Content and news by Rob Williams

So, just how do you know if a power supply works or not, plug it in right? Well that would require either hooking it to your motherboard, which if the PSU was bad might kill your motherboard, or jumping the wires to make the PSU think it is hooked up. Jumping the wires requires you to cut wires and essentially damage your PSU and void any warranty you might have. The easier way would be to buy a Power Supply Tester. Today for review I have the new Power Supply Tester from CaseBuy. It is equipped to handle the latest PSU’s, you can hook 24pin, SATA, PCIE and P4 connectors to it for testing and also the standard PSU connections. It is aptly named the ‘EZ Power Supply Tester 2’. I would like to thank CaseBuy for the chance to review there products.

Check out the full review at Think Computers.

Zalman was the first to introduce a passive watercooling kit. It was external and used a large radiator. They one up the previous
with the current Reserator 1 Plus. Considering the water is passively cooled, the performance isn’t bad.

Head on over to InsaneTek for the full review!

This is an excellent product if you have a newer desktop or laptop because most of these newer systems don’t come with parallel, serial, or PS2 ports. This device enables the use of these older peripherals. It’s USB 1.1 and 2 compatible making it plug-and-play which results in easy installation and setup. It also doubles as a USB hub. A versatile product! Watch the Video to find out more…

Check out the full review at 3D Gameman!

Motherboards like the Epox 5NVA+ SLI support Socket 775 Pentium 4/D/Extreme Edition as well as Celeron D processors. The four DIMM slots can accommodate up to 8GB of unbuffered non ECC DDR2 memory running at 400/533/667 MHz, while operating in dual channel mode with 1.8V. Epox also bundles a few on board goodies with the board such as Gigabit LAN, a 7.1 audio controller, IEEE 1394 and my personal favorite a Port 80 diagnostics card. If you need something the motherboard does not support, there are two free PCI Express x1 slots (three if you count the second PCI Express x16 slot when only running one videocard) and two open 32 bit PCI slots for legacy hardware. Of course, we must not overlook the two PCI Express x16 slots which will support SLI set-ups with the appropriate videocards either!

Head on over to PC Stats for the review!

Today we have ASUS’s latest limited edition and uniquely designed Extreme N7800 GTX TOP. TOP stands for Top Overclocking Performance, and it definitely earns its name. The ASUS Extreme N7800 GTX TOP has a unique heat sink and fan-cooling unit. In order to support the size and weight of this cooling unit, ASUS had to design this video card as a dual-slot video card. Although the actual size of this video card is very large, the increased size is a small price to pay as you will see.

Check out the full review over at Hard|OCP!

Today we are going to look at one of the best 3rd party disk defragmenter tools available. Perfect Disk 7® is an extremely complete and fast disk defragmenter. It was designed to work with Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2000, Windows 2000 and Windows XP only. Raxco’s PerfectDisk’s SmartPlacement™ technology provides a fast and efficient defragmenter that offers single pass file defragmentation and free space consolidation. It can also handle any of today’s large disk sizes. PerfectDisk 7 integrates seamlessly with Microsoft’s Active Directory to provide easy scalable network deployments and scheduling abilities.

Head on over to NGOHQ for the full article!

While the chipset was announced a months ago, nForce4-SLI Intel Edition motherboards are just now hitting the market. MSI Computers new P4N Diamond looks well… like a real gem of a motherboard! Obviously based on the nForce4 SLI Intel Edition chipset, the motherboard supports Socket 775 800/1066 MHz FSB Pentium 4/XE, Pentium D and Celeron D processors as well as a maximum of 4GB of DDR2-667 memory. The way nVIDIA implemented SLI on its NF4 SLI Intel Edition chipset is a bit different than with the AMD version. With the NF4 SLI Intel Edition the first physical PCI Express x16 slot gets lane 0 and all the even numbered lanes thereafter while the second physical PCI Express x16 slot gets all the odd numbered lanes.

Check out the full review at PC Stats!

Join us tonight on Stratics IRC as we chat with the developers of City of Villains, the standalone sequel to City of Heroes. This House of Commons will be at 3pm PDT / 8pm EDT / 10pm UTC/GMT in the #StraticsHoC channel on Stratics IRC. You can connect to one of our…..

Pretty impressive for a mid tower case. I will say the box had it
right, “Just Sexy”. Bone stock and it still looks awesome… if I, or anyone
else, were to make this case unique and mod it further then it could only
look even sexier.

Check out the full review at Case Mod God!

Half-Life 2: Lost Coast is Valve’s reply to a series of What If questions: what if there were no limits? What if we didn’t have to make sure people with mid-range systems could enjoy our games? What if the system requirements knew no bounds?

Following the release of Half-Life 2 worldwide on 16th November 2004, a group of programmers and artists at Valve sat down to create the ultimate level, incorporating ultra high resolution textures, models and adding High Dynamic Range Rendering (HDR) to the Source engine. Their aim was to create a technology showcase: a no-holds barred level that would set new standards in image quality and realism; something to really push even the highest of today’s high-end systems.

I cannot wait for this level! Check out the great article at Bit-Tech!

With the Robela, I was torn to come up with a final statement. The
water cooling abilities of the Robela are decent but certainly not
impressive. If I was running a system that was not overclocked and looking
for a case that would run almost silently, then the Robela would be a very
good choice. Heck, even with an overclocked setup the Robela system would be
acceptable as it runs the CPU only a few degrees higher than a large
aftermarket cooler, without any of the extra noise associated with that type
of cooler.

Check out the full review at Overclockers Online.

Philips apparently has big plans for an all-Hitachi USB drive series. First to come is the rugged 10GB USB drive driven by Hitachi 3600-rpm 1″ MicroDrive. What makes this special is that it can be withstand a 1.8m drop and that it comes with a truckload of Nero Sync and Backup. Let’s hope the Philips drives can help Hitachi offset the loss of business due to Apple switching HDD to flash. Philips will also release 2.5″ & 3.5″ Hitachi USB drives with capacity ranging from 40GB to 400GB.

Check out the full look over at EverythingUSB!

It’s Thursday, a package comes in. I notice it’s from Geil. Once opened I immediately notice a couple of things, the first being the class A packaging .. Spartan in all it’s ways but hey .. there’s no way you can damage the memory as the packaging is made of pure plexi-glass. The second thing you’ll notice is the pure beauty of the Geil memory modules.

Funky heatspreader with brushed tin coated copper finish and hey .. you’ll immediately realize that Geil is manufacturing memory for the enthusiast audience. Today’s memory is no different as once you observe the sticker I went like .. how on earth am I going to test that ? Today’s memory can handle a CAS latency of 1.5 …

Wow, 1.5CAS! Check out the full review at Guru 3D.

There is more to computers than just video games, overclocking and the internet. Now that we have DVDs, music, plasma TVs and surround sound systems the PC has become a home multimedia device. Honestly who would want to watch Sin City on a 19″ monitor? With many video cards having TV out capabilities and HDTV TV tuners, we can have our computers broadcast on a 61″ HDTV flat screen TV. One of the leaders in making our computers more fit to be furnished in our living rooms is Ahanix. And with the introduction of the MCE601, they make our PC look even better.

Check out the full review at Pro-Clockers.

A couple days after our fair well to AGP with the HIS X700 review we get back to the lovely PCI Express bus. What better way to do it then with a review of the HIS X800GT Turbo. This card features the R423 ASIC, 8 pixel pipes, 6 vertex engines, and 256MB of GDDR3 memory. The reason why the card is the “Turbo” version is because it comes with HIS’s iTurbo overclocking software which overclocks the X800GT’s core and memory frequencies with a single click.

Check out the full review of this great card at Bona Fide Reviews.

With the availability of so many different brands and sizes of MP3 players, the Transcend T-Sonic 610 stands out with its crisp, clear sound, and deep bass tones during MP3 playback, with the FM Tuner, and the built in recorder. If you take into account that no additional software is necessary to use it, and the overall ease of use, you have a great MP3 player!

Head on over to Big Bruin for the full review!

Titan Robela is a very innovative product as It is not only a cool looking and solid, but it also has high performance CPU and GPU water cooling performance. Its huge radiator helps a lot to dissipate the heat very well although we feel that the pump is really not powerful enough. The LCD panel looks great and works well by displaying most of the important water cooling information including noise level. However, good stuff doesn’t come cheap as the retail price for the Titan Robela is between USD388 and USD399. The cheaper one is using the shining metallic front panel as we mentioned in the beginning of the review. You might say that a custom built water cooling plus a standard ATX case won’t cost that much. But remember that the Titan Robela comes wiht an integrated water cooling case so it will be easy for maintainance and free of installation. Overall, the Titan Robela is a pretty good water cooled case that comes with all the blings!

Check out the full review at PC Modding Malaysia. Expect our review of the Robela next week!

Coolmax have been around for awhile, but have recently become more popular in the PSU market. Not too long ago, they released their CXI line of power supplies, which follow the new ATX 2.0 standard. Their higher models are even built for SLi use, in 500 and 600 wattages. Today, we are taking a look at their 400W version, so let’s see just how good it is!

Featuring a sleek and chic brushed aluminum shell the Lian Li PC-65b is all anyone could wish for in a mid tower. With the ability to remove the motherboard and PSU in just a couple seconds. Lian Li is known for their elegant and classy cases, they are designed and built to carry on the motto: a purchase you’ll never regret.

Check out the full review over at techPowerUp!

With the release of dual core processors, there is again a bandwidth crunch and DDR2 memory is the only source capable of filling the void. Corsair is quick on the ball, and today we have some very quick PC2-8000 compatible memory to test as a result. According to Corsair, with compatible supporting hardware, its 240-pin DDR2 Twin2X1024-8000UL memory can run at…..1000 MHz! Amazing!

Head on over to PC Stats for the full review!