Hey everyone, I hope March has been treating you well. We’re still getting rained on here in California which is a bit of a downer. Don’t forget to “Spring forward” for daylight savings on Sunday morning — assuming your location observes it.
It was a pretty slow week for reviews. I think a lot of sites are recovering from CeBIT while also trying to cover the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.
Vortez is a new hardware review site in the UK. We sent them a CMG4GX3M2B1600C7 Dominator™ GT DDR3 memory kit and in return, we received a silver award. Here’s what they had to say:
“For those looking for a high performance DDR3 dual channel kit the Dominator GT on test here would be a fine choice. Its high speed and low latencies lend themselves to great performance and the fact that you can increase that capability through a decent overclock is all the more commendable.”
CDR Info reviewed our smallest product, the Flash Voyager® Mini 32GB USB flash drive and gave it their greatest honor — the Editor’s Choice award. Here’s a sample of what they had to say:
“What we also require from such a tiny flash drive is a good build quality and of course, a good performance. The Flash Voyager Mini had them both. “
Finally, we’re always interested in seeing what you guys are doing with Corsair hardware. We found this “Corsair Dream PC” on the front page of [H]ardOCP. Great job by “Putz” with this one. Here’s what Steve from [H]ardOCP had to say:
“Long time [H] forum member “Putz” decided to build a new rig and used just about everything Corsair makes in the process. The result is an extremely clean system with impressive specs that anyone would be proud to own.”
That’s it for me this week. Have a great weekend everyone!
Upgrading the memory inside a PC is not a difficult task. However, for some the plethora of BIOS settings related to the memory can be daunting. This is especially true for users that do not have the requisite experience to make these settings with confidence. And, quite frankly, many users simply do not want to spend a great deal of time tuning and tweaking their system when they could instead be fragging their buddies.
Enter, Intel® XMP or Extreme Memory Profiles. From the Intel XMP product page:
Intel XMP is a performance-packed expansion of the standard DDR3 memory specification, enabling a robust, overclocking solution designed to take advantage of the mega-gaming features built into Intel® technology-based PCs. If you like to overclock and squeeze every possible ounce of performance from your PC, then memory based on Intel XMP is the solution you need to destroy your enemies and save the universe without breaking a sweat.
Designed for ultimate flexibility, Intel XMP-based platforms offer major advantages for pro gamers, novices, and everyone in between. With predefined and certified memory optimizations built into Intel XMP, overclocking on Intel technology-based PCs is easy right out of the box. Expert users still have the option of manually changing specific parameters for personalized fine-tuning.
Welcome to March everyone! It’s been a crazy week for us with lots of new product launches at CeBIT like the Flash Voyager® GTR USB flash drive, the Air Series A50 and Air Series A70 high-performance CPU coolers, and finally the Force Series SSD using the Sandforce controller. We’d love to hear your feedback about these new and exciting products.
“With its ease of use, 256-bit AES encryption, passive locking, cross-platform compatibility, and stylish form, Corsair has improved upon their original secure drive design with their Flash Padlock 2. You need not look any further if you need to tote around sensitive data with 100% confidence.”
“What it comes down to is this — if you want a sure fire way to keep your data secure, this drive may be the best choice out there. There really is no other drive that offers the security and peace of mind this device can.”
Bjorn3D is the latest in review sites to have a look at the Obsidian Series™ 800D full-tower chassis. If you’re still on the fence about the 800D, maybe these words from Bjorn will inspire you:
“The Corsair Obsidian 800D is a great computer case that offers a lot of space as well as great features and solutions for computer enthusiasts that want the best.”
Lastly, I just posted a video about the new Flash Padlock® 2 USB flash drive. If you want to see how easy it is to set a password and unlock the Flash Padlock 2, watch it!
Microsoft has provided a simple tool that enables users to make a USB flash drive bootable and to place an image of Windows 7 onto this drive. This is an excellent convenience and a leap ahead of using DVDs when you have the option. Users can now install Windows 7 from a USB drive quickly and easily and the media fits into your pocket!
Moving data is still an arduous task. It’s gotten better, though, with the advent of fast flash drives, and there’s none faster than the new Flash Voyager® GTR. The Flash Voyager GTR is just awesome. How awesome? In our lab tests, we compared the 128GB version against a major competitor’s 128GB “fast” flash drive. Instead of relying on artificial benchmarks, though, we decided to move some real files back and forth and see what kind of speeds we’d get:
No nonsense today, lets see what reviews we’ve got…
PureOC reviewed our Performance Series P64 SSD in a RAID 0 configuration. Why settle for one P64 when you can have two?
“…the bottom line is that the Corsair P64 is a very capable, very fast SSD and two of them in RAID 0 come at a pretty good price in that market segment.”
The Obsidian Series™ 800D full-tower chassis got reviewed at Tech Reaction and from the sounds of things, might be their date to the company party:
“The Obsidian won’t stand out like the wild girl in the red dress at the party. Instead, she will catch your eye wearing all black and being the classiest thing in sight. Corsair has hit a home run here. If you’re interested in a top quality chassis with enthusiast caliber features, this is it!”
Last, but not least, the Performance Series P64 solid-state drive in RAID 0 also got reviewed at the Bright Side of News where they compared it against a traditional spinning HDD. We had a pretty good idea how this one was going to go down:
“Even though the price is higher than vast number of 64GB drives you’ll encounter in your online searches, the P64 is a performance drive — and two of them almost maxed out the bandwidth offered by Intel’s ICH SouthBridge controller.”
Well that’s it for me on this dreary Friday. I’ll be playing baseball this weekend if the weather cooperates. What are you going to be up to?
In early February 2010 Ton Khowdee (www.IronMods.com) and I got the chance to put on a live overclocking demonstration at The Exploratorium museum in San Francisco. Ton was there also showing off his custom case mods along with other case modders for the Rods and Mods exhibit. In order to get the most out of both systems we were overclocking we used liquid Nitrogen on our setups. Ton ran not only his processor but his three ATI ®5770 video cards on liquid Nitrogen. The liquid nitrogen allowed both CPUs to almost double the stock frequencies.
At CES 2010 Intel launched their new Clarkdale Core i3 and Core™ i5 32nm CPU lineup with an IGP (Integrated Graphics Processor) on the CPU as well as the H55/H57 chipset to support the new CPUs with IGP. The new lineup consists of dual core processors with Hyper Threading for a total of four threads. With the exception for the Core i5 661, the new 32nm Core i3 and Core i5 processors are rated at a mere 73 Watts max TDP.
Normally a die shrink such as the one Intel did to achieve 32nm processors allows processors to run cooler, overclock further, and use less power. Intel also cut power usage by efficiently cutting power to the core while in an idle state and retaining the data in SRAM.
The Core i3 530 has a price tag of just over $100 and a frequency of 2930 MHz. Let’s see just how far this budget-minded CPU can be overclocked.
What a week this has been, and what a weekend it’s going to be! The Winter Olympics, Valentines day, Chinese New Year, and Presidents Day are all going down this weekend. And on top of all of that, Corsair’s going to be attending the Rods and Mods event at the Exploratorium in San Francisco. Whew!
Before we get to the reviews, we need your help. PC Games Hardware Magazine has a poll going to select their “Manufacturer of the Year 2009.” If you don’t understand German, click here. You don’t have to vote for every category to submit the ballot, but Corsair is up for categories 6, 10, 13, 15 and 19. We would love your support, thanks!
Now on to the good stuff. Think Computers reviewed the Corsair Obsidian Series™ 800D full-tower case and gave it a 10/10 and their Editor’s Choice award. Here’s a preview of what they said:
“If you are looking for a top of the line case this is it! The Obsidian Series 800D case is easily up there with the high end Lian Li cases and has a lot of up to date features that they don’t have.”
“Corsair H50 appears to be a very good cooler to be able to handle the vast majority of processors without any problem. Installation is easy and painless and it fits virtually all systems. With a price of less than 600kr and so good performance, this is a very good buy!”
Do you have an 800D? Let us know! Comment below with a picture of your 800D system build and let us know what you think! And whatever you choose to celebrate this weekend, have a great time and be safe!
Vortez is a new hardware review site in the UK. We sent them a CMG4GX3M2B1600C7 Dominator™ GT DDR3 memory kit and in return, we received a silver award. Here’s what they had to say:
CDR Info reviewed our smallest product, the Flash Voyager® Mini 32GB USB flash drive and gave it their greatest honor — the Editor’s Choice award. Here’s a sample of what they had to say:
