Having already tested out the 5770 recently, I was excited to find out that we had a 5870 coming in to try out. The 5770’s performance was impressive; imagine what the 5870 can do. This is also a chance to try out Eyefinity, multiple monitors finally being used for gaming! The 5870 is from PowerColor with their PCS+ cooling solution. Let’s find out how it performs!
When you hear the word Hybrid you may have images of Prius’s or maybe even the south park episode where they called all Hybrid owners fart sniffers. You may be surprised to find out that you can get hybrids in the computer industry, specifically in storage. With SSD’s gaining popularity it’s not a surprise that manufactures are looking at ways to bring SSD performance with a normal hard drives capacity and price. Today I have the chance to take a closer look at the Momentus XT from Seagate. This is a 2.5inch laptop drive with 4 gigs of SLC NAND (solid state flash) attached to the PCB to give you just that.
Over the last few years Cooler Master has reinvented heatsink design and helped many car guys get their fix with their V8 and V10 coolers. Both have amazing performance and good looks. However, both are also a little pricy. Today Cooler Master is officially announcing their newest addition to their lineup, the V6GT. The idea behind the V6GT is to get good performance while keeping the cost a little lower than their V8 and v10. Let’s take a closer look.
These days, it's hard to justify spending crazy amounts of money on a PC when so much performance can be had for very little money. You can put together a decent PC for just a few hundred dollars. You've done your research and picked out the parts you want, but somehow you've got to fit a case into your limited budget too? If you spend too much on one, you might have to cut back on something else. Sacrificing performance isn't something you want to do just for the sake of having a big fancy case. An ugly beige box isn't an option either. What do you do? In-Win thinks they have the solution to this predicament.
One of the best ways to keep the noise level of your high end gaming rig down is to look at water cooling options. Some of the all-in-one kits perform well, but are still hit and miss. Putting together your own kit is more complicated, but will give you much better performance, not to mention great looks. One of the big names in water cooling parts is a company called Danger Den. With help from Acoustic PC we were able to update our old water cooling kit with the parts needed to keep our i7 930 cool.
Lian Li has made a name for themselves by producing top-quality all-aluminum cases. Generally they are mid- and full-sized and fairly plain. Recently Lian Li has produced a few crazy designs including the case we are reviewing today. The T7 is also known as Mini-ITX Test Bench, a much more descriptive name. I am going to toss our Mini-ITX test setup on the T7 and see how it works. Does it still have the qualities that we expect to see from a Lian Li case? Let’s find out.
Today I have the chance to take a look at the Strato Headset from Ozone. Previously, we took a look at their Smog during mouse week and their ground level mouse pads soon after. They obviously have a strong focus on gaming. I hope that focus carries over to the Strato headset; I plan on putting it to the test in a few too many sessions of Modern Warfare 2.
Being the gamers and LAN goers that we are, we often sacrifice a good meal for a quick snack and more gaming time. Usually, it's more than our physical health that pays the price, it's also the health of our equipment. When we heard that a company had designed a snack food particularly for gamers, of course we were excited to check it out. Promises of no crumbs and grease transfer were appealing, but after checking out the product in-depth, we learned how much more it offered.
Sometimes I think that I have reviewed just about every variation of case over the past few years. I received an email from a company called Microcool who wanted us to check out something a little different. Their Banchetto 101 is a full acrylic test-bench with an Italian design. Is this a case the average user is going to want to use, or will it be limited to overclockers and press? The best way to find out is to throw one of our test rigs into it and see how it turns out. Lets jump in!
At Computex two weeks ago it seemed like everyone was announcing their new 80+Gold high wattage power supplies, apparently gold is the new black. We already took a look at Sparkles offering recently, today we have a chance to put Cooler Masters Silent PRO Gold 1200 watt to the test. With 1200 watts and an 80+ Gold rating we know this will be a monster, but will it maintain the silent performance that we have come to expect from their Silent Pro line up?
The SSD market has grown in leaps and bounds over the past few years. It has given new names a chance to make a name for themselves. Strangely enough, the biggest names in the storage industry Western Digital and Seagate have been slow to the market, letting the technology mature before jumping in. With the purchase of SiliconSystems, Western Digital finally jumped in. Today we are looking at their SiliconEdge Blue, their first entry in the personal SSD market. To celebrate we will showcase this milestone in a custom case from Cooler Master and Smooth Creations.
Not every PC needs to have two GTX 480’s, a 5870, or even a 5770. Sometimes you need something quiet, low power, and just enough power to get the job done. Today I will be taking a look at the HD5550 Ultimate from Sapphire. With a large heatsink and no fan this card is perfect for builds where sound is critical, today we are going to find out how well it performs.
Those of us who can remember back to the early days of gaming hold fond memories of arcades, one of the reasons being the lavish peripherals that could only be found in such an establishment. Being able to take the throttle of a plane on a replication cockpit and feel the turbulence as you took off was something the Nintendo controller just couldn't capture. Today, we have tremendously life-like flight sims available on our home machines, allowing us to once again encountered grand experiences. They are such great recreations that mouse and keyboard simply don't do them justice.
After receiving a distress call from the ground Ghost squad, you grab the accelerator throttle to your right, anxiously increasing speed while keeping a steady hand on the plane's balance to your left, and head towards the hot zone. As you drop to near 20 feet from the ground, under fire from several tanks and a few aerial hostiles incoming, you force yourself to relax in the leather pilot seat, concentrating on the target and eliminating uncertainty from your mind. And at that moment, your cat comes in the living room and jumps up on your lap, demanding attention and bringing you back to reality.
Budget builds have become more and more popular as the economy sees more falls and the industry sees more rises into the world of PC gaming. Regardless of if you have an entry level build or an enthusiast, cutting corners to save dollars only ends up costing you more in the end. There are several companies that strive to provide quality performance matched with affordable price-points, and XtremeGear has sent us such a piece: the HP1216B.
Based out of Michigan, MaxForce PC has been creating custom rigs tailored suited to customer requests since 2007. To further suit customer needs, they will even track down a part not listed on their site to install in your system. Max contacted us a while back to see if we were interested in reviewing one of his enthusiast gaming build's, the Javelin P55. Since it was right down our alley and had a perfect LAN situation to test it out in, we took the oppourtunity.
As PC enthusiasts, we tend to gravitate toward bigger and better, but not everyone needs a huge case with all sorts of fancy features and accessories. Sometimes small and simple is better. Let's say your mom finally decides to take you up on your offer to build her a new computer. Do you think she really cares if there's a fan controller or connections for water cooling? Mom just wants to turn it on and get her email. This is where the Cooler Master 430 Elite comes in.
No sleep and no quiet make Adam do something something.. As I sit here typing this review with our managing editor sitting here next to me I can already see that it won’t be long before Adam loses his mind, smashing high end hardware components all over the place. The reason his distress is due to the lovely Das Keyboard Professional S that I am reviewing today. We have visited their line of keyboards once before, today we are trying out the keyboard with letters on the keycaps. At least this time I can see the letters before Adam goes crazy.
Coming hot off the heels of the amazing 690 II Advanced, Cooler Master introduced today their newest case the HAF X. We have spent some time with both their HAF 932 AMD Edition and HAF 922, both getting some of our highest ratings. When the HAF X came in I was excited to find out how Cooler Master improved on the popular HAF design. Let’s jump in and take a look.
