Recently, Cooler Master released their new GX Gold Series. The two most significant improvements of the new models are the change of the OEM from Seventeam to Enhance and the upgraded efficiency from 80 Plus to 80 Plus Bronze. The test subject of today’s review will be the CM GX650W Bronze, which offers similar specs as the previous model but sports the popular 80Plus Bronze certification.
Headphone producer Head-Direct seems unstoppable when it comes to releasing new orthodynamic based headphones. The newest arrival is named HE-500 and slots in between the HE-5LEs and the HE-6s. New for the HE-500s is a special driver setup that allows for much higher efficiency.
Be Quiet's Straight Power E8 400W is a non-modular power supply coming at a very aggressive price point. According to the manufacturer it boasts an impressive 89% efficiency, also the unit is very quiet - no surprise, given the company name.
PowerColor's Radeon HD 6850 SCS3 is the first completely passive cooled Radeon HD 6850. This makes it the fastest zero-noise graphics card available today. Instead of the fairly compact heatsink of the reference design, PowerColor is using a massive triple slot cooler which provides the cooling required for the HD 6850 SCS3.
The brand-new ASUS M5A99X EVO, sports AMD's 990X and SB950 chipset. It is one of the first boards to offer full support for NVIDIA SLI and is also optimized for CrossFire configurations with its three PCI-E x16 slots.
Club 3D has recently entered the PSU market. Their new CSP-X1200CS is a high-end 1200 W model which addresses users with up to three graphics cards. Compared to the CSP-X1000CS the CSP-X1200CS, offers more power and better efficiency with its 80PLUS Silver certification.
The Kingwin Lazer Platinum LZP-550 is based on Super Flower's platinum platform (Golden King 550W) and according to the manufacturer achieves over 92% efficiency. The power supply's fan will only spin beyond a certain temperature, so the PSU will emit no noise at low loads. In our review we find that this power supply is the best model available in its power range at this time.
First seen at Computex this year, the ASUS GTX 580 Matrix Platinum is an overclocker's dream. It offers multiple voltage control via both software and hardware, a quiet running, powerful triple slot, dual fan thermal solution and easy to reach voltage measurement points. This card is also the first to be supported by ASUS' new GPU Tweak software.
Released on May 31st by ASUS, the M5A97 EVO is a new AM3+ motherboard, boasting support for AMD's upcoming AM3+ CPUs, as well, as current AM3 Phenom II CPUs. Sporting the now familiar black and blue color scheme from ASUS, the M5A97 EVO seeks, like its brethern, to turn the competition black and blue too.
Computex Taiwan is one of the leading computer tradeshows in the year. Thanks to its asian location the booths are full of hot show girls in short skirts. TechPowerUp brings you the complete collection with over 175 girls - including high-res images.
We are always thrilled to see new companies enter the PSU market because this leads to more choice for the end users and competition gets tougher, reducing prices. Today we will take a look at RASURBO's Real&Power 550 W, which is 80 PLUS certified, utilizes a semi modular cabling scheme and comes with attractive pricing.
The Viako Mini-Letter ML-55 chassis is extremely compact, costs less than 90 US Dollar including a power supply, is constructed of thick metal and can fit a standard Mini-ITX board. That all sounds really good, but can it deliver in the sight of stiff competition?
Patriot has also jumped on the USB 3.0 bandwagon with their Supersonic series of drives. While the Supersonic Magnum is the flagship drive, the normal Supersonic packs quite the punch and breaks the advertised performance barrier - giving you more than you bargained for.
MSI has upgraded their GTX 580 Lightning and calls it "Xtreme Edition" now. The biggest change is certainly the inclusion of 3 GB of GDDR5 memory. Other new features are a dust removal system and a fan that indicates overheating by color change.
Foxconn has made some waves with their compact but very capable ION based NT-330I Netbox back in 2010. Now, almost a year later the market has evolved and Foxconn is sending their newest version into the race. The NT-A3500 is based on the AMD Fusion platform, aiming to be faster, cooler and quieter.
PowerColor's HD 6670 uses a full-height dual-slot thermal solution to deliver outstanding idle and load temperatures. The reference clocked card with 1 GB of GDDR5 memory offers decent performance for the budget oriented gamer at resolutions up to 1680x1050.
Antec's High Current Pro 750 W is the smallest member of the High Current Pro Series which is Antec's flagship line of PSUs. The mighty HCP-1200 is well known for being one of the best power supplies on the market, so we wonder if the 750 W version can impress too.
Peripheral manufacturer QPAD has gone all out with their recently launched MK-80 mechanical keyboard. The keyboard featurea customizable back lighting, USB 2.0 hub and headset pass through. The keyboard uses the well performing Cherry MX Blue key mechanism and comes with a decent wrist wrest.
OCZ recently introduced the new ZX PSU series, which consists of three Gold efficiency members with 850 W, 1000 W and 1250 W capacities. Today we have the 850 watt model on our testbench to check if it shows the same usability, quality and price/performance we saw on the 1250 W model that we reviewed a while ago.
The ECS P67H2-A2, an ECS Black Series product, seeks to slay the Sandy Bridge dragons, offering an enthusiast package at mainstream pricing. Will the ECS P67H2-A2 prove victorious? Or will it be Sandy Bridge that slays the ECS P67H2-A2?
Corsair has a wide range of products that address enthusiasts. However the company does not forget Average Joe who just wants to power his low end system. For these users Corsair offers the Builder Series which promises great price/performance ratio. The new Corsair Builder CX430 V2 will be the test subject of today's review.
HIS has taken the AMD HD 6790 reference design, increased its clock speeds and slapped their new IceQ X thermal solution on it. The result is a solid HD 6790 card that is about 5% faster than the AMD version, which delivers awesome temperatures and good overclocking potential.
Verbatim has taken their affordable Store'n'Go hard drive line-up and now offers it with the newest USB 3.0 interface. Even so the drive still aims to be affordable while offering the level of performance one would expect from the new connection method.
NZXT made a big step into the PSU market with the HALE90 series of PSUs. With capacities ranging from 550W to 1000W these Gold efficiency units address the needs of every gamer that seeks for a strong, efficient and reliable PSU to feed his system. In today’s review we will test a HALE90 750W and see how it performs in our ultra tough tests.
After the Define and Array cases, the gloves come off and Fractal Design is jumping into the fray with a classic chassis aimed at the higher end mid-range market. We take the Arc for a spin to see if it keeps us and our hardware afloat in the battle or if the existing players in this price segment have the bigger guns.
