Today we have on our testbench two NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 accelerators. Just the graphics cards alone will cost you $1000. Is this something that can be justified? Performance aside, what's going on with power and heat when running two of these cards?
HIS sends their HD 5870 iCooler V Turbo into the race for the best custom designed HD 5870. In addition to the new iCooler V heatsink you get improved clock speeds over the AMD reference design and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 as game bundle.
MSI's HD 5830 Twin Frozr II uses a shiny metal heatsink that comes with two fans to keep the card cool. In our testing we see nice overclocking potential of around 20% which can easily bring the card to new performance levels.
HIS recently released its entry-level Radeon HD 5450 silent, low-profile graphics card targeted at those looking for a simple step-up from integrated graphics, packing all the essentials of this generation's GPUs. The model we're looking at has double the onboard memory at 1GB, native HDMI with 7.1 audio, and examining what it brings to the table with its added costs.
The term Utgard stems from the Norse mythology and means "land of the giants", ruled by Utgard-Loki. The Xigmatek Utgard offers you a unique and useful set of features, wrapped into a sturdy, tall and good looking chassis. We dive into the story to find out if the case will be forgotten or live on just as the legend has.
The In Win alpha 360 may have gone under in the masses of cases available on the market, but the Allure manages to rise and be noticed due to the fancy floral pattern and added bling of Swarovski crystals. While it shines on the outside, it manages to screw a few smiles with the inner attributes as well, as we open the Allure up and take a peek inside.
Noctua is well known for their line of excellent CPU coolers and silent fans. With the ever growing heat levels of modern processors, the company created the new "twin towers" design. Today we see if the NH-D14 can handle the heat while still living up to Noctua's promise of quiet CPU cooling.
Arctic Cooling known for their innovative cooling solutions recently launched a new line of in-ears. In this review we will be taking a closer look at their top-of-the-line in-ear dubbed E361-BM. Fitted with a microphone and remote these earphones also double as a headset, both for PC and phone.
Today marks the release of NVIDIA's new GeForce Fermi architecture. After excruciating months of delays, NVIDIA has finally given the green light for their new products. The GeForce GTX 480 offers all the latest features like DirectX 11, Tesselation, gaming on multiple monitors and GPU computation. Did NVIDIA's new card manage to claim the throne?
NVIDIA's latest beast offers unprecedented performance to the enthusiast gamer. But it also requires massive amounts of data being fed to it to perform. That's why it is commonly expected that high-end graphics cards are crippled if the PCI-Express interface does not offer the maximum speed of x16 2.0. We test four different PCI-E configurations and their performance to shine light on this question.
Corsair's latest Padlock revision brings about more changes than just a new look. Data is now secured with a 256-bit AES encryption, unlike the original Padlock 1, which just cut off power to the flash drive unless the correct PIN was entered. We drill the Padlock 2 to see if it holds up or snitches under pressure.
USB 3.0 has slowly been gaining market share over the last months. Vantec is one of the first companies to offer a USB 3.0 compatible external 3.5" enclosure. We take the NexStar 3 for a spin to see if the USB 3 promise holds up to the test.
Thermaltake has been around for many years, creating heatsinks for nearly every market imaginable. Thermaltake's first claim to fame was the Golden Orb, a unique cooler that set the computing world on its ear. Thermaltake has not stopped there, and they are still inventing challenging new designs. Today we take a look at highly awarded SpinQ and see what it has to offer.
Sennheiser's latest and greatest headphones are put to the test. The HD800s created quite a fuzz when released, not only were they one of the most expensive headphones launched last year, they were also the most anticipated ones. In this review we put them to the test and see if there can be a reason to spend $1800 on headphones.
PowerColor has engineered a unique HD 5750. Their Go! Green Edition is completely fanless using a big passive heatsink, it also works without additional PCI-Express power connector, a configuration which limits the card to 75W maximum power draw. Considering that the AMD reference design requires 92W, PowerColor had quite a way to go. Did they succeed?
MSI's new R5870 Lightning is designed with the hardcore overclocker in mind. It comes with more PWM phases, noise free coils, voltage measurement points, an overclock out of the box and software voltage change support via Afterburner. But is that enough to satisfy the demanding enthusiast crowd?
The Hades is part of the Crafted Series and features four fans, a temperature LCD display along with a very edgy, industrial design. The interior is all black and NZXT has chosen a unique approach by having nine 5.25 inch bays and multiple rails for 3.5 inch drives.
Here's Lian Li being Lian Li. The PC-T1 is an open mini-ITX chassis, which is one of the most wacky cases on the planet: it looks like a spider when assembled. Being the case that it is, we wanted to look into the belly of the beast and see if the menacing looks are coupled with the kind of engineering required to pull such a design off.
ASUS has released what seems to be one of the best custom designed HD 5850s. The card which supports DirectX 11 and Eyefinity is extremely quiet, offers better price/performance than the AMD reference design, comes with an overclock out of the box and supports voltage control via SmartDoctor.
Dimastech is continously updating their Benchtable and listening to the feedback of both users and reviewers. The V2.5 simplifies many aspects of assembly, while adding new and useful features to the Benchtable. We take a close look at what it has to offer and at the improvements, to see if it is a worthy successor.
G.Skill is offering a full range of P55 compatible memory kits, with the ECO being one of them. As the name implies, the memory aims to deliver the most performance while only requiring a mere 1.35V to run at 1600 MHz CL7-8-7.
The N2200 is an entry level dual bay NAS. It has a fairly long list of features without making it overly complex to configure, plus it comes at a low price. Since Thecus seems confident about the N2200 we took a closer look at it to see if this is justified.
Soundgraph is well known for their LCD and VFD products in the majority of HTPC enclosures from virtually all major brand names out there. The new FingerVU series takes the control of the PC to the next level with a 4" or 7" inch, high-res, USB powered LCD touch screen at your finger tips.
Today we have with us the ASUS EAH 5830 DirectCu 1024 MB, a premium non-reference implementation of the Radeon HD 5830. The way its cooler is designed, and going by ASUS' choice of components, the EAH 5830 DirectCu is catered to the value performance enthusiast who can squeeze the last ounce of performance out of it by overclocking.
The Addonics Pocket DigiDrive combines both the flexibility of a card reader and the speed of the eSATA interface into one functional package. We take the unit for a spin with a blazing fast Compact Flash card to see how it will keep up.
