Wed Reviews

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Honeywell makes products that fit nearly every market. Since they have a partnership with SOYO, they have also entered the computer peripheral consumer space. One of their first products to be released is the SecuraDrive. It is a 1.8" USB hard drive built for the security conscious.

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This is an editorial about my experiences with the Intel DX38BT motherboard. It is not a review, so please do not take it as such. There are no benchmarks and no testing. There was just annoyance. If you are looking for a review of the DX38BT, search on the web. ASE Labs will not be reviewing this board.

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Flash drives are really ubiquitous. If you look around your computer desk, you will probably find a few USB mass storage devices near your work area. They are a boon for taking documents from one computer to the next and are fast and simple to use. They replaced the floppy that the ZIP disk could not supplant. The one area that USB flash drives are lacking is the ability to boot. Even though many computer motherboards support USB booting, it is difficult to get the right combination. Using this guide, you will be able to make a bootable USB "hard drive."

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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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Last week we attend a small CeBIT preview for the press in Taiwan were MSI talked a bit about ECOlution, which is MSI's take on being more environmentally friendly among other things. Possibly the most exciting of the things shown in terms of what was easy to make out was their prototype CPU fan which uses a technology similar to a sterling engine which we told you about here. Now we've gotten around to uploading a short video we shot at the event which will give you a better idea of what it looks like in action. The noise you're hearing is actually from the fan itself, but MSI reassured us that this was only a prototype issue and that production fans should be quiet, due to different materials being used and a better manufacturing process being applied. This was of course far from the only thing on show and we've got pictures of a fair few other things to show you. First up we have a couple of pictures of MSI's EFI BIOS and it looks like a cracking way of access and changing all the BIOS options. Our Editor, Cameron Wilmot had a quick go as you can see from the picture below, although we weren't allowed to change any of the settings.

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The Tagan power supplies have continued to impress me. First their TG900-U95 900W power supply rated top notch and was the envy of many back in 2006. Then I had the chance to personally review the 1300watt power supply of the Tagan ITZ series and it just blew me away with the included features, strength, looks and scalability. The Tagan BZ series takes everything I loved about the ITZ series and improved upon it...

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Quote: Jason Dumbaugh takes the SimpleTech 160Gb portable drive for a test spin and shows you if this drive is worth your hard earned cash. With the growing usefulness of these small, large drives there is no reason not to own one. SimpleTech has a good selection of drives at varying sizes to meet your needs. How do these drives perform? Read our review to find out.

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Today we have the distinct pleasure of introducing the XFX's rendition of NVIDIA's 9600GT 512MB graphics solution. The model of the card we received for testing from XFX, the PV-T94P-YDF4, has the same specifications as NVIDIA's reference standard card. We have been assured by XFX that two other factory overclocked models will be available in the very near future. It has been our experience in testing a base model card such as this that often we're able to achieve an excellent overclock, in many cases even superior to the factory overclocked models. We'll soon see!

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The Logitech G15 ticks many boxes on the gaming keyboard requirements list, along with a few that are not even on it. You have the soothing orange backlight of the keys, and not distractingly illuminating the whole key either, just the letter in the center of the matt-black mini-monolith. This also makes it much easier to read the key in the dim darkness of your den. A nicely positioned LCD unit, while not completely necessary for gaming, does have some advantages. It is capable of displaying stats, windows info and media related activities. Four soft buttons underneath allow you to select an LCD option defined by a program.

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The NF-B9 is a 92mm fan that is very different from every other fan out there on the market today, it has teeth on the blade, well technically they are called Vortex Control Notches, but they look like teeth to me. Anyway, the NF-B9 also has beveled blade tips, and Noctua's own SC Drive system and SSO bearing to make for one very quiet fan that still can move quite a bit of air.

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Windows security is a big deal these days. It's hard to keep up with all of the viruses and spam and other malicious things which threaten Windows. Protection software can be expensive, too. On top of that cost, as much as 30% of system resources can be devoted to protecting against these threats, according to Yoggie, maker of the Yoggie Gatekeeper Pico. This tiny computer plugs into a Windows-based computer, and the driver offloads network traffic onto the device so it can be scanned for threats. Let's check it out...

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After taking a look at the Cooler Master Hyper 212 and Sphere CPU coolers, I am back to finish up the trifecta by putting the Hyper TX2 through our TECC system. The two previous coolers both suffered from Cooler Master's aging mounting system that requires you to remove the motherboard for all installations. On the TX2, a cooler costing half that of the previous two tested, surprisingly you do not have to remove the motherboard and mounting goes much easier. Let's dig in and see how the lowest priced cooler from the Cooler Master line-up performs against our previously tested heatsinks.

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As of Catalyst 8.3, a.k.a. The New Beginning a.k.a. The Big One a.k.a. The Humptyback Zinglebert, it's clear that CrossFireX has picked up where SLI left off. Right now, it's a better arrangement, with a lot of advantages not limited to performance. It's just that now there's even more reason for NVIDIA to improve SLI, and when they do, they're likely to start with a hardware advantage. When is this going to happen? AMD didn't include a slide on that subject.

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The looming arrival of solid-state hard drives (SSD) for notebooks seems like a rather exciting development at first blush. Unlike their mechanical counterparts, which have spindle motors, rotating platters and read/write heads, solid-state drives typically consist of flash memory chips and have no moving parts whatsoever. The benefits that these drivers offer compared to a mechanical drive are numerous, and include lower power consumption, improved performance, increased durability, less chance of data loss (no heads to crash into the platters), no noise and no heat output.

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During a recent trip to visit ATI we got a chance to see numerous AMD 780G motherboards and while we are finishing up our 780G review this should hold you over. AMD expects 780G based motherboards to be priced between $80-$120 with some manufacturers boards available this week and others later in the month. With the 780G and SB700 chipsets motherboard manufacturers can come up with some interesting designs and today we will be showing you what ASUS, ECS, Foxconn, Gigabyte, MSI, J&W and Jetway have developed...