Content and news by Matthew Harris

Got a guitar? Got an Android 4.2+ phone or tablet that supports USB OTG? Ever wanted to use your phone as a multi-effects unit for your guitar? Well you just might want to consider the IK Multimedia iRig UA.

After we posted our look at Fractal Design’s Define R5 a couple of months ago, it didn’t take long before Matt was craving not just a chassis upgrade, but a water cooling one, as well. With the chassis in hand, join him as he takes you through the process of setting up a dual loop setup, and tells you what he thinks of working with the Define R5.

Released this past fall, AMD’s FX-8320E processor promises to deliver a lot of processing power for those on a budget. It sports eight cores, and as a Black Edition, its overclocking capabilities are unrestricted. But is that enough to make this the best go-to budget processor, especially for gamers?

Got a hankering for a new case? Been bit by the water cooling bug? Having a bit of trouble reconciling the two? You should have a look at SilverStone’s TJ10B. Despite the nay-sayers claiming it’s not ideal for water-cooling, you might just be surprised!

On the lookout for the best cooling system and greatest power supplies for your money? We’ve got you covered. Our cooling guide will help you find exactly what you are looking for and then we top it off with a recommendation of three stellar power supplies.

Own a notebook and not impressed with the onboard sound solution? Would you like the ability to be a bit more “hands on” with your audio? Do you want something that’s different than what everyone else has? ASUS might just have the answer for you.

Finally! We are beginning to see Creative’s chipset offerings being used in other manufacturers sound cards. The first such product is Auzentech’s X-Fi Prelude, which we have on the test bench today. Though it excels in some regards, we find out that it has a lot of room for improvement.

If you look around you’ll find that there are more brands of power supplies than you can shake a stick at. Some of them are really good while others aren’t even worth being hit with the aforementioned stick. Does the Spire Rocketeer IVSP-ATX-600W fall into the first or second category? Read on and decide for yourself.

Sound. To a gamer it’s the hinge pin of gaming. You need it to survive and with the advent of multi channel sound solutions there’s no excuse for living with old school 2.0 setups, even when you’re lanning or trying to game without disturbing others. Today we take a look at a set of headphones that are 5.1 and feature their own built in amp and sound decoding.

Are you in the market for a roomy server case? Tired of the small cases that don’t offer enough room for all your bits and bobs? Today we take a look at a case that can run the gamut from HTPC to server to gaming case and gives you more room than you can shake a stick of Rambus at.

Looking for a new high end sound card that isn’t a cookie cutter "me too" card? Want one that offers great sound with no compromises? Is gaming not very high on your list? Then you might take a look at the Auzentech X-Meridian.

SilverStone is one of the premiere case builders in the market today. From their hugely popular Temjin tower series to the elegant LaScala series of HTPC cases to everything in between like the Sugo LAN case, SilverStone has something that’s sure to fit the bill. SilverStone is long known to produce masterpieces of design and thermal engineering, today we look at their latest effort and see if it is indeed their best effort yet.

So, you’re on a budget and shopping for a new power supply. You want a decent wattage and a modular cable setup but don’t have much to spend? There are a few choices that might suit you, today we look at an offering from Ultra and see if it has what it takes to garner your hard earned dollars.

There are a handful of 8800GTX certified power supplies, today we take a look at one that’s been hit with a bit of controversy recently and see if there’s more to it than certain people think there is.

One of the drawbacks of full graphics card water blocks is that they don’t always fit the cards being used like they should. There are tolerance issues depending on the height of the ram versus the height of the GPU. Swiftech offers a cure to those ills with the MCWRamcool.

OCZ has got small in a big way. A while back we looked at one of the thinnest thumbdrives on the market from OCZ and today we take a look at another diminutive thumbdrive from OCZ.

With power supplies pushing the stratosphere of over 1000 watts we lose sight of the needs of the basic user. If your system isn’t bleeding edge with terabytes of storage, SLI or Crossfire and a pair of power hungry processors you really don’t need tons of juice. If you’re like the majority of users out there with a couple of hard drives, a burner or two, a single video card and a dual-core processor you just need a simple, reliable power supply.

Water cooling has a lot of benefits. First off it’s more effective, water removes heat close to ten times better than air. Secondly it’s generally quieter, this is owed to waters better thermal capacity and the fact that the radiators used have way more area than a simple HSF does. Today we take a look at an un-traditional water cooling system that’s about as quiet as you’ll ever get.

With the introduction of the nForce 4 chipset we saw the beginning of cheap and easy mass storage options. With this revolutionary change we also see a need for Hot-swappable SATA drive bays for RAID-5 arrays made possible. Today we take a look at the new offering from ICY DOCK that allows for three drives in an easily achieved space.

Building a PC requires several considerations. What’s in it? What’s powering it? What case do I use? How do I cool it? For using air cooling there’s a wide world of cases open to you but if you’re using aftermarket water cooling your options start to narrow. Today we look at a new case from NZXT that lends itself to both air and water cooling.