Daily Reviews Summary 08/31/11

The Gigabyte HD6770 Silent Cell has a completely passive cooling solution. This HD6770 addition to Gigabyte's Silent Cell series claims even lower temperatures compared to the traditional actively cooled reference designs. Since the HD 6770 Silent Cell carries Gigabyte's Ultra Durable VGA technology, it is equipped with a 2 oz. copper PCB, Tier 1 memory chips, 100% Japanese solid capacitors, Ferrite core chokes and Low RDS (on) MOSFET. For display connectivity, the Gigabyte HD 6770 Silent Cell video cards has a DVI, HDMI and a DispayPort for 3-way Eyefinity gaming. Users looking for a quiet gaming experience without compromising thermal performance need to look no further than in Gigabyte's HD 6770 1GB GDDR5 DirectX11 Silent Cell video card.

The Sapphire Radeon 6950 Toxic comes with a factory overclock out of the box, not to mention an excellent value-added bonus of including a great game for free. As we've come to expect from Sapphire, we're hoping this card also comes with low temperatures and noise levels, a potent combination. Let's dive in and take a closer look at the Sapphire 6950 Toxic and found out if can do just that.

For at least two years solid state drives have been an area of rapid growth. No other technology has increased user experience or productivity in the last ten years like what has become our 200 Dollar, 128GB SSD. For years we went through cycles of adding more RAM and faster processors while our 50 year old traditional HDD design gained a few megabytes per second of performance. The HDD let us down with slow growth and moderate performance gains. A revolving digital image of an hourglass became the symbol of the storage product market's failure.

To get past Intel's P67/Z68 chipset's 2 SATA III port limit, OCZ Technology had to get creative and deliver the RevoDrive 3. Two versions are available; the RevoDrive 3 which uses two SandForce SF-2281 controllers and the larger RevoDrive 3 X2 that packs four SandForce controllers. Unlike previous RevoDrive branded products, the PCIe to PCI-X to SATA bridges have been burned and replaced with a new, proprietary technology that OCZ calls Virtualized Controller Architecture 2.0.

In such a cluttered SSD market, it is becoming increasingly difficult for manufacturers to distinguish their wares from those of the competition. Some rely on flashy packaging while others just follow meekly along with everyone else. Mushkin on the other hand has gone another route by introducing their SF2281-based high performance Chronos Deluxe 120GB at a price point which undercuts nearly every competing drive. But does this mean corners were cut?

A good fan is required for every computer if you want to have stable cooling and decent noise levels. Zalman is well known for their cooling products and today we are taking a look at their ZM-SF2 case fan and compare it vs other 92mm fans on the market.

After the huge success of the Obsidian and Graphite cases, Corsair is entering the sub $100 market with the Carbide 400R. We show no mercy and review it just like its bigger brethren and are happy to report, that it holds up in an impressive manner.

Tower coolers are becoming more and more popular due to their high powered cooling abilities, while horizontal coolers are becoming less prevalent. The reason being is they just don’t work as good as towered coolers. What if I told you there was a horizontal, low profile cooler that will not only fit over your RAM with high heat spreaders, but also provide decent cooling power. The Cooler Master Gemin II S524 is a CPU cooler that has all of that and more. Read on further to see what all it has in store.

As important as backing up data can be, keeping on top of things can be a chore. Lexar's promise is that with its Echo MX thumb drive, all potential hassle is minimized. As a solution that kicks off the backup process as soon as the drive is plugged in on both a Mac or PC, it does have some potential.