Week of October 18, 2009

So where do I stand when it comes to evaluating the QNAP TS-219P as an overall unit? The benchmark results are certainly respectable. You can count on performance in the range of 20 to 40MB/s depending on file size and transfer rate. The difference between RAID 0 and RAID 1 is large enough that you'll notice a small increase in speed but at the same time small enough that you won't be waiting forever while data is duplicated to both drives.

CLICK HERE FOR QNAP TS-219P Turbo NAS PRICING & SHOPPING

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

"Two Hundred is an inexpensive case from Antec, costing only USD 50 in the US. Is it a good choice? Let's see. "

CLICK HERE FOR Antec Two Hundred Case PRICING & SHOPPING

" Bluetooth has become the universal wireless standard for many things, and many netbooks come with it built-in now so why not take advantage of it for more than just audio. Today for review MobielFun has sent me over the Bluetooth Mini Mouse, it's a mouse, it's bluetooth, and it's small and portable, and it works great."

CLICK HERE FOR Bluetooth Mini Mouse PRICING & SHOPPING

"Our friends at MobileFun have sent me over the PowerMobile Advanced Emergency Charger for review. I like this unit for a number of reasons, it can use regular or rechargeable batteries and you can charge the batteries in the unit via USB. The product comes with several charging tips for many devices but it has a stand USB port, so you can charge most any device without the use of the included tips. It truly is a universal charger fro your portable devices.. "

Every once in a while we get a chassis that is so unique in styling and layout that it completely changes the entire concept of a chassis design. SilverStone has always come up with unique designs with their chassis. It first started years ago when SilverStone put the PSU on the bottom of the chassis. Now SilverStone has thrown in another out of the box thinking design that is completely re-defying how chassis should be designed for today's computer components. Lets take a look at the Raven RV-02 chassis.

CLICK HERE FOR SilverStone RV-02 Raven PRICING & SHOPPING

"The Kingston SSDNow V+ Series of SSDs performed nearly twice as fast as the original Kingston SSDNow V series and also happens to be available in larger capacities, which is key for the advancement of SSDs in the market. The Kingston SSDNow V+ was said to have sequential read speeds of up to 220MB/sec. and write speeds of up to 180MB/sec. We were able to come very close to those read speeds and were actually able to get slightly faster write speeds in some of the benchmarks. This is clearly a quick drive and performed on par with the Corsair P256 and OCZ Summit 120GB as both of those competitors' drives feature the same internal components..."

CLICK HERE FOR Kingston 256GB SSDNow V+ Series SSD PRICING & SHOPPING

Now a big name in the storage business, Seagate, has jumped onto this bandwagon and released its own USB drive-based NAS device, the Seagate FreeAgent DockStar. Instead of reinventing the wheel, however, Seagate chose to license the Pogoplug technology from CloudEngines and integrate it--with a few differences--into the DockStar. The most obvious difference between the Pogoplug and the DockStar is their appearance. While the Pogoplug is essentially a small white cube, the DockStar is a bit more svelte (3.39x3.351.50), with a cradle on top designed to work exclusively with Seagate's line of FreeAgent Go portable hard drives--in fact, the DockStar looks a lot like the Seagate FreeAgent Go Dock. Another major difference between the DockStar and the Pogoplug is that the DockStar has a total of four USB 2.0 ports versus the Pogoplug's single USB 2.0 port...

CLICK HERE FOR Seagate FreeAgent DockStar NAS Device PRICING & SHOPPING

The Sapphire Radeon HD5750 1GB graphics card does a lot of things better than you might expect from a 'mid-level' card. This isn't a top of the line gaming card, but it is does offer enough muscle to make games enjoyable even with the settings turned up pretty high. On top of the performance, it ran cool, quiet, and didn't tax the electric meter mush at all.

CLICK HERE FOR Sapphire Radeon HD5750 1GB Graphics Card PRICING & SHOPPING

We're going to take a look at the new AMD Athlon 2 X3 435 triple core CPU and see if we can't unlock it's potential, then we're going to try and unlock that disabled core. You should know that unlocking that disabled core is a crap shoot and not every Triple core CPU can handle it. We'd venture a guess that as many as 50% of the triple cores are capable of unlocking and functioning. That usually comes at a cost, most often you lose a little OCing capability. Typically an unlocked core CPU that overclocks to 3.GHz will OC as high as 3.5GHz so you lose 300 - 400 GHz OCing capability but gain a core. Other triple core CPU's won't stabilize with the core unlocked. If you have a little luck and a board capable of the trick you might extend the already great value of affordable AMD CPU's. Even if it doesn't unlock the Athlon 2 X3 435 running a mere $87 dollars at launch is still an exceptional value for budget minded enthusiasts.

"The Smart Quick Boost utility delivered a 3.84GHz clock speed with the click of the icon or just over 900MHz worth of increase, just by choosing the Twin Turbo option. The Turbo and Faster options delivered clock speed increases, but, as you can imagine, they were not as dramatic as the Twin Turbo option. The 3.84GHz clock speed is about 100Mhz higher than the utilities on the Maximus III Formula and MSI P55-GD65 delivered (at 3.7GHz), but the OC Genie is still by far the easiest to use option with the Gigabyte running a close second."

CLICK HERE FOR Gigabyte GA-P55-UD6 PRICING & SHOPPING

“NZXT has added another case to their Classic Series of cases, it's called the M59 and it is quite inexpensive at under $60. You would think a case with that price tag would be really cheap, but the M59 has features like 2 included fans, 2.5-inch SSD bays, a side panel window, all black interior, a wire management system, and an eSATA port. A lot of these features cannot even be found on more expensive cases. Let's see if NZXT has a winner in the M59."

CLICK HERE FOR NZXT M59 Classic Series Mid Tower Case PRICING & SHOPPING

Heat is bad. Heat is Evil. Need I say more? Not really, but I will. CPU Coolers offer a great way to keep your system cool. Today we’re going to look at the ZEROtherm Core 92 CPU cooler. This particular cooler is a Fin-Fan-Fin structure, which is a fairly unique design where the fan is actually mounted inside the cooler as opposed to on the side or on top. This makes for a very unique design that has a nice blue LED glowing from within the cooler. So, not only will this product keep your CPU nice and cold, but it will look good to boot. Let’s take a closer look.

CLICK HERE FOR ZEROtherm Core 92 CPU Cooler PRICING & SHOPPING

“Although AMD with its Phenom II CPU models cannot compete with competitors in form of Core i7 when it comes to top-performance models, Phenom II and its derivates can offer a lot of bang for the buck. AMD simply does not have high-end CPU that can be measured up against Core i7, but the rest of the lineup is very good. It is obvious that AMD aims at products that have best price/performances ratio. Phenom II is great gaming CPU and slightly inferior when it comes to workstation performance levels. On the other side, statistics are merciless and, retail-selling figures of those high-end CPUs are as low as just few percents compared to sum of all sold CPUs on the market today…”

CLICK HERE FOR AMD X4 Athlon II 630 PRICING & SHOPPING

NVIDIA's new GeForce 210 is set out to conquer the low-end graphics card market. It comes with native HDMI output, improvements to HDMI audio and a low profile form factor. While it also supports DirectX 10.1 and PhysX, it is definitely not made for gaming. However, it does score big in overclocking and power consumption.

"I was just looking back through our archives and realized it has been more than a year since our last Apevia case review. As it turns out, they have updated revisions of some of their most popular enclosures such as the X-Cruiser 2 and the X-Dreamer 3. The third installment of the X-Dreamer series continues the tradition of a mid-tower chassis with round LCD temperature display and controls located on the front panel. While maintaining nearly the same exterior dimensions and pretty much identical interior capacity, the X-Dreamer 3 improves the model by enlarging the side panel window, upgrading to 120mm fans and reducing the weight."

CLICK HERE FOR Apevia X-Dreamer 3 Mid-Tower Case PRICING & SHOPPING

Today we take a look at a product from Xigmatek, they have expanded quite a bit in the European regions and seem to get bigger and bigger with various products. We got a sample of their Nrp-Pc501 PSU that we are going to take a look at, we will compare it vs a high performing Enermax PSU to see what type of numbers we can get and also compare the noise they make. Lets take a closer look at the product.

"Radeon HD 5700 series is the first mid-range DirectX 11 video cards to arrive on the market. Let'snow see the performance of Radeon HD 5770 from XFX and see if it is a good buy."

CLICK HERE FOR XFX Radeon HD 5770 Video Card PRICING & SHOPPING

"When testing the T30 I kept kicking myself for not having a single-stage phase change system or liquid nitrogen so I could kick up the CPU's uncore and push the CAS7 and CAS8 frequencies. Now keeping that thought in mind, where does the T30 fit in with the myriad of other cooling devices on the market? For use within the typical system the T30 would define overkill. The H30 makes a lot more sense, especially for those individuals who already have their case watercooled. But the T30 isn't about making sense, it is about pushing the boundaries and for those select few people who are willing, the T30 is there to give them that extra edge. This is definitely a product geared towards the small group of competitive benchmarkers at the tip top of the horde of computer enthusiasts..."

Today we are going to have a look at one of Spires premium power supply units, the Blackmoon XP 600W. The Blackmoon XP (or eXtreme Precision) series is aimed towards enthusiasts and power users, therefore we expect to see the 600W model which we are going to review today delivering more than just middling performance.

Visiontek was kind enough to send us a HD 5870 reference model to test and we have to tell you it's looking very very good. It's a polished product with full functionality and so far we haven't seen anything that doesn't work 100%. Often early product features have minor flaws you have to work around but in this case the 5870 is a highly polished release. Sporting a new sleek cowling design which strays away from the normal red plastic cowling we've become used to the Visiontek 5870 is a sleek gaming monster you'll have to see to believe.

CLICK HERE FOR Visiontek HD 5870 PRICING & SHOPPING

"The rear of the motherboard also holds one part of this offering's RoG Connect functionality - In essence, this gives you the opportunity to control, monitor and tweak certain elements of your system from a remote machine via software. To do this, you can simply hook the Maximus III Gene up to another PC via the USB port you see above next to the analogue audio jacks using the bundled USB 2.0 cable, and then press the button to the left of said port. As long as you have the RoG Connect software installed on the PC to which that cable is connected, you can then make a number of changes on-the-fly."

CLICK HERE FOR ASUS Maximus III Gene Motherboard PRICING & SHOPPING

The easiest way to describe Logitech's Anywhere Mouse MX is to think of it as a mini SUV in 4x4 mode- it's small in size but will go anywhere you take it.

CLICK HERE FOR Logitech Anywhere MX Mouse PRICING & SHOPPING

Performance and gaming go hand in hand; you cannot achieve performance without some power behind it, and getting the power you need is key to a rock solid build. CPU’s and Graphics card that are out now suck a huge amount of power and if you are still sporting your white box 450W power supply that came with your PC in a bundle deal from 5 years ago chances are you are getting some sporadic crashes and hardware blue screens because you decided to upgrade everything but what matters most. Companies like Coolmax make it much easier to step up your performance without stepping down your pay check. I have used Coolmax products in the past and I have been very impressed with their overall performance to price ratio so let’s see how well their news lines of PSU’s do: VL-600B, CUL Series 750W, and the ZP series modular 750W Silent are the Products we will be checking out today:

CLICK HERE FOR Coolmax USA Power Supply PRICING & SHOPPING

"The layout wasn't the most impressive. For instance, I was not at all happy with where ECS decided to stick the auxiliary power connector. I was also unhappy about where the IDE connector was located. To me layout is one of the most important aspects of a motherboard, so these defaults really brought the P55H-A down a few notches in my book. I was also surprised that the Driver CD didn't work. Vista has been out for a while now, and 64-Bit is nothing new. The fact that the Driver CD didn't support 64-Bit Vista is just ridiculous."

Over the last few months we have been building up an impressive array of CPU coolers for Intel’s i7 / 1366 CPUs and it was high time they were all compared to one another. In this roundup we will be looking at new products from well-known companies like Tuniq, Kingwin and Zalman along with coolers from recent startups CoGage and ProlimaTech and finally some little-known units from Spire and ZeroTherm. The heatsinks we have on tap come from every price bracket and should give us a good cross-section of the current state of the CPU cooling industry.

CLICK HERE FOR CPU Cooler PRICING & SHOPPING

"Radeon HD 5700 series is the first mid-range DirectX 11 video cards to arrive on the market. Let's see the performance of Radeon HD 5750 from XFX and see if it is a good buy."

CLICK HERE FOR XFX Radeon HD 5750 Video Card PRICING & SHOPPING

"Two years ago, Google Android was nothing more than a rumor on technology blogs. Twelve months later, its sole representative was one awkward brick of a phone that looked like a prototype that had escaped from a testing lab. And today, lo and behold, the little open source operating system (OS) that could is undergoing a veritable renaissance, with manufacturers unveiling new, better cell phones left and right."

While the unit did not survive the review, I won't hold that against it. As the new test setup gets refined the mortality rate will hopefully drop, while the useful information provided in these reviews will hopefully rise. Before its death, the unit put up respectable numbers in terms of regulation, ripple, efficiency, and not previously mentioned - noise output.

The launch of Radeon HD57xx Juniper-GPU series cards is going very smoothly. ATI learned some hard lessons when they launched the HD4850 a couple years back. All the partners seem to have their cards ready for distribution this time, and there's no price gouging, due to the stable supply. This is doubly important for the HD57xx, since they're in the middle of the pack, performance-wise, and there are lots of competitors. XFX is one of the premium retail partners in the video card industry, although they're a relative newcomer to the ATI camp, and they've supplied Benchmark Reviews a model HD-575X-ZNF7 Radeon HD5750 to review. We recently looked at an early engineering sample of the HD5770, now we have the opportunity to take a look at a production version of the lower priced companion card, the XFX Radeon HD5750. We already know it's not going to challenge the HD5770, but can it beat out its real competition at the lower price point?

CLICK HERE FOR XFX Radeon HD5750 PRICING & SHOPPING

"The Antec Truepower Quattro 1000W lacks modular cable connections in my opinion. It will easily power two high end graphics cards in SLI or Crossfire, but that's as far you go with the four available PCI-E connectors (two 6+2-pin and two 6-pin). Power consumption of a high end dual graphic card computer would be 600-700W maximum, which leaves 300-400W of unusable power. That's fine for the user who likes a little headroom, but it does prevent the use of this power supply with three high end graphics cards – rare I know, but they are out there, and the Antec Truepower Quattro 1000W could power such a configuration with more connectors."

CLICK HERE FOR Antec Truepower Quattro 1000W Power Supply PRICING & SHOPPING

“You've all probably heard of NZXT by now, though the same could not be said seemingly just a few years ago. They have come a long way in recent years in design and innovation to produce some of the coolest and most desirable enthusiast products on the market. Their focus is on computer cases but they've also been introducing themselves to some other niches. We've reviewed lots of products from NZXT over the years with all of their products being of good quality and performance. Their Cryo series notebook coolers are another gem. Today I'll be checking out the highly touted Panzerbox high-performance chassis.”

“Long time ago, in the 1980’s actually, Walkman was considered the best portable media player. In those days, walkman owners were carrying audio cassettes and AA batteries along. In those days, we expected from our audio player to play audio cassettes, while these days things are
drastically different. First of all, dimensions of audio players are getting smaller every day, while even touch screens, wireless connections and similar technologies are not enoughanymore. After all kinds of media players that have passed through out test lab, finally, we got one that should be very good media player and at the same time does not have lower case “i” as first letter of its name…”

CLICK HERE FOR Zune HD PRICING & SHOPPING

"Today AMD is launching several entry-level 45-nm socket AM3 Athlon II CPUs and we are going to take a look on the new Athlon II X2 240e (2.8 GHz) and Athlon II X3 435 (2.9 GHz) CPUs and compare them to Athlon II X4 (2.6 GHz) but also with their main competitors from Intel."

"Do you leave your computer on all the time? If you've nodded yes to any of the above, it might be time to think about a more power-efficient processor. That's the idea behind AMD's Athlon II X2 240e. It's a 2.8GHz dual-core processor based on the AMD "Regor" core with a TDP of just 45W. The "e" behind the Athlon II X2 240e model name indicates that it's one of AMDs Energy Efficient processors. The Athlon II X2 240e has support for both DDR2 and DDR3 memory, depending on if the processor is dropped into a socket AM2+ or socket AM3 motherboard. Memory can be run at speeds of DDR2-1066 or DDR3-1333 via the Athlon II X2 240e's integrated memory controller."

The Cooler Master Lab is their first test bench unit and scores with some extremely compact dimensions along with the possibility to install a full size ATX board. We take a close look to see how it stacks up to the competition from the specialists like DangerDen or DimasTech.

"Today for review Geeks.com has sent me over the Hannspree 23” 1080P LCD monitor. Hannspree is company that is well known for making excellent quality and good performing products. The monitor I’ve got for review is a refurbished one so it does cost a bit less that it would buying it new, and I haven’t run across any dead pixels or problems with it so far. This monitor features a 5ms response time in addition to having a contrast ratio of 15,000:1, so it works very well for everything from gaming to movie watching. "

CLICK HERE FOR 23" Hannspree HF237HPB Widescreen 1080p HDMI LCD Monitor PRICING & SHOPPING

We've seen both dual core, and more recently, quad core Athlon II processors. Today AMD is announcing triple core Athlon II processors, along with a whole slew of low-power / energy efficient dual, triple, and quad core Athlon II chips! All these processors are priced aggressively against their Intel counterpart and should lead to some stiff competition.

Today we are going to look at the SteelSeries latest full-size gaming headset, the Siberia V2. This is essentially a refresh of the popular Siberia headset which has proved to be one of the best gaming headsets around for a very decent price.

CLICK HERE FOR Steelseries Siberia V2 Headset PRICING & SHOPPING

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

"Logitech lopped a few features off the Squeezebox Boom, added several others-including a beautiful 2.4-inch display-and whacked $100 off the price tag to come up with the Squeezebox Radio, a phenomenal value among audio-streaming devices. The Boom sounds a little better than the Radio (especially when you're comparing the speakers built into each box), but that advantage largely disappears when you use outboard speakers. And the Radio's display adds a host of features the Boom can't match."

CLICK HERE FOR Logitech Squeezebox Radio PRICING & SHOPPING

It has been awhile since Ultra released a new power supply, but that changed today. The new X4 is Ultra's newest and best looking power supply. The X4 is aimed at the enthusiast looking to build a gamer rig around and the individual that needs a good reliable power supply for max overclocking and long bench sessions. If these groups of people are fond of it, then the rest of the world usually catches on. We received two units from Ultra, a 600 model and a 850 unit. Lets get the units on the test bench and see what they are all about.

Our previous review with the MSI 785G-E65 has shown that the AMD 785G may just be the best budget chipset with integrated graphics. It has proven to be a very nice option for those who wish to setup and HTPC or a budget system.

CLICK HERE FOR Gigabyte MA785GMT-UD2H PRICING & SHOPPING

“Seasonic has been around for a long time-since 1975. It is more well-known for its OEM line of power supply units, but it sells some models retail, as well. It touts the S12D 850W power supply unit as being certified 80PLUS Silver, proving that the unit is at least 85% efficient. Seasonic claims that the unit can achieve 90% efficiency! Add that with a five year warranty and a nearly silent fan and this is one unit worth seriously considering."

CLICK HERE FOR Seasonic S12D 650W Power Supply PRICING & SHOPPING

As we move into the holiday season, many are looking to Intel's new Lynnfield Desktop Platform for an upgrade or new build. Not surprising, there's plenty of good hardware on the market to choose from. In this article, Benchmark Reviews looks at the P7P55D EVO motherboard from ASUS. As part of their P55 lineup, the ASUS P7P55D EVO provides full support the for the new Lynnfield platform, along with several unique features. We'll explore these features in detail and find out how the EVO stacks up against other mainstream platforms.

CLICK HERE FOR ASUS P7P55D EVO P55 LGA1156 Motherboard PRICING & SHOPPING

"On the flip side, for well under $100 for a processor and the same for a decent, mid-range motherboard, you can have a perfect platform for that new family computer or home theater pc that you have been putting off for so long. While these new processors may not break any records, they, including specifically the energy efficient Athlon II X2 240e, will make designing and running your new system eco-friendly and easy on the wallet all around."

Being underpowered is not acceptable for serious enthusiasts or gamers. With the beefy hardware we are starting to see come out lately, there is no excuse for running an inept low wattage power supply. You will simply not be able to run a stable system without putting up the cash for a decent sized power supply. Today we will be looking at a long time veteran to the performance PC world: Ultra Products. Their new line of X4 power supplies are 100% modular and have some serious punch. Let’s see how well it did and what it looks like:

"It was two years ago when we reviewed Ultra's then-new line of X3 power supplies, the 600, 800 and 1000 watt models. Not much has changed in power supply requirements since then, other than the obvious, an ever-increasing demand for more wattage! To accommodate the need for greater amounts of power, meet revamped cabling requirements and target the latest specifications for efficiency, Ultra has updated their X-series of power supplies and is releasing a new lineup of fourth generation models beginning with 400, 500, 600, 750, 850, 1050 and 1200 capacities. Dubbed the - you guessed it - X4, these latest power supply offerings from Ultra bear a striking similarity to their previous X3 generation PSUs."

"Continuing our cooler review series, we tested Evercool Buffalo, a low-cost CPU cooler with tower design, two U-shaped 6 mm heatpipes and a 100 mm fan. Will it perform as well as the more expensive coolers? Lets check it out!"

Recently Ultra released an entirely new series of power supply units, the X4. As the name suggests, the X4 series is the successor to the very successful X3 series. It is the 1200W version of the new X4 series unit which we are going to thoroughly test and review today, seeing how much of an improvement it is over an X3 series unit and how competitive it can be in today’s very demanding technology market.

An interesting thing about NAND Flash SSD technologies, beyond the fact that the market is flush with competitive product offerings, is that the technology itself is very flexible and adaptable to a number of different design approaches. Take for example a RAID 4-pack configuration with Intel's X25-M SSD or perhaps the omnipotent Fusion-io ioDrive. Granted, these are rather high-end, pricey setups, but you get the gist that solid state storage arena is just getting warmed up.

CLICK HERE FOR OCZ Z-Drive m84 PCI-Express SSD PRICING & SHOPPING

Corsair has built a name for themselves in the power supply market for offering solid, well built, and well performing units at a price very few people can resist. Today, they're looking to do more of the same in the TX950W, a 950 watt unit with one big bad 78 ampere 12V rail.

CLICK HERE FOR Corsair TX950 950W PSU PRICING & SHOPPING

"If you’ve paid any attention to what’s going on in a couple days then you’ll know that the new operating system from Microsoft is set to launch, October 22nd to be more specific. It’s called Windows 7, while I’m not attracted to the name of it, I do like the operating system itself. It offers many new things over Vista, including the ability to run smoother and of course better reviews and feedback. "

"Antec have a great reputation when it comes to power supply units with their Signature range and new CPX form factor units earning a lot of praise and respect throughout the industry. The hardware giant now has numerous different ranges but today we'll be focusing on the TruePower units – the 750W version in particular. We’ve seen great things from Antec before and so expectations are of another winning product. Let’s see if it can live up to them."

CLICK HERE FOR Antec TruePower 750w PRICING & SHOPPING

"The NOX apex 700W PSU arrived Technic3D. See you in the following Review from Technic3D the next PSU with four +12V rails (18A/20A), 140mm Fan, 4x SATA hard disk connectors and 3x PCI-e 6+2-Pin."

"When it comes to performance, the XFX Radeon HD 4890 is very capable of playing any game out now even at high resolutions. As the highest performing single card in the ATI Radeon HD 4000 series arsenal, that is to be expected. What was very surprising was just how little difference there was between the Sapphire Radeon HD 4890 2GB and our XFX Radeon HD 4890 1GB. Clearly, the extra memory is not showing itself in our game tests, which leaves us thinking that while it may be important for some games, in most it doesn't matter..."

CLICK HERE FOR XFX Radeon HD 4890 1GB Video Card PRICING & SHOPPING

Today we are going to look at Razer’s latest offering, the Naga gaming mouse. It is designed with MMO games in mind, instantly noticeable by the number of macro buttons included. It also has an impressive specification to back up its gaming orientation, boasting a 5600 DPI precision laser sensor and a 1000Hz polling rate.

CLICK HERE FOR Razer Naga MMO Mouse PRICING & SHOPPING

When Intel introduced the new Socket LGA 1156 platform many people were skeptical of its capabilities due to it lacking a traditional Northbridge, having an integrated memory controller (IMC) supporting only Dual Channel DDR3, and having only a total of 16GB/s of available PCI-Express (PCIe) video bandwidth. Keeping the 1156 platform focus in mind (the mid-range priced market), Intel had to get creative and offer plenty of performance at a bargain while keeping the hardcore enthusiast's focused on the Socket LGA 1366 platform. To offer an affordable solution to buyers, Intel reduced its flagship features from the LGA 1366 platform to create the brand new LGA 1156 platform.

CLICK HERE FOR ASUS P7P55D Deluxe PRICING & SHOPPING

"So why the Gigabyte GA-P55-UD6? It looks like a perfect example of the principle "make it glossy no matter the cost". It's a perfect choice for users who want the ultimate motherboard. Or at least to dream about one. Besides, such boards are necessary to show off manufacturer's engineering skills to create bleeding-edge devices. Devices called to amaze people."

CLICK HERE FOR Gigabyte P55-UD6 Motherboard PRICING & SHOPPING

"On the whole the Ultra X4 1050W performed very well. The DC voltage load regulation was very good with little fluctuation from zero to full load. The noise/ripple levels although within the limits set down by the ATX12V V2.2 specification were a little higher than I would like especially on the 12V rail. The Ultra X4 1050W marginally failed to maintain the minimum level of efficiency of 80% as required by its 80 Plus certification giving 79% at 20% loading on 110VAC. The power factor dipped below 0.9 which is very unusual even on some mid range power supplies."

We all know MSI as the company that had so much potential but then faded a bit right as the X38 boards were released. However, they are back with a vengeance and are sporting one of the strongest P55 lineups of any manufacturer. Their flagship board is the P55-GD80 and its looking to take on some of the best the competition has to offer.

CLICK HERE FOR MSI P55-GD80 LGA1156 Motherboard PRICING & SHOPPING

MSI was at Gitex and one of the most interesting things they were showing was their multi-touch Windows 7 based All-in-One PC powered by the ION Platform. The PC had MSI's Wind touch interface which certainly looks cool and is shown in the video below.

Lack of support for Intel Hyper Threading didn’t have significant impact of performance levels, except in synthetic benchmarks. Compared to Core i7 920, which has HT and one memory channel more, only real difference can be seen in rendering applications.

CLICK HERE FOR Intel Core i5 750 PRICING & SHOPPING

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

"When the stupid Superdrive chooses to not eject your disc. With no open/close button, no drive bay door and no way to grasp the actual drive mechanism at all, it can be a real hassle to get your disc back when your computer doesn’t feel like providing. The worst part is that there is no one, definitive, foolproof means of getting the disc back out. As such, and to save you the stress of scouring the internet for a multitude of ideas that may or may not work in your particular situation, I have compiled just about every remedy I’ve ever heard of here for you to try."

A few months ago we tested and reviewed the least powerful unit of their new entry-level series, the Eco 80+ 350W. Even though it was a little expensive for its class, it was a very high quality product with great overall performance. Today we will take a look at the most powerful product of the same entry-level series, the Eco 80+ 620W. This output is adequate for a modern gaming PC configuration with several hard disk drives. We will thoroughly examine the features and the performance of the most powerful Eco 80+ unit in this review.

CLICK HERE FOR Enermax ECO 80+ 620W PSU PRICING & SHOPPING

Since 1999, we have been developing the BIOS Optimization Guide, affectionately known as the BOG. From a meager beginning of a single page, it now covers over 400 BIOS options. As old BOG readers will know, we started offering two editions of the BOG since Revision 8.0 - a simplified edition and the complete edition.

Normally, the complete edition is only available to subscribers who help sponsor the development of the guide through a small fee. However, that changes today! From now on, we will post a BIOS option from the complete edition of the BIOS Optimization Guide every weekend.

CLICK HERE FOR Motherboard PRICING & SHOPPING