Thursday Reviews

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It has been a long time since I last reviewed a Logitech product. CES has come and gone and with the show brought some interesting items. One such item that Logitech was showing was the diNovo Mini which is targeted to media center PCs like those provided by MythTV. The diNovo Mini was released a few weeks ago and it is the spotlight in this review.

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What happens when you need a full size case for a new build? Maybe you want the extra space for additional cooling or hardware support. Look no futher than the Thermaltake Armor VA8003BWS. We already know that Thermaltake is a big player in the cases and modding market. This case certainly fits its name. It is big, heavy, and tough.

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Honeywell produces many different types of products in the consumer and enterprise market. It was just some time ago that SOYO partnered with Honeywell to produce a new line of consumer electronics and out of that agreement comes the newest LCD monitor from Honeywell: The ARIUS 22" HWLM2216. ASE Labs is proud to be the first site to review this monitor.

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It has been almost five years since I reviewed a Corsair product. In that time, ASE Labs and the industry have evolved. Five years ago it was DDR that was the memory of choice and DDR2 wasn't even on enthusiast's tongues. Fast forward to 2008 and we've got DDR3 just coming on the market. DDR2 is still alive and is the king of value right now. Corsair's 4GB XMS2 PC2-6400 kit is the subject for review.

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There are quite a few products available nowadays that allow you to display and capture over-the-air High Definition television content to your home computer or laptop. While the number of choices are plentiful, most of them are designed for those outside the confines of the United States. The reason for this is simple; the US tends to lag far behind other parts of the world when it comes to transmitting high-def signals over the air. With the inevitable transition toward digital broadcasting due to federal laws getting ready to take place early next year, this trend is finally changing. With this thought in mind, AutumnWave has come forward to address this new market need. They are a US based company founded in 2005 and at the time of this writing, their entire consumer product line is designed for mobile television devices.

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If you've got a Home Theater PC (HTPC), you know how awkward it can be keeping a full-sized keyboard lying around your living room. Logitech feels your pain, and has come up with a miniature wireless keyboard that doesn't take up much space but offers full control over any PC from up to 30 feet away. Its touchpad is a bit sensitive and you won't be typing a term paper on it, but for 99% of HTPC control tasks the diNovo Mini works wonderfully and is one of the most well-designed controllers we've ever tested. If you have a Playstation 3, the diNovo Mini works well with that system too.

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Like other Crucial Ballistix Tracer memory the Crucial Ballistix Red PC2-6400 4GB Memory Kit looks amazing, compatible, reliable, stable and overclockable. Crucial has always impressed me with their prompt service and memory support. Of all the memory I've reviewed it's by far the most compatible, which is fundamental when choosing memory.

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Today I will reviewing the Thermaltake Silent Water and am curious to know what has changed since my Aquarius III review in 2005 and indeed much has changed. Installation and ease of use has really been improved and is worlds apart since the Aquarius III. It no longer is complex as it was in the past.

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CPU cooling has always been important for the overclocker, but due to dual and quad cores it's becoming increasingly important for the casual user too. Water cooling and phase change are both great ways of cooling a CPU; however the extremes of these methods are both very expensive and can be rather risky. This is the reason why Air Cooling is still used today, though don't label it as boring, air cooling has changed dramatically over the past 3 years. Today I will be looking at the Xigmatek HDT-S1283 which features anti-vibration rubber and a 120mm 'quiet' fan. So lets take this cooler out for a spin and see how well it performs....

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The release of the video enabled iPod has been wonderful for travelers. However, sometimes one may want to watch the video on their iPod on a full screen. Luckily, the USBFever people have the solution for this situation. The iPod AV Cable allows one to use the iPod Video to play videos on any RCA composite enable monitor. With this cable, you can hold a video stores worth of movies in your palm and enjoy them on a TV or monitor. Unfortunately, Apple has modified the video out on the newer iPod Classic and third gen iPod Nano, so this cable is unable to output video with these iPods.

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The Thermaltake DuOrb CPU cooler is by far one of the most interesting looking CPU coolers on the market today. With a true Dual-Flow design it uses the system air flow to cool down surrounding temperatures and helps dissipate the heat of CPU, RAM, VRM, North Bridge, and the back of VGA card. The Thermaltake DuOrb CPU cooler gets testing on an Intel Core 2 Quad today, so read on to see if this new offering from Thermaltake can live up to its heritage.

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Several years ago in a thread posted within a storage section of a popular forum, I learned of the fabled RAM Drive. This was several years before the GIGABYTE product of the same name, back when using memory as a storage device was more of a fable, or story of myth. At the time, no one had ever actually seen a RAM Drive, or at least not anyone tooling around in forums. This wasn't because they didn't exist, it is just that they cost more than a Honda Civic. Today we will be looking at the future of hard drives. Mechanical is on its way out, and with it rotational latency. Moving at the speed of electrons is in, near instant access times and faster loading screens are on the way.

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Does that processor of yours that you just bought not too long ago seem like it is lacking in power trying to run the latest games and applications? Many people will answer yes to this question, and many PC enthusiasts will turn to overclocking in order to extend the performance life of their computer. With the added performance that is gained by overclocking, another gain is seen as well; heat. In order to keep your freshly overclocked CPU cool under its new settings, looking into aftermarket coolers should be your next step. OEM cooling solutions typically work great for stock speeds and maybe even a slight overclock, but for those users looking to gain the most from their CPU, an aftermarket cooler is definitely in order. Luckily, Arctic Cooling has provided us with their Freezer 7 Pro for Socket 775 processors to see how it holds up to the extra heat gained from overclocking.

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When AMD introduced the 3850 graphics card, it came bundled with 256MB of RAM which is a bit on the lower side for games that come out nowadays. Granted the 3850 is targeted as a mid-range card, it still pumps out pretty decent performance so a higher frame buffer could help. Today we look at the 3850 solution from AMD's biggest partner when it comes to graphics cards- the Sapphire HD3850 card with a frame buffer of 512MB.

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Overclocking these days is great; while many years ago it used to be reserved for only the most knowledgeable of computer enthusiasts, these days with so many software programs out there, overclocking can literally be done by anyone. The overclocking card of choice today is the 9800 GTX which has been out for just over a week. While out of the box the performance is pretty good, if we can get a bit more for nothing then we're not exactly going to complain. Since we already know about the 9800 GTX, let's just get stuck straight into the test system setup and have a look at the clocks we achieved.

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The drive seems to be a Western Digital AV GP hard drive, AV being Audio Visual, GP being Green Power. One spec conspicuously absent was drive rotational speed. Since Western Digital seems to have gone out of their way to omit this I would imagine that the drive is spinning at something less than 7200 RPM. Will this have a major impact on performance? The answer to that question is coming up soon in a later section.