General Gaming Article |
- AMD Radeon R9 380X Rumored to Arrive in Second Quarter of 2015
- Newegg Daily Deals: Kingston SSDNow V300 240GB SSD, WD Black Series 4TB HDD, and More!
- Oracle Plugs 167 Critical Security Holes Pertaining to Hundreds of Products
- HP Pro Slate 12 Wins Race to Retail Ahead of Apple's Rumored iPad Pro
- Batman and Superman Infiltrate List of 25 Worst Passwords
- Samsung Portable SSD T1 Review
- Steam Client Update Adds Broadcasting Support and FPS Overlay
| AMD Radeon R9 380X Rumored to Arrive in Second Quarter of 2015 Posted: 20 Jan 2015 10:33 AM PST
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| Newegg Daily Deals: Kingston SSDNow V300 240GB SSD, WD Black Series 4TB HDD, and More! Posted: 20 Jan 2015 10:12 AM PST
Top Deal: In the early days of solid state drives, prices were sky high for small amounts of storage, and speeds weren't all that impressive compared to today's models. But why live in the past? These days, you can build a budget rig and still opt for an SSD. To prove it, check out today's top deal for a Kingston SSDNow V300 Series 240GB SSD for $85 with free shippping. No coupon code or mail in rebate required, just an awesome price for an SSD rated for up to 450MB/s for both sequential reads and writes -- not too shabby! Other Deals: G.Skill Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory for $63 with free shipping (normally $73 - use coupon code: [EMCAKNA223]) WD Black Series 4TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5-inch Internal Hard Drive for $200 with free shipping (normally $230 - use coupon code: [ESCAKNA224]) Intel Core i7-4790 Haswell Quad-Core 3.6GHz LGA 1150 84W Desktop Processor for $290 with free shipping Acer 24-inch 5ms HDMI Widescreen LED Backlight LCD Monitor for $120 with free shipping (normally $130 - use coupon code: [EMCAKNA44]) |
| Oracle Plugs 167 Critical Security Holes Pertaining to Hundreds of Products Posted: 20 Jan 2015 09:56 AM PST
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| HP Pro Slate 12 Wins Race to Retail Ahead of Apple's Rumored iPad Pro Posted: 20 Jan 2015 09:30 AM PST
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| Batman and Superman Infiltrate List of 25 Worst Passwords Posted: 20 Jan 2015 08:43 AM PST
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| Samsung Portable SSD T1 Review Posted: 20 Jan 2015 07:06 AM PST The little engine that couldWith the US still lagging behind the rest of the developed world when it comes to the availability of high-speed Internet, there's still a lot of need for high-capacity external storage. It's also a good idea to have local system backups. A few years ago, your choices were mostly clunky 3.5-inch drive enclosures that needed external power. We've since graduated to sleek 2.5-inch units that get their juice straight from USB 3.0 cables that shuttle bits between the drive and your PC. Today, Samsung is taking it a step further with the Portable SSD T1, an external solid-state drive that can operate in the neighborhood of SATA III speeds. An enterprising gearhead can get most of the T1's functionality by purchasing an internal SSD and a drive enclosure that supports UASP (USB Attached SCSI Protocol). In short, UASP lets an external storage device use commands normally reserved for internal storage devices. The two key differences between UASP and standard USB are the ability to deal with data requests in an arbitrary order, and the ability to process multiple data requests at once. This can boost your performance by hundreds of mehabytes per second, putting UASP drives in a completely different performance class from USB 3.0. As you might imagine, this also requires a more sophisticated USB controller on the motherboard, and a driver for your operating system. Your mobo manufacturer customarily provides drivers or software to enable the UASP function of its USB controller.
The Portable T1 has an additional advantage, however, and it's not the compact dimentions. It has integrated drive encryption. When you plug it into your PC, it will ask you to set a password for your new drive. You don't have to set one immediately. You can do it later by double-clicking the turquoise gear icon in your system tray and clicking on the arrow next to the drive's security status. Your password can be up to 22 characters, which isn't as long as we could like, but the only way to reset it is to wipe the drive. This is actually a good thing. An external drive whose encryption can be bypassed with a physical switch or a call to customer support isn't all that encrypted. You can set up all kind of fancy encryption with that SSD that you've put into a UASP enclosure, but it's not going to offer encryption out-of-the-box. It needs third-party software to interact with the drive before it's secured. Having this built into the drive is a big advantage for non-expert users. If you don't need encryption, or you don't mind the logitistics of using third-party encryption software, then getting your own internal SSD and a UASP enclosure is definitely more cost-effective; the 250GB version we tested has a list price of $179.99. The 500GB version comes in at $299.99, and the 1TB is $599.99. They may end up selling for much less than the list price, which happens frequently with PC components. But it's starting out on the high end. Right now, you can get a 960GB Sandisk Ultra II internal SSD for $350 from NCIX US, and a UASP enclosure from Amazon for less than twenty bucks (which comes with a USB 3.0 cable). Most internal SSDs in that size range hit between $400 and $450, but the price difference is still pretty significant. Its performance isn't too shabby, either. Without UASP, the drive will transfer data in the neighborhood of 200MB/s, which is very respectable. It still leaves the Sandisk Extreme Pro at the top of the heap when it comes to external storage speeds. That's ironic, because it's just a thumb drive. The Portable T1 has 250GB, 500GB, and 1TB capacities, though, so there's that. The Extreme Pro's largest size is 256MB. With UASP in the mix, the Portable T1 leaps ahead of the pack, with a sustained read speed of 433MB/s, and a sustained write speed of 355MB/s, according to CrystalDisk Mark. But your results will vary. When paired with an Asus Rampage IV Extreme motherboard, we couldn't manage a sustained read speed of more than 350MB/s. When we plugged it into a USB 3.0 port on the back of a Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H, we could read at around 450MB/s, but the write speed maxed out at only 85MB/s. We tried another port on the back, and the sustained write speeds jumped up to 355MB/s. It's not the drive's fault, but it is disappointing to see this much variance from one USB controller to another, even on the same motherboard (which will sometimes use multiple controllers). PCMark Vantage also locked up while attempting to test this drive, but it reports a somewhat abstract score, rather than actual performance numbers, so it's not critical to our understanding of the drive's capabilities. The Portable T1's cable is also extremely short, measuring only about four inches long. This is perfect for laptop users, but desktop users will have the device basically dangling off one the ports on their case. We also regret to report that it uses a bright blue LED to indicate connectivity, though it's a small one, thankfully. It doesn't look like the electronics industry is in any hurry to return to the red LEDs we used for decades that never distracted the retina. On the bright side, it continues to push the envelope of external storage performance. In that light, our benchmark chart compares the drive to internal SSDs, since it completely outclasses non-UASP external drives. It's still not ideal for sustained high-bandwidth things like HD video editing, but it's a surprisingly snappy little unit otherwise. |
| Steam Client Update Adds Broadcasting Support and FPS Overlay Posted: 20 Jan 2015 05:22 AM PST
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Rumor has it the Radeon R9 380X will feature 4,096 GCN cores
Fixes for vulnerabilities in 48 different products
A bigger size Android tablet with a Duet Pen
User a super hard password to guess, not a superhero
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