Every six month product cycle, the battle for the “best buy” graphics card is renewed.  During the last cycle, nVidia won with their Geforce4 Ti4200 which combined good performance with a price that many enthusiasts could live with.  nVidia hopes to keep that important market niche with their FX5600 cards.  Like the FX5900 Ultra, the FX5600...

As always, a big thanks out to Logitech for their outstanding support throughout the years. Keyboards haven’t changed much in the last couple years.  There have been some keyboard “fads” such as illuminated keys, but that seems to not have caught on.  Other advancements such as the internet keyboard, complete with onboard buttons and extra...

A big thanks out to Logitech for providing this review sample! Computer hardware usually sees great advances within short times periods as evident by the six month product cycles of graphics cards and processors.  Other “less important” pieces of hardware are relegated to sit on the back shelf, and are only updated so often.  Mice, however integral...

If you ask me, I’ll be the first person to scoff at the performance mouse pad market.  So maybe I’ve never been an extreme gamer by any stretch of the imagination with the need for extremely accurate mouse tracking and any of the other things these mouse pads promise you.  Getting to actually review one of these premium surfaces has changed my...

A big thanks goes out to Bruce at Cooltechnica for providing this review sample and for being such a great guy to work with. This product is available at Cooltechnica for $139 + $10 for the side window.As computers become more mainstream, aesthetics play a larger role in catching the attention of a-would be customer. Even OEM manufacturers are moving away from...

Crucial is a name most often associated with high quality memory.  Pity that they are so conservative, releasing memory only when a standard has been established, because Crucial memory would be much more popular if they released more highly rated sticks, following the lead of Corsair et all.  With no official standard set for speeds greater than...

An elephant-sized thank you to Albatron for providing this motherboard for review!Although Intel has already released the Granite Bay chipset, supporting dual channel memory, the prior release named 845PE has been the choice of budget builders because of the Granite Bay’s higher price point and limited availability. Albatron, a relatively new motherboard...

The need for fast memory has arisen as overclockers push their machines to the limit. Some new faces have emerged including GeIL, now offering memory sticks in speeds greater than DDR466. Today, we have one of their early memory sticks, partly due to my immensely busy schedule, which is rated for the standard DDR400 speed. 5ns GEIL GL2000 Chips (as of now)Pure...

A big thanks goes out to Scott of HighSpeedPC for not only supplying this kit, but giving me the extra equipment needed to test it to the best of my ability.  It an honor to work with such a courteous man.  Here’s to you.        Watercooling despite the anxiety and fear of mixing water and...

A big thanks goes out to ThermalRight and Zalman for providing samples. With Intel and overclockers pushing the Northwood core to speeds in excess of three gigahertz and beyond, cooling solutions have never been so prevalent. The Intel stock heatsink is a great performer in its own right, but better heatsinks are needed by overclockers to push the limits of...

Thanks out to PCMods for providing this sample. Lighted fans seem to be the current craze with the slew of reviews coming out. A complaint of my and others have been that many are not of the highest quality and available in sizes other than the standard 80mm. Typically, these fans are made of clear plastic with LEDs embedded in the rotor or along with casing....

Thanks out to PCMods for providing this sample. The constant bane of many computer users out there has been cable clutter. Not only does it not look nice at all, the jungle of wires could impede airflow and thus create higher temperatures, something that is more disconcerting than cable clutter. There are many products out on the market designed to trim the...

First off a big thanks to EasyDisk, DiskonKey, and USBDrive for providing samples so this roundup could happen. Everyone needs portable storage. But the choices we have are antiquated and not convenient. Most computers have floppy drives but their capacities are often not enough; CDRW drives are in no shortage, but they are sometimes a pain to create and might...

Introduction Immersion has been the name of the game this year. All sorts of force feedback controllers and three-dimensional monitors have been popping up in the market place all to try to immerse the player into some sort of artificial world. Force feedback has been one of the forerunners in mainstream immersion techniques, employing motors to give lifelike...

Introduction What makes a good joystick? Good Ergonomics? Lots of buttons? Aesthetics? Or cool new technology? I think it is safe to say that the VR Pro 2000 has all of these qualities. Why in fact, its “fantastic new look is achieved by its translucent Black Ice color and internal LED lighting” and “enhanced button positioning and faster,...