Content and news by Rob Williams

When Enermax releases a new power supplies onto the market, you know that you are going to get a quality part. From the Whisper line to the Noisetaker unit, Enermax has not disappointed us yet. And with the release of the new Liberty line of power supplies, I am sure the quality is there. Boasting modular cables and a dark metallic paint job you are in for a treat. And our model puts out 620 watts of pure power.

Check out the full review over at Pro Clockers!

Well boys and girls it’s time again for another insane NGOHQ contest giveaway and we have a couple of surprises for you!! We are proud to announce that we are giving away two Leadtek Winfast PX7800GT Extreme TDH 256MB cards.

Woot! Free stuff! Check it out at NGOHQ.

It seems that NVIDIA is working on a new GPU architecture for laptops. We discovered that they already added support for the G73 inside ForceWare Control Panel. We believe it would be a mid-range GPU.

Ooh, what could it be? Check it out at NGOHQ.

Ever since we first reviewed an early version of Snapstream’s Beyond TV, I have had some form of Shuttle box or the like running this program in Damage Labs, ready to stream video over the local network to any box in the house. This setup’s existence has been suspended for many months between my intentions–to build a real HTPC for use in the living room to replace the TiVo–and various realities involving the relative difficulty of building a truly adequate TiVo replacement and my own available time. Then my HTPC project got a jolt over the weekend when, out of nowhere, the Toshiba DVD player in my living room gave up the ghost. Suddenly, it was time to build a basic HTPC right away.

Head on over to Tech Report for the full article!

Logitech has innovated once again with the MX610, making it the first mouse to actually receive information as well as transmit it. Operating wirelessly over 2.4GHz, the mouse is actually told when the computer is turned on and off and put to sleep, powering on and off accordingly to save battery life. This can be further extended by powering off the mouse manually if away from the desk or for computers that are never turned off.

Head on over to Everything USB for the full review!

From our point of view from these results this PrimeCooler HyperPipe PC-HP1 heatsink does exactly what it says on the box. Work and work well in the range it is designed to work in.

Head on over to A1 Electronics for the review.

Modding Crucial is most commonly known now for their Ballistix line of high performance, high speed, top quality memory. What if you don’t want or have a need for enthusiast, overclocker memory, but you still want quality, stable memory? Well today for review I have 1 gig of Crucial’s PC3200 desktop memory. It is what would be considered by some, plain, vanilla memory, no fills, no activity LEDs, no flashy, shiny heat spreader, it’s just a couple of sticks of ram like we used to have in our systems before it became common place for companies to ‘bling’ their memory to get attention to it.

Check out the full review over at Think Computers.

As with Connect3d’s X850XT, the Crucial version easily kept the frames above 100 in the doom3 test and with details set to high. The performance gain from the overclock was good with an average of up to 20FPS increase at some resolutions, this is still an impressive feat and not to be sniffed at as it outperforms the more expensive PE version.

Check out the full review over at Xtreme Computing!

On top the excellent CPU temperatures, another bonus is that the large wingspan of the Thermalright SI-120 allows cool air to be delivered to the motherboard’s voltage regulating chips as well as the system memory. Knocking a few degrees off of both of these components is good for system longevity, and will definitely help with any overclocking efforts.

Head over to Big Bruin for the full review.

Starting 10/24/2005 the City of Heroes® and City of Villainsâ„¢ character name policy will change. Names for characters under level 35 on game accounts that have been inactive for over 90 days will be changed to unreserved status. This means that those names will become available for new character names if picked…..

The VIVO breakout boxes give you all of the connectivity you need to capture external sources such as your camcorder or VCR. It also outputs HD source to your TV and gives you full capability to hook it up to everything in your home theater. The HD connection to my TV is of very good quality thanks to the HDTV acceleration of the Rage Theater chip. The Easy Look software combined with the Remote Wonder puts all of the features at your fingertips and allows you to remotely locate your system. The interface is very easy to use and gives you access to everything you need.

Check out the full review over at Got Apex.

For the cool price of $74 USD, the MSI Theater 550PRO is a pretty good value when compared to many other TV Tuners, including ATI’s own TV Wonder Elite which goes for almost double the price. Considering there isn’t much difference between the two in terms of software bundles and hardware, we’d lean towards MSI’s version of the card if you’re in the need of a tuner for your HTPC box.

Check out the review over at Viper Lair.

This buyer’s guide is going to go over a few entry level digital cameras with a brief analysis of each along with real-time pricing and links to a few online retailers. You will have to familiarize yourself with the basics of the digital still camera (DSC) world, but after that, this guide should be quite helpful. We will be focusing on what we call “entry level” digital cameras. This is not a very clearly definite category, but we have established some guidelines. We are choosing cameras which have a good brand reputation, generally sell for under $200 (with a few exceptions), and are easy to operate. The features of camera is going to depend on the manufacturer and price level, but they can all be considered “point-and-shoot” models, as opposed to being digital single-lens reflex cameras (DSLR).

Check it out at XYZ Computing.

The Cooler Master Centurion BTX-B540 Case maximizes air circulation with the
inclusion of a front mounted mesh grill that also acts as a dust filter. The
dust filter is completely removable and can be cleaned when maintenance is
required. Underneath the mesh grill is the location for a series front mounted
ports. The ports include two USB, Firewire, Headphone and Microphone. The
ports are attached to a series of extender cables which must be connected to
the proper headers on a motherboard prior to use.

Head on over to Mod The Box for the full look.

Under-hyped or Overrated? The Zalman CNPS 9500 LED is Zalman’s newest addition to their top of the line air coolers. This full-copper heatsink comes with a fan controller so you can optimize for performance or fan noise. In our testing it even beats a watercooling kit and proves that it is well worth your money. Watch as we put it to the test on the Pentium 4 Prescott 561 at 180 Watt TDP.

Check out the full review at techPowerUp!

Kate OS, the Linux distribution designed for just about
everyone ranging from programmers to home-users, have released their 2.2
version. Contained in this release is the 2.6.13 kernel with Reiser 4
file-system support along with the GTK+ v2.8.3 library and support for
GNOME 2.12, however, XFCE continues to be the default desktop
environment of choice. As always, Kate OS developers have done a
magnificent job on the default theme.

Check out the full pictorial over at Phoronix.

From an architectural point of view, there are some things about the architecture that we really like. We love the idea of HDR and Anti-Aliasing at the same time in more games, along with the option to enable Adaptive Anti-Aliasing and High Quality Anisotropic Filtering too. However, we are not quite sure about the performance of FP16 HDR and Anti-Aliasing together. The current games using the FP16 blend technique for HDR are Far Cry, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory and Age Of Empires 3, which comes out very soon. We’re expecting a patch for Far Cry to be released in the near future, but we’ve not heard anything about the other two games just yet. The patch for Far Cry should help to answer our initial questions regarding FP16 HDR and Anti-Aliasing at the same time, though.

Take a full look at this new card at Bit-Tech.

The “X-Sharp MS-X777” is the perfect choice for the gaming enthusiast who wants to take their gaming experience to the next level but does not want to spend a lot of money on un-necessary buttons and fancy features. I would recommend this unit to anyone looking for something basic that will give them the extra edge in their game play.

Head on over to 3D Xtreme for the full look!

Hiper’s midrange offering in their high performance Type-R series is in the form of the M Label 480W (HPU-4M480). We have tested it thus far to be very a respectable power supply and stands strong among the big names. Couple that with the price of USD 73 (MYR 276), it is simply an excellent price/performance ratio. Aesthetically, it looks quite sleek with the black chassis along with the sleeved cables, albeit not fully sleeved. Everything from the packaging, manual, performance, to the workmanship speaks quality. To sum it all up; Price + Performance + Aesthetics + Quality = A very worthy product. Definitely recommended!

Check out the full review over at PC Modding Malaysia.

The one word that describes Shuttle’s SD31P XPC is competent. Just add a hard drive, preferably SATA, optical drive, RAM, and an LGA775 CPU and away you go. Everything works just as it should, and installation is a real cinch for even novice XPC builders. Performance is also good when judged in comparison to ATX-sized i945G and i955X motherboards, and the ability to specify a Pentium 4 Extreme Edition or dual-core CPU, GeForce 7800 GT, 2GB RAM, and 1TByte of storage, should your pocket be deep enough, is eminently possible in this larger-than-normal XPC.

Check out the full review over at Hexus.