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Another innovative new product from our friends at Cooler Master! Today we have the Cooler Master Vortex Plus CPU Cooler. This is a low profile cooler to fit your HTPC or LAN chassis. We are always concerned with heat. Heat is not our friend. Smaller cases and smaller components rarely mean less heat. Quite often, it means more. We have the same powerful processors and video cards running on a smaller motherboard. With some of these Micro ATX cases being under 100mm wide, there isn’t much room for cooling. The Cooler Master Vortex Plus, with its overall height of just 84mm may just be the ticket to keep your micro system cool.

Provided by: Cooler Master

Price: TBD

Closer Look:

The front of the Cooler Master Vortex Plus CPU Cooler box gives us a good picture of the assembled cooler and lets us know that the product will also now fit i7, i5, Core i3, AM3.

The back of the package gives us a good look at the cooler and the fan and the 4 heat pipes.  There is also a brief list of the features and a visual reference of the measurements for the Cooler Master Vortex Plus CPU Cooler.

Ok!  Here is the whole package.  You’ve got the cooler, fan, mounting brackets for Intel and AMD, hold down clips for the fan, and a package containing thermal paste and the push pins for mounting the brackets to your motherboard.

The Cooler Master Vortex Plus CPU Cooler has a large cooling fin area and 4 massive stovepipes give promise to a great product in a very small size. When you take the Cooler Master Vortex Plus CPU Cooler out of the box, make sure to remove the piece of cardboard from between the CPU heat sink and the cooling fins.

Direct contact does put the heat in the pipes faster and a flat base helps even more, while the base is left in a more basic milled finish versus a good mirror polishing, but it is flat across the base. There are V grooves next to the pipes as they pass through the aluminium support.

Features:

• Compact profile design for HTPC chassis and LAN box chassis. (84mm height).
• Universal mounting for Intel LGA1366/1156/775 and AMD AM3/AM2/940/939/754 sockets.
• 4 x Direct Contact heatpipes for seamless contact between CPU surface and cooler.
• Extra silent PM fan with wide speed range and unique blade design for excellent airflow.

Specifications:

Testing:

My System:

CPU: AMD Phenom 8450@ 2.1 GHz

Motherboard: ASUS M2N-MX SE PLUS

Memory: G.SKILL 4GB 1066 MHz

VGA: PowerColor Radeon HD 5670 PCS+ Video Card

Case: CoolerMaster HAF 922

The testing will consist of idle and load temperature tests. All of the testing will be done in a 22 Degrees Celsius regulated room for consistency in temperatures. To place stress on the CPU, I used Prime95 to place 100% load on all cores for an hour. That was of course after letting everything idle for 30 minutes to get the idle temperature.

Conclusion:

If you are looking to Replace your Stock cooler for a low profile heatsink that does the job much better then the stock cooling solution, the Vortex Plus is right for you. When tested, the Vortex Plus delivered temperatures better then the stock cooler and also gave me some head room to Overclock my 8450 to 2.2 GHz and only went up to 40*C. The overall look to the Vortex Plus is very pleasant! The four heat pipe design with direct contact to the base is an outstanding addition for cooling efficiency. The wire clips that are used to hold the 92mm fan in place were very capable of doing the job.  The low profile design makes this cooler a perfect fit for small form factor chassis such as HTPC and Lan cases.

Cyber Clean is  a revolutionary cleaning compound! When it comes to cleaning action in cavities and where convention cleaning products have physical limits. Cyber Clean gets into cavities because of its perfect combination of viscosity, elasticity and its patented formula, it absorbs dirt and any other residues and provides deep cleaning action in the cavities and on the surface!

Provided By: Cyber Clean

Price: $10

Cyber Clean is a sort of neon Slim, not unlike Silly Putty It is designed to remove dust, dirt, junk, gunk, and any sort of loose material. Because it’s a soft material it can clean non-level surfaces. It picks up loose grime and envelops it in the compound. And it doesn’t only clean, it also disinfects the surface area.

How It Works:

Take the Cyber Clean Slime and press it (don’t rub) to the surface you want to clean. Cyber Clean molds to the surface you apply it to, after which you peel it off the surface. It encapsulates the dirt and bacteria into itself.

Does It Work?

In particular, Cyber Clean likes to use the example of the disgusting keyboard that traps a lot more dirt, food particles and bacteria than you can imagine. And yes, Cyber Clean definitely picks up the dust and particles on the keyboard and in between the keys. However, it’s not so elastic and ’smart’ to get to the particles that have fallen beneath the keys. There’s no question that this is a better method than the paper towel and household cleaner that I’ve used in the past – it picks up a great deal more and is much faster.

The bottom line is that if you’re  a real germ-o-phobe, you may want to periodically replace your keyboard, or even run it through the dishwasher; (no guarantees on whether it will come out working though!).

Conclusion:

But don’t restrict yourself to just your keyboard. The ubiquity of plastics and metals in our lives, not to mention the small form factors means there are lots more places for dust and bacteria to collect. Cyber Clean picks this up really well. Other item to use Cyber Clean on are: telephone, cell phone, MP3 player, speaker grill, AV equipment, computers and accessories. Anything that you can’t use water or liquid cleaners on is perfect.

Since the Cyber Clean traps all of the dust and dirt it comes in contact with, and eventually becomes too dirty to use any more, we recommend you perform an initial dusting of the device to get rid of the larger, more accessible particles before using. This should lengthen its lifetime.

Mobile computing is becoming less of a luxury and more like a necessity in today’s fast passed world. Not only are laptops getting more and more portable they are also becoming very affordable to the average user. This option for many is the only option so if you are one of these that can’t live without yout laptop or netbook then you will be very interested in the Nexus Liquid laptop cooler. Because of its design it is just as easy to transport as your laptop and can ad years to the life of your laptop and improve its overall performance. Let’s get a closer look:

Provided by: End PC Noise

Price: $24.95

Closer Look:

The TDD-9000 arrived in black cardboard box. The front side of the packet shows us the size of the product and claims that over 17c temperature improvements can be made with TDD-9000.

Backside shows some graphs from the official test reports of the product. Those graphs clearly state that you should notice huge temperature improvements with TDD-9000. Backside also says that the design of TDD-9000 is patented and the product is made with special cooling materials, liquid and structure. Just put your laptop on the cooling pad and it cools effectively. Heat will be dissipated equally and the overall temperature will drop significantly.

Features & Specifications:

• Patented liquid

• Soft black velvet

• No noise - Completely silent

• No energy consumption

• Universal application

• Ideal for use on your lap or desk

• Foldable - easy to take along

• Size: 40×29cm / 15.7×11.4in

• Weight: 500 gram

Made with special cooling materials, liquid and structure. Just put on your laptop on the cooling pad and it cools effectively. Heat will be dissipated equally and the overall temperature will drop significantly.

INDEPENDENT TEST Independent tests done by SGS Taiwan ltd. show an efficient performance with approx. 17°C improvement on area’s and parts of your laptop. You can find the official graphs from the reports elsewhere on this package.

NO POWER - NO NOISE The liquid cooling pad does not need any power to function. For optimal cooling and best performance shake the liquid cooling pad every 20 minutes.

EASY USE - EASY CARRY You can easily fold-up the liquid cooling pad and carry it together with your laptop. You will always have your cooling pad; use it any time, anywhere.

UNIVERSAL APPLICATION The liquid cooling pad was designed to fit any size laptop. But the cooling pad can also be used for example as a keyboard/mouse wrist cushion. Or any other application you will find convenient.

Note: For optimal cooling and best performance we suggest to shake the liquid cooling pad every 20 minutes.

Testing:

It would seem to make sense that the Nexus TDD-9000 would probably work more effectively on bottom-fan mounted laptops. However, Nexus does not state anywhere that the cooler is only to used on these and so it will be interesting to see whether the liquid cooling pad actually works on side-mounted laptops too. Moreover, I don’t have a bottom-fan mounted laptop available – all of mine are side-fan models and it seems these are more common.

Ambient temperature of the room I was using was 23 degrees (Celsius).

Temperature Results

Without Cooler:

With Cooler in operation for 1 hour the temperatures were as follows:

Both sets of temperatures were calculated using Speed Fan and we of course shook the cooling pad every 20 minutes as recommended by Nexus to keep the cooling at optimal level.

Even thought the temps were not a big difference the Nexus in the end out performed a fairly cool surface of my desk. If you were to do the same test on your lap or on top of a blanket you would notice a much larger difference in temperature.
Conclusion:

To conclude, I like the innovative idea of the TDD-9000 with its “proven” claims and ability to cool your laptop in an eco-friendly manner. However, with the poor results I witnessed, this power-less technology isn’t going to win me over.

Advantages

• No Power Needed
• Looks good
• Portable
• Comfortable Base for Laptop
• Innovative
• Inexpensive

Disadvantages

• Hardly Reduces Temperatures
• Could Easily be Pierced

Microsoft has announced a Splinter Cell: Conviction Xbox 360 bundle set to arrive this April in North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. The bundle will retail for $399 and will include two controllers, a standard edition copy of Splinter Cell: Conviction and a 250GB hard drive.

What better way to start your Saturday afternoon than with another Nexus One release rumor. Without further ado, today we’ve got whispers care of Neowin that the recently-FCC’d CDMA device is launching on Verizon’s network March 23rd, perfect timing for the beginning of CTIA. And while that fits pretty neatly into that initial ”Spring 2010″ launch window, there’s really no way for us to corroborate at this point other than just taking their word for it. You can wait diligently, can’t ya?

Lately the hardest choice when building a mainstream computer is video, there are a ton of mainstream video cards and while many are the same with different brand labels the average consumer may find it hard to decide which is which. The next phase would be to decide if you want an ATI based or NVIDIA based video card. DirectX 10 or DirectX 11 is another choice as well as how much memory 512MB or 1GB. The PowerColor Radeon HD 5670 PCS+ is a budget mainstream gaming video card and comes with a factory overclocked speed of 10MHz higher than a stock HD5670.

Provided By: PowerColor

Price:

Closer Look:

The PowerColor Radeon HD5670 PCS+ graphics card comes in a Black and Blue box with a Racing car image in the center of it. The back contains the many features of the graphics card, with power and system requirements on the side. Inside the exterior packaging is a brown protective box which contains the video card and its accessories.

The PowerColor 5670 PCI+ comes with a supplied DVI to VGA dongle. Also included are a specifications sheet and the driver installation disk.

Once out of the bag you can see that the PowerColor 5670 PCS+ has a black fan with the PowerColor Logo on it. The Heatsink/fan combination contains a 92mm low noise fan. It is PCI-e 2.1 compatible and it has one DVI, HDMI and Display Port output.

Testing:

My System:

CPU: AMD Phenom 8450@ 2.1 GHz

CPU Cooler: EverCool Buffalo CPU Cooler

Motherboard: ASUS M2N-MX SE PLUS

Memory: G.SKILL 4GB 1066 MHz

VGA: PowerColor Radeon HD 5670 PCS+ Video Card

Case: CoolerMaster HAF 922

My testing suite runs the gamut of synthetics and gaming engines that will help provide a more complete picture of a graphics card’s capabilities. The testing included the following software:

• Team Fortress 2
• FurMark
• Torchlight
• GPU-Z

Gaming tests were run at 1024X768, which reflects the resolution of my test setup’s monitor.

The Power Color 5670PCS+ has a strong showing, posting respectable frame rates with an average frame rate of 65 frames per second.

Torchlight gets an average frame rate of 66 frames per second.

OverClocking:

As always, mileage will vary when overclocking, so monitor temperatures and be sure to always test for stability after each incremental change. I recommend FurMark for stability test as it’s the most taxing application you’ll find out there, drawing even more power and causing higher temperatures than your favourite game or 3DMark benchmark.

With that out of the way, I start overclocking the core and memory clocks in MSI Afterburner. The PowerColor PCS+ 5670 does indeed have some gas left in the tank, I was able to achieve a final stable overclock of 845MHz Core and 1065MHz Memory.

Conclusion:

The PowerColor PCS+ 5670 is a very good budget gaming card, lower on the performance ladder than the 5750, and clearly geared to consumers who occasionally do some light gaming. It is a small, quiet, low-power card that is a great upgrade option for people with an older system that want to easily improve their graphics performance.

PowerColor has also silghtly bumped up the clock speeds on the PCS+ 5670, giving a 1-2% performance increase over the reference card, nothing spectacular but measurable. More interesting, however, is PowerColor’s decision to use Samsung memory chips instead of Hynix, resulting in some good overclocking headroom.

The PowerColor PCS+ 5670 512MB is a great video card with a minor bump in clock speed, some good overclocking headroom available, and running cool and quiet, this card is a very good budget gaming card for consumers who do only moderate gaming and may be looking for a good value upgrade in their performance.

The Buffalo is one of the many heat sinks on the market that utilize ‘heat pipes’ to transfer heat from the base to the cooling fins. Heat pipes have revolutionized the high-performance cooler market since they are able to transfer much more heat than a more conventional heat sink made from copper or aluminium that you would be accustomed to not so long ago. Because of this heat pipe coolers have become pretty much the norm for cooling any high-end components, and there are a lot of coolers by various brands on the market now.

Provided By: EverCool

Price: $15.99

Closer Look:

The cooler uses a heatpipe system to disapate heat to create it’s cooling solution. There are 2 cooper heatpipes shaped to form a U - so the cpu block sits on the base of the U heatpipes. To aid in the cooling the heatpipes go up through 60 aluminium fins which are cooled by a 100mm fan which is suspended to the site of the cooler. The fan is held to the cooler via a simple wire bracket, and controlled via 3 pin connector.

I love the way the product logo is printed on the top fin of the cooler - nice touch! The ends of the heat pipes have also been covered to improve the looks of this cooler.

Features & Specifications:

Testing:

My System:

CPU: AMD Phenom 8450@ 2.1 GHz

CPU Cooler: EverCool Buffalo CPU Cooler

Motherboard: ASUS M2N-MX SE PLUS

Memory: G.SKILL 4GB 1066 MHz

VGA: PowerColor Radeon HD 5670 PCS+ Video Card

Case: CoolerMaster HAF 922

The testing will consist of idle and load temperature tests. All of the testing will be done in a 22 Degrees Celsius regulated room for consistency in temperatures. To place stress on the CPU, I used Prime95 to place 100% load on all cores for an hour. That was of course after letting everything idle for 30 minutes to get the idle temperature.

Conclusion:

When it comes to external hard drive enclosure’s the 2.5-inch market is not that popular. Mainly because so many people use older 3.5-inch drives with 3.5-inch enclosures. The thing about 3.5-inch enclosures is that they are large and not easy to carry with you. The  MB668US-1SB 2.5-inch enclosure from ICY DOCK is not only small and light it also allows you to install a hard drive with no tools at all. Another interesting thing about this enclosure is that not only does it have a USB connection it has an eSATA connection as well.

Price: $24.99

Closer Look:

The MB668US-1SB is packaged in a box that breaks away from its unoriginal name, sporting a clean white facade around the sides and half the top a clear, plastic window allowing you to see the actual external itself.

Inside you will find the  MB668US-1SB enclosure, carrying case, USB power cable, USB cable, eSATA cable, software CD, The software itself is not that powerful but does allow you to use the one touch backup button on the back of the drive. Although it seems it is only limited to USB devices so if you have the drive connected via eSATA you cannot use the one touch backup backup feature on the drive.

Features
- Fits any standard 2.5″ SATA HDD or SSD.
- Universal USB 2.0 connection, featuring Plug & Play for Mac & PC.
- User friendly Screw-less design just plug in the hard drive and play.
- Stylish aluminum construction provides protection, mobility, and optimal cooling.
- Built-in blue LED. Less bright, less visible, less annoying.
- Leather pouch included to keep your drive clean and scratch-free.
- Built-in OTB (one touch back up) function for quick and painless backups (PC only).
- Included “DC to USB A Type” power cable for high performance HDD usage.

Specifications
Item Number: MB668US-1SB
Drive Fit: 1 x 2.5″ SATA I & II HDD / SSD (9.5mm thickness)
Drive Interface: SATA
Host Interface: USB 2.0 & eSATA
Transfer Rate: Up to 480/Secvia USB, Up to 3Gb/Sec via eSATA
LED Indicator:
- Device Power: Orange LED
- Drive Activity: Blue LED
Structure: Aluminum body w/ partial plastic
Drive Cooling: Aluminum heat dispersion
Power Source: USB Bus Power, 5V DC (Optional)
Support Platform: PC Only (Window Base)
USB Connection Support Platform: Mac & PC
Dimension (W x H x D): 76.3 x 13 x 150 mm

Testing:

When you power this external on, you’ll see the light on the left ‘D’ of Icy Dock flip orange, and during activity will change to a blue LED. Since the drive docking head is made mostly of a plastic and the actual body is a thin aluminum it will not absorbers any kind of hum or other noise from the drive.

Conclusion:

The MB668US-1SB does a great job performing just as it should, though additional features such as shock absorbents and coolants are absent. However for the price, Icy Dock has opted to design this external for simplicity, practicality, and affordability, and in each area performs exceedingly well. The MB668US-1SB is light-weight, portable external that compliments traveling with any hard drive, and the leather carrying sleeve completes the package.

The only real problem I had with this enclousre is that it did not come with an eSATA bracket, while most new cases do have eSATA ports many cases do not so you are left in the dark if you do not have a bracket.

Icy Dock has sent me over quite a ingenious product, it takes any 2.5″ hard drive and essentially turns it into a 3.5″ one. This can come in handy for many things including of course using it inside of your PC, or even inside of an external enclosure, the Icy Dock Convertor can make your 2.5″ drive go anywhere a 3.5″ can.

Provided By: ICY DOCK

Price: $24.99

Closer Look:

The package is a simple box with features and specifications; which I really like.

In addition to the enclosure, four mounting screws and an instruction manual are also included. There is no software or anything to worry about; everything is plug-and-play.

Features & Specifications:

Item Number: White	MB882SP-1S-1
Item Number: Black	MB882SP-1S-1B
External Interface	SATA
Compatible Drive Type	2.5″ SATA I/II HDD & SSD (9.5mm)
Device fit	3.5″ SATA hard drive bay
Transfer Rate	up to 3 Gb/sec
Support HDD Capacity	No limitation
Structure	Plastic body with stainless steel 2.5″ hdd bracket
Dimension (L x W x H)	145 x 101 x 25mm
Weight	195.3g

Conclusion:

The way the Icy Dock HDD Convertor works is rather slick, you set the drive on the rail, then you close the lid, closing the lid pushes the drive forward into the SATA connections on the PCB board inside and effectively locks it into place.The Icy Dock 2.5″ to 3.5″ Hard Drive Converter is a great little product that can be very useful, it’s well made and really it’s just a great little product.

I can easily recommend this product as it’s simple and works great.