Week of January 18, 2009

Nowadays, most computer cases have very similar designs; sure they might have a couple of different features, but for the most part they are the same. So it must be a big deal when a case is called “innovative”. Thermaltake, makers of a wide range of computer products, sent us such a case, the Thermaltake Spedo Computer Case. Will this case live up to its billing? Read on to find out more.

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Performance aside, one of the postives to come out of this ... is that most AM2+ motherboards will be compatible with these new AMD Phenom II processors, however you'll need check with the motherboard manufacturer first. Compatible chipsets include AMD's 790 series and Nvidia's 780a, allowing you to support 3-way SLI without any issues. This is great news for existing users who's currently using AM2+ motherboards, and provides an easy upgrade path.

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“Manufacturers of digital photo frames are fighting for customers’ attention in so many different ways. It is not enough to create simple photo frame anymore, to attract attention, it needs to have some specific functions. Samsung on SPF-105P model implemented several unique solutions that make it very interesting not only to fans of good photography. First thing that you’ll spot is definitely size of the frame. Display has 10-inch diagonal which, in combination with the biggest resolution that we saw so far on digital frames (1024 x 600px), results in exceptionally picture quality. Colours and picture brightness are even better than on most netbooks that passed through our test lab lately…”

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In fact, unlike previous generations of the Ultra-120, the new Ultra-120 eXtreme 1366 RT is fully equipped with a fan and ready for action right out of the box. We will be testing the performance of this "new-old" heat sink on a well equipped Intel i7 965 Extreme processor. The goal of this review will be to see what gains can be had by the Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme 1366 RT over the stock Intel i7 cooler and which fan configuration is the ideal for our test setup.

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"The Diamond Multimedia Radeon HD 4870 512MB GDDR5 is a solution that may fit your needs the Radeon HD 4870 is Diamond Multimedia’s entry for the mainstream gamer. The Diamond HD 4870 utilizes the ATI Radeon RV770 GPU which contains TeraScale graphics and enhanced anit-aliasing and ansitropic filtering to boost performance while gaming even in higher resolutions."

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"Commander 650 W is power supply from In Win that comes with an army-inspired looks, coming with a 14-mm fan, a modular cabling system and active PFC. Is this a good product? Can it really deliver its labeled power?"

"Overclocking the ASUS EAH4850 was nice since the Catalyst Control Center was not as restricted as it is with some cards; it gave me a lot of room to play with. I started off with overclocking the GPU core 5MHz at a time, pushing it until I could no longer run stable. Once I maxed out the GPU speed, I started on the memory frequency, pushing it the same as I did for the GPU. I was able to get quite far on the ASUS EAH4850MT, farther than I expected. This card took everything I threw at it and begged for more. The final overclock was 730MHz on the GPU and 1098MHz on the memory. The other HD 4850 that was compared in this review topped out at 675/1075MHz, so the ASUS EAH4850 MT definitely has some juice to put out."

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After NZXT's long unprecedented success with their Zero case, they went back to the drawing board once again to redesign and perfect what they now call the Zero 2. Today, more than ever, companies like NZXT are looking for a means to manufacture quality products at a cheaper price, without many compromises made on the overall functionality or the finish of their products. The only issue with that is, often times, companies cut corners on the features that matter and the features that consumers look for in cases.

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Despite these flaws, the Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 X2 does deliver a generally better gaming experience than Nvidia’s more expensive GeForce GTX 285. The cheapest we have been able to find the 285 for is around £300, including VAT, which makes it £40 more expensive than the 4850 X2. That makes the decision difficult and while we’d typically recommend a single GPU solution almost every time (especially in light of what we’ve described above), the price difference makes it an awkward choice – the GTX 285 is 15 percent more expensive and it’s slower in four of the seven games we’ve tested here.

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Not long ago we reviewed the Akasa Omega, a large high performance case designed to appeal mostly to hardware enthusiasts. While the Omega was a very good case, its simplistic appearance wouldn't really attract modders and gamers. Today we will have a look at a case from Akasa designed to appeal exactly to these groups of people, the Infiniti Zor. The Infiniti Zor is designed to be visually appealing but also to offer superior thermal performance for high-end gaming systems. We are going to examine its ergonomics, thermal performance and overall quality in this review.

“Multimedia players capable of reproducing various file types have become more and more popular lately. If someone, by any chance, is asking himself why anyone would use multimedia player instead of PC for watching movies and listening of music, than, we must tell you – because of so many advantages. First of all, multimedia players are very easy to use, secondly, you can enjoy in picture on big screen (many people don’t hold PC beside TV) and one more thing that some of you find very important – you have a chance to keep family away from your computer for awhile…”

Thecus has focused their business on network attached storage devices, and they definitely know what they are doing. The N4100PRO is well built, attractively styled, fairly easy to configure, and installing drives is simple. Testing shows that it is capable of respectable data transfer rates that easily outshine a less powerful NAS device.

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Like many products, there are entry-level D-SLRs, professional-grade D-SLRs, and plenty of models in between. Canon’s 50D blurs the line between amateur and professional D-SLR cameras. This camera strikes a good balance with its price and feature set. With this camera, you’ll get a lot of features you wouldn’t find on entry-level models, but you won’t pay professional-grade prices, either. Users who are just making the jump to a D-SLR, for example will appreciate the 50D’s Live View mode, which lets you use the D-SLR’s LCD to frame an image, similar to the way you would frame an image using a point and shoot camera. For more advanced shooters, the 50D also has full manual controls to give you ultimate control over your photographs.

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Computer chassis manufacturers are always working to perfect their designs and make each case in their line-up just a little better than the previous model. Recently we reviewed the Hiper Anubis, this was Hiper's rookie case. They have since released the Hiper Osiris which can be called an evolution of the Anubis design, and today we will see how it fairs.

"Blu-ray home-theater-in-a-box (HTIB) systems are still a rarity-there are currently only a few models available from Panasonic, Samsung and Sony. What's more, they're pricey. Sony's BDV-IS1000 lists for $1,000, keeping it just outside the realm of most mainstream consumers. But the biggest hurdle, as we found out, is simply that they don't always work. Despite trying two systems, spending an hour on the line with a support specialist, and about half that time again on a conference call with a product manager, we were unable to make the system's rear wireless speakers connect with the main amplifier. Other than that one, rather significant inconvenience, it's a sweet system."

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"The Asus Matrix HD 4870 is a most unusual card to overclock. Unlike nearly every other video card I've overclocked, this particular card has been equipped with everything you would need to reach the limits of the components. With Asus' iTracker software, you can increase the GPU and GDDR5 voltages well past what would be useful on air-cooling..."

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For those of us with our sanity intact though, it’s not enough. In fact, even if the PC-888 was the coolest and easiest case to use in the world it probably still wouldn’t be enough. Paying over £400 for a case is just nuts, even when you discount the fact that it’s outperformed and under featured in comparison to other premium cases like the awesome Cooler Master ATCS 840.

Sometimes setting up a RAID array can be a pain in the butt. For one, professional RAID cards can be expensive. Two, many "easy RAID" features of motherboards are closed solutions. Three: cheaper solutions may not be reliable, and often require offline rebuilds when something goes wrong.. What if you want to have the redundancy protection or speed of RAID, but in an external modular box that doesn't mess with your system's current configuration?

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We recently looked at the HIS HD4850 IceQ 4 TurboX and it earned our highly coveted Heavenly Gold Award. Hopefully the 4870 were looking at today can offer the same value and performance package for its class.

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With juicy features packed on high end motherboards, everyone wants a piece of that pie, although not everyone can afford it. There's a large chunk of end users today that want to see some of those features brought to a budget motherboard. Enter Gigabyte EP45-DS3R, an Intel P45 chipset motherboard, packing a good bang for buck.

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With the start of the new year, comes a new line of gaming cases from one of the most recognized case manufacturers in the industry: Cooler Master. Launched this month during CES, the new CM Storm division of Cooler Master promises to be the ulimate solution for gamers. Do they deliver? We'll find out today as Benchmark Reviews takes a look at one of the first products to get the CM Storm seal of approval: the Sniper Gaming Case SGC-6000-KKN1-GP.

"This version of the HD4670 was much more overclocking friendly that the Powercolor version I tested. Whereas that card did not want to give up any additional clock speed, the Sapphire version easily eclipsed the marks set by that card. The memory on this card just kept scaling upwards and finally gave up the ghost at 1070MHz. I backed down the clock speed 5MHz and I was ready to go. The Core speed increase was not all that substantial, but it is easily 15MHz faster than the Powercolor card. With this additional clock speed, there should be an increase in the performance delivered without a big noise penalty as the fan spools up."

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"Today, we have for review CoolIT’s latest cooling product: the Domino Advanced Liquid Cooling (ALC) all-in-one kit for single CPU systems. In keeping with their catchphrase, “Target the heat, kill the noise,” CoolIT hopes that the Domino ALC provides a silent yet powerful cooling solution."

"Samsung has been on a roll lately with their great TOC (Touch of Color) HDTV series. It was only logical that Samsung would transition TOC into their line of computer monitors. Read on to see if that transition makes the perfect 24-inch monitor you can get from Samsung; introducing the SyncMaster T240. "

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"The BFG MX Series of power supplies easily followed in the footsteps of the LS series by providing a very good low to mid range power supply that posses a real marque feature that users hardware will thank them for."

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Today, we're going to take a look at an XFX version of the GTX 260 (Core 216) with their XFX GeForce GTX 260 (216) Black Edition. The Black Editon takes the GeForce 260 (216) reference design to the next level by giving the GPU and Memory speeds a significant boost for added performance potential. Along with its complete retail package, the XFX version of the GTX 260 (Core 216) is clearly out to make an impression, and from what we've seen, they are off to a good start.

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With a market composed of a large variety of CPU coolers, manufactures have to get it right the first time around. If the cooler poses to many issues, or simply fails to meet today's standards, it will likely find its lifespan to be short. Today we are going to be taking a look at a cooler from a company that knows all about cooling, Cooler Master. Is Cooler Master really the master when it comes to cooling? Well, we are about to find out how well the Cooler Master V8 CPU Cooler can compare to a few other top performers on the market.

The 2463UW has been a blast due to its sheer size and list of great features. By including great features like speakers, microphone, and webcam, this monitor is great for web chatting and conferences. With HDMI input, a very large variety of video electronics can be used such as HD cable boxes, Blu-ray players, and current-gen consoles.

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Today we are taking a look at the Dell Mini 9, a machine which offers a similar specification to its competitors in an attractive shell. Dell are one of the largest PC manufacturers in the world and so we expect good all round quality for a reasonable price.

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Ever have that feeling that someone with a Heavyweight title just put you in a coma? And when you awoke from that coma everything you thought you knew was no longer a reality? That was the same way I felt when I realized how bad Intel was kicking the crap out of AMD�s booty all over the CPU market. And as a long-time fan of AMD, I�m sitting here wondering� just what the heck happened?

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Using both the boards has been an overall positive experience, although I have to say quite frustrating when we were overclocking. Gigabyte has tweaked both with a good software set that works and some nifty features, but they both just need a few loose ends tidying in places like the BIOS.

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BFG has been a favorite among computer enthusiasts for quite a while now. Known for their high quality cutting edge Nvidia GPU's and high efficiency power supplies, many an enthusiast has browsed the BFG site longing for that massive GPU that would complete their gaming shrine. Since the introduction of the GTX-200 series things have been really exciting in the GPU world.

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Come February 17, 2009, most major broadcast stations in the US will make the final switch from analog to digital broadcasts and this has been coming for a long time. This switch will affect the computer user two-fold. The analog video tuners that people bought long ago will not pick up broadcasts any longer. But, at the same time, it's a great opportunity for HTPC and media center builders to develop a digital TV recorder and viewer for their computers. The ASUS My Cinema U3100Mini steps into place as a portable digital TV tuner and recorder with the ability to accept both ATSC signals over the air as well as QAM signals through coaxial cable connections. Does the ASUS My Cinema U3100 Mini deliver?

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With the GTX 285 we will see the gradual phasing out of the GTX 280 and indeed, we are seeing the telltale signs of this with the outgoing cards retailing for significantly discounted prices. This in effect has been putting some major pressure on the GTX 285 launch since the cards are very similar spec-wise but you can find the GTX 280 for more than $100 less if you care to look around a bit. That $100 may not seem much to some of you but when you have the price of a brand new HD 4670 separating two very similar cards, not many people will look at the more expensive option.

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The down side of all of these "special" keyboards is that they usually come at steeper price. Sure you can find plain Jane cheap keyboards, but in most cases cheap is the key word, cheaply made, cheap materials and cheap performance. This is where OCZ comes in with it's Alchemy line, the OCZ Elixir keyboard is a gaming keyboard that's meant to not break the bank.

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The Strider series is one of Silverstone’s best-selling power units. The lineup consists of models ranging from 350 up to a massive 1200 watts. It is obvious that we won't be testing the whole lineup but we will look at the middle model the ST600F which is 600 watts of stable power aimed at the individuals that want modest power while providing a high level of efficiency and remaining quiet. And if you are looking for more reasons to consider the Strider well it is modular and priced to sell. We will go through the usual test to see is Silverstone's repetition be upheld by the Strider ST600F.

If you want to get rid of that air CPU cooler, but find water-cooling too complicated and expensive, CoolIT might have just what you're looking for. Their Domino A.L.C. is designed to offer greater cooling-abilities over air, while retaining reasonable noise-levels. Best of all, it's inexpensive, at $80, and won't hold back your impressive overclocks.

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When Windows Vista first hit the scene, it was quite a departure from Windows XP. It had been a while since a major desktop operating system release from Microsoft, and consumers along with many businesses, were slow to adopt. Add to that the new and sometimes cumbersome security features, plus reports that Vista was slower as a gaming platform, and you had an equation for low initial adoption. Even as service pack 1 was released adoption was still less than stellar, prompting Microsoft to launch new marketing campaigns in an attempt to sway public opinions (think Mojave).

"So yes this is a review of the Sapphire HD4870 with 512mb of ram, but it's also a comparison of what differences, if any there are between having 512mb or 1gig of ram on your video card. I'm comparing the Sapphire 4870 512mb to my Diamond 4870 with 1gig of ram to figure out if it's worthwhile to double the ram or not. Both card run the same 750Mhz Core Clock and 900Mhz memory clock, and both have the 256bit memory interface, they pretty much the same except for the onboard memory. "

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“We have decided to perform comparison test of memory modules that are certified at 533MHz or more precise at DDR2-1066 standard. We provided for this test several Dual Channel kits with 2x1GB capacity. Choice for this module speed came as consequence of the fact that most motherboards support 1066 standard. Capacity of 2GB RAM memory became standard also so our decision was actually led by these facts. We wanted to compare and determine what memory gives the best performances at default settings and of course, to determine overclock margin for each module. As you can see in table with specifications, tested modules have three the most popular chips lately…”

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Frankly we’re amazed by how quickly the SSD market is moving forwards and a drive that just a few months ago was a unappealing has now, though some clever engineering, been turned into an absolute star performer that’s able to match and for the most part better a drive that, just a month ago, was one of the best available. Will 2009 be the year of the SSD? If the Titan is anything to go by, it certainly looks like it!

In early September, 2008 Intel released their mainstream series of solid state drives. In its initial offfering Intel brought two drives to market, the X18-M and the X25-M built respectively on the 1.8" and 2.5" form factors. The initial capacity of these drives was 80 GB and recently a 160 GB version was released. Solid State Drives are rapidly changing the computing landscape, and many enthusiasts are using SSD technology in their primary systems to help boost performance. Benchmark Reviews has tested nearly all of the products available to the retail market in this sector, and several have done quite well while others fall flat. It used to be that performance was the largest hurdle for mass storage NAND Solid State Drives, followed by stability, and later price. In this review, we will give a thorough overview as well as benchmark test the linear bandwidth performance of the ! Intel X25-M 80 GB SSDSA2MH080G15E solid state SATA drive and compares it against the top competition.

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"First of all, these tests show that the competition in the CPU market is growing interesting again. Phenom II is evidently a success. Moreover, in a number of tasks we can speak about it even without mentioning prices."

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"The Thermaltake BigTyp 14Pro was able to do fairly well in comparison to the other coolers that I tested. It was able to beat out the Domino A.L.C. (Full), the Thermaltake SpinQ, and tie the OCZ Gladiator MAX. It was just a few degrees off from the best performers, such as the Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme, Titan CoolIdol, and the Cooler Master V8."

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Thermaltake took a long look at what a Home Theater PC needs and provides everything that one would want and need to make a full-fledged HTPC. Just provide the motherboard, the CPU, the memory the drives and the video card and you are good to go. The DH-101 is meant for a Digital Home user and is easy to install and use. The unit is in full-time use at Doc's house as his Blu Ray Disc or HD-DVD player can accommodate anything a regular PC can. The HD 2900XT is a rather long video card and fit into the case without problems. If you are looking for a fully featured HTPC case with plenty of airflow and room for expansion this is the case for you. An excellent design and an excellent unit for the Media PC.

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While the ATCS is known for its classic good looks what it is best known for (and thus the moniker ATCS) is high performance cooling with as many strategically placed fans as they can cram into a case. In this case Cooler Master has fit in not one, not two, but THREE of those 230x200mm monsters and they have done it without resorting to sticking one on the side panel.

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NVIDIA's latest addition to their graphics card lineup is based around the 55 nanometer GT200b. The new card offers more performance, consumes less power and is quieter than the previous model. Yet these improvements cost you a premium of about $70 over the GTX 280. Is that price justified?

"SSDs are trying to enter market and replace platter based hard drives. Technology wise they surpass the old way of storaging data magnetically so why the SSD market is still so slow even though the drives have been around for couple of years now?"

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"While XSReviews has had the chance to check out GPUs from many different companies, one of the ones we haven't worked with much is HIS, but recently they've decided we're worthy of their attention. With that in mind they've sent us a HD 4850 with their special IceQ4 branding. Let's see how it compares to some of our recently reviewed GPUs from other manufacturers."

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We had high hopes for the HIS ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB IceQ4+ Turbo, but sadly they haven’t been fulfilled. Typically, HIS goes out of its way to spice up AMD’s ATI Radeon graphics cards with an improved cooling solution, higher clock speeds and a few innovations added in for good measure. While we’ve got some of that here, the one thing we haven’t got is a new cooling solution – instead, it’s a refinement of the reference cooler.

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"MSI Radeon HD 4670 review which also features the Sapphire Radeon HD 3870. The MSI Radeon HD 4670 has 3% lower clock speed and 13% lower memory speed than the Sapphire Radeon HD 3870. However the MSI Radeon HD 4670 does have 320 Pixel Shaders which is the same as the Sapphire Radeon HD 3870."

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This new case that Ramsom was telling me about was the Thermaltake Spedo Advance. The Spedo offers an interior look that many will think is attractive. What the Spedo has that everybody will agree is on the inside. The case offers nearly unmatched cable management, very easy installation, cooling, and air ventilation that puts in the top tier of great cases. With all the new stuff the case has, the other parts such as spaciousness, storage, and cooling options were not sacrificed. I will now take you on a visual tour of the Spedo case from Thermaltake.

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Cooler master brings you the HAF 932. A larger full size tower case featuring a unique design set and a High Air Flow structure. This case features a wide range of premium features including tool less components, enhanced motherboard tray for cable routing, rear access to the mother board for easy CPU cooler installs and ready made mounts for water cooling just to name a few. If that sounds like a lot of features for one case your right. Is the HAF 932 worthy to be the next home for your hardware?

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Recently, Intel has been releasing new computer related technologies so quickly that PC builders like myself are having a hard time keeping up with them. Intel's latest offering, Core i7, a new processor lineup has brought on a slew of new motherboards for all kinds of users. The motherboard we will be taking a look at today is the ECS X58B-A Black Series, which from the name you can tell is based off Intel's latest chipset, x58. ECS released this motherboard, attacking the budget builders out there, yet at the same time giving them some great overclocking room, a nice multi-GPU solution and an amazing bang for your buck value. Being the first motherboard on the market to support SLI and Crossfire, this motherboard is one of a kind. Let's go ahead and take a look at what ECS is really about.

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We are back on the subject of Solid State Disk drives again and this time you're in for a real treat! This will be an adventure into extreme high-end storage with massive amounts of performance on tap. We managed to convince our contacts over at Patriot Memory to send us on over a grand total of four of their impressive Warp 2 SSDs.

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“One of the first things I noticed when I took the Axis out of the box was it was actually heavier then I thought it would be! The unit itself weights in at 1.5lbs which doesn't seem much but it does. After getting the unit out of its packaging and setup the Axis unit is very nice! It comes with this aluminized black metal case with the Maxtor on the side of the unit. On the front of the Axis you have your basic setup with a power light, hard drive light and access light. The LED's are a nice soft blue color which is pretty cool with the black metal look of the outside.”

While many are satisfied with having a single screen, imagine gaming across 3 displays with 180° vision. The Matrox TripleHead2Go Digital overcomes the shortcoming of a single or dual display setup and gives you the possiblity to connect up to three DVI based LCD screens with a total resolution of up to 5040 x 1050 for real surround gaming.

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I have several thoughts regarding the Evercool Transformer 6. It seems that every heatsink out there is based on heatpipes and in this case, we have six of them! Though heatpipes are excellent ways to transfer heat, it is actually the job of the fins to dissipate it away from the cooler and ultimately, the CPU. I am not entirely convinced that the fin design of this cooler results in efficient cooling. Based on the tests, it was slightly better than Intel's stock cooler but not by much. Given the large size of the cooler, I would have expected a larger airflow cross section through the fins. Also, a cross-flow orientation would have been more efficient instead of blowing the heat back down towards other components.

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"So, for many more months, consumers will expect ready availability of DDR2 and DDR3 dual channel kits, and DDR3 triple channel kits, forcing the memory manufacturers and hardware dealers to keep three generations of memory technology on hand. Add to that the uncertainty of the global economy and the memory guys are definitely in a strange position."

Spire’s first cooler for me to review is the TherMax Pro. While Spire has also another in its line-up that is very similar to this cooler with the Spire TherMax II, that is the more expensive version with a higher rated CFM fan applied than in the TherMax Pro. Either way, these coolers come with Direct Touch heat pipes, which we all know can hold a bit of an edge over the flat copper or aluminum solid base designs.

The Antec 1200 has been given the nickname of "The Ultimate Gaming Case", this is quite a moniker to carry around and I was a bit curious if the case could live up to all the accolades it has been given in other reviews. If you would like to find out just how well the Antec 1200 did during our testing just follow our link and get your answer.

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Overall I am impressed with the TV Wonder 650 Combo PCI Express card. For those wanting an alternative to buying a converter box or a new TV, the TV Wonder Combo PCI Express card may be for you as it allows you to use your computer monitor as a HDTV. As most LCD monitors are fully capable of 1280x720 output, this results in the ability to watch HDTV straight on your computer without additional purchase. If you have a higher resolution monitor such as the Optiquest 24" monitor I used in this review, the TV Wonder 650 Combo PCI Express card will allow you to do 1080p HDTV without buying a large screen TV. It also allows you to connect various devices to capture video or screenshots from your video game console or camera to your PC.

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"Armed with two Corsair DOMINATOR 6GB 1866MHz CL9 memory kits with the AIRFLOW fan I set out to see how easy it would be to run 12GB of memory on an Intel Core i7 desktop system. These TR3X6G1866C9DF memory kits retail for $449 each and are fastest Core i7 triple channel memory kit that Corsair has to offer. Since these kits go through the tightest screening and binning at Corsair I figured that a pair of these kits should provide not only the best chance at getting 12GB of memory running, but also the best performance should overclocking be in order..."

“Passive power supplies might not garner as much attention as those gaming monster units, but they do occupy an important place in the market, as more consumers look to incorporate HTPC setups into their homes. The quest for silence can be maddening for some, and today we're looking at the FSP Zen 400 power supply, a fanless unit that no doubt is silent. But what about performance? We’ll find out if the FSP Zen 400 and see if it's a contender or pretender.”

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“If HP 2133 that we reviewed two months ago was intended for business users then ASUS Eee PC S101 is intended for business users that need to make a statement. This is most elegant netbook that we tested so far, and it is suited for male or female users. This ultrathin model resembles Mac Book Air and its originality comes from unusual color of the cover. Color of the S101 that we got was something between color of brass and coffee. Piano finish of the cover, because of this unusual color, doesn’t look unappealing like on some models. Palm rest, or area around touchpad, is made of brushed aluminum and besides its elegant looks it is easy to maintain this surface…”

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"Frostytech first saw Zalman's CNPS9900 LED heatsink at Computex Taipei this past year, today we've finally got it on the test bench! The heatsink was appropriately set to release in tandem with socket 1366 Intel Core i7 processors and is thus fully socket 775/1366 compatible."

"The Thermaltake Toughpower 1000W meets the requirements of the claimed 80 Plus certification on 110VAC and 230VAC (PF>0.9 & Efficiency>80%). Actual measurements once again show the PF to be best at 110VAC and efficiency at 230VAC. Maximum efficiency of 85% is an excellent result and puts this power supply up with the best."

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NVIDIA Continues to refine the GT200 GPU, and the latest 55nm version offers better efficiency and higher performance. In this article, Benchmark Reviews performance tests the ASUS GeForce GTX 285 against a wide range of video cards. With 1GB of GDDR3 video memory clocked to 1300MHz, and 240 cores working at 1550MHz, the ENGTX285 TOP pushes frame rates to a new high. Benchmarks will help set these video cards apart, but price will ultimately decide the products fate.

With Solid State Drives scoring high on the Geeks techno-lust list, we've been covering more SSD's to help you keep up with the technology. Drives we've seen up until now were lacking in space, making them somewhat impractical for a primary boot drive big enough to meet your everyday needs. Sizes we've seen range from 32 GB to 128 GB, and while the 128 GB is a decent size, with high speed internet and downloading songs and media content a common place occurrence, it's just not quite big enough. We've been waiting for larger drives that are more feasible for the every day user.

We review so many Home Theater PC cases that sometimes they all start to look alike. Many of them try to mimic the look of either a home theater amplifier or DVD player. Due to size constraints, many manufacturers opt for the amplifier, which allows the consumer to use standard-size PC components. Some of the smaller designs look much more appliance-like, simply because at first glance it appears there's no way to fit PC components into the chassis.

"The television side of the Diamond AIWHD card performed very well, with the exception of not being able to brighten up the picture and that finding your way around the menu is a little clunky. The picture was crystal clear and crisp even at a 720p resolution. The programming guide worked great and I was able to schedule and record in advance. I was also able to pause, rewind, and fast forward shows during playback with no issues. The only problem I had with the Diamond All In Wonder HD card was that hiccup during recording when the virus scan started. But that is to be expected when you have to have memory intensive programs running and to only have the hiccup is great."

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When you think about digital music players, one name comes to mind immediately: iPod. Apple has regained its popularity thanks to their line of iPod mp3 players, including the Nano, iPhone, Shuffle, etc. But are they worth all the hype? Geeks.com, popular online retailer, sent us the first generation, 8GB version of the Apple iPod Touch. Read on to find out our take on the latest incarnation of the popular media player.

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"In this review, we'll be taking a look at the Cyborg Keyboard and Mouse from Saitek. The products from Saitek's Cyborg series are designed and aimed at the gaming enthusiasts. They give gamers an excellent gaming experience by offering improved control and great features. "

“Twenty first century is here and with it came new technologies like wireless connectivity that we will be focusing on in this review. Nowadays everything “must” be wireless and portable so folks from Logitech created one very unusual device. Name Squeezebox Boom doesn’t speak for itself too much. Actually Logitech Squeezebox Boom is speaker with two integrated wireless devices that allows it to be connected to your computer and internet at the same time…”

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There are many types and styles of cases out there today for the new iPod Nano 4th gen, and today I'm going to take a look at nine different ones from various companies and suppliers. What I've got represents a sampling of the styles or types you'll run across today on the market, they range from very inexpensive to moderately priced, from cloth, to plastic to leather, they all have their advantages and disadvantages.

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The topic of SSDs itself is rather interesting, but when you team up the increasingly popular flash memory technology with Microsoft's next operating system, Windows 7, things move up to the next notch on the excitement level - for us around here, anyway - but probably you too, if you are reading this.

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