iStarUSA is one of the companies that came to its senses and decided to offer an eSATA function to their hard drive docking station the xAGE-N99-SAU/US. So the only question that remains is just how close did they get their controller to the motherboard speeds? Read on and find out.

"The Sapphire HD5570 has to be taken in context to truly see how and where this product fits in ATI's current lineup of DirectX 11 videocards. The HD5570 is targeted towards the user that wants a small form factor card to insert into a small workstation or HTPC, but doesn't want to settle for the very basic performance of the HD5450."

Sapphire ATI Radeon HD5570 Videocard Review @ Tweaknews

Today we are unboxing the HIS Radeon HD 5450 1GB graphics card. This graphics card is aimed mostly at HTPC users with a passive cooling solution and the ability for Eyefinity with its VGA, DVI and Display Port connections. By offering a lot for the money, it’s going to be a big hit all around

PowerColor's brand new HD 5870 PCS+ comes with an overclock out of the box and an amazing cooling solution that makes the card quieter than any other card in this performance segment. For a price increase of only $10-$20 over the reference design this seems like a great deal.

AMD's clear goal at the moment is to finish rounding-off its HD 5000-series line-up in advance of NVIDIA's Fermi launch, and so far, it's doing a good job. It's continuing its success in this goal with the release of the $80 Radeon HD 5570, a card that's designed to offer stellar media capabilities along with reasonable gaming performance.

Hopefully one day soon Solid State Drives will be standard equipment for new computer systems, but first SSDs must become available as an optional upgrade item for build-it-yourself orders.

Plextor/LiteOn hopes to bring this service to tier-one OEMs, and computers from Acer, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Sony could soon offer lightning-fast SSD performance. In this article, Benchmark Reviews tests the LiteOn 32GB 'Strong-Page' SSD, model LA-32M1S, built on the Marvell 88SS8014-BHP2 Da-Vinci controller.

LiteOn Strong-Page MLC SSD LA-32M1S @ Benchmark Reviews

Even though both drives are based off the same technology, the firmware is a different and this may have the greatest impact on performance between the two units.  Many users of the Patriot Torqx SSDs have noticed a performance decrease when using the 1819 firmware, but this firmware keeps the drives performance static on a TRIM-enabled OS - even after prolonged use.

This particular board comes with an Intel Atom 330 dual-core 1.6GHz processor, has 2 DDR2 slots supporting upto 8GB of DDR2 memory modules of speeds upto 800MHz. It uses the Nvidia ION chipsetand has integrated graphics that supports DirectX10. This board also has integrated HD sound and Gigabit Lan.

A perfect board for HTPC users.

Mushkin sent us a sample of their new DDR3 memory kit. We got a sample of their Tri channel kit with 3x2GB Ram kits at 12800 speed and 7-9-7-24 timings. What can we do with this kit and our Core i7 920 Cpu? Lets have a closer look.

Mushkin PC3-12800 6GB Kit @ Rbmods

The NMP-1000 is not only a simple media player to hook up to your TV. The small unit includes a BitTorrent client, NAS, uPnP & DNLA functionality along with playback of ShoutCast, YouTube, Flickr, Picasa and Apple Trailers. In fact the list of functionality is so diverse, it does justify the 399 US Dollar price tag and still manages to put a smile on our faces.

Technology is growing at an amazing rate. Every couple of years we experience some kind of major changes in the industry. Just about two years ago we reached new and higher speeds of transferring data from one in interface to another. With SATA/SAS 3 Gb/s many companies converted their SCSI interface environments in to SATA/SAS and saved alot of money on power and got increase in storage. Lets face it a SCSI hard drive would cost roughly 200$ for 140 GB. With the same 200$ we could purchase a 1 TB hard drive and save some money in the long run.

UMLan Article Release: Seagate Constellation ES - Review

Ultra, the company who’s claim to fame is inventing the modular power supply, brings us another one of their X4 creations. Their last power supply got good marks in the lab, lets see if their more powerful version can pull off the same.

For the longest time, Asus was the kind of company that was only known by techies and enthusiasts. That changed in recent years with the release of devices like the Eee PC line of netbooks and soon expanded into the realm of all-in-one PCs with the Asus Eee Top. Now the company is going one step further with its one of its first home theater PCs. Working off a subsidiary, we discover the ASRock Ion 330HT NetTop. It’s got ASRock branding, but this is an Asus product through and through.

The term "3D" can be seen all over, and for good reason. Both software and hardware companies are beginning to deliver the goods to increase the immersion for our games, movies and even images. But, we're curious to see just how important this whole 3D aspect is to you. Answer three simple questions, and you could win an NVIDIA 3D Vision bundle!

We have reviewed quite a few Foxconn motherboards over the years and the high end boards tend to have a lasting impression on us. In most cases performance is exceptional; design and style are outstanding. All of these features can be found in the latest Quantum Force motherboard, the Inferno Katana.

"No longer will you have to worry about ghosting artifacts and you can watch any action movie or sports game and feel like you are really there. Although LCD models may try to mimic the fluid playback a plasma TV brings to the table, they can't hold a candle to plasma technology even today."

Samsung PN58B850 58 inch Plasma TV Review @ Tweaknews

NVIDIA and ATI dominate the market for gaming-oriented video cards. But neither company sells video cards directly to the consumer; rather, they produce "reference designs" that are manufactured by a number of "partners". Most partners simply produce the reference design and slap an identifying sticker on the card's cooler; although some might replace the reference design cooler with a quieter or more powerful solution, with few exceptions there's little to distinguish one partner's version of a specific card from another partner's version of the same card. EVGA breaks out of this rut with their EVGA GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX Edition, model 012-P3-1178-TR, which combines NVIDIA GTS250 and GTX275 GPUs on the same card, and Benchmark Reviews takes it around the block to see what it's got.

EVGA Geforce GTX275 CO-OP Video Card @ Benchmark Reviews

Today we are looking at the Boogie Bug AimB.Pad Gaming Surface. This is a regular sized mousemat that is 275mm x 320mm and is aimed at gamers and users who need precision from their mouse.

A couple of motherboard manufacturers are now including SATA 6Gbps and USB 3.0 chips on their motherboards. In this to the point article, we take look at the performance for SATA 6Gbps and USB 3.0 compared with their predecessors.

"After using Microsoft's new Explorer mouse for over a week, I'm very impressed by both the functionality of the BlueTrack Technology and the overall design and feel of the mouse. Careful shopping can get you one of these units for around $40 or so, and while cheaper mice are available, I would consider this an excellent value and would have no reservations in recommending this product."