Formerly codenamed Clarksfield, the 3 CPUs have arrived under the Core i7 moniker as the 1.6GHz Core i7 720QM, 1.7GHz Core i7 820QM and 2.0GHz Core i7 920XM Extreme Edition.

Arriving alongside Intel’s PM55 Express Chipset, the mobile Core i7 processors are equipped with new-and-improved Turbo Boost technology, allowing for the 2GHz Extreme Edition to run a single core at an impressive 3.2GHz.

A wave of notebooks equipped with Intel’s latest parts have already been announced by the likes of Toshiba and Dell. With no challenger in terms of performance, Intel’s Extreme Edition part – priced at over $1,000 in thousand-unit quantities – remains a ludicrously-expensive option and will appear in only premium notebooks. Here’s how the three processors compare:

Solid State Hard Drives (SSD’s) are causing quite a stir in the disk drive world. Some absolutely love the performance they offer, while others prefer to stick with their mechanical counterparts.

Myself, personally, am a believer of the SSD revolution. I can remember my younger years, taking my 286/12Mhz Elonex PC to bits, with its huge 1Mb of RAM and 20Mb (yes, 20 megabyte) hard drive. And then it struck me. Hard Disk technology is probably the only aspect of PC hardware that hasn’t evolved. Sure, manufacturers have managed to increase the capacity of their hard disks and keep up with interfaces like SATA and SATA-II, but the fact still remains they are all based on the same technology since they were created in the 1950s – An electromagnetic motor which spins a platter which is read by a head which is connected to an arm.

OK OK, so enough of the history lesson. Lets looks at the SSD on review here, a Corsair Extreme Series X64 MLC-Flash, 2.5″ SATA II SSD drive. Corsair’s Extreme Series drives are among the fastest available today. The combination of the Indilinx Barefoot controller, Samsung flash memory, and a generous onboard cache, results in extreme performance with up to 240MB/s sequential read and 170MB/s sequential write speeds (I’ll be testing these claims a little later in this article).

Available in 32GB, 64GB, 128GB, and 256GB configurations, the Extreme Series drives boast much higher read and write times. Will the benchmarks match Corsair’s claims ? Read on….

* Maximum sequential read speed up to 240MB/s
* Maximum sequential write speed up to 170MB/s
* Indilinx Barefoot controller and Samsung MLC NAND flash for maximum performance
* 64MB DRAM cache for stutter-free performance
* No moving parts for increased durability over standard hard disk drives
* Decreased power usage for cool and quiet operation and increased laptop battery life
* 100+ Year Life Expectancy (MTBF)
* User upgradeable firmware
* Two year warranty

A fairly comprehensive spec list there, now lets take a closer look at what you get:

And that’s pretty much it. Nothing else apart from a white box, containing a blister pack (not pictured) and inside that, the SSD itself. Whilst other manufacturers may bundle in drive rails, SATA and power cables, this maybe one area where Corsair have managed to keep the price down.

Upon installing the drive in our test PC and installing Windows 7, I couldn’t help but think the installation was progressing very quickly, so I was keen to start running some benchmarks.

The drive was connected to a MSI GD65 motherboard using Intel’s latest P55 chipset. The storage controller was set to RAID in the BIOS. Once windows had finished installing, I performed the following tweaks:

Superfetch disabled
Drive indexing disabled
Windows Search disabled
Windows write-cache buffer flushing disabled
Volume shadow copy disabled

First up,  ATTO:

When transfering 128Kb blocks or larger the speed is very consistent which really shows off the Indilinx Barefoot controllers (w/ 256Kb cache) performance.

HD Tune:

HD Tach (click for larger image):

And a series of Everest tests (click for larger images):

Read:

Linear Read:

Average Read Access:

Random Read:

Buffered Read:

If your looking for a high quality SSD made by a major memory producer then I highly, highly recommend the Corsair Elite Series X64 64Gb. Also available is the Corsair X128 128GB and X256 256GB SSD drives, which are apparently even faster.

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If I asked you to name 5 enthusiast motherboard manufacturers, I’d be fairly certain “MSI” wouldn’t be among the responses.  MSI are looking to change that, however,  with the release of their P55 motherboard range. The GD-65 which is being reviewed here, sits in the middle of the line up: the P55-CD53 below it, while the P55-GD80 sits above it.

The MSI P55-GD65 (in fact, all boards) are based upon Intel’s P55 Express chipset and supports all current LGA-1156 CPUs including the Core i7 860 and Core i5 750. The P55 chipset moves all of the Northbridge functionality to the processor, so the PCI Express lanes for graphics cards are on the CPU die itself. This saves costs over having a CPU+NB+SB combination of earlier chipsets.

The OC Genie is a new overclocking processor that MSI has put on their P55 motherboards. This allows one button overclocking of the CPU and Memory. The OC Genie button overclocks the system in 1 second compared to the 30 minute process of overclocking most motherboards require in the BIOS. MSI says the OC Genie will overclock the CPU 300% higher than using the traditional Intel Turbo Boost.

The GD-65 certainly look the part, with MSI opting for a Blue/Black theme from top to bottom, but what about the features ?

• Support for Intel Lynnfield Core i5 and Core i7 LGA1156 CPUs
• Intel P55 PCH
• Four 1.5V DDR3 DIMM slots supporting up to 16GB of memory
• Two Gigabit Ethernet controllers: Realtek 8112L and 8110SC
• Two PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slots providing either one x16 or two x8 links
• One PCI-Express x4 slot (open ended)
• Two PCI slots
• Six P55 SATA 3Gbps ports supporting Intel Matrix RAID 0, 1, 10, 5 and JBOD
• One IDE port supporting two devices, one SATA and one eSATA from JMicron JMB363
• 14 USB 2.0 ports – eight on rear I/O, six via pin-outs
• VIA VT6315N IEEE1394a Firewire supporting two ports – one via pin-outs, one on the rear I/O
• Realtek ALC889 7.1-channel High-Definition audio codec

Packaging is a little understated, which makes a nice change. More importantly, let’s see what’s in the box :

Whilst MSI have included all the correct bits to get going, it’s a real mixed bag (no pun intended).
I like the inclusion of the floppy and IDE cables for their respective connectors on the motherboard, the SLI and Crossfire bridges (seeing as the P55 chipset supports both Crossfire and SLI technologies) and the molex to sata power cables.
What I’m a little bit puzzled about is the inclusion of only 4 SATA cables when there are 7 connectors on the motherboard along with 3 USB headers with only1 twin USB expansion bracket.
As I said, no show stoppers here, certainly enough to get you up and running, but a questionable set of accessories nonetheless.

Lets take a closer look at MSI’s black/blue theme, along with the overall layout:

MSI has put a 8-pin power connector near the top edge. of the motherboard. Some of the P55 boards have four-pin power connectors, but this one has a 8-pin connector that most PSUs have. The CPU Fan header is located near the middle of the board right under the DrMOS heatsink.MSI has a heatsink covering the P55 Express chipset.

The CPU area of the board is clear of obstacles with two rows of Solid capacitors aligning it. The LGA-1156 interface uses a similar installation method to that of the LGA-775 interface lift the lever lowers the CPU into the Socket, lower the cover and lever making sure to install the cover front under the front screw and install the CPU cooler.

The 24-pin ATX power connector sits behind the Floppy drive connector. Below Floppy drive connector is a sideways facing IDE connector, followed by six SATA ports, the maximum that the Intel P55 chipset supports natively. Intel’s PCH controls the SATA. There is a JMicron363 chip on the board to support the seventh SATA port on the board and the external SATA port on the Rear I/O. The IDE controller and FDD controller are also controlled by the JMB 363.

Expansion on the board consists of two PCI Express gen 2 x16 slots, A PCI Express gen 2 x4 slot, two PCI Express gen2 x1 slots and two PCI slots. Multiple graphics cards are supported in both SLI and Crossfire mode. As the maximum number of PCI Express lanes on the LGA-1156 CPU is 16 and the controller is on the CPU die itself, the two slots will be divided into x8 x8 mode. There is a 2-slot separation between the PCI Express x16 slots, allowing for two slot video cards to be installed easily..

The bottom left side of the board starts off with the FP I/O connectors, followed by three USB headers, a COM1 header, Base Clock + and – buttons, Power button, OC Genie button, SPDIF Out header, Firewire header CD In header and Audio header. There is a OC Genie chip which is the actual processor that comes into operation when the button is pushed. Two Realtek RTL8111D PHYs handle the dual LAN jacks.

Onboard sound on the board is provided by the Realtek ALC889A CODEC that has been seen on many of the P55 motherboards. This chip fully supports the High Definition Audio standard and supports Multi-Streaming up to 7.1+2 channel simultaneous output. The rear I/O on the board consist of the standard PS/2 mouse, keyboard ports, Optical Out and Coaxial Out S/PDIF connectors, 7 USB ports, two Gigabit LAN jacks, a Firewire port, a special USB/external SATA Combo port and 6 jacks for the onboard audio.

I was suprised to see the inclusion of voltage readout points on such a mid-range board, but it shows just how serious MSI are about overclocking. This blue plastic rectangle with six square holes houses pins that offer voltage check points, so you can take a multimeter to them and get a real-time readout, without having to rely on often inaccurate software or BIOS readings.  The pins offer all the important readouts: VTT, DDR, CPU and PCH voltage. MSI include 2 ground points, so 2 voltages can be measure at the same time.

The voltage readout points imply that this motherboard will be used on a bench, however MSI doesn’t include reset or clear CMOS buttons: two of which overclockers find the most useful.  Instead you must rely on a jumper to clear CMOS.

We’re still waiting for a half decent CPU cooler to test our 750 CPU, but initial results of 4Ghz look very promising:

We’ll bring you some more screenshots and BIOS options as soon as we can !

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We couldn’t get G.Skill to send us their 1600 C8 2×2gb Ripjaws kit, but seeing as I needed some memory for my new P55 rig, I purchased some. Their new line up of RAM is very eye-catching to say the least, from the “Perfect Storm” and “Trident” models, right through to the Ripjaws:

G.Skill’s specs:

Good to see the lifetime warranty, this is something we’ve seen as “the norm” from G.Skill. Slightly worrying was the “2N” part of the CAS Latency, but I was hoping that it would run at 1N with a bit of tweaking.

A closer inspection of the RAM reveals a solid heatspreader, which in turn allows access to the ICs on the module (no D9’s here !):

Test Setup:
MSI P55-GD65
Intel Core i5 750

Once I assembled the module again, they were installed into the above setup and I booted straight at 200×20. Interestingly, the BIOS on the GD65 did not want to automatically set the modules to 8-8-8-24, instead, detecting them as 9-9-9-24. A quick tweak later and I had them running at 8-8-8-24-1N.

Not a bad start, apart from Everest not quite reading the new P55 chipset even though I grabbed the latest version from their site.

Next, I tried a few combinations of lower timings and higher voltages, but I could not get any sort of stable results (this could be down to the motherboard), and decided to concentrate on seeing how far they would overclock, and boy was I suprised.

A quick increase of 90Mhz to 1692 at 8-8-8-24-1N didnt seem to phase the Ripjaws, so I kept going.

Unfortunately the i5 750 CPU is multiplier locked, so I couldn’t quite get 4Ghz on the CPU, but the Ripjaws were once again happy with an overclock of 100Mhz, again at 8-8-8-24-1N and standardvolts of 1.65v (1.66v set in BIOS).

The system still wasn’t showing any signs of instability, so I decided to carry on

And this is where I ended up. DIMM voltage was raised to 1.73v and timings put back to 9-9-9-24-1N, but the ripjaws were happy to run at 2114Mhz. Thats an overclock of over 200Mhz. Pretty impressive.

Personally I prefer to run RAM with tighter timings than outright speed, but it’s clear that these Ripjaws from G.Skill will give you the overclocking flexibility for any combination of multipliers, base clocks and dividers.

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Need a reminder on what the RAIDDrive actually is? Put simply, it’s a RAID configuration of multiple Super Talent SSDs, housed in a 258mm x 112mm x 25mm unit designed to interface with a system’s PCIe x8 slot. The end result is capacities of up to 2TB, and seriously-blazing read and write speeds of up to 1.4GB/s and 1.2GB/s, respectively.

The RAIDDrive will be available in three models; the RAIDDrive ES, designed for Enterprise environments, the RAIDDrive WS, designed for workstation use, and the RAIDDrive GS, designed for gamers with money to burn. Here’s the spec table for them:

According to reports, AMD will unleash its next wave of high-end graphics products in under two weeks. Wednesday September 23rd is the date being bandied about, with AMD expected to launch two new products in the form of the ATI Radeon HD 5870 and ATI Radeon HD 5850.

It’s a beast of a product, equipped with dual-link DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort connectivity. The trend for bigger, badder graphics cards clearly hasn’t subsided.

Specifications are already surfacing around the web, but we’ll wait for official AMD figures before we publish. Knowing that this is the first high-end product from AMD’s Radeon HD 5870 line, its nomenclature alone suggests that it’ll be quicker than anything before it.

Here are a couple of snaps of the ATI Radeon HD 5870 – a card that AMD hopes will dethrone NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 295 as the single-card performance king.

Hardened enthusiasts will be happy to hear that rumours are suggesting that a dual-GPU variant – the Radeon HD 5870 X2 – will arrive shortly after.

The HD 5870 supposedly uses some sort of cooling that ATI hasn’t tried before. And thanks in part to the small size of the GPU, the HD 5870 X2 is going not have two seperate GPU’s — instead it will be two RV770 cores stacked on top of each other, sort of like Pentium-D style.

On launch day, MSI will be knocking a huge 55 per cent off the asking price of its two range-topping boards. Consequently, the P55-GD65, with a suggested retail price of £139.99, will be made available for as little as £63! The top-end P55-GD80, meanwhile, would normally fetch £189 and could be yours during the promotion for just £85.50.

MSI tells us it will offer the promotional prices on a limited quantity of stock – meaning the offer could last only hours. The promotion will run at SCAN*, Ebuyer, CCL and Overclockers, and will be limited to one board per customer.

This move may well tempt users who were happy with their 775 setup to take the plunge earlier than expected

It has every feature its predecessor the X58 Classified 3-way SLI does, including a 10-phase digital PWM power design for the CPU that can provide up to 600W of power to the CPU for extreme overclocking. The pins in the LGA-1366 socket have 300% more elemental gold for better conductivity. The power is further conditioned by low-ESR film capacitors. A much larger monolithic heatsink cools the chipset. The portion over the northbridge features a fan for active cooling. Other features include support for up to 24 GB of triple-channel DDR3 memory, 9 SATA 3 Gb/s connectors, 8 channel audio, dual gigabit Ethernet, and Firewire. The X58 Classified 4-Way SLI has been listed on the company store, placed on pre-order for US $449.99.

Firstly, before we start, lets get 3 things out of the way:

• The 1st, most important thing is neither myself, Chilled-PC or wherever this guide ends up will take NO responsibility for damage to your hardware. You do this at your own risk

• Secondly, doing this will more than likely void any warranty you had on your motherboard. Although I had a chat with EVGA and they advised me that as long as there is no physical damage to the board, they will accept it, providing that it is in it’s original state (ie, no nail varnish or liquid tape on the board, and no grease in the socket).

• Thirdly, there is no set way of doing this. Many people have different ways. I discovered another way whilst doing this method. You will find your own method once you know WHY it is your doing this…..

Which leads us on nicely to WHY we have to do this. Well, ever taken a cold beer or drink out of your fridge and left it on the table for a few minutes ? You’ll probably notice that the bottle is dripping wet on the outside with condensation. This is because of the temperature of the bottle is colder than the temperature outside of the fridge. The same principle applies here. We dont really want water dripping on our nice new £300 classified do we ?

So what we are trying to achieve here is an AIR TIGHT seal around the processor socket, minimising or eliminating the chance of condensaton forming.

Lets get started:

First, 2 shots of the Classified. Yep, you’ve guessed it. We’re going to be working around the socket of the board.

Now, I removed the CPU retention bracket:

Once removed, I identify the outline of the surface area I need to coat in clear nail varnish:

Then, I put the CPU projection cover back on the socket, and begin to “paint” the motherboard with the nail varnish. I normally use just one THICK coat. This will protect the board just in case any water was to form:

While I’m waiting for the front to dry, I turn my attention to the back of the motherboard, and again identify the outline of the surface area I want to coat:

Then I coat the area within this outline, again once THICK coat:

Once dry or nearly dry, I take a sheet of neoprene and begin to cut it to the boundaries of the board. With this piece, I slide it under the NB heatstink, make sure its right up against the MOFSET heatsink and close to the DIMM socket:

Then I start in the easiest corner, and begin to cut round the components on the board. A stanley blade works well for cutting the neoprene cleanly and accurately. [B]Tip – [/b] Pressing down on the neoprene will leave an indent on the underside to allow you to cut quite accurately

I used the “press down” method to cut holes for the caps. Its worth noting at this stage that I try and keep the neoprene in one piece:

Cutting more out of the neoprene, its beginning to take shape. The gap in the middle of the 6 capacitors I will fill with a small piece of neoprene:

Cutting around the capacitors near the DIMM socket:

For the socket, I generally start in the middle and begin to cut outwards. Measure twice and cut once. Its a pain when you cut just that little bit too much neoprene away and you have to start again :

Next, the CPU retention plate gets screwed back in and we can start to see a nice seal should be achieved:

Concentrating on the back of the board now, again I used the “press down” technique to get an inprint of the back plate of the retention socket so I can cut it out of the neoprene. Notice I didn’t cut all the way through the neoprene, I basically sliced away at it:

Once the neoprene sits flush on the back of the board, I use a small, long allen key to poke through the CPU heatsink holes, pushing through the back sheet of neoprene, and the front at the same time. Then I put the screws in:

I also like to put some neoprene on my benchtable, 2 sheets in fact, although in the picture there’s only one:

Now for our second layer of neoprene for the front. I cut just enough so I can see the CPU and a bit of the retention bracket. Some people will put a layer of high absorbant tissue inbetween the 2 layers, but I never have done before:

Time to mount the board on the bench table:

And with the phase unit attached:

And the DICE pot:

Once you’ve finished benching, I like to remove the phase head or the DICE pot as quickly as possible but ONLY after about 3-5 minutes. (it may be frozen to the CPU). Once removed, I scrunch up an old t-shirt and put it in place of the DICE pot. This helps catch any condensation and help bring the CPU and retention bracket back up to normal temp quickly.

We’ve already seen ASUS’ P5P55D EVO, P7P55D DELUXE and Maximus III Gene, as well as GIGABYTE’s P55M-UD4 and MSI’s P55-GD65. However, if you just can’t make up your mind, here’s another contender to add to your list from Taiwanese manufacturer Foxconn:

It’s called the Inferno Katana, and it’ll be the latest addition to Foxconn’s high-end Quantum Force range. The board makes use of Intel’s P55 chipset and sports an LGA1156 socket awaiting the upcoming Intel Core i5 750, Core i7 870, and Core i7 860 processors.

Foxconn’s board is both ATI CrossFire and NVIDIA SLI certified, and two of the three PCIe x16 slots can be configured as x8 lanes in a dual-GPU arrangement. Elsewhere, there are dual-channel DDR3 memory slots officially supporting surprisingly-limited speeds of up to 1,800MHz.

The board looks about as menacing as they come, and there’s plenty of overclocker-friendly features including Foxconn’s i-Tweaker, Green Efficient Power control and Fuzzy Equaliser. The latter, in case you were wondering, is a series of LED lights displaying PWM loading status. If you like flashing lights, you’ll also enjoy Foxconn’s Core Nerve – that’s an LED that’ll blink in relation to system load.

No details on pricing yet, but expect the board to land early next month alongside Intel’s new processors. Need more detail? Check out Foxconn’s complete specification below.