Computer hardware always evolves, and in the interest of making lives more productive technology continues to advance. 

We've reviewed quite a few Nexus powersupplies in the past. This time we will take a look at their newest product RX-6300, which is a 630W power supply cooled with a single 135mm fan. Let's have a look how it succeeds in our tests.

Nexus RX-6300 PSU @ Rbmods

MEGATech Reviews – KontrolFreek FPS Freek and Speed Freek Xbox 360 Thumbstick Mods

As you may already know, Microsoft is pretty strict about who it allows to make third-party controllers for the Xbox 360. So, instead of partaking in an extended licensing battle with Microsoft, some companies choose to come up with controller modifications instead.

A Futurelooks News Flash - KontrolFreek FPS Freek and Speed Freek Xbox 360 Thumbstick Mods Reviewed

Technology really moves at a breakneck pace. It was only a few months ago that we took a look at the original Western Digital WD TV HD Media Player and now the company that usually specializes in hard drives has already released that product’s successor: The Western Digital WD TV Live.

A Futurelooks News Flash - Western Digital WD TV Live HD Media Player Review

The ASRock ION 330HT-BD packs a BluRay drive along with a few other unique features usually absent from an ION platform. We pull the unit apart to see what makes it tick and even kick it into overdrive - yes we even overclocked this puppy.

ASRock ION 330HT-BD @ techPowerUp

It goes without saying that data security is important, because let's face it... it's not unusual for a hard drive to crash. But what about taking measures to prevent a drive from dying from things other than a simple crash, such as a fire, flood, or receiving a good beating? After tackling those exact scenarios, we can say that this product is a winner.

ioSafe Solo Disaster-Proof External HDD @ Techgage.com

"The Zalman CNPS10X Extreme cpu cooler is the best built processor cooler I have had on my test bench to date. With top notch materials, build quality, feature set coupled with excellent performance, this great looking cooler should be on any buyer's short list. There really isn't more you could add onto a processor cooler without ruining the overall package."

Zalman CNPS10X Extreme CPU Cooler Review @ Tweaknews

Unusual designs are something that impressed with the Thermaltake promote not only its buyers, but also times one or the other design award clears. Mit dem SpinQ wurde ein Kühler vorgestellt, welcher auf einen Radial-Lüfter setzt und sich so optisch stark von der Masse des Marktes abgesetzt hat. By SpinQ a cooler was introduced, which uses a centrifugal fan and has so much visually separate from the mass market. Der SpinQ VT ist eine Weiterentwicklung dieses Kühlers und kommt nun im Tower-Design daher. The SpinQ VT is a development of this cooler and now comes in the Tower, therefore design. Wie sich der optische Leckerbissen auf unserem Testsystem gegen normale Tower-Kühler schlägt, erfahrt ihr auf den folgenden Seiten. How the proposed visual treat on our test system to normal Tower Cooling, learn it on the following pages.

Thermaltake SpinQ VT

Computer hardware always evolves, and in the interest of making lives more productive technology continues to advance. Gigabyte has recently launched their P55-A series of motherboards on the Intel P55-Express chipset, which incorporate a new 3-3-3 theme of features: Super-Speed USB 3.0 and 3x the USB power output, as well as SATA-3.0 for 6Gbps bandwidth. In this article, Benchmark Reviews tests the Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD6 and inspects the new SATA-6G functionality in-depth. Performance will be measured between the Intel Core i7-860 fitted to the LGA1156 socket on the Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD6 motherboard and the Core i7-920 equipped GA-EX58-UD4P. Testing a Core i7-860 against an i7-920 might not seem fair, and it's a little biased to compare P55 against X58, but the final outcome might just surprise you.

Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD6 Motherboard Review @ Benchmark Reviews

The Xtreem Series from Team Group marks the company's high-end line-up of memory for the newest plattforms available. We rip apart, bench and push the memory to the limit, to see how it ticks below the surface of the thick, high quality heatspreaders.

Team Group Xtreem 2000 MHz CL7 6GB Kit @ techPowerUp

Houston, Texas – December 23, 2009 – Seidio, Inc., the leading developer and manufacturer of
premium Smartphone accessories, is excited to announce the release of our Innocell 2600mAh
Extended Life Battery for the Motorola Droid.  We have heard the cry of our customers and we
have answered!

Seidio invests in extensive research to find the best and most powerful battery components on
the market. We carefully select superior Japanese cells for our batteries to ensure the highest
level of safety, quality, and performance. Our research and expertise give us the ability to create
batteries that provide maximum capacity in their comparable space. This large capacity Innocell
Extended Life Battery is perfect for the avid traveler who can't always get to a charger. The
2600mAh Extended Life Battery for the Motorola Droid has 87% more capacity than the original
OEM battery and will keep you charged and ready to go, even with heavy phone and data usage.  
It comes with a black replacement door featuring Seidio's signature soft touch coating and only
adds 0.9cm to your device.

The Innocell 2600mAh Extended Life Battery for the Motorola Droid retails for $64.95 and is
expected to begin shipping the week of January 10th
, 2010 with pre-orders being accepted now.  
For more information on this and other great Seidio products, please visit www.seidioonline.com.

Founded in Houston, Texas in 2002, Seidio, Inc. is a leading developer and manufacturer of
premium Smartphone accessories.  We’re a visionary company with a passion for innovation and
an understanding of our customers’ needs.

CITY OF INDUSTRY, CA – December 23, 2009 – MSI Computer, a leading manufacturer of computer hardware products and solutions, is excited to announce the winners of the Educational Reseller Trial Program.  MSI is giving away 60 computers to two of the participating school districts.  The Magnolia School District in Anaheim, California will receive 30 free MSI U100 netbooks and the Hamilton-Jefferson Counties Regional office of Education in southern Illinois won 30 AE1900 touch screen PCs.

Sony may have you locked into their storage format, but that doesn't mean you can't get the most for your money. Find out if SanDisk's latest Memory Stick PRO Duo is worth your hard earned money.

SanDisk 8GB Memory Stick PRO Duo Review @ TechwareLabs

Updated Fatal1ty and PC Power and Cooling PSU’s

USB 3.0 and an SSD should make this one a quick one, as you can see with the testing

OCZ is ready for the upcoming year with a collection of SSD’s in all price ranges including a drive aimed to come out under 100 bucks!

 

The official first day of CES was today and getting back to the hotel now at midnight I finally have a chance to sum up a few of the things I saw today. My Day started and ended with our good friends at Cooler Master. In between I found the time to visit the OCZ suit; Crucial’s meeting space, MSI components, and Antec. In between a dropped by a few booths in my free time. Before I pass out Here is a quick summery

 

Cooler Master

Cooler Master shows off a few custom rigs using their cases

The upcoming V6 heatsink, coming in just under the v8 and v10, should be a low prices high performance

Notepal Ergo Stand, 5 angle adjustment and the ability to hold anything from a 9 inch netbook to a 17 inch laptop

1.2.3 Swapper, a 2.5 inch hard drive enclosure

Cardpal, under 10 bucks for an sd card reader

Cruiser, A mouse and mousepad combo available in many colors. The mouse expands to give it more height

G cool, a multiple function cooling pad

Cooler Master models anyone?

USP 100, low priced along with an included PSU, a wide body design gives an amazing amount of cabling room

The 690 II was released a few days ago with two models the Basic and advanced versions, this has to be the most exciting product at their booth for me this year

Storm SF19, not available yet but is cooler designed for large notebooks including the hard to fit 18.4 notebooks. Lots of cooling and special lighting effects will set this one apart

Adam, Wes, and (pimp) Joe of Cooler Master at the Cooler Master party in Aria Hotel.

I was up bright and early on the 3rd day of CES to visit phillips & Lite-On digital Solutions or PLDS. We have worked with them in the past with reviews of Plextor branded products. They also work with Lite-On and HP products.

12X Blu-Ray Disc Writer

PX-B310U External BluRay disc drive

Lite-On's big push is their new 8x External has replacable lids. Portable enough that this may be a perfect accessory for netbook owners looking for a drive

Saving the best for last.. Plextor has decided to jump into the SSD market this coming Febuary. Look forward to a review as soon as we can get a sample1

Razer was definitely one of the booths we we're excited for, hearing rumors of the first gaming console hardware from the company being displayed at CES. To our surprise, they not only had this but so much more, including a new type of interface none of us expected. The Onza, named after a predetory cat, is the a Razer controller for the Xbox 360. This controller comes equipped with adjustable tension on each of the joy sticks, allowing you to increase/decrease the resistance when moving the stick. Think of it like adjusting the DPI on you 360, how easy or hard it is to tranverse the pixels on your screen. Razer has also added an additional trigger button on both sides, which are programmable to any of the other button functions. For instance, if you find it difficult to run by pressing the analog stick down for long period of times, the third trigger button can be assigned this operation. This is acheived by using a switch on the back of the controller. The directional pad also saw upgrades, acting as four discreet buttons as opposed the Microsoft version, allowing more precision. This controller is marked for a third quarter release of 2010, with an MSRP of $49.99, and Razer has hopes to have this in physical retail shelves as well as online order.

The new Chimaera headset compliments the Onza, replacing the Microsoft version on the Xbox 360. These headphones feature 5.1 surround sound with semi-conductor and a 5.6 ghz signal broadcasting. The stand that it comes with not only gives the Chimaera a slick resting spot when not in use, but also recharge the headset via metal prongs the connect to transfer charge. This set is compatible with any controller and slated for a quarter three release, due at the same time as the Onza, with an MSRP of $129.99.

The most exciting concept, of course, was the new Sixense controller, which was only in development kit mode at the time of the demo. The Sixense is a dual wireless wand control system, using a receiving magnetic pillar and magnetic signals to produce motion control in the game. Yes, this sounds very familiar. However, rest assured that Razer has no intention of walking away from the core gamer market. That being said, this interface is extremely cool. The demo on hand was a modified version of Left 4 Dead 2, meaning first and foremost that Razer and Valve have partnered together. The third company to complete the triforce is Sixense, a company concentrated on gaming and more recently, of course, motion control. The Sixense system works very simply: a magnetic coil in the stand receives the magnetic signal from the wands, and mimics it in game. This system has 1mm of position and 1 degree of orientation accuracy. All the animations in L4D2 we're completely based on the user. As the demonstrater played through a small area withthe katana melee weapon, his exact movements we're copied in game. There are certain functions, such as jabbing to shove, tilting softly to the right to reload, and pulling up to jump. The charcater's movement is controlled from two analog sticks on either wand, and there are buttons used to do things such as 'use' and fire. At the time of demonstration, there was a lag of 40ms in the response time, but this is only a concept currently, and the response time is something Razer is working on.

Additional information on Sixense can be found at www.sixense.com.

{aseadnetadblock|NOSHOWAD|NOSHOWAD}

Robert Krakoff, on the new Sixense Control Interface:

"It’s very conceptional at this point because we don’t know exactly what we’re going to build. There’s an opportunity to do something at two feet and there’s an opportunity to do something at ten feet.  And they both change the grounds of what you can build. My thought process is that whatever it is, it needs to be something familiar to the end user. There again you don’t have to put a cap on somebody with a bunch of sensors to enjoy it. Yet I don’t think it can be something as simple as a wand. So somewhere where people can get the most out of play and then I think our task is to do a couple things: is to prove that with our technologies that our skills our ability are out of the area of developing firmware and writing code, for us to be able to move in and help a little in the area of latency and then smoothing out movements because right now they’re at one degree and one millimeter of accuracy is, depending on the DPI, can be as much as 200 pixels. That isn’t bad when you’re shooting really slow zombies, but when you’re shooting something intelligent that’s going to be moving a lot faster I don’t think it’s going to work. So we need to fix that. But I think that what you’re looking at is, and maybe more over than one iteration of products. What you’re looking at is a glimpse into what the future is going to be for the PC. Are we close to tournament level? No. Will the first product be? I doubt it. But I’ve always been proven wrong before by our brilliant engineers and our uniquely brilliant firmware people.

So I think that what the little glimpse of the future could be sooner than what I think it is, but at this point we have no idea what the end product is going to be. So we have to decide, there’s a bunch of issues on how we reconfigure the elements woven into the controller in going into the base station. There’s a large coil in there, and it’s fairly big, can we miniaturize it, how small can it be and still be effective, battery life, all those elements have to be decided upon. We’d love to have a product out this year but we don’t know. We’re a little obsessive-compulsive about finishing off a product, making sure that everything works and everything that goes in the box is a promise, so that’s why our products are usually a little late. We won’t release something until we really have it done. Hopefully, what we do will be rewarded.

I don’t want anyone to believe that we’re walking away from the hardcore market at all. We have a load of new Razer products coming this year, but we’re pretty tight lipped because were watched very carefully by our competitors. We are, in the industry, kind of the standard for engineering we develop and that’s because we do it all internally, and our competitors’ do it all externally. They use OEM technology, we create our own technology. So it’s very different. This is the only time we’ve actually gone outside for this technology. We’ve been approached many times by other companies wanting to sell us 3-D software and we’re supposed to make product for them.  But we’ve never been impressed by that. That’s a toy. This one’s got real legs to it. And the thing I like about it is that it supports any game ever made with the mouse and keyboard. So I can go back and play Descent and games I should’ve enjoyed more but I never found the right controller for. I can go back and play Duke Nukem 3D if I want. I can go back and play Half-Life 2 which would be really cool on this. So it will be like rediscovering some of your old games and replaying them. I like that. And if also you do the level editor, this is an incredible tool for level editor. Cut like 80% of, just whack it right off with the way this thing works. So there’s more to it than just this wand-type technology. It’s a very, very cool interface.

I think a lot of the guys who are bad mouthing it now just need to wait and see how good it’s going to be because it could wind up being very, very good. Personally, I think anything that has Valve and Razer can’t be too bad. We like working with them, we’re big fans. And these guys are pretty good, too. These guys from Sixense.  They’re really focused on one technology and really focused on gaming, which is what we like. All of their employees are gamers, and almost all of ours are, except maybe a few accountants. We set up extra gaming facilities in every office, and we actually more-or-less require everybody to game for one to two hours a day. We don’t just make it available to them, even if they’re just playing Mahjong or something like that, it’s okay. Just gaming, get the feel of our products."

{aseadnetadblock|NOSHOWAD|NOSHOWAD}

SteelSeries is all about gaming, and doing it like a pro. That's why their products are always trailored to meed the demands of the professional gamers, whether it be design, specifications, or perhaps price point. At CES, they had several products they we're very proud of and anxious to show us. The first was NP+, an XXL mouse pad made of ultra compressed fiber material that makes it water resistant. That means that no heat or chemical methods we're used.

The second was the new Siberia v2, which feature an integrated microphone and an enhanced noise isolation material on the ear cuffs.

The Xai is by far the most exciting new product, an advanced gaming mouse literally built from what the professional gamers want. Several months of research went into to getting this mouse exactly right. It supports virtually any gaming grip style, a perfect center of gravity, and a dead center sensor, as well as ambidextrous.

The Kinzu is the little 'sister' of the the Xai, designed to fit the smaller hand style of female gamer's, and therefore doesn't feature any of the side buttons that the Xai has.

{aseadnetadblock|NOSHOWAD|NOSHOWAD}

You Rock Guitar is a company that has made an electronic giuitar that is fully functional both as an actual guitar instrument, and can be used with the music genre video games. This is acheived by switching between modes via a control panel; when in actual guitar mode, you play the instrument just as you would, and in game mode, you'll press the corresponding colored buttons to play the notes on the screen, and pluck and string to strum.

The guitar runs wireless of batteries, though he wasn't certain on a definite life. The neck will detach, and the head will further detach from that, to help transfer the instrument to and fro.

YouTube Demonstration video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-s217m6wLXU

{aseadnetadblock|NOSHOWAD|NOSHOWAD}