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.
Samsung has roughly a trillion or so different products in virtually every market of the computing world, but one area where the company can occasionally be overlooked is in consumer storage. Samsung SSDs are plentiful, though, most notably inside of Apple’s MacBooks, and unlike many SSDs out there, they’re built entirely with...
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If our eyes are the windows to the soul, then what does that make our ears? Doorways to our internal sound stage, that's what. But listen up, it doesn't matter how gnarly the guitar riffs your favorite musician is playing or how intense the in-game effects are, if your headphones aren't up to the task, then you might as well go back to the...
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Cloud-based storage solutions are all the rage these days, but if you don't want to trust your files to a third-party data center and deal with the risk of hacker attacks and unexpected downtime, maintaining your own centralized storage platform is the way to go. This is where network attached storage (NAS) devices come into play. With...
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Diablo III is the sequel to one of the most popular games of all time; its launch on May 15 could cripple college graduation rates, triple the number of insomniacs worldwide, and slash national productivity. Believe us--we know. We've spent about six weeks with the beta and have just recently escaped from Khanduras to detail our findings....
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When it comes to adding a performance-enhancing upgrade to your system, a good SSD can’t be beat, but storage capacity is an ever-growing need as well. There was a time when a 1TB drive seemed grossly (deliciously?) excessive for the average user, but these days anything less than 500GB seems woefully undersized. Even casual users...
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Seagate’s first Momentus XT hybrid drive arrived about a year and a half ago. The original drive featured a 500GB hard drive paired to 4GB of SLC NAND flash and a SATA 3.0 interface. At the time of its release, the original Momentus XT turned out to be a rather compelling product. Its price was relatively low and Seagate’s...
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It was back in December of last year that we took a look at the Samsung SSD 470 Series solid state drive. Unlike the vast majority of other SSDs on the market at the time that used third-party controllers from SandForce or Indilinx (among others), the Samsung SSD 470 featured nothing but Samsung-built components. The Samsung SSD...
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As far as computer chassis go, when it comes to being successful in the enthusiast DIY niche', manufacturers tend to focus on a few key design approaches that will help products stand out and ultimately sell. You can go the way of functionality and build quality, like Corsair did, for example with their Obsidian 700 and 800 series, though...
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We’ve opened our last few SSD round-ups with comments regarding the break-neck pace at which the solid state storage market has advanced these last few years. At the risk of repeating ourselves, the SSD market continues to show no signs of slowing down. New drives are being introduced constantly and along with updated interfaces, drivers...
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With the massive amounts of digital content now at our disposals, spend enough time in front of a system, and eventually it'll require a storage upgrade. We live in a digital world where games take up more storage space, cameras generate larger images, and camcorders produce higher definition videos than ever before. It's only a matter...
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In some ways, Samsung is a silicon ninja in the solid state drive (SSD) space. How so you ask? While most of the competition is all too happy to blitz the SSD market amid much fanfare and ballyhooing, Samsung just quietly does its thing and usually flies under the radar a bit. Whether you realize it or not, Samsung has been churning...
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It's been over 12 years since Starcraft launched, and expectations for the sequel have been quite high*. Well, the highly anticipated sequel, Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty, is here and we've taken the time to play through the campaign, test various difficulty levels, and tackle both human and the computer's AI in multiplayer. The single-player...
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Solid State Drives are all the rage with PC Enthusiasts these days. Although relatively expensive in comparison to standard hard drives, Solid State Drives have gotten very popular and have earned a reputation as one of the most significant performance upgrades available to enhance general system responsiveness. Capacities are relatively low...
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Although Solid State Drives are all the rage lately, they comprise only a fraction of the overall desktop PC storage market. While SSDs are undeniably fast and enhance the overall user experience, they are also prohibitively expensive for many users and offer relatively low capacities. As such, traditional, spinning hard drives, with their...
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Samsung is the largest and one of the more popular consumer electronics companies in the world. Besides its hugely successful HDTV lineup, the company also makes some equally exciting LCD monitors. Samsung's offering of flat panel displays have proven to be stylish, dependable, and competitively priced. Generally, we've...
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Network-attached storage (NAS) devices come in all shapes and sizes; some even come without hard drives--with the intention that the users will add the drives themselves. There is even a relatively new category of NAS devices that don't have any internal drives at all, and instead use USB-attached drives as their storage source. These NAS...
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With the growing popularity of cloud-based storage solutions, such as the Amazon S3 and Nirvanix services, many businesses--both large and small--are eschewing traditional onsite file servers, and instead opting for offsite, third-party storage solutions. But the ongoing cost of maintaining cloud-based storage as well as the often unproven...
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Regardless of their size or industry, most businesses depend on ready and secure access to their data. To a business, "secure" means that its data is protected from hardware or software failures and is safe from prying eyes. But small and even some medium-sized businesses often can't afford to maintain a data center, let alone a dedicated...
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When AMD launched the Radeon HD 4870 X2 a few months back, the company hinted at the impending release of another, more affordable, dual-GPU powered card aptly named the Radeon HD 4850 X2. Like the more powerful 4870 X2, the 4850 X2 would sport a pair of RV770 GPUs on a single PCB, but on the 4850 X2 they would be clocked somewhat lower...
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Traditional hard disk storage is living on borrowed time. We know it and storage manufacturers know it. Solid state drives, which use non-volatile memory chips instead of rotating metal discs for storing data, are simply a better medium in the long run. They consume less power, create nearly zero heat, and produce no noise – but best...
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The price of LCD screens has steadily declined and in the last few years, larger monitors are starting to become relatively affordable. This is especially evident in the 19", 20" and 22" categories, where we see a significant number of products in the sub-$300 range. However 24" and larger screens still remained premium products until very...
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Let’s talk about SCSI for a moment. The disk interface which was once ubiquitous with high-end workstations and servers is now on the verge of obsolescence. With the influx of inexpensive and reliable Serial ATA hard disks and hardware SATA RAID controllers (which can provide excellent performance at a fraction of a SCSI’s price), it’s...
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