SteelSeries has been making professional-grade gaming products for the last several years. They feature several lines of mice, headsets, mouse pads, and more. In November of 2007, they announced their latest professional mouse surface, the SteelSeries SP. The SP features durable construction and a texture optimized for optical and laser mice.

StarTech.com sent us the SATABAY425BK, a Serial ATA (SATA) / Serial-Attached SCSI (SAS) backplane that fits in a single 5.25" drive bay and can hold up to four 2.5" hard drives in hot swap trays. The backplane supports both SAS and SATA's 3Gbps transfer rates, and utilizes a pair of 40mm fans in the rear to cool the drives.

StarTech.com is a company specializing in hard-to-find connectivity and technology parts, which it manufactures. StarTech.com recently sent us a WattSmart 750W EPS12V 80 PLUS Power Supply (EPSPOW750PRO) for review, and we were impressed by the quality and features present in this model: quad 12v rails, high energy efficiency, dual ball-bearing fans, and more connectors than we'd ever need.

Iron Storm 8, Pittco's 9th event, was held on March 15th and 16th of 2008, with approximately 170 gamers in attendance. From a staff member's point of view, this was Pittco's most successful event, despite some pre-LAN crises. More than $2,000 worth of prizes donated by sponsors such as Warrendale-based DVDEmpire.com, ATXPowerSupplies.com, Bawls Guarana, In Win, Razer, Red Bull, Thermaltake, and VisionTek were given as prizes for tournaments in games such as Counter-Strike: Source, Unreal Tournament 2004, Halo 3, Super Smash Brothers: Brawl, and Battlefield 2. For an entrance fee of only $25, the prizes seemed very much worth it.

D-Link is one of the first companies that comes in to my head when networking is brought up in conversation. The company has a strong line of consumer products, but also have several products focused on businesses. BIOS LEVEL recently received one of its latest networking products, the DNS-323 Network Attached Storage (NAS) enclosure.

A few weeks ago, I looked at GMC's C-50 Slim ATX Case. GMC offers a full range of case sizes and functions, including several home theatre PC (HTPC) cases. GMC calls its HTPC case line "Noblesse AV." From this line, we're going to be looking at the Micro ATX-sized AVC-M1 Noblesse AV Case, which features an iMON display and classy styling.

Normally, when I hear the name Vantec, I think of PC thermal solutions. This is because it had one of the fastest 80mm fans on the market several years ago, the Vantec Tornado. Nowadays, however, Vantec maintains a wide range of peripherals offering the best in terms of thermal cooling. Today, we're going to be looking at the NexStar 3, their hybrid eSATA/USB2.0 hard drive enclosure.

Xigmatek was founded in 2005, and have released a wide range cooling and power supply products since then. Their company philosophy is the acronym "I.C.E.", or Impressive, Creative, and Essential. Today, we're going to look at their HDT-S1283 Heatsink, featuring direct-touch heat pipes. Will it perform and stand up to their philosophy?

Silverstone has only been in the PC case business for about 4 years, but they've released some very high-quality innovative cases in that short span of time. In those last four years, one of the smaller trends we've seen is the use of mobile CPUs being used in desktop machines. Today, we're looking at Silverstone's Mobile on DeskTop (MoDT) ML-02 small form factor case.

Creative is known for making hardware-accelerated soundcards that rely on a computer's CPU for very little, taking the strain off. Creative launched the X-Fi Series of soundcards in 2005 to replace the Audigy as Creative's Flagship soundcard. Right in time for 2007's Holiday Season, Creative launched their first PCI-Express X-Fi card, the XtremeAudio. It promises better features than the Audigy line while being an entry-level card, and we're going to look at how the two stack up.