Arctic E461-BM Earphones1 Comment By TrembledustcloseAuthor: TrembledustName: Patrick Innocent Email: patrick@techreaction.net Site:http://www.techreaction.net About:See Authors Posts (10) on January 5, 2012
Arctic has been a well recognized and respected name in the custom PC building world for many, many years due largely in part to their PC cooling solutions. These solutions range from case fans, heat sinks, and of course their renowned thermal compound (MX family, please take a bow).
Unknown to some in the PC world, Arctic, under the guise of Arctic Sound, has been in the business of putting out audio devices to the public for a few years now. These products include headphones, headsets, spe...
[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] Noiseblocker TwinTec3 Comments By BoTcloseAuthor: BoTName: Edward Reese Email: bot@codisha.com Site:http://www.codisha.com About:See Authors Posts (14) on September 12, 2011
Introduction
Coming a long way to use, all the way from Germany, today we have the Noiseblocker TwinTec in the house. The TwinTec from Noiseblocker is Is one of the few ventures the company made into actual CPU cooling hardware. Noiseblocker has impressed so far with it’s products and it’s ability to live up to it’s promise, which is to deliver a silent product.
The NB TwinTec features some interesting design differences. First, instead of using the traditional 6 to 8 heatpipe...
[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] 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] Silverstone CW02 HTPC7 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 July 27, 2011
The CW02 from Silverstone’s Crown Series is crafted to allow users to really appreciate the design of this high quality HTPC chassis. At first glance, the all-aluminum construction and reinforced aluminum dress plates in the front set off the already classy case. The interior design of the CW02 is able to accommodate extended length graphics cards, proficiently displaying the HTPC system at its best. Capable of supporting CPU coolers of 160mm in height for additional cooling options, its s...
[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] ASUS HD 6870 DirectCU1 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 (169) on July 19, 2011
Today, we have the ASUS HD 6870 DirectCU, with a custom PCB design, that will be going onto our test bench to see how closely it performs to the marketing hype. The DirectCU line of cards from ASUS are catered to the overclockers out there in the market. The DirectCU has precision mounting, putting the copper heatpipes in direct contact with the GPU for better cooling performance. ASUS has also implemented their SAP, Super Alloy Performance technology, which uses high quality capacitors, MOSFETs...
[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: 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] Corsair SP2500 2.1 Speaker System5 Comments By GSG-9closeAuthor: GSG-9Name: Levi Tomes Email: gsg-9@mediocrocy.com Site:http://StypticDesign.com About:See Authors Posts (13) on June 16, 2011
Recently, our good friends at Corsair sent us their newest premium speaker set, the SP2500 2.1. It’s no secret that, as gaming enthusiasts, we want to get the best performance out of our rigs as possible. We’ll overclock our CPUs and massage our video settings to get every last FPS and graphical effect; it stands to reason that, to complete the immersive gaming experience, we shouldn’t neglect the audio landscape. Corsair took this same approach with their flagship 2.1 audio sy...
[Review] Xigmatek AEGIR2 Comments By BoTcloseAuthor: BoTName: Edward Reese Email: bot@codisha.com Site:http://www.codisha.com About:See Authors Posts (14) on June 11, 2011
Introduction
The next review sample in our Xigmatek lineup is the AEGIR SD128264. Xigmatek has been around for a little over 5 years, and has established itself well and rather quickly in the air cooling arena. They have impressed many consumers with good quality products and performance at an affordable price level. Xigmatek’s “ICE” philosophy is well-illustrated in the company and its products.
“ICE” = Impressive / Creative / Essential
The AEGIR is a 120mm vertic...
[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] 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 SD9636 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, ...
Arctic has been a well recognized and respected name in the custom PC building world for many, many years due largely in part to their PC cooling solutions. These solutions range from case fans, heat sinks, and of course their renowned thermal compound (MX family, please take a bow).
Unknown to some in the PC world, Arctic, under the guise of Arctic Sound, has been in the business of putting out audio devices to the public for a few years now. These products include headphones, headsets, spe... 
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
Coming a long way to use, all the way from Germany, today we have the Noiseblocker TwinTec in the house. The TwinTec from Noiseblocker is Is one of the few ventures the company made into actual CPU cooling hardware. Noiseblocker has impressed so far with it’s products and it’s ability to live up to it’s promise, which is to deliver a silent product.
The NB TwinTec features some interesting design differences. First, instead of using the traditional 6 to 8 heatpipe... 
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... 
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... 
The CW02 from Silverstone’s Crown Series is crafted to allow users to really appreciate the design of this high quality HTPC chassis. At first glance, the all-aluminum construction and reinforced aluminum dress plates in the front set off the already classy case. The interior design of the CW02 is able to accommodate extended length graphics cards, proficiently displaying the HTPC system at its best. Capable of supporting CPU coolers of 160mm in height for additional cooling options, its s... 
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 ... 
Today, we have the ASUS HD 6870 DirectCU, with a custom PCB design, that will be going onto our test bench to see how closely it performs to the marketing hype. The DirectCU line of cards from ASUS are catered to the overclockers out there in the market. The DirectCU has precision mounting, putting the copper heatpipes in direct contact with the GPU for better cooling performance. ASUS has also implemented their SAP, Super Alloy Performance technology, which uses high quality capacitors, MOSFETs... 
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... 
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... 
Recently, our good friends at Corsair sent us their newest premium speaker set, the SP2500 2.1. It’s no secret that, as gaming enthusiasts, we want to get the best performance out of our rigs as possible. We’ll overclock our CPUs and massage our video settings to get every last FPS and graphical effect; it stands to reason that, to complete the immersive gaming experience, we shouldn’t neglect the audio landscape. Corsair took this same approach with their flagship 2.1 audio sy... 
Introduction
The next review sample in our Xigmatek lineup is the AEGIR SD128264. Xigmatek has been around for a little over 5 years, and has established itself well and rather quickly in the air cooling arena. They have impressed many consumers with good quality products and performance at an affordable price level. Xigmatek’s “ICE” philosophy is well-illustrated in the company and its products.
“ICE” = Impressive / Creative / Essential
The AEGIR is a 120mm vertic... 
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 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, ... 
News Headlines
Categories
Tags
Links
Archives
