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.