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Category: Games
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Published: Wednesday, 20 August 2008 05:23
When I first started playing Soul Calibur 4, I was convinced it was going to be simply an upgraded version of the previous titles. The main menu screen presented several familiar options- single player, versus, character creator, and the museum. Anxious to see how the new installment ran, I jumped straight into the classic Arcade mode. Like everyone who bought SC4, Star Wars fan or not, I was curious to see how the new guest characters performed. Since I had the 360 version, my special character was Yoda, a fighter whose height often gives him an advantage parallel to that of Oddjob. While in the previous SC games one could select from several costumes and weapons, the only customization available was between two appearances. So I chose one at random and began my first match. The screen that reveals which two characters will be matched up has been upgraded; a black background with the character striking some battle poses now introduces each side. And, of course, the on-stage character intro that allows for some trash talking and taunts still exists, and even seems to posses a higher CG quality than the actual gameplay, similar to a cut scene.
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Category: Audio
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Published: Tuesday, 19 August 2008 09:28
Quality audio, despite the bemoaning of many, has proven time and again to be subjective to the listener. This allows for a wide base for competition within the industry, and serves to cause confusion among the average consumer. For instance, a quality set of 5.1 headphones can come in quite handy when gaming on the PC. You know your enemies' every move, every blade of grass crushed underfoot as they make a desperate attempt to flank you. It is a futile effort, unfortunately for them you can track them with your now acute sense of hearing. Audiophiles cry out, however, "5.1 headphones sound terrible when it comes to music!" So you can see the predicament these companies are in. By catering to one group they are ignored by the other. Tritton Technologies was kind enough to send us a pair of their AX51 5.1 Gaming Headsets in order to determine how they compare when faced with the rigors of gaming audio as well as music.
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Category: Cooling Hardware
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Published: Thursday, 14 August 2008 04:35
About a month ago we reviewed a thermal paste from GELID Solutions. After it out performed all of the other thermal pastes in the test I made a comment about how I planned on keeping an eye on this new company. Today we have a special chance to be one of the first to review their newest product (first in english). We are going to take a look at their WING 12 120mm fan. GELID Solutions WING series of fans are premium quality, UV reactive, ultra- quiet, dust and water proof cooling fans for gaming enthusiasts. We have high hopes for their fans after seeing how well their GC-1 thermal compound performed. Read more to find out how it performed.
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Category: Power Supplies
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Published: Wednesday, 13 August 2008 03:01
One of the most important PC components is the power supply. Without a good quality power supply putting out enough clean power to power your high end video card and quad core CPU, you would be stuck with a pile of useless parts. Today’s power supply’s have a lot of shoes to fill. They must put out enough power to meet any demand you will be able to throw at it, now and with future upgrades. All of the power must be clean and stable power, you wouldn’t want something to fry because you didn’t give it clean enough power. Then most recently people have been concerned about noise and aesthetics, the fans on power supply’s keep getting larger and quieter and you see things like windows and racing stripes on “gaming” power supply’s. This has also lead to the popularity or modular cabling, to me one of the best ideas to come to power supplies in years! Seasonic, one of our lans sponsors has provided us with their M12 700 watt power supply to check out.
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Category: Storage
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Published: Friday, 01 August 2008 06:00
The ability to hot swap hard drives has been around for a long time in the business market. You don’t see it as often in the home or even enthusiast market. Thermaltake came out with their BlacX recently, giving people the ability to hot swap hard drives into a small box on your desk. This gives you the ability to use hard drives the same way that tape drives and zip drives have done in the past. With 750 gig hard drives breaking under the hundred dollar mark you can backup and swap hard drives freely without worrying about running out of space. We are going to take a closer look at the USB2.0 model number N0028USU. We are going to see how it performs compared to other hard drive enclosures that we have looked at to date, along with how a product like this can change the way people backup and transfer files. Click to read more.
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Category: Networking
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Published: Thursday, 31 July 2008 06:07
The widespread use of laptops in today’s on the go lifestyle has accelerated the use of external storage due to the smaller hard drive space in laptops. With a lot of homes having more than one computer, you now have people looking for easy ways to share there files between computers. Most of the time this means you are unplugging your external and plugging it into other computers. TRITTON has produced the USB Sharenet for people who have this problem. Considering in our household we have 4 people online and sharing files at any given time this product is perfect for us, if it works the way its described. Click to find out how it worked for us.
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Category: Storage
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Published: Wednesday, 30 July 2008 00:00
I’ve talked about it before but just about every company anymore produces a hard drive enclosure. It’s hard to stand out with a product that has been done over and over again. Eagle Tech is hoping they have what it takes to stand out in this dog eat dog market with their new Consus N-Series PRO . The first thing that stands out to me from other hard drive enclosures is the mesh on both sides of the enclosure. Today we are going to take a look at the Consus N-Series PRO to see if it has what it takes.
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Category: Cooling Hardware
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Published: Thursday, 24 July 2008 05:03
Considering the performance and sound of stock video card coolers it’s amazing that more people don’t buy aftermarket coolers. As we have found out in the past one of the big hurdles is how intimidating and difficult to install they can be. Coolink a Kolink company decided to put there spin on the situation with their GFXChilla. We are going to see how it performs compared to the stock cooler along with the Thermalright HR-03 GT that we tested about a month ago. Considering that we found Coolink because they shared a book with our friends over at Noctua we have high expectations of their products. Click to see how they performed.
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Category: Storage
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Published: Wednesday, 23 July 2008 01:38
Just a few days ago I was considering building a media pc. It just so happens that VIZO provided us there Milano to review. It is described as a media hard drive enclosure. Can it prove to be an alternative to a media pc? Read on to find out...
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Category: Cooling Hardware
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Published: Wednesday, 16 July 2008 05:17
Continuing on our testing from last week, today we are checking out another thermal paste. This time is from our friends in Austria at Noctua. They have provided us with some of their NT-H1 thermal paste. We are going to put it against some of the best thermal pastes in the business along with stock thermal paste to see how it compares. I'm very excited to find out how it compares, we have had great luck with Noctua’s other products. Click to find out.
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Category: Cooling Hardware
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Published: Wednesday, 09 July 2008 05:48
When it comes to starting a new business, a PC Cooling business wouldn’t be on the top of my list. This is simply because of the amount of competition there is out there. So when you hear about a new company pops up, after you finish telling them they are crazy, you find out what there angle is. Gelid Solutions is focusing on “virtually silent, high- performance and top quality thermal solutions” sounds like something we might be interested in isn’t it? After reading a little more about their company I also noticed that it is founded by Gebhard SCHERRER and VC TRAN, both of them have been in the PC Cooling industry for a number of years. They knew what they were getting into; ether they are crazy or they know what they are doing, I’m hoping that it’s the latter. While they are working on their first heatsink release they have released there thermal paste the GELID Solutions GC1. Today we are going to check it out. Click to read more.
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Category: Input Devices
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Published: Wednesday, 09 July 2008 05:13
With Bluetooth becoming so widespread it’s not a big surprise that it is popular with the mobile computing crowd. In fact a lot of the midrange to high end notebooks are equipped with Bluetooth from the start. People with integrated Bluetooth can pick up a nice mouse like Kensington’s Si670m and not have to worry about a large USB dongle for their wireless mouse. Unfortunately my laptop doesn’t have integrated Bluetooth, but Kensington didn’t forget people like me. There USB Micro Bluetooth Adapter is made small enough to stay plugged in all of the time. Today we are going to check out the two items together. Click to read more.
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Category: Other
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Published: Friday, 04 July 2008 04:34
Having been looking for a powered USB hug to replace the junk one that came with our rock band kit I’ve learned two things. One, it’s hard to find any one hub that people can recommend. It seems the quality of almost every hub is hit or miss at best. Two it’s hard to find one that stands out. VIZO has been kind enough to send one of their “UFO” USB hubs along with a power kit. Let’s find out how they perform.
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Category: Cooling Hardware
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Published: Thursday, 03 July 2008 04:01
When we realized we would be doing a test on the Thermaltake HR-03 GT GPU heatsink we were very exited until we realized we didn’t have a 92mm fan to fit it. After a few emails Noctua was kind enough to send out one of their NF-B9’s. After finishing up testing on the NF-P12 120mm fan I already had high hopes for this 92mm. Would the NF-B9 perform up to the standard set by its big brother the NF-P12? Those are big shoes to fill, find out by clicking to read more.
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Category: Mobile
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Published: Wednesday, 02 July 2008 04:16
The word laptop is a very deceptive term. The general construction of it implies that such a device would be comfortable on a person’s lap. More often than not, however, this is not the case. They tend to heat up and nearly catch you aflame or are just plain uncomfortable. Personally, I have never used a laptop that proved comfortable after a few hours of use. Laplogic offers their own unique approach to this solution with their Aerogel Lapdesk . We had the privilege of trying their new G800 and W800 Aerogel Extreme lapdesks to see how they solve our heat and comfort woes.
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Category: Games
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Published: Tuesday, 01 July 2008 14:40
The vast majority of individuals who put their MGS4 disc into their system had been waiting for it since Hideo Kojima announced it as the final chapter of Solid Snake. Being the first in the series to be on the current next-gen systems, expectations were all the more elevated. There are few sequels that actually deliver on such prospects, especially when carrying on a storyline that has spanned over seven titles. Guns of the Patriots is really nothing new; same Snake, same stealth action, same particularly loud sound blip to let you know that yes, they’ve seen you. Which is one of the most impressive aspects of the game: its still an unbelievable experience. In an era of sequels, developers attempt to pull gamers back to a series by introducing some new aspect of gameplay, which usually ends up second-rate. MGS4 may not revolutionary, but fans of the series didn’t necessarily want something new. Besides, the series has already established itself as leader in the stealth genre. The only two features that have seen some adjustment are the camera view (Guns of the Patriots takes a more first-person view) and, of course, the graphics.
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Category: Console Hardware
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Published: Sunday, 29 June 2008 04:01
There isn’t anything like being in the middle of a game and having to stop to change batteries. Let’s hope you have fresh batteries someplace in the house. If not its going to mean you’re going to have to make a quick trip to the store to pick up few AA batteries. This is where Nyko comes in with their Charge Station for the Xbox 360. Check out what we thought of it.
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Category: Audio
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Published: Wednesday, 25 June 2008 17:11
Its news to me, but a headset is apparently very important to Gaming. All of those years I thought you could just yell at the screen. It turns out you needed a headset for everyone to hear you. SteelSeries apparently knew I was having this problem and sent me one of their 3H headsets. This is the same headset that we gave away at our last lanparty also. If it’s anything like our experiences with steel series in the past we should be happy. Click to find out
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Category: Cooling Hardware
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Published: Wednesday, 18 June 2008 06:20
As we have talked about before keeping your pc cool is very important. Considering the cost of video cards this is especially important. Not to mention that if you’re looking to get a little extra performance out of your setup you will be looking at overclocking your video card. That’s where company’s like Thermalright come into play. They are known for their top quality heatsinks. Today we will be looking at their HR-03 GT VGA Cooler. This is a redesign of one of their normal video card heat sinks made to fit some of the newer video cards. Click to read more about it.
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Category: Mobile
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Published: Wednesday, 11 June 2008 23:10
Krusell is a Swedish company who is known normally for making cases for cell phones and other portable electrical devices. They have recently branched into the laptop bag arena and have provided us with a sample for us to check out. They have provided us with a Radical Messenger bag for a 15.4” laptop. Is Krusell ready to enter the laptop market? We will find out after the jump.
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