Follow Up: Catalyst Drivers On The HD 6970 – 11.1a/11.1/10.12 Compared16 Comments By The DukecloseAuthor: The DukeName: Drew Briggs Email: drew@techreaction.net Site:http://www.techreaction.net About: Just keeping it real for the average joe overclocker and computer user.See Authors Posts (171) on January 31, 2011
After our recent review of the ASUS HD 6970 and seeing the lackluster results that we were presented with, we decided to set out and give the 6970 another shot. Was it just another bad driver from AMD that seemed to have crippled the 6970, or was it in fact just the card itself that wasn’t meeting our expectations? So what we have done is take the Catalyst 10.12 driver that we reviewed the card on and put them up against the new 11.1 WHQL and 11.1a Hotfix drivers that were released Janua...
[Blog] Cracked screen on HTC Droid Incredible: Fixed3 Comments By Drizzt5closeAuthor: Drizzt5Name: Dillon Glasser Email: drizzt5555@gmail.com Site: About: From New Jersey. I've always been a PC gamer. And ever since BestBuy deceived me as a kid I've tried to help people out with their computers.See Authors Posts (3) on January 30, 2011
So I fixed it. Did anyone doubt me? Shame on you. Well, without any fanfare here are the results:
It works! Thank god... I mean *COUGH* I knew I could do it!
The full screen
Please excuse the hearts...
As you can see in the picture above I did this on a table with hearts on it. Haters gonna hate. But you might also be able to see that the glass and pieces of the digitizer are stuck to packing tape. A good trick for taking out the old cracked screen is to put packing tape on the one side and pre...
[Review] Gigabyte P67A-UD7 VS ASUS Maximus IV Extreme – Battle of the Titans!19 Comments By miahallencloseAuthor: miahallenName: Jeremiah Allen Email: miahallen.ironmods@gmail.com Site:http://www.ironmods.com About: Well, I was playing with computers ever since my Dad got a Commodore 64 when I was 6 years old (1986), when I was 10 (1990) he bought a custom build 486DX33, and I was in love. Mostly back then I was just a kid playing games, but my fascination with computers had a start. Because I had no money of my own, I was stuck playing with my Dad's computers, and really couldn't "play" too much. So in 1998, the year I graduated, I spent some of my college savings to by a "computer for school", haha. It had two Voodoo2 12MB 3D accelerators in it, so you can imagine how much school work was done on it ;-) It had an AMD K6-233 that I had a really mild OC on, but my custom computer builder friend Aaron had done all the work. So I can't really take the credit there. My fascination with graphics just kept growing and growing over the years, and I was constantly in a struggle to keep my games looking as sharp and smooth as possible. OCing played a big role.
My whole world was rocked in 2004 when I was deployed to Iraq as a US Army soldier. The whole year I was there I had a cheap IBM Thinkpad R40 with a 2GHz Celeron, 1GB DDR-333 RAM, a 60GB 4200RPM HDD, and ATI Radeon Mobility graphics (same technology as a 7000 series with only 16MB of memory). It started out rough as I was really into Command and Conquer Generals at the time, and the machine would only play the C&C slide show LOL. So, I downloaded PowerStrip, and OC'ed the GPU by 40%...amazingly, the game was playable!
Things changed dramatically in 2007 when I met a guy named Matt while I was stationed in Japan. He introduced me to www.ocforums.com, and the "Benchmarking Team" there. I had not had much interest in benchmarking previously, I always though of myself as more practical. But, I thought I'd play along and I joined the team. My first introduction to an actual competition was was is "The Raptor Pit", "Forum Warz 2008" in the spring of 2008. I was running a Q6600 and an 8800GTX. With air cooling I was able to bench my Q6600 at over 4GHz, and tore up the competition in my class. Overall OCF won the Forum War in 2007, Winter and Summer of 2008, and 2009...that means five in a row. I was not part of the first one in 2007, but the four since then, I have participated in. After winning the 2008 Winter and Summer Warz, Tom's Hardware Guide announced they were looking for nominations for individuals to compete in their first ever international overclocking competition, called "Overdrive". I was nominated, and chosen to compete in the North American semi-finals in Los Angeles in November 2008. I was placed on "Team IRONMODS" as they only had two guys, yet three man teams were allowed. We won the semi-finals in LA, and our prize was a trip to Paris the following month, to compete with the best in the world.
The following month, Ton, Jake, and myself flew to Paris as "Team USA" to face off against the best from Taiwan, France, Germany, and Italy. It was a very intense competition, but after two heated days of battle (16 hours of benching), we emerged the victors. Amidst our celebration, Ton and Jake officially invited me to join "Team IRONMODS" on a permanent basis, and I graciously accepted. Ton, aka "TiTON", is a world renown case moder, and is also very well known for some of the AMD overclocking he has done. Jake, aka "CPT.Planet", is a genius overclocker, and a really fun guy. The team has a great synergy when working together, we really have complementary styles.
After winning the world championship in December 2008 things were a bit quite for a couple months, then in the spring of 2009 I received an invitation to the 2nd annual Gigabyte Open Overclocking Championship "GOOC". I would compete in the North American semi-final in LA, where the winner would win a ticket to the world championship in Taipei Taiwan during CES in June 2009. The competition was tough with 14 of the best from North America gathering for a 1 on 1 competition of OCing. But once again, I completed the competition well, and rose above the others. I won 1st place and the trip to the world finals in Taipei.
My luck ran dry in Taipei where I started off with a bad motherboard, and went through 5 more during the course of the competition due to various reasons. Despite the poor finish in Taipei, I have high hopes to redeem myself next year.See Authors Posts (24) on January 27, 2011
Introduction
If you haven’t already seen our complete Asus Maximus IV Extreme (MIVE) motherboard review, Parts ONE and TWO, you’re missing out. Part 1 covered synthetic testing with the i7 2600K CPU at 5.1GHz to give an idea of the power that this platform contains. Part 2 was a full blown comparison between X58 and Sandy Bridge, with a helping of AMD Thuban for good measure. We also awarded the MIVE the TechREACTION.net Gold Silicon award for its outstanding performance.
Today, we’ll g...
[Review] Patriot G2 Series 4GB DDR3-1600 – Value DDR3 for Overclockers1 Comment By miahallencloseAuthor: miahallenName: Jeremiah Allen Email: miahallen.ironmods@gmail.com Site:http://www.ironmods.com About: Well, I was playing with computers ever since my Dad got a Commodore 64 when I was 6 years old (1986), when I was 10 (1990) he bought a custom build 486DX33, and I was in love. Mostly back then I was just a kid playing games, but my fascination with computers had a start. Because I had no money of my own, I was stuck playing with my Dad's computers, and really couldn't "play" too much. So in 1998, the year I graduated, I spent some of my college savings to by a "computer for school", haha. It had two Voodoo2 12MB 3D accelerators in it, so you can imagine how much school work was done on it ;-) It had an AMD K6-233 that I had a really mild OC on, but my custom computer builder friend Aaron had done all the work. So I can't really take the credit there. My fascination with graphics just kept growing and growing over the years, and I was constantly in a struggle to keep my games looking as sharp and smooth as possible. OCing played a big role.
My whole world was rocked in 2004 when I was deployed to Iraq as a US Army soldier. The whole year I was there I had a cheap IBM Thinkpad R40 with a 2GHz Celeron, 1GB DDR-333 RAM, a 60GB 4200RPM HDD, and ATI Radeon Mobility graphics (same technology as a 7000 series with only 16MB of memory). It started out rough as I was really into Command and Conquer Generals at the time, and the machine would only play the C&C slide show LOL. So, I downloaded PowerStrip, and OC'ed the GPU by 40%...amazingly, the game was playable!
Things changed dramatically in 2007 when I met a guy named Matt while I was stationed in Japan. He introduced me to www.ocforums.com, and the "Benchmarking Team" there. I had not had much interest in benchmarking previously, I always though of myself as more practical. But, I thought I'd play along and I joined the team. My first introduction to an actual competition was was is "The Raptor Pit", "Forum Warz 2008" in the spring of 2008. I was running a Q6600 and an 8800GTX. With air cooling I was able to bench my Q6600 at over 4GHz, and tore up the competition in my class. Overall OCF won the Forum War in 2007, Winter and Summer of 2008, and 2009...that means five in a row. I was not part of the first one in 2007, but the four since then, I have participated in. After winning the 2008 Winter and Summer Warz, Tom's Hardware Guide announced they were looking for nominations for individuals to compete in their first ever international overclocking competition, called "Overdrive". I was nominated, and chosen to compete in the North American semi-finals in Los Angeles in November 2008. I was placed on "Team IRONMODS" as they only had two guys, yet three man teams were allowed. We won the semi-finals in LA, and our prize was a trip to Paris the following month, to compete with the best in the world.
The following month, Ton, Jake, and myself flew to Paris as "Team USA" to face off against the best from Taiwan, France, Germany, and Italy. It was a very intense competition, but after two heated days of battle (16 hours of benching), we emerged the victors. Amidst our celebration, Ton and Jake officially invited me to join "Team IRONMODS" on a permanent basis, and I graciously accepted. Ton, aka "TiTON", is a world renown case moder, and is also very well known for some of the AMD overclocking he has done. Jake, aka "CPT.Planet", is a genius overclocker, and a really fun guy. The team has a great synergy when working together, we really have complementary styles.
After winning the world championship in December 2008 things were a bit quite for a couple months, then in the spring of 2009 I received an invitation to the 2nd annual Gigabyte Open Overclocking Championship "GOOC". I would compete in the North American semi-final in LA, where the winner would win a ticket to the world championship in Taipei Taiwan during CES in June 2009. The competition was tough with 14 of the best from North America gathering for a 1 on 1 competition of OCing. But once again, I completed the competition well, and rose above the others. I won 1st place and the trip to the world finals in Taipei.
My luck ran dry in Taipei where I started off with a bad motherboard, and went through 5 more during the course of the competition due to various reasons. Despite the poor finish in Taipei, I have high hopes to redeem myself next year.See Authors Posts (24) on January 25, 2011
Introduction
For years, I have always been most drawn to value and mid range components with good overclocking potential, in order to extract high end performance, for a fraction of the cost. Having strayed into the extreme end of the spectrum, this often is no longer a viable option for me, as the high end gear is required for top overclocking scores. But for systems I build intended for daily use, I always seek high value hardware.
First to come to mind is the AMD Opteron 165 CPU that I own...
[Review] Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti – GF114 is mean!8 Comments By The DukecloseAuthor: The DukeName: Drew Briggs Email: drew@techreaction.net Site:http://www.techreaction.net About: Just keeping it real for the average joe overclocker and computer user.See Authors Posts (171) on January 25, 2011
The hunter has been released, again, but most people will come to know it as the GTX 560 Ti. The Ti on the end may bring back memories to many of the old-school gamers. Around 2002, Nvidia came out with the Ti line. First with the GeForce 3 series and later with the GeForce 4, however, it disappeared shortly thereafter. But now it is back with a vengeance on the GTX 560 line of cards. Of course, this premium line of cards will go for a little more money, but hopefully the performance makes i...
[Review] Cooler Master Spawn Gaming Mouse3 Comments By The DukecloseAuthor: The DukeName: Drew Briggs Email: drew@techreaction.net Site:http://www.techreaction.net About: Just keeping it real for the average joe overclocker and computer user.See Authors Posts (171) on January 20, 2011
The Spawn gaming mouse is light weight and ergonomically designed for comfort in long gaming sessions. The Spawn gaming mouse was built for professional FPS gamers who prefer a claw grip. Engineered to execute precise in-game tactics, Spawn comes loaded with an ultra high-performance 3500 DPI sensor that includes on-the-fly adjustment. The Spawn is manufactured with Japanese-made Omron micro-switches that are meant to endure up to five million clicks. Presented in an eye-catching crimson red h...
[Review] Noctua NH-U12P SE20 Comments By BoTcloseAuthor: BoTName: Edward Reese Email: bot@codisha.com Site:http://www.codisha.com About:See Authors Posts (15) on January 20, 2011
Introduction:
Continuing with Noctua’s line-up, we follow up with the Noctua NH-U12P SE2.
The Noctua NH-U12P SE2 still represents the premium model of the Noctua CPU cooler line-up. The Noctua NH-U12P SE2 CPU was considered a high-end CPU cooler when it was first released almost 3 years ago. It has since been overtaken by the Noctua NH-D14, however Noctua invested a good amount of R&D into the design of the thermal characteristics and cooling technologies used in the Noctua NH-U12P SE...
[Review] ASUS Radeon HD 6970 2GB10 Comments By The DukecloseAuthor: The DukeName: Drew Briggs Email: drew@techreaction.net Site:http://www.techreaction.net About: Just keeping it real for the average joe overclocker and computer user.See Authors Posts (171) on January 18, 2011
The codename “Cayman” represents the 6900 series of cards from AMD. The refined GPU boasts of more performance per mm², new and improved image quality features, enhanced multimedia acceleration and next-generation display technology with HDMI 1.4a and DisplayPort 1.2. It should also be pointed out that with the new 6 series launch, there is a new naming strategy from AMD. The 6900 series are now considered the high-performance cards and the 6800 series have now taken on the roll of being t...
[Blog] Cracked screen on HTC Droid Incredible: The Current State9 Comments By Drizzt5closeAuthor: Drizzt5Name: Dillon Glasser Email: drizzt5555@gmail.com Site: About: From New Jersey. I've always been a PC gamer. And ever since BestBuy deceived me as a kid I've tried to help people out with their computers.See Authors Posts (3) on January 17, 2011
Well looky here! A normal looking smartphone. And it is a pretty one!
But no one really wants to look at the back of the phone… lets flip it over and see that sexy 3.7 inch screen with 480×800 resolution and with the HTC sense UI… oh here we g…..OH MY GOSH?!? WHAT IS WRONG WITH IT?!?!
Despite the severely cracked screen it functions just like a brand new one would.
I just acquired this HTC Droid Incredible from a friend of mine. For some reason he didn’t want it...
[Blog] Psyko Audio 5.1 Gaming Headset Review0 Comments By cralorcloseAuthor: cralorName: Chris Email: cralor@gmail.com Site: About:See Authors Posts (2) on January 16, 2011
Psyko Audio has delivered gamers with their first product, the Psyko Audio 5.1 Gaming Headset. The Psyko Audio 5.1 Gaming Headset was recognized as 2009 CES’ most innovative headphones. This headset strives to give you a gaming audio experience like no other. We will take a look at all of its extensive features, as well as the technology behind this unique headset.
Packaging:
Features:
Next: In-Depth Look, Thoughts, and Conclusion
[Blog] “Socket burn” is back with Sandy Bridge?!? (UPDATED – Jan 18th)31 Comments By miahallencloseAuthor: miahallenName: Jeremiah Allen Email: miahallen.ironmods@gmail.com Site:http://www.ironmods.com About: Well, I was playing with computers ever since my Dad got a Commodore 64 when I was 6 years old (1986), when I was 10 (1990) he bought a custom build 486DX33, and I was in love. Mostly back then I was just a kid playing games, but my fascination with computers had a start. Because I had no money of my own, I was stuck playing with my Dad's computers, and really couldn't "play" too much. So in 1998, the year I graduated, I spent some of my college savings to by a "computer for school", haha. It had two Voodoo2 12MB 3D accelerators in it, so you can imagine how much school work was done on it ;-) It had an AMD K6-233 that I had a really mild OC on, but my custom computer builder friend Aaron had done all the work. So I can't really take the credit there. My fascination with graphics just kept growing and growing over the years, and I was constantly in a struggle to keep my games looking as sharp and smooth as possible. OCing played a big role.
My whole world was rocked in 2004 when I was deployed to Iraq as a US Army soldier. The whole year I was there I had a cheap IBM Thinkpad R40 with a 2GHz Celeron, 1GB DDR-333 RAM, a 60GB 4200RPM HDD, and ATI Radeon Mobility graphics (same technology as a 7000 series with only 16MB of memory). It started out rough as I was really into Command and Conquer Generals at the time, and the machine would only play the C&C slide show LOL. So, I downloaded PowerStrip, and OC'ed the GPU by 40%...amazingly, the game was playable!
Things changed dramatically in 2007 when I met a guy named Matt while I was stationed in Japan. He introduced me to www.ocforums.com, and the "Benchmarking Team" there. I had not had much interest in benchmarking previously, I always though of myself as more practical. But, I thought I'd play along and I joined the team. My first introduction to an actual competition was was is "The Raptor Pit", "Forum Warz 2008" in the spring of 2008. I was running a Q6600 and an 8800GTX. With air cooling I was able to bench my Q6600 at over 4GHz, and tore up the competition in my class. Overall OCF won the Forum War in 2007, Winter and Summer of 2008, and 2009...that means five in a row. I was not part of the first one in 2007, but the four since then, I have participated in. After winning the 2008 Winter and Summer Warz, Tom's Hardware Guide announced they were looking for nominations for individuals to compete in their first ever international overclocking competition, called "Overdrive". I was nominated, and chosen to compete in the North American semi-finals in Los Angeles in November 2008. I was placed on "Team IRONMODS" as they only had two guys, yet three man teams were allowed. We won the semi-finals in LA, and our prize was a trip to Paris the following month, to compete with the best in the world.
The following month, Ton, Jake, and myself flew to Paris as "Team USA" to face off against the best from Taiwan, France, Germany, and Italy. It was a very intense competition, but after two heated days of battle (16 hours of benching), we emerged the victors. Amidst our celebration, Ton and Jake officially invited me to join "Team IRONMODS" on a permanent basis, and I graciously accepted. Ton, aka "TiTON", is a world renown case moder, and is also very well known for some of the AMD overclocking he has done. Jake, aka "CPT.Planet", is a genius overclocker, and a really fun guy. The team has a great synergy when working together, we really have complementary styles.
After winning the world championship in December 2008 things were a bit quite for a couple months, then in the spring of 2009 I received an invitation to the 2nd annual Gigabyte Open Overclocking Championship "GOOC". I would compete in the North American semi-final in LA, where the winner would win a ticket to the world championship in Taipei Taiwan during CES in June 2009. The competition was tough with 14 of the best from North America gathering for a 1 on 1 competition of OCing. But once again, I completed the competition well, and rose above the others. I won 1st place and the trip to the world finals in Taipei.
My luck ran dry in Taipei where I started off with a bad motherboard, and went through 5 more during the course of the competition due to various reasons. Despite the poor finish in Taipei, I have high hopes to redeem myself next year.See Authors Posts (24) on January 14, 2011
UPDATE Jan 17th ***I’m seeing a lot of the same questions/rumors around the forums right now, and I just want to address a couple briefly*** UPDATE Jan 17th
The motherboard was sent to me in unsealed box, it appears to have been used.
The socket manufacturer is Foxconn.
Only one motherboard in my lab has any “burn”, the P67A-UD4….the other two boards are fine.
I’m still waiting for more answers from Gigabyte about the previous usage of this unit. And I&#...
[Review] ASUS Maximus IV Extreme – Sandy Bridge VS The World (Part 2/2)14 Comments By miahallencloseAuthor: miahallenName: Jeremiah Allen Email: miahallen.ironmods@gmail.com Site:http://www.ironmods.com About: Well, I was playing with computers ever since my Dad got a Commodore 64 when I was 6 years old (1986), when I was 10 (1990) he bought a custom build 486DX33, and I was in love. Mostly back then I was just a kid playing games, but my fascination with computers had a start. Because I had no money of my own, I was stuck playing with my Dad's computers, and really couldn't "play" too much. So in 1998, the year I graduated, I spent some of my college savings to by a "computer for school", haha. It had two Voodoo2 12MB 3D accelerators in it, so you can imagine how much school work was done on it ;-) It had an AMD K6-233 that I had a really mild OC on, but my custom computer builder friend Aaron had done all the work. So I can't really take the credit there. My fascination with graphics just kept growing and growing over the years, and I was constantly in a struggle to keep my games looking as sharp and smooth as possible. OCing played a big role.
My whole world was rocked in 2004 when I was deployed to Iraq as a US Army soldier. The whole year I was there I had a cheap IBM Thinkpad R40 with a 2GHz Celeron, 1GB DDR-333 RAM, a 60GB 4200RPM HDD, and ATI Radeon Mobility graphics (same technology as a 7000 series with only 16MB of memory). It started out rough as I was really into Command and Conquer Generals at the time, and the machine would only play the C&C slide show LOL. So, I downloaded PowerStrip, and OC'ed the GPU by 40%...amazingly, the game was playable!
Things changed dramatically in 2007 when I met a guy named Matt while I was stationed in Japan. He introduced me to www.ocforums.com, and the "Benchmarking Team" there. I had not had much interest in benchmarking previously, I always though of myself as more practical. But, I thought I'd play along and I joined the team. My first introduction to an actual competition was was is "The Raptor Pit", "Forum Warz 2008" in the spring of 2008. I was running a Q6600 and an 8800GTX. With air cooling I was able to bench my Q6600 at over 4GHz, and tore up the competition in my class. Overall OCF won the Forum War in 2007, Winter and Summer of 2008, and 2009...that means five in a row. I was not part of the first one in 2007, but the four since then, I have participated in. After winning the 2008 Winter and Summer Warz, Tom's Hardware Guide announced they were looking for nominations for individuals to compete in their first ever international overclocking competition, called "Overdrive". I was nominated, and chosen to compete in the North American semi-finals in Los Angeles in November 2008. I was placed on "Team IRONMODS" as they only had two guys, yet three man teams were allowed. We won the semi-finals in LA, and our prize was a trip to Paris the following month, to compete with the best in the world.
The following month, Ton, Jake, and myself flew to Paris as "Team USA" to face off against the best from Taiwan, France, Germany, and Italy. It was a very intense competition, but after two heated days of battle (16 hours of benching), we emerged the victors. Amidst our celebration, Ton and Jake officially invited me to join "Team IRONMODS" on a permanent basis, and I graciously accepted. Ton, aka "TiTON", is a world renown case moder, and is also very well known for some of the AMD overclocking he has done. Jake, aka "CPT.Planet", is a genius overclocker, and a really fun guy. The team has a great synergy when working together, we really have complementary styles.
After winning the world championship in December 2008 things were a bit quite for a couple months, then in the spring of 2009 I received an invitation to the 2nd annual Gigabyte Open Overclocking Championship "GOOC". I would compete in the North American semi-final in LA, where the winner would win a ticket to the world championship in Taipei Taiwan during CES in June 2009. The competition was tough with 14 of the best from North America gathering for a 1 on 1 competition of OCing. But once again, I completed the competition well, and rose above the others. I won 1st place and the trip to the world finals in Taipei.
My luck ran dry in Taipei where I started off with a bad motherboard, and went through 5 more during the course of the competition due to various reasons. Despite the poor finish in Taipei, I have high hopes to redeem myself next year.See Authors Posts (24) on January 14, 2011
Introduction – Part 1 Recap:
On January 2nd, NDA was lifted for the new “Sandy Bridge” architecture from Intel. TechREACTION was ready with a hands-on look at the new Republic of Gamers motherboard from Asus, the Maximus IV Extreme. With minimal time for testing, we were only able to bring you a portion of the review in Part 1, but we promised a follow up article to answer the remaining questions about the Maximus IV Extreme, and real world use with Sandy Bridge. Well, to...
[Review] Zalman CNPS8000A – A Simple Top-Down Cooler4 Comments By miahallencloseAuthor: miahallenName: Jeremiah Allen Email: miahallen.ironmods@gmail.com Site:http://www.ironmods.com About: Well, I was playing with computers ever since my Dad got a Commodore 64 when I was 6 years old (1986), when I was 10 (1990) he bought a custom build 486DX33, and I was in love. Mostly back then I was just a kid playing games, but my fascination with computers had a start. Because I had no money of my own, I was stuck playing with my Dad's computers, and really couldn't "play" too much. So in 1998, the year I graduated, I spent some of my college savings to by a "computer for school", haha. It had two Voodoo2 12MB 3D accelerators in it, so you can imagine how much school work was done on it ;-) It had an AMD K6-233 that I had a really mild OC on, but my custom computer builder friend Aaron had done all the work. So I can't really take the credit there. My fascination with graphics just kept growing and growing over the years, and I was constantly in a struggle to keep my games looking as sharp and smooth as possible. OCing played a big role.
My whole world was rocked in 2004 when I was deployed to Iraq as a US Army soldier. The whole year I was there I had a cheap IBM Thinkpad R40 with a 2GHz Celeron, 1GB DDR-333 RAM, a 60GB 4200RPM HDD, and ATI Radeon Mobility graphics (same technology as a 7000 series with only 16MB of memory). It started out rough as I was really into Command and Conquer Generals at the time, and the machine would only play the C&C slide show LOL. So, I downloaded PowerStrip, and OC'ed the GPU by 40%...amazingly, the game was playable!
Things changed dramatically in 2007 when I met a guy named Matt while I was stationed in Japan. He introduced me to www.ocforums.com, and the "Benchmarking Team" there. I had not had much interest in benchmarking previously, I always though of myself as more practical. But, I thought I'd play along and I joined the team. My first introduction to an actual competition was was is "The Raptor Pit", "Forum Warz 2008" in the spring of 2008. I was running a Q6600 and an 8800GTX. With air cooling I was able to bench my Q6600 at over 4GHz, and tore up the competition in my class. Overall OCF won the Forum War in 2007, Winter and Summer of 2008, and 2009...that means five in a row. I was not part of the first one in 2007, but the four since then, I have participated in. After winning the 2008 Winter and Summer Warz, Tom's Hardware Guide announced they were looking for nominations for individuals to compete in their first ever international overclocking competition, called "Overdrive". I was nominated, and chosen to compete in the North American semi-finals in Los Angeles in November 2008. I was placed on "Team IRONMODS" as they only had two guys, yet three man teams were allowed. We won the semi-finals in LA, and our prize was a trip to Paris the following month, to compete with the best in the world.
The following month, Ton, Jake, and myself flew to Paris as "Team USA" to face off against the best from Taiwan, France, Germany, and Italy. It was a very intense competition, but after two heated days of battle (16 hours of benching), we emerged the victors. Amidst our celebration, Ton and Jake officially invited me to join "Team IRONMODS" on a permanent basis, and I graciously accepted. Ton, aka "TiTON", is a world renown case moder, and is also very well known for some of the AMD overclocking he has done. Jake, aka "CPT.Planet", is a genius overclocker, and a really fun guy. The team has a great synergy when working together, we really have complementary styles.
After winning the world championship in December 2008 things were a bit quite for a couple months, then in the spring of 2009 I received an invitation to the 2nd annual Gigabyte Open Overclocking Championship "GOOC". I would compete in the North American semi-final in LA, where the winner would win a ticket to the world championship in Taipei Taiwan during CES in June 2009. The competition was tough with 14 of the best from North America gathering for a 1 on 1 competition of OCing. But once again, I completed the competition well, and rose above the others. I won 1st place and the trip to the world finals in Taipei.
My luck ran dry in Taipei where I started off with a bad motherboard, and went through 5 more during the course of the competition due to various reasons. Despite the poor finish in Taipei, I have high hopes to redeem myself next year.See Authors Posts (24) on January 14, 2011
Today we have a quick look at a top-down cooler from Zalman, a 4 heatpipe design with an integrated fan known as the CNPS8000A. While I will hold to our HSF testing methodology as best I can, I will only be testing with the integrated fan, and with the CPU at 2.8GHz. This cooler is not designed for serious overclocking, and fell flat on it’s face when presented with our overclocked settings. Not that I expected anything different from this cooler, it’s just not designed with a ...
[Review] Silverstone Treasure Series TS040 Comments By The DukecloseAuthor: The DukeName: Drew Briggs Email: drew@techreaction.net Site:http://www.techreaction.net About: Just keeping it real for the average joe overclocker and computer user.See Authors Posts (171) on January 13, 2011
SilverStone has created a mobile storage product, the Treasure TS04, to help protect hard drives not installed in your case. It connects to the PC via USB 3.0 or USB 2.0 interface which enables data transfer with maximum compatibility and stability. If the needs for maximum data transfer speed and versatility are a priority, the TS04 external hard drive enclosure may possibly the best choice for the job. We will test out the TS04 and see what kind of real world speeds you can expect when using t...
Zalman CNPS9900MAX Giveaway!39 Comments By EnJoYcloseAuthor: EnJoYName: Alex Joy Email: alex@techreaction.net Site:http://www.techreaction.net About:See Authors Posts (53) on January 12, 2011
It has been far too long since TechREACTION has had any kind of giveaway, but luckily for you, Zalman has stepped up to the plate with a nice little giveaway to get the new year started off right! For the next three weeks, Zalman and TechREACTION will be giving away two CNPS9900MAX coolers. Entering is simple and will only require that you have a facebook account to participate, the rules are listed below.
Official Rules & Instructions:
1. You must have a Facebook account to participa...
AMD @ CES: Zacate…it’s so tiny!2 Comments By EnJoYcloseAuthor: EnJoYName: Alex Joy Email: alex@techreaction.net Site:http://www.techreaction.net About:See Authors Posts (53) on January 11, 2011
Rounding out our coverage of CES 2011, Drew and I stopped by AMD’s meeting rooms at the Las Vegas Convention Center. We had a meeting setup with AMD’s John Taylor to discuss Fusion, as well as the upcoming processor road maps. Some interesting discussion ensued…
Girl: "It's so tiny!" *giggles*
Check out that image above (Don’t laugh!). That is a Zacate APU, featuring 2x Bobcat cores and the equivalent of a Radeon HD5450 DX11 graphics processing unit, wi...
Zalman @ CES: Refreshed Line of Chassis, Plus SSD’s.1 Comment By The DukecloseAuthor: The DukeName: Drew Briggs Email: drew@techreaction.net Site:http://www.techreaction.net About: Just keeping it real for the average joe overclocker and computer user.See Authors Posts (171) on January 10, 2011
Nearing the end of our CES adventure, Alex and I hit up the Zalman suite for a preview of their new items. They have updated the GS series and the Z9 plus series chassis. Zalman is also planning on diving into the SSD market as well, and we have pictures of their first attempts. Take a peek at the gallery below and enjoy some of the new items from Zalman.
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iBuyPower @ CES: Custom Systems Galore!1 Comment By The DukecloseAuthor: The DukeName: Drew Briggs Email: drew@techreaction.net Site:http://www.techreaction.net About: Just keeping it real for the average joe overclocker and computer user.See Authors Posts (171) on January 10, 2011
Alex and myself hit up the iBuyPower suite in our long journey over the week at CES. They had setup a lot of custom systems that were available on their site. You may recognize the cases from other companies that we have talked about already. Plus, you will notice the NZXT Phantom in the gallery as well, which we had not mentioned before. Have fun looking at the gallery below and I will dive into a special case they had for us later on in the article.
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MSI @ CES: P67 Big Bang Marshall and new AMD board?3 Comments By EnJoYcloseAuthor: EnJoYName: Alex Joy Email: alex@techreaction.net Site:http://www.techreaction.net About:See Authors Posts (53) on January 9, 2011
While we attempt to finish up our coverage of CES 2011, we paid a visit to our friends at MSI to discuss some of their new and upcoming products. MSI has been hard of work this past year, investing heavily into the overall quality and features of their motherboards. Check out the gallery below for shots of some of their products. We’ll go into greater details on some of the most interesting products further down.
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After our recent review of the ASUS HD 6970 and seeing the lackluster results that we were presented with, we decided to set out and give the 6970 another shot. Was it just another bad driver from AMD that seemed to have crippled the 6970, or was it in fact just the card itself that wasn’t meeting our expectations? So what we have done is take the Catalyst 10.12 driver that we reviewed the card on and put them up against the new 11.1 WHQL and 11.1a Hotfix drivers that were released Janua... 
So I fixed it. Did anyone doubt me? Shame on you. Well, without any fanfare here are the results:
It works! Thank god... I mean *COUGH* I knew I could do it!
The full screen
Please excuse the hearts...
As you can see in the picture above I did this on a table with hearts on it. Haters gonna hate. But you might also be able to see that the glass and pieces of the digitizer are stuck to packing tape. A good trick for taking out the old cracked screen is to put packing tape on the one side and pre... 
Introduction
If you haven’t already seen our complete Asus Maximus IV Extreme (MIVE) motherboard review, Parts ONE and TWO, you’re missing out. Part 1 covered synthetic testing with the i7 2600K CPU at 5.1GHz to give an idea of the power that this platform contains. Part 2 was a full blown comparison between X58 and Sandy Bridge, with a helping of AMD Thuban for good measure. We also awarded the MIVE the TechREACTION.net Gold Silicon award for its outstanding performance.
Today, we’ll g... 
Introduction
For years, I have always been most drawn to value and mid range components with good overclocking potential, in order to extract high end performance, for a fraction of the cost. Having strayed into the extreme end of the spectrum, this often is no longer a viable option for me, as the high end gear is required for top overclocking scores. But for systems I build intended for daily use, I always seek high value hardware.
First to come to mind is the AMD Opteron 165 CPU that I own... 
The hunter has been released, again, but most people will come to know it as the GTX 560 Ti. The Ti on the end may bring back memories to many of the old-school gamers. Around 2002, Nvidia came out with the Ti line. First with the GeForce 3 series and later with the GeForce 4, however, it disappeared shortly thereafter. But now it is back with a vengeance on the GTX 560 line of cards. Of course, this premium line of cards will go for a little more money, but hopefully the performance makes i... 
The Spawn gaming mouse is light weight and ergonomically designed for comfort in long gaming sessions. The Spawn gaming mouse was built for professional FPS gamers who prefer a claw grip. Engineered to execute precise in-game tactics, Spawn comes loaded with an ultra high-performance 3500 DPI sensor that includes on-the-fly adjustment. The Spawn is manufactured with Japanese-made Omron micro-switches that are meant to endure up to five million clicks. Presented in an eye-catching crimson red h... 
Introduction:
Continuing with Noctua’s line-up, we follow up with the Noctua NH-U12P SE2.
The Noctua NH-U12P SE2 still represents the premium model of the Noctua CPU cooler line-up. The Noctua NH-U12P SE2 CPU was considered a high-end CPU cooler when it was first released almost 3 years ago. It has since been overtaken by the Noctua NH-D14, however Noctua invested a good amount of R&D into the design of the thermal characteristics and cooling technologies used in the Noctua NH-U12P SE... 
The codename “Cayman” represents the 6900 series of cards from AMD. The refined GPU boasts of more performance per mm², new and improved image quality features, enhanced multimedia acceleration and next-generation display technology with HDMI 1.4a and DisplayPort 1.2. It should also be pointed out that with the new 6 series launch, there is a new naming strategy from AMD. The 6900 series are now considered the high-performance cards and the 6800 series have now taken on the roll of being t... 
Well looky here! A normal looking smartphone. And it is a pretty one!
But no one really wants to look at the back of the phone… lets flip it over and see that sexy 3.7 inch screen with 480×800 resolution and with the HTC sense UI… oh here we g…..OH MY GOSH?!? WHAT IS WRONG WITH IT?!?!
Despite the severely cracked screen it functions just like a brand new one would.
I just acquired this HTC Droid Incredible from a friend of mine. For some reason he didn’t want it... 
Psyko Audio has delivered gamers with their first product, the Psyko Audio 5.1 Gaming Headset. The Psyko Audio 5.1 Gaming Headset was recognized as 2009 CES’ most innovative headphones. This headset strives to give you a gaming audio experience like no other. We will take a look at all of its extensive features, as well as the technology behind this unique headset.
Packaging:
Features:
Next: In-Depth Look, Thoughts, and Conclusion
UPDATE Jan 17th ***I’m seeing a lot of the same questions/rumors around the forums right now, and I just want to address a couple briefly*** UPDATE Jan 17th
The motherboard was sent to me in unsealed box, it appears to have been used.
The socket manufacturer is Foxconn.
Only one motherboard in my lab has any “burn”, the P67A-UD4….the other two boards are fine.
I’m still waiting for more answers from Gigabyte about the previous usage of this unit. And I&#... 
Introduction – Part 1 Recap:
On January 2nd, NDA was lifted for the new “Sandy Bridge” architecture from Intel. TechREACTION was ready with a hands-on look at the new Republic of Gamers motherboard from Asus, the Maximus IV Extreme. With minimal time for testing, we were only able to bring you a portion of the review in Part 1, but we promised a follow up article to answer the remaining questions about the Maximus IV Extreme, and real world use with Sandy Bridge. Well, to... 
Today we have a quick look at a top-down cooler from Zalman, a 4 heatpipe design with an integrated fan known as the CNPS8000A. While I will hold to our HSF testing methodology as best I can, I will only be testing with the integrated fan, and with the CPU at 2.8GHz. This cooler is not designed for serious overclocking, and fell flat on it’s face when presented with our overclocked settings. Not that I expected anything different from this cooler, it’s just not designed with a ... 
SilverStone has created a mobile storage product, the Treasure TS04, to help protect hard drives not installed in your case. It connects to the PC via USB 3.0 or USB 2.0 interface which enables data transfer with maximum compatibility and stability. If the needs for maximum data transfer speed and versatility are a priority, the TS04 external hard drive enclosure may possibly the best choice for the job. We will test out the TS04 and see what kind of real world speeds you can expect when using t... 
It has been far too long since TechREACTION has had any kind of giveaway, but luckily for you, Zalman has stepped up to the plate with a nice little giveaway to get the new year started off right! For the next three weeks, Zalman and TechREACTION will be giving away two CNPS9900MAX coolers. Entering is simple and will only require that you have a facebook account to participate, the rules are listed below.
Official Rules & Instructions:
1. You must have a Facebook account to participa... 
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