Week of January 11, 2009

"Fresh off a momentous victory at Macworld, HP has started 2009 on a positive note. The company has a full line of new netbooks, larger Touchsmart all-in-one desktops, the TX2 notebook with touch control, and plenty of peripherals and gadgets to keep us busy here at Digital Trends. (They seem to have dropped out of the smartphone market, however.) The MediaSmart EX487, a server for home use that works just as well for small businesses, won the best-of-show award at Macworld, even though it runs a Windows OS product. As a second-generation update, the server is an ideal companion on the road to digital nirvana. It's fast, has plenty of expansion options, is easy to configure, and runs reliably."

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This down draft style 120/140mm fan heatsink won't set any cooling record, but is one of the few well-performing HTPC CPU coolers.

"If you are looking for something faster than a USB 2.0 Flash drive for file transfers the eSATA interface it certainly an option that you should look into if the systems you work with have eSATA available on them. When moving roughly 30GB of files like we did in the real world testing the OCZ Throttle saved over a half an hour of time and to those that work on deadlines or are in a hurry that is very important..."

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With an overclocked GPU @ 700Mhz, we're expecting the Inno3D Geforce GTX 285 Overclock to outperform the Asus ENGTX285 TOP. However, we also expect the GPU temperatures to increase too. Could this affect the overall performance? We'll find out later. The stock cooler should be more than adequate to cool the enitre graphics card, but as I imagine, Inno3D will probably release a i-ChiLL version soon.

Zalman's CNPS9900 LED is their newest all copper model in the CNPS series. A silent 120 mm blue LED fan has been placed between two arrays of pure copper fins. With exceptional performance and amazing looks, the CNPS9900 LED is a great CPU cooler if you can justify spending $79 for a CPU cooler.

From Nvidia’s side of the fence, the GeForce GTX 280 is the obvious competition and while the GTX 285 is faster, you have to ask if it’s worth the additional outlay over the few GTX 280s that are still available. Obviously, we’ve tested the standard clocked version here, but there’s an XFX GeForce GTX 280 clocked at 640MHz core (not that much lower than the GTX 285’s reference clock) on sale at Scan for ￡275 including VAT which makes us wonder whether it’s worth spending the extra ￡20 or so on a 285.

Enter the In Win Commander series of power supplies. Designed with the enthusiast/gamer in mind, they promise to deliver clean, stable power while maintaining a high efficiency rating. We have been blessed with the opportunity to review the 1200W version, but they are available in anywhere from 650W all the way up to 1500W. For many users, 600W is more than enough. But there is a certain group, a rather large group, that believe too much power is never enough. I, of course, happen to fall into the latter group. Why settle for 600W when you can have 1200W? It can offer several benefits. Not the least of which is higher efficiency. Many users mistakenly believe that when they hook up a 1KW power supply their power bill will go up as a direct result. When you have a highly efficient power supply, however, you're not drawing any more wattage from the wall than you would with a smaller PSU, you simply have more room to grow.

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"The Hummer-inspired ooler Master HAF 932 case is built on a foundation of roughened matte black plastic and steel chassis with a large red LED-illuminated fan right up front.At nearly two feet tall and weighing in at just under 30 pounds, the Cooler Master HAF 932 High Air Flow Chassis is an imposing full tower ATX case, marketed towards gamers and overclockers with an array of fans, cooling options, and lots of space for large components."

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"There are a couple of valuable observations to make from the results. The most important is the dramatic cooling performance the IXG-80HA2 has when combined with the fan kit. If you compare the stock cooler at 100% with the IXG-80HA2 with fans installed, you will find approximately 20% cooler temps in an idle state and around 30% better under load. Impressive! Almost as dramatic is the cooler's ability to remain effective without fans and operating in silence. Yes, the IXG-HA2 with no fans performed on par with the stock cooler at 25%. As a word of warning, the copper heatpipes on the heatsink get very hot when used passively."

Today lauched a die shrunk version of the GTX 280 which was named the GTX 285. Let's see if it bring anymore performance to the table with these reviews.

Cpu3d
Hardwarecanucks
Elitebastards
Tweaktown
Hardocp
Overclockersclub

"The SpinQ Cooler by Thermaltake has the appearance that is needed to turn heads and be functional at the same time. The SpinQ Cooler has an adjustable speed controller for the 80mm fan in the center of the Thermaltake SpinQ, not to mention the six heat pipes and circular aluminum fins that rise from the base of the SpinQ Cooler. The Thermaltake SpinQ’s design allows dissipation of heat from all sides of the cooler helping to keep the CPU nice and cool."

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“HAF 932 is the first model from newest Cooler Master HAF chassis series. HAF (High Air Flow) series is designed to provide maximal airflow. When “maximal airflow” is mentioned, probably the first association is noise, but nowadays this isn’t the case because R&D team from Cooler Master is actually listening to user critiques. As result of this “collaboration” between Cooler Master and users we can present you Cooler Master HAF 932. If you wonder how Cooler Master achieved big airflow with low noise levels, answer is simple: fans with large radius and low RPM. Of course Cooler Master didn’t re-invent hot water but this is not the only reason that makes this case unique and special…”

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Today we have the oppurtunity to review the Thermaltake BlacX 2.5"/3.5" Hard Drive Docking Station. This device gives you the option of using either a USB or e-SATA cable to transfer to or transfer from a SATA hard drive. Thanks to it's small and compact size the Thermaltake BlacX give you the option of adding an extra hard drive to your computer.

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"The AVC Black Samurai heatsink packs in a 120mm PWM fan which scales from 800-2000RPM, exhausting air downwards towards adjacent motherboard components like passive MOSFET and Northbridge heatsinks. Standing a good 150mm tall on six 6mm diameter heatpipes, the 760gram Black Samurai is a big cooler. For a little added visual appeal, the entire Black Samurai has been dark nickel plated."

"Canon's all new all-in-one printer, the Canon Pixima MP980, is the replacement for their older model, the MP970, and it comes packed with features. It's definitely an all-in-one in the strict sense of the term, allowing you to print, scan, and copy right from it with one-click functionality. It has a decent-sized LCD screen and six ink system prints very nice-looking photos prints. It also has built-in networking with wireless capabilities."

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Some people like simple mid tower cases that are freakishly boring and get stuffed inside a desk. Others like over the top full tower gaming cases with all the bells and whistles. Then, you have guys like me who are in the middle. We like modern good looking gaming mid towers that give exceptional cooling. Something you can take to a LAN party and people aren't like 'Holy $%17', but are more like 'Hey man, that's a nice PC you got there'. Today, Thermaltake kindly dropped off at my doorstep the V9 Marvelous Gaming Case. It has four 5 1/4' bays, seven 3.5' bays, two 120mm fans, a 230mm fan on the top, and a place to put a slim 80mm fan behind the CPU socket on the motherboard tray. It even has two holes predrilled and ready for external water cooling, as well as slits and an air filter for your power supply's fan.

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“Provided you have the room for it, and the desire for one of the best air cooled cases on the market, then the ATCS 840 is a hard case to pass up. What's even more impressive to it, though, is how this case manages to move more air than the previous champion - the HAF932, all while appealing to a more global audience than the formerly hard designs. I'm going to go and call this one a major winner. Go out and grab this if you're looking for a new case!”

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The funny thing about how expensive technology is, is that as soon as you buy something that costs $300, it�s automatically obsolete and is worth roughly 1/3 of the original price. Actually, it was pretty much obsolete the moment you bought it. The world of the PC DIYer is a fantastic world, but the price bracket sucks the biggest set of hairy boys possible. That�s why when I had to replace my motherboard on my tight budget, I went for one that wouldn�t break the bank. Because let�s face it. There are going to be a couple dozen introduced next week that will render your new i7 compatible board as ancient technology. I think I�ll stick with my Athlon Dual Core until the price range comes down.

In the quest for silencing a computer system, we often focus on noise sources such as CPU coolers and case fans. But what if the case itself can aid in reducing noise? NZXT, makers of a wide range of computer products, has developed a new case, the NZXT Whisper Series Case, which has added features to reduce computer noise. Will this case live up to its name and be as quiet as a whisper?

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"Fujitsu, best known in the notebook space for its business tablets, is showing the consumer crowd a little love with the $1,499 LifeBook N7010, which is being billed by the Japanese electronics company as an "Ultimate Multimedia Notebook"-and it is indeed a performer when it comes to high-definition movie playback and audio and video editing tasks. However, the system's highlight is the 4-inch "Touch Zone" display mounted directly above its keyboard, which acts as a fully functional touch-sensitive secondary monitor. Practical innovation or mere novelty?"

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The GTX285 is basically a GTX280 with the same number of Shaders and the same memory interface that has been moved from 65nm to 55nm manufacturing process with clock speeds increased on the memory, Shaders and core- something many manufacturers have already done with their GTX280 GPU powered cards (except for the die-shrink, of course).

The final stumbling block for the Revolution 700 is its price. Despite offering little in game performance advantage over a stock 4870 X2, which can be picked up for around £340 following aggressive price cuts in anticipation of the launch of Nvidia's GeForce GTX 295, the Revolution 700 retails for in excess of £30 more.

Just after Christmas I received a small black box in the mail; this contained one ASUS Xonar Essence STX PCI-Express sound card. The first shock I received was how fast ASUS had managed to get this sample out to myself; this tells me they’re excited about the product and to be honest, I am too!

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Today we will be looking at all new CoolIT Domino A.L.C. (Advanced Liquid Cooling) CPU Cooling solution that offers first time users the ability to step into the water cooling arena with out really getting their feet wet in the process (pardon the pun). The Domino is advertised as having the ability to not only cool your hot running i7, 775 or AM2 CPUs, but is also able to customize its characteristics "on the fly" with a simple push of a button. This really does put a new spin on things and we are itching to see how this innovative tweak works in a realistic environment.

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"Well after some time testing the HD 4550, I found its strengths and weaknesses. First, this card is excellent for video use, whether it be for a workstation PC, a casual use PC, or even a home theater PC. Since it is a low profile card with the bracket included for smaller cases, you will not have any problems getting this card to fit. Being actively cooled will keep the operating temperatures down when inside a small case such as a cramped HTPC case. The Sapphire HD 4550 however should not be taken lightly because of its size. While it was last in all of the video benchmarks, some of the tests were actually playable at the settings tested at. Lighten up on the settings between low and medium and you should be able to pull off reasonable frame rates for some casual gaming. Don't expect to crush any records though. With only 80 stream processors and a 64-bit memory BUS, you are limited on how fast you can perform in games in benchmarks. Trying to overclock this card was like hitting a brick wall, literally. I could not get past the limits of the Catalyst Control Center, no matter what overclocking tool I used. It would just lock up and I had to reboot."

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"nVidia have recently decided to rename a lot of their 9 series cards with the GT1 series moniker. Fortunately, XFX sent us over a couple before this, so today I'm not testing a GT something or other, it's a 9800 GTX + Black Edition. Let's check it out."

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Well, it's time for OCZ to come up with some new CPU coolers ... we welcome the OCZ Gladiator (92mm version) and the OCZ Galdiator Max (120mm version) featuring 4 heatpipes. Both coolers feature the OCZ's heatpipe direct touch technology which allows direct contact with the processor using four copper heat pipes, and ensures the most rapid heat transfer. The unique “folded” fin configuration also helps maximize surface area while maintaining a compact form factor.

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“Good business notebook should be lightweight, reliable, fast and with long autonomy and good quality. Toshiba built Tecra R10 for business users that travel a lot and we will see if Toshiba fulfilled its goal. At first sight Toshiba Tecra R10-10S doesn’t look tough. This impression is consequence mostly because of slim and flexible cover. Surprisingly, even under severe bending of cover, there was no picture distortion. After thorough inspection we concluded that toughness and quality of Tecra R10 aren’t that bad. Although if you expected casing that can withstand extreme punches you will be slightly disappointed…”

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"Coolage's Frozen Orb Z924 HDC heatsink makes use of the trendy "heatpipe direct contact" technique, except this time we're looking at a modified thermal design Coolage originally manufactured with a copper base plate. That heatsink was the Freezer Orb F0-Z924AL. Can a heatsink be retooled into an effective exposed heatpipe base CPU cooler if it wasn't originally designed as such? That's just one of the questions Frostytech will seek to answer in this review."

As you would expect given the Radeon HD 4870 X2 ATOMIC's extravagant cooling solution, both core and memory clock speeds see increases for this particular board. Firstly, both RV770 cores on the card get a 50MHz speed increase to give them an 800MHz core clock, while the 1GB of GDDR5 memory afforded each GPU gets a 100MHz bump up to a 1GHz clock speed.

"When a device tries to be all things to all people, it usually winds up satisfying no one. Most all-in-one printers, for example, are good for lightweight office tasks, but they make lousy photo printers. Epson's Artisan 800 is much better than that: It's a fabulous photo printer and a pretty good light-duty office machine. We expect a multi-function printer with a $300 price tag to include a long list of features and deliver impeccable performance, and the Artisan 800 doesn't disappoint on either count. Let's take a look at features, first, available by clicking to go to the next page."

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As a proof of concept the 3DVision is an excellent piece of tech and we confess that if it worked well with existing screens then as hardcore gamers we’d probably be tempted to go out and get one ourselves. If you’re looking to spend some cash on a tech toy outside the necessary keyboard and mouse and instead of other worthy upgrades, compared to the questionably working OCZ NIA or the excellent but ultimately restricted Novint Falcon, it’s worth the cash on 3DVision.

Benchmark Reviews has had the wonderful opportunity to review and critique some of the best and most powerful video cards currently available anywhere. These items are very exciting, dreams of playing your favorite video game as large as life and silky smooth abound. Wouldn't it be great if we could all afford one of these monster video cards? Today Benchmark Reviews will take a close look at what I'll call a junior monster. Currently fourth in nvidias lineup of single GPU cards, the Geforce 9800 GTX+ is a card for the mainstream gamer and offers refinements on an already proven design, specifically the wildly popular and powerful G92 core. With a die shrink to 55nm speeds are up and temps are down. We will focus specifically on the PALiT non reference design Geforce 9800 GTX+ NE/98TX+XT352. With it's nearly silent cooler and slightly overclocked core this card should put up some good numbers.

Arctic Cooling owes their good reputation almost entirely to high performance cooling products, but they are making concentrated efforts to diversify their product range. Today we will have a look at a new product from them, the Fusion 550R PSU.

Quite favorably, of course Seriously, though, the choice of SSD vs. HDD is a trade-off like everything else. The significant disadvantages are cost and capacity. The most obvious advantage is performance, but there are other advantages that might be of interest in some applications.

Hardwareoverclock Austria has reviewed the Gigabyte GA-EX58-DS4 Socket 1366 mainboard. This board is one of the cheapest mainboards on the market. But what’s about the performance and accessories.

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"Today I'm checking out Monster lab for the Playstation 2 console, and it's certainly a game that doesn't fit squarely in any genre of gaming, it's got aspects of role playing, puzzles and even action and adventure mixed in for a nice rounded out game. If you didn't figure out from the title, the idea behind Monster Lab is to create monsters, and you get to do it Frankenstein style and you're creations are truly nightmarish or frankensteinish made up of a hodgepodge of parts that you find and combine together on your adventures.. In the game you create and battle you monster up against other monsters you encounter, the actual fighting is turn based, role playing style, so there's no button mashing involved. One thing that keeps the game fun and interesting is the ability to create, and upgrade your monsters as you play, then there's also many mini-games as well that make it even more fun and that keeps things from getting tedious or repetitive. Monster Lab might sound like a kids game, but I had quite a bit of fun playing it, and it's got a lot of things going for it, and a few things that aren't handled so well either, but the pros heavily outweigh the cons of this game. Overall it's a well thought out and nicely designed game, that looks and plays well and should keep your attention for quite a while. "

“After only 5 years in the industry, SilverStone Technology has become recognized as one the premiere manufacturers of aesthetically compelling enclosures and accessories for the enthusiast market. Today we look at the Temjin TJ10, a top-end case for consumers with discerning tastes.”

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"Call us excited. The new Canon EOS 5D Mark II is one of the most anticipated D-SLRs of 2008. Not only does it have a 21.1-megapixel full-frame sensor, the camera is the first in its class to record 1080p high-def video. The Nikon D90 was officially the first D-SLR to record HD clips, but it did 720p footage. We liked some aspects of the $999 D90, but as a camcorder it definitely had its flaws. Now archrival Canon has outdone the D90 with a much better imaging processor, and enhanced video capture. Of course all these goodies come with a steep price-namely $2,699 for the body alone-three times the D90--although slightly less than the $2,999 full-frame 24.6MP Sony DSLR-A900 which doesn't record video at all. At first chance we charged the battery and were off to the races."

When building or upgrading a new PC there are always several options to consider regarding every component. One of the most confusing, for many users at least, is memory. I have friends(as I'm sure most of us do)that have trouble distinguishing between memory and hard disk space, that's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about all the different options out there. DDR2 had several different categories as the specifications aged and evolved. When DDR3 came about we were faced with an array of choices since the day the first product hit the shelves. Memory rated for different bus speeds, timings, voltages, and of course, prices.

"Core i7 is apparently a good product. We insist that its main goal is not to improve performance. It wouldn't be a failure even if it was less efficient than Core 2. Anyway, it's 7% more efficient. What else there is to wish?"

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Over the years weve seen countless designs spanning across a huge range of coolers on the market. Due to the ever increasing thermal output of modern components, companies have been evolving their cooling solutions over the years to keep up with the demands. Today were going to take a look at three coolers which use an exposed heatpipe design, providing the heatpipes with direct contact to the core as opposed to transferring heat through a base.

Nexus has sent us a couple of coolers in this category of compact cooling solutions before, namely the Nexus XiR 3500 copper and the XiR 2300 aluminum coolers. Nexus is based off the concept that there is a real need to lower the ambient noise of a PC to make it more enjoyable to be around. This philosophy stands to serve them well as more users are putting HTPC’s in rooms where noise just isn’t wanted, let alone the idea of giving the ears of everyday users a break.

When it comes to your computer case, the choices seem to be endless, however when you boil it down most of them are an enclosed rectangle box. Antec has taken a different approach with their latest case, the Skeleton. They have broken out of the 'box' in more ways than one with this latest case.

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“In last few years it looked like AMD lost its bearings in CPU market. No one expected that company, that is in constant transition, financial problems and without complete product portfolio, can produce interesting, equivalent and concurrent product. Phenom CPUs with K10 micro architecture didn’t claim speed crown from Intel, but they were significant step forward compared to “worn out” K8 cores. We must be aware of the fact that every processor is result of compromise between investments and goals. Probably K10 would be better product if it had larger L2 and L3 cache memory, with better and larger Branch Target Buffers, with different cache policies that are favoring intensive operations with cache memory, but in that case Phenom, that was manufactured in 65nm process, wouldn’t give adequate results…”

To make matters convenient, the charger is designed in such a way that you can easily use your keyboard while its being charged. It\'s like a plate that your keyboard docks to and your mouse rests upon. While this could work nicely if you have the Desktop 8000 connected to a desktop PC, it isn\'t necessarily ideal for a Media Center PC which is hooked to your TV ten feet away and the keyboard is held in your hands instead of a table.

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I know that there are many of you are thinking right now: "what, another new graphics card from Nvidia?" yup, you got it guys, Nvidia is on a mission to recapture the performance crown from the HD 4870 X2 and they aren't being subtle about it. Their latest stab at the ultra high end is called the GTX 295 and it is packing enough heat to put ATI's frontrunner in its place.

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XFX has a very interesting product with the nForce 750i SLI board. It overclocks very well with the 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo hitting over 3.2GHz on air cooling. That is a pretty impressive feat considering how generally un-overclocker friendly the CPU is. The ability to use two NVIDIA graphics based cards in SLI is another plus that is not available on the Intel LGA-775 platform except for those users having a SLI-capable motherboard like this one.

“However, when the Patriot Viper PC3-12800 6GB Triple Channel Memory is pushed to its full potential, there's a huge amount of memory bandwidth available which the I7 can use with things like audio and video formatting. It's actually quite surprising to see just how fast the kit is in both dual and triple channel mode. To give you a good idea, formatting an 8GB video file came close to matching the Skull Trail's performance which I had on demo at PDXLAN. The difference here is that the Skull Trail is two physical Core 2 Quad Extreme 1600 MHz FSB processors versus a single Extreme 965 with Hyperthread making virtually 8 cores.”

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One of the main problems with various motherboard's northbridge cooler is the small heatsink with little fan at 5000rpm. Fan at such speed makes high noise making use of computer very uncomfortable, not to mention the situation where the fan stops at all making the northbridge to overheat and possibly break due to it. Evercool was kind enough to provide us their newest northbridge cooler called Serpent.

I have come away from my experience with the Spedo Advance Package with a great appreciation for all the Spedo has to offer. Bold styling along with some useful features makes the Spedo Advance Package worthy of anyone's consideration.

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