Daily Reviews Summary 06/02/10

Targeted as an entry level mid-tower case, the Elite 430 Black is designed for minimum footprint with maximum use of interior space. Cooler Master claims even dual Crossfire HD5970 cards and oversized tower style air coolers like their V8 and Hyper 212+ will fit. Able to house up to six 120mm fans, the Elite 430 offers excellent cooling potential while tight mesh inserts allow filtration of incoming air. Blue LED lighting and a generous sized side panel window help the Elite 430 really show off its stuff, while the fully painted black interior adds the finishing touch. Join me as I take a closer look at the Cooler Master Elite 430 Black mid-tower case.

SSDs are both PC and Mac friendly, which is great news since Apple Computers have made significant progress taking up market share over the past decade. Although Mac computers can be expensive, Other World Computing offers hardware upgrades at prices that compete with the PC market. One such product, the OWC Mercury Extreme Pro-RE, is one of the most affordable SandForce-based SSD's available. SandForce-based SSDs are getting tremendous attention from the industry, and products based on the SF-1222 controller have demonstrated exceptional operational performance and speed. In this article Benchmark Reviews tests the 100GB OWC Mercury Extreme Pro-RE, model SSDMXRE100, against some of the fastest storage solutions on the market.

The Cooler Master Elite 430 Black Computer Case is a new addition to the Cooler Master lineup. The Elite 430 also does it's own take on the all black scheme, finished in high quality matte black inside and out. Adding to the appearance of the case is a blue LED fan that sits behind black venting, adding a glow to the front that can also be seen inside through the side window.

Laser printers have traditionally been more expensive to purchase and less expensive to operate than ink jet printers. Now, however, with the Officejet Pro 8000, HP is bucking that trend. They say that when used with HP's high-capacity cartridges, this Officejet ink jet printer has a 50% lower cost per page than comparable laser printers and the list price is only USD 179. So we set out to see if this ink jet printer lived up to the hype and if it was truly a worthwhile purchase.

Seagate's Momentus XT swaps the Windows-only shackles of previous hybrid drives for a scheme dubbed Adaptive Memory. Can it successfully marry 500GB of mechanical storage with 4GB of flash?

Perhaps the closest any of us many come to driving a Ferrari is a virtual one, in a video game, or using a branded wheel on our desk. And that is xactly what we're discussing here today: Thrustmaster's Ferrari F430 Force Feedback driving wheel. It brings some of the Ferrari mystique to market, certainly at an infinitely more affordable price tag, but can it bring some of that driving magic to users when running the back stretch of Nurburgring on Race Driver: GRID? Maybe. Let's take a closer look at the Thrustmaster F430 and see how it fares.

Antec is a staple in the power supply market around the world. Its Earthwatts line was introduced last year to target the green computing market. This line is designed to be sans no-frills, aside from partial modularity and 80PLUS certification. This SLI-certified, quad-12V-rail unit sports plenty of connectivity for its wattage, with nine SATA and nine device connectors in addition to its PCI-Express cables. ThinkComputers takes a look at this unit in this review.

If you want an X58 based platform and want to enjoy USB 3.0 and SATA3 6G, there really are no affordable alternatives on the market, until now that is. ASRock has released a new X58 motherboard. It's loaded with extra features yet comes with SATA3 and USB 3.0. It is up-to date, has some nice extras, and get this... will cost only 165 EUR or roughly 189 USD.

That price alone sparked my interest for sure as this board would need to really blow if it's not worth that money. So today we'll have look at the more budget conscious ASRock X58 Extreme3 motherboard, and dude .. it's pretty darn good really!