Computer Reviews

The Logitech Z-5500 speaker system presents another check mark in the good books for Logitech. The Logitech Z-5500 manages to pick up where their older Z-680 leaves off.

With a whopping big 10 inch sub-woofer to handle bass and 5 satellite speakers to do the work of the higher range stuff it produces sound that is very impressive, especially if it is used with a computer system.

The main features…

• 505W RMS power (317W for satellites and 188W for subwoofer
• Multiple input sources (Digital optical, digital coaxial, 6 channel, analog)
• Hardware encoding for Dolby Digital and DTS
• Central control panel

The satellite speakers of the system are designed to give the maximum effect ot both the mid and high range sounds. The design of the casing is such that you can mount the speakers on a wall of just sit them on a surface. Speaker wire is attached to the speaker itself, so there is no customization available there, unless you like to splice RCA cables (not much fun). 25 feet of cable should be enough for most uses though.

The subwoofer on the Logitech Z-5500 is a large affair. If it is to be installed in a tight space situation you might have trouble finding a spot for it. Or perhaps you can turn it into a little table? The size of the speaker itself is 10 inch, but the size of the cage to the screws is 12 inches.

The speaker itself uses a large case because of Logitech choice of speaker design. The Logitech Z-5500 utilises a port to enhance the sound it produces. Although ported designs can be a little harder to implement, they do it well and the overall boost in performance is well liked.

The central control panel which sits upright by itself performs all the main functions of the system. There is a large knob in the center to change the volume. There are multiple choices for input sources so it should support everything you have. If you need to listen from a portable mp3 player there is a spot for a jack on the side of the panel.

Although very large for a computer speaker system, these guys blow away anything else out there. Of course you could shovel out more money, but hey, why do that? The functioning and looks are good and you just need to make sure you have the space and the two hundred and a bit bucks, then the Logitech Z-5500 becomes a great choice for watching movies, listening to music, or adding kick to you favorite games.

Intel’s planned launch of its Graphic Media Accelerator intergrated Broadwater chipsets by the second quarter of next year has got both ATI and Nvidia on the move.

ATI has speeded up production of the R580 which is an upgrade of its current 90nm flagship model, and Nvidia has scheduled to roll out three new 90nm GPUs by the end of the first quarter next year.

The new Intel 965-series chipsets, the Q965, G965 and Q963 all integrate the Graphic Media Accelerator graphics core. Due for around Q2 next year.

ATI hopes the R580 will become the driving force of its mid-range and high-end GPU lines next year.

Nvidia is in production of the G71, G72 and G73, targeted at the high, mid and low range respectively.

Source: Digitimes

Western Digital disk drives have a good reputation for reliability and performance. The Western Digital Raptor disk drives allow new levels of performance from consumer oriented hard drives. With performance that matches that of parralell SCSI at a price thats right, the Raptors have the potential to skyrocket your hard drives disk writing and reading speeds.

This pair of drives is just a price saver, they are no different from the normal 74GB Western Digital Raptor disk drive that I’ve reviewed before.

Features…

• Name: Western Digital Raptor
• Size: 74GB
• Spindle speed: 10K RPM
• Buffer memory: 8MB
• Average read seek speed: 4.9msec
• Average write seek speed: 5.9msec
• Interface: Serial ATA-150

Instead of giving another full rundown of the Western Digital Raptor hard disk drive I’ll outline what benefits you can get from a pair.

Of course there is a major expense in getting two hard drives. That is always the hardest part for me and its especially true when the price of the drives gets this high. For the same price you could get a really huge hard drive with tons of space.

With SATA you usually get the option of RAID, using RAID, two drives work together as though they are one drive. There are two in use, but data is written as though there is only one physical drive.

Two options exist for RAID at the most basic level RAID 0 and RAID 1.

RAID 0 is a striping system, where the data is spread over the two drives. This gives fantastic performance as the data can be written to whichever drive is not busy at that time. The best place for this kind of setup is those doing something like video editing where bandwidth is important. Your drive size becomes the size of the two added together. The disadvantage of this setup is that there is not fault tolerance, so if one drive fails you lose all your data.

RAID 1 is a mirroring system. Both drive end up with identical data, so if one of them fails you do not lose all your data. It doesn’t provide any speed benefits over a single drive. You also only get the size of a single drive, so 2 74GB drives will yield 74GB. Best for data you can’t afford to lose.

These are the only two options available for 2 disks, you need 4 for other RAID options which provide a mix of performance and security but with the cost of 4 drives.

So if you want a performance increase with good security go for RAID 1, which is what I use. But if speed is essential, awesome performance can be had with the RAID 0 setup.

I highly recommend these drives for those who are looking for something to boost their already souped up computer.