Tech @ FuryTech

I’ve recently had the chance to use Thermaltake’s BlackX hard drive enclosure. It’s an external SATA to USB box that has some really nice features. Rather than being a standard enclosure that requires you to screw the drive in, it’s just a dock where you can plug in a SATA hard drive just like a big flash drive.

It feels pretty stable, seems fast, and supports hot-swapping as well. Anyone who does a lot of work with recovering data from hard drives, or who needs a fast, cheap way to move a lot of data should definitely take a look into this. You can buy it here.

The X-Blade case is one of the better-looking premodded cases.

Outside Appearance:

The case that I got was all black, except for the front panel, which was more of a chrome. The overall effect was great. The front panel has 4 5.25 bays, and 2 3.5 bays. There is a door protecting them. Unlike most cases with doors, there is a cutout for the top bay. This can be used for a cd drive or a temperature gauge/fan control. The door has a mesh piece attached to it with the X-Blade logo. It is backlit by 4 leds.

Here, however, there is a huge defect, the wire that provides power to the leds is between two pieces of plastic. Each time the door is opened or closed, the plastic scrapes at the wire. After a while, the sheathing is worn off the wire. This then weakens the wire. A fix is to lift the wire out of that area, and let it sit next the plastics, not between them.

Edit:

The wire is now frayed, even after my fixes, and the light only works when the door is closed, once the door opens, the light goes out

Near the base of the front, there are two intake slots. they are big and imposing looking. They have a plastic filter to keep the larger bits of dirt out. The power and reset buttons are mounted between them, and both are set up reasonably well. At the very bottom of the front, there is a small door that folds up to reveal a mic port, headphone port, and two USB ports.

Another small problem is that the power led and hdd led don’t appear to function correctly. I ignored the power led problem, as the all of the other leds were a pretty good indication of whether or not it was on or not. For the hdd led, I stuck a red led in the center of the case, and hooked it up to the hdd led pins on the motherboard.

Edit:

I have found out why the HDD led didn’t work. It had a clear backing, and the LED fan in the front of the case overpowered it. A piece of electric tape will fix that, or you could replace the led, or better yet, you could place the hard drive led on the *inside* of the case. This makes a statement and it looks really neat.

The side panel a large window, cut in the shape of the X-Blade logo. The metal that is still attached blocks viewing of most of the power supply, and most of the drive bays. Some people prefer this arrangement.The fan also has a filter.

The back of the case has nothing to distinguish it from all of the other cases out there.

Inside:

The inside of the case is not as well designed as some of the other cases out there. The hard drive bays are mounted sideways, with the back of the drives facing directly out the side panel. This makes it very difficult to install multiple hard drives, the cables generally keep the side panel from being installed, unless the cables are arranged just right. An extra half-inch of width would make using the drive bays much easier. The external drive bays are tool free. While that is nice, this creates another problem. The front of the case must be pulled off. If this is done enough times, it is possible that the standoffs could snap leaving you without a front panel.

There are 4 fan mounts. 2 80mm, one on the panel, and one under the hard drive, and 2 80/92/120, one on the back, and one on the front. The case ships with 2 80mm led fans, one for the side panel, and one for the back. The fans are set up well, except for the 80mm hdd fan. If it is installed, it takes up 3 of the 5 hdd bays.

Space wise it is good except for the hard drive bays. Be warned that 10″ ccfls have to mounted in diagonally.

Construction

It appears to be steel and plastic. It rather sturdy feeling. The inside of the case is rolled over and/or smooth, which makes it much harder to cut yourself. However, for some reason, the 3.25″ bays are not quite right. The case has warped sideways, so my floppy drive is wedged in place.

Conclusion

I would recommend this to anyone who wants a good case, and can deal with the few shortcomings.

Discuss the product and the review here: http://www.furytech.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=64

Links

http://www.a-top.com/xblade/xblade.html

Introduction:

In addition to all the computer work I do at my job, I also do some intermediate level photography, and I was considering getting a Wacom tablet to make that a bit easier. So, when Newegg had the Bamboo on sale a few days ago, I grabbed it.

The Tablet:

The tablet is smallish, roughly the size of a standard mousepad. It has four buttons at the top that can be configured to launch applications and programs, and a small touch area that is used for zooming in and out.

Writing on the tablet feels very natural, though it takes a bit of getting used to. The included pen feels a bit flimsy, you may want to invest in a better one, however, it gets the job done.

The tablet supports the Windows Vista tablet extensions, so after it’s installed, you have the option of using handwriting recognition in most applications. Some applications, like Windows Journal and Live Messenger let you save and send handwritten notes and messages.

As nice as using it with Windows is, it’s even better with applications like Painter and Photoshop. With those applications, it uses the pressure sensitivity to control how much of an effect the brush has on the canvas. The more pressure, the darker or greater the effect is, and vice versa. It makes a lot more sense than using the mouse with these applications.

The software isn’t too bad, giving a lot of options, ranging from how sensitive it is, to what monitors it’s configured to work with.

I highly recommend this tablet to anyone who wants a low-cost tablet. It’s definitely worth the money.

This is the final installment in my trilogy of Vizo reviews. The Vizo Shuttle is an external USB 2.0 2.5″ enclosure. Yes, this will let you hook up a laptop hard drive to your desktop, and vice versa. This device has the potential to be quite useful, if Vizo can work out a couple of issues.

In the box

The box has the Shuttle, a USB 2.0 cable, and a carrying case. The USB 2.0 cable has a grand total of 3 plugs. I have no idea what they are all for, the manual doesn’t say. The carrying case is nice, and acts like a sheath for the Shuttle.

There is also a manual, but it isn’t translated that well.

The Shuttle

The shuttle is slightly larger than a 2.5″ drive. It has a status light, a USB type C plug, and a AC Adaptor plug. I don’t know what the AC adaptor plug is for, it doesn’t need external power to work, and it wasn’t included.

Installing a drive into the shuttle involves unscrewing the backplate, attaching the backplate to the drive, placing the backplate/drive assembly back into the shuttle, and screwing it all back in.

The Shuttle is very picky with what size drives it allows. I tried it with an older compaq drive, that fits in most laptops, and it was 2mm too high to fit. The more recent drives appear to work fine.

I also ran into a problem with the backplate, it is only glued onto the circuit board, and it popped off when I was installing it. Fortunately, I was able to attach the drive to the circuit board, and then screw the plastic backplate over it so it all stayed together.

Once I got past the installation problems, it worked perfectly. Installing is as simple as hooking it up to the USB cable, and plugging it into your computer. It then shows up as a normal drive, that you can format, defrag, move files to and from, and etc.

Conclusion

This would be a great piece of hardware, if they would fix those minor issues with the AC adaptor port, and the backplate. For now, they get a solid 3 stars.

Discuss the product and the review here: http://www.furytech.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=919

Official site: www.vizo.com.tw

Introduction

I want to start off by thanking Vizo for sending me this. Vizo sent me this, along with a couple other parts that I will be reviewing over the next couple of days. The Masterpanel is designed to allow you hook up an internal drive to the outside of your computer.

It supports IDE, SATA, and E-SATA drives.

In the Box

The Masterpanel came in a nice box, instead of those annoying plastic containers that normally require something like a hacksaw to open. Inside the box, there is the Masterpanel, a SATA cable, and a power cable. There is also a manual.

The manual is decent, and tells you what you need to know, but it is translated rather poorly.

Installation

Installing the Masterpanel is a piece of cake. It screws into a normal 5.25 drive bay, uses a floppy drive power connector, and needs 3 SATA ports. Thats right, it will take up 3 SATA ports if you want to use IDE, SATA, and E-SATA. If you want, you can connect only the ones that you want. Right now, I have it set up just to run the IDE port, since I have no SATA drives.

Remember, you must make sure that the drives you hook up are set up as Master, since they won’t work otherwise.

To install a drive, all you have to do is plug in the included power cable to masterpanel, connect it to your drive, and then connect your drive to the panel with either an IDE cable, or an SATA cable.

In Use

It works as advertised. I was able to hook up an IDE drive to it, and access it without any major issues. It also appears to work as fast as a normal internal drive, which makes sense seeing as it is running an internal interface to the outside of the case.

Once it is all set up, it works just like an internal drive, and shows up as one to Windows.

Interestingly enough, it also acts as a SATA to IDE converter.

Now, there were a couple of minor issues.

First and foremost, it doesn’t support hot-swapping for SATA and IDE drives. I am fairly sure that E-SATA hot-swapping would work, but I didn’t have a E-SATA drive available for testing. I wouldn’t have even mentioned this, but according to the product information, it supports hot-swapping. Everytime I tried it, it did one of two things. It either crashed my computer, or reset my computer.

What it comes down to, is that you have to turn the computer off, plug in the drive, power on the device, and turn back on the computer. It still saves time compared to actually installing the drive into your computer.

The other issue was that I had some problems getting to work on K8T Neo motherboard. It was more of an issue with my SATA controller, since I have had problems getting anything SATA to work in my computer.

Conclusion

If you are like me, when you first saw the Masterpanel, something along the lines of “what will I do with this?” went through your mind. It turns out that it is quite useful, especially if you work on computers for a living, and need to be able to quickly test drives, backup data before formats, and things like that.

Discuss this review here: http://www.furytech.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=893

Official site: www.vizo.com.tw

The Vizo Luxon is next in my trilogy of Vizo reviews. The Luxon is a external hard drive enclosure for SATA and IDE drives. I have always liked the idea of having a portable hard drive enclosure, and this is in my opinion, one of the best ones on the market.

For those of you who are wondering, Vizo is a relatively new company, based in Taiwan, that makes various pieces of hardware for computer enthusiasts.

In the Box

The box is a rather sturdy feeling cardboard box, with a large picture of the Luxon on the front of it. Opening it was quite simple, as no knife or anything sharp was needed to open it.

The parts inside are all neatly arranged, and all placed so that they can’t scratch each other up. This is good thinking on Vizo’s part, since a lot of times the parts for things are just tossed in the box.

Included in the box is the Luxon, a SATA PCI bracket, a SATA cable, a USB cable, an AC adapter, a screwdriver, a manual and a couple miscellaneous cables.

I was pleasantly surprised that they included the USB 2.0 cable, and a screwdriver for the proprietary screws. Most of the time those things aren’t included with computer hardware.

The manual is not translated that well, but it is still understandable.

Testing the Luxon

The Luxon is all black, with silver writing and accents. The overall visual effect is quite aesthetically pleasing, and it matches my X-Blade case nicely.

On the back of the Luxon, there is a DC jack, a power switch, a USB type B port, and a SATA port.

Opening the Luxon so that you can install a drive involves using the included screwdriver to unscrew the torx screws holding the side on. I prefer drives using the Phelps head screws, instead of torx screws, but at least Vizo included a screwdriver for them, so you wouldn’t have to find a proper size torx screwdriver.

Once you get the unit open, you can install in the drive, using the included cables, and screw it in. I would recommend attaching the cables first, since they are difficult to attach after the drive is installed. Remember to set the jumper to either SATA or IDE. Also, the drive itself must be set to master. You can then screw it back together, and attach it to the computer.

The Luxon lets you attach itself to the computer in two ways, USB 2.0 or SATA. Installing via SATA will theoretically give you the same speed as in internal hard drive. They include a bracket so that you can transfer a SATA port from your motherboard to a PCI slot. You could also attach it to something like the Masterpanel. Right now, I am running it as USB 2, since I don’t have to power off my system to remove or install it.

In case you are worrying about cooling, there is no active cooling. Rather, the Luxon seems to act as a large heatsink, drawing the heat away from the drive, and dissipating it. I ran it for several hours, running a format, and the casing got warm, but not hot, so it appears to be safe. It would be nice if the next version came with active cooling.

I didn’t notice much of a difference in speed between running my test hard drive in it and running my test hard drive off of IDE.

Conclusion

This is a great enclosure, and it is proving to be quite useful. Once I find out where you can buy it, I will update this review with a link.

Discuss the review here: http://www.furytech.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=896

Official site: www.vizo.com.tw

Introduction:

Today’s hardware review will be done on the Vantec HDC-701A Hard drive cooler. It attaches to the top of a hard drive, and helps to keep the drive cool. This is good for the 7200-10,000 rpms drives.

I am reviewing the black one, though they do make a blue one as well. The hardware for this review was provided by Vantec, my thanks to them.

In The Box:

The box is relatively plain. It includes the hard drive cooler, and a small packet of screws. Sadly, there are no instructions, so you are on your own on installing it. It is a simple install though, so don’t worry about that. One more thing, the box that it comes in is kind of hard to open without a good set of scissors. It would be nice if Vantec would switch box styles, or make the box easier to open.

The Cooler:

The cooler itself is aluminum painted black with many fins on the cooler to assist in the cooling. Because it is all aluminum, it should pull heat right off the hard drive and then dissipate it with the fan.

The fan itself is a translucent 70mm fan, that spins at ~2800 rpms, and moves 22.3 cubic feet per minute. It is almost silent compared to the other fans in my case. It would have been nice if it had been 80mm so that it could be upgraded, but it probably wouldn’t have fit on the drive. It has a pass-through connector for power, so a Y-adapter isn’t needed.

Installation:

Installing the cooler was very simple. All you have to do is screw it into the four screw holes at the top of the hard drive, plug in the fan, and re-install the hard drive.

To the best of my knowledge, all hard drives have those 4 screw-holes on the top, though I would recommend double checking before you buy this. It would really stink to get it, and not have a place to put it.

Benchmarking:

This made a *huge* difference in my hard drive temperature. Before I installed the cooler, I placed a temperature probe on the drive, and it read 105 degrees F when I was defragging. I then installed the cooler, and checked the reading again. While defragging, it maxed out at 87 degrees F. This is an incredible reduction to a temperature. I really wasn’t expecting it to make that much of a difference in the temp.

Conclusion:

This is a excellent cooler, I would recommend this to anyone who wants to keep their hard drive cool. It is quiet, keeps the drive much cooler, and looks nice in the process. It also has a simple install, which is even better.

However, I will say that the cooler isn’t perfect. It has only a 70mm fan, so you can’t replace it with something faster or better. It also doesn’t have leds, which I think would make it look a bit better. I didn’t, however, deduct points for the lack of leds.

Still, these are just tiny, personal issues, it is a great cooler for the money.

Discuss this Article here: http://www.furytech.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=356

Introduction

For a while now, I’ve just been using the stock heatsink that came with my motherboard to keep my northbridge cool, so when Thermaltake contacted me in regards to reviewing one of their Northbridge coolers, I jumped at the chance.

The Extreme Spirit 2 is an improvement to the original Extreme Spirit, and adds heatpipes, much more copper, and an led lighted fan. However, it loses the speed controller that the original Extreme Spirit had.

In the Box

The box is a typical plastic container with one major difference. It is easy to open. I didn’t have to use a knife, or any bladed instrument to open it, it just pops open. This is a huge plus, since normally, I have to resort to using a knife to open the containers.

On the outside of the container, it has some pictures of the cooler, a features list, some specifications, and a clear part where you can see the cooler.

On the inside of the container, there is the cooler, the manual, and some assorted screws, thermal grease, and etc.

The Cooler Itself

The cooler itself is somewhat large, with a 40mm fan mounted vertically. The heatsink portion is all copper. The two heatpipes stick up a little further than the fan. At first, I was concerned since it looked like the tip of one of them was crushed, however, that is what the pictures show, so I’m going to assume it’s normal. It appears to work ok.

According to the specifications, it spins at 4500RPM, and moves 3.47 Cubic feet per minute. With a fan that small, and an RPM that high, one would think that it would be loud, but according to the specifications, it is only 19dBA, which isn’t very loud. When it is right next to my Thermaltake 120mm smart fan moving at full speed, I can’t hear the 40mm at all. Because of this, the lack of a speed controller doesn’t really affect the cooler at all.

Installing

Installing was somewhat involved, since I had to remove the motherboard, and almost everything else inside the case in order to install it. However, if you ignore the time taking out the motherboard, and putting it back in, it didn’t take that long to install.

Installation for involved removing the old heatsink and thermal grease, applying new thermal grease, and screwing in the new one. Only problem I had with the install was that it was kind of hard getting the screws lined up with the their attaching points on the heatsink, since the points were free swinging until they were screwed in. Once that was done, all I had to do was hook up the 3 pin cord to a free fan header on the motherboard.

For those of you who are interested, the installation guide was great. It had lots of color pictures, and was written in a way that made it very simple to understand. It shows how to install it on motherboards that have no mounting holes, and on motherboards that do have mounting holes.

Testing

Well, first off, the LEDs are great. They are nice, bright, and blue.

Now, onto what matters, which is the cooling ability of the cooler. With the heatsink that came with the motherboard, the temp was around 110-115 degrees F. With the Extreme Spirit 2, the temps are around 99-105, which is rather good drop in temperature.

Conclusion

This is a great cooler, and is well worth the cash for anyone who wants to overclock, or who is concerned about the temperature of their Northbridge, and for those who don’t have a problem with pulling their motherboard out.

Introduction

I got this fan to help with the cooling in the X-Blade case of mine. It was $10 at Newegg, but it is a bit more expensive now. Here are the specs, straight from ThermalTake’s website

So, it has some very nice specs. Yes, it moves 72.5 Cubic Feet of air. That is an incredible amount of movement. However, it does it at 46 decibels, which is *very* loud. I would recommend keeping it around the middle in RPMs,  that way, it still moves a ton of air, but it isn’t too loud.

One more thing, while it says that it has a 3 pin connecter, it also has a 4 pin connecter which I would recommend using, just so that you don’t risk damaging your motherboard.

In the Box

There is the fan, a temperature sensor, and a PCI bracket that controls fan speed. The box itself was rather simple to open; it wasn’t as hard as some of the other computer boxes out there, think hand held game containers.

The Fan

The fan itself looks fairly typical, though it was a little more translucent than transparent. Unlike most LED fans, it only has 3 leds instead of the normal 4. This does make a difference in the lighting power of the fan, my cheapo 4-led fans that came with the X-Blade case are much brighter than it. It has three modes, full speed, temperature controlled, and user controlled.

At full speed, the fan is almost unbearable in noise. It overpowers everything else in my case. I run it near the middle setting to protect my hearing . At that speed, it still moves a lot of air, but doesn’t make as much noise.

At full speed, however, it moves a ton of air. Thermaltake wasn’t joking about 70 CFM of air.

The PCI bracket

The bracket is simple, with the knob and a Thermaltake logo. The knob itself feels a bit flimsy, but not enough to concern me.

Conclusion

This is a great fan, if the noise doesn’t bother you. It is a little more than other 80mm fans, but it is higher quality, and moves a ton more air. I personally am planning on replacing the stock fans that came with my case with these as funds allow.

Discuss the product and the review here: http://www.furytech.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=65

Introduction

The Sunbeam Meteor light is a tubular led light system. It is a group of leds set up in a chain that runs through numerous different patterns. It is an easy install, and something that fits well in a case with a window. We are reviewing the blue version today.

The Box

The box is a rectangular tube, that is all clear plastic, letting the buyer see what they are getting. The box is easy to open, which I find a nice change from those horrible plastic cases that you have to pretty much take a hacksaw to open (think USB cable boxes).

Inside the box there is the Tube, an inverter, and a PCI bracket with the mode selecter and on/off button.

The Light

The light looks like a typical CCFL tube, however, this has the visible LEDs that make up the light. This light IS NOT based on CCFL technology, it is quite literally a group of LEDs all in a line.

It comes with some velcro, making it very simple to install it to your case. The nice thing about velcro is that it is easy to install, and if you have to pull your light out to install something, it just pops off. You only get one or two chances with the tape, so pick your spot well.

The Inverter

The inverter is a small blue box. It supports up to two Meteor lights, and a sound activation module. I only have one meteor light, and no sound activation module, so I wasn’t able to test that feature. The inverter comes with its own piece of velcro tape, so you can stick it where you want without it bouncing around. It doesn’t get hot, even after hours of continuous use.

The PCI Bracket

The bracket is a typical bracket. It has an on/off switch, and a push-button that controls the lighting sequence. There are enough different modes to keep everyone happy. The only disadvantage is that it is only a push-button. The light doesn’t remember what it was set to last, so every time you turn off the light, you have to reset the pattern. This could be a downside for those who have their case under their desk.

In Use

This light works great. Lights up well, doesn’t put off heat, and isn’t overpowering. In a case with a couple led fans, it works even better, just adding a little more light to the case.

Conclusion

I like this light a lot, and I think that I will get a second one. Free installation hint. This light looks best when installed where the light itself can’t be seen.

Discuss this review and product here: http://www.furytech.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=71