Kingston Wi-Drive
- Details
- Category: Storage
- Published: Thursday, 05 April 2012 14:36
I remember, early last year, thinking to myself; "Self, it would be totally awesome if they made an external hard drive that was battery operated and could connect to a WiFi network. No more USB cables!" Well, that time has arrived with several new products that have recently hit the market. Today, I would like to take a look at the Kingston Wi-Drive 16GB unit and see how it works, and more importantly, is it worth the money.
When Sandy Bridge E launched we went from everyone running the fairly cool Sandy Bridge processors to people actually having to worry a little more about what they select. This was made even more important because Intel didn’t include a stock cooler this time around, opting to sell their own water cooling kit for those looking to cool their 3960X’s. Soon after Cooler Master approached me about putting their Hyper 612 PWM, a heatsink that runs half the price of the Intel water cooling, up against the Intel Water Cooling. You want me to put your cooler up against something twice its price? SURE! Let’s dig in and take a look at the Hyper 612 PWM and its performance.
Today we are going to look at the Thrustmaster T500RS. This is one of the highest quality racing wheel/pedal setups on the market. Thrustmaster is known for building some of the most complex peripherals in the industry. From the wheels, joysticks to the insane flight controls for the A-10C Warthog game there is something for every gamer. With its build construction, paddle shifter, button layout and pedal arrangement all being tested out using some of the most demanding driving games, see if it’s up to par with what you expect. 
You have all seen and heard the rumors for months now about Nvidia’s upcoming GPU code named Kepler. When we got the call that Nvidia was inviting editors out to San Francisco to show us what they have been working on we jumped at the chance to finally put the rumors to rest and see what they really had up their sleeve. Today we can finally tell you all the gory details and dig into the performance of Nvidia’s latest flagship video card. Will it be the fastest single GPU card in the world? We finally find out!
Yesterday we took a look at the XFX R7870 Black Edition OC and really liked it. It seemed to fall into a nice sweet spot between price and performance. Today we are going to take a look at what looks to be the same card but bring the R7850 not the R7870, there are a few key differences. There are major differences in both power usage and compute performance between the two cards. I am really curious how this will translate to the performance and ultimately the price/performance that make the R7870 an idea card to pick up. Will the R7850 be an even better deal or a card to pass on?
AMD’s 7970 launch was very exciting but when it came to the lower priced HD 7700 series cards the reception was lackluster, mostly because of pricing issues. We still haven’t found the card that falls right into the sweet spot for performance vs. value while still being able to play anything you throw at it. These cards are rare, like the 8800 GTS G92 edition or the HD 6950 with the ability to reflash to unlock more performance. With the HD 7900 series cards being pricy and HD 7700’s series cards not having the power behind them. I am really hopping the HD 7800 series cards step up to the plate. Today we finally have the chance to take a look at an HD 7800 series card, the XFX R7870 Black Edition Overclocked. With XFX’s amazing cooler and overclock I’m hoping this will be the one.
Tablets are all the rage these days. If you don’t have one, someone you know certainly does. At my house we didn’t until I recently purchased an iPad 2 for my wife. Now a lot of the cases we see fold back and will help prop the screen up slightly, but really that just works for a landscape view. A dedicated stand would be a bit more flexible here. Cooler Master has a product meant to address that issue. Enter the Cooler Master Wave Stand.
It seems almost like it was yesterday when I took a close look at Gigabytes Assassin, flagship motherboard on the X58 chipset. Here we are less than a year later with a new chipset and socket available. That means it’s time once again to take a look at Gigabyte’s flagship gaming motherboard, the Assassin 2 X79. With a lower price point, smaller form factor, and all of the features of the original we loved the Assassin 2 should be a great board. Of course we won’t know that for sure until we dig in a little farther, so let’s jump in!
Haven already taken a look at a 
Finally decided to drop the cash on an iPad 2 or The New Ipad (ipad 3) did you? Well if you made the investment you are going to want to protect it. When I bought my wife an iPad a couple of weeks ago, the first thing I went looking for was a case. Cooler Master presented the opportunity to review their Choiix branded “Wake Up Folio” which would provide the iPad something in the way of protection. The Wake Up Folio comes in a variety of colors to choose from.
We have taken a look at glasses from a few different manufactures that claim to help relieve eye strain while working on your PC. From our experience they can be very helpful as long as you can get over the yellow tint that they all have. Even then the designs we have seen have resembled normal glasses or in one case even they looked just like a pair of hunting glasses. The problem with that is when you’re trying to game with your headset on they can still become uncomfortable. SteelSeries has been working with Gunnar glasses to design a few pair of glasses designed specifically to be comfortable with your headset on. Today we will be taking a look at one of those glasses called the SteelSeires Desmo. We know how the glasses perform but will they be comfortable for gamers? Let’s find out!
You guys have seen the results from our testing of both the XFX R7770 Black Edition OC and the Sapphire HD 7770 OC. I'm sure it was fairly expected but here are our Crossfire testing results using the press drivers. As you will see their are still a few crossfire bugs to be worked out just like we saw with our HD 7970 crossfire testing. But when the drivers work right these two cards paired up make for a cheaper sollution to get Performance similar to the HD 7950 and the GTX 580. Not bad for two cards that would cost you around $350 to pick up. Thats $100 less than what it would cost you to get a GTX 580 and close to the same for the HD 7950!
The Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) genre is still relatively young and gaining popularity quickly. Though still in beta, Dota 2 has generated a lot of attention in the past couple of months, having been the spotlight of a million dollar international tournament and in and out of court over the rights to the name Defense of the Ancients. If you’re thinking about trying DoTA or Dota 2, here’s what you should know coming from Summoner’s Rift.
Sapphire is always known for the wide variety of cards they product for each card series. The HD 7770 is no exception. This time around we are taking a look at their HD 7770 Overclocked edition. Apparently the 1 GHz stock clock wasn’t enough for them, so they gave it up bump up to 1150 MHz. With the HD 7770 priced similar to the HD 6770 and HD5770 cards at their launch I am excited to see what this card has to offer. The HD 5770 was a staple in our small form factor builds around the office for a long time. Now it’s time to give them an upgrade!
Not everyone can afford to go with the most expensive video cards on the market; most gamers have a more limited budget. This is mostly due to the fact that there are more gamers from the 13-30 age groups than anything else. Between being too young to work, poor college students, and then young budding family’s money is always tight. When your budget has you building a $600 dollar gaming rig there is no way you will be dedicating all or even half of that towards the video card. It’s important for gaming, but without the rest of your components you’re not going anywhere. That’s where AMD’s new HD 7770 comes in, at a price point that still leaves room in your budget. Of course we need to see how it performs, for that we are taking a look at XFX’s R7770 Black Edition Double D overclocked edition.
Earlier this month Star Trek: Online went the Free To Play model, meaning anyone can have their own starship and participate in one of the best science fiction franchises of all time! Why is that significant to this article? It is significant because I am a Trekkie. I openly admit it. When HornetTek contacted us to do some reviews on their products, this product definitely caught my eye for two reasons. One, I like hard drive enclosures and external storage solutions. Two, it is named "Enterprise". There is even a glimpse of the good 'ole 1701 on HornetTek's website.
Extended batteries. When I mention those two words, what is the first thing that comes to mind? Does anything even come to mind for you? Well, to most people that I talk to about getting an extended battery for their phone or other mobile device they just respond with “I will just make sure that I plug it in every day.” But what if you use your device all-day, every day, and you find yourself on a long flight across the Pacific? What if you are just too lazy to plug your phone in every night? Well, the Power Fort is a device that claims to be the savior of those moments. But how does it hold up in testing? Let’s find out!
With AMD’s new HD 7970’s rocking the boat slightly with both price and performance it’s about time we started to see the slow trickle of GPU’s that will fill in the rest of the HD 7000 series video cards. First on the list is the HD 7950, a card that a lot of people have been waiting for because of the high price of the HD 7970. There is no doubt that it’s not going to outperform the HD 7970, but how will this new card compare to the GTX 580? Today I’m not taking a look at a reference card, we have skipped directly to the XFX Double Dissipation Black Edition Overclocked version, similar in design to what we saw with their R7970.
I recently posted up our HD 7970 crossfire results. AMD released their 8.921.2 RC11 driver update the same day as our last post. Here are updated graphs showing the crossfire performance with the new drivers. I still experienced flashing and artifacts when in game water was in view and our test bench would have odd lockups when left sitting idle for a while. The performance increases with the new drivers are impressive, I hope they work out the rest of the bugs. Two HD 7970's is the best performance you can get currently (short of adding even more cards, lol) but without the driver support its going to be a tough sell. 
Everyone and their mom have jumped into the mechanical keyboard party over the past year. Typically each of the keyboards has a fairly standard layout with a few small differences to help them stand out. When we saw Cooler Master’s new offering I was excited to see something a little different. If you have ever seen a Filco keyboard this may look familiar. The new Cooler Master QuickFire Rapid is a compact keyboard without a number fad for those looking for something that doesn’t take up very much room on your desk. Sounds like a perfect keyboard for going to LAN’s doesn’t it? We thought so, let’s take a look.