata 3 connectors with 3 Sata express connectors also bringing an unprecedented 3 Ultra M.2 slots. Finally for connectivity this board has 8 USB 2.0 Ports with the Fatal1ty mouse port that has made these [...]

Up until the release of Sandy Bridge processors back in early 2011, overclocking was something generally reserved for only the most hardcore gamers and enthusiasts who wanted to push their systems to the limits. Overclocking required countless hours of tinkering and testing, which was generally a bit too complicated for mainstream users.

With the release of Sandy Bridge however, the landscape of overclocking has really changed dramatically. Significant overclocks may now be had with simple motherboard overclocking buttons or 5 minute adjustments in the BIOS, which greatly simplified the once complicated and confusing task.

With overclocking [...]

It’s only been about a year since we reviewed Creative’s Sound Blaster Recon 3D soundcard and they’re back again with a new line of products, the Sound Blaster Z series. Today we’ll be reviewing the Sound Blaster Z, which is the entry level soundcard in the Sound Blaster Z series of soundcards. While the Sound Blaster Z will be available for purchase starting now, Creative also has the Sound Blaster ZX and the Sound Blaster ZXR coming, both of which I’m told should be available for purchase in Q1 2013.

Despite the Sound Blaster Z being the entry level Sound Blaster Z series soundcard, the Sound Blaster Z is still a very high end [...]

When Cooler Master first introduced the CM Storm Scout, it quickly became one of my most highly recommended cases. Despite the case being oriented as a budget gamer case, it had been packed with tons of features which made it one of the best price to performance cases out there. While the CM Storm Scout is still a fairly competitive case, the design is almost 3 years old and it’s definitely time for an update.

This then brings us to our review for today, the recently introduced CM Storm Scout 2 gaming case. Like the original CM Storm Scout, the CM Storm Scout 2 is still a mid tower case, still features a windowed sidepanel (albeit a bit smaller), and [...]

Similar to Lian Li, SilverStone typically specializes in conservative, but functional high-end cases.  However, with SilverStone’s Redline series cases, SilverStone is taking a step out of their conservative case design philosophy and giving the cases a more modern, gamer-centric appeal.  With a glowing logo and HDD activity lights as well as a red 120mm front fan, the SilverStone Redline RL01 looks tough and ready for action.

You can probably guess then that today we’ll be doing a review on the SilverStone Redline RL01 mid tower case. For our review, we received the USB 3.0, windowed model of the Redline [...]

Truth be told, when I first laid eyes the CM Storm Trooper last year, I wasn’t quite sold. Not because it wasn’t a good case, no, on the contrary, it was a great case; possibly among the best Cooler Master has ever made. But, compared to some of the other stuff on the market (some even from Cooler Master themselves), it just seemed a bit dull – a bit boring even.

Why? Well, it’s a high end gaming case designed to house some of the most beautiful, most expensive computer components in the world, and Cooler Master forgot to give it a windowed sidepanel. Oops! In addition, the outward appearance of the case seemed kinda dull to [...]

Most computer cases these days follow a fairly standard formula. They are often rectangular in shape with the interior housing the the power supply mount at the bottom, the motherboard tray in the center, and the tower of drive bays to the right side. Some cases deviates from this style a little, but they’re often subtle changes in appearance.

Since there’s little deviation from this tried and true layout, when Raidmax announced the Agusta a couple months back, I was really interested in seeing what they had to offer. Unlike many cases on the market, the Agusta has two unorthodox design features that make it quite the [...]

Home theater PCs have always been a popular niche PC and it’s not difficult to understand the appeal of having one. Imagine a typical AV stack these days. You’ve got your AV receiver, you’ve got your DVD/Blu-Ray player, you’ve got your cable/satellite box, maybe a separate PVR unit, a game console or two, and maybe even a hard drive or two with a media player device. That’s a lot of stuff.

Now if you think about it, with the exception of the AV receiver and maybe the cable/satellite box, a typical PC can do all of that and more – given that the proper hardware is purchased. That said, one thing about PCs is that [...]

OCZ’s Vertex series have always been OCZ’s most popular high performance consumer grade SSDs. First introduced in 2009, the original Vertex shook the storage industry by becoming one of the most popular SSDs on the market. Being the first SSD to introduce the Indilinx Barefoot controller, OCZ surprised the market when it demonstrated that SSDs did indeed have a brilliant future. While riding the wave of the Vertex’s success, OCZ then introduced the Vertex 2. Featuring the then relatively new Sandforce controller, OCZ proved that with newer technology, faster, more affordable SSDs were possible. By now, practically everyone had [...]