Half the noise and a few extra degrees? Seems like a win. The design elements seem to come together perfectly on what – at first glance – appears to be a heat sink that would be lacking in many ways. It appears to lack surface area; it is not lacking. It appears to not have enough heat pipes; the numbers do not agree with this assumption. It only has one fan and can not keep up with dual fan coolers; it stayed within a few degrees at half the noise level…

The Dark Rock Pro 2 shows its value in design, quality, aesthetic appeal and function. It keeps core temperatures down and does not create annoying fan and air noise like many single tower coolers.

The performance is really hard to beat as there is only so much refinement that can be made where performance is concerned. Is it the best? No. The best is subjective and there are too many variables out there to be considered. What can be said is that, “The performance of the PH-TC12DX is commensurate to that of comparably priced units of similar design.”

Crucial has provided the Ballistix Sport VLP for testing and evaluation. This memory is about as low as you can go and it is at the speed sweet spot of 1600 with latencies 9-9-9 and a cycle time of 24 running on 1.35v.

Low profile is the word of the day and Crucial spells it BALLISTIX VLP Tactical. This memory packs bang in the smallest package possible. It is not the fastest memory but it is faster than other low profile kits. It does not have the lowest latency but it holds its latency up to 2133. It is not the least expensive but it is faster and less obstructive than the less pricy chips.

After this we decided that it was time to quit. This was the second Z77 FTW that we had received (first had BIOS issues, dropped RAIDS and dropped USB accessories as well) and we had quite a bit of of work in these boards with mediocre results at most everything – except overclocking. We really do not like to do this but there comes a point where no matter how much time and money you pour into a product you are not going to get the results you are looking for.

Pluses are many – great range, five operational modes, easy setup, small size, full power… We were able to take our signal and security with us out to close to 800′, surf the web and stream HD movies off of our media server at 600′ and have a backup router that is quick and easy to set up. There is no doubt that this small device can carry connectivity to the places you want to go.

Introduction This is the second Giada Mini PC I have had an opportunity to lay my hands on and I must say I am impressed. This unit, sporting the Intel ATOM D2500 dual core, has a solid feel and just enough ports to be useful without affecting its overall comeliness. Gallery The outer packaging is [...]