Content and news by Rob Williams

Cases & Enclosures
• NZXT Apollo – Phoronix
• Spire Pininfarina – Overclockers Online

Cooling
• Titan Amanda TEC Cooler – Think Computers
• Zalman Reserator 1 Plus WaterCooling – Virtual-HIdeout

Memory & Storage
• OCZ Secure Digital Dual- USB and SD in One Memory Card – XYZ Computing
• OCZ Ultra-Slim Mini-Kart USB 2.0 Flash Drive – ModTheBox
• Super Talent 2.5″ Flash IDE 8GB Solid State Drive – PC Stats

Motherboards & Processors
• Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 – PC Stats
• MSI K9N Platinum – EclipseOC

Peripherals & Power Supplies
• A4 Tech X-750F Laser Mouse – GameApex
• Auzentech HDA X-Plosion 7.1 DTS Connect Sound Card – Big Bruin
• NMediaPC Mute Power MP-400 Power Supply – ModTheBox
• QPAD|CT Gaming Surface – techPowerUp!
• Sennheiser PMX 70 – DV Hardware
• Vantec IDE to USB Adapter – OC Mod Shop

Displays & Video Cards
• D3DGear V.1.66 (Software) – 3D Chip
• GeForce 7950 GT 512MB Shootout – Guru3D
• NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GT – Hardware Info
• NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GT – Hexus
• NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GT – Tech Report
• NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GT – Technic3D
• XFX GeForce 7950 GT 570M Extreme – HotHardware
• XFX GeForce 7950 GT 570M Extreme – Legit Reviews
• XFX GeForce 7950 GT 570M Extreme – Motherboards.org
• XFX GeForce 7950 GT XT – Bjorn3D
• XFX GeForce 7950 GT XT – Neoseekers

Complete Systems, Competitions & Etcetera
• High End Digital Camera Buyer’s Guide – Digital Grabber

EDISON, NJ, September 14, 2006 – Majesco Entertainment Company, an innovative provider of digital entertainment products and content, and Valve, creators of the Steam broadband gaming platform, announced an agreement to deliver Majesco’s PC games via Steam. Beginning today, BloodRayne 1 & 2 and Advent Rising are available for download, while the critically acclaimed title, Psychonauts, from Double Fine Productions, will be offered in early October.

I’m not a massive fan of Steam overall, but it’s great to see some wicked support. The prices for these games are not too shabby either, so check em out!

Are you in need of a great partitioner? Don’t want to spend lots of cash for the popular commercial products? The GParted LiveCD offers most of the features that the big boys do, and even some that they don’t. The key benefit? This is free.

Microsoft will release a Technical Refresh build (4407.1005) for Office 2007 Beta 2 today. The UI is at lockdown after about 1000 changes to the ribbon and a new silver scheme. Anything after this will be bug fixes. B2TR is compatible with Windows Vista RC1 and comes in 5 languages: English, German, French, Spanish and Japanese.

Pricing for the retail versions are also listed, being $399 for the standard and $679 for the full-blown Ultimate. Expensive, but I have to admit Office 2007 is one application that has recently impressed me. Whatever Microsoft is doing wrong with Vista, they seem to be doing right with Office.

According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Nintendo is going to announce today that the Wii will go on sale on November 19th in North and South America, at a cost of $250. It will come bundled with Wii Sports and channels for such things as viewing photos, as well as news and weather.

Sounds like a great deal for $250! I can’t wait for this one…

A Nevada bulk email firm has been ordered to pay Earthlink $11m for spamming the ISP’s customers. Earthlink won the judgment in a CAN-SPAM suit filed in a federal court in Atlanta against KSTM LLC. Time for a CANned quote from Larry Slovensky, Assistant General Counsel for EarthLink: “This judgment should be fair warning that if you spam, we will sue.” Go get ’em, guys!

Well, I didn’t have to wait too long for another owned spammer story. Still, even as crazy as $11M sounds… it’s a wonder how much this actually hurts the spammers. Would be interesting to look inside those pocketbooks.

In a move that seems like a win-win for both companies, Google and Intuit are partnering to give small business owners the ability to create AdWords ad campaigns, get their businesses listed on Google Maps, and selling products via Google Base. Under the terms of a deal announced today, small businesses buying QuickBooks 2007 will have access to a number Google features from within the software.

What’s to come actually sounds pretty good. All of it is a bonus if you are a Quickbooks user to begin with, and enjoy upgrading to the latest software each year. Too bad it also comes with Google Desktop… who really needs that for a business?

Today IBM announced a new line of high-powered QS20 Blade Servers intended for use in seismic research, encryption, digital image rendering and military surveillance applications. Each QS20 will include two nine-cored Cell Processors clocked at 3.2Ghz apiece, which were developed by IBM along with Sony and Toshiba for Sony’s upcoming Playstation 3 console, among other things.

The primary uses that come to mind are medical or hardcore multi-media rendering, so it’s not for those without deep pockets. According to the article, each Cell CPU has 9 cores. 18 cores for a server sounds good!

Paul Fox, whose e-mail messages were intended to direct traffic toward his pornographic download site, was this week forced by a court order to pay Microsoft 45,000 pounds, or $84,177, for breaching the terms and conditions of its free Hotmail service. Those terms explicitly prohibit the delivery of spam to its customers.

I cannot get enough of these stories! $84K may be pennies to Microsoft, but that no doubt sets the spammer back quite a bit. Even with all of the spammer cases seen lately, I personally haven’t seen a decline to my inbox of any sort. So, we need more of this… a lot more.

California Attorney General Bill Lockyer may file criminal charges within a week in its investigation of tactics used by Hewlett-Packard in an inquiry into boardroom leaks, a spokesman said on Wednesday.

Yet again, not a surprise, but this could hit HP where it hurts. This won’t only affect people on the board, but also the hired contractors. Grab the popcorn, this will get interesting.

Sunnyvale, CA—September 13, 2006—OCZ Technology Group, a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory, today announced the second certified member of the new ATI CrossFire™ DDR2 series which delivers 800MHz speeds at 4-4-4 timings. The PC2-6400 CrossFire Certified modules now deliver gamers the performance and speed they require for their demanding computing environments. Approximating the newly released PC2-5400, the PC2-6400 modules feature an exclusive ATI special XTC (Xtreme Thermal Convection) heatspreader displaying ATI’s “Certified” logo.

You can read the full press release here.

Sunnyvale, Calif. and Santa Clara, Calif. – Sept. 13, 2006 – Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO), a leading global Internet company, and Intel Corporation today announced the kick off of Yahoo! Sports for TV, a new service that brings the excitement and camaraderie of fantasy football to TVs connected to Intel® Viiv™ technology-based PCs this football season. Consumers with entertainment PCs based on Intel Viiv technology can now get real-time updates on their fantasy football team while watching live games – all on a single TV screen.

You can read the full press release here.

NC Soft has notified us about a contest that they are running in cooperation with 1UP.com. If you want a chance at a free copy of the game or a free trial, be sure to check this out!

1UP.com is hosting an Auto Assault Week, starting September 12th. Join the hardcore party, prove you’ve got what it takes to sit behind the wheel, and make a play to win some free stuff!

2K passes along word that their highly anticipated NHL debut onto the next-gen consoles is close. To celebrate, you can now log onto your XBL account and download the demo which should tide you over until the games release in October.

In addition to debuting this week on the Xbox 360 and Xbox video game and entertainment systems from Microsoft, NHL 2K7, the latest in the #1 rated hockey game series, is now available as a playable Xbox 360 demo via Xbox Live Marketplace. For the first time, gamers can download the exclusive demo to play an exhibition game of NHL 2K7 and enjoy a free preview of the finest hockey video game this year.

Cases & Enclosures
• Cooler Master Mystique 632 Case – GamePyre
• HTPC Buildup Using NMediaPC Products – Pro-Clockers
• Shuttle XPC SN27P2 – Hardware Info
• Ultra Grid ATX Mid-Tower Case – Red & Blackness

Cooling
• CoolIT Systems Home Theatre PC Liquid Cooler Preview – Futurelooks

Motherboards & Processors
• ASUS P5NSLI – HardOCP

Peripherals & Power Supplies
• OCZ GameXStream 700W – Viper Lair
• Silverstone ST85ZF – Technic3D
• SteelSeries SteelSound 5H v2 USB Headset – 3D Gameman
• XTracPads Ripper XXL Mousepad – Club OC

Displays & Video Cards
• ATI Radeon X1900XT 256MB – Legit Reviews
• HIS X1900GT IceQ3 Dual DL-DVI VIVO 256MB – Hexus

Complete Systems, Competitions & Etcetera
• Alienware Aurora m9700 – BIOS Magazine
• “Grisoft AVG Free Edition Antivirus” – TweakNews
• iTunes 7 First Look – Digital Trends
• Logitech Harmony 895 – UK Gamer
• “The State Of IPTV” – The Tech Zone
• Toshiba Tecra A8-154 – Hardware Info

OCZ has released many products over the past few months, one being a new CPU cooler. It may not be much to look at, but the design promises great heat dissipation. If you are looking for a low profile air cooler that glows, read on…

The first two desktops won’t be anything exciting for enthusiasts and appear to be targeting the entry-level market. The model C521 will come in simple case with BTX layout that comes with integrated graphics. According to Dell, the system comes with Microsoft’s Windows Media Center Edition and can be upgraded to up to 4 GB system memory, 500 GB hard disk space. The E521 will offer more configuration flexibility, including more hard drive space, dual optical drives and Dell’s data safe technology.

It’s not known if these will be 939 or AM2 systems, because it could really be either or. It’s good to see this finally happening, though. Many people, including myself, have been waiting for this moment for more years than we wish to recount. Let’s bring on some Dell AMD laptops!

The firm behind popular online file-sharing software eDonkey has agreed to pay $30 million to avoid potential copyright infringement lawsuits from the recording industry, according to court documents filed Tuesday.$30 Million! It makes you realise just how much cash these fire-sharing companies actually make when they can fork over that huge sum of money. Oh, and don’t visit the eDonkey website unless you want to see something like, “Your IP address is ***.***.***.*** and has been logged. Respect the music, download legally.” Yes… please pay a lot of money to download low quality music from iTunes or another service. That should please the RIAA.

Later this year Intel will be introducing pin compatible upgrades to its Core 2 and Xeon lines, except instead of two cores these processors will feature four. Codenamed Kenstfield (Core 2) and Clovertown (Xeon), Intel’s new quad-core processors will dramatically increase the amount of processing power you can have in a single system. Given that the Mac Pro features two LGA-771 sockets, you could theoretically drop two Clovertown processors in there and you’d have an 8-core Mac Pro.

It’s good know Apple is ahead of the game, but even still… is there a need for eight cores?! Sure to please the hardcore media buffs, that’s for sure.

New York, NY – September 12, 2006 – 2K, a publishing label of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. (NASDAQ: TTWO), today announced Dungeon Siege II: Deluxe Edition, a special collector’s set that includes the original Dungeon Siege II, the Dungeon Siege II: Broken World expansion pack, and a number of collectible items spanning maps, portraits, wallpapers and a “The Making of Dungeon Siege II” DVD. Dungeon Siege II: Deluxe Edition will be available for PC at retail stores in North America in October and at stores in Europe in November 2006.

DS2 is a true classic, so if you have not picked up a copy yet, this may be the time to do so. Here is what the pack includes:

• Dungeon Siege II
• Dungeon Siege II: Broken World
• 8×12 fold out map of the entire continent of Aranna
• Six printable portraits of Princess Eva
• “The Making of Dungeon Siege II” Video
• Dungeon Siege II Wallpapers and Concept Art
• Dungeon Siege II: Broken World Short Story: Katala’s Journey