Month: February 2015

Plextor M6e Black Edition (256GB) Review

By Tarinder Sandhu @ Hexus

Storage company Plextor has experimented with producing solid-state drives (SSD) using various form factors. SATA remains the overriding favourite even though it’s limited in terms of interface speed, but Plextor has also released drives using the M.2 and PCIe form factors. This hybrid approach leads to the M6e drive mating a Marvell 88SS9183 controller with Toshiba NAND connecting to the system either via the bare M.2 drive or via AHCI-compliant PCIe through the use of an adapter card. Selecting the older AHCI standard enables Plextor to get the latest M6e Black Edition out to retail quickly without having to wait for the controller manufacturer – in this instance Marvell – to qualify NVMe drives, though such support is coming soon.

Read The Review Here

Hardware Storage | Donster | February 17, 2015 |

MSI X99S MPower Review: Sting Like a Bee

By Ian Cutress @ AnandTech

In our recent run of overclocking focused motherboards, we have had a couple of interesting contenders. Sub $300 is a difficult market to attack for X99 overclockers, and MSI brings the X99S MPower which is the focus of today’s review.

Read The Review Here

Hardware Motherboards | Donster | February 17, 2015 |

Just Announced Hardware for 17 February 2015

Check out these latest hardware announcements for today from around the web. Also included are some hardware news bits, and on some days, a few rumors tossed in for good measure. Click on the links below to read the official press release, visit the products web page, or to an independent news source.

Hardware | Donster | February 17, 2015 |

Historical Article: After Dunkirk

The Battle of France June 1940

By John Dudek @ The Wargamer

Time: 0900 hours 5 June 1940

Location: The village of Vandy France

The French artillery officer crouched low over the camouflaged WW I vintage, 75mm. cannon pointing towards the turn in the road a hundred yards away from the French farmyard they were concealed in. His gun crew were itching for action that was guaranteed to be not long in coming. As he looked through his binoculars, a column of German tanks, trucks and support infantry vehicles swung into view a few hundred yards distant and the gun crew quickly made their gun elevation and directional corrections. They aimed at the lead tank and awaited the “firing” order. The first round missed the lead tank but nailed the second one immediately behind it. That tank slewed out of line and drove off the road into a ditch to begin burning and “brewing up.” The second French artillery round nailed the lead tank squarely as well and it too began to burn, its crew evacuated the vehicle, only to be taken under flanking fire from hidden French automatic weapons fire. The third tank halted abruptly to begin sweeping the farmyard with machine gun and tank gunfire as the trucks and half tracks behind it began disgorging its supporting troops onto the ground. This was what the French officers in the farm house were waiting for as their Major emerged shouting and waving his sword. “Mes amis! Mes frères! Baïonnettes de charge!” (My friends, my brothers! Charge Bayonets!) A company of enraged, blood thirsty French infantry with bayonet fixed rifles and with their officers leading them, charged the shocked and surprised dismounted German infantry to quickly put them all to the sword, sparing only the rare few who managed to flee. A badly wounded German gefreiter, (private) lying next to one of the burning trucks coughed up blood as he tried to hold in his guts that had been recently pierced by a French poilu’s bayonet. He shook his head in disbelief saying: “I thought the war in France was over.”

Read on…

Military History | Donster | February 10, 2015 |

Vietnam ’65 Release Date Announced

I do not believe that the men who served in uniform in Vietnam have been given the credit they deserve. It was a difficult war against an unorthodox enemy..” (William Westmoreland – Chief of Staff of the US Army from 1968 to 1972)

Vietnam ’65, the new counter-insurgency strategy game by Every Single Soldier, has an official release date! We’re releasing on March 5th and streaming it live tomorrow at 2 pm EST/20.00 CET.

Developer Every Single Soldier aims to capture the specifics of the Vietnam War. At the head of the US forces, you will have to forget what you have learnt from other strategy games and think differently to destroy the enemy: building a safe logistic chain, gathering intelligence through the local villages, calling in air support on time, revealing the Ho Chi Minh trail, and minimizing casualties will be crucial to securing political support and eliminating the invisible Viet Cong threat!

Check it out tomorrow as we are going to give you a sneak peak of the game on the official Twitch channel of the Slitherine Group!

Get more information on Vietnam ‘65 from its official product page.

Strategy and Wargaming Vietnam '65 | Donster | February 10, 2015 |

Total War: Attila Gets Insane Unboxing Video

Source: GameInformer

The special edition of Creative Assemblies’ newest strategy sim, Total War: Attila, will include three new playable factions, a 64-page biography, and a double-sided poster, but you don’t want me yammering on about this game. Watch someone take an arrow to the knee while trying to do an unboxing. One of these developers is about to get the short straw when trying to do an unboxing video.

Strategy and Wargaming Total War: Attila | Donster | February 10, 2015 |

Sniper Elite’s ‘Zombie Army Trilogy’ PC Release Date Announced

Zombie Army Trilogy rising March 6th!

Independent UK studio Rebellion has confirmed that its intense, upcoming shooter Zombie Army Trilogy will be released globally on March 6 for Playstation 4, Xbox One and PC.

Available as a digital download on Steam, Xbox Live and the Playstation Network, the console editions will also see a physical release in most regions, marking the studio’s first foray into retail publishing.

Zombie Army Trilogy is the first chance for console owners to experience the blood-pumping co-op shooters that became a cult sensation on PC. Delivering 15 missions of intense solo and co-op survival, Zombie Army Trilogy comes packed with exclusive new content including a new third campaign, new horde mode, new player characters and more.

As a thank you to those fans who supported the series on PC, Rebellion is still offering an exclusive discount of up to 60% to owners of the first two Nazi Zombie Army games via Steam.

To celebrate the announcement Rebellion also released eight blood-curdling new screenshots which can be viewed on the official Zombie Army Trilogy website.

First-Person Shooters Zombie Army Trilogy | Donster | February 10, 2015 |

Crucial Ballistix Elite DDR4-2666 16GB Memory Kit Review

Author: MAC @ Hardware Canucks

All the way back in June, Crucial – the consumer arm of semiconductor giant Micron – announced their Ballistix Elite DDR4 memory modules. These sticks boasted fairly standard speeds of DDR4-2666 and DDR4-3000, but what really caught our eye were the heat spreaders. Frankly, they were sleekest and most badass heat spreaders that we had ever seen, and combined with the black PCB it made for an unusually eye-catching stick of RAM. Not only that, these modules featured built-in thermal sensors that allowed for real-time temperature monitoring via a custom Ballistix utility. A fast, great-looking memory module with sensors and its own utility? Sign us up!

Read The Review Here

Hardware Memory | Donster | February 10, 2015 |

Corsair Hydro Series H110i GT Review

By Parm Mann @ HEXUS

If you’ve been considering a high-end Corsair Hydro Series liquid cooler in recent years, you’ve probably faced a common dilemma: do you opt for the feature-packed H100i or its larger cousin, the ‘extreme performance’ H110?

A first-world problem, for sure, but one you no longer need to face as Corsair has combined the feature set of the H100i and the size of the H110 with a new flagship Hydro Series package dubbed the H110i GT. Priced at £100, this is one of the dearest all-in-one liquid coolers ever released, so let’s see if such extravagance makes sense for enthusiast builders.

Read The Review Here

Hardware System Cooling | Donster | February 10, 2015 |

Just Announced Hardware for 10 February 2015

Hardware | Donster | February 10, 2015 |