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<font size="2">Four aluminum heatsinks, eight (!) heatpipes, impressive size and extravagant looks absolutely have to attract enthusiasts’ attention.<br />
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<a href="http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/coolers/display/coolermaster-v8.html">Read more...</a></font>
In May, Antec sent us the 850W version of their Signature series, which delivered quite an impressive performance. They now have a smaller 650W model, and we wanted to test it and see how it compares to its "big brother". The appearance and feature set of the two models are similar, with the only difference being the rated wattage and price. We'll also discuss how it compares with competing power supplies from other manufacturers.
With the Signature series, Antec delivered with the first PWM-controlled fan, which they of course immediately patented. Antec wants to use this control unit to allow for better tuning of fan speeds and promises up to 50% quieter performance -- though we have to ask, 50% compared to what? Enermax utilizes a similar technology in their new Pro82+ and Modu82+ power supplies, which resulted in very low acoustic noise when we tested them. In addition, Antec already runs these power supplies with VRMs to generate the 3.3V and 5V rails instead of the old-fashioned transformer approach. We have seen Silverstone and Enermax follow that trend, and soon Seasonic will join them, as this technology brings a lot of benefits. For example, you get not only short transient response times but also better efficiency from the generated voltages.
The specifications show a minimum load on all rails, which is a no-load operation feature. This means that the PSU can run without any component attached to it. Normally power supplies have problems if you run it without a load attached, i.e. if you were to only connect a hard drive. The 3.3V and 5V rails both deliver up to 24A for a combined power of 140W, which is more than sufficient. There are three 12V rails, with 22A for the first two rails and 25A for 12V3. All of these rails have a combined power of 634W plus the -12V and standby 5V rails.
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<p class="subtitle"><font size="2">This article is our report about five power supplies from well-known brands ranging from 500W to 800W . Two companies, namely Thermaltake and Enermax, are long known as PSU makers, but the other three are new names in the market of power supplies.<br />
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<a href="http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/coolers/display/atx-psu10.html">Read more...</a></font></p>
No matter how many polygons or light sources contemporary graphics cards can create in a single frame, the real world has one principal difference from the virtual world: it is truly 3-dimensional. Luckily, the situation is not hopeless. Meet the new stereo monitor from Zalman that changes it all.
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We are going to talk about a compact version of a giant GeminII super-cooler from Cooler Master. Our review will reveal how surprisingly efficient this little guy turns out !
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<p class="subtitle"><font size="2">Six aluminum heatsinks and twelve copper heatpipes for two. Not bad! Today we are going to introduce to you two new processor cooling solutions from EVERCOOL and TITAN. Read our review for details!<br />
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<a href="http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/coolers/display/transformer6-coolidol.html">Read more...</a></font></p>
<font size="2">No one really paid much attention to Intel getting into the SSD (Solid State Disk) business. We all heard the announcements, we heard the claims of amazing performance, but I didn't really believe it. After all, it was just a matter of hooking up a bunch of flash chips to a controller and putting them in a drive enclosure, right? <br />
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The closer we got to release and the more time I spent with competing products, the more I realized that Intel's biggest launch of 2008 wasn't going to be Nehalem - it was going to be its SSDs. If Intel could price them right, and if Intel could deliver on the performance, the biggest upgrade you could do for your PC - whether desktop or notebook, wouldn't be to toss in a faster CPU, it would be to migrate to one of these SSDs. Combine Nehalem and one of these mythical SSDs and you were in for a treat. But that was a big if...Intel still had to deliver.</font>
<p><font size="2">We already talked about the drives back at IDF. The Intel X25-M and the X18-M, available in 80GB capacities, 2.5" and 1.8" form factors (respectively) with 160GB versions on the way. Today we are allowed to share performance data and pricing information, one of which is more impressive than the other. Intel will be selling the X25-M at $595 MSRP through OEMs and channel vendors, although I hear the street price may be lower.<br />
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Both of the -M models are based on Intel's MLC flash, while a X25-E using SLC flash will be due out by the end of this year. I'll detail the differences in a bit.<br />
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The pricing is rough, that puts Intel's X25-M at cheaper than SLC drives on the market but more expensive than MLC drives. Your options are effectively to get a 128GB MLC drive, an 80GB Intel X25-M or a 64GB SLC drive. But as you can expect, I wouldn't be quite this excited if the decision were that easy. Over the next several pages we're going to walk through the architecture of a NAND flash based SSD, investigate the problems with current MLC drives (and show how the Intel drive isn't affected) and finally compare the performance of the Intel drive to MLC, SLC and standard hard drives (both 2.5" and 3.5") in a slew of real world applications.<br />
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<p><font size="2">If you want to know the ending first I won't make you wait. Intel absolutely delivered with its first SSDs. After I completed my initial testing of the drive I sent AnandTech Senior Editor, Gary Key a message:</font></p>
<p align="center"><font size="2">"I think Intel just Conroe’d the HDD market."</font></p>
<p><font size="2">Honestly, within 6 months I'd expect it to be just as important to have one of these drives in your system, as your boot/application drive, as it was to have Conroe in your system back in 2006. The only issue here, the only problem I have is the price. I was hoping for something much lower from Intel and although the pricing is justified based on the performance, it ensures that the X25-M like most high performance SSDs, remains a luxury item.</font></p>
<p><font size="2">While the X25-M isn't the world's fastest storage device across the board, it is among the fastest. And in the areas that it does dominate, it does so unbelievably well. The other great thing? You’ve got one of the world’s fastest hard drives, and it can fit in your notebook.</font></p>
<p><font size="2">Let's get to it.</font></p>
<p><font size="2"><a href="http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3403">Read more...<!-- google_ad_section_end --></a></font></p>
Cooler Master already showed their new Silent Pro series at CES and CeBIT, and now we finally have the shipping product in our hands. However, so far only a few models are available, and with the lawsuit initiated by Ultra Products regarding modular power supply patents, Cooler Master unfortunately is not yet able to sell this series in the U.S. market. Rumors say that most of the affected companies have begun appeals against the patent, but they still await further court rulings on this case. Until that happens, folks over in Europe are the only ones that can enjoy this new product, which we will review today. (It's somewhat interesting to mention that before we could even publish this review, Cooler Master wanted to talk to their legal department first; luckily, we were able to talk them into letting us go forward.)
If you've followed our PSU reviews over the previous year, you can probably guess the ODM of the Silent Pro from this first image. Enhance has a deserved reputation of building high-end units, and they provide that service for quite a few companies. This time we are greeted by low to medium range 500W and 600W power supplies built by Enhance, and the performance has almost resulted in feelings of ecstasy during testing. The overall look is nice with rubber protection on the back and the front, and a large 140mm fan does the rest. We received both the 500W and 600W models, but we will focus primarily on the 500W unit for testing.
The label shows a single 12V rail with 34A and the 3.3V and 5V rails at 20A. This might seem a little low, but most systems don't need much power from the lower voltage rails anymore.
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<p class="subtitle" itxtvisited="1"><font size="2">In our today’s article we are going to talk about the ability of seven different 400GB 3.5” hard disk drives to work in RAID arrays of various types. We will test solutions from Hitachi, Samsung, Seagate and Western Digital.<br />
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<a href="http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/display/400gb-raid0510-2.html">Read more...</a></font></p>
Today we are going to discuss one more mass liquid-cooling system – a universal, relatively compact and inexpensive, easy to assemble and work with and capable of coping with overclocked processors! Meet the new system from Thermaltake in our new review.
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