Content and news by Rob Williams

“ENTHUSIASTS HAVE ALWAYS craved snappier performance and smoother frame rates, but lately, many of us have also become obsessed with lowering system noise levels. Years ago, most high-end systems sounded like jet engines spinning up for take off. Today, however, hobbyists are trading in their noisy cooling solutions for stealthier designs that employ larger heat sinks, temperature-controlled low-RPM fans, and even water cooling.”

Check out the full review at Tech Report.

“Well I have finally upgraded my CPU to a AMD 64! I got it brand new with the stock cooler. I was getting high temperatures so I needed a better CPU cooler. Today I will be looking at the Arctic Cooling Silencer 64 Ultra TC L. This cooler has a cool looking design to it, but can it perform? Well let’s get testing!”

Check out the full review at Think Computers.

“”Thermalright returns with a newly revised XP-90 aircooling heatsink. This time it’s all copper! Just how much better can it be over the crowned king XP-90??”

Head over to InsaneTek for the full review.

“Thermaltake has always been known for its very stylish products. They offer almost everything a computer enthusiast would need: cases, power supplies, coolers, etc… Today we have the Thermaltake Shark Black Series Full Tower Aluminum Case.”

Head over to Phoronix for the full review!

“DC Research Director Al Gillen said recent mergers and acquisitions signify the evolution of the open-source market, which has seen numerous startups with interesting technologies emerging over the past few years. Larger vendors are looking at how these technologies may fit into their portfolio as they expand their Linux strategies.”

It appears that SuSE will only be getting better! Read the full article at E-Commerce Times.

“Toshiba, which is supporting the HD DVD technology along with NEC Corp and Sanyo Electric, said that it had developed a triple layer disc with data capacity of 45 gigabytes, as compared to the earlier version with a capacity of 30 gigabytes. Toshiba said the 45GB disc has already won the approval of the DVD Forum, the governing body for DVD standards. Toshiba has been engaged in a battle with rival Sony Corp, which supports the Blu-ray disc format.”

I still think DVD’s hold quite a bit of data, but 45GB? Source: New Ratings.

“Police in Uppsala, a university town north of Stockholm, said yesterday they had been contacted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation about 16-year-old boy already in trouble with the law in Sweden for allegedly hacking into university computers.”

16 years old! I guess you’re never too young for a criminal record. Source: TechSpot.

“The elimination of the five-year-old Pocket PC brand for PDAs and the separate Smartphone label puts Windows Mobile on the same page as rival mobile device platforms such as Symbian and BlackBerry. It also marks another change of course in Microsoft’s long-evolving strategy to extend the dominance of its Windows computer platform to mobile devices.”

There are a lot of upgrades in the office departement, including better integration, and better viewing Word/Excel and PowerPoint documents that were created on a PC. You can read a lot more about this over at Technewsworld.

Mirkayn, guild leader of Clan WhiteStorm, and EQ2 Stratics have joined up to offer prizes for the Puzzle of Storms!! That’s right! The first person to solve the puzzle will receive an EQ2 Hat and Viewfinder! The clues have been given out on our forums. Five levels there are, and only five…..

AUSTIN, Texas, May 11, 2005—NCsoft® Corporation (KSE: 036570.KS), the world’s leading developer and publisher of online computer games, announces the beginning of its North American pre-order campaign for Auto Assaultâ„¢. Pre-order boxes will begin to appear on store shelves this week at retail outlets throughout the United States and Canada. Customers who…..

“ATi’s entry into the motherboard chipset market has been well… muted to say the least. With its videocards, we’re use to experiencing a lot of hype and excitement in the days and months leading up to a product launch, but with ATi’s motherboard chipsets, there has been almost literally nothing. In any event, PCSTATS always looks forward to the opportunity to test out new technologies, or even motherboards based around uncommon chipsets like the anonymous ATI ‘RS400’ Radeon Xpress 200. In this review we’ll be testing out the ECS RS400-A motherboard, which supports 800MHz FSB LGA775 Intel Pentium 4 processors and offers up PCI Express functionality.”

Should your next motherboard purchase include an ATI chipset? Read this review to help your decision!

“Every true professional gamer is aware of the Mouse pad’s influence and it’s consequence. You probably already know X-Ray, The mouse pad manufacturer. Today we had the chance to review their new product, The Thunder9 BL1-Smooth.”

Head over to NGOHQ and check out the review.

“Also quite important for some excellent HDTV usage, a component 3-way RCA cable. Connect the card to a nice LCD or Plasma screen and you can play HDTV games or playback movies on that big screen. The cards themselves then. It’s quite hard to determine real changes at PCB level over the reference model as the cooler is blocking my view! I can tell you though that HiS is following reference design precisely. The trick however is faster memory and the cooling technology, which is called IceQ-II, which we’ll get into in a minute.”

As always, the review is very in-depth, a great read. Head over to Guru 3D and read it!

“AMD’s dual-core Opterons are arguably the swankiest bits of hardware around. Not only do the chips combine a pair of processor cores on a single chip, but they can also be combined in multi-processor, multi-core configurations. Today we’ve rounded up a trio of dual-Opteron motherboards that, in combination with AMD’s new dual-core chips, are each capable of serving up four processor cores from only two CPU sockets. Based on NVIDIA’s new nForce Pro 2200 chipset, these new motherboards are also the first PCI Express platforms for Opteron. Join us as we examine motherboards from Asus, Iwill, and Tyan that can make the quad-CPU workstation a reality.”

Head over to Tech Report for the full in-depth look!

“SilverStone’s Eudemon Multifunction Panel doesn’t read memory cards, it doesn’t have audio ports, it doesn’t have USB ports and it doesn’t have FireWire ports. What the SilverStone Eudemon does do, and do pretty darn well, is keep track of three different temperatures and control the fans you connect to it to keep those temperatures under control. It also has a little LED to show hard drive activity and one to let you know the power to your motherboard is on, in case you forget. There is also an alarm you can set to go off when you need to stop fragging and get ready for work!”

Check out the full review at Lan Addict!

“Sadly, with the constant pace of change in the processor and chipset markets, motherboards become outdated very quickly when it comes to upgrade options. You can upgrade a processor or add a new memory module without causing so much as a blip from Windows XP, but a new motherboard can and will cause XP to stop booting altogether. Many have tried, and many have been greeted with the cold gasp of the Blue Screen of Death for their efforts. Fortunately, the procedure for correctly installing a new motherboard is rather easy and straightforward, and more fortunately, we’re here to talk you through it.”

Head over to PC Stats for the full guide.

“The Yepp YP-MT6Z goes for a remarkably affordable price compared to just a year or two ago, given its 1GB of internal flash memory. Furthermore, in a rare move of consumer friendly design, the Yepp YP-MT6Z is powered by a single AA battery that will last for upwards of 42 hours (straight playback). Long battery life and inexpensive AA batteries are probably one of the greatest attributes of this MP3 player; heck a AA battery is even included! About the size of a pack of Wrigley’s gum, the Samsung Yepp YP-MT6Z incorporates a digital FM Tuner with 20 pre-sets, inline MP3 encoding, a voice recorder and eight EQ pre-sets. It plays MP3, WMA, ASF, Secure WMA and Ogg Vorbis music files. Supported MP3 bit rates are 8 kbps – 320 kbps, and 48 kbps – 192 kbps for WMA files.”

Check out the full review of this great player over at PC Stats.

“Looking for a cool-looking case that’s solidly built and comes with loads of accessories right out of the box? Then you should perhaps take a look at the XG Sidewinder ATX case!

Join Goofy today as he explores the XG Sidewinder and find out what’s so great about this ATX case!”

Check out the full review over at Rojak Pot.

The immensly popular MMO from NC Soft is ungoing a huge patch update today, called Chronicle 3. In preparation for the Chronicle 3 update, all Lineage II game servers will go down at 10 a.m. PDT tomorrow (5/10/05). The servers may be down FOR UP TO 24 hours. Approximately 1-2 hours after…..

To celebrate the game being available for three years to date, (In Japan), SoE has release a new Cencus, that is chock full of interesting facts. To celebrate three years since the launch of FINAL FANTASY XI in Japan, we are proud to present the Fifth Vana’diel Census, an analysis of the Comment (0) -->