Corsair Blog

Spring is in the air. Spring brings about many things such as showers, flowers and spring cleaning. And, many times a spring cleaning job becomes so much more work than you initially thought it would but, that's not always a bad thing!

In August of 2011, we published a blog post using an Obsidian Series® 650D Mid-Tower Case. The goal for that system was for it be silent, or as close to silent as we could get it. That worked out pretty well. It worked out so well in fact that this has been my daily driver since that time and it has performed flawlessly.

Back in November of 2011, we brought you a build log focused on AMD's Llano APU. The log was based around the then, top of the Llano line AMD 3850K APU. The build log was very well received and highlighted the benefits of building a very power and cost efficient system. We've revisited the original testing with an APU upgrade, AMD's Dual Graphics, and a Corsair Accelerator Series SSD Cache Drive. And, the pricing is even better after a visit to Tiger Direct!

Before I started overclocking I used to game every day, but eventually I started dedicating all of my hardware and time to extreme overclocking. With the launch of Battlefield 3 and our Vengeance gaming keyboards and mice I recently started to game again. I even started playing Counter Strike and a few other games too. During this gaming resurgance I again ran into an issue that always caused me trouble in the past. I am always changing PCs, reformatting, or changing hardware due to my extreme overclocking addiction. Because of this, I found that I rarely feel like re-installing my games so I can play them. In ordert to solve this issue I now install my games to a 64GB Flash Voyager GT USB 3.0 drive. With read speeds of 135MB/s and write speeds of 83MB/s it is more than fast enough to handle games.

Vengeance® 1500 Dolby 7.1 USB Gaming Headset

The Vengeance 1300 Analog Gaming Headset and the Vengeance 1500 Dolby 7.1 USB Gaming Headset offer a strong set of features for immersive gaming: carefully tuned acoustics, high-quality audio drivers, circumaural earpads for excellent noise isolation, and materials, weight and “feel” engineered for comfort during long gaming sessions.

The Vengeance 1300 has analog stereo connectors, and the Vengeance 1500 has a USB connection. So, which one should you choose?

In my previous blog on 32GB memory caching perfromance I showed how using 16GB of memory to setup a RAM cache gave huge performance improvements in several benchmarks. A RAM disk is very similar to the RAM cache, however it sets itself up as a separate disk with its own drive letter. To use a RAM disk you will need to manually copy the files to the RAM disk partition. One advantage the RAM disk has over a RAM cache is the write speeds. Using a RAM disk you are only writing to RAM, with a RAM cache you are writing to the RAM and the SSD or HDD. Again I used software from SuperSpeed however this time I used RAMDisk Plus. I set my RAM disk up to use 16GB of memory from the 32GB Vengeance® DDR3 memory kit I used in this test.

We have released an updated version of the Corsair Link software, version 1.2.5. The v1.2.5 software can be downloaded from the Corsair Link product page using the Downloads tab.

Changelog:

• Fixed local issue with profiles (disappearing device boxes)
• Temp sensor reverse numbering
• Pump divider in H60 Auto Discovery
• RGB LED color selections are saved in profile
• RGB LED Setup temperature range expanded from 0° to 100°C
• Fixed a memory leak when switching between profiles

Corsair recently released two types of high performance mice, the Vengeance Gaming Series M60 and M90. The performance and features of both mice can be customized with the Vengeance Gaming Software. Below, you will find a screencast which covers all the basic functionality and options of the software. If you are wondering what features are available, and want some pointers on how to use the software, take a look!

Our Vengeance K90 keyboard is intended to compliment MMO and RTS type games, and includes some software which will allow you to configure some of the K90 keyboard's options, along with programming custom macros.  Below you will find a screencast which gives a general overview of the software and explains some of the features.  If you are wondering what type of capabilities the K90 has, or would like to get better acquainted with the software, have a look below!

Life at Corsair is pretty tough... I mean, playing the top twelve most popular games of 2011 for six weeks straight on some of the most high performance computer hardware with my sole assignment being to produce profiles that enthusiasts may use with the Vengeance M90 Performance MMO and RTS Laser Gaming Mouse — all while getting paid? But really... it was a lot of work! At this point a lot of readers probably hate me in a sort of loving way (I hope) but making proper profiles, not for yourself, but for other people to use, is a totally different ball game. They need to be easy to memorize, better to use than the default keyboard controls and, once again, EASY TO MEMORIZE. Here, I will discuss the mental methodology I used to come up with the profiles in this first batch. Hopefully, this helps you a bit more to retain each profile in your memory.

I have recently put together a screencast to help illustrate the features and use of our Vengeance 1500 Gaming software which works with both our Vengeance 1500 headset as well as the older HS1.  If you are wondering what options are available in the software, or just want some general information regarding all the features then this screencast is just what you are looking for!