The Level 10 design concept originated back in 2008 when Thermaltake Group initiated the first design collaboration with BMW DesignworksUSA, and the design concept was widely and continuously praised for its futuristic design, open-space architectural structure, excellent heat dissipation properties, and its intuitive functionality.

After the success of the Level 10 Chassis, Thermaltake and BMW DesignworksUSA decided to continue their pursuit in challenging themselves to create the most beautiful and functional products around in the realm of gaming peripherals with Thermaltake's subsidiary brand Tt eSPORTS, via the Level 10 M series. The first product in the Level 10 M series, the Level 10 M Mouse continued the iconic design of the Level 10 Project with the same use of aluminum throughout, open-spaced architectural inspirations, and excellent ventilation properties. The M Mouse has garnered numerous design awards already. It was only natural for Tt eSPORTS and BMW DesignworksUSA to further continue their pursuit for highly aesthetic and functionally designed peripherals, which led to the recent 10 M Headset and now… The Level 10 M Hybrid Mouse!

While EVGA is coming out with the GTX 780 Ti Kingpin Edition, ASUS is preparing its own custom-cooled and (most likely) factory overclocked GeForce GTX 780 Ti card, and it shall be known as Poseidon. The Taiwanese company offered a sneak peek of the card which will be part of the Republic of Gamers lineup and will feature a DIGI+ VRM, highly-durable Black Metallic Capacitors and the DirectCU H20 cooler which combines air and liquid cooling to allow for better performance and quieter operation.

DirectCU H20 packs two dust-proof fans, three heatpipes, a large heatsink and a water block. Based on the prototype card showcased by ASUS earlier this year we can assume the ROG Poseidon will have three working modes - air only, liquid only and combined (air and liquid). No word yet on the card's clocks, price tag or release date.

WD, a Western Digital company and storage industry leader, today announced the release of the WD Black2 dual drive, a unique storage innovation that fuses a 2.5-inch 120 GB solid state drive (SSD) with a 1 TB hard disk drive (HDD) to offer a powerful dual drive solution. Perfect for consumers and service providers looking to upgrade notebooks, small form factor desktops, and single-slot and all-in-one (AIO) systems with both SSD level performance and HDD capacity, the WD Black2 dual drive connects through a single cable and fits into a conventional 9.5 mm slot.

"Our customers told us they like our Solid State Hybrid Drive technology, but our tech savvy users asked for more control of where they store their data," said Matt Rutledge, senior vice president of WD's Storage Technology business unit. "The WD Black2 dual drives empower our customers to enjoy SSD performance and access high capacity storage in a no-compromise package. The WD Black2 dual drive is a direct result of our interaction with our customer base through WD Labs initiatives. WD devised its beta labs program to provide an exclusive testing arena for key customers and technology influencers of existing and emerging WD storage products."

Serial ATA International Organization (SATA-IO), the industry consortium dedicated to sustaining the quality, integrity and dissemination of Serial ATA (SATA) technology, today announced the ratification of its revision 3.2 specification. The latest specification includes SATA Express, a new specification that enables the coexistence of SATA and PCIe storage devices, as well as enhancements in power management, new SATA form-factors, and optimizations for solid state hybrid drives (SSHDs).

"SATA technology continues to evolve to accommodate ever-changing storage industry requirements," said Mladen Luksic, SATA-IO President. "The updates featured in the revision 3.2 specification, such as SATA Express and enhancements for emerging solid state hybrid drives, are driven by current market trends. These new features demonstrate SATA-IO's ongoing commitment to providing low-cost, high-performance storage solutions."

Eurocom is shipping a full line of professional grade Mobile Workstations powered by NVIDIA Quadro Graphics, with display sizes ranging from 15.6" to 17.3".

Eurocom Mobile Workstations are designed for the new breed of professional who must travel but still needs access to powerful, reliable and long lasting professional grade hardware.
Supporting the most powerful mobile professional graphics solutions including the NVIDIA Quadro in Eurocom Mobile Workstations ensure they are able to run the most demanding engineering and design software with ease, while on the go.

Toshiba's Storage Products Business Unit of Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc., a committed technology leader, announces the slim, 7 mm MQ01ABFH solid state hybrid drive (SSHD) series. Equipped with Toshiba's NAND flash and available in 500GB1 and 320GB capacities, the MQ01ABFH series is the first Toshiba SSHD drive family in 7 mm. The series continues Toshiba's legacy of providing world-class storage products, and offers customers a complete lineup of 2.5-inch solid state hybrid drives with the previously announced 1 TB and 750 GB MQ01ABDH series 9.5 mm SSHDs for ultrathin and thin and light notebook PCs, multimedia and gaming applications, and traditional laptop PCs.

Drawing upon its knowledge and experience in NAND flash, Toshiba optimized the NAND flash performance into a tiered-storage approach that uses the speed of the DRAM and NAND components with the high-capacity of rotating media. The SSHD delivers SSD-like performance without dependence on external drivers or assistance from the host system. The PCMark Vantage Average HDD Score, the established industry method for measuring SSHD read/write performance and responsiveness, for the MQ01ABF500H is approximately 20,000, surpassing the 16,000 industry standard result.

Super Talent Technology, a leading manufacturer of NAND Flash storage solutions and DRAM memory modules, announces its Super Hybrid drives for enterprise and desktop consumers.
The Super Hybrid is a group of SSDs and an HDD combined together that is connected to a system through a PCIe slot. This new product supports sequential read and write speeds of up to 800 MB/s with a cache of 192 GB.

ASUS today announced availability of ASUS Taichi 31, a sleek Ultrabook with a 13.3-inch dual-screen design that offers the mobile flexibility of a tablet with the performance and features of a notebook. ASUS Taichi 31 features a choice of Intel Core processors and joins the 11.6-inch ASUS Taichi 21, launched in October 2012.

With two Full HD 13.3-inch screens placed back-to-back, ASUS Taichi 31 combines the best features of a Windows 8 tablet and a powerful Ultrabook in a single sleek design. With the same stunning black-mirror finish and slender profile as the 11.6-inch ASUS Taichi 21, ASUS Taichi 31 is as elegant as it is innovative, and packs a host of features that help make light work of any productivity task.

Inno3D rolled out its newest flagship graphics card, the GeForce GTX Titan iChill Black Series. The card ships with Arctic's Accelero Hybrid cooling solution pre-fitted to an NVIDIA reference design GTX Titan PCB. The cooler uses a combination of a closed-loop liquid block to cool the GPU, and fan-heatsink to cool other hot components on the card, such as memory chips and VRM.

The GTX Titan iChill Black series ships with factory-overclocked speeds of 937 MHz core, and 980 MHz GPU Boost, against NVIDIA reference speeds of 837 MHz core and 876 MHz GPU Boost. Memory clock speed stays at 6.00 GHz. Based on the 28 nm GK110 silicon, NVIDIA's GeForce GTX Titan features 2,688 CUDA cores, 224 TMUs, 48 ROPs, and a 384-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, holding 6 GB of memory. The card draws power from a combination of 6-pin and 8-pin PCIe power connectors, display outputs include a pair of dual-link DVI, HDMI, and DisplayPort. The company did not release pricing or availability information.

The "A-Drive", one of the world's thinnest 5 mm hybrid hard drive in a 2.5" form factor, was officially launched by Mr. S. Iswaran, Minister in the Prime Minister's Office and Second Minister for Home Affairs and Trade & Industry, to commemorate the Data Storage Institute's (DSI) 20 years of R&D in the area of data storage capabilities.

The "A-Drive" represents the next generation of storage innovation providing capacities of up to 1 TB Hard Disk Drive (HDD) with 32 GB Solid State Drive (SSD). This potentially allows the "A-Drive" to store over 250,000 songs in its 5 mm body. The "A-Drive" also addresses limitations of the popular, yet expensive, flash-based SSD, as well as the conventional HDD for the consumer and business industry.

Corsair unveiled a trio of Enthusiast Series V2 (TX-series) PSUs in Japan, which feature Hybrid Silent Fan Control, a revised thermal management measure that spins down the fan completely under low loads, and begins to spin it up only after a thermal/load threshold is crossed. These PSUs feature the same casing as the modular TX-series V2 models (such as TX-750M), but feature completely fixed cabling. Among the PSUs launched are the new (improved) TX-650 (CP-9020038-JP), TX-750 (CP-9020042-JP), and TX-850 (CP-9020043-JP). The three models are 80 Plus Bronze-compliant, and otherwise feature the same specifications as the Enthusiast Series V2 models in the market, elsewhere.

Akitio introduced its newest desktop storage device, the Cloud Hybrid. The device can function as network-attached storage (NAS) over gigabit Ethernet, and disk-attached storage (DAS) over USB 3.0. It holds a single 3.5-inch hard drive, with SATA 3 Gb/s interface, up to 3 TB unformatted capacities are supported, as are volumes bigger than 2 TB in capacity. The device supports Microsoft exFAT file-system.

Its maker vaguely mentions that the device is driven by a "300 MHz CPU", with 32 MB DDR RAM, and 2 MB flash ROM. As a DAS, the device likely mounts its hard drive as a mass-storage device. As a NAS, however, most modern features are supported, including UPnP-AV, DLNA, iTunes music server, FTP, Samba, etc. Features such as BitTorrent and WebDAV server make for interesting additions for a device of its class, as is remote access over the internet, via a web-portal. While USB 3.0 (mass storage) posses minimal interface bottlenecks, Akitio assures 60 MB/s transfer-rates over SMB (in a GbE network). It is priced at US $99.

Cooler Master, an industry leading chassis, thermal solution, peripheral, and accessory manufacturer today announced the beginning of the ultimate March Madness sales event.

Just as March Madness brings about exciting new match-ups between the finest players in college basketball, Cooler Master's HAF Time Showdown unveils never before seen deals that will border on madness all throughout the month of March. Get some of the best parts for a computer build by following our deals.

Today novero announced the introduction of Solana, a lightweight, 10-inch laptop/tablet hybrid with a flip-rotating design at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Designed to deliver the best combination of everyday business computing and mobile entertainment, Solana offers optimal flexibility and state-of-the-art features in one unique device.

Whether converting between laptop and tablet mode with just one flip of the screen, or switching between the two operating systems Genuine Windows 7 (Windows 8 ready) and Android within seconds, or staying seamlessly connected through high-speed 3.5G (HSPA+), WiFi or Bluetooth, Solana is the premium lifestyle mobile device built to work, watch, listen, play and connect in multiple ways. Its capacitive sensing multi-touch panel, built-in video camera, stereo loudspeakers and six row full QWERTY keyboard all support the requirements of today's mobile life.

Micron Technology, one of the biggest DRAM companies, has announced that it's working the JEDEC standards organization for computer memory, to standardize a new DRAM interface and die-stacking technology called three-dimensional stacking, or 3DS, which may be incorporated into the upcoming DDR4 standard. X-bit labs has a nice summary of how 3DS works:

The idea behind 3DS is to use specially designed and manufactured master-and-slave DRAM die, with only the master die interfacing with the external memory controller. 3DS technology uses optimized DRAM die, single DLL per stack, reduced active logic, single shared external I/O, improved timing, and reduced load to the external world. This combination of features can improve timing, bus speeds, and signal integrity while lowering both power consumption and system overhead for next-generation modules, according to Micron.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Micron Technology, Inc. announced today that Micron will begin production of a new memory device built using the first commercial CMOS manufacturing technology to employ through-silicon vias (TSVs). IBM's advanced TSV chip-making process enables Micron's Hybrid Memory Cube (HMC) to achieve speeds 15 times faster than today's technology.

Micron's Hybrid Memory Cube features a stack of individual chips connected by vertical pipelines or "vias," shown above. IBM's new 3-D manufacturing technology, used to connect the 3D micro structure, will be the foundation for commercial production of the new memory cube.

IBM will present the details of its TSV manufacturing breakthrough at the IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting on December 5 in Washington, DC.

Seagate is now shipping the second generation of Momentus XT, its groundbreaking solid state hybrid drive for consumer and commercial laptops and the company's fastest drive ever for personal computers. With a simple drive upgrade, users can boost boot-up speed and overall performance to turbo-charge their laptop PC. Seven original equipment manufacturers are gearing up to ship laptops powered by the Momentus XT drive. The drive is now available at online retailers Amazon, Canada Computers, CDW, Memory Express, NCIX, Newegg, and TigerDirect.

Powering the Momentus XT drive are Seagate's Adaptive Memory and FAST Factor technologies. Adaptive Memory technology works by identifying data usage patterns, and then moving the most frequently retrieved information to solid state memory for faster access. Adaptive Memory effectively tailors hard drive performance to each user and the applications they use. FAST Factor technology blends the strengths of SSDs and hard disk drives for faster access to applications, quicker bootup and higher overall system speed.

Gigabyte released its newest premium HTPC motherboard in the mini-ITX form-factor, the A75N-USB3. As the name might suggest, this is a socket FM1 motherboard based on the AMD A75 chipset, and features USB 3.0 connectivity. Despite its compact dimensions, the board crams in everything a HTPC can benefit from. First, the FM1 socket seats AMD A-Series accelerated processing units (APUs), which pack up to four x86-64 cores with up to 4 MB cache, dual-channel DDR3-1866 integrated memory controller, and more importantly, a very powerful integrated graphics processor in the Radeon HD 6500 class. The FM1 socket on this board is powered by a 3+1 phase VRM that makes use of driver-MOSFETs. Power is drawn by a 24-pin ATX and a 4-pin CPU power connector.

The lone expansion slot is a PCI-Express 2.0 x16. The CPU is wired to two full-length DDR3 DIMM slots, which can take in up to 32 GB (that's right, future 16 GB DIMMs are supported) of dual-channel DDR3-1866 MHz memory. The AMD A75 chipset gives out four internal SATA 6 Gb/s ports, and one eSATA 6 Gb/s port on the rear panel. Display outputs include HDMI 1.4a and DVI. Analog outputs are done away with. Audio is handled by a high-quality Realtek ALC889 HD audio codec. Although this codec supports 8+2 output channels, it is wired to a 5.1 channel shared audio jack cluster, apart from the internal HDA_FP header. Those needing 7.1 channel output can still use the TOSLINK connector, that supports 7.1 channel output with 24-bit, 192 kHz resolution and Dolby Home Theater support. If even that's not enough, the HDMI connector gives you 7.1 channel HDMI audio with Dolby Prologic support.

OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems, today announced the release of the RevoDrive Hybrid PCI Express (PCIe) storage solution. Designed to dramatically accelerate applications and system responsiveness, the RevoDrive Hybrid's superior combination of SSD and hard disk drive (HDD) technology is a revolutionary step forward for high-performance, economical storage.

The RevoDrive Hybrid integrates the benefits of both SSD and HDD technology into a single solution to offer both enhanced responsiveness and ample storage capacity. The drive comes bundled with Dataplex caching software which dynamically manages the use of the 100GB SSD with the 1TB HDD for superior overall storage performance. This combination creates an environment where the most frequently used "hot" data stays on the ultra-fast SSD, while the "cold" data remains on the larger capacity HDD. Advanced caching algorithms learn user behavior and adapt storage policies to ensure optimal performance for each individual user, maximizing productivity for the most demanded programs and applications.In addition, the drive not only eliminates the SATA bottleneck unleashing ground-breaking bandwidth up to 910 MB/s, but also features up to 120,000 IOPS (4K random write) for high transactional workloads delivering true SSD-level performance. Finally, the RevoDrive Hybrid provides unique benefits to users by incorporating features of OCZ's proprietary Virtualized Controller Architecture (VCA) 2.0.

"The RevoDrive Hybrid leverages the best attributes of both solid state drives and traditional hard drive technology to deliver dynamic data-tiering on a single easy to deploy PCIe storage drive," said Ryan Petersen, CEO of OCZ Technology Group. "Leveraging Dataplex software to efficiently manage frequently accessed data delivers superior performance and capacity, making the RevoDrive Hybrid the ideal solution for high performance computing and media content creation."

The all-new OCZ RevoDrive Hybrid 1TB comes backed by a three-year warranty and will be available worldwide for an MSRP of $499.99, delivering the industry's best price per GB for SSD-level performance.

While not the very first of its kind, Intel Smart Response technology took the enthusiast community by storm, offering a middle-ground between small but fast SSDs, and large but slow HDDs. By caching on the SSD, Smart Response is able to give system responsiveness a significant boost. Before that, HDD major Seagate put a tiny SSD component onto its Momentus XT hard drive, to chop access times a little. Now OCZ inverted the concept, and strapped an HDD onto its SSD to make it more capacious, on its new RevoDrive Hybrid.

Here, the major component is a SSD RAID 0 on a stick, which pools data onto an HDD. RevoDrive is a PCI-Express x4 SSD card, which uses a number of SandForce SF-1200 driven SSD sub-units in RAID 0 that's abstract to the host machine. The card is normally available in capacities as low as 60 GB, or as high as 480 GB. On RevoDrive Hybrid, OCZ installed a 2.5-inch hard drive with capacities as high as 1 TB, with the SSD component very much intact. The device promises to give you RevoDrive-like speeds, and humongous capacities, by streaming low-access data onto the HDD.

ASUS extended its lead in the thin and light notebook segment with two new U Series models that offer unprecedented performance while maintaining super slim form factors.

The ASUS U35 and U45 notebooks are powered by standard voltage Intel Core i5 or i3 processors, adding much-needed computing muscle to a breed of notebooks typically associated with compromised performance. The heat generated by standard voltage CPUs previously made their use unfeasible in super slim notebooks, but ASUS' engineers have found a way to incorporate them without any detrimental thermal effects.

DDRdrive LLC, another fighter in the SSD market arena, on Monday introduced the DDRdrive X1 - a PCI-Express expansion card featuring a complete solid-state storage system designed for IOPS intensive tasks. The DDRdrive X1 is a PCIe Gen 1-based hybrid SSD, that combines 4 GB of DDR memory and 4 GB of NAND flash memory. Both solid-state technologies work in concert to provide the superior characteristics of DRAM (speed, reliability, and longevity) with the NAND part used for backups. In terms of read/write speeds, the DDRdrive X1 is not that spectacular. Limited by the PCIe x1 interface it can "only" do about 215 MB/s in reads and 155 MB/s in writes. But it's the Input/Output Operations Per Second (IOPS), where X1 really shines. A single drive can hit 300,000+ IOPS Random 512B Reads and 200,000+ IOPS Random 512B Writes. That's a massive bump in operation speed compared to practically all other solid-state drives currently in production. For comparison Fusion IO's enterprise drives are estimated at 200,000 IOPS 512B read, while other consumer SSDs are rated at about 100,000 IOPS 512B read. And those 300,000+ IOPS can be achieved with a maximum power draw of only 9.91 Watts. DDRdrive X1 can also be configured to work in striped (performance) RAID 0, mirrored RAID 1, or RAID 5 regimes.
The DDRdrive X1 is shipping now for $1495 with a 5 year limited warranty. For more information, please be sure to check this page here.

Cooler Master has gone full cylinders with innovation for the design of the V10 Hybrid TEC, a variant of the V10 cooler that employs a 70W TEC (Thermo-electric couple) element to indirectly cool the processor. The principle on which it works is fairly simple: A set of heatpipes propagate through the CPU contact block. The same heatpipes make contact with the cold-plate of the TEC. The hot-plate of the TEC is cooled by a dedicated aluminum fin array which is subjected to air flow. The heatpipes that cool the CPU propagate into two additional, independent aluminum fin arrays. All this, neatly packed into the shroud. The TEC part of the cooler has its own Molex power input, and is regulated by a temperature control module. The two fans in place to cool the fins use standard 3~4 pin fan connections. TweakTown put this cooler to test against most common high-end air coolers.

In theory, this is a good concept, though the indirect cooling the TEC element provides, isn't going to send temperatures down to sub-zero levels. Instead, the estimates on its spec. sheet shows it to maintain temperatures between 25 and 70 degrees Celsius. The cooler however, is rated for CPUs with TDPs of up to 200W (a figure achieved during overclocking). The findings of the review, however, show the cooler to be not much of an improvement over most high-end air coolers. The review can be read here.

In the CES 2009, to be held in Las Vegas from January 8, MSI will once again capture the world's eyes with its prolific R&D and designs. In addition to introducing the whole new U-series models, MSI will launch the new All-In-One Wind NetOn models and MSI's first dual-core Atom All-In-One models. G-series notebooks, the first series surmounting 10000 points on 3Dmark, will also be exhibited. With such a strong cast, MSI will successfully become the focus on the international stage once again.

Following the popular MSI Wind Netbooks, U100 and U90, MSI will introduce some more portable netbook in CES, including MSI U115 Hybrid, and will also announce that MSI U120 is "WiMAX Ready". Moreover the first netbook capable of running SSD/HDD simultaneously, and MSI X-Slim Series X320, the 13" super portable notebook of just about 1.3 kg.

MSI today announces U115 Hybrid. The very first notebook computer in the world that is capable of operating both SSD and HDD hard drives simultaneously, combining all the features of SSD and HDD in the U115 Hybrid for your enjoyment.

With MSI Exclusive Hybrid Storage Technology, in the "ECO on" mode, the battery life of U115 Hybrid is super long. This amazing battery life can escalate the mobility and the productiveness of the U115 Hybrid, which can also make your daily lives much more convenient.