Daily Reviews Summary 11/11/11

Fractal Design is a Swedish manufacturer, and their products are easy to find in the US. The Arc Midi is a mid-tower case that comes with eight 3.5"/2.5" bays, three 140 mm fans, and an analog fan controller. Let's see if it is a good product.

The GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD7 AMD 900 series motherboard was designed from the ground up to be a stable, high-speed platform for AMD Socket AM3+ processors. We test out this AMD 990FX mainboard by using the recently released AMD FX-8150 Bulldozer 8-core processor on it to see how it performs and overclocks. Read on to see how this $209.99 motherboard does in all of the tests we throw at it.

One aspect of the GIGABYTE 990FXA-UD7 truly set it apart from the ASUS Crosshair V Formula. That was our experience when we overclocked the AMD FX-8150. When we pushed the FX-8150 on the ASUS Crosshair V Formula, we weren't able to break 4.6GHz with all eight cores active. At 4.6GHz the system would boot up completely normal and seemed to be rock solid. When we tried for 4.7GHz the system wouldn't even post, didn't seem to matter if we pushed more voltage or any of the other tricks up our sleeves. It seemed that our FX-8150 was just limited to 4.6GHz with all eight cores. We were able to disable four of the cores and get to 4.9GHz. The GIGABYTE 990FXA-UD7 turned out to be a completely different story. We were able to bring the system to 4.6GHz, and didn't plan on much more thinking that our chip wouldn't do any more. Turns out it wasn't the chip that was the issue...

In what feels like ages ago now, during Computex we saw Apacer show off the new ARES PC3-17066 kit. I've used Apacer RAM in the past, but I couldn't even tell you how long ago it was and while we've seen the company offer quality module after quality module over the years, it's really been in that main stream segment with high end performance not being something they've focused a lot on.

The ARES looks to change that, though. With its mean looking heatsink and strong specifications it looks like Apacer is ready to rock and roll in the high performance memory segment with this new offering. Before we take a closer look at the exact specifications of the new kit, let's take a look at the kit itself.

When Intel announced its second generation Core processors we had 2 different chipsets to choose from the P67 chipset and the H67 chipset. P67 was made for gamers and overclockers having advanced overclocking features and being able to support Intel’s “K” series processors. H67 was the cheaper option taking advantage of the built-in graphics of Sandy Bridge processors. Both chipsets were successful, but there were many people that wanted features in both chipsets. There is where the Z68 chipset comes in. It fills that void allowing users to overclock their system, while using the built-in graphics. Z68 offers plenty of other features as well, but we will get to that in just a little bit. Our first jump in to the Z68 chipset will be with the ASRock Z68 Extreme4 motherboard. This board features ASRock’s advanced V8 power phase design, 3 PCI-E x16 slots, SATA 6GB/s and USB 3.0 support, Intel’s Smart Response Technology, and LucidLogix Virtu GPU virtualization software. Let’s get right in and see what Z68 and the ASRock Z68 Extreme4 motherboard is all about!

At Benchmark reviews, we thought it might be interesting to offer a light hearted article on the new PC version FPS/RPG hybrid game RAGE, from id software, the creators of DOOM. I've played a lot of PC games since I started using computers. I'm not saying I'm a "gamer," because I'm not. But, I have a good feel for how games have matured since DOOM, which was my first PC game. I've been luke warm with the entire genre of FPSs, MMOGs, and RTSs for a long time, with few exceptions. RAGE is one of those exceptions. Aside from video driver troubles early on, RAGE has a lot to offer and seems like a game inside of a game, inside of a game. This isn't a review, but more of a personal musing on the game itself. So, take off your armor and come on in for some fun...

Today we are looking at the second chassis in the Carbide series. For those who follow what I write about, the 400R wasn't all that long ago. In my time looking up information on the 400R, I found myself sitting there admiring its bigger brother more than I was actually looking into the 400R. My feelings were even written when I reviewed the first in the Carbide series that while the 400R offers plenty of bang for the buck, I wanted to see this version of a similarly designed chassis to give a more informed answer as to which of the two I would put my money on.

Even though there is a black and a white version of today's sample, Corsair was nice enough to send me the Arctic White version of the 500R from their Carbide series. This is why I brought up the 600T SE in the first place. I already have a handle on what a white chassis from Corsair can look like day to day, but this time I get a different approach in style to basically the same idea.

There may not be much interest in the SFF niche but Silverstone has dedicated a fair amount of time and resources towards designing cases for it. One of their latest is the Sugo SG06, a mini ITX enclosure that sports enough space for many mid range graphics cards but maintains an emphasis upon small, compact performance.

For those enthusiasts that feel the need for power and want those beefy graphics cards and highly overclocked processors that suck juice like it's going out of style (Bulldozer, anyone?), the need for a quality power supply becomes quickly apparent. The Antec High Current Gamer 900W is one such higher-wattage power supply, coming in a sleek black and red design and 80PLUS Bronze certified. It's not modular, but comes with an attractive price tag of about $140, so there's something to be said here for good value in a powerful unit.

There is always a way to save money when buying computer components. It often comes down to what you are willing to sacrifice to save that money. Ideally the difference in performance is small or the lost feature is replaced by a less expensive feature that is just as useful. In our GIGABYTE A75M-UD2H review for example, you’ll see that they’ve lowered costs by omitting the UEFI graphical BIOS, in favour of providing superior overclocking. Today we are looking at the ECS A75F-M2 which has an MSRP of $72.99. Hopefully we’ll see more replacement of features with better or more useful ones too.

We've got two of Corsair's newest headsets in the Neo labs today, the Vengeance 1500 and Vengeance 1300. The higher-end model, the Vengeance 1500, supports audio formats such as Dolby Digital and Virtual 7.1 Surround. The Vengeance 1300 on the other hand is an analog headset that performs best when paired with a high-end audio card that can push the unit to its threshold. Find out if any of these options are suitable for your audio headphone needs while you're camping in front of the computer (or in your game).

After seeing many trailers for this indie game it caught my eye and I had to give it a go. The game was developed by Overkill Software� the company behind the game Storm

Today we will take a look at the newest power supply from Enermax called ENM750AWT. ENM750AWT belongs to NAXN series which is a 80+ bronze efficiency line of power supplies. Let’s take a look how well it performs in our tests.

The Carbide 500R is the high-performance version of the 400R with additional cooling and an edgier design. Will these be enough to justify the higher price tag and will it leave us as impressed as with the more affordable brethren?

With an 80Plus Gold Certification, very good rail stability, low noise levels, 900W of power, 7 years warranty and a very good current price tag (on offer) the latest Glacier 900W power supply unit by In-Win has the potential to be one of the year's best selling units.

In the past the OC Genie one-touch overclocking utility has been excellent at giving the novice user a nice boost in processor speed for the small effort of pushing a button with no overclocking knowledge needed. On their Intel boards this works without a hitch but on the AMD side of the fence it may come down to needing some more time to iron out the details with the FX-8150. When it did work I was able to get an overclock of 4.02GHz which is just short of the 4.2GHz max you get under Turbo Boost situations. Kind of a disappointment considering how well it works on the Intel side of the fence. Manually overclocking the 990FXA-GD80 proved to not be a challenge except where the voltage to the processor was concerned. I had to find that fine balance of voltage taking into consideration what the chip needed to run the numbers. 4.84GHz was about all that I could get from the 990FXA-GD80 which is about 120MHz short of what the Crosshair V would give. Even with the lower clock speed, this amounts to a significant increase in processor speed of 1.2+GHz or around 33%.