Here a roundup of today's reviews and articles, including Corsair Flash Voyager GT USB 3.0 Flash Drive Review, Sapphire 6850 Vapor-X Review, and BitFenix Merc Alpha Mid Tower Chassis Review



Corsair Flash Voyager GT USB 3.0 Flash Drive Review
Everything USB posted a review on Corsair Flash Voyager GT USB 3.0 Flash Drive.

USB 3.0 is finally closing in on the mark of ubiquity, appearing in even the cheapest of Dell laptops. So let it be known that Ye Olde USB 2.0 is officially boring and dead now, and so are the days of waiting for files to transfer at a snail's pace. Flash drives with USB 3.0 interfaces are available here and now, and many crank the write speeds to just under 40MB/s. But this still isn't good enough for you, is it? Still nerve-wracked by progress bars? Well, "feast" your impatient eyeballs on the second generation of USB 3.0 flash drives, starting with Corsair's Flash Voyager GT USB 3.0. An in-depth review awaits you after the jump.

Verdict:
The Corsair Flash Voyager GT USB 3.0 is still a champ of durability and overall performance, but real world write speeds have become lax and the 32GB model competes too closely with its non-GT cousin.

Pros:
+ Fast read speeds
+ Also fast write speeds (64GB)
+ Durable as ever
+ 5-year warranty

Cons:
- Synthetic writes are far from real-world performance
- 32GB writes barely faster than non-GT model
- Blocks vertically-stacked USB ports
- Lanyard, extension cable not included

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VTX3D Radeon HD 6850 X-Edition Graphics Card Review
eTeknix.com posted VTX3D Radeon HD 6850 X-Edition Graphics Card Review

Unless you really do have your ear to the ground, you may be unaware as to who VTX3D are. VTX3d or Vertex 3D are a brand that have been brought to the market by the TUL Corporation, which you may or may have not noticed from the uncanny styling thats similar on both ranges of cards, is the parent company of leading graphics card manufacturer PowerColor.

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Fractal Design Define XL Black Pearl Case Review
Legit Reviews posted a review on the Fractal Design Define XL Black Pearl Case

Built like a truck and can hold 10 HDD's, Fractal Design's latest case is trying to break new ground in both price and features for a what they are calling a "mid-tower". Legit Reviews takes a closer look at the Define XL in Black Pearl to see how it stacks up to the rest of the cases at the super competitive ~$150 price point.

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NZXT HALE82-850-M 850 W Review
techPowerUp posted a review on the NZXT HALE82-850-M 850 W PSU

Till now NZXT had only one PSU series, HALE90, which included only Gold efficiency PSUs. However since Gold efficiency leads to higher prices, NZXT decided to release a new line of PSUs with lower efficiency and more affordable prices, targeting a wider range of users. The name of the new series is HALE82 and all of its members are 80 PLUS Bronze certified and feature a semi modular cabling design.

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Batman: Arkham City Performance Analysis
TweakTown posted Batman: Arkham City Performance Analysis

Batman: Arkham Asylum was a great benchmark. The built-in benchmark gave us a fantastic idea of what's going on with performance under the game and while performance has always been quite strong, the game looked fantastic as well. The other benefit was it included PhysX support which gave us a good idea of how PhysX would impact performance. Outside of all that, though, one of the best things about Batman: AA was the simple fact it was a really good game. It's one of the few super hero games in recent years that offered a fantastic story and the dark setting behind it all made for a really enticing experience.

Jump forward a few years and we're staring at Batman: Arkham City, the much anticipated sequel to Batman: AA. Like its predecessor, we've got another built in benchmark and no doubt a game that's going to be more intensive than its predecessor. With Batman: AC in hand, a bunch of video cards and our 30" monitor, we'll today be checking out the performance with a number of cards to see how the new Batman game runs on our X79 testbed.

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QNAP TurboNAS TS-219P II NAS Server Review
Real World Labs posted a review on the QNAP TurboNAS TS-219P II NAS Server

Sporting an upgraded 2GHz Marvell CPU and the same set of features as the excellent TurboNAS TS-219P+ the latest QNAP TurboNAS TS-219P II is really a remarkable Dual-Bay NAS Server capable of satisfying even the most demanding home and office users.

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Sapphire 6850 Vapor-X Review
XSReviews has a new review of the Sapphire 6850 Vapor-X

Today I'm taking a look at Sapphire's Vapor X card. A custom PCB with high quality components such as the second generation Black Diamond chokes makes for what should be a great performing and highly overclockable card. The custom Vapor-X cooler has been designed to provide not only cooler temperatures but also much less noise compared to the reference design cooler. Let's begin!

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Eyefinity Examined with Sapphire HD 6970 x4 and Core i7 3960X
TweakTown takes a look at Eyefinity with Sapphire HD 6970 x4 and Core i7 3960X

We don't get to use our Surround Vision / Eyefinity setup that much with the last time we used it being when we tested the MARS 2 from ASUS. Really, though, since then there's not been much reason to use it. With video card setups being pretty quiet lately and nothing changing in that department this year, the monitor setup has just been gathering hardware around it. Until today, though, where I found myself cleaning for an hour before I could actually move my testbed next to it.

With four HD 6970s on hand, though, and the new Sandy Bridge-E platform getting a good work out lately via both a 3-Way CrossFireX Article and 4-Way CrossFireX Article, it seemed the final piece of the puzzle was to see the kind of performance at the ultra-high 3600 x 1920 resolution.

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Samsung Galaxy S II Review
Tech-Reviews.co.uk posted a review on the Samsung Galaxy S II

Once again we have an extremely powerful smartphone in our possession, the Samsung Galaxy S II. The Galaxy S II is probably one of the most popular devices this year thanks to its large, extremely high quality 4.3-inch display, dual-core processor and 1GB of RAM, which enable it to carry out a whole range of processes without any problem at all. Combined with the brilliant design and £400 price tag, the Samsung Galaxy S II seems like the perfect phone. Let's see how it performs...

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BitFenix Merc Alpha Mid Tower Chassis Review
TweakTown posted BitFenix Merc Alpha Mid Tower Chassis Review

As far as being "no frills" and full of experiences, that holds true to the chassis as well. Don't let the no frills label I use scare you. Even in human form, you need to check waistbands and boots to be sure that you don't run into any surprises. The chassis we are about to look at also appears to be simple to give you that feeling of comfort as it sits on the table and stalks the competition, but behind its back, or under the door panels, there is plenty in store to aid you in an epic kill/death ratio, collecting dog tags, or in the quest for a golden gun!

BitFenix has in fact developed their own Mercenary to do our bidding. In fact, they even made two versions. What we are about to see today is the BitFenix Merc Alpha. Along with its partner chassis, the Merc Beta, there is only the top chassis ventilation that separates the two, so it will take a discerning eye to tell them apart, much like telling Bender apart from Flexo.

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