Patriot Warp 32GB 2.5" Solid State Drive Review
Elite Bastards posted a review on the Patriot Warp 32GB 2.5" Solid State Drive

It feels like we've been talking about solid state storage as the future of the hard disk for a long time now, but 2008 finally seems to be the year when this began to turn from mere speculation to reality. Plenty of companies are now shipping SSDs at a wide variety of price points (although, of course, still not at the kind of per Gigabyte pricing levels we're used to with platter-based drives), and the rise of the netbook has seen cheap SSDs become commonplace in products such as ASUS' Eee PC and its various spin-offs from rival manufacturers. Today, we take a look at an SSD offering from Patriot, in the form of their 32GB "Warp" drive.

Patriot Warp 32GB 2.5" Solid State Drive Review

Thermaltake RamOrb Review
Bjorn3D takes a look at the Thermaltake RamOrb

Deep within the realms of overclocking, you will find a lot of options for cooling your system. Nothing beats cooling your components properly than a series of fans, water, and what not (phase, ln2, etc.). Most overclockers will tend to focus more on cooling than most. For example, you won’t commonly find fans covering mosfets on your memory prom or the VR’s on the backside of your motherboard. Most of the time it’s just a heatsink or heatpipe assembly that, in turn, relies on the overclocker to keep it cool. Well, welcome to the best of both worlds, because Thermaltake (TT) has copper hat-tricks for us with their RamOrb.

Thermaltake RamOrb Review



X58 Motherboards Round-up December 08
DriverHeaven posted X58 Motherboards Round-up

Last month Intel launched their latest series of processors... Core i7. These CPUs require new motherboards and currently all of these use Intels X58 chipset. As the Core i7 range is likely to appeal to enthusiast users it is no surprise that the first batch of boards hitting the market are packed with features and designed to satisfy the needs of overclockers as much as mainstream users. Today we have three of these boards on our review bench and we will be running them through a selection of tests, mainly in real world scenarios, to establish which deserves to be the basis for your new Core i7 system.

X58 Motherboards Round-up December 08

Left4Dead GTX-280 SLI vs 4870 1GB Crossfire
Bjorn3D doing some testing of the latest game from Valve with Left4Dead GTX-280 SLI vs 4870 1GB Crossfire

Left 4 Dead, a revival of the FPS Horror Genre, was released on November 18th 2008, published by Valve and much to our surprise, was a DX9 game. The single player game consists of four levels where you're trying to reach a destination and get rescued. Each of the four levels has its own rescue point. While making your way to the rescue points you'll encounter hordes of Zombies, the occasional Boomer, solitary Hunters, occasional Zombie Witches, choking Smokers, and the dreaded Tank. Each has its own strategy, and their AI allows them to attack in different ways. While Zombie AI is what you'd expect from the recently dead returned to life, Boomers and Hunters have a more refined AI that allows for some strategy.

Left4Dead GTX-280 SLI vs 4870 1GB Crossfire

AMD Phenom II Performance Uplift - VR-Zone
VR-Zone posted an article on the performance of the AMD Phenom II processor

This slide shows the key areas of improvements for 45nm Phenom II over 65nm Phenom such as more IPC, higher frequency, more cache, and DDR3 support. There is a 5% cache uplift on the cache architecture and a 3% uplift on the core architecture. With all these innovations in place, AMD is touting a 20% performance boost...

AMD Phenom II Performance Uplift - VR-Zone

NVIDIA Quadro CX Review and Adobe CS4 GPU Acceleration
PC Perspective tested the performance of the NVIDIA Quadro CX under the Adobe CS4 suite

The NVIDIA Quadro CX is dubbed "the accelerator for Adobe CS4 Suite" and it is in fact just that. With the release of the CS4 series of software Adobe began offering GPU-enabled computing models in Photoshop, Premiere Pro and After Effects and NVIDIA's partner Elemental has a GPU-based encoder for Premiere Pro as well. All are examined and tested inside!

NVIDIA Quadro CX Review and Adobe CS4 GPU Acceleration

Kingwin EZ-Dock Hard Drive Dock Review
Virtual-Hideout posted Kingwin EZ-Dock Hard Drive Dock Review

We've reviewed a ton of Kingwin Products here at VH over the years and we've generally been satisfied with all their products. Today I have for you one of their new products called the EZ-Dock Hard Drive Dock. It's a data backup product that's extremely easy to use by simply sticking a hard drive in it's top (vertically) and powering up. No more with unscrewing a bunch of screws to get to the hard drive and worrying about hard drive cooling because it's stuck inside some enclosure. With the EZ-Dock, the hard drive is flapping in the breeze and always ready to snatch up and go at a moments notice.

Kingwin EZ-Dock Hard Drive Dock Review

Vizo Armada II RAM Cooler Review
Rbmods posted a review on the Vizo Armada II RAM Cooler

As computer performance increases, the need to cool the internal components of the computer becomes greater. While we focus a lot of attention on the CPU, video card, and case fan cooling solutions, another cooling product that is starting to become more prominent are RAM/memory coolers. Vizo, makers of a wide range of computer components, as released a new product, the Armada II RAM cooler, which offers a cooling solution for RAM sticks. Read on to find out if it makes a noticeable difference in performance.

Vizo Armada II RAM Cooler Review

Microsoft Explorer Mouse with BlueTrack Review
Maximum CPU has posted its review of Microsoft's Explorer Mouse with BlueTrack

The computer mouse has evolved greatly over the years. First there was the mechanical mouse, then the optical mouse, followed by the laser mouse. Well the mouse has once again evolved with the introduction of Microsoft's Explorer Mouse with BlueTrack technology. BlueTrack is billed as the ultimate mouse tracking technology because it can be used on surfaces that optical and laser mice could not handle. Is this in fact the case or is it all a bunch of hot air?

Microsoft Explorer Mouse with BlueTrack Review

DFI LanParty Jr 790GX Motherboard Review
Ninjalane has posted their review of the new MicroATX board from DFI based on the 790GX chipset.

In this review we will be looking at the new MicroATX motherboard from DFI called the LanParty Jr 790GX-M2RS. This motherboard is a perfect blend between the enthusiast power we have come to expect from DFI and the practicality found in the smaller MicroATX hardware offerings.

DFI LanParty Jr 790GX Motherboard Review

ASUS N10J Review
InsideHW.com has reviewed netbook ASUS N10J

After first wave of cheap netbooks, luxurious variants are starting to appear on the market. As it was the case with first netbooks, ASUS again made a first move in that direction and as result we got one crossbred luxurious netbook in our test lab. Even though ASUS N10J, technical sample that we got in our test lab, looks like classic representative of netbook product (with slightly bigger dimensions), it's not that simple to determine its product category. If we would try to define netbook product category in general, we would say that they have: small dimensions, low power consumption CPU, integrated graphics and no optical device. ASUS N10J is all that and something more.

ASUS N10J Review

Vizo Orbiter Hard Drive Cooler Review
Overclockers Online has posted a new review on the Vizo Orbiter Hard Drive Cooler

All things considered, the Vizo Orbiter is a well-designed, useful, and effective hard drive cooler. It is quiet and works well but there are a couple of things that could be improved. By utilizing a fan with a smaller height profile, the overall dimensions of the Orbiter could be made smaller which would help when trying to install the hard drive in a hard drive cage, for example. Furthermore, if the screw rails were made longer, the user would have more options when it comes to directing the airflow towards a specific part of the drive.

Vizo Orbiter Hard Drive Cooler Review

In Win Matrix Review
PureOverclock posted a review of the Win Matrix mATX case.

With its contemporary and stylish looks, In Win's Matrix is a Micro ATX tower that promises big things. In Win has done a great job thinking outside the box so to speak, so let's take the red pill and see how deep the rabbit hole goes here with the Matrix.....

In Win Matrix Review

MSI R4830 Review
Neoseeker takes a look at a HD 4830 from MSI, the R4830

This is pretty astounding, really. At these clock speeds, using RivaTuner we were able to get more performance out of our R4830 than a stock HD 4850! To put things into further perspective, the R4830 stock speed is 585 / 900, so the stable 734 / 1121 overclock we obtained is a 28% / 25% increase. Generally, video cards average about a 5% - 8% overclocking average, and 10% - 15% can be considered a nice overclock for a video card. The only other card in the last one and half years of my tenure here at Neoseeker that overclocked nearly as good was the HD 2900 Pro.

If you are into overclocking at all, this is the card to get. HD 4850+ performance for a damn cheap price. Most impressive.

MSI R4830 Review

ATI Catalyst 8.12 Analysis - XP & Vista
TweakTown posted an ATI Catalyst 8.12 Analysis

I have to say, the Catalyst 8.12 is one driver set that I’ve been looking quite forward to; this for a few reasons. The first is that I will get to take my brand new testbed for a nice spin using a host of top ATI based graphics cards. The second reason is that it was going to be interesting to see how ATI would respond to the ForceWare 180.47 drivers which had a huge focus on giving good performance to a lot of this holiday season’s top games.

From a paper perspective, the driver doesn’t look like it’s going to disappoint with some big promises made. Let’s have a look at what ATI say they’re going to give us before we get stuck in to the performance side of things and find out for ourselves.

ATI Catalyst 8.12 Analysis - XP & Vista

A closer look at the Core i7-940
The Tech Report posted a closer look at the Core i7-940

We first tested a "simulated" Core i7-940 by underclocking a Core i7-965 Extreme, but we missed a couple of the "uncore" clocks, including the one that governs the L3 cache. Just how much do those clocks affect performance, and how does a real Core i7 940 perform?

A closer look at the Core i7-940

Sunbeamtech SATA HDD Docking Station Review
OCIA.net has posted their review of the Sunbeamtech SATA HDD Docking Station

In the months following CES 2008 we have seen a proliferation of hot-swap hard drive docks come to market that all bear such a striking resemblance to the original BlacX that we can only come to the conclusion that Thermaltake is licensing the design. Such is the case with the product we have for review today, the Sunbeamtech HDD Docking Station. Like the original, the Docking Station supports 2.5" and 3.5" SATA hard drives up to 1Tb in size in an easy-to-use hot-swap base connected to the computer via USB. While the original BlacX did not support eSATA, that has since become an added feature and one the Sunbeamtech Docking Station also offers.

Sunbeamtech SATA HDD Docking Station Review

Thermaltake Soprano Aluminum Keyboard Review
Tweaknews.net posted a review on the Thermaltake Soprano Aluminum Keyboard

The Soprano is a great keyboard for general internet surfing, email and occasional document preparation. If a larger, classier version of a laptop keyboard sounds appealing to you, then it will be a welcome addition to your home office setup for years to come.

Thermaltake Soprano Aluminum Keyboard Review

Cooler Master Cosmos Black Label Computer Case Review
Benchmark Reviews posted a review on the Cooler Master Cosmos Black Label Computer Case

Back in September of 2007 Benchmark Reviews tested Cooler Master's Cosmos RC-1000 full-tower computer case, and was so impressed with the fine attention to detail that it earned our Golden Tachometer Award. Then, a few month later in February of 2008, we witnessed the Cooler Master Cosmos S arrive to the scene with a darkened appearance and sport-car curves. So it's fitting then that Cooler Master offer their most revered computer case in a limited edition set. In this article, Benchmark Reviews tests the Cooler Master Cosmos Black Label Limited Edition E-ATX full-tower computer case kit (SKU: RC-1000S-KKN2-GP), as a supplemental installment to our original comprehensive Cosmos 1000 review.

Cooler Master Cosmos Black Label Computer Case Review

XFX GTX260 XXX SLI Review
OCC has published a new review on the XFX GTX260 XXX SLI

This pair of GTX260s coming from XFX is nothing short of impressive. They feature an awesome looking heatsink and the bundle it comes with is all you need to get started - a couple adapters as well as the award winning Call of Duty 4. This is also the latest version of the 260, equipped with 216 processing cores and each of those are clocked to 640MHz, which is 64MHz over the standard edition. That's better than nothing, but since I just cannot settle with factory settings I, of course, overclocked these cards as much as it could. I was able to take the cores to 732MHz, which is pretty decent headroom. Obviously, the GTX260 is a very good performer, but as you have seen, a pair of them in SLI performs even better. The twins won every single benchmark of our suite except for Futuremark's 3DMark06 which, for some reason, has always performed better on ATI video cards.

XFX GTX260 XXX SLI Review