Week of September 13, 2009

"Docking stations for laptops have been around almost since the existence of laptops themselves. The problem is that not all laptops have a docking port built in. Usually only the business class notebooks, which are often more expensive than their consumer grade counterparts, have provisions for connecting to a dock. The product we have for review today is a universal laptop dock featuring DisplayLink technology. Although this device carries the HP brand name, its design allows it to work on just about any computer that has a USB 2.0 port. Freed from traditional docking station restraints of specific brands and/or models, the HP USB 2.0 Docking Station allows external connection of VGA, DVI, USB, SPK, MIC and NIC devices and shares these peripherals through one standard USB connection to the host computer."

CLICK HERE FOR HP USB 2.0 Docking Station PRICING & SHOPPING

"Once upon a time, when beige PC towers ruled the earth, your average PC user was rather limited for their choice of mouse pad – most were abominable little plastic rectangles backed with some kind of spray foam that served little purpose other than accumulating years of rotting spillages. Thankfully that time is no more and coMPanies have been churning out mouse mats of every conceivable shape, size and colour to cater to the needs of PC users for years. Today we take a look at Jetart's new addition to its MousePal line-up, the MP2000, to see if it's worth your hard earned pennies."

Intel has done a great job with the DP55KG Extreme motherboard. The board overclocks decently, but the real treat for this board is on the automatic overclocking that Turbo Boost provides. The board automatically changes the multiplier for the Core i7 or i5 CPU higher so it operates at 3.2GHz for the Core i5 750 CPU or 3.6GHz for the Core i7 870 CPU. These were completely stable in operation. Intel has done their homework with the overclocking and it shows. The board features a full suite of software from Intel including their new Desktop Control Center and a trial version of Norton’s Internet Security. It is for these reasons that I give this board an Editor’s Choice; it’s been a long time coming for an Intel retail board.

CLICK HERE FOR Intel DP55KG Motherboard PRICING & SHOPPING

The UL30 was just introduced last week along with a few other CULV machines, which stands for Consumer Ultra Low Voltage. This moniker refers to the Intel processor within, which is a more powerful chip than the Atom options found in most netbooks, yet isn't quite as potent as the full-fledged Core 2 Duo CPUs found in most full-size notebooks. Again, this whole machine is about splitting the difference, and we have to admit, it's a fine line to walk...

CLICK HERE FOR Asus 13.3" UL30A CULV Notebook PRICING & SHOPPING

The NexStar U.S.A. is a combination of devices many of us have used as PC builders. It can transfer data from one computer to another peer-to-peer, retrieve data from digital media cards, recover data from a malfunctioning hard drive or with the addition of a hard drive, become an external storage solution. However, there is one thing missing.

" Geeks.com has sent me over the LG GSA-E50L 8x DVD±RW DL USB 2.0 Slim External Drive w/LightScribe for review. The LG drive is essentially a laptop drive in an external enclosure, but what makes this drive preferable over others on the market is that it does not require an external power supply so you won’t need to worry about carrying one with you. The idea of a netbook is portability so this drive is not only inexpensive, but quiet and very portable. "

CLICK HERE FOR LG GSA-E50L PRICING & SHOPPING

"On September 1st, 2009, Western Digital announced two new 2 TB hard drives that belong in the Caviar Black and RE4 series, which are 3.5" hard drives that feature four 500 GB platters. The WD Caviar Black 2 TB (model WD2001FASS) and WD RE4 2 TB (model WD2003FYYS) hard drives feature 7200 RPM spin speed, 64 MB cache, dual stage actuator technology, SATA 3 gigabits per second (GB/s) interface, and an integrated dual processor to deliver ultimate performance in a maximum-capacity drive. WD's RE4 2 TB drive is designed for enterprise-class applications, so we won't be looking at that one today. We will be looking at the brand new WD Caviar Black 2 TB (model WD2001FASS) hard drive and will be comparing it to the WD Caviar Green 2 TB (model WD20EADS) hard drive."

CLICK HERE FOR Western Digital 2TB Caviar Green PRICING & SHOPPING

In the gaming and software world you will often here of Beta releases or Beta testing which means you are the first to try a product out and point out its faults so that a production release has the minimal amount of bugs possible. When NZXT released the Beta Gaming Chassis I was a little perplexed about the Title. After some use of the Chassis I was pretty impressed it had some great options for a mid-tower case.

The WinTV-MiniStick HD offers good image and sound quality both in TDT and TDT HD. I love the fact that WinTV7 uses the graphics card to diminish the load on the CPU. I am also very impressed by the included software, especially by how easy it is to operate. The WinTV-MiniStick HD goes for around 50€ here in Europe and isn’t currently available in the US as far as I know. This price is really good in my opinion. To be honest, I really expected the WinTV-MiniStick HD to be nothing short of exceptional and I wasn’t disapointed…

If you really want your PSU to last the first company you should look at is Corsair. There have been a few rumors going around about Corsair lowering the certification of this PSU because it didn't live up to what the expected. This is untrue, the PSU was never designed to be a Gold PSU, but it actually qualifies as one. This shows that Corsair is a company that doesn't try to cheat to make them look better. Not only that, but Corsair backs this PSU with a 7 year warranty, so you can be sure that they 110% stand behind their power supplies.

CLICK HERE FOR Corsair HX850 PRICING & SHOPPING

The newest series of cases from Thermaltake is the Element line. The Element series consist of three cases: S, G and the T. Each of the cases are designed to satisfy different individuals. The S is meant for professionals in a office, business or even producers of music and videos. The G is for the gamer that wants a killer looking case to house all his or her gaming gear. The last model is the T and we'll be taking a look at it today. The T is for the budget-minded individual that wants something which looks good and doesn't cost an entire paycheck to buy. The Element T is an all black mesh front panel case with clean lines begging for some attention.

CLICK HERE FOR Thermaltake Element T PRICING & SHOPPING

Depending on what you need an external hard drive for, you’re either going to have a small pocket sized one or a larger one to sit on your desk. The Consus is a great enclosure that fits in your pocket and has some great features. Read on to see what those features are and how the Consus does during testing.

CLICK HERE FOR Eagle Tech Consus PRICING & SHOPPING

The Lancool PC-K62 is the high-end model of the Dragonlord Series. It comes stuffed with four fans, screw-less systems everywhere you look within that black interior and a cool looking window to top things off. We go in for the kill to see if we can tame the Dragon.

And also according to Razer; their reputation for being a class leader in their field is seen in all of their products. Today we put that to the test as we look at their Megalodon 7.1 surround gaming headset product and see if it’s any good.

CLICK HERE FOR Razer Megalodon PRICING & SHOPPING

“This time we will review a notebook that sets new standards in area of quality and applied solutions. Lot of water under the bridge has passed since we encountered a notebook that left such positive impressions on us. To be honest, there were laptops that offered much better performance levels but this laptop has, until now, unprecedented combination of mobility and autonomy with quality to match and price tag below 700€…”

CLICK HERE FOR Acer Aspire Timeline 4810T PRICING & SHOPPING

Gigabyte is well known for their motherboards but their pre-overclocked graphics cards have been few and far between. Now, things are a-changin’ with them as they try to take on the likes of EVGA’s FTW, BFG’s OCX and ASUS’ Ultimate series with their Super Overclock edition of cards. In this review we take a look at the very first Gigabyte card to go head to head with the best the competition has to offer: the GTX 260 Super Overclock.

CLICK HERE FOR Gigabyte GTX 260 896MB PRICING & SHOPPING

"The first thing that we notice from our first loook at the TPower I55 is that it most certainly doesn't skimp on expansion slots - More on those later, as our eyes are also drawn to the impressively large heatsinks employed to cool the motherboard's P55 chipset itself as well as other major components. The general layout of the motherboard as a whole seems to be pretty good, although one of the fan headers gets blocked by basically any high-end graphics board you might care to use, while the floppy connector is also placedin a rather irritating position - Not that we really need a floppy drive connector on a modern system in 2009, so I'm not too sure why it's there at all."

"Overclocking was straightforward and predictable based on the capabilities of the CPU and memory. Extreme screenshots are nice for bragging rights but for most of us the computer has to be used day in and day out reliably. Along that vein, the Maximus delivered a slightly higher overclock with less voltage than was needed on the same processor on the Intel Kingsberg board. The Turbo V Evo software auto tuning feature worked well enough but it took a while to test and tune to get the same overclock that I can manually set and boot in thirty seconds."

Perhaps you want to gain some more PPD on folding, but do not have an extra machine to fold with. Well you can use this 3650 to fold, and increase your PPD on an old obsolete machine. You may be just someone looking for a new AGP card after your onboard video on your older motherboard decided to die on you. You certainly shouldn't pass up a card like this, because you may find the extra power useful down the road. Anyway you look at it, this 3650 AGP from VisionTek is your best bet to breath new life in an old AGP machine.

CLICK HERE FOR VisionTek HD 3650 AGP PRICING & SHOPPING

Patriot Memory has recently released their first NAS device; the Corza 2-Drive NAS enclosure. This device is designed to use two SATA drives in either a RAID 0, RAID 1, or Linear (aka JBOD) configuration. While two SATA drives doesn't sound like much, the Corza can provide up to 4TB of storage space based on currently available drives.

CLICK HERE FOR Patriot Memory Corza 2-Drive NAS Enclosure PRICING & SHOPPING

Benchmark Reviews had the opportunity to review and launch two new Lynnfield processors from Intel: the Core i5-750 and the Core i7-870. While these were the stars of the launch, it wouldn't be a complete platform without the motherboard. Released in parallel with the two processors, is the Intel P55 Express Chipset. In this review, we'll examine the new chipset in detail and take a closer look at Intel's flagship DP55KG Extreme Series Motherboard.

CLICK HERE FOR Intel DP55KG P55 LGA1156 Motherboard PRICING & SHOPPING

The N4100PRO is based on the AMD Geode LX800 Processor with 256MB memory which should make it reasonably fast. The drives easily screw in the bay and then simply slide into the SATA/POWER connector built on the logic board of the N4100PRO- no messy cables."

CLICK HERE FOR Thecus N4100 PRO NAS PRICING & SHOPPING

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

With this in mind, we can see that quite often at these presets, the HD 4770 isn't that far behind the 30 FPS minimum we want to see at 1680 x 1050. With a small detail drop, we would be able to get up and over that 30 FPS minimum and that is good news. Depending on the game, you'll probably find that you're able to get over 30 FPS at 1920 x 1200 at lower quality image settings.

"The only drawback that I have with the majority of the boards, with the exception of the 790X board, is that the SATA ports become blocked or partially blocked when using large video cards. It would be nice to have all the boards using the 90 degree SATA ports like the 790X board has to eliminate the issue. Other than that small quirk, these are rock solid motherboards that have a lot to offer the user, without breaking the bank. If you are in the market for a mid range board without all the frills of the higher end ones, then the Gigabyte lineup would be a big asset to your systems."

I’ve been asked by many friends if the 2008 models currently on sale are a good buy and my answer is: it depends. If you’re looking for a basic TV and only plan on watching Cable/Digital TV with the occasional movie in between go for what’s on sale as you’ll be happy with it. However, the B640 offers so much more. If you plan on watching more than just the odd HD movie or will be centering your entertainment system around a new TV then seriously consider the B640 as the baseline for comparison.

CLICK HERE FOR Samsung LN46B640 PRICING & SHOPPING

"Silent Pro M is the latest power supply series from Cooler Master, featuring modular cabling system and single-rail design, with 500 W, 600 W, 700 W, 850 W and 1000 W models available. Today we are going to test the 850 W version from this series (RS-850-AMBA-J3), which is scheduled to reach the market by the end of this month, and see if it will survive our tests."

The MSI P55-GD65 has a few distinctions over the P55-CD53 motherboard, which I reviewed on launch day. First is the ability to do Voltage Checkpoints, which the other board cannot do. Second is the higher Overclock ability (slightly) of the board. MSI has three models of P55 chipset on the market including this one and the P55-CD53 and P55-GD80 with slightly modified feature set for each. MSI’s board gets the Editor’s Choice due to the features and performance that you want at a reasonable price. Good Job MSI.

CLICK HERE FOR MSI i5 P55-GD65 Motherboard PRICING & SHOPPING

"Almost two years to the day after Apple reimagined the personal media player as a mobile computer with the iPod Touch, Microsoft has outed its own take on the pocket entertainment machine: the Zune HD. Like the Touch before it, the Zune HD uses a high-resolution touch screen to add a new degree of ease and color to mobile listening, and to serve as a portable theater for video. But since "like Apple" has never been enough to outsell the Cupertino thinktank that always seems to be one step ahead, Microsoft's Redmond engineers have also gone the extra mile with a retina-scorching OLED display, lighter design, and 720p HD video output, to name a few features that best Apple's Touch. Will it be enough to win iPod devotees over to Microsoft and breathe life into the struggling Zune brand? We pocketed the little guy and cranked up the tunes to find out."

CLICK HERE FOR Microsoft Zune HD PRICING & SHOPPING

Coolermaster is one of the leaders in power supply and case manufacturing. But today we will see if they can hit a high note with their new venture the Sentinel Advance dual laser mouse. With the recession the way it is today even large companies have to create a new hustle in order to stay above water. And the new Sentinel maybe the right hustle for Coolermaster as it is large and in charge. The features are one thing but before we even plugged it into the USB port we feel in love with the size of the mouse. My narrow long finger felt right at home on the Sentinel. It was like it was an natural extension of my hand. I think this is what Coolermaster was aiming for with the Sentinel.

"The AMD Athlon II X4 620 and Athlon II X4 630 processors offer nothing new or inspiring on the performance front, but they have a price point that will make you smile. For just $99 the AMD Athlon II X4 620 packs a mean punch and is the ideal processor to pair with an AMD 785G based motherboard. The AMD Athlon II X4 630 is a more interesting part to us as it has a higher multiplier and costs just $122. It was also able to reach over 3.8GHz, which is a fairly massive overclock for just air cooling. Getting more than 1GHz overclocks out of $99 and $122 processor is always fun because they really turn into 'budget beaters' and are able to out perform processors that usually cost significantly more than they do..."

The Cooler Master CHOIIX line of computer products is making it's splash in the mobile accessory market with products geared toward personalizing your portable computing environment. Does the accu-mouse give us a "choix", or does it force us to uncomfortable things?

CLICK HERE FOR CHOIIX Accu-mouse PRICING & SHOPPING

The Cooler Master CM Storm Sentinel Advance is by far the most feature rich gaming mouse I have seen to date. I would also go as far as saying that any gamer would benefit from the versatility and comfort provided by this mouse. Every aspect of the mouse is at your control to be adjusted and tweaked to fit each game's unique style of use.

If your looking for the insane clock speed of the 4890 but don't want to see the 90° C load temperatures common to the 4890 series some form of improved cooling is needed. A much safer option than upgrading the cooler yourself is to buy a 4890 with a factory installed aftermarket cooler. A pre-installed aftermarket cooler means that you don't chance killing your GPU, and the factory warranty won't be voided by installing an aftermarket cooling solution.

CLICK HERE FOR Gigabyte 4890 OC PRICING & SHOPPING

Lian Li seems to have made an almost perfect full tower case. With for example only 9.89 kg it is very light even if it is very big. As every high-end Lian Li case the PC-X1000 is made of brushed aluminum but this time you get 2 mm thick aluminum plates all around the case. Furthermore five fans should keep your precious interior cool at a low noise level. Quite ahead of time is the fact that the case comes with two 2.5'' alumium handles to mount SSD's or other 2.5'' drives.

"I have to say, I am very impressed with the new Athlon II X4 series processor. This baby performed very well despite having a low L2 cache, no L3 cache and a low clock speed of 2.6GHz. While it was no match for the Intel i7 series, it did come close when put up against the Intel i5 series in the gaming benchmarks and some of the scientific ones as well. When put up against the Phenom II X4 it came even closer, especially in benchmarks where the system as a whole was benchmarked and not just the CPU by itself. When it comes to overclocking, while it will not break any speed records, it did very well considering the multiplier is locked at 13x."

" Today we're looking at the Rosewill Xtreme 850W power supply, a unit that comes with enough horsepower for a hungry SLI/Crossfire setup, but with a price tag that won't break the bank. It's got some flash with a pair of blue LED fans, and it promises good performance at a good price. Sounds like a plan to us. Let's take a look and see if the Rosewill Xtreme 850W can live up to those claims."

Moving ahead today though, Phenom II is one of the most versatile processors, due to its dual mode memory controller. You can easily put a Phenom II processor into any AM2+ motherboard and use it with DDR2 memory or AM3 based motherboard and run it on DDR3 memory and this is one thing AMD definitely got right.

If you have ever looked into buying a powerful gaming or performance computer case, you have heard of Cooler Master. They are a household name in the power computing world. Now they are making a name for themselves with a new division focused on gaming. CM Storm has built up a lot of hype over their new mouse, the CM Storm Sentinel Advance Laser Gaming Mouse. It rocks the gaming mouse arena with a twin Doppler laser and up to 5600 dpi. Benchmark Reviews is bringing you the latest information about the CM Storm Sentinel Advance. A lot of gaming mice have been hitting the market recently, and CM Storm is looking to pull into the forefront with a completely customizable eight button laser mouse.

At first the announcement of Athlon II X4s doesn't seem too interesting. Especially since they have been rumored for some time and it wasn't much of a stretch to imagine that AMD would get around to releasing quad-core Athlon II processors eventually. Not to mention the Athlon IIs are in many ways just Phenom IIs with the L3 cache removed, so there isn't a ton of brand new tech under the hood to ogle at. However, things get a lot more interesting when you hear the list price....

When it comes to SSDs, the competition is fierce and relentless and companies have to stay ahead of the curve or they risk falling far behind the leaders. OCZ has drives in every price category but with their new Samsung-based Summit series, they are looking to strike the perfect balance between price and performance. In this review we take a look at their new Summit 120GB, the drive many of you will find to be the perfect size for your high-performance needs.

CLICK HERE FOR OCZ Summit 120GB PRICING & SHOPPING

"Microsoft has released the new Zune HD and they are hoping it will be a direct competitor to the Apple iPod line of MP3 players. It comes in two capacities, 16GB ($219) and 32GB ($289), and two colors, black and silver. The new device sports an HD radio, a beautiful user interface, and Internet browsing. There are drawbacks to the device, one of which is the lack of an App store that compares to the Apple iTunes App Store."

CLICK HERE FOR Zune HD PRICING & SHOPPING

"Biostar TA785GE 128 M is a micro ATX socket AM2+ motherboard with on-board video based on the new AMD 785G chipset, which uses a new DirectX 10.1 graphics engine (Radeon HD 4200, codenamed RV620) featuring dedicated 128 MB video memory on the motherboard (feature called "Side Port" by AMD) to increase performance. In this review we will compare the performance of AMD 785G to AMD 790GX and AMD 780G and we will also analyze Hybrid CrossFire performance. Check it out."

CLICK HERE FOR Biostar TA785GE 128 M Motherboard PRICING & SHOPPING

"A bunch of new high-end AVCHD camcorders from Canon, JVC and Sony have arrived-or will soon be here in time to record holiday parties. All cost close to a grand but deliver the best video you'll see this side of a quality HDTV. JVC's new Everio GZ-HM400 mirrors many ongoing trends including 1920 x 1080 high bit-rate recording and 32GB of built-in flash memory. It also has a 10.3-megapixel CMOS sensor capable of capturing 9MP stills. As Digitaltrends.com readers know, we're constantly searching for the perfect two-in-one imaging device. Let's see if this new Everio takes the prize."

CLICK HERE FOR JVC Everio GZ-HM400 PRICING & SHOPPING

Topower sent us their flagship power supply model, the Tiger 1200 Watt, for review today. Topower says it was designed to handle Nvidia's GTX 295 in quad configuration and AMD's most powerful graphics cards. With a pice tag of under $200US, this sounds like a promising unit.

"Input devices are arguably the most important pieces of hardware you buy for your PC. A $5,000 computer is only as good as its peripherals, and by the same token, a good keyboard and mouse can make a budget rig feel like a million bucks. I have recently become a collector and connoisseur of the finer input devices such as mechanical keyboards. When asked to review a new mouse from Cooler Master, I jumped at the chance to put this device through the paces."

Today we have the chance to review the Xclio Great Power 1000w Power Supply and let me tell you this thing has the power. With its 1000 watts of actual power and four independant 12 volt rails this baby could easily be called a beast. It sports top of the line capacitors and dual transformers making this one of the best big boy toys we have seen a long while. Come on over at and take a look at this one and see what you think.

ASUS has really gone the extra mile with their P7P55D Deluxe board with performance that exceeds that of its competition and a slew of new features including the Hybrid Phase and Xtreme Design. The board overclocked using ASUS’s automated overclocking utility to a respectable 3.15GHz totally stable. Hand overclocking got the board over 3.5GHz, a very nice overclock indeed. ASUS includes extras like the TurboV Remote which allows one button overclocking and the ability to clear the CMOS without having to dig around the back of the computer case. This is one Hot Product for the new i5 launch and ASUS even has one board higher than this the Premium version, which hopefully we will have for review very soon.

The Studio XPS 13 set itself apart from prior Dell notebooks by adding a touch of flair that was somewhat unheard of for the company previously. The all-black, low-profile keyboard coupled with the edge-to-edge LCD and subtle leather strip on the lid gave the Studio line a motif that even fashionistas could love, and all that's still firmly in place on the Studio XPS 16. Essentially, the machine we're testing today is just an oversized variant of the Studio XPS 13, but the extra room inside enabled Dell to beef up the specifications...

CLICK HERE FOR Dell Studio XPS 16 PRICING & SHOPPING

"A couple weeks ago I compared Windows Xp that comes on the Acer Aspire One D250 to the new Windows 7 to basically find out how they compared to each other in terms of performance. The D250 I have comes with 1gig of ram, so As sort of a part two to that article I thought I’d toss in 2 gigs of ram and re-run all of my tests to see what, if any difference there might be between running 1 gig or 2 gigs. The results of the testing very much surprised me in that 2gigs doesn’t seem to be better at all really, and I’m not sure why that is. Maybe someone else can shed some light on this for me…"

"With Cooler Master's first foray into the highly competitive mouse market, the Sentinel Advance looks extremely attractive, and Cooler Master appears to have hit all the right notes with this rodent. The features on the Sentinel also look to include just about everything but the kitchen sink. Aesthetics may help sell a mouse, but the comfort, ergonomics, and drivers are what often make or break the deal for most diehard gamers. We'll take a very close look today at each of these factors to see if Cooler Master can run with the big dogs or is left on the porch."

“First thing that struck us at first encounter with CM Storm Sentinel Advance was its size and shape. In era of miniaturization it comes as real refreshment to see full sized mouse. By its shape and size it resembles mostly to “good old” Logitech MouseMan Wheel or Microsoft IntelliMouse Explorer models…”

Even though Thermaltake have been around for a long time they have only recently entered into the power supply market... around two years ago. That hasn’t stopped them from forming several series (7 at the time of this review) consisting of several products in each category. We had the chance to review and evaluate a few of these products in the past, such as the Toughpower XT 850W and the Toughpower Qfan 500W unit. Today we will present you another high performance power supply product from Thermaltake, the Evo Blue 750W.

CLICK HERE FOR Thermaltake Evo Blue 750W PRICING & SHOPPING

"We had already reviewed two coolers from Thermaltake's ISGC series: ISGC-100 and ISGC-200, both with 92-mm fans. This time we tested ISGC-300, which uses a tower design with four U-shaped heatpipes and a 120-mm fan. Will it perform better than the other models from this series? "

CLICK HERE FOR Thermaltake ISGC-300 CPU Cooler PRICING & SHOPPING

"Cast your eyes back to page three and the cable length table. The peripheral and SATA cables are supplied in three different lengths – a nice touch, which may go a little way to helping with cable management and that uncluttered look. One small bone of contention is a Mean Time Before Failure (MTBF) figure of 100,000 hours quoted at 25°C. This temperature is totally unrealistic, especially if the power supply is heavily loaded."

Desktop computers are making a resurgence, and have exploited the compact nature of newer technology to provide the best of both worlds. Netbooks are the popular item for travelers, but they don't get the job done for full time workers and students. Notebooks are nice, and meet halfway, but have their own limits too. Behold the nettop. It's a compact desktop computer with a notebook profile. In this article, Benchmark Reviews tests the MSI Wind Top AE2010-02SUS All-In-One touch screen desktop computer against an Intel Atom-equipped ASUS Eee PC netbook, Core 2 Duo notebook, and NVIDIA ION desktop system.

CLICK HERE FOR MSI Wind Top AE2010 Desktop PRICING & SHOPPING

If you look up the definiton of gladiator on Dictionary.com, you’ll get three results, one of which is interestingly accurate for a gaming chassis: “a person …armed with a sword or other weapon and compelled to fight to the death in a public arena against another person or a wild animal, for the entertainment of the spectators.” Is a case not a gamer’s sword, fighting against others for our entertainment? Cooler Master has sent their warrior, the Gladiator 600, for us to review, and see how it stacks up as the thrid, and most simplistic definition: prizefighter.

CLICK HERE FOR Cooler Master Gladiator 600 PRICING & SHOPPING

If any graphics card has been hyped in the past months it's the ASUS MARS Dual GTX 285. It is the first and only graphics card featuring two GTX 285 GPUs with 4 GB VRAM. The card is set out to dominate every other card on the market delivering amazing performance - at a breathtaking price of USD 1200 per card.

For quite some time now, the power supply market has been nearly dominated by just one name - Corsair. Forum recommendations have gotten to the point where people are sick and tired of hearing that one name recommended over and over, but let's be honest - Corsair has worked hard to get where they are and they deserve their success.

So who can benefit from the Corsair Ice T30?? Well anyone can, as our temperature chart shows the 2000Mhz Dominator memory does get quite warm and that additional heat can affect stability in high performance situations.

GIGABYTE has gone the extra mile with this board. The board performed well in the default settings against the other P55 boards. The board overclocked to over 3.5GHz on air cooling which is not insignificant when using the 2.66GHz Core i5 750. The features of the board include 2OZ Copper in the Power and Ground layers of the board. It is available online for around $200 at this moment, making it in the middle ground of the P55 boards on the market today. As usual, with an Intel Chipset launch, GIGABYTE has launched several P55 boards this week. Gigabyte has a Hot Product with this new i5 motherboard.

CLICK HERE FOR Gigabyte i5 P55-UD5 Motherboard PRICING & SHOPPING

"If you are into overclocking, the Kingston 2133MHz HyperX T1 memory kit (KHX2133C8D3T1K2/4GX) has got you covered. We were able to reach 2200MHz by just upping the base clock of the system. Reaching 2300MHz was as easy as setting primary timings to 9-9-9. With very little tweaking and minor voltage adjustments, we hit 2400MHz! Getting big numbers from this memory was extremely easy. This is by far, the fastest memory I've had the pleasure of testing. Sure, you can get higher bandwidth numbers on a Triple Channel X58 system, but in terms of raw MHz I haven't had anything else that can touch it!"

CLICK HERE FOR Kingston HyperX DDR3 4GB 2133MHz PRICING & SHOPPING

"Although typically known for their motherboards and graphics cards, ASUS also has produced a line of sound cards as well. Today, we will be looking at one of their high end offerings, the ASUS Xonar D2X to find out whether ASUS has been able bring the quality their name is known for to the sound card market as well."

CLICK HERE FOR ASUS Xonar D2X PRICING & SHOPPING

Ever since it’s release, ATI’s HD 4890 has been going strong and companies have been quick to add their own custom flavors to the pot. In this review, we take a look at Sapphire’s custom HD 4890 that packs a whooping 2GB of GDDR5 and their proprietary Vapor-X cooler along with a hefty price premium over a reference card.

"Green, or eco-friendly, cellular phones have been around for at least a year, but most of them use 2004-era technology. The Samsung Reclaim is a true smartphone for the green arena though, essentially acting as a low-grade Propel Pro - and, considering its eco-friendliness, doing a surprisingly decent job. Read on to find out more about its nature-friendly features."

"This case is not for any one who considers themselves to be of the enthusiast level. I'd like to recommend this case to budget users, but cheaper and better cases can also be found. The lack of HDD and ODD bays will stop many mid-range users from purchasing this case. This puts the Bulldozer in a relatively awkward position. In the end, I'm not really sure if I can recommend it to anyone. If you're throwing together a secondary computer out of spare parts and want an inexpensive case that looks cool, then you might want to consider the Bulldozer."

CLICK HERE FOR GMC R-4 Bulldozer PRICING & SHOPPING

In today's crowded market it is important to try to make your product stand out in some way. The ASUS M4A78-HTPC/RC on the surface is just another micro-ATX motherboard with the AMD 780G/SB700 chipset but as its name implies there is more to it than that. In fact the ASUS M4A78-HTPC/RC is marketed as the motherboard to use when "Building the Dream Home Theater PC". With a special mode to keep the system quiet, improved sound as well as the software "Home Theater Gate" it sounds like ASUS might have created the perfect motherboard for us htpc-builders. Keep reading on as we pick this motherboard apart to see if ASUS can back up their claims or if it just falls flat.

The LifeCam VX-5500 sits near the top of Microsoft's web cam offerings yet the E4C-00001 kit checks in at a very reasonable price point. It has some great features including noise cancelling, echo cancelling, 1.3MP HD picture quality, and auto-adjustment for low light conditions -all in a compact package clearly directed toward the mobile user. Benchmark Reviews took a look at the VX-5000 a few months ago, now we'll check out the VX-5500 and see if it performs as well as this mobile warrior hopes.

CLICK HERE FOR Microsoft LifeCam VX-5500 Webcam PRICING & SHOPPING

Have a need for mobile storage, but not sure of the best solution? We're taking a look at three products from Icy Dock that should make your life easier, from allowing to you take your 2.5" hard drive mobile, to allowing to you use a 2.5" or 3.5" at your desktop with the help of a dock, supporting both USB and eSATA.

“IN-WIN, computer cases, power supplies, drive enclosures. They are a fairly well known company around here, and while I haven’t reviewed one of their PC cases before, this isn’t the first IN-WIN case I’ve used. When my family needed a new system, I chose a case that is very similar to the Matrix, the BK623 has a very unassuming name, and doesn’t look quite as clean beside the Matrix, but internally they are identical. The Matrix is marketed as IN-WIN's 'Tiny Tower' gaming case. Meant for someone who wants a clean setup, the case hides almost everything behind it's white panels, including the cables that normally make up such a rats nest behind most systems. “

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

A big power consumer these days is your home theather system, which includes but not limited to: receivers, cd players, HTPC, DVD recorder, and digital top box etc. They all run on stand by when you are not using them and believe it or not the stand by actually cost money if you count it out on a year. Tricklestar has released a product that takes care of that problem. The Tricklesaver products basically shuts all the extra products off when you turn your TV or computer off. How does it work?

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" Few things are more important than keeping your computer well ventilated and cool. Overheating can lead to your computer turning off on you, sluggish work and worst of all, damaged hardware. One of the principal parts to keep cool is the CPU, using a high-quality CPU cooler that will throw away the heat your CPU generates. Today, I've got a great cooler up for review – Arctic Cooling's Alpine 64 Pro cooler. While the Alpine 64 Pro presents itself as a very straightforward looking extruded aluminum heatsink, it has a lot of high quality components and design aspects that make it a very effective device for sufficient cooling and very low noise production."

CLICK HERE FOR Arctic Cooling Alpine 64 Pro CPU Cooler PRICING & SHOPPING

In the latest of our articles focusing on Windows 7 we look at the gaming performance when compared to Microsoft's older operating systems, namely Vista and XP. Many people (and websites) still hail Windows XP as the OS of choice so today we will ascertain if you should be making the leap to Windows 7 when it is released next month. We think you will find the results very interesting, we know we did !