2014: Year in Review

September

Asus X99 Deluxe

What better match for your £800 Core i7-5960X than this £300 monster from Asus? The X99 Deluxe has it all – 12 SATA 6Gbps ports, SATA Express support, two M.2 connectors, upgraded audio circuitry, onboard overclocking tools and heaps of fan and USB 3 headers. It even comes with a PCI-E M.2 adaptor card. Essentially every part of the motherboard has been tweaked to be the best or most available, hence the insane price tag. The UEFI is also up to Asus's usual high standards. We can't imagine there are many people out there truly capable of utilising everything this board offers to the full potential, and there are many better value X99 motherboards available, but for an all-singing, all-dancing, multi-GPU monster, we can think of little better, as it really looks the part as well.

Nvidia GeForce GTX 970

While we were still trying to keep up with the unexpectedly early Haswell-E and X99 launch, Nvidia dropped its high-end Maxwell GPUs, the GTX 980 and GTX 970 – September was a fun time to be a hardware reviewer. We can't complain too much however, as thankfully both cards were awesome, but it was without doubt the GTX 970 that stole the show thanks to an unusually aggressive pricing strategy from the green team. The card matched excellent performance with almost unbelievable efficiency, making it the sub-£300 card of choice. Credit in particular has to go to the MSI GTX 970 Gaming 4G for winning our mini launch day roundup – it's an awesome graphics card through and through.

ASRock Fatal1ty X99M Killer

As our X99 motherboard coverage continued, we came across this gem. Mini-ITX is out of the question for X99, but micro-ATX is a viable option if you want maximum power in as small a space as possible. The Fatal1ty X99M Killer, which not only looks the part but performs well too and can overclock a Haswell-E CPU as well as many of its full-size counterparts. It's worth mentioning that we actually kicked off 2015 with a review of Gigabyte's new X99M-Gaming 5, and found it to be just as good as ASRock's. If micro-ATX and X99 is the way for you, look closely at the features and choose what's best. Either way, ASRock deserves credit here for getting there first!

Corsair Gaming K70 RGB

While it may have been overshadowed by Haswell-E, X99 and Maxwell, September was also a big month for Corsair, which launched its new gaming brand, aptly named Corsair Gaming. Marking the launch was release of the much-anticipated K70 RGB mechanical keyboard, based on the fantastic design of Vengeance K70. With per-key RGB backlighting and macro support added to every single key thanks to the use of timed-exclusive Cherry MX RGB switches, the K70 RGB set a new high for features in a mechanical keyboard. It looks awesome and feels even better to use, and while the software could use some work on the user-interface side, it's crazy how much it can do.

News

• Microsoft refuses US email data order
  
• Dell unveils curved UltraSharp U3415W
  
• Samsung enters the virtual reality race
  
• AMD signs FreeSync deal with scaler makers
  
• Intel launches first Broadwell Core M chips
  
• HGST announces world's first 10TB hard drive
  
• Cooler Master announces NovaTouch TKL
  
• Oculus VR announces new prototype
  
• VESA adds DisplayPort to USB Type-C standard
  
• Raijintek unveils Triton all-in-one liquid cooler