Thermaltake Element Q is part of Thermaltake's Element series of cases; which consists of the Element S, Element T, Element V, as well as the Element G, which we also reviewed last year. Without further delay, let's take a closer look at the Thermaltake Element Q, and see just how well it stacks up in today's market for Mini-ITX dominance!

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The Diamond is very small and just a few millimeters thick. It is encased completely in plastic with a metal piece wrapped around it. Team Group has placed a single crystal on the top and turning it over, you can see the bare plastic, which allows you to push the actual USB connector out.

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Last week we checked out some new products from OCZ, namely the Vertex 2 and Agility 2 SSD's.  Both models use the SandForce 1200 controller.  While this relatively new controller performs very well, it has always come at the cost of greater overprovisioning of the drive.  This means that while other drives get 120GB out of 128GB of installed flash, SandForce controlled units only make 100GB of that same 128GB available for user data.  Less usable capacity translates directly into a higher cost/GB, as the bulk of the cost of an SSD is the flash memory chips themselves.  Recognizing that cost might weigh more heavily on the typical end user's mind, OCZ worked with SandForce to try and bring the overprovisioning down to a more 'consumer' level.

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Some people who demand the absolute best performance, want a little more than the stock 850MHz core speed reference HD5870's offer. Overclocking is a chancy business and often voids your warranty. We often see video cards with a paltry 25 - 50 MHz overclock hocked as OC models of various flavors. It's not often we see a GPU with a full 100MHz factory overclock.

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I'm very proud of companies like ASUS and HTC. These aren't your tradtional consumer electronics companies. They have their roots in the OEM business, working hard but for very little recognition. These Taiwanese companies have been desperately trying to bridge the gap to the mainstream consumer market over the past few years and honestly, they've done a great job thus far. Just earlier this year we saw HTC build Google's first branded smartphone: the Nexus One. A clear shot at the iPhone, the Nexus One was well built and only fell behind in software issues. It lacked the polish that Apple was able to provide with the iPhone. Rather than depend on Google to fix that, here we are a few months later and HTC has a solution.

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Galaxy's new GeForce GTX 470 GC video card offers a unique solution to a common problem for hardware enthusiasts. There are new features such as higher clock speeds, a custom PCB design, and something called a detachable flip fan you will want to see. We compare single and SLI gameplay performance against AMD.

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Before the explosion of PC computing there was a time when home audio and video components were proudly displayed in one's living area as something to show off to neighbors and friends. As time went on, these things became more and more integrated into PCs and portable media devices and became more of an individual, almost private thing for some. We have reviewed the LM300 Touch Pro and the LM100 Mini recently, now Thermaltake was kind enough to send us the LM200, which can hold a mATX board along with a full size expansion cards.

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ASRock is a relatively new company to the motherboard scene, but their latest P55 lineup includes a few good offerings for both AMD and Intel platforms in the budget and higher-end class of motherboards. ASRock shipped us one of their P55 Extreme motherboards to review, which was created for the LGA 1156 crowd and comes bundled with decent features like quad CrossfireX and SLI support,  an add-on card for SATA 6GB/s devices, and custom overclocking options that will make any newcomers to OCing foam at the mouth.

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The Phenom II also provides the L3 cache that the Athlon II lineup lacks, adding some additional performance. Since the start of the Phenom II manufacturing AMD has been getting better at manufacturing these chips. This is leading to an amazing unlock rate for the disabled cores on these chips. Armed with our 890 GX chipset board we will attempt to unlock the two hidden cores, and get this chip to extreme clocks. Lets dive into what should be a good time!

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It’s been a criminally long time since we’ve had a display review, partly because we’ve been changing and revamping our test bench with some new things you’ve been asking for, and partly because Jarred has graciously offered to let me do display reviews while he focuses on notebooks and other greater things. His are some hugely big shoes to fill, so go easy on me.

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