Introduction Wow! It feels like the hardware landscape is full of yin and yang. I wouldn’t necessarily call it a light or dark side, but there seems to be several instances of competitive battles being fought by only two sides. I’ll let you decide if Nvidia is yin or yang in this case, but we’re bringing that big green logo into the spotlight for a review of their GTX 1060. Once again, this is a card targeting mid-range budgets, but the effort to bring high quality gameplay to the masses feels a bit stronger in recent years than it has in the past. We’ll have to see how Nvidia stacks up here soon. Nvidia may be targeting the mid range budget, but you wouldn’t know based on what MSI is doing with their design of the GTX 1060. The Gaming X looks like it takes the card to almost top-tier levels of design and quality before we even get to turn a PC on. I suppose that it could all be flare and the actual build quality could be less than it appears, but I seriously doubt that will be the case. I’ve owned a couple of MSI cards in the past that I really enjoyed so it will be great to see if MSI lives up to their reputation of the past and the internet. As a world leading gaming brand, MSI keeps raising the bar in design and innovation of its GAMING Series products and has been a long-term sponsor of global eSports teams. Outstanding teamwork of MSI’s senior R&D staff and professional gamers culminates in the creation of every MSI GAMIN...

Introduction It’s time to get back into the graphics foray and we have the perfect head-to-head match up to start it. While top-of-the-line cards are great to drool over, the vast majority of users are squarely in a budget realm when shopping for a GPU upgrade (more on that in the conclusion, however). AMD decided to focus more on this sector of buyers when they released Polaris, the GPU found in their flagship RX 400 and 500 series cards. Needless to say, we need to see how they measure up in gaming performance to see if Radeon is succeeding in this bracket. We also have to point out another new thing that’s happened with Polaris. Gigabyte has been doing graphics cards for a while, but they recently switched a lot of their gaming components to their Aorus branding. It started with motherboards and Nvidia based GPUs, but now they’ve include the RX 500 series with the Aorus line as well. I’ve been a huge fan of the new designs under Aorus so let’s find out if their GPUs hold up just as well. GIGABYTE shares the same passion for gaming as all gamers. Therefore we have extended the premium gaming brand – AORUS, the pinnacle of our hardware excellence, to provide a full spectrum of innovative gaming products that deliver the ultimate performance and exemplify PC’s capability of bringing gamers unprecedented delights. We continue to participate in global gaming events, connect with the community and actively listening to gamers’ desires in ...

Introduction Chairs! Whether you’re being a cubicle jockey or gaming until your butt goes numb, a good chair goes a long way. Now EWinRacing has thrown their hat in the pool of gaming chairs, an analogy that has gotten away from me. Have they made the most epicurean masterpiece to which one should perch their posterior? Have they simply made a good looking chair? Let us find out. To the REVIEW! After these messages: EwinRacing chair was newly founded in 2016 after being a leader OEM office chair manufacturer. With the development in design and research, we strive for a professionalization in gaming chair field. Ever more, in order to bring you a healthier working and relaxing environment, we will continuously pursue humanism in design and manufacturing ergonomic gaming chairs. What’s more our strict quality inspection process and standard ensures you a better chair for better life. If you were having a hard time reading that, you are not alone. Moving on. Also, you can check out the video review if you enjoy watching the miseries of trying to open a box without cutting the tape!

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...

Introduction A gamer who doesn’t sit on their butt for hours at a time is scarcely a gamer at all. It’s at least true today, as the arcades have gone the way of… I don’t know, MySpace? They exist, but not like they did in their prime. If you want to play a game, you’ll likely want to sit. If you want to sit for hours without those post-game pains, you’re going to want a better than average chair. You might even want the Cougar Armor Gaming Chair. Let’s find out.   Real Gear for Real Gamers Created in 2007 by a group of engineers, COUGAR has been devoted since its first day to a single objective: to endow every single product with a superb quality, a rich functionality and a distinctive design. This aspiration moved us during our first years in the PC case, PSU and fan market. Our efforts bore their fruits in the form of user satisfaction, many praising reviews and prestigious design awards such as the 2010 design & innovation award, organized by iF at Computex Taipei 2010. After several years of success with our first products, we decided to enter the gaming gear market. The reason for this was our long-term dissatisfaction with the state of things in the areas of gaming mice, keyboards and headsets. The market was flooded with poor quality products, gimmicks presented as “gaming functions” and either boring or childish designs. Since all of us are gamers, it was hard for us not to feel that we had not only the power, but ...

Introduction AMD has officially shaken up the CPU market in a great way with Ryzen. While I know some of you wanted to see Intel brought to their knees with every single benchmark, the reality is we now have a clear picture of what the strengths and weaknesses are in the industry. Single-thread performance has certainly improved well over the past 5 years, but quality measures and multi-threaded ceilings needed a shot in the arm. The Ryzen 7 series does an amazing job of opening up professional performance to a wider audience of PC buyers. That leaves us answering the question of exactly how Ryzen 5 fits in the market. In fact, we’re only going to worry about tackling that question in this review. I’ve been squeezing everything I can in trying to complete review content, but life is catching up with me and I have to slow my pace down slightly. There’s just too many fun things to test and not enough time to do it, at least in fast of a time frame as I would like. While this focus will be on Ryzen 5 performance, I’ll be adding two more reviews down the road with one focusing solely on the newly designed Wraith Coolers performance and another focused entirely on overclocking guides and performance for the Ryzen 7 and 5 lineups. Let’s begin with a look into the philosophy behind AMD’s CPU designs, then we’ll start looking at the details of the 1600X and 1500X.