Monday Reviews

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Since 1986, Antec has been providing the computer hardware community with grade A cases and power supplies. Their tradition continues on to this day with their power supplies being the best in the business. Antec's cases are equally well known for quality. Today, ASE Labs looks at the Antec 900 which is one of Antec's premier cases.

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The EPIA series from VIA has really come a long way since its initial inception years ago. When the series was first released, it was a unique formfactor. The problem is that it was slow and the expandability was not there. Fast forward a few years and the later designs are nothing like what it was. You get speed and expandability in a great size. If Windows is your thing, this board is Vista certified.

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Noctua is a new company that promises quiet cooling with good performance. Their first entry into the market is very well built.

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Last week, I happened upon a forum thread about thermal compounds; asking which was best for a variety of scenarios. This got me thinking that maybe it was time to take a look at the various cooling solutions available on the market. After a visit to Newegg.com, and spending $85, I now have more syringes than Amy Winehouse. Today, we'll cover every thermal compound we can find (more than 20), and explain things like thermal resistance, conductivity, and which thermal compound is the best choice for you. While the performance results may not be dramatically different (which is actually a good thing), we'll dig a little deeper and look at things a bit differently.

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Quote: TechwareLabs tests out three new CPU coolers from Kingwin that use direct thermal transfer to integrated heatpipes. This is supposed to result in a great decrease in your CPU operating temperature. Does it work? Read our review on these three to find out.

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GIGABYTE graphics cards seem to be few and far between these days because they like to do things a bit differently. We're all for standing out from the pack, and the latest card from GIGABYTE to jump into that category would be the TurboForce Edition of the 8800GT. The Zalman cooler that they use isn't anything new, we've seen it used on the HD 3870 that GIGABYTE released a few months back. With that said though, it really is a tried and tested cooler that seems to be extremely efficient. The copper in the middle of the cooler helps move the heat and the aluminum fins help the heat dissipate quickly.

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But what if you want a great overclocking experience at a price closer to home? A price that won't equal that of mid range Mercedes Benz monthly payment. What if you only could scrap up the funds to obtain a Intel Dual Core 2200 or 6420? Chances are you will want a board that is packed with all the features you must have like eSATA, voltage selections, Crossfire support and the rest of the features necessary to overclock the hell out of your CPU.

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Not everyone needs a top of the line LCD monitor with a 2ms response time and all of the connections imaginable. Some people just want an LCD monitor to replace their huge CRT monitor. It is much easier moving around a few thin LCD monitors than a big CRT. Today we are taking a look at the VL2018W from Princeton. The 20.1-inch LCD features a 1680 x 1050 resolution and 8ms response time. You can get it from Geeks.com for a very decent price of $179.99. Let's take a look...

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It was a year ago that AMD had replaced its aging FireGL Control Panel inside its Linux driver with the AMDCCCLE, or AMD Catalyst Control Center Linux Edition. Since that time, this Catalyst Control Center for Linux continues to mature with a few new features being added here and there, and version 2.0 could in fact be introduced in an upcoming release. At the same time, the control panel utility that ships with NVIDIA's binary driver, nvidia-settings, has stayed more or less the same for the past few years with only a few minor revisions. How do these two Linux control panels compare though when it comes to the features? For this article we have put AMDCCCLE and nvidia-settings side-by-side to compare and contrast both utilities.

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Legit Reviews was able to snag one of Alienware's first High Definition Media Servers off the assembly line to take a closer look what could be the future of home computing and entertainment. These high-end media servers are designed for users looking to create a connected and fully-integrated home theater. The price of the media server is between $5000 and $7000 depending on the configuration that you desire. In the next few weeks Legit Reviews will partner with two custom home theater installers in Los Angeles to get their views on the functionality and operability of the Alienware HD Media Server (HDMS). Because this flagship media server is not intended for normal consumers to install, Alienware is only making these servers available to profession installers. Until our installers have a go at it and report back to us, we wanted to at least give you a sneak peak as to what you will see after our installers get through...

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I'll be honest to say that I was quite surprise by the results. The idle temps were nearly identical but to see a 5 degree difference in load temps really surprised me. The numbers obviously speak for themselves and Ultra's Aluminum Hard Drive Cooler with Heatpipes obviously does its job well and pretty much matches the results of the stock setup in the Cosmos.

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We've been talking about CrossFireX drivers since November 2007 and it's been a long four months of waiting, but it seems like it was worth the wait. The drivers we used for testing are still in development, so once the final CATALYST 8.3 drivers are delivered we will take a closer look at CrossFireX. CrossFireX looks good and the scaling from two cards to three shows performance gains of 5-50% with the average being right around 33%. We can't wait to see what Quad-CrossFire looks like and what CATALYST 8.4 and 8.5 drivers will bring to the table.

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When we first reviewed NVIDIA's new GeForce 9600 GT we noticed a discrepancy between the advertised core speed and the frequency reported by the clock generator. After further investigation we can now answer what causes this.

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Quote: NVIDIA's 3-way SLI indeed works but at the price of entry, it had better. The problem however is that in this instance it is based on technology that is approaching the end of its life. The 8800 GTX and Ultra have all but been replaced by the 8800 GTS 512MB and the 9000 series cards have already started to launch. The Quad SLI launch of the 9800GX2 is imminent and should undercut the cost of either Triple GTX's or Ultra's and perform on par or better. So really the only way this is going to be of benefit to anyone is if you've already got a 680i or 780i and a pair of GTX's or Ultra's...

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Aeneon memory is a division of Qimonda, a German memory manufacturer which is also a division of Infineon Technologies. While Infineon has been around for quite some time, Aeneon hasn't made any major jumps into the DRAM market, so it's about time we see a new player come in. Aeneon has rated these modules for 1333MHz with a timing rating of 8-8-8-24, which is about normal for 1333MHz modules. The SPD doesn't support Intel's XMP setup, but this doesn't stop them from running on X38/X48 chipsets.

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Leadtek honored us today by allowing Bjorn3D to review a brand new, just released, Nvidia 9000 series card, more specifically the WinFast PX9600 GT Extreme. One thought popped into my mind when I heard we were going to be reviewing this, 'Why are they releasing a 600 series card first and not an 800 series like all the previous releases, as in the 8800?' My opinion is that they have there eyes set and ears open to the people out there that aren't enthusiasts but are instead weekend gamers that can't afford the enthusiast cards or don't want to pull multiple one hundred dollar bills out of there wallets, or purses (for all you lady gamers). Join me as we take a closer look at the brand new WinFast PX9600 GT from Leadtek.

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As with all Sonic models from Palit this card comes out with an increased core and memory clocks so we'll just have to see how it goes today against the competition. But before we check that out, we of course need to have a look at the package and card which should prove to be very good. It's clearly got some stand out features; what are they? Well, there's only one way to find out and that's by moving forward. The Palit 9600GT could be one of the best graphics cards we've seen to date, so let's see if first impressions hold up as we get stuck straight into it.

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The Vista feeling slow? Speed it up with one of the many drives in the A-DATA Nobility N702 Series. Available in red, blue, or silver, and sizes of 1GB, 2GB, 4GB, and 8GB the N702 should be attractive to most people. This drive supports Windows ReadyBoost as well as having some decent transfer rates. The Nobility N702 has a couple unique features that you probably aren't going to find on any other flash drive. Take a further look into the review to find out what separates this drive from the rest.