Daily Reviews Summary 06/07/10 #2

Almost everyone who has went to buy power equipment such as a power supply and UPS has assuredly noticed that while power supply units are rated in Watts, UPS systems are rated in VA or in both VA and Watts. This usually leads to confusion as most people not only lack the technical knowledge to understand the difference between VA and Watt units but few might even realize that there is a difference.

It's been a long while since we've seen an unlocked multiplier on a mainstream Intel. How do the K series fare?

On our test bench today is a new case from GMC, the H-80. This latest introduction into the mid-tower case market for the Korean company combines some design aspects of the R-4 Bulldozer and X7 X-Station with enhanced cooling characteristics which appeal to gamers and enthusiasts.

Sometimes a huge 50" flat screen TV isn't needed or able to fit in a small space, like a kitchen or college dorm, so buying a smaller TV is the only choice. The 27-inch ViewSonic VT2730 is a good option because of its compact size that still offers good features, decent image quality, and a nice design.

The design for laptop cooling differ in many aspects. They may differ in size, shape, airflow direction, number of fans, power consumption, and they way they draw power. All of these will play a role in which cooler you should buy. For review we have Antec's Notebook Cooler Designer, we'll check out it's features and ability to cool.

Is this one of the fastest commercially available systems in the world right now? We think so.

Universal air-cooled heatsinks supporting 220w TDP have taken center stage in 2010 thanks to new six-core CPU platforms from AMD and Intel. The combination of aluminum fin arrays, heatpipes, and copper bases make for outstanding cooling solutions for today's hottest and fastest processors. Thermaltake stepped up to the plate and developed a dual-fan universal heatsink called the Frio to give power users a proven design that chills out different types of processors and looks good doing it.

The ATI vs Nvidia or Red vs Green battle has been played out for over a decade with many tech enthusiasts strongly camped in one corner or the other. Over past years, the graphics giants have traded blows with the pendulum swinging back and forth but the DirectX 11 skirmish would seem to signal a victory for the red corner.

At its launch, ATI's flagship 5 series card -- the Radeon HD 5870 -- was duly praised but could never definitely be hailed a success until Nvidia's response was analysed. Some six months later, the green camp finally had a product fit for launch. The GTX 480 was just that. Unfortunately, whilst performance levels were reasonable, high power consumption, high temperatures, high pricing and a noisy stock cooler ultimately cost Fermi and Nvidia.

So the HD 5870, endorsed by Fermi's poor showing, is many enthusiasts graphics card of choice and as expected, the ATI vendors are quick to respond releasing factory overclocked and tweaked versions of the flagship card to heighten performance and lower noise levels and running temperatures. Enter the XFX Radeon HD 5870 Black Edition...

Last week we have take a look at the Alpenföhn Matterhorn cooler. The cooler is assembled with six 8mm heatpipes and the strong 120 mm fan “Föhn 120 Wing Boost” with 108m³/h. There is also an optional second fan installation possible. So this cooler is the first choice of all overclocker and ambitioned gamers, who are seeking for a maximum performance with a amazing look.

A few weeks ago, we reviewed the first motherboard based on the AMD 890FX and SB850 chip combo, which was fantastic in every way except the price. This time around, we’re testing two more accessible models which should make it cheaper for users to build a strong PC based on a quad-core or hexa-core Phenom II, as they will be able to invest the difference in money in another component..

GeForce GTX 465 is the latest DirectX 11-based graphics chip released by NVIDIA, being more accessible than the GTX 470 and GTX 480 models. At USD 280 – USD 300 it is quoted exactly between the Radeon HD 5830 (USD 240 – USD 275) and Radeon HD 5850 (USD 295 – USD 335). Let's see how this factory-overclocked version from EVGA dubbed SuperClocked (SC) edition fared in our tests.