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Our news archive search is now powered by Google. The entire site is indexed, apart from the forums, which have their own internal search engine.   Web overclockers.com.au View News : Last 7 Days, Last 14 Days, Last 30 Days. View Monthly Archives. Proluma Geeky Self-Portrait Contest! (0 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 9-February-2010  03:07:47 (GMT +10) - by Agg You might remember our recent messiest desk competition during which Proluma gave away one of their fancy dual-monitor stands to the person with the most horrifying desk. Well, we're doing another competition now, to win one of the first Proluma triple-screen stands in Australia! This will naturally max out your geeky desktop, so the prize will go to the person who posts the geekiest self-portrait picture in this thread. Make sure you have an OCAU screenshot or an "OCAU" sign or something proving it's you. I'll pick the geekiest, funniest or otherwise arbitrarily "best" top 10 and we'll run a poll to decide the winner. 2nd and 3rd place will score a couple of OCAU 10th Anniversary stubby coolers too. Entries close at the end of February, so get geekin'! Thanks again to Proluma for another cool prize. OCAU Buzziness (2 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 9-February-2010  02:53:59 (GMT +10) - by Agg OCAU is the third buzziest channel for tech brand mentions, it seems. Wait, what? A company called Brandtology do a "Digital Brand Index" to see which websites in Australia have the most mentions of the "top 65 tech brands" - we came up third after Twitter and Whirlpool. You can download the press release and full report if you're keen. Tuesday Afternoon (21 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 9-February-2010  02:39:07 (GMT +10) - by Agg It's been nearly a year since Wolfram|Alpha appeared on the scene, but my question is: is anyone using it? It seems like a cool idea but whenever I try to get anything out of it, I find myself shouting at page after page of Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure how to compute an answer from your input messages. So if you think it's cool and use it all the time, tell us about it in the comments. PureOC have a guide to unlocking the X2 555 BE. How does a full-featured Phenom II X4 CPU for $99 sound? AMD's new dual core hotrod, the X2 555 BE, is actually an X4 in disguise and just needs a bit of help to unlock those two extra cores for all the performance goodness you can dream about at bargain prices. We successfully unlocked the X2 555 BE and we'll tell you how today and show the resulting performance increase. IBM has been demonstrating graphene transistors that might replace silicon one day, thanks metamorphosis. IBM has created graphene transistors that leave silicon ones in the dust. The prototype devices, made from atom-thick sheets of carbon, operate at 100 gigahertz--meaning they can switch on and off 100 billion times each second, about 10 times as fast as the speediest silicon transistors. Ashley spotted a video on a car ciggy lighter gadget that gives your buzzbox the sound of a throaty V8. It's a bit more clever than it seems at first, because it actually pipes the V8 sound to your stereo and reacts in sync with your throttle use. Could be quite amusing to install one in my bongo van. Mysrh sent in this pictorial history of Windows. November 1985: Windows 1.0 launches, after four years in development as "Interface Manager". HWZone have a 7-way CULV notebook battle. If you're still undecided on which Intel CULV notebook to get, then don't give this article a miss as we scope out the latest 13-inch models to see which one's really worth dragging the wallet out for. Acer, Dell, HP, Lenovo, LG, MSI and Toshiba battle it out in this shootout. We haven't heard about the Large Hadron Collider much lately, but it is doing sciency stuff, although not at full power yet. The Large Hadron Collider is capable of creating collisions up to 14 TeV, but scientists are gradually easing the machine up to that level to try to avoid safety issues that have arisen in the past. ... During the collider’s next run in March, researchers hope to create collisions of 7 TeV, says Roland. The success of the latest effort “makes us extremely optimistic about the detector,” he says. “It performed beautifully during the run.” Tuesday Morning Reviews (3 Comments) (link)  Monday, 8-February-2010  16:12:24 (GMT +10) - by Agg Power Supply: Ultra X4 1050W on TechWareLabs. Ultra X4 1600 Watt Full Modular on Tweaktown. Storage: Dynatron Azenx P-Secure Secure HDD Enclosure on Pro-Clockers. Team Group Xtreem-G1 120GB Solid State Disk on Tweaktown. Motherboard & CPU: USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbps Tested On Gigabyte P55A-UD6 on MadShrimps. i5 661 32nm Clarkdale on BIOSTAR TH55XE on OC.com. Foxconn Inferno Katana P55 LGA1156 board on NinjaLane. Gigabyte GA-H57M-USB3 LGA1156 board on Guru3D. Intel Core i5 661 Dual Core LGA 1156 CPU on ThinkComputers. Video Cards: MSI N240GT-MD512 OC/D5 on Bjorn3D. EVGA Geforce GTX275 CO-OP on BenchmarkReviews. ASUS ENGT240 on OCClub. Cooling: Arctic Cooling Accelero XTREME 4870X2 VGA Cooler on PCShopTalk. Noctua NF-P14 FLX Case Fan on VerdisReviews. Prebuilt: ASRock ION 330HT NetTop HTPC on Futurelooks. HP Pavilion Elite HPE-140f desktop on TechReviewSource. Misc: Samsung PN58B850 58 inch Plasma TV on Tweaknews. Antec Nine Hundred Two Ultimate Gaming Case on LegitReviews. Endeavour Launch (23 Comments) (link)  Monday, 8-February-2010  08:37:35 (GMT +10) - by Agg The Space Shuttle Endeavour is about to perform what will probably be the last ever night launch for a Space Shuttle. The countdown clock is at T-9 minutes but they're about halfway through a 45-minute "built-in hold", after which the countdown will resume and, weather permitting, the Shuttle will launch in about half an hour from now. More info on the NASA Shuttle Page, and you can watch the launch on NASA TV. Monday Morning (18 Comments) (link)  Sunday, 7-February-2010  14:39:45 (GMT +10) - by Agg The Shuttle Endeavour's launch has been delayed, and should now go ahead in about 18 hours or about 7:14pm Sydney time, I think. Shuttle Endeavour and its crew will deliver to the space station a third connecting module, the Italian-built Tranquility node and the seven-windowed cupola, which will be used as a control room for robotics. The mission will feature three spacewalks. South Africa's Kulula airline has painted (at least) one of their planes in a quite clever explanatory colour scheme. Now every traveler can even learn where the black box is. If you find yourself looking for one, by the way, I think they're usually orange. The FBI seem to be proposing that ISPs be required to keep records of website visits by their customers. Motta pointed to a 2006 resolution from the International Association of Chiefs of Police, which called for the "retention of customer subscriber information, and source and destination information for a minimum specified reasonable period of time so that it will be available to the law enforcement community." Recording what Web sites are visited, though, is likely to draw both practical and privacy objections. Tweaktown have an SSD Optimisation Guide. Today we are going to cut through all of the hype and discuss proven methods that will allow you to get the most out of your high performance desktop or notebook. JD spotted this (PDF) 49-port USB2.0 hub, in response to the power-only 80-port one from a few days ago. Meanwhile if I can't have a flying car, I can at least walk to work in a mech, thanks James. Except I work from home, damnit. Imagine taking it through a drive-through, though. Stride menacingly to the second window please.. PCPerspective have some info on Intel's upcoming tera-scale technologies. We have been talking about tera-scale technologies since 2006 when it comes to Intel research programs. The name is perhaps more grandiose than the actual idea: as data sets increase in size the need for computing technologies to handle this amount of data will need to be created. It is no secret that the CPU as it exists today simply can't handle the massive amounts of parallel information that will soon become normal operating procedure. stmok sent word of an Internet Explorer issue. Our investigation so far has shown that if a user is using a version of Internet Explorer that is not running in Protected Mode an attacker may be able to access files with an already known filename and location. These versions include Internet Explorer 5.01 Service Pack 4 on Microsoft Windows 2000 Service 4; Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 1 on Microsoft Windows 2000 Service Pack 4; and Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7, and Internet Explorer 8 on supported editions of Windows XP Service Pack 2, Windows XP Service Pack 3, and Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2. Protected Mode prevents exploitation of this vulnerability and is running by default for versions of Internet Explorer on Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008. Byteside have two new shows: the Tech Show: Byteside blasts into 2010 with a little subject called 'The Future', the Tech show explores some of the big ideas we'll be thinking about a lot in the coming decade. We explore the current hot ideas, from ebooks to iPads and 3DTV, to what happens next when the Internet is truly everywhere. And the Games Show: We start the new decade by exploring what might happen in the coming ten years. When might we see another generation of consoles? Where are the best new ideas in gaming going to come from? And is smellovision getting set for primetime? Google are getting a bit Star Trek, with plans for a speech translating phone. “We think speech-to-speech translation should be possible and work reasonably well in a few years’ time,” said Franz Och, Google’s head of translation services. “Clearly, for it to work smoothly, you need a combination of high-accuracy machine translation and high-accuracy voice recognition, and that’s what we’re working on. To truly work as well as Trek's "universal translator", it has to make the aliens' lips move so they even look like they're speaking English. ;) Monday Morning Reviews (2 Comments) (link)  Sunday, 7-February-2010  13:38:32 (GMT +10) - by Agg Cases: XClio Nighthawk on RBMods. SilverStone Grandia GD05 HTPC Case on OCIA. Thermaltake Element V on PureOC. AZZA Solano 1000R Full-Tower on BenchmarkReviews. Mini-Box.com M350 Universal Mini-ITX Enclosure on BigBruin. Cooler Master ATCS 840 on TechwareLabs. NZXT Hades on OCOnline. Storage: Silverstone DS221 Dual HDD Raid Enclosure on Pro-Clockers. Kingston MobileLite G2 USB Card Reader on LegitReviews. 64GB Solid State Drive Round-Up on HWSecrets. Memory: Kingston HyperX 1600MHz 12GB Triple Channel on TestFreaks. G.Skill Pi Series DDR3-2200 and Eco DDR3-1600 on HWHeaven. Input Etc: SteelSeries 7G keyboard on OC3D. Microsoft Explorer Wireless Rechargeable Mouse on Tweaknews. Misc: 22-inch 3D Vision LCD Monitor Showdown - Samsung vs. Viewsonic on HWZone. Silverstone Strider Plus Series 850W Modular PSU on Bjorn3D. The Budget P55 - Jetway Kuroshio BI-700 LGA1566 board on HWZone. Sapphire HD 5670 1GB on Bjorn3D. Wallpapers (3 Comments) (link)  Sunday, 7-February-2010  06:47:49 (GMT +10) - by Agg New forum member "graffiti tech" has made some spectacular AMD/ATI/Intel themed wallpapers - check them out in this thread: Click for the thread! Saturday Night Reviews (0 Comments) (link)  Saturday, 6-February-2010  10:49:17 (GMT +10) - by Agg Video Cards: ATI Radeon HD 5450 512MB GDDR3 Video Card in CrossFire on Tweaktown. Sapphire Radeon HD 5450 LP on HWLogic. Gigabyte GV-R545OC Radeon HD 5450 on Pro-Clockers. Sapphire Radeon HD5450 512MB on HWHeaven. Intel Clarkdale Linux Graphics Performance on Phoronix. Intel HD Graphics on XbitLabs. PowerColor Radeon HD 5750 on OCClub. MSI R5770 HAWK on Guru3D. MSI Radeon HD 5770 HAWK 1GB on Tweaktown. Sapphire Radeon HD 5450 on Motherboards.org. PowerColor Radeon HD 5850 on SilentPCReview. Motherboard & CPU: Gigabyte H55M-S2H LGA1156 board on TBreak. AMD Phenom II X4 910e Energy Efficient 65W CPU on PCStats. Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD4P LGA1156 board on PCStats. ECS A785GM-AD3 Black Series AM3 board on Motherboards.org. ASUS Maximus III Gene LGA1156 mATX board on PCPerspective. AMD Athlon II X4 635 CPU on RBMods. ASUS M4A785G HTPC/RC AM3 board on iXBTLabs. Asus P7H55D-M EVO LGA1156 microATX on SilentPCReview. Portable & Prebuilt: Alienware M11x Notebook on HWHeaven. MSI Wind U135 Pinetrail notebook on MadShrimps. Sony Vaio X Series notebook on DigitalTrends. Software: Star Trek Online (PC) on GamingHeaven. Metro 2033 (PC, 360) on GamingNexus. Pinnacle Studio HD Ultimate Collection V14 on FutureLooks. Cooling: Thermalright Venomous X CPU Cooler on XbitLabs. Noctua NH-D14 flagship dual-fan CPU cooler on SilentPCReview. Thermaltake SpinQ VT CPU Cooler on HWSecrets. Zalman CNPS10X Extreme & CNPS10X Flex CPU coolers on Bjorn3D. Thor's Hammer CPU Cooler on RWLabs. Misc Pics (17 Comments) (link)  Friday, 5-February-2010  04:35:55 (GMT +10) - by Agg I'll have to sneak this post in between thunderstorms! Thanks to Bobby and spyker for a few of these: And if you're after more, check out this Wiki page which lists ALL "misc pics" news posts from the archive. Friday Morning (14 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 4-February-2010  16:17:12 (GMT +10) - by Agg EB Games have joined the fight for an R18+ Rating for videogames in Australia. EB has announced that in all 350 EB Games stores across Australia customers will be able to sign a petition that will be used to lobby the Government to introduce an R18+ classification category for computer games. I really am trying not to mention Michael Atkinson in every news post this week, but BFM spotted an interview with him on JJJ's "Hack" program. Gamers4Croydon President and Legislative Council candidate, Chris Prior, and South Australia Attorney General, Michael Atkinson, discuss the R18+ rating for videogames on a segment of TripleJ's Hack, a current affairs program, broadcast on Wednesday the 3rd of February 2010. Quan-Time spotted this power piggy bank which is a kinda cool idea. If your kids have a habit of leaving their electronic devices turned on all day, this little gadget may be just for you. The Power Hog is a very special, easy-to-use piggy bank that helps children visualize and understand that using electricity costs money. Robots can evolve to learn cooperation and hunting. What could possibly go wrong? The researchers described "spider" hunting techniques among the bots in which hunters would lie in wait for prey (which in this case, fortunately, consisted of other robots). The hunted, meanwhile, developed a strategy of "quickly (rotating) in place, which reduced the probability of being approached from the sides without sensors." Speaking of which, there's a bizarre Lian Li marketing video involving a new spidery open-air case. Lian Li Chassis are rare and endangered, and very valuable indeed. None more so than this flirtatious creature captured on film for the first time-- in its unnatural habitat. Bill and Melinda Gates have pledged $10 billion USD for vaccinations. "We really believe vaccines are great miracle of our lifetime," said Melinda, estimated that the new donation would save the lives of 8 million children in the developing world. The Gates couple also said they believed a malaria vaccine would be available "in our lifetime." On a related note, those concerned about a possible link between certain vaccinations and autism should be aware that The Lancet has retracted the study from 1998 that linked the two, thanks JD. Since the controversial paper was published, British parents abandoned the vaccine in droves, leading to a resurgence of measles. Subsequent studies have found no proof that the vaccine is connected to autism, though some parents are still wary of the shot. Intel have revealed more info about their upcoming mobile and 6-core CPUs, with coverage on HotHardware and TechReport. In a press conference earlier today, Intel provided a sneak peek at some of the papers it will present next week during the International Solid-State Circuits Conference in San Francisco. The chipmaker revealed a few juicy details about Gulftown, its upcoming six-core, 32-nm processor, as well as some interesting research prototypes kicking around in its labs. I forgot who sent me this in IRC (sorry!) but it's some info on NASA's 2011 budget. People are upset about the Constellation (Shuttle-replacement) program being cancelled, but apparently the news isn't all bad. So NASA isn't giving up on space exploration, and it isn't just handing things over to private industry (it's merely going to incorporate it more). In fact, space exploration efforts will see an increase in funding by several billion dollars over the course of the next five years. Meanwhile, private industry will help advance efforts in LEO so that NASA can focus on the things that are most important (and the long term goals that corporations probably won't touch yet). The Constellation program is canceled but it has been replaced by a program that is likely far more cost-effective and realistic. Thursday Evening Reviews (0 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 4-February-2010  08:47:28 (GMT +10) - by Agg Nothing like a bit of flooding to add excitement to your day.. Video Cards: ATI's Radeon HD 5450 - The Perfect HTPC Card? on Techgage. ATI Radeon HD5450 on BenchmarkReviews. Sapphire Radeon HD 5450 512MB on PureOC. ATI Radeon HD 5450 512MB DDR3 on LegitReviews. Sapphire HD 5450 512MB on OCClub. Sapphire Radeon HD 5450 512MB GDDR3 on Tweaktown. ATI Radeon HD 5450: DX11 On The Cheap on HotHardware. ATI Radeon HD 5450 on LegionHW. Sapphire HD 5770 Vapor-X on TechPowerUp. HIS Radeon HD 5750 on Tweaknews. Gigabyte 1 Gig HD5670 on Bjorn3D. ATI RADEON HD 5670 on iXBTLabs. Cases: XClio Blackhawk Full Tower Chassis on Tweaktown. Thermaltake Element G Mid Tower on iXBTLabs. Zalman MS1000-HS2 Pro mid-tower on Guru3D. Storage: Synology DS-210J Two-Bay NAS on Tweaknews. Synology DS210j NAS on XSReviews. OCZ Vertex 2 Pro, Sandforce Powered SSD on HotHardware. Sunbeam Airbox 3.5-inch External Hard Drive Enclosure on ThinkComputers. Cooler Master Xport 251 HDD enclosure on TechPowerUp. Synology Disk Station DS410j NAS on TechWareLabs. Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB SATA 6Gbps Solid State Disk on Tweaktown. Crucial RealSSD-C300 SATA-III 6Gbps SSD on BenchmarkReviews. Kingston SSDNow V+ 128GB Solid State Disk on Techwarelabs. Memory: OCZ Reaper Triple Channel PC3 15000 6GB on NinjaLane. Mushkin Blackline 996782 PC3 12800 2x2GB on OCClub. Cooling: Xigmatek Bifrost VD1065: HDT Cooler for Graphics Accelerators on XbitLabs. Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme Rev.C, Cogage Arrow and Zalman CNPS10X Flex CPU coolers on XbitLabs. Thermalright Venomous X CPU Cooler on PCShopTalk. Corsair Hydro Series H50 CPU cooler on OC.com. Noctua NH-D14 Dual Fan CPU Cooler on Pro-Clockers. Thursday Afternoon Reviews (0 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 4-February-2010  02:34:25 (GMT +10) - by Agg Motherboard & CPU: ASRock P55 Extreme Intel P55 LGA1156 board on ThinkComputers. ASUS P7H57D-V EVO (H57 Express) LGA1156 board on Tweaktown. Core i3: The Most Affordable Nehalem on InsideHW. Tyan S2915 n6650W & S2927 n3600B Opteron boards on Phoronix. AMD Phenom II X4 910e CPU on TechWareLabs. Gigabyte GA-P55-UD6 Intel P55 LGA1156 board on PCStats. ASUS P7H55D-M EVO & Intel DH55TC LGA1156 boards on TechGage. MSI P55-GD85 LGA1156 board on HWSecrets. ECS A785GM-AD3 AM3 board on OCClub. ASUS P7H55D-M EVO LGA1156 board on Motherboards.org. Inferno Katana: Infernal LGA1156 on XbitLabs. AMD Athlon II X4 635 2.9GHz Quad Core Processor on LegitReviews. Input Etc: Thrustmaster F1 & F430 Gamepad Controllers on PureOC. Cyber Snipa Silencer Mouse on Hi-TechReviews. Mionix Naos 5000 Gaming Mouse on PureOC. Power Supply: Cooler Master GX 750W on HWSecrets. Ultra X4 600W Modular on OC3D. Cooler Master GX 750W on PureOC. Fractal Design Newton R2 1000W on RWLabs. Portable: Asus G51J Notebook on PCPerspective. Asus G60J: A Notebook for Gamers on InsideHW. Lenovo ThinkPad Edge on DigitalTrends. iiNet vs AFACT (46 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 4-February-2010  00:50:22 (GMT +10) - by Agg The Federal Court has handed down its judgement in the iiNet vs AFACT case, and it has ruled in iiNet's favour. No doubt there will be an appeal by AFACT but for the moment it seems the Court agrees that providing access to the Internet is not 'authorising' infringement. The decision had the potential to impact internet users and the internet industry profoundly as it sets a legal precedent surrounding how much ISPs are required to do to prevent customers from downloading movies and other content illegally. But after an on-and-off eight-week trial that examined whether iiNet authorised customers to download pirated movies, Justice Dennis Cowdroy found that the ISP was not liable for the downloading habits of its customers. There's some highlights from the summary here and an analysis here. More info on The Age, ZDNet and ITNews. There's a twitter feed with a lot more links here. Thanks to everyone who sent in info! Discussion continues in this thread. Phone Finance Scams (4 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 3-February-2010  13:27:19 (GMT +10) - by Agg VooDoo sent a warning about some phone finance scams that are doing the rounds and targeting small businesses. There's been recent coverage on A Current Affair and Stateline Queensland. The ACCC are now involved and there's a website here about the issue. From the ACCC: It is alleged the telecommunications companies used a "bundled services deals" business model. Under the deals the company would enter into a contract with a small business to provide it with telecommunications services and call credits to cover payments for what some customers thought was "free" equipment. Whereas, it is alleged, the equipment was supplied to customers under rental agreements by finance companies that were not related to the telecommunications companies. I'm not sure about all the claims being made so of course do your own research, but I thought it was definitely worthwhile passing along the warning. Modular Plug (19 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 3-February-2010  10:16:38 (GMT +10) - by Agg I recently spotted this Pix gallery uploaded by MUTMAN and asked if he had any more info. Turns out it's from an email that has been doing the rounds for a while, but it's a pretty cool modular plug setup: Click for the gallery! There's more info on this site, which seems to be the original source for what may (sadly) only be a concept for the moment. Someone make an Australian version!

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