"As PCs found their way into more homes, they quickly became a staple of modern life. And like most things in modern life, what worked yesterday won't work today. This not only includes components like faster CPUs and video cards, but also fancier cases and enclosures. People grew tired of the cookie cutter beige box and wanted to express themselves through radical looking cases. Once manufacturers began to take notice and it was only a matter of time before every enthusiast was given a sea of choices when it came to picking a suitable chassis. Whether you wanted a full tower, mid-tower, or HTPC, you had plenty to pick from. Side-panel or no side panel? It's all good. Even color was no longer restricted to just beige, black or silver.

Without further ado, I present you the NZXT Khaos. A full size tower chassis that is determined to take its own path. Read on to see if this case is worthy of your next build."

"Today PCSTATS is testing Palit's latest videocard, the Radeon HD4870X2, sporting a pair of ATI/AMD's powerful 4870 (Radeon 770) GPUs. This dual slot card is intended to provide gamers with the power of a dual video card Crossfire setup in a single unit, and features a huge 2GB of onboard GDDR5 video memory, enough to keep both GPUs fed and happy."

"Competition is fierce at the $150 price point, both NVIDIA and ATI have products for you which were considered high end not too long ago. How
does the newcomer HD 4850 stack up to the Geforce 9800 GTX? We compared them head to head, and threw an overclocked HD 4850 into the mix."

"Over the last six months the idea of going green with each motherboard manufacturer has picked up. Ideas and thoughts of a cleaner and greener PC industry are now taking hold. GIGABYTE can be thanked for kicking this off. Not only have they been the first to introduce solid state components across the entire line of boards, but also the first to introduce a hardware based voltage switching system that allows the board to physically shut down un-used phases when the CPU is at idle and during lower states of activity; very impressive.

Today we have added a new contender to the market, that being MSI. It has only been of late that MSI has decided to enter the green PC market and it’s very good to see them do it. MSI has decided not to jump straight in, but to work on its energy saving system a bit more to get the bugs out (something we think ASUS and GIGABYTE could have done). With that in mind, MSI has brought to the market what they like to call DrMOS."

"So you want all of the benefits that Blu-ray has to offer, but you dont want to rip open your computer, because who knows, you may let the magic smoke that runs your computer out! Have no fear, LiteOn is here! Introducing to you, the LiteOn DX-401S, a portable Blu-ray reader (BD-ROM). So, can this USB Blu-ray reader run with the big dogs, or will it be a complete failure?"

"Intel has been making waves about an entry into the solid state hard drive market for several months and today splashdown occurs. The new X25-M 80GB SSD is an incredibly fast, yet still obnoxiously priced, piece of hardware that every enthusiast will pine for. Come see how Intel plans to dominate the storage market in the coming years."

"Today HardwareLogic looks at one of Gigabyte's newest mid-range boards, the GA-EP45-DS3R motherboard. Like many before it, the EP45 touts Gigabyte's Ultra Durable 2 nomenclature, a set of technologies the company claims "can deliver dramatically lower temperature and longer system lifespan." Combined with several power saving features, Gigabyte has built up quite the spec sheet. Can the EP45 also deliver the performance?"

"Depending on who you believe, the solid-state storage revolution is on the horizon, just over it, a few years away, or already upon us. Analysts, journalists, and forum fanboys can't seem to come to an agreement on exactly where we are in the process. One thing seems certain, though: At least for some markets, it's not a question of if solid-state storage will take over from traditional mechanical hard drives, but when.

Of course, the mechanical hard drive is by no means dead. The torrid pace of platter development is still yielding impressive increases in performance and capacity. But as the price of solid-state alternatives tumbles, SSDs are sure to carve out a niche in the mobile space, where their superior shock tolerance and low power consumption are more important than storage capacity. Solid-state drives won't just make their way into notebooks, though. The near-instantaneous seek time of flash memory offers tantalizing performance potential for any workload dominated by random I/O requests. SSDs aren't nearly as impressive when it comes to sequential transfers, but they're getting faster on that front, too, making them interesting options for high-end desktops, workstations, and servers.

So solid-state drives are going to be big. Very big. And everyone wants a slice of the pie. It's no wonder, then, that industry giant Intel is eager to get in on the action. The company is in a rather unique position to serve the SSD market, too, with expertise not only in the chip manufacturing capability essential to populating a drive with memory, but also in the storage controller design that largely dictates performance.

Intel formally detailed its solid-state drive plans at IDF just a couple of weeks ago, revealing not just a single drive, but an entire collection of products that will trickle out in the coming months. The first of these SSDs to hit the market will be the X25-M, which boasts an impressive 250MB/s sustained read rate, a 70MB/s sustained write rate, 80GB of storage capacity in a 2.5" form factor, and support for Native Command Queuing. Read on to see how this drive stacks up against a mix of solid-state and mechanical alternatives through our exhaustive suite of performance, noise level, and power consumption tests. "

"Though the migration will be gradual, starting first at the consumer level, then moving into the industrial and enterprise space, it's a matter of time before the world literally goes solid state for its storage. In the short term, especially at the consumer level, the SSD market is expected to have explosive growth over the next year or so, some analysts predicting well in excess of 100% annually. It goes without saying, Solid State Storage is a safe bet.

Today Intel just bellied up to the table and dropped their chips down on the SSD market, and in typical Intel fashion, they're going in big. The following is a full evaluation of Intel's new consumer-targeted X25-M Solid State Drive. Is Intel playing to win? You tell us... "

"NVIDIA's new GeForce 9400 GT Series is based on the same G96 GPU that is also used on the 9500 GT. The 9400 GT has half the shaders however, which seriously limits the uses of the card in a gaming PC. On the other hand this greatly reduces the heat output which allows a completely passive solution. Point of View differentiates their card by using 1 GB of video memory and bundling a full version of the Wall-E game."

"Today for review I've got an interesting product from Altec Lansing, it's made specifically for portable audio players like iPods, and mp3 players or really just about anything that has a standard audio mini jack output. It's called the Orbit-Mp3 Portable Audio System, and it is portable, it's small and lightweight, the one thing interesting about it is that it is only one speaker, but that one speaker is supposed to provide a 360 degree sound field to project sound in all directions."

"The Pure Digital Technologies' Flip Camcorder, affectionately known as "The Flip", has quickly become one of the best-selling camcorders. We decided to review one to see why this small video cam is so popular."

"Looking to add some power and zip to your gaming experience? Seeking some redundancy for your server data without having to add a lot of extra drives? Michael takes a look at the very affordable Rocket Raid solution by HighPoint, the 2640x4. Pop in 4 drives and you have the ability to add both power and redundancy to your server or gaming rig. How well does it perform? Check out our review to find out. "

"Solid State Drives (SSD) have been around for over 25 years, but only recently have SSDs started to prove ready for the mainstream computing market now that performance is getting better and the price is coming down. It's been no secret that Intel has been working on a SSD for some time now and today they have finally released the new drives! Read on to see the X25-M in action!"

"Cooler Master HAF 932 is a full-tower case targeted to gamers, coming with three big 230-mm fans rotating at 700 rpm and one 140-mm fan rotating at 1,200 rpm – HAF stands for High Air Flow –, six external 5 ¼" bays and five internal 3 ½" bays and several other features. Let's take an in-depth look on this new Cooler Master case."

"Today we have the new OCZ Dominatrix on the slab, ready for a bit of rough and tumble. Many of our loyal readers will have an un-nerving sense of déjà vu as this mouse looks pretty much identical to the Cybersnipa I reviewed not too long ago. Well, in truth they appear to be the same mouse chassis with a few tweaks to the aesthetics.

Now we will find out just how different they are in the details. The OCZ edition has opted for the blue rubberised grip which is a solid choice as I like the rubber on this grip; it’s a soft and silky silicon feel but it doesn’t leave your hand sweating and struggling for grip."

"In the past we have reviewed several products from CoolIT Systems. Both the Pure and the Elite passed through our lab and received accolades while never offering the absolute extreme performance we hoped they would. Now, enter the Boreas which is lovingly installed into a Silverstone TJ07 chassis and is supposed to offer some insane sub-ambient cooling. It better blow our socks off considering its $800 price tag..."

"In computing an avatar is a user’s representation of himself or herself, and can occur in both two and three dimensions. It’s something gamers are very familiar with, along with the need for decent peripherals and how they can affect their reputation (and performance) online. So when applied to said peripherals, the term avatar can represent a gamer’s real or perceived reputation in their favourite game. This link may be a bit of a stretch, but when a company like NZXT enters into the arena of gaming peripherals, it can only represent the addition of another high performance peripheral to the gamer arsenal."

"Today we are looking at a very good flashlight from Duracell called the Duracell Daylite LED Flashlight. The flashlight comes in three versions defined by the light output and the battery type used. The Duracell Daylite LED Flashlight has a very white beam and significantly reduced dark spots. The beam can be adjusted with more of a pinpoint beam or widened to cover more space. The Duracell Daylite LED Flashlight had a brighter and whiter beam than a large three D-cell Mag-lite I had around for comparison using the naked eye."

"What is there to say about the Sunbeam Core-Contact Freezer? For starters, we can talk about the design of the cooler. I was impressed with the aerodynamics of the cooler, a seemingly simple "X" design actually helped out quite a bit when it came to getting the temperatures lower, also the built in bent fins that are supposed to help cool the surrounding motherboard components is an extra positive as well. The base of the Core-Contact Freezer is very unique as the four all-copper heatpipes are showing and have direct contact with the IHS of the processor, which allowed for a better transfer of the heat build up. The cooler is also very large in size, though it is still lightweight, which is always a nice combination as it has the surface area to cool the quad core processors while not weighing down the motherboard and adding extra stress on it."

"So, rather than skimp on features, ECS has been providing their latest Black Series affordable motherboards with many of those seen on more expensive solutions. A while back, we had the pleasure of checking out the AM2+ supporting A780GM-A Motherboard with the AMD 790 Chipset. While it encountered a few glitches with random memory kits, it wasn't all bad results. Stability wasn't an issue and there were decent integrated features.

Today, the ECS GF8200A Motherboard featuring the Nvidia Geforce 8200 and MCP78S Chipset, has finished the usual rounds of pummeling and testing to see if it's a better solution than the last."

"Enlight have a few products designed for gamers and enthusiasts though, and today we will take a look at one of them; the Sniper Power 650W PSU. Enlight currently has no 800W+ units and this product is their second most powerful they currently produce, but its output is more than enough for the needs of the majority of PC enthusiasts and gamers."

"Guru3D today published a review on the ECS GeForce 9800 GTX+ Hydra SLI. With this kit basically you'll receive two pre-modified GeForce 9800 GTX+ products and a water-cooling kit that is supplied by thermaltake. It's in fact the Thermaltake big water series that you can slide into you 5.25"drive bay easily.

Pretty much the only thing you need to do is connect four tubing connections, fill her up, connect some wiring ... and you are good to go. That's 15 minutes tops to get a gaming performance level better than the GeForce GTX 280.

That is a pretty easy yet high performance SLI watercooling solution folks ... don't miss the article."

"ATI has made a notable comeback over the past year with enticing GPU releases that have been able to match and sometimes surpass Nvidia's offerings in terms of performance, power consumption and value.

As things stand today, the GeForce GTX 280 is the fastest single GPU graphics card available, while the standard Radeon HD 4870 is not too far behind it. Yet the Radeon costs less than $300, while the GTX 280 is selling for roughly $450, giving AMD some generous pricing headroom to play with.

So, trying to make the most of this situation, for $559 AMD has come up with the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which follows the same premise of previous generation X2 cards, taking two of the latest Radeon GPUs and sticking them on a single PCB. A terrifying prospect given the power of today's graphics processors. The Radeon HD 4870 X2 boasts an enviable combined processing power of 2.4TFLOPS, 60 Gtexels/s of bilinear filtering, and courtesy of some highly clocked GDDR5 memory, 230GB/s of memory bandwidth."