Daily Reviews Summary 07/30/08

When buying a hard disk drive most users are only concerned with the drive's capacity. Should you also care about performance? We compared the performance of nine mainstream 250 GB SATA-300 hard disk drive models from Seagate, Samsung, Western Digital, Maxtor and Hitachi. Is there a big performance difference among them? Is it worthwhile to pay a little bit more and get a drive with a bigger buffer? If so, which is the fastest 250 GB in the market? Check it out!

The Asus Lion Square heatsink is a cylindrical tower of nickel plated
aluminum fins wrapped around a 92mm PWM fan suspended in the center of it all. From the outside only the erie blue glow of the Sunon Maglev fan is visible, its noise is muffled to moderately audible levels. The edges of all fins are bent down about 10-15 degrees, with a portion of the edge punched out to improve airflow. It's a unique approach for certain.

Most of the 20inch monitors have similar dimensions, mostly thanks to short stand (part between base and panel itself). Because of that it is not easy to achieve ergonomically right height, if you don't have worktable with raised stand or mount solution for monitor. Samsung 2053BW shares same faults with its competitors but it also has few advantages. Base has swivel option that allows this monitor to be rotated around vertical axis. Construction details cannot be discovered (it's sealed in plastic casing) but we assume that it's not that complicated and expensive solution..

A computer fan that can display words by turning on and off little mini leds at the right speed? If you don't mind people staring at your computer case, then this might be just the coolest fan you'll ever buy.

While the Lubix didn't do very well with music, it did a much better job with calls. The main reason for this is because you don't need super high quality sound reproduction when you are talking over a cellphone since the compression applied by the carrier already knocks the quality down. I found these suitable for listening to calls, and the people on the other side of the phone had no complaints either. While it is a little different to have something in both ears for a phone call, it wasn't too bothersome.

High resolution LCD monitors are everywhere in today's market. Seems that every PC manufacturer these days includes one with their offerings and usually has some decent upgrade offerings for better and larger models at rather reasonable extra cost. As prices are dropping, it is almost crazy to think that anyone in the market for a monitor wouldn't be looking for a nice flat panel LCD monitor like the Acer AL2002W 20" wide screen monitor. Here at Benchmark Reviews, we are going to take a look at this budget minded monitor.

The Raidmax Iceberg case is a mid range enthusiast case. It features 3 -120mm blue LED fans and 1 - 120mm black rear exhaust fan. The case sports two unique one click easy access side panels and is setup with pre-drilled holes for water cooling. This case has a lot of great features going for it along with plenty of room for your hardware.