Week of February 22, 2009

Thecus spent a lot of time making the N4100PRO easy to set up and use for even the most novice of users. The need for a NAS server for the Home business or even for the family that wants to share a lot of files between themselves or Music has never been more apparent than in today's media based American culture. Thecus's N4100PRO is available online for a modest $420, making it the same cost as a Netbook laptop computer. But for the $420 you get a NAS computer that can hold up to 4TB of HDD space, manage your files across a network and act like a fileserver. In that sense, the N4100PRO does the job just like the N5200BR and N3200 did and is an excellent product for the money.

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"The ASUS Striker II NSE motherboard continues in this tradition, with a heavy dose of the fastest NVIDIA-based platform for Intel socket 775 processors out there, some serious kick ass, and a healthy pinch of Take-that! To make this all possible ASUS has selected NVIDIA's DDR3-exclusive nForce 90i SLI chipset and taken advantage of its three-way SLI capabilities, so that a trio of NVIDIA graphics cards can be used together during gaming."

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"When it comes to Solid State Drives, the old adage holds true... speed costs, how fast do you want to go? OCZ's own SSDs such as their Core series of drives, have often garnered praise for their fast read/write times, but like other brands have been priced out of reach of the average consumer. To combat this OCZ has released their Solid Series, a value line of SSD drives for the masses. The 30Gb model they sent over for review today can be found for right around $100. But at that price can it live up to the OCZ name? Or is it merely a glorified USB thumb drive in disguise?"

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GeForce GTX 295 is based on two 55nm GT200b chips, which differ from their 65nm predecessors only in smaller die surface and lower power consumption. The transition to the 55nm process technology allows the card with two powerful GPUs to consume less than 300W and keep heat release at a level that its redesigned dual-slot cooling system can handle.

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The folks at OCZ have come up with a creative solution to help improve performance with their new Apex line of MLC based SSD's. Available in 60, 120 and 250GB capacities with a 2.5" form factor, the Apex drives utilize a RAID-0 configuration with a JMicron JMB390 RAID controller and dual JMF602(B) JMicron SSD controllers all enclosed in the drive itself without the need for external software or hardware to assist. In addition, the JMF602 controllers each have a 16KB on-die cache to help performance. This allows users to utilize the advantages of RAID who may not want the hassle of a traditional RAID setup. We will be specifically looking at the 120GB OCZ Apex drive which currently retails for around $350...

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I'm one of those people who love Vista; I will openly admit it and honestly, from day one I've loved it. Over time it's only gotten better and as someone who loves their graphics cards and games, why would you not want to experience DirectX 10?

" Today I’ve got the Epson Artisan 800 All-in-One Printer for review, and yes it’s a multi-functional printer, but it’s primary one for the artist in all of us, it’s centered more around creativity than office work. Don’t get me wrong though it can handle office tasks as well with ease, but it does it with style and grace. The built-in 7.8" touch panel is wonderful to work with, and there’s even a 3.5" LCD display as well, the Artisan 800 is what a printer should be."

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The computer storage industry has recently has been seeing a lot of technology advances and new types of products being pushed out, almost at a daily rate. External hard drive enclosures have also been a big product in people's lives as they are always looking for something that looks good on their desk and need something to take from place to place with them.

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Even though Xigmatek are a new player in the market, their innovative cooling solutions and high quality power supply units have quickly earned the company a good reputation. We reviewed several of their products in the past and they all were high quality items.

"Home theater PC’s can be a very pricy addition to your home theater. It's not just a matter of throwing any old PC together and hooking it up; if you want a fully immersive experience you need either Vista or XP media edition for an OS and a graphics card capable of doing HD. Also needed is a motherboard and processor that can get the job done. What if I said the PC you have sitting in your office is good enough and all you have to do is spend another $129.99 to get a fully immersive HD experience? Not only do you get this but also integrated OS and DVR capabilities all in one. This may sound too good to be true but the Kingwin KM-31BK HD-Multimedia Player and Recorder is everything you need all in one package. Let’s get a closer look at it:"

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"The Apogee GT 3x2GB DDR3 1866MHz kit is awesome. Its stock settings are 1866MHz at 8-8-8-24 timings. These are tight timings for such a speed. The design of the sticks is awesome. The fins at the top of each stick as well as the flashy pink stripes create a nice look. Furthermore, these fins definitely help keep the modules cool. During testing, even at overclocked frequencies and at 1.80V, the kit's temperatures were well below the safe limit. Speaking of overclocking, I achieved 1980MHz on the memory, at main timings of 9-8-8-24. I was hoping for the 2000MHz step.

When most shoppers compare system memory kits, they often look for the highest speeds for the best price. Everyone is different, but overclockers and performance enthusiasts generally aim for the best combination of low-latency high-speed RAM they can get find. In this article, Benchmark Reviews tests the performance of a top-speed triple-channel product for the Intel Core i7 platform. The Patriot Viper 6GB 1600MHz DDR3 memory kit PVT36G1600ELK will be compared against several other products and benchmarked for bandwidth and gaming performance. Are the higher speeds worth the money, or can this memory kit overclock to their level? By the end of this article, you'll have your answer.

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The Sapphire HD 4670 Ultimate we are looking at today takes advantage of a cool-running 55nm RV730 core in order to offer passive cooling to a card that allows for more than acceptable gaming performance in addition to its HD decoding muscle. Indeed, Sapphire has a massive selection of HD 4670 cards ranging fromreference models to GDDR4 equipped performance versions and even 1GB bruisers. Couple that with widespread availability at retailers across the country and you have a pretty good chance of finding exactly the right HD 4670 for you in Sapphire’s current lineup.

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After my tour of duty with the CM Storm Sniper case, I've come away with a positive experience overall. From top to bottom the Sniper packs in some useful features such as the built in fan controller and StormGuard peripheral retention system. The Storm shows that Cooler Master is listening to gamers and enthusiasts by including features from past cases that work and giving us new features that work.

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“Today we're looking at a set Patriot Viper 6GB tri-channel DDR3-1600 modules, sticks that look great in blue. But what about performance? To answer that, we'll pit these modules heads-up against some OCZ sticks that recently impressed us, to provide some straight-up answers that should help clarify some questions you may have."

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"The ICYDock MB674SPF-B provides a convenient way to increase data storage capacity in any computer case with at least three open 5.25" drive bays. Just open up one of the four bays, slide a SATA hard drive in and close the door. The hard drive automatically engages with SATA data and power connectors, no screws required! The ICYDock MB674SPF-B is a seriously convenient Serial ATA hard drive backplane module."

"Though we've poked fun at thin televisions in the past, we do have to profess finding a certain appeal to paper-thin screens (as long as we're not the ones paying for them). There's something about a TV that seems to disappear when you walk by it that really grabs attention - especially with people who are used to owning 300-pound CRTs. The trophy for "World's Thinnest" seems to trade hands every other month, but we've rounded up a few of the most notable models, from the ones that got things kicking to the ones that took it to the razor's edge."

The Lenovo ThinkPad W700ds is a rather unique product, targeted squarely at mobile professionals who require the power, features, and performance of workstation-class machine on the go. We previously evaluated the standard ThinkPad W700 and praised the system for its performance and stand-out integrated features, like a Wacom Digitizer Tablet and X-Rite Color Calibrator. The ThinkPad W700ds takes all of the features offered by the W700 and ads a secondary, slide-out display, which increases monitor real-estate by 39%.

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Today we will be looking at a water cooling kit for your processor from CoolIT Systems. The CoolIT Domino A.L.C. is an all-in-one water cooling kit, meaning you don't have to buy the block, pump and radiator separately. A.L.C. stands for Advanced Liquid Cooling. Read on to see if this kit cools off the competition.

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"Mouse mats aren't considered to be the most exciting of review products, as their usually fairly mundane, and with the rather opinionated testing methods, it's not something every reviewer looks forward to. However, now and again one comes along that really catches your eye, like today. Powerdrive Computers have sent over a new mat from a company called Mionix. This is their Alioth 400. Let's see if it performs as well as it looks."

“The new HyperX 2000 MHz Triple Channel 3GB Kit is perfect for extreme gamers that play titles like Command & Conquer, Supreme Commander, or even Farcry 2. It's also the right amount of memory for XP Pro and Vista 32-bit users who realistically don't need more than that. 64-bit users will want something a little larger which we hear is already well under way and should arrive very soon. In the meantime, if your I7 is going to be your new extreme gaming system and need the fastest memory available, this is the current memory of choice. This is HyperX at its best!”

The ocinside.de OC-Database currently comprises more than 10,000 PCs and thousands of processor overclocking results.
Several updates and new CPUs are now added for the immediate selection and comparison. E.g. the new AMD Phenom II, Intel Atom CPU or the Intel Core i7 processors are now additionally selectable in the OC database. The database is updated each night. So when you register your system today, you can compare it tomorrow with more than 10,000 PCs.

The MSI Eclipse is one of the most capable and feature rich motherboards we've ever come across. When they designed the Eclipse they might as well have climbed a flagpole and screamed to the world this is our flagship motherboard. The Eclipse is not only well designed and implemented, it's also one of the few X58 boards out there capable of running three dual slot GPU's. Features like that don't come cheap, but if you have to have the best and need room for the Core i7 platform to grow on, the MSI Eclipse is one of the best choices you can make. Then, to close the deal they toss in a Creative X-FI soundcard instead of relying on an onboard sound chip. This is one motherboard you're going to want to see.

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The success of the HAF932 was not a surprise to many of us as it offered a lot room, a rugged good looks and enough fans and cooling to keep everything in the case in good cool and solid running fashion. Coolermaster building on the success of the HAF932 decided to take the functions and features of the HAF and employ them in a new ATCS unit. The ATCS 840 will issue in a new class of ATCS (Active Thermal Convention System, yeah I know I should have mentioned it earlier) with its abundance of room, huge fans, easy assembly and clean looks. If you are a person that like refined cases this new case may be your next one.

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" What the Enthusiast needs to know about the Core I7 is that there is a lot of headroom to overclock. Most important is you don’t have to have the most expensive processor to get great “Enthusiast Value”. The motherboard used for this review was not an extreme edition X58, it was an entry level Gigabyte board - the one without all the bells and whistles. The processor used was the 920, which is the mainstream entry of the Core I7 processor. If it wasn’t for my heatsink limitations, I’m sure I would have topped the 4GHz mark."

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Asus' popular Eee PC 1000 series has a new entry, sporting a faster CPU, a bigger battery, and a redesigned keyboard. Can the Eee PC 1000HE live up to its legacy, and how much of an improvement is it over past models?

Gaming on a budget isn't as difficult as it once was, thanks to superb offerings from both ATI and NVIDIA that go for a modest price. But, what about the sub-$100 crowd? We'll find that out here, at least from the ATI side of things, with Sapphire's HD 4670 GDDR4 and HD 4830. Both feature great efficiency, and believe it or not, great overclocking as well.

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In this review we will be looking at the newest MicroATX motherboard from Sapphire called the PURE Innovation 780V. As the name suggests the PURE Innovation 780V is based on the AMD 780V chipset which is a mid-range IGP designed for mainstream use.

Today we have PowerColors version of the card. To date we've only had one HD 4830 come through the door and that card managed to set the bar high for the model. You have to wonder, is PowerColor going to come within arm's reach of the bar, or hop straight over it?

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"In the past, really small USB flash drives have had to make compromises on performance to fit everything in such a small form-factor. I'm pleased to say that the Super Talent Pico 16GB doesn't suffer from these drawbacks and offers great read and write performance. When you consider how small the drive is, this is even more impressive..."

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We put seven feature rich X58 motherboards for Intel´s latest Core i7 CPU to the test. Comparing performance, overclocking scaling in a multitude of applications and games. Which one comes out on top?

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“Today we're looking at the In Win B2 Stealth Bomber case, which is about as direct as a themed case can get. It looks the part—it even comes with decals to enhance the effect. It has a powered front cover which opens in a manner similar to the canopy of its namesake. The question, of course, is whether or not it performs similarly as well."

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"Antec has just released a new version of their famous Nine Hundred mid-tower case, called Nine Hundred Two. This is not the first time Antec is revamping one of their products: recently they launched NSK 4480 II, a new version of their NSK 4480 case. Let's see the differences between the two models and if Nine Hundred Two is really a good product."

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"The first of the new 2009 camcorders are finally hitting stores. Unlike the onslaught of low-priced (sub $200) video capture devices like the entry-level Flip Mino, models such as the GZ-MG670 have critical things like zoom lenses, better picture quality, bigger LCD screens and tons of others creature comforts that make them at least twice as expensive - but still much better deals in our view. Take the just released MG670 for example: It has a 35x optical zoom, a 2.7-inch widescreen LCD and 80GB storage (19 hours at best 720 x 480 pixel quality). Compare this to a Flip Mino with no zoom, a poor 1.5-inch screen and 640 x 480 clip quality. Basically, there is no comparison. However, the Flip and its brethren are extremely compact, and made for video sharing on YouTube. Both are features millions want and use every day. Until last year mainstream camcorder manufacturers didn't know sharing existed but that changed with the JVC GZ-MS100, a relatively affordable edition with YouTube uploading built into the software. Now JVC has introduced its newest models with YouTube and iTunes upload capability. As for size, it's definitely bigger than a Flip but hardly a TV station camera. Now is the MG670 worth it - and does it make sharing the breeze it's supposed to be? Let's start shootin."

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"The Cooler Master Storm Sniper was able to beat out the Cooler Master Cosmos S case at every test except for when the GPU was at a full load reading. I am not very surprised, due to how large the fans that are installed in the Storm case there are, along with the massive amounts of room for air flow that there is."

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The fit and finish, build quality and overall allure of this machine isn't all that different versus its closely related family members. And, as you can certainly tell from the model number, Asus didn't intend for it to be any huge departure from the norm. In fact, the 1000HE leads you on to believe that this is simply an Extended version (in terms of battery life, not cargo room) of the existing 1000H. In many ways, that's absolutely true, but as you'll see when venturing through the pages ahead, there were enough tweaks made to give even existing Eee owners a reason to pay attention.

" Antec is one of the most respected and well known case manufactures in the computer industry. They make a variety of cases that satisfy the OEM crowd as well as the enthusiast niche. The skeleton is a completely unique design and the term "case" really doesn't describe the enclosure that well. This case is made to really show off your components. "

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"Super Talent continues to "upgraded" their look, this reviewer believes the gold needs to go, I understand the reference of it, the aesthetics just aren't there. The heatspreaders are ribbed Aluminum with "risers" coming off the top. While we at VL have never been able to prove the addition of heatspreaders are of value, I suppose its better to have them then not, just in case you know :). Super Talent, like most manufacturers today, are RoHS compliant with their chips, which basically means youcan eat them and not die from led poisoning etc... The packaging ofthe Super Talent Extreme Performance memory modules is that of simplicity with little fanfare other then a short paragraph on the back of what denotes "Extreme Performance" in Super Talents dictionary. "

“We met earlier with WorkStation motherboards from ASUS . All WorkStation ASUS motherboards are high-class models that offer maximum possibilities and performances but the price that has to be paid for that commodity is high also. ASUS P6T6 WS Revolution has a price tag over 300€ so you shouldn’t be surprised that this model is intended for building workstations and top-notch gaming rigs. Motherboard is based on X58 chipset and as you can see from the pictures it has 6 (six) PCIe 2.0 x16 slots…”

Another Noctua product up for review here at Verdis Reviews– this time it’s from the fan department. The NF-P12 boasts some brilliant technology for the blades and bearing so I’m expecting big things from this fan. Let’s hope it can live up to the high standard Noctua product’s normally set.

"On the test bench at PCSTATS today is the ASUS VH242H 23.6" (hereafter 24") widescreen LCD display. This LCD computer monitor features a 16:9 aspect ratio and native resolution of 1920x1080 pixels that goes hand in hand with 1080p HD content oh so nicely. Put another way, the viewable area is roughly two and a half sheets of 8.5x11" paper taped together if you want to compare it to your current monitor. The 24" panel has an anti-reflective coating and features a brightness rating of 300 cd/m2, dynamic contrast of 20,000:1 and the industry standard 5ms G-to-G pixel refresh time. "

Nearly two months ago AMD launched the Phenom 2 with the main benefit over the original Phenom being enhanced performance on the higher end model. That was not the only improvement though as technology such as cool n quiet was improved and as a result the launch was quite successful, even if the processors were priced a little high. At that point the one thing which was missing from the AMD line-up was support for DDR3 which Intel have been providing for quite some time, today we look at the first couple of CPUs which resolve that issue.

The Eee Top ET1602 builds upon Asus' popular line of Eee-branded products by introducing an all-in-one desktop form factor, complete with a 15.6" touch screen. Like the Eee PC netbooks that preceded it, the Eee Top ET1602 is built around Intel's low-power Atom platform, with the 945 GSE chipset. Other features include an integrated webcam and 802.11n Wi-Fi, 4W speakers with SRS Premium Sound enhancement, and a flash memory card reader.

Could SSDs replace traditional hard drives? It certainly has the potential. Its small size in the 2.5" form factor means that it can also be used in most notebooks, laptops and netbooks. No mechanical moving parts means better reliability and longevity, while the low power consumption means less heat. So far all the advantages seem to out weigh the negatives ... that being price.

"While pricey gaming rigs from the likes of Alienware and HP's Voodoo unit often grab headlines, these machines are well out of reach for most consumers. Thank goodness for systems like Dell's affordable and stylish XPS 625, which demonstrates that you can still get solid gaming performance for around a thousand dollars. This desktop strips away most frivolities-after all, liquid cooling systems and tool-less interiors are agreeable but expensive perks-and just sticks to the essential hardware necessary to run the latest games with aplomb. And, as an added bonus, it looks pretty slick to boot."

In the end, it's one of those monitors that does better in isolation than in comparison. Viewed by itself, it's a pretty pleasant looking display that might just fool you – at a glance – into thinking it was a mediocre IPS panel. Placed side by side with a good VA or IPS screen, however, its short comings are obvious.

QNAP is making its presence felt in the NAS industry with solutions for everyone. The QNAP TS-209 Pro II fits the bill for anyone looking for a small, flexible and powerful NAS. It provides 2 drives configurable as a bunch of disks, RAID 0 or 1 and offer a download management interface and doubles as a webserver, media & iTunes servers.

What we are going to be looking at today is the new Delta V3 CPU water block from a fairly new company to the USA enthusiast community, XSPC. These guys have been around for several years over in Europe and have been doing fairly well and have been improving their products every year. I'm really excited to give their new block a try and see just how well it stands up to the performance of my current favorite water block from Swiftech.

"Six months ago NZXT sent over one of their new Avatar Gaming Mice for review. Seeing as how this was their first attempt at an input peripheral aimed specifically at the gaming enthusiast, the Avatar performed very well and got high marks from us and elsewhere around the 'net. About the only complaint we had with it was the placement of the side navigation buttons and their propensity for getting accidentally bumped while maneuvering the mouse. It seems we weren't the only ones to report this flaw, and NZXT we're happy to say has listened."

"In the very unlikely event that Microsoft makes no changes at all, I would still choose this OS over Vista any day of the week. Sure it does use a lot of RAM, but with memory prices as low as they are, you'd be better off to get a couple more gigabytes than stick with eight year old XP. Let's face it, XP has lived a long and successful life. Somebody buy it an aluminum walker! One of the main reasons it has lived for so long is that it runs on barely half-decent hardware. However, with hardware quickly progressing and getting faster every day, handling a relatively "heavy" OS is not much of an issue anymore. Honestly, Vista was ahead of the mainstream hardware and that explains the bad press it got and still receives. Windows 7 may not have all that much to offer you over XP or Vista, but you will have to upgrade eventually and the way I see it, the sooner the better. Even though there isn't anything clearly revolutionary, it adds a bunch of small things that make the whole experience that much more interesting."

In this article, Benchmark Reviews tests the performance of an top-speed triple-channel product for the Intel Core i7 platform. The OCZ 6GB 1600 MHz CL7-7-7-24 DDR3 memory kit OCZ3P1600LV6GK will be compared against several other products and benchmarked for bandwidth and gaming performance. Are the higher speeds worth the money, or can this memory kit overclock to their level? System memory is one of the most over-looked hardware components in computer systems, and with applications demanding greater memory overhead it is best to use as much memory as allowed. But not all memory is made the same; and even memory of the same speed can have different consumer targets.

NZXT has impressed us time and time again with their unique chassis designs and attention to detail, so when we saw that they were offering a $100 full-tower with a fully customizable cooling system, we had to check it out. With a clean design and lots of available space, did NZXT create a a must-have for the value-conscious consumer?

There's quite a lot of variance in DDR3 modules today, which can certainly be overwhelming for potential new buyers. While the Core i7 processor is officially rated to run at only DDR3-1066 speeds, modules that can run at DDR3-2000 or even higher are available for the Core i7, and many new motherboards support speeds even greater than these. There is also the introduction of huge 12 GB (6 x 2 GB modules) capacity kits to consider, and we have latencies in the CAS 7 to CAS 9 range, all of which affect pricing of these various modules kits dramatically.

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"iPods are great music players, but there are also other options. The Sansa Fuze is an iPod nano competitor. The Fuze has an FM radio and a built-in voice recorder; two features that the nano lacks, so we decided to take a look and see how the Fuze stacks up against the iPod and other portable music players."

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In September DriverHeaven had the pleasure to have a look at Antecs gaming enclosure flagship; the Antec Twelve Hundred. A few months have passed since then and during this time Antec decided it was about time that the Twelve Hundred got a younger sibling, which they decided to call the Nine Hundred Two.

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"Performance in F.E.A.R. 2 surprised us throughout testing. At every resolution we tested, all seven video cards allowed us to use maximum in-game graphics options with 16X AF and some level of AA."

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"The past few weeks have been a pleasure to use the ASUS N10Jc-A1 Netbook as toting around a 17" screen laptop has really become a chore over the years. Never again will I need to walk out of the house with a clunky laptop when I can just grab a 3-4 pound netbook. The ability to take an inexpensive, fully functional PC on the road is only part of what is making the netbook market explode right now. The other part is the state of the economy. Given the current recession, consumers are looking for more affordable ways to get an upgrade or satisfy their electronics addiction. The performance of the ASUS N10Jc-A1 was actually a little more than I expected..."

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The Sapphire Ultimate Radeon HD4670 is a passively cooled graphics card with plenty of features other than its silent operation that should appeal to HTPC owners. With an integrated HDMI port, DirectX 10.1, and Shader Model 4.1 support, it offers some of the things you look for in a gaming graphics card, but with an obvious focus on home theater performance.

Since the introduction of the 4850/4870 video cards and we as consumers were absolutely amazed by the shear power those cards possess, so naturally we wanted to have those cards in our machines. So when ATI released the mainstream 4000 series cards most of us overlooked these types as inferior.

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Up until this morning though, we'd have agreed with that because the Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 1GB was selling for over £220 - it's hard to justify what amounts to a five percent performance improvement and a fancy cooler when the reference one isn't exactly disappointing. But with the price being realigned to just under £195, we think it's worth taking the punt if you've decided that the Radeon HD 4870 1GB is the right choice for you.

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Taking a look at the HD 4670, this is not the same HD 4670 we reviewed some months ago. This is a new and improved HD 4670 when has been packed with GDDR4, which is a technology jump from the GDDR3 on the older model. What we will be looking at besides the performance increase from the new memory is the new and quieter dual slot active cooler which sits atop the 750MHz GPU core. Sit back and read on as we take the new HD 4670 for a hefty round of tests.

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"In testing the Silent Spirit, the temperatures rose to 62 degrees Celsius, which is pretty good. With an extra high CFM fan mounted on the heat sink, I was able to overclock to 3.8ghz with the same temperatures. The stock i7 heat sink performed similarly, although a little more loudly. Idle temperatures come close to the competition, but at load the temperatures escalated to near-stock performance. The heat sink looks to be able to handle the 130w i7 920, and would probably fair even better with a dual-core or tri-core processor."

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It's been quite a while since we have last taken a look at an ASUS monitor, much less one that we've been ultimately impressed by, so when we received their latest model, the VW266H, we couldn't wait to tear it out of the box to see if things have improved with their line-up. Read on as we find out whether this TN-based monitor is a winner.

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Launched last summer by Intel, the P45 chipset has quickly grown in popularity, replacing the aging P35 chipset. Intended for a mid to upper mainstream consumer base, the P45 chipset boasts some impressive features, such as: full DDR2/DDR3 support, 20 PCI Express 2.0 lanes, ATI Crossfire support, and a 65nm manufacturing process. By now manufacturers have had ample time to design and refine their P45 based motherboards and today Benchmark Reviews takes a look at ASUS' mainstream P45 DDR3 motherboard: the P5Q3. As a twist on our usual motherboard reviews, this article will also shed some light on the growing DDR2 vs DDR3 debate with some hard numbers in the benchmark sections.

"The Diamond Radeon HD 4670 1GB GDDR 3 is chock full of memory. The HD 4670 by Diamond has 1 gigabyte of memory and utilizes graphics double data rate 3, or GDDR 3, technology. The Diamond HD 4670 1 GB comes with two DVI outputs and an S-Video output and dongles to adapt to composite and VGA outputs. The Radeon HD 4670 1 GB is meant to compete in the Radeon 4600 family and with other entry level graphics cards and has no problem doing that."

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“Consumers are looking for quality and performance at a price that won't break the bank, and today we have a power supply that promises just such an enticing combination. We're looking at the Tuniq Potency 750w, a unit that looks sharp and is priced very well in a competitive market segment."

Thermaltake took a lot time designing this case and it shows. The ability to install 7 HDDs is worth the tradeoff that it requires from the 5.25" drive bays that would be found on other cases. A mid-Tower ATX case with a 230mm fan on top, two 60mm fans on the video card area and excellent airflow makes this case a good mid-range case for those that want plenty of airflow around their system and need six or seven HDDs in their system. The Element S case has a MSRP of $129.99 online and it is a good choice for those wanting a mid-sized tower ATX case without breaking the bank as some other cases on the market would.

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In this post, we'll show you a few select options for putting together an affordable media server computer for under $300 that can store all of your media in one central location and is small enough to fit just about anywhere in your house. This build guide is for a server that will probably be running headless (without a monitor) and not for an HTPC, although you can probably turn it into one by simply dropping in a discrete video card.

If you're anything like me, the only thing you enjoy better than a new toy, is knowing you got a good deal on it. Quality has a price tag, and that price tag is better left low. Presenting the Logitech Curve headphones, a trendy, relaxing pair that won't put strain on your money muscles. Using a modern-style and functionality, these behind-the-neck headphones satisfy in more ways than one. Whether you're looking to get a pair of new headphones, replacements, or just searching for a gift for your friends, you ought to lend an ear to these headphones I recently had a chance to try out. People, start your earbuds and please keep your ears inside the device at all times.

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“The trend of expanding product’s portfolio among manufacturers of graphics cards doesn’t abate, and this situation resulted in many new products based on ATI GPUs on the market. Nvidia’s so far exclusive partners are beginning to reject this kind of “monogamy”. For some of those partners this decision was quite expected from the very beginning but XFX came out as a true surprise because of their reputation of being Nvidia’s “hard core” partner. Even though we had to wait little bit more than it was officially announced, the first XFX Radeon was finally introduced…”

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"Sonata has gone through some cosmetical changes before. Let us see if the update this time is just skin-deep or has Antec made some larger changes to their very popular case."

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"Sony is the gorilla in the room when it comes to digital camcorders, especially in the high definition world. The all new Sony HDR-SR11 HD Handycam is one of their most advanced HD-digital camcorders yet. It has a built-in 60GB hard drive, a touch screen LCD display, 5.1 Dolby Digital sound recording, and automatic face detection. For its pricey price tag of $750-$1000, it's definitely a digital camcorder for those who are professionals or someone needing excellent quality audio and video."

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PC-based TV tuners are nothing new. For years, we've seen tuners of all kinds pass through the labs from a variety of manufacturers. ATSC tuners are a bit newer, but we've worked with those for a few years as well. An ATSC Tuner built on to a PCI Express video card, well, that is new for us.

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Arctic Silver 5 has long been hailed as the king of thermal compounds but it seems the king is finally dead. The GELID GC-1 trumps the AS5 in a couple of aspects. Letting the temperatures speak for themselves, the GC-1 does a much better job at conducting heat (or maybe, not impeding it as much). There is a caveat here, however, as the "delta" temperatures were somewhat close. With that said, the GC-1 did have a smaller "delta" between the idle and load temperatures in every test.

"Currently there are hundreds of PC fan manufacturer's out there. Some offer little tweaks on the same old ideas; others have broken into a whole new technology of fan motor, and design all together. Just because a fan sports cool LED's or a UV sensitive coating does not mean it will perform any better then the plain black one that came with your stock PC. Companies like Noctua are breaking the fan market up into two distinctive groups: performance, and needless fluff. The Noctua NF-P12 120mm Fan sports Self–stabilizing oil-pressure bearings or SSO-Bearing. We will see in this review if this means anything to the average user. Click read more to see the full review on the Noctua NF-P12 120mm Fan:"

“The board itself is VERY stable I haven't had any problems at all while running the 780V. The drivers worked for both Windows XP Sp3, Vista and Vista 64bit. I am running a GTX 285 video card as well and even though the board is a micro board it has no problems at all handling the big boys of video.”

“Taiwanese manufacturer Silicon Power was kind to send to us three 1GB memory modules declared at DDR3-1333 with CL9 latencies. This type of memory can be considered as budget solution so we weren’t surprised with declaration and absence of coolers. Silicon Power used blue coloured PCB and chips signed by ELIXIR. Full specification goes like this: 1333 (667MHz) CL 9-10-10-25, which is by our humble opinion very loosely set timings that leave space for tightening…”

Like most desktop PCs, a typical notebook/laptop nowadays is using more power and thus is creating more heat. In response to the heat, many companies are starting to offer notebook PC coolers designed to provide additional cooling capability. Today we’ll be looking at the Evercool Hermes Notebook cooler, which has a small footprint and a unique shape.

The Asus P5Q3 Deluxe/WiFi-AP @n (what a long model name) is an Intel P45 chipset based motherboard with DDR3 memory and ATi's CrossFireX technology support. This variant of the P5Q3 Deluxe motherboard comes bundled with WiFi hardware, hence the extra long model name.

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"In the $300 price segment, the Sapphire Radeon HD 4850x2 can't be accused of bringing a knife to a gunfight; with 1600 Stream processors, 2GB of GDDR3 memory running at 993MHz, and two GPU's clocked at 625MHz all packed on the massive 11 1/4" single PCI-Express circuit board, the HD 4850 X2 is ready to go against NVIDIA's GeForce GTX280, as well as today's most popular games. Let's take a look and see what Sapphire brings to the table in their HD 4850 X2..."

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A storm is brewing over at Cooler Master. As the turbulence stirs up, the mixture of wind, dust, and water, it mixes and molds these elements to create something magical. No, we are not talking about the physical storm that causes havoc to people's lives, but rather, we are referring to Cooler Master's latest line of products that is going to stir up the computer world. The Storm is a line of products from Coller Master that is targeted at the computer enthusiasts. One product off the Storm line-up is the Sniper case, that is the "magical" thing which the engineering and designing team stirs up. As you can guess, this case is going to be the start of this review.

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