Features
• Immense Performance: 4 of 5 fans included ( Front 120mm fan, Top 140mm fan, Side 120MM LED fan, rear 120mm exhaust included ), fans rated at 43CFM, 23dB(A)
• Fan control: Determine noise and airflow based on your needs, dual intakes and dual exhausts are controlled independently
• Black on Black: Smoked clear window and a black interior gives the best combination of black on black.
• Meshed front panel allows for more airflow
• NZXT Solid State bracket allows for two SSD drives to be installed
• Wire Routing: Motherboard punched holes allows for quick CPU bracket removable and optimal wire routing.
• Turned HDD also helps with providing a cleaner look.
• Pre-drilled water cooling holes on the back plate
• High end graphics card support, extra space is especially designed to fit longer 10.5″ cards
• Side mounted USB, Audio, and E-SATA ports
• Mounting holes for dual radiator at the top
• Removable filter at the bottom PSU
• Rubber Grommet for wire routing gives a even sleeker look to the system

Specifications
MODEL: Lexa S SERIES
CASE TYPE: MID TOWER Black interior chassis
FRONT PANEL MATERIAL: Steel
DIMENSIONS (W x H x D): 196 X 480 X 528 mm
COOLING SYSTEM:
- FRONT, 1 x 120mm , 23db/42CFM (included)
- SIDE, 1 x 120mm LED fan@1200RPM, 23db/42CFM (included)
- TOP, 2 x 140/120mm ( 1 140mm included)
- REAR, 1 x 120mm, 23db/42CFM (included)
DRIVE BAYS: 11 DRIVE BAYS
- 4 EXTERNAL 5.25″ DRIVE BAYS
- 7 INTERNAL 3.5″ DRIVE BAYS
MATERIAL(S): Steel Construction
EXPANSION SLOTS: 7
POWER SUPPLY: 500 WATT PS2 ATX 12V 2.0 ( OPTIONAL )
WEIGHT: 7 KGS (W/O Power)
MOTHERBOARD SUPPORT: MOTHERBOARDS: ATX, MICRO-ATX, BABY AT

Packaging
The Lexa S comes packaged in a unique box. The front of the box shows the Lexa S appearing to be made in a futuristic assembly line. The back of the box goes into the features of the case along with some interior pictures.

The case is protected by two hard pieces of foam along with a bag to protect it from scratching and dust. The window on the side panel and the front bezel are also covered by plastic to protect it from scratching or getting fingerprints.

Special thanks to Crucial for providing us with the M225 Solid State Drive for review!

Specifications & Features
Series Name: Crucial M225 Solid-State Drive
Capacity: 256GB Crucial M225 Solid-State Drive
Internal Cache: 64MB DRAM
Performance: 250MB/s READ, 200MB/s WRITE
NAND Flash Components: Multi-Level Cell (MLC) NAND Flash Memory
Interface: Serial ATA 3.0Gb/s (SATA)
Form Factor: 2.5″ (100.20 mm x 69.85 mm x 9.50 mm)

A Better Alternative.
Crucial’s M225 series solid-state drive is a better alternative to a traditional hard drive in notebook PCs. No moving parts provide for a quieter, cooler, and more durable storage solution designed for the demands of mobility.

Improves Performance.
Solid-State technology brings a new level of performance and reliability to netbook and notebook storage. With read speeds up to 250MB/s the Crucial M225 series can improve boot and application load times.

Memory Experts.
The Crucial brand of memory has long been synonymous with reliability and high-performance. Our expertise in NAND process technology enables us to optimize the performance and durability of Crucial solid-state drives.

Guaranteed Compatible.
Crucial M225 series employ a standard hard drive interface and dimensions, so it is an easy storage upgrade for most notebooks.

Packaging
Like most Solid State Drives we have reviewed here at ThinkComputers the M225 comes in a small box not much bigger than the drive itself. On the back there is a list of features and specifications.

Opening the box up we find the drive in an anti-static bag and an installation manual.

Features and Specifications

Packaging
The ASUS RT-N13U wireless router comes in a box decorated with the ASUS logo and mantra “Rock Solid, Heart Touching” prominently displayed on the primary surfaces. A picture of the device adorns the front, along with almost an overload of text describing the all-in-one printer management capability of the device.

The rear of the box shows an explanation of how the R13N-U can permit multiple users to use the same all-in-one printer sans wires, and sans configuration changes. The rear also touts a new router interface. Oh, tell me, sweet lords of usability, can it be true that ASUS has finally ditched the antiquated, Web 1.0-looking purple, green, and yellow abomination?

Inside the box is the router, a CD, some manuals, the power cord, and an Ethernet cable.

Special thanks to Chieftec for providing us with the BL-01B Case to review!

Features
• L-Type
• VESA Monitor Mount
o 19”-24” LCD Monitor Support
• Tool-less drive installation

Specifications
Series: BRAVO Series
Model: BL-01B-OP
Color: Black
With Power Supply: No
Motherboard Compatibility: ATX, micro ATX
External 5.25″ Drive Bays: 1
Internal 3.5″ Drive Bays: 3
Expansion Slots: 7
Front Ports: USB, Audio

Packaging
The BL-01 comes packaged in a plain brown box. The packaging isn’t the most attractive we’ve seen, but still provides a small bit of information and a front view of the case in black text. Two of the four sides have this information while the other two contain model numbers, serial numbers, etc. Opening the box reveals the case is protected by two large pieces of hard Styrofoam and a plastic bag, surely enough to protect it during shipping.

Though nVidia has recently come out with a few new cards, the GTX 295, GTX 285 and GTX 275, the venerable GTX 260 is still a quite powerful gaming card. And it really isn’t the same card it was when released, though released in the 65nm process, it has since been upgraded to the 55nm process. And originally sporting 192 stream processors, it now has 216.

I recently made the comment that the GTX 260 896MB video card is probably the best bang-for-the-buck gaming card deal going. It is a lot of video card for around $175, and gives reputable FPS when coupled with inexpensive processors like the Phenom II X3 720.

Today I will be looking at a GTX 260 by Sparkle, the GTX 260 Plus. This isn’t your typical GTX 260, as it sports 1792 megs of memory. I reviewed a couple of Radeon HD 4870 X2s that each had two gigs of memory, but they were actually two 4870s with 1GB of memory per GPU. This is a single GPU with not much less than two gigs for itself. Will this massive amount of graphics memory make a difference? Read on to see!

Special thanks to Sparkle for providing us with the GeForce GTX 260 Plus Video Card to review!

Specifications:
Model Number: SXX2601792D3S-VP
Interface: PCI Express 2.0 x16
GPU: geForce GTX 260
Core Clock: 576MHz
Shader Clock: 1242 MHz
Stream Processors: 216 Processor Cores
Memory: 1792MB GDDR3
Memory Clock: 2214 MHz
Memory Interface: 448-bit
RAMDAC: Dual 400 MHz RAMDAC
Max Resolution: 2560 x 1600
Power Connectors: 2 x 6 Pin PCI-E
Ports: 2 x DVI
3D API: DirectX 10, OpenGL 2.1

Features:
- 55nm manufacture process for lower power consumption
- Dual-link DVI supported
- HDCP ready
- Warranty: Lifetime Limited Parts and Labor

Packaging
The card comes in a sleeved white themed box with the typical icons denoting the card’s capabilities and features.

Inside the card is packed in bubblewrap and protected from the bundle by cardboard.

ASUS – (visit site)
P7P55D EVO Motherboard
ASUS MA3850M Graphics Card
EN9400GT Graphics Card
EN8400GS Silent Graphics Card
EAH4350 Silent Graphics Card
WL- 700GE Router
WL-500W Router
WL-500GP V2 Router
RT-N13 Router
Royal Knight CPU Cooler
Amazing Axe Square CPU Cooler
Triton 85 CPU Cooler
DRW-2014L1T Optical Drive (Lightscribe)

Thermaltake – (visit site)
Element G Case
Element T Case
BlacX Duet Hard Drive Dock

Kingston – (visit site)
5x DataTraveler mini10 8GB USB Flash Drives
5x MobileLiteG2 Card Readers with 4GB SDHC cards

In Win – (visit site)
Aplha 360 Case
Metal Suit GD Case
Commander 850W Power Supply

OCZ – (visit site)
Platinum 4GB DDR3 PC3-10666 Kit

NZXT – (visit site)
LEXA S Case

CoolIT – (visit site)
Domino A.L.C. Liquid CPU Cooler

So how can you win? There are actually A LOT of ways to win these prizes!

- The easiest way to win is to just simply leave a comment on this post. We will randomly choose 5 people who comment on this post.

- We really want your feedback on the new site design so we are also randomly choosing 3 people that comment on the Welcome to the new ThinkComputers.org post.

- We are keeping track of the top commenters on the site and at the end of 3 weeks the top 3 commenters on the site will win the ASUS P7P55D Motherboard, Thermaltake Element G Case, and the OCZ Platinum DDR3 PC3-10666 Memory Kit respectively.

- We really want to get the word out about this contest so if you let people on Twitter know you entered the contest by posting this status, “I just entered @thinkcomps HUGE Giveaway: http://retwt.me/1Km00 32 prizes up for grabs! Easy to enter!” Or you can just click here to make that your status. Also please make sure you are following us on Twitter too! 5 people who post this status and are following us will be selected as winners.

- Finally we will be randomly asking trivia questions on our Twitter account throughout the 3 week contest period. The first person to @reply us with the answer will win the prize for that day. So be sure to check our Twitter page often!

Check back to see what prizes get checked off the list as they are given away!

**This contest is for US and Canada residents only!
** Contest will run through November 22, 2009

Yes it’s Wordpress!
As many of you might have guess the new site is based on Wordpress. We considered many different content management systems, but Wordpress seemed like the right choice because so many sites use it and all of the available plugins and addons that you can get for it. The old site was running on a flat file system that was not that efficient and also made pages load slower. With Wordpress the entire site is on a database which will make it load faster and make it easier to change things site-wide instead of having to update every page. Also using Wordpress will help us with SEO and make it easier for other sites to search and index our pages.

Site Overview
Starting at the top of the page we have 4 “Featured” posts there, these are the latest 4 posts tagged featured. If you want to see all of the featured posts you can check them out in the featured category. The 4 top units we hope will bring more traffic to the articles we want to feature.

Moving down to the logo as you can see our logo was been “upgraded”, it’s about time the guy had a LCD monitor head instead of a CRT! His computer has also been upgraded as well. Next to the logo we make it really easy for you to subscribe to our RSS feed, follow us on Twitter and even subscribe to the RSS feed via e-mail.

The navigation of the site is below the 720 x 90 ad. The larger links go to pages and external elements like our forums. The smaller links are our post categories each have drop down boxes with subcategories. So if you hover over reviews the box will drop down and show you all of the subcategories under reviews. You can click on the reviews link for a list of the latest reviews or you can click on a subcategory for a list of the latest reviews in that specific subcategory. On the far right you have a search box, something we never had on the site before!

If you are on the main page of the site it will list the 10 latest posts on the site. If you scroll all the way to the bottom of the site you will see an Older Articles button that will take you back and show you 10 more previous posts.

The Sidebar
As you may have noticed we are only running 1 sidebar with the current layout. We think this will make it easier for you to read the main content of the site and it makes the site less messy. We have a popular posts widget that will show the top 5 popular posts for the current month. Below that we have split the sidebar into 2 columns. On the left there is an ad and on the right we have a listing of all our categories.

The sidebar becomes 1 column again and just like the old site we have a list of our 10 latest posts. The recent comments will list 5 of the latest comments and the top commenters widget will list the 5 top commenters on the site. Below that we have the tag cloud which will make it easy for you to see what we are writing about most on the site.

Post Pages
With this new layout all of our posts are easier to read with larger text and LESS ADS! We are still using the image popup system, just one that is more optimized. When you click on an image it will white out the background of the page and bring up the image. Also it will preload all of the images on the page so if you want to click through the images the will all load very quickly. To close the popup all you have to do is click off the image or click the close link on the bottom right of the image.

At the bottom of each post will have previous page and next page links as well as drop down menu that lists the pages if you want to easily skip through the posts pages. Below all of that we have the related posts that will list 5 of the most relevant related posts. This should help you discover more content on the site. Next to the related posts we have sharing icons for Facebook, Twitter, Delicious, Digg, and StumbleUpon. We also have the AddThis button that will allow you to share the post on pretty much any bookmarking or social site out there.

Instead of using our forums for comments on posts we are using Disqus Comments. After doing some research it was an easy choice to pick Disqus. Now to post comments on any post you are able to login via Disqus login, Facebook, Twitter, and OpenID. You can also just provide your name and e-mail to post comments as well.

Finally at the way bottom of the page you can see who actually wrote the article.

Where is all the content?
As you can see all of our content is not moved over to the new site yet. This is because the old site was flat file so it was not like we could simply import all of the content over. Over the past 2 weeks we have been moving reviews and articles over. We have everything up to April 09 on the new site. We will be slowly moving everything else over, probably around 5 posts a day until everything is moved over.

If you want to check out some of the old content don’t worry it is not lost. The old site is still functional you can get to it here http://www.thinkcomputers.org/old/. Also check out the Archive page for a full listing of where everything is.

We Want Your Feedback!
Obviously this is a big step in the right direction for us and we want to know what you think of the site. So please leave us your thoughts and suggestions in the comments below so we can make changes that will make your experience here even better. Also stay tuned for a contest that we will be announcing tomorrow.

Features

Great expandability
- Maelstrom supports 5* 5.25″ & 6*3.5″ drive bays and is compatible with 4 CPU M/B ranging from Micro-ATX to Extended-ATX.
User friendly ergonomic and mechanical design
- The patented shock-free railing system protects the drive bays and is designed for quick maintenance and upgrading 5.25″ devices. The Retaining holes on the M/B tray offer easy CPU cooler replacement.
Superior acoustic and vibration solution
- The Maelstrom offers a quiet environment and silent operation for gamers by using the installed acoustic absorbers laid inside the chassis. The tough casing structure efficiently reduces the acoustic noise levels and vibrations.
Revolutionary high efficiency thermal solution
- Ten front, side, and top 12cm fans enhance airflow while a meshed front and top panel provide superior ventilation. The Maelstrom offers an unparalleled thermal solution for any gaming system.
Luxurious exterior and interior painting
- The Maelstrom is fully draped in a dark metallic black, offering much more luxury and refinement apart from other normal chassis. With black coating inside and outside of the chassis, the Maelstrom can prevent damage from humidity, oxidation, and extended the product lifespan.

Specifications

Case Size: Full Tower Chassis
Material: SECC(0.8~1.0mm)
Dimension(HxWxD): 550 x 225 x 601mm
Power Supply:
- 1. ATX 12V
- 2. PS 2 or EPS Power
I/O Expansion Slots: 7 Slots
Thermal Solution:
- 1. Front:12cm Fan x 1
- 2. Rear:12cm Fan x 1
- 3. Top:12cm Fan x 1 (Maximum Supports 12cm Fan x 2)
- 4. Side:22cm LED Fan with switch x 1 (Maximum Supports 12cm Fan x 6)
- 5. Water-Cooling Hole Ready
Front I/O:
- 1. USB2.0*4
- 2. e-SATA*2
- 3. IEEE 1394A*1(FireWire)
- 4. HD/AC’ 97 Audio
External Drive Bay:
- 1. 5.25” x 5
- 2. Includes FDD Cage x 1 (5.25″ Convert into 3.5″)
Internal Drive Bay: 3.5” x 6
M/B:
- 1. ATX
- 2. Micro ATX
- 3. E-ATX (12″ x 13″)

Packaging

The In Win Maelstrom comes in a high quality box. The box, with a glossy black background, features an image of the Maelstrom and some fancy lettering along with a swirl of air going into the case. The opposing side of the box shows a side view of the case with the blue LED fan illuminated.

The sides of the box go into some basic features and specifications of the full tower chassis.

Two pieces of soft foam and a plastic bag protect the case, while a small cutout for the hardware is placed into one of the pieces of foam.

A sticker with the words “Do not use as a handle” is located on the top bar on the front of the case, just to forewarn you before using it.

Features

- Immense Performance: 5 fan capability (side 120mm LED and rear 120mm exhaust included) Included 9-fin rifle bearing NZXT fans rated at 42CFM and 23db
- Night light: A ambient light sits over the 5.25″ drives to give visibility in dark rooms or at LAN parties
- Black on Black: Smoked clear window and a black interior gives the best combination of black on black
- Meshed front panel allows for more airflow
- 5.25″ stealth bay to keep a clean look
- NZXT solid state bracket allows for two SSD drives to be installed
- Wire routing: motherboard punched holes allows for quick CPU bracket removable and optimal wire routing, turned HDD also helps with managing cables
- Pre-drilled water cooling holes on the back plate
- Front mounted USB, audio, and ESATA ports
- Support for external dual radiator at the top of the chassis
- High end graphics card support, the M59 features space that is especially designed to fit longer 10.” Cards

Specifications

MODEL: M59 SERIES
CASE TYPE: MID TOWER Black interior chassis
FRONT PANEL MATERIAL: Steel
DIMENSIONS (W x H x D): 190 X 449 X 508 mm
COOLING SYSTEM:
- FRONT, 1 x 120mm
- SIDE, 1 x 120mm LED fan@1200RPM, 23db/42CFM (included)
- TOP, 2 x 140/120mm
- REAR, 1 x 120mm, 23db/42CFM (included)
DRIVE BAYS: 11 DRIVE BAYS
- 4 EXTERNAL 5.25″ DRIVE BAYS
- 7 INTERNAL 3.5″ DRIVE BAYS
MATERIAL(S): Steel Construction
EXPANSION SLOTS: 7
POWER SUPPLY: 500 WATT PS2 ATX 12V 2.0 ( OPTIONAL )
WEIGHT: 6.5 KGS (W/O Power)
MOTHERBOARD SUPPORT: MOTHERBOARDS: ATX, MICRO-ATX, BABY AT

Packaging

Most NZXT cases come in very colorful and informative packaging and the M59 is no different. On the front there is a large picture of the M59 and on the back there is a list of features.

Opening the box up the case itself is nicely protected by large pieces of Styrofoam and plastic. When you take the case out of the box you also notice that NZXT has protected the side window and front panel with plastic covering as well.

Features & Specifications

- Super High Efficiency [up 90%]
- DC to DC Converter Design
- Tight Voltage Regulation
- Highly Reliable 105C Japanese Brand Capacitor
- Solid Caps on +12Vs
- Active Power Factor Correction [99% PF Typical]
- Dual Sided PCB Layout
- San Ace Silent Fan [SANYO DENKI]
- Smart & Silent Fan Control [S2FC]
- Ultra Ventilation [Honeycomb Structure]
- Multi-GPU Technologies Supported
- All-in-One DC Cabling Design
- Universal AC Input
- Patented Easy Swap Connector
- 5 Year Warranty

Packaging

The S12D comes in a standard clamshell box depicting the unit inside and highlighting the various certifications and specifications attained by the unit, such as 80PLUS and SLI certifications.

The most interesting graph on the back is the efficiency graph. Most even enthusiast-level folks don’t understand the point of all the talk about efficiency. A certain amount of electricity is required to power the unit, but some of that is given off as heat. Where another PSU might require 500W to yield 400W to the computer, thus displacing 100W of heat, the S12D requires only 444W to yield 400W, sacrificing only 44W to heat.

The box includes the PSU, a quick start guide, a manual, a power cord, and a floppy connector adapter.