Here today's reviews and articles, including Best SSDs For The Money: March 2013, AMD Richland APU Preview, Serving CGI Scripts With Nginx On Fedora 18, Raxco PerfectDisk Pro Version 12.5 Review, and Dual-boot Windows 8 and Ubuntu 12.10 in UEFI mode



Best SSDs For The Money: March 2013 @ Tom's Hardware

There isn't much happening in the SSD world right now, but prices continue to shift. Some are up, while others are down. Fortunately, most still fall under $1 per gigabyte. We're updating our recommendations for March in light of the recent movements.

Read more: Best SSDs For The Money: March 2013 @ Tom's Hardware

AMD Richland APU Preview: Trinity Gets a Facelift @ Hardware Canucks

AMD have officially revealed the upcoming Richland APUs, which represent a unique amalgamation of old architecture with new, updated features and additional performance benefits for the mobile market. This new product range is somewhat unexpected given the fact that even a a few months ago Richland wasn't on most people's radars since roadmaps showed Trinity making a relatively quick transition to Kaveri. Now it seems as though things are being done a bit differently.

When it was first released, AMD’s Trinity represented a huge step forward, improving upon Llano’s success in every way possible. It was one of the first true moves towards the ultimate goal of building a Heterogeneous System Architecture (HAS) with the accelerated processing unit (or APU) as its heart and soul. Trinity met with a fair amount of success, and it seemed the public was ready to completely embrace what AMD was trying to achieve. Now, its replacement Richland is being pushed onto the scene.

Read more: AMD Richland APU Preview: Trinity Gets a Facelift @ Hardware Canucks

AMD intros 35W Richland mobile APUs @ The Tech Report

AMD has formally introduced the first members of its Richland APU family. We have the goods on the chips and Richland's new power management tech, which combines temperature-based inputs with bottleneck-aware clock boosting.

Read more: AMD intros 35W Richland mobile APUs @ The Tech Report

Serving CGI Scripts With Nginx On Fedora 18 @ Howtoforge

This tutorial shows how you can serve CGI scripts (Perl scripts) with nginx on Fedora 18. While nginx itself does not serve CGI, there are several ways to work around this. I will outline two solutions: the first is to proxy requests for CGI scripts to Thttpd, a small web server that has CGI support, while the second solution uses a CGI wrapper to serve CGI scripts.

Read more: Serving CGI Scripts With Nginx On Fedora 18 @ Howtoforge

Raxco PerfectDisk Pro Version 12.5 Review @ Myce

At the outset, I should declare that I have personally licensed earlier versions of PerfectDisk (Versions 10.0 and then 11.0). To be frank, I’ve not paid any attention to it in the last few years – I’ve just let it chug away in the background looking after my big ‘spinning’ Hard Disk Drives.

With a quick glance it is obvious that PerfectDisk has evolved significantly since I last looked at it.

PerfectDisk still has the primary objective of keeping drives in an optimal performance state by reducing the level of defragmentation of files and free space and thus a key question that comes straight into my mind is – How does it compare to the defragmentation facility that comes packaged with Windows?

Read more: Raxco PerfectDisk Pro Version 12.5 Review @ Myce

ASUS Radeon HD 7850 DirectCU On Ubuntu @ Phoronix

Up for review today is the ASUS Radeon HD 7850 1GB DirectCU graphics card. This "Windows 8 Ready" AMD Radeon graphics card is being benchmarked under Ubuntu Linux and compared to an assortment of AMD Radeon and NVIDIA GeForce graphics cards.

The AMD Radeon HD 7850 GPU core is clocked at 860MHz and the reference design calls for 2GB of GDDR5 memory clock at a 1200MHz clock speed. There are 1024 Stream Processors, 64 Texture Units, 128 Z/Stencil ROP Units, 32 Color ROP Units, Dual Geometry Engines, and Dual A-Sync Compute Engines to this "GCN" GPU. The HD 7850 also boasts the other usual Radeon HD 7000 series features like PCI Express 3.0 x16 support, OpenGL 4.2 support, Eyefinity, App Acceleration, CrossFire, PowerPlay, etc.

Read more: ASUS Radeon HD 7850 DirectCU On Ubuntu @ Phoronix

Scythe Kabuto II CPU Cooler Review @ Hardware Secrets

Let's test the Scythe Kabuto II, a CPU cooler with a horizontal heatsink, six heatpipes, and a 120 mm fan.

Read more: Scythe Kabuto II CPU Cooler Review @ Hardware Secrets

Arion ET-AR602R-BK Floor Standing Speakers Review @ TechwareLabs

Today we are taking a look at the Arion AR602 floor standing speakers. With a built-in amplifier you won't need an external receiver like many home theater speakers and with a dedicated tweeter, mid-range, and subwoofer pushing 180W peak/100W RMS frequency range and volume shouldn't be an issue either. Read on to see if these speakers have what it takes.

Read more: Arion ET-AR602R-BK Floor Standing Speakers Review @ TechwareLabs

Swiftech H220: Adding to the Loop @ ThinkComputers.org

One of the biggest selling points of Swiftech’s all in one cooler, the H220 is it’s claim to be a fully expandable liquid cooling system. By this they mean it is possible to add other cooling elements to the self contained loop. This would mean that for the price of only $139.99 USD you can buy for yourself the complete set of core components needed for a custom liquid cooling loop, something that would normally cost around $300. The main components include; a pump, a radiator, a block for the component you wish to cool, and a reservoir. Starting off from these items you can now easily add any other element from your rig to the loop. If their claim is true, the sky’s the limit, you can liquid cool anything from your gpu to your chipset, to your ram. Not keeping cool enough with just the 240mm radiator? Throw an additional radiator into the loop as well! Follow along as we explore how to work with a liquid cooling loop, and find out just what the limits of this “expandability” are.

Read more: Swiftech H220: Adding to the Loop @ ThinkComputers.org

Samsung DV150F Review @ TechReviewSource.com

The DV150F is the latest iteration in Samsung's Dual View camera design. In addition to the rear LCD, which is a ubiquitous feature on point-and-shoots, a front LCD lets you point the lens at yourself to snap a quick self portrait. The 25mm wide-angle field of view makes it possible for a friend to join you, and integrated Wi-Fi lets you beam the photo directly to Facebook or your smartphone.

Read more: Samsung DV150F Review @ TechReviewSource.com

Dual-boot Windows 8 and Ubuntu 12.10 in UEFI mode @ LinuxBSDos.com

Dual-booting Windows 8 and a Linux distribution in UEFI or EFI-compatible mode can be a very frustrating and unpredictable adventure. You just never know how the system will boot or whether it will even boot at all. I have a computer that I built (assembled) using a motherboard with UEFI firmware. By default, it boots in Legacy mode.

Read more: Dual-boot Windows 8 and Ubuntu 12.10 in UEFI mode @ LinuxBSDos.com

Tomb Raider Review @ TheInquirer

The chesty action heroine is back, at the start of her journey as a Tomb Raider

Read more: Tomb Raider Review @ TheInquirer

Edimax N300 Wi-Fi Extender and N150 Personal Hotspot Review @ HardwareHeaven.com

As with a number of manufacturers who produce networking products Edimax offer a wide range of devices, not just the standard router and adapter configuration most people need. For those who have a more unique requirement Edimax offer devices such as their N300 Universal Wi-Fi Extender and Wi-Fi personal hotspot (or travel router as it could be known). Today we have one of each to review.

Read more: Edimax N300 Wi-Fi Extender and N150 Personal Hotspot Review @ HardwareHeaven.com

Zalman CNPS11X Extreme Review @ Vortez

Zalman are known the world-over for their wealth of expertise within the cooling sector. Way back in 1999 their journey began with the concept of “Noiseless Computing” which is a passion that many enthusiasts pursue as they build bigger and better computer systems. Having never dealt with Zalman before, this is our first outing and we are filled with anticipation.

Today we will be taking a look at one of Zalman’s CNPS CPU coolers, namely the 11X Extreme. 11X Extreme is a v-shaped dual heatsink CPU cooler that supports a wide array of socket types. It comes fitted with an attractive Ultra Quiet 120mm Blue LED fan and promises to give great balance between acoustics and performance.

Read more: Zalman CNPS11X Extreme Review @ Vortez

QNAP TS-469L High-performance 4-bay NAS Server for Home & SOHO Review @ Madshrimps

The TS-469L is another powerful NAS from QNAP aimed at home and small business users, equipped with a HDMI interface that can be connected to our Full-HD TV. Thanks to its HD Station function and it’s modules, we can transform the server into a fully-featured media center for browsing the web, playing media content with XBMC or even for navigating through the Turbo NAS OS interface, without the need of using a PC. As extra bundle, we can acquire separately the useful QNAP Media Center remote or extra RAM for a total of 3GB.

Read more: QNAP TS-469L High-performance 4-bay NAS Server for Home & SOHO Review @ Madshrimps

Gigabyte GA-H77N-WiFi Motherboard Review @ Hi Tech Legion

An increasing number of people have been building mini-ITX systems as of late and will only increase further with the push for all-in-one systems and compact gaming systems by manufacturers. This is a response to the increasing efficiency of system components and thankfully, the technology is here to make various builds possible. Whether building an HTPC, a small LAN box or a home file-server, Gigabyte provides a mini-ITX motherboard that is flexible enough for the task.

The Gigabyte H77N-WiFi motherboard measures 170x170mm and conforms to the mini-ITX form factor standard. The Gigabyte H77N has dual-stream WiFi features provided by an Intel Centrino Wireless-N 2230 card, capable of Intel Wireless Display and Bluetooth 4.0 functionality. For HTPC users, Gigabyte provides a DVI-I as well as dual HDMI video outputs with 8-channel audio and HDCP compatibility. Unlike other mini-ITX mainboards, the Gigabyte H77N-WiFi motherboard is equipped with dual Realtek 8111F Gigabit LAN ports for additional network connectivity. Should users decide to build a mini-ITX gaming platform, a PCI-E 3.0 x16 slot is available for discrete GPU installation.

Read more: Gigabyte GA-H77N-WiFi Motherboard Review @ Hi Tech Legion

Detailing Richland’s GCN & Dual Graphics Compatibility @ Hardware Canucks

The Richland APU and AMD’s Graphics Core Next architecture should be two mutually exclusive items which were never meant to be conjoined. With the latest APU refresh using an older Northern Islands design for its graphics processing stages, GCN was effectively off the table until Kaveri’s arrival sometime later this year. But GCN is nonetheless entering this equation in a roundabout way.

In our recent preview of the new Richland mobile APUs, it was mentioned that AMD had once again integrated support for Dual Graphics setups. Dual Graphics essentially gives OEMs the ability to pair up an accelerated processing unit with a secondary discrete graphics chip in order to increase performance by a substantial amount. Both Trinity and Llano featured the technology quite prominently and the benefits were impressive in some cases. However, this time around, AMD has made things a bit more interesting.

While Trinity’s use of the Northern Islands VLIW4 architecture represented a dramatic step forward from Llano’s Redwood-based “Sumo” design, some were expecting this year’s APUs to feature AMD’s latest GCN cores. That hasn’t happened yet since Richland uses the same layout as its predecessor, though with faster clock speeds and higher performance numbers.

Read more: Detailing Richland’s GCN & Dual Graphics Compatibility @ Hardware Canucks

NZXT Phantom 630 Computer Case @ Benchmark Reviews

I dug out some of my older computer cases recently, and was reminded and just how much the state of the art has advanced in the past few years. For example, my old Cooler Master Stacker was once one of the most advanced cases you could buy, yet its lack of any drive trays, toolless mounting, or even cable routing features, would make this aluminum monster noncompetitive in today's market.

Today's builder has come to expect more, and vendors who don't deliver it won't do well. NZXT has built their case business on delivering more, but at a lower price than many of the competitors...without sacrificing quality. Their Phantom line combines the latest features with some uniquely NZXT innovations that give the user a great deal of flexibility in their build.

Read more: NZXT Phantom 630 Computer Case @ Benchmark Reviews

Unigine Heaven 4.0 Benchmark Tool Walk Through @ OCC

If there is one critique I can make about the Heaven benchmark, it is the heavy use of tessellation. By heavy, I really mean excessive, because the difference between elements with the tessellation on and off can be staggering. The most extreme examples of this are the dragon statue and the stairs. Without tessellation, the stairs are actually simple ramps without any step-geometry. With tessellation enabled, they become actual stairs. The dragon on the other hand shifts from something that you could also see as being a pet, with its relatively smooth body, into a viciously spiked nightmare.

Read more: Unigine Heaven 4.0 Benchmark Tool Walk Through @ OCC

Noctua NH-L12 @ techPowerUp

With more and more of today's CPU coolers getting ever larger, Noctua has released the NH-L12. This small, versatile, low-profile cooler gets put to the test as we find out just what it offers today's PC enthusiasts.

Read more: Noctua NH-L12 @ techPowerUp

AMD's 35W Elite Performance 'Richland' APU Introduced

"AMD's 'Richland' platform is a largely incremental upgrade to the companies mobile APU processing platform; a moderate boost to CPU clock speeds and a collection of small power saving refinements built on existing architecture. The four new mobile A-series APUs include the quad-core 3.5GHz A10-5750M and 3.1GHz A8-5550M, dual-core 3.5GHz A6-5350M and 3.3GHz A4-5150M processor. Let's begin with a look a the spec chart.

Read more: AMD's 35W Elite Performance 'Richland' APU Introduced

DeepCool IceBlade Pro V2.0 Heatsink Review @ FrostyTech

Deepcool's IceBlade Pro V2.0 heatsink stands 161mm tall and weighs a solid 981 grams. At the heart of this boxy heatsink are four 8mm diameter copper heatpipes, nickel plated along with everything else, including the aluminum fins. The heatpipes are exposed at the base to make direct contact with the processor and ideally, reduce thermal joint resistance.

Read more: DeepCool IceBlade Pro V2.0 Heatsink Review @ FrostyTech