VR-Zone

With the release of Sandy Bridge-E today, budding overclockers will once again need to familiarize themselves with a new architecture and platform - starting with official safe operating voltages to run the chips, Quad Channel XMP 1.3 memory kits, bundled air/water thermal solutions for the new LGA 2011 socket and optimum LN2 temperatures clocking potential.

Read more ››

At VR-Zone, we continuously strive to provide you with product reviews of the highest quality. To enable us to test the thermal performance of computer casings in a consistent and repeatable manner, we have designed and built the Integrated Casing Torture Test. This test platform simulates the heat load produced by actual systems and allows us to take accurate thermal readings using laboratory equipment and customized software. Read on for more details!

Read more ››

The recently released Nvidia GTX 560 comes in various forms. Different brands offer different clockspeed, coolers and also memory size. How do you decide which one to get?

Read more ››

When shopping for an uninterruptible power supply (UPS), almost everyone would have noticed that they are either rated in VA's only or in both VA's and Watt's. This is not so with the vast majority of household equipment, including the very power supply unit (PSU) of the computer itself which comes rated in Watts only. As a result, this usually leads to confusion as most people either lack the technical knowledge to understand the difference between VA and Watt units or, even worse, do not even realize that there is a difference.

Read more ››

Technology enthusiasts and experts know that the presence of an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) can be vital to the longevity of their technology equipment, especially when they are powered by unstable and / or badly maintained power grids; however most people are unaware of the advantages that owning a UPS can have. But the real frustration starts when someone begins a research on which product to buy because most people cannot understand the differences between the several different UPS types available, especially when excessive marketing hype is involved. Thus, it is very common for most users, even technology adepts, to be confused over the different UPS systems or even be unaware of their existence at all.

The largest percentage of users who understand what a UPS does believe that there are only two type of UPS systems, the "on-line" and the "off-line" UPS, and / or believe that UPS products are designed only to protect computers; that is simply not true as there are at least seven different types of UPS systems and a few of them are able to power entire buildings or industrial facilities.

Read more ››

Even though power supply units are the most critical part of almost every electronic device, being a component absolutely vital to their operation, they rarely are given the attention they deserve. Almost no technology equipment can operate without them since electronic devices cannot operate using the utility grid AC voltage, which also varies in level and frequency depending on your position on the planet.

There are more than eight types of power supplies currently available; in this article we are going to focus on only the two types available for household and business equipment: linear and switching power supplies.

Read more ››

Through daily experience with common household equipment, many people should have noticed the terms AC and DC voltage and / or current; for example on a car battery which outputs 12V DC voltage or a household lighting lamp which needs 230V AC voltage. Yet only very few people can actually realize even that there are differences between AC and DC current, let alone understand the differences themselves. The purpose of this article is to explain the main characteristics and highlight the differences of AC and DC current, in terms understandable by people with very low or without technical expertise, along with providing some encyclopedic knowledge on the subject.

Read more ››

At VR-Zone.com, we continuously strive to provide you with the highest quality and most accurate product reviews. Thoroughly and accurately testing a power supply is a complicated matter, not only because the testing has to be done in a controlled environment and with full control over the power load but also because laboratory grade instruments have to be used for taking readings. In order to achieve that, we designed a specialized testing station for computer power supplies, emulating real world conditions as closely as possible while giving us complete control over environmental and / or power load aspects, all while taking readings and recordings through laboratory interfaces and high accuracy instruments.

Read more ››

At VR-Zone.com, we continuously strive to provide you with the highest quality and most accurate product reviews. You can certainly test a cooler by installing it on a CPU or a GPU, yet this is not a very professional method for various reasons. The differences between the processors, the rather inaccurate motherboard readings and the instability of the thermal load are but a few. Furthermore, nobody can guarantee that the same hardware will be compatible or even available to test a large number of coolers on it in order to get comparable results. Therefore, we decided to create a thermal benching station which can be used to test any form of cooler and achieve an exact thermal load. We took this a step further and designed it so that it can also control its input power both manually and automatically while taking thermal and acoustics readings at the same time.

Read more ››

Our original AMD Radeon HD 6970 voltage modification guide verified, now updated to encompass all C200 PCB types. We show you how you can gain complete voltage control!

Read more ››

'Tis the season to be jolly, and while there's no snow in sunny-and-occasional-rainy Singapore, many of us still celebrate Christmas here. If you haven't done your Christmas shopping for your beloved yet (you know who you are), here are twenty products, both hardware and consumer products, we at VR-Zone.com have come up with that we think would make wonderful gifts.

Read more ››

It has been a week since the launch of the AMD Radeon HD 6870, and none of the usual software tools seem to be able to deliver overclockers the mystic strength of complete voltage control. Do we still wait? We don't think so.

Read more ››

We show you how to wring the last bit of memory bandwidth out of your spanking new AMD Radeon HD 6870 for next-to-nothing. Enough said.

Read more ››

Earlier this year, we heard that OCZ Technology Group Inc. was concentrating on Solid State Drive (SSD) storage solutions. With a new SSD manufacturing facility, an all-new proprietary High-Speed Data Link (HSDL) interface, and a plethora of SSD products under their belt, even the most seasoned hardware enthusiast can get confused sometimes.

Read more ››

Notice that the GIGABYTE GA-H55N-USB3 becomes a better CPU overclocking platform when Load Line Calibration is disabled? We investigate why, and show you how to maximise your overclocks with a simple modification, or two.

Read more ››