All Components - Hard Drives

If you are into hardcore gaming or you value high performance from your PC, the Western Digital Caviar Black Hard Drive is the best choice for extreme gaming experience. This hard drive is equipped with a cool drive operation, a no touch head technology, and a vibration protection that is cutting edge – ensuring you the highest performance while maintaining durability and sustained data throughput.

This high performance hard drive provides big storage space that is capable of storing up to 400,000 of digital photos, up to 500,000 mp3 files, up to 50,000 uncompressed CD quality songs, digital video of up to 150 hours, DVD quality video of up to 770 hours, and high definition videos of up to 240 hours. All these figures depend on the file size, settings, formatting, features, soft ware and other factors as well as the operating condition of your PC.

WD Caviar Black – Maximum Performance for Power Computing at Newegg.com

Other key features include the dual processor which maximizes the computer’s performance as it has twice the processing power compared to that of a regular hard drive. The colossal cache — bigger and faster cache of up to 64 MB provides faster performance.

The WD Caviar Black Hard Drive has a Dual Actuator Technology. It has two actuators that improve the positional accuracy of the data tracks. The first and primary actuator uses the conventional electromagnetic actuator principle to provide a coarse displacement while the secondary actuator fine tunes the head positioning to provide a high degree of accuracy with the use of the piezoelectric motion. The secured motor shafts reduce the vibrations that are produced by the system and it also stabilizes the platters to give accurate tracking especially on read and write operations.

With this hard drive, you will be able to maximize the use of your high performance computers as it is ideal for high performance computing applications – photo and video editing, multimedia and hardcore gaming.

RAIDMAX SMILODON Extreme Black ATX Computer Case – Ease of Assembly and Great Air Power!

If you are the kind of person who loves to tinker around with your computer to add and replace additional gadgetry, you will like the way the RAIDMAX SMILODON Extreme Black ATX Computer Case is constructed.

Practically everything is modular and detachable. The two sides can be removed leaving only the racks for the HDD and the CD-Rom Drive on the main body of the case. The motherboard comes off with one side panel. This makes for greater visibility of and easier access to the motherboard when installing your computer expansion cards into their slots.

The hard drive rack is also removable. This makes it a lot easier to attach the hard drive firmly before screwing the rack back in its place. The other racks are firmly fixed on the casing.

Because the Raidmax Smilodon is easily taken apart, you can clean the motherboard every so often without too much trouble.

Three fans are used to keep your system temperature to within safe limits. The 120 mm fan at the back is the largest. One of the sides has an 80 mm fan to draw warm air away from the motherboard and cpu. There is also another 80 mm fan for cooling your video and other expansion cards in their slots.

The cooling power provided by those fans is sufficient even in the peak of game time.

The case is made of steel. This makes it a little heavy. It also has a lot of room inside in order to make cooling the system easier.

This casing is ideal for DIY undertakings. It is easy to disassemble the sides and as easy to put them back. There is a lot of space to place additional gadgets. For instance, there is a vent waiting for another separate fan for cooling the motherboard itself.

People who like to fix their computers themselves should definitely give the Raidmax Smilodon a look.

Antec TruePower New TP-650 650W Power Supply

The Antec TruePower TP-650 is an overall success in my book. It’s very quiet and supports plenty of juice to all but the most hardcore gamer or amateur PC builder.

The price is, well, a little more than I would like of an Antec in this bracket, but the old adage “you get what you pay for” is relevant here. You do get everything it promises and it performs just as good as any other PS I’ve ever bought—and trust me I have seen some atrociously-butchered homemade power supplies in my time.

Here’s a brief look at the specs that come off of my packaging (love the box design, BTW!):

It’s pin-drop quiet (and I can confirm this).
The 120mm fan contributes to that silence.
It’s very energy efficient.
The Truepower is completely ATX and EPS compliant.
It has industrial-grade inner components (this can be said of most PS’s, though).
4 12 volt output circuits for dedicated CPU usage.
Beautiful modular cables and great placement, front and back.
So far, it’s run at less than 29c the whole time and has been very stable, very few fluctuations.

In addition, the inclusion of BOTH 4 and 6 pin connectors is a breath of fresh air in this power supply. They’re perfect for my SATA and PCI connections and the front-end hard-wired cables make losing them impossible. Furthermore, the 12 volt rail system is laid out fairly well—but would have appreciated a little more literature in the manual for those. However, that’s such a trivial fact (opinion, whatnot) in the case of this PS.

Summing-up, I also love the fact that it has a larger fan than what seems to be the  factory standard in the power supply/PC hardware industry.

CORSAIR XMS3 RAM

Corsair has been one of my favorite tech products for a long time. The XMS3 RAM modules are no exception; they are (combined) 4 gigabytes of DDR3 memory that has 1600 megahertz standard rating.

From an article I read, they will actually sustain 1760Mhz with a heatsink, but that’s more or less subjective and could very well be….well, more or less. However, the fact that they are DDR3 is very important to me because both of my systems use the i7 core and are very powerful, yet very “hungry”. They also claim to support i5 processors, which they obviously will, considering my former statement.

I really enjoyed the newer DHX RAM innovation. It stands for Dual Path Exchange and dictates that larger heatsinks be employed, as well as a dedicated heatsink that keeps modules and attachments nice and cool. In addition, the Corsair product here is fully-SLI compliant to match NVIDIA’s standards in motherboards and power supplies.

The lifetime warranty claim is great, I just hope that is honored—as I have yet to file a claim on any RAM modules I’ve ever bought, but that fact alone should be of pretty good confidence. Another thing, I would honestly trust Corsair any day over the likes of Cambex, Silicon Power or Southland. Not bad products on their own, but Corsair is a personal favorite due to its flawless reliablity and performance it’s given me over the years.

Just in case you were wondering, one of my systems is a Phenom II 965 Black series and it has, installed, a twin-pair of these Corsair XMS3 modules. Given that it’s running at 4.1 gigahertz and has a AMD X4 processor, it’s lightning-fast and the RAM modules keep up with it so nicely—almost makes a grown-man cry. Almost, that is!

Thermaltake W0319RU 850W Power Supply

The Thermaltake W0319RU PS is one nice little product, especially for gamers and techies who frequently push the envelope of computing. With this review, I would like to objectively review this product for its pros and cons.

As a prolific online gamer and video editor, I’ve put almost all of my confidence into Thermaltake when it concerns items like the aforementioned power supply. I’ve also used a couple of their PC cases, as well as different heat sinks that I’ve used in making both medium-grade and some high-grade PC systems from my home.

General Specs on the TR2 RX-850:

• It has the Dual Core/SLI support that’s requisite these days
• A very generous 60A output
• It’s in compliance with the EPS 12V and ATX 2.2
• It’s rated at a hefty 120,000 hours of longevity
• The efficiency is manufacturer-guaranteed 85%
• Supports the typical Intel/AMD configs
• It’s pre-loaded with x6 SATA connectors
• Professional-level internal components

I haven’t experimented with their water-cooling systems yet (as are really “getting-up there” in terms of pushing the threshold of gaming and overclocking), but I plan to soon and can’t wait. However, I digress back to the product at hand. It’s basically the benchmark of power supplies—one that other manufacturers should try to replicate.

You’ll probably never crack-it open, but if you are anything like me—you love to take things apart and tinker. With that said, it’s got internal parts that are hands-down industrial quality. The fan itself is smaller than you would find in—say, a corporate server—but that’s pretty darn moot point considering this is a consumer/small-business-oriented product.

All-in-all, the Thermaltake W0319RU TR2 receives a 99 from me—reserving that 1 point for “objectivity’s sake”. Many thanks for reading through my review and happy shopping.