Wed Reviews

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The Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 retail box is black with red accents. This is the case it should be since ATI graphics are known to be red. Also, red and black are my favorite colors. While the box says it supports some stuff, there is no mention of Linux support even though AMD has said it wants its partners to include a penguin or other open sourcey stuff on the box. The Catalyst 8.6 drivers for Linux support this GPU and were released last month.

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Western Digital is well known to system builders and end users for providing excellent storage solutions matched with a good warranty and support. I only recommend two hard drive manufactures to people, Western Digital is one of them (the other being Seagate). The latest and greatest things in terms of technology have moved out of the computer case and into portable storage. The My Passport Studio comes in at 250GB and this one is preformatted for Mac. Don't let that scare you, though.

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I have always been a bit weary of doing reviews of things very subjective and a Bluetooth headset is just one of those things. When Lubix offered to send a review sample over, I was hesitant until they insisted. I'm glad they did since the UBHS-NC1 is a great stereo headset. I'm not a headset kind of person, but as standard Bluetooth headphones, they rock.

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While the next generation of graphics cards from ATI are just around the corner, you can get some amazing performance with full open source support for a great price. Some of the readers might also be looking for a silent solution while having good performance and the Sapphire Radeon HD 3870 Ultimate steps up to provide that. It combines a truly massive heatsink with the powerful 3870 GPU to create a fast and completely silent graphics card for your quiet PC.

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Over the next thirty days I will have only one thing on my mind; USB thumb drives. Thumb drives started out as small devices that were a little pricey, offered a small amount of storage and had very low transfer rates. Even with limited space and transfer rates that felt like we took a step back to 1.44 MB floppy disk days, people quickly adopted the technology based on their ease of use and convenience. TweakTown is working on gathering as many USB thumb drives as possible for a massive round-up review that will put products from every major manufacturer in the ring with one another. Some drives stand out for their high transfer rates, while others have high capacity. Other drives use a very small enclosures; about the size of your thumbnail.

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The product I have today for review is from our friends at Aerocool and it's called the Modern V. What the V stands for I'm not sure, but it's an LCD Display Fan Controller and Temperature Monitor that looks pretty cool when it's installed in your PC, oh and it works great as well...

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Quote: The Thermalright IFX-14 uses eight heatpipes to move heat from the base plate to the cooling fins, and these pipes are larger and more numerous than on many of the other big coolers on the market. Overall it is larger than any other cooler I have had a chance to use, including some titans like the Tuniq Tower 120 and Zalman CNPS 9700, which we will see compared side-by-side in this review.

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Power supplies have moved from the ugly box in the computer that no one paid any attention to, to the heart and soul of modern enthusiast systems. There are a lot of power supplies out there marketed as high-end enthusiast power supplies and are little more than cheap and not worth using in nice looking housings.

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Palit recently sent us the GeForce 9600GSO Sonic, which is an enhanced GeForce 9600GSO. Palit has added its own cooler, as well as factory overclocked the unit, and improved upon the power phases. The 9600 GSO is nVidia's latest foray in the mid-level 9000 series of GeForce cards, and is also the cheapest for a performance card. Despite the price point, the 9600 GSO should be a fair competitor to both the GeForce 9600 GT and Radeon HD3650.

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The X-Supra is a new mainstream case from Apevia, which features all the usual extras like a handful of colorful fronts, screw-less design and fan controller. On top of that you can go for a huge 250 mm side fan or a windowed variant with a smaller 120 mm fan. The special edition features a solid side panel.

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Alienware is a name we know for the top of the line gaming machines and laptops. Today we will be looking at one of their latest offerings the m15x 15.4-inch laptop. Alienware has really pulled out all the stops with this laptop, making it both visually appealing and packing some serious components inside to play the latest games. We've had the m15x for about a month now and we love it. Read on to see how powerful this machine is and how it will catch everyone's attention at the next Lan Party you attend!

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It used to be that counterfeit CD and DVD media originated from overseas and found its way onto popular auction websites. But in a wake of widespread technology developments, anyone is capable of creating completely indistinguishable copies of their favorite audio CD or movie DVD. Do most people still purchase the original content, or is everyone stealing from the artists? In this article, Benchmark Reviews offers a candid look into Consumer Home Piracy as we present the Research Findings for July 2008 as provided to us by Futuresource Consulting in partnership with Macrovision.

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If you take a budget chipset and mix it with a company like ECS you will get an incredible priced motherboard. In this case you will get the P43T-A2. The P43A is ECS's first P43 motherboard on the market. Even with all its short comings compared to the P45 this board offers the everyday Joe with everything they would need to build a stable and very complete system.

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It's amazing to think that a Pico-ITX board is part of a system that monitors oil rigs - or helps to regulate power plants. Embedded computing might sound boring to some, but it's a vibrant and innovative industry, where tough and small hardware designs get put into the most unlikely roles. Merlin CSI is a company who have become experts in the production of hardware platforms, industrial I/O devices and software applications, that form a complete package that can be integrated into various uses.

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Pioneer has introduced a system that appeals to not only the distinguished ear of the audiophile, but to those that are willing to spend a little more for a lot more sound. Pioneer's X-Z9 is an all-in-one stereo solution that brings audio fidelity into the digital home with its Apple iPod interface, XM and Sirius satellite radio support and networking capability so you can stream music from your home PC.

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We took our big, hard, $800 sofa out of our media/game room at ICHQ and replaced it with the Sac and three Omnis. The end result: more room, more comfort, and the ability to open up the room and rearrange things on a whim. Is it worth $199? It depends on whether or not you have room for it. If you do, then I say a resounding

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Today we are going to take a look at at products made by Gainward and Forsa. The former is a well-known manufacturer, while the latter is a startup. I cannot say that it's super, but it manufactures good products for minimal prices possible. There are both pros and cons. Today we are going to examine one card from Forse that is already replacing the regular reference 9600 GT.

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The OrigenAE T12 is a 12 touch screen that will set you back 800$. It is capable of processing up to 1080p resolution - perfect for that home theater. Thanks to the umbilical cord, you not only have a mouse at your fingertips, but also an IR receiver and USB 2.0 hub. Best of all the OrigenAE T12 does not even require an external power source, everything is integrated in the single cable.

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The Thermaltake Armor+ MX we will be looking at today is different from the Armor cases of the past as it is not a full or super tower case, but a mid tower. The Thermaltake Armor+ MX VH8000BWS Mid Tower Case was designed to accommodate the Thermaltake Big Water line of water cooling kits, which makes it nice for those building a DIY gaming system. Read on as we take a closer look at the Thermaltake Armor+ MX and install a water cooler in it.

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This last month has been filled with press releases from companies promising high performance solid state technology at prices that are up to 30% less than any of the drives we have previously tested. The cost reduction has to do with memory manufacturers starting to ramp up production of the memory chips used, and according to DRAMeXchange, prices are down 26% for many MLC memory sizes popular for use in SSDs. Super Talent is the first to send us their latest MLC Solid State Drive that takes advantage of the new lower contract prices on memory. The MasterDrive MX Line is available in sizes ranging from 8 to 120GB. Our sample 60GB model is available at Newegg right now for less than 400 U.S. Dollars. Let's have a look and see how these new low cost Solid State Drives perform against our trusty Western Digital Raptor 150GB and Samsung's SATA II SLC drive.

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Quote: The Hiyatek CF-6160-1 Laptop Cooling Pad is extremely lightweight, and becomes quite compact when the plastic tray is retracted. Those two features make it appealing for use on the go, while the integrated USB hub could be of interest to mobile or stationary users. But while it may operate in near silence regardless of fan speed, you might as well just leave it turned off since it isn't really cooling anything.

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Silicon Power has big dreams, but this a cruel world we live in and being the new name in competitive North American computer industry usually doesn't help dreams come true. Making matters more difficult - even beyond the obvious start-up hurdles - is the latest product focus of Silicon Power: Solid State Drive (SSD) technology. But all of this isn't to say that I don't think they can do it, because there have been many a new name made by fresh companies introducing product with a dramatic improvement over the old. But will Silicon Power enjoy this luxury? Benchmark Reviews tests the Silicon Power 64GB SATA SSD model SP064GBSSD25SV10 against nearly a dozen other Solid State Drives to see how well their SSD performs.

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On the review block for today is the Consus D-Series dual SATA hard drive external storage system from Eagle Tech. The D-Series has the ablity to use JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Disks) spanning to combine your odd sized disk drives into one larger drive, or you can run it plain old RAID 0.

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list for a notebook, the Asus M70S should be a system you need to be looking at. The M70S offers a fantastic movie watching experience thanks to its huge, crisp display, excellent sound system and Blu-ray drive. You can also store an unbelievable amount of your own movies and music on the M70 too, thanks to its unheard of (on a notebook at least) 1 terabyte of storage space. The systems only major drawback is the annoying media controls embedded in the touchpad. Not only are they difficult to control, but they include an area that disables the touchpad if you touch it accidentally, which was highly annoying.

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Quote: The In Win B2 is an excellent choice for anyone who wants a rather unique computer case. There aren't any other cases I know of that are modeled after a stealth bomber, or that have a front door that opens like this. Tool-less design features can be found everywhere, and except for mounting the motherboard, there is no need to get a screwdriver out.

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Quote: By taking the decent features and specifications that the ATI Radeon HD3850 GPU offers on its own and enhancing it with a few tweaks here and there, Sapphire just might be able to deliver on the marketing hype found on the box for this card... Delivering mayhem to the mainstream.