Starting out our day at Anandtech we
find they have been burning the midnight oil. First up there are
Antec's three models of Fusion HTPC Cases.
Anyone searching for an HTPC case
probably has certain things in mind. First is a nice and sleek design
that will fit in with the entertainment center in your living room.
Placing it there comes with another problem: size. The ideal HTPC case
should be small and designed to fit together with a stereo amplifier,
game console, and/or DVD player.
They also have a first look at the
ASUS Rampage II Extreme motherboard and the
Überclok Reactor Full System.
Over at the
Hard|OCP we have a
couple of items. First up is the
AMD's ATI Radeon HD 4870 with 1GB of GDDR5.
AMD’s brand new
ATI Radeon HD 4870 with 1GB of GDDR5 RAM is on the chopping block today.
We throw two brand new games at it; Crysis: Warhead
and Stalker: Clear Sky. We will directly compare
the new 1GB Radeon HD 4870 to a 512MB Radeon HD 4870 and the newer
GeForce GTX 260 video cards.
Still there, is a review of the new
Foxconn A79A-S - 790FX SB750 Motherboard and a sneak peek at the
MSI Eclipse X58 motherboard.
Let's check in with the pros at
Tweaktown for
coverage of the
BIOSTAR TPower N750 AM2+ Motherboard.
What we found annoying on
this board and it must be said, was the use of jumper banks to switch
between SLI and normal mode, making it a hassle to install a second GPU.
It requires you to remove the first card to access the jumper banks when
digital switching is available and works well. We just can’t see why
BIOSTAR didn’t go with this option.
Tagan
A+ Seenium Case action up at
Bjorn3D.
This case is
priced at $69.99 so it is aimed at budget/mainstream buyers. Despite its
pricing, Tagan Seenium is not too shabby in terms of the expansion slots
and its ability to help cool the internal components. Designed with the
ability to install eight cooling fans (seven 120mm and one 80mm) and
capable of accommodating up to five 5.25'' devices and six 3.5''
devices, this is a case with reasonable pricing but designed for
enthusiasts in mind.
Kingwin Elite 3.5" SATA to USB/eSATA
Hard Drive Enclosure review this weekend at
DragonSteelMods as well as over at
Think Computers. Just for good measure, here's
our review for
comparison.
When you are looking for that last
drop of performance out of your overclock, don't forget the paste.
Tweaknews has a
look at a new goo player with the
Gelid GC-1 Thermal Paste.
As you can see,
results varied very little unless you really cheaped out and went for
the bargain basement option from Radio Shack. This does show you that
you get what you paid for. The shin-itsumicrosi did some out on top, but
only by a small margin. The Gelid GC-1 did hold its own quite well, but
I think a little more viscosity would have helped it perform even
better.
There's a balance with power supplies.
Get a cheap and shoddy unit and it can fail taking down some of your
gear with it. Get a top tier unit and be too broke to get anything
else. So adding to the PSU database of sorts is
XS Reviews with
the
Silver Power SP-SS500 PSU.
Continuing what
appears to be "PSU Week" here at XSReviews, we have the Silver Power
SP-SS500, a 500w PSU. It's one of the more low output ones that we've
reviewed recently, but that shouldn't stop it from taking up the
challenge of our test rig. Let's see how it holds up to some more
expensive, and higher wattage units.
