"Today we are looking at one of the processors from AMD's 2010 line up, designed to go up against Intel's Pentium dual cores at the important £75 inc. VAT price point. Intel would no doubt prefer us to pitch this chip against its Core i3 530, but as that processor costs 20% more that wouldn't be a fair comparison. In actual fact the closest contemporary competitor is the Pentium G6950, which also uses the Clarkdale core. Intel released this chip rather quietly obviously mindful that without blistering clock speeds the Clarkdale architecture isn't as competitive as it would like. Either chip can be snapped up for around £75 from the cheapest online sources."

We hope you like the new look for ASE Labs and its sister sites. To celebrate this new default look, we're giving away some of our items that we've reviewed in the past. We have many different prizes to give away and there will be multiple winners.

FREMONT, California, March 24, 2010 — Corsair, a worldwide leader in high-performance computer and flash memory products, today announced the addition of a 32GB model to its award-winning Flash Voyager Mini line of USB flash drives. The increased capacity allows a huge number of movies, music, photos and personal documents to be stored in a format that’s one third the size of typical USB Flash drives.

To help push the tessellation boundaries just a bit further, Unigine has updated its Heaven benchmark to version 2.0 and introduced more robust modes. Alongside the updated Windows client, Unigine has also unveiled a Linux version, so we decided to take it for a spin to see how it both performs, and looks.

"Prolimatech has done a great job with the Megahalems Rev.B CPU cooler, offering the PC enthusiast community top-notch performance in a well-engineered product with excellent fit and finish."

Many people may subscribe to the idea of "a keyboard is a keyboard is a keyboard". People don't just sit in front of a desk and use their computers anymore. Many people have their PCs connected to their televisions for home theater use, or set up in their kitchen, or hidden within some inconspicuous furniture. Anything goes these days. As computer users each change the way they use their PCs, consumers will need different peripherals to take advantage of these trends. A traditional keyboard does not always suffice in the eyes of the customer, and Microsoft recognizes and addresses this trend with the compact wireless Microsoft Arc model J5D-00001 keyboard. Benchmark Reviews has been givin the opportunity to not only test this wireless keyboard, but also determine if something that looks as good can also perform well. With a small footprint and elegant looks, Microsoft considers this a piece of decoration as much as it is a piece of ele! ctronics. Stay tuned as we see if this product lives up to performing as well as it fits into your home decor.

Microsoft Arc Wireless Compact Keyboard @ Benchmark Reviews

"The transition to the 32nm process technology let Intel painlessly increase the number of cores. The updated Xeon 5600 series is either better or at least not worse than the Xeon 5500 one. The performance of dual-socket machines has been elevated to a new level, which is great. What's even better, the transition to new dice can solve another problem, i.e. reduce power consumption."

Not very long ago we looked at a gamer mouse from Mionix named 3200 which ended up being a very nice mouse that we awarded for a well balanced gamer mouse. Today we are taking a look at the Naos 5000 which is the next "high end" mouse that they have decided to release.

There are no shortage of RAM kits in the marketplace. From a broad selection of speed ratings, to assist in overclocking, to the total amount of RAM you want. There are even RAM kits certified to work perfectly with either an NVIDIA SLI or ATI CrossFire setup. Though multi-card video card configurations can make overclocking difficult, so can a mis-match between the RAM and chipset. So why not produce RAM kits that are certified to work with, and be able to be overclocked on, certain chipsets and CPUs? OCZ seemed to have been wondering the same thing with this AMD Black Edition Ready 4GB DDR3 Kit.

"Today we have the Thermaltake Element S ATX mid tower case that can be used in a gaming system or even a regular everyday system. It has lots of room and is designed to be very quiet. It is a mid tower case but is very close to being a full tower case. It's not too bold but is also not an average case either."

First One-Hundred Thousand Units Contain Exclusive Shepard Fairey Poster Featuring The Game’s All-Star Cast of In-Game DJs and Talent

Santa Monica, CA – March 23, 2010 – Beat junkies, music fans and budding turntablists already rocking the wheels of steel with DJ Hero™ – the number one new videogame IP of 2009 – can now invite their friends to spin along with a standalone turntable controller which is available today at retail stores nationwide, Activision Publishing Inc. (Nasdaq: ATVI) announced.  Additionally, the first one-hundred thousand fans to purchase a standalone turntable controller will receive an exclusive Shepard Fairey poster, featuring the artist’s unique renderings of the game’s all-star cast of in-game DJs and talent*.

Join us as we take a look at the Tempest-Evo, NZXT's latest revision of the award winning case. The Tempest EVO packs a lot of features but find out why we think its might not be the best bang for your buck.

It has been just over a year since we've had the opportunity to review a Zalman cooler, so you can imagine our excitement when Zalman shipped us one of their latest products; the CNPS10X Performa heatpipe cooler. Like all of its brethren in the CNPS10X series, the Performa sports a copper base, multiple heatpipes, a ton of aluminum fins, and a very quiet 120mm fan.

Nyko Technologies, the leading videogame peripherals manufacturer, today announced the shipment of its Intercooler Slim™ for PlayStation® 3 Slim (PS3 Slim) to major North American retailers. Designed for use with the PS3 Slim, the latest edition to Nyko's popular Intercooler line of game console cooling devices offers both convenience and functionality.

The Intercooler Slim boasts three powerful fans reducing the ambient air temperature by moving hot air away from the console. For customized cooling, a high/low fan switch enables you to choose how much air flow is needed. The Intercooler Slim is easily snapped onto the back of the console requiring no tools or other modifications, and with its patented power pass through connection, this cooling device requires no AC adapter. The Intercooler Slim can be used with the PS3 Slim in both vertical and horizontal positions and automatically turns on and off with the console.

“The Intercooler line has been one of the most successful accessories for this generation of consoles,” said Chris Arbogast, director of marketing at Nyko Technologies. “We couldn’t be more thrilled to continue the line on the new PS3 Slim with the features that made previous iterations so successful.”

The InterCooler Slim is available now at major North American retailers for an MSRP of $19.99. Connect with Nyko for your chance to win exciting Nyko prizes on Twitter or on Facebook.

USB 3.0 has slowly been gaining market share over the last months. Vantec is one of the first companies to offer a USB 3.0 compatible external 3.5" enclosure. We take the NexStar 3 for a spin to see if the USB 3 promise holds up to the test.

"Overall, I am satisfied with this keyboard. It does exactly what it is meant to do, which is to provide a comfortable alternative to the cramped style of a laptop or netbook keyboard."

Network storage has become the convenient answer to centralized data for corporate enterprise environments. The QNAP TS-459 Pro NAS server uses the energy-efficient 1.66GHz Intel Atom D512 processor with 1GB of DDR2 system memory to enable VMware Ready iSCSI for virtualization deployments. Dual Gigabit Ethernet network interfaces allow failover safety, while four SATA drives deliver basic-disk or RAID configurations. In this article, Benchmark Reviews tests performance of the QNAP TS-459 Pro against several other network attached storage servers.

Over the past few months, it's become increasingly clear that OCZ has shifted its focus more towards its core products, and as a result, the company will no longer invest in things like cooling products, peripherals and so forth. Rather, it will focus on SSDs, memory and of course, power supplies. As I made my earlier post, I had wondered what OCZ's renewed focus would mean for Hypersonic-PC, and that was made clear to me earlier today.

-- Undisputed Leader With USB 3.0 Motherboard Shipments of 1 Million --

TAIPEI, Taiwan – March 22, 2010 – GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY Co., Ltd, a leading manufacturer of motherboards, graphics cards and other computing hardware solutions today proudly announced that they have reached an industry milestone of 1 million SuperSpeed USB (USB 3.0) motherboards shipped, making GIGABYTE the single most widely adopted SuperSpeed USB platform in the world.