The Killernic M1 network adapter promises to lower latencies and increase frame rates in online games to give players an advantage over competitors.

It does this by offloading networking processes onto a PCI card with a 400MHz Arm processor, with 64MB of Ram running embedded Linux.

It interfaces directly with Winsock and bypasses other layers of Windows network stacks, which cuts latency but also frees up CPU power so frame rates can improve. The Killernic M1 is solely optimised for low latencies, whereas the Windows network stacks often trade low latency for high-data throughput.

The manufacturer boasts a ping improvement of between two and 30ms and frame rate increases of 10-30fps. However, over several hours of testing on a quad-core PC, pings dropped just 1ms from 75ms to 74ms in Counterstrike:source and there was no frame rate increase.

This isn't much of a boost, but slower PCs should see greater benefits. Cheaper setups would also see gains with a faster processor or internet connection.

A host of Linux utilities make it exciting in other respects. You can bring up a Linux terminal from within Windows and there's a hardware firewall and Bit Torrent client built in. Torrents can be downloaded directly to external hard drives using the USB port on the Killernic M1's backplate.

The firewall and Bit Torrent client aren't detailed applications but they reduce CPU usage compared with Windows applications. And combined with its extensive quality of service (QoS) functions, you can get good pings in games while your PC downloads big files.

The M1's big magnesium alloy heatsink and flashing red lights make it ideal for heavily modded cases, but upgrading other parts of your system may be cheaper.