- 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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Tuniq Tower 120 CPU Cooler Review
Almost everyone knows that Sunbeam is specialized in CCFL and other “modding” accessories, but it seems that their sub-company (Tuniq) came out with the Tower 120 which has proven itself to be a good performance air cooler. The only draw back of the Tower 120 is its huge size because some users might be wary to break their motherboard as it is heavy and tall. However, we test the cooler with proper installation withouh a hitch. Overall, the Tuniq Tower 120 is a good air cooler that is comes at an acceptable performance and price ratio.
Check out the full review over at PC Modding Malaysia.
Albatron K8SLI Motherboard Review
The Albatron K8SLI motherboard is a compact nVidia nForce4 SLI board that packs in quite a bit into a small space. The Albatron K8SLI comes with a basic set of features, such as Gigabit network ethernet, 5.1 channel audio controller (with SPDIF out), two free 32 bit PCI slots as well two PCI Express x1 & PCI Express x16 slots, and the standard assortment of SATA and IDE connectors supported by the nForce 4 SLI chipset.
Check out the full review at PC Stats!
Gigabyte GV-NX78X256V-B Geforce 7800GTX Videocard Review
Old games of yesteryear look primitive compared to the stunning games of today and visually it’s hard to go back and play those old favorites. Today, if you want the best videocard on the market regardless of price, it’s definitely going to be something based on the nVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX core. The GV-NX78X256V-B is backed up by 256MB of GDDR3 memory and supports VIVO as well as component output, and is fully SLI compatible. Included in the package is also a pretty good software suite which includes two full version games and some multimedia software.
Yet another 7800GTX review, but Gigabyte this time. Check out the full review at PC Stats.
GeForce 7800 GTX Shootout
Each package on test has merit when judged via a wide range of criteria. Leadtek’s is the cheapest and slowest, comparatively speaking. The bundle is good and a custom BIOS adds a bit of extra oomph to the already-fast card. Speaking of which, it’s strictly a reference design. BFG’s effort sits in the middle, both in terms of performance and price, and wins out in the warranty and bundle stakes. XFX’s, as is evident through our glut of benchmarks, is quite simply the fastest single-card solution that we have ever tested. Fast enough to attract a £65-£85 premium over the Leadtek, well, you decide.
Leadtek came out with the best $/FPS, making it a great value. Check out the full in-depth comparison over at Hexus.
Cooler Master Real Power 450W Review
Cooler Master has been providing solutions for the enthusiast market for quite some time. They have an established name and presence in the market when it comes to cooling, cases, and power supplies. Most of their fame, however, is mostly from building quality cases, like the CM stacker and the Wavemaster. Today we have the Cooler Master Real Power 450 up for review.
Head over to Phoronix for the full review!
OCZ PC2-5400 (DDR667) DDR2 Review
OCZ’s PC2-5400 Gold series have to be among of the fastest and most tweakable available on the market. We gave it a pretty good run for it’s money and basically we really worship this memory, however our CPU simply halts at ~4 GHz or a 275+ FSB. The best way we could push our memory was to lower the multiplier of the CPU and then raise the FSB. On this Intel platform we then reached a memory bandwidth that was amazing. Quite snazzy considering the combo of a (4×200) 800 MHz FSB based CPU :)
Wow this is great memory! Just when I thought I didn’t want DDR2, these scores come along. Check out the full review over at Guru 3D.
Spire SP792S12-U Air Cooler Heatsink Review
The Spire SP792S12-U is a compact light weight small air cooler heatsink intended for AMD processors. Its aluminium construction with a copper insert gives very respectable cooling performance as we can see here in our graph.
Head over to A1 Electronics for the full review!
Spire DiamondCool Review
The Spire DiamondCool LGA775 cooler looks to be able to provide great performance with the all copper fins and 4 heatpipes. It
already performs well but can do better with a better fan.
Check out the full review over at InsaneTek!
What Is VoIP and How Does It Work?
Chances are that you have already made a VoIP call without even realizing it. The major phone companies already use VoIP to route thousands of long distance calls through a circuit switch and into an IP gateway. This is then received by a gateway at the other end and then routed to another local circuit switch. More and more companies are installing VoIP phone systems, and the technology will grow and grow until it finds its way into every business and household across the globe.
VoIP is getting amazingly popular, so even you are not interested in it, check out the article at Big Bruin so you at least know what’s going on!
Crucial Ballistix PC2-5300 Review
Performance takes a few forms. If your are a fan of synthetic memory tests than this RAM is significantly better that DDRI and overclocking helps quite a bit. However most of us don’t run these tests continuously so we look to the real world results. For the most part there is no significant increase due to DDRII memory. The exceptions are TMPGEnc which shows a 4.5% increase by moving to DDRII, and the game tests which show a 3-5% increase in frame rate (3-4fps) also by moving to DDRII.
Not the greatest overclocker, but still solid memory. Check out the full look at this memory at Viper Lair.
MSI Theatre 550 Pro TV Tuner Review
ATI recently released the Theatre 550 Pro digital audio/video processing chipset which adds several image quality-related features, possibly making computer-based media centres a little more viable. We’ve already reviewed one Theatre 550-based product and found it to be the best TV-tuner we had yet looked at. Today we’re looking at another, the MSI Theatre 550 Pro.
If you are in the market for a great TV-Tuner, definitely check out the full review over at PC Stats.
OCZ DDR2 PC2-4200 Value Pro Review
OCZ has geared their DDR2 Value Pro towards “mainstream desktop users”. We had the DDR2 PC2-4200 Value Pro modules on our testbench and were surprised by how far we could overclock this memory. Close to DDR2-750 at stock voltage is certainly not mainstream. Timings could also be tightened from 4-4-4-8 to 3-3-2-4. Great results, especially if you consider the price of $120 for a 2x512MB kit.
This looks to be a great set of memory for an awesome price. As with usual with OCZ, it’s also a great overclocker. Check out the full review over at techPowerUp!
Customising Google News
Completely automated, Google News searches the top news sources around the world (HEXUS included) and then presents the latest news stories. It is capable of finding thumbnail images to go with a story, along with grouping together the same story if it is being covered by various websites. You can search Google News for a particular story or subject, or you can choose a category, such as “Sci/Tech” or “Business”. Better still, now you can customize Google News. So let me show you how to do it.
This is a great article if you frequent Google news! Head over to Hexus to check it out!
ECS PF88 Extreme Hybrid Intel/AMD Motherboard Review
While flexibility is the name of the game in the software world, the computer hardware realm is a lot stricter. AMD and Intel technologies are completely different from each other, so it’s impossible to use one product in the other’s platform. Or at least that has been the general rule until now… The ECS PF88 Extreme Hybrid motherboard is on our test bench for a thorough examination, and in the configuration pictured it works with either a socket 775 Intel Pentium 4 or socket 939 AMD Athlon 64 processor. Intrigued yet?
There have been a lot of ECS mobo reviews lately. Gotta love the purple! It turns out to be a great performer as well though. Check out the full review at PC Stats.
Zalman VF700-Cu GPU Heatsink Review
Zalman is well known for its silent cooling products, today I’m gonna have a look at the Zalman VF700-Cu cooler to see what it is capable off. The nice thing about this cooler is that it cools not only the VGA chipset and VGA RAM, but all other VGA components..
Head over to HardwareXL for the full review!
Mushkin’s New Heatsink Design Posted
Mushkin recently announced a radically new heatsink design for their top memory modules. They claim it offers greatly-improved thermal dissipation capabilities courtesy of a larger surface area, a new aero-efficient design and an advanced thermal adhesive. Check it out!
At first glance, I have to say I like what I see. It appears that the memory chips will have more breathing room, and if you have a memory cooler, it looks like that could have a great affect. Check out all the information at Rojak Pot!
G.Skill F1-4400DSU2-1GBFC Memory Review
TCC5 is not a brand new replacement for TCCD, it is simply the same chip speed binned to DDR466 instead of DDR500 and has been available for as long as TCCD. The performance of your TCC5 product now relies heavily on the binning process used by the memory manufacturers (OCZ, Corsair, G.Skill etc) but if they do a good job you should get identical performance to current TCCD.
Head over to Pure Overclock for the full review!
AcoustiFan No Dust Quiet Fans Review
If you are one of those people that hate any little bit of noise
and want your computer as silent as possible, than this review is for you.
We all know that dust increases a fan’s noise over time. Put that new quiet
fan in, and a couple of months later it is a little louder than it used to
be. That is why AcoustiFan has developed a dust free fan. It is designed to
eliminate that gradual increase in noise over time of a fan. Quiet PC was
nice enough to send us a couple for review.
A dust proof fan? My fans especially pick up dust far too quickly, so this would be great. Check out the full article at A True Review.
Foxconn TV-544 & TP-544 ATX Towers Review
The case market these days is saturated with cases of all varieties. The most popular ones are flashy modded cases, or high quality aluminum cases. However if you’re just looking for a very sturdy, well-built case, Foxconn’s TV-544 or TP-544 might be the perfect case for you.
I don’t recall ever seeing a Foxconn tower before, but both of these look pretty good. To see how great they are, check out the full review at Phoronix.
OCZ Gold PC3500 GX 1GB Kit Contest – One Week Left
There is only one week left in our OCZ Gold PC3500 GX contest so be sure to hurry up and join before it’s too late. It’s your
chance to win some great memory for your gaming or overclocking system.
As always, head over to the InsaneTek forums for all the details!
Multitasking with Native Command Queuing
INTELLIGENTLY REORDERING I/O REQUESTS in order to minimize the performance impact of a hard drive’s mechanical latency—otherwise known as command queuing—is unquestionably the right thing to do. However, though command queuing has long proven to be a valuable asset to SCSI drives faced with multi-user and enterprise-class workloads, the performance benefits of Native Command Queuing (NCQ) in desktop Serial ATA drives have been harder to illustrate. Unfortunately, most commonly used hard drive benchmarks don’t play to NCQ’s strengths, and those that do involve server-style workloads that are hardly indicative of desktop environments.
If you don’t know what NCQ is, this article is worth a look. Head over to Tech Report to see the in-depth view.
What can a VoIP phone system do for small business?
Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, is a term used to describe the transmission of telephone calls using a data network, rather than over traditional phone lines. It is a simple concept, but one that is having a very significant impact on the world of business communications.
It’s no doubt that VoIP is getting more and more popular. It’s almost something everyone should look into. Check out the full article at Bona Fide Reviews.
Sunbeamtech Chromatic Windmill Control Panel Review
On the back of the Chromatic Windmill you will find all the connectors neatly lined up, and well labeled… You will also find a place to install a back-up battery. If the power is ever lost to the unit you won’t lose your settings. This is a great feature, as I have always hated moving components around and losing the values that I had programmed in!
Sunbeam always makes great looking panels, and these are no exception! Check out the full review over at Big Bruin!
Hero’s Journey House of Commons – Dev Chat
Stratics is pleased to announce our next House of Commons Developer Chat with the developers of Hero’s Journey on August 3rd at 5:00PM PDT / 7:00PM CDT / 8:00PM EDT in the #StraticsHoC channel on Stratics IRC. You can connect to one of our IRC servers through the use of your favorite…..
Akasa Eclipse-62 Case Review
Overclockers and tweakers will find this case very user friendly as this case is totally accessible and almost everything can be disassembled. The Eclipse-62 is also getting my credits for its large interior space and the ability to support up to 10 hard drives with ease. I’m also giving credit to this case because of the supplied castors that makes life easy, especially when you’re getting to a LAN Party. The slide out motherboard tray is also very unique and I believe that this is the only case with a mirror finish motherboard tray.
This is a fantastic looking case. Akasa did a great job with it, and even went as far to allow the user to padlock the case. Check out the full look at this case over at PC Modding Malaysia.