By Paul Taylor
09 October 2008, 8:48 AM

A NAS SERVER is a thing to behold, in particular when it does just about everything you can imagine for your network. Olin, over at Benchmark Reviews had a go at Synology’s DS408, a 4-drive SATA RAID with Gigabit Ethernet. It’ll serve up just about anything and, considering the 4x1.5GB units used, 53W in load seems pretty thrifty.

The $800 bill might not, but the only thing it doesn’t do, that comes to mind, is email serving. Get the skinny on the DS408, here. MSI’s HD 4670 gets a going-over at TweakTown. The card performs just like its other brand siblings – in other words ‘very well for the price’ and even gets to show its strength in Crossfire. Good silent cooling, but a lack of TV connectivity (no HDMI) knocks it out as an HTPC card candidate, tho’. Get the article, here.

Driverheaven found gold in Gainward’s HD 4870 1GB. That’s right, the Golden Samples are back – the cherry-picked, non-reference babies of the Gainward stable. Well as per the tradition, Gainward ripped off the reference cooler and put in a new one, overclocked the GPU and added a bit of RAM. You now get 1GB of GDDR5@1GHz, which really gives the card an edge at 2560x1600 resolutions.

It’s still a close race with the GTX 260 Core 216, though, but it handles itself brilliantly in hi-res, AA/AF scenarios. Good stuff. Bit-Tech is debuting its DDR3 reviews in grand style with some 2x2GB G.Skill - ‘standard’ and GT1s (with RAMOrb) – and Corsair’s own DDR3 (with DHX Cooling) kits. Some serious overclocking going on there, but G.Skill takes the cake in performance and Corsair in value. Everyone’s a winner here.