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Lexar USB 1.1 Jumpdrive - 32MB

Monday, May 9th, 2005 | Reviews, USB Removable Drives | No Comments

Convenient storage of large files at an incredibly affordable price.

At 10 bucks this thing is great. It is small and makes it really easy to transport those documents around.

It’s the perfect replacement for a floppy disk. These kinds of removable drives can become quite expensive, but the price for this 32MB drive is hard to beat.

For those who are looking for a convenient way to carry around documents this drive is large enough to accomodate your needs.

It’s not enough to transport a lot of stuff, but if you are looking for convenience rather than a massive storage device it would be hard to beat this little guy.

You do need to carry an installation disk if you want o use it on Windows 98 or older.

If you are looking for a nice gift for a friend this is a wonderful choice.

Ultra 512MB DDR400/PC3200 RAM Memory

Monday, May 9th, 2005 | RAM Memory Reviews, Reviews | No Comments

Upgrading your memory is one of the most cost effective ways to increase the speed and performance of your computer, and just because it’s a low cost desktop computer, doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be running like a top desktop computer.

This stick of Ultra memory will help to boost your computer’s speed. If you are running only 512MB of memory now and you have got Windows XP or Windows 2000 and perhaps an onboard (built into the motherboard) video card some more memory could be the ticket.

This memory operates at 400MHz which is fast enough for most average computers today. Computers running faster than this are often overclocked.

So take advantage of this deal to boost your cheap computer to a new level. The best value is just to get one stick as the rebate is limited to one per household, so buying a pair of these is less value for money.

Ultra XL Dual Channel 1024MB DDR400/PC3200 memory (2 x 512MB)

Monday, May 9th, 2005 | RAM Memory Reviews, Reviews | No Comments

At first glance it is hard to imagine why anybody would spend this much money on memory, but after a closer look, the value becomes clear.

This matched pair of memory sticks will provide the performance that overclockers need.

It is capable of running at up to 533MHz speeds which match up to what some competitors claim their memory offers as standard.

The pair also comes with cooling aluminium heat spreaders to help to keep the memory cool under load.

If you are looking to overclock your memory up to 533MHz this is a good bet. Much memory will give out at these speeds, but these high quality sticks will give you that performance you need.

I would not recommend them as a general upgrade as their price is too high, but be sure that with these babies you are getting top of the range equipment.

Chaintech GeForce MX4000 / 64MB / AGP 8X / Video Card

Monday, May 9th, 2005 | Reviews, Video Card Reviews | No Comments

This video card is sure to grant some much needed performance to those who want to improve on the performance of their standard on-board graphics solutions, which come with their motherboards.

This card comes ready for AGP 8X which means that it is compatable with a majority of computers released in the last 2 years or so.

This card is not a top player in the video card market. It will certainly not be able to produce the kinds of performance needed by cheap high powered gaming computers, but for your average low cost desktop computer it will do fine.

If you are looking at a card in the range you are probably just upgrading from something older, or looking to upgrade from motherboard based graphics. You will effectively be able to free up some of your memory and give your CPU processor an easier time by putting this load on the video card.

So if you do fall into the categories above, this is a good buy. It’s a good way to improve performance with graphics as well as overall, by freeing up memory and CPU usage. Perfect for the home desktop of workstation.

Chaintech SK8T800 AMD Sempron 3100+ Barebone Computer

Monday, May 9th, 2005 | Desktop Computer Reviews, Reviews | No Comments

This kit is an assortment of good products held in a case that is woth the money you pay for it.

Often when buying a cheap computer there is usually a little disappointment at the durability of the case and the quality of the power supply.

This case comes with a case and power supply which is also labelled as Ultra. Ultra have a good name in the memory business, having a wide range of memory available at good prices. Their products are reliable, which is a reassuring start to this package.

The combination of the AMD Sempron 3100+ CPU processor and the Chiantech Socket 754 motherboard make this a good choice is you are looking to upgrade in the future. It is possible to upgrade to AMD Athlon 64 processors using this socket type, but will only be able to achieve an 1600MHz bus speed with the Socket 754 processors.

The motherboard is well featured, with many of the thing to be expected from a motherboard. It has LAN support, SATA support, ATA-133/100/66 support, buildt in audio, an AGP 8X/4X slot, USB support as well as being able to handle 400MHz front side bus speeds.

Other parts include a Maxtor 120GB hard drive, a reputable drive, supporting ATA-133. If you want to improve the speed of this computer, upgrading to a faster hard drive would be a good idea. The one that comes with the computer can be kept for data storage.

The Chaintech GeForce MX4000 64MB Video Card is a good choice, offering enough to allow support for new big monitors, and high resolutions on the screen. This card will not be enough to play cutting edge games, but will serve it’s purpose well.

The CD-ROM drive is a no name brand that will read CD-ROMs.

The included fan keeps things cool, but don’t expect to be able to overclock too much.

And finally 512MB of Ultra DDR400/PC3200 memory is included, as well as a keyboard and mouse.

This computer is a good starting point, at it’s price you get a good basic computer. The case, power supply and motherboard make a good starting point for upgrading if you ever need to. This low cost desktop computer will serve well in a home desktop environment for everyday applications like typing documents and surfing the net, as well as playing a few games.

Seagate 120GB 7200RPM SATA-150 Hard Drive with NCQ

Wednesday, May 4th, 2005 | Hard Drive Reviews, Reviews | No Comments

This drive is a newer drive from Seagate, who are well known in the hard drive industry. This drive will certainly set some high standards in terms of speed.

This drive utilises SATA-150 a newish technology which aims to speed up the information stransfer between to and from the hard drive.

It has a 7200RPM rotation speed. Although not the fastest, when you compare it to some of the 10,000RPM offerings, which usually appear on SCSI drives 2 times the price or more. It’s also a darn sight better than the standard 5400RPM which was usual for drives for quite a while.

It has a low seek time of under 9.5 seconds and average latency of 4.16 seconds.

All of these things combined result in a drive which is very fast. Compared to the average hard drive you will see a marked increase in performance.

But the most special thing about this drive is NCQ. NCQ stands for Native Command Queuing. What this does is to maximise performance of the drive by dynamically deciding which things need to be read in which order. As drives are just large discs rotating, if the read/write head has to wait for the drive to spin the whole way round, it takes longer to perform the operation. What native command queuing does is it allows other operations to be place ahead of that one so they can be performed as their part of the disc spins under the head. For a detailed spec you can have a look at this whitepaper on the subject.

With all this technology, this drive will certainly impress in terms of speed and reliability. If you are looking to spruce up your gaming performance or do lots of hard drive intensive work like video or audio editing, this drive is for you.

Ultra X-Connect 500-watt Modular ATX Power Supply with UV

Wednesday, May 4th, 2005 | Power Supply Reviews, Reviews | No Comments

This power supply provides the same reliability and power that is offered by it’s non-UV brother.

It features the modular design, which means that the cables only need to be in the computer when they are not in use.

Providing a solid 500 watts of power to this system, it has all the power needed to run even the most demanding of today’s computer parts.

This version of the power supply comes with UV reactive cables. So they will shine in the dark when a UV light is added to the inside of your case.

It comes with two fans and the sides are transparent. There is a UV light on one of the fans so that the inner parts of the power supply will glow, and are visible through the sides.

Great power supply, the modular design is nice to reduce clutter in the cool custom computer cases, and the UV is a nice little touch for those looking to put the final touches on their mod computer case.

Ultra X-Connect 500-watt ATX Modular Power Supply

Wednesday, May 4th, 2005 | Power Supply Reviews, Reviews | No Comments

“Wow, cool. So why didn’t anyone think of this before?”

That was the first thought that came into my head when I saw this power supply. Instead of all the wires being fixed to the power supply, which leads to all those cables just hanging around in your box, every cable is a seperate component that can be completely removed.

The wonderful part about this is that is removes clutter from inside the box, making it look better, but also improving air flow, which is important to keep things in the computer cool.

This 500 watt power supply does just as it is supposed to, and that is provide clean strong power to your computer’s parts.

According to reviews on this Ultra Power Supply it does just that. All of the voltages supplied to the different components are spot on, except for the 12V which someone reported as being 12.57V, but not too serious.

The 500 watts of power is more than enough to power practically anything you would want to put in your computer, and does a good job supplying that extra power to modern video cards.

The only complaint to be heard about this power supply is the flexibility of the cables. There are a lot of wires on any common component within the computer and when they are put together in a round cable it becomes stiff. Some people reported even having to move components around to get the wires to go in their place.

With the power supply often being the most neglected part in your computer, and standard ones being as little as 250 watts, if you plan on upgrading other things, make sure the power supply is sorted out first.

A great range of colors to compliment a cool custom computer case.

Abit KV Via Socket 754 MicroATX motherboard with AMD Athlon 3000+ and 512MB DDR400

Tuesday, May 3rd, 2005 | Motherboard Reviews, Reviews | No Comments

For those of you who are looking to put together a system based on the microATX case size, this board is likely to prick your interest with it’s wide array of features. This ASUS motherboard tackles the issue of people building microATX computer systems not being able to put a lot of power into them.

Note: microATX is not the “cube style” computer, but rather a much smaller version of the ATX case with limited drive bays.

The main difference between this microATX size motherboard and a traditional ATX motherboard, which is the most common, is the sizing. The microATX simply reduces the number of PCI slots for expansion, allowing the board to be less tall when looked at vertically.

The motherboard uses the socket 754 design, allowing it to take AMD Athlon 64 (included) as well as AMD K8 and AMD Sempron chips. The bus speed goes up to 400MHz, which is the usual high speed for the front side bus at this time.

There are two slots for memory. One of those will be taken up by the 512MB DDR400/PC3200 that comes with this package. I would personally recommend that you get another one along with this package. If you are going to build a system of this power, I would suggest 1GB of RAM to make it run very well.

There is support for an AGP 8x card if you want to expand graphics capabilities. But I would try out the onboard video chipset first. With this kind of specification from a board I think this would provide enough power for users just using big monitors or higher resolutions, but if you’re a gamer, go for an extra card.

There is support for ATA/133 hard drives as well as the new SATA. LAN support includes support for Gigabyte LAN. There are 8 USB ports, built in audio, 3 fan connectors to keep things cool in it’s little box.

The processor is an AMD Athlon 64 which can be overclocked with this board up to about 2.6GHz which amounts to a 3700+. These processors provide exceptionally fast access to memory because the controller that accesses memory is built right into the chip, speeding things up noticeably.

The included memory is 512MB of Ultra DDR400/PC3200. I recommend going for an extra one to up the memory to 1GB.

If you are planning to put together a microATX computer system this motherboard, processor and memory will certainly be a great place to start. With a good combination of features and power this is a combination that won’t disappoint.

Asus A7S8X-MX Socket A Motherboard and AMD Sempron 3000+ Processor

Tuesday, May 3rd, 2005 | Motherboard Reviews, Reviews | 1 Comment

This quality deal should be a great pair to start off a custom desktop computer, perhaps if you have very cheap desktop computers in mind, this will fit the bill.

This combination comes with the ASUS motherboard and an AMD Sempron CPU processor. These two are a good match to make up a cheap computer system that can handle well in an average computing environment, but still have a go at some gaming.

So, time for a closer look.

The AMD Sempron chip is AMDs answer to the Intel Celeron. It’s aim is to be the budget processor in AMDs range. But even though it’s a budget processor, it’s performance is beyond that offered by a Celeron of similar speed. My choice in processor if you’re looking for performance for the lowest price.

The motherboard is an ASUS. ASUS are well known for their motherboards, being quality motherboards with very few problems reported by customers.

This board offers up to a 333MHz front side bus, which is also the highest speed for the Sempron processor. So matching this system up with some DDR333/PC2700 RAM will help it to perform at it’s best.

There is built in sound, USB 2.0 support with 8 ports, LAN support as well as using the new SATA technology for connecting hard drives to the system. And for those who need a little extra graphics power, there is an AGP 8x expansion slot, as well as 2 PCI slots.

The only thing I would hope for on this motherboard is more powerful built in graphics. When looking at budget products I like to make sure the motherboards has as much as possible onboard, which saves having to buy one extra thing.

With that said, this is a good combo. It’s price is right for the pair and it’s a good starting point. Make sure you buy a decent fan with it too.