For those whom have not read the previous article on this subject. Today saw the Target Components Open day with many manufacturers showing off their wares and engaging with the I.T resellers throughout the land of Blighty. Some have even driven as far as Cambridgeshire in order to attend this prestigious event.  After the high buzz of the Cooler master stands, it was with some excitement that we visited the Samsung and Biostar exhibitions.

Now Samsung we all know of old as they produce just about everything from TV’S to monitors to computer components. Now  not many know the the aforementioned company started from a simple hardware shop in South Korea and believe it or not in order to learn the logistics of import and exporting goods they proceeded to dabble in the sugar market. Yes you read correctly Sugar! Indeed this helped them to have the necessary funds to make their OWN  silicon of which Samsung still use today.

We at OCT managed to have a word with a friendly Samsung representative called James and he proceeded to give us a few friendly pointers on their products.

Sporting a rather small stand the Samsung representatives only required a few laptops and a few of their products in order to get the message across. At this moment in time the aforementioned company sports two main drives the ‘PRO’ model, of which includes SERVER-error level correction and the EVO Models. The Pro model is better suited for Servers and the EVO for the enthusiast grade level.

Now just like the Corsair SSD Toolbox Samsung sport their own SSD software with the moniker of ‘Samsung’ Magician’ however as one can see below it looks like is has many more features than the former and has a more professional look to it also. Another nice feature is the ability to turn off certain features that can either break or slow down a Solid State drive such as automatic defragment and so on.

The above is a nice little programme that helps one to quickly optimise their system for use with the Samsung Drive.

BIOSTAR

I saw the the stand that belongs to Biostar over in one corner so I thought it would be prudent to have a rummage and see what they have come up with. Now in this industry there is a great deal amount of snobbery amongst component choice and many of the uneducated users tend to look down upon the former mentioned company. Yes Biostar are not Overclocking boards and yes they are not super fast but then again they never pretended to be as such and with a price that is often less than half the price of an enthusiast component then one cannot go wrong.   Rather than trying to compete with the big boys in Overclocking and pure speed they have concentrated on the quality of the on board sound and that of the home theatre based motherboards. The latter being of the Mini ITX and Micro ATX of nature and as such are ideally suited for home entertainment centres.

Demonstrating this they performed a comparison with duplicated settings of the on board sound present within a Gigabyte motherboard and the same within a Biostar and I can assure you the difference was  astounding.

The left is the sound system based within a a Biostar motherboard and on the lower right that of Gigabyte. Though the sound volume settings were duplicated on both motherboards and the same headphones utilised, the former motherboards sound quality was both crisper, louder and a heavier base frequency.

Hats off to Biostar with the new soundcard concept, now if only we can get them to translate this new feature from the full sized atx boards to that of Micro ATX and Mini ITX. We feel that if the company can do this  then they should be able to corner the market on quality home theatre based motherboards.

Do not miss the last installment of the Target Open Day where we speak to the former mentioned company themselves, what they are doing and the after show awards ceremony.

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