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Thread: Hardware Review Site

  1. #1
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    Hardware Review Site

    End of the year is here and so after doing some careful calculation, I've decided to upgrade my comp. Might as well prepare for the long haul of staying in and not spending tons of cash on other things. Sides, it'll be good to upgrade the system for Far Cry 2, Warhammer, Fallout 3 and whatever else is coming out.

    So, can anyone recommend a good hardware review site. You get pretty much get individual parts easily in Singapore and then cobble the system together, but a good set of reviews to know what to look for will be helpful.

    Thanks.

  2. #2
    Account closed How To Go
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    I like Tom's Hardware, but I'm sure there are some other good sites too.

  3. #3
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    tom's is easily the worst out of hardware sites most of all who gush brainlessly over free hardware given to them. which parts specifically are you looking for?

  4. #4
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    my two cents:

    storagereview.com for harddrives

    motherboard / chipset is the toughest decision. personally, I browse silentpcreview's forum for popular motherboards. that community values stability, sanity, and board layout instead of silly benchmark numbers. I like hardocp too.

    Then I google and read up on some candidates.

    oldies:
    tom's has good vga charts. that said, I haven't forgiven them for being intel apologists. they used to be great 10 years ago.

  5. #5
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    i like techreport.com. jonnyguru.com is the site to go to for psu reviews. recovering silentpcreview.com fan here as well. arstechnica.com is great as well.

  6. #6
    Spinning Toe
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    techreport.com seconded. Their articles are very readable, and I like their attention for power draw. Their system building guides cover your options from cheapish to ridiculously expensive.

    Extremetech.com is good at presenting information to less knowledgeable people (they rarely use the word "overclock"); they're hardly exhaustive, but VGA card and CPU reviews and system building articles are OK, and they give more attention than others to keyboards, mice, and sound cards.

  7. #7
    New Romantic
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    In no particular order, the sites I use: Anandtech; Tom's HW mostly for the CPU & GPU charts; Extremetech; once in a while I'll check Blue's News for their daily list of HW reviews. Other than that, Google is your friend.

    BTW, is there a good Metacritic-ish site for HW reviews?

  8. #8
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    Quote Originally Posted by unbongwah View Post
    BTW, is there a good Metacritic-ish site for HW reviews?
    Well of course hardware reviews are more qualitative and so it would be harder to aggregate the reviews into a single score.
    www.newegg.com works that way with user reviews like amazon.com

  9. #9
    Spinning Toe
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    I use:

    Extremetech.com (wish they looked at more stuff, though).

    Anandtech.com

    Newegg.com for customer reviews. But you have to be able to sift through the muck to get to the truth when you do that.

    I use Google, but if I'm looking for specific hardware info it usually leads me to nasty dead-end alleys of advertisements or sites that just link to sellers, and deserted forums after the first page or 2. I guess that's normal w/ Google. But once in a while, you find a gem on page 10 or so.......

  10. #10
    New Romantic
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    Quote Originally Posted by wisefool View Post
    tom's has good vga charts. that said, I haven't forgiven them for being intel apologists. they used to be great 10 years ago.
    Tom's is eye-rollingly bad in a lot of ways, but "Intel apologists"? What's there to apologize for in 2008?

  11. #11
    New Romantic
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    I think Tom's Hardware are easily bribed, but their charts of various types are very nice.

    Anandtech and ExtremeTech are the first two I think of if Google doesn't satisfy me first.

  12. #12
    Mad Chester
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    I'll look at them all if I can't find a specific review on my two main ones(Anandtech, Techreport). X-bit Labs sometimes has some really interesting articles with different information on things.

  13. #13
    Neo Acoustic
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    HardOCP, ExtremeTech, AnandTech, Bit-Tech.net, PC Perspective.

  14. #14
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    Quote Originally Posted by mkozlows View Post
    Tom's is eye-rollingly bad in a lot of ways, but "Intel apologists"? What's there to apologize for in 2008?
    Awkward phrase. They lost my confidence when I saw how biased they were in the P4 vs. AMD XP comparisons. This was in 2001, so I can't remember more details. :)

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