March 2011

by Rafael Hernandez on March 28, 2011 · 0 comments

When a company becomes known for certain product lines it’s always weird when they come up with something new. The Polaris 120 is Swiftech’s attempt at a higher end air cooling solution which is somewhat odd for a company that’s well known for their high end liquid cooling gear. You’ll come to find their design […]

Read more Swiftech Polaris 120 marks some weird new territory

by Rafael Hernandez on March 28, 2011 · 0 comments

Getting the best out of your storage system means steering clear of on-board solutions and going with an add-on card that lets you harness the power of a much speedier interface. The LSI MegaRAID 9265-8i supports Serial Attached SCSI setups and 6Gb/s SATA drives in very handy RAID configurations across a nice and wide PCI […]

Read more LSI MegaRAID 9265-8i is no performance slouch

by Rafael Hernandez on March 22, 2011 · 0 comments

That brand new mini PC you have planned probably won’t accept a tower cooler design and, unfortunately, the low profile cooler market isn’t exactly large so your options are limited. Thankfully the Arctic Cooling Freezer 11 is around with its focus on low-noise operation and taking up as little space as possible. Its two heatpipes aren’t […]

Read more Arctic Cooling Freezer 11 keeps things compact

by Rafael Hernandez on March 22, 2011 · 0 comments

If you weren’t already aware that a power supply can effect how much energy your system draws well become acquainted since it can be a serious drain on the pocket especially if you’re a frequent gamer or leave your system(s) on. The Amacrox Free Earth 88PLUS touts up to 88% efficiency which means less power is being wasted […]

Read more Amacrox Free Earth 88PLUS trumps your piddly 80percent efficiency

by Rafael Hernandez on March 18, 2011 · 0 comments

Multi-GPU setups are becoming quite a bit more palatable with the improvement of driver support and the possibility of combining two “inexpensive” mid-range cards two out perform a more expensive single high end card. The Palit GeForce GTX 550 Ti is clad in some seriously clashing colors but once it’s paired up with its sibling they […]

Read more Palit GeForce GTX 550 Ti SLI redefines the mid-range performance concept

by Rafael Hernandez on March 18, 2011 · 0 comments

If you’re any sort of power user you’ve come to realize that air-cooled heatsinks can’t always handle the heat load you like to throw at your PC’s processing elements so you’re going to have to step up your cooling solutions. Universal water cooling blocks are a cheaper way to get your graphics chip cooled efficiently […]

Read more GPU Waterblocks vie for your cooling dollars

by Rafael Hernandez on March 17, 2011 · 0 comments

The trend has been to come up with a completely new case design and market it as the greatest thing since sliced bread but it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense when you have a design that already works well. Antec’s Six Hundred V2 works on that principle by adding a hot-swap bay up […]

Read more Antec Six Hundred V2 touts improvements for your system building pleasure

by Rafael Hernandez on March 17, 2011 · 0 comments

If you don’t know of the tremendous speed benefits a solid state drive can bring to your PC you’ve probably been living under a rock. While the first generation of drives showed impressive capabilities the latest round of drives being shipped are tearing up the performance charts spearheaded by the Intel 510 series of SSDs […]

Read more Intel 510 250GB SSD shortens your waiting time

by Rafael Hernandez on March 15, 2011 · 0 comments

It’s a wonderful thing to see such attention to detail and a keen need for over the top cooling which some manufacturers seem to want to cram into their coolers. Thermalright’s Shaman GPU heatsink piles on 8 heatpipes that should instantly clue you in on the seriousness of this design but they take things even […]

Read more Thermalright Shaman takes a bit of the brute force approach to cooling

by Rafael Hernandez on March 15, 2011 · 0 comments

The high end single GPU realm has pumped out a number of designs over the years that tout amazing performance but do a real number on their coolers which reduces the amount of tweaking overhead you have to play with. The ASUS ENGTX580 and EAH6970 DirectCU II graphics cards take up 3 slots with its […]

Read more ASUS ENGTX580 and EAH6970 DirectCU II run comfortably at full load

by Rafael Hernandez on March 10, 2011 · 0 comments

Computer hardware manufacturers tend to overstate things when it comes to naming their products so any adjective is fair play and the more grandiose it is the better. Unfortunately the Nexus Prominent 5 doesn’t match up to its name at all which is difficult when your case is a solid black design but it does […]

Read more Nexus Prominent 5 is anything but