Author: admin

Choosing a Gaming Laptop, Back-to-School 2013 Edition

We regularly get asked for opinions on what product is “best” for a certain use case. Naturally, what makes a product perfect for one user may not matter much at all to someone else. Recently I was asked for advice on gaming laptops, and as this is a common question it seemed a perfect fit for another “best xyz” guide. The Haswell and Richland launches are now behind us, supply of the new processors is sufficient, and we’ve also got a variety of new GPUs to consider. What’s the best gaming laptop your money can buy today? First you’ll need to decide just how much of your stash you’re willing to part with, and then you need to weigh…

GIGABYTE Launch H81 Series Motherboards

When it comes to our motherboard reviews, we typically attempt to focus on the high sellers with distinguishing features – this normally means chipsets aimed at the mainstream to high end with more capabilities. Every so often we touch on something aimed more at the entry level or a cheaper chipset, and today GIGABYTE are launching their H81 series motherboards – entry level for Haswell. To put H81 into perspective, the chipset offers two SATA 6 Gbps ports, two USB 3.0 ports, no RAID, no Smart Response Technology, a single PCIe 2.0 x16 from the CPU and six PCIe 2.0 lanes from the chipset. GIGABYTE's H81 range covers both thinner ATX and micro-ATX motherboards, where PCIe 2.0 x1 and PCI ports occupy the extra slots down…