Content and news by Rob Williams

Functionality in mind, each of the regular Molex connector lines is of the
quick-disconnect variety and extremely long. The main power connections are
also all present including a 20-pin with a removable 4-pin section for 20 or
24 pin boards, a P4 AUX connector, twin PCI-Express video card connectors and
even a dual processor 8-pin power jack. That’s right, you can use this power
supply to run your twin processor server and still have enough connectors to
make the recently photographed giant squid envious. Continuing in the quantity
vein there are four more SATA plugs are present with two on their own line.

Check out the full review at Mod The Box!

Designed by Daniel Guermeur, the Das Keyboard has been
receiving a fair amount of attention since its design was publicized.
Although the keyboard may look nice in theory and on paper, is the
weighted key switches and blank keys anything worth compensating for the
premium price? Today we have the Das Keyboard with us and we’ll share a
wealth of pictures as well as our opinion on this innovative typing
solution.

Now this is a leet keyboard. Get one, then see if your friends bug you to use your computer! Check it out at Phoronix.

On Monday September 26th Day of Defeat: Source was launched. The original Day of Defeat was an online, multiplayer Half Life mod which became quite popular, but always existed in the shadow of Counter Strike. Once Half Life 2 was released, with Counter Strike: Source included in the retail kit, it seemed…..

Today we have another power supply for review. It is another entry from Xgbox/Mge; it is the Vortec 600 Watt power supply. Pushing 37amps off the 12volt line, this is not your vanilla power supply, this is built for power. This is the third power supply I have reviewed from Xgbox/MGE and the others have been outstanding in looks and performance. With this review I will have covered basically the entire line of power supplies from Xgbox, the impressive and stylish Magnum, the quiet and sleek Vigor and now the Vortec. Can the Vortec live up to its ‘brothers’ reputation? Read on to find out!

Check out the full review at Think Computers.

Backing up your personal or business computer is very important. If
you have ever lost data due to a virus, hardware failure, human error or
software glitch, you know how right I am. Many people still do not take the
time to backup their important information. Maybe it is too difficult for
these people to use backup software or maybe they forget to run it. That is
why Uniblue created their WinBackup 2.0 software to be easy to use and easy
to schedule. Let’s take a look and see if it is truly easy to use.

Check out the full look at A True Review!

Titan have created a pretty good package in the Serina. Sticking a USB hub, memory card reader and a couple of fans into a small aluminum pad is a pretty good idea. It is the perfect solution for those with a small amount of desk space. Why spread your devices around your desk when you can put them in a compact package under you notebook. And it is a well built pad. Built from aluminum, the Serina can take a beating and look sharp will doing it.

Check it out at Viper Lair!

So you want to water cool your system but you do not want to try
and figure which pump to get, what is the best CPU water block, and what
about hose size? Don’t worry Zalman might have what you are looking for in
the Reserator 1 Plus. Everything you need to get into the water cooling
scene is included in this easy to install kit.

Check out the full review over at CaseModGod.

We take a close look at VL System’s L.I.S 2 Blue eye, to find out how this middle-segment LCD performs. It can display anything from fan RPM and current time all the way to CPU temperature and voltages, it can even control up to 4 fans. Have you ever caught yourself wondering what time it is in the middle of a frag fest, and couldn’t risk switching back to desktop? Do you own a modded case and attend LAN Parties regularly? Then this might just be the unit you are after…

Check out the full review at techPowerUp!.

We all know that there is a multitude of multifunction panels on the market. Everyone wants to be able to see the temperature of their PC, control fans, and insert USB and Firewire devices into one simple bay device right? Well, today we have the Logisys Wireless Remote Multifunction Panel for review, is this device complete all of those tasks? We will find out. One thing is for sure, this device is capable of turning on, turning off, and restarting your PC with the simple push of a button, and get this, WIRELESSLY. Let’s get on with this review and find out a little more about this device.

Check out the full review at Extensive Mods.

The SinTek 500W SLI Modular PSU is feature rich. The Aluminum casing is light & helps it say cool. There are 2 fans for excellent air circulation, and a unique readout on the side monitors the inside temperature. Also, modular leads & SLI capability are a huge plus. All this & it performs very well. A fully loaded product! Watch the Video to find out more…

Check out the full review at 3D Gameman!

It didn’t seem as if he was asking for much. When the CD drive on Peter Ulyatt’s Dell desktop computer failed this summer, he called the support crew at Dell (DELL ), where he’d bought the $1,600 machine nine months prior. Armed with an extended warranty that cost him an extra $300, the Pasadena (Calif.) retiree got on the phone and waited. After sitting on hold for 45 minutes, a technician whom Ulyatt could barely understand came on the line and diagnosed a “software problem.” Ulyatt’s call, transferred to the software technician, was dropped. Calling back, Ulyatt waited on hold another 45 minutes, asked for the software desk, and waited a half-hour more before hanging up. “At the moment, I’m not high on Dell’s service,” says Ulyatt, who plans to buy two new PCs in a year or so. “When I buy again, I will look at others beyond Dell.”

Sadly, I feel the exact same way. Check it out at Business Week.

Thanks to JustAnAverageGuy from our forums for alerting me to this news story. Dell Home will stop providing free delivery of computers to your doorstep/office. If you don’t want to pay the shipping charge, you’ll have to pick up your package from your local post office. In a way, I kind of like this new policy. There’s nothing worse than being at work and checking your shipping status to find out that your brand new computer has been delivered to your house and is going to be sitting outside all day long until you get home. On the other hand, that’s one more trip for you to have to make to the post office to lug your heavy computer home.

Shipping to the post office is a good alternative! Check out the story at AnandTech.

Thunderbird 1.0.7 is a security and stability update that is part of our ongoing program to provide a safe Internet experience for our customers. We recommend that all users upgrade to this latest version.

If you are a Thunderbird user like me, grab the latest version from Mozilla.

As a Battlefield 2 junkie myself, I was definitely surprised to be greeted with a bit of choppiness when playing the game on my main rig. After increasing my rigs’ memory from 1GB of RAM to 2GB, all the choppiness was solved. Yikes, that’s 2GB of RAM! Never one not to capitalize on a new trend in memory, just as consumers are starting to see the peak of the 2GB RAM mountain poking out from behind the mist, a flurry of memory manufacturers are waiting in the winds with ‘brand new’ 2x1GB dual channel DDR memory kits like the 2GB EL DDR PC4000 Gold Edition memory kit from OCZ.

Check out the full review at PC Stats. For comparison, you can check out our review of the memory here.

What drove you to develop your own overclocking tool? Weren’t there any other good tools available, e.g. PowerStrip?

I loved the overclocking tool Radeonator. But the author stopped development on it, so some time after that I started looking into how to do low-level hardware access on ATI cards. The first steps took quite some while, but then everything started to come together. Things got even more exciting when I added the artifact scanner to ATITool… This was a unique feature and constantly refining it was a fun task. Also the feedback from the community motivated me even more.

Check out the full interview at MigoNet. For those unaware, ATI Tool is also starting to support NVIDIA, making this a tool for all GPU overclockers.

For nearly a year Ageia has been making headlines with its
innovative physics technology that they hope will revolutionize
game-play not only for PC games but also console platforms such as
Sony’s PlayStation 3 and Microsoft’s Xbox 360. As Ageia’s stance for
supporting their PhysX PPU on alternative operating systems hasn’t been
definitively clear, we sought additional information on their potential
Linux support, as well as other general information, and today we have
this information clarified.

This is good stuff! Everyone is still skeptical about AGEIA and PhysX, but it’s good to see they are covering most of the bases! Check it out at Phoronix.

Just a few days after releasing a report on how horribly Gizmondo was doing, today they apply for a NASDAQ listing. Co-founder of Tiger Carl Freer offered this: “We are gearing up our inventory as a result of an unexpected surge in sales. We also need product in the USA for our upcoming launch in time for the Christmas season.” What the? Monumental losses one day, and the next they want to get on NASDAQ because sales surged? Something’s fishy.

Check out the humorous but truthful look about the Gizmondo and it’s future at Kotaku.

With $5,000 on the line, hackers unable to crack the thick armor protecting VIA’s StrongBox. The application uses a security cocktail of hardware and software based encryption to secure user data.

The Taiwanese microprocessor vendor offered a $5,000 prize to any hacker that could break into StrongBox, a secure virtual hard drive of up to 40GB designed to protect data from computer intruders. Announced on Tuesday, the application is made using a combination of hardware-based SHA-1 and 256-bit AES encryption.

This doesn’t really surprise me.. it usually takes a while to break something like this, not a few days. Either way, it’s still cool. Source: AnandTech

The summer’s over, people are back in school, and its starting to get cold, but before you get too depressed- it is time for another XYZ Computing Giveaway. This month we will be giving away a HighSpeed PC Tech Station, the open air computer test bench. All you have to do to win is stop by and join in!

Get all the details at XYZ Computing.

PSP haxors have ported an Apple II emulator to the handheld, which means, I suppose, you can play Oregon Trail on the bus (“Wolves have eaten your mother!”). I posit that the number of possible PSP ports is infinite. I leave the proof of this as an exercise for the reader.

Hah, what won’t get ported to the PSP? Gizmodo