Reviews

Opinions have undoubtedly shifted over the years on what is expected from entry level motherboards. While many will not argue about the appropriate price, the functional aspects such as overclockability, storage options, expandability, and sub-system performance are affected so much with every concession made to fit the budget that designing the perfect budget model can be a nightmare for manufacturers. ... Read More »

Recently,  Intel released their refresh of the Haswell line of CPUs and along with that came the Z97 chipset. The Z97, in a nutshell, adds and updates a few things from the Z87. The major addition to the Z97 is the ability to support M.2 SSDs. Other than an update to the Intel Rapid Storage technology the Z97 and Z87 ... Read More »

So what’s the deal with the white case obsession? Is it because for so long you were only able to get black cases? Maybe it’s because a white case just looks sleeker and cleaner than any other colored case. Personally, I like them because they all remind me of Storm Troopers from Star Wars! Whatever the reason may be, white ... Read More »

Photos, music, and files, oh my! How much data do you have on your home PC or network? Is it backed up or protected? Do you have the capacity to store all your stuff? These are just a few of the questions I tend to ask folks when we are talking about new PCs or adding storage to their network. ... Read More »

As a hardware reviewer and a hardware junkie, I constantly swap parts in and out of the various PCs I have around the office. I’m constantly swapping this for that etc. Traditional PC cases make it very difficult and time consuming to swap parts. Over the years there have been various styles of open air test benches. I remember my ... Read More »

In the world of Mini-ITX, *small* size is king! Most people when they think of a smaller sized board, they think that corners had to be cut, features left off, and performance sacrificed in order to make such a paltry dimension. Gigabyte threw its designing prowess behind the petite package and wrapped it around AMD’s A88X chipset supporting the FM2/FM2+ processors.  Did ... Read More »

As evidenced by the current trend in Cellular plans, we are a data centric society. Our need for large, fast data storage is constantly on the rise and our voracious appetite and be satiated for a while. Technology has a way of quelling our apparent need all the while increasing our desire for more, more speed and more space. This ... Read More »

So many people have such radically different outlooks on thermal compound. Some people will undoubtedly tell you that you should only run a certain thermal compound. However, that’s not necessarily the case. There are several thermal compounds that all perform within just a small percentage difference of each other. That doesn’t mean you should just rush out and grab whatever ... Read More »

It is a misplaced romantic notion to think that some things can be made whole cloth from aether and that great ideas are some sort of a divine blessing from the universe to only a select few. The truth is that copying and imitation have their place in the creative process just as much as random chance does and the ... Read More »

Not every plan goes smoothly and in the tech world, everything moves so fast that odds are stacked towards the likelihood of a plan fizzing out before the idea even gets off the ground. This is why the strategic concept of “pivoting” is such a vital ingredient to the success of current Internet giants such as Instagram (which started out ... Read More »