<span class="content"><font size="2">We receive a lot of interesting products in the labs for review over the course of a year.&nbsp;We do not always review all of these products, although we will at least make mention of them in our blogs or forums from this point forward. In the meantime, there are those products that sometimes deserve more than a mention for a variety of reasons.&nbsp; Today we have one of those products and it comes from Vigor Gaming. </font> <p><font size="2">Vigor Gaming is best known for custom gaming systems that provide a high degree of customer satisfaction along with a fairly reasonable price to performance ratio depending on the configuration layout.&nbsp; What most users might not know is that Vigor Gaming offers several component choices for separate purchase.&nbsp; Of these, the iSURF II Hard Drive Cooling System caught our attention when it arrived.</font></p> <p><font size="2">Not so much for the fact that it is a hard drive cooler, more so for the fact that it had a certain industrial art edge to it and it felt like a very solid piece of hardware.&nbsp; While the design was the most interesting aspect of the product, we wondered out loud if it really worked.&nbsp; As it turns out, it does work as we will see shortly.</font></p> <p><font size="2">In the meantime, let's take a quick look at the product design.<br /> <br /> <a href="http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3365">Read more...</a></font></p> </span>

<p><font size="2">We've been eagerly awaiting our Cooler Master UCP sample; unfortunately, it was delayed an extra three weeks during shipment by the carrier. We first saw this new series at CeBIT 2008 earlier this year, and other than the name (previously called Ultimate Warranty Protection/UWP) not much has changed. This power supply has some impressive features and specifications, and we were definitely interested in putting it through our test regimen to see how it actually performs.</font></p> <p><font size="2">What's so special about Cooler Master UCP line? A press release points out the fact that they are the first company to receive an 80Plus Silver certification, which certainly generated some media attention. It's not that we've never seen an 88% efficiency power supply before, but the certification &quot;guarantees&quot; this level of performance to end-users. The difference between a regular 80Plus certification and an 80Plus Silver certification isn't all that great either, as it usually means only a few percent better efficiency overall. Even if you run the power supply constantly for years, you might only save $25. Still, it's a nice marketing tool, and there is an assumption that higher efficiency often means better overall quality. That may be true to a certain extent, but let's get to the rest of our testing before we come to any firm conclusions.<br /> <br /> The 900W UCP that we received is quite long at 190mm (7.5 inches), with a 120mm fan toward the bottom-front of the casing (assuming a normal mounting position at the top of your computer chassis). Cooler master puts a large label on the top of the power supply, where it will be hidden in most computer cases. The 3.3V and 5V rails are rated at 25A, which is more than sufficient in our opinion. The 12V rails are the more important factor in modern systems, and here Cooler Master provides four 12V rails with different amperages. 12V1 is rated at 25A and is for the CPU, while 12V2 is only 20A and is also for the CPU socket.</font></p> <p><font size="2">The specifications state that the first 12V rail is for the ATX12V connector, but it actually is used for the 24-pin motherboard connector, the ATX12V 4-pin connector, and the various Molex/SATA connectors. The added amperage makes sense in that case, as much of the system will be powered through that rail. The second 12V rail is for the EPS12V 8-pin connector, while the two remaining 12V rails are for the six PEG connectors.</font></p> <p><font size="2">Going back to the main 12V rail, how much power a graphics card draws from the PEG connection and how much it draws from the motherboard x16 slot varies by design, so having so many peripherals dependent on the one 12V rail may not have been the best choice. This is another instance where a single large 12V rail can sometimes be a better solution. Regardless, very few systems will actually come anywhere near maxing out the available power, but if you plan on connecting several hard drives and overclocking a quad-core processor you might run into problems.</font></p> <p><font size="2"><a href="http://www.anandtech.com/casecoolingpsus/showdoc.aspx?i=3364">Read more...<!-- google_ad_section_end --></a></font></p>

<p class="description"><font size="2">Everything about the new hard disk drive from Western Digital is extraordinary: speed, price, design. Let&rsquo;s find out why it is so from our new article.<br /> <br /> <a href="http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/display/wd-velociraptor.html">Read more...</a></font></p>

<font size="2"><span class="content"> <p>In our CPU Cooler review in March, the Noctua NH-U12P emerged as one of the best cooling performers we've tested here at AnandTech. However, at a price point of around $90 with two fans, that performance doesn't come cheap. Today we're going to look at a less expensive alternative, the Kingwin RVT-9225.</p> <p>KWI Technology Inc., known as Kingwin, sells a number of PC components besides CPU coolers, including power supplies, fans, cables, and so forth. Their CPU cooler line has three recent models supporting modern processors; these are all part of the Revolution line, which consists of the RVT-9225, the RVT-12025, and the RVT-12025D. All of these incorporate &quot;H.D.T.&quot; as they term it, Heatpipe Direct Touch, which essentially describes what it is: the heatpipes actually run through the CPU block and have a large contact surface to the CPU.</p> <p>As we'll see, this is effectively marketing hype and does not provide performance gains over other approaches. The RVT-9225 is the smallest of the bunch, with a 92mm x 25mm fan (hence the name), and retails at Newegg for around $30.</p> <p><br /> </p> <p><a href="http://www.anandtech.com/casecoolingpsus/showdoc.aspx?i=3357">Read more...</a></p> </span></font>

<font size="2"><span class="content"> <p>We recently tested the latest Silverstone Decathlon series power supply, but we also wanted to review one of their top-end models from the Zeus series. Silverstone has delivered many new features in the past, and their build quality has always been good. Unfortunately, the major addition for the Zeus family appears to be the bump to 1200W - power very few people will ever need for their system. However, the Zeus 1200W does make some changes to the voltage delivery subsystem that may be useful.</p> <p>Silverstone is an established name in the market for their cases as well as their power supplies. The latest Decathlon had a superb acoustic noise level as we saw in our recent review. Before that we saw other Decathlon and Olympia models that performed decently. Silverstone also announced a new passively cooled power supply just a few weeks ago that we will test in the near future.</p> <p><span class="content">The label shows six 12V rails with an enormous combined power of 95A. However, each rail is rated at 17A, which is not too much as we will find out later during the tests. If you prefer, the 12V rails can be combined into one massive 12V rail that will deliver the 95A alone. On the side is a little white round sticker that hides a switch used for combining the rails, but we do not recommend peeling off this sticker since you still won't be able to reach the switch. To access the switch, you will need to open the PSU casing as we will see later (<em>Update: This problem seems to be only with the first models like the one we have tested. The units in the shops have already access to the switch from outside</em>). The 3.3V rates 28A and the 5V rail 30A, both of which are more than sufficient. The standby rail rates 4A, which is according to the latest EPS12V norm.<br /> <br /> <a href="http://www.anandtech.com/casecoolingpsus/showdoc.aspx?i=3348">Read more...</a></span></p> </span></font>

<p itxtvisited="1"><font size="2">Today we will be looking at Zalman's power supplies that come with heatpipe cooling. Yes you heard right; Zalman wouldn't be Zalman if they didn't try to put heatpipes anywhere they fit, and now we have the first and only power supplies with heatpipe cooling. Not that it's really necessary to include heatpipe cooling in a power supply, but Zalman is big on marketing and this should certainly garner some attention. Not only does it look cool, but it also brings a new innovative touch to the boring appearance of the power supply market. Yes, the power supply is getting quite long with these extra coolers but they fit well and actually help with the cooling.<br /> <br /> Both power supplies are equally equipped and differ mostly in terms of the combined power. It seems to be the same as the Antec Quattro which we tested last year. We recommended at that time to go for the smaller version with 850W because the 1000W unit didn't really bring many advantages with it. We will see later on in the tests if things are the same with these two units today. Even though we have 10 to 15 amps more on the 3.3V and 5V rails, the combined power of the 1000W unit is not too far away from the combined power of the 850W version. With the six 12V rails the same, there we have just roughly 200W more with the 1000W unit. Besides the numbers, we have a detailed description of where the 12V rails are going and what they will power up later. This not only helps reviewers, but it also helps end-users make sure they connect everything optimally.</font></p> <p itxtvisited="1"><font size="2"><a href="http://www.anandtech.com/casecoolingpsus/showdoc.aspx?i=3343">Read more...<!-- google_ad_section_end --></a></font></p>