Tech News

• Asustek, Gigabyte Going Commando at CeBIT 2013

  Published: Monday, March 4, 2013 | By: Dennis

  While I can be fairly certain that most folks will be proudly wearing their undergarments at CeBIT the folks at Asustek and Gigabyte have decided that going boothless makes more sense than setting up a display on the show floor.

  Asustek Computer and Gigabyte Technology will not have any booth at CeBIT 2013, which will be hosted from March 5-9 in Hannover, Germany. The two companies have instead rented conference rooms outside the exhibition center to serve their clients.
  
  Compared to the top-2 motherboard brands, Micro-Star International (MSI) and ASRock are still eager to have a place in the show and have rented booths to showcase their latest products.
  
  Due to Europe's financial crisis and a shift of focus to Mobile World Congress (MWC), the numbers of CeBIT exhibitors and buyers have dropped rapidly in the past few years.
  
  MSI plans to showcase its latest gaming and high-end motherboards such as X79A-GD45 Plus at the show and will also display its new Twin Frozr graphics cards.

  While the companies have cited the financial crisis and MWC I am of the opinion that cost and liability have something to do with their decision.  We all know about product theft at CeBIT and how much it costs to pay for and setup a booth so it makes sense to have a hotel suite available.  It is a private setting, costs less and no fear of hardware walking off, at least right away.

  I wonder if they will be doing the same thing at Computex?

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• NL: Review Block: Cases and Coolers - Episode Ongoing

  Published: Friday, March 1, 2013 | By: Dennis

  In this episode of Cases and Coolers we check out some of the latest reviews from around the web including some, Cases and Coolers

  Cases
  - Fractal Design Define R4 @ LanOC Reviews
  - NZXT Phantom 630 @ PureOverclock
  - Fractal Design Arc Midi R2 Case Review @ Hardware Secrets
  - Xigmatek Gigas Aluminium Case Review
  - Silverstone Raven 3 @ LanOC Reviews
  - Funky Kit Review: Thermaltake Armor Revo Full-Tower Chassis
  - Lian Li PC-7HX @ LanOC Reviews
  - Nanoxia Deep Silence 2 Case Review @ Hardware Secrets
  - Cooler Master HAF XB LAN Box Review at Modders-Inc
  
  Coolers
  - Noctua Low Profile Heatsinks @ Bjorn3D
  - Corsair H110 CPU Cooler Review @ Hardware Secrets
  - Corsair H90 review
  - Corsair H90 and H110 CPU Cooler Review @ Hi Tech Legion
  - Noctua NH-L9a Low Profile AMD CPU Cooler Review @ Bigbruin
  - Cooler Master Seidon 240M CPU Cooler Review @ Hardware Canucks

  Keeping cool is one of the most important things you can do for your computer, invest in a good one.  Happy Cooling!

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• DeepCool IceBlade Pro V2.0 Heatsink Review @ Frostytech

  Published: Friday, March 1, 2013 | By: Dennis

  Hey look here, its a CM Hyper 212 with better mounting hardware!

  Deepcool's IceBlade Pro V2.0 heatsink stands 161mm tall and weighs a solid 981 grams. At the heart of this boxy heatsink are four 8mm diameter copper heatpipes, nickel plated along with everything else, including the aluminum fins. The heatpipes are exposed at the base to make direct contact with the processor and ideally, reduce thermal joint resistance.

  Not a direct 1:1 to the Hyper 212 I reviewed but it looks "very" similar when it comes to the basic feature set.  The cooler I linked to is the Plus edition they released with core contact heatpipes.  There was considerable space between the pipes and massive gaps that would suck up your thermal paste.

  The cooler was ok but I hated the mounting hardware, (and still do).

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• Dremel 8200 12V MAX Lithium Ion Cordless Rotary Tool Review @ ModSynergy

  Published: Friday, March 1, 2013 | By: Dennis

  Here is something every modder should have, A Dremel tool.

  Dremel has given us the opportunity to share with you how far they have come these eight years with one of their newest additions, the Dremel 8200.  The 8200 makes use of 12V Lithium-Ion battery technology instead of old NIMH.  Everything Dremel has learned has been tweaked many times over and has been implemented into the 8200 and its accessories.  Read on to see if the Dremel 8200 is worth your hard earned money.

  Personally I never go battery operated when it comes to rotary tools, they tend to be weak and if you don't use them all the time the battery will be dead.  I also tend to use mine for hours on end and knowing I have constant power is rather important.

  Looking over the list of changes the new Lithium-ion edition might be worth checking out.

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• NL: Review Block: Coolers Cases and a mousepad

  Published: Tuesday, February 26, 2013 | By: Dennis

  Just a quick review block

  Coolers
  - Noctua NH-L9i Cooler Review on Technic3D
  - NZXT Respire T40 @ PureOverclock
  - Coolink Corator DS LGA2011 @ techPowerUp
  
  Chassis
  - SilverStone Sugo SG09 @ Phoronix
  - LIAN LI PC-Q02 Mini-ITX Case at Modders-Inc
  Accessories
  - Func MS-3 Mouse and Surface 1030XL Mousepad Review @ Hi Tech Legion

  Full ArticleVisit Website

• MSI R7970 Lightning Boost Edition review: fastest HD 7970 yet

  Published: Tuesday, February 26, 2013 | By: Dennis

  I do love this card, its too bad the GTX 680 edition got snubbed.

  

  It's too bad that the Boost Edition doesn't overclock better than last year’s Lightning with its standard cooler despite the different chip. The limit is again 1240 MHz for the GPU and 1780 MHz for the memory. ASUS proved with the Matrix HD7970 Platinum that a more heavy-duty cooler and a few other tricks can take it further. If you plan on overclocking with just the standard cooler, then that Matrix HD7970 Platinum is a better choice in our opinion, and both cards cost about the same.

  The card works very well under LN2 and is the current go-to product when you want to break records.

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• Building a Home Server – The Complete Guide @ SSDReview

  Published: Tuesday, February 26, 2013 | By: Dennis

  Being somewhat of a server snob I often find myself chuckling at guides like this.  Most of them are built to insane levels as an attempt to show off while other guides are designed for real world situations.  I would consider this guide to be the first.

  Let's go down the line, 24TB of storage space.  Not many people can afford that kind of storage and unless you are building a storage server there is little need. On top of that how are you going to back up your data?  Hardware RAID will only save you from hardware failure and, for most, that is often enough.

  Many people never consider data corruption which is why you need to have daily backups of your important data and make sure storage is separated from OS.

  Over the past few years, The SSD Review has enjoyed a fairly smooth ride with little to complain about. It wasn’t until our readership explosion that we realized how important backups were. There is nothing worse than a site crash, other than a site crash which also contains a Forum of course.  The sudden loss of days, weeks, months and even years’ worth of data cannot arguably be equal to that of valuable Forum members who hate seeing their threads gone. It happened.
  
  Even worse was the fact that our hosting company was receiving premium monthly payments for daily backups, the last of which they had completed some two months prior.  It was only for the odd feeling that we had prior to leaving on Christmas vacation that we physically downloaded backups, minimizing our information loss to two weeks.  Although website material resulted only in the loss of our Acer S7 Ultrabook Review, the loss of forum posts could never be equaled.

  I like how this server build was sparked by a server crash and the lack of appropriate  backups.  Personally I think they could have done better with the hardware and based on the hardware they picked it shouldn't have cost 5k.  Heck I have built better servers for less (minus the insane storage requirement) On top of that the drives were sponsored so what cost so much?

  Looks like I'll have to do my own guide. 

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• Al-Qaeda 22 tips for dodging drone attacks: Its like High School

  Published: Monday, February 25, 2013 | By: Dennis

  This isn't directly related to overclocking or computer stuff in general but I find it interesting that most of the items on this list are things high schoolers do to avoid getting caught at parties.  Things like using trees to hide or stopping in the shadows and watching the cops walk on by.  You know, just the normal cloak and dagger stuff while you are trying to get home or to the next party.

  19. When discovering that a drone is after a car, leave the car immediately and everyone should go in different direction because the planes are unable to get after everyone. 

  While I'm sure the drone operators will tell you that none of these countermeasures have any impact on the drone there has to be some truth to it else it wouldn't be passed around.

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• LG Has Acquired webOS From HP to Power Smart TVs

  Published: Monday, February 25, 2013 | By: Dennis

  I was an insider at HP for a few months and the webOS plan was to spin it open source.  I guess that never happened.

  Update: CNET has seems to have pulled the original story from its website. It's not clear yet whether that's a technical issue or a reflection on the story's veracity.
  
  The deal will see LG take control of the source code for webOS, along with "related documentation, engineering talent, and related webOS websites." It also gets licenses from HP for use with its WebOS products, along with a slew of patents HP obtained from Palm. There's no word on how much the deal was worth.

  This should be a good move for LG, and the framework for a tablet/tv interface has already been built in so it will be interesting to see what they do with it.

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• NL: Review Block: GTX Titan and HWBot World Records

  Published: Friday, February 22, 2013 | By: Dennis

  There will likely be more reviews coming out as people start buying them.  Right now most of the cards are being gobbled up by boutique builders and sponsored overclocker types.

  GTX Titan Video Card Coverage Wrap-up
  - NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan Video Card Review @ Legit Reviews
  - NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN: The Most Advanced Single-GPU Video Card Ever Made @ Hi Tech Legion
  - Nvidia's GeForce GTX Titan reviewed  (who submitted this one? oh ya it was TR not putting their name in the link)
  - GTX TITAN: The beast to unseat the best!  (Bjorn3D doing the excat same thing)
  - GeForce GTX Titan review (threeway style) @ GuruThreeDee'z 
  - Buru3Dees GeForce GTX Titan Overclock Guide
  - NVIDIA's GeForce GTX Titan: Yes, It CAN Play Crysis 3
  
  Might I lay down a quote?  The NVidia GTX Titan is by far the coolest video card under LN2.
  
  Be sure to check out some of this HWBot Action
  - United States k|ngp|n`s 3DMark11 - Performance score - Professional Overclockers League
  - United States k|ngp|n`s 3DMark Vantage - Performance score - Professional Overclockers League 
  - United States k|ngp|n`s Unigine Heaven - Xtreme Preset score - Professional Overclockers League
  - United States k|ngp|n`s 3DMark11 - Performance score - Professional Overclockers League
  
  The above are all world records!

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