Thursday Reviews

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ASE Labs has always explained the benefits of having redundant storage and backups. There are series of articles devoted to each technology. Sans Digital is a big player in RAID enclosures and their latest model, the MobileSTOR MS2UTN+ delivers USB2 and eSATA support to a 2 disk array of your choosing. This combines the best of both world for data backup and redundancy. It really is an excellent product.

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OCZ may be best known for their memory products such as low latency and high speed RAM, but they also provide other products with enhanced speed and performance. Their line of cooling products as well as flash memory provide excellent performance in today's market. Today, ASE Labs has the OCZ Rally2 Turbo 4GB USB flash drive for review. Even flash can be dual channel.

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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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Recently we received two DDR3 kits, one from OCZ Technology and one from Patriot Memory. The kit from OCZ was their 4GB DDR3 12800 (DDR3 1600) Platinum Enhance Bandwidth product and Patriot sent us their 2GB Viper DDR3 15000 (DDR3 1866) kit. Both of these products were used in our recent review of the ASUS P5E3 Premium motherboard. We saw some rather interesting phenomena with both of these memory kits in that review so we have decided to review both of these kits comparatively in much more detail using the same test rig. Our goal is not only to give you a complete review of these two memory products, but to also answer the questions we alluded to in the beginning of this introduction.

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The QX9770 being reviewed today is Intel's latest Socket 775 Quad-Core which not only boasts the smaller 45nm manufacturing process as the QX9650, but it also ups the stock core speed by 200Mhz to 3.2Ghz, cranks up the FSB from 1333Mhz to a screaming 1600Mhz, and for good measure slaps on another 4MB of on die cache to keep all cores fed properly.

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Getting your hands on this device should solve your problems when it comes to flexible mobile storage with fail-safe protection. This is Enhance Technology's T4H CR. The unit comprises a very nicely built enclosure with handles for easy mobility, four HDD eSATA bays, a built-in LCD display for setup and configuration, and last but most certainly not least, a RAID controller with levels 0, 0+1 and 5. An independent PSU and rear mounted case fan is also resident. Before we get into the benchmarking side of things, let's perform a close physical inspection of the unit itself to get the full gist of what's on offer.

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Some organizations-or people-need serious storage. Sometimes a simple server running Windows 2003 or Linux might not be sufficient, in terms of storage space, redundancy, or cost for all of these. The Buffalo TeraStation Pro II series of network-attached storage devices aims to please users and administrators who need a large amount of redundant storage, automatic backups to other units, gigabit networking, and the ability to increase the capacity. ThinkComputers takes a look at the one terabyte rackmount version in this review.

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Antec is never stopping with the introduction of new cases. If seems like every 3 months or so there is a new case to drool over. That new case today is the tiny brother case of the P180 which is simply labeled the P180 Mini. The Mini carries many of the features of the P180 but in a smaller shell. The only thing that is lacking is the spacing of the P180. But the compartments and cable management systems remain in place. But what the Mini has over the regular size P180 is lighter weight and somewhat portability. It is definitely one for the person that is lacking room to house a bigger size tower but is it one for the LAN goers? This is what we will find out.

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While all of the Solaris excitement at Phoronix as of late has been around Solaris Express Developer 1/08 and the forthcoming release of OpenSolaris 2008.05, today Sun Microsystems has announced the immediate release of Solaris 10 5/08. This update to their Solaris OS includes major enhancements for those running Intel hardware, a number of new features, updated applications, the introduction of Solaris OnDemand, and updated drivers.

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With so many computer 2.1 speaker systems on the market today, it's easy to be turned off from anything starting at under $100. But at the Consumer Electronics show earlier this year, the buzz was all about Edifiers new E3350 lifestyle speaker systems. People were assuming that with such rich sounds, and well built speakers, they would be in the $250 or higher price range. Coming in at just $99.99, the new E3350 speaker system combines award winning design with practical affordability.

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Cosmos S (internally called RC-1100 by Cooler Master) is a big full-tower case featuring aluminum body, ten 5 ¼ bays, a big 200-mm side fan and several other features. Let's take an in-depth on this new case from Cooler Master.

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Mushkin's new XP-800AP power supply offers enough power for even the most demanding rigs. The shiny black paint looks great and the connectors are numerous. One special feature is Rail Fusion which lets the user select if the whole PSU should run with one big rail or in Quad Rail mode.

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* One of the holy grails of any PC enthusiast is to have a completely silent rig, or at least, quiet enough so that it doesn't disturb the game we're playing or the movie we're watching. This article is a collection of helpful information that should help those who don't want their conversation drowned out by rumbling hard disks or whirring fans.

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Even though the AMD Unified Video Decoder can offload CPU usage in HD playback by putting the work on the graphics processing unit, if you're running multiple tasks during HD playback, the system does struggle if it doesn't have the horse power. We don't do it often, but at times we'll be converting files into DivX for sharing, and the CPU is completely maxed out, causing dropped frames during HD playback. For the test files we used, the X3 8750 had no problems with HD and file conversion.

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The HIS HD3850 IceQ Turbo 512MB AGP Video Card comes action packed with powerful technology that will not let you down! And as much as we love a good hardware war, it's unfortunate that Nvidia is no longer building highend AGP cards for us to compare these results. With that said the question must be asked, is this the end of AGP?...

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Quote: When it comes to performance the AMD Phenom X3 8750 performed much faster than the AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ and actually beat out the AMD Phenom X4 9600 (Running the TLB Patch) in a number of benchmarks. It was also able to perform better than the Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 and Core 2 Duo E6750 as seen in the benchmarks. Intel still has the lead when overclocking, but AMD hasn't been marketing the Phenom X3 series as enthusiasts parts. With that said, we still managed to get another 500MHz out of the Phenom X3 8750 by overclocking just the bus frequency...

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'Thinking that having more cores would better? That is exactly what AMD is thinking. Today, AMD is once again being the first one on the market releasing the triple-core processor with their Phenom X3 8750. Does this processor can deliver a better performance than the dual-core processors, how does it compares to the quad core processors? Read our review and find out....'

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While the X4 is the more costly option (though in today's world the cost of a $250 processor isn't really that expensive), AMD is going to start shipping a cheaper option based on the same K10 architecture, and yes it keeps the Phenom branding, it's a direct descendant of the X4, but with a few modifications. On the chopping block today we have the new kid on the block designed to take over where the Athlon 64 X2's price range is set. Help us welcome to the Phenom family the triple core X3. How well does it perform? Stick around while we find out!

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the svelte and feature laden ThinkPad X300. While Apple had to make a number of compromises on the Air to get it down to its remarkable size, Lenovo took the opposite approach and have crammed as many features as possible - including an optical drive - into the X300. It's an expensive notebook because, unlike the Air, it comes with a solid-state 64GB hard drive standard. As of the time of this review, the Lenovo ThinkPad X300 is priced from $3000 USD.

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LiveWires T1 is the name of some new custom earphones that cost about half of its main rivals. They are built exactly to fit your ear with additional customization options like colors. These in-ears use two balanced armatures and play in a completely different league compared to whats usually available in this price segment.

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Quote: While we have reservations about any drive named after a fruit, Jason Dumbaugh takes a look at the SimpleTech 2.5 inch Signature Mini Portable drive weighing in at 250GB. Nicknamed the Kiwi this little storage monster comes loaded with some very useful software that covers backup of your PC to the drive as well as to an online source. We test this drive to show you if its a speed demon, a snail, or somewhere in between.

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Quote: First and foremost, if you're playing at extreme resolutions of 2560x1600 a single ATI Radeon HD 3870 is clearly not going to cut it. It is able to provide playable frame rates in some situations but is bested by the Nvidia 8800 GTS in most of those same situations. When it comes to performance compared to a standard 3870 with 512MB, our 1GB version really didn't show much improvement in our short battery of test, but I believe that the performance is being held back more by the actual GPU than an increase in memory bandwidth and size can help. Our testing at such a high resolution should have given the Diamond 3870 1GB a chance to shine...

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Tuniq is a performance chassis and power supply purveyor subsidiary of cooling, lighting, and chassis maker Sunbeamtech. Tuniq is in the fashion business of the computer industry, making cases, power supplies, and other products with style and durability in mind in addition to performance. ThinkComputers received its Ensemble 1200W power supply, a sleek powerhouse which operates at a minimum efficiency of 82.3%, and an average efficiency of 86%. Read on for the review...

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The more I play with this thing, the more I'm reminded of the Phasers that they used in Star Trek; it's uncanny. I can almost pretend I'm Patrick Stewart dashing about in a well fitted uniform, barking out orders to my number one in a fine English accent. It feels very natural to hold in the hand, and obviously Logitech have spent a good chunk of money on the ergonomics of this thing alone. It's not often one has to pick up a mouse and wave it around, and they have certainly made sure that it feels pretty natural to do it.

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Choosing a good keyboard and mouse is one of the most difficult choices I ever make and in so being I rarely switch my input devices. Using the MX5500 Revolution has made me quickly forget my old trusty mouse and keyboard. The keyboard is comfortable, responsive and customizable. The MX Revolution mouse is comfortable and precise and like the keyboard very customizable. The added bonus of Bluetooth wireless connectivity eliminates cables and has not showed flaky connectivity of Bluetooth units in the past.

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Quote: The Western Digital VelociRaptor was a blast to test since it's not every day something this new and innovative comes across the test bench. The Western Digital VelociRaptor is hands down the fastest single hard drive we have ever tested and it is hard to believe that the firmware is still being improved. It will be exciting to see how much more performance Western Digital will be able to get out of the VelociRaptor before it hits retail stores in May. As it stands right now having a burst speed of over 250 MB/s and a sustained read speed pushing over 100 MB/s is enough to put a smile on our face. Just imagine running RAID 0 with a pair of these!

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Now the current trend is focusing on energy more than ever, regardless whether to cut costs at the end of the month or the simple knowledge that over half of the United State's energy is produced from coal, therefore lower energy consumption translates into less coal pollution. When many consumers are penny pinching wherever they can, companies like Gigabyte and ASUS have decided to begin marketing energy saving motherboards not to a niche market, but to the masses.

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Noctua has gone and improved on an old favorite. The U12P offers some improvements that were most needed over its predecessor, the NH-U12. These improvements range from better performance to easier mounting. And if that isn't enough how about a better fan included in the package. If you can recall, the original cooler was a big hit with enthusiasts all over. With these tweaks who knows what the future has for those of us wanting it all from the newest CPU. Does the U12P have what it take to beat our reigning king, the Thermalright Ultra-120? Read on to find out.

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Zotac is a new nVidia partner- at least for us. Its a new brand in the region and this is the first product we have received from them which is an overclocked 9800GTX card. Considering how cool the 9800GTX runs, this should work out quite nicely. Lets find out how the AMPed version of Zotac compares to the stock 9800GTX and other cards.