ECS X58B-A Black Series Motherboard Review
Bjorn3D takes a look at the ECS X58B-A Black Series Motherboard

Recently, Intel has been releasing new computer related technologies so quickly that PC builders like myself are having a hard time keeping up with them. Intel's latest offering, Core i7, a new processor lineup has brought on a slew of new motherboards for all kinds of users. The motherboard we will be taking a look at today is the ECS X58B-A Black Series, which from the name you can tell is based off Intel's latest chipset, x58. ECS released this motherboard, attacking the budget builders out there, yet at the same time giving them some great overclocking room, a nice multi-GPU solution and an amazing bang for your buck value. Being the first motherboard on the market to support SLI and Crossfire, this motherboard is one of a kind. Let's go ahead and take a look at what ECS is really about.

ECS X58B-A Black Series Motherboard Review

Inwin Commander 1200W Power Supply Review
JonnyGURU.com posted a review on the Inwin Commander 1200W Power Supply

Two years ago, in late 2006, a weird electronics tech was drafted by jonnyGURU.com to torture innocent power supplies for crimes they did not commit. This electronics tech promptly began to take his job too seriously, and was then thrown into an imaginary maximum security mental institution. He promptly escaped from this institution into the Saskatchewan wilderness. Today, still hunted by men in white coats, he's up against an Inwin Commander 1200W power supply which he plans to try and let the magic smoke out of.

Inwin Commander 1200W Power Supply Review



Lenovo ThinkCentre M58p Review
ITreviewed posted a review on the Lenovo ThinkCentre M58p

The ThinkCentre M58p was designed specifically for the rigorous demands of large businesses and educational institutions. However, it's equally up to the task of running your small business. The design goal for the M58p was to be the greenest, most secure, most manageable and quietest ThinkCentre ever. Lenovo should be praised for its efforts, as with advanced technologies such as Power Manager and support for Hardware Password Manager, the M58p is one of the most complete business machines you can purchase. The ThinkCentre M58p comes with a limited, 3-year onsite warranty with next business day service.

Lenovo ThinkCentre M58p Review

Cooler Master HAF 932 Full Tower Case Review
Modders-Inc.com posted a review on the Cooler Master HAF 932 Full Tower Case

Cooler master brings you the HAF 932. A larger full size tower case featuring a unique design set and a High Air Flow structure. This case features a wide range of premium features including tool less components, enhanced motherboard tray for cable routing, rear access to the mother board for easy CPU cooler installs and ready made mounts for water cooling just to name a few. If that sounds like a lot of features for one case your right. Is the HAF 932 worthy to be the next home for your hardware?

Cooler Master HAF 932 Full Tower Case Review

ASUS Rampage Extreme Review
t-break posted a review on the ASUS Rampage Extreme

Extreme is the word used to define something that exceeds anything normal. And what we have with us today to review is anything but normal. An Asus motherboard on a Rampage is the Asus Rampage Extreme that has it all. This board simply demands you take it seriously, or else...

ASUS Rampage Extreme Review

HIS ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB IceQ4+ Turbo Review
bit-tech published a review of the HIS ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB IceQ4+ Turbo graphics card

We had high hopes for the HIS ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB IceQ4+ Turbo, but sadly they haven't been fulfilled. Typically, HIS goes out of its way to spice up AMD's ATI Radeon graphics cards with an improved cooling solution, higher clock speeds and a few innovations added in for good measure. While we've got some of that here, the one thing we haven't got is a new cooling solution -- instead, it's a refinement of the reference cooler.

What makes it worse is the fact that the refinements made appear to be for the worse -- at least, where noise is concerned. HIS has essentially redesigned the fan shroud to expose the heatpipes to the elements and introduced a slightly different fan with fewer blades. In order to improve cooling performance, the fan speed has been raised and to such an extent that it's quite noisy (but not offensively so) when the card is idling -- that's not something we really appreciate.

Disappointingly, the core clock speed hasn't been increased by anything more than a token amount and the result is that the real-world performance benefits are generally fairly limited. The memory clocks are impressive -- there's no doubt about that -- but we would have hoped the core speed overclock would have at least come close to matching that.

HIS ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB IceQ4+ Turbo Review[/url

HIS IceQ4 4850 Review
XSReviews has reviewed the HIS IceQ4 4850 GPU

While XSReviews has had the chance to check out GPUs from many different companies, one of the ones we haven't worked with much is HIS, but recently they've decided we're worthy of their attention. With that in mind they've sent us a HD 4850 with their special IceQ4 branding. Let's see how it compares to some of our recently reviewed GPUs from other manufacturers.

[url=http://www.xsreviews.co.uk/reviews/graphics-cards/his-iceq4-4850/]HIS IceQ4 4850 Review

32 GB Patriot Warp v2 Solid State Drive review
Metku.net took a closer look at Patriot's 32 gigabyte Warp v2 SSD unit.

SSDs are trying to enter market and replace platter based hard drives. Technologywise they surpass the old way of storaging data magnetically so why the SSD market is still so slow eventhough the drives have been around for couple of years now?

32 GB Patriot Warp v2 Solid State Drive review

ZOTAC GeForce GTX285 and GeForce GTX295 Video Card Review
Futurelooks has posted a review on the ZOTAC GeForce GTX285 and GeForce GTX295 Video Card

In the two horse race of performance video cards, things have been pretty cyclical. One company would release a new whiz-bang card, then the other company would release their response. This was followed by a similar cycle of tweaked versions of the same cards. In the last two release cycles those tweaks came in the form of dual GPU cards, which sandwiched two cards into one package. The most recent cycle left off with ATI releasing their dual GPU solution in the form of the Radeon HD 4870 X2, and NVIDIA responding with…nothing. NVIDIA finally turned their nothing into something by releasing both a dual GPU solution and a tweaked single GPU card, and they are bringing vendors like ZOTAC along for the ride.

ZOTAC GeForce GTX285 and GeForce GTX295 Video Card Review

Mirrors Edge Game Review
ocaholic.ch posted a review on the Mirrors Edge Game

EA Games has really been pushing this game. There were a lot of trailers and screenshots online before launch day. First we we can tell you one thing already at this early point of the review: this game is different. In the world of Mirrors Edge everything is supervised. At the beginning the city was lively, vibrant but the changes came slowly but certainly. Cameras and private security companies began to watch over the city and got it under their control step by step.

Mirrors Edge Game Review

Leadtek GeForce GTX 285 1024 MB Review
techPowerUp posted a review on the Leadtek GeForce GTX 285 1024 MB

NVIDIA's latest addition to their graphics card lineup is based around the 55 nanometer GT200b. The new card offers more performance, consumes less power and is quieter than the previous model. Yet these improvements cost you a premium of about $70 over the GTX 280. Is that price justified?

Leadtek GeForce GTX 285 1024 MB Review

Cooler Master ATCS 840 Full Tower Case Review
Hardware Canucks posted a review on the Cooler Master ATCS 840 full tower case.

While the ATCS is known for its classic good looks what it is best known for (and thus the moniker ATCS) is high performance cooling with as many strategically placed fans as they can cram into a case. In this case Cooler Master has fit in not one, not two, but THREE of those 230x200mm monsters and they have done it without resorting to sticking one on the side panel.

Cooler Master ATCS 840 Full Tower Case Review

Gigabyte EX58-UD5 motherboard Review
Neoseeker takes a look at the a new X58 mobo from Gigabyte, the EX58-UD5

It consistently took the top spot for stock speed results in the majority of tests; and it was almost always in second place - and several times in first place - for the overclocked tests, even though the MSI X58 Eclipse was running the Core i7 920 processor at a slightly higher overclocked speed (4.05GHz vs. 4.03GHz). The memory performance was particularly outstanding, letting the GA-EX58-UD5 take top spots in some of the overclocked tests even though it was at a slight processor frequency disadvantage.

Gigabyte EX58-UD5 motherboard Review

Thermaltake BigTyp 14Pro Review
OCC has published a new review on the Thermaltake BigTyp 14Pro

The Thermaltake BigTyp 14Pro was able to do fairly well in comparison
to the other coolers that I tested. It was able to beat out the Domino A.L.C. (Full), the Thermaltake SpinQ, and tie the OCZ Gladiator MAX. It was just a few degrees off from the best performers, such as the Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme, Titan CoolIdol, and the Cooler Master V8.

Thermaltake BigTyp 14Pro Review

Hercules XPS 2.150 Multimedia Speaker System Review
TweakTown posted a review on the Hercules XPS 2.150 Multimedia Speaker System

The very first product I took a look at from Hercules was the Game Theater XP sound card quite a few years ago. At the time this was the sound card to have and helped build a great reputation for the company. Some water has passed under the bridge since then and Hercules now has a brand new line-up of exciting products to show off.

One of these new products is a multi-purpose 2.1 speaker kit called the XPS 2.150. Finished in a very classy piano gloss black with orange speaker drivers, the XPS is out to make a strong aesthetic impression. The XPS features compatibility with just about anything you might want to use, such as MP3 player, gaming console, TV, DVD or Blu-ray player. The system also features a headphone output and a line input on the side of the left speaker. Read on to see how they sound during testing.

Hercules XPS 2.150 Multimedia Speaker System Review

Intel X25-M SATA 80GB MLC SSD Review
Benchmark Reviews posted a review on the Intel X25-M SATA 80GB MLC SSD

In early September, 2008 Intel released their mainstream series of solid state drives. In its initial offfering Intel brought two drives to market, the X18-M and the X25-M built respectively on the 1.8" and 2.5" form factors. The initial capacity of these drives was 80 GB and recently a 160 GB version was released. Solid State Drives are rapidly changing the computing landscape, and many enthusiasts are using SSD technology in their primary systems to help boost performance. Benchmark Reviews has tested nearly all of the products available to the retail market in this sector, and several have done quite well while others fall flat. It used to be that performance was the largest hurdle for mass storage NAND Solid State Drives, followed by stability, and later price. In this review, we will give a thorough overview as well as benchmark test the linear bandwidth performance of the Intel X25-M 80 GB SSDSA2MH080G15E solid state SATA drive and compares it against the top competition.

Intel X25-M SATA 80GB MLC SSD Review
Lenovo ThinkCentre M58p Review
ITreviewed posted a review on the Lenovo ThinkCentre M58p

The ThinkCentre M58p was designed specifically for the rigorous demands of large businesses and educational institutions. However, it's equally up to the task of running your small business. The design goal for the M58p was to be the greenest, most secure, most manageable and quietest ThinkCentre ever. Lenovo should be praised for its efforts, as with advanced technologies such as Power Manager and support for Hardware Password Manager, the M58p is one of the most complete business machines you can purchase. The ThinkCentre M58p comes with a limited, 3-year onsite warranty with next business day service.

Lenovo ThinkCentre M58p Review

Cooler Master HAF 932 Full Tower Case Review
Modders-Inc.com posted a review on the Cooler Master HAF 932 Full Tower Case

Cooler master brings you the HAF 932. A larger full size tower case featuring a unique design set and a High Air Flow structure. This case features a wide range of premium features including tool less components, enhanced motherboard tray for cable routing, rear access to the mother board for easy CPU cooler installs and ready made mounts for water cooling just to name a few. If that sounds like a lot of features for one case your right. Is the HAF 932 worthy to be the next home for your hardware?

Cooler Master HAF 932 Full Tower Case Review

ASUS Rampage Extreme Review
t-break posted a review on the ASUS Rampage Extreme

Extreme is the word used to define something that exceeds anything normal. And what we have with us today to review is anything but normal. An Asus motherboard on a Rampage is the Asus Rampage Extreme that has it all. This board simply demands you take it seriously, or else...

ASUS Rampage Extreme Review

HIS ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB IceQ4+ Turbo Review
bit-tech published a review of the HIS ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB IceQ4+ Turbo graphics card

We had high hopes for the HIS ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB IceQ4+ Turbo, but sadly they haven't been fulfilled. Typically, HIS goes out of its way to spice up AMD's ATI Radeon graphics cards with an improved cooling solution, higher clock speeds and a few innovations added in for good measure. While we've got some of that here, the one thing we haven't got is a new cooling solution -- instead, it's a refinement of the reference cooler.

What makes it worse is the fact that the refinements made appear to be for the worse -- at least, where noise is concerned. HIS has essentially redesigned the fan shroud to expose the heatpipes to the elements and introduced a slightly different fan with fewer blades. In order to improve cooling performance, the fan speed has been raised and to such an extent that it's quite noisy (but not offensively so) when the card is idling -- that's not something we really appreciate.

Disappointingly, the core clock speed hasn't been increased by anything more than a token amount and the result is that the real-world performance benefits are generally fairly limited. The memory clocks are impressive -- there's no doubt about that -- but we would have hoped the core speed overclock would have at least come close to matching that.

HIS ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB IceQ4+ Turbo Review[/url

HIS IceQ4 4850 Review
XSReviews has reviewed the HIS IceQ4 4850 GPU

While XSReviews has had the chance to check out GPUs from many different companies, one of the ones we haven't worked with much is HIS, but recently they've decided we're worthy of their attention. With that in mind they've sent us a HD 4850 with their special IceQ4 branding. Let's see how it compares to some of our recently reviewed GPUs from other manufacturers.

[url=http://www.xsreviews.co.uk/reviews/graphics-cards/his-iceq4-4850/]HIS IceQ4 4850 Review

32 GB Patriot Warp v2 Solid State Drive review
Metku.net took a closer look at Patriot's 32 gigabyte Warp v2 SSD unit.

SSDs are trying to enter market and replace platter based hard drives. Technologywise they surpass the old way of storaging data magnetically so why the SSD market is still so slow eventhough the drives have been around for couple of years now?

32 GB Patriot Warp v2 Solid State Drive review

ZOTAC GeForce GTX285 and GeForce GTX295 Video Card Review
Futurelooks has posted a review on the ZOTAC GeForce GTX285 and GeForce GTX295 Video Card

In the two horse race of performance video cards, things have been pretty cyclical. One company would release a new whiz-bang card, then the other company would release their response. This was followed by a similar cycle of tweaked versions of the same cards. In the last two release cycles those tweaks came in the form of dual GPU cards, which sandwiched two cards into one package. The most recent cycle left off with ATI releasing their dual GPU solution in the form of the Radeon HD 4870 X2, and NVIDIA responding with…nothing. NVIDIA finally turned their nothing into something by releasing both a dual GPU solution and a tweaked single GPU card, and they are bringing vendors like ZOTAC along for the ride.

ZOTAC GeForce GTX285 and GeForce GTX295 Video Card Review

Mirrors Edge Game Review
ocaholic.ch posted a review on the Mirrors Edge Game

EA Games has really been pushing this game. There were a lot of trailers and screenshots online before launch day. First we we can tell you one thing already at this early point of the review: this game is different. In the world of Mirrors Edge everything is supervised. At the beginning the city was lively, vibrant but the changes came slowly but certainly. Cameras and private security companies began to watch over the city and got it under their control step by step.

Mirrors Edge Game Review

Leadtek GeForce GTX 285 1024 MB Review
techPowerUp posted a review on the Leadtek GeForce GTX 285 1024 MB

NVIDIA's latest addition to their graphics card lineup is based around the 55 nanometer GT200b. The new card offers more performance, consumes less power and is quieter than the previous model. Yet these improvements cost you a premium of about $70 over the GTX 280. Is that price justified?

Leadtek GeForce GTX 285 1024 MB Review

Cooler Master ATCS 840 Full Tower Case Review
Hardware Canucks posted a review on the Cooler Master ATCS 840 full tower case.

While the ATCS is known for its classic good looks what it is best known for (and thus the moniker ATCS) is high performance cooling with as many strategically placed fans as they can cram into a case. In this case Cooler Master has fit in not one, not two, but THREE of those 230x200mm monsters and they have done it without resorting to sticking one on the side panel.

Cooler Master ATCS 840 Full Tower Case Review

Gigabyte EX58-UD5 motherboard Review
Neoseeker takes a look at the a new X58 mobo from Gigabyte, the EX58-UD5

It consistently took the top spot for stock speed results in the majority of tests; and it was almost always in second place - and several times in first place - for the overclocked tests, even though the MSI X58 Eclipse was running the Core i7 920 processor at a slightly higher overclocked speed (4.05GHz vs. 4.03GHz). The memory performance was particularly outstanding, letting the GA-EX58-UD5 take top spots in some of the overclocked tests even though it was at a slight processor frequency disadvantage.

Gigabyte EX58-UD5 motherboard Review

Thermaltake BigTyp 14Pro Review
OCC has published a new review on the Thermaltake BigTyp 14Pro

The Thermaltake BigTyp 14Pro was able to do fairly well in comparison
to the other coolers that I tested. It was able to beat out the Domino A.L.C. (Full), the Thermaltake SpinQ, and tie the OCZ Gladiator MAX. It was just a few degrees off from the best performers, such as the Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme, Titan CoolIdol, and the Cooler Master V8.

Thermaltake BigTyp 14Pro Review

Hercules XPS 2.150 Multimedia Speaker System Review
TweakTown posted a review on the Hercules XPS 2.150 Multimedia Speaker System

The very first product I took a look at from Hercules was the Game Theater XP sound card quite a few years ago. At the time this was the sound card to have and helped build a great reputation for the company. Some water has passed under the bridge since then and Hercules now has a brand new line-up of exciting products to show off.

One of these new products is a multi-purpose 2.1 speaker kit called the XPS 2.150. Finished in a very classy piano gloss black with orange speaker drivers, the XPS is out to make a strong aesthetic impression. The XPS features compatibility with just about anything you might want to use, such as MP3 player, gaming console, TV, DVD or Blu-ray player. The system also features a headphone output and a line input on the side of the left speaker. Read on to see how they sound during testing.

Hercules XPS 2.150 Multimedia Speaker System Review

Intel X25-M SATA 80GB MLC SSD Review
Benchmark Reviews posted a review on the Intel X25-M SATA 80GB MLC SSD

In early September, 2008 Intel released their mainstream series of solid state drives. In its initial offfering Intel brought two drives to market, the X18-M and the X25-M built respectively on the 1.8" and 2.5" form factors. The initial capacity of these drives was 80 GB and recently a 160 GB version was released. Solid State Drives are rapidly changing the computing landscape, and many enthusiasts are using SSD technology in their primary systems to help boost performance. Benchmark Reviews has tested nearly all of the products available to the retail market in this sector, and several have done quite well while others fall flat. It used to be that performance was the largest hurdle for mass storage NAND Solid State Drives, followed by stability, and later price. In this review, we will give a thorough overview as well as benchmark test the linear bandwidth performance of the Intel X25-M 80 GB SSDSA2MH080G15E solid state SATA drive and compares it against the top competition.

Intel X25-M SATA 80GB MLC SSD Review