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Cooler Master announced the pending arrival of a luxury edition of... yes, of what exactly? Cooler Master couldn't tell us exactly what the full package will entail, but the manufacturer at least revealed a picture of a modified Cosmos chassis and some specs and information for a "luxurious limited edition bundle". Within the package users will get a modified Cosmos chassis decked out in black on the outside and inside. The bundle is to provide "the best products Cooler Master has to offer", so we expect it will also include a power supply, and possibly a water-cooling system or air-coolers for the CPU and GPU. There might be a few other items as well.
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Four out of five Hiper PSUs we are going to talk about today have not only new parameters and functionality, but are manufactured by a different company. Hiper decided to replace their former manufacturer with a well known Channel Well. Their functionality, however, is truly great. Three models out of five have a built-in USB 2.0 hub.
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It has been sometime since we've seen a major brand like Thermaltake launch a new series of power supplies designed to address the needs of moderate users. We first saw Thermaltake TR2 QFan series at CES or CeBIT earlier this year, but the products haven't appeared in the retail market yet. We received test samples a few months ago, still with no sign of retail product, but Thermaltake assures us availability will occur during the next month.
The TR2 QFan series' claim to fame is limited to one area, and it's not even really a feature. What's so special? The series starts with a modest 300W unit, and ranges up to 500W in 50W increments. We will be looking at four of the units today -- everything except the top 500W model.
The QFan part of the name comes from the use of Thermaltake's patented fan design, which is supposed to decrease noise levels at higher fan speeds. Unfortunately, last time we looked the fan was just as noisy as any other fan design, but at least we can look forward to testing some decent power supplies that cater to users that don't need hundreds of watts of power. Finding good quality PSUs for this market has become increasingly difficult, and Thermaltake could step in to fill the void.
As you might expect, the differences between the various models are generally small. The 3.3V and 5V rails in the 300 and 350W unit are rated at 15A and 21A, respectively, while the 400W and 450W units are 15A and 24A. The 300W version comes with two 12V rails at 11A and 8A compared to the 350W version's 11A and 14A. The 400W and 450W also have different 12V ratings, with 17A on 12V1 and 14A (400W) and 16A (450W) on 12V2. All of this is in line with the higher output ratings, though there will also be some differences on internal components in order to support the higher wattages.
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Many air coolers out there are no longer just coolers, but try to attract potential buyer with their original unique looks. But how do they actually cool? Find out from our new review of new solutions from Thermaltake and Zalman.
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Samsung engineers have always been by far among the best when it comes to exterior monitor design. However, they have absolutely outdone themselves in the Samsung Touch of Color aka ToC series. We are going to talk about 6 monitors from this series ranging from 19" to 26".
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Everyone waited for this cooler to arrive, refused to settle for less and believed that IT will be the best. Let’s find out today if these hopes came true from our review of THE new cooler from Thermaltake.
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Though they haven't been around as long as some PC suppliers, Maingear has made a name for itself as a quality boutique supplier of PC gaming systems. They routinely come up in conversations and forum topics when discussing PC gaming systems, and have won multiple awards for performance and excellence.
The F131 we're looking at today is one of their staple products - there has been an F131 available since Maingear's inception back in 2003. We like this consistency, and the simplistic naming scheme on a flagship product. Maingear's mission statement claims "unmatched craftsmanship that provides incredible performance, style, and quality" combined with outstanding service. With these goals in mind, let's take a brief look at the company and website, and the F131 system.
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When it comes to high-end aluminum chassis, a few names come to mind. One name that should definitely be on your short list if you're interested in such a case is Silverstone. The Taiwanese manufacturer formed when a group of rogue engineers left Cooler Master to go their own way in 2003, and they have been building high-end cases and power supplies (and a few other products) since the split.
They recently introduced their new Fortress chassis series, and we will be looking at the black anodized version today. With this case, Silverstone follows the footsteps of Apple by producing the case - or at least the main frame - out of one piece of aluminum. That results in better stability as well as a cooler appearance since joints stay mostly unseen.
Silverstone chose to modify the cooling system relative to the ATX standard. The ATX standard says air needs to come into the case at the bottom front, which will allow airflow to cross over the mainboard and all the components, and then it will exit via the power supply and rear mounted fan(s). Minor tweaks in positioning of fans are one thing, but Silverstone mixes things up by having two large 180mm intake fans, one at the front and one at the top.
With more fans blowing air into the case, Silverstone creates higher air pressure inside the case, which in turn causes air to exhaust through every opening it can find. In the presentation on their website, Silverstone shows how the air will exhaust through the rear-mounted fan, the perforated side near the fan in the rear, and the front - again, wherever is an opening. One benefit of this design is that most of the air that enters the chassis will come through one of the two filtered fan intakes, reducing dust buildup and the interior. Silverstone has even posted a YouTube video demonstration.
There has been something of a debate among users for years about the best way to air-cool a case. Some people think it's best to have most of your fans as intake fans, creating positive air pressure -- like the Silverstone FT01. Others take the opposite view and feel it's best to have all of your fans exhausting air from the chassis, and there's the traditional matched intake/exhaust configuration that most cases use. Perhaps the best cooling setup depends on the overall case design, which is something we are working to test right now with the FT01. Initially, we will have results for the standard configuration of the FT01 that we can compare with other cases; however, we will update this article later today with testing results showing how reversing fan directions affects -- or perhaps doesn't affect -- cooling efficiency.
We first received a sample of the Revolution 85+ about two months ago. Enermax was going to launch the product much earlier, but a sudden change in plans created some delays. During the past couple weeks, we've had a chance to play around with final hardware, which has been quite fun. There are some new innovations inside this PSU, and in fact the inside looks totally different from what we've seen in the past. Enermax now includes DC-to-DC circuitry to create all of the lower voltage rails, something normally done with a transformer. DC-to-DC technology is nothing new since we've already seen it in several other units, but the approach Enermax took isn't quite the same as other vendors, which we will see later. Note that some of the images for this article come from Enermax marketing, including photos of the packaging material since that wasn't ready in time for this review.
The appearance of our first sample was similar to previous tested models like the Infiniti or Galaxy. In fact, this power supply was originally going to be branded Galaxy 2 before Enermax chose the Revolution moniker. The original came in a gunmetal color with a golden fan-grille installed over the huge 135mm fan; all of that changed with the latest version, which will finally hit the market.
In typical Enermax fashion, the company equipped this power supply with a massive modular cabling system that can satisfy pretty much any need. Some critics will say that modular cables can cause problems with high-performance power supplies, but during testing Enermax still manages to reach very high efficiency with stable voltages.
The Revolution 85+ series comes in four different wattages: 850W, 950W, 1050W, and 1250W -- although the last will only be available for 230VAC (i.e. Europe). Today we will be looking at the 1050W model, the ERV1050EWT. The feature list is impressive, with six 12V rails, no-load operation (which will be important for future hybrid power GPUs), power saving modes for upcoming CPUs, high efficiency, and all outputs rated at 50°C.
The six 12V rails are each rated at 30 amps, although Enermax has almost certainly set the OCP a little higher, i.e. 35 amps. There is more than enough power to connect the most demanding graphics cards, a highly overclocked processor, plenty of hard drives, and still have room to spare. 12V1 delivers power to the 24-pin ATX connector; 12V2 powers both the 4/8-pin and 8-pin EPS connectors; 12V3 is for the first and second graphics card connectors; 12V4 handles the first 12-pin socket and peripheral sockets 1, 2, and 3; 12V5 gets the second and third 12-pin sockets; and last, 12V6 is for the fourth 12-pin socket and the remaining peripherals. The distribution is very good and nobody should experience any overloads with today's hardware. The 3.3V and 5V are both rated at only 25A, although this is still more than sufficient for modern systems. The standby 5V rail is stated at 6A, which is massive compared to many other power supplies, but it's necessary in order to comply with the EPS12V regulations in version 2.92.
This roundup includes solutions from all companies making 750GB hard disk drives these days: Hitachi, Samsung, Seagate and Western Digital. We will discuss features and performance of 10 hard drives with 750GB storage capacity.
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