MSI R9 295X2 Now Available in stores World’s fastest graphics card MSI, the gaming force in Graphics Cards is happy to announce the availability of the new AMD Radeon R9 295X2 Graphics Card. With two R9 290X GPUs on-board with clock speeds up to 1018 MHz and 8 Gigabyte of GDDR5, the R9 295X2 delivers the most insane frame rates in todays and future games. The card is cooled with a zeo maintenance liquid cooling system so gamers can expect cool temperatures, quiet operation and consistent performance. So whether you’re looking at the best card for Gaming at 4K and higher resolutions or want to be in the driver’s seat for this year’s most stunning PC Games, the R9 295X2 is the right choice. Maximum Performance The record-shattering dual-GPU R9 295X2 is packed with two Hawaii XT GPUs featuring 5632 processors running at speeds up to 1018 MHz. The massive 8 Gigabyte of GDDR5 runs at 5 GHz and delivers enough bandwidth to drive 4K screens or 5 1080p screens in Eyefinity. Together with support for TrueAudio and Mantle technology, the R9 295X2 is ready to power the best games of 2014. Cool and Quiet Hidden under the massive aluminium housing, the MSI R9 295X2 contains a unique liquid cooling solution from Asetek that keeps the GPUs running at full speed. Heat dissipation is performed through an external 12cm fan with radiator that dissipate the heat from the dual GPU pumps. A separate fan in the middle of the card cools the rest of the on-board components making this a un...

It has been several months since AMD shook up the GPU market a bit with its R9 series of GPUs. Now that the dust has settled there has been time for AMD partners to design better cooling solutions for the Hawaii based GPUs at the top end of the R9 lineup. When the 290 and 290x first released there was a firestorm of complaints surrounding the massive amounts of heat generated and the lack of significant cooling solutions. Basically the reference design cooler was a major flop that actually caused performance loses. The 290 and 290x GPUs were known to throttle down to lower core speeds to stay within the thermal envelope. In some cases, this resulted in a 290 outperforming a 290x in benches or other counter intuitive results... OUCH! AMD partners proved to be up to the challenge though, releasing GPUs with their custom cooling solutions that offered better heat dissipation without adding to the noise penalty suffered by the reference cooler. This is all fine and dandy, but where does any of this leave the hardcore water cooling enthusiast? It leaves many researching to see which GPU from each manufacturer is and is not compatible with certain water blocks and adding additional cost to an already costly product. One of those OEMs, VisionTek, wanted to lend a hand in this process by taking away all guess work, and even the installation. They are now offering a GPU which comes ready to be incorporated into a custom waco system out of the box. I am happy to introduce the Cry...

When you look at most of the LED case fans out there, they're largely uninspired. Sure the lighting is solid on many of them, and some of them even offer up good cooling performance to match their look, but the lighting effect is ultimately the same: just a blob of light that looks like it could come from any manufacturer. While that may work for some system builders, Enermax has a solution for those of you looking for something a bit different than the rest. Enter the T.B. Vegas and T.B. Apollish fan lineup: coming in 120mm and 200mm sizes respectively, these fans feature not only some of the most unique case lighting you will ever see, but offer a degree of performance that you will be hard pressed to find in any other standalone LED fan. Let's see if these factors add up to be greater than the sum of their parts, shall we?

G.SKILL Releases Industry’s First  DDR3L SO-DIMM 2133MHz 32GB (4x8GB) 1.35V Memory Kit With validation screen on MSI GT70 2OC gaming laptop     Taipei, Taiwan – 15 April 2014 – G.SKILL International Co. Ltd., the leading high performance memory designer and manufacturer, is proud to announce the release of an even higher performance, higher capacity DDR3L SO-DIMM memory kit at 2133MHz! This time with a massive 32GB (4x8GB) capacity!   Operating at a low voltage of 1.35V and at a timing of 11-11-11-31, this new Ripjaws SO-DIMM memory kit will elevate the performance of your extreme performance gaming laptop to new heights. Desktop performance and capacity on a laptop is now a reality!   The following is a test screenshot completed on the MSI GT70 2OC gaming laptop, exhibiting stability under extreme load.     “As a world leading gaming brand, MSI Notebook’s goal is to become the most trusted name in gaming and e-sport. We stand by our principles of breakthroughs in design, the pursuit of excellence, and technological innovation as we have continued to raise the bar for ourselves and have accomplished a great deal of pioneering work in the industry,” commented Sam Chern, marketing director at MSI. “This time, G.SKILL’s F3-2133C11Q-32GRSL DDR3L memory kit clearly raises the bar for high performance gaming laptops and proves to be unbelievably stable on the MSI GT70 2OC gaming laptop, one of the best performance gaming laptops from MSI.”   About G.SKI...

QNAP Releases System Updates to Fix Heartbleed OpenSSL Vulnerability Taipei, Taiwan, April 18, 2014 – QNAP® Systems Inc. today announced firmware updates for Turbo NAS systems with vulnerability to the OpenSSL Heartbleed bug (CVE-2014-0160). The operating systems vulnerable to Heartbleed are QTS versions 4.0 and 4.1. Versions 3.8 and earlier use a different version of OpenSSL and are not affected by the OpenSSL Heartbleed bug.As described on the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures website, the OpenSSL 1.0.1 TLS and DTLS implementation, before 1.0.1g, does not properly process Heartbeat Extension packets which allow remote attackers to obtain sensitive information by reading private keys (aka the Heartbleed bug). “We strongly urge users of vulnerable Turbo NAS systems to update their firmware,” said Jason Hsu, Product Manager of QNAP. “Users are also recommended to contact their SSL providers to regenerate their SSL CSR/keys for server protection.” To obtain the system updates (QTS 4.0.7 and QTS 4.1.0 RC2) with recompiled OpenSSL, please download from http://www.qnap.com/i/en/product_x_down/ or have your Turbo NAS perform a live update via the QTS control panel. For more information, please contact us at http://helpdesk.qnap.com/   About QNAP QNAP Systems, Inc., as its brand promise “Quality Network Appliance Provider”, aims to deliver comprehensive offerings of cutting edge network attached storage (NAS) and network video recorder (NVR) ...

Lately it seems I have been covering the smaller side of things in reviews. If you read any of them, you will know that I am not a big fan of the diminutive size of Micro and Mini anything when it comes to computing. The bigger the better has been my motto. Huge cases that could fit every feature you might ever want, plus the remains of Jimmy Hoffa, have been my focus for the last few years. Despite this, not too long ago I had the chance to experiment with some of the newer small offerings from Bitfenix and MSI in the form of the Prodigy M and the Z87I Micro ATX Gaming board. I freely admit that I had a change of heart. To my surprise the performance differences between full size and snack size has been erased during this recent resurgence of the minuscule. Bitfenix is now giving me the chance to go even smaller with a Mini-ITX based Colossus M in an effort to fully rehabilitate my aversion to pint size PCs! If it is anything like the Prodigy M, they might just succeed. Let's dig in and find out!

I can’t help but say that I’m really excited about the new Godzilla movie coming out next month. As a kid, I grew up on the old Godzilla films, had a decent number of action figures, and shared in the disappointment that was the 1998 remake. What I’m seeing now looks like a great homage to the old 1954 monster. This long lead-in would no doubt beg the question of what any of this has to with NVIDIA’s Titan Z. While $3000 sounds like a lot to average PC users, this card is a huge release for the movie industry. Pixar may be a name you have already heard of, but just in case you haven’t, they really are the “undisputed king” of animation. The reason why they’ve turned out so many good movies is their attention to detail. Ever since the movie Brave, Pixar has been using their own animation system called Presto. This system allows their animators to animate in real time. The included demo video above is worth a watch, and showcases some interesting details. While working on Sully from Monsters University, the animators from Pixar had to render 900,000 hairs in real time. Each hair has 4 points! That’s a total of 3.6 million points the system is running and all of these hairs run entirely on the GPU, not to mention all of the other objects going on in the scene. What was the secret weapon behind all this power? Why none other than NVIDIA’s Quadro K6000. The K6000 is an impressive card. It has 12 GB of on-board memory a...

In Win has been known to release some pretty unique PC chassis; their design team have some pretty creative ideas when it comes to its aesthetics and overall style. Of course, that's not always true. Sometimes we've seen some pretty questionable designs and wonder what they were thinking? This can be true of any manufacturer. Regardless, the are other times when we just get that WOW factor. Today, we are going to look at an In Win chassis that gave us that WOW factor at first glance. The In Win 901 mini-ITX chassis has a very sleek and elegant design. Its aluminum construction combined with tempered glass just screams sophistication. Lets break down the In Win 901 Aluminum mini-ITX Chassis and see if this classy design meets the build quality and functionality to match its initial WOW factor.

MSI’s new Next Generation naming scheme – GAMING 3, GAMING 5, and GAMING 7       MSI are revealing upcoming line of “GAMING” mainboards, designed primarily for enthusiast gamers seeking to get the very most from their hardware to software. They are coming in three distinct flavors: GAMING 3, GAMING 5 and GAMING 7.     MSI USB Audio Power Our next generation GAMING motherboards all feature USB Audio Power, similar to the latest ITX GAMING models. USB Audio Power ensures stable 5V power delivery no matter what. Delivering perfect audio quality for USB headsets and USB DAC devices.       GAMING I/O Panel For our next generation of GAMING motherboards we spend a lot of attention to small details. They will come with a complete black I/O panel without the shiny silver edge you are used to.   Xsplit Gamecaster Show off your GAMING skills to the world with XSplit Gamecaster and MSI. Get a 6 month premium license for free with our upcoming next generation GAMING mainboards.       Audio Boost 2  Our new Audio Boost 2 solution is powered by Creative Sound Blaster Cinema 2 and comes with many new features.  The in-game sound has never been as good as before.    

  ASUSTOR Announces Compatibility for ASUS Xonar Series USB DAC Devices ASUSTOR integrates four USB DAC devices from ASUS including the Xonar Essence III, Xonar Essence One, Xonar Essence STU and Xonar U3, providing users with a rich and full hi-fi listening experience. Taipei, Taiwan, April 15th 2014 – ASUSTOR Inc., a leading innovator and provider of network storage solutions, announced today that it has added support for USB digital-to-analog audio converters (DAC) giving ASUSTOR users the ability to use a USB DAC to increase the quality of audio output from their NAS devices. A USB DAC can be conveniently used in concert with ASUSTOR’s SoundsGood music player App to provide users with a heightened listening experience featuring fuller and deeper sound. Featured in this integration of USB DAC devices are four models from ASUS. These models include the Xonar Essence III, Xonar Essence One, Xonar Essence STU and Xonar U3. “Today’s NAS applications have evolved from the traditional storage and backup functions as demand for multimedia functionality has taken off,” said Steve Huang, Product Manager at ASUSTOR. “ASUSTOR has made great efforts to support the increasing multimedia demands of NAS users by providing compatibility for a wide range of peripherals. With this integration of USB DAC devices, ASUSTOR users will be able to savor a fully enhanced hi-fi listening experience when playing music from their NAS.” The exclusive SoundsGood Web music pl...