Week of September 6, 2009

"ASUS launched nothing less than nine different socket 1156 motherboard models based on the new Intel P55 chipset. Today we are going to take a look on one that is currently being sold on the USD 170 range, called P7P55D PRO, which has lots of unique features and includes support for SLI."

CLICK HERE FOR ASUS P7P55D PRO Motherboard PRICING & SHOPPING

Today we are going to take a look at two products from EVERCOOL! The EVERCOOL Transformer 4 Heat Pipe CPU cooler and a companion product, the TWISTER Fan Speed Controller. Both products promise to be a hit with hard-core gamers looking for that extra cooling. The Transformer 4 is a monster of a cooler that by its very size implies great things. The Twister will let you tone down that noisy CPU fan when extra cooling is not needed. So without further adieu, lets delve into these two products for a closer look!

CLICK HERE FOR EVERCOOL Transformer 4 PRICING & SHOPPING

“Input devices are essential to the running of every single PC out there – after all they allow the user to control their processes and applications; a good mouse and keyboard are invaluable and can make working or gaming much easier. One such company which has a good track record in the peripheral industry is Speedlink and they are renowned for producing top quality products at a range of price levels that can suit a specific user’s needs. With a large number of keyboards already available, Speedlink have created the Base Line – a keyboard designed with the economic crisis in mind sporting a very reasonable price tag. We’ve seen brilliant things from Speedlink in the past, so let’s see how this latest product shapes up…”

Over the last few weeks we have taken a look at a variety of Seagate external solutions. Another big part of their business is workstation or business class products. Because of that its no shocker that they have an entire line just for that, it’s called BlackArmor. BlackArmor stands out from the FreeAgent line with a all black product line, business grade software, and high quality hard drives all designed specifically for business applications. Today I will be taking a look at the BlackArmor WS110 3.5 inch workstation external drive. How well will it compare to their FreeAgent line of externals?

CLICK HERE FOR Seagate BlackArmor WS110 PRICING & SHOPPING

" You've heard about LCDs. You've heard about plasmas. Maybe even you even understand all the pros and cons between them. But what are all these "LED televisions" we keep hearing about? With the crop of LED-backlit HDTVs announced at this year's Consumer Electronics Show finally starting to hit the streets in force, it's a question we hear a lot from budding home theater shoppers. Blame the acronyms. While yesterday's consumers had to make a simple choice between CRT and rear-projection television sets, today's consumers are confronted with plasma, LCD, DLP, OLED, and laser televisions. And now, the age-old term LED has been stirred into the mix. Let's take a look at what those three magic letters mean, how they apply to televisions, and why you might want to consider buying one."

CLICK HERE FOR LED TV PRICING & SHOPPING

Overall, the NZXT Panzerbox Classic Series case is very well made and attractive unit that is priced on par with other "mid-level" enthusiast cases. After lugging it around for a few weeks I can also say that while it is not the lightest gaming case I've ever had, it is certainly not akin to lugging around a boat anchor.

Ikonik is a new player in the game of high quality enthusiast chassis. With companies like Silverstone, Lian-Li, Cooler Master, Gigabyte and Antec overshadowing the market, the name Ikonik may be foreign to even the most up to date chassis enthusiast. Ikonik however, has a group of experienced employees who all have the same goal in mind. A goal to create high quality products that are functional and durable that look good while doing so. Having previously reviewed Ikonik's Ra X10 Liquid, we are familiar with what Ikonik can bring to the table. Sporting the same features as its big brother, we are very anxious to see how this case performs with an air cooled configuration.

"After reviewing all of the benchmarks and taking into consideration the purpose of the ARTiGO A2000, I can say that it has shown itself very well in managing and serving data despite its apparent inadequacies in actually performing CPU or graphics intensive tasks. At $239, this low-power network server seems to run cool, quiet, and stable, while still performing well in a battery of tests that put the strain on its Nano-ITX motherboard and VIA C7-D 1.5 GHz processor. When all was said and done, the ARTiGO A2000 did what it was made for: it provided an excellent solution to network storage..."

CLICK HERE FOR VIA ARTiGO PRICING & SHOPPING

"In today's economy many people need to be frugal, which is often very difficult when shopping for a kilowatt power supply. However, we may be in luck today since we're looking at the BFG EX-1000 power supply, a very sleek kilowatt modular unit that promises performance for those on a tight budget."

Much like with the Kingston memory the Corsair Dominators were able to make it above the 2000MHz mark. However, they didn't make it quite as far. The Dominators were able to reach speeds of 2026.6MHz with timings of 9-9-8-24. With Corsair's DHX cooling, these modules should be able to run at these settings without any problems. I know some of you skeptics are wondering why you'd need memory that runs at 2000MHz. The answer is you really don't, but having memory that can achieve these higher speeds is a good thing. This means you'll be able to overclock your CPU farther then you would have been able to with a generic memory kit.

CLICK HERE FOR Corsair Dominator 2x2 GB DDR3 1600 PRICING & SHOPPING

Are you thinking of purchasing a new computer? or simply just going to sell/give away an old machine? You may want to read this! Most of us know before ever disposing of a computer, whether we are selling it, or simply getting rid of it for a new one we must format the hard drive to ensure nobody can get to our private data, banking details, pictures, emails etc. I am certain there is at least one piece of information on your computer that you do not want anyone to see, you may have deleted it in the past, but it can certainly still be lurking around in cache or temporary directories on your computer.

“BIOSTAR is one of the biggest manufacturers when it comes to AMD base small factor motherboards. This model is based on AMD 785G chipset, has 128MB Sideport memory and supports CPUs with TDP up to 125W. However, before we sink our teeth into this motherboard let’s reflect on AMD 758G chipset and its market position…”

CLICK HERE FOR BIOSTAR TA785GE PRICING & SHOPPING

"Calling the Epson Stylus NX515 an all-in-one is a bit of stretch, considering it doesn't include a fax machine. On the other hand, not everyone wants or needs to send and receive faxes, and eliminating that feature while retaining a flatbed scanner brings the price of this pretty and relatively capable printer down to just $150. As such, the machine is certainly recommendable, albeit only for certain tasks. Read on for more details on whether or not it fits your needs."

CLICK HERE FOR Epson Stylus NX515 PRICING & SHOPPING

"After testing some "giant coolers" today we reviewed a "normal sized" model, Alpine 11 Pro from Arctic Cooling, which has a conventional size, no heatpipes and a full-aluminum heatsink. Will it perform well in our tests?"

The Arctic Cooling Silentium range of desktop chassis has slowly evolved with the latest enclosure now being the T5. One of the unique selling points of these chassis’ is that they are eco friendly incorporating a highly efficient power supply capable of supporting SLI or Crossfire graphics cards as well as a quad core CPU.

“EKL is an german cooler manufacturer with the own brand “Alpenföhn”. Die coolers from the Alpenföhn series are very interesting, expensive to manufacture and high quality. Also the selected names for the products are very creative. The Nordwand is a big Tower cooler for Intel and AMD processors. We have tested him on a Core i7 920. More about the temperatures and volume you can find in the review.”

Quad core processors, multiple video cards, and multiple hard drives are common components in computer enthusiasts setups. Providing quality power to these components is not resolved by buying the cheapest, highest rated power supply (PSU) you can find. The proper solution is to find a PSU that is reputable and efficient for your setup. Many PC builders are clouded by the cost of high quality PSUs. Instead of buying a proper PSU, builders will sometimes skimp on the PSU cost to be able to get a faster video card or more components. The fact is, the PSU is the most important piece of hardware in every computer.

CLICK HERE FOR Thermaltake Toughpower XT 850W PRICING & SHOPPING

There was no shortage of gaming headphone vendors at PAX 09. Not only were Astro, Dolby and Tritton there, but Turtle Beach was showing off some of their headsets designed for gamers.

"True to their company slogan "leading the world of quiet computing solutions", Zalman identifies each of their silent CPU coolers with CNPS in the model number. CNPS stands for Computer Noise Prevention System. The new 10X represents Zalman's first foray into the more conventional rectangular-fin tower style. There are two models to choose from, a basic no-frills Quiet version and the more advanced performance-oriented Extreme, both of which we will be looking at today."

CLICK HERE FOR Zalman CNPS10X Quiet PRICING & SHOPPING

CLICK HERE FOR Zalman CNPS10X Extreme PRICING & SHOPPING

It wasn’t that long ago that I took a close look at the Steel Series Siberia Neckband headset. My complaints almost all came from the neckband holding the headset up. Steel Series does make a Siberia headset that has a standard headband. Today I have the chance to test it out, and to spice things up a little bit this one is bright red, If my wife’s excitement is any indication the Siberia Full-Size headset should be nice.

CLICK HERE FOR Steel Series Siberia PRICING & SHOPPING

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

With the release of the X58 chipset around 10 months ago, a lot has changed in the world of computer hardware. Suddenly, gamers and hardcore enthusiasts were able to purchase a motherboard which supported both SLI and CrossFire, were able to run memory in an all-new triple-channel scenario and last but not least, make use of the awesome performance the i7 series processor offered. Although many would have liked to upgrade to the X58/i7 platform, doing it inexpensively was one of the largest roadblocks caused by this new technology.

CLICK HERE FOR ASUS P6T SE X58 i7 Motherboard PRICING & SHOPPING

In a time when all of our information is going digital there is more of a need for a way to store our information securely. The Vantec NexStar Vault aims to make this data secure by providing the security of a keypad, along with data encryption.

HTPC cases have turned into big sellers on the market as they tend to match your home theater systems and allows you to use them as media computers. Media computers are handy when it comes to viewing movies, listening to music and viewing pictures as an example.

CLICK HERE FOR Luxa 2 LM300 Touch Pro PRICING & SHOPPING

We understand that you don't have to like the price, but you have to love the power that the NVIDIA GPU offers. What tends to happen though with these high-end video card models from NVIDIA is that very few companies mix it up. Even though the video card has clearly been around the block a few times, it continues to be the fastest video card on the market and Galaxy decided to mix it up even more to get our, err… performance buds tingling even more.

It's time for another power supply review and this time we have the pleasure of reviewing the Silverstone Technology Strider 600 watt power supply. This power supply features 100 percent modular technology along with a large 135mm fan to help keep everything operating at a safe and cool temperature. Take a minute and have a look at our review and see just how well the Strider 600 performs.

The Gelid Silent Spirit is slightly larger than a stock OEM cooler plus it utilizes four heat pipes. Does the Gelid Silent Spirit have what it takes to compete with the OEM cooler variants?

CLICK HERE FOR Gelid Silent Spirit PRICING & SHOPPING

"We know that the Crucial M225 SSD looks gorgeous, and more importantly, it is one of the least expensive Indilinx-based drives on the market. That's all fine and dandy, but what about performance? Has Crucial used their time wisely and harnessed the power the technology has to offer? Let's put the M225 against several of the top SSDs on the market and find out."

CLICK HERE FOR Crucial M225 128GB SSD PRICING & SHOPPING

" At the rated timings and voltage, these modules scale all the way to 2000MHz without so much as an increase in voltage. To get above 2030MHz, I had to bump the cas latency and TRCD to 9. This took me all the way to 2180MHz, 580MHz (290MHz) over the rated speeds, all without the help of massive voltage increases. At this point, I was left speechless! Kingston has come a long way from the times when I could do no better than 2MHz over the rated speed on some DDR 400 HyperX modules that currently reside in a system build for a family member years ago."

The competition among Solid State Drive manufacturers is reminiscent of the video card wars between AMD and NVIDIA a few years ago. The invention of new controller technology has slowed somewhat, while each company races to combine high-speed NAND with custom firmware tweaks to produce the fastest SSD speeds possible. The Indilinx Barefoot controller has exploited a dominant hold over the consumer SSD market during the past several months, and 'overclocked' Solid State Drive products are beginning to replace 'new' product designs. In this article, Benchmark Reviews tests the fastest MLC SSD we've discovered to-date: the 256GB eXtreme-edition Corsair X256 CMFSSD-256D1.

Here are some more Intel i7/i5 release from around the web. Ours will be up shortly and was delayed due to a supporting hardware failuer that foced us to completely re-benchmark everything.

Techreport
Pro-clockers
Driverheaven
Bjorn3d
Xsreviews
OCaholic hardware-mag.de
Legitreviews
Benchmarkreviews

"The Cooler Master Hyper N620 lived up to my expectations. It is solidly built, engineered well, and performs well. The heatsink works on a variety of mounting types, even back to socket 754, which I was surprised about. The Hyper N620's base is slightly concave, as I pointed out the "pinch" on my nose while looking at my reflection in the otherwise mirrored finish base. I did check with a straight edge up against a light, and it was clear that there was a slight concavity. Not much, but it was there."

CLICK HERE FOR Cooler Master Hyper N620 PRICING & SHOPPING

"When considering which PC to buy, the terms "all-in-one" and "performance" needn't be mutually exclusive: Look no further than Dell's XPS One, HP's TouchSmart, or Apple's iMac product lines for proof. These machines are outfitted with components that render them strong enough to keep up with most mainstream conventional desktop rigs. ViewSonic's All-in-One VPC100 is a whole 'nother kettle o' bits, though. While it's true this computer is priced several hundred dollars less than those other machines, the manufacturer's component choices sadly render it fit only for the simplest of computing tasks."

CLICK HERE FOR ViewSonic VPC100 PRICING & SHOPPING

Corsair is well known as being a company that gets things right when they release new products, so naturally their announcement of a case into their lineup got people excited. Its name? The Obsidian 800D. Living off of a mere trickle of information about it for the last few months was hard but it is finally here and we put it through its paces.

CLICK HERE FOR Corsair Obsidian 800D Full Tower Case PRICING & SHOPPING

“Cooler Master Storm product series is intended for gamers and Scout is new addition to that gaming family. After Sniper case, in our test labs arrived Scout: younger and smaller brother of Sniper. It main characteristics are: military stealthy design paired with traditional Cooler Master build quality. Since it shares a lot of features with previously reviewed Sniper we won’t waste your time on describing all of its features…”

CLICK HERE FOR Cooler Master Storm Scout PRICING & SHOPPING

What do you look for in a gaming case? do you look for great customization options, do you look for ways to connect large 200mm fans everywhere you can, maybe you want something that is more convenient to carry then most cases, or maybe you look for a case with no flair but has a massive internal compartment with lots of room to work in. well with the Cooler Master CM Storm Sniper you can have all of this, minus the no flair part. With this “mid-tower” case (its one drive off of being a full tower) you get tons of room to work in, great cooling options and air flow, as well as a case as tough as a brick crap house, only with much nicer looks. Let’s take a closer look at this monster of a case and see what else it has in store for us:

CLICK HERE FOR Cooler Master CM Storm Sniper PRICING & SHOPPING

Mushkin's GeForce GTX 295 comes in a very stylish wooden box that radiates "premium product" as soon as you have it in your hands. Other than that the card follows NVIDIA's single PCB GTX 295 reference specifications to the letter, but also comes at an attractive price point of $499.

The Intel P55 Express chipset and the LGA-1156 CPUs are Intel’s new mainstream solution replacing the Core 2 Quad and Duo solutions earlier. As such the MSI P55-CD53 motherboard is a value board with costs of around $109 online at launch. The board does the job with performance that matches the Intel reference board. Turbo Mode does not seem to overclock the CPU as much as on the Intel Extreme board, but the combination of the OC Genie and gradual overclocking using the + button on the board I was able to hit over 3.4GHz with the Intel Core i5 750, a nearly 800MHz Overclock. Overall this motherboard is great for those wanting to get onto the new i5 bandwagon, but don’t want to pay the high price for a new setup.

Here are some reviews of the new i5 and i7 Intel Lynnfield processors being released today for review. Our review on this processor will be released later today as well.

Here are some other links till ours comes out:

Benchmarkreviews
Techgage
Hardwaresecrets
Elitebastards
Hardocp
Tweaktown
Overclockersclub
Hardwarecanucks
Hothardware
Motherboards.org

"With the launch of Intel's Lynnfield LGA1156 socket processors upon us, motherboard manufacturers have been gearing up for the big Core i5 and Core i7 into the mainstream market, busy readying boards for release. One of the new motherboards is the P55H-A Black Series from ECS, as they look to continue their push further into the market with what are essentially affordable enthusiast products in their Black Series lineup."

A while back we had the opportunity to take a look at Cooler Master’s Notepal Infinite laptop cooler, unique for its ability to support up to 17″ wide screen laptop, as opposed to the average 14~15.4″ limit. More recently, however, Cooler Master has release a new line of cooling options, and included is the Notepal X2, the Infinite’s big brother, so to speak, rivaling it as the second CM laptop cooler supporting wide screens. With a new look, new features, and new design, its time to see how the X2 stacks up in the harsh realm of notebook cooling.

CLICK HERE FOR Cooler Master Notepal X2 PRICING & SHOPPING

"Input devices are arguably the most important pieces of hardware you buy for your PC. A $5,000 computer is only as good as its peripherals, and by the same token, a good keyboard and mouse can make a budget rig feel like a million bucks. I have recently become a collector and connoisseur of the finer input devices such as mechanical keyboards. When asked to review a new mouse from Cooler Master, I jumped at the chance to put this device through the paces."

“Gaming grade peripherals have always been the crème de la crème when it comes to mice, keyboards, etc. But is there that much of a difference to be had between different peripheral manufacturers? There are a few things which are apparent even before testing – aesthetics and price. So let’s take a look at one competitor, the OCZ Behemoth.”

CLICK HERE FOR OCZ Behemoth Gaming Mouse PRICING & SHOPPING

Here at Tech-Reviews we’ve unfortunately never had the chance to review any desktop memory kits. However, whilst spec’ing up the components for our new i7 test rig an email suddenly dropped in my inbox from OCZ as they wanted to send us some OCZ Platinum DDR3 memory for review. After taking a look at the specifications and features of the memory, it seemed to be the perfect kit for an i7 rig – their website confirmed this with it stated that they’re designed and optimized specifically for i7 processors.

CLICK HERE FOR OCZ 6GB DDR3 PC3-12800 Platinum PRICING & SHOPPING

Today we will be having a look at a Radeon HD 4890 from ASUS which falls into the Formula series of video cards. With some pretty impressive versions of this GPU out lately already, ASUS will have to offer us something that stands out from the pack, if they want to be considered by potential buyers.

The last time we reviewed one of Seasonics power supplies was in January of 2008, and the model was the S12II. Now fast forward 20-months later and we are reviewing their power supply the S12D. Notice anything similar to these two unit? I think the big thing to take away from this is the when you have a good thing going why mess it up. So join us as we check this new addition to the already outstanding lineup of Seasonic Power Supplies.

“ASUS O!Play arrived in our test lab as first device of this kind made by ASUS and in area where WD TV is considered to be one of the best devices in Home Entertainment segment. Of course we were very interested
to see how newcomer will prove himself. Our previous experience with similar devices shows that manufacturers often made mistakes that significantly diminished usability of their devices…”

CLICK HERE FOR ASUS O!Play PRICING & SHOPPING

Silverstone have taken onboard specific criticisms of the original case, such as the front door mechanism and the top panel design and have opted for something quite different, yet equally as radical.

"For the $70 price tag, the Cooler Master Gladiator 600 is an exceptional bargain. It offers good airflow, sturdy construction, convenient features, and looks great. Cable management is easy, but could use a little more room on the back side, and the exhaust fan at the top doesn’t leave enough room for the huge coolers that are on today’s market."

CLICK HERE FOR Cooler Master Gladiator 600 PRICING & SHOPPING

It's OK to arrive fashionably late to a party, as long as you have something to add. ASUS has been offering their MATRIX branded video cards to the public well after the initial buzz has died down, for each GPU launch. The 9800GT and 4870 MATRIXcards were released in 2008, followed by the GTX260 MATRIX in early 2009. ASUS now releases the GTX285 MATRIX featuring the fastest single GPU available, supplied by NVIDIA. Benchmark Reviews looked at the ASUS ENGTX285 TOP back in January, which drew heavily from the NVIDIA reference design. Let's take a closer look at how they've stretched the limits on their latest offering, which is anything BUT a standard design.

You can read many reviews about many speakers. You won’t find many speakers like the JM Focal Chorus Series. For those audiophiles reading this you well know the fine tradition of Focal. This family company, which since its inception in 1979, has burgeoned – because they build something special.Let's get a good look at their Chorus Series Speaker and see what you can expect from your, not so average grade, speakers:

Looking for a USB hub or a Starwars product? Well you can get both in one product, we are looking at the R2-D2 usb hub that even makes the same sounds as he does in the movie. It is cool looking and all but can it perform like other USB hubs?

"Today for review I've got the new Arctic Cooling Alpine 11 Pro CPU cooler. This cooler is small in size, and it's actually compatible with both LGA775 and 1155/1156 sockets so you'll be able to use it on that new upgrade you're planning on doing. The Alpine Pro 11 is a black style cooler, meaning it's a solid block of aluminum, no fancy heatpipes, this is old-school style cooling at its finest. I've put it up against the stock Intel cooler on my C2Q6600 CPU for comparison and found it's a decent upgrade over the stock cooling solution. It's small size make it great if you're short on room in your case, and it's silent as well, so it might make a nice cooler for an HTPC setup. Read on..."

"HEC has been building computer chassis since 1991, and they've got plenty of experience in the field, experience they've applied in the design of the HEC 98 Series full tower, a massive yet beautifully crafted case. Today we've got the HEC 98 Series full tower to review, and we will see whether it can keep up with the demands of today's system builder, and if its functionality can match its aesthetic appeal."

"The goal of this article was to show how to build a mini-ITX HTPC system capable of playing Blu-Rays for under $600 in hardware. The end result is a system that can easily play Blu-Ray and other high-definition content with no stutters at all. The mini-ITX form factor is very sleek and the fact that you can cram a system like this into a chassis this small is awesome. Once I got past the size of the form factor, the highlight of the build has to be the power consumption numbers. The highest power consumption that I saw on this mini-ITX system was just 36 Watts at the wall during gaming. It looks like that 60W power supply brick that comes with the Travla C287 mini-ITX chassis will be able to offer plenty of power for the time being..."