This week on the roundup, we’ve got a couple of case-related announcements from Corsair and NZXT, plus a new Biostar motherboard and some iBuypower laptops to round things out.
- Biostar announces H67MH motherboard. This looks like a cheap and cheerful choice for folks planning a budget Sandy Bridge build. The H67MH accommodates LGA1155 processors with thermal envelopes as high as 95W, and it features a pair of memory slots, three video outputs (HDMI, DVI, and VGA), PCI Express x16 and x1 slots, and a choice of 6Gbps and 3Gbps SATA ports. Biostar squeezes all of this onto a Micro ATX board.
- Corsair announces windowed side panel kit for Graphite Series 600T. The title of the press release is as self-explanatory as it gets, but still, here’s the skinny. Corsair is selling a $29.99 side-panel kit for that 600T enclosure we reviewed last September. The kit comes with both clear acrylic and mesh inserts; the latter also includes mounting holes for an extra 120-mm fan. You can purchase the kit here.
- iBuypower launches three Battalion 101 Sandy Bridge notebooks. Take your pick from iBuypower’s new laptop trio. At the high end, the 15.6" Battalion 101 P151HM1 starts at $1,199 with a 1080p display resolution, GeForce GTX 460M graphics, and a 500GB hard drive. The $1,019 Battalion 101 W170HN serves up a 17.3" display and a GeForce GTS 540M graphics card, while the cheapest member of the lineup, the $899 Battalion 101 W150HNQ, delivers that same GPU with a 15.6" 1366×768 panel. All three systems include Intel’s Core i7-2630QM quad-core processor.
- NZXT H2 classic silent chassis establishes new era of whisper-quiet PC gaming. Potentially hyperbolic statements aside, the new NZXT H2 does look rather swanky. It has a layer of "premium noise dampening foam" inside, a magnetic fan cover over the top 140-mm fan, removable (and purportedly wireless) "touch powered fan compartments," and a three-phase fan controller that supports 40%, 70%, and 100% fan speeds. As icing on the cake, NZXT tosses in a hot-swap-capable Serial ATA dock at the top of the enclosure. Not bad for $99.99.
That NZXT case is eerily reminiscent of Antec’s P180 series enclosures, although it looks a tad bigger and roomier inside. I may have to get my hands on one of those bad boys.