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Reviews Around The Web
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Choose Web Reviews from this Maker:
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Monday, May 5, 2008
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The worst thing about the exclusive V-cool heatsink (really the only bad thing) is that to get enough surface area for the passive cooling to be effective the normally single slot 9600GT becomes a dual slot design. I also found that the back edge of the passive heatsink blocked the retention clip for the six-pin power connector the card requires. I had to lift gently on the fins of the heatsink to get the clearance needed for seating the power plug.
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The Cooler Master Centurion 590 is a very affordable entry level case that brings a lot of features from much more expensive enthusiast class enclosures. Its nine 5.25" drive bays offer ultimate expandability, large video cards will also find a comfortable home in it.
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The Casio EXILIM EX-S10 impresses with its credit card slimness while looking good enough to be a fashion accessory.
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Audioengine's stellar A5 "bookshelf" speakers knocked me flat with perfect sound. The fact that this company would trust invisible air tubes over good ol' copper to not screw up their performance is a compelling sign that their new Audioengine W1 is dyed-in-the-wool wireless solution, but I'm hella skeptical. While I certainly don't believe that Monster's onto something with their oxygen-free copper and gold lies, I'm not positive that I won't be able to tell the difference between wires and nothingness.
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The NH-U12P is the newer version of the NH-U12. It has the same basic features as the NH-U12F, but is paired with the new Noctua NF-P12 120mm fan. The Noctua NH-U12P has shown that it preforms better than its older brother, the Noctua NH-U12F.
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Looking for a new heatsink that works on either Intel or AMD processors? Good, say 'hello' to one of the new class of direct heatpipe contact heatsinks hitting the streets - the SilenX iXtrema IXC-120HA2. Like the nearly identical Sunbeam Core-Contact Freezer model, the SilenX iXtrema IXC-120HA2 heatsink features exposed heatpipes on the bottom which give it a serious advantage in the thermal tests.
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The Coolermaster Hyper Z600 heatsink is a novel passive CPU heatsink for today's dual core processors. Its' 'star' shape, widely spaced aluminum fins and prodigious number of silvery copper heatpipes allow it to work without the benefit of a fan, albeit within specific thermal limits. As far as passive cooling goes (and I mean true passive cooling without any fan blowing toward it) Frostytech threw caution to the wind and stressed the Coolermaster Hyper Z600 heatsink in its passive mode.
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GMC are a Korean manufacturer of PC cases and they are continuously trying to design innovative and functional products for enthusiasts who would like to have something a little different. Today we will take a look at one of their latest creations, the R-3 'Corona'. The R-3 is a tower case designed to fit a standard ATX system but with the minimum possible dimensions, making it considerably smaller than any standard ATX case out there. Of course such a design has downsides as well as advantages which we will examine in this review.
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As Spire say, they are a name synonymous with quality and innovation and most innovative companies respond aptly to market trends. One of these trends is that many people now have expensive high end graphics cards and prolonging their life has become paramount for many. With that in mind, Spire have sent the "Powerfuse" over-voltage surge protector for us to review.
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Performance on the XFX nForce 790i Ultra SLI motherboard was great! The majority of our testing showed that the motherboard performance was very close to what we have seen on recent Intel Express chipset based boards. Once we look at more recent gaming results like FEAR and Crysis, we see that the XFX 790i Ultra absolutely dominates compared to the boards we tested it against in this review...
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The be quiet! Dark Power Pro 450W PSU P7-Series arrived Technic3D. See you in the following Review from Technic3D the next PSU Review with a very high efficiency and a good price. Make the quiet 120mm fan, 4 Serial ATA connectors, 2x PCI-e 6+2-Pin this PSU better than the P6-Series PSU?
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Recently I took the Nexus XiR-2300 for a spin and found it to be a very good CPU cooler. Actually, it was the second best we have tested thus far. Today we are going to take the sibling of the XiR-2300 for a spin, the XiR-3500; an all copper cooler that uses the same design. Between testing the two Nexus coolers I wanted to find Nexus' secret; how they were getting the performance out of the XiR Series with such a conventional design. After a little digging I found the secret, a technology called SkiveTek, and it is exclusive to Nexus.
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Getting the Kingston HyperX 2GB PC2-9200 DDR2 memory kit up to the stock speed of 1150MHz was tricky only because it is an odd speed that I couldn't quite dial in with the settings found in the test system's BIOS. But getting into that general range required minimal effort, and even overclocking to well above 1200MHz was pretty much plug and play.
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INTEL's X48 chipset is the much anticipated follow up to the X38 chipset....which in turn was the much anticipated follow up to INTEL's hugely successful P35 chipset. It doesn't take a rocket scientist or industry insider to know that many in the enthusiast community are less than thrilled about the "marginal" improvements during the progression of chipsets, especially considering the prices some of these motherboards are going for (in excess of $300). While this isn't to say any of the three chipsets are poor performers, I find it a bit curious that INTEL has run these chipsets out as they have, taking the overall performance of each into consideration.
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If you are not familiar with Aeneon's DDR3 modules here is a quick rundown. Aeneon makes two different lines of DDR3, the first is their 'value' line which has no heat spreaders and a better price point. But the second series is the one that many of us would choose as it is meant for the overclocker and gamer that wants the most out of their rig. XTune is what this line is called and sports a very clean set of heat spreaders and pretty good timings. For those that are into numbers, how does 8-8-8-15 at just 1.5 volts sound?
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