Reviews 51911 Published by

Here a roundup of today reviews with 28 new articles:

- Cooler Master Choiix Cruiser Mouse Review
- MemoRight FTM-25 240GB SandForce Solid State Drive Review
- MSI P67A-GD80 Motherboard Review
- HP 2711x Review
- Turn your Radeon 6950 into a Radeon 6970 Guide
- Intel SSD 320 Series 300GB Solid State Drive Review
- Cooler Master GX 450 W Power Supply Review
- AMD Radeon HD 6950 1 GB Review
- Thermaltake Level 10 GT Full Tower PC Case Review
- iStorage diskGenie 128GB SSD Review
- Intel Core i3-2100 Processor Review
- BitFenix Survivor Case Review
- Gigabyte E350N-USB3 AMD Fusion Mini-ITX Motherboard Review
- HIS HD 6850 IceQ X Turbo Graphics Card Review
- AURAS Shagon' ARC-118 CPU Cooler Review
- Triple monitor gaming on GeForce GTX 590 and Radeon 6990
- Prolimatech Genesis Dual Blue Vortex 140mm Edition CPU Cooler Review
- Patriot G2 Series DDR3 1600MHz (2x2GB) Memory Kit Review
- OCZ RevoDrive X2 100GB PCI-E Solid State Drive Review
- P67 Memory Kit Roundup Review
- Xigmatek NRP-MC802 800W PSU Review
- Icy Dock MB877SK-B Tray-less 3.5" SATA Aluminum Hard Drive Mobile Rack Review
- The Fast-Enough Budget Computer Built and Tested
- Zalman ZM-HE350 U3 Hard Drive Enclosure Review
- Corsair SP2200 2.1 Speaker System Review
- ASRock P67 Pro3 (B3) Motherboard Review
- Cryo Nemesis System Review
- Western Digital Scorpio Black 750GB 2.5-inch Hard Drive



Cooler Master Choiix Cruiser Mouse Review
Tweaknews posted a review on the Cooler Master Choiix Cruiser Mouse

The Choiix Cruiser mouse does exactly what it is designed to do, which is provide smooth and accurate cursor movements on a wide variety of surfaces. That alone makes it a great choice for traveling laptop users, and the tiny USB receiver and adjustable height round out a well-made, affordable input device.
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MemoRight FTM-25 240GB SandForce Solid State Drive Review
TweakTown posted a review on the MemoRight FTM-25 240GB SandForce Solid State Drive

With SandForce on the verge of releasing the new SF-2000 Series controller, some may wonder why we are bothering with 2010 technology. The truth is that the darling 2010 controller will end up being a low cost, high speed controller for the first part of 2011. SandForce partners will be very aggressive with pricing on both old and new technology in 2011 to push market adaption, but it's safe to say that existing products will cost less than those fresh from the oven.

MemoRight is a premium SSD manufacturer that specializes in high performance, high reliability solid state drives. Even though the company can't be considered very old when compared to some of the larger players, their experience in solid state drive technology is just as impressive as many of the names we associate with SSDs.
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MSI P67A-GD80 Motherboard Review
TechwareLabs posted a review on the MSI P67A-GD80 Motherboard

MSI is determined to take the lead with the new generation of Intel CPUs, and toward that end they've sent us their flagship P67 board, the P67A-GD80. Make no mistake, this board is aimed squarely at the performance-hungry. With features like automatic overclocking, premium solid-state capacitors and enough I/O ports to choke a horse, this board is poised to take the market by storm. MSI's swinging for the bleachers here, let's see if they hit a Grand Slam or a foul ball.
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HP 2711x Review
TechReviewSource.com posted a review on the HP 2711x

Whether you're working with multi-page documents and spreadsheets or fragging your way to glory in the latest first person shooter, it's almost always better on a big screen. Enter the HP 2711x, a slender, 27-inch monitor that delivers good color and motion performance and is eco-friendly as well. However, you don't get many extras with this model, and it has grayscale and viewing angle issues.
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Turn your Radeon 6950 into a Radeon 6970 Guide
ITShootOut.com have just released a new guide on how to turn the Radeon HD6950 into a Radeon HD6970.

ITShootout provides a step by step visual guide on how to unlock your Radeon HD6950's latent shaders and turn it into a fully fledged Radeon HD6970 - a card costing almost twice as much.
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Intel SSD 320 Series 300GB Solid State Drive Review
HotHardware.com posted a review on the Intel SSD 320 Series 300GB Solid State Drive

Intel officially announced the new SSD 320 Series drives yesterday, which feature proprietary Intel SSD processors paired to cutting edge 25nm NAND flash memory. This new family of drives, however, isn't geared for ultra-high performance. While still fast, the overarching goals with the Intel SSD 320 series were increased reliability and security. In fact, despite being released after the SSD 510 series which we took a look at a few weeks back, these technically newer 320 series drives do not feature support for the faster SATA III interface. The Intel SSD 320 series drives are SATA II only.

We've got an Intel SSD 320 series 300GB drive on hand and have run it through a complete suite of tests to gauge its performance versus competing solid state offerings...
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Cooler Master GX 450 W Power Supply Review
Hardware Secrets posted a review on the Cooler Master GX 450 W Power Supply

The Cooler Master GX power supply series was released a while ago with 550 W, 650 W, and 750 W models. Now the manufacturer is releasing a 450 W version. Let's see if it is a good buy.
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AMD Radeon HD 6950 1 GB Review
techPowerUp posted a review on the AMD Radeon HD 6950 1 GB video card

In order to complete their lineup in the $250 segment, AMD has released a 1 GB version of the HD 6950. This makes the card $40 cheaper, yet does not impact performance in any way as our testing shows. We also saw great overclocking potential on our card which makes this card a tweaker's dream combined with the HD 6950 to HD 6970 modding potential.
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Thermaltake Level 10 GT Full Tower PC Case Review
Legit Reviews posted a review on the Thermaltake Level 10 GT Full Tower PC Case

Last march we looked at the single most expensive case we had ever seen at Legit Reviews, the $699 Thermaltake Level 10. This year we get a look at the more affordable rethink of the Level 10, the new Level 10 GT that costs just $269. Join us as we look at the new Level 10 GT as we want to see what Thermaltake and the BMW Group DesignworksUSA has been up to!

With the Level 10 GT I didnt find a whole lot I did not like. Most were just preference nit picking like the orientation for pre-made power cable for the hot swap bays. Only real issue I can think of the issue for those with long body power supplies. The install was very easy; running power cabling was a snap. I love the fact that the LED lighting can be turned off. I like this feature on all cases that have it mainly for the fact my desk is not far from where I sleep....
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iStorage diskGenie 128GB SSD Review
Tech-Reviews.co.uk posted a review on the iStorage diskGenie 128GB SSD

For those that want speed and security from their hard drive, a solid state drive is your best option. The diskGenie 128gb is the mid ranged option out of iStorage's current range. They also sell a 30gb, 64gb, 240gb and 256gb; all of are priced differently at £140, £209, £689 and £919, respectively. iStorage claim that the diskGenie SSD is the world's most secure, smallest and affordable portable hard drive. With that in mind, let's see how the diskGenie does in the review...
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Intel Core i3-2100 Processor Review
iXBT Labs posted a review on the Intel Core i3-2100 Processor

Processors like Core i3-2100 are in their right places in terms of both price and performance. In due time, we liked the Core i3-500 lineup very much. Now we like the Core i3-2000 one even more. We wish was bigger, however. But the noticeable price gap between Core i3-2120 and Core i3-2300 gives us hope that it may be expanded. Let's hope those new solutions will be as good.
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BitFenix Survivor Case Review
HardwareHeaven.com posted a review on the BitFenix Survivor Case

Soon after the Colossus hit the market BitFenix announced their second case, the Survivor and today we have that mid-tower on our test bench. We'll be finding out whether it is the ideal solution for anyone looking at a high quality compact chassis and whether BitFenix have taken on some of the key learning's from Colossus.
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Gigabyte E350N-USB3 AMD Fusion Mini-ITX Motherboard Review
eTeknix.com posted a review on the Gigabyte E350N-USB3 AMD Fusion Mini-ITX Motherboard

All i heard last year was that 2011 was going to be the year of the tablet, and whilst i can semi-agree with that, i don't believe it's as clear cut as that. I think 2011 is the year of small products, not just tablets, but smaller form factor gadgets and components including motherboards.
Whilst we see products getting smaller, we are generally seeing them using less power and dissapating less heat and this is where AMD have taken advantage with their showcase of their newest AMD Fusion APU platform.
Fusion utilises a CPU/GPU combination creating the Fusion APU to give users an all-in-one solution which draws very little power.
You may remember the Fusion Mini-ITX preview we did back in January which showed off the specifications and first glance pictures of these exciting new boards whilst in February we got a first hand play with a slightly bigger Micro ATX Asus E35M1-M Pro which gave fantastic results throughout our testing phase.
Today, our friends at Gigabyte have supplied us with the E350N-USB3 Mini-ITX board to see if by making a slightly smaller product, will the performance be effected?
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HIS HD 6850 IceQ X Turbo Graphics Card Review
Tweaknews posted a review on the HIS HD 6850 IceQ X Turbo Graphics Card

In the end, the HIS IceQ X HD 6850 Turbo was nothing less than outright surprise. Not only did it look good, but it had the performance and overclocking to match. This card just LOVES to be overclocked and the IceQ X cooler shrugs off the initial thermal burden without even pondering a sweat.
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AURAS Shagon' ARC-118 CPU Cooler Review
TweakTown posted AURAS Shagon' ARC-118 CPU Cooler Review

Right about the middle of this past February, I got a random email from a company rep. asking if we wanted to take a look at their new cooler. The mail came from a company named AURAS Technologies. The name rang a bell, but I had to Google the company to get to the bottom of why I had a memory of that company name. What I was able to piece together is that they make not only most of the OEM and ODM coolers on the market, there are even a few coolers they produce that I recognized right away that get sold under other manufacturers names. If a company like AURAS Tech. can keep all the major players in the brand name game interested, they have to be doing something right!

Building on the many successful coolers they have developed over the years in operation, AURAS Tech. is taking steps to develop their own retail name brand. Locating information on AURAS Tech. is relatively easy; Google took me right to them. Their sister company, however, is much tougher to locate on the web. This new off shoot is called Shagon', and while I have the site address printed on the packaging, multiple browsers and search engines still come up empty at the moment.
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Triple monitor gaming on GeForce GTX 590 and Radeon 6990
The Guru of 3D takes a look at triple monitor gaming on GeForce GTX 590 and Radeon 6990

We test gaming on three monitors with the GeForce GTX 590 and Radeon 6990. We take the monitor resolution up towards 5760x1200, check out game performance yet also try out quad GPU gaming as we place both cards in SLI and CrossfireX. So for both AMD and NVIDIA that means chucking up quad GPU performance and compatibility.

We'll take three 1920x1200 Dell 24" monitors, configure them in a 5760x1200 pixel resolution on both products and fire off a dozen of games at that resolution with superior image quality settings.
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Prolimatech Genesis Dual Blue Vortex 140mm Edition CPU Cooler Review
MadShrimps posted a review on the Dual Blue Vortex 140mm Edition CPU Cooler

The newest cooler from Prolimatech, the Genesis, comes with a shape that reminds us of the older V10 from Cooler Master and can be placed on the same level in terms of performance with the king of air cooling, the Noctua NH-D14.
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Patriot G2 Series DDR3 1600MHz (2x2GB) Memory Kit Review
Madshrimps posted a review on the Patriot G2 Series DDR3 1600MHz (2x2GB) Memory Kit

The G2 Series memory modules from Patriot offer decent performance for their price and come with low profile heatspreaders, to allow installation of high performance air coolers. We take a look at the Division 2 Edition memory kit rated at 1600Mhz.
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OCZ RevoDrive X2 100GB PCI-E Solid State Drive Review
ThinkComputers.org posted a review on the OCZ RevoDrive X2 100GB PCI-E Solid State Drive

OCZ is no stranger to creating some of the fastest solid state drives available. We know this from our reviews of the original RevoDrive and the Vertex 3 drive. Today OCZ has sent us their X2 version of the RevoDrive, which is to be faster and available in larger capacities. It boasts max speeds of 740MB/s read and 720MB/s write and capacities of up to 960GB. If you are a person that always needs to have some of the fastest components available in your system then the RevoDrive X2 is for you. Let’s see if it will become the fastest solid state drive we have tested to date!
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P67 Memory Kit Roundup Review
OCC has published a P67 Memory Kit Roundup

Corsair's Vengeance series modules are rated for operation at 1600Mhz with latencies of 9-9-9-24 using a low 1.5v. At 1.5v I was unable to get them to scale up to the next memory multiplier which was 1866MHz. However, at the rated speed, the latencies could be tightened up to 7-8-7-27. To reach the next multiplier step I had to increase the voltage to 1.65 with a bump in the TECD from 9 to 10. Once at this step I increased the BCLK of the 2600K to go further with this set, topping out at 1962MHz DDR. That's a 362MHz or almost 23% bump from the base 1600MHz rated speed. A pretty stout bump in clock speed if you ask me.
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Xigmatek NRP-MC802 800W PSU Review
VR-Zone posted a review on the Xigmatek NRP-MC802 800W PSU

Xigmatek was founded back in 2005 and is a company which primarily focuses on power supplies and high performance cooling solutions. Today we are putting to the test one of Xigmatek’s best power supplies, the NRP-MC802 800W unit, which boasts some very interesting specifications and features; we will see if it can perform as well as the company claims it can in this review.
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Icy Dock MB877SK-B Tray-less 3.5" SATA Aluminum Hard Drive Mobile Rack Review
Hi Tech Legion posted a review on the Icy Dock MB877SK-B Tray-less 3.5" SATA Aluminum Hard Drive Mobile Rack

The Icy Dock MB877SK-B mobile rack is an excellent tool for speeding up system management. The Icy Dock MB877SK-B is compatible with SATA I & II HDDs, but the latest updated version now includes support for SATA III 6Gb/s HDDs. Heat is not an issue for the Icy Dock MB877SK-B, with an aluminum body dissipating heat and a 40mm exhaust fan at the rear pulling out the hot air. Using a tray-less design, the MB877SK-B makes HDD swapping easy and fast, you can even do the entire operation using only one hand!
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The Fast-Enough Budget Computer Built and Tested
Benchmark Reviews posted an article: The Fast-Enough Budget Computer Built and Tested

Recently, I wrote an op-ed piece here titled "The Fast Enough Computer". I argued that for gamers, low- to mid-range components provided the most bang for the buck and could readily play most modern games. The metric I used was "30 frames per second at 1680x1050". In this follow-up, I build a system based on the components I thought would be adequate and test the result with several modern games.
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Zalman ZM-HE350 U3 Hard Drive Enclosure Review
Techgage posted a look at Zalman's ZM-HE350 U3 external hard drive enclosure.

Choosing the right CPU, GPU, or even SSD could be considered difficult - but so could simple peripherals, such as an HDD enclosure. These seem to be a dime a dozen, and while many consumer purchases may boil down to aesthetic value, we've discovered with Zalman's ZM-HE350 U3 that not all external enclosures perform alike.
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Corsair SP2200 2.1 Speaker System Review
Neoseeker posted a review on the Corsair SP2200 2.1 Speaker System

Corsair's Gaming Audio Series gets a 2.1 speaker system setup for an audio upgrade without the upgraded cost. The Corsair SP2200 promises big sound in a small package, and a smaller price tag at $100, so see if lives up to any of the promises in our latest speaker system review.
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ASRock P67 Pro3 (B3) Motherboard Review
iXBT Labs posted a review on the ASRock P67 Pro3 (B3) Motherboard

ASRock P67 Pro3 is a rather inexpensive LGA 1155 motherboard that mostly offers basic features of this platform, but has decent expandability. It won't do for a SLI/CrossFire configuration and may require additional expansion cards, if onboard connectors are not enough. If they are, you get a decent motherboard with matching software utilities that will let you build a good modern PC.
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Cryo Nemesis System Review
Kitguru posted a review on the Cryo Nemesis System

Not everyone is comfortable building a performance computer from scratch, so from time to time we ask for certain systems to be sent into our labs for analysis. One of our favourite UK system builders are Cryo Performance Computing, based in Bucks in England. When I first reviewed one of their systems years ago it was like a breath of fresh air, because I knew immediately that these guys really do know how to make a killer computer.
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Western Digital Scorpio Black 750GB 2.5-inch Hard Drive
TweakTown posted a review on the Western Digital Scorpio Black 750GB 2.5-inch Hard Drive

For years notebook users looking for desktop like performance were forced to purchase notebooks that used desktop components like processors and hard drives. The notebook main board and processor have evolved into components that rival their desktop counterparts, but the 2.5" platter based notebook hard drive has taken more time to reach the same speeds when compared to their desktop equivalent.

When Western Digital announced their new Scorpio Black 750GB and the marketing department advertised it as a notebook drive with desktop performance, I quickly took note. Last year we looked at the Scorpio Blue 750GB, the 5,400 RPM version of the Scorpio Black and came away impressed with the capacity offered, but the speed was only on par with many other 5,400 RPM drives.
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