CES 2009 - Coolermaster

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Asus Z77 Roundup When doing all of our Ivy Bridge launch prep we spent a LOT of time benchmarking and testing a whole collection of boards. You guys have seen our reviews of the Intel and Gigabyte boards. When it came time to write about the four different Asus Z77 boards I realized that most of you are not going to want to read through a lot of information that we would cover over and over on each review. We decided to roundup all four of the boards and cover them together. This way we can get to the point a little quicker, saving you time, as well as giving us a chance to talk more about the differences between the variety of boards that we tested.

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ASUS P8 Z68-V/GEN3 Perhaps one of the most daunting tasks after making the decision that you do not wish to purchase an off-the-shelf computer is attempting to figure out which components go in the machine. There are fun aspects, like the graphics card and processor, and then there are the not-so-fun aspects, like the motherboard (at least in my opinion). Why do I think it is a whole lot of not fun? There are so many out there to choose from, with all sorts of features. When shopping you will likely come across the ASUS board that I am going to review today. Arguably, it is one of the better all-around boards out there, with features like good integrated graphics and killer sound. But to a gamer that generally does not mean squat. Does the ASUS P8 Z68-V/GEN3 board have what it takes to function as a serious gaming component? Read on to find out!

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XFX R7750 Black Edition DD Not everyone is looking to spend $500 on their video card, in some cases that is the total budget for a build. When you are up against a wall trying to pack the best performance you can get into a budget build you still want to get the most performance you can out of your video card. That’s where cards like the XFX R7750 Black Edition Double Dissipation come into play. XFX has taken the styling and cooling from their high end cards and combined it with the price of budget cards like the HD 7750. Today we are going to take a look at how those two things do combined in XFX’s R7750 Black Edition Double Dissipation.

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Sapphire HD 7770 Vapor-X Earlier this year when AMD introduced the HD 7770 we took a look at cards from both Sapphire and XFX. Although we were impressed with the cards performance it was a little ill-timed due to AMD still clearing out discounted back stock. Three months later we are able to revisit the situation with today’s release of Sapphires new HD 7770 Vapor-X. With Sapphires Vapor chamber cooling technology along with a nice overclock over the reference design, the Sapphire HD 7770 Vapor-X could be a great option for a gamer on a limited budget. Let’s take a look.

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Motherboard Sizing When we got in a few oddly sized dual CPU motherboards from EVGA and Asus I posted up a few pictures on our forums and on Facebook. The problem was that even though they looked large there wasn’t any prospective. So we tossed in a couple other boards to give everyone a little perspective. This lead us to digging out even more motherboards to put together all of the standard motherboard sizes all together for everyone to be able to see the differences. Along with the picture we also have a breakdown on the dimensions of each size standard; I hope this helps everyone as some point. Sometimes it can be hard to understand all of the different motherboard sizes and how they all relate.

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Android to the Maxx, DROID Razr Maxx The list of different Android based phones available at any time is both overwhelming and frustrating. It’s almost impossible to get good feedback from friends who have the same phone because of this. So it’s rare than you have any one phone that manages to stand out. Doing something different is the only way to do this normally, but most times this ends off coming off as gimmicky or just lame. When Motorola introduced the Droid Razr Maxx it caught my attention right away. This was just before our trip out to San Francisco for the GTX 680 Editors day, what a better way to put the Maxx’s proposed batter life to the test!

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Lian Li PC 100 “The Hammer” We have had a few different Lian Li chassis come through the LanOC Offices and there hasn’t been a time that we haven’t been impressed with the new and interesting features Lian Li always seems to slip in. When they wanted to ship over their new case “The Hammer” PC 100, we signed up right away. We had seen the case previewed from a few shows prior and this time around Lian Li took a new perspective with its design, I was very interested to see how their changes worked out. Let’s jump in and see what it’s all about!

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Nvidia GTX 670 When Nvidia launched Kepler with the GTX 680 I was impressed with the launch price of the card but even at such a great value it is still out of reach for some people. Just because you can’t afford the top card doesn’t mean you don’t want to experience Kepler’s performance. Of course it was only a matter of time before we saw Nvidia filling in the gaps in their product line, starting first with the GTX 690 then going to the next step down from the GTX 680, the GTX 670. Today we get to have a look to see how the performance compares to both the GTX 680 as well as AMD’s offerings. We are also very curious how it compares to the GTX 580, a card that has found its way into most of our office PC’s.

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ioSafe Rugged Portable So you do the smart thing, you backup your data from your laptop and your home PC to an external or network drive and go on with life feeling confident that you have gone well and above what most people do. For the most part, you did. What about when you’re traveling, have you seen how much abuse a device can take when on the go? For some people, and I know I’m one of them, some of the data you carry with you while traveling is more important than the laptop or device that you actually carry it on. In that situation you need a way to not have to worry about your data, no matter the situation, and to have a guarantee to back it up as well. The folks over at ioSafe focus specifically on this crowd. Not only do they offer products that are according to them build to handle almost anything, but they back it up with data recovery if something does happen. Today we are going to take a look at that Rugged Portable hard drive to see what all of the fuss is about, without any more buildup, let’s dig in.

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Cooler Master Storm Trigger Just two years ago the only mechanical keyboards you would find were from companies like DAS keyboard trying to create a nitch market. Over the past two years things have really exploded with every manufacture you can think of introducing their own mechanical keyboards. Cooler Master has been especially aggressive with multiple unique designs like their Quickfire series. What they did lack was a full featured mechanical keyboard with full backlighting, until now. Today they officially introduce their Storm Trigger, although it you look around the board was available Globally before now. With full backlighting it falls into a small category of Mechanical Keyboards with very little competition. I am excited to see how it performs.

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Cooler Master HAF XM The topic of cleaning your computer out came up last week on our forums and it got me thinking about how often I really need to clean out my computer. As it turns out it’s not very often anymore. All because of improvements in case design like fan filters. You don’t really see them on low end cases yet but they have been slowly trickling down. At CES this year we had a chance to get our hands on one of Cooler Master’s upcoming chassis, the HAF XM. A mid-range case packed with the features we have come to love from their high end HAF line. Today we are going to dig into the final product and see how it came out.

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Gigabyte Z77X-UD3H Z77 boards come in all shapes, sizes, colors, and prices. Just about every manufacture has a whole lineup of boards covering the whole range to make sure you can find what you are looking for. Gigabyte is no different; they have a whole selection of boards that will fit your needs. Today we are taking a look at their Z77X-UD3H, one of their budget boards. It may not be a high end board but it is still packed with features. I am curious how it will perform now that the cat is out of the bag with Ivy Bridge. Let’s jump in and see what it’s all about.

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CES 2009 - Coolermaster

img_2027-lanoc-reviews-small Our good friends at Coolermaster decided to forgo the trouble of having a booth at CES this year and instead go all out with a suite in one of Vegas's famous hotel casinos. The money saved not having a booth they were able to pickup the penthouse suite in the Palms hotel. They invited both my wife Alex and I to their CES party on top of our scheduled meeting. We showed up to their party late after a long first day walking the CES floor. Even though I had an upset stomach and a head ache I made it anyway. When you get invited to a penthouse party in Vegas you can't turn that down, lol. Once we got there I noticed right away that the view was amazing. After being introduced to all of the important people from Coolermaster USA they gave us a tour of their current and upcoming products. The following pictures were taken the next day at my meeting; I didn't have the camera when we came to the party.

They started off with a quick run through of their current power supply selection.

From there they took me into a separate room dedicated to their new brand Choiix (pronounced Choice). Choiix will be giving people designer style along with the cooling performance that has been learned in the past with the Coolermaster brand. Most of the focus at this time is on the Eee PC and other small laptops or netbooks. Their "Air-Though" impressed me with a new way to keep your laptop cool no matter where the vents are on the underside. I likened the style of Choiix to something you would see at ikea.

Next, they showed off their new and upcoming cases from the standard Coolermaster line. Here are a few. Haf 922- A mid tower version of the popular Haf

Sileo 500 - focusing on keeping your rig silent, Coolermaster coated almost all of the panels with sound deadening.

c2b0tc2b3i-9 blackc2b0tc2b3i-22 A nice picture of the Cosmos Black, it's a shame that they only made 500 of them. And they are almost all gone from the states.

A Coolermaster branded notebookcoolers

Elite 360 - a low end case for a basic build that still has Coolermaster's great cooling. I also love how you can use this case on its side or as a tower. The Coolermaster logo will rotate to keep it visible.

New Elite - A mid tower for people on a midsized budget. I love the styled side window and the colored front ring. I am told the front ring will may be swappable with other colors when this case is released. The name of this product is set to change.

Gladiator 600 - another mid range case, this one reminds me of the Coolermaster 690. I think this would be a great pick for a build for anyone who isn't into the flashy stuff. It does have a Blue LED fan on the front, but there is a button to turn the lighting off. You can tell they have been super busy with additions to their heatsink line. V10 - This is the big daddy! With three full heatsinks, 10 heatpipes, two 120mm fans, and if that's not enough they have included a TEC (thermo-electric cooler) module on it also. With 200+ Watts of cooling this monster should have no trouble cooling anything. We should be testing this in the near future!

V8 - This heatsink is already out.

Hyper N520

Hyper N620

Both the Hyper N520 and N620 have an interesting cross flow fan layout that they say improves performance.

Just before CES Coolermaster introduced a full new line of cases designed for gamers by gamers called CM Storm. I could really tell just by some of the features that they focused on the lan crowd with these cases. Sniper - I love the easy lifting points on the top to make this easy to carry around. The fan controller is designed to allow additional fans for those who will need it. Above the PCI slots they included a peripheral lock meaning you can prevent someone from taking your mouse and keyboard while at a lan.

Scout - With one easy to grab handle up top this case is perfect for people who will be going to a lot of lans.

As you can see, Coolermaster will be hitting the ground running this year with some great new products. If that wasn't enough while we were at their amazing party we made out in the raffle. Olin from benchmarkreviews.com was nice enough to give Alex his ticket for the grand prize raffle; she ended up winning an Xbox 360 Arcade. Major thanks go to him for his kindness! To top it off I won a full PC from Coolermaster and CyberpowerPC. I don't know a lot about the details yet although I know it's going to have a i7 CPU, SLI, and be packed full of top of the line Coolermaster products so it has to be kick ass! I would like to thank all of the people from Coolermaster for inviting us out to their amazing party and giving us a lot to look forward to in the upcoming year from them. And because I know you guys will want them, here are a few more pics of the girls.

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CES 2009 - Coolermaster

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