Week of June 1, 2008

"Kingwin has been around since 1992 and has recently started promoting their high-end Mach 1 power supplies. Last September, we had a chance to review their Mach 1 800W PSU, and today we have for review their Mach 1 1,000W PSU, the ABT-1000MA1S. With six 12V rails, four rated at 20A and two at 35A, a hefty 150mm fan, and a unique modular cabling system, this power supply has a lot of promise."

CLICK HERE FOR Kingwin ABT-1000MA1S SHOPPING & PRICING

"SanDisk is known for their digital storage solutions, today we take a look at their compact 4Gb Cruzer Micro USB stick which sports a retractable USB connector and promises speedy transfer speeds."

CLICK HERE FOR SanDisk Cruzer Micro 4GB USB Stick SHOPPING & PRICING

"Today we have the Cyber Snipa Dog Tags on the review block. What exactly are the "Dog Tags"? Well, you are in for a treat. The big thing about the Dog Tags is the USB thumb drive, which in our case is a roomy 4GB sample. There's more to the Dog Tags though. On the other tag, it holds a small pair of pliers, a philips and flat head screw driver, and a small LED light."

CLICK HERE FOR Cyber Snipa Dog Tags SHOPPING & PRICING

Long gone are the days when the primary differentiating factors between competing laptops models were just battery life and weight. Don't be mistaken--battery life and weight are still important; but with so many folks now using a laptop as their only computer, laptop manufacturers have stepped up their efforts on the very look of their notebook designs, as well as piling on enough features to make you never miss a desktop PC. Apple, of course, leads the charge with the sleek designs and user-friendly interface of its MacBook line of laptops. Dell and Lenovo have also had success with their updated designs. Recently, long-time computer manufacturer, Toshiba, has done a complete refresh of its Satellite line of laptops, and we had the opportunity to take an in-depth look at an example of this new look and feel with the Toshiba Satellite X305-S6845.

CLICK HERE FOR Toshiba Satellite X305-S6845 Notebook SHOPPING & PRICING

Mistakes happen. We are all human and sometimes we do things we later realize were not the best way to do them. Most of the time these mistakes are small and harmless and sometimes they cost you. In this regard, I am referring to the NVIDIA 780i chipset. Yes, that's right, I called it a mistake. With native PCIe 2.0, eSATA and support for Intel's 1600MHz FSB CPUs, the 790i Ultra is what the 780i should have been, thereby making the 780i a very costly mistake for anyone who purchased one. But like all mistakes, we need to put the past behind us and look forward to better and brighter things. Better and brighter is just what XFX specializes in and with this board they aim to keep the good times rolling. As stated before, this board comes with lots of goodies including PCIe 2.0, on board eSATA, triple-SLI support, DDR3 support, and a sexy black PCB. If that wasn't enough, just wait until you look at all the accessories XFX throws into the mix. Without further ado I present to you the XFX 790i Ultra.

CLICK HERE FOR XFX 790i Ultra SHOPPING & PRICING

The AirView-2000 can stream your Windows desktop or favorite video to the device through any normal 54 MBit wireless network. So there are no cables to tie you down and you may walk around freely with your tablet PC or notebook during a presentation or at school & university.

From time to time, we must format our computers due to either broken systems, or ones that draggg. HP makes backing up photos simple with the SimpleSave Photo Disks. Simply pop the disk in the drive and watch it go! Jack tells us some interesting conclusions about the disks.

"Our first impressions on this case were: it is going to be drafty in there. That thought was a consequence of large number of ventilation openings for fan mounting. Case itself is build of steel and aluminum side panels and final fabrication is very well done. Design of this case is simple and elegant. Front panel is built of aluminum and quality plastics with edges that blend perfectly. Large part of front mask is covered with 5.25" drive bay covers. There is additional 3.5" drive bay cover for users that use floppy drive or internal card readers."

CLICK HERE FOR Cooler Master Centurion 590 SHOPPING & PRICING

"It’s always nice to see companies mix it up with new coolers, and the Hybrid Freezer seems to have some pretty cool technology behind it. It makes sense that they’re installing it on the popular 9600GT series of card, and in this case MSI has decided to install it on a card carrying with it 1GB of GDDR3 memory for added appeal.

While we’ve looked at so many 9600GTs, you have to admit that we’ve seen such a huge variety of different models; some excellent clocks, some excellent connectivity and some pretty funky aftermarket coolers."

"The A-DATA G Series DDR2 800 2 x 2GB memory kit was extremely surprising. First of all, it outperformed a set of Mushkin RAM rated at DDR2 1000 but run at the same 800MHz speed as the A-Data G series DDR2 800 memory. You would guess that it just scraped by the Mushkin set, but it was surpassing it by quite a margin in some tests but just squeaking by in others. Not only did it perform exceptionally, it ran at a stock voltage of only 1.8! That is what we as enthusiasts love to see, RAM that performs great at low voltages. I was also caught off guard by how much overclocking headroom this kit had. I was able to push out 501MHz to reach DDR2 1000, and amazingly, I only had to bump the voltage up to 1.9!"

CLICK HERE FOR A-DATA G Series DDR2 800 2 x 2GB SHOPPING & PRICING

"Ballistics - the fine science of motion that has given us cannons, catapults, rockets, and a myriad other toys with which to play havoc with. Then there are Ballistix, the (in)famous memory line from Crucial that leaves other lesser kits weeping from sorrow in it's wake. Forgetting about projectile trajectory for a bit, Crucial has rolled out the artillery in the form of its newest incarnation wielding a rating of PC3-16000. Yes, you read that right, a whopping 2000MHz of blistering speed that breaks the sound barrier of current offerings. When looking back to how just a few months ago DDR3 could barely out pace it's predecessor, we can only feel that slight tingle of glee and anticipation that normally follows such a launch."

High-resolution wide screen monitors are very hot right now. As with most computer trends, one will see a new technology start off expensive before growing into a less expensive and more mature product. LCDs have come a long way themselves; transitioning from an early-adopter, niche market due to poor viewing angles and high product costs into the de facto standard monitor for all new computer systems. Like any piece of hardware, many users aren't content with a single standard size and usually want something bigger, better, larger and more life-like or some such. Hence, large LCD monitors are becoming the new toys that many computer enthusiasts are picking up. The Samsung 2220WM-HAS represents a maturing line of larger wide screen monitors that are surprisingly inexpensive nowadays.

CLICK HERE FOR Samsung 22" Widescreen LCD Monitor 2220WM-HAS SHOPPING & PRICING

"ATI's HD 3650 replaces the HD 2600 Pro, a frustrating underachiever. Generally, I dislike video cards in the $50-100 range, mainly because they're not going to play new games well and, if you're after features, then you're better off buying a lesser model from the same series. The features here are the real selling points--two of which stand out ahead of price, connectivity (HDMI), and low power-consumption. First is video playback. ATI swings when it comes to playing movies, and even their entry-level cards are going to do well, if not flawlessly. Second is Hybrid CrossFire. All 3000-series cards can be run in CrossFire with motherboards that have the 780G (and upcoming 790GX) chipsets, in either a performance mode (like regular CrossFire) or power-saving mode, which completely powers down the video card when integrated video is good enough. Combined, these features might give cause to move up a price bracket, favoring a 36 over a 34."

"The team over at Kingwin recently sent word that they would like for us to check out their latest hard drive enclosure, the Elite Series. The Elite Series 3.5" SATA enclosures, built of dual process anodized aluminum, feature a one touch back up system and are USB 2.0 and eSATA compatible. How will this combination of features stack up against the heavy competition already in the marketplace?"

"Intel will launch a new Core 2 Duo series, E7xxx, in the second half of 2008. Just like the E8xxx series this new series is codenamed "Wolfdale" and will be manufactured under 45 nm process using the Penryn core. We had the opportunity of reviewing the E7200 model, which runs at 2.53 GHz with 1,066 MHz front side bus and 3 MB of L2 memory cache - half the cache compared to the E8xxx models. Let's take a look on the performance from this forthcoming CPU."

CLICK HERE FOR Core 2 Duo E7200 CPU SHOPPING & PRICING

"The PC hardware world is a very "grass is greener" kind of game. As soon as something new and exciting is released, we're all clamouring for the bit of kit over the next horizon. Fortunately - to some extent - in the world of GPUs this was halted for a while with the 8800GTX ruling the roost for just over a year. Now however, we're back to the old system, and while many have their eyes glued to the next nVidia and ATI offerings, the current ones are quite interesting. Case in point, XFX's 9800GX2... in Quad SLI."

CLICK HERE FOR XFX 9800GX2 SHOPPING & PRICING

High Performance Group (Hiper), a UK based company, was founded in 2001. They have a varied product catalogue which includes numerous power supplies, coolers and even a few keyboards and video cables. Recently Hiper branched out into computer chassis and the first in their range is the Anubis.

CLICK HERE FOR Hiper Anubis SHOPPING & PRICING

"No doubt the PNY Verto GeForce 9600 GT was up against some stiff competition when we tested it at a resolution of 2560x1600. Given that the card is a reference model it performed admirably against the GeForce 8800 GT and GTS, and outperformed the Radeon HD 3870 in many of our tests at both resolutions. Considering that currently the Radeon HD 3870 has to have a rebate to match the price of our PNY 9600 GT it's hard to argue against what a great value this card is..."

CLICK HERE FOR PNY Verto GeForce 9600 GT Video Card SHOPPING & PRICING

"Awkwardly proportioned and packed with ostensibly clever but actually rather pointless image quality enhancements, what exactly do we make of Samsung's new 21.6-inch display? In default mode—the mode we recommend you leave this display set to—it's a solid but unspectacular performer.

The real problem, therefore, is pricing. At over £200, it's not exactly cheap. Especially when you factor in the missing HDMI port and 0.4-inch shortfall in panel size. That may not sound like a lot. But in the absence of any mitigating features, it's just noticeable enough to be a significant niggle at this price point."

CLICK HERE FOR Samsung SyncMaster 2253LW SHOPPING & PRICING

Nowadays, many laptops are coming with built-in webcams, which aren't big enough, or smooth enough for our liking. HP sees this and has come out with the new Elite Autofocus Webcam! Rated at 12MP, we're sure it'll be big enough and fast enough for you.

Computex, Taipei, Taiwan, 5 June 2008 - VIA Technologies, Inc, a leading innovator of power efficient x86 processor platforms, today announced a new standard for Mini-ITX boards to ensure an optimized multimedia and computing experience in small form factor desktop PCs.

Mini-ITX 2.0 is a set of minimum specifications for the next generation of Mini-ITX boards to encourage the integration of the latest PC technologies into the small form factor market and to provide OEMs, system integrators and end-users alike greater freedom of choice in configuring mini PCs and home media centers to deliver an optimized graphics, high definition video, and computing experience. Mini-ITX 2.0 makes the ideal platform for such systems due to its advanced performance, high levels of feature integration, and easy expandability, coupled with the broad infrastructure of cases and accessories that has been built up around the form factor.

"This is most assuredly the era of high-definition, and now many people are buying into Blu-ray only to find that their old receivers aren't quite up to the task. Onkyo had met the demand for an affordable, versatile home theater receiver with last year's TX-SR605, a truly impressive offering for the modern age, with HDMI switching and the latest audio codecs. And after listening to consumer and industry feedback, they have addressed the 605's few limitations to make its successor even better, resulting in the killer TX-SR606."

CLICK HERE FOR Onkyo TX-SR606 Receiver SHOPPING & PRICING

"Not too long ago BFG extended upon the OC range by adding the OC2, which was an even higher overclocked model. The company has actually managed to take it yet another step further in some cases, offering an OCX in the 9800 GTX range.

What we have here today is BFGs highest clocked 9600GT; the OC2. We’ll see if it’s able to stand out from the huge pack of 9600GTs with something impressive."

"I was pleased to see that the Miniplant came with a 3-year warranty, which adds a certain amount of value to the unit. The Miniplant comes with a very large price tag that could be hard to justify, however this power supply was able to deliver decent performance for what I could test with. When added in with the warranty I believe that it would be worth the price. As for SLI Ready I could not located this PSU anywhere on Nvidia's site as a recommended PSU for SLI setups."

CLICK HERE FOR Tuniq Miniplant 950W SHOPPING & PRICING

The age old saying of "Love thy Neighbor" may still be heard on any given Sunday and will likely receive a positive reception. However, if the saying happened to be "Trust thy Neighbor" the response would most likely be a little different. Gone are the days where one can feel comfortable leaving their house or cars unlocked, trusting that your employees are honest, or even that the babysitter is not mistreating your child. It is rare that you walk into a store nowadays without being watched by electronic eyes. While to some that may be troubling, the fact of the matter is, it is becoming more and more a necessity. In the past, those high tech security systems were reserved for the business that was forced to justify the expense or the rich guy that could afford the rather large expense of not only purchasing the system but having it professionally installed.

CLICK HERE FOR QNAP NVR-1012 Wireless Network Surveillance Kit SHOPPING & PRICING

AMD has made the 790FX chipset their high-end chipset and as such, the Gigabyte MA-790FX-DS5 is designed to work with the newest Phenom B3 CPUs. Gigabyte has done an outstanding job outfitting this card with the features that you need and the performance to boot. The inclusion of features like 8 SATA ports and 2 Firewire ports make this board ideal for the HT enthusiast needing those features. If you are looking for a motherboard to run the latest Phenom X4 B3 CPU this is it.

CLICK HERE FOR Gigabyte MA-790FX-DS5 SHOPPING & PRICING

"Today we’re going to have a look at one of Sigma’s newer cases, the Unicorn. The Unicorn is a standard steel mid-tower case, finished in black with red LEDs. Of course, we all want our case to turn heads in one way or another, but are we willing to sink low enough to name our case the Unicorn?"

Dell’s lineup of flat panel displays have proven themselves to be reliable, stylish, and typically right on par price-wise with some of the most inexpensive LCD monitors on the market. They’ve delivered exceptional bang for the buck, and throughout the years, they’ve managed to improve the quality of the screens and the overall feature sets while overall prices have gone down. While this is also true for the rest of the monitor industry, Dell has retained their reputation for reliability, which still sticks with them today. Sure, Dell displays don’t have the raw sexiness of Apple’s Cinema series displays, but they’re typically quite a bit cheaper while offering more functionality.

CLICK HERE FOR Dell Ultrasharp 2408WFP 24" Widescreen LCD SHOPPING & PRICING

"Razer's entrance into the gaming sound arena was impressive and simple, following the path they’d cut for input devices. Their audio lineup includes a superb sound card, a headset, and a 2.1 speaker system. Their sleek style stands out first, and, priced as they are--$400--quality is expected. Re-thinking the very shape of a speaker seems appropriate. Not only for Razer, but also for THX, their partner in this matte-finish affair. The center of the re-design is simple: point the drivers down, bounce the sound out in every direction. And now every spot is the sweet spot. But their combined forces multiply marketing, add to the technical BS, and I say there are faults to find."

"The Super Talent MasterDrive MX is a great drive for those that want speed and don't have a ton of heavy writing that needs to be done. Its clear that these type of drives will not be a fad, and these will truly supersede rotational hard drives. Unfortunately these drives are still rather pricey at $419 for a 60GB drive..."

" My first orb was the Thermaltake Golden Orb way back when the Abit BP6 was the thing to have. Imagine having to shave a bit of a heatsink off to have it fit on your motherboard. Those were the days when you had to work hard for every ounce of performance. These days, you can squeeze so much out of new CPUs. Thermaltake has released a brand new orb, the DuOrb. It combines heatpipes and two huge orb coolers. "

CLICK HERE FOR Thermaltake DuOrb CPU Cooler SHOPPING & PRICING

Recently we were contacted by Mushkin, who informed us about a new series memory products that was in the offing. This series of products called the Ascent, would be offered both in DDR2 and DDR3, have both 2 and 4GB kits, and offer varying increases in performance over their previous product high-performance product line. Today it is our pleasure to share our findings for Mushkin's 4GB Mushkin XP2-8500 Ascent DDR2 memory kit. We should also note that the official launch for Mushkin's Ascent memory series should take be taking place and be available most major vendors as you read this review.

CLICK HERE FOR Mushkin 4GB Ascent DDR2 Memory Kit SHOPPING & PRICING

"The USB 2.0 4 Port KVM Auto Switch is an economical option for those who in need of a KVM that can handle a more expansive computing setup. Let's check out this product and see if it is the solution for ones multi-computing needs... "

The Osiris turned out to be one beautiful case. Hiper has really made an excellent product, with great attention to detail. It appears refined and polished, and in no way comes off as gaudy. No matter what side you look to you will find it blends perfectly with the rest. If you are looking for a clean, easy to work with, extremely well made mid-tower case, you should definitely consider the Osiris.

"I honestly thought that we were running out of letters to use for overclocked 9600GT cards. BFG pretty much has OC and OC2 locked down, Zotac has AMP!, ASUS has TOP and XFX has become tired of just using XXX, now opting for words like Alpha Dog.

TwinTech has opted for XXT for its top overclocked 9600GT. It’s been ages since we’ve seen anything from TwinTech, but the last time we looked we were pretty impressed with what they offered."

NVIDIA usually pleases the enthusiast community with their product launches, and no launch has been more memorable lately than the GeForce 8800 GTX and GTS graphic card launch more than eighteen months ago. So when the 9800 GTX product line launched on April 1st, 2008 there was a lot of commotion surrounding the new crown prince. With such a successful debut of the 8800 GTX back in 2006, the level of enthusiast skepticism surrounding the new 9800 GTX was unquestionably high. First came the lower mid-level 9600 GT, and then the ultra-high level GeForce 9800 GX2 which utilized two G92 GPU cores. Yet title of fastest single-GPU video card remains the honor of NVIDIA's GeForce 9800 GTX. Benchmark Reviews has already helped launch this product, and no we're back to test the performance of Foxconn's new GeForce 9800 GTX Standard OC Edition 512MB video card 9800GTX-512N.

Lenovo tests the waters in the LCD market with a product that we've been waiting quite some time for -- a 22" LCD monitor that offers a 1920 x 1200 native resolution. But is its resolution alone enough reason for you to give the nod to the L220X, or is it worth waiting for other manufacturers to follow?

CLICK HERE FOR Lenovo L220X 22" Widescreen LCD Monitor SHOPPING & PRICING

"The Asus Triton 77 heatsink is similar in design to some of the heatpipe based coolers on the market. Where it differs from those other coolers, is the updraft design. What this means is that the installed fan pushes air up and away from the CPU socket and motherboard. How this is accomplished, is by mounting the fan on the underside of the fin assembly to a shroud that directs all of the fans airflow through the fin array. There are 5 heatpipes used to draw the heat away from the CPU via the contact surface, which in turn carries the heat to the fin array to be dispersed into the air and out of the chassis. Embossed on the front of the heatsink is the Triton fork, as well as a tribal design that looks cool."

CLICK HERE FOR Asus Triton 77 SHOPPING & PRICING

Kingston is a company that needs no introduction. We've already reviewed many of their products here at circuitREMIX, and overall found them to be pretty good. Today we're going to be looking at a product from Kingston's performance oriented line of products, HyperX. No, it's not RAM, but a USB flash drive. Kingston's DataTraveler HyperX is the fastest USB flash drive series that Kingston currently offers, and we'll see how it stacks up to the competition. It is offered in 2, 4 and 8GB capacities, and we're going to be playing with the 4GB variety.

"Tempest from NZXT is a steel mid-tower case targeted to enthusiasts, with a transparent side window and nine 5 ¼" bays, eight internal 3 ½" bays for hard disk drives divided into two cages supporting four drives each (each cage takes three 5 ¼" bays) and six fans (one on the rear, one on the side panel, two on the top and two on the front). Let's take an in-depth look on this new release from NZXT."

CLICK HERE FOR NZXT Tempest Case SHOPPING & PRICING

"ASUS Company is well known for launching motherboards based on Intel chipsets that are among first few that appear on the market. Strong partnership between Intel and Asus become very obvious and as a result of good collaboration between them, ASUS made Asus P5Q Pro motherboard based on new Intel's logic controller under the name of P45. Before any further information about this motherboard, we'll first make a glance at new chipset and its possibilities..."

"Occasionally here at OCIA.net we receive review requests from overseas companies that we've never heard of before. Such was the case with computer and home electronics manufacturer NorthQ. Based in Denmark, NorthQ offers chassis, cooling and power supply products as well as other electronics for home and car. Today I will be taking a look at their Siberian Tiger water cooling system for AMD and Intel processors."

XFX has done a wonderful job with the 9800GX2 Black Edition as it is the fastest available 9800GX2 on the market today at a clock speed of 700MHz for the core. The card plays every game on the market including Crysis in high settings and with anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering fully enabled. The card is available online for a price of $599.99 from ZipZoomFly this card is not cheap, but it is ultra fast.

CLICK HERE FOR XFX GeForce 9800GX2 Black Edition SHOPPING & PRICING

Now admittedly we were a little disappointed that our plan to incinerate the ramshackle huts had failed so early on and that we had had to fall back and rely on Warren’s help, but the process actually helped to prove how great Far Cry 2 is when it comes to providing an emergent experience and an arena for players to experiment in and create their own stories.

"Under the heatsink is a whole lot of GDDR3, which in itself doesn't mean much--you can find a pile of budget cards with a gig of RAM, the extra memory incapable of boosting their meager performance--but the 3870 is plainly able to fill its frame buffer. If it were truly a budget card, it would come off as sheer marketing; with a high-end card like this, it really does make a difference. The last great ATI card was the HD 2900 XT, a spectacular misfire. But despite it's ridiculous power consumption, sub-par video processing, and tremendous heat with the blower to match, it still beat out the 512MB HD 3870. I hoped that this redesigned 3870 would have what it takes to finally put out the year-old performance despot. And it does, in almost every way."

CLICK HERE FOR Diamond Viper HD 3870 1GB Video Card SHOPPING & PRICING

The ASRock A780FullDisplayPort Socket AM2+ Micro ATX motherboard is based on the AMD 780G chipset and offers especially fantastic connection options for the graphics output. VGA, DVI-D, HDMI and also the latest DisplayPort graphics output is possible with this brand-new ASRock board. The review will show, if this reasonably priced motherboard is suitable for a HTPC living room PC and if it can be overclocked for High-End PCs and underclocked for low power consumption PCs.

Here is a small list of sites that are at Computex Day 1 this year. Should be a busy time with some interesting new releases coming out.

NinjaLane
CPU3D
TechwareLabs

The number one consumer video editing software, Pinnacle Studio has been enhanced with a new range of features and capabilities to meet the needs of first time and advanced videographers. The new Pinnacle Studio 12 includes more than 25 new features and more than a dozen capabilities requested by present users.

"As is befitting of its 'TOP' status, ASUS' EN9800GTX TOP features some pretty significant clock speed bumps over a reference GeForce 9800 GTX. On the GPU core side of things, we get an 80MHz increase, with the chip's Stream Processors getting a bigger boost as the board's shader core is upped to 1840MHz, a 152MHz gain. Elsewhere, on the memory front, the 512MB of RAM on this board gets a 75MHz increase, giving us a final clock of 1175MHz."

CLICK HERE FOR ASUS EN9800GTX TOP Videocard SHOPPING & PRICING

"Asus is everywhere and anywhere there might be a market for computer related components. This industry giant shipped out 55 million motherboards and earned over $16 billion in revenues during 2006. They followed that up in 2007 with revenue exceeding $20 billion dollars. With over 100,000 employees and an unsurpassed R&D team, its not hard to see why they are considered one of the best companies in the game."

CLICK HERE FOR ASUS M3N78-EMH HDMI Motherboard SHOPPING & PRICING

"How can you not love the 9600GT? It’s everywhere. It seems that every company is making at least five different versions of the card; stock clocked, overclocked, 512MB, 1GB, active cooling, passive cooling, dual slot, single slot, HDMI, Display Port, DVI and so much more.

It is the card that caters to everyone. GIGABYTE is here today with the heat-pipe version that carries with it 512MB of memory. Silent cards are extremely important to some people, but it was generally limited to low-end models in the past."

"NZXT has addressed these problems with their latest midtower, the Tempest. Dubbed “Airflow King”, this case has a fully vented bezel, dual 120mm front intake fans, dual 140mm blowhole fans, plus 120mm window and rear fans. Sounds like plenty of ventilation, but will it sound like the next Hurricane Katrina has arrived? Read on to see!"

CLICK HERE FOR NZXT Tempest Steel Midtower Case SHOPPING & PRICING

"Igloo 5750 is a CPU cooler from GlacialTech featuring four heat-pipes and two 92-mm fans and is available in two versions, Silent, with no speed control, and PWM, with speed automatically controlled by the system. We took a look on Igloo 5750 Silent."

If you live in the US, you have probably seen TV commercials about the analog TV signal being switched off in February of 2009. For old home TV sets, there is a converter that can be purchase and the government is even stepping in to help subsidize some of the expenses for the converter. However, for thoes users who mainly use their computer to watch TV via a TV tuner, they may be out of luck unless they upgrade their old TV tuner to a new one that supports digital signals.

CLICK HERE FOR Hauppauge WinTV HVR-1800 SHOPPING & PRICING

Apevia comes to us today with a checkered history among those who know about power supplies. Today, I am looking at the Warlock Power 900W unit, which promises to change people's minds about Apevia; offering plenty of power for today's high end systems. Will it prevail in its quest to improve Apevia's image?

CLICK HERE FOR Apevia Warlock Power 900W Power Supply SHOPPING & PRICING

"So why not just get two 3870s and rub a little CrossFire into your box? There are two reasons, really. For most people, that's just not an option. Dual-PCI-Express can easily tag a Benjamin onto the price of a motherboard, and, in Micro-ATX land, it's a mythical beast that visits overclockers in their dreams. And there's another thing: regular 3870s get the lower-binned GPUs--the faster-clocking chips go into the X2s. But, lastly, the 3870 promises something else: tri- and quad-CrossFireX. But that begs the initial question: now that the release is behind us, how much awesome stuck to the HD 3870 X2, and how much washed away?"

"In our test the Battle-Axe proved to be a very powerful graphic card cooler, but it doesn't come without a long list of down sides. First of all it's huge. This isn't a problem if the user only has one graphic card and doesn't even plan to get any other cards. Anyway it just leaves a feeling of "couldn't have been made any smaller". "

CLICK HERE FOR Xigmatek Battle-Axe GPU Cooler SHOPPING & PRICING

"Up on the review block today is the Super Talent T800UX2GC4 DDR2 PC2-6400 800Mhz 2x1Gb Ram, I'm sure most people are familiar with Super Talent, they makes quite a few products related to memory like USB Drive, SSD Drives and of course regular memory. The ram I have today from them is very sleek looking with it's dark blue heatspreaders, but looks don't mean much if it doesn't perform, so let's just jump right on in and see just how well it does perform... "

CLICK HERE FOR Super Talent T800UX2GC4 DDR2 PC2-6400 SHOPPING & PRICING

"Today we have one of the latest ROG boards to come from ASUS, this particular board based on the new X48 Express chipset. It packs in as many features as you can possibly imagine, so with little time to spare let’s see how it stacks up.

Today we have the ASUS Rampage Formula up against the Maximus Extreme and X38-DQ6 motherboards. The X38-DQ6 supports DDR2 while the Maximus Extreme uses DDR3 memory."

CLICK HERE FOR ASUS Rampage Formula X48 Motherboard SHOPPING & PRICING

Today Dan Shannon takes a look at the Altec Lansing T612 iPod system. Need big sound? What if you're afraid of missing phone calls? The T612 should kick right in and help out.

The Palit GeForce 9600 GT Sonic provides users with the best image quality and most flexible visual experience regardless of the output standard needed. The new advanced DisplayPort output supports a maximum of 10.8 Gbit/s data rate and display resolutions up to 2560×1600; high-definition video is supported with the HDMI output. Palit maintains dual Dual-Link DVI outputs on GeForce 9600 GT Sonic, further extending the usability of this graphics card. All four outputs support 40-bit HDCP and the DisplayPort output also supports 128-bit AES DPCP. Benchmark Reviews tests the Palit NE/960TSX0202 GeForce 9600 GT 1GB Sonic video card against a wide variety of Geforce products in this product review.

"While most early adopters and Gen Y-ers are used to the idea of watching TV on their PC using services like Bebo, Hulu, Joost or a million alternatives, now the rest of the world is finally catching up. Have yet to join the party? It's about time you tuned in - and upgraded your monitor to really enjoy all of these groovy options as they're meant to be experienced. Thankfully, Dell's new Ultra-Sharp 2408WFP 24-inch widescreen flat panel monitor can help."

CLICK HERE FOR Dell UltraSharp 2408WFP SHOPPING & PRICING

"If you haven't gamed on a widescreen monitor yet, you really need to do yourself a favor and buy one, because they are absolutely amazing to game on. The large 24" screen really put me into Counter-Strike: Source and Call of Duty 4. I really was amazed by how everything just looked so glossy and smooth. This monitor makes everything crystal clear, and I had absolutely no issues with either monitor during the gaming portion of the subjective viewing. The BenQ monitor wasn't quite as smooth and glossy looking as the Acer monitor was. I played both of those games at 1920 x 1200, which is the highest resolution on both monitors, and I must say that I have never gamed like that. I honestly felt like I was playing my games in HD because everything was so crystal clear. It was a close battle, but I would have to say that the Acer monitor looked slightly better than the BenQ's offering. Also, the Acer has a 2ms response time, while the BenQ has a 6ms response time. I couldn't tell a difference between the two, but it's good to know that the Acer has one of the fastest response times on the market."

CLICK HERE FOR Acer P243W 24 inch Widescreen SHOPPING & PRICING

“Honeywell is not a name you think of when you think of LCD Monitors, actually they are very new into the market. Recently they partnered with Soyo to produce LCD monitors and televisions. We got a chance to take a look at one of their latest LCD's the very affordable Topaz S 24-inch LCD monitor. Now Honeywell has a new LCD that is a more advanced and premium version of the Topaz S. Let's take a look at the Arius 22-inch Widescreen LCD Monitor!”

CLICK HERE FOR Honeywell Arius 22-inch Widescreen LCD Monitor SHOPPING & PRICING

“So, what we have here at the end is a "sleeper" graphics card. In the auto world, they’re cars that people drive around that don't look fast, but packs a powerful engine hiding underneath. These are called "sleeper" cars. While they have a meek facade, they'll surprise the racer next to him once the race begins. The ECS 8800 GT 256MB Graphics Card has replaced the 8600 GTS and HD 3870 512MB cards in their entirety because it's that much faster. This is the new king of the budget cards that performs much better than budget.”

CLICK HERE FOR ECS 8800GT 256MB Graphics Card SHOPPING & PRICING

" InsideHW did so far reviews for a few great motherboards from ASUS and this time in our test lab came ASUS P5E64 WS Evolution. First we have to underline that this exact model ASUS intended for advanced users. Professional and "serious" look of this motherboard perfectly matches the purpose and group of users that ASUS P5E64 WS Evolution is intended for. The rest will follow, bit by bit."

The Visiontek 3870x2 card certainly is a big boy. The card itself measures 9.75 inches long which is a tad less than the norm for current generation high end cards. The massive dual fan cooler that looks remarkably like the Thermaltake DuOrb (which we love around here) brings the size up to the point we even put the card on the scale. I say remarkably like but not exactly as the Visiontek card is a much more robust cooler that is clearly geared to trump the venerable Tt DuOrb.

CLICK HERE FOR Visiontek HD3870x2 Overclocked Edition SHOPPING & PRICING

"The comfort level of the Discovery 925 is incredibly nice. After finding the right size to wear, you start to wonder why manufacturers haven't come up with a similar design yet. A friend of mine who has small ears and has always had problems wearing "in-the-ear" type of headsets was able to fit the Discovery 925 with no problems at all. It doesn't matter if you are left-ear or a right-ear Bluetooth wearer, you can switch between ears with ease. Some headsets like the Jawbone require you to physically change the hardware for this basic switch. After using the 925 for a few days, there is no way I want to go back to the "ancient" fit of an ear hook like the Jawbone or "deep in the ear canal" of the Gennum. These headsets are great performers, but their fit is not as comfortable, free and versatile as the 925..."

CLICK HERE FOR Plantronics Discovery 925 Bluetooth Headset SHOPPING & PRICING

In the year 2048, The Mantel Corporation is waging an all out war for the freedom of civilization. At least that is the company line they are putting forth as they send legions of drug enhanced soldiers into the jungles of South America to bring down the rebel opposition.

CLICK HERE FOR Haze (PS3) SHOPPING & PRICING

All ram is not created equal, and that means ALL ram, one set of the same exact ram may perform better than another set or overclock higher than another set, it's hard to judge ram except with testing and examining the results to see where the strengths and weaknesses are of any given set of ram.

This is a useful change, but it's under the surface with the result that the P45 Platinum looks very similar to the P35 Platinum. Indeed, the only discernable visual difference on the P45 Platinum is the Circu-Pipe 2 cooling system, which has been heavily revised from the original Circu-Pipe that we saw on the X38 Diamond and X48 Platinum models.

Just like the old PK1s the new OK1s are a very though pair of earbuds to drive. Their impedance is a whooping 150 Ohms and definitely something you should take into consideration before buying them since you will need either a powerful headphone out from your DAP or a headphone amp to drive them well.

Let’s dive in and take a look at the new Thermaltake MaxOrb EX; we’ll then test it the same way we did the MaxOrb and all of our other CPU coolers to see if Thermaltake were able to get even more performance out of the Orb design.

"The G.Skill PC2-8500 4GB PI Memory is another strong performing dual channel memory kit. Stability is top notch and the kit is very reliable under pressure. At full load, the memory keeps its composure and pumps out the bandwidth. Thanks to the new spreaders, it was only slightly warm to the touch and looks pretty sweet."

I mean, if you really want to get harsh, about the only thing this game does wrong is allow money to magically appear in your hand (though if you have a credit card that would explain that), and there is no snow. Other than that, this game does everything right. If you actually say, "I am tired of playing this game," you are a crazy. The only reason to stop playing is to eat, sleep, or carry on with your life.