We have our hands on four SAS 6 Gb / s RAID controllers from Adaptec, Areca, HighPoint and LSI, and they went with RAID 0, 5, 6 and 10 workloads to test their courage. If your system connectivity, eight more ports? We answer that!

Check out motherboards today (or even some of the older platforms out there). Is it really still buy a dedicated RAID controller? Three-gigabit SATA ports are found on almost every card, and audio and network connectivity. The latest chipsets like Intel’s and AMD’s A75 Z68 even integrate support SATA 6 Gb / s. Based on a reliable power electronics, a powerful processor and many I / O, you’re not all characteristics of a solid add-in card? Where it makes sense to invest in a discrete control it?

In most cases, mainstream users to create RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10 arrays configured with its built-in motherboard SATA ports and a little bit of software allows reasonable performance. But in an environment where there are more advanced RAID levels, such as 6, 50 or 60 required, beefier drive control is desired, or scalability is required, the chipset-based controls are inadequate. That’s when it’s time for a professional-class solution.

And at this point, you’re no longer limited to SATA storage. To facilitate a large number of add-in cards that enable support for Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) or Fibre Channel (FC) disk drives, each interface offers unique advantages.

SAS and FC RAID for professional

Each of the three available interfaces (SATA, SAS and FC) brings different strengths and weaknesses of the table, none of them can be called in any case as the best. The strengths of the SATA drives on some of the largest capacity and low cost, while the management of large data rates. SAS drives are typically emphasize the reliability, scalability and high I / O rates. FC storage is focused on continuous, high data rates. As a legacy solution, some companies are still using Ultra SCSI, although with a maximum unit count of 16 (including a controller and up to 15 discs) disabled. In addition, the maximum total bandwidth of 320 MB / s (in the case of the Ultra-320 SCSI) rather poorly in comparison to its successors.

Ultra SCSI uses the standard for professional, enterprise storage solutions. SAS is largely over who have not only a much larger bandwidth, but also the flexibility of mixed SAS / SATA environments for cost, performance, reliability and the ability to really optimize within a JBOD. Moreover, many dual-ported SAS drives for the purpose of redundancy. If a controller card expires, you close the drive to a second controller failover. This allows SAS support for high availability setups.

In addition, SAS is not only a point-to-point protocol between a controller and a memory device. It supports up to 255 memory devices via SAS expanders on cable. By using a two-tier structure, SAS expander, theoretically, 255 x 255 (or slightly more than 65,000) storage devices can be connected to a SAS channel, provided that the controller chip has such a large amount of support.

Adaptec, Areca, HighPoint and LSI: Four tested SAS RAID Controller

In this comparison, we examine the performance of the current SAS RAID Controller, represented by four products: Adaptec RAID 6805, Areca ARC-1880i, HighPoint RocketRAID 2720SGL attack, and the LSI MegaRAID 9265-8i.

SAS and FC-why not? On the one hand, SAS is more relevant and interesting architecture. It offers features such as zoning, which can be very attractive for professional use. On the other side of the market data shows that the FC role in professional storage market is declining, and some analysts even predict their demise based on the number of distribution disks. While the future looks bleak for the FC, IDC predicts SAS drives 72 percent share of the enterprise HDD market in 2014 to enforce.

If you buy a new processor for your next machine? How about a new graphics card? Have you thought about the status of your storage subsystem? We make a case for the inclusion of solid-state technology, the next refresh shopping.

The verdict is in fans who had their hands on an SSD and felt the difference would not return to the use of a mechanical hard drive as a system disk. The benefits of flash-based storage devices can not be ignored. Their vulnerability (higher prices and a relatively lower capacity) gradually approached by smaller production node, helping to reduce costs and increase storage density.

On the other hand, are negligible access times, high data rates and to introduce an outstanding I / O performance, some of the benefits of SSDs. You can not forget, mechanical robustness, low power consumption, quiet operation, either.

So many vendors are crowding the SSD market today, however, that the average user having a difficult time separating the wheat from the chaff is. We’ve created our best SSDs For The Money column. Flip on the sixth side of the story, though, and you get a diagram to see how the modern SSDs blow away mechanical memory shows. Even if you can be a handful of solid-state drives together mine and extrapolate the performance difference, even the slowest model is much better than a spinning disk.

SSDs: Advantages and Disadvantages

Here’s the problem: it is difficult to assess the benefits of an SSD with the benchmarks we have run to demonstrate to quantify the benefits normally associated with processors and graphics cards. As a result, people who themselves do not spend too hardcore hardware enthusiasts a difficult time placing the reason more to a smaller capacity device, particularly if they have never used one.

Case in point: I was recently asked to look through a PC wish list of parts for the birthday of a friend of the son. It was armed with a Sandy Bridge processor, 4 GB of RAM, a nice graphics card, and a couple of handy accessories. But of course, it contained a hard drive with no evidence of solid-state memory. I’ve tried to convey the message that at a certain budget, it could actually make more sense to give a few hundred megahertz processor clock frequency and the factory-overclocked GPU for adding a 64 GB boot drive, keep the data on the hard disk.

A few days later, the PC is configured and built on a local PC store, without the SSD. Instead of twice with a hard drive.

Fact Check

The perception is usually based on concrete, comparable numbers. A 2 TB hard drive spins at 7200 rpm sounds impressive delivered as the old office PC with a 120 GB, 5400 RPM model. Even the evolutionary path of the interface sounds great as it really is. “Wow, that was 300 MB / s old, and now I can 600 MB / s?” If only it were that easy, right?

There are two things in play here. First, there are too few people that the introduction of a SSD in a system is a tangible feel to their applications. And secondly, from limited capacity and continuing high prices for many people, including what to avoid solid-state technology a shot.

Let’s say it again, though. The SSD, regardless of what you choose, runs circles around mechanical storage. And to show we do a SSD comparable to a popular drive in the same test machine.

Since the integrated GPUs usually employ shared system memory, RAM has a significant impact on the performance gaming frame rates. We test on 7 August GB DDR3 kits, the manufacturers are the perfect partner for us based on AMD’s mainstream Llano APU.

The biggest surprise in AMD’s Llano architecture, the integrated GPU to play games in the real situation. And we mean real games of the kind of title, people who consider themselves fans want to play. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is actually a high quality and 1680×1050 viable. What you need to understand is that gaming performance is largely determined by the store that you fall in a Llano-driven machine, such as the introduction of Chris Angelini influenced discussed cover sheet “Making Memory performance thing again.“

Of course, the latest tracks demanding than Call of Duty. But we are still able to play at lower resolutions and detail levels. This is something that no other integrated GPU ever done satisfactorily. We have always impressed by the graphic quality of Call of Duty, because, like low-impact appears on the hardware. Thus, we test some of the more challenging tracks in our suite in the current memory kits put through the ringer.

Note that we have some basic DDR3-1333 CAS 9, the latest round-up, designed to include a performance baseline in our charts. The real question is: how much more speed, this low-to mid-priced modules in order to bring our games?

Hard drives can be up to 3 TB of data into careful consideration, because they could not always work as expected. The round-up of four high-performance disks compares products from Hitachi, Seagate and Western Digital, then cover their reservations.

The latest 3.5 “hard drives offer up to 3 TB of storage. WD Caviar Green was the first WD30EZRS, and now Hitachi and Seagate have competitive products added to their portfolios.

In this equation, we use the Western Digital hard drive against TB three competitors: two drive from Hitachi (Deskstar 5K3000 The Deskstar 7K3000 and HDS5C3030ALA630 HDS723030ALA640) and Seagate ST33000651AS Barracuda XT.

Of course, the labels on the 3 TB hard drives are impressive, but you have many computers that recognize and not be able to use the drives properly cautious. So that they perform as intended and specific platform decisions often requires a suitable operating system. And you can forget to use them as boot drives when they are not equipped with a UEFI motherboard.

Despite hurdles associated with this configuration (we will do together to overcome at some point, if we want to see more drives), 3 TB drives are still a very important pillar in the storage environment, at home or in business. SSDs are better than in many ways, but they are certainly not in a position to displace conventional hard drives when it comes to basic data storage. The high capacity, low cost per gigabyte and low energy consumption per gigabyte magnetic storage, the only sensible choice for backup, archiving, and user data.

Performance and energy saving

Our test candidates can be divided into two different camps. It is the Western Digital Caviar Green and the Hitachi Deskstar 5K3000 WD30EZRS HDS5C3030ALA630 together. To translate their moderate speeds in a low power, moderate temperatures and low noise.

The second group consists of the Hitachi Deskstar 7K3000 and Seagate ST33000651AS Barracuda XT. Its 7200 RPM speed promise a better performance. Energy saving is not the main focus for this, which is reflected directly in their somewhat higher power consumption.

It takes courage to try passive cooling of a 127 W graphics processor. PowerColor Radeon HD 6850 sold the first one we have seen, have only covered with a heat sink. If the triple-slot cooler do its job, or Barts is simply too complex a GPU cool like this?

Passively-cooled mid-range graphics cards are now made to the status of endangered species. Their power and thus the heat, they kidnap is just too high. The attempt at a reasonably fast GPU fan to keep cool without two things: a sophisticated design and heatsink right environment. Almost unbelievably, PowerColor has not set the clock on his SCS3 HD6850 1GB card ever covered, and instead offers the power of a normal 6850 card (but no fan).

Knowing that the 960-shader core Barts suitable for 127 W, we were dying to find out how a heatsink alone was enough to keep the GPU cool. To reach this conclusion, we have not only benchmark the board in a series of games, but also in several cases examined to assess the viability in the wild. Except for an ultra-quiet fan mounted on the card, as compared to an active cooling things will change around.

Here’s a bit of a spoiler. In the summer, in the wrong context, this card runs the edge of disaster, and perhaps even exceed. Read on to find out how to avoid a meltdown. We will use against the usefulness of this card on all brands.

Would you like to add another monitor, but found the display outputs? DisplayLink technology uses USB bus to expand on the screen. The current implementation is not perfect, we are more excited about the USB 3.0 hardware is planned.

According to a recent survey we posted on our Facebook page, 61% of you currently use a notebook. If you do not, there is a chance that you just do not need mobility. Or replace the weight of a tablet PC with a cell phone or smartphone for tasks such as replying to e-mail or online banking. Nevertheless, we expect that the share of notebook users, such as improved performance and to raise prices to fall further.

The attractiveness of the notebook is clear. Ping is to plop on the couch surfing the Internet much more relaxed than sitting on the same computer desk, day after day. But this freedom has its price. Even if you ignore the fact that mobile systems inherently slower at the same price point, you’re generally still limited to a single screen.

Solution to this problem is not easy. Some laptops have a second monitor output, you can use a different monitor, if available. And we have a handful of laptops with AMD-based GPUs Eyefinity to expose functionality to accommodate a third screen seen. But there are not many people. So how do you the flexibility to address three of the four screens can be connected simultaneously? DisplayLink has a solution in the graphics technology that may be on the USB bus, monitors with USB ports.

These devices are useful in a pinch, but how do they work? We take a closer look at this technology, so you know what they are looking to purchase multiple monitors to your mobile office.

Today at Taiwan Computex Exhibition in 2011, has a new Asus Eee PC X101 MeeGo powered netbook that as thin as a MacBook Air!

Eee PC X101 with a 10-inch screen equipped, weighs 950g and is only 1.76cm thick. The thickest part of a 1.7-inch MacBook Air! Eee PC X101 hardware specifications are as follows: -

Processor: Intel Atom N435 running at 1.33 GHz
Display: 10.1-inch matte screen with a resolution of 1024 x 600
WLAN: 802.11b/g/n
I / O: 2 x USB ports, microSD card slot, headphone / audio output
Battery: 2600mAh

Eee PC X101 will be sold for about $ 200.

If you are fully text chat, which often keep sending text messages requires the services in the majority! What is the right place for you, as it has no obligation to check and copy paste text and send through your PC. Send SMS text messages from your computer without problems and more in less time. Basically, the function that lets you send SMS text via the PC should download the software for it. Check online the most appropriate software that exploits the most affordable, knowing time and easy to use software to send bulk messages through computer use.

With developing web services and online applications have become much easier to stay connected with your friends, family and loved ones anywhere in the world. Make it easier to talk and give your contact address with the better software SMS text messages through your computer. The use of computer for text messaging is simple techno fans and this is a time saver.

Certain advantages are waiting to be used in the most common form which can increase the frequency of messaging, quantity and easily save any type of waste as mentioned below:

Compatible, offers a very user friendly approach for sending SMS text messages from your computer.

smooth excess makes it easy to use and does not help reduce waste.

Bulk SMS in less time, is many times more essential text that remains unanswered as needed over time. But it must be in frequent communication with loved ones is only possible through this software at any time in any place and anywhere in the world.

Affordable, which provides investment services such as better cost efficiency via SMS and text messages in bulk also saves time and helps save the cost of consumption through other traditional styles in general, while SMA t5ext Message through the computer is very useful and effective in the purpose of cost as well.

Some better know-how for better implementation of the incredible message to send SMS text messages from your computer that can better address are as under:

Selection of application: It is something that makes the whole story selection application that provides the functions and services according to an application you choose. So when certain software is downloaded med care are essential factors for use and do a search in demand for the use or shall prevent the latter.

adequate records, assets for services is essential to register or be registered under the chosen application and will make the application software service to stay connected anywhere and at any instance of time.

Some applications are also available that takes advantage of sending free SMS, but later the charges the money to respond to incoming messages. Might be better to go through the terms and conditions completely and then download and sign up to be safe from the misinterpretation.

Surprisingly striking feature of the text messaging application could save the hassle of all of all time, “writes the contact number and your eye on the entire contact list. Check the slimy opportunity and make the best out of it. Acquire send SMS text message from your computer with the time-cost welfare and also wise techno gadget experts in technological stimulation.

It is almost essential to know how to scan and clean your computer and these notes will give you an idea of ​​what that means. The way forward is with the help of software known as a registry cleaner that can help improve system performance. I will also discuss a record of high quality software cleaner than the speed of my PC quickly.

Everything that happens on a PC leaves a record in a large database and, as time passes, and more actions take place, the database grows larger and larger. The PC becomes slower, unless something is done about it. The reason is that there are more entries, more time is needed to check, at the time of each transaction to take.

The cleaning program must be installed first, and then you can perform a deep scan, taking note of the problem or redundant files or entries, which make the PC is slow. Then you must remove the infringing items, to bring the machine to its top performance level. This can also be time to delete temporary files.

Because the record is quite complex in nature, may be that critical files are accidentally deleted, causing one or more programs to run incorrectly or not at all. Therefore, the cleaning company should be able to put the system to a previous state, in good condition.

Amazingly, the software often can find hundreds of errors which have had no dramatic effect on the machine, which is not a remarkable slowness of the operation. In general, exploration programs have tens of thousands of known bugs that can find and fix.

As a PC user, you should know how to scan and clean your computer, as this is one of the routine maintenance tasks to be carried out. This is at the same level in order to put a hard drive or the management of the browser settings. I personally managed to clean my computer by downloading the software registry cleaner quality.

He blew right by the dog on the wall of the garage. Each device in the house was fried. Hearing my neighbor is grieving the loss of all its equipment through a beam made me do some research on the hidden dangers of power surges. I was surprised to find that even without the lightning, the electricity power supply to my house was sending surges through my computers up to 20 times a day. Time to call an electrician.

I learned that energy fluctuations in the mains are normal. Occur up to 20 times a day in the average home. The most I usually notice a flashing light. Our devices, however, are affected by all changes in electricity supply.

Although designed to keep working through fluctuations within certain limits, my electrician told me that the net result of the foot to the constant changes in the power supply is costly wear and tear on all my appliances. Their life expectancy can be reduced by up to 30 percent. It does not matter much in a toaster for $ 50, but what about my teams, or the home theater system that cost me thousands of dollars?

Worse, during a lightning storm climates multi-beam grid, some of which may be close to home. Lightning is common from spring right through fall, so it is statistically more likely than not to get a hit near you at some point during the year. A strike only a mile away can send an additional 30. 000 amps of electricity through his house, which is enough to cause serious damage to sensitive equipment.

A lightning strike at home can fry every electronic device in it. Imagine having to replace their computers, televisions, and all other appliances in your home at a time. Worse, your insurance policy probably does not cover these events, which means you’ll be paying out of pocket.

A power surge protector installed by a professional electrician can extend the life of your machine, oven, and all the other expensive items at home. You can save thousands of dollars if you are unlucky enough to experience an electric shock. You can earn in two ways. Immediately start to save money by extending the life of your expensive equipment, and you’ll have peace of mind about the possibility of lightning to burn all your electronics.

This type of protection is simply not provided by the circuit breakers, which are designed to prevent fires caused by short circuits, but do not protect equipment against power surges. I found that having the whole house surge protection installed by a qualified electrician was surprisingly affordable. Now I have to protect my computers, home theater, refrigerator, washing machine, and countless other devices. My poor neighbor is paying to replace her.