With the X370GTN, BIOSTAR has succeeded to offer plenty of goodies, in a compact ITX format; due to a smaller VRM, the manufacturer does recommend CPUs with a maximum TDP of 95W, but if we do use it with a 65W SKU, we do also have some overclocking headroom. In our tests with the Ryzen 3 1300X, we have succeeded to achieve the same results as with the high-end Crosshair Hero VI from ASUS, by just setting up the multiplier and the voltage inside the UEFI interface, which is really easy to use. read more

The EXCERIA PRO M501 card from Toshiba has proven itself as being one of the speediest from the bunch we have tested so far, succeeding to even surpass the Lexar Professional 1800x read speeds in some usage environments. Write-wise however, the Lexar Professional distances itself quite a bit, offering speeds around 197MB/s, while the EXCERIA PRO M501 can go up to 130MB/s when writing large files, very close to the rated manufacturer speeds. read more

Besides the small performance bump in the encoding/rendering productivity applications, we have also seen lower loading times in various memory hungry games such as Forza after the upgrade and the stuttering was gone. One other aspect is that by using a larger memory quantity, we will also decrease the wear from the boot drive (a usage example would be working with a larger project in Adobe Premiere). Even if the RAM did run at the same frequency as before, the speed bump is mainly due to the switch from a single-channel (stock) configuration to a dual-channel. read more

With the AS6404T 4-bay NAS from ASUSTOR we are seeing an update to the Intel Celeron Apollo Lake J3455 Quad-Core 1.5GHz processor, which is paired with no less than 8GB of DDR3L RAM in order to handle plenty of multimedia content types, but for also being able to use even more application modules at the same time. We do also see an USB 3.0 Type C port in the back for connecting modern storage devices, support up to 10TB drives (for a total of 40TB in a single NAS) and dual LAN that can be used for both Link Aggregation and Failover. The LCD panel is easy to operate via the hardware buttons, we get an IR receiver so the… read more

By having its hardware/software implementation based on C-Media audio, we do get quite a rich set of configuration inside the HERA software for the HEBE M1 RGB headset. The Virtual 7.1 speaker surround can be used when watching various multimedia content and we were happy to see that the positioning of the speakers in the simulated room can be altered on our preference, including their individual volume. As most gaming-oriented headsets, the punchy bass is noticeable even at the stock settings, but it is not over-the-top in order to cause headaches after prolonged use; we can adjust its intensity by using the 10-band Equalizer but we can as well enable the vibration unit for even more immersion. read more