Everyone and their mom have jumped into the mechanical keyboard party over the past year. Typically each of the keyboards has a fairly standard layout with a few small differences to help them stand out. When we saw Cooler Master’s new offering I was excited to see something a little different. If you have ever seen a Filco keyboard this may look familiar. The new Cooler Master QuickFire is a compact keyboard without a number fad for those looking for something that doesn’t take up very much room on your desk. Sounds like a perfect keyboard for going to LAN’s doesn’t it? We thought so, let’s take a look.

With over 50 years of speaker system know-how for concerts, movies, public address and clubs, Cerwin-Vega has been around the block. When creating the XD3 speaker for desktop and computer applications the goal is to optimize the sound output while keeping the enclosure small. Clarity is critical, especially for those producing multimedia or analyzing tracks. Signal purity must be maintained by using low noise amplifiers that don’t disappoint when the volume is set on high.

Powered desktop speakers like the XD3 must also fully integrate with your entire sound system and outboard accessories. The XD3 has the capability to handle multiple inputs, you can switch instantly between your computer as a source or other more portable platforms such as iPods, phones and other media players via the 1/8″ stereo Auxiliary input. The XD3 also has a convenient headphone jack which allows you full control through the front panel power switch and volume adjustments. How well will they actually stack up in our testing?

Antec finally decided to enter the Platinum efficiency club with the new EarthWatts Platinum series. These units address all users that just need a high efficiency PSU, with no bells and whistles. This new series creates a new mainstream class of PSUs and is placed between the EarthWatts Green and the High Current Gamer series.

There are loads of gaming mice on the market but there are very few good smaller gaming mice that you can use on the road while you travel or for people with smaller hands. We are taking a look at the Xornet gaming mouse from Cm storm today that is aimed towards mobile gaming, the mouse is almost half the size of normal mice but can it perform is the big question?

CLICK HERE FOR CM Storm Xornet Gaming Mouse DEALS & PRICING

Keep in mind, the base clock speeds of 1000 MHz on the core and 1425 MHz on the memory are already sizable increases over the default clock speeds. However, XFX has added their Double Dissipation cooling to increase the overclocking potential of their Black Edition HD 7970. As a result, the card responded well to voltage tweaking and a further boost in the clock speeds to 1177 MHz on the Tahiti core and 1652 MHz on the GDDR5 memory. Clock speeds above 1.2 GHz on the core were possible in some games, but not the entire test suite – Dirt 3 just would not show love for a core speed that high.

The BitFenix Raider is a mid-tower case that promises high-end features for a mid-range price of under $100 USD. It's entering hotly contested territory, so hit our review to see how it measures against competing cases in a similar price range:

The Antec Three Hundred Two is a new design with added features that include a wider chassis, great cable management, easy access side doors, USB 3.0, and improved air flow, with 6 spots for fans in strategic positions throughout the chassis. The Three Hundred Two, from Antec, has preinstalled 120mm rear exhaust and 140mm top exhaust, and brings you the option to control fan speeds with the flip of a switch. With high and low setting built into the back of the chassis, it's easy to control air flow. The front mesh design of the Antec Three Hundred Two, with built in easy to remove washable filters, offers you not only good looks with its Tower design, but also gives you added airflow over your hard drive cage, CPU, and GPU.

The year 2011 has ended, so it's high time to sum up the results and see the general picture. If you're looking to upgrade, we hope this will make choosing a processor easier.

CLICK HERE FOR CPU/Processor DEALS & PRICING

Want snappy performance without breaking the bank? The OCZ Synapse is a budget SSD caching solution, and offers great performance for a reasonable price.

CLICK HERE FOR OCZ Synapse Cache 64GB DEALS & PRICING

The recently established Zero Infinity are looking to take on the CPU Cooling market by storm with their flagship dual tower cooler, the Free Flow+. Following the lead of our favourite CPU Coolers; the Noctua NH-D14, Thermalright Silver Arrow, Phanteks PH-TC14PE and Alpenföhn K2, Zero Infinity have already set their sights on the cream of the crop which is one excellent way of getting our undivided attention.

The Acer Aspire TimelineX 5830TG-6614 is a bit steep in price, but don't dismiss it. The 15.6-inch Aspire is loaded with everything from Intel Wireless Display (WiDi) to a discrete Nvidia graphics adapter that actually passed our gaming tests at medium resolution and detail settings.

CLICK HERE FOR Acer Aspire TimelineX 5830TG-6614 DEALS & PRICING

The 500R has support for USB 3.0 and 2.5” SSDs is built-in, while thumb screws on the side panels and tool-free drive installation should mean quick and easy installation of your hardware. Corsair has also integrated dust filters, which can be quickly removed for easy maintenance, keeping your system as clean as possible. Now that the love fest is over, let’s see if the Corsair 500R actually lives up to the same high standard we hold for all of Corsairs products.

CLICK HERE FOR Corsair Carbide 500R DEALS & PRICING

Westone's newest product is the Westone 4R quad driver in-ears. New for the 4Rs is a user replaceable cable and more tightly matched drivers, and a slightly altered bundle. We take the 4Rs for a spin to see how they compare to the originals.

The real benefit of this card from Galaxy is the ability to use up to four 1080p DVI monitors. This feat was not possible with run-of-the-mill Fermi based video cards since they are limited to two monitors from one card. Using Galaxy's MDT EZY software allows the end user to configure the displays in either split mode where each display has a desktop interface or merged mode where the display is spanned across multiple screens. The software is used in combination with the resolution settings in the operating system to get the optimal resolution for each display. The software is easy to use with little resource overhead. A gaming card it is not, but as a unique addition to the GT 520 line up, the GT 520 MDT from Galaxy offers a low-cost way to create a lot of desktop real estate.

Generally when we here at Benchmark Reviews get a motherboard in to test, it's aimed at a specific market: it might be an enthusiast-oriented motherboard for gaming, or a micro-ATX motherboard designed for a HTPC, or even just an inexpensive motherboard for users on a budget. Today, though, we have one of ASUS' "Workstation" motherboards: the ASUS P9X79 WS. How does it differ from other X79 motherboards, what's the performance, and should this board be on your short list for your X79 rig?

CLICK HERE FOR ASUS P9X79 WS Workstation Motherboard DEALS & PRICING

With the release of the Meka G Unit, the keyboard category has the most players in Thermaltake's eSports line. The G Unit itself is the third reincarnation of the Meka family, featuring mechanical switches among other gaming enthusiast features. The professional gaming market has never been hotter, nor more demanding. Let's see how Thermaltake handles the heat.

Have Alpenföhn designed the perfect CPU cooling upgrade for anybody on a tight budget?

Options, folks. That’s what NZXT is shooting for with its new full-tower Switch 810 case, which can be configured in a number of different ways to optimize airflow or sound reduction and is equally friendly for air- or water-cooling setups.

Available in black or white, the NZXT Switch 810 takes a while to get to know intimately. NZXT built buckets of details into this chassis, and the more you work with it, the more little surprises you find, from fans that rotate and slide, to well-placed LEDs, and the “hybrid fins” you can use to regulate noise or enhance airflow...

We will be taking a look at the Fulmo GT from the eye of the water-cooling system builder. Reason being is the Fulmo GT offers so much room for such a system. It is not often you can find a tower that can support dual loops without having to mod or having to go big with extra large expensive cube cases from case makers like CaseLab, Lian Li and Mountain Mod. We are not saying the Fulmo GT is small but its total area spans up and down and not up and down and left and right taking up more space and looking like a small refrigerator.

The DARKFORCE mid-tower comes into a saturated field of mid-towers made for PC gamers and enthusiasts. Gelid Solution will need to take a unique approach to find ways to distinguish itself from the competitions at the entry price of $120 in the US market. After an overview of the specifications, it looks like Gelid Solutions has used its past experiences to put something a little different into this product...

With Intels new X79 chipset series in mind, Gigabyte redesigned their portfolio of high end desktop motherboards. Nowadays the UD3 marks the entry level into Gigabytes X79 leauge. This board comes with a very clean design and an attractive feature mix. Furthermore it should also be a serious contender for overclocking and extreme overclocking.

CLICK HERE FOR Gigabyte GA-X79-UD3 DEALS & PRICING

The Fujifilm FinePix F600EXR is a 16-megapixel compact megazoom with a specialized EXR image sensor, which is designed to improve low-light performance. It has a large 15x optical zoom in addition to RAW shooting, GPS geotagging and overall good image and video quality.

CLICK HERE FOR Fujifilm FinePix F600EXR DEALS & PRICING

At this price, with Kingston's reliability track record and lifetime warranty, we feel this RAM would be a good purchase for any enthusiast rig. Not much to complain about when a $40 products works as advertised, overclocks to the next common memory clock frequency and is backed by a lifetime warranty...

CLICK HERE FOR Kingston HyperX Genesis 8GB DEALS & PRICING

Today we will have a look at new case from Xigmatek called Asgard Pro. Asgard Pro is aimed to budget class and is reasonably priced around 40€. Let’s see what you can and can’t get with that amount of money.

Can the improved Thunderbolt Plus offer anything more compared to the standard Thunderbolt power supplies? We put it to the test to find out!

Fractal Design has come through with a USB 3.0 Upgrade Kit for their flagship Define XL Full Tower Case that is all you would expect. The kit upgrades two of the four USB ports on the front I/O from USB 2.0 to USB 3.0 with a simple two screw installation. The overall clean look of the Define XL remains exactly the same after the upgrade. Cable lengths on the upgrade kit are more than sufficient to reach the USB headers on any motherboard installed in the case. Best of all, Fractal Design is offering this piece to consumers at a low price of only $9.99.

A short time ago we reviewed the Silicon Power Velox V20 120GB SSD which just so happened to be one of the few SATA 2 drives that we had seen in 2011; the world has gone SATA 3. To say the least, it was rather unique as it was the first to contain Hynix NAND flash memory that we had reviewed. Silicon Power has since sent us their next level in performance, the Velox V30 SATA 3 ‘SandForce driven’ 240GB SSD, requesting our evaluation and review. How could we resist?

In this article Benchmark Reviews gets to evaluate a HTPC case from SilverStone's Grandia line; the GD06. With these smaller cases, space is always an issue. This is becoming increasingly critical as high definition content becomes ubiquitous. Not only do we want to view our new content in more pixels than our brain can even process, but we want to upscale the old content, or view it in 3D, and do it upside down, right side up and inside out. While you're at it give me dish, cable, recording, streaming, email, gaming and the kitchen sink. Oh...and it needs to fit in a single box on my entertainment system. Well, SilverStone is at least trying to provide the box, the rest is up to you. They've expanded on past models to fit even more powerful toys inside your HTPC. Read on to see how model SST-GD06B crams the performance you demand and puts it on your shelf.

We have just released a Review of the 80 GByte Intel SSD 310 mSATA Solid State Drive, including Benchmarks and many more details.

CLICK HERE FOR Intel SSD 310 DEALS & PRICING

Our Samsung 830 sample has some trick components, kind of like a race version of a street car. There aren't any titanium valves or exhaust, but the 830 does give us our first look at 20nm flash. The flash is of course made by Samsung and doesn't conform to traditional ONFi standards, but it is Toggle Mode and very fast. I suspect it won't be too much longer before we start to see other SSD manufactures taking a closer look at Samsung 20nm flash for their SSD products built on other SSD controllers. The last time we saw a SandForce SSD with Samsung flash was on the G.Skill Phoenix 100GB and that flash was left over from the Indilinx Barefoot era.

In this review we will be looking at the Gigabyte X79 UD3 motherboard based on the Intel X79 chipset and supporting the new LGA2011 Sandy Bridge E processor. Gigabyte is offering three X79 motherboards in the Ultra Durable lineup starting with the UD3.

CLICK HERE FOR Gigabyte X79 UD3 Motherboard DEALS & PRICING

Enermax has a very good reputation when it comes to power supplies. The cooler market is quite new for them and at the moment they're trying to approach it with products that have a strong price/performance ratio. The ETS-T40-VD in this case comes with four heatpipes and a 120 millimeter fan, which can be PWM controled. To be honest, we're quite curious how this thing performs.

CLICK HERE FOR Enermax ETS-T40-VD Tower Cooler DEALS & PRICING

Today I will be reviewing the Arctic Accelero XTREME Plus II. This is a Graphics Card heatsink-cooler designed to cool even the hottest of cards – including my own Inno3D GTX580 OC, whilst remaining reasonably quiet.

CLICK HERE FOR Arctic Accelero XTREME Plus II DEALS & PRICING

Hardwareoverclock.com has just posted another review. Last week we have taken a look at the Corsair Hydro H100 watercooler. Are you still searching a silent and strong cooler for your cpu? Maybe the Corsair Hydro H100 is the right one for you.

CLICK HERE FOR Corsair Hydro Series H100 DEALS & PRICING

We’re back with another offering from BenQ. This time it’s in the form of the BenQ XL2420T 24-inch LED backlit high-performance gaming monitor. BenQ state that it’s perfect for competitive FPS games and has been co-developed with Counter-Strike legends, so we’re expecting great things from the XL2420T.

The SilverStone PS07 is the next PC-Case in the Technic3D Editorship. The PS07 supports DTX, Mini-ITX and Micro-ATX motherboards and have place for three 120mm Cooling-Fans. We will check this and many more in the following Review.

CLICK HERE FOR SilverStone PS07 Case DEALS & PRICING

The original A-Series APU line-up didn’t feature any enthusiast-targeted products, but AMD quickly reacted to the A-Series’ mostly favorable reception with a new flagship, dubbed the A8-3870K Black Edition, which we’ll be showing you here today. In its default configuration, the A8-3870K is a slight upgrade from the A8-3850, thanks to a small increase in its default CPU frequency. The “K” in its part number, however, means the chip is unlocked, which makes for some interesting overclocking. When paired to the right motherboard, which features an updated BIOS / UEFI that fully supports the A8-3870K, this APU is able to hang with some of AMD’s fastest quad-core desktop processors, while also offering discrete-class GPU performance...

It’s hard to be a PC gamer and not hear of SteelSeries. They’re renowned for some of the highest quality gaming peripherals produced today. Partnered with some of the biggest games companies in the world, and sponsoring some of the best professional gaming teams; SteelSeries are hard to avoid.

CLICK HERE FOR SteelSeries Sibera v2 DEALS & PRICING

Despite the name, the Super Flower Golden King PSUs are 80 Plus Platinum certified. Today we will test the 1000 W flagship model to find out if it has the potential to claim the throne for the best, high capacity, Platinum PSU and put the excellent Seasonic SS-1000XP in second place.