Archive for September, 2009

Samsung LN55A950D1F 55″ LED-backlight LCD A950 HDTV Review

Today PCSTATS will be reviewing the very top end of the Samsung LCD HDTV family, the 55" Samsung LN55A950D1F. Samsung's A950 series of LCD HDTVs has been designed to be the next step in image fidelity for liquid crystal display technology. These home theatre HD TVs use Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) that can selectively illuminate sections of the screen at a time, which means that they have a wider color gamut and better colour reproduction. They also boast superb black levels, do away with back...

Glacialtech X-Wing R1 Notebook Cooling Pad Review

The Glacialtech X-Wing R1 notebook cooling pad accomodates chronically overheating notebooks with footprints of up to 365x250mm, either while sitting on a desk or resting comfortably on your lap. That means netbooks with screens as small as 7" and full size laptops with screens as wide as 17" should fit onto the X-Wing R1 without a problem. The bottom of the X-Wing is curved so it rests across your legs comfortably, without restricting airflow or cutting into you as some all-metal notebook...

Zotac GTS 250 AMP! graphics card

The G92 core has been around for a while now with Nvidia utilising the GPU in a number of different cards making sure to keep renaming though so as give the illusion of a new product altogether. The core has evolved from the 8800GT to the 9800GTX+ right up to the GTS 250. This latest card uses a 55nm process tapping into both the heat and power consumption reductions combined with decent overclocking scope. So, as Zotac are prone to doing, they took the original GTS 250, used their...

Cocoon Innovations CLB551 Laptop Case

Today for review review I’ve got another case from Cocoon, but this one is for laptops up to 15.4” in size. It also features their GridIt system, along with several pockets and lots of room for your stuff. I was truly surprised by just how much stuff I could get in this case and still have room left over. Like the netbook case, this one is also nicely made and should offer decent protection for your laptop while providing room enough for all of your stuff Read...

Patriot Viper 2 Sector 5 DDR3 2GHz (PVV34G2000LLKB for Core i5)

Now with the LGA 1156 platform, Dual Channel DDR3 is all the rage. While your older high voltage DDR3 kit will work, it will need to run in under 1.65v to ensure you don't end up killing your CPU. So if you have a 1600MHz kit that requires 1.9v, (which isn't uncommon) you'll likely be limited to the 1333 - 1400 MHz range on that kit. To take advantage of the full potential of LGA 1156 Core i5/i7 memory your going to need a good kit of low voltage DDR3 capable of giving you the performance you...

Professional Mechanical Keyboard Comparison

There are a lot of keyboards out there. Some keyboards are wireless; others offer lighting effects, programmable displays, and drivers that remap the keyboards to configurations optimized for specific applications and games. But if you're a serious typist - a professional who thinks that a keyboard's primary duty is to enable fast and accurate typing, and not to glow prettily or adjust your speaker volume or display the number of missiles left in your launcher, then you might be interested in a...

Weekly Contest #16 – Wi-Fire WiFi Adapter

We’re back after a break with something else free for you! This week I’ve got the Wi-Fire Long range WiFi Adapter. This thing can extend your wireless range up to 1000 feet and let you access hotspots that you never knew were there. The Wi-Fire works and works well it’ll help you get the most out of your wireless connection. So read on to learn what you need to do to get it… Read...

Evercool HPK-10025EA Low Profile CPU Cooler

We all know about the abundance of Core i7 compatible coolers in the performance market, but what about more mainstream coolers that can be used in various applications, including HTPC or SFF?  Lucky for you, we at RBMods have the very thing right on our test bench!  It's the Evercool HPK-10025EA. Read...

EASEUS Todo Backup 1.0

The product is known as Todo Backup, and today we’ll take a look at how it functions and how it compares to other data backup software. A few months back I reviewed EASEUS’s Partition Master software to relatively high success, so I expect high marks from this product as well. Read...

Lian Li PC-B25F All Aluminum Mid-Tower Computer Case Review

When presented with a chassis like Lian Li's PC-B25F, it is very hard not to heap praise on it like a smitten middle school girl. There is, nevertheless, a hell of a lot to recommend this case. It looks good, has a fabulous feature set with many excellent tool-free elements and top shelf cooling. What more do you want? Read...

AMD’s ATI Radeon HD 5870 vs. HD 4890 GPU Comparison

When we had a look at the Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 we saw how it compared to a number of cards including the older HD 4890 and its main competition, the GTX 285 from NVIDIA. With a reference HD 5870 on our hands we thought that we could take a look at it in a slightly different way. What we'll do here today is see how the card compares to the HD 4890 and that card only. What we want to find out is the kind of performance improvements the new generation card offers over the previous generation...

Corsair P64 SSD RAID Set P64-RAID-PK1 Review

Enthusiasts are no stranger to RAID arrays. While server administrators depend on the redundancy of RAID-1 and other safe multi-drive configurations, performance enthusiasts are willing to risk it all for the promise of twice the normal performance from a striped RAID-0 array. To enjoy the added speed there must be two identical drives to which the data can split and write to each drive in stripes. Solid State Drive products already come at a premium over their hard drive counterparts, and...

Nexus TDD-9000 Liquid Laptop Cooler

Nexus, one of the largest computer cooling peripheral manufacturers in the world sent us their newest invention TDD-9000 liquid laptop cooler. TDD-9000 doesn't have any fans in it and is based on liquid cooling. There are something special in TDD-9000:s cooling mechanism so let's have a look if it does what Nexus has promised. Read...

Alienware Aurora ALX Gaming System Preview

The release of ATI's Radeon HD 5870 graphics card has caused quite a stir in the hardware industry. While enthusiasts scramble to find the coin to upgrade their systems, Alienware has provided an all inclusive option for those in the market for an entire rig, loaded with some of the fastest parts available. Yesterday, Alienware announced the launch of five new configurations, consisting of all new Area 51, Aurora, and M15x gaming systems. Although each option brings something new to the table,...

Asus P7P55D Deluxe Review

The introduction of the new LGA1156 platform and Lynnfield CPUs inevitably brought with them a wave of new motherboards; this time it’s the P55 PCH (Platform Controller Hub) that the boards are built around with the P57 to come. ASUS are always on the ball when it comes to new releases and this is no exception with the P7P55D range including a number of different boards from the basic layout right up to the more expensive Premium and Pro editions. The Deluxe board, which we are looking at...