The NZXT Phantom is the first truly brand-new case from the company in a very long time. It looks great, comes in multiple colors and packs a long list of useful and well balanced features. We take a look at the white version along with the white Hale90, the first 80Plus Gold certified PSU from NZXT and end up quite impressed by both products.
Today AMD released their new Radeon HD 6870. The card brings new features like HDMI 1.4 and DisplayPort 1.2 which allow up to six displays to be connected to a single card. Performance has also been substantially increased and power draw reduced. But is this enough to defeat NVIDIA's latest offerings ?
The new ASUS Radeon HD 6850 Direct CU aims to be the king of the sub-$200 segment. It offers plenty of performance for the latest DirectX 11 titles, overclocks very well and comes with improvements to the display output configuration. Instead of an AMD reference heatsink the card uses an ASUS Direct Touch heatpipe solution.
AMD's new Radeon HD 6850 comes at an extremely affordable $179 price point. This poses the question whether it can become the new weapon of choice for budget oriented gamers. In our testing we see excellent performance which enables full HD resolution gaming in DirectX 11.
In this review we will put the dual card CrossFire configuration of the AMD Radeon HD 6870 in the spotlight. It promises higher performance than a Radeon HD 5970 at only a fraction of the price. But is this enough to make CF a recommendation?
AMD's new Radeon HD 6850 is priced at an extremely affordable $179. This poses the question whether two cards in CrossFire can manage to claim the price/performance sweet spot in the $360 segment or if other alternatives are better.
MSI's GeForce GTX 480 Lightning promises to be an overclocker's dream. It is build around a completely redesigned PCB and thermal solution with overclockers in mind. The card offers unique features like control for up to three voltages, dual BIOS with liquid nitrogen support and easy to reach voltage measurement points.
The Armor A60 is a smaller version of the popular Armor A90. It retains the cool and edgy look of the larger brother, but also offers a few new and interesting features and updates. We throw everything we have at the case to see if the Armor A60 remains standing once the dust has settled.
Crucial's ReadSSD C300 is the first solid state drive to support the new SATA 6 Gb/s standard. Unlike many of the competition, the drive is not based on a Sandforce controller, but uses one from Marvell instead. We tested both on SATA-II and SATA 6 Gb/s to check if the new interface can really make a difference.
Sunrise audio, a relative newcomer on the headphone scene just released some neat earbuds. Today we take a look at their high end offering namely the AS-Charm earbuds. They retail at around $80 which promises excellent price/ performance ratio.
Colorful's iGame GTX 460 uses a massive triple slot cooler with two fans to keep the card cool. It also offers overclocker-friendly features like a Turbo button or voltage measurement points. Out of the box the card runs at clocks of 820 MHz core and 1000 MHz memory making it one of the faster GTX 460 variants out there.
Today NVIDIA launches their new low-end GeForce GT 430 Series. The cards which are supposed to replace the GT 220 bring full DirectX 11 support to the table. Power consumption is also low which enables its use in media PC systems.
Corsair's Force F40 is the smallest Sandforce based drive the company offers with just 40 GB capacity. It is also the most affordable at $120. Thanks to a 7-channel design and the SF-1222 controller the drive delivers great performance for users who want to get on the SSD bandwagon without breaking the bank.
Sunrise Audio, unknown to most, just released a full line-up of earbuds. Today we take a closer look at the AS-Feeling earbuds which is their mid-end offering. Available for only $40 online these are sure to be welcomed by many people looking for great sound on a budget.
The much anticipated GIGABYTE GO OC 2010 Overclocking World Championship Finals proved to be a spectacular show in the middle of Taipei. With 15 overclockers from around the world gathered, the competition was fierce.
The G.Skill 8 GB 2000 MHz kit manages to offer high capacity, nicely packaged within tall and solid heatspreaders. The active cooling bracket lights up blue and we push the memory & test bench to the limit to see what this kit is capable of.
The PC-Q11 manages to swallow a full size ATX power supply, standard optical drive and four hard drives while still looking as slim as today's runway models. The mini-ITX chassis is the successor of the Lian-Li Q07, growing slightly taller but managing to impress with a good list of new features. We peel it apart and stuff it full of hardware to see if it bursts apart or manages to keep its posture.
Falling next in line in the footsteps of its predecessors such as the V8 and V10 coolers, the V6GT aims high to be the cooler everyone wants. With unique features such as "tilted asymmetrical fin design", "DynaLoop bearing technology" and unique "Double-V" heat-pipe setup will the V6GT live up to its expectations?
What started out as the first quad core processor under $ 100, has evolved into a powerful and very affordable all round performer. AMD's newest addition to the Athlon II Series, the quad core Athlon II X4 645 is stepping over the 3 GHz mark, clocking at impressive 3.10 GHz.
Although frequency wars between AMD and Intel are long gone, this could be the day for the history books at AMD, as they let loose their fastest clocked retail processor. Based on the well known Deneb quad core, Phenom II X4 970 BE is clocked at 3.50 GHz and its goal is to refresh the upper end of AMD's offerings, replacing older X4 965 BE model but keeping the same price point and adding more pressure to Intel's Core i5 Series.
High end in-ear manufacturer JH AUDIO recently launched a new top-of-the-line in-ear dubbed the JH|16Pro. Featuring a grand total of eight drivers per in-ear these set the benchmark when it comes to cramming a lot of balanced armatures into one set of in-ears, retailing at $1,200. This brings forth the old question of whether more really is better, read on to find out.
Today NVIDIA released their new GeForce GTS 450. We take two of these cards for a spin and check whether SLI is an option worth pursuing. In addition to testing at the reference design clocks we also test at 875/1000 which represents two factory overclocked cards in SLI.
The ASUS ENGTS450 TOP DirectCU is a factory overclocked version of the NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450. It comes with a custom cooling solution called DirectCU which uses heatpipes that make direct contact with the GPU core. In our testing we saw excellent overclocking up to 973 MHz.
The MSI N450GTS Cyclone OC uses MSI's popular Cyclone cooler. The card is factory overclocked which provides a nice performance boost over the NVIDIA reference design. During testing we were impressed by how quiet MSI's cooler can work while also keeping temperatures low.
Palit's GeForce GTS 450 Sonic Platinum comes with 1 GB of fast GDDR5 memory and offers the highest clock rates of the GTS 450 cards we tested today. Running at 932 MHz core and 1000 MHz memory it is able to deliver performance higher than the AMD Radeon HD 5770.
