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Today we are going to look at the Gigabyte Z77X-UP4 TH which is aimed at the mainstream market. It boasts an impressive feature set which includes dual thunderbolt connectors and Gigabyte’s latest Ultra Durable 5 technology. The ‘P’ in the model number tells us that it features the Ultra Durable 5 technology which differs from the ‘D’ used for Ultra Durable 4
Other interesting features include a full complement of USB 3.0 ports,
PCI Express 3.0 and various overclocking technologies that should let us
squeeze a lot more power out of the i7-3770K that we’ll be using for
testing today.
Gigabyte Intel Z77 Dual Thunderbolt ATX Motherboard (GA-Z77X-UP4-TH)
Price $181.05
Kingston is one of the companies that are offering new memory modules for the Ivy Bridge platform in a very competitive market. We've seen many kits from Kingston over the past few years and their HyperX modules are well known for high performance.
Today we're looking at an 8GB kit of Kingston HyperX T1 modules that run at 1866MHz speed. They continue the large HyperX heat spreaders, though this time they're black instead of blue. They should look great in just about any motherboard, so let's see what prowess these Kingston modules can muscle on our test bench.
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Price $78.90
The ECS Z77H2-A2X motherboard is compatible with Intel Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge CPUs. It has four DDR3 memory slots up to 2800MHz in its top overclocked mode, there's two PCI Express 3.0 x16 slots, four Serial ATA 3.0 ports (and two Serial ATA 2.0 ports), Gigabit Ethernet, USB 3.0, and all of the other features that an enthusiast would expect from a top-end Intel motherboard.
The ECS Z77H2-A2X motherboard also carries the other "special features" from the vendor like a super alloy choke, ECS Nonstop Technology, Gold "4" Ever, Lucid Virtu Universal MVP, M.I.B. X, 15u Gold Contact, etc.
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ECS Z77H2-A2X LGA1155 Intel Z77 Motherboard
Price $210.97
If you are a gamer, lack space for your next gaming build and infatuated with the colors black and red then I think we have your very next motherboard on hand. It is the new Fatal1ty Z77 Professional-M from Asrock.
A gaming motherboard marketed by a gamer for gamers. The Asrock Fatal1ty Z77 Professional-M Z77 motherboard has the making to being a big hit with the masses as it offers a great many features for less than of the ASUS Gene series. When a mainboard like this comes along it may be a hit with the gamers but it has to overclock well to be a hit with the enthusiast crowd.
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Price $239.99
The MSI R7850 Power Edition OC graphics card has 2GB of DDR5 memory and it is equiped with the latest TwinFrozr IV heatsink and cooler. The reference Radeon HD 7850 cards are clocked at a 860 MHz core frequency and the GDDR5 memory runs at 4.8 Gbps (effective data rate as GDDR5 has a quad data-rate, so effectively that quadruples that number), the memory bus is 256-bit.
The MSI R7850 Power Edition OC with TwinFrozr IV cards are however clocked at 950 MHz. The memory clock remains reference though.
The board's overall power consumption from idle to load is slightly higher than reference. Expect an idle wattage of roughly 10 Watts and, when the monitor goes into power save mode, the card throttles down even lower to 3 Watts. We measured the TDP for the 7850 at roughly 100~110 Watts.
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MSI Radeon HD7850, 2GB GDDR5, Mini DisplayPortx2, DVI-I, HDMI, PCI Express 3.0 Graphics Card R7850 Twin Frozr 2GD5/OC
Price $219.99
The current ultrabooks are quite similar to each other. But manufacturers are trying to attract the buyers attention this way or another.
The best feature of Lenovo IdeaPad U300s ultrabook is the possibility to charge the battery to 50% in 30 minutes. Also, the battery charges to 95 percent in 66 minutes so actually it is almost fully charged available in an hour. When fully charged, the Lenovo IdeaPad U300s ultrabook can run for more than 4 hours on battery.
Other advantages of the IdeaPad U300s ultrabook are its light weight, thickness, fairly fast intel CPU and of course 128 GB SSD. The IdeaPad U300s have a 13.3 inch glossy matrix display at 1366 x 768 pixel resolution.
Listed below are the technical specifications of Lenovo IdeaPad U300s ultrabook:
- CPU: Intel Core i5-2467M: 1,6 GHz (up to 2.3 GHz w/ mode Turbo Boost) 2x256 KB of L2 3 MB L3
- Chipset: Intel QS67
- Graphics card: Intel HD 3000 integrated into the CPU
- Screen: 13.3-inch, 1366x768 w/ Glossy finish, LED
- Memory: 4GB, DDR3-1333 (single module)
- Hard disk: 128 GB SSD (JMicron JMF616)
- Interfaces: 1 x USB 3.0, 1 x USB 2.0, 1 x HDMI 1.4, 1 x composite audio input (mini-jack 3,5 mm)
- Wi-Fi: Wi-Fi/WiMAX (Intel Centrino Wireless-N 1030 BGN HMC)
- Bluetooth: 3.0
- Sound card: Conexant Cx20590
- Two speakers, microphone
- Battery: 6 cell battery 54 Wh
- Dimensions: 324x216x14, 9 (mm)
- Weigh: 1.315 kg
- Operating system: Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 (64 bit)
So what is it that makes the Live Duo better than just an ordinary external drive?
Well for one thing, at 4 terabytes of space, you’re not going to be running short any time soon, thanks to the two drives hidden away in the device.
Secondly, the drive also features RAID0 or RAID1 support – in RAID0 mode you’ll have access to storage on both drives, so when one drive is full, your data will be diverted to the second drive. In RAID1 mode, you’ll only have half the storage capacity (2TB in this case), but anything you copy onto the device is mirrored on both drives.
So in the event of one of the drives failing, you simply slot it out and add in a new one without losing a single byte of data.
With the drive up and running, I decided to run some simple tests to see what my transfer speeds would be.
In RAID0 mode, I was able to transfer a single 1.67GB file at about 52MB/s and with RAID1 mode the same file clocked roughly 43.2MB/s – this was with my test PC connected via LAN and not wirelessly.
While the transfer speeds aren’t as fast as some larger network storage solutions, it’s nothing to be disappointed at; given the size and cost of the Live Duo, it performed respectfully well with reading and writing whatever I threw at it. Swapping between RAID0 and RAID1 mode was very simple, however the drive did warn me to take a backup of everything first before swapping over. The switch actually took about 4 minutes to accomplish, but after that the drive had to ‘reinitialize’, which took roughly 4 hours to finish.
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Price $343.99
The flagship model in Sony's High Performance Cyber-Shot series, the new HX200V superzoom succeeds the HX100V in the process boosting the headline resolution from 16.2 megapixels to 18.2 effective megapixels from an Exmor R CMOS sensor. On the Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-HX200V compact camera we're blessed with the choice of a crystal clear tilt-up or angle down LCD display plus an electronic viewfinder (EVF); the latter ranged directly above the former on the backplate.
For those looking to shoot in low light, the HX200V's maximum light sensitivity now stands at ISO 12800, similar to a mid-range DSLR, while auto focus in dimmer conditions is claimed to be significantly quicker at 0.2 seconds at 3EV.
JPEG images from the Sony Cyber-Shot HX200V show good signal to noise ratio results, however the improved results after ISO 3200 comes at the cost of detail, which is smoothed in-camera to reduce noise.
Generally the Sony DSC HX200V digital camera comes across as helpful no matter what the level of your experience. If you just want to point and shoot, then you can; if you want to get more hands on and exert user control, then the camera will - mostly - simplify the route to you being able to do so.
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Price 407.00
The Dell UltraSharp U3011 LED Monitor is the most feature rich and flexible 30-inch panel there is right now on the market. Everything you would expect to see in a 30-inch monitor is present and accounted for in the U3011, plus a whole bunch extra. Most notably, the U3011 has more connections than a fast-talking Hollywood agent.
It's factory tuned for out-of-the-box performance and compatible with 100 percent sRGB and 99 percent AdobeRGB standards for pinpoint color accuracy. With 30 inches of screen real estate, the U3011 is both big and heavy. It tips the scales at nearly 34 pounds and takes up 22.5 inches (H) by 27.34 inches (W) by 8.32 inches (D) of real estate when the stand is fully extended. At its lowest point, the monitor stands 18.95 inches tall. The panel itself measures 17.85 inches (H) by 27.34 inches (W) by 3.27 inches (D) and can be removed from the base.
Despite the 7ms rating on the U3011, it's a darn good panel for gaming. In our testing, the U3011 didn't succumb to obvious ghosting, streaking, or other unwanted anomalies that affect lower quality displays. If you have the horsepower, gaming on a 30-inch monitor with a 2560x1600 resolution and all the eye candy maxed out is an awesome experience.
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Price $1,122.12
The Sony Cyber-Shot DSC TX20 is a sleek, rugged ultra compact digital camera. It's a great camera for people who want something that can withstand a day by the pool or hiking in the mountains. It has a plenty of fun shooting options. Some of the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-TX20's specifications include a 16-megapixel image sensor, a 4x optical zoom (f3.5-4.6 aperture; 25-100mm focal length) and image stabilization. Images are shot in JPEG format and have a maximum resolution of 4608 x 3456-pixels and movies are shot in MP4 format at a maximum of 1920 x 1080-pixels (60 frames per second). Supported storage media includes SD/SDHC/SDXC and MemoryStick Pro Duo.
The Sony Cyber-shot DSC-TX20 is designed to be dustproof, drop resistant for 5-feet and waterproof for up to 16 feet. The camera measures 3.9 x 2.3 x 0.7-inches (whd) and weighs 4.7-ounces. The small size means that it is ultracompact, but that can also mean bad things for users with small hands.
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Price $289.00
Today we are taking a look a the Division 4 kit of the Viper Xtreme Series, which is designed specifically for Intel’s X79 platform and 2nd generation Core™ processors. We are checking out the PXQ316G1866ELQK kit, which is a 16GB kit running at 1866MHz with timings of 9-11-9-27 at 1.65V.
Patriot actually has 3 different Viper Xtreme lines of memory. First is the Viper Xtreme line, which is designed for older systems (X58, P55). Second is the Division 2 line, which are all dual-channel kits and are designed for Intel’s 2nd generation Core processors. Finally we have the Division 4 line, which are all quad-channel kits and designed for Intel’s X79 platform. So if you didn’t guess already the kit we are checking out today is made up of 4 modules, with each module being 16GB.
Overclocking memory on the X79 platform is pretty is because for the most part you are overclocking the memory independently of the processor. The first thing I always try to do is bump the memory up to the next step, which in this kit’s case is 2133MHz. To my surprise the system booted just fine and I ran a stability test and things were fine. So this kit will run at DDR3-2133 with timings of 9-11-9-27 with no voltage adjustment at all! This was very impressive as when you are bringing memory up this high you usually need to adjust the timings and voltage.
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Price $118.71
Today we put one of the most interesting of the ASUS boards under the microscope. The Maximus V GENE Z77, a pint sized mATX product that packs a ridiculous number of features into a compact design. A few notable features on the ASUS Maximus V GENE Z77 include: SupremeFX III audio, LucidLogix Virtu MVP, GameFirst, Intel Gigabit LAN, mPCIe Combo, Extreme Engine Digi+ II, PCI-E 3.0, and SLI/CrossFire On-Demand.
ASUS has included a handy utility with the GENE to automatically overclock the system called CPU Level Up. CPU Level Up allows for quick and easy CPU overclocking by simply enabling the feature in the BIOS where there are three levels available for our 3770K: 4.2GHz, 4.4GHz, and 4GHz. Once you select one, the board resets and both a CPU and memory overclock are applied. The result is a boost from stock speed (optimized defaults, Turbo enabled) of 3,900Mhz to an instant 4,600Mhz with no effort whatsoever! Not only do we have a very nice CPU overclock with CPU Level Up, but the GENE also gave a modest overclock to the memory with 1866Mhz at 11-13-13-35 1T. This is among the best auto overclocks we have seen to date. The system was rock stable at 4.6Ghz while using the CPU Level Up feature and we were able to run all stress tests and benchmarks without any issue. For reference load, Vcore was at 1.328v and load temperatures in the mid 70s for the auto OC of 4.6Ghz.
The last thing we tested was how the 3770K would overclock while undervolted. At 1.1V Vcore, we could push the chip to 4.3GHz with temps averaging 46C after an hour of load. This could be a good option for folders or those running low power, low heat machines.
All in all, Ivy Bridge overclocking really is quite easy in comparison to Sandy bridge-E for example since there are less variables involved. The GENE was a pleasure to work with and the BIOS was virtually bug free.
With a brand new platform, growing pains often exist but users will be happy to know that one of the only issues they will encounter will be the crazy heat omitted by an overclocked Ivy Bridge chip. We thought that ASUS did such a good job with the GENE that we are left wondering what they have left up their sleeve for the flagship Maximus V Extreme Z77.
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Price $199.99
While the ViewSonic V3D231 may not be the smallest or thinnest monitor we have seen recently, this 23” display does have a surprisingly small footprint. Otherwise, it retains all of the nondescript qualities we like in gaming monitors. It was also good to see a somewhat generous list of input options on this TN monitor. You may not get a DisplayPort, but you do get HDMI 1.4, analog VGA, and DVI which is a step up from some other sets on the market. This is in addition to the 3.5mm stereo-in port for the built-in SRS Premium speakers and a 3.5mm stereo-out port for headphones.
The software that accompanies the V3D231 consists of the TriDef package. This is where the magic happens. The TriDef suite is responsible for converting 2D images to 3D as well as interpreting 3D content in a manner that can be displayed on a passive 3D monitor.
Although the ViewSonic V3D231 has an impressive color gamut, it doesn’t have what we would consider an impressive default color profile. The colors are close to being accurate, but the forwardness of the red and blue defaults combined with a slightly weak green default hinder this monitor slightly. The result is a color profile which is close to excellent but not perfect. Thankfully, setting this right is nothing more than a quick and easy fix away. The default colors can make for a very odd color palette that will need to be corrected ASAP, but thanks in no small part to actual physical buttons and a decent onscreen display, manually tweaking the ViewSonic V3D231 to a semblance of correctness is a relatively quick and painless procedure. In grand total it took us approximately 12 minutes to get the colors close, with an additional 10 minutes to dial them in as close to perfection as we could. It was then a relatively simple procedure to adjust the gamma via Windows’ built-in mode. In grand total it took us less than half an hour to get what was a fairly poor color profile to one that would be acceptable to all but the most finicky of users.
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Price $264.99
Netbooks sales are dwindling, and it's easy to see why. While consumers remain keenly interested in ultraportable computers, they clearly prefer tablets to tiny Windows PCs. Let's take a closer look at the Transformer Pad 300 to see how it stacks up. At 9.9 mm thick, the Asus Transformer Pad 300 is a little fatter than the 8.3-mm Prime. The docks are actually comparable in thickness. The Transformer's DRAM memory still weighs in at 1GB, but it's DDR3 instead of DDR2.
The Asus' Transformer Pad 300 tablet screen is pretty good. Our colorimeter tells us the backlight offers 324 cd/m² of brightness at its maximum setting. The IPS panel serves up 1280x800 pixels.
With the dock attached, the Transformer very much resembles an ultraportable notebook. The weight balance is a little different, though. On a notebook, the screen is usually much lighter than the base because it's just an LCD. The Transformer's screen is the entire tablet—battery and all—and it weighs 16% more than the dock. Put the two together, and the combo is decidedly back-heavy when open.
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Price $405.89
Fans are such an integral part of any computer system that you often overlook how important they are. Now you're thinking to yourself, 'Aren't all fans the same'? No, they are not.
In this review we will be looking at four 120mm fans from Arctic Cooling. These fans are all part of the F12 cooling series and feature a variety of different technologies to fit your particular application. The fans in this review are all different but come in two basic styles with two different configurations each.
The first Arctic F12 fan is a standard high performance case fan featuring a 1350 RPM fan speed, Fluid Dynamic Bearings and moving 57CFM. This next fan is the Arctic F12 TC which is identical to the standard F12 in outward appearance and specifications. TC stands for Temperature Control and will vary the fan speed based on ambient temperature. The sensor is calibrated to keep the case temperature between 30c and 40c. The fan does this by adjusting the fan speed between 300rpm and 1350rpm as the interior temperature rises above 32c. At 38c the fan should be spinning at full RPM.
The Pro Series is available in three basic configurations, standard (without rpm control), TC for thermal rpm adjustments and PWM to be controlled by the motherboard in response to system load and temperature. The Pro Series fans are quite impressive and offer, in a single fan, many of the things modders look for to increase cooling performance. The first is the inverted design that positions the fan away from the cooling surface. This reduces fan noise and increases airflow in situations where you have a perforated fan opening.
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Price 7.97
New ARCTIC COOLING F12 120 Mm Case Fan With Patented PWM Sharing Technology Extremely Quiet
Price $12.99
ARCTIC COOLING F 12 PRO TC ARCTIC F 12 PRO TC 120MM 400-1300RPM FAN
Price $9.99
Today we’ll be looking at one of Raidmax’s latest cases, the Seiran. It is available in a multide of colors and offers superior cooling and flexibility for those with multiple drives. The case keeps up to par with the latest cases by including USB 3.0, SSD support, cable management, and tool-free installation methods. The entire front panel of the case is made up of 9, 5.25” removable mesh bays, allowing you to move your drives anywhere you’d like.
The opposing side of the case shows the plenty of room available for cable management as well as the 9 additional tool-free devices for 5.25” drives, giving you an even more secure installation. You should be able to manage your cables pretty easily with the Raidmax Seiran mid tower case.
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Price $79.99
Today we will be taking a look at what Gigabyte offer at the low-end via the M-ATX Z77MX-D3H motherboard. The Gigabyte GA-Z77MX-D3H LGA1155 motherboard features Ultra Durable 4 components and seeks to provide a stepping stone for those wanting to build a compact Intel Z77 system on a budget. On Gigabyte Intel Z77 motherboards, Gigabyte have implemented dual BIOS so that even if there is a power surge or another type of fault – the secondary BIOS is used and avoids having a complete system shutdown. Anti-surge ICs have also been included to prevent power surges from taking place.
Overclocking with Ivy Bridge is identical to Sandy Bridge. It is achieved by altering the multiplier rather than the BCLK. So the BCLK stays at 100MHz and the multiplier is modified. The Intel Core i5 3750K CPU managed to overclock up to 45 – 4.5GHz from 3.40GHz, a 32% overclock. This is a significant increase and required 1.38 vcore. Temperatures at 4.5GHz with 1.38v rose to approx. 75C across all cores.
The performance benchmarks revealed that this motherboard can offer similar and in some cases, better performance. Overclocking as per other reviews identified some key advantages were video encoding and raw CPU processing power is concerned.
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Price $141.44
The new Sapphire HD7970 OC graphics card features switchable dual BIOS chips and dual cooling fans all on one PCB for maximum cooling and overclock stability. The SAPPHIRE HD7970 OC Edition features Sapphire’s new dual-extractor technology called Dual-X, which is a highly efficient multi-heatpipe cooler with dual fans providing quiet and very cool operation during normal operating conditions, and superb cooling performance even under extreme load due to superb its cooling features.
The Sapphire HD7970 OC Edition 3GB DDR5 graphics card ships with a raised core clock speed of 950MHz and 1425MHz for the memory.
The HD 7970 is currently the top of the line flagship card for AMD’s 7 series of cards and it comes equipped with 2GB of GDDR5 memory, which allows for better Multi-Monitor performance and for High-resolutions of 2560X1600 to play much better than previous generation graphics cards.
Superior cooling and instant overclocking make the Sapphire Dual-X HD 7970 a step above the usual reference based cards and having the protection of its dual BIOS makes it very overclocker friendly.
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Price $439.99
Today on the new test bench we have the latest Antec HCG-620M power supply, a 620 modular unit targeted towards the mid-end segment of the market and more specifically gamers.
The latest Antec High Current Gamer 620W M is a modular version of the HCG-620 i had the chance to test a while ago but since modular cabling affects the performance of a power supply i thought it would be nice to see just how good the new HCG-620 M really is. Certainly the high current gamer series is not Antec's top line of power supply units but it offers a very good performance/price ratio which is indeed what most gamers are after when looking to buy a new unit.
The box contains the HCG-620M power supply placed inside a bag, the user's manual paper (product overview), 4 mounting screws, AC power cord and the modular cables.
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Price $89.99
The Zalman CNPS8900 Extreme is a low-profile CPU cooler. It has two heatpipes which have direct contact with the CPU and a 110 mm transparent fan.
We tested the cooler with a Core i5-2500K CPU (quad-core, 3.3 GHz), which is a socket 1155 processor with a 95 W TDP (Thermal Design Power). In order to get higher thermal dissipation, we overclocked it to 4.0 GHz (100 MHz base clock and x44 multiplier), with 1.3 V core voltage (Vcore). This CPU was able to reach 4.8 GHz with its default core voltage, but at this setting, the processor enters thermal throttling when using mainstream coolers, reducing the clock and thus the thermal dissipation.
The Zalman CNPS8900 Extreme CPU cooler specifications:
- Application: Sockets 775, 1155, 1156, 1366, AM2, AM2+, AM3, AM3+, and FM1 processors
- Fins: Aluminum
- Base: Copper
- Dimensions: 4.7 x 4.7 x 2.4 inches (120 x 120 x 60 mm) (W x L x H)
- Heat-pipes: Two 6-mm copper heatpipes
- Fan speed: 2,800 rpm
- Noise level: 35 dBA
- Weight: 14.1 oz (400 g)
The Zalman CNPS8900 Extreme is a beautiful CPU cooler, with a low profile (2.36 inches or 60 mm) and good cooling performance for this category of cooler.
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Price $47.32
