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<p><span style="font-size: small; ">The mini-ITX form factor is starting to pick up steam these days, and with good reason. Micro-ATX boards are already capable of essentially hitting feature parity with full ATX boards, including multi-GPU support, while many mini-ITX boards include almost all the bells and whistles an end user could need. With the right board it's just not that hard to build a powerful gaming system in a fraction of the space it used to require.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: small; ">There's also been a slow trickle of new mini-ITX enclosures designed to support that kind of hardware, but even these enclosures have had their limits unless you were willing to spend through the nose on a Lian Li case. That changes today with the BitFenix Prodigy, a $79, full-frills mini-ITX enclosure designed for maximum performance in minimum space. If you're looking to build a powerful mini-ITX system with a single graphics card, this may very well be the case you've been waiting for.</span></p>
<p><a href="http://www.anandtech.com/show/5867/bitfenix-prodigy-review-the-affordable-performable-miniitx" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: small; ">Read more...</span></a></p>
<div><span style="font-size: small; ">Every so often we have a vendor come to us with a unique product, something that may or may not have an immediately evident purpose, or may not be suited strictly to end consumers. Such is the case with the LGX AG150 system we received for review from Logic Supply, a totally enclosed and fanless system geared almost exclusively for commercial and industrial applications. The LGX AG150 is also our first serious hands on experience with Intel's Cedar Trail Atom refresh.</span></div>
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<div><span style="font-size: small; ">This system is for all intents and purposes a fairly complete PC capable of running Windows 7, featuring both wireless and wired connectivity, an HDMI port that supports 1080p video, and even high current USB ports...all in a sleek aluminum casing. Logic Supply has given us an opportunity to review two products together: the Cedar Trail-based dual core Atom N2800, and the LGX AG150 system itself. One of these has a future, but the other seems to be stuck squarely in the past. Read on for our rundown of the good, the bad, and the ugly.</span></div>
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<div><span style="font-size: small; "><a href="http://www.anandtech.com/show/5849/loigic-supply-lgx-ag150-fanless-system-review-cedar-trail-or-cedar-trial" target="_blank">Read more...</a></span></div>
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<div><span style="font-size: small; ">One of the first cases we reviewed back when we initially established our case testing methodology last year was SilverStone's FT03, a very unique Micro-ATX design guaranteed to be both an eye catcher and a solid performer. It lived up to both of those claims. DigitalStorm even proved the FT03 was capable of handling a tremendous amount of power when they outfitted one with an overclocked i7-2600K and a pair of GeForce GTX 580s. The FT03 was successful enough that it was only a matter of time until SilverStone experimented with it a bit.</span></div>
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<div><span style="font-size: small; ">Today we have the results of that experiment. The FT03 Mini is the FT03 condensed further still, swapping out Micro-ATX for Mini-ITX and requiring an SFX form factor power supply in the process. Users who didn't care for the look of the FT03 aren't going to find anything new here, but people who dug on the FT03 are bound to find a lot to like.</span></div>
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<p><span style="font-size: small; "><a href="http://www.anandtech.com/show/5848/silverstone-ft03-mini-review-well-make-you-fun-size" target="_blank">Read more...</a></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: small; "><span style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 19px; text-align: left; ">We have already reviewed quite a few PC Power & Cooling products on AnandTech, but this time we will be looking at their first series with modular cables and a white case. In contrast to older PSUs PC Power & Cooling delivered, this one provides a 120mm fan for cooling as well. The new Silencer MK III</span><span class="st" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 19px; text-align: left; ">models are available in 400, 500 and 600W only. This is a good</span><span class="st" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 19px; text-align: left; "> news for everybody who is interested in small power supplies as they deliver more than enough power for any common PC with one graphics card.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: small; "><span style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 19px; text-align: left; ">PC Power & Cooling uses Japanese capacitors, one powerful +12V output, a ball bearing fan from ADDA , and a partially modular cable management. With 80 Plus Bronze certification, the Silencer MK III seems to be an average product, but Seasonic is the company behind these products—and they're definitely a good choice. What about the internal design and components? On the following pages we will see if they meet one's expectations.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: small; "><a href="http://www.anandtech.com/show/5844/pc-power-cooling-silencer-mk-iii-400w" target="_blank">Read me...</a></span></p>
Let’s meet the new cooler from Thermaltake, which is currently the most expensive and, most likely, the most efficient processor cooler they have to offer.
Today we are going to talk about three power supply units from the Corsair AX 80 PLUS Gold certified series with the wattage ranging from 650 to 850 watts.
Corsair has had an excellent run as a case designer, showing growth with each new enclosure by adding some features, subtracting other ones, moving things around, and generally continuing to experiment. The Obsidian and Carbide lines in particular have shown healthy progress, but today Corsair launches a fourth line under their popular Vengeance gaming brand: the Vengeance C70.
While the exteriors of the Obsidian and to a lesser extent Carbide cases have all been fairly austere, the Vengeance C70's target is pretty clear: they're going after gamers. Thus far, products in the Vengeance market have generally been of high quality and haven't been particularly ostentatious, but the C70's external design is an unusual step for Corsair. Is the C70 as a whole part of Corsair's continued evolution as a case designer, or is this their first major misstep along the way ?
We have already discussed the high-end Corsair system cases from the Graphite and Obsidian series. The products reviewed today belong to the third series, which is the newest and also the most affordable one at this time. Will they be as good in their class as their predecessors? Let’s find out.
<p style="line-height: 19px; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: left; "><span style="font-size: small; ">I remember the early days of the USB-vs-FireWire wars like they were yesterday, although Wikipedia reminds me that they were more than a decade ago (sigh). USB 1.0 arrived in 1996 but didn't begin to see broad adoption until two years later with version 1.1. When FireWire 400 (aka IEEE 1394a) emerged on Apple systems in 1999, its backers scoffed at USB's comparatively diminutive 11 Mbps peak (and much lower practical) bandwidth.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 19px; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: left; "><span style="font-size: small; ">Intel and its partners' response was swift; USB 2.0 came on the scene in 2000. Its 480 Mbps theoretical peak bandwidth, coupled with Intel's refusal to integrate FireWire support within its core logic chipsets, doomed FireWire to niche status in spite of the subsequent emergence of the 800 Mbps IEEE 1394b variant.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 19px; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: left; "><span style="font-size: small; ">Yet as anyone who's used a USB 2.0 hard drive or flash drive knows, the external bus's read and write performance still leave a lot to be desired, especially for video and other large-file-size material. eSATA attempted to address the issue, but its storage-centric focus left OEMs unwilling to adopt it en masse, from both incremental-cost and incremental-connector perspectives. What the industry wanted was an equally versatile but speedier successor to USB 2.0...</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 19px; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: left; "><span style="font-size: small; ">...and now it's got two. Yep, another standards war - except not in the traditional sense, as these two are complementary. The USB 3.0 specification was released in late 2008, with first products available beginning one year later. Designed primarily as a replacement for USB 2.0, it delivers 4.8 Gbps transfer speeds, along with discrete transmit and receive data paths. And courtesy of Intel's Ivy Bridge integration, USB 3.0 will soon become pervasive in a diversity of PC platforms and form factors. But more than a year ago, Intel and partner (and customer) Apple productized a copper-based version of an Intel-proprietary interface called Thunderbolt, formerly known as Light Peak.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 19px; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: left; "><span style="font-size: small; ">Each Thunderbolt port handles 40 Gbps of aggregate bandwidth, consisting of two pairs' worth of distinct 10 Gbps transmit and receive lanes. Thunderbolt isn't so much about enabling the connection of discrete storage devices (although it has been used for just that by many early peripherals), but new PC form factors instead. If you have to give up GigE, Firewire 800 and a gigantic screen to build a sleek Ultrabook, Thunderbolt will give you access to those things via an external display. Did I mention that Thunderbolt carries DisplayPort as well as PCIe? </span></p>
<p style="line-height: 19px; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: left; "><span style="font-size: small; ">To date Thunderbolt has mostly only appeared on Macs, but the Apple exclusivity period is now over. This year we'll see the emergence of more affordable second-generation controller ICs, resulting inThunderbolt showing up in a diversity of PC platforms and form factors.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 19px; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: left; "><span style="font-size: small; ">Anand has done several in-depth Thunderbolt peripheral reviews so far. And today we've got two more products up for evaluation; Seagate's 2 TByte GoFlex Desk HDD coupled with the company's just-in-production Thunderbolt Adapter, and Western Digital's two-HDD Thunderbolt Duo. Let's have a look, shall we ?</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 19px; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: left; "><span style="font-size: small; "><a href="http://www.anandtech.com/show/5797/a-tale-of-two-thunderbolt-storage-devices-seagates-goflex-desk-and-western-digitals-thunderbolt-duo" target="_blank">Read more...</a></span></p>
Aluminum has been experiencing a bit of a renaissance in the notebook industry, spearheaded largely by Apple and now Intel's ultrabook initiative, but as a construction material for desktop enclosures it's largely been a specialty item. Most manufacturers use it in isolated places, usually as an accent, with entire cases built out of it becoming largely the purview of Lian Li...and not too many others.
Cubitek, on the other hand, has seen fit to employ it for an entire new line of cases under the "ICE Series". Five enclosures all using an almost entirely aluminum chassis and finish, ranging from the Mini-ITX "Mini ICE" all the way up to the grandaddy of them all and the enclosure that we have in for review today: the "HPTX ICE." The Cubitek HPTX ICE is as big as it gets and is able to support the biggest motherboards on the market, every spec from Mini-ITX all the way up to EATX and HPTX, and it has a supersized price tag to boot. But is it worth it ?