Here a roundup of today's hardware reviews, including ASUS GTX580 DirectCU II Graphics Card Review, The Memoright FTM Plus SATA 3 SSD Review, and GIGABYTE Aivia M8600 Wireless Macro Gaming Mouse Review



Silverstone GD06 HTPC chassis review
The Guru of 3D posted a review on the Silverstone GD06 HTPC chassis

We review the SilverStone GD06 HTPC chassis, aimed at the home theater DIY audience that has a need for stylish looks, good functionality versus a competitive price.

We simply grab a A75 motherboard from MSI, pop on a A8-3800 APU from AMD, and start building a fully functional HTPC. With properly selected components you are looking at a 300 maybe 400 EUR budget, still quite a bit of money I know. But you'll notice you can build a relatively small HTPC that looks and performs amazingly cool.

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AMD A8-3800 Fusion APU Review
The Tech Report posted a review on the AMD A8-3800 Fusion APU

We weren't terribly impressed with AMD's A8-3850 APU when we first reviewed it, in part because its 100W power envelope seemed rather large for a chip whose integrated graphics are a major selling point. Happily, the new A8-3800 slides into a cool 65W power envelope and adds Turbo Core clock frequency scaling. Can it win our approval? Keep reading to find out.

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Xigmatek Pantheon Full Tower Case Review
Hi Tech Legion posted a review on the Xigmatek Pantheon Full Tower Case

One name derived from Roman culture is the Xigmatek Pantheon. The name "Pantheon" is actually a temple in Rome that is dedicated to the Roman Gods. In this instance, it is a rather impressive computer chassis. The Pantheon is a full tower that supports both mATX and standard ATX motherboards. Built into the Pantheon is a fan controller that features 2 independent controls that can manage up to 3 fans apiece. For expansion there are four 5.25" bays with one that can convert to a 3.5" for special peripherals like media card readers or drive trays. Internally there are six unique removable HDD bays. The bays are front loading and the top two are hot swappable.

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Kingwin Stryker 500W Fanless Power Supply Review
ThinkComputers.org posted a review on the Kingwin Stryker 500W Fanless Power Supply

Almost everyone wants the quietest yet most powerful computer possible. Most components generate noise because of the fans cooling them, or because of moving parts. Obviously, solid state drives have eliminated the necessity for moving parts for storage and liquid cooling can replace fans for most components. However, there’s still one pesky component which still generates noise: the high wattage power supply unit. Fanless PSUs have been around for a while, but they’re generally lower wattage and meant for business machines or ultra-efficient HTPCs.

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ASUS GTX580 DirectCU II Graphics Card Review
OCIA.net has posted their review of the ASUS GTX580 DirectCU II Graphics Card

I've looked at a couple of video cards over the past few months, each being more powerful (and expensive) than the previous. It all started with MSI's R6850 which retailed for $177.99 at the time of our review. Next on the list was the ASUS GTX560 Ti which showed a marked improvement over the slower AMD offering, albeit at roughly $75 more expensive. Today we will bump things up to the higher-end of the spectrum as we analyze the ASUS GTX580 DirectCU II graphics card, a $500 premium GPU featuring a core clock of 782 MHz, 512 processor cores and an effective memory clock of 4008 MHz. This card is factory overclocked by 10 MHz (772 MHz reference) but ASUS also offers a higher factory overclocked version of this card at 816 MHz.

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SteelSeries Sensei Pro-Grade Gaming Mouse Review
Techgage posted a review on the SteelSeries Sensei Pro-Grade Gaming Mouse

SteelSeries takes gaming seriously, as evidenced by its high-end Xai mouse released two years ago. Developed with the help of pro gamers, the Xai boasted high-end specs, unique features and looked good. The Sensei is the Xai's replacement, and with it comes even beefier specs, a CPU under the hood, and interesting aesthetics.

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Sapphire HD 6850 1GB Vapor-X Edition Review
OCC has published a review on the Sapphire HD 6850 1GB Vapor-X

Well, I was already aware of what most HD6850s were capable of through overclocking, and I found that I hit a similar wall with this one. The core speed, while using a voltage of 1.225V, got stuck at 1030MHz. Everything after that began to artifact and show poor, unstable image quality. At 1030MHz, this card produced the highest core clock speed of all of the comparison cards! This is a slight improvement over the XFX HD6850 comparison card, which maxed out at 1020MHz. The memory, on the other hand, pulled ahead at 1249MHz where the comparison HD6850 stopped at about 1200MHz. With a cooler that is slightly improved over the reference, XFX version, this isn't to be unexpected. The results here are good, especially with the near 30% overclock on the core.

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Pocket Boom Portable Vibration Speaker Review
TestFreaks posted a review on the Pocket Boom Portable Vibration Speaker

Today for review I’ve got a product that just has to be seen or actually heard to be believed. It’s a product that I thought was just a gimmick, but I was wrong, very wrong. It’s called the Pocket Boom Portable Vibration Speaker, and it’s a speaker that you can hook to anything with a standard 3.5mm jack. It’s much more than that though as it’s technically not a speaker. Yes, I said it’s called a speaker but it’s not a speaker, well yes it is though. I’ve confused myself I think here. Seriously though it work through vibrations, you can attach it to most anything like a cup, box, table or whatever and that item you attach it to will become the actual speaker. Let’s just jump right into the review…

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The Memoright FTM Plus SATA 3 SSD Review
The SSD Review posted a review on the Memoright FTM Plus SATA 3 SSD

Our review today is going to examine the Memoright FTM Plus 6Gbps 240GB SSD; a 'SandForce Driven' SSD capable of read/write performance in excess of 500MB/s. Memoright focuses primarily on enterprise sales, however, they were one of the first to release a consumer SSD back in 2007. Submission of their MR25.1 128GB SLC SSD for review was our first introduction and we were floored at its MSRP, at that time, of $3500. Solid state drives have come down just a bit since then.

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OCZ ZS 750W Power Supply Review
DreamWare Computers posted a review on the OCZ ZS 750W Power Supply

Over the course of the last year I've had the opportunity to test a variety of power supplies from OCZ's high end and extreme performance lines. All of these power supplies offered high efficiency, great performance and top notch build quality. For those without a
bottomless wallet, OCZ also has a mainstream power supply line known as the ZS series. The ZS series is a non-modular, 80PLUS Bronze certified trio of power supplies available in 550W, 650W and 750W flavors. Today, I have the 750W ZS power supply on the bench and will be seeing how this model stacks up against OCZ's higher end power supplies.

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GIGABYTE Aivia M8600 Wireless Macro Gaming Mouse Review
Vortez posted a review on the GIGABYTE Aivia M8600 Wireless Macro Gaming Mouse

What makes the move even braver is the fact that this mouse is anything but a budget entry. Tipping the scales at a costly £80 it is right up there with some very stiff competition. Granted wireless gaming mice are never a cheap option and not normally as advanced as wired gaming mice so to price the A VIA M8600 so high is begging the questions ‘What’s so special about it?’ ‘Can it compete with the best mice out there?’ ‘Is it worth it?’ - Questions I will seek to answer by the end of this review.

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