Today I will be reviewing three slim leather cases for the Apple iPhone 4. Two of them are made and sold by Turkish manufacturer Beyza Cases and the third is from Sena Cases. All three are marketed as “slim”.

Introduction

Being a dedicated iPhone fan, I have been through quite a number of different cases the last couple of years. I have tried flip cases, hard shell cases, folio cases, rubber cases and pouch cases. What I have learnt is that pouch cases are what suits me best. They are in general not as bulky as other cases, they don’t get stuck in my pockets like rubber cases do and they provide a good shelter for my little baby (yes, the phone).

What is important to know about leather cases is that they will expand after a while (like all things leather usually do). Therefore it’s important that the case is really slim fitted and not made of leather that’s too soft (which will expand even more). In other words; it’s a good sign if you have to use a little force to push the phone into a pouch leather case the first times that you use it.

The Contenders

OK, so let’s start with the looks. Here are all three cases in a shot together:

The first out is Beyza Cases’s “Apple iPhone 4 SlimLine Wave Case“:

Beyza Cases’ “Slimline Wave Case” is available in four different colors. You can find shots of all colors combinations at their website (link above). This case felt like very high quality, even more so than the other two cases in this review. I have to say that I didn’t particularly like the color of this case and neither did some of my friends. I did a check on their website and the other color combinations available for this case all suited my taste better. My brain kept making references to horses and stables during the trial period with this case (doesn’t their logo look somewhat like a horse shoe too?).

The design is really neat though with an opening at the bottom of the case which means you can keep the phone in the case when charging it and also that it’s easier to push the phone out of the case. Since this case was really slim fitted and made of quite sturdy leather, I had to use a little force to get the phone in and out of the case the first couple of times. After two or three days the leather had expanded enough to let the phone slide in and out of the case pretty easily.

The second case is also from Beyza Cases and it has the very catchy name of “Apple iPhone 4 Retro Super Slim Stripes Vertical Case“:

This case is also available in different colors which you can browse at the company’s website. Our test model was white with blue stripes, a quite sporty look which made me think about fast cars. I appreciated the design but I think it would have been even better without any stripes at all. A got some comments about it and they were all positive. One potential problem is the color of the case which is a rather bright white. I am not known for being careful with my gadgets but after a couple of weeks use it still looked great so it shouldn’t be a problem for most users.

This case also felt very slim fitted but not quite as much as the other pouch from Beyza Cases. I used this case for a period of three weeks and during that time the leather expanded just enough to make the phone slide in and out as it should, it never became too sloppy.

As you see from the images it has four air ventilation holes in the bottom which is great because many IP4 users have reported that their units can become rather hot during charging. I have never experienced this myself but no smoke without fire, eh?

The last case is from Sena and it’s called “Sarach UltraSlim“:

The last case in this review is from a more renowned manufacturer (at least to me); Sena Cases. I have previously owned their ULTRASLIM case for the iPhone 3G S and I was very satisfied with it because it was really slim fitted. Therefore I was a little bit disappointed when i first put my phone into Sena Case’s Sarach UltraSlim case; it slid in a little bit too easy and when I turned the case upside down (pointing the opening towards the floor) my phone slid out of it (if I didn’t keep some pressure on it from my hand). That can potentially be hazardous for your phone, at least if you can sometimes be a little flimsy with you gadgets (like the editor).

The leather is really soft and has a creamy color (the first image reflects the real color best) and the stitchings are made with a brown canvas like thread. There is no question that this case looks great and like the other two cases, the quality of the leather feels luxurious. After a couple of days use, I noticed that the stitchings on one of the side endpoints was a little loose so I took matters into my own hands and tied a little knot which kept it in place for the rest of the trial period (not really a big issue).

Conclusions

The case with the best fit was Beyza Cases SlimLine Wave Case and second best was their Retro Super Slim Stripes Vertical Case. Although I was a little disappointed with the fit of Sena Cases Sarach UltraSlim case, it grew on me after a couple of days and I ended up being a little more careful with my phone (a good thing, right?).

The luxurious feeling was similar with all three cases, from the moment you take them out of their boxes to when you first slide in your phone. I just love the rich smell of leather which lasted the entire testing period.

When it comes to looks, I preferred Sena’s Sarach UltraSlim Case and the runner up was the striped case from Beyza Cases. This is of course subjective and another person may have it the other way around.

I wouldn’t feel comfortable recommending one of the cases over the others because they are all very functional so it really comes down to what design you prefer. I can definitively recommend all three cases if you are looking for a high quality case which will last you the entire life cycle of you iPhone 4.

Written by: Fredrik Engdahl, TestSeek.com

Prolimatech sent us the Mega Shadow, an improved version of its “Megahalems” with extended compatibility and some aesthetic modifications.

INTRODUCTION

Prolimatech was created by a group of cooling enthusiasts in 2008. When they released their Megahalems cooler they got a lot of buzz from news and reviews sites all over the world.

The “Megahalems” can be derived from the “Nehalem” chip name (Intel) and the cheer size of the cooler. You should definitely check out reviews of the Megahalems at testseek to see what the buzz was about.

Prolimatech’s latest product will be on display today, the “Prolimatech Mega Shadow”. I’m thrilled to have the work of fellow cooling enthusiasts in my hand and it’s going to be very interesting to see what its performance results will be.

First of all, let’s have a look at the specifications:

BUNDLE

The packaging is very good with protective foam around the heatsink as you can see from the images below.

Prolimatech provides everything you need to mount this heatsink on Socket 775, 1136 and 1156.

The heatsink doesn’t come with a fan which enables the user to choose whatever fan they wish. They have however included clips for mounting two 120mm fans. Prolimatech recommends that you use a fan with a rotation speed of 16000RPM if you want to have the max performance with this cooler. For a balanced performance they recommend a fan with a rotation speed around 800-1200RPM.

Other included accessories are the needed screws and mounting brackets and Prolimatech’s own Thermal Compound, the “Prolimatech PK-1”.

IN DETAIL: PROLIMATECH MEGA SHADOW

The Prolimatech Mega Shadow is a “tower” type cooler of extraordinary dimensions (170mm x 74mm x 158.7mm).

This baby weighs in at 790 grams (without a fan) so you will need to have fastened it good for it not to risk to hurt your motherboard or CPU (if you install it in a tower case).

Check out Prolimatech’s product page for the Mega Shadow to get some extra details of this cooler.

The Mega Shadow is made in black nickel which has a very pleasing look and feel to it. Otherwise the cooler’s design is almost exactly the same as the Megahalems’. The cooler is constructed of two independent towers which each are crossed by six heatpipes of copper with a diameter of 6mm.

According to Prolimatech, the distance between the fins has been optimized to produce the maximum heat dissipation.

In the top part of the cooler we can see the logo stamped into the fins. To me, this is a nice detail which gives me some kind of warm feeling in my chest of appreciation of the product.

It’s actually possible to install two 120mm fans on this cooler, one on each side.

The base of the cooler looks mean with the massive heatpipes crossing from side to side. It reminds me of the cylinder of a Harley motor cycle.

The heatpipes have been welded to the copper base which is the traditional method and different from the HDT system (Heat pipe Direct Touch) which has won more and more popularity lately.

The finish of the back plate could not be better, the polish is of excellent quality and the mirror effect is striking.

INSTALLATION AND TESTS

The obvious difference between the original Megahalems and the Mega Shadow is the black Nickel finish of the latter one. Nevertheless, the greater compatibility of the Mega Shadow makes it more attractive. The compatibility with LGA 775, 1156 and 1356 is naturally an extra selling point compared to “Megahalems” which only is compatible with socket 775 and 1366.

There is also a special mounting kit for AMD users which can be bought separately. This kit will make the Mega Shadow compatible with AMD sockets AM2/AM2+/AM3.

I installed the cooler on an Intel 1366 system.

Because a back plate is needed for the installation, I had to take the motherboard out of my case in order to complete the installation. I wanted to get this cooler secured tightly to the board for maximum stability and contact with the CPU.

Check out the images below to get a grasp of the installation process.

I actually had to resort to the manual to get the installation right. With it as support, I didn’t run into any problem at all and the installation process took me no longer than 5-10 minutes.

I chose to install two fans on the Mega Shadow because I wanted to see what it could perform if I really pushed it.

In order to analyze the performance of the Prolimatech Mega Shadow I used this test system:

In order to load the CPU to the maximum I used the software “Prime 95” during 20 minutes. I tested the fan with both 1 and two fans to get a reliable and relevant result.

The temperatures were measured with CoreTemp. The tests were made in a room temperature of 20 ˚C. I did the tests with the Intel Core i7 920 at 2.7GHz; 3.06GHz (overclocked) and 4.02 (really overclocked).

I set the voltage in BIOS to 1.16V when I ran the CPU at its normal speed and to 1.26V when overclocked. I deactivated “TurboBoost” but left “HyperThreading” activated.

I used the “Scythe Gentle Typhoon 120mm” fan in my tests and the rotation speed was set to 1450RPM.

Here are the results of my tests:

Obviously these are spectacular results. At no moment we reached critical temperatures, not even at 4GHz. This is truly remarkable since the Intel Core i7 920 can be run at 80°C – 85°C without risking anything.

Also, remember that I used software which loaded all four cores to 100% simultaneously. In reality this will almost never happen. Therefore these maximum temperatures are truly the extremes.

The results point to the conclusion that the gains by using two fans are minor. I actually found the Scythe Gentle Typhoon fans to have a great balance between cooling performance and noise level at 1450RPM.

As a little curiosity I also ran the CPU at 3.4GHz without HyperThreading enabled. The result was quite significant. With the HT activated the average temperature was 63°C, with HT deactivated the average temperature was 56°C, which is considerably lower.

CONCLUSIONS

The performance of the Mega Shadow is fantastic; no one can ever claim anything else. Compared to the Megahalems it looks better and has a better compatibility list. The only real competitor has to be the Thermalright TRUE Black (Revision C) which also is a huge cooler with excellent performance.

This is an amazing product no matter how you look at it. The only thing about it is its price at around $80 which is a lot of money to put out for a CPU cooler. If you consider that this cooler can actually compete with water cooling systems, then the price doesn’t seem that high. No matter the prize, I have to give this product my highest recommendations.

Pros:

• Exceptional performance
• Mounting system
• Lovely finish and design in black Nickel
• Good compatibility list

Cons:

• High price

The final score is 96 out of 100 owls, and we give the “Prolimatech Mega Shadow″ our Editor’s Choice Award.

Thanks goes out to Prolimatech for letting me review this cooler.

Author: Noel Íñiguez Fernández

Translator: Vince Emiloz Sanderson

AMD is back with a new medium range card which promises a good price/performance ratio, the Radeon HD 5670.

INTRODUCTION

The first member of the Evergreen family hit the market back in September (2009). AMD has since then not said much about what would follow.

AMD chose to release the 5670 card at last week’s CES 2010 event. The 5600 series chip is called Redwood and currently only includes the Radeon HD 5650 and 5670 chips. The 5600 series is clearly directed to the mid range segment of the market as illustrated in AMD’s release strategy below. AMD has release two versions of the HD 5670 card, one with 1GB GDDR5 and another with 512MB GDDR5. This review covers the latter one.

The 5600 series adopts the technologies of its big brothers like ATI Stream and ATI Eyefinity. Here are AMD’s own words about their new “ATI Stream” technology:

ATI Stream technology is a set of advanced hardware and software technologies that enable AMD graphics processors (GPUs), working in concert with the system’s central processors (CPUs), to accelerate enabled applications beyond traditional graphics and video processing. This enables balanced platforms to run computationally-intensive tasks more efficiently, providing a better application experience to the end user.

The 5600 series also has full support for Microsoft’s DirectX11 API. I guess most people buying a graphics card in the middle range segment don’t really know what the big deal is but anyone interested in the GPU industry knows that if you want to see the latest innovations in gaming you want to be on the latest DirectX train.

AMD ATI RADEON HD 5670, ENGINEERING SPECIFICATIONS

The test sample I will be reviewing today is a generic AMD ATI Radeon HD 5670 512MB GDDR5. It is a pre production unit which AMD sends out to selected publications before other outfitters’ versions hit the store shelves. I am actually a bit late out with my review, but hey, what’s the hurry anyway?

Here are the specifications for the HD5670 512MB GDDR5:

IN DETAIL: AMD ATI RADEON HD 5670 512MB GDDR5

I’m not going to spend too much time rambling about what the card looks like since most outfitters will be mounting their own cooling solutions. In short however, the card has a one slot cooler which is great and expected with a middle range card.

The card is manufactured with a 40nm technology which is great since it will increase its energy efficiency and decrease the generated heat in relation to performance.

A good thing about the fact that this card is fairly small and thin is that it fits in smaller cases suitable for HTPC and media PC projects. The length of the Radeon HD 5670 is 170mm.

The card has no PCI- Express power connector which should be considered as something positive I guess. It means that the card will never draw more power than what the PCI-Express bus can handle.

The 5670 generic card has 3 connectors; a Display Port; a HDMI and a DVI connector. It supports the “ATI Eyefinity” technology which means you can use monitors on each connector simultaneously.

The HMDI connector support s HDMI 1.3a which means full support for Dolby True HD and DTS Audio Masters.

TEST SYSTEM

I used my normal test system for this review, here are the specs:

And here are some screenshots of my configuration:

During my test I set the in-game graphics settings to the highest quality. I set the filter settings to “medium” because of the fact that this card is not intended for people who “must” have the filter settings to max.

For those of you who are not too familiar of how to measure the performance of a graphics card, here’s a table with frame rate numbers and what they actually mean in real life gaming experience:

TEST: BENCHMARKING SOFTWARE

I always do the tests with the benchmarking software first because it often gives a glint of the overall performance of the card. In this case the results tell me that the performance of this card is a bit above what I had expected from a medium range card in the new AMD generation.

As a comparison a Nvidia GT 240 GDDR5 card I have tested in the same system obtained around 7000 points in 3DMark 2006 and in my last review of a GT220 card (a card more towards the lower end segment) it achieved 6700 points. The Radeon HD5670 card came in at 11700 points which exceeds the NVIDIA cards by quite a lot.

As I have experienced with all the DirectX11 compatible cards I have reviewed, the performance diminishes with the jump from DirectX10 to DirectX11. This is strange because “higher performance” is one of the major selling points with the new API from Microsoft.

TEST: GAMES PART 1

The Radeon HD 5670 actually turns out to be even more powerful in the first batch of games that I had expected based on the results achieved in the benchmarking tests. I was actually somewhat surprised that this medium range card, at a price level below $100, could move these games with great fluidity.

Games like The Last Remnant, Street Fighter IV and Devil May Cry 4 actually ran really well no matter what level of graphics quality setting, resolution or filter I set. Even Resident Evil 5 ran OK

TEST: GAMES PART 2

A strange thing about the results above is the case of the games STALKER: Clear Sky and STALKER: Call of Prypiat. The first one uses DirectX10 and the second DirectX11. STALKER Clear Sky (DX10) offers a very limited gaming experience while STALKER: Call of Prypiat (DX11) has much better results. I mean, those games are part of the same series. It raises questions like: is DirectX11 more efficient than DirectX10 after all? Or; do these two games have different 3D motors? I am afraid I cannot answer those questions for you, just thought that I’d bring it to your awareness.

There are however clearly two games in this batch which this card cannot handle; Far Cry 2 and Crysis Warhead. The performance of the Radeon HD 5670 in Far Cry 2 at a resolution of 1680×1050 (without filters) at 41.04 FPS just isn’t good enough and far from the results I achieved with the Sapphire HD 5750 (61.57 FPS).

Still, the Radeon HD 5670 demonstrates a remarkable performance in very demanding games. If we can live with not always running the games in the highest resolutions with filters enabled, then you will not be disappointed.

HD VIDEO

In order to analyze the performance of the Radeon HD 5670 when replaying HD video I measured the average CPU load (%) during a 5 minute period while playing HD content. I did the measurements in two resolutions: 720p (H.261) and 1080p.

The excellent results are really thanks to the ATI Steam technology. It is great to see such a powerful card with such small dimensions. It makes the card ideal for a HTPC.

OVERCLOCKING, COOLING AND CONSUMPTION

Overclocking is always exciting (at least for me) but I wasn’t overly enthusiastic about this card since all I had to work with was the ATI Catalyst application. I did however reach a decent 9% increase of the GPU (775 MHz) and a 9.5% increase of the original memory frequency. This was the max numbers I could set in the ATI Catalyst application which leaves some room for other outfitters to unlock a greater overclocking.

The cooling system of this card fulfills its task. We must consider that is just a generic sample of the card so none of the outfitters fancy cooling solutions are present. The temperatures that you see in the graph below at full load are high but they are actually what I usually see with a new reference model AMD ATI card. We will just see what the different outfitters can come up with in terms of cooling solutions for the 5670 chip and what they can do with the temperatures.

The fan is automatically regulated and its rotation speed is around 28% when the card is in idle mode. Below 40% the fan is imperceptible but above 50% it is perfectly audible without ever getting as annoying as fans on high end cards.

The use of the new manufacturing technology at 40nm gives this card a better efficiency ratio than previous generation of graphics cards. In the real world this means an improvement of the performance at the same power consumption levels. Or the other way around; a lower power consumption at the same performance level. According to AMD ATI, the idle mode consumption should be 14W whereas the typical consumption in operation is at 61W.

I measured the total power drainage of my system in idle mode and overclock mode which is illustrated in the graph below. I cannot tell you if AMD ATI’s number are correct or not.

RESULTS OF THE TEST WITH OVERCLOCK

Of course I ran some tests with the overclocked card as well, here are the results:

As you can see the results show a slight increase of the performance. For instance the gain in Crysis Warhead was around 1.5 FPS and in Far Cry 2 the increase was around 3 FPS. In reality this doesn’t mean much.

CONCLUSIONS

OK, so this card is clearly not a high end gaming card, but the big question is if it’s powerful enough to be of any use for us gamers? I would say definitely yes! If you can accept playing FPS games without filters you will be satisfied with this card. Hard core gamers will however have to go for the next price level.

What is great with this card is that AMD has managed to squeeze in all the new technologies which we saw in the 5800 series, like the ATI Steam, DirectX11 and ATI Eyefinity. That fact combined with the fact that this card is quite small makes it ideal for anyone looking for a graphics card for HTPC project.

This card will start to sell around the $100 level which I feel is very affordable considering its capabilities.

Pros:

• OK performance
• Low noise level
• Low power consumption
• Single slot card
• Low price

Cons:

• None really

The final score is 89 out of 100 owls, and we give the “AMD ATI 5670 Radeon HD 512MB GDDR5″ our Recommended Award.

Thanks goes out to AMD ATI for letting me review this card.

Check out alternatives of the Radeon 5600 series at testseek.com

Author: Manuel González Fernández

Translator: Vince Emiloz Sanderson

ZOTAC GeForce 220 with 1GB GDDR3 is a new card targeted towards the low end market. It has a customized cooling system and should satisfy most consumers looking for a card with good High Definition capabilities.

INTRODUCTION

In July 2009, NVIDIA began the transition to a 40nm manufacturing technology with two new models destined for the low end market: the GeForce GT 210 and GT 220. They were actually never destined to be sold as full retail cards but as the market has developed, NVIDIA now has full retail version of both of them.

The basic model (GT 210) has the “gt218” GPU which has 16 “CUDA cores”; a 64-bits interface; 512MB GDDR2 memory; 1 D-Sub, 1 DVI and 1 HDMI exit. The reference model runs on the following frequencies: 589MHz, 1402MHz and 790MHz (GPU/Shader/Memory). It replaces the old 9400 GT in NVIDIAS lineup.

The NVIDIA GT 220 reference card is based upon the “GT216” GPU which has 48 “CUDA cores”; a 128-bits interface; 1024MB GDDR3 memory; 1 D-Sub; 1 DVI and 1 HDMI exit. The reference model runs on the following frequencies: 625MHz, 1360MHz and 790MHz (GPU/Shader/Memory). It sells at around $60-$80 and it replaces the old 9600 GT and 9500 GT cards.

Today I will be taking a look at one of Zotac’s cards with the NVIDIA 220 layout. Zotac currently has four models based on the GT 220 GPU. The card I will be taking a closer look at today is the model “ZT-20201-10L”, here are its specifications:

THE BUNDLE

In the box I found the graphic card itself in an antistatic plastic bag. The card is accompanied by a licensed copy of 3DMark Vantage; a CD with drivers and software; a sticker and a manual. No brackets, adapters or cables are included in the bundle.

IN DETAIL: ZOTAC GEFORCE GT 220 1GB DDR3

The first impression I had of the card was that is clearly looks like an end level card. The cooling solution is a rather small single slot cooler with a tiny fan. The cooler has the capacity to be “self regulated”, i.e. it adapts its rotation speed automatically depending on the load on the card.

I also noted that the cooler is in contact with the memory chips in addition to the CPU. The card feels like quality with great robustness in both finish and construction.

The card occupies one PCI-Express slot and measures 157.5 mm in length and 111 mm in width. It has one DVI-I; one HDMI 1.3a (supports 7.1 audio) and one VGA connector. These connectors will let us connect the card to more or less any monitor or HD TV.

NVIDIA has focused on making this card compatible with the latest requirements for a multimedia PC. The feature with digital audio through the HDMI port is great because it goes directly through the PCI-Express port without needing a cable via a typical S/PDIF bridge from the sound card.

TEST SYSTEM

Here are the specs of the test system I used for this review:

Normally when testing graphics cards, I always set the graphics settings to max (in the game menus), but because this is a low end card I had to set the graphics settings to medium or low. Also, I didn’t activate filters.

TEST WITH BENCHMARKING SOFTWARE

The results obtained by this ZOTAC were not very encouraging. Already after the software benchmarks I can tell you that this card is not for playing the latest 3D games, at least not in good graphics quality or high resolution.

GAMING TEST PART 1

I decided to start with testing the card out in only two games: Far Cry 2 and Crysis Warhead. As I suspected, the card didn’t produce anyway near satisfactory performance with the highest quality settings (with DX10) in these games so I decided to do all the following testing at the medium setting of graphics quality with no active filters.

But even at medium graphics quality the gaming experience is poor with these very demanding games. I had to set the graphics quality to low to get a steady frame rate above 30 FPS.

GAMING TEST PART 2

In this second batch I have included games which are not as demanding as the games in the first batch. Generally these games gave a much better gaming experience with nice looking graphics, as long as I didn’t enable filters and set the graphics quality to the highest settings. But with Resident Evil 5 I again encountered too low frame rates for my own taste.

HD VIDEO

In order to analyze the performance of the ZOTAC GeForce GT220 1GB DDR3 when replaying HD video I measured the average CPU load (%) during a 5 minute period while playing HD content.

I did the measurements in two resolutions: 720p (H.261) and 1080p.

As you can see from the graph above the HD content replay worked very well with this card and the load on my CPU was not much to talk about.

I also did not encounter any problems with the digital audio out through the HDMI port. I connected the card to my HD TV through the HDMI port and selected the HDMI port as the sound output connector under Windows and the audio was excellent.

OVERCLOCKING, COOLING AND POWER CONSUMPTION

I had great expectations for the overclocking features of the ZOTAC GeForce GT220 1GB DDR3. The main reason for my expectations was the fact that this is the first NVIDIA card with a 40nm GPU. I have also heard other oveclockers who have succeeded in overclocking GT 220 cards as far as 15% and above.

I was with a bittersweet taste that I had to conclude that the max overclocking I could squeeze out of this card was a meager 6% gain. In numbers this means that I managed to overclock the card from the factory settings at 625/790/1360 (GPU/Memory/Shader) to 662/802/1440. I used the “FireStorm” program developed by ZOTAC.

The cooling solution worked very well. The idle mode temperature was 28 C and 52 C in full load. When overclocked the card’s temperatures came in at 29 C in idle mode and 54 C at full load.

I would say that this card can generally be categorized as quiet, the fan doesn’t go up to full speed very often but when it does it is quite noisy. It is possible to control the fan’s rotation speed manually and I set it to 40% and at that level it was practically inaudible. I had no problems with excessive heat at this level, even when running the card at full load.

In addition to the lesser heat which is generated thanks to the 40nm manufacturing technology, I noticed that the power consumption was exceptionally low with this card. I measured my entire system’s power drainage and in idle mode it was 109 W and 156 W at full load.

Considering that these numbers are substantially lower that what I have received in previous reviews of graphics cards with the same system, NVIDIA’s claim of a power consumption of only 7W in idle mode and 58W at full load should be correct.

REAL WORLD RESULTS OF THE OVERCLOCKING

I wanted to see if the rather small overclocking I managed to achieve with this card made any real difference in real life gaming situations and with benchmarking software. Here are the results:

As suspected, the IRLG (In Real Life Gaming…hehe) gains from the overclocking were minor.

CONCLUSIONS

Clearly the ZOTAC GeForce GT220 1GB GDDR3 is not a card for serious gamers. I wouldn’t even say that it’s a card for any kind of gamers. Of course at the price level around $60-$80 one should not expect anything else than a low end to average performance.

But this doesn’t mean that the card sucks. If you are building a HTPC and you are a very occasional gamer, this card can be an excellent option thanks to the 7.1 digital audio through the HDMI port and the possibility of decoding HD video by hardware. Also the card is cool and silent and of small dimensions. So for media/HTPC building purposes I have to say that this is an excellent card.

Pros:

• Finish
• Small dimensions
• Operating temperatures
• Low power consumption
• 7.1 audio through HDMI connector
• Quiet fan

Cons:

• High price/performance ratio

The final score is 77.5 out of 100 owls, and we give the “ZOTAC 220 GeForce GT 1GB DDR3″ our Recommended Award.

Thanks goes out to Zotac for letting me review this case.

Author: Manuel González Fernández

Translator: Vince Emiloz Sanderson

The Lian-Li PC-8N is a high quality medium range aluminum case with a sober design at an interesting price level.

INTRODUCTION

Just a couple of weeks back I had the immense pleasure to review the LanCool Dragonlord PC-K58 case and as I mentioned in the introduction to that review, LanCool is a member Lian-Li family of brands.

The Lian-Li PC-8N is a medium tower case without too many “extra” features. It is a sober looking case made in aluminum that should attract anyone looking for a high quality case at a reasonable price level.

Let’s have a look at its specifications:

From what I can read from the specifications above, this case is not one of those high end cases with a ton of interesting features. Instead, Lian-Li have focused on building a high quality case in aluminum which includes a rather small portion of innovations. However, it seems from the specifications that they haven’t held back on the cooling system and the noise dampening features.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

The accessories included with the case are: a manual; an anti vibration kit for the hard drives, screws, plastic bridles to organize cables, a small key and a system loudspeaker.

LIAN LI PC-8N IN DETAIL: THE OUTSIDE

The first thing that hit me when taking the case out of its packaging was that it’s really light compared to other cases I have reviewed in the same class. Of course this is due to the aluminum.  The second thing that hit me was the sobriety of its design.

In the upper part of the front there are four 5.25 inch expansion bays for optical drives, fan monitors, card readers or whatever you choose to install. Under these bays there’s a 3.5 inch expansion bay, below which the power and reset buttons are located. The power and HDD LEDs are located at the top right section of the front, to the right side of the 5.25 inch expansion bays, check out the pictures below to see what I mean.

Perhaps one of the aspects in which Lian-Li has missed out on the PC-8N is the fact that the front external ports only consists of 2 USB 2.0 ports and two audio jacks. I would have appreciated an eSATA and a FireWire port as well.

Under the front ports, there’s a metallic grid behind which a 120mm fan is located.

The back part of the case is quite conventional. This case hasn’t any pre drilled holes or any other features supporting a liquid cooling system which means you will have to be a bit handy if you want to outfit this case with such a cooling system.

The upper zone has a hollow for the PSU as you can see from the images below. Under the PSU, there’s another hollow for the motherboard I/O ports. To the right of the I/O shield hollow there’s a 120mm fan which blows the hot air out from the case. In the bottom zone, there are seven PCI card expansion slots.

As you can see from the images, Lian Li have not used the usual “bee wax cake” looking metallic grid for the fan, instead they have used a circular type of grid which lets more air out of from the case.

The top and bottom sides of the case are both almost totally solid metal. The holes that you see in the image of the bottom side of the case are intended to be used for fastening cables to the bottom of the case.

Just like the top and bottom sides, the two side panels are made of solid metal. If nothing else, they give a striking feel of quality and robustness.

THEY ROLL LI PC-8N IN DETAIL: THE INTERIOR

The inside of the case seems very simple at first but there are quite a few smart details as you will see.

The interior of the box follows the same principle of simplicity as the outside. The 120mm fan placed in the back has a rather dense grid to avoid that any cables get stuck in it.

The upper part looks like a wind tunnel but its function is actually to work as a storage area for the left over cables from the PSU. This is great because it leaves the rest of the case free from cables prohibiting the air to flow through the case.

The front expansion bays do not hold any bigger secret either, but I am a bit puzzled over why Lian Li did not include a “Tool-less” mounting system for the 5.25 inch bays, while they have included other nice details such as the white protector plastic as you can see in the image below.

When I removed the front panel of the box, I found a dust filter on the front fan which is great because this fan sucks air into the case and the filter will thus leave the dust on the outside of the case.

Another nice detail is that it’s possible to remove the external front ports, which means that you will have fewer cables to worry about inside the case.

The two 120mm fans that Lian Li has included with this case are the same and their model number is: LI121225SL-4. Their rotation speed is 1200rpm and they consume on average 3.24W. They have a very low noise level which is great but it also means that they don’t move too much air.

ASSEMBLY

During the assembly of the equipment I will show you some of the nice details which the Lian Li PC-8N has to offer.

This first task was to install the hard drives; one 3.5 inch unit and one 2.5 inch. A nice detail is that the screws have rubber anti-vibration rings. To install the 2.5 inch drive, I had to first remove the metallic bay and mount the drive in it outside of the case.

To install the PSU, you start by fastening a back plate to the PSU and then you fasten the plate and PSU to the chassis. It takes a little longer than usual but on the other hand it goes a little more effortlessly.

I was little bit worried about that it would be a somewhat painful experience to mount the motherboard and the rest of the hardware in this case. I guess the main reason for my concerns was the fact this case doesn’t have all the little extra features that I have gotten used to. But I was wrong in my expectations; the installation went without any troubles at all. As you can see from the images above, the final result is quite OK, but I would have liked to see a more extensive cable management system.

The above images shows how it looks from the opposite side and as you can see; the arrangement of the cables is not optimal.

CONCLUSIONS

It is always hard to sum up a review of a PC case because there are so many options available on the market today and one has to consider that all consumers are looking for different features and functions. All I can do is to as objectively as possible give you a fair view of my own experience with this case.

Most advanced users are picky about what material the case is made of and the favorite material amongst advanced users is aluminum. The reason for this is that aluminum is a light metal and the finish is normally great. I also suspect that there is another factor called vanity which plays a role here.

All in all, Lian Li PC-8N is a high quality medium range box which offers great materials, low weight and an excellent finish. It has some good details like the anti-vibration system for the hard disks; the fans and their anti dust filters and grids… but I can’t help wishing it had a decent cable management system and that the installation was tool free. If it had those two features it would be a practically perfect case. Still the case is quite spacious and the fans are quiet which lifts the overall score somewhat.

The Lian Li PC-8N is not a cheap case; it goes for around 100 bucks at Newegg. The main reason for its rather high price tag is of course the aluminum and if you want a case in this material you will have to put up this much cash.

Pros:

• Aluminum
• Finish and quality
• Anti-vibration for hard disks and side panels
• Quiet cooling system

Cons:

• Lack of eSATA port
• Better cable management system
• Tool free installation
• Hefty price tag

The final score is 85 out of 100 owls, and we give the “Lian Li PC-8N″ our Recommended Award.

Thanks goes out to Lian Li for letting me review this case.

Author: Manuel González Fernández

Translator: Vince Emiloz Sanderson

Sapphire is back with a new exciting series of graphics cards called “Vapor-X” which has a very special cooling solution. In this review I will be taking a look at the Sapphire Vapor-X HD 5750 card.

INTRODUCTION

The Radeon 5000 series of graphics cards were rather recently released by AMD/ATI and for the very first time in a couple of years, AMD/ATI (hereafter referred to as only AMD) is back in the performance lead. NVIDEA will release their next generation of graphics cards rather soon but no date is set and very little information about it has leaked to the press.

Just a couple of weeks back AMD released the 5850 and the 5870 graphics cards which were very well received in reviews and by consumers. I did a review of an Asus 5850 card myself.

Just a couple of weeks later AMD release the HD 5970 which is a dual GPU card with the code name “Hemlock”, a very powerful and expensive card. You can check out reviews at testseek.com on it. Here’s the current lineup from AMD:

I already discussed the news with the Radeon 5000 series in my Asus HD 5850 review so I’m not going to repeat everything again. Suffice to say, the new generation has some new great characteristics. First, the chips are made in the new 40nm technology which promises lower power consumption and less heat.  Secondly, the ATI EyeFinity technology makes it possible to connect up to three monitors to each card which means a total of 6 monitors in CrossFireX. Other important characteristics are the ATI Stream (GPU acceleration), Open CL (API for processing in parallel GPU-CPU) and Directx 11 support.

ENGINEERING SPECIFICATIONS: SAPPHIRE VAPOR-X HD5750 1GB DDR5

OK, enough is enough; let’s have a look at the specifications of the Sapphire HD 5750 Vapor-X 1GB DDR5:

FIRST IMPRESSIONS: 5750 SAPPHIRE VAPOR-X HD 1GB DDR5

On the box Sapphire emphasizes the Vapor-X technology and all the new AMD technologies discussed above.

The card is secured in a card board box and enclosed by the usual anti static plastic bag.

The included accessories are: a manual; a CD with drivers and utilities; the application “ArcSoft SimHD”; a coupon to download the Dirt2 game (supports DirectX 11); 2 molex to 6 pin PCIe adapter cables; a DVI-VGA adapter and a CrossFireX bridge.

IN DETAIL: SAPPHIRE VAPOR-X HD 5750 VAPOR-X 1GB DDR5

The card itself really looks impressive with its massive cooling solution. I have had the chance to see models of the 5750 from quite a few manufacturers and the Sapphire card comes out on top.

The cooling solution occupies a double slot which may be a disadvantage because this card must be rated as a medium range card and many users prefer single slot cards in this segment. AMD/ATI sets the overall rules from which the manufacturers can build their cards and they often leave rather small margins which I guess must be the reason why I have yet to see a 5750 single slot card.

The technology used by the cooling system Vapor-X has its origins in the aerospace industry. The cooling liquid, (in this case water) becomes steam on a hot surface (the GPU) and the resulting steam is condensed when it comes in touch with a colder surface which turns the steam into liquid again and returns to the hot surface again and so the process repeats itself. Sapphire claims that the Vapor-X system is much more effective than the reference cooling system, up to 7 degrees.

In the right hands, less heat means less noise. And this is also another characteristic of the Vapor-X system.

In order to help the Vapor-X system to cool the liquid that circulates in its interior, Sapphire has installed an 80mm fan which is perfectly integrated with the black plastic cover. One of the sides of the plastic cover holds the Sapphire logo which glows blue when the system is running. Check out the image below to see what I’m talking about.

The “Black Diamond” condensers which caused some buzz in the industry are included on this card.  The aluminum polymer in these condensers is superior to the one used one in “normal” aluminum condensers. According to Sapphire, these condensers are 25% more energy efficient than normal condensers.

The card has an extra 6 pin PCIe power connector as you can see from the image below.

The 5750 actual has two CrossFireX connections although due to the inefficiency of the Catalyst drivers, it is not recommended to install more than two cards.

The memory units are visible on the PCB of this card. They are four high quality Hynix GDDR5 chips.

There are four video exits on this card, two standard DVI-I; a HDMI and a DisplayPort. This should satisfy the needs of even the most demanding users. The card is only 185 mm long and thus fits in most cases.

TEST SYSTEM

These are the components in my test system:

Here are screen shots of my test system configuration:

BENCHMARKING TESTS

Sadly I received this card a little too late to be able to test it on my old test system on which I have made many graphics card tests. This means I will have to comment on the numbers without having any real references to results from old tests. I’ll try to be as objective as possible.

It’s not a secret that AMDs cards often get surprisingly high scores in the FutureMark benchmarking programs (3D Mark 06 and 3D Mark Vantage). And this time was no exception as you can see from the graphs above.

The Unigine tests of the DirectX 10 and Direct 11X was interesting to me because of the results I got with the same tests on the Asus HD5850 card a couple of weeks back. One of the main marketing points of the DirectX 11 is that it is supposed to be much faster than its predecessor. With the HD 5850 I got the opposite results and as you can see from the graphs above, the same goes for the 5750 card. Obviously AMD are having troubles here. Hopefully we will see improvements with the release of new Catalyst drivers.

GAMING I

The performance of the Radeon HD 5750 is spectacular. It is able to maintain a high FPS rate with all the games in this first series. It had no problems when I beefed up the resolution and turned on filters. The fact that it includes 1GB of GDDR5 with a bandwidth of 108 GB/s must be what ultimately keeps the smoothness in the games going even with filters on.

GAMING II

In the second battery of games which includes the most demanding games, the limitations of the HD 5750 comes to light. Although it doesn’t prevent us from enjoying the games altogether, it is clear that this is a mid range card. In favor of HD 5750 it is necessary to say that even the incredibly powerful HD 5850 had some troubles with these games with all the settings at max. Considering that the HD 5850 has double the amount of stream processors compared to the HD5750 it is fair to say that the HD 5750 is a very potent card.

OVERCLOCKING, COOLING AND POWER CONSUMPTION

The release of the HD 5750 brings power to the medium range segment. Up till now, I haven’t said much about its overclocking abilities but reports from other reviews and forums have been positive. Therefore I was very eager to test a HD 5750 card myself and see of the overclocking potential really was as good as I had heard. I cannot deny that I got even happier when I learnt that I would be able to test a HD 5750 with the Vapor-X technology.

Indeed, the overclocking capacity of this card is high. Check out the following screen shots which I obtained without modifying voltages but by only using Catalyst Control Center.

After having tested innumerable combinations, I received a stable configuration at 860 Mhz for the GPU and 1345 MHz for the memories. This means an increase of the default numbers of 23% for the GPU and 17% for the memories (percentages was calculated based on the values for the reference model with 700 MHz for the GPU and 1150 MHz for the memories).

The Vapor-X cooling system obviously does a fantastic job. In the following graph you can see the temperatures when the card is in IDLE and FULL LOAD modes. The IDLE temperatures were measured after the system had been running for half an hour without any load. The FULL LOAD numbers were taken after the system had been in full load (using Furmark 1.7) for a half an hour. The room temperature was 17˚C.

The Vapor-X technology clearly does a lot to keep the temperatures down. It was a long time ago I saw these low numbers at full load. I say it again; the Vapor-X does a great job.

The noise level is always hard to talk about since it’s a very subjective thing.  The fan can be set manually or automatic. During my overclocking the fan was set to regulating itself and it rotated at 50% of the max speed. I think that the noise it made on these levels ware perfectly OK but when it goes above it becomes noticeable and somewhat annoying.

The power consumption of the 5800 series has been reduced rather drastically thanks to the use of the ATI PowerPlay technology that diminishes the consumption in 2D. According to the specifications from Sapphire, the power consumption of the card in idle mode is as low as 18W. The maximum consumption is 108W at full load. The graph below shows the power consumption of my entire system when the card is in IDLE and FULL LOAD mode respectively.

RESULTS OF THE OVERCLOCKING

OK, here are the results from the overclocking tests.

It could not be better. The results are almost hard to believe. In Far Cry 2, I saw an increase of up to 10 fps.  In Crysis Warhead however, the increase of the performance was more limited.

The Sapphire Radeon HD 5750 Vapor-X is the most “overclock friendly” card I have tested in a long time. Considering the other reviews available for this card I suspect that my results are not due to an especially good sample of the card.

CONCLUSIONS

Some has called the arrival of the new generation of AMD/ATI cards a revolution. I wouldn’t go so far as calling it a revolution even though they have pushed the performance up a level or two.  But nVIDIA has definitely been challenged by the new AMD generation with the combination of great performance and low power consumption. Time will tell if they can come up with a good response, I wouldn’t be too surprised.

Sapphire has succeeded in perfecting an already good product, the AMD/ATI Radeon HD 5750. The Sapphire card has great performance, support for DirectX11, lower power consumption, doesn’t emit too much noise and has great overclocking abilities. It’s currently available for around $150 which to me is a real bargain. Buy.

Pros:

• Looks and finish
• Compact dimensions
• Vapor-X cooling system
• Overclocking capacity
• Price

Cons:

• None I can think of

The final score is 98 out of 100 owls, and we give the “Sapphire Vapor-X HD 5750 1GB DDR5″ our Editor’s Choice Award.

Thanks goes out to Sapphire for letting me review this card.

Check out alternatives of the Radeon 5800 series at testseek.com

Author: Manuel González Fernández

Translator: Vince Emiloz Sanderson

For the moment Testseek.com has collected 10 reviews of the Lian Li LanCool PC-K58 and it has received 9 awards (!) and a staggering 85% average score. Those numbers says a lot but I wanted to know what the fuzz was about so here’s my own review of it.

INTRODUCTION

When one looks for a case for a new high end PC building project, Lian Li always comes up among the interesting manufacturers. It is my opinion that Lian Li is synonymous with quality; design; elegance and exclusive features. This time I will be looking at a case which has all those features but also a reasonable price tag.

The LanCool is really more a brand of itself than just a Lian Li product series. Lian Li is by most considered as a high end brand, so to diversify into the medium range consumer market without negatively affecting the Lian Li brand, they started the LanCool brand. It is in some places sold without the “Lian Li” in the product name. Anyhow, what really matters is that Lian Li targets lower price level market with the LanCool brand/series.

One of the differences that I have noted about Lian Li versus LanCool cases is that Lian Li mostly uses aluminum while LanCool uses SECC steel for the construction of their models.

OK, so here are the technical specifications of the LanCool PC-K58:

Even though the price tag is not very high for this case, I would like to put this case in the high end segment due to all the extra features. One big plus of this case is that it is quite spacious and supports high end graphics cards.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

The LanCool PC-K58 comes in a very large and heavy card board box. And it’s normal since it is a large case and it is mainly made of steel and is thus quite heavy.

The accessories include; a printed manual; an anchorage adapter for the power supply; a mainboard speaker; a plastic cable management clip, one molex adapter and some screws. If anything, the accessories made me more curious about the assembly process to come.

LANCOOL PC-K58 IN DETAIL, THE OUTSIDE

My first thought about the design was that it looked like something from a SF movie but still sober. I guess it’s the block build style which makes me think of SF. I really liked the design which is of course my subjective opinion. Anyhow, the finish is absolutely top of the line.

The entire outside of the case is completely black, except for the back of the case which has the old gray steel look. The sides of the case is very simple, there’s no window or side cooling system. It is actually possible to acquire a side panel with a window and the logo of the “Dragonlord” series printed on it.

Something that I have seen coming more and more with high end cases is the metallic grid in the front. It’s great because it enables the air to move in and out the case more easily yet it keeps the dust on the outside.

The back part of the LanCool Dragonlord PC-K58 is quite interesting. The first thing I noticed was that the PSU is placed at the bottom near the floor where the coolest air always is. Above the PSU hollow, there are eight expansion slots. Note that all the slots have back plates with grids to increase the ventilation. The location of the tubes for the liquid cooling system is placed more or less at the medium height. This is good because it allows us to keep the circuit short. Another good detail is the screws for the fan which have an anti vibration function patented by Lian Li.

The bottom and the top of the case share an essential characteristic: the build of the fan slots. Unlike other manufacturers LanCool has a metallic grid which looks more like a sun screen window on an old house than the typical bee wax cake look. The bottom fan also has a dust filter which is great since it will keep dust from the floor on the outside.

The front connectors are located at the top of the case in the middle of the power and reset buttons. The connectors are two USB ports, one mic and one audio out. Take a look at the images below to check it out.

LANCOOL PC-K58 IN DETAIL, THE INTERIOR

When I removed the side panels I was surprised by their rigidity, they are really thick and heavy. Not a bad thing I suppose. LanCool hasn’t bothered with painting the back or the interior of the case which has the traditional grey metallic color.

The first thing I noticed was the fact that this case has a cable management system. There’s also a hollow in the motherboard back plate for the CPU. Another detail I noticed what the LanCool has already fastened the separator (between the motherboard and the motherboard back plate).

The bottom of the case is mostly occupied by the space for the PSU. As you can see LanCool has placed a rubber vibration dampener for the PSU.

Another one of the great details that this box incorporates is the tool free installation of the expansion slot cards. The system that LanCool uses with this case is very easy to work with and provides a safe anchorage for the expansion cards.

In the upper part of the back there’s a 120mm fan with a 1000rpm rotation speed which naturally makes it produce very little noise.

In the “ceiling” of the case are two places where you can install 120mm or 140mm fans. As you know, hot air wants to rise so these fans would be turned to blow air out of the case.

The inside front of the case is divided in two clear zones. The lower zone is dedicated to the installation of hard disks and the upper part houses the optical units or other systems that use the 5.25” expansion bays.

The rack for the 3.5” units holds a maximum of four drives, both 3.5” and 2.5”. LanCool has a great solution for the installation of the hard drives. You just put the drive in the tray; snap the plastic adapters tight and the push the tray into place. The trays are held by rubber fasteners so no vibration will be transferred to the case.

If at all present, most manufacturers have a 120mm fan in the front. LanCool has chosen to place a 140mm fan in the front and this is great because it manages to cool the hard drive trays perfectly as you can see from the images above.

From the other side of the case there is not much to talk about except maybe the cable management system.

The problem of dust seems to be very hard to completely avoid no matter which case you try. I believe that the best way to avoid it is the use of dust filters in one form or another. In this case, LanCool has really taken it to another level by placing dustfilters on all the air intakes of the case. The front of the case actually has a double dust filter, one which is removable and can thus be easily cleaned.

INSTALLING HARDWARE IN BOX LANCOOL PC-K58

I began with the optical unit, which was easily installed thanks to the tool free system. The installation of the hard disks was no mystery either, I just pulled out a tray, inserted the hard drive and made sure it was secured and then I just put the tray with the hard drive installed back in place in the rack. No screw driver needed.

The installation of the power supply was also easy thanks to the unique anchorage system. You just place the PSU on top of the rubber feet and snap the anchorage arm in place. It holds the PSU firmly in place without any risk of it gliding to either side.

The case is very spacious and I am glad to report that it does support expansion slot cards with a length up to 290 mm which means that it does supports all graphics cards on the market except the Radeon HD 5970 cards.

The fans that LanCool has chosen for this case are very quiet, mainly thanks to their large sizes and low rotation speeds.

CONCLUSIONS

This was actually my first experience with the LanCool brand/series of products and I must say that I am very impressed. If I had to choose one thing about this case that I really appreciated, it has to be the fact that the installation procedure is entirely “tool free”.

In my opinion there are two things that LanCool can improve with this case. First they need to paint the inside and back of the case and secondly why no add an eSATA port amongst the front connectors? Of course, as always the more extra features we ask for the more expensive the product becomes.

In all other aspects I can do nothing but praise the work of the LanCool designers. All in all the PC-K58 is a high quality case with great features such as: super easy installation; nice finish and good looking design. Maybe the best thing of all is its price at around $80.

Pros:

• Build quality and finish
• Spacious
• Wiring management system
• Plenty of anti vibration thinking
• Installation 100% tool free
• Good price level

Cons:

• -No eSATA support
• -Do not support HD 5970

The final score is 95 out of 100 owls, and we give the “Lian Li LanCool Dragonlord PC-K58″ our Editor’s Choice Award.

Thanks goes out to Lian Li/LanCool for letting me review this case.

Check out our case category for alternatives!

Author: Manuel González Fernández

Translator: Vince Emiloz Sanderson

NZXT M59 case is best described as an aggressive looking case with interesting features and a high build quality.

INTRODUCTION

To me, NZXT’s lineup of cases is rather typical for most case manufacturers with several product lines with different characteristics and price levels. A couple of months back I took a look at the NZXT Beta which is a case from one of NZXT’s lower priced series. The case which I will review today, the NZXT M59 is part of their “Classic” series which is a step up from the lower budget models.

The NZXT M59 is a medium range case which is oriented towards PC builders interested in modding. Here are the specifications:

As you can see from the specifications you get a lot of nice features with this case even though it is only a medium range case. I am especially intrigued by the cooling system which can be really extensive if you install fans at all the possible places.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

NZXT uses the catch phrase “Cool Clean Black” on the card board box in which the M59 case comes in. I am prepared to agree.

The included accessories are: a printed manual; anchorages for the 3.5 units and all the screws of different types.

NZXT M59 IN DETAIL, THE OUTSIDE

If I had to choose two things worth mentioning about the design of the NZXT M59, then I would choose the front and the side window. These two characteristics really define the case and make it stand out from the crowd.

The front of the M59 is mostly made of plastic. NXZT has placed the power buttons and the front connectors in the middle angled slightly upwards. Above the connectors there are some 5.25” expansion bays and below the connectors there is a metallic grid behind which a 120mm fan is placed by default.

The front expansion bays are illuminated by a LED light at the top of the case.

The left side is equipped with a window of rather big dimensions which really shows off the inside of the case. NZXT has also added a 120mm LED fan which is located on about the same height where the graphics card will be placed.

As you can see from the shot of the back of the case, the PSU is placed at the bottom of it. At the very top you can see the two pre drilled holes for installation of liquid cooling. Directly below those two holes there’s a 120mm fan. The backside is covered with a metal grid in most places to facilitate the cooling of the case.

In the ceiling of the M59, NXZT has made it possible to mount two 120mm or 140mm fans. As I said above, the power supply goes in the bottom of the case. As you can see from the image below, there’s a metallic grid intended to work as the air intake for the PSU. This air intake is protected by a dust filter which is a nice detail.

The rubber feet of the M59 give the case a bigger elevation over the floor than what I am used to see with other cases. I guess the intention with the higher feet is to facilitate for the PSU to draw in fresh air from the floor.

NZXT M59 IN DETAIL, the INTERIOR

I took of both sides to investigate the inside of the case. Apart from the window and the fan on the left side there’s not much to talk about.

A good thing about the included case fans is that they have several different types of connectors which facilitate the wiring and the administration of the fans.

I really like that the interior of the case is painted in black because it will make the system look cooler through the side window once it’s running. Another detail which I appreciated at first sight was that the motherboard back plate is very well thought through with hollows for the cable management and another hollow for where the CPU will be placed which makes it easier if you ever need to remove the CPU cooler.

I wouldn’t say that the case is small inside but the max graphics card length it can support is 290mm, which means that Radeon 5970 will not fit.

You can fit in a total of seven 3.5” units in the front bays which is not bad at all. I like that NZXT has turned the bays 90 degrees which makes it easier to work with the drives (5 units fit in this drive bay). NXZT has included a 2.5” adapter which may come in handy if you want to build a system with a SSD startup drive.

The NZXT M59 has four 5.25” bays of which 3 are equipped with anti-dust filters. The forth is covered by a black plate which is intended to be fastened on the drive front. This means that you can use a drive of any color and it will still look good.

There’s quite a lot of wiring coming from the front connectors and the power and reset buttons, we’ll see later if it causes a problem.

The PSU will rest on four rubber pivot points which serves as vibration dampeners. Above the PSU you can see the seven expansions slots. Note that all the expansion slots have back plates that allow air to pass through.

On top of the expansion slots there’s another 120mm fan of the same type as the one in the left side.

It’s possible to place two 140mm or 120mm fans in the ceiling of the case.

The M59 has a cable management system as you can see from the image above. There’s room for another 120mm fan in the lower part of the front, just below the front panel connectors.

INSTALLING HARDWARE IN the NZXT M59

The installation of the hard drive is facilitated by two adapters which you fasten on the sides of the hard drive and then you just slide the drive into place. The installation of the optical drive is similarly easy thanks to the screws which you can fasten with your hands, i.e. no screw drive is needed (check the accessories above).

The installation of the rest of the components didn’t give me any problems at all. The case feels fairly spacious and all the small smart innovations in this case helps a lot, like the fact that there’s hole in the motherboard back plate where the CPU goes.

I would say that I ended up with quite a clean looking installation thanks to the cable management system. Check out the images below to see what the case looks like in operation. I personally liked the blue LEDs in action.

In operation both case fans were so quiet I didn’t feel it was necessary to use any kind of fan control system.

CONCLUSIONS

This is the second case from NZXT that I have reviewed and I am as impressed with this one as I was with the first. I feel the biggest benefit with the NXZT cases is all the smart innovations which make them so pleasant to work with.

Another remarkable thing about the M59 case is of course its somewhat unusual design. I’m sure that it’s not for everyone but I love the aggressiveness in its design. It looks especially good when it’s running in a dark room.

The price for this case is around $60 which I think is very good considering all the extra features it holds. I cannot do anything else but give the NZXT M59 my highest recommendations.

Pros:

• Interesting design
• Excellent finish
• Spacious (although it’s not compatible with Radeon HD 5970)
• Extensive cooling system
• Good cable management system
• Excellent price

Cons:

• None

The final score is 95 out of 100 owls, and we give the “NZDT M59″ our Editor’s Choice Award.

Thanks goes out to NZXT for letting me review this case.

Check out our case category for alternatives!

Author: Manuel González Fernández

Translator: Vince Emiloz Sanderson

MSI gives us a motherboard with the NVIDIA nForce 750 SLI chipset which lets us combine a last generation CPU from AMD with a multi-GPU SLI setup and this without making a too big hole in our wallets.

INTRODUCTION

MSI is one of the giants within the PC hardware industry. They have been around for as long as I can remember. Motherboards is one of the ground stones in their business but the company have diversified into many different areas the last couple of years and as you may know, MSI is now one of the top suppliers of laptops.

Today I am going to review a very interesting motherboard from MSI, the NF750-G55. Here are the specifications:

By the specifications of the NF750-G55 it’s easy to conclude that MSI has worked hard to produce something a little extra with this board. The board offers support for SLI, Hybrid SLI and has some interesting proprietary technologies of MSI, like the “Easy OC Switch”. In this review I will not test the SLI functionality since it’s been done before, instead I will focus on the integrated GeForce 8200 chip and see what it can produce in terms of performance.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

The NF750-G55 comes in a rather sober looking cardboard box of standard size. On it, MSI emphasizes the support of the latest AMD processors, the support for SLI and Hybrid SLI and some of the extra features like the True Blu-ray Audio, APS and Easy OC Switch.

The included accessories are: a manual; a quick start installation guide; a drivers and utilities CD; the I/O back panel plate; SATA and IDE cables and a SATA power converter cable.

MSI NF750-G55 IN DETAIL

Although the MSI NF750-G55 is of the ATX standard, it’s a little narrower than most other ATX boards.

There are 4 memory slots which supports up to 16GB of DDR3 (up to 1600MHz). To clarify a little here, the chipset officially only supports up to 1333MHz, but it’s possible to run the memories at 1600MHz by doing a small change to the multiplier in the BIOS.

The only heatsink on the motherboard is the heatsink located on the nForce 750a SLI circuit.

The CPU cooler is fastened with screws which I think is great since it allows you to really get a grip of how tight the cooler is fastened, much better than with plastic anchorage systems. The 4 pin connector for the CPU is located in the middle of the board.

The MSI Active Phase Switching (APS) is located to the right of the 12V ATX connector. This system is in charge of real time automatic regulation of the power feeded to the CPU. The power level is actually illustrated by 4 LEDs which is a nice extra feature.

The board has two PCI-E x16 ports and 1 PCI port. As you can see; the PCI-E ports are separated by quite a big distance. If you use a double slot card in the second PCI-E port you will not be able to use the PCI port at all. It would have been better to place the PCI port before the first PCI-E x16 port.

The internal connectivity also incorporates 5 SATA 2  ports with RAID functionality, 3 USB 2.0 ports, a COM port connector, connectors for external audio; digital S/PDIF and a CD contact.

The integrated chips for the sound and the Ethernet connectivity are the Realtek ALC889 and RTL8211CL. Both chips are of high quality and supported with excellent drivers. The Fintek chip located next to the battery is in charge of the general I/O functions of the motherboard and also makes it possible to control fans with the popular SpeedFan program.

Perhaps the most interesting feature of this motherboard is the “Easy OC Switch”. It consists of a pink switch as you can see from the image below. This switch allows us to increase the FSB of up to 35% without having to do any other changes. In principle this addition is excellent, but it will only work well if the processor you are using supports overclocking without needing an increase of the voltage.

The back panel connectivity is excellent; check the specifications above for a complete list.

INSTALLING THE TEST EQUIPMENT

For the tests of the MSI NF750-G55 I used the following hardware and software:

Here are a couple of screenshots of the hardware I used:

In the graphics test I used a resolution of 1024×800 with the highest graphics settings.

BIOS

The BIOS on this board comes from AMI (American Megatrends Inc) and is very intuitive and easy to handle when overclocking.

The menu that interested me the most was of course the Cell Menu where all the real important settings are, at least of you want to overclock your system. Even though the NF750-G55 can be considered a medium range motherboard it offers many possibilities for overclocking both the CPU and the memory modules.

The M-Flash program which is incorporated in this BIOS is actually unique to MSI motherboards. It’s a smart little program which lets us update the BIOS and even to backup and recover old BIOS versions.

There is also a menu called “User Settings”. It makes it possible to setup different “profiles” of the BIOS setting. This can come in handy if you want to quickly load a preset of overclocking settings for a gaming session or similar.

BENCHMARKING TESTING PART 1

The CPU performance of the nForce 750a chip is within the margins that I had hoped for. However the memory testing came out a little short which surprised me as this is normally a strong area with the NVIDIA chips.

BENCHMARKING TESTING PART 2

The read and write speeds of the HD were very good which means that NVIDIA have solved the driver issues which have caused the hard disk to work slower than it should on older chipsets.

REAL WORLD TESTING

What draw my attention of the above results were the poor results from the WinRAR test. My conclusion is that it must be due to the memory problem noted above.

In the test of the IGP GeForce 8200 chip I didn’t receive any remarkable results in the 3D testing so it’s easy to conclude that you shouldn’t use it for gaming. It did work just fine for playback of HD videos though.

The power usage of this system is really low, especially when it’s operating in idle mode which makes it a good choice if you are building a 24/7 system.

OVERCLOCKING CAPACITY

NVIDIA has made classic AMD overclocking chipsets in the past including the now almost mythical nForce 2 and nForce 4 platforms. So what about the nForce 750a SLI overclocking capabilities? The following screenshots says it all:

I was able to overclock the FSB to 264MHz (!) which was actually a bit surprising to me, I hadn’t expected it to be so “overclock friendly” being a medium range card.

I also tried to overclock the integrated graphics card (GeForce 8200). I managed to get it to run stable at 601/1442MHz for the core and shaders respectively.

CONCLUSIONS

My first experience with the NF750 chipset has been a pleasure. The MSI NF750-G55 is a very diverse motherboard. It can be used in a hardcore SLI high end system or it can be used as a base plate for a HTPC project thanks to the integrated VGA with HDMI output.

Generally, MSI has managed to build a great motherboard around the nForce 750a SLI chipset. Its performance and overclocking abilities are excellent as the same goes for its connectivity. The integrated graphics solution is good but not as powerful as some of the integrated chips that AMD/ATI offers.

The price of this motherboard is around $100 (90 Euro) which I feel is a bargain considering the overclocking abilities and the diversity of this board.

Pros:

• General quality
• Built-in technologies (Hybrid SLI, Easy OC Switch, APS…)
• Very complete BIOS
• Good performance
• Excellent overclocking abilities
• Excellent price

Cons:

• Nothing worth mentioning

The final score is 90 out of 100 owls, and we give the “MSI NF750-G55″ our Editor’s Choice Award.

Thanks goes out to MSI for letting me review this motherboard.

Check out our Mainboard category for alternatives!

Author: Manuel González Fernández

Translator: Vince Emiloz Sanderson

A while ago, AMD released their last generation of graphics cards, the 5800 series. Asus is one of the top assemblers of AMD Radeon equipped cards so it’s a pleasure to review the Asus EAH5850 1GB DDR5 which promises to be a good alternative for overclockers.

INTRODUCTION

As usual when a new generation of graphics cards are is released, the first cards out on the market are the high end cards. In this case the HD 5870 and HD 5850. Later these have been followed by the 5770 and 5750 and we will soon see some lower end versions coming out too.

The release of the HD 5800 series brought a couple of new technology innovations with it. The “ATI Eyefinity” is a technology which enables one single card to support up to 6 monitors. “ATI Stream” enables GPU accelerated calculations, OpenCL gives us parallel GPU-CPU processing. However, the most important update is the support for DirectX 11 which in itself incorporates full support of Windows 7. This time around, Microsoft promises that the update of the DirectX API means a direct increase of the ratio between the graphical quality and the use of system resources.

AMD says their new GPU can achieve 2.7 TFLOPS, which really doesn’t say much about what the GPU performs like in real world (gaming) situations, but it does tell us that it is truly a very powerful data processor. The manufacturing technology is now down to 40nm, which should mean less power consumption and heat development.

Talking about the power consumption, AMD now promises that the max consumption will not exceed 190W in full load and in idle mode the card will not surpass 27W. If this is correct it would be a big improvement compared to their previous generation of cards.

ASUS EAH5850 SPECIFICATIONS

OK, enough rambling about all the new technologies and promises of the new AMD series, here are the hard facts of the Asus HD 5850 card:

Asus hasn’t added any physical alternations on this card; it is basically Asus’ version of the generic AMD 5850. However Asus has a series of software tools which help us overclockers to reach the maximum potential of this card; the “Gamer OSD” and “Smart Doctor”. This last application will be most useful since it allows us to play with the voltage of the core.

ASUS EAH5850, FIRST IMPRESSIONS

The card comes in a nice looking card board box with loads of aggressive printing on it. As is customary with graphics cards, ASUS pushes a lot on the overclocking tools. Also, the bundle (EAH5850/2DIS/1GD5) includes the game DIRT 2.

When I opened the box, I almost got a little Apple feeling for a moment when I saw the black cover with the Asus logo in gold. Underneath the cover I found two boxes. The bigger box contained the graphics card itself, enfolded by a standard anti static plastic bag and protected by a white foam plastic material. The other box contained the accessories.

Except for the DIRT 2 game (digital download, no DVD), I wasn’t overly impressed by the accessories; CDs with drivers and applications; a printed manual; a power adapter (2 molex to 1 x 6 pin PCIe), a DVI-VGA adapter and a CrossFireX bridge.

ASUS EAH5850 IN DETAIL

My first impression was that it really looks powerful with its red and black finish.

The card faithfully follows the AMD reference card in all aspects. This is a big card, the length is 240 mm and it takes up two slots.

The fan is a 70mm and I hope it will not bee too noisy, but looking at the rather small air exhaust in the back of card, I don’t feel overly positive.

The front of the card holds two 6 pin PCIe connectors which would theoretically provide 150W to the card.

Although I wanted to take the cooler off and have a closer look at the PCB I decided to let go of that intention since I would have to loosen a multitude of screws and it was impossible to remove only the housing without also clearing the cooler itself, which felt a little too risky.

A great thing about AMDs new cards is their connectivity. They include two DVI-I, a HDMI and a DisplayPort. With the ATI Eyefinity technology, it is possible to use 3 monitors simultaneously with this card, not bad.

MY TEST SYSTEM

OK, so here comes the list of the hardware components I used for this test:

And here’s the screenshots of my configuration:

The main changes in my test setup are that I have included the benchmark software “Unigine Heaven” and removed Lightsmark 2008. The main reason for this is that it enables me to compare the difference in performance between DirectX 10 and DirectX 11.

BENCHMARKING RESULTS

I will not compare these results to the result I have received in previous graphics cards reviews since my test system has been updated.

I was very interested in what the performance comparison between DirectX 10 and DirectX 11 would produce. As you can see from the graphs above the results were opposite of what I had expected, the performance was actually lower with DirectX 11 than with DirectX 10.

GAMING TESTS I

It is interesting to note that the performance remains high even when adding filters. This is something that AMD has corrected from their previous series which really suffered when filters were added. Otherwise, same here; the performance is very good but I will not make any direct comparisons to previous reviews.

GAMING TESTS II

The second batch of games includes more demanding games as usual. This test clearly shows that the EAH5850 has a lot of power under the hood and it was only in two games where the FPS rate didn’t hold steady above 30 FPS with the highest possible settings.

OVERCLOCKING, REFRIGERATION AND CONSUMPTION

On the packaging, Asus emphasized the “Voltage Tweaking” which is done with the Asus Smart Doctor software which also lets us modify the frequencies of both the core and memories.

It’s a dream to work with Asus’ tool for overclocking the card and it is impressive just how far this card can be clocked.

The cooling system of the card is very effective. The fan is noisy at full power but mostly it didn’t bother me too much.

I measured the total power consumption of my system in idle mode and in full load, here are the results:

Clearly the difference is enormous and it should be since AMD’s PowerPlay technology has drastically diminished the power consumption in 2D.

OVERCLOCKING RESULTS

OK, so here are the results from the overclocking tests:

The increase in the 3D Mark Vantage was truly impressive and this is also confirmed by the increase of 6 FPS in Far Cry 2 and the increase is there with filters enabled as well.

CONCLUSIONS

I must first praise AMD for the work they have done with this card. It is both energy efficient and a high performer, very impressive. Asus has taken AMDs reference design and added a lot of value to it with their smart technologies and software tools.

The main advantage with this Asus card is of course its overclocking abilities which are nothing short of fantastic.

ASUS EAH5850 is already on sale at a price that oscillates between the $270 and $300, which is very competitive given its performance, overclocking abilities and the fact that it includes DIRT 2.

Pros:

• Bundle
• General quality
• Supported technologies
• Adequate cooling solution
• Overclocking abilities
• Price

Cons:

• None

The final score is 97.5 out of 100 owls, and we give the “Asus EAH5850 1GB GDDR5″ our Editor’s Choice Award.

Thanks goes out to Asus for letting me review this card.

Check out alternatives of the Radeon 5800 series at testseek.com

Author: Manuel González Fernández

Translator: Vince Emiloz Sanderson