When building my latest HTPC, I decided that I would want to use the Apple Magic Trackpad as the mouse. The Magic Trackpad is small, stylish and works well as a pointing device to navigate HTPC menus. Personally, I use a Macbook Air 11" daily so I am accustomed to using the trackpad and thought it would be a...
StarTech sent their new SATSAS425BK hot swap enclosure after the recent review of the StarTech SATSASBAY425 unit. Both enclosures allow for four 2.5" devices to occupy one 5.25" bay. The big benefit here is that one can attain a higher level of density, especially with SSDs and turn 5.25" bay slots into something more relevant for today's use cases....
The ASUS P8C WS is the first motherboard based on the C216 express chipset, and built for the new Intel Ivy Bridge Xeon CPU (E3-1200 series v2). For those that are wondering, the C216 chipset is a decendent of the C206 chipset that came with the Sandy Bridge generation. The big advantage of the C206 and C216 series chipsets...
To follow on from the earlier article on the Zotac GeForce GT 430 PCI card that I actually bought and wrote about, the new ZOTAC GeForce GT 610 PCI video card is the latest version based on the 600 series NVIDIA GeForce GPU. The Zotac GT 430 was a great purchase for me, as it freed up my only...
The Crucial M4 256GB SSD is a very popular SSD that has a proven Marvell controller. One of the big advantages Marvell controllers enjoy over their SandForce competitors is the ability to handle non-compressible data at relatively fast speeds. This is a key reason that we saw nice performance in the OCZ Vertex 4 review. Recently, the price of...
It seems to be raining new dual Intel Xeon E5-2600 series motherboards at the moment. Today we look at the very new Supermicro X9DR7 and X9DRE. Like many we have seen thus far, they are dual Intel E5-2600 LGA 2011 motherboards, but what makes these motherboards different over all the other versions? Let's take a closer look a the specs and...
Moving up the stack, today we are taking a look at the Intel Xeon E3-1270 V2, which is a new Ivy Bridge Xeon E3 series CPU built on Intel's new 22nm process. Like last year where most of the original E3-1200 series was reviewed, we will be reviewing the vast majority of Intel's Xeon E3 V2 lineup. The Xeon...
Recently I found the MSI MS-S0221 over at MSI's website by accident, these guys have been very quiet on the server/ workstation front. This particular Intel Xeon E5-2600 series or Xeon E5-1600 series single CPU motherboard looks a standard server motherboardboard but with good quality components which could make it an interesting motherboard if you can find one. There is nothing...
The ASUS Z9PE-D8 WS motherboard is a workstation board meant to house dual Xeon E5-2600 series CPUs as well as several PCIe 3.0 cards. Recently Pieter previewed the Z9PE-D8 WS and noted that it is a competitor to offerings such as the Supermicro X9DA7 and EVGA's SR-X Classified. The ASUS Z9PE-D8 runs around $600 right now at retail, which...
Today we are taking a look at the Intel Xeon E3-1220 V2, which is a new Ivy Bridge Xeon E3 series CPU built on Intel's new 22nm process. Last year, ServeTheHome was the first site to review the Intel Xeon E3-1220 (V1) that was long delayed as there was a delay with the Sandy Bridge Bromolow platform. This year, we...