Micro Star International, or MSI as it better known, brings us one of their new G3 line of Intel Z68 motherboards today. The MSI Z68A-GD65 G3, is a feature rich, socket 1155 motherboard, designed for use with the current Intel Core i second generation series, Sandy Bridge CPUs as well as the forthcoming Ivy Bridge processors. Compatibility with a product that will not even be out for another year, implies an expectation of quality, and MSI backs the GD65 (and its big brother the GD80) with a 5 year warranty.
In for testing today is the Foxconn AHD1S-k. Foxconn is one of the largest makers of computing components in the world so their AMD Fusion ITX board should prove interesting. Under that big aluminium heatsink is a single chip, an AMD E-350 APU which is top of the AMD E-series line up. Inside the APU it bundles a CPU, GPU and DDR3 memory controller. The TDP of 18W makes for a very low power setup and with the passive heatsink, hopefully a very quiet system. The investigation begins!
Gaming laptops are for an elite audience, where ultimate performance is paramount. Sadly they aren’t cheap either, often costing £1,500, or more. Fear ye not, for today because we are looking at the MSI GE 620, a 15.6 inch portable which packs in a Core i7 quad core processor, 4GB of fast DDR3 with Nvidia discrete graphics … and all for £800 inc vat. Surely there is a catch?
