Daily Reviews Summary 10/30/10

Lacie introduces a cost saving alternative to USB 3.0 SSD storage. Will the capacity benefits outweigh the speed handicap? Read on and find out.

G.Skill hasn't been the most active in terms out putting out SSDs but sometimes slow and steady wins the race. We had the pleasure of test driving the 120GB Phoenix Pro to see how it compared to its peers in the marketplace. Will it crash and burn or will it rise from the ashes? Read on to see how this SandForce Driven SSD does compared to some of the biggest names in the industry.

I can't say that I am at all surprised by the performance of the G.Skill Phoenix Pro drive. As mentioned during some of the benchmark assessments, the configuration of the drive is nearly identical to a number of other drives on the market from its competitors. As such, the expectation of its performance to be on par with its peers was there from the start and we weren't let down. In fact, many of the benchmark numbers were almost exactly what we have seen from the other SandForce drives in the same configuration. Really, these are all pushing the limits of what the SATA II interface is capable of so you can't reasonably expect to see one really outshine the others...

The Vizio XVT423SV 42-inch LCD offers 1080p high-definition resolution, a 240Hz refresh rate, 5 millisecond response time, built-in Wi-Fi, and many connectivity options. Good picture quality gives this TV a leg up against the competition, but audio quality is only average at best.

The Power Supply market is very healthy with a wealth of offerings for all user demands. Today we are focusing on the enthusiast user who wants maximum efficiency combined with the lowest possible noise for a performance gaming or media center.

The Cooler Master Silent Pro GOLD 600W power supply is built to the most demanding standards with 80 Plus GOLD certification, aimed at the high end of the market, costing £100 inc vat.

With the 256GB RealSSD C300 Crucial developed an enormously fast SATA3 SSD, which can clearly eclipse usual SATA2 Solid State Drives. In this test report, the Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB SATA3 SSD was practically tested and benchmarked on a SATA3 interface and on a SATA2 controller. The Redaktion ocinside.de review will show, if the at present largest and fastest 256GB RealSSD from Crucial is a great choice.

Once again I present to you good sirs a memory review. This time I'm looking at a product from a Mach Xtreme Technology, a fresh brand offering a wide range of memory module products, including RAM, flash drives and SSDs. MX-Tech profiles itself with artistic designed products. Today we're taking a look at their Armor-series RAM, rated at 2133MHz CL9. I'll give it a quick comparison to a recent RAM review and of course the product will be rated for its price vs performance quality.

What happens if you take a good gaming mouse with a small design defect at the scroll wheel, fix that and add all the interesting features the previously launched products had in the past and more? The Kone+ Max Customization Gaming Mouse is born.

Today's mini ITX motherboards are slowing starting to support quad-core CPUs, advanced chipsets, and PCIe 2.0 graphics cards, but only a few vendors are actually taking advantage of it. Gigabyte jumped on the mini ITX train and suited up the H55N-USB3 with support for today's latest LGA 1156 processors, USB 3.0, and DDR3 memory. It should be interesting to see how this board fairs against other form factors that use the same chipset.

A decent portable projector that's worth buying?

Avexir, established in 2006, might be a somewhat unfamiliar name to many of the hardware enthusiasts reading this review. And, while they've only started building their own brand name this past year, they aren't exactly newcomers to the DRAM industry. Their OEM manufacturing is widely used in OCZ, UMAX, Teamgroup, Geil, Apacer, and even Mushkin DRAM. Not only that, but many of the executives carrying Avexir's own brand have jumped ship from consumer established organizations like Adata and Teamgroup. Avexir's leadership and experience in the industry couldn't come at a better time. While memory prices have somewhat settled, they are still ludicrously high, especially with the solid state rush and current economic stagnation. Fortunately, many of Avexir's current products on the market have been priced much lower than the competition, while offering substantially more quality. Today, we are going to look at one such Avexir product; that of their currently unreleased Avexir Standard Series 12GB (3 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 kit (AVD3U16000904G-3S). A memory product that looks to be both a solid budget choice and even a quality overclocking option - two features that are usually hard to find in one particular product.

Their value propositions were already strong, but will they overclock? You betcha.

NZXT is primarily a case manufacturer, although they have released some power supplies in the past, namely their Performance Power and Precise series. Here at OCIA.net we've looked a few of these models over the years and found them to be very stable and of decent quality, particularly considering their relatively low price. However even as recently as just two years ago, they failed to meet basic 80Plus standards, topping out around 78% efficiency. Now NZXT looks to change all that by releasing a new line of power supplies, the HALE90 Gold series.

The CherryPad is a 7-inch slate that comes preloaded with the Android 2.1 (aka Eclair) operating system and is driven by an 800MHz ARM11-based processor by Samsung backed by a meager 256MB of DDR2 system memory. The device is also based on a resistive touch display, so it takes a bit of getting use to, if you've been working with devices like the iPhone or similar where capacitive touch displays are ubiquitous. Journey on here with us in this quick-take video review of the CherryPad. Just what does $188 buy you in an Android tablet? You're about to find out...