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The mid-priced mid-tower case field is a crowded one, as as modern case design– no 5.25″ bays, mounting points for SSDs, and the ability to mount your GPU vertically– have spread across the market, it becomes harder and harder for one vendor to make their case stand out. Thermaltake’s known for their high-quality, reasonably-priced offerings, and the Thermaltake Divider 300 TG Mid-Tower offers an interesting stylistic element to distinguish their product from the herd.
HyperX is the “high performance product division” of Kingston Technology– that is, they make the gamer-centric stuff. They have a complete line of gamer-oriented mice, keyboards, headsets and the like, but with the fierce competition in the field these days, they’re constantly expanding their product line. Their HyperX Alloy series of keyboards boasts a solid steel frame, anti-ghosting and N-key rollover, and Cherry MX key switches. Well, most of them use Cherry key switches: today, Benchmark Reviews has in hand the new HyperX Alloy FPS RGB keyboard with ultra-responsive RGB-lit Kailh Silver key switches. With a shortened actuation distance compared to other switches, the Kailh Silver switches should help amp up the responsiveness of this keyboard for the most hardcore gamers.
USB-powered external hard drives remain the mechanism of choice for most laptop users who need to back up their systems or transfer large files. While their price is low, so is their performance, and the increasing availability of Thunderbolt 3 ports on newer laptops presents an opportunity for vendors to target high-end users who are willing to pay for the best possible data transfer rates. The Hewlett-Packard Portable SSD P800 leverages its Thunderbolt interface to provide performance that’s exceptional for any storage device, not just an external one, and today Benchmark Reviews will put this high-end new drive through its paces.
Zyxel Communications Corp. has sent Benchmark Reviews a sample of their new “Multy X AC3000 Tri-Band WiFi System” for review. The name may be a mouthful, but this system purports to provide easy setup and consistent performance across large areas with a “mesh” system that connects multiple routers via a dedicated channel. With a quad-core Qualcomm CPU, 512MB of RAM, and 4GB of flash storage, the Multy X routers should be capable of all the performance a home user could need.
The solution is a USB C / Thunderbolt dock, and today Benchmark Reviews has IOGEAR’s latest Thunderbolt 3 Docking Station Pro 85 external dock to review. Connecting to your laptop with a single Thunderbolt 3 cable, the Docking Station Pro 85 supplies 8 additional ports, all of which can be used at the same time.
Any enthusiast will know the name IOGEAR; this prolific peripherals company has been around for years and has a broad and popular catalog of products. Today Benchmark Reviews has the IOGEAR HVER RGB Aluminum Gaming Keyboard for review. This interesting input device includes popular features like partial aluminum construction, programmability with multiple profiles, and RGB lighting, but keeps costs down by eschewing mechanical key switches for rubber domes. How much of a sacrifice is this? We’ll see in this review.
If there’s a technology company that literally needs no introduction, it’s surely Hewlett-Packard. Literally founded in a garage in Palo Alto, CA in 1947, their first product, the HP200A Audio Oscillator, shook up the industry. Their business has expanded to cover the entire spectrum of professional and consumer computers and test equipment, and today Benchmark Reviews has in hand the new HP SSD EX900 M.2 solid state drive for testing.
It could be the product you didn’t know you needed… at least, if you’re someone that has a spare m.2 SATA SSD laying around. SilverStone Technology has something you might be interested in: a way to turn that old m.2 SATA drive into a function USB drive! That fact that this product even exists surprised me, but there you go. Today Benchmark Reviews looks at the SilverStone MS09 m.2 SATA External SSD Enclosure.
The ATX form factor is still with us more than 20 years after Intel finalized its specification in 1995. But other evolutionary pressures are affecting the design of the classic mid-tower computer case, such as the elimination of optical media and its 5.25″ drives; the move from 3.5″ hard drives to 2.5″ and m.2 storage, and of course the replacement of clear plastic side panels with the now almost mandatory tempered glass for enthusiast cases. Like most modern cases, the Corsair Carbide 500D Premium Mid-Tower Case eliminates 5.25″ drives, resulting in a blank front panel, but unlike some other cases we’ve reviewed, it uses the space thus freed to good effect, and makes some innovative design decisions along the way. Benchmark Reviews will evaluate and build a system in this case to let you know how well this new thinking works.
A docking station provides a quick and easy way to connect bare drive mechanisms to a computer, and is an essential part of any enthusiasts’ tool kit. For backup or simply data transfer, the ability to easily connect to a bare drive mechanism is very useful. In this article, Benchmark Reviews tests SSD performance with SilverStone’s new TS12C Dual Drive Docking Station, which brings dual drive support, offline drive cloning, and USB 3.1 Gen 2 SuperSpeed+ connectivity to the party.
Founded in 2001 with only 20 employees, ADATA has made a name for themselves in the memory market, providing RAM and flash-memory based storage for industrial and consumer applications. They’ve recently expanded their consumer m.2 product line and offer a broad range of products based on MLC and TLC NAND. Today Benchmark Reviews is testing the 256GB versions of their mid-range offering, the Gammix S10 m.2 SSD.
Solid state memory, while remaining significantly more expensive that traditional mechanical hard disks, continues to encroach on their territory. Inexpensive and high-capacity bus-powered USB external drives are even being challenged by external SSDs, for consumers who appreciate the advantages of much higher performance, smaller size, and greater reliability they afford. Samsung has been a pioneer in this field with their Samsung Portable SSD T3 external drives, and today Benchmark Reviews checks out their latest product, the 1 terabyte Portable SSD T5.
The days of the giant ATX gaming system are behind us, surely. A single-slot mITX system is smaller and less expensive than a full-sized ATX system, and modern video card performance precludes the need for SLI or Crossfire X for the vast majority of users. What, then, are we to make of Zalman’s massive Z-Machine X7 computer case? This is the largest case Benchmark Reviews has seen since the Cooler Master Cosmos: at x by y by z inches and weighing in at almost 40 pounds empty, this glass and aluminum monster will make its presence known with the help of a plethora of RGB fans and lighting effects.
Here at Benchmark Reviews, we’ve tested several AZIO keyboards and been impressed with the quality of their construction and the bang for the buck they offer. So when AZIO offered us the chance to take a look at a prototype of their project “MK Retro Pro” keyboard, we jumped at the chance– even though a retail version of this product is some months in the future. An evolution of AZIO’s existing “MK Retro” typewriter-themed keyboards, later renamed Retro Classic, ups the ante with a new design and new features.
Mini-ITX (mITX) motherboards, once nice products for HTPCs and the like, are becoming mainstream as the need for multiple PCI-E slots wanes. Today Benchmark Reviews has Biostar’s new Z270GTN Racing mITX motherboard, and it’s aimed squarely at the enthusiast and gamer market with features like solid state capacitors, onboard RGB LED lighting and control, and m.2 and u.2 storage connectors.
We’re in the middle of a transition from the DDR3 memory standard that has served us well for a decade to the new DDR4 standard. With higher bandwidth at lower voltage, DDR4 seems a perfect match for our compute-intensive multi-core CPU world. In this article Benchmark Reviews examines Crucial’s Ballistix Elite DDR4 enthusiast memory, which runs at an eye-watering 3466Mhz. We’ll test it against “standard” DDR4 to see what difference this extra performance makes.
If there are two big trends in computer accessories and peripherals these days, it’s “tempered glass” and “RGB illumination”. And if you can combine the two, as Corsair has done with the Crystal 460X RGB Compact ATX mid-tower case, so much the better! But there’s more to this case than just a serious amount of glam, and Benchmark Reviews will build a system in it to see if it would be a good home for your next gaming rig.
Any serious gamer needs a serious gaming mouse, and there are certainly a lot of them on the market to choose from. Premium vendor Corsair offers no fewer than five such mice, ranging from entry-level (for Corsair) items to multi-button mice for MOBA gaming. Today Benchmark Reviews has in hand one of what Corsair refers to as part of their “lightweight gaming mice” lineup, the Corsair Sabre RGB wired USB gaming mouse, equipped with a 10,000dpi optical sensor and multi-zone RGB lighting.
Real gamers – and you are a real gamer, right? – know that consoles cannot provide the performance and graphics quality of a good PC-based gaming rig. But giant 4K televisions provide an excellent canvas for immersive game play. You can set up a PC connected to your TV, but those console controllers just don’t cut it if you’re using to a good gaming keyboard and mouse. Too bad there’s no way to really use a keyboard and mouse on your lap. Or… is there?
No matter what type of keyboard you need, Corsair will have one for you. You can choose from a very broad array of products with a smorgasbord of mechanical switch types, lighting, and other features; from “fairly ordinary” to “has more computing power than your desktop rig did 10 years ago.” Benchmark Reviews has previously tested the K70 RGB Rapidfire gaming keyboard and found it to be a premium product; for this article we’re testing the Corsair K70 LUX RGB Cherry MX Red mechanical gaming keyboard.
RGB lighting is the current trend these days, appearing in everything from keyboards and mice to less obvious items like motherboards and mouse pads. While LED-lit fans have been around for years, leave it to Corsair to take it to the next level with their Corsair HD120 RGB fans. You can buy these fans individually, but today Benchmark Reviews is testing the HD120 RGB three-pack of fans with the included fan hub and controller (model CO-9050067-WW).
Azio Corporation says that their name derives from “A to Z, Input to Output”, While their products are manufactured in Taiwan, they’re designed in California (sound familiar?) In any case Benchmark Reviews has in hand their Armato Mechanical Gaming Keyboard, model MGK-ARMATO-01. As a single-color backlit mechanical keyboard with Cherry MX switches, it might seem as if there’s little to distinguish it from the many other similar products available. But first appearances can be deceiving, as we’ll find out in this review.
Samsung’s 950 PRO m.2 PCIE SSD set new benchmark records when we tested it here a few months back at Benchmark Reviews. The performance picture got even better we configured a RAID-0 array with two of these drives. Now they’ve introduced the new Samsung 960 PRO NVMe SSD, with upgraded NAND and a new controller, promising even more spectacular performance.
Today Benchmark Reviews has their new entry in the growing field of external, USB-connected solid state drives, the MyDigitalSSD BOOST 1TB external drive. Comprising two TLC SATA III 512GB SSDs in a RAID 0 internal array, the BOOST 1TB drive promises performance that exceeds that of SSDs connected to a SATA port, with maximum read and write speeds of 830MB/s and 730MB/s, respectively…but these speeds are only achievable if your computer has a USB Type C SuperSpeed+ port.
A4Tech is a Taiwanese company whose “Bloody” gaming division was launched in 2012. Bloody produces gaming keyboards and mice using a unique switch technology: rather than metal contact points closing an electrical circuit when a key is pressed, Bloody’s mechanical switches use infrared LEDs and photosensors, which Bloody claims provides faster key response and a more reliable and durable switch. Benchmark Reviews checks out the Bloody B830 LK Optic Mechanical Gaming Keyboard, equipped with next-generation “clicky” optical key switches.
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