Sansun is a new and rather unknown company, which produces various types of hardware including premodded cases. There are different designs available, the one that we tested has a Batman theme. It looks good and performs pretty well at the same time.
Mushkin has been well known for producing top-notch overclocker's memory. Now they have released a 2 GB kit which features their brand-new reengineered heatspreaders. Even though it uses 6 ns rated memory chips from Infineon we could overclock them to 280 MHz, a great result for a 2 GB kit.
ASRock has engineered the 939Dual-SATA2 around ULi's new M1695 chipset. The board has both AGP 8x and PCI-Express x16 slots which do not suffer from performance loss like other manufacturers' implementations. You can even use both slots at the same time. General performance is very close to that of the competition. Suprisingly the board is a good overclocker as well, it reached an amazing 380 MHz HTT after some tweaking.
Today, we will take a look at Sapphire's Radeon X850XT Platinum Edition for AGP. With nForce 4 for AMD and the i9XX chipsets for Intel, it seemed that the long era of AGP was over once and for all. However, about a year later, this is not quite the case, and many people still use AGP. Is there still some life left in the dying standard? Or would you be better off upgrading to PCI-Express right this minute?
The G.SKILL F1-4000USU2-2GBHZ unite overclocking and 2GB. They almost overclock like the best 1 GB Dual-Channel kits, but offer double the amount of capacity. We reached 275 MHz (DDR550) at low 2.6V. If you want the smoothness of 2 GB and also overclocking, they can be yours for about $245, which is an excellent price.
Sirtec may not be one of the known big players of the PSU industry, but in fact they are a huge OEM producer of power supplies, for example for Thermaltake and Chieftec. We test Sirtec's 410W unit which offers a beautiful chrome finish and a low-noise fan at a very competitive price.
G.SKILL uses Samsung TCCD or TCC5 chips on these DDR memory modules. The timings of 2.5-4-4-8 are pretty much what you would expect from modules using these chips. During our overclocking tests we could get DDR600 speeds out of the sticks, at a rather small voltage of 2.8V. The best about this memory? It's the price. You can find a 2x 512MB kit for around $170 online.
Thermaltake has engineered a completely new video card cooling concept. A self-contained water cooling unit which is mounted into two PCI slots keeps the GPU cool. People who think watercooling requires a lot of maintenance or leaks easily will be proven wrong. The installation is also remarkably easy. What makes this unit even more attractive is its competitive price. Powercolor liked it so much, that they use it on their X800 GT EVO series.
Under-hyped or Overrated? The Zalman CNPS 9500 LED is Zalman's newest addition to their top of the line air coolers. This full-copper heatsink comes with a fan controller so you can optimize for performance or fan noise. In our testing it even beats a watercooling kit and proves that it is well worth your money. Watch as we put it to the test on the Pentium 4 Prescott 561 at 180 Watt TDP.
World-famous case modder Mashie has created this unique case modding accessory. It is a stereo 7-channel real-time spectrum analyzer which shows beautiful patterns on 112 LEDs. It goes into two 5.25" drive bays and does not require any additional software because it comes with its own microprocessor on-board.
ATI has created this presentation in which they share with us what they think will be NVIDIA's reactions on the X1000 Series launch.
We are taking a look at the ASUS CT-479 Adapter which allows you to use an Intel Mobile Processor in your desktop. This Socket 478 to Socket 479 converter is considerably less expensive than the native Socket 479 boards. With this adapter you can turn that old ASUS 865P/875P mobo into a serious gaming machine. The OCZ DDR Booster is reviewed along with the ASUS CT-479 Adapter.
OCZ is well known for their excellent enthusiast memory. Now they have entered the USB memory stick market with a bang. Their Rally USB sticks use dual-channel technology to deliver the fastest transfer speeds available. Not only are the sticks fast, they also come in a robust aluminum case.
Functional panels for our computers have been around for a while now, but Logisys took the standard functional panel with USB, Firewire, fan controller, and temp monitors and tricked it out one more. They created "The first remote panel in the world designed for media PC and for enhancement of all computers". The Logisys FP800BK includes almost everything you could want in a front panel device, plus you can turn your PC on and off with its handy remote!
ATI held a nice press event at Ibiza this weekend, where they showed off their new R5xx series to the press. We weren't there, but we brought you some nice slides from the presentation for your prerelease viewing experience.
We take a close look at VL System's L.I.S 2 Blue eye, to find out how this middle-segment LCD performs. It can display anything from fan RPM and current time all the way to CPU temperature and voltages, it can even control up to 4 fans. Have you ever caught yourself wondering what time it is in the middle of a frag fest, and couldn't risk switching back to desktop? Do you own a modded case and attend LAN Parties regularly? Then this might just be the unit you are after...
For several years Thermaltake has been making "cool" hardware for the enthusiast. This includes heatsinks, fans, cases and other cooling solutions. Today we take a look at the Thermaltake VB6000SWS, an affordable case for people who still want a good looking computer.
When you ask hardcore overclockers about companies who have the best extreme cooling gear, you can bet that Asetek is among the first mentioned. Their Vapochill Extreme Cooling Units are legendary, but come with a hefty price tag. The average user is not willing to pay that much, so Asetek has engineered the Vapochill Micro series. While the principle is the same as the Vapochill, do not expect to reach sub-zero temperatures with the Vapochill Micro, it essentially is a heatpipe cooler, just with some very clever ideas. Asetek's experience in designing high-performance cooling units sure has helped here.
Thermaltake has recently released the Golden Orb II. Now they have the Blue Orb II. This cooler is a good deal bigger than its golden brother, which results in seriously improved cooling performance. Also the fan seems to have been improved - cools better, but not much louder.
NVIDIA has set out to bring the ultimate video and HDTV experience to the PC. Their PureVideo technology has exciting features like acceleration of video decoding, HDTV deinterlacing, Inverse Telecine and a high-quality rescaling engine. In the second part of this 35-page presentation NVIDIA's new DualTV technology is shown. It is the "industry's highest quality dual-analog tuner", according to NVIDIA.
NVIDIA's launch of the GeForce 7800 GTX has been a huge success, now they bring that platform to the mobile sector. It has double the rendering performance, while having the same power consumption. It also comes in a pin-compatible package making it easy for notebook manufacturers to upgrade their designs. We have a 26 page presentation straight from NVIDIA.
ATI's competitor NVIDIA has sat down and put together a presentation dealing with the shortcomings of CrossFire. Problems like limited resolution and game issues are listed. Not only do they cover the CrossFire video cards, but also problems with ATI's dual VGA motherboard chipsets.
This 26-page presentation from NVIDIA talks about their new nForce4 variants, called GeForce 6150 and GeForce 6100. Both have integrated VGA. The new high-end dual PCI-Express x16 part is also briefly mentioned.
ABIT has engineered the AL8 for Intel Socket775 to be a good compromise between features, performance and price. Apart from the standard features, the motherboard has Gigabit Ethernet, an extra SATA controller, 8 Channel Audio and ABIT's uGuru.
We also found out why other reviewers could not overclock past 220 FSB and describe how to fix it. Our best result was 4568 MHz @ 326 FSB.
Featuring a sleek and chic brushed aluminum shell the Lian Li PC-65b is all anyone could wish for in a mid tower. With the ability to remove the motherboard and PSU in just a couple seconds. Lian Li is known for their elegant and classy cases, they are designed and built to carry on the motto: a purchase you'll never regret.
