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Motherboards.org Reviews
Author: Benjamin Sun Date: 07-02-2009 Category: Hardware 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, rarel...
Author: Elric Phares Date: 06-30-2009 Category: Hardware Hello everyone, today we post our very first video review based on upgrading a 13'' Macbook Pro Laptop with and 80GB Kingston SSD and 4 GB of Crucial DDR3 8500 1066Mhz memory. This was a fun review to do as it takes us in a differ...
Author: Benjamin Sun Date: 06-25-2009 Category: Motherboards ASUS has taken the Core i7 platform and turned it into a pseudo supercomputer. The combination of three NVIDIA Tesla cards and a Quadro card brings up to four TeraFLOPS of possible computing performance. Performance of the board i...
Author: Benjamin Sun Date: 06-24-2009 Category: Hardware In Win set out to design a unique solution on their X-fighter case and it shows in the design and features of the case. The X-Fighter looks sort of like a spaceship but does not look like the ships we come to expect from the Star ...
Author: Benjamin Sun Date: 06-23-2009 Category: Motherboards ASUS has set a reputation among enthusiasts of offering high-priced excellent performing gaming motherboards of choice with their Republic Of Gamers motherboards and the CROSSHAIR III Formula is an excellent example of its breed. ...
Author: Elric Phares Date: 06-21-2009 Category: Motherboards Overclocking on this motherboard is for enthusiast users and not the faint of heart, because to get the optimum results you must use the overvoltage options. You can easily achieve a 15-20% overclock with most of the retail CPUs a... Author: Benjamin Sun Date: 06-18-2009 Category: Hardware From a performance point of view, if you're looking for the fastest card there really isn't much choice but to go with the GeForce GTX295 as it offers blistering performance in the latest games with the highest resolutions and set...
Author: Elric Phares Date: 06-17-2009 Category: Hardware I must say that having this much storage space on a single drive is quite appealing and my HTPC is an appreciative host for the WD 2TB Green hard drive. Now I can store even more massive quantities of movies and music, but in hone...
Author: Elric Phares Date: 06-14-2009 Category: Hardware Right now SSD drives are one hot commodity in the PC industry at large and with more and more companies jumping on the band wagon it will not be long before these new drives become the mainstay of storage. They will most likely be...
Author: Benjamin Sun Date: 06-12-2009 Category: Motherboards From a platform point of view the Gigabyte MA790FXT-UD5P motherboard fits the bill as a motherboard that supports AMD's latest CPUs on the AM3 platform including the 810 we used for this review. Features-wise this board has all of...
Author: Benjamin Sun Date: 06-11-2009 Category: Motherboards ASUS has done their usual solid job with a new motherboard release. As the chipsets used on this motherboard are not new, the performance across different boards using these two chipsets should be pretty close and they are. A lot ...
Author: Benjamin Sun Date: 06-10-2009 Category: Hardware The Sileo 500 case is an exciting example of an inexpensive case that distinguishes itself from other cases in a few ways. First is the silent operation. Everything from the padded insulation on the sides, top, and bottom of the c...
Author: Benjamin Sun Date: 06-05-2009 Category: Hardware From a performance point of view the GeForce GTX 275 from XFX performs exactly as specified from a standard GeForce GTX 275 card. The card outperforms the Radeon HD 4890 in a number of the applications as well in a head to head co...
Author: Benjamin Sun Date: 06-02-2009 Category: Motherboards ASUS motherboards are favorites of me and Doc Overclock. In fact, almost every motherboard in our personal systems has an ASUS motherboards installed on them. The P5Q Pro Turbo is a good motherboard, with performance, features and...
Author: Benjamin Sun Date: 06-01-2009 Category: Motherboards The fact of the matter is that the P45 chipset is delegated to the mainstream and value market right now. If you want the fastest CPU and best platform that is the Intel Core i7 and X58 combination as the AMD Phenom IIs is simply ...
Author: Benjamin Sun Date: 05-29-2009 Category: Hardware The Phoenix Neo case from Enermax has several positives including holes on the rear of the case for water cooling, the tool-less installation of drives, a removable HDD rack, and the tool-less installation of PCI devices. The case...
Author: Benjamin Sun Date: 05-28-2009 Category: Hardware From a pure performance point of view the GIGABYTE GV-N96TSL-1GI video card is not the fastest card in its price range. Where this card excels however is in the temperature rating it gets idle (52C) and under normal stress conditi... Author: Benjamin Sun Date: 05-26-2009 Category: Hardware There is a lot to like about the AZZA Solano 1000 case. First is the painted black interior. Second is the ease of use of installation on the case. The ability to install extended ATX and Micro ATX motherboards gives maximum flexi...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 05-20-2009 Category: Hardware The bottom line on the XFX card is: this card is priced online for $109.99 which is the MSRP ATI suggests for this card. You get the performance, features and support that you would expect from a card with the XFX branding. XFX bu...
Author: Doc Overclock Date: 05-20-2009 Category: Hardware MSI's card is the same as the reference design Radeon HD 4770, as the clock speeds and specifications are the same in almost every way. Performance of the card is similar to the other HD 4770s I've tested. Overclocking on the car...
Author: Jeremy DeLong Date: 05-20-2009 Category: Hardware But most do not offer the ability to plug and go without the use of drivers or user setup programs. This is where the Gigabyte GK-K6800 does very well. For the price of a low end keyboard, you get a midgrade board with some pop. T...
Author: Elric Phares Date: 05-19-2009 Category: Hardware I spent over a week toying around with this unit and was impressed with everything other than the crummy iMON software that is being used to use the Media Center remote control, as plainly it sucks and is almost worthless. Media C...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 05-18-2009 Category: Hardware The ENGTX260Matrix is a very interesting card for those wanting the ultimate in cooling for their video cards. Two fans allow the card to reach 650MHz by overclocking the card via iTracker. You get the ASUS quality hardware and so...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 05-17-2009 Category: Hardware The Gigabyte GeForce GTX 275 is an interesting beast of a card. It is designed to compete directly with the ATI Radeon HD 4890 and does a great job of doing just that. In the vast majority of cases the Gigabyte card beats the HD 4...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 05-14-2009 Category: Hardware Despite the fact that the case arrived damaged during shipping, I completed the review on a positive note. The case offers excellent cooling with up to 7 fans on a mid-tower case. Cooler Master has taken nearly everything into ac...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 05-13-2009 Category: Hardware Cooler Master has a hit with the Elite 360 case. They went outside the box in their thinking for a mid-tower ATX case, offering the ability to turn the computer into a HTPC with a few small modifications. As a HTPC case the Elite ...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 05-12-2009 Category: Hardware As the GTX260 is a pretty balanced video card in the scheme of things against the competition from ATI and other cards in this price range, the MSI card would logically be a faster version of that card. The card easily overclocked...
Author: Elric Phares Date: 05-11-2009 Category: Hardware At the end of the day this is really a novelty item, but it also has its usefulness as well, so it’s still cool for someone looking for some customizing accessories for their PC. If you have a PC that requires many fans to keep it...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 05-10-2009 Category: Motherboards So what differentiates this board from the many other ASUS P6 motherboards on the market? The P6T SE is one of the few X58 motherboards currently available on the open market, which does not support SLI out of the box. Balancing t...
Author: Doc Overclock Date: 05-08-2009 Category: Hardware In the right situation this keyboard is absolutely a solid winner, and for my setup it solved a lot of issues I was having and let me take back control of my Windows Media Center (MCE) HTCP. I was able to work in the Windows Vista...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 05-07-2009 Category: Motherboards Gigabyte has done their usual stellar job with the EX58-UD4P motherboard. This board overclocked to 3.8GHz on air without voltage tweaks. Had the board reached 4GHz as several of the X58 boards have reached, this product would hav...
Author: Doc Overclock Date: 05-04-2009 Category: Hardware ATI launched this card for a MSRP of $109 with a $10 rebate making it a sub $100 card. At this price point, ATI has a winner as performance is close in most cases to the bigger brother the HD 4850 and GeForce GTS 250. DirectX 10.1...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 05-01-2009 Category: Hardware There are cases on the market that make a lot of noise. The Thermaltake M9 VI1000 does the job that any mainstream consumer would expect from a high quality company like Thermaltake. This case retails online for $70, making it an ...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 05-01-2009 Category: Hardware Cooler Master set out to create the ultimate LAN party computer case with the Scout and in many respects succeeded with this case. The Scout is relatively lightweight due to the Mid-Tower form factor they used, yet is very sturdy ...
Author: Doc Overclock Date: 04-27-2009 Category: Hardware Today ATI launches their latest venture into the video card arena, code name the HD4770. The day of this launch we were lucky enough to get our hands on one made by our friends a Gigabyte in just the nick of time. We only received...
Author: Doc Overclock Date: 04-27-2009 Category: Hardware EVGA offers the best support on the planet for most of their cards. A 2-year warranty may not seem like much but the fact remains that few people have video cards longer than 2 years, especially for those that want the higher end ...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 04-26-2009 Category: Hardware Cooler Master took a simple premise with the Sniper case and delivered on that premise. The case has more than adequate ventilation with room for three 200mm fans, and two 120mm fans or five fans in total. The price online for th...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 04-25-2009 Category: Hardware MSI has taken the GeForce GTS 250 card and clocked it higher than the reference design, which NVIDIA clocks their standard cards at. While performance is not much improved, a lot of it can be attributed to the fact that the higher...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 04-22-2009 Category: Hardware The XFX GeForce GTS 250 Core Edition video card is available online for $129.99 off Newegg. For a limited time, you can purchase the card and get Call of Duty World at War as a bonus. The inclusion of a free game makes the purchas...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 04-20-2009 Category: Motherboards In terms of features, the Gigabyte GA-MA790GP UD4H motherboard has it all. It fully supports the new Phenom II CPUs on the market on the AM2+ Socket including the Phenom II X4 940 and Phenom II X3 710 CPUs we have in-house. The ...
Author: Doc Overclock Date: 04-15-2009 Category: Hardware The SilenX iXtrema Pro IXG-80HA2 cooling system is not cheap in terms of price. The combination of the IXG-80HA2 and the Fan kit makes for an excellent cooling system that can lower the temperatures of a graphics card by several d...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 04-13-2009 Category: Hardware XFX’s move to making ATI-based video cards is a long awaited one. With NVIDIA having troubles throughout and with the economic recession in full force throughout the computer industry, choice and price/performance are more importa...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 04-12-2009 Category: Motherboards AMD’s launch of the AM3 platform is an interesting one from many angles. For the new computer owner the move to DDR3 memory is pretty clear as fewer and fewer motherboards with DDR2 memory support are hitting the market today comp... Author: Ben Sun Date: 04-07-2009 Category: Hardware The AMD Phenom II X3 710 is an interesting beast of a CPU. It is the second fastest triple core CPU that AMD has to offer, but the fact is you can spend a little more money on the Phenom II 720 which is $20 more expensive giving y...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 04-02-2009 Category: Motherboards The ASUS M4N72-E motherboard has its strong and weak points. The strong points include SLI support, support for AM3 CPUs out of the box as it’s a new design and a solid bundle. Performance was lower than other chipsets but that is...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 04-02-2009 Category: Motherboards This board supports the latest AM3 CPUs without BIOS modification, which is a good thing. The board is available online for $69.99, making it a good value based choice for the AMD platform. Performance is within parameters of usin... Author: Ben Sun Date: 03-27-2009 Category: Hardware The reality of the economic downturn has affected every facet of our lives including the computer industry. While Intel continues to price their CPUs in the $999 price range with little change but a higher clock speed and higher s...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 03-27-2009 Category: Hardware The CoolIT Domino ALC CPU cooler is an excellent self-contained liquid cooling system for the CPUs. While a temperature of 58C is not the lowest temperature I've observed, it was also taken on a system running one of the hotter CP... Author: Ben Sun Date: 03-26-2009 Category: Hardware Workstation video cards are a totally different market from the consumer gaming cards. What is unacceptable in price to the average consumer is considered a bargain for workstation video cards. Quadro cards are the number one work...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 03-16-2009 Category: Hardware Lian-Li does great aluminum cases for every consumer. Their PC-8B case is available online for a price of $139.99 at this moment. While some people might fault a case for trying to go above and beyond the call of duty I am not on...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 03-15-2009 Category: Hardware Triple SLI is all about the Benjamin's. After all the outlay for a triple SLI system with three GTX280s is over a thousand dollars just for the graphics cards alone, not counting the PSU, the CPU to power the system, or the other ...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 03-06-2009 Category: Hardware Cooler Master did it with the HAF 932 case I reviewed last year and has done it again. For those wanting the ultimate in cooling solutions this case has no less than 7 fan spots with three of them being of the 230mm variety. The ...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 03-05-2009 Category: Hardware Thermaltake did a great job with the Spedo case, with plenty of drive expansion, an ATC and CRM to handle the thermals of the case and the cable management, packaged in a full-tower ATX case that fits the needs of the hardcore ent...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 03-03-2009 Category: Hardware The ASUS ENGTX260/HTDP/896M/A video card is an interesting mix of the latest NVIDIA technology (in the form of 216 cores, 55nm version available, PhysX) and a reasonable price (239.99 after MIR as of this writing). Performance wis...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 03-03-2009 Category: Motherboards I went into this review with a few bad experiences with ASRock boards in the past but an open mind as to this board. As they are not as big as other motherboard manufacturers in the enthusiast end of the motherboard market, it was... Author: Ben Sun Date: 02-26-2009 Category: Hardware Thecus spent a lot of time making the N4100PRO easy to set up and use for even the most novice of users. The need for a NAS server for the Home business or even for the family that wants to share a lot of files between themselves ...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 02-25-2009 Category: Hardware In terms of GeForce GTX 285, the card is quite obviously a speed bump of the GeForce GTX280. For those expecting miracles on the second revision of the GTX280 this card offers higher performance, more processing power and a lower ...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 02-20-2009 Category: Hardware Thermaltake took a lot time designing this case and it shows. The ability to install 7 HDDs is worth the tradeoff that it requires from the 5.25” drive bays that would be found on other cases. A mid-Tower ATX case with a 230mm fan...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 02-16-2009 Category: Hardware It's rather hard to make a judgment on a product that is a 1 out of 500 in the world item. How can you put a price on an item that is only available to a select few people? The nice thing about this case is it is a complete packag...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 02-10-2009 Category: Motherboards ASUS has done a superlative job with the P6T6 WS Revolution motherboard. This board scored among the highest of any X58 motherboards in terms of features and performance nearly across the board. ASUS bills this motherboard as the ...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 02-05-2009 Category: Hardware In terms of cable management and airflow the Tagan A+ Seenium BW case really can't be beat in this price range. Seldom do you see a Mid-Tower case with eight fan grills on it, much less for the price this case is targeted at. Anot...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 02-01-2009 Category: Hardware The positives of this card include an excellent cooling solution that doesn’t quit and keeps the card running cool. Under load temperatures of 44C maximum at default clock speeds is just amazing. The card overclocked successfully ...
Author: Doc Overclock Date: 01-26-2009 Category: Motherboards The XFX MB-X58I-CH19 motherboard is XFX’s second motherboard to use an Intel platform, with the first being the G31 based board we reviewed last year. XFX has diversified successfully with their two Intel boards and numerous ATI b...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 01-25-2009 Category: Motherboards The GIGABYTE GA-EP45-DS3R board is an interesting motherboard in this day and age of economic crisis. While the Core i7 and the like outperform the P45 and X48 motherboards with the Core 2 Duo and AMD Phenom II CPUs by a wide marg...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 01-18-2009 Category: Hardware Thermaltake took a long look at what a Home Theater PC needs and provides everything that one would want and need to make a full-fledged HTPC. Just provide the motherboard, the CPU, the memory the drives and the video card and you...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 01-11-2009 Category: Hardware Overall I am impressed with the TV Wonder 650 Combo PCI Express card. For those wanting an alternative to buying a converter box or a new TV, the TV Wonder Combo PCI Express card may be for you as it allows you to use your compute...
Author: Doc Overclock Date: 01-11-2009 Category: Hardware 3D has finally reached a point where it is a viable and affordable solution for the gaming environment and NVIDIA has done an excellent job of taking an old idea and turning it into something that actually works. There is a slight...
Author: Doc Overclock Date: 01-09-2009 Category: Motherboards XFX has a very interesting product with the nForce 750i SLI board. It overclocks very well with the 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo hitting over 3.2GHz on air cooling. That is a pretty impressive feat considering how generally un-overclocker f...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 01-07-2009 Category: Hardware The GMC Noblesse K-2 Ebony fits the bill as a multimedia PC case. The designers spent a lot of time and thought on making a workable HTPC case on a mid Tower. The inclusion of a VFD display, fan controllers, a remote control and t...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 12-30-2008 Category: Motherboards Gigabyte now joins the other motherboard manufacturers on the planet with their own special branding of their X58 chipset motherboard. Features like Hybrid SilentPower 2, Dynamic Energy Saving and EasyTune 6 set the EX58 Extreme a...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 12-28-2008 Category: Motherboards Intel has a lot to be happy about with their new CPU and X58 family launch, firmly taking over the enthusiast market with new processors that are clearly faster than the last generation. The DX58SO motherboard is nearly as fast as... Author: Ben Sun Date: 12-20-2008 Category: Hardware NZXT calls their Tempest case the Airflow King and I would agree with that. With two front 120mm fans, a 120mm fan on the rear, a 120mm fan on the side panel and two top 140mm fans, this case has more cooling fans and airflow than...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 12-19-2008 Category: Motherboards The ECS X58B-A Black Series motherboard is available online for a price of only $260. This compares favorably in the price department to other X58 motherboards which have a heftier premium. As we move into 2009 we’ll likely see th...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 12-19-2008 Category: Hardware MSI’s R4670 card is an interesting card in that it closely follows ATI’s reference design in almost every respect. The new drivers from ATI have improved performance in some areas and lowered performance slightly in other areas w... Author: Ben Sun Date: 12-17-2008 Category: Hardware Thecus is targeting the SOHO user or Home Office user with the N3200 NAS file server. With a price online of around $320, Thecus has done what it has set out to do. The N3200 supports up to 3 TB HDDs with a compatibility list on T...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 12-09-2008 Category: Motherboards ASUS's P6T Deluxe OC Palm Edition is the perfect example of what a new motherboard chipset should be when released. Every conceivable feature including SLI, CrossfireX, 24GB DDR3-1600MHz support, and the general build quality that...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 12-09-2008 Category: Motherboards MSI has exceeded all expectations with the MSI X58 Eclipse motherboard with a bundle like you wouldn’t believe, performance that matches or beats the competition in this marketplace and overclocking ability like there’s no tomorro...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 12-05-2008 Category: Hardware The HD 4870 X2 is a beast of a video card, with performance that outstrips that of the GeForce GTX 280 in most applications where the CPU is not the limiting factor. Currently, the Palit Revolution 700 Deluxe Radeon HD 4870 X2 is ...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 11-28-2008 Category: Hardware The video card market is constantly changing with new cards released every 6 months or so and prices lowering to keep competitive in the market. ATI and NVIDIA have full lineups that cover the entire spectrum of price ranges from ... Author: Ben Sun Date: 11-18-2008 Category: Motherboards The AMD chipset platform is constantly changing with new releases from AMD and NVIDIA to satisfy any need that may arise. The 790GX chipset is geared at providing the best integrated graphics performance on this platform and it su...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 11-18-2008 Category: Hardware So there are really two takes on this card today. The XFX GTX 260 216 Black Edition is the fastest available GeForce GTX 260 card on the market with a clock speed exceeding the reference clock speeds by 90 MHz. At this moment the ...
Author: Doc Overclock Date: 11-13-2008 Category: Hardware The 9800GTX+ Black Edition from XFX is on the market for a $229.00 price point, or nearly the same price as some of the HD 4850 cards and is still lower than the HD 4870 or GeForce GTX260 chipset models. There’s a lot of overlap i...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 11-12-2008 Category: Hardware The 4870 from MSI performs better than the ATI reference card across the board, mainly due to the improved clock speed over the original. The card is available online for a retail price of $299.99 making it a decent buy. The card ...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 11-10-2008 Category: Hardware Thermaltake has delivered a full-tower case with the features and looks one would expect from a higher priced model. Thermaltake has delivered on its promises of a great case with plenty of expansion room for those 4 dual slot vid...
Author: Doc Overclock Date: 11-08-2008 Category: Hardware The Key features of the new CPUs include the return of Intel’s famous HyperThreading technology, meaning that the CPUs can work on 8 threads at the same time, double that of the Core 2 Quad CPUs that were the top of the line CPU i...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 10-29-2008 Category: Motherboards ASUS has been the motherboard maker of choice for hardware enthusiasts for several years due to features like overclocking options in the BIOS, features of the motherboard, and performance of their boards. The ASUS M3A79-T board h...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 10-29-2008 Category: Motherboards Gigabyte has done what they set out to do with the Gigabyte EP45-UD3P. This motherboard combines the features of the P45 chipset, the performance that one expects from a Gigabyte board and the new Ultra Durable 2 technology which ...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 10-23-2008 Category: Hardware The positives of this card are many. With the updated Catalyst 8.9 drivers and the higher clock speed of the overclock button, this card can compete well against the ATI 1GB cards, with the increased memory not coming into play un...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 10-16-2008 Category: Motherboards In terms of overall graphics performance, the GeForce 9300 is in a class by itself on the Intel side of things. While the G45 struggles to maintain any kind of playable frame rates in the games that I tried and crashed 3DMark Vant...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 10-14-2008 Category: Motherboards MSI has built a stellar motherboard with the DKA790GX Platinum board. The board has all of the features that you would want from a 790GX motherboard including HD 3300 graphics with CrossfireX capability, ACC overclocking and more.... Author: Ben Sun Date: 10-13-2008 Category: Hardware From a strict performance point of view versus the standard 512MB HD 4870 this card didn’t seem much faster in most of the tests I ran it in and strangely slower in one or two tests. This is to be expected from a video card that ...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 10-10-2008 Category: Hardware The ATI Radeon HD 4350 is an excellent card for the HTPC crowd. The ability to fit the card into a half height bay means it’ll fit into most cases without issue. The ability to run 7.1 HDMI Audio is a definite plus as the card can...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 10-06-2008 Category: Motherboards ASUS tends to make high quality motherboards that are popular with a wide variety of hardcore enthusiasts and the ASUS M3N78 Pro has the features to contend with the best of the AMD chipsets available. The integrated graphics on t...
Author: Doc Overclock Date: 10-06-2008 Category: Hardware With the ever-increasing sizes of files including H.264 content, the need for a NAS server has never been clearer. While the Thecus N5200BR system goes for an amazingly high price of $699 or so, what you get is the ability to back...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 10-03-2008 Category: Hardware The video card market has been turned on its ear by the competition between NVIDIA and ATI for the gaming dollar. As soon as one company releases a new card the other either seems to release a new card to compete or lowers the pr...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 10-01-2008 Category: Motherboards Intel sells their X48 chipset as the high-end model of their chipset line at the moment and the ECS X48T-A motherboard is a typical example of an X48 chipset motherboard. ECS boards are generally less expensive than other Tier-1 m...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 09-30-2008 Category: Hardware For those wanting an inexpensive card that does the job when playing back HD content or a HTPC (Home Theater PC) that wants a quiet card that doesn’t draw a lot of power, the HD 4550 card will fit the bill nicely at a price of $5...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 09-22-2008 Category: Hardware The 9800GTX+ from XFX is on the market for a $199 price point, or nearly the same price as the HD 4850 card and lower than the HD 4870 or GeForce GTX260 chip. There’s a lot of overlap in the video card market as video cards that w...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 09-19-2008 Category: Motherboards The Gigabyte EP45-DQ6 has all of the features you would want from a motherboard based upon the Intel P45 and more. The board is so feature-laden in fact that I would have to say it’s a bit over the top compared with most of its co...
Author: Doc Overclock Date: 09-17-2008 Category: Hardware If you are going to buy a system it usually involves a whole lot of thought process, shopping around and then deciding who you want to buy from. This really does take some thought process as first off it’s your money, and secondly...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 09-16-2008 Category: Hardware ATI has hit a homerun in many respects with the HD 4xxx family of video cards u. The HD 4670 has similar performance to its older brother, the HD 3850 and better pricing. NVIDIA and ATI are both competing for the video card dollar...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 09-05-2008 Category: Hardware The HD 4850 supports all of the features of DirectX 10.1 meaning that if a game requires it the card supports it. As the little brother of the HD 4870, the HD 4850 from MSI is a great choice for all but the most hardcore enthusias...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 09-01-2008 Category: Motherboards I’m of two minds on the 790GX chipset in general. Yes this is the fastest integrated graphics on the market period. Yes, it features the new SB750 Southbridge which adds RAID 5 functionality to the chipset, and yes, the chipset su...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 09-01-2008 Category: Hardware The GeForce 9800GT card is in many respects a rebadged 8800GT card in a new package. The 9800GT has many things in common with the earlier 8800GT which is both a blessing and a curse. Performance of the 9800GT in single mode is as...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 08-27-2008 Category: Hardware The All in Wonder HD is an interesting jack of all trades video card. The good points include the ability to playback and record live TV on the PC, decent gaming performance in the form of the HD 3650 and the ability to run FM Rad...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 08-26-2008 Category: Hardware For a retail price of $230, the 9950 is an interesting choice from AMD. This has driven the price of the 9850 Black Edition down to the $200 level in 1000 unit quantities. The 9950 performs higher than the 9850 across the board as...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 08-25-2008 Category: Hardware The Tagan El Diablo Super Mid-Tower case is an excellent starting point for those wanting the ultimate in airflow on their new computer system. The 360mm side fan and 250mm front fan are the best in their class. The El Diablo case...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 08-19-2008 Category: Hardware Few things excite me more than innovation in case design. The Cool Master folks have done it again with the HAF 932 case. The case is available for a mere $160, which is a small price to pay compared to many of the other Full Tow...
Author: Doc Overclock Date: 08-19-2008 Category: Motherboards The P45 chipset from Intel is a very successful replacement for the P35 chipset that preceded it. The Gigabyte EP45-DS4 has a few issues but none that are showstoppers or enough to warrant actual complaint. The fact that the board...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 08-18-2008 Category: Hardware Lian Li cases are the best designed in the business and this is one of them. The V1100 Black has five 5.25” drive bays, but more importantly, has the ability to install six HDDs. There are a total of four 120mm fans on the case, o...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 08-16-2008 Category: Motherboards From a performance point of view, the ASUS Maximus II Formula is simply head and shoulders above the other P45 motherboards I’ve tested in the important categories of Sysmark (overall system score) and 3DMark (Graphics scores). Fr...
Author: Doc Overclock Date: 08-12-2008 Category: Hardware There is nothing to balk about with this release, even the price is not overtly overboard from an out of gate newcomer X2 series card as the 4870 X2 will even out price wise at about $500.00 US, and that’s not too out of line for ...
Author: Doc Overclock Date: 08-10-2008 Category: Hardware One of the big positives of this KVM Switch can also be a slight negative. The Bridgeport BR-U1021DA KVM Switch is small which looks good, but almost could get lost in the cabling of two computers if not placed in the right spot. ...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 08-07-2008 Category: Motherboards Gigabyte’s X48T-DQ6 is in many ways the exact same board as the Gigabyte X48-DQ6 in terms of layout, configuration with the main difference being the support of DDR3 memory on the board, which the other board does not support. The...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 08-05-2008 Category: Motherboards This motherboard is available online for $150, making it targeted for the mid-range market and not the enthusiast motherboard market another board in the $200-300 range would be in. The board has support for SLI after setting jump...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 07-31-2008 Category: Hardware Thermaltake builds cases, Power Supplies and other computer components. They are famous for their water and air cooling systems and their cases. Today I’m reviewing the Thermaltake Armor VH6001 Case, which is a Full Tower case and... Author: Ben Sun Date: 07-29-2008 Category: Motherboards Integrated graphics on the AMD platform have never been better, however. With the launch of the 780G chipset form AMD based upon the HD3200 and the launch of the GeForce 8200 from NVIDIA there is real performance from both chipset... Author: Doc Overclock Date: 07-26-2008 Category: Hardware Being such a large company like Palit is they are not limited by virtue of the numbers game to any one chipset slinger and offer VGA solutions from both the big guys ATI and NVIDIA. This gives Palit a broader spectrum of sales and... Author: Ben Sun Date: 07-24-2008 Category: Motherboards ASUS is a favorite among hardware enthusiasts as their boards offer many extras that aren’t found on the mundane motherboards like good overclocking, a good bundle and tweaks that allow the overclocker to work with their motherboa...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 07-22-2008 Category: Hardware The GTX260 from XFX is an interesting beast in that it is highly overclocked from the standard reference GTX260 that many companies are selling. In some cases the card comes close in performance to the GTX280 in CPU limited situat...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 07-20-2008 Category: Motherboards Intel released their latest chipset, the Intel P45 chipset just a short month or so ago. The newest chipset includes new features like being built on the 65 nanometer process, support for the new ICH10R Memory Controller Hub and s... Author: Ben Sun Date: 07-19-2008 Category: Hardware Hightech Information Systems (HIS Tech) is a Hong Kong based manufacturer of video cards that uses ATI chips exclusively. They carry the full lineup from ATI including the high-end HD3870X2 and the HD3870. The market for high-...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 07-14-2008 Category: Motherboards Integrated graphics have been widely regarded as a joke among hardware enthusiasts as they are generally underperforming, feature deficient and have drivers that don’t support the latest features in the case of the Intel integrate... Author: Doc Overclock Date: 07-06-2008 Category: Hardware Tagan is a company that was founded in 2001 by a group of technical professionals from all over the world who gathered to discuss the growing problems associated with power supplies at the Taipei Computex show. This discussion wa...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 07-03-2008 Category: Motherboards The X48 Express chipset was launched a month or two ago to great acclaim as it introduced new features like the FSB 1600MHz CPUs (Yorkfield) and sported a new MCH. The X48 chipset has been a success in the market place as AMD’s Ph...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 06-29-2008 Category: Hardware In my last review on the HD4850, I discussed price/performance. The 4850 was an excellent buy for $199 as the card outperformed any variant of the 9800GTX card available. Today’s 4870 card is an excellent value for the MSRP of $29...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 06-26-2008 Category: Hardware The Personal Computer has been kicking it for many years now, with the first IBM PC launched in 1981 with a 4.77MHz CPU and 64KB of RAM. That was almost 27 years ago, a long time in computer history. One of the problems with the ...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 06-20-2008 Category: Hardware ATI has been manufacturing video cards for many years and has been in a catfight with their archrival NVIDIA for as long as NVIDIA has been around. As a rule the battle has been back and forth with NVIDIA winning in the GeForce er...
Author: Doc Overclock Date: 06-16-2008 Category: Hardware Wow, there is fast and then there is faster and then there’s the fastest. The new EVGA GTX208 FTW Edition VGA card is the fastest single card solution we have ever had to grace our labs period; it’s as fast as an entry level 9800G...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 06-13-2008 Category: Hardware Cooler Master builds cases, cooling solutions, power supplies and other computer components. Their Stacker 830 case is the basis for this Custom Painted Warfare case as the name implies. CSX stands for Custom Style experience. One... Author: Doc Overclock Date: 06-12-2008 Category: Hardware ASUS is a leading provider of video cards, motherboards, and other computer components. ASUS sells video cards based upon both NVIDIA and ATI graphics chips. ATI released the HD3870 late last year offering high performance at a re...
Author: Doc Overclock Date: 06-06-2008 Category: Hardware CoolIT systems are a company that specializes in various cooling units based on both liquid and Peltier solutions for the end user client. They have made advances in the cooling industry by making High-End cooling easy for the com...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 06-06-2008 Category: Hardware OPPO is known in the Audio Video community for building high-quality components for inexpensive prices. They make HDMI cables, the HM-31 HDMI switch being reviewed here, and Universal DVD players with HDMI connections. The HM-31 i...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 06-03-2008 Category: Motherboards AMD has made the 790FX chipset their high-end chipset and as such, the Gigabyte MA-790FX-DS5 is designed to work with the newest Phenom B3 CPUs. Gigabyte has done an outstanding job outfitting this card with the features that you ...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 06-01-2008 Category: Hardware The video card market is defined today by the battle between NVIDIA and ATI, the last men standing from a group of over 30 video card companies back in 1996. Companies like 3DFX, Evans and Sutherland, S3 (the original S3), Renditi... Author: Ben Sun Date: 05-27-2008 Category: Hardware The Silverstone KL03 is a mid-priced case with a price online of $180. At this price, the case has a lot going for it as it has the space of an EATX case while easily fitting long video cards like the X1950XTX and 9800GX2 video ca...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 05-23-2008 Category: Hardware Cases are the cornerstone upon which a system is built upon. After all a mini-ATX case is rather limited with respect to the amount of expansion cards and hard disks available to it due to its small size. The case also determines ...
Author: Doc Overclock Date: 05-21-2008 Category: Hardware Enough of politics though let’s talk about the subject at hand the all new Black Edition series that XFX is releasing to satisfy the overclocker and enthusiast. It seems as if the Alpha Dog series will be now become the second fas... Author: Ben Sun Date: 05-21-2008 Category: Hardware Hiper is best known as a power supply manufacturer but have also branched out into cases, keyboards, Media Center PCs, Case Fans and more. They are based in the United Kingdom (England) and were formed in 2001. The Hiper business ...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 05-19-2008 Category: Motherboards The board features everything you could possibly want from a new motherboard today including DDR3 support, external SATA support, Crossfire support, and saves energy while delivering the features and performance you want from a ne...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 05-16-2008 Category: Hardware Today ECS is releasing another 8800GT card. So why release an 8800GT card when there are 9800GTX cards and 9600GT cards for sale? Good question. The 8800GT is still a great card and while the 512MB versions of the card are expensi...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 05-07-2008 Category: Hardware ATI has been at the forefront of the push towards higher graphics standards, being the first video card company to use DirectX 8.1 graphics with the Radeon 8500, the first to DirectX 9.0 with the Radeon 9700 Pro and the first to D... Author: Ben Sun Date: 05-04-2008 Category: Motherboards Intel motherboards dominate the market since their CPUs also dominate the market. Their main rival in the consumer business AMD has continued to struggle with their business mainly due to the inability of their CPUs to compete wit...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 04-30-2008 Category: Motherboards Elite Computer Systems has been around making motherboards and video cards among other computer related components for years. Mostly known as a value motherboard maker in recent years, ECS today has tried to change all of that wit...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 04-25-2008 Category: Hardware The EVGA 8800GT 1GB AKIMBO is an interesting card in many respects. The performance is not up to the 9800GTX but it is close being that the two cards share the same video chip just with 16 SPs disabled. The main selling point of t...
Author: Doc Overclock Date: 04-24-2008 Category: Hardware Everyone who is heavy into their PC knows what a Raptor drive is, and what it stands for, fast drives that exceed the competition and enhance system performance. The Raptor was introduced as a SATA (Serial ATA) drive series to co... Author: Ben Sun Date: 04-22-2008 Category: Hardware A Phenom 8750 with a 780G motherboard would cost around $290 today. This will give you excellent integrated graphics with full compatibility across DirectX 10 titles, with nearly the performance of the HD3400 series discrete graph...
Author: Doc Overclock Date: 04-21-2008 Category: Motherboards The new Intel E7200 was able to achieve a 3.56GHz speed over its normal 2.56GHz default setting, and the E8500 was able to go from 2.53 all the way up to a 4.2GHz increase completely stable. This is excellent results and shows th...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 04-18-2008 Category: Hardware XFX is one of the big dogs in the United States when it comes to NVIDIA based video card sales in the retail channel, along with EVGA and BFG Technologies. XFX has been a major ally of NVIDIA in good and bad times. They have bran... Author: Ben Sun Date: 04-11-2008 Category: Hardware Palit is a European and Asian based video card manufacturer that builds NVIDIA video cards, ATI video cards, motherboards and other computer equipment. They have built a name for themselves in Europe but have also begun selling vi...
Author: Doc Overclock Date: 04-04-2008 Category: Hardware XFX has made a solid place for themselves in the VGA community and the dog has put many other companies in the dog house, especially when it comes to performance based VGA cards for the gamers who like top end products. The mid le...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 04-02-2008 Category: Hardware Silverstone has been around for a few years building cases and PSUs, CPU Coolers, Storage Devices and fans. We’ve reviewed many SilverStone cases over the years with some having gotten Editor’s Choice Awards. Today I’m reviewing t...
Author: Doc Overclock Date: 04-02-2008 Category: Hardware NVIDIA has had a massive amount of releases in the past few months and the last few weeks have seen an onslaught of VGA cards and the new 790 series motherboards. The 9800GX2 we reviewed last week was a really fast video card bein...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 03-30-2008 Category: Hardware . The fact that the QX9770 has 12MB of L2 Cache, and the clock speed difference makes it a losing battle. The thing with the CPU market is the Phenom 9850 is designed for the $266 market, not the $1450 market that the Intel QX977...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 03-26-2008 Category: Motherboards ASUS has done a wonderful job with their ASUS MAXIMUS Formula board. Based upon Intel’s X38 chipset, the Maximus Formula brings the performance, the features and the stability one would expect from a top of the line motherboard fr... Author: Ben Sun Date: 03-21-2008 Category: Hardware The E8500 is the fastest Core 2 Duo solution on the market with the clock speed set at 3.16GHz, fully 266MHz higher than the next fastest E series CPU. For a MSRP on the Intel CPU price list of $266 this makes an affordable soluti...
Author: Doc Overclock Date: 03-19-2008 Category: Motherboards EVGA is a company that has pounded the pavement with NVIDIA products for almost a decade now and they show no signs of slowing down anytime soon. For every release NVIDIA has EVGA has a solution based on that product, usually with...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 03-07-2008 Category: Hardware ATI launched their HD3xxx series of cards late last year. The main impetus of the new cards was the features DirectX 10.1 and the new 55 nanometer process node. The performance rivaled that of the previous HD2900XT on their HD3870...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 03-05-2008 Category: Hardware The 4850e X2 CPU does what it is designed to do, namely bring the performance and features of the 4800 X2 into the 45W maximum power draw domain. From a performance point of view this new CPU is in line with the 4800+ X2 with simi...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 02-29-2008 Category: Motherboards XFX has long been known as one of the top video card makers in the NVIDIA camp, with many overclocked versions of their video cards reaching the market. Recently, they’ve also started manufacturing motherboards based upon NVIDIA c... Author: Jonathan Russell Date: 02-28-2008 Category: Hardware Logitech has been helping gamers get the edge on their opponents for some time now. From gaming headsets to the venerable G15 keyboard, if it’s for gaming chances are they make it. Today we take a look at one piece of their high ...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 02-27-2008 Category: Hardware Keyboards are important pieces of hardware that are used by every computer user today without exception. Without a keyboard of some sort, there would be no Email, no Instant Messaging, no typing on the computer of Word Documents. ...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 02-21-2008 Category: Hardware NVIDIA’s new 9600GT card is targeted at the $199 and below price point and EVGA says this card should come in at $200-220. At this level of performance and pricing, the 9600GT competes against ATI’s HD3850 card and almost competes...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 02-20-2008 Category: Hardware The HD3850 is an interesting card in the grand scheme of ATI’s lineup and Diamond’s 512MB version of the card is also interesting in that the card lies right in the middle of the 3850 to HD3870 price range. The price for this card... Author: Jonathan Russell Date: 02-19-2008 Category: Hardware Computers have become your complete multimedia entertainment center. You them for music, movies, games, photos, and more. When you’re playing your favorite game, watching a movie or listening to music it is fun to turn the volume... Author: Doc Overclock Date: 02-17-2008 Category: Motherboards Gigabyte uses the X48 Northbridge and ICH9R Southbridge combo to good effect. You’ll notice the inclusion of DDR2 memory instead DDR3 that the X48 chipset supports. The full feature set of X48 chipset and Gigabyte’s unique feature... Author: Ben Sun Date: 02-13-2008 Category: Hardware It has been a long drought for ATI in the high-end of the video card market. NVIDIA’s 8800 GTX has been the king of the video card market in terms of performance of single card solutions since its introduction over a year ago, wit...
Author: Ben Sun Date: 02-10-2008 Category: Motherboards EVGA is best known for building NVIDIA video cards and their excellent technical support, but they have recently gone into making motherboards based upon NVIDIA chipsets as well. EVGA has built motherboards based upon the nForce 6...
Author: Doc Overclock Date: 02-08-2008 Category: Motherboards Asus has always been one of the favorites of the hardcore enthusiast community with excellent overclocking potential on every one of their high-end boards, excellent performance and the features that matter most from each chipset....
Author: Doc Overclock Date: 02-04-2008 Category: Hardware At this point the system is a mixed bag of high performance as the drivers are very immature and improvements surely will come in later releases. As much as I want to say wow about the entire event, I am still left wishing that th... Author: Doc Overclock Date: 02-01-2008 Category: Hardware Rosewill is a division of Newegg and is a company like Ingram Micro’s V7 group that finds quality products and then re-labels them under their own Rosewill branded name. This is becoming a more common thing as large distributions ... Author: Jonathan Russell Date: 01-28-2008 Category: Hardware A case is sometimes the last part of our pc built that we think about, and often it gets the least amount of thought at that. You spend hours pouring over motherboard, CPU, Memory, and Video card reviews to narrow your choices do...
Author: Doc Overclock Date: 01-27-2008 Category: Motherboards Asus reigns supreme when it comes to motherboard sales and they have the biggest selection of boards as well, being that they manufacture products from all the major chipset players including Intel, NVIDIA and ATI to name the majo...
Author: Doc Overclock Date: 01-24-2008 Category: Motherboards The Intel P35 chipset was launched a little over 8 months ago as the replacement for the 965P platform that was the mainstream chipset equivalent to the 975X platform. The Bear Lake platform introduced new features including supp...
Author: Jonathan Russell Date: 01-22-2008 Category: Hardware At the end of the day the Sidewinder mouse really comes across as a solid mouse with an excellent feature set. Couple that with Microsoft support and you have a product that you can rely on for years to come. ... Author: Vlad Mihaiescu Date: 01-15-2008 Category: Hardware After a quick glance at the box, one thing is for certain: if I perform poorly in a game, I can’t blame it on the joystick, more precisely on the lack of available buttons or customization options. As a matter of fact, the Saitek...
Author: Jonathan Russell Date: 01-14-2008 Category: Hardware With no real down side this keyboard is a definite winner in my book. I was happy with the functionality of the previous Xgene keyboard that we looked at and this new one does not disappoint either. Though it is longer than the ot...
Author: Jonathan Russell Date: 01-10-2008 Category: Hardware The Black Siberia headphones represent a good midrange option when it comes to gaming headsets. The extra long cord, detachable microphone as well the independent controls are great additions that set these headphones apart from m...
Author: Doc Overclock Date: 01-04-2008 Category: Hardware Overall I would have to say that if you are looking for large monitor over the 22" size, the V7 D24W33 is something to seriously consider. If price is also a point in your buying plans the D24W33 also offers an excellent price poi... |
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