Tech News
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Putting SATA 3.0 to Work with Areca ARC-1880i and Crucial C300 256GB SSDs
Published: Saturday, November 27, 2010 | By: DennisOk we all know the benefits of RAID disks over single disks and while the advent of faster onboard controllers and software RAID has made addon RAID cards virtually obsolete (in the enthusiast PC) you can't ignore the performance gains. Provided you are willing to pay for the opportunity to use them.
TweakTown decided to put a couple of SSD drives to the test, and in an attempt to further expand the "no duh" factor associated with the speed of both SSD and RAID they combined them together. To do so they attached these drives to the latest hardware RAID controller from Areca and ran a few benchmarks.
Today our focus is on SATA 3.0, the latest computer bus interface for mass storage devices like hard drives and of course solid state disk drives. SATA Revision 3.0 or SATA 6 Gbit/s as it is also known replaced SATA 2.0 with several improvements including importantly for us here today a doubling of the maximum throughput from 375MB/s to 750MB/s per connected device.
What do you do with all that extra bandwidth that is offered by the new bus? You put it to work, of course! We hit up the folks over at Areca about a brand spanking new SATA 3.0 SAS controller that they have started selling and they obliged our request and sent on over one of their new ARC-1880i controllers for the job. Next up, we needed something to connect up to this shiny new RAID controller and we enlisted the help of the folks over at Crucial for this part of the mission. They were friendly enough to ship over no less than four of their RealSSD C300 256GB SATA 3.0 solid state disk drives.Yep, you guessed it, it's fast
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NL: Review Block - Gigabyte Edition - All Giga All the Tyme
Published: Monday, November 22, 2010 | By: DennisIn no particular order, some random Gigabyte reviews from around the web (localized to the Ninjalane Newswire)
- Gigabyte P67A-UD4 motherboard @ FunkyKit
- GIGABYTE GV-N480SO-15I Super Overclock @ techPowerUp
- Gigabyte H55N USB3 Mini-ITX review @ Guru3D
- Gigabyte Aivia K8100 Gaming Keyboard @ Pro-Clockers
- Gigabyte HD 6850 review @ t-break
- OC3D: Gigabyte GTX480 SOC Review
- OC3D: Gigabyte P67A-UD7 Preview
- Gigabyte GeForce GTX 480 SOC review @ Guru3D
- GIGABYTE GA-P67A-UD7 Preview @ Bjorn3D
- Funky Kit Review: Gigabyte M6980 Gaming Laser MouseI see a few P67 "Previews" in there, seems that P67 boards are out in the wild.
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Clocking Up Old Hardware - Worthless or a Gem??
Published: Sunday, November 21, 2010 | By: DennisThere is no mistake that most everyone has some old computer hardware laying around, maybe an old desktop you no longer use, or some old PC's at work the IT guys are too lazy to throw out.
Believe it or not but those parts might be worth something, on HWBot.
Most computer enthusiasts are all about current technology, they need to have the latest and greatest for bragging rights or points. In terms of HWBot usage (competitive overclocking) the latest processor combined with one or more of the latest video card(s) can easily go a long way in getting a big score. However those points are in high demand and will likely be lost overnight.
How do you overcome this?? Bench some of that old gear you have and lock up points that have a tendency to stay awhile. For instance Slngsht (from the Ninjalane Forums) has racked up over 50 points benching P3 processors he bought on Ebay. No special cooling required, just a board with plenty of bios controls
This actually inspired me to unbox my old development server and make a couple runs. Believe it or not but a dual processor P3 450 still has some life left. My latest endeavor is to tackle what I am calling "The 12 Hour Challenge" (name shamelessly taken from Slngsht). In this challenge you must submit 5 SuperPi 32m scores that take over 12 hours to complete. Not only is this a complete opposite of what you normally try to do with SuperPi but tests your nerves and knowledge to make a system slow enough to actually "pass" the test.
Check out the SuperPi 32m "12 Hour Challenge" thread in the Forum for more details.
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Sapphire HD6850 Toxic @ LanOC Reviews
Published: Friday, November 19, 2010 | By: DennisRemember that new nVidia card, the GTX 580?? Well the new cooler features a technology that was first introduced by this company in the VaporX line of products.
Only a few weeks ago AMD introduced their 6800 series cards featuring both the 6850 and 6870. We covered the 6870 with both Single and Dual card reviews. It didn’t take long to see non-reference designs coming from Sapphire with their Toxic HD6850 being announced today. We have had the pleasure of putting the card through its paces to see how it compares to the 6870 in both price and performance. With the GPU being clocked at 820MHz over the stock 775MHz and a memory frequency bump of 400MHz, from 4000Mhz to 4400MHz it should perform well. But with a few less shaders, compaired to the HD6870, will it hold its own? How will it compaire to Nvidia's offerings?
So, when did Sapphire change their board colors from Red to Blue? I guess it has been awhile now, Doh!.
So long red PCB.
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Prolimatech Super Mega and Armageddon Review @ XSReviews
Published: Thursday, November 18, 2010 | By: DennisMonster cooler anyone?? Heatpipe tower coolers have become the new standard in aftermarket cooling and it would seem everyone has a different idea as to how the heatpipes should be placed.
Prolimatech appears to think inline pipes is the way to go.
This time we are going to take a look at serious air cooling. Prolimatech is known as a producer of high quality air coolers which stand the test against most concurrents. Today we are going to look at two of Prolimatech top air coolers, the thin but wide Armageddon and the proper and copper, Super Mega heatsinks. Both coolers will be matched against each other and valued for their respective prices and market position.
While we cannot fully agree with the design layout people seem to still like the performance.
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SilverStone Sugo SG07 Mini-ITX PC Case Review @ Legit Reviews
Published: Thursday, November 18, 2010 | By: DennisWhen it comes to cool cases Silverstone has the market covered.
SilverStone has done a nice job with their Sugo SG07 and accomplished what they set out to do. Build a small form factor case that will house the biggest graphics cards available while having the built-in power to handle it and the rest of the system. All this comes with the quality and aesthetics that one expects from a company like SilverStone...
This particular case has been on display at the various trade shows (CES / Computex) for over a year now and is positioned to be "the" MiniITX case to buy if your board is anything but an Atom.
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P67 Sandy Bridge Previews
Published: Monday, November 15, 2010 | By: DennisIntel P67 is due to be released in the next couple months but we are already starting to see boards, at least in pictures. Below we have some of the new designs from ASUS, we have already seen some P67 motherboard designs from Gigabyte.
Intel P67
- ASUS P67 Sandy Bridge Motherboards @ PureOverclock
- P8P67, Maximus IV Extreme and Sabertooth 2 @ Legit Reviews
- ASUS P67 'Sandy Bridge' Motherboards Preview @ Hardware Canucks
- OC3D: Asus P67 1155 Sandybridge Sneak Peak
- ASUS P8P67 Deluxe Quick Preview @ HardwareHeaven
- Asus details Sandy Bridge motherboard lineupIn other Sandy Bridge news we have some actual names to link with the various processors.
Intel updates Sandy Bridge processor lineupIntel is set to launch several Sandy Bridge-based low-power processors under its Huron River platform, Core i7-2640LM, 2620LM, 2630UM and 2610LM, as well as Core i5-2530UM, in addition to its Core i7-2920XM, 2820QM, 2720QM and 2620M, and Core i5-2540M and 2520M, according to sources from notebook players.
So far we have seen P67 boards from ASUS, Gigabyte and ECS but what about the other players in the market like EVGA and Foxconn?? Well according to my sources their silence is held based on threats from Intel to withhold product.
Every motherboard is dependent on the chipsets and Intel is more than willing to hand out chipset designs provided the mobo makers can honor the strict NDA. This is one of the joys of owning the sole license to processor architecture. Had nVidia been allowed to produce Sandy Bridge chipsets we likely wouldn't have seen preview products until right at launch day.
As we have seen there are some cases where Intel allows for that NDA to be broken in what can be described as, targeted marketing. In this case they are allowing the top sellers to release previews of their designs in hopes that it will enhance sales and basically telling everyone else to suffer. Of course these P67 previews are "worthless" in the hands of the public since the processors are not available. Even media outlets are denied product until Intel decides it is ok to release them.
This kind of begs the question "Why even bother?" -
NL: Review Block - Cooling Video and Storage
Published: Monday, November 15, 2010 | By: DennisStorage
- OCZ RevoDrive X2 PCIe SSD Review @ HardwareHeaven
- OCZ RevoDrive PCI-E Solid State Drive Review @ OCIA
- Unsung Heroes: 14 Years of Hard Drive Performance
Cooling
- Cooler Master V6 CPU / Processor Cooler Review @ Tweaknews
Video
- Nvidia GTS-450 Graphics Card Review @ MissingRemote
- ASUS GeForce GTX 580 1.5 GB @ techPowerUp
- GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 480 SOC 1536 MB Video Card @ TT
- Gigabyte GTX 460 1GB Super Overclock @ PureOverclock -
Cooler Master Silent Pro Gold 1200W Power Supply Review @ Kitguru
Published: Thursday, November 11, 2010 | By: DennisKitGuru has posted a review of the Silent Pro 1200w PSU from Cooler Master, it's a great unit, lots of power, features a clean and quiet design and is 80 Plus Gold certified.
We actually reviewed the Silent Pro 1200w PSU some months ago and while initial impressions were extremely good those opinions changed a few months after. One of the pastimes we enjoy is overclocking, and having a good PSU is really important to get the most from your sessions. Naturally our first choice was to use the largest one in our arsenal, which happened to be the 1200W Silent Pro. Initially we didn't find any issues with the cables but it would seem that, while convenient, the breakaway plugs are a royal pain in the ass to line up and install making system setup difficult and time consuming.
Our only hope is that future editions of the Silent Pro Series come with improved cables, though we're not holding our breath. -
COD: Black Ops - Biggest Game Release Ever?
Published: Thursday, November 11, 2010 | By: DennisIt not like nobody saw this coming.
The video game publisher estimates the first-person shooter Call of Duty: Black Ops pulled in $360 million on its opening day in North America and the U.K.
Activision says 5.6 million copies of the highly-anticipated action game were sold. By comparison, last year's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 -- the previous "biggest entertainment launch in history" -- pulled in $310 million on launch day and sold 4.7 million copies.Not only does this set records in single game sales but also marks back to back sales records for Call of Duty releases. Now I just need to set aside some time to play.
