Content and news by Rob Williams

Talk about a HUGE LAN Party! We are in Louisville, Kentucky for
MillionMan LAN 4! There are around 1700 people here, and some nice
looking cases. Some well known modders are here including Mashie,
Gruntman, and Sky. Take a look at the pictures for all the crazy
cases, gaming and more!

There are a ton of pics with various case mods and of the event itself. Check it out at Think Computer.

This internal hard drive enclosure is one of the best because it’s so versatile. A 3.5″ IDE or SATA hard drive and even a 2.5″ hard drive can easily be installed. It’s all aluminum, has multi frequency noise absorption material, and is available in four colors. This product will keep any hard drive quiet while providing adequate cooling. Watch the Video to find out more…

You can head over to 3D Gameman for the full video review.

As well as support for NVIDIA’s new board, ForceWare 77.72 includes some interesting features from an SLI standpoint, most notably the introduction of support for ‘vanilla’ GeForce 6600 boards. As any of you who have seen such a board will testify, these cards come without the SLI bridge connector which will be familiar to most of you. On top of this, NVIDIA have also stated that devices can now be run in SLI without using this bridge connector, albeit with reduced performance.

It’s actually impressive that not *that* much performance is lost. Most people will use a bridge regardless, but it’s an interesting article, so check it out here.

Shares of ATI Technologies Inc. fell more than 10 per cent Thursday after the computer-graphics chip maker unexpectedly swung to a loss in its fiscal third quarter and cut a fourth-quarter sales forecast it made less than two weeks ago.

This much was obvious, and so was the next part. The R520 looks to be delayed. This sucks, I was *really* looking forward to seeing what they had up their sleeves. Hopefully we will see something in early Fall at least. Check out the full news posting at Globe Investor.

OPPAINTER has recently gotten this two 7800GTX’s and overclocked them with his watercooling set up. The results are amazing! 16,000+ in 3D Mark 2005, which is a new world record!

This was just water cooling.. imagine LN2! Check it out at the Xtreme Resources.

Utilizing a single heatpipe, will Prime Cooler’s PC-VGAHP 1 be able to provide the VPU temperatures overclockers are looking to achieve? In this review, we’ll be taking a look at this rare offering from the folks at Prime Cooler.

Head over to Phoronix.

ASUS put together a fine package in the P5WD2 Premium. Performance was solid and the board was problem free out of the box which is something we don’t see enough of these days. We were quite happy with pushing our 3.73 Extreme Edition past 4.5GHz, and although we’ve had mildly better success with other boards, we’ll still take a free ~700MHz boost anyday.

Check out the full review at Viper Lair!

Func Industries started back in 1999, and quickly developed a reputation as one of the world’s foremost manufacturers of professional and high-end products which began with the Func sUrface 1030. In early 2005, Func announced the release of a new mousepad, to commemorate the success of the original sUrface 1030. An exclusive, limited production version of the original 1030, it incorporates a base made out of a solid aluminium billet that houses the mouse surface. Let us all welcome, by Func Industries, the sUrface 1030 MBA Limited Edition.

Check out the full review at Cyberwizard Pit.

Go back just a few short years and the appearances of pretty much all computers were slight variations of the same theme. Boring beige boxes dominated the industry, and people looking to express their individuality with the style of their computer had to take matters into their own hands. The term “modding” may not even be a real word (I know MS Word’s spell checker is upset with my use of it), but it is appropriate for loosely describing the broad field of modifying a computer system to give it a personalized style. This tip will proceed by looking at some of the basic items, tools, and accessories used in modding.

Check out the full article at Big Bruin.

Turbine is getting ready to launch the latest expansion pack for their Asheron’s Call game, entitled “Throne of Destiny”. Will this expansion be enough to please current and old players of the game? Let’s take a good hard look at all ToD has to offer to make that decision.

Memory is arguably the most important and most scrutinized component in all high end computers. While computer enthusiasts search for low latency and high quality components, one type of chip comes to mind… Winbond BH5. BH5 memory is known by enthusiasts and gamers for its excellent performance and competitive pricing, which brings us to some of OCZ’s memory modules… The 1024MB EL DDR PC-3200 Dual Channel Gold kit, which utilizes the Winbond BH5 chip.

Check out the full review at Big Bruin.

The first thing we did was set the memory to run at a full 1 GHz and it had absolutely no problems running at that frequency. Playing nicely, we then raised the memory speed in 4 MHz intervals and 1.01, 1.02 and 1.10 GHz fell by the wayside. The maximum speed we got the memory to was 1.11 GHz, very good for an ATi Radeon X800 XL class videocard!

That’s a great overclock, and this proves to be a fantastic card. Check out the full review at PC Stats.

Thinking of the Xtreme Ti in strict DTR terms, the overall impression is favourable. You can zip around Windows XP, thanks, in main part, to Rock’s use of 2 60GB 7,200RPM laptop drives that are pre-configured in RAID0. Browsing around in 2D mode, the machine felt faster than Dell’s Inspiron XPS Gen 2, which shipped with a single 100GB 4,200RPM drive. The screen is a hit-and-miss affair. You’ll either love the high-contrast 17-inch (1680×1050) screen or immediately dislike just how reflective the X-Glass-equipped panel is. Rock’s got most of the performance bases covered, too, with a fast Mobility Radeon X800 (now XT) card providing decent framerates at the laptop’s native resolution. There’s also plenty of memory and the optical drive is decent enough.

Not as good as the XGS2, but hardly bad. Check out the full review at Hexus.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – June 23, 2005 – AGEIA™ Technologies, Inc., the pioneer in hardware-accelerated physics for games, today announced that Japanese online game specialist GungHo Online Entertainment is adopting AGEIA PhysX™ technologies for its titles, including the upcoming Rondo Projects. GungHo is using the simulation capabilities of AGEIA NovodeX physics software as a cost-saving alternative to expensive motion-capture and labor-intensive 3D animation. AGEIA PhysX technology is being used to create online worlds that offer virtually unlimited interactivity.

You can read more here!

ATi have stated that their solution will support different cards, which delivers an upgrade solution to current ATi card users.

We find it very likely that NVIDIA will release a new driver soon which will allow the support of ‘un-matched’ cards, and if what has been whispered to us turns out to be true SLi will deliver an impressive upgrade path.

Sounds good to me! Having to match up cards exactly is retarded. Check out the full article at Hexus.

AnandTech has put the lowest priced ($537US) X2 CPU to the overclocking table. At a stock 2.2GHz, they easily found themselves at 2.6GHz. Not an amazing benchmark, but not bad.

For an early x2 Athlon64 processor the overclocking performance on air is impressive. The next speed step of 2.4GHz (4600+) was easily reached, and we moved on past the next logical step of 2.6GHz to 2.7GHz. This is faster than any of the currently available Dual-Core Athlons. We should mention that 240×11 (2.64GHz) was an extremely easy and stable reach. That speed required just 1.45V, was exceptionally stable, and ran quite cool. The last 55MHz required a great deal more voltage and generated a lot more heat. For day in and day out the 240 setting (2.64GHz) would be our choice with this CPU (stock 2.2GHz) on air.

You can check out a lot more info and plenty of benchmarking results, over at AnandTech.

CodeWeavers Inc has announced plans to support Apple Computer Inc’s Mac operating system following the PC vendor’s decision to move to Intel Corp processors, potentially allowing more Windows applications to run on the Mac.

But do people who use Macs really want to use Windows apps? Usually it’s the other way around. At any rate, it’s coming for those who want it. However, as with Wine and Cedaga, the support will likely be very limited. Read more here.

A new browser flaw could allow attackers to trick users into relinquishing sensitive information such as passwords. The flaw is unusual in that it affects every mainstream browser and can be exploited on the Mac OS X operating system as easily as on Windows, according to security company Secunia.

Because of the way most browsers handle JavaScript dialog boxes, it’s unclear which site a dialog box originates from, Secunia reported. An untrusted site could direct a user to a secure site such as a bank, and then cause a dialog box to pop up in front of the bank site’s window.

So now we wait for these issues to be fixed. Microsoft has no immediate plans in patching the bugs, and Mozilla hasn’t given a statement yet. Opera however, has this bug fixed in version 8.01. Read more about it here.

The use of watercooling to cool your system is becoming increasingly popular. Evercool joins the watercooling crowd and
provides a setup with TWO compact radiators.

If you are looking for a new watercooling setup, check out this review at InsaneTek.

TEC cooling has a few drawbacks compared to a regular HSF setup, the main one being that it’s cooling is usually so efficient that temperatures will drop to below ambient, which means that you will need to insulate against condensation. This kind of setup also usually requires a separate power supply and more often than not, watercooling to cool the hot side of the TEC. But take the middle ground of a low power TEC coupled with a HSF combo, and while the temperatures won’t drop below ambient, they should get down lower than a HSF combo alone.

Interesting concept, but does it work? Read it at Viperlair.