July 2013 - Overclockers

MSI Z87 Xpower Motherboard Review (with LN2 results)

July 31, 2013 Joe Shields 8

There comes a time in every overclockers life when you just want to go out and get the most expensive darn thing you can…just because… even though advice from the forums is to shy away from such a move. Today makes me count my blessings that a couple years ago Overclockers.com gave me the opportunity to write reviews for the Front Page. Fast forward those couple of years to today and I have in my possession the most expensive darn motherboard on the Z87 platform at this time, the MSI Z87 XPower. The features list is long and its power phases are more robust than anything I have seen. This should be a good one people. Let’s dive in and take a look!

Cooler Master CMStorm Pulse-R Headset Review

July 30, 2013 Frank Bennett 2

When I started to work on this review, I had already had a great day, and the UPS man showing up with a mysterious box from Coolermaster made it even better. The box inside was mysterious, the attached NDA made it even moreso (NDA will have been lifted by time this review is out), and to top it all off, it was supposed to be flashy and sound good at the same time. Will Coolermaster have made the mistake of flash over substance? Will I ever figure out how to use the front 3.5mm outputs on my case again? Come inside and read to find out!

Non-Z Chipset Overclocking? Not so Fast Says Intel

July 29, 2013 Jonathan Heroux 11

Just a few weeks ago we reported that motherboard manufacturers had found a BIOS exploit to allow overclocking of the latest Haswell processors on “non-Z” motherboards. This week, Intel is reportedly working on a CPU microcode update that will put an end to this added bonus for B85 and H87 products.

Thermaltake Chaser A71 Full Tower Case Review

July 29, 2013 Dino DeCesari 7

The Chaser line of cases from Thermaltake have been one of their most popular chassis options over the past couple years. All previous cases Thermaltake has offered under the Chaser name have been classified as mid-tower in size, but today we get to see the Chaser in it’s first attempt at a full-tower design – the Chaser A71. I’ve had the opportunity in the past to work with a couple of the earlier Chaser offerings, and came away impressed with both the design and price. So, lets have a look at this full-tower Chaser A71 and see if it continues to impress!

ASUS Releases First FM2+ Motherboards

July 28, 2013 Jonathan Heroux 9

Top-tier motherboard manufacturer, ASUS has released to market the first two products to support upcoming Kaveri APUs from AMD, confirming new features in the process. The new motherboards are poetically named A55BM-A/USB3 and A88XM-A and are based on AMD current A55 chipset and new A88X chipset, respectively.

Galaxy Releases GTX 780 GC and GTX 770 HOF

July 27, 2013 Jonathan Heroux 3

Galaxy has released two interesting products in their GTX 700-series of graphics cards. Both have features that are sure to please, both the eyes and the frame rates. Meet the GTX 780 GC Edition and the GTX 770 HOF Edition.

ADATA 8GB XPG DDR3-2800 Memory Kit Review

July 26, 2013 Jeremy Vaughan 25

Single-sided Hynix MFR ICs have been making the rounds through various manufacturers recently. I didn’t give G.Skill a pass for them when they came through last time. They just don’t have the performance to go with the MHz due to timing compromises to make it to these kinds of frequencies. ADATA is here to give it a try this time. Let’s hope they reverse the performance sacrifices made for the MHz. Hey, if nothing else, MFR kits are always fun to see how far they can be pushed!

BIOSTAR Hi-Fi Z87X 3D Motherboard Review

July 24, 2013 Joe Shields 3

Today I am excited to bring to you another motherboard in the Z87 line! This time, it isn’t from the ‘big three’, but from BIOSTAR. They were kind enough to send us their Hi-Fi- Z87X 3D motherboard for review. Biostar has seemed to put a focus on the audio side of things with this board. So we will see what hardware changes they made to help that side out as well as test the board in the ‘Overclockers.com’ way and see what we have in the end.

Windows 8 Interface Problem Solved: Make Windows 8 Look Like Windows 7

July 23, 2013 c627627 20

Windows 8.1 is coming and it will have a Start Button. Except it’s not a Start Button! It is a Metro Button to sling you right back into the Windows 8 tile-based user interface! One can only imagine the frustration of average users finally managing to get away from the tile-based environment, finally seeing the familiarity of Desktop… only to click on the Windows 8.1 Start Button out of habit, and find out the hard way that it has been placed there to catapult them right back into the Metro interface they tried to escape from.

Tt eSPORTS MEKA G-Unit Red Switch Edition Keyboard Review

July 23, 2013 Dino DeCesari 2

Adding to their already popular MEKA gaming keyboard line, Tt eSPORTS (Thermaltake) has a new member of the family we’ll be reviewing today. The MEKA G-Unit Cherry MX Red Switch Edition Mechanical Gaming Keyboard is the full name attached to this monster, and that’s certainly a mouthful! The MEKA G-Unit line of mechanical gaming keyboards comes in other options as well, coming in the form of the Illuminated Edition, Combat Edition and one called simply G-Unit. Let’s save the other MEKA G-Unit keyboards for perhaps another day and dive into today’s sample for a closer look at this latest mechanical gaming keyboard offering from Tt eSPORTS.