Tech News
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NL: Review Block - Cases and Coolers
Published: Monday, December 17, 2012 | By: DennisWelcome to another episode of "Cases and Coolers" In this round we will be looking at six reviews from around the inbox including a couple from some friends of mine.
Cases
- Cooler Master Storm Stryker @ LanOC Reviews
- Corsair Carbide 200R Case Review @ Hardware Canucks
- Cooler Master HAF-XM Case Review on Technic3D
Coolers
- Cooler Master TPC 812 CPU Cooler Review @ ThinkComputers
- Corsair H55 Quiet Liquid CPU Cooler Review @ Hi Tech Legion
- Noctua NH-L9i Low Profile Heatsink Review @ OCmodshopJust my $0.02 the Corsair H55 could use a better fan and the Noctua NH-L9I isn an amazingly small cooler, just don't consider it to be your average OEM replacement.
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KingFast F3 PLUS 120GB KF2510MCF SATA 3 MLC SSD Review @ ModSynergy
Published: Monday, December 17, 2012 | By: DennisThe SSD has become the de-facto standard for high speed storage in recent years and has also become the epitome for unstable data storage. While there is no easy way to tell what drive will be the best for your prized data or the fastest for Windows 8 you can rest easy knowing that most drives are still described by a long string of numbers.
Sporting 120GB of Intel MLC NAND flash memory while making use of the SandForce SF-2281 controller, read on to know more about the KingFast brand, and what you can expect from their KF2510MCF. With a 3-year warranty, see why it became one of the fastest SSD's we've ever reviewed with the latest fixed SandForce firmware version 5.0.4
Of course I didn't mean to scare you away from using SSD drives, they are quite fast and some are even stable but, if my ramblings prompted you to start a nighly backup to a solid rotational drive then, I have done good.
As for the KingFast, check out the review and see what they think of it.
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US refuses to sign UN Internet regulations - Good Job!
Published: Friday, December 14, 2012 | By: DennisThis is pretty good news showing that the US ambassadors are paying attention.
The United States will refuse to sign a U.N. resolution calling for regulation of the Internet despite the measure winning the support of other countries participating in a summit on the issue, the American ambassador to the summit said Thursday.
“The U.S. today has announced that it cannot sign the revised regulations in their current form,” Ambassador Terry Kramer said in a conference call, adding that support for the resolution from other countries “looks strong enough that it looks unlikely that it will materially change.”
He added that the resolution will not force the U.S. to abide by the regulations.
“The resolution doesn't have teeth to it. ... At the end of the day, these (agreements) are not legally binding. ... They are much more normative and values-oriented.”The interesting thing about this is that the UN regulations are "values based" leading me to believe that the rest of the world feels that people in the United States have no values. Of course I can only speak for myself in saying that I feel I have good moral values but also seen 1000's more who seem to lack in the basics.
I say no to a regulated Internet and any attempt to take that away should be fought to the bitter end even if that does mean that other countries to create their own internets, just more bandwidth for us.
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NL: Review Block: Power Supplies and Oblivious Ranting
Published: Thursday, December 13, 2012 | By: DennisI like HardOCP and really enjoyed what they did for the hardware review world back in the early days. In fact, [H] was one reason I got into doing hardware reviews in the first place but when you get an email from them starting with "didn't want to send us a review sample" you know things are going to get ugly.
Some of the famous Hard|OCP rips include a Matrox triple head graphics card and the Foxconn Bloodrage. Both of which were samples [H] had to buy and thus changed their view (Bias maybe?) . Well in this rip the [H] reviewer is looking at the EVGA SuperNOVA NEX1500 Classified Power Supply and while they do a fair assessment of the device they are totally oblivious of the target market for the PSU and don't even mention some of the test bench specific features.
EVGA did not want to send us one of its 1500W PSU beasts to review, so we went out and bought the $450 behemoth so we could put it through the HardOCP PSU grinder. EVGA clearly states that NEX1500 PSU is all about "no compromises," but we suggest that compromises are exactly what you will be making; more than a few too.
EVGA SuperNOVA NEX1500 Classified Power Supply Review @ [H]
Here are some other PSU reviews from around the interwebs
- Rosewill Tachyon 750 W Power Supply Review @ Hardware Secrets
- Rosewill Fortress 750W Power Supply Review @ Pro-Clockers
- Be Quiet! Dark Power Pro 10 650W PSU Review @ Legit Reviews
- Seasonic X-Series KM3 650 W Power Supply Review @ Hardware Secrets
- Corsair AX860 Power Supply Review @ HardwareHeaven
- Corsair AX760 Power Supply Review @ Hardware SecretsKeep your webbytubes glued to station "omg this review is crazy" cause we got more to come.
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For all the id software fans- How I rage quit RAGE - 12/12/12
Published: Wednesday, December 12, 2012 | By: DennisThe big news of the day is the date; December 12th 2012. This will be the last repeating date that any of us will see in our lifetime. In fact the next time this will happen is shortly after the odometer flips sometime after the events that happen in the id game RAGE.
Speaking of RAGE I have to admit the game looks pretty nice and feels like an id title combined with a little bit of Skyrim and a failed integration with Borderlands 2. I am sad to say that after two hours of playing RAGE I am ready to shelve the game and move on with my life. Don't get me wrong I love the FPS aspect, the graphics look amazing (*I drooled over the shotgun detail) and the shooting mechanics are spot on. The thing I hate about RAGE is the "on rails" aspect of the maps and inability to drive with the mouse. Those things combined really have me at a loss when coming up for a reason to continue playing.
I mean, don't get me wrong but, if I wanted to play Metal of Honor: Operation Anaconda I would fire that game up and at least feel good about playing a triple A console title on the PC.
We all know the game RAGE was a tech demo to show off the latest megatexture implementation and get game developers "wet" to use their new gaming engine. But without PhysX or DirectX 11do you really think game studios will get in line to use the id Tech 5 engine? -
How to build a tiny Arcade Cabinet based on a classic Nintendo hardware at Metku.net
Published: Tuesday, December 11, 2012 | By: DennisI do love checking out the Metku mods, high quality, low prices and no questions asked.
We just finished our latest modding article. This time we document a project on how
to build a tiny arcade cabined based on Nintendo's technology...
From the article:
"Classic hand-held gaming devices near to your heart? Take a look at this project where I combine one of the real classics with another arcade icon."Check out the mod and let us know what you think.
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EVGA GeForce GTX 670 FTW LE 2GB Video Card Review @ circuitREMIX
Published: Tuesday, December 11, 2012 | By: DennisThe GTX 670 is one of the best video cards money can buy, its as fast as a GTX 680 and supports 4-way SLI even long after the girls have gone to sleep.
The video card from EVGA we're looking at today is the GeForce GTX 670 FTW LE 2GB. To easily understand where it fits in EVGA's lineup, it their entry level non-reference design offering that's one step higher than the basic reference design. With the term FTW (for the win) in it's name, you'd probably assume that this is one of EVGA's higher end cards. You would be semi-right, as the FTW (and FTW SIG2) version are EVGA's top 2GB GTX 670 products. It's the LE suffix that denotes the lower end of the scale. To me, FTW LE is an oxymoron.
Dare I say the above statement was quite bold, LE is the Light Edition (don't quote me on that) meaing its hotclocked and ready to rock. EVGA could have dropped the FTW leaving LE but that makes even less sense.
Bottom line is, who cares?? The people buying this product either know what they want or have been told what they want and have settled on picking the cheapest one. Either way the name makes little difference.
What is important, is the 4-way.
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Sandra 2013a: New Memory Transaction Throughput benchmark
Published: Saturday, December 8, 2012 | By: DennisAs some of you may have noticed I use SiSoft Sandra in almost every one of my reviews and find it to be quite accurate in judging overall performance and while I may only use three or four benchmarks from the suite that is by far not the limit that the software package can support.
In fact they are adding new benchmarks all the time and a few of these I might have to try out.
London, UK, November 5th 2012 - We are pleased to announce the launch of SiSoftware Sandra 2013, the latest version of our award-winning utility, which includes remote analysis, benchmarking and diagnostic features for PCs, servers, mobile devices and networks.
While Sandra has been updated for the brand-new Windows 8 / Server 2012 operating systems, we have not forgotten Windows 7, Vista or XP users - all new features and enhancements are supported on all operating systems.
As SiSoftware operates a "just-in-time" release cycle, some features were introduced in Sandra 2012 service packs: in Sandra 2013 they have been updated and enhanced based on all the feedback received.Some of the new benchmarks include:
- New GP (GPU/APU/CPU) Cache/Memory Latency benchmark (4 memory types, 3 access patterns, 2 interfaces)
- New GP (GPU/APU/CPU) Cache Bandwidth benchmark (4 memory types, 2 interfaces)
- Updated Overall Score for complete system performance evaluation (12 benchmarks to fully evaluate computer performance)
- Memory Latency: code/instruction cache latencies (2 memory types, 3 access patterns)
If you would like to try Sandra for yourself there is an evaluation version you can download along with options to buy the software for yourself.
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China Mafia-Style Hack Attack Drives California Firm to Brink
Published: Friday, December 7, 2012 | By: DennisThis here is a story of one man's fight to save what is right against the relentless hordes of the Chinese Digital Mafia. The Bloomberg story is a very good read and would suggest that if you are interested in computer security or wonder how bad things have gotten that you check it out.
For three years, a group of hackers from China waged a relentless campaign of cyber harassment against Solid Oak Software Inc., Milburn’s family-owned, eight-person firm in Santa Barbara, California. The attack began less than two weeks after Milburn publicly accused China of appropriating his company’s parental filtering software, CYBERsitter, for a national Internet censoring project. And it ended shortly after he settled a $2.2 billion lawsuit against the Chinese government and a string of computer companies last April.
In between, the hackers assailed Solid Oak’s computer systems, shutting down web and e-mail servers, spying on an employee with her webcam, and gaining access to sensitive files in a battle that caused company revenues to tumble and brought it within a hair’s breadth of collapse.In the end, the good guys win but not after having almost lost his business, his life savings and mind. It would seem that Digital war is just as stressful as the traditional but can be more focused than a smart bomb.
Food for thought, this all started with a phishing email and someone clicking on the link.
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NL: Review Block: Kitchen Sink Edition - and not the good kind
Published: Friday, December 7, 2012 | By: DennisBrace yourself this is going to be a seriously major list of reviews.
Input Devices (you know like Mice and stuff)
- ROCCAT Lua Gaming Mouse Review @ ThinkComputers
- Thermaltake Level 10 Mouse @ LanOC Reviews
- Funky Kit Review:Thermaltake Level 10 M-series Mouse
Coolers (these would be like fans and heatsinks, sorry no beverages)
- Sapphire Vapor-X CPU Cooler Review @ Pro-Clockers
- Silverstone Heligon HE01 CPU Cooler Review @ Hi Tech Legion
- Corsair Hydro Series H60 & H55 Review @ Hardware Canucks
- Cooler Master TPC 800 CPU Cooler Review on Technic3D
- SilverStone Heligon HE01 @ Ocaholic
- Corsair Hydro Series H80i and H100i Liquid CPU Coolers Review @ Madshrimps
- Sapphire Vapor-X CPU Cooler Review @ Hi Tech Legion
Motherboards
- ASRock Z77 Extreme11 review: with workstation features
- MSI Z77A-G41 Motherboard @ Rbmods
- ASRock FM2A85X Extreme 6 Motherboard Review @ TechwareLabs
- Funky Kit Review: Gigabyte Z77X-UP4-TH LGA1155 Motherboard (with Thunderbolt)
Memory
- Kingston HyperX Predator KHX18C9T2K2/16X 2x8GB Review @ APH Networks
- Corsair Dominator Platinum DDR3-1866 16GB Memory Kit Review @ ThinkComputers
- Corsair Dominator Platinum 2800 MHz @ Bjorn3DMore to come after the break
