Innovation in the cooler domain doesn’t really happen that often in the proper sense of the word. The copper base/parts were certain advancement, as were the heatpipes that were added later on. The Peltier cooling method may have been the greatest innovation at one point, but it turned out to be a dead end for commercial viability, with the few Peltier-based coolers that actually launched receiving a lukewarm welcome on the market. Vapour chamber was the next step, and although it’s nothing more than a modified, bloated heatpipe, it managed to become very popular. However, it was also a clear indication that not much is going to change in the cooler world for some time, with most companies working on perfecting the existing design rather than developing a new one. Cooler Master have decided to at least cause a crack in the mould if not entirely break it, with their latest model called TPC 800, which is the first to bring a vertical vapour chamber.

Micro-ATX motherboards are definitely the best choice for HTPC owners. Their dimensions enable them to be placed in the smallest of chassis, so as not to take too much space in your living room. Of course, chassis such as HAF XB imply that you’ll be using top-notch hardware for your HTPC, but just how many users are willing to dish out a large sum of money for an HTPC? Only those with specific needs, we reckon, and this isn’t such a large target market. In any case, many will try to cram as many things as possible into a very restricted space, with the desire to get a fully functional multimedia machine. The obvious choice for this sort of undertaking is an APU.

Rotating displays, touch-sensitive displays, tablet/notebook transformers… All of these were mere concepts a few years ago, yet they’re increasingly invading the store displays of today. Other than the Lenovo Yoga notebook, we’ve also been surprised by ASUS’ Taichi 21. Although the idea is the same, these two notebook models are actually quite different. While Yoga does its transformation from notebook to tablet by rotating the display by 360 degrees, ASUS has decided that Taichi should have two displays altogether.

As AMD’s premium partner, Sapphire has a certain reputation that it’s been maintaining for very long. Although they rarely venture out to the market with specials models such as ASUS’ Matrix, Ares or MSI’s Lightning, they still always manage to match their competitors. This they accomplish through constant quality, which has admittedly been questioned after the information about them having certain issues with Radeon HD 7870 leaked to the internet. Still, even such rare mishaps aside, Sapphire’s graphics cards have never been on top, but always very close by. Their advantage is based on frequent reality checks, unlike ASUS, MSI and Gigabyte, who tend to wander off into a higher price range in their desire to be the best. Sapphire sticks to the mortals and offers excellent models with an alternative design, with a far more interesting price tag. One direct consequence thereof has been the Dual-X model, always among the cheapest on offer, but with great cooling and excellent performance nevertheless. After the said model from the latest series, it was only logical to expect a card with a Vapor-X cooler. If you aren’t familiar with it, Vapor-X is the best Sapphire has to offer in terms of cooling, since it’s their in-house solution. These coolers rely on a large vapour chamber which is essentially one large heatpipe, lending its name to the entire series. Of course, this cooler has also evolved from one generation to the next, and one could say that this card sees it at its largest and most impressive.

A recent market study conducted by Mercury Research has shown that APUs take up more than 70% of the total number of processors sold by AMD in the third quarter of 2012, which clearly showcases the success of the Trinity platform. While AMD is constantly trying to keep up with the general pace in the processor market, APUs are removed from this equation. APU is simply a story for itself and no other company is even close to offering something similar. When you take into consideration the fact that these are great products on their own, everything becomes as clear as a bell. APU is something that AMD should and needs to focus on, which is exactly what they’re doing. A large number of models with all sorts of purposes have been presented, with a sufficiently broad gamma for everyone. The latest addition to the fold carries the name A10-5700 and represents a power-saving model that doesn’t sacrifice much of the performance sported by the flagship 5800K.

Judging by the title, many would conclude that we’re talking about a half-functional device. This isn’t the case, because the topic of this article is a very peculiar PSU that comes from Fractal Design. This company has turned very aggressive lately as far as presentation of new products goes. Fractal Design has recently refreshed their entire gamma of PSUs, with as much as three series. The newcomer that we’ve received for testing belongs to the Newton series and carries the name R3. Newton R3 is a PSU characterised by top-quality workmanship and design, but also a uniquely low number of decibels it emits during work. 600 W may not seem like much these days, but trust us, every declared watt is there and not a single bit of this PSU is just “marketing talk”. We believe that Newton R3 will impact Fractal Design’s reputation to the point of it becoming a household name, and here’s why.

When Microsoft announced “Project Natal” at 2009’s rendition of the E3 fair, most presumed it would be some sort of response to the ultra-popular Nintendo Wii. Of course, from today’s point of view, compared to the Wii Controller, “Project Natal” was equivalent to a spaceship. About a year and a half later, the said project gave birth to Kinect, and the rest is history. Kinect is based on technology developed by the Israeli company PrimeSense, based on using cameras and depth sensors in order to enable object tracking and gesticulation. Although it all looks relatively simple, the fact remains that no one has managed to successfully copy the technology thus far (not even the Chinese), which shows just how complex this system is. Kinect brought a whole new dimension to Xbox 360 gaming, and the so-called Kinect hackers were quick to surface as well, using this add-on for a variety of purposes.

All-in-one computers have great potential to be more than just a small PC for those who don’t have much space at their disposal. Primarily, many have already experimented with this concept in order to make an excellent multimedia device. There’s also a great potential to make a prestigious device which will not only fulfil its function as it should, but also attract the attention of all those who see it for the first time. That’s exactly what ASUS did with the ET220I model. After many unconvincing “all-in-one” computers, a new model will have no trouble with singling itself out.

This is hardly the first time that we’re meeting Huawei products for the pages of our website, but these were mostly manufactured by other companies and merely signed by Huawei. After the Ideos 7 Slim tablet, Huawei’s first Ascend P1 phone has arrived to our office for testing. Truth be told, we’ve already had the chance to test it some time ago, but only as an early preproduction sample, so we refrained from testing until we got the proper, final product. That time has finally come, with the phone already available with larger mobile providers. Huawei phones are already present to a large extent in most markets, and a torrent of even stronger ones is expected this year, which goes to show that Huawei has firmly decided to impose itself as a relevant competitor to companies such as Samsung, LG, Motorola, HTC etc.

At first, second and third glance, ZTE’s latest flagship model, Grand X In, looks identical to the Grand X we tested a few months ago. With minimal external differences, the large Intel logo on the back is the only thing that “jumps” at you. Since this is the first smartphone based on Intel’s (x86) platform that we’ve tested, many questions have arisen. Will there be limitations as far as application installation, compatibility etc. are concerned? How about unexpected bugs or issues? What to expect in terms of performance and battery autonomy? And heating?