Tech News
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NL: Review Block: Cases and Coolers redux'ed
Published: Monday, February 11, 2013 | By: DennisIn this edition of Cases and Coolers we'll be looking at a whole lotta NZXT squid coolers with the power to take down tiny wooden sailing ships with a single fan and, a pretty cool chassis from Lian Li.
Cases (aka Chassis, box, thing taking up space in the corner, etc)
- Cubitek Mini Cube ITX Case Review @ Pro-Clockers
- Lian Li PC-V700 Mid Tower Case at Modders-Inc
- Computing on Demand: Review: RAIDMAX Cobra
Coolers
- NZXT Kraken X40 Liquid Cooler review
- NZXT Kraken X40 & X60 CPU Coolers Review @ Hardware Canucks
- Corsair H100i CPU Cooler Review @ Hardware Secrets
- NZXT Kraken X60 Review
- Phanteks PH-TC12DX CPU Cooler @ TechreactionI've started taking odds on which mainstream self contained water cooler will have a major, front page on reddit, failure so big that everyone goes back to using the trusty heatpipe tower.
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Asustek, Gigabyte share over 50% motherboard market
Published: Friday, February 8, 2013 | By: DennisHere is an interesting statistic. Both Asus and Gigabyte (together) make up more than 50% of the motherboard market when you consider them as a brand. (My assumption is that they didn't count OEM products coming out of their factories)
Asustek Computer and Gigabyte Technology shipped 22 million and 19 million motherboards respectively for own-brand sale in the global DIY market in 2012, together occupying 51.3% of the total global shipments of 80 million units, according to Taiwan-based motherboard makers.
ASRock and Micro-Star International (MSI) shipped 7.7 million and five million own-brand motherboards respectively in 2012, the sources indicated.
There were an estimated 28 million own-brand motherboards shipped in the China DIY market in 2012, accounting for 35% of the global total, the sources noted. Asustek shipped nearly nine million units and Gigabyte shipped about eight million units, resulting in a combined market share of 60.7% in China, the sources indicated. The remaining shipments of about 11 million motherboards were mostly shared by ASRock, MSI, Biostar Microtech International and China-based Colorful Technology and Onda, the sources said.48 million motherboards shipped? Makes you wonder who is buying all these boards and where the Rampage and UD7 boards fall into this metric. I mean they tend to sell out rather quickly. So, are they really making only 200 of each? or are these boards really in high demand??
These numbers also shed a little light into the PC market as a whole. Assuming that more than half of those shipments are to replace aging systems you can assume that people are still building their own computers, either on a personal level or as a larger organization. Also assuming that the PC market is "flat" indicating no growth or decline will it be the motherboard makers that cause the downfall of the PC market or will some outside factor play into it?
Too many questions, maybe Darren and I will address it on the next podcast.
Stay tuned!
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Dell sold to Microsoft, Silver Lake for $24 billion
Published: Thursday, February 7, 2013 | By: DennisThe big thing in the news these past couple weeks is the sale of Dell Computers and word has come out that Microsoft is one of the new owners with a 2 billion dollar chunk of cash.. I guess we now know where all of the new Surface tablets will be coming from.
In an unexpected and exciting twist for the PC industry, Dell — pending regulatory and stockholder approval — has been sold to Microsoft, Silver Lake, and Michael Dell himself for $24.4 billion. Michael Dell remains the largest shareholder with 16%, and will continue to run the company. Microsoft’s part of the sale totals $2 billion, though big questions remain about how Microsoft will be involved in the newly-private company.
This may show my age a bit but "Dude! you're getting your company back!"
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Zotac shows off the ZT-Z77 Crown-U1D motherboard @ VR-Zone
Published: Tuesday, February 5, 2013 | By: DennisI saw a sneak of this motherboard on Facebook today and started looking around for more information. It would seem this Z77 from Zotac is clearly designed for the uber enthusiast who wants the best power delivery and features. However its missing some, well, features.
For instance there is no PCI Express bridge chip so you'll only be able to do 2-way SLI or Crossfire. The spacing between the PCI Express slots is only two giving you very little space between the cards to keep them cool. Given that this is a full ATX motherboard there is PLENTY of room.
The board does feature onboard wireless similar to every other Zotac motherboard and you have a few benchtop buttons right next to the primary 24pin power connector. Really the only saving grace is the PWM.
Some motherboards have 10 phase PWMs, others have 4. the Gigabyte Z77X-UP7 has 32 while some of the higher end X79 boards feature 12 at best. The Zotac Z77 Crown comes with 24 power phases that wraps around the entire CPU and occupies the space normally left for the North Bridge or PCI Express bridge chip. Maybe the best feature of this PWM design is the large FPCAP power capacitor used to condition power going to the CPU giving you better stability at super high frequencies.
Some say these are unnessarry, but cleaner power means cleaner overclocks.
Chances are I will never see this motherboard in the Ninjalane Labs and if Zotac follows their normal pattern of high end product releases the enthusiasts of China will get first dibs and likely be the only market they pursue.
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GIGABYTE Z77X-UD4H LGA1155 Motherboard Review @ Hardware Canucks
Published: Tuesday, February 5, 2013 | By: DennisI am glad to see that Gigabyte has scaled back their product launches a bit and aren't releasing as many motherboards as they did when P67 and Z68 came out. Something tells me that between the chipset recall and back to back chipset launches the product guys/gals decided that offering more features instead of more options was a better way to go.
Case in point, the new Z77X-UD4H.
Gigabyte's new Z77X-UD4H is among a new breed of motherboards which combine high end feature sets with an affordable price. Boasting great overclocking abilities and dual card Crossfire / SLI compatibility, it seems to have everything a budget-conscious enthusiast could possibly want.
Truth be told the board is almost identical to the Z77X-UD3H that I reviewed. The layout is the same and features are similar but it overclocks memory like mad. Due in part to a less complex board design lending its self to better signaling between processor and memory.
Sadly while the Z77X-UP7 is a super awesome motherboard the complexity lends to its downfall when it comes to high speed memory overclocking, just not going to happen.
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ASRock Z77 OC Formula Motherboard Review @ Madshrimps
Published: Tuesday, February 5, 2013 | By: DennisAre you in the market for a signature motherboard endorsed, modded and designed by a famous overclocker? Then you may want to look at the ASRock Z77 OC Formula.
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The Z77 OC Formula is one of the high performance motherboards from ASRock, was built in cooperation with the well-known overclocker Nick Shih and features a 12 + 4 VRM design covered by a massive waterblock/heatsink, an 8-layer PCB, measuring points, plenty of thermal sensors and more. What we also like about this board is the fact that they have removed the legacy components like Floppy/IDE interfaces along with the PCI slots, in order to have a clean motherboard PCB design in the end.
Personally I like the heatsink design and the inclusion of a fan to keep the PWM cool. They never do get that hot (or shouldn't) but when you are benching with water or LN2 having a little air moving around the PWM can go a long way.
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SilverStone PP06B Individual-Sleeved PSU Cables Review @ Pro-Clockers
Published: Tuesday, February 5, 2013 | By: DennisSome people don't like the look of individually sleeved PSU cables claiming that several things died many years ago and looking at PSU cables was one of them. But, in a world where casemodding is still a popular pastime anything different is generally good.
If this last route seems the best avenue for you and if you already own a SilverStone power supply that was manufacturer after 2009, they have some for you to look at. SilverStone has gone the route similar to Corsair and is offering sleeved cables. For a few weeks only black were available but red and white have recently showed up on their site. So, it is some to clean of the interior of one of our test rigs.
The great thing about these cables is that they come with some select PSUs but can also be bought aftermarket for any Silverstone modular PSU.
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NL: Review Block - Coolers and Storage - The good stuff
Published: Tuesday, February 5, 2013 | By: DennisQuick review block showing the latest cooler reviews spiced up with some SSD action. Normally I skip over the SSD stuff but these are pretty good.
The Coolas
- Zalman LQ320 CPU Cooler Review @ Hardware Secrets
- Silverstone NT06-Pro Topdown SFF/HTPC CPU Cooler Review @ Hi Tech Legion
- Evercool Silent Shark CPU Cooler Review @ Pro-Clockers
Storage - SSD Style
- Kingston SSDNow V300 120GB SSD Review @ Techgage
- OCZ Vector 256GB @ Bjorn3DNot the end of the world, just the end of this news post
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What Happens When a 900mph Ping Pong Hits Your Paddle
Published: Monday, February 4, 2013 | By: DennisI do love physics in the morning.
There's no shortage of plans online for building a simple ping pong cannon that can fire balls at hundreds of miles per hour. But you're probably not going to find the details of Purdue University Professor Mark French's cannon, since his creation can accelerate a ping pong ball to 900 miles per hour, or just over Mach 1.2.
When I was looking for a college to attend my decision was mostly based on word of mouth from previous students and friends who had attended. Of course cost also had a factor in my decision but in the end I choose my college based on the stuff they were capable of doing.
The video on this article is a great motivator, almost makes me want to head back to school.
Almost
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ASUS ROG ARES II Video Card - Massive Monster or Docile Dog?
Published: Friday, February 1, 2013 | By: DennisFancy new HD7990 card from Asus but instead of the normal stock style cooler they opted to include a self contained watercooler and blocks for each GPU.
Web Reviews
- ASUS ROG ARES II Video Card Review @ [H]
- ASUS ROG ARES II (Crossfire) review
- ASUS Ares II Crossfire X review: the most extreme graphics card times twoNot sure how this compares to the Devil 13 that was featured in the Ninjalane Podcast but one thing is for sure, Asus is late to the party with this one.
