Latest OCAU News

Geeky Self-Portrait Contest Winner! (10 Comments) (link)  Saturday, 13-March-2010  21:50:55 (GMT +10) - by Agg So, the winner of our geekiest self-portrait contest has been decided, and it was this entry from hoopstar: click to enlarge 2nd prize went to DrFrag, 3rd to MoonShadow and a bonus extra prize to Gypsyking. Hoopstar of course scores a triple-LCD monitor stand from Proluma! You can read a review of one here on Tweaktown if you're keen. Saturday Evening (1 Comments) (link)  Saturday, 13-March-2010  20:46:40 (GMT +10) - by Agg iXBTLabs have a 59 CPU roundup posted. As we promised late in 2009, today we shall sum up test results obtained with our Test Method v4.0. Initially, we planned on publishing the article in mid-January, but then we decided to do it according to updates in manufacturers' product series. January brought us nearly ten new processors which we added to this summary. China have warned Google to comply with the censorship laws in that country. Minister of Industry and Information Technology Li Yizhong was speaking at China's annual legislation session. "We need to preserve our nation's interest, our people's interest, we cannot be relaxed with any information that will cause harm to the stability of our society, to our system, and to the health of our under-age young people," he said. Discussion continues in this thread. A New Zealand inventor has created a cool-looking folding electric bike for scooting around the city. YikeBike is a statement about using smart technology to solve the problems of our increasingly congested, polluted, stressful cities. It is the first commercial expression of the mini-farthing concept, created up by a bunch of successful entrepreneurs, engineers and dreamers. Pink Floyd have won a lawsuit against EMI, preventing EMI from selling individual songs (as opposed to entire albums) without the band's permission. Their latest record deal, signed with EMI before legal downloads came along, said individual songs must not be sold without the band's permission. They argued that the same rule should apply to digital sales as well as CDs. JimX sent in this video clip with a Heath Robinson contraption. Or if you're American, a Rube Goldberg machine. Either way, they're cool and fun and I must build one one day. :) A few places are reporting that new hard drives might confuse Win XP. The big obvious name missing from this list is Windows XP (and its server counterpart, Windows Server 2003). Windows XP (along with old Linux kernels) has, somewhere within its code, a fixed assumption of 512 byte sectors. Try to use it with hard disks with 4096 byte sectors and failure will ensue. mpot spotted this Australian dot com crash quiz. Test your knowledge about the dotcom boom and its spectacular end. It is now ten years since the bubble burst. I remember it well, because I left my "real" job and started work full-time on OCAU right as everything collapsed. Still, here we are. :) While we're quizzing, you can test your video game knowledge. You click on the image and guess what computer game they're trying to convey. Discussion here. And if you're STILL not quizzed out, there's another huge game-identifying image here. Saturday Evening Reviews (0 Comments) (link)  Saturday, 13-March-2010  19:27:26 (GMT +10) - by Agg Cooling: Noctua NF-P14 FLX 140mm Fan on RBMods. Zaward Golf Fan II on Tech-Reviews. Prolimatech MK-13 VGA Cooler on OC.com. Storage & Memory: Terabyte Hard Disk Drives Roundup: Round Three on XbitLabs. Unitek USB 3.0 SATA HDD Docking Station (Y-1071) on BonaFideReviews. Tsunami Ultimate II 3500 HDD enclosure on XSReviews. A-DATA PC3-17600 (2200MHz) Gaming Series 4GB Memory Kit on Tweaktown. Kingston V+ SNVP325-S2 128GB on PureOC. Axus FiT RAID 500 Storage Device on ThinkComputers. Audio Visual: Mionix KEID 20 gaming headset on OC3D. QNAP NMP-1000 Network Media Player on APHNetworks. Motherboards: Asus P7H55-M Pro vs. Gigabyte H55M-UD2H LGA1156 boards on LegionHW. Jetway NC96 NC96-510-LF mITX Atom board on Phoronix. MSI 770-C35 AM3 board on IXBTLabs. Asus Maximus 3 Extreme LGA1156 board on Bjorn3D. Cases: SilverStone Fortress FT02 on PureOC. Thermaltake V3 Black Edition on OCClub. CoolerMaster 690 II Advanced vs. CoolerMaster 690 on NinjaLane. Cooler Master HAF 932 AMD Edition Full Tower on LegitReviews. Silverstone Fortress FT02 90 Degree Motherboard Case on Modders-Inc. Video Cards: HIS Radeon HD 5570 Fan on HWSecrets. PowerColor HD 5830 PCS+ on NeoSeeker. Radeon HD5830 DirectX-11 Gaming Performance on BenchmarkReviews. Axle GeForce G210 512MB on OCOnline. Misc: Lexmark Interact S605 All in One Inkjet Printer on TestFreaks. Epson WorkForce 610 printer on TechReviewSource. Logitech Speaker Lapdesk N700 on OCIA. CAPE 7 - ION PC on HWHeaven. Razer Imperator Gaming Mouse and Vespula Mouse Mat Video Review on Tweaktown. OCZ Z Series 850W PSU on HWSecrets. Misc Pics (16 Comments) (link)  Friday, 12-March-2010  14:28:14 (GMT +10) - by Agg Thanks to Manaz and Danske this week! And if you're after more, check out this Wiki page which lists ALL "misc pics" news posts from the archive. Friday Midday Reviews (0 Comments) (link)  Friday, 12-March-2010  12:40:33 (GMT +10) - by Agg CPUs: Intel Core i7 980X Extreme Six-Core CPU on HardCoreWare. Core i7-980X CPU on HWSecrets. Intel Core i7 980X 6 Core Gulftown CPU on Motherboards.org. Intel's new Gulftown Six Core CPU meets LN2 Extreme Cooling on Tweaktown. Intel I7-980X Gulftown Six Core Processor on Tweaktowns. Intel Core i7-980X Six-Core Processor Extreme Edition on LegitReviews. Intel 980x Gulftown on OC3D. Intel Core i7-980XE Gulftown 6-Core 32nm Processor on FutureLooks. AMD Athlon II X2 215 on iXBTLabs. Intel i7 980x Extreme on Bjorn3D. Phenom 2 X2 555 BE C3, Athlon X4 635, X3 440 and X2 255 on Metku. Storage: Kingston SSDNow V+ Series 128GB Solid State Drive on BigBruin. Imation M-Class 128GB SSD on HWLogic. Seagate 2TB Barracuda XT SATA6 Desktop Hard Drive ST32000641AS on TestFreaks. Misc G.Skill PC3-18400 (2300MHz) PI Series 4GB memory on Tweaktown. Seasonic X Series 750W PSU on PureOC. Razer Imperator Gaming Mouse on TechwareLabs. COGAGE TRUE Spirit LGA1366 Heatsink on Overclockers.com. MSI HD 5870 Lightning video card on TechPowerUp. Thursday Night (5 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 11-March-2010  21:45:11 (GMT +10) - by Agg New Zealand's internet filter has gone live. O'Brien says there is no compulsion for ISPs to tell their customers their internet service is being filtered. "It's a voluntary system and there's no legislation," he says, adding he understands the ISPs currently on the system have informed their customers. Closer to home, the Labor Party will reportedly vote within two weeks to decide if mandatory filter plans will become legislation in Australia, thanks enigma. The move puts Senator Lundy up against Communications Minister, Senator Stephen Conroy, and the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, both of whom have publicly backed the filter. Senator Conroy is known to be a strong advocate and has rejected public protests as well as political opposition from Independent Senator Nick Xenophon and the Australian Greens. Meanwhile the European Parliament has strongly opposed the ACTA. A strong majority of MEPs (663 against and 13 in favour) today voted against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), arguing that it flouts agreed EU laws on counterfeiting and piracy online. In addition, the Parliament's decision today states that MEPs will go to the Court of Justice if the EU does not reject ACTA rules, including cutting off users from the Internet "gradually" if caught stealing content. Gearlog got their hands on one of the fake Intel Core i7-920 CPUs, thaks mpot. They are, err, very fake. When turned it over, we quickly discovered that this was not a real processor. It looked and felt a lot like lead. Oh, yeah, this looks legit. You've probably seen them in the CPU reviews linked below, but in case you're only interested in the new gargantuan stock cooler from Intel, there's some photos here. Text isn't English but the pictures are pretty good. iiNet are in a trading halt, probably due to another acquisition, most likely Netspace. iiNet has pursued an aggressive acquisition strategy over recent years in a bid to cement its position as the nation’s third largest ISP. In 2005 the ISP spent $100m to buy OzEmail and in 2008 acquired Perth-based Westnet. Over the past four years, iiNet has bought out about 30 small ISPs. William Shatner has launched a science-fiction themed challenger to Myspace, kinda. Myouterspace.com (and can you see what they’ve done there?), is not quite the Next Generation of websites. It’s essentially a nicely constructed portal where creative professionals who have a love of the arts – and in particular science fiction, horror and fantasy – can talk with each other, network, and find jobs. Guru3D took a look at USB 3.0 performance, while iGadgetLife checked out two USB 3.0 34mm Expresscards. Today for review I’ve got two USB 3.0 34mm Expresscards, each feature two USB 3.0 ports and they’re basically the same really. One is from Unitek and the other is a no-name or generic one. Is there really a difference between them? Read on to find out. Gamepron report on a police raid going wrong and ending up with some game developers in handcuffs, thanks KF. Y’see, the gamers, who are currently hard at work on golf/thug-life release Ghetto Golf, have offices right next to a medicinal marijuana store. One evening, an alarm was triggered in the store, and police were dispatched to check out the ‘break-in’. Hangon, hangon.. Ghetto Golf? Seriously? Apparently so. Thursday Evening Reviews (0 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 11-March-2010  21:05:42 (GMT +10) - by Agg Portable & Prebuilt: MSI Wind Box Intel Atom 330 NetTops on Phoronix. Asus UL30A & Lenovo ThinkPad Edge 13 CULV Notebooks on SilentPCReview. Lenovo ThinkCentre A70Z & Asus EeeTop ET2203 All-In-One PCs on SilentPCReview. Lenovo ThinkPad T410 laptop on HotHardware. Cases: Cooler Master 690 II Advanced on OCOnline. Raidmax Skyline Windowed Mid-Tower on Tweaktown. NZXT Hades Crafted Series Tower on Pro-Clockers. Lian Li PC-T1R Spider mini-ITX on TechPowerUp. Antec P183 Advanced Mid Tower on ThinkComputers. Inwin Maelstrom on SilentPCReview. InWin Diva MITX on TechWareLabs. NZXT Hades on TechPowerUp. Audio / Visual: Proluma Deluxe Triple LCD Stand on Tweaktown. Samsung PN58B650 58 Inch Plasma TV on Tweaknews. Panasonic Lumix DMC-FP8 ultra-compact camera on TBreak. Mionix Keid 20 Headset on RBMods. Video Cards: ASUS EAH 5850 TOP DirectCU on TechPowerUp. Sapphire Radeon HD 5770 1GB on XSReviews. PowerColor PCS+ 5830 1GB on PureOC. Asus EAH5750 Formula on SilentPCReview. Cooling: Scythe Setsugen GPU Cooler on SilentPCReview. Cooler Master V8 Heatpipe CPU Cooler on BigBruin. Gelid Tranquillo CPU Cooler on HWSecrets. Thermaltake SpinQ VT CPU Cooler on LegitReviews. Thermaltake Silent 1156 CPU Cooler on OCIA. Zalman CNPS10X Performa CPU Cooler on ThinkComputers. Intel Core i7-980X Extreme Edition (3 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 11-March-2010  16:50:25 (GMT +10) - by Agg Intel have unveiled their first 6-core, 12-thread desktop CPU, the Core i7-980X Extreme Edition. This is a 3.33GHz 32nm CPU with 12MB L2 cache, for LGA1366 platforms, and comes with a beefy new cooler design. Coverage on Tech Report, Anandtech, HotHardware, Tweaktown, Guru3D, OCClub, Techgage, NeoSeeker, BenchmarkReviews, PC Perspective, HardCoreWare, HWHeaven and Motherboards.org have a video review. Discussion from here. Thursday Morning (2 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 11-March-2010  11:49:54 (GMT +10) - by Agg Victoria is expanding their use of Linux-powered voting kiosks, thanks mazzanet. However, in tender documents released last week, the state revealed it would expand its use of the machines. About one hundred kiosks will be deployed to early voting centres (including mobile facilities) around the state as well as in the United Kingdom. You and I might not think too much of the iPad, but a certain Fat Kid from St Albans really wants one. Now I'll be doing it again, but 17,000km away - in New York City, a small place somewhere in the USA, which is a whole different country. The iPad is being released a month earlier in the USA than in Australia, which bums me out, as I'm an impatient nerd with too much time on his hands. I can't explain it, but gadgets are what I live for. I don't drink, don't smoke, don't gamble, don't stay out all night and don't have any other vices except for a terrible technology addiction. Plus it's a great excuse to see one of the world's most amazing cities - so why not!? Someon3 sent in an interesting article about somewhat dodgy SD cards. Armed with this evidence, we confronted Kingston — both the distributor in China as well as the US sales rep. First, we wanted to know if these were real cards, and second, if they were real cards, why were the serialization codes irregular? One of our most popular Wiki pages is still the fake memory cards guide from a few years ago. Bizarrely, there's a reports of a USB battery charger with a trojan. The charger at fault is the Energizer Duo USB Battery Charger, you’re only at risk if you’re a windows user and downloaded the software for the charger from the Energizer site. Energizer have released more info about the problem. In addition, the company is directing consumers that downloaded the Windows version of the software to uninstall or otherwise remove the software from your computer. This will eliminate the vulnerability. In addition CERT and Energizer recommend that users remove a file that may remain after the software has been removed. The file name is Arucer.dll, which can be found in the Window system32 directory. LegionHW have a Radeon HD 5870 Crossfire CPU Scaling article. The time has come once again for us to take a pair of the gaming industry’s fastest performance graphics cards and couple then with a range of processors from both AMD and Intel. In this first part, which will be just one of many, we are taking the Core i7, Core i3, Phenom II X4, Phenom II X2 processors and testing them with Radeon HD 5870 Crossfire graphics cards at frequencies from 2.0GHz through to 4.0GHz. Meanwhile TechSpot checked out Battlefield: Bad Company 2 GPU Performance. Any game that looks this good is going to be demanding. What we experienced is that tuning down visual settings along with the resolution still hurt budget and even some mid-range graphics cards. DICE recommends at least a GeForce GTX 260 or Radeon HD 4780 graphics card to play Battlefield: Bad Company 2, and it is rare to find this kind of high performance GPUs falling under the recommended specifications. Read on for our in-depth findings on GPU performance and CPU scaling. The Large Hadron Collider's woes continue, with the operators now admitting there are design issues which require the machine to be shut down for a year while they are addressed. He said: "The standard phrase is that the LHC is its own prototype. We are pushing technologies towards their limits." ... "You don't hear about the thousands or hundreds of thousands of other areas that have gone incredibly well." Bill Gates is no longer the world's richest man, having been pushed down a spot by Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim Helu. That massive hoard of scratch puts him ahead of Microsoft ( MSFT - news - people ) cofounder Bill Gates, who had held the title of world's richest 14 of the past 15 years. There's more CeBIT 2010 coverage on Guru3D and MadShrimps. Today's timewaster is a Lynx ad game (possibly NSFW, ish) called Keeping Keeley, with discussion here.

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