Daily Reviews Summary 12/30/09

The vCase3 is a low profile HTPC case aimed at the DIYers out there who want an elegant yet simplistic design to house even the wildest of HTPC systems while not breaking the bank. Today we take a closer look at what the case has to offer.

The ION-TOP PC is Jet Way's attempt at what an HTPC should look like. The ION-TOP incorporates nVidia's newest chipset with integrated graphics - the ION and Intel's newest Atom processor, the 330. What will come of this powerful combination? Read on and find out what we think about this HTPC.

Today we are going to thoroughly test and review Akasa's latest GFX cooler which was released a couple of weeks ago, the Freedom Force. The Freedom Force is a bulky, high performance cooler designed to complement the most power hungry GFX cards.

In Win has definitely developed a unique product that will likely appeal to a many first-person shooter gamers. As pictured above, the Ammo enclosure was closely modeled after the ammunition cartridge of an AR-15. Even the groves down the cartridge are in similar positions. Even one end of the Ammo enclosure is angled in order to give the illusion that the clip is curved when, in fact, it is not. Besides having a uniquely themed product with a practical purpose, In Win also brought data security to the table. This will no doubt be an important feature to this market as most anyone would rather know their data is secure in case the enclosure was lost or stolen. Without an included RFID tag, the drive is locked down and does not even show up in Windows until the enclosure is unlocked...

The Nikon Coolpix S640 is touted as the fastest camera in the Coolpix range with an autofocus speed that compares favorably to digital SLRs. It also has a 28-140mm equivalent Nikkor 5x zoom lens with optical vibration reduction, a 12-megapixel sensor, and a 2.7" LCD screen. With specs like this the Coolpix S640 looks like a real winner. So we set out to find out if it would come out as a champion in our testing.

Immediately upon its introduction, the ATI Radeon HD 5870 took the title for the fastest, single-GPU on the market. There was simply no other single-GPU that could touch it, not only in terms of performance, but in regard to features as well. And at the time, virtually all of AMD's strategic board partners were at the ready with products based on the Radeon HD 5870 reference design.

Unfortunately, due to some yield issues at TSMC, the foundry that manufactures the actual chips at the heart of the card, supplies of Radeon HD 5870 (and Radeon HD 5850) cards quickly dried up. AMD had the fastest, most feature-rich single GPU on the market, and it was incredibly difficult to buy one for a while there.

The supply issues have since cleared up, however, and Radeon HD 5870 cards are easily attainable once again. With that in mind, we're taking a look at Asus' take on AMD's flagship single-GPU, the EAH5870. Like essentially all of the other Radeon HD 5870 cards currently available, Asus' offering is based on AMD's reference design. But Asus does have a couple of tricks up its sleeve that help differentiate the EAH5870 from the also-rans. Read on and take a look for yourself...

It has been about 2 years since Ultra, innovator of the modular cable power supply, has introduced a new line of power supplies; the Ultra x3 series was available in wattages up to 1000 Watts. With their latest offering, the x4, Ultra ups the ante with a 1600 Watt model, along with a 500, 600, 850, 1050, and 1200 Watt standard ATX units, as well as a micro ATX 400 Watt unit. Today we are going to look at the 600 and 1050 Watt versions.

P55A-UD6 is the top-shelf motherboard from Gigabyte for Intel socket 1156 processors (Core i5 and Core i7). Let's take a look at this motherboard, which comes with the latest and greatest features like SATA-600, USB 3.0, six memory sockets, support to SLI and CrossFireX, 24-phase voltage regulator and more.

The graphics card was already factory-overclocked, but I was able to take it from 875MHz core and 1225MHz memory to 940MHz core and 1340MHz memory - approximately 7.4% and 9.4% overclocks, respectively. Not humongous gains, but gains nonetheless.

A decent phone that's held back by the limitations of its Windows mobile OS and a resistive touch screen.