Wed Reviews

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SOYO was established in 1999 at the time when computer hardware was easy to list off in your head. Their Dragon series of motherboards were excellent and many enthusiasts employed their boards for computer builds. Today, SOYO is a vastly different company. Gone are the motherboards but SOYO has reinvented itself and now produces displays. They have a partnership with Honeywell for dual branding. Today, we are looking at the Topaz S 24" LCD Widescreen Monitor.

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Thermaltake is a company that is very well know to the enthusiast computer builder community. They provide many great products including a line of heavy (as in weight) power supplies, modding, cooling, and cases. ThermalTake was founded in 1999 and has really grown every since. They have always put out good looking products and the SopranoRS 101 is no different. Let's take a closer look.

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The SD2/8GB is an 8GB Class 2 SDHC memory card. Class 2 means that the card writes at (a minimum) of 2MB/s. This is the lowest speed class you can get in SDHC. Don't let that stand in your way; this is an 8GB card after all. Kingston offers a lifetime warranty on all its memory products. You don't have to worry about it breaking, but if it does, you are covered.

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enthusiasts know that water is inherently better than air when it comes to cooling our nuclear powered rigs. This is primarily due to water's capability to hold and transport more heat than air within the same volume of space. It is this property that has long allured users to take the plunge and stick water inside their machine regardless of the dangers. It is these same dangers that have kept water cooling on the fringe of mainstream acceptance. No one wants to deal with the reality of coming home to a dead machine only to realize the cause of the untimely demise was a leak in their water cooling loop. And so company after company has sought to solve this problem and devise a system so easy, a system so fool proof that it could rival the ease of air cooling while maintaining the benefits of water cooling. Not an easy feat to be sure. Enter Thermaltake, a company dedicated to cooling since 1999. With their vast amount of experience and R&D resources they stand ready to bri! ng water cooling to the mainstream.

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Well, Thermaltake has a solution for people like me and maybe someone like you as well. The Blac X is an external way of linking any SATA drive, 2.5 or 3.5, to your computer. But unlike the traditional method of opening up an enclosure, mounting a drive and then closing it all back up, the Blac X doesn't use an enclosure. Confused? Yeah, I would be too. But read the review and we will clear it all up for you.

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The SteelSeries Ikari Series mice, just being released not too long ago, are a perfect gaming addition for anyone looking to improve their gaming. With 15 months of research and development SteelSeries has been able to closely perfect the art of gaming mice for FPS as well as MMO/RTS gamers. This mouse offers up to 3,200 CPI and manual CPI adjustments for the perfect sensitivity. Wondering what CPI means? Check out the review to this as well as many other features of the Ikari Laser mouse.

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It has been a while since we have seen a new case from our friends at AeroCool, but they have come out swinging with the new M40 Small Form Factor Case. It feaures an LCD Display with temperature, Fan speed and Hard Drive activity indicator. It also has room for a pair of optical drives and perhaps the coolest feature of all is the two part chassis. Come on along a see what you think of this newest offering.

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The Origen AE Technology S21T HTPC Enclosure offers just about every feature that a consumer looks for in a HTPC case. The most prominent feature that stands out from the rest is the impressive 12.1 inch motorized TFT touch screen monitor. The S21T has several other great features as well, so let's dig in and see how the S21T does.

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We take a closer look at the fastest dual core CPU from Intel, the E8500, dubbed Wolfdale, is manufactured at 45nm which translates in low power usage and excellent potential for overclocking. We compare the performance of this newcomer to a 65nm Core 2 Duo and overclock past the limit using LN2. Read on to find out if we froze the Wolf!

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This is something that had to come out eventually - has Xandros picked up where the SCO Group left off? Well, let me put it this way. The single most effective way to defeat something that's offered for free it to find a way to make it better, then make a fortune doing it. In the past, Linspire and Xandros, among others, have tried this via various Wal-Mart sold Linux PCs and generally failed miserably at it. Then out of nowhere, comes another - Everex Linux PC - this time using common sense with Google branding power and make a fantastic go at it. Rather than convincing people that Windows-based PC hardware can be

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Since publishing our Linux review of the AMD Phenom 9500 on the Spider platform a month ago, we have continued in our investigation of this first AMD desktop quad-core processor that has been very problematic with Ubuntu 7.10 Linux. Fortunately though this support isn't stagnate and a better picture is painted when using the latest development builds of Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron with the Linux 2.6.24 kernel. Per reader requests, we have carried out additional benchmarks of the Phenom 9500 to compare its 32-bit and 64-bit Linux performance.