Seagate is the world's largest purveyor of mechanical hard drives. As the company prepares for mortal combat in the consumer SSD space, are its wits, Toshiba's Toggle-mode NAND, and SK hynix memory solutions' 87800 controller enough to get by?
After years of halfhearted attempts to join the solid-state storage market, Seagate is finally ready to reinvent itself with a new family of SSDs. The first one we're looking at is the enterprise-class 600 Pro. Does this 200 GB drive impress our team?
So you like our System Builder Marathon? Ever come up with your own idea for a killer rig? Don't forget to tell us about it on the Tom's Hardware forums. The following ten setups were configured by forum members and chosen in Q1 2013 BestConfigs Poll.
We've long claimed that the sweet spot for value was somewhere around $800. So, we narrowed this quarter's System Builder Marathon from $600 to $1,000. Which one of our three configurations gives us the most performance for our budget?
Last quarter, Don had $1,000 to spend on a mid-range enthusiast-oriented PC. This time around, we challenged him to build something better with $800. Is that even possible? Our System Builder Marathon continues, as we benchmark three hand-picked setups.
After one quarter after another of Pentium-based budget-oriented gaming builds, Paul Henningsen is ready to put together something a little more potent. We gave him an extra $100 and asked him to show us how to spend that money. He obliged, gladly.
Last quarter, our highest-end build put an emphasis on host processing. This time around, we're setting our sights on gaming performance. That's not to say any part of this $2000 build suffers. It sports Radeon HD 7970s in CrossFire and a Core i7-3770K.
Starved by the limits of our System Builder Marathon benchmark suite, Thomas decides to explore what happens when he really uncorks the graphics system. A helping of 5760x1080 across three monitors is being added to the complete four-course test set.
This quarter, we construct our most powerful $1000 enthusiast build ever, complete with a Core i5-3570K, GeForce GTX 670, and solid-state storage. Can it beat the value of Paul's $500 machine or come close to the performance of Thomas' $2000 system?
We compare nine different Thunderbolt-based storage solutions, delivering scorching sequential throughput. Of the nine, three submissions rise to the top. Although it remains pricey, in the applications where it makes sense, Thunderbolt cannot be beat.
More than two years after reviewing Seagate's first-generation Momentus XT, we're back in the lab with a 750 GB model armed with 8 GB of SLC NAND and a SATA 6Gb/s interface. How does it compare to pure solid-state and hard drive technologies? We dig deep.
Frugality returned in this quarter's System Builder Marathon, tipping the balance towards less-elaborate gaming rigs. Does cutting deep into the budgets end up hurting our lower-cost build too much for it to compete, or is its value enhanced instead?
With a $250-smaller budget this quarter, Don re-creates the previous build as faithfully as possible just to see how much of a difference two memory channels make. With no room left for an SSD or extra RAM, we think you'll be surprised by the results.
After a little inflation over the past few quarters, we chop $600 off of the most recent build. Is there such a thing as more performance from a smaller budget? Thanks to Intel's Ivy Bridge architecture and GeForce GTX 680, the answer is: sometimes.
Hitachi recently started shipping a pair of 4 TB hard drives. We can see that they're pretty expensive, but how do they compare to existing 3 TB models in other ways? It’s time for a comprehensive overview of today's high-capacity hard drive offerings.
We've shown you our three System Builder Marathon picks. Now it's time for something new. Using Newegg's user ratings as a guide, we picked the site's most celebrated components, built a PC, and overclocked it. Can this "Customer Choice" setup compete?
Three different builders took two different approaches this quarter. Paul and Don struck out in search of more graphics performance, while Thomas gave up some GPU horsepower in favor of a stronger CPU. Whose strategy paid off? It's time to compare!
At four times the budget of our cheapest PC, today's build minimizes compromise in the name of delivering unparalleled quality, performance, and features. Thomas takes the opposite approach as Paul and Don, beefing up on his CPU. Was it the right call?
This quarter, we're starting our System Builder Marathon with a little experiment. Paul wanted to build a gaming PC for $650 that'd target smooth performance at 1920x1080. He had to make a couple of sacrifices in the process, but the result is compelling!
When a little bit of flash memory is good, more must be better, right? Seagate's second-generation Momentus XT hybrid hard drive is out to compete with SSDs, even as it delivers capacities typical of laptop-oriented 2.5" mobile disks.
You've already seen our first two System Builder Marathon configurations, both of which are more expensive than last quarter's. Our entry-level build costs a bit more too, but we think it's a much more capable collection of parts.
Welcome to Part 2 of Tom's Hardware's 2011 Holiday Gift Guide. This second installment is geared toward the folks who want to buy components that stand alone as respectable gifts--call them the add-ons to go with the complete machines we built last week.
Advanced Format technology makes it possible to build 9.5 mm high 2.5” hard disks with 500 GB per platter. The result is a range of slim and speedy storage giants.
You don't need a massive case to cram in tons of computing muscle. With a little help from a few manufacturers, our excessively-overclocked GeForce GTX 580 SLI build is small enough to sit atop most desks (and smoke our $2000 SBM machine).
Big changes to a few components radically alter the performance profile of every machine in this quarter's competition. We’ve already seen how these changes affect the value of each machine, but how will they compare to each other?