Hardware Roundup for March 20

Happy Monday! There’s a lot going on today, so prepare for a lot of reading. If you like Cooler Masters cases and don’t want to pay too much, you should check out PC Perspectives review of the Praetorian 730. It’s around $100, but well worth it due to the great build quality and styling. Even though the cast lacks a window, it includes three blue led’s that will shine through various openings, including the mesh grill in the front.

Craving a 1GB memory kit? Hardware Logic takes the GeIL Ultra PC4000 for a spin, and found that it’s a good overclocker. The performance isn’t mind-blowing, but it may still be worth a look. If you though Plextor only made rom drives, your wrong! Hot Hardware is taking a look at the Plextor PX-EH25L which is a Network Protected Storage system. It’s not bulky as you would imagine, but rather looks like an over glorified HDD enclosure. Sadly, it’s hard to set up and lacks Gigabit ethernet… odd.

It’s hard to believe that the time is actually upon us… where people can safely have 1TB of HDD space in their PC. That’s what Bjorn3D has in their computer, which consists of two Seagate 500GB Barracuda drives. They take a look at the performance as a single drive and in RAID 0. The day Rojak Pot stops regularly updating their guides will be a bad day. They have updated their Desktop Graphics Card Comparison Guide this morning, so check it out!

Cases & Enclosures
• AplusCase Trooper Case – Technic3D
• Cooler Master Praetorian 730 – PC Perspective
• Ultra Aluminus ATX Mid-Tower Case – Overclockers Online
• Zalman HD160 HTPC Enclosure – Virtual-Hideout

Cooling
• Arctic-Cooling Accelero X1 – Legion Hardware
• Cooler Master NotePal Laptop Cooler – Hardware Secrets
• Thermaltake BigWater 735 Water Cooled AMD & Intel Heatsink – A1-Electronics
• Vantec Iceberg 5 VGA Cooler – GideonTech

Memory & Storage
• Corsair TwinX 2048-4000PT – Driver Heaven
• GeIL Ultra Platinum PC4000 1GB DDR1 Memory Kit – Hardware Logic
• Seagate 160GB Momentus 5400.3 Hard Drive – Rojak Pot
• Seagate 500GB Barracuda 7200.9 SATA II HDD – Bjorn3D

Peripherals & Power Supplies
• Cooler Master Real Power 550W Power Supply – Big Bruin
• Logitech MX510 Gamers Mouse – XS Reviews
• Plextor PX-EH25L-NA NAS Device – HotHardware
• Saitek P990 Dual Analog Gamepad – Future Looks
• Slim Devices Squeezebox Network Media Player – ThinkCE

Video Cards & Monitor
• Desktop Graphics Card Comparison Guide Rev. 10.3 – Rojak Pot
• Gainward 7900 GT – Technic 3D
• Gigabyte Geforce 7800GT 256MB VIVO – XS Reviews
• MSI NX 7800GT – 3D Chip

Etcetera & Contests
• Antispyware: HitmanPro 2.4 – HardwareXL
• Cebit 2006: Day 3 – techPowerUp!
• Linux: “Why Ubuntu Needs CNR” – XYZ Computing
• Mustek MP100 Portable DVD Player – Think Computers
• Podcast: Origami, PS3, and the Big Dell-Alienware Rumor! – Design Technica