Tech News
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How To Correctly Apply Thermal Grease
Published: Friday, January 13, 2006 | By: DennisEveryone has a different method for installing thermal paste, some guys love to be anal and use a razor blade to make sure there is an even and extremely thin layer of paste covering the entire processor. Others, like me, follow the 5 dot rule that involves 5 tiny dabs of thermal paste in certain locations that will eventually flatten and cover the entire processor.
Whatever method you use the trick is to only use enough to cover the processor without having any spill out over the edges. Oh and make sure the heatsink is installed properly since even the most perfect application of thermal paste will do you no good if the heat doesn't transfer to the heatsink.
"Everything you need to know about thermal grease: learn how to correctly apply it in order to prevent your CPU from overheating. A complete guide full of pictures."
The guide is all photos but does cover the basics.
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NL: Review Block - More Memory
Published: Monday, January 2, 2006 | By: DennisEveryone needs memory and the more the better. Funny thing is I've seen reviews for just about every module out there except from Patriot. This is funny because Patriot is very similar to Corsair both in marketing and product offerings; the only difference is that Patriot has a better website.
- Mushkin XP4000 eXtreme Performance @ BRnR
- OCZ Gold pc3200 XTC GX Review @ EclipseOC
Looks like I might have to contact Patriot and see what they can offer. -
ECS PF88 Extreme @ techPowerUp!
Published: Monday, January 2, 2006 | By: DennisThis might be one of the coolest multi-cpu boards on the market, but with everything designed with flexibility in mind you run into a few fundamental flaws.
"When you first look at the slot setup you can easily get confused by all the slots and the stickers.
The top orange slot will be used when using the CPU socket on the motherboard with a PCI-E x16 video card.
The purple slot (2nd down) is used with the SIMA CPU add-in cards which are available for Intel Socket 479, AMD Socket 754 and AMD Socket 939. When the CPU card is installed, the top orange slot will be blocked by the CPU cooler, so you have to use the orange slot below the SIMA slot." -
Swiftech MC14 BGA Memory Ramsinks Review @ OCIA
Published: Monday, January 2, 2006 | By: DennisWhile these ramsinks look rather cool I've heard the included thermal tape doesn't stick very well and in most watercooling applications they are too tall to fit under the hose barbs.
"Seeing as there isn't a real good way to monitor the temperature of video ram, I decided to run maximum ram overclocks on the video memory to test the MC14 ramsinks and see if they are doing their job. Using my X800XL and ATI Tool, I left the GPU core at stock speed and then ran ATI Tool to get the highest clean video ram overclock." -
Logitech G5 Corded Laser Mouse @ TheTechLounge
Published: Monday, January 2, 2006 | By: DennisI gotta get me one of these mice!, don't get me wrong the mx510 and the like are great mice but they are so light even pressure from the cord will move them around. The weight pack is exactly what these mice are missing.
"Where the G7 had a slot for inserting a Lithium-ion pack, the G5 uses the same space for mounting the custom weight pack. The pack is held in place by a spring-loaded clip and ejected via the small recessed eject button. Logitech has included enough small weights with the G5 to allow for multiple combinations of user-preferred weight. They even include a handsome weight carrying case…for when you want to show off your weights at that next LAN party." -
Chaintech GeForce 6800GS 256MB DDR3 SLI @ Techniz
Published: Monday, January 2, 2006 | By: DennisWith the downfall of Gainward some of use have been forced to look at cards from other mfgs, Chaintech is one of those companies. Generally speaking all of their cards are well built and overclock well provided you splurge for the higher end model when more than one is available.
"The Chaintech GeForce 6800GS 256MB DDR3 PCI-Express graphic card is great mid range graphic card. The performance of this Chaintech GeForce 6800 256MB PCI-Express graphic card is very good during our testing in various benchmark and games. For the overclocking results from this Chaintech GeForce 6800GS 256MB DDR3 PCI-Express graphic card is very good as well." -
ABIT AN8 SLI Motherboard Review @ MVKTech
Published: Monday, January 2, 2006 | By: DennisHere we have an old sk00l nF4 board from Abit with some fancy new features like the OTES cooling and removable sound board.
"What we find here is a motherboard that is packed with features with-out all the bells and whistles. Being said, the target user for this board will suite the newcomer and SLI enthusiast who seeks an entry level price with excellent features that will put SLI inside your rig for a very good purchase price."
Personally I like the overall colors but dislike the old Sk00l SLI configuration board. -
ULi Acquisition: A Killer Deal By NVIDIA @ CoolTechZone
Published: Sunday, January 1, 2006 | By: Dennis"People are apparently finding the ULi acquisition by NVIDIA surprising, but I believe it was long due and somewhat expected. Given that ULi mostly plays the value game, they make excellent southbridges. Their SATA II chips are to die for and of course, they are a major supplier to ATI."
Mergers typically take a very long time to finalize so it will be interesting to see what becomes of nVidia during the process. -
Hardware Secrets Trashed Their Corsair Voyager
Published: Sunday, January 1, 2006 | By: DennisNot sure what to say about this except to make a "L" and put it my forehead.
"Our “unbreakable” flash USB memory from Corsair, Flash Voyager, simply broke, as you can see on the pictures below. How? We hit it by accident with our chair while it was plugged to our desktop."
-- snip --
"we found out that this "shock resistance" is only regarding free falls. If you push it hard enough while it is connected to your PC, it will break, as it happened to us."
You take any USB drive in existence and you will find them to have the same flaw so the fact they targeted Corsair for their errors is really un-justified.
On the flip side their solution for fixing the problem is quite ingenious. -
Overclocking and WindowsXP x64 Edition
Published: Sunday, January 1, 2006 | By: Dennis" PCStats thought it would be interesting to see how overclocking is affected on the WindowsXP x64 Edition platform by illustrating both 32-bit and 64-bit benchmarks for an AMD Athlon64 4000+ based system. Would the test platform be stable enough to overclock successfully? Would WindowsXP x64 Edition require a more stable processor than its 32-bit counterpart does?"
The results are quite surprising however the biggest drawback is the lack of 64-bit programs thus rendering the 64-bit OS for the most part useless.
