Content and news by Rob Williams

On our bench today, we have what Gigabyte claims to be a “World First” – a PCI based wireless networking card that doubles as a router, allowing you to simply set up any PC as an access point, personal file server and firewall – something people have been doing, albeit with some frustration via operating systems such as SmoothWall. Gigabyte claims to take all the headaches of these installs with a diskless install (albeit, with a CD included for users on older operating systems). Without any further delay, let’s see if this product can do what it’s touted to, or if it’ll end up frustrating and impossible. Read on to find out.

Very interesting concept. Does it live up to the hype? Check out the review at Motherboards.org.

Many of you know Cooler Master for their computer cases, but what you may not know is that they have a whole line of watercooling products as well. Today we’ll see if these waterblocks can live up to the Cooler Master name.

If you are looking for a new waterblock, check out the review at OCIA.

When we last took a look at some DDR2 memory back in October of 2004, the technology was still a bit new and didn’t seem to offer any tangible performance benefits over standard DDR RAM. Higher speeds could be obtained with DDR2 though, and these modules required less voltage, thus lowering overall power consumption. The caveat with DDR2, however, was that early sets were much higher priced per MB than older DDR memory, and latencies were generally much higher, which kept performance on par if not slightly off the existing model. The Intel camp was left without any options, as the 925 series of chipsets and now the newer 945/955 motherboards only support DDR2.

Check out the full comparison at Hot Hardware.

Home Theater PCs (HTPCs) are becoming increasingly popular these days. A HTPC is nothing more than a simple computer combined with the multimedia hardware to connect to your TV that lets you accomplish tasks that you can’t accomplish with most DVR set-top boxes alone. Usually these computers are located close to your TV as part of your home entertainment center, but they can also simply be your primary desktop computer located in another room.

Check out the full review over at Hard|OCP.

Microsoft has won the first round in its legal action against Google, with a restraining order that prevents a former Microsoft employee from engaging in competing work at the search company.

The ruling came from King County Superior Court in Seattle on Thursday and represents an initial, if small, win for Microsoft. The software company is suing to prevent Dr Kai-Fu Lee from taking work with Google that would compete with Microsoft’s search engine strategy in China.

Looks like Microsoft won this round. Google countersued MS and the trial for that will begin in January. Check out the entire post at Tech World.

The first thing I would advise before going any further, is to sit down and read the manual and instructions from start to finish, remember make a mistake and your hardware could be visiting the morgue. However, the instructions are simple to follow and what seemed like a daunting task becomes quite a easy one.

Head over Xtreme Computing.

This board has some very interesting things that someone upgrading from their older PIV or Athlon system and wants AGP and PCIe, DDR and DDR2. Overall this is a solid basic board for someone who doesn’t overclock much, if at all.

Check out the review over at Viper Lair.

There are many sayings in the English language. Some offer wise insights into life, while others are, well… frankly rubbish! While bigger may not necessarily be better, and quality is often preferable to quantity, what the hell is the point in having a cake if you can’t eat it? More to the…..

Probably the biggest concern with mice, especially if you are a gamer, is how well they track. This is where both the Fireline and Blue Flame seemed to excel. Due to the 800 dpi engine, both mice tracked flawlessly. I used both mice in several first person shooter games such as Counter Strike, Unreal Tournament 2004, and Far Cry, and never once experienced any tracking issues of any kind. Movement was very precise and accurate with both mice.

Check out the review at Big Bruin.

Logisys has recently released a new slew of cases, the Yin Yang series. These cases are acrylic and completely see through, but sport the cool Yin Yang design. Let’s take a deeper look at this case!

Session Initiation Protocol or SIP refers specifically to a language that various computers can communicate to one another in so that they can complete voice calls. It has become vitally important in recent years as it plays a central role in VoIP or Voice Over Internet Protocol. VoIP Is the rapidly growing technology which has millions of Americans throwing out their local and long-distance telephone bills and replacing them with free calls made over the internet.

Check out the article at Bonafide Reviews.

Today I have another power supply for review, the 480 Watt Power Watcher by High Power. This one features a display to show real-time power consumption to help you keep track of your wattage, via a 5 ¼’ bay device. This sounds like a great idea, how many people have wondered just how much power their system is using? Let’s find out if this is such a great idea, and if the supporting power supply is worth it.

Check out the review over at Think Computers.

Says the PCworld article; “The dots’ minuscule size, covering less than one-thousandth of the page, along with their color combination of yellow on white, makes them invisible to the naked eye, Crean says. One way to determine if your color laser is applying this tracking process is to shine a blue LED light–say, from a keychain laser flashlight–on your page and use a magnifier.”

Hah, that’s different. I would have never of thought that would happen. Check out the posting at PC Stats.

If you ask an overclocker “Best memory chips ever?” you will most probably get the reply “Winbond BH5”. Unfortunately Winbond stopped production some time in 2003 and supply of these chips was running dry pretty fast. Now Winbond is back with their BH5 UTT and OCZ has built the PC-3500 Gold Gamer Extreme modules with it. The modules run at aggressive timings of 2-2-2-5 and offer a lifetime warranty for up to 3.1V memory voltage.

This looks like some sweet memory. Check out the review at techPowerUp!

For the real watercooling DIY enthusiast out there, DangerDen is one of the biggest names. While we aren’t here today to settle the debate about who makes the best waterblocks on the market today, it can’t be disputed that if you are looking for parts for a watercooling project one of the first places you will look is to DangerDen. My first real foray into watercooling was with a very basic all in one kit. Browsing through many forums over the past couple years I have become familiar with the DangerDen name. Eventually we finally got in contact with DangerDen to review a couple of their waterblocks after I had put together a system to accommodate them. Here we are now to find out if it’s really worth all the effort in putting together a custom system.

Check out the review over at 3D Xtreme!

Stratics is pleased to announce a House of Commons with the Developers of EVERQUEST tonight, Thursday July 28th. It will be at 6pm PST / 9pm EST in the #StraticsHoC channel on Stratics IRC. The topics of discussion for this HoC are Depths of Darkhollow and Live Events. The following will be…..

The NEW WaterChill Xtreme12V DC pump/reservoir system with integrated reservoir and USB/Software-based control unit is the first of its kind. Packed with features and design that ensure every consumer with the markets best usability and developed especially for water-cooling this 12V pump system utilizes the ultimate balance between flow, pressure and power consumption (heat dissipation) for maximum performance. I have used the Hydor L30 pump for quiet some time now, I was eager to find out what the new pump has to offer.

Head over to HardwareXL for the entire review!

We’ve started a new section at HEXUS where you’ll find all kinds of guides cropping up, from step by step instructions on how to do something, to interesting in-depth looks into technology. Let’s set the ball rolling with the first six.

Such guides include Installing Windows XP, RAID, DDR and DD2 and more. Check out the new launch at Hexus.

Till today, notebook users have to content with a single hard disk and often a small one at that. Hard disk sizes of 40GB and 60GB are not only unheard of but actually in common use!

Today, we are going to take a look at the new Seagate 120GB Momentus 5400.2 PATA notebook hard disk, which not only comes with 120GB of storage space but also 8MB of cache!

Check out the review at Rojak Pot.

There’s little doubt that ATI’s RADEON X850 XT graphics card provides decent performance in the high-end sector. Our benchmarks have illustrated that it performs at around the same kind of pace as a GeForce 6800 Ultra, and around 5% slower than ATI’s own X850 XT Platinum Edition. Performance, then, isn’t really a concern.

Crucial is not that well known in the GPU biz, but they do memory right! How about graphics cards? Check out the review at Hexus.