Sound BlasterX Kratos S5 Review – Computer. Monitor. Keyboard. Mouse. Is that a complete setup, or is there something missing? The final component you may or may not find on the average desktop PC is a set of speakers. Headphones are the obvious alternative, favoured by gamers for immersive sound effects while keeping the peace with … Read more
XPS 13 2018 Review – The archetypal windows ultrabook gets its first major refinement in 4 years – But it’s not without cost Had late Apple CEO Steve Jobs been in charge of designing a Windows PC it probably would have ended up looking a lot like Dell’s latest XPS 13 – a laptop whose … Read more
These speakers’ premium build and ribbon tweeters have Steve May grinning all over Airpulse A200 Review – WHILE THE BRAND may not be familiar, the designer behind Airpulse Audio might be. Phil Jones helped found British hi-fi outfit Acoustic Energy, and was responsible for a run of high-performing designs. These studio-style active monitor speakers are … Read more
Palit GTX 1060 StormX 3G Review – Mark buys a nice video card for all the wrong reasons • Requirements: x16 PCIe slot, six-pin PCIe power line There’s a fine irony in that what pushed me to get a better graphics card isn’t gaming but the maths intensive processing of drone-captured images. The software I’m using … Read more
This isn’t a cheap laptop, and nor would you mistake it for one. The slim yet strong aluminium case – available in dark grey or silver – hasn’t changed since 2016, when Apple introduced the Touch Bar. Read our Apple MacBook Pro 13in 2018 Review. [wpsm_toplist] [sc name=”ad 2″] A graphical ribbon along the top of the … Read more
Samsung’s 860 SSDs, in ‘black slab’ 2.5in SATA housings, have become a popular choice for PC builds. The 970 replaces a different animal, the 960 family of NVMe drives, made for the M.2 slots on recent motherboards. As such, it comes as a small printed circuit board (PCB) and promises much faster operation. We’ve seen … Read more
What do you look for in a motherboard? Clean style? Endurance? Good power draw? Never-ending connectivity? There’s a lot to think about when choosing the perfect motherboard. Much like a processor, you need one that’s appropriate for your build; suitable for what you want to do. In a lot of ways, it’s a contradictory component; … Read more
ASUS ROG Maximus X Hero Review – WE’VE ALWAYS TENDED more towards Asus’s Prime series motherboards than its ROG Maximus range, largely because the latter are invariably far more expensive. With the release of Intel’s Coffee Lake CPUs and accompanying Z370 chipset, it seems that won’t be changing any time soon: the ROG Maximus X Hero, more … Read more
MSI Raider GE63 8RF Review – MSI makes a bewildering array of gaming laptops. They come in all shapes and sizes from big, noisy and fast, to thin, light and portable. The Raider GR63 seeks to be an all-rounder – a gaming notebook that remains portable and sober enough to use for work. [wpsm_toplist] [sc name=”ad … Read more
Crucial MX500 500GB review – THE MARCH OF TECHNOLOGY waits for no man. Unless the poor sap in question relies upon the SATA interface for his PC storage connectivity. In which case, technology is happy to sit down and soak up the view. That’s because of the limitations associated with SATA. First, there’s a hard bandwidth … Read more
Lenovo IdeaPad 320s review – We’ve seen all sorts of amazing laptop- tablet hybrids from Lenovo, with touchscreens, pens, virtual keyboards and built-in projectors. This is not one of those. The Ideapad 320S is an unashamedly basic laptop at a refreshingly low price. The case, in silver or white, is mostly plastic but feels sturdy. And … Read more
Pi-Top V2 Review – Having bumped into the friendly people behind this Raspberry Pi accessory a couple of times at Maker Faire, we’ve finally got round to trying it ourselves. It’s a plastic case that has every part of a laptop except the computer, which you add by installing a Raspberry Pi, the low-cost single-board … Read more