FusionMods

In a prelude of a new CPU Cooler Review, I thought I’d just jot down some thoughts on the topic of upgrading coolers.

I’m finishing up a review of the Transformer 6 CPU Cooler, which is one massive CPU cooler. This one has a pretty logical design for being as large as it is, and do far, while I haven’t checked the comparison temps, it looks like it’s running great.

Here’s a few shots

[View with PicLens]

The only downside I’ve come across is that this cooler is large enough that it requires a back plate. In all honesty I prefer having this kind of structural support, these things can put a fair amount of weight on your motherboard, but it does mean you have to almost disassemble your full computer. With this being the case, I decided it was also time to clean everything too. It doesn’t happen often, but I have had fans actually stop working from getting too gunked up with dust before. Seems like the small HD cooler fans are always the first to go for me.

There was a small concern in the back of my mind that the cooler might run into the case or the graphics card, but everything went together perfectly. It also looks awesome. The fan lights up as well, just adding to the overall effect. Once I publish the product review I’ll give you the pics, but I don’t want to give away too many spoilers.

In the pics, you can also see my previous cooler from Xigmatec. This was also a very large CPU cooler with an upright 120mm fan, but this current cooler has a 120mm fan, as well as 6 heat pipes, and it looks like it’ll get better heat dispersion.

The big difference between the two is the direction of cooling. Coolers that blow to the side are nice since you can almost always find a case that has a fan on the back of it, but not all of them are built to vent air inside from the side panel. Luckily mine has two massive 230mm (I believe thats the correct size) fans built into the side panel. The xClio wind tunnel is a win of a case. Excellent toolless design as well btw

Hope you guys like this short preview. Feel free to shoot my any questions you might have on the topic too. And if you love your PC, please never use that lame stock cooler they send you, lol

Review by Gh0sTly of FusionMods.net

In today’s networks, we all want speed.  Fast LAN networks, fast Wifi networks, and a quick and easy way to get it all connected to the internet.  TRENDnet has delivered this with the TEW-672GR Router.

The first thing you notice out of the box, is that it has a very attractive design to it, and is very glossy and there is plenty of large indicator LEDs to show activity.  You also have 3 non-removable Wireless N antennas on the backside, as well as 4 gigabit network ports as well as a gigabit WAN port for your modem.  Thats right, gigabit Ethernet.  You can finally make use of that gigabit Ethernet port on your motherboard.  There is also a hardwired switch on the backside of the router to disable all wireless access.

The wireless n that this router has is a dual band wireless n(802.11n DRAFT).  This lets you hit wireless speeds upto 300Mbps when using a wireless card that also supports 300Mbps wireless N.  You can also connect other Wireless standards that have been around, as in wireless a/b/g(802.11a/b/g) devices.  Also, if you use if you choose WEP or WPA/WPA2-TKIP encryption, you will not get a full 300Mbps connection for wireless n, because 802.11n does not support these encryption types, so if you intend of rolling out a full 300Mbps network make sure that your wireless a/b/g devices can handle a WPA2 with AES or WPA-PSK with AES encryption.  Any other encryption will cause your wireless n devices to run at 130Mbps.

The router does support WPS(Wi-Fi Protected Setup) and can very easily simplify your wireless encryption needs by a simple push of a button.  You can set this up by either PIN or PBC(Push Button Connect) and will make connection to a secure wireless network much easier.

Upon a closer look at the indicator LEDs, you get a better sense of what is going on with your networks ethernet side.  With the LAN 1-4 leds, you could see one of the 3 possibilities.  A LED that is off means that there is either no connection, or the Cat5 cable is bad.  A green LED means that there is a 10/100 network capable PC connected.  A orange LED means there is a 10/100/1000(or gigabit) capable PC connected.

The TEW-672GR does support all of your traditional router features, including NAT, Traffic control, UPnP, DMZ, easy web management, and supports all Cable/DSL modems with Dynamic IP, Static IP, PPPoE, PPTP, L2TP, and Russian PPTP.

The interface is straightforward and easy to use, and offers all the features you would want.  You can even setup a remote access ability using a number of different free dynamic IP web services, like No-IP.com, or dyndns.org

Overall, I would easily suggest this router to someone looking to expand or move up to wireless n, due to is simplicity of setup and mass amount of features and backwards compatability.  It features many easy management settings, and can offer a crazy fast network for both wireless and wired PCs.

I would like to thank TRENDnet for letting us review this great product, and I hope to review more from them in the future.

TRENDnet

If anyone has any questions, please feel free to ask.
  
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