Daily Reviews Summary 02/02/12

The company's entry into the motherboard market hasn't been a smooth one, even though, it started off well with the PURE Black X58. Following the X58 we saw the PURE Platinum P67 Hydra miss the mark. The release of the new AMD A75 chipset and the Sapphire PURE Platinum A75 saw the company again shine in the motherboard market. The shine was quickly taken off as the delayed Intel Z68 offering of the Sapphire PURE Platinum Z68 again lagged behind its competitors. From a pure statistics standpoint with the on again off again relationship we've had with Sapphire motherboards, the new PURE Black X79N based on the new Intel X79 chipset which we are looking at today should be on the mark.

Before we find out just how performance on the board goes, though, we need to first take the time to check out the package that Sapphire are offering us here. From there we'll take the time to have a closer look at the motherboard itself to see how the design of it all is. After that it's time to get into the BIOS, an area that Sapphire has been a bit weak in since launch. With the move over to UEFI for the X79, we hope that Sapphire has been able to do something here that moves its BIOS in a positive direction. Once we've done all that, though, it's time to really get down and dirty with the BIOS to see what kind of overclocking potential the new board has before we of course check out the performance of it.

On the test track, Alienware notebooks have racked up some of the best performance numbers we've seen and the company's desktops rank right up there as well. One shape the Aliens have never assumed previously, however, is the small form-factor desktop. And let's be honest, systems in this weight class generally aren't known for their gaming prowess but usually serve as home theater or mainstream PCs. The folks at Alienware have a different sort of vision for their next alien life form and if you weren't paying attention, you'd almost mistake it for a game console rather than a PC. But you're here at HH, so you're obviously paying attention. And so are we.

You could say the Alienware X51 gaming PC system got our attention when it hacked into our news channel not long ago. So we decided to send a peaceful return transmission and allow it to touch down on a test pod in our lab.

Corsair has recently entered the mouse/keyboard gaming peripherals market and decided to make a good impression. The M90 mouse features multiple programmable buttons for RTS/MMO gamers, contains an aluminum chassis for increased durability and comes with the Avago Technologies ADNS-9500 LaserStream Gaming Sensor.