Content and news by Rob Williams

“Today 3DXtreme has the pleasure of reviewing a new cooler offering from Evercool, the HPC-925 Ice-Man. This cooler uses heatpipe technology to provide a cooling solution for a range of processors from AMD K7 and K8 to Intel P4’s. While we’ve seen a lot of heatpipes and have had mixed results, can we expect this one to be any different? Let’s find out…”

Check it out at 3D Xtreme.

“The Asus Extreme N6600TOP/TD/128M/A PCI Express x16 videocard uses a vanilla GeForce 6600 GPU, but backs it up with Samsung GDDR3 memory (128MB, 2.0ns DRAM). ASUS has also set the GPU and memory clock speeds of this card considerably higher than that of a stock GeForce 6600, accordingly the speeds are 400Mhz core and 900MHz memory. The Asus Extreme N6600Top videocard natively supports TV-Output as well as dual analog monitors (care of the included DVI-analog converter). The N6600TOP installs into a PCI Express x16 slot, and is SLI compatible too.”

Check out the review at PC Stats.

NGOHQ has released Glonim 1.41 which is a Windows tweaker.

● Add animations in many styles to when most windows open and close.
● Tile your own bitmap images on the back of windows and application backgrounds.
● Make windows transparent whilst they are being dragged.
● Change the window styles to put shadows behind windows.
● Make the Taskbar partly transparent, adjust its transparency in realtime, and put a bitmap on it on pre-XP machines.
● Put free memory, the day of the week, or your own custom (short) caption in the Start button.
● Remove the shading behind desktop icon text on pre-XP systems.
● Exclude applications if you want it to.
● it’s fast, easy to use, requires only a small amount of memory, it is compatible with practically any application, does not require any installation, and it works on almost all 32-bit Windows PCs.

You can check it out at NGOHQ.

“EPoX, with its EP-5LWA+ i925XE motherboard, has done things a little differently that most other tier-1 manufacturers. Whereas they’re happy to load on every conceivable feature known to man and bundle in everything but the kitchen sink, EPoX has been more conservative. The end result is a motherboard that’s comparatively light on features, but, crucially, comes in at £30 or so cheaper than the competition. £120 or so buys you a capable Alderwood board that’s laid out well, has decent overclocking options and utter stability.”

Check it out at Hexus.

“Let’s face it; we all want new hardware to push our computer systems to the next level. However, some of those new components can be hard on the wallet, so we’re here to show you what can be done with $500 while keeping an eye on performance and future upgradeability. This guide does assume that you are upgrading a current system in which you can still use your case, power supply, and drives.”

Check out the article at Hard|OCP.

“How many times have you drooled over a high end case and just started dreaming. ‘If I had that case, I’d put in some 120mm fans and some extra duct work and replace all the chrome screws with black ones and get a color coordinated LCD thermal display and… and…’ We’ve all had that dream at one time or another. Well apparently, so have the folks at Performance PCs. They have basically taken a Lian Li PC-60, already a fantastic box, and pulled out all the stops with Lian Li accessories as well as lots of other mods to make one of, if not the most functional case on the planet. The PC-V65 Plus is not for the faint at heart with a $339 price tag. Can a case really be worth that much? Read on and let’s pour over this box and you be the judge.”

Wow, $339 for a case! Check out the review at Overclocker Cafe.

“The USB Flash drive technology is becoming more popular as each day passes. Since flash drive technology is progressing at a rapid rate and newer drives are faster, larger and more affordable, many users find them as an easy way out from the restraints of the old, very limited capacity and slow floppy disk drives and the single write capability of the optical disks. Flash disks are progressing because of their high speed and ease of use, they are similar to small hard disk drives that fit into your pocket and you can simply and quickly utilize by placing them into an USB slot. Crucial took a step forward with their Gizmo! Flash drive design, releasing the 3rd version of their USB Flash drive several weeks ago, claiming it to be smaller and faster than previous models. Let us put the new Flash drive to the test and see what the little Gizmo drive can really do.”

Check out the review at Xtreme Resources.

“Expansion options on the board are varied and worthy of note. EPoX includes 3 PCI Express X1 slots, a PCI Express X16 slot for the video card and 3 regular PCI slots for backwards compatibility. Few PCI Express devices exist at the moment, aside from video cards. The positioning of the PCI Express X16 slot is not the greatest. The PCI Express X16 slot is directly above the IDE controller ports. This makes airflow a concern of the board. In fact a long video card, like a GEFORCE 6800 Ultra may cause the first IDE port to be covered. Using our standard GEFORCE 6800GT reference board caused the end of the video card to rest against the first IDE cable. The positioning of the PCI Express X1 slots and PCI slots allows for 2 PCI devices and 3 PCI Express devices to be installed, even when a 2-slot video card is installed.”

Check it out at Motherboards.org.

“Going online in most massively multiplayer games usually involves creating a pointy-eared elf character to venture into a persistent world where hobgoblins guard piles of treasure, and where thousands of other players await to help you wallop said hobgoblins and relieve them of said treasure. It’s a slightly different story in Star Comment (0) -->

Turbine, Inc. has officially started taking Alpha Program player registrations as it unlocks the gates to Stormreach, the frontier city from the highly-anticipated MMORPG Dungeons & Dragons® Online. “Fans have long waited to venture into the far away world and epic fantasy of Dungeons & Dragons Online, and now Turbine is anxious Comment (0) -->

Dungeon Siege 2 from Gas Powered Games and Microsoft is nearing release. They were kind enough to send me a preview build, which included about 6 hours of the potential 60 hours gameplay that is going to be available in release. I spent the last few days playing through it. I don’t Comment (0) -->

“The original Dungeon Siege was criticized for being too linear and a little thin on the gameplay. The common joke was that it was an interactive screensaver where you sometimes had to tell your character to drink a health potion. And although this was obviously an exaggeration — sometimes you drank a Comment (0) -->

bapenguin: Lets talk about the shadow comment Kathode. We’ve seen lots of screenies, but no shadows yet Jashin: Hold it. You can’t get into shadows just like that! kathode: Heh bapenguin: Haha Jashin: Start with graphics first! bapenguin: Works for me. Jashin: Oblivion’s pretty easy on the eyes, wouldn’t you agree, bap? Comment (0) -->

Computer and Video Games caught up with AoE III’s Lead Designer, Greg Street. In a previous interview, you said that one of the reasons for choosing AoE III’s time period was that, despite military technical advancement, combat fundamentals of the period weren’t too dissimilar to those portrayed in Age of Kings. Is Comment (0) -->

“A 12-year-old Seattle student and his buddies were caught after allegedly using a PC to counterfeit $20 worth of $1 bills that were used in the cafeteria to buy food, school officials said.”

This is what happens when printers are THAT good, and you are young. I can imagine what their parents thought. Check it out at News.com.

“Users might be particularly vulnerable to e-mails claiming to be from Microsoft this week. On April 12, Microsoft will make the Windows XP Service Pack 2 upgrade automatic for any machine that accesses the Windows Update utility at Microsoft’s official update site.”

Lesson #1: Hackers will exploit anything. And it will be amazing how many people will fall for it. Read about it at BPM Today.

“Microsoft Canada, in association with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Toronto Police, the Department of Homeland Security, Interpol, and Scotland Yard, has created an application it hopes will aid in the fight against child pornography. The new application, Child Exploitation Tracking System (CETS), works by linking together data that was previously located at numerous but disparate locations; with CETS, authorities worldwide can share and track information on child porn suspects and cases.”

Ahh this is sweet. Cost $2,000,000 to create, and they plan to spend that amount again to improve it. And that’s Canadian money! Check it out at Geek.com.

“You’ve just foiled a terrorist plot to destroy New York and managed to knock off a few dozen evil henchman in the process. And for some strange reason, you have a sudden craving for a Dunkin’ Donut.”

I am very two-sided on this. If you pay for a game, especially where some cost $50 or more.. you should not have to view ads in the game. It’s YOUR game.. why should you have to have ads thrown at you? If you bought a new dinner set, would you expect to see Sony plastered on them?

Of course, if the games would be cheaper due to the in-game ads, then I’d be all for it. Check it out at News.com.

“Microsoft has agreed to pay Gateway $150 million over four years, as part of an agreement to settle antitrust claims brought by the computer maker, the two companies said Monday.”

This is all due to the fact that Microsoft apparently charged IBM and Gateway more for the Windows OS, because they prefered to bundle Netscape Navigator, rather than Internet Explorer. Check out the posting at News.com.

“French Linux company Mandrake has changed its name following its acquisition of Conectiva – neatly side-stepping an ongoing trademark dispute.

The company’s new name is Mandriva, and its product line and web addresses have all been changed to reflect this. Its logo remains the same shooting star motif.”

I’ve never been a huge fan of Mandrake, but it looks better than since I last used it. Check out the news posting at PC Pro.