Wed Reviews

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* "Another memory competition but this time it's a kit of OCZ PC2-6400 2gb Flex memory. This kit has inbuilt water cooling capabilities and huge air cooled heatsinks. Designed to be the overclocker's dream, these modules are not something to be scoffed at."

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As one of the hottest products to hit the market today, the ZeroTherm BTF90 is classified as a high end CPU cooler solution geared for enthusiasts. Sporting a massive copper base, eight heat pipes, and copper fins, the BTF90 looks and feels to be the end-all CPU thermal cooling solution. Or is it? Let's take a closer look at this behemoth cooler and find out!

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The MSI marketing people just sent through a shot of the almost final revision of their X38 Diamond with the new full cooper heat pipe cooling solution (the shipping version will be striped of DDR2 slots and will be DDR3 only). The X38 chipset does get quite hot and as a result, a rather exotic cooler is required to keep things in order but it is not quite as crazy as the previous types we have seen from MSI but almost. This heat pipe cools the PWM area, X38 Northbridge, ICH9R Southbridge and the final chip at the very bottom (which is used to control PCI Express lane sharing between the four PEG x16 slots). The top two slots will run at x16 electronically while the bottom two will operate at x4 each if the top two are used in dual graphics mode (note we didn't just say Crossfire as X38 like its older brother the 975X can do SLI just not officially).

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Did you ever have a laptop go bad and you forgot to backup the precious data? Professional data retrieval could cost a significant amount of dollars. A simpler solution would be to purchase a 2.5'' external/internal storage enclosure which would allow you to connect the hard drive to a desktop for data retrieval. For a retail price of approximately $20, it would be an invaluable investment when it comes to data rescue. Here at Bjorn3D, we have previously looked at ICY Dock's 2.5 IDE internal/external enclosure and today, we are going to take a look at ICY Dock's 2.5'' SATA internal/external enclosure.

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In the quest for silent performance, users are looking toward heatpipes for most of their cooling needs. Today we are looking at the new fanless chipset cooler from Zaward, called the Twin Towers. This chipset cooler has two heatpipes, one of which can rotate around the other to reduce compatibility issues. We put the Twin Towers to the test to see what kind of performance comes with its silence.

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"Scheduled for release tomorrow is X.Org 7.3. Among the new features for X.Org 7.3 include the Xorg server 1.4, an application for adjusting a display's backlight, updated display drivers, and support for font catalog directories. Version 1.4 of the X.Org server contains such features as RandR 1.2 support, input hot-plugging, KDrive enhancements, Solaris DTrace support, and EXA improvements. In this article today, we will briefly go over some of the changes found in X.Org 7.3 and we will follow up with some benchmarks in early September."

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Remember the Gemini 3 from GECUBE? If not, let us refresh your memory. The Gemini 3 is the second dual GPU card from GECUBE, the previous one was the Gemini 2 and it was based on a pair of Radeon X1650 XTs. The Gemini 3 features a pair of Radeon HD 2600 XT GPUs and they're clocked at 800MHz. Each GPU is paired with 256MB of 500MHz DDR2 memory (1GHz effectively). This might not sound like anything all too remarkable so far, but it seems like GECUBE will beat all the other AMD partners that are working on dual GPU cards, this by simply being the first to market. GECUBE is expecting the Gemini 3 to be available in retail some time next month, but we weren't given an exact launch date or a price for that matter.

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This case is like a lot of other Mid-Towers on the market today, and does not offer a lot of room for oversized cards such as the 8800GTX, and when using a card like the 8800GTX your going to end up blocking a couple slots for hard drives, which isn't a problem for most 1-2 hard drive configurations, but if you plan on putting more than 2 in the case, you might be out of luck. . .

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Ultra Products has came up with a little solution that will not only allow you to easily add USB devices to your computer easily, but it will also allow you to connect the Hub to a second computer so you can share the devices between the two computers.

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Quote: "After going back five years and looking at the performance of the Athlon XP 1800+, it is amazing to see how far we have come in just five years. A good number of our readers still have Athlon XP systems in use and this article was a great opportunity to show them what they are missing out on as none of the major hardware review sites include these processor in updated performance charts any longer. The new Athlon 64 X2 6400+ processor is a welcomed addition to the Athlon series of processors, but it's sad knowing that this will likely be the last speed step for the Athlon series..."

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line up with each new release from AMD. The latest participants to the epic battle is the HD 2600 XT, coming standard with 256MB of GDDR3 memory Palit have taken it upon themselves to offer three models. There's the standard model which we don't really care about, because everyone knows that standard is boring. We then have the Sonic which is an overclocked 256MB GDDR3 card, and in the other corner we have the Super which comes in at stock clocks but carries with it 512MB of GDDR3 memory.

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"The iOne Scorpius P20MT 2.4GHz MCE Keyboard with Optical Trackball certainly lends a helping hand whenever it comes to using your HTPC. In today's world HTPCs are becoming more popular than ever. We are starting to see more companies emerge to help us enhance our home theatre environment. We have seen this from our previous review of the Scorpius N2T. The P20MT has some different features including the capability of easily recharging the device, a power button, and an even slimmer design. Let's take a further look to see what the Scorpius P20MT has to offer."

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"AMD have got their whole mid-range lineup well and truly going now and we had a look at Palit and their HD 2600 cards the other week; now it's time to have a look at the Sapphire HD 2600 XT and HD 2400 XT. The question is though, is it enough for us to recommend them over the 8600 series? Well at the time of writing about the Palit cards, almost! Since then a new driver set has come out in the form of the Catalyst 7.8 and some serious speed increases were seen for the mid-range cards. This could be enough for them to be the card of choice for users on a budget."

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The R500 received a lot of hype right from the start because of a few important distinctions. First of all, the R500 was (and still is) the slimmest notebook currently available with an optical drive. Its 7mm thick drive allows a total closed system height of just 0.77". Not long after the initial announcement the R500 made more headlines when different SKUs were announced, one of which (the R500-S5003) was called the world's lightest 12" notebook. At 1.7lbs for model with a 12.1" LCD (though no optical drive) this version of the R500 is obviously an incredible system, though its 64GB solid-state disk also helps to set it apart from the crowd. The R500 also touts the longest battery life of any 12.1" widescreen notebook, though this is something that we will look into more closely.

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Desperate times call for desperate measures. You may have heard this saying spoken throughout history and while those who have uttered these words may have been referring to periods of great struggle I am sure seeing the current state of video cards this quote applies here. As GPU's continue to hunger for more and more power they will continue to generate more and more heat. Gone are the days when a simple piece of metal would suffice. Even mid-range cards such as the 8800GTS require a dual-slot cooling solution to tame the beast within. What is an enthusiast to do? Sure you can get a nice large cooler if you can live with the noise it generates. What about water cooling? Ya know, that stuff you're NOT supposed to bring near expensive electronics. Before you decide me mad and click that little red 'X' what if I told you that you need not be so desperate to try water cooling. That a company with higher quality standards than most car manufacturers has a waterblock that destro! ys the competition and keeps your video card nice and chilly. With no more ado I give you the MCW-60 from Swiftech, a waterblock that delivers were it counts.

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"In the end it comes down to one question: Are you prepared to pay for the best. At a hefty 49.95 Euro (US$70) this is not a product a casual user will be interested in. I personally would never spend that much on a mouse pad but I don't claim to be an avid gamer either. If you are looking for the best gaming pad money can buy, you've found it. If you are looking for good performance at an affordable price, keep looking."

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Well we are glad to finally been able to partner with Sapphire, which = earned as a company already a great name within the ATI community. So we = will take you on a journey to show a bit more on what Sapphire is all = about and which products they are currently offering on the market. The = wait is finally over. Not so long ago AMD released the Radeon HD 2900 = series and along with that introduction came as well the low-end and = mid-range products to go up against NVIDIA. Now that we are a couple of = months further the Radeon HD 2600 series are available. Sapphire brings = is the GDDR4 edition of the Radeon HD 2600 XT graphics accelerator.