Daily Reviews Summary 02/07/12

I remember looking at the original Midgard from Xigmatek and I even refreshed my memory by looking at the old review from 2010. As I remember, the original offered something like five ODD bays, five HDD bays with metal trays, seven expansion slots and a pair of orange bladed fans to go along with the tool-less mechanisms used in that chassis. One other thing I remember was that the original did have most of the front and the entire top covered with mesh for easy breathe-ability for both air in through the front. Via convection it allowed hot air to escape right through the top passively or you could add fans to help things along. All in all, for the time of its release, the Midgard had an oddly placed front I/O panel, but other than that it was a nice chassis for its day.

As time progresses, older designs are left in the dust in favor of cases with USB 3.0, room to manage wires behind the motherboard tray and even handy hot-swap SATA hard drive docks built into cases are a huge hit. Well, Xigmatek saw the writing on the wall and took what was a good selling product for them and figured it was time to update the chassis to today's customers' expectations. With a fresh set of eyes, the new release got both an exterior and an interior redo. There are some subtle hints to the original case, but honestly it looks a lot like the mid towers we seen from BitFenix. Either way, the new chassis is a definite improvement over the original concept.

The term caching drive� is something that many people are becoming accustomed to as are we. We really started seeing these caching drives when Intel came out with their Z68 chipset that allowed you to add a smaller solid state drive to your existing drive, which would increase overall performance. This is great for people who have an Intel Z68 motherboard, but what about everyone else? This is where OCZs Synapse Cache drive comes in. It is a SATA 6GB/s solid state drive, but comes with software that allows you to make it a caching drive on any PC system. Read on as we check it out!

The BW-12B1LT from Asus has proven to be a solid contender in the relatively new market of Blu-Ray writers. It operates quietly, has a sleek look, and produced reliable burns with every type of recordable media I tossed at it.