When it comes to motherboards, they really do come in every shape and size. With high performance gaming motherboards, generally you have to get a full ATX motherboard to get a wide selection of features. Micro ATX is a little smaller but not small enough for true portability. That’s where Mini-ITX comes into play. Most of the Mini-ITX boards on the market use the older 775 socket and have a limited number of features. Today we have the opportunity to take a look at Gigabytes H55N-USB3, their first Mini-ITX board. With my recent obsession with small form factor gaming rigs, you will have to forgive my excitement to check this out.

CLICK HERE FOR Gigabyte GA-H55N-USB3 PRICING & SHOPPING

Today we have the opportunity to checkout Corsair’s new line of CPU coolers. Corsair has two different series of CPU coolers: the Air Series and the Hydro Series. We have a chance to check out the Air Series A50, which is mainly designed to out beat entry-level and stock CPU coolers. This is the first ever CPU cooler from Corsair that we’ve reviewed here at ThinkComputers, so let’s take a look further into Corsairs’ investments into CPU Cooling.

CLICK HERE FOR Corsair A50 Performance CPU Cooler PRICING & SHOPPING

MSI's GTX 460 HAWK is the flagship GeForce GTX 460 from MSI. It comes with a quiet Twin Frozr II cooler, 1 GB of memory and 781 MHz core clock out of the box. MSI has also expanded on the voltmodding capability of the card which supports software control for three voltages.

In the market for the best CPU cooler for the buck? Cooler Master's V6 GT is the one to look out for. It features a great design that's both appealing to look at and efficient in doing its job, and despite it taking up less room over all compared to other mega-coolers out there, it offers exceptional cooling ability.

Inside of the box we find a USB 3.0 cable, a USB power adapter, instruction manual, software, and the enclosure itself. The Gauntlet features a very nice black aluminum finish. It has a bit of a heft to it, but it really feels solid in the hand. I suspect it could take quite a beating and still protect the drive inside - well, more so with a solid state drive than a traditional spinning disk. The top of the enclosure displays the Gauntlet logo with the Patriot logo on the front.

A dual 120mm fan CPU Cooler with great performance, silent running, good looks and a price tag of $49? The latest Thermaltake CPU Cooler named Jing offers that much and then some.

The Mjölner also known as Thors Hammer is depicted in Norse mythology as one of the most fearsome weapons, capable of leveling mountains. The Hammer was forged by Sindri (or Eitri) and his brother Brokkr after Loki bet his head that they could not make something as beautiful as what the dwarves named the Sons of Ivaldi had made (Odins Spear [Gungnir] and Freyers Foldable Boat [Skídbladnir]). Well Loki lost this bet when the Hammer was created and because of a technicality having to do with not being able to cut off the head because the neck being cut was not part of the deal, so Brokkr sewed Loki’s mouth shut. So now that we have a history of this fabled hammer let’s see what this beautiful piece of engineering can do for your CPU Cooling needs. Will the Xigmatek Thors Hammer Live up to its Heritage or will we have to sew some mouths shut, let’s find out:

CLICK HERE FOR Xigmatek Thors Hammer PRICING & SHOPPING

CLICK HERE FOR TWEAKNEWS.NET'S REVIEW ON THIS PRODUCT

So far our personal favorite on the budget category has remained the Antec Three hundred. Now Cooler Master has designed a competitor to the 300 - The Elite 430 Black.

CLICK HERE FOR Cooler Master Elite 430 PRICING & SHOPPING

Today, we take a look at the ECS A890GXM-A, a new board based on the 890GX chipset from AMD. This board is part of the Black Series of motherboards from ECS, which means that it is a board that is geared more to the performance and overclocking end for enthusiasts. The Black series seems to have done very well, and we expect to see some great results as we test this board today...

CLICK HERE FOR ECS A890GXM-A AMD 890GX Motherboard PRICING & SHOPPING

Today for review I’ve got another notebook from HP, the ProBook 4720s. This notebook could be called business frugal, as it’s their business class of notebooks but it’s less costly than others. The design of it is very classy with it’s stylish brushed aluminum covers to it’s glossy keyboard. The 4720s is a Corei5 based notebooks with a 500gb hard drive, ATI video and 4gigs of ram running Windows 7. It also features three USB ports, HDMI, eSATA along with a 17.3” LED backlit LCD.

CLICK HERE FOR HP ProBook 4720s PRICING & SHOPPING

Today we are going to look at one of Arctic’s other gaming headsets, the P321, which is not quite as feature-filled as the P531 which we reviewed last week. So it carries a lower price tag which makes it more available to more budget-restricted users. We look forward to seeing how they compare with their bigger brother in our tests.

In this review we take a closer look at two budget friendly AMD motherboards from Gigabyte; 880GMA-UD2H with integrated GPU and the 870A-UD3. Do they stand a chance against high end AMD boards?

CLICK HERE FOR Gigabyte GA-880GMA-UD2H PRICING & SHOPPING

CLICK HERE FOR Gigabyte GA-870A-UD3 PRICING & SHOPPING

The new ASUS netbook, namely the 12" 1215N model, is one of the most powerful Eee PCs to have appeared thus far. First of all, ASUS has installed Intel's Atom D525, the new dual-core hyperthreading-enabled 1.8 GHz CPU, first presented at this year's Computex fair. D525 is actually the heir to the well-known D510 Atom CPU working at 1.66 GHz, but now also contains both DDR2 and DDR3 memory support...

Though USB 3.0 is now becoming affordable to a average user, the amount of products that fully utilize its performance is small. There are already many USB 3.0 devices, but most of them are designed for single bay hard drives, especially in the 3.5' and 2.5' form factors, neither of which take advantage of the full performance of the USB 3.0 interface. Users can choose USB 3.0 compatible SSDs, which offer the full performance advantages of USB 3.0, but these SSDs are often expensive and lacking in storage capacity. Whether backing up files, or working on film editing through the USB 3.0 interface, the capacity and performance of the USB 3.0 device will determine which product users will choose.

After spending several weeks playing with the ASUS AT3IONT-I Deluxe Mini-ITX motherboard all I can say is - WOW! This motherboard is very impressive. With integrated Bluetooth, WiFi, a multimedia remote control, and even a power supply built in, you're well on your way to getting your media center up and running without buying much else.

CLICK HERE FOR ASUS AT3IONT-I Deluxe PRICING & SHOPPING

NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 460 graphics solution has convincingly dominated the mid-range price point, and its GF104 Fermi architecture threatens several competing high-performance products. Our benchmark tests have concluded that both the 768MB and 1GB version can offer great gaming performance, along with outstanding overclocking headroom. Combined into a SLI set, two stock-speed GeForce GTX 460's compete with the Radeon HD 5870 in terms of frame rate performance. In this article, Benchmark Reviews takes the highly overclocked PNY 'XLR8 Black Box' video card (model VCGGTX4601XPB-OC) and compares it against a field of DirectX-11 graphics solutions. If you're shopping for a powerful middle-market video card, this externally-exhausting 1GB GeForce GTX 460 product could be the perfect fit.

Recently we received a new memory kit from Crucial that is part of their Ballistix line. We decided to test this kit on the AMD platform to see how they would fare. Considering that AMD can be picky with certain modules, we found this particular set quite interesting. Let’s take a closer look shall we?

CLICK HERE FOR Crucial Ballistix (2×2GB) DDR3 1600MHz PRICING & SHOPPING

GARDEN GROVE, California, Aug. 24th, 2010 - Zalman USA, Inc. the worldwide leading quiet cooling solution providers in the PC industry have joined forces with ZOTAC International, a leading innovator and the world’s largest channel manufacturer of graphics cards, motherboards and mini-PCs to showcase its latest technologies to the gaming community at PAX Prime 2010 in Seattle, WA.

“We are honored to partner with ZOTAC International at PAX Prime 2010, the premiere gaming event for enthusiasts. ZOTAC and Zalman enjoy a close partnership and the combination of their new GTX 480 AMP! Edition with Zalman VF3000 cooler and it will set new standards in PC gaming. “Says Chinny Chuang, Marketing Manager of Zalman USA.

Visit the ZALMAN / ZOTAC booth at the Washington State Convention & Trade Center, booth #882, Sept. 3-5, 2010 to see our hardware demonstrations and participate in the AVA Battle Tournament for a chance to win prizes. Final qualifiers in the AVA Battle Tournament have a chance to win a complete gaming system powered by ZALMAN, ZOTAC, Intel, GIGABYTE and Kingston hardware. Moreover, we are hosting raffle events on site twice a day so stop by to get freebies from your favorite PC companies. More info: http://www.zotacusa.com/zotac-zalman-pax-prime-2010

Also, come check out Zalman’s exclusive passive Stereotropic 3D monitors demoing some of the hottest games in full 1080P 3D. Zalman 3D monitor combined with ZOTAC GTX 480 AMP! Edition results in gorgeous visuals displayed in awe-inspiring 3D that will literally blow you away!

Coolermaster backed up this claim once with the Sentinel which is a great gaming mouse and believe it or not ended up connected to my main rig as a permanent part. The Sentinel is super fast and looks the part. But one of the comforting factors of the Sentinel is its comfort. It compared to my old G9 when it came to fitting under your palm.

The Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-HX5 is a 10.2-megapixel digital camera that is small enough to fit inside a pocket, but gives you excellent image quality, 1080p video recording, and an excellent user interface. There are also a few added features, like a GPS and compass for geotagging and a large, 3-inch LCD.

CLICK HERE FOR Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-HX5 PRICING & SHOPPING

BitFenix may be a new brand but their first product has landed. The Colossus case is so large that you simply cannot miss it. It is packed to the rim with new and unique features, which make you wonder what we did without them before. We take an in-depth look at the retail version of this massive EATX case that goes for a very affordable 159 Euros.

From the onset when I saw ‘Designed for Overclocking’ on the box it was clear the Frio was meant to perform, and with that statement on the box it better. On this front the Frio delivered as it matched the performance of other top air coolers. Combined with compatibility for all of the newest CPU sockets, two fans and built in fan speed controllers the Frio is certainly an attractive option to keep your CPU cool.

CLICK HERE FOR ThermalTake Frio PRICING & SHOPPING

CLICK HERE FOR TWEAKNEWS.NET'S REVIEW ON THIS PRODUCT

Netbooks are growing up right before our eyes. When they first surfaced, the screens were in the 7-inch range. They then grew to a norm of 10-inches and today the 12.1-inch netbook is fast becoming one of the most popular sizes on the market. These machines have more screen space and perhaps more importantly a larger keyboard than the 10-inch netbooks we typically see.

Today we'll review three graphics cards with ATI Radeon GPUs. The reason for the selection is simple: all three simply happened to be in our lab at the same time. All three cards have custom design and original coolers, so reviewing them promises to be interesting.

CLICK HERE FOR Gigabyte GV-R575SL-1GI PRICING & SHOPPING

CLICK HERE FOR MSI R5770 HAWK PRICING & SHOPPING

Gaming can be a dangerous sport, well virtually dangerous at least. At anytime you can be cut down by the next wave, having a little extra Armor is never a bad thing. Today we will be looking at your potential gaming wing man the Thermaltake Armor A60. This beautiful budget gaming chassis will make a great addition to any gaming rig and should impress even the most skeptical when they see the price tag. Although it may not actually help you physically in game at least you can look a little cooler at your next LAN event instead of sporting your moms Dell Case you decided to make your first build in, sure you should take pride in your first build but not if it makes you a pariah amongst the uber geeks of this world. Let’s take a look at the A60 and see if it is the best choice for your current or future builds:

CLICK HERE FOR Thermaltake Armor A60 PRICING & SHOPPING

ASRock does their thing as they bring another motherboard to market with one of the latest chipsets in the 880G Extreme3 motherboard. With features features like USB 3.0, SATA3 (6 Gb/s), eSATA3 ports, onboard AMD Radeon HD 4250 graphics and CPU core unlocking technology, how does this stack up to the competition? We intend to find out as we place it against the ECS A890GXM-A motherboard!

So here we are again with another printer from Canon for review. Last week I had the MG6120 All-in-one, today I have the MG8120 All-in-one photo printer. There’s some slight differences between them like the 8120 is physically taller, it has a larger LCD display and it has the ability to scan negatives and print pictures from them. There’s also a price difference of about $100 between them, but other than that there’s not much more different, both printers offer a very good choice, both are easy to use and both produce excellent results.

Today we’re going to look at the latest addition to SteelSeries’ range, the 7H gaming headset, which is targeted at the most serious of gamers.

With the 7H, SteelSeries has used a completely different design to the popular Siberia V2 headset meaning it provides a different experience which may appeal more to different people. There are commonalities between the two, though, including the 50mm driver units and pull-out microphone.

A few weeks back, AMD quietly released a couple of new graphics cards in the Radeon HD 5500 series. For a while there, starting with the Radeon HD 5870 in late September of last year, it seemed like AMD was releasing a new series of graphics cards aimed at different price points, practically every few weeks. Things slowed down a bit once the company had a complete top-to-bottom line-up of DX11 and Eyefinity capable cards from prices ranging from about $49 to $600, but obviously AMD wasn’t quite done beefing up the Radeon HD 5000 series.

CLICK HERE FOR ATI Radeon HD 5500 PRICING & SHOPPING

Equipped with an 80mm 'SilenX Effizio Series Quiet Fan', the SilenX EFZ-80HA2 heatsink makes for one compact little cooler, a heatsink small enough to use in a Media PC or compact computer enclosure. The heatsink is all but tiny compared to many of today's tower heatsinks, which is good because there aren't that many small CPU coolers to choose from anymore. Most remarkably though, the EFZ-80HA2 uses only two 6mm diameter copper heatpipes!

Overall, it was a pleasure having only one charger with me. It lightened my everyday load and made charging my devices more efficient than ever. At an MSRP price of $79.95 this power adapter beats the price points for the tremendously over priced OEM replacements and adds more functionality to it as well. For the price, I gave the adapter a rating of 8 because while it is well worth the price, there are other competing adapters in the $50 to $60 range.

FREMONT, California — August 31, 2010 — Corsair®, a worldwide designer and supplier of high-performance components to the PC gaming hardware market, today announced the launch of their inaugural audio product, the Gaming Audio Series™ HS1 USB gaming headset. This noise-isolating headset offers long-term playing comfort and immersive multi-channel audio, with massive 50mm drivers and a carefully tuned acoustical design optimized not only for gaming, but for movies and music as well.

The HS1 is loaded with features designed to optimize your gaming experience. The 50mm drivers provide more accurate sound reproduction and far lower distortion than is produced by smaller, more typical drivers. The circumaural, closed-back design helps reject ambient noise and keeps you in the game, even in high-distraction environments like LAN parties. Replaceable memory foam ear pads provide a reliable, comfortable fit that conforms to the shape of your head without binding or pinching. The uni-directional noise-cancelling microphone on an adjustable boom enables clear, low-noise voice chat. The end result is a headset that simply provides a superior gaming experience.

The desktop hardware industry was made popular by knowledgeable members of the community willing to share their overclocking experience with others. Passionate hobbyists aligned with similar goals graciously helped eager learners to tweak hardware components until they performed like the next model in the series, but pre-tweaked enthusiast products were slowly driving down the number of people who qualify as overclockers. It's not easy watching our hobby get dumbed-down to the point where the push of a button can replace years of trial-and-error experience. At some point, the real overclockers will return to save the desktop platform.

With the X58A-UD7 Gigabyte has a very well equipped motherboards in its portfolio which is based on Intels powerful X58 chipset. The board also comes with SATA III and USB 3.0 as standard and is therefore ready to support the latest storage technologies.

CLICK HERE FOR Gigabyte X58A-UD7 PRICING & SHOPPING

Last year we took a look at ASUS’s first external Blu-ray combo drive, the SBC-04D1S-U. It was the perfect external combo drive for a laptop or desktop and received a perfect 10 out of 10 score in our testing. ASUS has updated the SBC-04D1S-U with faster Blu-ray read speeds and a few other features. They are calling this new combo drive the SBC-06D1S-U. Let’s see if ASUS can make this drive any better than the previous drive we tested!

CLICK HERE FOR ASUS SBC-06D1S-U External Slim Blu-ray Combo Drive PRICING & SHOPPING

The Lenovo IdeaCentre A300 is an all-in-one desktop with a unique design for a fairly inexpensive price. It has a 21.5-inch display with a 2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU running 4GB of memory and a 500GB hard drive. The lack of an optical drive, however, does raise some issues, but it makes a good multimedia device for the home.

CLICK HERE FOR Lenovo IdeaCentre A300 PRICING & SHOPPING

Today we are reviewing the Asus Cine5 sound bar in combination with Asus’ older Xonar D2X 7.1 channel sound card. The Cine5 is a compact speaker designed to simulate 5.1 channel sounds with just one front unit. While there are a few similar devices out there, the major advantage of the Cine5 is that it doesn’t require any calibration or adjustment..

CLICK HERE FOR ASUS Cine5 Xonar D2X Sound Card PRICING & SHOPPING

I have seen a lot of love on many forums about the performance capabilities of the H50 we tested not too long ago. What I have seen time and time again, is that users are at least opting for a second fan. I learned over the years that a push/pull setup, when configured correctly, can seriously benefit the efficiency of the cooler. Corsair has listened and read what everyone was saying and revamped the H50. Hopefully with the new ideas and implementations, Corsair’s latest submission could top the charts in AIO cooling.

CLICK HERE FOR Corsair Hydro Series H70 CPU Cooler PRICING & SHOPPING

I for one have never really put much faith into the whole SSD craze. I will admit I am always skeptical until proven wrong. Well I was proven wrong not once but three times. First time I tried an 80GB Solid State Drive from Intel two years ago I was blown away by its performance over other solid state drives, not to mention how it dominated traditional moving parts drives. Then when I tried the solid state hybrid that Seagate put out I was impressed yet again, now for the third and probably not the final time I was able to test out the new X25-M drive from Intel and believe me when I say this I was thoroughly impressed with its performance. Intel sent us not one but 2 SSD’s and a ton of other goodies to give them a thorough testing so let’s see what we were able to achieve and see if SSD gaming is right for you:

CLICK HERE FOR Intel Solid State Gaming X25-M 160GB PRICING & SHOPPING

The Dragon Slayer from In Win is a very nice little case. The metal mesh front and side panels give it a nice look and allow for good air flow. With the Dragon Slayer falling in the $75-100 range it’s got a fair amount of cases to compete with. Unlike most mini towers in its price range the Dragon Slayer has more cooling, can accommodate larger coolers and has the 5th expansion slot that most mini towers don't have. The other side of that coin is that when most are looking at a mini tower they are looking for a small case...

The NetBox-nT330i barebone from Foxconn is an interesting product for those that need a very small media center PC, which can be also used for office applications or browsing the internet; its performance varies depending on what 2.5inch HDD/SSD and DRAM you decide to use with it.

Today we get the chance to put Limited Edition sample 0021 of XFX's Radeon 5970 4GB through its paces. Tests will cover 5760x1080 Eyefinity gaming, GPU computing, HD playback and the usual selection of single screen gameplay... is this the most extreme 5970 ever? Can it play the latest games including Mafia 2 and StarCraft 2 at 5760x1080?

Thermolab's BADA2010 heatsink is equipped with one 95mm PWM fan mounted to the heatsinks' raw aluminum fins with permanently attached rubber vibration absorbing posts. At full speed the Protechnic MGT9212LR-W25 fan rotates at 2100RPM, the baseline is 1000RPM. Weighing 521 grams, Thermolab's BADA2010 heatsink stands 135mm tall and installs onto Intel socket 775/1155/1156/1366 and AMD socket AM2/AM3 processors. Forming the backbone of this heatsink are three 6mm diameter exposed base copper heatpipes.

The Kingwin Dock Master has proven to be a very capable dock. Even though it only has a single USB 3.0 connection, being a high-bandwidth connection and backwards compatible makes it equally as versatile as docks with multiple connector types. The dock itself is solidly built and has the looks to match. Performance-wise the Dock Master is nearly on par with the internal SATA connection when connected via USB 3.0.

When Intel's Clarkdale-based processors were released this past January, Gigabyte jumped into action creating some of the best H55 boards available. With the new Clarkdale-based processors, the H55M includes built in graphics, making this setup great for people looking to build smaller PC's like HTPC's, small form factor web PC's, and small servers. With low power consumption and no need for a GPU (due to Intel's Clarkdale-based CPU), these computers save power and and are extremely efficient. The H55M USB3 we are looking at today also enters the new world of USB 3.0, giving this new setup an extra advantage.

CLICK HERE FOR Gigabyte H55M-USB3 PRICING & SHOPPING

The WD TV Live Plus has some great features over the original Netflix only players. While the Roku maybe well known for its Netflix streaming support, the WD TV Live Plus has Netflix and more. Combine tons of internet content with support for your internal network content and you've got a product ready to be at the center of your media needs.

CLICK HERE FOR Western Digital TV Live Plus PRICING & SHOPPING

Kingston launched their second-generation SSDNow V+ series on January 28, 2010. The new SSDNow V+ solid state drives feature Windows 7 TRIM support, better performance and come in four capacities - 512 GB, 256 GB, 128 GB and 64 GB. Kingston lists these as the SSDNow V+'s key features :

CLICK HERE FOR Kingston SSDNow V+ 64 GB PRICING & SHOPPING