Best NAS drive: Overview

NAS (network attached storage) devices certainly aren't the most glamorous gadgets you can have in your home. A network-connected hard drive might seem like a remnant from a home office – a backup necessity for over-paranoid users and not much more.

Early NAS devices – and even some new no-frills budget ones – do little more than allow any computer that's connected to a network to access an external hard drive as if it was physically installed in the computer. However, a lot of new NAS devices have some great features built in, which can completely transform what your home network is capable of.

Not only can they act as media servers throughout your house – letting your devices access and stream music and videos to any device on the network – they can also be used be used to stream your media across the internet, letting you access the files from anywhere in the world, and effectively allowing you to create your own version of Spotify or Netflix.

As for cloud backup and synchronisation services, while you could pay Dropbox the equivalent of $9.99 a month for 50GB of space, with a NAS device you could have your own service with huge amounts of storage (some NAS devices accept hard drives of up to 3TB) without monthly fees or the need to trust your private data to a third party. We've gathered the best NAS devices on the market to find out just what they are capable of.

Buffalo Cloudstation Duo - £240
www.buffalotech.com

Western Digital My Book Live - £147
www.wdc.com

Netgear ReadyNAS Ultra 4 - £423
www.netgear.co.uk

Buffalo Linkstation Pro LS-VL - £129
www.buffalotech.com

D-Link ShareCenter - £60
www.dlink.com

Iomega StorCenter ix2-200 - £274
www.iomega.com

Netgear Stora MS2110 - £130
www.netgear.co.uk

Synology DS411 - £485
www.synology.com

Best network storage: 1-6

1. Buffalo Cloudstation Duo

There remains a lingering feeling that setting up a network attached storage device can be complicated, time consuming and fiddly. Buffalo aims to dispel these preconceptions with the Cloudstation Duo, a NAS kit designed to be as user friendly as possible without losing any features or functionality.

The device itself is compact, though quite heavy. Flicking open the front gives quick access to the two 1TB hard drives that come installed. Removing the drives is a bit fiddly at first, but the process is certainly a lot easier than with many other NAS drives.

The fact that the Buffalo Cloudstation Duo is supplied with two large hard drives already installed and set up in a RAID 1 configuration is great, and eliminates a more fiddly and complicated part of the setup procedure.

Read the full Buffalo Cloudstation Duo review

2. Western Digital My Book Live

When it comes to hard drives, Western Digital knows its stuff. While the Buffalo Cloudstation Duo is promoted for its ease of use, the Western Digital My Book Live goes even further in its pursuit of simplicity.

For a start, the small case is completely enclosed, so there is no easy way to open the My Book Live up and replace or upgrade the hard drive as you can with the Buffalo Cloudstation Duo. This means that it's not really suitable as a comprehensive backup device – the lack of hot swappable hard drives means you'd have to physically remove the entire thing if you wanted to store your data safely off site.

The 'My' in the title is evidence that this is a NAS device that focuses on creating your own personal cloud, sharing your own media and files across the internet with as little fuss as possible.

Read the full Digital My Book Live review

3. Netgear ReadyNAS Ultra 4

NAS devices are a speedy, convenient means of backing up data, and units like the ReadyNAS Ultra 4 featured here are also capable of streaming any multimedia files to any device that can accept them.

Each of the ReadyNAS Ultra 4's bays can accommodate a 2TB drive, resulting in a possible 8TB of storage – that's an awful lot of video, photos and music.

The Netgear ReadyNAS Ultra 4 supports various implementations of RAID technology, which trades off available capacity against protection for your data. If one of the drives fails, you should be able to recover your files.

Features like RAIDar and X-RAID 2 help you make the most of this handy feature. Powered by a dual-core 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor, it's speedy and responsive. The onboard DLNA 1.5 media server worked well with a variety of networked players. Even multiple full HD video streams were glitch-free.

Read the full Netgear ReadyNAS Ultra 4 review

4. Buffalo LinkStation Pro LS-VL

Devices like these are becoming the tool of choice for storing a wide range of digital media, including downloaded movies and TV, music, images and CD/DVD/Blu-ray rips. Speed, capacity and reliability are all essential features, and the Linkstation Pro LS-VL has all three.

This 'Multimedia Shared Network Storage BitTorrent Download Box', ships with a power supply, LAN cable and installation discs, and is available with built-in SATA hard drives in 1TB, 1.5TB and 2TB sizes. Windows and Mac OS X compatible, the unit is simply plugged into any network Ethernet port or into the back of your wireless router, and is instantly accessible from any networked device.

The device features transfer speeds up to 76MB/s courtesy of a 1.6GHz CPU, which is a big increase from Buffalo's more home user-orientated Cloudstation Duo.

Read the full Buffalo LinkStation Pro LS-VL review

5. D-Link ShareCenter

D-Link has designed its NAS device to be at the centre of your home network, sharing your files and media throughout your home and over the internet – an admirable aim. The installation process is fairly straightforward, though there are a few options that you need to set yourself, and these can be confusing if you're not used to setting up network attached storage devices.

For example, at one point you're asked if you want to enable NTP server, without any explanation of what this is. There's also a step that asks you to enter your email address, along with port number and SMTP server – a pain if you don't have that information readily to hand.

The network drive wasn't mapped during installation – instead we had to run the D-Link Easy Search Utility, which found the D-Link ShareCenter on our network and then let us map it.

As with other aspects of the ShareCenter, the execution was rather cumbersome and inelegant, but it worked.

Read the full D-Link ShareCenter review

6. Iomega's StorCenter ix2-200

This 2TB NAS drive is billed as cloud storage, which means you can access the drive from anywhere with an internet connection. It's nothing hugely new, but Iomega has provided a good web interface for accessing your stored data online.

Unlike some of the other drives in our test, we had to install software to make it appear on our network. Fortunately, the software is well designed and your hand is held firmly through the process, making it ideal for people who have never used a NAS drive before.

From here, every feature of the drive is clearly explained with colourful bold icons, and essential tasks – such as setting up backups – are highlighted.

There's a range of useful tools too, from email updates to let you know if anything's changed on the drive itself, to the rather useful ability to download torrent files. You can also view hardware statistics, such as how full the drive is, and its current temperature. It's ideally suited to a RAID setup, too, and this can be implemented quickly and easily.

Read the full Iomega's StorCenter ix2-200 review

Best network storage: 7,8 and verdict

7. Netgear's Stora MS2110

We had high hopes for Netgear's NAS drive – after all, Netgear's home networking solutions have often trumped the competition in tests like these. However, we found ourselves sorely let down.

As soon as we connected the drive, all other computers on the network lost the ability to connect. It turned out that the drive had been completely locked down to the previous user, forcing us to do a complete hardware reset. That's not hugely unusual, but we're not sure why Netgear insists on you entering a software-style product key for something that's unlikely to ever leave your home or office.

Although the drive is hefty, the build quality is below par. The front panel – which clicks off to access the hard drives – sprang off in our hands. In fact, merely placing it on the floor caused the panel to flop open. Fortunately, the drives inside feel nicely secure, with a latch at the back to eject them.

Read the full Netgear's Stora MS2110 review

8. Synology DS411

The DiskStation feels like it's stuck between being a consumer-friendly NAS drive and a rack-mounted server. It's supplied without any hard drives, and looks like a small PC, complete with thumbscrews at the back and an array of lights at the front.

Synology recommends certain drives for the product, which are formatted on insertion. This isn't an easy process, especially compared to the more user-friendly drives we've looked at.

Hard drives must be mounted and formatted with Synology's software, and then the NAS drive itself has to be configured via a small patch located on the CD. Then any folders you want on the drive need to be added manually. These all seem like features that would be automated on other NAS drives.

Read the full Synology DS411 review

Verdict

This group test proved to be a perfect microcosm of the current state of the NAS market. On one hand you have devices that stick to the old ways of doing things – heaps of functionality, but with little thought of user-friendliness. The main culprits here are the Netgear ReadyNAS Ultra 4, the D-Link ShareCenter and the Synology DS411.

On the other side of the divide are the devices whose manufacturers have acknowledged that there is a growing market for centralised storage in the home, and have tailored their devices to offer easy to use interfaces for creating our very own personal clouds without a single network administrator in sight.

We believe that these devices that will excel in the future, when more homes are equipped with internet enabled devices like smart TVs, leaving the backwards-looking NAS devices in their wake.

Best NAS: Iomega StorCenter ix2-200 - £274

The StorCenter ix2-200 encapsulates everything we were looking for in a NAS device. Its advanced features are wrapped up in a user friendly package that's easy to set up and maintain. It isn't as fast as a professional NAS, but for the internet connected home, this is a great choice.

Best value NAS: Western Digital My Book Live - £147

It's not quite the cheapest NAS device on test here, but the Western Digital My Book Live wins the best value award because it has some great features, is reliable and is easy to use. If you want a relatively cheap NAS device that you can quickly set up and then just leave it to do its job without you having to check on it and tinker every now and then, go for this.

LG's TVs may have stolen much of the attention, but its monitor line-up has also been given a key boost, with four new arrivals.

The DM92, DM82, DM52 and D43 IPS monitors all offer 2D to 3D conversion - as LG looks to continue to blur the line of where TV's start and monitors end.

"The 2011 IPS monitor line-up shows LG's continued commitment to deliver innovative products that provide consumers with the most immersive home entertainment experience possible." said LG US home entertainment senior VP Jay Vandenbree.

LG DM92

The headliner, as the naming would suggest, is the DM92 - which has a design 'mirroring' the slim bezel Cinema TV range.

It's a 27 inch display and uses the LG FPR 3D display tech - with the Korean giant suggesting that it enables consistent colour and brightness from wide angles.

The DM82 series offers up a 23 inch panel, 7w speakers built in and a 'futuristic' design - which consists of a metallic neck and square base.

The more budget-friendly DM52 range comes at 27 and 23 inch , while the D43 offers up another option for those looking for a TV Monitor combination.

We're yet to get a UK release date, but the monitors will hit the US in the first quarter of 2012.

AMD has confirmed that its upcoming 7970 and 7950 graphics cards will come in dual-chip varieties.

The doubled-up variant, which could end up branded as the Radeon HD 7990, will be codenamed New Zealand in keeping with the AMD's island-based nomenclature.

Based on a 28nm architecture, the 7000 series is said to be AMD's fastest chip so far, beating its current top-of-the-range 6990.

Singularity

The singular cards are scheduled to be released in Q1 2012, with the dual-chipped card following shortly afterwards.

Nvidia is also working on a 28nm dual Kepler card, which we can expect to see around the same time.

There's no word on pricing yet, but it'll probably join the 6990 in the megabucks £500+ ($796+) bracket.

Although we were impressed by the 6990's performance, the extreme pricing was a big minus point. AMD could make the 7000 series more affordable - but we doubt it.

Processor and graphics card manufacturer AMD has posted its Q3 2011 results, and things are looking up for the previously-troubled company.

Its total revenue for the quarter is $1.69 billion (£1.04 billion), up seven per cent on last quarter, with a 4.5 per cent increase in sales.

While Bulldozer might not have the clout to take on Intel, it seems that the company has found success in its Fusion APUs - which combine the processor and graphics card on a single chip.

This has led to a dramatic turnaround - whereas the company reported a loss of $118 million (£73 million) this time last year, the latest results indicate a profit of $97 million.

Cold Fusion

AMD notes that most major notebook manufacturers have jumped on the Fusion platform, including Acer, Asus, HP and Toshiba.

It also reports a 10 per cent sequential growth in its graphics card division, formerly known as ATI.

AMD has always played underdog to Intel, but it seems Intel's reluctance to get into the lucrative smartphone and tablet processor market has put it on shaky ground.

AMD, on the other hand, has less to lose by staying desktop and laptop-oriented.

Chip giant Intel has sneakily released an upgraded Sandy Bridge CPU - the Core i7 2700K - just weeks after AMD launched its supposedly Intel-challenging Bulldozer chip.

The chip isn't a huge upgrade over its predecessor, the 2600K, offering only a small increase of 100MHz to 3.5GHz in operating frequency. In turn, this lets the chip reach speeds for 3.9GHz in Turbo mode.

Otherwise the chip's much the same, with four cores, up to eight threaded Hyper-Threading and an 8MB cache.

Unlocked overclock

As before, the Core i7's multiplier is unlocked for easy overclocking.

Intel has also announced price drops for three of its lower-end chips. The Core i2-2120 and Pentium G630 and G850 will be priced at $117 (£73), $64 (£40) and $75 (£47) respectively.

The Core-i7 2700K is now in stock at Scan Computers for £287, £87 more than AMD's latest chip.

Quite why Intel hasn't made its usual song and dance about the new chip is unknown - it could be that it's such an incremental upgrade that it's not worth promoting, or that it's going to big up the processor once the wind disappears from AMD's Bulldozer sails.

Semiconductor companies ARM and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) have announced the taping out of ARM's new 20nm Cortex-A15 multicore processor.

"Taping out" refers to the creation of the final blueprint of an integrated circuit before it's sent for manufacture. It doesn't refer to measuring it with a tiny tape measure.

ARM believes the 20nm process chips will deliver twice the performance of preceding generations, and ARM's other physical IP technology will be optimised around them for performance and power.

You and whose ARMy

"This first 20nm ARM Cortex-A15 tape out paves the way for the next generation of SoC integration and performance," said Mike Inglis, executive vice president and general manager, Processor Division, ARM.

The chips reached this point in a mere six months, which TSMC reckons is down to its Open Innovation Platform, which "provides innovation for the semiconductor design community."

ARM will target the new chips at smartphones, tablets, mobile computers and "high-end digital home".

There's no mention of whether or not the new chips will run Windows 8, despite Microsoft saying that the new OS would run on ARM processors.

Solid state drive manufacturer OCZ has fixed a blue screens of death and disconnect issue with its Sandforce SF-2000 series drives, such as the Agility 3.

The problem was caused by bugs in the drives' firmware, and resulted in a blue screen error when a primary-configured drive was woken from its SATA slumber or S3 and S4 modes.

It also caused unattributable blue screen errors when set as the primary drive with the OS installed, and stuttering and freezing within Windows.

In addition, the fix prevents low-level data structure corruption and improves TRIM handling.

OCZ noted that the problems are "rare", although internet support forums suggest otherwise.

The Sand People

In a statement, OCZ said: "We highly recommend that any customers that have experienced the BSOD issue update their firmware to 2.15.

"We sincerely appreciate the support from our customers, and if any customers have any questions or require additional support please do not hesitate to contact a customer service representative and we will be happy to address any questions or concerns."

It's worth pointing out that the issues afflict all drives with Sandforce SF-2000 series chips, such as Kingston's HyperX, but OCZ has been the first vendor to directly offer a fix.

SandForce itself has also released a firmware update, number 3.3.2. And, unsurprisingly, all new OCZ SSDs will be released with the update pre-installed.

PC gaming champ Nvidia has unveiled its latest 3D Vision system, which features redesigned glasses as well as Nvidia's own LightBoost technology.

The 3D Vision 2 glasses feature 20 per cent larger lenses than the first generation 3D Vision goggles, which results in both a larger viewing area and increased external light blocking.

They're also made of soft composite materials, so putting on gaming headphones no longer makes it feel like you've got your head in a vice.

Head in a vice

The glasses are backwards-compatible with existing 3D Vision systems, such as laptops and monitors.

Nvidia seems to have solved the 3D darkness problem with its LightBoost technology, which it reckons delivers two times brighter 3D images and improved colour quality.

"NVIDIA's engineering team has made incredible enhancements in 3D on PCs, creating a breathtaking gaming experience that's better than the best Hollywood 3D movie," said Phil Eisler, general manager of 3D Vision at Nvidia.

Whack-a-mouse

There'll be no more fumbling to find your mouse and keyboard, too - Nvidia says that it will make "gaming keyboards and mice more visible".

To compliment the glasses, Asus has released the first LightBoost-certified desktop display, the VG278H.

It's a 27-inch full HD monitor featuring 3D HDMI 1.4 input, as well as Asus' own Trace-Free II technology for smooth visuals.

Toshiba's jumped on the good ship LightBoost as well, with its Satellite P770/P775, Dynabook Satellite T572, Dynabook T572, and Qosmio X770/X775 notebooks being compatible with the technology.

Asus' VG278H monitor will cost $699 (£444) and is expected to be available at the end of October.

Nvidia's 3D Vision 2 kit - with two glasses and a wireless USB IR emitter - will retail at $149 (£85) with additional specs costing $99 (£63) each.

Taiwan component and computer manufacturer Asus has launched its ROG Maximus IV Gene-Z/Gen3 and P8Z68/Gen3 series motherboards.

The motherboards are said by the company to be the first in the industry with "genuine compatibility for PCI Express 3.0 support."

PCI Express 3.0 is the latest upgrade to the popular add-in card format, and boosts performance from 16GB/s to 32GB/s via the same 16x physical connection.

This requires an upgraded set of components, such as PCI Express 3.0 switching integrated circuits.

The motherboards also pack future-proofed hardware and UEFI BIOS support for Intel's upcoming 22nm processors, while being backwards-compatible with PCI Express 2.0 hardware.

Quality Street

Asus says it's "committed itself" to a quality assurance process before shipping its motherboards, in order to ensure everything works as it should.

Asus' latest motherboards also include all the bells and whistles we'd expect, such as four SATA 6.0 Gb/s ports, eight-channel audio, Bluetooth 2.1 and 12 USB 2.0 ports.

In addition, Asus has announced that more than 80 of its current non-SLI motherboards can also take advantage of PCI Express 3.0 and Intel's 22nm processors - presumably in a more limited capacity - thanks to a BIOS update.

Cooler Master has announced its Silent Pro Hybrid Series PSU, which the company claims is "the industry benchmark to aspire to".

The Silent Pro Hybrid packs many features we've already seen in PSUs, such as modular cables to stop the inside of your PC looking like an unkempt branch of Maplin, and 90 per cent efficiency with 80Plus Gold Certification.

Additionally, the PSU adds three ports for system fans, such as your CPU heatsink and rear case fans.

Poor middle men

This means that the load and connections are removed from your motherboard, a move which Cooler Master describes as "cutting out the middle man".

The system fans can be controlled via a dial on a 5.25-inch fan controller module, so you can avoid accidentally sucking small furry animals into your case. The PSU's onboard 135mm fan can be controlled via a seperate dial.

The onboard fan can also be set to "fanless" mode, which turns it off until the power loads become more than 200W, substantially reducing the noise coming out of your PC.

The Silent Pro Hybrid Series will be released in 850W, 1050W and 1300W models for €199.99 (£171), €249.99 (£214) and €299.99 (£257) respectively.

We never thought we'd be excited about a PSU, but we look forward to getting our hands on one before their release in December.

How to overlock your RAM

Overclocking memory isn't quite the ticker-tape parade of increased performance found when boosting your GPU or CPU, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be considered. A lot of memory comes boasting great overclockability (of course it's a word) but many builders are so keen on tweaking other components, they plum forget all about it.

Whilst tweaking your RAM is unlikely to yield noticeably higher frame rates in your favourite games, it can make a big difference to desktop use and file operations - and that alone makes it worth it. Plus, overclocking is one of the many things that make being a PC owner so great. We'd overclock our keyboards if we could.

But how does one get the most out of those innocuous sticks of RAM? There are a number of approaches, and like CPU overclocking your best bet is to head into the BIOS. Since we mentioned CPUs, if you're already running your CPU overclocked that will affect your RAM; particularly if you've increased the BLCK setting.

Likewise, upgrading your rig with high performance, high-headroom RAM can open up further possibilities for boosting your CPU. Intel 6 series chipsets (H61, H67, P67 and Z68) are highly integrated fellas.

The reason you can't get far by boosting the BLCK anymore is because you're overclocking the whole Northbridge, which controls both the PCI-e and RAM clock settings too, and it's a big ask to demand all your other components overclock as well as your CPU and its huge cooler.

Hertz me so

Thus, increasing BLCK is best used as a final measure to squeeze a few final Hertz from your CPU. If you've got RAM that can withstand timings as high as 2,133MHz though, you can squeeze a few Hertz more still, but it's memory frequency and latency that will give you the big RAM overclocks.

When you've raised all these elements to their limits, there's still voltage increase to consider. Increasing voltage is like getting an overdraft - it buys you more room for manoeuvre, but increasing it by too much can be dangerous. We'd advise 1.7V is as high as you'd need to go; you could probably go higher without causing permanent damage, but it probably wouldn't allow you that much more performance.

Project goal: Hit the rated speeds

A lot of RAM is sold as overclocking-grade these days, but to squeeze the rated speeds out of your particular sticks will require a little overclocking nouse.

Wringing out the RAM

But we ought to be wringing every last drop of performance from our memory. By the end of this tutorial you'll be lowering the latency of your RAM like my tenuous metaphors lower the bar for humour in this mag.

What's needed:

A decent set of DDR3 RAM If you've got G.Skill's monstrous RipJawsX from the gaming rig in our system building feature then happy days. Those blue sticks overclock incredibly well. Otherwise pick a kit with high rated frequencies and that's got low-latency and/or low voltages.

Jargon explained

CAS Latency: Time between the CPU asking for data and RAM releasing it.

RAS to CAS delay: Time to organise a Row Access Strobe line and Column Access Strobe in memory.

RAS Pre-charge: Or rTP, the time taken to disable one RAS line and active the next.

Active to pre-charge delay: Or tRAS, the time taken between memory access.

Memory tweaking tips

Six different ways to make the most of your memory

01. Enter the BIOS

The BIOS: Incomprehensible to some, but to the overclocker it's home. Here you'll find DRAM frequency, usually located in modern EFI BIOS' overclocking/volting options screen.

Most DDR3 RAM runs at 1,333MHz, but overclocking RAM such as G.Skill's RipJawsX will happily run at 2,133MHz. Ramp it up incrementally, though. If your PC boots, restart it and increase the frequency some more.

02. Test your settings

Run the memory bandwidth test in SiSoft's Sandra. This will also give you an idea of just how much you've increased your memory throughput with the boosted RAM.

Running a game won't give you much feedback; it's desktop responsiveness and speedy file operations you're after, so if your system remains stable while kicking about with Sandra, it's time to push it further.

03. BCLK tweaking

You probably won't get past 2,133 MHz in the DRAM frequency menu because the options go up in such large chunks, but that's not the end of the road for frequency boosting.

You can use the BCLK (usually in the same BIOS menu) to raise CPU and RAM frequency together, and in much smaller increments - by 0.5 if need be. Remember though, you are overclocking the CPU as well…

04. Knowing me, knowing CPU

…which makes it harder to pinpoint exactly how much extra performance is coming from memory. Again, SiSoft's Sandra will give you accurate readouts by stressing memory only.

If you've already overclocked your CPU within an inch of its life, including the base clock, obviously there's no further boost you can give to memory frequency here.

05. Know your SPD

The other pot o' performance gold is latency. To start tweaking this you'll need to know your RAM's stock SPD settings. CPU-Z will put you in the know with its SPD tab.

They should read something like 7-8-7-24. Each number relates to the time it takes to perform specific functions - CAS latency, RAS to CAS delay, RAS precharge, and active to precharge delay.

06. Reduce latency

For overclocking, you'll want to focus your attention on CAS latency, which is the time it takes between the CPU to ask for data and memory to provide it. A lower response time is obviously better, so find CAS latency in your BIOS' DRAM timings screen, and lower it by as little as possible.

If you ramped up frequency first, you'll likely be working back towards the stock timing.

Benchmarks

Our unflappable G.Skill RipJawsX 4 GB kit got put through its paces on an Asus P8Z68 V Pro board with a Core i5 2500K. We found the best performance increase in both synthetic and real-world tests came from increasing memory frequency.

Lowering CAS latency reaped its own benefits, but we found the balance between the two should favour increased frequency.

Click here to view at full resolution

Processor company AMD has announced shipments of its first processor based on its Bulldozer architecture.

But don't go rushing to PC World just yet - the chips are only shipping to OEM customers at the moment, and many have been earmarked for large supercomputer installations.

The first chips, codenamed "Interlagos", have been in production since August, and are compatible with AMD's Opteron 6100 Series platforms and architecture.

The chips are the world's first 16-core x86 processor, and are part of AMD's complete product refresh.

Rather than being upgrades to AMD's rather tired architecture, the chips have been designed from the ground up by the world's second most important processor company.

'A monumental moment'

It's an important day for AMD, and Rick Bergman, AMD Products Group's senior vice president and general manager, can barely contain his excitement.

"This is a monumental moment for the industry as this first 'Bulldozer' core represents the beginning of unprecedented performance scaling for x86 CPUs," Bergman said.

"The flexible new 'Bulldozer' architecture will give Web and datacenter customers the scalability they need to handle emerging cloud and virtualisation workloads."

Component company MSI has detailed its latest exclusive graphics card fan technology - it packs a number of new features, the most interesting of which is its dust removal technology.

On booting, the fan runs backwards for thirty seconds, sucking out any debris that may clog the heatsink.

MSI reckons dust may be to blame for many PC crashes, and that it could increase operating temperatures by as much as 15 degrees celsius.

But while the new technology may remove dust from the card itself, we can't help but wonder if it's simply sucked up by the card again when it starts running normally, or if it just roams the inside of your PC case looking for other heatsinks to inhabit.

Get into the groove

Other advances in MSI's new fans include the Propeller Blade, which uses arched edges, grooves and a gloss coating to provide a 20 percent increase in air flow.

In addition, the Smart Temp Sensor Tech makes the fans change colour from blue to white when the GPU is running at over 45 degrees celsius, which is great if you like looking at spinning objects more than you like watching Nazis' heads explode in-game.

The Smart Temp Sensor and Dust Removal Technology will be available on MSI's upcoming Nvidia N580GTX Lightning Xtreme Edition, and the Propellor Blade is available on MSI's latest Nvidia and AMD products.

Japanese technology company Hitachi has followed in the footsteps of rival Seagate with the announcement that it's squeezed an entire terabyte of storage onto a single 3.5-inch hard drive platter.

The new disks are targeted at desktop PCs and storage-based TVs and digital video recorders, and feature only a single 1TB platter in order to reduce power consumption and reduce the chances of the drives failing.

The Deskstar 7K1000.D and Deskstar 5K1000.B are designed for "power-friendly consumer and commercial desktop computers", and ship with a SATA 6Gbps interface.

The Deskstar 7K1000.D includes eighth-generation power management and HiVERT technology to ensure a low voltage draw and spins at 7,200RPM with a 32MB cache buffer.

Bone idle

The 5K1000.B provides 23 percent idle power savings over the 7K1000.D, but runs at a lower speed thanks to Hitachi's Coolspin technology.

The CinemaStar 7K1000.D and 5K1000.B drives offer the same 1TB capacities, but use Coolspin technology to limit the RPM, which results in quieter operation.

The CinemaStar drives also include "more than 10 features and technologies optimised for A/V streaming".

The drives are available immediately, and will appear at retailers and in Hitachi's channel partners' products.

Processor giant Intel has announced a whopping 16 new Sandy Bridge chips, as well as price cuts for its existing desktop line up.

Of the 16 chips, 11 are desktop processors for the LGA 1155 socket, with the remaining five designed for mobile devices.

The desktop chips range from the single-core Celeron G440 at $37 USD (£23) up to the quad-core I5-2320 which costs $177 USD (£110).

Lap it up

In the mobile sector, the Core i7-2960XM is a quad-cored chip with HyperThreading clocked at 2.70GHz, with Turbo taking it up to 3.7GHz.

The Core i7-2960XM will drop at a wallet-busting $1,096 USD (£680), so we can expect to see it appear in expensive, high-end gaming laptops.

At the bottom end of the Sandy Bridge mobile line up is the dual-core B840 Celeron, which will cost a mere $86 USD (£53).

In addition to the new chips, price cuts have been announced for current Core i5 processors, with most being reduced be two to six per cent. The Core i7-2600S, for example, will drop by $12 USD from $306 to $294.

Intel's pricing of its Core chips has been notoriously high, so it's good to see the chip supremo move into same low-price territory as rival AMD.

Networking company Netgear has announced three new products designed to shunt bits to your internet-enabled entertainment devices at IFA 2011.

The Powerline Nano Dual-port Set works like any other powerline adapter, with the advantage that the units themselves are small enough not to block a second outlet. The adapters come with two ethernet ports, and are capable of speeds of up to 200 mbps.

Powerline adapters are as cumbersome as they are convenient so if Netgear can shrink the form factor it will make them far more attractive.

The Nano Dual-port Set will be released in Europe in November, and is set to be priced at approximately £98.

TV on the radio

If you're resolutely against the idea of powerline networking, or somehow live in a house without powerlines, Netgear's other products may prove more enticing.

The Universal Dual Band Wireless Internet Adapter for TV and Blu-Ray players is designed to do exactly what it says on its rather elongated tin.

The adapter connects to any ethernet-enabled TV or Blu-Ray player and allows wireless streaming at both 2.4GHz and 5GHz, the latter of which Netgear reckons is perfect for HD video.

It's also designed to blend in with home entertainment devices, and can be powered by a TV's onboard USB socket or directly from the mains.

The Universal Dual Band Wireless Internet Adapter for TV and Blu-Ray has a release date of September, and a suggested retail price of approximately £55.

And finally...

Finally, the Universal Push2TV Wireless PC to TV Adapter broadcasts the contents of a Windows PC's screen on HDMI-compatible TVs.

The product consists of a USB flash drive-sized adapter for your PC, and an HDMI adapter for your PC.

Installation is said to be a simple one-time affair, and it's capable of displaying in full HD 1080p on your television.

The Universal Push2TV HD Wireless PC to TV Adapter will be released in September with UK pricing of around £78.

Semiconductor company GlobalFoundries has demonstrated its 20 nanometer process node with the production of a test chip.

The company - which works with the likes of AMD, Qualcomm and Broadcom - demonstrated full support for every step in a 20nm workflow, and has invited customers to evaluate the technology.

"We are committed to providing customers as much of a time-to-market advantage as possible with each new technology we introduce," said Mojy Chian, GlobalFoundries' senior vice president of design enablement.

Mapped out

GlobalFoundries has worked with four electronic design automation (EDA) companies to create the chip, with each one providing the necessary setup and and support for technology and mapping files.

"Our model of early collaboration with EDA partners accelerates the overall development cycle, and gives customers accessibility to the inner workings of the process so they can begin targeting their designs to the most advanced manufacturing capabilities with confidence," said Chian.

"This success is a major achievement toward market readiness of our newest process, and we will continue to enhance the design enablement support available for it."

If AMD picks up the process, it would put it a whopping 2nm ahead of Intel, which is currently readying its 22nm 3D chips.

Memory maestro Corsair has announced that its bigger capacity Force Series GT solid state drives (SSDs) are now available.

The new SSDs up the capacity of Corsair's Force Series GT to 180GB and 240GB, which are big increases on the already-available 60GB and 120GB sizes.

Corsair's SSDs include a SandForce SF-2280 processor, which natively supports SATA 6Gb/s, as well as ONFI synchronous flash memory.

Corsair says that the drives offer "outstanding read/write performance" and "significantly faster system response, boot times, and application load times than SATA 2 SSDs." The drives can read at speeds of up to 555 MB/s, and write at up to 525 MB/s.

'Premium systems'

Thi La, vice president of memory products at Corsair, said, "The new 180GB and 240GB models are ideal for premium systems which require large amounts of high-performance storage."

The drives are backwards-compatible with the SATA 2 interface, and include a 3.5-inch adapter for larger drive bays.

As SSDs become more capacious, we've reached a stage where there's little need to use them in conjunction with traditional platter-based hard disk drives.

Corsair's do come with mighty price tags, though - $379 USD (£232) for the 180GB model, and $489 USD (£299) for the 240GB drive.

Semiconductor company Micron unveiled its prototype ultra-fast Hybrid Memory Cube (HMC) DRAM during the Hot Chips conference at Stanford University.

The prototype memory uses a process similar to 3D processors to stack vertically connected memory chips, which in turn allows them to function at 128GBps.

That's a truly mind-boggling speed, bearing in mind today's fastest DDR3 sticks can only manage a mere 12.8 GBps.

Micron reckons the HMC chips can function at 20 times the bandwidth of today's DDR3, and could even reach speeds of up to 160 GBps.

The chips will also operate at a mind-boggling 3.2 billion 32-byte requests per second.

Low energy

If that's not enough, the modules will consume just 10 per cent of the energy per bit that current DDR3 chips use.

Staying true to its name, Micron also said that the chips will require 90 per cent less space, which could be a boon for mobile devices and laptops.

There's no word on a release date yet, and it could take Micron several years to perfect the chips - but even if it can deliver half of what it's promised, it could lead to a revolution in RAM.

Hong Kong technology company Sapphire has slapped its proprietary Vapor-X technology onto an overclocked AMD Radeon HD 6850 graphics card, according to a release from the company.

The card ships with clock speeds boosted to 800Mhz for the processor, and 1100Mhz for the memory, which Sapphire says gives users "a considerable boost in performance."

To cope with the overclocked clocks, Sapphire has added a Vapor-X cooler to the card. This uses the laws of thermodynamics and evaporation to cool the card with liquid in a sealed chamber.

Sapphire's Vapor-X technology was first introduced in 2007, and we've been rather impressed with it - it seems to actually work.

As well as the dark arts of Vapor-X, Sapphire has included 10-phase power control, black diamond chokes and its TriXX software for overclocking.

To Eyefinity and beyond

On the back of the card lurk the standard double-DVI ports, as well as one HDMI and two mini DisplayPort connectors. If you're lucky enough to have four monitors, these can be connected to the DVI and DisplayPort connectors for eye-popping Eyefinity vision.

It also supports DirectX 11 with hardware features such as an enhanced tessellation unit, HDR texture compression and 3D stereoscopic support.

The Sapphire Vapor-X HD 6850 has a UK release date of September, with its price to be confirmed.