
Asus HD 7950 Direct CU II review
Last reviewed
There's a tremendous sense of value when you get this Asus version of AMD's HD 7950 out of the box. It really is rather massive.
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There's a tremendous sense of value when you get this Asus version of AMD's HD 7950 out of the box. It really is rather massive.

PNY is a name normally associated with Nvidia-based consumer graphics cards, and maybe the odd memory modules. In fact it makes a whole range of memory-based hardware too.

Like its little 330 series sibling and its bigger brother, the 520 series, it's based around the LSI SandForce SF-2281 controller, but unlike the other two this one uses Intel's latest 20nm MLC NAND.

The question Samsung's asking is just how much are you willing to pay for the ultimate in SSD oomph.

Spire is probably better known in the UK for cooling products rather than cases, which might explain why there's more than a little of the Cooler Master HAF series about this X2.6011 chassis.

The best just got better. That'll be Intel's pitch for the new Core i7-3970X. And strictly speaking, it's absolutely true.

UPDATED This Z77X-UP7 is more along the lines of the Asus RoG range - all the bells and whistles you could possibly want from a high-end board, but with everything an LN2-snorting pro-overclocker might be looking for.

UPDATED The last few months have left me with a rather positive feeling towards AMD. Can this continue with the upgraded AMD FX-4300?

UPDATED The original FX-6200 impressed us recently with its combination of bargain price, impressive multi-threading performance and serious overclocking chops too. Can the FX-6300 repeat the same trick?

The Korean giant is currently cranking out world-beating kit in several segments, from smartphones to ARM chips and HDTVs. So how do their latest and greatest SSDs stack up?

With the My Book VelociRaptor Duo, Western Digital has taken two of the fastest drives it makes, with a SATA 6Gb/s interface.

The first CM Storm Scout was a dependable, surprisingly roomy case that didn't take up much space - all for under £100.

Its price tag might seem steep, but this mighty 8GB kit pays for itself by delivering a whopping performance boost.

The Intel Ivy Bridge technology is the finest desktop processor tech this side of Haswell, and for the PC build without severe budgetary constraints, it's the architecture we're telling you to stick into your gaming rig.

A reasonably priced and feature-packed motherboard that performs well and shows some intelligent design choices.

This is a serious bit of kit. Let's start with some of the highlights. Six copper heat pipes draw thermals from a polished copper cooling block and feed to two massive aluminium fin stacks.

The ThermoLab Trinity looks like a pretty conventional cooler at first glance. A big fan, a large stack of aluminium cooling fins and some copper heat pipes. Same old.

Fans 120mm and larger dominate the enthusiast and overclocking market. What hope, then, for the plucky little Scythe Katana 4 and its 92mm fan?

Keeps temps and noise under control, but the competition is smaller, more effective and cheaper. Game over

Silent, dustless cooling is an attractive idea,but this monster from Nofan proves high temps are unavoidable for totally passive coolers.

How much does fancy packaging matter? Ultimately, it can't be that critical, otherwise the Deepcool Ice Matrix 400 would have this thing completely wrapped up.

UPDATED AMD have updated the Piledriver specification to offer some more bang for your buck. Can it go toe-to-toe with Intel this time round?

UPDATED Affordable synchronous NAND with great performance. The real-world difference between this and the Neutron GTX is marginal.

The name KingSpec may be new to you, and indeed us, but the company has been in the flash storage business since 1995.

With the current crop of solid-state drives already knocking very hard on the door of SATA 6Gbps bandwidth limit, we might have to start looking elsewhere for speedy SSDs.