AIDA64 Extreme Edition Has an Extremely Large Variety of Benchmarks

How much do you know about your computer? Even if you're a power user, chances are you know less than you think. Most geeks can break down the basics--CPU, RAM, video card, OS, etc. but the deeper you go, the harder the questions are to answer. What are your current memory timings? What extended instructions does your CPU support? What's the product ID for your motherboard? Instead of reaching for the manual, booting into BIOS, or interrogating Google for the details, there's another answer: Finalwire's AIDA64 Extreme Edition.

AIDA64's stress test is worth its weight in gold.Now in its third incarnation after nearly a decade of development, AIDA64 is comprehensive system information and benchmarking suite designed to lay bare every conceivable aspect of your computer. Multiple versions cater to different markets; the initial 30 day trial version of each can be unlocked into either Extreme ($40) or Business ($80/5 nodes) editions. Extreme focuses on enthusiasts and performance computing while Business provides IT network inventory functions and can scan several systems at once. We took a look at the Extreme edition for this review.

AIDA64 Extreme is presented Microsoft Management Console-style, with a single window containing two panes of nested commands and data. The left pane lists the available tools and the right pane displays the results of each query or operation. Most of these are informational, breaking down each of your computer's subsystems by hardware component or software module and allowing you to drill down to details you never imagined were readily accessible, such as your DIMMs’ serial numbers or how many reboots you've performed since your desktop went live.

Beyond the audit, several benchmarking tools provide data on CPU, hard disk and memory performance. AIDA64 ranks and compares results against a comprehensive database of other systems past and present giving you context for your results. While the memory tests are well regarded by enthusiasts, the real gem here is a flexible system stability tool that allows users to stress test main components in any combination desired while tracking system temperatures, voltages and fan speeds via graphs that are updated in real time. Overclockers will find this indispensable, as few tools combine these features.

Problems are few but noteworthy. First, there's no way to measure 3D performance, a curious omission given the otherwise comprehensive nature of the suite. Price is the second factor. With no free version beyond the 30-day trial license, $40 is the minimum buy-in for AIDA64. SiSoft's Sandra, a similar system information and benchmarking suite, has a free version with many of the features found here, although it lacks the stress tests. This price may hurt AIDA64's appeal, but it doesn't take away from its utility or unique function. Take the trial out for a spin. The stress tests may be worth the price alone for hardware enthusiasts.

--Jim Norris

Industry leading system diagnostics and benchmarking solution for enthusiasts PC users, based on the award-winning AIDA Technology. Exhaustive details of system information on 100 pages including CPU, FPU, disk and memory benchmarks, advanced hardware monitoring and diagnostics capabilities.

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LaCie 5Big Network 2 Review: Large Capacity, Mediocre Performance

The LaCie 5Big Network 2 offers a lot of features and capacity for comparatively little cash: $900 (as of March 23, 2012) for 5TB. And despite the unit's extremely large blue status button (or maybe because of it), the 5Big Network 2 is quite a bit better looking than most NAS boxes. Regrettably, though, it delivers slow, barely consumer-grade performance.

Unlike its 2Big Network 2 cousin, the 5Big Network 2 does not attach directly to PCs, so you won't find a type B USB port. LaCie does supply a wide complement of other ports, however: two USB 2.0 ports, two ethernet ports (supporting failover and aggregation), and two eSATA ports. The five drive bays are accessible from the back via slide-out trays, which lock in place with thumb-screw mechanisms. The bays are numbered, which comes in handy when you're configuring the drive. Another amenity is the unit's fail-safe power switch, which initiates a safe shutdown, not a sudden power-off.

The 5Big Network 2 has all of the essential software features for network-attached storage: file sharing, iTunes and DLNA compliant media serving, backup, online backup, and Rsync for synchronizing the box with remote servers. The interface is nicely rendered and--with the exception of having to hit the home button to back out of sections--easy to use.

The 5Big Network 2's only real drawback is unfortunately a major one: performance. It finished dead last in three of our four tests and second-to-last in the fourth, out of 11 NAS boxes tested--among them some consumer-grade two-bay boxes such as LaCie's own 2Big Network 2. Configured in RAID 5, the 5Big Network 2 read our 10GB mix of files and folders at 34.2 megabytes per second and wrote them at 17.4 MBps. It read our single 10GB test file at a marginally respectable 57.5 MBps, but wrote it at only 28.6 MBps. With a 1.2GHz Marvell CPU and 512MB of memory on board, those numbers should have been better.

The 5Big Network 2's software features and style points would place it near the top of the multibay NAS box chart. But its performance doesn't equal that of competing models, including such low-cost alternatives as the Western Digital Sentinal DX4000 and the Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ v2.

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