So PC Specialist, what have we here with the Vortex M59 OC?

An overclocked Core i5 2500K? Why, a system with a CPU specification like that puts you in some pretty illustrious company: there’s Chillblast’s Fusion Rocket for starters.

Chillblast’s overclocked 2500K runs at 4.5 GHz, which is 300MHz slower than this rig, but then it’s also £150 cheaper. There’s also our new favourite Core i5 system, the AT-FX Polaris. Inside that rig lies a 2500K overclocked to 4.8 GHz, matching PC Specialist’s rig. It costs nearly £300 more, but there are several luxurious higher specified components inside to justify that.

The Vortex M59 OC fits neatly in between the two at £899. It’s certainly a smart price point, but how does it compare to these two 2500K-equipped rivals? Would you be better off going for the cheaper or higher specified option, or does this rig offer a happy middle ground?

Well, let’s look at the specs beyond that CPU. First, it’s air cooled by a Titan Fenrir Evo. Approaching the £1,000 point, you might expect to see a water cooling unit, but PC Specialist has managed a big CPU overclock on air cooling, and that’s fine by us; it is a good cooling unit after all. We’ve no grumbles so far.

Next, let’s look at the memory. The Vortex has 4GB of Kingston HyperX 1,600MHz DDR3 RAM occupies this rig, and it performed very well in our memory bandwidth test, posting 20.76 GB/s, which is as quick as we’ve seen from a 4GB kit. That’ll help any CPU-intensive tasks, such as video encoding, as well as loading times.

Chillblast’s Fusion Rocket’s 4GB kit doesn’t have the throughput that these HyperX modules have, whereas up there in the Polaris’s lofty heights, there’s 8GB on offer. It still doesn’t beat the Vortex’s RAM in sheer GB/s, but having double the capacity is useful too. The RAM, like the CPU and cooler, do demonstrate a happy middle ground – so far so good.

This is a gaming rig, and gaming performance is all about graphics cards. Choosing the right card in a densely populated market is important to a system’s overall value, and those crucial frames per second in your favourite games.

PC Specialist’s solution: Nvidia’s GTX 570. In a world of rigs powered by HD 6950s and GTX 580s, the GTX 570 is a rarity. They were quite expensive on launch, just shy of £300 for a Fermi card with largely the same layout as the GTX 480 but without that insatiable thirst for electricity. Just one stream processor away from the GTX 580, the 480 CUDA cores are still capable of high resolution, high frame rates, but a reduced 1.2GB of memory leaves it trailing way behind the GTX 580′s impressive pace.

TechRadar Labs

DX11 tessellation performance
Heaven 2.5 Frames per second: Higher is better
Vortex M59 OC: 28
Fusion Rocket: 21.7

DX10 gaming performance
Just Cause 2 Frames per second: Higher is better
Vortex M59 OC: 60
Fusion Rocket: 40

CPU rendering performance
Cinebench R11.5 Index: Higher is better
Vortex M59 OC: 7.33
Fusion Rocket: 7.80

The price has been slashed since the GTX 570′s release, making it a very appealing – you guessed it – middle ground between the 560 Ti and the full-blown 580. Sitting in this rig, it provides enough grunt to keep frame rates over 40fps at 1080p.

Our only reservation with the Vortex is the lack of an extra that the very best systems have. There’s no SSD, the mobo is mid-range… not big problems, nor a rip-off at all, but the market is that tight.

The latest release from Dell-owned Alienware, the M18X, is a behemoth with enough power to run any game under the sun without so much as a flicker. But you’ll have to have deep pockets to get your hands on one.

Even getting the M18X out of the box is a challenge, thanks to its 438 x 311 x 52mm dimensions and a back-breaking weight of 5.7kg. This machine was designed to dominate your desk. As expected, it sticks to the Alienware design, which we love, but probably won’t be to everyone’s taste.

The entire machine is a slab of moulded rubber and brushed metal, and that ever-present Tron-style neon backlight.

Unsurprisingly, the focus of the Alienware is gaming. Our review sample came with an AMD Radeon HD 6900M and scored a mind-blowing 19,056 during our intensive gaming benchmark test.

While the sheer power of the machine keeps games running perfectly, it is the 18.4-inch screen that made playing on the M18X a truly immersive experience. The Super-TFT screen is like a window into your games. It’s extremely bright and the 1920 x 1080-pixel resolution keeps the most complex graphics razor sharp.

But it’s the sheer size that is the winner here and you really notice the difference between this and a standard 15.6-inch machine.

Mixed keyboard

Although we like the keyboard on the M18x, there is a degree of flexing towards the centre and some might not appreciate the tightly packed keys, but the customisable backlight looks great.

As any gamer knows, you’re going to want a mouse, game controller, joystick, or any number of other peripherals to get the best from your laptop. So Alienware has gone big on connectivity. There are five USB ports, upgradable to USB 3.0 if you want, along with an Ethernet port, eSata port, VGA Out and audio jacks for your headset and microphone. On top of that, you get two HDMI ports for connecting extra monitors or an HDTV.

Despite our praise, the M18x is not without its faults. At 87 minutes, the battery life is woeful. The charger, like the laptop itself, is huge, and you certainly won’t be leaving the house without it.

The other problem with the M18x is that to play big, you have to spend big and, being custom-built, it costs a small fortune to get the best spec. Every model runs on a Sandy Bridge Core i7 processor, but there are different variants available.

Our review sample was powerful, but other laptop components such as RAM and storage space were poor. This was disappointing and, although you can customise the amount of storage, we would expect more than 250GB and 4GB of RAM for £1699.

TechRadar Labs

Battery Eater ’05: 87 minutes
Cinebench: 16967
3DMark 2006: 19056

Essentially, if you’re not a hardcore gamer, there is no reason to spend this kind of money. But if you want the best mobile gaming experience around, this is what you should be looking at.

The tiny Smart Witness Smart-i is certainly the smallest network camera we’ve tested. While its tiny size means it offers some fun features and possibilities, it causes a few problems as well.

There are two ways to connect to the Smart-i. The first is to link it directly to your PC, smartphone or tablet. The Smart-i broadcasts its own wireless network, and once we’d connected to it via our test laptop, we simply opened a browser and accessed the IP address 192.168.2.1 to access the video stream.

Despite the camera’s diminutive size, the image quality is pretty good. The ‘Stream images’ option didn’t work in Internet Explorer 9, but it did in Chrome. You can change the resolution and compression of the footage, though the higher compression makes the video stream look awful.

Watching the video on a smartphone is also easy – simply access the IP address 192.168.2.1 using a browser. There are also Android and iPhone apps available to record footage to your phone.

The direct method of connecting the Smart-i suffers from a major shortcoming: you’re limited to the Smart-i’s wireless range, which is around 20 metres. This means that the only footage you’ll be able to record with he Smart-i will be of things you can see with your own eyes anyway.

To get around this limitation, you can connect the Smart-i to your wireless network by switching it to ‘Setup’ mode. With a bit more tinkering, you can then to access the video stream via another computer on the network, or over the internet.

This is easily solved, but a more troubling shortcoming then presented itself. We noticed that the Smart-i became very hot when running, and the battery life was just under two hours. This severely limits the usefulness of the device, though a USB power adapter is available for an extra cost.

As a fun novelty it’s not a bad device, but the Smart-i isn’t going to replace a full-size network camera.

The Zoostorm 3390-2012/A is a good looking laptop, with a subtly lined black and grey chassis. While it’s certainly not the thinnest laptop we’ve seen – the new MacBook Air can sleep easy in that department – it’s not bulky either, and it’s perfectly easy to carry around.

The laptop’s chassis does feel slightly cheap and brittle, lacking the sturdiness of the Sony VAIO S Series VPCSB1V9E’s build quality.

As we’ve seen with other laptops, the inclusion of Intel’s second-generation Core i3, i5 and i7 processors gives them a big power advantage. The Zoostorm is no exception, and the model we tested comes with an Intel Core i3-2310 2.10GHz processor.

Backed up by 4GB of DDR3 RAM, this makes the Zoostorm 3390-2012/A a fast and responsive laptop that’s excellent at multitasking. Boosting performance even further is the inclusion of a solid state drive that drastically cuts down the time it takes for the laptop to boot into Windows 7.

Microsoft has designed its OS to take advantage of SSD technology, and this is evident in its sheer speed. The technology comes at a premium though, and the model we reviewed – which costs £479 – comes with only 64GB of storage. With Windows 7 Home Premium and the default programs installed there’s only 34GB of hard drive space left. If you need more then you’ll need to either use an external hard drive or opt for the 128GB model, which costs £549.

The only area where the Zoostorm 3390-2012/A is let down by its hardware is in the graphics department. Whilst the onboard graphics that come with second Intel Core processors is perfectly capable, it can’t compete with laptops that have dedicated GPUs. The Zoostorm’s 3DMark score was 7,564, compared with the Sony VAIO S Series’ 12,230.

Overview

Memory maestro Patriot has launched the Patriot Gamer 2 AMD Black Edition DDR3 4GB RAM kit specifically aimed at the AMD crowd. With the launch of AMD’s new Accelerated Processing Unit (APU), Llano, RAM is a vital performance component again.

Since the launch of Intel’s Sandy Bridge architecture, there has been a whole raft of memory modules launched claiming to be the ideal support for the new chipset. Indeed, Kingston’s HyperX Plug n Play claimed the same thing, but with, it has to said, a lot more justification than most.

Well now it’s the turn of the thorn in Intel’s side, AMD, to get some memory attention. It’s been a long time coming.

OK, compared to some of the blazingly fast modules that have been launched to support the Sandy Bridge platform, Patriot’s Gamer 2 AMD Black Edition 4GB (2 x 2GB) PC3-12800 kit may seem, well, a bit conservative to say the least. At just 1600MHz, it’s a little slow.

But even so, it does make a nice change to see a company giving some component love to AMD. Even if – marketing spiel aside – the memory will work in any modern motherboard, be it made by AMD or Intel.

Benchmarks

We tested all the Patriot Gamer 2 AMD Black Edition memory in an Asus F1A75-V Pro motherboard using an AMD A6-3650 APU.

Once we finished testing at stock speeds, we gave it a tweak but just using its stock 1.65V voltage setting. A quick adjustment to the bus speed got us to the next step up – 1866MHz. While the system booted up Windows perfectly and ran SiSoft Sandra’s memory bandwidth benchmark without a problem, when we tried to run World in Conflict there were all sorts of issues with the game freezing.

Eventually we got it to boot and run both benchmarks without any problems at 1840MHz, which is still a pretty impressive boost over the stock speeds, especially without having to tinker with any voltages.

Verdict

It’s been a long time coming but the Patriot Gamer 2 AMD Black Edition and others suggest we should now see AMD platforms getting some dedicated love from memory manufacturers.

That’s mainly thanks to the new Llano platform, with its strong memory performance, and AMD’s 990FX chipset and Bulldozer combo. It’s been a very long time since AMD had a strong enough offering to entice manufacturers into putting its badge on their products.

Hopefully these new platforms will see the end of one of AMD’s annoying platform traits when it comes to overclocking – they used to be quite fussy when it came to memory running at high speeds. So the prospect of getting ultra-fast memory kits designed for AMD platforms is an interesting one.

We liked


You wouldn’t class Patriot’s Gamer 2 AMD Black Edition RAM as a world-beater, especially at its stock 1600MHz speed. That said, it has bags of potential – as we found out during testing.

Thanks to its fairly relaxed 9-9-9-24 latency settings it does overclock very nicely, even at the 1.65V stock voltage. Even though it will reach the next step up from 1600MHz – 1866MHz – we couldn’t get it to run stably while playing the game World in Conflict.

We also liked the fact that the modules are low profile. You may be wondering why that’s of any importance. Well, wait until you get a large third-party CPU cooler, which usually make the first memory slot redundant. Normally it’s impossible to get a stick of memory into the slot because of these coolers, but with the Gamer 2 AMD Black Edition module you stand a fighting chance of actually using the slot.

We disliked


There’s not much to dislike about the Patriot’s Gamer 2 AMD Black Edition. It does what it says on the tin and shows some good overclocking potential. Its stock speed out of the box is a little conservative, however.

Final verdict

It may not be the fastest memory out of the box but it does show plenty of potential for the current Llano platform and the upcoming Bulldozer technology.

Lenovo’s ThinkPad range is traditionally aimed at business users, but has recently taken a more consumer-friendly turn, with less imposing builds and price tags. The ThinkPad Edge E520 is one of the more powerful laptops in the range and can keep you entertained on the move as well as at home.

The excellent performance is down to the latest Intel Sandy Bridge technology. This means you can do almost anything on this laptop, with incredibly fast response rates. Even complex editing software opens in seconds and happily runs alongside web browsers, media players and other applications. You won’t need to replace this laptop for a long time.

This laptop also scored high in our graphical tests, beaten only narrowly by the Acer Aspire 5750G. We tested out some recent games and found they ran smoothly, although we occasionally had to turn down detail levels.

You can also check out and play around with your photos or home movies. Of course, if you’d rather relax with a film, the Lenovo won’t let you down. High-definition (HD) films play perfectly and look good on the 15.6-inch widescreen display.

However, while many other laptops use Super-TFT screens, which use a glossy surface layer to produce richer colours, the Lenovo has a matt TFT display. Images aren’t quite as vibrant as a result but, on the flipside, the screen isn’t reflective, so you can use the laptop outside.

If you do want a portable to keep you entertained out of the home, this laptop has a lot going for it. Firstly, while the Toshiba Satellite L730-10G is a fair bit lighter, the Lenovo’s solid frame weighs just 2.5kg. We comfortably carried it around all day in a backpack.

Even better, we were able to watch an entire three-hour movie before the battery died, and lighter use will prolong the battery life by almost two hours.

TechRadar Labs

Battery Eater ’05: 183 minutes
Cinebench: 9431
3DMark 2006: 7167

An isolation-style keyboard is in place. It’s one of our favourites with firmly set keys that are very comfortable to type on. A separate numeric keypad is included, along with various shortcuts – you can lock the laptop, search your files or bring up the calculator with a press of a button.

Our only complaint is that the Left Ctrl and the Function keys have been swapped around. This won’t bother most people, but anyone who uses Windows shortcuts will be constantly frustrated when they hit the Function key by mistake.

Love or hate?

The touchpad covers a wide area and you get the trademark nipple in the centre of the keyboard, which can also be used to move the on-screen cursor. We can’t stand the thing, but we’re sure that some people out there might prefer it.

Features are comprehensive, from the 500GB of storage to the eSATA port which can be used to transfer data at high speeds with external hard drives. There’s also an ExpressCard slot for expanding the laptop’s potential, but most people will never use it.

The ThinkPad Edge E520 is a mobile machine that’s as good for work as it is for entertainment. If you need something to keep you busy on the move, this is one of the best laptops here.

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The Logitech Wireless Keyboard K360 is a pretty standard wireless PC keyboard, but it has a few nice features and design choices that make it worth considering if you’re on the lookout for a new keyboard.

To begin with, the K360 is pretty small – around three quarters of the size of a usual keyboard. This reduction frees up a lot of space on the desk, and makes it easier to carry around.

We’ve often found that typing for long periods on a laptop – or even worse, a netbook – can be quite uncomfortable. So having a larger keyboard to use on them, that is still small and light enough to fit into a laptop bag is a real bonus.

Smaller keyboards can often lead to more discomfort and, unlike a lot of recent Logitech keyboards, the K360 is not ergonomically designed. However, we found that when using it, the Logitech Wireless Keyboard K360 felt very comfortable – a lot of this being down to the ample spacing between the keys.

The small size also allows for an excellent battery life of around three years.

As well as six media-centric keys (back, forward, play/pause, mute, volume down and volume up) there are 12 programmable F keys for linking to much-used applications such as internet browsers and email. These can be easily programmed via Logitech’s user-friendly software.

Another nice bonus is that if you have a number of other wireless Logitech devices, such as the Logitech Anywhere Mouse MX, then you can connect them all up to a single USB dongle, freeing up your computer’s USB ports.

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You might not always be aware that the way you sit at your computer, and the way that you use it, can lead to injuries. Fellowes specialises in ergonomic devices that can make your computer more comfortable – and safer – to use.

While the Fellowes Health V Easy Gliding Palm Support helps support and protect your wrist as you use a mouse, the Office Suites Monitor Riser Plus makes it easy to ensure that your monitor is at the right height. This might sound a bit ‘health and safety gone mad’, but in reality if you’re bending your neck to view your screen then this can become uncomfortable.

While it might not do much more than what placing a monitor on a pile of books could achieve, it is a safe and specifically designed device that ensures the monitor is positioned correctly.

We found it easy to set up and sturdy enough to hold LCD monitors up to around 24 inches in size. It can also be used as a laptop stand. At first it feels slightly odd to use a laptop this way, but it certainly makes using laptops for long periods of time far more comfortable than resting them on a desk.

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We got 9900 problems but a choice of networks ain’t one — Vodafone and Three have confirmed they’re planning to sell the newly announced BlackBerry Bold 9900, and O2 has just revealed to CNET UK that it will also offer the 9900.

The 9900 was revealed yesterday by BlackBerry-makers RIM at BlackBerry World in Florida, which is either a conference dedicated to RIM’s popular business-focused smart phones or the world’s worst theme park.

The Qwerty keyboard-packing 9900 will be the thinnest BlackBerry smart phone, at 10.5mm thick. It boasts a 1.2GHz processor and 2.8-inch capacitive touchscreen with 287dpi resolution. There’s 8GB of memory for storing your music, video and photos, snapped with the 5-megapixel camera and filmed with the 720p video camera.

The other major networks, Orange and T-Mobile, have yet to confirm whether they too will sell the 9900, but it’s pretty likely. Orange and T-Mobile are now united as one company under the Everything Everywhere banner, so if one sells the 9900 the other probably will too.

The 9900 will be the first phone to pack BlackBerry 7 .0OS, the next generation of CrackBerry software. It offers voice search, faster browsing and a new-look Liquid graphics interface. Other adjustments include improved support for augmented-reality apps, HTML 5 and 720p high-definition video recording. The new software also works with near-field communication, a feature that hasn’t quite caught on here in Blighty yet.

As for when you’ll be able to get the 9900 snugly slotted into your belt holster, Three has only revealed it’ll be “soon”, and O2 says specifics will follow.

Say hello to the Rollerphone concept! At first glance it’s merely a wrist band that projects time, much like the Alessi Concept we saw earlier, but then you realize it’s actually a phone with a retractable transparent screen at the base. How high-tech! It features perfect ergonomics and anthropometry in design thanks to customization – meaning the screen unfurls only to the tip of your fingers, so basically it give you a good fit between the ear and the mouth. 
 

Besides the obvious features found in the latest cellphones, Rollerphone boasts of an enviable media centre. You can watch videos, chat online, play games, read books and listen to music. It’s going to be hard parting with a phone like this, who wouldn’t want their entire digital world on their wrist!