Hardware

HighPoint RocketStor 5212 Dual Bay ThunderBolt Storage Dock Review

Check Out The HighPoint Rocketstor 5212 at Amazon! The Thunderbolt interface has been out for some time now and doesn’t seem to have caught on as many might have hoped.  Considering that it provides a significant performance boost (10Gb/s vice 5Gb/s) when compared to USB 3.0, performance over price was the hurdle that many believed could be overcome.  Marketability and …

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QNIX QX2710 27″ Evolution II 2560×1440 Monitor Review – Value Driven Korean Monitors Are a Purchase Alternative

THE DILEMMA It wasn’t so long ago that an upgrade to a 27″ 2560×1440 pixel monitor couldn’t be done for under a $1000 and these were considered the highest of niche displays for the gamer and PC enthusiast.  Today, value priced Korean units can be found  at $319 or lower, realizing at least a 50% savings when compared to current …

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Cooler Master Storm QuickFire Stealth Cherry MX Blue Mechanical Keyboard Review – Slanted Phantom Keys With A Tenkeyless Layout

Cooler Master Storm Stealth Cherry MX Blue Mechanical Keyboard featured

When we received a tour of Cooler Master’s suite at CES this year, one of the most intriguing showcases were the new keyboards. Previously, Cooler Master was not known as a company dabbling too much into gaming. This time around however, the gaming peripherals and hardware were endless. One of the biggest surprises was the CM Storm Trigger featuring Cherry MX …

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HighPoint RocketU 1144C 4-Port USB 3.0 HBA Quick Look

We have received a few e-mails about a specific piece of hardware in one of our Test Benches so I thought I might post some pictures and my thoughts on it; it is the RocketU 1144C 4-Port USB 3.0 PCI-Express HBA.  Long story short, the 1144c increases my USB 3.0 count by four but it does so much more as …

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Cougar Archon Mid-Tower Gaming Case Review – Cutting Edge, Budget-Cutting, Both, or Neither?

cougar archon featured

The mid-tower PC case market is a very crowded segment, so differentiating yourself from the competition is what is going to be required in order to become a successful product.  Even the sub-category of “gaming” mid-tower PC case is becoming populated with dozens of choices.  When we drill even further down to the sub-sub-category of “budget” “gaming” mid-tower PC case, …

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Angelbird SSD2go & Angelbird SSD2go TWIN 480GB External SSD Review – Pushing USB 3.0 To The Limit

angelbird ssd2go external usb 3.0 ssd twin 480gb 240gb feat

With the rapid progress of technology from one day to the next, concepts, ideas, inventions, and reinventions suddenly turn from wishful thinking into reality. In the case of solid-state drives the burning question was whether we would see a viable external solution. Conventional hard-drives already go their external variant primarily thanks to USB 2.0; with the raw speed and performance …

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Apotop DW17 Wi-Reader Pro Review – An Excellent Multifaceted Mobile Companion

Apotop DW17 Wi-Reader Pro

It seems as if the newest trend coming out from peripheral-based companies are a plethora of mobile companions. Starting off as battery-backup units, these devices have evolved further into capable media streamers, card readers, cloud storage clients, and wireless extenders/routers while still retaining their original purpose as a powerbank. We can effectively call them ‘mini-NAS’ units at this point. Now …

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Patriot EP Series 128GB SDXC Class 10 UHS-1 Memory Card Review

When SSDs first started to appear back in 2007, their top capacity was 32GB and pricing soared to well over $3000; such is the price of new technology.  Even today, it seems incredible that we could fit 128GB of memory into a secure digital memory card.   Capacity in a SD card is nothing without performance and today’s media enthusiasts are …

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