Tech News
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ASUS P5N32-E SLI Plus Motherboard Review @ Virtual-Hideout
Published: Wednesday, August 29, 2007 | By: DennisMicroATX has always amazed me in that originally mfgs built them for small industrial systems with the idea that a smaller motherboard would mean less cost. Well now that enthusiasts have started to build smaller and more powerful systems it becomes a challenge to find suitable motherboards. This board seems like just the ticket, SLI and small.
ASUS has been one of the leading manufacturers of motherboards for a number of years, and is the preferred board of the VH staff. The motherboard under the scope this time around is the P5N32-E SLI Plus, which uses the 650i chipset - a lesser version of the 680i which means a lower retail price. Although this is a newer motherboard using a less powerful chipset, they did make some changes to it and got dual x16 PCI-E SLI support. Another cool feature is the Stack Cool design which helps pull heat away from the components around the CPU. Another heat reducing feature are the heatpipes that cover each of the chipset chips separately. With so many features let's get on with the review and see how things work out. -
Whoopty has interviewed Dan Forster from Ageia
Published: Wednesday, August 29, 2007 | By: DennisNot sure a PhysX card is really what we need for gaming these days but then again looking back at what the Voodoo 2 did to advance the technology it might not be a bad thing.
Inthe past XSReviews has worked quite closely with Ageia, reviewingtheir hardware and testing out some of their supported games to see howPhysX effects gameplay and ultimately, to see if that extra add-in cardis worth it. Recently I had the pleasure of conducting a lengthyinterview with Dan Forster who is the PR and Marketing manager forAgeia in Europe and he was able to answer some of our questions onupcoming games like Warmonger, using the PhysX SDK, competition fromthe Havok engine, and what we can expect from the Ageia hardware in thefuture. -
DFI Infinity P35 Blood-Iron Overclocking Test @ Madshrimps
Published: Wednesday, August 29, 2007 | By: DennisThe P35 is a pretty hot item these days, and why not it overclocks like a champ! (or so I've heard)
DFI launches their affordable P35 based Intel board, nick-named Blood-Iron. We take a look at how high it can soar when pushed to the limit in this overclocking test -
New Site Up and Running
Published: Monday, August 27, 2007 | By: DennisWell not really running per-se but everything has migrated to the new server with no "runs, drips or errors" as they say in shop class.
For those of you that don't know Ninjalane.com is hosted on a dedicated server that is in turn hosted by The Planet. We have actually been running this way for several years now (since 03) and up until this most recent server purchase, have loved every minute. So why the sudden disrespect??, Well a sales punk named Matt (at the planet) fucked "me" over big time!!.
Yes I said it, FUCKED!!.
Basically the long and short of it is a little sales punk named Mathew screwed up my server order by not listening to what I was saying and making empty promises. I asked for a secondary HDD, so what does he do? He tells me that he can get me that second HDD for free. I say great!. He they goes on to say it will show up as 1x drive at double the space. When I asked about the secondary hdd, he goes on to say it will be added as an “upgrade” later. Thinking this is how the “free” part of it goes I went along. Come to find out he put me down for another special The Planet was running where you could “double down” on certain items including HDD, Memory, and Bandwidth.
After I got the server and NOT seeing my secondary HDD I got a hold of Mathew to see what the deal was and to basically complain. Well my complaints went to management and fell on deaf ears. However I suspect Mathew didn't mention the part about how he didn’t do what I had requested and for the most part treated me like every other customer bound to a 12 month contract.
Any event here is a big "fuck you!" to Mathew, the most worst a sales guy at The Planet, I hope you get a nice shiny bonus for your incompetence.
oh.. and news to follow. -
System Downtime - This Weekend
Published: Wednesday, August 22, 2007 | By: DennisHello everyone just wanted to mention that Ninjalane will be undergoing some system maintenance and downtime this weekend to facilitate a DNS update and server migration. This was part of the new Ninjalane v3 plan, just not executed until now.
With any luck downtime will be minimal and a new review will follow. -
Spyware is annoying
Published: Wednesday, August 22, 2007 | By: DennisWell its been a trying past few days with me battling a nasty spyware infection on my home workstation, it appears to also be a losing battle. The story goes a little something like this.
There I was minding my own business and all of a sudden I get 10 IE popunders advertising everything from commission junction to real-estate. Knowing exactly what had happened I quickly downloaded my favorite virus scanner (haven't had a virus infection in over 2 years so I never reinstalled the scanner) and updated my spybot database and proceeded to flush out the infection.
Slowly one by one the 8 or so trojan/virri that had somehow infected the system where removed until I got down to one that no matter what I tried would not go away. I even tried some of the donateware scanners rumored to be the "fix" but with no avail. One the system tested clean in safe mode I rebooted and BAM! popunder city.
Sadly the last resort is a re-format meaning new HDD for data transfer and a couple days worth of installing software and tweaking settings until everything is back the way I like it.
On the positive, the first tine I'll be installing is my virri scanner and some sort of password to keep the sneakernet users from using my workstation.. -
Vizo Voyager Hard Drive Cooler Review @ Mikhailtech
Published: Friday, August 17, 2007 | By: DennisNo one really understands the need for hdd cooling, in some cases you don't really need it and in others it becomes a necessity. Our thoughts on the matter are that a cool HDD is a happy HDD.
Hard drive cooling is a bit of acontroversial topic. Most drives are perfectly fine with whatever circulationgoes on inside a case, but others can get quite hot. Dedicated coolers arenever a requirement, but they can add to peace of mind that your equipment isrunning at optimal temperatures. The past couple weeks we've taken a look atseveral models. Today's contender is a bit different: it's wider and has acouple fans.
This little unit looks pretty cool and even comes with fan guards/filters. Not sure why you'd need them for an underdrive cooler but then again I'm sure someone will be dumb enough to stick their finger in there. -
NL: Review Block - Motherboards
Published: Friday, August 17, 2007 | By: DennisThe hot item at Computex 2007 was the 3 series chipset from Intel supporting 1333Mhz FSB and in some cases DDR3. While it will take several months and a few processor upgrades to take advantage of the 1333Mhz FSB and DDR3 the enthusiast market has already found the silver lining in the 3 series, extreme overclocking!
- Abit IP35 Pro Motherboard Review @ Hardware Secrets
- ECS P35T-A Intel P35 Express Motherboard Review @ Legit Reviews
- ECS P35T-A Motherboard Review @ HardwareLogic
- Asus Blitz Formula and Blitz Extreme @ HotHardware
- Gigabyte GA-P35T-DQ6 DDR3 board @ Hardwareoverclock Austria
- ECS P35T-A Motherboard Review @ Hardware Secrets
- Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R Motherboard Review @ Hardware Secrets
Of course we'll have our own P35 and other 3 series motherboard reviews as well so stay tuned. -
Danger Den DD-29XT HD 2900 XT Waterblock @ techPowerUp
Published: Friday, August 17, 2007 | By: DennisIs products like this that take me back to when there was a Ninjalane line of custom coolers. Granted they were still in prototype phase but damn they looked good.
Danger Den is considered to be one ofthe best companies around when it comes to high performancewatercooling hardware. Taking a similar approach used on their previousTyee waterblock, Danger Den designed a full coverage waterblock for theRadeon HD 2900 Series, the DD-29XT. The waterblock and can cool boththe GPU, Memory and Voltage Regulators efficiently and promisesdramatic results. -
Noctua NC-U6 Chipset Cooler Review @ OCModShop
Published: Friday, August 17, 2007 | By: DennisWe recently reviewed some of the Noctua case fans and found them to be some of the coolest fans ever. So what do you suppose you can expect from their North Bridge cooler?
Noctua is aiming to deliver high quality computer products and proudlyproclaim their products are "Designed in Austria". Their answer to thechipset cooling problem is the Noctua NC-U6 chipset cooler, which is ahigh-rising copper and aluminum heatsink with heatpipe technology thatlooks rather impressive.
These are heatpipe coolers that not only are very light but also do a pretty good job at keeping these cool and quiet.
