Review: Crucial M500 960GB SSD
A consumer-friendly drive with class-leading tech, capacity
When Intel entered the personal computer solid-state drive market it was with the stated aim of making SSDs something more than an expensive luxury.
It implied it would drive prices down to a point where SSDs would become a viable alternative to the standard rattling old mechanical disk drive.
But even the blue-hued chip giant …
Cache 'n' carry: What's the best config for your SSD?
Feature How to gain solid-state performance with out losing hard drive capacity
The idea of using a low-capacity SSD to store the most frequently accessed files or parts of files in order to access them more quickly than a mechanical hard drive can serve them up - a technique called SSD caching - has been around for some time, but it wasn’t until the arrival of Intel’s Smart Response Technology with the …
Review: Intel 335 240GB SSD
New NAND tech tweak treat
Intel’s 520 and 330 range of 2.5in consumer SSDs are the product of its relationship with LSI SandForce. It's practically unheard of for Intel not to have a controller of its own but its reliance on SandForce has left it in the same boat as every other drive manufacturer using these controllers. Namely, they are all eagerly …
Thunderbolt interface strikes YOUR PC: What's the damage?
10Gbps, you say? Now for the reality check
Thunderbolt has been available on Intel-based motherboards for around six months and although Apple has featured it on its computers since 2011, peripherals with this interface have appeared at a glacial pace. But the ice appears to be melting now. Besides a range of hubs and adapters that take advantage of Thunderbolt's …
Samsung SSD 840 series storage review
MLC for business and TLC for pleasure
When Samsung launched its first true consumer SSD, the 470, it was met with a generally good reception. Yet the timing of its release pretty much coincided with the arrival of drives using the second generation of LSI’s SandForce controller and its 6Gb/s SATA 3 interface. Hence, the 470 having a 3Gb/s SATA 2 interface was no …
Plextor M5 Pro 256GB SSD review
Modern Marvell
Some companies make a real song and dance about the launch of a new product, others just seem to launch something without hardly making a ripple. Plextor sits firmly in the latter category, which is something of a surprise considering its latest Pro SSD range, the M5 series, features not one but two new technologies that are, …
Crucial v4 256GB budget SSD review
SATA 2 and proud of it
The latest addition to Crucial’s range of SSD’s, the v4 series isn’t, as you might expect, the follow up to the company’s highly successful m4 series but a different animal entirely. It's so different in fact, it makes you wonder what was Crucial’s thinking behind it.
Crucial v4 256GB (CT256V4SSD2) SSD Practical electronics: …
Ivy Bridge for Ultrabooks
Inside Intel's premium portables
The one thing missing at the launch of Intel’s Ivy Bridge CPU technology was detail on the dual-core and lower powered chips for the mobile market segment, in particular, for its Ultrabook concept. The recent launch of the ULV (Ultra Low Voltage) and dual-core standard voltage mobile Ivy Bridge parts has revealed all, with the …
Intel 330 120GB SSD review
Mainstream makeover must-have?
When Intel launched the SSD 520 series of drives it caused quite a kerfuffle. The company had abandoned using one of its own controllers or even a Marvell controller, as found in the 510 series. Instead, the ubiquitous LSI Sandforce SF-2281 controller was utilised but with Intel’s own hand firmly in charge of the firmware. …
OCZ Vertex 4 256GB SSD review
Homegrown hot shot
Time was, when OCZ was typically first out of the gate with a range of SSDs based on any new incarnation of SandForce controllers. Yet, the first generation of the company’s popular Vertex drives were powered by Indilinx’s Barefoot controller. Now, with the fourth generation of Vertex drives, OCZ has completed the circle and …
Choose Smarter: Ten…portable optical drives
Product Round-up The art of spin
Optical drive is the collective term for CD, DVD and Blu-ray readers, recorders and rewriters, the mainstay of swap-in-swap-out storage in notebook and desktop computers.
For many reasons, optical discs remain a useful storage option and having a portable unit allows you to get the best of the latest laser tech without having …
AMD and Intel mainstream desktop CPUs
Review Cheap as chips?
It’s fair to say that Intel has the very high end desktop processor market pretty much to itself, however, it’s a different story in the lower end of the food chain. Although Intel – through the sheer number of different processors it offers – seems to have it all its own way, AMD does make a good fight of it at a number of …
Choose Smarter: Ten... Sata 3 SSDs
Product Round-up Solid choices for an essential upgrade
There may never be parity between SSDs and the good old mechanical HDD, but the solid state option is moving rapidly in the right direction regarding cost and capacity.
SSDs already lead the way in terms of resilience (they're far more durable than hard drives), power consumption (low), noise (lower still) and speed (high), …
Choose Smarter: Ten… USB 3.0 External Hard Drives
Product Round-up Big storage
Hard drives are still the most cost-effective way of adding extra storage capacity to a desktop or laptop. They are cheap to buy, easy to use and remarkably robust in service.
Solid-state drives may be quicker, but while the prices of hard drives continue to fall, their capacity goes on climbing, so the overall cost per …
Choose Smarter: Ten… Class 10 SDHC Cards
Product Round-up Sharp cards
Until the day when broadband is truly fast and all devices have wireless internet access as well as sync'n'store services such as Dropbox or Google Drive, memory cards will remain the most convenient general-purpose, pocketable storage medium.
They help everyone to move documents, photos, music and videos around safely and …
Ten... Sata 3 SSDs
Product Round-up Solid choices for that essential upgrade
It wasn’t that long ago that it would’ve been a struggle to put together a list of ten consumer SSDs. Now it's case of asking: only ten? Indeed, the rise of flash based storage in the last 18 months or so has been truly astounding.
Increased competition and cheaper NAND prices have combined to force prices well below the …
AMD and Nvidia extreme GPUs workout
Extreme PC Week Visual feast
Extreme PC Week
At the very extreme end of desktop graphics are the dual GPU, frame crunching, power hungry monsters that you won’t give you much change from a grand. The extreme offerings can be a little difficult to find too, as most card vendors only produce a limited range. Instead, they prefer to concentrate on the next …
AMD and Intel extreme desktop CPU workout
Extreme PC Week Feel the burn
Extreme PC Week
Comparing high-end desktop processors that use the latest architecture from AMD and Intel these days, is a bit like comparing apples to walnuts. To pimp up a PC, there is only one company that really offers extreme processing power, and that’s Intel. But it’ll cost ya. In the extreme arena, AMD gave up arm …
OCZ RevoDrive 3 X2 240GB PCI-E SSD
Review So long, SATA
Extreme PC Week
One wonders if, after ratifying the SATA 6Gb/s standard, the people at the SATA-IO (Serial ATA International Organization) gave themselves a pat on the back to say job well done, that’s that future-proofed for a while, we can relax now.
OCZ RevoDrive 3 X2 240GB PCI-E SSD Scorchio: OCZ's RevoDrive 3 X2
After …
Intel Ivy Bridge Core i7-3770K quad-core CPU
Review The generation game
Reg Hardware PC Week
Intel loves marketing jargon for most things it produces, and the company’s processor architecture roadmap is no different. In Intel speak, this moves along in "Tick-Tock" sequence. The Tock refers to a major revamp to the core architecture, while the Tick covers changes to the manufacturing process. …
WTF is... Intel's Ivy Bridge
Feature Inside Core i's third generation
Reg Hardware PC Week
Intel’s latest processor architecture, codenamed Ivy Bridge, is its previous one, Sandy Bridge, shrunk. Sandy Bridge chips, marketed as second-generation Core i CPUs, were produced using a 32nm process. Ivy Bridge is 22nm
Actually, there's a little bit more to it than that.
Intel Core i7-3770K processor …
Dell XPS 13 Ultrabook
Review Airs and graces
Having been in the hardware reviewing game for more years than I care to mention - cue the violins - I have looked at a huge number of notebooks claiming to be both thin and light.
From the days when thin meant something less than half an inch in thickness and light meant something around the 2kg mark if you were lucky, I've sat …
Samsung Series 3 NP300E5A 15in notebook
Review Computing for the cost-conscious
Samsung’s NP300E5A-A01DX is the Core i3 model in its Series 3 family of notebooks and is priced accordingly, at around £400. Unashamedly aimed at the cost conscious end of market it has plenty of company including Acer’s Aspire 5749 that Reg Hardware reviewed late last year.
Samsung Series 3 NP300E5A 15in notebook Samsung …
SanDisk Extreme 120GB SSD
Review Sata 3 Sandforce speedster
Another week and yet another new range of Sandforce controlled drives has been pitched into battle in an already crowded market place. Still, here’s hoping the increased competition will impact on prices. Arriving hard on the heels of Intel’s new 520 range reviewed recently, is the Extreme series from flash memory experts …
Intel 520 240GB SSD
Review Sandforce inside
The rumour mill was working overtime throughout 2011 with suggestions that Intel was considering forsaking the Marvell controllers it had used for its previous generation of consumer SSDs, the 510 series. The story went that the company was jumping into bed with another third party controller manufacturer, namely Sandforce, for …
Eurocom Panther 2.0 Core i7, SLI notebook
Review Just what does a £5k laptop get you these days?
While currently every notebook manufacturer seems to offering the thinnest, lightest and easiest to carry around notebook ever, in a bizarre way, it’s quite refreshing to find a company wandering off message and offering notebooks at the other end of the scale. Enter Eurocom’s Panther 2.0, the heaviest, most amazingly specified …
HP Pavilion dv6 15.6in quad-core notebook
Review Llano laptop, anyone?
CES 2012 Week
Choosing an HP notebook isn’t an easy task, not because they are hard to find - far from it - it’s just the bewildering choice of notebooks you can find in a range. Take the recently refreshed Pavilion dv6-6b series, for example. There are currently a staggering 16 different options in this family alone.
HP …
Samsung SSD 830
Review Sata 3 scorcher
When it came to putting together a list of SSDs together for your latest upgrade, one name that you could easily overlook until recently was Samsung. Compared to its rivals in the marketplace the company hardly trumpeted its solid state storage products.
Samsung SSD 830 solid state drive Samsung's SSD 830: 256GB is an …
Acer TravelMate Timeline X TM8481T 14in Core i5 notebook
Review Endurance over performance?
As the name might suggest, Acer’s TravelMate family of notebooks are aimed at the mobile users, with an eye on business bods after something a little more stylish than the standard issue grey slab. A new addition to the range is the Timeline X TM8481T with just a couple of variants at present.
Acer TravelMate Timeline X TM8481T …
