Week of July 5, 2009

Noctua has sent us their newest case fan for us to review, the NF-S12B FLX. Succeeding the vastly successful NF-S12, the NF-S12B is a next generation quiet fan featuring Noctua's advanced SCD2 technology as well as a new blade geometry with Bevelled Blade Tips that improves its predecessor's airflow efficiency by up to 10%. Read on to see how this new fan performs.

CLICK HERE FOR Noctua NF-S12B FLX PRICING & SHOPPING

The word heatsink has always been one of those unusual words that doesn't quite fit what it actually is. Let's break it down. Heat is a form of energy associated with the motion of atoms or molecules and capable of being transmitted through solid and fluid media by conduction, convection or radiation. To sink is to fall or drop to a lower level, especially to go down in stages, or to make weaker or less forceful. Hmmm... I guess heatsink does work after all.

Regardless of my lame attempt to fill an introductory paragraph, there are many many vendors of CPU coolers (aka heatsinks). Most of them do an adequate job, but only a fine few are worthy of being in a PC enthusiast's rig. Enthusiasts (such as the fine readers of OCModShop) want a cooler that performs beyond the call of duty, because they are usually overclocking their rigs, pushing them to the thermal breaking point.

"SilverStone Sugo SG05 is one of the smallest computer cases we've ever seen and yet it supports video cards up to 9" (22.8 cm) in length, making it a terrific case for building a very small but powerful PC. To shrink its size SilverStone decided to use a small CFX power supply, which comes with the product, and support only a slim optical drive, i.e. an optical drive originally targeted to laptops. Let's see what you can expect from this new case."

CLICK HERE FOR SilverStone Sugo PRICING & SHOPPING

“Finally we got our hands on smartphone that created quite a stir on a PDA market. This is one of those devices that is very interesting in many ways and looks great at the same time. Samsung Omnia HD, or i8910 HD, is larger and heavier than most other smartphones, which isn’t a flaw in any way. Omnia HD is very compact and rugged device with metal frame that contains usual buttons (photo and video recording, volume rocker-control, lock button etc) and three usual buttons on the front side.…”

CLICK HERE FOR Samsung OMNIA HD PRICING & SHOPPING

"OCZ's Vertex is a multi-layer SSD that features the Indilinx 'Barefoot' controller, promising very fast performance numbers, particularly with Write operations. OCZ's Vertex is the latest in their product lineup, and the performance claims sound impressive. Today we’ll pit it against some of the fastest traditional hard disk drives, and also alongside Intel's renowned X-25M SSD, and see if this OCZ Vertex can impress."

CLICK HERE FOR OCZ Vertex SSD PRICING & SHOPPING

Sapphire has taken an already powerful card in the HD 4870 and overclocked it. The resulting card is nothing less than superb with the extra cooling that the Vapor-X offers I was able to overclock the card to 810MHz for the core and 1100MHz for the memory. Card temperatures reached 72C when under stress and running overclocked but that is not much of a jump from the 65C that the card would exhibit when idle. Turning up the Fan Speed allowed me to run the card overclocked 100% of the time.

CLICK HERE FOR Sapphire Toxic Radeon HD 4870 PRICING & SHOPPING

We are looking at a power supply in todays review, Gigabyte sent us a sample of their Odin GT 550W unit. We are going to compare it vs some similar PSU´s on the market both during idle and full load. Lets take a closer look and see what we can expect from this unit.

CLICK HERE FOR Gigabyte ODIN PRICING & SHOPPING

As DDR3 pokes its ugly expensive head into the AMD world. Jetway decided to make the transition from AM2 to AM3 as pleasant as possible. The MA3-79GDG Combo Motherboard gives you the ability to use the cheaper DDR2 variant or more expensive DDR3 with the latest AM2+ and AM3 processors. This includes the new Phenom II X4 chips, which we will be testing this board with today.

"When GIGABYTE first sent me this mouse I thought it would be something chintzy and cheap looking, but when I opened the package that arrived at my door I could see that this is a product which has been given a lot of thought as to the marketability.

In this set you get the mouse itself embedded with three Swarovski crystals from their Crystalised series. Also included is a certificate with an edition numbering, batteries, the RF transceiver that nestles into the bottom of the mouse when not in use and a carry case for it, adorned with GIGABYTEs logo."

Back in March of 2009, I reviewed some of GELID Solutions thermal paste called GC1. During my testing phase I was amazed at the performance of this thermal paste. I was notified by GELID Solutions that they were making newer, & better thermal paste that rivals even there GC1. At first hearing this, I was a bit skeptical of this, GELID Solutions offered me to review some of this 'Better' thermal paste. Well, of coarse I was more then happy to check out this new and improved thermal paste.

I was not expecting much difference in my CPU temperatures, because even I came to realize that the only way for my CPU temperatures are going to go down any lower then they are, is by drastically changing my water cooling set up to something a bit more aggressive. Like adding frozen Carbon Dioxide (better known as 'Dicing') to my water, or purchasing a Phase Change unit, to figuring out how to put my reservoir inside of a freezer. Of coarse these steps are just a tad bit too drastic of a measure for my self to gain a few extra MHz on my CPU.

The two new thermal pastes that GELID Solutions sent me were their Extreme, and the GC2 thermal pastes. Do these thermal pastes have what it takes to compete with good already proven thermal pastes out on the market? Like Noctua, OCZ Freeze, Artic Silver, Cooler Master, or even remotely keep up with their tried and trued GC1 thermal paste. Lets step inside and see how these two new thermal pastes stacked up.

Cooler Master has been at the forefront of case marketplace for some time now but their coolers have been somewhat lacking. We looked at the V8 and V10 but were left wanting, reviewed the N520 and were a bit disappointed but now we have before us the Hyper 212 PLUS. This is an HDT cooler that is priced at a mere $40 and we have some very high expectations for it. Let’s hope it can put its best foot forward.

CLICK HERE FOR Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus CPU Cooler PRICING & SHOPPING

"The Gigabyte GV-R435OC-512I is a half-height PCI Express x16 videocard designed for small form factor and home theatre PCs that need a bit more horsepower, HDMI output, or both. It has DVI, VGA and HDMI output, and can do audio thanks to an on-board codec. This videocard also supports HDCP, so it'll play nicely with your protected Blu-ray discs."

CLICK HERE FOR Gigabyte GV-R435OC-512I Radeon HD 4350 PRICING & SHOPPING

Lenovo's IdeaPad S10-2 is an somewhat of an odd proposition for netbook buyers. For those who completely missed out on the IdeaPad S10, this is a welcome update and a solid overall contender in the netbook space. For those familiar with the original, two feelings are apt to surface: bitterness and / or confusion. Indeed, the changes found on the IdeaPad S10-2 are minor, with most of the hardware remaining exactly the same. In fact, the vast majority of the tweaks are completely cosmetic, though we do think much thought went into this overhaul. Come on by the site and check it out...

CLICK HERE FOR Lenovo IdeaPad S10-2 Netbook PRICING & SHOPPING

"Flash memory marches on! Samsung recently introduced a trio of high-def camcorders using advanced solid state drives (SSDs) rather than hard drives-or ancient media like tapes and shiny three-inch disks. SSDs read and write faster than HDDs, are lighter, use less power and have no moving parts making them just right for capturing video on the fly. Samsung sent us one with a 64GB drive-the HMX-H106-but the -H105 and -H104 are available with 32GB and 16GB storage, respectively at lower prices. The new AVCHD camcorders are fairly tricked out and it would be good to see if Samsung should be considered a key player in the HD Camcorder Game."

CLICK HERE FOR Samsung HMX-H106 PRICING & SHOPPING

“Though it may have not started off that way, today's performance industry sees these two giants that we evaluate today - OCZ Technology and Crucial - butting heads across product lines. Both products promise the same speed, and carry the same capacity, and to be honest, even manage to perform with the same latencies - despite what Crucial has to say on the tin. So what is it then, that sets these products apart from the clashing titans? Only time will tell.”

CLICK HERE FOR OCZ Platinum Memory PRICING & SHOPPING

CLICK HERE FOR Crucial Ballistix Memory PRICING & SHOPPING

"The Kingston SSDNow V Series should be of interest to consumers due to its price versus value. When we first found out that the Kingston SSDNow V Series was using the JMicron JMF602 controller we thought the drive would suffer from stutters like many of the early SSDs did with the same problematic controller. Even though the benchmarks showed some weird performance spikes and slow 4K random access writes, none of the stuttering issues were seen during our testing period. It seems that the new firmware update that was designed Kingston, J-Micron and Toshiba in the six months leading up to the launch of the V Series paid off. By implementing a firmware workaround for the stutters the performance of the drive did take slight hit..."

CLICK HERE FOR Kingston SSDNow V Series PRICING & SHOPPING

"If you follow closely our power supply reviews you know that all power supplies from Huntkey Green Star series explode if you try to pull its labeled power (we tested the 350 W, 400 W, 450 W and 550 W models - all exploded, see the reviews to watch the videos from them exploding). Today we tested another model from this same brand: V-Power 550 W. Is it a good power supply or will it have the same fate as its sisters?"

There are a lot of reasons one may have use for a docking station such as this: simply having multiple hard drives, having data stored on a smaller 2.5″ drive that needs accessed, or simply not enough room to install another drive in a case or laptop itself. The EZ-Dock provides solutions for all the above, including access to data and files without the trouble of physically installing a single piece of hardware (unless your case is absent an eSATA port, in which case Icy Dock has provided a quick fix). With such an involved piece of hardware, there are several instances in which a company can go wrong, and with such a micro-managed field technology is, even the smallest quirk can cause problems. Today, we take a look at Icy Dock’s EZ-Dock to see how well it performs under the stress of data access.

CLICK HERE FOR Icy Dock EZ-Dock MB811US PRICING & SHOPPING

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

With more people having more than one computer the need to share and transfer files between them has grown. Vantec has come up with a product geared towards this market with the Vantec ezSHARE Adapter. It boasts an easy setup with no additional software to install and a setup time of only seconds. Let's see what the ezSHARE Adapter has in store.

Notebook computers tend to get hot. Some are even considered to be "desktop replacements" because of all the advanced hardware thrown into such a small space. With desktop systems, we have the luxury of adding large and advanced heatsinks with fancy LED fans, but laptops pretty much have to rely on the OEM cooling that the manufactuer has decided is "good enough".

Enermax says "nay" to this philosophy and introduces the Aeolus CP001 notebook cooler, which is made from all aluminum, and has a large 250mm fan to blow a lot of air to the underside of your notebook and remain silent while doing it. The fan is also equipped with blue LEDs to produce a nice glow in your man-cave. Aeolus is the god of the winds, in Greek Mythology, so Enermax apparently thinks highly of this product.

CLICK HERE FOR Enermax Aeolus CP001 PRICING & SHOPPING

"The OCZ Behemoth Gaming-Mouse arrived Technic3D with 3.200dpi and two Sensors. It offers accurate and predictable motion reporting up to 60 inches per second, performance over a wide range of speeds, and accelerations covering the demands for various gaming applications in either low 100dpi or turbo charged 3200 dpi settings. The microprocessor supports data-upload from the PC to the onboard memory of the OCZ Behemoth. The OCZ Behmoth gaming grade double laser engine provides uncompromising high-precision and ultra-fast tracking power? See you in the following Review on Technic3D."

CLICK HERE FOR OCZ Behemoth PRICING & SHOPPING

"A few days ago I took a look at the Seagate BlackArmor PS 110 2.5″ external hard drive, today I’ve got the BlackArmor WS 110. This drive utilizes a 3.5″ 1TB hard drive inside of the unit, and features both eSATA and USB connections along with everything that the PS 110 can do. So let’s just jump right in… "

CLICK HERE FOR Seagate BlackArmor WS 110 PRICING & SHOPPING

"The ASUS GeForce GTS 250 Dark Knight is a graphics card that not only houses the smaller 55nm GPU, but also sports a very interesting non-stock cooler from ASUS that looks to provide even further cooling. Paired with the die shrink, the Dark Knight could post some very impressive results, both in terms of gaming performance and framerates but also cooler temperatures and a quiet fan setup. What's not to like about cool and quiet gaming prowess on the cheap?"

CLICK HERE FOR Asus Nvidia Geforce Gts 250 PRICING & SHOPPING

“Hardly anyone can give precise answer to the question: What is netbook? Few years ago answer was simple: portable computer with small display, without optical drive, based on Intel Atom CPU (with few exceptions in form of HP 2133 Mini-Note ). Today we have netbooks based on Atom, but there are also full sized notebooks based on the same platform. One of those is MSI X-Slim X320…”

CLICK HERE FOR MSI X-Slim X320 PRICING & SHOPPING

We live in the multimedia age that is ever growing and has created wonderful possibilities. Never before has there been various ways where we can attain and enjoy media on our personal computers. We have a vast variety of media to enjoy such as high definition videos that we can download, video blogs that we can watch, and streaming media such as YouTube that we can enjoy. There has never been a better era to live in and the fact that these technologies are still advancing makes it so interesting to look forward to.

Now what if there was a way to interconnect the media we have on our computers and bring these to the comfort of our living room. Today we have that possibility by building our own home theatre PC but now there are standalone units that are being sold as media players where we can view all types of video on our HDTV’s.

Today I will be reviewing one such media player from HornetTek that looks to invade the market with an affordable 1080i HD media player solution that you can use to play all sorts of video, photos and listen to MP3’s and transfer files easily with its one touch copy feature. Introducing the HornetTek Mirage HDD Media Player review.

CLICK HERE FOR HornetTek Mirage PRICING & SHOPPING

SSD drives are getting more and more mainstream all the time, and they have actually released info that they should drop in price soon and replace the older IDE and SATA drives. The question is though; have all the issues with write speeds been fixed then? We are going to benchmark the Torqx 64GB from Patriot today to see if we can see some speed improvements compared vs a Gskill SSD we got awhile back.

CLICK HERE FOR Patriot TorqX SSD PRICING & SHOPPING

"There's much to get excited about with Samsung's 52" LN52A850S1F LCD HDTV, commonly known as the 'A850'. For starters this LCD HDTV ups the ante with the ability to play movies/music/pictures directly from a USB mass storage device or over a home network connection and it's screen is less than 2" thick, making it one of the thinnest large screen TV's out there. For those of you obsessed with specs and numbers, Samsung's A850-series stacks up like this: the 52" diagonal LCD screen boats a contrast ratio of 70,000:1 (dynamic), a brightness value of 500nits, industry standard viewing angles of 178/178 (horizontal/vertical), and a 4ms pixel refresh rate. The LN52A850S1F has a native resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels and can maintain both 60Hz and 120Hz refresh rates. It's ATSC digital TV tuner picks up over the air signals without any additional hardware, and the screen boasts no fewer than four HDMI inputs."

CLICK HERE FOR Samsung LN52A850S1F A850 PRICING & SHOPPING

As I have touched on in my last review of AKAI`s very latest USB Turntable, the company has been in the business of electronics for a long, long time. And like any large experienced company, they are moving with the times and offering technology for today’s standards.

With so many different forms of media needing to be played back in the average home of today, it seems fitting that AKAI has designed an all-in-one entertainment unit that attempts to handle a large whack of them all at once. Claiming support for MP3/iPod/CD/DVD/Up-sampled DVD/USB/SD Flash cards/FM radio/Karaoke along with a HDMI output for up-sampled DVDs, we certainly have a lot of support here.

The video card market is an ever-expanding one that sees new cards from ATI and NVIDIA alike month after month. Granted, some are just core refreshes or 're-branding,' but there is always something new. Usually cards that are released in between series updates offer a good price/performance ratio, and lower the price of main cards as well; two of those cards will be compared today. Up on the review block are the ASUS GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB and the Sapphire Radeon HD 4670 512MB...

CLICK HERE FOR Sapphire Radeon HD 4670 PRICING & SHOPPING

"The Eagle Consus 2.5” M-Series is a small and portable drive enclosure with USB and eSATA connectivity, with a great aesthetic and an amazing price for those looking for an external storage system."

CLICK HERE FOR Eagle Tech Consus PRICING & SHOPPING

Gigabyte is well known for their motherboards and graphics cards. However, when it comes to the peripheral marketplace they have yet to hit their stride but are moving forward with all guns blazing. Their new multimedia keyboard (simply called the K6800) looks to offer a long list of features and a low price of about $25. Is it possible to offer value and performance in this competitive market?

Today we are going to have a look at one of Tagan's new products, the PipeRock II 680W. Designed to be a high performance modular unit, the PipeRock II boasts some very interesting specifications on paper and currently carries a very tempting price tag.

The limitation on flash storage has been size, people love the portability and convenience of a good flash drive. Size has been an issue for a while. Now it's not uncommon to see 16GB and larger drives reasonably priced. Select companies are ramping up sizes (in limited quantities) of drives as large a 128 GB so we can expect to see even larger sizes soon. With the size limitation lifting flash storage is once again back in the news.

The flash drive we have today is the WWF Panda 16GB Flash drive. Active Media Products has a variety of animal drives and makes a contribution to the World Wildlife Fund for every drive sold. (Minimum contribution $25,000) Not only do you get the portable storage you crave, the World Wildlife Fund gets much needed funding and you get a cute USB Thumb Drive. The cuteness might be it's downfall so if you get one for yourself you might want to get one for the woman in your life, ours got confiscated 'Due to excessive cuteness'.

Everything from music to gaming seemed to undergo an audio resurrection with the Altec Lansing VS2421 computer speaker system, convincing me that if you have the standard 2.0 speaker system you really are missing out. Clarity was fantastic and I was surprised at the amount of bass that was pushed out, even loud explosions showed no distortion.

CLICK HERE FOR Altec Lansing VS2421 PRICING & SHOPPING

NVIDIA Recently unveiled their ION platform, which combines a GeForce 9400m GPU to the Intel Atom mobile processor. The synergistic effect of GeForce and Atom processors have combined to deliver true high-definition performance beyond any mobile platform before it, allowing more range from 'NetBook' and 'NetTop' products. A dual-core 1.6GHz Intel Atom N330 CPU and NVIDIA GeForce 9400M GPU are packaged onto a Mini-ITX DDR2 AMCP7A-ION motherboard to create the ASRock ION, and ultra-efficient NetTop system. Delivering an compact HTPC or desktop computer alternative with native HDMI high-definition playback capability and powerful computing power isn't easy, and Benchmark Reviews discovers how well the ASRock NetTop ION 330 performs against mobile competitors using the Windows 7 Operating System.

Super Talent memory products have never failed to impress me and the Super Talent Luxio is no different. With a massive storage capacity of 64GB, you will be able to transport all your large files in its conveniently small
package. In the aesthetics department, the Luxio is not revolutionary in terms of its design. However, it looks very sturdy, durable, and it has an elegant look to it.

CLICK HERE FOR Super Talent 64GB Luxio USB Flash Drive PRICING & SHOPPING

"It was quite a shock when Corsair announced their entry into the solid state market. Just weeks before the announcement a Corsair representative stated that the company was not looking to enter the market until they were ready. At that point just about everyone took the news at face value and pretty much planned to revisit the situation a year or so later. It is strange how fast things turn around; Corsair has now released a couple of solid state drives and done it so quietly that few even noticed.

So far most of the other memory companies have chosen to team with Intel, JMicron and more recently Indilinx for their SSD products. Corsair, the company that brought us the innovative Dominator memory products once again chose to do something different. The Corsair P256 uses a Samsung S3C29RBB01-YK40 chipset, a second generation chipset that should approach performance levels of the fastest Indilinx and consumer Intel products. The latest Samsung chipset allowed Corsair to use 128MB of cache, twice that of the early Indilinx drives that we have tested."

CLICK HERE FOR Corsair P256 PRICING & SHOPPING

We have had the pleasure of reviewing a number of theme cases from our friends at In Win Development, and the case we are reviewing today follows along the same path. The case I am speaking of is the In Win X-Fighter mid-Tower Case, this case features both front and rear 120mm fans and a matched set of 80mm fans along the side of the case. It is worth nothing that all fans used on the X-Fighter use
ceramic bearing rather then ball, rifle of bushing.

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

"This is the last in our series of thermal compounds that we’ve been looking at, as of late. Last time we looked at the GC-Extreme Thermal Compound which was aimed more at the hardcore overclocker who wanted the best performing results and didn’t mind paying a bit extra for it. This time the GC-2 is aimed more at the general end user and light overclocker. It’s a premium compound offering great properties for an affordable price. If you don’t want to sacrifice quality, but don’t want to spend a lot, then you’ll see how the GC-2 is going to be perfect for you."

"We have the opportunity to look at another AMD Socket AM3 motherboard in our review today. This one is the 790FX-GD70 from MSI and it is poised to be the flagship motherboard of the AM3 lineup for MSI. MSI has been around for quite some time, and so it is no stranger to competing in the motherboard business. This board sports the 790FX/SB750 combination of chipsets, so it is the best that you can get now in the AM3 scene. It also has a total of four X16 PCIE slots, so it is ready for a multi-GPU setup to take gaming to its graphical extremes..."

CLICK HERE FOR MSI 790FX-GD70 PRICING & SHOPPING

Mice are usually the last thing many people think of when putting together a brand new build but for gamers and professional users, there is no denying the importance of a good set of peripherals. Gigabyte isn’t a household name when it comes to peripherals but with their new Ghost series of gaming mice, they are hoping to change that.

"Kingwin's XT-1264 cooler is an example of the notion where a company wishes for us to look at things a bit differently. This cooler employs their Heatpipe Touch Chip (HTC) technology, where heatpipes touch the chip instead of the case. What? That sounds awfully familiar, doesn't it? Yes, it's the same design as HDT but a different name. The XT-1264 looks rather unassuming and it's priced pretty well, so let's see if it has the dash for the cash on a highly overclocked Core i7 monster."

CLICK HERE FOR Kingwin XT-1264 PRICING & SHOPPING

The good news is that digital cameras seem to get cheaper every day. The even better news is that most camera manufacturers are adding more and more useful features, even in their lower-priced cameras. We took at look at the FujiFilm FinePix A150 to see what you can get in an entry level digital camera. The US retail price of the A150 is USD 129.95. Street prices are considerably lower.

CLICK HERE FOR Fujifilm FinePix A150 PRICING & SHOPPING

When it came to overclocking on the ASUS Crosshair III Formula, I found it easier and more effective to push the BUS speed versus raising the multiplier. When raising the multiplier, I was only able to push it to 18x for a total speed of 3.6GHz before I lost stability. However, by putting the voltage to the maximum of 1.5v, I was able to push the BUS speed all the way to 241MHz for a total overclocked speed of 3.854GHz, which is over 200MHz more than the previous attempt. With this stable speed, the overclocked settings will be run at 241x16 for 3.85GHz.

Up until a couple of years ago, I thought a mouse pad was a mouse pad. It made no difference what the manufacturer was, or the type of mousing surface used. Having a large mouse pad was basically just for our E-Peen size. I sure was not going to buy a 30 USD mouse pad when a 5 dollar Walmart special would do just as good. Well, was I ever wrong, dead wrong.

Until just recently 'gaming' mouse pads were only made by a few manufactuers, now just about everyone makes 'gaming' mouse pads, and claims to give us better performance, better handling, and more comfort, yadda yadda, you know the drill. For those who are always going to LAN parties, toting a mouse pad is effortless, even if it is a large surface pad. What kills some mouse pads is that they bunch up on us when we are really getting into our games, or shift postitions during a rigorous gaming session causing us gamers to stop and reset our mouse pads so we may continue our onslaught.

X-Trac has a mouse pad that is light wieght, large enough for us to use our multi DPI mice on, and to top it off, they made it so the mouse pad does not slip and slide underneath our mice/hands when we are really getting dirty.

Here at Bjorn3D, we bring you the X-Trac Logic mousing surface.

The SSD battle has really been heating up as of late with battle lines being drawn as more and more companies enter this burgeoning market. While there are plenty of new faces, OCZ has been on the SSD bandwagon since their first release into the retail marketplace. Today, we take a look at one of their higher-end drives: the Vertex 120GB. With all the choices on the market, OCZ is hoping this is the one that is a cut above.

With the introduction of Intel’s latest range of processors – the i7 series – thermal solutions manufactures have been caught between two minds: to create a new cooler which is better able to counter the 130W TDP of these new processors or to create a mounting mechanism for an existing CPU cooler in their range to allow it to fit the LGA1366 motherboards.

There are certian elements in gaming that are both critical and necessary. Sound is one of them. It can provide feedback to the gamer in a way that a monitor can't. Razer has been in the audio facet of gaming for a while now, and today we are going to take a look at their newest headset, the Razer Carcharias. Let's see how it performs.

" A little bit ago I took a look at the Diamond ATI Radeon 4870 1gig video card, a higher end card for sure, today though I've got the other side of things, an Nvidia GTS 250 from ECS Elitegroup. It's totally the other side of things, it costs about half as much and it's from a different company, still though I was curious as to how it would perform against my current 4870. So read on to see how they compare, you might be a bit surprised as I was..."

Inspired by a spacecraft theme, the X-Fighter is In Win's latest offering for gaming enthusiasts. Having a case that supports water cooling, big video cards, and good air flow is important to gaming enthusiasts. Fortunately for gamers, In Win has been listening. The X-Fighter supports all those things and looks good while doing so. With its hard angles, and multi-colored theme, the X-Fighter is certainly attractive. Sporting a $120 price tag, lets take a look at the X-Fighter to see if it meets a gamers standards.

For many years, PC Power & Cooling was perhaps the top name among consumers who wanted a power supply that was better than the run of the mill units available from most other companies. Offering industrial grade units to the consumer market, PC P&C quickly became known for uncompromising quality and performance. Relatively recently, the competition has gotten a lot tougher for PC P&C. No longer the only option when it comes to server grade units, they're facing pretty stiff opposition these days in the likes of Corsair, Silverstone, and Antec to name a few.

Last week they has take a look at the XFX HD 4890 1000M Black edition, one of the fastest HD4890 videocards with 1000 MHz gpu clock.

"Today for review I’ve got the Seagate BlackArmor PS 110 2.5″ External Hard Drive. The PS 110 is much more than just a way to transport your data to and from places. Continue on as I take a look at not only the drive itself and its’ performance when compared to others, but also I’ve taken a look at the software suite that’s included with the drive. "

GlacialTech is a company of many talents; from LED lighting to CPU cooling. Today we take a look at their new UFO V51 CPU cooler that is marketed towards gamers and is compatible with a wide variety of systems. In the past we have been impressed with GlacialTech products so the expectations for this cooler is pretty high.

Today we are going to check out a notebook from ASUS called the N90Sv that falls squarely into the user group of those who want a machine with a big screen and power. The rig isn’t something you would want to tote around campus all day, but it just might make you the envy of the dorm or neighborhood when it comes time to watch movies.

CLICK HERE FOR ASUS N90Sv-A2 Multimedia Notebook PRICING & SHOPPING