Tech News April 2005

Uneed DIGN HV5 HTPC case review @ XtremeResources
Xtreme Resources :: Thursday, April 21, 2005

” The very first PCs that began entering into households were based o­n the original desktop design. Not long after, this design was abandoned for the more practical and convenient tower design, which was better for space arrangement and heat dissipation. However, nowadays the ‘old’ format became popular for HTPC setups, as they require a desktop design which looks nice in order for them to harmonize a living room hi-fi setup. o­ne of the cases that excel in looking just perfect to complement a hi-fi arrangement is the Uneed DIGN HV5 HTPC Case. To the untrained eye, it will be mistaken for an oversized DVD player. Uneed is a company based in Seoul, South Korea. Being a very new company, they specialize in building o­nly HTPC cases and hardware ”

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Thermaltake SHARK aluminum tower case @ Legit Reviews
Legit Reviews :: Thursday, April 21, 2005
” Thermaltake’s SHARK series is one of the most versatile Tower designs on the market today. The side panel features a “Honey-comb” viewing alternative which replaces the typical plexiglas window and allows further ventilation… ”

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Cooler Master Vortex TX Universal CPU Cooler
hardCOREware :: Tuesday, April 19, 2005
Lately we have been noticing a trend from the CPU cooler companies. While still offering the huge heatsinks that look like they could rip a motherboard right out of the case, they are starting to offer more and more ‘midrange’ coolers. These are intended to be a step up from the stock cooler that came with your CPU, but available at a modest price point.

There are some things a cooler must do right before it is worthy of consideration though. Today we’ll be looking at the Vortex TX from Cooler Master. This cooler will fit on virtually every CPU made recently, and is touted to be ‘silent’. We’ll have to see about that…

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Cooler Master Vortex TX @ Viperlair
ViperLair :: Tuesday, April 19, 2005
“Having gotten used to heatpipes for air cooling, I had some concerns of how the Vortex TX would compare against those coolers. Overall, the Vortex TX had a strong showing and managed to more or less tie the Hyper 48 but it couldn’t hold a candle against the Hyper 6. Keep in mind that the Hyper 6 is quite a bit bigger, and uses two fans at high settings for maximum performance.”

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Seagate USB 2.0 5GB Pocket Hard Drive @ InsaneTek
InsaneTek :: Tuesday, April 19, 2005

Quote: “Why waste your time on skimpy small USB pen drives when you can have a massive 5GB on the go? Once you have the portable storage space, you won’t want to go anywhere without it.”

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Keeping Technology Simple Editorial @ The Tech Zone
The Tech Zone :: Tuesday, April 19, 2005
Being the total opposite to a technical person, it is hard to imagine future Internet software advances. The techno-humans have come up with incredible ideas and subsequently their ideas have come to fruition. It seems like anything a human puts their mind to can be done. Our species has come such a long way, but I feel the key to the next part in our evolution of technology and consciousness is to integrate the ideas of the average person. Who do we build all this technology for anyway? I think it’s made for humans to have a better life. It’s time to start making the technological advances in computing with the non-computer-based people of the world in mind.

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XTracPads HYBRID Mouse Pad Review Posted!
Tech ARP :: Tuesday, April 19, 2005

Quote – “The HYBRID is the latest culmination of XTracPads’ development efforts. As its name implies, it is a hybrid of two different surface materials integrated together for superior performance. Let’s see if this new method of creating a gaming pad works out!”

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Asus K8N Motherboard Review @ CoolTechZone
CoolTechZone :: Tuesday, April 19, 2005

“After taking a look at VIA’s K8T800 chipset last week and NVIDIA’s nForce3-150 chipset internally in our labs, it’s clear that both chipsets failed to offer AGP/PCI lock and lacked features that would impress the high-end home user. There were instances where certain manufacturers were able to implement AGP/PCI lock on certain motherboards, namely Abit, but majority of them did not bother to do so. The problem was a tough one to crack, since the chipset never had support for the aforementioned feature initially. NVIDIA’s nForce-150, on the other hand, supported an AGP/PCI lock, but due to manufacturer’s mistake, it wasn’t implemented on many boards either. According to NVIDIA, many board makers wrote the BIOS incorrectly, which disabled the feature. Whatever the reason may be the initial socket 754 chipsets weren’t for the high-end overclocker.”

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A news post on your site would be excellent. :)

Aqua Computer Premium watercooling kit review @ XtremeResources
Xtreme Resources :: Tuesday, April 19, 2005

“Germany is arguably the country with the fastest and strongest growing water cooling products market on the planet. I do not know and can not possibly guess what caused this kind of growth, but it is most evident. I can think of at least 30 German water cooling product manufacturers in a single minute. One of the most reputable manufacturers in Germany for their quality and ease of use is Aqua Computer. Founded during the Spring of the year 2001, the company is dedicated to the research, assembly and manufacture of water cooling products. Their Aqua Premium kit is under the microscope today. Let us see what the Aqua Computer has to offer the hardware enthusiast.”

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HEXUS.review – Gigabyte’s GA-8AENXP-D Mainboard
Hexus :: Tuesday, April 19, 2005
Snip: If I have to say something bad about the board, it’s that the aesthetic makes me decidedly unwell. Go forth and seek, should high-performance, feature-packed, well-presented Pentium 4 be your Valhalla. Highly recommended.

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News – Antec NeoPower 480W PSU
Techniz.co.uk :: Tuesday, April 19, 2005

“Antec is one of the most famous brands of producing the True Power PSU. The performance of this Antec NEOPOWER 480W PSU is very good and stable as you can refer back to the testing and performance section. Moreover, the PSU is comes with a sexy black color housing and it looks so great. A part from that, it comes with the advance cable management system where you only need to plug in the cable that you require to use.”

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PimpRig Review // Cooler Master CoolDrive Lite
PimpRig :: Tuesday, April 19, 2005

“On removing the bottom, which is also the mounting plate and heat sink for the hard drive, you’ll find the housing containing the blower fan. Taking this apart reveals the tiny 44mm fan. The blower assembly does not direct air across the hard drive but rather across the fins of the heat sink.”

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Seasonic S12-430 430 Watt Power Supply
PCStats :: Tuesday, April 19, 2005
“A good power supply is becoming more of an essential component for modern computer systems than it ever used to be. In this review, PCSTATS will be testing out Seasonic’s S12-430 power supply. This 430-Watt supply features Active Power Factor Correction, dual 12-volt outlets, ‘ silent focus’ fan control, honeycomb ventilation and a full three year warranty. It also comes with a nifty ‘DR. Cable’ cable management kit for a neater PC interior.”

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Modding : Project LP3 Player (work in Progress)
Tech-Mods.net :: Tuesday, April 19, 2005
Quote:” Well I had this linear tracking turntable for quite some time and figured it need an upgrade….I don’t play LP records any more so it was time to turn the tables on this bad boy of the day and get it up to present times.”

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News – Thermaltake Rocket Fanless Liquid Cooling System
Techniz.co.uk :: Tuesday, April 19, 2005

“Thermaltake have come out with another fancy and good performance product. Personally, I very like the design of this Rocket Fanless Liquid Cooling System, with all the LED’s and UV reactive design. It will be great for case modding. As for the performance, it was very good compare to those stock cooler, you can refer to the cooling performance at the testing section. It was a totally fanless and noiseless water cooling kit. The Rocket is support the Intel P4 ( Socket 478 ), P4 LGA 775, AMD K8 and K7. The water pump was very powerful enough as well. Finally, this will be another great cooling kit for your system especially those enthusiast that looking for a fanless and noiseless setup.”

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X-ray Mouse Pads Review
Sharky Extreme :: Tuesday, April 19, 2005

The Thunder 8 ships in its own tin carrying case. Inside there are molded foam pieces which fit the pad perfectly. This not only protects and prolongs the pristine condition of the pad, but also looks nice and will no doubt get attention at a LAN party. It gives the Thunder 8 an overall “gamer” feel and any company that sells performance mouse pads should consider at least some form of viable transportation. Several colors choices are also available: black, blue, green, orange, and yellow. The mouse pad remains black, but the trim is different.

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Contest: Tech-Mods.net Unique Dremel Contest… @ Tech-Mods.net
Tech-Mods.net :: Sunday, April 10, 2005

“OK People put your thinking caps on! Tech-Mods.net and Dremel have teamed up to give you a chance at winning one of Dremel’s XPR 400 Tool Kits ($79.00 USD Value) all that is needed is for you to come up with the most unique way you would use the New 400 Series XPR rotary tool while performing a computer mod of any kind.”

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Jon Peddie on Parallelism @ Hexus
Hexus :: Sunday, April 10, 2005
“The first and most successful examples of going out have been the parallel architectures of the graphics structures, sometimes called pipelines. Today’s GPUs are expressed in parallel structures of 16 pipelines each with multiple programmable floating-point processors and other specialized state machines. The results have been nothing short of phenomenal. Partially that’s due to the inherent nature of graphics, which in the most simplest terms can lead me to the parallel wash of millions of pixels exciting my rods and cones when I look at a display. But it goes much deeper than that and is found in the algorithmic construction of the physics of light that we try to mimic with our GPUs and high-speed silicon memory systems.”

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Corsair XMS2-6400 TwinX Memory Kit Overview @ Adrian’s Rojak Pot
Tech ARP :: Sunday, April 10, 2005

“The Corsair XMS2-6400 TwinX memory kit is the latest and fastest DDR2 memory kit at 800MHz!

Optimized for the NVIDIA nForce 4 SLI Intel Edition platform, this memory kit features two matched 512MB CM2X512A-6400 memory modules but is also available as a single module.”

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Corsair Pro Series XMS2-5400 DDR2 Memory Reiew @ Systemcooling
SystemCooling :: Sunday, April 10, 2005
“In the past, when we’ve reviewed DDR2 memory, we’ve found the results to be a mixed bag. In general, the memory is capable of running at very high clock speeds, but overall performance is hamstrung by the very high latencies that such clock speeds dictate. Today, we’re going to look at Corsair’s 1GB Twin2X XMS2-5400 Pro Series modules. This memory goes way beyond the standard DDR spec in terms of rated speed, and we’ll find out if this extra headroom is enough to overcome the latency issues inherent to the DDR2 specification.”

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PCI Express 101 Article @ Viperlair
ViperLair :: Sunday, April 10, 2005
“For those who are looking for an upgrade to their system, PCIe (short for PCI Express) is a great technology to take advantage of. However, if you are looking to have the best possible graphics, there is no reason to splurge on a motherboard just with PCIe as AGP 4x and 8x should provide ample bandwidth for any intensive games you run, including Doom III / Half Life 2 and other soon-to-be released titles.”

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Thermaltake PurePower 350W Fanless Heatpipe Cooling Power Supply Review @ 3dGameMan
3dgameman :: Sunday, April 10, 2005
“This power supply is extremely different than most on the market because of its implementation of a very effective heatpipe cooling system. While no fans are required to keep it cool, great case air circulation is strongly recommended. This product offers quality efficient power in total silence. A perfect product for quiet PC buffs. Watch the Video to find out more…”

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A-Top Gladiator Case Review @ Overclocker Cafe’
Overclocker Café :: Saturday, April 09, 2005

“Here we get a better look at the main draw of the Gladiator case. Are these things wings or claws? I’m not sure but either way they’re pretty tough! Looking closer, we can distinguish that the window isn’t really a window at all, it’s a mesh screen. As we said before, circulation isn’t going to be an issue with this case. The down side is that the greater the air flow within a case the more often you are going to need to blow the dust out of it.”

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Hiyatek Notebook Cooler Review @ Tech-Mods.net
Tech-Mods.net :: Saturday, April 09, 2005

“Alpha & Omega Computers sent over their Notebook USB Cooling Pad with Temperature LCD Display made by Hiyatek to test out. This USB cooling pad houses 2 70mm speed controlled fans below an aluminum spacer plate”

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Jetart ThermoEye DT2000 Thermometer Overview Posted @ Adrian’s Rojak Pot
Tech ARP :: Saturday, April 09, 2005

“The key to maintaining a healthy PC system, especially an overclocked one, is to keep it in the ideal state. And this includes the operating temperature.

Jetart has one such product to monitor your system temperatures – the Jetart ThermoEye DT2000!”

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A.C.Ryan Connectx PSU Mod Kit Review @ Mikhailtech
Mikhailtech :: Saturday, April 09, 2005

“The first of the included tools is the 4-pin plug remover. This is pretty much the best thing ever. One end is for male connectors, one for female. To remove the wires from a connector, simply slide the Toolx into the hole and pull the cable out the other side. This way you can disconnect all the wires from a plug in a matter of seconds. Note that you should always keep track of which wire goes where (best way to do this is remove them one at a time and immediately put them back into the new connector), since even the two ground wires aren’t the same”

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A-Top Technology XPlode case review @ Xtreme Resources
Xtreme Resources :: Saturday, April 09, 2005

“Although there are many veterans in the computer case and component industry, not all know how to put a package together that satisfies today’s hardware enthusiast. Lucky for you, A-Top Technology has accomplished this task o­n several levels. Up for review is the XPlode mid-tower case by A-Top. Available in three different color options, this fully ventilated case looks as well as it functions. I had the pleasure to review the blue case with deluxe features.”

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SilverStone TJ05 *2005 Revision* @ OCIA.net
OCIA :: Friday, April 08, 2005

“Finally, someone listened to the cries of enthusiasts and got rid of the horrible rear stamped grill. A free-flowing design offers much better airflow and lower overall noise. The rest of the backside looks pretty standard, except for the button-switch near the middle-right side of the rear.”

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Neoseeker Thermaltake Armor Full Tower Case Review
Neoseeker :: Friday, April 08, 2005
Today at Neoseeker we take a look Thermaltake’s Armor, a full tower case for the true power users out there who are taking advantage of the 12 drives supported by some of the current high end motherboards. The full tower is a bit of a dying breed as the current trend is to go small and while the Armor is big, it is light and functional. Besides the massive number of drive bays, the design also accounts for those who want to watercool or run a fully passive system and should be of interest to enthusiasts.

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Alpha PAL8150 Heatsink Review @ Ninjalane
Ninjalane :: Friday, April 08, 2005
Feel free to sample a small quote from the article or use the one provided below Quote: Aircooling is the tried and true method for system cooling and for every one cooler you find you will find 20+ more that perform the same if not better than the first. The Alpha PAL8150 is certainly is one of the chosen few that can actually outperform many coolers on the market and thus keeps with the rich Alpha tradition.