Month: November 2007

Intel D201GLY2 Mini-ITX mainboard

The D201GLY turned heads when it appeared in May this year. An embedded ULV Celeron 215 processor on a mini-ITX board from Intel at a rock-bottom price was definitely worthy of notice. The just-released D201GLY2 improves the board with two SATA channels and lower power draw with a Celeron 220. We examine the new board

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Sparkle Power SPI220LE 80 Plus FlexATX PSU

Sparkle Power’s SPI220LE 80 Plus FlexATX power supply has such a low power rating that it’s invisible to the mainstream DIY retail market. Meant to be a part for commercial system builders, it has the distinction of being one of the “smallest” 80 Plus power supplies, which means it has 80% efficiency down to very

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Asus M2A-VM HDMI: AM2 mATX motherboard

MicroATX boards usually offer excellent value, but the Asus M2A-VM HDMI offers many features normally found on premium boards: RAID, FireWire, and gigabit ethernet. Asus also provides S/PDIF audio, displays can be connected via HDCP-compliant HDMI, DVI, VGA, component, S-Video, and even composite out. The 690G chipset also supports SurroundView, which allows the Radeon X1250

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Gigabyte Volar CPU heatsink/fan

Gigabyte’s Volar is certainly unusual. It’s a tower heatsink on a 45° angle that seems to use Intel’s stock heatsink for its fins. Throw in a frameless fan and you’ve got an odd mongrel of a heatsink. It was tough to know how it would perform ahead of time, so a full test on our

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Reflections on the Asus Eee PC

Three weeks after the Eee PC was released for retail sale to a thunderous roar of applause, we consider the hardware, the software and the significance of this new ultramobile notebook from Asus in an article that’s equal parts review and editorial.

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Silverstone GD01 and LC17 HTPC Cases

Silverstone has a huge lineup of home theater PC cases. The GD01 and LC17 are mid-size models that can accommodate ATX motherboards. They look quite different at a quick glance, especially when the GD01 is equipped with the optional VFD, but under the skin they’re almost identical. How well do they perform the role of

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Seagate Momentus 7200.2 160GB 2.5″ hard drive

Seagate is one of three manufacturers now making 7,200 RPM Notebook drives. Their Momentus 7200.1 was an acoustic disappointment, but it’s been updated with Perpendicular recording and fall detection in the 7200.2. Did the improvements extend to the acoustics?

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Asus EN8600GT Silent/HTDP/512M Graphics Card

A fanless, silent version of the Asus 8600GT graphics card turned up in our lab recently. This is identical electronically to another Asus card we reviewed recently, except it has 512mb of RAM. Is the passive cooling solution good enough for a hot, low airflow, silent system?

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Zalman VF1000 LED Graphics Card Cooler

The Zalman VF1000 LED VGA cooler features 100% copper, four heatpipes, and a massive array of linear fins. It has all the makings of a lean, mean cooling machine. We’re going to pit it against one of its predecessors, the Zalman VF900-CU — which for more than a year has been a favorite for those

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Moneual MonCaso: Touchscreen Gadgetry and Solid Cooling in One?

The Home Theater market is burgeoning with so many high end cases that it takes something special to stand out. Moneual hopes that something is an LCD touchscreen. Their idea gets our gadget juices running, but the devil is in the details, and we expect good software, good thermal design, and excellent acoustics to go

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