Enermax Platimax 1000-watt Power Supply Review @ Tweaktown

This time around it is for their Platimax series of power supplies which offer superb performance at Platinum rated efficiency. We took an early look at the Platimax series late last year when the only PSU we could get our hands on at the time was the 600W model.  We wanted to follow up and see if their high wattage offerings were of the same quality as we were sure our readers would be interested in Platinum efficiency in an enthusiasts quality power supply.

SteelSeries Kana Black 1.1 Gaming Mouse Review @ Tweaktown

I briefly mentioned the adapted sensors, but to add to that, there is also a bit of software to add some really cool functionality to what is already an impressive mouse to use. With the software in action you can create custom game profiles with various bindings to the buttons, you can add macros and you can swap the right and left handed controls because their mice are ambidextrous in design. The sensor itself is made to be more accurate with less DPI/CPI. Where most companies offer 6000+ DPI sensors and a mouse with added weight that feels like pushing a brick, SteelSeries goes for light, lean and accurate to give you the edge in competitive or armature level gaming, for a good price.  Today we are going to be looking at the Kana in the black and orange variation. There is also a white variant, but I do believe it is this black on orange combination that won the Facebook competition for the user's pick of best looking combination. There is a lot that this middle child of the smaller Kinzu, which we will see real soon and the larger Sensei mice. I've taken the pictures, I've played many hours of FPS games and used it daily - stick around and see what I think about the SteelSeries Kana Black 1.1 gaming mouse.

Antec High Current Gamer M 620 W Power Supply Review @ Hardware Secrets

The new High Current Gamer M is a version of Antec’s High Current Gamer power supply series with a modular cabling system. Let’s take an in-depth look at the 620 W model.  The new High Current Gamer M is a version of Antec's High Current Gamer power supply series with a modular cabling system. So far, only three models are available: 400 W, 520 W, and 620 W. The original High Current Gamer series also has a 750 W and a 900 W model. All models have the 80 Plus Bronze certification and single +12 V rail design. Let's take an in-depth look at the 620 W model from this new series, also known as HCG-620M.

BIOSTAR TPower X79 Motherboard Review @ Legit Reviews

The BIOSTAR TPower X79 is the first 'budget' board for the Intel X79 chipset the Legit Reviews has had the pleasure to look at. The TPower X79 will be stacked up against some of the best motherboards in the market today! How will this 'budget' board compare to the flagship motherboards from companies like ASUS and GIGABYTE?  As I just mentioned the BIOSTAR TPower X79 is the lowest cost motherboard that we have looked at for the Intel X79 chipset. We were comparing the BIOSTAR TPower X79 to boards like the ASUS Rampage IV Extreme, GIGABYTE GA-X79-UD7 and the ASRock X79 Extreme9 that we looked at last week. Each of these boards is at least 150% the cost of the BIOSTAR TPower X79 motherboard. Sure, the performance of the BIOSTAR TPower X79 was a little lower compared to these more expensive boards, but not enough that you would a difference in the day to day operation of your system...

Intel Core i7-3820 Quad-Core CPU Review @ The SSD Review

Our review today is going to transition away from the SSD scene just a bit to take a close look at the Intel Core i7-3820 Quad Core CPU and we were able to have alot of fun reaching a lightning fast and very stable speed of 5GHz which was a bit surprising.  Take a quick read of our review and you might just find how easy it is get find that amazing speed that so many seek.

Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Ultra-Portable Hard Drive Review @ PCSTATS

The Seagate FreeAgent GoFlext Ultra-Portable hard drive is more than just a portable 2.5" SATA HDD. key to the system's brilliant usefulness is that Seagate designed this hard drive to interface with a series of modular cable interface adaptors, docks and a media player. It's what you'd call, really very flexible.

Coolermaster Hyper 612 PWM Heatsink Review @ Frostytech

On the test bench today is a boxy tower-style processor heatsink from Cooler Master called the Hyper 612 PWM. This is a pseudo-quiet cooling heatsink built around six, 6mm diameter copper heatpipes and a single 120x120mm PWM fan. The fan rotates at 2000-600RPM and offers at best, excellent thermal performance. At the slowest fan speeds you can expect very quiet but generally average performance from the Hyper 612 PWM heatsink.

Fractal Design Define R3 USB 3.0 Black Pearl Mid-Tower Chassis Review @ Tweaktown

The outside of the Define R3 is a sleek and simple looking concept driven toward silence over LEDs and gaudy looks. The front is hidden by a foam backed front door that has ventilation down both sides of the bezel behind it to redirect the noise the 120mm fan here makes. Behind the door is access to two 5.25" bay covers and two dust cover doors that one of which houses a fan, the other does not from the factory. The left side of the chassis offers the option to remove a couple of sound proof pads to install optional fans in the door of extra cooling is needed and the same is said for the top of the chassis, as it has a pair of fan holes covered out of the box, too. The exterior is completely black in the Black Pearl edition with the door having a brushed appearance put into the plastic.

Cooler Master Silencio 550 Case Review @ Madshrimps

With todays powerful hardware components, most computer case designs are mainly focused on maximizing airflow. Sometimes compromising on one vital aspect, which is noise reduction. It's pretty hard to get a decent balance in a midi sized tower between decent airflow and near silent operation. Cooler Master is targeting, with this Silencio 550, those that look to build a silent PC. Yet no compromises are made in build quality, air flow is decent to warrant safe operation and all this with a very affordable price tag.

QNAP TS-879U-RP NAS Rack Server @ Benchmark Reviews

DESCRIPTION: How much is too much? For those who tend to answer "...it's never enough!" there is the QNAP TS-879U-RP Turbo NAS. With eight 3.5" drive bays available, there is a potential for 24TB of storage and transfer rates of more than 10 Gb/s. That's ten times more data than any home PC can pump through its ubiquitous GbE network interface, and twenty times faster than what the latest generation of SSDs can muster. This is for people who have serious data appetites and deep pockets. The cost to fill this unit up with HDDs, in the early days of 2012, is enough to give some people pause; for most business owners, it's a small and necessary cost.

Patriot PCBOWAU2-N Wireless N USB Adapter Review @ Tweaknews

Patriot has a well rounded product with the PCBOWAU2-N USB wireless adapter. If you're using their PBO media player, this is the quickest and easiest way to stream content wirelessly to or from that unit. It is fast, reliable and a cinch to set up.

XFX Radeon HD 7770 Super Overclocked Edition Video Card Review @ Hardware Secrets

So far, XFX released four different video card models based on the new Radeon HD 7770 GPU. Let’s see how the Super Overclocked Edition version fared in our tests.  The new Radeon HD 7770 (a.k.a. "Cape Verde XT") is a mainstream graphics chip based on the latest graphics architecture from AMD, dubbed "Graphics Core Next" or simply "GCN," which supports the new PCI Express 3.0 connection and the latest DirectX version (11.1).

XFX Radeon HD 7770 Black Super Overclocked Edition DD Video Card Review @ Madshrimps

The Radeon HD 7770 Black Super Overclocked Edition Double Dissipation is a video card from XFX featuring the new "Cape Verde" mainstream GPU. The card is cooled by the new dual fan cooling system from the same manufacturer, which is both efficient and silent, the GPU reaching no more than 65 degrees after 15 minutes of stress testing in Furmark. The card comes pre-overclocked and still has some headroom left without the need of raising the stock voltage.

I first ventured into liquid cooling for my computers way back, about a decade ago, for my Intel Pentium 4 "Williamette" and AMD "Duron" based test systems.  This was when I was in high school and in my early years of reviewing computer hardware.  Back then, the big players in the watercooling market were Danger Den and Swiftech.  There were no pumps specific for computer watercooling, so most adopters of liquid cooling used fountain and pond pumps.  For radiators, the main choices were the Black Ice series from HWLabs or car heatercores (I preferred Chevelle cores).

Runcore ProV Max 120GB SSD Review @ The SSD Review

It was just over a year ago that we analyzed the Runcore ProV 3Gbps 240GB SSD as one of the top SSDs available, then surpassing some RAID configuration performance results. As amazing as that review was, it now stands to be a great example of how far SSD technology has progressed this past year.  This report looks at Runcore’s ProV Max SSD which contains the SATA 3 SF-2281 processor, as did our report of the Runcore T50 120GB mSATA SSD that we reviewed a few months prior.

ASUS X79 Sabretooth Motherboard Review @ Madshrimps

The ASUS Sabretooth lineup always has been part of a little controversy. Some had no idea why the TUF series ever had to be made. Claiming high Durability and Reliability. So the other ASUS boards were inferior then in build quality ? Wouldn't they survive the torture test that the Sabretooth series do ? I've had the Sandybridge P67 version for internal testing and must say that it was a joy to work with. Even when benching with LN2, the board remained hassle free. It was no surprise that with the launch of Sandy Bridge-E another Sabretooth would appear on the market. Today we are gonna have a look at the latest addition to the TUF series : The Sabretooth X79.

Silverstone Treasure TS06 External Enclosure @ Pro-Clockers

And with my laptop being my main PC, I seldom even use my optical drive for anything. So, the people at Silverstone has given people like us another use for that space the optical drive take without actually losing the drive.  The TS06 is an external enclosure for your internal optical drive and also provide you the opportunity to use the space the drive once took up for addition storage space. A little confused? Read on and I will elaborate for you.

Corsair Vengeance K90 Performance MMO Mechanical Gaming Keyboard Review @ Madshrimps

The K90 Performance MMO Gaming Keyboard from Corsair is a solid product and comes with a combination of MX Red switches and silicone domes (the domes are only used for the less frequent used keys). On the left we have no less than 18 programmable keys and thanks to the extra 3 memory banks, we can assign a total of 54 macros on a single profile. The product integrates very well with the previously reviewed M90 mouse and the software is unified so we can access both mouse and keyboard interfaces from the same menu.

500GB Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Ultra-Portable Hard Drive Review @ PCSTATS

The Seagate FreeAgent GoFlext Ultra-Portable hard drive is more than just a portable 2.5" SATA HDD. key to the system's brilliant usefulness is that Seagate designed this hard drive to interface with a series of modular cable interface adaptors, docks and a media player. It's what you'd call, really very flexible.

Maingear EPIC T1000 Thermal Cooling Solution Review @ Legit Reviews

If you are looking to extract the most performance out of any given processor you need it to stay cool. It doesn't matter if you go with Air, Water, or even Phase Change you still need some thermal interface compound between the cooler and the CPU. Maingear has been using the mother of all TIM's in their custom builds and now they are making available for everyone. Is this really the best TIM money can buy? Legit installs it into one of our high end water cooled rigs to find out.EPIC T1000 is a precision engineered Phase Change Metal.  Alloy (PCMA) that maintains high contact with the metal surfaces of the IHS and the cooling block (surface wetting) and provides very low thermal resistance due to its high bulk conductivity. Testing has shown this can be as much as three times (3x) better performance than the best TIMs based on aluminum, silver, and diamond...

AZZA Fusion 3000 Full-Tower Chassis Review @ Tweaktown

On the outside our latest submission has a large and chunky presence. It starts with the large feet and is taken up the front and onto the top giving you a chassis reminiscent of something along the lines of the CM HAF cases, yet different enough to set this AZZA chassis apart if they were next to each other. On the inside things are taken to a whole new level in any gaming chassis I have seen. I have done a few server chassis reviews and even there I have not seen the amount of back planes for hard drive bays. I mean seriously, between the 2.5" and 3.5" bays, there are ten hot swap bays to play with here! On top of that, the only other thing inside the chassis I needed a tool for was the risers and motherboard screws. The rest is completely tool-less or uses thumbscrews.  This chassis I have been describing is the Fusion 3000 from AZZA. While I have hit on some interesting points already, those were just enough to peek your interest and are really just the tip of the iceberg as far as what this chassis offers both inside and out.

NZXT Havik 140 Heatsink Review @ Ninjalane

In this review we will be looking at the NZXT Havik 140 heatsink. This is a tower style heatsink that features dual 140mm fans and six heatpipes in a non-traditional configuration. We say non-traditional because they run perpendicular to the cooling fans for maximum exposure.

Understanding SSD Advertised Performance and Its Purchase Implications - An SSD Primer @ The SSD Review

Today's SSD close up is going to teach us the most valuable thing we can ever learn about an SSD.  This is the fourth paper in a series of articles that explain the benefits, types and components of a solid state drive and will go so far as to make up our SSD Beginner Guide.  Each article is designed to be easily understood and will enable the reader to become proficient in every aspect of the SSD as it relates to their specific computing needs.

Enermax Platimax 850 W Power Supply Review @ Hardware Secrets

Let’s test the 850 W version of the Enermax Platimax, which comes with the coveted 80 Plus Platinum certification and modular cabling system.  The 80 Plus Platinum certification is the next level in energy efficiency, promising 92% minimum efficiency at typical load (i.e., at half of the power supply's labeled power). The Enermax Platimax was one of the first power supply series carrying this new certification level to reach the market, with 600 W, 750 W, 850 W, 1,000 W, and 1,200 W versions. We've already tested the 600 W model, which proved to be an excellent product. Let's see if the 850 W version is a good choice.

AMD Radeon HD 7770 and 7750 Video Card Reviews @ Legit Reviews

Last month AMD introduced the Radeon HD 7000 series (Southern Islands) of graphics cards. These new cards are based on the 28nm manufacturing process and use a new core architecture called Graphics Core Next (GCN). Many assumed that AMD would be doing a top-to-bottom launch for the AMD Radeon HD 7000 product line, but that is not the case. AMD decided skip over Pitcairn, the Radeon HD 7800 series, and introduce Cape Verde along with the Radeon HD 7700 series.  At the end of the day the AMD Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition and the Radeon HD 7750 are both solid mainstream graphics cards. They played all the games we wanted and can easily run games at 1920x1080 resolutions with moderate image quality settings. They will be extremely popular in the months to come and we can easily recommend them to our readers as this card will be the go to series for mainstream gamers...

XFX Radeon R7770 Black Edition Video Card @ Benchmark Reviews

Benchmark Reviews has reviewed the XFX versions of AMD's new Tahiti-based Radeon 7970 and 7950 video cards. They provided ground-breaking single-GPU performance (both were faster overall than the NVIDIA GTX 580), but at very high prices. While these cards do a good job of supporting the very high end video card market, many more users will gravitate towards less expensive options. The Cape Verde GPUs represent the low end of AMD's new Graphics Core Next GPU line and today we have the XFX R7770 Black Super Overclocked Edition card to test.

Sapphire Radeon HD 7770 Overclocked Video Card @ Pro-Clockers

The new Radeon HD 7770 is codenamed: Cape Verde XT. And looks to be placed in a market where it will have its fair share of buyers. At $150, it boasts fully DirectX 11 compliance, multi-display setups and this is just the beginning.  Based on the Cape Verde XT chipset, the HD 7770 features 640 streaming processors and 1GHz of GDDR5 memory with a 128 bit bus looks to be in close competition of the older Radeon HD 6850 series. We will now put the card through its paces and see just how well it does.

Arctic Cooling is a company most of you probably heard of before, and it's focus was on computer cooling products.  Most well known for its video card cooling products, it was also very popular with it's Freezer 7 and 64 CPU coolers.  Rebranded as ARCTIC in 2010, the company now covers a wider market with a variety of different computer and electronic products.  Today we're looking at two products which extend from the original roots in cooling hardware ARCTIC came from, the Freezer 13 PRO and Freezer i30 CPU coolers.  In the past, the brand has been known for producing high performing coolers with value oriented pricing, so we'll see what their current generation of products bring to the table.

Intel 520 Series 240GB Solid State Drive Review @ Tweaktown

On release, the SF-2281 controlled client drives leaped to the top of performance charts, but for some, reliability and odd BSOD issues plagued these products. In our testing only two drives experienced issues. The first drive made it through standard testing, but ran into problems when deployed in a daily use system. The second drive failed to complete our standard benchmark procedures, having BSOD issues out of the box. Both drives were later fixed with a firmware update, but for a company like Intel, issues like these are unacceptable.  Intel has experienced their own issues with firmware in the past and they've learned quickly from their early mistakes. Intel was not going to release a new client SSD with known problems without addressing them thoroughly before a release. In the documentation provided to us Intel only included one line about firmware, but it said enough to make it clear that Intel was not just another copy and paste member of Team SandForce.

SilenX Effizio EFZ-120HA5 Performance CPU Cooler @ Pro-Clockers

We will be taking a closer look at the EFZ-120HA5 which is aimed at what SilenX is known for. Quiet operation. It also has two other characteristics that is a must have for many of us and that is great performance and an affordable price tag. The 120HA5 is of the tower design and weighs in at 648 grams. And according to SilenX, it only takes ten minutes to install. So, we are guessing it is a pretty simple process. We will see.

ASRock X79 Extreme9 Motherboard @ Hardware Secrets

Let’s take a look at the most high-end socket 2011 motherboard from ASRock, featuring five PCI Express 3.0 x16 slots, eight SATA-600 ports, eight USB 3.0 ports, and coming with a high-end, add-on sound card.  ASRock has released seven motherboard models for the new socket 2011 platform, heavily betting that this platform will become more mainstream after Intel releases cheaper LGA2011 processors during this year. This time we will take a look at the X79 Extreme9, which is the most high-end (and most expensive) socket 2011 motherboard offered by ASRock at this time, with five PCI Express 3.0 x16 slots, eight SATA-600 ports, eight USB 3.0 ports, and a high-end, add-on sound card called "Game Blaster."

Thermal Compound Roundup - February 2012 @ Hardware Secrets

We added five new thermal compounds to our previous roundup, for a total of 65 different thermal compounds from major brands. We also tried another alternative thermal compound: diaper ointment.  Following up on our Thermal Compound Roundup – January 2012 review, we are adding five more thermal compounds to our roundup, for a total of 65 different models from Akasa, Antec, Arctic Cooling, Arctic Silver, Biostar, Connectland, Coollaboratory, Cooler Master, Coolink, Deepcool, Dow Corning, Enermax, Evercool, EVGA, Gelid, Glacialstars, Innovation Cooling, Masscool, Nanoxia, Nexus, Noctua, Phobya, Prolimatech, Scythe, Shin-Etsu, Spire, StarTech, Revoltec, Rosewill, Thermalright, Thermaltake, TIM Consultants, Titan, Tuniq, Xigmatek, Zalman, and ZEROtherm. In this review, we will determine if certain products are superior to others. We will also try another alternative thermal compound to see if it works.

Le Pan II Android Tablet TC979 Review @ TechwareLabs

When it comes to Android tablets it seems that just about everyone offers one. Features tend to blur together and you get lost in the confusion. So which one is a good model, and what do you buy? Stick to name brands only or venture out into the lesser known brands? On first impressions the Le Pan II gets high marks. Le Pan who you say? Pay attention to this brand as if they continue the trend this will be a company to watch.

ASUS Xonar U3 USB Sound Card @ Pro-Clockers

If you've decided it is due time to finally time to do away with the onboard audio on your mobile computer, wanting something that makes your music collection worth listening to, then you can turn to ASUS for that as well. The Xonar U3 is a compact USB sound card, not much bigger than a flash drive. The goal is to provide a product for the person who is constantly on the go, loves to listen to their music, but isn't going to settle for the integrated solution any longer. So exactly how good can such a tiny device actually be, can it really deliver anything close to what a larger sibling Xonar can? We plan to answer that, so sit back and dive in!

NZXT Switch 810 Full-Tower Computer Case @ Benchmark Reviews

What is it that you should look for in a computer case, exactly? The market is full of many different styles with plenty of different features and the prices range from next-to-nothing to arm-and-a-leg. When deciding on a computer case, those are the three areas you want to focus on; price, functionality, and style. Computer case manufacturers are constantly trying to find a balance between those three items by giving customers everything they want at a price they can afford and in a style that they'll like. NZXT is a company that tries hard to please gamers and enthusiasts and their products reflect that. At CES 2012, NZXT announced a completely new case design that offers a lot of functionality for its price. In this article, Benchmark Reviews is exploring the NZXT Switch 810 Full Tower Computer Chassis to help you find out where it fits for you within those three categories.

SilenX was born in 1995 as a hobby between a group of college students.  Originally they wanted to make the computer systems they used silent, but there was a lack of variety of cooling products in the market with a focus on low noise.  Since its humble beginnings, SilenX has been released and offered a wide variety of low noise computer cooling products.  Today we'll be looking at one of their newest products, the Effizio EFZ-120HA5 CPU cooler.  With support out of the box for all of the modern CPU sockets (including LGA2011) and a low price tag, this cooler is meant for the mass market.  We'll see if the Effizio EFZ-120HA5 is able to live up to the SilenX name with low noise output, but without compromising cooling performance.