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XSPC AX Radiator Desk Stand Review
One of the biggest limiting factors in what you can do with watercooling is how much room you have in your case. With so much equipment to pack in for watercooling alone, space ends up being one of the chief concerns for builders and modders. And the single biggest limiting factor: how much radiator one can fit. Radiators are large, bulky, and inflexible in how they need to be installed. This can easily lead to the builder having to sacrifice cooling surface for space. There is a solution to this problem though; external radiator stands. And if you have chosen to use XSPC’s AX series of radiators, then you’re in luck. Today we will be looking at the AX Radiator Desk Stand from XSPC.
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Win a NZXT Phantom 630 Case!
It is summer time and it is the perfect time to give you, our readers some free hardware! We have teamed up with our friends at NZXT to give away a brand new NZXT Phantom 630 Case! This Ultra Tower not only looks good it has room for quite a lot inside like long graphics cards, XL-ATX Motherboards, 8 hard drives and a lot of watercooling! Like many of our contests we will be running this one on Facebook and it is extremely easy to enter!
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Case Mod Friday: ReactorMod
Welcome to another Case Mod Friday showcase! This week we have a builders ReactorMod build. Here is what he had to say about it: It's a modded Chieftec BX-03 case. I wanted to make it look like it's quite old and kinda shabby. I was thinking about this build for quite a long time, so I managed to collect some cool stuff that I've found on a nearby scrap yard (e.g. switch or steel sheet that I used to make the radiator cover). I also used some spare parts that I had lying around.
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Enermax Triathlor FC 550W Power Supply Review
Enermax is a brand whose strong product is their power supplies, especially when it comes to the high-end spectrum. Their Platimax and MAXREVO units are some of the best out there. But these units are not cheap in terms of cost. Enermax knows not everyone has a ton of cash to throw at a new power supply so they have created the Triathlor series of power supplies. There are actually the Triathlor and Triathlor FC units. The Triathlor units are lower wattage and non-modular and the Triathlor FC units are higher wattage and are modular. Today we are checking out the Triathlor FC 550W unit which is 80PLUS Bronze certified and offers quiet operation.
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SilverStone ARM22SC ARM Two Dual LCD Monitor Mount Review
We mainly know SilverStone for their cases and for good reason, they are high quality and look great. What if SilverStone took that same quality and put it into a LCD monitor mount? Then you would have what we are reviewing today which is the ARM Two ARM22SC dual LCD Monitor Mount from SilverStone. LCD arms are a great addition to any computer setup, especially if you are using a multi-monitor system. The ARM22SC is constructed with robust aluminum alloy and steel so this is a heavy duty piece of hardware. It will support two displays with VESA mounts. Read on as we get this installed and see how it transforms our desk.
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Win a Pivos XIOS DS Media Player!
Pivos is a company we have been working with lately and they make some pretty cool little media players. We have already reviewed their XIOS DS media player and it is a very unique device. Pivos was nice enough to give us one to give away to our readers! Just like all of our contests this one is very easy to enter and we will be running it on Facebook? So what are you doing get out there and get your entry in!
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Case Mod Friday: Black and White
Welcome to another Case Mod Friday showcase! This week we have Christian Black and White build. Here is what he had to say about it: Well this is the first time I do something like this, and it really is interesting the world of case modding the project is BLACK AND WHITE and really was a design chosen because I began to paint the cabinet only and one thing leads to another as in all cases and was thinking of some ideas for covers.
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The History Of The Hard Drive
In 1953, engineers in IBM's California-based laboratory invented the very first hard drive. Since that first disk drive, technological advances have been made at an astonishing rate, with data capacity increasing and size and price decreasing exponentially, year on year. 60 years on, the hard drives of today are unrecognizable from the first models, which took up an entire room. Hard drives today are measured in terms of gigabytes and terabytes, rather than megabytes-an amount of data that would have been almost unimaginable in the early history of computers. Here we take a look back at the evolution of the hard drive as it grew from 5MB to 4TB.
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Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 11 Review
Lenovo has been making headlines with their IdeaPad Yoga. It is a tablet convertible that can be used as a laptop as well. There are 11-inch and 13-inch models. While the larger 13-inch model has the choice of Intel Core processors, the 11-inch does not and is rather powered by the NVIDIA Tegra 3 platform. Today we will be taking a look at that unit which does offer a very sleek and slim design, responsive 11.6-inch touchscreen, Lenovo’s patent-pending hinge design that allows the screen to flip completely over and it is running Windows RT. Let’s check it out!
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Case Mod Friday: ViRoiD
Welcome to another Case Mod Friday showcase! This week we have Ben's ViRoiD build. Here is what he had to say about it: Pictures speak louder than words. Getting a 690 to fit in a prodigy is not a big deal until you start thinking about watercooling it, and a cpu, and ram. I wanted a color that matched the p8z77-i, and blue was the ticket. The orange case was chosen because of its location opposite of blue on the color wheel. Modding the front of the case to fit the 200mm rad was fun, plus it gave me some extra materials to make some psu covers with.

OCZ Vector 256GB Solid State Drive Review

Final Thoughts
If the Vector was the last ditch effort of a dying company it would be a valiant one, but I don’t see OCZ going anywhere.  The Barefoot 3 controller is what OCZ has been working towards for the past few years.  This is why they made the acquisitions they did and I am sure it is going to pay off.  Up until now OCZ used other companies technologies in their solid state drives, much like everyone else in the space.  Doing that it is really hard to stay competitive, I mean look at all the SandForce-based drives, they are basically all the same.  It has been a long rocky journey for OCZ but the Barefoot 3 controller is here, designed completely in-house by OCZ.


The Vector drive sits as OCZ’s new flagship drive and they definitely have a winner here.  As far as performance goes the Vector scored top marks in many of our tests.  One thing I really noticed when testing the Vector was how constant the data transfer was, it did not jump around a lot at all.  This really says a lot for the Barefoot 3 controller.  Another thing you don’t have to worry about is a loss in performance when it comes to incompressible data.  SandForce-based drives have this issue, but the Vector Barefoot3-based drive does not.  In ATTO Disk Benchmark the Vector scored read and write scores of 556MB/s and 534MB/s respectively.

A great surprise with the Vector drive was the new branding and design on the casing.  There is a new sticker that covers the entire drive and just looks great.  The casing now has a cool aluminum look as well.  OCZ does not skimp on accessories either.  Included with the Vector drive you have a 2.5-inch drive adapter, Acronis True Image Software and of course a cool sticker.  Not only that OCZ’s SSD tool can be downloaded it makes it very easy to update the firmware on the drive and perform a secure erase.

I think that the Vector is a step back in the right direction for OCZ.  It has everything you would expect from OCZ before they got into their troubles, great performance, great quality and a good price.  Talking about the price the Vector 256GB which review today is selling at my favorite online retailer for 269.99 and it does come with a 5 year warranty.  Overall ThinkComputers gives the OCZ Vector 256GB Solid State Drive a 10 out of 10 score and our Editor’s Choice Award!

Pros:
- Great performance
- Solid data transfer performance
- Acronis True Image software included
- Does not have the incompressible data issue like SandForce drives
- 5 year warranty

Cons:
- None that I found

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