QNAP TS-421 and more

QNAP recently released a major upgrade of their operating system, the QTS 4.0, and they were kind enough to send us a 4-bay NAS for testing, the TS-421, which comes with their latest operating system pre-installed. The TS-421 is a mid-level NAS best suited to home and SOHO environments.

Situated towards the entry-level end of Gigabyte's Ultra Durable series of Z87 motherboards, the Z87-D3HP aims to provide a cheap-and-cheerful way for budget-conscious users to make the switch to Haswell.

A long, long time ago, someone much smarter than I coined the phrase, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Adobe seems to have taken that message to heart with the latest retail release of its photo management software, Lightroom 5. We’ve taken it for a spin over the past month, and walked away suitably impressed… but what we were most impressed with was Adobe’s commitment to ironing out kinks to a winning formula, rather than redefining and redesigning a tool designed for workflow management.

Lightroom 5 has a rather short list of improvements and additions, and nearly all of them help it to stand on its own as an image editor designed purely for enhancement of photography and videography instead of adding more bloat. In fact, I’d dare say that most consumers will upgrade based mostly on one reason – the Advanced Healing brush. However, this short list of new features is deceptive – many of these bring Lightroom into the forefront for the first time as a true image processing center, rather than a front-end for Photoshop.

The DefenderPad is a product that was developed to protect your lap from laptop radiation and heat. It also replaced lap desks, lap trays and laptop cooling pads as it serves the same purpose. An FCC certified lab test revealed that DefenderPad blocks nearly 100 percent of all potentially harmful Electromagnetic Radiation (EMR) and greatly reduces heat emitted by laptops, tablets and other modern devices. Read on if you need this to protect your lap!

Welcome to another Case Mod Friday showcase! This week we have Peter Brands l3p Parvum build. Here is what he had to say about it: In December 2012 Justin from Parvum Systems contacted me if I would be willing to do a build around their brand new designed case. I fell in love with it the moment I saw it. Always wanted to do a watercooled m-ATX build.

In the past year or so flat panel monitor prices have entered free-fall, with massive 27 displays widely available for under $300. Given that, why would anyone even consider spending over $1,500 on a somewhat larger 30³ display? Lenovo has lent Benchmark Reviews one of their ThinkVision LT3053p units to review, so let'™s see what all that extra money buys you.

Advocates of SilverStone will know all too well that the Raven Series has been expecting its fourth instalment for some time now. Year after year SilverStone have teased enthusiasts at various trade shows like CES and Computex with sneak previews of this upcoming case and it isn’t until now that we can finally get our hands on what can only be described as “much anticipated”.

The Raven series has had plenty of success, especially with the notorious Raven 2 (RV02) and fans of this range have been keen for something to appear along similar lines. The new Raven 4 adopts similar characteristics to its predecessor but also brings in some interesting new concepts too.

Thermaltake has always been known for their superb case design and quality throughout the years. This time they are back with a Mid Tower offering in the same price range as many leading competitors with the enthusiast additions we have come to expect. Present are the optimized ventilation, cable management and tool-free bays we all love to see delivered in an aesthetically minimalist package. Will the Urban S21 prove to be a hit or end up as just another option? Joins me as we give it the once over and see if the Urban Mid Tower stacks up.

A couple of weeks back, SanDisk launched a new line of Class 10 UHS-I microSDHC / microSDXC cards targeted at performance conscious consumers. When describing the cards, SanDisk's director of retail product marketing Susan Park said, "The SanDisk Extreme microSDXC card allows users to do more with their devices.Our high-performance and high-capacity microSD cards enable consumers to take advantage of the high-quality HD video and imaging capabilities in the latest 4G smartphones, tablets and action cameras."

With up to 80MB/s read and 50MB/s write speeds, the new SanDisk Extreme microSDXC cards should easily be able to handle the needs of users taking photos and videos on today's mobile devices, be it a smartphone or tablet or even a high-end camera. And with capacities up to 64GB, the cards offer plenty of storage space too...