Thecus N299 Review
Dan's Data posted a review on the Thecus N299 storage box

The Thecus N299 is, I think, just about the cheapest two-drive network storage box on the market today.

And it's got a feature list as long as your arm.

Which suggests that it may be a little... quirky.

As it turns out, yes, it is. But I still think the N299 is worth buying.

Check out my review, including careful examination of everything in this thing that doesn't work right, and a quick rundown of its competitors, here

Thecus N299 Review

AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ Black Edition CPU Review
Virtual-Hideout posted AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ Black Edition CPU Review

Now why would AMD release an AMD Athlon X2 5000+ Black Edition Processor? Try affordability and performance on for size. At a reasonable $115.00 for 2.6GHz of power running through two cores, this processor should be very capable of providing more than enough power for today's most graphic intensive games. Of course as with any of the newest processors, it should be teamed up with a good graphics card like the NVidia 8800 or ATI's newest series. This more affordable processor is basically AMD's way of thanking all of the people who have chosen and continue to choose AMD processors.

AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ Black Edition CPU Review



Lapworks Laptop Desk Futura Review
Mikhailtech posted Lapworks Laptop Desk Futura Review

Lapworks, located in Rancho Cucamonga, California, specializes in products that make working with notebooks easier, safer, and more productive. With such an outstanding claim, you may be wondering what exactly Lapworks means by these three enhancements. Let's take a further look.

Lapworks Laptop Desk Futura Review

Westone UM1 Earphones Review
techPowerUp posted a review on the Westone UM1 Earphones

The Westone UM1 in-ear-monitors are aimed at people wanting good sound quality on the move without having to spend several hundreds of dollars. With a price of $109 they are Westone's contribution to a highly competitive price segment.

Westone UM1 Earphones Review

SimpleTech PC3-10600 DDR3 1333MHz S1024R5NP2QA Review
Benchmark Reviews has released a new article on the SimpleTech PC3-10600 DDR3 1333MHz S1024R5NP2QA memory kit

Of all the RAM kits we have reviewed thus far in our High-Speed DDR3 Overclocking and Review Series, practically every set has been aimed towards performance enthusiasts and overclockers. But Benchmark Reviews isn't going to ignore our roots within the system builder and reseller community. SimpleTech offers OEM system builders and GSA suppliers with a solid PC3-10600 DDR3 1333MHz S1024R5NP2QA RAM kit for the Intel P35/X38/P45/X48 chipsets.

SimpleTech PC3-10600 DDR3 1333MHz S1024R5NP2QA Review

ATI Catalyst 8.1 Analysis - XP & Vista
TweakTown published an ATI Catalyst 8.1 Analysis

With the slow run that AMD have been having with driver releases over the past few months it will be interesting to see what happens with the new release. Considering January is generally a pretty quiet month for hardware sales thanks to the fact that everyone spent their money over Christmas, who knows what AMD will have up their sleeves with this release.

The most interesting (and potentially disappointing) fact about this driver release is that AMD mention no form of performance improvements with the driver update. We hope this isn’t true, but let’s find out what happens when we place the driver through our typical line-up of games and graphics cards.

ATI Catalyst 8.1 Analysis - XP & Vista

Asus Blitz Extreme Review
OCC has published a new review of the Asus Blitz Extreme

I never thought I would be able to pull more performance out of my existing hardware. My CPU has hit walls from 440 to 470 FSB on other boards but usually I could coax another 5 FSB from it with extreme voltages. As it turns out, the old Quad had a little more life left in it after all. 490 x 7 was stable in Memtest 1.70 but would crash upon loading Windows. Lowering the clocks a little further resulted in a boot into Windows at 484 x 7. Not only did this clock speed boot into Windows, but was Prime 95 stable for over 24 hours as well. Voltages on the northbridge, CPU and CPU PLL were increased to gain stability at this clockspeed. A nice little feature in the BIOS is the color coding of the miscellaneous voltages. Green, of course, for normal, Yellow for high and Red for crazy. This gives you an indication of what levels Asus thinks are "safe" and which are not. Overclocking the memory did not require a whole lot of tweaking to get the memory to perform. By focusing on the CPU clocks I ran the memory slower than it is capable of. This memory does indeed push to 940MHz on this board with timings of 8-7-6-20 at 1.96volts. Pushing the limits on the Asus Blitz Extreme was not a problem. The crash recovery requires just a shutdown and reboot. This takes you back to the default settings, so the next boot is trouble free. Kind of refreshing if you ask me. If it does get to the point where the simple reboot does not work, there is always the clear CMOS button on the I/O panel just in case. The final clock speed of 484 x 7 is the most "Extreme" clockspeed that my Q6600 has ever been able to achieve.

Asus Blitz Extreme Review

Intel QX9650 Core 2 Extreme Review
HardwareLogic.com posted Intel QX9650 Core 2 Extreme Review

After months of hype and anticipation, INTEL and AMD have unleashed their next generation processors on the market. While AMD's Phenom line has received luke warm reviews to this point, INTEL's Penryn line has been the toast of the town. Why?

Today, HardwareLogic breaks down the quad core QX9650. While a casual glance might leave the impression there's little difference between the QX9650 and its predecessors (the QX6800 and QX6850), looks can be, and in this case, are deceiving. There's much more here than meets the eye...

Intel QX9650 Core 2 Extreme Review

PC Power & Cooling Silencer Quad 750w PSU Review
OCIA.net has posted their review of the PC Power & Cooling Silencer Quad 750w PSU.

Despite being named the Silencer Quad, this PSU uses just a single beefy 12V rail, running 60 amps! Seeing specs like those just makes you want to drool. High efficiency, just one silent fan, and single rail design, all of this is amazing. but is it too good to be true? Continue on as we find out.

PC Power & Cooling Silencer Quad 750w PSU Review

Lexar 8GB ExpressCard SSD Review
XtremeComputing posted Lexar 8GB ExpressCard SSD Review

although it didn’t operate as fast as the USB drive, the power consumption is where the benefits were and for people on the move that is important. I also used the drive under vista, via vista boost and there was a slight increase in performance when opening and shutting files I was working with, so a performance boost without a huge power hit.

Lexar 8GB ExpressCard SSD Review

ASUS P5K Pro motherboard review
Elite Bastards takes a look at the ASUS P5K Pro motherboard

As standard, P35 offers sixteen lanes of PCI Express 1.1 bandwidth (meaning no PCI Express 2.0 support in this chipset) as a single PCI Express 16x slot for a discrete graphics board. However, this bandwidth can be split across two electrical PCI Express 16x slots to offer CrossFire support, and indeed this is exactly what ASUS has done with the subject of today's review - Insert and enable two ATI CrossFire capable boards into the P5K Pro and multi-GPU rendering is possible, with the PCI Express bandwidth split between the two slots, giving eight lanes of bandwidth to the primary slot and just four to the secondary slot. While this will impact performance in some bus bandwidth intensive scenarios (with ATI's Super AA mode being the primary culprit for such situations), in many cases performance should be broadly comparable to using two 'true' sixteen lane PCI Express slots.

ASUS P5K Pro motherboard review

ASUS Maximus Formula (Non-SE) Review
Bjorn3D takes a look at the ASUS Maximus Formula (Non-SE).

Today we intend to not only review the ASUS Maximus Formula but perform the review using a somewhat different approach that we hope is a precursor to something really unique and exciting for our readers. We'll detail the changes we've made when we get to the 'Testing Methodology' section of the review where the change actually are implemented. Up until then the format of our review of the Maximus formula will remain essentially the same. Please join us in our pursuit of presenting the Maximus Formula from a much broader and complete perspective.

ASUS Maximus Formula (Non-SE) Review

Sparkle GeForce 8800GT Cool-Pipe3 512MB Review
The Guru of 3D posted Sparkle GeForce 8800GT Cool-Pipe3 512MB review

Sparkle recently released a GeForce 8800 GT that actually is passively cooled. Because the reference cooled 8800 GT already runs insanely hot to 90 degrees C, doing the cooling part passive .. would definitely make things even worse. Combine that with the rumored GPU core temperatures of 110 Degrees C I pretty much stereotyped the product even before we had tested it.

Now given the wrong conditions passive cooling on a 8800 GT will give insane temperatures ... you can fry an egg on the card. Given the right conditions .. it's really just fine. Read all about it in the full article

Sparkle GeForce 8800GT Cool-Pipe3 512MB Review