It's finally happened... Antec has released a fully modular power supply. I for one, am pleased to see it, for this fully modular power supply happens to be the High Current Pro 1kW model. Which, by the way, is certified 80 Plus Platinum. Yes, folks, Antec saw what Seasonic has been doing lately and has decided to go for the throat. It's time to find out if Antec was successful in producing some competition for those units.
I've had a few interesting power supplies come through here that were fanless. The ability to power a system without making any noise at all is very appealing. But what about the rest of the computer? Streacom comes to us today with a case designed for mini ITX boards that is totally fanless with a built in passive CPU cooler. I'm looking forward to seeing what this case is all about.
For many enthusiasts
want a quiet system, with room to spare, and a beautiful exterior the Antec
P280 is exactly what they are looking for. The Antec P280 is a "Super Mid
Tower" designed as an addition to venerable Performance One series. This refresh
comes with a redesigned interior, exterior, and an updated port selection.
These updates came without Antec disrupting the Performance One series goal of
"Quiet Computing", using materials with different acoustic qualities
to help minimize the amount of sound leakage. Benchmark Reviews will evaluate
if the noise characteristics and build quality of the Antec P280 are worthy of
the Performance One moniker that it has been given. @ Benchmark Reviews
The F.R.E.Q. 5 stereo gaming headset is the
first headset from the Cyborg studio, and as such we were really interested to
see if they could take their innovative design standards from their mouse
range, into the world of gaming audio. @ HardwareHeaven
Every gamer has felt it at some point in their playing career. After a
double digit hour session of console or PC gaming: dry eyes, they ache,
you can’t focus properly, they might even be watering. It sucks but its a price
to pay for just one more game. Let’s see if they live up to the hype. @ XSReviews
The SilenX EFZ-120HA5 is a good cooler, with high quality construction, nice looks, simple installing system, and a beautiful box. It is also very quiet and has an attractive price tag.
However, its performance is barely mediocre. Due to its construction details (direct-touch heatpipes, closed sides, rugged fin surface, etc.), we were expecting better cooling from it. @ Hardware Secrets
The other day we had a chance to look at the first
non-reference NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 from Palit in the form of the JetStream
GTX 680. Impressed with what the company was doing so quickly out the gate we
had to try and get the opportunity to get a second and see what was going on
with SLI performance.
This was going to give us the opportunity to try two things: the first was
to see just how SLI is looking with the latest generation of NVIDIA cards. The
second was to see just how the GTX 680 in SLI compares against its biggest
competitor, the HD 7970 in CrossFire. @ TweakTown
ASUS Xonar Essence One is the name of a brand new DAC
& Headphone amplifier combination from ASUS. The unit can decode 192 kHz
source material and features a well performing headphone amplifier stage that allows
for op-amp swapping. @ techPowerUp
The Black Edition series from XFX has served us
extremely well since the launch of the new HD 7000 series this year. We saw XFX
come out strong with the HD 7970 version which was then followed up with the HD
7950 version.
After that we saw the HD 7770 get the same treatment, but unfortunately the
HD 7770 on a whole hasn't been our favorite model due to the current price
point it hits at. Today it's time to check out the HD 7870 version of the Black
Edition card and see how it goes. @ TweakTown
When it comes in SATA 6GB/s
solid state drives or solid state drives in general there are a few names that
come to mind, OCZ, Kingston and Patriot are just a few but Samsung is not
really one of the them. For the consumer market Samsung gave us the 470
series drive and now they have entered the SATA 6GB/s segment with the 830
series. What is interesting about this drive is that it uses Samsung’s
own controller, NAND and DRAM. Something we have not seen on any solid
state drive that we have reviewed. The 830 series has rated speeds of
520MB/s read and 320MB/s write. Let’s see how this drive stacks up
against other SATA 6GB/s drives that we have tested. @ ThinkComputers
The Basiq power supply series from Antec is
targeted to users with serious budget restrictions. The new VP350 and VP450
models are the most entry-level power supplies offered by Antec, as they don't
have a PFC circuit or 80 Plus certification. We've already reviewed the VP450,
which achieved terrific performance for its class. Now it is time for us to
test the 350 W model. @ Hardware Secrets
SAN JOSE, CA—March 1,
2012—OCZ Technology Group, Inc. (Nasdaq:OCZ), a worldwide leading provider of
high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems,
will showcase its innovative client and enterprise SSDs at this year’s CeBIT
tradeshow in Hannover, Germany. OCZ’s latest products and technology
demonstrations will be on display at the event in Hall 17, Booth D31.
When we moved away from the single GPU performance via
the XFX HD 7770 Black Edition S Super Overclocked 1GB and checked out the
CrossFire performance via Sapphire we saw a bit of light at the end of the
tunnel thanks to some awesome CrossFire scaling. The issue continued to be the
price of the setup, though.
With some strong overclocks out of the box, we wonder what kind of
overclocking potential we have with the model. Today we'll be finding that out
exactly via the help of the MSI Radeon HD 7770 1GB OC Edition video card. There
are of course a few things we need to do before we cover the overclocking side
of things. @ TweakTown
The ASUS
Radeon HD 7750 OC is a custom implementation of the HD 7750 design from ASUS.
It comes at reference pricing, yet features slightly increased clock speeds out
of the box. We have seen its cooling solution before on other cards from the
company so it is a tested design that works well and delivers low temperatures
and low noise levels.
Syndicate is a re-imagination of the video game
of the same name that was released in 1993 and followed up in 1996 by Syndicate
Wars. The original games were published by Electronic Arts and developed by
Bullfrog whereas the re-imagined version is developed by Starbreeze Studios and
published by Electronic Arts. This new take on a classic game stays quiet
faithful to the general theme of a cyber punk dystopia but switches the game
perspective creating a first person shooter. @ HardwareHeaven
I am pretty positive that during my discussion with
SteelSeries at CES I actually had this mouse in my hands as most of the
"wow's" and "where the rest of the mouse" comments derived.
Now, I am a guy that I think has larger hands, and I have been told I even have
sausage fingers. So for the junior model of the three piece series to fit in my
hand so well, I was surprised to say the least. Since we are stepping down the
overall size from the Kana we just looked at, I have a bit of bad news, more of
the buttons are gone as well. What you are left with is the most basic of
devices to run through the environment with as little confusion as possible,
while still delivering top level performance even the most recognized gamer
would like to have in their hands. @ TweakTown
Antec listened to
criticism and are now giving enthusiasts and gamers the ability to choose what
cables they plug into the PSU with this new modular version of the HCG. With an
already good reputation and further enhancements the HCG-M looks good on the surface
but how will it fare as we take a closer examination? Let’s find out! @ Vortez
