Just got word from Julio @ TechSpot.com that their Creative SB Audigy 2 review is up.

For some, the Audigy 2 is what the original Audigy should have been, however without trying to underestimate Creative efforts, they are bringing us today a revamped soundcard that is set to raise the bar like the original Live! did, many years ago.

You will be happy to know that Creative has taken care of the board quality from the ground up, newer and better DACs are used to ensure 24-Bit/96-kHz/192kHz playback and among the rest of niceties the card offers you have DVD-Audio playback, full 6.1 surround sound, THX certification and the mandatory (for a Creative soundcard) EAX Advanced HD.

OCIA checks out the 3aCooler Z-Bra HSF in their latest review! Here's a snip.

The install of the sink was a little tricky. It was difficult to get the back side clip down and clipped onto the fingers. After several attempts to hold the front clip up and get the rear to catch, I discovered that if you lock the rear clips under the nuts that hold the mounting tabs to the block, it was easy to catch.

Just got word from Tobias @ TecCentral.de that their Elsa Gladiac 9700 Pro graphics card review has been posted! the review is available in three languages:

German
English
French

If you are in the market for an eye-candy case, this is the one. People always brag about having a window in the side of their case... What about having a case that is a window?"

VR-Zone Hardware has just posted a review of the newest Seagate SCSI drive, the Seagate 10k.6 147GB Ultra 320 SCSI harddrive. Here's a snip:

The other issue I've mentioned is that the drive is louder than most ATA drives, but is significantly quieter than the last generation of 10,000 RPM SCSI drives. Seagate both shrunk down the drives to a more manageable size, and made the drives quieter to make them more appealing to the public. Now you ask just how loud is the 10K.6? If you're running a high end heatsink fan combo that uses a TMD or louder 80mm fan, the noise is almost indistinguishable, but if you pop the drive into a system that uses water cooling or a quiet cooling solution, you'll definitely be able to hear the drive when it's working.

Just got word from Robert @ TecCentral.de that they have posted 2 new reviews: the first review is of PC Cooling power pack "Ultra silent" MR/CH, PFC, tripolarizes fan, ATX (420 Watts) power supply and the second is around of 7 Fancontrollers from the following manufactures:

OCZ, better known for their highly overclockable memory, has lately been making news for their heatsinks too. Today we'll look at the Gladiator 2 and Dominator 2-CU heatsink/fan combo's for AMD chips. We will be using the AMD retail heatsink/fan as a base comparison. For full reading warp2 Tweakhound.com.

The AiW 9700 Pro, the current flagship, doesn't come cheap. ATi has addressed the cost concerns with a new AiW 9000, but it may still be a bit pricey for some people. That is where the ATi AiW Radeon VE comes in. It's cheap, provides TV-Tuner and video editing capabilities, and is powered by the Radeon 7500, which is no screamer, but will let you play most games at acceptable framerates. Though not everyone has an AGP slot, everyone will have a PCI slot, which will work out fine since the AiW VE is a PCI part. Warp2 Viperlair for the full review.

DataFuse.net have posted their review of antec's latest product: the LANboy.

LANboy ... hmm, to be worthy of that name, it must be light, easy to carry, sweet to look at. Let's see if it got those things.

OCIA checks out the ThermalRight SK6+ HSF in their latest review. Here's a snip.

The install of the sink was a bit tricky. The back side clipped down onto the fingers very easily. The front side clip is set by using a small flat screwdriver. The screwdriver clip notch is not very tight and the screwdriver slipped out on my first attempt, but luckily I was prepared and had thick piece of rubber under the clip area. The bottom of the heat sink was highly polished and free of any burs or rough places and made good contact with the cpu core. I applied a small amount of silicone paste which was supplied with the unit and booted up.

LSDsmurf writes today that DVhardware will be taking a closer look on one of the newer cases from Antec, the PlusView 1000 AMG case. Antec is well known for its excellent cases in the past, So how about this case? Will this case be able to fit in Antecs line of high quality cases or is it a complete mistake?

VR-Zone Hardware has just posted a review of the latest nForce 2 motherboard from ABIT, revision 1.2, a board optimized for the overclocker.

Lastly we have the back panel I/O connectors, which in the NF7-S's case, are an audio junkie's dream. Including all the sound connectors necessary for a 5.1 setup along with a S/P DIF-Out connector, all the necessary hookups for almost any high end sound setup are included on the board, a great addition to the board, but this is of course at the expensive of extra back panel USB ports. The rest of the back panel features the standard PS/2, Parallel, and serial ports, as well as two USB 2.0's and a 10/100 Lan port.

After last weeks Preview of Nvidia's GeForce FX 5600 & 5200 Ultra graphics cards! Matt Burris @ 3dgpu.com lets me know that nvidia have lifted their NDA and Here are the first full review of theses cards.

Just got word that Amdmb.com have posted the first Review of VIA's KT400A Chipset! Here's a snip.

As our benchmarks will show, the KT400A is definitely an improvement over the KT400 chipset. But what actually changed on the chipset for this to happen, and why didn?t it happen earlier? While VIA was visiting Amdmb.com, I asked them these same questions and the answer to the second one was very interesting. VIA Technologies most prominent chipset designer, Wennie Chen, the mind behind the KT133A and KT266A chipsets, during the design phase of the original KT400 chipset was hard at work on the K8T400 series of chipsets for the AMD Hammer processors and thus unable to contribute a large amount of work into the Socket A chipsets then. However, now that that K8T400 is all but finalized, Wennie Chen was put to work on the KT400A ? a move that proved to be very good for VIA.

After all the buzz about the new Zalman heatpipe coolers for the high-end video cards, there were some of those less fortunate who were feeling just a little left out. But fear not! TweakTown's Mike "Darthtanion" Wright takes a look at the Zalman ZM50-HP VGA Heatpipe Cooler. It features the same quiet cooling method as the larger models but is made for those who are still using a low-end video card. Can it still maintain good results in a smaller package? Lets find out!

Although they are no strangers to motherboards, the 8RDA+ marks the first time Epox have worked with Nvidia. With the nForce2 getting a lot of good press, Viperlair takes a look at Epox's nForce2 solution, and determines if this motherboard is worth consideration.

just got word from Extension that ExtensionTech's X-Trac Standard Optical Mouse Pad review is out!

I'll be looking at something a bit different today, a cloth mouse pad. Yes, cloth. While I'm literally against cloth pads myself, for obvious reasons, I think I found one that I like. It's the X-Trac standard pad. While the pad is kind of small in comparison to a Ratpadz, or an Everglide Giganta, some people may not want a huge mouse pad on their desk. In my instance and testing, this pad was large enough to do its job, as long as you have your mouse speed turned up...?

Here's two reviews that were sent in by the guy's @ Vr-Zone: the first review is for EPoX's 8RGA+ nForce2 IGP mainboard and the second review is for Gainward's GeForce 4 PowerPack! Ultra/750-8X XP VIVO Golden Sample graphics card.

EPoX 8RGA+ nForce2 IGP: EPoX 8RGA+ board is follow up to the very popular 8RDA+ where most overclockers are getting now. This board is based on the nForce2 IGP chipset with decent set of board features such as LAN, 6 Channel Audio, Firewire and possess the same powerful set of overclocking options in the BIOS like the 8RDA+. EPoX has added an additional BIOS option to allow VDD tweaking up to 2.0V which is definitely most welcomed by many overclockers. With all these BIOS settings, i am able to increase the FSB to 220Mhz Dual Channel Mode at 2-2-2-5 memory timings and further more to 225Mhz at Single Channel Mode.

Good friend Nathan Glentworth has send us a word that an Albatron Geforce 4 MX480 has been reviewed on his site.
Article Snippit: "Seems like all you hear about in the hardware world is the high end cards. But are these cards for the everyday gamer, nope. Do you think that most people have US$200-$400 to spend on one component, nope. People today like to have a blend of value and performance and that is where the Alabatron MX480 delivers." For full read please warp2 www.tweaknews.net.

Looking for the smackdown on Sharp's latest 16" offerings? Check out G3D's latest foray and comments regarding it's D-SUB video quality, 2D imaging, resolution scaling - and oh so much more.

As you may know, all LCD monitors have a "native resolution", as they have a set number of pixels. You can't go higher, and going lower forces the monitor to stretch the image out amongst the pixels, which will obviously cost you some image quality. Now, if you're quite the gamer, then you'll know that a handful of games use a resolution of 1280x960 as opposed to 1280x1024. Why? Good question. In fact, the question should be, "Why isn't 1280x960 the standard resolution?" It should be."