PC Components, Peripherals And Gadget Reviews And News
Dig into our deep-dive product reviews and news of PC components from processors, to motherboards, graphics cards (GPUs), sound cards, and storage, along with other gadgets and peripherals that complete the computing experience. Whether you're a DIY PC enthusiast builder or just looking to read-up on what should be inside or connected to your next pre-built PC, here's where you'll find all the nuts and bolts sorted on what makes modern computer systems tick, as well some of the best user interface devices to go with them.
Intel did something interesting when it launched its Kaby Lake-based series of 7th generation Core i processors recently. Tucked away in the product line-up, alongside quad-core speedsters like the Core i7-7700K, was a new, relatively low-priced Core i3 processor, which also happened to be unlocked for more flexible overclocking. Most previous-gen...
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The last time we saw OCZ, there were tearing up CES with an upcoming NVMe solid state drive that could transfer data at upwards of 2.7GB/s that was features alongside a few new SATA-based solutions, like the Trion 150 series we’ll be showing you here today.The OCZ Trion 150 is an update to last summer’s Trion 100, which was the first drive...
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Solid State Drive technology continues to make big strides in performance, reliability and cost. And of course, at CES 2016 there were a number of storage manufacturers on hand showing off their latest grear, though none made quite the splash that Toshiba's OCZ Technology group made with the annoucement of their new...
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OCZ is launching a brand new series of solid state drives today, dubbed the Trion 100. Early prototypes of the drives were shown off at CES a few months back, but the drives are now ready for primetime. We should note that the Trion 100 series breaks some new ground for OCZ. Not only are they the first drives from the...
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OCZ Technology is at the ready with yet another new Solid State Drive, built around the company’s tried-and-true Barefoot 3 controller. The Vector 180 series drive we’ll be showing you here today is packing some of Toshiba’s latest A19nm MLC NAND flash memory and has some welcomed features and additions normally...
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OCZ is launching a brand-new series of solid state drives today, targeted squarely at budget-conscious, mainstream consumers. The new ARC 100 series doesn’t stray far from its roots, however. The ARC 100 features the very same OCZ Barefoot 3 M10 as the higher-end Vertex 460, but these new drives feature more affordable Toshiba A19nm...
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OCZ's RevoDrive series has been a popular enthusiast and workstation-class storage product family for years now. The last time we looked at an OCZ RevoDrive, the RevoDrive 3 X2 offered smoking-fast performance and bandwidth of up to 1.5GB/sec for reads and 1.25GB/sec for writes thanks to its PCI Express-based design, which basically comprises...
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To say OCZ has had a tumultuous year in 2013 would be putting it mildly. The company took a brutal beating financially and was knocked down, but not out. Now, thanks to an acquisition by Toshiba, the newly formed and revitalized OCZ Storage Solutions, is poised and ready to make another run at enthusiasts and the enterprise. In an effort...
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We had originally planned to start this review and evaluation off with a brief discussion of OCZ’s potential fate and what the company’s recent bankruptcy and looming acquisition by Toshiba could mean for its future. But in the 11th hour yesterday, news came through that the acquisition was complete and OCZ would go on producing...
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OCZ is at the ready with a brand new line of solid state drives in its popular Vector family of products, targeted at performance-conscious PC enthusiasts. The new Vector 150 builds upon the success of the original Vector, which debuted last year at about this time, but offers better sustained performance and longer endurance, despite its...
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OCZ already offers a wide array of popular, high performance SSDs, but to the company’s credit, it’s not resting on its laurels. After employing SandForce controllers on some of the earlier Vertex SSDs, OCZ snapped up Indilinx and is using what is now its own proprietary silicon in many of its drives. Thus, the brand...
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In between chipset releases, manufacturers typically pump out numerous motherboard variations, adding this or that feature or optimizing boards for a particular function. Unsurprisingly, folks like us enjoy tinkering with those boards when granted the opportunity to see if they offer anything special, over and above plain-Jane products. Gigabyte...
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OCZ has been carpet-bombing the solid state storage market for years now. It seemed that every time a new controller technology emerged, OCZ was at the ready with a fresh batch of products and over time built a portfolio that targeted virtually every market segment. Consumer-class solid state storage is in an interesting phase right now,...
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Back in April, we ran a pair of OCZ Vertex 4 SSDs (256GB and 512GB) through the benchmark grinder to see what they could do and also told you everything you ever wanted to know about them in the process. Today, we’re testing another brother in the family, the 128GB OCZ Vertex 4. When we first tested the aforementioned drives, we...
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As the resident open source zealot, I thought it might be nice to have a quick rundown of some of the best apps that are free, open source, and cross-platform available to our readers. Experienced users may find fault with me for leaving out their favorite app, but hopefully they will agree that the ones I’ve picked here are deserving...
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OCZ Technology’s Vertex series of solid state drives have been consistently popular with enthusiasts since their initial arrival in 2009. OCZ has made significant changes with each successive generation of Vertex solid state drives, but generally speaking, each one has offered strong performance and was considered among the best overall...
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OCZ had been a strong partner of Indilinx, dating all the way back dating back to the original Vertex series of SSDs, which featured the Indilinx Barefoot controller. Due to stiff competition from Intel and SandForce, on both the price and performance fronts back then, Indilinx-based SSDs ultimately fell out of favor with enthusiasts....
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Over the last few months, we have taken a look at a couple of OCZ-built products that leverage the company’s SuperScale Storage Accelerator with VCA (Virtualized Controller Architecture) 2.0. The first product to arrive was the RevoDrive 3 X2, which is a high-end, PCI Express SSD targeted at ultra-enthusiasts and workstation customers....
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A few months back, OCZ took the wraps of their RevoDrive 3 product line. The RevoDrive 3 was the first product to make use of what OCZ calls their SuperScale Storage Accelerator processor with VCA 2.0, or Virtualized Controller Architecture. In short, coupled with a quartet of SandForce SF-2200 series SSD controllers, OCZ's VCA technology...
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If you've been reading the pages of HotHardware for any length of time, you've probably noticed that we have an affinity for just about anything SSD related. As performance enthusiasts at heart, it's no wonder why we're keenly focused on the market segment, but even so, there are standout products that tend to pique our interest more...
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When the GeForce GTX 580 arrived, it extended NVIDIA's lead in the single-GPU graphics card market. Although the green team's own GTX 480 previously held the title of fastest single-GPU, its reign was temporary as the first generation Fermi card required some tweaks in order to unleash all 512 shader cores, reduce heat output and...
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Just last week, we gave you a glimpse of what OCZ has in store for the enterprise SSD market with our preview of the Vertex 3 Pro. Without giving away all of the juicy details, the Vertex 3 Pro essentially buried the competition and offered performance that was significantly better than any current-gen solid state drive. As we mentioned though,...
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