Hardware Roundup: Tuesday Edition
Category: Video Cards, Motherboards, Memory, Cooling, Power Supplies, Manufacturers, Gaming, Storage / Hard Drives, CPU Cooling, Hard Drive Cooling, Trade Shows/ConventionsPosted: January 22, 2008 06:31AM
Author: Nemo
Searching the web this morning turned up quite a few offerings for you to peruse. We start off with two articles looking at the state of affairs at AMD. The company announced their financial result for the latest quarter last week and PC Perspective provides a look in their AMD's 4th Quarter Analyzed . Looking forward, Tech ARP wonders if there is More Trouble For AMD In 2008?. While we're talking about AMD, Legit Reviews brings us the Diamond Radeon HD 3850 512MB Ruby Edition Video Card and reveals how this card differs from the original ATI reference design. The large majority of motherboard reviews focus on the desktop and gaming crowd. Today we get a chance to look at the Asus P5K64 WS motherboard. The 'WS' denotes it's a workstation card and RBMods walks us through the feature set and compares it to the Asus P5K3 Deluxe board. Speaking of workstations, HotHardware gives us a unique chance to look at two graphics cards geared toward the professional graphics design crowd in their ATI FireGL V8650 vs. NVIDIA QuadroFX 5600. The use of heatpipes in heatsinks is old news by now but a new approach is to put the heatpipes in direct contact with the CPU instead of transferring the heat through a metal block. That's the approach two different companies are taking and Overclocker Cafe looks at two such offerings in their Kingwin RVT 12025 & RVT 12025D Cooler review. FrostyTech has the Xigmatek HDT-S1283 Exposed Heatpipe Base Heatsink. You might be surprised at the results. Some folks find the concept of water cooling their computer a bit intimidating and opt for a pre-built kit. The Thermaltake BigWater 760i is one such option and Techgage reviews the installation process and compares the results from this kit to air-cooled options. If you are thinking about making the switch from AMD to Intel, or perhaps you haven't built a system since the socket 478 days, you should check out How To Install An Intel Socket 775 Processor and Heatsink at PCSTATS. The X48 chipset is the latest addition in the Intel lineup and the first to officially support FSB speeds of 1600MHz and TweakTown offers a look at the MSI X48 Platinum Motherboard. If you move up to a board based on the X48 chipset, you're going to need DDR3 memory and the Super Talent Project X 2x1GB PC3-14400 at Overclockers Online may be just what you're looking for. While you're at it, how about a new power supply? Tweknews has the Thermaltake Toughpower Q-Fan W0163RU 650Watt Modular Power Supply up for review today. Hard drives are often an overlooked comonent when it comes to cooling. Most options require the use of a 5.25” bay for installation. Is it worth it? Check out 3DGameMan for a review of the Ultra Aluminum Hard Drive Cooler. Portable drives a re a great way to add additional storage to your system as well as a convenient way to transport data to other locations. But that exposes your data to theft or being misplaced. Biometrics are one way to protect your data from prying eyes and EverythingUSB sees what the Apricorn Aegis Bio 120GB Portable Drive offers in this area. Gamers should find the Supreme Commander Benchmarking Guide at Tech ARP an interesting read. Finally, we have more from the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2008 - Part 1 courtesy of Virtual-Hideout.
