Content and news by Rob Williams

On the back of the Chromatic Windmill you will find all the connectors neatly lined up, and well labeled… You will also find a place to install a back-up battery. If the power is ever lost to the unit you won’t lose your settings. This is a great feature, as I have always hated moving components around and losing the values that I had programmed in!

Sunbeam always makes great looking panels, and these are no exception! Check out the full review over at Big Bruin!

Stratics is pleased to announce our next House of Commons Developer Chat with the developers of Hero’s Journey on August 3rd at 5:00PM PDT / 7:00PM CDT / 8:00PM EDT in the #StraticsHoC channel on Stratics IRC. You can connect to one of our IRC servers through the use of your favorite…..

Overclockers and tweakers will find this case very user friendly as this case is totally accessible and almost everything can be disassembled. The Eclipse-62 is also getting my credits for its large interior space and the ability to support up to 10 hard drives with ease. I’m also giving credit to this case because of the supplied castors that makes life easy, especially when you’re getting to a LAN Party. The slide out motherboard tray is also very unique and I believe that this is the only case with a mirror finish motherboard tray.

This is a fantastic looking case. Akasa did a great job with it, and even went as far to allow the user to padlock the case. Check out the full look at this case over at PC Modding Malaysia.

Over the next few pages PCSTATS will be reviewing a pair of PCI Express MSI X6800 TD-128E SLI-capable videocards in both single and SLI mode. We’re going to see just what kind of performance a user can expect from these high-end cards operating in tandem. By now, most consumers should be familiar with SLI benchmarks from 6600GT mid-range nVidia cards, so let’s take things up a notch! Each of the MSI NX6800 TD-128E videocards we’ll be testing are based on the nVidia Geforce 6800 GPU and sport 128MB of GDDR3 memory, SLI compatibility, full HDTV/S-Video/composite TV-out capabilities and dual-monitor support. The blue analog connection is for CRT monitors and the white DVI connector is for digital LCD displays.

These cards offer great performance, and in SLi mode they beat out the 6800GT by a nice little margin. Head over to PC Stats for the full look.

Have you ever felt the need to remain anonymous, while surfing on the internet? Even if you are doing nothing wrong, it may be something to consider. In the article, we give great starter tips on how you can get on the road to anonymity.

The continual march of technological progress can be fascinating and exhausting at the same time. It was only a few months ago when 1024 MB of ram, a full gigabyte was more than any game could utilize. But as time has relentlessly brought more demanding applications and huge immersive multiplayer games, having more than a gigabyte of memory can now show a benefit to a significant portion of our readers.

Head over to AMD Zone for the full look!

LOS ANGELES, Calif. – August 2, 2005 – At SIGGRAPH 2005, AGEIA™ Technologies, Inc., the pioneer in hardware-accelerated physics for games, today announced that it is receiving broad support from third-party vendors of tools, plug-ins, game editors, and middleware. These innovative companies are using the AGEIA physX™ SDK (formerly called NovodeX™) to enhance the power of their tools in a variety of unique ways, while providing support for hardware acceleration using the AGEIA physX™ processor.

“AGEIA is creating many interesting synergies by drawing on the talents of third-party tools vendors in the digital content creation space,” said Jon Peddie of Jon Peddie Research. “This strategy should pay off in their efforts to bring real-time physics simulation to mass-market game consumers.”

You can check out the full press release here!

After the success of the old “BH-5” PC3500 LVL2, Mushkin tries to continue the success story with the new Redline XP4000. They select the best Winbond UTT CH-5 and use them on these modules to have a big clearance above the specifications. The modules offer 250 MHz with tightest timings of 2-2-2, but require active cooling. We test these sticks at up to 3.5V and see how far they go.

Check out the full review at techPowerUp!

All that said for a heatsink system that does not make any noise and can be used on AMD Athlon and Intel Pentium 4 processors this Thermaltake Rocket is great.

Because of its performance, quality of manufacture and noiseless operation we are proud to award this Thermaltake Rocket our Editors Top Choice for a fanless water cooler heatsink system.

Head over to A1 Electronics for the full review!

Well, in my humble opinion there are to many companies making cooling solutions. There are so many out there to choose from anymore, I’m not going to list them, you know most of them I’m sure. Having this many companies making heat sink fan cooling solutions can be a problem, not everyone is going to be great. Truth is, most aren’t, and the ones that at one time were, have let their success go to their heads and let quality control fade away, thinking they will sell products on their name alone. Having cool names, cool packaging might sell products to a newbie, but at what cost really? Today for review I have a heat sink fan combo from Spire, called the Whisperock 5, sure everyone knows the name, they make a decent cooler right?

Check out the review at Think Computers.

Inspired by the American television shows Orange County Choppers and Monster Garage, a crew down in southern California has begun producing a quite extensive array of custom computer cases – dubbed the Signature Series. In this article today, we’ll be offering some rare looks at their first “themed” chassis off their workbench along with other insights on how KickButtComputers is aiming at creating an entirely new genre of computer case modifications.

Check out the full article at Phoronix!

Gigabyte just can’t seem to stop with great new inventions. Their aircooling coolers are very nice. Their watercooling is awesome.
Now their first case becomes a great choice to house your hardware.

Head over to InsaneTek for the full review!

Meet the mouse that reinvented the wheel. The scroll wheel, that is. At $49, Mighty Mouse features the revolutionary Scroll Ball that lets you move anywhere inside a document, without lifting a finger. And with touch-sensitive technology concealed under the seamless top shell, you get the programability of a four-button mouse in a single-button design. Click, roll, squeeze and scroll. This mouse just aced the maze.

It definitely has the Apple styling, very clean looking. It’s seriously about time that they released a two-button mouse! Check out all the info here.

Meridian, Idaho, August 02, 2005 — Crucial Technology today announced the immediate availability of its leading-edge Crucial® Ballistix™ high-performance memory modules, including 1GHz PC2-8000 (DDR2-1000), the fastest Ballistix module to date. In addition, Crucial is releasing PC2-6400 (DDR2-800) and PC2-5300 (DDR2-667) low-latency memory, designed specifically for computer gamers and power users seeking maximum system performance and stability at a competitive price-point. The new DDR2 PC2-6400 and PC2-5300 modules are optimized to provide leading-edge performance in motherboards based on both the Intel® 925XE and 955X Express chipsets.

Crucial’s Ballistix high-performance DDR2 line now includes the following modules in both 512 megabyte (MB) and 1 gigabyte (GB) densities:
– Crucial Ballistix PC2-8000 (DDR2-1000), CL5-5-5-15, 2.2V
– Crucial Ballistix PC2-6400 (DDR-800), CL4-4-4-12, 2.1V
– Crucial Ballistix PC2-5300 (DDR2-667), CL3-3-3-12, 2.1V

Wow, Ballistix have finally seen the 1GHz light. The 5-5-5 timings are a little high, so I’m interested to see how these will perform in some reviews. The memory is expensive though as it stands, $330US for a 1GB stick and $166US for a 512MB. You can check them out over in Crucials Store.

• Deluxe water cooling chassis
• Excellent heat dissipation for CPU, GPU and inside the case

• CPU : compatible with Intel P3, P4 (Socket 478/775)
compatible with AMD K7, K8 (Socket 754/939/940)

• GPU : compatible with most ATI and NVIDIA VGA cards

• Easy installation
• Super cooling radiator design with 12cm x 2 silent fans to provide ultimate heat dissipation
• Cool light multi-function LCD panel to monitor the water level, water pump status, fan speed, noise level and temperature

• Alarm for pump failure, fan failure, low water level, and over temperature.
• Compatible with Micro ATX, Standard ATX and Extended ATX (Dual CPU) motherboards.

• Including tool-free 5.25” and 3.5” device brackets and tool-free PCI slots.

These are great looking cases, and it you are interested in checking them out, head over to the Titan-CD website!

This year’s NewEgg LANFest could not have been more fun and exciting for OCZ Technology! The premier annual gaming event took place in the Pasadena Conference Center this past weekend and welcomed gamers of all ages, expertise, and interests to participate in several tournaments, computer hardware raffles, and case mod contests.

There are a lot of great looking pics over on the OCZ site. Looks like the event was a massive success! Check out all the pictures here.

The USB 2.0 Hub has the advantage of nicely spaced out ports, LED indicators for power and usage, and of course the bonus of USB 2.0 speeds. Being a powered hub you shouldn’t have to worry about power hungry USB devices drawing to much power and shutting down your ports, and the power adapter itself is quite universal with an input rating of 100-240v; a simple plug adapter and the hub can be powered up anywhere with a socket.

Check out the full review over at Viper Lair!

Quite some time ago Thermaltake produced the Golden Orb CPU Cooler. Now the successor Golden Orb II is released for Socket939 and LGA775. It features a huge heatsink with a nice looking gold-fin design and two blue LEDs which light up the cooler during operation. Is it as cool as it looks?

Check out the full review over at techPowerUp!

Stratics Contest Giveaways continue this week. Readers can sign up to win: * Rapid Reality’s MMOCenter Giveaway. 5 MMOCenter Pre-Orders each week which include access to closed betas. This contest runs through August 20th. * Turbine Entertainment’s Asheron’s Call:Throne of Destiny Giveaway. This includes 5 free 1-year accounts and 10 signed boxes,…..

Overclockers and enthusiasts these days usually pursue one of two goals: to reach DDR600+ memory speeds at slightly relaxed timings, or to maintain tight 2-2-2-5 timings while pushing up to around DDR520+ speeds. If you’re looking for the latter, then OCZ’s new Gamer eXtreme PC-3500 might be the perfect modules for you.

Check out the full review at Phoronix.