There was a time when if you were talking about gaming you were talking about a desktop system. There was no other option really. To get the performance and power you needed you had to have a desktop system. Then a few years ago GPU and CPU manufacturers found a way to put a lot more power into their mobile products and real mobile gaming was born. However, with that came more power draw and more heat. There have been and more than a few solutions to keep these mobile power houses cool, but not all of them have worked. Cooler Master has had a string of these products that have been fairly capable. We have one of these in the lab, a new one, called Cooler Master Notepal Infinite EVO. It is a dual fan aluminum surface cooler with a 4-port USB hub built in. Let’s see what it can do.

The term Big Bang is used by many scientists to describe the moment of creation. They say that before this event the universe was a chaotic mass of gasses and unformed matter. The gravity and heat combined to compress this to a critical mass. At that critical point all of that gas and unformed matter exploded in all directions to form the basis or the universe we know. MSI’s Big Bang is a culmination of ideas, components and design choices that have, well not really exploded but, hit the market in a fairly big way. Before the launch of this line up MSI was having a rough time in the market. However, even then we saw the hints of big things on the horizon. MSI had partnered up with Lucid; they had begun tinkering with new components for their motherboards and their video cards. We have seen what they can do with the X58, P55 and even the 8xx chipsets from AMD. Now let’s take a look at what they do with the P67 chipset in their Big Bang Marshal.

So you bought a new Windows 7 Based tablet. If you are like me you and you picked up the Asus EEE Slate EP121 then you are very happy with your purchase. However, no matter what product you picked up you are probably finding limitations. The biggest one that I have found is that I run out of USB ports and there are not many monitors that support HDMI in a resolution that the EEE Slate can realistically handle. There is also the little nagging issue that I would like to use the Gigabit network I have built in my house. I mean sure, the wireless n card in the EP 121 is good and certainly fast, but why stick with 150Mbps when you can have 1000? Today we offer up a possible solution as we take a deep look at the Lenovo USB 2.0 dock complete with DisplayLink’s USB to VGA technology. It should be interesting to say the least.

In what is a rather interesting move for the mischievous group known as ANONYMOUS we are hearing they are working to file a real, legal class action law suit against what they are calling “private Federal Reserve Bank and it's shareholders”. Their claim is simple, they are angry that the Fed allowed the toxic debt that were building in 2008 and 2009 (and before when you really get to it) and now want accountability. They are asking everyone to join in for this. They have posted a PR statement and also Youtube video explaining everything. Since a picture is worth a thousand words we will let them speak for themselves but have also posted up their typed PR Statement.

In an odd turn of events Netflix, one of the largest internet streaming media companies, appears to have locked out the Windows 7 Media Center Plug-in. The issue began on June 29^th in the early evening when reports of this issue popped up from different users around the net. We checked into the problem and found that while the rest of the service appeared to work flawlessly, you still could not view any movies. The error? Our apologies – we could not authenticate this request.

The Z68 has been touted as “cougar point done right” and many other things. I have been asked if the Z68 is going to replace the X58 and many other things beside that ever since it came onto the scene. We have taken a theoretical and design look at one Z68 and now we are going to take a look at another. This one is from Gigabyte; the Z68X-UD3H-B3 (we are getting back to the long names again). This board has a more than its share of selling points. It features the new TouchBIOS (also called Hybrid EFI), the usual compliment USB 2.0 and 3.0 ports and of course SLI and crossfire. But there is more to the Z68X-UD3H than just this. We also see that it comes complete with the new VirtuGPU technology from Lucid Driver MOSFETs, and much more. So let’s see what we can find digging into the design and features before we get to the performance numbers in part II.

When people think about cases many different things come to mind. To some the best case is a simple black box (or beige) that they put their components into and that is that. Others want more style to the box that holds all of their expensive hardware. But that raises a question, what is style to one person might not be to another. We also have to consider that what I may think is a great feature is a useless add-on to someone else. It is with this in mind that we take a look at a rather unusual case. This is the V9 BlackX Edition. This mid tower enclosure has a very interesting feature in that it has dual SATA HDD docks on the top of the case. This is along with the usual features that you would expect to find in any PC case.  So let’s see if the V9 BlackX is a great device, or is it just a giant drive dock.

At the request of some of our readers we are going to start splitting up the way we do our reviews. However, instead of the normal “unboxings” that we find out on the Internet we are going to break up our normal review into two distinct parts. There will be the first part that will cover design choices, board layout, and features. This will be followed up with our normal performance section. We feel that this will give everyone the pieces and parts they are looking for. You can still read both (they will be crosslinked) and also discuss them on our new forum, but this way we can cover things quicker and in a more complete fashion without making each review too long. For our first dive into this new style we have the MSI Z68A-GD80B3 up on the test bench and behind the camera lens.  This board follows the same trend as most of MIS’s recent product, but now they are into their second generation; you get Military Class II and OC Genie II.  So let’s dive into the more theoretical part of our review and take a look at the packaging, board layout and the features for the MSI Z68A-GD80B3.

OK I have been promising this for some time now and it is about time that I got moving on it. Decryptedtech is having another giveaway. After the response we got from the 6950 giveaway (where we made you work for it). We decided to add something to this one. In the next three reviews you will find words that are in bold. When you put these words together they will form a question; that is one question for each review. The questions should not be too hard but will vary in topic (Cake or Death?). Once you have all three answers just be the first to email us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Oh yeah, I suppose you would like to know what I am giving away huh? Well I am giving away an Asus P6X58D Premium brand new still in the box. This contest is open North American residents only due to export taxes and restrictions. Keep checking here, our facebook page and also twitter for when these reviews hit the net. Good luck!