Week of October 5, 2008

"Continuing what appears to be "PSU Week" here at XSReviews, we have the Silver Power SP-SS500, a 500w PSU. It's one of the more low output ones that we've reviewed recently, but that shouldn't stop it from taking up the challenge of our test rig. Let's see how it holds up to some more expensive, and higher wattage units."

For a monitor at this price point and with such a robust set of specifications, a basic swivel stand just does not cut it. Now, for if I were to conclude in such a manner, more than a few e-mails would end up in my inbox wondering, how, with such scorn for the stand, did the T240 win me over? The screen itself produced brilliant colors, the lines are sharp, it is vibrant, it keeps ahead of fast paced action movies, games and the unit itself is beautifully sculpted. For what the T240 offers, I know I can live without a fancy stand.

CLICK HERE FOR Samsung T240 LCD Monitor SHOPPING & PRICING

G.Skill offers with the 4GB PC2-8800 a new High-End DDR2 memory kit, which promises high performance also with a standard DDR2 voltage of 1.8V-1.9V. The memory kit contains two 2GB modules with DDR2-1100 speed at CL5. In this review we will test the performance of the inexpensive 4GB DDR2 kit with CL4 and compare them to several other DDR2 memory modules.

"If you're LAN party enthusiast that prefer to take a mobile gaming rig, the DFI LanParty JR P45-T2RS offers very good performance for the price. What you'll be getting is a micro ATX P45 motherboard with great features and Crosfire support via dual PCIe slots. For this reason ... I can fully recommend it."

"Crysis Warhead is probably one of the most anticipated games of 2007, ever since the success of Crysis, fans have been patiently awaiting a release of a sequel. So, Crysis Warhead was released, but it's not really a sequel, as much as part of the original story, just played from a different point of view. "

CLICK HERE FOR Crysis Warhead SHOPPING & PRICING

"The P45 chipset has been out on the market for quite some time now and motherboards are widely available. But as usual, it takes a bit more time for DFI to tweak and tune their version of the P45. Today, we have a look at the P45-T2RS Plus motherboard, let's find out if it was worth the wait."

The I-Rocks RF-6572 2.4GHz wireless keyboard mouse combo is a very simple, yet effective wireless keyboard and mouse combo. Vista recognized both devices quickly, and used them without any additional software or problems. With a price of about $40, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this combo to anyone looking for a simple wireless keyboard and mouse setup.

CLICK HERE FOR I-Rocks RF-6572 2.4GHz Wireless Keyboard SHOPPING & PRICING

When Crysis Warhead was first announced, the issue of optimization for lower-end systems was a critical factor in its creation. Crytek even went so far as to design a "budget" gaming machine that became a focal point for optimization. Along with making the game a little more system friendly, they also worked on improving the graphics quality to keep the CryEngine the king of visual performance. However, questions surrounding a system's ability to tame the beast still remains.

"When buying a hard disk drive most users are only concerned with the drive's capacity. Should you also care about performance? We compared the performance of ten 500 GB SATA-300 hard disk drive models from Seagate, Samsung, Western Digital and Hitachi. Is there a big performance difference among them? Is it worthwhile to pay a little bit more and get a drive with a bigger buffer? If so, which is the fastest 500 GB in the market? Check it out!"

CLICK HERE FOR 500 GB Hard Disk Drive SHOPPING & PRICING

This brings us to the star of our review product, Tagan's Seenium. This case is priced at $69.99 so it is aimed at budget/mainstream buyers. Despite its pricing, Tagan Seenium is not too shabby in terms of the expansion slots and its ability to help cool the internal components. Designed with the ability to install eight cooling fans (seven 120mm and one 80mm) and capable of accommodating up to five 5.25'' devices and six 3.5'' devices, this is a case with reasonable pricing but designed for enthusiasts in mind.

When it comes down to it, consumers that shop for aftermarket cooling products only want one thing: the very best their money can buy. It makes perfect sense, too. Since so many products flood the market every day, it all comes down to price and performance. Based on this principal, Benchmark Reviews searches out the latest CPU coolers and tests them under real-world overclocked conditions. Want to know which cooling products stand-out? This quarterly update to our Best CPU Cooler Performance series will separate the good from the bad.

AXP (known as Xion in the US) have been releasing many high performance products lately, trying to appeal to the widest possible user base of PC enthusiast. A while ago we had a look at one of AXP's PSUs, the Supernova 800W which we found gave great performance for the price. Today we test another AXP PSU, the 1000W model of the Supernova series. The 800W and 1000W models are much alike and share the same base design, but AXP tuned the newer 1000W version further and improved several of its key performance points.

"The OCZ ModXStream 600 is a lot of power supply in a relatively small package. Boasting 25A on each of its dual +12v rails, plus an additional 25A each for the +3.3v and +5v, the ModXStream 600 seems at least as capable if not more so than many power supplies with higher wattage ratings."

CLICK HERE FOR OCZ ModXStream Power Supply SHOPPING & PRICING

"Since this card higher speeds from the start I had to wonder how much was left in the tank. As it turns out the tank had some gas left. I kept bumping it up and up until I hit the wall on the core and then the same with the memory. Then I had to find the best combination of the three clock speeds. Once I reached about 840-850 MHz on the core I was getting crashes, so I used RivaTuner to unlink and back down the shader cores a touch to move the bar a little higher. This yielded an increase on the GPU core of 123MHz and a final speed of 863MHz. The shader core clock increased by 235MHz and 150Mhz on the memory. All pretty substantial increases on air cooling. Speaking of cooling the stock cooler does a great job cooling this smaller core."

CLICK HERE FOR XFX 9800GTX+ SHOPPING & PRICING

Companies that make CPU coolers try all different tactics to distinguish their products in the marketplace. One of those tactics is to give a product an interesting name. Evercool, makers of a wide range of cooling solutions for PCs, has a new product, the Evercool Transformer 6 CPU cooler, which promises to show you extreme performance. Will this cooler prove to be more than meets the eye? Let’s find out.

"Playstation 3 is the latest video game console from Sony. Today we completely disassembled a Playstation 3 (80 GB version) to show you how it looks like inside and the components used."

CLICK HERE FOR Playstation 3 SHOPPING & PRICING

ASUS tends to make high quality motherboards that are popular with a wide variety of hardcore enthusiasts and the ASUS M3N78 Pro has the features to contend with the best of the AMD chipsets available. The integrated graphics on the M3N78 Pro are not up to par with the ATI 790GX motherboards, but on the other hand run a wee bit cooler, can save more energy with HybridPower and are sufficient to run H.264 content. Overclocking features are adequate, but this board is really not for the hardcore gamer or enthusiast buyer.As a HTPC motherboard this is great as the onboard video has HDMI and has the ability to run 7.1 surround- sound through the HDMI port. NVIDIA really needs to launch a faster integrated graphics processor if they intend to compete with ATI on pure performance comparisons.

CLICK HERE FOR ASUS M3N78 Pro Motherboard SHOPPING & PRICING

"Overall, I’m very pleased by it, and I’m not only talking about the great performance it delivers, it also has a great look, especially with its 2 red LEDs on the fan lighting up the whole cooler. No surprise it received the “design & Innovation award 2008” at Computex Taipei ... With 8 heatpipes, 4 sets of Aluminum fins and a pure copper base, the V8 offers excellent thermal performance. It can easily cool an overclocked CPU with no problems at all. "

AMD's new Radeon HD 4550 comes in a passively cooled version without fan. Such a noiseless experience is crucial in media PC designs where you don't want to be distracted by any fan noise. Also included is a native HDMI and DisplayPort output for connection to your big screen. With a price of around $50 the card even offers some potential for casual gaming.

"Whilst in a game, aside from the ability to accurately shoot your opponent in the face, the ability to move is fairly high on your list of things to do. Most people will have a keyboard to do this with the usual WASD configuration of walking about. However many companies are now bringing out little innovations to make this easier: Circular keyboards with all the buttons you need for gaming on, highlighting the commonly used buttons on your keyboard with back lighting or are combining the two and adding a little gaming keyboard to the side of our normal one. The last of these options is what Genius have done with there latest professional keyboard, the Luxemate 525 Star Cruiser. But with a compromise between a normal keyboard and a gaming one can it be any good?"

We’re sorry to say it, but the ECS 9800 GTX+ Hydra SLI kit is a bit of a disappointment. The build quality of the GPU cooling and waterblocks is probably the most galling of faults – we almost couldn’t believe it when we saw the shoddily fitted waterblocks when we took the cards out of the box, and the situation only got worse when the PWM coolers literally fell apart once we’d started testing. The baffling inclusion of the blue LED lit paddle fan adds to the list of flaws – they have absolutely no influence on card's operating temperatures and are so woefully underpowered that they couldn’t ever hope to keep the cards cool on thier own in the case of a watercooling system failure. It’s as if ECS just wanted something to stick some blue LEDs onto so screwed a load of useless plastic onto the cards.

For many years, watercooling for PC's has been something that is seen as extreme. Many people look at those of us with anti-freeze running inside a computer case as being a little bit 'not quite right.' Of course, even my wife tells me I'm crazy for doing it. But then, there are those of us that understand just what all that liquid can do for you. Extreme overclocks, extreme voltages, and often a nice UV glow are all reasons those of us that have taken the plunge (so to speak) decided to do so in the first place. Besides, I enjoy getting really weird looks when I tell people that I have a radiator in my computer. Or, from those in the know, the looks of envy when you tell them just how big the radiator is, or which new blocks you just got. Competition is all part of the fun.

"Arriving on my doorstep recently was a sleek and sultry little number from the big S, their new S3 series MP3 player. The version sent to me by post as pictured is the “pretty in pink” model, because as a modern 20something guy, I’m secure in my manliness...

The menu system of the player is fairly intuitive and you will rarely find yourself flummoxed or lost in menus, so it’s easy to switch into DSNe 2.0 environments while playing a track. There is a bunch of standard pre-sets offering you EQ boosts and then there are spacial simulators to give the effect of a concert hall or a stadium gig."

CLICK HERE FOR Samsung S3 MP3 Player SHOPPING & PRICING

First Impressions are the lasting ones. Still you cannot always judge a book by its cover, and the Cooler Master HAF 932 is one of these situations. Most people will either love the look, or just down right hate it. Still once you get past the "Mad Max" aesthetics of hardline cages and mesh over every opening you will begin to start respecting what the HAF 932 has to offer including the incredible airflow from 3 x 230mm fans and 1 x 140mm fan on the rear.

CLICK HERE FOR Cooler Master HAF 932 Case SHOPPING & PRICING

"The Alphenfohn GroB Clock'ner heatsink on the test bench today is a heatpipe direct contact cooler - meaning the heatpipes are exposed at the base. EKL's heatsink stands 154m tall, is 125mm across and weighs upwards of 700grams."

“On the test bench today is Xigmatek's Red Scorpion S1283, which offers Heatpipe Direct Touch (HDT) technology, a new trend in tower-style heatsinks. We’ll be comparing this to a couple other very capapble coolers to determine its cooling efficiency. The Scorpion sure looks good, but cooling is king, so we'll see if it's regal or reject.”

CLICK HERE FOR Xigmatek Red Scorpion S1283 SHOPPING & PRICING

"It's up to our readers to decide whether this enclosure is actually glamorous, but we cannot say that G6 is radically different from G5 in design. As for the insides, there are only minimal differences. On the whole, owing to the chipset, this model is a good choice for a generic computer with rich functionality, which is very high in this DELUXE modification."

CLICK HERE FOR Shuttle XPC Glamor SN68PTG6 SHOPPING & PRICING

As usual, after the initial launch of the high-end cards, manufactures will make some modification, disable certain features, and tweak their chips to produce mainstream and budget graphic cards. For AMD, the HD 4670 is their budget derivative that stems from their HD 4800. This card, which sells at retail for $80, is in direct competition to the NVIDIA 9500GT that was launched last month. We have previously looked at Foxconn's 9500 GT and today we will put the cards against each other to see if we can give some insights to our readers who are in the market for a new budget card.

CLICK HERE FOR Sapphire HD 4670 SHOPPING & PRICING

On our test bench today is Gainwards Golden Sample version of the latest high end video card to be released by ATI, the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. Rumours and news about this particular model have been around since before the 512MB version made it to launch but it has taken some time for the 1GB model to reach the marketplace and it enters into a slightly more crowded segment than it would have three months ago. The main reason for this is the release of the 216 unified shader GTX 260 within the last fortnight.

“You can find the Signature 850 Watt Power Supply for $230.00 at retailers like Newegg and Performance-PCs. That's not a bad price at all given the internal improvements made to the new Signature line. And besides, you're buying a product from a proven name in the PSU industry. And if that doesn't entice you, how about a 5 Year Warranty? They're that confident about this product. Why shouldn't you be? Until I see something better come along, this is my top recommended power supply in the 800 to 900 watt range.”

CLICK HERE FOR Antec Signature 850 Watt Power Supply SHOPPING & PRICING

As a network administrator for several small and medium businesses, I am used to seeing pedestal servers with expensive Windows Server edition Operating Systems running for the sole purpose of serving files out to the workgroup or domain. Such environments has made it necessary to look for money-saving opportunities in the office environment. A few years back Network Attached Storage server hit the scene with a price tag comparable to the alternative, but the NAS products offered in today's market are far superior and cost far less than before. Synology has pioneered the NAS server into mainstream, and now offers devices to fit every range and environment from home to enterprise. Benchmark Reviews has the good fortune to performance test the 4-drive SATA Disk Station DS408 RAID NAS.

CLICK HERE FOR Synology DS408 SHOPPING & PRICING

"Today we find ourselves once again looking at one of the new mid-range ATI based graphics cards. The particular card we’re looking at today is the HD 4670 which impressed us at launch just the other week.

With MSIs version in hand, we will see if it can manage to impress us like the Sapphire did. The mid-range market is no doubt one of the most important segments for both AMD and NVIDIA, as this is where the quantity is found."

CLICK HERE FOR MSI Radeon HD 4670 Graphics Card SHOPPING & PRICING

The N5200BR is a computer in its own right and the ability to back up files onto a file server and use it as a FTP server and other uses is well worth the price when balanced in the whole. The amount of energy the N5200BR consumes is less than a normal PC as the CPU is a Celeron-M 600MHz. As a file server, the N5200BR is an excellent example of using old hardware for new uses that work. There is nothing to complain about with the 5200BR, it is a solid well built and thought-out system that employs simple ideas and makes the user feel at ease with the unit from the point of entry of its installation to final backup of your files and information. The 5200BR is a two thumbs up Editors Choice product, good job Thecus.

CLICK HERE FOR Thecus N5200BR NAS Server SHOPPING & PRICING

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

“After few top models of biggest world motherboard manufacturers we got in our test lab “runner” from BIOSTAR. How much this company invested in overclock possibilities of their motherboards and how they have done their job we will try to show you on their TPOWER I45 model. As opposite to BIOSTAR T series that is easily recognizable for its blue PCB, TPOWER I45 model has black PCB. Layout is very good and it shows that BIOSTAR invested significant amount of time in its design. First interesting detail, that shows how much BIOSTAR takes overclock serious, is little detail in cooling solution…”

CLICK HERE FOR Biostar TPower I45 SHOPPING & PRICING

"Bgears b-Envi is an all-aluminum HTPC (Home Theater PC) case, target to media PCs (i.e. computers to be hooked to your home theater system for playing movies and songs) or to users that want a very small case to carry your PC around (LAN parties, for example). It comes with a memory card reader, a touch panel and a 2 ½" hard disk drive aluminum enclosure that allows you to easily carry your data around. Let's take an in-depth look on this case."

CLICK HERE FOR Bgears b-Envi Case SHOPPING & PRICING

With the recent run of newer and more affordable graphics cards from ATI, it's almost easy to forget that there's already a sub-$200 frame-rate cruncher called the Radeon HD 4850. Based on the same RV770 chip as the more powerful, yet more expensive HD 4870, the HD 4850 ships with the same 800 stream processors, 40 texture units, and 16 ROPs that have made these cards such hot items. The main area where they differ, other than clock speeds, is in regard to memory. While the HD 4870 ships with high-end GDDR5 memory chips, the HD 4850 finds itself loaded with 512 MB of more mainstream GDDR3.

CLICK HERE FOR HIS Radeon HD 4850 SHOPPING & PRICING

CLICK HERE FOR Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 SHOPPING & PRICING

"In the past, overclockers had a core set of components they needed to focus on to guarantee stability and performance: CPU, motherboard, memory and GPU. One often overlooked aspect of the intrepid system builder was the PSU. However, as products have become more high powered, with GPUs especially needing hundreds of watts just on their own, PSUs have become far more important. With that in mind, InWin have sent over their Commander 750w PSU. Let's see how it holds up."

"The Lian Li PC-A7010 carries a whopping $295 price tag and is most definitely a high end case. With the time I have spent with the PC-A7010 I now know why some enthusiasts covet the Lian Li cases so much. The build quality is amazing, as it should be for an investment close to $300. The SATA backplane is a nice feature. It will clean up a lot of cable clutter and make things look very nice, even though it is hidden behind the case side..."

CLICK HERE FOR Lian Li PC-A7010 All Aluminum Full Tower Case SHOPPING & PRICING

"Mainstream users will be glad that ATI haven't forgotten about them. The Sapphire Radeon HD 4670 does offer decent performance at a price that's irresistably attractive. You also get great features which include the support for DX10.1, x24 custom AA, HDMI, HDCP, CrossfireX, as well as lower power consumption."

CLICK HERE FOR Sapphire Radeon HD 4670 SHOPPING & PRICING

ATI has done a turn-around that hasn't been seen since the GeForce 6 days. They have even gone so far as to take back the performance crown from Nvidia. Today, we are privileged enough to have the Sapphire HD 4850 Dual Slot Fansink, which goes head-to-head with the Nvidia 9800 GTX. The HD 4850 takes the place of the 3870 from ATI and the 8800 GT from Nvidia in the lower high-end market.

CLICK HERE FOR Sapphire HD 4850 SHOPPING & PRICING

"What is there to say about the Sapphire HD4870 Toxic video card other than it is amazing? I was very surprised to see the benchmarking scores that it was able to produce. It was able to compete with and beat out the PowerColor HD4870 PCS+, which is also an overclocked HD4870 with a custom cooler. The Sapphire card was able to either compete with or beat just about every other card during both the stock and especially with the overclocked speeds, and in those it did not beat it kept the performance differential close."

CLICK HERE FOR Sapphire HD4870 SHOPPING & PRICING

In today's world 600Watts may not sound like much but it is really more than enough power for the average user and there are several aspects of the SilverStone ST60EF that help to reinforce.

CLICK HERE FOR SilverStone ST60EF 600 Watt Power Supply SHOPPING & PRICING

So, you say you just bought a second or even a third computer for your household and you're wondering how you're going to connect it to the Internet? Well, for one thing you'll need a router and probably a wireless adapter such as the Belkin F5D8053 N Wireless adapter, unless you plan on directly wiring it to a port on your router. Using a wireless adapter however would be the much easier and quicker way to setup access to your home network/broadband Internet connection. Benchmark Reviews has just reviewed the Belkin F5D8053 N Wireless adapter for you. Now let's see if it's something worth buying or not.

CLICK HERE FOR Belkin F5D8053 WiFi N Wireless Adapter SHOPPING & PRICING

Today we will be looking at another addition to Noctua's award winning lineup: the NH-U9B. Unlike the other Noctuas we have put through their paces, the U9B is different from its brethren since it is actually quite small in comparison and uses a completely different fan size and design to keep its heatsink cool. It is geared towards those of you who do not want a massive heatsink in your HTPC (or standard ATX) case and seems to have been released to compete with the Thermalright Ultima 90.

CLICK HERE FOR Noctua NH-U9B CPU Cooler SHOPPING & PRICING

It's no secret that the HD 4870 is one of the best overall GPUs on the market right now, but with so much selection from vendors, it's hard to choose the "best" one. Palit has a definite winner with their Sonic Dual Edition though. It's pre-overclocked, runs 20°C cooler than the reference design and carries no cost premium.

"OCZ's Gladiator Max heatsink is an extension of the Vendetta 2 model, except that it now utilizes four large diameter copper heatpipes and a somewhat different aluminum fin geometry. As with other heatsinks from this series, the copper heatpipes make direct contact with the top of the processor - an approach called Heatpipe Direct Touch. OCZ's Gladiator Max heatsink is equipped with rubber vibration absorbing fan posts to quietly support a 120mm PWM fan which can scale in speed from 800-1500RPM."

CLICK HERE FOR OCZ Gladiator MAX Heatsink SHOPPING & PRICING

Like most other HD 4870s on store shelves, the EAH4870 TOP sports 512MB of GDDR5 memory and a 256-bit memory bus. Additionally, the card features support for DirectX 10.1, Shader Model 4.1, and CrossFireX multi-GPU technology. What differentiates the EAH4870 TOP from most other 4870s is its factory overclock: the core clock pushes pixels at 815 MHz (ATI's reference spec is 750 MHz) while the memory is set to 925 MHz (ATI reference is 900 MHz).

CLICK HERE FOR ASUS EAH4870 SHOPPING & PRICING

Although ATI seem to have taken the throne for high performance graphics cards, there’s still a vast demand for mid-range cards. This demand is in favour of nVidia, who offer some great mid-rangers for low prices. One card which comes with a low price tag and fairly good specs is the 9500GT. Today we have Zotac’s version of this card, let’s give it a whirl.

CLICK HERE FOR Zotac 9500GT SHOPPING & PRICING

" External hard drive storage is the technology that people are using to keep their data backed up in multiple locations in the current era of technology. There are good products and bad ones just the same but not all enclosures promise the same thing. The Thermaltake BlacX was probably the first unit to take a hard drive and turn it into the removable storage. Now you can easily keep multiple physical backups with ease using this product. Pretty interesting. "

CLICK HERE FOR Thermaltake BlacX SHOPPING & PRICING

"It is nice to finally see the SB750 on the same board as the 790FX chipset. The addition of the SB750 brings a performance boost to the aging 790FX, and boosts the performance of the Asus M3A79-T Deluxe to help it outscore its younger sibling, the Asus M3A78-T. It may not have been a huge jump in performance, but it was enough to make a difference in our testing, and certainly proves that the SB750 fits well with the 790FX. Performance wise, this board did just fantastically..."

CLICK HERE FOR ASUS M3A79-T Deluxe Motherboard SHOPPING & PRICING

A-DATA's 4 GB Vitesta Extreme Edition DDR2 memory kit offers great performance at a low price of only $75. The memory can even run CL3 at the specified 800 MHz, with a small voltage increase and scales up to DDR2-1066 at CL5.

Enter todays review subject, the Radeon HD 4550, which sits nicely between the 3450 and 4650 in ATIs product catalogue and competes directly against the GeForce 9400 GT. In this review we will be comparing those two cards in a selection of the latest games as well as seeing how each fairs in some high definition playback tests.

"Hiper's newest iteration of their popular HTC series enclosures is the Hiper Osiris, a chassis that takes what was great with the Hiper Anubis and expands upon it. Featuring the same 6063 T-5 aluminum alloy construction that the Anubis used to great effect, the Osiris aims to attract a new contingent of enthusiasts looking for a high quality and well built chassis. Will the Osiris manage to outshine the Anubis? Will Hiper's newest enclosure match well against comparably priced enclosures? There's only one way to know for sure, and HardwareLogic is bent on finding out!"

CLICK HERE FOR Hiper Osiris Case SHOPPING & PRICING

"One such company is Liteon, they've got a line of portable optical DVDRW drives called the EZ-DUB. These drives feature a standard sized, fully featured, optical drive inside of an external enclosure, but what makes these special is the addition of two touch sensitive buttons labeled 'File and 'Dub' to make common functions easily accessible to the end user. Is the EZ-DUB worth your money, are the extra features worth it? "

CLICK HERE FOR Liteon EZ-DUB External DVD RW Drive DX-20A4PU SHOPPING & PRICING

Now here's the thing - I have a beautiful Antec Nine Hundred case with a single DVD drive installed in one of the 5.25' external drive bays, so the other bays remain largely unused. I've considered putting in additional optical drives, but tell you the truth, I personally just don't have any great need to do so. For looks alone I've been considering installing a fan controller or something fun with lights and gauges, but just never saw anything that I couldn't live without. Fortunately for me, ICY DOCK came along with an intriguing new product and I was given the opportunity to check it out. Not only does the ICY DOCK MB672SKGF internal 3.5' SAS/SATA HDD Enclosure look great, but it actually solves a problem I never realized I had. Now with one drive bay easily accessible in the front of my Nine Hundred case, I can easily swap out hard drives and forget about those external drives and the plethora of cables and power supplies that come with them. Let's take a closer look at ICY DOCK and the new internal drive enclosure from this innovative company.

CLICK HERE FOR ICY DOCK MB672SKGF-B SHOPPING & PRICING

In terms of single GPU performance, the Radeon HD4870 set the bar pretty high, and the Sapphire Toxic Radeon HD4870 512MB graphics card had its work cut out for it to do much better. With a factory overclock of 30MHz on the GPU and 100MHz on the memory, the Toxic version generally did perform better, but not always by much.

In keeping with the rest of their TOXIC range, this offering features increases to both core and memory clock speeds over a reference boards - While the card's RV770 core gets a modest 30MHz boost for a final clock speed of 780MHz, the GDDR5 memory on board gets a more substantial 100MHz increase, with the 1000MHz memory clock offering up some impressive memory bandwidth improvements.

CLICK HERE FOR Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 SHOPPING & PRICING

At anywhere between £187 and £200, including VAT, the Radeon HD 4870 1GB appears to represent pretty good value for money. It’s not only cheaper (and better-performing) than the various GeForce GTX 260+ cards on the market, but it’s also not that much more expensive than the pre-overclocked GeForce GTX 260s out there as well. In most scenarios, it’s actually not too far behind Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 280 – a card that costs around £80 more.

CLICK HERE FOR ATI Radeon HD 4870 SHOPPING & PRICING

"Since the Sapphire PC-AM2RX780 is an AMD chipset base board you can use either the BIOS for overclocking or the AMD Overclocking Utility. For the purpose of this review I testing overclocking on both options and ended up with the same result both ways. In the end the Sapphire board did not like any changes at all in the bus speed, not even 201Mhz, but this board was the most liberal I have had with the multiplier, allowing me to raise it up to 16x for a whopping 3.20GHz on the Phenom x4 9850 Black Box. The was achieved only by raising the VCore to 1.45v and Northbridge VID to 1.35v. This is one of the best overclockes I have achieved on this chip which goes to show you how well chipsets are evolving as time goes on."

"Logitech knows a thing or two about being successful and they have injected this knowledge into their business model. They know that you have to supply a steady stream of new and innovative products to keep customers coming back. They are also well aware that you need a wide range of products, from high end gear all the way down to items that will fit any budget. It is with this mindset that Logitech released the Cordless Desktop S520 last month, the latest addition to their keyboard + mice combos that checks in at a very attractive price point."

CLICK HERE FOR Logitech Cordless Desktop S520 SHOPPING & PRICING

The low to mid-range market has been heating up over the past few months; NVIDIA released the 9500 GT which I personally felt was a massive disappointment due to the price to performance ratio when compared to the 9600 GSO.

Every now and then, the idea of knowing what your friend might type on his computer pops in mind. Keelog has provided us their newest product Keelogger Flash USB keylogger, which saves everything you type on your computer to tiny USB flash memory and allows you to read it whenever you want. The current product line includes PS/2 and USB keyloggers with 2MB, 512MB or 2GB of memory.

Does your living arrangement make it impossible to locate your PC near your preferred space for audio listening? Audioengine's AW1 wireless audio system could be your solution, but does it improve upon the traditionally lacking audio quality of previous wireless systems?

CLICK HERE FOR Audioengine AW1 Wireless Audio System SHOPPING & PRICING

“Computers can be used from many reasons but most recent are usage for quite elementary things. For all users with basic needs, computer purchasing can be a true nightmare. Ignorance issue, enormous choice and quite often contradictory advices, only lead to confused buyers and very often lead to spending unnecessary huge amount of money on something that actually isn’t adequate configuration for a specific user. Acer Company tried to help you by launching series of cheaper models…”

“Apevia has quite a large lineup of cases, from full-towers like the X-Jupiter we reviewed earlier to the diminutive X-Qpack2 MicroATX case. Even with such an extensive lineup, they show no signs of slowing down, releasing the X-Sniper mid-tower case. When we reviewed the X-Jupiter, we found it to be an excellent entry into the full-tower market. Can the X-Sniper do the same for mid-towers?”

CLICK HERE FOR Apevia X-Sniper G-Type Mid-tower Case SHOPPING & PRICING

This is Tech-Reviews first review for Iqua, it’s for a product called the ‘Iqua Sun’ which is literally the world’s first solar powered Bluetooth headset. Bluetooth headsets have become more common over these past few years with the new laws in the UK such as the rule which states you cannot use a mobile phone whilst driving. Read on to find out how this revolutionary product performs…

CLICK HERE FOR Iqua Sun Bluetooth Headset SHOPPING & PRICING

There’s been a deliberate structure built in to this review and of the three pages you’ve just read you’ll have probably noted that the first two say that The Force Unleashed is a good game. The last page however doesn’t, getting stuck on the issues that plague the game.

CLICK HERE FOR Star Wars: The Force Unleashed SHOPPING & PRICING

How SAS works is very similar to SATA; it uses the same seven wires to connect the drive to the host controller. However, instead of sending ATA packets, SCSI data bits are sent along the controller cable to the controller which then decodes them. This means that the drive has no interface chip; similar to parallel SCSI; it’s all handled on the controller card itself.

CLICK HERE FOR HighPoint RocketRAID 2640X4 SHOPPING & PRICING