The AMD 880G Northbridge and SB850 Southbridge are two of the latest bits of chipset silicon designed to bolster AMD's position in the mainstream PC market. They were released about a month apart this Spring, as part of a full line of 800-series chips, and ASUS wasted no time putting them into production. Key items that help make the M4A88TD-V EVO/USB3 motherboard stand out are native support for SATA 6Gb/s, USB 3.0, and AMD's latest game changer, the Phenom II X6 CPU. With both Core Unlocker and Turbo Unlocker functionality built right into the board, this combination could be the magic ticket to dynamic-clocked, quad core processing on the cheap. Benchmark Reviews is pleased to review one of the latest ASUS motherboards, using the latest entries from AMD's new 800-series chipset.

Along with the innovation in computer case design comes an increasing number of new fan designs. Manufacturers try to tune noise and performance with tweaks to rotational speed, blade design, and even grill and fan chassis alterations, giving the enthusiast a broad selection of fans with differing acoustic and airflow levels. SilverStone Technology has introduced a new version of the giant 180mm fans used in their "vertical motherboard" chassis series (the Raven RV01, Raven RV02, and Fortress FT02): the SilverStone SST-AP181 Air Penetrator fan. Benchmark Reviews compares the performance of this new fan to the stock fans in a Fortress FT02 case to see if the extra performance justifies their price.

Some years ago, Intel tried to move beyond the ATX "Advanced Texchnology Extended" motherboard standard with a new design layout called BTX, for "Balanced Technology Extended". One of the main reasons for doing this was to improve the cooling of motherboard components. The new design called for new cases as well, and although a few BTX systems and cases were produced, they never caught on. The ATX standard remains today, albeit with variants like "MATX", "EATX" and "HPTX". But innovation in cooling and case design is hardly dead, as the SilverStone Fortress FT02 cases proves, and Benchmark Reviews checks it out to see if its unique vertical motherboard mounting design has any real-world benefits.

Many companies are clamoring to compete with AT&T's Apple iPhone 4. Verizon has the Blackberry, and Sprint's answer is the HTC EVO 4G Andoid Smartphone which uses the Qualcomm Snapdragon processor. Can Sprints' EVO compete to win customers over from the Blackberry and iPhone market? Benchmark Reviews will take a look at how things compare and see if this could be the phone for you... especially if you are a Sprint mobile customer and are looking to upgrade.

NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 460 1GB-GDDR5 graphics card empowers DirectX-11 video games to deliver unmatched geometric realism at the $220 price point. Based on the same Fermi architecture that powers their high-end GeForce GTX 480 model, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 delivers mid-range performance for gamers on a budget. The GeForce GTX 460 comes armed with NVIDIA's GF104 Fermi graphics processor, and packs seven Streaming Multiprocessors for a total of 336 CUDA Cores and 56 Texture Units. In this article Benchmark Reviews tests 3D video game frame rate performance on the 1GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 video card, and compare our results against the most competitive graphics products in the segment. NVIDIA's 1GB GTX 460 price tag fits in nicely between the $200 Radeon HD 5530 and $250 GeForce GTX 465, but could deliver more performance for the value. In the following pages, Benchmark Reviews demonstrates how well the GeForce GTX 460 performs against these other DirectX-11 video card products.

ProlimaTech, the company behind the award-winning and record-setting heatsink, has released a successor to the overclocking throne: the ProlimaTech Super-Mega heatsink cooler for Intel CPUs. The Megahalems was ProlimaTech's first run at CPU-cooler's, and a very successful one at that. Having already earned the Benchmark Reviews Editor's Choice Award and countless accolades from other websites, ProlimaTech has built high expectations with their follow-up products. The Super Mega is ProlimaTech's plan to remain seated comfortably at the top. In this article, Benchmark Reviews examines the ProlimaTech Super Mega heatsink and compares performance results directly against the original Megahalems design.

GIGABYTE has grown a lot in the market lately. They mainly produce top-notch quality motherboards and GPUs, and they have even entered new areas as well. We couldn't say they had a specific motherboard for each user until they finally released their Mini-ITX H55N-USB3 motherboard. Last year, Mini-ITX motherboards meant low CPU-performance. But in 2010, things have changed and now you can build a very small PC with great performance and good efficiency. Benchmark Reviews tests the GIGABYTE H55N-USB3 motherboard paired with an Intel Core i3 530 processor and 4GB of RAM to check which kind of performance we can expect from a Mini-ITX HTPC system like this one.

Just when PCs were starting to seem irrelevant in this fast-paced world of mobile gadgets and smart phones, along comes a new product that changes the entire landscape. SSDs, or more formally Solid State Drives, have finally lifted computers beyond the age of spinning metal magnetic platters. Delivering a boost in speed that no memory upgrade or new processor could ever dream of, solid state drive technology has sent hard disk drives packing. OCZ Technology, an enthusiast memory company and pioneer of consumer SSD products, further commits to their passion for high-speed storage and delivers the OCZ Vertex 2. Based on the SandForce SF1200 controller, the OCZ Vertex 2 Extended SSD delivers up to 50,000 IOPS with incredible bandwidth speed. In this article, Benchmark Reviews tests the 120GB OCZ Vertex 2 Extended OCZSSD2-2VTXE120G against some of the fastest storage solutions on the market.