So the war is over, Blu-ray has won, even though it really wasn’t much of a war, more of an argument than anything. So now all of our hi-def videos will be on the Blu-ray format, and if we wish to watch it on our PCs we’ll need to buy some hardware. Prices have been falling quite a bit on Blu-ray drives, below $100 which is nice, but I highly doubt that they’ll ever fall to the prices we see today for DVD drives due to Blu-ray licensing fees. Sure eventually they’ll fall in price but not until a new format is released most likely, the greed of the Blu-ray consortium companies will keep the prices high and force us to pay up for the privilege of watching Br movies on our computers. That’s capitalism, and it makes the world go round, so we’ve just got to deal with it I guess… Click here to read more

Benchmark Reviews has been on the web for over a year now.  In that time I've had the pleasure of reviewing some very nice higher end computer items, including mid and full tower cases.  While I love the high end market I realize for every high end part sold, there are probably 100's of mid to lower end parts sold.  So who's buying these parts?  Everyone is that's who.  So where do they get their pre purchase information from?  Hopefully here at Benchmark Reviews.  Cooler Master recognizes there is an audience at this price point and so should we.  Today Benchmark Reviews will look at the Cooler Master Elite 330 RC-330-KKN1-GP Chassis. A mid tower computer case that appears to be big on features but small on price. Click to read more

Thermaltake was pushing the boundaries of innovation when they created the SpinQ, focusing on achieving the unique look rather than performance. The performance isn't but for its price, there are competitors who can do much better. Nonetheless, the SpinQ is one of the most visually entrancing coolers I've seen, making it the perfect upgrade for someone who doesn't care about the big OC numbers, but someone interested in modifying their computer's appearance to make coworkers point and stare. Click here to read more

Although the P5N7A-VM's stock performance would normally be more than enough for most home theater PC or basic home desktop tasks, overclocking could be beneficial. The P5N7A-VM offers very basic overclocking functionality, but it was more than enough to allow me to overclock the Q6600 to 3.0 GHz (9x333) with a stock Intel heatsink. Click here to read more

Coolermaster has finally launched the long awaited v10. We took a look at it at CES and will be posting up our results from testing soon enough. But for now make sure to check out the launch website. A launch website for a heatsink? you might be asking. Yes, due to the performance and the anticipation the V10 is expected to shake things up a little bit. So for Coolermaster a little celebration is in order. Click hear to learn more

4 February 2009, Keelung, Taiwan – Lian Li Industrial Co. Ltd has launched the PC-A06F Mid-Tower chassis. The all aluminum mid-tower design features a front mounted 140mm@900RPM fan, with an additional top mounted 120mm@1000RPM extraction fan. The sleek brushed aluminum chassis is only 3.8kg in weight and the dimensions are 187 x 375 x 490 mm ( W, H, D). The traditional layout is slightly restrictive in that only small CPU heatsinks can be used, as the PSU is mounted directly over the CPU mounting region. The chassis is imbued with all the functional and user friendly design aspects users have come to expect in a Lian Li case. Highlights for PC-A06F

• Anti-vibration side mounted HDD cage
• Supports ATX and Micro-ATX motherboards
• Adjustable PSU bracket for extra long PSU
• Removable front, side and top panels
• Top extraction 120mm Fan @1000RPM
• Front input 140mm Fan @900RPM
• Multi-media I/O ports in top panel
• Anti-vibration clips to prevent side panel vibration
• Anti-vibration HDD cage
• Folded elements to prevent sharp edges
• Tools-less CD-ROM claspers

Today, we at Benchmark Reviews will be presenting our findings for the Corsair TR3X6G1600C8D memory kit which is a 6144 MB kit of 1600 MHz DDR3 SDRAM DIMMs based upon Corsair's high performance Dominator family of memory.  This kit has been verified to operate at 1600MHz at latencies of 8-8-8-24 at 1.65V VDIMM.  These statistics put the TR3X6G1600C8D in the mid-range of DDR3 performance statistically, but as we're all aware a number of memory modules on the market can solidly produce much higher performance figures than their ratings might allude.  We plan to use a variety of tests both at stock and overclocked performance speeds to give our readers a solid overview of just what this kit has to offer. Click here to read more

I'll admit I'm a junky for full tower cases as I love all the room they have to offer. With that being said I was quite pleased overall with the mid tower V9 Black Edition. I never felt cramped or had to contort my hands while assembling the PC. The twin 230mm fans do a great job of keeping things cool and the front 120mm also sports a red LED. The black powder coating really sets off the interior and makes for a very attractive package. Click to read more

So you want to be a rock star huh?  Well just like the Stones say, you can't always get what you want.  Some of us realize we are just normal people and must settle for our daily mundane tasks.  The same holds true for computer graphics cards, or does it?  Today Benchmark Reviews will look at a mainstream card with a bit of an identity problem.  The Sapphire Radeon HD4670 GDDR4 graphics card.  This little guy thinks it's a rock star!  Maybe it thinks that "6" in it's name is an "8"?  It does have 512mb of GDDR4 RAM.  Well, I'm positive this card is no HD4870 but that hasn't stopped this little fella from rockin'!  Let's see if this HD4670 has what it takes to be a real star. Click here to read more

When I started this review I'll admit I wasn't familiar with CSX's memory, but I will say I have come away with a very positive outlook. While typically PC6400 kits don't get a whole lot of fan fare, CSX's CEC line delivers on their goal of overclocking with a budget kit. If what CSX has to offer in their budget line is any indication, I can understand why their Diablo line has made some noise in the enthusiast market in other countries. Click here to read more

Just forty years ago the first computerized mouse was invented and made practical, yet even today we haven't seen a mouse that is both highly comfortable while still able to retain a high amount of quality-features (ergonomic mice seem to lack necessary features). eSportNova, a company with 15 years of experience in the peripheral market, has decided to hopefully solve that problem with the Nova Slider X600. Today, we're going to take a look at this new product and see if it offers what consumers are looking for - a comfortable, high performance mouse." Click here to read more

Ok, a little while back I ran a somewhat large USB Flash Drive Comparison with 21 drives compared, today I got part two of that comparison. I’ve taken the 8gig and 4 gig drives, nine in total, and formatted them FAT32, NTFS and ExFAT and ran all of the tests over again for a comparison of how the file systems work on the drives. And yes I truly ran all of the tests over again, I recently upgraded to SiSoft Sandra 2009 SP2, so I needed to re-do all of those tests as well. I’ve been at this for quite some time now, and I’ve got a whole lot of information for you inside. The reason for this is out of my curiosity and other people mentioned as well why not compare the file systems, so to satiate my curiosity and to give everyone as much information as possible I took a very large chunk of my time and dedicated it to this rather large article. So sit back, relax and continue on, I’ve got tons of graphs for you all broken down and separated by file systems and tests. Click here to read more

The XCM Cross Fire Converter for the Xbox 360 will allow you to use your Playstation 3 / PS3 controller on your Xbox 360 console! This is the first adapter of its type and is expected to debut in late Feburary 09. More information to be posted as it is released. Stay tuned. Sidenote: If this is anything like the Cross Battle Adapter for the Playstation 3, it will be plug and play compatible and have rapid fire, but thats just speculation at this time. Click here to read more

OCZ may not have created the Solid State Drive, but they've done more to bring SSD technology mainstream than any other company in the industry. Once SSDs could outperform their HDD counterpart, it was all about price and capacity. The OCZ Core Series helped to offer affordable Solid State Drive technology to the masses, but capacity and stuttering became new issues. Using a pair of JMicron JMF602B SSD controllers to organize two banks of Samsung K9HCG08U1M DRAM modules into a JMB390 controller, the new OCZ Apex Series SSD offers an impressive capacity with internal RAID-0 performance to subdue stuttering. Benchmark Reviews tests the performance of the OCZSSD2-1APX120G against over two dozen other products in this article. Click here to read more

Picture with me a high end gaming rig with an i7-965 Extreme CPU, a X58 Chipset capable of Crossfire or SLI, 7.1 channel Audio, and one or two of today's high end video cards. If you're like me you would be picturing one of today's large high end cases holding it all together. Now most of you have heard of Shuttle Computer Group with their compact form factor PC's that have been perfect for businesses, low power pc builds, and HTPC's. Shuttle is getting ready to release their new X58 chipset barebones called the SX58H7. The SX58H7 promises to be a great platform to build your high end gaming rig packed into a case that is literally the size of a breadbox.

I didn't schedule a meeting with our friends over at the Thermaltake booth this year, but that doesn't mean that I didn't find time to stop by and check out their booth.

I think I walked atleast 50 miles in the four days. In that time I only really ate a few times, mostly just a cookie and water at some of the meetings. But durring all of that I did manage to see some amazing things. Here are just a few of them!

If you don't own a Nyko Wiimote charge station you probably know someone who does. The charge station is the highest selling third party peripheral in North America. Because of that I would be really surprised if you didn't know who Nyko is or why I was excited to see what they are up to. I wasn't surprised to see a charge station at our meeting, but the one I was looking at had a few small changes. What I saw had updated batteries and a gauge to show you how charged your Wiimote's are. I was happy to hear that this will not be a new model but rather a on the fly update to the current model. It is good to see that they aren't planning on just letting things ride, they are going to continue to update all of their products as needed to stay competitive in the market.

I stopped by the In-Win booth to check out their upcoming line of products. We have seen their products both on here and at our lan parties. They had their standard line of cases and enclosures to show off along with a few prototype's and a upcoming case that I am looking forward to.