Month: December 2010

Noctua NH-C14 Dual Fan Top-down CPU Cooler

Noctua’s NH-C14 is a big, beastly follow-up to the popular NH-C12P top-down CPU cooler. Armed with a bigger fin stack and two 14 cm fans, the C14 is the first down-blower cooler that truly competes against the against the formidable side-blowing towers that have taken over in recent years.

Read More

Thermalright Shaman 140mm Fan GPU Cooler

The Thermalright Shaman is a massive eight heatpipe GPU heatsink with an equally imposing 14cm fan. Taking up three extra expansion slots and weighing a total of 680 grams, this monster should have no trouble quietly cooling a high-end graphics card. We check it out on a 215W GPU.

Read More

MUKii TransImp USB 3.0 Adapter and Hard Drive Dock

The MUKii TransImp USB 3.0 adapter and hard drive dock are a pair of useful gadgets for anyone who works extensively with PCs and needs the ability to quickly access a hard drive without the bother of hooking it up inside a PC.

Read More

Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme Rev.C & AC Freezer Xtreme Rev.2

The Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme Rev.C and the Arctic Cooling Freezer Xtreme Rev.2 are two divergent different approaches to extreme CPU cooling that manage to remain in the same basic “side-blowing fan on a tower of fins joined to the base by heatpipes” design dominating the field. Is there a winner? Yes, and its by a

Read More
blog image

New high areal density 2-and-3 TB Greens from WD

Three Terabyte capacity in a 4-platter drive and 750GB/disc density is excellent, but the 2 TB model in a drive with one less disc might prove to be even better for noise and power. We examine samples of the latest WD Caviar Green models along with an earlier 2 TB 4-platter AV-optimized Green.

Read More

Asus DirectCU & AMD Radeon HD 6850 Graphics Cards

The Radeon HD 6850 is AMD’s sub US$200 entrant in the discrete graphics card market. We have two on the bench to compare, a reference sample from AMD, and the Asus EA6850DirectCU, which is overclocked, has an adjustable core voltage, and is cooled using a direct-touch heatpipe heatsink. They turn out to be winners, especially

Read More
blog image

Zalman CPU & VGA Power Consumption Meter

These are not the first power meters to bear the Zalman name. But they are the first by any PC components company that seem to offer serious CPU and VGA power measurement tools for end users.

Read More