Daily Reviews Summary 05/26/10 #2

Today we will be looking at one product area where Cooler Master have produced a wide range of devices each with a slightly different take on its job - Notebook Coolers.

We have been sent eight different Notebook Coolers to put through their paces, 6 from the Cooler Master brand itself, and another 2 from Choiix.

Today we have the Aurora Micro Wireless Keyboard on our test bench. If it meets the standard of their previous models then it should be very impressive.

In addition to the Aurora Enermax also sent us a set of their Twister fans, we shall look at them also.

Since its conception the raison d'être of the Sony Vaio Z series has been to squeeze as much performance as possible out of a 13,1" laptop. This year's spring refresh is no exception, but it brings a number of exciting new technologies to the table. New for this season is dual or quad SSD drives in RAID0, a 1920x1080 Adobe 96% RGB Full HD screen, a backlit keyboard and Core i5/i7 processors - plus a weight reduction of around 100 grams; down to 1.4 kilos (around 3 lbs)..

While today I'll only be playing with the baby GTX 400 cards, the bottom line is that as the weeks have gone on and companies have taken the time to attack this model with new cooling, we've really been able to see the model for what it is. In its reference form it's an overpriced model that runs too hot, too loud and gets beaten by the HD 5850 at higher resolutions. In the Palit and Galaxy forms, though, the cards have become quieter and cooler overclocking beasts thanks to companies like Galaxy and MSI with their overclocking software Xtreme Tuner HD and Afterburner, respectively.

Today we'll be seeing how our non-reference cards play with each other in SLI. We're hoping for no bumps in the road and some good performance gains. We'll also be setting a starting point for SLI which really hasn't been tested in months here. From then on out it'll no doubt be time for some mean SLI and CF throw downs. Of course, if everything goes well here today we'll also be attacking the models with more voltage and a bump in speeds to hopefully yield even more performance.

Powerful overclock-able processors require powerful cooling, that is a given. With Intel's i7 and i5 being full force on the market the new sockets LGA1366 and LGA 1156 are the top priority for new CPU coolers. Thermaltake's SpinQ VT has the answer for that. It is Thermaltakes new take on older SpinQ with slight differences in design. Let's put the new version to the test.

The Mini Kaze 50 mm from Scythe is a perfect choice for adding a bit of airflow in those hard to reach places, without impact the noise level. They can be used as extra chipset fans, replacement for external HDD case fans, or a replacement fans for small ITX cases.

We’ve received a very interesting motherboard model from ASUS this time around. This is the very model that we’ve used for testing Intel’s Core i7 980X CPU. With an estimated retail price of around 200€, this motherboard presents customers with a very attractive piece of hardware. The P6X58D-E model possesses some very interesting technological solutions, already seen on the more expensive models from the same manufacturer. Naturally, USB 3.0 and SATA 6 Gbps are also present; they may not have that much of a use at the moment, but are very sought-after features due to future compatibility that they provide…

Cooler Master is launching today a new full-tower case within their HAF family: HAF X. Let’s see take an in-depth look in this new beast.

USB3.0 is quickly becoming a mainstream feature. Today we have the opportunity to look at an external hard drive enclosure that will take full advantage of USB3.0! The SUNBEAMTECH Airbox USB3.0 3.5" External enclosure will keep your hard drive cool and performance hot! Read on to find out more and see how it performs on USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 headers!

The SUNBEAMTECH Airbox USB3.0 3.5" External Enclosure performs head and shoulders over the previous generation of USB2 enclosures! I suppose that is to be expected since USB3.0 offers ten times the bandwidth of USB2. USB2 was limited to 480Mb/s and USB3.0 offers a massive 5Gb/s, so the performance gains we saw here today are nothing short of expected. I will admit though, knowing the speed that USB3.0 offers I was still pleasantly surprised. I was surprised as to how well the SUNBEAMTECH Airbox USB3.0 3.5" External Enclosure performed when compared to the same drive being attached via the SATA port on the test system...

As KitGuru only opened a few weeks ago we have been playing a game of ‘catch up’ with all the hardware sitting in our offices. Today we are going to look at the GTX 480 … more specifically the Zotac version of the card. The target? AMD’s high end HD5870. We also include the overclocked XFX HD5870 Black Edition in today’s review.

Four 5870’s in CrossfireX with an overclocked gulftown CPU is a monster setup in anyone’s book; and they would be right. But I say NO! - We want more and by more, I mean more drama, theatrics and excitement. So, it’s time to bring out the soldering iron, strap on more copper than can sink a small boat and really get these cards pumping.

For some time now I’ve looked forward to some five-pot action; that’s liquid nitrogen containers on the CPU and one on each of the MSI 5870’s. But one hold up, or should I say hardware failure after another has made this long overdue. At long last those false starts are behind me and I am finally ready to let this monster setup loose.