Content and news by Rob Williams

“We’re sure most of you have heard of the beast called the Asus Star Ice. The massive cooler was constructed out of copper and weighed a whopping 865 grams. Today from Thermaltake we have a very similar looking cooler called the Thermaltake Beetle.”

Check out the full review over at Phoronix.

“The Spire Verticool SPA49B0 combines several technologies into one compact cooler that weighs in at just under 350grams. Its heatpipes draw heat away from the copper baseplate, which is further cooled by a brazed-on extruded aluminum heatsink. Noise levels are moderate-to-low for the Spire SPA49B0, but it lacks a thermally responsive fan. The package includes a small syringe of ‘Fanner 420’ white silicon thermal compound with a listed thermal conductivity of less than 2.062W/mK.”

Check out the review at FrostyTech.

“Corsair Flash Voyager USB drives are rugged, stylish, compact, reliable, and exceptionally fast, making them ideal for transporting MP3s, digital images, presentations and more. With data transfer rates up to 19Mb/sec, Flash Voyager drives are fully Hi-Speed USB 2.0 compliant, and are backward compatible with USB 1.1. They support Plug and Play with most operating systems. Their durable rubber casing is easy to grip and water resistant. These highly portable drives are available in capacities ranging up to 2GB.”

Interested? Check it out at 3D Gameman.

“Although desktop dual-core processors from AMD are on the horizon, engineers there are still hard at work refining their single-core processor designs. The latest revision to the Athlon 64 core, internally code named “Venice”, recently made it way onto the mass market, carrying a “Rev. E” moniker. With the Venice core, AMD has integrated SSE3 multimedia instruction sets into the Athlon 64, and have made some additions and enhancements to the integrated memory controller as well.”

The review shows that the Venice core is better at overclocking, and even while OC’d, can keep cooler than the Newcastle. Check out the full review at HotHardware.

“The Age of Empires designers like to play fast and loose with history. Accuracy is good, but gameplay is better: so when it came time to choose which civilizations will be featured building colonies in the New World, Ensemble threw in a couple of “what ifs…” “The list of nations below, and Comment (0) -->

“Which video card should I get might be the biggest question you are asking yourself. Today we have a X700 Pro video card from Connect3d which seems to be a very nice card for a small amount of money that can still perform very well. We will compare this to a normal X700 card and against a Geforce 6600GT to see which actually performs the best.”

Check out the full review at Red and Blackness.

“HARDWARE GIANT Dell is to add an extra 2,000 people to its staff count in India, Dow Jones reports.

CEO Kevin Rollins told the wire that by the beginning of next year, its head count will number 10,000 people in India.”

Bah, great news. /sarcasm. Nothing against India, but since we buy our computers in NA, it would make sense to talk to someone that speaks our native languages. Check out the posting at The Inquirer.

“3D Accelerated received the Logitech MX518 Gaming Mouse over the weekend. This mouse caught our eye right from the start with its flashy exterior and sleek design. It seems like just a couple years ago every PC user was using the same generic optical mouse. But then like an overnight sensation mice started to change in form and shape. Apple had a big part in this revolution with their unique brand of mice, especially their clear mice. Other companies like Microsoft and Logitech also changed things up a bit as wireless technology became more popular.”

For comparison, you can check out our review of the mouse here and check out the review at 3D Accelerated.

“THERE’S AN opening for Linux to grab a much larger market share on the consumer desktop side over the next twelve to eighteen months, but penguin advocates need to pull their act together and hope a couple of software companies – or one big hardware company – decides to throw their weight into giving Microsoft heartburn.”

This is a good article on the hope for a great Linux future. Free OS’s are mentioned to drastically lower the price of pre-built computers. Consider this fact, a computer that could cost you $400, is a great deal, but $100 of that is for the Windows OS. Check out the full article here.

“Online criminals turned their attention to antivirus software and media players like Apple Computer’s iTunes in the first three months of 2005, as they sought new ways to take control of peoples’ computers, according to a survey released Monday.”

It’s a fact, computers are bound to always have vulnerabilities. Check out the posting at News.com.

“A new survey released today states that computer criminals are shifting their eyes away from Microsoft products to other popular programs. Hackers are now looking to take advantage of less frequently patched software programs as Microsoft’s Windows operating system got more secure because many Windows users nowadays receive security upgrades automatically.”

Check out the full posting over at DarkVision Hardware.

“The Gigabyte GO-W1616A drive we are looking at today has some impressive specifications, in addition to dual-layer DVD recording. It supports a maximum writing speed of 16x for both single layer DVD+-R media, 4x for DVD+R DL media, 8x for DVD+RW and 6x for DVD-RW. The GO-W1616A supports 48x burning for traditional CD-R and 24x for CD-RW. In terms of reading, the drive can read single layer DVD+-R media at 16x, DVD+R DL at 4x, DVD+-RW at 8x and standard DVD media at 16x speeds. With CDs, the drive can read CD/CD-R media t 48x and CD-RW at 32x speeds.”

Head over to PC Stats for the full review.

“A newly discovered fragment of the oldest surviving copy of the New Testament indicates that, as far as the Antichrist goes, theologians, scholars, heavy metal groups, and television evangelists have got the wrong number. Instead of 666, it’s actually the far less ominous 616.”

Whether this is 100% true or not, it’s still intersting. Check it out at The Independent.

“Today i’m taking a look at a Club-3d X800 128mb PCIe graphicscard, wich is sold for less than € 250,- in europe (its bigger brother the X800 XT costs about € 150,- more).
But seeing the costs makes me wonder “how will it perform?”. Well i have run a few games and i must admit, seeing as it does’nt even need a external power power connected it performs quiet well.”

Check out the full review at HardwareXL.

Stratics is pleased to announce a House of Commons with the developers of Planetside today, Monday, May 2nd . It will be at 5pm PDT / 8pm EDT in the #StraticsHoC channel on Stratics IRC. Alex “Samhayne” Von Minden will be attendance together with a couple of other Devs and they are Comment (0) -->

Todays high-end computers can no longer run on 400W PSU’s, it’s a fact. There are plenty of high-end PSU’s out there, but many aren’t that appealing to the eye. If you are looking for a PSU with looks and power, check out our review of the 600W X-Finity.

“The XtremeTV PVR600 is a Hi-Speed USB TV tuner, but Diamond bundles with all kinds of media software together to make it a Home Theater PC (HTPC) conversion kit for a laptop or PC. Coupled with Beyond TV & Media, the $143 XtremeTV PVR600 package does time-shifting like the TiVo; records MPEG-2 natively via its on-board encoder; organizes all your photos; and doubles as a software MP3 player. And you get to enjoy your media from the comfort of your sofa with the bundled SnapStream FireFly remote control. Unfortunately, there’s no DVD burning nor video editing software.”

Check out the full review at EverythingUSB.

“The potential to overclock on a number of identical cards can be very different. It’s the same situation as CPU’s. Some will fly and overclock dramatically, others won’t. I can only provide results for the card I have in my possession and though it gives a general idea of what to expect, your results could be higher or lower. Its pot luck! This particular card overclocked to 600/590 which is way beyond even the stock X850XT PE! The memory that is rated at 1.6ns should have been able to hit 600Mhz (1200Mhz) but it couldn’t. This leans me to believe that ATI are most likely using aggressive timings above the Samsung 1.6ns specification, but I can’t be sure until I test more X850’s.”

Check out the full review at Pure Overclock.

A new contest is happening over at MikhailTech, sponsored by Aercool. Prizes include a Spiral Galaxies case, GT-1000 gold plated universal cooler, and some Turbine 120mm fans.

Check out the full contest rules at MikhailTech.

“A new month, a new contest. For the month of may we have a contest made possible in part by the generosity of Logisys Computer. This month we will be giving away a computer chassis, keyboard, and fan mouse. Registration is simple so join now!”

Check out all the contest rules at Phoronix.