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Saturday July 4th
2009 -
dean
Independence Day Edition
Happy 4th to you all. And a Happy
8th to my son who's birthday it is also! Before we dive into the
news and fireworks stands be sure to check out the
Heatsink
Factory with Arctic Cooling Accelero Cooler for
NVIDIA and ATI applications,
specifically the HD 4870x2.
The pros at
Anandtech has two reviews up for you.
The first covers the
EVGA Killer Xeno Pro NIC.
In our original investigation, we did see some
situations where the Killer NIC could make some difference, but, for
what you get, the cost was much too high. One of the ways that Bigfoot
is trying to combat this is by selling chipsets and letting vendors like
EVGA build and market boards. They've managed to get their costs down
and the price of the Killer Xeno Pro, while very high for a network
card, is much more reasonable than the original offering.
The second over
that way is the
ASRock X58 Extreme Motherboard.
Yes, that’s right, we finally have a full featured
ATX X58 based motherboard below the $170 mark without a rebate or
reduced feature set. While you could purchase a great AMD 780G board and
processor in that price range, this a quite reasonable price for an X58
product.
Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 Vapor-X 2GB anyone?
I thought so. Check out
Motherboards.org for more.
The Radeon HD
4870 is not the newest available card from ATI;
the HD 4890 replaced it earlier this year.
Performance on the HD 4870 is still excellent
for the price. Sapphire went the extra mile with
the cooling on the card, rarely going higher
than 68C even under the most stressful
situations. 2GB of memory really shows off when
setting anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering,
as the extra memory gets used in those
situations.
Dropping back
a few points on the performance and price meter
is the
ASUS EAH 4770 Formula that is on
Overclocker's Club deck.
What you have in the Asus
EAH4770 is a
video
card
that performs above its price point when
overclocked, delivers cooling performance
without the noise penalty associated with
AMD/ATI reference heatsinks and is built with
high quality components for a price that won't
break the bank.
9500GT & 9600GT on a Diet?
Low profile
graphics solutions are not new, but most of these parts use low-end
GPUs, which means that they end up being not much more powerful than the
onboard graphics they're meant to replace.
Now this is
pretty hip.
Nexus TDD-9000 Liquid Cooling Pad Laptop Cooler
scoop by the boys of Tech-Reviews.
There are many
different types of cooling solutions for notebooks available and each
claim to work wonders, but the Nexus Liquid Cooling Pad specifically
claims of a whopping 17 Degree drop in laptop temperature (based on
their own independent tests). It’s now time to find out whether or not
their claim is the result of an exaggerated marketing company or
reality.
Lian Li is
well known for making some quality cases.
The
Lian Li PC-8 Case is shown off to continue
that trend by the
OCAholic crew.
Lian Li's PC-8
is another mid-tower-beauty with a plain and simple but elegant design.
The hole case is made of black and brushed aluminium with a high
manufacturing quality. Special for Lian Li is the relatively low price
of CHF 99.- (EUR 66.-). Therefore the tension is high if Lian Li even in
this, for a full aluminum tower, low price segment knows to convince.
ECS Black Series X58B-A "Nehalem" Motherboard
action up at
Future looks for your holiday weekend.
My overall
impressions of the ECS X58B-A “Nehalem” Motherboard are good. They’ve
disclosed exactly who this platform is intended to serve and it does
what it says. In fact, it goes beyond the call of duty and offers extra
performance beyond specifications. This is always a win in favor of any
motherboard, no matter what name is on top.
More mobo
coverage in the Intel line with
HotHardware and the
EVGA X58 3X SLI Classified Motherboard.
It's taken roughly four months since the time
EVGA launched their first Intel X58 motherboard
(the more than worthy X58 3X SLI) to follow it
up with their enthusiast-class product, which
we'll be looking at today. That board is EVGA's
new X58 Classified motherboard. With a whopping
$425 price-tag, $125 higher than their baseline
X58 motherboard, EVGA is confident that they
have a board which can out-class all others in
order to demand such a price premium. What do
you get for that extra $125?
Our friends at
TechARP have posted on the
Galaxy GeForce GTX 260+ OC Graphics Card.
Galaxy is one
of those manufacturers who saw the potential in
offering factory-overclocked versions of the
GeForce GTX 260. Their Galaxy GeForce GTX 260+
OverClocked graphics card offers
factory-certified clock speeds of 625 MHz core,
1350 MHz shader and 1050 MHz memory. Let's take
a look at the card and see how it fares!
Equal AMD coverage shows us some
Tweaktown
coverage of the
GIGABYTE MA790FXT-UD5P AM3 Motherboard.
AM3 has never
looked so good. With support for both DDR2 and DDR3 on the same CPU, the
possibilities with this platform are endless. We have already seen quite
a few good boards come out, either supporting one or the other
technology and some with both. But one thing remains constant; a good
price and a pretty good performing board and CPU combo for the outlay.
More flags, fireworks and fun.
Evercool Buffalo HPFI7-10025 CPU Cooler at PureOC.
Rosewill RM-8500 Mouse and
NZXT
Cryo S Notebook Cooler at Bjorn3D.
Mushkin EP-400AP 400W PSU at Technic3D.
Coolit Domino A.L.C. DM-1000 CPU Cooler at Overclock3D.
Zalman CNPS10X Extreme CPU Cooler at Tweaktown.
BFG Tech EX Series 1000w PSU at the OCIA.
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Thursday July 2nd
2009 -
dean
Long Weekend Soon Edition
For a lot of us, today is our Friday
with a long and deserved July 4th weekend coming to us. Let's take
a quick look in the news bucket.
Our day begins
at
TechPowerUp with this posting on
Sapphire's new HD 4730.
Actually Sapphire's HD
4730 performance itself is quite sufficient to
run all of today's games at modest resolutions.
This makes the card an excellent deal at its
current price point of $79. However, given the
high power draw and fan noise, the 9600 GT, HD
4770 or HD 4830 are better choices at this time
when you are looking for the best bang for the
buck.
Kingston HyperX (KHX-FAN) Memory Cooler
reviewage posted only at Tweaktown.
The KHX-FAN is a
memory cooler that uses the power of a motherboard header or any 3-pin
fan connection to spin the dual fan designed arrangement. I’m no
stranger to what these types of coolers are capable of doing for memory
cooling and first impressions of the KHX-Fan lead me to believe they
have built something very capable of the task at hand.
Bjorn3D has a new guide up for you folks
looking to put some Summer fun in your rig;
Setting Up A Split Loop Water Cooling.
When water
cooling multiple video cards we still daisy chain the two video cards
together. This becomes increasingly problematic when dealing with 'High
Restrictive' video card water blocks. This guide is a modification of
these types of cooling systems, and with a bit of time, luck, and also a
lot of patience, they can be integrated into other aspects of water
cooling.
We have a
bunch of cases lined up for you. To begin
with is the new
Maxcube Amoris 6010 Case makes a debut of
sorts over at the
Overclocker's Club.
For
Maxcube's first case, I must say I am impressed with the features it
brings to the table. Not only is the case sleek and stylish, but it has
function as well. The case features two more front USB ports than most
cases I've seen and is following with the new trend of bring eSATA to
the front panel as well. Tool-free cases have been around for a while
and Maxcube has integrated this feature into the Amoris. It even
introduced a new concept to me, the external CMOS reset switch, which
would be useful to any overclocker, as you wouldn't have to open the
case to reset CMOS.
Continuing our
case review madness is
Driver Heaven with the
Cooler Master HAF922 Case.
At only £84.77
the HAF 922 is a brilliant case for the price and offers a multitude of
features along with solid build quality, high end performance and a
stylish industrial design. Apart from the fan noise (which you can
replace at a small additional cost) and the possibility of dust build-up
this is a fantastic product.
NZXT Panzerbox Case coverage by the crew
from the great white north,
Hardware Canucks.
From an
aesthetic perspective, the Panzerbox is a nice and simple looking
enclosure with some subtle “aggressive” hints, like the semi-transparent
mesh top and front providing a view of the very large 190mm fans. Beauty
is always in the eye of the beholder, but we think that NZXT was able to
strike a nice balance, and create a case that just about anyone will
like the look of.
Techware Labs has a go at the
NZXT Khaos Aluminum Case.
With the
NZXT Khaos at hand, one can
only speculate as to what NZXT has in mind as a “unique” and
“unparalleled design.” You may want to take your time looking over this
hefty chassis, as it weighs upwards of 35lbs+ because its 2mm and 3mm
thick aluminum construction and of course its quite large $400 price
tag.
$400 bucks!! Geez! Has NZXT
priced themselves over Lian Li and
Zalman's high end cases??
Thermaltake DH101 HTPC Case review online
where else but
Overclockers Online.
The DH101 is a
full size HTPC case that is stylish and provides a wide range of options
for hardware. The piano black and silver finish should blend with most
entertainment centers. With the included Media Labs LCD and remote
control you can easily view your media files from the comfort of your
couch.
Another Tt box
for our pre-weekend is the
Thermaltake's V9 Black Edition Case that is
on deck at
AMD Zone.
Thermaltake have
done an excellent job with the V9 Black Edition gaming case. The amount
of fans is superb and all provide great cooling with low noise. There's
plenty of room to work within the case, lots of expansion ports and it
is also quite easy and fast with a mostly tool less design. There's no
complaints with the cosmetic or any placement. One thing we're unsure if
is just one lock for the hard drives in the cage, again we'd feel more
secure with locks on both sides but we had no problems with our install.
Potpourri reviews.
Antec CP-850W PSU at XS Reviews.
Techware Labs has the
NZXT Avatar Gaming Mouse.
Spire TherMax II CPU Cooler at Technic3D.
Kingwin XT-1264 HTC CPU Cooler at the OCIA.
Thermaltake Litepower 450W PSU PureOverclock.
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Tuesday June 30th
2009 -
dean
What Day Is It Edition
...it's Tuesday... what year? What
happened..?? Sorry for no new update yesterday all. Let's
see what's what though.
One of our
favorite NVidia partners is Inno3D.
TechPowerUp has a go for your day with the
Inno3D GeForce GTX 295 Platinum Card.
NVIDIA has silently introduced a new revision of
their GeForce GTX 295. The new version crams
everything onto a single PCB. While the
performance characteristics have not changed,
thermals, fan noise and power consumption did
change indeed. Is the new single PCB GTX 295 a
success or just an unimportant product revision?
Hardware Logic looks at the mid priced
Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P Motherboard for the
masses.
At about $260 street,
Gigabyte's EX58-UD4P sits somewhere in the
middle of the X58 pack, but that's only when
looking at the sticker price. A glance at the
spec sheet reveals anything but a mid-range
motherboard, and this one tilts heavily towards
the high end. In fact, all that really separates
the UD4P from Gigabyte's pricier X58 models are
two more SATA ports, an additional LAN port, and
slightly improved cooling, positioning the UD4P
at the cutoff point before diminishing returns
kicks in.
Pretty sad
when $260 rates "mid priced".
In Win X-Fighter Case action posted today by
the
Hardware Secrets crew.
In summary, we were positively
impressed by In Win X-Fighter. It provides a somewhat attractive price
for a product with a different design that will certainly please lots of
people.
What's the best
heatsink?
Frostytech's Top 5 Heatsink Chart has the
answer.
Always a good
time for a
Thermal Paste Round Up. Blame
Bjorn3D.
Here at Bjorn3D,
and into the dark dank mysterious Dragon's Lair, are going to look at
seven different manufacturers, totaling up to eight different thermal
pastes, and find out what thermal pastes meets the grade and which ones
fail miserably.
ZOTAC IONITX-A-U Atom N330 WiFi N Motherboard
anyone?
Bringing
personal computer technology into the home theater environment has just
come one step closer, thanks to the NVIDIA ION platform. The synergistic
effect of an NVIDIA GeForce 9400M and the dual-core 1.6GHz Intel Atom
process have delivered true high-definition performance beyond any HTPC
before it. The Zotac IONITX-A-U packages the Atom N330 CPU and 9400M GPU
on a Mini-ITX DDR2 motherboard.
NZXT Cryo S Notebook Cooler review is on
theat
Virtual-Hideout bench.
Many of you may
remember last year when we reviewed the NZXT Cryo LX Notebook Cooler and
I proclaimed it an Editors Choice. Well that notebook cooler was best
suited for notebooks in the 17" range. Today I have for you the newest
notebook cooler in the Cryo series of notebook coolers; the Cryo S. This
notebook cooler is best suited for the 10" - 15" range of notebooks.
Otherwise the design and construction are almost identical sans a
smaller scale.
Odds and ends.
Cooler Master Hyper TX3 CPU Cooler at R&B Mods.
Cooler Master Hyper N520 CPU Cooler at Tech Reviews.
Scythe Kamariki 650W PSU at Technic3D.
Kingwin Mach 1 1000W PSU at JonnyGURU.
Kingwin EZ-Dock 2 HDD Docking Station at the OCIA.
IN-WIN Comander 650/750W PSU at Bjorn3D.
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