Here a roundup of the latest reviews, including Asus' A53T Llano-powered notebook Review, PowerColor Radeon HD 6770 PCS+ Vortex II Graphics Card Review, and Sandy Bridge-E and MSI X79 Preview



Asus' A53T Llano-powered notebook Review
The Tech Report posted a review on Asus' A53T Llano-powered notebook

Here we have our first example of a genuine, honest-to-goodness consumer laptop powered by AMD's latest and greatest accelerated processing unit. How does it perform?

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Thermaltake Armor A30 Micro ATX Case Review
eTeknix.com takes a look at the Thermaltake Armor A30 Micro ATX Case

There is an ever increasing market for small form factor cases as consumers demand smaller PCs to fulfil their space requirements. Small form factor cases are perfect for people who want to build a home theatre PC or even for people who don't have a lot of space to work with.

Thermaltake produce a wide range of products that includes some quality power supplies and a variety of gaming peripherals under their Tt eSPORTS brand. But one of their key areas of expertise is in the PC case market. While they have a sizeable range of budget cases, they have proved that they can produce high quality top end cases like the original Thermaltake Level 10.

Today we are going to look at one of Thermaltake's latest cases, the Armor A30, which boasts quite an impressive feature set for a small form factor case. It supports Micro ATX motherboards alongside a full size PSU, a couple of solid state drives and long graphics cards so is excellent for taking to LAN parties or for an exotic-looking HTPC.

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SilverStone EC01 USB 3.0 Internal 19-Pin Dual Port PCI Express Card Review
MissingRemote posted a review on the SilverStone EC01 USB 3.0 Internal 19-Pin Dual Port PCI Express Card

Some of our recent enclosure reviews (SilverStone TJ08-E, Fractal Design Define Mini have featured external USB 3.0 ports requiring a connection to a 19-pin header required by the USB 3.0 specification which poses a problem for most motherboards to date. While SilverStone was kind enough to provide an internal USB 3.0 to USB 2.0 adapter with the TJ08-E, it would be ideal to take advantage of the USB 3.0 capability. Enter SilverStone’s EC01 PCI Express card providing a 19-pin internal connector capable of supporting two USB 3.0 ports.

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Patriot Wildfire 120GB SSD Review
HardwareHeaven.com posted a review on the Patriot Wildfire 120GB SSD

One of the major manufacturers offering a Sandforce based SSD is Patriot with their Wildfire range of drives and today we have one attached to our system, putting it head to head with Intel's 510 model and the recently released Samsung 830 Series.

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Thermaltake Chaser MK-I Case Review
Hi Tech Legion posted a review on the Thermaltake Chaser MK-I Case

The Thermaltake Chaser MK-I happens to be one of those gems. The Chaser MK-I contains features similar to the Level 10 GT, but at half the price. Inside, Thermaltake uses a completely tool free system for the 5.25" and 3.5" drive bays. The cooling system includes a giant 200mm intake and top Colorshift fan, while the rear exhaust is a large 140mm TurboFan. Those fans are connected to the included fan controller, which features a high and low setting. There is enough room to expand and add 7 more fans for extreme cooling. Special features include an adapted BlacX docking station on the top, the ability to use the new USB 3.0 front header for compatible motherboards, and a headset holder connected to the side panel. The Chaser MK-I is completely liquid cooling ready and includes heightened foot stands.

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ASUS U36SD-A1 Notebook Review
Hardware Canucks posted a review of the new ASUS U36SD-A1 notebook

By now we should all know that when buying an ultra portable notebook, sacrifices almost always have to be made but ith their new U36SD, ASUS is turning these preconceptions onto their heads. Note only is this new laptop equipped with a standard voltage Sandy Bridge processor and a dedicated NVIDIA graphics processor but it weighs less than 3 lbs, boasts over 7 hours of battery life and comes in at under $900. Sounds like perfection, doesn't it?

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PowerColor Radeon HD 6770 PCS+ Vortex II Graphics Card Review
eTeknix.com posted a review on the PowerColor Radeon HD 6770 PCS+ Vortex II Graphics Card

Rewinding time to a few years ago, the Radeon 5770 took centre stage and gave AMD a great boost in sales as it took the market by storm as an affordable mid-range card that had a lot to offer for a great price point. Building on the success of that card, AMD released the next generation in the form of a 6770 offering up slightly improved features and expecting to take the market by storm in the same manner.

With Nvidia releasing the likes of the GTX 550 Ti, it was going to be a lot tougher for AMD to compete, especially at a reference level. This is why many more manufacturers on the market are investing time and money into custom coolers, custom PCB's and faster pre-overclocked cards and PowerColor thought they'd give some of their star treatment to the Radeon 6770 by slapping their patented Vortex II cooler on board and bumping up the base clocks slightly to give that extra performance that we all crave, especially when it doesn't cost any extra, right?

We've never been fans of mid-range cards, but that's all down to the fact that the staff at eTeknix are enthusiasts through and through, but we do believe that mid-range cards have their place in the market, as not everyone has £400+ to spend on a dual GPU monster like the Radeon 6990 or GTX 590, and for the most part, cards like that would be wasted on most consumers. This is why we find manufacturers releasing these refreshed cards which give the consumer something more than your bog standard reference card.

PowerColor are keen to show off their Radeon 6770 PCS+ Vortex II graphics card, and with PowerColor being a new brand to us in the test lab, we're keen to see what it can do and if it's really worth the extra money for a pre-overclocked card with a fancy cooler.

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Promise Pegasus R6 Review
Business Computing World published a review of Promise's Pegasus R6 Thunderbolt RAID device

Sure it's expensive, isn't available diskless or pre-fitted with 10,000rpm HDDs or SSDs, lacks a status display and isn't very secure, but the bandwidth offered by the Pegasus is so much more than anything out today. Thunderbolt drives will start to decrease in price once more manufactures release products, but for now the Pegasus is a premium product demanding a premium price.

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Fallout New Vegas: Lonesome Road DLC Review
HardwareHeaven.com posted Fallout New Vegas: Lonesome Road DLC Review

Our Fallout: New Vegas review has now been updated to include content from Lonesome Road, the latest DLC pack.

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Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO CPU Cooler Review
TopReviewShop.com posted a review on the Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO CPU Cooler

Today Cooler Master has released a new version of their popular Hyper 212 cooler that is designed to meet all your budget-conscious CPU cooling needs - the Hyper 212 EVO. With universal socket mounting and a tower-style design height of 158mm, it's not likely to conflict with your motherboard components and shouldn't have trouble fitting in traditional cases. It's even compatible with the upcoming AMD FX series of processors. Let's see how it performs against the competition.

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Intel Releases Atom D2500 and D2700 Processors
Anandtech reports that Intel has released Atom D2500 and D2700 Processors

Back in April, we reported the specifications of Intel's upcoming Cedar Trail platform. On Sunday, Intel quietly updated their CPU price list with two new SKUs: Atom D2500 and D2700. These are Intel's first Cedar Trail codenamed CPUs, as well as the first 32nm Atoms. The specifications are the same as what we reported earlier but lets list them anyway

There aren't any major compared to what we have already published. The only new bits of info are GPU frequencies, but unfortunately we still have no idea of the architecture, and hence performance remains as a big question. It's not even sure whether DirectX 10.1 is supported, even though we initially reported that it will be. There were rumors of Intel having problems with DirectX, thus it's possible that Intel will be releasing only DirectX 9 capable driver at the release to avoid further delays. 

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Sandy Bridge-E and MSI X79 Preview
The Guru of 3D posted a preview on Sandy Bridge-E and MSI X79

Today we bring you a preview covering the Intel Core i7-3960X (Sandy Bridge-E) processor and X79 based motherboard. An update to the true high-end six-core processor series aimed at consumers. A processor based on 32nm technology that comes with most of the bells and whistles we have learned to like and love of the current Sandy Bridge processor generation.

Head on over to the next page where we'll discuss Sandy-Bridge-E processors, the respective models. We'll also have a chat about MSI's X79 motherboard and chipset and then will throw a decent photo-shoot and benchmark suite at the products.

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Mushkin Blackline PC3-16000 3x4GB Review
OCC has published a review on the Mushkin Blackline PC3-16000 3x4GB

Using the XMP profile, the suggested QPI voltage was 1.40V. But, in my case the memory controller wasn't happy until I gave it 1.45V. Once that issue was patched, the memory ran perfectly stable at stock, operating warm but not hot. The memory would tighten up some, but the CAS latency didn't like to go down to 8 over 1850 MHz, however, 8-9-8-27 was fully stable at 1805 MHz and 9-9-9-24 was stable at 2000 MHz. Overclocking was easy but my i7 920s IMC couldn't keep up, so I had to settle with 2105 MHz which required 1.5375V QPI.

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SATA3 Solid State Drive Round Up Featuring Corsair, Kingston, Patriot Memory and OCZ
Futurelooks posted a SATA3 Solid State Drive Round Up

The SSD market is finally at price levels I would call palatable. There are 120GB SATA2 SSDs for $179.99 or less and SATA3 SSDs for $184.99 and above. This will undoubtedly impact sales for smaller 20-64GB SSDs used in conjunction with Intel Smart Response (ISR) technology on Z68 platforms. ISR is great for pairing a smaller and cheaper 20-64GB (max) SATA2 SSD with their hard drive so users don’t have to reformat. However, since many of those smaller SSDs are still around $100, I think it’s very safe to predict consumers are going to hand over another $80 or so to land a 120GB SSD in the SATA3 flavor.

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Samsung RC512-S01 Review
Neowin posted a review on the Samsung RC512-S01 notebook

This laptop from Samsung claims to be a powerhouse portable. Can it really be one, or is it all for show? Find out as Neowin puts the Samsung RC512-S01 through its paces.

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Lian Li's PC-V353: Lighter Than Air
Anandtech posted a review on Lian Li's PC-V353 case

We've been wanting to get Lian Li enclosures in house for review for a while now, and we're pleased to report we finally have a contender on hand (with more on the way!) in the form of the PC-V353. Lian Li touts this case as having been designed to cool through use of extensive ventilation instead of fans, but surprisingly they don't advertise what may be one of its more interesting aspects: the enclosure is comprised almost entirely of aluminum and is likely to feel surprisingly light. Can an aluminum, well-ventilated enclosure take the place of steel and fans?

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HP LaserJet Pro M175NW Review
TechRadar posted a review on the HP LaserJet Pro M175NW printer

Laser printers offer three key advantages over the more common inkjet: high print speeds, cheap running costs and stellar text quality. Unfortunately, HP's LaserJet Pro 100 Color MFP M175nw printer, scanner and copier fails to excel in any of these areas. It's far from fast. Our 20-page test document took over five minutes to print ? a poor result considering a HP Officejet inkjet printer can manage it in less than two.

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