Here a roundup of today's reviews and articles, including SteelSeries Sensei Pro Grade Laser Mouse Review, Areca ARC-1882i and Corsair Force GT 7 Drive SATA III RAID 0 Setup, and Corsair Force GT SATA 3 240GB SSD Review



SteelSeries Sensei Pro Grade Laser Mouse Review
HardwareHeaven.com posted SteelSeries Sensei Pro Grade Laser Mouse Review

Today we have the latest SteelSeries mouse attached to our system. The Sensei has a familiar look and feel but this masks some impressive component upgrades inside such as one of the most precise gaming sensors we have ever tested... powered by a CPU as powerful as the original Pentium. Read on to find out what we thought of the mouse during our time testing it.

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SilverStone Temjin TJ08-E Case Review
Hardware Secrets posted SilverStone Temjin TJ08-E Case Review

The SilverStone Temjin TJ08-E is a small form factor tower case, supporting microATX and Mini-ITX motherboards, with a big 180 mm fan and an aluminum front panel. Let's see if it is a good solution.

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VisionTek High Performance PC3-12800 8GB Kit Review
TweakTown posted a review on the VisionTek High Performance PC3-12800 8GB Kit

Pulling our VisionTek kit out of the package, we instantly notice that we're not dealing with some cheap heatsink which is always a good start. The heatsink itself is quite tall and like most companies who opt for this tall heatsink, it can cause problems with some large coolers, but most of the time you're able to swing those coolers around or opt for the RAM in slots 2 and 4 which sit a little further from the CPU cooler.

Getting into specifics, we're dealing with two 4GB modules making up an 8GB kit that comes in at PC3-12800 or 1600MHz DDR. As you can see off the specification tag, we're dealing with a CL8 kit, but the specifics on the timings are 8-8-8-24-1T @ 1.65v.

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Corsair Force Series GT 120GB SATA 6Gb/s Solid-State Drive Review
ThinkComputers.org posted a review on the Corsair Force Series GT 120GB SATA 6Gb/s Solid-State Drive

It seems like it has been a while since we have reviewed a solid state drive, the last time we looked at one was back in June! Well today we are taking a look at a solid state drive this will not disappoint! The drive I am talking about is the Corsair Force Series GT 120GB SATA 6Gb/s drive. The Force Series GT’s are Corsairs highest solid state drive offering boasting read speeds of 555MB/s and write speeds of 515MB/s, on top of that they are saying speeds of up to 85,000 IOPS. Let’s check this beast out and get it on our test bench!

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EnGenius ESR-9850 Wireless Router Review
TechwareLabs posted a review on the EnGenius ESR-9850 Wireless Router

Shopping for a wireless router can be a bit of a crapshoot at times; every last one promises you the world, and problems can crop up with alarming frequency. Wading into this sea of uncertainty is a relatively unknown manufactuer, EnGenius. Their history is more with telephony than with networking gear, but this latest router they've sent us, the ESR-9850, shows some promise. Let's see if it can hold up when it counts.

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Areca ARC-1882i and Corsair Force GT 7 Drive SATA III RAID 0 Setup
TweakTown posted Areca ARC-1882i and Corsair Force GT 7 Drive SATA III RAID 0 Setup

We love SSDs here at TweakTown; not just as a site, but all of our writers love what SSD technology brings to the table. Most of us here actually run SSD setups including the boss who late last year moved to a 4x 256GB SATA III Crucial setup.. One of the biggest requirements for myself when upgrading my testbeds recently was the introduction of larger SSD drives. The 128GB Kingston drives I'd been using for a while now had served me very well, but as we expand our game testing and games themselves become so much bigger, we needed to make the move to the next size up.

Since the move to the next size up was happening, it made sense to make use of the latest SATA III technology. The 120GB Force GT from Corsair has already lit up our test system, but today I thought we'd take the 240GB version which are being used in my new testbeds for a spin. Of course, this isn't a hard drive review or anything like that, Instead, because a total of seven drives arrived for my new testbed line-up and a smart cookie on our facebook page commented we should throw them into RAID 0 for a bit of fun, we figured why the hell not!

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Fractal Design CORE 1000 Review
techPowerUp posted a review on the Fractal Design CORE 1000 case

The CORE 1000 is the most affordable entry into the Micro ATX case market from Fractal Design. It is aimed to take on the Cooler Master Elite and the Xigmatek Asgard by offering as many features at an affordable price point. Will it prevail?

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Rise of Nightmares Game Review (XBOX 360 Kinect)
HardwareHeaven.com posted Rise of Nightmares Game Review (XBOX 360 Kinect)

While some games allow us to play with a controller or Kinect Rise of Nightmares very much pushes us down the latter route, Kinect is a requirement and everything within the game relies on it including the menu's and loading screen interactivity. Upon selecting our difficulty level we are thrown into a mini-tutorial mission based around two characters with terrible French accents. This mission fills us in nicely on the control method and sets the scene well for what we can expect from the game.

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MSI X460DX 14" Core i5 Notebook Review
HotHardware.com takes a look at the MSI X460DX 14" Core i5 Notebook

The MSI X460DX straddles two of the more popular notebook form-factors available today. It's not an ultraportable, and it's not a mainstream 15-incher either. Instead, its 14-inch form factor gives mobile consumers another choice. It's a platform size that we don't think is used enough, and it doesn't get nearly enough attention. That said, MSI has decided to step out a bit with the X460DX, and the internal specifications are just as intriguing as the outside chassis...

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Ozone Strike Gaming Keyboard Review
Vortez posted a review on the Ozone Strike Gaming Keyboard

The Ozone Strike has one major difference from your run-of-the-mill gaming keyboards in that it has Cherry MX-Black switches. Being a mechanical keyboard, Ozone claim it is more precise than a standard gaming keyboard which use the more commonly applied rubber dome pads beneath the keys. Not only that but the Ozone Strike has full Nkey rollover function (with PS/2 attached) allowing every single key to be detected simultaneously, a 1000 Hz polling rate, a USB/Audio hub and multimedia functionality. Couple this with gold plated connectors on the end of a double nylon braided cable and it appears Ozone are pulling out all of the stops to make this keyboard a success.

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Spire Gemini SP986B1-V2-2P Heatsink Review
FrostyTech posted a review on the Spire Gemini SP986B1-V2-2P Heatsink

Spire's Gemini SP986B1-V2-2P heatsink is a minor variation on the popular Eclipse II tower heatsink design, the most notable difference being a novel bifurcated fin stack. To 'bifurcate' means to split into two... so in other words, the fin stack is split down the middle and the fin edges are closed off so air can only pass through the heatsink from front-to-back. This unique 'ducting' approach essentially creates two independent fin towers connected by six, 6mm diameter U-shaped sintered metal wick copper heatpipes.

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CableCARD Tuner Essentials Guide
MissingRemote posted CableCARD Tuner Essentials Guide

At a higher level, the technology was developed to protect consumers from being forced into having to rent set top boxes (STB) at increasing fees from cable companies (or MSOs) without an alternative. From a home theater PC (HTPC) perspective, it meant the ability to natively tune high definition programming from a cable provider (previously the options were only analog cable, or digital over the air broadcasts).

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Motorola Droid Bionic Hands-On Impressions
TechSpot posted first impression of the Motorola Droid Bionic

The Motorola Droid Bionic has had a storied past, despite just being released a couple of days ago. It was originally announced way back at the CES trade show in January, though it was a very different looking smartphone back then. Motorola went back to the drawing board and redesigned the Bionic to what we have today: a 4G LTE phone that could be a doppelganger for the already-released Droid X2.

I have had a review unit for a brief period, and while I haven't had it long enough to subject it to a proper, in-depth review, these are my initial impressions of the Droid Bionic.

Contrary to what we were shown back at CES, the device that we have today is very familiar looking among Verizon's smartphone lineup. Featuring a mostly square face, and the now signature hump on the back for the camera that the Droid X and Droid X2 exhibit, the Droid Bionic fits right in with the rest of Motorola's Droid products for Verizon.

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Razer BlackWidow Ultimate Mechanical Keyboard Review - Mechanically superior? Just mechanical?
PC Perspective posted a review on the Razer BlackWidow Ultimate Mechanical Keyboard

Keyboards are often overlooked during the purchase of a new computer; for many there does not appear to be any real difference between any two keyboards outside of wireless technology, backlighting, or extra keys. Those who game heavily or those who are typing enthusiasts for work or hobby might be in the market for a more personalized experience. There are whole categories of keyboard styles which allow a tailored solution to your personal style of use right down to the type of switch used to register a keystroke.

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Ceton InfiniTV 4 USB CableCARD Tuner Review
MissingRemote posted Ceton InfiniTV 4 USB CableCARD Tuner Review

For more than a year enthusiasts in the Home Theater PC (HTPC) community have known Ceton as the Kirkland, WA company that delivered the first true PCIe, and until recently only, Digital Cable Tuner (DCT) available on the market. Discontent to sit out the recent, relative glut of CableCARD devices and form factors they have introduced a new external USB member to their four tuner product line with planned availability on September 19th -- aptly named “InfiniTV 4 USB.” We recently reviewed two similarly external CableCARD tuners from Hauppauge and SiliconDust which entered the market ahead of Ceton, but time to market is only part of the equation as both devices have struggled with maturity; so the real question is if Ceton’s experience in the field can provide the same quality of experience we have come to expect from their earlier device.

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Is Google DNS Better Than Your ISP's?
Computing on Demand has posted a new article, 'Is Google DNS Better Than Your ISP's?'

Recently, Google introduced their own DNS service for internet customers.  With the latest iteration of their service, along with OpenDNS and a few other DNS Service providers, they have started to use CDN's (Content Delivery Network) to increase performance.  This helps latency issues that your ISP is typically unable to address by gathering and using data stored on DNS servers based on the requestor's location.

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Inside the second: A new look at game benchmarking
The Tech Report takes a new look at game benchmarking

Is measuring game performance in FPS a mistake? We set out to introduce some new game benchmarking methods, and those tools promptly helped us uncover an intriguing problem: multi-GPU micro-stuttering.

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P67 Roundup Part Two
OCC has published P67 Roundup Part Two

The most noticeable thing about the ASUS P67 SABERTOOTH is the board's thermal armor, partly because it's so different and partly just because of how cool it is. The SABERTOOTH is a full ATX motherboard and utilizes a ton of features unique to ASUS. These include the board's TUF Thermal Armor, TUF Thermal Radar, TUF Engine Power Design, 8+2 Digital Phase Power Design, TUF Components, ASUS DIGI+ VRM Utility, E.S.P. (Efficient Switching Power Design), Safe & Stable Guardian Angel, ESD Guards, MemOK!, and Anti Surge protection.

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Sapphire Radeon HD 6850 Vapor-X Review
Neoseeker posted a review on the Sapphire Radeon HD 6850 Vapor-X

The HD 6850 effectively replaced the HD 5750 in terms of market positioning and pricing, but the total performance offered by the Sapphire Radeon HD 6850 Vapor-X is more in line with the HD 5850. The HD 6850 Vapor-X promises plenty of bang for the buck, and we put it to the test in our latest Radeon HD 6850 review.

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Corsair Force GT SATA 3 240GB SSD Review
The SSD Review posted Corsair Force GT SATA 3 240GB SSD Review

Corsair recently announced new capacities for both the Series 3 and Force GT lines of their SSD family making them the easy winner in capacity selection for any single SSD series choice that we know of. Shortly after that announcement, a Corsair Force GT SATA 3 240GB SSD arrived at the office and we couldn't resist the chance to throw it on the bench and see the numbers this GT could push. From the looks of it at least, the GT is on fire!

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Bulldozer First Release and the State of 32nm AMD Parts
PC Perspective posted an article on the new AMD Bulldozer processors

Some five months later we are now making the same type of announcement for AMD and their first revenue shipment of the Bulldozer core. The first chips off the line are actually “Interlagos” chips; basically server processors that feature upwards of 16 cores (8 modules, each module containing two integer units and then the shared 256 bit FPU/SSE SIMD unit). The first customer is Cray, purveyor of fine supercomputers everywhere. They will be integrating these new chips into their Cray XE6 supercomputers, which have been purchased by a handful of governmental and education entities around the world.[/quote6
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ASUS P6X58-E Pro Review
PureOverclock has published a review of the ASUS P6X58-E Pro motherboard.

We all know that LGA1366 X58 motherboards are not new products. They've been around for some time now and have proven to have quite a bit of longevity. Today we will take a peek at the ASUS P6X58-E Pro motherboard and see what goodies ASUS has added to this long lasting and versatile chipset.

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Antec LanBoy Air Yellow PC Case Review
Real World Labs takes a look at the Antec LanBoy Air Yellow PC Case

The latest Antec offering in their gamers PC case line called the LanBoy Air doesn't only feature a modular design never seen before, very good build quality, low weight and superior airflow but it also allows you to customize pretty much every aspect of it in order to meet your exact needs.

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ECS A75F-A motherboard Review
The Guru of 3D posted a review on the ECS A75F-A motherboard

Today we look at a A75 motherboard from ECS, in the 100 EUR bracket they have released the A75F-A, a board that ECS decided to pair with two PCI Express x16 slots (the second one is x4 electronically), two PCI Express x1 slots as well as with no less than three legacy PCI slots.

This is the kind of stuff that ECS shines at, have a peek at the motherboard and read the review right here

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Coolermaster Hyper 612S Review
Overclock3D have just published a new article titled: Coolermaster Hyper 612S Review

We take a look at the latest heatsink from Coolermaster the Hyper 612S. Can it build on the success of its little brother the 212?

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