Daily Reviews Summary 06/25/10

The NZXT Vulcan is a mATX gaming case capable of holding large multi-GPU configurations with a convenient carrying handle. We tear it apart and fill it with hardware, to see if it lives up to its promise or turns up to be nothing but smoke and hot ashes.

High Definition (HD) video is all the rage right now. I don’t think you can find a new digital camera these days does not record video in HD. With video being easier to capture and all of the video sharing sites out there pocket video cameras are really popular right now. They are small devices to make it really easy to record video and most record in HD. Today we will be looking at one such device, the Zi8 from Kodak. It features 1080p 16:9 video capture, an SD/SDHC card slot, and an external microphone jack to record stereo sound. Geeks.com was nice enough to send the Kodak Zi8 Pocket HD Video Camera over, they are a great place to find cheap camcorders.

When I saw the initial prototype pictures of this case floating around the web last year, my first thought was 'why would anyone buy that'? Then after seeing it first hand at CES, the look started to grow on me and by the time I have now finished working with it, I have become a bit more enamored with it. Unlike most cases on the market, you find a few things that just don't "fit" as they should. Things like holes being punched slightly off center, or the expansion brackets bowed out so you need to tweak them back into place to mount your video, sound, and NIC expansion cards. Side and front panels that just do not fit quite right! Those were things I did not find with the Level 10.

The knowledge required to build an effective liquid cooling system can be rather intimidating to beginners (not to mention worries about leaks!) This is where the CoolIT ECO 120 A.L.C. comes in: a self-contained liquid cooling setup for your CPU that is easy to install and maintain, and all at an affordable price that is accessible to the masses.

The Intel P55 platform has been with us for a good while now, and it is a real sleeper, having the memory controller integrated with the CPU gives it a nice performance advantage over competing products, even higher priced ones. If it has any serious shortcomings, it's the number of PCI-e lanes that it supports. With a maximum of 16 lanes of PCI-e 2.0 available for graphics cards, there is no room for expansion, if additional devices require PCI-e 2.0 connectivity. Guess what the most common support chips for SATA 6Gb/s and USB 3.0 require? You got it, PCI-e 2.0. ASUS works their way out of this problem on the P7P55D-E Pro motherboard with a PCI Bridge from PLX Technology that takes some spare PCI Express 1.1 lanes, converts them into the required PCI-e 2.0 version, and serves them up to the latest NEC and Marvell controllers. Benchmark Reviews was intrigued by this latest combination and we're pleased to present a review.

Today we are taking a look at one of the newest HTPC cases from SilverStone, the Grandia GD05. The Grandia GD05 is a shallow depth case that can hold standard parts and full size video cards up to 11”. So join us as we take a closer look at the Grandia GD05.

SilverStone has a nice case on their hands with the Grandia GD05 HPTC PC case. It is very well built and has a nice finish all the way around. With the shallow depth of the case it will fit in any place you can put a standard set top DVD player. Not having an LCD or an LED display on the front might be a turn off for some users, but those that have had an HTPC before either find themselves using it all the time or never. If you are one of those that don't like to have any illumination coming from the front of your PC the SilverStone GD05B is right up your alley...

Today a review on what is probably the most overclockable card (on air) in the world. We test the MSI R5670 Cyclone 1G.

This is a sub 100 USD graphics card that certainly is not a card with a lot of muscle, but for low-level and not too demanding gaming, it can suffice. MSI decided to redesign the board a little bit, slapped a Cyclone cooler on the GPU, ditched their high-end 'military class' components on it, equipped it with some faster memory and bam... you've got yourself a product that can be tweaked into the stratosphere.

1GHz ?! Not an issue my dear Watson.