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March 2016 |
Crucial BX200 SSD
(5 Comments)
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Thursday, 31-March-2016 23:39:29 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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I've taken a look at Crucial's BX200 2.5" SSD. It's an economy drive, but still comes with decent performance and the other benefits of an SSD. It also aims to make life easier for upgraders by including a handy install kit.
click for the review!
Wednesday Night Reviews
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Wednesday, 30-March-2016 23:58:51 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Motherboard & CPU:
BIOSTAR RACING Z170GT7 LGA1151 Motherboard on MadShrimps.
ASRock X99 WS-E/10G Intel LGA2011 on OCInside.
Input Etc:
Roccat Kiro Modular Ambidextrous Gaming Mouse on HWAsylum.
Cooler Master Sentinel III Mouse on BenchmarkReviews.
Tobii's EyeX eye-tracking controller on TechReport.
Ozone Argon Laser Mouse on APHNetworks.
CM Storm QuickFire XT Gaming Keyboard on ThinkComputers.
Cooling:
Noctua NH-D15S on OCAholic.
Reeven Four-Eyes Touch Fan Controller on PCPerspective.
Audio Visual:
Shure SRH1540 Premium Over-Ear Closed-Back Headphones on Tweaktown.
Razer Leviathan Mini Bluetooth Speaker on Tweaktown.
Portable & Prebuilt:
EVGA SC17 Gaming Notebook on PCPerspective.
Microsoft Lumia 950 XL Review: The Windows 10 Mobile Flagship on HotHardware.
Android N Developer Preview on the Nexus 6P on TechSpot.
Shuttle XPC Nano NC01U5 on Vortez.
Storage:
Adata XPG SX930 240GB SSD on TechReport.
SanDisk Extreme 900 USB 3.1 Gen 2 Portable SSD on Tweaktown.
Seagate Enterprise Capacity 3.5 HDD V5 8TB SATA III on NikKTech.
SanDisk Extreme 500 Portable SSD on Guru3D.
Misc:
Hykso Boxing Sensors Review: Wearable Technology And Fitness Collide on HotHardware.
be quiet! Silent Base 600 case on TechPowerUp.
Intel have apparently killed off their long-standing tick-tock development model for processors. As part of our R&D efforts, we plan to introduce a new Intel Core microarchitecture for desktops, notebooks (including Ultrabook devices and 2 in 1 systems), and Intel Xeon processors on a regular cadence. We expect to lengthen the amount of time we will utilize our 14nm and our next generation 10nm process technologies, further optimizing our products and process technologies while meeting the yearly market cadence for product introductions.
Western Digital released a new hard drive for the Raspberry Pi. Naturally it's 314GB in size. The 314GB drive, which will normally cost $45.81 but is currently available for $31.42, is a 7mm-high drive based on the basic Western Digital Blue drives that still ship in many budget and mid-end laptops and PCs. The difference is the interface, which has been changed from SATA to USB and is designed to connect to the Pi directly without drastically increasing the footprint of the device.
Google have released the Nik Collection for free. What is it? It's a powerful set of photo editing plugins. Easily create the photos you’ve imagined with six powerful plug-ins for Photoshop®, Lightroom®, or Aperture®. Discussion continues here in the Photography & Video forum.
It's a little light on detail, but TechRadar have an interesting article about how graphene will change your life. It's strong, it's flexible, and it's here. After a long time cooking in the labs, the first graphene-based products are beginning to trickle out into the world of smartphones, wearables, batteries, virtual reality, sports equipment, super-capacitors and supercars. I actually didn't know about the capacitor side of things.
ArsTechnica have posted part 9 of their extensive history of the Amiga. The Amiga, however, was originally designed as a game console, and so it was compatible with standard television frequencies. Where the Amiga designers showed insight and forethought, however, was in creating a bridge between analog and digital. The very first Amiga contained a genlock, which matched video timings with an NTSC or PAL signal and allowed the user to overlay this signal with the Amiga’s internally generated graphics. The first person to realize the potential of this was an engineer living in Topeka, Kansas. His name was Tim Jenison.
The law of unintended consequences is in full effect in Angola, where unrestricted access to Wikipedia Zero and Facebook Free Basics has resulted in widespread piracy, thanks mpot. Wikimedia and Facebook have given Angolans free access to their websites, but not to the rest of the internet. So, naturally, Angolans have started hiding pirated movies and music in Wikipedia articles and linking to them on closed Facebook groups, creating a totally free and clandestine file sharing network in a country where mobile internet data is extremely expensive.
Google have released a series of short documentaries about the race to the Google Lunar X Prize. The Google Lunar XPRIZE is the largest prize competition of all time with a reward of $30 million and aims to incentivize entrepreneurs to create a new era of affordable access to the Moon and beyond, while inspiring the next generation of scientists, engineers, and explorers.
Meanwhile NASA have a worldwide Space Apps Challenge hackathon next month, including four locations in Australia. On April 23 and 24, participants are asked to develop mobile applications, software, hardware, data visualizations and platform solutions that could contribute to space exploration missions and help improve life on Earth. This year’s challenge will include a Data Bootcamp on April 22, streamed live from the global main stage. The bootcamp is open to the public and will give participants the opportunity to learn new skills with computer coding and data.
Monday Night Reviews
(2 Comments)
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Monday, 28-March-2016 23:11:24 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Motherboard & CPU:
ASUS Maximus VIII Extreme Assembly on OCAholic.
MSI Z170A GAMING PRO Carbon motherboard on Vortez.
Input Etc:
Razer Wildcat Gaming Controller on MadShrimps.
Cooler Master Masterkeys Pro S Mechanical Gaming Keyboard on eTeknix.
Logitech G900 CHAOS Spectrum gaming mouse on Vortez.
Logitech G900 Chaos Spectrum Mouse on eTeknix.
Fnatic Gear Rush Backlit Gaming Mechanical Keyboard on LegitReviews.
Razer Wildcat controller on HWHeaven.
Roccat Ryos MK FX keyboard on HWHeaven.
COUGAR Attack X3 Mechanical Gaming Keyboard on NikKTech.
ROCCAT Ryos MK FX Gaming Keyboard on MadShrimps.
Corsair Gaming SCIMITAR RGB game mouse on Guru3D.
QPAD MK-90 RGB Pro Gaming Mechanical Keyboard on eTeknix.
Portable & Prebuilt:
ASUS ZenFone 2 Laser (ZE601KL) Phablet on TechARP.
HP Envy 13 laptop on TechSpot.
CompuLab Airtop fanless PC on Phoronix.
GIGABYTE P34W V5 Laptop First Impressions on Tweaktown.
Audio Visual:
Braven Balance Portable Bluetooth Speaker on Tweaktown.
Accessory Power Enhance GX-H3 Gaming Headphones on TechnologyX.
Razer Kraken Mobile Gaming Headset on Tweaktown.
Logitech G633 Artemis Spectrum RGB Wired Gaming Headset on Tweaktown.
Jabra STEALTH Bluetooth Headset on NikKTech.
Audio-Technica ATH-ADG1X Audiophile Open-Ear Gaming Headset on Tweaktown.
Acer Predator X34 - 34'' Curved Gaming 21:9 display on OCAholic.
Cooling:
Cooler Master Silencio FP 120 PWM Performance Edition Cooling Fans on APHNetworks.
CRYORIG C7 Ultra Compact CPU Cooler on PCPerspective.
Power Supply:
be quiet! Pure Power 9 700W Power Supply on eTeknix.
Gelid Zentree USB Charging Station on eTeknix.
Storage:
OCZ Trion 150 480GB Solid State Drive on ThinkComputers.
Samsung 850 EVO With 3rd Gen 48 Layer V-NAND SSD on TheSSDReview.
Samsung T3 SSD on HWHeaven.
Video Cards:
Gigabyte Geforce GTX 980Ti Waterforce on HWHeaven.
Inno3D GTX 980Ti iChill Black video card on eTeknix.
Misc:
Vertagear S-Line SL5000 Gaming Chair on OCClub.
Patriot Viper Elite DDR4-3000 16GB Memory Kit on ThinkComputers.
Swann Xtreem Gravity Pursuit Video Drone on TechnologyX.
Rivet Networks Killer Wireless-AC 1535 MU-MIMO Card wifi card on LegitReviews.
Far Cry Primal on OCClub.
Antec Performance One P380 Full-Tower on Tweaktown.
Have a happy and safe Easter! The last pic might be NSFW.. but it's Good Friday, why are you at work anyway?
     
     
     
     
     
     
Co-founder and long-time CEO of Intel, Andy Grove, has died aged 79. He has been called the "guy who drove the growth phase" of Silicon Valley. Steve Jobs, when he was considering returning to be Apple's CEO, called Grove, who was someone he "idolized," for his personal advice. In 1997 Time magazine chose him "Man of the Year", for being "the person most responsible for the amazing growth in the power and the innovative potential of microchips.".
Something that came and went so quickly I missed it entirely, was Microsoft's attempt to make a learning twitter chatbot. Naturally enough the internet trained it to become a massive racist in no time at all and then Microsoft deleted it. Just another day on the internet, folks. However, some of the responses were organic. The Guardian quotes one where, after being asked "is Ricky Gervais an atheist?", Tay responded, "ricky gervais learned totalitarianism from adolf hitler, the inventor of atheism."
Meanwhile Matt spotted this new robot from Apple, which takes apart iPhones. True innovation means considering what happens to a product at every stage of its life cycle. Liam disassembles your iPhone when it’s no longer functioning, so the materials inside can live on.
If the Windows 10 upgrade thing is troubling you, OCAU member metamorphosis points out GWX Control Panel. This is a free tool that can remove and disable the 'Get Windows 10' notification area icon on Windows 7 and Windows 8. Recent versions can also disable 'Upgrade to Windows 10' behavior in the Windows Update control panel and do much more. See the user guide at the Ultimate Outsider blog.
Here's something different but oddly fascinating, a investigation into sci-fi fonts.
Thursday Night Reviews
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Thursday, 24-March-2016 23:51:36 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Cases:
Antec P380 Full-Tower on LegitReviews.
be quiet! Silent Base 600 Mid-Tower on Tweaktown.
Azza Nova 8000 CSAZ-8000B Full-Tower on Tweaktown.
Storage:
QPAD DX-20 on Vortez.
ZOTAC Sonix 480GB NVMe PCIe AIC SSD on Tweaktown.
Samsung Portable SSD T3 500GB on OCAholic.
Mushkin IMPACT 256GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive on NikKTech.
Zotac SONIX 480GB PCIe SSD on Guru3D.
Power Supply:
Be Quiet! Pure Power 9 CM 700 Watt PSU on Guru3D.
be quiet! Pure Power 9 700W on OCAholic.
Griffin PowerDock 5 USB Charging Station on ThinkComputers.
Cooler Master V Series 650 W on TechPowerUp.
Tuesday Night Reviews
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Tuesday, 22-March-2016 22:51:15 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Cooling:
CRYORIG R1 Universal CPU Cooler on APHNetworks.
Noctua NH-C14S CPU cooler on OCAholic.
Portsble & Prebuilt:
Tested: The Galaxy S7's always-on display consumes very little battery on TechSpot.
Samsung Galaxy S7 edge – Unboxing & First Impressions on TechARP.
Cases:
Corsair Carbide 400Q on TechPowerUp.
Aerocool Aero-500 Windowed Mid-Tower on eTeknix.
Silverstone ML08 on Modders-Inc.
Zalman Z9 Neo Mid-Tower on TechnologyX.
Storage:
Synology DiskStation Manager (DSM) 6.0 on eTeknix.
Western Digital Red 8TB Consumer Helium HDD on PCPerspective.
Input Etc:
Bloody ML160 Commander Mouse on BenchmarkReviews.
Logitech G933 Artemis Spectrum RGB Wireless Gaming Headset on Tweaktown
Networking:
ASUS RT-AC88U AC3100 Extreme Wireless Router on Tweaktown.
Sitecom Greyhound AC2600 Wi-Fi Router on MadShrimps.
Smanos W020i WiFi Alarm System on NikKTech.
Misc:
ACTIVEON CX GOLD action camera on TechWareLabs.
Photography Gallery
(1 Comments)
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Monday, 21-March-2016 20:42:46 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Here's a quick snapshot of what people are up to in our Photography Gallery forum.
Monday Afternoon
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Monday, 21-March-2016 15:03:17 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Formula E, the fully-electric FIA racing championship, are holding a parallel virtual race series this year. With eSports enjoying huge growth across all sporting sectors, Formula E is embracing this vast audience by running a virtual championship alongside its electric-powered race series. The championship will comprise of at least four online rounds, which will serve as a preview to the on-track action ahead of the Formula E races in Long Beach, Paris, Berlin and London.
The furore about Windows 10 upgrades continues, but apparently on the mobile side of things, Microsoft are being less forceful. Windows Phone users who might have been nervously awaiting Windows 10 Mobile have been told they can relax. Unlike Microsoft’s aggressive tactics to migrate users from Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 (which have ticked off customers), Windows Phone users won’t have to accept Windows 10 Mobile upgrades if they don’t want to.
People never learn. If you have a new boat, don't ask the internet to name it. A £200 million Royal Research Ship, at the forefront of British naval engineering, deserves a proud, strong name to match the might of the vessel. Behold – the RRS Boaty McBoatface. This could be the reality as the joke name leads an open online vote to name the new ship, having picked up more than 15,000 votes.
OCInside have a photo report from CeBIT 2016 Hannover. The CeBIT 2016 in Hanover, Germany showed again a lot of interesting products. The OCinside.de CeBIT 2016 report shows with more than 200 images an overview of new IT products. Our CeBIT report main focus each year is current PC hardware and shows some new chassis, cooler, graphics cards, motherboards, power supplies, SSD, Router and NAS.
NVIDIA have unveiled their GameWorks 3.1 SDK. Coverage on Tweaktown, PC Perspective and HotHardware. Earlier in the week, NVIDIA also announced availability of its latest NVIDIA GameWorks software development kit (SDK), which is now up to version 3.1. In addition to the aforementioned new lighting and shadowing techniques, the latest GameWorks SDK also offers a couple of beta updates to PhysX.
AMD meanwhile have updated their GPU Roadmap with some upcoming architectures. Needless to say, it has been many years since we have seen a process node jump like the one we will be experiencing this summer. 28nm held its own for a long time, but we are finally jumping to a new node that promises far more density and power efficiency. When we combine this with design work that has been honed by having to rely on a single process node for many years, we can expect to see very efficient and fast parts. Just how fast will depend on how big the chips can get, but for now we believe that we have at least the budget and midrange covered with Polaris 11 and 10 respectively.
Matt spotted this video from 2011 showing how to securely erase a hard drive. This old hard disk needed to be securely deleted before being discarded. So, I opened it up and grabbed the power supply that charges my cap bank, an MOT 2-pack stack. I worked over the circuit board and disk assembly, but wasn't satisfied with my work. The disk assembly was filled with plaster and aluminum powder, which was ignited with a fuse. The data should be gone from this drive.
Monday Afternoon Reviews
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Monday, 21-March-2016 13:41:12 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Input Etc:
Tesoro Excalibur V2 Illuminated Mechanical Gaming Keyboard on eTeknix.
QPAD DX-20 Pro Gaming Optical Mouse on eTeknix.
Cooler Master's MasterKeys Pro L and Pro S keyboards on TechReport.
Cooler Master MasterKeys Pro L keyboard on LanOC.
Cooler Master MasterKeys Pro L Keyboard on Modders-Inc.
Audio Visual:
SteelSeries Siberia 650 Gaming Headset on NikKTech.
Audio-Technica ATH-AG1X Audiophile Gaming Headset on Tweaktown.
Polaroid CUBE HD Action Camera on ModSynergy.
Ministry of Sound Audio On Headphones on Tweaktown.
Ozone Tri-FX in-ear headset on OCAholic.
Storage:
Samsung 850 EVO V1 and V2 Compared - 32 vs. 48 Layer Flash on PCPerspective.
SanDisk Connect Wireless Stick on ThinkComputers.
Motherboard & CPU:
Gigabyte Z170-Gaming K3 (LGA1151) on eTeknix.
ASRock Fatal1ty Z170 Gaming-ITX/AC on Modders-Inc.
Software:
Far Cry Primal Graphics Card Performance Analysis on eTeknix.
ArmA 3 - AMD & NVIDIA CPU & Memory Stock vs. OC Performance Scaling Skylake on OCAholic.
Hitman 2016: PC graphics performance benchmark review on Guru3D.
Cases:
Cooler Master MasterCase 5 on APHNetworks.
In Win 909 E-ATX on MadShrimps.
Misc:
Razer Naga Chroma lighting system on Vortez.
Corsair Hydro Series H5 SF AIO CPU Cooler on eTeknix.
NETGEAR Nighthawk X4S R7800 AC2600 Wireless Router on MissingRemote.
Thanks to mpot and t1mbot again this week!
     
     
     
     
     
Friday Afternoon
(5 Comments)
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Friday, 18-March-2016 14:50:12 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Tasmania is cut off from the world, with much of their internet bandwidth disrupted. The Basslink cable connecting Tasmania to mainland Australia has been cut. Repair crews don’t yet know exactly where the fault is, the repair bill is projected to be “phenomenal”, and full power and Internet connectivity isn’t expected to be fully restored until May. Customers of iiNet and Internode in particular are struggling, with services like Steam and peer-to-peer downloading throttled or blocked completely over the weekend.
Telstra aren't doing too well lately, with another major mobile outage and an internal routing issue. Telstra customers were unable to connect to their services in one of Amazon Web Services' Sydney data centres this morning as a result of a peering issue within the telco's network, just hours after the company resolved a massive mobile outage overnight.
Boston Dynamics have been making lots of cool robots lately, but it seems Google wants to get rid of them. Boston Dynamics, though, was never folded into Google X and was instead put up for sale. After the division’s latest robot video was posted to YouTube, in February, Google’s public-relations team expressed discomfort that Alphabet would be associated with a push into humanoid robotics. Their subsequent e-mails were also published to the internal online forum and became visible to all Google employees.
A man's Apple Watch has been credited for saving his life by helping him notice his elevated heart rate. While sitting down in the trailer, he started playing with his two-week-old Apple Watch. He had already become a bit obsessed with checking his pulse, but when he did so this time, it wasn’t normal. It showed a rate of 210. “I turned to my helper and said: We need an ambulance.” The paramedics determined that he was having a heart attack and they rushed him to Royal Alexandra Hospital in Edmonton.
Microsoft are reassuring people that Windows 10 upgrades remain optional, so stories of automatic unwanted upgrades are probably people mis-reading or mis-clicking the endless stream of reminder prompts. Customers continue to be fully in control of their devices, and can choose to not install the Windows 10 upgrade or remove the upgrade from Windows Update (WU) by changing the WU settings.
Here's a cool trailer for DOOM Multiplayer. Mmm, gibs.
Friday Afternoon Reviews
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Friday, 18-March-2016 14:38:42 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Storage:
Kingston MobileLite Wireless G3 and Mobile Wireless Pro 64GB on OCClub.
QNAP TS-253A Network Attached Storage on Modders-Inc.
Synology DS216play 2-bay NAS on TechPowerUp.
Input Etc:
GIGABYTE XM300 GAMING MOUSE on Modders-Inc.
Patriot Viper V760 Mechanical Gaming Keyboard on NikKTech.
Cooler Master MasterKeys Pro L / S Mechanical Gaming Keyboard on Tweaktown.
Das Division Zero X40 Pro Gaming Mechanical Keyboard on HotHardware.
Portable & Prebuilt:
Two weeks with a beast - the OriginPC EON17-X Laptop on Tweaktown.
Meet Intel NUC NUC6i7KYK – Skull Canyon Arrives With Thunderbolt 3 on LegitReviews.
Digital Storm Bolt 3 SFF Gaming PC: A Compact Powerhouse on HotHardware.
Cases:
In Win Chopin on OCAholic.
NZXT Manta Mini-ITX on BenchmarkReviews.
Cooler Master Mastercase 5 on HWAsylum.
Antec Signature Series S10 Full-Tower on Tweaktown.
Misc:
Cryorig A80 Hybrid Liquid CPU Cooler on LegitReviews.
Synology RT1900ac Router on ThinkComputers.
Kicker EB300 Bluetooth Earbuds on GamingNexus.
HIS R7 360 GREEN iCooler OC 2GB video card on MadShrimps.
Native Union JUMP Cable on Thinkcomputers.
Wednesday Morning
(7 Comments)
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Wednesday, 16-March-2016 10:33:40 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Microsoft's push to get everyone upgraded to Windows 10 continues, even targeting corporate end-users directly, thanks aftahours. The company had previously announced that domain joined machines would soon see upgrade banners to Windows 10 if they were not managed by WSUS and after this month’s patches were released, network administrators are reporting that their users are now seeing an update prompt; some have reported seeing the messages even if they are using WSUS. It also seems some Windows 7 users are being automatically upgraded without (much) consent.
AMD have a new dual GPU card. AMD has been hinting at their dual-GPU for the better half of a year, but today is the day that we've been introduced to their dual-GPU: the Radeon Pro Duo. Up until now, we thought it would be called the Radeon R9 Fury X2, as well as the tease of Gemini, but AMD landed on the name of Radeon Pro Duo. More info here on Tech Report.
They've also unveiled XConnect Technology. What is the AMD XConnect Technology? It is basically an external graphics card solution for notebooks. It allows you to pair a desktop-class AMD Radeon graphics card with a compatible notebook using Thunderbolt 3. Let’s take a look!
PCPerspective have an interesting article on benchmarking DX12 / UWP games. Yesterday morning Andrew pointed me to a GitHub release for a tool called PresentMon, a small sample of code written by a colleague of Andrew's that might be the beginnings of being able to properly monitor performance of DX12 games and even UWP games.
Also an interesting read, this Wired article covers how Dropbox moved away from Amazon. In other words, those billions of files were stored on Amazon’s machines, rather than machines owned and operated by Dropbox. But not anymore. Over the last two-and-a-half years, Dropbox built its own vast computer network and shifted its service onto a new breed of machines designed by its own engineers, all orchestrated by a software system built by its own programmers with a brand new programming language.
HardOCP look at Far Cry Primal performance. A new game in the Far Cry series is out on the PC called Far Cry Primal. We will run FCP through its paces on six video cards including SLI and CrossFire with the latest drivers and game patch to see what it takes to push these pixels. We will discuss this games stripped down graphics quality compared to Far Cry 4 and what it means for gaming.
IBM have a VR tour of a nanotechnology lab.
Lifeline's Suicide Petition
(13 Comments)
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Tuesday, 15-March-2016 18:32:31 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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I don't normally post this kind of thing, and it's a grim topic, but these numbers are alarming and I think it deserves more awareness: Suicide was the leading cause of death for Australians under 44 last year. It claimed seven lives every day, more than road accidents or cancer. Will you join Lifeline and call on our Government to at least double the funding for suicide prevention and awareness?
click for the petition
If you or someone you know is in crisis or thinking about suicide there is help. Lifeline is available on 13 11 14 or https://www.lifeline.org.au/Get-Help.
Tuesday Evening Reviews
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Tuesday, 15-March-2016 18:14:33 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Audio Visual:
ASUS ROG Swift PG348Q Curved GSYNC monitor on Guru3D.
iClever Magneto Wireless Headphones on TechnologyX.
GAMDIAS Hephaestus Almighty Gaming Headset on APHNetworks.
Software:
Tom Clancy's The Division: Graphics & CPU Benchmarks on TechSpot.
The Division PC Performance Analysis on Tweaktown.
ArmA 3 - AMD and NVIDIA GPU Performance Scaling on OCAholic.
Storage:
Samsung 950 PRO SSD RAID-0 Performance on BenchmarkReviews.
Verbatim 16GB Store 'n' Go Mini Metal USB 3.0 Flash Drive on ModSynergy.
ASUSTOR AS3104T 4-bay NAS on MadShrimps.
Cases:
IN WIN 805 ATX Mid-Tower on Tweaktown.
Antec Signature S10 Premium Tower on NikKTech.
Thermaltake Suppressor F31 Silent Mid-Tower on PCPerspective.
Misc:
Stanley FatMax LEDLISL Lithium-Ion LED Flashlight on ModSynergy.
Zalman ZM-K700M keyboard on TechPowerUp.
ASUS ROG G20BM video card on Vortez.
CRYORIG C7 CPU Cooler on Modders-Inc.
EVGA Z170 Classified K Motherboard on ThinkComputers.
Here's some cool projects from the forums:
Monday Afternoon Reviews
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Monday, 14-March-2016 13:22:12 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Portable & Prebuilt:
ASUS ZenPad 7.0 (Z370CG) Tablet on TechARP.
Razer Nabu Social Smartband on MadShrimps.
HP Spectre x360 15t on HotHardware.
honor 5X Smartphone on TechARP.
Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge smartphone on TechSpot.
Software:
Black Desert Online Performance Analysis on Tweaktown.
15-Way Linux OS Comparison Shows Mixed High-Performing Linux Distributions on Phoronix.
Audio Visual:
SuperTooth FREEDOM Wireless Bluetooth Headset on NikKTech.
Epic Gear SonorouZ X Gaming Headset on Tweaktown.
Storage:
WD My Cloud EX2 Ultra NAS on LegitReviews.
OCZ Trion 150 480 GB on TechPowerUp.
Input Etc:
SteelSeries Rival 100 Optical Mouse on APHNetworks.
Das Keyboard Division Zero X40 Pro Mechanical Gaming Keyboard on Tweaktown.
Wacom Intuos Pro Pen Tablet on OCInside.
Zalman ZM-M600R Gaming Mouse on OCClub.
Misc:
devolo DLAN1200+ PowerLine LAN Starter Kit on NikKTech.
Swiftech H220 X2 Prestige CPU cooler on LanOC.
Thanks to mpot and t1mbot this week!
     
     
     
     
     
     
MSI Rise of the Tomb Raider Giveaway
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Friday, 11-March-2016 12:49:51 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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MSI are giving away two game codes for "Rise of the Tomb Raider" to OCAU members. For details, see the thread:
click for details!
Motherboard:
BIOSTAR RACING B150GT5 LGA1151 Motherboard on Madshrimps
ASUS ROG Maximus VIII on Vortez
BIOSTAR Racing Z170GT7 (Intel Z170) Motherboard on TweakTown
Keyboard/Mouse:
Cooler Master Xornet II Mouse on Benchmark Reviews
E-Blue K820 Professional Gaming Combo on eTeknix
Rantopad MXX Tenkeyless Mechanical Gaming Keyboard on NikKTech
Case:
Fractal Design Node 202 mini-ITX Chassis on eTeknix
Corsair Carbide 400C Mid-Tower Enclosure on PC Perspective
Storage:
QNAP TAS-268 QTS and Android Combo NAS on eTeknix
NVMe RAID0 - 2 x Samsung 950 Pro 256GB on ocaholic
WD MyCloud EX2 Ultra 8TB NAS on Techspot
Cooling:
Scythe Ninja 4 SCNJ-4000 CPU Cooler on TweakTown
Reeven Justice CPU Cooler on ThinkComputers.org
Arctic Cooling Liquid Freezer 240 AIO CPU Cooler on HardOCP
Misc:
Galaxy S7 Vs iPhone 6S Performance Showdown on Hot Hardware
Corsair VOID Wireless Dolby 7.1 RGB Gaming Headset on ocaholic
Patriot Viper Elite 3200MHz CL16 PVE48G320C6KGY 2x8GB DDR4 on Modders-Inc
Sony FDR-X1000V 4K Action Camera on TechARP
Late-2015 Dell XPS 13 on Hot Hardware
SilverStone Strider Platinum ST55F-PT 550W Power Supply on eTeknix
Fractal Design Roundup
(4 Comments)
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Thursday, 10-March-2016 17:06:11 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Josh1990 has reviewed a few goodies from Fractal Design in the forums. Welcome to my review of Fractal Design's Define S case, Integra M 650W psu and Kelvin S36 AIO water cooler.
click for the thread!
Thursday Afternoon
(1 Comments)
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Thursday, 10-March-2016 16:01:27 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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There's some banking malware targeting Australian users. Commonwealth Bank, Westpac, National Australia Bank and ANZ Bank customers are all at risk from the malware which hides on infected devices waiting until users open legitimate banking apps. The malware then superimposes a fake login screen over the top in order to capture usernames and passwords. The malware is designed to mimic 20 mobile banking apps from Australia, New Zealand and Turkey, as well as login screens for PayPal, eBay, Skype, WhatsApp and several Google services.
Google have released a sneak peek at the next Android version. Google I/O is happening on May 18-20, but forget Google I/O—the developer preview of the next version of Android is launching right now. Google has posted the Android N Developer Preview for the Nexus 6P, Nexus 5X, Nexus 6, Pixel C Nexus 9, and the Nexus Player.
Meanwhile Google's Deepmind AI has beaten the world's best Go player. The Deepmind-based computer's victory in the complex Chinese game marks a major event in the development of artificial intelligence — the game depends hugely in intuition, since there are so many possibilities, and so mastery of the game was previously thought to be a human skill.
If you haven't patched Windows recently, you probably should. This month's bumper release of security patches has one bulletin that affects every supported version of Windows. Microsoft said on its regularly scheduled Patch Tuesday that users on Windows Vista and later -- including Windows 10 -- should patch as soon as possible to prevent attackers from exploiting a flaw in how the operating system handles media files. The "critical" bulletin (MS16-027) patches an issue that could allow an attacker to remotely execute code or malware as the logged-in user.
Tweaktown have been benchmarking The Division. Ubisoft has had its biggest launch ever with The Division, with it selling more copies in its first 24 hours than any other Ubisoft game, ever. Well, thankfully The Division has a built-in benchmark that I've spent the last 4-5 hours inside of, testing it out on my two fastest GPUs - AMD's Radeon R9 Fury X and NVIDIA's GeForce GTX Titan X.
Wednesday Morning Reviews
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Wednesday, 9-March-2016 11:31:23 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Audio Visual:
MP4Nation Brainwavz HM5 Headphones on TechPowerUp.
Corsair's Void Surround headset on TechReport.
ROCCAT Renga headset on Vortez.
PAPAGO! GoSafe S30 Dashcam with Sony Exmor on MegaTechNews.
Software:
Tom Clancy's The Division graphics card performance on Guru3D.
Street Fighter V Graphics Quality & Port Report on Tweaktown.
Rise Of The Tomb Raider PC Gameplay And Performance on HotHardware.
Storage:
ASUSTOR AS3102T NAS Server on NikKTech.
Zotac Premium Edition SSD Review (480GB) on TheSSDReview.
OCZ's Trion 150 SSD on TechReport.
QNAP TS-453A on LegionHW.
ASUSTOR AS3102T Network Attached Storage on APHNetworks.
Toshiba EXCERIA PRO M401 64GB microSDXC Card on MadShrimps.
OWC Thunderbolt 2 Dock on Tweaktown.
Toshiba EXCERIA M301-EA 128GB microSDXC Card on MadShrimps.
Motherboard & CPU:
ASUS Z170-PRO (Intel Z170) on Tweaktown.
ASRock E3V5 WS Intel LGA 1151 on OCInside.
AMD Refreshes FM2+ Lineup for APU and CPU on PCPerspective.
Portable & Prebuilt:
Mythlogic Deimos 1615S Gaming Laptop on HotHardware.
Lenovo Y700 Touch 15-inch Gaming Laptop on ThinkComputers.
Amazon Fire HD 10 Review: An Inexpensive Large Entertainment Tablet on HotHardware.
Cases:
BitFenix Pandora ATX on ThinkComputers.
Phanteks Eclipse P400S on BenchmarkReviews.
In Win 805 on OCAholic.
Thermaltake Core V51 on FutureLooks.
Misc:
Singlecue Review - Touch-Free Smart Home Control on TechnologyX.
Zotac GeForce GTX 970 AMP! Extreme Core on Guru3D.
TEAMGROUP DARK Pro DDR4-3333 8GB Dual-Channel Memory Kit on Tweaktown.
Ray Tomlinson, the creator of the first email system and the man who saved the @ symbol from obscurity, has passed away aged 74. Tomlinson sent the very first email back in 1971; at the time, he was working in Boston at Bolt, Beranek, and Newman (BBN), a company that was instrumental in the development of a very early version of the internet, called ARPANET. As an employee, he was "looking for problems [ARPANET] could solve," Tomlinson told The Verge in a 2012 interview.
Samsung have a monster 15TB SSD. Samsung has announced that it is now shipping its PM1633a SSD. That's a boringly mundane name for a drive that's anything but: the PM1633a isn't just the biggest SSD around, it's straight-up the biggest drive around. At 15.36TB, it dwarfs other SSDs and surpasses the capacity even of the very latest magnetic spinning disks. Remarkably, it packs all this storage into a conventional 2.5-inch package. More on PCWorld, thanks adz.
Phoronix compared the Raspberry Pi 3 with eight other ARM Linux boards. For getting an idea of the Raspberry Pi 3 performance potential, I compared the performance to the ARM boards used in the recent 8-Way ARM Board Linux Benchmark Comparison From The Pi Zero & ODROID To Tegra made possible by Lover Pi. The comparison targets included the Raspberry Pi 2 Model B, Raspberry Pi Zero, Banana Pi M2, ODROID C1 Plus, Orange Pi PC, Orange Pi Plus, NVIDIA Jetson TK1, and NVIDIA Jetson TX1. They also compared it to the newer ODROID C2. he ODROID-C2 costs just a few dollars more ($40 USD with free shipping) while having a faster SoC and other advantages.
Meanwhile Anthrox spotted this article (I think from 2013) about overclocking Arduino with LN2. Why? Because I can. To learn how electronics behave at cryogenic temperatures. And just curios how much juice you can squeeze out of AVR if you push hard enough This also produced some results relevant to desktop processors overclocking with liquid nitrogen cooling.
Case:
NZXT Manta (White Edition) ITX Case on Modders-Inc
Thermaltake Core X9 E-ATX Cube Case on NikKTech
Storage:
Lexar JumpDrive M20c USB Type-C Flash Drive on Madshrimps
SSD Charts 2016: 65 SSDs - Toshiba Q300 Pro 256 GB RAID0 on ocaholic
Seagate NAS HDD 8TB SATA III HDD on NikKTech
Zalman VE350 External HDD Case and Virtual Drive on TechnologyX
OCZ Trion 150 SSD Review (240GB/480GB/960GB) on The SSD Review
Cooling:
be Quiet Dark Rock TF on OCC
Cooler Master Hyper 212X CPU Cooler on OCInside
Reeven Okeanos and Brontes CPU Coolers on PC Perspective
Motherboard:
Supermicro X11SAE Workstation (Intel C236) Motherboard on eTeknix
Gigabyte Z170X SOC Force Overclocking Motherboard on Hardware Asylum
ASUS ROG Maximus VIII Formula (Intel Z170) Motherboard on TweakTown
ASUS Z170-WS (Intel Z170) Motherboard on TweakTown
ASUS Sabertooth Z170 Mark 1 Motherboard on PC Perspective
Networking:
TP-LINK Touch P5 Touchscreen AC1900 Wireless Router on TweakTown
Actiontec WCB6200Q MoCA Wireless Network Extender on TweakTown
Laptop/Portable:
MSI GS40 Phantom 6QE Gaming Laptop on Techspot
Dog & Bone Backbone Wireless Charging on TechnologyX
Misc:
Amkov AMK7000S 4K Action Camera on Mod Synergy
Sony FDR-X1000V 4K Action Camera on Tech ARP
Mushkin Redline DDR4 3000MHz 16GB (4x4GB) Quad Channel Memory Kit on eTeknix
CCL Computers Iris 200 Desktop PC on Vortez
Plantronics RIG 500E Headphones on Legit Reviews
Patriot Viper V760 Mechanical Keyboard on APH Networks
Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 on Gaming Nexus
Early pics this week!
     
     
     
     
     
     
Friday Morning Reviews
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Friday, 4-March-2016 10:33:26 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Input Etc:
Logitech G502 Proteus Spectrum Gaming Mouse on TechARP.
Logitech G410 Atlas Spectrum Tenkeyless RGB Mechanical Gaming Keyboard on NikKTech.
Cases:
BitFenix Alchemy 2.0 on OCAholic.
Phanteks Eclipse P400 on Modders-Inc.
Storage:
Crucial BX 200 480 GB SSD on TechPowerUp.
OCZ Triton 150 480GB SSD on BenchmarkReviews.
Synology DS416j NAS on TechWareLabs.
Misc:
Linksys MAX-STREAM EA7500 AC1900 MU-MIMO Wireless Router on Tweaktown.
EC Technology 2nd Gen 22400mAh External USB Battery on LegitReviews.
Amkov AMK5000S 1080p WiFi HD Action Camera on ModSynergy.
iClever IC-TCH001 USB-C and Gigabit Ethernet Hub on Tweaktown.
SAPPHIRE Nitro Radeon R9 380X 4GB on Tweaktown.
Zenator's POWER CELL
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Wednesday, 2-March-2016 13:06:43 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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A couple of people pointed out that Zenator has finished his POWER CELL custom PC - and more importantly, that it has been chosen as Maximum PC's Rig of the Month. You can see the full worklog here:
click for the worklog!
Wednesday Midday
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Wednesday, 2-March-2016 12:10:12 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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There's a new Raspberry Pi. The Raspberry Pi 3 Model B features a quad-core 64-bit ARM Cortex A53 clocked at 1.2 GHz. This puts the Pi 3 roughly 50% faster than the Pi 2. Compared to the Pi 2, the RAM remains the same – 1GB of LPDDR2-900 SDRAM, and the graphics capabilities, provided by the VideoCore IV GPU, are the same as they ever were. As the leaked FCC docs will tell you, the Pi 3 now includes on-board 802.11n WiFi and Bluetooth 4.0. WiFi, wireless keyboards, and wireless mice now work out of the box. Discussion continues in this thread.
Matt sent in this retro PC build with a 118GB floppy drive. Wait, what? If you haven't guessed already, that's not a typical disk or a typical drive. Instead of the little pancake of magnetic tape that most floppy disks have inside, thess disks are actually just mostly empty pieces of plastic that have been modified to fit normal SD cards—which can sport capacities in the hundreds of GB instead of the paltry 1 MB an actual floppy can hold. Full build gallery here.
Tweaktown looked at Far Cry: Primal performance. Far Cry: Primal is out now on the PC, and we delve deep into the performance of the game, seeing just how fast it runs on various AMD and NVIDIA GPUs.
"Ashes of the Singularity" is a new DX12 game, and people are using it for benchmarking also. Tweaktown combine nVIDIA and AMD cards and then try Crossfire vs SLI, while PCPerspective wonder if we need to rethink benchmarking. Shortly after the initial release, a discussion began around results from the Guru3D story that measured frame time consistency and smoothness with FCAT, a capture based testing methodology much like the Frame Rating process we have here at PC Perspective. In that post on ExtremeTech, Joel Hruska claims that the results and conclusion from Guru3D are wrong because the FCAT capture methods make assumptions on the output matching what the user experience feels like. Maybe everyone is wrong?
PCPerspective ponder Microsoft's plans to merge PC and Xbox gaming. "In theory" and "in practice" are two wildly different things, and we've already seen one example of this not going as planned. I do believe that game developers would jump at the chance to have true cross compatibility as long as the hiccups and issues we are discussing can be dealt with in a reasonable way. It just makes sense: this eases development hurdles and expands the possible customer base.
NASA are paying more attention to the "Aeronatical" part of their name, beginning work on a quieter supersonic passenger jet. “NASA is working hard to make flight greener, safer and quieter – all while developing aircraft that travel faster, and building an aviation system that operates more efficiently,” said Bolden. “To that end, it’s worth noting that it's been almost 70 years since Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in the Bell X-1 as part of our predecessor agency's high speed research. Now we’re continuing that supersonic X-plane legacy with this preliminary design award for a quieter supersonic jet with an aim toward passenger flight."
Case:
be quiet! Silent Base 800 Enclosure on Futurelooks
Thermaltake Core X9 E-ATX Cube Chassis on PC Perspective
Lian Li PC-V33WX on ocaholic
Storage:
Patriot Supersonic Magnum 2 256GB Flash Drive on TweakTown
Synology DiskStation DS216+ NAS on Techspot
Patriot Supersonic Magnum 2 USB 3.1 Flash Drive on ThinkComputers.org
Samsung 950 Pro 512GB M.2 NVM Express SSD on NikKTech
Toshiba Q300 Pro 256 Gigabyte on ocaholic
Audio:
Corsair Void Surround Gaming Headset on Benchmark Reviews
Creative Sound BlasterX G5 7.1 External Gaming Audio DAC on Hardware Asylum
Razer Kraken Mobile on Vortez
Corsair Void Surround Gaming Headset on Neoseeker
Creative Sound BlasterX H5 Gaming Headset on Hardware Asylum
Portable & Prebuilt:
MSI Nightblade X2 Prebuilt Machine on Vortez
Dell XPS 12 (2016) Core m-Powered 2-in-1 Laptop Convertible on Hot Hardware
CompuLab Airtop PC on Phoronix
Games:
Far Cry: Primal (PC) on TweakTown
Far Cry: Primal (PC) on Guru3D
Keyboard/Mouse:
Zalman Z-Machine ZM-K700M Gaming Keyboard on OCC
ROCCAT Kova Gaming Mouse on Madshrimps
Misc:
Noctua NF-A14 industrialPPC, NF-F12 industrialPPC, NA-SAVP1, NA-SAV2 Cooling Fans on APH Networks
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 980Ti Xtreme Gaming Graphics Card on eTeknix
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