Ask the Experts: I'd like some suggestions on a GPU upgrade!
Our Ask the Experts section has a new question, where we have Igor from Bosnia with $400 to spend on his GPU and needs some suggestions on what to buy.
Q: Some suggestions on upgrading my system?
Hello, I'm currently planning to upgrade some stuff on my rig. Currently I have:
I'd like some suggestions on which gaming GPU to get with cost of under 400$. Also, I've been planning to get 16GB (4x 4GB) of Kingston's HyperX Genesis DDR3 RAM. Is this RAM a good choice?
Thank you!
A: You can view the answer to Igor's question right here.
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Study says illegal music sharing decreased 17% in 2012
According to a study by The NPD Group, the number of consumers engaging in illegal music sharing via the P2P protocol decreased by 17 percent in 2012 from the previous year. Other forms of music sharing also saw a decrease in 2012, which NPD Group attributes to the rise of free alternatives, such as Pandora and Spotify.
Russ Crupnick, senior vice president of industry analysis at NPD:
For the music industry, which has been battling digital piracy for over a decade, last year was a year of progress. Among other factors, the increased use of legal and licensed streaming services has proven to be an alternative for music fans who formerly used P2P networks to obtain music
The volume of P2P music files downloaded decreased by 26 percent, CD ripping by friends and family fell 44 percent, the number of files transferred via hard drives fell 25 percent, and the volume of music downloaded from digital lockers decreased 28 percent.
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Apple stock surges on rumor of a stock split
Douglas Kass, a contributor for The Street, has tweeted that a stock split will be announced at tomorrow's shareholders meeting. We'd caution everyone that this is just a rumor and that he hasn't backed it up with any sort of hard evidence that a split will actually be announced.
High above the Alps my Gnome is hearing a rumor that Apple will announce a stock split at tomorrow's shareholder meeting
Apple's stock (AAPL) is up 1.38 percent to $448.90 after being down earlier this morning.
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Razer Edge will go on pre-order on March 1, starts at $999
The Razer Edge, Razer's Windows 8 take on the tablet, will go on pre-order March 1. This Windows 8 tablet will start at $999, though the price can go as high as $1,500 if you want the ultimate machine. The base unit will come with an Intel i5 processor and 64GB SSD with accessories being sold separately.
The upgraded version, Razer Edge Pro, will come with an Intel i7 processor and either a 128GB or 256GB SSD. The optional gamepad controller, home console dock, and extended battery accessories will all go on pre-order at the same time as the Edge. Pre-orders will start at 12:01 a.m. PST at Razer's website.
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Staples now selling Apple accessories
Staples is now selling Apple accessories just a week after executives confirmed the chain would. The office supply chain is selling all sorts of different Apple accessories, including Smart Covers, Magic Mice, Apple TVs, and Time Capsules, which are now all available through the retail chain's online store.
The products will likely be coming to physical outlets as well. This could end up being great news for Apple as many companies have corporate accounts with Staples. These accounts would allow companies to easily purchase Apple products as they are coming from a source the company is used to dealing with.
So far, US Staples do not sell any actual Apple hardware, such as the iPad or iPod, but the executives hope that this will change.
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Rovio launching 'Angry Birds Toons' on March 16, is a web cartoon featuring the Angry Birds
Rovio continues to expand its marketing of the Angry Birds franchise and will be releasing "Angry Birds Toons" on March 16. Angry Birds Toons is a new animated cartoon that will take place on Piggy Island and feature the characters from the Angry Birds games. It will be released on the web only and lead up to the Angry Birds movie set for 2016.
Angry Birds Toons is an all-new animated series that throws the doors to Piggy Island wide open! For the first time ever, you can get up close and personal with your favorite characters. Join us every week starting the weekend of March 16th for a brand new episode featuring the latest adventures of the birds and pigs!
A new episode will be released each week on the Angry Birds Toons' website. It's not clear if the characters will talk, as in the preview above, they don't. This is likely a cartoon show aimed at little kids, though it's not clear how many little kids will know how to find it online.
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Slaker brings Xbox 360 to town, free to download for Xbox Live Gold subscribers
Xbox Live Gold subscribers living in the US and Canada now have access to a Slacker app that will allow them to stream music to their Xbox 360. The 116.17MB app is a free download for Xbox Live Gold members, though they could be on the hook for subscription fees and other costs.
Craig Rechenmacher, Slacker's Chief Marketing Officer:
Slacker brings the world's most complete music service to Xbox LIVE Gold subscribers in the U.S. and Canada for free. Whether you're into country, hip hop or want to listen to the soundtrack from your favorite game, Slacker's team of music experts make it easy to find and discover the world's best music from the comfort of your living room.
The app makes use of voice control via the Xbox Kinect and brings access to hundreds of radio stations. More information about Slacker can be found on the company's website. Slacker is also available on Windows 8, Windows Phone 8, iOS, Android, and BlackBerry.
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Google invites kids to take a virtual tour of how it makes its Doodles
Google, as part of its Doodle4Google contest, is inviting kids to take a virtual tour behind-the-scenes to see how Google makes its famous Doodles. The event, which will be live from the Googleplex on March 1, can be registered for by heading to the event registration page put up by Google.
Join the talented group of illustrators and engineers LIVE on Friday, March 1st for an exclusive behind-the-scenes view into how Google doodles are created. Two illustrators will even participate in a live doodle-off - determined by your votes!
The broadcast will take place at 1 p.m. ET or 10 a.m. PT.
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Adobe patches Flash vulnerabilities, some of which are being exploited in the wild
Adobe has issued updates to its Flash product to patch some security vulnerabilities found in the product. At least two of the vulnerabilities are currently being exploited in the wild against Firefox, meaning that you should be sure to update to the latest version of Flash immediately.
The attack works by tricking a user into clicking a link. The link leads to a website that features a malicious piece of Flash content designed to exploit the security holes in Flash Player for Firefox. Head over to Adobe's website to download the latest version of Flash Player.
Those using Flash Player in Google Chrome or Internet Explorer 10 should be automatically updated to the latest version.
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Instagram soars past 100 million active users
Instagram, the mobile picture sharing social netowrk, has finally passed 100 million active users. This feat took around two and a half years and comes just a month after Instagram began releasing active user counts. Instagram was forced to start releasing active user counts after the terms of service fiasco that started back in December.
Comparing the service to other similar services, we can see that Instagram has done a better job at gaining user base. It took Twitter around six years to reach 200 million active users. Facebook likely helped boost Instagram's active user count.
CEO Kevin Systrom in the company's blog post:
It's easy to see this as an accomplishment for a company, but I think the truth is that it's an accomplishment for our community. Now, more than ever, people are capturing the world in real-time using Instagram-sharing images from the farthest corners of the globe. What we see as a result is a world more connected and understood through photographs.
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Zuckerberg, Gates, Dorcy, Newell and others team up to inspire children to learn to code
Some of the biggest names in computer tech history have banded together to create an inspirational video in hopes of getting a dedicated coding curriculum in every school in America. The video is made for Code.org, a website dedicated to furthering the push to get children coding at an early age.
Giants like Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Gabe Newell, Jack Dorcy and even celebrity Will.i.am appear several times in the video stressing the fact that their success is based on the fact that they began writing code at a young age. Even Miami Heat super star Chris Bosch made an appearance putting importance on the need for a coding class in every school.
Code.org founder Hadi Partovi said:
"Enrollment rates in programming classes are low, but what is worse is that schools aren't even teaching it, even though this is the fastest growing segment of jobs in the country. It's a big issue for our country. We're trying to use immigration reform to help solve the problem, and that's important, but the long-term fix really is that we should teach more people these skills."
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STRaND-1 successfully makes it into space; Nexus One payload becomes first PhoneSat in Orbit
On Monday, a Google Nexus One was launched into orbit aboard a CubeSat named STRaND-1. Surrey Satellite Technology and the University of Surrey's Surrey Space Center are the two entities behind the launch and now hold the record for putting the first PhoneSat and UK CubSat into orbit.
In addition to the HTC manufactured handset, is an altitude and orbit control system, two propulsion systems and a Linux based computer. Once some test are ran, and everything checks out, the Linux computer will relinquish control to the Android based Nexus One.
The mission will test several experiments including how well off the shelf electronics survive the extreme conditions of space as well as some apps written by winners of a competition held last year. There is even an app called 360 will let users back on Earth request snapshots of our big blue ball taken from the phone's camera.
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Google launches Google+ sign-in app
Google has been integrating its social network Google+ with everything it can imagine, and now it's getting a universal login service similar to Facebook Connect.
Dubbed Google+ Sign-in, the service is akin to similar services offered from Google and Twitter. The process is quite familiar as well. Upon using the service to sign up for a website, users are shown what private information the site or app wants to access. You can then choose what circles, any related activity and features you want to share this info with.
The new service is available on the web as well as both iOS and Android devices. Android users will see additional features like the ability to push any mobile app version to their phone or tablet.
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Google says selling phones in Play Store will continue, despite issues with recent Nexus 4 supply
Google is the first to admit that its decision to sell the Nexus One through the Google Play Store was not the best move it has made, but the search giant has not given up on direct handset sells through its app store.
In an interview with The Verge, Jamie Rosenberg, VP of Google Play, said that the company will continue to offer direct sells of its handsets through the Google Play Store. "We're getting better at fulfilling demand and kind of operating the store in a way that consumers expect us to," Rosenberg said. "The Play store is a reliable way for us to get these devices into market in different countries around the world."
After suffering through the Nexus One debacle, and then the seemingly never ending issues with Nexus 4 supply and availability, I for one am very surprised that Google has decided to make handsets a permanent fixture in the Google Play Store.
What do you think? Would you buy a phone from the Play Store even if you had not had a chance to demo it in person?
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Swedish Pirate Party caves, The Pirate Bay pulls up anchor and sets sail for Norway and Catalonia
Last week I wrote about a copyright activist group called The Rights Alliance who planned on suing the Swedish Pirate Party for its role in hosting the infamous torrent search site The Pirate Bay. All initial indications alluded to the Pirate Party standing its ground, but I guess the old saying "when the going gets tough, the tough get going", is true.
Rights Alliance Group is backed by all the major Hollywood studios, and therefore has virtually unlimited monetary resources and an entire army of lawyers who are just itching to rack up thousands of billable hours. The Swedish Pirate Party knows this and they did what they had to do to survive.
The Pirate Bay has been handed off to not one, but two Pirate Parties in separate countries: Norway and Catalonia, a small country within the borders of Spain. Swedish Pirate Party officials said that they knew that the resources backing Rights Alliance were simply too massive for them to go head to head with, and that they did what they deemed necessary to ensure that The Pirate Bay lives on.
In an interview, The Pirate Bay's Winona had the following to say:
"TPB did of course have lots of backup transit lined up for ages. This is however the first time we are going to show two at the same time. It will be interesting to see who is now blamed for hosting TPB. In the end, maybe the anti-interneterians will understand that they can't win a fight when they have the people against them."
Swedish Pirate Party Leader Anna Troberg released a statement saying:
"It is wonderful to be able to pass on the baton to two sister parties. It is testament to the pirate movement's maturity and strength. We help each other and work with our sight set firmly on the future. Today, there are more than sixty different Pirate Parties all around the world. Every cut connection to The Pirate Bay will generate two new connections.
You always have to chose your battles wisely, It would be crazy to enter a game where the rules are decided by the other team. The Pirate Party's mission is not to produce martyrs for the copyright industry. Our mission is to create long-term political change that ensures that the copyright industry in the future will not be allowed to threaten companies, organisations and individuals into silence with our common judicial system as a weapon."
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Sony's waterproof Xperia Tablet Z hands-on video from MWC 2013
MWC 2013 - Sony also made waves at Mobile World Congress 2013 in Barcelona this year with the announcement of its newest tablet, then 10-inch Xperia Tablet Z.
As far as specs go, it comes with the Qualcomm S4 Pro quad-core processor clocked at 1.5GHz and includes LTE 4G support. Its 10-inch screen is capable of Full HD 1080p resolution and it will come in black or white versions with a non-flossy back, which our correspondent Johannes Knapp seemed impressed about, in his hands-on video, which is embedded above.
The unit is rather thin and light, actually thinner than the Apple iPhone 5. It is also waterproof - not to say you could go swimming with this tablet, but it can take some basic spills. All of the ports on the tablet have doors to protect it from liquid spills. It's debatable who actually needs a waterproof tablet, but it's a nice feature nevertheless.
Many have written off Sony in the tablet game in the past, do you think the Tablet Z can turn things around for the Japanese electronics giant? Comment below!
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Microsoft finally releases Internet Explorer 10 for Windows 7, download it now
Internet Explorer 10 (IE10) has been available for Windows 8 since the OS launch, but Windows 7 users were stuck with IE9 until now. This morning Microsoft released Internet Explorer 10 for Windows 7, which brings forth greater support for HTML5, improved speed and better privacy protection for users.
IE10 is said to be about 20% faster than its predecessor IE9, and utilizes DirectX 11 for the browser's graphics hardware acceleration speed-ups. HTML5 support is improved by more than 60% bringing forth a wealth of new feature rich web elements that developers will be sure to take advantage of.
Another feature worth noting is that Do Not Track is enabled by default. This feature blocks certain sites from tracking your browsing habits, such as Google who uses your browsing history to serve up targeted ads. Users must be running Windows 7 with Service Pack 1 installed in order to install Internet Explorer 10. You can download IE10 from the source link below.
How do you feel about the new IE10? Let us know in the comments.
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LS unveils tiny WCP-300 wireless charger, claims it is world's smallest
Wireless charging of mobile devices is the next big thing, and we will definitely see more of it this year. Foreseeing the future, LG has released a tiny yet powerful wireless charging base.
Being billed as the "world's smallest" wireless charging device, the WCP-300 is a 6.9cm, round little pad that is compatible with any standard 5-pin micro-USB charger. Unfortunately at the moment there are only two devices available in the US that support wireless charging: the LG Spectrum and the Nexus 4.
The recently announced LG Optimus G Pro will support wireless charging as well as a few other smartphones released this week at the Mobile World Congress. The WCP-300 will hit shelves in South Korea next week with a worldwide roll-out to follow. MSRP is said to be $60 USD, but that number is unofficial.
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Micron Announces the New P410m SAS 25nm MLC Enterprise SSD
Today Micron is unveiling their new P410m SSD. This is Microns first SAS SSD, and is designed for data center servers and storage platforms. Providing a SAS solution rounds out Micron's impressive portfolio of enterprise SSDs. This new SAS SSD comes hot on the heels of the, mainstream SATA P400m, the entry level SATA P400e, and the high end PCIe P320h. A quick click of each link will take you to our full product evaluations of the entire Micron Enterprise SSD line of products.
The P410m adds another facet to the Micron line of products by providing a high endurance 25nm MLC SSD for SAS customers. The robust feature set of SAS is rooted in its early origins in aircraft, providing bulletproof reliability in an environment that requires always-on accessibility. The P410m features SAS's standard dual-port functionality which provides multipath and failover capability.
This 25nm MLC NAND SSD provides surprising endurance from standard MLC, with up to 10 full drive writes per day for five years. This provides an overall endurance of up to 7PB of lifetime data written to the drive depending upon the capacity utilized. Micron is backing up this endurance promise with a five-year warranty for this new product. The P400m comes in a slim 7mm form factor with capacities available in 100GB, 200GB and 400GB. The P400m is already validated through several key OEM partners and is available for immediate purchase.
The SSD utilizes the Marvell 9187 controller with Microns own custom firmware. This firmware is the engine that delivers sequential read and write performance of 410MB/s read and 345MB/s write. Random read speed comes in at 50,000 IOPS and random write performance is and impressive 30,000 IOPS.
The terrific endurance is due to Microns implementation of their proprietary XPERT (eXtended Performance and Enhanced Reliability Technology) drive management. This suite of highly optimized
firmware algorithms and hardware enhancements increase the endurance of MLC NAND and provides full data path protection. As part of their approach Micron utilizes the same RAIN (Redundant of Independent NAND) technology that we have seen utilized in their P320h and P400m SSDs. Additional facets of the XPERT approach include Adaptive Read Management/Optimize Read (ARM/OR) and DataSAFE technology.
Utilizing MLC NAND provides Micron with a lower cost solution than typical enterprise SLC. With XPERT technology Micron can provide much higher endurance than client and entry level MLC products.
One of Microns key advantages as a NAND producer is their ability to keep the design and construction of the SSD in-house. This ensures complete quality control during the entire drive development, test, manufacture and shipping process. Micron has included a neat video that compresses the whole process of building an SSD into a nice quick video.
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Foursquare now accepts Visa, Mastercard and debit cards with its check-in program
Foursquare have just announced that they're accepting credit and debit cards with their check-in program, which is somewhat obvious, but when the check-in program was launched it was only open to a very select few cardholders.
The new program opens up new relationships instead of just American Express, which joined up with Foursquare a little under two years ago, which allowed Foursquare users to redeem special discounts and deals by checking in to local businesses after linking their Foursquare accounts to their AMEX cards. Foursquare's goal was to remove the awkward feeling when whipping out that paper coupon, instead you could just tap and go.
Foursquare Product Manager, Noah Weiss, when talking to AllThingsD said "When users are having a great experience, and merchants earn more money, we earn more money in the process."
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Dell Latitude 10 gets released once again, with an 'Enhanced Security' edition
Dell have updated their Latitude 10, releasing the "Enhanced Security" version of their 10.1-inch slate. Dell's updated Latitude 10 Enhanced Security is the only dual-authentication Windows 8-based tablet on the block, providing an integrated SmartCard and fingerprint reader.
If you thought they were the only two security measures, the tablet boasts Dell Data Protection, Trusted Platform Module 1.2, Microsoft BitLocker full-drive encryption, Computrace, and a Noble Lock slot. Inside the updated Latitude 10 Enhanced Security we find the aforementioned 10.1-inch 1366x768 IPS display with five-finger touch support and Gorilla Glass, an Intel Atom Z2760, 2GB of DDR2 RAM, 64GB SSD, 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, HSPA+ support, a 720p front-facing camera backed up by an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera and finally, a swappable 30Whr battery.
As for price, it is $200 more than the standard Latitude 10, at $779. Dell have also mande a point of their testing with Principled Technologies, which compared how easy it was to implement the Latitude 10 against the iPad in large scale environments. Their testing reported that the Latitude 10 is 17% faster and 94% less expensive to deploy, saving an incredible 580 hours in system preparation and installing applications.
Not only that, but Dell's updated Latitude 10 is also 99% faster when it comes to updating software, as well as 85% cheaper per device when maintenance over three years comes into play.
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The OverClocker Issue 23 is out, the first issue of the year
The OverClocker has seen its first release of the year, with issue 23 now available to all. Issue 23 sees KINGPIN sealing a motherboard permanently for some LN2 fun, as well as a talk with veteran overclocker "Chispy" and his thoughts on the hardware industry.
There's the usual reviews, which include ASUS' Rampage IV Gene, OCZ's Vertex 4 512GB SSD, Corsair's H100i cooler, ASRock's 990FX Extreme9 motherboard, Cooler Master's Seidon 240M, Intel's 335 240GB SSD and finally, MSI's GeForce GTX 660 HAWK GPU.
You can read the latest issue right here.
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Sony Mobile will "explore the development" of a Firefox OS-based device, would launch in 2014
We've already heard that ZTE are working with Mozilla on a Firefox OS device, but it looks like Sony Mobile are looking into it too. They've announced a new multi-year deal with Telefónica which will "explore the development" of a Firefox OS-based device.
Sony Mobile's Deputy Chief Executive Officer and Head of Products Business Group, Bob Ishida, has said that engineers are already working on a new device with the mobile OS, and that their goal is to "bring a product to market in 2014". There's not much else to report, but we should hear more on Sony Mobile's Firefox OS device in the coming months, with a possible unveiling at MWC 2014?
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G.SKILL team up with EVGA & KINGPIN for an awesome giveaway, win an NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan!
In order to celebrate the launch of the new GeForce GTX Titan GPU from NVIDIA, G.SKILL have partnered up with EVGA & KINGPIN to give one of the incredibly fast GPUs away! Not only that, but the first prize includes a bunch of other high-end hardware, too.
As you can see above, the prizes on offer here are pretty awesome and all you have to do is enter the giveaway right here. The competition starts today and ends the day before my birthday - Friday, 11th March 2013. The only prerequisite is that you 'like' the fan pages of KINGPIN Cooling & G.SKILL on Facebook. If you recommend your friends to enter, you'll receive one bonus entry for every friend that enters the event through a shared link, so get sharing!
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Respawn Entertainment will be at E3, what should we expect?
You might not know who Respawn Entertainment are right now, but in a few months time, I'm sure they're going to blow most of our minds away with some next-gen first-person shooter. Vince Zampella and Jason West are the brains behind Respawn Entertainment, the two guys who were the co-founders of Infinity Ward - the developer behind Call of Duty.
Zampella told the world Respawn was attending E3 2013 through his Twitter account, where he said "I've gotten a 'few' questions about @e3expo plans this year. Yes, we will finally be at E3!" There's no details on what we should expect to see, but I think we should get ready for some mind-blowing next-gen FPS on the next-gen consoles and PC. The time for gaming to really change is here, and with the guys who bought us the first, and arguably best Call of Duty titles, we should be nothing but excited right now.
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Zalman MS800 ATX Mid-Tower Chassis Review
Introduction
Of course I have been aware of the fact that Zalman made more than just coolers, even though that is what seems to drive most of their business. There have been a few cases I have seen in news blasts and for sale when shopping prices for other cases, but up until now, Zalman hadn't sent me any.
This year at CES I had a meeting with Zalman, and of course we discussed the large group of new CPU coolers that are in the works, there was also a section with quite a few new cases that Zalman is to offer at various points this year. I also saw the chassis we are going to be looking at today, and at that time I believe I was told this case was planned to retail in the $100 to $150 price point.
Making a bold leap into today's chassis market, specifically in the $100 to $150 range, is almost suicide with what is currently offered. As I look over at Newegg, cases like the Define R4, the Storm Scout 2, the C70, the 500R, the 550D and the TJ04 to name most of the top offerings in this segment. With the bar set so high by these cases in design, aesthetics, feature sets, most of these cases are at or near the price point of this new case, and are the direct competition as I see it. This is why I say it's almost suicide to enter this segment, but Zalman feels they have a strong enough design and final product to deserve you money over the other somewhat aging designs.
Since I have yet to actually hold a Zalman chassis in my hands, I have no real expectations. I was able to look at this chassis at CES, but it was more in passing as I tried to absorb all the information on this chassis as well as around six others, all in the short amount of time we had set aside to discuss things. That in mind, I don't have anything that sticks out from CES about the mid-tower chassis we are looking at today, the MS800. So with no shadows or silver linings over their heads, let's dive into the new MS800 and see just where it falls in the already flooded market of mid-tower chassis offerings.
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Patriot Supersonic Rage XT 32GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive Review
When it comes to flash drives there is no doubt in my mind that USB 3.0 has pushed this compact form factor to the mainstream. Previous to this we were stuck with slow and arduous drives that took hours to transfer a batch of files, to the point where USB ports were only good enough for mice, keyboards and the occasional webcam.
Now that we have made the transition to USB 3.0, with many manufacturers jumping on-board including Patriot, we now have the ability to transfer files faster than ever before, reaching speeds upwards of 300MB/s.
In the lab today we have one of the latest drives to come out of the factory in Fremont California, the home of Patriot Memory. The Supersonic Rage XT follows the same design concept as the previous Xporter Rage USB 2.0 drive that Patriot released many years ago. This compact, yet durable drive houses 32GB of flash memory inside a plastic shell with full slide articulation.
The Patriot Supersonic Rage XT supports the full array of operating systems with Windows ME/2000/XP/Vista/7 and 8 support next to Linux 2.4+ and Mac OS X 9+.
Looking over the Rage XT, our first impression is of the size of this drive, being the smallest we have seen to date. The drive carries Patriots' new blue and black color scheme with brand identifiers of Supersonic Rage in the 32GB flavour. In this closed position the drive measures in at 53.6mm.
On the flip side where we normally see all the legal jargon, we instead see a large XT logo.
In somewhat of a backwards fashion the Rage XT slides together to reveal the USB 3.0 connection. The overall size of this drive in its extended position is 53.6mm, the same as it was in its closed form. Pulling back on the drive again safely tucks it away.
The USB 3.0 connection here shows the same blue coloring as all 3.0 peripherals with the overall width of the drive measuring in at 22mm.
Looking over the PCB we find the Phison controller to the left with a single 16GB flash package to the right.
The backside houses a single 16GB NAND flash module, bring our total to the 32GB capacity. The NAND used in this drive labelled TU57G2LAKA is Toshiba MLC.
Taking a closer look at the controller used in this drive that is labelled PS2251-03, it's a Phison controller that markets itself as a high speed USB 3.0 to NAND flash controller, supporting 3x/2x and 1x nm flash memory while being ONFI 2.2 compliant.
One of the lesser known features of running Microsoft's new operating system Windows 8 is the native capability of USB Attached SCSI or UASP. To start my benchmarking procedure I secure erased the Patriot Rage XT, as I do all drives.
ATTO is commonly used for marketing performance of hard drives and solid state drives alike. Taking a look at our results from the Rage XT we peaked just shy of marketing specifications for this drive. At 188MB/s read and 49 MB/s write, this isn't the quickest drive we have tested, but it does offer performance five to ten times better than USB 2.0.
CrystalDiskMark's default testing uses a set of random data or incompressible data, there is also an option for 0xfill or compressible data. We will use the standard data set for our purposes.
Managing a nice 195MB/s read the Rage XT exceeded its marketing specs on this front, where 180MB/s was advertised on the packaging. 44MB/s write fell just short of marketing set at 50MB/s. 4K numbers were somewhat disappointing and furthering this was 4K at QD32.
Disk Bench is a rather simple program that benchmarks real-world file transfers between drives. For this test I made up three data sets, one consisting of 1000 pictures totalling 1.5GB, the second consisting of four MP4 movies with a total file size of 8.65GB. The last data set consists of Microsoft Windows 7 x64 install w/ SP1.
Transferring photos proved be a nice workout for the Rage XT, where we managed a slow 20MB/s taking 1 minute 16 seconds to transfer our batch of 1000 photos.
The Rage XT did manage to transfer our video files at a faster rate, but in the end the amount of time consumed doing this task was nearly three and a half minutes.
Our Windows install transferred to the Rage XT at 42MB/s with a total completion time of 95 seconds.
The Patriot Rage XT truly is a unique drive in that it encompasses a great design. I'm sure most of you have plugged in a flash drive in the past that had a wonky slide mechanism that was just worn out, leading you to hold onto the slide while plugging it in. The Rage XT reverses the traditional slide mechanism in that you are pushing the actual USB 3.0 connection through the front plastic housing, giving you a secure connection that will never flake out. Furthering this unique design the Rage is covered with a soft rubber to enhance durability and protect against life's everyday mishaps.
Performance of this drive was as advertised and while it may not be the fastest on the market, it does offer speeds of 195MB/s read and 44MB/s write as seen in our testing.
To get yourself one of these Patriot Rage XT drives you will set yourself back $34.99 for the 32GB and $62.99 for the larger 64GB model. This drive in both the 32GB and 64GB flavours are warrantied from Patriot at five years. Pricing puts this drive from Patriot in a great market segment with the 32GB model specifically, you won't find a faster drive at a cheaper price with the added bonus of a five year warranty from a top-tier company like Patriot.
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GIGABYTE X79S-UP5-WiFi (Intel C606) Motherboard Review
Introduction
With Intel not doing a lot with the CPU and motherboard market till the middle of the year when Computex hits, we're seeing companies hit us up with some refreshes of popular established chipsets. Recently we have not only received a bunch of Z77 motherboards, but we've also seen a couple of X79 ones show up to continue to keep Intel and its partners in the spotlight.
Outside of these Intel boards recently, though, we've got a couple of AMD boards lined up waiting for the recently looked at AMD A10-5800K and FX-8350 processors to be installed in to. Today, though, isn't about AMD based chips or boards, instead we're all Intel here. The X79 Express chipset really should need no introductions, it's been the chipset of choice in our video card testbed since launch thanks to the power house of CPU's that fit in it including the beloved Extreme Edition series. We're not exactly dealing with the Intel X79 chipset today, though. Instead we've got the Intel C606 chipset on offer which is actually the server version of the high-end X79 chipset. It brings with it a few extra options which we'll cover as we work our way through the motherboard.
Along with support for some of the fastest CPU's on the planet, the chipset also carries support for massive amounts of RAM and video cards. While it's been almost a year since we looked at an X79 motherboard, we dust off our trusty 3960X that has been sitting around and find out just what this chipset has to offer.
Today we're looking at a board from GIGABYTE with the X79S-UP5-WiFi name attached to it. The UD5 / UP5 name has always been one that has impressed us with a strong feature set and a more aggressive price point than its bigger brothers.
There are a few things we need to do before we get into the performance side of things. We'll check out the box and the package to see what GIGABYTE is doing in this area. Once we've done that we'll move onto a closer look at the board before heading into the BIOS. Finally before we get into the testing side we'll check out our testbed here today and look at how we went with the overclocking side of things.
Package
While we're dealing with quite a large box, we're haven't got one that opens up like we see on some of the high-end GIGABYTE offerings. With that said you can see we've got an absolute wealth of information here. Across the top we've got a large push on the Ultra Durable 5 feature while across the bottom you can see the 3D Power and 3D BIOS is being pushed.
Looking at the back of the box you can see a lot more detail when it comes to the main features that are being pushed on the front of the box. Across the top you can see an expansion of the Ultra Durable 5 side of things and how it offers more power efficiency and better cooling throughout the motherboard. Covered below that is the 2x Copper PCB, Dual UEFI BIOS and look at some of the main features of the motherboard via a picture.
Across the bottom we've got the 3D Power 3-Way Digital Engine, mention of the included Wi-Fi + Bluetooth 4.0 card that's included along with a look at the 3D BIOS that GIGABYTE has been using for a while.
Moving inside the package we've got a lot of the usual suspects here. We've got a bunch of paperwork and a couple of CD's including the standard driver one along with another one for the WiFi / Bluetooth card. We've also got six SATA cables included along with a 3-way SLI connector, standard 2-way SLI connector and a CrossFire bridge.
One of the bigger standouts for the bundle is the combo WiFi / Bluetooth card along with its two antennas. It supports Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n on the wireless front. When it comes to Bluetooth we've got support for 4.0, 3.0+HS, 2.1+EDR making for quite a versatile card.
Finally to round the bundle off we've got a front panel dual port USB adapter included.
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Origin EON17-S Gaming Notebook Review
Introduction
Today we've got Origin's massive EON17-S gaming laptop in the lab. This beast of a machine is one of the most powerful laptops on the market and has blown through our benchmarks with lightning speed.
The EON17-S is styled similarly to the EON11-S that we reviewed last week. Save for a difference in size and performance, the two are very similar. Both have excellent build quality and performance packed into a mobile chassis.
The EON17-S is the big brother of the EON11-S. It features a massive 17-inch screen and features that put my desktop system to shame. Let's take a look at the specifications and how it does in our benchmarks.
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ASRock H77 Pro4/MVP (Intel H77) Motherboard Review
Introduction
Intel's H77 chipset isn't really one that we've followed too closely. So much so that I had to actually bring myself to search TweakTown to see if I had actually reviewed a board that uses the chipset. A quick search discovers that we haven't which makes this review become even more important as we take our first look at the H77 chipset.
For the most part there's not too much that separates the H77 and Z77 chipset. The major difference is the inability to split off the PCIe x16 slot. The other main difference is that "CPU Overclocking" is disabled. We don't know too much about this and we'll cover it more in the overclocking side of things in a couple of pages.
Apart from these two differences, though, the similarities between both boards are very similar with maximum SATA III ports coming in at two off the chipset, up to four USB 3.0 ports of the chipset and Intel RST and SRT technology both being offered.
The first thing we need to do is check out the box and the bundle that ASRock is offering us. Considering the $79.99 price tag associated with the board, we're not expecting anything too major when it comes to extras.
Once we've done that we'll move onto the board itself before checking out the BIOS. Following that we'll look at our testbed setup and cover the overclocking side of things where we'll cover the "No CPU Overclocking" feature that is listed as not available.
Package
Having a look at the front of the box you can see the 555 XFast technology is heavily highlighted. Apart from that there's not a whole lot more being shown on the front of the box apart from a couple of logos across the bottom and the model number across the top.
Turning the box over you can see we go into some detail on the main features of the board including the 555 XFast technology. Below that you can see we've got a rundown on the Lucid Virtu MVP technology that is included along with a bit of information in Intel Smart Response Technology and Intel Rapid Start Technology. Finally across the bottom we go over some of the other features including DIGI Power, PCIe 3.0, UEFI BIOS, On/Off Play technology and Intel HD graphics.
Considering the price point of the board and the target market, it comes as no surprise that the bundle is on the light side. We've got a bunch of paperwork including some that explains XFast 555 and Lucid Virtu MVP in more detail. Along with that we've got a driver CD, I/O back plate and two SATA cables.
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Sentey LTP1000-SM 1000W 80 PLUS Platinum Power Supply Review
Introduction
Today we are taking a look at our second unit from Sentey. Most of our readers aren't going to know who they are since the company is relatively small, and they are making a name for themselves as they go along. Sentey is a company whose headquarters resides in Florida with an operations center in California and manufacturing in China. The company is also expanding distribution centers in Latin America and is poised to make quite a name for itself. Currently the company offers a wide selection of computer cases, coolers, video cards and power supplies.
The unit that we have in question today is the upcoming LTP1000-SM. It is a 1000W single rail unit rated for 80 PLUS Platinum efficiency. Beyond that, it offers one heck of a warranty at seven years. That doesn't mean too much if it can't handle the heat, so let's start looking at how the power supply stacks up on paper, then move into the testing.
Specifications, Availability and Pricing
Most of the power for the Sentey LTP1000-SM is delivered via the single 12V rail, rated for 83A or 996W. Both minor rails are rated for 20A each and have a combined maximum output of 100W. The 5VSB rail is rated for 2.5A or 12.5W which is half a watt lower than what we are used to seeing. Maximum combined output for the power supply is 1000W.
I was really surprised to see that both Over Current Protection and Over Temperature Protection are missing from the LTP1000-SM, especially considering this is a rebranded Super Flower Golden King unit and all of the others we've covered have had at least one of the two the protections present. Aside from the two missing protections, everything else is present. The power supply features both native and modular cabling, all of which is either fully sleeved or of the flat ribbon type. The LTP1000-SM is rated for 80 PLUS Platinum efficiency as well as 100% continuous output at 50C.
The Sentey LTP1000-SM isn't available for purchase in the USA, but we've been told to expect the unit in March. Once it hits the shelves, you can expect it to have an MSRP of $219.99. This puts it comparatively priced against other similar power supplies. Sentey will back it with a seven year warranty should the need ever arise.
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Adaptec by PMC re-enters HBA Market with Series 7H, 7He and 6H Adaptors
Adaptec Series 7H, 7He, 6H
Adaptec has announced a new line of 6Gb/s HBA's (Host Bus Adapter) in the form of the Series 7H, 7He and 6H families. This new line of HBA's marks Adaptec's return into the HBA business, a market that Adaptec had chosen to sit out of for the past few years.
Adaptec was acquired in 2010 by PMC-Sierra, a semi-conductor developer. Soon after the merger of the two companies, Adaptec launched their 6 Series RAID controllers and adaptors. The 6 Series of controllers were designed before the resources of PMC-Sierra were brought into play. The Series 7 products are the first generation of controllers from Adaptec that reap the benefits of their merger with PMC.
Adaptec is following the Series 7 RAID controller release with their return to the HBA market. This strategic decision to rejoin the HBA market is due to the changing realities of server design. By anticipating the needs of the HBA market, Adaptec hopes to come in with new features that will resonate with their customers. Companies such as Facebook and Google are deploying their own custom-built servers into their datacenters, and the need for HBAs and slim storage solutions has become increasingly prevalent.
One of the greatest aspects of these new HBAs is the ability to pack more density into slim servers. To cram enough connectivity for the plethora of available ports onboard these small cards, Adaptec is transitioning to the HD MiniSAS specification one year early. Most companies are waiting for the 12Gb/s generation to make the transition, but Adaptec feels that this will put them a full year ahead of the competition in instituting the switch to HD MiniSAS.
This new line features the industry's only PCIe Gen3 low profile/MD2 form factor HBA with 16 native ports, and the industry's only solution to take full advantage of the PCIe Gen3 bandwidth with one card. This results in the only SAS/SATA HBA solution that is capable of 1 million IOPS with 512Byte blocks.
The features are powered by new PMC silicon in the form of the 16 native port PM8019 and PM8018 processors. These controllers provide SAS 2.0 connectivity via the PCIe Gen3 x8 bus. With sequential read and write speeds on the PCIe Gen3 bus clocked at 6400MB/s, and over 800,000 IOPS with the 4K block size, these HBA's surely will not disappoint in the speed category.
Another new feature employed by two of the Series 7He models is the MaxCrypto functionality. This provides the industry's only HBAs that feature encryption. We will cover this in further detail in the following pages.
Pricing has not been announced yet, but prices are projected to be competitive with competing solutions. Full availability for all of the product family will be in Q2 of 2013. We expect to have in some silicon for testing well before that, but first let's take a look at the entire line-up, and some of the functionalities that these controllers bring with them.
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GIGABYTE Z77X-UD4H (Intel Z77) Motherboard Review
Introduction
Since we're roughly five months away from a massive influx of new motherboards via the Haswell platform, we're seeing companies promote the current crop of Z77 motherboards quite heavily at the moment. The latest motherboard to arrive comes from GIGABYTE and continues the line of strong Z77 based motherboards.
Recently we had a chance to look at the Z77X-UP7 which impressed us with strong features, good performance and a fantastic look. While not for everyone, the cheaper Z77X-UD5H could be a better option, as it won't bust the bank account open quite as much.
Today we look at an even cheaper option in the Z77X-UD4H. So what does the cheaper price tag bring to the table? Well, we can only find out by doing one thing and that's getting a closer look at the motherboard.
The first thing we need to do is look at the package and bundle before we move onto the actual board itself. We'll then head into the BIOS area to see what's going on before looking at our testbed, the overclocking side of things and finally of course the performance of the board at both stock speeds and overclocked speeds.
Package
Looking at the box it's not quite as full on as other more expensive boards with information as the Z77X-UP7 which opens up to reveal the board and a whole lot more. Looking above, though, you can see some of the main features are covered with a big push on the 3D Power and 3D BIOS features being mentioned on the front. You can also see that we've got PCIe Gen 3, Virtu MVP and SLI support.
Turning over to the back of the box you can see we get more detail on what exactly 3D Power and 3D BIOS brings to the table along with some detail on the Ultra Durable 4 side of things. As always we've got a fairly strong looking board, but until we get into the down and dirty, we won't know exactly what we're dealing with.
Being a cheaper UD4H motherboard means that the bundle side of things is a little lighter than other more expensive boards. Above you can see the manuals along with four SATA cables, SLI bridge and an I/O Panel to round everything off. Due to the nature of getting the board a little earlier before volume shipping, we didn't get a driver CD, but you will see this in the retail offerings on the street.
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Seasonic Platinum 520 Fanless 520-Watt 80 PLUS Platinum Power Supply Review
Introduction
We really do hope that our readers are familiar with Seasonic by now. Over the last 35 years, they have become synonymous for high quality and efficient power supplies. Seasonic not only produces power supplies under their own name, but also acts as an OEM for a very large number of different manufacturers. Chances are that if you've had five or more power supplies throughout the years, one of them was built by Seasonic.
On top of all this, we've covered several of their units and they really are top notch. Our last review of a Seasonic unit was the Platinum 1000W and it was superb. It did leave us wanting more though and Seasonic has expanded their Platinum lineup with more units. Not only that, but their sub-600W units are available as fanless units.
We have one such unit on the bench today and it is the 520W model. Keep reading as we go over the new Platinum Fanless 520W and see what it has to offer.
Specifications, Availability and Pricing
As you would expect from a lower wattage power supply, 12V power is delivered via a single 12V rail. In the case of the Platinum 520 Fanless, it is a 43A rail capable of 516W of power. Both the 3.3V and 5V rails are rated for 20A each with a combined maximum output of 100W. The 5VSB rail is rated for 2.5A or 12.5W. Maximum combined output for the power supply is 520W.
I'll be the first to admit that I was surprised when we weren't able to fill our feature summary full of green checks since this is a Seasonic unit. It is understandable though, since the power supply is fanless and it isn't intended to be in very hot environments. All protections are present including Over Temperature Protection. All cables for the Platinum 520 Fanless are both modular and fully sleeved. The power supply is 80 PLUS Platinum rated for efficiency and while it is not rated for 100% continuous output at 50C, it is rated for it at 40C.
Seasonic has an MSRP of $149.99 on the Platinum 520 Fanless power supply. A quick search will yield a much lower price of $134.56 from Provantage. This may seem like quite a bit for a 520W power supply, but let's not forget that it is fanless... and actually comes in cheaper than the competition by at least $10. Seasonic backs the Platinum 520 Fanless by a seven year warranty.
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Building a DIY All-in-One PC with GIGABYTE's H77TN Thin Mini-ITX Motherboard
Introduction
At the beginning what we were going to do with our first DIY AIO PC was a little unknown. GIGABYTE has introduced a new motherboard for the latest PC category in the form of the H77TN - a Thin Mini-ITX motherboard designed for All-in-One systems. With this being new to us we're just kind of going with the flow today. The board itself doesn't have a full package and the manual hasn't even been completed yet by GIGABYTE at the time of writing.
The AIO segment is going to become bigger and bigger as time goes on and the DIY aspect of it is going to be interesting as we see some companies offer motherboards for the platform and others offer chassis. Alongside the H77TN motherboard from GIGABYTE, we've also got a MiTAC Maestro 770 chassis.
What we're going to do today is have a look at both items, but more so cover the experience on a whole. There seems to be plenty to focus on with the first part of the whole process being the build. It's the first time we've built an AIO PC and with no manual, we're kind of just winging it. With a few years of PC building experience under the belt, though, I should be fine. But what is the process like? There tends to be nothing worse than working in a small system and you really can't get much smaller than an AIO PC.
The other big thing we need to cover is the user experience. I've had a play here and there with Windows 8 and continued to find myself disappointed with it. This time around, though, we've got a multi-touch screen. Will I finally get myself a decent Windows 8 experience?
We'll do a little bit of benchmarking to give you a bit of an idea of what kind of performance you can expect. Most of the focus in this area, though, will be on the CPU side of things, as we expect little to happen when it comes to the gaming side of things. The first thing we're going to do is take a closer look at the motherboard GIGABYTE has given us. We'll cover some of the main features and some of the components you'll need to get up and running. Once we've done that we'll take a closer look at the MiTAC Maestro 770 chassis.
Once we've covered both those items we'll then move onto the build process, and cover how easy or hard it was, and any problems we ran into. You know, all that kind of fun stuff before we finally get around to installing both Windows 7 and Windows 7 on the device. Then we'll cover the touch aspect of the unit, and run a few benchmarks before finally wrapping up our experience.
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Kingwin Power Force 850-Watt 80 PLUS Bronze Power Supply Review
Introduction
It has been nearly a year since we've had a look at anything from Kingwin so we figured it was time to take a look at something new from them. Up to this point, everything that we have looked at concerning their power supply offerings has been leading edge. Whether it is efficiency, silence, quality of power, or a mix of any of these, we've looked at what they have had to offer. What we haven't taken a peek at is any of their entry-level offerings.
That is where today's review comes in. On the bench right now is the Power Force 850W power supply. It is very much an "entry-level" power supply aimed towards those with higher quantity of power needs. Don't let this fool you, though. While it may not be the most efficient or have the greatest voltage regulation on the planet, it is more than capable of powering a dual GPU gaming rig with ease.
Specifications, Availability and Pricing
A single 12V rail provides 100% of the power for the Kingwin Power Force 850W power supply via a 70.83A rail. Both the 3.3V and the 5V rails are rated at 25A each with a combined maximum output of 150W. The 5VSB rail is rated for 3A or 15W. Maximum combined output of the Power Force 850W power supply is 850W.
One of the first things to go when you start talking about a lower end unit is features. That is something that you just won't find happening here with the Power Force 850W from Kingwin. They keep almost all of the features you'd expect to see from a top-tier power supply, even providing more than what we saw from the recently reviewed PC Power & Cooling Silencer Mk III 850W. All cables, both native and modular are fully sleeved. The power supply is rated for 80 PLUS Bronze efficiency, but not for 100% continuous output at 50C.
Kingwin has an MSRP of $109.99. That's quite cheap for an 850W modular unit and the best we could find the unit for online at the time of writing was $110.15 with free shipping at aaawave.com. Kingwin backs the Power Force 850W with a five year warranty.
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Top 10 TweakTown Content from the past week [18 February 2013]
Here are our top 10 articles, reviews and guides from the past week!
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Swiftech H220 Compact Drive II CPU Water Cooler Review
Introduction
After a long talk with Gabe from Swiftech at CES, I finally got to get to my own testing of their new AIO coolers. The news of these has been flooding websites and there is no reason at this point to not disclose the product since it is all the rage as of late. The new H220 is an AIO cooler that should make every other AIO builder on the planet stand up and take note as to what Swiftech is now bringing to the table. I for one found that not only are the standard components are much better than the basic AIO, but Gabe and his team at Swiftech have gone over this concept with a fine toothed comb and made sure that this kit not only disassembles to add in blocks, or just so that it can be installed anywhere it can fit, including outside the chassis. This is something no other AIO on the market has while still retaining its warranty.
Most of the parts in this kit are off the shelf components that Swiftech has already had much success with, and some things are new, made specifically for this kit. The head unit is designed off of the Apogee Drive II that we had tested earlier, but this time it is built with an aesthetic that is only found in the H220. The radiator is also something off the shelf, and the major plus to this design is that the radiator is brass and copper, so there is no metal mixing in the Swiftech loop, like every other solution on the planet. Another enhancement to the H220 is that it uses 3/8" black tubing to improve flow inside of the loop and also help to fight any direct sunlight from making bacteria or fungus in the coolant. Lastly, this kit comes completely assembled, right down to the fans on the radiator, and while being a "custom water loop", these units should perform like it, but allow users with limited skills a chance to enjoy what some of us have been using for years.
So in essence, Swiftech is taking on all the major players in the AIO market, and instead of going to Asetek, CoolIT, or just stealing the basic concepts and sticking their name on it, Swiftech takes a major step above the crowd and delivered the H220, which we are about to see in fine detail. Three things that should sell you on a cooler like this versus the competition are the attention to detail in all of the components and accessories, the fact that you can tear this loop apart and add in a block, radiator, pump, flow meter; basically anything you want, and the last thing that should amaze you is the price point at which Swiftech is going to sell these units. With those basic three things, Swiftech may very well shake up the AIO community and raise the bar to a height that most other manufacturers won't be able to reach since their work is all done by someone else. This is where it is nice to be manufacturer that designs the products; you don't have to follow the mold that has been presented.
That in mind, let's have a look together and see why I think Swiftech may just crush the competition and all other AIO offerings on the market today.
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Light Virtualization and Instant Recovery Software: A great overall safety net for your computer
Introduction
Many computer users nowadays are completely unaware that certain software utilities exist which are able to reverse and completely undo most kinds of software damage with just a simple reboot. Seasoned users may have heard of such programs, but are often under the impression that such software belong strictly within the domain of expert users and system administrators.
This couldn't be further from the truth. Most of those applications are extremely easy to use, for as long as users can understand and appreciate their basic principles, functions and possible limitations.
In this article we will be exploring the basic principles behind these software technologies. This will be followed by several individual articles in which we will be analysing the best solutions within this software field, with special focus on their features, functionality and limitations.
The aim here is to provide our readers with all the necessary information so that they can make an informed decision when choosing between such solutions, which we will begin to check out in future article.
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TRIM Check: Overview of an essential SSD TRIM functionality tester
Introduction
Most SSD users are aware that TRIM is an essential Windows command that prolongs SSD life and ensures that their SSDs stay speedy. TRIM kicks-in after a file deletion in Windows and notifies the SSD controller of which data blocks should be wiped clean.
Like many SSD users I have always wondered whether TRIM actually works on my systems or not. We can check if TRIM is enabled simply by running the fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotify command within an elevated command prompt. If the result is DisableDeleteNotify = 0 this means that TRIM is enabled. This however only means that the operating system is configured to send TRIM commands to the SSD controller; it doesn't necessarily mean that TRIM is fully functional. There is a method to check for TRIM functionality using a hex editor, but apart from that there hasn't been an easier and surefire way to find out whether TRIM actually works or not.
I came across some forum posts recently that indicated the existence of an easy-to-use freeware program which checks for TRIM functionality in a definite way. This utility is named "TRIM Check" and has been written by Vladimir Panteleev.
Let's take a look at it.
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Google Nexus 4 Smartphone Review 2.0 - Two Months with Google's Superstar Smartphone
The Last Two Months
My initial review of the Nexus 4 was very positive. But why don't we try something different here? We're going provide you with some thoughts on how it has been, two months after our review of LG and Google's very competitively priced - if you can find one - smartphone.
I was incredibly lucky at the time, even if it didn't feel like it, to score a Nexus 4 at launch. Remember, this isn't a review sample; I had to sit in front of my computer and smash my F5 key like the rest of you, in a very small 15 minute window, to secure one of these bad boys. Even now, I read on various forums and Reddit that people simply can't buy one still. This isn't the case everywhere, but we know that there just isn't enough stock of the Nexus 4 to meet demand. This happens, even to Apple, but it seems people want the Nexus 4, sometimes more than you see the crazy demand for the latest iPhone.
I've been using my Nexus 4 pretty much exclusively for the last two months as I haven't received many samples of other phones over the holiday period. I've taken it everywhere with me and it has become an increasingly important tool in my day to day life. You can say that about any smartphone, but when you have your digital life so intertwined with Google services, owning a device that provides you with the 'pure Android experience' does just that.
I'm a daily user of Gmail, I live on it. Heck, I'm lying in bed right now typing this into an email to myself so I can work on it on my desktop in the morning. The experience of Google services on the Nexus 4 is nothing short of near perfection. Google's apps are pretty solid, but apart from that I'm very efficient in the amount of content and apps I keep on my phone. I use Facebook, Instagram, Foursquare, SwiftKey, Twitter and a few other apps on the daily. No games, no movies and no TV episodes.
Every smartphone user is different, which is why it's incredibly hard to be a reviewer of these devices. Not everyone will agree with review methods, and this can upset some people. So let's get to my thoughts on the Nexus 4 from using it over the last couple of months.
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Sony Xperia Tablet S Review
Introduction and Specifications, Pricing and Availability
To be brutally honest, I haven't touched a single Sony smart device until the Xperia Tablet S. The last Sony phone I even used was an old Sony Ericsson flip phone from many moons ago. In a world completely dominated by the likes of Apple and Samsung, Sony can get lost in the white noise.
Over the few years, Sony has lost their edge in the smartphone market, especially after they had a huge run with Ericsson - but between then and now, not so much. Sony have enjoyed decades as the undisputed Japanese electronics leader, but that shine has slowly been fading over the years.
The Xperia Tablet S actually launched nearly six months ago now, but was pulled from retail shelves after a manufacturing fault was discovered. This didn't fare well for Sony, as the competition fired multiple rounds, launching the Nexus 10, fourth-generation iPad, iPad mini and many more slates.
Can the Xperia Tablet S change things around for the tablet line at least? Let's take a look at the XPERIA Tablet S' specifications.
Luckily the XPERIA Tablet S sports some decent specs, which we're greeted by with NVIDIA's Tegra 3 quad-core processor, cranking along at 1.3GHz, 1GB of RAM and a 9.4-inch display with a 1280x800-pixel screen - this gives us 161 pixels per inch. On the software side of things, we have Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich - not Jelly Bean like most of the other tablet splashing down right now, but it's not terribly disappointing, either.
The Tablet S comes in three sizes, 16GB, 32GB and 64GB but features expandable storage by an SD card slot - and this isn't any normal microSD card slot, but a full-sized SD card slot. A strange addition in this microSD card slot world.
As for pricing, Newegg sell the 16GB, 32GB and 64GB Xperia Tablet S for $399, $499 and $599 respectively. This isn't too bad, but when you consider it against the Nexus 10 and fourth-generation iPad, it's not that great. The fourth-gen iPad is $100 more at every size point, and the iPad mini is $329. If we take a look on the Android side of things, the Nexus 10 is $399 for the 16GB version, and $499 for the 32GB Nexus 10.
So, Sony is sitting in the middle here - offering their tablet with older software than the Nexus 10 features, but with expandable storage. Availability wise, you should be able to get the Tablet S at most electronics stores, with Newegg offering free shipping on the above prices.
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SanDisk Extreme 64GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive Review
Back in November our resident storage editor Chris Ramseyer had the chance to take a look at the SanDisk Extreme SSD, a drive that to this day is one of the highest performing on the market. So, it is only right that we at TweakTown would bring you the next evolution of "Extreme" from SanDisk, albeit much smaller, but still Extreme.
Last spring SanDisk made its grand entrance into the USB 3.0 flash drive market with the drive we are testing today, the SanDisk Extreme USB 3.0 flash drive. Sporting capacities from 16GB to 64GB, the Extreme comes out of the box dawning a clean, compact design with sequential read and write speeds of 190MB/s and 170MB/s respectively.
For those of you that wish to have a more secure environment when transferring sacred data to and from PCs, SanDisk has outfitted the Extreme with 128-bit AES encryption via their Secure Access software. Compatibility of this product is Extreme as well with Windows XP/Vista/7 support along with Mac OSX 10.5+, although you will need a quick download for Secure Access on Mac OSX.
First impressions of the SanDisk Extreme are of its sleek yet simple exterior. Furthering this sleek approach SanDisk has opted for a compact design as well, by adding the slide feature that safely tucks away the USB 3.0 connection inside the case.
The back of the drive shows the model of the flash drive along with information such as the serial and model numbers. You will also find the capacity of the drive listed here - ours is the 64GB model.
Sliding out the USB male connection extends the drive to a full three inches, seen above, and the blue coloring of the port indicates its USB 3.0 compatibility.
As I would not like any of you to destroy your flash drives and waste you're hard earned money, please refrain from attempting this yourself. Disassembling the Extreme was rather easy yet meticulous, but alas I did manage to get it apart and have for your enjoyment images of the internals. Seen above we have the foundation of a blue PCB, the USB 3.0 controller mounted to the left and flash controller to the right.
The backside of the PCB houses a single 64GB NAND flash module. Being SanDisk labelled, we know its toggle mode NAND.
Looking closer at the components on this Extreme's PCB, the flash controller is labelled 20-82-00270-1 and may look familiar to some since it was used in the ReadyCache SSD from SanDisk. The USB 3.0 controller sitting to the right is manufactured by Fujitsu and integrates USB3.0 to SATA bridge and PHY's along with a 32-bit RISC processor to respond to requests from USB host.
The NAND flash package is labelled 07097 064G. I was unable to find out any further information on it as of this writing.
Initial setup of the SecureAccess software if you choose to use it is pretty straight forward. Using alphanumeric characters enter a password that fits your needs - something you won't forget would be preferable.
You will then be greeted with a splash screen, giving you options for transferring files. The easiest method, by far, is the drag and drop.
After securely transferring your data to the drive, upon removal, and reinserting the drive, you will be greeted by a password protected login that will give you access to all your files.
One of the lesser known features of running Microsoft's new operating system Windows 8 is the native capability of USB Attached SCSI or UASP. To start my benchmarking procedure I secure erased the SanDisk Extreme, as I will all drives I test in the future.
ATTO is commonly used for marketing performance of hard drives and solid state drives alike, above you can see that the SanDisk Extreme was a very capable drive. We managed to squeeze out 269MB/s read and just over 206MB/s write, a far cry from the 190/170 numbers that are advertised on the package.
CrystalDiskMark's default testing uses a set of random data or incompressible data, there is also an option for 0xfill or compressible data. We will use the standard data set for our purposes. Again we see strong performance with the SanDisk Extreme, sequential reads were consistent at 268MB/s, while sequential writes stayed fast at 212MB/s. 4K numbers were equally impressive - for a flash drive.
Disk Bench is a rather simple program that benchmarks real-world file transfers between drives. For this test I made up three data sets, one consisting of 1000 pictures totalling 1.5GB, the second consisting of four MP4 movies with a total file size of 8.65GB. The last data set consists of Microsoft Windows 7 x64 install w/ SP1.
The SanDisk Extreme is certainly an impressive drive, with the first of our real-world testing showing us it capabilities as a daily driver. At 94.94MB/s I don't think you'll be pulling your hair out waiting for those pictures to transfer - at least not like the days of USB 2.0.
Copying our movies over proved to be even quicker, with the SanDisk pulling it off in just over 44 seconds.
Transferring our set of Windows install files happened to complete even quicker - 21 seconds for the full 4GB install.
To start, there is certainly something to be said about using this drive with particular USB 3.0 controllers. I had a number of issues getting this drive to show up on my P67 based motherboard, where I found myself with a non-functioning device when USB 3.0 turbo mode was enabled in the BIOS. After searching the web for answers, I found that there does appear to be an issue using the Renesas u720200 USB 3.0 host controller with "Turbo". Our Z77 test system, however, had no such issues.
Being that this was my only issue, we can focus on some of the great features that encompass this entry into the USB 3.0 flash drive market for SanDisk - one being the SecureAccess drive encryption that works very well. Quick drag and drops of your important data leave it secured on the flash drive should you misplace it, although I feel there should be some sort of limit to the number of access attempts made on the drive.
Performance of the Extreme was much better than advertised, coming in at 270MB/s and 206MB/s rather than the advertised 190MB/s and 170MB/s with UASP enabled. Again the key here is the UASP - that comes natively on Windows 8.
SanDisk has also priced this drive very well, at $69.99 for the 64GB version you are paying just over $1 per GB. While there are other USB 3.0 enabled flash drives on the market at a lower initial cost, there aren't many manufactures that offer a lifetime warranty, and this alone should give you reason to take a good look at the Extreme from SanDisk.
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NZXT Phantom 630 High Performance Modular Full-Tower Chassis Review
Introduction
It really doesn't seem that long ago when the first generation Phantom chassis arrived from NZXT. Back then, the aesthetics were something never seen in the case market, and it took just a little bit of time, and a lot of potential buyers fell in love with the design. Then along came a mid-tower design, which pretty much put the Phantom in the dryer on high heat, and left us with the Phantom 410. Moving onward, with the huge success of the Switch 810, NZXT thought, why not dress it in the Phantom exterior, and offered us the Phantom 820. Due to a flood in my basement, I lost that chassis and it is the only one of the series I did not have the chance to look at in depth.
In every new release of chassis in the Crafted Series to hold the Phantom name, there were some pretty major changes to the interiors. On the outside much has changed besides the addition of USB 3.0 as it became popular and slight tweaks to the buttons or the type of fan controllers that are used. Inside the original Phantom, NZXT was trying their hands at wire management with grommets, removable hard drive cages, and potential to add water cooling. Inside the 410 things were much closer, but you still got all the offerings of the full sized Phantom, just less a few wiring holes and bays. We did look at the Switch 810 which is the same as the Phantom 820, and there was a whole new go at the interior, and introduced the adjustable fans on the hard drive bays, a new way to remove the bays, and a much better motherboard tray layout. Just when you think they had a lock on the design, NZXT decides to try another version of the Phantom.
This is where the Phantom 630 High Performance Modular Ultra-Tower chassis comes in today. NZXT decided that maybe the 820 wasn't what people were wanting, and went about trying to make things even better this time around. There are some pretty slick additions like an eight fan hub behind the motherboard tray, SSD mounts behind the tray, and even a new shape and layout of the tray itself. There are a few more chances that were made for this latest rendition, but if I tell you about all of it now, what will keep you reading?
On that note, get comfortable, as there is a lot to cover with a chassis such as the new Phantom 630 from NZXT.
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Far Cry 3 PC Review
If publishers want a case in point in how to build hype at an E3 reveal, Far Cry 3 is the perfect case. Ever since we first heard Vaas utter those now famous words, "Did I ever tell you the definition of insanity?", we have waited with baited breath. The video had action, intense gameplay and also psychological elements that sent the hype levels of the game through the roof. And so now 18 months later it's time to determine if the developers have delivered on the promise from that video and aside from a few quirks here and there and a poor ending to the story, the answer is a resounding yes.
In Far Cry 3 you take control of Jason Brody, a young college kid with rich parents enjoying life to the max on an island paradise when things go awry. Jason and his friends are captured by pirates and the infamous Vaas. Taken for ransom from their wealthy parents, Jason manages to escape with his brother and from there the story becomes that you as Jason must rescue your friends, but also as you build acquaintances on the island, decide how you want the future to be for those people. There is a point where the story just becomes boring and formulaic unfortunately, but until then it's one of the best stories of this generation.
As expected based on the first two games, Far Cry 3 puts you in a massive open world with side missions and main story to complete. One of the key facets of the title is exploration and the game significantly rewards you for exploring. Whilst there are scripted elements to some of the missions, sometimes it's just interesting to wander about the island and see what the enemy and other NPCs are doing. One example was we were closing in on an enemy kill, only to see a crocodile jump out of the water to take him alive. If someone else was to go to that exact spot, it may not happen because those sequences are not scripted.
In fact, Far Cry 3 gives one of the best representations of a living breathing world in a video game to date. You can of course choose to main line the story if you wish, but that is to completely devalue the amount of effort that Ubisoft has not only put into the side missions, but also the world itself. You will miss a lot of the awesome areas of the island and some interesting, story building sequences as well. There is also a meta game within the game where you can hunt animals present throughout the world to improve Jason's overall abilities and weaponry.
For example, if you get some shark skins, you can craft a new pouch which improves your inventory level - something which is a lot more interesting to do than just buy a new pouch. You can pick up leaves and plants to help you concoct medicine to heal Jason. At no real point in the game are you forced to buy things. For example, one area which encourages exploration is the local stores. If you manage to take over the local radio tower, the shops will give you free weapons as a reward whilst that tower is not held by the enemies. It's a really interesting mechanic that rewards exploration in a manner that is tangible rather than just 'let's see this entire island'.
For the most part the missions are also enjoyable to play as well. There are over thirty campaign missions with quite a number more side missions to complete. To complete Far Cry 3 without doing side missions will take you about 10 hours and so it is a fairly meaty game when you compare it to most releases. The game does contain fast travel once you have visited a location although sometimes it is better to just explore and see the world on offer.
What Far Cry 3 manages to achieve is a believable world. This island could be a real world thing (although it's not), and the developers have clearly put a lot of work into building a fantastic world for the game. It has the crazy professor and the tribal warriors to complete the mix. But what takes it to the next level is the various fauna milling about the place. You can be swimming quietly in the rivers or ocean and the next minute a shark or crocodile attacks. The first time this happens you will literally jump in your seat and it's generally over before it even starts. You can imagine this is how it happens in the real world as well with most victims attacked before they even know it's happening.
The design of the island also allows for some open world elements to creep into the campaign missions as well. Whilst you are somewhat restricted as to the zone you can move in during missions (we guess to not break the mission entirely), you are given leeway as to how you approach the mission. Go in guns blazing? Or snipe from the mountain side? Many different ways are available to generally complete each mission and it is this variety that keeps the game fresh to the end.
On the PC at least, Far Cry 3 is a visual tour de force and one of the best games graphically we have ever played. If you have the hardware and video card to push this to the max you will see a visually stunning world with amazing graphics. Tone the graphics done a little and the game still shines even on older hardware, so it is clear Ubisoft has done its job in optimizing this game for fairly run of the mill systems as well. This is something that the original Far Cry game was criticised for not doing.
The game also features a co-operative multiplayer portion for up to four players to take part in. It is set six months before the actual events of the single player campaign and so in many ways is its own story. Introducing co-operative into such an awesome, open world game is something that Ubisoft had to do to take this game to the next level. With a length of about six hours, you certainly get your money's worth even though it's not the main campaign.
Far Cry 3 started out with a great E3 presentation that put the hype levels through the roof. Usually when this happens games significantly let us down, but in this case Ubisoft has delivered. No doubt they felt the pressure of such an awesome opening with Vaas and our main character, but instead of crumbling, they produced what is sure to be one of the best games of 2012.
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Hitman: Absolution Xbox 360 Review
As a series Hitman has been quite successful and this is why it's puzzling that we are now only just getting the return of the game. Hitman Blood Money was one of the better games from the earliest times of this generation, but IO Interactive decided to put that to the side and come up with the new IP.
This game became Kane & Lynch which had middling success in both sales and critical format. So six years later we have the return of Agent 47 and it's not without changes. Absolution completely changes up the series in many ways and we still aren't sure if all the changes and decisions made were the right ones.
Absolution picks up with Agent 47 being tasked to kill his agency handler Diana. She has gone rogue and has been selling secrets to enemies of the agency so his final contract becomes her. The agency has produced another agent from a child, Victoria with Diana on her deathbed asking 47 to protect her at all costs. This is what the story primarily revolves around; the protection of Victoria and escaping from the agency that 47 once called home. From the outset this shows just how much of a departure Absolution is to the regular format with previous games tasking 47 with contracts to fulfil for the agency.
In terms of the gameplay there are a lot of elements that have returned from previous games. On some of the missions you will be tasked with taking down a target and you can either choose to go in all guns blazing or make the death look like an accident with the latter not only scoring you more points, but generally being more satisfying to do as well. Hitman can be seen as a puzzle game - trying to concoct together various environmental elements such as leaking oil and a bullet to take out enemies unseen.
This is only apparent on some of the levels. On many levels within the game there are no targets and instead it is 47's goal to reach another area to continue the story. As well as this there are times where the game takes control from you and performs kills in cut scenes. For a series which has focused so much on clean quiet kills from a gameplay perspective, to have this happen is frustrating. There are some sections in the game where quiet kills just cannot occur.
This is where you will like this game or not. Whilst in the past each mission was one huge environment for 47 to traverse and come up with sneaky ways to take out the target, in this game you are instead tasked with basically getting from point a to point b. Hitman in many ways becomes a third person shooter with the amount of sandbox missions able to be counted on less than two hands. Given that there are 20 missions overall in the game, this is a bit disappointing.
However, on those levels which do give you the freedom to explore and come up with various ways to take out the targets, the game absolutely shines. Previously seen at E3, the King of Chinatown level is one such example where there is many different ways to take out the target such as poisoning fish or blowing up a car. And it is these missions that you will revisit over and over again to try and come up with different ways to end the mission without being seen.
As well as the actual targets each mission contains a number of challenges to complete. Sometimes these challenges are to take out the targets in various different ways whilst other times it can be tasks such as finishing the mission only using 47's suit. Given that you very often traverse areas where you should not be, doing this is harder than it sounds.
Many of the elements we have seen in previous titles have again come back. You can still take the disguises of other characters although this is a bit harder than last time around.
Enemies will spot that you are not one of them quite easily and so it becomes a case of still having to focus on stealth even when blended in. To aid with this, 47 now has an instinct ability which allows you to see enemies through walls and walk near enemies in disguise without being spotted. You gain more instinct by performing quiet kills and tasks.
One of the more frustrating elements of Absolution is the change from limited save games to checkpoints. Instead of being able to save at any point in the game (within a limited number), you now have to track down and find checkpoints in the level. They are generally off the beaten track and this can be very frustrating especially on the tougher levels. The checkpoints also do not get retained if you leave your game which we have no idea why IO Interactive decided that was a good idea.
The enemy AI generally revolves around them being able to determine you are 47 rather than actually being tough. When things go bad you generally can get out of a tight spot with your bullets except towards the end of the game where that type of tactic just gets impossible due to the weaponry they have. Once they spot you the game moves into a very Metal Gear like alarm system. At the highest level they hunt you and shoot on sight whilst if you can manage to hide long enough, they will give up and lower the alarm level. Of course the best way is to not be spotted at all and in general this is possible on every mission.
On the visual and environmental side of things the game is generally impressive. Whilst there is quite a variety to the locations that you will visit during your time with the game, it is not as varied as it was in Blood Money with some locations being visited more than once. Some of the missions are quite large in size whilst others are almost corridors only. It goes without saying the larger missions are the ones where 47's abilities can really shine. One thing that is true is that in general IO Interactive has used the environments to the best of their abilities with 47 being able to perform numerous environmental based kills on his targets.
Multiplayer comes in the form of contracts mode and in an ironic twist this system is much closer to that of the older games. You can either build or download contracts from other users and basically you are dropped into a world and have to kill targets silently to fulfil the contract. As you do so you gain money which can be used to upgrade your weaponry in multiplayer. This is an interesting take on multiplayer and we hope that users really embrace this system because it's entirely possible this could give the game a lot of legs.
Hitman: Absolution is a game that made us think about how we review games in many ways. Should we review a game based on what the name is on the box, or what the content actually is. Of course the latter is the answer, but we can't help but feel that this is not the greatest Hitman game. It's significantly different to other Hitman titles, but it's also not a bad game. If you come into the game expecting Blood Money 2 you will be disappointed, but if you look past this you will find a competent Hitman game that has just enough elements of its predecessors to ensure you should play as 47 again.
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Assassin's Creed III: Liberation PlayStation Vita Review
It's fair to say that whilst the Assassin's Creed II series of games were some of the most well received games this generation, the portable versions of the game haven't really set the gaming world on fire. Appearing only on the PSP (aside from the iOS games that were not 3D), the games focused on Altair, the original protagonist, rather than the very likeable Ezio.
However, with the release of a new platform, the PS Vita, Ubisoft decided to give the portable space another crack with the AC series and have come out with mixed results. Liberation is not necessarily a bad game, but there are some areas which can be quite infuriating to play.
Liberation for the first time introduces a female character as the main lead. You play as Aveline, the black daughter of a rich businessman in the 1700's. A result of infidelity, Aveline lives with her step mother and father in New Orleans as one of the wealthy and famous. However, Aveline wants to rid the world of slavery, especially for her people and sets about trying to bring down the tyranny which existed in the time. Set in the 1700's, the game takes place during the same timeline as that of the main console game, and to get the most out of the story, you need to play both.
There are a few major changes for the franchise aside from the fact you now control a woman. The game introduces for the first time personas. Aveline has three; wealthy lady, slave and assassin. Depending on the persona (clothing) you are currently wearing will limit or improve the abilities Aveline has available to her. For example, in the wealthy dress, Aveline cannot climb buildings or walls whilst in the assassin clothing she will draw suspect looks from the guards right away.
This is probably the most interesting change to the franchise because it means you often have to change your clothing to complete tasks. Having to change clothing to complete a task can be a tad tiresome (especially when it's not clear which clothing you should be wearing), but all the same the addition enhances the franchise.
As well as the main city, you will also visit the bayou of New Orleans which gives you the opportunity to partake in tree climbing and jumping. Ripped directly from the console game with Connor you can at will climb trees and often have to when completing assassination tasks. The game controls well and it's very obvious when you can and cannot climb trees. The Bayou has a very Metal Gear Solid 3 feel to it - a large, lush jungle full of crocodiles and other animals that can hurt Aveline. The main difference being that Aveline does not need to eat animals to survive.
The structure of the game takes on that of its console big brothers. The game includes nine sequences to complete which is a little on the short side and you will have this game down in around six to eight hours depending on how good you are at it. There is no difficulty setting so once you finish it, that's it really.
There are a number of side tasks to complete and there is a meta game where you can control a shipping company to gain money, but really in the grand scheme of things, you can ignore these and easily complete the game. One of the interesting elements is that the story you get if you just play the main missions is not the actual story. To get the real ending you need to take out a particular hidden character in each sequence.
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One of the biggest bugbears we have with the game is the PS Vita controls. The main controls themselves are fine, but when the developer is trying to shoe horn in the touch mechanics of the game, it just starts to break. For example, the game will at times ask you to put the Vita camera near a bright light. It took us a while to find a light that would give the Vita what it wanted, and there was no indication at all whether we were getting closer or not.
There are also other sections of the game which use the back touchpad such as paddling a canoe. There is nothing wrong with trying to include Vita specific controls, but when they work like they do in Liberation (it's a lucky dip as to whether your motions will be picked up), it would have been best to leave them out.
The environments that the game is set in are impressive for a handheld product. The city of New Orleans is beautifully represented by period buildings and the actual city itself is quite large, but nowhere near what you find in the console games of course. The split of the bayou and the city is an interesting feature with both environments having graphical problems as well as also some impressive sections. Voice acting on the system is impressive especially for a handheld and whilst the soundtrack can become repetitive, it suits the game and setting well.
There is no doubt that Assassin's Creed III: Liberation is the most impressive handheld version of the series yet. Ubisoft has used some of Vita's power well, but also included some utterly frustrating mini games based on the touch and camera features. It is on the short side and that means it's not really suitable as something for a long distance trip, but for short spurts on the way to work, it works almost perfectly.
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Genius Introduces The Ultimate Gaming Combo - KMH 100
Genius today announces the ideal toolset for professional gamers - KMH 100 - is now available in the US and Canada. This 3 in 1 GX Gaming Series combo brings together some of the elite products of the GX Gaming Series: Maurus Black gaming mouse, Imperator gaming keyboard and Lychas gaming headset.
Featuring numerous customizable features, Maurus gaming mouse gives gamers a personalized experience. The Scorpion UI (User Interface) lets you set up and save to 21 macros, giving you a competitive edge in the heat of battle. Maurus' buttons, with default settings of left, right, middle with scroll, next page, and last page, are programmable giving gamers even more customizable control. Additionally, the over-clocking SG Core i engine lets gamers adjust the dpi to four different levels (450/900/1800/3500) directly from the mouse.
Maurus gaming mouse not only gives you personalized control when hunting down your foes, but also provides a smooth, stable connection with a comfortable design. The non-slick rubber coating ensures a firm grip when moving the mouse violently back and forth.
With 6 programmable keys under 3 game profiles, Imperator gaming keyboard allows gamers to assign up to 18 macros. The included UI makes it easy to manage and customize your macros. Once programmed, gamers can cast spells or execute specialized commands in a single keystroke.
When not gaming, users can take advantage of the seven easy access media keys including instant mute for simple control of movies, videos, and audio. Imperator gaming keyboard has an optimal 3.8mm key travel distance resulting in perfect elasticity. During long gaming sessions, the palm rest support helps gamers stay comfortable.
Ideal for LAN parties and competitions because of its individual ear cup volume control, Lychas gaming headset is easy to carry around with its the swivel ear cups and foldable design. When both of the ear cups' volume is turned up, this GX Gaming headset not only provides clear and accurate audio for a tactical advantage in any combat situation, but the large 50mm drivers also prevent distraction from background noises.
The in-line control box lets gamers easily tweak the master volume and mute the microphone in-game. Mounted on the left ear piece, the omni-directional microphone can be simply rotated out of view when not in use. And the adjustable headband fits comfortably on any gamer.
Individual components' highlights:
Imperator Gaming Keyboard
Maurus Black Gaming Mouse
Lychas Gaming Headset
The KMH 100, 3 in 1 GX Gaming Series Combo, is now available in the US and Canada for the suggested retail price of $129.99.
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ECS Updates its G24 All-in-One Desktop
ECS today proudly announces the exclusive touch based All-In-One PC - G24, with a elegant and versatile design. In order to support the latest interface of Windows 8, ECS G24 has considered all the design and components to meet the Windows 8 requirements, including edge-to-edge 23.6" touch panel, 10-finger touch capability, realistic audio display and full HDMI capability. The unique of sleek and neat design is perfect for business productivity and also home entertainment platform.
ECS G24 is an ideal central station for medical sector and health center with its larger display, high resolution and friendly touch screen. The slim and elegant design makes G24 a perfect digital signage platform for public information, advertising and promotion in shopping malls and chain stores, which can take full advantage of your business. The delicate touch screen can swipe the programs freely and also become an intelligent platform for information sharing and entertainment.
ECS G24 also comes up with a series of interchangeable ECS Thin Mini-ITX motherboards in order to fulfill the wide range of application for various segments. Equipped with full HDMI capability, G24 strengthens the application of tablet PC, smart phone and notebook. Besides general PC usage, with TV tuner kit, G24 turns into your second TV at home.
Moreover, ECS G24 is the world's first All-in-One PC with a hot swap bay on the right side of the display. Users can easily switch optical drive device to 2.5" portable hard disk and grab data to go whenever needed. ECS G24 is the latest all-new customized AIO system that meets the needs of next generation desktop computing.
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Be Quiet! Announces DC1 Thermal Interface Material
be quiet!, market leader for power supplies in Germany for seven years in a row*, announced today the availability of the new high performance thermal compound DC1. The new paste is the logical extension of the award-winning cooler portfolio of the German company. With its excellent heat conducting properties and its extremely simple handling, the paste is suitable for both normal users and Overclockers.
Through the perfect combination of metal oxides and silicon the new be quiet! thermal compound DC1 has a theoretical thermal conductivity of about 7.5 W / mK. Thus it offers several degrees Celsius advantage over conventional thermal compounds, as used for example in many ready-build-systems. Overclockers can also improve their results with the DC1. Thanks to a wide temperature range of -50 to +150C, DC1 is suitable for various cooling methods.
Its unique composition allows the paste to be applied easily. be quiet! 's DC1 comes in a handy syringe, which allows for a neat and tidy application onto the CPU die. For a perfect and planar layer of thermal compound there is an extra enclosed spatula. A syringe with 3 grams of be quiet!'s DC1 costs EUR 6.49 and is available in stores now.
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ZOTAC Unleashes New FireStorm Overclocking Utility
ZOTAC International, a global innovator and leading manufacturer of graphics cards, mainboards and mini-PCs, today releases a new version of ZOTAC FireStorm, a user-friendly overclocking utility with advanced features that enable enthusiasts to finely tweak and tune their ZOTAC GeForce series graphics card to extract every ounce of performance available.
"We wanted to create an overclocking utility that novices and enthusiasts can use to tweak and tune their ZOTAC GeForce series graphics cards. ZOTAC FireStorm is the result and enables users to adjust the GPU and memory clock speeds, voltage and fan speeds," says Carsten Berger, senior director, ZOTAC International. "Enthusiasts with the latest ZOTAC GeForce GTX TITAN graphics card can take advantage of display overclocking too."
DOWNLOAD: ZOTAC FireStorm v2.0.0
ZOTAC FireStorm includes GPU monitoring capabilities to let users keep an eye on GPU temperatures and fan speed of their ZOTAC GeForce series graphics card. Advanced users can monitor the GPU load, voltages and available GPU memory of their ZOTAC GeForce series graphics card with FireStorm as well.
It's time to play with ZOTAC FireStorm!
General details
Novice capabilities
Advanced capabilities
Up to 5 performance profiles
ZOTAC GeForce GTX TITAN exclusive
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Barnes & Noble to Celebrate NEA's Read Across America with Special NOOK� Offer, Storytime Events & Activities in Stores Nationwide During March
New York, NY - February 26, 2013 - Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS), the leading retailer of content, digital media and educational products, today announced that Barnes & Noble stores across the country will celebrate the National Education Association's (NEA) Read Across America annual reading motivation and awareness program with a special NOOK offer, Dr. Seuss Storytime events and activities storewide during the month of March.
The "Hats Off to Reading" celebrations will include a reading of Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat, fun "cat-tivities" provided by Random House, and treats from the Barnes & Noble Cafe. Events will feature demonstrations of The Cat in the Hat interactive NOOK Book and other Dr. Seuss titles, as well as fun Dr. Seuss apps available in the NOOK Store, a sure-fire way to keep even the littlest fans enthralled.
Additionally, as a thank-you for supporting literacy and reading, customers attending any Barnes & Noble Read Across America event will receive a $25 NOOK gift card with the purchase of NOOK HD, perfect for experiencing Dr. Seuss's interactive Read to Me NOOK Books, apps, and even movie favorites like The Lorax on NOOK Video in beautiful HD clarity. NOOK HD offers everything customers want in a tablet, with millions of books, apps, movies, TV shows, magazines and more on its must-see full HD 7-inch screen. Offered in the colors "Snow" and "Smoke," and featuring great battery life and expandable memory for even more storage, NOOK HD is available for $199 (8GB) and $229 (16GB), and is now an even greater value with a free $25 NOOK Gift Card (limit 5 per customer).
"While most of the NEA's Read Across America events are traditionally held on March 2 to honor the birthday of beloved children's author Dr. Seuss, we gave our booksellers the option of hosting it anytime in March so they could join local teachers, librarians, literacy organizations and families at events being held in their communities," said Sarah DiFrancesco, Director of Business Development for Barnes & Noble. "It's so enjoyable seeing kids' faces light up as they experience the world of literature. And there's no better advocate for learning and imagination than Dr. Seuss," she added.
Customers interested in attending this event may contact their local Barnes & Noble or visit the Barnes & Noble Store Locator (http://store-locator.barnesandnoble.com) for store locations and details. Events are free and open to the public. No purchase is required to participate.
NEA's Read Across America also provides NEA members, parents, caregivers and children the resources and activities they need to keep reading on the calendar 365 days a year. In cities and towns across the nation, teachers, teenagers, librarians, politicians, actors, athletes, parents, grandparents and others participate in NEA's Read Across America activities to bring reading excitement to children of all ages. Over 45 million people participated in 2012.
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Barnes & Noble Announces NOOK Special Savings Offer
New York, New York - February 26, 2013 - NOOK Media LLC, a subsidiary of Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS), the leading retailer of content, digital media and educational products, today announced a special limited time savings offer on the critically acclaimed NOOK HD+, the lowest-priced and lightest 9-inch full HD tablet. Starting Tuesday, February 26, through Monday, March 11, customers who purchase NOOK HD+ online at http://www.nook.com or at any of the nearly 700 Barnes & Noble stores nationwide will receive $50 in their NOOK account to purchase digital content from the expansive NOOK Store, including apps, magazines, newspapers, books, movies, TV shows and more. It's the perfect way for customers to start their NOOK library with the best in reading and entertainment.
The $50 credit will load to a customer's NOOK account within 3-10 days of registering that account to the new NOOK HD+. The free $50 credit must be used within 30 days of posting to a customer's NOOK account. See NOOK.com/50free for more details and Terms and Conditions.
NOOK HD+ offers everything that customers want in a tablet, with millions of books, apps, movies, TV shows, magazines and more on its must-see full HD 9-inch screen. At only 18.2 ounces (515 grams), NOOK HD+ is the lightest full HD tablet ever invented. Offered in the color "Slate," and featuring great battery life and expandable memory for even more storage, NOOK HD+ is available for $269 (16GB) and $299 (32GB), and is now an even greater value with a free $50 promotional credit when purchased at http://www.nook.com, or in-store at Barnes & Noble, between February 26 and March 11.
Both NOOK HD+ and the 7-inch NOOK HD deliver extraordinary experiences in the areas that tablet owners use most. The reading experience is unmatched, offering beautifully rendered text, magazines in spectacular HD and lightning fast page turns. NOOK Video delivers a growing and diverse catalog of favorite standard and HD movies and TV shows rendered in spectacular color and stunning definition from major studios and content providers including NBCUniversal and 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment. The Web browser in NOOK HD and NOOK HD+ is super-fast, making it simple and smooth to surf favorite sites. The built-in email app offers an easy-to-use, clean format that supports a host of popular personal and work-related email services including Gmail and Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync. NOOK Apps includes many of the most popular and bestselling top 100 app titles for tablets, including Angry Birds, Temple Run: Brave and Words with Friends, along with thousands of other popular apps and games.
NOOK HD+ is packed full with even more great tablet features, including:
Customers can visit http://www.nook.com or visit the NOOK Digital Shops and displays in any of Barnes & Noble's nearly 700 bookstores for more information. Barnes & Noble offers Always Free NOOK Support in all of its neighborhood bookstores, with more than 35,000 NOOKsellers across the country ready to assist customers with setting up their NOOK devices or choosing their next great read.
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LG DEMONSTRATES ITS FIRST TD-LTE DEVICE AT MWC 2013
BARCELONA, Feb. 26, 2013 - LG Electronics (LG) successfully co-demonstrated Time Division-Long Term Evolution (TD-LTE) service at Mobile World Congress 2013 in partnership with China Mobile, the world's largest mobile operator. TD-LTE is a telecommunications technology for 4G LTE networks that differs from the widely adopted Frequency Division-LTE (FD-LTE) technology. China Mobile plans to roll out the TD-LTE network in the second half of this year. The demonstration at MWC 2013 was conducted using a modified Optimus G, LG's flagship smartphone.
"TD-LTE has the potential to cover 2.7 billion people in Asia alone and today's demonstration proves that this technology is ready for consumers," said Dr. Jong-seok Park, President and CEO of the LG Electronics Mobile Communications Company. "LG is committed to offering a range of TD-LTE smartphones based on our unrivaled leadership in 4G LTE technologies."
LG will roll out TD-LTE-capable smartphones in China in the second half of the year when China Mobile launches its TD-LTE service.
For more information on LG's newest mobile products, visit the LG stand in Hall 3 of Fira Gran Via or visit the online newsroom at http://www.LGnewsroom.com/MWC2013.
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Innodisk to show full industrial SATA III storage range at Embedded World 2013
February 22, 2013 - Taipei, Taiwan - Innodisk, an industry-leading manufacturer and solution provider of industrial embedded flash and DRAM storage products and technologies, will be showing its new range of products for 2013 at the Embedded World 2013 exhibition and conference from 26-28 February in Nuremberg, Germany.
Innodisk's complete series of industrial SATA III products includes SSD, SATADOM, SATA Slim, mSATA, and CFast, with a wide variety of form factors and interfaces. With SATA III, Innodisk products can offer sequential read and write speeds two times faster than SATA II, to satisfy almost any embedded systems requirement.
Products on display at the Innodisk booth in Nuremberg will also include the Innodisk InnoRobust series of SATA SSDs which are compliant with military standards for ruggedness, durability and reliability in even the most extreme operating environments.
Building on its research and development strengths, with the upgrade to SATA III, Innodisk offers support for temperatures ranging from -45C to ~85C, customized firmware for specific system applications ranging from entertainment to aerospace, power outage data protection and other advanced functions, moving the industrial PC application market forward into the next generation. As well as almost doubling read and write speeds, the upgraded SATA III 2.5-inch SSDs provide a lower power design with enhanced power saving sleep modes. New products are expected to be on the market in March 2013.
Innodisk turns a product into a true solution with the exclusive iSMART disk health monitoring tool to protect customer's investments in SSDs and HDDs. Powerful and easy-to-use, iSMART does not just display passive information and a disk lifespan prediction, but can also save hours of setup and maintenance time by giving users easy one button access to write-protection, ATA Security, quick erase, and power saving features.
Innodisk will also be introducing advanced LR-DIMM memory modules for capacities up to 64GB. With Innodisk 64GB 1333MHz LR-DIMM, servers can break through existing memory capacity constraints for improved performance, greater reliability, and lower operating costs. Finally meeting the demanding requirements of the latest cloud computing applications, these exciting new products are expected to be on the market in the second quarter of 2013.
As well as these new products, Innodisk will be showing other popular products and recent innovations from its existing range. These devices feature iSLC technology that greatly extends the lifetime of NAND flash with similar performance of SLC-based flash, but at a significantly lower cost. There will also be DRAM products with support for the ARM architecture, 32 bit modules, rugged mounting pads, and module height of 17.9mm for small form factor systems.
With a very wide range of popular products and new innovations to offer, Innodisk welcomes your questions, advice and comments, and looks forward to meeting friends from the industry, as well as potential new customers, at Embedded World 2013.
Meet Innodisk at Embedded World 2013
Date 26 to 28 February, 2013
Location: Nuremberg, Germany
You will find Innodisk in Hall 1, at Stand 122
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AMD Aims to Meet Higher Expectations for Tablet and Hybrid PC Performance at Mobile World Congress 2013
SUNNYVALE, Calif. - Feb. 20, 2013 - AMD (NYSE: AMD), creator of the performance tablet category, today announced a new innovation for hybrid PCs that delivers uncompromised mobile PC experiences when in tablet mode or when connected to its base keyboard. Hybrid PCs are a new market segment between full notebooks and pure tablets that AMD plans to demonstrate, along with stand-alone performance tablets, at Mobile World Congress 2013 in Barcelona, Spain next week.
AMD Turbo Dock technology[1] automatically adjusts performance of the AMD accelerated processing unit (APU) higher while a hybrid PC is docked and being used for more complex tasks like content creation. Likewise, AMD Turbo Dock is designed to lower power consumption when in tablet mode, helping to save battery life and extend movie or video watching, as well as web browsing time.
"With our latest APUs, AMD aims to deliver a more complete, full-featured experience on tablet and hybrid PCs than has been available to date," said Steve Belt, vice president of AMD Ultra-low Power Products. "AMD Turbo Dock technology delivers on that promise by dynamically adjusting to what the user is doing to provide the optimal experience and battery life whether they are watching a video, playing a DirectX 11-supported game or building a PowerPoint presentation for work."
AMD Turbo Dock technology is expected to appear this year on equipped hybrid systems built around the system-on-chip (SoC) codenamed "Temash" with AMD Radeonâ„¢ HD graphics. "Temash" is AMD's latest ultra-low power, mobility processor for Windows 8 tablets and hybrids that delivers five times the graphics performance of the competition's x86 tablet solution[2]. Demonstrations at Mobile World Congress will include leading-edge applications and games on both quad-core and dual-core versions of the processor built with 28nm manufacturing technology.
"IDC research shows that two of the top demands tablet owners have are speed and a high resolution display," said Tom Mainelli, research director for tablets at IDC. "Balancing performance on high pixel density screens with user demands around battery life is essential to a great tablet experience. Technologies like AMD's newest generation APU 'Temash' aim to meet those needs."
Other premium features available from AMD-based tablets and hybrids include:
Supporting Resources
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ZOTAC unleashes the TITAN
ZOTAC is pleased to harness the DNA of the world's fastest supercomputer to unleash the GeForce GTX TITAN that takes PC gaming to the next level of detail and clarity.
General details
ZOTAC Boost Premium software bundle
ZOTAC Assassin's Creed 3-Game Pack included
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ADATA Technology to Showcase Latest Industrial Memory and Storage Solutions at Embedded World 2013
Taipei, Taiwan - February 22, 2013 - ADATA Technology, a leading manufacturer of high-performance DRAM modules and NAND Flash storage application products, will participate in Embedded World 2013 Exhibition in Nuremburg, Germany. Embedded World is the world's biggest exhibition focusing on system integration and embedded technology. ADATA will display its line of complete memory solutions for industrial use, including industrial standard Flash modules, high-performance DRAM modules, industrial memory cards, full line of eMMC, eMCP, and SATA interface storage media.
Optimistic about the prospects for cloud computing and the industrial computer market, ADATA will also showcase a range of newly developed embedded memory and storage media products, and will highlight its next generation of energy-saving low voltage server memory modules. Also on hand will be industry-leading wide temperature solution DDR3 SO-DIMM modules and solid-state drives, which deliver performance even in extremely hot or cold environments.
Embedded World will run from February 26 to 28th. For more information, visit the ADATA booth in Hall 1.Booth number: 1-145.
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Lian Li Announces the PC-9N Mid Tower Chassis
February 21, 2013, Keelung, Taiwan - Lian-Li Industrial Co. Ltd, today announces a new brushed aluminum mid tower chassis, the PC-9N. Supporting ATX and micro-ATX motherboards, the PC-9N forgoes the traditional motherboard tray, and instead implements a railing mount design for increased thermal performance and better cable management.
Lian Li's new railing mount technology greatly improves airflow under the motherboard, helping systems run cooler. This innovative Lian Li design replaces the traditional solid motherboard tray used in competing products, which blocks airflow and adds to system weight and cost. The new railing system also provides better routing options for internal wiring and cables, reducing clutter, improving system appearance and further improving airflow.
The Lian Li PC-9N holds up to three 3.5-inch hard drives and one 2.5-inch SSD in its all aluminum, tool-less, modular drive cage at the lower front of the chassis. The drives are secured by quick-access thumbscrews with rubber suspensions to greatly reduce irritating noise and vibrations. The HDD cage itself can be swiftly removed or rotated for easy maintenance access or case modification.
At the top of the chassis are three 5.25-inch drive bays with external access. The tool-less design of the bays, makes it easy for DIY builders to install optical drives.
A 140mm fan at the front pulls cool air into the chassis, and directly onto the hard disk drives. There is space for another optional 140mm fan in the middle of the front panel, where it can push external air directly across the motherboard and expansion cards, for advanced cooling requirements. The front panel can be removed without tools, making it easy to clean and maintain the air filters. The rear 120mm exhaust fan pulls hot air out of the chassis.
The PC-9N accommodates CPU coolers up to 170mm (6.6 inches) in height. The PC-9N has 8 vented expansion slots with thumb screws. There's space for very long VGA cards up to 430mm (16.93 inches) in the chassis.
Power supplies up to 300mm (11.81 inches) in length fit easily at the bottom of the PC-9N. Ventilation slits underneath the PSU, with a removable pull-out air filter, help increase the life and performance of the power supply and system.
The I/O panel on the top of the case has two USB 3.0 and HD audio connections. A door covers the I/O panel to protect it from dust and keep the elegant look when not in use.
The PC-9N is available in two stylish color options: silver (PC-9NA) and black (PC-9NB).
Look out for more PC cases featuring Lian Li's new motherboard mounting system and other technical innovations in the near future.
Check out Lian Li's new facebook page at: http://www.facebook.com/LianLiHQ
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Mobeam Launches Music Video at Mobile World Congress to Showcase How Its Technology Will Revolutionize the Way We Shop
SAN FRANCISCO - February 21, 2013 - Mobeam (www.mobeam.com) today launched an innovative new music video to showcase what will happen when the more than 165 million Point of Sale (POS) laser scanners in use today are capable of scanning barcoded content on a smartphone using mobeam's technology. While many companies tout their products as the solution in mobile commerce, no company has been able to crack the code of scanning a barcode at checkout - until now. Mobeam has patented technology that will revolutionize the way we all shop by enabling smartphones to be scanned by POS scanners, unlocking new potential for marketers and providing consumers the ability to seamlessly redeem coupons, gift cards and loyalty cards from their smartphone.
The music video was produced by Portal A (http://portal-a.com/), San Francisco's hottest creative team and experts in web video. The video, "MOBEAM! The Supermarket Musical" will be officially released at a red carpet premiere to the media and attendees at Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona on Sunday.
"There's a new phone app scheme that makes shopping a dream - Coming Soon to Screens Everywhere." - MOBEAM! The Supermarket Musical
Currently, anything that uses a barcode, such as a coupon, loyalty card, gift card, pre-loaded payment card or event ticket still needs to be printed out or carried to be redeemed, the vast majority of the time. Mobeam's technology converts barcodes into a beam of light that can be read by every one of the estimated 165 million laser scanners in use today by retailers around the world. It uses common light sources on a smartphone to send pulses of light directly to the sensor in POS scanners, mimicking the black-and-white sequencing of a standard bar code. Instead of reading the reflection from a printed barcode, laser scanners receive identical information from pulses of light - meaning that existing POS scanner technology and databases that are already installed worldwide won't require any upgrades.
"We created this fun, Glee-styled music video to highlight the life-altering changes our technology will provide when the world's smartphones are finally able to work at the point of sale with the 165 million laser scanners in use today," said Chris Sellers, CEO of mobeam. "Right now, many people think they can go to the grocery store, show a coupon on their phone and have it scanned - which unfortunately is not the case. The vast majority of in-store laser scanners cannot scan barcodes displayed on mobile phone screens. Through this video, we are saying, there IS a way, we've developed it and it's called mobeam."
More than 500 million people around the world are expected to receive mobile coupons this year, a 30% increase from 2012. Additionally, Juniper Research found that for 2013, the number of coupons accessed and redeemed by mobile is forecasted to come in around 10 billion discounts in total, representing a more than 50 percent increase from last year.
"This is definitely the most ambitious video we have done and we are honored that mobeam has chosen to launch it internationally at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona," said Zach Blume, managing director and co-founder of Portal A. "We love working with the most innovative companies around and we think mobeam's technology is going to be a game-changer that revolutionizes the mobile industry, ignites mobile commerce and changes the way we think about our wallet."
In the past year, mobeam has partnered with Procter & Gamble (P&G), Coca-Cola and General Mills - three of the world's largest consumer packaged goods companies, in a joint effort to create the first-ever completely mobile couponing system. This initiative, along with other partnerships mobeam has established with companies like ProLogic, brings consumers one-step closer to phasing out paper coupons entirely.
"We are excited about the potential for this new technology and our partnership with mobeam to make shopping simpler and faster for consumers. Couponing is a great way for shoppers to try new products or save on the trusted brands their families have come to love. If that can be easier, faster and less costly for shoppers and retailers, we want to help bring it to life," said Jeff Weedman, vice president of P&G Global Business Development.
Mobeam will be demonstrating their technology all week at MWC. While the technology has not been released on a handset yet, Mobeam is currently in confidential negotiations with several prominent manufacturers to bring mobeam to mobile devices around the world.
The music video was released in conjunction with a social media campaign and contest on Facebook and Twitter that gives a free mobeam t-shirt to the first 1,000 people that share the video on Facebook. To participate in the contest, visit http://www.mobeam.com/contest.
For more information on mobeam, visit http://www.mobeam.com.
For more information on Portal A, visit http://www.portal-a.com.
For more information on Mobile World Congress, visit: http://www.mobileworldcongress.com.
To watch a "How It Works" tutorial of Mobeam's technology, visit: http://www.mobeam.com/how-it-works/
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iBUYPOWER Unleashes Crushing Performance with GeForce GTX Titan
February 20, 2013, City of Industry, CA - Prepare yourself for the highest levels of cutting-edge performance. iBUYPOWER is proud to announce the availability of NVIDIA's latest graphics beast: the GeForce GTX TITAN.
The new GeForce GTX TITAN is a single-GPU solution that's unlike anything else on the market. Coupled with a monstrous 6GB of GDDR5 video memory, GeForce GTX TITAN provides thrill-seeking gamers with unrelenting power.
"We know that gamers continue to demand the most from their systems, and providing our customers with the ability to build their performance systems with NVIDIA's new GeForce GTX Titan is something we believe they will love," said Darren Su, Vice President of iBUYPOWER, "and we're really excited about putting GTX TITAN in some of our most unique systems, like Revolt."
iBUYPOWER recently shook the PC gaming industry with the launch of the Revolt, the company's daring take on PC system design. Despite its highly integrated and slim form factor, Revolt is fully GeForce GTX TITAN ready. But it doesn't stop there. A wide variety of systems is supported, including many of iBUYPOWER's custom gaming desktops. With larger gaming systems, customers will be able to take advantage of blistering performance by harnessing SLI.
Check out how you can configure an iBUYPOWER gaming system with the GeForce GTX TITAN at http://www.ibuypower.com/info/NVIDA-Titan.aspx
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