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<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 13px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(68, 68, 68);"><span style="font-size: small;">If you've ever looked at a builder's guide for a desktop system on any major tech site (including this one), you've undoubtedly noticed that the first thing to get cut to make room in the budget is the enclosure. It's not hard to see why; as long as a case keeps things cool enough and runs quietly enough, for the most part it's doing its job. It's only when you look at the greater ecosystem of cases that the real sweet spot of the market ($99-$139) becomes more apparent. What this means, though, is that the sub-$99 market is very competitive, and when you start hovering between $50 and $70, it's downright brutal.</span></p>
<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 13px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(68, 68, 68);"><span style="font-size: small;">That competitive nature has forced manufacturers to get creative about fitting feature rich cases into lower price tags, and one of those cases is on hand today: the In-Win GT1. The GT1 features a hotswap bay, USB 3.0 connectivity, a semi-modular drive bay, and fan control, and comes in with an MSRP of $69. There's potential for this case, but does it offer enough to beat the incumbent in this bracket, the $10 cheaper Antec GX700 ?</span></p>
<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 13px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(68, 68, 68);"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.anandtech.com/show/6821/inwin-gt1-case-review-fighting-an-uphill-battle" target="_blank">Read more...</a></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; line-height: 21px;">Back in late January, I received the TECK for review, a keyboard that goes by the not-so-humble name of “Truly Ergonomic Computer Keyboard”, manufactured by a company that likewise uses the name Truly Ergonomic (hello name space collision). I’m sure other companies that make ergonomic keyboards might take exception to the name, but as far as I’m concerned that’s mostly marketing. The real question is how the TECK fares in day-to-day use, and whether it’s really a better keyboard for serious typists—and particularly typists like me that suffer from carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS)—compared to the other options.</span></span></p>
<div> <span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; line-height: 21px;">I won’t sugarcoat the difficulty of the initial learning curve: it’s brutal, and I already wrote some </span></span><span style="font-size: small;">first impressions on the subject</span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; line-height: 21px;">. If you buy a keyboard like this, you’re going to need to plan on a solid three or four days minimum before you can start to approach your previous efficiency. Give it another week or two, though, and as with most things it becomes mostly second nature. With over a month of regular use now in my back pocket, I’m ready to provide some thoughts on the TECK experience. Can any keyboard possibly be worth a price of entry well north of $200? I suppose that depends on what you’re doing with it.</span></span></div>
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<div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; line-height: 21px;"><a href="http://www.anandtech.com/show/6819/truly-ergonomic-computer-keyboard-review-one-month-with-the-teck" target="_blank">Read more...</a></span></span></div>
<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 13px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(68, 68, 68);"><span style="font-size: small;">BitFenix has historically been fairly reliable at producing reasonably priced cases that have their own aesthetic flair and solid performance. They've been exactly daring enough with designs like the extremely popular </span><span style="font-size: small;">Prodigy</span><span style="font-size: small;">, and been able to produce great value with less expensive builds like the </span><span style="font-size: small;">Merc </span><span style="font-size: small;">series. For the most part their midrange has been fairly well-covered by the </span><span style="font-size: small;">Shinobi</span><span style="font-size: small;">, but for users looking for something with a little more pep and a little different design, today we have on hand the Raider.</span></p>
<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 13px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(68, 68, 68);"><span style="font-size: small;">The Raider seems like a fairly basic ATX mid-tower, but there's some secret sauce at work here. BitFenix includes a pseudo-removable drive cage and, almost surprisingly, no side ventilation. No window, no side fan, nothing but two solid side panels. There's also a trio of BitFenix's silent Spectre fans, and that signature attractive soft-touch plastic finish. It sounds like the Raider has a lot going for it, but does it hold up ?</span></p>
<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 13px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(68, 68, 68);"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.anandtech.com/show/6807/bitfenix-raider-case-review-all-these-little-things" target="_blank">Read more...</a></span></p>
The "dirty" secret of PC peripherals is that the word "gaming" can often mean any combination of two things: robust quality and gaudy design. Most mechanical keyboards tend to be geared towards gamers, and likewise, most high quality mice tend to be pointed in the same direction. It's not unusual for digital illustrators to use one of the single-hand gaming keyboards for Photoshop shortcuts, and a good mechanical keyboard like the Corsair Vengeance K90 pretty much sells itself the instant a regular user feels the keys.
Yet sometimes these peripherals don't feel like they were actually designed with human hands in mind. I've tested a few gaming mice that were definitely reasonably comfortable, but still clung resolutely to my aging Logitech G500. ROCCAT sent me two gaming mice to test, though, and I walked away seriously impressed. With the Kone XTD and Kone Pure, ROCCAT has two mice that are surprisingly comfortable and incredibly full-featured. Have I finally found a reason to retire my G500, and should you be looking for these ?
Vendors are always very quick to send us their biggest, best, and brightest. Rosewill's own top-selling Blackhawk Ultra has been with us for a little while, but while we rework our testbed for high end cases, we thought it might be worth looking at one of the workhorses in Rosewill's stable. Looking at enthusiast kit is fun, but it's interesting to see what's floating around in the budget sector, too, as many of us are often on the hook to build and maintain desktops for family and friends. With that in mind, we requested the micro-ATX Rosewill Line M.
<p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Tahoma, Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, sans-serif; line-height: 16px;">It is the first cooler with a dual-array heatsink and two fans in the sub-$40 price segment. And I am not talking about some compact mini-cooler, but about a fully-functional cooling system with overclocking potential. Let’s find out what it is capable of.</span></span></p>
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<div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Tahoma, Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, sans-serif; line-height: 16px;"><a href="http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/coolers/display/deepcool-frostwin.html" target="_blank">Read more...</a></span></span></div>
The second revision of the Japanese Scythe Grand Kama Cross top-cooler had a very pleasant surprise hidden up its sleeve. Today we are going to unveil what it is.
<p style="line-height: 19px; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><span style="font-size: small;">During our visit to CES 2013, we had a chance to meet with Deepcool, a deceptively large Chinese company that has been producing heatsinks for OEMs for some time now. Deepcool is striking out with their own line of heatsinks targeting enthusiasts in the PC space, and they sent us a hefty box full of accessories and more importantly, a massive stack of heatsinks to test.</span></p>
<div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 19px;">Tower coolers are pretty much the way to go these days if you're going to air cool your CPU, and Deepcool has a substantial number of them on offer. They also have availability virtually everywhere in the world except the United States, an issue they're fast ameliorating. The problem these coolers are going to face is a doozy, though: the heatsink industry already has a tremendous amount of competition. Does Deepcool have what it takes, or are they going to need to bring something more aggressive to the table ?</span></span></div>
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<div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 19px;"><a href="http://www.anandtech.com/show/6780/deepcool-cpu-air-cooler-roundup-playing-it-too-safe" target="_blank">Read more...</a></span></span></div>
Amusingly and appropriately enough, the wave of silence-oriented enclosures that have been popping up recently haven't really drawn attention to themselves as a trend. Yet all of a sudden, we have results from a couple of solid contenders from Nanoxia and a few less expensive (and more readily available) also-rans. For a little while, this was a wave that Fractal Design was riding high, but the Define R4 wound up being a little underwhelming. As it turns out, they might just have something better lying in wait.
We never had a chance to play with the original Fractal Design Define XL, so it's tough to draw a direct comparison there. Yet one look at Fractal Design's page for the original tells you that while the Define R4 didn't change much from the R3, the Define XL R2 is a major shift. The original XL didn't support E-ATX; it was more just a conventional Define with a separate drive compartment. This R2, on the other hand, really is a giant Define R4. As it turns out, that bump in size and modest increase in cooling capacity may very well have been all the Define R4 needed.
Today we will talk about the peculiarities and cooling efficiency of two affordable CPU coolers. What are these modest-looking products capable of ?
Read more...