[Review] Corsair Voyager GT 32GB USB 3.00 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 (168) on February 1, 2012
Standard USB 3.0 flash drives are fast. Flash Voyager GT USB 3.0 is touted to be even faster with its data transfer rates. The portability and convenience of USB drives has always meant putting up with delays while waiting for files to copy, but with USB 3.0, that should be thing of the past. Chances are that you’re still using at least one PC that hasn’t yet been upgraded to USB 3.0. Flash Voyager GT has you covered, as it is also backwards compatible with USB 2.0 as well. The finger-friend...
[Review] G. Skill Ripjaws X 8GB DDR3 1866MHz Memory Kit2 Comments By TrembledustcloseAuthor: TrembledustName: Patrick Innocent Email: patrick@techreaction.net Site:http://www.techreaction.net About:See Authors Posts (10) on September 28, 2011
Established in 1989, G. Skill is synonymous with memory modules that deliver great performance and have very impressive overclocking capabilities. What stands out with G.Skill memory is that for modules that can overclock the way they can, the price of their memory is often lower then similar modules offered by their competitors which don’t nearly have as good overclocking potential. G.Skill’s latest memory entries – the RipJaws and Ripjaws X series – have been praised...
[Review] Silverstone TS07B USB 3.0 3.5″ Enclosure1 Comment By NeuromancercloseAuthor: NeuromancerName: Rich Smith Email: rsmith@nettronic.net Site: About:See Authors Posts (27) on September 19, 2011
Silverstone is known for providing high quality merchandise to support your computing needs. From cases and power supplies to peripherals and NAS solutions, Silverstone makes products to increase performance and expand storage. Despite being less than a decade old, Silverstone has made a mark for itself, especially in the high end case and power markets.
The SST-TS07B is an aluminum HDD enclosure that utilizes the speed and compatibility of the USB bus to make external 3.5” SATA 6G storage sol...
[Review] Silverstone EC03 Internal USB 3.0 PCIE card2 Comments By NeuromancercloseAuthor: NeuromancerName: Rich Smith Email: rsmith@nettronic.net Site: About:See Authors Posts (27) on August 31, 2011
Silverstone is a company that is known for providing high quality merchandise to support your computing needs. From cases and power supplies to peripherals and NAS solutions, Silverstone makes products to increase performance and expand storage. Despite being less than a decade old, Silverstone has made a mark for itself, especially in the high end case and power markets.
Today, we look one of their peripheral offerings – a PCI Express expansion card that provides a internal 19 pin USB 3.0...
[REVIEW] Crucial M4 SATA 6G 256GB SSD4 Comments By NeuromancercloseAuthor: NeuromancerName: Rich Smith Email: rsmith@nettronic.net Site: About:See Authors Posts (27) on August 17, 2011
Many people know of Crucial as the consumer arm of the memory giant Micron Technology. Crucial itself has been marketing Micron-designed products for a decade and a half. It should thus be no surprise that Crucial brings the big name of Micron to the consumer level in the M4 STATA 6G series of SSD.
Crucial.com. The Memory Experts.
At Crucial.com, we know memory. We research it. Test it. Stock it. And we’ll even replace it. We’re among the first ones to get a new platform, OS, mothe...
[Review] OCZ Vertex 3 240GB MAX IOPS2 Comments By NeuromancercloseAuthor: NeuromancerName: Rich Smith Email: rsmith@nettronic.net Site: About:See Authors Posts (27) on August 1, 2011
OCZ Technology has made enormous strides in the SSD technology field since throwing the company whole-heartedly into NAND flash storage solutions. Their latest SATA 6Gb iteration is the Vertex 3 MAX IOPS edition. We have on the test bench the 240GB model, featuring the super-fast SandForce 2200 storage controller and 256GB of 32nm Toshiba Toggle Mode Double DATA Rate NAND Flash.
The specifications on the drive are very beefy. Sporting a 550 MBps max read speed, as do many of the other OCZ SATA 6...
[Review] Corsair Vengeance 12GB 2000MHz Memory5 Comments By TrembledustcloseAuthor: TrembledustName: Patrick Innocent Email: patrick@techreaction.net Site:http://www.techreaction.net About:See Authors Posts (10) on July 14, 2011
Corsair hit a home run in the latter half of 2010 with the release of their Vengeance 12GB 1600mhz kit. Buyers on Newegg raved about the stability of the kit, and the ability to run the Cas9-rated sticks at Cas 8. While this is something that would not impress most RAM overclockers, it did seem to put a smile on a lot of mid- to high-level PC users. Corsair seems to want to follow up their success with the recently released 12GB 2000Mhz version of the Vengeance ram with a slight difference. This...
[Review] Intel 320 Series 160GB SSD SATA 3Gbps6 Comments By NeuromancercloseAuthor: NeuromancerName: Rich Smith Email: rsmith@nettronic.net Site: About:See Authors Posts (27) on July 8, 2011
On the test bench this week is Intel’s newest SATA 3Gbps SSD offering, the 320 series 160GB SSD. This is designed to replace the vaunted X25-M SSD. Featuring fast read and write speeds, and vastly improved 4K IOPs specifications, this drive on paper at least, lives up to being a high end SSD designed with SATA 3Gbps in mind. Built using 25nm NAND flash memory the new drive is inherently less expensive and comes in larger capacities than previous SSDs. Why would Intel make a SATA 3Gbps SSD now,...
[Review] k|ngp|n Cooling Liquid Nitrogen Containers – Pushing to the Limits3 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 June 28, 2011
Introduction
If extreme overclocking had a name, it’d be k|ngp|n. Vince Lucido (a/k/a “k|ngp|n”) is arguably the man who got such things started in the United States. Back when most people were still gawking at the extreme ventures of a few folks pushing overclocking to new heights with water cooling, this guy started to bring the truly extreme methods of employing liquid nitrogen (LN2) to achieve even more outrageous performance. While Vince was not the first person to use ...
[Review] OCZ Agility 3 240GB SSD4 Comments By NeuromancercloseAuthor: NeuromancerName: Rich Smith Email: rsmith@nettronic.net Site: About:See Authors Posts (27) on June 24, 2011
OCZ technology has made some great strides in the SSD space since they jumped into it. A dazzling array of options and formats brings more choices to the consumer, allowing buyers to find products to fit their specific needs (and budgets). Support for the end user is a continuing process at OCZ, since anyone can check out their forums for firmware updates, SSD care tips, and the latest news.
On the bench today is OCZ’s latest SATA3 offering, the mid-ranged OCZ Agility 3 240GB. OCZ produce...
[Review] OWC 240GB Extreme Pro 6G3 Comments By NeuromancercloseAuthor: NeuromancerName: Rich Smith Email: rsmith@nettronic.net Site: About:See Authors Posts (27) on June 14, 2011
With the SATA 3 specification being only 2 years old, and the wide availability of SSDs only 2 years more advanced than that, solid state drives have managed to push SATA2 to its limits very quickly. With SATA3 seeing near-universal availability on new motherboards, it is no surprise companies are trying to push the SATA3 interface to its limits.
OWC has just released the Extreme Pro 6Gbps SSD. At 240GB, and sporting some of the most cutting-edge I/O circuitry, it is capable of pushing the SATA3...
[Review] Patriot Memory Viper Xtreme DDR3 2000MHz5 Comments By TrembledustcloseAuthor: TrembledustName: Patrick Innocent Email: patrick@techreaction.net Site:http://www.techreaction.net About:See Authors Posts (10) on June 6, 2011
Introduction:
The second generation of i7 processors have taken the PC world by storm, with many users switching over to the current P67 chipsets, and even more (yours truly included) anxiously awaiting the upcoming Z77, and Z78 chipsets.
A majority of PC enthusiasts feel the X58 platform is dead, and that it is time to move on. It’s hard to argue against that thinking, as Sandy Bridge has proven to be a faster and better-overclocking chip then its older brothers. Some companies, however,...
[Review] Crucial Ballistix DDR3-2133 (3×2GB) – DDR3 with Thermal Monitoring3 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 April 26, 2011
Introduction:
The performance memory market has continued to push the performance envelope over the last few generations of hardware, each new development ushering in more speed and better performance. But beyond speed, memory has not yielded much material to the marketing departments. We all know that the marketing departments are tasked with getting products on the market and into your hands. But other than performance, the only marketable aspects in the segment are fancy heat spreaders, ...
How To: Installing RAM In Your Netbook0 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 (168) on April 25, 2011
Reasoning For This:
As Netbooks become more and more popular in our lives, it will be nice to know you can extend the Netbooks life longer with a few easy upgrades you can do yourself. Most Netbooks will come with 1GB of RAM, which in todays world or memory hogging applications, is an extremely minuscule amount of RAM. You could get some work done, but if you wanted multiple programs open or even multiple documents open at the same time, you will start to push the boundaries of the 1GB capabilit...
[Review] OCZ RevoDrive 80GB4 Comments By NeuromancercloseAuthor: NeuromancerName: Rich Smith Email: rsmith@nettronic.net Site: About:See Authors Posts (27) on April 19, 2011
Introduction:
Solid State Drives are becoming faster and faster. With the advent of the SandForce controller, drives quickly started maxing out the capabilities of the SATA 3 Gbps interface. A quick fix was doubling the speeds SATA operates at and along came SATA3 operating at 6Gbps. Most motherboards have included SATA3 ports for about a year now, although only since P67 have they been native solutions on Intel motherboards. For AMD, SATA 6Gbps has been natively supported since SB850 debuted, h...
[Review] Kingston HyperX Grey Series 2133MHz 4GB DDR34 Comments By NeuromancercloseAuthor: NeuromancerName: Rich Smith Email: rsmith@nettronic.net Site: About:See Authors Posts (27) on March 2, 2011
Introduction:
On the test bench this week is the Kingston HyperX Genesis Special Edition Grey Series 2133MHz 4GB Dual Channel DDR3 Memory Kit (KHX2133C9AD3X2K2/4GX). A real mouthful of a nomenclature, so in the interest of brevity, X-Files fans might appreciate this reviews short name for them “The Greys.” These sticks might not be from “out there” but they do support blistering fast speeds and are designed for use with the second generation Sandy Bridge microprocessors. Dual XMP profile...
[Review] OCZ Vertex 2 RAID Testing1 Comment By NeuromancercloseAuthor: NeuromancerName: Rich Smith Email: rsmith@nettronic.net Site: About:See Authors Posts (27) on February 27, 2011
Introduction:
Solid State Drives are known for there incredible access times and massive sustained write speeds. A single SandForce controller-based SSD can push the limits of the SATA II interface. This leads to faster Windows boot times, application loading and a snappier desktop feel. OCZ Vertex 2 drives were among the first to bring the SF-1200 to the enthusiast community and have received numerous commendations as a result. The OCZ Vertex 2 60GB review was enough to make this reviewer take ...
[Review] Patriot Convoy 425XL1 Comment By NeuromancercloseAuthor: NeuromancerName: Rich Smith Email: rsmith@nettronic.net Site: About:See Authors Posts (27) on February 10, 2011
Introduction:
Patriot memory was established in 1985, and has manufacturing facilities in both Fremont California and Taipei. Over the last few years, Patriot have made themselves popular among PC enthusiasts with their DRAM memory modules, and more recently with Solid State Drives. The Convoy 425XL is a natural extension of this memory and storage background, as it provides more storage solutions for 2.5” drives. Compatible with both Mechanical and Solid State Drives, the 425XL allows a user ...
[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...
Standard USB 3.0 flash drives are fast. Flash Voyager GT USB 3.0 is touted to be even faster with its data transfer rates. The portability and convenience of USB drives has always meant putting up with delays while waiting for files to copy, but with USB 3.0, that should be thing of the past. Chances are that you’re still using at least one PC that hasn’t yet been upgraded to USB 3.0. Flash Voyager GT has you covered, as it is also backwards compatible with USB 2.0 as well. The finger-friend... 
Established in 1989, G. Skill is synonymous with memory modules that deliver great performance and have very impressive overclocking capabilities. What stands out with G.Skill memory is that for modules that can overclock the way they can, the price of their memory is often lower then similar modules offered by their competitors which don’t nearly have as good overclocking potential. G.Skill’s latest memory entries – the RipJaws and Ripjaws X series – have been praised... 
Silverstone is known for providing high quality merchandise to support your computing needs. From cases and power supplies to peripherals and NAS solutions, Silverstone makes products to increase performance and expand storage. Despite being less than a decade old, Silverstone has made a mark for itself, especially in the high end case and power markets.
The SST-TS07B is an aluminum HDD enclosure that utilizes the speed and compatibility of the USB bus to make external 3.5” SATA 6G storage sol... 
Silverstone is a company that is known for providing high quality merchandise to support your computing needs. From cases and power supplies to peripherals and NAS solutions, Silverstone makes products to increase performance and expand storage. Despite being less than a decade old, Silverstone has made a mark for itself, especially in the high end case and power markets.
Today, we look one of their peripheral offerings – a PCI Express expansion card that provides a internal 19 pin USB 3.0... 
Many people know of Crucial as the consumer arm of the memory giant Micron Technology. Crucial itself has been marketing Micron-designed products for a decade and a half. It should thus be no surprise that Crucial brings the big name of Micron to the consumer level in the M4 STATA 6G series of SSD.
Crucial.com. The Memory Experts.
At Crucial.com, we know memory. We research it. Test it. Stock it. And we’ll even replace it. We’re among the first ones to get a new platform, OS, mothe... 
OCZ Technology has made enormous strides in the SSD technology field since throwing the company whole-heartedly into NAND flash storage solutions. Their latest SATA 6Gb iteration is the Vertex 3 MAX IOPS edition. We have on the test bench the 240GB model, featuring the super-fast SandForce 2200 storage controller and 256GB of 32nm Toshiba Toggle Mode Double DATA Rate NAND Flash.
The specifications on the drive are very beefy. Sporting a 550 MBps max read speed, as do many of the other OCZ SATA 6... 
Corsair hit a home run in the latter half of 2010 with the release of their Vengeance 12GB 1600mhz kit. Buyers on Newegg raved about the stability of the kit, and the ability to run the Cas9-rated sticks at Cas 8. While this is something that would not impress most RAM overclockers, it did seem to put a smile on a lot of mid- to high-level PC users. Corsair seems to want to follow up their success with the recently released 12GB 2000Mhz version of the Vengeance ram with a slight difference. This... 
On the test bench this week is Intel’s newest SATA 3Gbps SSD offering, the 320 series 160GB SSD. This is designed to replace the vaunted X25-M SSD. Featuring fast read and write speeds, and vastly improved 4K IOPs specifications, this drive on paper at least, lives up to being a high end SSD designed with SATA 3Gbps in mind. Built using 25nm NAND flash memory the new drive is inherently less expensive and comes in larger capacities than previous SSDs. Why would Intel make a SATA 3Gbps SSD now,... 
Introduction
If extreme overclocking had a name, it’d be k|ngp|n. Vince Lucido (a/k/a “k|ngp|n”) is arguably the man who got such things started in the United States. Back when most people were still gawking at the extreme ventures of a few folks pushing overclocking to new heights with water cooling, this guy started to bring the truly extreme methods of employing liquid nitrogen (LN2) to achieve even more outrageous performance. While Vince was not the first person to use ... 
OCZ technology has made some great strides in the SSD space since they jumped into it. A dazzling array of options and formats brings more choices to the consumer, allowing buyers to find products to fit their specific needs (and budgets). Support for the end user is a continuing process at OCZ, since anyone can check out their forums for firmware updates, SSD care tips, and the latest news.
On the bench today is OCZ’s latest SATA3 offering, the mid-ranged OCZ Agility 3 240GB. OCZ produce... 
With the SATA 3 specification being only 2 years old, and the wide availability of SSDs only 2 years more advanced than that, solid state drives have managed to push SATA2 to its limits very quickly. With SATA3 seeing near-universal availability on new motherboards, it is no surprise companies are trying to push the SATA3 interface to its limits.
OWC has just released the Extreme Pro 6Gbps SSD. At 240GB, and sporting some of the most cutting-edge I/O circuitry, it is capable of pushing the SATA3... 
Introduction:
The second generation of i7 processors have taken the PC world by storm, with many users switching over to the current P67 chipsets, and even more (yours truly included) anxiously awaiting the upcoming Z77, and Z78 chipsets.
A majority of PC enthusiasts feel the X58 platform is dead, and that it is time to move on. It’s hard to argue against that thinking, as Sandy Bridge has proven to be a faster and better-overclocking chip then its older brothers. Some companies, however,... 
Introduction:
The performance memory market has continued to push the performance envelope over the last few generations of hardware, each new development ushering in more speed and better performance. But beyond speed, memory has not yielded much material to the marketing departments. We all know that the marketing departments are tasked with getting products on the market and into your hands. But other than performance, the only marketable aspects in the segment are fancy heat spreaders, ... 
Reasoning For This:
As Netbooks become more and more popular in our lives, it will be nice to know you can extend the Netbooks life longer with a few easy upgrades you can do yourself. Most Netbooks will come with 1GB of RAM, which in todays world or memory hogging applications, is an extremely minuscule amount of RAM. You could get some work done, but if you wanted multiple programs open or even multiple documents open at the same time, you will start to push the boundaries of the 1GB capabilit... 
Introduction:
Solid State Drives are becoming faster and faster. With the advent of the SandForce controller, drives quickly started maxing out the capabilities of the SATA 3 Gbps interface. A quick fix was doubling the speeds SATA operates at and along came SATA3 operating at 6Gbps. Most motherboards have included SATA3 ports for about a year now, although only since P67 have they been native solutions on Intel motherboards. For AMD, SATA 6Gbps has been natively supported since SB850 debuted, h... 
Introduction:
On the test bench this week is the Kingston HyperX Genesis Special Edition Grey Series 2133MHz 4GB Dual Channel DDR3 Memory Kit (KHX2133C9AD3X2K2/4GX). A real mouthful of a nomenclature, so in the interest of brevity, X-Files fans might appreciate this reviews short name for them “The Greys.” These sticks might not be from “out there” but they do support blistering fast speeds and are designed for use with the second generation Sandy Bridge microprocessors. Dual XMP profile... 
Introduction:
Solid State Drives are known for there incredible access times and massive sustained write speeds. A single SandForce controller-based SSD can push the limits of the SATA II interface. This leads to faster Windows boot times, application loading and a snappier desktop feel. OCZ Vertex 2 drives were among the first to bring the SF-1200 to the enthusiast community and have received numerous commendations as a result. The OCZ Vertex 2 60GB review was enough to make this reviewer take ... 
Introduction:
Patriot memory was established in 1985, and has manufacturing facilities in both Fremont California and Taipei. Over the last few years, Patriot have made themselves popular among PC enthusiasts with their DRAM memory modules, and more recently with Solid State Drives. The Convoy 425XL is a natural extension of this memory and storage background, as it provides more storage solutions for 2.5” drives. Compatible with both Mechanical and Solid State Drives, the 425XL allows a user ... 
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... 
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