Week of March 1, 2009

Just the other day we looked at the GTS 250 from Galaxy. But today we're looking at something a bit more higher up in the market, NVIDIA’s number two card and the fastest single GPU graphics card on the market; the GTX 285.

The keyboard is coated with a layer of rubber. The key's feel kind of iffy. I much prefer my keys to feel like silk! Smooth, soft to the touch, but the elixia really felt odd with its rubber coating.

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"In today’s information world the transformation of data is such a large and integrated part of our lives. From work to home to school, or just about anywhere else, moving a large database of files can be painful if you’re not properly equipped. An external hard drive is one such way to ease that pain, an inexpensive and handy device that can save many frustrations. Today we will examine a couple of options: Consus I-Series and the iNeo NA305J from Eagle Tech."

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Most computer cases on the market nowadays come with a fairly standard set of equipment and have similar layouts. It’s rare that you find a case that offers a unique design. GMC, makers of a wide range of computer components, has developed a new case, the GMB R-4 Bulldozer Computer Case, which challenges the concepts of traditional case design. Will this case bulldoze the competition? Let’s find out in this review.

“I don’t have many concerns or complaints about the Zaria A10, or the Vulcan 850Watt power supply. It is a fine case, and I love the SIM module. The Vulcan works very nicely with the Zaria, I love being able to turn off every single LED on both the Case, and the Power supply. “

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 video card proves to be a step in the right direction for NVIDIA in taming power consumption. The 55nm revision has enabled higher efficiency and increased overclocking overhead while still keeping thermals in check. I suspect in the near future we'll see a few GeForce GTX 285s with lighter coolers and 3rd party PCBs to cut costs. The two cards reviewed today, the PNY GeForce GTX 285 and the XFX GeForce GTX 285 Black Edition, both consistently beat the PNY GeForce GTX 280 used for testing...

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Today we will take a look at a set of In ear headphones which have been receiving critical acclaim since they were released. Are these rather expensive phones set to redefine expectations of in ear entertainment?

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"With the Photo Marketing Association (PMA) convention underway in Las Vegas, a tsunami of announcements of affordable point-and-shoots is underway. This huge wave of new models (well over 75) will overwhelm camera buyers this spring and summer, even with the recession underway. However, at the high-end of the compact category, things move at a much more leisurely pace, with select manufacturers introducing one or two killer models that usually hang around for awhile. Canon's 14.7MP PowerShot G10 is a fine example, as is the 10-megapixel LX3 we're reviewing now. These cameras are for shutterbugs looking for DSLR quality, but without the hassle of carrying a bag of lenses. They're also willing to spend close to 500 clams at a time when the prices of aim-and-forget are falling to the center of the Earth. Given all these trends, the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3 has risen to cult status with photo aesthetes due to its Leica vibe and reported picture quality. We couldn't resist the opportunity to add our two cents at a time when dozens of affordable point-and-shoots are being unveiled. Is the LX3 all it's cracked up to be? You'll know shortly."

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As I mentioned before with the ET-CSPESU2-BK 2.5, Eagle Tech strive to produce the most innovative and easy to use hardware for our demanding needs. Let's face it, an external enclosure is just that. An external enclosure. It's really hard to top the latest in designs but we still manage to find products that catch our spying eye. Today we have the Eagle Tech Consus ET-CSMDSU2-BK 3.5" dual bay external enclosure. Upon first inspection it looks to be quite the piece. Let's find out exactly how Eagle Tech decided to impress us today.

Thermaltake did a great job with the Spedo case, with plenty of drive expansion, an ATC and CRM to handle the thermals of the case and the cable management, packaged in a full-tower ATX case that fits the needs of the hardcore enthusiast. There is plenty of room inside the case to install the largest video cards on the market. Where the case falls short is in the lack of Firewire and the lack of a removable motherboard tray which are common items in today's high-end systems. Thermaltake's Spedo Advanced system is available for under $250 online making it a good buy for those looking for a high-end case that want cooling throughout as the ATC is an excellent feature for a full tower case. This case would win an Editor's Choice Award if it cost a little less, but it no doubt is a Hot Product for those wanting a big case with lots of room for air-flow and/or modifications to their system like water cooling.

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"The Noctua NH-C12P CPU cooler is a ninja when it comes to sound and a Sumo wrestler when it comes to cooling. The NH-C12P cooler by Noctua comes with three speed settings and Noctua's very own special brand of thermal paste. The NH-C12P cooler was designed with compatibility and effectiveness in mind. The Noctua NH-C12P has six heat pipes and air flow gaps to allow maximum cooling of the CPU and assist in the cooling of the motherboard."

"The Leadtek WinFast GTX 260 Extreme+ (Leadtek Limited) performed above average thanks to the factory-overclocked core running at 602MHz, and once overclocked further provided the best mid-range card performance. Temperature was no problem here, and the cooler operated quietly. There was no shortage of peripherals and should be ready out of the box for almost all end users. Based on the 55nm core, this card definitely saw benefit as the efficiency was increase and nearly brought the card to GTX 280 levels."

"Thermaltake have taken the design of the V1 and tweaked and enlarged it into a monster that is the V14Pro. The added bulk is not in vain though and it works well and temperatures are improved because of it. The fan on full speed is loud, and I wouldn't want to run it like that all the time, but the manual fan speed controller allows you to dial in your own compromise between noise and performance."

You may remember that a while ago I set up a two-way duel between a pair of Razer and SteelSeries gaming headsets. During that battle Razer came out tops for sound, but I felt there could have been some improvements to the headset itself.

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The ASUS ENGTX260/HTDP/896M/A video card is an interesting mix of the latest NVIDIA technology (in the form of 216 cores, 55nm version available, PhysX) and a reasonable price (239.99 after MIR as of this writing). Performance wise the card has the horsepower to outshine the ATI Radeon HD 4870 video cards in every benchmark that matters and ASUS cards come with a load of extras including a Multi-Language User Manual on CD and CD Wallet. PhysX can make a huge difference if the game supports it like Mirror's Edge. If you are looking for good VGA card, but don't want to break the bank the ASUS GTX260 is a serious card to consider.

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Dell's new XPS 625 is their latest AMD-based creation, and is the first out of the Dell labs using the relatively new Phenom II processor. Initial reviews of AMD's new chip have been favorable, as this new quad-core processor is slated to deliver roughly the same performance as Intel's quad-core Core 2 processors at very tolerable price points. While it's pretty clear that the Phenom II can't quite crack Core i7 levels of performance in most usage scenarios, the question is, do most users really need that much computing power? Can the Phenom II deliver a great computing experience at a palatable price? Is it worth considering one over an Intel-based Dell system? The XPS 625 is here to help us answer those questions.

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"I have very little (if anything) bad to say about the Cooler Master Storm Sniper Black Mid-Tower Case. This is one very nice case! It has loads of room and is relatively light. It also gives the end user the ability to remove unwanted items, add in needed items, and reconfigure fan locations. As open as the case is it is very quiet, on low you don't even know the system is running. I turned it off once by accident by hitting the power button because I had the LEDs off and I thought the system was off."

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" Up on the review block today is the OCZ Diesel 16gb USB Flash Drive, it’s very well made with it’s aluminum housing and it’s got some impressive speeds as well. Continue on to see how it compares to the others I’ve tested this past week…"

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“We already write about monitor’s price drop, and why and how this price cuts didn’t have influence on prices of monitors that have 22 inch and bigger diagonals. Price drop is inevitable force of advancing technology, so now even 22 inch and 24 inch monitors are entering into low-budget category. We had on test Samsung 2433BW that is, if judged by specification, suited for users that want biggest possible monitor for their money…”

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Patriot has made quite the name for themselves by doing just this: releasing good products at extremely competitive prices, all while backing it up with an above average warranty. Needless to say, we have high expectations for the Warp v2 as it is their second generation model and thus should be tweaked to get the most from its components.

These days, the need for a good T.I.M. (Thermal Interface Material) is just as important as the heatsink we use for the critical parts of our computer, such as our CPU's, GPU's, etc. Let's face it. If the heat is not getting transferred between the components we are trying to cool and the heat sink our, components overheat. T.I.M. should be easy to apply, non conductive, should not need an excessive time to cure, and it should provide a good medium to transfer heat from our components to the heatsink we use to cool these components.

The strongest selling point of the Sparkle GeForce 9800 GTX+ is that it stays cool and quiet at all times, which coupled with an integrated HDMI port makes it a good fit for an HTPC. It can handle games just fine when the settings aren't turned up too high, and the multimedia capabilities are more than adequate for any HD playback.

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" The market for graphics cards centers around price to performance. While high-end cards capture the eye of the press, it is the job of the mainstream graphics card to capture the entire market. The 4600 series from ATI is targeted to the mainstream crowd and the Sapphire Radeon HD 4670 has just been refreshed with GDDR4 and a faster memory speed. The time to buy may be now. "

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Thermaltake SpinQ, A1VX and BigTyp 14 Pro - Overall, the world of air cooling has gotten to be fairly stagnant simply due to the quality and efficiency of the products on the market. That said, for those of you that are looking for good cooling that carries with it a good dollar value and some aesthetic value as well, there is always something new to look at.

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"With that new Blu-ray player and library of accompanying discs, you might find that you also need a new receiver to reap all the benefits that the high-definition format has to offer. After all, without HDMI connections and the ability to decode the latest high-resolution surround sound formats, what's the point of getting a new Blu-ray player in the first place? For this reason, receivers are making a comeback in what has been, as of late, a video-centric world. Pioneer, calls it the "SBL" era: The era of sexy blue lights. On a positive note, the company's new Elite SC-07 7.1-channel receiver is the perfect specimen for this epoch. The average Joe might be intimidated by the SC-07, however. Take a look at the back panel, and you'll see why. It's absolutely jam-packed with every I/O under the sun, including four HDMI inputs and two outputs. But if you take a little time to get to know it, you'll find that the SC-07 is really quite approachable. And, mercifully, the front panel is much easier on the eyes. In fact, Pioneer has taken special care not to clutter the SC-07 with logos and buttons. Critical functions are hidden behind a drop down panel, and branding is, thankfully, nearly absent from the panel's front. Still, while the receiver's gorgeous styling is definitely noteworthy, it's nothing compared with the technology contained within."

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"I must say I am very impressed with this motherboard. It ran very stable at stock speeds and overclocked, even though the overclock was not that high. I like how Sapphire took the time in the designing of the board's features, although there were a couple of design flaws I noticed during the testing. First, the placement of the top two SATA ports and the onboard power and reset buttons are covered when you are using a large video card, such as the GTX 260 used in this review, rendering them useless. Even using right-angle SATA cables, I could not get access to the ports. Secondly, there is a lot of empty real estate on the back panel. It would have been nice to have a couple of extra USB 2.0 ports available and even maybe an eSATA port."

Organizing and sharing digital contents have become a big headache for many people because of ever expanding digital contents. Ten years ago, only in a business environment would you find a dedicated data storage setup to share files among different users. For many home users, a simple router or switch seems to do the job just fine to network all the computers in a household to allow direct file transfer between desktop systems.

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A new competitor has been released on an already crowded battlefield to take advantage of the mainstream market. does this new solution come in swinging?

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"When I first started examining the DS408 I was impressed with the number of features it offered. For data storage it offers a RAID 0/1/5/6 which makes it ideal for both home and small office and workgroup environments. You can mount up to four hard drives for a maximum of 6TB of storage. The DS408 also offers volume expansion support where you can add additional drives to an existing RAID 5 array as well as the ability to replace existing drives with larger disks without losing data. The unit also offers an impressive list of multimedia functions for serving and sharing video and music files. Integrating all of these features can sometimes result in a patchwork of seemingly unrelated applications, but the DS408 avoids this with its Disk Station Manager user interface."

“Today we are examining the Xigmatek S-1283V Dark Knight on Core i7 1366, a cooler which looks gorgeous in nickel-coated black and is available at a very attractive price. The only question that remains if whether its performance can match its stunning looks."

Intel as a company needs no introduction as they are the 800lb. gorilla when it comes to CPUs; however this is their first real foray into “mainstream” SSDs. As such it should be interesting to see how effective the first generation is, and whether or not it suffers from “first version syndrome”. We truly doubt that it will considering if anything, Intel is known for their approach to solid QA so while it may not end up being a speed demon we highly doubt many drives in the near future will beat it in the overall performance category.

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“One of ASUS trumps in category of cheap portable notebooks is model X95GL. In X59 series last two alphabet characters are very important and “carry” information about platform on which is notebook based. In this case “GL” means that this model is based on NVIDIA solution and not on unpopular SiS chipset as it is the case with, for example, X59Sr model. Shiny black notebook cover with piano finish can be described as: “heaven to be seen with, and hell to maintain it”. Dust, fingerprints and similar will be painfully obvious. Nice detail is that small cloth is included in the package so you can eliminate those “thorns in the eye” with ease. Cover is not flat as most covers are but it has small indentation at the base…”

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"So back in September I looked at the NZXT Avatar Gaming Mouse and I found it to be a great choice for gaming or just everyday use, in fact I still use it everyday, it has become my favorite mouse. One of my complaints, and many others about the Avatar was the large side buttons, they could easily be accidentally pressed, but NZXT listened to us reviewers and you users out there and released a second version of the Avatar."

"Today PCSTATS is testing Samsung's LN40A650A mid-sized 40" widescreen LCD HD TV display. The screen has a native resolution of 1080p (or 1920 x 1080 pixels), a pair of built-in 10W speakers, is 120Hz compliant and boasts no less than five HDMI inputs in addition to a variety of other connections. The Samsung LN40A650A is designed for use with high-definition content like Blu-ray movies, HDTV broadcasts and gaming consoles, but it can also use VGA or HDMI to double as a big-screen PC display."

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"PC’s and audio are starting to become a match made in heaven. Companies like Kliptch and other high end audio manufacturers are even throwing their hats into the ring. PC speakers may not be at the point that Seth Green wanted them to be in Italian Job, but there may be a day, in the not to distant future, when they will actually blow your clothes off. Edifier is a relatively new comer to the audio world, although they have been around since 96 a lot of people have not heard of them. I for one am very impressed with there products line and can’t wait to try them out , so let’s get into it and see what the Edifier M3400 Multimedia PC Speaker can do:"

" A sequel to the popular Zero case, the NZXT Zero 2 replaces it's predecessor at the top end of the pedestal. Equipped with a side panel capable of wielding no less than four 120mm fans, the NZXT Zero seemed perfect for the serious gamer or enthusiast running multi-GPU systems. Featuring a slew of changes from it's counterpart, NZXT hopes to wow the gamer and enthusiast community with a similar vivacity. Can the Zero 2 be just as strong the second time around or will it prove sequels can never compete with their predecessors? Let's jump in and find out! "

Many people, myself included, have often wished for an easier way to connect multiple displays. Perhaps you don't have the money for multiple video cards. Or maybe your laptop doesn't have a video-out. Or maybe you just want to connect six monitors. That's a lot of maybe's, I know, but Hightech Information Systems (HIS for short) has developed a solution to solve all of those problems.

We continue our look at Hiper's brand new energy efficient offerings here today with the 80 Plus Bronze certified S625. You'll recall that the M1000 came up somewhat short when it came to impressing me, so it will be interesting to see where the S625 stands when it comes to providing a quality lower powered unit for folks on a budget.

"To alleviate heating issues, manufacturers have created slabs of aluminum called laptop cooling pads that go between you and the laptop, or between the laptop and desk. A cooling pad is essentially a flat surface with vents or fans embedded in the body. The sole purpose of a cooling pad is to promote better circulation across the base of a laptop. The Xigmatek Talisman is constructed from a big extruded aluminum slab which has been anodized black and ventilated across its surface. It contains two 70mm fans that rotate at 1500RPM."

If you are looking for a quiet high performance card, then the factory-overclocked iChill GTX 260 is certainly a great choice for you. Using Arctic Cooling's Accelero XXX cooler it emits less fan noise than most low-end cards, yet offers performance close to the GeForce GTX 280.

Looking for a well-rounded notebook that won't break the bank? That's a lot easier to pull off today than it was a few years ago, and ASUS proves it with their N50Vn. For its $1,149 asking price, this 15.4" notebook offers a lot for the money, including the ability to not only get your work done, but even get some gaming taken care of as well.

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So what can we expect in terms of performance and price? Well, one has to remember that the AMD's new Phenom II X4 - 810 (AM3) processor is aimed at the mainstream market ... so we can't expect any Core i7 killing performance. Still, we do expect decent performance comparable to Intel's quad core and of course AMD's own quad core processors. It will be interesting to see if the long-awaited support for DDR3 ram was actually worth waiting for.

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“One thing we haven’t seen until now is a flash drive that is targeted specifically to the environmentally-conscious consumer, a product that seeks to mitigate some of the impacts on the world around us. Promising environmentally-sensitive manufacturing that does not come at the expense of performance, the ATP EarthDrive certainly piqued our curiousity."

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"For those of you unsatisfied by the stock heat spreaders on performance memory there are a handful of after market RAM heat spreaders like Thermaltake's RamOrb memory heatsink to consider. The Thermaltake RamOrb heat spreaders are sold individually, and each comes with four sheets of thermal interface material so it can conceivably be installed on two sticks of memory in its lifetime."

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"LCD and plasma technology have enabled TVs to get wider in inverse proportion to their thickness, which can make the audio side of the home-theater equation stick out like a sore thumb. Denon's $500 DHT-FS5 promises to deliver an authentic surround-sound experience from a single, low-profile box. And while it doesn't completely replicate what a true surround system is capable of, it comes pretty close."

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"The i7 runs at 2.66GHz and only needs around 1v to work at this frequency, a pretty impressive feat. Getting it up to 3GHz was simple enough, all it took was to bump the base clock up from 133 to 150MHz. Then things started to get a bit complicated and required some, actually a lot, of trial and error. Since I am using a processor with a locked multiplier I started by decreasing it and finding the highest stable BCLK. The highest I could hit was 215MHz, although it was only stable up to 204MHz. The MSI board dealt reasonably well with failed overclocks, it would turn on for about ten seconds and then shutdown and so on until I manually shut it down and turned it back on myself. Never did I have to make use of that nifty clear CMOS button on the back. Now that I knew how high the board could clock and already knowing the limits of the RAM, I set off to find out how high the MSI X58 Platinum could drive the i7 920. Tweaking core and QPI voltage properly was absolutely necessary to make the overclock stable. I needed +0.18V on the processor and another +0.15 on the QPI link, any more than that and temperatures got out of control, but it was enough to get a not too shabby 3.646GHz overclock. The memory modules we're kept at 1212MHz 7-7-7-20 and the other voltages were left on the Auto setting.

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One of the most amazing things about the Core i7 platform is that it took DDR3 and brought it to maturity. On previous platforms the gain from moving to DDR3 from DDR2 brought negligible results. When Core i7 and Triple Channel memory hit the market and memory bandwidth jumped from 8-10 GB/s to above 30 GB/s, in some cases, DDR3 made people stand up and take notice. While Core i7 is the most powerful platform we've ever seen, the processor didn't triple its performance, but it did triple RAM performance. RAM performance is the single largest gain on the Core i7 platform, so we've been paying a lot of attention to RAM kits.

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"AMD has updated its gaming platform codenamed Dragon with launching Phenom II processors. As all other parts we've reviewed have turned out to be more attractive than competitors in our tests and in terms of features, it's logical to assume that the new platform will merge all advantages of its constituent parts not just to make a poor part look better at the cost of other elements, but to raise platform attractiveness to a new level."

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MSI are a big player in the computer industry, manufacturing everything from high end motherboards and graphics cards to MP3 players and laptop computers. A couple of months ago we looked at their littleWind Netbook, an atom powered ultra portable laptop. Today we are going to look at an offering from MSI on the opposite end of the spectrum, a dual core 17 inch notebook set to facilitate a proficient workstation, portable gaming rig and media centre system.

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"You really can't lose with either video card; you are simply going to have a great gameplay experience with either of them in today's games."

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This new cooler which is called the V10 is part of Cooler Master’s V-line of CPU cooling solutions and in positioned right between the V8 and V12 in their model nomenclature. The V10 is a multi fan, multi heat pipe, multi cooling fin array heatsink which is not only a tower AND a downdraft cooler but is also a TEC cooling solution.

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It wasn't more than a few months ago that Benchmark Reviews tested the ASUS BC-1205PT Blu-ray Drive, which was proven to be a future-proof asset with the format war recently ended in favor of BD media. But sometimes technology isn't adopted quite as fast as we might think, because in the age of Blu-ray there are people out there who still haven't made the transition into a DVD-burner. Unlike CDs and DVDs, Blu-ray Disc isn't in every household, and since music and movies seem to work perfectly well on the older platforms there might not be any real need for such a premium storage device.

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“In its last financial reports nVIDIA has acknowledged losses that are consequence of global economic crisis and relatively low sale rates. Main culprit for second reason is, of course, ATi that performed better in this period and proved itself as best AMD investment so far. nVIDIA’s first answer to ATi’s success was GTX260+ model. This had limited effects and now it is time to take drastic measures. Final result are two graphics cards: GeForce GTX295 and GTX285. First one is nVIDIA’s way to show everybody that they have “best” (fastest) product and second one is result of “face lifting” of older model. Both graphics cards are signed by XFX…”

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"External backup drives are really important these days with all of the important information that we all have stores on our computers. Just think about it...what would you do if you lost all of your financial documents, photos, e-mail contacts, and more? With the Clickfree HD325 you get file backup protection and 320GBs of space to backup all of your precious files. It is both Mac and PC compatible and connects using a USB 2.0 interface for fast file transfers."

The .dot netbook has a 8.9inch screen which puts in the middle of the pack size-wise, depending on where you live the Dot is offered with different configurations, the entry level model is the most affordable at €399 (can be found cheaper online), the second model adds more battery power, the third model adds 3G integrated network adapter. Naming convention is not very telling though, Dot.be/005, Dot.be/010, Dot3G.be/020. Each step up adds about €50 to the price. We received the Dot.be/010

The ASUS 4870 Matrix is a graphics card that differs in nearly every point from the reference design. The GPU clock therefore is 800 MHz instead of 750 MHz and the 512 Mbyte GDDR3 memory come clocked at 1900 MHz. Furthermore the card comes with a PCB developed by ASUS itself which carries a dual-slot cooler and is specially optimized for ASUS iTracker software. Similar to Intels Speed-Step, iTracker enables a dynamic clock adjustment possible regarding GPU and memory clock speeds.

"Today I’ve got a 16gb USB drive from PNY for review, it’s called the Attaché. It’s a very small drive especially considering it’s size, it seems well made as well, but quality and size aren’t much without performance to back it up. So read on to learn how the PNY Attaché fairs against some others I’ve got on hand. "

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We've been eagerly awaiting the release of Crucial Ballistix Tracers for the Core i7 platform. While there are lots of kits out there there's only one kit that takes the bling factor beyond the normal high tech heat spreader. That's right if you want the ultimate in bling clipped into your ram slots there's only one vendor that can bring you Tri Channel DDR3 for the Core i7 platform that feature color keyed LED's in Blue, Red and Green.

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Convenience of Function is the term I give any good product that does its damned job without a whole bunch of crap work involved. Install these drivers while plugging in this and then rub the top counter-clockwise whilst singing the Star Spangled Banner. You know the usual nonsense that comes with most electronics. My review today is on a product that is an excellent example of convenience of function. The SunBeamTech eSATA/USB 2.0 HDD Docking Station is a versatile and convenient way to access your precious data on the fly.

At the time of writing (February) the transition from analog to digital should have already taken place. Millions of older televisions should have already been converted to ATSC (the new digital standard) through use of converter boxes. The American government had already given reminders of this date and provided applications to receive $40 coupons. None of this really mattered as people still were unaware of the change and money had supposedly run out for coupons. As a result newly elected President Barack Obama pushed for extending the deadline for the analog to digital switch and has pumped more money for coupons. The new date is set as June 12, 2009.

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When NVIDIA released their GTX 285 card last month, it became the fastest single-GPU card on the market, and that fact still remains. But with our insatiable appetite for more performance, we can't help but be curious as to how the cards perform when overclocked. So let's check that out, with the help of EVGA's SSC Edition.

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"Raven from SilverStone (also known as RV01) is a full-tower case with a unique design, where the motherboard is rotated 90º, making the rear connectors to be available on the top part of the case. This was done to improve thermal dissipation, especially from the video card, as hot air tends to go up and high-end video cards usually blow hot air from the inside to the outside of the case - usually to the rear of the case, but with Raven hot air is blown to the top."

We were disappointed with the original Phenom II X4 - 940 processor (AM2+), so it would be interesting to see how well these new AM3 processors will perform. Right now, Intel holds the crown for peformance and I can't see the Phenom II coming anywhere close. What the Phenom II X4 - 810 could offer is an excellent value for money and a great price/performance ratio ... this is especially important during this the current economic climate. Another great advantage for these new AM3 pocessors is that most current AM2+ motherboards are AM3 ready via a BIOS update. This offers an easy drop-in upgrade, however there won't be any DDR3 support.

"I’ve got a fairly large review for you today, it’s a rather small product but it’s just packed with features. Today I’ve got the Thecus 3200Pro NAS box, and it’s a powerhouse in a small package. The N3200Pro is equipped with an AMD Geode processor to insure everything from file transfers to streaming media will run nice and smooth. In the N3200Pro you can put up to three 1 Terabyte hard drives which can give you 3 Terabytes of storage, but you can also choose from several RAID options as well like the main feature, RAID 5, that allows you to have anything you put on the N3200Pro to be nice and secure. So read on to learn about what is probably the most fully featured NAS box on the market today… "

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"The SanDisk 16GB Mobile Ultra microSD card (part number SDSDQY-016G-A11M) comes with a SanDisk MobileMate Micro card reader makes switching devices simple. By inserting the microSDHC card into the MobileMate it can then be used in a computer or any device with an open USB port. This feature is nice for those that want to take pictures straight from their phone and look at them on a TV or digital picture frame as it can be done in seconds and nothing else needs to be purchased..."

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Is your computer located under your desk and are you tired of crawling under your desk to switch on your PC? And do you hate having to search for audio ports and USB ports in the dark? Then you might be interested in the PC Jump Start from Sharkoon.

In a world of growing demands and technology it's really hard to come up with new and innovative ideas for the consumer. An external enclosure is pretty basic piece of tech which is hard to improve on. Our experts over at Eagle Tech though strive to prove this wrong. Today we have the ET-CSPESU2-BK 2.5' External Enclosure from Eagle Tech Computers Inc. Let's see what kind of new features they can pack into a basic external enclosure.

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The GTX 260 has quickly become one of those confusing models. We had the card originally launch in June of 2008 and towards the end of last year word came of an updated model that would carry with it 216 shader processors over the original 192 we saw at launch.