I've seen systems that are worth hundreds and thousands of dollars fall to poor PSU choices. I've seen one PSU kill two motherboards in a row because they thought buying a flea market PSU was a good idea. I've seen video cards that cost $300 (USD) and more die because people thought their PSU would be enough to drive the GPU. You name it I've seen it. Including a $20 dollar 650 Watt PSU burn down part of a house. Computer PSU's aren't something to skimp on.

You can take your chances in the PSU crap shoot and go cheap, or you can buy a quality PSU like the Seasonic M12D 850 Watt Modular and know that you will enjoy a long safe computing experience. Keep in mind that cheap PSU might still be running but, PSU that are cheap don't provide good solid voltage so every time you push that button your shortening the life of your computer. Be smart, go with a good quality PSU from a manufacturer like Seasonic that will provide years of good service and keep that gaming shrine safe from the dreaded flea market PSU catastrophe.

There's no doubt about it - for nine out of ten scenarios, the Intel Penium Dual Core E5200 will yield the best value, as long as you can heavily overclock it. If only AMD's Athlon X2 7750 Black Edition was happy to reach 3.5+GHz stably it would yield a far more competitive or even the best value processor in more tests.

For those that want to stick with AMD, the Athlon 5200+ also looks like a good possible choice for extremely cost concious individuals, but if that's the case, we would actually point you in the direction of the 4850e instead. In the performance graphs it may sit at the bottom, but we know it loves extra HyperTransport, and at just a 45W TDP it has oodles of thermal overhead meaning 3GHz+ is very doable. This would likely yield 6000+ or greater performance, but for a fraction of the cost, dropping it into the green area in many cases.

So it looks like our monthly buyers guide will still recommend the Intel Pentium Dual Core E5200 then for the time being, and even if you're considering that E8400 upgrade - consider whether it would be worth saving the cash and dropping it on extra memory, or a better motherboard or graphics card instead.

Oh, what a difference two years make. When we reviewed the OCZ Special Ops Urban Elite PC2-6400 2x1GB in December 2006, DDR2 was just gaining momentum, costs as much as performance DDR3 costs now, and the revolutionary first wave of Core 2 Duos 6-series for desktops and 7-series for mobile were still fresh in the hands of die-hard enthusiasts. I was lucky enough to be an owner of a then-amazing Core 2 Duo T7400 based laptop, and a significantly overclocked E6300, in which I still have to this day. In those days, I was enjoying a relatively care-free life in high school, compared to my current uber intense engineering schedule. It's kind of funny how I'm still the Editor-in-Chief at APH Network despite all this -- I guess this provides me with some sort of relief and entertainment. Heck, I lived in another city towards the end of 2006. Do I miss the days? To be honest, I sort of do. As I run the last stretch and my university first term pulls to an end with less than two weeks before finals, and daily prayers of, "Dear God, I need a miracle", and piling up tons of review products before I actually write about them, here's one that separates itself from the rest: the OCZ Special Ops PC3-10666 2x2GB. While the OCZ Special Ops is a pair of value gaming DDR3 RAM, being 'value-oriented' does not mean it has to 'look' value-oriented. With a cool looking heatsink following the tradition of the original, comes with OCZ's excellent warranty program, and a retail price of approximately $130 USD for 2x2GB at press time, it's definitely something would not miss your search. Let's pop open the package and see how the OCZ Special Ops PC3-10666 2x2GB dual channel kit steps up.

While most USB drives do allow for, and work well with disk encryption, the IronKey is intended to be an answer to many portable security issues users might have. The IronKey protects against hostile networks, and includes utilities for storing passwords, and clean browsing software. In effect, the IronKey is your very own bastion of portable security, meant to survive whatever you throw at it and keep your data out of prying hands without too much interference.