Today's power supply is XFX's "Black Edition", fully modular, "Pro" 1250W.
This will be the tenth XFX power supply we've reviewed and the seventh with marketing overload. Ah.. the good ol' days of the original Black Edition and XXX Edition. I admit that the jokes are getting a little old, so I plan to keep them to a minimum this time. Most of the marketing terms are the same this time around. I'll point out the newer ones and try to explain what they're trying to say.
Our journey through the lands of the thousand watt units continues today with the Silverstone ST1000-G, a new iteration in the Strider series intended to be competitive with the bevy of Gold and Platinum units that have been hitting the market left and right lately. Packing in such desirable features as full modularity and a magnetic dust filter for the fan, this unit is very much after your dollars. Let's find out if this unit is worth picking up.
Recently, Seasonic came in and took the market by storm with their brand new 1000 watt 80 Plus Platinum certified design. Not to be outdone, Kingwin is answering the challenge here today with the LZP-1000, based on a very solid looking Superflower platform. Let's see if Kingwin can knock Seasonic off the throne.
Almost everybody knows Gigabyte from their VGA and
motherboard products, but the company also makes power supplies. Their newest
PSU series is called Sumo, which consists of two high power PSUs with 80 Plus
Silver certification. Today we test the smaller one with 900W capacity and find
out how it performs. @ techPowerUp
Epic Gear have given us the opportunity to have
a look at their new gaming mouse the Meduza which features Hybrid Dual Sensor
Technology. Essentially the Meduza is equipped with two sensors, one laser and
one optical which when combined create an impressive specification. Let's take
a closer look. @ HardwareHeaven
As most would expect from an enthusiast grade power
supply and from Seasonic, the X-1050 has a full complement of features. All
protections are there including over temperature protection. The unit is rated
for 100% continuous output at 50C and carries an 80Plus Gold rating. Months ago
there were rumors that the X-1050 would be Platinum rated, but it looks like
they weren't quite able to make it happen. @ TweakTown
If you weren't already sure then maybe
Quad SLI/Crossfire capability along with a 22 Phase power design and the
obligatory support for 128GB of ram would be enough to convince you that this
motherboard is a force to be reckoned with. No? Well carry on reading as
there's so much more to this mainboard that can be covered in just a few
paragraphs... @ Vortez
Kingston is a big name in the memory business and
their HyperX system memory is legendary. When they decided to put that name on
an SSD many people were sceptical, but it seems Kingston achieved their goal.
In our testing we see the HyperX SSD cruise past the competition, making it the
fastest SSD we ever tested. @ techPowerUp
When we originally published our 7970 content on
January 9th 2011 it wasn't possible to run Quad CrossFire with the 7970 and
MSI's new X79 Big Bang XPower 2 motherboard. The configuration simply wasn't
enabled. That changed overnight with a new BIOS from MSI and new driver from
AMD (dated 5th January) which allowed us to test 4x7970 in CrossFire. @ HardwareHeaven
An evolution of the original Kinzu this new
model features high quality components in a four button design that won't break
the bank. Let's find out if SteelSeries have found that perfect match of price
and performance. @ HardwareHeaven
The Cooler Master Cosmos
II is definitely a case for those who won't settle for the run-of-the-mill. It
is an extremely well thought out case that combines great convenience features
with appealing aesthetics, and low noise/high performance cooling. In the end I
have to agree with Cooler Master's assessment that it was "inspired by
luxurious supercars". @ Bigbruin
To sum up, the CNPS 12X is a very worthy
addition to the Zalman stable. The six composite heatpipes and triple fan/dual
radiator design yields excellent cooling performance at a very modest noise
penalty. The cooler's enormity may limit its use in some cases and it's a bit
fussy to install, but the 12X will deliver some astounding cooling performance
in exchange for some diligence and patience on the part of the user. @ Tweaknews
Thermaltake is showcasing some of their products this year at the International CES event being held in Las Vegas, Nevada from Jan 10th through the 13th. Unfortunately, none of us from JonnyGURU were lucky enough to attend the event this year. There is always next year.
Today we’ve got a full tower chassis from Enermax called the Spinerex. They’re
a fairly well respected company, so I expect great things from this case. As a
full tower, I’ll be looking to ensure that it can contain a hearty helping of
computing goodness, as well as the normal things like build quality, materials
used and cleverness of design. @ XSReviews
I recently took a look at our first Fractal case
the Define Mini and I was very impressed. For a new
company in the market I was very impressed with both their innovation and
simplicity. Even more impressive and important was the price tag! The Define
Mini is one of many cases from Fractal and I was very excited when they sent
out another case to take a look at. This time a Mini ITX case that is designed
to be a home NAS box called the Fractal Array R2. Without an optical drive and
with room for lots of hard drives the Array R2 is a good candidate as a case
for our event server rebuild. @ LanOC Reviews
If you've followed what goes on with the ASRock model
numbers, you would know that the -M refers to the board using the mATX Format.
The mATX boards from ASRock, though, don't only bring with it a smaller board,
they also bring with it a cheaper price and at the time of writing the ASRock
Extreme4-M is the cheapest X79 motherboard available at Newegg, coming in at
$218.99 US.
It will be interesting to see how the cheapest X79 board performs today.
Before we see how the X79 Extreme4-M performs, though, we need to check out the
package and bundle to see what ASRock are offering us in that department; once
we've done that we'll take a closer look at the board before we move into the
BIOS. @ TweakTown
Not everyone can afford 1000w+ units, especially
Platinum certified products which always come with a premium so to cater for
the mainstream Enermax has just released their Revolution87+ 850w model and we
have one on our test bench today. Can it impress us as much as their new
enthusiast models? @ HardwareHeaven
We are continuing our reviews of Fractal Design cases today with their
Arc Midi mid tower desktop case. We have previously reviewed the Core
3000, Define Mini, Array R2, and Define XL. Like the other Fractal Design
cases, the Arc Midi features a sleek, minimalist design, but it stands out as a
versatile case that would work equally well for gaming, HTPC, as a media
server, or a combination of all three. It can work as an HTPC but with
more built in storage than the R2 and Define Mini. It has 2 fewer HDD
bays than the XL, but won’t cost near as much (~$50 less) if you are looking
for a great server option, and although the Core 3000 is the closest in design
and price, the Arc Midi is slightly larger (8 HDD bays as opposed to 6, more
fans, etc.) and has a USB 3.0 port that the Core 3000 lacks. @ MissingRemote
