Synology DS210J este un dispozitiv NAS (network attached storage) ce face parte din categoria SOHO (small office/home office)

It’s rare that anything we review has the longevity that Intel’s Core i7 Bloomfield platform has enjoyed. If you were one of the fortunate few to buy a Core i7 920, 940 or 965 back in November 2008, you’d still have one of the fastest desktop CPUs today in March 2010.

In fact, other than a few minor speed bumps, Intel hasn’t done much with its LGA-1366 platform in the past 15 months. Last year Intel introduced Nehalem for the rest of us with its LGA-1156 socket and in January we got the first dual-core derivatives.

Although we gave AMD’s 890GX/SB850 a lukewarm reception last week, there’s no denying that a sub $150 price point for a feature laden board such as the ASUS M4A89GTD Pro is deserving of closer inspection.

While most of the boards within a certain price bracket follow a common component formula, ASUS and ASRock have managed to segregate themselves by breaking rank and offering hardware level core unlocking for budget dual/tri-core AMD processors. That means that you can buy a sub $100 CPU and unlock it at your leisure to enjoy 4 core number crunching. The feature itself is not new per se, it’s just that AMD decided to drop support for ACC on series 8 chipsets, leaving vendors to do things on their own accord. ASUS’ workaround is almost certain to have upset AMD, but we think they made the right choice - if moving to the 8-series chipsets meant giving up core unlocking, many enthusiasts wouldn't.

If you take a look over at the blue corner (Intel), you’ll see that sub $150 expenditure almost exclusively limits you to the micro-ATX and mini-ITX form factors on the H55/H57 chipsets. While such motherboards are perfect in the context of small HTPC builds, there are times when users need increased levels of plug-in flexibility and future-friendly upgrade paths, and that’s where a full sized ATX motherboards start to make sense.

We’ve got a couple of AMD board reviews lined up for you this month, kicking-off today with the M4A89GTD Pro, as subjected to our standard test suite. Do note that we’re still in the process of bringing you a meaningful SATA 6G performance comparison – we should have a dedicated article up on this shortly.

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One of the most anticipated game titles – Battlefield: Bad Company 2 – has just hit the market. X-bit labs decided to take a closer look at this game in order to help you pick up the right graphics card for the ultimate gaming experience.

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We are going to talk about the new 1 TB HDD models that appeared in the market over the past year. And since one of these solutions is Western Digital Caviar Green WD10EARS with 4 KB sectors, we will also discuss this type of HDD internal structure, its pros and cons.

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We will introduce to you three new power supply units from Chieftec ranging from 550 to 750 W. Read more in our new article.

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   Deşi n-au trecut decât 5 zile de când în Windows a apărut fereastra de alegere a browser-ului, cei de la Opera au început deja să vadă roadele. Browser-ul norvegian Opera a cunoscut o creştere de trei ori a numărului de descărcări.

Today we are going to talk about four system cases of the most popular type: mainstream price range. We will talk not only about solutions with classical design that stood the test of time, but also about a few truly unique products. Among our testing participants are AeroCool Syclone, Enermax Phoenix Neo, NZXT Beta EVO and Scythe Fenris Wolf.

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    Un oraş din Kansas a renunţat temporar la numele său şi se va numi Google timp de o lună,

It’s been a few years since we’ve written a full review featuring an Intel motherboard. The reason for that is simple; we just didn’t see some of the Intel boards as being competitive in terms of features, performance and pricing when compared to products from third party vendors. Probably not a good decision on our part because appearances can be deceptive... Take a look at our H55/H57 coverage and you’ll see that sub-vendors often struggle to get the basics right.

 In hindsight, we should have added an Intel motherboard or two to those articles, because it would have been interesting to see how Intel measures up in the areas that truly matter. Better late than never we suppose, over the next month, we’ll be providing you with full reviews of three Intel boards; two are P55 chipset based, while the third and most exciting (if you like mini-ITX) is the DH57JG - formerly known as “Jet Geyser”. It’s the DH57JG that we’ll be looking at today; it should be on retailer shelves in a couple of weeks priced at around $125.

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