Daily Reviews Summary 10/06/08

Apevia has quite a large lineup of cases, from full-towers like the X-Jupiter we reviewed earlier to the diminutive X-Qpack2 MicroATX case. Even with such an extensive lineup, they show no signs of slowing down, releasing the X-Sniper mid-tower case. When we reviewed the X-Jupiter, we found it to be an excellent entry into the full-tower market. Can the X-Sniper do the same for mid-towers?

Computers can be used from many reasons but most recent are usage for quite elementary things. For all users with basic needs, computer purchasing can be a true nightmare. Ignorance issue, enormous choice and quite often contradictory advices, only lead to confused buyers and very often lead to spending unnecessary huge amount of money on something that actually isn't adequate configuration for a specific user. Acer Company tried to help you by launching series of cheaper models.

Does your living arrangement make it impossible to locate your PC near your preferred space for audio listening? Audioengine's AW1 wireless audio system could be your solution, but does it improve upon the traditionally lacking audio quality of previous wireless systems?

Every now and then, the idea of knowing what your friend might type on his computer pops in mind. Keelog has provided us their newest product Keelogger Flash USB keylogger, which saves everything you type on your computer to tiny USB flash memory and allows you to read it whenever you want. The current product line includes PS/2 and USB keyloggers with 2MB, 512MB or 2GB of memory.

The low to mid-range market has been heating up over the past few months; NVIDIA released the 9500 GT which I personally felt was a massive disappointment due to the price to performance ratio when compared to the 9600 GSO.

ATI / AMD hasn't been asleep, though. The HD 4670 came out and has really managed to impress. The HD 4650 is also supposed to be out, but for some reason it hasn’t really shown up on the market. Adding to the HD 4000 series, however, is a new low-end entry level model; the HD 4550.

The ProWater 850i has a lot going for it. Performance is good, setup is easy, and all required parts are included along with a generous helping of accessories. The kit succeeded in keeping an AMD 5000+ Black Edition CPU cool during stress testing without all the noise associated with air cooling. As an added bonus, the tubing is UV reactive so it will look cool in a windowed case with UV lighting.

Logitech knows a thing or two about being successful and they have injected this knowledge into their business model. They know that you have to supply a steady stream of new and innovative products to keep customers coming back. They are also well aware that you need a wide range of products, from high end gear all the way down to items that will fit any budget. It is with this mindset that Logitech released the Cordless Desktop S520 last month, the latest addition to their keyboard + mice combos that checks in at a very attractive price point.

The low to mid-range market has been heating up over the past few months; NVIDIA released the 9500 GT which I personally felt was a massive disappointment due to the price to performance ratio when compared to the 9600 GSO.

ATI / AMD hasn't been asleep, though. The HD 4670 came out and has really managed to impress. The HD 4650 is also supposed to be out, but for some reason it hasn’t really shown up on the market. Adding to the HD 4000 series, however, is a new low-end entry level model; the HD 4550.

Since the Sapphire PC-AM2RX780 is an AMD chipset base board you can use either the BIOS for overclocking or the AMD Overclocking Utility. For the purpose of this review I testing overclocking on both options and ended up with the same result both ways. In the end the Sapphire board did not like any changes at all in the bus speed, not even 201Mhz, but this board was the most liberal I have had with the multiplier, allowing me to raise it up to 16x for a whopping 3.20GHz on the Phenom x4 9850 Black Box. The was achieved only by raising the VCore to 1.45v and Northbridge VID to 1.35v. This is one of the best overclockes I have achieved on this chip which goes to show you how well chipsets are evolving as time goes on.

Today we test and review the HIS Radeon HD 4850 ICEQ4 TurboX. A very lovely mid-range Radeon HD 4850 graphics card that comes pre-overclocked and has one of the best performing and definitely most silent coolers available on the market to date.

In this review we'll show you all the ins and outs of this product, as usual covering the GPU, thermals, power consumption, noise levels, photo-shoot, benchmarks, overclocking and obviously our verdict.