OCZ Technology Agility 4 256GB SSD Review

For as long as I've been writing about SSDs, two issues are played back about the technology. It costs too much and the capacity is not enough. Your record is broken, throw it out. It's time to put your money where your mouth is. For the last few months high quality SSDs have reached the $1 per GB mark. You really can't ask for more than that. For those of you still holding out, let me tell you about the OCZ Agility 4.
OCZ Technology's Agility 4 hit the market at less than $1 per GB. Based on the Indilinx Infused, next generation Marvell SATA III controller and unknown 25nm flash, this SSD is one of the best value drives on the market today for mainstream users.

Asus VE228 21.5 Inch Full HD LED Monitor Review

There is always a way to improve technology and the latest focus is getting a far superior picture whilst using less and less power whilst doing so.
This is where Asus have stepped upto the mark with the VE228. From the outside, it looks pretty much like any other recent widescreen LCD monitor, and to the majority of people it is, but peel away the layers and you’ll soon realise that this is not an LCD as we once knew it.
LEDs are becoming more and more popular in the tech market and with their extreme light output from such a small power source, its understandable why. So to produce one of their latest screens, Asus have taken away the cathode tubes that traditionally light up and LCD and have replaced them with LEDs to give a brighter, crisper image which also allows for a better colour reproduction and contrast level at the same time.
Read more...

ASUS VS228H-P 21.5-Inch Full-HD LED Monitor (Black) Price $134.99

Noctua NH U12P SE2 CPU Cooler Review

The Noctua NH-U12P SE2 CPU cooler has a tower heatsink, four heatpipes, and two 120 mm fans.
The main differences between the NH-U12P and the NH-U12P SE2 (Special Edition 2) are that the SE2 has the SecuFirm2 mounting mechanism and comes with two fans.

The main specifications for the Noctua NH-U12P SE2 CPU cooler include:

• Application: Sockets 775, 1155, 1156, 1366, 2011, AM2, AM2+, AM3, AM3+, and FM1 processors
• Heatsink dimensions: 5.0 x 4.7 x 6.2 inches (126 x 120 x 158 mm) (W x L x H)
• Fins: Aluminum
• Base: Nickel-plated copper
• Heat-pipes: Four 6-mm copper heatpipes
• Fan: Two, 120 mm
• Nominal fan speed: 1,300 rpm
• Fan air flow: 54.33 cfm
• Maximum power consumption: 2 x 1.08 W
• Nominal noise level: 19.8 dBA
• Weight: 2.07 lb (940 g)

The Noctua NH-U12P SE2 was designed to be quiet. It is one of the quietest CPU coolers we tested so far, even with two powerful fans. The overall quality is outstanding and the cooling performance was reasonable. Read more...

Noctua CPU Cooler NH-U12P SE2 Price $55.99

Mushkin Chronos MX 120GB SSD Review

Mushkin has long been known for their memory products so it's no surprise when they began producing SSDs like their peers OCZ, Corsair, Patriot, among others. Their current line of Chronos drives all feature the SandForce SF-2281 controller but different NAND configurations that impact performance.
At the bottom of the performance pile is the Chronos, followed by the middle of the road Chronos MX, and topped off by the Chronos DX. Mushkin popped a 120GB Chronos MX in the mail to our SSD lab to put it through our usual battery of tests. Read more...

Mushkin Direct Chronos Deluxe MX 120 GB Solid-State Drive (MKNSSDCR120GB-MX) Price $139.98

G.Skill Trident X 2400MHz DDR3 Memory Review

Performance-wise, the Trident X modules deliver performance indicative of the latencies and clock speed they run at. Against lower rated modules, the Trident X modules deliver higher bandwidth and ultimately a higher level of performance across just about every test run. Overclocking delivered measurable performance increases over the baseline results, as expected. When it came to overclocking, I was able to pull another 100MHz from the already high 2400MHz, to reach just over 2500MHz, while tightening up the TRFC slightly.
G.Skill's Trident X line-up comes with kits that range from the 2400MHz kit we are looking at to a 2800MHz kit for massive memory speeds and the associated bandwidth that is a hallmark of higher speed bins. It seems that G.Skill is most definitely targeting the budget overclocker with this set of Trident X modules. A $99 price tag for 2400MHz-rated modules is a welcome sight after seeing huge price tags just a few months back for cas8 and 9 modules binned above 2133MHz. The Trident X are modules that perform well and deliver some overhead for a little bit more tweaking and come with G.Skill's lifetime warranty. Excellent looks aside, the Trident X would make a good addition to any system and have the flexibility to be cooled in multiple ways. Read more...

8GB G.Skill DDR3 PC3-19200 2400MHz Trident X Series CL10 (10-12-12-31) Dual Channel kit Price $114.49

ADATA SX900 256GB SSD Review

ADATA has released their XPG series SX900 SSDs based on SandForce, well LSI these days. The XPG (Xtreme Performance Gear) SX900 SSD's use new optimized firmware to utilize greater storage capacity. Combined with sequential read and write speeds of 550/530 MB per second and with maximum random 4k write speeds as high as 85,000 IOPS the new SSD series promises a lot.
ADATA's SX900 series comes with the 2281 series SandForce controller.
According to ADATA that will increase sequential read and write performance to 550MB/s which makes the SX900 the fastest SSDs they have ever produced. Read more...

ADATA XPG SX900 256 GB SATA III 6 GB/sec SandForce 2.5 Inch SSD (ASX900S3-256GM-C) Price $299.99

Crucial Ballistix Elite 1866MHZ 16GB DDR3 Memory Review

The Ballistix Elite series is designed for the gamers and enthusiasts in mind. Running in frequencies ranging from 1600 to 2133 MHz and kits size of 4 to 16 GB, Crucial as a kit for almost everyone.
Our overclocking adventures begun with us jumping right to 2133 MHz using all the 1866 MHz timings from the stock setting and the system tried to post into Windows but froze just when the 'Starting Windows' display came up. Then we backed the system back to 1866 MHz and starting playing with the Strap and manually adjusting frequency. Never touching the voltage at this point remaining at 1.5v.
We found our sweet spot for the XMP stock settings were with the 100 MHz Strap. First thing we did was try 105 BCLK and the system passed 32M in SuperPi with no problems. So, we decided to push our luck and jump to 108 MHz instant lock up on the system. After playing around in this range the finally frequency was 106 MHz for a 1978 MHz at 9-9-9 at 1.5v. A very nice overclock at low voltage.

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Crucial Ballistix Tactical 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM 8 Dual Channel Kit 1866 (PC3 15000) BLT2CP4G3D1869DT1TX0 Price $64.64

Corsair Vengeance C70 Case Review

The Vengeance C70 is the latest mid-tower case from Corsair; it was visibly designed to resemble an ammunition box.
It is available in three colors: arctic white, gunmetal black and military green.
The left panel of the Vengeance C70 has a big tinted window with two meshes, supporting the installation of two 120 mm or 140 mm fans.
The case comes with rubber rings for these fans, in order to absorb vibration and noise. There is no air filter on the left-side panel.

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Corsair Vengeance Series C70 High Airflow Military Green Mid-Tower Case CC-9011018-WW Price $137.27

Asus Maximus V Gene LGA1055 Motherboard Review

The Asus Maximus V Gene motherboard is the mATX variant of the ROG Z77 lineup. This motherboard comes with more bells and whistles than we could shake a stick at. The good points on this board are numerous, but we will try to cover some key points here. The mPCI-E/mSATA card is awesome and opens the doors to some awesome possibilities for system designs or custom system builds. Having the standard dual slot spacing so that a 4 slot LANBOX style case can run dual cards makes us happy to know that the layout designers kept the people who will actually build mobile gaming systems in mind. USB 3.0 boost provides amazingly capable external solution especially when paired with a UASP compatible device. The onboard switches provide greater diagnostic flexibility and ability to run the board in a test bench. The SupremeFX III audio provides the best gaming experience when you just have to get your game on. The overall layout of the board is just excellent, and everything works well which is a definite plus. The sheer amount of tuning options just for memory alone is staggering and is any benchmarker's dream solution. Finally, to round out the litany of impressive features, USB BIOS and ROG Connect serve to make users' lives much easier.

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Asus MAXIMUS V GENE Z77 mATX DDR3 Intel LGA 1155 Motherboard Price $209.99

The Sapphire HD7770 Vapor-X OC Edition Graphics Card Review

The Sapphire HD7770 Vapor-X OC Edition graphics card comes factory pre-overclocked.
The core clock of this Cape Verde GPU has been increased by 100MHz (10%) to 1100MHz and the memory clock has been increased by 175MHz (15.5%) to 1300MHz (5.2 GB/s effective).
This graphics card is based on the latest series graphics chips based on the 28 nm process manufacturing, code named 'Southern Islands' and it has 640 Stream Processors and 16 ROPS.

The Sapphire HD7770 Vapor-X OC also features vapour chamber cooler and two 80mm quiet fans. It has the following outputs: one HDMI port with 3D and 7.1 audio output, one DisplayPort 1.2, and two Dual-Link DVI ports. The HD7770 Vapor-X OC measures having dimensions of 8.86(L)x4.33(W)x16.9(H) inches.

Test System:
CPU: Intel Core i5-3570K
Motherboard: Asus P8Z77-M Pro LGA1155
Memory: G.Skill DDR3-1866 16GB Quad Channel
Disk Drive: OCZ Vertex 4 128GB Solid State Drive
Operating system: Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit w/ SP1
Graphics card drivers: AMD Catalyst 12.4

To check the overclocking potential of the HD7770 graphics card, we used the Sapphires overclocking utility, named TriXX. We managed to overclock the already factory overclocked graphics card by a good margin.
The highest stable overclock we were able to achieve without altering the voltage and fan speed was 1225MHz on the GPU core and a memory clock frequency of 1460 MHz.

Benchmark Results:

Games:

3DMark11:

The Sapphire HD7770 Vapor-X OC Edition graphics card was able to deliver excellent performance. Also, the temperature was under 69°C under heavy load, and up to 36°C when idle, which is quite impressive.

Power consumption:

Pros:
Great price/performance ratio
28 nm GPU
Quiet operation

Cons:
Consumes slightly more power than the reference HD7770 card.

Currently, the Sapphire HD7770 Vapor-X OC Edition is aboot 65% cheaper than the GeForce GTX 670 offering from NVIDIA. If you are looking for an affordable mid-range graphics card, then the Sapphire HD7770 Vapor-X OC Edition is currently the best choice available on the market today.

Biostar TZ77XE4 LGA1155 Motherboard Review

The TZ77XE LGA1155 motherboard is Biostar’s high-end Intel Z77 offering. This motherboard have 13 phase power design and a dual heatsink which covers the MOSFETs and is joined via a single heatpipe, providing the potential to be a great overclocking motherboard, with plenty of features specifically for enthusiasts to take advantage of.
The TZ77XE4 motherboard has support for Intel’s 2nd and 3rd Generation Processors (Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge).
Aesthetically the TZ77EX4 is a delight to overlook. A matt black PCB is something that most enthusiasts strive for and the orange heatsinks set the motherboard off very well. A quick glance over the features will highlight quite an assortment of characteristics, including a generous helping of SATA storage ports – more than you would get on your typical Z77 motherboard.
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Biostar TZ77XE4 - LGA1155 Intel Z77 Chipset ATX Motherboard DDR3 SATA 6Gb/s PCIE3.0 DisplayPort USB3.0 CrossFireX/SLI Gigabit LAN 8CH HD Audio Price $149.99

Sapphire Radeon HD7770 GHz Edition OC Graphics Card Review

Today we are going to take a look at the Sapphire HD 7770 GHz Edition OC graphics card with a new architecture that may have fewer stream processors, but much higher clock speeds.
The Sapphire HD 7770 GHz Edition OC is based on the 28 nanometer GCN Architecture with 10 Compute cores (640 Stream Processors), 40 Texture Units, 64 Z/Stencil ROP Units, and 16 Color ROP Units.
As with all GHz Edition AMD HD 7770 graphics cards, it is designed for at least 1 GHz core speed and 1125 MHz (4500 GHz effective) GDDR5 memory across a 128-bit bus. The Sapphire HD 7770 GHz Edition OC is the single fastest card in this category with a core speed of 1.15 GHz (1150 MHz) and 1250 MHz (5000 MHz effective) speed for the 1 GB memory onboard.
The Sapphire HD 7770 GHz Edition seems to have an advantage with DX11 games. This could very well be true as the GCN architecture was intended to be forward thinking.
The Sapphire HD 7770 GHz Edition OC is the best in its class, but still not very impressive in the grand scheme of things. Don’t get me wrong here.
At the price point of $149.99 it is a great buy for those building a new mid range system or those upgrading from any previous generation card that is a 6790 or lower. Even if a similarly priced AMD GPU matches performance, it will still be at a clear win in power consumption, noise, and cooling for this card, as illustrated by its battle with its closest sibling still on the market, the HD 6850.
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Sapphire 11201-02-20G Radeon HD 7770 GHZ OC 1GB DDR5 HDMI / DVI-I / Dual Mini DP PCI-Express Graphics Card Price $149.99

Thermaltake Frio Extreme CPU Cooler Review

The Frio Extreme highlights that Thermaltake are pulling out all the stops. They are using two large 140mm fans which can be adjusted with the supplied fan controller. Additionally they have finally ditched the plastic shroud, opting for a naked dual tower heatsink methodology.
The Thermaltake Frio Extreme ships in a large box with a picture of the cooler on the front. There are some details here, such as support for LGA2011 and the included fan controller. Thermaltake rate the cooler as capable of handling 250W of heat output. The Frio Extreme Cooler ships with two large 140mm fans. These are coloured blue and are rated to spin between 1,200 rpm and 1,800 rpm.
Thermaltake are using a nickel plated copper core base which is manufactured to a perfect shine. Thermaltake have really enhanced their engineering quality with this cooler, it is a significant improvement on the previous coolers in this range. The whole installation process only took around 10 minutes the first time, but would be slightly quicker for subsequent installations.
Thermaltake are clearly going after the enthusiast performance crown with the release of their latest Frio Extreme cooler. It is expensive, but if you want the best aircooler on the market we doubt you will be disappointed.
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Thermaltake Frio Extreme Universal CPU Cooler with Ultimate Over-Clocking Support of 250W TDP Dual 140mm VR/PWM Fans CLP0587 Price $99.99

Nikon Coolpix P510 Digital Camera Review

The Nikon Coolpix P510 digital camera is the successor to the company's popular 36x P500. The P510 ups the zoom factor to 42x and have a built-in GPS and ups the resolution to 16 megapixels.
Considering the size of its lens, the P510 is quick to start up and shoot. It manages to do that in 1.6 seconds, can rattle off a burst of five shots in a second, and records a relatively short 0.4-second shutter lag.
The P510 records 1080p30 and 720p60 video in QuickTime format. Footage is colorful and sharp, and the camera is able to zoom and focus while recording. The sound of the lens moving in and out is audible on the soundtrack, but not overwhelming. There's a standard mini HDMI port on the camera, so you can connect it to an HDTV to view photos and video, as well as a proprietary USB connector so you can plug it into a computer.
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Nikon COOLPIX P510 16.1 MP CMOS Digital Camera with 42x Zoom NIKKOR ED Glass Lens and GPS Record Location (Black) Price $399.95

Corsair Obsidian 550D Case Review

The Corsair Obsidian 550D is all steel, but uses ABS plastic for tool-less clips, drive trays and the frame of the front bezel. To spice things up a fair bit, a sleek and simple, brushed aluminum panel gets anodized black and works as the front swinging door of this mid-tower. Inside the chassis supports both ATX and Micro-ATX motherboards and has eight expansion slots in the back. in the front you have a set of four 5.25" bays with tool-less clips and room for up to six 3.5" or 2.5" drives via the cage and tray system incorporated in the 550D that is also half or fully removable.
In the front you get a rack capable of holding four 5.25" drives. Each bay has its own tool-less clip that allows the drive to slide in. There are three 3-pin fan headers to connect, HD Audio, USB 3.0 and the various control and LED wires.
With the ODD in place it doesn't really matter how it looks unless you want to run it without the aluminum panel, but why do that when it works so conveniently, as it is and it covers the mess we don't need to see, like the front of this drive.
In the end, I am really grasping the line built by builders, for builders, as this chassis is a prime example of that concept. I mean you can take any case on the market today and try all you can to compare it to this design, but in the end, I'm pretty sure your solution will fall short in some if not a few aspects of the design of the 550D.
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Corsair Obsidian Series 550D Quiet Mid-Tower Cases CC-9011015-WW Price $135.99

Kingston HyperX Genesis 8GB 2400MHz DDR3 Memory Review

Kingston, which is a household name in the industry and frequently a favorite here at Pure Overclock, is well represented on our test bench today. Today, we have the newest edition from Kingston, the HyperX Genesis 8GB DDR3-2400 kit.
Now that we have the basic overclocking rules out of the way on the Sandy Bridge “E” with LGA 2011, overclocking the memory uses the old familiar way: the memory multiplier times the BCLK. Processors such as the Sandy Bridge 2600K had little to no wiggle room in BCLK so your choices were limited. 2400, 2133, 2133 or 2400MHz. You could hit certain parameters in frequency except for certain things; it depended on the modules whether you would be able to hit a target frequency, but not the next step up. Plus, there was no BCLK headroom so you were stuck at certain speeds. The strap setting as noted above now allows that wiggle room above a max set frequency. Stock settings on the Core i7 3930K is 3.2GHz with a 32x multi and a BCLK of 100. Turbo raises the overclock to 3.8GHz. For the testing, we will use stock settings at 1600, 1866, 2133M, and 2400Hz speeds.
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Kingston Hyper X Genesis 8GB Kit (4x2GB Modules) 2400MHz DDR3 Non-ECC CL11 DIMM XMP Desktop Memory Price $108.22

Asus P8Z77-V LGA1155 Motherboard Review

The ASUS P8Z77-V is placed in the middle of the new V series, sporting top quality components across the board and plenty of truly useful features. While the ASUS P8Z77-V boasts many enthusiast class qualities, such as DDR3-2600 capabilities with T-Topology, tri-SLI/Crossfire and quad GPU capable PCIe 3.0, LucidLogix VirtuMVP, Smart DIGI+ VRM with dual processors and Intel and Asmedia SATA III and USB 3.0 controllers. It also offers great usability and features for other segments.
ASUS P8Z77-V Deluxe has an embedded energy-optimization microprocessor that works in conjunction with the DIGI+ VRM to achieve high energy efficiency. The EPU can be enabled or disabled via an onboard switch or through software, giving the user flexible options for adjusting the power saving features when necessary.
Performance tuning on the P8Z77-V paired with the Ivy Bridge processor isn't any more different or difficult than tuning an older Sandy Bridge processor. The main difference between the two is that because of the manufacture process change from 32 to 22nm, Ivy Bridge uses less voltage. For this board, RAM ended up being the limiting factor, as any adjustment from a 100 BCLK would cause issues. Seeing that the 3570K processor was being used, the CPU multiplier could be adjusted at will. With a 46 multiplier and the voltage set at 1.33V, the tune topped out at 4.6GHz.
The bottom line is, the P8Z77-V is a top performer with ASUS’ rock solid build and advanced engineering. The feature set of the P8Z77-V is going to satisfy 90% of the users on the planet, from enthusiasts, to gamers, right down to the work station user. ASUS covered all of the bases for the main board of the V Series, and pulled it off with perfect execution, taking advantage of everything the Z77 chipset has to offer and throwing in high end tweaks and components across the board. The ASUS P8Z77-V is highly recommended, and a solid choice for a very surprising number of applications.
Source

ASUS Intel Z77 ATX DDR3 2400 LGA 1155 Motherboard P8Z77-V Price $199.99

MSI Z77A-GD65 vs ASUS P8Z77-V Deluxe vs Intel DZ77GA-70K Performance Comparison and Benchmarks

The subject of this performance comparison are three new Intel Z77 Express motherboards available on the market today: the Intel DZ77GA-70K, the MSI Z77A-GD65 and ASUS P8Z77-V Deluxe.
The performance of the motherboards was measured at stock speeds with a spiffy new Ivy Bridge Core i5-3570K CPU and AMD Radeon HD5770 graphics card for all benchmarks.The same processor, hard disk, and memory were used on each motherboard.
The Intel Core i5 3570K CPU was installed on the MSI-Z77A-GD65 motherboard and overclocked to 4.6 GHz at stock voltage without any hassle. The overall performance of Intel DZ77GA-70K LGA 1155 motherboard was about equal to the ASUS motherboard and slightly better than the MSI motherboard. This might not seem like much but is better than Intel has done in the past.

CineBench single-thread benchmark results:

CineBench multi-thread benchmark results:

Sysmark 2012 benchmark results:

Total System Power Consumption:

Dell XPS13 Ultrabook Review

The Dell XPS 13 ultrabook looks quite standard for this class of devices. The aluminum cover, a thin form factor, multiple ports, and basically, that's all. The memory is soldered directly to the motherboard, so upgrading of memory is not possible. However, you can replace the 128 GB SSD drive, (or you can buy a model with 256 GB SSD included). In general it is better to leave it as is.
The Dell XPS 13 ultrabook has a 13 inch, 1366 x 768 pixel display. This resolution and the quality of the screen are enough for the average user.
Also, the brightness, contrast and color of the display are good and overall left us with a pretty good impression.

PCMark Vantage Benchmark Results:

3dmark Vantage Benchmark Results:

Battery life:

Dell XPS13 Ultrabook Technical Specifications:

• Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium
• CPU: Intel Core i5-2467M (or i7-2637M)
• Display: 13.3 "HD WLED, 1366×768 720p, w/ Gorilla Glass
• Graphics Card: Intel HD 3000
• Memory: 4GB DDR3 1333Mhz
• Hard Drive: 128GB (256GB) SSD
• Audio: High definition audio MaxxAudio
• Wireless network card: Wi-Fi 802.11 N, Bluetooth v3.0
• Ports: USB 3.0 (1) + USB 2.0, mini Display-Port, audio out, mic in
• Battery: 6 cell
• Dimensions: 318x205x16 mm,
• Weight: 1.36 kg

Fujifilm X10 Compact Camera Review

Inspired by popular X100 models the Fujifilm company has introduced yet another camera, made in retro style, the Fujifilm X10. The focal length of Fujifilm X10 compact camera is not fixed as in the X100, and covers the range (28-112 mm in 35mm equivalent) which is enough in most situations. The aperture optics should be noted too: f / 2,0-2,8. For comparison: the Olympus XZ-1 with a smaller sensor - f / 1,8-2,5, a Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX5 - f / 2,0-3,3, a Canon PowerShot G12 - f / 2, 8-4,5. The Fujifilm X10 camera offer high-speed continuous shooting at up to 7 frames per second at maximum resolution. The Fujifilm X10 combines Fujifilm’s proprietary EXR technology with CMOS technology, which allows to reduce the noise level and dynamic range due to the 12 Megapixel EXR CMOS sensor.
The front lens is manually controlled focal length. By the way, you can turn off the camera by turning the zoom control ring, which is very convenient. Fujifilm X10 is equipped with an optical viewfinder. The focus operates in three modes: single-frame shooting, continuous auto focus and a manual. Switching between them is carried out using the lever on the front of the camera. White balance settings other than Auto mode, include the following presets: Daylight, Shade / clouds, three options for setting fluorescent, incandescent, underwater. In addition, it is possible to manually set the white or gray area, as well as manual selection of color temperature in the range from 2500 to 10000 K. The main menu looks the same as in the most Fujifilm compact cameras.
The camera can record video in full HD 1080p resolution in MPEG-4 format with stereo sound. At the maximum resolution it can shoot 7 frames per second and 10 at a resolution of 5 megapixels, although in both cases the duration of the series is substantially limited by the buffer capacity.