Reviews 51946 Published by

Here a roundup of todays reviews and articles:

- RIM BlackBerry Bold 9780 Review
- ROCCAT Kova+ Review
- Fractal Design Define XL Case Review
- KFA2 (Galaxy) GeForce GTX 560 White edition and Anarchy review
- MSI P67A-GD65 Intel Socket 1155 Motherboard Review
- LG VL600 (Verizon Wireless) Review
- MSI GeForce GTX 560 Ti 1GB Twin Frozr II Video Card
- Hauppauge Colossus HD Capture Card Q&A
- Arctic Cooling Freezer 11 LP CPU Cooler Review
- Cooler Master Elite Power 350 W Power Supply Review
- Kingston HyperX Max 3.0 64GB Review
- AMD Catalyst 11.1 Windows 7 Driver Analysis
- Lian Li X2000F Review
- MSI P67A-GD55 Intel P67 Motherboard Review
- Sapphire Pure Black X58 Review
- Evercool HPL-815 Low Profile Heatsink Review
- HIS Radeon HD 6970 Turbo Graphics Card Review
- ioSafe SoloPRO USB 3.0 1TB Disaster Proof External Hard Drive Review
- Sapphire Radeon HD 6970 Review
- Sandy Bridge: The mobile perspective



RIM BlackBerry Bold 9780 Review
Business Computing World published a review of the RIM BlackBerry Bold 9780

If you're a fan of the traditional BlackBerry then the Bold 9780 is a real step forward. The core mobile e-mail function remains intact and the new Universal Search tool on its own is almost worth the upgrade to the new OS. Regular Internet users will also like the much improved Web browser. One word of note, however. If you've had trouble typing on the small BlackBerry QWERTY keyboards in the past, you may find this one similarly tricky to its predecessors.
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ROCCAT Kova+ Review
Vortez posted ROCCAT Kova+ Review

ROCCAT had a tremendous 2010, introducing some of the finest gaming products to the market with a keen eye for innovation and proficiency. Kick-starting 2011 we have ROCCAT's first product to launch, namely the Kova[+]. Just like the Kone[+], the Kova[+] is a successor to its originator the Kova which was a mouse centered around oldschool gamers - those that wanted impressive feedback but a basic shell. No customisation, no driver software. But things are about to change.
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Fractal Design Define XL Case Review
KitGuru posted a review on the Fractal Design Define XL Case

Today we are going to look at the Fractal Design Define XL Case which is designed to keep noise to a minimum. The ‘XL’ part of the cases’ name is certainly reflective of the size of the case which is quite a lot larger than the other £100+ cases we’ve looked at recently.
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KFA2 (Galaxy) GeForce GTX 560 White edition and Anarchy review
The Guru of 3D posted their KFA2 GeForce GTX 560 White edition and Anarchy review

KFA2 submitted two cards, one focused at pure silence is the Galaxy GTX 560 Ti GC / KFA2 GeForce GTX 560 EX OC ANARCHY. The second card tested today is the GeForce GTX 560 White Edition aka KFA2 GeForce GTX 560 LTD OC White edition.

The KFA2 GeForce GTX 560 EX OC ANARCHYcomes with a TwinBlade dual 90mm silent fan cooler which offers 1.8x more cooling fin than the reference cooler. A cooling solution that is much more silent than the reference products and comes with a detachable design. The second card tested today is the GeForce GTX 560 White Edition aka KFA2 GeForce GTX 560 LTD OC White edition. It comes factory clocked at 950 MHz on the primary GPU core and 4400 MHz on the memory at default.

The White edition is loaded with extras and features alright, first off that white PCB, then we spot 6+8-pin PEG power connectors. Check out the full review right here
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MSI P67A-GD65 Intel Socket 1155 Motherboard Review
Legit Reviews posted MSI P67A-GD65 Intel Socket 1155 Motherboard Performance Review

The MSI P67A-GD65 is the next motherboard to come across the Legit Reviews Intel Sandy Bridge test bench. Our first article featured the ASUS P8P67 Deluxe as well as the ASUS P8P67. Both of these boards did a bang up job and set the bar high. This will give the MSI P67A-GD65 P67 based motherboard something to strive for. Will the MSI P67A-GD65 meet that challenge or will it crash and burn? Read on to find out!

Whether you are an experienced overclocker or just getting into overclocking, the MSI P67A-GD65 should satisfy your urges for speed. Starting out with the OC Genie, which will overclock your system in only one second, we had a system that was overclocked to 4.2GHz, and was rock solid. Nothing like a little free performance with zero work. When I first started overclocking manually I was running an older version of the BIOS. With this version I was able to hit the same overclock with the Intel Core I5 2500K as we were able to previously in the ASUS P8P67 Deluxe article. Our previous best was 4824MHz on both of the ASUS boards that we have tested. Since then a new feature has been added within the BIOS for both the ASUS boards as well as for the MSI P67A-GD65. You can now have the Internal PLL Voltage either enabled or disabled. Once we enabled it within the MSI P67A-GD65 BIOS, things started to get just a little more interesting...
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LG VL600 (Verizon Wireless) Review
TechReviewSource.com posted a review on the LG VL600 modem

Verizon's 4G LTE network is the fastest in the land, at least in the 38 cities where it's been turned on, and the LG VL600 modem is a fine way to tap into those blazing speeds. It's sleek and businesslike too, but it lacks Mac support and a few other important features.
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MSI GeForce GTX 560 Ti 1GB Twin Frozr II Video Card
TweakTown posted a review on the MSI GeForce GTX 560 Ti 1GB Twin Frozr II Video Card

We've already been amazed with what the GTX 560 Ti offers us when we looked at the GIGABYTE version which falls into the SOC series from the company. Now it's time to see what MSI can do with the model and while this one might not fall into that higher end HAWK series that we've grown to love, it does carry with it both an OC and the Twin Frozr II cooler.

We instantly know that the card isn't going to be as aggressive on the clock front because it's part of the Twin Frozr II series, but we expect it to offer some great cooling numbers while at the same time giving us a better idea of how lower clocked GTX 560s will perform against the competition.
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Hauppauge Colossus HD Capture Card Q&A
MissingRemote has posted a Hauppauge Colossus HD Capture Card Q&A

I currently have a prototype Hauppauge Colossus HD PVR in my development HTPC and wanted to start a Q\A thread here at Missing Remote. Note, I am using a prototype board so my experience may vary slightly from the production boards but not significantly. So far it has been stable. I am using two boards, one with digital audio and the other with stereo audio to compare and track potential stability differences. There are four inputs. 1- HDMI; 2- A dongle that provides either component video + analog audio or composite video + analog audio; 3- TOSLINK SPDIF (digital optical) input; 4- IR receiver (shared with the IR blaster).
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Arctic Cooling Freezer 11 LP CPU Cooler Review
Hardware Secrets tested the Arctic Cooling Freezer 11 LP, a low-profile CPU cooler with two heatpipes and a 92 mm fan.

This time we've tested a low profile CPU cooler from Arctic Cooling: the Freezer 11 LP. It has two heatpipes and a 92 mm fan. Let's check its performance!
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Cooler Master Elite Power 350 W Power Supply Review
Hardware Secrets posted a review on the Cooler Master Elite Power 350 W Power Supply

We also like to review low-end products from time to time so people with a serious budget restriction can have an idea whether it is worthwhile to buy cheap products or not. Today we are going to take an in-depth look at the Elite Power 350 W (RS-350-PSAR-I3) from Cooler Master. Can it really deliver its rated power? Is it worthwhile giving it a shot if you don't have a lot of money to spend on a power supply? Let's see.
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Kingston HyperX Max 3.0 64GB Review
XSReviews reviewed the Kingston HyperX Max 3.0 64GB USB 3.0 drive

While little pen/flash drives have increased in capacity in recent years, those that want a bit more storage space are still forced with going with portable hard drives, or SSDs. However, if you don't want to utilise a drive of your own, or sort out hard drive cages or covers, the pre-built option is also available. Today we look at such a device from Kingston, the HyperX 64GB Max 3.0 device that utilises USB 3 technology to give it incredibly quick transfer rates with a reasonable capacity behind it too.
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AMD Catalyst 11.1 Windows 7 Driver Analysis
TweakTown posted an AMD Catalyst 11.1 Windows 7 Driver Analysis

As we roll into another year and the first month comes to a close, it comes as no surprise that we begin to see a new iteration of the Catalyst driver suite. As you would've guessed, we're dealing now with the 11 series driver and being both the first one and the January one, the exact name is the 11.1 driver.

This has been a little weird this time around, as AMD actually released a hot fix version of the driver before the official WHQL one. This is something we're seeing more and more from them and it will be interesting if over time we continue to see "monthly" WHQL drivers, instead of just "monthly" driver updates. The thing is, over the recent months we've seen the official WHQL driver come followed by a bunch of non WHQL hot fix versions. We know the WHQL process takes time, and we would assume it also costs money, so it will be interesting to see if anything changes in 2011.
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Lian Li X2000F Review
PureOverclock has published a review of the Lian Li X2000F full tower case.

Today we are looking at the Lian Li PC-X2000F, a sleek and massive tower from Lian Li that strives for the top. But it also comes with a massive price tag. Is it justified? Let's see if this tower can live up to the Lian Li pedigree.
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MSI P67A-GD55 Intel P67 Motherboard Review
ThinkComputers.org posted a review on the MSI P67A-GD55 Intel P67 Motherboard

I’m sure you have been loaded with Intel Sandy Bridge news and reviews all this month. We posted our first Sandy Bridge review on the CyberPower Gamer Xtreme 4000 Intel P67 Sandy Bridge System, then the Intel Core i5-2500K LGA 1155 “Sandy Bridge” Processor, so check those our if you haven’t already. Today we are going to be taking a look at our first Sandy Bridge motherboard the P67A-GD55 from MSI. This is also our first MSI motherboard review so we are pretty excited. This motherboard is Sandy Bridge ready and features the P67 chipset, 2 SATA 6GB/s ports, 4 USB 3.0 ports, the OC Genie II feature, ClickBIOS and Military Class II high stability components. Let’s take a look…
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Sapphire Pure Black X58 Review
OCC has published a review on the Sapphire Pure Black X58

Overclocking the Sapphire Pure Black X58 initially was met with a lot of failed boot attempts until I figured that the voltages needed were a bit different from the values I've needed in the past. Not so much different but one in particular that I had never really needed to adjust before was the IOH/ICH I/O voltage. This voltage helped bring stability to my overclock at 210 x 20. The board could boot up to a bclock of 218Mhz and make it into windows at 214Mhz but good long-term stability was only reached at a bclock of 210. This of course done using air cooling. I used a combination of CPU vcore, CPU vtt, IOH/ICH I/O voltage and DRAM voltage to increase the speed of the processor ultimately giving me a 4.2GHz stable OC.
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Evercool HPL-815 Low Profile Heatsink Review
FrostyTech checked out the Evercool HPL-815 Low Profile Heatsink

Standing just 45mm tall, the Evercool HPL-815 is a low profile heatsink suited for use in 2U thick computer cases. It's equipped with a top mounted 80x80x15mm PWM fan that rotates at speeds of 4000-1000RPM, exhausting air downwards into a 23mm tall array of quilted aluminum fins. In fact, of all the sub-60mm low profile heatsinks Frostytech has tested the HPL-815 ranks 7°C cooler (at 4000RPM fan speed) than the next best thermal solution.
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HIS Radeon HD 6970 Turbo Graphics Card Review
HardwareHeaven.com posted HIS Radeon HD 6970 Turbo Graphics Card Review

Today we have the HIS Radeon 6970 Turbo on our test bench and have paired it with an overclocked Core i7-980X to see how well it performs against the standard 6970 and GTX 570 in a selection of real world gaming tests, media playback, stereoscopic 3D and GPU computing.
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ioSafe SoloPRO USB 3.0 1TB Disaster Proof External Hard Drive Review
Futurelooks takes a look at the ioSafe SoloPRO USB 3.0 1TB Disaster Proof External Hard Drive

One of the biggest reasons why you may choose to have an external hard drive is so that you can make backup copies of all your critical data. This gives you peace of mind in case the hard drive in your primary computer happens to crash. How, then, can you get peace of mind if your home or office happen to catch on fire?
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Sapphire Radeon HD 6970 Review
Hardwareoverclock.com posted a review on the Sapphire Radeon HD 6970 video card

Hardwareoverclock.com has just posted another videocard review. Last week we have taken a look at the Sapphire Radeon HD 6970.
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Sandy Bridge: The mobile perspective
The Tech Report takes a look at the mobile variants of the Sandy Bridge processors

As Intel was rolling out its desktop Sandy Bridge processors earlier this month, it also unleashed a whole family of mobile variants. Join us as we benchmark a behemoth of a laptop powered by Intel's second-quickest mobile Sandy Bridge CPU.
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