Daily Reviews Summary 12/27/06

We have just posted the V-Link Data 2X Support BIOS feature today. This brings the BIOS Optimization Guide up to 364 BIOS features.

"V-Link Data 2X Support is a very elusive BIOS feature. Practically nothing is known about its true function. Even after much research, what we do know about it is currently limited to the following..."

Back in May, we published an article and report about many issues reported on the latest Creative Labs product - The Sound Blaster X-Fi. A few weeks later Creative released information and blamed DDR Dual Channel for these related issues. And, after a few months, they changed their version and blamed Nvidia's nForce4 for these issues, instead. Nvidia never responded to us about their side in the story, but they denied it on a chat.

We kept following this story and we received a lot of reports from users without nForce4 that claimed they had the same issues. So, to investigate these issues, we grabbed an X-Fi XtremeMusic from the closest hardware store and checked it out on the following motherboards: Asus M2R32-MVP, Asus A8N-SLI, Asus A8N32-SLI, ECS RS482-M and Gigabyte GA-965P. We used Windows XP SP2 with the latest updates and the latest drivers for all the devices. We also used the latest BIOS versions and ensured that the X-Fi was not sharing an IRQ with any other device by plugging it into non-shared PCI slot.

I think it looks great, cools great, can be adjusted from silent to OMG!, and also can be easily configured to face any direction (north, south, east or west). It's a no-brainer to award the Zalman CNPS9700 NT the Editors Choice Award!

Straight out of the box, the Cooler Master CB5-7KFSA-02-GP Type II BTX Cooler looks like it is ready to get down to business on some serious cooling. It is well built and heavy duty, and the specifications lead you to believe it will move a good deal of air to cool your CPU. Unfortunately, things aren't always what they seem.

When the 680i chipset was launched last month, it proved to have exactly what the enthusiast was after. However, most of those boards range in the $250 area. ASUS has just released their new P5N-E SLI board which offers the 650i chipset. It's a scaled down version of it's bigger brother, but costs far less and still contains a huge punch for enthusiasts.

There are so many great speaker systems for your PC, from 2.1, 5.1, even 7.1 systems, but to use them to their full potential you need a top of the line sound card. This is the dilemma a lot of people face when going out to get a new set of speakers. Well Altec Lansing has solved your problems with the FX5051 5.1 Speaker System. The system is able to deliver 5.1 surround sound without a 6-channel sound card, without any sound card at all! The FX5051 uses USB to bring surround sound to any computer without a sound card.

With all those crazy high-speed CPUs and GPUs out there, one area of cooling tends to be taken for granted or forgotten: Hard Drives. Is it worth going around and installing fans and coolers onto them to drop those few degrees? What about the noise? Let's find out!

Hear that? That’s the collective relief of Antec. The Nine-Hundred (900) series has finally arrived. What’s that, I hear you say? It’s been out months? Sure it has and no, we’re not going mad. This, folks, much like washing powder, is the new and improved Antec 900.