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Reviews Around The Web
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Choose Web Reviews from this Maker:
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Wednesday, July 2, 2008
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Back in March we had looked at the Intel Core 2 Duo T9300 mobile processor with its Penryn core and 6MB of shared L2 cache between its two cores clocked at 2.50GHz. We were very pleased with the performance of this mobile processor on Linux, which was found within a Lenovo ThinkPad T61 notebook, and today we are looking at the Penryn's desktop counterpart. Intel's Core 2 Duo "Wolfdale" E8000 series processors were released earlier this year with 6MB of L2 cache, 45nm manufacturing, a 1333MHz FSB, and support for SSE 4.1. The processor from the Wolfdale series we are looking at today under Linux is the Core 2 Duo E8400.
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Sony's DSC-W130 is a good all-rounder, though image quality is quite run of the mill with softening around edges and noise at ISO 800 and higher. Colours are vibrant and shots are generally acceptable, though aren't quite as sharp as they could be - but they're more than suitable for respectable A4 prints, e-mailing, and posting on the Web. The DSC-W130 doesn't set the world on fire, but its build quality, fast shutter, longer-than-normal lens, and handy in-camera editing and slide show functions make it a well-rounded offering for the asking price.
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Pioneer has made a very solid, very inexpensive product and the brand name should certainly go a long way to assure the quality and investment is something that's worthwhile, if you're getting into HD movies. It does what it says on the tin and for once even the retail package is at least partially compelling if you don't already have some good disc burning software and Blu-ray playback software. It's still not cheap enough to become an automatic up-sell purchase over a standard SATA DVD-RW drive, however if you are after some Blu in your life, don't pay any more than you have to.
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The CLP-610ND does what few printers are capable of. It brings the features, performance and capabilities of a expensive commercial color laser printer, but is priced low enough that the average consumer can take advantage of its functionality.
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Hiper was kind enough to contact us to review the latest in their Type R series offering- The Mark 2 or MK 2. The metal connectors are a surprise omission, I loved them, but the mesh housing stays. New on the MK2 units is the increased efficiency rating and power support. The surprise addition is USB ports! Keep reading to find out what a power supply and USB have in common.
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Tuesday, July 1, 2008
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This macho saying has many dubious applications, but it's quite at home in the world of CPU coolers. When cooling with air the more surface area you have, the more heat you can dissipate. So Thermaltake's latest DuOrb CPU cooler, which sports two fans and two heatsinks, should be at the top of the heap right? I guess that depends on what part of the heap you look at.
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The SilenX brand is most commonly known for their cool and quiet case fans. SilenX, however, does manufacture heatsinks, power supplies, and other goodies. Today SilenX gave us the opportunity to review the SilenX iXtrema IXC-120HA2 Pro Series Heatsink. This vertical fin stack design offers plenty one of SilenX's very own case fans, we actually got two to test out. The features include a fan speed controller, exposed copper heatpipes on the base, and an entirely screw-less design making for an easy and tool-less installation.
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Shoppers today are faced with many options when choosing where to store their valuable data: from traditional optical media and hard drive based storage, to flash drives and even more exotic third party online storage - each with its own advantages and disadvantages. In this article Benchmark Reviews will look at one such option that's recently emerged in the storage market; the network-attached storage (NAS), in the form of the QNAP TS-209 Pro Gigabit SATA NAS. The NAS has lately gained popularity as more and more consumers realize the need for a reliable, cost effective, and easy to access centralized way to store their data.However, with so many competing products it's not always possible for buyers to easily compare what's on the market. Read on as Benchmark Reviews puts this "all-in-one" NAS through its paces.
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AMD is launching a three-pronged attack on the desktop CPU space today, with the introduction of three new quad-core Phenom X4 processors. One of the processors, the new 2.6GHz Phenom X4 9950 Black Edition, is AMD's latest flagship desktop CPU. The other two, however, are somewhat surprising "green", low-power quad-cores dubbed the Phenom X4 9350e (2.0GHz) and Phenom X4 9150e (1.8GHz). With its Black Edition branding, it should be obvious to the power user among you that the Phenom X4 9950 BE is targeted squarely at enthusiasts and overclockers. But the audience for the Phenom X4 9350e and Phenom X4 9150e processors is a little harder to quantify. Head on over to the site and check them out...
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Razer already had their own type of keyboard called the Tarantula, but they now have another one called the Lycosa. A slick looking keyboard with led lighting, touch sensitive media controls and more. Without much further a due, let's see what this keyboard has to offer.
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Samsung is one of the largest memory suppliers in the world, so it is natural to find them playing in the Solid-State Drive (SSD) market. Their latest offering, the MCBQE32G5MPP-0VA00 is a 2.5-inch 32GB drive with big potential and a new low price tag. From the get go we were told to expect MTRON MOBI performance at a 15% reduced cost. Today we are going to take the new Samsung MCBQE32G5MPP-0VA00 and put it through hell with two different single drive configurations and run RAID 0 on two, three and four drives. In addition, we took three drives and ran a RAID 5 array just to see if there was a performance hit we would get on an Areca SAS controller.
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It's hard to believe you can buy a 13.6-megapixel point-and-shoot digicam for under $349 USD from a top brand-not simply a piece of junk from some godforsaken outfit working in the farthest depths of this globalized world. Think 13 or 14MP is a lot? There's no end to the megapixel race as camera makers constantly try to outdo one another day-by-day. We've heard 14-plus megapixel compacts are due in September and we even expect 25MP D-SLRs to be introduced at the Photokina 2008 trade show around that time. Pretty amazing stuff. Now the question for buyers is pretty simple-is this total overkill and is an 8MP point-and-shoot like $249 USD Canon SD1100 IS really all you need? Or is a camera like the Sony DSC-W300 just your cup of pixels?
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We've been busy in the Icrontic labs, and there is no shortage of heatsinks coming in. You can expect several new reviews in the not too distant future. We coincidentally received two very similar heatsinks from two different companies-Sunbeam's new "Core Contact Freezer" and OCZ's "Vendetta 2". Both are based on the popular "heatpipe direct touch" or "HDT" design. If you haven't already guessed, the heatpipes do not contact a base, but contact the heat source directly. It has proved to be an effective technology and more and more heatsinks are beginning to emerge with this type of design.
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The X-Spice Kira is a SFF (small Form Factor) power supply which would be an ideal choice for those looking for a mid-range power supply to place in their HTPC or other small project. The power supply is SLI compatable and is extremely quiet during use.
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Put simply, Corsair's TWIN2X4096-8500C5DF is a great kit. The DHX cooling system is still the best I've seen to date, cooling both a specially designed PCB and the ICs themselves. BGA based DDR2 modules conduct quite a bit of heat back into the PCB, so this is a very intelligent design that will likely prolong the life of just about any IC under the hood. Corsair's included "Airflow Fan" has also proved to be a very quiet and effective cooler that complements the DHX system nicely. The combination of the unique cooling solution and black PCB also make this a great looking kit.
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