Week of August 16, 2009

With SSD's at the top of the list for computer enthusiasts we've been looking at a lot of them lately. The Crucial CT128M225 128GB SSD is based on MLC (Multi-level Cell) Nand Flash technology with a whopping 64MB of cache to bolster the already lightning fast Indilinx Barefoot controller. If previous experience has taught us anything drives with the Indilinx Barefoot controller and 64 MB of cache to smooth data transfer rates its that they are among the fastest drives out there. Not that we would expect anything less from Crucial. When Crucial fields a product you can depend on it doing just what they say it will. Ease of operation and dependability are synonymous with the Crucial name.

CLICK HERE FOR Crucial 128GB SSD PRICING & SHOPPING

The V in Kingston's SSDNow V Series 128GB solid state drive stands for value, and that is definitely what it offers when compared to other solid state drives. Checking Newegg.com finds that the desktop kit including this drive is $239.99 with free shipping, making it the cheapest of the twenty six 128GB drives they list, and $25 less than the closest competitor's drive.

CLICK HERE FOR Kingston SSDNow V Series 128GB PRICING & SHOPPING

Earlier this year Thermaltake introduced their Element series of cases with the Element S. The Element S is a stylish case with a distinctive look without lots of lights and other distractions. Today I will be taking a closer look at the Element T, an entry level gaming case Thermaltake released to complement the Element S. We will find out if its right for your next budget build.

CLICK HERE FOR PRICING & SHOPPING

"Of course performance wasn't as great as the G, but it was pretty close and this could definately be attributed to the fact that there aren't as many fans, particularly in the case of the HDD, GPU, and Chipset temperatures, which were considerably higher due to the fact there was no fan moving air over any of these components. Instead, they were left to be passively cooled by the air being pulled in by the exhaust fans. Depsite its downfalls in the wire management and lack of fans compared to the rest ot the Element series, the T appears to be a decent entry-level performer with the ability to be as good as the rest with a small upgrade involving a 200mm side intake and either dual 120mm front intakes, or a 200mm front intake fan."

CLICK HERE FOR PRICING & SHOPPING

We've had a good look into the VGA side of things when it comes to Windows 7. However, while for many people that's the most important section, it's not all of it. Today we'll be having a closer look at how some of the other components in our system run under the new operating system due out in just a few months.

Benchmark Reviews has the pleasure of testing NZXT's newest fan control: the Sentry 2 Touchscreen Fan Controller. A step up from the Sentry 1 and a worthy stable mate for the Sentry LX. The Sentry 2 is a different approach to the same problem. A more elegant solution to a problem that has plagued computer enthusiasts since their earliest days; fan noise. With it's touchscreen controls it's a definite step in the right direction above and beyond it's predecessor the Sentry 1, the Sentry 2 is simplicity itself.

CLICK HERE FOR NZXT Sentry 2 PRICING & SHOPPING

Today not only are we testing three of the hottest new overclocked 4890 ATI graphics cards but we are building a high performance system with the focus on value for money. We base the system around the powerful, yet extremely affordable Phenom III 965 Black Edition and the very capable Asus Crosshair III Formula motherboard.

"With Raven RV01 SilverStone introduced a new concept on the market: it was the first case where the motherboard is rotated 90º, making the rear connectors to be available on the top part of the case. Now SilverStone releases another case based on the same concept, Raven RV02, which costs far less than the original Raven. Let's compare the two and see if it is worthwhile buying this case."

"There are a couple aspects that go into making the Zipang 2 unique, but let's start with the basics. The Scythe Zipang 2 (SCZP-2000) heatsink features six 6mm diameter copper heatpipes, "multiple airflow pass-through" aluminum fins, a copper base plate and a mammoth 140mm PWM fan that spins at a leisurely 1000 RPM. The heatsink weighs in at 715 grams and stands just 105mm high. That squat height means it competes well against the multitude of +150mm tall tower heatsinks which are too big for a great many PC cases out there. The fan has 11 impeller blades and is rated for 51.4 CFM."

"We loved the original HTC Touch Pro. Or wanted to, anyway. Though HTC wowed us with distinct styling, a snappy keyboard, and a downright luscious screen, we could never quite get past how clunky the slow the TouchFlo 3D interface felt pasted over Windows Mobile 6.1. At the end of the day, we just couldn't recommend it. But with a company as prolific as HTC, you seldom have to wait long for a better version. With the second go around on the Touch Pro2, HTC has attentively resolved many of the most annoying issues with the first phone, delivering one of the most livable Windows Mobile 6.1 handsets to date."

“When you plan a vacation one of the major concerns is always a camera that will be needed to record all those memorable moment at the beach, mountain, desert etc. When it comes to cameras, choices are numerous these days, but there is always present a fear of damaging camera with water or dust. If accident occurs it is most likely that photos on memory card will be salvageable, but camera will be most likely ruined for the rest of vacation. Waterproof camera models are pretty scarce and expensive while other solution to this problem can be purchase of waterproof chassis for certain modes of cameras. Recently Olympus has introduced few interesting compact waterproof cameras and now Canon is joining that market with its PowerShot D10 model…”

CLICK HERE FOR Canon PowerShot D10 PRICING & SHOPPING

The AMD Phenom II X3 705e and Phenom II X4 905e processors make a great drop-in replacement for those of you running an older and slower processor. We were able to replace the AMD Phenom X4 9350e, which is a quad-core, 2GHz, 65W TDP part from last summer, in our 780G Maui HTPC system and drop in the AMD Phenom II X4 905e after a quick BIOS update. The extra 500MHz boost in performance is noticeable and best of all the power consumption and temperatures on the system actually lowered. The load power consumption was only 8 Watts lower, but that is impressive for a processor that is running 500MHz faster on the core clock and with 4MB more L3 cache!

CLICK HERE FOR AMD Phenom II X3 705e PRICING & SHOPPING

CLICK HERE FOR AMD Phenom II X4 905e PRICING & SHOPPING

Our good friends at Asrock as grace us with one of their new Nettop Ion 330. This model is one of two that ASrock produces. The Ion 330 is based on the Nvidia Ion chipset obviously. And the other S330 is based on the Intel 945C chipset. They are both centered center the Intel Atom 330 dual core processor. The feature set of both are pretty similar as they both supply HD 1080P playback through HDMI, slim-line DVD device and a 2.5" hard drive. But the most important features once again are the small size, money saving and light multitasking.

Looking for a versatile easy to use TV tuner card with a lot of HTPC features? The Asus EHD3-100 is a robust TV tuner that comes with a lot of the features you need for a HTPC build. Dual Hybrid tuner capable of recording two shows at once, watching one show while recording another, tuning local radio stations, XP/Vista/Win 7 ready. Not only does it provide the Dual tuner you need for watching one show and recording another you get a great USB IR receiver with 2 IR inputs, and a full featured remote control to turn the computer on and off, tune channels, record shows, pull up Windows Media Center, just about everything you need for tuning TV and Radio from the comfort of your armchair except the popcorn.

CLICK HERE FOR Asus EHD3-100 Dual Hybrid TV Card PRICING & SHOPPING

Coolermaster has a reputation in the world of hardware cooling. They are well known for their excellent heatsinks and water-cooling devices. I've used several of their products over the years and have rarely been disappointed. The old saying goes that you get what you pay for, and with Coolermaster, even if you feel you are buying the name, their reputation always holds up to expectations. So when I got the opportunity to review the Hyper TX3, I jumped on it. So here's a little preview of what the TX3 claims to do, and then we'll put it to the test to see what it's really made of.

"VIZO has produced two products to make the otherwise tedious but wholly necessary process of backing up your data much easier. For review, we've got the Luxon Advanced ED, and the Arius EX, the former being an external drive enclosure, and the latter, a locking, internal HDD rack that fits right into a 5.25” drive bay. Both are designed to support 3.5” drives and a SATA II interface, with the Luxon supporting eSATA as well. Let's take a look and see how each fares."

"The AMA Phantom performed better than the AMA Orc and with a smaller foot print. Although it isn't as unique looking, personally the performance would win me over. Although the package looks like it was dropped off the production line it still worked great and the fin damage was easily undone. Considering this heat sink has twice the heat pipes than the ZEROTherm Core 92 heat sink and is also larger, price will play a big role in the sales of this heat sink. AMA has a good theme going, the company's line of heat sinks could be very successful with the right strategy."

"In this review Frostytech will be testing Coolermaster's Hyper 212 Plus tower heatsink - an exposed heatpipe base cooler that comes ready out of the box for socket 1156 Intel 'Lynnfield' P55 motherboards. Naturally, it supports Intel socket 775/1366/1156 and AMD 939/AM2/AM3 processors. For whatever reason, Intel has spaced the motherboard mounting holes for socket 775, 1156 and 1366 all a little differently... but that's another story."

CLICK HERE FOR Coolermaster Hyper 212 Plus PRICING & SHOPPING

“Audio is one of those areas where I believe that one should not skimp out on because of the end result you’ll be able to definitively experience. And that end result is a worthwhile experience to have an outcome that will make you ask yourself “what have I been missing out on”. While you don’t have to spend a fortune to have good sound, spend a little bit more money and why not have something that will be the last in-ear canalphones you’ll ever need. That is what I am proposing today with the Sennheiser IE 6 noise isolating in-ear-canalphone review.”

CLICK HERE FOR Sennheiser IE 6 Noise Isolating In-Ear-Canalphone PRICING & SHOPPING

"SilverStone Element power supply series is being out for some years now, and we were curious to review their popular 500 W model, ST50EF-Plus. It is important to know that models from SilverStone Element series can be manufactured by two distinct companies: models up to 600 W are manufactured by Enhance Electronics, while models starting at 650 W are manufactured by Seventeam. SilverStone uses a lot of different manufacturers for their power supplies. Besides Enhance and Seventeam, units from their Decathlon series are manufactured by Impervio and units from their Strider series are manufactured by FSP. Phew!"

CLICK HERE FOR SilverStone Element ST50EF-Plus 500 W PRICING & SHOPPING

We're writing to let you all know that we have just posted a new review at HotHardware of the Seagate BlackArmor NAS 440. The 440 is a four-bay NAS device that comes with four, user-serviceable, internal SATA drives, which can be configured as RAID 0, 1, 5, or 10 arrays, or as JBOD (just a bunch of disks). Depending on which RAID mode is being used, drives can be swapped out without needing to shutdown the device--commonly referred to as hot-swapping. The 440 also includes a total of four USB 2.0 ports, which can accommodate additional storage in the form of external hard drives or for attaching a USB-based printer to make the printer accessible to users over a local network. Another feature of the 440 is that it includes two Gigabit Ethernet ports for port-failover or aggregation.

CLICK HERE FOR Seagate BlackArmor NAS 440 PRICING & SHOPPING

"If you've just downed a great porterhouse steak, why have ultra-expensive Kobe beef for dessert? Because you can. That's how we felt when LG's new 55-inch LH90 LED LCD HDTV arrived after just reviewing a similarly-featured Toshiba Regza HDTV - an excellent but pricey television. Although HDTVs may have similar specs like this pair, there are always differences - some small, some huge. We quickly fired up this big boy to see if it was worth the asking price."

CLICK HERE FOR LG 55LH90 PRICING & SHOPPING

"MSI Radeon HD 4770 also featuring the Sapphire Radeon HD 4730. The MSI Radeon HD 4770 has the same 750Mhz Clock Speed, 12% less Memory Speed and the same 640 Pixel Shaders compared to the Sapphire Radeon HD 4730. The MSI Radeon HD 4770 uses the RV740 GPU while the Sapphire Radeon HD 4730 is using the RV770 GPU."

CLICK HERE FOR MSI Radeon HD 4770 PRICING & SHOPPING

"What more can really be said about the Element G? This case has a lot going for it. It features space for a lot of hard drives and moves about as much air as anything else on the market. What gives it an edge over the competition is the amount of space dedicated to hard drives. I have yet to see another mid tower that can hold this many. There are also many optional accessories that you can put in the Element G, such as two optional 120mm fans in front and two 60mm fans in the real for VGA cooling. It also has great looking LED fans and the option to change between five color modes, which I found to be quite nifty."

CLICK HERE FOR ThermalTake Element G PRICING & SHOPPING

It is quite incredible how many models QNAP release and how often they are updated but this is due to the relatively cheap prices of large mechanical hard drives and end user demand for ever growing storage space. QNAP were established in Taiwan in 2004 and are well known for their build quality and sophisicated software packages. The QNAP TS-639 Pro is based on the same platform as the TS 509 Pro which we reviewed a while ago and as such now supports iSCSI integration as standard.

CLICK HERE FOR QNAP 639 Pro PRICING & SHOPPING

Boasting sound-dampening foam, anti-vibration HDD mounts, and two silent-running 800RPM 120mm fans, the Sileo 500 is an interesting break from Cooler Master's usual chassis design. A long-time manufacturer of high-end gaming cases, it appears Cooler Master is now adding silent computing to their arsenal. Benchmark Review will take a closer look at the RC-500-KKR3-GP model and finds out if the Sileo 500 worthy of the name and your money.

CLICK HERE FOR Cooler Master Sileo 500 PRICING & SHOPPING

The target market for this cooler is HTPC and other small form factor designs with limited space. For its intended market the Thermaltake MeOrb would be a decent upgrade over the stock cooler both in performance and looks.

CLICK HERE FOR Thermaltake MeOrb PRICING & SHOPPING

In the external hard drive market, there’s no shortage of products available looking to separate your Benjamins from your wallet. Today I’ve been given the Seagate FreeAgent Desk for Mac external hard drive to inspect. Digging for information leaves me a little confused – as the page that references the drive on Seagate’s site only allows you to select the 2tb model, although it supposedly comes in 500gb, 640gb, 1tb, 1.5tb, and 2tb variants. Those sizes are pretty standard in the external hard drive market.

In the thermal solutions market, the name Noctua is a highly respected one that is synonymous with a very high build quality and great performance. Their product base is fairly limited though with a total of three different heatsinks but when you can produce products such as the NH-U12P and NH-C12P, you don’t exactly need a huge selection.

CLICK HERE FOR Noctua NH-U9B PRICING & SHOPPING

We are taking a look at a PSU from Coolermaster today which is one of their cheaper versions on the market, it will go together with one Coolermaster case that we are reviewing later on, but for now we will test this PSU to see what type of numbers we can get out of it.

CLICK HERE FOR Coolermaster Extreme Power Plus 550W PRICING & SHOPPING

“Lot of attention of, above all, gamers attracted ASUS with N50Vn notebook. Good gaming performance levels and acceptable price are not that common occurrence in notebook market. Because of this, a lot of potential buyers doubted that there is some sort of a catch or hidden faults in it. We got one of ASUS N50Vn models in our test lab and if something’s wrong with it you can bet that we will find what’s wrong…”

CLICK HERE FOR ASUS N50Vn PRICING & SHOPPING

Powercolor's new HD 4770 PCS comes with a cooling solution designed by Artic Cooling and a custom PCB design by Powercolor. This should result in improved thermal performance, less noise and better overclocking. Thanks to decisive product design, Powercolor manages to offer the card at no extra price over other HD 4770 cards.

CLICK HERE FOR Powercolor HD 4770 PRICING & SHOPPING

Last week, I took a look at one of BFG's latest and greatest, designed exclusively for the Phobos gaming computers. This week, I'm continuing my look at the power supplies intended for those rigs by looking at the LS1200, a 1250W monster of a unit that does everything the LS1000 does and then some.

The Element G is a case that reflects a great deal of thought and effort in its design. We have immense cooling, vast amounts of room for hard drives and some of the best cable management you can get. If you are looking for a mid tower case that will not only accommodate the larger video cards and motherboards, but do it in style, then the Element G is right up your ally.

CLICK HERE FOR Thermaltake Element G Mid Tower Case PRICING & SHOPPING

Many laptops heading out the factory door don't have very good hard drives in them, sure they work but the performance we've seen on them is fairly low. Much to our horror we saw 30MB/s on the Toshiba Satellite we use around the lab. Right out of the factory spanking new they tossed a Hitachi Deskstar 120GB HD that averages 30MB/s in a decent laptop with 4GB of ram and a T5300 Intel Dual Core processor.

CLICK HERE FOR Kingston SSDNow V 128GB Laptop Upgrade Kit PRICING & SHOPPING

Today we’re going to be looking at the FT01 chassis which is a return to a more traditional design implementation – simple yet elegant. This mid-tower chassis incorporates design cues from the immensely popular TJ07 chassis and is home to a number of quality features such as sound proofing, dust filters and tool-less mechanisms.

"Today we’re taking a look at the new Element T mid-tower case by Thermaltake, the third in their Element lineup. The Element T is the value option in the series, currently listed with a price tag of about $75. But what about features and functionality? Let's take a peek at what this gamer-oriented mid-tower case has to offer."

CLICK HERE FOR Thermaltake Element T PRICING & SHOPPING

"Looking at the basic spec sheet, you could be forgiven for thinking the Asus EAH4770 FORMULA is the same as every other Radeon HD 4770. The EAH4770 FORMULA is built around the ATI RV740 GPU, which is itself a direct descendant of the original ATI RV770 GPU. This means that the GPU core clock is still at 750MHz, and there's still 512MB of GDDR memory running at 800MHz."

"Today we tested Thermaltake ISGC-100, a "small" horizontal cooler with three heatpipes and a 92-mm fan with a special fan blade design to reduce noise. But will its cooling performance be comparable to the performance of other coolers we tested recently?"

CLICK HERE FOR Thermaltake ISGC-100 CPU Cooler PRICING & SHOPPING

So you have decided that you want to build a small gaming shuttle box. You have already decided on what components you want to make up you new computer but you haven’t quite settled the case you want. Well hopefully I can help by suggesting that you take a look at the Bgears B-Envi. With this small compact unit you can fit a nice deal of hardware and still have a powerful Micro ATX gaming system, or for those that want to build a home theater PC that is easy to take with you, then why not consider taking a look at this case. Let’s take a closer look at this perfect shuttle box case:

CLICK HERE FOR B-Gears B-Envi HTPC PRICING & SHOPPING

AMD first launched the 955 Black Edition and 945 CPUs back in April both based on the 45nm Phenom II technology. With Intel seemingly forging ahead in terms of performance with its i7 series, AMD’s new products aim to compete more with Intel’s quad-core range and should offer a cheaper upgrade for users with an AM2+ platform as the AM3 CPUs are backwards compatible with AM2+ sockets.

CLICK HERE FOR AMD Phenom 955 PRICING & SHOPPING

Until 2009, Solid State Drive (SSD) popularity was only growing in the elite enthusiast circles. Then along comes the Indilinx Barefoot chip, which quickly became the backbone SSD controller for over a dozen different products. Crucial, being The Memory Experts that they are, have returned to the market with their second SSD product. By most accounts, this isn't par for the course when you consider how often the competition reveals a new product line. Equipped with the test-proven Indilinx Barefoot controller and 64MB of DRAM buffer, Crucial is insured that the M225-series will deliver outstanding performance. Benchmark Reviews tests the bandwidth speed and IOPS performance for the Crucial M225 128GB SATA-II SSD CT128M225 against a large contingent of desktop storage products in this article.

CLICK HERE FOR Crucial M225 Solid State Drive PRICING & SHOPPING

With their Eee PC line of products, Asus has been at the forefront of the netbook revolution. But they've also got an extensive line-up of full-sized notebooks and laptops that was recently expanded with a new gaming machine aimed at mainstream consumers, that combines strong graphics performance and surprising affordability. The G51VX-RX05 is a member of the Asus Republic of Gamers line-up, targeted at the performance enthusiast market and features a Core 2 Duo processor, 4GB of DDR2 memory, an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260M GPU, a 15.6" LCD display, a spacious 320GB hard drive, and Windows Vista 64-bit operating system. While those specs are appealing, the most attractive feature is the competitive asking price, which currently sits at about $1049. With the new school year just around the corner, we know consumers are in the market for notebooks that provide the best performance for their dollar, so let's take a closer look at what the G51VX has to offer.

CLICK HERE FOR Asus G51VX-RX05 Gaming Notebook PRICING & SHOPPING

Eagle Tech are best known from their OEM based external hard drive enclosures and they had a fair few on the market with clear expertise in this particular product range. Recently, they have diversified into the audio market teaming up with Arion to produce a number of affordable 2.0 and 2.1 soundstage speakers.

Recently at Tech-Reviews we’ve been reviewing a lot of high wattage power supplies. We haven’t however looked at the lower range units. Luckily today though, we’ve been handed a Tuniq Potency 550W to review. Can it live up to the same performance standards as higher wattage units? Well there is only one way to find out, introducing the Tuniq Potency 550 Watt…

If you have not already guessed, this review is based upon one of them great performing video cards the HD4770. This time aroung though, I will not be just using one HD4770 (VisionTek's). I will be pairing this HD4770 with another HD4770 video card from Sapphire. And see how these two video cards stck up in some Crossfire action.

CLICK HERE FOR VisionTek 4770 PRICING & SHOPPING

Noctua has released their first cooler for the Intel 1366 processor in the form of the NH-U12P SE. The U12P-SE is a revamped version of the U12P which was one of the best performance coolers we had ever tested at Pro-Clockers. In order to tame the heat that is put out by the Core i7 processor, Noctua has opted for a new mounting assembly and dual NF-P12 120mm cooling fan. Besides the upgrades offered on the NH-U12P, the cooler retains the four nickel plated heat pipes and its handsome good looks. But is the NH-U12P enough to remain in the top range of coolers like it was in the past? We will spend a few days with the cooler and see how well it performs.

From a pure performance point of view the XFX HD465X-YAF2 Radeon HD 4650 512MB video card is not going to win awards as the card is based upon the mainstream version of the RV7xx series. From the perspective of someone wanting an easy, quiet and power efficient upgrade to an Intel integrated graphics chip, the HD 4650 provides a good inexpensive upgrade path for those users. After all, not everyone can afford to spend $200 on a video card. The XFX card is short in length meaning it can fit into some cases that the larger video cards cannot. XFX has a decent product here for the mainstream gamer wanting decent performance for around $50.

CLICK HERE FOR XFX Radeon HD 465X-YAF2 PRICING & SHOPPING

Sometimes we get a product in the lab that actually performs better than expected; the Corsair H-50 is one of those items. Don't let the small size or all-in-one design fool you.

CLICK HERE FOR Corsair H-50 PRICING & SHOPPING

Small form factor cases seem to be making a rise in the market lately. It’s sort of reminiscent of "sleepers" in the street racing scene. This is where you take an average car, usually paint it in black primer, and strip it of all non essential parts. The biggest part of a "sleeper" is what’s under the hood. Pulling up to a Chevette at a light, you wouldn’t expect it to have 350 cubic inches of motor, but you sure know it when he rockets away at the green light.

"As the move towards smaller and lighter netbooks begins to gain in popularity, the dominance of older high heat-producing full size notebooks may eventually ebb over time. True, there will always be those users who want a larger screen size, or need the full performance of a high-end, multi core processor, and for as long as there are laptop computers making the tops of our thighs uncomfortably warm there will likely be coolers designed to combat it. Today I have a product for review from Thermaltake with the descriptive title of Massive23 CS, which makes use of a single, large 23cm cooling fan. How effective are laptop coolers at actually reducing operating temperatures though? Join me as I put the Massive23 CS through its paces."

CLICK HERE FOR Thermaltake Massive23 PRICING & SHOPPING

Coolermaster is well known for their high-end cases, but what about their mid range cases that everyone can afford? We are looking at the Sileo 500 today that seems to have some silent features and a stylish look. It also has a PSU included with the bundle that we are going to look in a separate review so the features are quite cool, lets take a closer look.

CLICK HERE FOR Coolermaster Sileo 500 PRICING & SHOPPING

" Up on the review block today I’ve got a 3.5” SATA hard drive enclosure, the Max 4 from Thermaltake. This enclosure features both eSATA and USB connections along with a built-in 80mm cooling fan and an aluminum housing to make sure things keep cool. The Max 4 is well made and it’s very easy to install your hard drive into, a few screws and you’re done and ready to transfer your files. So read on to learn more about the Max 4.. "

“I'm not sure why manufacturers think they can just slap some LED's on anything and it'll pass. Maybe 10 years ago, but not anymore folks. And honestly, who uses 40mm fans anymore? They are utterly useless in every area. This product is called a notebook cooler and that's a stretch of the use of the category. If by simply tilting up the rear of your laptop enables itself to cool better (as it would with virtually every laptop on the market), then I suppose you could loosely call this a cooler. However you need a smoke stream to see if the air is even moving (even on "high" power). I bet this unit could be redesigned as a wireless notebook cooler, and with those tiny fans and no airflow, it should run for weeks on a couple of AA batteries.”