Daily Reviews Summary 08/25/11

Ah, another day, another CPU cooler. This time it's from NZXT, a company that started out making low-priced computer cases with features and quality normally seen only on more expensive products. Then they added a line of premium sleeved cables, case fans, mice, higher-end cases like the critically acclaimed Phantom, and even power supplies. The NZXT HAVIK 140 is their first CPU cooler, and they're aiming directly at the high-end air cooling market with an MSRP of $74.99. Benchmark Reviews tests their latest offering to see if it can play with the big boys.

ASUS, a full line motherboard manufacturer, has been busy with both AMD socket AM 3+ and now socket FM1 motherboards. Let's dive in a see what the F1A75-M PRO brings to the table with these new APU's from AMD coupled with groundbreaking on die graphics processor 6550D.

The SM-9000 brings yet another new design to Nexus' already popular Silent Mouse series and is also the first in the series to offer a laser optical sensor.

Our first look at PCIe 3.0 comes from none other than MSI, with their recently launched Z68A-GD65 (G3). Adding support early for future Intel CPUs, the Z68A-GD65 (G3), with its true PCIe 3.0 support, not only offers a bit for the future, but also a bit of extra speed, right now. We take the overclocking-oriented Z68A-GD65 (G3) for a spin.

In recent weeks the talk of the town has been a sleek black external 12x Blu-ray WRITER from the folks at Plextor. The Plextor PX-LB950UE connects via USB 3.0 or eSATA cables and is capable of burning single layer Blu-ray Disk (BD) media at 12x, double layer BD media at 8x and DVD-R media at 16x speeds. In addition, it supports the playback of Blu-ray 3D movie titles. The bonus to going the Blu-ray writer route, is that BD-R media is even more useful than DVD media for archiving MASSIVE amounts of data.

While it might no longer be the smallest or cheapest NAS that Synology have available, the DS110J is still up there and you can buy it with built in storage if you so choose. It might look a little antiquated, but it still packs Synology's disk station software which is some of the best we've tested.

Let's see if this little NAS still holds up in the latter half of 2011.

The Max 5G provides everything one could ask for in an external HDD enclosure - sturdy construction, support for the latest SATA III drives, a fast USB 3.0 connection, and active cooling to help ensure your data stays as safe as possible.