52 mouse pads tested. Eek! Squeak!

WHAT DO you normally when you are a reviewer that is slightly bored during the weekend? What about reviewing 52 mouse pads from France., just for the fun of it. That's exactly what fonky - not funk-i - did at Informanews. They even include two very cheap mouse pads that you've never heard of. The A4piceofpaperz and the A4laminatorzpieceofpaperz. For the test, they use both ball mice and optical models, no lasers unfortunately. As for the mousepads, they tested even glass pads and luminous ones.

Bjorn3D tests the VisionTek Radeon X1600XT 512MB video card, a member of Visiontek Xtreme Gamer Edition cards. It is an AGP model by the way, which means that you could eventually use it to upgrade your old Radeon 8200 card if needed. The card comes with twin Dual Link DVI ports and 512MB GDDR3 memory. During the test, the card was compared to a X800XL model and it did compete on equal grounds with its elder cousin. No overclocking test though, which would have make good use of the DualCool SS cooling system. Viperlair takes a fresh look at Corsair's latest PSU. Yes, just like OCZ before it, Corsair has decided to explore other horizons, in this case, power supply units, to complement its existing cooling and memory segment. There are a number of things that distinguish the PSU from others. It comes with a five year warranty, it is a modular PSU, meaning that you add or remove cables when needed, it is a 600w model and achieves 84% power efficiency. On top of that there's a 120mm which makes sure that the PSU is well cooled.

PCStats reviews the MSI K9N SLI Platinum nForce 570 SLI Motherboard. You will get SLI compatibility, six SATA channels, 10 USB 2.0 ports, dual GbE as well as quite a few accessories, courtesy of Mr MSI. Of course, on top of that there's a few slots, a huge passive heatsink for the chipset but only one PATA connector. It might not be the 590SLI you are looking at, but still this board is a wickedly fast one to go for, all with a decent price tag.

Techage reports on the Ultra X-Finity 500W w/APFC which is another power supply unit. The PSU is quite different from others on the market. The cables for example are much more elegant, almost silvery, and the same for the outside look of the PSU itself, it looks like brushed aluminium, although I doubt that they would use it. Other interesting bits include a well documented manual, a more than affordable price - especially for technology that lies inside, a good and quiet fan and the Active PFC system. Thinkcomputers reviews the Thecus N2050 RAID External Hard Drive Enclosure, which looks like no other external enclosure. It allows almost anyone to get hardware RAID - either stripped or mirrored - for a small price. The Thecus also supports eSATA and USB 2.0. It has two 3.5-inch bays which means that it can accommodate up to 1.5TB capacity, if you can get hold of two 750GB HDDs. It looks good, runs cool and is absolutely fast. The deluxe edition also comes with an PCI eSATA card just in case you need one. µ