Wed Reviews

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DDR3 has been out for a pretty long time already and even though a majority of enthusiasts currently run systems that utilize DDR3, the majority of systems are still running on DDR2. DDR2 is the mainstream technology and has a price point to match. The KHX8500D2T1K2/4G kit comes with brand new heat-spreaders and good performance for a 4GB DDR2 kit.

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The market for graphics cards centers around price to performance. While high-end cards capture the eye of the press, it is the job of the mainstream graphics card to capture the entire market. The 4600 series from ATI is targeted to the mainstream crowd and the Sapphire Radeon HD 4670 has just been refreshed with GDDR4 and a faster memory speed. The time to buy may be now.

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Antec is one of the most respected and well known case manufactures in the computer industry. They make a variety of cases that satisfy the OEM crowd as well as the enthusiast niche. The Skeleton is a completely unique design and the term case really doesn't describe the enclosure that well. This case is made to really show off your components.

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Kingston manufacturers a number of consumer electronic devices that have to do with memory. The main business of Kingston is memory and every enthusiast knows that Kingston makes enthusiast RAM for overclocking. That market segment is quite small compared to consumer electronics in general and the Kingston 19-in-1 USB card reader really shines with good features you don't see elsewhere.

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For those with a compatible computer, the Latosta portable laptop stand is an extremely lightweight and compact stand that can make it much more comfortable to use your laptop for extended periods of time. The typing angle created is more comfortable than a flat surface, and the elevated screen takes some of the strain off of your neck.

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The Sapphire Ultimate Radeon HD4670 is a passively cooled graphics card with plenty of features other than its silent operation that should appeal to HTPC owners. With an integrated HDMI port, DirectX 10.1, and Shader Model 4.1 support, it offers some of the things you look for in a gaming graphics card, but with an obvious focus on home theater performance.

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The Tuniq Potency 650W power supply is a no nonsense unit that will get the job done on a basic computer system without wasting your money on bells and whistles. It has decent features and specifications, was able to power the test configuration without issue, and it remains cool and quiet during operation.

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"We proceed with a series of practical articles, in which we analyze sufficiency of various CPU+GPU combinations for games, trying to keep our test conditions as close to popular realia as possible. We hope that such articles will come in handy to readers willing to reasonably distribute their budget between a graphics card and a processor."

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In the past, really small USB flash drives have had to make compromises on performance to fit everything in such a small form-factor. I'm pleased to say that the Super Talent Pico 16GB doesn't suffer from these drawbacks and offers great read and write performance. When you consider how small the drive is, this is even more impressive...

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The television set has to be the most loved device in the house. After all, how many hours do you spend in front of the toaster each day? Despite all of that adoration, though, the boob tube no longer corners the market when it comes to audiovisual excitement. Thanks to advancements in online multimedia delivery, services such as YouTube, Picasa and iTunes also offer a lot of Web-based entertainment to get you through the wee hours of the morning. Still, no matter how much you can contort your body, sitting in an office chair is definitely not a

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The first of the new 2009 camcorders are finally hitting stores. Unlike the onslaught of low-priced (sub $200) video capture devices like the entry-level Flip Mino, models such as the GZ-MG670 have critical things like zoom lenses, better picture quality, bigger LCD screens and tons of others creature comforts that make them at least twice as expensive - but still much better deals in our view. Take the just released MG670 for example: It has a 35x optical zoom, a 2.7-inch widescreen LCD and 80GB storage (19 hours at best 720 x 480 pixel quality). Compare this to a Flip Mino with no zoom, a poor 1.5-inch screen and 640 x 480 clip quality. Basically, there is no comparison. However, the Flip and its brethren are extremely compact, and made for video sharing on YouTube. Both are features millions want and use every day. Until last year mainstream camcorder manufacturers didn't know sharing existed but that changed with the JVC GZ-MS100, a relatively affordable edition with YouTube uploading built into the software. Now JVC has introduced its newest models with YouTube and iTunes upload capability. As for size, it's definitely bigger than a Flip but hardly a TV station camera. Now is the MG670 worth it - and does it make sharing the breeze it's supposed to be? Let's start shootin.

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Today we have PowerColors version of the card. To date we've only had one HD 4830 come through the door and that card managed to set the bar high for the model. You have to wonder, is PowerColor going to come within arm's reach of the bar, or hop straight over it? There's ultimately only one way to find out, so let's have a look at what the company has done with the package before we have a closer look at the card and then its performance. From there we will wrap it all up and hopefully the PowerColor card can offer us something that we didn't get from the MSI one which managed to impress.

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Trying to find a air cooling heatsink for our video cards that not only cools well but is small enough to fit into our cases and on our motherboard without taking up 3+ slots, has become a complete nightmare. As video cards get bigger and faster, most think that the cooler that cools these cards should also be massive in size. Either it adds a lot of extra unneeded weight to our video cards or these coolers take up extra valuable PCI slots that we may need.

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The rear of the box gives us a full compatibility list which takes in much of the GeForce 6, 7 and 8 series (apart from certain high-end GeForce 8800 parts), and a handful of ATI cards from the Radeon X1800 and X1900 series down to the later Radeon HD 3850 part. The cooler's specifications are all noted here, as we can see that the device is constructed from copper and aluminium (as you'd expect), while also featuring an 80mm fan, with the cooler as a whole weighing a little over 230 grams.

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Today I will be looking at the P6T, Asus' basic mainstream X58 motherboard. As with other Asus Intel motherboard series, the P6T falls just under the Deluxe model, and is a full-featured but more affordable board. The P6T supports 3-way SLI and 3-way CrossFireX, triple-channel memory, and all of the other goodies provided by the X58 chipset.

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Today Noctua has sent us the NH-U9B CPU cooler for testing along with a matching optional fan to allow for dual fan testing. The Noctua NH-U9B is a scaled down version of the NH-U12P that we reviewed some time ago. The major difference with these two coolers is that this is a 92mm fan cooled version for HTPC, or possibly even some SFF cases. This four heat-pipe cooler shows promise from what I have read in reviews of other products, as well as word of mouth from forum members and highly experienced people like Chris. I know, technically the NH-U9B shouldn't compete with its larger brother in temperatures, but Noctua pride themselves on quiet solutions to CPU cooling. With this in mind, I would hope this cooler is in fact quiet and can still hold its own footing battling temperatures. It is time we get to opening up Noctua's NH-U9B and see if everything I have been lead to believe is true.

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Super Talent continues to upgraded their look, this reviewer believes the gold needs to go, I understand the reference of it, the aesthetics just aren't there. The heatspreaders are ribbed Aluminum with risers coming off the top. While we at VL have never been able to prove the addition of heatspreaders are of value, I suppose its better to have them then not, just in case you know . Super Talent, like most manufacturers today, are RoHS compliant with their chips, which basically means youcan eat them and not die from led poisoning etc... The packaging ofthe Super Talent Extreme Performance memory modules is that of simplicity with little fanfare other then a short paragraph on the back of what denotes Extreme Performance in Super Talents dictionary.

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ASRock has been known to us here at TweakTown as producing a more rounded board aimed at the mainstream and value end of the spectrum. Never would we consider putting this motherboard maker into the hardcore and overclocking segments that ASUS, MSI and GIGABYTE has managed to push into, yet ASRock for all their trying are aiming for the top. And why not! Today's motherboard market is cut throat. To survive you need to either have a unique product or to produce a mainstream product at the cheapest price. ASRock hasn't produced anything unique, but they are able to keep prices down. The ASRock X58 SuperComputer aimed towards the mainstream and extreme users comes to us at a price of $294.99 USD from Newegg and at this price it's one of the cheapest X58 boards out there. But how does it perform compared to the likes of ASUS and MSI? - Let's find out.

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In early January we had delivered Linux Solid-State Drive Benchmarks of an OCZ Core Series V2 SSD, which was a low-cost low-capacity single-cell drive. The increased performance and decreased power consumption compared to a 5400RPM Serial ATA 2.0 hard drive was nice for a netbook, but how are the higher-end solid-state drives performing? In this article, we have a high-performance Intel X25-E Extreme SSD on a System76 notebook running Ubuntu Linux.

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While pricey gaming rigs from the likes of Alienware and HP's Voodoo unit often grab headlines, these machines are well out of reach for most consumers. Thank goodness for systems like Dell's affordable and stylish XPS 625, which demonstrates that you can still get solid gaming performance for around a thousand dollars. This desktop strips away most frivolities-after all, liquid cooling systems and tool-less interiors are agreeable but expensive perks-and just sticks to the essential hardware necessary to run the latest games with aplomb. And, as an added bonus, it looks pretty slick to boot.

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QNAP is making its presence felt in the NAS industry with solutions for everyone. The QNAP TS-209 Pro II fits the bill for anyone looking for a small, flexible and powerful NAS. It provides 2 drives configurable as a bunch of disks, RAID 0 or 1 and offer a download management interface and doubles as a webserver, media & iTunes servers.

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What we are going to be looking at today is the new Delta V3 CPU water block from a fairly new company to the USA enthusiast community, XSPC. These guys have been around for several years over in Europe and have been doing fairly well and have been improving their products every year. I'm really excited to give their new block a try and see just how well it stands up to the performance of my current favorite water block from Swiftech.

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*One of Cooler Masters lastest offerings is the Hyper N520 CPU cooler. With the promise being able use the Hyper N520 on most recent motherboards, even the LGA1366 sockets, the Hyper N520 looks like it could be another high performance HSF from Cooler Master. However, we won't know until we toss it on our test bench and see how it compares to other coolers. Stick with us and check out the results.

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iPods are great music players, but there are also other options. The Sansa Fuze is an iPod nano competitor. The Fuze has an FM radio and a built-in voice recorder; two features that the nano lacks, so we decided to take a look and see how the Fuze stacks up against the iPod and other portable music players.

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The past few weeks have been a pleasure to use the ASUS N10Jc-A1 Netbook as toting around a 17 screen laptop has really become a chore over the years. Never again will I need to walk out of the house with a clunky laptop when I can just grab a 3-4 pound netbook. The ability to take an inexpensive, fully functional PC on the road is only part of what is making the netbook market explode right now. The other part is the state of the economy. Given the current recession, consumers are looking for more affordable ways to get an upgrade or satisfy their electronics addiction. The performance of the ASUS N10Jc-A1 was actually a little more than I expected...

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As more and more people design wireless home networks, the question becomes one of what to do with your older wireless and wired systems. This has become even more prominent with the increase in the number of inexpensive 300Mbps N specification routers and access points available. Newer laptops and netbooks do come with N wireless cards, but many devices that are less than a year old do not. Well, TRENDnet has an answer for you in the form of its TEW-645UB High Power Wireless N USB adapter. The TEW-645UB boasts up to twice the range of traditional N USB adapters; with up to eight times the range of standard g adapters. Speed is also a feature of the TEW-645UB with maximum theoretical speeds of up to 300Mbps. Will the TEW-645UB be able to deliver on its promises? - It looks great on paper, but let's see if it can perform in the real world.

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Now a days video cards are pretty much follow a reference design, nothing that stands out from one to another manufacturer when it comes to actual card itself. But where manufacturers differ on their video cards is the type of cooling they use on their particular video cards. HIS has always been one of the fore runners on using an aftermarket type of GPU cooler's for their video cards. We at Bjorn3d going to look at such a video card that uses an aftermarket GPU cooler, and for its price range should provide the much needed horsepower we need to play today's most demanding games. We going to be looking at a HIS iSilence ICEQ 4+ 4670 1 gig video card.

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I hope you all had a good weekend. It's been quite a while since Auzentech's first design based around Creative's Xi-Fi chip, the X-Fi Prelude, hit the market, and today we take a look at the successor to this part, the X-Fi Forte. Boasting a low-profile, PCI Express design and a full set of driver functionality including support for Dolby Digital and DTS encoding, can it carve a niche for itself as the best discrete sound card on the market?

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Consumers are looking for quality and performance at a price that won't break the bank, and today we have a power supply that promises just such an enticing combination. We're looking at the Tuniq Potency 750w, a unit that looks sharp and is priced very well in a competitive market segment.

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PC-based TV tuners are nothing new. For years, we've seen tuners of all kinds pass through the labs from a variety of manufacturers. ATSC tuners are a bit newer, but we've worked with those for a few years as well. An ATSC Tuner built on to a PCI Express video card, well, that is new for us. Today we'll be looking at the ATI All-In-Wonder HD. The card we'll be reviewing is an ATI/AMD reference card and when shopping around, you'll most likely find a version from one of AMD's board partners. As the name implies, the card is designed with HD in mind, and while Over-the-Air (OTA) ATSC tuners have been released by ATI before, the AIW HD is a step forward in integration.

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Arctic Silver 5 has long been hailed as the king of thermal compounds but it seems the king is finally dead. The GELID GC-1 trumps the AS5 in a couple of aspects. Letting the temperatures speak for themselves, the GC-1 does a much better job at conducting heat (or maybe, not impeding it as much). There is a caveat here, however, as the delta temperatures were somewhat close. With that said, the GC-1 did have a smaller delta between the idle and load temperatures in every test.

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Taiwanese manufacturer Silicon Power was kind to send to us three 1GB memory modules declared at DDR3-1333 with CL9 latencies. This type of memory can be considered as budget solution so we weren't surprised with declaration and absence of coolers. Silicon Power used blue coloured PCB and chips signed by ELIXIR. Full specification goes like this: 1333 (667MHz) CL 9-10-10-25, which is by our humble opinion very loosely set timings that leave space for tightening.

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Today we have a look at what is dubbed as a power saving motherboard that is also capable of above average performance. The Asus P5Q3 Deluxe/WiFi-AP @n (what a long model name) is an Intel P45 chipset based motherboard with DDR3 memory and ATi's CrossFireX technology support. This variant of the P5Q3 Deluxe motherboard comes bundled with WiFi hardware, hence the extra long model name.

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In the $300 price segment, the Sapphire Radeon HD 4850x2 can't be accused of bringing a knife to a gunfight; with 1600 Stream processors, 2GB of GDDR3 memory running at 993MHz, and two GPU's clocked at 625MHz all packed on the massive 11 1/4 single PCI-Express circuit board, the HD 4850 X2 is ready to go against NVIDIA's GeForce GTX280, as well as today's most popular games. Let's take a look and see what Sapphire brings to the table in their HD 4850 X2...

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Hot on the trail of their very impressive new Xonar sound cards, ASUS have just sent me some wireless headphones. Up until this point I was not aware that ASUS were in the headphone business, but with so many users, particularly gamers, needing a personal audio solution and also taking into account the trend towards wireless devices, it makes sense to see an offering in this category by arguably one of the largest manufacturers in the game. Offering an easily accessible retail price and a simple software-free installation, it will be interesting to see what ASUS have come up with in what will be my first ever headphones review for TweakTown.