A few months ago, the subject of better CPU cooling  came up when discussing processor reviews. While stock coolers have their place, they don’t allow very much in the way of overclocking. But after talking to our expert friends over at Acoustic PC, the Thermalright Venomous X CPU Cooler came highly recommended for taking away the heat and achieving higher frequencies. What we discovered is that, while non-poisonous to humans,  it definitely killed some heat. How much? Let’s find out!

Futurelooks News Flash - Thermalright Venomous X CPU Cooler Review

Most notebook computers include just one bay for a hard drive, so you obviously need your boot drive to also handle your storage needs. This has meant that you either had to compromise on performance or capacity when choosing between an SSD and a traditional hard drive. The Seagate Momentus XT hybrid drive is the solution to this problem.

Seagate Momentus XT 500GB Hybrid Drive Review @ Bigbruin.com

Solid-state may be the future of our storage, but for now, the prices for the latest SSD's (even value models) is still far too high on the $/GB scale. For those looking for mass storage and still-great speeds, mechanical storage is still on top, and WD's latest VelociRaptor's, which utilize SATA 3.0, sit comfortably above all the rest.

Western Digital VelociRaptor 600GB @ Techgage.com

The Hard Disk Drive (HDD) has enjoyed a long service life in the computer industry, and only recently has the Solid State Drive (SSD) threatened to replace it. While the HDD offers higher capacity at a better price, SSDs offer tremendous speeds and operational performance. Finally, Seagate has achieved the optimal blend of each, and presents the Solid State-Hybrid Hard Drive. Seagate's Momentus-XT hybrid uses a 7200-RPM hard drive fused with 4GB SLC NAND flash to deliver SSD speeds and HDD storage capacity. Seagate's Adaptive Memory technology uses an algorithm to monitor user data access transactions, which caches qualified data onto the SSD. In this article, Benchmark Reviews tests the Seagate Momentus-XT Solid State Hybrid Drive against several of the fastest notebook storage devices available.

Seagate Momentus-XT Solid State Hybrid Drive @ Benchmark Reviews

"I was fortunate enough to actually start testing the Hybrid back in the alpha stages of its design and I quickly came to realize the potential it had. In fact, I received the Momentus XT alpha drive before ever touching an SSD for review and I must admit, I prefer the capacity and snappiness of the Momentus XT drive to any of the SSD's that I own. Now that I have two of them in a RAID setup, I would not spend the extra money on another SSD. As long as I can have the speed and capacity of the Momentus XT, I'll pick one over an SSD every time."

Seagate Momentus XT 500GB ST95005620AS Review @ OCC

Many times there comes situations when you want to overclock your graphics cards or the your old faithful cooler gets broken. Usually the only way to solve this is to buy a new third hand cooler. This time we will take a look at two mainstream GPU coolers from Zalman and compare them against Arctic Cooling Accelero L2 cooler which is priced around the same range as the Zalmans. Let's have a look how the Zalmans perform against the Arctic Cooling.

Zalman VF950 LED & Zalman VF770 @ Rbmods

Shuttle is now offering pre-orders of the highly-anticipated Shuttle J3 5800G designed for gamers and enthusiasts


City of Industry,CA -- May 21, 2010  -- Shuttle, an industry leading designer and manufacturer of high-performance small form factor (SFF) PC solutions and creator of the XPC, today launched the official website of the Shuttle J3 5800G desktop PC, the high-performance J3 Series model, available for U.S. pre-order starting at $1,899.

The flipSYNC is available now in Best Buy stores and online at BestBuy.com and Scosche.com

Oxnard, CA, – May 21, 2010 –Scosche Industries, award-winning innovator of iPod, iPhone and now iPad

accessories, is proud to announce the availability of the flipSYNC – keychain USB charge and sync cable. The flipSYNC, about the size of a car alarm remote control, provides users with convenient syncing cable when on the go and fits comfortably on any keychain. “

"Have you used those monitor stands for your laptop at work? Yes, I have until I got the chance to try this Cooler Master NotePal ErgoStand notebook cooler. It is a notebook cooler and stand in one with a four port USB 2.0 hub built-in as a bonus. It also has clips on the back so you can manage your cables a little better too. So let's see how it handles and performs in our tests."

Cooler Master NotePal ErgoStand Notebook Cooler @ BayReviews.com

Palit's GeForce GTX 470 is one of the GTX 470 versions that comes with a custom PCB design and non-reference thermal solution. Since the card is $20 cheaper than the reference design we take a close look to find out whether Palit cheaped out on their card or if it's worthy for consideration.

World-Exclusive: Palit GeForce GTX 470 Dual Fan @ techPowerUp

As our games continue to become even more robust, it would seem likely that having more memory available to the GPU would prove useful, but are we soon to see 2GB cards become commonplace? After many completed tests with Sapphire's Radeon HD 5870 Vapor-X 2GB, we're having a hard time settling on that.

Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 Vapor-X 2GB @ Techgage.com

"One look at the Hawk's cooling solution tells you that this is not your standard GTX 470. This large cooling solution looks like it came straight out of the Arctic Cooling catalog with its three fans, heatpipe construction and massive fin array. This large cooling solution is built to tame the immense heat generated by the large die size. It will also take up in excess of two expansion slots, making it a 3 slot solution. Hope you have room!"

Inno3D GTX 470 Hawk Review @ OCC

“Today I have for review the new Eco-Vue case from Marware for the Apple iPad. It's a leather folio style case designed for maximum protection. The exploding success of the Apple iPad is driving accessory manufacturers to hurry up and get their products on the market. Many of them are rushed and poorly designed. The folio style case is one of the most popular designs on the market with not two being the exact same. It seems they are as unique as fingerprints. Will the Marware Eco-Vue rise above the endless masses of subpar products? Read on to find out.”

[News] Marware Eco-Vue for iPad Review @ Virtual-Hideout

Logitech usually do solid products and they have succeeded here as well. However there are some minor faults which I recommend them to fix for newer revisions of this product.

 

One of the things that annoyed me a bit was the low luminosity of the LCD screen. In some conditions I just couldn’t read it properly. The second thing is the fact that the mouse just feels a little too small for a desktop set mouse. I would have liked to see a little better mouse at this price level, perhaps the Performance Mouse MX? Again, what you think about the size of the mouse is of course something that differs from person to person, but for me it was too small.

 

Overall this is a good kit though, especially if you can deal with a mouse of smaller dimensions. The long battery times; the Incurve keys; the padded palm rest are all things which are very convenient for a desktop kit. Also, we shouldn’t forget about the Unifying technology and the FN button…

Review of Logitech Wireless Desktop MK710 keyboard and mouse combo

The Crucial Ballistix PC3-12800 CL8 4GB DDR3 RAM kit contains two 2GB modules, which just needs a little voltage increasement to operate at DDR3-1600 CL8.
In the current review we will see, how far the memory modules can be overclocked and how the kit performs against other memory modules.

Crucial Ballistix 4GB Kit DDR3-1600 CL8 BL2KIT25664BN1608 Memory Review

 

? Class-leading performance of up to 285MB/sec read and 275MB/sec write, outstanding 4K write speed and IOPs –

FREMONT, California — May 20, 2010 — Corsair^®, a worldwide designer and supplier of high-performance components to the PC gaming hardware market, today announced three additions to its ultra high-speed Force Series™ SSDs. The additions to this product family include the F60, F120, and F240 Force Series SSDs, sporting densities of 60GB, 120GB, and 240GB respectively.

After a long period of scaling down its processors both in price and performance, AMD finally got some fresh reinforcements to continue the fight with Intel. The new Phenom II X6 1090T and its 3.20 GHz clocked six cores, aim to take AMD to new heights, where Intel's Core i7 processors were untouchable until now.

AMD Phenom II X6 1090T 3.20 GHz @ techPowerUp

All Black Aluminum with Side-Panel Windows

20 May 2010, Keelung,Taiwan – Lian Li Industrial Co. Ltd. today releases the PC-8NWX, the PC-7FNWX, and the PC-60FNWX mid tower chassis. All three models' interiors and exteriors are made with all-black, 1.5 millimeter thick, anodized aluminum making them solid but lightweight, and easy to keep cool; not to mention beautiful. These computer case chassis also feature large, side-panel windows for easy viewingof the interior. The top panels, on all three, come with a spare 140mm fan mount. Depending on the model the two USB 3.0 ports, plus HD audio ports are on the top panel or  the front panel. Lian Li is known for customizable cases and these are no exception. In addition to the completely tool-less installation design of these chassis, users can mount ATX or Micro-ATX motherboards. Rubber coatings and anti-vibration silencing designs are used throughout these computer cases.

While SSDs are still a fairly new technology, it has certainly come a long way in the last couple of years. The choices in SSDs are increasing and the prices are also decreasing making it possible to own one without a second mortgage. Though SSDs are getting cheaper, they still aren’t cheap, with larger ones still hitting some heavy figures. But even a smaller drive can make your system faster and INTEL has responded with the introduction of their 40GB Value Performance X25-V SATA Solid-State Drive (SSD).

Futurelooks News Flash - Intel X25-V 40GB Value Performance SATA Solid-State Drive Review

"Overall, I am definitely pleased with what Antec has supplied with the Sonata Proto. It is sturdy, clean looking, performs well and is quiet for sure. For a sub $80 case, I wouldn't say it is an absolute bargain, but absolutely worthy of ownership if a user is looking for a case that is sleek and stylish yet quiet case without all the lights and windows."

Antec Sonata Proto Review @ OCC