Content and news by Rob Williams

FrostyTech’s back, and in addition to thermal stress tests, we’ve taken sound measurements, poked and prodded, measured and compared just about every surface of the Zalman CNPS9500 LED heatsink in their latest review! The CNPS9500 LED heatsink is compatible with all current AMD and Intel socket formfactors. The heatsink is voluminous, but designed to operate quietly and cool under low noise, low fan-speed conditions. Three heatpipes bent into a figure-eight form the backbone of the CNPS9500 LED heatsink, and the rest of the design is simply form following function to a “T”.

This is by far, one of the best looking heatsinks out there right now. Does the unique design make for better cooling? Check out the full review at FrostyTech.

The ersatz CD player front panel has a tradition at ThermalRock, and this time around is no different – it’s all just a fata morgana. Granted, you can still insert a real CD or DVD in the recess of the case, but it won’t play. Whereas the initial model in the series – the Circle RH-F030-25W – had storage space for four such discs, the Eclipse midi tower only lets you stow a single one. With the Mystic, this feature was dispensed with entirely; instead of the CD, all you see is an arc of light.

These are cool looking cases, especially if you are into that odd CD Player look. It looks like ThermalRock did a fantastic job on these two cases though, there’s none other really like them either. Check out the full look at Toms.

BITMICRO showed off a 155GB Ultra 320 SCSI solid state hard drive at a military show here in London. The E-Disk 3S320 will operate at temperatures between -60° Celsius to over 95° Celsius, said the company.

This thing must be crazy expensive.. I don’t think we want to know. But it is fast as heck though, so hopefully it will become more mainstream in the near future. Check it at The Inquirer.

A dispute between a painter and a toy-maker was reported in ‘The Copenhagen Post’ this week. Apparently the toy producer Lego, a Danish company and maker of the toy building blocks known around the world, is suing a Danish artist because she uses her middle name, Lego, as her signature on artworks. So, the toy company is basically saying that Louise Lego Andersen’s art work could be mixed up with their toy company.

We made a post last week about how the company will rag you out if you call them Legos. That was bad enough.. but now it’s just getting ridiculous. Check out the posting at Tech Dirt.

The Programmers Developer Conference (PDC) has unveiled the user interface for Microsoft Office 12. Bearing more than a passing resemblance to Aqua and brushed metal looks from Mac OS X the menus now appear to operate more like a tab popping-out the right toolbar instead of a sub-menu.

Check out the full posting at Slashdot, which includes a link to many pictures of the new Office.

As everyone knew, LCD monitors are now the most sought after computer display device in the world with standard CRT monitor sales dropping like a lead balloon over a black hole. The reasons for their success are obvious as seen above and their drawbacks are being picked off one by one by manufacturers trying to get a product onto the market that is superior than the rest.

Check out the full review at TweakNews.

It has been quiet from Crucials side for awhile as the other companies have pushed out high performing memory out on the market. We got a sample though of their new Ballistix Tracer that is the follower to the popular Ballistix memory that was released awhile back. It will be interesting to see how this new Tracer version performs compared to some Mushkin and OCZ ram that are very well known as high performers.

Check out the full review over at R&B Mods!

Popular amongst many case modders, the Cooler Master Aerogate II not only looks nice but is also useful in monitoring case temperatures and controlling fan speeds. Today, Papercut takes a look at an improved version of the Cooler Master Aerogate II, which corrects issues discovered in the original Aerogate II. Come and see what’s new!

Check out the full review at Rojak Pot!

Saratoga, CA and Tokyo, Japan – September 13, 2005 – Futuremark
Corporation, a leading provider of performance-analysis software and
services, announced today that Tokyo-based Digital Media Professionals
Inc. (DMP) is joining its handheld benchmark development program. In
addition, DMP is licensing source codes for Futuremark’s SPMark04 3D
graphics test and forthcoming OpenGL ES benchmark suite.

“We are delighted to welcome DMP as a development partner,” said Tero
Sarkkinen, Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing for
Futuremark. “DMP develops sophisticated real-time 3D graphics
solutions; their participation proves the global reach of our
benchmarks that have become de-facto industry standards,” Sarkkinen added.

Read: Full Press Release

The premise behind this product is that it has been designed to be placed as
an add-on component for an existing water cooling set-up. When installed
inline especially in the path of a cooling fan; the Xtreme Xchangers remove
heat away as coolant flows through it via passive cooling. North Water Xtreme
PC Cooling has taken a universal approach to the design by supporting all
available tubing sizes and fittings available, including compression fittings
seen on commercial based water cooling kits from Alphacool, Asetek, Innovatek,
NextCool and Xice.

This is a unique idea, and it actually works! If you are interested in making your water cooling even cooler, check out the review at Mod The Box.

Today’s computers have become extremely power hungry. Because of things like high powered video cards, multiple hard drives, dual processors, and a whole list of available peripherals, never has the need for a rock solid power supply been greater. Using a cheap or under-rated power supply is a sure fire way to create random computer problems and severely handicap any efforts at overclocking your computer… Enter E-Power Technology with their new Silent Engine Tiger 550 watt power supply.

Yet another Modular solution, which is a great thing! Check out the look over at Big Bruin.

The NF4SK8AA-8EKRS is not fantastically life changing and revolutionary, but isn’t bad either. In short, the board does what it says on the tin, works very well at stock speed, should be cheaper than the competition, covers all the necessary bases and has a sexy orange PCB. At the right price, it’s worth a look.

Check out the full review at Bit-Tech!

The first thing you will notice when opening the side is the unusual placement of the lower HDD rack, rather than sit flush with the front Thermaltake have mounted it about 1 ½ inches away from the front fan. Now the only reason ii can think this has been done is to ensure good airflow in the case. Also as I mentioned earlier the strange placement of the top 3.5 bay, before we take a look around the inside let us see what is included in the case.

Head on over to Xtreme Computing for the full review.

Thermalright is famous for making some of the best CPU heatsinks available. The V-1 is their first attempt at making a VGA cooler
and we take a look to see if they can extend their crown into the graphics section.

If you are looking for a very different looking GPU cooler, check out this review at InsaneTek.

San Francisco – September 13, 2005 – Macromedia, Inc. (Nasdaq: MACR) today announced the immediate availability of Macromedia Studio 8, the essential suite for web designers, developers, video professionals, and graphic artists to design, develop, and maintain interactive online experiences. Combining the latest releases of award-winning Macromedia Dreamweaver®, Macromedia Flash® Professional, and Macromedia Fireworks®, and key productivity tools Macromedia Contribute™ and Macromedia FlashPaper™, Studio 8 offers a new level of expressiveness, efficiency, and simplified workflow to create websites, interactive media, and mobile content. For more information about Studio 8, please visit http://www.macromedia.com/software/studio.

“Studio 8 exemplifies our continued focus on delivering the best solutions for communicating rich information to global audiences across multiple mediums,” said Stephen Elop, chief executive officer, Macromedia. “With tremendous improvements to features and performance, we believe Studio 8 will fundamentally change the way people create and deliver digital content all over the world.”

Finally, the wait is over and the tools are out. You can expect our hard look at the products within two weeks!

Read: Full Press Release

One of the features I really like is the EVP, that’s basically OCZ saying “We know you are going to tweak this RAM to get the best performance possible, and that’s OK with us.” Features like this show how enthusiasts, gamers etc. have shaped the industry. It wasn’t to long ago that doing things like modifying voltage etc would void your warranty. These days manufacturers are providing end users with the tools needed to overclock and tweak their hardware without having to worry about voiding the warranty.

Check out the full review over at Viper Lair! For comparison, you can check out our review of the memory here.

The Magnum 500w power supply propels MGE into a market they haven’t been before, highest end PSUs. Their newest offering presents many of the best attributes on the market and then adds a few others to top it off. There have been silent power supplies before from companies such as PC Power and Cooling or Antec, but none have taken it to the level that MGE has, a full size copper heatpipe. This alone will extend the life of the PSU, heat is one of the primary killers of computer parts. Combine that with a decent fan to provide some ventilation and airflow and you have a killer combination.

Wow, this PSU has been reviewed all over lately, but who couldn’t enjoy a completely silent one? Check out the full review at Got Apex!

The Foxconn 945P7AA-8EKRS2 supports 533/800/1066 MHz FSB Pentium 4/D and Extreme Edition processors and can be equipped with up to 4GB of non ECC DDR2-667 memory. The board has plenty of onboard expansion ports, such as an additional IDE/RAID controller, dual Gigabit NICs, IEEE 1394a and Intel’s Azalia audio controller.

Head on over to PC Stats for the full review!

Don’t forget to join us tonight(September 12th) for our monthly House of Commons with the developers of Planetside. It will be at 5pm PST / 8pm EST in the #StraticsHoC channel on Stratics IRC. Come chat with Planetside Developers and get your questions about the latest development in the game answered! You…..

BARCELONA, Spain (BrainShare® 2005) – Sept. 12, 2005 – Novell today announced the rapid growth of business-critical applications running on Linux* in the data centre, as data centre software vendors Agresso, Carmen Systems, Jeeves Information Systems and Sage join Oracle, SAP and Siebel in supporting Novell’s SUSETM Linux Enterprise Server. In addition, Novell is launching the beta version of the most rigorous training and examination program for Linux certifications to meet data centre requirements. As a result, customers can run the critical applications they need on a cost-effective and proven Linux infrastructure in their data centres, with the full backing and global ecosystem of Novell.

“CIOs are under increasing pressure to align their IT infrastructure with changing business requirements while positioning themselves for growth,” said Hans Sparkes, head of Enterprise Linux, Unisys EMEA. “Our expertise, unique tools and enterprise-class services optimize organizations’ IT infrastructure and maximize performance through consolidation, migration and simplification. Our partnership with Novell provides customers with greater choice and flexibility at a significantly lower cost than with proprietary solutions.”

Check out the full press release at Novell.