Daily Reviews Summary 06/01/09

The Luxa? LM300 Touch Pro is a new HTPC enclosure for the discriminating home entertainment enthusiast. While Luxa? is a relatively new brand, they are a division of Thermaltake who are no strangers to HTPC cases and accessories. With features such as all aluminum construction, a touchscreen LCD and fully integrated media software, the LM300 Touch Pro seems to be the total package in terms of a complete multimedia enclosure.

The AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition processor is a 3.20GHz quad-core processor with 6MB of L3 cache and support for socket AM3 motherboards. This is the fastest quad-core processor every released by AMD and retails for just $245. Read on to see how the processor does against other popular CPUs.

I can remember when Donkey Kong and Pac-Man ruled the roost when it came to video games. I used to save as many quarters as possible throughout the week so I could head to the local café on Friday and Saturday and play either of them for hours on end. Café? Yes, Café, I grew up in Newark, N.J. (Down Neck Newark) - we didn't have arcades, we had the neighborhood café that had a couple video games.

NVIDIA GeForce 3D Vision is a Stereoscopic solution that allows you to game in 3D right from your computer. The GeForce 3D Vision hardware can be purchased as a single unit, which would be 3D Stereoscopic glasses and an IR emitter, or as a bundle, which includes a 22" 120 Hz LCD monitor. (You will need a 120 Hz monitor * to play in 3D, details can be found later in this review.) NVIDIA GeForce 3D Vision is yet another tool you can take advantage of, if you own an NVIDIA GPU that is PhysX and CUDA ready.

The cooling solution is far from what you normally see with a reference card; the use of a dual-slot solution instead of the single slot used in the HD 4850, HD 4830 and HD 4670. This is a welcome sight since subpar cooling and excruciating noise were a fact of life when and if you could adjust the fan speed. The cooling solution on the HD 4770 looks much like an Intel CPU heatsink and does an admirable job in dissipating the heat generated by the 40nm core. When overclocked, I measured load temperatures of 50 degrees Celsius when the fan was run at 100% and 60 degrees when the drivers were in charge of the show. Even at 60C I did not see any performance issues due to heat. With an open design like this though, there is one drawback when used in a less than optimally vented case; most of the heat generated will be discharged into the case, driving up component temperatures. The upside here is that the fan noise, while audible, is not what I would call incredibly loud. It was audible over my Scythe Kaze fans, but the pitch was not such that it was out of the norm driving me nuts.

ASRock has been one of the up and comers in the motherboard market. Originally slated to be an OEM only producer, ASRock found that just building plain boring boards may make you a few bucks, but mainstream users are now wanting more and more on their systems and are turning more towards high-end and enthusiast boards. To this end the ASRock company has started to put a lot of investment into producing new and more impressive boards.

ASRock has a lot of Intel boards now, but equally they have supported AMD just as much and today we have a new board for the AM3 based processors using DDR3 memory and powered by AMD’s mainstream 790GX chipset, which has a lot of goodies in itself such as an IGP for budget users.

Today we're testing the Xigmatek D984 Cobra CPU cooler that offers Heatpipe Direct Touch (HDT) technology in a small form 92mm fan setup. More importantly, however, is that the Cobra is a top-down cooler design, and we'll be comparing it alongside its brother the Nepartak, which is a tower-style cooler. This should give a good indication of the efficiency of each design.

Think excitement - Think Spedo! At least that's Thermaltakes' spin on it. But what's in a name anyway? Well, a lot less than what's packed inside this Spedo... Spedo Advance Package gaming chassis that is. Name aside this case at first glance appears to have a lot going for it. It has a laundry list that would rival St. Nicks naughty/nice list in length, items such as Advanced Thermal Chambers (A.T.C. 3) and Cable Routing Management (C.R.M. 3). Is all this stuff needed or is this a gimmick? Benchmark Reviews will take a closer look at the outwardly impressive Spedo Advanced Package full tower case (model VI90001W2Z) and see if this is eye candy or the real deal. My hopes are high as this is really the first case that I've reviewed that has many of missing elements on my cons list of previous chassis reviews.

The DS-209 is right up there with the best home/SMB NAS units currently on the market. Not only does it provide a fast and reliable storage solution for your network, but it also works as a small server that offers everything from web hosting to file sharing to video surveillance and beyond.