This is what I love about the component industry. You can never see it all and something will always surprise you. For instance, I knew Phanteks had gorgeous cases, but I was surprised to find out about their stunning CPU blocks as well. While they are fairly new, the Intel ones have been out for a few months now. Hey, at least I know about them now. Since the press release has all the details and beautiful images, check that out below. http://www.phanteks.com/PH-C350a.html (Click the image for larger sizes)

Gaming Chairs have been around for quite a while now, but it seems that recently a whole crop of new companies have sprung up offering more options than ever before. If you’re the kind of person that spends a decent amount of time at a computer desk, you should certainly look at a good gaming chair. They look cool, are typically more comfortable, and emphasize ergonomics as well. However, if you’re looking for options in a budget, Ewin is a relatively new company that seems to have a solid variety to choose from. There isn’t much I can say about them yet without having ever sat in one of their products, but Ewin does have a video describing the differences between them and off-brand chairs. The tear down is a pretty good indication that the chairs are very comfortable and well made. That said, take it with a grain of salt since this is a news post and not an official review. On top of that, their prices seem to start at $250, ranging up to the higher $300 mark. Those are extremely competitive with the market as well as fitting in well with varying levels of consumer budgets. Check the link below to see more of their products and stay posted at PureOC since we plan to have more on them soon! http://www.ewinracing.com/ http://www.ewinracing.com/content/8-ewinracing-vs-other-brands

Oh Deepcool, I love you! Not only did I get the chance to build in the Genome II recently and find out how great of an experience it was, but you send your press releases in Word documents. You know how to make a freelance journalist’s life so much easier in so many ways. Oh! Deepcool has an awesome RGB air cooler and case coming out. I’m surprised that RGB air coolers are so few and far between, but 2017 seems to be the year to bring more options to the market. With the Gammaxx GT, not only do we have the obvious option of an RGB fan, but Deepcool integrated the customizable lighting into the top cover as well. Following the cooler, Deepcool is adding the Earlkase RGB case to their lineup as well. It’s interesting that there doesn’t seem to be any included fans with the chassis, but the case is strongly catering to liquid cooling enthusiasts who are unlikely to keep stock fans in their rig anyways. What would normally seem like a cop-out ends being a strong value proposition since the MSRP is only $79.99. Considering the size and features, I feel like it’s a pretty good deal. Check out the full press releases below so you can see some images, find out more details, and determine if one of these designs needs to end up in your future building plans. While I’m pretty excited about what I see here, I’m still waiting for that official launch of the amazing Quadstellar case I saw at CES. Nobody can convince me of a good reason why one ...

Man! I take one week to finish some house work and the press releases explode!!! It’s alright though because we’re catching up on them and Swiftech is next in line. As always, they have a couple of releases that correlate to new hardware releases, but the SLI/Crossfire bridges are extremely impressive. These are bridges to connect multiple Komodo waterblocks and the LE edition has RGB lighting that can be controlled to match other components. Of course the other major release is the Komodo blocks with compatibility to the latest GTX 1080 Ti graphics card, which I’m sure will be an awesome combination for pushing GPU clocks to the max. Finally, Swiftech also announced AM4 compatibility with their Apogee Drive II integrated pump and waterblock. Check out the PRs below for the full details and links to their site. PICO RIVERA, CA – May 15, 2017 – Rouchon Industries Inc., dba Swiftech® (OTC Pink Current: RCHN), the leading force in driving the high-end thermal management scene in personal computers today announced the release of their new Universal Bridges. Following the Komodo product lines, these bridges are available in two sizes: Luxury Edition (LE) and ECO Edition. The LE Edition distinguishes itself from the ECO version by an integrated RGB ALED lighting system compatible with the Swiftech Iris-Eco light controller. Swiftech Universal Bridge Dual LE in red, blue, and green The 1.6” (40mm) PCI spacing is currently available, and the 2.4” PC...

More companies are joining the foray for RAM supremacy and Ballistix is the latest to introduce integrated RGB lighting. The interesting part is that the light bar is removable and you can 3D print your own custom designs to swap in place. Even then, the black PCB and grey heatspreaders look excellent on their own, without the lighting. Check out the rest of the press release below for more info and I wouldn’t be surprised if many builders have these kits on their wish list once they release. Ballistix Announces Tactical Tracer DDR4 RGB Gaming Memory Modules PC modders and gamers can improve gameplay and performance while lighting up their rigs in style Key Messages: User-controllable RGB LEDs allow for the ultimate customization and color matching options for your unique rig Get faster speeds and more aggressive game play with speeds starting at 2666 MT/s Monitor temperatures and take command of RGB with the Ballistix® M.O.D. Utility Removable top bar and available design files allow users to customize and 3D print unique options Boise, ID — May 30, 2017 – Ballistix, a leading global brand of gaming memory, today announced the availability of Ballistix® Tactical Tracer DDR4 RGB memory. The new Tactical Tracer modules allow PC modders and gamers to light up their systems with RGB brilliance with the ability take control of their memory and color scheme while providing the increased performance and stability they expect from Ballistix memory. With sp...

Noctua is the gold standard when it comes to fan performance. They seem to know the best way to get great airflow at some of the lowest noise levels possible, but “fans” of 200mm fans were out of luck, until now. It turns out customers have been asking for them, but as always Noctua has to make sure quality and performance meet their standards before releasing a product. Hey, if this customer is a huge fan RGB LED, do you think Noctua has some of those in the works? Check out the full press release below for more information and links to all of the releases that include slim fans, 40mm fans, a fan controller and S-ATA to 4-pin power adapter. Vienna, May 17th 2017 – Noctua today expanded its award-winning A-series of premium-quality quiet cooling fans with new 200mm, 120mm and 40mm models. Thanks to the series’ signature features such as Flow Acceleration Channels and AAO (Advanced Acoustic Optimisation) frames, the new NF-A20, NF-A12x15 and NF-A4x20 provide outstanding performance and superb quietness of operation. All models come with Noctua’s trusted SSO2 bearings and a full 6-year manufacturer’s warranty. In addition to the new fans, Noctua introduced the new NA-FC1 fan controller, NA-SAV3 and NA-SAV4 anti-vibration mounts and NA-SAC5 S-ATA power adaptor cable. “Customers have been asking us for 20cm and slim 12cm fans for years, but meeting the quality standard users have come to expect from Noctua fans in these form factors has proven very chall...

Introduction They say you can’t reinvent the wheel, but that doesn’t stop car companies from doing something to make you think you need to buy a new rims or tires. Computer mice are in a similar position. While we have come a long way from the old trackball style of mice we used to have, today it feels like most new designs are built around gimmicks to sell more units. So when I say you should definitely take notice of the unit we have in review today, I understand why you might think it’s a gimmick, but I can assure there is way more going on with the original RBT Rebel than meets the eye. During my trip to CES last January, I got a little time to wander the show floors and see what I would randomly run across. I saw the RBT (pronounced “Rabbit”), put my hand on it, and figured it was a gimmick, but the designer saw me and stopped me before I could walk away. He explained what he had and while I wasn’t convinced, I decided to sit down and see if I could understand what he was saying. After trying the design out, it was beginning to dawn on me how this could be a huge benefit for gamers. The RBT on review is a prototype and while QuadraClicks, the company behind the design, is still in its fundraising stages, they’ve already raised over 100% of their goal to kick off the project. This review will be pretty straight forward because there isn’t a ton of details to go over until the product officially launches later this year, b...

That title is fun right? Yesterday AMD had it’s Financial Analyst Day which turned out to be quite the product announcement. Zen was a pretty disruptive release and it seamed to prompt Intel to add more core options to their X299 platform releasing sometime this year. It looks like AMD doesn’t want to be outdone though, so they’re releasing a monstrous 16 core, 32 thread chip that will thoroughly compete with Intel’s enthusiast offerings, but there might be some slightly disappointing news from yesterday as well. Technical details are pretty scarce right now, but PCWorld as an excellent slide showing the major highlights of yesterdays event. We only know the core and thread count of Threadripper for the time being, but seeing as how it’s based on Zen architecture, it will most likely have super competitive TDP and multi-threading performance numbers. AMD also announced Epyc, which looks like it will have 32 cores and 64 threads. This is completely designed for the enterprise market though, since it appears to have lower clockspeeds as well. The other fun announcements were related to Vega, but gaming seems like a minor focus in comparison to the professional uses mentioned during the FAD. This where things get a bit murky. It’s looking more and more like AMD isn’t releasing a card that directly tackles the GTX 1080 Ti initially. While Vega, labeled Frontier Edition, has high levels of compute power, Raja had a straightforward menti...

To be fair, I’m not sure I’ve ever sat in a DXRacer yet. However, I’ve sat in many gaming chairs at conventions and such that left me wondering what the point was. Sure, it could’ve been the fatigue of trekking all over Vegas, but sitting in Corsair’s T1 Race Gaming Chair was the best seating experience of my life. My entire body literally melted into sheer comfort! Corsair doesn’t need anything else, yet they still have a hefty amount of features that keep it competitive, even at the $349.99 MSRP. Just keep in mind that the weight limit is around 265 lbs. Look, I do own gaming chairs now and yes, they do help with my overall comfort levels immensely, but months later and the feel of the T1 Race has yet to leave my memory. Check out the full press release info below for images, links and more info! Inspired by Racing, Built to Game: CORSAIR Launches T1 RACE Gaming Chair  FREMONT, CA – May 16th, 2017 – CORSAIR®, a world leader in enthusiast memory, PC components and high-performance gaming hardware today announced the launch of its first gaming chair, the T1 RACE. Inspired by racing, crafted for comfort and built to last, the T1 Race joins CORSAIR’s award-winning range of mice, keyboards, headsets and mousepads to complete the ultimate gaming experience. Built using a solid steel skeleton and dense foam cushions, the T1 RACE has the strength to ensure a lifetime of sturdiness, while it’s 4D-movement armrests raise, lower, sh...

AMD’s Ryzen release has been picked apart pretty well now, but it still stands as a solid release from team Red. Performance has been under the microscope so much, that power efficiency could get overlooked. Part of that is the fact that Intel doesn’t offer the wide range of variety in core counts that Ryzen has right now, but the other part is the fact that the wait for Intel competition has been long as well. However, with Skylake X about to release on the X299 platform, it strange to say that Intel looks like they’re struggling with power efficiency compared to AMD. WCCFTech has more info on the upcoming chips from Intel, including TDP ratings. I still can’t wrap my head on around the 7740K that is supposedly the “fastest” chip in the Kaby Lake lineup. When you go down the chart, the specs are identical accept for the socket type. Oh, and it somehow has a higher TDP in spite of having the same clockspeeds and L3 Cache. Moving on to the new i9 chips though, their TDPs range from 140W to 160W. This seems to show us two really important things about Intel. The great news is that Intel hasn’t been holding back single-thread performance for the purpose of squeezing the market dry. Their IPC architecture is truly a marvel. The bad news is that Intel could’ve been offering more cores to buyers way before now. Considering the flagship gives us 12 cores and 24 threads pretty easily, it’s hard to imagine why mainstream has bee...