Black Mac mini rip-off gets an outing

IT-REVIEW took a look into the wonderful world of Lego. The latest product Mindstorm, is guaranteed to give you hours of fun. Bear in mind that this is serious robotic kit, although if you give it to your kid, don't be surprised if one day a robot brings you breakfast in bed.

PC Perspective reviewed an HDTV tuner called OnAir GT. The tuner still has only 32-bit operating system support, but OnAir claims that v3.0.0.0. of the driver and TV tuner application v3.01 will support 64-bit operating systems as well.

Bjorn3D tested AVB USB 2.0 Mobile 4GB Drive and came to an interesting conclusion.

Hardware.Info ran a budget system guide article. Regardless of all the marchitecture wars between Intel and AMD, the sad truth is that Intel is still producing too many NetBurst CPUs (yep, Conroe/Merom/WoodCrest are just a little part of the current production mix) and that AMD just has better performing parts than most of Intel's production. Thus, you should not be surprised that low-end systems feature the excellent AMD Athlon 62 X2 CPU, which just demolishes Pentium Ds of today.

The guys also posted a review of AOpen MiniPC 945VXR, known to most readers as that Mac mini copycat. This time, AOpen changed the exterior a bit.

HardOCPers tested Shuttle's miniPC, dubbed X200 Mini-HTPC. Interesting to see how Shuttle grew from a near-bankrupt company to a leader in the Small Form Factor (SFF) arena. It now even has retail stores and builds complete PCs with branded LCD monitors.

Phoronix reviewed Silverstone's computer case SG01W in conjuction with ST50EF-Plus SC power supply.

Virtual-Hideout tested GigaByte's 3D Aurora 570 ATX chassis. We are not sure why Gigabyte thinks that every product needs to have "3D" in its name, but we'll just leave it as temporary Taiwanese craziness over a term from the wonderful world of IT. To add a light or two to the case, Bluegears B-Flexi and B-Cool fans were tested as well.

LegionHardware tested Thermaltake's 850W power supply from Toughpower series. We're not sure about the power part, but it is impressive to see 87% efficiency power claim "thanks to new top grade components". If they're claiming they're using top grade components now, what was inside the PSU until this one showed up?

Thomas from Dvhardware reviewed ThermalTake iFlash and 120mm fan. Regardless of what you think about ThermalTake and their gaming acessories, this is quite useful product, since it projects the temperature and shows a rotating ThermalTake logo. Turning his head from this single fan, Thomas also tested NZXT Zero case. While the company claims that shipping case with eight fans as an advantage over competiton, we would rather see fewer, more efficient fans. Also, there were several other comments, but check the case anyway.

LegitReviews tested nForce 650i based motherboard from ECS. It turns out that 650i is a potent product from Nvidia, but has some nags for those hardcore overclockers out there.

Not directly related to review of hardware, but an interesting read anyway comes from our Futuremark buddies, who recently launched YouGamers website. Remedy, developer of Alan Wake (a native quad-core meets DirectX 10 title) gave an extensive interview, so head over here and read.

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