In the Lab - Steam Link & Controllers, VOID, CPUs

The Latest Gaming Tech Reviews and News: A Sneak Peek at What's Coming Up

We're just around the corner from our next big review, and it's going to be a doozy. Right now, we're taking a closer look at MSI's Be 150 Pro Gaming Motherboard, a board that promises top-notch performance for its chipset price tag. The Be 150 is technically classified as a business-focused chipset by Intel, but don't worry – it's perfectly fine for gaming, too. Similar to the H170i 110 we reviewed in the past, this board has some limitations when it comes to overclocking, but that shouldn't be an issue for most gamers.

One thing that caught our eye right off the bat was the unique color scheme on the board itself. Specifically, there's a little strip running along the right side of the board that's... let's call it "undyed." It's not entirely clear if this is a pre-production feature or just the final product, but what we do know is that there are LEDs embedded in this strip, and you can run them through different colors. We're particularly fond of the red color scheme because it ties in nicely with the rest of the board's design, which is dominated by red and black hues.

For those who may not be familiar, RGB LEDs have become incredibly popular in gaming hardware over the past few years – we've seen everything from keyboards to headsets get their own custom lighting schemes. And now, MSI is joining the party with its Be 150 motherboard. We're excited to see how this board performs in real-world use cases and will be putting it through a thorough review in the coming days.

In other news, our team has been working on some exciting new content for you guys. Unfortunately, we can't reveal too much just yet, but rest assured that we'll have some big announcements coming soon. We're talking about video card reviews, CPU benchmarks, and possibly even some new hardware from MSI itself. We'll be testing out the MSI 3 90 X motherboard, which is a permanent sample that will be used in future benchmarks – we hope to see some updated GPU benchmarking with all the driver changes and updates that have been happening lately.

In addition to our usual suspects, we've also got a new CPU from Intel on the horizon. We'll be putting this chip through its paces on our Be 150 motherboard (if it's non-K, of course!) and will see how it stacks up against the competition. More details on that one as we get closer.

Finally, we wanted to give a shoutout to all of you who have been supporting us on Patreon – your help has been invaluable in allowing us to keep creating content like this for you. If you don't have the means to contribute to our Patreon right now, it's still the biggest help you can give us: just share our videos with your friends and family, post them online, or spread the word about what we do here. We appreciate it all!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: eneveryone i'm steve from gamers nexus dotnet and this is our first episode of a new segment we're calling the shop and the whole purpose of this is to give you a behind-the-scenes look and some sneak peeks at upcoming hardware maybe games but mostly hardware that we're working on behind the scenes what we're working on reviewing and testing actively and hopefully provide some insight earlier as to what we think of those products before the finalized review so this week we're working on a few things we've got to steam controllers with a steam link I'll talk about those in a moment we've got the corsair void headset Logitech's new G 933 wireless headset which i reviewed the G 633 wired version of it basically the same thing with a couple of differences and like Wireless and then we've also got the MSI be 150 a pro motherboard and a couple of new Intel skylake skews four cpus and I'm going to be honest I actually don't know what skews they are just yet because I haven't connected them to a board yet and the IHS on the CPUs is marked as Intel confidential so haven't plugged them in yet don't know what they are but should be fun to test and we'll get a more complete intel sky like cpu lineup out there soon in terms of benchmarks but let's go back to the steam stuff so from valve we have to steam controllers and the steam link the controllers are somewhat similar to the Xbox 360 controller if you have an xbox 360 wireless controller the profile is similar but the buttons are actually pretty different and this is maybe something that most of you already know but the main thing is the input device so instead of using multiple analog joysticks valve has opted for a haptic input device for the right thumbstick and also for the d-pad so when you roll around on those you'll feel a haptic vibration similar to what you get from modern phones when texting so that's pretty interesting we're working on reviewing that and then the steam link is probably the lesser-known of steam and valves hardware operation right now the link is similar to the doco if you remember that from NZXT and the link basically serves as a video and USB pass-through to transfer your remotely rendered game data to a TV so the way that works is you have a system set up maybe in you bedroom or whatever and that's rendering your game content with your high-end GPU cpu all that that uses the on die encoder on the GPU passes that data via internet land to the link and then the link passes that data via HDMI to your TV the purpose of this is to allow remote rendering of your game content and playback on maybe like a family TV or family room set up living room set up something like that the objective being more group or party style play of games without having the main be spc located adjacent to the TV and the steam link also serves as a USB passthrough so you connect your controllers your wireless keyboard things like that to the link which is located near your TV may be mounted to the back of it you connect those two the link that takes the USB input passes it to your remote system which then processes the input as normally as you would normally process it then passes back and forth for whatever other data you're transmitting between the two devices so this introduces some latency to your input and we're not sure what that latency is just yet we haven't measured it yet that's hence this video but the latency should be pretty low and then just brief hands-on plane I can tell you that it is pretty unnoticeable for most games now if you're playing competitively playing competitive csgo you want to mitigate that latency wherever possible and trying to compete with a pass-through device is probably not the best idea but for most other games it's it's fine it's certainly playable for RPGs and things of that nature moving on to the corsair void this is Corsairs wireless headset so this is a pretty cool one I actually really like this so far the review is forthcoming of course I'm sure I'll have some things to complain about it as always but overall I do like this headset quite a bit and it looks like it's going to become my primary headset pushing aside the plantronics gamecom 780 8 which is actually for a 50 to 60 dollar headset when my favorite options out there so the void is very good the corsair void is $150 wireless headset uses a radiofrequency transmitter connected to basically an amplifier if you have the the special edition whatever it's called limited edition maybe and that connects to us so you have a USB going to a dongle that extends the range of the radiofrequency transmitter the wireless transmitter that connects to your headset and I've gotten pretty good range i can walk probably it's about 60 70 feet line of sight i mean if you have a straight line to the receiver transmitter then you get about 70 feet if you're working around a house obviously it's different because you have walls that damage the range of the signal pretty heavily but i can still walk around a couple of rooms with that problem so i'm a fan of that and i like using it for conference calls press events things like that where i can just walk around mute my mic and continue doing things that i actually need to do while listening to the press event so pretty cool the audio quality is very good I haven't done a direct comparison yet with a g9 33g 633 headsets from Logitech but it is certainly up there competing with them if not slightly worse you're slightly better than them and the microphone is decent quality it's better than the logitech headset quality from our previous review you can check that out and surprisingly it's still not quite as good as the game calm but it's it's a good Mike I can't complain too much so more on that coming up that is an RGB headset price at one hundred fifty dollars and we'll have a full review pretty soon I'm not sure one yet but either this week end of this week or early next the next item we're looking at is MSI's be 150 a pro gaming motherboard so this is a be 150 motherboard as indicated by the name that means it's chipset is be 150 not the Z 170 flagship chipset that we've all become familiar with the performance great chipset and we also looked at in h1 70 board the biostar board reviews already on the site video reviews forthcoming so we had a couple of boards to look at with this msi be 150 a pro motherboard the be 150 board is technically using a chipset classified for business by intel but it's perfectly fine for gaming as well similar to the h 17 th 110 you can kind of use it for mainstream for gaming whatever as long as you're not overclocking that's the primary limitation of these non ze chipsets is the overclocking so we're gonna be looking at the power draw the boot times the security features that's a big thing for the business class chipsets even if it is in a gaming motherboard looking at all that pretty soon as far as the colors on the scheme one thing I did like quite a bit about this already was on the right side of the board there's a little strip that's oddly colored it's it's sort of undyed motherboard and I need to confirm with MSI if that's a pre-production thing or if that's the final sample of the board but what I can tell you for sure is that there are LEDs in this strip off to the side you can run them a couple different colors but it looks good as red because the rest of the board is red and black and that's just sort of a neat feature LEDs are definitely becoming a big thing lately with the keyboards the headsets like the void and the Logitech ones and of course the NZXT hue that we just looked at so that ties the motherboard in more closely with all the other operating devices out there with RGB LEDs pretty cool stuff I'm not sure how it performs just yet so don't go buy it yet wait for a review on that but that's kind of what we're looking at right now so the final two items are the sky lake CPUs and we've got some new video card content coming as well no new video cards but new content and I am getting a couple of existing cards in stock for our first run-through on the r9 380 x for example I've only tested the 380 and 390 at this point but the 380 x is coming from power color we've got a 3 90 x coming from msi as a permanent sample that will be used in future benchmarks particularly with battlefront and i'm hoping to do some updated GPU benchmarks with all the driver changes and things like that that have been going on lately so stay tuned for that in terms of sky lake we've already tested the 6700 k you can find that content on the channel on the site the 6600 ki have and is of course the i5 so that makes it the more popular of the two CPUs and then we've got some other Intel skew that as i said i'm not sure what it is yet but I'm looking forward to testing that as well well I'm hoping it's a non case you will see shortly though and and hopefully put that through the ranks through the benchmarks especially with a be 150 board if it is non k otherwise a little Izzy 170 stuff we have so all that stuff pretty cool looking I'm excited to put out all content we're working more on video as you all know have the set set up have the lights the lav mics which I'm still trying to figure out the best way to hide the conceal the wire but everything is going very well here we're pretty excited with all the benchmarking all the feedback from you guys as always leave comments I do read all of them are almost all of them even if i don't reply to all of them and if you like this type of coverage if you want to help us out check the patreon link in the postural video as always huge help from those of you on that site backing us but if you don't have the the extra funding to spare on patreon it's the biggest help we can get to just share the videos post them places share them with your friends things like that so I will see you all next timeeveryone i'm steve from gamers nexus dotnet and this is our first episode of a new segment we're calling the shop and the whole purpose of this is to give you a behind-the-scenes look and some sneak peeks at upcoming hardware maybe games but mostly hardware that we're working on behind the scenes what we're working on reviewing and testing actively and hopefully provide some insight earlier as to what we think of those products before the finalized review so this week we're working on a few things we've got to steam controllers with a steam link I'll talk about those in a moment we've got the corsair void headset Logitech's new G 933 wireless headset which i reviewed the G 633 wired version of it basically the same thing with a couple of differences and like Wireless and then we've also got the MSI be 150 a pro motherboard and a couple of new Intel skylake skews four cpus and I'm going to be honest I actually don't know what skews they are just yet because I haven't connected them to a board yet and the IHS on the CPUs is marked as Intel confidential so haven't plugged them in yet don't know what they are but should be fun to test and we'll get a more complete intel sky like cpu lineup out there soon in terms of benchmarks but let's go back to the steam stuff so from valve we have to steam controllers and the steam link the controllers are somewhat similar to the Xbox 360 controller if you have an xbox 360 wireless controller the profile is similar but the buttons are actually pretty different and this is maybe something that most of you already know but the main thing is the input device so instead of using multiple analog joysticks valve has opted for a haptic input device for the right thumbstick and also for the d-pad so when you roll around on those you'll feel a haptic vibration similar to what you get from modern phones when texting so that's pretty interesting we're working on reviewing that and then the steam link is probably the lesser-known of steam and valves hardware operation right now the link is similar to the doco if you remember that from NZXT and the link basically serves as a video and USB pass-through to transfer your remotely rendered game data to a TV so the way that works is you have a system set up maybe in you bedroom or whatever and that's rendering your game content with your high-end GPU cpu all that that uses the on die encoder on the GPU passes that data via internet land to the link and then the link passes that data via HDMI to your TV the purpose of this is to allow remote rendering of your game content and playback on maybe like a family TV or family room set up living room set up something like that the objective being more group or party style play of games without having the main be spc located adjacent to the TV and the steam link also serves as a USB passthrough so you connect your controllers your wireless keyboard things like that to the link which is located near your TV may be mounted to the back of it you connect those two the link that takes the USB input passes it to your remote system which then processes the input as normally as you would normally process it then passes back and forth for whatever other data you're transmitting between the two devices so this introduces some latency to your input and we're not sure what that latency is just yet we haven't measured it yet that's hence this video but the latency should be pretty low and then just brief hands-on plane I can tell you that it is pretty unnoticeable for most games now if you're playing competitively playing competitive csgo you want to mitigate that latency wherever possible and trying to compete with a pass-through device is probably not the best idea but for most other games it's it's fine it's certainly playable for RPGs and things of that nature moving on to the corsair void this is Corsairs wireless headset so this is a pretty cool one I actually really like this so far the review is forthcoming of course I'm sure I'll have some things to complain about it as always but overall I do like this headset quite a bit and it looks like it's going to become my primary headset pushing aside the plantronics gamecom 780 8 which is actually for a 50 to 60 dollar headset when my favorite options out there so the void is very good the corsair void is $150 wireless headset uses a radiofrequency transmitter connected to basically an amplifier if you have the the special edition whatever it's called limited edition maybe and that connects to us so you have a USB going to a dongle that extends the range of the radiofrequency transmitter the wireless transmitter that connects to your headset and I've gotten pretty good range i can walk probably it's about 60 70 feet line of sight i mean if you have a straight line to the receiver transmitter then you get about 70 feet if you're working around a house obviously it's different because you have walls that damage the range of the signal pretty heavily but i can still walk around a couple of rooms with that problem so i'm a fan of that and i like using it for conference calls press events things like that where i can just walk around mute my mic and continue doing things that i actually need to do while listening to the press event so pretty cool the audio quality is very good I haven't done a direct comparison yet with a g9 33g 633 headsets from Logitech but it is certainly up there competing with them if not slightly worse you're slightly better than them and the microphone is decent quality it's better than the logitech headset quality from our previous review you can check that out and surprisingly it's still not quite as good as the game calm but it's it's a good Mike I can't complain too much so more on that coming up that is an RGB headset price at one hundred fifty dollars and we'll have a full review pretty soon I'm not sure one yet but either this week end of this week or early next the next item we're looking at is MSI's be 150 a pro gaming motherboard so this is a be 150 motherboard as indicated by the name that means it's chipset is be 150 not the Z 170 flagship chipset that we've all become familiar with the performance great chipset and we also looked at in h1 70 board the biostar board reviews already on the site video reviews forthcoming so we had a couple of boards to look at with this msi be 150 a pro motherboard the be 150 board is technically using a chipset classified for business by intel but it's perfectly fine for gaming as well similar to the h 17 th 110 you can kind of use it for mainstream for gaming whatever as long as you're not overclocking that's the primary limitation of these non ze chipsets is the overclocking so we're gonna be looking at the power draw the boot times the security features that's a big thing for the business class chipsets even if it is in a gaming motherboard looking at all that pretty soon as far as the colors on the scheme one thing I did like quite a bit about this already was on the right side of the board there's a little strip that's oddly colored it's it's sort of undyed motherboard and I need to confirm with MSI if that's a pre-production thing or if that's the final sample of the board but what I can tell you for sure is that there are LEDs in this strip off to the side you can run them a couple different colors but it looks good as red because the rest of the board is red and black and that's just sort of a neat feature LEDs are definitely becoming a big thing lately with the keyboards the headsets like the void and the Logitech ones and of course the NZXT hue that we just looked at so that ties the motherboard in more closely with all the other operating devices out there with RGB LEDs pretty cool stuff I'm not sure how it performs just yet so don't go buy it yet wait for a review on that but that's kind of what we're looking at right now so the final two items are the sky lake CPUs and we've got some new video card content coming as well no new video cards but new content and I am getting a couple of existing cards in stock for our first run-through on the r9 380 x for example I've only tested the 380 and 390 at this point but the 380 x is coming from power color we've got a 3 90 x coming from msi as a permanent sample that will be used in future benchmarks particularly with battlefront and i'm hoping to do some updated GPU benchmarks with all the driver changes and things like that that have been going on lately so stay tuned for that in terms of sky lake we've already tested the 6700 k you can find that content on the channel on the site the 6600 ki have and is of course the i5 so that makes it the more popular of the two CPUs and then we've got some other Intel skew that as i said i'm not sure what it is yet but I'm looking forward to testing that as well well I'm hoping it's a non case you will see shortly though and and hopefully put that through the ranks through the benchmarks especially with a be 150 board if it is non k otherwise a little Izzy 170 stuff we have so all that stuff pretty cool looking I'm excited to put out all content we're working more on video as you all know have the set set up have the lights the lav mics which I'm still trying to figure out the best way to hide the conceal the wire but everything is going very well here we're pretty excited with all the benchmarking all the feedback from you guys as always leave comments I do read all of them are almost all of them even if i don't reply to all of them and if you like this type of coverage if you want to help us out check the patreon link in the postural video as always huge help from those of you on that site backing us but if you don't have the the extra funding to spare on patreon it's the biggest help we can get to just share the videos post them places share them with your friends things like that so I will see you all next time\n"