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Reviews Around The Web
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Choose Web Reviews from this Maker:
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Monday, March 2, 2009
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The folks at Coolermaster have come up with a case that represents this new trend of tough guy gaming cases. In fact, the Coolermaster folks have big plans to make this style of case one of their signatures and will be rolling out a series of new cases very soon based on this
style. Today we?ll be checking out the case that started it all for Coolermaster; the HAF932 Full Tower ATX Chassis.
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It wasn't more than a few months ago that Benchmark Reviews tested the ASUS BC-1205PT Blu-ray Drive, which was proven to be a future-proof asset with the format war recently ended in favor of BD media. But sometimes technology isn't adopted quite as fast as we might think, because in the age of Blu-ray there are people out there who still haven't made the transition into a DVD-burner. Unlike CDs and DVDs, Blu-ray Disc isn't in every household, and since music and movies seem to work perfectly well on the older platforms there might not be any real need for such a premium storage device.
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When it comes to the higher echelon of computer enclosures, manufacturers love to include new features and gadgetry in their designs. This is not just to persuade enthusiasts to make a purchase, but to also validate the exorbitant cost of the chassis itself. With the introduction of the Thermaltake SwordM enclosure, can Thermaltake convince enthusiasts that the SwordM?s high cost justifies its feature set? We take a close look at the Thermaltake SwordM to find out if it can be successful in a hotly contested market segment.
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Multi-Level Cell (MLC) drives have started catching their Single Level Cell (SLC) counterparts in recent months when it comes to the performance category. The MLC drives have always had a significant lead when it comes to price, but SLC has towered over MLC in performance. Today we are looking at the latest SLC technology to come from MTRON, one of the global leaders in solid state storage technology. The MTRON SLC 7500 SSD is an enterprise product designed primarily for use in server environments. MTRON does market the drive as being a notebook drive alternative, but the high cost of ownership makes this task seem unlikely. MTRON does, however, make a line of products that fit into the typical notebook user category, the MOBI line. Today we are going to focus on the new PRO 7500 line of products and see how they compare with today's latest and greatest 2.5-inch products, both platter and solid state based.
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One thing we haven't seen until now is a flash drive that is targeted specifically to the environmentally-conscious consumer, a product that seeks to mitigate some of the impacts on the world around us. Promising environmentally-sensitive manufacturing that does not come at the expense of performance, the ATP EarthDrive certainly piqued our curiousity.
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In retrospect, the information that Louis had just received obviously was about the Nehalem. After seeing the improvements that the i7 has over the Core 2, I can fully understand his excitement. Today I will be looking at the result of Louis' excitement, Kingston's HyperX DDR3-2000 3GB Triple Channel kit. These memory modules sport beautiful new pin-fin heat spreaders and 9-9-9-27 timings at 1.65v. Will this Kingston kit carry my new i7 920 to glory? Read on to see!
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Hiper's new TYPE R MKII 680W ATX power supply brings a lot to the table, and it's all good. With excellent performance, quiet operation, and a very innovative feature set, this PSU could easily find a home in all but the most demanding systems.
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If you are looking for a quiet high performance card, then the factory-overclocked iChill GTX 260 is certainly a great choice for you. Using Arctic Cooling's Accelero XXX cooler it emits less fan noise than most low-end cards, yet offers performance close to the GeForce GTX 280.
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The latest incarnation of the GTX 260 not only packs the upgraded 216 stream processors, but it also carries with it a 55nm core. What this means is that the card can run cooler, which in turn means it can run faster. While NVIDIA chose not to do anything with the clocks of the card, it doesn't mean companies out there won't! Today we're looking at the Palit GTX 260 Sonic 216SP. The Sonic means the card is overclocked and the 216SP means that we have the upgraded stream processors. This is our first 55nm GTX 260, but I think we've picked out a good one.
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Last month we looked at the OCZ Fatal1ty 700W which performed very well and was another nice power supply from OCZ Technology, the company that also owns PC Power & Cooling. Another one of their power supplies to have been introduced in the past few months is the ModXStream-Pro 600W. Unlike the Fatal1ty series, the ModXStream Pro series has modular cables and a few other differences, while still being 80+ Certified, NVIDIA SLI Certified, and is backed by OCZ's excellent PowerSwap warranty. In this review we are testing out the OCZ ModXStream Pro 600W for ourselves.
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Wednesday, February 25, 2009
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In the past, really small USB flash drives have had to make compromises on performance to fit everything in such a small form-factor. I'm pleased to say that the Super Talent Pico 16GB doesn't suffer from these drawbacks and offers great read and write performance. When you consider how small the drive is, this is even more impressive...
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Jonathan 'Fatal1ty' Wendel may be 12-time world gaming champ, but how does he cope inside a 50c hot box sucking on a heavy load? Find out as we test the OCZ Fatal1ty 700w PSU!
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If you're the type of audio enthusiast who delights in discovering nuances in musical recordings you thought you were already intimately familiar with, you'll want to check out the Asus Xonar Essence STX sound card. This audiophile-quality sound card is a glittering sonic jewel.
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Today we have PowerColors version of the card. To date we've only had one HD 4830 come through the door and that card managed to set the bar high for the model. You have to wonder, is PowerColor going to come within arm's reach of the bar, or hop straight over it? There's ultimately only one way to find out, so let's have a look at what the company has done with the package before we have a closer look at the card and then its performance. From there we will wrap it all up and hopefully the PowerColor card can offer us something that we didn't get from the MSI one which managed to impress.
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Gaming on a budget isn't as difficult as it once was, thanks to superb offerings from both ATI and NVIDIA that go for a modest price. But, what about the sub-$100 crowd? We'll find that out here, at least from the ATI side of things, with Sapphire's HD 4670 GDDR4 and HD 4830. Both feature great efficiency, and believe it or not, great overclocking as well.
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