Any long time reader has no doubt seen the Razer Deathadder before. We have used them in countless reviews including our writ-up on the new at the time 3500DPI version HERE. There is a reason for that though, over the years there hasn’t been a time that I didn’t have a Deathadder being used on my main PC or one of our test benches. The Deathadder is one of, if not the best mouse that Razer ever introduced. Because of that when we saw they introduced a Transformers edition I had to get my hands on one. Now that we have one, let’s take a closer look.

With the keyboard moving to mechanical keyboards in mass over the past year there is still one company holding their ground. Logitech as of this posting has not introduced a mechanical keyboard into the gaming market. The reason they haven’t is because their gaming line holds its own, even with just minor changes over the years. The key to this is their built in screen with up to date game and PC information right on your keyboard. No one else on the market has been able to develop anything similar, largely due to Logitech’s integration with so many games on the market. We had a chance to look at their G19 a while back, but even still today their main keyboards are still very similar to the original G15. The G15 was replaced by the G510 and that is what we will be taking a look at today.

Blizzcon, the annual game fest celebrating all things Blizzard Entertainment has been going on since 2005. In my list of gaming events I want to (or have already) attended, it is up there with the likes of Comicon, Quakecon, and DreamHack. Unlike QC, this event is not free, so one must purchase a ticket during a limited sale. I attempted to purchase a ticket in 2010 and was not lucky enough to get one before they all sold out.

Nearly five years ago when we hosted our first LAN party we had no idea what to expect or any idea on how much it would grow in the future. Research online as far as what other LAN’s were using was one of the most helpful things. Because of that, as we prep for our 10^th event I wanted to give everyone a look behind the scenes at our network. This should help give you an idea of what to start with if you plan on growing in the future.

Here at LanOC Reviews we consider ourselves to be fairly picky with our mice reviews. We are still one of the only sites to bring to light the Z-Axis tracking issues when we come across them and as a whole we hold every mouse that comes into the office to a very high standard. Typically we only see mice from the usual suspects (Razer, Logitech, Steel Series), but sometimes we get a chance to take a look at a mouse from an up and coming manufacture. Today is one of those days. We are going to take a look at a mouse from Tek Republic designed for gaming. Being new to the market I am hoping to find a gem, or at least a few new ideas. The only way to find out is to put it through our testing and you know what that means right? I get to game and act like its work!

We try to make it out to as many LAN’s as possible every year on top of our own events. Because of that we have had a strong interest in finding different ways to make packing up your rig to make going to LAN’s easier. In the past we have taken a look at the difference between a SFF build and a laptop, looked at ways to pack your peripherals, and even a SFF build for my wife. The SFF build for my wife has been perfect, but none of our solutions have helped her be able to pack everything up easily and carry it all into a LAN in one trip. Thermaltake’s new dragon bag lets you pack everything but your PC in it, including your monitor. Finally a way to cut those loading and unloading trips down to one!

It’s been a while since our last review of a Noctua heatsink. Part of that has to do with their patients and dedication to make their products perfect before introducing anything. The other reason it’s been so long is just plain delay on our part. We have actually had one of their heatsinks here in the office for quite a while. In fact, some of our more dedicated readers may recognize this one from our test rig. Noctua’s NH-C14 is a top flow cooler design that both helps cool your ram and motherboard while also being shorter than most high end traditional tower designs. How does that effect cooling? Let’s jump in and take a look.

In all of our LGA 1155 testing one of best experiences we had was with our Asus P8P67 EVO. Not only was the board of the best quality and feature packed, but for once we were very happy with the included software. Because of that we were very excited to see what Asus would have to offer with the launch of X79. Today we will be taking a look at their P9X79 PRO. With a full feature set I am expecting this to be a killer board, but there is only one way to find out for sure! Let’s take a look.

My first true gaming mouse pad was the Razer Exact Mat. Surprisingly I still pack that same pad in my laptop bag every day due to its metal constructions durability. When I originally purchased the eXact Mat it also came with a wrist rest made to fit it. That same rest actually was carried on from the eXact mat to the Destructor later on for me until it became a little to tore up for me to use day to day. When I had seen Razer’s introduction of the Vespula, I couldn’t help make the connection to the eXact mat with the included wrist rest and dual sided design. We have finally gotten our hands on one, the Transformers 3 Licensed version to be exact. Let’s see how it compares to its much older brother.

A couple of months ago a friend came to me and asked about upgrading his machine. With his current rig running a Core2Duo, 3gb of RAM, Windows Vista 32bit, 2 Nvidia 9600GT's and a spinning hard disk. What he wanted was something that would boot quickly, handle his four monitors for stock trading and be an overall better PC. We had some work to do.

The PC world is always moving, innovating, and reinventing itself. Every day, every month, and every year we see new products introduced from every aspect of the industry. You will almost never will you see any of those new products cause more than just a small hiccup in the overall scheme. There is one company that is a little different. When we come across a main Intel launch everyone in the industry stops what they are doing to make sure they are aligned with what Intel is doing. Today I can finally talk to you about Intel’s newest launch, a new socket, chipset, and CPU. Today we are taking a look at the new i7-3960X CPU and the x79 chipset that is introduced along with it.

When it comes to putting together a small functional PC for your parents or an HTPC for your living room there is a lot more to take into account than normal. In these situations noise, power usage, video performance, and cost also need to be considered. That’s what AMD had in mind when introducing their E350 with AMD Fusion Technology earlier this year. There are multiple manufactures that make and sell versions of this motherboard, but many of them don’t have Gigabytes features. Today we are going to take a closer look at the Gigabyte E350N-USB3 and hopefully show that it is capable of doing quite a lot.

It’s rare that we see a new case manufacture jump into the market and wow everyone. This past January at CES Fractal Design did just that to a lot of people including a member of our own staff. From then on we have been excited to get a chance to take a closer look at what Fractal has to offer. Well that moment is finally here. Today we will be taking an in depth look at the Fractal Define Mini, a Micro ATX case built to be silent, compact and stylish. Their goal is to “provide products with an extraordinary design level, without compromising the important factors of quality, functionality and pricing”. That is a high goal to set, let’s find out if they were successful.

We had the chance to speak with Zotac USA's President Sean Tang about the past, current, and future direction of operations of ZOTAC. Not only that we had a chance to get a little insight on their interest in events like GeforceLAN and even LanOC. Click to find out what he had to say. 

Hey guys sorry for the radio silence yesterday but I will give you guys a quick recap. We will be updating this post with our day to day coverage and also with links to other related coverage. Of course that is only if we come back. Gaming with 600+ people at one of the most epic events even could easily kill us, or cause us to go crazy. The good part is ether way it should be entertaining for you, the reader. Please post up and let us know what you think and even what you would like to see. If you do it soon enough we might even be able to help you out. 

When you’re looking at mouse pads you really only have to consider a few things. Do you want a hard or soft mouse pad? How big does it need to be? Thickness? Would you like a design on it? Let’s be honest: the mouse pad market is a little hard to be innovative in. Ether it’s a good pad or it’s not. Most of the manufactures have resorted to designing pads with designs from popular movies and video games. It’s very rare that we see anything come along with a new design that truly innovates in the mouse pad market. XFX’s new mouse pad the WarPAD may do just that. Its edgeless design is very intriguing, but is it just a gimmick? There’s only one way to find out.