Sealed, all-in-one water coolers seem to be the fastest-growing segment of the CPU cooler market today. Air coolers are reaching their physical limits: given the room inside existing cases, and the (frequently ignored) weight limits defined for CPU coolers, something like a Prolimatech Megahalems is about as big as you can get without running into problems. Water cooling systems work around these problems by moving the heat exchanger off of the CPU socket, and using a fluid to transfer heat from the CPU to the heat exchanger. Coolit Systems has been making retail and bespoke liquid cooling systems for some years now, and the Coolit Vantage A.L.C. cooler brings new features and performance to the fray. Benchmark Reviews pits this new entry against existing air and water coolers in a performance showdown.

Zalman is best known for their very quiet coolers, stylish computer cases, and power supply units. Now they're adding high-speed storage devices to their product stack, begining with a SandForce-driven Zalman N-Series SSD. The Zalman N-Series solid state drive is capable of 50,000 IOPS, with read bandwidth topping 280 MB/s while maximum write speeds reach up to 270 MB/s. In this article, Benchmark Reviews demonstrates that 4K IOPS performance is more important than speed for high-power computer users tests, and tests the 128GB Zalman SSD0128N1 SSD against some of the most popular storage devices available.

Although there were previous entries in the field, Corsair's Hydro Series H50 all-in-one sealed liquid cooling system was one of the first that actually worked, in the sense of being easy to install, reliable, and most importantly offering performance competitive with good air coolers while being quieter than most of them. The H50 became very popular and spurred competition from other vendors. The Corsair Hydro Series H70 improves upon the H50 design with a new pump and a much thicker radiator equipped with dual fans. It should offer significantly better performance than the H50, and Benchmark Reviews puts it to the test against a collection of air and water coolers to see how it compares.

One of the benefits of testing computer hardware is that you occasionally get to look at a new product before it's introduced to the market. In my time at Benchmark Reviews, I've been fortunate enough to be able to review computer cases and CPUs before they were generally available (or in some cases, before they were even announced). Recently Benchmark Reviews was given the opportunity to evaluate a prototype of Xigmatek's forthcoming Achilles Plus SD1484 CPU cooler, and I tested it to compare performance against a variety of air and water coolers.

With cars, a frequent trade-off buyers must consider is performance versus mileage. All other things being equal, higher performance cars generally use more fuel than lower-performance cars. There are ways to work around this: for example, reducing a vehicle's weight will improve both performance and mileage. CPU coolers make similar trade-offs: better performance is often accompanied by more noise, and the workaround is to make the cooler larger, since more metal dissipates more heat with a slower, quieter airflow. Thermaltake's new Jing CPU cooler attempts to hit the sweet spot of the performance/noise compromise, and Benchmark Reviews pits it against a collection of high-end air coolers and water coolers to see how it compares.

History always repeats itself, and NVIDIA is hoping for a repeat performance with their new GTX 560 Ti video card. With performance per mm² and per watt numbers that put the first Fermi chips to shame, the GTX 460 deserves all the success it has enjoyed. Now, they've applied the same tweaks to the GF104 GPU that brought the high-end Fermi cards back from the dead, and we have the new GF114 in place to do battle in the upper mid-market. MSI is also repeating the same steps they used with the GTX 460 to capture the interest of graphics overclocking enthusiasts. Their Twin Frozr II design offered a massive upgrade in performance compared to the stock cooling scheme, and it helped achieve a world record of 1.0 GHz on air cooling for the GTX 460. Fast forward six months and MSI has launched an upgraded GTX 560 Ti video card at the same time that the reference design is hitting the market. The MSI N560GTX-Ti Twin Frozr II/OC model offers up a modest 7% factory overclock, but I'm guessing there's more where that came from. Benchmark Reviews takes full advantage of MSI's hardware upgrade, as we explore the full potential of NVIDIA's latest midrange marvel on our test bed.

In recent years when people solicit my opinion about buying a computer they are increasingly asking about laptops as opposed to desktops. They are turning to laptops as an all-purpose computing, working, and entertainment platform. High-end graphics, 19" screens and gigabytes of of bits can generate serious amounts of heat. But the vast majority of cooling options for laptops are meant for smaller machines with smaller heat profiles. For serious cooling CM Storm released the Strike Force SF-19 dual fan 19" laptop cooler. Model SGA-6000-KKYF1 is like the HAF X for laptops. Read on to see how the SF-19 performs under the Benchmark Reviews tests.

When we talk about different video card brands, there's always a factor which motivates us to choose one over any other. Most likely, we make our decisions depending on retail price, but there are things to consider: the bundle and accessories, factory overclocked speeds, and of course, included heatsinks and fans so that the GPU can be overclocked higher or simply work without being as loud and hot as a reference design. With this in mind, Benchmark Reviews tests the GIGABYTE GV-R685OC-1GD AMD Radeon HD 6850 video card. We've already tested some HD 6850 GPUs before, but GIGABYTE offers their newest design with the Windforce 2x GPU cooler and Ultra Durable VGA technology. Additionally, this is the factory OC version which brings 820MHz (against 775MHz) GPU Core clock and 4200MHz (instead 4000MHz) GDDR5 Memory clocks. Let's analyze the GV-R685OC-1GD model and see if it can be a serious contender against reference HD 6850 and GTX 460 graphics cards.