ASUS brings the P55 chipset an update in the form of the P7P55D-E PRO, with USB 3.0 and SATA 6 Gbps. The P7P55D-E looks to rival other boards on the market, and even potentially some of the up and coming P67-based products. In the face of Intel's latest release, is it still a viable option?
MSI's GeForce GTX 560 Twin Frozr II comes with MSI's own cooling solution, which does a great job at keeping the card cool. Even with heavy voltage increases, the temperatures never rose above 80°C. For maximum performance MSI has overclocked the card out of the box - at no price increase compared to the reference design.
Zowie's newest mouse mat is dubbed the G-TF and features triple stitched edges for better durability. The surface smoothness has been improved and provides a better and more consistent glide than many other high end cloth mat offerings.
PowerColor's new HD 6970 PCS+ comes overclocked to the highest clock speeds of any Radeon HD 6970 card that is available at the market right now. It also uses a dual-fan heatsink which will help give you that edge during overclocking and overvolting. With a price increase of just $10, pricing is right, too.
The Darkfleet series from Antec features a very industrial design and comes jam packed with fans and features. There are models for every budget and the DF-85 is the largest of the bunch. we take a look at the many unique extras within the chassis and walk away impressed by both the price and performance.
iTwin aims to enable secure access to your data in the office or at home with plug and play ease. The 99 US Dollar device does not require setup, nor does it have any capacity restrictions for the amount of data you may access. While other implementations are based on software or online storage scenarios, the iTwin is completely independent and may be used on any Windows based system.
Today Microsoft released Windows 7 Service Pack 1 to the public. We wanted to check if there are some gaming performance gains included the upgrade, so we ran NVIDIA's and ATI's flagship graphics cards through our VGA benchmarking suite.
The Dragon Rider is not only an extremely cool case to look at, but also has a very long and interesting feature set that should grab your attention. We take the Dragon Rider for a spin and look behind that shield of a front to see if it manages to fend itself off or if the armor is cracked upon closer inspection.
HIS has designed a new cooler called IceQ X. It comes with a light blue transparent plastic shell that conveys an "ice block" feeling. In our testing we saw low idle and load temperatures, evidence that the cooler does a good job. The card also comes with increased clock speeds out of the box to gain some extra advantage over the reference design.
ASUS is expanding their triple-slot cooler graphics card lineup. Their GeForce GTX 570 Direct CU II offers amazingly low noise levels as well as low operating temperatures in both idle and 3D. ASUS has also increased to clock speeds out of the box, even though the increase is only minimal. But with a price increase of just $10 there is not much to complain about.
The G.Skill Ripjaws come in various flavors and capacities, but focus more on the mainstream overclocker. With many different versions and color variants of the kit out there, one could wonder if G.Skill is not simply trying to create models to cover every memory chip they get their hands on. But, we take a look at the 1600 MHz kit and are surprised to find headroom, lots and lots of headroom.
Zaward drew inspiration from the golf ball to enhance air-flow using a "heatsink breathing design", as well as heat dissipation with its Vapor 120 CPU cooler. In the process, it came up with a rather slim-looking 120 mm tower-type heatsink. Will Zaward's golf ball-inspired CPU cooler click?
We had a chance to take a look at the BitFenix Shinobi chassis pre-production sample, which is the first budget chassis from the upstart BitFenix. While the Colossus and Survivor managed to turn heads with unique looks, the Shinobi packs an understated design and a mean price/performance punch.
ZOTAC's GeForce GTX 560 Ti AMP! Edition is the highest-clocked GTX 560 money can buy at the moment. Its blazing clocks of 950 MHz core and 1100 MHz memory give it a 12% real-life performance advantage over the reference design, which is quite impressive for the $279 it's coming at. With additional overclocking we could reach 998 MHz, and almost broke the 1 GHz barrier!
MSI's HD 6870 HAWK is the company's premium overclocking HD 6870 model. The card comes with support for software control of three voltages, voltage measurement points and OCP disable support. MSI has also included a nice overclock out of the box and adopted the dual BIOS feature that we have seen on the AMD HD 6900 Series.
PowerColor is bringing an exciting new HD 6950 to the market. Their HD 6950 PCS++ includes a feature to unlock additional shaders, resulting in the same shader count as the HD 6970 - a nice performance increase, for free. Since the feature is enabled by the flick of a button even novices will be able to use it.
ASUS' new GeForce GTX 580 DC2 uses a massive triple slot Direct CU II heatsink that increases cooling performance significantly. As a result the card is extremely quiet in both idle and load - quieter than many midrange cards. ASUS has also increased the operating clocks of their design, all this for a small price increase of $5.
MP4Nation's newest budget in-ears are called the M1s. These in-ears sell for $39.50 online. Compared to other in-ears these feature a rugged cable that even performs well microphonics wise. Surprisingly enough the M1 features a full bundle with seven pairs of tips and a carrying case.
Lian Li has taken the small form factor of the PC-A05N and has changed the interior in favor of mATX compatibility and added space to store up to 7 hard drives within the chassis. With a price tag of just under 100 Euros we take a really close look if it is as innovative as the A05N back in the day or if it is nothing but good looks.
Raidmax is well known for their spacey looking cases and the Blackstorm is no execption. Available in black/blue or white/blue, we enter the storm front to see if what is at the eye of the hurricane.
NVIDIA's new GeForce GT 440 sets out to deliver acceptable performance in the low-end segment around $100. ASUS GT 440 comes with a custom designed, black PCB and a stylish heatsink. The card also comes with higher clocks out of the box to gain an extra performance advantage.
Corsair has introduced their new line of memory called Vengeance. Available in high capacity kits up to 16 GB we got a hold of the triple-channel one with 4x 3 GB modules. That said we push the trio to the max and see if it comes back with a vengeance or fizzles into thin air quietly.
Fractal Design has enlarged the Define R3 to a full tower with additional features, calling it the Define XL. We tear it apart, fill it with hardware and see if we still have room to breath or if it is all nothing but wasted space
Palit's GeForce GTX 560 Ti Sonic Edition comes with increased clock speeds of 900 MHz core and 1050 MHz memory out of the box, which translates into a 7% real-life performance improvement. Its $20 price premium also gives you improved display connectivity: full-size HDMI and analog VGA.
ZOTAC's GeForce GTX 560 uses reference clock speeds, but comes with a custom cooling solution by ZOTAC. The card is also one of the few that uses full-size HDMI and DisplayPort outputs and comes with a bundle of Assassin's Creed Hermand.
