Tech News

• Arctic Freezer 13 Pro Cpu Cooler@ Rbmods

  Published: Tuesday, April 26, 2011 | By: Dennis

  Ok so this looks like a monster of a heatsink, and if you can get past the "buy this at newegg" affiliate links it is a good (and short) read.

  Today we will test a CPU cooler designed to bring a massive heat dissipation capacity of 300W. ARCTIC’s Freezer series is undoubtedly a reference mark in the world of CPU coolers.
  
  Arctic’s Freezer 13 Pro is the younger brother of the original Freezer 13 and the Freezer 7 before it.  As far as I can tell, the Freezer 13 Pro is bigger and utilizes a few promising technologies which should bring superior performance together with a whisper-quiet operation.
  
  Let’s find out if these promising features would give us what is guaranteed on the paper.
  

  Can't even tell you if the cooler is any good, but given the 4 heatpipe configuration and large radiator I highly doubt it can dissipate 300w.

  btw in case you were wondering, 300w is about what a Core i7 920 puts out at 5Ghz and is also what my single stage phase cooler is rated at.

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• Creating Bootable Linux Thumb Drives with Universal USB Installer @ Techgage

  Published: Tuesday, April 26, 2011 | By: Dennis

  Will the uses for flash drives ever end?  Here is a handy guide explaining how to create a bootable flash drive to install Linux from.

  A great thing for Linux is that its popularity is rapidly growing, and thanks to the countless number of "Live CDs" out there, anyone can download and burn an image to allow them to test drive a distro with no risk to their PC. But, what about those who either don't have blank CDs lying around, or don't have an optical drive installed in their PC?

  I have heard of PendriveLinux before but never really took them serious, until now.

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• Acer to launch notebook with ultra-thin LG Shuriken panel

  Published: Monday, April 25, 2011 | By: Dennis

  Couldn't resist posting this. 

  Taiwan-based notebook brand Acer is set to launch a 14.1-inch notebook featuring LG Display's ultra-thin Shuriken panel as soon as May 2011 and the model will be manufactured by Compal Electronics, according to sources from upstream panel makers.
  
  Although the notebook will feature a 14.1-inch panel, the body of the machine will only have a size of a 13.3-inch model, benefiting mainly from the panel's technologies, which significantly shrink the panel frame's width from 1.2cm to 8mm and reduce the thickness of the device to only 4mm, the sources noted.

  Based on the description I really want to see it.  Maybe they will have it on display at Computex.

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• Ninjalane HWBot Ranking Update - 5th in the USA

  Published: Sunday, April 24, 2011 | By: Dennis

  Some of you may be familar with HWBot, (http://www.hwbot.org).  It is a website dedicated to finding out the limits of computer hardware by taking a community approach and awarding points to members that score well.  While you can use standard hardware and get a result the real fun is getting points by overclocking your hardware.

  This weekend HWBot Team Ninjalane moved up and is currently ranked 5th in the US and 56th in the World!!

  

  The HWBot team is an open enrollment so if any of you are curious about the fun you can have overclocking your gear stop by the forums and we'll let you know how to get started.  Likewise if you currently overclock and your team is gotten a little "meh" lately give us a look. 

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• NL: Review Block - Massive Motherboard Roundup

  Published: Friday, April 22, 2011 | By: Dennis

  Normaly I like to break out the motherboard reviews into seperate postings but anymore it just makes sense to post up a review block and let you decide what to read.

  Mini Motherboards
  - ASRock E350M1 AMD Fusion APU Motherboard @ Pro-Clockers
  - Sapphire Edge-HD Mini PC @ LanOC Reviews
  
  Full Sized Motherboards
  - ASUS P8P67 WS Revolution @ Bjorn3D
  - ECS P67H2-A2 @ Phoronix
  - Gigabyte G1.Sniper X58 review @ Guru3D
  - OC3D: Gigabyte X58-OC Preview
  - Asus P8P67 Deluxe Motherboard (B3) Review @ KitGuru
  - ASRock Fatal1ty P67 Professional Motherboard Review @ Madshrimps
  - ASUS Rampage III Formula Intel X58 Motherboard Review @ ThinkComputers
  - iXBT Labs Review: Foxconn P67A-S Motherboard
  - MSI P67A-GD65 Socket 1155 Motherboard @ Pro-Clockers
  - ASRock Fatal1ty P67 Professional Review @ ocaholic
  - Funky Kit Review: MSI Big Bang Marshal (B3) Motherboard
  - Gigabyte G-1 Assassin Gaming Motherboard @ LanOC Reviews
  - GIGABYTE G1 Assassin X58 Motherboard Review @ Legit Reviews
  - ASUS P8P67 PRO P67 Motherboard Review @ APH Networks

  More to come including something new from Ninjalane

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• Bears Slam OCZ After Fraud Allegation - Seeking Alpha

  Published: Thursday, April 21, 2011 | By: Dennis

  This seems like a really big deal. 

  OCZ has misrepresented its SSD growth and has financial irregularities that are nearly impossible to reconcile," a short seller at Copperfield Research wrote, referring to solid-state drives. The report also alleged CEO Ryan Petersen has failed to disclose a criminal background involving charges of theft, drug violations, and forgery.

  Keep in mind these are just Allegations, and as they say in the industry.  Everything comes out in the wash.

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• Leaked Roadmap Reveals Multiple Enthusiast Sandy Bridge-E Processors

  Published: Wednesday, April 20, 2011 | By: Dennis

  Nothing like a leaked roadmap to get the juices flowing.

  The first class are the 6-core chips at the very top of the pile, probably branded "Extreme Edition", which feature both unlocked BClk multipliers, and have 15 MB of L3 cache, among several other features enabled. Traditionally these processors cost around US $1000. The first of such chips will be clocked at 3.30 GHz.

  The TechPowerUp news posting goes on to talk about the quad memory channels and ability to run 4 graphics cards without a bridge chip.  This is basically mirroring my thoughts that the Sandy Bridge-E is two current generation Sandy Bridge chips smashed together on a single processor.  

  Considering the high end features 6 cores, do you think there is 2 cores disabled on there someplace?  Knowing Intel. No.

  Be sure to check out the "Source" for the roadmap or visit TPU for the English version.

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• Crucial Ballistix Smart Tracer DDR3-1600 4GB Kit Review @ ocInside

  Published: Wednesday, April 20, 2011 | By: Dennis

  Looking for some bling for your memory modules can don't want to afford the Corsair solution?  Then the Crucial Ballistix Tracer might be what you are looking for.

  Today, ocinside.de published again an interesting DDR3 memory review. This time the new Crucial Ballistix Smart tracer DDR3-1600 modules are tested, which offers fast timings, high frequencies and a special highlight, in the truest sense of the word. We already know activity LEDs in different colors on the top of the modules and near the pins from several Crucial Ballistix Tracer reviews. But these new Smart Tracer RAM LEDs can be programmed with a special BallistixUtility and additionally the software can show the temperature of the DDR3 memory modules and write it into a log file. The temperature monitoring of the RAM is particularly interesting for overclocking and for us one reason more to overclock these modules up to the limit. Let us see, what these Crucial Ballistix Smart Tracer PC3-12800 CL8 4GB DDR3 kit can offer in addition to colored lighting and temperature monitoring. 

  The modules even come with some software to program what the LEDs do, sounds like what Corsair did back with the Xpert modules back in the day.

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• Where does Homefront fit into the online Multiplayer market? @ GamingHeaven

  Published: Wednesday, April 20, 2011 | By: Dennis

  It is clear that Homefront was designed to be a Multi player game given the lack luster single player story (despite the awesome backstory) and inclusion of LAN play out of the box.  I haven't written off Homefront just quite yet but do long for a game with a good single player story.

  FPS titles no longer focus on the single player experience. It's a sad fact but one that's becoming increasingly true with the release each new game as the single player lover is left in the dark. The most recent example of the future of single player FPS games was the startlingly short (at 3 hours play-time) single player campaign of the hotly anticipated Homefront.
  

  Well said.

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• Gigabyte Fires Back on Rumors of P67 Board Cancellation

  Published: Monday, April 18, 2011 | By: Dennis

  There are several tech sites out there who thrive on a scatter gun approach to reporting the news, the idea is to keep firing, eventually you'll hit something good.  I guess it works since they seem to be making money at it. 

  Early today there as a widespread report claiming that Gigabyte was going to shift their entire motherboard focus on the new Z68 chipset and basically stop producing the P67 version.  While it seems silly that Gigabyte would stop a good thing there might be some truth in there someplace.

  Here is a snip from Gigabyte in response to the rumor.

  The industry reports about GIGABYTE cancelling all P67 projects and moving 100% to next gen Intel 6 series chipset models are misleading and unfounded. GIGABYTE will continue producing P67 chipset motherboards until the end of 2011, and the H67 models are expected to be available well into 2012.

  Rumor sites often employ "perspective" when coming up with new stories.  For instance in the issue of Gigabyte P67 projects the truth is they will still be producing current P67 designs until they can no longer obtain chipsets from Intel.  The "twisted" truth is that since initial design for current P67 motherboards was done MONTHS ago and with Z68 being the next best thing you can assume that Gigabyte will be focusing their efforts on the new board design.

  Both are true but the "twisted" version isn't very PC but is interesting enough that people will read it and naive people will believe it.

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