Patrick Schmid and Achim Roos

The first USB 3.0-based external hard drives aim at eliminating the USB 2.0 bottleneck (that hovered around 30 MB/s) with enough bandwidth to outperform the fastest mechanical disks. A-Data, Buffalo, and WD do battle for maximum performance.

Kingston’s HyperX LoVo-series DDR3 memory allows users to reduce voltage to 1.35 V or 1.25 V in order to save power and allegedly decrease system temperature. We test the eco-friendly modules to find out if it really makes sense to run undervolted memory.

Most people know that Intel’s Atom is a slow, low-cost processor. But does it even offer enough performance to take it beyond desktop processors nearly a decade old? Today we're comparing a modern Atom CPU to two Northwood-class Pentium 4-based PCs.

When it's time to look into small form factor machines, do you pick AMD or Intel? With an increasing number of motherboard companies offering Mini-ITX platforms with powerful desktop performance in a diminutive footprint, we compared two modern options.

Intel's Turbo Boost technology provides a mechanism for improving system performance most significantly in lightly-threaded apps, even at peak loads. But what is the feature's impact on a Gulftown-based Core i7-980X processor with different core counts?

You need Intel’s LGA 1366 interface and an X58-based platform in order to run the latest six-core processors, but which board should you pick? We're comparing a mainstream and flagship platform from the same company to explore the worth of high-end X58.

Remember when 500GB was the most you could get from a notebook drive? It seems like most vendors have made the transition to 640GB. Western Digital even has its own 750GB model that fits within the 9.5 mm z-height. So, which of these drives is the best?

Samsung and Seagate are each offering new high-capacity drives that strive to cram tons of data into a 3.5" form factor. Today's battle is the eco-friendly Spinpoint against the nearline Constellation, low power against business-class. Which one is best?

What’s the real benefit of six cores versus five, four, three, two, or one? This article looks at the performance, power, and efficiency of AMD's Thuban-based six-core Phenom II X6 1090T processor running with several different core configurations.

SSDs are best for performance. SATA hard drives provide maximum capacity. Enterprise-class SAS disks are the workhorses positioned between them. But which enterprise hard drive capacity makes sense when there are several from which to choose?

AMD’s six-core CPU is affordable (at least, compared to Intel's Core i7-980X). We're overclocking the Thuban design to see if its efficiency improves from faster clock rates. Comparisons to other quad- and hexa-core processors provide some perspective.

With more than 100 MB/s throughput and 500GB of storage capacity for notebooks, Hitachi’s Travelstar 7K500 and the Toshiba MK5056GSY face the established Seagate Momentus 7200.4. Were the two newer drives worth waiting for? We benchmark them to find out.

The latest PlayStation 3 Slim offers up to 250 GB of storage on its built-in hard drive. But enthusiasts are better off paying Sony less for a cheaper model and upgrading immediately to a larger hard drive. We show you how in four simple steps.

Wondering how fast USB 3.0 runs compared to USB 2.0 and eSATA? We take three flash-based thumb drives and run them through our storage benchmarks. We don't expect to see the interface's 500 MB/s maximum any time soon, but the results might surprise you.

Update: with more real-world testing under our belts, Seagate's Momentus XT is receiving our rare Best of Tom's award for excellent performance. This new hybrid hard drive combines up to 500GB of storage and 4GB of flash memory to maximize performance.

Notebook drive manufacturers can choose between two drive heights: 9.5 mm and 12.5 mm. At 9.5 mm, most drives are limited to two spinning platters, while 12.5 mm has enough room for three, enabling higher capacity. We compare the two 2.5" variants.

Intel’s $115 Core i3-530 doesn't include Turbo Boost technology and it doesn't boast hardware-based AES-NI, but it overclocks like a fiend. We benchmarked this dual-core, HT-equipped chip at 4.4 GHz and determined the most power-efficient overclock.

Diminutive 2.5” form factors are favored in the enterprise storage world for many reasons, but how do high-end 2.5” SAS drives compare to the established 3.5” products when it comes to performance and power? We requested some drives and did the analysis.

Atom was designed to be a low-cost, low-power solution, but its value in the desktop space is debatable if you consider performance. We pit the cheapest Core i3 against Intel's Atom on a performance-per-dollar and a per-watt basis to see which is better.

Now that Intel offers hardware-based AES acceleration in a number of its mainstream processors, it's time to take a look at two of the most popular system encryption tools, BitLocker and TruCrypt, both of which are able to harness the hardware feature.

Five high-capacity SD cards from Samsung, SanDisk, Silicon Power, and Transcend recently found their way into our lab. One of them was so fast that it required an upgraded reader in order to help realize its potential. Read on for more!

The role of 2.5” hard drives is changing. The smaller form factor now provides increased storage density and improved power efficiency compared to 3.5” models, all while delivering the capacities SSDs still can't touch.

Professionals rely on high-speed CompactFlash cards. Today we're looking at a handful of different options from Lexar, Samsung, SanDisk, Silicon Power, and Transcend with capacities up to 64GB and speeds up to 600x (as high as 90 MB/s)

In part one of our SSD roundup, we looked at drives from Crucial, OCZ, Intel, Solidata, and Toshiba. To those results, we're adding Crucial's first 6 Gb/s SSD, WD's first SSD, and Kingston's 128GB SSDNow V-series, along with 'fresh' and 'used' scores.

The new six-core Core i7-980X runs at a smokin' 3.33 GHz and has lots of overclocking headroom, thanks to Intel's 32 nm manufacturing process. We dialed in multiple overclocked settings (up to 4.4 GHz) on our quest for the most efficient frequency.