2014: Year in Review

February

Nvidia GeForce GTX 750 Ti

The GTX 750 Ti was one of the most interesting graphics card launches of recent years for a few reasons. It introduced a new architecture to the market in a way that was until then unheard of for Nvidia, bringing it in first at a mainstream price point rather than with a top-down approach where the fastest card is released first. It also marked a very significant increase in performance per watt, without any process node shrink, which is truly remarkable. The card itself is dinky and powered solely by the PCI-Express bus, yet it's capable of smooth framerates in modern games at 1080p with high or even ultra settings. As such, it quickly became the ultimate affordable upgrade for those running basic off-the-shelf PCs or integrated graphics.

Corsair Hydro Series H105 and H75

Corsair has always been a dominant force in the all-in-one liquid cooler market, which has now grown to incorporate numerous companies and brands and, thankfully, a little more variety in the look and feel of the products compared to a few years ago when almost everything was a rebranded clone of an Asetek or CoolIT model. By design, the H105 and H75 are actually both very run-of-the-mill, as they lacked the software compatibility introduced with the H80i and H100i and had no other real unique features besides an interchangeable coloured plastic ring on the pump unit. However, with their launch, Corsair showed it still has an edge in this market – these two coolers are well-built and perform very well. They're also the easiest to install AIO coolers we've ever worked with.

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