- Qualcomm Launches Snapdragon 4 Gen 2 Mobile Platform
- AMD Launches Ryzen PRO 7000 Series Mobile & Desktop Platform
- Intel Launches Sleek Single-Slot Arc Pro A60 Workstation Graphics Card
- NVIDIA Announces Latest Ada Lovelace Additions: GeForce RTX 4060 Ti & RTX 4060
- Maxon Redshift With AMD Radeon GPU Rendering Support Now Available
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Water Cooled Xbox 360
Four years ago next month we built the world’s first water cooled Xbox. At the time, a lot of people asked us why we would want to water cool an Xbox, mostly because they didn’t understand the motivation behind it. The fact of the matter was that the standard heat sink on the 700MHz Intel processor would barely get hot under normal use and surely didn’t warrant the performance offered by a custom water cooling kit. At the time, we did it simply because no one else had done it and “because we could.†That was our motivation then and that is partially our motivation now.
This is a great article for all you DYI’ers and is definitely easy to follow. If you don’t want to wait for a commercial solution, check out the guide at Hard|OCP.
GeForce 7800 GS on eBay
Some exciting news about the GeForce 7800 GS which has been previously reviewed here. It seems that the owner of this card is selling it on eBay. Now you have a chance to buy a card that isnt suppose to exist on the market.
Check it out at NGOHQ.
New easy watercooling from Corsair
The Nautilus 500 consists of an external unit which sits on top of the computer’s case, along with a CPU waterblock and retention brackets. Installation of the waterblock doesn’t require the removal of the motherboard, which will appeal to both watercooling newbies and those who just can’t be bothered faffing about taking their board out.
Now this is a great looking system. Check it out at Hexus.
CES Unveiled
Well CES is only a day away now, but there is a special press only event called CES Unveiled. This event gives manufacturers a chance to showcase new products before the big event. There are only a handful of companies that chose to exhibit at this event, and there is free complementary food and drinks, which makes it even better. So today we will be showing you some of the cool new products that were showed at this event.
The article is down at the time of writing, but what I did get to read seemed great! Check it out (if the Slashdot effect passes) over at Think Computers.
Enemy of the State of Privacy
In the 1998 movie, “Enemy of the Stateâ€, actor Will Smith’s personal privacy is invaded by his own government using high technology devices planted in his home, office and even on his person. Sounds far fetched? The technology does exist to do everything portrayed in the movie and much more. The only difference between the movie and real life is that unlike the movie where government agents physically entered the home and office of Smith, this is not necessary to breach the privacy of any citizen.
Check out the full article over at BTX Form Factor.
The first GPU Cooler from ARCTIC COOLING with Heatpipe Technology
Pfäffikon/ Switzerland, 03.01.2006: Swiss cooler manufacturer ARCTIC COOLING launches
new series of Graphic card coolers named Accelero (X1 for NVDIA 6800/ 7800 Series and
X2 for ATI X1800/ X1900 Series). Vibrations caused by the rotating fan are absorbed by a
patented vibration muffler. Complex airflow simulations were conducted during development
of the fan, the results were incredible cooling performance at extremely low noise levels as a
result of to 6 heatpipes. ARCTIC COOLING offers for this series a 6 year limited warranty.
Hardware Roundup for Jan. 4
There are not too many reviews available today, but that could be because CES is directly around the corner. If you are looking for a midstream card but really don’t want to go with NVIDIA, then check out 3D Gamemans review of the HIS X1600XT which uses dual DVI’s. Norcent is well known for making affordable Plasma screens but not so much their LCD TV’s. It’s definitely one of the ugliest LCD TV’s I’ve seen and it lacks HDMI, but does it have enough redeeming qualities to make it worth a buy?
- Asetek WaterChill Xtreme 12V Pump-Reservoir – PC Modding Malaysia
- Cooler Master Ammo 533 Cooler – Maximum CPU
- Thermalright V1 Ultra VGA Cooler – Big Bruin
- Thermaltake Silent Water CPU Cooler – 3D Xtreme
- Titan Bianca Water Cooling Kit – Gamer God
Cooling
- ECS RS480-M – Overclockers Online
Motherboards & CPU’s
- Enermax Liberty 620 Watt PSU – Guru 3D
- Zalman ZM460-APS Noiseless Switching Power Supply – OCIA
Peripherals & Power Supplies
- HIS X1600XT IceQ Turbo DL-DVI 256MB PCIe – 3D Gameman
Video Cards & Monitor
- Intel’s Viiv Campaign: Here’s to Good Timing! – Design Technica
- JVC GZ-MG50EK Digital Camcorder – Trusted Reviews
- Kanotix v2005-04 (Linux) – Phoronix
- Norcent LT-2722 27 Inch LCD Television – XYZ Computing
- TR awards 2005 – Tech Report
- VL’s Editor’s Choices of 2005 – Viper Lair
- Zotac Bomba 100 Digital Audio Player – Legion Hardware
Etcetera & Contests
No Ads in Wikipedia Says Wales
Contrary to a news report that circulated in the blogosphere last week, Wikipedia has no plans to implement advertising on its burgeoning consumer generated encyclopedia. That’s according to Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, who told ClickZ News he remains opposed to advertising on the voluminous reference site. Wales said he was badly misquoted in a Times Online story published last week with the headline, “Wikipedia chief considers taking ads.”
It’s great to know that Jimmy is so against having ads on the site, but it must be extremely difficult to muster up the funds to keep a massive site like that running. Source: ClickZ.
AMD spends $75m to license Rambus tech
The licence will last for at least five years, but the two companies refused to disclose any other terms and conditions underpinning the deal. “Specific terms of the agreement are confidential,” said the firms’ joint announcement beneath a headline revealing AMD is paying $75m for the rights to the technology.
After waiting for months, we finally hear that AMD will support DDR2, and now they can technically support DDR3 if they wanted to. It’s great to see that they are ahead of things. Source: Channel Register.
Windows Vista drops support for old DVD drives
Raymond Chen has let slip that Windows Vista will be somewhat choosey with regards to which DVD drives it supports. Chen, who has worked on Windows development since joining Microsoft in 1992 and specializes in backwards compatibility issues, has warned that older DVD drives will not function fully in Windows Vista.
Chances are if you shell out $300 for a new Windows, then you already have a newer DVD-Rom and likely a writer. Even so, we have come to expect Windows to support whatever ‘normal’ hardware we throw at it, so this is somewhat of a blow. Source: Ars Technica.
Virtual Product Placement
Viewers of last April 25’s episode of the CBS show “Yes, Dear” may have noticed a box of Club Crackers sitting on a living room coffee table, next to a plate of cheese. What they did not know was that the box did not really exist, at least not on the set.
This actually isn’t too bad of an idea… I’d rather see a real product than the same product mispelled. Source: News.com.
Hardware Roundup for Jan. 3
There’s many cooling related reviews going ’round the web today for all tastes. If you want to get into water cooling your PC, but don’t know which kit to choose, you may check out the review of Corsairs COOL kit over at Bjorn 3D. It’s not the best kit in the world, but worth a look. On the air side of things, PC Modding Malaysia takes the latest from Arctic Cooling for a spin. They are testing it on their Intel system but it’s also compatible for your AMD S939. For comparison purposes, they even detail the differences between this cooler and the non-pro version.
If you think your $300 CPU is pricey, then you won’t want to check the review of the 2.8GHz Xeon at Hexus today. Rolling in at $1,030US, it beat the more expensive Opteron that it was being compared to. If you have yet to jump on the dual GPU bandwagon (me too), but are still considering it, you can check out Driver Heaven today for a great review of a dual X1800 setup.
- Arctic Cooling Freezer Pro – PC Modding Malaysia
- Coolermaster Nano Fusion Thermal Compound – AMD Zone
- Corsair COOL Water Cooling Kit – Bjorn3D
- PrimeCooler MegaCool 7 Intel Pentium 4 LGA775 Heatsink – A1 Electronics
- Sharkoon Red Shock Cooling – Technic 3D
- Thermaltake Big Water 745 – techPowerUp!
- Thermaltake Golden Orb II Cooler – AMD Zone
Cooling
- OCZ 1024MB EL Gold GX XTC PC3500 Dual Channel DDR – Big Bruin
Memory & Storage
- Gigabyte GA-K8N51PVMT-9 – OC Workbench
- Intel ‘Paxville’ Xeon DP 2.8GHz – Hexus
- nForce4 SLI Motherboards: Premium Performance at a Bargain Price – AnandTech
Motherboards & CPU’s
- Microsoft Optical Mouse 3000 & 4000 – Hardware-Pacers
- SteelSeries SteelSound 5H Headphones – techFEAR
Peripherals & Power Supplies
- ATI X1800 Crossfire Edition – Driver Heaven
- Desktop Graphics Card Comparison Guide Rev. 9.8 – Rojak Pot
Video Cards & Monitor
- Canon PowerShot S80 – Design Technica
- Evesham Mini PC Plus – Bit-Tech
- Gregwired Panosaurus Spherical Tripod Head – XYZ Computing
- The Benefits Of Using Ergonomically Correct Mice And Keyboards – Bona Fide Reviews
Etcetera & Contests
KDE 4 to Support Apple Dashboard Widgets
Basically, this means that a layer (similar in some ways to layers in Adobe Photoshop) in the KDE desktop could function the same way that Dashboard does in Mac OS X. Widgets themselves are not inherently difficult to write nor properly interpret, since they are usually just HTML and Javascript (although Cocoa code can be included, the developer’s skills permitting). Furthermore, since Konqueror and Safari share very nearly the same rendering engine, KHTML and WebKit, this too will simplify the process.
This is great news, especially since some of the Apple widgets are quite useful. The latest KDE includes Super Karamba which is similar to Apple widgets, but it would be nice to be able to carry your widgets from your Mac PC to your Linux PC. Source: Slashdot.
Hardware Roundup for Jan. 2
Welcome to 2oo6! So many things happened during 2005 in the tech world, that I can only imagine what the new year will bring. We can certainly start off the new year and a Monday with some great reviews. OCIA are taking a look at some Swiftech GPU memory heatsinks. In the end, they performed quite well, and look far better than most others I’ve seen. In the actual memory side of things, Phoronix is taking the new 2GB Gold GX kit from OCZ for a spin. As with most Gold series, the performance was good but the overclockability is not there.
- Arctic Cooling Fans – Red & Blackness
- Kingwin SK-523 – Overclocker Cafe
Cases & Enclosures
- Cooler Master NanoFusion – Overclockers Online
- Swiftech MC14 BGA Memory Ramsink – OCIA
Cooling
- OCZ EL PC-4000 2GB Gold GX XTC – Phoronix
Memory & Storage
- Intel Celeron D 336 CPU Overclocking – Legion Hardware
- Intel Extreme Edition 955 – 3D Velocity
Motherboards & CPU’s
- Bluetake Bluetooth Adapter (BT009Si) and Mouse (BT510) – Techniz
- ConexUSB Lighted USB Cables and Adapters – Extensive Mods
- MicMouse & Steelsound – 3D Velocity
- Shure E3g Gaming Ear Buds – Design Technica
Peripherals & Power Supplies
- ASUS Extreme N7800GT Dual-SLI on a single card – Xtreme Computing
Video Cards & Monitor
- 2006 New Years Laser Giveaway! – MVKTech
- Announcing the ARP-Intel Survey Contest winner – Rojak Pot
- BIOS Optimization Guide Rev. 8.7 – Rojak Pot
- Samsung YP-U1 USB Drive Music Player – Mod the Box
Etcetera & Contests
LGP X2 v1.4 (BETA 1) Benchmarks
On December 31, LGP finally sent its first draft of the X2
game off to its closed BETA community. With the game still being under
development, there is a fair amount of bugs to speak of but many of the
testers have faced an unreliably low level of performance. To show
gamers what they will need to expect from this upcoming game, we have
ran a slew of benchmarks over X2 v1.4 BETA 1 with various NVIDIA
graphics cards.
Check it out at Phoronix.
$4,000 Tube Speakers for Your iPod
I know you’ve just been dying to spend more money this season. And what could be a better investment than the world’s first tube-based iPod speaker system. Sold only at Hammacher Schlemmer, these Studio-Quality Triode-Tube iPod Speakers will only set you back a mere $4,000, but hey, you’ll also get a aluminum-encased amplifier housing four Class-A tubes.
If I were to pay $4K for speakers, I think I’d be playing a little more than 128Kbps MP3’s out of them. Check it out here.
BeleniX LiveCD v0.3
For your viewing pleasure today we took a look at BeleniX
v0.3, which is based upon OpenSolaris and mutated into a LiveCD. This
latest release includes a new hdinstaller utility and miscellaneous
other enhancements. GtK+ v2.8.6 managed to make its way into this
release as well as Xfce v4.2.3 and v6.9 CVS of Xorg, which 7.0/6.9.0
were finally released recently after no major release in over a decade.
BeleniX is a growing distribution that certainly has possibilities and
is our focus of attention today.
Well, the Sun in the background of the photos gives me the creeps, but the bonus is that you can try this Linux out without installing it on your system. Check out the pictorial at Phoronix.
Liquid cooling for the Xbox 360 – First Photos!
We’ve obtained what we believe to be the first shots on the net of a new retrofit liquid cooling system for the Xbox 360… which is claimed to run cooler and quieter than a standard Xbox 360.
How this works exactly is a wonder, but this would be a welcomed solution by many I’m sure. It’s sad that people had to create such a solution for a console that shouldn’t have an overheating problem to begin with. Check out the pictures at Hexus.
VR-Fidelity USB Speakerphone Review
With the ever increasing popularity of voice over internet/broadband (VoIP), there will come of course, lots of cool products. Today I have one such product for review that actually surprised me in its quality and functionality. It comes from a company called Blue Gears; they primarily make high end sound cards. Blue Gears has come up with a small gadget that has multiple uses, not just for VoIP, it is called the VR-Fidelity USB Speakerphone. The name ‘speakerphone’ is somewhat misleading for this product because it is so much more than that. Curious? Read on to find out more about it…
TC reviews some of the most unique products, and this is no exception. This is actually something I am surprised to now have seen sooner though. Check it out at Think Computers.
Hiper Type-R HPU-4B580 Power Supply Review
Hiper hasn’t been that long on the market but the name is already known around the globe for there powerful and professional products, especially their power supplies. We got the opportunity to get a closer look at their newest high performance power supply which delivers the latest ATX power standards and incorporates a new unique modular cable design to reduce excess cables. Lets dig into the Type-R series Power Supply Units, namely the Hiper Type-R HPU-4B580 (580W) power supply.
The Hiper PSU is very different from most standard supplies, but that’s a good thhing. It even comes in a plastic ‘toy-box’ looking container. Check out the full review at MVKTech.
Vantec Vortex2 HDD Cooler Review
This Hard Drive Cooling System does actually work! Some hard drive cooling solutions do not really accomplish much in the way of keeping a hard drive cool. Many have small fans that do next to nothing. The reason why this one does work very well is because of the cross-flow blower fan. This fan pushes enough air across the hard drive to prevent overheating. Overheating is very dangerous for a hard drive and can result in system instability, data loss or worse. It’s very important to keep current hard drives cool, especially SCSI hard drives…
The Vortex2 is a huge step over the first one primarily because of looks. It looks to function better as well though. Check out the full review over at 3D Gameman.
NVIDIA AYiR 2005
In continuation of our previous piece entitled ATI AYiR 2005
(A Year in Review), where we looked at ATI’s features implemented this
year into their drivers as well as thoroughly examining the frame-rate
performance, today we have turned the tables yet again and today are
taking another look at NVIDIA’s gains this year…
Of course this is no ordinary look at NVIDIA like you’d expect. Since Phoronix are Linux gurus, it gives a different perspective on the state of things. Check it out right here.
Thermaltake SI-120 Heatsink Review
Thermalright have been making quality heatsinks for awhile now and usually lead the pack with new innovations to make the humble PC users’ life easier. Today we test the SI-120 from their latest line of ‘Light ‘n’ Easy’ products. Weighing in at 400g, it certainly is light, but is it easy?
Thermalright claimes that this is a “Light and Easy” heatsink despite it’s large size. It’s definitely unique though and does a great enough job to warrant an editors choice award. Check it out at Pro-Clockers.
Intel and ECS Contest
There is only 1 day left for you guys to win a pretty new dual-core processor from Intel. Hurry up before time runs out!
Check out the full contest details at InsaneTek.
The Thumb Drive RAID Experiment
The idea of a thumb drive RAID array might not be practical for every day needs, but it is a novel idea that could be of benefit to some people. For one, owners of mini-ITX systems that boot from a flash drive might be interested in the sizable speed burst a RAID 0 array could provide… In the end, results were achieved that showed great promise for thumb drive RAID arrays.
This is a great experiment, but it certainly takes some effort. It’s too bad that he only had junk thumb drives on hand. I’d love to see the tests re-done in the future with some better ones for sure. Check it out at Big Bruin.