Monday Reviews

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Since ASE Labs is getting more and more into producing videos, it is time to start reviewing digital video cameras. The first such device is absolutely perfect for the Youtube crowd and has been making the rounds on the internet. The Flip Video Mino from Pure Digital promises web videos made with ease and they aren't kidding.

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A few months ago, I reviewed a DDR3 kit from Kingston that supported 1800MHz operation at fairly fast timings. It was criticized by some that the modules did not include XMP information to aid in easy system setup. Fast forward to the current market and the KHX14400D2K2/2GX delivers XMP support.

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Just a few weeks ago, the Radeon HD 4850 was released and with it came a huge boost of performance for the price. The 4870 is the highend version of the RV770 series of GPU released from AMD. Sapphire provided a card for this review and the Radeon HD 4870 is here.

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You are probably like most people when they go on vacation and use a digital camera with a few memory cards. It would be great if you didn't need a computer all the time to constantly backup your photos. The MS1U from Sans Digital is billed as a digital photo bank and it does just that. It takes a laptop (IDE) hard drive and converts it into portable storage for your memory cards.

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Quote: The Moneaul MonCaso 972S home theater PC case is something like an all-in-one solution for those looking to build a highly function, extremely attractive HTPC. You not only get a great case with plenty of top-notch features, but you also get a multi-function remote control and an integrated seven inch touchscreen to make interacting with your system enjoyable and convenient.

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*Patriot tries to make the choice very clear with one of the fastest memory kits currently on the market. Specially designed for the high end 790i chipset, the Viper PC3-16000 kit sizzles at a stock speed of DDR3-2000. You read that right, 2000MHz! It also weighs in at 2GB (2x1GB) with timings of 9-9-9-24. Sporting an nVidia inspired bright green paint job, there is no mistaking these sticks among the sea of RAM choices available. If you are looking for a memory kit that can help push your system to its limit, you'll definitely want to keep reading as HardwareLogic throws these Vipers on the test bench to see what life at 2000MHz is really like.

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This is just what Thermalright did with the IFX-14. The cooler consists of twin towers linked by a set of heat pipes. Now I am not going to give you all the features here in the introduction. But I will tell you the cooler does come with a little surprise. Something that no other cooler comes with. If you want to know what it is then you will have to continue reading.

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The Zalman ZM750-HP Power Supply passed testing and all my methods to melt it down. It's rated to 750 Watts and doesn't come up short in any power rail. If four 12v rails offering 20 amps each isn't enough, then consider Zalman's 850 or 1000 watt Heat Pipe models. Most users are going to find this PSU far more capable for their SLI based systems and endless drive arrays. It's a silent, clear winner from a name trusted by enthusiasts the world over. You can rest easy that the Zalman 750 Watt Heat Pipe Power Supply can fulfill its purpose.

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QNAP wowed ThinkComputers a while back with its TS-109 Pro NAS, a small, aluminum-cased, single-drive unit. QNAP has grown quite a bit since then, and recently released a larger unit for its small business and corporate users, the TS-409U. The TS-409U is a quadruple bay rackmount NAS with support for up to 4 TB of space in a variety of storage configurations, including RAID5 and RAID6. Its variety of server software, including a full LAMP stack and printer server, can provide usefulness and utility to users at all levels of technical know-how and work goals.

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The HD 4850 is the card that has put AMD/ATI back on the graphics card map over the past month. While the HD 3850 and HD 3870 were both good cards, a constant line-up of NVIDIA cards along with price drops meant that the aging technology was having trouble keeping up with cards not only in a similar price bracket, but cheaper again. The latest HD 4850 to come into the labs is from GIGABYTE and before we get stuck into the performance side of things, we will have a look at the package and what's inside as well as the card itself. So, let's not ramble on anymore and just get stuck into it.

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How often you wanted to watch movie on TV that was stored on your PC? How did you solve the problem? Have you burned it on DVD and watched it on DVD player? Or have you watched it through TV-out on graphics card? Whatever you did, we are sure that at some point something bothered you, or the picture quality was really bad, or perhaps you just wanted simpler solution.

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Akasa has taken the Mirage-62 case and has updated it using thick aluminum panels, adding air vents which also can be used for water cooling units and a stylish new front door. The mid-tower case features loads of space and some clever design choices to make it big enough for even the largest power supplies and longest graphics cards.

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Prestigio GeoVision 350 belongs to low-cost GPS navigation devices (we could say that it is cheapest) but its exterior doesn't give that impression. Casing and windshield cradle are nicely done without rough edges. They doesn't look cheap and don't give impression of low quality product. We don't have any complaints neither on functionality neither on mobility of windshield cradle. In package we found 12V charger (with adapter for car cigarette lighter), USB cable, external (additional) GPS antenna and manual.

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Just think, not too many years ago you had to look to floppy disks and cd burning to put files on something you could carry with you, either for class or work or even as storage. Then came the flash drive, pen drive, removeable media, usb drive, etc... It has many names. They started out large and eventually got smaller and smaller. Today, Bjorn3D is happy to present to you the worlds smallest pen drive........ with BLING. The Super Talent 24K Gold PICO. It's about the size of a quarter and yet can hold 8GBs of information and water proof to boot. But does it really work? It is so small, and yes, I will even submerge it in water. Scary!!

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Up on the review block today I've got a new product from our friends at OCZ Technology, it's the Alchemy Elixir Series Keyboard and it's advertised as a gaming peripheral but it's also a great all around keyboard as well. It features 10 Macro keys, 7 Internet keys and 8 Media keys along with the ability to switch modes between standard and your personalized gaming configurations with the touch of a button. This keyboard retails for $29.99, and at that price most people wouldn't expect much, as most other 'gaming' keyboards out there cost two to three times as much, but the Elixir will surprise you with its functionality, comfort and ease of use. It's a very nice keyboard really that works well, is well made and most anyone will be happy with, OCZ has brought quality, professional gaming keyboards down to budget level with the introduction of the Elixir Series of keyboards.

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As enthusiasts build high-end computers which require more and more power for the multiple processors, multiple graphics cards, and multiple hard drives in these rigs, power supply manufacturers, such as Cooler Master, churn out power supplies with increasingly higher wattage to handle these power-thirsty devices. Cooler Master sent ThinkComputers the next generation of its Real Power Pro series, the six-12V-railed 1250W monster with enough connectors and juice to power just about anything one could throw at it.

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The first chipset to have come out in the 7 series was the 780G, the first with the next generation in onboard graphics along with HT3 support for the Phenom processors. AMD really outdid themselves; not only was it future proof, it finally introduced a good onboard graphics accelerator. GIGABYTE has been one of the biggest producers of motherboards along with ASUS and MSI. And one thing is for certain with these three companies; above all else, if the chipset is good, you will find at least one board based on it. Today we are looking at the GIGABYTE GA-MA78GM-S2H motherboard. How does it stack up as a HTPC board? Let's have a good look.

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Intel's latest performance desktop chipset is now the X48 Express, but there still is life left in the X38 Express, which was released late last year. The Intel X38 and X48 Chipsets share many of the same features including support for the latest dual-core and quad-core Intel processors, DDR3 system memory support, and 2 x PCI Express 2.0 x16 interfaces with there being very few differences to the end-user between these chipsets. In addition, benchmarks we have delivered from different motherboards have shown the X48 has little to no performance improvements over the older Bearlake chipset. ASUS's X38 motherboards are still very much in the market place and today we happen to be looking at one of their workstation motherboards based around the X38. The motherboard we are looking at is the ASUS P5E64 WS Professional, which ships with all of the usual ASUS innovations in addition to having four PCI Express x16 slots.

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Laptops have become compact enough to tote along just about anywhere you go. Along with that compact size comes all the heat of modern processors, and the Mobile models generally run hotter than their Desktop counterparts. This heat still needs to be removed, or it'll build up and cause a thermal shut down and damage that expensive equipment.

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Since 1987, Elitegroup Computer Systems has been providing motherboards to the masses and now stands as the fourth largest manufacturer in the world. I will be taking a look at ECS' latest creation, the P45T-A, based on Intel's fantastic P45 Express chipset. The motherboard arrived at HardwareLogic's West Coast Lab and immediately demanded attention with its 1333 FSB, CrossFire support, eSATA, 8 channel audio and 16GB of DDR2 capacity. And since its from ECS, you know its affordable. Take a few minutes to check out this review as I throw the P45T-A motherboard on to my test bench for some serious benchmarking. How did it do? There's only one way to find out.

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These two things, though quite bad on their own, don't obscure the wall of pros that come hurling along with this chassis. Firstly, is the complete modularity, and secondly is the included hardware - being able to fit 11 hard drives which are cooled off the bat is incredible, especially when they're actively cooled. Couple this with the fact that this is one of so very few cases at this price point which are capable of holding an extended ATX system, and the fact that when the door works, the inbound airflow is filtered, the result becomes a very good deal, despite the flaws.

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While the GTX 280 might be the most powerful single cored graphics card on the market at the moment, it didn't seem to be greeted with welcomed arms. A high price tag and small to no gains over its older dual GPU brother, the 9800 GX2 meant that people didn't get all that excited about it. Today we're going to take the time to see what MSI have done to the card. We know they've decided to overclock the card, but we wonder if they've done anything else with it to let it stand out from the pack. While we haven't fallen head over heels for the GTX 280, there's no denying that it's a very fast single core card and it's difficult not to be impressed by the performance the single GPU puts out.

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For me, Windows Mobile has always been primarily focused on data access, rather than data creation or modification. The Touch excels in this regard. It's not a multimedia powerhouse, but it will get an acceptable job done for most of your basic needs. If HTC added a hardware keyboard and a standard audio port, I think this would be a perfect Windows Mobile device. For now, if you are looking for a small, attractive smartphone and you can put up with a less-than-ideal input solution, the Touch may be a great option for you.

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I do a lot of case reviews as the junior reviewer at Pro-Clockers. It doesn't bother me, because I've got a case fetish of sorts. In its own twisted way it works out fine for everyone involved. Over the years, I've owned big cases, small cases, weird cases and modded cases. To be honest, I change cases more than some men change shirts. The last few years, I settled in with the Antec Sonata II. It's a great case and did what I needed it to do. However, I changed it for the Aerocool AE Plus last month. Always a sucker for big fans, the Aerocool drew me in. After trying out the Sunbeamtech Quarterback, I switched again. My main rig is now happily housed in the slightly odd, yet highly functional Quarterback. Read on to see why I changed cases.

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There's really just no denying it: AMD has truly impressed us with the HD 4870. It easily rips through the latest games without ripping through the wallet and has really stirred things up in the market. If you're in the market for a powerful card this summer, you just can't go wrong with the AMD Radeon HD 4870.