Gigabyte sent me one of their entry-level products to check out, called the B75M-D3H. Yet make no mistake, just because this product is value-oriented, does not mean it by any means cheap! What makes Gigabyte's B75M-D3H so great? We'll find out in our review.
KFA² has revamped the GTX 680 PCB design, picked a sexy white PCB color and added a large triple fan cooler to their GTX 680 LTD OC. As the name suggests, the card is heavily overclocked, which gives it a real-life performance boost of 8% over the GTX 680 reference design.
Gigabyte's HD 7970 SOC introduces a new cooling concept. Instead of placing the fan(s) on the large surface of the heatsink like on all recent graphics cards, the company chose to position five small fans along the top edge of the card. Our review will investigate whether the card will be too noisy and too big, or if it can truly provide some benefit.
The Corsair HX850 has been in production for many years. Its successor has many improvements to show, including Gold efficiency and a new look similar to the HX1050 unit. Fan noise is also under control, the unit will go passive at low loads.
Silverstone has taken the already compact FT03 and successfully shrunk it to fit a Mini-ITX board, while still allowing for long graphics cards to be used. Has Silverstone managed to find the perfect balance between compact dimensions and compatibility, or does the shrink go too far?
Club3D's HD 7850 RoyalQueen comes with a modest 1 GB of memory, which is half that of a typical HD 7850. Nevertheless we got some interesting results in our testing. The card is just as fast as the 2 GB HD 7850, at full HD resolutions and below. Coming at a more than reasonable $195, the card is also one of the most affordable choices on the market.
Gigabyte's first real high-end gaming mouse gets put to the test. It features an 8200 DPI laser sensor and a wealth of buttons to boot. The design is ambidextrous which makes it a great mouse for lefties as well!
Corsair's new Force GS SSD introduces toggle mode NAND flash, which promises increased performance at similar pricing. In our testing we see excellent real-life performance results from this SandForce based drive.
Rosewill decided to join the Platinum party with a brand new PSU series, called Fortress. All units of this line use a non-modular cabling system, probably in an effort to restrict production cost thus making them more appealing to budget oriented users.
ASRock's Z77 Extreme9 is equipped with a PLX PCI-Express bridge chip, which adds additional PCIe slots to the board, for a total of six x16 slots. This will be a godsend for all users who want to run CrossFire or SLI with more than two cards. ASRock has also delivered a very usable BIOS implementation to maximize overclocking potential.
Today we have on our testbench OCZ's 256 GB Vertex 4 SSD, using the latest version 1.5 firmware. In our testing we see excellent performance from this Indilinx based drive. OCZ also brought the price of the SSD down to $210, which makes it one of the most affordable drives on the market both in terms of performance per Dollar and GB per Dollar.
Today we are testing the Synology DS212j, an entry level NAS that comes at an attractive price of $199. Even at that price, the NAS is equipped with a huge list of features and offers good power savings potential since it needs only 17.6W in operation.
Cubitek has entered the market last year with their Tank series of cases, which were quite an affordable alternative to Lian Li cases. The latest unit from the Magic Cube family, simply called AIO or All In One, carries a similar price tag as Lian Li alternatives. Will an interesting interior layout and the fact that it is apparently the smallest EATX chassis out there be enough to sway users to the new player in the market?
Sapphire's HD 7950 Flex adds the capability to run three DVI monitors without active DisplayPort adapter. It also comes with increased clock speeds out of the box, which gives the card a 6% performance advantage over the reference design.
CM Storm's full sized Quick Fire Pro keyboard is the bigger brother of the original Quick Fire gaming keyboard. The pro version features user selectable switches and has partial backlighting. At only $99.99 the Quick Fire Pro is one of the cheaper full sized mechanical gaming keyboards with backlight.
Gigabyte's first G1.Killer Intel Z77 Express product takes a completely new slant on enthusiast gaming products, shrinking down to a mATX form factor, as was widely requested by end users. The G1.Sniper M3 is a gaming soldier that's ready for battle, equipped with some of the latest and greatest technology, including a Creative Recon3Di audio CODEC, and Intel LAN controller that supports CFOS traffic shaping technology.
Xilence has taken the Interceptor chassis and slapped another compartment on the already big HPTX case to add a separate ITX section. Called the Interceptor Pro, this gargantuan unit offers a surprising amount of functionality for a very good price.
Sapphire's HD 7870 Flex adds comes with the capability to run three HDMI/DVI monitors without active DisplayPort adapter. Something that's not possible on reference design cards. This means that many EyeFinity users will be able to save $30, because they don't have to buy an active DP adapter. But what else does the Flex offer?
The Aerocool Strike-X Advance chassis aims to offer cool looks, a spiffy red interior and elaborate design for everyone on a budget. Will the case manage to hold everything we throw at it, or crack under the pressure?
According to Corsair their Game Series PSUs are ideal price-performance solutions for gamers that want style along with high performance. The updated GS units, which keep the same naming scheme, feature a renovated design and upgraded efficiency. Today we will test the strongest member of the series, the GS800 and see how it performs and if it is worth your money.
Today we will evaluate the DS412+, a NAS server specifically designed for small and medium-sized businesses that need reliability, performance and features like centralized data backups, advanced file sharing etc. In our tests we will find out if the DS412+ manages to achieve the performance levels that Synology claims, so stay tuned.
Be Quiet's Dark Power Pro P10 850 W is based on an excellent Seasonic platform, which features Platinum efficiency. Be Quiet has enhanced it with a quieter fan and the ability to combine all rails into a single powerful one by an easy switch.
Already own a Sandybridge CPU? Want to update to the new Intel chipsets, and use everything offered, like triple PCIe slots? Bought a new Ivy Bridge CPU, and want a power-sipping full-sized board? ASUS has the answer, and that answer is the P8Z77-V.
ZOTAC's GeForce GT 640 is based on NVIDIA's new Kepler architecture. Thanks to its energy efficient design, ZOTAC managed to release a single-slot graphics card that will be interesting to many media PC builders. It also comes with HDMI and 2x DVI outputs, adding to the card's versatility.
CM Storm's gaming product portfolio just got expanded with the release of the Speed-RX cloth mats. The mats feature a new high performance surface and have a hefty 5 mm thick rubber base. The mat is available in three different sizes and costs $19.99.
