Category Archives: Hard drives

How often do you build a PC?

Upgrading RAM. For most avid PC types, it’s less about re-building than it is upgrading along the way. But what about everyone else?

Crucial, makers of SSDs and RAM conducted their own survey of PC users in the US, UK and France earlier this year. They have been spitting out the results over the course of the day; and these are their findings so far:

53% of people think their PCs should last much longer than 3 years.
Nearly half of Brits surveyed said “slow-speed” was their number 1 pet peeve with their PC.
49% of Brits believe a RAM upgrade would inject some performance into thier current rig.
Meanwhile 39% of Brits fear even opening up their PC, let alone upgrading parts.

Personally, I feel a decent investment in a $1,000 PC should see you through at least a few years of gaming, without having to be thinking about upgrades. But then of course there are a plethora of different desires and expectations out there, particularly when it comes to PC gaming.

What about you. Do you upgrade every time Intel blows their horn with the announcement of a new CPU, or whenever Nvidia or AMD announce a relatively beefier graphics card? Or are you more realistic and conservative with your PC buying budget?

PCMark 7 available now

PCMark 7 out now PCMark 7 is available now, having been initially slated for a May 3rd release.

The popular PC benchmarking suite from Futuremark is designed for Windows 7. Basically if you want to put your entire PC through a broad gamut of performance tests this program will give you an indication of how well your hardware is performing. You can even check and compare your score online with people who have similar or identical PC hardware.

Futuremark are offering 3 variants of PCMark 7; including a free edition which allows unlimited runs of the main test. You can download the free-edition or order the advanced or professional versions directly from the PCMark website.

PCMARK 7 BASIC EDITION – Free

Free PC test offering unlimited runs of the main PCMark test suite
Browse, search and compare results online
Store one result online

PCMARK 7 ADVANCED EDITION – $39.95 – ORDER NOW

Includes all 7 PC tests with more than 25 individual workloads
Browse, search and compare results online
Unlimited online results storage
Hide results from public view
Offline result management
Advert-free online service

PCMARK 7 PROFESSIONAL EDITION – $995.00 – ORDER NOW

Licensed for commercial PC system testing
Includes all 7 PC tests with more than 25 individual workloads
Command line automation
Browse, search and compare results online
Unlimited online results storage
Hide results from public view
Offline result management
Advert-free online service
Priority support

Nvidia giving away Duke Nukem Forever PC

Duke Nukem Forever 3D PC Nvidia is teaming up with Maingear to give away a Duke Nukem Forever, 3D-capable PC.

In anticipation for the launch of the long, long, long awaited Duke Nukem Forever, Nvidia and Maingear are giving away a 3D-capable, i7, multi-GPU, water-cooled dream machine to one lucky winner. The fortuitous participant will also get a free copy of Duke Nukem Forever, naturally.

Unfortunately entry is only open to residents of the US and Canada; if that’s you visit this page. Entries will be taken until May 31st.

Duke Nukem Forever is coming to PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 on June 10th internationally, and the US 4 days later on June 14th. You can pre-order the game on PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 from Amazon.

Kingston announce critical firmware update for V100 SSDs

Certain drives are hanging and failing to boot. A number of users are having issues with Kingston’s SSDNow V100 solid-state drives, although Kingston claims it’s a very small percentage. The problem is a failure to boot and hanging at the bios screen which can lead to drive failure.

The company released a firmware upgrade they recommend people apply immediately.

If you’re being affected by this issue or not, head on over to Kingston’s website and grab the updated firmware.

From Kingston:

We have discovered a technical issue with our SSDNow V100 which could result in drive failure. While we have observed this issue in only a small percentage of drives, Kingston strongly recommends that a firmware update be applied to all V100 drives to prevent possible failure.

The firmware update to fix the technical issue is available via Kingston Technical Support. As with any firmware update, we recommend that you back up your data prior to applying the firmware revision.

Western Digital set to buy Hitachi Global Storage for US$4.3bn

Western Digital

Hard drive giant Western Digital is set to buy Hitachi Global Storage for a cool US$4.3bn. The company will be paying US$3.5bn in cash along with US$750m worth of Western Digital shares.

This means Hitachi, Ltd. will then own approximately 10pc of Western Digital shares. And 2 of Hitachi’s representatives will be added to WD’s board of directors.

The companies say the proposed combination will result in a customer-focused storage company, with significant operating scale, strong global talent and the industry’s broadest product lineup backed by a rich technology portfolio.

Based in Irving, California Western Digital was founded in 1970 by Alvin B. Phillips as General Digital. Since then it has gone on to become the 2nd largest hard drive manufacturer in the world, next to Seagate.

Source.

Intel announce 510 Series SSDs

Today Intel officially announced the details of its next-generation of SSDs.

According to Intel the 510 series is being aimed at “gamers, media creators and other performance-intensive users..”. The 510 series takes full advantage of the SATA 6Gb/s connection to offer whopping speeds of “up to 500 megabytes per second (MB/s), the Intel SSD 510 doubles the sequential read speeds, and at up to 315MB/s more than triples the sequential write speeds of Intel’s current 3Gbps SSDs, to transfer more data in less time.”

But what about the price? The 250Gb version will set you back $584, while the 120Gb flavour is a little more tempting at $284. Both versions come with a 3 year warranty.

Check out the video above for a demonstration of load times when compared to a mechanical hard drive.

From the press release:

The Intel SSD 510 offers the fastest sequential read and write speeds of any consumer SATA SSD available today, providing industry leading performance that beats a traditional hard disk drive (HDD) by more than 50 percent.¹ In addition to better overall system responsiveness when compared to a mechanical hard drive, SSDs have no moving parts so are more rugged, consume less power and run quieter and cooler than HDDs. SSDs reduce boot times, launch applications and files faster and recover from sleep mode quicker, resulting in noticeable improvement. Conventional HDDs are also unable to effectively take advantage of 6Gbps platform technology, since HDDs fail to maximize even the current 3Gbps SATA interface.

Intel launching 510 series SSDs on March 1st

Intel 510 Series SATA 6 Gb/s SSD

Intel is all set to launch its next-generation of performance SSDs. The 510 series is being aimed at PC enthusiasts and the gaming demographic that has money to burn. The 2.5″ 9.5mm HDDs will come in 2 separate capacities; 120 Gb and 250 Gb and will be Intel’s first 6 Gb/s SSDs.

But the real meat and gravy comes in the HDD specifications. These bad-boys will feature read speeds of up to 470 Mb/s and write speeds up to 315 Mb/s (surpassing the current SandForce drives). The 510 series SSDs will be priced $366 and $767 respectively, which puts them in the almost-but-not-quite insanely expensive bracket.

Nvidia’s Keggonator shown off at CES

An Nvidia rep shows off a PC in a keg at this year’s CES. This water-cooled barrel of bad-boy contains a mobile Sandy Bridge chip and 2 of Nvidia’s flagship dx11 cards, the GTX 580 in SLI. And before you ask, yes that beer tap at the top actually works. There’s also ample room inside for your ale.

New range of SSDs coming from Galaxy Microsystems

Galaxy 256gb SSD The manufacturer of Nvidia-flavoured graphics cards has announced an upcoming range of solid state drives aimed at gamers. Expreview.com have a few details on the specs:

The four Galaxy SSDs are 2.5-inch form factor,features 64M cache,supports Windows 7 TRIM.They are supposed to deliver read and write speed of up to 240MB/s and 215MB/s,respectively.

They will be available with capacities of 32GB/64GB/128GB/256GB.

There is no current release date or pricing details available as of yet.
Via Overclockers Club

10Mb hard drive, only $3,398!

10Mb? One of my FLAC files is bigger than that sucker.. Ryan over on Dabs Blog has an interesting article up. He happened upon this picture of an old hard drive advertisement. I’m not sure of year, but looking at the specs and seeing that it’s $3,398 for 10Mb of hard drive space, let’s just call it the Dark Ages and move on shall we?. This old piece of crap (by today’s standards) would have cost you £213 per megabyte!.

It’s a funny juxtaposition when you consider 1 terabyte hard drives these days are going for as little as $59.99.

Going on the cost of megabytes per dollar from back then, a 1 terabyte hard drive would have set you back £213,000,000. Viva technological progress!

Today you would struggle to spend more than £50 on a 1TB drive (such as this Hitachi Deskstar for this £42.48) – that’s 1 million megabytes! If you bought that much storage at the time this advert was made it would have cost you £213,000,000.

Hard drives – how much storage is too much?

December 7th is the day Futuremark kills your PC

3DMark 11

Set your calenders for December 7th. Futuremark will finally be ready to usher in a new era of PCs that were once considered fast, turned into snails. The next version of the Finnish company’s popular PC benchmark suite was delayed a few days back due to some bugs in the software. But it seems all that is in the past and any inconsistencies have been ironed out.

There will be a free version of the software for the average Joe to download, but it will contain advertisements, and lack some of the functionality of the more advanced version. But if you’re a hardware reviewer then I’m sure it’s worth splashing out $20 for the full program.

Full details and pre-ordering here.

Friday’s hardware roundup

Intel Core i7

Here’s a look at Amazon.com’s best-selling PC hardware on this, the 3rd of December 2010. Info comes from Amazon’s statistics.

No real change on the processor front from last week. The Core i3/5/7 are all selling well. EVGA are still on top with their variant of Nvidia’s GTX 460, a top seller in both 768 and 1024Mb flavours.

Intel processors:

No. 1: Intel Core i7 950 3.06GHz 8M L3 Cache LGA1366
No. 2: Intel Core i5 750 Processor 2.66 GHz 8 MB LGA1156
No. 3: Intel Core i3 Processor i3-540 3.06GHz 4MB LGA1156
No. 4: Intel Core i7-870 2.93GHz 8 MB LGA1156
No. 5: Intel Core i5 Processor i5-650 3.20GHz 4MB LGA1156

AMD processors:

No. 1: AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition 3.2Ghz
No. 2: AMD Phenom II X6 1055T Thuban 2.8Ghz
No. 3: Phenom II X4 965 Black AM3 3.4Ghz
No. 4: AMD Athlon II X4 640 Propus 3.0 GHz
No. 5: AMD Phenom II X2 555 Black Edition Callisto 3.2 GHz

Video cards:

No. 1: EVGA nVidia GeForce GT 220 1 GB DDR3
No. 2: Sapphire Radeon HD4550 512 MB DDR3
No. 3: EVGA 01G-P3-N959TR GeForce 9500 GT 1GB
No. 4: EVGA GeForce GTX460 768MB DDR5
No. 5: ZOTAC nVidia GeForce 8400GS 512 MB DDR2

Motherboards:

No. 1: Intel DX58SO Extreme Series X58
No. 2: Intel DP55KG Extreme Series
No. 3: Intel Core i7/i5 LGA1156
No. 4: MSI G31TM-P21 LGA 775
No. 5: Intel DP55WB Media Series P55

RAM:

No. 1: Kingston Apple 2GB Kit (2x1GB Modules)
No. 2: Crucial CT2KIT25664BC1067 4GB 204-PIN PC3-8500 SODIMM DDR3 Memory KIT (2GBx2)
No. 3: Crucial CT2KIT25664BC1067 4GB 204-PIN
No. 4: Crucial 2 GB Kit (2 x 1GB) DDR PC3200 UNBUFFERED NON-ECC
No. 5: Corsair TR3X6G1600C8D Dominator 6 GB 3 x 2 GB PC3-12800 1600MHz

Mechanical hard drives:

No. 1: Western Digital 2 TB Caviar Green
No. 2: Seagate Barracuda LP 2 TB 5900RPM
No. 3: Seagate Barracuda 7200 1.5 TB 7200RPM
No. 4: Western Digital 1 TB Caviar Green SATA Intellipower
No. 5: Western Digital Caviar Black 1 TB

Solid state drives:

No. 1: Kingston SSDNow V Series 64 GB SATA 3 GB/s
No. 2: Intel 2.5-Inch 160 GB X25-M Mainstream SATA II MLC
No. 3: Intel 80 GB X25M Mainstream SATA II
No. 4: Intel 40 GB X25-V Value SATA II MLC
No. 5: Kingston SSDNow V Series 128 GB SATA 3 GB/s

PC Cases:

No. 1: Cooler Master RC-922M-KKN1-GP HAF 922M ATX Mid Tower Case (Black)
No. 2: Antec Three Hundred Gaming Case External
No. 3: Cooler Master CM 690 II Advance ATX Mid-Tower Case
No. 4: Cooler Master HAF 932 High Air Flow ATX Full Tower
No. 5: Cooler Master Elite 310 ATX, MATX Mid Tower Case

Power supplies:

No. 1: Corsair CMPSU-750TX 750-Watt TX Series 80 Plus Certified
No. 2: Corsair CMPSU-650TX 650-Watt TX Series 80 Plus Certified
No. 3: Thermaltake W0070RUC TR2 Series 430W
No. 4: Cooler Master Elite 460W ATX +12V V2.31
No. 5: Corsair CMPSU-550VX 550-Watt VX Series 80 Plus Certified

Optical drives:

No. 1: Lite-On LightScribe 24X SATA DVD+/-RW Dual Layer Drive IHAS424-98 – Retail (Black)
No. 2: Samsung SH-S222L/BEBS Internal Half Height Supermulti PATA 22X
No. 3: Samsung SH-S222A/BEBE Internal Half Height Supermulti PATA 22X
No. 4: Buffalo Technology MediaStation 8X External Blu-Ray Burner USB 2.0
No. 5: LG Electronics GDR-8163B 16x DVD-ROM Drive

Sound cards:

No. 1: Creative Labs SB0570L4 Sound Blaster Audigy SE Sound Card
No. 2: Creative Labs Sound Blaster Wireless Audio
No. 3: Creative Labs SB1090 USB Sound Blaster X-Fi Surround 5.1 Audio System
No. 4: Creative Labs SB0880 PCI Express Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium
No. 5: PCISOUND4LP Pci 4CHANNEL Sound Card

LCD displays:

No. 1: ViewSonic VX2250WM-LED 22-Inch
No. 2: Viewsonic VX2450WM-LED 24-Inch
No. 3: ViewSonic VA2231W-LED 22-Inch
No. 4: HP 2010i 20-Inch Diagonal HD Ready
No. 5: ViewSonic VA2431WM 24-Inch

Patriot Convoy 425XL SAS/SATA RAID Enclosure

Patriot Convoy 425XL RAID Enclosure

Patriot Convoy 425XL RAID Enclosure Review

Most PC cases sold today don’t have any provision for directly mounting a 3.5″ device in the front panel. Floppy drives are a thing of the distant past, and most accessory units designed for mounting in this location have adopted the 5.25″ format. The Patriot Convoy 425XL takes advantage of this larger environment to provide space for four 2.5″ format drives. Commonly called “laptop” drives, the smaller format is also the most common platform for SSDs. There are a few 1.8″ drives around and even fewer 3.5″ SSDs available, but there has been an explosion in the last two years of 2.5″ SSDs on the market. Silent and fast, with low power requirements, they would seem to be an ideal companion for this new class of drive enclosure. Let’s take a look at the ins and outs of the Convoy 425XL and then put it through its paces with a full suite of benchmarking tests.

The Convoy 425XL supports RAID 0, 1, 3, 5, 10, Clone, Large, and JBOD modes with its built-in controller, and features a single connection each for both power and SATA II signal cables. The front loading hot- swappable drive trays support SATA I or SATA II drives up to 12.5mm in height, and are individually lockable and removable. The Convoy 425XL is ideally suited for an application where a RAID solution is needed in a small space, particularly the higher RAID levels that require 3-4 drives for a combination of speed and redundancy.

This is a guest article written by our content partners at Benchmarkreviews.com

Read on @ Benchmark Reviews

Western Digital unleashes massive 3TB hard drive

Western Digital 3 TB Caviar Green Western Digital’s new 3TB Caviar Green ‘ obliterates all heretofore known storage boundaries’ according to PC MAG. The $239 drive is noted as slow for a 3.5 inch drive because it is eco-friendly and uses less power, and it won’t work on Windows XP at all because of the enormous capacity. On the other hand it offers owners the bragging rights of having the largest hard drive on the planet. Another caveat of the drive is you can’t use it as a boot drive unless you have a motherboard running UEFI instead of BIOS.

What are technological limitations when you have history to make? That must have been Western Digital’s controlling thought process when conceiving its latest Caviar Green drive. This 3-Gbps SATA model, priced at $239 (list), has a full 3 terabytes (TB) of storage space, which makes it the largest-capacity 3.5-inch internal hard drive you can buy. The bad news is that almost no one will be able to use this kind of high-capacity drive without making some adjustments to their system. Windows XP users won’t be able to use it at all, and those who do get it working will find it’s not exactly a speed demon. But if all you need is basic storage—and a lot of it—the 3TB Caviar Green delivers.

WD Caviar Green (3TB) review at PCMAG.com

The official portal for the drive with specs is available here.

Silicon Power announce upcoming ultra-fast SSD’s

Silicon Power E20 256GB No release date or pricing has been revealed, but Silicon Power is lining up a new range of SSD’s called E20 which they say should surpass the read and write speed of current SSD’s on the market. The read speed listed in the press release is up to 250MB/s and write speeds up to 230MB/s. The extra speed is possible using proprietary technology from Silicon Power.

The 2.5” SATA solid state drive is designed for Windows 7 and quick start up times for the OS. The main features highlighted by Silicon Power are:

DDR2 DRAM Cache Memory Implementation
Users are most concerned with lag when using computers as it affects workflow and efficiency. With E20’s built-in DDR2 DRAM Cache Memory, even during continuous intensive-write situations, computers shall lag no more! This feature not only enhances SSD’s read and write performances, it also extends SSD’s lifespan.
Circuit Current Sensor
During read and write, users most dread irregular current supply resulting in data lost or corruption. Silicon Power’s E20 has specially added circuit current sensors to detect fluctuating or abnormal current to effectively protect your personal data!
S.M.A.R.T Support
Through Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology (S.M.A.R.T.), user can monitor the health of E20.

The drive will come in the following capacities: 32GB/64GB/128GB/256GB. Alas there’s no date when the E20 will be available, or pricing details.

Valve’s hardware statistics for October, has anything changed?

Valve's Hardware & Software Survey

It’s been a while since I’ve taken a look at Valve’s PC hardware statistics. As I’m sure most of you already know, Valve periodically releases results of a hardware survey they conduct from within the Steam software. Information is gathered from a user’s machine – like what processor they use, how much system ram they have, hard drive space etc. It can be fun to see the demographic you yourself fit into in the overall hardware pallet. Let’s take a brief look October’s results.

Processors:

Intel vs AMD

Unsurprisingly Intel has a monopoly on processors, but you might be surprised at just how much. According to Valve’s October Hardware & Software Study, 72.37% of its users have Intel processors. This dwarfs AMD’s small footprint of a mere 27.63%.

Processor Cores

As more and more PCs are equipped with multi-core CPUs, let’s take a look at the percentages. Single-core processors still make up 11.22%, that’s down from over 14% 2 months ago. Dual-core seems to be the dominant blend with a whopping 56.97% share. Quad-cores are on the rise but still only account for 33.13, up from 27.24%. With hex-core still in its infancy, only 0.57% (up from 0.43%) are booting up their Steam-based machines with 6 processing cores. This is obviously bound to change with AMD’s low-cost Phenom II x6 processors and whatever lower-priced variants Intel unleash next year.

Graphics Cards:

As with Intel, Nvidia also makes up a larger share of the pie with 59.11% of users having their GPUs, compared to AMD’s 32.98% market share. Tragically 6.22 % still use on-board Intel graphics. Maybe we should take a moment’s pause to reflect on their pain. Why are they even using Steam?

Interestingly enough only 0.56% of users have 1.5Gb of Vram. It looks like Nvidia’s GTX 480 is not too popular among users of Steam.

System Ram:

Ram is not quite as important as it once was when it comes to gaming with 4-6 Gb being the mainstay for most avid gamers. 24.04% (down from 26.9%) are still on 2Gb, with 27.02% using 3Gb. 4Gb users are a slightly smaller bunch with 26.00% (up from 22.9%) of the chart. Do you use more than 4Gb of ram? You’re in an illustrious club of 14.06%.

Operating systems:

It seems that Windows XP just won’t die. Microsoft has cut off the life-support machine, and many PC vendors have already stopped supporting the aging OS. But like a stubborn old man, XP fights on with 26.55% (down from 31.49%). I should note that Windows 7 64-bit has surpassed XP with 33.37% (up from 29.62%). The 32-bit version of Vista still has a surprising 13.65% of users, but this is on the decline as you would expect.

Conclusion:

Has anything changed? Well, not a whole lot since August. Single-core CPU usage is slightly down while dual-core hasn’t changed at all. Quad core has made a promising gain of 5%, although 6 core gaming clearly has along way to come.

No real push on the GPU front but this may change over the next few months with newer cards from both ATI and Nvidia already released with more on the way.

I’m convinced there is a deity operating chest-paddles on Windows XP. Microsoft’s aging OS has had its life-support machine cut off, no more care has been given to it, but XP must have a stronger heart than Microsoft realized and is not looking likely to call it a day any time soon. I guess a lot of people running Direct x 9 titles are still happy with the plucky little senior citizen.

Windows 7 is on the rise, with a lot more people adopting the 64-bit variety to take advantage of all that RAM they invested in.

Best-selling PC hardware, this Black Friday

Intel Core i7

With Black Friday in full swing and everyone rushing for the best deals, I’ve taken a look at the top 5 best selling PC hardware components, right from Amazon’s statistics. I’ve included (practically) the full gamut of PC peripherals.

Intel processors:

AMD processors:

Video cards:

Motherboards:

No. 1: Intel DX58SO Extreme Series X58
No. 2: Intel DP55KG Extreme Series
No. 3: Intel Core i7/i5 LGA1156
No. 4: MSI G31TM-P21 LGA 775
No. 5: Intel DP55WB Media Series P55

RAM:

Mechanical hard drives:

Solid state drives:

PC Cases:

Power supplies:

Optical drives:

Sound cards:

LCD displays:

OCZ RevoDrive X2 PCI-Express SSD Review

OCZ RevoDrive PCI-Express SSD
Over the past several years, OCZ have transformed themselves from an enthusiast system memory brand into a recognized name for high-performance storage devices. They’ve earned consumer praise for their ability to deliver Solid State Drive technology at a reasonable price, and they push the boundaries with their High Speed Data Link project. There’s a solid middle ground between SATA and HSDL, and that’s the PCI Express bus. Not long ago Benchmark Reviews tested the SandForce-driven OCZ RevoDrive, and now we’re back with the high-level version of that product: OCZ RevoDrive X2. Now using four SF1200 SSDs in RAID-0, the RevoDrive X2 series is capable of up to 120,000 IOPS at speeds up to 740 MB/s.

Solid State Drive technology has become the high-performance option for SATA-drive upgrades, yet these ultra-fast NAND components are capable of so much more. Most computers are capable of offering 3.0 GB/s bandwidth via second-generation SATA controllers, which is fast enough for most general power-users. Although the latest desktop motherboards have incorporated third-generation SATA controllers good for up to 6.0 GB/s bandwidth, there’s currently only one SSD storage product capable of utilizing this speed (as of September 2010). PCI-Express is an ideal alternative, since it doesn’t require an add-on chip to support a new standard and still offers 5.0 GB/s bandwidth.

This is a guest article written by our content partners at Benchmarkreviews.com

Read on @ Benchmark Reviews

Tom’s Hardware and Zalman SSD giveaway

Zalman S-Series SSD

Everyone wants an SSD, but when they see the price-to-gigabyte ratio they usually run for the hills. If you’re feeling lucky, Tom’s Hardware are giving away a Zalman S-Series SSD. All you have to do is comment on their article, like Zalman’s Facebook page and like Tom’s Hardware’s Facebook page. Easy! And the competition is worldwide.

Lego-men assemble Dual GTX 580 gaming rig

Preparing the GTX 580 for water-cooling

Careful not to damage the pins lads

Why build a PC yourself when you can get a legion of lego workers to do it for you? Vector, from the PDXLAN user forums clearly had enough of manually assembling PCs, so he looked towards the cheap labour of lego-men.

It took them a little longer, but they were able to assemble this Dual-GTX 580 rig with time for tea and biscuits at the end.

Check out their progress.

Bargain-bin SSD for $11,500

LSI WarpDrive SSD

LSI have released a new PCI Express solid state drive that might not be much to look at, but it has the potential to give you blisteringly fast throughput, while at the same time rendering you bankrupt. If you don’t mind taking out a second mortgage, the aptly titled WarpDrive promises up to 240,000 sustained IOPS (Input / Output Operations Per Second), with 1,400MBps sustained throughput.

According to LSI you would need 400 mechanical hard drives with 300 times the power to match this drive’s performance. It’s good to know if I ever win the Euro millions, I will have no trouble shaving large sums from the jackpot with expenditures like this.

$10 off OCZ 100GB SSD today only

OCZ Technology 100 GB Vertex Limited Edition 2.5-Inch SATAII Solid State Drive Amazon have a small deal on the OCZ 100 GB Vertex Limited Edition Solid State Drive today if you’re in the market for a SSD. They’re offering $10.31 off the price, which is normally $429.99. It’s not much of a saving but better than nothing if you’re piecing together a new PC on a budget.

Check out the drive here.

AlienBEware Episode V: The Wallet Strikes Back

If you only knew the power of a custom-built gaming PC!

Back in August I set out to build a decent PC gaming rig without breaking the bank. I wanted to show how much money can be saved when purchasing all the parts separately and assembling it yourself. For the price comparison I chose Alienware as they are pretty well-known for making high-end gaming PCs and Notebooks but with a hefty price-tag.

Since the PC is now built, I figured I’d follow the last post up with some performance benchmarks and updates on the changes made (notably the price). It has pretty much remained the same apart from the graphics card and a few minor changes. But the few minor changes have saved even more money. All the parts arrived about 2 weeks ago and I have found the time to put it together and run some benchmarks. So if you’re interested in building your own rig, read on if you want to see the kind of performance that can be attained on this budget.

The previous build came to a total of 1,534.79 Pounds Sterling, with Alienware costing almost double for practically identical specs. My slight hardware revision shaves even more off that price and weighs in at a more pocket-friendly 1,251 Pounds Sterling. That equates to $1,970.67 USD, but these parts are much cheaper in the U.S. as opposed to here in Europe so it would be even less expensive than that for my Yankee comrades.

Parts:

Processor: Intel i7 950 Quad Core Intel Core i7 950

This is a great Quad-core processor with Hyper-threading. All cores run at 3.06GHz but individual cores can be bumped up in speed when applications don’t make use of all the cores. It has come down in price literally by 50% in the past few months, so as I was going i7 anyway, this was a no-brainer for me. Plus if you’re into overclocking the CPU, I’ve seen people reach 4GHz with ease (with a decent air/water-cooler).

Graphics card: MSI Cyclone GTX 460 1GB

I can’t begin to praise this card enough. It cost me under 200 Euro; it runs silent, even while in game and has more than enough beef to handle any game I’ve thrown at it so far. The desktop temps are in the mid 20s and when I get out of a long stint of gaming, the card never gets hotter than 44 degrees. Plus this little mid-ranger is a Herculean overclocker, but more on that later.

The original build included an ATI 5970 but for one 22″ monitor that was a little overkill in retrospect.

Motherboard: Asus P6X58D-E

This board is basically the same as the Premium variant but with a few minor features missing. It’s the perfect budget-board for anyone interested in building an X58 system. It supports 3-way SLI and Quad-CrossfireX and has support for USB 3.0 and SATA 6GB/s, with all the usual ASUS features you would expect. Obviously it can house any Intel i7 processor, including the 6-core Gulftown.

System RAM: Corsair Dominator 3 x 2GB Corsair Dominator 1600MHz 3 x 2GB

This RAM performs very well. Although I had to adjust the frequency in the BIOS settings in order for the Corsair Dominator to run at its native speed of 1,600MHz. But that was painless and literally took seconds.

Power supply: Cooler Master Silent Pro M850

I went with the Cooler Master Silent Pro because it has an 80 Plus Bronze rating and got rave reviews pretty much across the board. It is extremely quiet (as the name
Cooler Master Silent Pro m850 would imply), comes with a 5 year warranty and has ample power to feed my rig, even when I add another graphics card sometime down the line.

Modular PSU ftw!

PC case: Cooler Master HAF 932

The Cooler Master HAF 932 is one of the main stars of this build, and is a shining beacon of engineering prowess. I cannot heap enough praise and when you look at the Amazon page, you’ll see others sharing in my enthusiasm. The case’s aesthetics are first and foremost what drew me in. It looks like something you’d find in Darth Vader’s chamber in The Empire Strikes Back. It’s black all around with some red LED lights on the front intake fan.

The case sports 3 x 230mm case fans; one that blows from the side door right over the graphics card and processor, the other sucking air from the front and one more venting heat out the roof of the case. There is also a smaller fan at the rear, sucking hot air out the back. I could literally cool beers inside this case, it’s pretty amazing. If you’re looking for something that will give you ample room to
Western Digital Caviar Black 640GB (6GB/s) work in, have plenty of cable management holes, great air flow and killer looks, than I highly recommend the HAF 932 full-tower case from Cooler Master.

Hard drive: 640 GB Western Digital Caviar Black 6GB/s

I know a lot of you recommended an SSD, some were horrified that I would dare put a mechanical hard drive into a new gaming rig. But unfortunately price-per-gigabyte, I cannot justify spending money on these things just yet. I’m happy to see that the prices are coming down all the time, and I will add one in at a later stage, probably around the same time I pick up another GTX 460. For now though, the Caviar Black is a decent hard drive, very cheap and serves its purpose well. It’s limited to 7,200 RPM but I can live with that until SSDs come down a title more.

Mouse: Sidewinder X3
Microsoft Sidewinder X3 I really like this mouse. I’ve always said that Microsoft make great mice, that last. This mouse feels like it was custom-made for my own hand. I can game for yours with no cramp or wrist pain to speak of. The only thing I would complain about is the buttons on the side are a little far to the front of the mouse. But other than it’s a cool little mouse and pretty darn cheap.

Keyboard: Sidewinder x4

Microsoft SideWinder X4 I’ve been using laptop keyboards for damn near 8 years now so it was a little bit of a transition to get back into PC keyboards again, but once I got past that hurdle, this is one comfortable keyboard with a wrist-rest at the base. It has all the usual features from a gaming keyboard; like the ability to assign macros to certain keys, and the likes of volume control, play, stop, etc. Very good price. Plus the keys light up in red, which matches the LEDs at the front of the case..’nuff said!

Monitor: 22″ LG E2240T LED LG Flatron E2240

This is one sweet little monitor, with a crisp clear image. Compared to the laptop I have been using for the past few years, this monitor is like sweeping the cobwebs from my eyes and getting a cornea upgrade. For the price, wow.

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How to get your old laptop infected with an SSD

Thinking of replacing your slow, mechanical laptop HDD with an SSD? Here is a short video from Corsair explaining just how easy it is. Basically if you can can upgrade your own ram then replacing a laptop hard drive should be easy as pie.

SSDs are becoming more and more affordable as time goes on, and small capacity 2.5″ SSDs are pretty much within most people’s reach at this stage. If you have a business laptop, with nothing more than an office suite, a few apps and your browser a 60, 40 or even 30GB SSD is the best friend you ever had.

Here’s a short list of low-capacity SSDs to give you an idea of the kind of choice that’s available if you’re thinking of upgrading the laptop.

Intel 40 GB X25-V Value SATA II MLC Solid-State Drive

OCZ Technology 30 GB Core Series V2 SATA II

OCZ Technology 30GB Vertex Turbo Series

OCZ Technology 30 GB Agility Series SATA II

OCZ Technology 30 GB Vertex Series SATA II

Kingston SSDNow V Series 64 GB SATA 3 GB/s

Corsair Force Series 40 GB SATA II 2.5-Inch

OCZ Technology Vertex 2 Series 40 GB SATA II

As you can see from this short list, there is no shortage of choice available for a budget SSD laptop upgrade. But it doesn’t have to end with your laptop, these 2.5″ SSDs will also fit nicely, with a little bracket into your PC tower. But a 3.5″ SSD is generally recommended for your desktop.

Seagate Expansion HDD, Amazon slashes price today only

Seagate Expansion 500Gb

Amazon’s deal of the day on this the 4th of October is Seagate’s external USB HDD. This is a 500Gb capacity external USB 2.0 HDD for backing up movies, photos, Steam games etc. Today only it’s down from $89 to $59.

Check it out here.

Top 5 best-selling hard drives

HDD

Western Digital and Seagate have a nice firm hold on hard drive sales over at Amazon.com. It’s also nice to see plenty of people adopting the new SATA 6GB/s variety.

If you’re building a PC or just looking to upgrade your hard drive, here are Amazon.com’s top 5 best-selling drives.

No. 1: Western Digital 2 TB Caviar Green SATA Intellipower 64 MB Cache

No. 2: Seagate Barracuda 7200 1 TB 7200RPM SATA 3Gb/s 32MB Cache 3.5 Inch

No. 3: Western Digital 1 TB Caviar Green SATA Intellipower 64 MB Cache

No. 4: Seagate Barracuda LP 2 TB 5900RPM SATA 3 GB/s 32 MB Cache 3.5-Inch

No. 5: Western Digital Caviar Blue 500 GB Bulk/OEM Hard Drive 3.5 Inch, 16 MB Cache, 7200 RPM SATA II

Not very surprising to find a lack up SSDs in the top 5. SSDs at the moment, at least in my opinion are too expensive and don’t offer enough hard drive space for an adequate gaming hard drive. No doubt they are the future and offer a much faster and responsive PC experience, but I can certainly sympathize with anyone who doesn’t opt in yet.

What is surprising is not seeing WD’s performance Caviar Black model in there. This is the poor man’s SSD.

Free Ubisoft game download when you buy Intel solid state drives

Amazon have a special offer on two Intel solid state drives. Anyone who buys either the 160 GB X25-M Mainstream or the 80 GB X25M Mainstream will receive a free download of one of a selection of Ubisoft games.

The games are Far Cry 2, Assassins Creed II, RUSE, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas, Call of Juarez Bound in Blood and CSI: Deadly Intent.

To avail of the offer just buy the drive as usual on Amazon and they will email you 1-7 working days after it ships with instructions on how to download your game.

Hurry though, the offer ends on the 15th of September.

8 of the best SSDs for your gaming rig

Intel X25 E Extreme

They are smaller in size, have no moving parts, are much more durable, they cut boot-up/shutdown times in half, launch programs much faster and generally give your PC one of the biggest bumps in performance in recent memory.

But are SSD (or Solid State) drives worth forking out your hard-earned cash for that extra performance boost just yet?

My recent article on building your own gaming PC sparked a fury of debate on a number of websites precisely because I omitted an SSD from my build.

I’ve since done a little research and have compiled a list of 4 high-end SSDs and 4 more affordable models that won’t break the bank.
What mainly interested me when choosing these 8 drives was cost, hard drive capacity and read/write speeds.

Top of the range SSDs

The Intel X25E Extreme offers a low 64 GB of storage for a hefty $743.99.

Intel 64 GB X25E Extreme	Capacity	64 GB	$743.99
	Read speed	250 MB/s
	Write speed	170 MB/s

Complete spec sheet

Next let’s take a look at the OCZ 1 TB Colossus Series. This thing is a monster, especially the price.

OCZ Technology 1 TB Colossus Series	Capacity	1 TB	$4,290.99
	Read speed	Up to 260 MB/s
	Write speed	Up to 260 MB/s

Complete spec sheet

The Corsair 240 GB Force series comes in at a more affordable $644.78 and a decent 240GB capacity.

Corsair 240 GB Force Series	Capacity	240 GB	$644.78
	Read and write speed	Up to 285 MB/s
	Sustained write speeds	275 MB/s

Complete spec sheet

The Kingston SSDNow V+Series offers half a terabyte of storage but at a steep price.

Kingston SSDNow V+Series 512 GB	Capacity	512 GB	$1,393.72
	Read speed	230MB/sec
	Write speeds	180MB/sec

Complete spec sheet

Lower priced models

The Intel X25M Mainstream is low on storage (80GB) but is at a price point within the reach of most gamers I think.

Intel 80 GB X25M Mainstream	Capacity	80 GB	$199.99
	Read speed	Up to 250MB/sec
	Write speeds	Up to 70MB/sec

Complete spec sheet

OCZ’s lower end model offers a nice 120GB storage for an affordable $266.

OCZ Technology 120 GB Solid 2 Series Solid State Drive	Capacity	120 GB	$266.00
	Read speed	125 MB/sec
	Write speeds	100 MB/sec

Complete spec sheet

Kingston’s SSDnow Vseries offers 128GB at $226, offering better value than OCZ’s lower end model above.

Kingston SSDNow V Series 128 GB	Capacity	128 GB	$226.00
	Read speed	200MB/sec
	Write speeds	160MB/sec

Complete spec sheet

Corsair’s Performance Series offers 128 Gb for $299.99, the most expensive-per gigabyte of the lower end models we’ve spotlighted.

Corsair SATA II 3.0Gb/s 128 GB Performance Series	Capacity	128 GB	$299.99
	Read speed	200MB/sec
	Write speeds	160MB/sec

Complete spec sheet

In conclusion

The best value lower end model is the Kingston by at least $40, although the Intel Performance series model is the cheapest, but only offers 80GB of storage.

All in all, SSDs have come a long way in the past 3 years. We’ve seen the price come down considerably but for many gamers the amount of gigabytes you get for your buck still isn’t worth their hard-earned Dollar. What do you think of SSDs? Do you own one yourself? How have you found the performance gains? Any regrets in buying one? Maybe you’ve bought 2 for a RAID-0 setup?

Let us know your experience with SSDs or your intentions (if any) to invest in these drives for a future or current games machine.

AlienBEware: Why You SHOULD build Your Own Gaming PC

AlienBEware

For the past 10 years I’ve been living in a laptop-gaming fantasy land where games never run quite right and low frames-per-second are enough to give you migraine. So I decided a few weeks back to break the mold and build me a new gaming PC, an almighty Herculean flagship for the wrath of Directx 11 titles on the way, and of course for next year’s Rage and Doom 4.

But how much would it cost? And what was I going to put into it?

Back when I was building PCs it was much more of a pricey hobby. Intel Pentium III processors were all the rage, and if you had over 128mb of ram you were considered a little eccentric and on the fringes of the overclocking community. Times have changed though, and thanks to major competition we can build a high-end gaming PC with a fraction of the budget of 10 years ago.

Below is a chart showing how much I will be paying for my new dream rig, and how much it costs with a reputable PC builder. As you can see the savings speak volumes. But more on that later.

Currency	My PC	Alienware’s Price	Money I Saved
Sterling:	1,534.79	3,029.01	1,494.21
Euro:	1,875.00	3,693.28	1,818.28
Dollars (US):	2,368.23	4,666.50	2,298.27

System Specs:

Full tower case: £116.99

I watched more case unboxing videos than I care to remember. There’s a lot of great choice out there when it comes to a PC enclosure. But at the end of the day I settled with the Coolermaster HAF 932. It has ample space, more than enough to accommodate the hardware I’ll be putting into it – with lots more room for anything that might happen a few years down the line. Plus it has 2 x 230mm fans and looks like something Darth Vader would use.

Coolermaster Haf 932

Power Supply: £118.99

If my CompTIA instructor taught me nothing else (and he didn’t) it was never to skimp on a power supply. This is important even more so in the last few years as graphics card power requirements are through the roof. ATI recommend a minimum of 650 Watts when powering their 5970 card. I went with a Cooler Master Silent Pro 850 Watt. If I choose to add another card sometime down the line this power supply (which comes with a 5 year warranty) will comfortably handle a dual-gpu setup.

Silent Pro 850w

Processor: £234.99

Right off the bat we’re going quad core. The price of Intel’s i7 processors are dropping significantly in 5 days time so now even the i7 950 is not out of reach for the cost-conscious gamer.

Everyone seems to be overclocking these chips with ease. It’s not something I plan on doing anytime soon but it’s nice to know that perhaps in a few years when it needs a bit of a kick, I can go into the bios and start fiddling with voltages and what-not. But with a stock speed of 3.06ghz this thing should be fine for the time being.

i7 950

Motherboard: £149.99

For the motherboard I’ll be buying the much lauded Asus P6X58D-E. This board is future-proof in supporting USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gb/s. It also can hold up the 24 GB of ram. I’m not sure if I’ll ever use that much ram, but I wouldn’t rule it out. It handles both SLI and Crossfire configurations with all the usual features you would expect from a premium ASUS board.

Asus P6X58D-E

GPU: £469.99

We’re not skimping on the processor or motherboard and the graphics card will be no different. For this rig I’ll be fitting a Sapphire Radeon HD 5970. I didn’t make this decision lightly, it’s still a pretty expensive card but nearly all the benchmarks I’ve seen put this dual graphics processing monster King of the DX11 range. It simply creams through any game out there. With 2gb of GDDR5 memory this card is likely to be a strong contender for the next few years. Let’s hope the price drops before I buy the card (which will be my last purchase).

Finally I can play games at 1080p resolution!

Sapphire HD5970

RAM: £169.99

For system memory (Ram) Corsair’s Dominator memory modules are top of most enthusiast’s list. These ultra-low latency DIMMs will find themselves right at home inside the case. I was going to go with 12gb of system memory, but after close examination of benchmarks and reading what the experts say I don’t think I can justify forking out the cash for 12gb. Even recently released games don’t recommend anything over 4gb.

Corsair Dominator

HDD: £47.99 x 2

My hard-drive setup will consist of 2 x 500gb Western Digital Caviar Black SATA 6Gb/s 64MB, in a RAID 0 configuration. I’ve never set up RAID before but the idea always intrigued me – the power of 2 hard drives working as one. I’m assuming it’s easier to setup than it was 10 years ago. It will be interesting to see just how much faster RAID 0 (or striped set) will perform.

WD Caviar

Monitor: £126.89

For the monitor I’ll be going with a 21.5 inch BenQ LED. I’m not too fussy about the screen as long as it supports a 1980x1080p resolution, which this monitor does comfortably. I’ve never used an LED monitor before so I’m looking forward to seeing how far technology has come in 10 years.

Benq LED

Keyboard/Mouse: £33.99 / £16.99

Keyboard and mouse will be Microsoft’s Sidewinder range (x4 and x3 respectively). I already bought the mouse and I can assure you it’s the most comfortable thing I’ve ever wrapped my right hand around.

So far I’ve purchased the case, power supply and mouse. It will be about 6-8 weeks before I have the rest of the hardware, but you can get an idea of what you’ll need to spend to build a high-end rig. For my money this pc has a good 3-4 years on the top of the gaming world before it will start to show its age with the very latest games.

Below is a list of the components – where I’m buying them an the cost (and no, I’m not getting any money from the companies I’m linking to ). :P

Sapphire Radeon HD5970 GPU £469.99

Coolermaster Silent Pro M 850 Watt Power Supply £118.99

Coolermaster Haf 932 Case £116.99

Asus P6X58D-E £149.99

Intel Core i7 950 £234.99

6 GB of Corsair Dominator Ram @ 1600Mhz £169.99

2 x 500gb Western Digital Caviar SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache £47.99 x 2

21.5 inch BenQ LED 126.89

X3 Gaming Mouse £16.99

Microsoft Sidewinder X4 Keyboard £33.99

Building the Dream Machine with Alienware:

I know Dell has taken over Alienware but that’s the first name that pops into my head when I think of high-end gaming PCs. So with that in mind I went over to Alienware’s UK website to build a PC with the exact same (almost) specifications to the one I’m building to see what the cost benefit is in building it myself.

Alienware Area 51

This Alienware Area-51 differs only in a 200mhz faster processor. I’m not sure what kind of motherboard, power supply or ram they have in that machine, but I can’t imagine it’s any better than what I have chosen for my PC (Asus, Coolermaster, Corsair etc).

I’m aghast to the nth degree at the exorbitant pricing of Alienware’s flagship gaming PC with the build I specified. It boggles the mind thinking how this could actually be justified. I sincerely hope this is an eye-opener for anyone thinking of going for a pre-built gaming PC. Building one yourself is a piece of cake, and you’ll save a whole lot of cash in the process and likely end up with something more powerful and ultimately more personal than a mass-production assembly line could ever conjure up.

Update: 27/10/2010:

Since the PC is now built, I figured I’d follow this post up with some performance benchmarks and updates on the changes made (notably the price).

Read about it in my new article:
AlienBEware Episode V: The Wallet Strikes Back