[Review] Antec KÜHLER H₂O 9200 Comments By BoTcloseAuthor: BoTName: Edward Reese Email: bot@codisha.com Site:http://www.codisha.com About:See Authors Posts (14) on February 3, 2012
Introduction
There have been many discussions on the interwebs of whether or not traditional air cooling is efficient enough and if it can provide enough performance or if water cooling can supersede it and offer things that air cooling just can’t. Noise, power draw, reliability, performance and pure price are among common categories mentioned in these discussions. The camps are still divided but the manufacturers aim at the middle and hopefully will change that. A few years ago we started...
[Water Cooling] Fan Test XSPC RX 480 Quad Rad6 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 (169) on December 20, 2011
With all the questions I have received lately on water cooling, which fans to get and how will they effect my cooling, I decided to throw together a test with a few different fans that I have lying around here. I will be running a push/pull installation with my fans for the testing. I am hoping to show differences in the fans used, or lack thereof. Yes, I know the choices of fans are just a miniscule amount considering the large number of fans on the market today.
Yes, absent is one of the mos...
[Review] Akasa Venom Voodoo3 Comments By BoTcloseAuthor: BoTName: Edward Reese Email: bot@codisha.com Site:http://www.codisha.com About:See Authors Posts (14) on December 11, 2011
Introduction
We got some Voodoo in the lab. No seriously, some Venom Voodoo. I think you got it now. Correct, The Akasa Venom Voodoo spooked it’s way in our labs. Let’s hope that the black magic doesn’t effect the results.
The company Akasa is well established. Akasa has development and manufacturing operations in Taiwan, China, Brazil and England to makes this an international operation. There is a wide range of products Akasa is developing and manufacturing. We will focus on...
Review: Gelid Tranquillo Rev28 Comments By BoTcloseAuthor: BoTName: Edward Reese Email: bot@codisha.com Site:http://www.codisha.com About:See Authors Posts (14) on November 7, 2011
Introduction
A sample from our next contender comes from Gelid. The company is based in Hong Kong with management in Swiss. The company is a fairly young player in the industry and was founded in 2008 by Gebhard Scherrer and VC Tran. Gelid is Gebhard Scherrer’s latest project after co-founding the well known Arctic Cooling brand. Gelid’s name established quickly and well in the industry, rather known for their case fan product line, Gelid now is also more determined to get a foothold...
[Review] Cooler Master H612PWM1 Comment By BoTcloseAuthor: BoTName: Edward Reese Email: bot@codisha.com Site:http://www.codisha.com About:See Authors Posts (14) on September 14, 2011
Introduction
Today we have an exclusive Cooler Master release product on the bench. The H612PWM is an ambitious attempt to take the cooling crown. We are very proud to be one of the first to have it to get an exclusive look at what could be the future of the air cooling market.
Looks like sheer size and the brutal force of 6 heat pipes is the magic behind the Cooler Master H612. The cooler was not intended for small cases but performance was the primary idea behind this design. The H612 feature...
[Review] Sapphire Pure Platinum H672 Comments By ArchercloseAuthor: ArcherName: Kevin Marlin Email: kevinsmarlin@embarqmail.com Site:http://www.techreaction.net About:See Authors Posts (18) on August 17, 2011
Introduction
Sapphire Technology is well known for their line of AMD/ATi video cards but they are also making motherboards. What can a video card company bring to the table? Name recognition that has been earned over the years by producing quality products.
Packaging
Sapphire has an all business approach with the packaging by pointing out the features. Other than the “Pure Platinum” badge it is a no frills look.
Product Shots
The Mosfets need no cooling and the Bluetooth does n...
[Review] Nexus LOW-7000 R23 Comments By GSG-9closeAuthor: GSG-9Name: Levi Tomes Email: gsg-9@mediocrocy.com Site:http://StypticDesign.com About:See Authors Posts (13) on August 12, 2011
Recently, Nexus sent us their newest product in their war on noise; the Low-7000 Revision 2 Low Profile cooler.
Silent Low Profile CPU Cooler
Balanced performance
Ideal for HTPCs
The Low-7000 R2
The heatsink itself comes with mounting hardware for the following configurations:
Socket:
LGA1366
LGA 1156
LGA 1155
LGA 775
AMD AM3
AMD AM2
Nexus Low-7000 Fan 02
Manufacturer’s Description & Specifications:
The Nexus LOW-7000 cooler combines some of...
[Review] iBuyPower Gamer Power BTS11 Gaming PC3 Comments By TrembledustcloseAuthor: TrembledustName: Patrick Innocent Email: patrick@techreaction.net Site:http://www.techreaction.net About:See Authors Posts (10) on August 8, 2011
Many in the PC community know the name iBuyPower for offering quality PC desktops, and laptops in use for gaming, workstations, and media. The California-based company has been around for ten years, and in that time they have accumulated many awards from sites like Maximum PC, AnandTech , PC World, and Gamepro just to name a few.
Today we get a chance to get our hands on iBuyPower’s latest custom gaming PC desktop dubbed the Gamer Power BTS 11. This rig is part of iBuyPower’s back...
[Review] eVGA Frostbite vs Arctic Silver Céramique1 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 July 20, 2011
Introduction
With the market for extreme PC cooling growing at a rapid rate over the past few years, we are seeing a much greater number of PC components and accessories geared to this end of the spectrum. This goes back to the Foxconn “Quantum Force” line, which was kicked off with a killer mainboard, the BLACKOPS with features that had never been seen before. Fast forward a few years, and now all the top manufacturers are mimicking elements from that board, and pushing forward ...
[Review] Sapphire Radeon HD6770 Vapor-X3 Comments By ArchercloseAuthor: ArcherName: Kevin Marlin Email: kevinsmarlin@embarqmail.com Site:http://www.techreaction.net About:See Authors Posts (18) on July 15, 2011
Sapphire Technology has been around for ten years and has learned how to get things done the right way. Being one of the, if not the, largest supplier of AMD/ATi video cards Sapphire is a leader in design, innovation and application of new processes. Through what many consider a conservative approach to innovation; Sapphire has maintained a strong market share in an ever growing field of competitors. Is this HD6770 is one of the reasons why:
Though the packaged is a rather plain, no frills, box;...
[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: Xigmatek GAIA SD12836 Comments By BoTcloseAuthor: BoTName: Edward Reese Email: bot@codisha.com Site:http://www.codisha.com About:See Authors Posts (14) on July 7, 2011
Introduction
Last but not least in our Xigmatek review lineup is the Xigmatek GAIA SD1283. We have been talking about the company in previous reviews already and won’t go into much detail again. Xigmatek has impressed consumers with a good quality product line up and performance that can be shown off, remaining at an affordable price level. Xigmatek’s “ICE” philosophy is well-illustrated in the company and its products.
“ICE” = Impressive / Creative / Essentia...
[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,...
[Blog] FFF&FM Rev2.0 – water cooling built for benching!10 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 May 28, 2011
The original recipe
A couple years ago, I put together a simple water cooling system that I dubbed FFF&FM.
Form
Follows
Function
and
Fully
Modular
And the name really tells you everything you need to know. It was not a pretty system, nor did it need to be….but it did work very well for cooling my HW while pretesting for more serious benching session with liquid nitrogen. Here is a link to the original forum post where I detailed the build.
FFF&FM Rev1.0 parts
The original syste...
[Blog + Contest] Intel Recon // Challenge: 2nd Generation Core i7 Unlocked Processors7 Comments By parelemcloseAuthor: parelemName: Julie Gierald Email: julie.gierald@gmail.com Site:http://techaggregate.com About: 20 something tech enthusiast from ChicagoSee Authors Posts (3) on May 23, 2011
There was a knock, and a large box left at my door. What could this be, we were not expecting any deliveries? Ah…it has been a while, but we were once again entrusted with a mission from Intel.
Large box at the door.
Unboxing
In the box was an Intel core i7-2600k processor, an Intel DP67BG Extreme Series motherboard and a 4GB (2×2GB) kit of Patriot Viper Xtreme Series, Division 2 Edition PC3-17066, and another box? Hmm…interesting box. Upon closer inspection, we realized it was ...
[Review] ASUS P8P67 Pro3 Comments By NeuromancercloseAuthor: NeuromancerName: Rich Smith Email: rsmith@nettronic.net Site: About:See Authors Posts (27) on May 18, 2011
Introduction:
The P8P67 PRO is one of the latest Cougar Point motherboards from ASUS for the LGA 1155 “Sandy Bridge” architecture. Targeted between the basic P8P67 and the Deluxe, the motherboard aims to bring nearly all of the power of the Deluxe, at a more modest price point.
For a more detailed breakdown of the Sandy Bridge Architecture with features like ASUS DIP2 and Digi+ VRM (covered in brief in this review), please check out the P8P67 Deluxe review.
The P8P67 Pro brings choices to th...
[Review] Noctua NH-C14 – Built To Perform2 Comments By GSG-9closeAuthor: GSG-9Name: Levi Tomes Email: gsg-9@mediocrocy.com Site:http://StypticDesign.com About:See Authors Posts (13) on May 14, 2011
Introduction:
Our friends at Noctua recently sent us their latest and greatest heatsink for review, the NH-C14. The NH-C14 is a top-flow heatsink of similar design to the NH-D14, which is a cross-blowing heatsink.
The Noctua NH-C14:
The NH-C14
The NH-C14 supports the following processor sockets:
Intel:
LGA1366
LGA1156
LGA1155
LGA775
AMD:
AM2
AM2+
AM3
Next: Specifications and Dimensions
[Review] Xigmatek LOKI SD9635 Comments By BoTcloseAuthor: BoTName: Edward Reese Email: bot@codisha.com Site:http://www.codisha.com About:See Authors Posts (14) on May 3, 2011
Introduction
Some review samples from Xigmatek have arrived today, and the first that we will be looking at is the LOKI SD963. Xigmatek has been around for a little over 5 years and in that time the company made a name for itself rather quickly and impressed many with good quality and performance oriented products. Xigmatek’s “ICE” philosophy seems to be well applied and directly translates into the companies products.
“ICE” = Impressive / Creative / Essential
The ...
[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, ...
Introduction
There have been many discussions on the interwebs of whether or not traditional air cooling is efficient enough and if it can provide enough performance or if water cooling can supersede it and offer things that air cooling just can’t. Noise, power draw, reliability, performance and pure price are among common categories mentioned in these discussions. The camps are still divided but the manufacturers aim at the middle and hopefully will change that. A few years ago we started... 
With all the questions I have received lately on water cooling, which fans to get and how will they effect my cooling, I decided to throw together a test with a few different fans that I have lying around here. I will be running a push/pull installation with my fans for the testing. I am hoping to show differences in the fans used, or lack thereof. Yes, I know the choices of fans are just a miniscule amount considering the large number of fans on the market today.
Yes, absent is one of the mos... 
Introduction
We got some Voodoo in the lab. No seriously, some Venom Voodoo. I think you got it now. Correct, The Akasa Venom Voodoo spooked it’s way in our labs. Let’s hope that the black magic doesn’t effect the results.
The company Akasa is well established. Akasa has development and manufacturing operations in Taiwan, China, Brazil and England to makes this an international operation. There is a wide range of products Akasa is developing and manufacturing. We will focus on... 
Introduction
A sample from our next contender comes from Gelid. The company is based in Hong Kong with management in Swiss. The company is a fairly young player in the industry and was founded in 2008 by Gebhard Scherrer and VC Tran. Gelid is Gebhard Scherrer’s latest project after co-founding the well known Arctic Cooling brand. Gelid’s name established quickly and well in the industry, rather known for their case fan product line, Gelid now is also more determined to get a foothold... 
Introduction
Today we have an exclusive Cooler Master release product on the bench. The H612PWM is an ambitious attempt to take the cooling crown. We are very proud to be one of the first to have it to get an exclusive look at what could be the future of the air cooling market.
Looks like sheer size and the brutal force of 6 heat pipes is the magic behind the Cooler Master H612. The cooler was not intended for small cases but performance was the primary idea behind this design. The H612 feature... 
Introduction
Sapphire Technology is well known for their line of AMD/ATi video cards but they are also making motherboards. What can a video card company bring to the table? Name recognition that has been earned over the years by producing quality products.
Packaging
Sapphire has an all business approach with the packaging by pointing out the features. Other than the “Pure Platinum” badge it is a no frills look.
Product Shots
The Mosfets need no cooling and the Bluetooth does n... 
Recently, Nexus sent us their newest product in their war on noise; the Low-7000 Revision 2 Low Profile cooler.
Silent Low Profile CPU Cooler
Balanced performance
Ideal for HTPCs
The Low-7000 R2
The heatsink itself comes with mounting hardware for the following configurations:
Socket:
LGA1366
LGA 1156
LGA 1155
LGA 775
AMD AM3
AMD AM2
Nexus Low-7000 Fan 02
Manufacturer’s Description & Specifications:
The Nexus LOW-7000 cooler combines some of... 
Many in the PC community know the name iBuyPower for offering quality PC desktops, and laptops in use for gaming, workstations, and media. The California-based company has been around for ten years, and in that time they have accumulated many awards from sites like Maximum PC, AnandTech , PC World, and Gamepro just to name a few.
Today we get a chance to get our hands on iBuyPower’s latest custom gaming PC desktop dubbed the Gamer Power BTS 11. This rig is part of iBuyPower’s back... 
Introduction
With the market for extreme PC cooling growing at a rapid rate over the past few years, we are seeing a much greater number of PC components and accessories geared to this end of the spectrum. This goes back to the Foxconn “Quantum Force” line, which was kicked off with a killer mainboard, the BLACKOPS with features that had never been seen before. Fast forward a few years, and now all the top manufacturers are mimicking elements from that board, and pushing forward ... 
Sapphire Technology has been around for ten years and has learned how to get things done the right way. Being one of the, if not the, largest supplier of AMD/ATi video cards Sapphire is a leader in design, innovation and application of new processes. Through what many consider a conservative approach to innovation; Sapphire has maintained a strong market share in an ever growing field of competitors. Is this HD6770 is one of the reasons why:
Though the packaged is a rather plain, no frills, box;... 
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
Last but not least in our Xigmatek review lineup is the Xigmatek GAIA SD1283. We have been talking about the company in previous reviews already and won’t go into much detail again. Xigmatek has impressed consumers with a good quality product line up and performance that can be shown off, remaining at an affordable price level. Xigmatek’s “ICE” philosophy is well-illustrated in the company and its products.
“ICE” = Impressive / Creative / Essentia... 
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,... 
The original recipe
A couple years ago, I put together a simple water cooling system that I dubbed FFF&FM.
Form
Follows
Function
and
Fully
Modular
And the name really tells you everything you need to know. It was not a pretty system, nor did it need to be….but it did work very well for cooling my HW while pretesting for more serious benching session with liquid nitrogen. Here is a link to the original forum post where I detailed the build.
FFF&FM Rev1.0 parts
The original syste... 
There was a knock, and a large box left at my door. What could this be, we were not expecting any deliveries? Ah…it has been a while, but we were once again entrusted with a mission from Intel.
Large box at the door.
Unboxing
In the box was an Intel core i7-2600k processor, an Intel DP67BG Extreme Series motherboard and a 4GB (2×2GB) kit of Patriot Viper Xtreme Series, Division 2 Edition PC3-17066, and another box? Hmm…interesting box. Upon closer inspection, we realized it was ... 
Introduction:
The P8P67 PRO is one of the latest Cougar Point motherboards from ASUS for the LGA 1155 “Sandy Bridge” architecture. Targeted between the basic P8P67 and the Deluxe, the motherboard aims to bring nearly all of the power of the Deluxe, at a more modest price point.
For a more detailed breakdown of the Sandy Bridge Architecture with features like ASUS DIP2 and Digi+ VRM (covered in brief in this review), please check out the P8P67 Deluxe review.
The P8P67 Pro brings choices to th... 
Introduction:
Our friends at Noctua recently sent us their latest and greatest heatsink for review, the NH-C14. The NH-C14 is a top-flow heatsink of similar design to the NH-D14, which is a cross-blowing heatsink.
The Noctua NH-C14:
The NH-C14
The NH-C14 supports the following processor sockets:
Intel:
LGA1366
LGA1156
LGA1155
LGA775
AMD:
AM2
AM2+
AM3
Next: Specifications and Dimensions
Introduction
Some review samples from Xigmatek have arrived today, and the first that we will be looking at is the LOKI SD963. Xigmatek has been around for a little over 5 years and in that time the company made a name for itself rather quickly and impressed many with good quality and performance oriented products. Xigmatek’s “ICE” philosophy seems to be well applied and directly translates into the companies products.
“ICE” = Impressive / Creative / Essential
The ... 
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, ... 
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