Microsoft has provided a simple tool that enables users to make a USB flash drive bootable and to place an image of Windows 7 onto this drive. This is an excellent convenience and a leap ahead of using DVDs when you have the option. Users can now install Windows 7 from a USB drive quickly and easily and the media fits into your pocket!
Corsair Flash Voyager Mini
In early February 2010 Ton Khowdee (www.IronMods.com) and I got the chance to put on a live overclocking demonstration at The Exploratorium museum in San Francisco. Ton was there also showing off his custom case mods along with other case modders for the Rods and Mods exhibit. In order to get the most out of both systems we were overclocking we used liquid Nitrogen on our setups. Ton ran not only his processor but his three ATI ®5770 video cards on liquid Nitrogen. The liquid nitrogen allowed both CPUs to almost double the stock frequencies.
Since late 2003 and the announcement of the Intel® Pentium® 4 EE, having an unlocked processor multiplier used to mean shelling out almost $1,000 USD. While Intel previously launched an Intel Pentium Dual-Core E6500K processor that was unlocked it was not widely available. However, the new Intel Core™ i5 655K and Intel Core i7 875K processors, will be widely available as part of the “K” series of unlocked processor. Two benefits of having an unlocked multiplier include the fine tuning frequencies and higher overclock potential, which can really be seen when using extreme cooling.
What a crazy week. To an outsider, it probably seems like not a whole lot is going on as far as Corsair is concerned. But trust me, this is just the calm before the storm. I'll leave it at this — Computex starts next week. There will be plenty of news to go around. Until then, check out these reviews...
Up first is a round-up review that ZDNet UK did of five different SSD drives, including our Nova Series V128. Here's a snippet:
"If you factor in price, then the Intel X25-M starts to look expensive for its 80GB capacity, whereas the Corsair Nova [Series] really shines. It's by no stretch of the imagination a cheap drive in a market where £70 buys you 1.5TB of conventional disk drive. But among its peers, the 128GB Corsair Nova [Series]hits the right capacity/price/performance point and so is our overall choice."
Hot Hardware also had a SSD round-up but this time it was the Force Series F100 bringing home their Editor's Choice award.
"Taking all things into consideration, the Corsair Force Series F100 and OCZ Agility 2 drives would be our preferred all-around choices, for obvious reasons. The Corsair F100 offers better overall performance than the Agility 2 thanks to its firmware..."
I really wish I could spill the beans about what we're showing at Computex. It's so exciting! We've been working real hard on these products and I think you'll be seeing a lot more awards being handed out when they get reviewed. I'm going to leave you all with this food for thought. If you had a dream product for us to announce at Computex next week, what would it be? Post your answer in the comments.
Have a great weekend!
Tomorrow is a pretty significant day in geek history. No, I'm not talking about the Windows 3.0 release in 1990. Thirty years ago tomorrow, Pac-Man hit the arcades of Japan. Just a few years later, I got my first game console, an Atari 2600, for Christmas with a Pac-Man cartridge and I was hooked. Never played Pac-Man? Shame on you. You should head over to Google's home page and click on the "insert coin" button and get your game on!
But you didn't come here looking for information on antiquated video games, did you? On to the reviews!
Our friends to the north, Hardware Canucks, were busy this week with a couple of reviews. First up, we have their video review of the Obsidian Series™ 700D full-tower case.
In addition to getting a Dam Good award for the 700D, we also received one for the 32GB Flash Voyager® GTR along with an Innovation Award.
"In both synthetic and real world testing the [Flash Voyager] GTR simply destroyed the competition and even gave our lone USB-equipped solid state drive a run for its money. The fact that you can get all this speed in a package which is only slightly bigger than your average run of the mill flash drive is simply a testament to miniaturization."
Before we go, you simply must check out this awesome luggage mod we found. You heard me right. Luggage. Why do we care? Did I mention it's a luggage mod? In all seriousness though, they're using our Hydro Series H50 CPU cooler and we think this has to be the coolest application of the H50 we've seen yet.
Have a mod we MUST see? Leave it in the comments!
Have a great weekend everyone.
What a crazy week for Corsair products! First, they broke the dual-channel memory frequency world record and then they go and travel around the world. Already, our products have accomplished more and traveled more this year than I have!
Hot off the press is a review from Hexus of the Corsair Obsidian Series™ 700D full-tower case and it pulled in their Recommended award.
"The good is bountiful, including cavernous interior; the best cable-management system we've seen; well-thought-out cooling zones; cutout for through-the-motherboard heatsinks and decent airflow. Perhaps most importantly of all, it's an absolute doddle to build into, and it's practically impossible to have an ugly-looking installation."
If you're looking for a fast USB flash drive, the guys over at Everything USB enjoyed the performance of the
32GB Flash Voyager® GTR.
"With synthetic read and write speeds reaching up to 34.1MB/s and 31.7MB/s respectively, the Flash Voyager GTR series stands head and shoulders above its USB 2.0 brethren. Real-world writes were also at least 70% faster than another 32GB flash drive from a reputable maker."
Finally, Vortez Hardware reviewed the Corsair Hydro Series H50 CPU cooler and gave it their Silver award after testing it in numerous different environments.
"Performance wise, it matched many of the high end air coolers such as the Noctua NH-U12P, Alpenföhn Nordwand, Prolimatech Megahalem and the Thermolab Baram. When a push/pull configuration was employed, the H50 delivered even better results pitting it against the like of the Thermalright Ultra Extreme."
That's enough of me for this week. Have a great weekend everyone!
Unfortunately, it was a pretty slow week for reviews this week. Must be the weather? Either way, the two reviews we do have this week are focused on the Obsidian Series™ 700D full-tower case. If you've been salivating over the 800D, but were waiting for a cost-down alternative you might want to take a look.
Shane from Legit Reviews thought enough of the Obsidian Series 700D to give it their highest honor — the Editor's Choice award. Here's a bit of what he had to say:
"Corsair had done what it set out to do with the 700D for the Obsidian Series. They made a more affordable version of the 800D that will fill the gap for the users that wanted the 800D, but not the side window (yes some people prefer no window) and/or the hotswap features."
Tweak Town has reviewed the Obsidian Series 800D in the past, so they have an interesting take on the 700D.
"...the 700D offers all the room of its older brother, but there are changes afoot. Some really obvious, some less conspicuous, but all designed to offer the same quality and pleasurable experience of ownership as was brought to you with the 800D, just this time a little different way of looking at things."
That's all we have for reviews for this week, so I wanted to mention that we'll be making an appearance at PDXLAN in Portland, Oregon. PDXLAN is a 500 person LAN event and runs July 16-19. We'll be there the 17th and 18th. Come by, say hi, and compete in the system build-off competition that we're sponsoring. We're giving away all the components necessary to build your very own Corsair Dream PC!
If you are not already familiar with the Intel term XMP, or Extreme Memory Profiles, you may be asking yourself — what is XMP? Here is an excerpt from Intel's website: 
'"Intel XMP is a performance-packed expansion of the standard DDR3 memory specification, enabling a robust, overclocking solution designed to take advantage of the mega-gaming features built into Intel® technology-based PCs. If you like to overclock and squeeze every possible ounce of performance from your PC, then memory based on Intel XMP is the solution you need to destroy your enemies and save the universe without breaking a sweat.
Designed for ultimate flexibility, Intel XMP-based platforms offer major advantages for pro gamers, novices, and everyone in between. With predefined and certified memory optimizations built into Intel XMP, overclocking on Intel technology-based PCs is easy right out of the box. Expert users still have the option of manually changing specific parameters for personalized fine-tuning."
I've been playing quite a bit of the Starcraft II beta recently, and I've come to realize one thing -- I'm not very good. There was a point where I was decent -- I could win one game for every game I lost -- but the more people they let into the beta, the fewer wins I'm able to get for each loss. There's always the option of playing against the computer when the game goes live, right?
In reviews, we had a couple of Force Series SSD reviews this week for those of you who are still looking for reasons to pick one up. Our Canadian friends at Hardware Canucks reviewed the Force Series F100 100GB SSD where it came away with a couple of awards.
There is no doubt in our minds that if you are looking for an SSD that offers extremely flexible performance in nearly every discipline, the buck stops at the Corsair Force 100. Throughout our tests, it exhibited class-leading performance and simply blew the competition out of the water in some benchmarks.
The other F100 review was by Hexus and they gave it their Performance Award. 
Corsair's Force SSDs represent premium performance for a premium price. Most consumers will be presented with a more favourable £-to-GB metric by opting for, say, the super-speedy Intel X25-M 160GB, but if your need is characterised by massive bombardment of the storage subsystem, few, if any, drives are better than the Force range.
The Hydro Series H50 High-Performance CPU Cooler has been out for a while now, but it continues to rake in the awards. Case in point -- Fudzilla got their hands on one this week and gave it their Recommended award.
If you were looking for a water cooling solution with no need for assembly (which can get messy if you don’t know what you’re doing), Corsair H50 is made for you. Setting it up is no more difficult than it is to set up an air cooling system – no water pouring, and thus no risk of getting your motherboard all wet. Although the fan is pretty loud at maximum RPM, it ran silent most of the time.
That's all I have for this week. I have to go work on my zerg rush defense. Have a great weekend everyone!
I'm suffering from a pretty bad case of writers block right now, so I apologize for not having something witty or interesting to say in this space. Let's just get to the reviews.
Joe over at Legit Reviews took a look at the 32GB Flash Voyager® GTR USB flash drive and were impressed with the performance.
"The Corsair Flash Voyager GTR offers outstanding performance in a stylish, yet rugged package. You'd be hard-pressed to find a better performing USB 2.0 flash drive. Being backed by Corsair's good name and excellent warranty certainly doesn't hurt either."
Keeping the subject on our USB flash drives, Tech Power Up reviewed the Flash Padlock® 2 and gave it their recommended award.
"Corsair has gone with the unattached PIN entry with no software required to be run on the host system. This means that there is no way to bypass the system. It is a mystery to me, how Corsair manages to give the user instant access when using VBE, but if that is true, the entire flash memory is encrypted. Even if one opens up the unit and de-solders the flash storage IC and then accesses the data, all the hacker will find is encrypted data."
Finally, Overclockers Club reviewed the Nova Series V128 solid-state drive featuring the Indilinx Barefoot controller. "For the price, this is the best bang for the buck. While not in as high capacity as mechanical drives, the blazing speed and load times it offers, out weighs the higher costs."
Well that's it for me this week. Have a great weekend!
