Week of December 7, 2008

For FSP's first review here at Overclockers Online, they haven't done a bad job at all. The Power Mod 700W may not be the prettiest unit out there, but it does get the job done. The unit remained quiet through all tests and the modular connections were a big plus. The unit did perform well in all of our tests. As we slowly piled on the load and turned on the heat, the Power Mod 700W looked promising. The voltage regulation was steady and the unit remained quiet.

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I think we all know by now that digital SLR technology is “the standard” when it comes to choosing a camera. DSLR business has and continues to be very strong and popular among consumers this Christmas and coming New Year 2009 who are looking for change from their little point and shoot digital cameras. I’m sure you’ll agree with me regarding popularity as looking at the papers each week shows digital SLR deal after deals being offered.

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IKONIK's latest power supply comes with a whopping 1200W of output power. It offers six 6+2 PCI-Express connectors, which means it is able to handle any video card configuration you can throw at it. The efficiency of over 83% also makes it a viable choice for green computing.

Asus manufacture some of the best motherboards in the business and their product range expands out to laptops, displays and even mobile devices. A couple of years ago Asus came out with the Lamborghini VX1. It was nippy, stylish and carried the famous Lamborghini badge. Today were going to look at the latest in their series of Lamborghini products, the VX3 laptop. Unlike the previous machines in the series, this latest addition to the line has shrunk down to a 12.1 laptop, slightly bigger than the netbooks floating around the market but smaller than any high performance laptops weve seen. It really is an ideal size for a potent combination of portability and speed.

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"Overall I have mixed feelings about the Antec Skeleton. The geek in me loves it; the dad in me is scared of it. As a father of two under the age of 10 there is more then one occasion that something will go flying across the room. Even in my office I was leery of people around the system that were holding drinks and leaning over the case. Those that have pets at home might also want to think twice as a cat on catnip might find the 250mm disco fan a little too interesting..."

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"Although I do like what Palit have done with their Geforce 9600GSO Sonic, I feel that they've fell short in the performance department. But that's not the fault of Palit, but rather Nvidia's. The Palit Geforce 9600GSO Sonic is probably ideal for the budget conscious gamer, but for the rest of us, I suggest you take a look elsewhere ... there are there are so many other better performing cards out there on the market."

I must admit to having something of a soft spot for highly compact ATX cases. One of my personal favourites of yesteryear was the Antec LanBoy – a very compact and well built aluminium ATX chassis much in the vein of the PC-9 which had a lot of the features of higher specification chassis, while still being very affordable.

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When I heard that I was going to be getting the Gigabyte EP45T-Extreme I was extremely excited. It's been quite a long time now since I've gotten my hands on a motherboard designed specifically for overclocking. The last one was from DFI, back when their LanParty boards were king. My past few boards have been from MSI, and although they make quality products, their BIOS options for overclocking are somewhat limited and not what I would consider designed for advanced users.

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In the PC industry, companies aren't allowed to sit on their laurels very long. Video cards become dinosaurs in a few months time. New processors come out just about once a month. "Hey, Joe. You going to get that new Intel Core Quad? It's 2 MHz faster with an extra kb of l2 cache." Case companies aren't entirely immune to this unstoppable force crunching tired technology underfoot. If they were, the same cases from years past would still litter the shelves of retailers like Best Buy. Though innovations like new form factors are slow to come about, case manufacturers must stay abreast of the latest peripheral technology and cooling breakthroughs. Not to mention, consumers are notoriously finicky. The case design loved last year might just be loathed this year. Staying ahead of that curve is rather difficult. Some companies find a happy medium and ride it like a pony at a 5 year-old's birthday party. Other's are more daring and constantly attempt to push the envelope. I like to consider Aerocool one of the latter. Their designs sometimes look a bit out of the ordinary, but the dedication to innovation is always evident. Today I'm reviewing the AeroRacer Pro. Its unique appearance showcases the courage of its conviction. This box is meant for people obsessed with cooling and it's not afraid to let it be known.

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"This pair of GTX260s coming from XFX is nothing short of impressive. They feature an awesome looking heatsink and the bundle it comes with is all you need to get started - a couple adapters as well as the award winning Call of Duty 4. This is also the latest version of the 260, equipped with 216 processing cores and each of those are clocked to 640MHz, which is 64MHz over the standard edition. That's better than nothing, but since I just cannot settle with factory settings I, of course, overclocked these cards as much as it could. I was able to take the cores to 732MHz, which is pretty decent headroom. Obviously, the GTX260 is a very good performer, but as you have seen, a pair of them in SLI performs even better. The twins won every single benchmark of our suite except for Futuremark's 3DMark06 which, for some reason, has always performed better on ATI video cards."

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Back in September of 2007 Benchmark Reviews tested Cooler Master's Cosmos RC-1000 full-tower computer case, and was so impressed with the fine attention to detail that it earned our Golden Tachometer Award. Then, a few month later in February of 2008, we witnessed the Cooler Master Cosmos S arrive to the scene with a darkened appearance and sport-car curves. So it's fitting then that Cooler Master offer their most revered computer case in a limited edition set. In this article, Benchmark Reviews tests the Cooler Master Cosmos Black Label Limited Edition E-ATX full-tower computer case kit (SKU: RC-1000S-KKN2-GP), as a supplemental installment to our original comprehensive Cosmos 1000 review.

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"In the months following CES 2008 we have seen a proliferation of hot-swap hard drive docks come to market that all bear such a striking resemblance to the original BlacX that we can only come to the conclusion that Thermaltake is licensing the design. Such is the case with the product we have for review today, the Sunbeamtech HDD Docking Station. Like the original, the Docking Station supports 2.5" and 3.5" SATA hard drives up to 1Tb in size in an easy-to-use hot-swap base connected to the computer via USB. While the original BlacX did not support eSATA, that has since become an added feature and one the Sunbeamtech Docking Station also offers."

Overeall I found the Antec Veris Multimedia Station Premier to be well worth the price. It easily converts any PC (even a packaged PC) into a Home Theater PC (HTPC) with a minimum of fuss and muss, while providing many convenient features. The remote, receiver, display and software are all intelligently designed and conveniently laid out.

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With a single eye half closed, we take a look at the Zotac's nForce 630i-ITX. Based on the Mini-ITX form factor with a surface area of just 170mm², this board is really very small and would fit great into an HTPC or mini PC case. Add dual display ports and an HDCP compliant DVI output, it's already hinting its purpose.

Here are some more shots on the GeForce GTX 295 card. Enjoy! Among other things we have confirmed today are 480 SPs, 289W TDP, Quad SLI support. Clock speeds, performance and price still remains a mystery but we will soon find out. Can RV775 X2 card stands against this NV offering?

In this review we will be looking at the new MicroATX motherboard from DFI called the LanParty Jr 790GX-M2RS. This motherboard is a perfect blend between the enthusiast power we have come to expect from DFI and the practicality found in the smaller MicroATX hardware offerings.

At first glance this mouse has some blatant similarities to a bunch of other mice I’ve reviewed before, including OCZ’s Dominatrix. But it’s not surprising that companies have been adopting this shell for a while now, because it’s a form-factor that works well!

"I have to congratulate Lian-Li for producing a very nice chassis for the mainstream market. It offers excellent build quality, solid Aluminum construction, it's light-weight, strong and it's got some great features. It might not suit the gamer or the highend enthusiast user ... but for everyone else it's perfect."

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After first wave of cheap netbooks, luxurious variants are starting to appear on the market. As it was the case with first netbooks, ASUS again made a first move in that direction and as result we got one crossbred luxurious netbook in our test lab. Even though ASUS N10J, technical sample that we got in our test lab, looks like classic representative of netbook product (with slightly bigger dimensions), it’s not that simple to determine its product category. If we would try to define netbook product category in general, we would say that they have: small dimensions, low power consumption CPU, integrated graphics and no optical device. ASUS N10J is all that and something more…

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"Think Excitement – Think Spedo” is the marketing expression for the Thermaltake Spedo Advanced Package Case. And I could not agree more, with the innovative Advanced Thermal Chamber 3 Cooling System and the Cable Routing Management 3 System, you would be hard pressed to pack any more excitement or innovation in to the Themaltake Spedo Case. The Spedo Advanced Package Case has a sleek design on the outside and keeps the inside looking simple.

As per most SSDs, Patriot's Warp series of drives use MLC (Multi-Level Cell) technology with all of the usual abilities such as wear levelling, provided in a 2.5" package. The subject of today's review is the smallest member of this particular family in capacity terms, providing 32GB of storage.

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"Aim-and-forget cameras rule-especially this time of year! We're all for the myriad tweaks available on D-SLRs, but there's something very comforting about a camera that simply takes very good snapshots-all you have to do is put it in Auto, zoom and press the shutter. The 10-megapixel Canon PowerShot SD880 IS Digital ELPH is just such a camera and long-time DT readers know we're big fans of Canon's better point-and-shoots. And this one has a 3-inch LCD, a nice 28-112mm lens, optical image stabilization and an enhanced processor. With the holidays rolling in, with friends and family on the horizon, what better way to save memories than with some cool snapshots? Now is the SD880 the perfect holiday gift to grab those images?"

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"To overclock the Sapphire HD 4650 I chose to use the ATI Catalyst Control Center's Overdrive Utility. I started off raising the GPU clocks 5MHz at a time until the system became unstable and then backed down 1MHz at a time until stability returned. I did the same thing for the memory speeds to achieve optimum results. I was able to push the GPU to 690MHz stable which might not seem very high for an overclock but remember this card is pre-clocked from the factory already so this is about where it is expected to be. The memory maxed out at the rated 1000MHz for the type of Hynix memory used. One thing of note I want to mention is I was able to push the memory beyond 1000MHz using ATI tool however it was not stable and caused artifacting during testing. For my overclocked numbers the final speeds will be 690MHz on the GPU and 1000MHz on the 512MB GDDR3 memory."

Deep within the realms of overclocking, you will find a lot of options for cooling your system. Nothing beats cooling your components properly than a series of fans, water, and what not (phase, ln2, etc.). Most overclockers will tend to focus more on cooling than most. For example, you won't commonly find fans covering mosfets on your memory prom or the VR's on the backside of your motherboard. Most of the time it's just a heatsink or heatpipe assembly that, in turn, relies on the overclocker to keep it cool. Well, welcome to the best of both worlds, because Thermaltake (TT) has copper hat-tricks for us with their RamOrb.

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Godfrey Cheng, Director of Technical Marketing in AMD's Graphics Product Group, has said that PhysX will die if it remains a closed and proprietary standard.

"There is no plan for closed and proprietary standards like PhysX," said Cheng. "As we have emphasised with our support for OpenCL and DX11, closed and proprietary standards will die."

This was part of AMD's response to our questions about EA's and 2K's decision to adopt PhysX across all of their worldwide studios earlier this week.

Last month Intel launched their latest series of processors... Core i7. These CPUs require new motherboards and currently all of these use Intels X58 chipset. As the Core i7 range is likely to appeal to enthusiast users it is no surprise that the first batch of boards hitting the market are packed with features and designed to satisfy the needs of overclockers as much as mainstream users. Today we have three of these boards on our review bench and we will be running them through a selection of tests, mainly in real world scenarios, to establish which deserves to be the basis for your new Core i7 system.

When it comes to cases, Coolermaster aren't exactly known for their subtleties. With chassis like the Stacker range that have dominated the large tower market for years, it's about time they introduced something new; but hopefully just as OTT. Their new range is called the HAF, and I'm looking at the 932 model. It's a pretty monstrous in terms of size and cooling ability.

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"I would recommend this board to anyone looking for a cheap net browsing or office PC with a super tight budget who needs the ability to add a graphics card later. Although its not a performance board it never pretended to be it does exactly what it says on the box and it does it well."

MSI has exceeded all expectations with the MSI X58 Eclipse motherboard with a bundle like you wouldn't believe, performance that matches or beats the competition in this marketplace and overclocking ability like there's no tomorrow. The Eclipse gets a solid Editor's Choice award from me and a solid recommendation to buy this board if you are looking for a new motherboard based upon the X58 chipset this board is hard to beat. The included extras like the D-LED2, a Creative Labs X-Fi sound card and the ability to install three GTX 280s or HD 4870 cards makes this a good choice for those that want the highest performing system available on the market today.

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As its name implies, the EN9800GT Matrix is based on NVIDIA's GeForce 9800 GT GPU, but Asus puts their own spin on the card with a slight factory overclock and a unique custom cooler.

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"Tucked away under the cooler on the MSI Radeon HD 4830 are the eight Samsung memory ICs that make up the 512MB for the 256-bit frame buffer. Notice that the 4 + 1 phase power design uses solid capacitors and solid state chokes. This helps reduce loading and provides more stable and power and a longer lifespan. Not all the capacitors are solid state though, as the video card has five electrolytic capacitors..."

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" Today for review I've got a scanner, it's the Fujitsu ScanSnap S300 Mobile scanner and it's just an excellent all around product that works perfectly for everything that it does. It features dual power sources, so you can use it while traveling with power from a USB port, or use a standard AC adapter for home or office use. Its small and lightweight making it very portable, it scans double sided documents and can import them directly to PDF format if you wish. the ScanSnap S300 can also scan to JPEG and will scan business cards, then import the information directly into your contacts for you. The ScanSnap S300 is just a great scanner all around, be it for home/office use or on the go…"

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"The new Cooler Master ATCS 840 is an all-aluminum full-tower case supporting two power supplies, coming with four fans (one 230-mm fan on the front panel, two 230-mm fans on the top and one 120-mm fan on the rear), removable motherboard tray, several other features we will talk about and a very conservative looks. Let's take an in-depth look on this latest release by Cooler Master."

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"Relative to other HD4670s, this MSI card was a good overclocker. In the end I was able to increase the RV730 core and memory clock by 100 and 150MHz respectively. The HD4670's clocks were adjusted using CCC. Temperatures were monitored using CCC as well. To reach my final overclock I started by increasing the core and memory speeds by 25MHz until I hit system instability on anything above 849MHz on the core. I was able to increase the memory speed by another 50MHz from there however. In the end, any clock above 849/1149 caused instanteous and massive artifacting. Temperatures were never any issue in any of the testing as idle temps were in the low 30s."

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Have you ever been to the local computer store, just browsing the aisles, and you begin to make comparisons based solely on how something looks, how it's packaged, and so on? I know I'm guilty of it. You want to just spend some time looking around so you don't bother checking out the reviews first, and now you're thinking about buying that new power supply or that new motherboard because it seems like even the packaging was well thought out? To some, this may seem silly, but it happens more often than you think. What's this all about you ask? It's about the latest power supply available to us for review, the OCZ ModXStream-Pro 600W. It is certainly well packaged, but will it deliver the rock solid voltages that we're looking for?

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The best performance increase was in our Crysis benchmark with a pair of Radeon HD 4870 1GB cards running in CrossFire - Microsoft did promise some graphics performance improvements, but they weren't as unanimous as we were expecting them to be. This was really the only scenario out of the six that were tested where we saw any kind of performance increase.

This may be NZXT's first foray into gaming mice, but they have produced a solid initial offering. The Avatar seems to mix elements from other popular gaming mice with a bit of NZXT's own innovation to create a recommendable product. The comfort and performance of the mouse are key selling points, but the high level of customization is obviously important, too.

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"One of Nikon's latest digital cameras is the Nikon Coolpix S610c, which is a point-and-shoot camera that works out quite well for users out there due to its excellent indoor and outdoor photo quality as well built-in Wi-Fi. Its other features include a 10-megapixel resolution and a 3-inch LCD display on the back. Check our TechReviewSource.com's full review for all the details."

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The In Win Matrix is a unique and extremely compact mATX enclosure. It looks good all around, thanks to a clever design and features a unique and well thought out interior. Despite its small size you can still fit in a regular graphics card and several harddisks.

Performance is key for a PC and the Tracer kit doesn't disappoint. The tight stock timings generated reasonable performance numbers despite the lower speed we're use to seeing. Backed by a 30-day satisfaction guarantee and a limited life-time warranty, the timing to buy this kit couldn't be any better as we enter the holiday season. Your glowing and dazzling PC will be enough reason to not need to setup a Christmas tree!

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In the world of gaming mice, there are a few names that we see often, such as Logitech and Razer. But, a new entrant is here, and they're hoping to make a splash with their first-ever gaming peripheral. The Avatar from NZXT has both the style and design we're looking for, so let's see if it lives up to the rest of our expectations.

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How scary are the rodents of the future? Mice that can shoot lasers with advanced precision from a single eye. They have no fear and invade homes by the millions across the country. Around the world, even. And, they are wireless. But weren't mice always wireless? The disease-spreading kind were, but Verbatim's Recharge/Go wireless laser mouse is a picture of the advances we have made toward making wires a thing of the past.

"When it comes to mobile gaming, the issue of audio is one commonly ignored. The sounds coming from the games on your PSP or iPhone aren’t the most intriguing, so most people simply mute their mobile gaming device in public. Those little gadgets are for more than just games though. If you’re going to listen to music, you probably don’t want the cheap stock earbuds included with your device. Enter the Razer Moray in-ear headphones, today’s review item."

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"If you're a Nvidia fan who's looking for a decent graphics card that offer good performance with new features ... then the Palit Geforce 9800GTX+ is definitely worth considering. Featuring Nvidia's new 55nm G92 GPU that's slightly overclocked GPU @ 745Mhz, it's probably one of the most affordable Geforce 9800GTX+ available on the market."

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When it comes to computer cases I am about as picky as anyone can be. So when I reviewed the CoolerMaster ATCS 650 Full Tower Classic I was pleasantly surprised to find out that this was a case I could find nothing wrong with. Not only was it a case without major issues it was also a case that one of the best cooling arrangements we have ever seen in a reviewed case. So come on along an take a look at this one of a kind case.

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“Definition of wide display isn’t precisely defined, but in that category belong all displays that have dimension ratio “wider” then 4:3. How wider wasn’t important too much until HDTV standard got popular so it wasn’t too weird to find displays with 16:10 ratio (1.6). Now we have wide displays with “true” wide ratio 16:9 (1.78) that are perfectly fit for resolution of HDTV. Samsung 2343NW that we tested has unusual resolution and size but it is still wide 16.9 monitor…”

"It's always a pleasure to test new wireless devices. After all, there's nothing more annoying then a veritable jungle of wiring hanging from the PC. The Logitech Clear Chat PC Wireless is a headset (microphone + headphone) that not only is cordless but also truly plug-and-play, being very easy to install and promptly use. It's better for VoIP applications than gaming and listening to music, as we are about to see on our test."

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Generally speaking, Sapphire have stuck with AMD's reference Radeon HD 4650 design here, employing the same small, single-slot cooling solution and utilising the standard 600MHz core and 700MHz memory clock speeds to boot.

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"The Lian Li Silent Force 850W will provide what most PC users want: stable rails up to its rated maximum power. The efficiency, although very good, is borderline as far as 80 Plus certification is concerned, and at one point we get a power factor that dips below the required level of 0.9. The DC level and ripple on the 5V0 are slightly high, but don't let this put you off using the Silent Force 850W. It's a minor problem and will not, in my opinion, affect real world operation of the supply. If efficiency and power factor aren't top of your list of requirements, then this power supply will easily run all dual graphic card configurations with ease, and is on par with other power supplies in its class. The performance of the Lian Li Silent Force 850W power supply, although not perfect, was solid."

This is definitely one special board that has a lot to offer. For starters, it sports three PCI Express x16 slots for 3-way SLI, and it boasts support for up to nine SATA 3Gbps drives. Additionally, the mainboard supports 2,000MHz dual channel DDR3 with EPP and a front side bus up to 1,600MHz. The board was designed with enthusiasts in mind though, so you can rest assured that EVGA also includes a plethora of overclocking options in the BIOS. Continuing the trend, EVGA appeals to enthusiasts even further by offering a digital PWM circuit, an 8-phase power design, VDroop control, 100% solid state capacitors, and onboard clear CMOS, power and reset buttons.

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Since the introduction of DDR3 memory a few years back, with the Core 2 Duo/Quad CPU's, along with the P35, X38, X48 , and the P45 chipsets, we, as users, have never really seen a significant increase in our memory bandwidth over using DDR2 memory. It wasn't until Intel introduced the Core i7 CPU's and the X58 chipset with their capability of handling not just Dual Channel, but Tri Channel capabilities, that we finally saw a significant bandwidth increase with our memory. But with these newer CPU's, Intel also has imposed a memory voltage limitation of 1.65 volts max to the memory modules. Intel states that going over this amount of voltage can and will damage your CPU because of the way the IMC (Integrated Memory Controller) handles the memory.

So it’s faster than the competition, cool and quiet, but obviously Samsung wasn’t happy with releasing just a great high capacity hard drive – it had to go and make it affordable too. At just a little over £73 the Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB works out at just over seven pence a gigabyte, which is frankly ludicrously good value for money, especially when you compare it to the more expensive and slower Seagate 1TB which sells for closer to £80.

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"A lot of interesting motherboards from various manufacturers were based on AMD 780G, the predecessor of AMD 790GX. However, if there had existed a nomination for the most interesting product range, it would have been Gigabyte to win it. We've tested three motherboards, and awarded two of them. It goes without saying, we couldn't pass the only 790GX-based model from this manufacturer."

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The Hiper Type R Mk-II 680W is a unique power supply because it comes with an integrated 8-port USB hub. A ninth USB connector is dedicated to charging any USB based devices like your Iphone or Ipod, even while the PC is turned off. The PSU itself delivers excellent performance values in stability and fan noise. Efficiency is also high with 82%.

Antec are well known for making impressive products with extremely high build quality. One of our test systems with an Antec PSU has been running 24/7 now for around five years and still shows no sign of faltering ... a sure sign of high quality control.

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" ... from an end user, non-enthusiast point of view, the MSI X58 Platinum motherboard has everything going for it ... good performance, great features and it's cheaper than the Eclipse."

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Keeping your computer running cool is always a priority of a computer enthusiast. NZXT has created a case designed with cooling in mind. Dubbed the "Airflow King" the NZXT Tempest has six fans as well as options for water cooling as well. Touting great features and a budget price tag let's see how the NZXT Tempest performs.

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"Today we have an opportunity to examine some of the latest Leadtek products. In fact, the company has customized only the 9500GT series. Other cards are reference products with Leadtek stickers."

"iPhone/iPod Touch apps are all the rage and with their ease of installation, low prices (how does free sound?) and huge selection of choices, it's no wonder why. There are apps for just about everything you can think of and a bunch more you wouldn't have ever conceived. Some are extremely useful while others are purely fluff and fun. Many of them are very specialized (German translator anyone?) and appeal to only a small percentage of users. How about useful apps for the average Joe User? Here are my picks for the top 10 useful apps of 2008 in no particular order..."

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"Samsontech has sent me over their StudioDock 3i Active USB Monitors, yeah it's a fancy name for a set of speakers, but they're so much more than that. These speakers include an iPod dock, USB input and standard RCA inputs as well so they can be used for much more than just your PC. On the front of the speakers is even another input jack and a headphone jack along with a volume control knob to easily adjust the sound. These are a relatively inexpensive set of speaker that are decent sounding and can provide a nice audio solution for someone with an iPod and any other audio devices."

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There are also many more advantages which will give it a performance edge over many motherboards on the market today. These include it being an Intel socket LGA775, which currently supports some of the most powerful CPU's on the market. The board has an X48 chipset, and currently the premier gaming chipset. There is also support for DDR3, the fast growing standard in RAM. DDR3 can hit much higher speeds than DDR2 memory, making it far superior. With all these specifications, this board easily classifies itself as a high end gaming board. It should compete with the best gaming boards out there, giving you unparalleled performance.

It seems like everyone and their mother has a heatsink out now. Companies known for their graphics cards, power supply moguls, and case manufacturers have all had their go at making the latest and greatest heatsink. And most of the time, the ugliest. And now someone else wants to put their chilly mark on the cooling industry. Actually, it's a whole freaking country. They call themselves Noctua, and they want to show us that Austrians are as cool as the rest of us.

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"Connectivity is the other issue that Palit has addressed. By having four connectivity options the value of the card goes up in my mind. Display Port, DVI, HDMI and an anolog VGA output give you all kinds of flexibility. Display Port is not a popular option yet and is not very common, this will, of course, change in the future and this card will have some measure of future proofing based on its capabilities and connectivity. Performance-wise the Palit R700 fared about the same in the benchmarking as the Sapphire HD4870x2. At the lower resolutions it was beaten up a bit by the green camp, but once you start playing in the higher resolutions the performance comes alive or it just does not drop off. Probably a little of both. Overclocking the cores only gave me a 63MHz improvement, not huge but it will pay dividends. The memory overclock was huge though at 196MHz for a max speed of 1146MHz, nothing to sneeze at. By taking the road less traveled Palit has taken the HD4870X2 to a new level both in size and cooling capability."

This board is killing me because I want to like so much as the MSI team has clearly put in incredible effort and risk into designing the Eclipse SLI. Since just the P45 generation six months ago, so much has changed for the better which we need to give MSI credit for - the GreenPower core is excellent, the D-LED 2 is a good evolution, the board looks fantastic, it's stable with 12GB of memory and it's finally got a compelling market niche. The problem is that it's only 95 percent of the way there and it still needs attention to tidy up the loose ends - the BIOS and the software needs work, the cooling isn't wonderful, the D-LED 2 can evolve further, the X-Fi is either love or hate and the GreenPower Genie can go in the bin.

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The HD 4870 X2 is a beast of a video card, with performance that outstrips that of the GeForce GTX 280 in most applications where the CPU is not the limiting factor. Currently, the Palit Revolution 700 Deluxe Radeon HD 4870 X2 is a good buy for those wanting a quiet fast video card to run the latest games at a reasonable price for the highest end card on the market. Palit's card runs absolutely silently even under the heaviest load. The dual cooling fan solution does the job with stable temperatures even when overclocked.

"Like its smaller brother the HTC Touch Diamond, the Touch Pro adopts a decidedly angular case and HTC's own TouchFLO 3D interface, but adds on a slide-out QWERTY keyboard in an attempt to pitch the phone to more serious business users. While the sturdy keyboard certainly helps speed up data input, the phone's interface still chugs along at an unbelievably sleepy pace, which will prevent professionals from working at the speed they need to."

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The Maxima force is quite the bundle. This unit brushes off anything thrown in its direction, and maintains and incredibly quiet operational temperature, but more than performance this unit also looks good. With a black crinkle finish, the Maxima force has a subtle yet undeniable rugged appeal, yet at the same time elegance. Let's not forget, this is a Lian Li product. Fully sleeved cables and black connectors are a nice addition as well, and top off the deal.

"We have for review today Envision’s G218a1 Professional Series 22” widescreen display. At just over $160 at Geeks.com, the G218a1 definitely comes in friendly on your wallet and hopes to be a choice pick for the budget rig."

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Alongside the GK-K8000 GHOST series keyboard reviewed previously, GIGABYTE also sent along their GM-M8000 gaming mouse to complete the whole desktop. This squeaker sports a huge number of features and neat tricks to compete with the top gaming mice on the market.

"Sandisk has sent me over their Sandisk Cruzer Enterprise 2gb USB drive for review, it features hardware based 256bit AES encryption, mandatory access control, Lockdown mode, it's centrally manageable through Sandisk CMC software and it's the first encrypted drive to be compatible with Apple Mac OS X Computers. "

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“New battle on GPU battlefield that started with launch of RV770 GPU and as consequence had price drops on both sides: greens (nVIDIA) and reds (ATi). Because of that we have a lot of different products in relatively small price range. Inevitable deformations occurred in product lineup creating situation where different products can have identical prices. All that confusion is worsened thanks to strange nVIDIA product markings and ATi’s stubbornness when it comes to removing of older models, that are replaced with new ones, from the market. In a attempt to make things clear to all our readers we applied different testing routine…”

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Not too many people can remember the days when we didn't have too many options for cooling a CPU. I can personally recall using many zip ties to fasten a higher speed fan on top of an OEM Intel or AMD cooler and then manipulating dip-switches and jumpers on the motherboard to bump up the FSB and voltages for a friendly 5% overclock. It didn't take too long for several companies to get a clue, and before you knew it you had several coolers to choose from. One of those originators came to be known simply as the TT ORB. It was a low-profile, low-noise cooler that was easy to mount and use on a socket 370 CPU, and provided decent enough cooling for overclocking. It was an inexpensive pioneering achievement, to say in the least, and Thermaltake really started making a name for themselves due to their innovative philosophy.

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Palit is not known for launching cutting-edge products ahead of the competition, as they can be described as the tortoise in a race against the hare. What Palit does do well is deliver a refined (read: not rushed) product to store shelves. The Palit Revolution 700 Deluxe is one such example, which offers the Radeon HD 4870 X2 with 2048 MB of GDDR5 video frame buffer and is cooled by a proprietary triple-slot thermal solution. In this article, Benchmark Reviews tests the AE5487XSF0545-PM9348 SKU against many of the latest high-performance graphics products available to the retail market.

With recent laptop prices dropping recently, there are more and more people out there replacing their desktops with laptops. To do a complete replacement, you usually end up with a behemoth of a laptop that can roast your lap during heavy use. Of course you can opt to pick up one of the netbooks to play around with, but I consider that an under-powered companion, not a total replacement.

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With the GA-EX58-UD5, Gigabyte presents a mainboard which is based on Intels latest X58 chipset. Gigabyte packed this product full with features and tools. With this board Gigabyte provides you with triple SLI and CrossFire on the same mainboard. It should also be possible to overclock the EX58-UD5 very high.

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Today we have a look at MSI's first X58 motherboard named 'Eclipse'. It's a gaming series motherboard featuring some innovative features like, DrMOS, Triple PCI-e x16 slots that supports both nVidia's SLI and ATI's CrossFireX setups. Also MSI is taking it a step further and the package includes a Creative X-Fi PCI-e sound card.

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RE0 is the name of the brand new high-end in-ear solution from Head-Direct. Despite the naming scheme, these new in-ears have very little in common with its predecessors in the RE-line of products. Actually they are one of the best sounding in-ears that we ever tested.

"Our friends at Geek.com have sent me over on of their 22" LCD Monitors for review, it's from Envision and it's the G22LWK DVI Widescreen Monitor. As with most newer monitors this one features HDCP to make the most out of your digital content, it's got a resolution of 1680×1050 along with a 5ms response time. One of the more interesting features is that it includes both DVI and VGA or RGB analog connections and you can easily switch between them if need be with the push of a button in the menu. "

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“Nowadays many manufacturers are paying more attention on design than on printer functionality, but Epson decided to do just opposite. Epson B300 is printer designed for business and education institutions mostly, and its design brings us a few years back in time. Obviously manufacturer realized that this printer will just stand in a corner of some office, far away from user’s eyes. Fortunately, this design contributed to fact that usage of this device is very easy. Example of this is a pretty simple way of changing cartridges which are within easy reach…”

Cooling your expensive CPU is an important task and the level of cooling you choose can either make or break your system performance. If you're overclocking, it can mean the difference between a minor OC and one that can give you major bragging rights. Air cooling has come a long way, but water cooling has come even farther. With CPU's running faster you get higher heat, and air is okay for some people, happy with a decent overclcok, but if you're going for the gusto, you might need a little more.

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A third on the Mini-ITX front this week; it seems as if this micro standard is getting a huge boost. So far we have seen VIA really pushing EPIA for the card PC market, however, Mini-ITX has a home in the home, specifically, the Home Theatre and Digital Home PC segment. When it comes to compact designs, Mini-ITX is truly the ultimate in Mini PC’s. While we have smaller standards like Pico-ITX, their design is simply too small with limiting features, so Mini-ITX is the perfect compromise.