Week of February 8, 2009

"Today I've got part two of the Limited Edition Cooler Master Black Label Set, the HyperZ600 CPU Cooler. It's essentially the same as the original Z600, but just black colored. It's a large and heavy cooler featuring six heatpipes and the ability to use two fans for maximum cooling performance or use no fans for a truly silent system."

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"With easy to use enclosures the 2.5 harddrives have made it to the market, they are easy to carry along and they have also gotten faster. This makes them a good choice for a travel drive and for that you need a nice looking and also protective enclosure so you won't damage your device while traveling or moving it around. Today we are going to look at a enclosure from eagle tech with a built-in USB cable and has no need for any external power. Let's have a closer look at this and also see how it performs."

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"GeForce GTX 295 is based on two GPUs running at the same clock specs as GeForce GTX 260, but having more processing cores (240 against 216 or 192, depending on the version). Zotac's model (ZT-295E3MA-FSP) runs with the default clocks set by nVidia. Let's see what kind performance you can expect from this beast."

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"Consumers are looking for value in when putting together their shopping list with increased frequency. These same consumers still continue to seek the best performance for their dollar. Gigabyte seeks to fill the motherboard best performance for your dollar segment with their GA-EP45T-Extreme motherboard. We show you how extreme this copper clad warrior is and compare it to the fastest rig available in the 3DMark Vantage test for a cost vs performance comparison. Who do you think the winner will be?"

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"Sapphire has a track recorded of taking the reference designs from AMD/ATI and pushing them up a notch or two. The SAPPHIRE HD 4670 512MB GDDR4 is another fine example of their hard work."

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"Today for review I've got a quite interesting and innovative new mouse from Cyber E Sport, it's called the Orbita Freestyle Mouse and it looks nothing like your standard mouse. The Orbita is round and puck shaped, there are buttons on the side and the top, and the entire mouse spins for scrolling. Is it something that will replace your mouse? Probably not, but it is something that could be very useful in the right hands."

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"I've been running DDR3 on my Core 2 Quad systems for some time now and I've been very pleased with the overall results of its performance. Now, with the introduction of the new Intel Core i7 platform with its Triple Channel memory controller along with its QPI (Quick Path Interconnect) built into the CPU itself instead of the memory controller being intergraded into the Northbridge, it's going to bring overall memory performance to new performance heights for the competition to try and meet.

Today, we're going to be running a 6 gig kit of G. Skill's new high performance low voltage DDR3-1600 Tri-Channel Pi-Black memory through its paces on my newly acquired Intel Core i7 to see just how well it performs. Needless to say, I'm extremely excited to get into this review as it will be my first time running the Core i7 system as well as my first time running a G. Skill product. So, enough of the chit chat and let's get on with the review."

"The most aggressive company in the SSD market most likely is OCZ, who released no less than six new series of SSD drives during the past seven months. Today we will have a look at one of their mainstream series SSD models, the Apex 120GB. We are going to see how well the latest mainstream MLC SSD drive from OCZ can perform in this review."

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"The Scythe Kama Angle was quite an odd looking cooler, to say the least, but its "V" shaped design was a success. The performance is where it should be and definitely put a good fight against the large Xigmatek HDT-S1283 cooler. The cooler was also one of the quietest CPU coolers that I have come across. This shouldn't come as a surprise though as Scythe is known for its silent coolers. An impressive feature about this cooler is its flexibility."

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"The Antec 900 was one of the most popular gaming cases released in the past few years. It was good looking, had great cooling and some interesting features, and was even followed up by a little brother version, the Antec 300. Now though, Antec felt that it was time for a refresh, meet the Antec 900 v2. It's got whopping cooling options, along with a nice side window, dust filters have been added and it still looks damn sexy. Let's see how it holds up in our testing."

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Zotac's GeForce GTX 295 comes with two NVIDIA GT200b GPUs sandwiched together in one graphics card. The card can successfully defeat ATI's HD 4870 X2 in our benchmarks and offers plenty of overclocking headroom beyond that. Thanks to the 55 nm GPU design and clever power saving methods the card even delivers in the performance per Watt segment.

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The notebook itself is small in size and beautiful to look at. The entire top lid is covered with a bamboo layer that not only looks good but feels quite nice as well. It has definitely made heads turn. The bamboo finish continues on the palmrest including the trackpad and this makes the feel of the trackpad with the wooden texture incredible to glide your finger upon. It beats the Glassy trackpad on the Unibody designed Macbooks which I felt were the best I had used.

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It's been over half a year since the Radeon 4800 series of graphics cards first arrived, but there are still very much in the limelight. Manufacturers continue to produce new takes on the Radeon 4800 series and there is a 4800 series product aimed at every consumer segment, from low cost reference designs to premium solutions with custom cooling. ASUS and Sapphire are two such manufacturers and they have both recently released new 4800 series products aimed at the higher end performance segment.

"So today I've got the Limited Edition Cooler Master Black Label Cosmos Case for review, and it by far exceeds all of the hype surrounding it. The Black Label set is limited to 500 sets worldwide, so getting one kind of puts you in an exclusive club in terms of rarity of the set, but it also gives you one of the finest PC Cases ever made, the Cosmos 1000, done in all black of course. The Cosmos case is an amazing product in terms of usability, size and the quality of the craftsmanship, it truly is a site to behold. "

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“Cooler Master has been very busy of late launching several new cases, and today we’ll be looking at their latest, the Sniper, first in their new CM: Storm series lineup. As you can probably surmise, the Sniper is a tower that is targeted (no pun intended, honest) toward the gamer crowd, offering several robust features that are typically in demand by this market segment."

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“Maybe you are not aware of that, but chances that you already have Cooler Master cooler on your CPU are pretty big. How? Well, for example, every Intel Box cooler is actually made by Cooler Master. In their official product portfolio you can find large variety of CPU coolers. Right now Cooler Master “rules” in low and middle class CPU cooler products but in high end class Cooler Master was dragging behind “high rollers” in this “cool” game. Guided by idea that they need product that can compete with best of the best, Cooler Master has created (and presented) V series of coolers. Naming convention is simple so products in current lineup are: V8, V10 and V12. This time we present you Cooler Master V8 CPU cooler…”

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To put it plainly, the Sniper is not your average mid-tower case. With two massive 200mm fans, a military grade appearance and tons of convenience features, it is pretty clear what kind of buyers reside in the crosshairs of the Sniper.

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"Depending on which NH-U12P cooler you pick up dictates its compatibility - The standard cooler is suitable for both AMD and Intel systems, from the latter's LGA 775 socket to the formers Socket AM2 and AM2+, while the NH-U12P SE1366 only ships with support for Intel's new Core i7, Socket LGA 1366 CPUs. The actual body of the cooler itself is a pretty hefty beast, weighing in at 600 grams, which supports the installation of either one or two 120mm fans, with the SE1366 edition of the cooler shipping with a pair of fans by default compared to a single fan on the standard bundle. These bundled fans take the form of Noctua's own most excellent NF-P12 part, complete with its Ultra Low Noise Adapter to drop the fan's rotational speed to 900 RPM from its default 1300 RPM if you're looking to make your cooling solution as quiet as possible."

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"According to Asus, the V in the VW266H's rather convoluted model name stands for value, and the company delivers accordingly by serving up 25.5 inches of screen, full 1920 x 1200 resolution, and built-in audio with an MSRP of only $400. On paper, it's a budget monitor buyer's dream. On the desktop, it's pretty close. Though not perfect, the VW266H manages to juggle multiple priorities - including price - quite effectively, making it one of the most practical monitors in its size class."

“It may only be flexing 600 Watts. And, it may not look like it has anything special underneath that clean, sexy, black exterior. But, the CoolerMaster Silent Pro M 600W Power Supply does have some extra horse power hiding underneath the hood. This is why I suggested having a look at the test results before running off to buy a 700 Watt PSU. The Silent Pro M 600W is like a "sleeper" hot rod PSU hiding underneath that cool, black exterior.”

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Silverstone is a great leader in the computer chassis market and they have a very nice looking product that's very sleek and easy on the eyes. The Silverstone Fortress FT01B-W is a mid tower case that offers the functionality of a full tower, yet the quietness of a MiniATX case. Let's dig in and see what this case is all about.

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SteelSeries have built a name for themselves over the years by producing some of the most popular gaming headsets and surfaces in the business. We have looked at a couple of their other accessories recently though, namely the 7G Keyboard and their World of Warcraft Mouse.

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The CM Storm Sniper is Cooler Master's first offering of the new "CM Storm" branding. The gear is intended for the enthusiast, semi-pro or even professional gamer. That said, the Sniper is jam packed with unique features, all wrapped up on a beautiful design and incredible paint job.

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Thermaltake has quite an offering on their hands with the Spedo Advance full-tower, and it might be one of the most robust chassis' we've had on our bench to date. Noticeable R&D went into this one, with cool features such as a wireless door fan, an "advanced" thermal chamber, pure black aesthetics and top-notch cable management.

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Hardwareoverclock has reviewed the Spire Thermax II Allround CPU cooler. The universally compatible TherMax II is the big brother of the original TherMax cooler innovation by Spire. Designed with four 8mm copper U shaped heat-pipes enclosed by fifty-five aluminum stacked Micro-fins. The heat-sink base is equipped with the latest Direct-Touch heat-pipe technology providing the optimal cooling configuration. The Thermax II is compatible to all Intel and AMD processors. Hardwareoverclock has tested the cooler with Intel’s Core i7.

"ASUS has given us everything enthusiasts ask for in a motherboard and then multiplied that by pixie dust and a kitchen sink factor with the Asus P5E3 Premium motherboard. Sure, other motherboards have dual gigabit lan ports, but how many have dual eSATA? Or dual firewire? In addition to a dual antenna wireless-N integrated network adapter?"

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All Noctua products use their familiar Blue-Brown and beige color palette, keeping in line with their renowned fans. To go with its easily identifiable box is all the necessary information you need, such as sizing charts and package contents, but you can forget about that as you can be damn sure Noctua added all you needed and then some.

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In this review will be taking a look at the newest motherboard from Foxconn called the BloodRage. BloodRage is a Quantum Force design and based on the new X58 chipset from Intel. As with all Quantum Force designs the BloodRage comes with a variety of features specific to the hardware enthusiast and overclocker.

For the most part, more is better. But the thing about this equation is while more is going to be faster, does the extra speed warrant the price increase that is going to come with the upgrade? - The release of the X58 chipset saw two new standards for memory capacity; because of the extra module included we now see memory kits in 3GB and 6GB.

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"Today we put BFG's GeForce GTX 285 OCX under the microscope. We already know what Nvidia's new flagship single-GPU (not to be confused with its dual-GPU single videocard) solution brings to the table, and BFG looks to up the ante by overclocking its card beyond the reference design. Not only that, but BFG's OCX model currently ranks as the fastest-clocked GTX 285 on the market. Combined with the company's lifetime warranty, this would appear to be a slam dunk right from the tip-off, but even the favotires have a tendency to falter. Does BFG have game? Let's find out."

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"I was amazed by the intelligent design and quality engineering which has obviously been incorporated into the Thermaltake Element S Case. One has come to expect quality from Thermaltake, but in this case they truly have outdone themselves. The classic, professional styling and crisp black color appealed to me the moment I removed the case from the box. Removing the side panels only heightened that appeal, as I discovered the expandability (seven 3.5” HDD mounts, two 2.5” HDD or SSD mounts), ease of use (convenient layout, easily removed components), and strong construction (solid steel construction, bended edge-design) of the Element S."

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"One of the hottest HDTV trends is slimming down already skinny flat-panel televisions. At CES 2009, there were loads of prototypes of ultra-slim plasma and LCD TVs, shrinking overall thickness from around 4 inches to one or less. Hitachi is in the vanguard of this trend with its much-publicized 1.5-inch-thick series of LCD HDTVs, which are available today. Now, is a supermodel-thin set the way to go, or is an "obese" 4-incher the answer? Hitachi sent us a 37-inch UT37V702 to find out."

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"Looking around the rest of the case, there is a 120mm normal exhaust fan with its own molex power adapter neatly wrapped up like its blower style counterpart. The fan also has a three-speed speed switch built into the back of the case again with the H, M, and L labels. Behind where the hard drives are installed is the main and only air intake slot, as you might have seen in the drive picture. The fact that it is passive is an impressive statement on Antec's part, and I am really interested to see what kind of temperatures this case achieves. As advertised on the display box, there is a dust filter over the intake that can be easily cleaned by simply pulling it out with the built in grips."

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PNY has been in the GPU market for a very long time. They are more well known for their memory products than their GPU's. The addition of the PNY GTX-285 Performance Edition to their lineup brings them right to the cutting edge of graphics. PNY has been out of the Bjorn3D limelight for a period of time, but they've always been there, producing high quality graphics cards, flash products, and performance memory.

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Finally, AMD is mostly lacking stock - right now, even a few days after release you still can't buy any of these CPUs - that's a mirroring of the Athlon X2 7750 and Phenom II X4 940/920 launches where actual product was unavailable for several weeks. We seriously hope AMD rectifies this soon, because it only gives Intel more chance to fill the gap.

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Nearly every enthusiast who has overclocked a computer system has wished that processors weren't restricting them from the hobby they love. Even I can still recall the good old days (less than four years ago) before Intel and AMD locked the clock multiplier on their processors and overclocking was a combination of factors and no limited to the stability of a motherboard. Intel believes that their Core i7-965 Extreme Edition (EE) processor series is worth the $1000 price tag, but AMD begs to differ. Perhaps the timing is right then, and consumers won't hastily spend unnecessary cash on an expensive unlocked processor when AMD offers their Black Edition Phenom II X4 940 CPU for just $220. Benchmark Reviews compares the field, and tests the X4 940BE HDZ940XCGIBOX against the Intel Core i7-920.

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"This motherboard looks very unusual with its fanciful heatsink. Judging by its characteristics, it's designed for practical users who choose a motherboard for an all-purpose home computer."

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"We all know that it is important to backup your computer's file on a regular basis, but if you want to make sure that data doesn't fall into the wrong hands, the Maxtor BlackArmor protects your backup data for you. It's an external hard drive that securely encrypts your important data that you have backed up, such as financial information, and ensures its safety. The drive has a 160GB storage capacity, which holds a fairly large amount of data and comes with some very strong encryption features as well."

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OCZ wasn't going to let us down with a sub-par memory card, and they didn't. The OCZ Gold Series SDHC card exceeded the claimed expectations of a Class 6 memory card. We peaked out at 11.5MB/s write and 20MB/s read. These numbers are similar to the original OCZ Class 6 SDHC card, but it does have a slight advantage from the tests I've done.

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It’s not often that we’re presented with a computer enclosure that doesn’t follow suit to the usual tower-format of case. Antec’s Open-Air Skeleton is one such enclosure which is different from the rest. The Antec Skeleton is a stripped down version of a system case, consisting of only the core essentials of an enclosure – no side panels etc. As I’m sure you’re aware, this is quite a unique approach to a computer case and quite a risky move on Antec’s part.

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Core i7 a well known name for most computer users these days, it is Intels latest processor that really seems to crush all opponents on the market right now. We are going to benchmark the 965 Quad Core today which is the most expensive Core i7 processor on the market that retails for around 1000$. Will it be worth the money and how well does it really perform? That is a few of the questions we are going to answer in todays review.

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Plantronics has developed their GameCom 777 Gaming headset, which is used by professional gamers (at least that's what I saw at their booth at PAX 08). This gamingheadset features Dolby Headphone technology, which not only allows gamers to experience positional sound in games, but listen to music and watch movies in 5.1 surround.

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Connection wise the card has both VGA and DVI ports meaning those of us with older monitors don't need to use any of the annoying DVI to VGA adaptors that we would have with newer cards. Another very nice addition to the card that others may not have is the presence of a HDMI port, allowing you to connect the card directly to your HD TV, the card can also channel your computers sound through the HDMI cable so that you can have video and sound all through one cable, which I think is a great feature to have.

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In our launch article, we also gave you a glimpse of the EVGA GeForce GTX 295 Plus, but due to time constraints, we weren't able to benchmark and fully evaluate the card. We have since, however, given the EVGA GeForce GTX 295 Plus a good once over, and are ready to shine the spotlight on it here. Although it is, at its core, a straight-up reference design, EVGA worked a bit of their mojo and tweaked the GTX 295 Plus' clock speeds slightly to boost the card's performance over stock models.

" A while back I took a look at the FutureSonics AtrioM5 Professional Earphones and I found them to be a very excellent product overall, today I've got another set of higher end earphones from Ultimate Ears, the SuperFi5 Personal Earphones. From my time with these earphones I've come to like them very much, they're very well made, they include several different styles and sizes of earbuds, and of course they sound very good as well. So continue on to learn more about a very nice set of earphones…"

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“New BlackBerry model that was launched by Research In Motion (RIM) in last week of January, belongs to Curve series although it is actually similar to BlackBerry Bold . Maybe there will be someone that won’t agree with the fact that Curve 8900 (also known as Javelin) is better than Bold 9000, Curve 8900 actually has a lot of advantages and new features. Small package, in which we got Curve 8900, contains almost the same content as it was the case with Bold. Biggest difference between Bold and Curve 8900 is the price: Curve 8900 is for 25% cheaper than Bold…”

"AMD has launched the second round of their Phenom II processors, they will be both quad and tri cores. They are the Phenom II 810 X4 and 720 BE X3, which are both AM3 processors. As part of the new series, AMD is also offering other X3 and X4 Phenom II’s, but we will be focusing on the two mentioned. Unlike some of their past processors, the new AM3 series is reverse compatible with AM2+ chipsets and motherboards. The Phenom II AM3 processors will give you the versatility of either upgrading just a processor and staying with most of the components you already have or, if you choose to take full advantage of all the newest technologies, you can upgrade your entire system and move forward to DDR3 Ram."

"We all know that Apple's iPod is the most popular digital music player on the planet. Yet, there are many competitors. The Microsoft Zune is one of them. We took a look to see how the Zune compared to the iPod and also to see if the Zune was worthy enough to attract its own audience. We found that while the iPod and other MP3 players are for people who like to listen to music, the Zune is the digital music player for music lovers. Our review will explain. "

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"While XFX have always tended to stick with a given board's reference solution when it comes to launching new NVIDIA-based parts, in the case of the Radeon HD 4850 XXX they've decided to replace the cooling solution as well as upping both core and memory clock speeds. While this board's RV770 GPU gets a modest 25MHz increase, finding itself clocked at 650MHz, the memory used on this XXX Edition part is clocked at 1050MHz, giving the 512MB of GDDR3 on-board a more significant 57MHz boost."

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"You've no doubt connected your digital camera to your computer to download photos or have inserted a little black thumb drive to store or retrieve files. But rejoice - the USB port can be used for so much more, thanks to its ability to suck electricity through your computer, powering some of the world's strangest devices. Following are ten of the cutest, silliest and most useless examples we could find. As a fun game at home, try playing along by suggesting your own examples: You'll be amazed at mankind's capacity for ridiculousness. Oh, how we cry for the poor children."

"As delivered from Crucial, the latencies on this set of modules are 9-9-9 at 1333MHz. This, of course, they will do at 1.5 volts. Surprisingly, they do 7-7-7-20 at 1333MHz at 1.58 volts as well. Running at 7-7-7 was nice at the bottom end but the modules didn't get too much further without big volts until the CAS latency was increased to 8. I bumped the voltage up to 1.65 and started the march to a higher speed and was able to pull off 8-8-8 at 800MHz, this with still less than 1.7 volts. Getting to the 1600MHz (800MHz) level was not something I was expecting from a $115 set of memory. Figuring they had some more in them, I kept pushing up the CAS latency without any more voltage and finally reached 894MHz at 10-10-10-28. Pretty decent for a non performance based set of memory."

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For today's standards in an everyday PC, a metal box that feeds enough power to your computer is enough. On the other hand though, you have enthusiasts, mainstreamists, and even the little guy that all want to look cool with shiny parts in their PC's. These guys want quality power supplies that look nice at a cheap price. These days we have a lot of manufacturers that live up to this, but how do you select just one out of all that are available? You have to know a lot, to be quite blunt, and we're here to help.

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Here are some links covering AMD's latest processor release showing the benefits of adding DDR3 support to their chips. Will it challenge the might Core i7???

Hothardware
Tweaktown
Overclockersclub
Hardocp
Benchmarkreviews
Legitreviews
Bjorn3d
Hitechlegion
Extremeoverclocking
Icrontic

Today we have a look at the OCZ Vendetta part deux with a larger heatsink and bigger fan. This heatsink incorporates Heatpipe Direct Touch (HDT) where the heat-pipes are in direct contact with the heat source which allow for better cooling performance than conventional heatsinks.

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Synology has become well-known over the years for producing some of the highest-quality NAS boxes on the planet, some of which we've taken a look at in the past, and the new DS209+ is no exception. Though expensive, it has a huge feature-set and superb performance to back it up, which makes it a good buy for anyone with a fairly lenient budget.

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"Today, we have for review one of OCZ’s newer releases, the OCZ Throttle eSATA Drive. OCZ has been producing removable storage for a number of years now, and has, at long last, released an eSATA thumb drive. Promising read speeds of up to 90MB/s and write speeds of up to 30MB/s, the Throttle is sure to be a crowd pleaser."

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Today, we will be reviewing the EX58-UD5, which is the second most high-end model in Gigabyte's current roster, and which is largely differentiated from the EXTREME model by its lack of the elaborate Hybrid Silent-Pipe 2 cooling system. The omission of the more impressive cooling system doesn't seem to have diminished interest in this motherboard, since this is the model that consumers are buying in spades and it is easy to see why.

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It's been a little while since we last looked at a Coolermaster unit here at the site, but at long last I'm looking at one today: the Silent Pro M600. This is a modular 600W unit that promises 600 watts of good clean power while not making a lot of noise in the process. Let's see if it can deliver.

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"ElementS, also known as VK6000, is a high-quality steel mid-tower case from Thermaltake, bringing interesting features such as two 2.5" hard disk drive bays. Let's take a look on this new case."

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"As the first motherboard with Socket 1366 in our test lab, ASUS P6T Deluxe is bound to attract extra attention as it features so many new technologies. And our readers' interest to the new processor microarchitecture, new CPU family, new socket, new chipset, etc. inevitably touches the motherboard as well."

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"Gigabyte's high-end GA-X48-DS5 motherboard is, as you might have guessed, based on the Intel X48 Express and ICH9R chipsets. It's core logic offers up 32 lanes of PCI Express 2.0 bandwidth which makes this platform great for running a pair of Crossfire'd ATI videocards at full tilt."

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As usual, it utilises Intel's X58 chipset along with ICH10R southbridge, and supports triple channel DDR3 ram, CrossfireX, as well as Gigabyte's innovative UltraDurable 3 and DES Advanced. As far as performance is concerned, we can expect the EX58-UD4 to be very similar to other X58 based motherboards from Gigabyte ... such as the EX58-DS4.

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"Today going under scrutiny at XSReviews is one of the less sought-after products in the enthusiast hardware industry, something expected to come with your case – a card reader. However, this is not simply a bog standard card reader but in fact a multi-function controller and media card reader, or so the manufacturer describes it as. Let’s see whether this product is all it’s cracked up to be. Time to introduce the product in question; I give you the Scythe Kama Panel."

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The Lian Li PC-C36 Muse HTPC case is a very well made case that has a lot of nice features. Its brushed black anodized aluminum construction is not only clean and elegant, it looks at home in the typical home entertainment center. It's clear Lian Li never intended this case to house one of the more powerful graphics cards, but that's not really an issue in the HTPC market segment.

"Patriot Memory has been working hard to gain market share along with a reputation within the enthusiast scene for providing high quality, overclockable modules with a distinctive look. HardwareLogic's West Coast lab recently received Patriot's latest concoction, the Viper Series PC3-12800 6GB Extreme Performance memory kit which features a speed of 1600MHz, CAS 8 latency, Intel XMP, and bright baby blue heatspreaders to help it stand out from the crowd. Keep reading to find out if this memory has what it takes to be a part of your next build."

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"There is no doubt the Cooler Master HAF932 is a very good case, it is huge, which makes building in it nice and easy and I believe it would take a substantial water cooling set up internally. It's built like a tank, it has fairly striking looks without going too far and it has a lot of nice features, like the hole for the fill port and the front mount E-sata connector and of course that cooling which is very quiet but incredibly effective."

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Thermalright has never been one to be out done by anyone when it comes to air coolers. One of their newer coolers is not going to be out done with it comes to weight. The TRUE Copper is the heaviest cooler we have ever had in our labs here at PC. The new TRUE weighs in at a whooping 1900g. That is over four pounds of pure copper weighing down on your motherboard. Special precautions should be made in order to use this mammoth on a motherboard standing in a upward position, but this is not what we are concerned about. What we want to know today is it worth the $100 plus asking price many retailers are asking.

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Value wise the Apex is also a little disappointing. While we appreciate that cutting edge tech always carries a premium, the cost per gigabyte of the Apex at ￡2.87 in comparison to the G.Skill Titan’s ￡1.83 doesn’t make it as appealing (if you can ever call that sort of price per Gigabyte appealing!), although it’s still a lot better than the ￡4.50 per Gigabyte Intel charges for its 80GB X25-M.

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In terms of cable management and airflow the Tagan A+ Seenium BW case really can't be beat in this price range. Seldom do you see a Mid-Tower case with eight fan grills on it, much less for the price this case is targeted at. Another great feature is the toolless installation of drives and add-on cards once the motherboard is in place. The weakness of this case is the fact that there are only two included 120mm fans. While this is understandable in the face of the price and the case offers plenty of options for those that want more, it would have been nice to have fans included with the case. The other negative of this case is the lack of external SATA ports on the FP IO, a feature that has found its way unto much more expensive cases. Overall this case is excellent for what it is supposed to do, offer plenty of airflow and options for a new computer without needing to rob the bank to buy it and I would recommend it for the end-user wanting to spend under $70 on a case.

"With the original ATCS chassis, Cooler Master brought the first truly custom alloy case to the market. Their ATCS 840 Classic has proven to be a worthy successor. With classic good looks and superb build quality, the 840 is poised to make as big an impact on the market as its predecessor. Besides being huge, this chassis is also very configurable and will hold all the hardware that virtually any enthusiast will want to stuff into it, including the watercooling folks."

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The benefits of a low-TDP processor are obvious, but a usual downside is also obvious: low clock speeds. Intel's changing that thinking with their Core 2 Quad "S" series, which includes the Q9550S, Q9400S and also the Q8200S. Compared to their non-"S" variants, they draw less power and run cooler, all while retaining the performance they've become known for.

"Overall, MSI has produced a very nice product with the X58 Eclipse . It was stable, very fast and with the 1.32 BIOS, a very good overclocker. The results compared to its Intel counterpart were close, though it did trail slightly across the board at stock speeds. Where MSI realy comes out ahead though is the included extras such as quality audio and excellent system management hardware and software tools."

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“Newest K10 core was from start designed to support DDR3 memory standard, but from unknown reasons (to us) AMD decided to disable that support for 65nm revisions of this CPU. Even first Deneb 45nm cores had disabled support for DDR3 memory. Deneb cores that have DDR3 support are the same C2 revision that initially appeared on Socket AM2/AM2+. Same mistake with transition to new memory standard AMD didn’t want to repeat so new AM3 CPUs are backwards compatible with AM2/AM2+ motherboards. If you have old AM2 motherboard that supports Phenom CPUs, new Phenom X4 810, X3 720 or any other AM3 CPUs can be plugged in and everything will work flawlessly with “good old” DDR2 memory that you already have…”

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Small computers is the word in today's world. Asus EEE series and MSI:s Wind PC are very common in thin-client business. However it's possible to build your own mini sized computer. Keyparts are mini-itx motherboard and mini-itx case. Today we will take a look at Sunbeamtech's Mini-ITX Acrylic case which is designed for HTPCs.

Just when you thought the heatpipe tower cooler has reached the end of its usable life you find a cooler that not only pushes the envelope but does so with only a few minor tweaks to the basic design. The ThermoLab Baram is a 10 heatpipe cooler that features a staggered heatpipe arraignment to promote better overall cooling and air flow.

"It was possible to increase the Front Side Bus (FSB) speed from 333MHz to 475MHz, but we had to run the processor at 1.350V in order for the Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 to be able to fully stable. This bus speed increase makes the former 2.33GHz processor run at 3.33Ghz, which is a 1GHz overclock! This is very nice for a processor that costs just $169.99 at online retailers..."

Meanwhile Corsair was able to establish in the high-end power supply market. With the TX850W they present a power supply that comes with a +12V rail that can cope with a massive 70 A therefore it is called a single rail PSU. Furthermore the efficieny should be above 80 percent and life expectancy is about 100'000 hours.

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With its four heatpipes and excellent design, the performance is great and it really is silent! I especially liked the fact that the base had fins of its own; this way, not everything is dependent on the heatpipes. Installation was extremely easy due to the push-pin type mounting technique. Also, the cooler's low weight and small size made it a pleasure to work with.

“Memory manufacturer GeIL attracted a lot of attention with its RAM modules. This is consequence of very wide and well segmented product portfolio so anyone can find something interesting. If you are searching for top-class (priciest) or value (budget) modules, GeIL has a product for you. Faster modules need better cooling so most users that overclock their memory are mounting fan above memory modules to achieve lower operating temperatures. Those modules often come with mounted coolers (heatsinks) but in some (most) cases that is not enough so GeIL came up with elegant and functional product for users that need nice and functional active memory cooling solution…”

"So today I'm taking a look at the Lexar Shoot-n-Sync Wi-Fi 2gb memory card. It enables you to wirelessly transmit your photos back to your computer so there's no need to ever take the card out of your camera. "

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"Today for review I've got a product from our friends at Liteon, it's their Blu-ray internal reader optical drive, it's actually a combo drive which makes it a bit more valuable since it can also burn DVDs and CDs with no need for a separate drive for those tasks. The Liteon iHES206 Internal 6x Blu-Ray drive is fast and quiet, two things that are very positive aspects for an optical drive, at least the two most important things to me. It's also capable of burning with Lightscribe as well so you can label your discs. I've put it up against one of the fastest drives out there today, the Samsung Super Writemaster, continue on to see how it matches up… "

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A new year can be exciting. It's a time for renewal, and resolutions, and even some times it's a time a new president. But this new year, it was also a time for gamers. At the Consumer Electronics Show this past January in Las Vegas, Nevada, a new video card was debuted, the Nvidia GeForce GTX 285. Built upon the GTX 200 series architecture, the GTX sports a smaller die process (shrunken from 65nm to 55nm) that lowers power consumption and lowers heat, but packs more performance than its predecessors. And though the GTX 285 is the younger sibling to the GTX 280 that was previously Nvidia's top-of-line offering, the new GTX 285 is now definitely its big brother.

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"NVIDIA Stereoscopic 3D has come out with guns blazing and it looks good, real good! It is a shame that the economy is doing badly, but economies like that of America thrive off consumer spending and launching a product like this might be perfect to get people out and spend some money. You have to see it to fully understand how great gaming in 3D is, but I can honestly say that it is the best thing to happen in gaming in years. If you are getting bored of PC gaming in general 3D gaming will invigorate your gaming appetite and make you wonder why it took this many years to come to market..."

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