Thrifty shoppers are faced with many options when choosing where to store their valuable data: from traditional optical media and drive based storage, to flash drives and even more exotic third party online storage - each with its own advantages and disadvantages. In this article Benchmark Reviews tests the Synology Disk Station DS209 Gigabit SATA Nnetwork Attached Storage (NAS) server. The NAS has lately gained popularity as more and more consumers realize the need for a reliable, cost effective, and easy to access centralized way to store their data. However, with so many competing products it's not always possible for buyers to easily compare what's on the market. Read on as Benchmark Reviews puts this "all-in-one" NAS through its paces. Intended for small/medium business (SMB) and small office/home office (SOHO) users, The Synology DS209 offers a relatively inexpensive and easy to use data storage and backup that's sure to appeal to budget-minded users.

The Sapphire Radeon HD 4770 introduces the 40nm RV740 GPU paired to 512MB of DDR5 video frame buffer memory, and a double-height cooler allows the 100277L model video card to operate at 750MHz. As of May 2009, the Sapphire HD4770 sells for as low as $99, which allows gamers to create a very affordable CrossFireX array using this mainstream graphics accelerator. Benchmark Reviews compares two Sapphire Radeon HD4770's assembled into a CrossFireX set against a large collection of high-performance GPU's for the tests in this article.

ASUS has it tough. No question about it, everyone loves to hate the front runner. It's hard to remember when they weren't one of the top dogs, and in this business, it's as hard to stay on top as it is to get there. For the last several years, like everyone else, they've been paying the bills by selling Intel-based systems. They kept faith with the AMD crowd however, and have consistently offered a full range of products to support the underdog in the CPU race. All that is paying off, now that the new Phenom II AM3 chips have hit the street, and enthusiasts are once again buying AMD CPUs in earnest.

The new ASUS M4A79T Deluxe motherboard uses some of the latest support chips from AMD: the 790 FX Northbridge, providing 42 lanes of PCi-e 2.0 connectivity and support for quad graphics, and the SB750 Southbridge. The 790FX was part of AMD's "Spider" Platform, launched late in 2007, but it still packs a punch, as we'll see. This is the top specified AM3 board for ASUS, so we'll see what features separate it from the rest of the pack. Let's take a good look at what ASUS brings to the AM3-DDR3 party with their new M4A79T Deluxe motherboard.

Back in April, Benchmark Reviews covered the release of AMD's flagship quad-core processor, the Phenom II X4 955 BE. Nearly four months later, we have that opportunity once again. Today, we look at the new king of the mountain over at the AMD, the Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition processor model HDZ965FBGIBOX. Coming in at 3.4GHz, it not only bests the previous flagship model by 200Mhz, but also happens to be the highest clocked CPU on the market. In today's review, we find out how well that extra clockspeed translates to performance.

Today at Computex, AMD took the wraps off of two highly anticipated processors: the Athlon II X2 250 and the Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition. Both are based on AMD's 45nm SOI process with the key difference being the amount of L3 cache. The Phenom II X2 550, codenamed Callisto, gets the full 6 MB cache of the Phenom II family and will serve as AMD's new flagship dual-core processor. The Athlon II X2 250, on the other hand, is based on the new native dual-core Regor die that omits the L3 cache completely and targets the mainstream segment. Benchmark Reviews was fortunate to receive samples of both processors and today we can officially share with you our results. In this review, we focus on the Phenom II X2 550 BE HDZ550WGIBOX.

HDTVs are rapidly becoming the norm rather than the exception. With such new-found popularity, there are more TVs than ever to choose from. The wise consumer contemplates overall value rather than just size and brand name. Benchmark Reviews seeks out the value in HDTVs with this review of the 27-Inch 1080i Widescreen Olevia 227V-S11 LCD HDTV; a steal at just over $400. Olevia is quickly making High Definition the standard with their affordable line of HDTVs, and they aren't skimping on quality in the process.

How much data storage is enough to satisfy your enterprise needs? Thecus would like to assure you their N7700 SATA-drive NAS server has you covered. With seven hot-swappable drive bays assembled into a rugged stackable chassis, the N7700 aims to safely house large collections of data in basic-disk JBOD, RAID-0, 1, 5, 6, and 10 arrays using either the EXT3, XFS or ZFS drive format. Dual Gigabit Ethernet ports can be configured for network load balancing, failover, or 802.3ad aggregation modes; and also adds up to 9000K MTU jumbo frame support to each. A single Intel Celeron M 440 processor powers the N7700 on a 533MHz FSB, using 1GB of single-channel DDR2 memory to process requests. In this article, Benchmark Reviews tests the bandwidth speed of the Thecus N7700 against several of the best Gigabit NAS servers available.

Indilinx has been tapped to add their 'Barefoot' controller into the design, and a new generation of Solid State Drives has delivered top-level speed and performance. The Patriot (Fusion) Torqx 128GB MLC SSD is one such product, built from a proven architecture that has done well for others of the same controller family. The Patriot Torqx Solid State Drive adds 64MB of Elpida DRAM to the buffer has permanently solved stuttering problems, making raw performance the last bottleneck. An Indilinx 'Barefoot' internal controller commands the bank of Samsung K9HCG08U1M DRAM modules, allowing the Torqx SSD to offer an impressive capacity with top-speed performance. Benchmark Reviews tests the reaction time and bandwidth performance for the PE000143-PFZ128GS25SSDR 128GB model against over two dozen other products in this article.